We recently listed the amazing Not The Spaces You Know, But Between Them quadruple lp box set on Three Lobed, which contained exclusive sidelong tracks from Sun City Girls, Sonic Youth, Comets On Fire, Bardo Pond, Eternal Tapestry and more (we still have a handful of copies left! but only a few�), apparently folks who preordered copies direct from the label, got a little something special in their box. THIS. A brand new ep from Pete Swanson, who was one half of the late great noise/drone duo Yellow Swans, but who since then has been carving out a pretty decent niche for himself as a solo artist.
This latest disc is just about the prettiest thing we've heard from Swanson, a hazy, washed out bit of what sounds like solo guitar, or more specifically, sounds like it COULD be solo guitar, what it actually sounds like is warm lush layers of chordal shimmer, dreamy tangles of lilting melody, everything warm and sun dappled, distorted but not harsh, more sort of thick and smoldering and lush, the sound does get noisy, but again, it's the sort of dreamy noisiness we dig, a thick swirling cloud of psychedelic shimmer, all soaring guitars and whirling FX, in fact some of Swanson's playing here reminds us of legendary NZ guitarist Roy Montgomery - the same sort of hazy, brittle tone, a similarly constructed soundscape of blurred riffs and smeared melody, softly propulsive and dreamily druggy.
The final track might be our favorite, a gorgeous assemblage of keening high end tones, all woven into a darkly melodic bit of abstract, majestic drift, mournful, melancholy, but strangely and hauntingly epic, WAY too short at 9:29, would have been happy to have that track stretch out to fill up the rest of the cd. So nice.
Pretty sure this is limited to, we got a bunch direct from Swanson himself, but since most of these ended up on those boxsets, not sure how many more we'll be able to get when we run out...
When Man With Potential, the latest solo record from Pete Swanson, one half of late great floorcore noise outfit Yellow Swans, first came out late last year, it sold out so fast, we never got a chance to list it, in fact we got so few copies we sold out before most of US even got to hear it, so we weren't really sure what the hubbub was all about, other than it involved 'beats'. Thankfully, it's been repressed. And thankfully, Man With Potential is nothing nearly as simple as a noise record with beats, although it is quite noisy, and is definitely the most rhythmic thing we've heard from Swanson. Opener Misery Beat unfurls a dizzying swirl of creaks and squeaks, bloops and bleeps, into a dizzying churn, the beat hear more implied, a pulsing chunk of crumbling low end dragged along in the loop, but then about three minutes in, the proper beat does in fact drop, a pounding four on the floor house music thud, pulsating beneath the glimmering field of high end skitter and dubbed out bleepage. But let's not forget that Swanson was born of the noise scene, so the track gradually builds momentum, picking up all manner of sonic detritus on the way, heaving swells of super distorted chordal crunch, keening shards of blunted noise, that chittering high end also getting louder and more distorted, until finally, the track sounds like some crazed hybrid of an electronically simulated runaway train, and the noisiest rave ever. It's pretty fantastic stuff, managing to be hypnotic and repetitive, but staying totally engaging and mesmerizing throughout. Follow up "Remote View" follows a similar pattern, this one a bit more dubbed out and woozy, the melodies more stately and melancholic, still wreathed in the same crunch and keen, the sound gristly and corrosive, but weirdly dreamy and drifty as well, sounding almost like a slightly house-ier Portishead by way of Merzbow. Elsewhere, the beat is sometimes sublimated, relegated to a heartbeat like pulse beneath thick sheets of blown out, in-the-red melodic buzz, and carefully sculpted prismatic noise, and still elsewhere, Swanson channels old school gabber through a thick haze of Our Love Will Destroy The World like soft cacophony, and still elsewhere crafts some straight up electro-pop club music, but buries it beneath an avalanche of glorious noise, strangely melodic and lush, almost shoegazey, but an awesome sort of buzz drenched blissiness. And then there's the title track, which might be the noisiest of the bunch, and sounds a bit like several record playing at once, a head spinning collision of Astral Social Club at their beat heaviest, and Our Love Will Destroy The World (again) at his loopiest, but together, it's a wild chunk of swirling psychedelic noisiness that is again surprisingly listenable, eventually blossoming into a wash of blissed out noise drenched dreaminess.
This lp comes with a bonus cd, which is NOT a digital version of Man With Potential, but is instead a whole 'nother record called Man With Garbage, which seem to be culled from the same sessions, as they display a similarly noisy beatiness, although it definitely leans more toward the noise side of the equation, the sound a bit more lo-fi and raw, but even at its noisiest, strap on the headphones and dunk your head in that roiling torrent of sound, and you'll discover all manner of muted melody fractured poppiness and swirling dreamy hooks. "Returns" is a heaving big beat almost Nadja-worthy doomic churn, while the two part, 25 minute "Challenger" is less about beats, and more about texture and timbre, flitting from full on face melting white noise, to stuttering staticky melody flecked crunch and crumble, to blurred blown out psych-noise dreaminess.
We imagine this pressing is probably limited too, so grab one before they're gone. Again!
The latest record from former Yellow Swan finds Pete Swanson continuing to explore/dissect/reimagine/reinvent his own mutant strain of techno. Like on his recent Man With Potential lp, the sounds here are raw and chaotic, home brewed and noisy, a lot like what you might have imagined a techno Yellow Swans might have sounded like. The framework is classic, a thumping four on the floor, but it's the setting and surroundings that makes Swanson's sound so compelling. Very much like the more beat oriented jams of Our Love Will Destroy The World, or the dancefloor experiments of Astral Social Club, Swanson seems to be coming at techno from a similarly genuine, yet sonically removed, angle, a bit of kitchen sink, mad scientist noisiness, with lots of the sounds obviously culled from an arsenal of synths and drum machines that are not all that dissimilar from what he employed in his noise making floorcore days. But Swanson has definitely proven himself, this is no mere dalliance, these jams are fierce and driving, and in a weird way, seriously funky. The title track here is a mesmerizing blast of super layered, heavily textured techno, that has SO much going on. Total maximalist techno, tangled melodies, chirping fragments of high end, thick shard of rumbling bass thrum, the sort of groove you never want to end. The VIP mix of the same song, just strips back the melody, and piles on the noise, adding even more hiss and glitch, the bassline pushed up in the mix, woozy and hypnotic, the sounds sharp and jagged, and yet the whole thing somehow still so mesmerizing and kinda catchy. The idea that you could get this sort of thing stuck in your heard, seems preposterous, until you find yourself humming these sort of melodies, hours later.
The B side is the real gem here, a sprawling expanse of minimal noisescapery, all washed out shimmer, fluttery fragmented high end melodies, and super spare skeletal skitters, everything beneath a layer of gauzy ethereal hum, the vibe way less electronic, and more sort of Jeck / Tim Hecker style soft noise ambience, the beats not so much beats, as just more texture, buried rhythms and blurred pulsations, even filling up a whole side, you'll find yourself lifting the needle and playing it again and again and again.
Saucy retro Chippendales cover art too.
One half of former Bay Area / current Portland noise drone outfit Yellow Swans, and Jyrk label head honcho Pete Swanson unleashes the innermost desires of his distortion pedals, who were switched on and then allowed to do whatever they liked. Swanson was just on hand to direct the sound back and forth through the mixing board. The result is Static Space, and you'll be amazed at the sorts of sounds distortion pedals can make when left to their own devices. From a thick grinding, metallic slither through dense thickets of fuzzy drone and machinelike buzz, to wide open expanses of slowly shifting melodic moan and glistening shimmer, to a strangely guitar like whir that builds into a massive wall of fuzz to the final 13 minute stretch that sounds like some sort of minimal soundscape of barely there white noise whir, occasionally colored by bits of melodic feedback. Darn pretty for a couple of little metal boxes and a mixing board. But Swanson has been working the same sort of alchemy for years in the Yellow Swans, so we probably shouldn't be all that surprised. Pretty darn cool, and of course...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!! We will not be able to get more. Packaged in gorgeous hand made sleeves with a thick textured gold oil painting affixed to the front.
