A curious commission for sure, and one that was destined to fail from the outset. CM Von Hausswolff is the Swedish sound / installation artist responsible for all sorts of unusual projects including his collaborations with John Duncan, The Hafler Trio, and of course Leif Elggren as the twin figureheads of the Kingdom of Elgaland / Vargaland. His clinical sounds using shortwave radio, WW2 era oscillators, sonar, amplified electrical fences, etc. manifest the electro-magnetic detritus from these various technologies. We're pretty sure that when Hausswolff received the commission to broadcast his various tones and drones within the Istanbul Airport as part of the 5th International Istanbul Biennial, he must have been playing with Brian Eno's strategies of his Music For Airports with the machines doing the talking for him through cyclical ambient passages. Of course, Hausswolff's sources are grey, corroded, and not exactly easy listening; so only half of the submitted work was accepted for transmission. The first disc is a 60 minute plus excursion into deep-electric isolationism, with swells of grim resonance and low-frequencies occasionally usurped by squiggling synthesis. As sound design, it's purposefully rough-hewn and very dark in its intention; and in the context of an airport, this would certainly instill dread and foreboding into somebody getting onto a plane. But for late night bunker-inspired / dark-ambient listening, this is pretty fucking great. The second disc features those tracks that had been accepted for airport listening; and these are much more peculiar for Hausswolff as he's eschewing his normal mode of operation for downtempo electro rhythms and slow-motion samba loops topped with accordion. Rather summery wallpaper music that's probably what the curators were looking for, but not nearly as impressive as the first disc.
The connection between the Swedish conceptual artist Carl Michael von Hausswolff (former member of The Hafler Trio and current co-monarch of The Kingdom of Elgaland / Vargaland) and the Raster-Noton label began in 1997, when von Hausswolff collaborated with Raster-Noton's Carsten Nicolai (aka Noto) and Frank Bretschneider (aka Komet). At that time, all of these artists shared a common
Aside from that previous collaboration, it's still a little hard to believe that Von Hausswolff would produce a record for Raster-Noton. Not surprisingly, "Strom" has very little in common with the Raster sound. Instead, he is continuing his documentation of electronic seances which he first began researching while in The Hafler Trio and more recently presented on his "Operation of Spirit Communication" record. Implementing telephone bugging / wire tapping microphones, Von Hausswolff captured these anomalies when recording the pure drones of electrical circuits and datafrequency hardlines. The point of such recordings was to uncover the sonic neologisms found by EVP researchers Raymond Cass and Friedrich Jurgenson. While "Strom" does not specifically feature any ghostly EVP languages, these thick low-frequency tones are striated with distant rhythmic statics, fluctuating glitches, and aerated electrical-field washes.
This is easily Jim's favorite record from Raster-Noton!
Carl Michael von Hausswolff stands as one of the more intriguing conceptually based sound artists, often manipulating electro-magnetic ephemera within highly codified contexts, installations and performances. Hausswolff is most well known for his collaborative project with Leif Elggren called The Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, a psycho-geographical territory that claims to have annexed all of the land between countries and the space where dreams exist, along with a number of deliberately absurdist proclamations to act as a critical counterpoint to the nation-state of the 21st Century. Beyond this, Hausswolff has steadily produced an eccentric body of recordings, culling static, noise, feedback, and tones from disturbances in electro-magnetic fields. For Leech, he has taken on the role as a parasite, extracting the sounds on this recording from the electro-magentic disturbances caused by four of his contemporary artists: Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Holler, Tommi Gronland / Petteri Nisunen, and Richard D. James. Hausswolff provides a scant amount of information about the installations / performances, and it hardly even matters that some of the sounds might have come from one of Eliasson's ephemeral installations bringing the fog into large-scale mirrored kaleidoscopes or the legendary sandpaper DJ set by the Aphex Twin back in 1994. Hausswolff's sounds are typical of the technology he has always employed: wire-tapping microphones, cheap algorithmic samplers, and noise-gating devices. The resulting sounds on Leech are raw recordings of glitches, crackle, and sinewave piercings that hold a cathode ray deadness to the collected recordings, except for the Aphex extractions which have been bathed in a cavernous warehouse reverb. The concept does seem to stand a bit above the execution of Leech; but the idea is such a strong one, and Hausswolff has such a strong grasp of his equipment that the album certainly holds up to his previous albums.
Oof. What a title! Actually that's par for the course for Swedish conceptualist CM von Hausswolff, who has his fair share of projects that extend quite plausible thoughts to absurdist extremes. He's perhaps best known for collaboration with Leif Elggren as the twin heads of the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, as well as for his 'blasphemous' installations that attempted to communicate with the dead at a New Mexican cemetary. Hausswolff continues to offer a wealth of interesting ideas alongside his clinical presentations that revel in their purposeful lack of ornamentalization. Three Overpopulated Cities continues where A Lecture On Disturbances In Architecture left off as a critique of the failure for urban planning and architecture to accomodate Hausswolff's eccentric ideas. For this album, Hausswolff addresses the pollution problems of the electro-magnetic spectrum: cell phone traffic, shortwave utility signals, wi-fi network grids, etc. While there might be a public policy issue in how all of these are affecting the environment, Hausswolff bemoans the fact that these may be interfering with attempts at documenting EVP, the paranormal phenomemon of unknown voices breaking through onto radio signals and presumed to be those of the dead.
The four extended tracks on this album express those ideas as raw data, simply documents of electromagnetic fields from various overpopulated cities around the globe. This amounts to volatile static from walkie-talkie distortion, surgically exact sinusoidal drones, and 60 cycle hums interrupted by field disturbances. Very little, if any processing can be heard on these recordings, putting this closer to his work Basic or To Make Things Happen In The Bunker Via The Micro Way.
Florid Pagoda marks the return of the enigmatic Von Himmel, a scant few months after we awarded Record Of The Week status to the monolithically awesome Space Communion lp. The four collage-like pieces here conjure all kinds of beautifully disorienting atmospheres and moods. Pulsating melodies provide a rhythmic, breath-like quality to all the tracks, while there seems to be no discernible percussion, and at times it sounds like some subterraneous orchestra is trying to claw its way out from below. In the end, those demonic scrabblings and cavernous rumbles can't help but be overtaken by the majestic swells of melodic noise. At one point in the song "Shadow Locus", from out of the cosmic hugeness there appears to be some sort of synth war, with electronic sounds raining down from above. While at other moments you feel as if you're wandering dreamlike through some creaky old house. Closing number "Luminous Inertia" alters the vibe with Klaus Schultze-like spaciness and sequenced sounds taking things into eternity. Awesome.
Super swank hand painted packaging, and of course ULTRA LIMITED.
Within the last few years, the frequency of Von Himmel and related releases has picked up significantly, and thus, here we are with the band's long in the works follow up to their mighty Space Communion lp. Things have gotten even more insular with this two song monster, offering yet another glimpse into the band's strange and unique soundworld.
"Rock N Roll Animal", aka all of Side 1, comes across like some weird, warped Alice Coltrane number beamed in from another dimension, all woozy and queasy sounding. Stuttering drums merge with glorious cascades of jagged riffing to form a beautiful, strangely cohesive mess. We've mentioned legendary Texas psych pioneers the Red Krayola before when talking about Von Himmel, and the similarities are still evident in their expansive collage-like jams. Jams that manage to be hypnotic and quite lovely at times but also noisy as hell. Things are definitely chaotic, but it's a chaos with purpose, recalling previous VH releases but with what appears to be a new sense of direction, or at least forward momentum. Ramshackle bursts of melodic noise that sound a bit like an orchestra pit warming up, or fucking around, create a suspended dream state before switching gears at the midway point with some majestic cymbal washes and drones. Zoned out bits of German Oak style proto-industrial ambience appear, before things end in a swirling mass of pulsing noise that would make the Taj Mahal Travellers proud.
Side 2, "Traum Esel", begins with a sinister drone intro, heavy and sort of evil sounding, a bit like Harmonia at their most ominous. It's more meditative and subdued than the A side, maybe a little more "focused" than the freewheeling feel of the first track/side. As the song continues, things get seriously krauty with immersive, washed out melodies and sparse bits of looped percussion before ending in clouds of billowing GAS-styled bliss.
Another winner that somehow manages to top their previous release, pushing in new directions, but dragging much of what we loved about that record with them, this lp also marks the inaugural vinyl release for the band's Donkey Disc label. Grab it now!
It's been a while since we last heard from Von Himmel, and this lp is actually a reissue of a now out of print cassette put out by Sloow Tapes a few years back. As was written on that label's website, Space Communion is "absolutely deserving of a vinyl reissue on some hopelessly obscure American private-press psych label." Thankfully the future is now, and if you weren't one of the 70 people to get a tape you'll want to do yourself a favor and pick this up NOW, and not only because the lp is itself limited to a mere 300 copies. You'll want it because Space Communion is a completely mesmerizing piece of multi-layered drifting free psychedelia and one of those records that seems to exist outside of time and location. That said, the major touchstones here are of a decidedly '70s German variety (the band's name no doubt a reference to the song "Von Himmel Hoch" from the first Kraftwerk lp), think Ash Ra Tempel, early Cluster, German Oak, NEU!, and all the other greats. Throw in some ESP-Disk styled experimentation and it only makes sense that we would make this a ROTW.
