We've noticed that in lots of our reviews we make reference to the No Neck Blues Band. Assuming, of course, everyone would know exactly what we were talking about. But then we discovered that we had only really reviewed two of their previous records, one with only a single sentence! Certainly, it seems, not enough to warrant so many comparisons. What neglect for a band to whom we constantly refer! But this dearth of reviews is mostly due to the scarcity and limited nature of most of their releases. Currently, there is only one double cd available, a reissue of a release from a few years back as well as a sort-of-bootleg lp. And now this new vinyl package.
For us at AQ, the name No Neck Blues Band has become synonymous with the sort of stumbling/free/improv/space/psych/drum-circle/hippy/tribal free jams that we love so much (Avarus, Kemialliset Ystevat, Anaksimandros, Thuja, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Jackie O Motherfucker, etc.). NNBB is a loose collective of hippies, shamans, musicians and hangers on that seem to be able to effortlessly conjure up wild, free and totally mesmerising jams reminiscent of the ESP Records roster, the thudding primitve, dirge-psych of German Oak, and the spaced out psychedelic krautrock of Amon Duul. In the past we described their sound as "loose & stumbling, trippy neo-kraut, free 'sort-of-jazz' improvised jams, drunken drones and hypnotic hums" and that sound hasn't changed too much. If anything it's gotten a little poppier, albeit in the loosest sense of the term, and a little more structured. But it's still some of the best transcendental, tribal, droning, rhythmic, hypnotic free sort-of-rock we've ever heard. NNBB have never been ones to skimp on packaging and this time around is no different: a thick slab of vinyl housed in a gorgeous, cloth bound lp sleeve (like an old hardcover book) with embossed text and pasted-on image on the cover. Also comes with a bonus 7" from a 'related' group called Mount Analog, although to my eras, the two songs on the 7" fit perfectly with the sounds on the lp. Also comes with two pages of NNBB rants. Curious and typically indecipherable.
A bit price-y for sure, but as with all NBBB releases, it's limited, will soon be out of print, and considering how little of their stuff is readily available, fans of all of the above mentioned bands as well as folks into all things tribal/hippy/pschedelic will be kicking themselves if they miss out.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of three new NNCK releases, this is one of two new limited lps, released on the band's own label and packaged in beautifully hand assembled sleeves. First Kingdom is all about rhythms, with percussion and drums driving these extended tracks. Starting off with a wild and wooly howl fest, all demonic wailing and tribal chanting, things quickly settle into more familiar NNCK territory, a dense miasma of rhythmic bliss, shimmering and pulsing, with rattles and shakers, clacks and clatter, rumble and skitter, all woven tightly into a head nodding, primitive drum jam. At one point the fog clears and a simple 4/4 beat emerges, a steady wooden clomp over Eastern guitar melodies and rumbly guitar thrum, sounding like Jewelled Antler recording for Kompakt or a some sort of ancient forest gnome techno.
It's been a surprisingly prolific and action packed few months for the otherwise NOT-prolific and as-underground-as-can-be No Neck Blues Band. Good for us. And them too I guess. First was the super elaborate and expensive Ever Borneo lp/7" we listed a few weeks back as well as a super limited live lp and the reissue of one of their old double cds. This week brings a reissue of their out of print Revenant cd and this here brand new full length. Phew. Must have run out of weed or something. What else could explain such productivity?! No Neck Blues Band, for those just tuning in, are a loose collective of East Coast noisemakers (whose members also do time in AQ faves Sunburned Hand Of The Man as well as AQ not-faves Suntanama) who are the ultimate in hippy-psych-trance-free-drone-folk. Taking liberally from classic Krautrock, seventies folk, free jazz, and noise rock, NNBB have a knack for turning all of these disparate elements into smooth and cohesive, rhythmic and hypnotic, and totally fucking gorgeous free-jams. This new record may just be their best yet. Dreamy and drone-y and completely mesmerising. Washed out tones stretch out over rickety frameworks of hand drums and simple percussion, bells and chimes, while guitars tentatively weave their way through the murk, leaving trails of wispy melody and shimmery thrum. Propulsive rhythms struggle under a dense fog of thick chords and moaning synthesizers while delicately strummed guitars flit from note to note, weaving a lush and soul soothing soundscape. Hippy tendencies are downplayed throughout, resulting in a way more cohesive, way more 'musical' offering than No Neck's usual hippy-trance-caveman-freakouts (which I love, don't get me wrong). Fans of classic and modern krautrock, Finnish psych-folk (Avarus, Kemialliset, etc.), Jewelled Antler, and all things drone and clatter should buy this NOW.
MPEG Download: "Witch" [/audio/noneckwitch.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Witch" [/audio/noneckwitch.m3u]
MPEG Download: "Open That Grass Can" [/audio/noneckopen.mp3]
Awesome archival release from one of the most referenced bands on this here aQ list. Whenever we need to describe something abstract and clattery, stumbly and mysterious, percussive and otherworldly, rhythmic and fractured and psychedelic, we'll often invoke this long standing New York based free form sonic institution. And this disc is a definite reminder of why we were so immediately taken with this band when we first heard them close to 15 years ago.
Languid Red Marchetti was recorded in 1994, close to the birth of the band, and features a stripped down quartet, and the sound is raw, feral, super abstract, very percussive and atmospheric, all clang and clatter and scrape, buzz and rumble and skree, a cacophonous exploration of time and space, what sounds like disparate bursts of crunch and creak, woven into an almost lyrical expanse of sound. Sometimes hushed and sinister, other times angular and primitive, the record ebbs and flows, drifts gorgeously between two extremes, spending most if its time right in between, a lush jagged world of rhythm and sound, noise and texture.
Any one into NNBB will definitely be all over this, especially if you miss the No Neck of old, performing in squats, with busted up old gear, wrapped in old blankets, wreathed in shadows, dimly lit spaces, magical mystery conjured from the ether, every performance some sort of alchemical ritual, some ancient rite, like something you might stumble on in the forest, an ages old musical communion with nature, or the spirits, or the darkside, an abstract avant improv filtered through some grimy, fractured junkyard punk rock, totally transcendent.
A bit pricey, but NNCK records are almost more art than sound, as much visual and tactile as sonic, Languid Red Marchetti is no different. limited to just over 300 copies, housed in a printed full color inner sleeve, a gorgeous full color spot varnished jacket, includes a thick paper insert with some truly dense liner notes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Loose & stumbling, trippy neo-kraut, free 'sort-of-jazz' improvised jams, drunken drones and hypnotic hums. Accidently and occasionally breathtaking. Plus a good helping of pipe fight!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Of all the bands we reference in other bands' reviews, the No Neck Blues Band has to be the most frequently mentioned. For a while there, this ever mutating collective had such a distinct sound, that whenever another band tried to do some sort of free, tribal, pagan, ritualistic, percussion based free jam, we couldn't help but compare them to the godfathers of the tribal drum circle Ur-drone space jam, the mighty No Neck.
Even today after countless releases, tons of tours and a whole bunch of worshippers at the altar of NNCK (Sunburned Hand, Avarus, etc...), No Neck still effortlessly outdo most of their contemporaries, a free noise, what-the-fuck folk, tribal improv juggernaut, able to spin delicate webs of soft sound as easily as a Crash Worship worthy drumjam free for all.
