Not to be confused with the double e'd Midwestern punk rockers Vee Dee, this is the triple e'd Veee Deee and are American expats living in Japan. Well, at least one of em. AQ customer and long time pal Clay, most well known around here for sending us scathing (and hilarious) anti Keiji Haino hate mail, doing his very best to get Allan all riled up, much to the snicker delight of Andee (another misguided Haino hater).
Anyway, this is all sort of funny, as the sound of Veee Deee is not all that far removed from Haino's white noise psychedelic squall. Whoever is handling the ax duties here, could probably meet Haino on the sonic field of battle and hold his or her own. Dense flurries of rapid fire runs, weird moaning chords, bits of reverbed soft strum, all wound around some fierce and furious drumming.
While there are some Haino-ish elements, this falls way closer to modern freaked out spazz rock a la Strom And Stress, Coptic Light, Hella, Lightning Bolt, especially on the first track, with the band locking into hyper complex convoluted grooves, occasionally slowing things down for some tripped out drift, other times erupting into full on distorted crumbling NOISE. Someone must be manning the recording deck, as there is plenty of fucked up glitch and production weirdness. The second track (of three) is much more rock, with a seriously angular riff, wailed emo vocals, the drums still a chaotic clatter, sounding a little bit like Drive Like Jehu, slowing down for some minimal groove a la Stinking Lizaveta.
The final track mixes the disparate sound of the first two, a definite post rock post punk groove, but here muted and muddy, buried in a sludgy mix, emerging from a cloud of glistening atonal guitar splatter, and throbbing bass, tinkling chime like ambience and what sounds like croaking frogs, and finishing off in a flurry of buzzed out distorted skree. Cool stuff. Can't wait to hear more...
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As much as we dug the most recent record from Prurient, a seriously caustic slab of NOISE (and we're VERY picky about our noise) we're beginning to think Prurient mainman Dominick Fernow's true calling is playing in an actual band. It doesn't really matter what kind, as long as it's noisy and distorted and heavy and fucking LOUD. We've been freaking out about Fernow's black metal duo Ash Pool, a buzzing black beast as blown out as any noise combo, but here we have another of Fernow's bands, this one more rock than black metal, at least as far as we can tell. Actually for all we know the Vegas Martyrs could be black metal too, it's sort of hard to tell under all that noise and static and buzz and hiss.
There's lots of melody peeking out through the chaos which leads us to believe that somewhere in there lurks a rock band.
Like Ash Pool, Bone Awl, and Ancestors, it's all about the recording and the sound around the songs, which here means a swirling dense cloud of harsh buzz and whir, crumbling and grinding and hissing. But underneath are looped hypnotic melodies, howled vocals, pounding drums, all but completely obscured by that layer of blown out noise. It's almost like some rock band recorded by Merzbow and then mixed by Tim Hecker if that makes any sense. Or imagine the My Bloody Valentine model applied to noise rock instead of indie rock, less dreamy and blissy and more harsh and chaotic. Heavy, brutal, cacophonous, grating, in the red, overblown, ear splitting and dissonant, but at the same time, weirdly and impossibly pretty.
Packaged in a thick black and white sleeve, and pressed on super thick clear green vinyl. Limited to 750 copies, only 250 on green!
Finally available, only on cassette, the second, and final, unreleased record from East Coast black metal merchants Vegas Martyrs, featuring Dominick Fernow, he of Ash Pool, Cold Cave, Prurient and Hospital Productions.
We dug the first VM record a lot, a twisted chunk of buzz drenched heaviness that to our ears straddled the line between noise rock and black metal. Raw and pulverizing, but still weirdly melodic and subtly poppy, and while record number two seems, at least on the surface, to be a bit more grim and harsh, those elements still loom large. The opener sets the stage with some serious hateful lo-fi blackness, definitely for fans of Bone Awl, Ash Pool, Ancestors and the like, it's the next track that reveals the group's soft white underbelly, with a long sprawling bit of looped melody, wreathed in electronic crackle and laced with minimal bits of percussion, a stretch of brooding hypnorock that could have been some weird Circle outtake, that is until the song explodes in a flurry of heaving riffage, crashing drums and bellowed vokills, but that looped melody still drives the song, giving it an AmRep noise rock vibe, albeit a few shades blacker.
And so it goes, the whole record a blurred dizzying barrage of tangled melodies, of mathy rhythms, of looped riffage, of fragmented shards of pop music buried under a continuous avalanche of crumbling electronics and feedback, wreathed in reverb and echo, tense and intense, all wound into tight yet, sprawling blasts of pop flecked avant math/noise/black metal weirdness. Awesome.
Techno/electronica remixes of your Vegetable Orchestra favorites, from the likes of Ricardo Villalobos, Luciano, Oliver Hacke, Basteroid, Sian, and others.
THE BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR of music made entirely with vegetables. Well, almost entirely. This extremely healthy twelve person ensemble's raison d'etre is indeed the use of instruments constructed from vegetables... they've designed carrot flutes, celery bongos, and something called the cucumberophone! We've been fans for a long time, but some of you might not be familiar with the Vegetable Orchestra, it's been a while since their last proper album (this is their third, or fourth if you count a remix disc). Years and years ago, back in 2003 when they were more formally known as the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra ('cause that's where they're from), we made one of their early albums a Record Of The Week. That's long out of print now, so we're pretty excited that the Vegetable Orchestra has at last sprouted a new disc. Even Andee here at AQ, who is infamous for NOT liking vegetables, loves the Vegetable Orchestra (finally, a decent use for vegetables, he thinks... yeah he'll listen to vegetables, just doesn't like to eat 'em).
The VO has definitely kept perfecting their techniques and exploring new possibilities of vegetable-based sounds, this album displays a lot of variety (and not garden variety, even though it belongs in a garden). There's the tracks that sound like minimal electronica... also poppier ones, and darker, ambient soundscapery... also some thumping techno beets, er, beats, and onionoisy outbursts. In the past they've done some covers, Kraftwerk among 'em, but these 12 tracks are all homegrown tunes. Rhythmic and textural, not only is the MUSIC enjoyable, but there's the added enjoyment of the intriguing way it puts your imagination to work, trying to conceive of what possible manipulation of what possible vegetables could possibly result in these sounds??? It's amazing, there are tracks here that manage to remind us of everything from Pan Sonic to Konono No.1 to Matmos to the big salad we had for lunch yesterday. And listening to these organic, "crunchy" sounds, some of the time it would be easy to think this really belongs in our field recordings section. The rhythmic pitter patter of rattling legumes, or the snapping, rustling of celery stalks (we're guessing?) can sound like rain, or surf... other veggies mimic the sound of our faves, frogs! And the blowing of horns carved from root vegetables (again, we're making assumptions) can sound like larger mammals, or fog horns.
Some of the tracks are calm, others rambunctious, all interesting. It's groovy, and experimental. Track ten, a short one entitled "Krautrock", gets positively NOISY, loud, distorted, industrial, as if the latter-day Faust took over the vegetable instruments.
Look, going full circle here, it wouldn't matter WHAT their instruments were made of, vegetable animal or mineral, if the resulting sounds and songs weren't good. These are. Creative, curious, even kinda catchy. The nutritional benefits are just a bonus.
Now that they've got this new disc out, we really hope they come play here in the States. Would love to see 'em live. They could do a tour of farmer's markets!
Comes in a nice digipak with poster. Recommended!!! (As part of a balanced diet... c'mon, Andee!)