The album begins with "Moon Moss", where lush atmospheres merge to form an ambiguous, slightly disconcerting vibe not unlike that moment right before the drugs kick in. We were reminded of Sun Ra's wild Moog experiments from the Space Probe album we reviewed a while back, in addition to all the great library music collections we love from labels like Trunk and even more recent favorites like Anworth Kirk. It's not difficult to imagine this as some educational 1970s soundtrack whipped up by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and one can almost hear David Attenborough's mellow voice describing the living habits of leafcutter ants or something. "Astronomer" opens with what sounds like a flute (or maybe it's a synth?) and some sparse percussion, which slowly builds and shifts to a more aggressive rhythm while still maintaining a degree of restraint. You get an image of bearded longhairs recording in a field under the stars before the drums cease and you are left with pure buzzing bliss. The first song to utilize a more "rock" based structure is "Sun Spots" with its steady rhythm and hypnotic bass groove. Bits of electric guitar strum away in the background as the keyboards swirl their way into the mix. It's similar to something you might hear on a Wooden Shjips record, but even more skeletal. In other words, it's a good one to get lost in. "Mantra" works in some field recordings (we couldn't tell if they were played in reverse or not) of a man chanting as the band's melodies shimmer beautifully loose and free. You close your eyes and zone out, but then you gotta flip the record over to side 2 where Von Himmel ups their experimental tendencies even more with two lengthy tracks. "Strawberry Hill" opens with an evil buzz that sounds like it's seeping out of a medieval dungeon. This one definitely had us thinking of German Oak, as well as something you might here in a film like the Devils or anything else where witches are burnt at the stake, sorta like the snippets between Electric Wizard songs. At around 7 minutes, frantic free jazz drums enter followed by a bleating saxophone, spinning wildly before fading into a barely audible hiss. Closer "Country Bog" begins with a sitar drone and more nature sounds before a subsonic bass gets things rumbling into somewhat doomy territory. The sounds here blend in and out so perfectly before wrapping up with a moaning voice and more clattering percussion.
Space Communion is one of those rare records that exists in its own world, outside the notions of "psychedelic" or "experimental" music that most bands today adhere to. Things here are brilliantly presented on their own terms, not merely as some modern day interpretation of an old Krautrock record. Bold words indeed, but we ain't fucking around, and neither is Von Himmel.
LP number three from these local psychedelic cosmonauts, and like the two previous ones (both of which we made Records Of The Week), the nearly unpronounceable weltraumruckfuhrungsubereinkommen, finds VH delving ever deeper into the cosmic ether, but unlike those past outings, this new one is way less raw, more polished and focused, the recording too, at least in places, much more high fidelity, the sound lush and layered and expansive, the closest they've come to capturing a majestic ur-drone / psychedelic raga bliss out. Still hugely beholden to their krautrock forebears, VH deliver an ever shifting soundworld of dense tangled drumming, flurries of murky rhythmic drift, wreathed in clouds of high end shimmer, which blossoms into straight up psych-kraut drift, all fluttery flutes and loose percussion, not to mention billowing clouds of sitar like buzz, while elsewhere, loping motorik rhythms, drift in and out of dense washes of electronic squiggles, distant melodies, blurred chordal shimmer and soft-noise ambience, all woven into a heady, hypnotic sprawl, anchored by slo-mo caveman drumming, not to mention occasional blasts of kosmische trip out, wedded to mysterious percussion, and woozy spaced out FX, not to mention swaths of keening guitardrone melody, scraped strings, buried tabla like rhythms, everything wreathed in alien electronics, and soft swirls of divine druggy ambience. As always, gorgeous, fantastically tripped out stuff.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! We have less than ten that we got direct from the band. If/when we run out, it'll take a little while to get more from the label overseas, and they'll likely be more expensive. So grab one quick while you can, or be prepared to be patient and to pay a bit more...
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We're always up for some more tripped out abstract space psych, or some druggy far out improv krautdrone, or even some cracked electronic prog, so this debut cd from local outfit Von Himmel definitely hit the spot, touching on all of those imaginary genres and then some.
The note that arrived with this disc included a bunch of wacked text including bits like: "Recorded through a single mic with the power of a thousand suns" and "First in a series of stone-age crystal technologies' hyper metareverberant mycophiliac outer space groove unit transmissions" and of course "An as yet unknown German psych substitute with free jazz perversions discovered lodged in the core of a meteorite" which all sounds completely wacked, until you wrap your ears around the sounds these guys conjure up.
Picking carefully through those garbled transmissions, we come up with German, free jazz, metareverberant and psych, and you might be getting close. You'd also have to include druggy, krautrock, murky, tripped out, and handful of other descriptors.
Three long songs that manage to sound both abstract and groovy, channeling German Oak as much as any other influence. The German Oak vibe is huge, the cavernous lo-fi production, the strangely funky vibe running throughout. But at the same time, Von Himmel are exploring some lost corner of the galaxy, setting a course for the heart of the sun, they blast through dense clouds of swirling effects, metero belts of tribal percussion, the sky a series of fuzzy smears, their path shifting from blown out psychjam, to laid back sun baked groove to full on drug doused black ambience.
The first two tracks are extended sonic explorations, equal parts Can, Faust, Popol Vuh, German Oak, Amon Duul, looooooong spacey voyages, all long hair and big amps, black lights and bellbottoms, big drums and lots of wah and flange, but for the final track, the band lets loose of all that stuff, leaving some whirring buzzing black hole, which rumbles and reverberates eventually disappearing into the inky blackness.
Definitely for fans of the above mentioned groops, but well worth checking out if you're into stuff like Comets On Fire, Wooden Shjips, Hawkwind, Spacemen 3 and other outer sonic space explorers.
CRAZY LIMITED! Only 50 or so copies...
Full length number two (record number three) from this fantastically confusional minimalist techno supergroup, a trio made up of Mortiz Von Oswald (Chain Reaction, Rhythm And Sound), Sasu Ripatti (Vladislav Delay) and Max Loderbauer (Sun Electric), but like the first record, and the Live In New York double lp, the members and their sonic pedigrees do little to prepare you for the actual sound of the trio. Not techno, not even really electronica, at least at first, instead it's a sort of minimal jazz abstract dub, a thick, sinewy baseline holds the first track together, while around it reverbed guitars drift and pulse, bits of glitch surface here and there, flurries of percussion, fragmented melodies, it's all very abstract, hushed and minimal, it takes 6 or 7 minutes for the various strands to be pulled together, and then anchored to a super stripped down metallic rhythm, nothing else changes, those bits of guitar still swirl and shimmer, the rhythm pulses within a cloud of muted murk and strange abstract effects, finally growing more propulsive during the last several minutes, a skeletal beat, augmented by hand drums, tambourine, soft billows of hiss and whir, streaks of crunch and crumble, but all way in the backdrop and the rhythm loops hypnotically.
The second track begins much more overtly electronic, with another minimal electro pulse, but again, the surrounding sounds are definitely more organic that you might expect, glimmers of guitar, soft streaks of melody, some rubbery upright bass thrum, scatters of extra percussion, hazy synth swirls, but for all that seems to be going on, it's super hushed and muted and yeah minimal. The other two tracks are of course variations on the same theme, with "Structure 3" being perhaps the most Chain Reaction-y, with a little bit of a heroin house vibe, a muted electronic pulse, a dubbed out rhythm, laid across a sea of distant jangle and swirling echoes, until the final track, the longest of the bunch, and perhaps the most heavily rhythmic, but just barely, a groovy jazzy sprawl, the only deviation a couple of sonic squalls, one a flurry of wildly sawed strings, brief but dramatic, the other a less obvious burst of extra percussion, but throughout, the whole thing remains hushed, and muted and minimal and quite darkly dreamy.
Like the other MVOT records, features super striking minimal cover art.
Von Schirach's second long player of leftfield electronica, very schizo, following his spastic "8000 BC", also released this year. Quite prolific, Mr. Otto Von, for he could have edited the best parts of each release down to one powerful record. Features guest
A long overdue reissue of this miltaristic ambient industrial folk, cinematic masterpiece originally released in 2000. Very much in the vein of Folkstorm, Toroidh, Der Blutharsch and the like, the music of Von Thronstahl was conceived, in the band's own words, with the idea of making "music & art which would be more attached to a real European heritage and not to a freemasonary, anarchic tradition of false liberty, which means lawlessness and rootlessness." Oof. Heavy. Well, no need to agree, or to even understand to dig this record. An expansive, orchestral, dark hued journey through European History, Fascism, War, life and love and loss. Huge sweeping minor key strings, over mournful melodies, plaintive piano, martial percussion, snippets of found sounds, snatches of old songs and speeches, ominous whispered vocals. Very intense and ominous and emotional, and weirdly reminiscent of UK outfit In The Nursery with the big strings and occasional pounding militaristic percussion, and even some once-in-a-while playful gipsy melodies. But the occasional lighthearted vibe aside, Imperium Internum is a raw and harrowing record, majestic and epic, but ultra personal, full of sorrow and misery, darkness and light. So great.
Newest record from this long running post industrial neo-folk outfit, whose sound fits perfectly amongst AQ faves like Der Blutharsch, Folkstorm, Toroidh and the like. Combining militaristic rhythms, acoustic guitars, field recordings, snippets of newsreels, military speeches, their sound transporting the listener to otherworlds, other times. The last disc to war torn Europe specifically, the music evoking the smells and sights and sounds, crumbling buildings, smoldering fires, smoke and the smell of burning flesh, the marching of soldiers, announcements over loudspeakers, all wound up into a haunting dark ambient sonic journey.
