An unlikely split it might seem, to some ears at least, but as far as we're concerned, tough to go wrong with these two bands, and hell if more splits were based simply on two bands that rule and that we love, well, the world would be a much better place wethink!
Fucked Up give us a short blast of totally epic progressive punk rock, the way only they can do it, beginning with an opening salvo that is about as epic and majestic as it gets, brooding, slow building, total super heavy post rock bliss, before launching into the song proper, the vocals that instantly recognizable bellow, the guitars chiming and chugging, the song rocking and hypnotic, but super dynamic, with plenty of start/stops and a few stretches of blissed out almost krautrock sounding melodic tangle, before launching back into it. If only all punk rock was this weird/cool/good.
Norwegian drug/drone/space rock combo Serena-Maneesh counter with another jam of their twisted druggy psychedelic weirdness, equal parts droned out space rock, indie jangle, brooding dark drones, and totally twisted avant experimentalism, sounding a bit like a mash up, the buzzing heavy guitars, and chaotic drumming, underpinning, mumbled whispery vocals and keening psychedelic leads, the song peppered with shards of white noise and abrupt bursts of crunch and static, sounding almost like someone flipping switches, while the band rock out oblivious, totally heady, druggy, weird as fuck, space drone hypnorock outsider heaviness, that continues to rule. Not sure why more people don't worship at the altar of S-M, but hard for us to imagine anyone listening to this and not being converted. Fucking AMAZING!
Both tracks rule, and make it well worth the sorta steep price...
A couple years ago there was Trans Champs, now it's The Fucking Am. That's right, it's the second occurance of the unholy union of two bands whose identity you've hopefully figured out already. It's a good thing too, 'cause as you may or may not know, The Fucking Champs are down to just drummer Tim Soete and guitarist Tim Green after guitarist Josh Smith retired from their ranks a while back...and we weren't sure what Tim and Tim were gonna do without Josh in the band anymore. Actually we're still not sure, but at least they are keeping the Champs spirit alive with this project, which (although the Trans Am folks outnumber the Champs members) seems rather more Champsish than Transamy. First Trans Am record maybe. Anyway, Gold is an album of mostly instrumentals, a post-rock/prog/cock-rock concoction that finds the common ground betwixt the two parent bands and that means a lot of Thin Lizzy and a little bit of Kraftwerk/video game music, plus some of the Krautrocky psychedelia of Tim Green's Concentrick project as well... Tracks vary as widely as from the very '70s bar-rock blare of vocal number "Taking Liberties" to the lovely, folky jamming of "Acoustico Gomez" (one of the album-closing "Gomez" trilogy), but things seem rather more purposeful and fully realized than on these guys' initial ep collaboration (maybe 'cause for the Champs duo anyway, this was suddenly not really "just" a side project, but basically their next record?). So fans of either band ought to give this one a try. Hopefully this "group" will continue to work together...if so, next time, will it be The Transfucking Amchamps? Or, how 'bout the Amping Champ Trans Fucks?
The return of our favorite (and perhaps the only?) baritone guitar / turntable duo The Fun Years, and another record of warm warbly mystery. Wonderfully warped turntablescapes, looped and crackly and fuzzy, the baritone guitar unfurling spidery melodies while the turntables weave lush gauzy backdrops of sepia sound.
Like past Fun Years records, this one is dreamy and otherworldly, ghostly and sweetly melancholic, the guitar manages to sometimes sound just as crackly and fuzzy as the vinyl on the turntables, the two elements so perfectly intertwined. The Fun Years side builds to a lush crescendo, a warm layered, soaring ur-drone, before slipping back into a slow shimmery outro.
.Cut Featuring Giblet are new to us, a guitar and laptop duo, who are a perfect match for the Fun Years, their sound a haunting elegy, the laptop is super subtle, adding texture and color more than glitch or bleep, gorgeous, creepy, warm and lovely, a slow building gauzy swirl over ghostly drifting guitar figures, eventually reaching a sort of soft cacophony, but even then still floating dreamily from the speakers.
Super limited, only 489 copies, each one hand numbered, and unfortunately super price-y as well, not sure why, but both bands offer up sounds pretty enough that for some folks, it'll definitely be worth it.
We were really excited about this match up, Hospital Productions head honcho Dominic Fernow's gothic industrial techno project Vatican Shadow, teamed up with David Sumner of Sandwell District's ominous minimal techno alter ego Function. We could only imagine what sorts of fantastically grim and murky sounds would emerge from this unholy union, would it be monolithic slabs of heartless black techno, or swirling rhythmic sprawls of pulsing murk? Our imaginations sort of ran wild, and yet somehow, we never imagined THIS.
The sound is definitely still plenty moody and dark, but instead of being harrowingly abject, or bleak and brutalist, it's actually sort of blissed out, and pretty dreamy much of the time, the vibe more hazy and soft focus, lots of atmospheric drift and Pop Ambient style swirl. There are beats too, but they're not so much beats as pulsations, often buried and barely there, almost always skeletal and ultra minimal, drifting amidst gauzy stretches of woozy, washed out nocturnal murk, soft focus atmospheres, and blurred dream-state ambience, the vibe ethereal and airy, almost like a blackened new age, but one that often drifts into fields of dark, swirling, chordal thrum, and softly tangled sheets of smeared melody, glistening and glimmering and prismatic. There are hints of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, the Caretaker, the whole Pop Ambient series, Emeralds, lots of drift and shimmer for sure, but a few spots that get downright sinister and soundtracky, like on the "nemesis Flower", an ultra minimal John Carpenter style sprawl of murky throb, rumbling synth blurts, and distant melodic shimmer. It's not until the second to last track, "Red Opium" that we get any actual techno, and even then, it's a sort of laid back, blissed out mid-tempo house music groover, the tempo loping and hypnotic, the beat surrounded by soft billows of resonant overtones and blurred melody, which leads directly into the closer, "Bejewelled Body", which is about as close to a 'banger' as any track here, a churning, four-on-the-floor throb, wreathed in electronic squelches, keening fragmented melodies, and underpinned by some seriously droned out kosmische raga-like shimmer.
We haven't had these in ages, but since Furze is some of our favorite far out black metal EVER, we figured we oughta relist it since we just now managed to get some more copies (and we might not be able to get any more after this as the label is pretty much sold out!). Here's how much we love this stuff (from when we listed it the first time a few years back):
Everybody went so nuts for the newest Furze record we listed recently we figured we oughta track down the first one as well. And it's just as freaked out and damaged and totally brilliant. Unlike the weird droning doom of Necromanzee Cogent, Trident Autocrat is all black metal. But that doesn't mean it's not as bizarre, because it most definitely is. The song titles again are totally perplexing: "Zaredoo Knives Endows Thy Sight", "Devacamo Possessed Black", "Witchboundator", "Scolopendraarise" and the lyrics and imagery are quite ridiculous as well. The logo, which features three witches brooms and the slogan: "Trident Black Metal Feast", the back of the record that features a long exposure swirl of light in a spooky hallway, and lines like "The overall vibration of the preacher, The way of sneaking teeth and hypocrisy, It's the destruction ritual of the holy trinity" all combine to form the perfect framework for one of the coolest weirdest black metal records ever. All the BM hallmarks are present, buzzing riffs, growled vocals, chaotic lightning speed bast beats, but the black metal of Furze turns these seemingly typical elements into completely insane musical madness. The growling vocals squirm and morph from demonic growl, to howled distant anguish, heavily reverbed as if they were being recorded at the bottom of a well, to maniacal gremlin like chatter, and creepy cartoony chanting. The riffs, are super affected and sometimes sound totally heavy, sometimes completely brittle, lo-fi and tinny one minute, buzzing and snarling the next. The most surprising thing is how damn catchy some of these riffs are. The first song has been stuck in my head like crazy, and unlike most black metal, you'll no doubt find yourself humming along. Only a half hour long, but so much wonderful weirdness is crammed into those 30 minutes you definitely won't be left wanting.
A split release between the two bands. Fuxa's entry is what you've come to expect, long drawn out melodic post-rock with vintage synth action. Welsh group Ectogram's contribution is the reason to buy this disc -- their repetitive groove will remind you of
The LAMC series of 7"s features tons of our favorite bands (Fuzz, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees), delivering an exclusive track on the A side, while the B side features one of THAT band's favorite new artists. A pretty cool concept for sure and we're reviewing 3 of our favorites in the series.
