First vinyl release from At War With False Noise and it's a doozy.
The A side is a band called Seppuku, who not long ago sounded completely different and were called Testsuo! Ring any bells? No matter, what we've got here are two songs, the first a caustic slab of Eyehategod, caveman Sabbath style sludge doom, classic Sabbath riffs melted down into something much more raw and viscous, the vocals a feral howl, practice space drums that plod along bravely amidst the doomic din, all wrapped up in a warm swirling cloud of downtuned buzz and lurching drone. The second track is way more spare and space-y, some sort of tripped out abstract krautjam, the drums skittering along in wide open expanses of whir and rumble, riffs drifting in clouds of glittering FX, cookie monster vox waaaay off in the distance, a stumbling druggy meander that eventually careens into a chaotic free psych blow out. Sounds like a lo-fi noise rock version of Bardo Pond or Comets On Fire, but after WAY more pot and too much Hawkwind. Wait. There's no such thing as too much Hawkwind. Awesome.
The flipside is by Mutant Ape, and sounds a lot like you accidentally set the needle down directly on the label instead of on the wax. A horrifying white noise crush, electronics grind and squeal, feedback shrieks and all sorts of blown out sounds crumble and collapse only to be set afire and shoved through your melding speakers. This is indeed NOISE, and is truly for those partial to such things, or with ears of steel. And of course, it's a good aural palate cleanser, flip it over between spins of the Seppuku side, blow out all the doomy riffs, so you can begin again�
LIMITED TO 220 COPIES. Oversized gatefold sleeves, with laser printed full color paste on artwork, and a photocopied insert.
Killer three way split, two parts Japanese, one part USA. Essential for Sludge doom fanatics, as this features a brand new unreleased track from Japan's mighty, unsung doomlords Dot [.]. Maybe it's the weird spelling, maybe it's the paucity of available material, but Dot [.] are every bit as cool and weird and heavy as Boris or Corrupted and this track proves that once again. But the big surprise here are the two bands we have never heard of before. both amazing, one quite possibly our new favorite band!
Up first are Japanese black thrash outfit Sete Star Sept who spew forth 4 tracks of super downtuned, blackened thrashing grind metal insanity, super low cookie monster growls, furious riffing, massive blown out production, thick swaths of shrieking white noise. Like a killer old school UK crust band super charged and run through some cracked Japanese blackgrind filter. So cool.
But holy fuck, Watch Me Burn just totally and completely knocked us on our asses. So heavy, so weird, so utterly damaged and freaked out. Imagine the Boredoms circa Vision Creation New Sun, mixed with later tripped out trancier spacerock Solar Anus (even though they're American), then imagine that band playing some super schizophrenic what-the-fuck grindcore, with tons of totally unhinged studio weirdness, random snatches of Swedish death metal guitar leads, swirling drifts of acoustic guitar and garbled beats, bizarre ambient stretches peppered with hand drums and guttural vocalizations, abstract percussion super tripped out malfunctioning studio FX, occasional plodding processed death metal chug, super spastic drum machine, bits of slowed down doom groove, weird jangly guitars, super processed slabs of rhythmic interference, blinding super brief blasts of Merzbowian face melting grind and too much other confusional fucked up randomness to even begin describing. Like Soilent Green or Brutal Truth chopped up and reassembled by a very high jungle DJ with two broken turntables. So fucking amazing.
And finally Dot [.], who give us just what we need, an absolutely crushing slow motion stoned doom drone groovescape. Starting out more Church Of Misery than Corrupted, the band sways and swings before stumbling into a druggy glacial lurch, a sick Eyehategod dirge, that crawls and slithers, wrapped in thick peals of feedback, a harsh, rasped super demonic vocal over gloriously murky downtuned sludge. Absolutely essential.
A cool and totally DIY daily planner/calendar for 2012 that's also filled with tons of awesome tips for life in San Francisco, covering everything from knowing your rights as a worker to free nights at theaters, fish to avoid, taxi cab numbers, 24 hour diners, weekly food cart meet-ups, farmers markets, knitting patterns, needle exchange places and more... all done with a total lo-fi punk rock aesthetic, plus there are loads of listings for cool events happening during the year. Rad for people who live here to have as a resource and functioning calendar/daily planner, as well as any of you out of towners who think you might be coming to SF at any point in 2012, or hell anyone who just wants a bad ass daily planner.
It also comes with a cd compilation of San Francisco bands including Full Moon Partisans, The Dont's, The Abi Yo-Yo's, and more.
Continuing their eastward migration, former Victoria, BC natives Shapes And Sizes make a bigger leap from Vancouver to Montreal, and have a new split 7" with their Austin, TX buddies Weird Weeds to boot. The charming Canadian foursome offer up the peculiarly titled, mildly eccentric and invigorating "Junker / That Fat Hand", while WW presents a more low-key, stripped down and subtly uneasy art-folk number "Hold In The Light". Kewl!
Sheriff is the Swedish duo Magnus Granberg (vocals, piano, guitar) and Henrik Olsson (percussion), and this is their second release. They are not men of many words. Absolute barebones, intimate, slow and resonant. A piano's keys are struck, the notes allowed to linger languidly. After a few moments they're joined by a deep, very present male voice sing-speaking a handful of lyrics. Each word joins the notes in the air hanging like amber pendants. The following four tracks offer much the same but the piano is occasionally replaced or joined by low plucked guitar strings and strikes of percussion and bowls. An example of just how Spartan the proceedings are: the third song is titled "Stay, Stay" and that word repeated solemnly over and over again forms the better part of the song's lyrics. Brings to mind the most minimal moments of Slint. Hushed and meditative, Sail, Sail Away is an exercise in utter restraint. Super limited, and soon gone, as we only were able to get a handful...
Awesome mix, as we would expect from firsthand experience, when he DJ'd in the store!
