We had never heard of Shed Dwellaz, but apparently these guys were a hip hop crew from Redwood City, active in the nineties, and NYC tape label Ormolycka has dug up these 4 track demos from back in the day, and folks who've been digging Ormolycka know the sort of fucked up taste they have in hip hop (Antwon, Juiceboxx, Lil Ugly Mane, Death Grips, etc.) so the sound of the Shed Dwellaz sounds right at home. Guessing most of these guys are white, it's got that sort of Beastie Boys via Anticon vibe too it, but it's much more lo-fi, DIY and old school, with some sick flows from the MC's and some pretty sweet tracks, swirling harps, stuttering chopped up vox, plenty off fuzz, distortion and static, weird samples. Hints of Wu-Tang of course, but also Sensational, even Hawd Gangstuh Rappaz Wid Gatz, some of this is goofy, but some of it's dark and sinister, shades of Gravediggaz for sure, but home brewed 4-track style. Killer stuff for sure. Housed in a sweet double cassette case, full color J-cards, and like lots of the Ormolycka jams, LIMITED!!!
We've been going kinda crazy lately for super dark, ultra minimal, abstract techno, the darker and murkier the better, records by Shed and Terrence Dixon, as well as the whole Hospital Records axis (Silent Servant, Vatican Shadow, etc.). We also just discovered Marcel Dettmann, whose latest we'll review on an upcoming list, not to mention recent reissues from Fluxion and Monoton, and then there's this, the first we've heard from Shifted, who delivers exactly what we've been hankering for, super spare, crackly, skeletal, avant techno murk, all clicks and pulses, some sort of spaced out electro dub ultra minimalism that had us in its thrall from the very first few seconds. Equal parts clinical Raster-Noton style electronic abstraction, and Chain Reaction heroin house, the sound of Shifted is gorgeously hypnotic, and utterly mesmerizing, the opening intro a spaced out sort of dronescape, with distorted smears of what sounds like guitar, blurred into a drifty atmospheric haze, laced with strange industrial crunch, the whole thing getting more and more distorted and dirty as it progresses, which had us expecting something a bit more blown out and noisy, but instead, in swoops "Chrome, Canopy & Bursting Heart", a delicate crystalline arrangement of hiss and static, throb, and thrum and pulse, underpinned by a distant rumbling low end, and laced with strange bits of clatter, and softly reverbed texture, another one of those cases, that if the record had simply been a 70 minute version of THIS song, we'd be just as into it. Instead, the sound of Under A Single Banner moves in al sorts of different directions, but never deviating too much from the hushed and clipped minimalism that makes it so hypnotic. "Suspended Inside" is all high end sizzle and skitter, laced with distant rhythmic flurries, peppered with barely there bleeps, and draped over a backdrop of what sounds like crickets, while the title track is an ominous bit of crunchy abstract stutter, this time driven by deep, distorted bass pulsations, and woozy, groovy rhythm, a sort of ghost electro, that's haunting, and subtly harrowing at the same time.
"Burning Tyres" is heavy on the reverb and echo drenched, and could be some obscure Hospital Records B side, being spun is a massive cave, the beats ricocheting all over the place, the melodies blurred and smeared, the whole thing a gauze-y fantastically garbled field of blackened and blurred space-house, which leads directly into the much more controlled "Pulse Incomplete", which loops what sounds like a human breath, and links it to percolating rhythms, and subtly blooping and bleeping cascades of muted melody, the beat frantic and frenzied, but somehow also subdued and dialed way back. "Contract 0", makes us think of a Kompakt record stripped of every non essential element, almost like the opposite of Pop Ambience, all the fuzzy, dreamy melodic driftiness pulled back, leaving just the barebones rhythm, and some strange distant glitchery, and fragmented static. Finally, "Story of Aurea" is all droned out mystery, a burbling, softly undulating low end swell, laced with tiny upper register trills, and barely audible dog whistle sonar sine waves, which leads directly into the closer, "Wash Over Me", which begins as some abstract minimal electro dub, just rhythm, and a distant chordal thrum, before the rhythm is joined by some soft billowing clouds of synthy shimmer, the sound transformed into a dreamy bit of new agey soft focus skitter, which again, we would dig a WHOLE record of.
So good! One of our new favorite electronic / minimal techno records for sure, our current going to sleep music (which as you all know, is probably THEE highest recommendation we can give to this sort of record), and very likely to end up on some of our top ten lists (cuz list making time is coming up!!)...
The previous Rune Grammofon album from Norwegian electronica/jazz outfit Shining (2005's In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster) we liked quite a bit -- and sold quite a few copies of as well. But we don't remember it being quite as hard and heavy as this new disc! Some of this is almost industrial-metal, seriously. Herky-jerky rhythms one moment, sheer droning heaviness the next, with moody male and female vox amidst the instrumental/electronic onslaught. This has a sinister circusiness that makes you think that Mike Patton (Fantomas/Faith No More/etc.) must somehow be involved, though of course he's not. Doubtless he'd like how spunky, brassy, swirly, and dark this is, and that Shining haven't lost their any of their intense cinematic Morricone-ish sensibility.
Latest release from Holy Mountain, a new 12" from The Shining Path, the duo of Ilya Monosov, and Preston Swirnoff. We've dug pretty much everything we've gotten our hands on so far, and this 12" is no different. Well, actually it is, sort of.
And no we don't mean it's different as in we don't dig it, but no, as in it sounds WAY different than other SP releases. Where as other records were overdriven dubbed out druggy psych rock, Chocolate Gasoline has a bit of, well, a sort of calypso vibe mixed into their usual psychedelic stew. It's really strange, sort of sleazy sounding, WAY tripped out, but we still love it.
