We're pretty sure there's not a person alive who hasn't heard Ke$ha's "Tik Tok", an insanely and inanely addictive chunk of electronic commercial pop, that at least a handful of aQ-ers have ended up digging despite themselves. But WAY before Ke$ha, there was Uffie, a spoiled bratty slutty teenager, who moved to Europe, fell in with the Ed banger crew, and ended up being an unlikely sort-of-star with her inane but AWESOME jam "Pop The Glock", dopey lyrics, autotuned vox, super catchy, we don't know anyone who didn't dig it, whether they wanted to or not, but that was YEARS ago, so it seems fortuitous that Uffie finally unleashes her proper full length debut, right when the climate is right for another vapid, gold digging, slutty, super hot electronic superstar. And of course "Pop The Glock" is here, it is her best song after all, and if it weren't for all the swearing, it's not hard to imagine this being all over the radio, although the vibe is more trashy euro than US mall punk, but still, it sounds as good as ever.
The only problem, is that "Pop The Glock" is so good, the rest of the record sort of pales, but even then, this is a pretty bad ass dose of sweaty, groovy, club bangers, "ADD SUV" should be blasting in every club, total coke and crystal, VIP room, stripper anthem, "MCs Can Kiss" sounds like a modern version of Roxanne Shante, a sort of dumbed down "Cars That Go Boom" (which as already sorta dumb), "First Love" is about as close to a sensitive ballad as Uffie can get, still all about sex, and laced with heavy beats and buzzy synths, and then there's the title track, that almost sounds like Best Coast, summery and sunshiney and fuzzy and poppy, which is weird, but besides "Pop The Glock" might be the best song here...
Obviously, this is poised to be THEE guilty pleasure of the year, but that's only if you feel guilty for digging this, which we don't really at all!
Weird Japanese indie pop/electronica/jazz group, described as some impossible combination of salsa, beats, and Zappa, or something like that. Their brand of willful eclecticism is of the very brave (foolish?) variety, where they don't so much fuse genres as skip among them from track to track, making this sound almost more like a compilation than a band. For instance, track four is an interpretation of Ornette Coleman's "Skies of America", with saxophones a-plenty, but by track six we're experiencing a hip hop song featuring guest MC Mike Ladd. Other guests and musical approaches are introduced over the course of the album, but at least one unifying factor is the recurrence of saxophones, and another is the recurring vocals of Kyoko Brown, who manages to come as close as a Japanese (-American?) woman can to sounding like Mike Patton, appropriate since I'd imagine that Mr. Bungle fans looking for something in the electronica vein would go for this... Interesting!
Lupine Norwegian tricksters Ulver have been around for 10 years now, and mark the occasion with this invitational remix album, something very appropriate for a group whose whole career has been about morphing and reinventing themselves, remaining weirdo outsiders in whatever genre they visit. A decade ago they started out (and still have some residual allegiance to) the Nordic black metal genre, but today we're not sure what genre they claim, certainly it's not metal anymore. Glitchy electronica and downtempo beats took over from buzzing guitars and blast beats, but there's a definite connection between the two as this project proves.
Remixers include Ulver themselves (whose track goes way back to their Vargnatt demo tape from '93 for source material) and an international cast of experimentalists: Merzbow, Fennesz, Stars Of The Lid, Neotropic, Bogdan Raczynski, Third Eye Foundation, Information, Upland, Pita, V/Vm, Jazzkammer and a few others. An impressive and unusual line-up, certainly not entirely what we expected. Some do drones, some delve into beat-scapes, while others go for the raw black stuff, such as Merzbow (of course) whose ten-minute "Vow me Ibrzu" is one of the highlights, being a properly scary and noisy trawl through the evil riffage of Ulver's metallic past. Quite a few of the mixes are drawn from Ulver's more recent electronica efforts (Perdition City, the Silence eps, and the Lycantropen Themes soundtrack), but not all -- early stuff from Ulver's classic lycanthropian "Trilogie" of black metal albums (Bergtatt and Nattens Madrigal specifically) makes it on here as well. Several more mixes derive from Ulver's industrial version of William Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the double cd that was an early signpost of Ulver's willingness to violate genre norms and musical categorization. Like it says here, wolves evolve...
MPEG Download: FENNESZ "Only The Poor Have To Travel" [/audio/ulverfennesz.mp3]
MPEG Stream: FENNESZ "Only The Poor Have To Travel" [/audio/ulverfennesz.m3u]
MPEG Download: UPLAND "Lost In Moments Remix" [/audio/ulverupland.mp3]
The title doesn't lie. This latest transmission from those Norwegian eccentrics Ulver consists of but four songs, a sampling of gothic glitch rock, the sad-synth-symphonic soundtrack to a ghost story left to you to imagine. The melodies and electronic beats give little clue to Ulver's origins as a vulpine black metal band, although the final track is in fact a rearrangement of a piece from their 1996 Kveldssanger opus, and makes an ominous, distortion-filled ending to the ep without altering the mood already set by the chamber strings and doleful male singing of the previous three tracks. With this ep, Ulver continue their ectoplasmic existence as a restless spirit that filters through many musical bodies, fully possessing none but leaving weird nightmares behind...
