Tomutonttu is Jan Anderzen, member of Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Anaksimandros, and who knows how many other Finnish free folk outfits. He's one of the kings of that scene. His hand (and gnarled guitar, and wheezing keyboard...) have been in tons of our favorite records and projects. This however is the first chance we've had to hear Anderzen on his own as Tomutonttu, seeing as the first Tomutonttu was so limited it disappeared before we were able to get even a single copy.
Needless to say, fans of all things folky and Finnish will love this, it fits perfectly amidst the Avarus and Kemialliset releases, but it stands on it's own too, strange in its own right, personal, and lovely, but also spacey and kind of freaked out. But then why would we expect anything else?
The record begins with the calls of whippoorwills, soon joined by the calls of yet more birds, all whipping wildly above a thrumming drone made up of buzzing kazoo vocals, moaning muted strings, and some mysterious pulsing minimal throb. Sounding almost like a super lo-fi "Symphony Of The Birds" all tangled up with some chunk of freaky forest folk. Ends up those aren't real birds, as their calls slow down and get all twisted up, it becomes evident it's a record of birds being slowly manipulated, becoming more and more abstract, the bird calls transforming into weird rumbles and flurries of high pitched squiggles, all over the growing buzz of a shimmery space guitar and more of that strange buzzy kazoo like moaning, peppered with deep rich sonic swells, very dreamy and alien, like some sort of otherworldly nature recording.
The next track hews closer to the Finnish folk sound, sort of medieval sounding with drifting high end keyboard melodies draped over muted rhythmic clang and sweet swoonsome swirls of soft sound. The last track on side A sounds like some strange Bollywood Western, minor key and very Eastern sounding, processed guitar and blown out keyboards all tangled up into a gorgeously lilting melody, dreamy and sparkly and super playful.
Side B begins with more playfulness, this time the percussion, all drenched in reverb and echo, like some sort of wind chime garden, muted into strange melodies, droning keyboards beneath, very haunting and otherworldly, it almost sounds African, like likembes, sometimes there are hints of gamelan too, at least in the timbre and the melodies, but all warm and distorted and dreamily blown out. The next track is a brief snatch of what sounds like some unearthed old time recording, all fuzzy warble and a softly keening melancholy melody. And finally, the lengthy final track is a reprise of the opener, all tinkling chimes, distant moaned vocals, and soft clouds of constantly shifting and swirling bird calls, dizzying but also strangely soothing. Definitely one of the nicest records we've heard from the Avarus/Anaksimandros/Kemialliset Finnish freakfolk axis...
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Tone Language is the collaboration between Lee Norris, Ichiro Taniguchi, and Kenji Taniguchi. Norris has made a number of electronica genre-jumping albums as Metamatics and as Nacht Plank, while the Taniguchis have recorded as the drum & bass duo Reflection. With a trio of laptops streaming a blurred clatter of warm glitchpopmuzik, Tone Language exactly replicates the sound of Oval from the seductive ambient salves to the nebula bass pulses. Pretty shocking how much this sounds like "Szenariodisc."
Wow, is this record ever bizarre, not at all what you might expect from the same label that released the record of Pajo Misfits covers or Paz Lenchatin's gorgeous country drone folk record, but like those records, Tonetta's 777 is truly unique and weird and to some ears perhaps also wonderful. Incredibly strange music for sure...
Some folks might recognize the name Tonetta (or Tonetta 777) from his various videos on YouTube, and no doubt some of you were probably forwarded them as they are truly truly odd and were becoming a sort of sensation. So we were trying to find a simple succinct way of describing Tonetta, and decided to turn to the online source for all things freaky, Freakipedia (oddly enough there was no entry for Tonetta on Wikipedia) where Tonetta's entry described him as "an incredibly gay older man on YouTube who dances half naked to songs he pre-recorded. While most of the music sounds the same in his videos, his lyrics largely differ dealing with sexual fetishes such as pissing and pooping, larger women and men, and ass to mouth." Which does pretty much sum it up. Tonetta dresses in strange ripped Flashdance style outfits, g-strings, torn sweatshirts, bustiers, weird masks, sometimes pantyhose over his head, wigs, dresses, whatever, sometimes he's practically nude, he shimmies and shakes, in a diamond shaped frame surrounded by trippy colors, in front of a backdrop that looks like it's probably in his basement, white curtains, a black sheet hung on the wall, a bunch of balloons, and we haven't even gotten to the music yet, simple primitive drum machines, looped disco basslines, blown out guitars, everything in the red and blown out and distorted, the vocals either a deep croon, or a weird almost falsetto trill, the sound warped and warbly alternatingly funky, groovy, and/or psychedelic, sometimes the music sounds like some underground post punk lo-fi disco, other times it sounds almost like Ariel Pink or John Maus, and then there's the song tiles and lyrics, which as the Freakipedia entry alludes to, are subversive and sexual and bizarre and problematic and pretty goddamn funny: "My Bro", "Still A Slave", "A Really Big Cock", "Toronto Is Starting To Stink", "Metal Man", "Peeping Tom", "Drugs Drugs Drugs", "God Treats You Right", "I'm Gonna Marry A Prostitute", and on and on. Fucked up and freaky, but weirdly addictive, and as skeptical as we may have been about a whole album of this stuff, after seeing a bunch of his videos, we find ourselves digging this a whole lot, and listening to it more than we ever thought we would, which pretty much says it all!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on 140 gram vinyl, housed in a super nice thick cover, adorned with a 2 color serigraph, and comes with a cd version of the record as well.
The second of two new mysterious sonic missives from UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one comes from the strangely monikered Tongues Of Mount Meru, who might be more familiar to people by their given names, noisemaker Lasse Marhaug (of Jazzkamer), and Jon Wesseltoft, a member of black metal legends Thorns. Seems like a strange combination for sure. And the strangeness is further heightened by the fact that you won't find any crunchy noise, Merzbowian blur or blackened blasts here, instead, we're treated to extended mantra-like Niblockian drones, layered and hypnotic, pulsing and ever shifting, fuzzy and buzzy and dense, recorded live, the sound is rich and intense, the edges rough and prickly, within the core drone, drift all sorts of buried melodies, and prismatic overtones, strange little electronic shimmers seems to surface here and there, occasionally, the layers blend perfectly into haunting harmonies, only to slowly drift apart once again. Hard to tell what the sound sources are, but at one point it sounds like an accordion or harmonium, that lush, rich, organic wheeze, all warm and ever-changing.
Two sidelong drones, the first side is more aggressive, more intense and almost abrasive, the second much more swirly and moody, but both similarly dreamy and mesmeric. Total longform hypnodrift drone bliss.
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Giancarlo Toniutti has certainly increased his activity around the turn of 2009, having released two new compositions after going almost a decade between records; and now, he's authorized a hefty overview of his early work, with a forthcoming boxset on Vinyl-On-Demand and this cd reissue of La Mutazione, originally released on Broken Flag back in 1985. Toniutti is earnestly long-winded in his academic defense of his work, speaking in highly technical terms and with willfully obscure references (i.e. the semio-cosmologist Rene Thom and the idiosyncrasies of the Athabascan dialect, seriously); and cd booklet of La Mutazione comes with a signature essay from the man on how this work came to be and what theoretical ideas revolve around these sounds.
