We only got three or four of these so tape nerds and noise rock nerds will want to jump on this fast. Limited to 100 copies and packaged in a cool oversized full color two sided old school plastic tape case, like the kind that might have house some language tape or something. It's pretty bad ass looking.
Inside, it's two Michigan noisemakers, Odd Clouds and Wigwam. Odd Clouds offer up a dense cloud of tribal electronic psychnoise, thick and drifting, like some damaged collision between the Skaters and the Yellow Swans, while Wigwam present us with their own brand of noisiness, a murky Wolf Eyes-ian expanse of grinding muddy rumble and slithery black ambience, with bits of industrial clatter and electronic fuckery here and there.
Also includes a bonus 3" cd-r with a 15 minute jam from Odd Clouds, more of the same, massive roiling dreamy expanses of blown out sound and electronic weirdness. packaged in a hand painted mini sleeve, and stuck inside the plastic tape case with the cassette.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have 4 or 5 and there will be no more once these are gone...
More of an installation artist, who delights in the play between the psychedelic and the clinical, Christine Odlund proves to be quite talented when it comes to her own darkened electro-acoustic composition, holding her own next to the likes of Thomas Koner, Matt Shoemaker, and BJ Nilsen. Throughout her catalogue of installations, video, and sound, Odlund has been interested in simulating synaesthesia, the neurological phenomena of the transposition of one sensorial experience with another - in other words, the ability to 'see' sound or 'hear' touch. Odlund's installations feature overblown projections of microscopic organisms displayed in dazzling hyperdelic colors and hung against jet black environments; and her sound work is a like-minded chimera, although it's much heavier, darker, and blacker. Low-end modulating tones pool around a flattened hiss to start the record, setting a suitably grim, dark-ambient vibe. Squeaking metals echo in the distance, as the morass of blackened sound builds to a shadowy crescendo of dark noise. Slow loops and theremin-like swells of tone offer an oceanic interlude that leads into a crackling collage of VLF recordings, electro-static bristlings, insect choruses, and various crunchings that sound like a massive amplification of an army of beetles. Two shortened tracks of percolating computer music sequences and electronic algorithms break up Odlund's abstracted drone, crunch, and hiss which return in fine effect by the end of the album. Very nicely done.
The last we heard from Loren Chasse's Of project (not to be confused with the similarly monickered duo Ov, featuring Chasse and his wife, our very own Christine) was on a cd and a cd-r released about the same time way back in the beginning of 2005. This latest disc is sort of similar to those two Of releases, in that they are a bit noisier, a bit more aggressive than Chasse's usual nature based ethereality. But on The Awful Cloud, Chasse has mixed up his darkest and heaviest and most active material to date, pushing even the boundaries of the already more belligerent Of. The opening track is like some sort of abstract free jazz being performed by black eyed demons in some fiery pit, filled with broken old drum kits and random bits of metal, a clanging, clattering, shuffling primitive percussive ritual, while all around these rhythmic freakouts hover Awful Clouds of corrosive feedback, warm whirls of fuzzy organ, a thick miasma of drones and whirs, incredibly dark and ominous and fierce. Who knew Mr. Chasse had it in him! The rest of the record is not nearly so prickly and abrasive, but the darkness and dread is equally as pervasive, just more subtly so. A dense roiling mix of organs and bells and vibrating strings and collaged found sounds, from shimmery soundscapes of keening hiss, simple melodies buzzing into reedy drones, to the cavernous dark ambience of the near 20 minute third track, some sort of slowed down guitar crumble, trudging glacially forward like some slithery black beast, surrounded by wreaths of warm pulsing chords and disembodied musicbox melodies, to the dreamlike expanse of the final track, gently picked guitar suspended in a thick gauzy lattice of muted organ and distant subterranean rumble. So lovely, but so so dark. Highly recommended!!
Packaged in a handscreened sleeve with a photocopied insert.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES. WE GOT ABOUT 30 (we ordered 50!)!!
Nowadays the words Jewelled Antler are so widely known in underground outrock circles, that all we have to do really is just mention the name and y'all know we're talking about some seriously awesome sprawling nature-y goodness. It's true, the Jewelled Antler crew have been high on the sound worship, rural psychedelic trip for over a decade, with no signs of coming down. Between the recent Porter box set and several other discs released earlier this year on Nature Strip and the Helen Scarsdale Agency, Loren Chasse has established himself as a sort of mystical elder in the Jeweled Antler community. Recording/performing with Thuja, Kyrgyz, and The Blithe Sons (to name a few) and working as a SF public school teacher, its amazing Chasse ever has time to sleep, let alone record all of these effing remarkable collections of minimal innerspatial sound!
Recorded between 2005 and 2007, Rocks Will Open is a sonic escape across coastal worlds, through secret doorways beneath tree stumps and into iridescent waves of shimmering prismatic dust. And not your average list of instruments in the liner notes either: dulcimer, gravel, sand, stones, and khaen (a Southeast Asian mouth harp!) to name a few! The opening / title track starts things off with creeping dulcimer melodies, methodical plucks and strums over earthen textures, sonic topsoil moving and shifting on its own. "Trail of Hornfel", track two, is a dark drift, a choir of possessed singing bowls howling from the bowels of a partially submerged seaside cavern. Chasse has has perfected an organically rich sound all his own, recordings that sound more like he has somehow cast spells on each instrument, conjuring sounds and textures through divination and sorcery, channeling the pulse of the natural world. "The Paper Raft" is deep and somber, the earth splits open and melancholic passages of deep bowed tones swell dramatically and narrate the fall of Western civilization, a rarely visited shadowy realm for Chasse. But actually, all of Rocks Will Open has a mysterious haunting unsettling beauty sewn into its fabric, illiciting the kinds of feeling evoked by leafless trees in snow, or a blazing campfire flickering in a suffocatingly black nightscape, or like being quietly captivated by a towering tsunami seconds before it swallows you whole. A contemplative experience that unfolds and blooms with every listen as sounds hidden in the woodwork reveal themselves, this could easily be our favorite solo record from Chasse. Rocks Will Open is totally necessary for fans of Peter Wright, Tim Hecker, Gregg Kowolsky and anything Jewelled Antler (obviously). So if you know what's good for you, do not miss out on this super incredible release.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Nowadays the words Jewelled Antler are so widely known in underground outrock circles, that all we have to do really is just mention the name and y'all know we're talking about some seriously awesome sprawling nature-y goodness. It's true, the Jewelled Antler crew have been high on the sound worship, rural psychedelic trip for over a decade, with no signs of coming down. Between the recent Porter box set and several other discs released earlier this year on Nature Strip and the Helen Scarsdale Agency, Loren Chasse has established himself as a sort of mystical elder in the Jeweled Antler community. Recording/performing with Thuja, Kyrgyz, and The Blithe Sons (to name a few) and working as a SF public school teacher, its amazing Chasse ever has time to sleep, let alone record all of these effing remarkable collections of minimal innerspatial sound!
Rocks Will Open is Chasse's latest, brought to us by Digitalis in an ultra limited arts and crafts edition of 100!! Yes we said limited! While the disc is being released in a larger pressing of 500, the first 100 copies (which we got 30 of!) come with a mind blowing exclusive tape called Morphological Echo! Yes! Basically a whole extra record!!
