This is a split cd-r of pure analogue synth sweeping and Kosmische dirges from Grasslung and Pulse Emitter. Portland's Daryl Groetsch has been pumping out the micro-edition releases with anybody willing to release his gnarled take on '70s electronic expansiveness; whereas Grasslung, the solo project of Jonas Asher who also hails from the incredible UW Owl and operates the Phaserprone label, has been much more particular in releasing his sounds. On first investigation into this work, it seemed to be a collaborative project with uniformly blackened surfaces of smoldering saw-tooth noise generation and undulating surfaces that spoke of dead-eyed electronics and sci-fi bleakness. As plausible as this seems, the first track of rippling electronics, half-consumed melodies, and amorphously twisting drones is that of Pulse Emitter; and the second two pieces of chilling, horror tonefloat mired in sickening gloom, hail from Grasslung with equal aplomb. Think Expo '70, Omit, Emeralds, and even Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion, and you won't be far from the mark on this great piece of modular synth sprawl. Packaged in very impressive letterpress / die-cut packaging, and limited to something like 200 copies.
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Imagine that this split release is a see-saw, with Graves At Sea on one side and Asunder on the other. They're both so heavy that the teeter-totter wouldn't totter, but simply snap in the middle, leaving both bands sitting there, glaring at one another, having no fun at all. But no fun sounds good, if you like doom like we do. And both of these bands do the doom quite well, ultra low and slow -- so slow that just to make it through a song they need at least ten minutes (the two Graves At Sea tracks clock in at 10:45 and 11:16 while Asunder's contribution lasts 18:59) and you'll need a dose of anti-depressants. I mean, is this a split release or a suicide pact?
Graves At Sea (who had a cd-r release a while ago, but as yet no full-length cd) are from LA and basically are along the lines of Khanate, Burning Witch, or Corrupted -- nasty, feedbacking, hateful sludgecore, with a dreadlocked vocalist (known as the "bloody guy" around here) who spits out a screech like Edgy from BW or Khanate's Alan Dubin. And they're not to be confused with Buried At Sea, by the way, although both bands play music dug from the same charnel pit!
Graves At Sea make a perfect pairing with Asunder, who are the Bay Area's contribution to the "funereal doom" subgenre, aligning with the likes of Skepticism, Evoken, and Disembowelment. Majestic and morose metal played at a glacial pace, with both the use of cellos and the presence of ex-Weakling guitarist/vocalist John Gossard giving 'em extra dismal atmosphere. Their track here is definitely in the vein of their epick A Clarion Call album from last year.
Man, we'd thought that Graves At Sea were long gone, sunken deep into some pit in the ground, maybe playing their ultra doom dirges for the denizens of Hell at this point, but no longer active in our surface world. Turns out the band, in fact defunct since 2008, recently reformed with a new lineup, so they're essentially back from the grave (back from the sea?) - and here's a new recording from 'em, on a split with another hoary bunch of heavies, Sourvein, whom we haven't kept up with lately either, but are also are still kicking out the stoner sludge jams like every day's doomsday.
Graves At Sea take the first half of this split, with two tracks, each over seven minutes long, their blown-out, droned-out sludge stomp as forceful and abject as ever. Headbanging to this makes your skull feel like it weighs a thousand pounds. Their vokills are like we remember 'em too, a gruff shrieking gargle that sometime sounds witchy in a way - not witchy like all those sultry female "occult rock" singers, but witchy like a cackling hag putting a curse on you. (It's a dude singing by the way, we don't want to mislead.) Awesome shit, bad vibes you can rock out to.
The Sourvein half is awesome shit too, three tracks of their slo-mo, Southern Sabbathy sludge sound, pretty much as heavy but more spaced out and psychedelic than the Graves stuff, not quite so grim, the vocals a bit more wasted Ozzyish, the riffs and leads a bit more overtly classic '70s inspired - man, makes us realize we need to go back and check out the Sourvein recordings we've slept on - the last thing we reviewed by them was back in 2005, must rectify that pronto!
Both bands kill it here, a superb split for anyone into the sludge!! (FYI, there's also vinyl of this, we should get some soon...)
This split is a super interesting match up, pairing two bands who ostensibly play the same sort of music, but who have dramatically different approaches to their sound.
Up first are the Red Sparowes, who take the metallic post rock angle, stretching their tracks out into loping epics, that loop and repeat hypnotically building to a massive crescendo, all soaring guitars and keening melodies. Eventually breaking back down into mesmerizingly mathy rhythms and melancholy ambience. The drumming is awesome, Simple but so powerful and propulsive, definitely driving the band, helping shape these aggressive epics.
Gregor Samsa, come at their post rock from a whole 'nother direction, choosing to drift instead of pummel, to float and hover instead of pound and wail. In addition to the typical rock band instrumentation, GS are augmented by cello, violin and upright bass, which adds to their simple understated majesty. Both tracks here are spacious near ambient affairs. Simple, spare reverbed guitars, tons of glistening reverb, hushed, near whispered vocals, sounding very much Low or Galaxie 500. So dreamy and lush and laid back. Eventually the first track builds into a super dramatic sweep of soaring strings and crashing drums, not heavy, just intense and emotional. So nice. The second track starts with a blissed out drone, shimmering and sparkling, before the drums and guitars kick in, turning the track into something more Loop or Spacemen 3 or Swervedriver than any sort of metallic post rock. Again the strings swoop in to add all sorts of emotion and urgency, turning the track into a fuzzy minor key dreamdrone fuzz rock epic! Man, we love this band. In fact we love BOTH these bands. An absolutely killer split.
A while ago we were informed that French ultradoom combo Monarch had called it a day. We were crushed. One of our favorite purveyors of filthy slow motion doooooooooom, fronted by a woman, a rarity in doom for sure, and with a penchant for smiley skulls and Hello Kitty. A band that seemed tailor made for the very bizarre tastes of the AQ faithful, seemed to be no more.�
But before we could begin our campaign of mourning, black clothes spray painted with cute skulls, black Hello Kitty armbands, we discovered that in fact we were misinformed, or maybe the band had taken a break, or something, but we cared not, for whatever reason, Monarch was still alive, and would live to doom another day. And doom they did. Gracing us with more and more glorious downtuned heaviness, including their bad ass cover of Turbonegro's "I Got Erection"!
So now that we're pretty comfortable with the continued existence of our favorite cute doomsters, we can wait patiently for each new, massive slab of harsh slow motion glacial dooooooooooooooooooooom. And for folks new to Monarch, don't go expecting this to actually -sound- cute. They may be fronted by an adorable French girl, who spins playfully on the beach in their videos, but when she opens her mouth to sing, it's the sound of blackness and misery, a demonic caterwaul, unrivaled by most male metal vocalists. And sure the art on their records may be cute cartoon burning churches and big eyed ghosts, but the sounds inside are slow and black as tar, guitars tuned so low they rumble instead of roar, drum beats so far apart, the drummer can probably smoke a cigarette between beats.�And we're happy to report that this 16+ minute chunk of doom is all that and more. The more being the haunting ethereal female vocals partway through... Crushingly heavy, weirdly beautiful. A plodding symphony in slow motion. Essential Monarch beautiful brutality.
The surprise here is the Grey Daturas track, also a 16 minute epic, that on first listen sounds surprisingly doomy, and a lot like the Monarch track. The Daturas are often heavy, but rarely doomy like this, but it suits them. And they pepper their doom with all sorts of sonic weirdness, bits of electronic fuckery, strange modulated feedback, subtle FX, until about 13 minutes in, when the song suddenly morphs into a muted wall of smeared and crumbling white noise, a blast of blurred sound that eventually fades into nothingness.�
Pretty amazing stuff, from both bands. Doom hounds will be well pleased. Super fancy gold inked black cardstock gatefold sleeve too...
