Another awesome chunk of retro pop weirdness from Olde English Spelling Bee, this one from the truly baffling Autre Ne Veut. Unlike the rest of the current crop of John Hughes worshipping garage pop new wave revisionists, who mix their retro leanings with modern bits of rocking indie crunch or hypnogogic swirl, the music of ANV is totally removed from any modern musical movement. It definitely has that eighties soundtrack vibe, a weird minimal synth pop, with keening falsetto vox, woozy synth bass, stumbling skeletal rhythms, cheesy electronic drums, super dramatic melodies, reminding us more of Terence Trent D'Arby, Erasure, Prefab Sprout, Scritti Politti, groups like that, and it almost sounds like every track here is from a musical montage from a cheesy eighties straight to video teen movie, the kind you only see at 4am in a hotel in some godforsaken town, where everything closes at 9pm, so you're forced to stay in your room, eating food from the gas station watching whatever is on whatever janky cable channels they have at the Motel 6, and somehow you find yourself riveted. And these are the songs you somehow find stuck in your head. And that's the thing, for all of their cheesiness and retro-ness, these jams are pretty irresistible, like the theme from Beverly Hills Cop, or Breakfast Club, or Pretty In Pink, but once removed, less obviously poppy, but still crazy catchy, more synthy, more cheesy, and sort of more alien and abstract, but at the same time cooler, and weirder, rife with strangely lush vocal harmonies, washed out sci-fi synths, occasional bits of twisted effects, and some of the coolest weirdest (synth) pop songs ever.
Strange and wonderful and definitely a new favorite...
Finally! The long out of print nineties releases from legendary industrial / power electronics / UK noise / black drone one man band AX once again see the light of day. Longtime fans of the mighty Skullflower, will no doubt be familiar with AX, the project of one time SF member Anthony Di Franco, who also did time in a number of other bands you might also be familiar with: Ramleh, Novatron, Ethnic Acid, JFK. But we always had a soft spot for AX, whose first two vinyl lps (collected here), Nova Feedback and II, originally released in 1994 and 1995 respectively, were for some of us our first taste of power electronics, and unlike much of the more harsh, ear shredding power electronics, AX trafficked in something much more droned out, a sound that whether intentionally or not, seemed to foreshadow the sort of slowburn sludge, and crumbling slo-mo ultra-doom that would follow. It's hard not to hear hints of Earth and SUNNO))) and Bunkur and Khanate or even groups like Troum and Maeror Tri, for all of its noise, and it IS noisy, that noise is sculpted in such a way as to render it impossibly listenable, totally hypnotic, and utterly mesmerizing. You can almost imagine a primitive hybrid of Troum and SUNNO))), the dark trancelike dronescape of the former, fused to the impossible black hole heaviness of the latter, but then the whole thing doused in a haze of caustic industrial crunch, and liberal swaths of grinding howling feedback.
This collection opens up strangely enough with one track that is NOT from either of those two 12"s, but is instead plucked off AX's only proper full length cd, 1997's Astronomy, but that track, "Kortex", is definitely the perfect opener, and in some ways the perfect introduction to AX. The doomiest of the bunch by far, due in no small part to its plodding slow motion 'beat', a gristly metronomic crunch, that sounds like a snare hit slowed down a hundred times and run through a bank of dead distortion pedals, over which Di Franco lays down a churning layer of crumbling blackened distortion, wreathing those plodding squashed bug beats in squalls of overloaded powergrid buzz, it's a sort of primitive electron-level ultra doom, snakelike tendrils of hiss wrapped around sheets of grinding metallic buzz, all driven by that sinister blacknoise pulse. Which leads directly into "Nova Feedback 1", a swirling psychedelic wash of rumbling black buzz, and phased out thrum, evoking the whole guitar-against-the-amp style near-static minimalist doomdirge. Fans of the late great Vulture Club and other practitioners of that sort of doomdronedrift will be in heaven.
"Heavy Fluid" is near symphonic, a sprawling 11 minute soundscape of layered guitar buzz, gristly electronics, shards of static, clouds of hiss, some serious proto-SUNN extreme slo-mo heaviness, which had us thinking a bit of another recent aQ fave, Blackwolfgoat, unfurling an endless cascade of woozy guitar buzz and melting blackened psychedelic riffage, the tones shifting constantly, as if someone was continually fiddling with the pitch knob, or more likely, an endless fiddling with the tuners, letting notes morph into other notes, to dip down into an even murkier thrum, before slowing drifting into a near howl. The sort of track, that we could listen to ENDLESSLY, only really exploding about 8 minutes in, when the original detuned creep is barraged by scrapes and squiggles and an avalanche of still more roiling guitarnoise. There are moments of pure noise, "Theme One", is in fact pretty much a four minute blast of face melting, ultra corrosive, blacknoise blur, but it almost acts like a palette cleanser, as it leads directly into the title track, which might be the most tranquil jam here, again foreshadowing the sort of bleak black soundscapery of groups like Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer or Gnaw Their Tongues, a gorgeously abject stretch of haunting post industrial buzz and hum, super cinematic, laced with all manner of grinding guitar noise, and strange moans and creaks, slipping easily from hushed drift, to cavernous bellow, and back again.
We then move into the two tracks from AX's II 12", the first a 10+ minute of grinding power electronics bliss out, which after an opening blast of speaker destroying crunch, seems to gradually settle into something more spaced out and atmospheric, but really no less noisy, buried voices, shards of feedback, and all manner of metallic crunch, are blurred and smeared into a softly heaving sprawl of dense, droned out, psychedelic free-noise drift. The second part begins as a low level hum, distant heaving moans buried beneath layers of static and hum, super dense and tense, the perfect cue for the final shot in some long lost seventies horror movie, but soon the haunting elements are all but subsumed by the swirling noise, the result a roiling sea of hiss and howl, grinding metals and churning buzz.
