Automatic Music Volume II, as the title suggests, is the second in a series of recordings from Australian organist / soundscaper John Chantler, who has played with loads of folks, from Lawrence English to Maher Shalal Hash Baz, and who here presents two extended pieces of electronic music, obviously indebted to early electronic pioneers, but equally obviously quite modern, mixing glitchy fields of bleeping and blooping, with wildly chaotic bursts of noise, all laid atop a bed of super serene wheezing organs, it's almost like listening to the past and future collide, a man with a primitive pump organ, jamming with some twisted floorcore weirdo, or some brainy scientific soundmaker, surrounded by a mad scientist concoction of synths and electronics, blasting this sci-fi din, while right outside, a huddled figure hunches over a sruti box, the two inadvertently creating some sort of alien sonic ritual, heady and hypnotic, haunting and seriously out there, imagine Zomes remixed by the Radiophonic Workshop! Awesome.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Tom Jenkinson/The Squarepusher's new project Chaos A.D. goes back to the roots of techno, bringing along some digital hardcore as a tour guide.
Could Charles Atlas' wistful atmospheric music possibly be made any more airy and blissful? You betcha! Especially when put in the able hands of (the mostly likeminded) Magnetophone, Pram, Sybarite, Isan, The Telescopes, Marconi Union, Nudge, Strategy, Park Avenue Drift, Stendec, Casino Vs. Japan, Signaldrift, and Telefunken. Sooo mellow and soothing, these glistening tracks just wash right over you. Go on, unwind!
Release from the Japanese label Shiranui, which has developed a rather unique variant of drum & bass, which employs spastic asynchronous breakbeats accompanied with austere modernist jazz overtones of bowed metal, stand-up bass, and muted horns. Not at all dissimilar to the early Spymania releases by Squarepusher, though more dissonant and less groove-based.
In many ways, the work of Richard Chartier is anathema to the aesthetic course embraced by Aquarius Records. It can't be tangentially connected to the expanding definitions of metal, and only liminally parallels the feral dronecore of Birchville Cat Motel and the Double Leopards. It doesn't lend itself to ridiculous ruminations on the artifice of memory and loss, or any hyperbolic rhetoric for that matter. It's hard even to call this type of work beautiful as the rigor embedded into the process is attuned to an cold sterility rather than an aspirations for aesthetic transcendence. Thus, Chartier's work simply is what it is: a pure manifestation of sound elegantly moving through time with a highly refined sensibility for the subtle transition. The simple perfection from the minimalist ethos is difficult to champion as the manifestations are hardly theatrical enough to warrant any of the marketing strategies listed above to make most people jump up and down; but here we are, announcing that Richard Chartier has crafted an exquisite album, one that may be his finest recordings to date.
Incidence is a vacuum of external references, beginning and ending with the same hissing static. Chartier plunges the album into a series of interlocking subsonic frequencies. While these frequencies were never intended to achieve the heaviosity of SUNNO))) or Earth, Chartier's understanding of psychoacoustic principles actualizes an impressively claustrophobic display of blackened tones. As Chartier introduces a simple half-step melody against these extended drone vibrations, his work opens a small referential window towards the grim isolationism of Thomas Koner or BJ Nilsen. Time manages to stand still on the best of Chartier's work, and at over an hour in length, Incidence is over before you know it. Very, very well done.
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Seems like we're not the only ones who have become obsessed with anonymous minimal mutant techno producer Chasing Voices, whose first two 12"s we could barely keep in stock. And there was indeed some confusion with those, as they both were packaged in cool silkscreened sleeves, and both bore very little in the way of any useful information, and of course the fact that both tracks (every Chasing Voices 12" seems to be a one sided affair) sounded like two parts of the same epic minimal techno masterpiece. Well, it seems that maybe that masterpiece is more epic than we imagined, as here comes part three, the latest one sided 12" from Chasing Voices, and like the two that came before, Acid Bathory and Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit, Another Walk is another dark brew of dubstep and techno, minimal acid skitter, dark brooding ambience, tense and intense, moody and subtly malevolent, darkly propulsive, less about the dancefloor, and more like some soundtrack for a mysterious futuristic chase scene through some crumbling city, beneath a bruised black sky, the sound reflecting the machine cause chaos, the throbbing rhythm encircled in a relentlessly swirling cloud of glitches and squelches, minor key melodies and woozy textures, a seriously and gorgeously grim slab of futuristic techno that is just as good as the other two 12"s, and most likely just as limited...
