Jim White's third album Drill A Hole In That Substrate And Tell Me What You See is brimming with warm, lovely songs (and it's also brimming with an unbelievable list of special guests... more on that later). Occasional atmospheric flutters of slide guitar slinks and horn flourishes mingle with White's smoky, achingly emotive vocals sorta like the more recent recordings by Calexico (he does bear a striking vocal resemblance to Calexico's lead singer Joey Burns), but when female vocals surface to join White's, the songs much more brings to mind Yo La Tengo's murmur-singing duo Georgia Hubley and Ira Kaplan. If you're familiar with either of those groups, you know they're superb company to keep, and actually the further into the album you go the more White leans into the more obtuse territory of Calexico's comrade Howe Gelb (just check out "Jesus Drove A Motorhome"). We should add however that although White's music may at times ring rather similarly to those artists', for the most part he definitely has his own thing goin' on. Sometimes soaring and elegant, sometimes lulling and earthy. Now, what about all those guest players that we alluded to earlier? Here goes: Aimee Mann, The Sadies, M. Ward, Bill Frisell, Joe Henry, Ralph Carney, Eyvind Kang and uh, the Barenaked Ladies. That's just scratching the surface. Plus it was produced by David Byrne. Wonderfully enveloping music for hideaway evenings far away from the hustle and bustle.
Wow, this is fantastic! All on its own (i.e, even without the film for which it was made) Jim White's soundtrack to Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus is one helluva stunning, evocative collection. The odd thing is, the film itself (by British filmmaker Andrew Douglas) was inspired by one of Jim White's previous albums. Funny how things come full circle, innit? Anyways, this will surely appeal to fans of Calexico and Giant Sand. The artists certainly weave similar musical tapestries, but whereas those Arizonans' music is drenched with Southwestern desert sunsets, Jim White's is conjured from the humid Deeep South. In addition to his own material, this cd includes songs by many AQ faves such as David Eugene Edwards of Sixteen Horsepower, Cat Power, Johnny Dowd, Maggie Brown, Handsome Family, Clarence Ashley, Doc Watson, Lee Sexton, Trailer Bride's Melissa Swingle, David Johansen, Larry Saltzman, and spoken word from Harry Crews (one of Andee's favortie authors EVER!). Steeped in rich imagery with plenty of soul searching and haunting gothic chills, each individual artist's contribution converges magically with the rest, making for a deeply moving and cohesive aural journey. Really, if this soundtrack's impact is even a fraction of that of the film, we're gonna totally love it. Recommended!
First we've heard from sampledelic South London producer Paul White, whose new album for Now-Again ought to appeal to everyone who liked the Madlib Medicine Show No. 6 disc we listed last time (which was a crazy DJ mix of vintage psych/funk/prog from around the world). Paul White likewise takes a chopped-up, dial-spinning, hiphop approach to quite similar, psychedelic material coming from but ONE source: the records of cult Swedish psych purveyor ST Mikael (who records for the Subliminal Sounds label, same as Dungen). Sampling, editing, looping, and layering snippets of ST's stuff, Paul also contributes additional synth, percussion and vocals, constructing a veritable psychedelic fantasmagoria, 25 delirious and delightful tracks that mash n' meld hiphop beats, popsike melody, Eastern string zing, folky strum, freaky electric guitar, odd sound FX, head nodding funky grooves, mystical atmospheres, non sequitur spoken bits, etc.
While we must admit we were only passingly familiar with the work of ST Mikael (and what we'd heard, or maybe it was just his record covers, seemed a bit cheesy, in an aging New Agey hippie sort of way, he's from the '90s after all) but Mr. White's hiphop makeover of Mikael is definitely cool. The results are a bit like the aforementioned Madlib, also remind us of When albums like The Lobster Boys and Pearl Harvest, as well as the likes of DJ Shadow, BMSR, and Rockford Kabine. Dreamy and druggy and definitely A.D.D. Recommended for sure. YOUR brain will be purple by the time you're through listening.
The cd version comes in a cardboard wallet, the vinyl in deluxe "paste-on" jacket, and in addition, the vinyl version includes a bonus 12" (first 1000 copies only) featuring Paul White together with Guilty Simpson.
Dreamy! Initially this struck us as being oh so very very adorable, but for those around here with a low tolerance for sugar its cumulative effect soon became too much. Their teeth started to hurt, and they fruitlessly tried to shield themselves in the metal section. Alright, that's an exaggeration! Simone White's voice is a little bit Regina Spektor and a little bit Sybille Baier and a little bit Rose Melberg. The production is seriously lux, with some of the nicest inclusion of brass instruments in a pop song we've heard in a long time. Everything is ultra soft and smooth. Hmmm, it's sort of Finchy too. Our only sticky point is that Ms White opts for a few lyrical trends that have become somewhat tired and overused, like uhh... anything about feathers! However, if you embrace your inner cute and twee darling self no matter what your age, this is so for you! Absolutely crushworthy!
This is a reissue of Tony White's second (or third?) solo album, and the one that is considered his best. A prolific songwriter (the stunning "Rainy Night in Georgia" as well as hits performed by everyone from Elvis to Etta James to Ray Charles), he's got
Recently we remarked upon how the long-running stoner rock label Small Stone had been kicking our asses with some great releases of late (Obiat, Iota, etc.). Gotta say the same thing now about the MeteorCity label, another veteran stoner rock purveyor who in the '90s, were second only maybe to Man's Ruin as THE stoner rock label of the day. Well, it's 2010 and, despite a lowered profile, the re-activated MeteorCity has been killing it lately, maybe even moreso than in the good old days, with such recently highlighted here releases like Ararat, Village Of Dead Roads, Freedom Hawk, and Egypt... THIS list, we've got two more from 'em to rave about, Leeches Of Lore and WhiteBuzz!
WhiteBuzz hail from Germany and illustrate a controversial point. You might think that the sound a band is known for is THEIRS, they invented it, and anyone else that sounds similar are obviously influenced or are flat out copycatting. Well, yeah maybe that's sorta true. But you could also think of it this way: the SOUND exists already, band A just came along and "discovered" it, channelled it, made use of it. But rather than wait for band A to make another record 'cause you want to hear that sound again, what about if band B comes along and ALSO taps into that sound, and it speaks through them just as legitimately as it does through the "original" band? Nobody is copying anybody, both bands A and B are servants to that sound, it's just that chronologically speaking band A came first, band B later. Likewise, there could be bands C, D, E, etc., all "tuning in" to this pre-existing, eternal "SOUND". That's a theory anyway, and it makes more sense when the sound in question seems so darn cosmic. We might be making to big a point out of this, actually, 'cause while we were gonna say if band A = Om then band B = WhiteBuzz, we think you'll be able to tell 'em apart. For one thing, WhiteBuzz have a guitarist! But if you like the epic ritualistic psychedelic fuzzed out epics of Om, we're pretty sure you're gonna dig WhiteBuzz, complete with a similarly chant-like vocal style and lysergically spaced-out interludes amidst the blown out super heavy repetitive riffage on the 4 loooong tracks here (plus a fifth, shorter, unlisted bonus cut that sounds more like a tribute to the Melvins).
Has WhiteBuzz heard Om? Well, we'd bet they have, probably, yeah, but who know, could be the not-so-coincidental cosmic scenario outlined above too. Heck, these heavy invocations weren't invented by Om, or precursors Sleep, EITHER, exactly. They go back to Pink Floyd and Hawkwind and Black Sabbath... to Tibetan monks... to the first cultivators of cannabis... to pagan prehistory... You could probably hear sounds like this in temples on Mars or in ancient, imaginary Hyborea!
Basically, we're sure YOU'VE heard Om, anyway. And it's likely you like Om, too. If so, and you'd like some more Om-ishness RIGHT NOW, then check out WhiteBuzz. To be honest, original or not, we like 'em almost as much as Om themselves. The only thing that kinda bugs us about WhiteBuzz is, why do they spell white/whyte two different ways in band name and album title? But otherwise, we're quite happy with this release!