A pretty good match up, and not just based on the band names (although it doesn't get much more perfect than that). Our beloved Texas by way of the UK by way of Texas drum heavy rhythmic noise rockers Shit And Shine start things off with some super lo-fi, looped and repetitive dubbed out minimalism, weird echoey vox draped over a surprisingly super mellow bit of drift and drag, creepy and spaced out, a little skittery and shuffly, at least until it EXPLODES in a blast of grinding distorto noise and howling feedback, transforming the sound into some sort of blacknoise power electronics industrial stomp, yet for all it caustic noisiness, it remains surprisingly rhythmic and hypnotic, the sound SO distorted it seems to be crumbling and decaying as the track plays, replete with all manner of glitches and drop outs, which makes it almost sound like Shit And Shine covering Faxed Head!
We had never heard of Expensive Shit before, but it definitely sounds like the equipment they're using is anything BUT. They counter with their own sort of lo-fi noise rock dubbiness, a twisted, murky, FX flecked dark sonic churn, laced with all manner of clatter and crunch, all over a roiling spaced out dronescape. After a brief blast of noise, the track settles into a slithery, skeletal bit of abstract industrial noise dub, that sounds like Throbbing Gristle recording at King Tubby's and as that might have you imagining, it sounds pretty damn good.
There's been much talk about grunge around aQ these days. A lot of it has to do with the fact that a bunch of us just love grunge, STILL, and thus talk about it all the time. But beyond that, Andee recently dedicated an entire radio show to his grunge favorites, and this summer is the Sub Pop 20th anniversary celebration, which rumor has it, might entail a Green River reunion! And now there's this, the first volume in a proposed series called Grungecore. And the second we heard about it, we knew we needed it!
Gabber jungle dancehall electronic freak Shitmat, covering Nirvana's "Negative Creep"!!! As if that weren't enough, the flipside is some other crazed electronic tweaker taking on Nirvana's "Senseless Apprentice" (aka "Scentless Apprentice"). And if even that weren't still enough, every single 7" comes in a sleeve, hand sewn from actual flannel shirts! Holy shit!!!
So the Shitmat side is a killer. It begins with all this throbbing black ambience, weird rhythmic skitter, which explodes into a fierce relentless blast of gabber madness. But it no way does it sound anything like Nirvana. UNTIL, the vocals kick in, and then it fits, it sound so right, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Kurt Kobain fronting some band on DHR back in the nineties, the rhythm of the original is kept intact, with the little pauses filled with flurries of jungle instead of that moaning guitar, the howling at the end of the chorus processed into some fucked up digital scream. Only reminds us how much we love Shitmat.
The flipside is someone called Ladyscraper, and their version of "Scentless Apprentice" sounds nothing like the original, less of a remix, more of an interpretation. Huge chunks of throbbing sizzling synth, massive grinding bass, the beats are more like speaker shredding bolts of digital crunch, the churn and skitter and occasionally explode into impossibly dense tangles of digital glitch. The vocals are super distorted, almost black metal, the whole thing stops and starts, super convoluted, it's basically impossible to tell it's a Nirvana song, but that doesn't mean it's not awesome.
Each 7" comes in its own flannel sleeve, hand sewn, from various parts of various different flannel shirts. Some are sleeves, and have buttons or cuffs, others have parts of collars, a few have a strange mudflap that flops outside the plastic sleeve. Each sleeve has a Grungecore sticker affixed to the front and a FUKDUP label Sub Pop parody sticker on the back, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, the label on the 7" is hand stamped and hand numbered, and includes a photocopied insert with liner notes and rad high school drawings. WAY recommended.
A super limited split single by two raw SF art-rock hotties! On special occasions half of Erase Errata (namely Jenny and Bianca) splinter off to form the dynamic duo California Lightening (no, not Lightning). And when Sic Alps convene they usually star Hospitals' Adam Stonehouse and Mike Donovan (of Big Techno Werewolves and Church Steps and a heap of other projects), but on this record the abovementioned Jenny (oh yeah, and she's also a member of Burmese!) and Flying Luttenbachers' Weasel Walter join in the S.A. fray too. The record sleeve features those participants, minus Mr. Walter, remaking the Lennon/Ono Two Virgins album cover photo. That in itself is an attention grabber, but then there's their music to keep you glued too. Sic Alps proclaim "I Am Grass" in their peculiar hazy, glazed-eye dissonant fashion and California Lightening offer up a churning menace in "Basement". Ultra limited pressing of 300 of which we've only got a handful, so either act now or whimper to yourself when they're all gone!
Another blast of sinister grimness from this local tape label (who in the past have brought us Sunchariot, Surt, Uruk Hai and more), this time in the form of this two way split, featuring two bands who are not so much black metal as blacknoize, two strains of mutant death industrial. Sirius are up first, unfurling a caustic crawl of power electronics thrum, and noise drenched rumble, all blurred and glitched out, shot through with fragmented melodies, and swirling textures, as well as buried churning rhythms, over which a strange voice, doused in effects and heavily processed, delivers some arcane incantations, the sound roiling and blackened, dense and intense, caustic and corrosive, but also muted and murky, making it more listenable than a full on noise record, with the sound constantly shifting, and often settling into tripped out psychedelic drifts and sprawls of primitive lo-fi electronics, all whirling grey noise and burbling gurgling glitches, dark cascades of woozy melody, tumbling into gnarled black tangles of sound, one sound in particular sounding like that horn they always blow at sporting events, but here slowed waay down, and heavily processed into a creepy atonal bleat. The sound continues to unfurl, and unravel, detuned pianos, over warbly loops, and bowed buzzing metals, darkly hypnotic, and seriously warped and woozy, with most of Sirius's side of the tape tending toward creepy ambience and atmospheric mumbled mesmer.
Cosmic Breath begin with a serious of reverbed cosmic concussions, ringing out over a field of caustic crunch, before abruptly cutting out, and slipping into a haunting bit of atmospheric drift, all tinkling melodies, and moaning drones, of swirling synths, all woven into a gently undulating sprawl of glimmering psychedelia, and woozy droned out dirft. Minor key melodies seeming to melt over a dirge like churn, while the sky above is filled with high end streaks and shimmering sine wave like overtones, the sound transforming into stately synth marches, all wistful and melancholy, but paired with sick, raspy demonic vokills, that changes the cinematic synthiness into something much more menacing, the juxtaposition truly warped and bizarre, and it continues like that, creepy lo-fi Carpenter / Goblin style synthscapery, drifting and slithering and creeping beneath those monstrous shrieks, occasionally slipping into something much darker, wreathed in feedback, droning ominously, a super tripped out collection of grim black-synth cosmic ambience that definitely has us wanting to hear more!
