Another killer (and super limited, argh) release from Sound & Fury, a killer record store / label in Australia, who recently decided to close down the shop, but will continue to book tours, have shows and release records, lucky for us! This disc is a live to minidisc recording from a massive New Zealand freenoise show featuring a who's who of AQ faves and kick ass NZ underground legends: Birchville Cat Motel, 6Majik9, James Kirk from Sandoz Lab Technicians, and of course the Nether Dawn and 1/3 Octave band.
The Nether Dawn are Antony Milton (PseudoArcana, Mrtyu, etc.) and AQ pal Jon Dale, who teamed up for this 15+ minute set of soaring ur-drone and dense thick hum and shimmer. Big low pulses of sound tangled up with sparkling high end, glistening melodies and mumbled heavily affected vocals. A blast of cosmic space out along the same lines as Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof! and the like but with a softer, more dreamlike focus. Nice.
1/3 Octave Band follow up with their own lengthy jam, a near 17 minute slab of chiming metal, clanging percussion, super reverbed pipefight, little swirls of high end feedback, reverberating chimes, and a soft shimmery skree, that about halfway sort of slow down and stretch out, into a languid, sunbaked guitar/electronics free jam drift. A shimmering cascading flow of warm reverberant chords, flickering feedback, and subtle but distinct minor key melancholia. So nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, WE GOT THE LAST 25 OR SO. Packaged in really nice brown paper, sealed with a black stamped wax seal, each copy hand numbered with a printed inner sleeve and a unique full color, actual photo.
- MPEG stream: One
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Julien Neto creates velvety and gorgeous drone music that twitches with static-like prickles. Each track of Le Fumeur de Ciel envelopes the listener with an aching heaviness, the kind that originates from deep within your chest. Quite moving and very film score-ish. If you enjoyed Port-Royal's Flares album that we highlighted last list, you might also find Julien Neto's music ticklin' your fancy.
Been a while (8 years?) since we've heard from Nettle, or DJ /Rupture for that matter. Nettle is the live band project of DJ /Rupture, the amazing mix master (and self-described "border-crossing bass visionary") responsible for, as we put it, "plunderphonic dancehall turntable mashups" on his various rad mixes (2001's Gold Teeth Thief being THE classic). We know he's got a show on WFMU, still does music and mixes, but we didn't know that his band Nettle was still active, or rather that it had been reactivated. So this new Nettle album is unexpected, but nevertheless awesome.
El Resplandor is a concept album, the quite cool concept pretty much revealed in its subtitle: The Shining In Dubai. Yes, we're in imaginary soundtrack territory here - what if, Stephen King's The Shining were set in an abandoned luxury hotel in the Arabian emirate of Dubai, on the Persian Gulf? Musically, this turns out to be an excellent idea... you keep the spooky psychological horror stuff (family moves into isolated empty hotel, things get weird, dad loses his shit, etc.) and add an ethnic Middle Eastern music element as well.
DJ /Rupture, credited with "electricity, mudd", works with an ensemble of musicians, including guitarist Andy from The Ex. So there's guitar, cello (x2), violin, and guembri (an African 3-stringed skin-covered lute) - along with lovely, wordless female vocals, something that's always perfectly suspense soundtrack worthy!
While in the past, this outfit sounded something like a beat-heavy, uber-distorted Muslimgauze, with hiphop elements even, El Resplandor is more restrained, atmospheric, and eerily evocative, in keeping with the concept. There's much somber shimmer and string pluck, and of course tape manipulation and electronic glitchery, with DJ /Rupture applying his mixing/editing skills to what may have been improvised solos from the various instrumentalists - we're not sure of the compositional method, but it certainly involves some measure of computer processing. The eleven varied tracks all individually contribute to the haunted, alienated, edge-of-the-desert vibe of The Shining in Dubai idea... From the stately exotic dance of "Espina" to the buzz, crackle and chaos of "Simoom (Wasp Wind)", this is a beautiful and dramatic disc. One that makes for a good late night listen, excepting the presence of that "Simoom" track, where thing get a bit... disturbed... that might wake you up from your reveries!
The digipack packaging features scene-setting liner notes by none other than imaginative architectural essayist Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG fame (great blog, check it out if you haven't before) and equally appropriate photographs by Lamya Gargash. Quite recommended!
This is one of three separate shards of electronic music history (Ashley, Neuhaus, and Palestine) recently unearthed by Italian audio archaeologists Alga Marghen.
Max Neuhaus' "Fontana Mix-Feed" features six "realizations" of an indeterminate John Cage score, in Neuhaus' hands an electro-acoustic feedback concerto created with timpani, contact microphones, amplifiers, and a mixer. Shrill, high-end death drone, different at each performance. This is common stuff nowadays, but back in 1965 before such genres as "power violence" and "no-input mixing board" music, it must have fascinated and/or severely disturbed the listeners (generally in some posh academic setting -- the booklet is full of great photos and flyers for Neuhaus' performances). Like the Ashley's "Wolfman", this Neuhaus disc is cool when you consider that context: as depicted on the cover, a nerdish young Neuhaus in suit and tie, on stage at Carnegie Hall causing audience discomfort and pain with his knob twisting! Definitely of historic import, at the very least.
MPEG Download: "Chicago, April 1965" [/audio/neuhauschicago.mp3]
If we had to pick THEE most warped and bizarre and musically confusional motherfucker out there, we just might have to pick Nondor Nevai, sometime member of To Live And Shave In L.A., but with a pretty sizable catalog of completely fractured and fucked solo recordings, not to mention he plays in a duo with Mick Barr, which is like a free-metal freakout, which really has to be heard to be believed. As does this, the latest outing from NN, self described as "murderous freeblasting klassikill" performed on "an amplified organ so distorted and piercing it is painful", which is pretty much spot on, but there's way more going on. The provenance of discovering this record might put it in perspective. Someone sent us an amazing video, featuring Nondor Nevai, in a snowy clearing in the middle of a dark forest, next to a tree with a severed deer head tied to it, NN in black jeans and suspenders, shirtless, huge shaggy mop of hair, arms covered in blood, wildly headbanging as he lights an upside down plywood cross and chugs alcohol, and most importantly, getting all up in the camera, menacingly brandishing his iPhone! That phone clutched in his outstretched hand 'invisible orange' style. And the music, suitably warped, blasting buzzing weirdness, check it out for yourself:
http://nandornevai.com/movies.html
So when NN got in touch we ordered a bunch of this new record, a super limited (only 250 copies) 180 gram 12", housed in a super thick, gatefold sleeve, with a killer patch affixed to one side, featuring a strange image of some sort of demon hovering over the earth, glowing silver hands holding arrows crossed in front of this hooded visage, bearing the legends "Overshadower Kommand" and "Kolder Than Heaven". Once you finally make it past the eye popping art and the confusional text, you'll discover a sprawling collection of what can only be described as electro classical black prog doom whatthefuck. Buzzy super distorted melodies, twisted processed vokills, heavily panned so they stutter swinging wildly from speaker to speaker, the songs alternately plodding along menacingly, lumbering and lurching or occasionally slipping into ferocious blackened blasts. There's plenty of Goblin-y ambience here and there, but even those bits are wrapped around wild octopoidal drumming, the sound not really black metal, but definitely black, and occasionally metallic, instead it's like some twisted carnivalesque black prog, which to us sounds like a dream/nightmare combination of ELP, Vondur and Orthrelm, which needless to say, means this RULES.
Baffling and brilliant, totally recommended for folks who like their heaviness as fucked up as possible, total outsider black prog bliss.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!