The local label Out of Round has been laboring quietly in the background, not calling a lot of attention to itself yet turning out record after record that are consistently of similar mood -- due to the fact that they all play on each others recordings. The
Check out www.outofroundrecords.com -- we carry all of their releases. For a limited time only, get an Out of Round Records label sampler free with purchase any full length on the label.
Peter Whitehead is my favorite artist on the label. This Mission-ite is British-born and a cool instrument-maker, who croons downer vocals over otherworldy stringed instruments just "off"-sounding enough to be delightfully puzzling. Piano, mandolin, zither, siren, "spike fiddle", lyre. Very cool layers of lush metallic sounds acts as climaxes to his Michael-Stipe-like haunting verses.
Record number two from Australian doom dirge juggernaut Whitehorse. And whaddaya know? It's another live record! But so what!?!? If they sound this heavy and this brutal live, why even bother going in the studio? In fact, we're sort of afraid of what might happen if these guys actually did make it into a studio. Not sure we could handle it! This is intense stuff. Massively heavy, so slow and plodding it's almost ambient, with huge stretches of near silence, while the crumbling remnants of the last riff drift earthward before the next riff comes crashing down. Shrieked inhuman screams, and plodding drum beats set at least a mile apart, moans and drifting guitars and cymbal sizzle drift like tendrils of black smoke between each Teutonic crush. Hell they even have a guy in the band credited with just "Rumblings." Fuck yeah! Think Khanate, Bunkur, Corrupted, Eyehategod. So so so good! Packaged in a beautifully printed oversized cardboard sleeve. And as always SUPER LIMITED!!!!
Our pals at Conspiracy Records, a label/distro based in Belgium, who in the past have brought us records by Boris, Jesu, Shora and more, are this year celebrating their 10 year anniversary. A decade of amazing music. From a bedroom based punk rock label, to one of Europe's most important and influential labels and distros, all we can say is HURRAY! And HUZZAH! It's always so exciting, when a bunch of folks get together to spread the word about great music, great WEIRD music, and survive, even thrive. Such is the case with Conspiracy. And as if that weren't already enough, just knowing that some great people were selling some amazing music, those sweeties at Conspiracy have decided to share the love with us. And you.
To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they've decided to do a super limited subscription series, 12 records over 12 months, each limited to somewhere between 200-500 copies, ONLY available to series subscribers. EXCEPT, they've decided to let AQ have 20 copies of each, we're the only store with copies of these subscriber only lps, and for a brief moment, we can offer them to you, our loyal AQ customers. Needless to say we are thrilled, as the series lineup reads like a who's who of AQ faves, as well as including a handful of lesser knowns. All pressed on super thick vinyl, and packaged in killer hand screened original art sleeves. But be warned, we only got 20 of each, and we will run out fast and we will not be able to get more. When we do run out, there is a chance you can still get one from Conspiracy direct, but what that means is act fast and prepare to leave empty handed.
Australia's masters of monstrous sludge return with an actual studio recording. Their first if we're not mistaken. After multiple live recordings, these guys finally made it into a studio and the result is much as we imagined. These guys are seriously heavy and frighteningly brutal! One side long epic, a massive slow build, like an apocalyptic metal tinged Godspeed, swirling cymbals, keening guitars, thick drifts of distorted fuzz, underneath gargled demonic vocals struggle to be heard above the swirling din, super abstract and nearly ambient, it takes almost half the side before the song kicks in properly and then you're done for. A slow motion math metal sludge jam of unprecedented proportions. Stumbling and crushing, swathed in space rock FX, sounding very Corrupted like, Whitehorse are an unstoppable dirge, with some wild off kilter drumming and strange arrangements, so strange in fact, that occasionally, the band bursts into spastic chaotic almost 'free' sonic freakouts, like Neurosis doing free jazz. Nicely compliments their unstoppable glacier like brutality. WOW.
Amazing cover art too, angular, black and gold metallic patterns, the same patterns are also silkscreened on the B side of the lp. Quite striking! ----* ----* Black Metal Tape Mania!!! : ----*
Falling somewhere between the ultra doom of Khanate, the metallic post rock pummel of Isis, and the shrieking feedback / bowel-loosening dirge of Earth / Sunn O))), Whitehorse kick up a serious racket. Rumbling ambient drones slip into screaming feedback which in turn become huge unstoppable walls of noise, occasionally interrupted by beautiful mellowed out melodic interludes. Crashing drums all over the place, high end guitar melodies shriek like sirens, and of course the howled hyper intense vocals add another layer of sonic skree to the mix. Recorded live, with a totally blown out, super distorted mix, that while losing a lot of the finer details, definitely makes the whole thing sound that much more aggro and chaotic and on the verge of total collapse. Seriously noisy and fierce as fuck. Can't wait to hear a studio record from these guys. But for now, this white hot blast of live fury will do just nicely. Packaged in a beautifully printed oversized cardboard sleeve, with some deranged apocalyptic liner note ramblings from artist Seldon Hunt.
In the review of the last Whitehorse cd, we went on a bit about their propensity for releasing eps, and live eps at that. And only a few days later we got a sheepish email from the band, seeing if we wanted copies of their new record, a live ep?!?! Arghhhh. Well, the band has promised us that next stop will be the studio for a proper studio recorded full length, but what the hell, another 30 plus minutes of soul crushing sludge can never be a bad thing, and in the case of Whitehorse it's a very very good thing indeed. This time, the live show in question took place in Japan, but the sound is not that far removed from the first two eps. A massive slow moving lumbering sludge metal behemoth, trudging through graveyards, and ruined villages, the depths of hell and everywhere in between. This two track set is actually a wee bit speedier than their other recordings, which is a lot like saying a turtle is a wee bit faster than a tortoise, as this is still slow motion tarpit doom, but the pace is not so funereal, instead the vibe is much more Eyehategod than Khanate this time around, still harsh and abrasive and brutally heavy, but there's almost a groove going on. Which definitely lends the proceedings a sort of stonery doom vibe. As always really fucking great! Fans of Corrupted, Khanate, Eyehategod, Bunkur, Moss and all that is slow and heavy will not be disappointed.
Packaged in a beautifully printed oversized cardboard sleeve. And of course, SUPER LIMITED!!!!
Progression is the latest chunk of abject nihilistic ultra doom sludge from these Aussie heavies, the first full length since their sprawling double cd on 20 Buck Spin, and it continues on right where that one left off. Lurching lumbering downtuned slo-mo riffage, dueling vocals: grunted monstrous growls versus maniacal shrieks, fat fuzzed out bass buzz and massive pounding drum pummel, but unlike many of their doom/sludge contemporaries, Whitehorse actually have some groove, and some serious forward momentum, with maybe more in common with Eyehategod and Khanate than say Monarch or Bunkur, this isn't all near-ambient black doom drift, no these guys grind and pound, this is most definitely metal, just really really slow, it's propulsive, but a sort of tarpit propulsion, the sound super dynamic, lacing their metallic crunch with plenty of stop/starts, long stretches of squealing feedback, strange industrial clatter, the songs shifting from slow slung bass driven crawls, to loping glacial doom, to almost swinging metallic crush.
Opener "Mechanical Disintegration" channels the spirit of Winter and diSEMBOWELMENT into some sort of slow motion death metal, peppered with some surprisingly melodic filigree, these strange but super hooky guitar melodies draped over the main churning riffage, makes it sound like some classic metal playing at 2 rpm.