Nine For Victor is a live set recorded back in 2005, and wanders wantonly through all of the various sounds No Neck dabble in, deftly making them all flow seamlessly. Throbbing underwater bass, wheezing spaghetti western harmonica, electronic bleeps and bloops, fuzzed out synths, long stretches of Terry Riley like high end piano flutter, underpinned by barely there percussive shuffle and muted guitar strum, spaced out cinematic drones with keening high end melodies, weird creaking percussive clatter, angular jazz piano, dense clouds of shakers and drums, cricket like percussion, a clattery rattling near-drone, krautrocky slowjams with wild lead guitar and buzzing basslines, all tangled up and interwoven, overlapping, creating a ramshackle but surprisingly cohesive whole.
One of three new NNCK releases, this double cd released on the band's own Sound@One label, is another massive and gorgeous slab of primal psychedelic free folk tribalism. Unlike the relative tranquility and dreaminess of the two simultaneously released lps (reviewed elsewhere on this list), this double cd leans a bit more in the jagged / dissonant direction. Fear not though, there are still plenty of blissed out, stumbly folknoise soundscapes, cobbled together with scraped and bowed instruments, subtle percussion and soothing rumbles. But there also happens to be plenty of squealing feedback, rapturous moans and groans, pounding drums and bells, angular guitar melodies, speaker punishing primitive Krautrock thump, silverware drawer clatter, erratic drum circle madness, skronky horns and maniacal Melt Banana-like vocalising. Somehow NNCK manage to take both extremes and meld them into one super satisfying, surprisingly listenable whole.
Yet another freaky transmission from whatever otherworldly outpost these mysterious NY free jazz / drone rock / outsider avant hippy tribalists call home, and lordy, is it a gloriously moody creep! A series of slithering, warbling, shimmering, stumbling psychedelic jams deftly constructed from grinding electric guitars, pounding krautrock rhythms, haunting quavering organs, alien little pizzicato melodies, all swirling and swaying in a dense murky haze. However, unlike the delicate ambience and unstructured abstraction of past NNCK efforts, Qvaris is downright rocking, with at least half the tracks held together by shuffling, stomping, swinging drum beats. Those tracks are especially reminiscent of krautrock legends German Oak, with their strangely claustrophobic vibe and dense unfunky funk. The less structured bits scattered throughout are sparkly kaleidoscopic flares, free floating stretches of smeary ambience and glistening radiance. The combination of the two, surprisingly lush and lustrous. All of Qvaris sounds much more composed and less improvised than most NNCK material, which makes the whole record sound less 'New Weird America' and more like some weird psych rock / post rock band whose propulsive rocking manages to get sort of twisted and tangled, into a deliriously druggy moonlit tumble through the looking glass.
Judging from the cryptic liner notes, the album artwork, and the video on the NNCK website (http://www.theserth.com), the new record seems to somehow concern a certain sacred object, that appears (at least to our untrained eyes) to be a sequined eggplant, which in some strange way makes perfect sense when you're dealing with the cracked vision of the No Neck Blues Band. But don't let the addition of sparkling vegetables to the mix throw you off, this is some of the most gorgeously dreamy and drone-y and drugged out psychedelic free folk noise rock you'll ever hear!
More stoned, spaced out, rhythmic free-rock bliss out from AQ faves the No Neck Blues Band. This is a live set from a year or two back released only on lp. Mr. A Fan unfurls like a thick, warm blanket of fuzz, with subtle thumps and rattles, mumbled, incoherent vocalising, druggy guitars and underneath it all, a doggedly steady rhythm turning what would otherwise be a hippy-ish mess, into some primo modern krautrock. Think Reynols covering German Oak or Jandek jamming with the 'Dead or Yahowah playing the Amon Duul songbook or Hawkwind unplugged. Weird and wild and wooly and beautifully fucked up. And as always, so totally great! Sorry, we only have 3 copies still hanging around, so act fast!
It came as a bit of a surprise to realise that we've never listed the No Neck Blues Band before, especially considering how often we reference them in reviews, whenever we're trying to describe some sort of stumbling and stoned, improvised hippie tribal
Subtitled "An Urban Ceremonial", this super limited new release from AQ faves the No Neck Blues Band documents a live performance at the Greene Naftali Gallery in November of 2004. It's been a little while since we've heard from these guys, but thankfully they sound as good as ever, maybe a little more subdued and subtle, although that could just be the venue or even this particular performance. As always, the NNBB offer up a langorous, dreamily exotic tribal soundscape of crystalline shimmers, drifting ambient slivers of high end, muted tribal drumming, subtle velvet shadings of reverbed guitar, simple shuffling rhythms, chimes and bells, ghostly woodwinds, drifting psych guitar drone, occasional clang and clatter, music box-like melodies all swirled into a rambling soundscape of tribal ambience, krautrock creep and pagan folk ritual.
Packaged in an oversized carboard sleeve with a poster. And again EXTREMELY LIMITED!
The latest mysterious musical missive from these aQ faves, NYC's psychedelic improv free rock explorationists No Neck Blues Band, who remain one of the most reference groups on the aQ site, referenced whenever we need to describe some sort of tribal freeform psychedelia or jazzy abstract drift, or dirgey home-brewed free form minimalism, or pretty much any stop in between, these guys are the modern masters, and this record is another fantastic glimpse into their utterly unique soundworld. Recorded in 2009 in the Faust Studios in Germany, YTIU offers up two sidelong epics, the first starts out all psychedelic and raga-like, with spidery guitar melodies, rumbling low end, and occasiona synth squelches, dreamy and drifty for sure, gradually becoming more electronic and skittery, a little bit jazzy for sure too, slipping into some hushed near ambient shimmer before bursting into some abstract free noise atonality, laced with sawed strings, tinkling chimes, stuttery horn bleats and propulsive tribal krautrock drumming.
The flipside is the band at their most meditative and dreamily psychedelic, dedicated to Pink Floyd, it's a long drift of thick whirring organs, abstract melodic figures, slowly unfurling psych guitars, shuffly and jangly, a sound that perhaps envisions them, however briefly, as an underground avant Grateful Dead (or Pink Floyd perhaps), which is not at all a bad thing, druggy, dreamy, endless psychedelic jamming, that drift and hovers and shimmers and soars weightlessly heavenward.
LIMITED TO JUST 300 COPIES!! Sadly we have less than 10, and it's already sold out and out of print. So these are the last copies we'll ever get. The covers are each individually hand painted and hand stickered too!
Yup, that is a nod to Model 500's classic "NO UFO's" - one of the few techno trax from the mid '80s that can legitimately qualify as being timeless. The project that has taken this name is authored by Vancouver's electronica wunderkind Konrad Jandavs, who's caught in not one, but two parallel timewarps - one fixated on the kraut / motorik oscillations of Harmonia, Neu!, and Conrad Schnitzler and the other on a lo-fi adaptation of the avant-electronica circa 1993 especially Autechre and Main. All of which are great sonic signposts on their own; but thrust together in a mottled collage, the results are kaleidoscopically discombobulating. The cheap drum machine marching beneath an expository synthdrone noodle akin to J.D. Emmanuel on "Evidence / Century Park" leads into the acid reflux of "Vertigo (K. Alexi)" seeking the same influences that spawned Aphex and Autechre. The hypno-riff from Jandavs' guitar on "00/00/2010" with scrabbled electronic drone and oscillation is structurally identical to what Robert Hampson was going for on his awesome Main album Hydra-Calm (now, there's an album in need of a reissue!). For all of its genre-hopping bricolage, Soft Coast is a very self-assured album and one that fits rather nicely amidst the retro-garde agenda promoted by John Elliott's Spectrum Spools imprint.
