We recently reviewed a full length lp from Hum Of The Druid, Raising The New Wing..., a mighty caustic slab of noise drenched drones and fucked up ambience. For a record that harsh and harrowing, we really couldn't stop listening to it (and yeah, we have a few copies left). So we were psyched to discover a new record by them (him?), a split with another noisemaker we dig, but have yet to review anything by.
The Hum Of The Druid side is more of what we've been hankering for. A dense sea of crumbling distortion and blown out grit, a spray of grizzled amp buzz and all manner of hum and crackle and glitch. There are brief interludes of abstract ambience, laced with bits of feedback, but those are merely brief respites from the relentless onslaught. The HotD side ends with some super creeped out blackened drones, lots of distorted in-the-red low end, and tortured anguished howls buried way down in the mix, culminating in a super jagged speaker destroying crunch and glitch outro.
Fire In The Head most definitely hold their own, opening with slithery slowed down guitar drones, underneath creepy fucked up samples, plenty of buzz and glitch, all over a thick sea of processed rumbles and whirs, there's definitely an old school industrial vibe, intense and haunting, lots of vocal samples. It all builds to a seriously fired filed of static, underpinning cool super effected demonic vokills, doused in distortion and reverb. Super super creepy. The side ends with some awesomely distorted blown out rhythms, all stuttery and chopped up, like some damaged metallic noise dub. Cool.
Super nice packaging. Thick black sleeve with paste on covers on each side, and Rudimentary Peni fans take note, the Fire In The Head side features original Nick Blinko artwork! Also includes a printed insert / lyric sheet, and of course, it's ultra limited, and we only got a handful.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
After a seemingly endless streams of reissues, comes some brand new music from folk legend Michael Hurley. Recorded over the last few years, Blue Hills finds Hurley in mostly solo mode, accompanying himself on one side with electric piano and old pump organ, while on the other side it's just acoustic guitar, with a tiny bit of violin on one track. The results are pretty stellar, Hurley's voice is rough and worn, a little ragged, but it suits these melancholic compositions. "In The Morning", with its strange melody and haunting electric piano ends up sounding mysterious and otherworldly, the soundtrack to a big empty house on a grey rainy day. The pump organ tracks have a similar vibe, darkly emotional, wistful, mournful, the wheezing organ a perfect compliment to Hurley's countryish croon, which slips smoothly from whiskey soaked to a surprisingly smooth falsetto.
On the second side Hurley straps on an acoustic, and goes all back porch blues, down home country folk, and his voice sounds amazing, delicate, a little wounded, wrapped around simple crystalline melodies and folky fingerpicked guitar, add some buzz and hiss, and it could be some rediscovered old timey field recording. The record finishes off with Hurley re-doing one of his old songs, originally recorded in 1963, and although this was in fact recorded last year, it again sounds timeless, Hurley's falsetto floating dreamily over skeletal guitar melodies, and moaning violin. So nice.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally some new music from aQ faves FRKSE, whose last lp, Guilt Surveillance, we made Record Of The Week, and for good reason. A stunning collection of home brewed mad scientist rhythmic experiments, all twisted loops, mutated samples, home built machines, noise and sonic detritus, somehow sculpted into heady, hypnotic, robotic soundscapes, reminding us a bit of Strotter Inst, but even more damaged and decayed, the sound gorgeously hypnotic, but at the same time, like the soundtrack to some dystopian wasteland. But before we get to the new FRKSE tracks, this here is a split, with another aQ fave, Husere Grav, a Texan one man band who specializes in harrowing, Lustmordian black ambience, and twisted industrial soundscapery, and these tracks here are some of his best yet. The opener, a haunting sonic smoldering, that sounds like a blackened Caretaker, all buried melodies, wistful and melancholic, but wreaths in crumbling, rumbling buzz, and burnished hiss and whir, hazy and hypnotic, we would have been more than happy if this dystopian drift filled up the whole side, but instead, the sound shifts into something even more abstract, what sounds like a field recording of some subterranean passage, the whir of distant machines, fragments of conversation, all blurred and smeared into a dreamlike sibilance, and amidst this sort of slow moving, near static shimmer, all manner of melody and texture seem to fade in and fade out, ghostly and ephemeral. The rest of the side is easily the most lovely stuff we've heard yet from Husere Grav, no caustic crunch, no ominous rumbling, instead, it's a darkly delicate sprawl of reverberant thrum, softly pulsing tones, all spread out into lush layers, deep dense billows of sound, softly haunting, deeply tranquil, some seriously lowercase, cinematic, slo-mo bliss out of the highest order. Fans of hushed ambient drift and deeeeeep listening drone music will be smitten for sure.
The FRKSE side is just as good as we expected/hoped. A ramshackle assemblage of beats, percussion, rhythm, some bits sound like actual drums, but mostly it sounds like found sounds, hiss and static from old records, the clang of metal on metal, the pulse and throb of an lp run off groove, what might be plucked rubber bands, or a processed heartbeat, who knows, and who cares! The sound settles into a totally hypnotic rhythm right out of the gate, and then the sound is constantly in flux, a sort of junkyard industrial, the main rhythm, gathering noise and detritus as it goes, whether that's simply more rhythm, or thick swaths of crumbling crunch, or squalls of hissy, staticky psychedelia. Like pretty much every track we've heard from FRKSE, it's so immediately mesmerizing, you sort o never want it to end, but invariably it does, only to conjure up a new rhythm, which is equally enthralling. But here, that first rhythm fades out, leaving the surrounding sounds to swirl and shimmer, a long stretch of soft-noise ambience, that like the HG side is surprisingly lovely, only to culminate in one final rhythmic stretch, a slow brooding bit of almost doom sounding lope, but it's not heavy, instead, it's a muted pulse, a lumbering, somnambulant groove, a dreamily lovely tarpit-creep, that again, sounds like it's being performed by junkyard automatons, or some strange crew of cobbled together robots, but the amazing thing is that it doesn't sound robotic, it sounds human, and emotional, the sound infused with a haunting, pathos, a melancholia, that transforms it into something otherworldly. Fantastic!
Beautiful packaging too, simple plain white covers with a piece of white plaster/gauze affixed to the front. Includes two inserts. NO download. And as you might imagine. EXTREMELY limited!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
You might remember Hypothermia from their amazing split with Dimhymn a few months back, and we review the killer Durthang tape elsewhere on this list. But these two Swedish purveyors of bleak lifeless doomic black metal are the perfect match up.
Hypothermia's side is an ultra lo fi blast of midtempo buzz, super murky, almost like a practice space recording, with strangled vocals, and some killer riffing. Definitely some serious cult black brutality.
The flipside is two loooong tracks from Durthang, and further convinces us that this could very well be one of our new favorite black metal hordes. A strangely clean sound, but nice fuzzy riffing and way up in the mix drumming. Mournful melodies over relentless double kick drumming. Cool arpeggiated guitar lines over swirling buzzing blackness and blown out distorted vocal shrieks. A darkly depressive Burzumic buzz wrapped around melancholy minor key misery. So good. And so far the only Durthang recording available are on ultra cult cassette tape only!!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Here's the double disc soundtrack to the new movie about Bob Dylan which stars no less than six actors, including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, and Richard Gere, ALL as Bob Dylan. Whoa. It's like Casino Royale. As a matter of fact, both the movie and the soundtrack are star studded to ridiculous proportions! Thirty four covers of Dylan songs performed by a mix of hip young things and venerable veterans such as Sonic Youth, Eddie Vedder, Calexico, Willie Nelson, Cat Power, Yo La Tengo, Tom Verlaine, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, Antony & The Johnsons, John Doe, Stephen Malkmus, Iron & Wine, Richie Havens, Roger McGuinn, Los Lobos, Jeff Tweedy, The Black Keys, Mark Lanegan, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Sufjan Stevens, The Hold Steady, Charlotte Gainsbourg and The Band! A perturbing thing we noticed about these renditions though is that it seems like many artists were trying to sound like Dylan... and strangely enough many ended up sounding like Neil Young instead! Weird.
