The return of psychedelic drugfolk alchemists Wovoka. We heavily dug their last disc, and this one is more of the same. A super tripped out, blissy drone-y raga like buzz, drifting through some Autumnal wonderland, the sky full of falling orange leaves, the ground muddy and moist, the sky a burnt copper, the wind warm and smelling of smoke and burning wood. And on the wind drifts a lazily unfurling web of skeletal acoustic guitar strum, little bits of muted guitar leads, silvery strands of banjo, lots of warm warble and tape hiss. It's not until a few tracks in that the band begins to rock, hand drums, electric guitar, some wailing psych leads, but even at their rockiest, these guys are still laid back and stoned, drifting and swaying, letting night fall on their campfire jams. Looped and cyclical, dreamlike and mesmerizing, the strummed steel strings and the sporadic bongo drums turning everything into some warped alien drum circle. You can almost envision this wandering tribe of buzz-and-strum minstrels wandering through some dark Finnish forest, where they stumble upon Avarus or Anaksimandros, who of course welcome them with open arms, for once having heard the sounds coming from the woods, they knew it must be like minded spirits. Who else but musical brethren could be making such hazy, fuzzy, dreamy, druggy forestfolk...
No Neck, Sunburned, Tower Recordings, Avarus, you know you the names, add Wovoka to the list if you haven't already....
LIMITED TO 199 COPIES. Already sold out, we seem to have the very last copies. Packaged in a super thick old fashioned mini-lp stylee gatefold sleeve, with the pasted on inside image, and pressed on faux-vinyl cd-r's (complete with inside label and fake grooves!).
Dust In Our Mouths from Scottish black ambient dronelords Wraiths, is the final installment in the group's extended blackdrone trilogy/triptych which started with Oriflamme released on Aurora Borealis, continued with The Grey Emperor, released on At War With False Noise and finally finds its resolution here, in a nearly hour long track the label describes as "a crushing noise ritual from the dark realms of plague and grim death", which perhaps paints to noisy a picture, as anyone whose been following Wraiths over the last two records, have watched the band transform into something much more abstract and ambient, shedding much of the harsh noise that defined their early sound in favor of gorgeous grim atmospherics. Dust In Our Mouths, in fact, opens with some haunting blackened drift, lush chordal swells, all anchored by a hypnotic, looped, almost dubbed out rhythm, just a simple softly stuttery snare, and gently tinkling chimes. In the background, there lurks all manner of sonic misery, heaving slabs of corrosive low end, disembodied spectral howls, sheets of jagged feedback, but those are relegated to background ambience, the first few minutes gorgeously hypnotic, spare and skeletal, almost like some black metal band doing their best minimal abstract dub, a hushed sort of industrial ambience, it's not really until about 20 minutes in, that the song shifts dramatically, not necessarily noisier, but that dubby rhythm is replaced by lush dreamily distorted shimmers, and blurred melodic drift, it's almost Caretaker-ish in fact, woozy and washed out, but here that wistfulness is underpinned by an ominous grimness that manifests itself as a dense spectral hum, roiling with shadows of black noise, but that noise is definitely obscured by the woozy wash of smeared surf-like shimmer.
The drums return, more of an ominous sort of death march, still buried in the murk, that murk growing ever more intense, blossoming into a blown out black buzz, and eventually splintering into squalls of muted feedback, only achieving full on noise about 40 minutes in, where things become chaotic and dense and intense, but even here, the sound is infused with all manner of hidden melody and swirling textures, the sharp edges smoothed out, resulting in a heaving crumbling wall of blurred blackness, churning its way through clouds of hiss and hum and howl, until finally disappearing in a cloud of swirling FX heavy white noise, emerging on the other side, to play out its last few seconds as a skeletal sprawl of loping reverbed drift. Awesome.
The latest sonic assault from UK black ambient drone/noisescapers Wraiths, the perfect continuation of their Dust In Out Mouths record, which we reviewed here recently, starting off with some haunting monk like chants, before immediately launching into a smeared soundscape of abject feedback, and groaning industrial crunch, the sound murky and muddy, as if recorded beneath the surface of the earth, the sounds a slow moving avalanche of rumble and whir, or screech and howl, all sort of blurred into black and grey swirls, the sound surprisingly dynamic, shifting from black noise crunch, to a more woozy washed out low end rumble and back again. Not nearly as washed out and Caretaker-ish as Dust, this is definitely a noisier companion, exploring much of the same territory, but delving way deeper, the earth rent asunder, as Wraiths descend into the hellish depths, the high end tones almost sounding like the wails of lost souls, the rumbling roiling grinding buzz, a sonic representation of the earth crumbling beneath our feet, the sound of everything disappearing into a black abyss, and yet amidst all this grim black malevolence, and harrowing musical misery, lurk buried melodies, accidental rhythms, the surface here and there, but for the most part, churn beneath the surface, adding more layers and extra texture to the already dense tectonic blackness of Wraiths' sinister soundworld. Fans of Wolf Eyes, MZ412 and other practitioners of the sonic dark arts will definitely dig.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
After records on Aurora Borealis and Paradigms, Scottish black drone alchemists Wraiths have found their way to At War With False Noise, yet another ideal home for their grim black noise. This time it takes the form of a single hour-long track, that drifts through an endlessly and ever shifting landscape of hushed bleak minimalism, strange otherworldly percussion, deep dronemusic and caustic black noise.
The Grey Emperor begins as a strangely looped glitchscape, a tribal rhythm over undulating stretches of distorted rumble, growing ever more ominous, the low end getting more and more jagged and buzzy, a black cloud of sound threatening to swallow the rest of the sounds whole, surrounded on all sides by a slow shifting layer of swirling blackened whir, shot through with streaks of muted feedback. The track pulses and undulates, slipping from caustic crunch to hushed throb, strange little rhythmic flurries careening below the surface, the textures constantly changing and shifting, like watching the surface of some grim black sea, barely able to discern the shadowy shapes underneath.
Eventually, the low end is pulled back, allowing layers of hiss and buzz to pile atop one another, just barely holding the feedback at bay, only to have the blackness begin to crumble, while black bells peal, thick shards of sound plummeting into the swirling blackness, the track building and building to chaotic frenzy, the sounds blown out and on the verge of utter collapse, weirdly melodic while impossibly dense and destructive, finally exploding in a supernova of Merzbowian grind and crunch, that manages to be strangely textural and musical, while on the surface appearing as a dying black sun.
Gorgeous oversized packaging, a gatefold sleeve, printed woodcut style design on textured paper, and held shut with a stamped wax seal. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
The last we heard from Scottish ambient doomlords Wraiths, was their amazing full length Plaguebearer on UK label Paradigms. That disc was a caustic collection of deep ominous black ambience, light on the ambience, heavy on the, well, heavy. If anything, Oriflamme is even moreso, as it predates Plaguebearer, originally released as a super limited cd-r, now available again, however briefly, as a limited lp.
These are the roots of Plaguebearer, in fact, it sounds like it was definitely cut from the same mouldering black cloth. There is nothing serene or soothing about this sort of ambience, it's harsh and chaotic, corrosive, roiling, ominous and thick, heavy for sure, but more than anything, it's incredibly dense.
Layer upon layer upon layer. Huge chunks of industrial grind, massive pounding, and bursts of corrosive crunch, super processed vocals, synths and streaks of feedback, deep rumbling drones, whirring and hissing, it's the sound of wandering through the pits of hell. Huge demonic machinery, massive gears and pistons, caked with black soot, and unspeakable grime, churning away endlessly, shadowy figures toiling behind the flames, the sounds of hammer on stone, of gnashing teeth, and hopeless wails, all seeming to come together into some hellish symphony. A glorious and gloriously abysmal industrial black noise drone, a sound not unfamiliar to fans of MZ412, Merzbow, Wolf Eyes and other proponents of caustic low end explorations and buzzing sonic filth.
The second half of Oriflamme is much less dense, and more spacious, as if after barely making it through the industrial wasteland of part one, the listener has emerged in a massive cavern, so high, the rock walls just disappear into blackness, the only things visible are those illuminated by the guttering flame of your lantern, your mind left to decipher the strange and mysterious soundworld lurking just out of sight. Distant moans and shimmering black murmurs, bits of glitch and crunch, smeared into swirling black shadows, heaving swells of blackness, streaks of electrical interference, billows of earth shaking rumbles, hissed voices, deep creaks and monstrous gurgles, wind like whirs, wavering electrostatic buzz, all spread out into a harrowing and bleak doomscape, as disturbingly (and impossibly) beautiful, and it is absolutely grim and brutalizing.
Gorgeous super striking covers, like some old lost dust covered tome, and don't be fooled by the frayed and tattered edges, they're printed on the sleeves. And as if we even needed to tell you, EXTREMELY LIMITED!
The second of two new releases from the Uk's amazing Paradigms label (who in the past have brought us records by Titan, Hjarnidaudi, The Angelic Process, Throne Of Katarsis, Amber Asylum, Woburn House and more), the first, the moody dramatic post rock smolder of Seattle's Snowdrift, reviewed elsewhere on this list, and this here slab of bleak black brutality, Plaguebearer by Wraiths.