Uh oh. It's from Finland, and it's limited, and it's nobody you've heard of before. Thus Aquarius is almost contractually obligated to champion this 7", because all of those things ring true about No Xivic. This is also another fine release from Drone Records run by Stefan Knappe of Troum. On this single, No Xivic explore primeval, oceanic dronemusik, mysterious vocalizations broadcast as omni-directional sirensongs out from a sea of reverberation and tidal fluctuations. Very cold and very bleak, much like the later work of Lustmord. Limited to 300 copies, with this first edition pressed on clear vinyl. ONLY A HANDFUL OF THESE IN STOCK!
We've got two new tapes on this week's list from the Merzbild label, the newly expanded offshoot of Merz Tapes. There's the latest from Swedish death drone dealer Trepaneringsritualen, and then this one, the years in the works Yksityisyys from Finnish dronescaper/sound sculptor No Xivic, who we had only heard before on a Drone Records single, but who here is give the space to flesh out his vision, a glorious, sprawling vision that includes field recordings, sampled machinery, mysterious voices, drones and textures, buried melodies. The tape starts off almost tranquil, with birdsong, and little else, evoking a summer day, but soon, black sonic clouds gather, a brooding dense thrum, that threatens to swallow the other sounds whole, atonal chords blurred into slow shifting swells, the sounds pocked with crackle and crunch, the vibe growing ever more ominous, the sound billowing outward, soon blotting out the sun, leaving everything in shadow. Chanted voices, droning organs, a grim swirl of dark sonic shimmer, which eventually settles into something even more bleak, a minimal foghorn like rumble, beneath the sound of rainfall, or perhaps traffic on rain slicked streets, foot steps, the vibe urban and industrial, that heavin wall of low end rumble surfacing again and again, threatening to crash down violently, but instead, fading out, leaving just footsteps, that seem to be walking into darkness, the surrounding sounds again, growing more and more threatening, and the field recordings, less recognizable as human, hissings and buzzings, all blurring into something truly torturous, but yet rife with some sort of melodic melancholy, lurking most often just below the surface. The whole tape is a series of sonic set pieces, musical renderings of lost places, the sort no human should dare tread, a place that one can not find, but a place that finds you, and lures you to your doom, and by playing this tape, the listener seems to be slowly sinking into whatever black horrors lurk on the other side.
Ultra minimal packaging, just a purple tape, with silver printing, housed in a clear plastic case, no art, no J-card. And like the other Merzbild tape, EXTREMELY LIMITED.
We mentioned in the past that EM records just might be our favorite new record label. They also have pretty much clinched the title of MOST CONFUSINGLY ECLECTIC RECORD LABEL EVER. Their catalog is massive, but even just looking at only the discs we've reviewed so far, your head will spin and your ears will spew smoke just like those old cartoons. Let's see, so far we've got freaked out sixties free jazz, musical saws, space age exotica, cut up tape birdsong symphonies, bizarre seventies psychedelic krautrock (from the USA), lost Australian dub, experimental tape music and of course MORE AND MORE SAWS. What the heck is it with the musical saw? EM Records (and Japanese music fans in general) seem to have an inordinate love of the singing saw.
It's easy to see why though. A high keening lonesome wail that imbues whatever music it's accompanying with a ghostly, old timey, dreamlike, melancholy vibe. This record from the bizarrely named Noahlewis' Mahlon Taits is not some recently discovered, unearthed 78 rpm record from the thirties or forties, some dusty old scratched up slab of wax, stashed in the bottom of an old trunk in the basement of some house in the country for the last 8 decades. Although it does definitely sound like it. Nope. Noahlewis' Mahlon Taits are a modern ensemble, channeling musical ghosts and sonic spirits through an eclectic array of old time instruments, weaving, dreamlike, otherworldly soundscapes of old time jazz and slow smoldering ballads, warm and warbly, just like listening to some scratchy old 78, but performed live.
Brings to mind the band on some doomed ocean liner, the bar band at that mysterious bar at the end of the world. People are sitting in corners, heads held low in dark booths, couples slow dancing, a row of regulars slouched over the bar. Very cinematic and atmospheric. Flutes and violas, guitar, accordion, piano, cello, shuffling jazz drums, banjo and ukulele, and of course musical saw. The fiddles creak and keen, pianos tinkle, the cellos and violas weave soft fluttering backgrounds, melodies are dimly lit and drift wraithlike through the smoky jazzscapes, there are even a few moments of blurping jug music, but above it all is the singing saw. Its haunting theremin-like siren song soaring one moment, whispering and shimmering the next. So totally lovely. Six Pieces For Dancing immediately transports you to another time, another world, it's like stepping into some old tattered photograph, straightening your ascot and top hat, handing the doorman your cane and overcoat, grabbing a drink and heading out to the dancefloor, just as the band in the corner starts up again. So cool!
Up until now, we'd managed to hear very little from electronic soundscaper / audio experimentalist Lee Noble, but we definitely liked everything we heard, but this will be the first LN release to make it on the aQ list, which in some ways is perfect, as it's not a split, but instead a collaboration with aQ faves Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle, from another aQ fave The Starving Weirdos. It's a perfect collaboration, in that it's impossible to tell exactly who is contributing what, and while the lush, organic, near cinematic sounds here do display shades of EE, Motion Forever expands on those sounds with Noble and Pyle crafting swoonsome swirls of Caretaker-esque shimmer, and Jeck like turntable ministrations, everything woozy and warbly, a nocturnal drift that gives way to some creepy skeletal lo-fi pop, laced with plaintive vox and detuned strum, all atop a layer of electronic buzz. A mysterious strain of slowcore that gradually disappears in a cloud of warm thrum, draped in tinkling chime like melodies, before returning to the Jeck / Caretaker like skeletal balladry of the opening few minutes.
The flipside introduces muted rhythms, beneath softly swirling synths, and over distant soft focus drones, all laid back and dreamily druggy. Strange samples surface throughout, the sound shifting into something much more dirgey and almost new wave sounding, haunting and otherworldly, with processed vox and distorted piano pound, a ghostly, spectral electronic dirgepop finale that is as good as anything we've heard from either participants!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
The latest project from SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley comes in the form of this explosive psychedelic drum/guitar duo, recorded live in 2010, and while we hadn't heard of Noble before this, we had definitely HEARD him, as he's a member of Aethenor, along with O'Malley, and is a UK improviser of some repute, as well as apparently having played on no fewer than NINE(!) releases on the Bo Weavil label.
St Francis Duo definitely serves as a fantastic (re)introduction to Noble, at least to Noble as mainman, right out of the gate, we're barraged with an onslaught of tribal toms, and thick clouds of cymbal sizzle, a sound that even sans O'Malley, sounds like it would be HUGE and dense and powerful. But O'Malley just adds to the chaos, ditching the slow and low droneguitar of SUNNO))) in favor of some full on Keiji Haino-esque psych-noise fury, the first couple minutes a veritable avalanche of guitar buzz octopoidal drum sputter, before settling into something much more restrained and rhythmic, Noble still impossibly busy, laying a framework of jazzy skitter which O'Malley unfurls warm swells of dark twang and muted thrum, the rest of the track more a showcase for Noble, with O'Malley painting a blackened blurred backdrop for a relentless fury of cascading rhythms and fragmented grooves, furious fills and a track long drum solo. But somehow it all manages to be super mesmerizing.
The other three tracks (each a sidelong epic) tend toward a similar sound, blissed out and brooding, with Noble doing most of the heavy lifting, whether it's hypnotic grooves, or abstract jazzy stutter, or dizzying blowouts of wild drum damage, O'Malley though the perfect foil, his guitar rumbling ominously one second, grinding and shredding wildly the next, spitting out jagged shards of atonal melody before slipping into some almost straight ahead riffage, before splintering and devolving into another tangled woozy melodic meltdown.