We had never heard Canadian electro-soul experimentalist Grimes before, but had heard a lot about her, and we have to say, her sound definitely lives up to the hype, her voice spectral and girlish, a sweet high croon one second, a Kate Bush like wail the next, the vocals wrapped in ethereal atmospheric swirls and pulsing electro synths, skittery IDM rhythms, all subtly glitched out, laced with haunting pianos, everything hazy and reverby, a little witch house-y, but for all it's weirdness and experimentalism, it's also seriously poppy, and about as commercial as stuff like this can get without switching teams, like in some alternate universe, this would be all over the radio, and should be. Folks who dig Zola Jesus, Glass Candy, Salem, oOoOO, Cosmetics and the like will dig big time.
D'eon, whose Palinopsia 12" we reviewed a while back, drags things back squarely into some outsider soul / weirdo electronics netherworld, with a gorgeous, hazy softly psychedelic intro, all swooshy new age synths, and spidery barely there guitar, cascading melodies, swoonsome underwater bass, and a melodic refrain that had this sounding almost like a re-interpretation of the Twin Peaks theme, but laced with a skeletal rhythm created by glitchy cell phone interference, that immediately recognizable stuttery static...
But after that, it's back to the fractured fucked up retro soul D'eon does so well, super washed out, kaleidoscopic eighties flashback grooves, Terrence Trent D'Arby like soulful vox, draped over smears of synth shimmer, and warbly loops, an avant IDM soul that seems to gradually blossom into even more crunchy glitched out rhythms, almost jungly at one point, but never shedding its gloriously dated eighties haze. The closer, with its electronic bass, and electro handclaps, definitely sounds like some lost eighties VHS soundtrack, bouncy, soulful, groovy, and fracturedly funky.
Killer three way split of grim depressive blackness from the same label that brought us the new Pyha (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), and while we were familiar with French outfit Grimlair, we had never heard of the other two. And while Grimlair have not made it onto the aQ list until now, the black metalheads around here have dug them for a while, their, woozy, mournful, melancholic buzz drenched miserablism, the guitars crunchy and softly corrosive, the vocals and anguished wail, the drums simple and buried in the mix, but the melodies, so dreamy and haunting and emotional, think Xasthur and Alcest and Amesoeurs, but way more raw and stripped down, a single riff spread out into a whole song, the melody winding through the churning murky riffage, not so much heavy as atmospheric, a gauzy, blackened sonic dreamworld, the last track a cool, reverby, almost classical clean guitar piece, love this guy. If you're at all into the sad and sorrowful side of the grim black spectrum, this will totally hit the spot.
The guy from Grimlair apparently also plays in Klar, who not surprisingly traffic in a similar sound, but Klar's sound is a bit more lush and full, the same sort of melancholic melodic grimnesss, but with a dour almost post punk undercurrent, the guitars reverby and echoey, with some cool, almost psychedelic sounding leads, the vocals more up front, and a bit more tortured sounding, with occasional bursts of almost blasting blackness, but for the most part, Klar creeps and crawls, crafting ominous and haunting slo motion metallic atmospheres, peppered with stretches of almost post rock sounding clean guitar jangle, and one long stretch of solo guitar that's super meditative and hypnotic.
Finally, there's Unending Hatred, a depressive duo from Mexico, who have their own take on miserable blackness, a full, heavy sound that definitely reminds us a little of Lifelover, but much more raw and grim, the guitars woozy and washed out, everything wreathed in thick buzz, the melodies sad and sorrowful, minor key and mournful, and the vocals, twisted mewls and wild falsetto shrieks, very alien and animalistic, adding a seriously demented vibe to the droned out depressive blackness, definitely want to hear more from these guys.
Three variations on grim black miserablism, all of them pretty great...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited split single from aQ beloved Grouper, and the new-to-us City Center.
Grouper continues in her slow drift away from the lo-fi murk of early recordings into something distinctly more folky, with softly strummed acoustic guitars, and a gorgeous swirl of voices, overlapping harmonies, ethereal and almost choral sounding, the result, while still psychedelic and lo-fi, just might be the best sounding, and strangely enough, poppiest, track we've heard yet from Grouper!
City Center fares just as well, offering up a hazy lo-fi murk-pop gem that leaves us definitely wanting more. Beach Boys style harmonies doused in effects and buried in buzz and girt, laced over woozy guitars and a mechanical looped rhythm, delay and reverb everywhere and all over everything, warped and underwater sounding, with some incredible hooks barely audible through the hazy fug wrapped around the whole track. Think John Maus, Ariel Pink, Kurt Vile, that same sort of otherworldly seventies radio station vibe, but even more psychedelic and pretty.
AWESOME!
So this past spring Grouper and Pumice graced New Zealand with a small tour, and we were lucky enough to track down a few of the highly limited splits they brought along. Grouper's side is a hazy, dream-like offering of her Way Their Crept type drugged out drone-pop. And Pumice's side is not unlike the material on the recent Quo album. Both previously unreleased tracks for these bedroom pop heavyweights, limited to 500 copies, don't even think about missing out on this one!
Split ep between Olympia, WA trio Growing and former Get Hustle member Mark Evan Burden with each contributing a 16 minute track. Growing's track "Firmament" begins as a bubbling analog synth warble, progressing to ever more dark and ominous waters, but stripped of the guitar and bass parts that made their full length works remind us of Sunn 0))) or Earth. Burden's piece, "10724/02", is a striking contrast. His electronics accompanied piano improvisation ranges between the maniacal pounding minimalism of Charlemagne Palestine and the atmospheric soundscapes of Harold Budd (sans the nuage tendancies). Quite nice!
Chinese punk!! In folded silkscreened poster packaging that's probably all stuck together...
Yet another one of the ultra limited Record Store Day releases, we got enough of this one to review for all the faraway folks who couldn't be here on the day. A killer split, one side longtime aQ fave Ilyas Ahmed, teamed up with Steve Gunn on the other.
Ahmed offers up some warm sun dappled Appalachia, lush strummed 12 string guitars, all minor key and melancholic, accompanied by wispy reverbed vox, plaintive and intimate, the sound hazy and hypnotic. Near the end, buzzing streaks of electric guitar swoop in, hushed swells and layered harmonies, turning the folkiness into something more moody and softly psychedelic.
Gunn counters with his own take on Appalachia, a stripped down bluesy vamp, a little bit bluegrass, a bit folky, warm overtones, lots of layered buzz, Gunn's vocals deeper and more gruff, swaddled in reverb and delay, the various spidery melodies seem to grow more tangled as the song progresses, a gorgeous chunk of bluesy psych folk for sure.
LIMITED TO 800 COPIES, only 200 on clear, which are the ones we have. Housed in a super swank jacket with original artwork by Ahmed.
Minimalist composers Bernhard Gunter and Steve Roden had intended on selling this split CD exclusively on their tour in Japan in November 2001, but became so fond of the recordings they decided to let the rest of the world have access to them as well. Gunter
By now, most aQ metalheads know all about our undying love for oddly monickered Happy Days, and most likely feel the same. But for those who might be confused by a metal band called Happy Days, let's examine this, their latest, a split with Dutch outfit Eindig. The record is called The First Step Towards Suicide, there's a photo of an oven on the cover. The Happy Days tracks have names like "Clinging Onto A Chance Of Happiness" and A Bleak Future That Awaits Us" and "Too Sick To Speak", the booklet is full of blurred photos of people hunched over, seemingly in misery, so yeah, the name Happy Days is meant ironically, cuz these sounds are the soundtrack for the unhappiest days you can imagine.