This latest release from unclassifiable Norwegian electronica experimentalists Ulver (y'know, the not-a-black-metal-band-anymore-so-don't-even-ask Ulver) is a soundtrack to some sort of arty werewolf film (we think, check out the trailer at http://www.lyckantropen.com/trailer.php) by Swedish director Steve Ericsson. Following on in the style of their recent, quite nice "improv-glitch" eps (collected on the Teachings In Silence cd reviewed last list), Ulver's music for Ericsson's film is suitably dark and moody -- and glitchily melodic. Loops and crackle and synth drones, almost entirely instrumental, in a very "modern" electronic vein -- not a bit like Ulver's previous werewolf-themed albums (Nattens Madrigal for instance)! You'll hear no distorted metallic Darkthrone worship here (although things get a little frantic on the disc's tenth and final track). This is informed more by the likes of Tarwater and Autechre and downtempo electronica, and they do it well. Scoring soundtracks may indeed be Ulver's new true calling, though we'd still love it if they'd surprise us again in the future with yet another new direction. As good as this is, they've yet to really be as original or unique in their adopted/adapted "electronica" guise as they were in the realm of black metal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The most predicably unpredicable band on the Norwegian black metal scene has to be Ulver. They've made an album of metallic, raw Darkthrone worship, another of pure acoustic folk, and (most recently) even a double cd combining William Blake poetry with industrial beats. Now, with this new four-track ep, they've gone fully techno, Ulver-style, meaning dark, heavy electronica beats with only traces of the old Ulver remaining, mainly in the occasional Viking-opera vocals. Appropriate to this "metamorphosis", the cd tray features the following message from the band: "Ulver is obviously not a black metal band...we are proud of our former instincts, but wish to liken our association with said genre to that of the snake with Eve. An incentive to further frolic only. If this discourages you in any way, please have the courtesy to refrain from voicing superficial remarks regarding our music and/or personae. We are as unknown to you as we always were." Yet another surprising release from this unique band.
Well it's pretty clear that these Norwegian weirdos will never be a "black metal" band again. Following the industrial and techno experimentation of their last two releases comes the new disc, "Perdition City" (pretentiously subtitled "music to an interior
We managed to get a few of the LIMITED EDITION version (same price) for the moment. The music is the same, but the booklet is bigger, with more photos, and it comes in an oversized weird sort-of-jewel case. But once they're gone, they're gone for good, and then we'll have to sell you the not-limited normal version.
Formerly black metal avantgardists Ulver of Norway present 24 minutes of electonic experimental improv, a slowly-unfolding collage of organic drones and beats and clicks and field recordings and post-rock piano melody etc., that might remind you of everything
The long, lone track on this limited edition ep was constructed from material recorded in a one-night "Dead City Centre jam" last February during the sessions for Ulver's most recent full-length, the love it or hate it "Perdition City". Unlike that album, though, this ep benefits from a lack of horrendous vocal and saxophone contributions! While some of Ulver's past attempts to branch out into non-black metal genres have been, as just alluded to, kinda shaky (if commendable in spirit), this stands up well in the "experimental/electronica" category. Recommended, as possibly Ulver's best post-metal effort.
We're still waiting on the upcoming string quartet version of Ulver's black metal masterpiece Nattens Madrigal, but in the meantime they've released something else new, another soundtrack effort (their second, after last year's Lyckantropen Themes). As with that album, Ulver are in their current manifestation as a dark, avant-electronica act, their Nordic metal past a mere shadow cast over the proceedings. With eerie, tinkling piano and far-off, distant screams, Ulver create sonic echoes of crimes that we'll assume appear on celluloid in Svidd Neger. Melancholic horns and downtempo beats make this a creepy yet club-contemporary sounding listen. And after you're lulled into thinking it's all gonna be quiet and mellow, wham some ominous heavy chords come crashing down, Mogwai-style. Mostly though, this is quiet and creepy, and menacingly melodic.
This new cd from Norwegian avantgarde ex-black metallers Ulver isn't really new, as it actually is a reissue compilation of their two limited edition, now out of print eps "Silence Teaches You How To Sing" and "Silencing The Singing" on one handy, domestically issued disc (by a new label run by Aaron of tUMULt's noise-pop artists Iran, who met Ulver while in Norway filming a documentary about the black metal scene!). So, you don't need it if you already have those two import discs, but if you don't, we most certainly recommend it -- both eps are two of Ulver's best post-black metal efforts to date, as they move into unclassifiable experimental/electronica realms. To sum up our previous commentary on these eps: "Silence Teaches You..." is a single, 24 minute track of electonic experimental improv, a slowly-unfolding collage of organic drones and beats and clicks and field recordings and post-rock piano melody etc., that might remind you of everything from Tarwater to Philip Jeck to Fennesz to Mogwai... Quite mellow, dark and beautiful, a soundscape composed, in part, of static-y electro-grime overlaying scratchy vinyl looping with occasional wordless drifting vocals. It was constructed from material recorded in a one-night "Dead City Centre jam" during the sessions for Ulver's previous full-length album, the love it or hate it "Perdition City". Unlike that album, though, this ep benefits from a lack of horrendous vocal and saxophone contributions! The similar in method/sound "Silencing The Singing" follows, three tracks providing another half hour of music, constructed of repetitive melodic and non-melodic loops (some notes on a piano, scratchy vinyl surface noise, what might be far-off voices), gradually joined by electronic blips and beats. The mood is quiet and languid, as are the rhythms, although the last track builds into a lovely few final moments of loud distortion.
Ulver of course originally made their name in the black metal scene, with such classic the-forest-is-my-throne-style albums as "Nattens Madrigal" and "Kveldsanger", full of church-burning riffs and wolverine vocals (and acoustic folk music in the case of "Kveldsanger"). And we won't deny that that's some of their best stuff -- it is. But since those days they've abandoned black metal and morphed into some sort of odd, willfully abstract electronic/experimental band -- and as well, Ulver leader Krystoffer "Garm" Rygg started up the fab Jester label to release music by all sorts of likeminded (i.e. fucked) Norwegian artists (including AQ faves When, Bogus Blimp, Origami Galaktika, Rotoscope, and of course Ulver).
