Lots of you are probably pretty obsessed by now with UK label Paradigms and pick up pretty much everything they release. Always interesting, gorgeously packaged, and Snowdrift is no exception.
Veering dramatically from their drone/metal direction, Paradigms surprised us a while back with the recent full length from Plants, a dark, psychfolk duo from Portland who reference everything from Comus to Incredible String Band to M83 to Charlemagne Palestine.
And now, Paradigms have dug up another dark treasure from the Northwest, this time from Seattle, Snowdrift are a dark brooding ensemble, who aren't nearly as far out as the rest of their labelmates. The label mentions Low and Mazzy Star and Amber Asylum and those are pretty good starting points. Imagine a moody shuffling post rock, with moaning cellos, shimmering guitars, sort of laid back and smoky, with occasional squalls of subtly blown out psych, but for the most part sort of drifting and slithering dreamily. The focal point is definitely the vocals, female, dark and throaty, a rich velvety croon, perfectly matched to the warm shimmery musical backdrops. And while the band does explore and experiment here and there, this is nothing so much as moody minor key mope rock. A sort of post rock slowcore pop... On a different label, one could definitely imagine these guys and gal on the radio, maybe even MTV, the dark moodiness just accessible enough for regular folks, but dreamy and dramatic enough to keep it interesting. The songs are fairly conventional, but they are often wrapped in decidedly unconventional layers, be it a thick swaths of shimmering strings, a fuzzy rumbling drone, some clattery abstract ambience. Cool stuff for sure. But might be a bit tame and middle of the road for the truly experimental among you. And if you were hoping for something a little more Hjarnidaudi or Angelic Process, then see elsewhere on this list for the other new Paradigms release from the decidedly more fucked Wraiths.
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a colorful mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
Woah! We've got the return of a way, way, way, WAY OUT electric guitar and drums duo document here, an improv maelstrom of uber DISTORTION freakout action that proves there's nothing new under the sun, 'cause this was cranked out by two long haired American hippies back in the early Seventies. In the annals of underground noise, they deserve a special place. This is proto everything! Mick Barr, No Wave, Ascension, Rhys Chatham, Glen Branca, Sonic Youth, High Rise, The Blue Humans, Dead C, Harry Pussy, Lightning Bolt, D!O!D!O!D!, even the Rangda we listed a couple weeks ago... heck, we're hearing all of that here. Wow. A total feedback and bashing attack, but not negative in attitude or anti-musical at all. In fact, it's presented with a lot of positive hippy-dippy charm ("listen for the time when the drums play themselves - when the spirits in the drums themselves are dancing" - that's a quote from drummer Bob Thompson found on the '98 release, and the title Daily Dance comes from the writings of Ken Kesey of Merry Prankster/Acid Test fame). Yet, it makes one of their own influences - The Stooges - seem square in comparison. These two go further in channeling spiritual free jazz a la Coltrane and Sanders into a stripped down, amped up primal "psych rock" context, it's hard to think of many earlier examples of such out-rock exploration. And it was also totally DIY punk too - of course, no label back then, or now for that matter, would have seen much commercial potential in this volume-dealing duo's pioneering skronk fest!
Daily Dance was recorded in 1972, and subsequently released as a private press lp in '73 via Carla Bley's New Music Distribution Service. It was reviewed favorably by Creem magazine in '77 (you can see, this didn't get all that much attention when it first came out, but has grown in cult status over the years), with Doug Snyder's guitar squall indeed compared to James Williamson of The Stooges. Snyder also cited the Velvet Underground and Sonny Sharrock as his guitar influences... Japan's Masayuki Takayangi was probably unknown to Snyder at the time but we bet he'd have been into him too, though the Daily Dance duo definitely are more ROCK than they are jazz. Or at least, they manage to combine rock and jazz without coming close to "fusion", not that there's anything wrong with fusion, good fusion anyway, but there's lots of bad fusion and this ain't either.
Now it's been reissued on cd for the second time (the previous edition, from '98, is long out of print) and on vinyl as well, making it available to a new generation of improv noise rock freaks. [Vinyl? Yes, unfortunately we're out of stock on the vinyl right at the moment, but will get it back in soon, so please let us know if you want a copy in that format.] Pretty neat to hear music "like this" being made for what might have been the very first time, certainly Snyder and Thompson were "pushing the envelope" as they knew it then, advancing into territory not entirely mapped out by things they'd already heard. And even if it wasn't from '72, anyone who likes loud, full-on freakout, rhythmic skree, and droney noisy textures will be variously entertained, whether it be by the moody, mystic feedback and percussive shimmer that closes out the epic title track, or the dense rumble of "Teenage Emergency" at the end of the disc that makes us think of Sharrock playing some sort of static surf music...
Lion Productions, in association with Cantor Records (responsible for the vinyl reissue mentioned above), has done this up nicely, in a fancy Japanese-looking miniature lp style paste-on sleeve, complete with obi. Remastered from the original tapes, and packaged with a 20 page booklet with liner notes and photos. Nice! FYI, this compact disc edition also includes a previously unreleased two-minute bonus track, "Unseen, Unheard", that was left off the both the original and reissued vinyl for reasons of space (and it's not on the previous cd version either).
We had been hearing the name So Percussion being thrown around a lot lately, but we actually hadn't actually heard their music until now. Based on their name and the fact that they are made up of young percussionists we were worried that maybe it was going to be like the audio equivalent of seeing Stomp. And while we do actually love going to see Stomp with our Mom's (ahem), we are happy to report that the music that So Percussion makes is not merely a "look at us we're making drum sounds out of everything." In fact, Amid The Noise actually pushes the percussion to a much more subtle and ambient level, having more in common with Eno and Reich as it does street musicians drumming on garbage cans or Blue Man Group. Meditative playing that recalls Tortoise at their zenith, and the most delicate and intricate moments of Aphex Twin's Druqk's. Disciplined and perfectly played yet not sterile. The second disc is a DVD of beautiful films by Jenise Treuting of Japanese street scenes set to the music of So Percussion. We're definitely happy to finally know what So Percussion are all about.
Like the best of improv musicians, Matmos have proven to be such mindful and masterful collaborators over the years. Teaming up with everyone from The Kronos Quarter to J Lesser, David Pajo to Marshal Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Wobbly to Rachel's, Terry Riley to Bjork, the list goes on and on! What's always exciting about these collaborations is that Matmos really do shed their skin and mutate into something totally different as they play off the blueprints of the folks they are collaborating with, and help bring that sound to entirely new places, stretching the bounds of outer sound possibilities. This time they're working with So Percussion, the percussive based collective whose sound exists somewhere between Steve Reich and Tortoise, but with Matmos thrown into the mix the sound becomes much more stretched out with unexpected twists, turns and nuanced vibrations. From a Penguin Cafe Orchestra vibe to postmodern gamelan rhythms, this is a record that really encapsulates what it means to be sound artists feeding off of each other. These are all musicians who you can tell are stretching way out, using their imaginations and having fun while they create something together that they wouldn't have come up with on their own. Highly recommended!
Don't know too much about these guys (this guy?) other than the fact that they create the sort of hazy mechanical looped soundscape we can't seem to get enough of. Imagine the music of Philip Jeck, Wolf Eyes, Tim Hecker, Starving Weirdos and This Heat but all stripped down and reassembled into some abstract collage of post industrial loops, gritty lo-fi dronemusic and abstract motorik krautrock abstraction.
Hard to say what exactly these guys are using as sound sources, there is some sort of metallic percussion, super processed vocals, tons of FX, layer upon layer of fuzzy grit, grimy blurs and deeprumbles, there's a drumkit in there too, lurking below the woozy fug above, but occasionally exploding in a little burst of sizzling cymbals. There's a definite grim gothic vibe too, when the noise occasionally peels back, it reveals a moody meandering sort of doom drift, cold wave, gloom pop, all tribal and haunting and hypnotic. With warm warbly organ, weird swirling production, before the record explodes again in a sprawl of clank and clatter and crunch.
