The THIRD repress of this exquisite album on vinyl. If you missed it the last two times, don't expect this one to last any longer! The only difference is the black & white artwork, but the musical content is the same. Here's what we said way back when...
Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill opens with an entirely characteristic yet coy swell of effected elemental smear, crumbling delicately yet forcefully, until giving way to what is, to date, and here is the coy part, Liz Harris' most songwriterly and structured album. As opposed to the rich swaths of drone that up until now defined her sound, Harris has shifted from the abstract towards a more distinct and figurative sound. True to the title, the record unfolds like a sort of mysterious and morbid fairytale, innocent in its clear and elegant melodies, yet creepy and highly abstract in its more droney and sublime interludes. For the most part, her guitar playing is laid bare, removed from the dense fog of effects that typically occlude them. And what we discover is actually a pretty strummy record, with plenty of clean guitar articulation though certainly the aroma of her previous tech heavy approach remains in what is relatively speaking still pretty effected. At times she even reverts back to the gorgeous icey crunchy string attack of some previous efforts. With so much space liberated in the absence of drones, we also get to hear her stunning voice. Furthermore, the occasional audible lyric creeps to the surface, one standout fragment being "Love Is Enormous," a somewhat shockingly affirmative sentiment from an otherwise darkly mysterious and abstract persona. From start to finish Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill lulls you into its graceful murmurings and hypnotic thrumming. An exquisite addition to an already compelling discography. Recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
New project from FM Einheit (the muscleman / technician who left Neubauten a few years ago) Gry Bagoien and Einheit have collaborated to create a German cabaret version of Portishead full of tensely building left-field electronica. Gry whines and whispers with all of the theatricalities of Beth Gibbons with bossanova flares and Peter Thomas-like brash horns. Plus there are a handful of special guests: Funkstorung, Pan Sonic, Terranova, and Alexander Hacke.
We just can't get enough of this "pop ambient" stuff. This is exactly how the future will sound. And how the distant past must have sounded. And how right now would sound if we could just listen close enough. After a somewhat disappointing second album, Guentner returns to form with another gorgeous batch of crystalline ambient pop. A couple tracks are Kompakt gems of perfectly pulsing narcoticized dancefloor throb, but the majority are dreamy and whispery, drifting and abstract explorations into inner space. Crackly and fuzzy, warm and languid, everything with a dreamy sheen, slanted rays of the sun diffused into warm yellow clouds, every movement setting off a chain reaction, molecules bumping into one another, the sound of a trillion colliding molecules becoming a distant buzz that swells into warm waves of gentle whispers and barely there rhythms. Fish in the sea and birds in the sky move in perfect synchronicity, creating a simple insistent pulse, that suffuses every living creature, as we soon find that gradually we all begin to move in concert with this hidden heart beat. Rain drops ring like chimes as they hit the ground, each one a different size and color and note, like a million bells ringing at once, becoming a huge warm chord that just sort of spills over the horizon, spreading slowly until we're all floating weightless atop a slowly shifting sea of sound, letting ourselves blissfully sink to the bottom.
Following the electro-ambient hush of "In Moll" which was released on Kompakt in 2001, Markus Guentner hits us with another album of pleasant tech house grooves that beefs up the drum machine and the Moroder-esque arppegiations for ample dancefloor booty shaking, but doesn't entirely remove the silken 'pop ambient' sub-genre that Kompakt has been pushing for the past 18 months or so. While a few of the tracks are pretty standard in their four-on-the-floor drum machine progressions, Guenter mixes things up with occasion nods to electro revivalism and to Shitkatapult shuffletime grooves, as well as an Ibiza house cover of Talk Talk's "It's A Shame"!!!
MPEG Download: "Sunset" [/audio/markusguentnersunset.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Sunset" [/audio/markusguentnersunset.m3u]
Squelches and whirrs nestle in rolling hills of fuzzy dreamy drones as clicks and pops struggle for air beneath a downy blanket of suffocatingly gorgeous billowy clouds of synth wash. Sound good? It does.
It's German electronica artist Markus Guentner's debut cd for the Kompakt label. For those of you who don't know, the Kompakt label has developed an almost timeless aesthetic, not unlike the 'heroin house' sound of Chain Reaction. The Kompakt sound is an application of the often invoked but rarely successful working model of 'ambient techno'. A good example of this sort of thing that AQ-customers probably know about ('cause we sell so many of 'em) is the Wolfgang Voigt project Gas. His minimalist techno releases (in particular the Gas album "Konigsforst") are some of the few electronica albums that all Aquarians can agree on and strongly endorse.
In creating "In Moll," Markus Guentner has done more than his part to fill the void created by Voigt's unusual absence, with a disc that captures much of the feel we liked so much about the Gas records, a sort of dreamy melancholy that manages to be both wistful and hopeful, lonely and warm. Jeff thinks it has a real "change of seasons" vibe, that harkens, again, to Gas. And while the Gas comparison is surely accurate (if you haven't caught our drift already, let's state: fans of Gas should pick this up without a second thought!), Guenter does add his own flair to Voigt's signature sound though, creating a more varied and more dynamic soundscape than Voigt's pastoral hum and thump.
Four track ep by Markus Guentner, who brought us the lovely "In Moll" lp last year. Two tracks are remixes of the title track, by the dominating forces on the Cologne scene, Wolfgang Voigt and Michael Mayer.
San Francisco's Tommy Guerrero finds himself on Mo' Wax for "A Little Bit Of Something." And he's right at home, as this album recapitulates the blunted trip hop sound that put Mo' Wax on the map in the mid-90s with lots of groovy Spanish guitar licks and mellowed basslines. As pretty, mildly quirky, and downright inoffensive as the Margaret Kilgallen cover art.
It's hard to put our finger on what exactly it is about this record from UK electronic / dubstep producer Guido that has us so obsessed, but all it took was a single listen, and we were hooked. We haven't been able to stop listening to it since.