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Pietro Mazzocchin was an Italian malcontent whose squalid noise and power electronics made sporadic appearances in the catalogues of Broken Flag and Aquilifer Sodality in the early '80s. The New Sadism was one of his monikers, Observation Clinique another, and then there was Swastika Kommando which had the distinction of getting published through Broken Flag. There were three tapes that Gary Mundy / Broken Flag released all in 1983, as well as a couple of Swastika Kommando pieces on a Crusade cassette compilation from the same year alongside Mauthausen Orchestra, LXSS, Kleistwahr, and some terminally obscure noise outfits. It has to be said that there doesn't really need to be much of a trigger warning to be issued for the Swastika Kommando, whose nom de guerre could very well be a red herring of political incorrectness as an act of minor transgressivism instead of some right-wing declaration of neo-fascism. Death In June and Der Blutharsch, in particular, have long walked the tightrope of appropriation-as-commentary versus outright patronage; and Swastika Kommando falls right into that category. Well, certainly not aesthetically; and Mazzochin is an exemplar of early power electronics, adhering with the grim, monotone horror peddled by many of his fellow Italians at that time (MB, Mauthausen Orchestra, Sigillum S, Giancarlo Toniutti, etc.). For whatever reason, Mazzochin stopped making music in 1985. What is it with the Italians and their flair for a dramatic cessation of activity? (See Maurizio Bianchi in 1984 / 2010 and Mauthausen Orchestra in 1986). "Mental Answer" may be probably the most realized of all of Mazzochin's works with a thrumming / all-consuming bass-drone that engulfs a dub-delay wash from an incomprehensible tape-recorded monologue. Spooky shit, indeed. "Der Arbeiter" - a possible reference to the 1932 tract of democratic liberalism penned by Ernst Junger who called for a society run by warrior-worker-scholars - is a primal screech of 4-track overload noise via synth-squalor and chant-punctuation vocalizations. "Untitled" is an ironclad beast of feral noise, finding some comradry with the British noise propaganda from Total and Ramleh. The privately pressed cassette "Public Assault" didn't seem to be a live documentation, but the liquid trills of synth-noise very much embrace an in situ coloring of sound organization amidst the hurricane/engine roars of tape + room noise. All of that said, there were just 152 copies of this boxset pressed up. Damn it.
UK tape label the Tapeworm launches their new, non-tape imprint, called The Wormhole, with two new releases, the double 7" vinyl debut of Drcarlsonalbion aka Dylan Carlson from Earth, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and the oddly named outfit The Swifter, a trio of piano, electronics and drums and percussion, featuring long time aQ fave BJ Nilsen manning the electronics. This record documents the group's first encounter, which took place in an old German church, and found the trio taking full advantage of the space's incredible acoustics, for a fantastic bit of dreamlike minimalism, beginning life as a creaking ship's hull, channeling Nurse With Wound's fantastic Salt Marie Celeste, but quickly letting the piano move to the fore, the sound transforming into something much more Necks like, the flurries of swirling notes reminding us of Lubomyr Melnyk, the drums a subtle background shuffle, the electronics alternately adding texture, or manipulating the sounds of the other players, but on the opening track, the sound is quite organic, minimal motorik free jazz drift, that gradually splinters into something much more rhythmic and abstract, and electronic sounding, but due to the instrumentation and the space, even the electronics sound organic.
The rest of the record explores similar territory, the piano adding most of the melodic color, while the drums and electronics supply the texture, dreamy and washed out one second, spare and skeletal the next, with some really fantastic moments throughout, the looped piano fragment and martial snare on "Neap Tide", or the No Neck Blues Band like soft cacophony on "Swallow", the record finishing off with the fantastic "Wave Guidance Allows Three", which again on the surface has a Necks like feel, but the low end piano is looped and layered and processed, creating huge dense blackened billows, churning and strangely atonal, while the drums supply a simple subtle driving rhythm underneath, before dissipating into a gorgeous glistening bliss out coda.
Utterly gorgeous and meticulously crafted sounds infused with warmth and a glimmering, strangely tender vibe. Almost like a more melodic Jasper TX or Machinefabriek, Ben Swire intertwines traditional instruments with field recordings and electronics to create a totally seamless sound that has been the soundtrack to constant drifting, dazed daydreaming.
While Swire resides right here in San Francisco, it actually makes a lot of sense that this was released by the great Australian label Preservation, who have proven to have such immaculate taste in soft focus underground sounds (Eddie Marcon, Caethua, Aaron Martin, etc.). But we also think he would be a perfect fit for the roster of Root Strata, as his music really taps into a similarly perfect hazy, delicate, droney yet melodic sensibility. We hear hints of so many artists that we love like Philip Jeck, Es, The Fun Years, Part Timer, Mountains, as well as a more organic interpretation of early recordings by folks like Mum, Opiate and Markus Archer. While we are reminded of all those great artists, there is something so striking about Swire's soft touch, understated and assured with some pleasant surprises of a slightly darker nature, subtly tense and ominous, which unfold in the later half of the record. But for sure this the perfect soundtrack for staring out the window on long road trips as the scenery washes by and your mind floats away in a million different directions. So beautiful!
Wow, Preston Swirnoff has been one busy (and versatile) bee over the last several years. From his collaborative vinyl only releases on Eclipse with Ilya Monosov, to their blown out psych-rock band The Shining Path, his avant jazz outfit, The Seesaw Ensemble and his amazing dub project Habitat Sound System, a record we were blasting all last summer. Maariv is a collection of solo works composed and performed by Swirnoff from 2004-05 only now finally seeing its much deserved moment in the sun. Using 20th century minimalism, ritual drones and early tape and electronic sound experiments as his launching pad, he's tapped into a mystical realm that can be both gorgeous and disturbing.
Each of the four pieces use a different set of instrumentation and various tape loops. The opener filled with rolling piano thunder and a delicious fog of electronics had some of our favorite AQ customers drooling as they heard it blasting from our speakers, as it recalls some of the most breathtaking work by Charlemagne Palestine. The next piece is probably the most intense and disturbing of the lot, as a room full of organs create a cacophony of sound which radiate with a scary and relentless passion. Then comes the most delicate and pretty track in the collection where Swirnoff uses a sequence that Ilya Monosov played on electric-guitar and uses a tape machine and speed control to create an otherworldly gamelan-like sound that would be right at home on a Colleen record. The album ends with a really nice nod to the kind of works that came out of the SF tape music center of the '60s as four tape machines go back and forth between speeds and pitches to create a mesmerizing mood that we could listen to forever!
Whether tapping into the power of Gyorgy Ligeti or showing an amazing range that rivals Barton Smith, Preston has created a vivid work of electroacoustic music that will most surely stand the test of time! Highly recommended!
Self-titled records are strange. They are definitely a statement. It's sort of like 'our record doesn't NEED a title, it speaks for itself'. We can't help but think sometimes though that it's just pure laziness. The sort of band who would forgo an album title are only a hop skip and a jump away from ditching song titles too. And then what's next, no band name? That's part of the fun, part of the magic. Part of the unique world that a band creates. Sometimes the title of a song or album is exactly what makes us want to listen to it. Along the same lines, we're often frustrated by bands who have multiple self-titled records. Quite confusing, there's the OLD self-titled one, and the NEW self-titled one. But what about these Swedish metalheads. Not one, not two, not even three self-titled records, BUT ALL FOUR of their release so far are self-titled. Even their first seven inch! And they HAVE gotten rid of song titles, opting instead for numbers. So I guess it is all about the music after all. So yeah, the music, that's why we're here, right? All we can say, is what the hell happened to Switchblade?! Something seriously scary we'd have to guess. Last time we checked in, they were one of those metallic post rock metalcore hybrids, exploring drifting loping melancholy rhythms that would explode into chugging grinding sludgy metal freakouts. They also had a strange Albini-esque vibe, big booming drums, really spacious recording.
But now. Holy shit, these guys are a whole lot scarier. A lot slower. Even heavier. It's like they discovered their inner Khanate. This is downright doooooomy. It's almost like the last Switchblade record played at 16rpm. In fact, maybe it is... Hmmm? Anyway, this has much more in common with Moss and Bunkur and Earth and Nadja and Marzuraan and Khanate, than the bands that occupied a similar sonic space as their last record, the Pelican's and Isis's and the like. The new Switchblade is a slow lumbering beast, two lengthy tracks, one 16 minutes, one almost 30 minutes, each a plodding, slow motion, glacial, dirge. Riffs are drawn out and allowed to drift and dwindle before the next riff arrives to take over. The drummer sounds like he only has one drum. And one cymbal. But both of them are really BIG and really LOUD. But unlike some of the sludgelords this disc is obviously indebted to, Switchblade keep their sound warm, and spacious. This isn't murky or muddy. It's wide open and spacious, the guitars are clear and bright, distorted sure, but more thick and heavy than downtuned and sludgy. A bit like recent discs from the Angelic Process and Nadja, a sort of beautiful sludge. the first track is the more overtly evil of the two with super creepy harsh whispered vocals, like Gollum from Lord Of The Rings, a raspy demonic growl. The second shorter track, sounds a bit like a heavier version of slowcore legends Codeine, with whispery crooned vocals, drifting minor key chords, all strung along a skeletal doom plod. Haunting and malefic, but at the same times strangely delicate and introspective. A truly mysterious and utter metamorphosis. We can hardly wait to hear what their fifth self-titled release will bring...