Recorded between 2005 and 2007, Rocks Will Open is a sonic escape across coastal worlds, through secret doorways beneath tree stumps and into iridescent waves of shimmering prismatic dust. And not your average list of instruments in the liner notes either: dulcimer, gravel, sand, stones, and khaen (a Southeast Asian mouth harp!) to name a few! The opening / title track starts things off with creeping dulcimer melodies, methodical plucks and strums over earthen textures, sonic topsoil moving and shifting on its own. "Trail of Hornfel", track two, is a dark drift, a choir of possessed singing bowls howling from the bowels of a partially submerged seaside cavern. Chasse has has perfected an organically rich sound all his own, recordings that sound more like he has somehow cast spells on each instrument, conjuring sounds and textures through divination and sorcery, channeling the pulse of the natural world. "The Paper Raft" is deep and somber, the earth splits open and melancholic passages of deep bowed tones swell dramatically and narrate the fall of Western civilization, a rarely visited shadowy realm for Chasse. But actually, all of Rocks Will Open has a mysterious haunting unsettling beauty sewn into its fabric, illiciting the kinds of feeling evoked by leafless trees in snow, or a blazing campfire flickering in a suffocatingly black nightscape, or like being quietly captivated by a towering tsunami seconds before it swallows you whole. A contemplative experience that unfolds and blooms with every listen as sounds hidden in the woodwork reveal themselves, this could easily be our favorite solo record from Chasse. Rocks Will Open is totally necessary for fans of Peter Wright, Tim Hecker, Gregg Kowolsky and anything Jewelled Antler (obviously). So if you know what's good for you, do not miss out on this super incredible release AND the special limited edition cassette that comes along with it!! Once we run out of the limited version with the tape, which will most likely be sooner rather than later, folks who order Rocks Will Open will then get the cheaper tape-less cd version.
Yeah we know, here at Aquarius Records it's always Jewelled Antler this, Jewelled Antler that. They're our friends, we're big fans, and we wax enthusastic about all the great music they make all the time (heck there's at least one other Jewelled Antler item on this very list). And we know a lot of you out there are equally enamoured of the Jewelled Antler thing. If that's you -- and like us, make sure to get EVERY Jewelled Antler related release that comes out -- then you can pretty much stop reading this right now and just buy this darn disc, you need it / want it / must buy it. But if you're more of the casual Jewelled Antler fan, or not yet familiar with their stuff but curious, then, well, we'll say pretty much the same thing, just buy it! Yep, that's because this new Of opus is one that we'll be pointing Jewelled Antler novices to as a true JA essential (and not just 'cause its in print and on cd, as opposed to being one of their many out of print cd-rs, although that helps). Of is the "instrumental" solo project of JA linchpin Loren Chasse, whom you may also know from such sonic congregates as Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelecanth, and Id Battery among others. He's done other solo recordings under the L.Chasse name but as Of he takes his textural, field recording approach and makes it into something more overtly, hauntingly musical, something like a one-man Thuja, his ear exploring both the wilds of the woods and the sounds he could conjure on his own with an array of instruments and objects. Allan immediately recognized (with nostalgia) the field recordings of Pennsylvanian night-time buzzings incorporated in the track "Glowing Prints". Such sounds of nature merge perfectly with Chasse's own darkened drones, percussive textures, distorted strum, shimmering tones from bells and bowls, wheezing harmonium, etc. It's music to drift off to sleep to, to dream strange dreams and then awake immersed in sound, wondering where and what you are. Utterly utterly beautiful. What a darn great second Of album! (fyi: the first, The Infant Paths, originally a cd-r, is to be reissued soon on cd as well!)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oooh this is good. Haunting, gentle, abstract-seeming but musically very pretty stuff, in the vein of the best folk/drone from Tower Recordings and Kemialliset Ystavat, Popul Vuh and Brian Eno. Perhaps you've heard the Atrium Musicae "Musique de la Grece Antique" disc? This too sounds like imaginary ancient music, maybe made by wood-spirits before the dawn of man. An elemental, atmospheric sonic ritual. Of is the new solo project of AQ-pal Loren Chasse. You might know him from Thuja, Id Battery, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelacanth, numerous other "Jewelled Antler" projects... There was an Of track on Jewelled Antler's Heat & Birds compilation, and this cd-r is the debut full-length release from Of, dedicated to Loren's grandmother who passed away recently. Now maybe you're wondering, doesn't Loren already record solo as under his own name, putting out stuff like that great Hedge of Nerves cd on Anomalous, so what's with this Of moniker? Well, with Of, Loren takes the field recording / experimental sound collage ideas that he brought to Id Battery and his previous solo projects and brings it into a live-recorded, improvised *musical* context, where --this is important-- in addition to minidisc and contact mic, he's also playing more traditional sorts of musical instruments. Kinda like a one-man Thuja, or Blithe Sons or Child Readers. There's guitar, oud, bells, harp, pipes, whistles, bowed wires, harmonium, drumkit, and a 150 year old mellodion (pump organ) employed here, plus the usual assortment of rocks, sticks, and other natural debris that Loren "plays". Also to be heard is record crackle from an old Victrola, and recordings of wind and water made by his mother on her sailboat. All lovingly lo-fi home (and outdoors -- in California, Maryland, and Pennsylvania) recorded and mixed with handheld tape recorder, mindisc, and computer. Sleepy, dark, and meditative, "The Infant Paths" is a perfect example of the Jewelled Antler aesthetic, a musical methodology where lapping water sounds complement harmonium drones and carefully plucked guitar strings; tinkling bells and crackling branches accompany simple, fragile melodies found on broken organ keyboards; where nature and the environment are musical collaborators with poetic souls like Mr. Chasse.
Unlike Blithe Sons or Child Readers, this is all instrumental -- nope, you won't hear any vocals from Loren here, the only singing is done by birds. Someone else (Richard Youngs, Greg Weeks, the Blithe Sons themselves) might have been tempted to sing over these tracks, but they're plenty magical without any wispy vocals or lyrical content. Dense and detailed, suitable for your own dreams and reveries. Wow. We knew he had it in him, but still we're impressed. One of our favorite releases by Mr. Chasse yet!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not only did Thuja's Loren Chasse so very recently grace us with a phenomenal full-length cd from his solo project Of (reviewed last list), he has also now just brought in a handful of these Of cd-rs he originally produced to sell on Thuja's December jaunt to a festival in Scotland. Maybe 12 bucks might seem just a little pricey for a 25 minute cd-r, but Loren's made 'em look really nice (each one with an individual leaf-rubbing and handwritten credits) and more importantly, the music makes it well worth it. The first, five minute track begins with some pleasantly harsh distortion before settling into a soothing drone, Chasse weaving together both field recordings and his own instrumental improvisations into one seamless, organic whole. This is but the warm-up for the other, twenty-minute track on here that's an exquisite late-night humid dreamscape that you won't want to wake up from, which makes hypnotic use of what I think could be frog croakings but also sound a lot like a ticking clock... Needless to say, any and all Of fans need this, and as well it's recommended to all of you into nocturnal, eternal nature-boy drone!
Loren Chasse, one of the chief swamis of the collective Jewelled Antler sound through such projects as Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Franciscan Hobbies, Ov, and too many more to list (boy, they used to crank out those cd-rs!), records solo under the moniker Of (the similarly named Ov being the duo of Chasse with his wife and AQ-employee Christine, full disclosure). Simply put, we love Of (and Ov), of course... and are always happy when Chasse takes some time away from his other activities (the somewhat less musical of which being his day job as a public school teacher) to craft a new Of album, a phantom tendril from his own personal dreamworld reaching through our shared reality to caress our ears and cause imaginary crystals to glow softly somewhere within that part of our minds attuned to such blissful vibrations. Not to make this sound like any sort of New Age fluff though, as while as ethereal and meditative as this is, Chasse always incorporates some primitive grit into his work, his music full of feedback hiss, quiet distortion, ambient elemental field recordings of nature, the magnified rubbings of rocks and plants, objects close to the ground, part of the earth, illuminated (and given shadow too) by the radiation of a far-off, flaming star.