Another release from Finland's Fonal records, related in membership (and thus not surprisingly also sound-wise) to Es and Kiila. Velvolino are a mostly instrumental guitar-bass-drums trio whose compositions range from moody and mellow to more energetic, foot-tapping fare, reminding us of everything from fellow Finns and AQ-faves Circle to the Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet to film noir soundtracks! Throw in jazz flourishes, organ on the appropriately titled, Bohren-like "Sicilian Dirge", and the mysterious field recordings that crop up between some tracks, and you have an excellent, eclectic listening experience. Oh, and the lone vocal track "How To Make Love Quietly" strangely enough makes us imagine an unthinkable Circle / Weezer collaboration! So yeah, we said 'eclectic', yet Tango does have a cohesive sound of its own. Another lovely release from Fonal's Sami Sanpakkila and friends!
Yet another blast of misanthropic, demented and damaged, ultra complex and super sick splattercore-broken-beat-drum-and-bass madness from Aaron Funk aka Venetian Snares. This stuff is so much more complicated and fucking creepy than any of his contemporaries. Take Aphex Twin at his most complex (Boy Girl maybe) mix in some Lesser (totally irrational beats chopped to bits) plus some truly creepy samples and some hateful misanthropy (Pornography, S+M, Snuff films, Whitehouse, Trevor Brown who once again supplies the suitable pervy album art, etc.) and filter it all through the 'Snares wicked sense of drama and melody, and his knack for making impossibly stuttery beats and retarded rhythms coalesce into some painfully dark, amazingly appealing and truly nightmarish electronic mayhem.
MPEG Download: "Befriend A Child Killer Remix" [/audio/venetianbefriend.mp3]
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Another twisted electronic gem from Mr. Aaron Funk, aka Venetian Snares, and much like or favorite records of his, and there have been many, My Love Is A Bulldozer, is another dizzying mashup, this one, combining his wildly tangled drill and bass and frenzied jungle, with jazzy torch songs, and haunting Scott Walker like ballads. Sounds like a weird mix, and it is, pretty jarring too, but in a really cool way. All it should take is a few minutes of opener "10th Circle Of Winnipeg", which begins with swoon some strings, then jazzy drum skitter, then throaty female vox, then some thick dub step bass warble, the drums gradually cranking up, the sounds wreathed in weird little flitting fireflies of FX, before exploding into a gloriously chaotic drum and bass freakout, all wound around that swoon some torch song opening, veering wildly back and forth between buzzing droned out skitter, to wild cascades of spastic drum programming, to dark jazziness, and back again, often all of those edges blurring and bleeding into something confusional and downright mad scientist brilliant. And heck, that's just the first song.
The rest of the record is rife with strings, and choirs, the sound classical, baroque, folk, Flamenco, in equal measure, with long passages that could be mistaken for some lost Arvo Part piece, but inevitably, the sound explodes into some classic Snares drum programming.
The male vocals, presumably Funk's, are super emotional and distinctive, dramatic and over the top, sounding a little like Scott Walker, and when wound around dizzying drum programming, it's pretty stunning.
And those vocals definitely define much of this record, those tracks sounding like some weird seventies prog-folk record re-envisioned as modern warped electronica, while other tracks (like "Dear Poet"), are epic and cinematic, and sound like they could be the score for some Game Of Thrones style epic, or some steam punk space opera, the jungle perfectly meshed with the orchestral stapes, the droning synths, the strange chorales, the strings, totally over the top, confusing, and utterly and entirely addictive. Like every Venetian Snares record, we can't stop listening to this one, and feel compelled to proclaim it the best yet, at the very least it's currently our favorite, which is saying something, considering that the Venetian Snares catalog is pretty much all favorites. Needless to say, WAY recommended.
As much as we do try to avoid judging a book by its cover, it does seem to be getting easier and easier to get an idea of what to expect from a Venetian Snares record by the cover art. Take the last disc.�Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms, the cover was a strange cybernetic blend of gears and pipes and cow parts, all in a big confusional tangle. And inside, the music reflected that (well, maybe not the cow parts), a wild snarl of buzzing drill and bass, circusy sound samples, confusional loops... Then of course there's�Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, with it's spare grey sky filled with silhouettes of birds in flight, very classic and mysterious and romantic, and� thus inside, the darkest VS record yet, all stately strings, and dramatic swells, held together by a framework of melodic squalls of drum and bass.�
Which brings us to Pink + Green, and to be honest, we're not sure what to expect. A wild My Little Pony world of pink skies and rainbows, pinballs raining from the sky, dayglo colored foliage, balloons and strange spaceship like buildings, but most striking of all, the ponies themselves, here blessed with extra eyeballs, skull and crossbones tattoos, leg warmers, mohawks, cigarettes, hypodermic needles, and at least one pair seems to be engaged in some sort of lewd and lascivious frolicking. And you know what? Even though it's nearly impossible (and not a little bit scary) to imagine what the aforementioned scene might actually sound like, it's not that long a stretch to imagine it sounds like this.�
Falling somewhere between old Venetian Snares, Shitmat, and a handful of other chop-it-up-and-wrap-it-all-around-insane-spastic-drum-programming audio practitioners, but VS, aka Aaron Funk, has always had a special way with the slice and dice, and the drum machine set on stun, and not much has changed, this stuff is wild and dizzyingly complex, huge fuzzed out bass lines, skittering drums EVERYWHERE, the most notable difference here, are the vocals, or more specifically the original remnants of the songs before they were all chopped up, the twee girly 'pink and green' vocals on the title track, the 'get fucked up' toasting of "Husikam Rave Dojo" complete with some almost buried rave diva wailing.�
As the record progresses it gets faster and faster, more and more chaotic, like some robotic dance party gone awry, the machinery suddenly malfunctioned, sending the poor human dancers into a frenzied dance to the death. "Husikam Rave Dojo" is a dancehall rave all fucked up and twisted and tangled. The VIP mix of the title track sounds like the programmed drums were replaced by REAL drums (and they were according to the liner notes, although that seems impossible) and the record finishes with the awesomely titled "Sporto Fucking Sellout Cocksuckerface" a slow building gabber flecked spastic drill and bass freakout with bizarre (and goofy) vocal samples, fuzzy speaker melting synths, and of course a futuristic dumpster full of garbled beats poured out all over everything. Phew...
Yet another collection of fantastic and far out musical weirdness from Finnish madman Verde, also known as Mika Rintala, one time member of Circle and Extroverde, but by now, much better known as a mad scientist instrument builder, whose records are constructed using the various and sundry electronic devices Rintala designs and assembles. The inside cover of Verde's new disc offers up a cool snapshot of some of these contraptions, all brightly colored, with tubes and switches and levers and speakers and knobs, and all placed in front of a field of blossoming flowers.
They may be pretty and colorful, but those machines can create pretty out there sounds, which Rintala deftly mixes with bits of jazz, looped droniness, and hypnotic rock. Fans of Circle and the various Circular offshoots will definitely find much to love here. Analog synths swoop and shimmer, wrapped around a repetitive guitar figure and some sizzling cymbals, deep pulsing bass tones throb underneath atonal steel string clang. The result a little bit new age, a little bit abstract electro, pretty hard to describe, as is the whole disc, from old timey jazz accompanied by what sounds like whales songs, wreathed in tape hiss and whirring fuzz, to ominous downtuned looped low end rhythms, peppered with percussive thumps, and squalls of creepy robotic buzz, to wildly malfunctioning electronics wrapped around off kilter guitars and thick sheets of feedback, to gorgeously warped chamber music, played on what sounds like the inside of a piano and some thick warbly rubber band strings, to gorgeous minimal rhythmscapes, with muted percussion, and mesmerizingly woozy melodies, fractured detuned steel string guitar, found sounds, a men's choir speaking not singing and more weird sounds and musics than we could ever find words for.
The cool thing about Verde records, and this one is no different, is that these are not just collections of 'weird sounds', or even sonic experiments, these are actual proper (or perhaps IMproper) songs, pieces, movements, they just so happen to be composed and recorded using a motley collection of hand assembled machines, which if anything, makes the music of Verde more bizarre, but also, way more special and unique.