"Cyclo" is the inevitable collaboration between glitch maniplulators Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai, who quite obviously state that "the error itself becomes the topic for this release." This album sounds exactly as anyone familiar with both Ikeda and
As with the packaging of the "20' to 2000" series on Raster with the then little seen clam shell cases, Raster has found a nifty new prefabricated case that houses the CD tightly inside until the adjoining plastic lever is pulled down, pushing the disc out of its case (like a manual toaster. There's probably a name for it... but we'll call it the Prest-O-Matic for now
- RealAudio clip: C1
- RealAudio clip: C8
Yay, more delightful music from Ilaiyaraaja, illustrious composer for South India's Kollywood (not Bollywood, but close) film industry. Finders Keepers / B-Music has previously brought us a couple other comps full of Ilaiyaraaja's tremendously enjoyable and unusually arranged tunes, so hopefully you know all about him already and are eager for more, 'cause look out, here's another seventeen tracks of the man's colorful and creative East-West mashup music, circa the synth-pop Eighties (his prime), full of electro funk drum machine grooves, '80s future shock synthesizer (Yamaha DX7 keyboard in the house!), orchestral flourishes, and the often amorously impassioned vocalisations of a variety of famous playback singers including K.S. Chitra, aka the "Tamil Nightingale".
Ilaiyaraaja himself can lay claim to the honorific "The Maestro". He's also been called "The Crown Prince Of Tamil Pop", and it's easy to hear why from this disc of so very lively and infectious and not overly-serious music, joyful songs designed to get characters in Tamil films - and maybe you too - singing and dancing.
Apparently Ilaiyaraaja, currently 69 years of age, has written/recorded over 4,500 songs in his career (and counting), so we can probably look forward to more collections from Finders Keepers and other equally hip labels, but don't let this one slip by, it's got a lot of gems on it. Imagine if Axel F went to India...
Extensive, interesting, informative (as usual) liner notes from DJ Andy Votel are included, the disc having been compiled by Votel and Doug Shipton.
Import double vinyl version also forthcoming, by the way, we should have that in time for our next list.
The entity that released the phenomenal and weighty 10-cd wooden box set known as "Improvised Music From Japan" (box, label, website) is now also a magazine. Printed in both English and Japanese, this squarebound, digest-sized debut issue runs to about 132 pages (with the Japanese text occupying the second half, or first if you read it back-to-front Japanese style). And, it comes with a cd compilation bound inside the front (or back) cover. Reviews, interviews and essays by and about the likes of Otomo Yoshihide, Seiichi Yamamoto, Ami Yoshida, Uchihashi Kzuhisa, Phew, Aki Onda, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, Utah Kawasaki, and many others make for fasinating reading if you're the sort of avant-garde music fan at all curious about the underground Japanese improvising scene. There's a review of, and translated excerpts from, a book called "The History Of Japanese Free Jazz" which us English-only types will find to be extremely tantalizing. Perhaps a full English translation of the book could be future project for the industrious Improvised Music From Japan folks? Info about such artists as Masayuki Takanyangi, the Taj Mahal Travellers, and Kaoru Abe is certainly hard to come by in the West, so it would be nice...
Meanwhile, on the compact disc, there's works by Toshimaru Nakamura, Haco, Yoshio Machida, Masahiko Okura and others. Creaking door ambience, silence, acoustic guitars, shortwave static crackle, field recordings, laptop computers, trombone drone... it's a really nice disc, proof of why this scene deserves such a journal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oh Lordy, it's here. Weren't you just asking us about when the next issue of Improvised Music From Japan was going to arrive? All 200 pages (half in English, half in Japanese) of it, plus two compliation cds. Do any of these names interest or excite you: Kazue Sawai, Aki Onda, Kazuo Imai, Tetuzi Akiyama, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Sachiko M, Taku Sugimoto, Haco? Then this is for you, and you probably *were* asking us about it... All those folks and more appear in these pages, along with a bunch of tantalizing reviews. And there's a special section from Otomo Yoshihide all about making connections with the Korean free jazz scene, in which he interviews saxophonist Kang Tae Hwan. So, if Japanese free jazz / 'onkyo' / improv electronics etc. is your thing, here you go, plenty of good readin'. Not to mention listenin', as the two discs are crammed with all sorts of interesting and diverse performances from many of the artists mentioned above. We were particularily chuffed to check out the "improvised extreme optical core unit" Optrum who provide five noisy tracks on disc two.
The wait is over -- now that it's 2006, the 2005 edition of Improvised Music From Japan is here! It's an indispensable journal to those of you, like us, who are confirmed musical Japanophiles and/or into the extremes of improvised sound activity. This time around, IMJ consists of a beautifully designed 128 page digest-sized book accompanied by two cds tucked under its front and back covers. The print portion of this is devoted entirely to write-ups about new albums from 2004 and 2005, over 350 of them (of which 21 are Merzbow releases!). Some are full articles all about a particular artist, others are briefer descriptions or impressions of the music, sometimes written by the artist in question (so we won't call these "reviews" in the consumer-guide sense, though this could be used that way). As always, the text is presented in both Japanese and English, along with thumbnail album cover pics. Besides all the Merzbow, there's plenty of names you might know here, and plenty more you probably don't. And you also find some non-Japanese artists in here as well (David Grubbs, Bastard Noise, Carl Stone, etc.) included because they've been released on a Japanese label or have collaborated with Japanese musicians.
Perusing this, you're gonna start making a list of releases you hadn't heard of before to try and hunt down -- we certainly did. One revelation was that Omoide Hatoba released a new album in 2004, we hadn't known that!! Gosh. Gotta get a hold of that somehow.
Meanwhile, the cds, like the magazine, feature both relatively well-known improvisers and (to us) newcomers. Among the 21 tracks spread across these two cds, you'll find pieces by familiar names like Toshiya Tsunoda, Merzbow and Kiyoshi Mizutani. But also you'll be introduced to the likes of VOIMA, sim and Tetsuya Umeda (whose track "Error Piano", featuring Yasuhisa Mizutani improvising on the piano whilst Umeda "loiters" nearby, with a portable radio, is indicative in its peculiarity and spontaneity of the variety of music to be heard on these discs and read about in the pages of the magazine). Out-jazz, mimimal electronics, brutal noise, all of the above and everything in between, that's the IMJ aesthetic”a good match for many curious AQ customers wethinks.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Second issue (sort of, they call it "Extra") of this print and audio journal devoted to the underground Japanese electro-acoustic improvisation scene. Definitely THE place to go to get enlightened about what's happening on that front. In both English and Japanese, this thick 128 page magazine features interviews with Ami Yoshida, Shoji Hano, and numerous others we're less familiar with, quite a few of 'em from a young generation of musicians here dubbed "Improv's New Waves". There's also a ton of reviews of intriguing cd releases that you'll probably only find out about here (and never see in a shop outside of Japan), and of course there's the magazine's audio portion: this time around, two discs full of cuts by artists from that "New Waves" scene, everything from jazz trumpet to turntables to death metal drums n' laptop. There's couple bonus cuts as well, including one from, um, old wave improvisor Shoji Hano.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited lp sampling the current state of Portland underground sounds, with a couple well known outfits, and a couple brand new ones (at least to us), all former members of a long lost Portland band called Alarmist.
Up first is Inca Ore, who most folks are probably familiar with, and her tracks here are lovely as always, dark and contemplative, lo-fi bedroom folk, deep bell-like tones and whispered vocals, the whole thing super hushed with weird rubbery bass and of course tone of reverb and delay. The strange thing, is that in between these super quiet songs, are super raucous crowd noise, people shouting and howling and cheering, it's weirdly jarring.
Up next is Argumentix, and for most folks it will definitely be an acquired taste. Beginning with some strange a capella almost off key vocalizing over a backdrop of murky crumbling distant drones, which quickly gives way to some super lo-fi hip hop (!), lots of bleeps and bloops and strange, sort of goofy rapping. A little bit Magnetic Fields actually. The last few tracks are chunks of abstract noise, weird ambience, clicks and buzz drone, and another bunch of goofy crooning vocals. Argumentix might take a few more exposures to win us over completely.