This latest disc though is a lot more song oriented, less dark and droney and more lilting and lovely. A dark apocalyptic folk reminiscent of later Swans, The Angels Of Light, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, even New Model Army and especially Current 93.
The opening track is all acoustic guitars and soaring strings, haunting harmony vocals and simple subtle percussion. The second track begins with a simple eighties style drum beat, until the minor key guitar strum joins in as well as a totally gorgeous falsetto vocal hook, some strange chanted vocals, and weirdly some awesome "Stand And Deliver" style Adam Ant horns. "Gloomy White Sunday" is pure folk, like some lost seventies UK single, or Current 93 channeling their sonic forefathers. Gorgeously dark and languorous. And then there's the perplexing but brilliant "Occidental Identity", which steals wholesale the main riff from the Who's "Pinball Wizard", and transforms it into a haunting chunk of dark folk, intertwining vocals wrapped around that instantly recognizable riff, eventually the acoustic guitar drops out, leaving just the dynamic crashes, while strung in between are strange drones and processed vocals. A totally brilliant appropriation.
The rest of the record dabbles in both: moody, melancholy folky strum, and the occasional purloined musical phrase or melody, as well as bits of cinematic ambience, dramatic strings, thick washed out drones, and various other mysterious sounds, with the focal point remaining the songs, the strum and the voice. All the disparate elements gorgeously woven into one of the coolest weirdest collections of dark apocalyptic folk we've heard in ages.
We reviewed a super limited tape a while back by Ben Wildenhaus, former guitarist from Northwestern garage rockers Federation X, and an occasional collaborator with members of the Reeks And The Wrecks, and as we mentioned in the review of that tape, Wildenhaus has since transformed into a bit of an avant guitarist, now living on the east coast, and managing the Instrumental Quaalude blog, on which he weekly posts new recordings, always instrumental, always under 5 minutes. That tape, Great Melodies From Around, has now been reissued both on cd (and yeah, a real cd, not a cd-r), and vinyl, with a download coupon, and while there is new artwork and the curious addition of 'Von' to Wildenhaus' name, Great Melodies From Around is presented in these new formats, sonically identical to it's early cassette tape iteration...
Great Melodies From Around seems, in fact, to be an extension of Wildenhaus' Instrumental Quaalude blog, as it is a moody and sonically surreal collection of similarly dark, gorgeously instrumental excursions, assembled from lush layered drones, Appalachian style steel string guitars, woozy twangy slide guitar, strange murky percussion, bits of vocals (NOT singing) employed as more texture, wheezing organ, sinewaves, minimal drumming, subtle electronics, bits of glitch and hiss, amp buzz, a little noise here and there, the occasional sample... The sound is smokey and dark and ominous, dreamy and hauntingly lovely, a distinctly Lynchian soundtrack vibe for sure, late night, lights low, everything dusty, and dark, and lonely, and lit by the streetlights outside, hazy, gauzy, fuzzy, and totally and fantastically lovely.
Another fantastic batch of broody, moody instrumental guitarscapes from the man who used to swing his axe in Northwestern garage rock outfit Federation X, but who has since transformed into a bit of a wandering troubadour, a veritable one man band whose twisted take on guitar soli, sounds more like some impossible John Fahey / Ennio Morricone / Sir Richard Bishop / Joe Meek hybrid, slipping easily from haunting hushed strum, to groovy, smokey, jazziness, to twisted cinematic ambience, and it's not just guitar BVW wields, there are drums, and organs, bass, all woven into some super striking darkly psychedelic mood music. The A side sets the mood with a slow burn sprawl of twang flecked, post Appalachia mesmer, before disappearing into a black cloud of pulsing, almost John Carpenter-ish soundtracky malevolence, could be synths, could be processed guitars, either way, dark and creepy, and trippy and psychedelic, but then effortlessly, the sound slips right back into some skittery, almost bop-sounding jazziness, replete with crowd sounds, shuffling feet and a smattering of applause. From there on out, anything goes, a quick burst of super distorted angular crunch, some Waitsian / Ribot style spidery atonal guitarscapery, a bit of swoonsome tango, albeit wreathed in feedback, cool murky dream folk, lo-fi and laced with tape hiss and strange samples, some experimental ambience that sounds almost like Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, all warbly and woozy and washed out. And that's just the A side.
The flipside is another dizzying sonic journey through BVW's twisted soundworld, opening with some darkly contemplative, drone swaddled, twang, before the drums come in, and we're suddenly in post rock territory, the sound like early Tortoise, a sort of jazzy slowcore. The side continues its meandering trajectory, some gristly, glitchy, distorted back porch blues, a bit of hushed folky shimmer, some FX drenched kosmiche folk, some almost straight up Appalachia, a short stretch of haunting, dusky piano laced balladry, and finally finishing off with some spare, abstract steel string wrangling. And if that wasn't cool enough, one of the aforementioned jams, is in fact a cover of the theme song from Cannibal Holocaust!
Cool packaging too, the tape housed in one of those plastic bags, sealed at the top with a paper label, the kind you see hanging from hooks in the drugstore! Probably limited, so don't dawdle... Includes a download code as well!
Finally!!! It's taken us years (literally) but we finally managed to track down the second record (in a quantity enough to review and list) from one of our all time favorite outsider weirdo whatthefuck metal bands, VORAK! If you're a regular reader of the list, you know how much we love the damaged and demented, the fucked up and freaked out metal, so believe us when we tell you Vorak just might be the weirdest and most fucked up EVER. When we reviewed the first Vorak years and years ago, we summed it up suggesting that Lord Vorak, the man behind one man classical nihilist black metal commando unit Vorak "either must be joking or is totally out of his mind" and record number two only furthers that sentiment.
The first record was a dizzying logic defying head spinning blur of spastic drum machines, sped up vocals, garbled metal guitar and snatches of piano, all tossed in a blender and spewed out in a confusional froth. Well if anything, record number two, Rhetoric Of The Supermen, demonstrates a little bit more song structure, but manages to sound not one whit more sane. In fact Vorak's sound is almost even weirder when applied to actual sort-of-actual-song arrangements.
But let's start from the top. Vorak. Aka Lord Vorak, a man we're led to believe must be a classically trained pianist, whose record covers are covered in metallic gold busts, flaming eagles, and barbed wire, who's partial to song titles like "Dies Irae: Kruel And Glorious Purgation Of The Untermenschen", "Synthetic Nepenthe", "Australyan Uber-Volkslieder 1", there seems to be some sort of obsession with fascism, inside the booklet, it mentions that "All aspects of this supreme music of the future production emanate from the mind of Lord Vorak entirely for his own amusement and gratification"... and heck, we haven't even gotten to the music yet.
An ultra fucked up and completely fractured assemblage of super distorted classical piano, screeching metallic buzz, damaged chipmunk vocals, stumbling chaotic drum programming, interspersed with some straight classical piano, some soaring strings, all tangled and convoluted, every track rife with new head scratching (and head banging) moments...
The record opens with some wild tangled harpsichord sounding piano, dense flurries of notes, strangely recorded, but distinctly classical, until the super distorted metal riffing takes over at the beginning of track two, laid over a series of struggling stumbling drum machine rhythms, and super high pitched vocals, sounding a bit like that girl at the beginning of Kiss's "God Of Thunder" but more maniacal... The guitar is furious, the riffing relentless, with wild squiggly leads everywhere, huge swells of string like synths, and the vocals squawking and bleating all over the place, the drums a head spinning splatter... The next track slows things down a little bit, a thick sheet of blurred distorted guitar laid over some gorgeous minor key piano, the vocals sporadic and drenched in reverb, creepy more than weird, the whole thing super emotional and dark, but still completely unhinged.
Then comes "Blood-Reich 2000", with its relentless metallic onslaught, that gives way to strange piano / helium vocals / sputtering drum machine interludes, always returning to that furious minor key riffing. Several tracks are just piano, and those are quite stunning, atonal and modern, but still melodic and emotional, also strangely recorded so the lower notes are super distorted and at times sounding like a harpsichord. And there's one long track of blown out ambience, fuzzy and blurry, and strangely cinematic, thick swaths of buzz over strings all arranged into sweeping movements. But those tracks are surrounded on all sides by mind melting flurries of manic metal and furious freaked out metallic damage.
The disc includes two bonus tracks, both solo piano, both pieces by Richard Wagner, a strangely lovely and sedate finish to a record that most definitely ranks as one of the weirdest, and absolutely one of our all time favorites.
Totally recommended. And absolutely essential for all lovers of damaged, demented, fucked up, freaked out, outsider metal weirdness.
From the same brain that created the fragile, pretty electronic sounds of French Paddleboat comes this decidedly more glitchy and at times more cacaphonous effort. Scott August is the young gent from Kelowna, BC who began making music while still in his teens. Holed up in his bedroom like a sonic mad scientist. On the usually much more dissonant and obtuse music label Scratch Records.