Yet another brilliant, and hyper limited one sided 12" from this mysterious minimal electronic music producer, whose sound hovers somewhere in the shadows between the dark industrial churn of outfits like Silent Servant and Vatican Shadow, and the dark techno minimalism of Shed and Terrence Dixon. An abstract, almost-dubstep, stripped down to its bare essentials, just a skeletal rhythm, a throbbing bass pulse, and a softly swirling halo of ominous abstract sound, distant minor key melodies, raga like drones, clouds of gritty thrum, weird processed voices, sample breathing transformed into weird swaths of staticky hum, as the track progresses, the surrounding sounds gradually overtake the beat, pushing it further into the murk, and billowing into hazy clouds of fractured melody and shimmery textures, getting downright house-y for the second half, but even then, it's super spare, ultra dark, and utterly mesmerizing. Less dance music, and more late night, chill out, futuristic, speeding down the autobahn, abstract electronic beat laced blackened ambient techno minimalism that's tough to beat. Odds are you're gonna end up wanting to track down all the Chasing Voices you can. But be warned, they disappear quick, so you know what that means...
Fourth installment from these mysterious NYC producers, and another chunk of abstract dancefloor radness, this one another one sided 12", and of the bunch maybe the most overtly dubsteppy, still on the minimal techno side, but with some seriously thick bass buzz. That and some looped and chopped female vox, not to mention some cool glitchy static, all gets woven into a woozy, fuzzy chunk of housey/dubsteppy groove, definitely one of more overtly dancey of the bunch, but still sorta dark hued and low slung with a bit of a creepy ominous vibe. Killer stuff, and like past Chasing Voices 12"s, crazy limited, and odds are they'll blow out of here and be tough to restock, you have been warned...
Housed in a cool, super simple hand silkscreened jacket, with no info at all, no title, no band name, no nothing!
Oh how we hate spoken word. Bad poetry, dramatic readings, in all but a very very very very few rare cases, spoken word = BAD. But then this is not your average spoken word record. In fact it's not even strictly a spoken word record. It's a modern minimal electronic record, made with voices instead of electronics. Closer to someone like Jaap Blonk, that is if someone recorded Blonk's bizarre poetry and then chopped it all up and reassembled it into complex rhythms.
Sound poet Anne James Chaton has been collecting receipts and train tickets, newspaper headlines, and various other seemingly mundane bits of text, specifically related to rare media related occasions, in the case of these recordings, specifically Barack Obama becoming president, and the death of the 'king of pop' Michael Jackson.
Much like those sound exercises where a phrase is repeated until it becomes a jumble of nonsense syllables, these pieces are paced on short spoken pieces, which are recorded, cut up, and reassembled into human beatbox style hyper rhythmic arrangements. The result is strangely hypnotic, not just the words, but the percussive elements of recorded speech are transformed into lurching, stuttery, skittering beats, the jumble of rhythmic vocals peppered with brief snippets of the original phrase, creating weirdly meditative trancelike expanses of rhythmic speech, or speech based techno, or whatever you want to call it.
Baffling and brilliant, this stuff would sound so amazing mixed randomly into a DJ set, but it's also some serious headphone bliss, it's so easy to get totally lost, letting the words and sounds, the sibilance and phrasing, the pulse and throb of these textual rhythms transport you to some strange world where sound and speech, music and words, blur into something wholly other.
Also included are shorter loops, presumably so you can assemble your own rhythmic word workout....
It's not often that a group you have never been into, and maybe even actively disliked, makes something that totally blows you away. Well it's happened! None of us at AQ have ever been Chemical Brothers fans, we always found them so forced, contrived, and too much like the glossy stadium rock version of electronic music. But damn we are forgetting about that past right now, as Further is one of the most explosive, dynamic and epic electronic records of the year. Maybe their day in the mainstream limelight is done and they could make the record they always wanted to or maybe they just evolved, refined their taste and got so much better. Either way, we LOVE it!
Further is a blast of fuzzy and spaced out electronics filled with a driving force and such a rich sense of melody. In fact the first few times we played this in the store everyone working came up front to see what M83 record it was, as it has that really dynamic and engaging scope of sound. It's also reminding us of some cool combination of the cosmic odysseys of Etienne Jaumet mixed with the catchy hooks of Ratatat.