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After a couple of live cd-rs, a tape, and numerous live shows, the energetic but short-lived free music trio Sword & Sandals have called it a day. Comprised of John Dwyer (Thee Oh Sees), Randy Lee Sutherland (Freak Out label) and visual artist Shaun O'Dell, the trio bow out with their most layered, expansive and exciting release to date! Containing seven tracks, their normal instrumental set-up of two saxophones and a drummer is fleshed out with bells, flute, piano, bass clarinet and even a synth. Good & Plenty is definitely channeling the spirit of those BYG Actuel release from the late sixties from the likes of Don Cherry, Sun Ra or Sunny Murray. The dueling dynamic of O'Dell and Sutherland's horn interplay is not one of willful free jazz cacophony, but a means to reach a harmonic connection through disparate starting points, often sounding like the horns are worrying back and forth over the same small tonal point creating a tense movement of sound. But unlike their live shows and recordings, the horns are not always locked in battle. The overall flow of the record tempers the noisy urgent moments with quieter moody tracks of looser and more playful rhythms, sometimes ramshackle and other times more martial with strange washes of bell sounds, out of tune piano, weird bleeps, and minimal plaintive horn drones. It's one of those records where the band has finally come into their own, harnessing the ferocious energy of their live shows into something deeper and more reflective and at times quite beautiful. Limited to 300 copies, each lp comes with a download card. Highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Swung is New Zealand musician Zoe Drayton, and as the title would suggest, these five tracks are pieces for voice and piano recorded over the last twn years. Super sweet and incredibly intimate. The first track is solo piano, dark and dreamy, the chords ringing out, a sweetly melancholy lullaby. Track two is just the between song utterances, breaths, lip smacks, all woven into a strange soundscape, that leads into a simple piano piece recorded in a big empty room. The third track is super lo-fi, a dreamy vocal line and a barely audible pump organ, a fragmented lowercase pop song. Track 4 is a warm rich organ drone over some sort of creaking machinery, really haunting and lovely. The final track is soundscape created from chopped and manipulated song parts, mostly backwards vocals, recontextualized into a beautiful but alien little ditty.
We'd never heard of Drayton or Swung, but this lil' disc definitely has us hankering for more!
Packaged in a cool little full color 3" sleeve with a printed insert.
Yet another fantastic collection of tranced out shamanistic kraut-psych from these aQ faves, the first pressing sold out in a heartbeat, and disappeared before we managed to get even a single copy. This is the second pressing, limited to just 250 copies, and while we did get a bunch, odds are we're gonna sell out quick...
Like the Latitudes record that we listed recently, Perzische Tapijten again finds these Flemish psychedelic alchemists unfurling lush expanses of raga-like shimmer, and darkly propulsive krautrock infused droney druggy mesmer, this time with a bit more of an Eastern influence. The tracks smolder and drift, the opener sends snake charmer melodies slithering through clouds of swirling effects, the vibe sun dappled and dreamy, which darkens considerably in the following track, which churns ominously, the riffage dark and minor key, the drums more plodding and menacing, some serious German Oak dirgery going on, a grim chunk of wah wah-ed bunker psych that is WAY too brief at less than 4 minutes. The rest of the record unwinds drowsily slipping between the two, droning ominously, chugging and churning, then blossoming into warm swirling swells of heady psychedelic shimmer, and drifting back again. Some of the tracks veer into even stranger territory, like "Assassijn", which anchors its sound on what sounds like one of those cheesy Casio keyboard presets, the band burying the looped skitter beneath moaning horns, fluttering synths, swirling FX, and mesmerizingly minimal drumming, but then it's right back into it with "Etherik" a gorgeous slab of Eastern psychedelic raga, busy rhythms float atop low slung sinewy basslines, while a sitar-like guitar buzzes hypnotically above. Finally, the record finishes with a darkly drone bit of softly chaotic psychedelia, sounding like something you might hear on a Sublime Frequencies comp, the sound lo-fi and a bit murky, the guitars blurring into lush smears of chordal thrum, the drums shuffling beneath, totally tranced out, and utter drone-psych bliss. Obviously totally recommended. And also recommended, that you snap one of these up before they're gone for good...
It's been more than 2 years since we last heard from this Flemish free-noise post-kraut avant-psych collective, and strangely, this Latitudes session was recorded back in 2010, so while it's technically a new releases, the actual status of this drone-psych outfit is definitely in limbo. But regardless of their present state, circa 2010, Sylvester Anfang II (an homage to Amon Dull II we assume) were in fine form, culling these 35 minutes from nearly 3 hours of continuous jamming, during which the band zoned out and unfurled some gorgeous sprawling psychedelic krautrock flecked jams, jams that seemed to gradually evolve into hazy drugged out ragas, all woozy bass lines, simple motorik drumming, wheezing organs, spidery guitars, and soft hazy clouds of effects, everything blurred and smeared into gauzy expanses of minimal ritualistic drift. But the magic of SAII is that for all of their abstract drug rock exploration, they're also masters of freaked out psychedelic space rock blissout, and the tracks here are the perfect blend of both.
The opener is a loping drug-psych dirge, all tangled up in tendrils of sitar like guitar buzz and anchored by a mesmerizingly hypnotic bass groove, while the second track slows things down to a murky woozy crawl, haunting and abstract, the drumming lose and almost jazzy, the various instruments floating weightless in wide open stretches of bass thrum and echoey shimmer. the third track (all the tracks are titled "Jam 1", "Jam 2", etc.), is minimal but darkly propulsive, the tightest we've heard these guys sound, still jammy, a little bit dubby too, but dense and driving and totally hypnotic. The fourth jam, cranks up the buzz and the murk, channeling Hawkwind through some swirling King Tubby like percussion, and wrapping everything in some strange space-y synths, underneath which a buzzy garage riff churns away, the drums again loose and free, the whole song seeming to drift heavenward, and finally, the closing jam is a total space-garage stomp, sounding like some lost sixties Nuggets artifact dipped in LSD and sent spiraling into the ether, super rocking and mesmerizing, this track especially has us thinking that everyone into Carlton Melton, Wooden Shjips, White Hills, Gnod, Burnt Hills, 3 Leafs, and the like, who somehow missed out on these guys until now, will definitely find themselves adding Sylvester Anfang II to their space / kraut / psych rock pantheon.
As with all Latitudes releases, the packaging is exquisite, the cd in that immediately recognizable white on brown origami style sleeve, each one hand number, with a full color insert, the vinyl featuring the same design with an intricate die cut letterpressed jacket, both formats LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Brand new album of electronic flecked tribal spaced out druggy free folk krautrocky weirdness from the Belgian "Funeral Folk"collective known as Sylvester Anfang (now spelled with a 'Y' instead of an 'I' for some mysterious reason) who have continued to evolve with every record.
The now out of print Satanische Vrede lp introduced us to these guys, with a garish lp sleeve featuring the band shirtless, wearing white hoods, holding goats on leashes, an image that somehow reflected the music inside disturbingly accurately. A primitive, ritualistic, orgy of abstract percussion, tripped out psychedelia, wandering free folk, some serious space rock, and a hint of something blacker and much more sinister.
This is only technically the second proper full length, but things have somehow gotten even more space-y, more druggy, more krautrocky, and thus more ROCKING. The record does start off with a strange sonic ritual, all mysterious spoken word, squiggly electronics, chaotic noise guitar backdrop, tons of effects, streaks of feedback, long swirling tendrils of whirring shimmer, but then BANG, the record launches right into "Na Regen Komt Sondvlred" mid-jam, as if someone just walked in on the band and pushed record without the band even noticing, locked as they were in full on transcendental space psych jam mode, relentless motorik skeletal beat, warm warbly low end pulse, and guitar, LOTS of guitar, distorted and wah wah'd the fuck out, flitting from moaning croonsome melodies to dense tangles of freaked out chaos, the whole sound and vibe so druggy and trippy and divine. The first band we thought of was German Oak, as this also sounds like it could have been recorded in some massive underground stone bunker, then Hawkwind, then some mix of the two, a seemingly endless mind expanding, speaker melting ur-jam, and we're only two songs in!
