Huzzah! The former guitarist for '90s underground noiseniks Harry Pussy is back with a 2nd full length solo lp, his guitar strings once again all in a tangle - maybe six of 'em, but probably less, last we checked he had dispensed with the A and D strings, 'cause he plays a (repaired) broken-necked vintage acoustic that couldn't take the strain. Of course, the way he plays it, we'd think it wouldn't be safe with even one string...
2009's critically acclaimed A New Way To Pay Old Debts was crazy popular, a proverbial hotcake of a seller here, and fans of that record won't be disappointed with this equally emotive follow-up. Wild Bill brings the urgent, alien Appalachia, this album a noisy-as-acoustic-can-be "blues" freakout that's, as we've said before, both frantic -and- focused. Chaotic, tumbling, yet trance-inducing in its intricate intensity. There's also some calmer respites from his sturm-und-drang (strum-and-dang?), like the stark, hushed "Heaven Is Closed To Me Now".
Orcutt throws in some wordless vocalizations here and there, getting properly glossolalic at times, which only adds to the "outsidery-ness" of the proceedings - and also conveys even more authentic feeling. This is one dramatic, raw, real record; while this might be what we like to call "fuckery", he's not fucking around. Fans of such folks as Japan's Kan Mikami and Tetuzi Akiyama, Jandek, and of course spiritual "American Primitive" mentor John Fahey (imagine John Fahey meets Derek Bailey!) should find this speaks to them in a language that can't be faked. And non-fans, or not-yet-fans? Well at first blanch you might find this tough going, but stick with it and see if it doesn't stir something in your soul.
Currently gatefold vinyl-only, compact disc version to follow in a few weeks. And by the way, nice Stevie Ray Vaughan pick collection on the cover! Rolling in his grave, no doubt...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Avant guitar slinger Bill Orcutt, formerly of legendary noise terrorists Harry Pussy, returns with another lp-only offering, a starkly handsome one sided, one song record on crystal clear vinyl, documenting a performance from his recent tour of New Zealand. Anyone who heard Orcutt's limited (and sadly out of print) A New Way to Pay Old Debts lp can look forward to another slab of atonal neo blues performed in a frantic but highly focused way on a battered old acoustic with only 4 strings. Orcutt's runs up the fretboard also come off a bit like strange ragas as the strings resonate and sustain almost like a sitar at times. Though performed in front of an audience, there is a spaciousness to the recording that takes on almost cosmic proportions and works perfectly with Orcutt's guitar work, which sounds huge and menacing but also strangely melodic. Way Down South takes on a weird trancey quality, and one can only assume that Orcutt was definitely "in the moment" here. But unlike so many bands and solo artists now, who rely extensively on loops, pedals, and all kinds of electronic fuckery, this shit is stripped to its essentials - I mean, can you really get more basic than an acoustic guitar? - and ably performed by a guy who can simply shred balls. Way recommended, and not surprisingly, limited to 300 copies!
The Oregon Painting Society is a collective from Portland which features Matt Carlson of Golden Retriever, Birch Cooper and Barbara Kinzle (both of The Slaves and The Greys), filmmaker Brenna Murphy, and Jason Traeger. During a frenzied three year period, OPS presented peculiar happenings through elaborate installations of discarded materials reconfigured into weird electronic instruments. The images of Cruisn' - an installation / performance at the Appendix Project Space in 2010 - shows the five members wielding very strange objects, including a couple of black corncobs with connected to a salvaged folding table by way of guitar cables lending to the impression that these corncobs might be acting as some sort of theremin. Then there's a small wood-panelled platform covered in light switches and dimmers that one of the members is flipping off and on; and there's also a loom which seems to be grinding a large stick; and somebody wearing a low-rent Stellarc cybernetic suit whilst balancing on a bale of hay. The imagery is weird yet compelling in the deliberate low-rent / high-tech approach to hand-crafted instrumentation, and this tape is a documentation of the five performing on these objects.
So what does it all sound like? Circuit-bent boards, broken consumer electronics, malfunctioning amplifiers, and electronic-sound-kits all rewired into a huge tangle of spluttering noise, sick-tone, and static. Think David Tudor trying to work out what he did with all of the janky gear that Nautical Almanac scraped together from thrift stores and the basements of antiquated electronic stores. All of the blistering, scabrous, polydactyl blurts of 4-bit electronics are improvised into grotesque swarms that aren't all that far from the later Matthew Bower explorations of free-noise through Sunroof! Wild and wooly for sure, and you bet this is limited!
We just got a batch of new cd-r's from a new label called Seedy R!, a sub label of the already kick ass PsuedoArcana label run by Antony Milton. The Van The Van, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this curiously titled disc.
Organorganorganorgan is exactly what you might imagine, 4 organs. Played by Sam Hamilton, Stefan Neville, Campbell Kneale and Antony Milton. Recorded live at a NZ art gallery, these chaps plugged in their fan driven chord organs, and proceeded to unfurl an expansive tapestry of whirs and warbles and wheezes, rich and dense. Slow shifting layers of epic warm sound. A half hour of thick slithery shimmery drone, wreathed in a cloud of subtle overtones and muted melody. So nice. Palestine, Sunroof!, Nitsch, Gurdjieff, and other masters of the extended organ drone... you get the idea.
Packaged in a brown paper sleeve, with a hand stamped 'R' on one side, and a killer psychedelic illustration of four madmen wildly abusing their .. ahem.. organs, on the other.