The flip side begins with Ghost To Falco, who we had heard OF, but never heard. Beginning with some random banter, and then a poem, we weren't sure what to expect, but then the band slips into some dark mopey slowcore, a bit reminiscent of The For Carnation, spidery guitars sad mumbled vocals, muted percussion, shuffling drums, dark and moody and quite nice, before slipping into a more traditional sounding, but no less dark sort of indie folk.
Finally, long time aQ fave Tunnels returns, but instead of deep long drones, or abstract freaked out psychfolk, he offers up something else entirely, starting things off with a wild squall of blown out psychguitar, but then adds some seriously tweaked, strangled mewly vocals. Hot on the heels of that comes some skittery new wave moaned vocals, gloomy synths, robotic drum machine, before the sound shifts again and becomes a sort of unhinged cabaret super dramatic deep vocals, lots of percussive crunch, all very over the top, yet still gloomy and goth and dark.
Weird record. And all over the place even for a 4 way split. Almost plays like a recording of some strange stage production, with bands maybe trying stuff they might not normally, or more likely channeling the spirit of their old outfit Alarmist, who we have not heard, all a bit campy and very over the top in places, but balanced by the darker more somber bits.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in nice thick silk screened sleeves. Includes photocopied inserts with liner notes and track info.
We have very very very few of these so we won't go into too much detail. You probably already know just from the two artists if you need this or not. New work from two of the few women kicking ass in the mostly male 'noise rock' scene. Both huge AQ faves, both who utilize voice and effects, in addition to the usual string-ed instruments to weave dreamlike soundscapes and delicate cinematic ambience.
Both are in full effect here, each outfits offering up gauzy beauty and mysterious haunting murk, distant shimmery drones and abstract lo-fi song fragments. Gorgeous as always.
Printed insert in a gold paint splattered tape case. And as mentioned above, CRAZY limited and gone before you know it.
There's a whole series of these, split cd releases from the cult-minded metal label Stormspell, giving some of the new breed of thrash metal bands from all around the world a snazzy showcase, two bands per disc. Head to head headbanging, as it were. They're all been pretty cool, and we probably should be listing each one, but can't write reviews 24/7... however, we really wanted to at least do a write up regarding this volume in particular. It pits California's Infantry against Finland's Pyrotoxic... and if you know AQ, you won't be surprised to learn that it's Pyrotoxic that really got us all excited. FRENZIED FINNISH THRASH METAL MADNESS!!! Don't get us wrong, Infantry are good, but Pyrotoxic simply kill. Part of what gets us about these maniacs is their uber energetic off-the-rails speediness (they make Infantry sound slothful) but it's also the awesomely wretched and rabid vokill delivery of the singer. Furthermore, while their more chaotic approach is quite frazzled, and feedbacking, and frothing mad, amidst all of it they've got hooks happenin' too, really rockin' and rollin' on such tracks as "Nuclear War (Has No Rules)" and "The Secret Of Steel". This is the true NWOFHM!
Though Pyrotoxic are our faves here, Infantry bring it too, they're just in comparison much more restrained, polished and precise, but certainly slay it up with such tunes as "Desecrate The Church" and the instrumental "Inhumane". Heck, their half comes first and listening to 'em rage you wouldn't think they'd get upstaged by the Finns, no sir. Which makes Pyrotoxic all the more impressive.
Well, not much more to say, there's 6 songs here from Infantry and 5 from Pyrotoxic. songs, and we'll be definitely on the lookout for more from either band, but especially those crazy Finns!
PS to give you a further notion of what these bands are all about, we'll mention the influences they each cite in the cd booklet. Infantry give props to "Slayer, Demolition Hammer, Deicide, Cannibal Corpse, Destruction, Kreator, etc." We get the idea they like black metal too, since one song is called, "Black Metal", and we already mentioned the one about church desecration! Meanwhile, Pyrotoxic hail "Dark Angel, Bulldozer, Tankard, (early) Slayer, Destruction, Armagedom, Sadus".
This is a really nice split LP from two up-and-comers in the ever blossoming US post-noise scene. Infinite Body is the work of Kyle Parker, who constructs sustained swarms of sun-blinding guitar noise that sparkles upon undulating surfaces from crosshatched delay patterns. Belong and White Rainbow stand as Parker's closest neighbors, yet his crystal cracked noise enjoys a knife sharpening quality to the overblown distortion that nudges the work just a little bit outside the realm of post-shoegazing psychedelics. A brief Devendra Banhart-like falsetto recorded on a crappy tape recorder emerges between two extended fuzz tracks as a teasing piece of emotional excess despite its brevity of barely 15 seconds.
It's nice to hear more from Emaciator (aka Jon Borges), who had blown us away with his Reflection 2lp not that long ago. Like Parker's Infinite Body, Emaciator transmits a constant stream of overblown noise, but sourced from analog synth and crusty filter boxes. Deftly transitioning through his distorted, shimmering drone with a dense harmonic interplay and almost subliminal melodic passages, Borges creates an entrancing and hypnotic piece that's equal parts Birchville Cat Motel and LaMonte Young. As his blizzard of electricity draws to an end, Borges picks up the guitar with a sadly elliptical chord that winds down gradually.
Excellent stuff to be sure!
Over the last few weeks, we've reviewed a bunch of 7"s, previously only available to subscribers to Not Not Fun's long running Bored Fortress Club 7" Subscription series. For whatever reason, the singles have finally been made available to non-subscribers, and feature a pretty killer line up of bands: Wet Hair, Peaking Lights, High Wolf, Gnod, Robedoor, Ducktails, Rangers, Sex Worker, Psychic Reality, and The Savage Young Taterbug. The only one we weren't able to list, UNTIL NOW, is this one, a split between two longtime aQ faves, noise poppers No Age, and psychedelic post noise dronescapers Infinite Body.
No Age unleash a squall of gnarled distorto guitar, muted drums, and buried vox, a swirling cloud of sound that finds the various elements blurred into a single heaving washed out noisepop mass, here and there shimmering guitars ring out through the murk, while near the track's end, the rhythmic pulse transforms into a metallic industrial pound, and the guitars grow hazier and more ghostlike, until the song blinks out with a short blast of grinding crunch.
Infinite Body counter with a woozy loopscape, all burnt guitar thrum, and circusy melody, a pulsing hypnotic landscape of gristly distorted smears, reminding us of Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, a gloriously lysergic, gently blown out bit of dronefuzz ambient dreaminess.
As with the other installments in the series, killer eye popping packaging, and of course VERY LIMITED!!
It should be only a matter of time before somebody pulls the obscurant folk miserablist Terrors from the cassette netherworld, as his bleakly rendered minimalism for guitar, voice, and hell of a lot of reverb captures the spirit of the first few Smog records. But at the same time, Terrors has been sharing the same LA post-noise haunts as Pedestrian Deposit and now Infinite Body; so maybe, that's where Terrors should stay lest he / they start to suck. Terrors' cassette Inequipose was one of the best tapes that we heard in 2009, so anything new (that wasn't immediately out of print!) would certainly pique our interest. Hence, this twenty-minute cassette with one Terrors track, one Infinite Body track, and one collaborative track with guest vocals from Laena Myers-Ionita; and it's a gem!
Infinite Body opens the tape with a vocal edit of a piece that really sounds like it's all synth, following upon what he produced on the recent album Carve The Face Out Of My God. Brightly shimmering synth percolations extended through delay and reverb all of which are very sharp in attack. The Terrors solo track is a mopey cover of Billie Holiday's "God Bless The Child" with downer guitar strums and reverb drenched vocals breaking up the empty tape hiss spaces. And that collaborative track is really quite special, sort of sounding like a very lo-fi version of Mazzy Star as remixed by Wavves, with overblown synth drones softly abrading against Terrors repetitive guitar chord and Myers-Ionita maudlin vocals. Limited to a mere 100 copies, or thereabouts.
The long anticipated return of Inh Halentropy, a band we know very little about, other than they make a sound like almost nothing we've EVER heard before. A band who introduced themselves to us with a random package in the mail, containing a cd-r, and these simple words: "Dark Greetings. For your grimnatious becryptlement�" as well as the similarly mysterious sign off: "In ancient solemnity, none so grimm�".