The title track slows it done even further, adding lots of scrape and clatter to the death march trudgery, a pounding minimalism that shifts gears part way through when the band launch into a serious groove (at least for them), verging on almost headbangable, really lurching and lumbering, some Sabbathy swing slowed down into something more serpentine and slithery. The rest of the record veers from funereal crawl, to grinding metallic pound and back again, the songs laced with strange mechanical hiss, white noise hum and weird glitches, all wrapped around that super low throb and thrum, culminating in the epic 9+ minute closer, which pounds away relentlessly before finishing off in a squall of feedback skree, twisted black noise and super distorted buzz.
Finally, the first widely available full length (and then some!) cd release, after a handful of live eps, from�Australia's masters of monstrous sludge, a double disc set collecting tons of previously released material from some of those long out of print cd-r's, a couple tracks from the long gone Conspiracy lp, and most importantly, a brand new studio recording in the form of the 22 minute track "The Unwelcome Return"! We'll get to that in a second, but first, a primer for those new to the downtuned brutality of Australia's Whitehorse, and folks who may have missed out .
Falling somewhere between the ultra doom of Khanate, the metallic post rock pummel of Isis, and the shrieking feedback / bowel-loosening dirge of Earth / SUNNO))), Whitehorse kick up a serious racket. Rumbling ambient drones slip into screaming feedback which in turn become huge unstoppable walls of noise, occasionally interrupted by beautiful mellowed out melodic interludes. Crashing drums all over the place, high end guitar melodies shriek like sirens, and of course the howled hyper intense vocals add another layer of sonic skree to the mix,�plodding drum beats are set at least a mile apart, moans and drifting guitars and cymbal sizzle drift like tendrils of black smoke between each Teutonic crush. These guys are a massive slow moving lumbering sludge metal behemoth, trudging through graveyards, and ruined villages, the depths of hell and everywhere in between
Each track a�massive slow build, like an apocalyptic metal tinged Godspeed, swirling cymbals, keening guitars, thick drifts of distorted fuzz, underneath gargled demonic vocals struggle to be heard above the swirling din, super abstract and nearly ambient, it takes forever before the songs kick in properly and then you're done for. Slow motion math metal sludge jams of unprecedented proportions. Stumbling and crushing, swathed in space rock FX, sounding very Corrupted like, an unstoppable dirge, with some wild off kilter drumming and strange arrangements, so strange in fact, that occasionally, the band bursts into spastic chaotic almost 'free' sonic freakouts, like Neurosis doing free jazz. Nicely compliments their unstoppable glacier like brutality. But the�pace is not always so funereal the vibe is as much Eyehategod as it is Khanate, still harsh and abrasive and brutally heavy, but there's almost a groove going on here and there. Which definitely lends the proceedings a sort of stonery doom vibe. It's easy to hear bits of Corrupted, Khanate, Eyehategod, Bunkur, Moss and the like, but Whitehorse definitely add their own twisted slow motion spin.
A�good chunk of this stuff is previously released. Avid AQ doomhounds may very well have 75% of this stuff, but odds are, due to the limited nature of the eps, and especially the Conspiracy lp (of which we only ever had 20 copies), a lot of you missed out on at least some of it. And besides all that, there's the brand new 20+ minute�"The Unwelcome Return" to contend with... and whaddayaknow, another crushing, head caving slab of slow motion sonic dirgery, like Electric Wizard on some serious downers, spun at 16 rpm, a lumbering gargantuan crush, with a long stretch of swirling bass heavy ambience in the middle. A loping bassline amidst lowend rumbles and strange shuffling drumming, all wrapped in constantly shifting swells of white noise and buzzy hiss, before the whole track explodes again, trudging hellward and crushing every goddamn thing in its path. Including us. And we LOVE IT.�
Worshippers of all things doom and drone and sludge would do well to prostrate themselves before these mighty and unmerciful doomlords, and to welcome the oncoming sonic annihilation...
Packaged in a killer black on black, gloss on matte, mini gatefold lp style cd sleeve, with a full color insert!
Killer split 7" from Aussie heavies Whitehorse, and Floridian thrashers Hot Graves. Whitehorse offer up another skull caving slab of extreme heaviness, churning, lumbering, groovy and sludgey, with some cool harmonized melodies offsetting the otherwise downtuned crush. The vocals are a demonic gurgle buried in the mix, occasionally exploding into banshee like howls, the sound creeping one second, swinging and Sabbathy the next, a killer jam, and surprisingly melodic/catchy.
Hot Graves are new to us, and a quick glance online seemed to have them pegged as sounding like Swedish styled death metal, but to these ears, at least on this split, they sound way more old school thrashy metal, reminding us quite a bit of aQ faves Speedwolf. Loping, galloping metallic punk (or punky metal?), all classic metal chug, shredding leads, raspy throat shredding bellows, raw and fucking fierce, with wicked classic harmony guitar leads, and a cool second half, that slips into a mosh worthy breakdown with still MORE classic metal riffing. Definitely want to hear more...
Probably limited, super swank silkscreened covers, and a printed heavy cardstock insert.
It's been a while since we've heard from Aussie heavies Whitehorse, but they've returned on this split with East Bay grinders Negative Standards, Whitehorse's contribution to the split a sidelong sprawl of downtuned miserablism, a song that takes WH's usual knuckle dragging tarpit doom sludge, and adds some insectoid black buzz, the swirling fast picked guitar weaving a strange backdrop to the band's monstrous lumber, bellowed vokills and caveman drum crush, the song droning and tranced out, devolving into a killer stretch of power electronics midway through, a field of garbled static and solid state feedback, before lurching back into action, slipping right back into an epic sonic trudge, that like past jams, sounds a bit like a more abject, slo-mo Godspeed, before returning to that opening black metal riff to finish things off.
We had never heard, or even heard of Negative Standards before, even though they hail from across the Bay, but they definitely make a good match for Whitehorse, their sound not doomy as much as crusty and grindy, opening with an extended intro of blackened ambience, and swirling FX, before launching into some fierce D-beat pound, lurching from crusty churn, to furious fastcore grind and back again, the vocals a seriously sick demonic rasp, the sound relentless, until the doomy midsong breakdown, the song slipping easily into slo-mo, downtuned creep, all knuckle dragging pound that evolves into some near Neurosis level epicry, before exploding into one final salvo of blasting, grinding fury. Things finish off with a short sharp burst of crusty grind, beginning with a brief blast of static/feedback power electronics, before exploding into some frenzied metallic crush, the relentless blasting crust, peppered with a few seconds of seriously spaced out doom midway through.
Killer artwork from Sutekh Hexen's Kevin Gan Yuen! But no download, sadly.
The Female James Brown. Holy Shit!
It's Bjork! And Bogdan Raczinski!
Thank gosh for the good ol' British Broadcasting Corporation and shows like "Top Gear", "Saturday Club," and of course "The Old Grey Whistle Test." Rather than simply play their records, the BBC put bands in their studios to cut live versions of their hits for airplay (due to Musicans Union rules that kept pre-recorded music almost entirely off the air). Because of this, today we can enjoy incredible archival releases of live Beeb sessions by the likes of The Beatles, Hendrix, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and now, The Who! From the years '65 (when the band actually had to audition for a spot on the radio) through '70, we get 25 "historic, unreleased" cuts including their goes at the Radio One jingle. Needless to say, highly recommended!
We first discovered French electro-grind-metal-psych-whatthefuck duo Whourkr a year or two back when we got their debut record, Naat, which totally blew us away, it sounded like a malfunctioning metal record and a freaked out techno record, all scrambled up together, tangled up and spit out, a skittering, skipping, looped, grinding chunk of electronic metal weirdness. The vocals would howl, but then get processed and looped and would become something else altogether, the drums and guitars were so gnarled and stretched and twisted up, that the band could explode into flurries of rapidfire mathematical grind, way faster and more complex and convoluted than any human could possible play. It was a total headfuck. Like the fastest freakiest grind, made even faster and freakier, but with a little techno thrown in for good measure. Remember the Drum>MachineGun compilation, of insane drum machine driven grind? Whourkr makes that stuff sound so so tame in comparison.