The two part "The Devil Always Shits In The Same Graves" is a massive twenty minute songsuite, that seriously smolders, the guitars twangy and Morricone-esque, the vocals a distorted scowly growl, the guitars spidery and sitar like, buzzing lazily, the melodies Eastern sounding, the drums laid waaaaay back, like listening to the Wooden Shjips at 16 rpm, but turned way down, for some late night bliss out. The second half is almost like a mirror of the first, but doused (dosed?) in noise and delay and distortion, a blurred lysergic Hawkwind outro rendered in effulgent streaks of buzz and fuzz, even more abstract and drone-y and space-y than the first part.
The four tracks in between cover a lot of ground, although never straying too far from that psychedelic buzz drenched krautrock that forms their core, from warm languid muted dronescapes, a thick smear of undulating effects laden warble over what sounds like a buried pop song, to still more white hot (outer) space rock dirge-ery, thick ropy basslines supporting swirling garage fuzz organs and tangles of psychguitar as well as dense clouds of malfunctioning electronics and haywire effects, to dense swells of super intense spacekrautdronegroove that could/should go on forever, to long stretches of glistening high end guitar shimmer and moaned sorrowful vocals, all wrapped in soft billows of dreamlike delay, to woozy garage kraut dirges, all detuned riffage, and pounding machinelike pulse, blurred buzz and otherworldly effects.
The whole record seems to melt together into one oozing organic meta-sound, a glorious extended space jam with a trajectory set somewhere in the distant future, a dizzying journey through innerspace, a slow burning series of sounds, fragments of the whole, sent spinning into the ether, streaked with starlight and glimmering reflectively in the muted glow of distant suns, a glorious bit of space rock, beamed to earth, into a clearing, in the middle of a forest, lit by firelight, channeled through the figures gathered there, surrounded by a stone circle that on closer inspection is revealed to be a haphazard assemblage of amplifiers, the cords running along the dirt of the clearing like black vines, the various figures hunched over, each wielding some sort of implement, their movements downright demonic in the firelight, and the sounds that come drifting out of the clearing even moreso....
Try as we might (and see above, we are obviously trying!), words hardly do these sounds justice. One of the best records of the year so far for sure...
Such a fantastic complement (and compliment) to David Sylvian's last album Blemish (which you may or may not know was a particular fave of Andee's)! You almost wouldn't think it possible, but on many of the remixes on The Only Daughter, Sylvian's chosen remixers have stripped down the tracks to an even more stark and austere state than that of the originals -- at times giving the impression that Sylvian has gone beat poet or is having intimate tete-a-tetes with a petulant piano or lonely horn. One of the best moments on this remix collection is Readymade FC's work on "A Fire In The Forest" with its gentle crunch-crackle-chime of an old neglected musicbox. Beautiful. The impressive list of participants also includes Ryoji Ikeda, Burnt Friedman, Yoshihiro Hanno, Tatsuhiko Asano, Jan Bang, Erik Honore, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, and Akira Rabelais -- all of whom have treated Sylvian's material with the utmost respect and furthered the haunting moods and atmospheres of Blemish in a most fitting manner.
Symbol is the incredible debut solo effort of Christopher Royal King, founding member and guitarist for epic post-rockers This Will Destroy You, as well as founder of the Light Lodge label which has brought us some of our favorite Austin scene releases by Pure X , Silver Pines, Survive and Sleep Over. Online Architecture is the latest release on Holodeck, and it's a perfect follow-up to the label's last release of Ssleeperhold's Ruleth, leaning on the more brooding side of ambient synthesis. Not quite as goth as Ssleeperhold or Troller, instead Symbol plays into the more Tim Hecker/ Fennesz side of faded and worn down sounds, cinematic and epic, but also remotely nostalgic and beautifully melancholy. Sound sources are parsed through multiple filters and blurred into psychic layers of damage and decay, yet still sound so intriguingly tranquil and elegant. Deep, slow and heavy, Online Architecture is a thoughtful and considered release, embarking on an introspective journey into what may be a futile future. Highly Recommended!
Also, maybe the coolest, most striking record cover / album art we've seen in YEARS!!
Here's one of those mysteriously dark, mysteriously packaged, and mysteriously produced records that we love here at aQ. It's hard to say really who is doing what on this album, which may be considered a collaboration, may be a split, may be a set of remixes, or somewhere in between. SYNB is the work of Matt Brinkmann who had a couple of releases on Load a while back as Mr. Brinkmann, of fuzzed clunk and bass, but more recently has acquired notoriety as a member of the Paper Rad comic 'n' video collective. HSDOM is the work of Jochen Hartmann, half of the mighty (if under-appreciated) UW Owl, whose deadtech rhythms and blackened noise conjure the best that SPK or Factrix had managed in their most feral and brutal period. Phaserprone states that this release features SYNB reworking HSDOM materials and HSDOM reworking SYNB's recording Black/Gold Chip, although there is very little to indicate which tracks are done by or to whom. No matter how you look at it, this album seems to follow more of the UW Owl monstrousness, and it fucking rules!
After a grim introduction of close-looped feedback pushed through subharmonic distortion pedals for a thicket of skinscraping noise, convulsive rhythms tread through a perpetually exploding minefield of analog synths and circuit bent chaos. Ash, soot, toxic rain, nuclear fallout, brimstone, and any other suitably apocalyptic residue seems to hang on every blast of electricity, whether that be the abject white noise turned black or the jacked-up beats overdriven with distortion and hotwired fuzz. Within these entirely instrumental tracks, SYNB and HSDOM offer an alternative course for where Wolf Eyes could have dramatically improved their strategies of making hellish robotic electronica.
Nicely packaged in a letterpressed cover in an edition of 200 copies.
There's curious piece of artwork adhered to the debut album from this Russian one-man-drone-band, with stylized arms slashing at each other with knives, keys, and barbed knuckles, exposing blood, muscle, bone, and tendon with cartoonish detachment of the human body. This sort of imagery would seem suitable for The Ex in terms of allegorical punk ideology about the failures of war and capitalism; but no, it ain't punk found within, but rather an all-encompassing gloom that lurks through bowed, looped, and layered bass guitar. Peter L. is the Muskovite protagonist for System Morgue. He's one who can conjure a somber, wintery ambience like the best of any of black metal magician, and the extreme droned-out minimalism is chock full of static buzz, sacred/profane intonations, and indeterminant velocity offering graceful crescendos of existential numbness. These pieces are ground upon variable bass riffs mostly bowed but occasionally picked with piles of effects and looping techniques that create an entire symphony of deeply ominous tones and pregnant sound suspension. The most obvious references would be Nadja and Maeror Tri in terms of density and darkness, with an equally impressive ability to shape subtle melodies that ripple through the album. The drone-heavy Russian industrialists have been producing some very high caliber work in recent years, and System Morgue is another very impressive project.
Two new releases from sound artist Nicholas Szczepanik, a long time aQ customer, whose releases have some how so far eluded us, until now. After a handful of super limited cd-r releases, this is in fact the first time we managed to get enough to review and list.
Astilbe Rubra is on Small Doses, another micro-label whose releases we just can't get enough of, every one lovingly and extravagantly packaged, which is surprising considering how limited the releases are. This one is no different, only 104 copies, housed in a gorgeous screen printed diecut fold over sleeve, with a printed insert, liner notes, and each one is hand numbered.
Szczepanik offers this release as a work in process, each track an unfinished idea, meant to be pursued and fleshed out later, but to our ears, these tracks sound perfect as they are. Deep, rich, lustrous sprawls of drone and whir and ambient shimmer. Heck there's even a track called "Shimmer", although it doesn't shimmer so much as crumble and grind and rumble. The opening track begins with a wall of soft white noise, that unfolds gradually, eventually revealing a warm chordal whir within, that stretches out into a long, dreamlike crawl. Lots of the tracks experiment with glitch and hiss and buzz, recording inconsistencies, meshed with abstract field recordings, some tracks are seriously intense, brittle, sharp and jagged, while others are murky and minimal, muted and introspective. Hard to believe these are just works in progress, but if they are, we sure can't wait to hear them when they're finished.