Okay fellow Finnish obsessives! It's that time again. The arrival of another super cool, and of course super limted (only 300 copies worldwide!) sonic missive from the bizarre musical world that is the Finnish Underground. The is the second release we've carried from Verde, AKA Mika Rintala, who sometimes plays with Circle and Ektroverde, but more often is holed up in his home studio concocting all sorts of far out sounds. And far out they are, from bleeping alien melodies, to shuffling electronic jazz to minimal music concrete to droney hypno-rock and everything in between. Utilizing homemade instruments as well as traditional ones, Rintala constructs his own vison of the future (and at the same time, the past), a world of sonic mystery, assembled from unlikely parts into bizarre and beautifu arrangements, resulting in a truly curious, and truly wonderful collection of songs and sounds.
More Finnish musical madness in the form of this, the third and latest release from Verde, who just happens to be the musical alter ego of one Mika Rintala, who occasionally plays with Finnish dronerock legends Circle, as well as their jazzier offshoot Ektroverde. But when he's not helping with the rock or the jazz, he's holed up in his mad scientist laboratory, building homemade instruments, and using them to create incredibly demented, droney and druggy, beautifully abstract spaced out electronic soundscapes, that totally blow our minds.
Think Tangerine Dream, Space Machine, Christine 23 Onna, Hawkwind, Popol Vuh, Circle, it's some sort of Alien Krautrock, long drawn out buzzing blissful soundscapes, drenched in homemade FX, buzzing and blurry, super affected rhythms wrapped in slippery shifting whorls of dizzying synthesized sound. Like an android Can, all motorik and propulsive, shiny but always teetering on the verge of collapse. A complicated mechanical band, assembled from spare parts in the basement, wound up and wheeled into the studio. Angular melodies, abstract music box tinkles, simple shuffling drums, warm washes of synthesizer swoosh, skronky horns, splattery garage rock funk rhythms, bits of found sounds and field recordings, long stretches of primitive synth warble, bits of warped horns all tangled up in strange little space rock epics. Verde really shines when the sound is in full on far out space rock mode: a simple rhythm is unleashed, barrelling relentlessly toward infinity, leaving a swirling trail of junked FX, clouds of clank and clatter, thick whirls of bleep and bloop and whoosh, jagged fragments of melody left to drift weightless, angular guitar grit, a shimmering sparkling contrail of divine sonic detritus.
So cool.
Verde is a Finnish one man band who also goes by the name Mika Rintala, and when Rintala is not playing with his friends in Circle or Ektroverde, he's busy inventing and building instruments and using them to assemble totally damaged, beautifully otherworldly records like this one. Vuoronumero is a gorgeously blissed out, creepy and lovely selection of mini epics, that veer dramatically from freaked out sci-fi space drone, to creepy drone-y minimalism, to weird outerspace jazz, to haunting cinematic soundscapes. Incorporating field recordings, classical guitar, shimmering feedback, alien elctronic buzz, super distorted Tom Waits-ish vocals, mutated jazz horns, wailing fuzz guitar skronk (ala Sonny Sharrock), thumping Krautrock rhythms and a motley assortment of homemade sound making machines, Rintala manages to create a weird blend of Circle-ish drone rock, twentieth century music concrete, and demented outrock. Guests include a handful of Finnish underground luminaries including most of the guys in Circle!
Are not from Vermont. Give it a listen, maybe you'll guess... they're from Cologne, Germany.
And Vermont's debut release comes to us via our fave techno/electronica imprint, Cologne's Kompakt. It's the first collaborative project from experienced producers Marcus Worgull and Danilo Plessow (Motor City Drum Ensemble). This duo has also enlisted some friends to help 'em out - among them, Can's Jaki Liebezeit, who drums on two of the cuts, along with one of Jaki's bandmates in his '80s Phantom Band. So no surprise that this has got a satisfyingly, slightly krautrock-ish vibe, shades of Cluster and Kraftwerk; these moody, melodic instrumentals all arising out of the Vermont duo's relaxed jams on vintage analog synth gear, augmented on a few of the tracks by guest guitar, violin, drums, and theremin. There are 14 varied pieces, with Teutonic names like "Ruckzug" and "Ubersprung" and "Katzenjammer". Self-descriptive names too, like "Dynamik", "Majestat", and "Macchina". Some have atmospheric, "incidental" music feel, others are more active and insidious. All are constructed from a quite pleasant palette of sounds that include sundappled electronic blippery, gently chirping melodies, headnodding beats, and whooshing soothing synth textures. As befits a release on the label that brought us the "Pop Ambient" concept, there's moments here that sound like the mellowest video game theme music you could ever imagine!
It's nice stuff, very nice. We're happily transported by this music to the mountains of an imagined idyllic Vermont (that's somehow right outside of Cologne), the temporal location of which is also oddly imprecise - could be just yesterday, or deep in the '70s.
Vinyl version (tracks spread over an lp and a 7") also includes a cd of the whole album, which is what you get when you get the cd version, obviously.
The depths of the ocean and the heights of the mountains. As poetic as these subject matters are for Blake Edwards, he seeks to describe the existential danger inherent in exploring such places. To ascend Mount Everest may be the most exhilarating experience in one's life, but the possibility of death is very, very real. The same can be said for plunging to the bottom of the sea. Manifesting such existential threats has been part and parcel of Edwards' project Vertonen. Recently, he's embodied a slipperiness between a tonal, electro-acoustic beauty and undercurrents of industrial violence lurking from within; and that holds true on this album as well. The coordinates of the first track refer to the location of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean; and appropriately enough, that track plummets through a series of aqueous, yet ominous electronic percolations coming to rest at a blackened pressurized hum, amounting to a great piece of bleak, industrial strength dronemuzik. A lurching heartbeat rhythm guides the first half of "HACE/26,250", whose title refers to the altitude at which the condition known as High Altitude Cerebral Adema begins to impact the human body negatively through the lack of oxygen getting to the vital organs and causing the collapse of brain activity. And thus, amidst this slow somatic rhythm, harsh sinewave electronics and squalls of tempestuous noise beckon from the nether regions behind a glacial pall of cold cold drone. Eventually, these actionist gestures dissolve alongside the heartbeat rhythm into a shimmering, snowblinding drift of minimalism, a portrait of a mountaineer gazing over the horizon from the top of the world while his or her body shuts down. Horrifyingly great.
Deteriorated Broadcast is a short-run cd-r from Chicago power-drone engineer Blake Edwards (aka Vertonen), and we can't help thinking to back to John Duncan's minimalist opus Phantom Broadcast, given that Edwards too has sourced at least some of this work from the spectral palette of shortwave radio. There are plenty of sublime moments where Edwards (like Duncan) creates an electonic bath of rarified drones, whose sustained, shimmering chorales emerge as those transmissions from another plane that Thomas Edison once thought possible through the birth of radio communication. Muffled voices and cavernous room thrumming snap into a volatile cascade of haptic vibration and sinusoidal shortwave hues, that slowly give way to a monochromatic dead-circuit tone, which is akin to a particular strain of noxious interference that runs rampant through the shortwave spectrum in urban areas. Phased static and additional sinewave tones gradually modulate through this slumped sonic field as a ghostly residue of some type of broadcast filtered through the earth's atmosphere and all of the irradiating fields that drift through our cities. Some 30 minutes into the 50 minute piece, Edwards intensifies his psychoacoustic crucible of sound with metallic slashes whose mutated and bloated abrasions gradually collapse into a chest-compressing sound-pressure wall of low-end frequencies matched with industrially charred hiss. A great album for sure for fans of Joe Colley, The Hafler Trio, and Francisco Lopez; but be warned this is limited to less than 100 copies of which we only have a handful!