Still Life is the first physical offering from former aQ-staffer Marc Kate. For a couple years now, he has run the digital imprint Untitled & After, which branded itself as wanting to be the 4AD of techno when it grows up. Deep house, minimal techno, and a smattering of ambient tracks ripple through his understated, yet finely curated catalogue. But that's not what you're gonna get with Never Knows or at least with this one-sided single. Here, Kate supplies a grizzled, minimal wave cut driven by his crooning baritone, which is uncannily similar to Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode. It was never a secret (at least to us) that Marc's youth was shaped by the dark romance of new wave; but we never knew (sorry, pun intended) that he could sing it too! Musically, Kate takes after the more angular arrangements of John Foxx and Fad Gadget all grafted with an ominous synth noise scab picked off of the scraped knee from any number of the old kids who grew up in Sheffield circa 1979 (e.g. Clock DVA, Hula, Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, etc.). Hypnotic, seductive, gritty, and transgressively groovy. The track foreshadows a full album that is slated for the spring of 2014; and if this single is any indication, that album should be a fucking corker! The flipside to the album sports of silkscreen of a splattered image of Marc suffering the consequences of having a bucket of black paint dumped on his razor shorn head. Limited to a mere 250 copies, and comes with a download!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's so sad that we haven't been able to keep a single release by this band of space age retro psych poppers in stock for than a matter of days. Both their debut lp, and their split 7" with Still Corners sold out in a flash, and we imagine a similar fate will befall this most recent cassette, yet another ultra limited record from Boston pop groop The New Lines, whose sound is a gorgeous, warm and fuzzy blur of Stereolab like krautpop, sixties bachelor pad grooves, Beach Boys harmonies, analog synths, whirling organs, and that sort of retro jangle pop we can't seem to get enough of, a la the Zombies, High Llamas, and the Elephant 6 Stable. These guys may be flying under the radar for now, but it can't last long, cuz anyone into THAT sound will be flipping out when they hear The New Lines. Perfect fuzzy, jangly pop, wreathed in reverb and echo, driven by super melodic basslines, underpinned by lush chordal swells, the vocals a deep and dramatic croon, all blurred into a gauzy swirl of dream pop shimmer, hooks and melodies drifting weightless through sun dappled glades of whirring organs and summery strum, everything infused with a weary melancholia that makes these sounds perfect both for summery afternoons, and bundled up wintery wanders. Grab one before they're gone, cuz this is LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, and it's already sold out and out of print. So these are the LAST COPIES EVER...
It gets harder and harder to describe drone records and dark ambient music. After hundreds of releases, all of them dark and drone-y and shimmery, mysterious and rumbling and blackened, whirring and abstract and ominous, we've pretty much exhausted our thesaurus. But truth be told, those words still do apply to most of the ambient music we like, and just because we run out of new words, doesn't at all mean that there isn't more dronemusic to be discovered. More black ambient to explore.
And while repeating ourselves is perhaps unavoidable, each record that does offer up something new, will hopefully in turn allow us to discover new ways of describing those sounds. Sounds that while perhaps similar to other music we've heard, are in fact, in their own way, unique, and which sonically transport us to someplace fresh and exciting.
Although fresh and exciting are maybe not words we would use to describe Whispers of The Approaching Wastefulness from Italian black ambient master New Risen Throne. The sounds here are, well, see above, all of those. But in addition to being ambient music, and dronemusic, the sounds here are much more than that. Incredibly textured and cinematic, each song playing out like the soundtrack to some harrowing journey, evoking underground caverns, windswept icefields, barren fields, forests of dead trees, these tracks are rife with all manner of miniature events, NRT approaching sound less as a composer as a recordist, or an anthropologist, making sure to make note of every detail, no matter how minimal or seemingly inconsequential, as all of those little details, when fused into a larger whole, offer up an incredibly rich and deep world of sound, surrounding and swallowing the listener whole. Stepping through your speakers and emerging in some lost world, dimly lit by some black sun, buildings in ruins, cities in flames, fields run fallow, a landscape of dead leaves and burned bodies, the usual long slow rumbles and shimmering blurred buzz are of course present, but those sounds are just the backdrop for what is really going on, much of it seemingly not musical, it's almost like a field recording made by some time traveler lost in the middle ages, the drone and whir and buzz, merely sonic artifacts from the time travel, or the faulty recording equipment, the actual magic being the lives and worlds captured on tape. Eyes closed, one is able to imagine these other places, sound being as powerful if not more powerful than sight or smell or touch. And sure, cursory listeners will find this to be some gorgeous drone music, perhaps a bit on the grim ominous side for some, but adventurous listeners, willing to strap in, eyes closed, and leap into the abyss, will definitely find much more than mere drone music within Whispers of The Approaching Wastefulness.
You know a record is good, when you have no idea what the hell to say about it. Or if "what the fuck" is the first words that come to mind. Such is the case with this tour only cd-r ep from local twisted psych goth weirdos New Thrill Parade. Part of a burgeoning local scene that includes the Ovens (new record on tUMULt soon), Prizehog, Robocop 3 and a bunch of other dubiously named local noisemakers.
But New Thrill Parade definitely stand out, their dizzyingly druggy cabaret workouts, chiming high end guitars, chaotic drumming, long stretches of doomy Nick Cave like crooning, buzzing bass drones and wild operatic freakouts, like a soundtrack to some super fucked up Tim Burton student film. It's impossible to not imagine some strange stone creatures or gross, tentacled beasts singing the deep vocal parts, and some crazed multi headed ring master type balancing on some equally deformed beast belting out the wailing high parts.
Moody and dramatic and cinematic and over the top. Plenty psychedelic and tripped out and druggy, and really fucking catchy, hooks popping up all over the place, while the band unfurls their peculiar brand of funhouse doom and abandoned amusement park goth, horns bleat and moan sparring with the multiple voices, the vibe is definitely eighties, these guys would have KILLED at L.A.'s Scream club, maybe opening for Jane's Addiction or Tex & The Horseheads, but they take that sound and doll it all up with some more modern lo-fi noise rock heaviness, some warped off kilter over the top psych-glam freakouts, and plenty of textures and layers and effects and ambience.
Still need to see these guys live, might be a disappointment since we're envisioning strange beasts and scary monsters, but that's why the cd is perfect, close your eyes, and let these guys drag you screaming into their cracked and crazed world of sound.
TOUR ONLY, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, we got a dozen or so, might very well be the only copies we get.
We're really so excited to finally welcome local label Time Released Sound to the aQuarius family. We've yet to list anything, in part because their releases are so limited, but also, because they sell out so quickly. Every single release, every single copy is an incredible work of art. Each one hand crafted, individually assembled, numbered and hand stamped, letter pressed and printed, the packaging thematically linked to the sound within, with photographs, or old records, strange little knick knacks, clock hands, piano keys, they're really incredible, an absolute labor of love, with most of the limited versions taking hours to assemble, and the fact that Time Released Sound is just one man, makes it all the more impressive. So from here on out, we'll get a limited number of each release, they're quite limited already usually around 70-100 copies. And odds are we won't be able to get more than 10-15, but trust us, they're worth it, sonically beautifully, and visually stunning. There will be regular non-art editions of some of the releases, much less limited, and thus less expensive, but if you're after one of the limited editions, you'll want to act fast.
This one is already sold out, we have the LAST 6 copies, limited to just 78 copies (that number will make sense in a sec), this is a 3" cd, affixed to an actual 100 year old, 5.5" mini 78 rpm record, with the cd-r and the record with matching labels, both housed in a black, holed record sleeve, wrapped with a series of printed cards, those cards wrapped in vellum, with a tag affixed to the cards by string, the black sleeve hand printed. All of that housed in a stamped and stickered envelope, each with an actual stamp, it's quite stunning. And the 78 rpm is definitely playable, just be very very careful, those old records are incredibly fragile, and brittle, which is another way the art ties in with the music, Newlyn's record a series of delicate miniatures, lush pianoscapes, wreathed in reverb, occasionally flecked with strange machine like sounds, tinkling melodies, swirling strings, cinematic and hauntingly dreamy, a sort of otherworldly chamber music, hushed and intimate, melancholy and oh so lovely.
Be warned, these do NOT travel well, if you buy one of these, they need to be packaged like crazy! Tons of packing, loads of protection from the postman, or the other items in your order. The label suggested we only sell these locally, but we figured some of our mailorder folks would probably dig, so be warned re: the packaging, and if the shellac record does crack, we can't replace it, although maybe the label would see fit to send you a new 78!
While we've raved about the insane and insanely elaborate packaging from local boutique label Time Released Sound, we try to stress that all this fancy pants packaging wouldn't mean shit though if the music wasn't able to stand on its own, and thankfully, since a lot of the TRS releases sell out before we can get our hands on them, or are just a bit too pricey for some folks, they also come available as more affordable discs in less extravagant packaging, which is especially good news, cuz it would be sad for music like this to only make it into the ears of the 80 people who managed to nab the deluxe version.