The record shifts and transforms constantly, but often finds a gorgeous washed out hypnotic sound and settles in, sticking with it for long stretches, lulling the listener into an altered state, and then yanking them out and hurling them into an avalanche of crumbling distortion and fractured truncated beats, streaks of feedback and heaving swells of muted distortion.
Even at its noisiest, Born Into It manages to be weirdly pretty and super mesmerizing, but more often than not, the noise is tamped down by thick swaths of thick whirring dreamdronedrift, and wrapped around abstract skeletal rhythms.
Super cool stuff.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Full disclosure: the members of this new, Jewelled Antler-related outfit making their debut release on the Digitalis label are not only all friends of ours, but one of 'em, namely Christine Boepple, works here at AQ (she's the charming lass dealing with all your mailorder requests). And until recently, another of the Softwar bunch, Kerry McLaughlin, was also working here side-by-side with Christine. So, OF COURSE this is great! And if all you regular mailorder customers don't order one, well, don't say we didn't warn you about what happens when you get on Christine's bad side... But seriously, this IS good, a relaxing fantasy camping trip into the wilds of Northern California (and into the basement musical lairs where these folks dwell when they're at home).
It is, as you might expect, improvised, abstract psych-folk. Drifting and densely detailed. Jewelled Antler's Franciscan Hobbies (among other JA acts) would be a close parallel, as would Finnish contemporaries Kemialliset Ystavat. Softwar's mysterious droning moods are sweetened by distorted melodies and haunting, gentle female singing. The sounds and structures are inherently unstable, with queasy keyboards and overloaded electronics sending the listener softly to the floor (or up to the clouds), where one can safely bask in the queer beauty of Softwar's fragmented songforms, which range from whispery lullabies adorned with clinking and tinkling atop their shimmering drones, to much more beard-stiffening, rhythmic jamming, with suggestions of a primitive communal hippy vibe recalling krautrockers Siloah ferinstance.
Like the artwork that accompanies it -- vintage photos of happy, groovy people playing "non-competitive group games" in the Whole Earth Catalogue era of the 1970s -- the music is playful and nicely captures the spirit of icebreaking games that were designed sincerely with the ideal of changing society.
We mentioned Kerry and Christine, who have played in a zillion bands from this scene, Kerry in Franciscan Hobbies, Buried Civilizations, and Skygreen Leopards among others, Christine in Skygreen Leopards, Ov, Kyrgyz, Franciscan Hobbies, Whysp, etc. But Softwar's also got two guys to go with those two girls: Geoff Koops (Franciscan Hobbies, The Shitty Listener) and long-time AQ fave Loren Chasse, whom we're sure you already know quite well from all of his myriad projects. Let's list a few together shall we? Thuja, id battery, Of, Ov, Coelacanth, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Child Readers, L/R, Kyrgyz, etc. etc. etc.
As wonderful as so many of those other projects have been, we're truly convinced that these four teaming up to wage Softwar is a very special thing.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Second release we've been able to get our hands on from Soil Sing Through Me, a sort of underground freak folk supergroup featuring members of Feathers and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, who for this disc have teamed up with DC outfit Kohoutek for an evening of communal music making, the results should be no surprise, a druggy blown out meandering laid back psychedelic folk free for all. Blasted, stoned, groovy and fucked up.
You can definitely hear more SHOTM than Feathers, or maybe it's Kohoutek who we had never heard anyway, but this is not so much folky as sort of spaced out and trippy. Simple propulsive tribal rhythm jams and simple stripped down rock beats are the framework for these inner space excursions, wah guitar and slivers of silvery feedback drift to and fro, melodies are spread out over the proceedings like a tattered old blanket, there seem to be vocals too, but they are minimal and are usually buried under a ton of FX and psychedelic shimmer, keyboards buzz and huge spacious expanses offer the players plenty of space to stir up subtle bits of percussive clatter, glistening flurries of blurry buzz, strange spidery little melodies all tangled up amidst the stumbling drums and rumbling bass. This definitely has a Dead C vibe, but then what improvised noise rock psych jam doesn't? No good ones, that's for sure.
The usual suspects will eat this up. Sunburned Hand obsessives for sure need this, as do all you free folk noise rock cd-r freaks...
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, most likely already out of print. Packaged in the instantly recognizable skull and crossbones Wabana purple painted digipak.
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Sokai Stilhed is the stage name for the soft-spoken Heather Cullen, whose vocal and sound-sculpting abilities should be taken quite seriously given the strength of her work on this hand-spun release. There's plenty of things that Cullen employs that immediately give us pause. First of all, there's the perpetual crackle of old vinyl achieving a golden patina which accentuates her otherworldly reverberations; but most importantly is her voice which drawls haunting reconstructions of Appalachian psalms which crosshatch a world-weariness with a hallowed adoration for the divine. Even as she pushes her own voice deep in the recesses of the faux-tape compression and dreamily droning ambience, there is a potency and strength to her voice. Given the opportunity, she could belt out a bluesy, a capella number at a Baptist church that would give many people the shivers; but instead of that well-trod path, she fragments her own voice to complement the delicate artifacts from guitar, autoharp, field recordings, and her trusted Loop Station. These tracks emerge as if stitched from spider webs, catching hold of whatever may fall into the web, but they are ephemeral if nothing else. If Philip Jeck were given unrestricted production over a Cat Power record, it would sound pretty close to this. These editions are handmade by Cullen featuring a candle-burnt and wax sealed piece of paper mounted to the cover and also featuring the album's track titles. It remains to be seen just how limited these are... A fantastic release, no matter how you look at it!
Latest from this Danish doomlord, whose last record, Let There Be A Massacre, was a huge hit around here, sure we hauled out the extra o's, it was supremely dooooooooooomy after all, but not sludgey funereal ultradoom, it was more a classic doom, with soaring and majestic melodies, proper songs, not just huge slabs of black rumble (not that we don't love that too). This new one though, actually starts off with some super minimal dronemusic, all layered tones and undulating swells of low end, atmospheric and ambient, it's not until about 5 minutes in, when something other than low end surfaces, but instead of a blast of doomy crush, it's an accordion / harmonium, emitting yet more drones, but these melodic and melancholy, drifting atop that sea of roiling blackness, and then when the church organ comes in, it's epic and intense, the sound so powerful and haunting, the whole first side of the tape, this gorgeous bit of blackened almost folky ambience.
But then flip it over, and that's where the doom comes in, a massive, crushing, lumbering slab of howled anguished depressive doom, the vocals a throat shredding yowl, over the downtuned churn of the guitar, and the Teutonic pound of the drums, all underpinned by atmospheric synths, the sound does shift into something more melodic, all spidery melodies and almost post rocky arrangement, before slipping right back into more abject doom. The track continually drifts between the two, before finally bleeding into the final track, which begins all wheezing organ drone and simple drum plod, hypnotic and weirdly krautrocky (reminding us actually of that Tony Conrad and Faust collaboration, so much so we sort of wished it kept doing that for the entirety of the song), until the guitars and vocals kick in, but instead of getting super doomy, the guitar is weirdly twangy, the vibe almost like a doomy Morricone, the shrieked vox the only concession to true doom, otherwise it would sound like some weird sort of Scenic / Barn Owl hybrid. Weird and quite cool.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES! Packaged in a gorgeously printed textured paper J-card, the tape held shut by a printed Japanese style obi.