A couple years back, Vertonen began a series of compositions entirely based on field recordings of heavy machinery. This was truly industrial music glommed from the rhythms of pistons, turbines, pneumatic hammers, and any other thing that goes clank in the urban jungle. This series began as an homage to the classic French industrial sounds of Le Syndicat and Vivenza, with their brute recapitulations of an unwelcome man-machine hybrid. Of course, all the titles of these albums are French too, driving home the point. But as Vertonen (aka Blake Edwards) continued to work with the material, the pieces became refined into a metal machine music of acoustic noise more akin to something by Organum or more precisely Chop Shop. While the churning and grinding of those machines are ever present, Edwards dials in particular midrange frequencies from diesel engines, hydraulic motors, and the workings of a metal scrapping facility (to name a few of his sources) into a boiling mass of white noise. The effect is more hypnotic than aggressive, with Vertonen shifting and sliding these layered recordings in and out of focus in relation to the foregrounded sounds. The accompanying cd-r is a longform, yet thoroughly menacing collage of somewhat more droned-out recordings from HVAC systems, computer farm cooling vents, and the familiar whooshing sounds of BART - the San Francisco Bay Area train that connects the city with the East Bay. Again with the French, this disc gets the title Machines Domestiques. This is a really good looking picture disc, with a couple of vertiginous photographs from rust-belt sites of heavy industry. Limited to 300 copies.
Oh, yes. Industrial music. Blake Edwards - the man behind Vertonen, not to be confused with, uh, the other Blake Edwards - ventured hither and yon throughout the great state of Illinois cataloguing the noises, rhythms, and drones from the state's wealth of industrial-strength machines, capturing half-ton presses, diesel engines, hydraulic presses, air filtration systems, hay balers, drill presses, iron works fabrication facilities, desalination facilities, etc; and he's worked these grinding rhythms, incendiary hisses, and atonal klank into a very effective set of pulse-oriented collages that harken to a classic, early '80s definition of Industrial Music, post-Throbbing Gristle. The likes of Vivenza, Esplendor Geometrico, and even Test Dept. looked to the sounds of the industrial workplace for musical inspiration, contextualizing their field recordings with a claustrophobia that alluded to a grim monotony within an increasingly dehumanized social order. Such is the framework for Vertonen's La Coeur Mecanique, recorded a few decades later with a more clinical mindset in the approach to the sounds, alternating between a rhythmic bash on one track followed by a monolithic gray wash of noise on the next. For the former strategy, Vertonen's locomotive, mechanical churnings lock into incessant patterns of hammered iron and steel, with blossoms and swarms of hum, hiss, and klang amassing in the distance. And on the latter, the compacted layers of steam ventilation and compressed air become the ashen bellowings from the belly of an ill-tempered foundry. Without the rhythmic patterns of the former, these latter works are bleak parallels to those industrially-sourced recordings by Francisco Lopez. Limited to 160 professionally duplicated cd-rs, we might add.
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Chicago's power acoustician Blake Edwards has been recording as Vertonen for years now, with plenty of caustic noise and atonal hums that draw parallels to the likes of John Duncan, CM Von Hausswolff, and Joe Colley (who has released a number of works through Edwards' own C.I.P. imprint). Yet, this album is easily the most subtle production for Edwards, and it's almost as it he's gone out of his way to burnish away almost every plausible signifier to this album, leaving behind a stately drone construction of phased vibrations and bellowing rumbles. All he provides from the outset is a statement that his source material was culled from a tape made in 1979. While he doesn't come outright and say who made the tape, if you were to ask him (we did), he would honestly say that the tape was from Jonestown; and the title itself comes from the People's Temple book of shortwave radio codes, which is code for "this is not a code." His obfuscation of the source material was intended not to shroud the material further in occluded transgression, but an attempt to remove the potent sensationalism around the Jonestown massacre all the while trying to articulate his own metaphors of horror, control, and fear through an act of negation. The slowly developing passages of flickering, long-stare drones is thick with a creeping sense of dread, even as Edwards makes plenty of compositional gestures to the likes of Eliane Radigue and Roland Kayn. It's as if Edwards has erased everything from that Jonestown tape, except for feelings of tranced-out exhaustion and sun-bleached humidity from the People's Temple members who had left everything behind in the US to embark upon a utopian project that had already turned ugly but soon was to become tragic. This is probably Vertonen's best work to date and certainly comes recommended.
We had never heard Vessels before, a 5 piece from the UK, this record just showed up one day in the mail, so we threw it on and BAM, were totally BLOWN AWAY. We're tempted to say they don't make music like this anymore, but then we're not really sure they ever did. Like a supercharged modernized big beat-ed post rock maybe, starting out with woozy Konono like melodies over big distorted Tortoise like drums, and when the track kicks in, the sound is impossibly dense, everything wrapped in thick buzzing synths, a propulsive, almost groovy slab of super rhythmic, post-kraut hypno rock, imagine maybe if Black Moth Super Rainbow were making records for Thrill Jockey in the nineties, this is sort of what we imagine that might have sounded like.
But in some ways it's too modern, the sound impossibly lush and polished, the arrangements too, balanced delicately between progged out and intricate, and super repetitive and hypnotic, with some of THEE most kick ass drumming we've heard in ages. All woven into some seriously heavy and epic modern post rock. Just check out opener "Monorform" which we basically just described, except for the super heavy final movement which finishes things off with a totally majestic blast of blown out Godpeed worthy heaviness.
The Tortoise vibe is big too, with the band getting post rocky and jazzy all over the place, that combination of delicate instrumentation and big booming drums, what we liked so much about the early Tortoise recordings, but again here, Vessels crank it up, and make it impossibly heavy, the sound dense and layered and gloriously and melodically cacophonous, super dynamic too, the band deftly switching gears from full on bombast to hushed intricate skitter, from churning dirge to washed out drift, often in the same song. The vocals are minimal, and when they do pop up, they work perfectly, otherwise Helioscope is mostly instrumental, and Vessels are smart enough to know that sans vocals, the music is everything, and the music here is incredible, just check out the sound sample and see if you aren't as blown away as we were. Most definitely a new favorite!
Some folks may know Lisa McGee from Barn Owl side project, Higuma, or her vocal work on Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Love Is A Stream, or perhaps even Portraits, the zen-minded supergroup of Bay Area improvisationalists. Truth is, McGee has been a muse behind a lot of great recordings in that circle so it's really nice to see her finally in the spotlight via her debut solo effort, Vestals. In some way McGee is channeling Rachel Brook from early nineties Bristol bands, Flying Saucer Attack and Movietone, in her ethereal noise-pop laden songs replete shimmering electric guitar, and featuring Trevor Montgomery's bass and partner Evan Caminiti's bowed guitarscapes. The atmosphere of desolate spaciousness and the smoldering shoegazed distortion that ripple through the Higuma recordings are certainly present; but in Vestals, McGee pushes the song-writing to the forefront with chiming hypno-drone-rock bliss akin to Roy Montgomery channelling the Velvets, which thrums and drones most prominently on the album's lengthy mantra "Of Ripples." But she can also shift into quite the chanteuse, as on the crushed-velvet noise-pop of "Forever Falling" and "In Waking Dreams" where McGee's voice carries the songs to stratospheric crescendos through a hook-laden bliss. A gorgeous debut that limited to a mere 300 copies!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest from the Monorail Trespassing label, who in the past have brought us killer releases from Infinite Body, Robedoor, Emaciator, Cloaked Light, Terrors, Sean McCann, Pedestrian Deposit and a bunch more. Vestigial Limb fits pretty perfectly with the above mentioned sonic sorcerers, weaving thing undulating swaths of downtuned guitar buzz, strange tinkling percussion, warbly almost mechanical sounding rhythms (like a noisier Strotter) and woozy rubber band melodies into a softly noisy, dreamy and darkly cacophonous Jeckian dronescape. Sweet stuff for sure. Very few copies...