Finally, the collection finishes off with the last two tracks from Nova Feedback, the first, a dreamily psychedelic swirl of prismatic deconstructed guitar shimmer, and process chordal whirl, pulsing and pulsating, easily the prettiest track here, those strange melodies a recurring theme throughout the track, but gradually pulled apart and recontextualized, drifting dreamily one second, chopped up, looped and layered the next, wreathed in delay and reverb, and sent swirling into the ether, keening melodies over soft focus background guitarnoise, here rendered a dreamlike haze, totally hypnotic, and strangely tranquil. And finally, "Cluster" finishes things off, with what sounds like a classic chunk of black metal buzz, but here looped and layered and stretched out into an endless stretch of guitarbuzz mesmer, again reminding us of Blackwolfgoat, or perhaps Mick Barr, if he was restrained to just using the lowest strings, but that sort of near symphonic buzz, a churning tangle of blackened riffage, but blurred into something much more amorphous, a dreamlike cloud of psychedelic black shimmer, that is the perfect finish, to a near perfect collection.
Needless to say EXTREMELY recommended, and not just for nineties industrial obsessives (although obviously, for those folks, this is a no brainer), but if you dig minimal guitar mesmer, psychedelic doom, abstract heaviness, post industrial soundscaping, all strains of drone, especially heavy guitardrone, this collection will blow your mind.
We've been meaning to list more releases on Medical Records, one of the coolest reissue labels going these days. The label describes themselves as "Purveyors of classic synth, cosmic disco, wave (cold/new), and future music", and in the past have brought us killer reissues from Der Plan, Deutsche Wertarbeit, and Alexander Robotnick, with tons more we've yet to review (but hopefully will soon!). But we can't think of a better way to start our Medical Records review campaign than this amazing record, 1983's Novels For The Moon, by the awesomely named Axxess, aka French multimedia artist Patrick Mimran, a record whose genesis is nearly as interesting as the record itself. But before we get to that, just know that ANYone into the current crop of psych-space-synth retro-futurists, a la Zombi, Majeure, Umberto, Gatekeeper, Dylan Ettinger, Nightsatan, Blizaro, Xander Harris, Roll The Dice and all the rest, should grab one of these right now!
So, the story goes, that Mimran was working as a top executive at Lamborghini Motors (the exotic sports car / race car company), when he made this record, and originally released it on, believe it or not, Lamborghini's own record label (which had us wondering what other Lamborghini Records releases might be lurking out there?!). His music was heavily influenced by the German krautrock of the time (Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, etc.), and he even commissioned a German engineer to build him a custom synthesizer, a much more complex version of one that the same engineer had earlier designed for Tangerine Dream! And in a further connection to Tangerine Dream, Novels For The Moons was recorded with help from TD member Christopher Franke (who was also in Agitation Free). Needless to say, sonically, this Axxess album has much in common with Tangerine Dream, but also with the creepy synth soundtracks of Goblin and John Carpenter, the sounds on the record ranging from pulsing space disco, to haunting ominous synth soundtrackery, to blissed out kosmische new age, often all of those combined.
On first listen, you'll be shocked at how much the current crop of synth wranglers sound like Axxess, an artist probably most of them have never heard, but who no doubt will be immediately obsessed with, how could they not be? The tracks mesmerizing and hypnotic, sequenced melodies, pulsing rhythms, the Kraftwerk vibe HUGE in places, thick swaths of kosmische drift, swirls of new agey shimmer, much of this sounds like mysterious B-movie soundtracks, chase scenes, credit sequences, others sound like background music from some seriously tripped out seventies nature program, all of it sounds druggy and cosmic, soaring and epic and impossibly catchy, driving and pulsating, pulsing and mesmerizing, beyond the classic synth sounds, there's plenty of other craziness going on as well, strange processed vocals, intense stereo panning, even wild monkey screeches on one track, but it's all somehow woven into the whole, which most definitely works as an album proper, but whose sound slip seamlessly from dark and ominous, to playful and goofy, to intense and driving, krautrocky and blissed out one minute, groovy and darkly psychedelic the next. So totally recommended.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES! Each one hand numbered. Pressed on 180 gram yellow vinyl, housed in a reproduction of the original jacket, with a 12"x12" printed insert with liner notes including pictures of the synth used to make the record, a history of the record and its creation, and an interview with Patrick Mimran!
The two most recent records put out by ultra hip experimental electronic label Triangle, finds that label continuing to push well past the 'witch house' genre ghetto that birthed them. To be fair, the first few proper releases on Triangle, Holy Other, Clams Casino, and Balam Acab, were already a sort of POST witch house strain anyway, with some of the WH tropes retained, but with those groups upping the production big time, and ditching much of the lo-fi drag that defined the best witch house, and in the process, inventing a new electronica. Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the new record from SF electro weirdos Water Borders, a dizzying slab of Coil worshipping electronic what the fuck genius, and then there's this, the debut from Ayshay, which also incorporates a bit of Coil into the proceedings, but there seem to be no beats at all, at least initially, channeling some sort of Cocteau Twins ethereal drift, with some processed throat singing style vocals as a bass, the only beat a buried pulse, it's pretty compelling, and darkly haunting, and beautiful for sure. The second track offers up more of the same, channeling Grouper and stripping away all that low fidelity murk and instead creating a lush layered symphony of voices, subtly twisted and tweaked, another spectral vocal bliss out, and in fact, the third track is more of the same, it's like a three part vocal song suite that acts as a sort of introduction to the final 12 minute "Nguzunguzu Megamix", which is in fact the first track with beats, and while we may have been expecting some sort of skittery drag, or murky muted low end throb, it actually plays more like some lost Muslimgauze remix, all skittery Eastern percussion, multiple drums and rhythms all tangled up, some hand claps, some serious low end, all over those ethereal vox from the first few tracks, the sound constantly shifting, the beat growing more and more block rockin as the track progresses until it finally blossoms into some almost jungle near the end, the stutter and skitter (and some BIG bass booms), perfectly woven into that strange shimmery swirl of ghostly vox. And it's those last few minutes that are the sort of warped and weird, beat heavy mystery secret weapon that some cool DJ will unleash from his sonic arsenal at just the right time and just destroy the dancefloor. So good, getting tons of play here at AQ and appropriately just in time for the Halloween season...