We reviewed David Newlyn's last release on TRS, and sold out in a heartbeat, and while we weren't able to get any copies of the super deluxe version of this new one, we got a handful of the standard version, but it's the sounds that count this time around, and they are divine, two lengthy tracks of haunting modern classical music, lush soaring strings and haunting melodies, melancholy swells and dreamlike drifts, the sounds gradually growing more abstract, the effects slowly dialed up, the sort of chamber music of the first few minutes soon pulled apart into something more abstract and spaced out, a whirling drifty ambience, all bleary shimmer and softly reverbed thrum, laced with glitches and subtle electronic interference, not to mention what sounds like banjo or mandolin at one point. So lovely.
The second track is even more pastoral, hazy and gauzy and washed out, long layered drones softly undulate over all manner of mysterious field recordings, delicate piano melodies, buried operatic vocals, foot steps, voices, children playing, all beneath a fog of long tranced out drones and looped string shimmer, finishing with a surprising bit of drum driven distorted noisiness!
Not as limited as the deluxe version, but limited nonetheless, so grab one before they're gone!
A necessary resurfacing of the NF Orchest. This was an East Bay post-noise project spearheaded by Jim Kaiser, Angela Hsu, and A.C. Way many years ago, marked by leaden electronics and acoustic dinscraping. The group found themselves with the rather trite problem of having too much on their plate - Kaiser performing almost constantly with Hsu, Thomas Carnacki, and irr.app.(ext.) amongst others; and Way taking up the cause of Maleficia, Carrion, and probably a few other blackened projects festering in Oakland warehouses. After five years since the last time we heard from the NF Orchest, the three found themselves plugged into the same PA at the Luggage Store in early 2010, where Kaiser bowed his trusted bicycle wheel, Hsu slashed across her violin, and Way produced all sorts of dread-inspiring, subterranean noises. The resulting sounds have the feel of being recorded way deep underground, with a molten snarl of hellish drone bubbling about atonal plucks and scrapes spiralling through phased delay patterns. Yeah, the violin improvisations in abandoned buildings do resonate with the Hsu / Kaiser end of the NF Orchest spectrum, but Way's heavy, black drones put this into an entire other catagory of spectral dark ambience.
NF Orchest is a Bay Area electro-acoustic / noisenik / improv trio centered around the activities of Angela Hsu, Andrew Way, and James Kaiser. While Hsu has connections with Mills College, Way and Kaiser have performed extensively around the Bay Area as French Radio with Bruce Anderson; Kaiser also records solo under the moniker Petit Mal. Bowed metals, damaged turntables, tumbled rocks, screeched violin pushed through squawk boxes, and the improbabilities of feedback all come together in the density of raw sound of NF Orchest that reflects the same interest in acoustic sonology as heard in Organum and Tony Conrad. Couple those influences with a eagerness to set off depth-charge rumbles, subterranean detonations, and Skaters-esque lo-fi dissonance, NF Orchest adds a particular noise-junk malice that is all their own. Yup, this is a super limited CD-R release of two live sessions recorded in July, 2005. Only 104 copies.
A very nice pairing of East Bay improvising post-industrialists NF Orchest and the abstractionist filmmaker Jerry Smith. NF Orchest's contribution is a documentation of a live action at The Lab in San Francisco, opening for irr. app. (ext.) back in 2010. The turgid atmosphere is set through a bed of gray crumbling noises, sculpted through murky electronics and shortwave radio noises. Out of this carcinogenic haze, NF Orchest scribbles slow gestures of creepy-crawling drones and nails-on-the-chalkboard screeches from viola and prepared bicycle wheel, whilst the bed of noise detonates in a cavernous hall with a Maurizio Bianchi-like pall of ash and slumped depression working throughout the metallic scrapings. Jerry Smith's video was conceived after the performance had transpired, and he manipulated found footage to match the sounds' progression. Ghostly flickerings of light emerge from static landscapes, darkened through various masks and overlays from additional footage, prismatic refractions, and residues from grainy filmstock. A slow-motion series of watery reflections of light on water is transformed into a choreography of near calligraphic marks dancing on a black backdrop. As one of those smoldering crescendos of noise builds towards the end of this 27 minute video, arcing flares of color jump-cut back and forth next to deep blue tidal waves, spiralling mandalas, and geometric elements. Limited to something like 50 copies.
Phill Niblock is the god of drones! All these other experimental musicians and "dronologists" are like little kids with kazoos when put up against Niblock and his amazing compositions. It's only in the last few years that his works have found their way onto recordings so his reputation is finally, albeit slowly catching up with other more prolific modern composers. And here's a new disc to illustrate our point. The first track is a gorgeous thrum, performed by a 60 piece orchestra reading a traditional score, with no post-recording manipulations. The sound is very haunting and a bit Gregorian sounding. Absolutely mesmerising. The second track features contrabass flute, contrabass saxophone, contrabass tuba all pre-recorded, with the samples later re-assembled with ProTools. The sounds weren't altered but the assembly of the different pieces changed the sound. Consequently, this piece is sonically less organic and more electronic / clinical sounding, even though the source sounds are traditional instruments. The final piece is another traditionally composed and performed piece for viola, cello, bass clarinet, soprano sax, flute and trombone and is an unwavering multi-tonal thrum, rich and layered, slowly shifting as the microtones try to settle into position, sounding quite a bit at times like modern dronesters Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra.
One of flute-drone master Niblock's best, in fan Andee's opinion.
Seems like Jim O'Rourke keeps sticking his grubby little paws where they're not needed. Tortoise? Stereolab? Mirror? Sonic Youth? Phill Niblock?!?!?!? Good thing he doesn't think Aquarius is cool enough otherwise that bunny-suited dork would be ringing you up at the cash register!! Maybe that's a little mean, but it does seem, where hipness goes, O'Rourke will follow. And in this case, at least, we can't really complain since it means we are treated to one more amazing Phill Niblock record. Niblock who has been active for 20+ years, but had never recorded due to his distaste for the process and the resulting less-than-adequate and timeless document, has recently seen more and more of his work seeing the light of day thanks to better recording and a medium (cds) with more room for longer duration pieces. Niblock also runs the XL label that has been focusing on twentieth century composers specialising in extended drones. On G2, 44+/X2, Niblock has composed an extended piece for multi-tracked guitar. The first version features guitar samples from Rafael Toral, Robert Poss, Susan Stenger and David First. The second version features the same 24 track mix as the first version, but with Kevin Drumm, Lee Ranaldo, Robert Poss, Alan Licht and Thurston Moore adding 2 live parts each. The results are stunning. Version one warm and ALIVE, a swelling, throbbing, beating wall of thick guitars, feedback and chords, all layered into one massive otherworldy drone. The second version is quite similar, but even more dense, with the extra guitars adding more low end rumble and a dizzying array of ultra-subtle harmonics. When the record ends, it's like a vacuum in your skull. It almost physically hurts when the music stops, as if you were floating on a rich, thick bed of sound and suddenly it was yanked out from under you and you find yourself laying on the cold hard ground. Nothing to do but push play again, sit back and let the guitars lift you toward the sky. SO GOOD!!
We just can't figure out Superior Viaduct. They're quickly becoming one of our favorite reissue labels, but they're so all over the map. From Devo to 100 Flowers, from the Solaris soundtrack to Factrix, from Heldon to Sensations' Fix, it's like a label version of someone's crazy record collection, which is exactly how it SHOULD be, and probably why we dig it so much! The latest reissue from SV is the 1982 debut lp from legendary modern minimalist / dronelord Phill Niblock. Nothin To Look At Just A Record consists of two sidelong pieces, extended instrumental tones, recordings of both Richard Lainhart and Richard Kelly at SUNY in the mid-seventies, edited to tape and accompanied by trombone, the result is dense and layered and intense, thick swaths of sound, multiple iterations of the same note, in constant motion, fluid textures and rhythmic beating, drifting overtones, all blurred and smeared into organic fields of rich lustrous sound. It's the sort of sound, that when it ceases, creates a sensation like the air is being sucked out of your ears, it's a sound that's almost physical, its energy palpable. If there was ever any question as to the power of the drone, the answer is right here.
Folks into more modern drone music who have yet to delve into the roots of those sounds (Riley, Reich, Young, Conrad and yeah, Niblock) might just discover a whole new world of sound to get lost in.
Super heavy old school tip on style sleeves, with a printed insert that includes both liner notes and the musical score!