Paradigms began as a sort of metal / drone label, having dipped into decidedly less heavy musical waters lately with the psychfolk of Plants, the post rock pummel of Woburn House, the ambient classical of Hallvardur Asgeirsson, and the aforementioned Snowdrift.
So for those of you who have played your Angelic Process and Hjarnidaudi and Utlagr and Throne of Katarsis discs to death, we bring you salvation, in the form of Wraiths. This has very little in common with any of the above mentioned bands, other that it is dark, heavy, noisy and strangely pretty.
Five tracks clocking in at nearly an hour, Wraiths are some sort of black ambient outfit, unfurling epic swaths of grinding crumbling distortion, thick sheets of squealing feedback, long stretches of cavernous rumble and all bleak black stops in between. Imagine some strange mash up, equal parts Wolf Eyes, Merzbow, MZ412 and Birchville Cat Motel. But all tucked within a spiky, black and brooding carapace.
An expansive drift through bleak landscapes of dubbed out rhythms, and shimmering industrial whir, black swells beneath, grey swirls above, often building to full on cacophonous noise-psych freakouts. Murky worlds of drone and distortion, smeared into soothing and serene drones. Haunting vocals and anguished howls drifting way down in the mix. Full on wall of keening sound, high end harmonies of corrosive downtuned buzz and ear splitting upper register skree, harsh and heavy but completely mesmerizing in that crumbling wasteland, edge of the black abyss, doom drenched blackened ur-drone sort of way. Killer stuff.
Unlike most of the Paradigms releases, which come in cardboard sleeves wrapped in hand stamped, brown paper, this disc is in a white DVD case, with black and white printed insert (like the Hallvardur Asgeirsson) and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
This record has been floating around in various forms, all insanely limited, and as the title suggests, it was initially a cassette, then a cd-r, then a download, and is only now finally available as a slightly less limited lp, still titled Black Cassette of course, and regardless of format, it's a serious slab of mathy doomy electronics laced sludge, a bit of an odd one for The Flenser, who traffic mostly in metal of the blacker variety, but Wreck And Reference have a sound that is most definitely blackened, and in some ways just as grim and kult and bleak as most black metal. The sound is a wild almost industrial sounding chaotic lurching heavy sludge, with clean vox, thick blown out bass, tons of effects and loads of swirling electronics, a heaping dose of pop liberally applied too, with much of the record playing out like a sort of slowcore indie rock.
The first track was all it took to convince us, a jagged lumbering chunk of dirge pop, with crumbling super distorted guitars, pounding drums, crooned clean vocals, a killer main hook, everything wreathed in buzz and glitch, rife with long stretches of droned out shimmer, and rumbling detuned buzz, and wild squalls of psychedelic feedback, the drums growing more and more chaotic, eventually the guitars following suit, stuttering, all clipped stops and starts before grinding to a halt. So ruling. The following track is more of a moody brooder, a bass driven chunk of slowcore, with clean vocals delivered way back from the microphone, giving the proceedings a definite nineties math rock vibe, think Shellac or Slint, and when the band does finally kick in, the guitars crunch, the drums pound, this time everything is beneath thick sheets of heavily effected synths, making everything deliriously spacey and dreamy. The rest of the tracks offer more of the same, a variation on doom we've never heard before, a Torche like approach to metal, definitely heavily influenced by indie rock, pop and post punk, sung/spoken vox over tribal drumming and grinding muddied riffage, big drumming over muted buzz and what sounds like haunting piano, not to mention deep dramatic crooning, a strangely blurred blast transformed into something much poppier and prettier, long stretches of shimmery spaciness and still more surprisingly poppy vox, and finally, a killer chunk of slow building post rock epicness that sounds a bit like a doomier, more post punky take on Godspeed. A pretty weird, and pretty awesome band, and definitely one of the coolest things The Flenser has put out, which is definitely saying a lot.
Wreck And Reference's Black Cassette record was a big hit around here, a blackened gloomy, electronic flecked sludge, that managed to infuse it's outsider metal with plenty of goth pop weirdness, haunting slowcore creep and industrial post rock churn, so much so that an argument could be made for whether it was in fact a metal record at all. And really it hardly matters to us. In fact, it was precisely, all the non metal elements that really made it so distinctive and cool. And if anything, the duo's new record No Youth moves even further from a sound that could be considered 'metal'. The opening track is the perfect example, the only bit of actual metal, a brief bout of blackened screeched vokills, but other than that, it's all creaking industrial crunch, processed FX heavy loops, psychedelic ambience, muted guitar strum, clean vocal croon, distorted buzz stretched out into pulsing drones, tribal, almost jazzy drumming and then a wild chaotic squall of noise rock freakout. Bam. That's it. And it's great! The second track too, a creepy gauzey slowcore drift, al crumbling muted thrum, and muted feedback, again some metal elements surface, this time a blast beat, but it just so happens, the blast beat is blasting away beneath a creepy crawly droned out melody, and darkly dramatic crooned vocals, the song winding down into a slow fade, before launching into another non-metal jam. A loping post/math rock lope, all snarly, gothic vox, and processed background, the final few minutes slipping into a near metallic churn, but again, it's more dark and woozy and gothic and hauntingly heavy. Okay, now that we've established that W&R are NOT a metal band, at least by any traditional definition, we can simply enjoy their wonderfully warped, super progressive, experimental avant heaviness, and wonderful and avant it is. We're most reminded of Pinkish Black, a recent aQ Record Of The Week, whose sound also took metal as their launching point, and then stopped concerning themselves with anything other than making heavy, tripped out, amazing music.
And Wreck And Reference have definitely blossomed into something special, a band that we imagine must be pretty divisive, even though they're dark and heavy, and near metallic at times, they have a pop streak a mile wide, and a similar gloomy gothy streak, not to mention a thing for electronics, and programming, and transforming perfectly serviceable riffs into stuttering progged out blurs, and they obviously like real singing, and they like that singing to be dramatic and intense and melodic most of the time, and the thing is, when the band to indulge in some pure metallic crush, they do it so convincingly, it's easy to think they were a metal band who got weird, instead of the other way around, which is how they sound to us. Even better than the Black Cassette, which we dug big time, and everyone who bought that Pinkish Black record, even though this doesn't sound at all like it, seems like something most of you could very well end up digging A LOT.
With a lineup including members of Leviathan, Twilight, Nachtmystium, Anatomy Of Habit and Yakuza, you could be forgiven for expecting this to be a buzzy blackened blast of metallic heaviness, and while there are moments of blackened heaviness here, in fact, You've Always Meant So Much To Me, is the latest composition / recording from long running experimental / ambient / avant classical project, Wreckmeister Harmonies, aka JR Robinson, who many aQ-ers might remember as the man responsible for that Vice documentary on one man black metal bands, but who has been performing and composing as Wreckmeister Harmonies since 2006, his compositions featuring an ever shifting cast of musicians and noisemakers, which in the past has included members of US Maple, the Jesus Lizard, Tortoise, and a handful of modern new jazz luminaries.
This time around, even with a heavy weight, primarily metal ensemble, You've Always Meant So Much To Me
is gorgeously minimal, a dark, droning, softly pulsing creep, something you might expect to be released on Miasmah or Type, a billowing black ambience, woven from softly layered chordal thrum, deep resonant low end rumbles, wheezing barely there horns, buried feedback, and disembodied vocalizations, all blurred into a lush expanse of slow moving sonic swells. Eventually, from within this droning drift, surfaces, little tangles of guitar melodies, sizzling arcs of keening high end, weird almost animal sounds, and then some haunting acoustic guitar, unfurling beneath the now dense ur-drone skree, before everything is enveloped in a cloud of sweeping, swirling strings, a darkly brooding, slow building majesty, that's aching and melancholic, the sound dense, and softly roiling, quickly growing darker and more dissonant, a blackness creeping in, the sounds atonal and angular, everything swaddled in a crumbling distortion, the collective's metal pedigree revealing itself as a blown out buzz, that splinters into a lurching, lumbering doom, downtuned and distorted, massive and pummeling, with harsh howled vokills, pounding and crushing and epic. But before you know it, the distortion fades, the drums disappear, leaving just swirling, buzzing sonic traces, creepy chant-like vocals, sheets of crumbling buzz, wrapped in more aching strings, blurred and bleary, a sort of black buzz drenched modern classical, all of which slowly fades, eventually leaving just a lush harmonium like drone, beneath soft spidery tendrils of acoustic guitar, the drone fading too, leaving just that lonely guitar, drift slowly and dreamily through a field of near silence.
Vinyl only, super limited (we got all we're gonna be able to get), pressed on virgin vinyl and packaged in a heavy old school tip-on style sleeve, with stunning cover art by Simon Fowler. Includes download.
Another triple shot of sonic weirdness from Diagnosis... Don't!, the label run by AQ faves the Grey Daturas, this one comes courtesy of NZ guitarist Nigel Wright, whose two previous cd-r's were huge hits around here (and are gone gone gone so don't ask).