B. Moniker's "Station Identification" parallels the Cassetteboy album also recently reviewed, as a peurile form of People Like Us inspired plunderphonia / channel surfing electronica. This homebrewed concoction recontextualizes tons of non-placed media samples from a number of archetypal genres (i.e. mad scientists, kung-fu movies, gameshow hosts, televangelists, newscast pollsters, hyperbolic commercials, children's radio dramas, and quick tunings through the fm radio band) with a smug sense of irony. Far more reliant upon musical interludes than the never-ending barrage of vocal cut-ups on Cassetteboy, B. Moniker forces his dialogues into a melange of samples from Steinski-like hip-hop instrumentals, those sad post-rock grooves that punctuate the earnestness of "This American Life," and filtered Autechrish breakbeats, all topped off with whimsical casiotone melodies.
An Austrian band (we think) playing what they (or their label) like to call "slo-mo-kraut-progck". Hmm? Well what this is, is downtempo, bass-heavy post-rock with half-buried whispery female vox, all kinda creepy and emotionally portentous. The drummer's rhythms are plodding, head-nodding. There's lots of electronics filling out the sound, with both grand, dark synth washes and glitchy details. It's a late night cinematic sound, very moody, but maybe not quite as gripping as the vocalist wants it to be. It gets more interesting when they get heavier and freak out a bit instrumentally, adding clarinet, trumpet, violin, etc. to the mix.
MPEG Download: "Uv" [/audio/bosuv.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Uv" [/audio/bosuv.m3u]
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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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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This German experimental / electronica artist has taken to record rather 'warm' source material and manipulate the original sounds through a clinical editing process into rather hypnotic sequences. Momente is quite similar in feel to the best work of Oval (i.e. the 24 minute version of 'Diskont 94'). Recommended.
No, not the same Bad News which offered up a British version of Spinal Tap's heavy metal stupidity and awesomeness; although there is a certain incredulity about this Bad News as well. Of course, styles come and go with each season, and many of the sounds that defined the '60s, '70s, and '80s have eventually come back around through whatever cultural zeitgeist is spurning them on. So, this Bad News is one of several bands currently at the forefront of a minor movement that is pushing beyond the minimal wave aesthetic out of the early '80s and into the more aggressive, blustery sounds of industrial uttered by Wax Trax, PIAS, and Nettwerk from 1986 to 1990. Yeah, think Vivisect 6 era Skinny Puppy or Twitch era Ministry. Bad News is the work of Alex Lucas and Sarah Bernat, the latter being renowned for her work in the chairkickingly punk-as-fuck noise trio 16 Bitch Pile-up; and her bad-ass swagger on vocals and guitar is amply matched by the heavy sequencing and blister-popped electronics from Lucas. "Decay" sports a Missing Foundation / Skullflower guitar churn amidst a slow dive bomb squalor of electric noise and Bernat's gray-colored monotone vocals, with the rhythms and electronics embued with a heavy, machined plod. Sweaty. Smelly. Greasy. The title track throws a monophunk basskick into the foreground with hypnotically aggressive intentions matched by what could only be seen as an industrial strength / megaphone raga in which Bernat chants those titular words. "Typical Illusion" is Bad News' finest moment of post-hardcore riffage affixed to militantly double-timed rhythms and cluster bombs of heavy noise, electronic confusion, and ill will. If anybody remembers when Controlled Bleeding released a couple of really ho-hum records on Wax Trax in 1989, THIS is what Paul Lemos, et al. should have been doing.
We had this on cassette briefly, and we gotta say that the vinyl mastering job renders a truly superior product. Fucking rad.
From the always impressive Sygil label, who in the past has given us stunning releases from
Aurora Dorey Alice, Charnel House, Avakr, OS, Sky Projection and more, comes this gorgeous missive of witchy, washed out dark wave gloominess/dreaminess. Falling somewhere between the drifty murk of Grouper, and the gothic torch songs of Zola Jesus, Bad Psychic unfurls stately, hauntingly meditative gloom-ragas, with soaring, tranced out vocals, over a bed of roiling dark drones, and softly churning synths. Woozy loops, and layered melodies, bleed and blur into softly undulating sonic tapestries, sometimes tethered to a spare, skeletal rhythm, but often left to float weightless in a sprawl of blackened shimmer. Some tracks (like "Dance Spell") slip into a sound a bit more overtly new wave, but even then, it's still creepy, and hazy, and drowsily lo-fi. Opener "Fortune" sets the mood perfectly, with it's tranced out, almost chorale sounding mesmer, that druggy, drowsy vibe surfacing throughout the record, sometimes morphing into a grim kosmische sound, other times blossoming into near poppiness, but always shadowy, and grey, and darkly dreamlike. Even after just one listen, we were compelled to just lift the needle and put it right back at the beginning again.
Fans of witchy, dreamy dark pop, especially folks who were bummed on the most recent Zola Jesus record, will find themselves wishing that had sounded more like this. A dark, droney, hypnotic, gloom pop gem, that comes WAY recommended. Includes a download code as well. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered.