We were joking a couple days ago about Phill Niblock, or it could of been Tony Conrad (Or Angus Maclise or any of those folks) about how great it must be having over the course of your entire 30 or 40 year career to have played only 4 or 5 notes. Obviously it's not as simple as that. Niblock is one of the few modern composers that can hold your attention for an hour or more with the judicious use of a single note. Like Reich and Riley, Niblock harnesses the natural properties of sound letting the sound do much of the work, shifting slowly, beating intermittantly, always shimmering and occasionally throbbing as notes nestle close to each other, sometimes sliding into place perfectly, other times finding a strange resistance and audibly working to fit in, resulting in all these subtle shifts. This is glacial and static, warm and thick and totally mesmerising. Touch Food also seems, to me at least, to be Niblock's most melodically complex set of pieces. The melodies here manage to be fairly prominent, even though they are stretched to their limit and obfuscated by the thick wash of sound. This is heady, heavy stuff. Heavy enough in fact that all you dirge-istsâ who are into Earth and Sunn 0))) and stuff like that may find that Niblock is your gateway drug, opening up the door to Maclise, Flynt, Cale and beyond. And of course, fans of modern drone, Sunroof!, Birchville Cat Motel, Skullflower, Vibracathedral Orchestra should definitely pick this up! His best record since Four Full Flutes!
MPEG Download: "Sweet Potato" [/audio/niblocksweetpotato.mp3]
Awesome. Simply, awesome. Phill Niblock is an artist that every musician should aspire to be. He's tirelessly composing, performing, and hosting this seminal series at his own Experimental Intermedia loft, all well into his late '70s! If you were to think of so many artists who had started to suck when they hit 30 or 40, the fact that Niblock is continuing to amaze as the elder statesman of NY Minimalism is all the more impressive. Never one to be effusive in his titles, Niblock's Touch Strings is a double disc of compositions for stringed instruments. The first disc is a 60 minute piece for electric guitar and bass, performed by Susan Stenger and Robert Poss (both from Band Of Susans) each restricted to only a few notes (E, F, and F#, to be specific) to coax sounds through their respective instruments with ebows. The resulting composition is an unhurried set of majestic drones, whose microtonal shifts delicately unfold over the course of the hour. Changes are definitely noticeable but only after they've happened, as Niblock's compositional genius is thoroughly hypnotizing. The second disc is broken into two pieces, both sourced from acoustic strings. The microtones from a single cello are ripped apart and layered back as a densely packed, monumental drone that buzzes, blurs, and bends for 25 minutes. The next piece applies the same strategy but to a four piece ensemble, all of whom are building harmonic intervals along a single drone arc that Niblock then reconfigured digitally after the fact. So fucking good!
"No rhythm. No melody. No bullshit."
Thus read the caption in Niblock's recent feature in the UK's Wire magazine. And we couldn't have summed it up better ourselves.
Three is Niblock's third release on Touch and most definitely his most ambitious. Three discs, every piece 20 to thirty minutes in length, each composed using the recordings of a single instrument. Be it sax, or cello, or viola, Niblock has the performer play extended notes, 15 to 30 seconds, he later removes extraneous sounds, breathing, etc. and then subtly shifts the sounds to create microtones, and microtones are exactly what is so magical about Niblock's work. Small subtle shifts, glacial movements that over the course of a twenty minute piece cause nearly imperceptible alterations, an ultra minimal flux that reveal all sorts of gorgeous subtleties. These pieces are massive, monolithic, grand explorations of sound, that require close listening, and close listening results in untold rewards, the beauty is secretive, revealing itself slowly and in tiny tiny increments, but it allows these pieces to grow and hover dreamlike, wrapping your head in a sound that feels alive, filling your ears with a thick, practically viscous drone, so intense, that when it finally stops, it feels like you've been yanked suddenly back from the abyss. This is truly powerful minimalism, at once simple and spare, but also dense with microscopic color and incredibly subtle shadings.
Niblock has been composing and subtly influencing many of his more well known peers since the late sixties, lurking on the fringes of academia and underground avant composition for years, having only started to document and release his compositions relatively recently, with the advent of the compact disc, a medium much more well suited to long from pieces, and he has rapidly and rightfully take his place amongst the minimalist hierarchy. With every new Niblock release, especially one as epic as like Touch Three, we find ourselves longing for Niblock to take his drones even further, exploring DVD audio and hours long live performances. These are the kinds of pieces, the sorts of sounds, that given enough time and space, could continue to grown and expand and blossom, revealing completely new worlds of sound. And we can't wait!
A perfect fit for Raster-Noton, Nibo is the moniker of a Japanese audio-visual artist who has been articulating sound through mathematically tight digital-click repetitions and pure sinewave tones, that end up sounding virtually identical to the post-techno rhythmic tendencies of Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, and to a lesser extent Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio.
Let's Play is the first recording by a drummer / vocalist / noisemaker from the Northwest named Cameron Michael Nichols-Rage, on which he collaborates with Alvarius B, Stuart Dahlquist (Asva, Burning Witch), Masami Kawaguchi (LSD-March), Irr. App. (Ext.), Mason Jones (Numinous Eye), Robert Millis (Climax Golden Twins), John Olsen (Wolf Eyes), Andrew Liles, At Jennie Richie, and a bunch more notable noise folks. Sounds pretty much MADE for aQ. Even moreso when you discover that Cameron is in fact, a 20 month old little boy, who just happens to be the spawn of 1/2 of blacknoize duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer!
The proud papa captured Cameron's wild free jazz drumming, and adorable vocal mewlings and yelps (like a toddler Keiji Haino?) and let the above horde of noiseniks jam along with young Cameron, and the results are pretty spectacular and ALL over the map. Lots of the stuff here has a sort of free jazz / avant rock vibe, Cameron's wild skittery loose drumming 'style' perfectly suited for that sort of thing, but then out of nowhere, the sound will coalesce into a weird churning almost industrial sounding post punk, like on the opening track, Cameron and crew locked into an angular, noise-punk groove. Elsewhere, Appalachian guitars (Cameron's?) are wound around boom-crash drum splatter, and accompanied by Cameron's free form vocal stylings. Some tracks sound like some alien avant-prog, all woozy and warped. others are surprisingly lovely, chiming gamelan like tones drifting above a bed of restless skitter, and still others are dense sprawls of warped detuned blues-murk. The most intense track is probably the Andrew Liles collaboration, that pairs Cameron's drums with moody, haunting piano, bizarre samples, and super distorted agonized screams. Harrowing stuff. But surrounding that blast of sonic intensity, are deep surrealistic dronescapes woven from Cameron's chopped and processed drumming, buzzing kosmische psychedelia, replete with soaring sitar-buzz guitars and crooned vox, and dreamy, organ drenched drifts, again, anchored by Cameron's abstract drum skitter.
There's lots more as well, all stripes of free-noise, and dark drone, and black ambience and twisted post industrial weirdness, it's all pretty great too. And really, had we not mentioned it, you'd probably never guess that this was (mostly) the work of a 20 month old little boy!!! So obviously WAY recommended!
San Francisco sound-n-noise technician Brandon Nickell had been recording under the moniker Aemae for a number of years, but he's recently dropped that to go with his given name. It's been a couple years since Nickell / Aemae released a full album (well, there was a pretty awesome cassette on Black Horizon in 2009). But, he's been performing out quite a bit up and down the West Coast and working through his experiential research into auditory hallucinations. If these sounds are any clue as to what kind of hallucinations Nickell was having, they must have been unsettling to say the least. Analog synths, voice, and a hell of a lot of digital synthesis went into pierced electronic tones that Nickell generates, each honed to have a razor sharp edge to sheer your ears straight off. Digitally forged drones stream in every direct at the onset of the album, sharpened for skull scraping results. Even as these dissolve into creepy-as-hell vocal gasps detuned to low-end rumblings, Nickell quickly cuts to an unstable collage of slashing cacophony. Transitioning into a tempered set of recordings of mechanoid grinds, post-Oval digital splutter, and spatialized clank, the pierced rasping tones return to bring the album to a conclusion. There's definitely a connection to the eardrum rattling psychoacoustics that The Hafler Trio could generate, augmented with the aesthetics of Florian Hecker, CM von Hausswolff, and John Wiese.