There are a few moments, where the two lock tight and approach something akin to a Necks like mesmer, and other times where they sound like a facemelting noiserock band, or some classic freeform Japanese psych combo, but in-between, the two seem to build epic psychedelic improv constructs, only so they can tear them down again, reveling in both parts of the process, and managing to make both the ascent and descent, equally compelling.
For fans of heavy free psych, chaotic drum heavy free jazz and abstract improvised noiserock.
- MPEG stream: 1
- MPEG stream: 4
You would be right to be skeptical of Nocturnal Emissions, as the long standing project has released a handful of duds amidst a catalogue of mediocre records. HOWEVER, the one exception is Drowning In A Sea Of Bliss, which is not only the best Nocturnal Emissions record, but also one of the most brutal, abrasive pieces of industrial electronics ever, alongside the best that SPK and TG produced back in the day and certainly providing a template for the caustic electro-shock treatments of Wolf Eyes, Prurient, UW Owl, and the like.
Drowning In A Sea Of Bliss originally came out on lp in 1983 through Nocturnal Emissions' own Sterile Records and was later reissued by Touch, first on cassette and then on cd in the early '90s. At the time, Nocturnal Emissions was the British duo of Nigel Ayers and Caroline K, the former of whom has helmed the project since the late '80s on his own veering into soft-focus ambient and questionable electronica. Nocturnal Emissions was always much better when Ayers had his foil in Caroline K, although the division of labor was always a bit murky. This album had been envisioned as a vinyl release. with two distinct sides - one being a series of audio collages of overblown noise, distorted media cut-ups, tape loops, and primitive electronics, and the second girded to a series of minimal-wave rhythms with plenty of noise bursts and dead-eyed tonalities. For better or for worse, the two cd reissues of the album have not broken up the album into individual tracks (which are listed in the liner notes), but instead present each side of the lp as a single continuous track. We had hoped that Klanggalerie would remedy this, but alas, the problem remains. That said, this minor quibble doesn't detract from the brutal power of this album, with the first half being what Cabaret Voltaire should have done with all of their Burroughs' inspired cut-ups. Here, maniacal loops of analog distortion and piercing screams corrode into sharply rendered bursts of noise and plenty of deconstructed samples from military commercials and news clippings. The second half is no less blackened, but is far more clinical with the primitive electronic rhythms actually getting sort of groovy from time to time, even as shards of searing noise burst forth. Think early Coil or Fad Gadget. Fucking incredible is what this is.
If there's one Nocturnal Emissions record you should get, this is the one.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nocturnal Emissions has been active since the late 70s and has gone through dozens of aesthetic changes, under the watchful ear of ringleader Nigel Ayers. "Energy Exchange" was originally released in 1991 on Ayers' label Earthly Delights to document a handful of their live recordings. At this time in Nocturnal Emissions' history, the band was engaged in a blissful yet esoteric ambience heavily influenced by the seminal ambient recordings from Brian Eno. On a few of these tracks, members of the anonymous collective :Zoviet France: make appearances. The cd version features three bonus tracks which didn't appear on the out of print vinyl.
Managed to dig up two copies of this fantastically strange record, a concept record about Doctor Mabuse, the main character from Norbert Jacques' infamous novel, here rendered in sound, as a sprawling bit of cinematic ambience, equal parts post industrial drift, avant soundcollage, psychedelic samplescape and freeform radio play. Warm drones, mysterious martial percussion, lots of sampled German voices, rumbling distorted low end, bursts of blown out Merzbowian crunch, ominous cavernous thrum, layered loops and blurred samples, like the score to some mysterious lost German art film. So mysterious and creepy and weirdly beautiful.
We have just TWO copies of this. The cd is packaged in a full color gatefold sleeve, which is then housed in a full color 7" style jacket, includes various inserts AND a bonus cd-r with two extra tracks. Cool!
Wow! We haven't heard from Noggin in forever. This guitar and violin duo have been kicking up a storm for years now. More than a decade! The last time we had a record from these guys it was before there was even an AQ list! But we loved 'em. They even played an instore at the old store on 24th Street. And they weren't your average free noise duo, even back in the day. Eric O. on guitar, scrabbling and scraping and creating some glorious chaos, and Michael G. who was probably already in his late fifties or early sixties when Noggin played at AQ on violin, so now... in 2006... WOW. The definitive elder statesman of North Western Noise for sure!! you might also remember Michael from his stint playing violin in the killer aggro-post-punk rock combo Behead The Prophet No Lord Shall Live.
So what's the modern day Noggin all about? Pretty much exactly what they were all about 10 years ago. An angular scrapescape, a tangled web of Derek Bailey, Hans Reichel, Lee Ranaldo and Keith Rowe, like a table full of household objects and broken steel strings and fried amps, but all stuffed into a single guitar. A throbbing, angular, rasping. clanging swirl of drone and clatter, with the processed violin, slithering and squealing, keening and braying, and sometimes even scraping right alongside the guitar. A glorious burst of unfettered instrumental deconstruction, playful and wild, dark and deliriously damaged. Cool stuff.
Packaged in a mini 3" jewel case and as with all Jyrk stuff super limited, in this case...
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!!
One of four new releases from Germany's Drone records. This one from the new to us group Noise Dreams Machina. And their name does not lie, especially the Noise part, as this is definitely some noisy business, especially for the more often droney and dreamy Drone records. Right out of the gate a growling super distorted wall of crumbling feedback and blown out electronics, churning and roiling and throbbing until it finally gives way to something slightly more subdued and muted, but still managing to be subtly noisy and intense. The track transforms into a constantly shifting swirl of sonic chaos, often so in the red it seems to seize up, clog the speaker, before lurching back into skipping stuttery noise. Right near the end of the A side it gets all rhythmic like a symphony of skipping digital clicks.
The flipside is much more serene, deep and shimmery, barring a brief squall of glitched out digital damage right up front. The track drifts abstractly from whispery hiss to muted thrum to washed out buzz and back again, never getting as fierce or as fucked up as the A side, but somehow managing to imbue its dark drone with plenty of noisy menace.
Packaged in a thick, black and white sleeve, pressed on clear vinyl, with a grey cardstock insert, and a first edition LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!
First we've heard from the appropriately named Noise Nomad, a mysterious horde who traffic in primitive electronics and avant noise rock. Like an even more Neanderthal Man Is The Bastard but without the basses, or like some�sort of damaged tribal Silver Apples, but way more lo-fi and fucked up.
Wild squalls of Lost In Space electronics and FX, stumbling pounding unhinged chaotic drumming, creating some sort of crumbling framework for the pulsing alien high end skree happening in the foreground. Within this stumbling static soundscape of caveman thud and abstract electronics, lurk lots of other little sonic mysteries, that flit and flutter just below the surface, but it's all about the dueling drums and FX that will either melt your brain or send you drifting off into some gloriously damaged trancelike state.�
Super limited of course, and packaged in cool two color silk screened covers.