The hyperbolic sonic aggresion of Panacea is set aside for this side project dedicated to riding the new electro wave. Angular old-school robobeats, as heard on the amazing Electro Non-Stop compilation of a few months back.
Some of you might be familiar with Raz Mesinai from his work with the illbient/ambient dub project Sub Dub. If so you know that he has this great ability to get to eerie places in the music he creates. Growing up in Jerusalem he spent many of his formative years around Bedouins and really really latching onto their musical stylings. Then studying with dervish sheik Murshid Hassan he became a master of Middle Eastern drumming excelling in the playing of everything from bendir to zarb to darbukka. Meanwhile, he also studied extensively with folk musician and Hasidic rabbi Harov Shlomo Carlebach. All this background info really sets the stage for this outing as Badawai. The underlying tension in his homeland is no doubt a constant fuel for his music. Taking from both Palestinian and Jewish traditions he creates songs that are loaded with suspense and sizzle under the surface. With an amazing ensemble including Eyvind Kang, Marc Ribot and Mark Feldman the result is darn near flawless. It might just be a matter of moments before Mesani is snagged by a big film studio because we can't think of anyone better suited to score films filled with drama, mystery, suspense and horror. Wow.
Now released domestically!...When we first heard the Badly Drawn Boy, we couldn't believe our ears. Who was this guy? He was like a Britpop Beck; sort of Beck-like voice, twisted pop sensibilities, beautifully Sentridoh-style home recording, and songs that kill. Well, we still don't exactly know who he is, except for the fact that he's the Mercury Prize winner, but at least now there's more than two impossible to find eps. Surprisingly, for his first full length, BDB has abandoned the lo-fi bedroom sound, and lots of his Beck-isms and created a lush, hyper-produced pop masterpiece. Somewhere between Elliott Smith, Radiohead, and Beck. Right off the bat, the first song is a spare arrangement for strings and oboes and cornets. In fact the whole record is dotted with swelling string parts, horns, accordions, bleeps and bloops and super creative production. This is a weird and beautiful (albeit commercial, compared to his earlier recordings and remixes) record, definitely for fans of Beck, Elliott Smith, Radiohead, Quasi, Built to Spill, etc. Imagine Beck or Elliott Smith, if they grew up in England, listening to Radiohead and Oasis, and cut their teeth doing remixes for a who's who of British pop/dance groups, and put a record out on MoWax. It's kind of like that, but not exactly. But it *is* totally great.
Following up their 1998 disc "Dancing Drums", here's a second album of "Indian electronica" that again sees DJ and producer Badmarsh teaming up with multi-instrumentalist Shri (bass, tabla, flute...). On the UK Outcaste label, for fans of that "Untouchable Outcaste Beats" sound.
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Back in stock and at a much more reasonable price thanks to the new domestic distribution of Zorn's Japanese Avant label... Again, this is the critically-disputed love-it-or-hate-it record featuring British guitar improv legend Bailey "dueting" with DJ Ninj (who some might recall contributed the beats to Buckethead's jungle disc). Probably -- heck, definitely -- a record that will appeal much more to Bailey fans than jungle buffs.
The latest lovely musical missive from local label Time Released Sound comes in the form of this stunning collaborative effort from two artists we had never heard before, Christophe Bailleau and Julien Demoulin, who create billowing sprawls of softly swirling synth shimmer percolating melodic glimmer. Liquid, languid expanses of electronic flecked kosmische synthscapery, equal parts psychedelic space out, drifty new age ambience, and hushed atmospheric mesmer.
The tracks range from pastoral and melancholic, to haunting and ghostlike, the sounds warm and organic one minute, dark, rumbling and gristly the next, drifting moodily from prismatic sun dappled dreaminess, to dark contemplative mesmer, long stretches cast in shadow, that move gradually into the light, blossoming into lush, layered beauty. So nice.
Like all Time Released Sound releases, there are two versions, this is the super limited Deluxe edition, which is limited to just 100 copies, and is housed in an 8" x 5.5" machine sewn booklet, each booklet is made from an antique negative still, with all sorts of original artwork sewn into the pages of the booklet, diagrams, drawings, wall paper and other antique papers. Every book is hand stamped, drawn on, scribbled in, and beautifully personalized. The whole thing packaged in a hand stamped translucent envelope.
The latest lovely musical missive from local label Time Released Sound comes in the form of this stunning collaborative effort from two artists we had never heard before, Christophe Bailleau and Julien Demoulin, who create billowing sprawls of softly swirling synth shimmer percolating melodic glimmer. Liquid, languid expanses of electronic flecked kosmische synthscapery, equal parts psychedelic space out, drifty new age ambience, and hushed atmospheric mesmer.
The tracks range from pastoral and melancholic, to haunting and ghostlike, the sounds warm and organic one minute, dark, rumbling and gristly the next, drifting moodily from prismatic sun dappled dreaminess, to dark contemplative mesmer, long stretches cast in shadow, that move gradually into the light, blossoming into lush, layered beauty. So nice.
Like all Time Released Sound releases, there are two versions, this is the more nice priced, slightly less limited version, which houses the cd in a hand stamped printed envelope/sleeve, with a printed cardstock insert.