We've heard Sol before, the one-man Danish dooooooooooomster whose debut on Van we compared to both Skepticism and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and recommended also to fans of such acts as Svarte Greiner and even Woven Hand, due to the "apocalyptic doomfolk" elements of Sol's sound. Now, we've got some new Sol, a collaboration on the always interesting Paradigms label with another Danish artist named Blodtru, and it's even more of a mashup of ultra doom, militaristic neo-folk, ambient, goth, and classical (the first track adapting music by 17th century English baroque composer Henry Purcell). Instrumentation ranges from accordion and glockenspiel to feedback and programming... Musically, it's both menacing and melodic, usually molasses-like and mesmeric. Across the six long tracks of this 77 minute disc, you'll encounter rumbling low-end bass, some sombre singing, shimmering cymbals, martial drum rolls, acoustic string pluck, and long lovely stretches of quietly wavering electronic drone. The occasional vocals sound somewhere between Antony of Antony & The Johnsons and Gregorian monk chant, or get scarier with a guttural black metal like rasp. Stunningly effective, super heavy when it's heavy, totally blissed out when it's blissed out, sometimes both at once, so atmospheric, and recommended! Could equally appeal to fans of Der Blutharsch and OM, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat and Aun. Limited to 500 copies.
When we first heard Ireland's Solar Bears, for whatever reason we sort of pegged them as another eighties style retro Carpenter / Goblin worshipper, and while there is an element of that in what they do, and we of course LOVE that stuff, there's so much more going on, their sound at once futuristic, but also pastoral, droney and a little sci-fi, but also blissed out and a little new agey, organic and poppy, jangly and dreamy, an incredible mix of so many different sounds we love, which perhaps seem like they wouldn't work together, but somehow, She Was Coloured In ends up sounding practically perfect.
Beginning with a reverbed sample, laid over a murky lo-fi loop, and a skeletal bit of rhythmic skitter, the track blossoms with prismatic synth swirls, fuzzed out swells of distorted chordal shimmer, it's like some sort of shoegazey dreampop, before the track shifts into something almost funky, with fat fuzzy stuttery bass and some sci-fi soundtracky synth, which gives way to gorgeously hazy folky steel guitar strum, which in turn leads into some almost Ariel Pink sounding FM radio retro pop, all warm chiming melodies, vocodered vocals, low slung basslines and little flurries of guitar jangle.
As if it wasn't already good, starting with the third track, "Twin Stars", it gets even better, deep fuzzed out low end drones, thrum and throb, darkly melodic, then some programmed beats swoop in, looped and stuttery, some melancholy synth melodies surface, all very soundtracky, still more melodies, a counterpoint to the original melodies, all very emotional and intense and dramatic, until that gives way to swirly bit of Reichian synth loop shimmer that could go on forever. The title track begins with stately cellos, or cello-like synths, some woozy bass, lush melodic swells, and then the song transforms into some sort of post rock lope, chiming guitars simple drums, swoonsome strings, a little twang, a little psychedelic crunch, so lush and subtly epic, which leads directly into two minutes of glimmering new agey bliss in the form of "Head Supernova", which gradually transforms from muted murky thrum, to weirdly majestic pomp.
"Crystalline (Be Again)" is another strange hybrid, beginning as a minimal bit of subtle synth drift, before crunchy psychedelic guitars transport the track into the realm of propulsive space kraut drift, and then into tripped out new wave, more loping bass, swirling space age synths, looped riffs, building to a seriously soundtracky bit of retro futurism.
The record is so varied, and the sound so ever shifting, that it's difficult to describe without going track by track, yet for all of the record's varied sounds and songs, it all flows so perfectly, like the score for some lost sixties psychedelic film, or the soundtrack to some super strange European television show, so evocative and ethereal and atmospheric, but with moments of spaced out rocking, or blissy shoegazey drift, or hypnotic krautrock throb. Fluttering flutes intertwine with delicate Appalachian folk, strings soar and sing, tinkling chimes drift over sixties Stereolab style Europop, synths distort and crunch, and weave pulsing science fiction electronic groovescapes, with moments definitely reminding us of Zombi and Majeure, but then as quickly as those bits explode into action, they recede leaving gently lilting drifts of hushed new age folky ambience, or layered droney buzz, or even minimal soundtracky groovepop that reminds us of Rockford Kabine's audio experiments, elsewhere looped sixties vocals are layered over warped fuzz bass and shuffling percussion, strings slip and slide, house-y rhythms sink into thick swaths of sun dappled chordal crunch, and super sweet melodies swoop and soar above handclaps and clipped drum machine, a weirdly propulsive sunshiney electro space pop, and then finally, there's a gorgeously lush and somber closer, with reverbed piano, more flutes, simple strummed acoustic guitars, warm soft swells, building to a lush tangle of guitar melody and dark piano chord drift, eventually leaving just a bit of flute flecked layered and distorted dronemusic, finishing with the ka-chunk of the stop button being pressed on an old tape player, as if we were listening to some old tape, or even better, like we were listening to this very record, only in some alternate future, the future as envisioned by pretty much every eighties movie and TV show, one where where cassette tape technology was still the preferred method of audio playback, even in our flying cars, and automated houses.
We love this record.
So, for those poor folks who missed out on the first cassette we listed from our absolute favorite Vancouver psych/drone duo Solars, here's your chance to pick up their latest slab of gloriously executed, beautifully layered drone-gazeeee!
Eyes begins as a faint wave creeping up from beneath the tides, only to slowly shift into a blossoming crescendo of layered electric guitar, vocal decay and an avalanche of ecstatic, chakra-melting bliss. Imagine Eliane Radigue somehow jamming with Slowdive, then picture those recordings mixed by William Basinski, and you pretty much have this tape. Swarming overtones arching from the wavering drones, rich synth-like low end hovering under the placid wash of shimmering, heavy nu-new age. Similar to the heavy-gazing alchemy of their first cassette Shadow/Cave, this single-sided, long form track is patiently sculpted with close attention to sonic detail, each new listen revealing a hidden world of buried beauty. If you can't tell already, this is criminally limited to an edition of 50. Yep, only 50 of these out there, not sure if we can get more than the 10 we already have, so act fast if you want one! Don't want folks missing out TWICE....
If you're a loyal aQ follower, you already know how much we love to discover new and awesome music from all over this dusty planet. And you probably already know that what makes us even more excited is being able to share it with all of our fellow music nerds! With that in mind, we absolutely could not wait to share with you our newest obsession and latest discovery, Vancouver's best-kept dream drone secret, Solars!
This brand new tape from the heavy hitting drone-gaze duo completely hits the spot, super unique and magical stuff here. Imagine the slow creep of distant bells growing louder and louder until you're bundled in a blanket of rich, metallic swell, then massive layers of thick guitar wash expand over you into monolithic chords that shimmer and morph in the blinding sunlight. Like taking the crushingly heavy, melodic smear of MBV's loveless, and combining it with the melodic richness and orchestral detail of Stars of the Lid, and there you have Solars' Shadow/ Cave, their debut cassette on Pop Drones Records. Somber melodies wrapped in cocoons of fuzz and buzzing heaviness, echoing electric guitar lulling you deeper and deeper into the night's hazy mist, completely blissed out and amazing!! Though the duo have also released a 7" in the past, this is their most recent release and a fine representation of what these sonic magi can conjure up. With a tape debut as killer as this, we seriously cannot wait to hear what else these Canadian conjurers cook up in the future. Super duper limited to an edition of 30, we only have a few, so you better be quick if you want one, they will be gone in no time!!