Number 10 comes from none other than Fuzz, Ty Segall's heavy psych combo, who offer up, you guessed it, a fierce and fuzzy slab of super rocking psychedelic garage crunch, churning, blown out distortion, wild drumming, shredding leads, wailed vox, this jam in particular reminds us of Redd Kross at their heaviest, which is a very good thing for sure. A jam that would have been right at home on the recent Fuzz full length.
Fuzz's pick for up and coming artist is a band we had heard of but never heard until now, CCR Headcleaner, and it's easy to see why Fuzz would have picked them, murky, drone-y, druggy psychedelia, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, wreathed in a gnarly haze of blurred distortion, wasted, drowsy vox, the whole thing woozy and washed out and seriously trippy. Mesmerizing psych-noise garage-dirgery that sounds a bit like a ramshackle, lo-fi Loop! Killer tracks from both bands. And as you might imagine, also SUPER LIMITED!!!
Plastic Crimewave's immense, amazing psychedelic music zine (almost also a comic book 'cause it's all hand lettered and drawn, and does indeed include some underground comix, as well as a feature on "psychedelic superheroes"), the one and only Galactic Zoo Dossier, returns with issue number six!! This time, you'll find interviews with quite an odd/interesting assortment of folks: Vanilla Fudge, Keith Rowe (ex-AMM), John Renbourn, and Pip Proud. Plus features and bits on psychsters old and new and heavy and obscure including Acid Mothers Temple, Debris, Stackwaddy, Rodriguez, Edgar Broughton, Uriah Heep, The Lemon Drops, Exuma, The Outsiders, etc.
And, beyond the 'zine, you get the second set of Crimewave illustrated "Damaged Guitar Gods" trading cards -- including John DuCann (Atomic Rooster), Michael Yonkers, Wally Gonzalez (Juan De La Cruz), Davy Graham, Dorothy & Helen Wiggins (The Shaggs), Erik Brann (Iron Butterfly), Erkin Koray, BoAnders Persson (Trad Gras Och Stenar) and dozens more. Pretty darn cool. Plus, that's not all: there's also a freakin' double cd compilation entitled Ascension Days When We Rise: Ultra-Rare Avant/Psych/Garage 1960's-1990. It features Acid Mothers Temple, The Heads, Six Organs Of Admittance, Miminokoto, The Hototogisu, Oneida, Michael Karoli, and a bunch more, some we've never heard of before but are eager to check out. This 'zine is just such a "turn on" regarding the underground sounds obsessed about within. Something about everything in the magazine being handwritten not only gives it more of an organic, '60s psych vibe but also utterly underscores how much of a labor of love this is, just how incredibly ENTHUSIASTIC Plastic Crimewave and Co. are about this stuff. Right on.
Yay! It's another gigantic, illustrated issue of Galactic Zoo Dossier, all hand-drawn and lettered, always a treat for those into psychedelic rock and weird folk and underground comix and that whole scene, which is like, most AQ customers. The 100+ pages include interviews with the Incredible String Band's Clive Palmer, Ed Askew, Gary Panter, Kevin Coyne, Mammatus, Residual Echoes, etc.
Also features on The Stooges, Chicago funk mob Rasputin's Stash, psychedelic soul, The Nice, hippie horror flicks, Giorgio Moroder, the British acid blues underground, Sonny Bono, Tiny Tim and tons more... and a hall of fame of "Dark Psychedelic Classics" including LPs by Crushed Butler, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come, and Billy Joel's Attila (yes!).
Plus, several more sheafs of GZD's trademark trading cards, 72 cards in all, this time divided between "Astral Folk Godesses" such as Brigitte Fontaine and Kim Jung Mi and "Damaged Guitar Gods" (Set Three), examples being Vincent McAllister and Martin Pugh...
AND, this comes with not one but TWO bonus cds as the soundtrack to this issue. One of 'em, entitled Teenage Meadows Of Infinity, is stuffed with "rare psychs and stomps" from both bonafide psychedelic heroes and unknown obscurities of the past, among them The Stooges, Blossom Toes, Gollum and Teska Industrua. The other disc, From The Ashes Perfect Attainment Shall Be, consists of "modern freaked sounds" from the likes of Vincent Black Shadow, Acid Mothers Temple, Plastic Crimewave, Ed Askew, Devendra Banhart, Charalambides, and more!
Good grief. Mindblowing.
Boy howdy, it's another enormous, fully freaked out issue of the psychedelic rock / folk magazine edited by artist, musician, and megafan Plastic Crimewave. As always, it's all hand-written, and full of PCW's underground comix style artwork, including random portraits of such bands as Suicide and Kaleidoscope UK. Textwise, this time we get interviews with Ya Ho Wha 13, Vashti Bunyan, Peter Walker, Guru Guru, MV and EE, and "light show pioneer" Bill Ham. Plus features on Hoyt Axton, Eddie Hazel of Funkadelic, Brian Wilson, The George-Edwards Group, The Gods, The Zombies, and much more!! Including a lot of cool stuff about superhero comic book art.
And then there's the bonus compilation "head-melting cd of mega-rarities" also found here, with tracks from, among others: Vashti Bunyan, Simply Saucer, Ruthann Friedmann, Peter Walker, Ya Ho Wha, Samara Lubelski, George-Edwards, La Otracina, Christina Carter, Plastic Crimewave Sound (natch) and freakin' Monster Magnet (an unreleased '86 demo track)!
And of course, this is also bagged with more of GZD's trademark Plastic Crimewave illustrated TRADING CARDS. Several sheets of 'em, again divided between "Damaged Guitar Gods" (set four) and "Astral Folk Godesses" (set two). The DGG's range from Alessandro Alessandroni who played on many of Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western soundtracks to Takashi Mizutani of Japan's Les Ralllizes Denudes to Ygarr of Zolar X from outer space. AFG's include the lovely likes of Sibylle Baier, Dorothy Moskowitz of United States Of America, and avant-prog chanteuse Dagmar Krause.
Each issue of GZD is a wonderful opportunity to revel in your musical obsessions (those that intersect with PCW's that is, which we bet they do) as well as probably learn about a few other obscure soon-to-be obsessions. Way cool.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
We were so psyched to see Mississippi Records release this collection of recordings made by these two little known Louisiana musicians whose beautifully melancholic contribution to early American Cajun folk music is as indelible as it is mysterious. If you were a fan of HBO's True Detective this past year, you may recognize the title song that opens this record, "Sur Le Borde De L'Eau", a spellbinding Cajun ballad sung by Gaspard featured on the soundtrack of that series.
Gaspard, blind at an early age, sang and played guitar, and is known to have formed a string band with both his brothers who grew up in the rural parishes of Louisiana, but we're not sure if they ever recorded. He also played backing guitar for cajun fiddler Delma Lachney who recorded for the Vocalion label in the 1920's. During those sessions, Gaspard recorded four solo tracks, and the pair's combined recordings make up the entirety of this here release and is about all we know of the two.
The duo's instrumental, "La Danseuse", featured on Volume 2 of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, is absolutely one of our favorite old-timey songs ever, a song we could easily see being used in a period film like Heaven's Gate or Days Of Heaven. And similarly the other Lachney instrumentals follow suit quite sweetly in Cajun bluegrass form. But also heavenly are the songs where Gaspard sings. In a high French patois, Gaspard reminds us a bit of John Jacob Niles or Roscoe Holcomb, as well as early Devendra Banhart, but the sentiment behind the songs, full of romantic old country longing and nostalgia is wonderfully heartbreaking. Like the great Mississippi comp, I Don't Feel At Home In This World, there is a weary pain to these sweet songs. We were hoping to learn more about these two with this release, but sadly no extra info is provided, only some of the most haunting and lovely early Americana we've heard. Highest Recommendation!