One of two new records this list from long time aQ fave Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs Of Admittance. This one is super limited, maybe the first vinyl release we've gotten on godhead Japanese label PSF, and features one super dense abstract sidelong jam from Six Organs on one side, and a whole batch of groovy shimmery soft psych folk grooves on the B-side from a Japanese group called Azul. For those of you, who like us, had never hear of Azul, it's the new project of Hiroyuki Usui, who long time aQ list readers might remember as one half of the August Born, an earlier collaboration with Chasny, as well as being the man behind legendary folk psych outfit L, whose Holy Letters album was a past aQ Record Of The Week!
So here they are, Chasny and Usui, together again, each doing their own thing on their own side of this lp. Chasny's jam is a weird one. A sprawling slow burning drone, all crunchy and warm and gristly, over which muted guitar scrabble scrapes and skitters, melodies surface here and there, but they're minimal and murky, the whole sound is distant and abstract, a droney almost-raga, shot through with little tangles of fragmented Appalachia, eventually growing into something much more epic and cinematic, with what sounds like strings, Eastern sounding melodies, before a heavy psych coda, chunky super distorted riffs, weary, haunting double tracked vocals, all over a sea of swirls and squiggles, finally giving way to a weird warped riffy outro. Really cool.
The Azul side is WAY more laid back. Groovy, woozy, super sixties sounding, psychedelic, but soft and hazy and a little stoned sounding, hits of that classic Summer Of Love sound, a little Santana, lots of hand drums, warm tinkling vibes, soulful vocals, lazy late afternoon vocals, breezy and a little blissy, a few of the tracks inject a little jazziness, some skronky horns, fluttery flutes, shimmering gongs, but for the most part, it's all steel string guitars, draped over sun dappled arrangements and wreathed in fuzzy clouds of soft focus psych.
Gorgeous packaging. Blue and yellow psychedelic drawings on the sleeve, bizarre characters and warped shapes, lots of texture and detail, wrapped in a printed vellum Japanese style obi. And as you might have guessed. EXTREMELY LIMITED.
The second in this limited edition vinyl series dedicated to the works of cosmic krautrockers Popul Vuh offers the hypno-drone psychedelia both of Northern California's wonderful Six Organs Of Admittance and the stalwart Texan ensemble Charlamabides. Again,
Charalambides -- now whittled down to the duo of Tom and Christina Carter -- create a similarly swirling sound, but from the mournful chords of intertwining guitar and bass reverberations. Both pieces are some of the best work from either of these two artists. As we say, limited, and we only have a few. We also still have just a few of the equally excellent first volume in the "Songs From The Entopic Garden" series, the Drona Parva / Ultrasound split LP (reviewed on list #128).
The return of our favorite anarcho vegan pagan black metal band, Kentucky's Panopticon, here teamed up with Canadian duo Skagos, who we'd never actually heard before, but had heard OF, and were dying to check out.
But first, three new tracks from Panopticon, a one man band from the South, whose crusty weirdo math abstruse black metal we went nuts for, a buzzing blasting pounding onslaught of Pagan fury, rife with samples and all manner of strange sonic filigree. The tracks here begin with a strange sampled folk song, simple percussion, lots of cheers and group vocals, very Teutonic, until the track explodes in a gnarled frenzy of furious blasting blackness, dense and brutal and weirdly melodic, an epic jam shifting from mathy churning stutter to frantic lightspeed buzz to loping post rock meander, and finally to shimmery shoegazey ambience. The second track begins a gauzy rhythmic dronescape, washed out and hypnotic, the drums sound programmed, stuttery and shuffly, while melodies unfurl and blur, the whole thing hazy and dreamlike, until the guitars come in, the track instantly transformed into some churning Neurosis like heaviness, breaking down at one point, to just super fuzzed out bass, drums, and weirdly tortured and effected vokills, before finishing off in a blaze of total blackened sonic chaos, which somehow manages to still sound melodic and melancholy.
And holy shit, the last track is a monster, right out of the gate, an impossibly insanely complex squall of looped buzzing riffage and frenzied drumming, so heavy and dense and intense, over the course of the track, shifting to hushed soft focus drone laced with tinkling chiming melodies, to spacious post rock drift, wreathed in echo-ey shoegaze guitars and maniacal shrieked vocals and anchored by still more incredible drumming, grinding to a halt, leaving a just a strange sample of deep chanted singing, and a mysterious German conversation, angelic choirs, and the sounds of birds and streams in the background.
As if that weren't enough, we've got two lengthy epics from Skagos, both seeming to fit in with the whole Cascadian black metal sound (Wolves In The Throneroom, Fauna, etc), the sound as post rocky as it is black metal, very melodic, and melancholy, blasting beats and harsh vokills laid atop swoonsome melodies, and some super surprising clean vocal pop parts, very distinctive, not typically black metal 'clean vocals' either, almost like Modest Mouse or Built To Spill, an indie pop croon over woozy minor key riffs and simple rhythms, eventually erupting back into some seriously fierce heaviness, but never losing that element of emotion and melody, the track getting mathy occasionally, with cool start / stop rhythms, twisted arrangements, and plenty of blissed out ambient haze, so much going on over the course of the 12+ minutes.
The second track is even longer, and just as varied, beginning with crystalline clean guitars, underpinned by haunting atonal strings, before erupting into some seriously filthy raw blasting black metal, that eventually dials it back, and reveals a strangely pretty melodic element lurking just below the surface, the vibe is a little Neurosisy too, heavy and epic and a little bit crusty, slipping into a cool churning chugscape, before a burst of loping doomic crunch, and then more delicate ambient prettiness, just gorgeous guitar suspended in a dreamlike haze, where the clean vocals return, this time sounding like Jeff Buckley, super emotional and intense so at odds with the rest of the track, which is why it's so cool. Makes us almost wish they would have that singing all the way through, instead of the harsh vox, how cool would that be?