The first three tracks are pretty much perfect, not quite dubstep, not quite electro, but super melodic, a little skittery, playful and weirdly soulful, The opener pairs a spare beat to a dreamy minor key melody, letting the song develop slowly, the notes sounding like pizzicato strings, the vibe spare and skeletal, but very cinematic, synth stabs surfacing in the background, while little melodic flurries swirl around that main melody and that stuttery beat. "Orchestral Lab" might be even catchier, with its main squelchy synth melody, totally irresistible, almost anthemic, and then when the track switches gears, and gets all moody and minor key, it sounds again like the weirdo synth soundtrack to some super dramatic sci-fi space opera, laced with soaring strings, and then some cool dubby dubstep bass counterpoint, giving it some groove and heft, but then it slips right back into that main melody. The third track "Woke Up Early" just seals the deal, beginning with a sputter of stumbling beats, before a woozy squiggly synth melody gets all tangled up in there, and some fizzing spacey swirls of hiss and shimmer, lurching along, sun dappled, a little psychedelic, a lot groovy, stuff like this is often to light for us, but this is so goddamn good. The only real bummer is, that these first three songs are so awesome, we've barely made any further headway onto the rest of the record. There are definitely worse problems, and giving the rest of the record a quick once over right now, reveals that there's most likely more favorite tracks to come, more ridiculous sonic obsessions, including a handful of vocal driven tracks that rule, fuzzy and buzzy and skittery and a little spacey, the vocals chopped up and wrapped around the lurching beats, the record closes with a fierce chunk of late night dubstep, driven by some seriously thick bass wobble, an ominous and dark bit of stutter step that pretty much matches the opening trio in terms of complete radness. And be sure to stick around, there's a secret track tucked away at the end.
Another new electronic favorite for sure.
Weirdly enough, we first heard Guilty Ghosts on some mysterious witch house / drag compilation someone made for us, that track a haunting bit of morose skeletal downer guitar pop, all chiming 4AD guitars over skittery clipped rhythms and soft focus swirls of hushed dreamlike shimmer, not to mention swoonsome strings, listening to that track again now, has us wondering why exactly the rest of the world hasn't caught on to Guilty Ghosts. It's the sort of thing a label like Matador or Fatcat or XL should be flipping out over.
But for now, GG, aka Tristan O'Donnell, is going the DIY route, releasing his own tapes and cd-r's, and we managed to get a handful of the deluxe version of his most recent full length, which does in fact include that mixtape jam we loved so much back in the day, and we're happy to report that the whole record is brimming with more of the same, lush expanses of layered guitars, softly tangled melodies, warm swirling buzz, looped breakbeats, the sound melancholic and wistful, the drum driven jams sounding like a darker, more mysterious underground lo-fi shoegaze pop version of the Happy Mondays, while the more guitarscapey tracks remind us of the Durutti Column, and when the vocals come in, it's total shoegaze dreampop bliss. Just check out "Everlasting Evening", which is the sort of jam we wish would go on forever, a thick swirl of guitar buzz, beneath strummed acoustic guitars, underneath ethereal streaks of tangled psychedelic melodies, buried mysterious samples, and some gorgeous angelic female vox, it's definitely easy to see why GG would be embraced by the witch house camp, but the sound is so much more lush and composed, O'Donnell's sights set somewhere much higher, these tracks expansive and cinematic, with tracks like "Everlasting Evening" reminding us of MBV and Portishead and the like.
The whole record unfurls like a dream, the lush swirling tangle of guitars all on its own would be enough to have us smitten, but the occasional vox, and the various rhythms, the ever shifting drones and textures, all deftly woven into gorgeous sonic dreamscapes, and be sure to check out "Begotten", tucked away near the end of the tape, which just might be our favorite jam here, haunting and lovely, like the brooding slow building soundtrack to some heart wrenching scene in an arty big budget blockbuster, we're surprised someone hasn't snapped this up for some Christopher Nolan trailer or something. So awesome. And obviously totally recommended!!
This limited version includes both a tape, with a printed J-card, a sticker AND a bonus mix cd, which offers up a ton of cool and super varied GG beloved jams, all gathered up in a screen printed canvas drawstring bag.
We weren't sure what to expect from a Scantily Clad side project, but it certainly wasn't this! But we like it. In fact we sort of LOVE it. Unlike the cosmic synth drone of Scantily Clad, Guisher specializes in a dizzying, short attention span collection of home brewed lo-fi cut and paste, slice and dice, collaged, sample heavy, hyper rhythmic loopscapes. Sped up soul samples, snippets of songs off the radio, are slathered in crumbling distortion, then assembled into strange stuttery beatscapes, waves of white noise swallow up the proceedings, only to spit out fragmented shards of pop on the other side.
The sound is awesomely raw and primitive, like some caveman Art Of Noise at times, but the structures and rhythms are often surprisingly complex, and downright groovy at times, while pulverizingly noisy at others. The sound is pretty fantastic, slipping from DJ Shadow like moody skitter to weird world music collage to barely there short wave static in the same track, only to weave some sort of analog assembled electronica on the next track, all lumbering rhythm surrounded by flurries of tangled melodies, and weird swooping backwards effects. And so it goes, a head spinning kitchen sink concoction, a blast of crunchy electric guitars, shards of yacht rock, blasts of static and slowed down voices one second, warm and warbly, shuffling sort-of-electronic woozy rhythmic groovescape the next. So great! And apparently all recorded while on prescription drugs, which definitely might explain everything...
SUPER SUPER LIMITED. ONLY 55 COPIES, partially because the packaging is so deluxe, an oversized photocopied booklet with tons of fold out pages, secret panels, a little multi paneled triangular booklet in the middle, and a foldout poster, all in a plastic bag, each one individually sewed shut with multi-colored thread.