Been meaning to review this for a while now, kick ass split of distorto-electro from these two Chicago outfits, Windbreaker being the reason we were into this in the first place as that group includes members of aQ faves Lazer Crystal, and fans of that outfit's sound will find much to dig here, pulsing crunching beats, swirling kosmische synths, tangled melodies, there's an early eighties video game music vibe, but also some sort of alien dance party thing going on too, with the beats fractured and fucked up, and thick squalls of weirdo FX and dense swells of noisiness, the second Windbreaker track slipping more into Zombi / John Carpenter territory, with cheesy eighties synths and vocodered vocals, definitely channeling old VHS movie montages, groovy and funky, spaced out and cosmically psychedelic.
Gel Set bring it way down on their side, unfurling a sort of sexy sci-fi murk, all handclap rhythms, sultry ethereal vox, distant swirling synths, minimal pulsing rhythms, the vibe is definitely "love theme from outer space", the sound like it could be from some Italians Do It Better 12", dreamy and washed out, woozily hypnotic, the second track "U Lock In My Hand" is super stripped down and spacey, pure sexy pouter space slo-mo synth disco blissout dreamdrift with some surprisingly swaggery bad ass lyrics, delivered in a dreamy laid back chanteuse croon.
Pressed on green vinyl!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hip hop remix.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
First in a series of remix 12"s, each being released on a different label, each with a different collection of uber cool remixers, all tackling various songs from recent aQ highlight, Genghis Tron's Board Up The House. Off to a pretty good start with volume one, just check out the remixers: Justin Broadrick from Jesu, Steve Moore of Zombi, Eluvium and of course Mr. Rob Crow of Pinback and Heavy Vegetable.
First up is Steve Moore and as we might have expected (and hoped), he gets all Goblin / Heldon on our asses, transforming the original into some awesomely creepy and cheesy eighties soundtrack, all murky sci -fi synths and old school drum machine pulse, haunting and cinematic, definitely evokes all sorts of gruesome and scary images and ideas, why isn't this guy scoring movies??? This may be a GT remix, but boy it sure just sound like Zombi. Who's complaining?
Broadrick steps up next and takes a clunky chunky rhythm and chops it up a bit, loops it into a strange mechanized lurch, wrapping the whole thing in thick streaks of Jesu like fuzz, taking the vocals and drenching them in effects and burying them in the mix, adds in some soaring strings, streaks of feedback, and we're definitely in some metal bliss territory, the second half gets a bit heavier, much more doomy and ominous, but still quite shimmery and dreamlike.
On the flipside, Rob Crow tries his hand at a GT remix, and his ends up being the most schizophrenic of the bunch, mangling it into super strange shapes, stripping away all the metal guitars, adding acoustic strumming, only to flip it around and have it all come crashing back down, draping the vocals over some weird bloopy electronics, pulling up the drums, turning it all tribal, before letting it explode back into some face melting crunch. It's almost like they pumped Crow full of caffeine and let him loose in the control room where he proceeded to go nuts with the faders while they were mixing, but it sound pretty excellent.
Finally, GT transformed into deep shimmering dark ambience, fuzzy and gauzy and washed out and expansive, hushed melodic blur, over deep soft swells, eventually building to something a bit heavier and blissier, almost sounding more like a Jesu mix than the Jesu mix, or maybe more of a soft Sunroof! Either way, quite nice.
Pressed on cool grey and gold swirled vinyl, and SUPER DUPER LIMITED. We only got a fraction of the copies we ordered, so these will probably be gone soon.
As much as some of us love grind, we definitely don't get enough grind on the list. This split cd, released we think to coincide with a Japanese tour, features unknown to us until now Japanese grinders Gesewa, and SF grindlords Utter Bastard, who since have broken up, but who happen to feature aQ pal Roberto behind the kit.
Gesewa definitely hit the spot, the songs mostly clocking in at less than 30 seconds, aren't so much blazing fast, although there are bursts of extreme grind, instead, Gesewa are of the weirdo, pounding metallic what-the-fuck school of grind, sharing more in common with say Bathtub Shitter than Unholy Grave. Lurching start stop arrangements, plenty of D-beat pound, wild hysterical dueling vocals, one grunty and low, the other shrieky and high, the guitars downtuned and chuggy, plenty of buzz and chaotic noise drenched thrashing, pretty awesome stuff.
Utter Bastard are much more technical and heavy than their twisted and bizarre Japanese compatriots, and tend toward a more classical grind sound, pounding and relentless, the guitars frenzied and furious, the drums pounding and blasting, with mathy complex arrangements, but UB too offer up some bizarre dueling vocals, only here and there, but for the most part, they chug and churn, spewing out some seriously crusty classic American grind. Rad stuff for sure. Too bad they're no more.
Beautifully designed cd as well, super striking layout, with liner notes and lyrics inside.
Okay, I know that the general consensus from people seems to be that the Mulatu Astatke disc (Ethiopiques #4) is the best in the Ethiopiques series. And yeah, it's a great disc. But to really experience the zenith of Ethiopian popular music from the golden era you really gotta have the vocals. The workouts these singers put their vocal chords through are as unbelievable as they are beautiful. Case in point is Tlahoun Gessesse. And we are thankfully blessed with a full CD of his passionately yodelled Ethiopian funk groove. Gesesse was the most popular Ethiopian singer of the times -- bigger than Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete or any other singers. So great was his vocal stature that he was dubbed "The Voice". Pretty much says it all. And well applied the title is; his vocal control is insane, wavering vibrato all over the place and melisma stacked upon melisma. To boot he's backed by the best in the business: the Body Guard Band, All Star Band, Exhibition Band and Army Band. The usual arrangements of guitar, bass, drums, percussion, horns, piano and incredibly strange organs play the most haunting accompaniment to Gessesse's impassioned vocals. And for what its worth, several of the tracks here were even arranged by Mulatu Astatke. Though Gessesse's career dates back to the fifties, the recordings included here are all from the early seventies. Included is a 30 page booklet with biographical notes, photos (including a two page spread of 45 jackets) and lyrics. This one comes highly recommended!
We're pretty sure we have this Ghast thing all sorted out, there's a Ghast that's Welsh, and whose May The Curse Bind just got reissued on vinyl, who traffic in a sort of doom laced black metal, then there's this Canadian horde, whose sound is way more filthy and fucked up, a sort of glacial blackened crawl, all downtuned sludge, crumbling distortion, and harsh gurgled demonic vokills, not to mention the strange swirl of grit and grime and buzz and hiss that seems to surround everything they do like a glorious black sonic cloud of hiss and crackle. And that's precisely what you get on these two tracks, two extended filthfests, crushing, lumbering dirges, each a lurching sonic behemoth, howling and hateful and despondent and depressive and heavy and brutal as fuck. These ultradoom crawls creep malevolently along, the vocals sometimes doused in reverb, sometimes just grunting and gurgling demonically, melodies played out over minutes, buried in the murk and mire, super dynamic, and a little bit bizarre, especially the second track, the vocals sounding almost like a Muppet, the sonic death march being bombarded by strange electronics and streaks of skittery static. Pretty goddamn great. These guys should really get the same love bands like Moss and Bunkur and Corrupted do...
We'd never heard of Abandoner before, but apparently, they're a sort of blackened post industrial drone outfit made up of members of US doom sludge juggernaut Unearthly Trance. Weirdly enough, UT would have been a perfect sonic match for Ghast, maybe too perfect, so instead, we're treated to, or punished by, Abandoner's caustic soundscapes, all wild bolts of feedback, strange processed noises, loads of buzz, and rumble, guitars not so much played and allowed to spew gouts of crunch and howl and skree, everything wrapped in a hazy field of murky thrum, laced with damaged electronics, noisy, but not NOISE, more like a sort of even more twisted, less melodic Wolf Eyes? But definitely cool stuff, and an interesting foil to Ghast's monstrous downtuned black doom trudge.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Some seriously grim blacknoise weirdness here...
We first heard from Ghast on their split with Yoga, we were pretty obsessed with both bands and have been on the hunt for more from both ever since.