While their past releases relied so heavily on the influx of guest appearances, this record finds them sticking to a unified vision that doesn't depend on outside star power and have thus finally found a way to reach the stars and outer galaxies of sound all on their own, with such stunning results. Who says you can't get better, to teach old dogs new techno tricks? We never would of thought we'd say this, but the Chemical Brothers have made one of our favorite electronic records of the year!
Ooooh! It's the "Special U.S. Edition". Like I fucking care. New tracks, remixes, live stuff from Glastonbury, cd-rom video.
3 versions of the title song plus "Buzz Tracks." Noel Gallagher appears.
It has been far too long since we've heard from Chessie. Seven years, in fact. And that sabbatical, hibernation, hiatus, or whatever you want to call it is somewhat quizzical, considering that Overnight (the 2001 album in question) had received heaps of acclaim from all across the board. For loyal Aquarius customers who happened to venture in the store around that time, Overnight was on the short list of albums that seemed to be in constant rotation here in the store, alongside the likes of Spoon's Girls Can Tell, the first New Pornographers album, Amon Duul II's Yeti, and the Andrew Chalk / Jonathan Coleclough collaboration Sumac. We have our beloved former co-worker Byram Abbott to thank for getting Overnight under our collective skin. Seven years later, Chessie works their magic once again.
A duo comprised of Stephen Gardner and Ben Bailes, Chessie operates along the borders between digitally crunched electronics and impressionist shoegazing. Gardner began his off-and-on musical career in US shoegazing indie-pop band Lorelei back in the early '90s, with a smattering of impressive singles that clearly formed the foundation for Chessie's chiming guitars grafted into an electronica context. Many of the songs on Manifest enjoy wistfully slow-burning, post-pop crescendos (e.g. Pinback, early Stereolab) as remixed through the fizzing Max/MSP patches of Fennesz. Shuffling motorik breakbeats, pierced bleeps 'n' bloops, blissed-out washes of multi-tracked guitars, and maudlin samples from muted French horns and strings pock the album's varied tracks, with occasionally lulls into hypnotic atmospherics only to snap into some truly memorable pop hooks. Had Chessie decided to incorporate a vocalist, perhaps they might be the next Postal Service; but the more adventurous route of the instrumental better serves Chessie's sensibility. A very highly recommended album, and one which will no doubt be on lost of folks 2008 top ten lists!
Beautifully hypnotic, guitar-driven electronica from the Virginian duo of Stephen Gardner and Ben Bailes. Their third full length and first for Los Angeles-based Plug Research, "Overnight" is quite a departure from Chessie's underachieving,
Euro-scenesters Chicks On Speed host a wild electro-rock, disco-punk party on their somewhat-inaccurately titled new album 99�, inviting such friends as Peaches, Tina Weymouth, Le Tigre, Kevin Blechdom, Miss Kittin, Mika Vaino and others to get down with them. Now, while fashion/design/music collective Chicks On Speed are considered cutting edge, it may be that their visual aesthetic is more advanced than their musical mode -- which, despite the laptops and advanced Austrian electronica technology, is less 21st century than 1983. Of course, that's the idea. Sheer good times retro dance floor fodder, with an edge. It's fun and hip and sure to please fans of the CoS, Peaches, Blectum From Blechdom, Ladytron, all that sorta thing. It's hard to tell if the lyrics are supposed to be clever or dumb, but since when did anyone have a problem with disco having dumb lyrics? Includes video clip for the track with Peaches, "We Don't Play Guitars" (for which we're also selling the cd single, $6.98, fyi).
The Chicks on Speed return with more of their stupid art school crap. "Chix 52" finds these talentless morons covering the B-52s ("leave the B52s alone, dammit!"), and ending up sounding even worse than the Kathleen Hanna electronica project Julie Ruin. Yeah, it's that bad. Heck, even if you liked Julie Ruin (as some here did), this is bad. Do not buy this, unless you want to be stuck with the worst album of the year. I'm fucking serious.
The Chicks on Speed return with more of their stupid art school crap. "Chix 52" finds these talentless morons covering the B-52s ("leave the B52s alone, dammit!"), and ending up sounding even worse than the Kathleen Hanna electronica project Julie Ruin. Yeah, it's that bad. Heck, even if you liked Julie Ruin (as some here did), this is bad. Do not buy this, unless you want to be stuck with the worst album of the year. I'm fucking serious.