Latest release from one of our favorite dronescapers, this one super minimal and shimmery, a gorgeously hushed piece of abstract ultra personal drone music, a sort of sonic letter to Szczepanik's father, the result of a request by his father that his son write him a letter, a request that a younger Szczepanik didn't really understand and thus ignored at the time, only attempting to write that letter, in sound, recently, the result is Dear Dad, one of those rare records where minimal instrumental music manages to convey a surprising amount of emotion, no small feat, transforming childhood emotions, kept in check until adulthood, into sound, gorgeous lush droning sound, a hazy, gauzy brooding slow building buzz, that begins in complete silence, before becoming a whisper, and over the course of the next 20 minutes eventually a howl, a dense, ragged, blown out, noise drenched blast of crumbling corrosive crunch, still infused with buried melodies, but so intense, cathartic, a gorgeous sonic release, culminating in a strange bit of tangled melody, still in-the-red and blown out, but hauntingly lovely and lilting, wrapped in a constantly swirling squall of grinding buzz and glimmering caustic shimmer.
The second, shorter track is much more tranquil and serene, as if the catharsis of the first track purged any negativity, replaced regret with hope, the title "Forgive To Forget" seems to suggest as much, as does the music, a warm softly pulsing whir, all washed out, the soft focus edges eventually coming in to focus as the track progresses, the shapeless forms and indistinct streaks, becoming sweet melodies, the hushed whirs almost like soaring strings, a lush drone glowing with an inner warmth, that permeates all of the surrounding sounds, transforming sound into feeling, music into energy, notes and chords, textures and timbres into emotion. Not sure if it was the kind of letter Szczepanik's father was expecting, but it seems to be more than he could have hoped for.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. This is a replicated disc (not a cd-r)! Gorgeously packaged in a thick dark brown matte finish sleeve, with a printed cardstock insert, and all wrapped in a Japanese style cardstock printed obi, each with an actual stamp, every one unique.
Two new releases from sound artist Nicholas Szczepanik, a long time aQ customer, whose releases have some how so far eluded us, until now. After a handful of super limited cd-r releases, this is in fact the first time we managed to get enough to review and list.
This one comes from 200mg, the same label that brought us the amazing Man Is The Bastard No Skull Left Unturned collection, as well as a handful of other strange dark musics. Szczepanik's disc fits pretty much perfectly, a single long track, expansive and dense, shifting from soft breathless whispery drones, to throbbing crumbling distorted dirgescapes and back again.
Utilizing contact mics, field recordings, found sounds, keyboards, samples, shortwave radio and manipulated vinyl (in particular, according to the liner notes, Neil Young's Harvest!) Szczepanik manages to transform those various elements into a singular new sound, a buzzing, glowing streak of constantly shifting shimmer. Over the course of the track, the sound dips into melodic shoe gazey blur, growling industrial whir, delicate crystalline glimmer, haunting distorted chiming, and washed out soft focus hiss, each sound, every part, melting seamlessly into the next. Super nice.
Packaged in a cool oversized silkscreened cardstock booklet with a pasted on front image, inside a simple stark printed black and white booklet packed with abstract photos of trees and foliage.
A split release between bad ass French microlabel Basses Frequencies, and Szczepanik's own Sentient Recognition Archive label, The Chiasmus is Szczepanik's latest collection of dronology, and the first proper cd we've had (quite possible his first proper cd release entirely). We've long been fans, being the dronelords and ladies we are around these parts, and past Szczepanik joints have demonstrated a mastery of the drone, creating surprisingly lush and lustrous expanses of low end minimalism. On The Chiasmus, Szczepanik continues to move ever deeper, ever darker, five long tracks, each a different variation of drone, drifting from minimal black shift, to near Pop Ambient bliss.
Record opener is cavernous, epic, Teutonic and slow shifting, peppered at the beginning with bits of glitch and hiss, the song soon settles into an uneasy sprawl, ominous and dangerously grim, but still somehow warm and expansive and enveloping. The second track shifts gears completely, unfurling a gauzy bit of chordal shimmer, all warm and sun dappled and delicate and gauzy, gentle tranquil melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds, a little Eno for sure, as the song drifts and flutters and hovers dreamily in midair. The final three tracks hover somewhere in between, deep moaning post industrial whirs laid over dense metallic buzz, the two layers slowly seeping into one another like some blackened sonic spill, deep bell like tones ring out, their tones frozen in time and stretched out into softly undulating sheets of sound, slightly reflective and iridescent and kaleidoscopic, glimmering and glistening underneath some alien black sun, and finally, a loooooooong stretch of grinding muted buzz, spreading out in slow motion, it's black shimmer infused with streaks of melody, as if some strange black seas was slowly growing warmer and coming to life before our ears.
Fantastic, gorgeous stuff. Essential listening for the drone obsessed...
As a medium, the drone is liminal at best. Strip away too much and without making the very best of decisions, the drone gets boring very quickly. The success of any given composition grounded in the drone is often found at the sites of transition between ambient passages, atmospheric disturbances, and / or meditative properties. Whatever "truth" the Chicago-based dronemusician Nicolas Szczepanik may be seeking through the transience of the drone is dictated from one warm immersive drone into another. Szczepanik's tonal quality has brightened considerably in the past few years, his billowing, gaseous drones sounding radiant and hymn-like. Even when he dials up the distortion, as he does on the mesmerizing second-side of this album, the slow-burning intensity of smoldering noise refracts the fundamental drone with a jagged yet shimmering quality akin to a piece of pyrite reflecting sunlight. Szczepanik steers the track through a steady build, cutting the power at the end of the track. A nice trick for sure. The first-side of the album is more of a convoluted composition, with gong-tones and rasping digitalia dispersions jutting from Szczepanik's gilded hypnosis, almost sounding like Oren Ambarchi remixing Eliane Radigue, or vice versa. Really beautiful stuff.
Housed in a fluorescent lime-green sleeve with foil stamping, marking this another excellent album from Brandon Nickell's Isounderscore label. Limited to 300 copies.
A wonderful new release by Oakland, CA electro-acoustic experimental artist Agnes Szelag! Despite this 24-minute EP's title and the fact that it was recorded during the summer and winter months of 2005 through 2007, the latter season definitely seems to have left its mark on her music. The four soundscapes do evoke frosty, overcast atmospheres - looming shadows of skeletal tree branches, moaning winds that chill to the bone, the slow flutter of snowflakes and the delicate bite of ice crystals on your cheek. Szelag's darkly dreamy compositions will surely appeal to fans of Nurse With Wound's creaky ghost ship of an album Salt Marie Celeste or the icy shimmering ambience of many releases on the SF based Dynamophone label (such as Fjordne, Balustade Ensemble, Curium). Recommended.
Spokes is the debut full length from aQ customer Jeremy Young and is a fantastic collection of impressionistic dronemusic and miniature guitar compositions, blurred into a sprawling sonic drift, it's a "conceptual tone-cycle" which incorporates text from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs Du Mal (1857), and features a handful of aQ faves reading Baudelaire, Aki Ondo, Liam Singer, and others, and while we're often a bit put off by 'spoken word' records, Spokes is something else entirely, the brief bits of spoken word are in fact very brief, and are often deftly woven into the sounds surrounding them, in fact the 12 minute opener, features a spoken word intro, but then proceeds to unfurl a fantastically mesmerizing stretch of abstract minimalism, from droning upper register tones, to hushed dreamlike shimmer, from hazy almost pop ambience, to a folky soft focus psychedelia, not to mention a long stretch of what sounds like field recordings and tape experiments, and some cool electronic glitchery, all held together by a drone that seems to run throughout.
Elsewhere, the spoken word bits are laid upon soft billows of glistening shimmer, wreathed in gauzy streaks of warm thrum, or set amidst field recordings of rushing water and all manner of wildlife, but surrounding those brief bits are still more lush stretches of sound, Barn Owl like atmospheric twang, strange bits of sci-fi electronics wrapped in lush undulating Niblock like tones and overtones, cinematic soundscapes laced with melancholy melodies drifting through clouds of static and hum, it's all quite hushed and lovely and dreamily haunting reminding us of Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, and other explores of similarly hushed ambient beauty and abstract dreamlike songsmithery. So nice.
Packaged in a minimal, super striking 4 panel digipak, and wrapped in recycled hemp twin with a manilla tag.
T.A.C. have been at it since 1981, operating on the rhythmic side of the industrial culture, finding home for their work on Insane Music, Ant-Zen, Tesco, Minus Habens, Discordia, etc. This Italian project seemed to have undergone a number of personnel upheavals over the decades with Simon Balestrazzi being the only founding member still active in the project. Splintered was recorded back in 2003 as something of a witchy / gothy take on click'n'cuts electronica. Crisp rhythms and ultra-minimal arrangements for synth, horns, and guitar are laced with the caterwauling female vocals of Monica Serra, all of which predate what The Knife were up to a couple years later and are somewhat prescient of the whole witch house thing, if T.A.C. would have dunked everything in a massive pool of reverb and delay like Mater Suspiria Vision.