So Ghast have returned, on yet another split, offering up two more loooong tracks of their unique not-quite-doom, a dirgey crawl, that spends as much time shimmering and buzzing as it does pounding and lumbering. The opener here is 21 minutes of grinding corrosive soft buzz, think Tunnels, Wolf Eyes, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, that sort of thing, deep whirring low end, drifting beneath clouds of metallic buzz, plenty of fuzz and hiss, beneath it all, there does seem to be some sort of thick tarpit like riffing, but it's WAY down, more like a distant drone than anything overtly metal, but it does lend the track a serious sense of dread and foreboding, as if any second the track might splinter into pieces and explode into crushing doom, but it never does, instead ratcheting up the tension, like the soundtrack to some super abstract foreign horror film. An actual rhythm dose seem to develop, but it's cobbled together using hissy white noise, ominous whirring synths, buried and blurred vocals, and a super drawn out low end melody, creeping and creeping before the low end drops out leaving just a sea of high end electrical buzz, and weirdly enough the sound of sheep (!). The second track clocks in at nearly 12 minutes, and again, is more ambient than anything, bits of crackle, melted tape loops, field recordings, processed electronics, all blurred into a strange undulating drone, peppered with fragments of melody, some buried riffing, which finally crawls up from the murk, and the band, for the first time in nearly half an hour, launch into some lurching lumbering doom. But the sound is not massive or crushing, instead, it remains murky and muted, more bass heavy than anything, if there is guitar it's tuned WAY down and is locked in with the rumbling bass, the rhythm mechanical and machinelike, with a definite industrial vibe, the track slipping into brief stretches of ambient drone-like shimmer, before the band lurches back into action, pounding away, stripped down, but still heavy and doomy and mysteriously grim.
Rape-X existed until now, as an MP3 file someone sent us a looong time ago, a half hour slab of blown out metalnoise, industrial drone weirdness. We'd notice it on the computer every once in a while and fire it up, and always think, "wow, this is pretty great, I wonder when they'll have a record". Well here it is. And Rape-X is a pretty good match for Ghast, seeing as they traffic in a similarly abstract doomy ambience, falling closer to Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer than any classic sort of doom. The vocals are huge part of the sound, and are harsh and super processed, demonic and maniacal sounding, giving the track a bit of a Whitehouse feel, ranting and proselytizing over a constantly shifting backdrop of blackened noise and droning harsh ambience. A glorious metallic cacophony, wreathed in hiss and skree, a bit like a way more static Sunroof!, the sound roiling and churning below the surface like some rough black sea, while that hellish voice continues to testify, the unholy scripture from some lost black gospel.
Caveat Emptor, though: these have a pressing defect, it's minor, but it's definitely noticeable. The band was contacted about it, but apparently there's some bad blood with the label, so there will never be a new, corrected version, so we figured we would list it anyway, since otherwise it's pretty amazing, and the defect is so slight. Basically, the problem is, there's a digitial click at the beginning of each track. Annoying, distracting, yes, but it doesn't affect the songs themselves, so if you can handle that (you can also edit out the clicks yourself on your computer when you import it into your iTunes or whatever), then by all means pick this up, some seriously abject and harrowing doom-ed blacknoize.
Yoga is a pretty unlikely name for a black metal band. But then Yoga from Portland, Oregon are a pretty unlikely sounding black metal band. So much so that we're not even sure they really are black metal. Or metal. But they are. Sort of.
The sound of Yoga takes the lo-fi practice space recordings of grimmest of the BM outfits, and combines it with the murky muddy noise drenched blur of bands like Wold. But then take it even further rendering their sound so muted and lo fidelity that even when they're blasting furiously, it still sounds like a busted music box or an old black metal 78. And then there's the fact that Yoga spend a good amount of their time not blasting blackly, but instead, crafting synth heavy Goblin style film music, all throbbing bass and buzzing synths, creepy minor key melodies and tons of haunting ambience. Those songs too are wreathed in a foggy night-on-the-moors sort of murk, which ties those songs closely to the more blackened ones.
The strange combination of grim and Goblin, the tripped out fucked up recording quality, the damaged arrangements, the looped hypnotic quality, turn Yoga into something totally out there, most likely way to abstract and psychedelic and deliriously lo-fi to appeal to folks �looking for grim buzzing blackness, but for the rest of you, if you can try to imagine some impossible mix of Philip Jeck, Wold, Goblin, the Skaters and some of the super weird EEE unblack bands, all produced by John Maus and Ariel Pink, then you will flip for this.
The other band on this split, Ghast, are also not at all typical black metal, although they are much more distinctly metal than Yoga. Their sound is a super spare, slow motion blackened doom, still plenty lo-fi, the drums murky and down in the mix, the guitars more of a distant moan, sometimes soaring to the forefront, before drifting off again, the vocals super distorted and effected and harsh. All around this plodding blackness, creepy drones soar and shimmer, wail and keen, offering up a mournful abstract backdrop for Ghast's miserablist blackdoom. There's also a live track, where Ghast's sound is transformed into a crumbling blown out blackened drone, sounding almost like a metal band playing from behind a brick wall, the whole thing captured using a mic in a bucket of dirty water. The result is pretty fantastic, only the drums are at all identifiable, and then just barely, all the other instruments have been transformed into a mesmerizingly damaged, murky, muddy, sludgey pulsing drone. Awesome.
We got these direct from the band, and got the last copies, so once we run out, we might not be able to get more...
Must suck to be Ghast, considering that pretty much every review has to start with "not to be confused with the OTHER Ghast", so it probably sucks for the OTHER Ghast too. But in this case, we're not talking about the Welsh black doomlords, we're talking about the Quebecois black doomdronedirge horde Ghast, with an umlaut over the 'A', whose sound is a much more raw and filthy proposition, droned out and blackened, and who strangely enough seem to only release splits. Their first with avant black metal weirdos Yoga, their second with blacknoize horde Rape-X, and now, this one, a brand new split with Japanese ultra doom sludge outfit Zombie Blasphemy.
As always, Ghast do not disappoint, offering up two lengthy slabs of abject, nihilistic slow motion creep, lumbering, lurching, troglodytic crush, the guitars massive sprawls of low end buzz, feedback everywhere, like Eyehategod doused in (more) cough syrup, a funeral crawl, a throbbing cloud of buzz and thrum, the vocals a beastly grunted howl, way off in the distance, keening high end skree plays out a melody stretched out over minutes, the riffing glacial and oozing and black, the track gathering momentum eventually, but peaking at a plod. Somehow, the other Ghast track is even MORE minimal and abstract, loose drumming laid over a haze of feedback and amp buzz, distant sirens, almost ambient, no riffs, just soft swirls of guitar noise, and some strange mewled vox, all the while the drums pounding sporadically and erratically, the last few minutes, the various strands seeming to come together to form something much more dense and droney, still black and abstract, but a strange sort of chanted sludge raga ritual. Awesome.
We had never heard Japanese sludgelords Zombie Blasphemy before, but much like their sonic compatriots in Coffins, they traffic in slow and low extreme doom, with an awesome guitar sound, so distorted it sounds like your speakers are fried, the vocals an impossibly guttural grunt, this is Moss / Corrupted style doom, but even more sludgey and crusty, the guitars occasionally offer up wild tangles of unhinged spidery melodies, almost leads, draped over the woozy warped lumbering chug and churn, the band do crank the temp here and there, but even then, the sound is SO blown out, and low fidelity and in the red, it turns everything into a glorious blackened noise drenched buzzy blur, and when they unfurl some wild psychedelic leads during the final track, it almost sounds like some sort of Tim Hecker / Merzbow mash up. So good. Total metal noise drone doom radness. For sure need to hear more from these guys. And hell, wouldn't hurt to finally get a non split Ghast full length too.
Totally recommended blast of twisted noise drenched extreme heaviness, two different, but equally twisted and genius takes on ultra slo-mo doom drone sludge...
How awesome is the name Yarn Lazer?! If it wasn't already the name of this killer cd-r label, it would definitely be the name of my band, or my restaurant, or maybe my first born!! This is a super limited split between Portland drone ensemble Ghosting, a band AQ folks just can't seem to get enough of, and Irish stoned drone ensemble Bonecloud (also a possible name for the first born btw!).
Ghosting pretty much sound like their name. Their sound is a drone based wander through a ghost town, or better yet, a ghost world, the sound of floating wraithlike through a moonlit landscape, dreamlike and indistinct. Lovely but slightly ominous. Completely mesmerizing.