And while Ulver's black metal past isn't overtly evident on these recordings, we could suppose that their earlier appreciation of the grim, lo-fi, trance-like ambience created by their (former) heroes Darkthrone and Mayhem is still a part of Ulver's sound, explaining their music's current immersion in a grimy (if not grim) background of constant crackle and buzzing drones. Well, that and the fact that such sounds are now as hip in experimental/electronica circles as they are cult in metal.
The latest chunk of seventies/eighties faux giallo soundtrack John Carpenter / Goblin worship from longtime aQ faves Umberto comes in the form of this EXTREMELY limited one-sided silk-screened 12". Umberto, aka Matt Hill, who is one half of psychedelic spacekraut explorers Expo 70, offers up another glorious slab of brooding cinematic ambience, this one a lot more ambient that past outings. More on that in a second. Final Exit is packaged in a super striking fold over sleeve, which features the image of one unlucky man's final exit, laying on a bed, suffocated with a plastic bag over his head, the sleeve also bears the legend: "This record is intended to accompany the last moments of your suffering." It also features a seal, adorned with a flower, and the words "good life / good death". The record itself is one sided, the flipside featuring another image of that same man, this time eyes opened and bulging! Morbid for sure. And the music follows suit. Sort of. In some ways it almost sounds more like a slightly more sinister and soundtracky Expo 70, with warm swoonsome synth swirls, a sort of darkly new age-y drift, moody and broody, with lush swells that sound almost choral, the vibe is definitely majestic and cinematic, but is also minimal and restrained. A few minutes in, percolating synth melodies surface amidst the dark swirls, and then a simple heartbeat like pulse, motorik and minimally propulsive, near the end the sound changes tone and timbre becoming much more gristly and distorted the hum and thrum transformed into a crumbling buzz, ominous and sinister, the whole sound hazy and gauzy, and gradually fading to black.
The record sounds great at both 33 and 45rpm, but we tend to like things slower, so at 33 it definitely sounds much creepier and gloomier.
LIMITED TO JUST 150 COPIES!!! Each one is hand numbered. When we run out, we will NOT be able to get more, so if you want one, act fast.
Word of warning: These come in those super brittle plastic picture disc sleeves that, to be blunt, kinda suck, so every single one of the sleeves is slightly damaged, whether it's cracked on the corner, or with a seam split, it's the nature of those sleeves, and of having them shipped from overseas too (which also resulted in some some bent corners and so forth), so if you're super anal, or a nit picky collector, you have been warned, everyone else, you should be fine, they're all housed in a second polybag anyway, and the records themselves are in perfect condition (and look amazing!), so grab one before they're gone!
The first thing you notice is the goofy Eddie Murphy cover art, with the altered tagline "He's been ZUULed, thrown through a window, and arrested." The second thing you notice are the equally cheesy sounds inside, channeling the same eighties VHS soundtrack grooves as before, but somehow, where in the past, Umberto sounded like horror movie scores, or lost John Carpenter soundtracks, or sci-fi fantasy weirdness, this one sounds like it COULD actually have come from an Eddie Murphy movie, funky synthed out grooves, programmed drums, faux horn melodies, at least on "Put An APB On Those Bastards". "Common Street trash" almost sounds like it could have been titled "Love Theme from Common Street Trash", all hazy washed out melodies, another weird horn like refrain, everything super dramatic and heartfelt and again fantastically cheesy. "Going Rogue", laces some piano over soaring strings, some big stadium drums, a slow building super tense, but all too brief bit of dramatic musical tension, before the big finish, "Illegal Entry With Intent To Zuul", with its Barney Miller bassline, sizzling high hats, new wave drums, and yep, another cheesy electronic sax solo, all washed out and woozy, as faded as the crappy VHS print of whatever imaginary movie this came from, the funky bass rooting it solidly mid eighties, same with the sax, the second half gets a little more far out and new wavey, with some strange synth melodies, all the while teetering right on the edge of goofy retro synth revivalism and the sort of thing we weren't sure we understood even the first time around... Goblin fans should be pleased!
Doubtless many movie (and music) buffs would agree that Italian '70s and '80s "giallo" (horror/thriller) cinema, from directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, had soundtracks usually as evocative and inspirational as any visual aspect of the films, soundtracks which often stand as effective works of art all on their own. The scores by prog band Goblin being perhaps best known, influencing such modern day bands as Zombi and Crime In Choir. Now here's another, utterly blatant and most excellent example of Italian giallo soundtrack worship by a current artist: Umberto!
Umberto is actually a one-man band, that man being Matt Hill, live collaborator / touring member of AQ faves Expo '70! Under his guise of Umberto, he has just released his first album as limited edition cassette and cd-r on the Sonic Mediations label run by Expo '70 mainman Justin Wright. While Expo '70 has proven to be especially adept at channelling the heavy kosmiche bliss of prime '70s krautrock a la Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, Umberto is equally savvy at conjuring the dark, suspenseful soundtrack-y sounds of Goblin and the like. With, some cosmic Klaus-y krauty-ness thrown in as well. This definitely sounds like it could be an actual soundtrack, in fact, someone should MAKE a film just to use this as a soundtrack. You can certainly do so in your imagination, aided perhaps by the cinematically suggestive track titles, which include "Running Blade", "Intermission", "Dream Sequence", "Shower Scene", and "End Credits" (the only track here with vocals, otherwise it's all instrumental... and the vocals on this last track are some sort of hard-to understand, chant-like invocation). Listen with the lights off for best results.