One of two new releases on the Ge-stell label, run by aQ pal Cameron, who was also the man behind the Merzbild and Merz Tapes labels, the other is the latest from Chris Douglas, aka Dalglish, and then this one, a new 12" from another aQ pal, Brandon Nickell, who previously recorded as Aemae, and runs the Isounderscore label. On Skyline, Nickell explores a moody netherworld of pulsing industrial beatscapery, fractured avant hip hop deconstruction, post rave grooves and acid drenched rhythms, laying down fields of deftly programmed beats, and swaddling them in hazy swirls of melancholy shimmer, a series of strangely reflective backdrops for a constantly transformational rhythmic palette, churning and robotic one second, skittery and stuttery the next, the surrounding sounds though, strangely human, darkly melodic and almost cinematic, the beats less of a driving force oddly, and more a framework for Nickell's moody broodscapes, whether it's the lonesome raga like buzz of "Norvig Trajectory", the keening high end shimmer of "Quartz", or the pulsating retro-cold wave kosmiche of the title track. And even within these various permutations, Nickell manages to evolve and sculpt, transforming the opening droned out skree of the aforementioned "Quartz", into a gorgeously serene, hushed lowercase drift, or the beautifully blissful beats of closer "Tessellate" which lays out a slow motion rhythmic crawl over a background of rapidfire pulse, a darkly propulsive core, to what is otherwise languorous and strangely tranquil, a gorgeous, hypnotic closer, that leaves us wanting more more more.
Pressed on 150 gram transparent vinyl, mastered by Rashad Becker, housed in a silkscreened PVC plastic cover, with die cut slit, along with a printed transparent insert.
Over the course of a handful of releases, San Francisco electronic artist Brandon Nickell has revealed to us a number of facets to his sound, typically landing on the psychonautical side of digital abstraction and bitcracked noisemongering. The Art Of Memory finds Nickell eschewing much of the DSP-systems and laptop codeslinging in favor of modular synthesizers that reflected his infatuation with the rhythmic / IDM-inspired electronic music from the late '90s and early '00s. Tundra Dubs had approached Nickell on the strength of a tape he released concurrently with Holly Herndon's Car cassette on Third Sex a couple years back; and whether intentional or not, there are some parallels to the atonality, precision, sci-fi dystopian vibes, and compositional complexity between Herndon's acclaimed album Movement and Nickell's The Art Of Memory. The title track to this long ep bangs through a shuffled techno rhythm alternating taut step sequencing with glacially dark drones falling between Sandwell District's industrial reclamation project and early Alec Empire rhythm explorations. The 8 minute long workout "Progenitor" laces a skittering Coh / Thomas Brinkmann rhythm with witchy vocal elongations and bellowing drones, punctured with dry, whipcrack snares. The closing track "Sutro" takes after the monophunk of Reinhardt Voigt reprising the spiralling step sequences and arpeggiations from the title track as fractal patterns that splinter, dissolve, and blossom into infinity. Limited to 150 copies!
Nicole 12 is the sicko-noise project of Finland's Mikko Aspa who happens to be the same Mikko Aspa behind one of our favorite black metal hordes Clandestine Blaze AND serves as the current vocalist for Deathspell Omega. Along with running Northern Heritage (black metal label) and Freak Animal (for the power electronics and noise stuff), he happily toils in any number areas of deviant publications that involve considerable levels of filth and degradation. He's claimed that he has no moral dilemmas whatsoever with the work that he publishes, and Nicole 12 is one such project that exists by design at a uneasy end of the libertine spectrum. It's a thin line that Whitehouse walked between entering a dialogue about sexual exploitation and glorifying the negative politics of perversion; and Nicole 12 marches through a similarly uncomfortable minefield of the taboos surrounding the sexualization of youth and the commodification of the body. The politics of Nicole 12 require a strong stomach, and the power electronics are equally blunt in their cold, dispassionate constructions of squalid frequencies, body-shock rumble, and panoptic blurts of vocal command. It's very clear that Nicole 12 (and the whole Mikko Aspa oeuvre) was a HUGE influence on the early work of Prurient, right up to the point when Dom shifted his work towards the rhymthicist productions of Bermuda Drain. This album represents something of a conclusion of one chapter for Nicole 12's catalog, collecting all of the non-album tracks that Aspa recorded since the project's inception in 1999. Upon the completion of this album, Nicole 12 will only be releasing full albums through Freak Animal, or so it seems. Dare we recommend this? It is a pretty amazing piece of filthy-filthy noise, but seriously don't even entertain the notion of checking this out, if you don't know what you are getting yourself into.
While not new, we only just discovered NID, and our discovery came about in a very random manner, considering various related works were right under our nose. We listed a killer 4 way split 12" a while back called One Man Drone, and our favorite track from the spit was a piece by a group called B(degree)Tong. We later discovered that the man behind B(degree)Tong was previously a member of German experimental sound-collective NID. But what we did not know was that NID was sometimes also known as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, a group who had various releases on the Drone Records label, one of which is included on the recent tUMULt collection of out of print Drone singles.
So now it's sort of come full circle and we have this, the only proper full length recording (as far as we know) from the group NID, aka Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim and it's pretty amazing. Pretty bizarre too, but then with a (sometime) name like Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, what else would you expect?
Three looooooooong tracks. Each an epic, incredibly varied soundworld, blending found sounds and field recordings with drones and intense blasts of layered sound. The opener begins with a muted cacophony of birds and crickets, before disappearing into a roiling black cloud of rumbling low end and distant droning guitar buzz. It almost sounds like sticking your head out of a speeding car, the wind whipping by and causing all sorts of distortions, but blurred into an impressively massive wall of sound. Within all this whipping sonic wind and rumbling whirs, are strange bits of percussion, the clang and bang of metal on metal, shakers and simple rhythms, they drift briefly in the eye of the storm, before the drone drops again, even more furious than before, until it fades out amidst the dreamy shimmer of female vocals and haunting minor key melodic buzz. Really intense and strangely beautiful.
The second track is another deep cavernous roar. A bit smoother than the previous number, but not for long, bit of metallic buzz surface amidst the undulating rumbles, with some serious dynamic spikes, some of which sound like brief bursts of SUNNO 0))), and others are even lower and more aggressive bits of low end exploration. There are bits of static and random buzz here and there, but mostly it's black and dark, a massive growling beast, slowly uncoiling into a monster that blocks out the sun. Near the end of the track, the darkness abates and in its place is a strange skipping stuttering snippet of music, wrapped in hazy distortion and looped into a mesmerizing rhythm, repeated over and over and over, gradually crumbling and becoming more and more distorted before erupting into a final burst of chest rattling low end, finally slowing down and sputtering to a halt.
The final track is over twenty minutes and is the most melodic of the bunch. Beginning with a looped cycle of xylophone melody, over a throbbing low end pulse and streaks of keening distant guitar and bits of operatic female vocals. Very ominous and mysterious sounding. When suddenly everything stops, and there's a guy with a British accent ranting over someone ransacking a kitchen, breaking glass, clanging cutlery, and suddenly it's gone, and we're back in some new dronescape, a mumbled voice looped into a haunting mantra, beneath distant thunder like rumbles, and little blurs of high end melody, indistinct, but gradually building in intensity. The drones drift away leaving birds and voices, and some strange bits of hiss and skree, before transforming into a plodding doomdrone beast. A simple stretched out rhythm over cavernous thrums and the sound of subway cars, everything pulsing and throbbing, a bizarre bit of dark collage, that manages to be strangely musical and completely hypnotic.
An amazingly weird record, and absolutely essential listening for the drone obsessed, which we would assume should be most of you...
Another long out of print warehouse find, this one released on Seedy-R, an offshoot of Antony Milton's Pseudo Arcana label, and again featuring avant guitarist Anthony Guerra, here teamed up with drummer Matthew Nidek, for a 23 minute abstract drone/free-noise/psychedelic workout. Hard to say which is the focal point here, so we'll go with both, the guitar is fiery and fierce, alternatingly unfurling thick sheets of SUNNO))) like drone or white hot streaks of Haino-esque howl, slipping from spare and minimal to blurred and burly and almost blackened, the drums locked in tight every step of the way, skittering intricately, occasionally offering up bursts of rhythmic crunch, but always slipping right back into the skree, the sound is heavy and intense, and manages to get louder and louder and more blown out as the record progresses, until finally exploding in a cloud of near white noise skree, which eventually splinters into a stumbling abstract detuned outro, that manages to retain much of the preceding ferocity, recasting as something more warped and brooding.