Bonecloud offer up their own sonic ghostworld, beginning as a shimmery high end drone, before slowly devolving into a murky subterranean crawl, muted voices, buzzing strings, thick whirs and pulsing white noise, all wrapped in a druggy fug and left to drift through along some Stygian stream, a dense murky fog, wrapping your head in muted fuzz and filling your ears with a warm thick sonic syrup. A bit like a modern day, lo-fi, cd-r Taj Mahal Travellers!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!! Packaged in screen
printed and spray painted sleeves with a photocopied insert.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Two AQ faves together for the first time: Portland Oregon's Ghosting and L.A.'s Robedoor.
Been a little while since we've heard from Ghosting and it's mighty fine to have them back. Their half of the split begins with warm whirring drones beneath buzzing and scraping steel strings, intense and dramatic, and maybe a bit more aggressive than their usual sound. The track grows in intensity, the drones becoming thicker and thicker, eventually becoming an almost Sunroof! style roar, swallowing up any of the drifting melodies completely.
Robedoor, a recent discovery, and a new favorite for sure, counter with what might be their -prettiest- track yet. Very serene, warm swells in the distance, strange submerged rhythms, silver streaks of muted feedback, moaned melodies way down in the mix, the whole thing crawling and slithering darkly through buzzy blurry murky cloud of sound.
Gorgeous packaging, hand screened, one side artfully torn, limited to 325 copies, each sleeve hand numbered, pressed on black streaked white vinyl. Nice!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not sure where the idea came from for this match up: Billy Gibbons of legendary boogie rock gods ZZ Top, and Bonnie Prince Billy, formerly of Palace Brothers. Was it the two Billy's thing? Could be. But then there's also the fact that both are covering Fleetwood Mac! Seemed kind of silly, and like a total novelty, but goddamn if both tracks here aren't pretty great.
Gibbons tackles an older Peter Green 'Mac track, back from when they were a proper blues band, and thus it suits him perfectly, a dirge-y swampy blues, driven by a simple rhythmic stomp, Gibbons' badass raspy vox, all slithery blooze stomp, and it sorta kills! BPB takes on a Stevie Nicks track, and it ends up sounding like it could have been a BPB original, all stripped down and mostly acoustic, gorgeous vocal harmonies, all building to a lush final few minutes, helps that it was already a beautiful song to begin with.
Double cd anthology of rocksteady and reggae tracks from producer Joe Gibbs. Gibbs started his career with a bang, recording Lyn Taitt & the Jets "Hold Them" in 1967 -- a song that would later be hailed as the first rocksteady release. Gibbs had the good
Collection of Joe Gibbs productions from the late seventies and early eighties tracing the evolution of dancehall and Gibbs' role within it. Working with Sly & Robbie and their group (under Gibbs they were known as the Professionals) Gibbs produced a number of successful tracks and, more importantly, helped establish a modus operandi which would become de rigeur among producers through the eighties on to the present. Most importantly, inspired by Bunny Lee, was the concept of the recycled rhythm -- done to save money (no need to come up with and rehearse a new rhythm, hoping it would become a hit) -- the bulk of which initially came from classic Studio One tracks. Another was the requisite dub side for every single released. While Bunny used King Tubby, Gibbs went to Errol Thompson. Soul Jazz has culled together 19 tracks, both classic and rare, typifing the Gibbs production sound from his most successful period. Included are classics like Culture's "Two Sevens Clash", Junior Murvin's "Cool Out Son", oddballs like the Joe Gibbs & The Professionals sound effects laden dub "Massive Fire" and the troll like vocal track "Dreader Mafia" by Snuffy And Wally. Includes a 14 page booklet of liner notes and historic photos.
By all accounts, this double LP of pure brutality finds the Canadian noise outfit The Rita remixing source sounds from Brooklyn noise king Carlos Giffoni and vice versa. In the press release for this album, The Rita's Sam McKinlay offers a cogent argument about the aesthetic differences which stem from The Rita's 'dirty' methods of overdriving sound through daisy-chains of pedals contrasted against Carlos Giffoni's pulsing synths which cruise beneath the turbulent noise surfaces. While there are some notable differences on both of these pieces of vinyl, they are secondary to the overwhelmingly harsh noise which persists throughout. This is all about the noise, and this noise is an abject, blackened sound which has the feeling of particulate soot from a very dirty coal power plant given to the force of a sandblaster used not on a brickwall, but your eardrums to penetrate as a viral agent. On occasion, thicker chunks enter this jet-powered stream of sound, smashing against each other like massive sheets of shattering glass. The first of the two LPs uses these sounds within a series of erratic compositions that gradually build to cut-the-power conclusions. The second LP unleashes the flood gates from beginning to end with very little variation to the punishment. In both cases, it's still all about the quality of that noise, as an extremely aggressive tool of harsh, ugly, vile blackness. Limited to 300 copies!
Oh wow, this is one of those amazing split 7"s that makes you stop listening to the piles of records you've been meaning to get to, as once you put this one all you wanna do is listen to each side over and over again. This is the first we've heard of Girls Names, who apparently will have their debut full length out early next year and if "I Lose" is any indication it's gonna be a record that'll demand some serious attention. We haven't been quite this smitten with the sounds of a new rock band since we first got floored by Crystal Stilts a few years back. In fact they have a very similar sound to Crystal Stilts, nice warm reverb rushing through their hollow and haunting garage rock.
We were already big fans of San Francisco's Brilliant Colors so it comes as no surprise that their song on the split is another gem of early '80s inspired post-punk/dream-pop garage bliss. Even though we have so much other stuff to listen to right now, we just can't stop flippin' this and playin' it nonstop!
Brand new song from aQ beloved Irish garage poppers Girls Names, teamed up on this split with new to us Weird Dreams. Girls Names unfurls some fuzzy eighties beholden twee pop, laced with new wave synths, and driven by deep, breathy, dramatic vocals. A soaring chorus laced with weird slightly industrial percussion and a woozy psychedelic shimmer, transforms the song into something way weirder (and cooler) that your run of the mill retro pop.
Weird Dreams look back with their sound too, but in their case, back to the sixties for a smokey, sultry torch song style pop ballad, slithery basslines, crooned vox, everything fuzzy and late night ballady, spidery melodies weaving a darkly psychedelic spell, fans of the New Lines and Still Corners will definitely dig.
Pressed on clear purple vinyl!!
Brand new split from these two purveyors of black filth, LA black metal trio Harassor, and Kentucky one man black metal outfit Glass Coffin. Harrassor start things off with a surprising bit of poppiness, the opening of "Promise Of Fire" is crazy catchy, sounding like it could explode into some sort of M83 / Weekend sort of noisepoppiness, but instead, the vocals swoop in, an inhuman shriek, and the sound splinters into some seriously grim blackness, but without ever really losing the vibe of that first riff, in fact, whenever that riff is present, it sounds like some sort of blackened shoegaze, but the song is in constant movement, lurching from chaotic thrashing black blast to churning death march doom, to Venom-ous black metal stomp, but eventually returning to THAT riff. Has us wondering what kind of noisy beauty these guys could whip up if they set their minds to it. But metal heads fear not, the rest of the Harassor half is furious, chugging black metal pound and thrashing, shrieking griminity, although we prefer their sound when it slows down, into a sort of black doom, which it does often, and these guys conjure up some seriously intense doomic ruminations, the sound perfectly murky and blown out. And we just had a chance to see these guys play a couple weeks back, and they were SOOO good.
Glass Coffin start their side off with some classic sounding metal, a little lo-fi, some majestic leads, gruff vokills, before the sound splinters into something more raw and grim and urgent, buzzing insectoid riffing, weird brittle band room production, leads WAY up in the mix, twisted outsider lo-fi primitive blackness that definitely pushes all our raw BM buttons, but then the second track is TOTALLY different, a murky, muddy, frantic blast of black buzz, the drums buried in the mix, growled throat shredding vox, the sound still loose and chaotic and stumbly, the third track too, dramatically different production, but similarly buzzy and grim and hellish, but stick around for the final GC track, the weirdest of the bunch, black ambience beneath a buzzing riff, suspended in space, weird harmonics, a little bit cant post rocky, but also sort of damaged and abstract, a trippy droned out soft noise blackness, that had us wishing for WAY more of that!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Includes a download code too.