Stripped down percussion, moaning reverbed guitar, blown out FX drenched leads, strange vocals, that almost sound like Jamaican style toasting, and that calypso vibe. It continues on through most of the record, occasionally interrupted by dubbed out rhythms, clouds of electronic glitch, all dizzy and druggy, it actually sounds a bit like this: imagine the house band in some dark dingy calypso bar, a bar you just stumbled into after being heavily dosed with LSD, everything spinning and twisting into freaky shapes, the band jamming in the corner, begins to lift off the ground, their sounds becoming colors, the bar fading until just you and the band are standing on some other planet, watching the Earth melt in the background while the band jams on, and the little rock you're on drifts closer and closer to the sun.
Packaged in an eye popping 12" style sleeve, all reds and blues and yellows, just begging for some 3-D glasses!
Ah Rune Grammofon, what have you for us today? Another enticing digipacked cd of course, this one from a band called Shining, from Norway (but not to be confused with the black metal Shining from Sweden). What be they if not black metal? Hmm, let's listen...good grief, dunno the genre for this even...it's jazz we guess...of sorts. Powerful and freaky and technological. Lead by Jorgen Munkby (ex-Jaga Jazzist, as is the Shining's keyboardist) who plays (on here) everything from sax to accordion to church organ to guitar to mellotron to synths, and does drum programming too. But Shining is a five-piece band so as multi-instrumental as Jorgen is, he's doesn't have to do it all at once. And they leave the tubular bells to a guest musician. So, you get the idea that there's potentially a lot going on. The requiste Kim Hiorthoy cover art, which kinda looks like a blown-to-bits website, implies as much. The ten tracks here veer from booming bombast to melodic moodiness. Energetic ADD explosions of horns and percussion are calmed with weird wordless vocal parts, rhythmic frenzies give way to eerie grooves, and the players' jazz chops are chopped up. There's plenty of tension, and release, let's say! Just imagine some hotshot jazz guys gone on a dark, cinematic bender, unhealthily obsessed with Carl Stalling cartoon scores and arty prog rock and all possibilities of modern electronics. Your ears will feel fully exercised (and dare we say delighted) after a session with Shining. Very cool.
Here's another new one from the prolific, AQ-fave jazz pianist Matthew Shipp, another entry in Thirsty Ear's forward-looking, Shipp-curated "Blue Series".
The futuristic jazz found on "Nu Bop" is quite similar to David S. Ware's recent "Corridors & Parallels", which featured three of the players found here: Shipp, bassist extraordinare William Parker, and drummer Guillermo E. Brown. On "Nu Bop", Daniel Carter handles sax & flute, and someone named FLAM is responsible for synths and programming (leaving Shipp to his customary piano, instead of the keyboards he played on the Ware disc). This group has produced a unique, enjoyable mix of electronic beats and droney synth atmospheres, and up-tempo, uh, "nu-bop" jazziness. The album's sci-fi theme is reflected in the somewhat hokey track titles, like "Space Shipp", "X-Ray", "Rocket Shipp", and "ZX-1". As with other Blue Series offerings (like that great Spring Heel Jack "Masses" disc from last year), these hybrid jazz/electronica experiments are both good places for the jazz-curious modern music listener to begin exploring, and for the avant-jazz-centric to branch out. The future sound of jazz? We'll leave that for others to debate. We just hope that Shipp doesn't take it *too* far (no DJ remix disc please!!).
They pretty much had us at "dubstep Shit And Shine". Yep, UK mysterious masked multi drummer-ed noise rock weirdos, who recently destroyed at SXSW, and did a fair bit of damage in the Bay Area recently as well, return with their own take on dubstep, and it's just as fucked up and freaked out as we might have imagined (or hoped), and we have to say it's pretty much how we wish ALL dubstep sounded, heavy and super distorted, blown out, the beats pounding, the bass fuzzed out and crushing, a lurching hypnotic groove, surrounded on all sides by crumbling FX, distorted howls, a dizzying swirl of demented sounds, it's like the Butthole Surfers remixed by Burial, or Kode9 covering Rusted Shut.
The B-side is the blissier of the two, but only just barely, with deep undulating bass, a locked and looped main groove, weird grunts, and blurred voices, little bits of melody, twisted and tweaked, but weirdly tranquil and hypnotic. Some DJ somewhere is gonna whip this out midset and either utterly destroy the dancefloor, or seriously freak folks the fuck out. Much more likely the latter.
Best dubstep jam of the year? Quite possibly...
Shit And Shine sure have come a long way from the multiple-drummer-ed Neanderthal noise rock rock pummel that was their M.O. for years. Recent recordings and performances have run the gamut from warped noise drenched dubstep to pounding psych rock laced with balloon squeak solos, so every live show and ever new record is a total unknown, and even once you get into a new record, every track ends up being a warped surprise. But really we wouldn't have it any other way. This new lp Jream Baby Jream pretty much continues right where the sprawling Le Grand Larance Prix triple lp left off, a handful of warped jams that end up going in whatever fucked up direction the $&$ guys want them too. Which requires a quick run through of all the songs...