Umberto has a heavily synthesized sound, keyboards buzzing and droning and squelching, crunchily distorted or eerily ethereal, sounding at once like ominous Gothic organ music and also spacey futuristic electronica. Mechanical drumming plods along, propulsive beats adding to the menacing atmosphere. There's also plenty of fat disco synth-bass, and we bet folks into Italians Do It Better 12"s, or Black Devil Disco Club, or even skweee would get a kick out of this too, not just Goblin fanatics... but yeah Goblin fanatics (and John Carpenter and Zombi fans too) REALLY ought to check this out! Very cool, very creepy, and even at times kinda catchy-groovy.
We LOVED the previous Umberto album, From The Grave, and are stoked that he/they/it have finally returned with another full length packed with oodles of Goblin-y goodness, just in time for Halloween!!
But the sound of the Expo 70-associated Umberto is not strictly that scary, at least not all the time, in fact, like Goblin and other '80s Italian fright-film soundtrackers, most of the scary stuff here is really just an *underlying* un-ease, a sinister suspenseful undercurrent over which more "groovy" stuff gets down. And way more groovy this one most definitely is, some serious haunted dancefloor action, or horror movie disco, or whatever you want to call it, but Umberto has for sure upped the funk/groove quotient, lacing the usual cocktail of thick, tense, pulsing synth throb, minimal motorik rhythms and heavy ominous drones with plenty of funky basslines, crunchy modulated keyboard buzz, soaring synths, chanted voices and propulsive grooves... Here and there, the sound gets all stripped down leaving just gurgly, crumbly distorted low end peppered with spaced out booming rhythms, or creepy ambient atmospheres, but the songs tend to slip quickly back into haunted shuffly rhythms, woozy horror movie atmospherics, ominous strings laced funky grooves and dark descending bass blarp.
The second side begins with one of those tracks that sounds like the music that always introduces us to the main character in all those seventies thrillers, the little girl playing with her dollies, the old woman in the garden, the sound is tranquil but subtly sinister, here it's a music box like melody, plinking dreamily beneath haunting strings, and soft swirls of creepy voice like synth, total horror movie soundtrack shivers for sure.
After that it's back to wah guitars, chiming bells, groovy Italo funk haunted dancefloor grooviness, but this time with some cool washed out M83 style female vocal textures, a shoegazey gauze over that propulsive Goblin-y groove.
If we had to pick a single song that was THE ONE here, it would probably be "Someone Chasing Someone Through A House" which sounds exactly LIKE THAT, pulsing throbbing synths, electronic squelches, deep ominous drones, dark swells, foreboding and creepy and tense and SCARY!
The album ends with an upbeat track entitled "Everything Is Going To Be Ok", all sun-coming-up, yay we survived the zombie onslaught good cheer & cheesiness. The sort of music that plays over the closing credits, or even better, over the final shot which lulls you into a sense of false security, before a decaying hand bursts through the ground, or a beast explodes from the water and drag our heroine out of the boar, some sort of shock to let you know that evil won't stay buried... which of course usually leads to a sequel, and we are definitely looking forward to the next installment of groovy Gobliny sonic scares from Umberto!
The lead track from Umberto's 2010 album Prophecy Of The Black Widow gets an extended "disco" remix here on this new 12".
You're not imagining things, that skull in the rearview mirror is looking at you. Expo 70 sideman Matt Hill, aka Umberto, is back... eerie as ever! Following his recent, limited, and now out of print one-sided 12" entitled Final Exit on Italian label Black Moss, comes this strikingly-sleeved 45rpm 12" via UK label The Great Pop Supplement, also quite limited (500 copies only), vinylizing a cassette put out by Solid Melts in an even scarcer edition a year ago. Welcome To The Chillzone consists of two tracks of equal 10:03 durations, really one piece split over two sides, both quietly brooding and creepy, side A slowly unfolding, building up to the somewhat more intense but still restrained side B... which ends, though, as side A begins, the whole composition looping like the original tape. Umberto's sinister sonics are indeed chilling here, full of blissful yet shivery synthwork, like hushed melodic whispers drifting above an ominous hallucinatory hum... eventually there's sequenced rhythmic pulsations, but gentle, this 12" as compelling and effective as any suspense film soundtrack we can think of. As with Final Exit, 'tis more ambient and icy than the deathly disco of Umberto's more electro beat-driven earlier efforts, so next to Goblin and John Carpenter among the giallo-obsessed Umberto's influences, have been added the zoned out cinematic synths of Tangerine Dream, perhaps.
As we said, limited edition of 500 copies, already sold out at the label!! We got a couple dozen, but when they're gone, they're gone, we won't be able to get any more...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Sometimes it's hard to keep up with the output of Italian '60s/'70s groovedelica reissue label Easy Tempo. Fortunately this release didn't escape our notice, 'cause it's super great. Italian composer Piero Umiliani has been the subject of numerous reissues and compilations as his "space age bachelor pad" music is finding a newer audience 30 years after it was created. And while the sticker on the cd reminds you that Umiliani's experimental synthesizer (moog, mostly) pop material can favorably be compared to the exotica of Martin Denny, the '60s rock of Jefferson Airplane, and jazz a la Ellington, we're here to tell you that at times the music sounds utterly contemporary, as modern and fresh and full of original ideas as any new "electronica" artist out there. In fact, the electronic material is so clean and avant sounding that we are instantly reminded of Krautrock pioneers Cluster and Neu. You heard me--Cluster. Yeah, it's that good! Not that it's all super serious or anything -- there's a great version of "Caravan" on here worthy of Perrey & Kingsley. Highly recommended!