Eventually, the track winds down with a final burst of pounding downtuned blackened howl, but it's those mysterious clean vocals, and the strange melodic elements that run throughout both tracks that definitely make Skagos something special.
Comes packaged in a super swank digipak, full color, printed with reflective UV ink...
Another SUPER LIMITED cd-r from the Jyrk Collective (run by the guys in the Yellow Swans) who also just recently released the amazing (and also quite limited) Grey Daturas / Yellow Swans collaboration found elsewhere on this list. Unlike the GD / YS collaboration, this is a good old fashioned split, with each band offering up twenty minutes or so of their particular brand of skree. The Yellow Swans deliver a practically swoonsome drone, haunting and mysterious, with simple plodding percussion, occasional elctronic filigree and moody Eastern sounding guitar melodies. So nice. The Skaters take the noisier road, with a clangy clattery blown out soundscpae of distorted drones, buzzy fuzzy electronic whir and heavily affected disembodied vocalisations. Thickly layered and weirdly otherworldly.
And again, just to drive that point home, THIS IS VERY LIMITED. By the time you read this review, this cd-r will already be out of print. So if you want one act fast!
We'd been dying to hear more Skin Horse ever since their self released 3 song ep from last year, a killer mix of lurching black doom, mathy post rock, and epic dark ambience.
So here we have one new track (it's a long one though, nearly 14 minutes), and it definitely takes off right where the ep left off. Beginning with a dark brooding slowcore skitter, although it's laced with some super strange warbly downtuned tones, that make the whole thing sound a bit twisted and off kilter. The heaviness builds, as heaviness so often does, but here it just wraps itself around that initial post rocky guitar part instead of obliterating it completely, making for some seriously moody heaviness. Once things get going, the guitars are slathered on thick, and allowed to bow and bend the otherwise straight ahead jams into yet another warped groove, there do seem to be vocals, but they're buried way down in the murk.
About halfway through, Skin Horse shift gears and get super intense and aggro, going all mathy, offering up bursts of ultra tight rock, before splintering into some plodding ultra doom, the vocals a caustic wail, the guitars an oozing black buzz, the drums a massive plod, and just as you're getting into that slow motion groove, they shift gears again and bliss out, the guitars becoming nearly translucent, drifting over a sea of sizzling cymbals, weird bits of sampled preaching, dense grinding effects laden buzz, building to another mathy metallic frenzy, before almost dubbing out into a long, sprawling outro. Killer stuff, definitely need to see these guys pull this off live.
Skin Horse share this two song half hour split with a band called Nanda Devi, who we'd never heard before now, but who definitely seem like a good match for Skin Horse. Their 18 minute epic begins with layered sheets of noise, buried bits of melody and softly strummed guitars, which give way to some surprisingly melodic post rocking, the drums massive and LOUD, the guitars simple and stripped down, swirling and building into some metallic Godspeed territory, in come the howled Neurosisy vocals, but the cool thing is, the guitars are still not heavy or distorted, instead jangling and shimmering and singing and soaring, a good contrast with the raw gruff vocals and the wildly chaotic drumming. They too shift gears part way through, the drums getting all tribal, the guitars getting more angular, and beginning another slow build, until a second guitar swoops in adding all sorts of spaciness to the proceedings. Another bout of howled vocals, and the song unwinds in a flurry of tripped out spaced out swirling whirling epic heaviness. Bad ass. And BOTH bands here come WAY recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Five track ep that features the best (and only good?) track from the Mo'Wax Headz 2-B collection, 1998's crash. Mr. Skull is one of the great overlooked producers of downtempo hiphop/breakbeat excursions. Dark and murky stuff a la DJ Shadow, Spectre & DJ Vadim. The first track is almost a 'post-rock' instrumental, although we hate the term... "Snapz" is supremely listenable & enjoyable. Don't miss it.
A total drone/noise dream team, for the latest in Not Not Fun's Bored Fortress series of split 7"s, too bad we only managed to get about a fifteen of these, direct from Mr. Axoltol himself, who sold us his, and apparently THE, very last copies. Too bad as it's a doozy, but at least a handful of folks will get to lay their ears on this stuff.
The Axolotl side sounds like Karl Axoltol crafted his track knowing full well it was going to be sharing a record with Matthew Bower's Skullflower, as it is a total slab of Sunroof! style ur-drone bliss. A wash of keening high end shimmer, a backdrop of murky upper register whirs, while over the top, a glorious cascade of glistening glimmering feedback.
The Skullflower side finds the band (or the man) continuing to explore dense guitarscapes, however this track is the most musical and melodic of recent outings, a huge wash of guitars, layered and tangled, but with some serious riffage buried in the mix, streaks of feedback and a haunting minor key undercurrent.
Cool eye popping full color cover art. And again, we only have fifteen or so copies so don't get your hopes up�
Holy shit is this an incredible match up. Legendary industrial/noise/power electronics/experimental guitar/drone outfit Skullflower teamed up with local gnarled avant headfuck sci-fi blast-buzz one man black metal horde Mastery for this super limited 12", with each band delivering some of their best material yet. This is extremely limited too, once we run out, it might take us a while to get more, assuming we can even get more...
Skullflower's Matthew Bower has made no secret of his love for / fascination with black metal, and it's been seeping into the SF sound for a while now, but strangely, on a record where he's paired with an actual black metal band, when you might expect Bower and Co. to deliver some kvlt black buzz grimnity, blasting and howling and hellish, this is something entirely different. While it is in fact blackened and buzzy, it's much more atmospheric and droned out, weirdly hypnotic and majestic, keening arcs of blown out distortion, buried melodies, and lush crumbling textures, atmospheric, haunting and hypnotic and yeah heavy too, with a super intense in-the-red production, that gives the sound a feral ferocity, and makes every note feel on the verge of collapse, even though it's all actually, in its own fractured and fucked up way, quite lovely.