With a delicate combination of minimal guitar drones and subtle laptop manipulation, Wright weaves dark rhythmic soundworlds of creaking cricket like chitter, thick syrupy swells, ominous shimmer and rumbling guitar groan. Spare and desolate, with an underlying loveliness, but so very grim and austere. It's a lot like a Wolf Eyes record, with its suffocating oppressive atmosphere and dark dark ambience, but with all the clang and clatter and roar removed, leaving a more skeletal, mysterious and muted drift, all wrapped up in a strange otherworldly warmth. So nice.
Packaged in thick textured black paper mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
And as always, these are SUPER LIMITED, and odds are we won't be able to get more...
There are so many tiny cd-r labels, and so many releases, it's basically impossible to keep up. We do what we can, sort of pick and choose the best we can find, and one of our favorites is NZ guitarist Nigel Wright. Unlike the legions of overproducers out there, we've only managed three Wright releases in 3 years. This one makes it four, and it's absolutely gorgeous. Gauzy and hazy, woozy and washed out, dense and dreamlike. Fennesz, Jeck, Tim Hecker, Wright travels a similar sonic path, creating gorgeous sun dappled soundscapes of softly blurred melodies, of buried notes, his guitar not so much expelling notes and chords, as much as unfurling lush sonic tapestries, soft focus, bleary eyed beauty, peppered with clouds of crumbling distortion, shards of delay, streaks of muted whir, but all deftly incorporated into Wright's constantly shifting soundworld.
Somehow the world at large needs to discover what Wright is capable of. C'mon Touch, swoop in and snatch this man up and give him some resources to make the record we know he's capable of. If he can make records this pretty with a guitar and a 4-track, the mind boggles...
Brand new record from NZ guitarist/dronescaper Nigel Wright, who at this point definitely has to be one of our favorite sonic conjurers of minimal drones and gorgeous abstract soundscapes, and the two tracks here do nothing to convince us otherwise.
The A side is a hushed meditative drift, warm layered whorls, slow motion melancholy melodies, all draped over a strange haunting urgent tension, the imbues the whole track with a fantastic dark drama, very minimal, and slow moving, it's almost the darker, more shadowy side of Pop Ambience, ominous and haunting but so lovely.
The B side plays like a more washed out dreamlike version of the the A side, hazy, gauzy, a bleary blurred shimmer rich with buried melodies and slow shifting layers, reminding us of The Caretaker without all that crackle and hum, the same sort of faded memory timeless melancholia. So nice.
Includes a download coupon as well!
We were first introduced to Mr. Nigel Wright (not to be confused with fellow dronester Peter Wright) via a super limited cd-r on the CMR label. A gorgeous assemblage of mysterious loop based systems. Totally hit the spot for fans of Coleclough, Ambarchi, Nilsen, Chalk and the like (like us!). Well, recently Wright got in touch with us to see if we wanted to carry his latest release, another super limited cd-r, this time a 15 minute 3" in crafty hand made packaging. Well, the answer was obviously "Hell yeah!" and thus we have this, another completely mesmerizing slab of warm fuzzy looped and drone drenched goodness. The first track comes on like some My Bloody Valentine William Basinski mash up. Thick gauzy waves of distortion wrapped around delicate glistening melodies, layered and looped into a haunting ebb and flow of pulsing drone and slow shifting buzz. The sound is very organic, rich and thick and multi-hued, almost like a warmer fuzzier SUNNO))). The second track pushes even further out in the same fuzzed out blown out ambient direction, the guitars (?) are even more corrosive, channeling the wall of skree sound of bands like Sunroof! but filtered through the doe-eyed innocence and romantic moodiness of bands like M83 or any of their like minded Gooom labelmates. Dreamy and ambient enough to be perfect for the drone obsessed, but enough like some avant rockdrone outfit to appeal to folks who have been digging Nadja, The Angelic Process, Hjarnidaudi, Jesu and the like. Awesome!
Not sure how limited these are but we're guessing VERY, so act fast. Packaged in tiny little plastic sleeves with colored paper covers and simple typed insert.
Fuck, first there was Celebrate Psi Phenemona, and then Pseudoarcana jumped into the fray, and now CMR is the latest label to start releasing super limited edition cd-r's from the New Zealand underground of improv free-noise, lo-fi drone scraping, and damaged sound art. Not to be confused with the Andrew Lloyd Webber associate of the same name, the Auckland based Nigel Wright focuses on loop-based systems which he transforms into miasmic drones. It's hard to say if those looping systems refer to feedbacking loops (which is possible as there is a cyclical sine-wave feel to many of Wright's sounds) or to a Terry Riley time-lag accumulation (which is also possible with all of the crystaline percolations that ripple through the dronescaping); regardless of the process, Wright's eponymous debut recording alternates between deadened electrical atmospherics and beautifully blissed out driftscapes. Fans of BJ Nilsen, Oren Ambarchi, and Jonathan Coleclough should take note! Limited to 100 copies only!
This is a gorgeously sublime drone record reminiscent of Maeror Tri/Troum or Organum at times. Lots of bowed guitars, bowed cymbals, random found sounds (markets, rain, church), and guitars all looped into thick velvety drones, with clanging percussion
The amazing Drone Records label, run by Stefan Knappe of Maeror Tri / Troum, has been quietly releasing super limited, hand made slabs of gorgeous drone music for years now. Mostly 7", always vinyl, some of which were recently collected and released as a 2cd on Andee's tUMULt label), each record an ultra personal exploration of the drone, sometimes soft and dreamlike, sometimes harsh and noisy, but always beautiful. The most recent 7" in the ongoing series is Air Guitar, a three song single from New Zealander Peter Wright, an absolutely gorgeous collision of field recordings and guitar exploration. It also just might be the loudest and most active of the Drone singles so far!
The record starts with subtle bits of clatter, like someone in the kitchen or the practice space, just sort of moving stuff about. Those random ambient sounds are soon swallowed up by dense moody mesmerizing guitarscapes, gentle sweet insistent melodies over a slow building drone. Like a heavier dronier Roy Montgomery maybe...
The second track is a lush tapestry of tangled melody woven from sheets of super distorted guitar and streaks of incandescent feedback, that Wright deftly controls and harnesses into something more moody and lovely than freaked out and ferocious. The final track takes up all of the B side and is a single sonorous side-long drone, humming low end slowly and languorously drifts beneath a night sky lit by glistening streaks of high end glimmer. So nice.
Packaged in cool, hand painted orange sleeves, pressed on swirled orange vinyl, with a printed orange insert.
This is the first pressing and is limited to 300 copies!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
WAREHOUSE FIND! Just discovered a little stash of these, 6 or 7, not sure how they slipped through the cracks, but this came out a few years back, is as far as we can tell now out of print, but this way at least a handful of folks out there can nab one of these, an incredible double disc of dark shimmery dronemusic and mysterious processed field recordings. We've raved on and on about New Zealand soundscaper Wright on past lists, so long time aQ folks are probably already quite familiar, but for those who aren't, this is a great introduction. Two whole discs, lengthy sprawling minimal epics, warm washed out whirs drifting into clouds of bird song, seagulls float above burnished streaks of coppery sun dappled blurs, delicate bell like tones are smeared into gauzy impressionistic soundscapes of muted melody and hushed slow motion hum, heaving crumbling distorted crunch blown out into blistering shards of ur-drone, traffic noise fades into hazy fields of delicately reverbed guitar, which fades into the sounds of a forest stream, dreamy druggy shoegazey guitardrones rumble and build before dissipating into clouds of indistinct otherworldly barely there grey gauzey ambience. So so so good. Last copies ever, essential listening for drone obsessives, and anyone into Jasper TX, Machinefabriek, Svarte Greiner, Aidan Baker, the Fun Years, Xela, and other crafters of dark dronelike mystery...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another batch of super limited and beautifully packaged cd-r's from Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. The finest in underground free noise / drone, culled mostly from New Zealand but all around the world as well. For those of you new to the CpsiP label, imagine classic Siltbreeze (Dead C, etc.) mixed with Jewelled Antler (Thuja, Blithe Sons etc.), dark and deep listening that sometimes verges on all out noise, but more often than not remains subtle experiments in avant drone and abstract sound. And when we say limited we mean LIMITED. These babies come in pressings of 30-80, out of which we get a whopping 10 copies!!
Peter Wright returns with what may be his most fully realised release yet. A lush soundscape of barely-there field recordings, subtle shadings of grey rumbles and black ambience, keening chimes smeared into lengthened sonic shadows, shifting overtones and subtle shimmers, all very melancholy and emotional, dreamy and otherworldly.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've said it before, over and over and over, but we don't mind saying it again, in fact we'll shout it from the rooftops, and print up t-shirts or even write it in review after review until everyone listens and understands. Peter Wright is one of the most compelling soundmakers we have ever heard. And his lustrous soundscapes and dark dreamlike drones are every bit as lovely and mysterious, and as carefully crafted and breathtaking as any of the work from bigger names like Chalk, Colelcough, Mirror, Maeror Tri, Organum, Basinski or any of the flavor of the month limited cd-r drone rockers.