We tried and tried to track down copies for the store, but never had any luck, and then we heard that Crucial Blast would be releasing the NEW Whourkr, so we waited and waited, and now it's finally here, and it's totally different than the first one (or at least how we remember the first one), way poppier and more melodic, like the band are now actually composing songs instead of throwing all the sounds in a blender to see what comes out (not that we don't dig that too!), it's way poppier, catchier, but still totally and utterly freaked out and glitchy and fucked up beyond belief.
Chugging guitars and shrieked vox are chopped and spliced into a hyperspeed deathmetal Melt Banana, all the sounds constantly shifting, the tempo changing, the rhythms colliding and hiccuping, occasionally coalescing into full on grooves, other times splintering into bursts of electronic freakouts, and there are serious hooks happening too, it doesn't seem possible that music like this could be listenable, let alone catchy, but it is. Big time. We'll be the first to admit, that the other Whourkr record was difficult listening, brutal and to many ears annoying, and yeah, the same might be said for Concrete as well, but the band are so much better now, in terms of composition and songwriting, that once you're immersed in their fucked up and freaked out soundworld, it becomes surprisingly easy to acclimate to the rapidly and constantly shifting sounds and rhythms, in order to enjoy the songs themselves. Plus the vocals seem to play a much larger role, not just howls and shrieks, there are plenty of clean vox, soaring almost operatic, low AND high, wrapped around frenzied riffing, wound up into spiralling psychedelic freakouts, or like the instruments, chopped into crazed stutterscapes.
Take the track "Santo", with its deep crooned vox and acoustic guitars, sounding almost like Circle, the electronic effects very subtle at first, before the track lurches into full on doom, the voices and guitars just slightly glitched, eventually giving way to gorgeous delicate piano, only to be obliterated by the next track "Skovsnails", a little burst of drums, and a crazy clipped main riff, it almost sounds like some insane DJ remixing Orthrelm, the song stutters and lurches and hiccups, totally frenetic and relentless. The record dips its toes into all sorts of weird sounds, loping moody electronic downtempo, albeit a little fractured, head spinning hyper grind, shot through with unlikely pop hooks, glitched out death metal, soaring slow building post rocky drama, and more Melt Banana-esque grind pop, but nothing here sounds thrown together, or hodge podge, this is a baffling collection of sounds, but one that is meticulously composed, performed and recorded, and for those in the market for something truly demented, insane, extreme and heavy, not to mention out-there, and pretty much entirely unlike anything you've ever heard before, be next to impossibly to top Whourkr. Definite contender for metal record of the year, even though calling it a metal record is selling it WAY short. Regardless, absolutely recommended.
And, for a limited time (next couple of weeks, until February 2nd 2010), we'll be selling this for a special $2 discount off the regular price, which would normally be $13.98.
The idea of decay in sound has always been super appealing to us. Malfunctioning machinery, misused and abused effects, damaged tape, drop outs, hiss, hum, all the various imperfections that most music strives to eliminate, we tend to embrace, and that weird fucked/damaged element informs so much of what we are attracted to sonically. Which is why we were especially thrilled by our discovery of the French electro-grind / glitch-metal duo Whourkr, whose album Concrete we made a Record Of The Week a few years ago. Whourkr seems to embrace that who damaged fractured thing we love so much, but instead of their sound being about decay and destruction, it's some strange form of creation, and hybridization, melding blurred lightspeed metallic crunch with stuttery chaotic electronics, but again in keeping with that same vibe, their mission is not to make that interaction seamless, instead it's a glorious head spinning sonic trainwreck. There's definitely a method to the madness, and their mastery of both metal and electronics is something to behold, but as one of us casually mentioned when listening to the other Whourkr record recently, "why does all of our favorite music sound like the cd player is malfunctioning?". Which is as good a place to start as any with this, the duo's 2007 debut, Naat.
In our review of Concrete, we offered a brief thumbnail description of Naat, which we might as well repeat here:
"Like a malfunctioning metal record and a freaked out techno record, all scrambled up together, tangled up and spit out, a skittering, skipping, looped, grinding chunk of electronic metal weirdness. The vocals howl, but then get processed and looped and become something else altogether, the drums and guitars so gnarled and stretched and twisted up, the band exploding into flurries of rapidfire mathematical grind, way faster and more complex and convoluted than any human could possible play. A total headfuck. Like the fastest freakiest grind, made even faster and freakier, but with a little techno thrown in for good measure. Remember the Drum>MachineGun compilation, of insane drum machine driven grind? Whourkr makes that stuff sound so so tame in comparison."
And listening to this again now, we're reminded how fucking nuts this stuff is. It's definitely death metal, but some sort of alien death metal, where the churning riffs splinter into little shards of digital flutter, while the belching cookie monster vocals get stretched into weird gurgling drones, it's heavy and hypnotic, like some sort of mad scientist took his Cannibal Corpse records and Necrophagist records and removed the sound bit by bit, byte by byte, and then meticulously assembled this demented slab of digital death. Less insanely glitchy than Concrete, this is way more death metal, but still so completely and fantastically fucked up, that its transformed into a sort of death metal for outsider weirdo music electro metal nerds. If there are such things, well, besides us!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
NEW ON MISSISSIPPI!!!!
They may specialize in reissues, funk and soul and blues and gospel, but the fine folks at Mississippi also dabble in more contemprorary sounds, The Spooky Dance Band (members of the late great Reeks And The Wrecks) and Sad Horse (members of the late great Fuck!) being the most recent, until now, and until Why Are We Building Such A Big Ship, which sounds exactly like it could be the title of a Mississippi compilation, but is in fact the name of a group, a BIG group, nine members, handling instruments like accordion, upright bass, banjo, bass drum, trumpet, French horn, sax, piano and euphonium. That should give you a rough idea of the sort of sounds these cats conjure up, and consider that this is a co-release with a label in New Orleans, so we're talking a sort of woozy, New Orleans style funeral jazz, or more modern references might be the Decemberists, or even a less rambunctious, darker more contemplative Pogues, that sort of jazzy, drunken, wandering minstrel sort of cabaret sound, the instrumentation makes the sound old timey, Dickensian even, the horns moan and bleat, the accordions wheeze, very playful, yet ominous and haunting, the arrangements are gorgeous, evoking cobblestone streets, and cloudy skied rain soaked afternoons, shuttered buildings, and rolling hills of brown grass and tumbledown structures. It's the music's very old timey-ness that somehow makes it a perfect fit on Mississippi, and while it may not appeal to the blues / gospel / archival vinyl reissue purists, it is pretty cool, and should definitely please fans into the Decemberists, Beirut, Neutral Milk Hotel, Slim Cessna and other outfits not necessarily at home in this time...
SUPER LIMITED of course. Super swank, silkscreened chipboard jackets, white, black, red and metallic silver on brown, includes a printed insert as well.
The ever-changing roster of the impressive ensemble known as The Why Because is graced with numerous music luminaries from around the Bay Area. The line-up for Music shapes, their third release, is a six member crew including folks from Anticon/Lex avant-hoppers Subtle and Themselves. The disc's five lengthy improvised tracks (recorded live back in 2004) explore the far reaches of jazz, postrock, psych/space rock and ambient experimentation. And they incorporate an even broader array of instruments with trumpet, saxophone and percussion taking prominence amid the Fender Rhodes, other keyboards, bass clarinet, guitar, bass and melodica. Music shapes commences with "Fenced Bird Takes Flight" a barren landscape of faintly blown horns and Spartan drumming. This gradually blossoms into a more fleshed out and sprawling journey with many mesmerizing and meditative stretches as well as more kinetic cyclical passages. Check out "Serpentine Tides" and "We Will Fight For The Things That We Love".