French prog from the seventies can move us in just the right ways, especially if it hits that sweet spot between Kosmiche new age and sublime Euro-jazz, yet still has that individually eccentric feel that you only get from the French. Patrick Vian's sole 1976 lp Bruits et Temps Analogues, famously included on the Nurse With Wound list, is just such a record. An amalgam of Michael Rother sky gliding electronic music and a mellower take on the "Superficial Music" of Bernard Szajner, Vian packs a lot of punch into his compositions, propelled forward by the hypnotic counterpoint of sunny guitar lines, analog Moog washes, flutes and all kinds of dazzling rhythmic instrumentation, such as kinetic jazz drumming, and deep vibraphones, the latter thanks to the help of Mino Cinelu (who had played with the likes of Gong, Weather Report and Miles Davis). There's also an exotica quality at play here especially on the track, "Orenock" which feels like we're on safari on some strange desolate planet, as well as some avant-garde tendencies, such as using tape manipulations of recordings of American sporting events on the musique concrete piece, "Tricentennial Drag". Vian began his musical career in the legendary French prog /free jazz band Red Noise, but the vibe on Bruits et Temps Analogues is way more serene and groovy. It lives up to its awesome cover painting. Originally released on the Egg / Barclay label, it's about time this stellar album got reissued. Thanks Staubgold! Highest Recommendation!!
While this is not a cd-r, and is not on VHF, or on Rural Electrification Program, I'm sure you'll understand its inclusion in this section:
Another slab of glorious din, courtesy of the Vibracathedral Orchestra. This time, in the guise of the VCO 'drum troupe', they explore a different side of their personality on each side of this seven inch. One side sounds like an orchestra, tuning up for all of eternity. Notes stretched and bowed in some sort of cosmic slop. The other side sounds like just the orchestra's percussion section, pushed down a stairway that goes on forever. Bells and gongs and shakers in some sort of ancient sounding ritual. Quite nice.
Judging from the amount of material coming from the Leeds collective, the Vibracathedral Orchestra must be constantly performing, recording, or manufacturing artwork for their exponentially increasing discography of super limited edition cd-rs, seven inch
This is a limited cd-r live document of AQ faves the Vibracathedral Orchestra recorded in 1999 at shows in Leed, Glasgow and Manchester as a five piece. But before we get to the music, let's just talk for a minute about Bill at VHF and how much care and
1. Tinkling chimes and buzzing metallic grit pierce a monstrous wall of hum.
2. Seriously intense washes or warbles and roars and thrum, with a simple one-drum rhythm holding the whole thing together. Epileptic percussion and waves of cymbal/gong wash give way to squealing horns and a drum corp gone haywire.
3. An almost-folk song constructed from looped guitars/synths, shakers, bells and cymbals.
4. Spaced out meditative ur-drone. This time complemented by the sonic crush of a church organ. The sound of the apocalypse. Think: Nitsch jammng with Skullflower, or better yet, don't think at all, just sit back and give up....
5. Noisy chaotic out-rock drone. Sounds like a rock band, loosed of any sort of ties to 'the proper way of playing' (which it sort of is) and just letting the instruments do what they want. Thick and relentless, layers upon layers of electrified fury that eventually dissipates into tranquil dreaminess.
Live is definitely where the VCO come into their own, stretching and exploring the sonic possibilities of 'rock and roll', and coming up with some of the most gorgeous and transendentally intense droning free-rock we've heard! So recommended! And as you might have guessed, limited.
It's been a while since we've heard from UK ur-drone spacelords Vibracathedral Orchestra, founder Neil Campbell took off on his own a while back, and now kicks up a ruckus as Astral Social Club, but the Orchestra is still going strong, fronted by long time members Mick Flower and Adam Davenport, who for this new set of THREE (!!) full length releases, is joined by John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and the mighty John Godbert of the legendary Total.
Each of the three, Joka Baya, The Secret Base and Smoke Song, function on their own as fully formed proper albums, but the three also seem to fit together into one expansive whole, a sweeping sprawling songsuite, that seems to drift from one lp to the next, and in fact, although we didn't try it, we imagine you could probably play these records simultaneously in various combinations and the results would be even trippier.
Needless to say, most folks will most likely want all three, but no harm done in starting with one, and then grabbing the others later, unless they sell out that is, which seems very likely considering that these are quite limited.
Up first is Joka Baya (in the black cover) beginning with a bit of African drumming, which gives way to some gorgeously glimmering and glistening prismatic dronemusic, swirling effects, all dreamlike and bleary eyed, with what sounds like birdsong mixed into the chiming notes and extended tones. The record shifts gears after that into something much heavier and more blown out, a full on psychedelic post Hawkwind spacejam, a heavy krautrock rhythm beneath a flurry of tangled psych guitars. The African drums return briefly before the band lock into a throbbing processed minimal looped dronescape, murky and washed out, dark and hypnotic.
The flipside is a single side long epic, a slow burning cloud of processed guitars, cymbal shimmer, glitched out FX, building to a pounding psychedelic crescendo before slipping into a propulsive muted buzzdrone raga outro.
The second lp is called The Secret Base (in the white and red cover) and begins immediately with a total Spacemen 3 / Loop styled drug rock jam, repetitive, mesmerizing, super hypnotic, the guitars smoldering and incendiary. The next track is an Eastern tinged spacekraut groove, strangely Southern sounding as well, a bit twang flecked, a little dubby even, melodic, and major key and surprisingly playful. Like the first record, The Secret Base also fills its second side with a single extended track, this time, it's all clattery and ritualistic and tribal, shakers, bells, hand drums, moaned and chanted vocals, very reminiscent of Avarus, NNCK, Sunburned Hand, eventually the sound locks into a skeletal groove, hypnotic and propulsive, but still abstract and way loose.
Finally, the third art in the trilogy, Smoke Song (in the Orange cover), which begins with a sprawling bit of Clattery, twangy tribal free drift, fluttery flutes, lots of percussion, a sort of wild and wooly drum circle, laced with woodwinds and swirling effects, before slipping into a muted spacey jam, all subtle drumming, wheezing chords, little bits of guitar jangle, warm whirring keyboards, druggy, psychedelic, and just a bit Doors-y (or Wooden Shjips-y, for a more contemporary reference).
Smoke Song too offers up a side long closer, this one ending the whole trilogy, and it's a doozy, full on droned out drug rock, cyclical, mesmerizing, sitar-like buzz wrapped around a simple, but pounding motorik beat, while all around it a swirling cloud of hiss and buzz and shimmer.
Needless to say, all three are recommended, and again, not sure how limited these are, or how long they'll be around...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Vibracathedral Orchestra is a hypnotic free noise group out of the UK which features current collaborators in Sunroof (whose most notable member is Matthew Bower of Skullflower and Total). Cyclical clatter of strumming guitars, not-quite-but-almost-drum-circle percussive swells, and squawking horns build the majority of these loosly improvised tracks that fall squarely between the free jazz of Albert Ayers and the dissonance of the experimental sides of Thurston Moore & Lee Ranaldo.
Back in print! And cheaper! First reviewed on list #182, four years ago, as follows:
This amazing record, previously LP only, finally gets the digital reissue from the until now primarily F/i oriented Lexicon Devil label. This one's for all you turntable-less folks and those of you who just may have missed out on this the first time around. But even those of you with the lp might have to pony up again, since there are 3 lengthy bonus tracks! Long, long, long pulsing drones, with strummed guitars, thrumming and warbling wind instruments and wheezing hurdy-gurdies. Classic Vibracathedral. At one point the mostly rhythmically free drone moves into a brief section that's surprisingly rocking for Vibracathedral Orchestra with drums beating out a steady 4/4 beat and lead by organ and electric guitar along with the usual saturation of droning accompaniment before settling back into a wash of gorgeously swelling drones once again. As always, totally mesmerising.