Bay Area sound sculptors Dominic Cramp and Jared Blum don many musical hats of their own design and in collaboration with others (perhaps most notably, Cramp is in Carla Bozulich's wonderful Evangelista band), and we've carried quite a few of their various projects' recordings here. Have to say, Vulcanus 68 might be one of our faves. This is their second release, and it's as cryptic as the first. They dispel with song titles, instead each track is cataloged with a number/letter. From the seemingly innocuously described instrumentation of electronics, and multispeed turntables and tapes, they churn up a stewed aural bog for you to sink your ears into. It's an ominous sci-fi soundscape populated by insectile prickles, slippery gelatinous gurgles, gritty buzzing masses and heavy rolling drones. Might just be us, but compared to the darkly mischievous tone of Vulcanus 68's debut release, we sense more of an undercurrent of skin-crawling malevolence here. Potentially nightmare inducing. Aaiiieeee... heh heh... good stuff! 47 minutes. Recommended.
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Opening the latest Vulcanus 68 release is the haunting "Monochrome Canon I" which possesses a lost in space sense of lonely melancholia. This tone resurfaces in the second and third passages of the canon which are evenly spaced amidst the seven other tracks. Evoking the indistinguishable shift from dream to nightmare, these are the kind of beautiful and foreboding soundtracks you'd expect to hear in some 1970s post apocalyptic near future sci-fi movie in which insect communities slowly amass to engulf a human civilization (a la 1974's "Phase IV"). Putting their characteristically woozy pitch/speed manipulated samples, analog synth buzzing drones and shimmering resonance to fine use, these Bay Area audio sculptors transport your ears through zones of claustrophobia and expanse, imbuing each of their soundscapes with rich dynamics, texture, subtle movement... and yes, plenty of contour and colour. A terrific addition to your Gigante Sound library!
We always wondered when and how we could finally remove the musician from the equation entirely. Not like synthesizer and sequencer sampled electronic music or anything. And not like some Chuck E. Cheese robotic band. No, we mean just taking a drumkit or a guitar, plugging them in or setting them up and letting them go. Some bands have come close for sure, SUNNO))), Earth and the like. Music so slow moving that it seems to just sort of hover, a music that seems to be playing itself via huge swaths of amp hum and wild sheets of feedback. It's almost as if the music would still play even if the band members took five. All of the robes and smoke machines and demonic imagery in the world can't disguise the fact that you could get almost the same sound from just plugging in a guitar, turning the amp to 10, the distortion all the way up, and leaning the guitars up against the amps, and letting the guitars just feedback, moaning and squealing and rumbling and droning gloriously on and on and on....
Thus we have Vulture Club, a band, MAYBE, or perhaps just some guitars and amps who somehow figured out a way to capture their nocturnal rumblings on tape and press up a bunch of cd-r's. Either way, this record has been kicking our asses since we first got a copy a few weeks back. Imagine a more minimal Earth 2, or SUNNO))) without the riffs, or a more metal Troum! Slow shifting, churning, warm thick swells of guitar hum that swirl and eddy like some strange black tide. Alternately, at its most fierce, a seriously Total like skree, like a plane flying overhead, or someone mowing their lawn down the street, or all of your neighbors vacuuming at once heard through the apartment walls, or the sound of the mighty Ditch Witch that has been sucking sewer water out of ditches all along Valencia Street outside our store for the last two weeks. A thick and gloriously corrosive din! But the noisy edge is tempered by long stretches of tranquil drone and hum, a whirring and warbling rumble, that would sound not at all out of place hovering dreamily between your Maeror Tri records and all of those limited PseudoArcana and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon cd-r's!
Really, the thing to do would be to actually buy those amps, three or four 100 watt amplifiers, a handful of distortion pedals, and a couple guitars, and let them loose, set the amps up around your bed, cranked as loud as they'll go, plug the guitars into the distortion pedals, crank 'em up, lean the guitars against the amps, lay down and just get buried in guitars. But assuming you're not up for spending the $10,000, or are short on space, Vulture Club should most definitely do the trick for now!
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES (we took almost the WHOLE pressing!!) Hand numbered and stamped in cool oversized cardstock sleeves, with strange hairs/fibers affixed to the front, with a lovely vellum insert and track list.
The first Vulture Club cd-r was the ultimate man vs. machine battle royale, with the machine winning. A record where the instruments called the shots, an army of guitars and amplifiers, marching across a blackened bloody battlefield littered with the corpses of musicians, the masters now bone and blood, the guitars and amps allowed to ring out, reverberate, to unfurl epic swaths of rumbling, crumbling feedback flecked drone. And we loved it!
The ultimate doomdrone sound, no riffs, no rhythms, just the sound of steel strings vibrating, amplified, played back at incredible volume, in turn causing the strings to vibrate, and the cycle continued... Another one of those sounds that is practically perfect unadorned, we could listen to an E chord ringing out through a wall of Marshall stacks FOREVER. But at some point, the amps and guitars that make up Vulture Club, decided more could be done with their buzz and drone, so they did the unthinkable, they recruited players, musicians, they chose not to give up their freedom, but to work together with their former masters, to create a new world of sound, a world where the guitars and the amplifiers were still in control, but the musicians were able to coax certain sounds from the guitars, to gently bend necks, stretch strings, fret certain notes, and thus, we have Live Young, Die Fast And Leave An Exquisite Corpse. The sound is still dronedirgedoomsludge but just like the debut, that sound is stretched to its absolute limit, a soundworld where notes and chords mean less than timbre and tone, melody is supplanted by power, you can feel the sound more than hear it. BUT, for this new disc (a real cd this time), the action ante has been upped just a bit. Instead of letting the guitars just buzz endlessly, the droning distortion is more dynamic, with percussive attacks, and extended decays, notes and chords barely visible in their flatlined form, the sound pulsates and throbs, creating unintentional rhythms, guitars unleash simple tones which are wrapped in layer after layer of distortion, and allowed to slowly crumble to bits, revealing all the secret tonal color inside. It's all very subtle, this still sounds like a room full of amps cranked to ten, with guitars run through distortion pedals and leaned up against the amps, the sound a glorious low end cacophony, but repeated listening, deep listening, reveals an amazing amount of subtle sonic variation beneath the glacial whirs and buzzing blur. Vulture Club is the sound of SUNNO)))'s and Earth's colliding, the music of black holes, the sound of guitar and amplifier joined in the unholiest of unions, an absolutely glorious sound indeed!
Many of you probably remember a strange release from a group called Throne Of Blood, that we reviewed years ago. Beyond the music, the packaging was ridiculous and amazing, a rubberized dvd style case, with evil looking faces and vines and flowers and a unicorn, complete with a glass eye, all molded into the cover, Evil Dead Necronomicon style. At the time we thought no bad could live up to that crazy packaging, but somehow Throne Of Blood did. A furious grinding noise metal juggernaut with wild splattery drumming and shrieked vocals, short sharp bursts of fuzzy, fucked up lo-fi Melt-Banana like noiserock math metal which KILLED. And then to seal the the deal, the second half of the record was just the first half in reverse, which transformed the sound into a tripped out metallic psychedelia. We had often wondered what happened to ToB. And now we now what happened to at least one of them, they ended up in this warped, twisted outfit, a duo called Vvltvre, whose sound we had seen described as sludge/doom, and while much of this is, some of it is way more fucked up and far out, in fact, most of it is. Just check out the opening title track, which spends its first few minutes unfurling some sort of creepy ritual, all tinkling chimes, distant drum pound, weird breathing, seriously demonic vocalizing, the sound growing increasingly more agitated, louder and more caustic, the drums becoming more tribal, the vox weirdly processed, resulting in something that sounds like a way more damaged and demented and blackened version of No Neck / Sunburned Hand / Avarus, until about 7 minutes in, the song explodes into a churning blackbuzz dirge, the black buzz provided by what sounds like an insanely distorted bass, while the tribal drums pound away underneath, think The Body crossed with Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, a sort of blacknoise doom, or a noise rock sludge, when the band lock into these dense looped rhythms, it almost sounds like a Lightning Bolt 45 spinning at 16 rpm. The opening track gradually begins to revert to the opening, like some sort of doom sludge palindrome, the sound getting more abstract, the rhythms more spare, a death march pound, over rumbling crumbling low end, laced with some cool tripped out backwards effects.
The B side follows a similar pattern, beginning with some ritualistic ambience, chanted vox, soft focus chordal shimmer, barely there percussion, then the drums come in, and it remains hauntingly tribal, like some ancient sonic ritual, and then eventually, the track again splinters into some seriously harsh heaviness, reminding us a bit of Monarch for sure, but with a definite Whitehouse vibe, the sort of droned out buzz beneath near hysterically shrieked vox, which again eventually erupt into some pounding noise rock dirgedoom mathiness. The third side mixes things up by foregoing the heaviness completely, and instead offering up a sprawling rhythmscape, all abstract drum pound, gurgling low end, subtly employed effects, lots of dark drones and washed out thrum, a gorgeous bit of meditative abstract ambient doom minimalism, which gives way to the closer, the 15 minute D side, which is all bass drone for the first 6 minutes, super minimal and hushed, before the drums creep in, beneath clouds of cymbal shimmer, the bass growing more distorted, the final few minutes, a strange lurching, stuttering feedback drenched, super dynamic slo-mo math doom that ends WAY too soon.
WAY recommended for fans of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Khanate, Moss, Bunkur, Gnaw Their Tongues, Monarch, Wicked King Wicker, Wolf Eyes, Otesanek, Habsyll, Human Quena Orchestra and other purveyors of slow, low sonic sickness.