The amazing Drone Records label, run by Stefan Knappe of Maeror Tri / Troum, has been quietly releasing super limited, hand made slabs of gorgeous drone music for years now. Mostly 7", always vinyl (although there will soon be a 2cd collection of early out of print singles on Andee's tUMULt label), each disc an ultra personal exploration of the drone, sometimes soft and dreamlike, sometimes harsh and noisy, but always beautiful. Recently, Drone has launched a new series, 10"s this time, with a very complicated premise: "A concept that embraces the prospect of infinite possibilities for artists to create music about the intangible such as: the unnameable, the unspeakable, the unthinkable, the unidentifiable, etc. Various aspects related to "The Unknown". Sound artists and artwork designers were invited to work on the theme of the "grey matter" / the "dark continent" surrounding us & within us. Transforming this paradoxical idea into acoustic and visual objectifications." Phew. Pretty heady stuff. But these first three installments are up to the task, creating dark and disturbing and truly though provoking dronemusic. We can hardly weight for the rest of the series.
Third in this first batch of releases (along with Asia Nova and Daniel Menche) is the mysterious Belgian troop Noise-Makers Fifes. using homebuilt instruments and utilizing choreographed performances, NMF unleash, soft billowing clouds of glistening high end, minimal percussion, bird songs and outdoor ambience. Incorporating live recordings, the first side sounds like some mad sonic alchemist, performing all manner of mysterious and minimal sound rituals at the heart of the dark forest. Like a slightly more industrial Jewelled Antler. The B side is based on a series of field recordings of insects in Kenya and the result is a wide swath of ultra ambience, the sort of quiet music that truly requires deep listening. Occasionally sounds collide, and some bizarre reaction takes place causing the tranquility to buckle, a jagged upheaval os stuttering lurching glitchery, before drifting off again into near nothingness.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Pressed on cloudy clear swirled vinyl.
It's a little difficult to consider Noisegate a metal band. Although their live persona, which features lots of slow motion headbanging while they hold down various keys on their samplers, clearly gives reason to peg them as metallers, a careful
After their caustic debut, "The Towers are Burning" (also on tUMULt), a record that explored an especially pummeling and punishing kind of ambience, Oakland based audio terrorists Noisegate abandoned the violent and corrosive clamor that peppered their first full length, and instead, created a dark and barren dronescape of ominous, slowly shifting deep resonance. Whirring and thunderous low end rumble underpins shimmering textures of glistening darkness and hazy tonal reverberations, grey and austere. "Suspended Animation" is a breathtaking arrangement of hum and buzz and chime. Stark and spatial, warm and mesmeric; feedback, voices, guitars, and bells are dismantled, reduced to tones and timbre, flowing like a murmering black river; bubbling up from a lost spring. A maudlin elegy, hypnotic and somber, funereal yet effulgent.
Reminiscient of the isolationist experiments and drone investigations of Lustmord, Organum, Zoviet France, Andrew Chalk, and Jonathan Coleclough.
Noisegate were a two man ambient wrecking crew, taking the crusty crush of Neurosis, and smearing it into desloate and apocalyptic stretches of pure droning malevolence. This, their first record, is easily one of the bleakest and harshest and gorgeously heavy records we have ever heard. Brutal and aggressive and furious, sometimes impossibly tranquil and serene, but even at it's most ambient, Noisegate still managed to imbue every minute of every track with some ineffable otherworldly forboding.
Four huge ominous dronescapes over the course of sixty minutes, interrupted by violent squalls of slow-motion pummel and 16 rpm grindcore. uneasy ambience and corrosive electronics nestled in a sea of suffocating drones and rib cage rattling hum. Sparse brooding nightmarish ambience punctuated by bursts of skull crushing walls of bass, guitars, tapes, samples and vocals. A monstrous and truly threatening din.
So here's the deal. Nothing is heavy enough for you. Nothing is fast or furious enough. Hardcore techno, drill and bass, none of those offer up the beats you need, none of that stuff kicks your ass. And grindcore, no matter how heavy or fucked up or insane, is just not brutal enough. Sound about right?
Have you been loving the Drumcorps shit, did you go nuts for that Drum:Machinegun comp? A damaged and delirious hybrid of metal and spastic blown out beats what you're craving? Well have we got the thing for you.
Japanese duo Noism. Two dudes, a guitar and a drum machine. And all hyperbole aside, this is probably the most fucked up, furious and frenzied grindmetaltechnowhatthefuck you will ever hear. Imagine Drumcorps remixing Orthrelm, but then the results tossed in a computer, chopped up and spit out double time. Or along those same lines, take your favorite grind records and spastic drill and bass 12"s, throw those in that same computer, smash them to bits (and bytes) and then compress them all into 21 minutes of face melting tech(no) metal fury. There are no songs really, well there are, but they, super convoluted fucked up alien 'songs', no 'arrangements' (see: songs). Just lighting speed riffing, squiggly guitars all over the place, blasting 300+ bpm beats that stutter and skip and skitter, all tangled up into a blurred grinding metallic beat heavy onslaught, it sort of sounds like free jazz played by a malfunctioning drummachine and a robot guitarist set on shred. Like if you had some computer that was meant to emulate the music of any performer, and you entered Masayuki, Takayanagi and Mick Barr and Venetian Snares, and it overloaded the program and cause the mainframe to fail, but somehow it still spit out a result, it might sound a little like this, Which Is, as far as our iron ears are concerned, a very very good thing. Recommended, if you think you can handle it...
The overt rebellion of industrial culture icon Boyd Rice (aka Non) against mainstream American culture through occultish symbolism and a rhetoric of hate parallels the punk movement's call for social upheaval. Yet, Rice has polarized himself between the extremes of American culture, espousing on one hand the Church of Satan, rightwing totalitarianist warmongering, and general amorality; and on the other, the sickly sweetness of Barbie, the Partridge Family, and '60s girl groups! Rice has never claimed to change the world, but instead revels in social detritus as the means to accumulate personal power and strengthen his own claim of self-determination against any authority structure.
To those familiar with the unholy noise, apocalyptic prophesies, and machine-gun spray misanthropy that have riddled Rice's recordings for the past quarter century, his "Children Of The Black Sun" album is a surprisingly calm composition, but one that doesn't detour from Rice's manifestations of free-will. For this album, Rice has drawn from the ancient apocryphal texts of the Greek Gnostics, who believed that the knowledge of God (and thus the ability to be God) was possible to attain through the rigorous study and existential self-discovery. Lucifer, Cain, the Nephilim, and the Archons have all been the central figures for Gnostic studies, as all have willfully separated themselves from the authority of God in favor of their own pursuits. Rice's "Children Of The Black Sun" traces some of the mythologies of Cain after he had been banished from God's Kingdom for murdering his brother. Yet, just as many of those myths are shrouded in a poetic mystery, Rice has constructed a mostly instrumental affair of blearily sustained drones: hunting trumpets, violins, harp, and dissonant guitar noise, not unlike the massive orchestrations of Hermann Nitsch. Like all manifestations of Gnosticism, Rice hides the true content (perhaps because it's a lie?) but creates a spellbinding atmosphere.
"Children Of The Black Sun" has been released as a double disc with one disc housing the audio in stereo, and the other disc being a DVD with audio only for the surroundsound, 5.1 platform. Nope, no visuals on the DVD.
Non Toxique Lost began in the early '80s as a German industrial band that had stuck true to the avant-garde / difficult listening propositions to also come through Throbbing Gristle and Dome. While plenty of other industrialists such as Psychic TV and Einsturzende Neubauten honed their craft for occluded electronics with sinister motives into downright catchy tunes, Non Toxique Lost chose a murky collage strategy for metal bashing, undulating electronic arppegiations, and megaphone vocal barking. Wanton was the first album for Non Toxique Lost, recorded between 1982 and 1984 and released a year later on vinyl. There's an aggressive deconstruction of sound within the primitive synth-punk arrangements which get splattered into amassed distortion from guitar freakouts blowing out of way too small amplifiers on top of lumbering electronic loops, all of which get cut up and mangled on tape. One of the early members of Non Toxique Lost was Achim Wollscheid, who had also begun his solo project of DIY musique concrete called S.B.O.T.H.I. before developing his highly conceptual sound art projects throughout the late '90s. It seems that Non Toxique Lost is still around, although Wollscheid left many years ago. Either way, Wanton is a fascinating document of art-damaged noise from this little known German industrial project.