Mastery of course is in his own gloriously demented and ultra damaged sound world, delivering the sort of lightning speed, dizzying blackened sonic fury that few others can touch, so much so, that we continue to wonder how this guy isn't utterly worshipped by the grim hordes. Could be cuz it's just too goddamn weird, cuz it really is. We're talking far out freaky WTF beyond black metal outsider genius. The sound twisted and tangled, a buzzing blur, wild sonic smears constantly colliding, the vocals rasping and croaking over squalls of blacknoise, and impossibly furious riffing, not to mention inhuman drumming. The guitar playing in particular is totally next level avant insanity, Mick Barr better be looking over his shoulder, cuz at times this sounds like multiple Ocrilim records playing at the same time, all spinning at 78rpm. Beyond that there's all kinds of weird noisiness too, industrial churn, wildly sputtering drum machines, total black metal bliss out head fuck radness. If you've yet to discover just how fucking mind blowing the music of Mastery is, here's another chance...
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES! Cool colored vinyl, and super striking sleeves, with space wolf artwork similar to the double cd on tUMULt!
As we've mentioned in our reviews of the last clutch of Skullflower releases, Matthew Bower's long running industrial/noise/power electronics/experimental guitar/drone outfit seems to be gradually growing blacker and blacker, with Bower's love of black metal transforming Skullflower's distortion drenched skree into some sort of avant black buzz. Now that blackness has manifested in a series of splits with 'actual' black metal bands, a forthcoming split with local one man band Mastery, and this one, with weirdo experimental Norwegian blackened doomlords Utarm, whose twisted Apocryphal Stories on Handmade Birds was a huge hit around here, and whose fractured and fucked up take on black buzz seems especially appropriate alongside Skullflower's own idiosyncratic noisemaking. That said, the SF tracks here might be the prettiest stuff we've heard from them/him in a while, the opener super melodic, ultra textural, distorted and crumbly, multiple layers buzz and undulate, buried melodies are looped and tangled into soft squalls of lushly textured crunch, and warped cascades of soft focus noise, even at ten minutes, it's the sort of dense, swirling psychedelia, that we could get lost in for a whole record. The second track, again, on the surface, a wild, noisy, washed out dronescape, but the crackling buzz and fractured FX seem to be draped over something much lovelier, a droned out thrum, a smoldering landscape of minor key shimmer, it's a heady concoction, a sort of pretty ambience in blacknoise clothing, but the prettiness seems to be the victor, infusing the caustic noisiness with a warm melodic glow, and again, we would have happily dug a whole record long version. So we were expecting the final track to be explosive and buzzy, but instead, it's even prettier, gentle guitar strum, pulsing electronics, a sky full of psychedelic squiggles, the pulsing building and intensifying throughout, eventually becoming the dominant presence, but even then, the sound is more moody and haunting than anything, the guitars doused in woozy effects, the overall sound almost jazzy, albeit some sort of black noise power electronics devil jazz.
Utarm keep the weird quotient pretty high with their two tracks, the first, a massive near 18 minute epic, all squiggly synths, and weird processed falsetto vocals, distorted spidery guitar melodies, almost like some sort of demonic lullaby, warped and damaged, until about 5 minutes in when an avalanche of crumblingly distorted downtuned riffage comes crashing in, the sound a black ooze, a sort of SUNNO))) like dirge, but wreathed in howled FX drenched vokills and wild squalls of high end guitar noise, super psychedelic drone-dirge weirdness that KILLS, and so it goes, for the duration of the track, a blown out, heady, heavy psychedelic noise dirge dronescape, that's weirdly hypnotic and melodic, while being darkly corrosive and caustic, some serious black beauty for sure, finally exploding into a closing burst of melody infused blacknoise howl.
The closer, clocking in at a conservative 10 minutes, starts out sounding like it could be Skullflower, noisy swirly and psychedelic, until the sound splinters into a weird sort of industrial creep, all processed vocal samples, churning dirgey basslines, anguished wails, heaving swell of crumbling low end, what sounds like dense collages samples, almost symphonic, all blurred into a wild but weirdly pretty din/skree, super tripped out, free form WTF psychedelic noisy weirdness.
Killer stuff from both groups and obviously WAY recommended!
What else do you need to know besides this: SUPER LIMITED SKULLFLOWER 7". Not much we'd imagine, but heck, just in case, it might be good to know that this chunk of Skullflower guitarnoise, veers dramatically away from the spate of recent releases, that focused on a more harsh, speaker shredding, ear wrecking intensity, and slips back to something a bit more warm and washed out, definite Sunroof! territory for sure, albeit less upper register skree and more wall of thrum low end crush. Blissed out and melodic, think Jesu, Nadja, SUNNO))), but totally and distinctly Skullflower, heavy, and harsh, dense and intense, but shot through with pretty melodies and constantly shifting layers and textures, a dizzying drift of soft focus muted Merzbowian buzz. So good. Had this been stretched out into a full length record we'd be talking serious Record Of The Week contender for sure.
The flipside comes from UK one man black metal horde White Medal, who counters with his own murky slab of downtuned distortion drenched doomic black buzz, a heaving sea of muddy low end and swirling muted chaos, the drums blasting away, but buried in the mix, the vocals a howling demonic inhuman wail, the sound so blurred and blackened, that it sounds almost static, even though beneath the surface, the drums are blasting, the riffs grinding, a glorious smear of woozy melancholic buzzing blackness, dense and ferocious, but washed out and weirdly melodic. Both sides rank up there with some of the best stuff we've heard from either outfit. But act fast, only 400 COPIES!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
At almost 200 pages, Skyscraper will keep you occupied for a long long time. And it's worth it. Lengthy interviews with Flaming Lips, They Might be Giants, June of 44, US Maple, the Locust, Slaves, I Am Spoonbender, Songs:Ohia, the Melvins, Mr Bungle, Macha, Rachels, and about 8,000 reviews of albums, singles, and printed matter. Sooo worth the five bucks, PLUS you get a cd of previously unreleased remixes including tracks by: Tristeza, Lowercase, Cars Get Crushed, Make-Up, Les Savy Fav, Atombombpocketknife, etc, with full color artwork just ready to be slipped into a jewel case.