The music of The Sun and Earth Together is akin to a slowly turning mobile, as if it were giving off drones and tones as well as glinting with color and the reflections of light. As light shimmers, so does this music. As light dims, it dims too. The abstract sculptural shapes of this imagined mobile move in beautiful indeterminate patterns, much as the sounds Chasse conjures from disparate sources* as cymbalom and stones, autoharp and voice, bells and bowls, guitar and zither all drift delicately, and droningly, in phosphorescent clouds and constellations. This disc clocks in at 51 minutes, consisting of four tracks, each one longer than the last, from the three minute opener "Ignimbrites" to the 26 minute closing title track. All composed of tingling, whispered layers of lo-fi loveliness, gentle and graceful and ultimately glorious.
*we're guessing on some of these...
Two sides of home brewed minimalism. Of, aka Loren Chasse (Thuja, Coelacanth, etc) takes a slight detour into a dark mysterious world of disembodied free folk. Some sort of country music, deconstructed, just whisps and afterimages left to drift wraithlike. It's like the skeleton of a banjo, was left to wander aimlessly along some lonely seashore, the sound of the surf a shimmery hiss, the banjo's footsteps a spacious barely there twang. All under a murky grey sky, soft melodies like warm breezes.
Greg Davis counters with a swirl of zinging strings, a complex web melodies, the harps' shimmering strings intertwined and overlapping, all over the distant soft splashing of water. Almost like an orchestra made up entirely of harps, performing playfully in a giant bathtub. With the harps tangled sonics being subtly glitched up and processed, making the end result all the more dense and dreamy.
Got one final batch of these direct from the label, last copies we'll ever see, so one final chance to grab one of these, featuring some early recorded weirdness from Mr. John Dwyer, aka OCS, aka Thee Oh Sees, long before Thee Oh Sees became a proper band, when it was just Dwyer and his four track. Originally released as a super limited 6" vinyl / 3" cd set, first in a run of 51 copies, then a couple years later in a run of 52 copies, and now finally, this is available again in a slightly more copious pressing, now a double 7", one black vinyl, one a sort of watery cola colored vinyl, housed in a screen printed cardboard box with some really sweet original Dwyer artwork, and including a printed insert, each one hand numbered (420 copies total!).
And for those familiar with the Oh Sees, and more specifically, the older stuff (specifically, the rad double cd on tUMULt), the stuff here hews way closer to that all over the map, ramshackle, home recorded sound, this isn't sweaty sixties style garage pop, nope this is a dizzying collection of eclectic home brewed sounds, from soft abstract folk, to dreamy drones, to squalls of noisy weirdness, to twisted deconstructed pop, to drugged out experimental freakouts, all fractured damaged and wonderful and so so so good.
More spaced out free noise racket from the amazing Last Visible Dog. OHM are a New Zealand free rock outfit treading similar territory as the Dead C, but the sound is more sparse and spread out. Sputtering drums and droning guitars, warm feedback and dreamy peals of high end squeal. Warble guitars and shuffly jazzy drums, played in the middle of a huge empty hall while sharp bolts of guitar hum and amp buzz are deflected by gentle strumming and whispery melodies and multiplied into occasional walls of bzzzzzbrrrrrghhhhh. This single 40 minute track basically documents the entire existence of the band OHM. Gorgeous and spare. Campbell Kneale (Mr. Birchville Cat Motel) guests. Features a hilarious cover spoof of the Who's maximum R+B logo!
Full on noise attack from this international "supergroup" of sorts. Featuring ex-members of To Live And Shave In LA, Fear Of God, Sudden Infant and Schimpfluch-Gruppe (who, along with Runzlestirn & Gurgelstock, collaborated with noise giant Masonna a while back on the "Arschloch-onna" disc on Japan Overseas), the group utilizes the human voice as the main source of sound, employing a multitude of electronic manipulations guaranteed to destroy eardrums as well as irritate the fuck out of your neighbors. Totally retarded and highly recommended to fans of the above or those needing a fix for what was once the consistent output of the dearly missed RRRecords of Massachussets. On the newly established Ohne label, a subsidiary of the acclaimed Viennese power electronics tastemakers Mego.
Another amazing cosmic sonic artifact from Japanese reissue label EM, this one a legendary album of galactic analog synth wizardry, originally released in 1978, created by composer / sound designer Matsuo Ohno. He's most famous for his sound design on the animated television show Astro Boy, on which he was assisted by none other than Takehisa Kosugi from seventies fluxus dronelords Taj Mahal Travellers. With the help of Kosugi, Ohno recorded this his first non soundtrack release, a sprawling collection of super abstract cosmic drift, often classified as new age, but really so much darker and mysterious. Separated into 8 parts, beginning with zero and ending with infinity, the record unfurls slowly, almost as if it were in fact the sounds of the universe, as pictured on the record's cover, with some strange all seeing eye hovering amidst the stars. The sounds rumble and whir, smeared into long stretches of deep thrum, and spaced out shimmer, there's plenty of gurgling buzz and dense rumbles, crumbling distortion, and strange little squiggles of sci-fi effects, if anything the sounds here are way more academic, and sonically seem to hew closer to experimental tape music. The swoosh and whoosh of most analog synthscapery is relegated to the background here, with Ohno coaxing all manner of strange sounds from his synths. His experience in sound design is evident throughout, as much of this plays out like some lost soundtrack, the score to some strange experimental film, or how we imagine some seventies planetarium light show would sound on LSD, streaks of melody, shards of chordal thrum, lots of reverb and echo, the vibe is definitely futuristic, but not kitschy, instead, it's ominous and haunting and fantastically otherworldly. Essential listening for analog synth obsessives, but the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of dronemusic and spaced out abstract psychedelia as well.
And as if the record proper wasn't enough, also included is a bonus 3" cd that features a rare recording originally released as a super limited flexi-disc, which was created in honor of the 1970 World Expo (as in Expo '70!), and features 6 popular songs of the time, from all over the world, America's contribution being "My Darling, Clementine", recreated using nothing but animal sounds, which had been captured on tape. A trippy bit of outsider tape music for sure, one that in some strange way foreshadows the dogs-singing-Christmas-carols and Jingle-Bell-cats kitsch that would prove to be so weirdly popular decades later. But this is not nearly so goofy, instead, it's strange and wonderful, the animal sounds wreathed in echo and delay, bizarre and beautiful, and again, recorded with the assistance of Taj Mahal Traveller's Kosugi.
Gorgeous packaging as always, a full color gatefold sleeve, with reproductions of the original artwork, a big booklet too with liner notes in Japanese and English, the 3" bonus disc, house in a miniature replica of the original World Expo flexi-disc sleeve. Wow!
One of THREE new Utech releases this week (plus the vinyl of the latest Locrian!), and the first we've heard from this Spanish duo, but hopefully not the last, as these guys push all our heavy spacey droney buttons. A series of long form, atmospheric space outs, draping thick pulsating guitar grit over swirling electronics, fusing Morricone-ish twang to spiraling streaks of synth shimmer, creating a sort of hazy, droney space folk, or maybe a folk flecked bit of space drone, either way, this stuff is divine, hypnotic and mesmerizing.