The three tracks on this disc (the two original cuts on the LP and a unreleased bonus track) harken to
the early '80s as Toniutti darkened of cosmic electronics from the likes of Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Conrad Schnitzler through the lens of Whitehouse, Nurse With Wound, and Throbbing Gristle. At the time, Toniutti had just matriculated from the Conservatory of Venice with a heady amount of education in Stockhausen, Schaefer, etc. These three musical poles come together in this dark, dark, dark construction of layered static, analog synth explorations, and even some field recording. The totemically named track "The Tree" situates upon an oppressive drone of low frequencies scraped by waves of radio static, which parallels the early work of John Duncan in many ways. Throughout "The Tree," Toniutti injects a lugubrious bubbling of synthetic notes with similarities to the untrained atonalism that Maurizio Bianchi had grafted to the cancerous power electronics of Regel and Das Testament from the early '80s. Those same synth notes snap into a morose two note melody on the aptly named "Nekrose," which is even darker in atmosphere and creepy intensity than the first. The bonus track "Apoplettica" is a darkened delay exploration with clanking loops and unsettled harmonic drones that foreshadows the guttural psychedelic blackening that Mark McGuire alludes to in Emeralds.
A triumph back then, and a triumph now.
Well, it's about fucking time! During the past two and half decades, this uncompromising Italian sound artist released only two solo records and a handful of noteworthy collaborations, all of which had earned him a reputation for incredible compositions nestled within an intellectual framework dealing with semiotics, esoteric languages, psychogeography, cosmology, and plenty of other topics that are way above the heads of 99% of everybody else. For all of Toniutti's high-falutin' ideas, his sound design isn't nearly as obtuse as you might think. There is an expressionism to Toniutti's work that you might also find in Xenakis' electronic works or Chris Watson's high quality field recordings, although Toniutti's idiosyncrasies make it difficult to draw apt comparisons. So with the release of Qwalsamtimutkw?italuc'ik, Toniutti has finally issued something new. Almost 19 years after the last proper full length album, and 11 years since the last major collaborative project. There have been entire careers that have risen and then fallen during that span of time, and Giancarlo quietly toiled away with his research into dying languages and an occasional flurry of recording which only now has been resolved. The title itself translates from Nuxalk, an indigenous Canadian language, if you must know.
As for music, Toniutti built an instrument which he calls a 'rattle-harp' out of a large piece of found metal, several long thin pieces of wire, and some bones. The sounds that emanate from this instrument are haunted drones and rattles which create an unsettled ground of activity that is anything but static. Sure, the surfaces of these shadowy subharmonic thumbs and oceanic tone bursts could fall into the darkened ambient catageory that we love so much; but as Toniutti slips the layers against each other, unnerving ruptures in frequency provide a woozy feel to these occluded drones. Even at low volumes, these tectonic rumblings can be very potent.
At the time of this writing, Toniutti has announced a slew of archival recordings including his bleak electronic album La Mutazione which Broken Flag released back in 1985, as well as a 3lp set for Vinyl On Demand; and yes, there might even be another new record. So, Giancarlo Toniutti does not appear to be the Kevin Shields of noise culture, rather just a highly exceptional composer with a pretty sizeable time gap in his discography.
No one will ever accuse Giancarlo Toniutti of releasing too much music into the world. It has literally been ten years since Toniutti has released any recordings outside of a very rare compilation track here or there. That said, Toniutti is an undeniably intriguing sound artist, who has deeply immersed himself into obscure forms of ethnomusicology and linguistic study, all the while keeping a finely tuned ear to the habits of vangarde composition. His earliest recordings emerged out of the Italian power electronics community of the early '80s whose most well known practitioner was Maurizio Bianchi. Like Bianchi, Toniutti put out a handful of recordings on the seminal British noise label Broken Flag. While bracing, complex, and adventurous in its crunched tape manipulations and sinister synthesis, Toniutti's work stood apart from the signature Broken Flag arc of transgressive noise, due to Toniutti's intellectual rigor. It was this rigor that brought Toniutti to pursue his collaborations with Andrew Chalk and Conrad Schnitzler, and it was probably this rigor that caused the prolonged length between recordings over the past decade.
So, the 20 minute composition that Toniutti produced for Ferns impressive series of 3" discs has been granted a Hopi Indian title based on an ancient song dealing with cunnilingus and bedbugs. I'm sure that Giancarlo has a very particular reason for placing such a text alongside this warbling set of mutated field recordings; but as of yet, it remains something of a mystery. This composition does enjoy a hermetic quality, in spite of Toniutti's explanation that he derived all of the sounds from a field recording he made in Italy involving a mountain, a 10ft tall cross, a metal pylon, and a temple bell. Out of that environment and those objects, Toniutti arrives at a record that might appear somewhat meditative at first, with its constant wash of low frequencies; but upon deeper investigations into the piece, he reveals queasy, off-kilter tonalities which gently vibrate against each other, bristling with quiet textures. His is a pretty unique sound, somewhat like the early electronic work of Xenakis with the diminutive sensibilities of early Bernhard Gunter. Highly recommended!
BACK IN STOCK! We had this very rare record many moons ago; and we've managed to get a handful back in stock. Here's what we had to say about it way back when...
The specialization of language offers the ability for those acquainted with certain phrases, words, and even verbal inflections to communicate with a greater efficiency. Here at Aquarius, we've coined such neologisms as "dronology" and "fuckery," simply because we hope that such words offer enough connotation even without a lot of context. Sure, we make references to obscure movies, books nobody read, and composers that never really got heard outside of some tiny state-funded electronic music institution, but hopefully we explain things in a language that can be understood. On the other hand, Italian composer / musicologist Giancarlo Toniutti communicates in nothing even close to a common vernacular; instead, his writings are a confounding display of specialized academic language and are composed within extended run-on sentences that make Aquarius look like the saints of brevity in comparison. There may have been a time when I had the patience to read Derrida, but not anymore.
Given that ridiculous prologue, I have to say that the collaboration between Toniutti and Andrew Chalk (who in contrast to Toniuitti has always been painfully quiet about his work) is truly fantastic. As the language in the massive liner notes is too convoluted to decipher with any certainty, I'm guessing that the two artists collaborated upon long thin wires which they set up in natural settings. They then took these recordings of windswept scrapes, amplified creeks, and bowed metals to ICR Studios where Colin Potter helped them mix their recordings into that eerily angelic drone which emanates from all Andrew Chalk recordings. As Chalk doesn't entirely dominate the proceedings, Toniutti's penchant for gritty textural striations does add an important aural characteristic to the recordings. In spite of the difficult-to-impossible liner notes, the music which it attempts to describe is transcendentally beautiful.
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Everybody went crazy for Tonstartssbandht band's recent cassette, titled Parson Sounds, which was in fact covers of legendary Swedish psychfolk jams from Parson Sounds, Harvester and International Harvester, it was the first we had heard from these guys, but it's tough to go wrong, covering stone cold classics like that. Of course when we got this 7" in, we realized that because that first tape was all covers, and pretty faithful ones at that, we didn't actually know what these guys sounded like. And the weird thing was, we didn't actually imagine they'd sound like THIS, but we're digging it anyway, big time.