Amen is the second in a trilogy of works from Organum, the ongoing project of arcane drones from British artist David Jackman. While Jackman's previous work with Organum has focused upon extended glissandos from bowed cymbals swarming into huge choruses of acoustic cacophony to amazing affect, this trilogy has more in common with the minimalist agendas of Philip Glass and Brian Eno. The structure of the piece is a simple drone from a Hammond organ gaping towards infinity, furthered by repeating a sample of a monastic chant whose cathedral reverb renders any actual words indecipherable. Solitary strikes upon a tower bell and sparse chords from a piano also make their mark upon the plastic ambience. As with the first installment to this trilogy, Jackman offers two almost identical variations of the same score to flush out the 40 minutes of sound on this album. While clocking in at a considerably greater length than most Organum recordings, this trilogy pales in comparison to the strongest Organum work, best experienced in Volume One and Volume Two, both released on Robot.
Quite limited, we warn you -- we were only able to get a dozen...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The dense acoustic scrapes & drones recorded in richly sonorous environments (cavernous warehouses, freeway overpasses, waterducts, etc.) appear much more orchestrated here on 'Birds' Wings...' than on the previous Organum records. Solid fragments of bowed cymbals and clattering metal have been mapped out strategically against the hypnotic austerity of droning quitars and bowed steel wires. Along with the mastermind of the project David Jackman, Organum's line up includes Robert Hampson (Main / Loop), Michael Prime (Morphogenesis), Emma O'Bong, and Mat Fox. Both Jim and Byram give the thumbs up on this one!
Despite his development as an artist within the heyday of the British post-industrial community of Nurse With Wound, Whitehouse, and The New Blockaders, David Jackman's musical beginnings date back much earlier to the nascent stages of British improv. In fact, Jackman's earliest recordings were made within Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra and a couple of late '60s projects spearheaded by Eddie Prevost of AMM; but it wasn't until much later that he actually released anything he conceptualized. Up until about five years ago, it was pretty safe to say that most everything Jackman touched turned to sonic gold. The signature Organum sound is an aggressively droning acoustic screech, typically created by bowing cymbols and multi-tracking the results with little or no processing. Nowadays, artists like Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof, and Birchville Cat Motel owe their entire sound to Organum; and it's hard to find instances when the students have outclassed the teacher. The main problem with Organum and Jackman is his insistance upon very short programs... such as this 18 minute 3". It's fucking beautiful; but would it really damage Jackman's curmudgeonly mystique to actually compile a full 70 minute album?
Anyway, the four tracks found on Die Hennen Zahne date back to the early '80s, with the first cut "Die Kralle" pre-dating the earliest Organum work, when Jackman was multi-tracking metallic hammerings and primative sampled loops of scraping noise. The title track explodes with a constant tumble of crashing glass and Tibetan horn blurts. At merely four minutes long, Jackman's controlled fury is no match for those epic blasts of cacophony heard on Sub Rosa's amazing collection of Tibetan Buddhist rites, but it is nice to actually hear a rare influence intrude into the Organum repertoire. "Maus" is the centerpiece of the album, beautifully encapsulating everything that Jackman does so well. Bowed cymbols set in a complex polyphony of static reverberation and shimmering metallic vibrato. Excellent! The final track is a quieter bit of 'pipe fighting' between Jackman, Michael Prime, and Emma O'Bong, much like the Organum curiousity Vacant Lights. Even if it is a bit short, Die Hennen Zahne is well worth diving into.
Justifying the price of $13.98 for a seven inch with 8 minutes of music can be difficult. David Jackman continues to release tiny editions of his music in bite sized portions. Obviously, he's banking on the fact that both his solo work and his project Organum is fascinating enough to entice his loyal customer base to gobble up anything that he releases. "Die Letzte Musik Vor Dem Krieg" is the latest from Organum, a project that specializes in the timbres and drones from bowed and scraped metals. Jackman, who appears to be the only member of this permutation of Organum, has always been a master of this artform, collaging multiple layers of these sounds on top of each other to create a swarming minimalism that's almost always better than anything that Tony Conrad or LaMonte Young could muster. Jackman mixes things up a bit, by throwing in a couple of solemn piano notes on one track, and mournful Tibetan horns on the other. Being pressed at 45 rpm, this single sounds great at slower speeds, thus balancing out the dollars per minute ratio a bit more.
Be warned, we only have 5 copies of this, and these will be gone soon. Don't delay, or you may end up spending $25.00 on Ebay for a copy. And you know what, it's probably worth it!
The 2 three and a half minute tracks on Ein Schwarzeres Schwarz represent the source material that Z'ev used to mix the exquisite collaborative record Tinnitus VU. Jackman offers a stately cluster of piano chords which he repeats every 30 seconds or so with the sustain pedal firmly depressed. Behind this arrangement, very subtle drones flutter in the distant. Limited edition to 500 copies with the artwork being simple spot varnish lettering on a white cover.
It is quite plausible to propose that Organum is one of the many logical extentions of '60s minimalism. After all, Organum's David Jackman has maintained a longstanding friendship with AMM (whose Eddie Prevost joined Organum for a couple of records) and wrote
Sonically, this stands as maybe the finest work from Organum. The extended screech of bowed cymbals fits perfectly with non-verbal deep vocal chants and the hovering wisps of a flute to create a timeless and ancient sounding music. As soon as Organum sastisfactorily meets the requirements for the drone supreme with complex interlocking timbres from various tones and abrasions, Jackman orders everything to cease. The shortened program of these beautiful sounds appears as a let down at first, but Jackman's fleeting constructions say everything that needs to be said with all of economy of a three minute pop song. If you disagree, the digital format will work in your advantage as you can simply repeat this album indefinitely for extended listens. Regardless, this is highly recommended!!!