Note: This cd is dedicated to member Dax Pierson who was seriously injured in a tour van accident last year. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Dax Recovery Fund.
We've loved pretty much everything on Anticon, the East Bay hip hop label that has been turning hip hop upside down with their arty, bizarre production and their whiny whiteboy emcees. And this new Why? record takes the production even farther out, so much so that this almost sounds like a quirky indie rock record rather than a hip hop record. But the vocals are really tough to take. I love the whiny, rapid fire delivery, the lyrical surrealism, but here, THAT, combined with the un-hip hop production, makes Why? sound a little too much like Atom And His Package or some other annoying joke band. And the thing is I LOVE Atom And His Package. But I'm sorry, Why? is just no Atom.
More totally out-there, free form experimental hip hop from the always awesome Anticon collective. Everything we've come to expect and love about the Anticon folks: whiny white boy flow, songs that are snippets and vice versa, erratic and completely unpredictable samples, and hiccupping stop/start rhythms. Ridiculous, but not silly. Funky, but impossible to dance to. Serious subject matters, but no overbearing preaching. Really cool.
First things first, if you want one damn terrific song with one catchy soaring chorus with some really pretty backing vocals and some rockin' heaviness to boot, "Time Machine" by Whysall Lane is where it's at. Hey, sometimes all you need is one song! You'll be singing along and/or humming it during the day in no time. However this Bay Area based band deliver much more on their self-titled debut! This is the current incarnation of former Versus vocalist Richard Balayut's longtime personal project. Up until recently the entity named after a street in Detroit, MI was either a solo endeavor or had an ever-changing supporting cast, but now along with the solid presence of Adam Pfahler (Blackball Records bossman and ex-Jawbreaker, J-Church) on drums and Mikel Delgado (ex-Wussom*Pow) on bass and vocals, his formerly stripped-down songs have been fleshed out into rockin' full band extravaganzas -- dark and smolderingly brooding and peppered with occasional slightly proggy or postrock-ish excursions and sweetly heartfelt sentiments. As we touched on above when Delgado chimes in with her back-up vocals, they really complement Balayut's deep world-weary delivery (also check out their song "Half Life" for more dreaminess!). Recommended.
Those who worship at the altar of all that is slow and low and heavy and sludgey and doomy and droney, you must now bow before a new lord, the duo from New York known simply as Wicked King Wicker. After three records, each heavier than the last, comes Borne Black, a sprawling black sun explosion of creepy crawly riffage, lumbering lugubrious tempos, tarpit sludge, and spaced out abstract buzz and shimmer, if you fancy Moss, Bunkur, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, SUNNO))), Wolf Eyes, Khanate, Skullflower, Human Quena Orchestra, Monarch, Corrupted, Otesanek, Habsyll, and all the various other denizens of the inky black dronedirgedoom underworld, and have yet to hear WKW, you are in for a treat. That is, if a treat for you is two guys all dressed in black, mere shadows, pummeling you to within an inch of your life with bloodied guitars, tossing your limp form into a freshly dug grave, before toppling a Guitar Center's worth of amplifiers into the hole, then burying you alive, before pushing the amps, the bloody guitars and your mangled corpse across an endless expanse of blackened filth and debris with a massive demonic KILLdozer. That's kind of what it feels like listening to Borne Black, five lengthy tracks of ultra slow riffing, and black ambient soundscaping. And while these guys can lean their guitars against the amps with the best of 'em, conjuring up thick black clouds of noxious low end slither, they are also masters of the RIFF, and most of these songs do in in fact contain riffs, not always right up in front, but the songs are driven by the riff, giving them more weight, more heaviness, and making them sound way more METAL than most of their contemporaries.
Just have a listen to album opener "There Is Only Pain", a crushing descending, depressive doom riff, that just churns relentlessly, pounding away, a gloriously miserablist sonic trudge, all amidst a constantly swirling field of white noise, static buzz, and caustic feedback. Over the course of 10 + minutes, the riff, and the demonic vokills that accompany it, sing slowly into the abyss, as the swirling clouds of noise around it grow more and more thick, the main riff eventually crumbles into a tangle of what sounds like drum machine and electronics, before finally disappearing completely in a doomic haze of black psychedelic power electronics. Woah. We could stop right there, and you'd definitely be getting your $12 worth. But there's nearly 40 minutes of 'wickedness' to go...
Woozy washed out shimmer gives way to ultra distorted crunch, which in turn gives way to some post industrial noise drenched pummel. Murky groaning ambience spreads out like some black fog, underneath which delicate melodies struggle for air, the textures shift and the layers roil, before an insanely distorted riff emerges, the distortion so thick and crumbling and blown out, it's difficult to discern the actual notes, that riff plays out, transforming as it goes from sharp caustic crunch, to muddy murky mumble, always wrapped in bellowed vox and a steady barrage of FX-saturated noize, until finally, the 13 minute noise doom dirge of album closer "They Are Suffering Alone And Terrified", a feedback slathered stumble through a field of erratic metallic buzz, chugging grinding guitarnoise and weirdly dubbed out drums, a twisting tangled bout of abstract heaviness, so corrosive and chaotic, any semblance of metal can only be glimpsed through a constantly heaving haze of blackened fury.
Fucking awesome, and definitely some seriously difficult listening, but for the legions of the slow and low, who can't ever seem to get enough glacial, near static, demonically riff-ed, doom-ed blacknoize, then Borne Black is yet another gloriously grim missive from the darkside, another black sonic stone to hurl at the heavens, as let these sounds drag you further into the fiery deep.
WAY recommended!!
Evolving is the latest from NY doom/sludge/dirge/drone duo Wicked King Wicker, and does in fact find the band evolving, their already blackened, tarpit, ambient dirgery moving further away from any proper metallic riffery, and instead, exploding in a supernova of power electronics and blacknoize brutality. The opening track here, a 10 minute sprawl titled "The Devil Must Learn The Limitations Of The Host", drapes a pulsating buzz over a field of grinding blackened electronics, of rumbling, crumbling drones, the vibe weirdly motorik, buried beneath all the noisiness, there seems to be strange shapes drifting, hauntingly melodic, giving the noisiness a mysteriously tranquil core. Soon the sound is engulfed in swirls of white noise, swaths of hiss and static, there seem to be vocals as well, buried in the mix, a monstrous bellow, blurred into still more smeared soft focus blackbuzz, the sound locked into an almost kraut-drone noisiness, before splintering into something much more caustic and chaotic, but still anchored by that buzzing riff-like pulsation.
That track definitely lays the foundation, as "A Prayer For Death" explodes right out of the gate, a heady, howling blast of Merzbowian murk, all churning, roiling crunch, and like that first track, obscuring something much more melodic underneath, this time, a dirgey slowcore pulse, and a field of constantly shifting textures, shards of feedback rain from the sky like hailstones, squalls of grinding skree, and crumbling distortion, all woven into something weirdly hypnotic, yet still undeniably brutal and caustic.
Things don't really let up. "Zen And The Art Of Nihilism" unfurls a field of grinding low end, wreathed in sheets of ear shredding upper register blasts, again, somehow transformed into something weirdly rhythmic, and strangely listenable, this track in particular, almost like multiple black metal riffs, melted down, and poured directly into your earholes, a tar black sonic pitch, pure blacknoize bliss. And finally, "The High Exalted Nothing" finishes things off with a riffy, dirgey churn, a darkly propulsive black dirge, almost industrial sounding, like Wolf Eyes meets SUNNO))) meets Bunkur, with some seriously terrifying vokills, no high end on this one, a black murk blowout that might be our favorite track here!
We had never heard of this NY band before but HOLY SHIT. A serious new contender for sure in the ever expanding world of crushing slow motion ultra doom-dirge-dronemusick. Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, SUNNO))), Skullflower, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Bunkur, etc. Any of those names get your blood boiling, then WKW just might be your favorite new band.