Even if we weren't already Umiliani fans, we'd have been sold on this from the cover art alone - the painting looks a bit like a still from some psychedelic science-fantasy animation, like La Planete Sauvage, and the creature in the foreground with the one big eye reminds us of a 'minion' from Despicable Me wearing a black leather/latex bondage suit! So there's that. And, there's the music - also cool and strange and not that far removed from La Planete Sauvage stuff either. This album, which was originally released circa 1980 (supposedly, though some sources state '81, and others 1976), was made by Italian soundtrack/library music composer Piero Umiliani, here operating under the "band" name Moggi. We've always loved Umiliani, best known for his nonsense hit "Mah Na Mah Na", made more famous by the Muppets. He's a 'Space Age Bachelor Pad' music maestro, and here, with drums, bass and hella Moog, gets especially spacey, these retro-futuristic ditties approaching kraut-electronica status (a la Cluster), often sounding quite ahead of their time. It's a real wondrous romp of experimental synthesizer poppiness, chock a block with quirky, groovy instrumentals, squelchy and super-catchy and synthed out to the max, with mesmeric melodies, percolating percussion and other splashes of jazziness along with the avant-garde electronics and FX. Utterly delightful.
First time reissued on vinyl, limited to 500 copies, and goin' fast - in fact, we can't be sure if we'll be able to get more at all when we run out. (Oh, and nice label name, by the way!)
A fantastic record in the sampladelic genre: fans of DJ Shadow, Barry Adamson, David Holmes should take note! It's rare that we'd quote a press release in an AQ review, but in this case the reasons why I (Windy) like this record so much are exactly what's stated herein:
"Unagi extends an invitation into his unique sonic wonderworld, constructed from forgotten vinyl and dollar bin digging. He serves up mid-fi sample based music, sidestepping the antiseptic production values dominating present day hip-hop. Influenced by luminaries such as Lonnie Liston Smith and Eumir Deodato, Unagi offers tracks carefully crafted with an ear refined through a lifetime of musical consumption. This self-titled debut album is a stylistic drive-by of love. Unagi's magazine is loaded with an array of themes ranging from space jazz, Caribbean cruise ship lounge, roller rink couples' skate and Sunday afternoon afterglow soul fusion."
According to the *well documented* liner notes, this album was originally released on cassette in South East Asia in 1982. The
The music on the disc is classic Hot Air material though: quirky and humorous electronica, squeaks, farts and irreverence (thumbs in the face to the pretensions of high brow electronica abound.) The disc starts off with a field recording of insects buzzing on a lonesome highway and then goes into some ping pong ball bouncy electronica with ersatz-Asian melodies that almost sounds like an attempt to imitate Burmese Pat Wiang (a melodic circular set of drums that sound like rototoms). Included also are a lot of really cheesy gamelan-esque samples and synth sounds in to boot. The end result is audio tourism where the tourist never even leaves home, but just comes up with a fictional vacation. Our mysterious tour guides Obeng & Jalan (most certainly Matt Wand -- we're making an "ass" of "u" and "me" here that it's Mr. Wand behind this) have produced some wickedly funny /possibly offensive electronic fuckery. Hot Air has released this mini cd as part of their "Hot Air Global Education Series" in cooperation with "The Hotairian Institute".
Ex 2nd Gen mainman Wajid Yaseen abandons his damaged hip hop in favor of damaged minimal glitch and drone. Noisy and weird and way abstract. Features guests Lydia Lunch, Alan Vega, Dalek and more. Cover art by infamous actionist Franko B.
Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
And Community Library have done a really nice job of it, the gatefold cd sleeve containing a thick 32 page cd booklet with elaborate colorful collage style liner notes by bandleader Scott "Dr. Tex Nology" Ryser, a Units manifesto of sorts, he also talks about the wild and crazy San Francisco of the '70s/early '80s era, and also there's several pages of old fliers for Units gigs at the Fab Mab and other SF punk venues... we noticed one for the Warfield too, with The Units opening for OMD and Gary Numan. Also shows with Romeo Void, Dead Boys, Soft Cell, Psychedelic Furs, Dead Kennedys, Crime, Screamers, Iggy Pop, the Police, Tuxedomoon... Definitely makes us young 'uns wish we'd been around in SF back then. (Another note about the packaging, it says copyright 2007 on the back but that that's a mistake, it's when the artwork was initially prepared, this is indeed a brand new 2009 release, with also a vinyl version upcoming as well, not sure when, though.)
This past Record Of The Week NOW AVAILABLE ON VINYL!!! There's fewer tracks than on the cd version, but at least the lp includes a download code to get mp3s of ALL of the tracks from the cd reissue. No booklet unfortunately (although it seems some of the booklet is reprinted on the cover), but there is an insert, with some liner notes, as well as an explanation for the song choice on both the cd and lp, the lack of the Units' major label material and the reasoning behind less songs on the lp. Regardless, totally essential, especially now that it's on vinyl. Here's what we said about it before:
Moog-enabled synth punk subversion straight outta San Francisco in the late '70s/early '80s, entertaining n' agitating electronic New Wave action excavated and reissued! And it's totally timely considering how many bands in today's scene would so love to sound like this.
We won't pretend we were familiar with The Units before this fantastic anthology album showed up. Perhaps we'd heard the name before (or maybe we were confusing 'em with ol' Jandek's 1978 debut album, also under the name The Units), but we knew nothing about this band 'til we heard this disc a few weeks ago. And as soon as we did, it went into heavy rotation here at the store. These Units were definitely a important piece of San Francisco punk/new wave history, but just a bit before our time. Well, not Aquarius's time, just us folks who work here now! Actually, a close reading of the thanks list in the cd booklet will find a shout out to Aquarius, 'cause (if you didn't know) Aquarius was THEE punk/new wave record store in San Francisco in the '70s... (Which reminds us, we've got to get more of our history up on the AQ website.) And, in fact, The Units' debut lp Digital Stimulation was the very first release on seminal SF indie 415 Records (who had their biggest hit with Romeo Void), a label run in part by Aquarius' owners at the time. So this most certainly isn't the first time that The Units music has been blasting regularly in the Aquarius shop, it's just been a few years, is all.