Managed to get another batch of these back in. Not sure how long they will last or if we'll be able to get more, so if you missed out last time, you got another chance! Don't blow it.
You know you want this. We did the minute we heard about it, and then again the second we laid eyes on it. And you best act fast 'cause these are SUPER LIMITED. Massive triple cd-r documenting VCO's recent US tour. And it's just as good as you would expect. Extensive shimmering primal tribal free drone epics. Take the best parts of NNCK, Sunroof!, Jackie O Motherfuckers and spread them in a thick paste over a sundappled mountaintop and you still don't even come close to how fucking perfect this is. Three hours of some of the most divine skree you will ever here. Hypnotic and mesmerising and breathtaking and the sounds I hope to hear as I drift into the next world. Matthew Bower and Tom Greenwood (Jackie OMF) guest on a few tracks her and there. Packaged in a cool odd sized triple cd DVD-style case and filled with blurry, rose tinted live shots of the band in full bliss out action. And again, VERY VERY LIMITED!
Vibracathedral Orchestra are the unsung heroes of drone rock. Free noise underdogs. They mine the same rich sounds as their more well known compatriots, Sunroof!, Hototogisu and the like, but they never receive the accolades, the adoration. Well, we're here to let them know that WE adore VCO, they are one of our favorite noisemaking outfits around! And as far as we're concerned, not only have they never released a bad record, they've released a few that might just be some of the best droning free rock we've ever heard.
That said, here we have the latest in VCO's quest for the ultimate drone. Well, this one will probably not help as this is both a decidedly more 'rock' and more abstract affair than their usual soaring skree. Starting off with a lush, soft cacophony, VCO take bells and percussion and woodwinds and chanting vocals, and twist them all into a gloriously droney din, sparkly and effervescent, like a sunnier Sunroof! in fact. But this soon gives way to a more tripped out krautrock, pulsing rhythms, looped guitar figures, drizzled with spacey filigree, very reminiscent of Can or Faust. The sidelong B side though, is not rock, nor is it drone, it's a dizzying day at some strange Eastern bazaar, percussion and vocals swirl like dust kicked up by passing carts, vocals chant and mutter, imagine strolling along back alleys, and down side streets, hearing all the strange sounds of some mysterious city, from a bustling marketplace to street musicians on the corner, all rendered with the same array of instrumentation, just wielded differently. From clangy tribalism to blissed out ur-drones, all heard as the living breathing sights and sounds of the city, shifting and changing as you pass by. Really cool.
Packaged in a hand screened black sleeve, with a little abstract painting attached to the front.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We had planned on listing this new Vibracathedral Orchestra record but only just discovered that it is already out of print. So know this: we only have FOUR COPIES. If you are reading this any later than the day after the list comes out, assume they are already gone. So quick on the trigger... Two side long epics, side one is an endless ambient shimmer the way only VCO can do it, side two is less drone and more rhythm, lending the proceedings a distinct SHOTM / NNCK vibe. Nice.
It's been a while since we've heard from UK ur-drone spacelords Vibracathedral Orchestra, founder Neil Campbell took off on his own a while back, and now kicks up a ruckus as Astral Social Club, but the Orchestra is still going strong, fronted by long time members Mick Flower and Adam Davenport, who for this new set of THREE (!!) full length releases, is joined by John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and the mighty John Godbert of the legendary Total.
Each of the three, Joka Baya, The Secret Base and Smoke Song, function on their own as fully formed proper albums, but the three also seem to fit together into one expansive whole, a sweeping sprawling songsuite, that seems to drift from one lp to the next, and in fact, although we didn't try it, we imagine you could probably play these records simultaneously in various combinations and the results would be even trippier.
Needless to say, most folks will most likely want all three, but no harm done in starting with one, and then grabbing the others later, unless they sell out that is, which seems very likely considering that these are quite limited.
Up first is Joka Baya (in the black cover) beginning with a bit of African drumming, which gives way to some gorgeously glimmering and glistening prismatic dronemusic, swirling effects, all dreamlike and bleary eyed, with what sounds like birdsong mixed into the chiming notes and extended tones. The record shifts gears after that into something much heavier and more blown out, a full on psychedelic post Hawkwind spacejam, a heavy krautrock rhythm beneath a flurry of tangled psych guitars. The African drums return briefly before the band lock into a throbbing processed minimal looped dronescape, murky and washed out, dark and hypnotic.
The flipside is a single side long epic, a slow burning cloud of processed guitars, cymbal shimmer, glitched out FX, building to a pounding psychedelic crescendo before slipping into a propulsive muted buzzdrone raga outro.
The second lp is called The Secret Base (in the white and red cover) and begins immediately with a total Spacemen 3 / Loop styled drug rock jam, repetitive, mesmerizing, super hypnotic, the guitars smoldering and incendiary. The next track is an Eastern tinged spacekraut groove, strangely Southern sounding as well, a bit twang flecked, a little dubby even, melodic, and major key and surprisingly playful. Like the first record, The Secret Base also fills its second side with a single extended track, this time, it's all clattery and ritualistic and tribal, shakers, bells, hand drums, moaned and chanted vocals, very reminiscent of Avarus, NNCK, Sunburned Hand, eventually the sound locks into a skeletal groove, hypnotic and propulsive, but still abstract and way loose.
Finally, the third art in the trilogy, Smoke Song (in the Orange cover), which begins with a sprawling bit of Clattery, twangy tribal free drift, fluttery flutes, lots of percussion, a sort of wild and wooly drum circle, laced with woodwinds and swirling effects, before slipping into a muted spacey jam, all subtle drumming, wheezing chords, little bits of guitar jangle, warm whirring keyboards, druggy, psychedelic, and just a bit Doors-y (or Wooden Shjips-y, for a more contemporary reference).
Smoke Song too offers up a side long closer, this one ending the whole trilogy, and it's a doozy, full on droned out drug rock, cyclical, mesmerizing, sitar-like buzz wrapped around a simple, but pounding motorik beat, while all around it a swirling cloud of hiss and buzz and shimmer.
Needless to say, all three are recommended, and again, not sure how limited these are, or how long they'll be around...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
On which perhaps our favorite troop of UK blissed out dronesters takes the percussive clatter, free jazz bleats, and latent Krautrockery of weird America's No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand of The Man, adds some Eastern raga to the mix and then melds it to their already divine cosmic drones resulting in Vibracathedral Orchestra become perhaps the only true heir to the long vacant Krautrock throne. Epic and unfettered, VCO emit long peals of sweet sonics that leisurely unfurl into massive expanses of cosmic hippy bliss, but the pulsing rhythms and relentless throb, harness the ethereal ambience, and manage to squeeze free sonic strum into ultra hypnotic, pounding perfection.
It's been a while since we've heard from UK ur-drone spacelords Vibracathedral Orchestra, founder Neil Campbell took off on his own a while back, and now kicks up a ruckus as Astral Social Club, but the Orchestra is still going strong, fronted by long time members Mick Flower and Adam Davenport, who for this new set of THREE (!!) full length releases, is joined by John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and the mighty John Godbert of the legendary Total.
Each of the three, Joka Baya, The Secret Base and Smoke Song, function on their own as fully formed proper albums, but the three also seem to fit together into one expansive whole, a sweeping sprawling songsuite, that seems to drift from one lp to the next, and in fact, although we didn't try it, we imagine you could probably play these records simultaneously in various combinations and the results would be even trippier.
Needless to say, most folks will most likely want all three, but no harm done in starting with one, and then grabbing the others later, unless they sell out that is, which seems very likely considering that these are quite limited.