Omega is the final installment in a series of releases from Organum that vaguely deals with the notions of holiness. Like Sanctus and Amen before it, Omega is a composition for Hammond organ, gong, and tower bell, with the addition of a droning sitar replacing the monastic chants found on Amen. And again, the compositional structure is a simple drone from a Hammond organ gaping towards infinity, with the gongs and tower bells struck for dramatic punctuations. The raga-drone from the sitar is a nice touch, slanting Organum's gaze upon spirituality toward the East. Omega may be the most interesting piece in this trilogy and may even appeal to those fans of Aidan Baker's ambient atmospherics; but it has to be said that Organum's best work is not found here. For that, look to the Organum albums (e.g. Vacant Lights, Ikon, Sphyx, etc.) from the late '80s and early '90s, which continue to slip in and out of print.
Up until recently, David Jackman has appeared to be more interested in digging through his archives to release albums of his classic material from the '80s, rather than working on new material. However, he's been slowly increasing his activities thanks to a couple of recent collaborations with Z'ev. Sanctus stands as the first proper full length album from Organum in nearly a decade. So for those of you who have been holding out for Jackman to finally release a full 45 minute recording, here it is! Jackman declared that this album is a variation on a theme, having composed four discrete parts from a single graphic score for grand piano, Hammond organ, tower bell, and gong. Despite these very specific acoustic elements (and claims to the contrary), the four pieces of Sanctus sound much more synthetic and plastic in nature, perhaps due to the excess of processing. As always, the Organum sound is turbulant and static at the same time, emerging as a slow motion expanse of dynamic drones. Due to the synthetic appearance of his sounds, Jackman comes across as much more Eno and much less, well, Organum.
For the "Sphyx" sessions which evolved over a three year period from 1990 - 1993, David Jackman amassed an all-star line-up for his stellar drone ensemble Organum with a young Jim O'Rourke (freshly matriculated from Illusion of Safety), Christoph Heemann (HNAS, Mirror), Eddie Prevost (AMM), Dinah Jane Rowe, and post-production help from Robert Hampson (Main). The Organum templates for glittering cascades of scraped metal, bowed cymbals, and steel strung cellos with occasional flourishes from Jackman's shakuhachi (i.e. a Japanese flute) remain intact. While certainly attentive towards the shifts within the limited palette from coarse metals, Organum specializes in the density of those acoustic textures layering, swelling, and mutating upon themselves.
However, the extended track 'Aurora' prominently features Eddie Prevost skittering across the drum kit punctuating the glistening textural drone with a rhythmic patter often found on the mid-period AMM recordings. For the CD reissue of this long out of print LP, "Sphyx" features two bonus tracks recorded around the same time. Unfortunately, this too has a limited run, with only 700 copies of the digipack CD available. As with all of the Organum albums, this comes highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This isn't anything new, though we have picked up a bunch of this Organum record not only because it is fantastic but also to give further insight into the earliest drone work from AQ-favorite Andrew Chalk (who also has been quite active in Mirror and the recently defunct Ora). While Chalk kept his residency in Organum for only a few records, his presence added patience and delicacy to Organum's textural actions for bowed cymbals, motorized vibrations, and scraped metal. With his lengthy tonalities from sampled bells and field recordings of birds, Chalk made an excellent addition to Organum's collective which for "Submission" includes the curmugeonly ringleader David Jackman, Dinah Jane Rowe (no relation to AMM's Keith Rowe), and Nurse With Wound's Stephen Stapleton on the production knobs. This incarnation of Organum provides the most elegant ensemble that Jackman has been able to arrange - with his own breathy flutes and aerated wisps of sound bathed in a glistening reverberation and surrounded by the complex textures of the aforementioned scraped / bowed metals. "Submission" was originally released on vinyl for United Dairies in 1988 and in 1994 Illusion of Safety's Dan Burke reissued it on his Complacency label.
Legend has it that Organum recorded Vacant Lights in less than an hour, yet the cover art took Organum's frontman David Jackman over six months to complete. While Vacant Lights has finally been reissued after its original publication back in 1988, the artwork that Jackman toiled over is nowhere to be found. But we do get the music, a text-book definition of what Andee would describe as a pipe fight, in which the sonic pugilists arm themselves with chains, glass bottles, pipes, a chainlink fence, or any other object that you might find in an abandoned lot or junkyard. Then for the course of an hour (or however long is necessary), the participants drag, scrape, and toss those objects around, building the composition either after the fact or purely along improvisational lines. While contemporary improv ensembles occasionally tinker with the pipe fight strategy with little or no success, Organum's Vacant Lights excels simply because all four members (Jackman, Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton, Dinah Jane Rowe, and Peter McGhee) are so intent upon listening to each other. While the other three quietly rattle and clink their objects, Jackman stoically plays his Japanese flute which interweaves gently with the environmental sounds of trucks passing by. As the interplay between all of the elements is so subtle, Vacant Lights often appears as a quizzical field recording. It's nonetheless magnificent.