We love when weird stuff just shows up in the mail, especially when that weird stuff turns out to be some grim, rhythmic, experimental blackened industrial avant-noise, like this, the first we've heard from Solitary Torture, whose sound is tough to describe beyond the above. Somehow super varied, but woven into a strange black sonic ritual, beginning with whipping winds, and some glitched out primitive rhythms, which is soon swallowed up by a blast of howling heaviness, before transforming into a swirling psychedelic blacknoise freakout, moaning vocals, and gristly electronics. At that point, we were sort of expecting this to be a straight up noise record, but instead, the second track unveils a melancholy, buzz drenched black metal riff, but instead of exploding into your standard blasting metal, in stretches way out, for the length of the track, spaced out and truancy and minimal and super hypnotic, the final minute or two erupting into some speaker shredding crush.
The rest of the record splits its time between, grinding black electronica, post industrial thrum, woozy abstract black ambience, blurred grim riffage, strange minimal noise collages and dense, blasting blacknoise blowouts. Killer stuff for sure. Surprised this isn't on Crucial Blast.
Needless to say, we only got a tiny handful of these, so not sure if/when we'll be able to get more. Comes housed in a DVD style case, with two xeroxed black and white inserts.
Some new gentle sounds from the bright SF indie label Tell-All Records! This is the latest album from Mr. Scott Solter, a gent who is perhaps most known for being the man at the helm of the recording board for numerous aural luminaries such as Mountain Goats, Spoon, Court & Spark, Tarentel, Crooked Jades, Okkervil River and 31 Knots. On occasion though he steps to the other side of the console to craft his own music. One River is a soothing, vaporous listen. Ambient drones drift in and out, evoking the tranquility of a calm lake rather than the flowing movement of a river. Very very nice!
First we've heard from this new local label, and the debut recording from Some Ember, aka Dylan Travis, who was laid up after an accident, and decided to spend his settlement on a bunch of gear (and from the sounds here, he must have been on plenty of pain killers too!), building this record from scratch, and learning to record in the process, but you'd never know it from the results. It's a dark, lush landscape of brooding, swirling post punk cold wave minimalism, all pulsing muted synths, spare percussion, shimmery atmospheres, thick, crumbling industrial swells, hushed melancholic melodies, all blurred into a murky, washed out dirge pop dreamscape, sounding a bit like a more lysergic Talk Talk, driven by Travis' vocals which at times sound like Danzig covering Scott Walker, and at others like some impossible hybrid of Antony and Dave Gahan, soaring and passionate, emotive and dramatic, we really weren't prepared to dig this as much as we do. Fantastic!
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!
The Paradigms label has taken a mysterious turn away from things heavy and metal lately, focusing instead of the dronier and more ambient side of the sonic spectrum. Both the new releases in the latest batch are dark and mysterious, haunting and atmospheric.
Somnam are from Finland, and you know how much we love weird sounds from Finland!
The label references Twin Peaks, Goblin and Ulver, we definitely hear all that, but we also hear John Carpenter, and plenty of Muslimgauze, a sort of alien world music, tribal percussion, muted industrial crunch, swirling synths, all woven into creepy cinematic soundscapes, deep resonant drones beneath keening distant melodies, skittering electronic beats, swirling moody ambience, thick slabs of low end rumble, wavery sci fi synth warble over reverbed piano and crumbling washed out fuzz. It definitely sounds like the soundtrack to some awesome lost seventies Italian horror flick. Fans of Zombi will dig this like crazy, and we've said it before, but why aren't modern filmmakers looking to the world of underground music, bands like Zombi and Somnam, would be just as well served scoring horror flicks and weirdo indie films as they are playing with regular rock bands and making records. For now might was well just throw this on, close your eyes, and imagine all the fantastically grotesque and wonderfully horrific images these sounds invoke.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in white dvd style cases with full color artwork, and printed inserts.
When it comes to the methods of making dronemusik, the way you mix all of the component parts is probably more important that the original source material. A subtle shift between all of the layered drones can deeply impact any of the metaphors, allusions, and imagined landscapes that might emerge from the minimalist atmospheres. The Anoxia collaboration between Chicago's improv-dronescapist Adam Sonderberg and British tone-bender Paul Bradley (who has occasionally partnered with Colin Potter and Darren Tate on a number of exquisite post-Ora productions) finds Sonderberg culling all of the source material and Bradley producing the final mix. Within Bradley's engulfing, haunted mix of reverberant atmosphere, it's hard to tell what Sonderberg brought to the mix; but the resonance of what could be gongs, metallic pipes, and long strung instruments have been stretched and tugged into deep low frequency drones broadcast from the bottom of the ocean, collecting shimmering watery echoes, sonorous refractions, extended gasps of drowned air, and occasional tactile crunches of sand and grit. Beautifully immersive stuff that should appeal to those into Jonathan Coleclough, Thomas Koner, Keith Berry, and Loren Chasse's non-Jewelled Antler material.
Yes, this is a brand new recording by the same Alan Sondheim who made records on ESP and Riverboat in the late 1960's. A multi-intrumentalist, a poet and a visual artists, Sondheim has been making culture a little more interesting and innovative for the last four decades. Ski/nn finds his fingers navigating vintage instruments like a 19th century parlor guitar and a prime alpine zither from the 1920's. The results are so amazing! Primitive psych-folk that is sometimes really pretty and at other times freaked out and menacing. Sharing a similar spirit and freedom as the late Derek Bailey. Short pieces that together create a ghostly and timeless sensation.
Alan Sondheim is a legendary writer and critic, he's also quite the accomplished musician, his fantastic Ritual-All-7-70 album was recently reissued on ESP which we should get around to reviewing quite soon. This collaborative effort is in fact not archival but a brand new record, released on the insanely prolific and always impressive Porter Records, on Julu Twine Sondheim teamed up with lap steel guitarist Myk Freedman for some improvised folk, that manages to bristle with energy, sounding quite abstract at moments, but surprisingly composed at others.
Incorporating a unique arsenal of instruments, including zither, banjo slide guitar and even something called a parlor guitar, the duo crafted this gorgeous songsuite, the playing is often quite percussive, and aggressive, subtle strumming and abstract finger picking is all tangled up with intense strumming, and atonal scrabbling, here and there the instruments are wreathed in thick buzzing feedback, other times the melodies are spidery and abstract and allowed to unfurl lazily. Sondheim contributes a kick ass banjo solo, that sounds simultaneously like classic bluegrass, but also slightly chaotic and seat-of-the-pants sounding. Freedman counters with a gorgeously languid slide guitar solo, all drifty and woozy and ethereal, but the record works best when the two play together, and off of each other. Lots of reverb and room sound, strange haunting Eastern sounding melodies, occasional squalls of detuned hillbilly psych freakouts, stumbling lurching atonal melodies drifting into soft shimmering avant Appalachia, squiggly slippery slide wound all around off kilter chromatic riffing, and once in a while, the two come together perfectly and unfurl a warm washed out drone-y guitar raga, that we wish would just go on and on and on.
Everyone into Blackshaw and Rose and Bishop and Baldwin and Ahmed And Akiyama and other modern acoustic guitarists should definitely check this out. Same sort of sound, but way more tripped out and otherworldly and mysterious and jazzlike. RECOMMENDED!!!