WE ONLY HAVE 4 OR 5 COPIES OF THIS, it's out of print, the label folded, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
The acronym T.A.C. stands for Tomografia Assiale Computerizzata, which for all of us Anglophones equates to a CAT-Scan, and this Italian post-industrial / dark-pop project has been producing work since the early '80s with quite a number of limited releases mostly on Italian labels. Small Voices was one of those Italian labels, who had specialized in a lot of obscure Italian post-industrial and experimental music; thus serving T.A.C. quite well. Here, T.A.C. is revolving around the founding member Simon Balestrazzi and vocalist Monica Serra. There's a minimalist sound design to their nocturnal electronics, which almost harken to Morricone's restrained atmospherics on his horror soundtracks with lugubrious basslines, radio-fuzz guitar, and skeletal Coil-esque electronic bloop to go with Serra's languid combination of Annie Anxiety and Beth Gibbons at their most somber.
WE ONLY HAVE 4 OR 5 COPIES OF THIS, it's out of print, the label folded, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
Of the three T.A.C. album we managed to get in, Waiting For The Twilight is the earliest, recorded in 2002 and taking many of its cues from the '90s period of Coil, with skittering glitch based electronica gliding over downtempo breakbeats. All sorts of darkly baroque flares lay upon T.A.C.'s skeletal framework with ritualized hand percussion, occluded Spanish guitar excursions, and plenty of loping basslines that all set a dark-eyed atmosphere much on par with fellow Italian avant-rock occulists Larsen, further shaped by the evocative vocalist Monica Serra.
WE ONLY HAVE 4 OR 5 COPIES OF THIS, it's out of print, the label folded, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get... so as with all the Small Voices / A Silent Place stuff we're listing this week, probably a good idea to list alternates when ordering.
Way back in 2008, we reviewed the debut full length from a mysterious East coast outsider black metal horde called T.O.M.B. (which stands for Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy, btw). That record, Macabre Noize Royale, was a weird one, the MO of the band unlike any black metal bands we knew about. Sure, some bands record in the forest, or a cave, but these guys recorded in all sorts of strange locations, based on the places themselves, whether a location was supposedly haunted, or where some tragedy took place, or even better, with some fucked up acoustical properties.
Those remote recordings definitely informed their sound, depending on the space, the sound could be brittle and tinny, or deep and reverby and resonant, and the songs themselves differed dramatically as well, blackened dronemusick one minute, buzzing blasting blackness the next, weird industrial clang and clatter the next, often incorporating the location into the sound, banging on pipes, scraping fences and whatnot.
We managed to get just a small handful of these, the second, and perhaps final release from these guys, a collection of various tracks, recorded over the last 14 years, at all sorts of mysterious locations, a cemetery, a mental institution, a mental hospital, and although these tracks span more than a decade, they hold together pretty well, and sound incredible, from frenzied shrieking blasts of blackness, to murky, chugging, dirgey almost industrial sounding crush, from blown out blackened psychedelia, to creeping, lumbering mechanical dirgery, all clanging metal, and inhuman howls, from noise drenched Teutonic Swans-like pummel spaced out abstract ritualistic Abruptum like weirdness, from super distorted crumbling Merzbowian blacknoize blowouts to blurred and blackened ambience, this stuff is pretty goddamn great. Sonically, Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy II is really not that far removed from Macabre Noize Royale, but then that's just fine with us!
And again, be warned, we only got a small batch of these, not sure if we can get more when we run out...
So many bands use periods like they use umlauts, just throwing them into to make their band name seem more fucked up or evil or grim. So we fully expected that T.O.M.B. were doing just that, until we discovered it does actually stand for something: Total, Occultic, Mechanical, Blasphemy.
Which is in fact a pretty good name for these guys. Cuz this is indeed some seriously occultic mechanical blasphemy. This one man band from Pennsylvania is one of the new breed of black metallers, with a healthy appetite for NOISE, but in T.O.M.B., that appetite is sated in a fairly unique way. Every song here was recorded in a different location, various places in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, all in some way spiritual, whether they were the location of some tragedy, or perhaps they are supposedly haunted, each one adding their vibe and spirit to the recordings, not to mention their bizarre acoustics.
The tracks here range from blown out blurred dronemusic, thick with distortion and buzzing guitars howled vocals, and tons of reverb from the huge concrete environs, while others are more straight ahead blackened buzz, but even those tracks are far from straight ahead, the two disparate sounds often getting all tangled up in one another, or even overlapping, the more metal parts slipping from loping mathy black metal to furious thrashing, cool start stop dynamics, haunting minor key melodies...
But the best tracks are definitely the ones that sounds like some fucked up grim metal band set up at the bottom of some cistern or on the wide open floor of some burnt out factory. The drums a machine like pulse, the guitars a howling cloud of droney buzz, the vocals just adding to the din, every once in a while bits of guitar drifting to the surface, some tracks it sounds like the band is playing in another room, very much like it sounds standing right outside the door of a club, but way more murky and washed out. Because of the field recording aspect, the sound quality varies dramatically, and tends toward the raw and lo-fi, but that's the point, it's the industrial city version of Nordic bands recording in the woods, this is band out in 'the wild', incorporating the surroundings into their sound, almost creating a new kind of USBM, this is definitely not for everyone. The sound is damaged and really strange, the metal here is plenty buzzing and blasting, but more often than not is wreathed in reverb, or buried in murk, or just plain fucked up, but awesomely fucked up. Headphones help for sure, there's so much to hear, so much going on beneath the noise and within the black buzz. Definitely one of the coolest weirdest black metal records so far this year...
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Third Wave Holocaust is the latest sonic assault from this Philadelphia based black noise / industrial / black metal collective, whose acronymic moniker stands for Total Occultic Mechnical Blasphemy, and whose process involves setting up in all sorts of locations with emotional or historical import, old abandoned buildings, decaying churches, sites of deaths, murders, with the goal, we assume, to channel that psychic energy into the sounds, and the sounds, shit, even sans whatever psychic energy these guys conjure up, is seriously crushing, totally speaker shredding blown out blackness, bordering in places on pure white noise, overwhelming walls of Merzboic brutality, the pure sonic chaos of performing at extreme volume in huge spaces with massive natural reverb and delay, a swirling vortex of sound, furious and frenzied, and in many cased blurred and smeared into indistinct bursts of caustic sonic malevolence, those moments balanced with more nuanced ritualism, voices, chiming bells, dense rumbles, distant drones, thick low end reverberations, the sound slipping easily between hushed demonic drifts and all out aural punishment, with most of the record straddling the two, the best moments when the blacknoise oozes into the more tranquil passages, or when the strange vocal incantations somehow make it to the surface, from beneath a morass of churning, roiling buzz and howl, sometimes peppered with strange fragmented rhythms, but just as often, those perceived rhythms splintering into just more layers of crumbling chaotic sound.
It makes sense that this is on Black Plague / Malignant, as it's closer to noise/industrial than it is black metal, but adventurous black metallers still just might find this grim and hellish enough, but really, anyone into black/drone/noise/industrial ritualism, these guys are for you...
Sweet! This is the sort of thing that makes for a good Record Of The Week both 'cause of how it sounds (always the biggest consideration of course!!) and also 'cause the back story is pretty cool, too. We'll start with that. T.R.A.S.E. stands for Tape Recorder And Synthesizer Ensemble, a name that, if used by a band nowadays might seem just a bit unimaginatively straightforward & blandly self-explanatory, or perhaps meant ironically academic-sounding somehow. But when you learn that T.R.A.S.E. were a DIY "ensemble" masterminded by a precocious British schoolboy back in 1981, making experimental electronic home recordings that sound not too far from stuff such modern-day outfits as Emeralds and Umberto and Soft Moon would be doing years later, then the name becomes fairly endearing, eh? Just take a look at the cover photo, two skinny teenagers, one looking kinda cool in T-shirt and shades, standing with electric guitar in hand, the other kid in sweater and jeans, looking a bit dorkier as he sits amidst a cluttered array of electronic keyboards, amplifiers, reel-to-reel tape machines and other assorted audio gear. The latter teen is T.R.A.S.E. founder Andy Popplewell, most definitely an A/V geek at his school, who put together his own six-channel audio mixer at age 16 following plans in a issue of Practical Electronics magazine. Being into both sci-fi soundtracks and new wave music like The Human League, Ultravox and Gary Numan (one of the tracks here is a Tubeway Army cover) it wasn't long before that mixer, and other gear he built, like an "Elektor Chorosynth", was put to use to record his own music. Kraftwerk, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Giorgio Moroder where among his other inspirations. T.R.A.S.E. recorded one unreleased cassette lp called Electronic Rock, and the deep diggers at B-Music/Finders Keepers have compiled tracks from that tape here along with other home studio / real studio / demo tracks by Popplewell and T.R.A.S.E., 14 total cuts of adolescent outsider synthsplorations, all tick-tocking drum machines and swells of droning synth, adorned with phaser and fuzz FX, replete with gentle melodies and warped "cosmic" soundz. These tracks are mostly instrumental, though a few have vocals, like the Messethetics-ish downer electro pop of "Talk To Me" and the sad, fuzzy "Unrequited Love". So much primitive shimmering synth beauty, the more abstract of the tracks glistening rhythmically, the more song-like coming across like lo-fi coldwave cuts.