We'd venture a guess that Guitar aka Michael Luckner is not a man of many words. He chose the name of the common musical instrument as his moniker, and makes uncommonly dreamy instrumental music from a broad palette of processed guitar sounds that offer a healthy nod to My Bloody Valentine. On his latest album which he's titled simply with the name of a major Japanese city, he's got Japanese vocalist Ayako Akashiba adding some honey-sweet murmurred vocals to three of the tracks. The music has a hazy translucence as if each track (vocals included) were painted in watercolor with a smattering of heavier brushstrokes applied with koto and programmed beats. Lovely!
Brand new single with what might be our favorite track from the most recent Gum Takes Tooth record, Mirrors Fold, which we recently made our Record Of The Week. The A side is the version from the full length, a wild, percussive, tribal workout, a churning sprawl of tranced out rhythms, wreathed in hazy vocal harmonies, the sound falling somewhere between Animal Collective at their most abstract and rhythmic, and William Bennett's post Whitehouse one man Afro-Noise project Cut Hands. So it makes perfect sense that GTT would recruit Cut Hands to remix that track, especially since it already sorta sounded a little like Cut Hands anyway.
But Bennett takes the original, slows it way down, adds tons of distortion, and transforms it into something meaner, and darker and more industrial sounding, still groovy and tribal, but fierce and pounding, those background vocals turned into strange spectral smears, swirling around a monstrous rib cage rattling beat, flecked with stuttery percussive filigree, a whirling psychedelic sprawl of roiling rhythmic crunch, that kills! And has us super excited for the forthcoming Cut Hands full length, and kind wishing Gum Takes Tooth would get Bennett to remix their whole record!
Imagine a band that sounded like a bastard mix of UK-via-Texas, multiple drummered noise rockers Shit And Shine, grinding bass and drum duo Lightning Bolt and legendary weirdo drug rock combo Butthole Surfers. Then imagine the sort of din such a band could and would kick up and mix in all manner of mangled and freaked out electronics. Finally, imagine all of that noise being conjured up essentially by a single drum kit. And thus you have UK duo Gum Takes Tooth, which is essentially a drummer, whose drums are wired up to a dizzying array of home brewed electronics and tone bent circuit boards, with a second member tweaking and fucking with the sound in real time. 43 minutes of electronic-ed drumming might not sound that appealing to some folks, but don't make the call until you get an earful of the sounds these two whip up. Sure at times it's raw and rhythmic, noisy and chaotic, but the sounds here are all over the map, from super charged This Heat style rhythmic workouts, to blasting almost grind metal like blow outs, minimal FX fueled ambient drifts, to tripped out sci-fi psychedelia, murky, meandering distorto slow-core to frenzied noise drenched prog and pretty much every conceivable stop inbetween. Add in some Merzbow style noise, a little Psychic Paramount drum heavy post rock heaviness, some world music like tribalism, and stir it all up, and voila.
Opener "Young Mustard" is a pretty good sampling of what these guys are capable of, offering up a wild frenzy of tribal drum pound, weird processed vox, swirling electronics and FX, which eventually explode into some seriously aggro Lightning Bolt style, blast beat driven, downtuned grind, only to blossom into some Six Finer Satellite like synth-drum craziness, before the whole thing devolves into a abstract stretch of minimal clatter, random bloops and bleeps, swirling electronics, all beginning a slow build, the tribal drums swooping back in, slowly goring more distorted and intense, until finally fracturing into what sounds a bit like the Ruins crossed with Man Is The Bastard, thick blown out buzz low tones, pounding drums, howled processed vox, all woven into a seriously crushing electro-dirge.
"Tankjott" is another good one, starting out with some rapid fire kick drums, some gurgly vox, some squiggly electronics, building to a lurching, stuttery groove, soon more electronics, and more of that heavy bass buzz swoop in, and it's some sort of metallic krautpsych groove, with all manner of buzzes, strange twisted vocals, electronic pulses, before exploding into another fried and buzz drenched rhythmic workout, sounding to us like a way more chaotic / noisy / electronic version of MITB offshoot Geronimo, definitely the heaviest track here, sounding almost metal, but via Hawkwind and This Heat and Melt Banana and all blurred into some impossibly mesmerizing electrometal krautgroove, WAY too short at 7+ minutes.
And in between those two tracks, plenty of hypnotic, cyclical, rhythmic noise, progged out heaviness, stuttery drum heavy buzz and psychedelic noise rock, usually all at the same time, "Strychnine Motive" probably the most traditionally song sounding, but it's really relative, while "The Earth's Mantle Colonised" takes that same sort of sound and trips it WAY out into some sort of psychedelic space rock, the vocals chopped and processed, plenty of spacey squiggles and weird chanted vocals, the whole thing still drum driven big time, "Nomad/Monad" sounds like some bastardized gamelan orchestra, or a punk rock electronic noise version of Konono No.1, all looped thumb piano like melodies, tangled up and barraged by all manner of strange sounds, and then finally, record closer "Hermaphrodite And Nourishment" which does in fact feature a member of Shit And Shine on second drum kit, and while we were expecting a super frenzied drum heavy blowout, instead, it might be the pretties song on the record, all moody and loping and melodic, laced with ringing Tibetan bowls, crooned softly distorted vocals, squalls of feedback, and the cool thing is it never really explodes or freaks out, instead, it's just gorgeously mesmerizing and hypnotic, droned out and tribal, the perfect sort of sonic come down at a record that spends much of its time at a serious musical fever pitch.
Probably one of our most exciting recent musical discoveries (thanks Jason P.!), and with every listen this record continues to confound and delight and reveal more of the weird shit that seems to constantly be going on just below the surface, and odds are if you like any/some/all of the above mentioned bands, imagine them all mashed together and distilled into some wildly and gloriously twisted hybrid, and we imagine you'll probably be as knocked out as we were.
Who cares who Shinju Gumi is? Whoever they are, they've got mixes by Kid Loco (same as on the "Press Play" comp), Solex, Tarwater, etc. Dubby pop triphop electronica...
aka DJ Vadim. "Support the stop R&B killing hip hop movement" it says on the back.