The A side starts off the 10+ minute "Dinner With My Girlfriend" which couples alien vocoder-ed and auto-tuned vox to some dirgey, blown out super distorted beats, the whole track sounds like it's at the wrong speed, the sounds filthy and crumbling, swirling FX and all manner of weirdness going on beneath the surface, a stunted electro-drug groove that should have some dancefloor bumping, just not one where normal folks congregate. "Mermuda Triangle" is a blast of electronic weirdness, pitch shifted buzzes and constantly shifting layered drones, all over stuttery beats and weird ominously spoken vox, the whole thing laced with weird eighties melodies, which makes the track sound like Faxed Head covering some obscure eighties pop song. The A side closes with the title track, which is the weirdest of the bunch, mostly for being the least weird. It's a straight slow jam rock tune, all stripped down guitar and shuffling rhythm, the weirdest part being the mush mouthed vox, but otherwise it sounds like some warped slow jam high school dance ballad, playing in a gym in bumfuck, nowhere.
The B side starts off with "Woodpecker", a short blast of heavy No U-Turn style dubstep / jungle, all stripped down and pounding, but plenty fractured and fucked up, noisy and rife with all manner of glitches and squelches, before leading into the 10 minute "Rodeo Girls", a woozy, psychedelic slab of looped weirdly distorted kraut-funk, the sound shifting constantly, getting blown out, murky and muddy one second, brittle and crunchy the next, strange melodies surfacing throughout, all the while the main loop remains maniacally mesmerizing.
And finally, "Youth Led Worship" is a dark minimal coda, all murky and pulsing, a dirgey droned out drift, with haunting processed vox, and a field of deep moaning buzz, a blurred blackened sprawl of hushed sinister creep. Weird as fuck, of course, but bafflingly brilliant too.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES! On either green or orange vinyl! Already sold out at the label and out of print. These are the last copies we'll be able to get!!!
We've said it once, we'll say it again, we CAN NOT get enough jungle. Especially the mutant strain of spastic junglized, hard raga drill and bass practiced by folks like The Bug, Kid 606 and of course Shitmat. And if we had to pick, Shitmat would most likely be our pick of the bunch. Amazing programming, keeping enough of that classic cheesy drum and bass sound to satisfy our nostalgia, but fucking it up just enough to hit the spot for those of us always in need of a head spinning, ear shredding blast of complete jungle mayhem. The first Shitmat record was just multiple versions of the same song albeit all drastically different, but it's still a huge thrill to finally get a new record of all new (well new in their current form, ya know?) songs. And blessed be, it's even weirder, funnier and harder than the first one. Originally released on 5 separate 12"s, this disc collects almost all of the tracks (one from each 12" was left off jsut to piss us off, but that's okay, we still have been spinning this like crazy). Just like the first album, this collection is a massive buzzing electrified briarpatch of ultra complex drum and bass, huge booming low end and sliced and diced hard ragga. Highlights of Full English Breakfast include the track "Day O," where Shitmat takes the "Banana Boat Song" and turns it inside out and shreds it to ribbons adding crashing amen breaks and booming low end, "There's No Business Like Propa' Rungleclotted Mashup Bizznizz," a totally fucked up take on Irving Berlin's classic show tune, and "Dis Dancehall Ting...", a chopped up, and junglized version of Aled Jones' "Walking In The Air", junglizing tunes by The Archers, Trisha and the Blue Peter theme, and loads more rumbling, pummelling raga dancehall gabber jungle dancefloor destroyers. WE FUCKING LOVE THIS STUFF!!!!!
We went on and on about the Shitmat record a few lists back. A massive buzzing electrified briars patch of ultra complex drum and bass, huge booming low end and sliced and diced hard ragga. So fucking good!! One of Andee's favorite records of the year by a longshot. So we were super psyched for this new series of five limited 12"s. Be forewarned, these 12"s are being reissued on cd eventually, but one track on each 12" will NOT be on the cd, and those are FIVE tracks you CAN NOT live without!!
Volume One is jam packed with that booming buzzing, speaker shredding old school jungle, new school drill and bass we love so much! FUCK YEAH!!
We went on and on about the Shitmat record a few lists back. A massive buzzing electrified briars patch of ultra complex drum and bass, huge booming low end and sliced and diced hard ragga. So fucking good!! One of Andee's favorite records of the year by a longshot. So we were super psyched for this new series of five limited 12"s. Be forewarned, these 12"s are being reissued on cd eventually, but one track on each 12" will NOT be on the cd, and those are FIVE tracks you CAN NOT live without!!
Volume two features the track "Day O," during which Shitmat takes the "Banana Boat Song" and turns it inside out and shreds it to ribbons adding crashing amen breaks and booming low end. Plus four more tracks of rolling pounding, stuttering drum and bass madness.
We went on and on about the Shitmat record a few lists back. A massive buzzing electrified briars patch of ultra complex drum and bass, huge booming low end and sliced and diced hard ragga. So fucking good!! One of Andee's favorite records of the year by a longshot. So we were super psyched for this new series of five limited 12"s. Be forewarned, these 12"s are being reissued on cd eventually, but one track on each 12" will NOT be on the cd, and those are FIVE tracks you CAN NOT live without!!
Another blast of all orignal (well, you know...) rumbling, pummelling raga dancehall gabber jungle insanity. Set your speakers for stun!
We went on and on about the Shitmat record a few lists back. A massive buzzing electrified briars patch of ultra complex drum and bass, huge booming low end and sliced and diced hard ragga. So fucking good!! One of Andee's favorite records of the year by a longshot. So we were super psyched for this new series of five limited 12"s. Be forewarned, these 12"s are being reissued on cd eventually, but one track on each 12" will NOT be on the cd, and those are FIVE tracks you CAN NOT live without!!
On the final volume, Shitmat indulges his goofy side (much like on his recent cd) by covering and junglizing tunes by The Archers, Trisha and the Blue Peter theme, as well as another 4 tracks of huge ragga dancehall gabber brutality. We can never get enough of this stuff!!!