Fantastically packaged in a deluxe gatefold sleeve, with some super striking artwork, while inside lurks a gorgeous handmade 32 page booklet, hand painted and glitter-ed, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yet another lost cd-r, dusted off and wheeled out for your perusal, and perhaps purchase. Released last year, this little gem from the now prolific VxPxC was limited to only 50 copies, and thus is long gone. These 8 or 9 being the only remaining copies, means that only a few of you will get lucky, and emerge from the melee with Lizard In The Spring tucked safely in hand, and you will be pleased, for this is a hearty slab of droned out fractured folks and space-y drift. Deep snowdrifts of sound, distant voices, wind chime percussion, all very lo-fi but warm and whirring. Track two introduces some laxy drawled vocals, some stripped down rhythms, all drifting weightless in reverb drenched blackness. Like a seriously wasted (or more wasted) Velvets. There's even some harmonica!
The next two tracks are super murky and muddy, like listening to an Avarus cassette on a boombox under a blanket. Wheezing and weary, with that harmonica surfacing again. There's a brief blissy drone coda, but before that, the band spread waaaaay out into a 13 minute underwater space blues jam, that sounds almost orchestral, with deep swells, what sounds like soaring strings, broadcast speakers stuffed with steel wool.
Packaged in a cool mini dvd style case, full color artwork, inserts, hand numbered and crazy limited and way out of print. Last copies ever.
Now here's a tape label that knows how to do it right. Each tape, even though they're limited to only 100 copies, comes with super deluxe full color artwork, printed labels on the tape, each hand numbered, AND each tape is a different color to match the artwork. Nice!
Third in the opening salvo of releases from this brand new label comes from the until recently unknown to us VxPxC, and we were pretty dang pleased. Another in the new wave of drifting sonic abstracticians, weaving drone and folk, and simple primitive percussion, into a strange modern genre we have taken to calling freedronefolkdrfit or something similar. And VxPxC fit right in, hovering comfortably somewhere between Avarus and Davenport and the Starving Weirdos, with a bit of Dead C thrown into the mix (but a not so noisy bit). This release would have been right at home on Digitalis or Barl Fire or any of the handful of other labels documenting the modern soundworld.
On Reticent Manifest, the sound is laid back and wide open, there is a main riff, but it is murky and minimal and barely there, drifting, sort of throbbing in a mildly seasick manner, while atop this soft fluttering backdrop, random bits of percussion are shaken and rattled, keyboards wheeze out minimal melodies, it's all very playful and primitive, wistful and melancholy, dark and dreamy, although here and there, it does get dark and heavy with dense swells of rumble and throb, but it usually dissipate quite quickly back into another stretch of dreamy reverbed abstract drift.
Limited to 100 copies! Each tape hand numbered. ----* ----* FINALLY!! Black Metal Cassette Grab Bag Is Back!! : ----*
It's getting harder and harder to review that particular strain of music we love so much, the sort of abstract, meandering foresty folk, the drifting drone and shimmering soundscape. As much as we love it, and can't get enough, unless someone comes out with a whole new thesaurus will all new words, we're not sure what's gonna happen. So we were getting ready to introduce this latest disc from VxPxC with the above lament, when they go and do what we wish everyone would do, blindside us with a whole new sound, with all sorts of unexpected sonic weirdness. That's the true test of a great band, not releasing a million cd-r's a month, but to change your sound, make it new and exciting, every disc an adventure, but without losing the essence of what makes your band distinctly your band.
The opening track on this Stoned To Death is maybe the best thing these guys have done, an acid fried blown out guitar crawl, a simple melody, sort of plucked out on an electric guitar, but so caked in grit and buzz and hiss, it sounds like it's being dragged through a pit full of shortwave radios, the sound crumbling to pieces before our very ears, wrapped in halos of glistening harmonics, and muted melody, but the guitars front and center, rotting and gradually turning to dust. The effect is breathtaking, and as far as we're concerned even if there was only one song on here, if it was this one, it would be well worth the price of admission alone. But lucky for us there's 50 more minutes of cracked and stoned sonics, The rest of the disc is just as evocative, maybe not as immediately gut wrenching as the opener but still warped and damaged, gorgeous and haunting, from a weird swoonsome country sprawl, complete with pitch shifted vocals and all sorts of slippery melodies, to lugubrious low end rumbles, so distorted it's almost like the musical version of what you used to do as a kid where you held a note so long and so slow that it started cracking and making weird rhythms (you know what we're talking about), to distorted dubby jams, to weird eighties disco jams by way of Faxed Head... it's all amazing, and once again proves VxPxC might just be the underdog everyone forgets to watch while they gradually and systematically blow all the other home brewed lo-fi cd-r combos out of the water...
SUPER LIMITED of course. Packaged in an oversized handsewn sleeve with a printed insert.
A relative new name in the neofolk / modern free rock scene, VxPxC have definitely been making up for lost time with a whole mess of releases, cd-r's cd's, cassettes, and of course, all crazy limited so it's been tough to get our mitts on enough to review and list. We grabbed as many as we could of this one, but as it's limited to only 50 copies, that still doesn't amount to much. So those of you looking for some more gorgeous blissy druggy psychedelic drone drift might want to jump on these quick.�
Only 20 minutes long, but these guys make it count, a brooding, mysterious trawl through some dark desolate landscape of deep mesmerizing melody and thick lustrous swells of sound. Imagine a soft focus Wolf Eyes with a way more psychedelic bent and you might have a rough idea. Some of the track sound like actual songs, with vocals, and riffs, but they're so obscured by dense clouds of reverb, they seem to be pulling apart, stretching and crumbling into smears of indistinct sound that only -resemble- songs. A gorgeously laid back and languid drift through some tripped out inner space, like a Burnt Hills jam, recorded at 5:00 am after the band was dosed with thorazine and horse tranquilizers. The perfect collection of bad trip, bleary eyed, unable to move, still sort of wasted, comedown jams...
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!! We only got a handful. The cassettes are hand painted and are housed in printed full color covers each one hand numbered.�
When you first heard Godspeed You Black Emperor, did you think it was a new ECM release before that guy started grumbling about the apocalypse?
Two staples of European free music. Wachsmann on violin and viola, Lytton plays percussion, both use live electronics. These improvisations are calm, methodic and sometimes melodic, usually taking the minimal less-is-more approach over high kinetics.
Here's a pretty stellar set of classical minimalism from the San Francisco based composer Tashi Wada. "Direct" repeats a series of five detuned notes on a violin, and with each repetition, Wada interjects incremental steps of harmonic overtones and dissonance. The rasping, singing drones build into an incredibly complex, yet wholly acoustic swarm that eagerly applies the classic strategies of the '60s minimalists (e.g. LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad, Alvin Lucier, and of course, Tashi Wada's father Yoshi Wada). The B-side contains "Retrograde" an exact reversal of the "Direct" composition, and through the act of flipping the record over and over again, there's an infinity loop / Moebius strip of harmonic drones that begins to evolve through the speakers.
Yik Yak pressed-up Alignment to be spun at 45 rpm. So, of course, we spun this at 33 rpm and fucking loved it! The raga-drones crawl slower, the overtones ring a little longer, and the whole mood of the composition is all the more ominous. Wada may not care for this bit of instruction on our part, but it's gotta be mentioned as it just sounds so good at that speed!
Droooooooooooooone... Yep, it's another amazing archival release in the Yoshi Wada reissue campaign from Japan's wonderful EM label, in conjunction with their colleagues at avant-electronics specialists Omega Point. This one's from earlier in his career than the other Wada pieces previously documented in the series, but is no less droney! Recorded in 1974, and unreleased until now, Earth Horns With Electronic Drone is just that. Four players blowing into Wada-built "earth horns" (absurdly long alpenhorn style instruments, "constructed from ordinary plumbing materials and steam fittings"), resonating in an acoustic environment wherein the horns interact with an electronic feedback/looping system designed by Liz Phillips and Yoshi Wada that responds to and reinforces subtle alterations in the volume and pitch of the pipehorns. It's explained in the liner notes, but still a little difficult to understand. Somehow the pipehorn tones are recycled, extended, modulated and mixed, essentially enhanced by the electronics for extra droning effect, that much is obvious! The results are lovely, mesmeric... though, it's hard to come up with much of a description besides, do you like foghorns? Being in San Francisco, we know we do! This is like endless foghorns, mixed with answering whale calls. Or imagine the Himalayan horns of hyperventilating Tibetan monks, high on cough syrup, slowed down and stretched out. Screwed but not chopped.
Occasionally punctuated by what must be the coughs and echoing rustle of the close-to-dozing audience members in the gallery of the art museum where this took place, the pipehorns blow (and the electronics further generate) low, ever so slightly wavering tones that weave together forever... well, if not forever, for about three hours at the original performance!! Of which 77 minutes are presented here on the cd format. There's also the fancy, much more expensive triple vinyl version, which runs to 2 hours and 42 minutes! In metal parlance, that would be the "diehard" edition. But we only have three copies of that, and aren't too sure about whether we can ever get more. Still, even only 77 minutes of Earth Horns With Electronic Drone is a decent dose, with no flipping of sides also.
For those just now tuning in to the ritualistic, minimalistic, ultra-droned-out works of Wada, we'll refer you to our reviews of his three previous discs on EM for more info on this Fluxus-associated composer and sculptor. But you can certainly see from the vintage b&w photos on the sleeve, including one of Wada's ensemble accompanying a Merce Cunningham dance performance in Nassau Coliseum, that his pipehorns have an impressive physical dimension and shape suitable for display and demonstration in art galleries, or other public spaces. And on this recording you can certainly HEAR their impressive physical dimension and sound-shapes they make as well!