After recently making two recent offerings on the Medical Records label into Records Of The Week (Axxess and Lou Champagne System), we figured we oughta review a couple other kick ass Medical releases that somehow slipped under our radar. One of those is a collection of lost tracks from a Swiss teenage synth / electro-pop duo, with the unlikely name Guyer's Connection, whose Portrait lp originally released in 1983 is a synth nerd holy grail.
The tracks here were recorded around the same time as Portrait, but were only rediscovered in 2005, and include a mix of unreleased tracks and reworked versions of older songs. And the sound definitely seems right at home amongst the current crop of synth retro-revivalists, in fact, if these guys weren't so obscure, you'd swear some of the synth kids today owed much of their sound to these two. But unlike much of the brooding Carpenter / Goblin worship these days, a lot of the music here is fun and playful, even kind of goofy, it is after all a couple of teenagers with 2 synths, a drum machine and a 4 track, just check out opener Discoqueen II" with its woozy vocodered vox, bloopy bleepy percolating synths and skittery drum machines, or the krautrocky "Laugh About" which sounds a little like Kraftwerk gone haywire, with some bizarre sampled voices, and a deep dramatic main vocal.
There's also a strange cover of a German children's song, with lyrics by Kurt Weill, which sounds like the guy who plays organ in the mall, all cheesy easy listening organ and shuffling rhythm underneath weird sing songy vocals and twisted music box melodies.
And while all that playful goofiness is occasionally balanced by tracks like "Flow", a dark, brooding, slightly sinister, slab of soundtracky synth creep, the record seems to spend most of it's time pulsating through autobahn like expanses of sleeky synthy futurism, and groovy electro-synth, pop weirdness, the songs super varied, and featuring a surprising array of vocalists, and vocal styles, which gives the record a distinctly twisted outsider vibe. Killer stuff, and definitely recommended for the legions of aforementioned retro synth revivalists out there.
Pressed on 180 gram green vinyl, housed in super striking silver on green jackets, and LIMITED TO 600 COPIES, each on hand numbered. Sold out at the label, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get.
We're really feeling the early house music vibe these days. Sometimes we just want to slip into some tiny hot pants and roller boogie away (sez Allan? Scott? Andee?). At least that's the feeling we get from this comp from Ghana's prodigious keyboardist Kiki Gyan and his disco-era music from 1978 through 1982. As this release's liner notes explain, Gyan got into recording disco tracks after he defected from Osibisa, the influential pan-African outfit that helped start the whole UK Afro-rock scene in the late '60s. In his post-Osibisa years, Gyan continued fusing African highlife sounds, jazz, blues, soul, and rock with fellow Osibisa defectors. As Gyan became swept up in Europe's cocaine-fuelled party scene, he and collaborator recorded the title track. "24 Hours In A Disco" has all the lush violin arrangements and falsetto vocals common to popular '70s disco tracks, but it also includes a bongo breakdown! Unfortunately Gyan wasn't always the nicest guy, and he stripped Ayivor's vocals from the original recording and re-released it in Nigeria without his bandmate's permission so as to horde the profits. That's the version you're getting on this comp. We haven't heard the original, but with its super-tight conga playing, this one is still pretty spectacular. On "Keep on Dancing" Gyan adds steel drumming into the mix along with a cowbell breakdown. "Disco Dancer" features some great syncopated hand-clapping and Gyan's slap bass work and funky keyboard lines. The atmospheric vocals here will lift any disco denizen into the heavens. Many of the tracks would be right at home at Larry Levan's Paradise Garage or even David Mancuso's super-underground Loft parties. All the cuts on this comp work really well as a cohesive album and you'll find yourself playing it from start to end and then back to the start again!
First V/VM Test release that isn't a completely moronic conceptual art piece of shit. H>OST is the work of Polish artist Jacek Toszek. Cold and beautiful sonic landscapes much like those found in his native land, Toszek captures and embraces the frigidity
This is the previously unreleased 1979 sequel to Bruce Haack's 1970 "Electric Lucifer" LP, perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere. The robotic voices and
Wow, now someone's done a first-time-on-vinyl version of this interesting Bruce Haack artifact. It came out on cd about 13 years ago, that's now out of print, and this is what we said then:
This is the previously unreleased 1979 sequel to Bruce Haack's 1970 Electric Lucifer LP, perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere. The robotic voices and mechanical rhythms that made the first Electric Lucifer such a cult kitsch classic are still present on Book II, although it's perhaps more poppy and goofy and less disturbingly weird than its predecessor. Aside from that one (not-too-successful) major label release, Haack's career from the '60s through the early '80s focused on self-released electronic children's records, which while certainly amusing (and of interest for his innovative home-built synths), of course don't come close to the trippy electro-rock and serious religious themes of the Electric Lucifer concept. Book II is a definite treat for Haack fans, nice to have it on vinyl, and lookin' good.
If you're like us, you can never get enough Bruce Haack. Pretty much everything he touched was amazing, as well as way ahead of its time from a technical standpoint. Haack's genius, however, is that at the core of his strange electronic music is real emotional depth.
The most obvious comparison for Bruce Haack's sound would be Kraftwerk, and surely both parties were taking electronic music into unprecedented new territories. It's a bit of a lazy comparison though, as Haack's pioneering work actually predated Kraftwerk as most people know them, and it overlooks how unique Haack's approach to songwriting was. Haack is most famous for the Electric Lucifer album, definitely his strongest and most conceptually realized statement, but he also made children's music, as well as some more, shall we say "adult-themed" compositions. There was even an Electric Lucifer Book 2 and a number of perfect pop singles. Farad (the name of the homemade vocoder he used extensively, named in honor of famed British scientist Michael Farraday but also sounding a bit like "far out") collects prime cuts from 1970 to 1982, showing an artist who remained true to his initial vision while continuing to break boundaries. Haack was a man who wanted to share his songs with the world, as evidenced by a quote in this album, and accordingly, his music is very fun to listen to. Songs like "Rita" are really beyond any sort of reference point, just weird and beautiful and insanely poppy gems that even today sound beyond anything else. Other numbers like "Man Kind" from the Haackula album are spacey sci-fi romps filled with all kinds of great analog atmosphere and evocative vocoded lyrics that flow like bizarre little nursery rhymes. Then you get some racier stuff from the 80s like "Snow Job" and "Program Me", the latter of which resurrects a song from the Electric Lucifer and re-envisions it in a colder, more robotic way for some great results. Haack even proves with 1982's "Party Machine" that he was fully ready to embrace the progression of electronic dance music while still sounding unlike anyone else. It's crazy to listen to the more playful material alongside the epic storytelling of the Electric Lucifer tracks, as you realize Haack grasped so many types of music with a wide range of emotions, and merged this with bold electronic innovation. As a compilation, Stones Throw have done a great job here, making this the obvious place to start for anyone unfamiliar with Haack's work while also being a great collection of some of his strongest songs. Awesome.