A bit of that Swedish psychfolk from the tape makes its way onto this here 7", but it's woven into a sort of heavy blown out psych pop, big booming drums, echo drenched vocals, thick, muddy, murky riffs, super catchy and still pretty psychedelic, totally ramshackle, super distorted, fuzzy, warped and lysergic, big hooky choruses, a little bit Animal Collective, a little bit Japandroids, a little bit Lightning Bolt (especially in the frantic tangled bass harmony breakdowns) all tangled up into a heavy, hooky freaked out blast of in-the-red mini noise pop gems, the sort of stuff that sounds like it would be amazing live, a heaving sweaty crowd spilling onto the stage, the band loose and on the edge of collapse, loud as fuck and totally on fire. And the 7" does a pretty great job of capturing that normally-quite-difficult-to-capture rock energy!
"Cyclorama Lift 3" is a 21 minute out-take from the same sessions that warranted the "Aeriola Frequency" album for Perdition Plastics. These recordings marked Toral's first exploration beyond the guitar based approach to the Phil Niblock drone minimalism. Here, he has used an open circuit on an empty circuit on a mixing board with two 8 second delay pedals and a 4-band parametric
The fourth in series of live performances, published by Touch although lacking Jon Wozencroft's elegant design touches, "Engine 03_04_03" was taken from Rafael Toral's performance at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Continuing his experiments with the guitar as a complex dronemaking device, the Portuguese sound artists overlaps slow moving glissandos and sinewave modulations from "two guitars, one bass, twin modulated feedback circuits, motorized strings, analogue modular system, routing audio mixer, and several other devices." Similarities run rampant to Phill Niblock, Steve Reich, and Jim O'Rourke.
MPEG Download: "Engine 03_04_02" [/audio/toralengine030402.mp3]
On his entry in Table Of The Elements Lanthanides 12" series, Portuguese experimental guitarist Rafel Toral uses his guitar like a simple sound generator, coaxing forth warm and sonorous, gossamer strands of crystalline low end drone, nestled in equally diaphanous tendrils of analog electronics and computer generated sinewaves. Truly sublime. On clear aquatic blue vinyl, with an ancient sea map silkscreened in metallic ink.
Recorded live in Japan in 2003, this 40 plus minute single piece is a slowly building exploration of harmonics, using just a sinewave generator, custom software, random electronics and just to keep things slightly analog, a good old guitar. None of those parts are easily discernable though, as Harmonic Series 2 is one epic gentle, slowly shifting tone, working its way through various abstract melodies, and gently rolling tonalities. Really quite beautiful and soothing.
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Rafael Toral is a Portuguese experimental guitarist given much critical acclaim by the likes of Lee Ranaldo and Jim O'Rourke (who ended up reissuing this early 90s album). Lush ambient guitar drones with gossamer avant-pluckings cross the likes of My Bloody Valentine's glide guitar sound, Eno's embryonic ambient, and John Fahey's more sedate meanderings.
Rafael Toral has adopted the persona of Keith Rowe (minus the guitar this time) in crafting a series of improvisations for home built electronics that squiggle, bleep, and fizz. There's absolutely no processing to these expressionist burblings, and the whole thing comes off as something similar to early computer music with a freewheeling scribble crafting the sounds instead of algorithmic functions.
This acclaimed Lisbon-based experimental musician-producer-academic continues to create lush ambient soundscapes using electric guitar and effects (as well as some "silence" recorded from a space shuttle mission). Very beautiful. Recommended.
We've long been fans of New Zealand guitarist Roy Montgomery, his guitar sound so distinctive, able to conjure up whole other worlds with his music, having cut his teeth in legendary groups like Dadamah and Dissolve, it was really as a solo artist where Montgomery finally unleashed his full potential. A sort of reverbed minimalism writ large, Montgomery takes simple melodic phrases, fragments, riffs, even just a few notes, and transforms them into mesmerizing landscapes of sound, hazy and spacey, multitracked expanses of melodic mesmer, his playing fluid and lyrical, all of the edges smoothed out by a battery of deftly employed effects, transforming the guitar into some sort of alien psychedelic sound generator, able to fashion strangely inviting sonic worlds for the listener to explore, and get lost in.
So we were curious to hear this, the oddly named Torlesse Super Group (a reference to some NZ geology apparently), which is (or was, this was actually recorded back in 2004-2007), Montgomery's new group, or duo to be more precise, and finds Montgomery teaming up with Nick Guy, who we had never heard of before, for a strangely haunting, and surprisingly rhythmic bit of hazy, psychedelic, post industrial, dreamlike guitarscapery.
The record opens with the three part, 16 plus minute "Erewhon Sentinel", the first part of which is a super abstract stretch of looped skeletal rhythm, a barely there bit of staggered static, distant melodic swells, twisted flecks of glitchy electronics, eventually a deep low end thrum surfaces, as well as some creepy soundtracky chimes, not to mention some ven creepier bits of distorted crunch, the low end beginning to pulse, all cinematic and a little bit ominous, honestly we would have been happy if this was ALL the record did, but then we would have missed out on part two, which might be our favorite new jam, beginning with more rumbling low end, laced with some cool super distorted melody, the result is very ghostly and otherworldly, and then a beat comes in, a slow, slithery, downtempo skitter, and suddenly this sounds like some post Portishead, post Bowery Electric sort of electronic ambient creep, now THIS definitely could have continued for the rest of the record, hypnotic and low slung, woozy and warped, a sort of subterranean underwater lope, very soundtracky, evokes all sorts of super striking images, rain slicked streets, dark abandoned cities, low lit late night speakeasies. The sound continues to develop, additional melodies, more layers, harmonies, distant lo fi chimes, looped electronic high end squiggles, all drifting on that low thrum and hypnotic shuffle. Part three is something else entirely, sounding like a lo-fi melding of Autechre and Seefeel, a little bit glitchy, but warm and organic, swoonsome and woozy and dreamily looped, wound around some serpentine melodies, and plenty of fuzz and thrum.
Definitely a surprise, if Montgomery is playing guitar over all this, then he's even more of an alchemist than we already thought, cuz nothing here sounds distinctly guitar-like, at least in this opening salvo, all textural and ever shifting timbres, and layered loops, and swirling atmospheres, and propulsive rhythms and dark sonic swirl. It's not until the fourth track, where the guitar finally makes its presence obvious, with Montgomery unfurling a looped bit of repetitive riffage, eventually joined by a super skeletal beat, and then an avalanche of guitars, all buzzy and psychedelic, warm and washed out, creating a heady, hazy sprawl of mesmerizing drone rock shimmer, definitely more reminiscent of past recordings.
The rest of the record plays out in a similar fashion, with Montgomery laying down some spare, sparse guitar, sometimes lacing it with muted feedback, or woozy folky strum, while his partner (we presume) wraps these delicate bits of melody with streaks of glitch, fragmented rhythms, even seeming to add some dub to the sound, letting various elements careen and drift before settling back into their original druggy drift, the sound is super hypnotic, fantastically lysergic and dreamy, the sounds tapping into a psychedelia akin to Spacemen 3, repetitive, cyclical, a core droned out loop, but surrounded by crumbling distortion, sonar like pings, but with Montgomery's melodic reverby strum at its core.
The final track in fact begins with that reverby strum, hear letting a single strum repeat, ring out into the ether, before gradually, various other sounds creep in from the periphery, streaks of pulsing buzz, hushed shimmery swells, it's almost like the dreamiest, prettiest, softest doom ever, which weirdly enough is more like the Montgomery of old than anything else here, it's late night drift off dreamdrone psychedelia, strummy and shimmery, it's not really until about 9 minutes in that some crunch and heft are added to the mix, but subtly, so they don't overwhelm, instead, they just add density, and Montgomery's strummy grows more urgent as well, and added layers of melodic counterpoint and guitar harmonies, only make the sound blossom into something both lush and lovely, crunchy and a little bit dark, before finally fading out into a sweetly melancholic softly psychedelic haze. Gorgeous!