Perhaps the best recommendation we can give this, is that playing it in the store, generally results in customers asking about it and buying a copy. Probably the best "long lost tapes" release of vintage unknown electronica since that Rodion G.A. record!! One of those serendipitous discoveries, occasioned by a fortuitous meeting between Andy Popplewell and Andy Votel of Finders Keepers.
The cd booklet includes color photos and vintage synth kit adverts, alongside detailed and very revealing liner notes penned by Popplewell himself, who in the wake of T.R.A.S.E. later became a BBC radio engineer, now works in audio media restoration, and who currently studies conspiracy theories and other esoteric knowledge in his spare time.
Fyi, we momentarily had an import vinyl version of this a while back, but it took 'til now for the cd to materialize, glad it finally did, though it's too bad we don't have the vinyl anymore (maybe again, someday?).
Yay, here's another new solo album by Acid Mothers Temple member Tabata Mitsuru (who also has Zeni Geva and the Boredoms on his heavyweight Japanese underground musician resume). We mentioned this one in our review of his other recent solo disc We All Gonna Face The Rising Sun not long ago, and it's pretty similar, again getting the thumbs up from us, for it's gorgeous, droning blend of guitar, loops, backwards tapes, and noisy (but not too noisy) glitch. The tracks Mahhagogo parts 1 and 2 (with their cute little vocal intros) bookend this disc, being the hissingest, harshest dronewerks here. In between them you'll find four other pieces that are mostly much mellower, prettier and placid... mostly. All instrumentals, made from bits of simple guitar melody and swooshing pulses of gentle psychedelic electronics. The likes of "Hydrozoa" are a lazy drift of ambient abstraction, for a sundappled afternoon nap... So nice! Feedback and distortion transformed into utter, sweet blissfulness.
So, it's been two Tabata Mitsuru albums in a fairly short span of time, but we've been fans of him for forever and by Acid Mothers Temple standards, he's not really that prolific. So, if he keeps doing what he's been doing on these, we'd be happy with a few more this year please!!
Japanese guitarist Mitsuru Tabata's name should be better known than perhaps it is... he was an early member of the Boredoms, is a current member of Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno, and has served as KK Null's axe associate in Zeni Geva for many many years, among other activities. He's also made some brilliant solo albums, of which this is one (his third -- a fourth, on Utech, also just came out)!
Rather than making much use of the heavier guitar blurt that so many of his other projects feature, on this solo disc Tabata works with layers of lovely loops, quietly cycling 'round a spacey cosmos of his own invention... well for the most part, though the track "Annihilation" does sound appropriately amped up and ferocious. But most of these pieces are built from backwards tapes, shortwave drones, guitars and synths spinning out gentle folky melodies amidst soothingly tripped-out electronic effects. Abstract psychedelic lullabies, calm and spacious and really nice! Highly recommended, all Acid Mothers Temple fans should check this out -- and not just them!
The Anti Group has existed sporadically as a research and development project concentrating on specific ideas in numerous media and a fluctuating line-ups reflecting ideas of an egoless collective. It was initially founded back in 1978 by Clock DVA's Adi Newton and Stephen Turner, although very little has been heard from either Clock DVA or The Anti Group (who often abbreviate their name as TAGC -- with the C referencing 'corporation'). Psychoegoautocratical is the first output from TAGC in more than a decade and actually doesn't appear to feature any of the founding members; rather fellow Clock DVA technician Robert Baker joins M. Hogg, and Andrew McKenzie (best known as the mastermind of The Hafler Trio). Unfortunately, the trio only provides us with a 17 minute EP as their return to the public domain. It begins very quietly with some barely audible electric fluctuations that slowly increase in volume to resemble some of the hypnotic repetitions of William Basinski's epic Disintegration Loops. As hauntingly beautiful as these passages are, TAGC continue to press forward on the volume increase up to rather painful extremes with a brazen crescendo of digital aggression.
First proper cd release from Students Of Decay cd-r label head honcho Alex Cobb's solo guitar project Taiga Remains. Collecting two tracks from a long out of print cd-r as well as including two brand new looooong tracks,�Crushed Radiant Deities is sort of the more active side of Taiga Remains' sound. On the Ribbons Of Dust series of 3" cd-r's Cobb wove spidery, smokey ambient shimmer from slowly unfurling guitars, creating a sound more like a whisper or a ghost, where as the last few releases have been more dense, more noisy, and more from the Birchville / Vibracathedral school of drawn out raga drones. The interesting thing is, Cobb's weapon of choice is an ACOUSTIC guitar! Hard to believe some of these sounds were coaxed from just an acoustic guitar, electronics and voice.�
The two new tracks are longform epics, slow shifting, layered and textural blurs of sound, gritty and fuzzy, layer upon layer, over the course of each track, building in intensity, becoming a near industrial blast of M83 fuzz and My Bloody Valentine swoon and Birchville skree all wound up into one thick pulsing shimmering wall of dense sound.�
The two older tracks aren't so sharp or shimmery, instead, they are a bit more lo-fi, one track is muddy and murky with mumbled melodies, all the hiss and skree, smoothed into warm warbly smears, very dreamy and underwater sounding, a static drift, the various layers of sound shifting almost imperceptibly, the other is thick and fierce, another static wash of buzzing and whirring, like a symphony of lawnmowers and weed wackers and air conditioners, subtle melodies and barely there shifts in tone and timbre buried within a serious squall of swarming insectoid buzz. Awesome stuff.�
Packaged in a super nice black white and red fold together cardstock sleeve, with a cool abstract splatter design on the outside, and liner notes and abstract little spirograph designs on the inside. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another lost recording from aQ faves Taiga Remains, one of two unearthed releases that have been lurking on the shelves but have somehow made it unreviewed until now.
This one came out on Barl Fire a while back, and since then the label has called it quits, so these are absolutely the very last copies, so act fast. It's too bad cd-r releases like this are so limited, when you think about the time and care and love that went into beautiful sounds like these, it seems almost criminal that they might only be heard by 50 or 100 people. And these are beautiful sounds, Taiga Remains, aka Alex Cobb, is as comfortable weaving haunting noisescapes as he is unfurling sweet minimal Appalachia, this one is begins as the latter, a spacious reverb drenched chunk of Fahey-esque soft strum, notes and chords drifting in a wide open expanse of reverby shimmer. So delicate and soft focus and lovely.
This is quickly followed up by a bout of extended buzz. A prickly electronic hum, the excited vibrations of steel strings rendered in a subtly undulating layer of insectoid whir, cloaking a deep rumbling drone and mysterious barely audible melodies. The closer is a 3 minute reprise of the opener, more delicate harmonics and fluttery strum, quivering like a dew dappled spider web spun across a sun dappled sonic glade. So so so nice.
Hopefully this will get reissued one of these days, but for now, a handful of you can feast on these lovely sounds.
Finally the way too limited Ribbons Of Dust cd-r's get a proper cd reissue. Three volumes, each a 3" cd-r, from one of our favorite abstract drone outfits going. We raved about all three installments, so if you missed out on any or all, or just want to upgrade to actual cd, then now's your chance.
Seems like the impetus for starting a cd-r label must be born from a similar need to create music yourself. Considering how many microlabel bosses are also serious sound makers in their own right (Campbell Kneale and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Antony Milton and PseudoArcana, Brad Rose and Digitalis, etc.) Makes sense, a passion for discovering new music can be fed directly by making that new music yourself. Taiga Remains is the solo electric guitar project of Alex Cobb, who also happens to run Students Of Decay, a pretty badass cd-r label. Volume 1 of Ribbons Of Dust is a slow moving, bleary eyed, slow moving morning of a track. The guitar is rendered riffless, instead it's transformed into a sparkling glistening glimpse of a sun dappled expanse of still water, foggy and fuzzy, a dream world of shimmering muted high end drift and warm soft hum. Reminds us a bit of ex-Souled American axeman Scott Tuma, and his abstract slow motion soundscapes. So totally lovely and blissfully otherworldly.