Wow. This is a real "believe it or not" release. We thought we knew all about eccentric electropop pioneer Bruce Haack (1931-1988). Omni's reissue of Haack's 1969 psychedelic synth classic The Electric Lucifer was an automatic Record Of The Week for us. But we'd never heard of Haackula before. However, it lives up to its billing as a "lost classic of outsider electronica" for sure. At first, we weren't sure what to expect, putting it on with some excitement and trepidation... rest assured, we now have big smiles on our faces. Haackula is playful and perverse, and perhaps more than a little bit paranoid. Imagine Perrey and Kingsley on some bad acid. Haack's electronically effected vocals here continue the wordplay that he delighted in on The Electric Lucifer but now, shockingly, some swear words have crept in, for instance he drops the f-bomb in the first song "Lie Back", wherein he also rhymes "schizoid" with "shitzoid"!
Bruce Haack unleashed his Moogs (and warped imagination) in his bedroom studio to create Haackula back in 1978, but it remained officially unreleased until now. Possibly 'cause a large portion of Haack's discography consists of records for children, we were really surprised by the R-rated content of Haackula. And the R isn't just for robotic. There's a song called "Blow Job" fer chrissakes. Perhaps this is why it never saw the light of day in Haack's lifetime...
Haack's homebuilt synths and rhythm machines bleep and bloop, shuffle and shudder, conjuring an alternate universe of electronic computer funk wackier and weirder and way more off-kilter than anything Kraftwerk was up to at the time. The musical sense of childlike innocence with which Haack was so adept is still happening here, these tracks are as tuneful and catchy as ever, but his mystical ideas are joined by sexual themes... where The Electric Lucifer was astrological, Haackula is scatological. Adult realities are confronting the outsider, making Haackula's haunted house electronics all the more eerie, while the bizzaro-factor (plus Haack's aforementioned songwriting skills) insure that it's all very entertaining, gleefully so.
And if Haackula itself wasn't cool enuff, there two equally mindblowing bonus tracks. First there's Bruce Haack's 1982 proto-hiphop collaboration with Def Jam's Russell Simmons, an 8 minute track entitled "Party Machine" that features funky Herbie Hancock "rockit" style grooves and deep distorted vocals laying down such science as "Haack attack is back... Bruce Haack... Anti-wack." Damn!
The other bonus track included is an epic 32:15 piece called "Icarus" that would have made a fine release all by itself. Commissioned in 1979 to accompany an avant-garde art exhibition in Guadalajara, it's a sensational soundscape of everything from mad scientist laboratory burbling to faux-classical fantasias, frightening noise and groovy beats...
Omni has done their usual nice job with this. It's remastered from the original master tapes, and includes a thick booklet. Extensive, informative liner notes tell the story of Haack's "lost years", about his psychological ups and downs, how his passion for music and technology (and the two together!) never flagged despite his lack of major label success after The Electric Lucifer failed to take the world by storm... we also learn how he hooked up with hiphop producer Simmons, though we're left wondering if any DJs back in the day ever got their hands on it. As well, the cd booklet includes vintage photos and lyrics to all the Haackula songs.
Like we said, believe it or not, it's true. Haackula lives!!
Working with Raymond Scott, Bruce Haack developed his own very bizarre, though very distinct brand of electronic composition using self-built machines. These recordings, from between 1969 and 1970, are simple songs ostensibly for children (includes a strange version of "This Old Man") in the tradition of Raymond Scott. But this is no bliss for babies--this is analogue, vocoder, acid weirdness. Several of the tracks are pulled from his legendary album The Electric Lucifer, an electronic opera of the battle between Heaven and Hell. So don't buy this for your children, buy it for your next trip.
Can you imagine if "Music To Moog By" maestro Gershon Kingsley had dropped acid, joined a commune, got religion, and jammed with the Silver Apples and Lothar And The Hand People? That might approximate what the unique, wondrous psych-pop "Mooglove" of 1970's The Electric Lucifer sounds like!
YES!!! It's about time. We've always wanted this album to come out on cd. This HAD to be our Record Of The Week. Heck, years and years ago, Allan (long before he worked at Aquarius) became a bit obsessed with this record. He'd found a beat-up old LP of it at a yard sale, bought it mainly 'cause of the title and the freaky colorful cover graphics, and then was blown away by the weird music within. It's what we've described as being "perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere." Allan actually went so far as to try to track down Bruce Haack for an interview, but without any luck (turns out Haack had already passed away back in 1988, a couple years before Allan discovered the record). And Allan's not the only one here at AQ to have a longtime soft spot for this record... so we're all so happy that it's finally, FINALLY been given the cd reissue treatment. It's absurd, really, that this wasn't reissued sooner. The legend of eccentric electronica pioneer Bruce Haack has only grown in recent years. There's been several compilations of his work (Hush Little Robot was the best, since it featured a couple tantalizing cuts from this album), expensive imported Japanese reissues of several of his Moog music albums for kids, a posthumous Electric Lucifer sequel from the vaults, and even a documentary released on DVD, entitled Haack - The King Of Techno! But Haack's crowning glory, his masterpiece The Electric Lucifer, wasn't available at all. Until now. And The Omni Recording Corporation (a label new to us) have done it right, even down to the very welcome notion of including a 5-minute track of silence to separate the 13 tracks of the album proper from the over thirty minutes of additional bonus material that they've added on -- which consists of a 1970 Canadian radio interview with Haack on the subject of Electric Lucifer and an alternate take of "Electric To Me Turn". The packaging is top notch as well, reproducing the amazing artwork and Haack's trippy sleevenotes from the original LP (wherein he discusses his concept of "Powerlove"), plus cramming tons of additional stuff into the thick cd booklet. There's loving liner notes by several of Haack's friends and colleagues and lots of vintage photos and graphics. Nicely done.