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Another one we somehow neglected to list - back in 2007 when we got 'em in, from the same label that brought us cool stuff by Rabbits, Acre, and Purple Rhinestone Eagle.
This is a split release of crusty blackened thrashing metal, Portland's Order Of The Gash all instrumental (but with gnarly songtitles), the amazingly monikered Slam Dunk (With Authority!) doing their thing with gnarly vocals too.
Pressed on translucent "periwinkle" colored vinyl. LIMITED TO 300 numbered copies, and who knows, these might be the last ones anywhere.
Here's one epick, metallic seven-inch piece of plastic indeed, released by brothers-in-metal The Lord Weird Slough Feg and Bible Of The Devil, to commemorate their several tours together (including one upcoming this summer... as part of which both bands will be appearing together at the first annual "Alehorn Of Power" festival in BOTD's hometown of Chicago, IL, alongside Manilla Road and Gates Of Slumber, among others!).
From San Francisco's Slough Feg, you get two songs on their side, a new one called "Poisoned Treasures" and a killer cover of "Shalala" by their Irish ancestors Thin Lizzy! Extremely rockin'. It's their first recording with new guitarist Angelo Tringali (of cult doom act Cold Mourning), who takes over from Hammers Of Misfortune's John Cobbett in Slough Feg's dual axe onslaught alongside Mike Scalzi. Meanwhile, on the flip, Bible Of The Devil take their twin flying V's into outer space with a tune called "Galactic Violator". Packaged with cool Masters of the Universe comic-booky cover art to boot, with a Galactus-dude on the BOTD's side of the split, mirrored by a horned barbarian guy on the Slough Feg side.
The Miskatonic Foundation -- the cultish, doomy metal label run by Rich Walker, guitarist for UK's Solstice -- has embarked upon a little tribute project here, releasing volume one of a proposed three-volume set of split 7" records devoted to cover versions of Rich's favorite New Wave Of British Heavy Metal songs. And we're not talking the anything obvious like Iron Maiden or Diamond Head, or even Tygers of Pan Tang or Tokyo Blade, we're talking bands like, uh, Nighttime Flyer and Desolation Angels! Real obscure stuff. And that's making a point about what was so incredible about the NWOBHM, the real underground acts that sprung up for just an amazing 7" or LP or two.
Rich recruited AQ faves and SF locals The Lord Weird Slough Feg to appear on volume one, sharing the 7" with Portugal's Manilla Road worshipping headbangers Ironsword. Slough Feg are of course a great choice for a NWOBHM tribute, even though they didn't get to do something off of Maiden's Killers... Volumes two and three are slated to feature Orodruin and Scavenger, and Twisted Tower Dire and Revered Bizarre.
And the neat thing about a 33 rpm single? Y'know everything sounds great at 45, that's the rule. Both bands' vocalists have voices low enough that on 45 they still sound like metal singers more than chipmunks... but of course you're supposed to play it on 33, and at that speed this is still a lot of fun! Slough Feg's rough-and-tumble cover of a song awesomely-entitled "Heavy Metal Rules" by Nighttime Flyer will endanger your sanity after the chorus gets stuck in your head, as it will. I don't think Slough Feg ever even had heard the song/band before Miskatonic sent 'em a tape from which to chose a track to do -- it was the b-side to Nightime Flyer's only release, a single from '79 -- but they picked it 'cause heck, how can you resist such a title/lyric? And the riffs are remarkably Fegesque in fact.
The NWOBHM nugget "Valhalla" by Desolation Angels is ably essayed by Ironsword, who have improved in leaps and bounds since their first album by the way. And they've always had the proper spirit for this sort of thing anyway.
This is clearly meant for serious fans...You gotta know Slough Feg and/or Ironsword, and what NWOBMH stands for. The bands being covered aren't even listed on the sleeve, just the song titles! Numbered and limited to 500. We've just got a few. Buy or die, Slough Feg fans! Same goes for NWOBHM freaks, Ironsword maniacs (there must be some) and rabid metal vinyl hounds.
Portland's clattery, free improvised noise unit meets Ann Arbor's caustic power electronic doom-synth trio, for an unprecedented meeting of the..uh..minds. Smega seem to come out on top, with the overall sound falling squarely in their clinking, crashing, hippie music concrete by way of No Neck Blues band free folk clatter and Negativland-ish plunderphonic found sound collage. The strong sonic personalities in Wolf Eyes seem to have no problem playing the supporting role here, underscoring the ramshackle freeness of Smegma, with their buzzing homemades synths, and grinding electric guitar grit.
Ok, here's a clever way to get maybe not-just-the-usual people interested in an album of difficult, avant-garde electric guitar improv solos. Make it a double cd, where the raw improvs by British guitar maverick Gary Smith found on the first disc are used as source material for the exclusive "treatments" and "interpretations" by a disparate variety of other artists that populate the second disc. So if scrabbling, abstract textural guitar glitch isn't enough to pique your interest (for some it certainly will be enough, Gary Smith is no slouch at coming up with strange sounds from his axe, for fans of that sort of thing), perhaps the likes of Steve Roden, Bernhard Gunter, Peter "Pita" Rehberg, Elliott Sharp, This Heat's Charles Hayward, BJ Nilsen, and others on the second disc will!!
First, the first disc... Imagine Nels Cline and Derek Bailey and a bunch of mice, playing guitar and mixing drinks. It's a quietly noisy disc of tangled strings and liquid chimings. Tinkling ice. Crystalline shards. Counterintuitive guitar-based beauty. Like a "normal" guitar track had been crumpled up and irradiated and examined under a microscope.