Happy Days offer up a new batch of abject audial depression, beginning with a mournful jangly guitar accompanied by an appropriately dark and hopeless sample, before launching into some buzzing midtempo depressive black metal, melodic and melancholy, after a burst of furious buzz, the record settles into a loping melodic gloom and doom, gorgeously sorrowful guitar melodies draped over pounding drums, raspy vokills and churning riffage. More dark and atmospheric than blasting and buzzing, but there's still plenty of that lurking within these tracks. Some killer riffs, some awesome hooks, buried amidst all the miserable buzz. But every time the second guitar line comes in, with some totally heartbreaking melody, it's then that Happy Days reveals itself as more than just some grim black horde. This is the best sounding Happy Days record yet, the music exuding that same dark pathos, but perfectly suited to the duo's slightly more polished black melancholic buzz.
Dutch depressive metallers Eindig are a subtly different beast, their sound thicker and more full, a bit more poppy too, their opening track, strangely melodic and 'happy' sounding, a sunshiney melody strapped to some pounding beats and some howling vox, balanced we'd imagine by some seriously bleak lyrics (can't tell for sure, as they're not in English), but the song slips from super melodic jangle to more grim minor key miserablism. Which seems to be their M.O., their music a strange mix of melody and aggression, but with a sound that shifts dramatically, from that sunshiney opener, to a more anguished and dejected traditional depressive black metal, to a downright lovely bit of big drum / clean guitar post rocky drift, the vox WAY down in the mix, super spare and skeletal and really quite pretty, to the final 9 minute epic that is similarly melodic, no distorted guitars, just drums and clean jangle, this time though the vocals a ghastly and tortured presence, jarring over the comparatively lovely melodic drift underneath, and some super intense, yet still undistorted crescendos. Incredible stuff from both bands.
It would be pretty much impossible to fuck this one up. Steve Von Till's (of Neurosis) Harvestman, along with psych heavies U.S. Christmas, and sludgy metallic post rockers Minsk, all covering their favorite Hawkwind jams. Exactly. We didn't even really have to hear this to know we needed it. And we were not disappointed.
U.S. Christmas are definitely right at home tackling these Hawkwind tracks, as there's plenty of Hawkwind in their sound anyway. Musically, their versions are dead ringers, the same sort of urgent guitar crunch, the swirling clouds of effects, the big difference is the vocals, sounding more like a super harmonized Paul Stanley, which is not a bad thing, but it's definitely a bit weird, and does help to make these songs their own. And the songs they picked, tough to beat: "Master Of The Universe", "Psychedelic Warlords", "Orgone Accumulator" and "You Shouldn't Do That" (notable also for the specificity of vocal duties described in the liner notes: "Do That"s, "Shouldn't Do That"s and "You Shouldn't Do"s, all split between various band members). Needless to say, if this was just a U.S. Christmas Hawkwind ep, we'd be in, but there's more more more.
Harvestman too are no stranger to psychedelia, and we can bet Steve Von Till has a pretty serious Hawkwind collection, and he proves it with some cool versions of some of our HW faves, "D Rider" sounds like a Von Till original here, stripped down and acoustic but with plenty of effects, and that unmistakable rasp. "Down Through The Night" also sounds like just acoustic guitar, but wrapped in a thick swirl of hissing space psych effects, and some awesome vox, "The Watcher" is bluesy and slithery, and sounds like Hawkwind via Tom Waits, while "Magnu" is all propulsive crunch and psychedelic swirl.
Finally Minsk drop the hammer, on "7X7", "Assault & Battery / The Golden Void", and "Children Of The Sun", and get all spaced out and druggy and psychedelic, letting their pounding post rock get swallowed up in clouds of buzz and blur and his, they even let loose with some sax! Finishing off with a straight up acoustic "Children Of The Sun", which is all sun dappled and dream, until near the end, when it transforms into a churning chugging psych space stomp.
Anyone who dug those Trensmat Hawkwind covers singles is gonna want to check this out, and if you love Hawkwind as much as we do, and as these guys obviously do, you're probably not gonna be able to resist. So why try? You shouldn't do that.
All most folks will need to know about this, is BRAND NEW HARVEY MILK TRACK. And maybe LIMITED TO 550 COPIES and ALREADY ALMOST OUT OF PRINT. If you're a long time aQ New Arrivals list reader, then the deal will no doubt be further sealed by these words: BRAND NEW WILDILDLIFE TRACK. Okay, that's enough all caps for one review. But that's it in a nutshell, killer new super limited split 7" from the gods of epic slow motion majestic sludge, and the up and coming masters of chaotic tripped out psychedelic metallic noise pop. Both bands bringing their A game, with tracks that sound like they could have come off either of their kick ass last albums.
So Harvey Milk, if you need an introduction, have a gander at the multitude of gushing reviews elsewhere on the aQ website, needless to say, there are a handful of bands who practically define aQ, who embody everything we love about music, and Harvey Milk is definitely one of those bands. And even in one side of a 7" it's easy to understand why. Even at 45, it still almost sounds too slow. And while it most certainly is sludgey and doomy and drone-y and dirgey it's also super catchy, with killer vocal harmonies, but those weird harmonies only HM can pull off, rough and raw and howled but still somehow harmonious, the sound and song majestic and epic, slow burning and emotional, like some classic rock staple slowed waaaaaaaaay doooooooown. So good.
Wildildlife counter with probably their poppiest song ever, still with that lysergic Butthole Surfers vibe, but WAY more hooky and bubblegummy, this track too has a classic rock vibe, but also a little Janes Addiction, sludgey guitars (that also sound a bit Aerosmith-y), chaotic drumming, tangled vocal lines, some clean and clear and crooned, others processed and sped up, all a little tripped out, with some killer squiggly guitar leads, lots of effects, delay and reverb all over the place, a dense, heavy, catchy hook filled pop psych jam that totally slays. Produced by Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux btw (she's also producing their forthcoming full length).
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Weird cover art: HM dude eating toast on one side, corpse painted cat on the other, some tripped out illustrations and liner notes inside. Will be gone before you know it.
A strange split between the stalwart Japanese noise artist Hiroshi Hasegawa (of C.C.C.C. and Astro infamy and also half of the Hasegawa-Shizuo duo with a couple of exceptional albums on Utech) and the dreamy ambient composer Sasha Darko. The Hasegawa side is a monster of a piece as oceanic grey chunks of hissing noise with crumbled distortion dramatically build through an intensity of dense layering and compressed noise chomp augmented with pulsar-driven oscillations and industrial ventilator churns. More Prurient than Merzbow, landing on the dynamic, theatrical side of noise construction. Great stuff we should add. The Sasha Darko half is a drifting excerpt of pretty twinkling electronics graced with kosmische overtures. Some of Darko's previous albums retain overt allusions to deep-sea imagery complete with dolphin and whale tones (eek!), and it's seagulls he's going for on this tape of lulling patterns and sea-green serenades. This one clocks in at just 10 minutes, and the artwork from Black Horizons is top-notch, with offset silver printing on black linen paper.