How can we explain the utter charm of this album? Well it's about as psychedelic as you can get, a concept album that's futuristic and Biblically ancient at the same time. Haack used an electronic "computer voice" (long before it was cliche) that he named FARAD, as well as regular human vocals, to convey deep Age of Aquarius astrological/philosophical concepts, sometimes in the form of sinister liturgies, at others like playful rhyming lullabies. These Moogy, moody and groovy compositions feature churchy organ sounds, bleeps and bloops, and rhythmic percolations that wouldn't sound out of place in the Star Wars cantina. There's lugubrious droney passages, mechanical beats, switched-on classical flourishes, and musique concrete style sound collage. Very weird *and* oh-so-catchy. It's definitely every bit as wonderful and essential as the Silver Apples albums, which we know so many AQ patrons love dearly. Again, we're so happy this has been reissued. Highest recommendation. Listen to the love angel, people!
Are the Lexington, KY group unfortunately named Hair Police attempting to dethrone the Digital Hardcore crew? Sure sounds like it. Cacaphonous art punk angst in a head-on collision with a very DHR sonic barrage. One dozen brief, thick'n'murky tracks of
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Laurel Halo's last record, Quarantine, was a big hit around there, but it was also maybe her most divisive album yet, the vocals being a big sticking point for some, those vocals seemed to be the defining element of that record, in a way they had never been before. The vocals stark and unaffected, meant to ascribe a sort of fragility and vulnerability to LH's voice, but for some people, the heavily sample/processed vocals of the earlier releases were sorely missed. So for those folks, Chance Of Rain might just might do the trick, as it is, as far as we can tell, almost entirely instrumental, barring a few sample snippets here and there. And as if to make up for the missing vocals, the rhythms seem to have been pushed to the fore, cranked up to the point that much of Chance Of Rain almost sounds like Laurel Halo's take on Footwork. Think DJ Rashad, RP Boo, DJ Nate, Young Smoke, Halo seeming to build her psychedelic electronic landscapes from maddeningly repetitive loops and samples, often it's subtle, those stuttering loops blurred into dreamy Field like electro-bliss, but just as often, those repeated rhythms add fantastic tension, the best moments for us being when the sound is dialed WAY down, the looped stutter muted and minimal, the sound locked into a tranced out hypno-groove, that could go on forever!
Plenty of the record harkens back to past Laurel Halo jams, but even the familiar sounds are recast, even the dreamiest tracks, dark with sonic tension, rife with brooding minor key melancholia, lush textures in constant motion, except when they're not, and the tracks seem to lock into a glorious moment of sonic stasis, only to launch right back into the song proper. The sounds themselves tend toward the murky, the record for the most part super dark, shadowy and muted, but then a track like "Thrax" bursts out of the mire, a gout of sci-fi skitter, and synthed out squelch, only to slip right back into another sprawl of murk-house footwork minimalism, a fantastic blast of claustrophobic skittery electro-gloom, which is fast making this maybe our favorite Laurel Halo record yet...
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Record number two from this new wave dreamgaze ambient electro wave songstress, and just like the first one it's a dizzying blend of synthed out electro, dark witch house-y creep and shoegazey 4AD style dream pop, all woven into a gorgeous, groovy bit of electronic skitter and stutter, but unlike the first record, this one seems to be mostly instrumental, the only real vocals seem to be sampled, and then processed and manipulated, conjuring up the same sort of murky abstract soul as Burial or How To Dress Well, but here, that's wedded to something much more upbeat and propulsive, record opener is serious groover, all hazy layered vocal samples, skittery big beats, and wooshy synths, not to mention some buzzy basslines and washed out shoegazey ambience. The second track does have vocals, but it's more like she's using her voice to make layers of sound, long tones held forever and wreathed in echo and delay, while beats careen undeneath, and all around shimmery melodies whirl and swirl, it's the one song here that most resembles the first record, channeling a little Zola Jesus, Tamaryn, etc.
Track three, "Head" starts out all glitchy and minimal, before exploding in a psychedelic squall, only to dissipate leaving a super minimal, skeletal heroin house pulse, while "Speed Of Rain" is the most polished and new wavey, heavy on the swirly dreamy 4AD shimmer, only to quickly give way to the 9 minute title track, which is low slung and ominous, taking some of that Goblin / Carpenter soundtrack sound and fusing it to something much more groovy and druggy and later night, and then finally there's the closer, "Strength In Free Space", which is the dreamiest of the bunch, another vocal driven song, but even more then the other one, this one's all hazy and gauzy and washed out and dreamy, like a much less lo-fi dancefloor friendly Grouper, which is most certainly not a bad thing.
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Yet another addition to the ever expanding ambient dreamgaze electro-wave songstress scene, which is a genre we just made up, but one that does sort of actually exist, if not in name, certainly in sound, modern musicians channeling the spirit of early 4AD, eighties and nineties dance music, Kate Bush, Siouxsie, and similarly shoegazey/gothic electronic pop, into something swirling and ethereal and space-y and groovy and rhythmic and well, like a more MODERN gothic shoegazey electro pop. Ladies like Zola Jesus, Tamaryn, Glasser, and the like, now joined by Laurel Halo, a one woman newwavedreamgaze band from NYC by way of Michigan, Halo channels an abstract, danceable and slightly witchy mutant form of electronica, a little bit of the outsider home brewed R&B of How To Dress Well, a little of the witch house sound of her pals Balam Acab, a little synthy new wave drift a la another of her pals Oneohtrix Point Never, but all filtered through the Cocteau Twins, and Kate Bush, and classic decades-ago MTV, and transformed into a delicate, crystalline, but still seriously propulsive and groovy bit of drifty, floaty, washed out echo drenched eighties style electronic pop, but with plenty of that modern futuristic retro sheen, that has the club kids all in a tizzy.