As we've mentioned many times in the past, we're practically obsessed with the music of Mr. Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk. From the blackened drone of his old church burning corpsepainted ambient horde MZ 412, to the industrial noisefolk of Folkstorm, the full on noise assault of his collaboration with Goat, the rhythmic noise experiments of his collaboration with Merzbow, the bleak drone drenched dark ambience of his projects with former partner in MZ412 Drakh (including an upcoming release on tUMULt!), he also plays in a couple black metal bands, has a noise group, and of course there's the haunting militaristic ambient drone folk of Toroidh. When does this man find time to sleep?!
As much as we love everything he's donee, we have a particular soft spot for the music of Toroidh. It's just so evocative, so dark and creepy, beautiful, but incredibly ominous, haunting and downright frightening at times.
We had never been able to get any Toroidh records for the store, so we were super ecstatic to discover that the first three Toroidh records were being remastered and re-released as a box set!!
It's hard to put into words just how massive and breathtaking these records are, how huge in scope. Epic explorations of history through sound. The three records are definitely distinct and unique, but they work together perfectly as a trilogy, their sound, themes and structures perfectly compliment each other. A long strange dark and soulful journey through sound.
Haunting looped military marches, snippets of speeches and rallies, lilting waltzes with moaning horns give way to militaristic drums, over slow soft swells of murky gloomy shimmer, peppered with more snippets of speeches. Thick church organ drones wrap themselves around deep densely reverbed operatic vocals, throughout muted percussive thumps and throbs pulse rhythmically, everything swirled into woozy Skepticism like dirges.
Warm swells of brass moan in the distance, beneath mesmerizing male chanting. Huge expanses of abstract drone, slowed down mournful murmurs wash over forlorn minor key melodies, spread out into murky whorls of sonic sorrow, dizzying swirls of 16rpm warble and deep droning drift. Crunchy industrial marches wrapped in smoky blackness underpin simple propulsive rhythms. Minor key acoustic guitar strum floats on thick beds of soaring strings. Each record manages a seemingly impossible balancing act, situating itself somewhere between cold martial pound, and super emotional melodicism.
European Trilogy is a completely mesmerizing, and ever shifting sonic expanse, the listener is sent into battle to wander cold and alone, lonely and afraid, allowed to wander along the streets of some unnamed village, observing some unnamed war, watching the people, the buildings, the destruction, the devastation, but most specifically the sounds. From hypnotic propulsive militaristic marches to strange processed field recordings and bits of historical sound to deep dark cavernous drones. An absolutely astonishing piece of sonic beauty!
Gorgeous, super deluxe, over the top packaging. A black matte rubberized box with the title debossed, a super striking black on black, inside each disc is in its own thick textured paper sleeve, embossed with the band name and disc number (in Roman numerals of course), and a booklet on super thick glossy paper, with track listings and credits, everything appropriately spare and striking, very simple and streamlined and Teutonic. WOW!
It's getting harder and harder to keep up with the many sides of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk. He may be perhaps best known for his blackened ambient combo MZ412, but that's just the beginning. He's released tons of stuff under his own name, sometimes collaborating with his former MZ412 partner-in-noise Drakh for a few records (including the recent Betrayal Of Light album on tUMULt). Then there's his militaristic folk combo Folkstorm, his damaged blackened noise outfit Goatvargr, his blacknoize black metal band Vargr (see elsewhere on this list) his full on noise group Hydra Head 13, and of course, quite possibly our favorite side of this sonic Renaissance man, the epic historical ambience of Toroidh. A sonic trip through the history of the world, told through its wars and atrocities. Some heavy stuff for sure, but the music is suitably powerful, so much so that much of Toroidh plays out like some PBS documentary set to music, heart wrenching at moments, dark and ominous at others, but always completely enthralling.
Testament was originally released on Nordvargr's own 205 Recordings label back in 2003, but has been resurrected here with two bonus tracks as The Final Testament. Split into two lengthy movements, Testament is sweeping and epic, haunting and mysterious, dense and multilayered. Militaristic marches, fanfares and anthems, woven into long stretches of rumbling drone, strident neo folk, strummed acoustic guitars, and swooning synths, Teutonic industrial pummel, ominous martial drumming, thick swaths of black ambience, snippets of operas, soaring super dramatic strings, tolling bells, murky expanses of low end whir, soaring strings and soundtrack like mood music, chanting monk-like vocals, all woven around bits of speeches, radio broadcasts and other wartime soundbites, the whole thing buried beneath a black sonic pall, like thick smoke over a burning city.
The bonus tracks are brief, and are more like a sort of sonic addendum, the first track "The Final Testament", is a propulsive industrial dirge, all tribal drums and thick serpentine synths, deep rumbling low end and tinkling percussion, very neo-folk martial industrial, while the final track, "Hail Wermland II", is a recording of an old scratchy dusty '78, a mournful lament, proud, deep, crooned vocals, and simple minor key melodies, all wrapped in staticky crackle and pop, bookended by brief smears of smoldering drone. So good.
Remastered, and with all new artwork, an eight page booklet with liner notes and lots of appropriately teutonic images.
Another killer, super limited cd-r from the ALWAYS kick ass Small Doses label. This one a split between Torso, who we've dug for a while, and Gack who are new to us.
Torso, who we last heard from on a split with fellow dronesters Unicorn, offer up six tracks of deep dark raw drone/noise music. Beginning with some super minimal shimmer, streaked with low end groans and shards of feedback, Torso wander through fields of power electronics, spaced out glitch, thick synthscapes, complete with super distorted demonic vocals and all sorts of industrial buzz and grind, to crumbling malfunctioning electronic dirges, to dense melodic drones culminating in a nearly 10 minute blast of sci-fi outer space abstract glitched out FX drenched dronoise.
Gack respond with something much more minimal and muted, but no less caustic and ominous, LOTS of low end, the sound smeared and blurred and crumbling, tons shimmer and drift, disembodied voices, creaks, and machinelike grunts and murmurs, jagged shards of industrial clatter, deep rumbling ambience, Gack's tracks here sound more like the foley work for some fucked up outer space sci fi horror movie, which is not at all a bad thing.
Fans of Wolf Eyes and other modern bleak post industrialism as well as folks into the current crop of abstract noise drenched drone cd-r-tists should definitely check this out.
LIMITED TO 103 COPIES. Packaged in a plain black and white sleeve, printed on heavy cardstock.