Another killer release from Total Holocaust, this one from two bands we'd never heard of before, Haud Mundus from Ireland, and Wormlust from Iceland, both bands, sharing members, so while the bands definitely sound different, there's some sonic overlap for sure. Two loooong songs from each, up first is Haud Mundus, who begin with a haunting cinematic doomic plod, all choral voices, soaring synths, strange mutterings, tangled guitars, before exploding into some serious woozy, depressive mid tempo raw blackness, ultra distorted, weirdly melodic, tangled and mathy arrangements, plenty of stops and starts, hushed ambient stretches, but when the band are rocking, it's some serious tripped out gnarled post black metal radness, the drums way blown out, the vocals buried in the mix, the guitars super epic and emotional, lurching and sea sick, almost like some noise rock / black metal hybrid, dizzyingly flitting from full on black blast to lurching downtuned lumber to weird shimmery drift. The second HM track is just as cool, beginning with a sort of Viking vibe, still weirdly distorted and in the red, eventually lurching into a more traditional sounding black metal blast, but even then, the riffs are twisted and angular, keyboards soaring here and there, a strange industrial breakdown, before finishing off with some killer abstract doomgaze pound. Seriously awesome. Only recording by these guys, and we're already dying for more!
Wormlust finds the vocalist of Haud Mundus teaming up with an Icelandic partner for some more twisted blackness, similarly blown out and off kilter, but the sound of Wormlust is more machinelike, bordering on industrial, downtuned and chuggy, with bellowed vokills, and loud drums, mostly midtempo, but with some awesomely tripped out psychedelic interludes, at times sounding a bit like a slower, more freaky, more raw Marduk, the first track finishing off with a swirling chaotic spaced out coda that just rules.
The second track is tripped out black psych workout, plenty of clean guitar, woozy riffage, echo drenched howls, lurching midtempo rhythms, soaring synths, droned out buzz, some super fuzz bass chug breakdowns, some glistening clean guitar drift, and a final 30 second blowout of pounding black crush. Oblivio Appositus is also Wormlust's only proper release, just two songs, but like with Haud Mundus, we're ready from these guys as well.
Packaged in a cool 6 panel embossed digipak.
From Finland, a three-way split of chaotic industrial metal, chock full of noisy distortion, dance beats, and scary samples. Two of these bands are actually the SAME band, they just changed their name (Havoc Unit was known for the past ten years as AndOceans, who did several previous albums of avant-garde black metal that we liked in the past). So you get the first ever Havoc Unit track, and the last from And Oceans, plus two (very different) remixes of each. And then there's the third band, The Sin:Decay, also in the same brutal industrial-metal vein, and it turns out it's a side project of one of the members of Havoc Unit/And Oceans... So despite being a "split", this could easily be heard as an album by just one band, Havoc Unit we'll say for simplicity's sake. And Havoc Unit, oddly enough, sound a bit like the '90s band Canadian Malhavoc, if you remember them. So well worth checking out if you're any of the following: a fan of AndOceans / a fan of Malhavoc / just into some blackened industrial metal weirdness. Brought to us by the rather off-the-wall metal label Vendlus (Wolves In The Throne Room, Grayceon, Audiopain, etc.).
Seems like Minneapolis noise rockers Buildings were the big hit from the last list. We sold out of their record immediately, and hell, for good reason, that record was a fierce chunk of old school AmRep style heaviness, beholden to all the bands we grew up with and still love, Buildings paying homage, but making that sound their own.
So here we have a brand new split single from those guys, teaming up with fellow noise rockers Hawks. Buildings offer up more of what we dig, chugging, churning, rhythmic mathy radness, the bass super distorted, the guitars buzzy, the band immediately locking into some serious crush, swaggery and snarly and heavy as fuck, both tracks here laced with squalls of feedback and driven by some seriously kick ass drumming, not to mention some soaring distorto guitar swirl and some blown out bass buzz. Cannot get enough of these guys!
Hawks counter with their own take on mathy, noisy heaviness, starting off with a weird sample, and a slow swell of distorted guitar, before the drums kick in, and the song lurches into a pounding, riffy swagger, the vocals a bearded bellow, it all reminds us of that old classic Sub Pop sound, a bit grungy, a little poppy, but seriously heavy. And when the lead guitar swoops in, it transforms everything, and the song is suddenly catchy as fuck! The second track is a bit busier, with weird chiming guitar harmonics, wild drumming, more bellowed vox, and again, the grunge vibe is huge, which is really the only way we could dig this sort of noise rock sound ANY more. There's a Hawks full length out there somewhere, and these two songs have us begging for more!!
While they last, we have the yellow vinyl version. Includes a download code too!
Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland).
Of the Volume 5 - January 2005 edition's seven featured artists, AQ customers will probably be most familiar with Sean Hayes. His three songs include "Diamond In The Sun", "Rattlesnake Charm" and a fine rendition of the title track of his beloved Alabama Chicken album. Other stand-outs are the haunting spartan female sung three songs from Black Bird Stitches, the easy-going pop folk double-shot from Songs From The Living Room and the rousing intoxicated gypsy strings of Sour Mash Hug Band. L.Carey, Jason Webley, and P. Panamarenko (who also appears on the Vol. 6 and Vol. 8 editions).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another record that barely needs a description at all. Essential listening for all psych nerds, space rock freaks, and anyone into shredding, spaced out, druggy, dreamy heaviness, which we would imagine would be most of you!
Two sidelong tracks, one each from aQ faves White Hills, and another aQ fave, UK space rockers The Heads. Both exclusive tracks, both kick ass, gorgeously packaged, super limited, you know the drill, if you haven't already thrown one of these into your shopping cart already, well then heck, here's a quick rundown of each track:
The Heads launch right into it, almost as if someone just randomly pushed the record button mid epic jam, there's nothing, then suddenly the band is crushing! Buzzy and blown out, tons of guitar shredding, wild wah wah, crumbling distortion, tearing up a storm a la Monster Magnet or Acid Mothers Temple, stoned and wasted and wild, until about halfway through, the song shifts, and the group stagger wildly through a lurching start stop freakout, very off kilter, tons of space, the band definitely getting a bit freaky, until finally, the track coalesces again and we're back in full on hear-of-the-sun ur-jam mode. Awesome.
The flipside finds Whitew Hills, in a contemplative mood, or if not contemplative, super drugged out and lysergic, their sound less blasting and wildly shredding and more sort of drifting, a Spacemen 3 vibe runs throughout, woozy, meandering, loping rhythms wreathed in a druggy haze, the guitars all tangled up in swirling clouds of distorted buzz, super effected vocals, drawled and washed out, the whole track tripped out and Loop-ish, baked and sooooo psychedelic, this track definitely had us drifting off into some other WAY more outer space. So good.
Incredible packaging, the thick vinyl housed in a super psychedelic full color die cut sleeve, the record label visible through the hole, and inside a full color 12" by 12" printed insert. Needless to say (but as is our style, we'll say it anyway), ESSENTIAL. Oh, and very very limited...
Less a split, than a sort of adjustable collaboration, Monolith: Earth is the first in a series of single sided lps, where two bands are paired together, and each contributes a single mono track, one track stereo left, the other stereo right, so depending on how the listener dials it in, he or she can listen to just one of the bands' tracks, or some easily adjusted blend of the two. Thankfully, the lp comes with a cd featuring stereo version of both the tracks, as well as an extra track or two.