Flydust is WKW's latest offering, two tracks, both taking up a whole side, each a harrowing black expanse of crumbling, buzzing, churning heaviness. A sprawling, bottomless sea of throbbing, pulsing downtuned lowend buzz, roiling distorted drones, all murky and muddy and smeared into constantly shifting layers and textures, abrasive and chaotic, but washed out into a single heaving organic black expanse. Over the top, a weirdly motorik drumbeat, locked into a neverending rhythm, looped and hypnotic, and over that, super creepy vocals, equal parts death metal gurgle, and tortured anguished howl. The sound is mostly monochromatic, but the sounds shift and the textures transform, moments of melody surface here and there amidst the long stretches of near static blur and buzz, the vocals almost like another instrument, another black layer, all tangled up into an abject, blackened and brutal otherworldly kraut-doom. Harrowing, mesmerizing, buzzing, grinding and blown out, fucked up and abrasive, but simultaneously hypnotic and in its own brutal and punishing way, strangely beautiful.
VINYL ONLY. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one has a hand drawn inner sleeve, customized (i.e. scribbled on) by the band, every one unique.
More planet crushing doom drone blackness from these two axe wielding alchemists, one of which just so happens to run the bad ass Noiseville label, whose bad assness most definitely extends to his work in WKW, a juggernaut of low end brute force, ultra doom, plodding, trudging, lumbering heaviness, slowed down to an absolute crawl, 4 bpm never sounded so harsh and harrowing, which is saying a lot....
WKW take the slow and low template laid out by Khanate, and fill up all the extra space with crumbling distortion, howling feedback, garbled grunted vokills, fractured riffs, churning anti-rhythms, filthy and blackened and grim, a sprawling black cloud of sound, that seems to teeter on the edge, right between doom metal and pure drone, the two elements fused into some impossibly brutal and punishing sonic beast.
The awesomely titled "Call My Name Sweet Demon, So I Know I Am Not Alone" find WKW dipping into Wolf Eyes' bag of tricks, infusing their apocalyptic metallic creep with all sorts of industrial flavor, looped mechanical rhythms, stuttering processed electronics, sheets of feedback, thick shards of caustic buzz, layered and tangled, swooping from rhythmic throb to on-the-verge-of-collapse noise meltdown to muted damaged chug. The final epic track (all three tracks are just shy of 20 minutes long) is another strange assemblage of sounds, some abstract riffage, some swooping swirling high end streaks, plenty of hiss and skree and crunch, the whole thing twisted and tweaked, sometimes stumbling to a near halt, other times sprawling into a caustic crumbling jagged drone, and other times soaring into a near Merzbowian psychnoise blow out.
One of two new releases from this East Coast ultra doomdrone duo, the latest in Noiseville's Outer Bounds Of Sound lp series, which in the past has featured Burnt Hills, Kleistwahr. Skullflower... And Wicked King Wicker fits just find in that esteemed noise making company.
Much like their sonic compatriots Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, WKW seem to be a doom band in noise's clothing, or maybe it's the other way around. Ostensibly a doom outfit, WKW are just as likely to unfurl a burly glacial downtuned riff as they are to releases a swirling cloud of washed out psychedelic drift, which is what they do here, the root of their sound is still a downtuned buzz, a sort of murky riffage, but it's transformed into a looped dronescape, whatever riffage there was has been blurred and smeared into a softly pulsing, roiling blackened sprawl, peppered with gorgeous bits of electronic glitch, or synthy shimmer, it's hard to discern what it might be, but it adds a cool melodic component to the band's heaving abstract heaviness, the result something much more atmospheric and dreamy, that's pummeling and punishing, while still managing to sound heavy and intense and pretty epic.
The B-side sounds like it might have started life as a throbbing lumbering dooom jam, but was somehow subverted into an almost Fennesz sounding stretch of intense muted heaviness, glazed with flecks of crackle and crunch, wreathed in a psychedelic blur, the main component remains some sort of transformed guitar, all pulsing throbbing rumble and whir, finally finishing off in a blaze of abstract, super distorted Sunroof! like psychguitar ur-drone.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in cool metallic foil stamped jackets...
Latest grim black slab of droned out corrosive ultradoomscapery from this East Coast one man band, a nearly 40 minute, two sided, two tracked onslaught of crumbling distortion, pulsing roiling downtuned churn, slo-mo drone-psych riffage, blackened ambient crawl and howling glacial creep, falling somewhere between the all out blacknoise brutality of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, and the blissed out ur-drone skree of Sunroof!.
The A side is a filthy, crusty monster, but the chug and crush and rumble is infused with thick layered swaths of high end fragmented melodies, siren like pulses, a swirling tangle over a roiling black undercurrent, the strangely melodic bent gives the otherwise harsh noise a strangely orchestral feel, epic and majestic and soaring and sweeping, but still brutal and suffocatingly punishing.
The flipside is much more minimal. Muted and muddy and murky, the guitars blurred into long grimy streaks of industrial whir, blown out and super distorted, but so washed out to be almost transformed completely into a subtly propulsive dronescape, buried in the mix are some actual riffs, even a bit of rhythmic heft, and vocals too, a monstrous barely audible demonic gargle, but all wrapped in a lo-fi haze of crackling, slowly decaying sonic filth. Totally epic and hellish doomdronedirge bliss.
Housed in a super sweet three color silkscreen cover, and LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, 75 which are red, those are the ones we have, and we don't have all that many...
Brand new slab of extreme ultra low end slow motion doom-ed brutality from this NY outfit, whose last few records have left us beaten and bloodied and jonesing for more.
These guys have been around for a while apparently, but we only discovered their beautifully caustic downtuned din last year, with two records, their s/t debut (re-listed elsewhere on this week's update) and their second record Flydust. Both pushed all the right buttons, SUNNO))), Skullflower, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Khanate, Bunkur, Moss, just unbelievable heavy and sludgy, blackened and glacial, dripping and oozing with atmosphere, textures and drones, not just run of the mill sludge, or boring, lean-the-guitar-against-the-amp guitardrones, no, this was a band, rocking out full force, albeit insanely slow, and crushingly intense. So here comes record number three, another super limited lp only release, two sidelong tracks, and hell, if it doesn't leave the other two in the dust.
We're listening to it at 33, which sounds perfect, but it sounds pretty bad ass at 45 too, and still slow and sludgey, EVEN at 45, but slower is better, and this is slow and thick and viscous and so so so heavy. All built on a super stripped down bass riff, the bass super distorted and crumbling, unfurling an impossibly slow doom-ic anti-groove, over and over and over, cyclical and hypnotic and trance like, ultra minimal, but in no way boring or simple, just mesmerizing, while all around that riff, the rest of the band fills up whatever empty space is left with, massive sheets of buzz and whir, distorted effects everywhere, layers upon layers, drones and textures, feedback and incidental melodies, all being dragged along in the wake of that main bass riff behemoth. Not sure how they do it, but the sound, beyond heavy, and drone-y, is super musical, and while not quite melodic, there is some melody buried under all that murk and grime, it's like super blown out space rock, slowed down to 3 or 4 rpm, still retaining some of it's blissed out spaciness, but setting it amidst a roiling sea of black sonic tar and creeping, lurching, lumbering heaviness.
The flipside, another side long black drone sludge doom epic, seems to have been birthed out of the same grim black sound hole that produced the first side, the same lugubrious creep, the same grim blackened atmosphere, but here that riff has been pulled apart, whatever black beasts lurk in the shadows has torn it to pieces, leaving just shards and fragments, a swirling churning chaos of dense processed low end, crumbling distortion, deep fractured drones, more atmospheric and ambient than the first side, but just as harsh and hellish and heavy. Imagine building a massive roaring fire, then taking a load of guitars and amps, all plugged in, cranked, and howling and moaning and feeding back, and tossing them into the fire, letting them twist and ooze and smoke, recording the sound of the guitars and amps dying, melting, slowly fusing into one charred blackened heap of blistered and blown out buzz. It's kind of like that.