We expected black metal, and that's what we got. sort of. Their sound was most definitely black, but not metal in any way we were familiar with, instead they unfurled a cinematic new age-y black ambient doom, equal parts Esoteric, Goblin, and Low, a sort of mysterious blissed out yet grim slowcore. Or something. Their cd-r release disappeared in no time, and no word from the band until recently, a new cd-r just showed up one day, that familiar two part band name, an owl and all sorts of strange symbols, we were soooo excited. We originally thought it was a record called Dull Knife, but soon discovered Inh Halentropy were sharing the cds with another like minded horde CALLED Dull Knife.
So what has changed in the last two years, if anything? Well, the sound is still grim, and haunting, a swirling slo-mo mix of atmospheric doom and creepy crawly slowcore, an eighties horror movie soundtrack vibe infused with a shimmery drifty bit of new age ambience, two tracks, the first a plodding cinematic sprawl, with abstract programmed drums, dark swells of distant rumble, smears of almost cheesy sounding synths, what sounds like faux horns (also probably synths), deeeeeeep bass that throbs underneath, all wrapped up with super lyrical, haunting minor key melodies, definitely like the soundtrack to some lost 30 year old European horror film.
The second Inh Halentropy jam is even trippier and more spaced out, beginning with heavily effected falsetto vocals, that almost sound like wild animal calls or that little 'cooo' sound from Serge Gainsbourg's "Bonnie & Clyde" albeit way more evil, some woozy detuned guitars, and some shimmery squalls of warped warble, eventually spreading out into a slow burning sprawl of spidery guitars, hushed whir and glistening tinkles, and some seriously disturbing slowed down samples. So creepy and kick ass. Hate to think we might have to wait 2 more years for another full length.
Inh Halentropy set the bar pretty high, but Dull Knife are undeterred, and offer up their own sort of creepy ambience, deep warped low end tones, unfurling grimly in an expanse of muted buzz and crumbling distortion, reminding us quite a bit of Trollmann, in its minimal low end heaviness, over the course of the track, the low end grows more abrasive, and more active, fluctuating more wildly, like some weirdly distorted symphony for foghorn and black buzz. The second DK track's another bleak bit of minimal grimness, this time even more harrowingly dense, the sounds thick and corrosive, the swells coming faster and faster, eventually blurring into a single oozing slab of blackdrone, shot through with shards of crunch and strange bits of glitch. Wow. Guess we need to hear more from these guys as well.
Needless to say, anyone into sounds slow, low, grim and black, spaced out and atmospheric, haunting and heavy, should grab one of these right quick.
SUPER LIMITED of course. Each one hand screened, different colored ink, on different colored textured paper, every one different.
This was a warehouse find, managed to dig up 4 or 5 copies, been hiding away for 5 or 6 years now, which is a shame cuz this is some pretty bad ass black metal. Split records are always funny when both bands share members, but even more funny when both bands are one man bands, and that one man is the same guy. Thus we have this split from way back in 2004, featuring Inimical and Sect, both the work of J. Del Russi, who hails from New Jersey, and MIGHT be more recognizable under his other name, Xathagorra Mlandroth, which is what he used in another one man band, long time aQ faves, ultra funereal doomlord(s) Catacombs.
But before the blackened slo-mo tarpit crawl of Catacombs, Russi/Mlandroth was trafficking in some serious old school raw and grim black metal, all frantic riffing, furious drumming, and some sick raspy vokills, the sound murky and lo-fi, the arrangements repetitive and trancelike, very hypnotic and mesmerizing, in fact almost weirdly looped sounding, which only adds to the mesmerizing vibe.
Where Inimical was more murky and washed out, the sound of Sect was more brittle and buzzy, the sound blown out and buzz drenched and thickly atmospheric, but similar to Inimical, the sound is cyclical and repetitive and trancelike and again weirdly looped, few parts repeated over and over, almost mantra like, although Sect did mix it up, with some weirdly industrial rhythms, abstract droned out ambience, and some weird spacey song structures, often ditching the blackness entirely for something way more abstract and tripped out. Cool stuff for sure. And in Sect maybe hints of what was to come in Catacombs.
Got very few of these, not sure if it's even still available, but we're guessing not, so grab one of these quick before they're gone.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
These two San Francisco bands, take their indie rock streaks, and bury them under a layer of buzz and hiss and electronic skree. Iran sound a little like the Grifters if they were on Siltbreeze, and you were listening to them through a shortwave radio. The Church Steps take the lofi, and use the hifi to make it sound even more lo fi. Both sound beautifully damaged.
Originally intended to be released for Record Store Day, this split lp features long time aQ faves Iron And Wine, teamed up with new aQ faves the Low Anthem, both performing live (from a recent tour they did together). The four Iron And Wine tracks are expanded to a whole 100 minute set with the download coupon, and is heavy on the newer stuff, with a whole band, fairly rocking, big drums, horns, synths, if you dig the new sound, the new songs sound great live, as do the old ones. Not for newbies so much as for already-fans. The flipside finds the Low Anthem doing their dark brooding folk thing, taming a rowdy crowd, their sound, lush and dreamlike, haunting and meditative, lush vocal harmonies, all melancholy and sweetly moody, nearly 30 minutes of folky softly psychedelic drift.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Supposedly only available and indie stores, it's apparently already out of print, we have just 5 copies left, and then that's it! Comes in a full color jacket, with a swank letter pressed 2 color silk screened insert, and includes a download coupon, with the Low Anthem tracks and the WHOLE Iron And Wine set.
We weren't really sure what to think when we were first exposed to the strangely named Iron Bitchface (thanks AQ pal Guy from Guelph), ostensibly a black metal band, IBF ended up being so much more than a mere metal band. In fact, barely a metal band at all, more some sort of metallic techno digital hardcore sort of thing. Needless to say, we LOVE it. And odds are you will too. That is if the idea of grim black metal crossed with spastic DHR style techno pushes your buttons. And c'mon, it really should, cuz this stuff is amazing. Completely baffling, wild and heavy and totally fucking bizarre.
Iron Bitchface is K-Rot and We Are Trolls collects four out of print releases, Return To Gran Mountain, Flirtinis All Round!, I Hate The Internet and Caffeine:Caffiend. Each one a confusional blend of relentlessly inhuman drum machine blasts, bizarre synths, buzzing blackened guitars and growled demonic vocals. The synths pluck out playful melodies over washes of guitar buzz, the drums spastic and hyperspeed. Some songs are almost straight black metal, others are weird abstract synthscapes, others are weird block rockin' techno, like some sort of lo-fi Basement Jaxx, while still others are some weird sort of alien house music. But as you might imagine, the best bits, and thankfully, that means most of the tracks here combine all of the above into totally damaged danceable black thrash techno hardcore whattheefuck. Awesome.
And even more awesome is the fact that this is a split, with the also strangely named Chaos Through Programming, who as much as we hate to admit it, might be even cooler and weirder than IBF. Where Iron Bitchface is sort of buzzy and lo-fi and home brewed, the sound of Chaos Through Programming is HUGE, a dizzying chopshop, mixing big dance beats, bizarre samples, and massive crunchy metal guitars, like a metal obsessed Chemical Brothers with ADD, but with surprising moments of melodic lucidity and killer rhythmic complexity scattered amidst the brain melting bursts of collaged metal dance weirdness.
Packaged in an oversized slimline DVD case with full color artwork and a full color insert.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ah ha! The deluxe edition of the Night Wearing Feathers collaboration between the surrealistically minded irr. app. (ext.) and the enigmatic At Jennie Richie. We previously listed the standard lp version, but this extremely limited box set edition (we have only THREE copies), in addition to the vinyl, also features the previously released but now out of print cassette Unknown Invertebrate Drama AND an entirely unreleased cassette as well, both gorgeously package in deluxe printed jackets. And to the best of our knowledge, none of the material on any of these three elements overlaps with anything else. Everything's housed in a beautiful box and includes two deluxe printed cardstock inserts, each one #'d and signed. We've not checked out the unreleased cassette (which looks to be a proper split between irr. app. (ext.) and At Jennie Richie, but probably only the members of those projects know for sure!), but here's what we said about the other two elements:
The first side of the vinyl - "Night Wearing Feathers" - was originally a 3" cd-r from 2006; and as you could probably guess, that's long been out of print. This track begins with a squeak and sigh only to snap into simple skittered rhythms that succumb to a radiant drone build from and / or occluded by various mechanical vibrations that poke through the glassy mesmerism. It's not out of step from the brilliant trilogy of Wilhelm Reich related recordings irr. app. (ext.) embarked upon around that same time period (e.g. Ozeanische Gefuhle, Cosmic Superimposition, Kreiselwelle). The B side - "Sunshine Bus Rider" - was composed six years later in 2012 and is a far angrier, more gnarled composition, with a buzzing guitar (or maybe a detuned sitar?) slowly blooming at the onset like some of the more recent OM recordings with fucked collage noise, nervous slices of diabolical laughter, and clattering found objects all getting jostled around in the true spirit of Nurse With Wound's sonic Dada.