For the first volume, the to bands are pretty stellar choices, dreamdrone duo Windy & Carl, and distorto psych rock trio Heavy Winged. For this experiment to really work, without turning into a sonic clusterfuck, one or both of the bands has to be the ambient half, and Windy & Carl are more than happy to take on that role, their track being a slow burning shimmer, all processed and effected guitars, smeared and blurred into long smeary streaks, layered and woven into subtle soft melodies and warm gauzy expanses, there's some buzz buried way down in the mix, but for the most part it's all glorious drone and drift.
Heavy Winged take on the other role, which is not that different from their usual sound, super blown out distorted guitars, pounding drums, super lo-fi and high end, the guitars not riffing so much as offering up thick sheets of sound and dense squalls of feedback and psychdrone freakout. Which suits the concept perfectly, as it's basically like two drones wrapped around each other, leaving the drums to meander and skitter and do what they will. Perfectly happy to listen to each track on its own, but they do sound pretty badass together, and the picture disc image spinning round and round is quite mesmerizing.
The extra track on the cd is an actual collaboration, or seems to be as far as we can tell, but ends up sounding more like a Heavy Winged track with some extra texture and ambience, as HW's super blown out distorted heaviness overwhelms the Windy & Carl's shimmery sounds, but with the picture disc, you can control the levels, creating quite possibly one of the few instances where Windy & Carl sonically overwhelm Heavy Winged!
We only have a dozen of these, the label was sold out, we got all the copies the band had too, so once these are gone, that's probably it...
Here's a good buy for fans of either or both bands: a double cd, featuring a disc each of Hella and Dilute performing live. SF's Dilute do "Apple", "Alphabet", "Sickroom", "Balloon Song" and "Sold" while Sacramento's Hella play "Republic of Rough and Ready", "Better Grab a Broom!", "Cafeteria Bananas", "Biblical Violence", and "City Folk Sitting, Sitting". If this was a competition, we'd have to say Hella has the better song titles. But it's not a competition and both bands are winners, with Dilute being one of the Bay Area's best, most creative post/indie rock combos and Hella being NoCal's answer to Lightning Bolt, a two-piece instrumental tour de force. Go see both bands if/when you get the chance, and in the meantime don't miss out on this double live document (which maybe could have fit all on one disc, but whatever).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Two simpatico noisescapers from Austin square off for this limited split cassette release. We're well familiar with Smokey Emery from his many releases on Holodeck, Indian Queen, and his own Kiamesha Drive imprints, but Andy Hendrix & the Skwaarmalar Machine are new to us. We can't imagine what a Skwaarmalar Machine would look like or how it operates, but the sounds contained on that side of the cassette are cavernously industrial sounding like a go-cart race slowed down for intense drama. The slowly throbbing rev of an echoing motor as it swerves and skids around a warehouse, speeding up to an intense climax then slowing down to a deep bass pendulous pulse. The Smokey Emery side is from four live edits and contain his trademark hazy murk of built up tape loops of infinitely recycled recordings. Using an arsenal of personal recording devices including cell phones, and digital video cameras, it's a rich cloud of tunneling drones containing smoldering pockets of murmurs and atmospheric rumbles that are sublime and at times quite terrifying.
No one has done more in recent years to renew faith in the power of dance music than Andy Butler. With his amazing debut album as Hercules & Love Affair he took his passion for decades of dance floor culture, from disco to house, to create one of the most vibrant and memorable debuts of the decade. Sidetracked finds Andy putting together a mix of music that truly moves him. So in case you are confused this is NOT A NEW HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR ALBUM, but instead an awesome document of many of the sonic ingredients that helped inform Andy's taste, and were a huge part of the amazing sounds he creates with Hercules.
HOWEVER, there is one brand new Hercules track in his mix and oh my god does it kill! "I Can't Wait" has this manic house vibe of ecstatic empowerment that's made us play that track more times then we can count! The first disc is the actual DJ mix so you can also get a feel of what it's like to be on the dance floor for one of his DJ sets. He culls his tracks from tons of classic house records (many of total obscurities) as well as some left-field disco gold. Dubwise, Studio X, Dr. Buzzards Original Savanah Band, Gino Soccio, Rainbow Team, In Flagranti, Daniel Wang and lots others. The second disc pulls out eleven of those tracks and keeps them unmixed in their original form but remastered so even those of you lucky enough to have a worn out 12" of some of these burners now can hear them all clean and shiny for a change. Of course we're anxiously anticipating the actual new Hercules & Love Affair album, but until then we're loving being Sidetracked!
We don't hear a lot from Japanese sludgelords Dot [.], which is a shame, cuz they could really give Boris and Corrupted a run for their money. In fact, now that Boris have become more of a proper 'rock' band, Dot [.] and Corrupted are pretty much the only two bands left carrying the slow motion Japanese doomdirge torch. But both bands seem to be on an entirely frustrating one record every couple years schedule. Thankfully, we've just discovered something to keep our doomdeathdronedirge hunger sated, a brand new Dot [.] track. Only a track? Fear not, it's a side long and heavy as fuck. Massive crumbling downtuned dirge. Pounding and lurching, a pummeling behemoth stumbling through black tar and thick sludge. With super tripped out affected vocals, a cookie monster growl, wrapped in delay and echo, so each growled lyric, goes spinning dublike off into the ether. Like Corrupted with King Tubby handling the vocal production. Pretty cool. This is the second or third time we've noticed some bits of dub finding their way into massive doom tracks. When is someone gonna just go for it, and record the first ever DOOMDUBSLUDGE record? We can hardly wait. Dot [.]'s partners for this low slung musical split are the UK's Hey Colossus, who bring their own slant to the whole sludgy downtuned rock thing. HC offer up a much more spacious and epic sounding concoction. A definite post rock influence infuses their crusty sludge. A sort of Boris via Mogwai by way of Slint, or something. Creeping grooves that build into thick waves of grinding downtuned riffage, with weird shouted vocals, thick with Hawkwind FX and sent drifting over HC's spiky psychedelic krautrock stoner sludge grooves. Pretty freaking awesome, and a darn near perfect foil for Dot [.]'s more traditionally sludgy sound.
Packaged in cool printed Rorschach design sleeves with a two color insert.
The problem with a split lp featuring two bands who are somewhat unfamiliar, when there is no specific info on the record labels or cut into the grooves on the vinyl, is deciding which band is which, going on number of track (here both bands have three), instrumentation (HGP list no instruments, Zond have a guy credited with skateboard, which seemed like it would be a dead giveaway but sadly we could hear no skateboard), but then, usually we decide fuck it. It doesn't really matter until you decide you need more by either / both bands, which unfortunately (or fortunately!) you probably will after listening to this twisted slab of sonic weirdness.
We'll tackle the B side cuz that's what we threw on first, and we'll assume that this is actually Zond, who we have never heard before, but are digging BIG TIME. Super distorted and blown out, sludgey dirgey noise rock, howled vocals barely audible over the din of downtuned riffage and in-the-red psychrock squalls, the drums a buried muffled pound, the whole thing a churning, grinding, gloriously filthy trudge. Maybe imagine a more Dead C-ish Brainbombs and you'd be close. That is until the extended final track, the eschews all the damaged outrock that came before, and offers up a stretched out expanse of buzzing shimmering ambient drone, not really tranquil, still a bit noisy, a little off kilter, the sounds bathed in distortion, wrapped in feedback, but stretched out into a weirdly hypnotic noisescape.