Limited to 300 copies.
Nonhorse is the work of one Gabriel Lucas Crane who spends his day job rocking in the group Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice, but when he's on his own, it's a whole 'nother sonic ball of wax. Ot maybe ball of old busted cassettes would be more like it.
Each track, always clocking in at either 3:12, 3:13. or 3:14, is a dense assemblage of random sonic detritus, fuzzy indistinct song fragments, manipulated tape drop outs, ringing phones, sound effects, huge swaths of buzzing distortion, looped bits of detuned guitar, slabs of damaged percussion, the sounds of tapes rewinding and fast forwarding, abstract guitar shimmer looped and slowed down, snippets of classical music, crackle and static, everything murky and indistinct, blurry and smeared into strange cross-eyed soundscapes. It's a bit like John Oswald for the ADD set, but when the mania subsides just a little, and sounds are allowed to shimmer and fade, the sound becomes remarkably beautiful, like Dialing In, all blown out and gorgeously crumbling to bits before our ears, or like a more corrosive lo-fi version of our favorite soundscapers, Jasper TX, Tim Hecker, Machinefabriek, Philip Jeck, the same sort of milk eyed warble and disembodied drift, but assembled from a pile of junkyard tapes. A seriously drug addled mashup of light and dark, pretty and ugly, noisy and serene, and somehow it works. In a big way. Completely dizzying and confusional, warped and warbly, but in it's own ugly duckling manner quite pretty. If all that blissed out fuzzscape crap is a little too mellow for you, but you still want to be dragged off to some other world, Nonhorse might be the little red pill you've been waiting for.
Mastered by the Yellow Swans' Pete Swanson.
G. Lucas Crane is the man behind the dead-eyed tape excursions he broadcasts as Nonhorse; and he's the same G. Lucas Crane who can also be found in the equally as psychedelic, but far less grim projects Woods and Vanishing Voice. It's all about the cassette for Nonhorse, how the hiss accumulates over multiple dubbings, how crappy tape heads can fuck up the sound, how the machines start, stop, rewind, and fast-forward against the tape itself. The door creaking loop that begins Shadow World is a very low-tech translation of Philip Jeck's equally low-tech turntable rhythms; and the crawling synth rhythm takes this somewhere way more phantasmagoric than anything Jeck has produced. Floating monastic vocals spiral against the agitated delivery of shortwave radio transmissions from a Christian evangelist. These kaleidoscopic revolutions haphazardly tumble in and out of the simple overlapping structures, eventually mutating into a thumbing mess of pre-recorded tinklings from synthetic bells while clarinets tumble about some drill 'n' bass breaks appropriated from Hrvatski's missing-in-action Oiseaux 96-98 album, all of which is augmented through start-and-stop strategies on the tape decks, through a chain-linked fence of delay and reverb. As a willfully confused collage of warped hiss, toxic noise, and corroded found sound, Shadow World is a throw-back to the tape-trading heyday of cassette culture permeated by the likes of Solid Eye, Blackhumour, AMK, and Premature Ejaculation. You don't see this type of stuff kicking around much these days, that's for sure!
Released in several tiny editions through Upstairs, which has already sold out of all of their copies, meaning these few copies are all we will ever get!
Nord began in 1979 as a minimal electronics / drone-on industrial project for Hiroshi Oikawa and Katayama Satoshi. They only recorded one album together -- their eponymous 1981 release on the Pinakotheca imprint - before they parted ways, but each of them used the moniker Nord for their own projects. Satoshi's Nord involved a handful of Japanese noise musicians including Hiroshi Hasegawa from Astro and C.C.C.C., with a smattering of recordings being released over the decades; but it's Oikawa's Nord that has become a holy grail to those seeking one of the most obscure releases of the Japanese noise underground from the '80s. He released two LPs on his imprint L.S.D. Records, as well as a couple of cassette releases. NG Tapes was one of those cassette releases, only made available as a bonus tape with a select number of copies of Nord's LSD album, itself an edition of just 200 copies. For all of its mystery and mythology, LSD was a dodgy record, in part due to the Surrealistic Pillow citation at the beginning on one side of the record; but the follow-up Ego Trip with its mind-erasing irradiation of post-Schnitzler / post-Monoton / pre-Thought Broadcast minimalist arpeggiation and dour electronics is a watershed album no matter how you slice it. NG Tapes may in fact be even better than Ego Trip, making this reissue all the more necessary.
NG Tapes centers upon three long-form tracks of ominous, synth pulsations that capture radio-tunings, blankstare guitar drone/noise, and some disembodied vocal monotone within a psychic black-hole vortex of emotional emptiness. Oikawa girds these longer tracks with some short numbers of noise-junk tactility, scuzzed-out distortion, low impact power-electronics, and primitive rhythm-box programming. Presumably these shorter numbers reflect the aesthetic of the aforementioned Pinakotheca album though that one doesn't seem to be in the cards ever for a reissue. Hypnotic. Narcotic. Desolate. There's the sound of NG Tapes in a nutshell. A one-time only reissue, nicely repackaged in a tip-on sleeve and an obi to replicate the original tape's design.
- MPEG stream: A1
- MPEG stream: B1
- MPEG stream: B2
Originally released in 1974, these examples of Norwegian electroacoustic composer Nordheim's music are both beautiful and scary.
Whenever you may be reading this, it is inevitable that Merzbow will have released another recording of thoroughly destructive noise, being promoted with the claim that said recording is 'better' or 'more listenable' than the last three or four dozen records. It may be more lost analog recordings or another headcleaning splatter of digital noise; and I'm quite sure that Merzbow will be quite good at what he does on those records. At the same time, there are so many other noise artists in the world who may never get their fair shake because there's got to be over 200 Merzbow records by now, not including the ridiculous 50 CD Merzbox. That's a fucking shame, because when it comes to noise, The Nordic Miracle deliver when they say "We Shall Provide." Refering to themselves as a "crooner noise duo - not at all inventive or groundbreaking," The Nordic Miracle are the quintessence of what a great noise act is all about: hellish, incendiary, destructive, fucked, nihilistic, cantankerous, aggressive, torturous noise. This duo comprises of Tore Honore Boe and Lasse Marhaug, both of whom had been in Origami Republica and also the latter hails from Jazzkammer. Unlike Merzbow's very public transition to digital, the Nordic Miracle revels in the old school methods of noise making with overloaded effect boxes, amplifier damage, turntables, and a neverending cascade of shattered glass which really makes for an amazingly unsetting addition to the hornet's nest of raw noise. There were rumors that the Nordic Miracle employed samples of Francisco Lopez' Untitled 92 (the blustery collage of record surface noise which came out several years ago). It's impossible to be sure, but let's throw caution to the wind and propagate that rumor about this crushingly good noise record.
Finally, after several releases of noise drenched metallic blackness, the Lord Nordvargr returns to the foul black sonic pit from which he was born. Evolution in some ways could be read devolution, as Nordvargr seems to have shed the buzz and the riff and the noize, and indeed returned to a sound much more minimal and abstract, the master of the black drone thus easily reclaims the throne that had sat empty during his grim blacknoize crusades.