We've been fans of Unicorn for a while now, not nearly as long as we've been fans of -unicorns-, but close. On their Playing With Light� record, we began our review with these words: "Goddamn this record is beautiful. We mean seriously beautiful. So beautiful it sort of has us at a loss for words." Needless to say, we sold tons of those, and it remains an AQ favorite (and we'll hopefully soon have more copies, thanks for being patient). So since then we would snap up anything those guys (or that guy, we're not sure) did.�
This latest one is no different. Well, no different in that we snapped it right up, but definitely different sounding. At least the first Unicorn track here, a hissy high end drift, all upper register whir and shimmer and skree, what sounds like balloons and compressed air, very strange, but after that it's back to the Unicorn of old, with deep resonant drones, strange electronic glitches, haunting rhythmic loops, really quite beautiful, but Unicorn here are all over the place, the next track is another abstract industrial soundscape of low end whir and rhythmic hiss, some more high end weirdness, then back to more dark droniness finishing off with some super minimal hushed drift. Not as straight up beautiful as the other discs, but way more varied and interesting, intense and unique.�
Unicorn are paired off here with Torso, who we had never heard before, but we're led to believe features members of Man Is The Bastard / Bastard Noise, and it sounds like it could be true, Torso's take on the drone is much more raw and abrasive, gritty and buzzy, with the tones blown out and crumbling, verging on power electronics, but remaining just on this side of noise, like a much heavier more lo-fi Niblock, with long drawn out notes layered on top of each other, allowed to pulse and beat and subtly shift and change. Torso also add all sorts of other sounds to the mix, random slabs of distant buzz, electronic crackle, what sounds like a drill of some kind, creepy voices, warbly turntables, bits of found sound, distorted vocals, feedback, all woven into the mesmerizing fabric of Torso's harsh drones. Really cool. Definitely need to hear more.�
Packaged in a gorgeous, multi colored, metallic ink, screen printed fold over cardstock sleeve in a thick vinyl pouch. Nice!
Now this is indeed a pleasant surprise. The return of Tortoise. A band we were OBSESSED with in the beginning, whose first few records are classics, undefinable masterpieces that managed to totally transcend their classification as mere post rock. Tortoise's self titled debut still sounds classic and timeless, a loping hypnotic blend of math rock and krautrock and jazz. Their Millions Now Living, which was released in the very early days of the aQ list, so it only has a barely descriptive two sentence review, was a mind blowing meld of Oval like electronics and abstract jazziness, of brooding post rock and almost orchestral arrangements. The remix record, which found the band being reimagined by Steve Albini, Brad Wood, Bundy Brown, Jim O'Rourke, John McEntire and others, still ranks as one of the few examples of how a collection of remixes, in some ways can even transcend the originals. But from that point on, the band seemed to lose their way, it's hard to explain just how, but their record, often literally years in the making, surprisingly enough didn't sound fresh anymore, the sounds tired and played out, maybe meant to be 'mature' or 'academic' but instead mostly sounded boring, and in some cases bad.
There was always a spark, and every record had brief flashes, little musical moments that reminded us what they were once capable of.
Which brings us to the awkwardly titled Beacons Of Ancestorship, which while not a total mind blowing complete return to form, is pretty dang good. A handful of the tracks ranking up there with some of their classic jams from years back.
Most folks have been focusing on record opener "High Class Slim Came Floatin' In", and rightfully so, the band definitely had something to prove, some lost ground to make up, and some fans to win over again, and hell, "High Class Slim" is just the song to do it. It still sounds like Tortoise, but it's all revved up, skittery jazzy drums wrapped around deep woozy bass and reedy synth buzz, before in swoops some tripped out Stereolab / Tangerine Dream keyboard swirl, and then some super out of place buzzy keyboard groove, but it somehow works, the track gets more intense, the sounds smolder and throb, blissy and subtly psychedelic, a little bit funky, a lot bit space-y, even a breakdown that gets all cybotronic robot funk, washed over by some new age shimmer, and sparkely space-y effects... it was almost too much to hope for that the whole record would sound like that the whole way through, but then it wouldn't really be Tortoise, for these guys it's just a launching point for their latest exploration of sounds both simple and sinister, serene and cinematic, jazzy and funky.
There are definitely a few moments where things lag, where it definitely sounds like they're back to doing Tortoise by numbers, some Morricone-ish guitar, that while we usually love, here doesn't do much, some of the stretched out jams bog down more than bliss out, but those moments are few and far between, the rest of their time is spent weaving pretty fantastic flights of instrumental fancy, mathy jams rife with melodic curlicues and warm whirls of warble and whir, cool skittery almost dancehall sounding bits of buzz and blurt, wrapped around some truly funky rhythms, long stretches of stuttering almost African sounding grooves, laced with sitar like buzz, and cool psychedelic flourishes, and at least one track that starts off with some looped Afterschool Special music that is transformed into what sounds like the perfect backing track for a Kanye West song. And then there's the unpronounceable "Yinxianghechengqi" which finds Tortoise getting their Trans Am on, fuzzed out, snarling guitars wrapped in crumbling distortion, pulsing bass, John McEntire pummeling his kit like he probably hasn't since his Bastro Days, but then this IS Tortoise, so over the top they drape some atonal modal Return To Forever sort of buzz drenched melodic weirdness which ends up turning the song into something else entirely. And minus those few aforementioned lulls, the rest of the record continues on, and manages to hold our attention, and definitely has had us returning again and again.
So while it's not quite Millions, Beacons is definitely the best Tortoise record since the mid nineties, and once distanced from the legacy and the expectations and all the non musical bullshit, on it's own as simply a record by a band, a collection of songs and sounds, Beacons is really pretty fantastic.
We had never heard of Dutch blackened dirge/drone outfit Torture Corpse, before, but we have to say, with a name like that we were most definitely intrigued, and the fact that we first heard about them via a wholehearted recommendation from one half of aQ faves Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, and if someone responsible for that sort of bleak heaviness and abject ambience says they thing something is scary and heavy and amazing, well, then odds are it probably is. And it only took a few seconds for us to be converted, starting out with some softly caustic crunch, only to shift into a bit of hazy ambient drift, the record then really takes off with TC unfurling what sounds like some buzzing blackened riffage, all droned out and blurred, over a mysterious field of rhythmic glitch, and what sounds like buried vocals, singing in tongues, a textural garble that only adds to the chaos. Almost as soon as you're utterly entranced, TC jettisons all the noise and buzz and crunch, leaving, just a shimmery field of soft chordal thrum, and hushed sonic swells, tranquil and warm and woozily washed out, a blissfuly bit of dreamy drift, with the sounds seeming the grow gradually more distorted, but very subtly so, eventually fading out and leaving a strange and ominous industrial landscape, laced with thick speaker rattling low end, all manner of clatter and crunch, a blurred post apocalyptic creep through some sonic wasteland, slowly building to a lurching lumbering almost doomic blackened trudge, almost like Wolf Eyes doing sound design for a remake of Pitch Black, a machinelike, black industrial ambience that manages to be haunting and heavy, but also weirdly melodic and mysterious. There are strange vocal samples too, wreathed in reverb, draped over strange percolating anti-rhythms, laced with bits of creepy melody, the sounds throughout the tape seem to be constantly shifting, no single song sounds like the next, some are crushingly heavy, others breathlessly beautiful, but they're all woven into something epic, a super cinematic slab of grim black beauty.
Sweet packaging too, intricate designs on both the inside and outside of the heavy cardstock J-card, as well as a printed insert with liner notes and sing titles.