The opening two tracks seem to function as one single two part epic, crafted from a Tim Hecker like cascade of warm whirring chordal blur, beneath soft spacey pulsations, some twangy guitars, a bit of thick Earthy buzz, all blurred and smeared into a thick, organic, undulating dronescape, the fuzz and buzz gradually receding, leaving a sky full of crystalline guitar shimmer, that seems to pick up grit and whir as it goes, eventually it fades out completely, leaving just a lush shadowy cloud of muted crunch and swirling ambience, only to erupt into some distorted guitar crunch, laced with strangely rhythmic streaks of hiss and glitch, before finally fading out into something much more tranquil.
The rest of the record offers up variations on this twangy spacey droney sound, often resulting in something that sounds like a Tim Hecker / Barn Owl jam, ethereal and ephemeral one minute, all spidery melodies and slow shifting glimmer, pulsing and electronic the next, strange flurries of stuttering melody wrapped around gentle steel string strum, and hushed chordal background blur. There are moments when the sound transforms into something much more soundtracky and spacey, "Red Forest" for example sounds like it could be an alternate score for Logan's Run, a haunting retro-futuristic creep, all swirling minor key synths, loping basslines, and pulsing electronics, quite ominous and haunting, but which gives way to the warped squelch of "Threshold" all murky and muddy, but again, haunting and futuristic sounding, like another lost sci fi synth score, the whole record wrapping up with the hazy drone psych of "Jatavena" warm whirling buzz, murky distorted rumblings, strange bits of noisy background detritus, the tone of the track gradually shifting and getting more and more ominous, before again seeming to shrug off the sonic clouds, closing with a warm whirring bit of softly melodic droned out drift.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Packaged in super sweet Utech style mini sleeves, black ink on heavy brown paper.
Another nice addition to the Rune Grammofon label, the music of Nils Okland is reminiscent of the soundtrack efforts of Carter Burwell (Fargo, etc.) Playing a hardanger fiddle, violin and accompanied by harmonium, piano, organ, trumpet and double bass plus occasonal vocals the music of Nils Okland sounds almost like an abstracted and drawn out Appalachian string band with Eastern European prog leanings.
Much has been made of Jakob Olausson being a beet farmer, heck even in our review of his last record, our whole review revolves around that somewhat salient fact, and while that is indeed an odd personal fact, it shouldn't distract attention from his formidable musical talent, record number two finds this Swedish outsider psychedelic folk troubadour crafting a fantastic record of hazy, washed out, psych folk that while remaining as idiosyncratic as his debut, has managed to up the production, and add a little polish, but it's all relative, the sound is still elegantly raw and warmly home brewed, the guitars rich and lustrous, Olausson weaving a lush backdrop for his smoldering psychedelic leads and his rough raspy croon, which reminds us quite a bit of aQ pal Cayce Lindner (R.I.P.) and his group Flying Canyon, the same sort of achingly plaintive countrified folk, a sort of acoustic slowcore, that creeps and drifts, everything wreathed in tape hiss, and swaddled in billows of echo and delay, the sound minimal, and stripped down, but at the same time, still impossibly lush, the various tracks obviously recorded at different times and on different equipment, some are loud and lustrous, others are more lo-fi and brittle, but all of them are hushed and dreamy and darkly divine.
Yet another batch of aural oddities from the esteemed and mysterious UK tape label, The Tapeworm, this one the result of an improvised home recorded bit of abstract electronic experimentation, from this audio/visual collective
who in real life tend to specialize in a much more dancefloor driven sort of electronica, but here, the group are loose and free, conjuring up spaced out clouds of blurred psychedelic drift, laced with bits of glitch, sonar like pings, haunting pianos, bowed violins, strummed guitars, everything wreathed in tape hiss, the sound almost Caretaker-y at times, melancholic and mysterious, slow burn shimmers that wrap themselves around glistening guitar harmonics drifting weightless in fields of electronic crackle, Morricone-ish twang, wreathed in reverb and draped over long wavery tones, a sort of tentative unearthly dronemusic, a super abstract deserty slowcore, the vibe dark and ominous, soundtracky and mesmerizingly atmospheric. There's a deep throbbing low end running throughout, occasionally pulsing minimally, but also occasionally blossoming into something thick and viscous. The hushed drifts of smeared sound adorned with swoonsome strings, darkly delicate piano, all manner of field recordings, tangled melodies, murky swirls, all woven into a hazy soft focus landscape of dreamlike ambience, and ethereal slo-mo dreamdrift dirgery. So gorgeous. And like all Tapeworm releases, SO LIMITED. Grab one before they're gone.
We first heard from this mysterious outfit via a cassette courtesy of weirdo UK tape label the Tapeworm, that tape a fantastic bit of broody, murky, home recorded experimental electronic ambience, which we mentioned in that review, hinted at another side of the band, which trafficked in a more dancefloor driven electronica, but if this is THAT, then suddenly that tape makes a whole lot more sense, cuz while this is electronic, and there are beats, it's also dense and dark and psychedelic, dubbed out and lysergic, atmospheric and seriously tripped out. Demdike Stare fans line up here!
Compendium collects the best bits from a handful of the group's early 12"s, weaving them into a darkly mysterious and gloriously hauntological whole, dense swirls of blackened ambience, gives way to Fuck Buttons like electro-buzz, before the sound slips into a dubbed out creep, all wisps of chordal shimmer, and weirdly disembodied beatboxing, woven into a super minimal abstract IDM, drifting beneath heavily reverbed, breathy vocals, which eventually splinters into some woozy glitched out electro, laced with swooping backwards effects, super minimal rhythmic skitter, spare, minor key melodies, a weirdly warped, hushed almost electro pop, but fear not, that 'pop' oozes with a definite Demdike style hauntological electro vibe, churning rhythms, echoey ambience, smears and swirls of gauzey thrum, warped slo-mo dirge-pop, anchored by lugubrious tarpit beats, and creepy slowed down vox, stuttery swirls of layered piano, cascading sheets of muted noise, sped up soul vox, lurching hip hop beats mired in fields of crystalline shimmer, the whole thing slipping dreamily and druggily from dark ambience to beat driven moodiness and back again. So good.
Most definitely recommended for fans of Demdike Stare, oOoOO, Pye Corner Audio, Burial, Holy Other and the like...
A beautifully chaotic, spastic slab of plunderphonia from our pal Chris' Soft Abuse label. Old Bombs are one of those bands that all live in different cities and therefore compose and collaborate through the mail. An ideal working method for a music so inherently fractured and schizophrenic. Chopped and reassembled, reappropriated and reimagined, this is a complicated rhythmic sound collage that hints at IDM, abstract sound art, wacked out noise rock and all stops in between. Stuttery rhythms are constructed from old radio clips and ambient backdrops are woven from found sounds and bursts of instrumental chatter. Glitched out electronics collide with random instrument buzz and tape drop out while melodies deftly weave between the wildly careening sounds, trying desperately not to be noticed. Fucked up and awesome. Equal parts Wolf Eyes, People Like Us, Autechre, Merzbow, Lesser but somehow nothing like any of them, Old Bombs make a truly damaged and beautiful noise.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
First release we've listed by Common Oracles, a one man electric guitar raga ensemble based in the US, but recorded in New Zealand. And the sound is definitely New Zealand, it's impossible not to hear some Dead C, although we hear just as much Skullflower and Sunroof, and maybe a little No Neck. Needless to say, this is some underground guitar nirvana. The opener is a 15 minute slow burn that begins all slippery and wiggly, fingers all over the fretboard, notes all tangled up in dense little squalls, but mysteriously imbued with plenty of melody, albeit, buried under swirls of psych guitar chaos, before eventually morphing into some upper register snake charmer Ur-drone. The second track is a total 180, with simple electronic rhythms and whooshing swooping analog synths, like a new wave lo-fi Tangerine Dream or something. Weird but pretty cool. But it's all about the nearly half hour final track, a detuned blues jam stretched into a mantra like rage, riffs, repeated over and over, the blues getting lost in thick streaks of guitar thrum, eventually smoothing out into a creeping glistening melodic shimmer, before exploding into a frenzied psychrock coda.