The first installment in a new series on Beta-Lactam Ring called the Drone Compendium series, curated by none other than Mr. Aidan Baker, he of mighty dronedoomdirge duo Nadja, and as is befitting his status as curator, the first installment is in fact a Baker record, entitled Pure Drone, and the record delivers precisely what the title promises. Recorded live in 2010, the A side, while pure drone, is definitely more than a single tone, or a simple bit of minimal hum. Instead, the sound is lush and layered, a sprawling, smoldering expanse of dreamlike drift, a soft focus slow build, rife with subtle melodies that gradually reveal themselves, beneath subtly shifting textures, laced with streaks of high end and pulsing almost-rhythms and shimmering overtones. The B side is a bit more subdued, a little more minimal, but still lush and lovely, the tonal colorations surfacing in the second half, after a long dark droney bit of hypnotic thrum, the sounds seeming to blossom, the light up, it sounds like watching a star appear from behind a planet as the orbits shift, that sort of fundamental, monumental sonic power, the melodies glimmering and glittering in the alien starlight, so gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES, packaged in super swank heavy jackets!
If 79 tracks over two volumes was a little too much to digest of John Baker's strange and jazzy electronique miniatures, than this vinyl version might be just the thing for you, as it condenses the most interesting 25 tracks from both volumes.
Delia Derbyshire may embody the otherworldly beauty and mystique behind the sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but John Baker was its alchemical heart. Who else could take a simple tone from air being blown over a bottle and make it into a warm and electrifying panorama of melodious sound? In this LP, we find TV adverts, library pieces, jazzy soundtracks, radiophonic pieces and home recordings as well as an interview on how he made the sounds contained here, and his broadcast obituary. Baker had a knack for melody, and often imbued his mechanically made recordings with a warmth and playfulness that his more mathematically-inclined contemporaries lacked. The jazz and library compositions (made for the Southern and Peer International organizations) are similar in form and sound to Basil Kirchin and Michael Garrick (two other Trunk luminaries), urgently spright and pastoral, sometimes soft and spacey. Yet he could also establish veils of mystery and drawn out suspense in his carefully composed themes. Our favorite in particular is "Jazz Advert" a track we suspect Broadcast or Stereolab must have been very aware of. However, Baker's real talent is brevity. With most of the tracks contained here lasting under a minute, he evokes a complex and engaging sound world that is perfectly encapsulated within its miniscule timeframe.
Covering his entire musical career from 1954 up until his death in 1985, and exhaustively culled from boxes and boxes of often unmarked tapes, this is a great and essential purchase for anyone interested in early British electronic music.
Delia Derbyshire may embody the otherworldly beauty and mystique behind the sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but John Baker was its alchemical heart. Who else could take a simple tone from air being blown over a bottle and make it into a warm and electrifying panorama of melodious sound? This is the first of two volumes of rare and unreleased pieces from the heyday of the BBC; this one covering the years 1963-1969. In it we find TV adverts, library pieces, jazzy soundtracks, radiophonic pieces and home recordings as well as interviews on how he made the sounds contained here. Baker had a knack for melody, and often imbibed his mechanically made recordings with a warmth and playfulness that his more mathematically inclined contemporaries lacked. Yet he could also establish veils of mystery and drawn out suspense in his carefully composed themes. But Baker's real talent is brevity. With most of the 49(!) tracks contained here lasting under a minute, he evokes a complex and engaging sound world that is perfectly encapsulated within its minute long timeframe. Baker is the first of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop composers to get such a retrospective overview. Hopefully this means we'll see more individual overviews from this important laboratory of recorded sound very soon.
Volume number Two of BBC Radiophonic workshop guru, John Baker's amazing recorded output. This time focusing on his jazz compositions, homemade electronic experiments and library music, most of it largely unheard. Less small themes and interludes than volume one, which also means less of what he made exclusively for the BBC. But that should not deter the BRW fanatics out there from picking this up. It's even stranger because it's so varied, covering his entire musical career from 1954 up until his death in 1985. Exhaustively culled from boxes and boxes of often unmarked tapes, there's homemade musique concrete pieces made early in his musical development, as well as his early recordings with a jazz combo. The jazz and library compositions (made for the Southern and Peer International organizations) are similar in form and sound to Basil Kirchin and Michael Garrick (two other Trunk luminaries), urgently spright and pastoral, sometimes soft and spacey. There is also soundtrack music for an early Ridley Scott short film, Boy on A Bicycle, and advert music, one of which we suspect the group Broadcast must have been very aware of ("Jazz Advert"). A great and essential companion to Volume One, and for anyone interested in early British electronic music.
Another 'witch house' luminary gets their first proper (non cd-r or download) release in the form of this gorgeous 5 song ep. For those who have somehow missed out on the whole witch house thing, it's sort of hard to describe, a new self proclaimed genre that seems to mix electronic music with dark creepy samples, everything slowed down and murky and witchy, ethereal vocals, distorted production, there's already a serious backlash because of the ridiculous witch house hype, which is pretty funny, considering probably all but the very hippest folks have barely even heard any witch house.
We reviewed the debut 12" from oOoOO a few lists back (all the witch house bands tend to have names that borrow heavily from the zapf dingbats font and the special keys on your keyboard), a fantastically dreamy chunk of electronic ghostly minimal dream pop, we also made Salem's King Night our Record of the Week, with its bombastic shoegaze bliss meets chopped and screwed Southern style crunk, but Balam Acab definitely tends toward the former, the two part title track a fuzzy, almost dubsteppy bit of gently glitchy gauziness, angelic vocals, wreathed in reverb, drifting over swirling industrial loops and shimmering synths, the second part totally blissed out and otherworldly, the beats spare and skeletal, the vocals floating on clouds of whirling effects and blurred melody, while in between, basslines buzz ominously, beats careen in slow motion, voices loop and hover, melodies fragment and drift apart, the sound like some eighties MTV pop slowed way down and dipped in drugs and left in the afternoon sun to warm, fuzzy streaks of sound wrapped around stuttery glacial beats, "Big Boy" offering up a hook on par with "See Birds", while "Dream Out" sounds like a warped Kate Bush record playing at 16rpm, while kids play video games in the next room.