EM Records of Japan is a label from which we *always* are eager to hear more, specializing as they do in the most odd, obscure, awesome reissues EVER. Without them, we wouldn't have such a great selection of musical saw cds here at Aquarius. Or '70s New Age weirdness. Or psychedelic surf music soundtracks. Or (most recently) steel drum jazz funk!
While the steel drum jazz funk might have appealed mostly to the more eccentric crate digging DJ types, we know that THIS release is gonna really take off here. That's 'cause it's all about the DRONE. And y'all love drone we know.
Yoshi Wada is a Japanese artist who relocated to New York City in the late '60s and (just like another Japanese expatriate, Yoko Ono) got heavily involved with the conceptual art movement known as Fluxus. Doing sculpture, performance, and sound installations, he rubbed elbows with the likes of minimalist maverick LaMonte Young, studying with both him and Indian vocal guru Pandit Pran Nath. That's very evident on this album, the intriguingly titled Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile, which was originally released on vinyl in 1982 by the avant garde label India Navigation (responsible for important Dreyblatt and Niblock documents as well). Wada only made two records, of which this one is considered his most significant, not to mention rarest.
There's two long tracks here (over a half-hour each). Both are utter drooooooooooone nirvana. Track one, "Singing" (31:06), is ALL voice, Wada giving long guttural throat-bleatings (waaaaah waaaaaah ooooooooo....) that he builds into a gorgeous, rising and falling soundscape of overtones and drones. He recorded it in an empty swimming pool for extra bass and natural echoing effect... the results are serene yet joyous, somehow liturgical, suggestive of blissful monkish raptures. Wada certainly got into it, actually spending the night before this recording *sleeping* alone in the pool, and (he says) almost experiencing auditory hallucinations due to the resonant acoustics of the space.
The second track, side two of the original LP, is a continuation of the first with even MORE drone. Entitled "Bagpipe" (33:17), it adds to Wada's vocal intonations the sound of experimental homebuilt reed instruments of Wada's own devising, "adapted bagpipes with sympathy" made of plumbing tubes, powered by an air compressor. Improvising with voice and "bagpipe", this piece is much louder, denser, and grindingly trance-like than the far more delicate first track. The two instruments he used are pictured on this cd's back cover. One is called The Elephantine Crocodile, and another The Alligator. Both are Partch-like sound-making sculptural objects in their own right. They're carefully tuned to take advantage of higher octave harmonics and microtonal partials and other things that we'd need more study of music theory to understand exactly, but obviously with which Wada is fully conversant. What we do know for sure is that with his voice and unusual instruments he's conjured a deeply psychedelic and meditative dronescape that we're darn glad EM (in conjunction with another cool Japanese label, Omega Point) have seen fit to unearth and reissue!!
If you like drones, this not only a worthy historical document, but also would be a fantastic listen even if it had just been recorded yesterday. In fact, it compares interestingly to another drone release reviewed this list, Schmickler and Chisholm's Amazing Daze. But Wada achieved these drones without the aid of electronics or computers. About the only complaint we could make about it is the rather abrupt ending! We realize that it can't go on forever (as much as we'd like it to) but its sudden cessation (instead of a gradual fade out) can harsh one's mellow... though if you're like us you'll listen to this going to sleep at night and won't ever make it conscious to the end anyway.
This has been digitally remastered from the original tapes, with the two pieces restored to their original intended lengths (they'd been edited down to fit on the LP release). And as usual, it gets a fabulous EM packaging job, complete with vintage b&w photos and extensive 1982 and 2007 liner notes in both English and Japanese, written by Wada himself. This one is definitely up there in the pantheon of EM essentials, and that's saying a lot.
We have to thank Japan's EM Records - actually, we've been doing that a lot lately - but this time we have to thank 'em for turning us on to the celestial soundworlds of dronologist Yoshi Wada. If you've read our reviews of EM's two previous Wada reissues, you know he's a Japanese sculptor/composer who made his way to New York City in the late '60s, delving into the Fluxus conceptual art movement and hanging out with folks like pioneering minimalist LaMonte Young. In 1982, Wada issued an LP entitled Lament For The Rise And Fall Of Elephantine Crocodile, featuring his voice and homebuilt instruments. When it was reissued on EM last year, we were bowled over by its unique deep drone soundings. EM's second Wada reissue, The Appointed Cloud, from 1987, was equally amazing.
Happily, there's more Wada releases in the vaults than we'd thought. Now EM has brought out a cd version this one, Off The Wall, which was originally released on vinyl in 1985 by the German free improv label FMP. Dubbed a "majestic minimalist monsterpiece" by EM, it consists of two long tracks (over twenty minutes each), a part one and part two of the same performance, which features the bagpipe blowing of Yoshi Wada and colleague Wayne Hankin, along with the "adapted organ" (pipe organ put together by Wada) played by Marilyn Bogerd, and the percussion of Andreas Schmidt-Neri.
EM have also added a bonus cut - this third (and even longer than either of the others, at 27:14) track, "Die Konsonanten Pfeifen", was recorded in Berlin in 1983 and originally issued as a cassette. Again, Wada and Hankin play the bagpipes, this time accompanied by percussion (tympani, tam tam, and cymbal) from one Kevin Newhoff, which kicks in, with a hiccup, near about the halfway point, providing steady, ominous pulsations that bring to mind some of the portentous mood of Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra".
Bagpipes, that's right, this is bagpipe music. But it doesn't sound much like Scotland's The Black Watch. Maybe if the Royal Highland Regiment were marching to 20th century avant-classical. Keening endlessly, the twin bagpipes of Wada and Hankin weave exotic-sounding tones and overtones together in slowly shifting, shimmering patterns, that seem to keep one step head of your sensory apparatus, so that you realize there's something new going on in the piece only after you've been hearing it already for a few moments. The effect of these modulations is quite mesmeric, almost meditative, New Age with an edge, like Phill Niblock meets Terry Riley, taken to a Far Eastern extreme. The multiple instrumental voices blend into one total drone, yet upon examination each has its own wending and winding part to play. The usual repetition of "minimalist" music isn't so mechanically evident here, Wada's drones floating high into the expanses of space, combining with the rumbling earth-bound drums to achieve a sort of ceremonial aspect and dramatic impact.
Yes, thank you EM! This is packaged in the usual excellent EM fashion, in a tri-fold sleeve with original liner notes in both English and Japanese translation, also b&w photographs, and a full-color reproduction of the original graphic score for "Off The Wall".
In reality, this was recorded live at the Great Hall of New York Hall of Science in New York, November 8th 1987. But listening to it, you could easily imagine it being part of some mysterious & portentous religious ritual, enacted high on the slopes of some vast Himalayan mountain by horn-blowing, drum-beating Tibetan monks... these monks perhaps being part of an aktion under the direction of dramatic drone artist Hermann Nitsch. Seriously. Well it's not Nitsch, it's Yoshi Wada, and there were no monks involved, but we're sure it was an impressive performance to witness in its own right. Certainly to hear, which thanks to EM Records, we all now can.
This is the sequel to EM's previous reissue, some months ago, of Yoshi Wada's first album, Lament For The Rise And Fall Of Elephantine Crocodile. While that 1982 LP may have more rare record collector cachet, and be more historically significant chronologically speaking, we have to say that this one is at least as amazing. As we explained in our review of Lament, Wada is a Japanese visual artist and sound sculptor who relocated to New York in the '60s, where he aligned himself with the Fluxus conceptual art movement and definitely got deep into dronology. (He now lives in San Francisco, and for more information on his career, check out the June '08 issue of The Wire, #292, which features an interview with Wada conducted by AQ's own Jim Haynes.)
The Appointed Cloud, a composition/sound installation "designed specifically for the acoustics of the cobalt blue cathedral of the Great Hall", utilized a massive Wada-designed soundmaking assemblage controlled by a computer interface, this unusual "pipe organ" constructed from compressed-air powered pipes, a suspended 20 foot long sheet of metal, and a steam pipe gong. In addition, Wada and the other musicians involved play timpani, tam tam, sirens, and a trio of keening bagpipes. All this in the majestic, modernistic stained-glass setting of the Great Hall.
As alluded to above, this is somewhat suggestive of Buddhist ritual, and reminds us of Nitsch's large-scale symphonics as well. Rather than give a minute by minute play by play of this piece's hour-long duration, we'd encourage you to experience it for yourself. Experience the thundering drum vibrations, the percussive rattle, the quiet gentle tones and hushed rustle that erupt into dense bagpiping drone squeals and resonating rumble... it's grand and gorgeous.
Physically this cd reish is up to EM's usual high standards, packaged in a gatefold sleeve with color photos, a reduced reproduction of the piece's graphic score, liner notes by Wada as well as the original program notes, in both English and Japanese. Soundwise, it's also up there with that first Wada disc among our favorite stuff that EM has yet released -- in other words, highly recommended!! Even moreso for those especially dronologically and/or 20th century classically inclined.
With all these warehouse finds we've been reviewing and listing, you might imagine aQ was like that last scene in Raiders Of The Last Ark, cd shelves as far as the eye can see. And while that's really at all accurate, we do have a closet, and a back room, and piles of stuff and boxes everywhere, which means, stuff gets forgotten, overlooked, misplaced, and what not. Lots of stuff we order with the intention of getting more, but then for whatever reason we don't, maybe the release sold out, the label stopped pressing them, and then we don't have enough to review it, and it somehow slips through the cracks.