Packaged in hand made, painted and taped sleeves, constructed from old LP jackets, with Xeroxed artwork affixed to the front and a photocopied insert inside.
And of course, super limited...
Everyone's favorite simian enamored post-metal/post-doom/post-opposable thumbs heavy dirge titans (featuring members of Isis, Converge and Cave In, no less!) have returned from the caves and the treetops to deliver another bewildering slab of mysterious noise-flecked sonic sludge. Only this time it's two slabs. And they both look almost identical. And they both have the same name. That's right - The return of Old Man Gloom is heralded by a cloud of listener-confounding confusion that can only be described as "Circle-esque." Oh, and did we mention there was also a pre-release "leaked" version that went out to zines & blogs that was actually different from both of these? Yeesh, our heads hurt. But we have to admit it's refreshing to see a band with a bit of a sense of humor in a genre that has a history of taking itself perhaps a little too seriously. But there sure ain't anything funny about either of these album. Blown out noisescapes, like unnerving ethereal ancient transmissions from long dead alien civilization give way to staggering rhythmic doom, peppered with indiscernible static mutterings & world-breaking howls. Whistling feedback pleads hypnotically with swaths of ghostly reverb. The drums plod and roll enormously, like a slow motion avalanche unfolding over a millennia. It's alternately punishing, trance inducing, serene & unsettling - and sometimes it's all of those things at the same time. The ambient passages (of which there are plenty over both discs) lure the listener into a drunken state of ominous hazy hypnosis, which only serves to make those heavy sections all the more overwhelming and landscape flattening. A musical experience as aggressive, punishing & cold as it is mysterious, distant & alluring. A high evolution in instinctual primitivism! A fight-or-flight pummeling recommended to heavy-leaning, spaced-out bipeds everywhere...
Note: same review here for both discs, 'cause why would you not buy both? In fact, you'd better not try and order just one 'cause we're likely to send you the wrong one accidentally. And, FYI, vinyl versions on Sige arriving soon too.
Everyone's favorite simian enamored post-metal/post-doom/post-opposable thumbs heavy dirge titans (featuring members of Isis, Converge and Cave In, no less!) have returned from the caves and the treetops to deliver another bewildering slab of mysterious noise-flecked sonic sludge. Only this time it's two slabs. And they both look almost identical. And they both have the same name. That's right - The return of Old Man Gloom is heralded by a cloud of listener-confounding confusion that can only be described as "Circle-esque." Oh, and did we mention there was also a pre-release "leaked" version that went out to zines & blogs that was actually different from both of these? Yeesh, our heads hurt. But we have to admit it's refreshing to see a band with a bit of a sense of humor in a genre that has a history of taking itself perhaps a little too seriously. But there sure ain't anything funny about either of these album. Blown out noisescapes, like unnerving ethereal ancient transmissions from long dead alien civilization give way to staggering rhythmic doom, peppered with indiscernible static mutterings & world-breaking howls. Whistling feedback pleads hypnotically with swaths of ghostly reverb. The drums plod and roll enormously, like a slow motion avalanche unfolding over a millennia. It's alternately punishing, trance inducing, serene & unsettling - and sometimes it's all of those things at the same time. The ambient passages (of which there are plenty over both discs) lure the listener into a drunken state of ominous hazy hypnosis, which only serves to make those heavy sections all the more overwhelming and landscape flattening. A musical experience as aggressive, punishing & cold as it is mysterious, distant & alluring. A high evolution in instinctual primitivism! A fight-or-flight pummeling recommended to heavy-leaning, spaced-out bipeds everywhere...
Note: same review here for both discs, 'cause why would you not buy both? In fact, you'd better not try and order just one 'cause we're likely to send you the wrong one accidentally. And, FYI, vinyl versions on Sige arriving soon too.
Our favorite primate-obsessed doom metal drone outfit finally return! Old Man Gloom are back with a three inch ep to hold us over until their next epic. The centerpiece is the two part Christmas Eve. The first part is all dreamy drone-y acoustic guitar strum and mournful electric guitar melodies over an ominous rumble that becomes a thick sheet of amps-gone-wild before dissolving into misty ambience again. Part two starts off just like part one but is quickly transformed into a hyper distorted, black hole dirge, with earth crushing downtuned guitars and chanted vocals sounding not unlike Alice In Chains slowed down and run through a bank of distortion pedals (which is definitely a good thing). The rest of the tracks are random bits of OMG ephemera: a thirty second blast of shrieking downtuned metallic grind, two tracks entitled Masami's Music Box I and II, presumably Masami Akita aka Merzbow contributing two thirty second bursts of uncharacteristically sweet melody and ambient hum, and a bonus track, an Extreme cover (Extreme the band, not extreme the sound) that is so stupid that it's funny (sort of), but has such an amazing ending (why hasn't anyone done this before, but more importantly, how the fuck did they do it) that it would be unfair for us to deprive you of discovering it for yourself. Just don't complain to us when you finally hear it. There is nothing wrong. It's just the OMG Simian Alien Defense League fucking with your mind! Resistance is futile!
With the "Use Your Illusion"-style simultaneous release of these two new discs on HydraHead sublabel Tortuga, Boston's Old Man Gloom have vaulted to the forefront of the so-called "noisecore" scene, at least in our estimation. We were already big fans of
From our pal Mike at the amazing Sleeping Giant Glossolalia comes this latest blast of gnarled metallic guitar heavy whatthefuck from long time aQ fave Mick Barr (Krallice, Ocrilim, Octis, Orthrelm, Crom-Tech) who in Oldest, is teamed up with Brooks Headley (Born Against, Universal Order Of Armageddon), who besides being a rad drummer, is now a fairly well known pastry chef! However, as curious as we would be to hear/see Headley's pastries combined with Barr's axe-work, it is in his role as drummer, that he completes the Oldest duo, which Barr describes as sounding like Voivod meets Darkthrone, but which in fact sounds a lot like Barr's late great Crom-Tech combo. A wild mathy tech metal grindpunk noise-prog blowout that finds the duo unleashing frenzied stretches of tranced out guitars, frantic riffing, the melodies angular and atonal, the drumming dense and complex, the arrangements fractured and fucked up, the vocals a punkish shriek. Intricate and heavy, dizzying and chaotic, the songs super fluid, droney, cyclical and near static one second, lurching stop/start stutter the next, slipping occasionally into chugging classic metal mode or soaring blackened buzz, but always returning to that distinctive twisted technical grinding math/meth metal crush that Barr seems to have a lock on. Fucking awesome. And not even really out until next month, so for now, an aQ exclusive!