Awesome stuff. And we could care less really if the hipster intelligentsia has decided witch house is dead, cuz we're definitely dying to hear more...
Pretty much every one at aQ loved that first Balam Acab ep, especially the track "See Birds", a song and sound that managed to at once define the already maligned genre 'witch house' and move beyond any sort of genre specific strictures, a dark dolorous drift, a slowed down RnB pop that managed to mesmerize and transport, that vocal line so distinctive, the strangely stuttery rhythm, it was pure magic for sure. And while there's maybe nothing quite approaching the mainstream-baiting hookiness of "See Birds", Wander/Wonder does have much to offer, and on repeated listens, many of the tracks most definitely approach the electronic pop mastery of "See Birds".
Take opener "Welcome", which begins with a stretch of burbling underwater sounds, a theme that seems to define much of Balam Acab's sound, a sense of submergence, but this opening track just drifts and shimmers, that burbling underpinned by a barely there sonic pulse, and then BAM, the beat bursts in, and it's not at all what you might have expected, a strange reverbed fragment, and with it comes a haunting bit of operatic vocalizing, the sound so haunting and mysterious and otherworldly, and the track just creeps along ominously, the vibe very cinematic, the sound super spare and abstract, and the perfect launching point for a record of what is essentially radical modern minimal electronica, the following track starts out again with a hushed bit of shimmer, before blossoming into a woozy bit of slo-mo soul, sped up vox somehow slowed down and melded to some blurred shuffle and skitter. "Motion" turns Pop Ambient shimmer into a hazy stretch of melting radio pop, while, "Expect" adds low end synth buzz, to shimmering strings, angelic vox, and more water sounds, for something dreamlike and ethereal. "Await" is a barely there underwater lullaby, with more sped up vocals, wistful piano melodies, and still more water sounds, and finally, "Fragile Hope" transforms dripping water and whispered breaths into the rhythm for a smoldering bass heavy ballad, that sounds like a slightly tweaked version of something that you could hear on the radio, some sweetly soulful slow motion soul. So good. And while not quite as dark and witch house-y as the See Birds ep, for folks into the new breed of warped RnB and slowsoul, as well as fans of How To Dress Well, Hype Williams, Soft Metals, D'eon and the like, this could be your new favorite record...
It's hard to predict what songs will become hits, it's a magical mystical mysterious talent that few possess, and the ones who do wield that power like kings. But every once in a while, it's totally obvious, no secret talent needed, that jam you heard in the grocery store, in the background of a commercial, on the radio in the car, all it takes is a few seconds, and it's lodged in your head for good. The music, the vocals, the hook, the beat, the lyrics, when everything falls into place, few can resist. Which is also when songs and records get crazy hyped, and inevitably then incur some crazy backlash, which is precisely what happened to Azealia Banks and her song "212". A song we had been hearing about for months, but hadn't actually heard. Or hadn't realized we'd heard. Cuz we had just caught a second of some song on the radio that blew our minds, a weird, double-dutch-y Missy Elliott style stuttery hip-hop jam, all warped beats, skittery rhythms, and some of the craziest vocals, a sort of valley girl drawl, distorted and a little bit blown out, occasionally slipping into a weird dubbed out effects heavy loop, or a squelchy electro groove with an almost shouted hook, before lurching right back into it, with a cool little bloopy synth horn melody, and a lush soulful bridge, weird and warped, but CRAZY catchy. We did some digging and discovered that it was in fact the very same song we had been hearing about. So we looked it up on YouTube, watched the video, which only made us dig it more, AB a total cutie in a Mickey Mouse sweater, dancing with a nerdy pal, while spitting rhymes, and then we noticed just how nasty the lyrics were, easily the most occurrences of the word 'cunt' in a top 40 pop song, and then we wondered how the fuck they could have altered the song for radioplay, considering the 'chorus' is pretty much unbroadcastable. As is the verse really. But whatever. You've probably heard this already, and you probably already dig it too. Needless to say, this is WAY worth the $5 for that song alone, and we listened to that song about a hundred times before we even bothered listening to the rest. But the other three songs are pretty good too, the Missy Elliott influence even more prevalent, one a little bit of a techno vibe, one a little bit housey (with some dark bark beats, and a goofy slowed down vocal outro), and the title track sounding like Missy Elliott by way of Tribe Called Quest. Cool.
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Grabbed this off of Jim's favorites shelf, this is what he had to say about it: "As Sabotage gets a criminally small amount of press, there will be virtually no hype for Bannlust...which is a fucking shame, as thousands of trainspotters will pass this up looking for that long gone Autechre album when they should be listening to this...as good if not better than recent Autechre and/or Skam recordings!!!"
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The fifth in the series of split singles of leftfield electronica from the fabulous Fat Cat label. Bannlust (whose Digital Tension album for Sabotage last year was a stunning surprise) presents three tracks that rival Autechre with their moody and hypnotic crunch of fractured dark electro. Chasm (a.k.a. Robert Hampson of Main/Loop) pares away the isolationist guitar drones in favour of disjointed beats generated through micro processing of concrete sounds.
Be not mistaken, there's certainly no Robert Blake here, nor any sign of his bird. What we have is the soundtrack for those nights when you just wanna kick back and chill. Got it? Slow to mid tempo grooves for when you feel like spinning something new along the lines of Thievery Corp or Kruder & Dorfmeister.
SKWEEE!!!! Fans of that special brand of mostly Scandinavian B-Boy retro '80s video game hip-hopped electro synth sound, check it out...