ULTRA LIMITED, and way out of print. We have 4 or 5 of these and then THAT'S IT!
Another warehouse find, this one from the nearly impossible to pronounce Niellerade Fallibilisthorstar, who we in the past had sort of assumed were some obscure experimental black metal band, but who in fact are something much more esoteric, a mysterious group trafficking in a dark, skeletal, haunting and abstract industrial / electro-acoustic ambience.
These Swedes unfurl sprawling atmospheres of distant buzz, of lush layered shimmer, of rhythmic clank and clatter, a grey malevolence seems to settle over these blurred glimpses of some barren otherworld, the sound shifting from heaving downtuned distorted crumble, to hushed soft focus melodic smear, laced with buried foghorn melodies, what sound like field recordings from some old decrepit dock, streaks of sine wave like high end, machine-like creaks and groans, softly set in fields of reverb, and natural ambience, Halrum often plays out like an actual recording of the listener exploring some strange burnt out factory, discovering a part of the floor, where the concrete seems to crumbled revealing a firelit cave underneath, the walls seemingly alive with shadow motion, these are the sounds of exploration, into the deepest, darkest recesses of whatever blackness lurks below. So awesome. And we really only have a tiny handful of these, and we're not sure we can get more...
Another warehouse find, this one from the nearly impossible to pronounce Niellerade Fallibilisthorstar, who we in the past had sort of assumed were some obscure experimental black metal band, but who in fact are something much more esoteric, a mysterious group trafficking in a dark, skeletal, haunting and abstract industrial / electro-acoustic ambience.
These Swedes unfurl sprawling atmospheres of distant buzz, of lush layered shimmer, of rhythmic clank and clatter, a grey malevolence seems to settle over these blurred glimpses of some barren otherworld, the sound shifting from heaving downtuned distorted crumble, to hushed soft focus melodic smear, laced with buried foghorn melodies, what sound like field recordings from some old decrepit dock, streaks of sine wave like high end, machine-like creaks and groans, softly set in fields of reverb, and natural ambience, Halrum often plays out like an actual recording of the listener exploring some strange burnt out factory, discovering a part of the floor, where the concrete seems to crumbled revealing a firelit cave underneath, the walls seemingly alive with shadow motion, these are the sounds of exploration, into the deepest, darkest recesses of whatever blackness lurks below. So awesome. And we really only have a tiny handful of these, and we're not sure we can get more...
A few months ago, a mysterious disc showed up in the mail. Or more accurately, discs. Four cd-r albums of fucked up fractured outsider pop. No information anywhere on the discs, or the packaging, other than the words Crystal Shards. Which seemed pretty perfect. That's exactly what that stuff sounded like. Jagged and fragmented and crystalline and shimmery and totally bizarre and beautiful. So of course, as is our way, we become a little obsessed, and decided we had to track more down, so we could share these sounds with the aQ faithful�
But searches for Crystal Shards revealed almost nothing, and the label was sold out, and there were at that time no plans to make more Crystal Shards. SO we hd all but given up, until the label got in touch, and mentioned plans to release a proper cd, collecting various tracks from the Crystal Shards cd-r's, and we were thrilled, anxiously waiting its arrival, knowing that it would have to be a Record Of The Week.
And so here it is, but strangely enough, the band is no longer called Crystal Shards. In fact, there is no mention anywhere of Crystal Shards, instead, the band (actually, the man) is now called Night Control, and this disc, Death Control, collects some of our favorite Shards from those previous discs, and weaves them into a perfectly imperfect album of minimal murkiness, moody shimmer and lo-fi pop, generously dappled with effects and feedback and distortion, hooks and jangle buried in buzz and hiss. Woozy, dizzy, druggy, tripped out, and catchy as fuck. Think Ariel Pink, Gary War, John Maus, Ty Segall, Wavves, Blank Dogs, Kurt Vile, Night Control definitely fits pretty comfortably amongst those lo-fi fractured pop denizens, but definitely brings his own vibe to the party, offering up something folkier and prettier, more classically poppy, even Beatles-esque at times, but still plenty murky and freaked out and fucked up, and deliriously off kilter. We also hear some Grifters in there as well, which is never a bad thing.
Where as a lot of those other bands seem willfully obscure, the weirdness in Night Control's music seems more like a natural byproduct. As if the creation of these hauntingly perfect little pop fragments, invariably resulted in the sonic cast offs that litter the record, be they sheets of gauzy buzz, or jagged slivers of feedback, the songs at their very core, are pure pop, but that core is protected by layer after layer of noise and hiss and shimmer. Yet unlike many artists who make their pop 'weird' by adding random crap on top, or record on the shittiest equipment possible, the two sides of Night Control's sound, the jangly pop, and the lo-fi buzz, seem to meld into something totally new, a sound that couldn't exist with both those elements. The guitars jangle and strum, but often explode into blow out leads, or super crunchy textures, the bas burbles below the surface, but it too can sometimes crumble into a cloud of swirling buzz, the drums are simple and spare, but hold the whole thing together, along with the lilting vocals, always wreathed in reverb and delay. Every song here is a gem. And every song manages to reference classic pop, while filtering it through the new fractured noisepop style. Sebadoh covering Tom Petty, Cheap Trick as envisioned by Strapping Fieldhands, or imagine the Beatles or Kinks, if they were growing up today, and released handmade cd-r's. There may be noise and distortion and grit and buzz and hiss, but this stuff is way too poppy to really appeal to the noiseniks, instead this takes the sort of lo-fi pop of early Pavement records and Shrimper cassettes, and re-imagines it as some sort of alternate reality top 40, not like the bizarre alien FM radio of Ariel Pink, but something much more earnest and heartfelt. Total sad boy, late night mix tape nirvana for sure.
Hard to pick favorites, as this is a sort of greatest hits, culled from a catalog that as far as we're concerned is ALL hits, but two of our favorites are "Two Hard", with its lilting jangle, rubbery underwater bass, and some incendiary lead guitars, weaving lush sun dappled textures over a sort of repetitive post rocky drift, and "No Making", a woozy, drifty torch song, the bass driving the song, the whole thing warped and warbly, the tape speed subtly shifting throughout, causing the whole song to subtly shift and twist and making it feel like your speakers are melting, and as if that weren't enough, then there's an awesome soaring bridge / chorus, with some incredible lush guitar harmonies that could go on forever (and you'll wish they would).
Hopefully some of the other Crystal Shards stuff will surface in one form or another, but for now, there's plenty here to get lost in, a fantastic and phantasmagorical document of blissed out hallucinatory outsider noise pop. ESSENTIAL!
First release from this groop of kosmische synth-float dream-space drifters, who normally spend their time kicking up more of a sonic ruckus in local space rock combo Carlton Melton, but in Night Flights, all of that rock is ejected through the airlock, and left to drift weightlessly amongst the stars! This new 12" perhaps the soundtrack to that transition. Equal parts Cluster, Eno, Tangerine Dream, this is all abstract, ambient bliss out. Psychedelic new age for the new age, long tones float and shimmer, melodies unfurl lazily, expanding and then drifting apart, textures shift in slow motion, thick billowing clouds of sound roil softly over a hushed backdrop of barely there thrum, it's chilled out and gloriously laid back, the music from some long ago planetarium show, a show presented in slow motion, the various planets and stars swirling slowly, the contrails making all manner of prismatic patters that ebb and flow, pulse and fade. Imagine the trippiest parts of Carlton Melton (of which there are plenty), but then slow them down, and stretch them way out, let them drift skyward, spreading out across the stars like some weird sonic filter, channeling the strange broadcasts from the furthest reaches into chiming guitar shimmer and swoonsome chordal whooshes, moody murky synthiness and tripped out atmospheric dronemusic, everything blurred and smeared into a fantastically mesmerizing slab of gloriously free form minimal space music, that should hit the spot for both psych nerds and drone lovers alike.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, on clear yellow vinyl. Includes download code too.