Putting things in proper place/time/scene perspective, this archival disc starts off with an audio snippet of the late SF punk "godfather" Dirk Dirksen on stage at Mabuhay Gardens, good-naturedly mocking both The Units (accidentally referring to them by the name of another band, the Zeros) and their cheering fans (with the sardonic comment "obviously, people with as little taste as yourself would become ecstatic over such average talent"). Then, making us ecstatic, twenty tracks of prime Units music follows, The History Of The Units containing most all of the tracks from their 1980 415 Records album Digital Stimulation as well as a handful of stuff taken from early 7"s and demo tapes, as well as more experimental pieces recorded for film soundtracks and art happenings and other ephemera.
Not unlike Devo, The Units had a concept thing going, all about a critique of alienated modern industrial society, dehumanizing conformity, and corporate culture, with songs like "Cannibals" and "Work". Perhaps perversely choosing to use machines to make their point, The Units tried to take the human element out of the rock band equation, preferring for instance to project their own propaganda films rather than allow the audience to focus on a frontperson. And yes, they do also sound quite bit like Devo at times, which is way okay by us!
Their synth-obsession was also in part an anti-guitar thing, a reaction to the mainstream. In fact, they took their anti-guitar philosophy to the extreme of not only having a "stamp out guitars" logo, but also making fake guitars out of plywood to smash on stage, while letting their synths play on "cruise control". So definitely The Units were highly conceptual, art schoolish, but not academic - the liner notes are clear that the idea was to be an all-synth band that "kicks ass" (the full quote being: ""I wanted an all synthesizer band... and not some fucking polite, socially acceptable electronic experiment in academia. I didn't want a doctorate in electronic doodling. No, I'm talking about a synth band that kicks ass!") and according to what we're hearing here, they succeeded. And they were not without contemporaries. There were The Screamers, Nervous Gender, and of course Devo; all of whom wanted to take the synthesizer into punk. For many of the Units tracks, it would very easy to replace the lead synth lines with guitars and have an equally kick ass rock song, but the fact is that these are Moog-powered cuts which do oscillate between a quirky sensibility with angular chops and a full-throttle punk car-crash. If you would think the former finds the Units sounding like Devo and the latter like the Screamers, you'd be right!
Yes indeed, the songs on this disc range from urgent Devo-esque pop punk and Screamers-y rants to moody proto-'80s dance tracks to more abstract, instrumental, rhythmic/textural electronic pieces like "Tight Fit" and "East West". There's loads of electric energy, some goofy humor, and certainly serious intent. So many gems here, incorporating buzzing droning distorted synths, propulsively skittering drum beats, and monotone vocals (both male and female).
Their incredible singles "Cannibals" (a tempestuous, driving song that was pure '70s punk), "High Pressure Days", and "Warm Moving Bodies," are prominently featured here, all of which were impressively catchy. Their ability to write these hooks earned them a deal with Epic, who released two seminal 12" singles (which couldn't be licensed for this compilation) and has been sitting on another collection of recordings since 1983. But beyond the hook, the Units were plenty weird, as seen in their peculiar lullaby melodies on "Red" which almost comes across like a Rodd Keith song-poem with a very sparse arrangement. Despite the band's curses toward academic music, a few choice intertwining moments of the Units minimalist grooves come awfully close to sounding like a punked out Terry Riley! Hardly polite music!
Other selections here include the cold wave weird science of "Digital Stimulation", the gloriously grinding downer melody of "Contemporary Emotion" (apparently a cover, a song by some contemporaneous hard rock band we've never heard of called Trakstod Station), and there's even an ode to our very neighborhood, "The Mission Is Bitchin", with lyrics about burritos and marijuana!
Of course it's all a bit dated, of its era, and that's part of the charm... but like we said, a lot of this also sounds like it could be put out by a band today, since everything old is new again and the '80s New Wave / synth thing is a current retro craze. Definitely this is a good time for The Units to be reissued!
We discovered the D-Trash label (and consequently Unitus) via the amazing DHR 'Don't Fuck With Us' compilation from a few lists ago. Unitus is definitely very beat heavy ala DHR, but lays the beats down in a thick, dark miasma of digital crunch and ambient drones and rumbles. Making for an almost dreamy, definitely droney, hypnotic drum and bass workout with stretches of ambient whir, reminding us quite a bit of the seminal Third Eye Foundation 12" 'Semtex' from a few years back. Nice thick analog sounding dirgescapes, with simple, skittery beats woven throughout . Really fucking great! Myabe electronic music isn't dead after all. You just have to know where to look.
Sigh. This is not as good as those salivating music critics would have you believe. The sizable and impressive line-up of cameos does not save this disaster of an album, and shouldn't even be listed for fear of embarassing the artists associated--oh hell, UNKLE '98 is James Lavelle of Mo'Wax (what happened to the other guy?) who has roped in DJ Shadow as his new partner, with appearances by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Mike D. of Beastie Boys, and Jason Newsted of Metallica along with a bunch of others... Psyence Fiction is like the aftermath of the collision of a Lexus and a BMW, as both drivers of the vehicles were too busy making record deals on their cell phones to pay attention to the road. You just get pissed-off waiting for it to end while the tow-trucks come to drag the sad wreckage out of your way. Mo' money, mo' problems--this is like when someone gets too rich, too fast and buys a really big ugly house. There's no accounting for taste, but somehow this ostentatious display is aesthetically offensive. It's supposed to be THE end-of-the-millenium hybrid-genre watershed record that crosses boundaries and all that crap. But we all know what's *really* gonna be playing when 1999 rolls over to 2000--"Wonderwall".