Awesome packaging too, thick clear plastic sleeves, silkscreened in white, over a red slab of vinyl with no labels, and a printed single panel insert, with three tiny Dore woodcut cards bearing the band's initials. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
We had never heard of this NY band before but HOLY SHIT. A serious new contender for sure in the ever expanding world of crushing slow motion ultra doom-dirge-dronemusick. Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, SUNNO))), Skullflower, Khanate, Wolf Eyes, Bunkur, etc. Any of those names get your blood boiling, then WKW just might be your favorite new band.
This WKW's self titled debut, and is in some ways even heavier and more blown out than Flydust (reviewed elsewhere on this list). The root sound is similar, a heaving morass of crumbling superdistorted guitars, but where as Flydust is murky and muddy and washed out, the sound here is prickly and cacophonous, abrasive and sort of sharp. The sound is also more propulsive, more distinct riffs, dripping with in-the-red distortion and twisted FX. The opening track is one single ascending riff, looped over and over and over and over, pounding its way through a dense cloud of impossibly thick buzz, the drums a buried plod, the vocals, barely audible through the churning mass of unfurling riffs and a constantly expanding wall of sound. The strange thing is, there is a definite groove lurking underneath, loping and lurching, but groovy nonetheless. Think Godflesh or Pitchshifter mixed with Ramleh and Wolf Eyes, but super charged and revved up, and dipped in a psychedelic concoction of tripped out prismatic psychrock filigree and blown out amp destroying drone drenched doom.
But the second track is a whole different beast altogether, a stretched out slowed down distorted riff, unfurled in slow motion, very reminiscent of Earth 2, but peppered with simple spare drumming, only barely, until about halfway through when the sound is swallowed up but a wall of distorted sound much more like the opening track, and suddenly the sound is transformed into a blown out acid-doused blast of crumbling blacknoise.
The last two tracks offer up more of the same, varying degrees of forward momentum, of spaced out ur-drone, of in-the-red effects, pounding abstract percussion, all draped over near static whitenoise buzz, weird krauty grooves, woozy metallic crawls, pulsing metallic ambience, and heavy heavy hypnotic dirgedoomdronemusick.
The lp is limited to 490 copies, pressed on purple vinyl, the cd is limited to 1000 copies.
As promised last list, here's the second of the two volumes of collected wah-wah overload and heavy fuzz freakout from this legendary underground UK hard psych power trio, circa 1969-1972, who were doomy and proto-metallic, but also fairly melodic and bluesy and sixties-sounding (they do a version of Jimi's "Voodoo Chile" here, which fits right in).
There's seven more archival Wicked Lady selections here to delight deaf bikers everywhere, ranging from excellently titled opener "I'm A Freak" to the album-ending 22 minute epic "Ship Of Ghosts", each full of heavy fuzzed out chugging guitar to the max.
Imagine a rather darker, more evil sounding Blue Cheer and you'd be close. The nearly 10 minute "Passion" sounds a heck of a lot like something by early Pentagram (or Bedemon), you could almost imagine it's Bobby Liebling singing it. Also there are some lines in the lyrics that go: "Tell me you love me / And I won't throw your grandma on the fire", how nice!
The cd booklet includes lyrics, and liner notes (the same notes as found in vol. 1, The Axeman Cometh, though). And for your information, Guerssen has released this on vinyl as well, though we're still waiting for our copies to arrive.
A holy proto-metal relic here, folks. This is the first of two volumes (vol. 2, modestly titled Psychotic Overkill, we'll review next time) collecting the recorded output circa 1969-1972 of this heavy riffing underground UK unit, well known in the annals of hard psych fuzzarama. A classic power trio, featuring Martin Weaver (later of the Dark) on guitar, along with Bob Jefferies on bass and "Mad" Dick Smith on drums, Wicked Lady had a rep for being LOUD and causing violence. No surprise that Wicked Lady's axeman stateth in the liner notes that their fans were either partially deaf people or bikers! Or both!
Their sound was based on the basic British blues rock of the day, a la Cream, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, and so forth, with melodic vocals and a generally sad vibe, their songs sometimes relatively tame hippie popsike seeming - at first - before Weaver would unleash the hellish wah wah fuzz freakouts that whipped those poor deafened bikers into such a state.
Groovy, lumbering, loping, amped up and drugged out, Wicked Lady is the real deal, dated to us now, perhaps, but quite charming. You can't argue, ferinstance, with how after a gentle, folky beginning, the track "War Cloud" morphs from melodic to martial, a jackbooted march with wild soloing o'er top, kinda as if Trad Gras Och Stenar went (proto-)metal� such fuzz guitar jamming excess is to be found throughout, like Wicked Lady were the Earthless of their day.
The eight tracks found here (DIY recorded in the band's dingy rehearsal space, 'cuz they were about playing live, not making records, but wanted to remember how the songs went!) are all gonna be of interest to those into the likes of Randy Holden's Population II, High Tide, Stray, '70s Pentagram, Iron Claw, T2, Negative Space, and other obscure late sixties / early seventies purveyors of heavy psychedelic riff rock. This is the first time Wicked Lady's music has been legitimately released on cd (and Guerssen has pressed vinyl too, which hopefully we'll have soon), with the participation of Martin Weaver himself, who contributes liner notes, telling the whole Wicked Lady story - and he's got some stories. Though he does dispel the rumor that he broke a window and stole his first guitar - instead, apparently, he built it himself. Full lyrics are also included in the booklet.
As an earlier, bootleg edition of this on the cult Kissing Spell label put it in a back cover blurb: "60 Minutes Of Wah Wah Hell"!
Sometimes we just have to pinch ourselves to make sure we're not dreaming, and that Japan's EM Records and all the crazy stuff they somehow find and reissue is actually real! Seriously, it's hard to believe, EM dig up such obscure things that are just so AQ-perfect, so darn weird. We have whole sub-genres of stuff in stock here at the store all because of EM - steel pan funk, psychedelic surf soundtracks, singing saw music! And quite a few one-off items that pretty much represent new genres in and off themselves. Like this one, which EM almost too tamely describes as "Obscure evil psycho machine-funk from '80s Washington D.C. Psychedelic madness!".
From the moment Wicked Witch showed up in the mail, we were ensorcelled. Heck, this pretty much had us with the cover, featuring a Vice magazine Dos and/or Don'ts worthy photo of a mysterious, ridiculously bad ass lookin' African American fellow wearing shiny black leather and spikes, sporting a knife in a scabbard attached to one of his boots. He's got his hands on his hips, his eyeballs are colored in red, and we sure wouldn't want to mess with his rad dudeness. But even that strange, sinister image couldn't have prepared us for what this actually sounds like... Which is, to us, ARIEL PINK PLAYING FUNK!! It's that damaged, that lysergic, a one-man outsider take on the druggiest moments from early '70s Miles Davis and especially Funkadelic, like "Wars Of Armageddon" off of Maggot Brain ferinstance.
The first track of this anthology, "Fancy Dancer", a 7" single from 1985, drops the listener right in at the deep end, a dense miasmic phantasmagoria of percolating off-kilter grooves, funky vampings, and creepy, low-end synth buzzings and growlings, further made freakier towards the end of its 5 1/2 minutes with a dose of wild psychedelic electric guitar soloing. Damn. Don't even know if funk is the right word for this. How about "glunk"? 'Cause it's got such a melty, gooey viscosity to it. The credits tell us this appeared on a 7" single from 1985, with all instruments and vocals by Richard Simms (he's the cover star, he's Wicked Witch, and he's apparently quite a character!). Next, track two, "Erratic Behaviour", is maybe even more murky and chaotic, a mixture of echoing, babbling voices and tick-tocking drum machine, set loose amidst swirling electronics. It comes from another 7" single, circa '83, as does the similar track three, "X Rated", which adds some "sensual" guest female sex-freak vocal exhibitionism over the lashing beats, bass throbs, and general dementia. But it's at least as spooky as it is sexy...