I can hardly begin to describe the Sonic Catering Band without cracking up. The whole idea is completely silly, but totally brilliant. The Sonic Catering Band are as much about concept and execution as they are about sound. Basically, the members of the band prepare, cook, and consume a meal, while mic-ing every single step of the way, plates and pots, utensils and cuttlery, and processing, cutting, mixing and layering those sounds into gorgeous drone-y, clattery soundscapes. The concept has evolved, sometimes including band members' mothers brought in for the actual cooking and sometimes including the actual prepared food with the finished record. Their debut was a very limited (ten copies actually) cd-r / cd-sized cake (!) which obviously went out of print immediately, or at least got thrown in the fridge to keep fresh. And outside of a few singles, there hasn't been much else until now. Greek label Absurd has put together this massive 2 cd live document of EVERY SCB performance. Disc one is a dense collage drawn from all of the bands live performances while disc two is their final show in its entirety, unedited and un-fucked with. The sounds of cooking are transformed in the deft hands of the Sonic Catering Band into dense, throbbing soundscapes of pulsing, fuzzed out low end rumble, crackling, staticky clatter, upper register, tweeter shredding skree, and the clinking, distant ambient whir of dining and cooking and sitting down to a homecooked meal. You can even get all the recipes from their website and try them out at home! Think Total, Skullflower, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Lustmord, Angus Maclise, Jonathan Coleclough, and Troum all battling it out on Iron Chefs. Brilliant and delicious!
The Sonic Catering Band were a fairly recent discovery for us, even though they've been around for several years now, and they seemed a perfect match for our strange tastes here at Aquarius. A large ensemble, that physically, prepare, cook and consume meals, while the sounds of cutlery, cookware, conversation, cooking, and eating are all captured, recorded, tweaked and presented as their own strange sonic architecture. Their last double cd, a collection of live recordings, was a dreamy and drone-y collage of rumbles and whirs and purrs and hums. One of the best drone records we'd heard in a while. The new record takes an entirely different sonic path at least for the first half of the record, with the drones pushed to the background, supporting an abstract assemblage of percussive clatter, dynamic and dense. The website claims definitively and defiantly that there are no beats, however, there are abstract rhythms and almost-structures, that surface from the kitcheny chaos. The two final tracks though will have drone-freaks drooling. Two lengthy static explorations, into the deep, dark, rumbling depths of dronology, with throbbing pulses stretched into warm sheets of sound, hiss and whir spread out over everything like a thick layer of peanut butter, and a humming, reverberating thrum dripped over both tracks like sonic molasses. As an added bonus, the website explains that with the addition of several new members, and those members particular dietary requirements, the Sonic Catering Band are no longer a vegetarian entity. Thankfully, vegetarians can still enjoy the results, relatively guilt free.
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. [/cat/experimental165.html]
Sonic Youth and the usual suspects (cohorts Willy Winant, Jim O'Rourke, Christian Marclay, and others) team up to pay tribute to a variety of avant-garde 20th Century composers, performing works by the likes of Steve Reich, Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Yoko Ono, James Tenney, Pauline Oliveros (who specifically wrote a piece for this), Takehisa Kosugi, George Maciunas, Christian Wolff and more. Yes, this is totally pretentious but the music ain't bad at all, lots of bowing, grating, droning, scraping, banging, screaming, etc. The cd version includes a Quicktime video of the band happily hammering nails into the keys of piano (a Fluxus conceptual piece by Maciunas). As a Yoko Ono fan, though, I am a bit miffed that the best SY could do was have Kim and Thurston's kid Coco cover her "Voice Piece For Soprano" (which means, scream for twelve seconds) - but I guess that's as much Ono's fault as theirs, in a way.
As much as we dig pretty much all the Sonic Youth records, from Evol to Sister, Daydream Nation to Dirty, even Rather Ripped and Murray Street, we definitely find ourselves a little partial to the group's SYR releases, various records that for whatever reason the band opted to release themselves, the sound usually well removed from the indie noise pop of their proper records, and focusing on collaborations, live performances, odds and ends, and even soundtracks.
Simon Werner A Disparu is a collection of music SY recorded last year for the latest film by French director Fabrice Gobert. The group approached it like any musician scoring a film, watching the rushes and dailies, and crafting their songs and sounds into cues that fit the action on screen. But when it came time to release those recordings separate from the film, the band decided to return to the studio and rework the various cues into SY songs, creating altered versions and new compositions by taking those various cues and the numerous sonic fragments employed for the score, and weaving them together, layering them on top of each other, pulling them apart and reconfiguring them, essentially transforming the score into what is now less a soundtrack, and more an actual Sonic Youth record. And a pretty great one at that.
Performed by classic SY lineup: Thurston, Kim, Lee, and Steve (with longtime SY collaborator Jim O'Rourke on one track), from the first track it's immediately recognizable as Sonic Youth, dark and mesmerizingly droney, shuffling rhythms, percussive guitar scrape and crunch, that gives way to a woozy loping slightly gnarled groove, rife with spidery guitar melodies and swirling guitar ambience. "Alice Et Simon" is up next and is classic Sonic Youth, it's almost impossible to keep from constantly expecting Thurston's vocals to come in any second, but they never do, instead the band weave a lush bit of softly atonal jangle and crystalline chordal shimmer. And so it goes, a series of instrumental SY jams, all propulsive motorik drumming, low slung bass thrum, and a gorgeously cacophonic symphony of angular guitars, from warm melodies to grinding crunch, chiming chords over warped melodic squiggles, all wreathed in plenty of crackle and buzz and the occasional strange effects.
The final track finds the band joined by Jim O'Rourke for a sprawling 13 minute epic, droney and krauty, the sound shifting from shuffling jangle to super melodic slow build moodiness, to full bore psychedelic chaos to abstract ambient free noise exploration, culminating in a gorgeous droned out hypno-kraut outro.
So good! And makes us want to see the movie now too!
One of six records which were originally part of a multi part release from local label Time Released Sound, whose releases are initially presented as deluxe hand crafted art editions, which we carry when we can, but in the case of this series, dubbed the 'chocolate box' series, which found each record pressed onto 3" cd-r's and packaged in a mini chocolate box, every box hand assembled, and every one different, the set had a seriously hefty price tag, and sold out super quick anyway, so while we weren't able to get our hands on the deluxe versions, thankfully the records were also available as proper cds in more modest packaging. We already reviewed the first two installments on the last New Arrivals List, Taskerlands and David Newlyn, and this week, we have the other four.
One of which is this one, from Sonmi451, a Belgian soundscaper named Bernard Zwijzen, whose last release on TRS, Star Atlas, we dug quite a bit. Four Peaks, while thematically well removed from the celestial focus of Star Atlas, still sonically evokes much of the same imagery, but now, instead of looking out at an expanse of stars and planets, we're looking out at a mountain range, from our perch atop some lofty peak, the majesty of the earth laid out before us, these sounds, a collection of electronic ambience and shimmery dronemusic, help evoke the strange otherworldliness of such a setting, and surprisingly it's not that different than Star Atlas, the isolation of outer space certainly analogous to the isolation of some mysterious snow capped mountain, the sounds here surprisingly varied, we imagine to capture the sprits of the four peaks for which each track is named, from the gurgling glistening glitchfolk shimmer of "Eiger", to the strange swirling ambient collage of "Grossglockner" with its mysterious tangle of sampled voices, to the hazy almost new agey drift of "Matterhorn", with its woozy Oval like muted malfunctioning electronics, to the hushed dreamlike melodies of "Tre Cime De Lavaredo", a gorgeous languid coda, that might be the prettiest of the bunch.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
If anyone ever needed a reminder why mp3's will never compare to actual physical releases, they really need look no further than the handful of small labels who more than putting out records, are essentially creating art objects, releases where the extravagant and luxurious packaging are as much a part of the release as the music itself, a gorgeous fusion of art and sound, see elsewhere on this week's list for a handful of new tape releases from the Auris Apothecary, who blow our minds with every new batch of releases, as does Time Released Sound, a local label whose pricey creations are worth every penny, and could just as easily sit in a gallery as on your record shelf at home. Just feast your eyes and ears on this, the latest from Time Released Sound, another fantastically hand assembled release, this one from the oddly named Sonmi451, whose crystalline celestial shimmer is perfectly represented by the star/space themed artwork, but more on that in a moment.