The latest from local label Time Released Sound, and another fantastic discovery, this one a collaboration between Russian trio Night Shift and Olli Aarni, who is a member of a Finnish combo we have yet to hear called Ous Mal. Together, they've created a dizzying plunderphonic soundscape, weaving together field recordings, old Russian folk songs, popular song snippets, damaged electronics, all manner of effects into something that manages to be hauntingly atmospheric, but also quite musical as well. The opening track is one of the catchiest sampledelic soundscapes we've heard in a while, backwards melodies and warped pop songs woozily drift from speaker to speaker, surfacing and fading like sonic swells, wreathed in mysterious found sounds, and fractured melodies, very reminiscent sonically of Philip Jeck, we actually had trouble moving past the first track, it's so good, but once we did, there was more to discover, the record quite possible some sort of linked sonic narrative, the vibe definitely cinematic, atmospheric, lush textures, and an incredible amount of sonic minutiae, headphones are definitely the way to go. Music box melodies blur into the chirping of crickets, voices appear and disappear, samples fragment and fade, bleeding into one another, the sounds coalescing into lush sprawls of warm shimmer and epic expanses of near symphonic soft noise, before fading into intimate musical glimpses of some other universe, or some other time, each song a seemingly self contained sonic travelogue, or an alternate universe, rendered in sound. Really fantastic stuff.
The deluxe version is limited to 100 copies, and as as with all the TRS deluxe versions it is indeed quite deluxe, this one a super striking pop-up faux-rigami mini book, the pages of the pop up made from 100 year old hand written ledger paper, and bound in antique hardcover book covers, which are then housed in hand made / hand stamped black slipcases. The standard version is also limited, to 150 copies, and comes housed in a full color digipak.
The latest from local label Time Released Sound, and another fantastic discovery, this one a collaboration between Russian trio Night Shift and Olli Aarni, who is a member of a Finnish combo we have yet to hear called Ous Mal. Together, they've created a dizzying plunderphonic soundscape, weaving together field recordings, old Russian folk songs, popular song snippets, damaged electronics, all manner of effects into something that manages to be hauntingly atmospheric, but also quite musical as well. The opening track is one of the catchiest sampledelic soundscapes we've heard in a while, backwards melodies and warped pop songs woozily drift from speaker to speaker, surfacing and fading like sonic swells, wreathed in mysterious found sounds, and fractured melodies, very reminiscent sonically of Philip Jeck, we actually had trouble moving past the first track, it's so good, but once we did, there was more to discover, the record quite possible some sort of linked sonic narrative, the vibe definitely cinematic, atmospheric, lush textures, and an incredible amount of sonic minutiae, headphones are definitely the way to go. Music box melodies blur into the chirping of crickets, voices appear and disappear, samples fragment and fade, bleeding into one another, the sounds coalescing into lush sprawls of warm shimmer and epic expanses of near symphonic soft noise, before fading into intimate musical glimpses of some other universe, or some other time, each song a seemingly self contained sonic travelogue, or an alternate universe, rendered in sound. Really fantastic stuff.
The deluxe version is limited to 100 copies, and as as with all the TRS deluxe versions it is indeed quite deluxe, this one a super striking pop-up faux-rigami mini book, the pages of the pop up made from 100 year old hand written ledger paper, and bound in antique hardcover book covers, which are then housed in hand made / hand stamped black slipcases. The standard version is also limited, to 150 copies, and comes housed in a full color digipak.
We're a sucker for a band name, you should definitely know that about us by now. And a lot of you are the same. The thinking is, if you're that creative with just the name of your band, imagine how nuts the music must be?? Sure, that doesn't always hold true, but in the case of the awesomely monickered Tremor Of The Black Manx, the name couldn't suit the music more.
On the same label as last week's record of the week, the bizarre black metal weirdness of Jute Gyte, comes TOTBM, who we know NOTHING about, but it hardly matters, what does matter is that this is some awesomely confusional and fucked up stuff, like some sort of fractured electronic hyper grind, or maybe we could call it grindtronica, or something like that. The structure is definitely grind, the songs are short, the arrangements are head spinning, but all of the sounds seem to be synths and not guitars, although sometimes the sounds DO seem to resemble guitars, maybe they're just super processed, regardless, the result is a strangely synthesized bit of frantic buzz, tangled melody, moody murky drift, all wrapped around skittering, stuttering programmed drums, that go from plod to pound to inhuman blast in the blink of an eye, dragging the rest of the sounds along with it. Really rad, and WAY weird.
TOTBM are teamed up here with Night Troll, who sound like a slightly electronic, WAY fucked up, ultra lo-fi raw primitive black metal. Ildjarn, Bone Awl, Akitsa, if you love that stuff but wish it was WEIRDER, more damaged and demented, with throbbing sub bass, tangled atonal guitars, processed death metal grunts, and all sort of other random fuckery, then this is for you. Total lo-fi stumbling ultra raw outsider electronic black metal. Which to us reads: SUPER RAD.
East Coast weirdo rock label Corleone gets a West Coast blood transfusion, but the results sound just as Providence damaged as anything actually raised and bred in Rhode Island. Best known around these parts as the label that brought us the rubber encased, supremely damaged metallic onslaught that was Throne Of Blood (and rest assured we have been hassling the label constantly for a repress), Corleone offer up this latest blast of off kilter propulsive noise rock drone jam groove that fits pretty cozily amidst their like minded but opposite coasted noisemaking brethren.
Night Wounds have all the right ingredients, angular scrape and skree guitar, chaotic but strangely funky drums, blown out bass, strangled almost new wave vocals, even a saxophone that manages to skronk and kick ass and not sound at all cheesy (which is quite a feat, apologies to Gerry Rafferty). The cool thing about Night Wounds is they almost sound like they could be some forward thinking no wave/new wave band from back in the day. A killer blend of Crispy Ambulance, James White And The Contortions (due mostly to the sax and the damaged jazz vibe), Pylon, and a handful of others whose names escape us right now. All tangled up with bursts of nineties style mathy complexity, stretched out hypnotic grooves, and squalls of noisy chaos.
Imagine if Factory Records had continued on, it's not difficult to imagine that Night Wounds might have embodied "The Factory Sound" circa 2007. A weirdly catchy, super groovy, damaged and demented, gloom infused tribal workout, alternatingly woozy and weird, freaky and funky, as likely to send the dancefloor into a herky jerky frenzy as it is to make the pit explode in a sloppy sweaty tangle of limbs.
A rare live recording from uber-obscure early Tangerine Dream worshippers, Nightcrawlers, a three piece out of New Jersey who released cassettes of their "cosmic floating space music" between 1979 and 1992. Recorded in a church in 1985, these two 30 minute tracks take full advantage of the reverent resonance of the live cathedral environment with beautiful bowed drones, glacial organ and intensely meditative flourishes of futuristic kosmiche. Super-Limited to 50 copies, this group presaged the new age krautrock revival by about 20 years and are long overdue for rediscovery.
They're from Finland. They're called Nightsatan. Their record is called Midnight Laser Warrior and features on its cover some helmeted ghoul with a knife, and a sawblade, and a bullet belt, and tons of spikes and studs on the leather jacket that barely obscures his rotting zombie flesh. They have song titles like "Four Eyed Cyclops", "Death Chess 2000", "Karelian Stairmaster (Evil Lucifer)". The record was mastered by two members of aQ faves Finnish hypnorockers Circle. We saw a YouTube clip of Nightsatan performing, where a certain member of the crowd got so worked up he decided to sing along, that person was none other than Albert Witchfinder of the mighty Reverend Bizarre (and The Puritan, among others). Their drummer is credited with player "Laserdrums". And most importantly, they play "LAZERMETAL". Which is in fact, not metal at all, nor even "NWOFHM", instead it's some sort of crazy, futuristic, electro prog, like Goblin or John Carpenter, or any of the current crop of Carpenter worshipping retro futurists (Majeure, Umberto, Zombi, Blizaro) but filtered through some ELP, or Yes, or even more obscure prog faves like Il Balleto Di Bronzo or the New Trolls. Sure the sound is synthy, and retro and electro and will no doubt appeal to those folks, but it's also twisted and proggy and FINNISH, which makes this something else entirely.
The cool thing about these guys, ONE of the cool things, is that they're a proper band, this isn't just a studio project, assembled at a desk with a computer, no these guys are a BAND, and there's tons of footage of them playing live, and most notably, they have a DRUMMER, who plays drums, electronic drums sure, but they give the sound a sweaty, urgent, human element missing from lots of similar stuff, not to mention, these songs are epic and complex and again PROGGY.