Which is what seemed to have happened with Three Uneasy Pieces, a solo guitar record from Aussie axeman Ian Wadley, who is probably better know as the guitarist in garage rockers the Bird Blobs, but here, he creates, just as the title suggests, three uneasy pieces for guitar, and a handful of pedals, and nothing else, and creates a gorgeously abstract, dreamy meandering soft focus tangle of spidery melodies, of deconstructed chords and of haunting effects wreathed atmospherics. Minimal and minor key, the tracks range from near psychedelic swirl, to brooding dramatic abstract folk drift, to hushes minimal twang flecked drone, and within each of those pieces, Wadley deftly conjures up surprising moods, and emotions, subtly shifting textures and timbres, and creating some gorgeous guitar ambience.
While their sounds are not all that similar, this seems like something that would definitely appeal to fans of Roy Montgomery. And really, anyone into dark dreamy contemplative guitar music, or just ambient atmospheric soundscaping in general, should really check this out. VERY FEW COPIES LEFT, grab one before they're gone.
As long time readers of the aQ list no doubt know by now, we definitely have a thing for Finnish music, and Finnish music of all stripes, be it freaky forest folk, churning metallic hypnorock, twisted outsider cabaret, or progged out whatthefuck weirdness, but not all Finnish music is so flat out twisted, there's plenty of other amazing stuff going on, a lot of which we're not always hip to. Which is why we can thank local label Friendly Fire for introducing us to Ethiopian-Finnish folk singer Mirel Wagner, who conjures up a darkly haunting soundworld of bleak murder balladry, and grim blackened doom folk, her voice gorgeous and mysterious, childlike at times, but definitely with a chilling world weariness, perfectly accompanied by Wagner's spare skeletal acoustic guitar, the sound alternatingly clear and crystalline, murky and deeply reverbed, but always lush and lovely, hypnotic and tranced out, the vibe bleak and brooding, the soundtrack for shadowy late nights, for vast expanses of wind swept emptiness, the sort of mysterious songsmithery you might expect to discover next to a campfire, in some post apocalyptic otherworld, a dusty cloaked figure, hunched over the fire, face obscured by shadows, fingers deftly moving along the neck of a battered old guitar, the music drifting heavenward, through clouds of fireflies bleeding into fields of glimmering stars, Wagner's music like some end of the world lullaby. So gorgeous.
We certainly missed the boat on this one... But it's never too late to pick up a great record! Steve Stapleton (aka Nurse With Wound) continues his mad scientist ethos while taking over Tony Wakeford's penchant for Nietzchean death folk (as can be seen in his outfit Sol Invictus) for a somber album of washed out acoustic guitars and devilish drones. Exceptional!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This limited-to-500 copies only 6cd retrospective box set of the 1970's 'electronic' albums by obscure French composer Igor Wakhevitch is loaded with tense awe-inspiring surrealism constructed from neo-chamber music, spatial electronics, massive plodding percussion, and odd ethnic influences. The earliest albums in the box feature contributions from French psych band Triangle, making for an incredible combination of eerie modern classical composition (with choirs, etc.) with krautrockish rhythms and fuzzed guitar. While he was an early associate of Soft Machine and Terry Riley, Wakhevitch's work is far more malevolent than either, taking on qualities that have more in common with the Swans. It should not be a surprise that Michael Gira has recently claimed Wakhevitch as one of his favourite musicians. Very highly recommended -- everyone who works here bought a copy!!!
Sylvie Walder has been recording the sounds around her since childhood, with piles of tapes, mini-discs, and now digital files amassing her obsession with sound. It's a little unclear as to when Ms. Walder began to manipulate and transform her recordings into artfully slow-burn compositions of ambient wash and darkened piano smear. Sure, we have to wonder what treasures may be lurking in the tapes made by a precocious French kid some 15 years ago; but we're really happy to have discovered this strikingly confident ambient record that could easily find itself on Kranky next to Stars Of The Kid or Gregg Kowalsky.
The piano seems to be the source material for the bulk of this album, as Spartan, deep notes are rendered through digitally tricked effects for a pitchshifted and timestretched mass of reverberating tones which in turn spiral into a darkened atmosphere of shimmer and drone. Eno's Thursday Afternoon and Coleclough's Period would be the nearest landmarks of elongated ambience and melancholy impressionism. Walder's production does harken to some of the Pop Ambient pixel-pushing washes of sound, but always push forward the liminal slippages between forgetting and remembering through her shadowy sounds.
Limited to 130 copies.
You know it's gotta be an amazing record when we start a review by stating "we don't know where to begin with this record" and then we blather on and on for another 500 words pretty much demonstrating that while we may not where to begin, we certainly have a lot to say. And that totally applies to The Sleeping Moustache, the latest release from the enigmatic Helen Scarsdale Agency. The most well known of these five audio contortionists is Steven Stapleton who is the brains behind Nurse With Wound, who convolutedly reconstitute Surrealism, avant-garde aesthetics, and krautrock expressivity, resulting in some of the most profoundly brilliant and disturbing records we've ever heard. Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson is one of the drunken pilots of Stilluppsteypa, an Icelandic project of electro-absurdity capable of magnificent minimalism. M.S. Waldron is responsible for irr. app. (ext.), (an unwieldy moniker for sure) which has produced an amazing body of post-Surrealist expressivity in recent years. When he's not manning the fron counter here at Aquarius, Jim Haynes has developed a peculiar knack for rust-inflected dronescaping. and finally R.K. Faulhaber, who is the mystery man amongst the bunch, although we've been told his unpublished works offer a byzantine array of mutilated sonic collages. The album that these five produced is a weighty proposition to say the least, with detours a plenty within this mangled concoction of delirious dronescaping punctuated with glossalaic vocalizations. Delicate plinks and plonks sprinkled across sublime, gaping tones which transition to a convulsive beauty with mechanical spasms and nightmarish creakings. Throughout The Sleeping Moustache, ghostly reminders of each of the contributors' refined aesthetics emerge as a Gordon knot of convoluted logic, unsettling shifts between horror and comedy, psychological instability, and disquieting soundscapes. If you're even remotely a fan of Nurse With Wound or irr. app. (ext.) or Stilluppsteypa, this album is not just recommended... it's absolutely required.
Anyone who saw the great 2008 Scott Walker documentary, 30th Century Man, may recognize this final Walker Brothers album from 1978 as the musical bridge that connects Scott Walker's early over the top orchestral balladry from the sixties and seventies to his bizarrely dark and doomy sonic explorations of the past 25 years. The rare, much sought after Nite Flights is a strange brew indeed. The Walker Brothers started out in the mid-sixties as the British equivalent of The Righteous Brothers. Even though all the members were American and not brothers, they had a much bigger following in England. Nite Flights is their last hurrah and much like the Beatles' White Album, it feels like a suite of the various members solo leanings, rather than a cohesive band effort. Though it's brought together production-wise by everyone's attempt to follow a more modern rock direction, so it's got a more driving and rather darkened vibe that unfortunately includes some era (in)appropriate rock sax, and electric guitar solo riffery. But it's the Scott Walker songs (the first four on the record) that are worth the whole price of admission, especially the title track which has a noirish night drive David Bowie feel (in fact Bowie covered it, but Scott's is better!). "The Electrician" with it's foreboding tense beginning is the biggest premonition towards what he would later attempt on Tilt, The Drift, and Bish Bosch, even if it includes some lush big pop orchestrations of strings and harps that looks nicely back to Scott 4. A curious rock record that has some weirdly great songs that every fan of Scott Walker should have.
I Have Never Told You is comprised of twenty tracks of haunting, contemplative compositions from the fine songwriting quill of one Mr. Erik Ian Walker. Together they form a somberly dramatic soundscape of constantly changing atmospheres. Walker's piano, hammond organ and vintage synthesizers (a Buchla and an Oberheim Matrix-12) entwine with a variety of guest musicians' strings, horns and woodwinds. Brief surfacings of Marit Brook-Kothlow's soulful forlorn vocals, occasional rhythmic outbursts and fleeting glimpses of ambient sounds like the whistling of a tea kettle or the percussive rattle of an old radiator punctuate the proceedings. A particularly stirring stretch comes in the tenth track "Castle Canyon" in which over the course of a few minutes a mere whisper of sound slowly builds, swelling to an absolute roar. Wonderful!
Whoa! Scott Walker has certainly never been about meeting audience expectations, but we never expected hime to go in a direction this extreme, a lyrical and musical excursion so far out it's a little disconcerting. The Drift, his first release in 11 years has got to be some of the darkest and intensely uneasy soul-baring music we have heard lately, which is saying a lot for us. Visceral and highly visual, Walker seems to be channeling the decadent symbolist literature of Rimbaud, Verlaine or J.K. Huysmans as well as the surrealist existentialism of T. S. Eliot or Georges Bataille, as he takes us on a poisoned delirious absinthe-induced journey through the seasons of hell. Walker's voice recalls a strange mutation of Antony's (from Antony and the Johnsons) operatic theatrics and Jandek's sorrowful moans as it plays against orchestral arrangements that sound like Arvo Part, Morricone and Penderecki caught in a purgatorial bar-room brawl. Punctuated by deep resonant strings, concrete blocks pounding on wood, sounds of donkeys braying, and snippets of shortwave radio, Walker's arrangements vary from oppressive ambience to brutal stabs of orchestrated noise, as they cover a wide gamut of themes, characters and moods, from the reproachful condemnation of power to the painful humanity of love. The saving moment comes at the end with A Lover Loves, a spare but melodic ballad of voice and acoustic guitar that is the albums only peek back to the Scott Walker of old (in particular, Scott 4), and it kills!