We've got like just 4 copies left of this, the latest vinyl offering from celebrated Skweee artist Randy Barracuda (he's been one of our faves ever since we heard his classic skweee jam "Rick James Is Dead" on the first Museum Of Future Sound comp back in 2007). Random Works Vol. II is, as the name sort of implies, his 2nd full-length album, following a self-titled record for Flogsta Danshall a few years ago. This one's got eight new tracks of Randy's skweee genius - super groovy, stuttery lo-fi funk full of fat synths. There's more tracks with vocals than we expected, kinda soulful like DamFunk... though lots here are the usual skweee style instrumentals.
LIMITED TO 101 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
SKWEEE!
Skweee!
Originally composed as the soundtrack for an upcoming Judge Dredd film adaptation (and rejected!), Drokk finds Geoff Barrow from Portishead, teaming up with composer Ben Salisbury for a dark futuristic synthscape that looks to the classic scores of John Carpenter and Goblin, but instead of sounding like just another record jumping on the retro-futuristic synthscape bandwagon, that seems to have infected so many other groups, the sound these two have conjured up is much darker, and much more dense. And it plays out more like an actual soundtrack, since after all it is (was?) one. Drokk offers up all sorts of rhythms and melodies and arrangements and textures that definitely do feel like cues, like sounds designed to accompany specific images and actions, and while in many cases, scores loosed from their films lose a lot of their power, that is definitely not the case here. The sound reminding us in places of Blade Runner, and displaying obvious influence from groups like Tangerine Dream. There are also some Portishead like moments, creeping spare downtempo dirges that work surprisingly well with the more driving puslating synths. The opening jam definitely sets the tone, and sounds like it must have been for the opening credits/sequence, a spare bit of synth pulse, underpinned by a high sinewave like tone, the synths growing ever more ominous, expanding into fuzzy swooping synths, before exploding into full on eighties style sequenced synth stutter, laced with reverby industrial percussion, the sounds dense and lush and layered, frantic and frenetic (it is titled "Pursuit" after all). From there on out it's easy to get lost in the Barrow and Salisbury's imagined soundworld, haunting minor key melodies, woozy percolating synths, primitive rhythms, one second all washed out and cosmic, the next dark and driving and relentlessly rhythmic.
Needless to say, fans of the current crop of Carpenter/Goblin worshipping retro synthwranglers will flip for this big time, and while sonically, this does fit pretty perfectly alongside Umberto, Zombi, Majeure, Roll The Dice, Expo 70, Bitchin Bajas, Dylan Ettinger, Gatekeeper, Food Pyramid, Xander Harris and all the rest, Drokk actually manages to sound less like one of those bands looking to the past, and more like one of the originals from back in the day, looking forward, to some impossible unimaginable future, like the one we're living in today.
Y'know how sometimes a lil' itch can drive you totally nuts, downright crazy! We can assure you that Basement Jaxx's Crazy Itch Radio will not have the same effect. Sure it tingles and tickles, but in the way that might make you wanna get up 'n' shake yer moneymaker. Hmmph, did we just say that?! Anyhoo, this is a bubbly candy-coated dance club party record that goes splendidly well with the new one by Los Amigos Invisibles. These folks just wanna have a good time... won't you join 'em?
Second album from this popular dance/club act. We like the ape on the cover.
When it comes to modern day dance music it just doesn't get a whole lot more colorful, joyful and F.U.N. then the Basement Jaxx. What's always set them apart from so many of their peers is that while most good dance minded outfits tend to rely so heavily on retro influences, Basement Jazz, who for sure have absorbed the best in dance music of the last few decades from disco to house, electro and hip-hop, instead take those sounds and warp and personalize and modernize, creating their own distinct vision and sound. Scars is ranking right next to Rooty, one of our other favorite Basement Jazz jams, so full of such infectious songs that not only totally make you shake it, but they also have a really nice wide range of emotions and an incredibly lush sonic palette, with guest vocalists like Yoko Ono, Sam Sparro, Santogold, Kelis, Yo Majesty, etc. bringing their own distinct flavor to the mix. Scars is the kind of record that will get you moving AND get stuck in your head, we've already listened to it so many times and it's holding up so well on repeated listens. Who knows when Daft Punk will ever release a new album, but until then, the other major titan in modern dance brilliance will keep our bootys shaking!
We've been digging this recent wave of super minimal electronic music like crazy, whether it's the stripped down house and dark moody techno of Shed or Terrence Dixon, the post industrial gothic beatscapery of Vatican Shadow, the dour blackened brutalism of Silent Servant, the murky avant electronica of Haxan Cloak and Prurient, the field recording flecked minimalism of Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, or recent outings from new aQ faves like Shifted and Ron Morelli, it's almost like the techno/house haters have had their whole world turned upside down, with all of these gothy, gloomy, murky, grim variants on house music and techno, stripped down to the bare minimum, transformed somehow into something blackly psychedelic and woozily abject, total blunted comedown minimalism, that is easily some of the darkest and most mesmerizing music we've heard in ages. None more so than Oats, from Basic House, aka Stephen Bishop, the man behind the Opal Tapes label, who as Basic House, has created something more than that moniker might imply, sure it could be considered 'basic house', but a basic house constructed from crumbling distortion, and chunks of static, weird field recordings, woozy loops, disembodied melodies, you can hear hints of Andy Stott and Demdike Stare and the Caretaker, but Basic House is something else all together, a sort of decaying hauntological dance music, that seems to be cobbled together from sonic detritus, one could almost imagine this as electronica as envisioned by Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck, it has that same sort of warped warble, and grey, washed out abstraction. It's one of those rare records that is truly difficult to describe, which is precisely what makes it so utterly mesmerizing.