The return of this Dutch drone/dirge/doom weirdo, courtesy of local label Sanity Muffin (their second for the label), and yet another batch of gloriously grim atmospheres, psychedelic power electronics, and twisted avant industrial noise. Like the previous two, it's a dizzying din, with SUNNO))) like guitar heave wedded to garbled, demonic vokills, all wound around streaks of blown out feedback, coruscating guitar noise, and constantly shifting sheets of blurred noise, and somehow, amidst all that going on, some of the sounds seem to coalesce into some sort of rhythm, giving the sound the momentum of some sort of lumbering sonic behemoth. We're reminded a bit of Gnaw Their Tongues for sure, as well as Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead (who turned us on to this guy in the first place), but Torture Corpse inhabit their own bleak corner of this harrowing sonic universe, the tracks peppered with all manner of strange sample voices, moaning, or chanting, crooning or mewling, all the while a black cauldron of sound roils and churns in the background, often oozing into one massive black hole swirl, but just as often, splintering into jagged shards of grey noise and clattery percussive splatter, and in both cases, the sounds are often processed into something else entirely, dense tangles of squelch and glitch, or stuttering fields of hiccupping static, and yet, those processed sounds are still set amidst haunting shimmers, and mesmerizingly psychedelic drones. Sans headphones, it can all sound like a wild, chaotic jumble, and it sort of is, but deep listening definitely reveals a sonic underworld of surprising complexity, a twisted landscape of sculpted white noise, of looped raga-like mesmer, of punishing, head cleaving skree, and of droned out industrial bliss, all woven into something sinister, blackened, brutal and beautiful.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered in gold ink, the distressed black and white artwork also splattered with gold ink.
A while back we discovered this Dutch dirge / drone outfit thanks to our pals in Teeth Engraved With The Names Of The Dead, and you know when a band like that is raving about something being dark and heavy and bleak and AWESOME, then you best listen, and we did, and we went a little crazy for TC, and were super excited to discover that TC had a new release coming out on one of our favorite labels, Auris Apothecary, who have FOUR different new releases on this week's list (Unholy Triforce, Sitar Outreach Ministry, (((o))) and this one!), and once again, they've pulled out all the stops packaging wise with all of them.
Torture Corpse's Ooru Naito Rongu comes packaged in either grey or green scouring pads held together with metal wire, wrapped in a printed transparent Japanese style obi, sealed with a black wax seal, and inside there are printed inserts. It's pretty dang striking, and the rough scouring pads are a hint at the rough and raw sounds that lurk inside, as this is a way noisier proposition than the other TC we reviewed, starting out with a weird bit of super distorted and totally garbled noise rock, which then transforms into a sort of blackened industrial dirge, before finally slipping into a more black and droney drift, but that drift is caustic and chaotic and noisy for sure, a thick corrosive black sonic smear. And so it goes, the sound a blown out, in the red, speaker melting series of jams, dirgey rhythmic krautrock one second, doomy creep the next, stumbling noise rock heaviness one second, and blissed out crumbling Sunroof! style ur-drone the next, everything here slathered in blacknoise, streaks of hiss and whir and shards of keening feedback, all except the nearly nine minute closer, which is a surprising bit of dreamy droney drift, complete with some strange haunting vocals just below the surface.
This definitely benefits from headphone listening, but either way, like the other Torture Corpse (and the other AA stuff), totally recommended.
LIMITED TO 95 COPIES!!!
Two new slabs of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!! Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a new cd-r from Astral Womb, but this right here is record number two from Torture Gnosis, a duo whose first record seemed to slip right by us, for which we are now definitely kicking ourselves, cuz this stuff is seriously ruling.
Fans of the Frequency Thirteen label, the home of 'True Sheffield Black Psychedelia', and the various TSBP bands we've gushed over in the past: Black Vomit, Dukkha, Rape Rack, Ice Bound Majesty and Skultroll, should probably just stop right here and add this to your cart, but for everybody else, imagine a sort of twisted more lo-fi and sci-fi Expo 70, the same sort of psychedelic bliss out, long expanses of cosmic shimmer, but not rendered in the typical tropes of 'kosmische' music, instead, these are weirdo lo-fi metallers crafting a gorgeous fractured songsuite of intergalactic ambience. Their first record was a much noisier beast, with many of the tracks leaning way more toward a dizzying chaotic confluence of black metal, free jazz, and industrial clatter, but even then, the band would pepper these blasts of blacknoise and tangled metaljazz skree with hushed expanses of druggy drift and mesmerizing shimmer, and for II, it seems the band have jettisoned the blackness, ditched the rhythms, and instead opted for something much more tripped out and tranquil, soft focus swirls drifting weightless through clouds of effects, raga like drones layered into lush swells, all the tones stretched way out, meditative and dreamlike. But fear not, there's still plenty of darkness, with a handful of tracks playing out like soundtracks to some low budget VHS Alien knock-off, and we mean that in a good way, creepy ominous cinematic sprawls laced with weird sounds, is that some creature chewing human bones, or the footsteps of some mysterious figure trudging though some alien graveyard, or a mad scientist in a cave assembling some infernal machine, the synths rumble and thrum, occasionally blossoming into something that sounds more like the music from a seventies planetarium show. Killer stuff. And definitely recommended for all you into the current crop of psychedelic space synth and retro-futuristic Carpenter / Goblin worship who might be up for something a bit more fucked up.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!!
Torus is Adam MacGregor, formerly of technical grind outfit Creation Is Crucifixion. Recorded in 1998 and 2001, 'phlogistics' is a collection of noises ranging from metallic tinkerings to guitar-based feedback excursions.
Much like the Dead C and Vibracathedral Orchestra, the Belgian trio Toss purposefully seeks to bathe their avant-drone rock in the nervous haze of cable buzzings and various terminal disconnections. For the most part the amorphous terrain is shaped by improvisational meanderings past screwdriving-the-guitar-strings vibrato, gentle guitar strum evolving in the distance, spluttered jazz-rock percussion as in No Neck Blues Band or Jackie-O Motherfucker, sporadic emergence of voices sounding more like unregulated bar room banter than intentionally placed lyrics, and on occasion a groovy Crescent organ blast. Certainly will appeal to fans of Corpus Hermeticum and the sound reminds Andee of Philip Jeck in with its hiccuping rhythms and old fashioned sepia tone haze.
An awesome artifact from the apparently now defunct Total. Total was another amazing project of Matthew Bower from Sunroof! and Skullflower. And the sound of Total fell somewhere between the droning crush of SF and the dreamy hum of SR! Recorded in 1996,
Another lovingly produced and beautifully packaged cd-r from the only folks that manage to make us like cd-r's! And of course, limited.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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An utterly punishing onslaught of hateful hardcore and feedback drenched punknoise from this Texas outfit, 27 songs in 39 minutes, opening with what sounds like an unholy union between the Dead C, Harry Pussy and the Brainbombs, a full on, downtuned, stumbling, free noise, avant punk crush, and fuck, we would have been happy if that track stretched out past it's already sprawling 3:51 and filled up the whole record, but as the title suggests, this is just the "Introduction". From there on out it's a full on Black Flag / Void style blowout, blistering hardcore fury, vitriolic vocals, frantic riffing, fuzzed out bass, a wild, unhinged, bloody knuckled, sweat soaked hybrid of eighties thrash punk, grind, powerviolence, classic hardcore and new/no wave heaviness, all blurred into a monster blast of skull crushing punk rock pummel.
This cd collects the self titled record proper and tacks on 15 bonus tracks (!) from their Sex Pig 7" and demo!