Now for the "compilation" disc, where that radiation produces mutation. This is one diverse batch of characters taking Gary Smith's sounds in all sorts of interesting, often surprising directions, their own music adding to or twining around Smith's. It starts off with a lovely psych-folk tune entitled "Pear Tree Tomorrow" from obscure legend Bill Fay!!! Yes the same Bill Fay whose early '70s albums were recently reissued to great acclaim. Many of the other participants, some mentioned above, are more in the line of "usual suspects" for experimental projects such as this. But it's still a very diverse collection, from the bleak poetry of Current 93's David Tibet, to the violent digital breakcore of Tom Wallace, to the harsh noise-rock of Aufgehoben (with whom Gary Smith has collaborated before, on the devastating Magnetic Mountain album). There's Tianna Kennedy's ambient low end scrape and Paulo Raposos's high end drone. And lots more. Somehow, Gary Smith's guitar ties it all together. Puzzling out how Smith's material was "used" is an interesting, if mostly inconclusive, exercise. Wow. Even by itself this would be a great comp. The Smith solo disc almost a bonus. Though we like 'em both!
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Super limited split between two new (to us) bands, Snake Apartment and Work / Death.
The Snake Apartment side is a side long track, a murky Brainbombs-y dirge, blown out and gunky, thick and corrosive. A plodding slab of sticky syrupy sludge rock, mixed with haunting disembodied lounge singer vocals, the whole thing a sort of moaning sea sick stumble.
Work / Death offer up their own druggy dirge, theirs is a noisy abstract drone, crowd sounds, room ambience, footsteps and muffled conversations are eventually sucked up into a vortex of thick rumble, peppered by blasts of fuzzy murk, the whole thing sounding like a damaged recording of a roomful of amps with guitars leaned up against them. Intense and abstract and pretty fucking cool.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Six different covers, by six different artists: Will Schaff, Ben Barnett, Mike Taylor, Merdith Stern, Scott Reber and Mat Brinkman!
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The soundtrack to the film Songcatcher is filled with compelling performances by such songbirds as Iris Dement, Dolly Parton. Alison Moorer, Deana Carter, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Emmy Rossum, Patty Loveless, Hazel Dickens, and Lone Justice's Maria McKee. About half of the songs are traditionals and they fit in well with the original compositions. Wonderful.
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Magazine of the week, month, etc. Any new issue of Ed Pinsent's music 'zine The Sound Projector is a cause for joy. Anyone who buys and enjoys fellow UK music mag The Wire MUST pick this up, as it covers more-or-less the same range of musics (from electronics to avant-classical to dub to krautrock to drone to urban hip hop and more--avoiding metal tho, just like The Wire, that's both mags one main blindspot) and does it in a much more genuine, fannish way. It's not a slick mag with lots of ads and pretentious music journalists writing with hip, trendy agendas, faults The Wire sometimes falls prey to--although it's big (124 pages, squarebound) and nice looking (with a instantly recognizable and pleasant black-white-and-red design aesthetic). The magazine usually consists of mostly record reviews, and this issue is no exception, there's 163-or-so of 'em, in 22 eclectic, esoteric catagories: from Very Special Nothing Music (ultra-minimalism, reviews include Francisco Lopez and Bernard Gunter, of course) to Music From Japan (reviews of Tabata, Ground Zero, etc.) to Soundbombing (with reviews of the likes of Company Flow, Master P, Hot Boys, and an epitaph for Big Pun). And if you're reading our list, then you must like to read record reviews, eh? And one fo the nice things about the reviews is that they're not all of new stuff. The writers will go ahead and review something that they've been enjoying for a long time, or maybe recently discovered, even if it's a few years old, which is great 'cause that spotlights some otherwise forgotten gems. In addtion to the reviews, there's some indepth writing and interviews dealing with Van Dyke Parks, Otomo Yoshihide, People Like Us, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and more. Basically, a great magazine that more people (in the States) should find out about. Highly, highly recommended.
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We went a little nuts for the debut release from Anduin a while back, the project of Souvenir's Young America keyboardist Jonathan Lee, taking SYA's Western tinged post rock doom, and stretching it out into something much more subtle and ambient. But SYA is back to remind us just why we were so into Lee and his crew in the first place, with two brand new tracks of sweeping epic, spacious and cinematic post rock, rivaling and perhaps surpassing any of their more well known contemporaries.
The guitars chime and ring out, the drums propulsive and subtly mathy, lots of deserty ambience, moody melodic swoon, crunchy almost metal guitars here and there, haunting blissed out stretches of soft strummy drift, slippery slide guitar and pulsing electronics. There are some haunting processed vocals, distant and heavily effected, tribal rhythms, lots of space, little bits of glitch here and there, slightly doomy, with a distinct twang, gorgeous and dark, but always mysterious and hauntingly dreamy. Can't wait for the next full length.
The flipside features a new (to us at least) group called City Of Ships, who prove to be a pretty good match for SYA, starting their side with some washed out ambience, glimmering guitar harmonies, shimmery cymbal washes, all before the band kick in and get all mathy with tangled squiggly guitar leads and hard hitting complicated drumming. And unlike SYA, City Of Ships are NOT instrumental, the vocals a raspy croon that get more and more wild eventually veering into almost emo territory, the sound a mix of June Of 44 and a mellower Neurosis. Long stretches of mellowy meandering peppered with jagged bursts of crunch and pound, the tracks building to seriously epic climaxes with grinding metallic guitars, angular and sharp, with howled vocals and wild chaotic drums. Good stuff.
Packaged in a super swank fold over 2 color hand screened gold colored sleeve, each one hand numbered, with a photocopied insert, and LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!!
See our review of the Space Vacation's s/t cd-r to see why you should pick this up! One of our fave tracks from that disc pressed to vinyl, on one side of this split single with a rockin' LA band we know nothin' about.
One more track from our new favorite retro thrashers, Denver's Speedwolf, whose killer demo tape is reviewed elsewhere on this list, which you should grab immediately before they're gone. Think classic thrash, but with some Danzig mixed in, as well as some Bad News (really!), hooky and heavy and pounding and frantic, and so fucking killer. Bad ass riffs, crushing drumming, throat shredding vox, and hooks all over the place. These guys should be HUGE.