We went on and on about the Shitmat record a few lists back. A massive buzzing electrified briars patch of ultra complex drum and bass, huge booming low end and sliced and diced hard ragga. So fucking good!! One of Andee's favorite records of the year by a longshot. So we were super psyched for this new series of five limited 12"s. Be forewarned, these 12"s are being reissued on cd eventually, but one track on each 12" will NOT be on the cd, and those are FIVE tracks you CAN NOT live without!!
Volume three's standout numbers are "There's No Business Like Propa' Rungleclotted Mashup Bizznizz," a totally fucked up take on Irving Berlin's classic show tune, and "Dis Dancehall Ting...", chopped up, and junglized version of Aled Jones' "Walking In The Air" as well as two other dancefloor destroyers.
We love Shitmat. A lot! As any regular reader of the AQ list must realize by now. But this new one sort of threw us for a loop. Shitmat was our go to guy for that blasting old school nineties heavy ragga jungle, bass bin rattling drum and bass, with super blown out synths, buzzing bass, and those hyper charged drum breaks. As we've said before, it's one of those sounds that we could listen to FOREVER.
Well, Hang The DJ starts off from a whole different angle. With a more mash-up vibe going on. In fact, the first few tracks could pass for Girl Talk tracks, with their million bits and pieces all cobbled together into a head spinning pop culture dance floor concoction. Well, once we got over our initial shock, we started to really dig it, sure it wasn't what we were expecting, but damn if it wasn't kicking our asses. Furious and freaky, skittering skipping and completely brilliantly baffling. Classic pop songs, old diva standards, heavy metal guitars, snippets of hip hop, and pretty much everything else under the sun. It began to almost sound like Girl Talk crossed with Venetian Snares. But the more we listened, the more we could hear the Shitmat sound. A bit obscured and all tangled up in there, but still that same cheeky sense of humor and flair for killer stuttery beats.
But about halfway through the disc something happened. The jungle returned, subtly at first, but soon, we were in full on dance floor destroying ragga jungle heaven, killer toasting, gnarled Amen breaks sliced and diced, huge drops, massive slabs of synth bass, some full on bursts of hardcore gabber...
And then before we knew it, it was gone, and we were back to stuttering skittering mash-ups, but suddenly it all made more sense. The next time through, those opening mash-ups sounded perfect butted up against those wild jungle tracks, and the jungle bits perfectly segued into the million-sample-a-minute freakouts, and all of a sudden, it seemed like we just might have ourselves a new fucked up electronic sort-of-jungle mash-up dance record....
The last Shitmat record was just a tad too ravey for us, when what we really want from Mr. Shitmat, is wild pounding ragga jungle. He's probably responsible for one of our favorite ragga jungle records ever, Killababylonkutz, a whole record of multiple version of the same dancehall jam, but holy shit did that one slay. Wild drill and bass, over the top toasting, bizarre samples, all chopped up and looped into chaotic careening slabs of junglized pummel.
Since Killababylonkutz, Shitmat has moved more and more toward straight up rave music, sometimes doing sort of mashup thing, other times going for the goofy retro angle a la the recent Zomby, record. No matter how much we liked all of those records, we couldn't help hankering for more of the hard stuff. Well, it looks like Shitmat heard our prayers somehow, cuz even with that title, this is the hardest most jungly record since Killababylonkutz and we've been going nuts.
Sure there's still plenty of rave-y jams, and mashup bits, but there's also plenty of wild chopped drum and bass, some serious chunks of ragga jungle here and there, even some toasting, and Shitmat lets his spastic programmed insanity run wild, spitting out dizzying tangles of impossiby complex drum jams, making even the cheesiest of dance grooves sound hard and heavy. The best jams are definitely the ragga jungle numbers, worth it for those 3 or 4 tracks alone, but like we said it's all pretty great, and makes for excellent listening even for the dancefloor phobic!
Awesome Cabbage Patch Kid cover art too!
We've long been complaining about the dearth of "grime" in the States, so we were psyched to discover that the folks at Planet Mu decided to do something about it. They've been reissuing UK grime releases for the states, but this latest batch of 12"s offers up some grime / jungle hybrids as well as their own twisted take on dubstep and grime. And it kills!
AQ fave Shitmat whips up this nutty two step banger, with all sorts of pop culture detritus mixed in to a swirl of throbbing distorted grime, FAT fuzzy bass lines, pounding low end and all sorts of vocal fragments and electronic chaos.
Chevron takes the same track and stretches it out a bit, removing all the random sonic extras, turning it into a stripped down minimal skittery jam, sort of lo-fi with affected vocals, burping bass and skeletal grimy beats.
Finally Mu-Ziq turns the track inside out, chopped up and super spastic, stuttery and shuffly, a minimal grimescape, sounding creepy and intense and about to blow, like it might shift into some manic Squarepusher drill and bass at any moment but it never does leaving you tense and exhausted. Awesome.
There's been much talk about grunge around aQ these days. A lot of it has to do with the fact that a bunch of us just love grunge, STILL, and thus talk about it all the time. But beyond that, Andee recently dedicated an entire radio show to his grunge favorites, and this summer is the Sub Pop 20th anniversary celebration, which rumor has it, might entail a Green River reunion! And now there's this, the first volume in a proposed series called Grungecore. And the second we heard about it, we knew we needed it!
Gabber jungle dancehall electronic freak Shitmat, covering Nirvana's "Negative Creep"!!! As if that weren't enough, the flipside is some other crazed electronic tweaker taking on Nirvana's "Senseless Apprentice" (aka "Scentless Apprentice"). And if even that weren't still enough, every single 7" comes in a sleeve, hand sewn from actual flannel shirts! Holy shit!!!