Stupid art-school crap. That's all this is. Don't say we didn't warn you. Dunno why The Wire devoted a page to 'em, except that they have some connection to the Mego / Mille Plateaux scene. There's a bunch of special guests on this record but we'll refrain from embarrassing any of these Austrian electronic-nerds further by naming them. A horrific cover of "Warm Leatherette" seals their fate.
Berlin-based art school pop darlings Chicks On Speed team up with Dusseldorf post-Kraftwerk electro craftsmen Kreidler for four arty synthpop anthems. As expected, the collaboration quickly becomes a throwaway novelty as the Chicks' ridiculous post-ironic,
A very different Chicks On Speed greets us when we press the play button. For the first track, the aptly titled "Household Song", it seems like they've taken ample cues and inspiration from the seminal minimal art-punk of The Raincoats' Ana Da Silva (whose fine solo debut album they just released on their own label), stripping away their usual clutter and tidying things up a whole bunch. However for the second song they revert back to their raucous angular selves with crunchy rudimentary guitars, throbbing bass, clunky drum machine rhythms, cryptic samples and barked-out hystrionic vocals shouting out their socio-political lyrics. Yes, their sonic sisterhood with Le Tigre is still in full effect, but they strike us as being far less self-important and much more willing to cut loose and do whatever tickles their fancy... no matter how retarded, like naming a song "Wax My Anus". That said, the second song "Mitte Bitte" did sorta make us wanna bounce around the living room like a delirous Muppet. Some of this is genuinely fun, while some of it is just plain painful. Ah, but some folks have a penchant for painful. 'Tis an acquired taste.
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A double seven inch from the DHR electronica realms of low IQ punk fury thrown onto 808s and powerbooks. Chicks on Speed follows Cobra Killer's alienated and blatant sampling in a new wave context... DMX Krew (the same who did those cheese-ball electro cuts for Rephlex???) cranks out the punk rock songs, literally.
While this is technically not new, we still figured we ought to list it since it somehow managed to fall through the cracks when it initially came out. Released in 2000 on Germany's Plate Lunch label, Chine Nual is beloved AQ customer Rick Kitch, composing,
Throbbing Gristle ceased to exist (for the first time) in 1981, shortly after the transgressive industrialists performed in San Francisco in May of that year. TG were deft in their manipulation of media, ominously stating that "The Mission is terminated," with the 'mission' referring to their numerous stark proclamations against society at large conjoined with their adventurous manglings of noise, rhythm, and atonality. But there's another rather self-evident historical fact: that TG's Genesis P-Orridge broke up with fellow bandmate & long-term partner Cosey Fanny Tutti. Shortly thereafter, Cosey and fellow TG member Chris Carter struck out on their own (with a romantic partnership not far behind), and later on in 1981, Chris & Cosey released their first solo project, the minimal wave / synthpunk masterpiece Heartbeat. In TG, Carter's propensity for beguiling electronic melodies and disco rhythms could be heard on such classic tracks as "United" and "Hot On The Heels Of Love." Both of these were signature tracks for Carter's aesthetic, which espoused an economic proto-techno approach to drum machine rhythms and heavily sequenced electro pulse melodies. Such has been the template for Chris & Cosey's sound since.
"Put Yourself In Los Angeles" opens the album with a dizzying percolation of flanged electronics which snaps into a militant march of Cosey's gnashed guitars locked against barked samples of a lunatic radio host and insistent rhythms. At least on this track, it's easy to hear the influence that Chris & Cosey would have on the likes of Front 242, Ministry, and Nine Inch Nails. Other tracks such as the metronomic spiralling of "Voodoo" and the downright pastoral birdsounds of "Moorby" looked back to the Krautrock electronic meanderings of Cluster. "Just Like You" is one of Chris & Cosey's finest tracks, oozing with paranoia and dread throughout the slashed noises and found dialogue haunting the minimalist techno-horror sequencing and sustained minor-key melodies. The title track completes the album brilliantly by looking forward to any number of Detroit-inspired techno trax with double timed rhythms emerging out of maudlin, if cybernetic melodies and electronic-pop propulsive sequencing that really does act as a bridge between the realm of Kraftwerk and the British new wave that was bubbling up around Chris & Cosey back in the day. An absolute classic!