Disc two of this reissue campaign contains the Rara Avis single, which fits much more closely to the archetypal Organum sound of bowed metals, scraped gongs, and complex timbral dronings from acoustic sources. Die Stadt could have easily lumped all of this material onto one disc. Well it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to get the original on eBay.
We've long championed the works of David Jackman's Organum, a long running drone project, whose modern take on classic minimalism, a gorgeous assemblage of bowed metals and collaged layered dronescapes, has managed to far surpass any of his/their contemporaries in terms of quality, originality, and sheer vision.
While most of the Organum records do in fact share sonic similarities, each one is most definitely its own sonic universe, a fantastic(al) piece of musical art, that manages to soothe and entrance, yet still challenge and engage, as is the case with Valentin, the first Organum vinyl release in 7 years, a single track spread out over two sides of a 7", at 45 rpm of course, so like past Organum 7"s, this is about quality more than quantity, a bit pricey perhaps for just a brief glimpse into Jackman's unique soundworld, but as always well worth it.
Valentin begins with a whir of what sounds like rainfall, a soft sheen of hushed white noise, punctuated by the occasional piano chord, minor key, ringing out mysteriously, soon joined by the clatter of crashing metals and shattering glass, those sounds are spaced out, letting that swirling hissing ambience drift and hover, before voices surface, a choir, a lovely chorale buried in the blurred background. There are some rumbling scrapes, some distant creaks, and while the sound seems to evolve over the course of the two sides, it also sounds looped, cyclical and mesmeric, the various sounds, recurring, perhaps subtly altered each time, perhaps not, the result though, how ever brief, is a gorgeous sprawl of haunting, elegiac, abstract minimalism. So fantastic.
LIMITED TO 233 COPIES, pressed on ultra thick vinyl, housed in a heavy matte picture sleeve, with a printed cardstock insert, each one hand numbered.
FINALLY REISSUED!!! While it's always a pleasure to listen the classic recordings of Organum, I've resigned myself to the possibility that David Jackman has quietly ceased all of his current musical operations and has been merely reissuing much of the huge back catalogue of his solo work and Organum from the '80s (what no Monoplane?). "Volume One" was one of the first documents of the Jackman / Organum reissues, collecting material from "Rasa" (originally produced as a split with Nurse With Wound on United Dairies) and the L.A.Y.L.AH. anti-records "Tower of Silence" and "In Extemis." Like everything else Jackman released, "Volume One" quickly went out of print and began fetching hefty sums on eBay. Fortunately, this has come back into print (but probably not for long); so those without a disposable income can afford to hear the wonderful paradox that is Organum.
The timeless, acoustic drones that make up the music of Organum could have been made for the beginning of the world or for its final breath; yet Jackman has always avoided assigning any specific metaphors to his work. Instead, this is music that attempts to exist purely within its own context, unconcerned with anything beyond its self-defined borders. Grinding motorcycle engines, steel strung instruments, bowed metal, and Japanese flutes are the instruments that continuously re-appear throughout Organum's recordings. However grim, Industrial, grating, dissonant, or punishing Organum could be with such instrumentations, Jackman always manages to arrange his work to emphasize the dynamic and often beautiful tonalities of those sounds. For those fans of Mirror, Andrew Chalk, Birchville Cat Motel, Oren Ambarchi, and other drone obssessed composers, Organum's recordings are required listening.
FINALLY REISSUED!!! Just like "Volume One," Robot Records has discarded David Jackman's mandala-like collages of medical clip-art as well as any pertinent information in favor of an all black package, with the tracklisting printed on the cd itself. Fronted by the curmudgeonly Jackman (who previously worked with Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra, Nurse With Wound, and members of AMM), Organum has been an unwavering vehicle to compose unsettling drones out of the dynamic timbres of metallic scrapings. As heard on the first track "Valley Of Worms" - a collaboration with The New Blockaders from the Organum album "In Extremis" Organum's sound is a monstrous howl of dissonant acoustic noises, chugging Kawasaki motorcycle engines (!!!), and abrasive textural overlayering; yet upon the following tracks "Horii" (originally released on L.A.Y.L.A.H. and featuring noted Organum graduate Andrew Chalk), and "Ich Reiste Weit Und Verweilte Fur Einigezeit In Tring" (an unreleased track from 1989), Jackman's symphonies of noise begin to harmonize into a eerily beautiful drone. Very highly recommended work that probably won't stay in print for much longer in spite of the repressing!
Again, Organum and The New Blockaders have released archival recordings without providing any information about those recordings. Fortunately, we here at Aquarius can subvert the two outfits' willful mysteriousness by providing a bit of information to go along
When collaborating with the Rupenus Brothers (aka The New Blockaders), David Jackman (the ringleader for Organum) hedges for a punishingly abrasive tone to come from his arsenal of scraping metal and growling motors. The "Pulp" ep is no exception with multiple hand-grinders abusing piles of scrap metal. Yet, behind this noise, Organum and The New Blockaders offer a strangely calm organ sound that drones noxiously like the late-period, carcinogenic work of MB. "Wrack" find the two ensembles again grinding away at another pile of metal, but with Jackman's Kawasaki motorcycle humming in the background. I'm not kidding. "Raze" finds all of the textural grit collapsing into a blur of white noise. Still quite nervous in its construction. There is also a track given the unfortunate title of "No Title" that rounds out this album. Since Jackman has five or six releases with this name, it's hard to say what this is, exactly. Nevertheless, it fits within the harsh acoustic noise that Organum and The New Blockaders are masters in creating.