So working under the assumption, that the B side is Zond, then the A side must be Hi-God People, who we have heard once before on a split with none other than the Dead C, but the sound here is dramatically different, which is probably what threw us off in the first place. The first and longest track, is a sort of fractured free folk, detuned acoustic guitar twang, sitar like buzz, crooned atonal vocals, wreathed in shimmery effects, swirling clouds of wah wah guitar, strange bleepy bloopy ambience, it almost sounds like some sixties hippy jam, but completely fried and fractured. A more spaced out, free folk, No Neck, or maybe a Sunburned Hand / Avarus musical summit. Until the track slips into something a little different, unleashing more of a krautrock vibe, a subtle pulsing propulsive jam, underneath all of the twisted twang and abstract strum.
The second track is much more abstract, a tripped out buzzy dronescape with random clattery percussion, wheezing organs, swooping melodies, fluttery woodwinds, all very creepy and somewhat cinematic, finally finishing off with the brief closer, a gorgeous, hazy, druggy buzz drenched psych jam, that begs for a whole 'nother side for it to drift and unwind.
Good stuff, from both bands, whichever is which. Super limited of course, and housed in super swank hand screened sleeves!
Ok, Wino/stoner rock fans. Time to decide how big a fan you really are. This split features two quite excellent new tracks from Wino's current outfit, The Hidden Hand. Like their debut album from last year, they have injected a greater dose of conspiracy theory and musical chops into the music of Wino's previous outfits Spirit Caravan and The Obsessed, resulting in what we might term "advanced stoner rock". Heavy in so many ways. Then there's also two tracks from newcomers Wooly Mammoth, another stoner rock outfit who play music that's kinda groovy and grungy and almost as heavy as The Hidden Hand. In addition, there's a bonus Meteor City label sampler disc, with unreleased/upcoming tracks from the likes of Atomic Bitchwax, Black Nasa, The Obsessed, Weedeater, Yob and others. So, here's the decision part. Are you into Wino enuff to pay $15 for two songs? And/or are you into stoner rock enough to pay $15 for the sampler and the two Wooly Mammoth tracks, along with the two Hidden Hand cuts? Time for some careful cost/benefit ratiocination. If it helps, remember that the sampler has an old Yob demo track on it from '99.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yay! So many good things combined here with this release, it's like a crazy cosmic convergence of cool. First off, it's a Skin Graft comic book single. That's right, this colored-vinyl 7" record comes with a full-color comic book by the guys at Skin Graft, getting back to their roots as a combo of weird-music label and underground comix publisher. They haven't released anything in this format for ages, but we have fond memories of similar releases from way back by UFO or Die, Zeni Geva, Dazzling Killmen, Space Streakings, Mount Shasta, Brise-Glace... The comic doesn't have much to do with the music, but it's pretty cool.
And yeah, then there's the music. Side A: High On Fire. You know 'em you love 'em (or you should). Motorhead on Sabbath on Slayer on 11. They contribute a song from their latest, probably greatest release Blessed Black Wings, called "Brother In The Wind". And on Side B: Ruins. You know 'em you love 'em (or you should). Magma meets Lightning Bolt. Their track is a previously unreleased number entitled "Gwodhunqa" that encompasses everything that's great about Ruins: nimble, bass-heavy grooves and crazed yet catchy complexity. Parts of this sound like it's on 45, even though it already is on 45, if you know what I mean.
Never thought High On Fire and Ruins would share a split, but why not? Whoever thunk this up, give 'em a raise.
Nice tripped out split from these two New York outfits who both venture into psychedelic sonic realms in their own compelling ways. High Places is a duo that we've heard in passing before but we didn't remember them sounding like this. Their side is one long, really spaced out and percussive slow burner with early Throbbing Gristle like textures, infused with an underlying dubbed out and hypnotic groove. We realized that the first few times we played this we had it on the wrong speed but we have to say whether you slow it down (and the vocals start sounding like some cool mixture of Arthur Russell and Panda Bear) or you play it at the correct speed, it sounds pretty awesome either way, so you kind of get two rad long High Places tracks instead of just one.
Soft Circle is the project of Hisham A. Bharoocha, well respected visual artist and a former member of Black Dice (who in our opinion have never been quite as good since he left their fold). His debut as Soft Circle from a couple years ago was a great exercise in warm exploratory percussive bliss. This outing finds him gravitating more towards a drugged out pulsating dancefloor sound, in fact one of the songs "Don't Just Stand There" was remixed on the latest Milky Disco compilation. It's really cool to see folks finding refreshing new avenues to reach such soaring psychedelic heights.
The Not Not Fun label's Bored Fortress subscription split 7" series has been going on for a few years now, and is always killer, featuring a who's who of hip underground weirdo rock combos, not to mention some seriously fantastic packaging, and for whatever reason, this year, a handful of the previously subscription only singles have been made available to non subscribers, but not for long, as these babies are crazy limited.
High Wolf do more of that tripped out psychedelic loopage we love so much, and that few seem to be able to pull off quite so fantastically, this one a little bit more rhythmic and spacey than usual, a simple motorik pulse, beneath billowy clouds of processed guitars and sweetly melodic blurred loops, which eventually build to a full on pounding, lo-fi, psychedelic squall freakout. Awesome.
Never heard of the weirdly named Savage Young Taterbug, but as their name might suggest, their sound is equally weird, a twisted drift of super lo-fi Casio style organ wheeze, abstract tinkling chimes, disembodied melodies, super distorted echo drenched vox, crumbling crunchy guitars and all manner of percussive plink and plonk, like a poppier, way slower Avarus, that same sort of abstract psychedelic campfire jam, which is surprisingly transformed for the last little bit into a super lethargic 16rpm blues crawl, still wrapped in buzz and fuzz and whir. Definitely psyched to hear more, uh, Savage Young Taterbug!
Also, we have another Bored Fortress title, besides the ones we're listing now, the Infinite Body / No Age split 7", VERY few copies of that one, not enough to list, just ask if you want one and IF we still have some left, it could be yours!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
***Expo '70 alert*** ***Expo '70 alert*** ***Expo '70 alert***
That's right, we're sounding that alert 'cause you might not know these names... suffice to say though that Justin Wright is better known (to AQ customers) as the guy behind Expo '70, whose new full-length cd Black Ohms happens to be our Record Of The Week this list. And Matt Hill is his touring partner, whom you've seen together with Wright if you caught 'em recently in SF at the Hemlock with Wooden Shjips, or elsewhere on tour. Also, their pal Duane Pitre is another guitar-wielding dronester with tendencies in line with the cosmic Expo '70 aesthetic. The prolific Expo '70 being an outfit we've continually championed as they constantly amaze us with their sooooo gorgeous, '70s krautrock inspired, spaced out instrumental drone musick.
There's four tracks here on this solid black cd-r. The seventeen minute long track one, finds Wright, Hill and Pitre playing together, droning out mightily, live at someplace called The Pistol Social Club. The credits have 'em all playing guitar, all responsible for "textures, drones", with Pitre also on "prepared percussion, disjointed lines" and Wright handling "melodic lines" as well. It starts as a hushed ambient soundscape, at once spacious and intimate, hesitantly melodic and repetitiously trancelike; raw, rough edges softened by gentle whirr, their guitars' volume gradually increasing, eventually building into a quite dense, distorted finale.