On first half of the Unknown Invertebrate Drama cassette, At Jennie Richie's track is mysterious through and through with gray blasts of sound ebbing from silence only to blink out of existence in seconds. These are ghostly sounds, or rather these noises are treated in a ghostly way akin to the acoustic materialization that Francisco Lopez would offer forth about a decade ago. The motorized rumblings that massage themselves into a eerie cosmic purr open the second side and could be generated by no one except for irr. app. (ext.). Out of this introduction, Waldron sets up weirdly flanging, filtered tones that undulate above watery field recordings and nocturnal bumps in the night, concluding with a strange set of angular synth beacon pulses and gasped utterances. What we've heard are mind-fuckers for sure, and we mean that as the highest of compliments!
The boxset is limited to 66 copies. We have only THREE!!
Technically this is a split release between At Jennie Richie and irr. app. (ext.) with each project contributing a 16-minute, side-long track to this limited cassette on Black Horizons; but it's also a strange collaborative project as well. M.S. Waldron - the mad scientist behind irr. app. (ext.) - has worked within At Jennie Richie in the past and may have contributed to the murky, post-DADA smeared noise here; and for the irr. app. (ext.) track, Waldron has recycled elements of At Jennie Richie's track from this tape into his own composition of swirling drones and psychic miasma. Got it? Nothing is ever easy for that Waldron fellow! At Jennie Richie's track is mysterious through and through with gray blasts of sound ebbing from silence only to blink out of existence in seconds. These are ghostly sounds, or rather these noises are treated in a ghostly way akin to the acoustic materialization that Francisco Lopez would offer forth about a decade ago. The motorized rumblings that massage themselves into a eerie cosmic purr open the second side and could be generated by no one except for irr. app. (ext.). Out of this introduction, Waldron sets up weirdly flanging, filtered tones that undulate above watery field recordings and nocturnal bumps in the night, concluding with a strange set of angular synth beacon pulses and gasped utterances. Packaged very handsomely as always by Black Horizons with a full color printing on metallic paper for both o-cards that nestle together with the cassette inside. There's only 66 copies of this one!
For those of you who have had the opportunity to witness the live reincarnation of Nurse With Wound over the past couple of years, there are two bald men making funny noises usually on either side of Steven Stapleton. One is Andrew Liles, who had run the table in terms of a release schedule in 2007 releasing 14 full albums of eccentric drones and abstracted collages, some of which were pretty darn good, but could maybe have used some editing. The other bald man is M.S. Waldron, whose slowly trickled releases are impeccable constructions of modern day Surrealism through audio sorcery, clearly not in any need of an editor whatsoever. Outside of NWW, he's been toiling away in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California under the unwieldy moniker irr. app. (ext.).
This split release with Chicago's Panicsville has been in the works for many years now, finally seeing the light of day in early 2008. The irr. app. (ext.) half of the equation slowly spirals from one assemblage of discombobulated field recordings, agitated ether, and curious atmospherics into another set of equally malformed sounds, much like a black-acid kaleidoscope. Yes, it makes perfect sense that Stapleton would want Waldron to assist in Nurse performances, as he clearly has talent at taking weird noise making to a sublime level of abstraction.
With a name like Panicsville, the expectations were of an obstinant noise project; but instead, this splatter of mechanoid gestures pocking sea-sick drones is a worthy companion to irr. app. (ext.)'s sidereal brilliance. So good in fact, that we may seek out further recordings. So good in fact, that you too should pick this thing up. Limited to 500 copies.
Oh, shiny pretty electronica! There's a lot of Styrofoam around AQ these days -- his newest album Nothing's Lost (which features some collaborations with Benjamin Gibbard among other folks), last year's I'm Here To Show Something's Missing, and this split Japanese tour cd with likeminded labelmates Isan and The Go Find (although strangely the front cover doesn't list The Go Find's band name with the other two). You get three tracks from Isan and two each from Styrofoam and The Go Find. Have we said the bands' names enough yet? Nope! Isan's contributions are chiming musicbox-y tracks (one of which is a cover of the old traditional Japanese song "Akatombo"). The two Styrofoam numbers are covers of Lou Barlow's "Think (Let Tomorrow Be)" and Elliott Smith's "Between The Bars". The latter proves that Styrofoam's Arne Van Petegem can sing just like Smith. It's totally Elliott Smith-meets-Notwist. The Go Find's gentle pair of tracks nestle in nicely between the others. This gathering actually serves as a pretty accurate sampler of the Morr Music label's unassuming electronic pop sounds.
The Snowbringer Cult was a double cd originally released way back in 2008 on the Students of Decay label, and was the first proper cd release from French bedroom drone-psych-folk epic from Natural Snow Buildings, the boy/girl duo of Mehdi Amaziane and Solange Gularte, that double cd included a NSB full length, as well as an album from each of their solo projects, those being Isengrind and Twinsistermoon. That double cd is finally available again, but has also been reissued on vinyl for the first time, with each of the three parts being released separately as its own record.
Natural Snow Buildings have been a band since WAY back in 1999, toiling quietly WAY underground, and over the course of the last decade plus, have only really released a handful of records, and in the first 6 or 7 years, they only managed 4 cd-r's and two tapes, the total number of copies of all 6 of those releases hovering at about 250. That's insane! At the time we couldn't help wonder how a band with such a small catalog, that has reached so few ears, could generate so much fanboy freakout?! But that's precisely what happened. And thankfully, and perhaps surprisingly, in the case of NSB, and the two solo offshoots, the hype does not seem unwarranted. The freaking out more than merited. The music of Amaziane and Gularte is definitely something special, much more than the usual generic fx laden droned out abstract cd-r floor-core that seems to be constantly flooding the scene, this duo write actual songs, and create gorgeous soundscapes, they mix raga-like psych with fluttery folk, deep drones with pristine pop, weaving it all together into something spectacular.
The Isengrind record begins with some deep dark ambience, huge shimmering streaks of ominous sound, like an orchestra tuning up in a cave, drawn out into warm washes of dronelike sound, processed choral vocals, and wheezing accordions. That intro gives way to a buzzing Eastern style raga, lots of percussion, shakers, bells, hand drums, buried beneath a shimmery smear of thick coruscating buzz, a sea of sitars, with Solange's vocals soaring ghostlike over the top. The next track is a dark folky drift, a simple melody, fluttering flute, more abstract percussion, definitely reminiscent of Avarus and other Finnish forest folk, but somehow more ethereal, and genuinely folky. The rest of the Isengrind tracks drift from spectre like folk, simple strums soaked in reverb and wrapped around ethereal vocals, to more raga jams, Indian style buzz filtered through a fractured folk sensibility, to haunting cinematic ambience, abstract soundscapes rife with streaks of feedback and wheezing chordal whir, disembodied strum, mysterious vocals and sporadic percussion, tribal, primal, primitive and raw, but still dreamlike and lovely.
As we commented in our review of the now out of print Laurie Bird cd-r from French bedroom drone-psych-folk duo Natural Snow Buildings, it always surprises us how bands with nothing but a MySpace page and a cd-r or two, can generate so much hype and excitement. It seems to be a common occurrence these days, with some bands even getting real live major label record deals purely on the strength of the handful of tracks on their MySpace page.