So the Shitmat side is a killer. It begins with all this throbbing black ambience, weird rhythmic skitter, which explodes into a fierce relentless blast of gabber madness. But it no way does it sound anything like Nirvana. UNTIL, the vocals kick in, and then it fits, it sound so right, it wouldn't be hard to imagine Kurt Kobain fronting some band on DHR back in the nineties, the rhythm of the original is kept intact, with the little pauses filled with flurries of jungle instead of that moaning guitar, the howling at the end of the chorus processed into some fucked up digital scream. Only reminds us how much we love Shitmat.
The flipside is someone called Ladyscraper, and their version of "Scentless Apprentice" sounds nothing like the original, less of a remix, more of an interpretation. Huge chunks of throbbing sizzling synth, massive grinding bass, the beats are more like speaker shredding bolts of digital crunch, the churn and skitter and occasionally explode into impossibly dense tangles of digital glitch. The vocals are super distorted, almost black metal, the whole thing stops and starts, super convoluted, it's basically impossible to tell it's a Nirvana song, but that doesn't mean it's not awesome.
Each 7" comes in its own flannel sleeve, hand sewn, from various parts of various different flannel shirts. Some are sleeves, and have buttons or cuffs, others have parts of collars, a few have a strange mudflap that flops outside the plastic sleeve. Each sleeve has a Grungecore sticker affixed to the front and a FUKDUP label Sub Pop parody sticker on the back, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, the label on the 7" is hand stamped and hand numbered, and includes a photocopied insert with liner notes and rad high school drawings. WAY recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Beyond two-step, dark step, tech step, and hard step, Shizuo embodies his own mutant brand of drum 'n' bass... Fuck Step. This music is so fresh and vital it will get your blood going like Black Flag and the DKs did for that 35 year old who lives next door to you. (Hey hey now don't get defensive, Grampa, I'm over 30 too.)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Shizuo, one of the noise/breakbeat/punk standouts on the intense Digital Hardcore label (with a great 7" out on Grand Royal), releases this studio & live ep, 10 tracks of Berlin electronic mayhem.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of our favorites from Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore stable, with a new ep the title track of which is apparently a Cramps cover.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of 4 singles from Digital Hardcore Recordings, Germany's nastiest, most extreme hardcore techno label, issued here in tasty uninitiated-friendly 7" format by the Beastie's Grand Royal label. A cheap way to learn all about what the hell is going on.
The weirdest of the Digital Hardcore crew breaks out with his first full length. Unanimous store favorite. Includes his stellar Sweat single, and features some of the hardest, most distorted yet intelligent bass and drums this side of Panacea. Recommended (esp. the next time you're pissed off.)
We don't care what the rest of the world says, we still love Witch House, or drag, or grave rave, or cave rave, or whatever you want to call it, we still can't seem to get enough of it, the murky slithery soundscapes of slo-mo rhythms, tarpit soul, slowed down vocals, everything wreathed in a cough syrupy haze, it's the perfect late night music, like a bastardized drug addled Portishead, which sounds amazing right? We've been particularly partial to the recent spate of groups crafting a sort of abstract soul, a minimal, washed out, woozy RnB that takes the tropes of the original sound and stretches 'em waaaay out and slows them waaaaay dooooown, the result being a blissed out sonic comedown, all lumbering shuffling beats, woozy washed out melodic swells, vocals alternatingly chopped and screwed or left to drift angelically amidst hazy clouds of druggy drift. Think How To Dress Well, Crypt Thing, D'eon, Holy Other, Dirty Beaches, Hype Williams and the like.
We had never heard Shlohmo before, and actually first discovered him via a recent local show featuring Water Borders, oOoOO, White Ring and other sonically similar soundscapers (think Witch House if you want, it's okay). Shlohmo definitely traffics in a similar sound. fans of any of the above mentioned bands, will no doubt dig Shlohmo as well, his sound leaning more toward the swirling slow motion melodicisim of Balam Acab or Clams Casino, the sound all slow strummed chords, wreathed in effects and layered beneath blurred vocals, occasionally deep and dramatic, but more often, a fluttery Prince like falsetto, spidery melodies, creepy rickety rhythms, slow motion stutters and woozy warble, those distinctly witch house-y female vox all layered into a sort of chordal thrum, the sounds here hovering mainly in some ethereal sun dappled Technicolor dreamworld, but once in a while the sounds gain momentum, and become darker, the sounds more caustic and crunchy, but even then, the vibe is more shoegazey and dreamily druggy, with the sound eventually slipping back into something much more drifty and ephemeral.
Gorgeous stuff. WAY recommend for fans of prettier dreamier drag (Balam Acab, Clams Casino, etc.)�
Packaged in a super swank full color gatefold sleeve, includes a download code as well.
Latest 12" jam from local label Voltaire, and the first we've heard from local trio Shock, their song "Heaven", starts out all noisy and synthy, driven by a dark house-y pulse, which sort of had us expecting something all Carpenter/Goblin-y, but then the vocals come in, and the song is transformed into a gorgeous slab of retro electro pop shimmer, all groovy low slung bass line, reverby guitar jangle, ominous synth pulse, dubbed out handclaps, skittery beat, and some seriously divine, sultry vox, all wreathed in a gorgeously lush production, that had us thinking M83 for sure, a fantastic blast of fuzzed out shoegaze electronic house-pop.
The remixes are pretty bad ass too, probably most exciting for aQ-ers, is Steve Moore from Zombi's mix, which transforms it into a glistening cascade of percolating synth melodies, the house music pulse left intact, but the vocals blurred and smeared into long stretches of breathy looped drones. So good!