Then there's one track apiece from Hill, Pitre, and Wright. Hill's seven minute contribution is all acoustic guitar and field recordings, sparse pickings and pluckings, sounding like a broken music box, crank turned at half-speed, backwards, amidst nighttime insect buzz. Unidentifiable crackle, rustle, and hiss infuse the plinking proceedings, which could be a mellowed out Derek Bailey with Jewelled Antler production. Pitre's piece, "Motorized Music for Electric Guitar (live)" is what that says: a live performance, at a church in Brooklyn, with Pitre applying a "handheld high-speed rotary tool" to the strings of his electric guitar. The result is a twelve minute Niblockian drone divine, slow-building and shimmery. Wonderful. And then Wright bats cleanup, ending the disc with a live improv guitar piece featuring the use of two amps, and, we're told, a squeaky chair. It's ten and a half minutes of dreamy, subtle cosmic throb and drift, with sci-fi electronic FX whispering from outer space to swirl around this piece's glowing meditative center. So nice.
For Expo '70 fans and anyone into the guitar-drone-zone, this here's a varied four-part treat indeed!
Two things I could never quite get into: funk/soul compilations, and David Holmes. As far as the compilations, they always seemed either too familiar, or too "Whoo, let's dance and get funky". Ugh. Especially when there's so much seriously intense and dark funk and soul floating around. And as for Holmes, he always seemed on the right track, his 'film' music always just barely missed the mark, falling too much in the 'chill-out music for the Kruder and Dorfmeister set' when you could somehow tell he was capable of so much more. So imagine my surprise when one record proves me wrong on both counts. Holmes has picked out some ridiculously obscure soul gems, but more importantly, these tunes are amazing: dark and sultry and so catchy. Once in a while, he masterfully mixes beats and atmospheres into some of the soul jams turning them into modern, bumping, top-down, cruising classics. The interludes here are performed by Homes in his 'classic soul' guise as The Free Association. Occasionally these interludes kind of break the flow, with 'LSD' clips and stuttery samples and that sort of thing, but even more often, he manages to emulate the tunes found elsewhere, coming up with some dirty grimy neo-soul. Plus, this features what has to be the most amazing and intense flute tune ever, taking Roland Kirk's speaking/screaming/hyperventilating flute solos about as far out as you can. Been listening to this non stop!
San Francisco's Raub Roy (aka Horaflora) met Ryan Martin (aka Secret Boyfriend), during an ambitious Horaflora tour in 2008, whereby he biked from Georgia to Maine, playing his unique brand of acoustic noise along the way with just what he could carry and what he could scrape together at each show. Martin hosted one of these shows in his hometown of Carrboro, NC; being impressed by the performance, he offered Roy a split release on his own Hot Releases imprint. While it would have been cool to have a document from the Horaflora bike tour, this is a damn fine split release of nocturnal murk linking the two projects. The Horaflora side is actually a recording of a live radio broadcast at KALX in Berkeley, with Roy being accompanied by Andrea Williams. One of Roy's best tricks - expanded balloons expelling their innards across drum heads and metal surfaces - is on display here; and it's great to hear the variety of these blustery elongated textures in an audio environment when it has been such a great visual aspect to his live performances. Amidst these sounds, Roy and Williams interweave acoustic noise-junk textures from found metal, tin cans, and hypercompressed recordings from hand-held tape decks, spluttering towards a dense climax of floor rattling low end and aerated acoustic noise.
The Secret Boyfriend side opens with a meandering set of Roy Montgomery styled noise-drone guitar melodies collapsing into a murky spectral-decay wash of no-fi shoegazing. Fuzzy piano tones begin to emerge as graceful calliope like melodies, still hung with enough grit and cobwebs to make these sound haunted. All of this comes to an end with a menacing burst of noise grafted upon a cheap synth melody that tone bends from the depths of cavernous cistern, but the noise begets a couple of darkened mope-folk tunes of just acoustic guitar and voice buried in echoplex.
300 copies and that's it for this great split!
What more do you need to know? Finland's Horna. France's Peste Noire. Hard to imagine a more kick ass black metal match up. And sonically, a surprisingly suitable one.
The Horna track is epic and majestic, beginning with a cool backwards buzz guitar part, that segues into furious blackened riffing and a surprising amount of melody, sounding at moments like old At The Gates only blacker. The songs is laced with weird melancholy pounding, and haunting arpeggiated melodies, but all tangled up within dense blasts of hyper speed grimnity.
The Peste Noire track, some folks might already have, as it was a bonus track on the recent Peste Noire record Folkfuck Folie. Tangled and convoluted, the song structure constantly shifting, the guitars fuzzed out and insectoid, the vocals howling, it's definitely buzzing black metal, but in the hands of Peste Noire it becomes something else entirely, infusing the sound with bits of pop, melody, angular weirdness, turning it into an impossible catchy slab of black weirdness.
Obviously essential. And probably equally obvious is the fact that this is seriously limited, we got a bunch, but imagine they will be gone in no time. And yeah, they're a bit pricey, but you can blame the currently very sad US dollar�
Super thick vinyl, thick cardstock inner sleeves, and a super striking woodcut style outer jacket.
A few lists back we reviewed a 12" collaboration between blackened metallic dronelord Horseback, and blackdoomdrone duo (and sometimes trio) Locrian, which was a gorgeous slab of black drone heaviness, fusing the power of both groups. Here, in a sort of sonic coda, each group goes it alone.
Horseback unfurl a hazy droned out raga, the track centered around a glorious high end drone, all shimmer and reverberation, the sound sun dappled and gloriously effulgent, very much like Sunroof!, mesmerizing and dreamlike, to which HB adds, some twisted gnarled vocals, all hissy and demonic, wreathing the whole thing in little melodic tendrils, the sound blissed out and gauzy, the blackness seemingly held at bay by this shining sonic light, the sort of track that is WAY too short on a 7", we could listen to stuff like this forEVER.
Locrian counter with something much more dark and grim, a churning bit of blurred tarpit riffage, a dirgey bit of SUNNO))) like thrum, but that low end creep is soon swaddled in delicate crystalline melodies, and thick hazy streaks of high end shimmer, that weird doomy dirge immediately transformed into something more dreamlike and ethereal. Vocals drift in, deep liturgical chanting, draped over the dirgey riffage and swaddled in the chiming melodies, the sound seeming to grow ever hazier and more ephemeral before fading out completely.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!
We won't go into too much detail about this, as it's limited to just 200 copies, we got about 15, and can NOT get any more once they're gone, so if you want one, stop reading now and ADD TO CART! But if you're feeling daring, and are curious for a little more into, read on to find out more about this limited tape.
Two of the names will no doubt be familiar to most readers of the aQ list, blackened drone outfit Horseback, whose sound recently has shifted more toward a rhythmic post rock a la Skull Defekts, and of course, the unpronounceable Njiqahdda, whose twisted strain of (un) black metal we've been big fans of for a while now. Also included are Venowl and Cara Neir, both new to us, more on them in a second. Up first though are Horseback, whose sound continues to evolve, moving further away from the murky drone and black buzz of their early records, and sounds like it could have come right off of their Half Blood record. Rhythmic and hypnotic, bass and drum locked into a sort of hypnorock groove, laced with fluttering flutes, weird electronics, swirling shimmering melodies, when the guitar comes in, it's sort of washed out and droney, giving the track an almost Earth-like vive, the overall sound is like a super cyclical krautrock styled minimalism, with an epic second half, replete with those shrieked black metal vox. Great stuff, and definitely worth the price of admission all on its own. Njiqahdda fill up the rest of the A side with an epic multipart jam, that slips easily from softly psychedelic and melodic, all clean guitars and shimmering ambience, to churning intricate mathmetal, to doomic sludgey heaviness, to wildly convoluted progged out blackness and back again, with some cool (and surprising) clean vocals, the sound majestic and heavy as hell, and seriously epic.