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
You may know that U.N.K.L.E. is the breakbeat project of Mo'Wax label-head James Lavelle. They've remixed Tortoise and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and this is definitely one of the better EPs on Mo'Wax, boasting 4 delightful & very distinct versions of one source track. Highly recommended.
Anyone wanna play 'Name That Film" with your ol' Unkle James Lavelle? His latest release is somewhat vaguely titled Edit Music For A Film, and a little bit more helpfully subtitled Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Reconstruction. Maybe it should more appropriately be titled Edited Music From A Bunch Of Films 'cause what it featured is snippits of music and dialogue that Lavelle has nabbed from a lengthy list of movies and pieced together atop his deep bass and breakbeat meltdowns. The first disc has one single 54-minute track named "Widescreen Edit - A New Hope", while the second one is slightly longer at 58 minutes (but is also a single track) and is called "Bonus Material Edit - Strikes Back". Some clips are so fleeting that their origins barely register with the casual listener, while others are more complete and recognizable -- such as the seemingly unadulterated Sid Vicious rendition of "My Way" and the excerpts from George Lucas' early film THX-1138. He even uses two images from the latter film for one of the inner sleeves. The inclusion of the former is a bit distracting as it rudely jolts the listener out of the grooving Unkle-zone, and makes for more of a film music compilation feel. Not for everyone, but it might make a novel gift for your movie'n'breakbeat lovin' buddy.
Bristol-based Up Bustle & Out exhibit a genuine fondness for world music (heck I thought this whole time they were from South America), a fetish which can be incredibly annoying when appropriated by talentless DJs, but in the hands of this duo, the results
Along with the Bogus Blimp reviewed recently, here's another new Jester title, from this Autechre-ish glitchtronica act from Norway. We liked their first, self-titled album quite well, and now they're back with Obliterated...and again it's what you might call extreme IDM, a complicated construction of clicks and cuts and beats and yes some melodies. Machine music madness! A nicely done return (let us wax nostalgic) to the exciting heyday, not so long ago, of stuff like Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Squarepusher at their most complex and bewilderingly beat-frenzied craziest.
Like Autechre and Squarepusher, Norway's mysterious Upland (a person? a duo? a group?) offers up the sort of instrumental electronica that in some ways could be seen as the avant-garde player piano music of the 21st century. Upland's densely clicking, stuttering, sputtering geiger-counter frenzies are manipulated into impossibly broken yet pleasing rhythms. These glitchy textures are backed by by ominous synth drone-tones and thick buzzes. Rather noir-ish and quite listenable.
Norway's always-interesting, and stylish, Jester label has provided this with a 16 page cd booklet with no text, just beautiful artwork: scratched up prints of a repeating moon-shape that's a good visual analog for this sort of abstract digital music. It's becoming more and more ridiculous that Jester's releases seemingly only gets distribution in the States via metal outlets, as they've quickly become one of our very favorite labels for electronic, experimental, and even pop (When) music. Most of Jester's releases have only tangental connections to the realm of metal, if any at all. Upland is a case in point. As we said, very much a la Autechre, not Abigor or Abruptum.
Uprock Rhizome And The Aphasia Group sputter, stutter and belch out a heaping platter of sampled noise stew titled Jungle Green Memes. Did we say "heaping platter"? Nay my good lord and lady, this is more like a truckload of live instrumentation and sampled field recordings, improv jazz jams, etc that have been processed and pulverized to virtually unrecognizable shards. Although the label's press release for Jungle Green Memes likens it to a namedrop-heavy meeting between Nihilist Spasm Band, Milford Graves, Tom Ze and Masami Akita or Peter Brotzmann, Eugene Chadbourne, Matching Mole, Mission of Burma and Throbbing Gristle, a closer comparison would actually be to the brutal doom'n'bass of Panacea or Atari Teenage Riot's Nic Endo. The cd comes with an accompanying book that you might think will help make some sense of the mysterious murk. but no! It's 48 pages of equally cryptic, hazy microscopic images.
A couple years back, you may recall, there was great a record called Black Noise by an artist named Pantha Du Prince, and although the album title might have the uninitiated imagining something, well, blackened and noisy, it was in fact a gorgeous collection of minimal electronica, that had us totally smitten. So here we are a few years later, and while this is not a new PdP record, it might be something even better. Ursprung finds PdP teamed up with Stephan Abry from 'kraut-folk' combo Workshop, for what is essentially a disc of loop-guitar kosmische electronica, with Abry unfurling gorgeous Vini Reilly like guitar figures, abstract melodic tangles and blissed out Rother style new age kraut mesmer, to which PdP adds minimal beats, muted rhythms, various arrangements of electro skitter, and murky Kompakt style pulses. The sound varies greatly over the course of these ten tracks, but they're all held together by a distinctive melodic / compositional thread. And while many of the tracks are definitely beat driven, it's strangely enough not really about the beat. But more about the rhythm and the guitar interacting.