Up first is Joka Baya (in the black cover) beginning with a bit of African drumming, which gives way to some gorgeously glimmering and glistening prismatic dronemusic, swirling effects, all dreamlike and bleary eyed, with what sounds like birdsong mixed into the chiming notes and extended tones. The record shifts gears after that into something much heavier and more blown out, a full on psychedelic post Hawkwind spacejam, a heavy krautrock rhythm beneath a flurry of tangled psych guitars. The African drums return briefly before the band lock into a throbbing processed minimal looped dronescape, murky and washed out, dark and hypnotic.
The flipside is a single side long epic, a slow burning cloud of processed guitars, cymbal shimmer, glitched out FX, building to a pounding psychedelic crescendo before slipping into a propulsive muted buzzdrone raga outro.
The second lp is called The Secret Base (in the white and red cover) and begins immediately with a total Spacemen 3 / Loop styled drug rock jam, repetitive, mesmerizing, super hypnotic, the guitars smoldering and incendiary. The next track is an Eastern tinged spacekraut groove, strangely Southern sounding as well, a bit twang flecked, a little dubby even, melodic, and major key and surprisingly playful. Like the first record, The Secret Base also fills its second side with a single extended track, this time, it's all clattery and ritualistic and tribal, shakers, bells, hand drums, moaned and chanted vocals, very reminiscent of Avarus, NNCK, Sunburned Hand, eventually the sound locks into a skeletal groove, hypnotic and propulsive, but still abstract and way loose.
Finally, the third art in the trilogy, Smoke Song (in the Orange cover), which begins with a sprawling bit of Clattery, twangy tribal free drift, fluttery flutes, lots of percussion, a sort of wild and wooly drum circle, laced with woodwinds and swirling effects, before slipping into a muted spacey jam, all subtle drumming, wheezing chords, little bits of guitar jangle, warm whirring keyboards, druggy, psychedelic, and just a bit Doors-y (or Wooden Shjips-y, for a more contemporary reference).
Smoke Song too offers up a side long closer, this one ending the whole trilogy, and it's a doozy, full on droned out drug rock, cyclical, mesmerizing, sitar-like buzz wrapped around a simple, but pounding motorik beat, while all around it a swirling cloud of hiss and buzz and shimmer.
Needless to say, all three are recommended, and again, not sure how limited these are, or how long they'll be around...
Vibracathedral Orchestra are one of those rare groups with a completely singular sound and a seemingly endless reserve of psych rock free drone inspiration with which to explore it. For us, they are one of the only bands who we could literally listen to forever, an everlasting endless jam, unfurling over the course of the next 50 years, each riff unfolding every month or so, each drum hit an entire day, melodies stretching for weeks and weeks. Our eyes close and we drift off to the next world while the music plays on...
That's exactly how it feels listening to Tuning To The Rooster. The songs are long, and they do feel gloriously and deliriously long, but they're never quite long enough. Not for us anyway. VCO have been masters of the drone, of the slowly shifting soundscape since their inception, but much like Skullflower discovering their inner Hawkwind on recent records, VCO seem to also have rediscovered the RIFF this time around. The opening track is like an Allman Brothers track gone totally apeshit. Or maybe Skullflower jamming with the Outlaws. Or something! There's a jangly sort of Southern rock riff, over chaotic propulsive drumming, a serious jam for sure, but the whole thing is wrapped in a thick cloak of droning shimmering distorted guitar noise, a continual psychedelic freakout SO continual that it becomes a static psych rock drone, with the original riff eventually repeating mantra like until it meshes with the background drone and it all becomes a brain melting divine psychedelic jam of the highest order. Woah, everyone who freaked out over Skullflower's Exquisite Fucking Boredom needs to check this out! The second track is back to that classic VCO sound we can never get enough of. A primal primitive space jam, all drones and rumbles and whirs and shimmers, a glorious pagan ritual that makes us want to lay naked in the middle of the forest and sink into the wet leaves as our eyes sparkle with reflections of shooting stars. Drifting and dreaming...
The last two tracks again focus on the riff, hypnotic and repetitive, like Steve Reich composing for Hawkwind. A glorious minimal psychedelic jam, wreathed in a haze of swirling feedback and wild melodies, minor key pianos, and all manner of swoosh and swoop. So utterly and fantastically divine!
The second album from this UK quintet is quite simply jubilant, an adjective not often used to define the circle of esoteric free-noise makers that spawned the Vibracathedal Orchestra, as well as Skullflower, Ramleh, and Ashtray Navigations. Vibracathedral Orchestra embark on the time honored journey of achieving the eternal drone supreme, hobbled together from fuzzed out guitar wash, acoustic guitar strum, long duration violin bowing, church organs and thankfully sporadic skree horns. "Versatile Arab Chord Chart" is well balanced between continual haziness and a variety of textural plucks and scratches, and ends up sounding quite reminiscient of Amon Duul's "Psychedelic Underground," No Neck Blues Band's improvisational hippiness, and Skullflower's lithium laced contemporary 'dream music' as initially envisioned by Cale, Young, etc. (these historical roots are available in a recording found elsewhere on this list).
First proper full length in a while from these ur-drone space explorers, which is long overdue, considering the protracted near silence of VCO, and Matthew Bower all but abandoning his Sunroof! in favor of the noisier Hototogisu. Whatever you call that sort of music that Sunroof!/VCO traffic in, very few other outfits have managed to channel the same sort of ferocious guitar freakout and blissy ambient swirl into the magical metallic drift that those two groups did.
So here we have Wisdom Thunderbolt, featuring the VCO usual suspects (Neil Campbell, Mick Flower, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport) with a whole mess of special guests, underground drumlord Chris Corsano, the aforementioned Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Sunroof!, Hototogisu, etc.), Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers and John Godbert (Skullflower, Total) and the sound is exactly as we remember it.
Thick and dense, swirling and blissed out, druggy and blurry, smeared and shimmering. There is percussion, it mostly tinkles and skitters, but occasionally pounds and swings, organs and synths are woven into weird little buzzing soundscapes, horns wail and skronk, guitars growl and jangle...
While the opening track is a ramshackle stumble, all over the place, but in a very good way, the second track is where the band locks into that perfect groove they've always been capable of. A blown out stretch of raga like buzz, tribal drums underpinning a simple riff, a spacey sea sick shimmer, all wrapped up in layers of guitar buzz and hissy synth, rich and thick and totally mesmerizing.
The rest of the record is more of the same, longform buzz drenched krautrocky drone jams, with some notable exceptions. The 12+ minute "Rainbow Whirlwind, which sounds like some lost Spacemen 3 jam, the guitars pulsing and throbbing, tones beating against other tones, the synths and guitars creating constantly shifting rhythms, interrupted in the middle by a blown out free noise fest, before slipping back into spaced out pulse and dreamy drift.
And, the uncharacteristically 'rock'-y intro to "Sway-Sage" that sounds like the Guess Who's "American Woman", before quickly slipping back into some super distorted space jam, with a glitchy buzz laid over a relentless rhythm, and with thick ropy swirls of guitar and synth buzz burying everything in that distinctly VCO warm washed out sonic blur.
Originally released in 2004 in a criminally limited run of just 250 copies, this killer slab of classic psych/drone/raga is available again, however briefly, reissued on VHF, a swank double lp, accompanied by a live DVD (more on that in sec).
An amazing archival selection of tracks, performed by the 'classic' lineup: Mick Flower, Neil Campbell, Bridget Hayden, Adam Davenport, Julian Bradley, and right off the bat, it's total bliss, a thick droned out wash of heavy layered buzz, soaring upper register skree and pulsing low end throb woven into a feedback drenched psych-kraut raga, laced with all manner of fluttering woodwinds, warped FX, which sort of sets the template for the rest of the records, longform drugged out space psych ur-drone drift, the various tracks bleeding into one another, ending suddenly, the edits weirdly jagged, but it all contributes to the home brewed flavor of these incredible psychedelic explorations.