To be fair to Natural Snow Buildings, they have been a band since 1999, toiling quietly WAY underground, and over the course of the last 9 years, have only released 4 cd-r's and two tapes, the total number of copies of all 6 releases hovering at about 250. That's insane! How does a band with such a small catalog, that has reached so few ears, possibly generate so much fanboy freakout?! But that's precisely what happened. But thankfully, and perhaps surprisingly, in this case, the hype does not seem unwarranted. The freaking out more than merited. The music of Natural Snow Buildings is definitely something special, much more than the usual generic fx laden droned out abstract cd-r floor-core that seems to be flooding the scene, this boy girl duo write songs, and create gorgeous soundscapes, they mix raga-like psyche with fluttery folk, deep drones with pristine pop, weaving it all together into something spectacular.
So here we have the very first proper cd release (others on the way, reissues of several of their various way-too limited cd-r's) from Natural Snow Buildings, bundled with an extra disc, featuring a whole record from both NSB members' solo projects, Twinsistermoon, whose last disc we reviewed recently, and Isengrind, the project of Solange, the female half of NSB.
Isengrind's half of disc one begins with some deep dark ambience, huge shimmering streaks of ominous sound, like an orchestra tuning up in a cave, drawn out into warm washes of dronelike sound, processed choral vocals, and wheezing accordions. That intro gives way to a buzzing Eastern style raga, lots of percussion, shakers, bells, hand drums, buried beneath a shimmery smear of thick coruscating buzz, a sea of sitars, with Solange's vocals soaring ghostlike over the top. The next track is a dark folky drift, a simple melody, fluttering flute, more abstract percussion, definitely reminiscent of Avarus and other Finnish forest folk, but somehow more ethereal, and genuinely folky. The rest of the Isengrind tracks drift from spectre like folk, simple strums soaked in reverb and wrapped around ethereal vocals, to more raga jams, Indian style buzz filtered through a fractured folk sensibility, to haunting cinematic ambience, abstract soundscapes rife with streaks of feedback and wheezing chordal whir, disembodied strum, mysterious vocals and sporadic percussion, tribal, primal, primitive and raw, but still dreamlike and lovely.
Mehdi begins his side of the disc, with a sound that perfectly compliments Solange's (and make it obvious why the two work so well together in NSB), long drawn out glimmering high end tones, draped over a dark minor key folky strum, and simple percussion, while Mehdi's feminine sounding falsetto soars over the top, all infused with some sort of freaky folky Wickerman vibe. Gorgeous and haunting. That track is followed up by a short chunk of perfect dreamfolk, simple folky strum, and Mehdi's crystal clear vocals, ringing out, pure and impossibly high, if you didn't know better you might think this was some rare track by some lost seventies female folkie.
And so it goes, tracks weaving back and forth, from warm washed out blissy dreamy dronescapes, to simple stripped down folk, often the two sounds drifting into each other, cross pollinating, the folk songs short and seemingly serving to separate the longer sprawling expanses of drone and shimmer, the two sounds dramatically different, but somehow complimenting one another perfectly.
So what happens when the two join forces, becoming Natural Snow Buildings? It would be way too easy to say that the sum equaled the parts, that if you took the sound of the two halves of the first disc, it would equal the whole of the second. There is certainly �some- truth to that, but it's not math, it's magic. Alchemy, musical sorcery, these are sounds not numbers, and thus are governed by forces far more magical and mysterious than physics or science. The two together join spirits, their natures become entwined, they draw from one another, each offering the other part of their soul, rendered in music. The results are truly divine. An assemblage of sounds, deftly woven into expansive shapes and hushed mystery, landscapes of drone and shimmer, of cinematic wonder and dark introspection. Some tracks are super abstract, layered near static drifts, longform movements that sonically evoke other lands, other times, the past long forgotten, the future not yet experienced, other tracks are wheezing sun dappled Appalachia, but turned inside out, the chords and notes seemingly drawn inward, toward the speakers, the vocals breathless and mournful, all laid atop a thick swirl of distorted riffage, other tracks are fragmented folk, all murky blurred piano, backwards guitars, heartsick melodies, wrapped in a thick gauzy production, smeared into snapshots glimpsed through eyes brimming with tears. Other tracks are space rock writ small, minimal dirges, drone jams, chanted vocals, strange stuttery percussion, and glorious buzzing guitars, culminating in the final track, which begins much like the others, all hazy and dreamlike, vocals ethereal, guitars spare and skeletal, until unexpectedly the band lock into some serious droned out space rock. A serious dark and druggy looped riff, a la Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, Loop, anchored by a simple pounding thudrock rhythm, driving intensely through swirling clouds of FX and warm whirring ambience, a seriously dense, propulsive krautjam, that just so happens to hide a soft drifting pop shimmer underneath, and while the track rocks with a surprising intensity, it's precisely what's underneath that turns the jam into something resplendent.
Gorgeous packaging, a fancy 4 panel gatefold digisleeve, with super striking original artwork and liner notes all drawn by Solange.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
This is hardly a tough sell. AQ faves Isis, the 'indie rock Neurosis', masters of the metal meets post rock pummel, with a flair for epic emotional song writing and capable of tempering their fist-in-your-face brutality with gorgeous melodies and strangely tranquil post rock passages, remixed and reinterpreted by an impossibly perfect lineup that reads as if they were handpicked by us! (Or you!) Fennesz, Thomas Koner, Venetian Snares, James Plotkin, Dalek, JK Broadrick, Tim Hecker, Speedranch and more! Most folks have already leapt out of their seats and tossed this puppy in their shopping cart, and we can't blame you. But for those of you who need a more in depth look, here's a track by track synopsis.
Disc One:
Fennesz offers up his immediately recognizable glistening sun dappled digitization, dreamy and otherworldly.
Ayal Naor of the band 27 delivers a version that is pretty true to the original but with some extra production tweakery and effects fuckery.
Thomas Koner unfurls a crumbling militaristic nihilistic drone, with creepy whispering voices, industrial whir and claustrophobic ambience. So good.
James Plotkin's version of "The Other" is all dreamy and melodic, with backwards drums, and isolated vocals, and plenty of deconstructed riffs and melodies, smeared into warm ambient noisescapes
The first of Tim Hecker's two takes on "Carry" is a wash of shimmering guitar, stretched into an epic thrum, a pulsing throbbing swirl of overblown guitar with minor key melodies buried underneath.
Teledubgnosis (featuring Ted Parsons of (Prong, Godflesh, Jesu, Swans) offer just what you'd expect, a modern dub version, with everything stripped away except the vocals and the background ambience.
Mike Patton adds his particular damage to "Maritime" turning in a super tweaked version with bizarre vocals, lots of random sound effects and loads of studio weirdness.
Disc Two:
Venetian Snares spits up a bizarre mix of dubbed out drums, super stereo panned guitars, isolated growly vocals, and reverb all over the place. Almost like a King Tubby / Lee Perry metal dub!
Tim Hecker's second version of "Carry" is a dense landscape of churning whorls of fuzzed out guitars, and warm whirls of ambient blur.
The Oktopus (aka Dalek) turns "False Light" into an industrial hip hop jam, with buzzing analogue synths, and the original's howled vocals careening from speaker to speaker. Like African Head Charge meets Neurosis.
Speedranch isolates the female vocals and douses the drums in massive reverb, and then chops the song into new shapes with hypnotic cd skipping riffs. Definitely the coolest, least annoying thing Speedranch has ever done!
The mysterious Destructo Swarmbots' track is a murky subterranean trawl through underground caverns and bottomless pits of droning rumbles and minimal distant melodies.
And JK Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu) takes on "Hym", staying pretty close to the original, adding his machinelike rhythms and turning the majestic midtempo metal of the original into a lost Godflesh / Jesu track, which is most definitely a good thing.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Maybe it's just 'cause we miss our ol' pal Lance Hahn, ever since he moved off to Austin, TX a little while back, that reviewing this release by his melodic, energetic pop-punk band J Church just makes us all nostalgic, thinking about when we could count on seeing Lance almost everyday hanging out here at Aquarius. But of course we're happy he's happy over there in Texas, and we're also happy to report that J Church is as vital as ever. This split teams five tracks performed by Lance Hahn's new Texan J Church lineup with four cuts by another Austin-based band, Storm The Tower, who play a Black Flagish, vaguely metallic style of hardcore. Their side is no let down, while J Church's half adds five fine new songs to the vast J Church discography, ranging from galloping pop punk anthems to explorations in guitar noise texture. Opening track "Terror Or Love" we almost thought was '80s metal before Lance's distinctive, earnest, diy vocals kicked in on the chorus!