Opener "Four Eyed Cyclops" begins with a bit of Tangerine Dreamy synthiness, accompanied by some growled cookie monster vox, but it doesn't take long for the track to get going, with some awesome syncopated rumming, locked tight with the synths, then another buzzing bit of low end synth swoops in, and while it's not metal, we can definitely feel the same sort of power and energy and intensity. All the synths drop out, leaving just the buzzing low end one to unfurl a serious slithery riff, the drums come back in, and it's like some weird electronic electro-doom, the metal vibe, more in the vibe than the sound, but it's definitely weird and heavy and electronic, with lots of bent notes wound into electro leads. Awesome.
"Death Chess 2000" starts off with more buzzing low end synth riffage, some "Iron Man" style kick drum, before slipping into another bit of electro-doom, only to have everything suddenly speed up, and transform into a car chase Autobahn soundtrack that returns briefly to that opening electro doom, before stripping down to just minimal synth and a skeletal rhythm, and more of those weird raspy vox, finishing off in a blaze of swirl and buzz.
"Karelian Stairmaster (Evil Lucifer)" might be the proggiest of the bunch, another swirly Logan's Run sounding intro, all arpeggiated melodies underpinned by thick wheezing synth buzz, while the snare drum drives the rhythm, before blossoming into a hazy, futuristic soundscape (which more than one customer mistook for the Tron soundtrack! If only!), that warbles woozily, and eventually switches tempo and becomes the perfect score for some lost eighties VHS tape horror movie futuristic dystopian city montage. Throughout, the song offers up some strange detours, intense super dynamic stop/starts, with pounding drums, and some gorgeous woozy video game soundtrack balladry (which again has us thinking how much better these guys would have been for scoring Tron).
"Ninja Apocalypse" is creepy, and haunting, with the sound of fake rainfall, deep bass swells, and a main keyboard melody that would most definitely not be out of place in a Halloween or Friday The 13th movie, but like all the songs, the track continually shifts and transforms, minimal and hauntingly creepy one second, supper progged out and propulsive the next, soaring and majestic the next, and druggy and psychedelic the next. "Steel Diamond Part 4" (parts 1 and 2 are on the 7" reviewed elsewhere on this list, not sure where part 3 is though), is another electro prog workout, that features a super soundtracky main melody wreathed in layer after layer of synth buzz, the drums dense and intricate, the sound swirling and shimmering, evoking images of alien planets, of crashed starships, of subterranean lairs, of strange creatures chained up and walking into the depths, of the blackness of space, which leads right into the final track "Stars, Our Destination", which takes that space synth sci-fi sound even further out, pulsing and throbbing, the melodies tangled and intricate, hypnotic and totally mesmerizing, the sound dramatic and emotional and epic, and so totally cinematic, every track in fact here plays out like the music to some climactic scene from some lost eighties sci-fi adventure epic, with "Stars, Our Destination" being the perfect culmination, the drums less rhythmic, and more dynamic, pounding alongside the synths, the vocals more breathy exhalations, soon joined by thick rubbery low end pulses, everything growing more and more intense before fading into a swirling drift of warbly synths, swirling FX and whispered urgent voices. There's a short hidden track, another sort of Halloween gone electro synthwave, with a pulsing house-y beat, creepy raspy vocals, and a main melody that sounds like it had to be created for some horror movie, tense and intense, this final coda brooding and moody, but also propulsive and weirdly motorik, the perfect sci-fi, electro house, futuristic synth wave hypno krautrock finish to a pretty much perfect sci-fi, electro house, futuristic synth wave hypno krautrock record!
And all this talk of soundtrack and cinema is not just us, the artwork on the back cover, which features a modular synth, with the various patch bays altered to read as song titles, also includes various inputs for things like "Doom & Gloom", "Heavy Pounding" and maybe most tellingly "Extra Giallo". So good. Easily our favorite of this new batch of synthy soundtracky sci-fi sounds. There is vinyl, but it's not out yet, a few weeks still. And if you dig this, be sure and grab one of those 7"s too!!
If you found your way here without reading about and most likely buying the full length Nightsatan record, best to take a second and go check out that review, we get WAY more in depth there about the band and their fantastic futuristic sounds. And if you already added the cd to your cart, and just need MORE, then heck, skip the rest of this, and throw one of these in your cart too.
But for those who need to know more. Nightsatan are from Finland, and play "Lazermetal" which is in fact less metal, and more futuristic soundtracky sci-fi synth wave prog.
"Steel Diamond" parts 1 and 2 make up the bulk of the 7" (part 4 is on the full length, no idea where part 3 is), and is a sprawling synthscape of fat, fuzz drenches electro future prog, swirling synths, propulsive electronic drums, sweeping arrangements, epic swells, the bass buzzy and blown out, all wound into some sort of electronic krautspacefunk soundtrack. There are some breakdowns and interludes that are so thick and heavy, the bass SO buzzy, that it almost does sound metal.
The second part of the "Steel Diamond" quadrilogy offers up a plodding super dramatic space opera lazer prog workout, wild tangles of synth leads, evoking the final march up to the castle, the final battle, knights versus aliens, the vibe is definitely doomy, but synth-doom, building to a wild proggy break, that gets all electro-metallic before slipping right back into that spaced out synthy futurism.
The other track here, "Space Revenger" (awesome title!), is a pounding Teutonic bit of synthy electro prog metal, but with all the metal guitars replaced by MORE SYNTHS, epic and dramatic and intense and cinematic, with some surprisingly crushing parts that remind us a bit of MIDI metal (those cheesy electronic versions of classic metal sounds, YouTube it) but cranked WAAAAAY UP!
The cover art here is cool too, the band in metal T's and studded wristbands, huge black shades, obscured by red lights, looking very metal, with a shiny silver sticker that says "Finland's No#1 Nightsatan - File Under LAZERMETAL", while the back boasts two different legends, one reads "No guitars played on this record", the other "DEATH TO FALSE LASERMETAL". Fuck Yeah. Pressed on LAZER-RED vinyl too...
UK label Barl Fire has a darn near perfect record with kick ass releases from James Blackshaw, Rameses III, Robert Horton, Lamp Of The Universe, Floating World, United Bible Studies, The North Sea, Uton and more. Their focus seemingly on drone folk and free rock. Their last two releases however, this one, and the James Reid (reviewed elsewhere on this list) have begun to drift more toward straight ahead folk, or at least the sort of modern folk of New Weird America and similar minded hippies. Where as the James Reid channels the spirit of Nick Drake, the Nihil Project is more of a pagan ritual, a sort of Renaissance Wicker Man mystickal magickal folk. Sitars and zithers, tablas, harpischords, violins, along with more traditional acoustic guitars and flutes as well as some little more modern electronic flourishes. Crooning vocals, lilting melodies, occasionally dark and ominous, but just as often playful and festive. Definitely for fans of the Wicker Man, Pentangle, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Forest, Comus, as well as the new breed of modern folk a la Devendra, Brightblack, Newsom and the like...
This one is definitely for the noise crowd. Doomlords might find this latest joint from Northwester dronedoomdirge duo (now trio apparently) Blue Sabbath Black Cheer a little too punishing. We can only assume it's the influence of Nihilist Assault Group, not that BSBC didn't have noisy tendencies before, but here, the two combine forces to unleash a blackened Merzbowian beast, two side long blowouts of grinding white noise drenched hiss and glitch and howl and buzz. At low volume, like much of this ilk, one might mistake this for TV static, or a vacuum cleaner, or the needle slipping off the record and scraping over the label, a cacophony of crunch and scrape and gristly fuzz, blurred into heaving clouds of NOISE.
Strap some headphones on though if you dare, and there's definitely more going on than meets the ear, some churning almost rhythms, cool textures, tangled strands of drone and rumble and whir, but that's all buried underneath an avalanche of satanic hiss and skull caving, amp destroying white noise brutality.
Awesome stuff, if your ears can handle it. Again, very little in the way of doom, or even low end to be found here, but if you like to sit back, and relax to some Incapacitants, dine to a little Merzbow, or entertain to the strains of Hijokaidan, then heck, this might be the perfect soundtrack for your next nihilistic dinner party.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Gorgeous black and white jackets, with a thick printed insert.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