WOW! Hyperdub kills it again (see Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland's new jam Black Is Beautiful, reviewed last list)! Quarantine is the debut full length from Laurel Halo, whose previous ep releases are among some of our favorite in modern experimental electronic pop music, and here on her first full length, she presents us with a work that is both explorative and deeply emotive. The tunes here are more on the King Felix ep side of things, in that they are most definitely "songs" (as opposed to her more experimental techno leanings on the Hour Logic ep, and the music she makes under the somewhat confusing King Felix moniker). Beautiful intertwining multi-tracked vocal melodies floating on top of layers and layers of gorgeous cosmic synth drones, muted rumbling drum machines, and amorphous atmospherics ricocheting from one ear to the other, but all beautifully placed in the mix, giving it a subtle sort of hypnotic quality. "Airsick", the first jam, is an underwater, gurgling and bubbling beauty. Plenty of space for her voice to be the focus, but underneath a woozy piano sample rubs up against some projector reel like hiss rhythms, while dreamy synths play the progression with ease. All the lines are blurred and the music seems to effortlessly expand and contract.
This sort of natural, organic confidence is a strand that continues throughout Quarantine, the sounds totally spaced out, yet reigned in in a way that ultimately ends up bolstering the quality of the song. The third number "Thaw" starts with a deep and dark square wave drone with looped atonal strings and pitch bent bells eventually giving way to an absolutely BEAUTIFUL broken and bouncy arpeggiated progression. Slowly, new sounds are subliminally introduced, delay drenched and 'verbed to the max skree, and oscillating chirps swelling underneath the sheen of the song. All the while the vocal melodies, double tracked and harmonized the whole time, remain very much exposed above the mix, with very little effects, giving the lyrics and delivery a vulnerable feeling, which is an extremely interesting effect when paired with such far-out sonic experimentation. "Carcass" which is undeniably the darkest and weirdest tune of the bunch (and possibly our fave) is an industrial tinged, hypno-trance bubbling acidic roller. A pitch black, syncopated bass synth line unfurls, the filters opening and closing slowly, as the deep and cold synth squelch and atonal high pitch textures swirl and morph. Layers of synth and samples coalesce into an altogether punchdrunk outta body high, and than suddenly the vocals enter. The vocals on "Carcass" are astounding! Pitch shifted and bent all out of shape, her voice sounding like it's being transmitted from some wayward space station, the feedback of the faulty connection providing dark space overtones to an already harrowing vocal melody. GORGEOUS! And a little scary and overwhelming. We could go on and on, as all the tracks here are excellent, but why spoil all the fun of discovery!
Quarantine is fast becoming a favorite around here, and with good reason. Laurel Halo's music is extremely blissful, but not in a "shoegazey" sort of way, or really in any sort of way that you can pinpoint a super specific reference. Those references are of course there, but she blurs the lines with a deft hand. It's a new type of bliss. Futuristic bliss! A very bold, beautiful, inventive, and wholly singular record. Very, very impressive debut. Can't wait to hear what's next!
Hamijama is a collaboration between Jake Mandell and Safety Scissors. This single for Beta Bodega (a label with a propensity for presenting their electronica within rambling pseudo-intellectual drivel) runs between Kim Rapatti / Mono Junk style techno groove minimalism and mid-'90s AFX / Autechrist melodic angularities.
Sound artist Joseph Hammer was a member of the legendary/infamous LAFMS (Los Angeles Free Music Society), and on I Love You, Please Love Me Too, he takes everyday sounds, and creates something far from everyday. It's a gloriously head spinning Plunderphonic style collage of loops and snippets and samples, old dusty records, snatches of radio broadcasts, tapes of old performances, all layered and mashed into a swirling sonic stew, repeated motifs melt into warped and warbly murk, pianos tinkle, vocals swoop and soar, different languages, jazzy horns, chugging metal guitars, skittery programmed drums, jangle and crunch and grind and swoon. RnB gives way to nu-metal, yacht rock gives way to new age, but chopped and sliced and diced and recontextualized so each element is just a part of the bigger, constantly mutating whole. The A side seems more jumbled, a relentless onslaught of stuttering sound, a swirling flurry of tangled melodies and ever shifting voices and instruments, flurries of shards and fragments in constant motion, while somehow, the second side seems more serene, the sounds blurred and smeared into something slightly more linear, the pitch and speed still constantly changing, a warped woozy sprawl of psychedelic, ADD plunderphonic pop.
LIMITED TO 330 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and like all releases on Pan, the vinyl is 140 gram, and is housed in a thick jacket, which itself is presented in a super elaborate and psychedelic two colored PVC plastic sleeve, with eye popping tripped out geometric designs.
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Now domestically priced: Japanese avant-chanteuse Hanayo (whom some will recall from her collaboration with German electronica hotboy Panacea) here presents another collaborative work, this time with a whole host of international electronic/experimental artists, including Terre Thaemlitz, Curd Duca, Merzbow, Patric Catani, Stilluppsteypa, Christophe de Babalon, and others. So it's a varied mix of digital hardcore, electronic pop, abstract noise, and everything in between, with Hanayo's little-girl voice holding forth over all, whether her collaborators provide atmosphere or chaos...nice.