Then, track four, "Vera's Back", suddenly shifts things into another realm, delving into Wicked Witch pre-history. Written and produced by Simms, this track was originally released in on a 12" in 1978 by a band he was in (on bass and vocals) called Paradiagm [sic]. It's twelve minute workout of shredding jazzfunk fusion, with over the top chops, a la Return To Forever, with violin and echoing vocals and proggy changes galore. It's a lot "cleaner", less distorted and drugged out than Wicked Witch's later bizarre cauldron bubblings, but still pretty crazy, some of it like Goblin on speed!
The next three tracks bring us back to the more unusual funk (or glunk?) stylings of Rick Simms solo in the '80s, with two takes (one instrumental, one vocal, though both have vocals, the latter just more n' nuttier of 'em) of a track called "Electric War", from a 1984 Wicked Witch 12", and then, for a finale, the disc comes full circle with a previously unreleased, extreme remix of "Fancy Dancer" done in '86. Again, weird, dense, DIY outsider grooviness. Yep, CHAOS: 1978-86 is aptly titled. And we're still astonished, dunno how EM does it. Who digs deeper? You couldn't make this stuff up, we know, but we're still pinching ourselves. Maybe Wax Poetics will do a feature on Wicked Witch one of these days... we can only imagine what became of Simms, perhaps institutionalized in some asylum for the Funkily Insane. In the meantime, you can pour over the photos included herein.
FYI, the above review describes the programming of the cd version, EM's lp of this has a slightly different running order and in fact some different tracks! The vinyl edition omits the "Fancy Dancer" remix and the "Electric War" vocal version. But, its "Erratic Behaviour" and "X Rated" are both remixes different from what's on the cd. And, there's a whole 'nother previously unreleased cut on the lp, "Under Your Spell", eight and half minutes long, from 1986! So we can't tell you which format to choose. Either one, or both, are highly recommended!
Oooh -- a domestic release (somewhat different from the previously available version issued in 1998 by the UK's Trunk label, more on that later) of the soundtrack to the amazing and supremely creepy 1972 British pagansploitation film The Wicker Man! A group of folk musicians, most of whom appear in the film, bring nordic lyre, harmonica, concertina, recorders, guitars, hand drums and more (some psychedelic electric guitar at one point!) to Paul Giovanni's exceptional Celtic influenced compositions. More than just film accompaniment music, the soundtrack plays an important role in the film's characterization of the pagan inhabitants of a remote island off Scotland (led by their Laird, played by Christopher Lee in what he considers his greatest role) who are suspiciously reticent in helping a stuffy, upright Christian policeman (Edward Woodward) investigate the mysterious disappearance of a young girl. Sometimes bawdy, sometimes haunting, and ultimately infused with the film's mounting sense of menace, the songs capture the lusty forces of nature which embrace death as readily as birth. As much as they work in the context of the film, these songs form an album that is great in its own right. Divided into "Songs From Summerisle: Ballads of Seduction, Fertility and Ritual Slaughter" and "Incidental Music From The Wicker Man," the tracks are culled from newly unearthed stereo masters as well as rougher and perhaps more appropriate sounding mono mixes which originally appeared in the film. Highly recommended, both for fans of English folk (of the sixties revival and/or "apocalyptic" varieties) as well as for fans of cult oddities. Truly the "unholy grail" of film soundtracks, as the Trunk version's liner notes put it.
Oh, if you've got that disc, and are wondering what's different with this release, here's the lowdown: That 1998 cd release was a mono recording, taken from the music and effects tapes from the shortest (86 minute) cut of the film, whereas this new version was done from the newly-discovered stereo masters of Giovanni's music, and includes the wonderful song "Gently Johnny" which only appeared in the longer, uncut version of the film and thus was missing from the Trunk cd. The sound effects and dialogue aren't mixed over the songs, as with the earlier version, and as mentioned, this new disc is organized with a suite of tracks of incidental music and sound effects presented separately, following the actual songs (rather than mixed all together, arranged as in the film). However, this new Wicker Man's running time is actually a few minutes *shorter* than the previous version, even with "Gently Johnny" included. Hmm. We're not exactly sure what's missing, presumably some of the incidental music /effects were edited differently. But no matter, this still must be considered the definitive Wicker Man soundtrack, because of its superior stereo sound source, as well as the packaging, which includes a handsome booklet of photos and text housed beside the cd's jewel case in a cardboard slipcover.
And if you haven't ever seen the movie, it's on DVD now, go rent it!!
One of our all-time favorite soundtracks to one of our all-time favorite movies gets the deluxe gatefold vinyl reissue treatment. You probably know you want it, if you want it. And if you don't, we can only think of a couple reasons: you've never seen the movie, or you don't have a turntable. Definitely correctable conditions. It's a bit expensive, too, but so worth it! This is the vinyl version of the domestic stereo master reissue from 2002 with the incidental music included. Includes extensive liner notes on both the film and music. Here is what we said about the cd edition way back on list #147:
Oooh - a domestic release (somewhat different from the previously available version issued in 1998 by the UK's Trunk label, more on that later) of the soundtrack to the amazing and supremely creepy 1972 British pagansploitation film The Wicker Man! A group of folk musicians, most of whom appear in the film, bring Nordic lyre, harmonica, concertina, recorders, guitars, hand drums and more (some psychedelic electric guitar at one point!) to Paul Giovanni's exceptional Celtic influenced compositions. More than just film accompaniment music, the soundtrack plays an important role in the film's characterization of the pagan inhabitants of a remote island off Scotland (led by their Laird, played by Christopher Lee in what he considers his greatest role) who are suspiciously reticent in helping a stuffy, upright Christian policeman (Edward Woodward) investigate the mysterious disappearance of a young girl. Sometimes bawdy, sometimes haunting, and ultimately infused with the film's mounting sense of menace, the songs capture the lusty forces of nature which embrace death as readily as birth. As much as they work in the context of the film, these songs form an album that is great in its own right. Divided into "Songs From Summerisle: Ballads of Seduction, Fertility and Ritual Slaughter" and "Incidental Music From The Wicker Man," the tracks are culled from newly unearthed stereo masters as well as rougher and perhaps more appropriate sounding mono mixes which originally appeared in the film. Highly recommended, both for fans of English folk (of the sixties revival and/or "apocalyptic" varieties) as well as for fans of cult oddities. Truly the "unholy grail" of film soundtracks, as the Trunk version's liner notes put it.
Oh, if you've got that disc, and are wondering what's different with this release, here's the lowdown: That 1998 cd release was a mono recording, taken from the music and effects tapes from the shortest (86 minute) cut of the film, whereas this new version was done from the newly-discovered stereo masters of Giovanni's music, and includes the wonderful song "Gently Johnny" which only appeared in the longer, uncut version of the film and thus was missing from the Trunk cd. The sound effects and dialogue aren't mixed over the songs, as with the earlier version, and as mentioned, this new disc is organized with a suite of tracks of incidental music and sound effects presented separately, following the actual songs (rather than mixed all together, arranged as in the film). However, this new Wicker Man's running time is actually a few minutes *shorter* than the previous version, even with "Gently Johnny" included. Hmm. We're not exactly sure what's missing, presumably some of the incidental music /effects were edited differently. But no matter, this still must be considered the definitive Wicker Man soundtrack, because of its superior stereo sound source, as well as the packaging, which includes a handsome layout of photos and text in the record's gatefold and features blown up movie poster art on both sides of the record's jacket.
And if you haven't ever seen the movie, it's on dvd now, go rent it!!