Okay, seriously, how could we resist? The band is called Totally Radd. That's Radd with two D's. That's like the rad version of Hott with two T's. The record is called Shark Attack Day Camp, and features eye poppingly garish artwork depicting two kids playing video games in an arcade full of bloody zombies, including one who has been pushed head first through the monitor of another game. Oh and that game just happens to be called Hammer Hamsters. Inside the illustration is of kids in full Lord Of The Flies mode, wearing animal skins and heads, also covered in blood, in a grassy field peppered with dead elks and bears not to mention a huge pile of dead bloody rabbits, not sure how any band would expect to live up to the promise of all this ridiculousness, but somehow Totally Radd do, delivering totally over the top eighties soundtrack, NES, 8-bit keytar, glam rock, dork pop cheesiness that is hilarious and totally dumb, but crazy fun and way catchier and funnier than it has any right to be. But the second we threw this on in the store, we were immediately obsessed, and have been playing it non-stop, much to the chagrin of some people no doubt, but fuck 'em!
If you've been paying attention to the aQ list lately, you may have noticed us referencing eighties training montage music, several records we've gotten in recently have sounded inexplicably like that music, from cheesy VHS tapes, the sort of inspirational RAWK that always accompanies training for the big fight, or the big race, well, this stuff REALLY does sound like that. It also sounds a bit like metallized video game music, it also sounds like a brain damaged Sparks, falsetto vox slip into monstrous demonic vokills or screamo shrieks, total Legend Of Zelda 8-bit sputter collides with chugging metal guitars, super catchy punky pop becomes wild video game music and vice versa, the lyrics are completely silly, about cross dressing, and video stores, and all kinds of random stuff. There are songs named after video games, and we originally assumed those would be covers, but instead are simply songs ABOUT those video games! And speaking of covers, our favorite part might be the bonus 7" that comes with the lp, which starts off with a killer version of Phantom Planet's "California", given a sort of bubblegum synth / electro pop makeover, with vocodered vocals and squiggly synths, wrapped around a Weezer-ish power pop core. Then there's a cool, goovy, broody chunk of ballady electro-pop, a sort of video game Weezer slowdance number, before the awesomely titled "2 8-Bit 2 Quit", which is the most 8-bit of the bunch, sounding like Perry And Kingsley by way of Donkey Kong...
The B side of the 7" starts off with a jam that almost sounds like nineties era black metal, via 8-bit pop nerd dorkiness, brooding and dramatic, with Rob Zombie vocals, which goes right into a cover of Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" with a very misleading intro that's essentially a pitch perfect take on beginning of "Just What I Needed" by the Cars, before slipping into a dangerously straight ahead version of the Soul Asylum original, with extremely overly dramatic vocals, and a swirly psychedelic synth solo in the middle, but otherwise, a pretty straight rock (piss?) take...
It's all dumb and fun, and falls somewhere on the sonic spectrum between Steven Schultz and that MSG Songs From A Gated Community lp we reviewed a while back, but with more Mario Brothers, more pixie stix, more gratuitous violence, more blood thirsty zombies, more after school specials, more boobs, more masked serial killers, more BMX bikes, more gleaming the cube, more lost boys, more revenge of the nerds, more� well, you get it. GET IT!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A blast of improvised guitar and drum action, featuring a member of KIT and XBXRX...
It seems like this ensemble never get the credit and attention that many of their peers in Chicago do. Hopefully that will change with "Up Above" their most fully realized and compelling album to date. The record finds them incorporating lots of eastern instrumentation like tambura, sitar, karkabas along with lots of hand percussion, glockenspiel, violin and countless other musical tools which they bring together to brew some front porch minimalism at its finest. It's like they found a way to channel the meditations of Terry Riley with like a more celestial Henry Flynt. While past releases have always been really nice but also somewhat predictable, we were so happy to hear that they've set their sights to a higher place and hit their target oh so nicely.
Throughout the '90s, Cedric Peyronnet would boldy announce that none of his Toy Bizarre recordings were made with synthesizers or samplers, instead with field recordings and collage techniques as his twin media. It has been speculated that this notion comes from a punk attitude against France's institutional avant-garde which evolved out of the work of Pierre Schaefer and Pierre Henri; but at the same time, Peyronnet's recordings focus on the specificity of sound locations, and the technology of samplers and synthesizers didn't have the ability to reflect the unpredictability that Peyronnet witnessed in environmental sound. While Peyronnet doesn't mentioned his aversion to technology on this 3" from Ferns, he's retained the same adventurous sensibility for dynamic edits coupled with nocturnal, slippery ambience. From the jump-start opening of crackling twigs and grasses with an airplane's Doppler-effected engine roaring in the distance, Peyronnet's 20 minute composition dissolves into elegantly fluid timbres weaving out of tactile sounds from sand, grit, gravel, and other bits of detritus. Once all of the sounds have all settled into a drift of stasis, a quick jump to another set of textures and abrasions begins with a corresponding set of sympathetic drones. Fans of Loren Chasse's field recording work, Tarab, and Steve Roden should all take note of this exceptional release.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Toy Bizarre presents another collection of sound illustrations constructed entirely out of unprocessed field recordings. Twilight noises, maddeningly unidentifiable drones, and the musical minutiae of stolen moments of the world that surrounds us. Completely free of synthetic sounds and samplers, Toy Bizarre's soundscapes are certainly for fans of Id Battery.
Ok. First of all, this is a concerto for electric guitar and toy orchestra. TOY ORCHESTRA!! Six women and an array of children's toys and noisemaking devices intended for varying age groups. Fred Frith, as you may or may not know, is a well-known improvisational guitarist, who, over the years has worked with the likes of John Zorn and others. If anyone could play with a toy orchestra and do it right, it'd be Frith. The highly disciplined result is at the very least interesting and novel, and at most quiet emotionally evocative!
Sometimes a pedigree can tell you a lot about a band. For instance, take Transitional. Here's a list of bands the various members have been a part of: Novatron, Head Of David, Jesu, Grey Machine, God, Fear Falls Burning, and if you include the guy who mastered the record, add to the list: Jesu, Godflesh, Final, Ice, Techno Animal, Sidewinder and Napalm Death. Phew! You probably nailed that last one as Justin Broadrick, who does indeed master this second disc from Transitional, and the group does not stray too far from this sonic lineage, as Stomach Of The Sun is indeed intense, drone-y, grim, ominous, noisy, distorted, rhythmic, blackened, atmospheric, hypnotic and HEAVY. Fans of any or all of the above mentioned bands will most likely find this much to their liking.
The record begins with a 13+ minute slow burn guitardrone, that builds and builds, growing ever more intense and caustic, but somehow remaining warm and lush, before stumbling into a lurching industrial Godflesh-ed pound, dirgey and dense, but with a bit of a melodic element, a feedbacky melody draped over Transitional's tarpit plod, totally brings us back to the early Earache / Pathological days, but with a slightly more modern sheen. "In My Collapse" follows up with more rhythmic metallic crunch, this time a bit more dubbed out, a little space-y, like a Godflesh ballad if there could ever be such a thing, which leads directly into "Drowning", a gorgeously washed out doomic drift, spare drums, swirling effects, and lots of streaked longform tones, hypnotic and dreamy. The rest of the record pretty much shifts between those sounds, the more Jesu-y metalgaze drift, the post industrial metallic plod and the dreamlike ambient shimmer, the three sounds rarely remaining totally distinct, instead, constantly blending and mixing, creating gorgeous hybrids, sometimes dense and ominous, othertimes soft focus and otherworldly. "Hideaway" is the best song Jesu never recorded, the title track begins all spaced out and dubby, before introducing one of the most crushing (and weirdly processed) riffs ever, and the record closes with an epic swath of noise drenched free form ambient soft noise drift, that manages to be soothing and serene, as well as intense and haunting at the same time.