Record after record of completely mesmerizing sound. Gorgeous gauzy smears of fuzzy guitar, lilting ghostlike melodies, soft focus ethereal drifts and dense swirls of abstract melancholia.
This cd, originally released as a super limited cd-r on Foxglove, is no different. The title Desolation Beauty Violence describes the music more succinctly than we ever could.
A gauzy glimpse into a microscopic alternate universe, where everything is broken into their base elements, the sky is a woven tapestry of smoky languid guitar lines, tiny glistening sonic molecules drift like snowflakes against a fuzzy slate grey sky, while in the distance, shimmering molecules reverberate, sending deep cavernous whirs drifting skyward. Melodies are tiny bits of sound, stretched out into minute long smears. Bits of percussion offer up some muted underwater click and clack like stones in a mountain stream, everything spread out into dreamy slabs of trembling sonic gauze.
So goddamn lovely. If asked, we'd probably insist that you buy EVERY SINGLE PETER WRIGHT RECORD you can get your hands on, but for now, start with Desolation Beauty Violence, and be prepared to fall hopelessly under his dreamdrone spell...
Originally released on Wright's own Apoplexy label, Distant Bombs is a timeless, gorgeous slab of melodic drone resurrected by our pals at Last Visible Dog. Unlike the static, barely shifting tectonic rumbles of many of our drone favorites, this is drone at its most airy and melodic. As if actual pop songs were smashed into pieces, then melted down into a dizzying swirl of lush gasoline rainbow swoon, smeared in a thick paste on a pane of glass and held up to the full moon, letting muted blues and greens, and subtle bursts of prismatic sound drift through. Really nice.
Subtitled "Collected Drone-Poems 2000-2003", this collection gathers up many long out of print and now impossible to find drift/drone/free/noise gems from NZ expat Peter Wright. Collected here are the cd-r's Duna (Last Visible Dog), A Tiny Camp In The Wilderness (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon), Catch A Spear As It Flies (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon), Pariahs Sing Om (Apoplexy) as well as a few pieces from compilations and a couple previousy unreleased tracks. And as you might expect it's all totally captivating and dreamy and lovely. All three discs here are overflowing with warm drones, subtle shifting soundscapes, vast expanses of creaking, groaning, drifting sound, soft and shimmery, sweet and slow moving, guitars hover weightless in dense clouds of chordal warmth, single notes float and flutter, while clusters of notes get smeared into still more layers of drone and rumble. Gorgeously subtle, every track deep and dense, sparkling and crystalline, lustrous and so lovely, resplendent with muted colors, like watching clouds float across the sky, or watching leaves drift down stream, this is deeply personal, totally captivating ambience that is most certainly the equal of his more well known peers. Fans of the drone cd-r underground (CPSIP, Digitalis, PseudoArcana, atc.), as well as the more academic side of minimal dronology (Chalk, Coleclough, Niblock, Berry) should most definitely make it a point to further explore Wright's constantly evolving, gorgeous and mysterious soundworld.Ô
Packaged again in one of those strange triple fold plastic sleeves that is unfortunately not ideal for keeping cds from gettin' scratched...Ô
We've raved about New Zealander Peter Wright in the past, numerous times, we've even now that we check back at past reviews, raved ABOUT raving about Peter Wright, but we really have no choice now but to do it again. For someone as prolific, and as talented as Wright, he seems to continually to fly well beneath the hipster radar.
Which is maybe good for us, but at the same time, it's hard not to root for someone who seems to effortlessly conjure up such beautiful sounds. But the thing is, we KNOW it's not effortless. The world is filled with folks who have a microphone and some effects, and think they can be soundscapers, field recordists, ARTISTS. And while that sort of spirit is to be applauded, the truth of the matter is, just like with anything, flying a jet, swimming the English Channel, playing the trumpet, racing Formula 1's, some people are just more talented than others. And Wright is just about as talented as they come.
Weaving field recordings into longform drones, creating soundscapes from found sounds and processed guitars, Wright manages to create dreamlike expanses of sonic wonder.
Take the first track here, the title track, it's hard not to imagine Pretty Little Mushroom Clouds. The sounds of birds, and wind, maybe branches rubbing against each other in the distance, while all around these sounds of nature, deep buzzing swells ebb and flow, dark, slightly ominous melodies, swell and recede, a super minimal pulse, a gorgeous cloud of shimmer drifting across verdant hills and blue blue sky. You can almost imagine, lush rolling hills, dotted with wildflowers, cute little houses, scattered copses of trees, birds soaring in the sky, while way off in the distance, huge black mushroom clouds blossom in the sky, but from here, they just look beautiful, the music capturing that moment before everything is turned to ash, a brief vacuum, where even the vilest of objects is transformed into a vivid picturesque sonic snapshot.
Over the rest of the record, the field recordings are much more subtle, relying more on the processed instrumentation, guitars are ground into muted walls reverberating buzz, rife with disembodied melodies, streaks of high end and bits of rumbling drone, some tracks are massive and pitched down, the sound of drifting beneath miles of ice in the Arctic Circle, everything glowing some unearthly blue, all the sounds muted and warbled, others are nearly ebullient, like the perfectly titled "The Devil Wears Sunroof", which from the sound of it we can only assume is a nod to Matthew Bower and his Ur-drone unit, all glistening high end shimmer, and long stretches of buzzing upper register guitar. The final track finds Wright taking all of his various sounds and assembling them into a super hypnotic, strangely heavy looped take on, well, Loop actually, a repeated riff, a static groove, totally mesmerizing and space-y, eventually building to a full on blast of almost Japanoise, before petering out, leaving just the sound of an airport terminal or a train station, or a huge sparsely filled performance space as it's revealed to be, when the crowd finally offers up some applause, for what may have been a live performance, or may have been just a random bit of live crowd sound sampled and woven into Wright's mysterious sonic sprawl.
As always, amazing packaging from aRCHIVE. Six panel full color glossy gatefold, the cd affixed to a nub on the middle panel, while around the jacket, an outer sleeve of printed vellum. Super nice.
Limited to 500 copies, single one time pressing.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We haven't heard from New Zealand dronescaper Peter Wright in about a year. Well, it's been at least that long since we've reviewed one of his discs. Somehow two other Wright discs slipped through the cracks in that time though, which is a shame, since pretty much everything we've heard from Wright is fantastic. This latest double disc is no different.
Nine looooooong tracks spread out over two discs, most in the 15-20 minute range, which is ideal for Wright's slow building, slow burning drone-epics, allowing for plenty of time to drift and shimmer and buzz and whir and rumble.
The first disc opens as disembodied voices float above and within thick swells of grinding melodic buzz, smoothed out into undulating sonic sheets, feedback is dulled and blunted and transformed into warm ambience, the raga-like buzz sprawls out seemingly endlessly, this is Wright at his heaviest and most aggressive, the tones taking on a timbre not that far removed from Nadja's doomic crush, but Wright approaches that sound from another direction entirely.
The rest of disc one is much more serene, minimal and hushed, a slow swirling ambient shimmer, delicate and crystalline, which over the course of two tracks and nearly 40 minutes manages to slip from hushed whisper to smoldering whir, glowing hotter and hotter but never letting loose, until the 6 minute closer gets all riffy, the guitars blindingly distorted, but remaining soft and warm and hauntingly melancholic.
The second disc is the perfect second movement, shifting from warm effects drenched drifts to deep subterranean rumbles, from sun dappled cinematic ambience to reverbed minimal mood music and finally to full on crumbling corrosive blown out crunch, with weirdly decaying distortion, strange strangled guitars, thick swaths of blurred buzz, and gorgeous chiming tones ringing out in the background.
Yet another collection of divine drones and sublime minimal soundscaping from the inimitable Peter Wright. Needless to say, absolutely gorgeous, and for the droneminded among you, most likely essential.
After some initial clang and crash and general futzing about and plugging in, Peter Wright gives the drone-heads everything they've been jonesing for. Rich deep drones with drifting, wailing feedback offering up minimal melody, shimmery industrial soundscapes, and noisy expanses of raw sound that alternately wrap your ears in sandpaper of velvet. Instrumentation includes guitar, clarinet, percussion, bicycle (!), and of course the broken Kawai.
MPEG Download: "The Broken Kawai" [/audio/wrightbroken.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "The Broken Kawai" [/audio/wrightbroken.m3u]
New Zealand comes to Rhode Island. Peter Wright, whose records on Celebrate Psi Phenomena we have dug in the past, gives our pals at Last Visible Dog one 70+ minute track recorded for a gallery in New Zealand, and it's pretty darn lovely. It starts off with a lush soundscape of chimes and bells and electronic buzz before it dissipates into a vast expanse of hum and skronk and reverb and lots and lots of S P A C E. Very musique concrete. Drones swarm out of inky blackness, only to diappear as suddenly as they appeared, leaving us to once again carefully feel our way through this cavernous piece.