Volume 2 is made up of huge billowy clouds of dense but soft electric guitar drift. Melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds. Ambarchi meets Fennesz but with the bones removed, leaving just a drifting ghost of the guitar. It's hard to even think of this as a guitar. There's no strumming, or picking, or bowing, instead it's nothing but shimmering and glistening and sparkling and reverberating and drifting and shining and floating and twinkling and slowly fading away...
The final volume is all about late night, disembodied slow shifting guitar glimmer. Huge soft clouds of warm chords, thick swells of reverberating steel strings, minor key drifts of shimmer and whir, very oceanic, like drifting on some soft sleep sea, each note another gentle swell, lulling you into a state of complete bliss out. So beautiful.
Packaged in a super striking silkscreened origmai style fold over cardstock sleeve with a printed insert.
Students Of Decay label head honcho Alex Cobb returns with part two of his Ribbons Of Dust series of solo guitar explorations under the name Taiga Remains. And since volume one is gone as is the super limited cassette we got a while back, you're gonna want to grab this one quick, cuz we'll be out before you know it and it's pretty dang great. Huge billowy clouds of dense but soft electric guitar drift. Melodies played out over minutes instead of seconds. Ambarchi meets Fennesz but with the bones removed, leaving just a drifting ghost of the guitar. It's hard to even think of this as a guitar. There's no strumming, or picking, or bowing, instead it's nothing but shimmering and glistening and sparkling and reverberating and drifting and shining and floating and twinkling and slowly fading away...
Packaged in a mini jewel case, with a pretty black on dark blue sleeve. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. These will be gone in no time!
Students Of Decay label head honcho Alex Cobb returns one final time (well, not final, he's not dead or anything) with the last installment in the Ribbons Of Dust trilogy, a series of 3"cd-r's, each featuring gorgeous dreamy late night solo guitar excursions performed under the name Taiga Remains...
If you have the first two, or he long out of print cassette tape, you'll know what this is all about and probably want this too.
But for those who have missed out on last few, Taiga Remains is all about late night, disembodied slow shifting guitar glimmer. Huge soft clouds of warm chords, thick swells of reverberating steel strings, minor key drifts of shimmer and whir, very oceanic, like drifting on some soft sleep sea, each note another gentle swell, lulling you into a state of complete bliss out.
So beautiful.
Packaged in a mini jewel case, with a pretty black on dark maroon sleeve. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. These will be gone in no time!
Seems like the impetus for starting a cd-r label must be born from a similar need to create music yourself. Considering how many microlabel bosses are also serious sound makers in their own right (Campbell Kneale and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Antony Milton and PseudoArcana, Brad Rose and Digitalis, etc.) Makes sense, a passion for discovering new music can be fed directly by making that new music yourself. Taiga Remains is the solo electric guitar project of Alex Cobb, who also happens to run Students Of Decay, a pretty badass cd-r label. This 3" cd-r is a slow moving, bleary eyed, slow moving morning of a track. The guitar is rendered riffless, instead it's transformed into a sparkling glistening glimpse of a sun dappled expanse of still water, foggy and fuzzy, a dream world of shimmering muted high end drift and warm soft hum. Reminds us a bit of ex-Souled American axeman Scott Tuma, and his abstract slow motion soundscapes. So totally lovely and blissfully otherworldly.
Packaged in a mini jewel case, with a pretty black on brown sleeve. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. And you know these will be gone quick...
Not sure why we had this marked as out of print on our website, well, it IS actually out of print, but we still had 7 or 8 tucked away in the closet, so last chance to grab a copy of this gorgeous chunk of ultraminimal guitardrone ambience....
Taiga Remains is the solo guitar project of Students Of Decay label head honcho Alex Cobb and The Nothing And Nowhere is just that, a 40 minute expanse of the sound of nothing and nowhere. Almost. With just an electric guitar and some effect pedals, Cobb transforms his axe into some sort of drone producing dream machine, unfurling wispy, vapor trails of abstract melody, of glistening midnight shimmer, long drawn out tendrils of sound that seem to be on the verge of dissipating and disappearing completely.
Like Spacemen 3 with all the rock sucked out, leaving just a ghostly trace of that buzzing raga like guitar, let loose to drift foglike over moonlit landscapes. Or Loren Connors, playing at the bottom of a well, the sounds just barely making it to the surface, and by then, more soft shadows of the sound than the actual sound itself. Dreamlike, delicate and so completely captivating.
Packaged in a full color sleeve with a printed insert and sealed shut with an actual TWIG (note: some of our last copies may not have a twig)!!
LIMITED TO 95 COPIES!! Out of print at the label, but we've still got a few...
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It's been a little while since we've heard from Taiga Remains, aka Alex Cobb, seems he's busy running the kick ass Students Of Decay label, but we've been doing some digging around and discovered a few Taiga titles lurking in the shadows. The first is this 3"cd-r, now long out of print, these are absolutely the last copies, released on Onomato, in a cool mini 3" jewel case, a single 17 minute song, a symphony of hiss, a wash of soft white noise draped over a swirl of dark drones, the reverberate and pulse beneath the staticky surface, eventually, as your ears become accustomed to the hiss, it sort of melts away and becomes another layer of drone, a warm billowy sonic halo, while the buried tones, spell out a slooooow drawn out melody, pretty intense when you realize this was recorded using just an acoustic guitar and some delay. Eventually much of the hiss does in fact melt away, leaving the buried tones revealed, as they begin to blossom into extended tones, muted high end, gently throbbing and pulsing hypnotically, eventually fading out completely.
As always super nice stuff. And again, LIMITED like crazy, OUT OF PRINT, these are the last copies ever...
Alex Cobb, aka Taiga Remains, has been a busy boy of late, with a whole clutch of cd-r's, a brand new proper cd full length, as well as finding time to run his Students Of Decay label. This, his first for Celebrate Psi Phenomenon is a bit of a departure from his usual modus operandi, trading in an electric guitar and a suitcase full of FX for an acoustic guitar, an organ and a delay pedal. And the results are pretty fantastic. It's a little bit difficult to believe that the majority of this disc was made with an acoustic guitar, there's so much jagged scrape and mysterious shimmer. The opening track alone is a strange slow shifting stretch of insectoid buzz, with little bits of melody drifting up here and there, but for the most part, it sounds like a dentist's drill, or as if he were somehow playing the guitar with a tiny fan, an endlessly oscillating reverberation, that is rife with subtle overtones and barely discernible melodic color. At first it sounds a bit harsh, but as you sink in, it's strangely soothing and dreamy. The second track somehow whips the acoustic guitar into billowing clouds of glistening metallic whirs, again transforming any trace of a typical acoustic guitar into blissful drifts of soft focus drone. The third track is the most acoustic sounding of the bunch, almost like a slowed down, stretched out bit of abstract Appalachia, the guitar humming lazily upon a thick layer of wheezing organ. The final track is another gorgeous expanse of dreamlike sound, the organ and acoustic guitar whirled into a looped hypnotic drone, thick with lo-fi detritus, room sound and all manner of buzz, sounding quite a bit like Birchville Cat Motel oddly enough.
SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
Another batch of WAY too limited cassette releases from Twonicorn, whose releases seem to go out of print in the blink of an eye. This time we managed to get even more copies, in fact we took most of the copies from each pressing, but considering the fact that the pressing usually run between 40 and 100 copies, you know these won't last long either way.
A few weeks back we reviewed a killer 3" cd-r from Taiga Remains, aka Alex Cobb (the man who runs the amazing Students Of Decay cd-r label), a gorgeously bleary, dreamy solo guitar exploration that we couldn't stop listening to. So here we have the recently releases cassette only follow up, but unlike the cd-r, the tape is a lot more aggressive, less drifty and abstract, more growling and distorted. The vibe is still of the blissed out drone variety, but the drones here are constructed from buzzing snarling metallic rumbles, shimmering sharp edged distorted crunch, and thick slabs of murky whir. Still totally dreamy and otherworldly, but a lot darker and grittier, falling more along the lines of Sunroof! or Birchville Cat Motel. Which is not a bad thing at all!
LIMITED TO 85 COPIES. We got 20 and we will not be able to get any more.
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