The second record released in 1982 from former Throbbing Gristle alumni Chris Carter and Cosey Fanny Tutti still mines the coldwave and industrial electro aesthetics of their debut, Heartbeat (reviewed elsewhere on this list). But it may be their least regarded record due to its more removed soundtrack feel, exploring supposed realms of medieval chants and non-Western religious music, buried as they are under stuffy rhythms, slithery washes and ambient death-disco permutations. Apparently the band and label, Rough Trade had a dispute over the retail price of the record (our original copy says in printed type along the bottom edge "Please Note: Mid-Priced Record") and moved to various other labels shortly after, so it's hard to say if Trance got any real promotion at all. That's not to say Trance is not a worthy album, but its murky combination of earthy propulsive synthesis and detached ritualism make it less instantly accessible than their debut. Trance works best as a connected suite of songs, than individual tracks, a lot like Demdike Stare's twisted soundscapes, which share Chris & Cosey's fascination with an arcane British-ness. Especially the final two tracks, "Until" and "The Gates of Ancient Cities", which are two of our favorite C&C tracks ever, partially because they offer a shimmer of light from what preceded them and make a beautiful pastoral move towards grace.
Christine 23 Onna is a collaborative effort between Fusao Toda and Maso Yamazaki, better known as Masonna. While the presence of one of Japan's most frightening noisicians should be enough the scare away all of the too-hip-and-too-stoned kids who only care about 'rare grooves,' Christine 23 Onna's "Shiny Chrystal Planet" is actually a pretty damn funky record. Yeah, it's noisy, but in a swirling, synth-overload, super psychedelic way, not like Masonna's usual electronic scream-skree. And really uptempo breakbeats set the rhythmic backbone for some awesome trance-rock much like the latest grooves from their countrymen the Boredoms (a la "Super Are" and "Vision Creation Newsun)". The phase shifting fuzz guitar and cosmic space dusted synthesizers get jammy, but fortunately never too wanky. Those of you familiar with the '60s spy thrillers of Jerry Van Rooyen may recognize one of his tempestous songs covered by Christine 23 Onna (we think we do, anyways, although it's not credited as such...). Wild, spacey groov-adelia. All around great stuff! Amazing cover art recreating Ash Ra Temple's "New Age Of Earth"!
Ok, so this has been passed around the store for a little while with a rotation of different people assigned to review it. Why the hesitation? It seems the folks around here who had no idea who Christmas Decorations are, took a look at the cover and thought it was perhaps another Christian psych-folk reissue from the seventies or some twee homey Americana and kept putting it below their priority list. And the folks around here who DID know who Christmas Decorations are, from their Kranky debut a few years ago, didn't like that album very much at all, mainly due to its atonal vocalizing over quirky electronica. Well, when we finally put this on, we were pleasantly surprised, if not out and out AMAZED at what we heard. First of all, there are thankfully no vocals, and while this is not the Christian folk or Americana record some of us thought it to be, there is a strain of, er rustic folkiness through the presence of slide guitar as it barely permeates through the murky minimal ambience of shifting electronics. It seems that Christmas Decorations have cleaned house since their debut, removing all the unnecessary elements of song-forms from their compositions, and reducing their sound to layers of decayed and drifting abstractions barely hinting at the melodies beneath them. Think the winter equivalent to Fennesz's Endless Summer. Like the sounds of oxidation on old and rotting wood, subtle and melancholy with the textures of wet dirt and leaves burbling under slowly melting ice. So beautiful! We think fans of Jasper TX and Machinefabriek and similar outfits of dreamy drift would dig this a lot. What a surprise!!
Sometimes droll, atonal singing can work really well (think Beat Happening, Reynols or Magnetic Fields), but unfortunately not on the Christmas Decorations' debut album. Seriously, this is some painfully out of tune singing. It distracts from the rest of the music which taken without the vocals is quite pleasant, if somewhat underwhelming - moody chiming soundscapes comprised of some highly effected guitars, bass, melodica and sequencers. This comes as an enormous disappointment following Revolve the one and only album from the fantastic but crushingly short-lived band that was Beautiful Skin whose nucleus was Nick Forte and Ross Totino. There was an unquestionable musical chemistry between them that propelled their music beyond simplistic new wave references and the Wire / Gang Of Four / New Order worship of Forte's previous bands. This new group however does not draw such glowing praise, instead it truly bummed out a few of us.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Rumours have it that Christophe was clocked at over 500 splices per second for this record. Regardless of the truth to this, his brilliant cut-up collage done entirely on an old reel-to-reel sounds very similar to recent digital collages of Stock, Hausen, and Walkman!