Two of our favorite Denver noise rock / post punk outfits team up for a killer blast of nineties style matched out heaviness. Both bands actually played with Andee when A Minor Forest was on tour recently, and that should definitely give you an idea of where these guys are coming from. Accordion Crimes though deliver something much more sinewy and tense, still channeling the Jesus Lizard and sonically similar outfits, with low slung basslines, chaining angular guitars, sung/spoken vocals, some kick ass drumming, and loads of space, some Shellac going on too, but mostly just that classic nineties Midwestern pigfuck math rocking crunch we can't ever seem to get enough of.
Glass Hits deliver two short, sharp blasts, that definitely traffic in some of the same sonic tropes, the rhythm section locked tight, swinging and swagger, the guitars thick and buzzing, but it's the vocals that steal the show, a raspy, emo caterwaul, that manages to peel the paint, but remain melodic, it's hard not to love it, and hard not to imagine the singer must barely be able to talk after these guys play. We definitely get a Quicksand vibe along with the usual suspects, but if you dig that sort of old school melodic heaviness and post/math/noise rock radness, this single will definitely hit the spot.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Yellow vinyl, two inserts, one a full color lyric sheet, the other liner notes on vellum, all packaged with a thick, screen printed wooden cover. Includes a download code too!
Not sure about you, but when we rip cds into iTunes to put on our iPods, we long ago ditched the traditional genre descriptions and began making genres of our own, that more accurately reflected what the music really sounded like. A quick glance at our iTunes library reveals genres like African Psych, Rembetika, Experimental / Minimal / Classical, Powerviolence, Funereal Dooooooom, Gore Grind, Finnish Avant Rock, Electric Sitar Garage Psych, Gooom, Cinematic Space Psych, Psychedelic Space Synth, and then of course one genre, reserved specifically for Gnaw Their Tongues, Industrial Symphonic Cinematic Black Doom. Which if you've yet to hear this twisted one man band, should definitely give you an inkling of what you're in for.
On this split though, much of the symphonic, bombastic element has been dialed way back, in favor of something much more bleak and minimal, a creepy distorted black ambience, laced with all sorts of creepy field recordings and industrial clatter. Eventually this abstract drift coalesces into something much more intense, a furious blast of full on blacknoize, crumblingly distorted and seriously blown out, processed vox wound into the roiling blackened mix, all underpinned by a dark lurching rhythm. The vocals eventually morph into voKILLS, the background black abyss becomes more intense, a churning glitched out crumbling buzz, that threatens to swallow up all the other sounds, and eventually does.
GTT is matched up with Corephallism, who we had never heard before, which is apparently a solo project of one of the guys from Boston noise outfit Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck, which had us expecting some harsh noise, but instead, the first begins with long layered synth tones, and deep sonorous chants, blurred hazy rumbling drones, the vibe is almost liturgical, at least until a cascade of crumbling static explodes into action, bringing with it, some crzed demonic vocal rasps, the match up of the almost serene synths and the crumbling, crackling, hissing howling noise is pretty potent, an ends up making it more listenable than you might think. The second track follows a similar pattern, but the noise triumphs this time around, the background a slow rumbling chordal swell, hypnotic and woozy, over which is laid a sheet of feedback drenched white noise skree, and more buried vokills, and while this track is much harsher, that pulsing low end background manages to balance the noise, and make it more droned out mesmer than ear destroying pummel.
Killer 4 way split of extreme outsider heaviness, most folks will probably grab this for the two new Gnaw Their Tongues tracks, but will probably end up digging the other three bands nearly as much.
But since GTT might be the reason most folks are here, let's talk about those tracks first. No huge departures, just more of that same, grim, apocalyptic, industrial, cinematic doom. "Crawl" is just that, a harrowing sonic crawl, with blown out distorted drums, heaving downtuned guitars, moaning miserable melodies, hysterical shrieks, shimmering strings, dense drones, a freaked out apocalyptic soundtrack to the death of mankind. "Paleness" is more of the same, but more metal, the main riff a blurred bit of undulating buzz, the vocals insane, the drums and industrial plod, long stretches of creepy ambience, the final half of the song a dense, thick, layered bit of blackened slow motion dronemusic, that is as weirdly hypnotic as it is hellish. Definitely worth it for fans, to get those two tracks, but there's much more metallic misery to be had.
The Arm And Sword Of A Bastard God (killer name!) are a Southern California doomkult, and traffic in plodding blackened doom, minimal and murky, big guitars, pounding drums, and some sick slowed down death metal style vocals. Halo Of The Sun contribute their own bit of UK style doom-ed blackness, a frantic bit of black metal laced with wild squiggly guitar harmonies, harsh vox, a definite Cradle Of Filth vibe, weirdly melodic, but way more lo-fi and underground, the track breaks down into a lurching doomy trudge, there are even some weird processed clean vocals, but it's soon back into the dense black grind and churn. Cool stuff for sure. Definitely be into hearing more from these guys.
And last up, from LA come The Slaughtered Lamb, who also do the black doom thing, their sound way more akin to Gnaw Their Tongues, super distorted, almost industrial, the guitars crumbling and nearly formless, the vocals dripping in effects, a filthy abject sonic crawl through broken glass and bloody entrails, leading to the 26 minute closer, an sprawling bit of epic and dismal black ambience, from hushed shimmer, to distorted thrum, to black buzz creep and back again.
All four bands impress, so buy it for the Gnaw Their Tongues, but stick around for the Slaughtered Lamb!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest from Bay Area black metal duo Lascoiec, a split with a band (person) called Gnieu, from Belarus, who we had never heard before, but who, after about a minute of the first track, might just be one of our new favorite bands. After a brief bit of doomic creep, the song erupts in a flurry of twisted tangled buzz, the drums a chaotic stutter, the riffs, so blurry and black, they're just a wall of thrum, while a strange melody, played on another guitar, or a keyboard, hard to say, flutters and flits and gets all tangled up, and eventually the sound seems to coalesce into something more traditionally buzzy and black, but then continues to constantly shift and transform, exploding into impossibly fast burst of blackbuzzblur, the drums completely bizarre, skittery and super intricate, the sound stumbling into wildly chaotic crush, before exploding again in a wild squall of bleary eared blur, there seems to be some keyboards too, but instead of making obvious keyboard noises, they just thicken the sound, adding texture and buried melody, the result is something warm and washed out, epic and majestic, black and buzzy, and in its own way sort of free and abstract, but also weirdly haunting and pretty, without losing any of its grim mystery. As the record progresses, the sound remains firmly in some sonic netherworld, guitars are swathed in reverb, unfurl surfy almost riffs, only to slip into a weird bit of minimal ambient jangle, before building to some sort of dirgey drift, only to again lurch into an explosive sprawl of warped blackness. Pretty sure we're gonna have to track down every single thing from these guys.
And we haven't even gotten to the Lascowiec side, who start things off with a bit of natural ambience, a dreamy bit of folky guitar over birdsong, lilting and dreamy, laced with some subtle mysterious sounds and effects, but for the most part very pretty, only to abruptly switch to some murky minor key black buzz, the sound warm and washed out, the vocals a buried demonic croak, the sound haunting and majestic, grim and depressive, and like all the Lascowiec we've heard managing to sound both intense and black, yet weirdly haunting and lovely, could be partially the production, wrapping everything in a gauzy veil of blurred shimmer, but it also seems to be the melodic structure and the arrangements, definitely frantic and frenzied, but muted and a muddied, dreamily lo-fi, but without ever losing its blackened brutality.
A pretty fantastic split, a new discovery (and obsession) and an old favorite, both sides getting much repeat play around here for sure.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
UK space rock combo Gnod definitely seem to have a thing for splits. Thankfully, they've shared most of those splits with some seriously kick ass bands, two with NYC psychedelic space rockers White Hills, one with riff heavy psych rockers Robedoor, and one with UK space doom outfit BONG, and now they team up with the until-now-unknown-to-us A Middle Sex, who definitely hold their own alongside Gnod, and amidst the elite split sharing brethren.
Two side long 45rpm jams, Gnod's is a sprawling expanse of swirling psychedelic shimmer, total blissed out slow burn kosmische drift, clouds of tinkling glimmering chimes, spidery tendrils of smoldering psych guitar, wailed vox WAY down in the mix and a pounding caveman beat that's not so much rhythmic as it is some sort of primal throb. The more we listen, the more it almost sounds like some twisted space rock version of Finnish forest freaks Avarus. Not a bad thing at all!