The sound here is so sweet, if something this noxious and abject and menacing could be considered sweet, but it is most definitely a return to his Swedish industrial ambient roots, with long stretches of whirring low end rumbles, haunting cinematic ambience, disembodied voices drift like spirits lost in the abyss, the sound is cavernous, the mood is mournful, a few tracks feature the clang and crunch of some beastly industrial machinery, pounding out an infernal rhythm, behind it a demonic voice intones some blasphemous vitriolic filth, but just as quickly, the tone shifts to something dark and whispered, harrowing and hushed. The tones deep and dense and thick, the sound of black holes, of bottomless pits, of empty space, of the unholy nether regions, rendered in bleak blackened sound.
The second disc is mostly made up of a 9 part song suite, similar in tone and timbre to the first disc, but even more minimal and mysterious, more organic sounds interspersed with the darker sonic emanations. The last segment is even stranger, with some skittery electronic elements infused into the buzz and glitch, some Ryoji Ikeda style clinical clikery, and a final track that's like some weird sort of sinister minimal housemusick.
Recommended of course, as are all of Lord Nordvargr's unholy sonic gospels. Packaged in a super striking 8 panel double digipak.
Not one, but TWO new Nordvargr discs this time around, the other being the latest from Nordvargr and his former partner in black metal ambient alchemists MZ412, Drakh, the crushing and beautiful disc, The Betrayal Of Light on Andee's tUMULt label, and this, being his latest solo effort, released� on Brazilian label Essence, who in the past has brought us discs from Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, Merzbow, Rapoon and Wolfskin as well as Nordvargr's earlier Vitagen record.�
It seems that lately, Nordvargr has a renewed interest in the guitar, as well as a blossoming love of black metal (he has a BM disc coming out in the near future), and this is definitely reflected �in both of his new releases. Where as past efforts have tended to lurk and creep, hovering in a much more distinctly dark ambient realm, both of these new releases embrace the guitar, the riff, distortion and buzz. On The Betrayal Of Light, the riffing is merely a part� of that records larger sonic picture, but here, the guitar is everything. A sprawling black behemoth, a crushing black hole of sound, oozing out in all directions, subsuming everything in its path. This is the sound of massive, heavily distorted, downtuned riffage, crumbled into pieces, and melted down into some viscous black fluid, that pours from your speakers like tar, dripping onto the floor, filling up every available space until the listener is sucked under and buried alive. Slow motion grinding guitar grrrrowl that would give SUNNO))) a run for their money, but here, those roiling virulent riffs are dropped into a sea of swirling ambience, a chaotic whorl of low end shimmer and mysterious drones.
This glacial riffing is peppered with brief stretches of soft focus flutter, moments of shimmering tranquility, brief bursts of distorted hiss and jagged shards of buzzing whir, but these are just momentary respites, from In Oceans' relentless doom drone trudge, a pulverizing monstrous lurch, through a field of black sonic sludge and blown out low end grind.
We had complained a while back about how hard it had been for us to get records by the mysterious Nordvargr (aka Toroidh, Folkstorm, Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, half of black noise outfit MZ412) which was a shame as some of us were downright OBSESSED with everything he had done musically. It seems like now, for whatever reason, we've finally been able to locate some of our favorites, for example, 2001's Cold Void Of Nothing, the first collaboration between Nordvargr and Drakh after the dissolution of their legendary black ambient group MZ412. While MZ412 were steeped in the imagery and mythology of Nordic black metal, later sonic explorations found more in common with the industrial subculture and the world of dark ambient music. The sound itself had not changed dramatically, on Cold Void, theirs was still a world of bleak abstract ambience, slowly shifting sound fields, haunting glimpses into a dark and dreary otherworld, shortwave radio interference, mysterious broadcasts from the other side, ghosts and chants and the sound of time and space. Drone music perhaps, but not static or still, instead rich and multi layered, minimal but still active, a huge sonic world broken down into tiny subtle movements, a musical universe of lost spirits and disembodied souls, haunting and harrrowing and so good!
For now, the AQ list / site may not reflect it, but we have been MASSIVE, almost obsessive fans of the work of one Nordvargr, who we first discovered as the driving force behind the mysterious black metal dark ambient outift MZ412. He would later go on to record some of the most gorgeously bleak, martial ambient / drone musick as Folkstorm, Toroidh, and under his given name Henrik N Bjorkk. He is a modern master of dark ambient death drone. Most of his records have been really tough to track down, so we were super excited to be able to get enough of these to list. The name Drakh may be even less familiar to you than Nordvargr, but some of you may immediately recognize him as Nordvargr's partner in MZ412! So the hopes were quite high for what basically amounts to a new MZ412 record. And thankfully, you dark ambient death drone doom fanatics will not be disappointed. This is a crushing black souled threnody. Massive sheets of dark sound, shift and shimmer, disembodied voices crumble into sonic shards, oppressive walls of suffocating rumble, roll endlessly into the dark oblivion. But what sets this apart from other dark ambient / drone records is the guitars. Yep, guitars. About halfway in, bookended on either side by bleak shimmering lowend ambience, sirens wail, and drones creep slowly onward, as huge downtuned guitars unfurl slow motion riffs, lugubrious and lumbering, so distorted, and tuned so low you can hear the chords crumbling into pieces, while the whole thing lurches forward, through a cloud of black tar mist. It's like a Sunn 0))) track stuck in the middle of a Lustmord record. Like endless blackness being painted even more black. Like dropping a black hole into another even blacker hole...
By now we shouldn't have to go into too much detail regarding or massive love of all things Nordvargr, from the militaristic folk of Folkstorm, the martial industrial sounds of Toroidh, the bleak black ambience of BM legends MZ412, to the various recordings and sounds perpetrated under his own name, pretty much everything he's touched as turned to black gold.�
But no matter how much we love everything Nordvargr, our hearts will always belong to MZ412. When we first discovered that band we were totally thrown for a loop, we were loving the sounds of black metal by then, and here was a band with a cryptic monicker, amazing album design, burning churches on their record covers and the band members in full corpse paint. We were ready to be totally blown away, and we were, just not in the way we expected. Their sound was not metal, no buzzing guitars, no shrieking vocals, no blast beats, instead, theirs was a dark world of mysterious blackness, bleak and barren, frosty and and grim, and impossible JUST AS HEAVY as any of the other black metal we had been listening to. This was ambient music, but it was intense, and brutal, and scary.
The band ceased to exist and Nordvargr moved on to the above mentioned projects as well as numerous collaborations and projects under his own name. Then a few years back, a strange thing happened, a record surfaced credited to Nordvargr and Drakh, who just so happened to be Nordvargr's partner in MZ412, and as far as we were concerned, it was the rebirth of MZ412 in everything but name. Several more releases followed, all delicately balanced between dark ambience and buzzing blackness, culminating in this, the brand new record from the duo that once was MZ412.�
The two have some dark chemistry together, weaving elaborate worlds of black sound, not just ambience, not just drone music, but songs, with parts, and riffs and melodies, lots of guitars, occasionally trudging glacially like some slow motion doom behemoth, other times buzzing like some disembodied ghost� of black metal, and at others, glistening and drifting in vast expanses of shimmer and whir.�
The Betrayal Of Light was originally meant to be releases on several well known dark ambient labels, who all rejected the record for being too heavy, and that's all we needed to hear. Nordvargr, Drakh, too heavy, too much guitar....
Thus it ended up on tUMULt (run by our very own Andee), quite possibly where it belonged all along, fitting quite comfortably amidst a roster of black metal and drone music, embodying at least a handful of descriptors that seem to apply to most tUMULt releases, dark, droney, and fucked...