Good, great, amazing, none of those are really useful superlatives in the case of The Drift, although it is all of those things and then some, as it definitely will not appeal to everyone, especially fans of Walker's first four solo records from the late sixties. But viewed as a work of art, with all the genuine brilliance and pretension that that may entail, this is extraordinary and astonishing uneasy listening!
When we first heard about the collaboration, it sounded like a joke, like some internet meme. It did seem crazy, and on the surface, pretty hilarious, but eventually it was proven to be an actual thing. Then when we first heard a little snippet online, we weren't entirely sold, Walker sounded even more over the top than usual, and the title Soused seems to indicate that maybe Walker was in fact completely wasted when he recorded his vocals, cuz it definitely sounded like it. But when we finally got to hear the whole thing, it suddenly all made sense, Walker's vocals, while still insanely dramatic and over the top, were somehow perfect, and SUNNO))), instead of just doing the guitars-against-the-amps drone thing, really seem to be working way outside their comfort zone, and in fact, lots of this record sounds extremely, sonically uncomfortable. Fantastically so. We were so smitten by opener "Brando", we had trouble digging any deeper into the record. Right from the get go, opening with Walker crooning over a whirring organ, shimmery and sun dappled, and what sounds suspiciously like the Guns 'N Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" guitar lick, but then the thick, viscous drones creep in, accompanied by strange ticks and pulsations, as well as what sounds like a bull whip, as well as the occasional burst of distorto guitar, the combination of that low end creep, and Walker's vocals, as well as a cool feedback/high end that seems to echo the vocal melody, it's pretty powerful, and stunning, weird, but also weirdly beautiful. "Herod 2014" was our next obsession, with it's weird squelchy electronic rhythm, buried in thick rumbling thrum, it's Walker who carries the song, some sort of demented, and yeah, likely seriously soused, torch song, flecked with static, and driven by a slo-mo Sabbath riff stretched out into near static sprawl, Walker's vocals wreathed in lots of mysterious noise, the whole track peppered with what sounds like some strange banshee wail, or pterodactyl cry, but it's somehow so perfect, that it becomes as integral to the song as any other element.
"Bull" is downright balladic after the previous heaving monoliths, but not for long, the song exploding into some serious Swans like pummel, with Walker kicking it up a notch, some loose chaotic drum damage, some junkyard percussion, and a 'hook' that manages to be the catchiest bit on the whole record, the song slipping into slo-mo somnambulant creeps, before launching right back into that 'chorus'. We have to be honest, the first three songs are so perfect, it's not until maybe the 20th listen that we even made it to the last two, but they're similarly broody and bombastic, "Fetish" featuring some seriously buzzed out bass (assuming that's a bass), and like "Bull" before it, another killer 'chorus', that sounds like Swans gone haywire, dosed on some serious narcotics, a wild cacophony of elephant like electronic bleats, churning metallic riffing, monstrous drumming, before settling into what sounds like some sick, mutant strain of kraut-doom. And don't even get us started on Walker's INSANE lyrics, in this case, a refrain of "Choo Choo, Choo Choo mama", which sounds ridiculous, but in the context of the song, it sounds mad, maniacal, and like some sort of twisted genius, which we're assuming it is. Finally, there's "Lullaby", which is one, at least for a moment, until another blurt of atonal, moaning, keening, doom cabaret explodes from the murk, only to settle right back down, most of the track spent in hushed lowercase mode, finishing off super dramatically, a field of barely there guitar rumble, distant sonar like pings, ominous swells, mysterious insectoid clicking, and one final, haunting stanza from Walker. Most definitely a twisted outsider masterpiece, and considering how skeptical we were, it's even more surprising that this might just end up being a record of the year contender for some of us!
Guitar (and sample) slinging Texan Scott Ayers's Walking Timebombs make a return to the fucked up industrial/goth/experimental rock of his previous outfit, the late great Pain Teens. The Walking Timebombs are not only a full-fledged guitar/bass/drums band now, they also got themselves a female singer a la Pain Teens. But while Scott's heavy duty guitar, loops, and samples haven't changed much from the Pain Teens days, new singer Sarah Evans is no Bliss Blood. Her singing is just too forced and affected, in that Alanis Morrisette style. Or like a female Layne Staley, even. Alanis Morrisette fronting the Pain Teens? Hmm. None of the danger of Blood, indeed a few tracks like "Good Thoughts" could maybe be played on modern rock radio. Ugh. What's with that? Pain Teens wrote some "pop" songs too ("RU486") but not like this. Still, some of this certainly does bring back memories of Pain Teens' heyday, and might get you dragging out your old "Stimulation Festival" or "Born In Blood" discs, 'cause while "Sapsucker" has its enjoyable moments, for this most part this new stuff is just too safe. The Pain Teens we remember had much more of an edge, this is just kinda hokey; the 'disturbing' bits just aren't convincing even when the music is fairly heavy. Of course, it's NOT the Pain Teens, so maybe we're not being fair. But Scott and Co. have to expect comparisons... so give it a listen yourself.
John Wall's "Constructions" are highly digitized collages of sonic fragments culled from the jazz-themed improvizations from John Edwards' double bass and Mark Sanders' spartan drum kit skitter within a sea of spliced samples originating from Xenakis, Ryoji Ikeda, Evan Parker, Penderecki, Beautyon, Luigi Nono, and Put Put (amongst others). Beautifully packaged in a cloth-bound book.
John Wall's compositions employ aesthetic strategies that pull sounds from the most sterile of digital glitch techniques as well as from the tense start-stop-silence approach from academic circles of free jazz. Wall may announce where all of his samples originate (Xenakis, Evan Parker, Luigi Nono, Fennesz, Pita, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, etc.), but he is very careful to
John Wall's "Fractuur" is a high density composition for digital fragments culled from both recordings and live improvisation meant for this work. Sampled sources include Evan Parker, John Zorn, Giacinto Scelsi, John Cage, Disinformation, The Hafler Trio, Penderecki, Mauricio Kagel, David Toop, Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Luigi Nono among others. In addition, there's use of "live fragments" played on violin, double bass, bass clarinet, and cello. Not unlike an even more austere Oval deconstructing European jazz (i.e. ECM stuff). Beautifully packaged in a deluxe cloth-bound book.
Zach Wallace is half of the group Sun Circle, whose s/t debut (first cd-r, then lp) we raved about a while back right here. Gorgeous, organic, ritualistic, raw and intimate dark and droning minimalism, one track was a dense thick drone constructed from just voices, the other a delicate drift of weightless tones distant chimes and hushed shimmer.
This solo disc from Wallace reminds us a bit of that second track, another soft focus swirl of ethereal sounds, and warm muted tones, although here, all of those tones are created on a home made glass armonica, hence the title. Wallace's glass armonica, is based on Benjamin Franklin's original design from 1761, but is made from thrift store wine glasses, and salvaged bits of lumber. The glasses are arranged by pitch, and Wallace's version of the armonica has been expanded for up to 12 players.
Most of us have played a glass, rubbed the edge of a partially filled water glass at dinner, and made a cool little sound. And while the concept is the same, the sound here is so much more expansive and lush, a symphony of microtones and overtones, the various notes and sounds, buzzy and metallic, warm and muted, pulsing and throbbing, intertwining, weaving in and out of mysterious melodies, hypnotic and otherworldly, sounding like insects one second, singing strings the next, the interactions creating strange subtle rhythms, the tones slipping in and out of warm whirring harmonies, sometimes tense and dramatic and almost dark, other times ephemeral and surprisingly melodic, the timbre and tone shifting subtly from thick and dense and powerful, to crystalline and barely there, all three tracks so lovely and so easy to lose yourself in.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Cool fold over cardstock sleeves, silver metallic screen printed with photocopied insert.
Three notorious Chicago musicians, led by Flying Luttenbachers drummer Weasel Walter (also of Hatewave, Lake of Dracula, To Live And Shave In LA, etc. infamy), decide to record their tribute to the late legendary Japanese free jazz guitarist Masayuki Takayangi. Dunno if Masayuji would entirely have enjoyed this, as while his music was definitely noisy (noisier than what's on here, sometimes!) there was also a beauty and restraint that's not explored on this disc. Nor would we imagine that such song titles as "Endless Corridor Of Roasted Babies", "Give Me head 'Til You're Dead", or "Slitted Tit" would appeal to him. And the Masayuki Takayanagi connection/concept here seems to have become secondary to a black metal derived aesthetic, anyway: the three musicians are pictured in corpsepaint, with evil-sounding stage names (Jim O'Rourke is dubbed "Lycanthrovampyr"), and the last track, "Triumph of Death", is a Weasel semi-ambient solo piece that sounds more influenced by Burzum than Mr. Takayanagi. Regardless, fans of over-the-top drums/cello/guitar skree (or "infernal improvised music", as these guys put it) should dig this immensely. After the first 30 minutes of "For Jojo/Freebasing Styrofoam" some will be exhausted, but that's a mere warm-up for the rest of the disc. The back-cover motto "play loud and die" sums it up.