If there were any justice in the world we'd be speaking of Peter Wright in the same hushed, reverential tones reserved for the more well known minimalists and dronologists. Chalk, Coleclough, Berry, Kneale, Milton, all fantastic, but they have nothing on Milton. In fact, if anything, Milton takes the subtle drones and the amorphous soundscaping of his brethren and uses those concepts and sounds to make actual songs. Like on the opening track "The Chain Bridge", Milton lays out a thick wash of warm cathedral guitar, slow moving and stately, so thick with reverb and delay that the melody sounds submerged in some warm viscous sound, the overtones so rich and thick they seem to overwhelm the notes that produced them. But that doesn't keep Milton from unfurling the mightiest of drones. Take the 13+ minute "Offa's Dyke" a chiming reverberating slow moving mass, glistening black, shot through with all the colors of the rainbow, but so subtle as to only be barely glimpsed through the whir and rumble of the mighty drone. But even in full drone mode, there are layers of melody, subtle shadings, even little song fragments and sonic swirl. Then there's tracks like "Bannockburn", one of the most gorgeous, and emminently listenable pieces of modern minimalism we've heard in ages, a circular series of repeated motifs, slowly shifting and gently overlapping, the best Steve Reich piece that never was. A 21st century new-weird-underground cd-r Terry Riley even. Wow.
Yellow Horizon is that rich in sound, heavy in emotion, just beautiful to listen to, all the way through, alternately droning and lilting, slow and smoldering, shimmery and effervescent.
Easily one of the most gorgeous records of the year so far!
A collaborative effort between likeminded Japanese hyperminimalists Toshiya Tsunoda, Hiroyuki Iida, Jiro Shimizu, and m/s is an exercise in persistance, as pure tone sine-waves extend unwaveringly, high-speed digital glitch manipulation tumbles slowly into low-end rumbles, and speak-n-spell collages prove to be quite unnerving.
It's been a while since we've heard from avant black metal weirdo Wrnlrd, and it seems a few things have changed since the last record. The band, formerly a mostly one man project, has expanded to include a handful of other players, contributing a strange selection of instruments (strange for black metal, but not necessarily for Wrnlrd, whose bluegrass roots managed to shine through no matter how buzzy and black proceeding got in the past), including accordion, piano, pedal steel, female vocals, and Dwid from legendary hardcore heavies Integrity even makes a guest appearance. And as we mentioned in the past, the Wrnlrd website offers very little in the way of proper info, but does feature a strange series of numerological sigils and strange diagrams, which would seem to indicate, that this just may be the second to last Wrnlrd record EVER. Which would be a shame, cuz this is definitely the most gloriously fucked up Wrnlrd yet.
Sonically, it's not all that far removed from the last few records, but it's somehow, just MORE. The guitars are filthier and crunchier and more distorted, the arrangements are more bizarre, stumbling and abstract and confusional, the instrumentation, as mentioned above, elevates this WAY beyond black metal, into some sort of tripped out blackened avant noise rock, or something.
Beginning with some gnarled detuned riffage, lumbering bass blur, and some monstrous gurgling vox, the record doesn't explode from the speakers so much as ooze, sounding like a death metal 45 at 16rpm, a furiously ominous creep, before slipping into more 'typical' Wrnlrd territory, which means gloomy low slung bass, big pounding drums, swirling electronics, super distorted buzz and chug, and of course super dramatic almost operatic female vocals, balancing more of those gurgling death metal grunts, the result is impossibly both beautiful and haunting, fucked up and grim, underpinned by super cinematic synths.
"Midnight Ride" is about as traditional as it gets, with some killer distorto riffing, pounding drums, keening guitar melodies, and those immediately recognizable Integrity style bellowed vox, it's doomy and dirgey knuckle dragging heaviness, that seems to mutate and morph growing more and more tripped out and psychedelic as it goes, finishing off in a cloud of lap steel shimmer.
After a stretched out bit of twisted piano ambience, the final track unfurls, a wheezing accordion sounding sinister and grim, soon swallowed up by a squall of atonal buzz and twisted guitar squiggle, finally coalescing into a woozy seasick bit of blackened lurch and stumble, the buzz caked on, the sound filthy and in the red, laced over super haunting blown out melodies, again managing to (im)perfectly merge melody and murk, until the track finally collapses into a chaos of colliding chugs over some darkly delicate fingerpicked guitar.
Incredible, and incredibly twisted stuff. Probably WAY too far out for the grim black hordes, but for everyone else, this is some beautiful and brilliantly baffling heaviness.
Housed in a cool diecut sleeve, comes with a poster and a patch and a digital download of the record.
There's weird black metal, and then there's WEIRD black metal. Generally the weird stuff tends toward either the stumbling and inept, or the super avant and ridiculously proficient, but the strangeness of Wrnlrd seems so much more organic, as if the sound of Wrnlrd was not in fact strange, but more that all the other sounds around it were way too normal. Nothing sounds forced, or ridiculous, but it all sounds twisted and freaky, and most definitely unlike any other black metal you've ever heard. Could be because the man behind Wrnlrd grew up playing bluegrass, could be these are just the sounds he hears in his head, whatever it is, we're grateful, cuz every Wrnlrd record seems to blow our mind more than the last.
Just check out the opener here, the guitars -almost- out of tune, the melody strangely atonal, the drums buried in the mix, the bass warbly and warped, and what sounds like some sort of bleating tuba supplying the low end, chugging riffage over strange snippets of found sound, tangled saxophones (?), bellowed vocals, all the sounds relentless and all tangled up in a swirling blackened mass, harmonized guitars, weird jagged shards of metallic crunch, and then the song suddenly shifts, the key changes to something slightly more melodic and major, and female vocals, soulful and almost operatic wail over the top. What? Really? How does it work? And why does it sound so goddamn amazing? You'll probably be asking yourself that over and over as you dig into Myrmidon, that is if you can stop yourself from headbanging or pry the headphones off your ears. That first track is a sort-of-template for the whole record, the soaring female vocals, the gnarled crunchy riffage, the lurching start stop arrangements, everything murky and downtuned, a bit noisy, blurred and buzzy, dense and so chaotic, but somehow it all works, and the result is some seriously transcendent black art.
Super thick vinyl, 180 gram, comes with a digital download too!!
Record number six from this far out fractured one man black metal horde hailing from Virginia. There's some serious significance to the numbers in the world of Wrnlrd. Check out his website for some truly mind bending numerology, and maybe you will understand the non musical significance of the unveiling of Oneiromancer, the first vinyl release, and sixth overall in a proposed nine part cycle. We've raved about the music of Wrnlrd on past lists, and judging by how difficult it is to keep in stock, you all feel the same. We'd been hearing about Oneiromancer for a while now, rumored to be the best and most fully realized Wrnlrd disc yet, and we're inclined to agree.
Much of Wrnlrd's sound is improvised, in the spirit of automatic writing, and most of the vocals are spontaneous wordless vocalizations, with the lyrics incorporated later, which definitely adds to the mystery and goes some way to helping explain how unlike most black metal Wrnlrd's black metal really is.
The record opens with what we can only describe as high end doom, upper register chords allowed to ring out, left hanging, abstract with tons of space, a slow churning soundscape of chiming chordal shimmer. Which quickly gives way to some old school metallic chug, peppered with ultra lo-fi buzz, the skree of feedback and simple pounding drumming. The next track explodes in a frenzied blast, machine like rhythms beneath riffs so distorted and blurred they sound like static drones, occasionally interrupted by stretches of black ambient shimmer and whirring minimal drones. There are some dark haunting doomy bluegrass hybrids too, steel string twang drifting over deep resonant rumbles and throbbing black murk.
All of side two is taken up by the epic "War", with distinct multiple movements, woven into one organic shapeshifting whole. Beginning with acoustic guitar, melancholy and slightly atonal, stumbling tribal drumming and soft static guitar buzz, interwoven with subtle backwards loops, which gives way to a dirgey blast of primitive and raw blackness, which is quickly pulled under a tripped out FX laden drift. After that it's a loooong stretch of muted buzz, all murky and muddy, buried drums, like suddenly the speakers blew, until the track shifts once again into a super distorted in-the-red blowout, finally fading out, leaving a minute or so of swirling warped backwards warble to lead us out. Schizophrenic and deliriously damaged, some of the most far out "black metal" we've heard. We can only imagine what record 7,8, and 9 hold in store!
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed in metallic ink, and includes a download code to get you the whole record digitally for your iPod.
Easily the BEST album whose tracks contain of a lot of seeming nonsense baby babble and backwards tape manipulations (that was originally improvised for Italian radio) we've ever heard. Even if you already think you'd like babbling vocals and tape FX, this is even better than you think. Why? well it helps that it was done by Robert Wyatt, who is a bit of a genius, you know. Of course, if you're a Wyatt fan, you already know you want this 'cause it's basically an UNRELEASED ROBERT WYATT ALBUM FROM 1981.