Originally released as a cassette in 1984, "Salute" is an early collaboration between David Jackman (Organum's mastermind) and the Rupenus brothers (who outside of the anti-art noise in the New Blockaders, are also known as Masshitshaddu, Metgumbnerbone, Bladder Flask, Mixed Band Philanthropist, and probably a few other projects of esoteric hermeticism). While these two entities have crossed paths on a number of occassions (most notably being their speaker damaging noise collaboration "Symphony in X"), "Salute" makes for quite a listenable album, albeit one full of nervous claustrophobia. The tense analogue vibrations that buzzes incessantly with a flanged clatter of scraping/creaking metal put "Salute" in close proximity to the high-end squeal of Whitehouse, but fortunately without the embarrassing vocals. Most everything that Jackman touches is certainly worth listening to, and this is no exception.
It's been far too long since Organum (or the ensemble's mastermind David Jackman for that matter) released a proper full album. Instead, we've encountered a steady stream of short program EPs and seven inch singles, which is becoming an unfortunate tease, as Organum's work, with their beautifully sustained drones, mesmeric timbral interplay, and transcendent minimalism really requires extended durations for the Organum aesthetic to articulate itself. I would imagine that Jackman wants the audience to work for those ecstatic epiphanies that are potentially present throughout his entire catalogue. If this is in fact true, then I must resign myself to the fact that Organum records are going to continue to shorten, condense, and shrink.
Tinnitus VU finds Jackman taking up the Organum moniker once again, but this time he's collaborating with the shamanistic percussionist Z'ev. As one could expect, Mr. Jackman is not an easy man to find; and, even a man as esteemed and talented as Z'ev had to put considerable efforts into contacting Jackman, much less arranging a studio session to record. When the two finally got together, they bowed gongs and prepared wire instruments, scraped large pieces of metal together, and dragged heavy wooden objects across the studio floor. Alongside these archetypal actions for the two artists, they also decided upon a series of gentle piano chords. When Z'ev got a hold of those recordings and began to render a number of digital treatments of the source material, this 18 minute EP began to blossom. The piano only serves as a punctuation to the timbral explorations which emerge at first as shimmering drones of densely layered metallic dissonance and later, as an ocean of tumultous rumbles. Even with the digital sheen that Z'ev grafts upon the Organum sound, Tinnitus VU is an immaculate document.
We have sung the praises of many a David Jackman record, including both his solo projects and his epochal drone project Organum; yet, Jackman doesn't make it easy for us to like him. In recent years, he has only released hyper limited edition 7"s and 10"s with a paltry amount of sound on each, and usually with a pretty hefty price tag. Even the cd reissues are a bit frustrating, for instance the Vacant Lights / Rasa Avis was inexplicably released as a double cd when a single disc was more than adequate to house all of the material. Yet, Tocsin -- which is the second collaborative recording between avant-percussionist Z'ev and Organum -- is a much meatier release with almost 50 minutes of soundsculpting. In all likelihood, Z'ev is the one we have to thank for the longer program of Organum's music. The source material for Tocsin came from a single studio session in which Z'ev bowed and scraped the surfaces of an unspecified steel instrument, and Jackman sat behind a piano offering sparse clusters of sound. Afterwards, the two went their separate ways to further process the recordings. Z'ev's material focuses on the sustained metallic klang of that steel instrument; and while the resonances of those scrapes are quite similar to Jackman's quintessential albums like Ikon and Sphyx, his production sensibility places a much greater emphasis upon digital signal processing over Jackman's very dry sound. When it comes to Jackman's take on the material, he unsurprisingly concentrates on his piano clusters, with Z'ev's scrapes relegated to the background.
A beautiful live document from the msyterious Origami Galaktika. Four extended tracks mixed into one 36 minute seamless whole. A rich, dense, lush, organic assemblege of ambient drones and droning ambience. Distant fog horn moans, chimes blowing in the wind, rumbling glitch flecked hum, getting more and more ambient, until scratchy white noise fuzz adds the sound of rain beating on a roof or a distant steam engine sort of thrum to the proceedings, that eventually morph into a sort of bass driven groove, albeit a super minimal and subtly pulsing one, with the sounds of occasional passing trains and other found sounds. So nice.
What is it with Garm from Ulver (who runs the Jester label)? He just seems dead set on alienating everybody. I mean Garm and Ulver defined black metal for a while, even going so far as to record a record IN THE FOREST! Then they released an experimental double
The latest release on Pre-Cert Home Entertainment, a mysterious label/imprint run by Finders Keepers head honcho Andy Votel and hauntological soundscapers Demdike Stare, and as you might imagine from the folks running the label, not only is the music fantastical and strange, it's also of questionable provenance, with both Votel and DS keen on whipping up wild tales, and imagining far out backgrounds for record they themselves have made. But all we have to go on at this point is what we're told, which is that this is the vinyl debut, after a series of custom books and tapes, from David Orphan, who runs something called Devon Folklore Tapes, a Smithsonian Folkways like research/cultural heritage project/label, which in this case is concerned with a witch called Hannah Henley, and this tale of her ruthless mistreatment of the locals, and their revenge via the work of a white witch. The story is spelled out on the back of the sleeve, but it's unclear exactly what part the music plays, other than perhaps an imagined soundtrack to those long ago proceedings, and it does play like that, heavy on the found sounds and field recordings, starting out almost like the story, sans narration, set to vinyl, foot steps, creaking chairs, Hannah (we assume), humming and singing to herself as she works, the clink of glasses, all manner of sounds. Gradually strange musical cues begin to surface, and eventually play a much bigger part than those ambient sounds. ominous chords, mysterious wheezing harmoniums, pulsing synths (?), woozy bass melodies, all laced with whispered voices, the resulting soundscape sinister and quite haunting.