The other remixes are less dramatic, Beatbroker, as his name would suggest, goes heavier on the beat, while letting all the other sounds blur into something more ethereal and washed out, while Hatchback go the other direction entirely, and take the song in a much more eighties pop direction, more fuzzy retro-pop, all hazy and almost Beach House-y at times.
Wow!!! Most loyal AQ customers are pretty aware of our total love and adoration of almost all things Finnish, especially pretty much everything released on Finnish label Fonal. They just have not done us wrong yet. Islaja, Kemialliset Ystavat, Paavoharju, Es, the list goes on and on. And while for the most part their releases focus on the more murky free folk side of Finnish underground rock they have proven to be a label that isn't just about one 'sound' but instead are simply about beautiful music. Period. Whether it's random ethereal forest folk, dreamy drifty swooning ambience, or crunchy chaotic tribalistic clatter. Their latest release, from the Helsinki quartet Shogun Kunitoki, is further proof to that effect, and dare we say this might even be the greatest thing Fonal has released. Some of you may be shouting IMPOSSIBLE! And under different circumstances we'd be right there with you. But just listenening to Tasankokaiku has us thinking not only is it possible, it's damn near for certain. Color! So much vibrant color just bursting out of Shogun Kunitoki's instrumental onslaught. It starts out on fire and every song and sound just feeds the flame. It's almost as if Steve Reich and Terry Riley raised a child weaned on the BBC Radiophonic experiments, a young Rick Wakeman who grew up listening to the fuzzy guitarscapes of M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas... and the dreamy and propulsive instrumental jams of Stereolab, and thus cultivated a totally informed yet unique outlook and approach to music and music making. The sounds on Tasankokaiku are triumphant and assured, flickering then bursting, warm and so totally alive! Knowing how to perfectly use repetition to build momentum and then suddenly blast off to sparkling spaces that make you feel like you're being spirited away to a place that you've never been to but have always dreamed about. A sparkling glistening land of thick warm keyboards, hypnotic prog laced krautrockiness, Neu-infused soundscapes, basically a world populated by all the sounds that drive us wild. This is another one of those rare records that is an across the board unanimous AQ favorite. Everyone who works here loves it. We all hear different things too, besides the above mentioned bands, Andee hears bits of Goblin and Zombi and Heldon, Allan hears hints of Aavikko and Cluster and Circle, Irwin noticed a little Broadcast and even some Raymond Scott, but no matter what you hear, or what shades of sound reveal themsleves to you, the sum is SO much greater than its parts. A gloriously dense and warm world of fuzzy sound that we just can't stop listening to. No matter what music you've been obsessed with lately, this is one of those special records that somehow trumps whatever it is, straight to the top of your listening pile, elbowing it's way past all the other discs in your collection right into your cd player where it will effortlessly fend off any other records wanting to get in there. It's that good.
Our friend Adam who runs the super cool Crucial Blast label, has, for over 6 years now, been quietly (and not so quietly) putting out some of the coolest shit around. From crusty Finnish metal to droning electronica to sparse folk to brutal power electronics. This new series of cd-r's, limited to 100 copies and nicely packaged in oversized DVD cases will only be available via Aquarius records (unless you get them directly from Crucial Blast). So don't blow it...
One man band Shuai makes his noisy lo-fi electronica from a weird mix DHR style digital hardcore breakbeats, throbbing old school synths, blipping bleeping IDM, throbbing hardcore techno and some all out noise. Fans of DHR and meaner/harder IDM stuff should definitely check this out.
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Justin Broadrick (Godflesh, Final, Techno Animal) and Kevin Martin (God, Ice, Techno Animal) get together again as The Sidewinder to mix up some heavy modern lo-fi electronica. On the always-interesting Mille Plateaux label.
This actually came out a few months back but we've been waiting and waiting for more to show up in stock so we could review it...now they're here, so here goes: it's Austrian experimental guitarist Martin Siewert's new solo album, wherein he gets into more of an electronic pop thing than we've heard from him before. Has Siewert gone techno? Well there IS some poppy, techno-ish glitch blip stuff on here, and it's good -- but the two longest tracks (like, 14 minutes and 18 minutes) get into a droney, textural zone similar to the electro-acoustic improv work we've enjoyed by Siewert in the past. And one of these epics benefits from the live drumming of Tony Buck of AQ-faves The Necks! Also appearing on the album are prior Siewert collaborators Werner Dafeldecker, Patrick Pulsinger and Radian's Martin Brandlmayr (no slouch in the drumming dep't. either!).
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Signal is the Raster supergroup/collaborative effort between Frank Bretschneider (aka Komet), Olaf Bender (aka Byetone), and Carsten Nicolai (aka Noto). Having set up an arsenal of laptops, black boxes, and oscillators, Signal's caustic electronics have produced a synthetic aural approximation of the Pantone spectrum of grey. Dessicated rhythms form terse electronic structures within layers of timestretched sinewaves and digital clickery. Nice work.
The latest chunk of clinical otherworldly, stark white dancefloor anti-funk from the always amazing Raster-Noton label comes from Signal, who we haven't heard from in ages, a sort of modern minimalist supergroup, featuring Frank Bretschneider (Komet), Olaf Bender (Byetone) and label head Carsten Nicolai (aka Noto), and you might think with that many cooks in the sonic kitchen, the result would be dense and messy and chaotic, but anyone even slightly familiar with these guys and this label know that nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, this is just as minimal and stripped down as anything we've heard from any of these guys�
But like much of the later Raster-Noton releases, the label's Ikeda-ish trademark super spare high end low end sine wave click and buzz has been tempered with bits of melody, subtle hints of groove, the result a strange alien robot dancemusic.