Sonmi451 is Bernard Zwijzen, a Belgian soundscaper who blends field recordings, electronics and acoustic instruments into a dreamy glitchy starscape of sound, pulsing skittery rhythms beneath dreamlike shimmers and tinkling bell like tones, mournful strings wrapped around sprawls of softly percolating electronics, looped and collaged, blurred and smeared into soft focus stretches of ethereal / ephemeral ambience, the sounds definitely evoking the starry sky, it's so easy to drift away and find yourself laying in thick grass, away from the lights of the city, watching the start twinkle glimmer, the black blanket of the nightsky painted blue by the glow of millions of stars, utterly gorgeous, hushed, delicate and dreamlike, the songs here seem to be made for sonic stargazers, for those lost late nights and lazy early mornings, transmissions from beyond the stars, sent from mysterious blinking beacons, drifting weightless in the cosmos, emitting these sweetly subtle sonic missives, sounds both muted and minimal, transformative and transcendental. So nice!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Each one hand numbered, we only have 15 OF THOSE COPIES, and that's all we'll ever be able to get. And as mentioned above, the packaging is sublime, the cds are thermal printed with a full color image of the night sky, the discs housed in a folded sleeve made from an antique star chart, all housed inside a vellum sleeve, printed and stamped and this time adorned with tiny glow in the dark stars, that hover above the deep blue night sky star field visible through the vellum. Also inside are a 5" star finder wheel, as well as various inserts, printed on antique book pages, so incredible!
Sonoptic is the SF duo of Chuck Marcus and Alison Faith Levy fashioning loosely structured dronescapes for guitar, tape loops, and analogue synths, which falls not far from the New Zealand murky aesthetic axis of early Dean Roberts, RST, or even Gate. Pretty good stuff!
Sorc'Henn's last disc, Harmonium Pieces & Dead Reveries, which was released on Faunsabbatha, the more 'metal' sub label of Ruralfaune, wasn't actually a metal record, more a dark dronescape, whirring expanses of Lustmordian Wolf Eyes style post industrial buzzing black shimmer.
This latest Sorc'henn disc, released on Crucial Bliss (another sub-label, this time of Crucial Blast) is even more removed from anything metal. And in many ways anything dark. At least the 21 minute opener, which plays out like an Argento soundtrack composed by Oval, all shimmering layers, and skipping cds, looped ambience, that glimmer and glistens, a bit of Philip Jeck, a little Tim Hecker, all fuzzy and crackly melodies locked into haunting loops, while over the top, a child's voice whispers, and in the background bits of bird song. Truly creepy, but simultaneously quite lovely, totally mesmerizing, would have been happy if this track was stretched out to fill the whole disc. Odds are you'll find yourself listening to it over and over, luxuriating in its haunting mystery, eyes closed, picturing some old crumbling estate, surrounded by dark forests, a child peeking from the heavy curtains in an upstairs window.
After that, the sound gets even more fuzzed out and crackly, a warm washed out hiss, speckled with bits of crackle and pop, a slowly unfurling minimal melody way off in the distance, the sound of thundering low end drifting by like black clouds, warm whirring organs, bits of electronic glitch, deep throbbing reverberating buzz, all leading up to the 27 minute long final track, a totally demented black musickal ritual, deep rumbles, growled Darth Vader like invokations, bits of industrial clatter, squalls of hiss, whirling streaks of effects, detuned guitars, woozy melodies, thick waves of crumbling buzz, slivers of feedback, creaking and groaning machinelike ambience, distorted chimes, disembodied vocals howling and moaning, a truly harrowing black and bleak soundscape, finishing off with a brief snippet of an old timey French piano ballad, adding even more mystery to the song's already eerie and mystical vibe.
Like all the Crucial Bliss releases, packaged in a cool 3 panel full color fold over sleeve.
In a world full of tiny labels, it takes a lot to stand out, whether it's some amazing and mysterious sounds or super unique and hand made packaging. And if anything RuralFaune as shined in both respects, a crazy collection of some of the weirdest noisemakers in the world, and some seriously amazing, and in many cases, fragrant, packaging. Hand printed, painted, folded, pasted, held together with string or wire, often filled with branches or flowers, scraps of paper, seeds or bits of plant matter, many of them very strong smelling, all of them amazing.
Well, Bruno, the man behind RuralFaune, was really getting into heavy music, and decided that maybe RuralFaune was not the place for such musics, so he started FaunSabbatha, a new label dedicated to heavy, creepy, dark music, metal, metallic, or just plain evil. Four new releases, each one outrageously limited, gorgeously hand packaged, and gone before you know it.
Sorc'Henn are from France, and their particular brand of heaviness, as the title of their disc suggests is all about the harmonium, the piano, and lots and lots of drones. The opening track is a thick cloud of piano overtones, lots of sustain and reverb, a single funereal chord, struck over and over and over, the tones blending into each other, the overtones building up until it's some sort of doomy sonata. The second track, is a bleary buzzy blur, very Tim Hecker-ish or Oval-like, but with vocals that sound like the growls of some wild beast, a gurgling rumbling grrr. A bit like a pride of lions fronting Lustmord, very haunting and very very weird. But at the same time, strangely pretty.
The next two tracks are thick layered drones, the first dreamy and blissy, lots of soft melody and dreamlike drift, the second is a blurred black metal, buzzing riffage doused in effects and overloaded, until the riff melts into its surroundings with the overall effect being a throbbing pulsing blackened swell.
The awesomely titled "Where Does The Breath Of The Dead Pianist Come From ?" ironically enough features no piano at all (as far as we can tell), instead sprawling into some grinding Wolf Eyes-ian industrial plodscape, with plenty of dirge-y whir and distorted crunch. The second to last track "Grand-Harmonium Du Diable" is just that, a creepy lo-fi harmonium drift, the instrument wheezing demonically, haunting minor key melodies escaping like a demon's heavy breathing, an evilized version of the harmonium work of Gurdjieff or Nitsch.
Finally, the disc finishes with "Huelgoat And The Droning Stones", a 10+ minute underwater dirgescape assembled from swooping backwards notes, murky and warbly and hypnotic, that fades to silence, before returning as a minimal muddy grinding low end melody that unfurls until the very end...
SUPER LIMITED!! ONLY 66 COPIES!!!! In a spray painted cardboard sleeve, housed in a printed oversized paper jacket, all in a plastic sleeve with little bits of branches!
The processes of the mysterious composer / sound sculptor Soriah are almost as interesting as the strange and otherworldly music he creates. The live performance, the setting, is often a spiritual complement to the composition itself, taking place in haunted tunnels, in treetops, in the deserts, in churches, all adding to the mysterious ceremonial aspect of each piece, as do the extensive costumes, head-dresses, totems, tribal garments, all combined with Soriah's background in Butoh, Yoga and other ritualistic practices, lend his music a timeless and mysterious air. A dark pagan dance of drones and dark ambience.
After numerous, super limited, self published and hand made art editions, this is Soriah's first proper release, and it's totally breathtaking. Two lengthy pieces, for vocals, pipe organ and effects, Soriah conjures up a haunting sonic otherworld, drifting, dreamy, menacing and malefic, a rumbling, whirring
dark ambient dronescape, thick with the natural timbre of the wheezing pipe organ, and dense with subtle overtones from the various vocals. A deft mash up of ancient classical musicks and modern experimental drone based minimalism, a heady blend of Messiaen, Mirror, Coleclough, Dead Can Dance, Jacula, Niblock, and Eastern ragas. A dusty old pipe organ, built in 1881, lays the groundwork, a rich, thick, multilayered bed, subtle overtones, rich swirling drones, notes and melodies shimmer and beat against each other, creating strange movements, a thick wash of chordal whir that pulses and breathes like it was alive.