Now, the title is Radio Experiment as it definitely was an experiment, a successful one, fortunately. Wyatt was invited to come to Rome and spend a week at this radio station's studio, recording his spontaneous creative process during that time frame, whatever might transpire.
The radio people picked the right artist to participate in this project, as Wyatt fully embraced the concept, working in a "blank frenzy", willing to let the end results remain secondary to documenting the work in progress of music making, though as it turned out, the finished music is pretty cool. And strange.
There's seven completed compositions presented on this disc, along with a final 10 minute track that was assembled and edited by the radio program's staff from recordings made surreptitiously during Wyatt's initial "rehearsals" in the studio. He's a one-man band here, playing piano and keys and drums and Jew's harp and other "objects". And singing, overdubbing his voice, which is all over the place, from playfully chopped up burble to weird whisper to high pitched whine to mumbled chatter to, well, actual singing that's quite fragile and pretty. There's plenty of wordless ba ba ba la la la, and other more coherent parts where you can understand the lyrics, in some cases read from political/historical texts. Multitracked and layered, all these pieces have a dreamy, hazy, hallucinatory aspect, somewhat abstract but pleasant, moody and melodic too. Being to a degree improvised, some jazz seeps in from Wyatt's Soft Machine days, and one track in fact is an interpretation, of sorts, of Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce".
Overall, a week well spent! Wyatt fans of course should enjoy this, and it also sounds to us like something perhaps This Heat related, and there's lots of current underground, cd-r scene activity featuring fractured pop and rhythmic lo-fi psychedelia and the textural use of the human voice that unknowingly harks back to these archival recordings from 28 years ago, long hidden away but thankfully now issued on cd and vinyl. The way this combines both beautiful pop-iness with really weird methods and sounds seems like something fans of, say, Panda Bear would be totally into. Very recommended!
DR-99. Somehow we missed out on listing this one, but we do have a handful of copies of this Drone Records single from Wyrm. The subterranean scratchiness of Wyrm emanated from the North Carolina hills by way of Allan Zane; and he's collaborated in the past with the likes of Rapoon, Nocturnal Emissions, and shared a split release with irr. app. (ext.) to give you some sort of idea as to where this Wyrm likes to crawl. The two tracks are loop-based constructions of eerie, horror-film drone with revolving textures and tactile gyrations. "Divination Bones" cycles through patterns of acid rain pelting concrete surfaces with a sharp resonant guitar drone rising out of the mist and fog. "Adam Coils" lumbers with deep vocal mantras reverberating through catacombs topped with eerie electronic harmonic squalls that seem like devilishly treated Tibetan horns. Cut at 45 rpm, so of course we played it... and enjoyed it immensely at the slower speed. But these two tracks from Wyrm are pretty great at 45 too! Super limited stock. ONLY SIX COPIES... ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
Long in the works, this last ever Throbbing Gristle project, which was to be a fully realized cover album of the legendary Nico record from 1970, has had more than its fair share of controversy and drama within the confines of the remaining members of the group (Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson). Not only by the death of key member and project leader Christopherson, but also the decision of Chris and Cosey to continue the project on their own as a tribute to "Sleazy" sparking a widely publicized twitter feud with former Throbbing Gristle member Genesis P-Orridge. Already the name X-TG was christened due to P-Orridge's unwillingness to continue to tour with the reenergized Throbbing Gristle in late 2010, and the remaining members continued on, under the new moniker, with a desire to mold new sounds in the studio. The Desertshore album was in fact instigated several years before, back in 2006 for an art installation, but the results were unsatisfactory and thus re-recorded two years later. With Sleazy's death occurring before the project was finished, it became a tribute with vocals given to an array of familiar guests. What seemed at first like a dream project, has since been altered so far away from its original intentions, that while on one hand it's great to see a long involved project finally realized, we can't help but wonder what could have been.
The problem being that with so many guest vocals, it's impossible to be immersed into a singular sound world that the original Desertshore demands, as the changes among vocalists create an unwanted distraction. The sound that X-TG created for themselves is beautifully exquisite, and on some tracks, especially the Antony led, "Janitor of Lunacy", the total effect is mesmerizing. But between the bravado of Marc Almond, the tepidness of Sasha Gray, and the wildly fluctuating moods of other guests including Blixa Bargeld and Argentine cinema provocateur, Gaspar Noe, it's difficult to feel satisfied overall. The biggest question for us is why didn't Cosey just sing the whole thing? Her vocal contributions are among the best of the lot and might have led to the project having some much needed continuity. Perhaps perfect closure was too much of an unattainable goal in the post-TG world for us to expect.
Unlike the other declarations of finality, disc two in this double disc set is in fact The Final Report for the remnants of Throbbing Gristle. The sketches of The Final Report were mapped out during studio sessions from 2009 through 2010 up until Sleazy's death, with Chris and Cosey completing the album themselves. In many ways, it's a considerable improvement upon the Third Mind Movements by Throbbing Gristle from 2009, with flickering, mirage-like electronic tones and deconstructed samples sliding in and out of focus around the orbit of the lumbering rhythms. While the technology and the ability to use it has improved, the band continue to build from primitive pulses and scaffolding that are plastered with uneasy sounds, subliminal vocalizations, and mutant electronica -- all very much in keeping with the Industrial agenda of 1978, but with current technology. "E.H.S." sounds very much like what Throbbing Gristle revamped today would sound like, with unsettled vocalizations lurking at the perimeter of perception and Cosey's atonal guitar bursting through the cybernetic, lurching rhythm in chunky blocks of bent sound. "What He Said" is a noirish piece of futurist electronica with a heart-beat pulse gradually building in intensity with elongated coronet tones and skittered echoings of caustic noise bouncing throughout. The Final Report is pretty much a unified album, which is a strange thing to say about a Throbbing Gristle record, which in the past were known to be distinctly disjointed and multi-faceted. Here, the vision is consistent with a morose soot covering both man and machine alike. Let's hope the next Chris & Cosey record picks up where this one leaves off!
A whole mess of new releases from Germany's drone records, as always gorgeously packaged, super limited, and some of the deepest, darkest, loveliest and most mysterious dronemusik around.
This one comes from a group called XABEC, whose installment comes pressed on thick maroon vinyl, and housed in a gold embossed 7" cardboard box, with a printed cardstock insert. As always, it's a first edition and is thus limited to only 300 copies.
The A side begins as two simultaneous drones, one soft and shimmery and static, the other more buzzy and distorted, a hissing rumble, wrapping itself all around the main drone. Later on, creepy footstep-like percussion drifts in, and distant keening metallic melodies. Whirring distortion underpins bits of clatter, and various random sounds, all woven into a darkly undulating sonic tapestry.
The B side is a piece from a performance based on music and fireworks, and thus ends with field recordings, captured by Mnortham, the track opens with a flurry of fireworks a cloud of skittery pop, like an army of tiny machine guns, quickly giving way to a wash of deep resonant metallic drones, and a strange alien groove over the top, some sort of squeaky looped rhythm that sounds a bit like Drone meets Kompakt. Weird but quite cool.
We almost sold out of these after only a few days, without even reviewing / listing it, but then it IS a new Xasthur record, and it IS a super limited (500 copies) cassette version, and cassette means cult, in a cool oversized clamshell case, with original artwork by Hildolf from Draugar, and inside, it also contains a photocopied booklet, 3 pins and a patch! So yeah, no real surprise that those flew out of here. We did manage to get a handful more of these, but seeing as how these have been selling pretty much nonstop, who knows how long they'll last.
Beyond all that stuff, we're pretty psyched for sure. Finally, a new record from Xasthur, aka Malefic, a one man doom-ed depressive black metal machine, whose last release, Defective Epitaph was a huge hit around these parts, due in no small part to the shift from drum machine to actual drums, no programmed beats, actual kit bashing rhythms courtesy of Malefic himself, and the result was pretty stellar, creating a sound even more raw and murky and lo-fi than past efforts, but no less bleak or introspective or amazing. So now comes All Reflections Drained, soon to come on double lp, and we would assume cd, but for now available only in the very old school, very metal, and very kult kassette format. And it's very much a continuation of Defective Epitaph, from moment one, the sound boomy and reverb drenched, echoey and WAY lo-fi, loping doomy guitars, stumbling midtempo drums, and then WOAH, the sound shifts, and the drums double time it under a layer of thick low end dramatic piano, creating some strange Skepticismy drift, over the relentlessly buzzing blackness below. The mix is REALLY weird, fractured and gloriously fucked up, the sounds shifting and merging into one another, the songs too, woozy and warped and seasick sounding and a bit waltzy, the drum sound super raw and distant and for the most part buried in the mix, minus some flurries of kick drum that practically explode. The guitars are washed out and melancholic, lumbering doomily through hazy clouds of muted buzz and soft focus hiss, lots of creeped out ambience, and dark soundscaping, way less of a focus on vocals, in fact several songs in, and we barely noticed any, minus some far off clean crooning and some rumbled mutterings, the usual blackened harsh rasps seemingly lost in the swirling off kilter mix.