Beginning with a thick swirl of buzzing synth, almost like an electronic SUNNO))), the buzz quickly gives way to a glorious minimal skeletal funkiness. Where Chain Reaction took minimalism into a fuzzy, grungy underworld and wrapped it in murk and whir, these guys lay the whole thing out in a bright white space, all metallic edges and sanitized surfaces, a gloriously machinelike and propulsive future funk abstraction of techno created in some alien vacuum. The best part about this Signal disc is that in addition to all the stark minimalism and clipped robotic beats, they've also introduced some, well, maybe 'dirty sounds' might be the best way to describe them in this context, some air conditioner hum, some spurts of Geiger counter glitch, bits of blurry fuzz, smears of distortion and crumbling effects, some low end buzz that is chopped up into what almost sounds like metallic riffing. Rather than sounding out of place, they simply add more texture, more grit, make the music sound slightly more human and less alien, they also serve to highlight just how clinical and awesomely austere the beats and sounds are when those bits of buzz and hum drop out, a dramatic sonic shift that almost makes your ears pop. Awesome.
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Ultra minimalism from the three heads of Noton/Rastermusic - Olaf Bender (aka Byetone), Frank Bretschneider (aka Komet), and Carsten Nikolai (aka Noto) - whose combined effort is abstract digital sound structures based on the very simple clarity of sine waves and noise modulation.
Sigur Ros on Kompakt!? It kind of makes perfect sense. Especially as this is remixes of their great lead off track from their latest full length, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endlanst. Their Iceland buddies Gus Gus (and newly members of the Kompakt family) do a really nice job bringing Sigur Ros into techno/dance territory and Thomas Fehlman's mix take it to a whole other deep German techno state of sound.
More proof that you should never believe anything that NME or Melody Maker has to say about music. Praised by the UK asskissers at NME as the next thing to follow up Godspeed You Black Emperor, Sigur Ros does attempt to orchestrate lengthy passages for a large ensemble. But, instead of the psychic wastelands of Godspeed which soar with a grandiose majesty, Sigur Ros soaks their orchestral rock in a heavy-handed, melodramatic goop that is inexcusable. The CD has twice as much material as the vinyl!
Frosty, shimmering and yes, oh so distinctly Icelandic. This is the new album from Valgeir Sigurdsson. An unfamiliar name perhaps? Well, if you looked closely to the credits for some of your favorite Icelandic artists' albums, you'd probably find his name listed as the producer, engineer, collaborator among other roles... particularly for Sigur Ros, Mum and one Ms Bjork! Sigurdsson steps to the other side of the recording studio console to make his solo debut. It's a tapestry of delicate, stuttery IDM waves and chiming melodies. On tracks such as "Focal Point" the airiness is countered by the sound of heavy fingers on (toy?) piano keys. Enchanting!
Features guest appearances by Bonnie Prince Billy and Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables!
It's been awhile since we heard from Austin based one man band Silent Land Time Machine, not that Jon Roberts hasn't been busy. He runs his own Indian Queen imprint as well as co-running the fantastic tape label, Holodeck (from which we've reviewed releases by Thousand Foot Whale Claw, Smokey Emery and the other band Roberts does times with, the awesome kraut-psych drone outfit, Lumens). His debut, & Hope Still on Time-Lag, felt like a host of musicians in a full-on psychedelic Henry Flynt whirlwind, but all instruments were deftly played by Roberts himself. Here on this six song vinyl ep, he gives his compositions more space. With treated violin as his primary instrument, he carefully crafts beautifully layered psych-folk dirges that sound as if they were transmitted from some far-off place and time. Billows of static over looping and cascading filigrees of melody, murky percussive rhythms, and field recordings add to the songs' haunting remote quality. With harmonium and parlor piano on a song like "An Own To One's Room", it feels like some old west paean to days gone by. The long title, I Am No Longer Alone With Myself and Can Only Artificially Recall the Scary and Beautiful Feeling of Solitude, is a quote from Carl Jung, and it aptly describes not only the overall feel of the recording, but also the mysteriously romantic notion of how experience is shaped by continuous yet selective entanglements with the memories of our past. On 180g clear vinyl. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Highly Recommended!
Silent Servant's dour techno emerges from the now defunct Sandwell District collective of techno-heds keen on bending the Detroit / Berlin axis to allow for the grim pathologies of Industrial culture and all of its post-punk offshoots to infiltrate the boom-boom-boom of a 909 drum kick. Sandwell's Karl O'Connor is certainly the most vocal, hardlined, and aggressive of the District's members through the brutalist techno that he's produced over the years. His DJ sets are notorious for dropping Whitehouse and other power electronic squalor amidst furiously hard breakbeats. Juan Mendez (aka Silent Servant) strikes a gloomier pose than O'Connor through the Sandwell District and carries this over into the ethereally witched-out Tropic Of Cancer. Silent Servant's Negative Fascination drops from Hospital Productions, whose ghastly noise aesthetic parted once before for Cold Cave's gritty synth pop, making room for head honcho Dominic Fernow to follow suit with his own adventures in rhythm (e.g. Vatican Shadows, Christian Cosmos). If one were to imagine what Dom would want out of a techno record on Hospital, Negative Fascination is exactly what comes to mind - Chain Reaction's dub-inflected heroin house, Clock DVA's cybernetic futurism, and the atmosphere from the mournful dirges of New Order's first album.