This is volume three in My Cat Is An Alien's series of split lp's/cd's. The lps are limited to 100 copies and contain original MCIAA artwork, but sell out immediately and more importantly cost over $100 so we wisely passed on those since the cds are way more nicely priced. And sound exactly the same! For volume three, MCIAA is joined by Jackie-O Motherfucker, who offer up a twenty minute musical joyride, equal parts tribal clatter, vocal experimentation, music concrete, skittery free jazz, ambient drone, studio fuckery / tape splicing / turntable weirdness and found sound collage. Sounds like it could be a mess, but it somehow works. A chaotic convoluted sonic freakout that's more mesmerizing than maddening. Quite cool actually. For their half of the split, MCIAA deliver a keening wash of glistening ambience, with lots of space-y swoosh and futuristic bleeps and bloops, that slowly morphs into an almost nursery rhyme like ditty with affected vocal melodies, simple chimes, and reverberating steel string shimmer.
It's been awhile since we've heard from these two camps of free rock improvisers, but this split is a welcome return for both old faves, Jackie-O Motherfucker and Tom Carter.
The Jackie-O side is a side-long track called "House of Rain" which begins plaintively with funereal horns, bass, synth, and clattering percussion airing out in a slow build. Mournful mumbling vocals intone through a collage of interweaving sounds, broken guitar strums, hallucinogenic claptrap, and propulsive dirgery that coalesce into a momentous free-jazz memorial send-off for some seemingly heroic figure's burial at sea. Flutes, drums and horns buzzingly flock together into an epic whirring cloud of noise that battles it out among the stratosphere before slowly dying out.
The Tom Carter side is a collaboration with cellist Helena Espvall (formerly of Espers) called "Electrogesis" which begins more abstractly with what sounds like sped-up piano tones joined by cello and guitar in tandem, the cello more abrasive and droney while the guitar is more searching and exploratory, riding the line between melodic psych excursion and free improvisation. Soon the two lock horns around an intense raga-like center and as the sound grows more intense, the music fragments and destabilizes into a burning murky ember of glorious beautiful noise. So great! Limited to 200 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The UK's Jazzfinger hit us again with another slab of their gorgeous free rock abstract drone wonder, but here they're sharing sonic space with a band we had never heard before. A Way are from Finland, and seem to fit somewhere between their countrymen Avarus, Anaksimandros, Kemialliset Ystavat and like-minded groups like No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Ghosting, Bonus and of course Jazzfinger. A Way's 4 tracks are brief little snippets of low end weirdness. Drones, but dense with disembodied non-melodies, fragmented chunks of rumble and shimmer, rhythms, but the sort of rhythms you can only see when you stand way back, up close, they're just dizzying whirls of random percussive shuffle and stumbling flutter, the warm whir of machinery, a smeared industrial drift, sparkling with tiny harmonics and muted tonal color. An ambient world of soft and spooky sweet submerged.
Jazzfinger counter with a 20 minute wall of crumbling guitar. Layer after layer of pealing, keening, roaring, buzzing amps and strings. Dense but also sort of lo-fi. It almost sounds like some sort of installation where a gallery was outfitted with 1000 crappy tape players, all playing poorly dubbed copies of live Sunroof! bootlegs. A gloriously epic tangle of high end guitars, a massive sun dappled Ur-drone, hovering and shimmering, while beneath lurks a swirling world of tinkling music boxes, plucked strings, sing songy melodies, random percussion, thick strum and abstract riffage. Nice!
SUPER LIMITED. We only have a dozen or thereabouts, so act fast. Packaged in thick plastic pouches with two hand screened squares of textured paper and secured with a tiny piece of twine.
We won't go into too much detail on this one, as it's an oldie, from way back in 2003, we never had enough to list it until now, and even now we probably don't have enough, but we do have a bunch, so if you want one of these act fast, cuz it's pretty dang great.�
Longtime AQ faves, UK duo Jazzfinger (at least a duo here) battle it out free rock, abstract ambient drone style with fellow noisemakers Number None, who we've actually been fans of for a while, but this will mark their first appearance on the AQ list.�
The Jazzfinger tracks, are more of what we've come to love, hissy lo-fi soundscapes of warble and shimmer, clattery chaotic percussion and rumbling drones, the eleven minute second track is the shows the band at their best, stretching way out, and meandering from soft focus drone to foresty free folk, to No Neck clatter jam and back again, washed out, grinding buzzing and so gloriously mysterious. The rest of the tracks play out similarly, like some strange mechanical music making contraption, wound up and let loose, on some old 1800's dirt road, wobbling beneath bruised purple skies and sending the villagers skittering back to their houses, to peek warily through the curtains.�
Number None, are like minded maybe, but their execution is completely different. More minimal and hushed, their tracks are stretched out streaks of muted metallic buzz, buried mumbled vocals, dark industrial hiss, haunting melodic fragments, all drifting weightless in some murky alien sea. The final track, the 15 minute long "High Noon On The Negative Plane" sounds exactly like that. Dark shimmers of ringing metal, smeared into barely shifting slabs of soft sound, an orchestra of Tibetan bells, dropped into the sea, their subtle vibrations recorded as they descend into the blackness, then broadcast toward the surface, where they arrive as a warm watery warble. So nice.�
And again, SO LIMITED, already out of print, so needless to say, these will be gone in a flash...
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Okay. Jex Thoth. The band. The woman. A very polarizing proposition for doom fanatics. The music is pitch perfect, a folk flecked fuzzy groovy, dirgey doomy seventies style classic doom, the vocals, clean and dramatic and soaring and way up in the mix. Definitely changes the vibe and feel of the music. But anyway, you can read all about the full length elsewhere on this list, but this single track, from the album, might just be the best thing we've heard from Jex Thoth (the band) yet.
Beginning all spacy and seventies folky, fluttering acoustic guitars, all drifty and dreamlike, the track soon gives way to some SERIOUS classic doom. Like we mentioned above, druggy and fuzzy and groovy, wah wah guitars, distortion, fuzz, leads, a stone cold killer, then Thoth (the singer) joins in and the song is transformed into something less distinctly doomy, into something more classic rock, the Jefferson Airplane comparison is apt for sure, which is not a bad thing, the vocals not so high in the mix, less clean and measured, a little more loose and feral sounding. Which makes this probably our favorite track from the full length. Pretty damn great.
But the flipside, holy shit how much do we love Pagan Altar?! That's a rhetorical question, cuz if it wasn't the answer would be SO FUCKING MUCH!!!! Super blown out fuzzy groovy doomy brilliance, a re-recorded version of their second recording ever from 1976. Recorded in 2007 but you'd never know it. And the sound of Pagan Altar here is not so much doomy, as classic rock, like Jex Thoth, but where JT are channeling Jefferson Airpolane, PA are whipping up some Blue Oyster Cult shit, seventies arena rock heaviness, slightly doomy sure, but totally rocking!
Packaged in a super heavy sleeve with original artwork from Reverend Bizarre / The Puritan mainman Albert, pressed on thick vinyl with a printed color insert.
Already out of print we think so these are the last copies we'll get...
Pretty killer match up between two aQ faves, Justin Broadrick's (Godflesh, Jesu, etc) new electronic outfit JK Flesh, and long running experimental noise/power electronics combo Prurient. The JK Flesh tracks here are about the darkest and fiercest we've heard from Broadrick, opening with a thick corrosive buzz, droned out and dense, before exploding into a dense churning industrial dirge, which soon blossoms into some old school jungle, and thus flits back and forth between chugging, metallic, almost Godflesh like crush to still bleak, but more beat-y drum n' bass stutter.
The other tracks follow suit, laying a groundwork of beats and rhythms, and then dousing them with noisy, psychedelic sound, a loping breakbeat is looped over a dark background of industrial clatter and buzzing synth squelch. Creepy gothy electro roils ominously, the lumbering machinelike grooves sounding not unlike classic Skinny Puppy, albeit a bit revved up and dirtied up.