Fflint Central is a U.K. label run by two extraordinarily nice guys and darn fine hosts (good enough to befriend a sick and bedraggled on-tour Andee and buy him Cokes). Fflint specializes in experimental electronics and harsh abstract noise. One would think that there's enough, or too much of both, but the men from Fflint have that something special (fuck-you attitude? undefinable sound? sense of humor?) that makes these records way better and way more interesting than the majority of the 'electronica' we hear these days. Fans of VV/M, Lesser and other 'troublesome' electonica will dig this stuff. Affordable CD-Rs. Go ahead and take a chance. You may regret it...
This is probably the most laid back record on FFlint, but that's not to say it isn't still intense and incessant. Tranquil soundscapes (processed field recordings made in Norht East Wales) are mixed with pulsing synths, bells and chimes, and warm drones, making for a soothing and dark and an amazingly beautiful record.
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We have to admit we were never that into DJ Olive, he always seemed to be the token turntablist on records by NY based rock ensembles trying to be 'edgy' or wanting to 'experiment', either that or the go to guy if Spooky was already booked. We're not trying to be harsh, we'd definitely take Olive over Spooky ANY day, but that's just the impression we got, but this record, boy did it shut us up good. Real good! This is definitely one of the most beautiful turntable drone records in recent memory. Really. One epic 50 minute track, a murky underwater drift, equal parts Oval, Jeck, Basinski, Marclay and Hecker. Gauzy and slightly warbly, loops seemlessly integrated into a single glacial drone. Fans of any of the above mentioned turntablists should just stop right now and buy this immediately.
It's not just a drone record either. The first half of the disc is thick and warm, a slow moving slab of rich multi timbral sound, but partway through, the smooth dreaminess begins to peel back, revealing little bits of guitar, or strange rhythmic clicking, brief glimpses of the inner workings, that reveals a strange skeletal system beneath Sleep's seemingly deep organic surface. Which only adds to the deep listening, feeling strange shapes moving just below the surface, the drone interrupted to skip and skitter before resuming its glacial pace.
I know we say this about a lot of records, but Sleep truly is dreamy.
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This is the final 12" in Table Of The Elements' 10th anniversary Lanthanides series of one sided silkscreened 12"s and what a fine way to end it. Pauline Oliveros has been massively influential in improvised music, electronic composition and her spiritual and meditational approach to music making. A Little Noise In The System was recorded ar UCSD in 1967 utilising a Moog synthesizer, tape delay and feedback and is anything but meditational. A big ol' blast of hissing skree, like a million crickets with Merzbow in their walkmans and the volumes cranked to 11. Over the course of the piece, the sound does shift and modulate and offers quite a bit of tonal variety, but this is still pretty fierce stuff.
Clear vinyl with a lonely stretch of road winding through the woods silkscreened in white ink on one side.
Two beautiful and intense minimal electronic compostions from 1967 and 1966 respectively.
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Wow! Three early live experiments with electronics, which at the simplest level use an array of oscilators and tape loops processed through long delays, for some of the most beautiful and haunting electronic drones to pass through our speakers!
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This recording documents the pinnacle of the collaborations between vangarde accordionist Oliveros (called the 'godmother of ambient' in the presskit) and electronic magician David Gamper. Layers of crystalline drones and gossamer structures emerge from the modified accordion of Oliveros and Gamper's tense electronic vibrations for a mesmerizing listen.
Drone-fanciers alert! Pauline Oliveros (legendary Mills College-based electronic music pioneer, subterranean accordion-drone virtuoso) meets up with the electronic talents of one Andrew Deutsch for this lovely, organic drone-fest. The duo's accordion, modified television, bells, etc. make music to match the evocative song titles: "Water Birds", "Summer Bugs," "Candle Ice," and others. A nicely done package, each one with different found paper scraps inserted behind the jewel case tray (old letters, maps of England, watercolors). Over seventy minutes.
We were never all that impressed by past Olneyville records. This Rhode Island group features ex-members of Six Finger Satellite and trafficked in repetitive minimal post-rock/funk and always kind of fell flat for us. But on this most recent disc things just really seem to click and we're offered up a thick slab of lo-fi post (f)(p)unk jams, instrumental and droning, repetitive and hypnotic. Think a Lightning Bolt 78 played at 16rpm or a smacked out James Brown jamming with the Starfuckers or better yet ESP weirdos Cromagnon trying to cover This Heat. Check it out.
Previously only on 10" vinyl via Neurot, now finally available to compact disc users! David Tibet is an obsessive man, amassing a huge collection of books, records, paintings, and ephemera from his favorite artists, religious leaders, and cultural icons; and he often incorporates bits and pieces from that collection into the apocalyptic hymns of his band Current 93. A couple years ago, Tibet found himself awestruck by Om's first album Variations On A Theme and approached the stoned-metal mesmerists about working together. Through their correspondence, Om's bassist Al Cisneros found himself a contributor to the Current 93 opus Black Ships Ate The Sky, and then the two projects decided to produce this split release. What you get from Om is exactly what you would expect: heavy-as-fuck bass lines, lumbering drum propulsion, and tranced-out vocal incantations very much along the psychedelic vein of Sabbath and the druggy side of Hawkwind. Normally Tibet outsources the guitar work on his Current 93 records to the likes of Ben Chasny, Michael Cashmore, or Tony Wakeford, but here he's picked up the guitar, the bass, and a ton of distortion to match what Om does on the other side. He proves that he too can muster a heavy doom-drone riff laced with caustic waves of distortion and feedback. Of course, his revelatory vocals emerge from the cyclical riffs as does a caterwaul of droning bagpipes.
David Tibet is an obsessive man, amassing a huge collection of books, records, paintings, and ephemera from his favorite artists, religious leaders, and cultural icons; and he often incorporates bits and pieces from that collection into the apocalyptic hymns of his band Current 93. A couple years ago, Tibet found himself awestruck by Om's first album Variations On A Theme and approached the stoned-metal mesmerists about working together. Through their correspondence, Om's bassist Al Cisneros found himself a contributor to the Current 93 opus Black Ships Ate The Sky, and then the two projects decided to produce this split 10". What you get from Om is exactly what you would expect: heavy-as-fuck bass lines, lumbering drum propulsion, and tranced-out vocal incantations very much along the psychedelic vein of Sabbath and the druggy side of Hawkwind. Normally Tibet sources out the guitar work on his Current 93 records to the likes of Ben Chasny, Michael Cashmore, or Tony Wakeford, but here he's picked up the guitar, the bass, and a ton of distortion to match what Om does on the other side. He proves that he too can muster a heavy doom-drone riff laced with caustic waves of distortion and feedback. Of course, his revelatory vocals emerge from the cyclical riffs as does a caterwaul of droning bagpipes. There have been a couple of different pressings of this single; and what we have is the domestic, blue translucent vinyl version.
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FINALLY THE REPRESS IS HERE! These split singles went out of print in a flash soon after we first reviewed 'em on list 244. But more were promised, and now at last they're here, for now...
Most of you have already smashed the add to cart button to bits before even getting to reading the review, so we'll keep this brief. A monumental match up of modern psychedelic masters from the NorCal locale. On one side is the mighty post-Sleep behemoth known as Om, a bass and drums duo who churn out extended sludge mantras, and on this track it's no different. A super fuzzed out doomy plod and groove. When we first threw this one, we accidentally had it on 45 and it sounded pretty dang killer and super blown out and weird, until the vocals came in and went all doom chipmunk on us. But at 33 it was even slower and heavier and dirgier just the way it was meant to be. Note: the track on this 7" is the bonus track from the Japanese version of Conference Of The Birds that we listed recently, so a few of you may already have this song! On the other side we have Ben Chasny and his Six Organs Of Admittance, who seem to be upping their own personal dirge quotient in order to compete with the sheer heaviness of Om. There is still some lilting folk, but it's buried beneath wild squalls of psych guitar freakout that sounds VERY Japanese (High Rise, Mainliner, Fushitsusha).