The Betrayal Of Light is one massive sonic event, a black cloud of sound, separated into movements, the first, begins as a slow beautiful crawl, a murky soundfield supporting a delicate web of softly plucked guitar strings, until a wall of downtuned buzz swallows it whole, a massive mournful dirge,�stately and majestic, classic old school funereal doom, but�super dramatic, and strangely melodic, sounding a bit like Earth or SUNNO))) playing the procession at a funeral or the royal march for some ancient court. Minor key and so gorgeous, a lonely lament rendered in amp buzz and smeared riffage, but completely nestled amidst a sea of churning low end, and that ever present minor key guitar line...
Not long after, the duo explode in a frenzy of buzzguitar, moving�as close to black metal as they've ever gotten, after a slow building� shimmer, the track coalesces into a furious buzzing riff, with what sounds like some buried demonic vocals,�no drums, so it's a sort of unmoored black metal drift, the riff cycling hypnotically while all around low end roils and whirls and in the distance the landscape is peppered with�reverberant subsonic booms, and low level rumbles...
The album's centerpiece is the nearly eleven minute long "Vessel", a lengthy, meditative guitarscape, delicate minor key melodies unfurled over a web of strange whirs and buzzes, the melodies occasionally being overwhelmed by waves of oscillating industrial detritus, before drifting back to the surface where they are joined by rumbling guttural throat singing, or heavily reverbed monklike chants, all the while, a constant ominous drone, grinds and crumbles just below the surface, culminating in a bizarre symphony of processed guitars and grinding insectoid vocals, simultaneously epic and intense, and weird and disturbing.
The rest of the record is a harrowing journey through the dark woods, through a warren of underground passages, through a vast wasteland of barren frost and black sun, thick coruscating guitars buzz and howl, sheets of thick riffs one after another, create an ever shifting wall of crumbling distorted sound, voices drift ghostlike beneath a murky swirl of distant feedback and warbling whir, tones and notes and bits of muted melody are stretched out and blurred into gorgeous hazy smears, pulses and barely audible throbs shift and shimmer just below the surface... everything creeping and slithering through a constant cloud of drifting damaged drones.�
Finally, the journey comes to an end, a gorgeous low end lurch, a thick serpentine shamble with gorgeous bits of backwards guitar, and shards of minor key melody. The low end is lopped and pulses like some mysterious machine, the low end growing in intensity, like some black star about to implode, dreamy backwards vocals drift in, like some reverse angelic chorus, until a deep voice, drenched in reverb and distortion, intones a mysterious apocalyptic warning, and then suddenly... it's done.�
An intense and overwhelming sonic journey, as heavy and brutal as it is delicate and beautiful. Doomy and blackened, drifty and drone-y, soft focus and hazy, dense and devastating... and of course, so so recommended.�
It's hard to believe that at one time The North Sea, the solo guitar project of Digitalis head honcho Brad Rose, was more of a shimmery minimal folk thing, cuz at some point, the sound changed, and the North Sea became more about blackened heaviness, dense drones, thick layered wall of sound, still evocative and atmospheric, but way darker, and way more intense.
Based on the opening track of Bloodlines, things seem to have remained dark, and we're digging it, this time around especially as there seems to be more of a focus on electronics and synths, the opening track features a motorik pulse, a tolling bell, all beneath a squelchy synth drone, and little streaks of spaced out effects, ominous and creepy and a little bit alien, eventually exploding into a gristly crush of crumbling buzz and processed synth. Which leads directly into a sprawling dronescape, that begins where the first track left off, a cloud of synthdrone psychedelia, only to unwind into something much more minimal and dark, a creeping sort of bassline drifting along beneath a cloud of hiss and static, which smoothes out into a grinding stretch of muted heaviness, a bit like SUNNO))) but not distorted and downtuned as much as thick and dense and dark. It's not until a few more tracks in, that the clouds finally part, and let a little melody shine through, and even then, those melodies are still being pelted with synth buzz, and wreathed in blackened whirrs.
"Save Yourselves" might be our favorite track here, with its deep sinewy swells, that blossom into lush chordal drifts, the vibe growing ever more menacing, the soft sounds soon surrounded on all sides by intense, not-so-soft sounds, a swirling soft cacophony, the whole track seems to moan and groan, exploding into a frenzied climax, a soaring sonic ritual, where drums come in for the first time, abstract and spaced out, but it gives the track a really intense, propulsive feel.
The final two tracks continue on, the whirling roiling buzz, the sporadic drumming, the wild squalls of psychedelic noise, it's like a sort of free jazz / free noise / free drone hybrid, finally collapsing into the final track, a sea of soft tones, ominous synth pulses, distorted bass buzz, and clouds of cymbal shimmer, what began as tranquil and dreamlike becomes a sort of Carpenter style synth dirge, before transforming into a psych drone blowout and finally grinding to a halt. Epic. And awesome.
An archival slab of blackened buzzing textural dronemusic from Digitalis main man Brad Rose, his incarnation as The North Sea definitely in transition from dark shimmery folk, to intense crumbling glacial heaviness. Maybe this darkness was always lurking just below the surface, but we never saw it coming. the 'new' North Sea is all about sprawling dirgescapes, more dronedirgedrone than freakfolk, it might be guitars, synths, oscillators, who knows for sure, all we know is it's a glorious din, long tones held forever, wreathed in caustic buzz, and machinelike whir, blurred and buzzy and thick, a sort of lo-fi noise drenched Niblock to a certain degree, slathered with fractured effects, swirls of glimmering metallic shimmer. The B-side is a little bit more sedate, but only a little. The crunch is dialed back a bit, but there's still some seriously roiling low end going on, tones tangling and overlapping, overtones, beating the throbbing, a glorious stretch of mesmerizing minimal buzz. Needless to say, more essential listening for the drone-doom-dirge set, but equally appealing wethinks to folks into the latest wave of kraut-drone, Expo '70, Rahdunes, etc.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. We have 20. That's it. Gorgeous packaging too, red ink on silver paper, simple bold design, super thick multi panel fold out sleeve...
Latest chunk of crunch from The North Sea, one of many musical projects perpetrated by Brad Rose, the man behind the mighty Digitalis label. Longtime readers of the list probably remember when The North Sea was more of a folk thing, Rose then a sort of modern day folk drone troubadour, creating lush twang flecked soundscapes, but somewhere in the recent past, The North Sea encountered a bit of a... well, sea change, and shifted direction dramatically, drifting toward a sound much more in keeping with the drone-doom-dirge tradition, where once was shimmer, now was rumble, where once was delicate, now was crushing, but, the cool thing about the new North Sea, is that the folky past has not been discarded, merely absorbed.
This latest jam is the perfect example, a massive corrosive sprawl of post industrial buzz and throb, layers of crumbling distortion and keening feedback, howling heaviness, blurred and smeared into thick tarpit swells, layered and shaded and lush, but for the most part intense and HEAVY. But throughout, Rose has laced his buzz with delicate steel string melodies, what sounds like a bouzouki, or even a sitar, is plucked gently, its notes reverbed and delayed, but left clean and clear and simple, the perfect counterpoint to the blackened squall that is constantly threatening to swallow it whole.
Probably too much for the New Weird America types, and the free folkies, but for the rest of you, into heavy guitar drone, and post industrial black ambience, this folk flecked beast will be much to your liking.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Each in deluxe printed metallic vellum sleeves, with a single panel hand marbled piece of art, and every one with a printed marbled metallic obi INSIDE the case held together with rivets!