Prurient, aka Dom Fernow (Cold Cave, Ash Pool, Cold Cave, etc.) counters with whirring drones, mysterious disembodied voices, all reverbed and processed, and set adrift through fields of soft noise thrum, buried feedback, and heavy crumbling sheets of distortion, even some synthy cold-wave style pulsations, haunting and murky and muddy, at super rhythmic at times, reminding us of some of Fernow's other recent projects, Vatican Shadow, Silent Servant and Christian Cosmos. The final track though is the perfect blend of noise and dreamlike ambience, a Caretaker / Tim Hecker style gauzy drift, a swirling sprawl of ethereal ambience, haunting reverbed piano melodies, floating in glorious expanses of dep hum and slow shifting thrum, and beneath it all a constantly roiling sea of jagged, but muted and muddied feedback, all smeared into a hazy bleary eared, but still subtly corrosive, dronescape.
Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, and packaged in heavy, old school Stoughton style tip on sleeves.
Visionary cult cinephiles get ready to drool! If you were as excited as we were about the recent reissue of Kenneth Anger's early films, then this incredibly packaged and affordable 4dvd+2cd box set of the early films of Chilean theatrical genius Alejandro Jodorowsky will surely make your head explode!!! Fando Y Lis! El Topo!!, HOLY MOUNTAIN!!!! Marvelously restored and beautifully remastered, there is so much amazing material here that has either never been available before, or only available previously as extremely hard to find poor quality transfers from mediocre prints.
AND there's more! This set also includes the absolutely killer SOUNDTRACKS to both El Topo and yes, Holy Mountain!!! The Holy Mountain Soundtrack has never been released before and it so totally kills, and why wouldn't it, Don Cherry is all over it! But more about that in a minute, there's also bonus features, interviews, deleted scenes, audio commentary, a documentary and a short film from 1957 that was presumed lost until it was found early last year.
So for those who may be unfamiliar with Jodorowsky's films, a bit of back story:
Born in Chile and struggling to become an actor, Jodorowsky became fed up with the idea of scripted theatre and moved to Paris to study mime. Working with the great mime, Marcel Marceau while at the same time influenced by the Surrealists, Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, Jean Cocteau's mythical fantasias, and the European Art House cinema of Fellini and Bunuel, Jodorowsky relocated to Mexico to form the theatre troupe, The Panic Movement, which would stage early happenings (involving lots of nudity and rotting food) and existentialist plays by Ionesco, Beckett and Fernando Arrabel. It was Arrabel's play, "Fando Y Lis" that would inspire him to move away from the theatre into cinema, but far from any structured or direct form of filmmaking. Jodorowsky wanted to re-interpret Arrabel's play by filming it completely from memory and in a remote and ruggedly extreme locale. Here he would bring together all the soul-baring psyche of experimental theatre, the role-playing excess of costumes, props and pageantry, the ritualistic entanglements of violence and beauty as catalysts of transformation, and most importantly the notion of existence as a journey through all kinds of personal and mystical revelations both sacred and profane. All of these qualities permeate each of the three films here.
Ok, you get the idea. So let's just break it down for you, what you get from this awesome box set:
--Fando Y Lis (1968): Jodorowsky's first full length black and white feature started riots at its premiere at the Acapulco Film Festival and was banned in Mexico due to its violent sexual imagery and ritualistic mocking of church beliefs. Based on Arrabel's play about a pair of dysfunctional lovers (one impotent, the other paralyzed) in a Fellini-esque quest for the spiritual city of Tar.
Extras on this disc include the 1994 French documentary, La Constellation which features interviews with Marcel Marceau, Peter Gabriel (who was inspired by El Topo, when he wrote The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway), and the French sci-fi illustrator, Moebius, who began working with Jodorowsky on the failed attempt to film Frank Herbert's Dune, which sparked Jodorowsky's interest in graphic novels.
--El Topo (1970): The bloody surreal western that spawned the Midnight Movie. Funded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, this film is like a Sergio Leone film on a serious dose of brown acid.
Extras include an interview with Jodorowsky about the Midnight Movie phenomenon.
--Holy Mountain (1973): The ultimate spiritual quest film. Jodorowsky takes us through every imaginable belief system only to completely shatter our preconceptions about spiritual enlightenment.
Extras include deleted scenes and commentary about Jodorowsky's continuing interest in the Tarot.
--La Cravate (1957): A 35 minute silent film in color based on Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads about a girl who sells heads and the men who are her customers. This film was presumed lost until its discovery last year in someone's attic in Germany!
--El Topo Soundtrack: 18 tracks composed by Jodorowsky and John Barham inspired by both the soundtrack work of Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota. Full of flutes and droning horns, accordions and organs and twisted Mariachi styles.
--Holy Mountain Soundtrack: 24 tracks composed by Jodorowsky, Don Cherry and Ronald Frangipane. Ranging from spiritual free drones to acid rock to Moroccan desert jams to pensive marches to soft jazz and everywhere in between. There are even themes for each of the nine planetary characters. Such a wild, weird, and wonderful soundtrack and it alone is worth the price of admission.
Phew! So can you guess, that this is totally and absolutely recommended!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Sea and Cake track appears on the straight-to-video John Hughes film called Reach the Rock, and although the McEntire track does appear in the film, it's not gonna be on the full length cd soundtrack, so we guess that's your reason for getting this single (although its similarity to Windham Hill-style Shadowfax new age lite might turn you off just a bit). Yikes.
For those of you who missed out on the super limited handmade Five Pillars Of Soul cd-r's JWB released one at a time over the last couple years, you can once again thank your lucky stars, you've been saved. And those of you who did manage to get em, well, why not get this handy disc that collects all 5 cd-r's onto a real cd with even more extensive liner notes added.
While this is purportedly a tribute to soul music, the soul music seems to be mostly implied here, like 'soul' in spirit, in concept, in intention, but not in execution. Which is not a bad thing. This -is- soul music, but the way it can only be played by middle class, white, mid-western boys. All shrieking, skronking, sweaty, pounding, rocking and GROOVING. You can catch glimpses of the Make Up, the Blues Explosion, the White Stripes, New York Dolls, as well as Alice Donut (especially in the vocals). Weird and pretty wonderful. Spazzy, soulful, glammy ROCK AND ROLL. There are 5 volumes. Short and sweet (each clocking in at 10-15 minutes) and all in honor of JWB's peculiar ideas of the pillars of soul: Melvin Van Peebles, Tania Hearst (Patty Hearst with her SLA name), Albert Ayler, Marc Bolan and Yoko Ono. They also throw in some covers of the Zombies, the Fugs, and Mission Of Burma but turn them into punky soul-fuck explosions... Good stuff. Although I'm still clinging to the belief that the sixth pillar must be BRUCE WILLIS!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Daniel Johnston has been a staple of underground DIY indie rock for as long as we can remember. From his early homemade cassettes, to his rock records, some time spent on Shimmy Disc, always totally unique and bizarre and beautiful. Johnston is the ultimate outsider artist. Innocent and childlike, troubled by demons, some we all have to deal with, and of course some of his own invention. A talented artist as well as musician, he has influenced everyone from Yo La Tengo (who has covered his songs) to the Butthole Surfers (who used to play shows and tour with Johnston). This double disc is such a fantastic testament to Johnston's talent and legacy. The first disc is all covers, various well known 'fans' offering up their own versions of Johnston classics. Flaming Lips with Sparklehorse, Death Cab For Cutie, Vic Chesnutt, TV On The Radio, Teenage Fanclub with Jad Fair, Bright Eyes, Tom Waits, M. Ward, Mercury Rev, Beck and more. The second disc consists of 19 tracks, all the hits everyone knows and loves as well as some less well known jems, spanning his 15 year career. Johnston's immediately recognizable keening childlike voice, over plinking guitars, warbly toy pianos, wezzing squeezeboxes and all sorts of weird home taped sound bites. So good. Essential listening for sure, hopefully the star studded selection of indie rock luminaries will get people less inclined to indie weirdness to check out the genius of Daniel Johnston. Who sure does look remarkably like Captain Kangaroo these days....