We never really got that into Handsome Furs before, a husband and wife duo, who are now on record number three, we did review a record of theirs WAY back, and described them as sounding like Bright Eyes meets U2, which is definitely difficult to understand in the light of this new one. We almost didn't even give it a chance, considering our disinterest in past HF outings, but holy shit are we glad we did. This new one is all dark and electronic and gloomy, a sort of gothic synth wave or something, just check out "Damage", the perfect mix of retro eighties synth sounds, and new sort of post punk gloom, swaggery and low slung, tense and dramatic and minor key, the sort of thing that a band like Interpol would kill for, although here it sounds like Interpol crossed with some lost eighties VHS soundtrack.
And while that's THEE jam here, and well worth the price of admission on its own, there's plenty to love here, the loping new wave swagger of "Memories Of The Future", with it's pulsing synths and Depeche Mode like melodies, "Bury Me Standing" is a total eighties throwback, classic MTV style electro synth pop, but the vocals, a dead ringer for Woven Hand's David Eugene Edwards, gives the song (and all the songs here) an extra gravitas that most synth pop is missing. "Cheap Music" is the punkest of the bunch, with it's buzzing guitar, and propulsive big beat, and the record closes with the 7 minute "No Feelings" which is the perfect hybrid of eighties synth pop, and noisy post punk gloom, thick squalls of corrosive guitars dotting an otherwise new wavey groove. We'd dig even deeper, but we just can't seem to stop listening to "Damage"...
Some of the coolest packaging we've seen in a while, a full color gatefold digipak, with naked lady posing beneath an overpass on the front, while inside, lots of pix of young Asian men at some sort of water park, the booklet wrapped in see through printed front and back covers, so the artwork is superimposed over the images underneath, and the actual cd sleeve too, made from printed color plastic. Nice.
So as Barn Owl made their way home from Austin, Texas this past spring, they made a pit stop in the ominous town of Tulsa Oklahoma to hang out with friend and owner of Digitalis records, Brad Rose. They got into Tulsa just in time, as a huge storm had followed in their wake. And with a dark looming sky of black clouds and the threat of a tornado touching down any second, what else could they do besides stay inside and record some dark psychedelic drooooones? And this they did, and the result is a new project called Hanging Thief, named after the giant, praying mantis-like insect that frequents Rose's porch. Barn Owl, Rose and his wife Eden together sculpt a slow rising monolith that gently creeps up from the cracked Oklahoma soil. Hazy vocals, faint synth sorcery and heavy guitar droning melt together into two 30 minute sides of slow building, grim atmospheric psychedelia. Limited to an edition of 150, this tape is pro-dubbed and decked out in killer hand drawn artwork by Eden, don't be sorry you missed out on this ritual offering of analog sorcery!
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Wow! Long-lost (or neglected) tapes starring electronic krautrock luminaries Moebius and Roedelius (of Cluster) and Michael Rother (of Neu!), and Brian Eno!
On first glance you'd definitely be forgiven for thinking this was a reissue of some lost sound library recordings. The cover looks properly sixties, and the layout and song titles definitely look like those thrift store records you always dream about finding. And throwing it on doesn't do much to dissuade you from that notion, loungy exotica, shuffling jazzy bossa nova, bleeping bloopy space-y interludes, weirdly antiquated lo-fi synth funk, dreamy elevator music, ominous spy movie music, all with shimmering zithers, warm fuzzed out organs, and all the other perfectly sixties sounds you'd expect. Which is a pretty mean feat considering Harmonic 33 is all the work of one man, hip hop producer Mark Pritchard, who recorded all this just last year! Occasionally there will be some subtle studio trickery, that hints at the record's more modern genesis, but in the context of the whole disc, it just makes it sound extra weird and extra cool. We had actually listened to this record over and over for weeks, totally digging it, all the while thinking it was indeed some sixties reissue, and we were pretty amazed to find out it wasn't. Not sure how hip hop headz will react to this, as it's pretty straight up, no extra funky beats, or superfluous scratching, but fans of cocktail jazz exotica and found sounds and weird sixties lps, will definitely dig this, and can decide for themselves if they too would have fallen for it had we not spilled the beans. Falling for it or not, this is just an awesome slab of spaced out, funky, jazzy, groovy, lounge-y exotica! Dig it!
The final release from a series of collaborations commissioned by the Canadian hard-electronica label Hushush finds Mick Harris (Scorn, Lull, Quiot, etc.) working with Belgian industrialists Ambre. It appears that Ambre supplied a large arsenal of samples to
Reissued and remastered for the first time on vinyl since its initial 1980 release, and previously long out of print on cd too, this beautiful collaboration between minimalist composer / experimental trumpeter Jon Hassell and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno has never sounded better! Such a gorgeous classic. Made between Eno's production work on Larajji's Ambient 3: Days of Radiance and the David Byrne collaboration, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, Possible Musics was an early investigation into world music influences tempered through modern, Western studio techniques (synth treatments, tape delay, echo effects) resulting in a music of a borderless hybrid world of geographical intrigue. It greatly influenced the future-primitive recordings of My Life In The Bush of Ghosts made only ten days after the Fourth World sessions finished, though really they are different sides of the same coin.
Hassell, studied under Pandit Pran Nath and learned to transcribe Indian classical vocal techniques to the sound of the trumpet. Through various effects, he is able to conjure a vast array of sounds and textures, animalistic and mystical, sometimes flute-ish and even didgeridoo-ish. It never once sounds like a trumpet. There are definitely influences of Aboriginal, African, island and tribal music, but the aim feels more topographical than ethnological. The slow and deep attention to detail like the timbre of strings, the deep pulse of water drums and the loping liquid rhythms suggest big expanses of weather and terrain, movement and landscape. Hassell's trumpet treatments processed through Frippertronic-like tape loops and reverse echo effects are like deep rain clouds slowly moving across sparse tundra but seen and heard at a far distance. And indeed the whole album has this remote field recording quality like one is witness to something far-off, slightly foreboding, perhaps mystical, but also magnetic and alien, especially felt on the final side-long track "Charm (Over 'Burundi Cloud')". One of our favorites of the whole Eno/Ambient catalog!! Vinyl version comes with a copy of the cd.