Definitely essential.
If we were told that this disc was actually unearthed from the once-lost archive of a curmudgeonly pair of outsider artists who lived on some sodden island in the Puget Sound during the mid '70s, we could definitely be excused for believing it, and thus being completely wrong about the true identities of Vague Johnson & Thompson Omake. With every sound swaddled in tape hiss and occasionally thrown out of orbit by an unruly tape machine, the curious happenings on Headiferous Untacbulum could have easily come from that era of unkempt post-hippie / proto-Industrial expressionism (e.g. Taj Mahal Travellers, Nihilist Spasm Band, Nurse With Wound, etc.). These tracks are grimy psychedelic adventures of free-folk-drone-noise wanderings for homebuilt instruments which rumble and churn against a static field of modular synthesis. Elsewhere, long form drones from dissonantly bowed strings swell into huge clouds of radiant drones. Then, there are the hammered plucks across acoustic guitars with plenty of nods to Fahey and Basho that also emerge behind a pall of spring reverb, and stone-encrusted field recordings crashing through the mix with unexpected results. Top it all off is the hand-dyed envelope with a crusty smear of wax holding the package together. Wouldn't be surprised to see something from these two on Foxy Digitalis or Root Strata one of these days.
All that said, it turns out that Omake and Johnson are the work of contemporary Seattle based musicians Matt Shoemaker and Dave Knott, working through Shoemaker's arsenal of electronics and Knott's invented instruments recorded through a beat-up tape recorder. A really great piece of way-out there sound-field generation and free-folk splutter; and of course, it's super limited to about 40 copies.
Omit is the longstanding project of New Zealand's finest electron technician Clinton Williams, who dropped out of high school close to two decades ago and holed himself up in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere New Zealand to wrangle with analogue synthesizers, 8-track tape decks, unruly drum machines, and a small army of effects pedals. There was a time in the '90s when Williams' output was ridiculously prolific, through countless cassettes in tiny editions and a handful of lathe-cut singles. His work caught the attention of the Dead C's Bruce Russell, who was so taken by Williams' work that he collaborated with the man as Dust/Omit and released a handful of discs through Russell's seminal Corpus Hermeticum imprint. Upon the release of the 1997 3cd boxset Quad, Williams' Omit project began to slow down tremendously. The quality of work had certainly continued, but the wealth of releases was considerably diminished. In 1999, there was Interior Desolation, brilliant with its squealing pigs adding to electronic claustrophobia. Then Anomalous released Rejector in 2002; and Helen Scarsdale had the honor of releasing the epochal darkness of Tracer (2005), and now the skeletal rhythmicist drones on Interceptor.
Working in isolation has lead Williams to develop a language which is entirely his own, yet exhibits a curious convergent evolution with many of the other greats in DIY electronics - most notably Chris Carter from his days in Throbbing Gristle, Mika Vainio and his early hyper-minimal phaseshifting experiments in post-techno, and the gaping proto-industrial paranoia of Klaus Schulze. His work is simultaneously ponderously huge and effortlessly simple, as his sounds hover along intertwining sweeps of synthetic ambience grafted to simple rhythmic structures. The saddest melodies in the world poke through Omit's cold and barren surfaces, accenting the isolationist tendencies already inherent in these sounds. Interceptor is a slight detour in the Omit aesthetic, and the detour was by design as Williams had ventured outside of his hometown of Blenheim in search of a job. But he also brought two suitcases of gear with him to continue his recording. The frustrations he felt in his failure to secure employment are matched in the bleak gestures found on Interceptor. Williams had stripped away much of the grandiose sweeps of ambience and shadow, leaving behind a life-support system grid of overlapping, phase-shifted blip and click. An undertow of hypnotic tonalities pulls those rhythms towards a crepuscular gloom, which as with all of Omit's work are effortless in their compositional appearance. Anybody, and we mean ANYBODY, who has a passing interest in electronic music - contemporary, historic, surreal, arcane, Warp-ish, Kompakt-ish, or otherwise - has got to do themselves a favor and investing the time into Omit. The rewards are infinite from this under recognized, autodidactic genius.
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With dozens of self released tapes, a 3cd boxset, and a handful of collaborations with Dead C/A Handful of Dust guitarist Bruce Russell, this New Zealand reclusive misanthrope returns with more dark & claustrophobic dronescapes. Found sounds, homemade instruments, & barely perceptible rhythms are forced into Omit's mostly broken 8-track in the form of tape loops which shift and pulse ominously. Plus the recurrent motif of squealing pigs. An absolutely stunning record!!!
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Clinton Williams (aka Omit) is a misanthropic recluse who dropped out of high school and holed himself up in a small house in Blenheim, New Zealand to construct hundreds of hours of sinister looping sound collages. 3 discs of field recordings and bedroom drone constructions as if Nurse With Wound were to remix Main, obsessively illustrated with black and white diagrams. We have only a limited quantity of these...
Through his DeepSkin imprint, the hermetic New Zealander Clinton Williams has released dozens of cassettes as Omit, housed in his obtuse artwork of bizzare post-Dali monsterisms and awkward geometric shapes. Due to the absence of Williams' artwork on this CD-R production of "Rejector," SySecular doesn't apppear to be the CD-R extention of the Deep Skin cassette catalogue. As Omit's work for haunted synth / loop constructions are incredibly well-executed and sublimely creepy, it's a shame that "Rejector" has only received CD-R status; regardless it's a more accessible format than the nearly-obsolete cassette. Omit's work has clear predecessors in '70s Kraut synthesists like Conrad Schnitzler, Kluster, and early Tangerine Dream; yet his apparently sinister intentions and sci-fi isolationism push his productions closer to the sounds of mid '80s Nurse With Wound (i.e. "Homotopy To Marie") and Zoviet France (i.e. "Mohnomische"). His work uses some amazingly simple techniques of counterpointed tape loops (crackling wood, creaking doors, down-pitched tape splice clicks, etc.) that warble in and out of phase with each other, while dark synth drones swell in and out of the mix to form slowly developed two or three note melodies. As with all of the Omit recordings, "Rejector" comes highly recommended! Super limited too, so don't dawdle.
Over the past few years, we have made quite a fuss over the free-noise / dronescraping scene out of New Zealand, as perenially great artists such as the Dead C, Birchville Cat Motel, Flies Inside The Sun, Surface Of The Earth, RST, Eso Steel, Seht, Peter Wright, and many others form a population that is proportionally way larger than countries many many times the size of New Zealand. Amongst all of those NZ artists we mentioned, there is another artist who gets name-checked from time to time: Omit. At one time back in the mid-90s, Clinton Williams -- the sole knob twiddler and tape-splicer behind Omit -- put all of today's hyper-prolific cd-r artists to shame with his own stream of releases through his own cassette and lathe-cut imprint Deep Skin. An artist whose paranoiac aesthetic was completely wrapped up in the bunker mentality of '70s analogue electronics, Omit never really made the logical transition by updating from cassette to cd-r, having only re-released a fraction of his old tapes on disc, the Rejector reissued on Anomalous, the Quad boxset released on Corpus Hermeticum and now the monumental double disc set Tracer, rescued from obsolescence by The Helen Scarsdale Agency.