The B side opens with some dreamy druggy psychedelic folk, softly crooned female vox (Hannah again?), simply strummed guitar, underpinned by super creepy EVP like vices and bursts of demonic hissing. The record progresses with synth flecked woozy organ gypsy folk, giving way to dirgey sea shanties, al wheezing squeezebox and wild barroom percussion, long stretches of tripped out ambience, and a final burst of chaotic buzz drenched psychedelic freakout.
Hard to say how much of this is based in reality, but it hardly matters, it's really the perfect hauntological artifact either way, full of sonic mystery and heavily supported by all sorts of intriguing (mis)information, the cover featuring a sigil based on the story and a bone supposedly used in the creation of these sounds, and while it won't necessarily be of interest to fans of Demdike Stare and the like, as this is way less electronic and beat oriented, anyone into strange sounds, outsider art, and mysterious sonic archaeology, this will definitely hit the spot.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Originally released in 2007, the oddly named Find Electronica sees Italian soundscaper / audio alchemist Orsi, conjuring up some hushed delicate beauty, that sort of hazy, otherworldly fuzzy drift we can't seem to get enough of. Warm slowly whirling melodies blurred into long lazy drones, the layers constantly shifting, gorgeous overtones surfacing here and there, melodies buried and revealing glimpses now and again through the hushed lush shimmer of these tracks. The opening track is total Pop Ambient bliss out, anyone who digs that beatless shimmer, that washed out glistening thrum of groups like Gas and Klimek will be in heaven, Heck even the second track which finds Orsi looping an acoustic guitar into a bit of Appalachian mesmer, takes that guitar and wreathes it in a gorgeous gauze of muted electronics and muted psychedelia, the sort of late night sky-full-of-stars dreaminess that could go on forever, before slipping into a strange bit of post rockiness that quickly transforms into a sort of electronic music box bleepscape.
The record closes with the darkest of the three, a murky, low end rumble, shot through with glistening textures and subtle melodies, the sound ominous, but still warm and weirdly welcoming, gradually thickening, becoming something akin to a much more minimal Nadja, heavy, but woozy and warbly and completely mesmerizing. So fantastic. One of the coolest things we've heard from Orsi, which makes it all the more sad, that WE ONLY HAVE FIVE COPIES OF THIS!! Sadly the label is no more, which means we can never get more, which means these are the very last copies we'll ever see...
Latest from local label Time Released Sound, comes in the form of this ULTRA limited Peter King lathe cut 10" from Italian soundscaper Fabio Orsi, and it's a gorgeous, drifting dreamy dronescape, spread out over both sides of the record, glistening, and glimmering, laced with field recordings, the chirping of birds and the sounds of natured deftly woven into Orsi's delicate crystalline soundworld, all hushed and hazy, spectral and shimmery, laced with some soaring swoonsome string-like melodies, and patient, painterly piano, all blurred and smeared info gauzy streaks of soft focus sound, lush and so so lovely.
Like all Time Released Sound releases, extravagantly packaged, each 10" housed in a hand altered, spray stenciled, repurposed vintage picture sleeve from an old popular music 78, every one unique and one of a kind. Must have taken hours and hours of work since each one required a different stencil.
LIMITED TO JUST 70 COPIES!! We got only FIVE and will NOT be able to get more!!
We're really so excited to finally welcome local label Time Released Sound to the aQuarius family. We've yet to list anything, in part because their releases are so limited, but also, because they sell out so quickly. Every single release, every single copy is an incredible work of art. Each one hand crafted, individually assembled, numbered and hand stamped, letter pressed and printed, the packaging thematically linked to the sound within, with photographs, or old records, strange little knick knacks, clock hands, piano keys, they're really incredible, an absolute labor of love, with most of the limited versions taking hours to assemble, and the fact that Time Released Sound is just one man, makes it all the more impressive. So from here on out, we'll get a limited number of each release, they're quite limited already usually around 70-100 copies. And odds are we won't be able to get more than 10-15, but trust us, they're worth it, sonically beautifully, and visually stunning. There will be regular non-art editions of some of the releases, much less limited, and thus less expensive, but if you're after one of the limited editions, you'll want to act fast.
Another limited edition from Time Released Sound, this one from sound artist / dronescaper Fabio Orsi, whose Theft Of A Rose, is a sonic homage to Jean Cocteau's 1940 film Beauty And The Beast, and is a glorious piece of hushed and haunting minimal dronemusic, a lush, slow shifting expanse of warm swirling tones, lightly layered atmospheres, a luxurious slow build from a whispery drift, to a thick almost shoegazy shimmer, definitely reminiscent of Machinefabriek, mysterious overtones, pulsing buried rhythms, darkly dramatic and gorgeously ominous, so lovely, and well worth the price of admission alone, but the packaging is over the top!
Limited to just 100 copies, the cd is housed in a little black printed envelope, which along with an actual polaroid of a still from the film, and a lock of real hair tied with twine, is housed in a small plastic envelope, which in turn is placed in a vellum envelop, printed front and back, with a small tag affixed with twine, and inside the envelope are a handful of tiny sewn roses. So gorgeous!