REPRESSED, BACK IN STOCK!!! Now including the "lost side" of unreleased tracks featured on the recent deluxe vinyl version.
Ooooh Ahhhhh! This one has been sizzling in our ears pretty much on endless repeat since it showed up at the store. Chromatics have undergone a pretty radical change from their early herky-jerky no-wave inspired beginnings, as showcased on the amazing and scene defining After Dark comp that we recently listed, and are still so in love with. Chromatics now have a sound that is much more sensual, subdued and spaced out. And we have to say we are loving this new direction. I definitely suits them so much more naturally than their noisier punky past.
With a sound much more rooted in early drugged out disco and '80s Euro-pop, Night Drive is sparse and melancholic enough to reel in folks whose taste usually falls on the darker end of the spectrum yet with songs so damn sexy and enticing that those of us with dance and pop leanings are seduced by their sound as well. With Ruth Radalet's vocals sounding like they are being delivered in a dark room filled with fog and smoke, there is such an intoxicating late night vibe that Chromatics tap into which feels so vacant and so sexy in the best possible way. They take on the daunting task of covering Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and manage to make it their own, no small feat as that is a song with such deep meaning for so many of us. So damn good!
With a new perfectly delivered sound, Chromatics have become a huge favorite here in aQ land over the last couple months as we've been playing their new album IV: Night Drive over and over and still not even getting close to burning out on its seductive and steamy sounds. This 12" contains one of their great selections from the scene defining After Dark compilation which will for sure find its way on to many 2007 best of lists. Along with that comes an extended mix, an instrumental version, the haunting vocal only mix and a hot take on Springsteen's "I'm On Fire." We're not sure if the Boss would approve, but we sure do!
So stoked that this awesome album by the Chromatics is available on vinyl now and with a whole side filled with unreleased tracks.
Ooooh Ahhhhh! This one has been sizzling in our ears pretty much on endless repeat since it showed up at the store. Chromatics have undergone a pretty radical change from their early herky-jerky no-wave inspired beginnings, as showcased on the amazing and scene defining After Dark comp that we recently listed, and are still so in love with. Chromatics now have a sound that is much more sensual, subdued and spaced out. And we have to say we are loving this new direction. I definitely suits them so much more naturally than their noisier punky past.
With a sound much more rooted in early drugged out disco and '80s Euro-pop, Night Drive is sparse and melancholic enough to reel in folks whose taste usually falls on the darker end of the spectrum yet with songs so damn sexy and enticing that those of us with dance and pop leanings are seduced by their sound as well. With Ruth Radalet's vocals sounding like they are being delivered in a dark room filled with fog and smoke, there is such an intoxicating late night vibe that Chromatics tap into which feels so vacant and so sexy in the best possible way. They take on the daunting task of covering Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" and manage to make it their own, no small feat as that is a song with such deep meaning for so many of us. So damn good!
More modern electro funk party jams from these guys. We know lots of folks love em, but we've never been able to really jump on this party train, but who knows, maybe this could be your dance party cup of tea...
Much like the vibrant clothes of eras past that twenty-somethings are currently sporting to wild nights at dive bar dance parties, the soundtrack to those dance parties has become vibrant and '80s-esque, with a '00s spin. It's what you could call synth-wave with a digital flare. In fact, Chromeo's Fancy Footwork is the third ultra-Moogy album we've reviewed for this list -- check out our reviews of Justice and Digitalism... While those two tip their hats to the '80s with uber-synths and samples, they also combine more modern sounds (Daft Punk, Faint, and Fatboy Slim come to mind) to give an overall feel that the Deathstar has just descended on the sweaty dance party. Chromeo, however, has taken a more pure approach in their nod to the '80s, and it isn't the '80s that never stopped being 'cool' (Cure, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, etc). Oh no, Chromeo have managed to create the the sound of Don Johnson walking into the room and eyein' your girlfriend, that kind of '80s vibe in the year 2007. We're talking Rockwell and Ray Parker Jr. kind of '80s folks. We figure this balls-to-the-wall synth resurgence might go as fast as it's come, but will no doubt shape what comes next and will be remembered fondly by many as they look back when the decade has passed reflecting fondly on the raging party they attended when the world was so close to the edge.