Seriously awesome stuff, not sure how we missed out on their debut, but this one is so good we're definitely gonna have to track that one down as well... On limited (naturally) vinyl and cd.
Every now and then a reissue will come our way that totally exceeds all of our wildest expectations. Unbeknown to us, Swans drummer Jonathan Kane made an ep in 1981-82 with Daniel Galliduani under the name Transmission. This was before The Swans even existed and demonstrates an unparalleled world of east meets west blistering percussive mastery! Imagine LaMonte Young leading a no-wave band with The Boredoms as his players and you'll start to get the idea of how ahead of their time Kane and Galliduani's sonic explorations actually were. With Kane's drumming creating a feverish trance and Galliduani's sax processed toand transformed into some sort of snake charming wall of guitar sound, the two created a relentless 22 minute polyrhythmic excursion that just drips with sweat, life and blazing rhythm. Decades after this recording was made a new wave of no-wavers and sonic explorers like Black Dice, Excepter, Lightning Bolt, Gang Gang Dance and countless others began to explore this same intense sound manipulation, rife with percussive heavy psychedelia, but truth be told this record is pretty impossible to top! In our minds the best record Jonathan Kane has ever made. Totally scorching, wildly creative and rushing wildly through our veins!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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This was another discovery after digging around through boxes in the back room of aQ, a little stash of tapes from this mysterious band called Trap Of The Trap. They were accompanied by a letter, saying that the band was done, and that the sender of the tapes was embarking on some sort of journey, and they just wanted to find homes for the remaining tapes. Well, somehow it took years for us to finally listen to these, but when we did, holy shit, we totally flipped. Andee played them on his radio show, and we set about trying to track down the band with the intention of getting more, or maybe even re-releasing these ourselves. As it is, we have about 6 copies of each tape, and regardless of future repressing/reissuing possibilities, these are the only copies left of the tape versions, which are all hand screened, and hand drawn, each one numbered, they're super DIY and look amazing, so if you're a tape nerd, you might want to grab one or both of these quick before they're gone, cuz this shit is AMAZING. And like all the coolest stuff, pretty hard to describe. They list a whole mess of instruments, pedals, guitars, monosynth, keyboards, turntables, drum machine, video camera (!), voices, accordion, harmonica, and more, all recorded onto a 3-track (the fourth track was busted), and all woven into a crazy collection of twisted sonic vignettes.
Reverse Mermaid, which is the first one we listened to, starts out with a hazy bit of Philip Jeck like looped swirl, all dreamy and drifty and woozy, which leads directly into "All Cages Open", which is the track that sealed the deal, a strange sort of minimal krautpsych, crafted from primitive rhythms, layered loops, groovy and mesmerizing, everything in a haze of crackle and static, we've probably listened to that track about 20 times. The rest of the tape is just as cool, slipping from Machinefabriek like melodic minimalism, to spaced out dreamfolk shimmer, and from garbled collaged psychedelia to weird outsider kosmische electronic drift, and lots of other strange stops in between.
Poppin' Street Jams, plays out more like fragments, and sketches, there's churning metallic crumbling crunch, there's hazy swirling cinematic post rock minimalism, blissed out gauzy psychedelic drones, primitive outsider electro, blown out melodic crumble, and again, especially on this record, a ton of other twisted fragments and fractured sonic experiments.
Here's hoping this stuff will resurface in some other form down the line, but for now, your tape deck is essentially worthless without one of these crammed in it. Our favorite new (very old) chunk of musical mystery for sure...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This was another discovery after digging around through boxes in the back room of aQ, a little stash of tapes from this mysterious band called Trap Of The Trap. They were accompanied by a letter, saying that the band was done, and that the sender of the tapes was embarking on some sort of journey, and they just wanted to find homes for the remaining tapes. Well, somehow it took years for us to finally listen to these, but when we did, holy shit, we totally flipped. Andee played them on his radio show, and we set about trying to track down the band with the intention of getting more, or maybe even re-releasing these ourselves. As it is, we have about 6 copies of each tape, and regardless of future repressing/reissuing possibilities, these are the only copies left of the tape versions, which are all hand screened, and hand drawn, each one numbered, they're super DIY and look amazing, so if you're a tape nerd, you might want to grab one or both of these quick before they're gone, cuz this shit is AMAZING. And like all the coolest stuff, pretty hard to describe. They list a whole mess of instruments, pedals, guitars, monosynth, keyboards, turntables, drum machine, video camera (!), voices, accordion, harmonica, and more, all recorded onto a 3-track (the fourth track was busted), and all woven into a crazy collection of twisted sonic vignettes.
Reverse Mermaid, which is the first one we listened to, starts out with a hazy bit of Philip Jeck like looped swirl, all dreamy and drifty and woozy, which leads directly into "All Cages Open", which is the track that sealed the deal, a strange sort of minimal krautpsych, crafted from primitive rhythms, layered loops, groovy and mesmerizing, everything in a haze of crackle and static, we've probably listened to that track about 20 times. The rest of the tape is just as cool, slipping from Machinefabriek like melodic minimalism, to spaced out dreamfolk shimmer, and from garbled collaged psychedelia to weird outsider kosmische electronic drift, and lots of other strange stops in between.
Poppin' Street Jams, plays out more like fragments, and sketches, there's churning metallic crumbling crunch, there's hazy swirling cinematic post rock minimalism, blissed out gauzy psychedelic drones, primitive outsider electro, blown out melodic crumble, and again, especially on this record, a ton of other twisted fragments and fractured sonic experiments.
Here's hoping this stuff will resurface in some other form down the line, but for now, your tape deck is essentially worthless without one of these crammed in it. Our favorite new (very old) chunk of musical mystery for sure...
We're currently quite enamored with the happenin' Vienna electro-acoustic improv scene -- especially when it involves the participation of two of the folks you'll find on this here Trapist album, Martin Siewart and Martin Brandlmayr. Recently we reviewed Too Beautiful To Burn, the album both Martins did together for the Erstwhile label, a simply gorgeous merging of live improv playing and electronic dronescape processing. Guitarist Siewart also appeared recently on B. Fleishmann's great "Welcome Tourist" album (contributing to that 2-cd set's second, dronier disc). In addition, drummer Brandlmayr you should know from the fractured propulsion he provides in the excellent glitch-rock instrumental outfit Radian. The Trapist trio is rounded out by Joe Williamson, an ex-pat Canadian bassist much in demand in Euro-improv circles these days.
So, what's going on here that's so great you ask? Well, maybe it's nothin' new to take live instruments and feed them into a computer, but both the playing (melodically blissful) and the editing (restrained, spacious) here are stellar. It's a sort of jazz-electronica, very lovely, with mellow moody drones and pretty details. All five tracks are quite wonderful, seemingly abstract yet focused. It's got a lot in common with Siewart & Brandlmayr's duo disc, but is much groovier, not so minimal. Like that record, the coloration of instruments like vibraphone and pedal steel bleed into an electronic, ambient field conjured by the group's synths and computer post-processing. This 2nd album from Trapist finds them on Thrill Jockey, who also put out the only US release by Radian, Rec.Intern, in 2002. There's similar musical methodology at work here -- fans of Radian will assuredly like this -- but Trapist is less 'post-rock'; more gentle, melodic, and electronica-like. Recommended!