Eventually the track does attain some forward momentum, a lurching, lumbering, lysergic dirge, but by the time it does, things are already winding down.
A Middle Sex, who also call the UK home, do their own psychedelic space rock thing, which in their case is all about rhythm, after a brief swirl of kosmik krautsynth shimmer, the band launch into a seriously spaced out sprawl of tribal pound, a primitive Crash Worship style rhythm ritual, wreathed in streaks of keening feedback and swirling high end. The track gradually becomes enveloped in a haze of psychedelic guitarnoise, a Skullflowerish skree for sure, before settling back into a weirdly tranquil bit of drugged out drift, laced with strangely effected Buttholes style vox and more keening high end tones.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on nice heavy 140 gram vinyl.
The Not Not Fun label's Bored Fortress subscription split 7" series has been going on for a few years now, and is always killer, featuring a who's who of hip underground weirdo rock combos, not to mention some seriously fantastic packaging, and for whatever reason, this year, a handful of the previously subscription only singles have been made available to non subscribers, but not for long, as these babies are crazy limited.
UK dronedrugspace rockers Gnod unfurl a sprawling bit of effects heavy minimal space psych crawl, all super reverbed vocals, swirling echoey guitars, ultra minimal almost dubby drumming, the guitars a distorted murky muddy squall of tangled melody, drifting over the dirgey creep-like black clouds.
Robedoor lay down some grungy riffage, some big boomy drumming, and lock into some seriously drum heavy dirgery, with strange alien vocals, super saturated guitars, a crazy blown out sound, all barely obscuring some gloriously epic psychpop within, a psychpop that seems to emit glorious rays of sonic shimmer constantly on the verge of bursting from within the fantastically grimey, swirling murky muddy production.
Also, we have another Bored Fortress title, besides the ones we're listing now, the Infinite Body / No Age split 7", VERY few copies of that one, not enough to list, just ask if you want one and IF we still have some left, it could be yours!
Another special Record Store Day release, and another one we were truly excited about, two 12"s of remixes from former aQ Record Of The Weekers Goat, whose ROTW, World Music, was a dizzying collection of twisted and mysterious Swedish psychedelic space rock, heavy on the twisted grooviness, rhythmic and propulsive, and laced with cool double-dutch style vocals, wild percussion, we weren't the only ones who flipped for these guys (and gal).
So Rocket Recordings picked what seems to be most folks favorite track, and got some like minded sonic saboteurs to take a stab and remixing it and making it their own. A bunch of remixers we knew: High Wolf, Teeth Of The Sea, Gnod, Cherrystones, Hookworms and Tom Furse (of UK goth rockers the Horrors), but a bunch we didn't: Raikes Parade, Thought Forms, Redg Weeks, Cage & Aviary. While a lot of the remixers only slightly tweaked the originals, some went all out and pulled the song apart and reassembled the pieces into something entirely different.
The first volume starts off with Thought Forms, who are one of the groups who don't mix it up too much, and instead just does some looping and layering and rearranging, adding some sound effects here and there, dubbing out certain bits, and stripping away a lot of the guitar, letting the drums drive the proceedings. High Wolf also does some looping and layering, but the resulting sound is a lot different, much more tripped out, sounding a bit like Muslimgauze at 45rpm, rhythmic, groovy, the vocals relegated to the background, lots of buzzing sitar like sound, the whole thing dense and druggy, swirly and shimmery.
Redg Weeks gives the original a serious dub overhaul, the bass CRANKED, the drums heavily reverbed, the snare hits sent careening into the ether, the whole thing dirgey and hypnotic, dark and droney, some seriously mesmeric loping dub psych minimalism for sure. Tom Furse from the Horrors, hews a bit closer to the original, adding subtle synth swirls, and tonal colorations, adding textures and layers, the overall effect making the song a whole lot more spacey and trippy.
SUPER LIMITED!! Like most of the Record Store Day releases, while we have a bunch, it's very likely, we won't be able to get (many/any) more. Comes housed in an old school style big hole 12" sleep, decorated with the same sort of fractal design as the cover of the full length.
Another special Record Store Day release, and another one we were truly excited about, two 12"s of remixes from former aQ Record Of The Weekers Goat, whose ROTW, World Music, was a dizzying collection of twisted and mysterious Swedish psychedelic space rock, heavy on the twisted grooviness, rhythmic and propulsive, and laced with cool double-dutch style vocals, wild percussion, we weren't the only ones who flipped for these guys (and gal).
So Rocket Recordings picked what seems to be most folks favorite track, and got some like minded sonic saboteurs to take a stab and remixing it and making it their own. A bunch of remixers we knew: High Wolf, Teeth Of The Sea, Gnod, Cherrystones, Hookworms and Tom Furse (of UK goth rockers the Horrors), but a bunch we didn't: Raikes Parade, Thought Forms, Redg Weeks, Cage & Aviary. While a lot of the remixers only slightly tweaked the originals, some went all out and pulled the song apart and reassembled the pieces into something entirely different.
The second volume starts off with Gnod, who team up with the previously unknown to us Raikes Parade, for something a whole lot more minimal, that main riff, suspended in a haze of disembodied vox, tinkling chimes, fractured music box melodies and ominous synth squelch. Soon a stuttery beat surfaces, giving the song an almost dubstep vibe, the original elements of the song blurred into thick swirling clouds of atmospheric background sound. Cherrystones version transforms the more rocking original into a lurching creep, a hiccuping beat and some blorping synths, draped over the washed out remnants of the original, woozy melodies all tangled up in the proceedings, the feel very Eastern and exotic, this track too, dubbed out and a little bit Muslimgauze-y.
UK space rockers Hookworms, whose full length we'll be reviewing hopefully soon, turn the original into something way more laid back and washed out, employing mostly the drums and the bassline from the original, smearing all the other sounds into a druggy swirl, the perfect backdrop for some slowburn guitar, and spaced out psychedelic shimmer. Finally, Cage & Aviary strip Goat's sound WAY down, and craft some woozy, warbly, electro-house groovery, pulsing and loping, warped melodies draped over sheets of crumbling guitars, all faded into the background, the vox too, chopped up into weird little melodic blurts, all beneath woozy basslines, warped FX and that hypnotic relentless rhythm.
SUPER LIMITED!! Like most of the Record Store Day releases, while we have a bunch, it's very likely, we won't be able to get (many/any) more. Comes housed in an old school style big hole 12" sleep, decorated with the same sort of fractal design as the cover of the full length.
Another blast of twisted black metal weirdness from Finland, from long time aQ faves, one man BM weirdo Dead Reptile Shrine, and fellow one man black metal outfit Goatmoon, who just happen to be finally making their aQ list debut.
And as you might have surmised, 'weird Finnish black metal', could very well mean that this is not at all like the black metal you're used to, and in this case you'd be right. Goatmoon, who in the past have shared a split with another aQ fave, the truly insane/brilliant Ride For Revenge (in fact, Mr. Goatmoon is a member of the RfR live band), offers up the nearly 25 minute title track, which is barely black metal at all, instead, the first 4 minutes is all acoustic guitar, draped over swirling winds, sounding a little like a Nordic Six Organs or something, that is until the guitars fade out, leaving just the wind, then some tribal drums, howling wolves, and then what sounds like some alien gypsy ritual, buzzing guitars that sound very Eastern, the percussion bells and shakers, the only real black element is the howled demonic vox, otherwise it sounds more like Amps For Christ, that is until that fades out, leaving just piano, a mournful lament drifting over that same whipping wind, then that distorted gypsy folk sounding buzz returns, this time with crooned clean vocals added to the mix, before everything fades out, leaving just a soft swirling expanse of melancholy synths, a meditative dronescape, haunting and dreamlike, drifting darkly though the ever blowing wind. So amazing, twisted and far out. Finland!
Which brings us to Dead Reptile Shrine, who like Goatmoon, confound and confuse, here offering up a thick swirl of hazy psychedelia, minimal percussion beneath a cloud of tangled looped buzz, a weird disembodied distorted voice buried in the mix, the sound tense, never quite offering release, instead, a continual crescendo, epic and majestic and gorgeously haunting, before giving way to the stripped down minimal stumble folk of the next track, reverbed notes drift over electronic buzz, the vocals a caveman grumble, before a second vocal swoops in strident and powerful, the track flecked with steel string guitars, atonal melodies, monstrous whispers, a creepy chunk of haunting black folk mesmer.