Venowl start things off on the B side, offering up a stumbling super lo-fi doom/sludge sprawl, creeping and woozy, laced with anguished vocals (that slip into that weird sort of oinking pig vox, which here are terrifying), chaotic and in-the-red, total rehearsal space sound, but it suits their crusty creep, the drumming impossibly damaged and totally off kilter, the whole thing sounding on the verge of constant collapse, so super fractured and fucked up, like a sludge metal version of Dead Reptile Shrine, or Circle Of Ouroborus, which is definitely a good thing. Finally, Cara Neir finish things off with three short-ish tracks of blasting black metal, the sound appropriately brittle and buzzy, but weirdly melodic, the fast picked guitar unfurling some surprising catchiness throughout, at least on the first track, the other two tracks are much more grim, and dense and mathy, the sound gradually revealing itself as not your typical black metal, with all sorts of weird shit going on within their black buzz. Awesome stuff.
Again, this is LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! and we only have a handful, so act fast if you want one.
We've long been fans of Horseback (aka Jenks Miller), whose sound has gradually developed from blissed out dronescapery, to full on blasting post rock flecked black metal, to... well, to this (more on that in a second). We've also long been fans of pretty much anything Matthew Bower related, Total, Skullflower, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, and of course Voltigeurs. And while these two may not seem like the most obvious match up, their sounds are surprisingly complimentary.
Horseback offer up two tracks, of what we can only call black prog. Buzzing guitars, pounding drums, harsh hellish vokills, and lots of ELP style organs, which transforms the sound into something way weirder, and frankly way cooler. The organs swirl and pulse and buzz over murky drum pound and those blackened shrieks, the black element sounds slowed down, like some bizarre mash up of Burzum at 16rpm and ELP at 33, the keyboards make the sound more psychedelic and spacey, and fuse perfectly into a gloriously twisted hybrid, one that is peppered with squalls of freaked out psychedelic noise, and culminates in a gorgeous Burzumic outro, all blown out drone riffage and buried anguished howls, mesmerizing and mysterious.
The second track is soaring and epic and a little blackened, but sounds more static, more like a sort of Sunroof!-style ur-drone, draped over blasting beats nearly lost in the churn and swirl, harsh vox here too, the overall sound extra distorted, glimmery and glistening and downtuned and crumbling, as if the signal is way too hot for the speakers, which makes it sound noisier for sure, but also mesmerizingly psychedelic.
Voltigeurs, which is Matthew Bower and cellist Samantha Davies, finds the duo doing what they do best, stirring up huge clouds of washed out white noise skree, a blindingly brilliant tangle of dense guitar freakage and whirling steel string buzz, a solar flare sprawl of amp melting, ear shredding psychedelic heaviness, that like other Voltigeurs recordings, offers very little to the casual listener, but beneath the barrage of howl and crunch and skree, lurk an ever shifting field of riffage and melody, buried song structures only visible occasionally, these glimpses coloring the cloud of noise that surrounds them, turning the whole thing into a surprisingly listenable blast of psychnoisebliss.
VERY VERY LIMITED! And an expensive import. We have about 10 copies, not sure we'll be able to get any more after that.
Hot Hot Heat's contributions to this split cd feature their earlier temper-tantrum vocals (courtesy of former HHH vocalist Matty Marnik) and darkly catchy Juno 60 keyboard lines (courtesy of current vocalist Steve Bays) -- very angstful and angular late 90s San Diego / post punk influenced (a la Gold Standard Laboratories label). Recorded back in 2000, these songs are a great deal more abrasive, flailing and uneven than those on their recent finely tuned, punchy pop album Make Up The Breakdown, but this older material fits well with the other band with whom they share this cd. The Red Light Sting are HHH's friends and fellow Vancouverites. Their sound is quite similar to HHH as mentioned above, but it's got much more aggressive hardcore tendencies like Convocation Of, The VSS or The Locust, but add female vocals to the already blistering fray. Check 'em out! Oh, by the way, we also wanted to let you know that this is an enhanced cd that includes live footage. Pop it into your computer and go!
We just have a very small handful of these limited split singles, and when they're gone, they're gone... So you probably already know if you want to (quickly try and) get one, if you're a big fan of one or more of the four badass SF rawk groups on here, all throwbacks to sweet times in the heavy, glammy '70s for sure.
Of special note, two of the bands do covers: Dirty Fences taking on Blondie, and big aQ faves Hot Lunch covering the obscure yet mighty UK proto-punks Crushed Butler - a perfect choice for 'em!
The soundtrack for Ethan Hawkes' latest movie (based on his first novel) sure reads like a who's who of the hip and the cool: Cat Power, Feist, Bright Eyes, The Black Keys, M.Ward, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Brad Mehldau, Rocha, Tony Scherr, and Jesse Harris... Uhh, wait a sec, that last name on the list might not ring any bells as clearly as the rest of the bunch... yet! But he's the fella who wrote all of the songs on this soundtrack. Close pal Mr. Hawke thought Harris' songwriting skills would be a perfect match for The Hottest State. Not having seen the movie, we can't say for certain whether it fits or not, but as a stand alone compilation it's pretty darn solid. Heck, this should come as no surprise really because we've all probably unwittingly heard his superlative songwriting abilities before. He wrote Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why" single for gosh sake. And how's this for timing? Harris' own album Feel was just released last month so if you find your ears itching for more....
Damn. This is just amazing, another winner from Monk, compiling 8 different Delta blues greats on two lps, with the central focus on the mighty Son House. House's seven cuts here are from a legendary 1930 session in Grafton, Wisconsin for Paramount that also recorded Charley Patton, Willie Brown (also featured here), and Louise Johnson. It's pretty unbelievable to imagine these titans of American music all piling into a car in Mississippi and making the trip up to Wisconsin, but what is even more awesome is the music itself. These recordings capture House at his absolute prime, which is saying a lot considering what a force he remained throughout his many years. The level of intensity cuts right through Paramount's substandard recording quality, with House's former preacher voice booming over his expert slide playing, sounding like the toughest son of a bitch on the block and making so much else sound flat out weak in comparison.
While Son House will most likely be the main selling point for this, the other bluesmen are no slouches. Rube Lacy offers two tracks of classic Mississippi blues, mournful and propelled by a steady rhythm, while the obscure Kid Bailey's only two recordings are featured here, detailing a masterful understanding of his craft. Willie Brown is perhaps most famous for being namechecked in Robert Johnson's "Crossroad Blues", while some have speculated that he might actually be Kid Bailey. His "M & O Blues" and "Future Blues" are the only two sides known to exist from a total of six, and they are certainly worthy of their legendary status. Brown's gravelly voice and harmonically rich guitar playing were perfected from years playing side to others (including House, Patton, and Johnson), but there is no question that he stands as a powerful and assured soloist on these tunes.
Garfield Akers' four cuts (also his only known recordings) show off his clear, higher register vocals which often soar to an amazing yelp over his nonstop strumming, in which his chords almost seem to float. His two part "Cottonfield Blues" also feature second guitar from his pal Mississippi Joe Callicott, who contributes two songs himself. Jim Thompkins, another Delta enigma, is featured on "Bedside Blues", one of only two known recordings, while Blind Joe Reynolds (sometimes known as Blind Willie Reynolds and other names to remain one step ahead of the law), shows off his prowess with a bottleneck slide to go with a highly focused and intense vocal delivery.
Some of you may have trouble keeping up with the sheer output of labels like Monk and Mississippi, but this comp stands out as a prime collection of classic blues that will appeal to anyone with even the slightest interest. If you don't know where to start, look no further.