A fine grit coats the production of Negative Fascination, and it's something that electronic purists may find off-putting, but it suits the bleakness and dystopian overtures that Mendez injects into his production. Acid-like gurgles propel the minimalist techno thump of "The Invocation Of Lust" and "The Strange Attractor" both of which rise and fall through a complex sequence of churning rhythms and shifting drones. "Temptation & Desire" lifts a taut rhythmic stab straight from The Sisters Of Mercy circa Body Electric and mutates it into a punchy minimal wave number with appropriately coldly theatrical drones hovering in the distant. The finale "Utopian Disaster" is right out of the Sandwell playbook of modulated techno sequencing, Chain Reactive dubby rhythms, and stealth bomber vibes. A fucking great record. (FYI, turntable types: the vinyl version's first pressing sold out, but is being repressed right now, so back in soon.)
Silo are a Danish trio who boastfully proclaim their allegiance to Metallica, yet sound nothing at all like metal. Instead, the group takes a post-rock approach, with metronomically tight, cyclical rhythmic patterns of guitar, bass, drums, and electronics, not dissimilar to the AQ-endorsed sounds of Fridge, Village Of Savoonga, and Circle. While the sounds on "Alloy" certainly
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Polyrhythmic pop-electronica from this Spanish duo who got a stellar line-up of remixes from Locust, Scorn, Autechre, Seefeel and Scanner.
Attack Decay Sustain Release, is surprisingly the first full-length album released by London based production/ DJ duo, Simian Mobile Disco (James Ford and Jas Shaw), though a slew of SMD remixes and catchy dance fueled singles like "Hustler" and "I Believe" have been in heavy rotation throughout various DJ/dance internet blogs and mixed in night clubs far and wide for a few years now.
When considering the beginnings of SMD, one wouldn't assume they started as half of the psych/folk rock outfit, Simian, which saw considerable success though the two weren't exactly comfortable with the direction of the group. Seeking a more "electronic party music" approach the duo left Simian to delve into the DJ/production game, soon building a reputation with production and remixes for artists like AIR, The Klaxons, and Arctic Monkeys. We've all been anxious to see how a full album of SMD material would hold up against the numerous comparisons to the releases of French electro outfit Justice (listed a few lists back), and Kitsune's Digitalism. Basically, the question is, who will be the next Daft Punk!?
Well, we think it's safe to say there are similarities though A.D.S.R. definitely holds its own, being a bit more vocal and progressive. This is a brilliant collection of dance tunes, though not terribly long (10 songs all together), its a quality over quantity approach, with varied tracks that are constantly stimulating. Every song here is well crafted and instantly memorable with catchy synth choruses drowned in effects, every synth melody put in its right place. A lot of variation in this album. The more club oriented tracks like "Sleep Deprivation" are dense with randomly filtered bleeps, bloops, and dominant kicks, and "Tits & Acid" filled with quirky, burbling sequencer lines, ecstatic sweeps and washes, and the occasional chopped and filtered vocal edits.
Then there are the more poppy tunes (but good pop) like "I Believe" reminiscent of Kraftwerk with a crisp, wobbly bass and a super catchy synth chorus (a personal fave, minus the vocals) and, "It's The Beat" featuring vocals by Ninja from The Go! Team. Then there's "Scott", an amazing, dreamy, electronic composition, similar to that of early synth pioneers like Jean Michel Jarre or Teddy Lasry. Best yet, it's all recorded on analog machines, to steer clear of the more techy, programmed sound.
Overall, an electrifying album indeed!
While we love and appreciate the music of Simian Mobile Disco, created of course on all analog equipment with sights set on a flashing dancefloor, it's really the incredible DJ skills of Simian Mobile Disco that impresses us the most. A few of us have seen them play their sets before and it really was some of the best dancefloor/DJ action we've ever experienced. So we were super excited about their entry in the Fabriclive series.
This should really be used as a template/textbook for all aspiring dancefloor DJ's. SMD are masterful at mixing both the obvious and the obscure, the expected and the very UNexpected. From disco to four-on-the-floor techno, rife with great peaks and valleys with great twists and turns throughout, this is a mix made for playing loud or as the soundtrack to the kind of party that involves bodies moving with reckless abandon. Who else could somehow sneak in Raymond Scott, Moondog, and Moebius/Plank/Neumeier into a mix featuring Hercules & The Love Affair, Plastikman and Tomita and make it all flow so effortlessly? There is a danger sometimes with DJ's playing show-off with their record collections, but Simian Mobile Disco really utilize their great taste in music for maximum dance floor effect. They would be the perfect group to DJ a Daft Punk after party! Aspiring DJ's get out your notebooks cause school is in session!
It's been a long and interesting road for Mike Simonetti since his days as a hardcore/punk fixture in the '80s and '90s New York scene. Booking shows at places like Mars and running one of the more diverse and cool labels to emerge out of the hardcore scene, Troubleman Unlimited. With that label he put out amazing records by everyone from Erase Errata to The Rye Coalition to Shotmaker to Wolf Eyes to Tussle. Then as he started to DJ and widen his appreciation of post-punk and dance music, he launched Italians Do It Better, the label that helped put the space disco revival on the map with folks like Glass Candy and The Chromatics.
There's no doubt Simonetti is an amazing taste maker with awesome and varied taste (he even orders lots of black metal from us!) but we weren't really sure what to expect from his new solo outing. With Capricorn Rising he's created a record that wonderfully splits its time between dance floor ecstasy and darker prog like meditations. Imagine M83, Junior Boys and Zombi all jamming together. Aside from Glass Candy and Chromatics, most of what Italians Do It Better has released tends to be more focused on singles and not so much a thought out album. We love how Simonetti has taken this opportunity to create an suite of songs that has a running theme and irresistible aura and makes for an engaging listen from start to finish.