The organ is intertwined with various vocals, sometimes crooning, alien and operatic, but more often an impossibly low-end rumble, a dense and deep Tuvan style throat singing, buzzing and multilayered, more like some strange long stringed instrument than a human voice. Crumbling and corrosive, but at the same time soothing and ethereal. The vocals drifting through various effects, become smears and stretches that blend and blur into the overall droneworld.
Definitely one of the darkest and dreamiest drone records in recent memory, and all the more compelling in that this is not just a simple tone or set of tones, slowly shifting, know this is a rich and vibrant live ritual, you can feel the organ vibrate, the vocals curl around you like some ripe exotic smoke, this music is alive, soft and inviting, but dangerous and dreamlike. A bit like SUNNO))) armed only with church organs, and accompanied by Huun-Huur-Tu, a massive physical drone, a huge deliriously suffocating wall of rumble, like laying at the bottom of a pit, eyes closed, and being buried alive by soft sound. So good.
It's been a while since we've listed something from Sote, who had a few killer releases on Warp and aQ pal Drew's Dielectric label. Since lately most of the electronic music we've been reviewing has been super murky and minimal, sort of Kompakt style techno, this 12" is an awesome nod to the good old days, the days of Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards Of Canada, Squarepusher and the like. But Sote doesn't just ape those folks, he has his own sound, in fact he seems to have two distinct sounds, one is a sort of Middle Eastern ethno-electronica, but even then those sounds are all tangled up with what seems top be Sote's other distinct sound, crunchy junglized beats, and thick buzzing basslines, and that's what we get here. Three tracks from Sote's old Warp Records days...
The A side is a total dancefloor destroyer. Thick grinding lowend sytnhs over crazy skittery breakbeats, a massive roiling wall of old school jungle, but infused with elements of dubstep and electroclash, it's all a bit grime-y and fuzzy, the beats are wicked, the low end seriously devastating. Some moody skitter surfaces part way through, an interlude with pizzicato melodies and some almost ambience, but then the beat drops again, and the record runs out a furious and dense beatscape.
The flipside is a bit more spacious and laid back, with some wooshing string swells, and some new age-y synths, but even within this more subdued sound, there lurks some skittery drum tangle and some fierce spastic programming. It's all good stuff for sure, but the A side is worth the price of admission on its own.
Thick, swirled, colored vinyl, house in gorgeous hand sewn fabric sleeves. All hand made, and so of course VERY VERY limited. Only 300 copies.
The first salvo of electronic vinyl madness from AQ pal Drucifer's new label comes in the form of four 12"s, beautifully packaged in distinctive orange sleeves (dance 12" style) and on nice thick vinyl, and sonically running the gamut from stuttery glitched out electronica to shimmery drones to speaker shredding digital rhythms to dreamy beatscapes.
Sote (who also has a record out on Warp) veers wildly all over the electronic music spectrum, from hyperactive, staccato jackhammer beats to lush hypnotic beatscapes, employing fuzzy block-rocking beats, swirling melodies, crunchy digital glitches, sampled harmony vocals, washes of warm distortion, crickety clicks, super-distorted female torch singing, buzzing insect melodies, and all sorts of rhythmic and melodic mayhem.
MPEG Download: "Musick" [/audio/sotemusick.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Musick" [/audio/sotemusick.m3u]
Another mysterious release from upstart UK tape label The Tapeworm, one of FOUR new releases this time around (all reviewed on this week's list). So who are Souls On Board? Well, like lots of the stuff The Tapeworm releases, it's really hard to tell, the recordings sound live, plenty of crowd sounds, shuffling feet, room noise, tape hiss, according to the minimal liner notes, the sounds were "recorded in Tangiers, Mallorca, London, Lisbon, Lanzarote and other unknown locations." Guests include Wire guitarist Bruce Gilbert, as well as Northwestern noisenik Daniel Menche, each contributing something subtle to the Souls' smoldering buzz drone minimalism. Hushed barely there static, deep pulsing swells, smears of gristly hiss, bumps and clunks and clanks smoothed out into rugged textures, thick and layered and dense, and quite mesmerizing. With a vibe and sound that recalls the antique obfuscations of Philip Jeck, or the warm pixelated sonic Gauze of Tim Hecker, but way more abstract, but that's really only the first lengthy track. After that, there's some intercepted conversations, some intense high end tones, some strange abstract field recordings, but soon those too give way to more of that washed out creepiness, peppered with voices, strange electronic glitches, and plenty of soft focus noisiness.
The flipside offers up some more dark minimal throb and pulse and buzz, beginning as a super hushed throb, laced with found sounds, and a patina of static, before getting all rhythmic, then noisy, a sort of Chain Reaction / Pan Sonic / Wolf Eyes mash up. Dark and heavy and haunting and droney and a little bit noisy, quite cool for sure.
LIMITED TO ONLY 250 COPIES!!!!
From the same label that brought us that amazing Otesanek record from a while back comes this, the first lp in a series called Sound Cartography, which, as the label helpfully explains is:
"Concerned with the investigation of how individuals react when presented with unfamiliar material. Using a linear sequence, each consecutive participant ultimately determines the structure & feel of the record, taking cues from the previous submissions." Sounds cool so far. So when you figure in the fact that the participants include members of Iron Lung, Pig Heart Transplant, Brainoil, Lana Dagales, Running For Cover and Cages, you might be getting an idea of what sort of heavy sonic punishment you're in for, but odds are, you'd be wrong.
While this record is heavy and punishing, it's not metal, or grind, or power violence, there are no drums, if there are guitars, they're used in very un-guitar-like ways, if anything, it's a drone record, albeit a particularly malevolent drone record, with deep swells of cymbal shimmer, rumbling low end buzz, blackened and blurred thrum, all underpinning a haunting spoken word vocal, and laced with a grinding layer of gnarled FX laden crunch, way down in the mix, streaks of glitch, a bit of clatter, building to a burst of abstract ambient near power violence before giving way to an extended bit of super spare, minimal drift, peppered with bits of plinked piano, detuned steel string buzz and hysterically howled invective.
The flipside offers up more of the same, another swirling abstract dronescape, grim spoken vocals, pulsing distorted soft noise, thick swells of sound, barely there pulse like rhythms, reverbed crunch and clatter, slightly sci-fi sounding, again finally slipping into a gorgeous sprawl of hushed drones and ominous whispers, laced with bits of effected dubbed out glitch.
Gorgeous packaging, hand screened two color (black and metallic silver) chipboard fold over jackets, printed on both sides, pressed on thick vinyl, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
Another hefty 170 pages of music-obsessed text from Ed Pinsent and crew! Yay. We love this UK-based magazine, it's kinda like a hyper-enthused homebrewed 'zine version of The Wire, packed solidly with intelligent reviews reviews reviews of cool sounds both new and old, whatever sonic weirdness strikes their fancy from "throaty roarage" to "punk synth" to "maladroit rhythms of rock" (some of the review section titles here). This issue is a Seattle experimental music special, featuring interviews with Climax Golden Twins, Matt Shoemaker, Scott Colburn and others from that scene. In addition, there's talks with the likes of Francisco Lopez, Mnortham, William Basinski, and others as well. An awesome read, essentially essential to all AQ-list devotees!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This one should be a no brainer. Any one into space rock krautdrone a la Expo 70, might as well just stop reading and grab this right now.
Recorded by Expo 70's Justin Wright, and released on his Sonic Meditations label, Sounding The Deep definitely sounds like it could have been Wright under a different name, the same sort of brooding psychedelic drift, the same blissed out ambience, the same minimal blurred dronescapes, the same occasional forays into something slightly heavier and Sunn-ier, but it's actually the work of a fellow named David Williams. And don't assume that Sounding The Deep are a rip off of Expo 70, they just happen to tread the same sonic territory. Imagine the furthest reaches of space, Wright's Expo 70 is drifting aimlessly through the stars, coordinates set for the heart of some distant sun, when who should drift into view, Sounding The Deep, their trajectory an entirely different far off sun, a wholly different destination, but with a shared journey.