Breaking down the first two tracks should give you a rough idea of what you're in store for, beginning with a weird field of stuttering static, shards of tape hiss, and what sounds like gristly analog crunch, all pulsing hypnotically over a backdrop of woozy looped melody, and slow shifting textures, a barely there rhythm seems to be forming, it's not until nearly two minutes in that a proper beat surfaces, a monotonous 4/4 pulse, adding a strangely skeletal framework to the proceedings, before that beat blossoms into something almost electro, adding some distorted dubsteppy bass wobble, but the whole thing remaining super wasted and washed out and ultra minimal. Eventually, multiple melodies swoop in, as do auxiliary beats, the sound a dense swirl, dizzying and weirdly psychedelic, and in a weird way, almost poppy sounding, before devolving in a field of spaced out crackle and hiss, all tangled up with layered loops, and mysterious, almost easy listening sounding samples, before lurching directly into the second track, a churning murk-march of pounding Teutonic throb, and looped ominous whisper, everything wreathed in thick swirls of record crackle / tape hiss, the sound quickly and repeatedly transforming, at one point sounding like alien elevator music, rife with churning, chugging low end thrum, and fields of insectoid click, while elsewhere unravelling like a heaving sprawl of avant industrial noisiness. And while that may give you an idea of what Basic House is all about, the rest of the record does its best to continually confuse and confound.
Short stretches of mangled field recordings wrapped around barely there beats, give way to super spare soundscapes of glistening crackle, and mutated textures, jagged shards of caustic digital crunch are sculpted into corrosive rhythmscapes that seem to melt into droned out Wolf Eyes style drones, all high end skree, and scraping digital crunch. Some tracks are whispery latticeworks of groaning and creaking ambience, short wave transmissions drifting through fields of hushed thrum, and barely there chordal swells, sometimes blossoming into garbled grooves, all hazy and bleakly blissed out, other times unfurling mysterious swirls of digital stutter and looped vocal whispers, those alien sounds seeming to collect melody and texture as they creep through landscapes of shimmer and hum. Here and there, the record does return to something more overtly rhythmic, like on the balearic "C-Beat", which is like modern minimalism by way of Pole's granular digidub, but recast as some ghostly trance, all whispery stutter, wreathed in warbly wooziness and glassine high end shimmer, but the record eventually settles into a haunting hushed finale, the meditative, minimal drone of "L-Wave And Combo", which is one long sprawl of buried melody and tranced out thrum, but instead of smooth and shimmery, the sounds are rough and raw, crumbling and crunchy, but in no way does that detract from the track's enthralling mesmer. So fucking great. And just in under the wire, in the nick of time to make it onto plenty of top ten lists, and for some of us here, quite possibly a contender for the top spot!
Loss is an apt title in describing a sensibility that we find super compelling in music, each list tends to have at least one example of a record that taps into the ideas behind the nostalgic loss of memory and the triggers that cause those memories to flood back into consciousness. For an example, have a gander at the introductory paragraph of the review of Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet. Bass Communion's Loss, while not exactly aesthetically sympathetic to Mr. Hecker's pixel smear masterpiece, shares the sensorial drama of residual sounds evoking things past. Steven Wilson, the sole proprietor of Bass Communion, has commented that Loss is an extension of the ideas he previously investigated on Ghosts On Magnetic Tape, which related to the parapsychological research into the Electronic Voice Phenomena, whereby voices (presumably from beyond the grave) break through mediated sound in order to communicate with the living. Of course, that record complete with its spectral droning clouds of sound went over quite well here at Aquarius; and its follow-up does not dissapoint. Sourced from reverb saturated piano, old 78 RPM records, and supposedly a vibraphone, Wilson offers yet another compelling perspective upon the nature of memory and loss through a spartan and occassionally grim unveiling of drones and low-end piano notes.
Included in both 5.1 (as heard on the DVD component of this twin set), and as a regular CD.
Steven Wilson may be known best from Porcupine Tree, although he has also been quite prolific as Bass Communion producing a whole slew of darkly tinged ambient records for the past decade or so. Back in 1996, Wilson began corresponding with Bryn Jones of Muslimgauze, at first merely to share his enthusiasm over the Muslimgauze album Blue Mosque. Without expecting anything, Wilson sent a set of recordings to Jones whose urge to improve upon the recordings was too great for him to deny; hence, a few days later, Wilson received several hours of recordings with his musics radically transformed into the fiery Arabic electronica that had been the signature for Muslimgauze for countless records. Thus began a collaborative process, whereby Wilson would mould the Muslimgauze sounds into something to his liking, only to have Jones reject those mixes in favor of his own. The Muslimgauze ethos is still the dominant force here, with a ghostly dark ambient lingering in the distance the only remnants of Wilson's contributions. The recordings that comprise this CD had been released previously as a long CD EP / short album (depending on who you ask) and a CD single; both of those discs had been out of print for sometime now, so it's nice to be able to hear this stuff again!
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We loved the last Pierre Bastien record, which consisted of broken down old children's turntables rigged to play simple loops while Bastien played along on a muted trumpet. Those rigged turntables have given way to even greater flights of mechanical fancy,
We actually thought this was going to be the SF band Baths we've been hearing so much about but turns out there is actually a Baths from LA who are way different but totally awesome as well (the San Francisco Baths are changing their name and we're anxious to hear a record from them one of these days too). This Baths is a one man warped electro-hip-hop artist out of Los Angeles who fits so perfectly on Anticon. This is a record that really does sound like the natural progression for the label and its sound really needed and deserved. Approaching left field pop with the same kind of vision that folks like Black Moth Super Rainbow/Tobacco have, infusing hip-hop production and beats into a much more nuanced and Technicolor soaked melodicism. Crazy to think this guy is only 21, as the music he makes sounds so assured flows so flawlessly. Armed with J Dilla like beats and Neon Indian sounding production, this is totally hitting the spot right now!!