While Williams calls the tiny farming comunity of Blenheim, New Zealand his home, there is very little in his work that latches upon the gristled noise and feral folk tunes heard in many of his fellow New Zealanders. Instead, his work sprawls from the sci-fi bleakness that ran through the post-psychedelic explorations of German electronics, most notably Klaus Schulze, Conrad Schnitzler, and Cluster. At the same time, Omit's kosmische homage stands as an eerie parallel to the Raster-Noton sound that ripples with Omit's millenial horror, albeit through the sterility of digital production. Comparisons have also been made to early '80s Cabaret Voltaire, but Omit is infinitely better in executing his ideas than CV ever were. It could be said that Mr. Williams is a man in the wrong time, in the wrong part of the world; and all things considered, Mr. Williams would probably like it that way. Perhaps the best way to make the world's most isolating music is to be thoroughly isolated oneself.
Following his previous work on Anomalous and Corpus Hermeticum, Tracer demonstrates a finely crafted execution in these bleak, isolationist recordings. The slow moving synth sweeps, creeping electric atmospheres, unnerving loops of mechanized clamour, and low-slung rhythmic austerity have all of the trappings of industrial culture strategies in using technology to critique technology's alienation over mankind; yet, Omit has never really stated what this is about, instead leaving hints that Omit is merely a reflection of Clinton Williams' soul expressed through blighted electronic hypnosis. Emotive expressionism isn't something you think of when it comes to Cabaret Voltaire or Throbbing Gristle, but that's the ground where Williams has consistently tred. You would be hard pressed to find an electronic album as majestic, melancholy, and profoundly human as Tracer.
On, not to be confused with the mysterious New Zealand mindfuck punk band of the same name previously released on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, is a collaboration between French composer Sylvain Chaveau and percussionist Steven Hess of Pan American and Haptic. But then built into the concept of their collaboration, the recordings they make together are then handed off to a third party, this time around to the one and only Helge Sten, aka Deathprod, to be "remixed", for the lack of a better description, and thus we have Your Naked Ghost Come Back at Night. Like much of the dark and trembling chill of many Type releases from Svarte Greiner and Xela, listening to the blurred spectral ambience of On's sound, it is nearly impossible to distinguish the original source material from Sten's treatments. We can only know the ghosts. Originally recorded in 2003 with a limited release in 2004 on the Les Disques Du Soleil Et De L'Acier label, Type has fittingly reissued this unique release which in all but name is pretty much the final Deathprod release as Sten has vowed never to record under that name again! Like all of Type's releases, the vinyl is limited so act fast!
This one is a total mystery. Not sure where they're from (New Zealand we guess) or what their story is, other than the fact that it was released on Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, and that it is one seriously blown out punked up slab of garage-y scuzz and roll. Heavy and noisy, spastic and sludgy, when this was playing in the front of the store, Allan went up to see what black metal record was playing if that tells you anything. Filthy and crumbling ultra distorted guitars, boy girl vocals WAY down in the mix, riffs that go from paint peeling shred to gut churning rumble. Some ungodly hybrid of vintage Dead C, the Butthole Surfers, The Germs, Flipper, recent AQ faves the Violent Students, and recent Siltbreeze noisemakers Times New Viking. This is definitely punk as fuck, but wrapped in layer after layer of guitar grit and broken amp splatter, classic punk rock swallowed whole, chewed up and spit out in huge sludgy gobs of grrrrr and rrrroooaaar. Epic sludgescapes of pound and churn, showered with wild lightning bolts of squealing feedback. There seem to be pop songs in there somewhere, but don't even try to dig that deep, you'll just end up bruised and bloodied, or you'll lose a hand or an arm. Best to just lay back, close your eyes real tight, clamp your hands tight over your ears, let these noise rockers just back their ten ton punksludge steamroller right over you and pray you survive.
Record number three from the duo known simply as On, made up of composer / producer Sylvain Chauveau and percussionist Steven Hess, a member of both Pan American and Haptic, all favorites around here, so it's no surprise that we dig On as well. And their recording technique has always been pretty cool, capturing various improvisations, song fragments, completed songs, various textures and sound experiments, and the handing the whole thing over to another musician to shape into whatever sort of record he or she imagined. Deathprod was the guest arranger/producer/assembler on the last album, and this time around, it's none other than long time aQ fave, experimental guitarist and soundscaper Christian Fennesz, and Fennesz definitely works his magic, assembling the various parts into sweeping smoldering minimal epics, gorgeous dronescapes and wide swaths of glimmering ambience. The record opens with a cloud of layered feedback, all high end skree, before gradually dissipating into something more delicate and tranquil, hushed chiming melodies, and crystalline overtones, give way to a much more soothing stretch of throb and thrum, wreathed in gentle static and subtle glitch, dark tones glide and shift, drifting through clouds of cymbal shimmer, fields of click and skitter, but all smeared into a slowly unwinding spiral of smoldering lysergic swells.
The record switches gears part way through, and becomes much more woozy and soft focus, muted tones, a warm washed out haze, and finally some stripped down skeletal drumming, the vibe almost krautrocky, simple and spare and propulsive, the background ever swirling and whirling, a softly lopped melody drifting in and out of earshot, the whole thing mesmerizing and hypnotic, before the drums eventually fade out, leaving a bleary landscape of slowly melting tones, and gently collapsing melodies, a hushed abstract, dreambliss outro.
Which makes the darkness of the next track that much more dramatic, churning buzzing muted riffage, looped and layered, wrapped in a cloud of delicate cymbal sizzle, subtly rhythmic, locked in an awesome groove, WAY too short at a little over 4 minutes, but that leads right into the epic 20 minute closer, mirroring the opening track, with another field of hushed and muted feedback, tangled buried melodies, the various bits of guitar, and barely there percussion woven into a slowly shifting gradually mutating dreamscape, sounding more and more like a proper Fennesz record, prismatic, kaleidoscopic, warm and lustrous, lush and fantastically abstract, very reminiscent of Oval, that sort of looped glitchery, but here, it's much more organic, much more soothing and entrancing, totally captivating and utterly lovely.
On Fillmore is Darin Gray (Brise Glace, Dazzling Killmen, Gastr Del Sol) and Glenn Kotche (Boxhead Ensemble, Wilco). These two put their heads together and come up with something new for both of them. Acoustic bass and vibraphone are the foundation, laying down simple almost jazzy/funky grooves. But the focus seems to be on wild and scattered percussion: triangles and chimes and bells and drums and pots and pans are WAY up in the mix and are responsible for most of the tecture and melody. The sound is kind of how you imagine Brise Glace or You Fantastic covering Sun Ra with a purposefully limited pallet. Very hypnotic and noir-ish, slightly jazzy but more just simple, dark and moody.
The Once And Future Herds brings together two overlapping Jewelled Antler duos: The Blithe Sons (Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse) and the Skygreen Leopards (Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn). The material on this five song, 18-minute lil' 3" cd-r released by our friends PseudoArcana in New Zealand finds Glenn, Loren and Donovan relaxing back at the ranch (literally, this was recorded on a hillside out at Borges Ranch State Park) after a hard day of wrangling field recordings. As Jewelled Antler efforts go, this leans in a country-folk direction, more strummy and structured than is sometimes the case, with guit-fiddle to the fore and vocals that, at times, remind us of a muffled, mumbled Devendra Banhart. But all the weird, textural nature ambience you'd expect is also fully in the mix. It's really really nice and all you Jewelled Antler fanatics need to jump on it now, as we only have a dozen in stock of this limited release.