Speedwolf share this single with long running rockers The Hookers, who we'd only heard once or twice before, but who prove to be a pretty epic match for the 'Wolf. We remembered them being more punk rock, and while this is till plenty punky, it's got a serious NWOBHM vibe. A little Iron Maiden, a little Venom, wild feral vocals, killer riffs, rad harmony guitars, and hooks that slay. Definitely gonna have to give these guys another chance and track down some of their full lengths.
Both sides rock AND rule, anyone into classic sounding heaviness NEEDS this (and the Speedwolf tape) BAD!
Super cool cover art, and limited of course, ONLY 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered...
Latest in the LAMC series of split 7"s from the Famous Class label, each single featuring a known entity on the A side, and then a more obscure band on the flip, chosen by the A side band. This marks the first appearance on the aQ list of Speedy Ortiz, which is CRAZY, cuz some of us here have been fans for ages, not sure how that happened, but needless to say, their track here is a gem, heavily beholden to nineties indie rock, in particular the Pixies and the Breeders and Veruca Salt, fuzzy bass beneath crooned female vox, kinda swaggery, and dirgey, but hook heavy and poppy, the chorus super Beatles-esque, soaring and majestic, lilting and melodic, and catchy as all get out. One of our favorite modern day outfits mining our favorite era of indie rock for sure.
We had never heard of Chris Weisman before, and while we were maybe expecting something more indie rocking, instead, it's just acoustic guitar and vocals, the vibe sort of Big Star-ish, maybe a little bit like the Posies, dreamy vox, lush steel string strum, super dreamy and classic pop sounding, at points even reminding us of Emmit Rhodes, which is most definitely a good thing. Will for sure be tracking down more from Weisman...
Like all the LAMC singles, as you probably already guessed, this is VERY LIMITED!
Check this out! Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney and Mary Timony of Helium put their clever heads together to whirl up their collaborative effort known as Spells. Sounds just as you'd expect, Carrie's smart pop prettiness and Mary's much more wizardly fantasy pop leanings. Includes a Who cover.
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A three cd collection of classic old soul, disco and r'n'b gems. The first disc is a continuous mix by DJ Spinna, whose skills aren't all there but somehow his clunkiness adds a charm to the whole thing. The two remaining discs are the originals of each of the records he used in his set, and this is such a treasure trove of good music, 27 tracks in all, well worth the price. With Minnie Riperton, Bohannon, Marvin Gaye, Donald Byrd, Sugarhill Gang, Foxy, Johnny Bristol, Roy Ayers, and many more.
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Two excellent stoner rock groups go head to head on this split single: Mike Amott's much-loved Spiritual Beggars and newcomers Grand Magus.
We seem to be in the midst of another round of Springsteen mania, with The Boss recently wowing the crowd at the Super Bowl, coming out with a brand new record and once again flexing his muscle as one of rock n roll's strongest shepherds. While we all have our own favorite Springsteen document (Nebraska, Greetings From Asbury Park, etc.) we have to say we were pretty thrown off in a pleasant way a few years back when we caught a YouTube clip of The Boss doing an incredible live rendition of the Suicide classic "Dream Baby Dream." Made us have way more respect for the Boss and also made us realize that no matter how much of an underground sensation those first two Suicide albums were, underneath it all were totally brilliant and long lasting pop songs.
So with The Boss in the spotlight once again we thought we'd get around to listing this 10" that's part of Blast First Petite's series of Suicide splits with the other bands all doing their own versions of Suicide classics. We listed the Lydia Lunch/Suicide split a little while ago. We're not sure if it was the unexpected delight of when we first saw the clip of Springsteen playing "Dream Baby Dream" that made it seem so incredible but it's not quite as mind blowing here. Still pretty cool to hear him doing it. The flipside finds Suicide performing their track back in 1979 for an NBC late night show and then another Suicide cover by a contemporary group called Beat The Devil with their take of "Mr Ray." We just found out that all these Suicide splits have been released in honor of Alan Vega's 70th birthday, how cool!
New split from former aQ Record Of The Weeker Stacian, who delivers two tripped out kosmische synth workouts that sound like alien Kraftwerk, pulsing and tranced out, the tons in constant flux, locked into stiff robotic grooves, but then occasionally growing all slippery and squiggly, and then the vocals come in, weird processed, FX heavy bellows, drifting above the field of bleeps and bloops below, but somehow transforming the blessed out sci-fi synthiness into some weird fractured future pop, dizzying and drone and druggy and divine. The second track on the Stacian side slips into something a bit more lo-fi and new wave-y, all primitive drum machines, and sing songy synth melodies, but all the sounds distorted and crunchy, a little crumbly, the vibe melancholy and minor key, a little wistful, some sad robot, drifting through space, alone for eternity, and then again, the vocals, now pitched down to a Scott Walker like croon, make this some sort of interstellar torch song, epic and majestic, a sprawling slab of downer space pop that sounds like it could easily not just be from another galaxy, but also another time, like some lost eighties artifact that could have been a reissue on Medical or Dark Entries!
Gel Set, who we've previously heard on a split with Windbreaker, delves into something sonically similar, weaving a minimal cold wave electro pop from squelchy synths, minimal programmed drums, what sounds almost like tablas, and some haunting processed vocals, again that sound pitched down into some spooky spectral croon. The background synths get more and more active, soon all tangled up into intricate melodies, wound around a roiling dark pop murk. The second track gets a bit more electro/new wave, sounding like it might have been transported from some alternate universe eighties MTV, but something went wrong in the process, rendering the resulting sound more woozy and warped, slowed down, and a bit sonically smeary, a hazy, gauzy, drowsy and druggy electro space pop that is definitely a good fit with Stacian. The coolest/weirdest track might be the close, which is super stripped down and percussive, moody and murky, rhythmic and -almost- funky, almost like some alien electro / hip-hop, but slowed down, and pulled apart, and stretched way out, the vocals here too a deep moan buried in the mix, it's all about the beat, and the rhythms, and it ends way too soon, would have happily listened to a whole record of this sort of warbly, alien electro-kraut space-hop!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Housed in cool metallic silver on matte black sleeves.