Sounding The Deep to our ears sounds a bit more droney, and abstract, not as heavy or space-y, instead, more contemplative, minimal and abstract, tendrils of guitar melody drift in a haze of deep low end tones, occasionally thickening into something a bit more dense and blackened, but retaining a proper amount of bliss and shimmer, the resulting overall sound is more like slowcore or shoegaze, but slowed waaaaaaaaay down, to a crawl, what once might have been a dirge, is transformed into something much more ephemeral and ethereal, chords and melodies are spread out over minutes rather than seconds, tones are allowed to ring out, and dissipate, chords sprawl spaceward, almost disappearing completely before the next one is sent in its wake. Hushed, minimal, dark and lovely, definitely essential listening for folks into the dreamier side of spacedrone, could be your new favorite late night chill out drift off soundtrack... it's fast becoming ours!
Remember Spaceheads? Kind of a '90s sensation, 'round these parts anyway (they played Terrastock SF), this underground experimental "abstract dance" duo from the UK made a super groovy, spacey brand of "live electronica" with trumpet, drums, and various electronics n' effects. Well, now they're back, not that they ever really went away. Trip To The Moon is a new ep from 'em, with both Andy Diagram (trumpet/loops/FX harmonizers) and Richard Harrison (drums/percussion) up to their old tricks - which could be taken to mean, they still sound very "nineties". When we first heard this, we were like, huh, kinda reminds us of LTJ Bukem!
Features four groovy instrumental tracks, sixteen and a half minutes full of funky beats, nicely melodic trumpet licks (looped), and some fat synth-y bass blurps (which must also be the trumpet, somehow). There are uptempo frenzies of skittering percussion, and also much more mellow jazzical moods too.
And yes, the first track "Cosmic Freight Train" is quite aptly titled, with its driving choo-choo-choo rhythm. All aboard!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another amazing release from VHF (who also brought us the Record Of The Week by Alexander Turnquist), and another fantastic disc of modern minimalism / 21st century classical, this one from the duo of Jesse Sparhawk and Eric Carbonara, who play the 38-string lever harp and the 22-string upright Chaturangui guitar respectively, hence the sixty strings of the title. Carbonara was trained by none other than Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, so there is definitely an Indian vibe to the proceedings, a dreamlike Raga feel, but Sparhawk also plays in psych folk outfit Fern Knight, so there is a bit of that sort of buzzy dreamy dronepsych going on as well.
Two long tracks, sprawling and spacious, the two instruments weaving lush webs of melody, those melodies constantly shifting and intertwining, like the dreamiest and new agiest krautrock, warm and tranquil, deeply mediative and mesmerizing, the harp melodies often leaping to the fore, while the guitar buzzes sitar like beneath. The second track is a bit more folky, the guitar urgently strummed, while the harp offers some melodic counterpoint, the overall sound very dark and percussive, eventually settling down into something a bit dronier and driftier, which is when a snare drum enters the mix, seemingly replacing what would normally be tabla, and playing tabla like rhythms, shuffling and skittery, the effect is quite fantastic, not so much propulsive as textural, the guitar melodies beginning to sound almost flamenco, as the harp takes on the supporting role, unfurling a gorgeously repetitive loopscape, which the guitar soon mirrors, until the two are engaged in an impossibly tangled dance, before the song finishes in a folky flourish. So incredible. The sort of record we want never to end...
It seems like such a perfect match up, such a great idea, it's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. The gauzy murky dream folk of Sparklehorse, and the fuzzy pixelated hazescapes of Christian Fennesz, just imagine how great they would sound together, and you'd be right. Sparklehorse records already sound like they were produced by Fennesz, so if anything, this collaboration just pushes the sound even further. Apparently it was Fennesz' idea to get together with Mark Linkous aka Sparklehorse for an In The Fishtank session, a long running series that pairs likeminded musicians, gives them two days in a studio together and releases the result. And we have to say, as much as we love many of the Fishtank releases, this one might just be our favorite yet. And how could it not be, the whole session is a series of washed out melodies and barely there song fragments, of hushed dream pop, and spaced out chamber ambience, of drifting dronescapes and haunting cinematic shimmer.
Because the two conjure up such similar sonics, it's hard really to pick out who's doing what here, but that's not the point, the two meld into one, creating a gorgeous organic whole, softened notes, distant melodies, lush layered mysteries, guitars unwind lazily, Linkous' vocals are plaintive and keening, always on the verge of cracking, made even more poignant as they are suspended in clouds of minor key blur, and squalls of softly pixelated sound. Throw some headphones on, and suddenly it's like looking at this fuzzy ambient pop through a microscope, the vocals are looped and chopped and layered and turned inside out, not audible on the stereo, but up close, a kaleidoscope of colors and textures.
All of those bands who try to do that 'regular old pop made special by adding a little electronic glitch' need to bow down before these masters. Two days together and they're able to create something magical, that yes is a blend of folk and rock and electronics, but it's so much more, every facet is linked to every other, all of the elements are inexorably linked, seeping into the sounds around them, bleeding into each other, it's not just a pop song dipped in some computery glitch, the glitch here and the digital element is subtle and lush and as organic as any of the guitars or voices.
A few of the tracks get noisy and thick and corrosive and almost explosive here and there, but even then, that crunch and buzz is underpinned by swirling melodies, and lush hushed drones.
Such a beautiful beautiful record, hard to believe it was conjured up in only a matter of days. It makes us almost wish these two keep making music together, imagine what they could come up with given a week? A month? A year? Here's hoping...
Another out of left-field gem from Hooker Vision, who've really tapped into the deep underbelly of what The Wire had pegged as "New Weird America." Frank Baugh (aka Sparking Wide Pressure) carries on the tradition of outsider / asynchronous artists warping blues, rock, and folk sensibilities within his own drug-addled visions of narcoleptic collages and murkily psychedelic droning. Bauer hails from the satellite city of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he's crafted a number of DIY psyche-drone explorations that seem to have a psychic connection with those similar hallucinatory vibes from the Starving Weirdos or the self-subverting detours of Tarentel's latter day incarnations. Sensible basslines, humble electronic structures, and Byrds-like acoustic jangle form Baugh's foundations which blossom through dizzying, lo-fi layers of heavy, washed-out distortion, fucked-up megaphone vocals, and some unhinged knuckle dragging on the guitar that might warrant a Richard Youngs / Bill Orcutt comparison. What residues of Americana that reside in Baugh's work has been forgotten, then found, then lost again, only to be crumpled up in a pair of jeans and left to soak in the chemical properties from some pot shake tossed nearby. As with all the Hooker Vision tapes, this one is limited to 100 copies.
Spear is a Polish post-industrial / dark ambient ensemble who appears to have picked up where the nearly forgotten Cranioclast left off with their cryptographic adventures for linguistic puzzles and deep dronescapes. Amidst glowing ripples of prepared contrabass, tape reversed bells, time-stretched ambience, and fluidly sustaining reverberations, Sapphire Flower maps out a metaphoric narrative that delves into the weighty topic of the twilight between life and death, through the sporadic intervention of computer manipulated voices. The pace of the album is suitably slow and funereal, but never gets too heavy-handed or ghastly partly due to Spear's dedicated emphasis upon the construction of crystalline electro-acoustic droneworks. Thus, the music tells the majority of Sapphire Flower's story rather than the text itself.
Certainly fans of Biosphere and the more subtle atmospheric work of Current 93 / Nurse With Wound would do well to check this out.