We're probably not the first to say it, but doom metal band Orthodox are *anything but* orthodox on their second offering for the Southern Lord label. Spanish sludge lords with a psychedelic bent, Orthodox's 2006 debut album Gran Poder was a major sensation among connoisseurs of the heavy, being selected as an Album Of The Month on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website, in part for its pagan-Catholic imagery, in part for its monolithic heaviness. What about eagerly anticipated album number two? Though we think it's great, and most likely Mr. Cope does too, this new one will no doubt cause some consternation among the less open minded of doom fanatics, as it's got a lot more going on that sheer sludge-ry. Not that Gran Poder wasn't an eccentric effort either, but this one's extremely so. Extremely eccentric, and eclectic, indeed.
The first track, "Con Sangre De Quien Te Ofenda" could easily be mistaken for a moody piece of instrumental avant-jazz, with that wide-open-desert-spaces feel of Hex-era Earth, baroquely adorned with a shuffling, dramatic drum solo and an almost-joyous improv-blowing session for trumpet and other horns. It actually brings back fond memories of the late great metallic math-rockers Engine Kid, the band that SUNNO))) member and Southern Lord label boss Greg Anderson used to play in back in the day, like when they would get jazzy like Iceburn and cover Coltrane... Minus the horns, that disjointed, free-jazz vibe continues on the second track, the nine-minute "Mesto, Rigido E Ceremoniale", though they heavy it up quite a bit. Imagine a slowed-down, fractured Black Flag instrumental, like something from The Process Of Weeding Out made more abstract, slower and heavier. Entering into the territory of defunct Dutch instro-metallers Gore here! With the third song, though, vocals finally enter the mix, weirdly distressed and wailing chant-like, and the riffing gets more intensely metallic, rigidly clawing through a miasma of chaotic, psychedelic, paranoid jamming. That one, "Solemne Triduo", makes us think of Om mixed with Los Natas at their strangest. And then, just when things are getting loudest and most insane, the album takes an abrupt shift into the quietly windswept, acoustically strummed "Amancer En Puerta Oscura" which flows immediately into the ominous "Puerta Osario", with stark repeated chords, and cruelly plinking piano keys. Though just two minutes minutes long, this is no brief detour like the piano interlude heard in the middle of Gran Poder, as it seamlessly segues into the sedated, suspenseful "Templos" that pulsates for 15 minutes in an darkened dreamworld of eerie clarinet, shimmering cymbals, slow-paced percussion, sparsely echoing bass, sheer moody atmosphere... It's a kind of creeping chamber music, that could be the score from some Italian horror soundtrack, or the sinister cousin to the epic tracks on Circle's mellow and mesmeric Miljard, mixed maybe with the 20th Century style stuff Ghost was experimenting with on their last album, In Stormy Nights.
The seventh and final track, "Parte II. Apogeum", then hits like a ton of bricks, massive doom-riff guitars smashing all before it, as if to say, you want ye olde DOOOOOOM? You got it! This song should shut up any complainers who didn't entirely get what was going on before, it's a doozy of a doom number all right, complete with even frenzied, metallic, acid-fried guitar soloing, and insanely effected alien Ozzy vocals. Closest comparisons would be to Thrones, and Yob and/or Middian, at their most claustrophobically crushing. It's like Orthodox wanted to wrap the album up with one song that in 7 minutes, 54 seconds would utterly satisfy anyone wanting Gran Poder Part II, for whom some of the more mystifying, weirdly proggy stuff elsewhere on this album could just be a bonus. Of course for us it's all good.
Recommended to all unorthodox doom lovers! Art and design by Seldon Hunt, by the way, and as long as we're dropping his name, here's some other names that we should have worked into the review somehow, as we think fans of the following might quite like this: Boris, Comets On Fire, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Ennio Morricone, Dragonauta...
All the doom (and ultra doooooooOOOOOoooooom) lovers here at aQ agree, idiosyncratic Spanish outfit Orthodox is one of our faves, and have been pretty much ever since their 2006 debut, Gran Poder. Over their several albums since, they've pushed the doom envelope in various extreme and extremely strange directions, indulging all sorts of influences, but even when their predilection for sometimes avant-garde, proggy, jazzy, acoustic weirdness takes over, and they start sounding like a cross between Yob and Six Organs Of Admittance playing free jazz, they still ruled - and ultimately remained rooted in old school doom metal too, with a powerful, crushing, heavier-than-thou RIFF always lurking around even the most confusional of corners of their freaky ceremonial sounding compositions.
We hope you're as big of fans of Orthodox as we are, 'cause we're excited to have this new, double cd rare tracks collection from 'em. Of course it's all over the place, from covers of Venom and Sabbath to full on improv sessions, and it's all pretty killer. There's cuts from 7"s and compilations and early cassette demos, plus the bonus tracks from the Southern Lord vinyl edition of Gran Poder (those covers), and several previously unreleased songs as well, all remastered. Obviously for fans first and foremost, but heck if you started your Orthodox experience here you'd be well equipped (and we expect, eager) to delve into the rest of their catalog.