And so it goes, the sound definitely seems to exist in some warped abstract folk continuum, stumbling looped rhythms, distant fluttery flutes, detuned finger picking and fractured folk strum, eventually subsumed by some almost blackened buzz, and ridden by echo drenched sung/spoken vokills, the next track is about as close to proper black metal as DRS get, but as you might imagine that's not very close, with a black metal riff slowed way down and gradually unraveling, while various bits of percussion or shaken and rattled, and strange chant like croons swirl all around, until finally, DRS finish things off in a cloud of keening almost Skullflower like guitar, peppered with tiny bits of percussive glitch, thick low end rumbles, and a strange voice that almost sounds like he's speaking while breathing in, warped and weird, and pretty amazing in fact, a haunting, confusing bit of black ambient ritualism, and pretty much what we would expect (if one could really expect anything) from Dead Reptile Shrine.
Of course, unadventurous black metallers should steer clear, but everyone else, whether you dig anything weird and Finnish, or love blackened outsider folk, or twisted deconstructed folk flecked black metal or like us want ANYTHING from either of these bands, this comes HIGHly recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Two of the LA doom metal scene's heaviest slug (and sludge) it out on this split release, with two songs each, of course played slow enough to make this a full-length! Goatsnake (featuring ex-members of The Obsessed and Engine Kid) even do a cover "Burial At Sea" by LA's godfathers of doom, the late great Saint Vitus. Sabbarific!!!
The return of the peculiarly monickered Gog, a one man practitioner of the dark musical arts, able to whip up huge swaths of drifting droney shimmer as easily as a crushing avalanche of corrosive slow motion riffage. More often than not some glorious grey area right in the middle.�
Here Gog is teamed up with the unknown to us Apparatia, who proves to be a worthy match up.�
Gog begins the proceedings with a 25 minute epic, blown out and buzzy, recorded SUPER hot and way in the red, a strange creepy soundscape of metallic clang, and huge reverbed guitar, not riffing, just sort of shimmering and vibrating, everything suspended amidst a barren sprawl of decay and delay, until everything explodes, and the track is transformed into an impossibly distorted, barely moving glacial wall of sound, the production so hot, the speakers seem on the verge of collapse, a massive spacious dirge that like other Gog stuff, manages to be lovely amidst all those jagged edges and crumbling chaos. Partway through, the guitars blur into just a long stretch of distorted whir, while beneath, the bass and drums continue to plod along, a strange slowed down groove buried beneath roiling clouds of fuzz. Gog finishes off his half the split with a little minute or so long chunk of random sound, peppered with vocals, a haunting little fragment of creepy ambience.�
Apparatia are in fact a grim buzzing black metal behemoth, who right out of the gate, first song, launch into some seriously grim blasting, super distorted and ultra sick, the vocals a demonic croak, the guitars a blurry buzz, the drums another static roar buried in the mix. But the band do mix it up, weaving haunting clean guitar interludes, with the harsh super affected vocals crooning hellishly over the top. Raw and primitive, and gloriously intense and brutal, the�vocals and guitars in a constant battle of the buzz, the recording quality sort of damaged and lo-fi, making for some Faxed Head like audio damage. Pretty fucking cool for sure. Definitely need to hear more from these guys. But for now, this is a seriously killer one two punch, one part slow motion sludge, one part grim, buzzing fury.�
AMAZING PACKAGING. A printed sheet of metal, black on silver, super heavy, like the music inside, text and images affixed to the back, the cd housed in a black and silver metallic paper sleeve, with mysterious blurred images and liner notes. Sticker on the front,�LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!! Each one hand numbered. We got 40 and that's it. Once these are gone, we will not be able to get more...
The last Fresh & Onlys full length was probably our favorite so far, but this SF garage pop combo don't seem to show any signs of letting up. Two new tracks, more of the same, big drums, jangly guitars, lush reverbed vocals, male and female, harmonies, hooks galore, total sweet sixties pop filtered through the more fuzzy blown out lo-if garage of today, few do it better, a little Kinks, a little Beatles, a lot of crunch and shimmer and shuffle and soar. Surfy, garage-y, hazy and washed out and summery and so goddamn catchy.
Teamed up with the F&O's here are Golden Triangle, hyped as the next big thing, we weren't super into their recent full length, but these two tracks have us reconsidering our position.
Fuzzy, crunchy riffs, sixties girl group vox, definitely fits perfectly alongside the current crop of 'Girls (Dum Dum, Vivian, etc.), but with way more of an eighties post-punk vibe, especially on the second track, with its chiming guitars, jungly tribal rhythm, two chord chug, and animal sounds. Cool!
Wait a second... Weird. These two bands usually sound nothing alike -- The Gossip's all about beltin' out their raw indie soulful blues whereas Tracy And The Plastics whoop it up with used and abused lo-fi electronics -- but on Real Damage it's super hard to tell where one band ends and the other begins. There's a potent devil-may-care grittiness that runs throughout this four-song EP. These Olympia scene faves end up being a great match for a split release, each kickin' out their respective hot licks. Super frantic and empassioned, and sure to please fans of both bands. Rad!
Volume five in the long running Black Tar Prophecies series, finds cinematic post rockers Grails teaming up with their self proclaimed favorite band, Finland's hypno-rock Circle offshoot Pharaoh Overlord! Grails start things off with some dark, brooding, Morricone-esque soundscaping, all atmospheric and a little bit gothic, swoonsome chordal swells beneath lush layered shimmer, a definite Godspeed vibe, but Godspeed via Barn Owl. The following track adds some twang to the proceedings (someone here thought it sounded a little like the intro to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead Or Alive"), wreathing the deserty drift in FX drenched swirls of buzz, all driven by some woozy somnambulant riffage. There's definitely a bit of an eighties vibe going on to, with much of this sounding like soundtrack music from some strange thriller on late night cable, the sound at times slipping into surprising soft prog grooviness, but eventually settling into a shadowy sprawl of twangy post rock dreamdrift thrum.
Pharaoh Overlord, a long running side project of aQ faves Circle (and really at this point, PO are just as much aQ faves as Circle, if not moreso), fill their side with two epic jams. The first is all chuggy, and riffy, and Circle-like right out of the gate, in fact, it sounds essentially like Circle, stripped down, minimal and motorik, churning hypnotic riffery solid simple rhythms, but as the track progresses, the surrounding atmosphere thickens, adding all sorts of psychedelic filigree, adding layer upon layer of shimmery swirl, eventually blissing out into some seriously abstract kosmische drift. The second track gets even more spaced out and minimal, unfurling a gorgeous sprawl of dense drones, thick and woozy, a blurred downtuned raga of sorts, sounding like the Taj Mahal Travellers via Wolf Eyes, rumbling, shimmering low end thurm, underpinned by muted percussive pulses, barely audible through the blackened sonic swirl, everything blurred into a hazy, slow motion expanse of softly psychedelic, almost SUNNO)))-like tectonic reverberations.
LIMITED TO JUST 1500 COPIES! Each one hand numbered. We took every copy our distributor had, and they weren't sure when/if they would be getting more, so when we run out, while we're hoping we can eventually get more, this could be it, so best snag one now just in case... as they say, buy now or cry later...
Featured on the first episode of glamorously low-budget cable tv show Hollywood Nailz last year, two of our favorite SF rock bands faced off in a battle for best cover interpretation. First up, Shannon and The Clams taking Snap's "The Power" to a whole new punk level (brave choice!) while the flip side has Grass Widow bringing a groovy Bangles-ish flair to EMF's "Unbelievable". The segment featured an "all-star" panel of Nobunny, King Khan, fashionista Ringo Rock Yay and dominatrix Miss Shannon. For good reason, Grass Widow won the contest. Dressed in burkas, wearing glasses with large googly-eyes, the 'Widows brought a whole new meaning to unbelievable! Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HLkwLu2xuo. Many of the commenters on YouTube asked where they could pick this up, and we have the answer for you: right here!