If anything this record is a logical extension of the direction Malefic had been taking the sound of Xasthur, like a Defective Epitaph part two maybe, but somehow quite a bit doomier, and WAY weirder, more spaced out and experimental, with a serious focus on dark brooding non-metal parts, hints of slowcore and drone abound, some parts are downright orchestral, and the sound is definitely even murkier and mysterious than ever, dripping with buzz and tape hiss, blown out low end (that sounds like a tuba or something similar) and thick crumbling distortion, but fear not troo grim hordes, it's still plenty depressive and dolorous, minor key and epic, miserable and moody, gorgeously buzzy and bafflingly brilliant.
Again, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! And these will probably disappear FAST... To be sure, there will be a vinyl and perhaps cd version coming out eventually, but they won't be as kvlt as this! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
Unheard recordings of proto-punk madness, primordial industrial ooze, and untrained no wave expressionism! Yes, those dates in the title speak to the timeframe for Xeerox, a shortlived conglomeration of anarchists, anti-musicians, and electronic dilettantes who had some pretty solid connections (if not overlap) with the seminal Spanish industrial outfit Esplendor Geometrico. One of the principle members of Xeerox was a feverishly enthusiastic fellow named Krishna Goineau, who fled Barcelona for Germany where he went on to found Liaisons Dangereuses with Beate Bartel (Malaria!) and Chris Haas (DAF). From the onset, Xeerox hoisted the ideological flag of punk but rejected much of the aesthetics of punk's rock revisionism. Their initial sound was an atonal fug of Sister Ray-isms glommed onto motorik drum-kit pulses with distantly megaphone barked vocals, presumably by Goineau. The grimy distortion which dominates the first side of untitled tracks speaks not only of the shitty cassettes that they recorded onto but also a glowing appreciation of Crass later blossoming into a full-throttle one-note minimalism prescient of the work that was just getting started by Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. Assuming the tracks are chronological, the second half of the record finds Xeerox really coming into their own with the monomaniacal march of metal bashed rhythms, insistent electronic blorps, weirdo tape-reverse effects, maddeningly repetitive guitar plucks that put us in the best kind of trance, and some torturous amplifier noise that would make Matthew Bower howl with respect. A pretty bloody awesome find; and a pretty bloody limited pressing of just 300 copies that comes with a nicely produced booklet of suitably xeroxed band photos and instructive history from Xeerox's Javier Hernandez.
Our first exposure to Xela, the musical outfit of Type label head honcho John Twells, was the most recent full length disc The Dead Sea, which took the sound of, well, The Dead C, and got it all tangled up with the blissy fuzz of the Gooom label, and the warm shimmer of Pop Ambient, all coalescing into some perfectly abstract dreamy off kilter pop flecked free noise. Buried amidst all of the other elements was some electronica skitter, but it was a tiny part of the bigger sound.
But as we've dug deeper into his past efforts, we've discovered, that Xela began as much more of an electronica / IDM sort of project. The recently reviewed reissue For Frosty Mornings And Summer Nights was heavy on the beats, carving out a sonic niche somewhere between his later more abstract sound and the warm sun dappled electronic shuffle of Boards Of Canada. And this two song 7" definitely falls within the same sonic parameters. One side is all record crackle over murky thumps, bits of strange industrial clatter, and deep almost house music like swells, but with a HUGE low end that rumbles your ribcage and wraps its thick tendrils around everything. There are some stuttery rhythms, some chopped vocals, bits of looped melody all swirled into the mix, the result sounding like a way more abstract Boards Of Canada. Which is definitely a good thing.
The flipside is even more reminiscent of the Boards, with muted melodies, epic string swells, and all sorts of skittery shuffling Autechre-y rhythms. All amidst layer after layer of warm thick sound, dense and blissed out. Melodic and dramatic and melancholy, dreamy and so so nice.
SUPER LIMITED. Packaged in a plain white sleeve.
Brand new, vinyl only release from Xela, aka John Twells, head honcho of the amazing Type label. On past Xela releases, Twells has dabbled in abstract ambient doom, crafting haunting and heavy landscapes of ominous low end and sprawling blackened dronemusick, and also explored sounds much more delicate, soft crystalline shimmers and washed out sepia toned blurs, but here, on Heirs Of The Fire, Twells tries his hand at arranging vocals, creating gorgeous vocal variant of the Xela sound. A shimmery chorale, ethereal female voices drift amidst muted metallic chimes, a bit like Grouper or Inca Ore, but less lo-fi and more lush, in the background whirring bits of old machinery creak and hiss, this haunting shadowy tableau seemingly frozen in amber, a snapshot of some other world in some other time, the voices gradually growing less distant, the sounds melting into one gloriously organic, woozy, druggy bit of textured soft focus drone.
The flipside is another bit of washed out gauzy ambience, ghostly traces of instruments and shadows of melodies, reverbed chimes over softly effected tones, a bit like a gamelan, drifting in a mysterious haze of blurred shimmer and late afternoon fade. Deep and dark and dreamlike, minimal but at the same time understatedly lush.
Gorgeous packaging, super striking red design silkscreened on thick black jackets.
Another gorgeous fuzzed out collection of washed out abstract dronescapes from aQ faves Xela, this one a four track, hour long sprawl of glistening, shimmering, crackle and hiss drenched drift. Type label head honcho John Twells, takes the sound of Xela, a sound we had previously described as "Dead C meets Pop Ambient meets Gooom" (Gooom the early home of M83, Abstrackt Keal Agram, Purple Confusion and others), even further out this time, letting the various sounds ring out, spread out, decay and space as much a part of the sound as the notes and arrangements. The amazing thing about Xela, is that it's almost not even music, it often sounds more like a manufactured field recording, sometimes recognizable - are those footsteps? the sound of running water?, the creaking of old machinery? - but just as often, a sound that is totally alien, is that the sound of strange creatures rustling below the surface of some barren asteroid? Is that a recording of magnetic fields, or of spirits or ghosts, or maybe even something there are no words for? Which is what makes the sound of Xela so magical, and mysterious.
In Bocca seems to be steeped in religious symbolism, with a mysterious sigil on the cover of the lp, Latin song titles, and even sonically, it's like a wander through the catacombs beneath some old abandoned church, as if envisioned by Tim Hecker and Philip Jeck, with plenty of loops, smears of hiss, muted buzz, fields of crackle, fragmented melodies, all drifting amidst and among all manner of sounds, footsteps, chiming bells, short wave interference, bits of guitar (?), warm chordal swirls, woven into an incredibly evocative soundscape, that most definitely brings to mind another time and place, a world of darkness and grey skies, of stone walls below the ground dripping with moisture, of dusty shafts of sunlight filtering through bent bars, painting the dirt floors blurred shades of black and brown.
The opening track is thick with distortion and buzz and crackle, its beauty sublimated by all the extraneous noise, but it's that noise that give the track its texture, that turns a drone, a drift, into something much more tactile, a sound that is felt as much as it is heard, but the second track, shrugs off all of that noise, at least in the beginning, leaving just the muted sounds of a carillon, drifting down from a crumbling tower, mournful and funereal, before from below, surfaces swirls of soft electronic buzz, which become more and more smooth and blurred, finally existing as a sheet of warm whir over the ever tolling bells.
All four tracks seem to exist as a single multi movement piece, each slipping smoothly into the next, in the third movement, the bells drift off, and over them are laid deep moaning tones, the buzz and crackle now merely a whisper, a haunting slow motion creep into a thick waterfall of pink noise, before distant drums (courtesy of the dude from Heavy Winged) announce the beginning of the final, and longest movement. Tribal, militaristic, but spare and still abstract, the drums unfurl a skeletal rhythm, while all around it, the sounds become more and more frenzied, feedback, squalls of amp buzz and hiss, cymbals explode like fireworks in a black sky, the background scribbled with electronic squiggles and jagged shards of distortion, growing more and more blown out, the drums growing wilder and wilder, buzzing synths emerging from the chaos, until the drums drop out and the track has been transformed into a spaced out synthscape, all layered and pulsing, buzzing and blissful, as if suddenly, the dank stone floor gave way, and the listener, the catacombs, and everything as we know it, collapsed inward, emerging in some otherworld, a neverending expanse of glimmering, glistening blackness, a slow motion swirl of mysterious voices and distant drones all stretched out along thick streaks of looped buzz stretching off into the void.
The cd is packaged in a normal jewel case, with quite striking, and bloody artwork, the 2lp is limited (of course) and comes in a thick chipboard brown jacket, adorned with a simple black symbol right in the center.