Pulsating guitars are blurred into thick swirling clouds, and draped over woozy low slung basslines and creaking electric guitar buzz, primitive ritualistic rhythms, pound and skitter through a fog of sci-fi bleeps and bloops, smatterings of splattery percussion drift atop processed guitars and streaks of string buzz and electronic squelch, the sound often coalescing into some seriously heady grooves, total mesmerizing minimal hypnorock krautjams that should have fans of Circle and Sylvester Anfang and Wooden Shjips losing their shit.
The second lp takes up right where the first one lets off, but dials it back a bit, with some tripped out alien folk, all looped steel string guitar and bloopy rhythm, which gradually becomes more and more driving, like some strange motorik electro folk, replete with keening vox and loose chaotic drumming, before slipping into some sweetly somnambulent buzz, a simple stumbling rhythm, beneath a sky of shimmery strum and hazy chordal wheeze. Soon the sound becomes almost funky, a strange sort of folk groove, that sounds like a field recording of some lost tribal folk, which dissipates leaving some gorgeously serene folk, all fuzzy and softly twangy, which almost immediately splinters into stretch of pulsing krautrocky grooviness, only to return to that washed out skyfull of swirling strums, this time with some skittery splattery free jazz drums added to the mix, and some atonal twang, before finishing off in a soft focus blaze of skronk flecked psychedelic thrum. So awesome.
The accompanying dvd includes some amazing live footage of the group, the video of varying quality, with two of the clips looking professionally shot/edited, the sound incredible, with the band mostly in full rock mode, bombastic and heavy, some seriously energetic psychedelic stuff, and also includes some amusing band commentary on one of the tracks!
While many assumed that Paradigms was an exclusively heavy music label, seeing as many of its early releases were metal, and that it was born out of the death of the truly kick ass Rage Of Achilles label, in fact, from the very beginning, Paradigms has been releasing drone records and free folk records, weird prog records, along side the heavier metal and black metal and noise records, discs by bands like Gnaw Their Tongues, The Angelic Process, Throne Of Katarsis, Titan, Utlagr were balanced by discs from Plants, Tropes, Amber Asylum, Somnam, Snowdrift, this latest from California's The Victim's Shudder definitely fits more with the latter group.
Long dreamlike expanses of synthesized shimmer, drifting female vocals. The obvious reference is Cocteau Twins, maybe Dead Can Dance, TVS would have been right at home on 4AD, or at their most bleak and drone-y on Cold Meat Industry. TVS is essentially a one man band, who weaves massive reverby drifts of soft sound, shimmery and dreamlike, ethereal and New Agey at times, flurries of delicate piano drift over synthesized strings, cooing vocals hover in wide open expanses of sun dappled ambience, everything is gauzy and soft around the edges, bleary eyed and blurred.
A few tracks up the ante heaviness-wise, like "For Francesca" with its buzzing synths (or could they be real guitars?), growling demonic vox, lots of distortion and crumbling rumbles, grit and interference, all draped over a soaring chunk of stately neo-classical, or the cinematic drift of "A Godless Serene", replete with the sound of water and wind, field recordings layered beneath quivering strings and mournful melodies. The disc closes with the 13 minute "One Last Fatal Suite", beginning as another delicate crystalline blur, vocals indistinct and wordless, piano, simple and pointillist, eventually joined by strange electronic specters, high end streaks, grinding bits of crunch, static, hiss, building to a haunting caterwaul before drifting away completely. Beautiful and haunting, definitely for the 4AD inclined, and fans of neo-classical dark ambience. Maybe not heavy enough for some of the Paradigms faithful, but quite pretty nonetheless.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Packaged in a white dvd style case, with a full color cover and printed black and white insert.
Not super familiar with Ben Vida, but this super limited cassette for Root Strata has definitely whetted our appetite for more. On two long form synthscapes, originally a soundtrack to a video projection / art installation, Vida takes the whole synthdrone sound, that frankly is getting a little played out, and twists it all up, most noticeably, constantly shifting the speed/pitch, creating unlikely melodies by speeding up the sound, then slowing it down, making those buzzing synths gorgeously woozy and warped and warbly. Not to mention that the whole thing is wreathed in field recordings of chirping crickets, bird song, and the subtle white noise of crashing surf, or burbling brooks, as well as adding extra panpipe like melodies, and some swirling sci-fi spacey fx, but subtly, the various elements, even the field recordings, shifting dramatically in volume, in the foreground one second, barely audible the next, the label describes it as some kind of sonic safari, and it really does sound like it, maybe like some synth/flute performance, taking place in some remote forest glade, the entire thing recorded onto a 4 track with dying batteries, the results, a dreamily druggy, atmospheric ambience, a warped ritualistic Jewelled Antler styled new age, and a seriously divine soft epic.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
This is the third, in a series of lp collaborations gathered under the heading Required Wreckers (the second being the recently reviewed Ensemble Economiques record Standing Still, Facing Forward), a collaboration between Ben Vida, whose recent Root Strata tape was big hit around here, and longtime aQ fave/pal, Keith Fullerton Whitman, formerly known as Hrvatski.
Two side long tracks, one new work from each artist, both experimenting with digital / analog hybrid compositions, Vida starts things off with a flurry of squelchy electronics, a tangle of fragmented melodies, and buzzing tones, the sound flits all over the place from warm whirring shimmer, to glitchy electro crunch, from whirling stereo panned pulses, to fractured sci-fi spacesynth warble, from blooping bleeping lab conjured electronic minimalism, from layered sinewave soundscapes, to playful Radiophonic Workshop style electronic primitivism.
Whitman counters with his own high concept piece, one using live recordings, multiple speakers and inputs, room noise and crowd sound, all woven into a constantly twisting and transforming soundscape, that pairs dolphin call like electronic clicks with skittery lo-fi glitchery, ping pong like percussion with super distorted stuttery electro-chaos, almost jubilant sounding high end music box like melodies that seem to fade into more percussive skitter, with hazy, and buzzy garbled almost shortwave sounding transmissions, with thick swaths of keening tones that buzz and undulate while beneath other sounds pulse and percolate. Heady, trippy, strange stuff for sure. Both sides in fact, a bit more academic / avant compared to much of the electronic/synth music we hear, but definitely gorgeous stuff, and essential listening for fans of abstract electronic experimentation.
Gorgeously packaged in nice thick sleeves, with a letterpressed mini obi attached with colored elastic string, includes a 16 page art booklet insert as well.
This is the first we've heard from the awesomely monikered Video Nasties, aka Montreal video artist Rob Feulner, whose sound is a mix of lo-fi psychedelic dub and noise drenched no-fi new wave synth damage. The opening starts out straight up dub, all upstroke guitar and swirling atmospheric shimmer, but soon, a buzzing warbling synth enters the mix, and the sound grows more woozy and washed out, druggy and darkly dreamy, the various effects cranked to 11, that dubbed out beginning soon submerged beneath a wild squall of echo and reverb and wild squiggles and blasts of high end skree, before gradually transforming into a more sort of spaced out droney drift, all scrabbling melodies and blurred chordal drift, before transforming again, into a heady bit of kosmische almost Reich-like carnivalesque home brewed synth wave minimalism.
The flipside explodes right out of the gate with a blast of ear piercing feedback, which gives way to some feedback drenched super distorted chords, sounding like an old Casio run through a million distortion pedals, a lilting synth-noise lullaby, driven by a weird industrial rhythm consisting of just short sharp blasts of white noise, the rest of the side shifting from strange distorted bloops and bleeps, to smeared layered textures, and finally another long stretch of pulsing cosmic synthscapery, that sounds like a lo-fi little brother to folks like Zombi or Majeure.
LIMITED TO JUST 25 COPIES!!! Each one housed in a gorgeous screen printed wooden box, along with a full color insert and a pin.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