The opener is all spidery twang, over a pitter patter rhythm, all drifting just below a layer of hiss drenched keening shimmer, which is soon joined by thick chordal low end thrum, warm and whirling and totally mesmerizing. The follow up sends little melodic flourishes into the ether, to drift weightlessly, before a blurred shuffle surfaces, pocked with little bits of glitch and static. From there on out, Ursprung weave a lush and delicate landscape of steel string buzz, of smeared dreamlike melodies, of barely there pulsations, chiming harmonics, murky moody dirges and fuzz drenched sprawls of Tim Hecker like shimmer, rumbling whirs and insect like skitter, lo-fi drones and percolating synths, the sound crystalline and shimmery one second, blurred and smeared and bleary the next, the beats barely there one moment, skittering and stuttering the next, but all perfectly woven into a fantastic songsuite of mesmerizing droned out guitar driven electro-minimalism.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Uusitalo is the latest pseudonym for Vladislav Delay, though I wonder if Uusitalo is perhaps his real name, as I doubt he was born Delay. Regardless, Uusitalo concentrates on the house / non-textural side of the Vladislav Delay aesthetic. Delay (as well as lots of recent Force Inc / Mille Plateaux artists) solely uses a silken organ synth patch (an unfiltered factory preset, it seems) to create the monochromatic loops of sound, with a soul-less but funky house groove. They call it "glitch-funk", if you care what they say.
A new recruit for Warp records, V.L.A.D. offers four tracks of tense electro beats, algorithmic arpeggiations of bleep, and minimalist melodies quite similar to the Richie Devine material from Schematic with parts of the booty-bass squiggliness from Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker" ep.
This curiously titled compilation from Edition... doesn't want to make the process of uncovering its intentions and potential meanings an easy task, by obscuring the context of how this is to be heard, read, investigated, etc. Edition... has packaged this
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Compiling the experimental / minimal / synthetic realms of post-techno from the more dancefloor friendly pulses of Taylor Dupree and Kim Rapatti (whose track is an exceptionally good variant of Sahko's frigid melodies of bleeps set against a skeletal structure of techno beats) to the more piercing sinewave modulations of Komet (Raster Music), Goem (Korm Plastics, Mego) and *O (whose pure tones are some of the most head rattling noises this side of Ryoji Ikeda). All of the tracks are previously unreleased.
After licensing the "Skampler" to Silent Records, Skam has issued an excellent collection of Manchester's finest beat-heavy electronica. Following the leads set by Autechre (recording here as Gescom), the artists include Bola, Jega, Audiomontage, The Fall (yes, Mark E. Smith does electronica!) and more... The only e-music record in a long time that's good enough to excite Jim!
Fat Cat Records has so far released 10 of their acclaimed split 12"s featuring a medley of engaging tracks from electronica technicians, dronologists, noise makers, and pranksters. This cd collects 11 of the tracks which had been featured on the series, with contributions from Third Eye Foundation, Gescom vs. Ad Vanz, Chasm (aka Robert Hampson of Main), James Plotkin, Merzbow, Foehn (who has contributed some of the finest dronework that few have heard!), Team Doyobi, V/VM, Speedranch & Janski Noise, and Req. Sadly the brilliant darkness from Anthony Child / Andrew Read didn't made it on the compilation, as was the same fate for a track claimed to be done by Pole (which turned out to be a fabrication of Pole's electronica dub and forced Fat Cat to order the destruction of the pressing, thus making the James Plotkin track pretty much exclusive to this cd).
This disc is so great! It's an uninterrupted one hour mix, and it's one of the best I have ever heard. Stephen and David Dewaele, the two Belgian brothers who play in the band Soulwax plumbed their record collections for everything from totally obscure forgotten tracks to universally popular ones. One of the best pieces overlays Salt 'n Pepa singing "Push It" over The Stooges' "No Fun", which you may also have heard on the (now out-of-print) Best Bootlegs in the World comp. I find 2 Many DJs better than the best Bootlegs comp, actually, because [1] it's a perfectly sequenced smooth mix, all the tracks flow into the next, lots of overlap, and [2] it's not just popular hits being mashed up, it's gems from 2 very smart music fanatics' collections. I mean, who knew that Destiny's Child's theme to Charlie's Angels would work so well over Dolly Parton's "9 to 5", or that a Peaches chord progression's secret twin is a Velvet Underground song?
The endearingly simple 2 Many DJs website lists all the tracks used, along with juicy gossip about how hard or easy it was to get clearance for each one and tracks whose owners *refused* clearance. (If you're crafty you'll be able to find these tracks on the net as mp3s anyway -- I'm downloading the Skee-Lo/"Eye of the Tiger" mix right now.)
This is SO MUCH FUN. Look for it to go out of print sooner rather than later -- don't hesitate. Highly recommended.
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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Great dubstep comp!!
3rd Base features a selection of varied works from Base Records artists such as Rehberg/Bauer, The Smiling Buddhas, Alois Huber, Schlund, The K, Swamp Swallow, Martha Hurry and Aural Screenshots with James Plotkin (Old, Phantomsmasher, Atomsmasher, etc).
99 artists given 45 seconds to do as they wish. It's best to think of this like an audio equivalent of an Exquisite Corpse, the Surrealist parlor game in which a drawing or a sentence would be created by a group of people, who had concealed the nature of the preceding drawings or words, and thus often resulting in absurd creations that characterized the "unconscious reality of the personality of the group." Artists include: Safety Scissors, Stars As Eyes, Lali Puna, D84 (aka Blevin Blectum), Hood, John Tejada, Phthalocyanine, Languis, Sutekh, Tarentel, Martin Rev, Kim Cascone, Jan Jelinek, DJ Spooky, and dozens more. In case anybody cares, the Coelacanth found on this compilation is not the same Coelacanth comprised of Loren Chasse and AQ's Jim Haynes. Oh well.