Remember the French label Gooom? The label that introduced us to the gauzy blissed out dreampop of M83. As well as similarly beautiful pop buzz from bands like Cyann & Ben, KG, Abstract Keal Agram, Montag, Mils., Purple Confusion and others. Well, while Gooom seem to have dropped off the map, Type has stepped up in their bid to be our new favorite label of blissy abstract wonder. While the two labels do share an aesthetic, a sort of blurry buzzy dreamy drift, each approaches the sound from dramatically different angles. Gooom bands are, at their core, simply pop bands, or slow core bands, or post rock bands, but bands nonetheless. Guitar, bass and drums. Choruses, verses, bridges, lyrics, but these seemingly normal elements are then twisted and distorted, blurred and fuzzed out, into the glorious sounds and shapes we fell in love with. Like hearing sweetly psychedelic pop music, filtered through a cracked funhouse mirror made out of amp buzz and fuzzy sheets of reverb. Type are obviously fans of the same sort of cracked sonic shimmer, all of their releases shimmery and ethereal, rife with lots of buzz and hiss, glitch and fuzz.
Such is the case with Xela, the debut release from Type label head honcho John Twells. His cracked pop vision fits perfectly alongside the other outfits on Type, Ryan Teague, Mountaineer, Machinefabriek, Goldmund, North Sea & Rameses III. Twells wanders through a strange world of abstract sound making, fuzzy dreamlike blurs, and manner of mechanical musics. Melodies are rendered indistinct, actual songs are turned into blurry fragments, everything is pulled apart into abstract skeletal soundscapes, like seeing buzzy dream pop from the inside, watching all the gears and bits and parts and machinations that make that sort of music so dang pretty on the outside. But the view from the inside is so gorgeously alien, grinds and clicks, disembodied melodies stretched over rhythmic skitter, it's almost like being shrunken down and exploring some huge music box. Or better yet, imagine the Dead C making a record for children, playfully noisy, subtly melodic, a disembodied dream folk bathed in dreamy static, murky record crackle, and tangled up with little bits of video game music, all stretched into a gauzy later afternoon soundscape. So great. When we first heard about this album, we read a description the label wrote that pretty much seemed intended to make us at AQ curious, as it cited both Italian horror soundtracks by Goblin, AND Jewelled Antler improv soundscapes as references for Xela's sound!! Amazingly enough, The Dead Sea lives up to the expectations thus generated, and we're hooked.
Amazingly creepy cover art. Black and white line drawings of people drowning and being attacked by some sort of underwater zombies. Cool!
A super limited missive from Xela, aka John Twells, head honcho of the super kick ass Type label. But his work as Xela is much darker than his label might lead you to believe. His is a world of doom. Not old school heavy metal doom. But truly ominous darkened worlds of doom. His is not a doom of huge riffs and pounding drums, but instead, rumbling sinister drones, and haunting ambience. Crumbling black landscapes of mysterious buzz and whispered menace. The A side of this tape is like a field recording of a rickety old dock, jutting out into the choppy waters of the River Styx, old rust chains rattle, rusty lanterns clang against one another, the rotted wood groans and creaks, the wind howls, the choppy water laps at the pilings, black birds circle overhead, an old boat tied up to the dock rocking wildly in the water, straining against the frayed rope, while in the distance, an ominous buzz permeates the air like the stink of decaying flesh, and somewhere, below the surface of the water, or hidden behind the black clouds overhead, some unspeakable beast growls, his ominous rumble like thunder filling the sky.
The B side takes up where the first side left off, that same dock, being lashed by a fierce storm, but instead of rain and lightning, it's decaying black buzz, and howled vocals, a stumbling, lurching doomy drone, recorded on an old tape, the sound dropping out, the speed shifting, slowing down and speeding up, as much a part of the sound as the obfuscated riffs, and the creeping mournful melodies. Fucking awesome.
Red cassettes with metallic gold sticker, in a cryptic printed black and white sleeve, photocopied insert. LIMITED TO 111 COPIES. Already out of print. We got the last batch so act fast.
We always say "we only have a very few of these, so we won't go into too much detail" and then we pretty much always do. But not this time. Nope. Cuz we only have 8 copies of this. We got a bunch, but most sold before we could get them reviewed and listed.
So for a lucky few of you, here's a brand new, awesome split tape, LIMITED TO 99 COPIES and already out of print.
One side: Type records head honcho John Twells' ambient doom outfit, creating another haunting, crumbling, creepy world of doom-ed sound, epic and heavy, intense and soaring, layers upon layers of coruscating guitars, woven into moody moving droning beauty. The other side: new discovery Ajilvsga, another ambient doom outfit, a duo, one half of which is Digitalis overlord Brad Rose, their side is a thick viscous grinding sludge of blown out guitars, crumbling distortion, heaving slow motion glacial heaviness, that manages to imbue its buzzing creep with haunting melodies and strange blackened beauty.
Gorgeous full color covers printed on textured paper, each one hand numbered, gone before you know it... ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
Ultra limited one sided vinyl only release from AQ faves Xela. Already out of print, we have the last copies anywhere.
A single long form composition, more classical and minimal sounding than the most recent Xela full length, beginning with gentle simple piano, tinkling chimes, distant whirs, folky steel string twang, subtle percussion, a subtle mixture of cello, piano, vocals, acoustic and electric guitars and effects, all woven into a lovely stretch of active ambience. Soon though this tranquil drift is enveloped in a thick sonic haze of blurred buzz, and the instruments all seem to be deeply effected by the change, the guitars begin to stutter and glitch, the piano detunes and becomes more atonal, throwing out dense little flurries of notes, steel strings scrape and creak and groan, becoming more and more intense, building to a lengthy drone, everything whipped into a frenzy, swirling whirring, intense and dense but still strangely melodic and quite lovely.
Pressed on thick vinyl, packaged in plain white sleeves, each one stamped and hand numbered, limited to 300 copies, and again, already out of print, these are the last copies ever...
One of legendary 20th century new music composer Iannis Xenakis' most heralded works, "Persepolis" is here remixed by some of today's most adventurous musicians. Though the liner notes clumsily attempt some high brow hoo-ha internationalist theory about why the chosen remixers are appropriate for this project -- "Creative modernism is left with choosing between authoritarianism and religion. Hence, the inclusion of a second disc of remixes..." (hence? huh?) -- the obvious reason why these remixers appear is because, like Xenakis, they manipulate noise, musique concrete, and take experimental music to conceptual and sonic extremes. It makes aural sense; don't give me political wish-wash. Anyway, here's what we've written about Persepolis, which is on the first disc here:
Attention all you avantgarde electronic music fans! Important reissue alert! Iannis Xenakis' "Persepolis" was originally commissioned in 1971 as large-scale sound installation for the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival of the Arts in Iran. "Persepolis" -- Xenakis' longest electro-acoustic composition -- originally involved 8 channels of dense electro-acoustic material broadcast through the vast complex of the ruined Palaces of Persepolis along with a massive display of arclights, fireworks, and bonfires. Xenakis arranges slow tectonic rumbles and rough granular trebliness with extended passages of what could have been the bowed metal of Organum if Jackman et. al. were tumbling down a flight of stairs... "Persepolis" engages the visceral and the physical in a way that no other academic / musique concrete / electro-acoustic / minimalist piece has ever done before. It's frightening how powerful this piece of music is, even to one familiar with more recent massive electronic displays by MB, Merzbow, and Organum.
The remixers include: Ryoji Ikeda, Zbigniew Karkowski, Otomo Yoshihide, Francisco Lopez, Antimatter, Merzbow, Laminar, Ulf Lanheinrich, and more. A veritable noise fest. Construction site rumblings. Very difficult listening. If nothing else, this is a perfect introductory sampler of not only Xenakis but also some of AQ's favorite experimentalists. Nice price -- two discs for the price of one.
It's a shame that this is merely a cd-r, as Black Book is the best Xeno Volcano album that has come through these doors, although his website indicates that a proper pressing might be in the works. While his origins lie in the San Francisco Bay Area, Xeno Volcano currently lives in Zurich, Switzerland where he has worked with Black Sun Productions (who in turn offer their sexual magick for Coil's stage show) and makes soundtracks for automobile accident prevention videos. Needless to say, Xeno Volcano's tastes find comfort in the transgressive behavior of post-industrial culture. Black Book is buried in dark overtones, as eerie drones flicker across the barren expanses of Xeno Volcano's electronic landscape, sounding not all that far off from Lustmord's classic dark ambient recording The Place Where The Black Stars Hang.
Here's a solo work by one half of the Swiss duo responsible for the Die Organik disc that we listed recently - brought to us by the man himself on his way back home to Switzerland. It reveals a subtly different, broader side of Xeno Volcano. As opposed to his rather stern and clipped collaborative work with Elektra Sturmschnell, in which he provides the backdrop to her spoken word, here he allows things to stretch out, shift and linger a bit more. Track length varies from a scant few seconds to over fourteen minutes. The sounds are also less coldly foreboding and more organic with a bit more warmth and light. Drones drift in like looming clouds, skittery clicks and sputtery hiss collects and dissolves, aloof voices (including that of Sturmschnell) and assorted field recordings surface briefly. In all, it is quite a darkly atmospheric 80 minutes, but it's not without a hint of levity (namely in track titles such as "Whoopee Ball Traffic Mall" and "The Bilge Elvis"). Definitely for fans of dark post-industrial experimental soundscapes (Current 93, Christoph Heemann and select Nurse With Wound).