Things start off with mantric, OM-ish "Matse Avatar", the A side of a 7" originally released on the Doomentia label. Great lyrics, you can read 'em in the booklet - one line mentions an "old lady mermaid" who "sings like Geddy Lee". The B side comes next, then their version of Venom's "Genocide", an appropriately aggro and off the rails, bass heavy black metal blast. That's followed by the other cover, wherein Orthodox take one of the first, if not thee first, doom songs ever, "Black Sabbath", and come close to making it their own, being ultra fuzzed out & fucked with, and also seriously psychotic in the vocal dep't.; we'd thought we'd heard that song, and covers of that song, way too many times, but we're willing to spin this Orthodox version again and again. Weirdly, it somehow reminds us of Japanese underground '80s prog act YBO2, if that means anything to you or yours. Then there's the 18+ minute "Heritage", taken from the Four Burials 4-way split, a beautiful and haunting example of psychedelic slowcore "headphone doom", as we described it in our review of that disc. The three previously unreleased tracks are particularly interesting as well, one's from a collaboration with a flamenco dancer - but for sure isn't flamenco music, with its explosive distortion detonations and skittery soundscapes. The other two are intense noisy improvs, and the rather enlightening track-by-track commentary in the cd booklet from the band members reveals that they were inspired by Black Flag and Japanese psych like Mainliner and Keiji Haino, yup, we might have guessed. John Coltrane and, uh-huh, Rush are other influences mentioned here and there. In fact, one of the improvs is titled "Japan Rush", ok!!
Disc two is all lengthy tracks from live rehearsals, originally released on demo tapes, definitely raw but with tons of atmosphere, two of 'em being the first Orthodox recordings ever from back in 2005, demonstrating that they dwelled in "the void" from the very beginning, cult stuff for sure, and HEAVY - listen to these early versions of songs from their debut studio album and get even deeper into their eccentric, unhinged doooooom vibe. The demo track from Sentencia, "Ascension", shows how much changed in a couple years, the band even more eccentric, their doom harder to define.
All in all, essential to anyone who really appreciates Orthodox, and well worth checking out if you're into adventurous doom in general, from Cathedral to SUNNO))), Khanate to Boris, OM to Los Natas... (We're not sure if Rush fans will dig, but they could give it a try too.)
Second release from former Crom-Tech guitarist Mick Barr and Josh Blair (of ABCS) following their debut on Tolotta. Ninety-nine tracks fly by at a warp speed twelve-and-a-half minutes. Naked City meets Yngwie Malmsteen gone hardcore pretty much sums it up.
Ok, we were wrong back on AQ-L 117 when we said that former Crom Tech guitarist Mick Barr's Octis project was "the polar opposite" of his other band, Orthrelm. For some reason we had gotten the idea that while Octis specializes in short, fast, squiggly guitar
Orthrelm spells...? Not relief from headache, that's for sure! Notorious guitarist Mick Barr (ex-Crom Tech, and of Octis and Flying Luttenbachers infamy also) and drummer Josh Blair continue their assault on musical sanity with Ov, newly released by Mike Patton's envelope-pushing Ipecac label. Ov leaves the envelope pretty much pushed beyond what most people can take -- it will be quite the endurance test for some, but pure bliss for a select few. By the end of this review you should know who you are if you don't already (owning other records involving Barr is one clue).
Way back when we reviewed Orthrelm's debut ep Iorxhscimtor, we admitted that we'd been under the mistaken impression that Orthrelm was supposed to be "some sort of droney, doomy thing with super-long songs". It wasn't... but now it is. Sort of. Unlike previous Orthrelm releases (and Barr's other project Octis), Ov isn't about a million trebly tracks of stop-start skronk. No, here the duo's frenetic drumming and insidious ADD guitar squiggle are harnessed into a single, 45 minute long track of intense, almost metallic, repetitive minimalism. A high-pitched, note-dense, trance-inducing (maybe seizures too?), insectoid symphony that slowly shifts gears and builds tension but offers little respite or resolution until its 45 minutes are up or your ears/speakers/the disc iself shatters from the stress. Yet, if you can take it, Ov's continuous rumble of drums and precision frenzies of tinny guitar shred also create a thing of static, maddening beauty. I think...or maybe I've lost it. Am I crazy when I think that some of the feedbackier parts remind me of moments of the Boredoms' Super Ae? Or that this is not entirely unlike something that Boris or SUNNO))) would do... but with a million times more emphasis on the high end, and the notion of motion on the micro if not macro level??
- MPEG stream: "Ov
- MPEG stream: "Ov
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We have only 4 copies of this, a super limited cassette tape release from weirdo abstract blackened doomscapers OS, whose Twelve Truths lp we raved about a while back. Besides being another sick slab of crusty creepy crawly black filth, the packaging is to die for, small, black-painted wooden coffins, each with a brass plaque affixed to the front, and each of course NAILED SHUT, inside is the tape, and a handful of tiny BONES! Pretty awesome. And CRAZY limited. Already out of print. We managed to get a mere FOUR copies from the band, and will not be able to get more. So if you're in the market for some howling, atonal, sludge-y blackened doom sprawl and lumbering chaotic caterwauling abject detuned black ambient heaviness, or even if you just want a killer coffin-cloaked bone-surrounded blackdoom cassette, well better act fast, cuz odds are these will be gone in no time...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We heard of the Portuguese duo Osso Exotico from the exceptional Drone Records 7" series (curated by Stefan of Troum / Maeror Tri). Their single was actually an out-take from the recording sessions for this album of lengthy church organ explorations. The sustained chords of the organs received no electronic treatment, showing Osso Exotico's ties to the phenomological compositions of Alvin Lucier or Pauline Oliveros. Very nice work!
SF sampling keyboard improviser and composer Ostertag's new, noisy solo disc (volume one).