A friend played me the song, "Me And My Man", a while ago and I was instantly addicted to one of Canada's best current electro exports, Chromeo. Shockingly, we haven't carried it until now. Well, reminiscent of Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue", Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" and Egyptian Lover (minus some nasty freakiness), She's In Control features analog synths, some rockin guitar, 808, rhodes and lots of talk-box... yeah! That it's on Vice's label should tell you something on how it rates on the hipster scale, but it's definitely an album for delightfully uncool people too. It's chock full of party tracks like "Needy Girl", "Woman Friend" and "Ah Oui Comme Ca". The production is just good enough not to sound too polished, leaving the songs sounding fresh, like they were put together by two inspired best friends - which is true. It is also true that they are pulling from such a specific type of nostalgic sound, it will easily date itself now... but it's just soooo fun! If you plan on having a kick ass dance-party soon... invite me. If you want to listen to something fresh and totally awesome, you must must must have this!!
As much as we love all the indie rock and noise pop that's been coming out of China, and we do, hell, check elsewhere on this list for a couple new Chinese bands, we tend to become super obsessed with the more out there, experimental groups and records that have also been coming from the same scene. We made the latest record from White+ our Record Of The Week a while back, the sound like Yellow Magic Orchestra crossed with Neu!, or so the label suggested, to our ears it was way more far out and psychedelic. Out latest discovery / obsession comes from this Beijing based experimental four piece called Chui Wan, who according to the label, count Beach Boys, Arthur Russell, Les Rallizes Denudes and the Sun City Girls among their primary influences, but as always, there's no way a band could possibly sound like that, and Chui Wan, to our ears at least don't really sound like what we imagine that band math would produce, but that's not to say we don't dig it, we do, a LOT, in fact this is one of our favorite of all the Chinese records we've gotten in recently, but the sound is a bit harder to pigeonhole, the opener is a sort of loping, instrumental jangle pop jam, all blooping basslines, shimmering guitars, and motorik rhythm, surrounded by burbling cascades of swirling melodies, and chiming spidery guitars, so we were kind of prepared for a whole record of that, but then the second track swoops in, all distorted guitars, and driving drums, not to mention some strange echo drenched vocals, lots of swirling psychedelia, the track veering from spaced out mesmer to heavy, chaotic freakout, with brief bits of mathy angular pop, it's a weird mix, but it somehow works, at times sounding like a warped WTF version of Television, maybe with a little Boredoms mixed in, with plenty of spaced out psych jamming, and hypno-kraut grooves.
And amidst all this krautgroove and psychedelic drift, the band add swoonsome viola melodies, soaring ethereal vocal harmonies, plenty of almost proggy arrangements, subtly deployed samples, Eastern melodies, swirling electronics and FX, with some tracks sounding like psychedelic ragas, others blossoming into horn flecked almost-klezmer, and still others field recording laces tribal dirges. The record finishes with a nearly eleven minute closer, that's like some sort of doom-prog / kraut-folk, epic and majestic, weirdly recorded so the sounds are all blown out and crumbly, the arrangement strange too, in constant flux, the whole final half of the song peeling back all the noisiness, leaving just a gorgeous sprawl of processed horns, pointillist pianos, swirling synths, layered electronics and strange samples, super heady and hypnotic, tripped out and utterly mesmerizing.
WAY recommended, for fans of space rock, psych rock, experimental avant pop, and the weirder side of the new wave of Chinese indie rock...
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Don't miss out on this very limited UK import. Only 500 were pressed. Three songs from this San Francisco duo. Chris and Mike create layer upon layer of electronic textures, thoughtful, hushed vocals and lovely, tentative guitar melodies. We should note that this record has a much more aggressive electronic presence from Chris (alias OST/Rook Vallard) than the fragile, pretty Jewelry cd-ep.
Sounding a lot like indie rock fave Smog (if Bill Callahan would only keep up with the state of music today, instead of sounding more and more dated with each release), Church Steps cloak the most heartfelt sensitive-guy vocals in a shimmer of melancholy.
Cover art by beloved local artist Jo Jackson.
