Here's the latest Dark Yellow Swans...or you might better know them as simply Yellow Swans! As with most releases by the very DIY San Francisco fella Mike Donovan (Sic Alps, Big Techno Werewolves, Nam, Sounds Of The Barbary Coast, The Ropers, Dial Records), there is only going to be a very small homespun run of these made, so needless to say, don't snoooooze! Pssst... we also have a small number of some of Donovan's other Folding cassette releases, all with hand made covers -- a couple of short ones from Death Sentence: Panda and Donovan's own current band Sic Alps plus a compilation he compiled with artist Chris Johanson called SSSSSOSS2 and one by NVH with Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny. Dust off yer cassette deck!
Yen Pox is hardly a prolific project, but their dark ambient constructions over the past two decades stand as benchmarks for the genre alongside the likes of Lustmord, Inade, and Nordvargr. Blood Music was in fact the first album by Yen Pox (a duo comprised of Michael Hensley and Steven Hall) released in 1995 only to go out of print shortly there after. That record in particular had been heavily championed by Eric Lanzilotta of Anomalous Records and Stefan Knappe (then of Maeror Tri and now of Troum), with Knappe releasing a Yen Pox single for the seminal Drone Records series (later anthologized on tUMULt's epochal 2cd set of tracks from the Drone back catalogue). A Yen Pox / Troum collaboration came to fruition in 2002, thoroughly blackening Troum's already dark guitar drones with Yen Pox's death obsessed theatrics.
Blood Music is an apt name for the horror sound design presented by Yen Pox. Much like the catacomb and crypt recordings from Lustmord's quintessential dark ambient record Heresy, Yen Pox grounds all of their compositions upon an ominous murk of shadow, reverb, and obfuscated sound all of which gives the sense of being trapped deep underground without any viable means of escape. Slashes of metal-on-metal give an infernal allusion to ghostly trains grinding against the rail and filling the air with thick, cancerous smoke. Dark-minded synthesizers are buried under heaps of reverberation, blurring their cosmic fizz into a sodden percolation of electricity. Sinister voices moan, cackle, and howl in the nether regions of the Yen Pox soundtrack, occasionally marked by very slow moving melodies that are not too far from some of the dark majesty that Troum can utter in their grimmest state.
The second disc to Blood Music contains a remastering of their very first cassette plus a track from an early single and a compilation track originally released by Relapse ambient / experimental sublabel Release. That cassette was a pretty murky affair, and the remastered job really brings out the power of the Yen Pox sound, marked by oceanic swells of thrumming noise and atonal punctuations. A very worthy complement to an already exceptional record.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yen Pox took five years to follow up their devastating drone album "Blood Music" with the just released "New Dark Age" and it's been well worth the wait. This has already been hailed as the record of the year by Stefan Knappe of Troum / Drone Records. And if you are looking for something to fall neatly alongside Troum, Noisegate, and Lustmord, this is a perfect fit! Yen Pox -- the duo of Michael Hensley and Steven Hall -- have masterfully created a very cold album that is as majestic as it is bleak. Huge gaping drones swallow up reverb saturated metallic clanging, slow moving melodic figures, and frozen synthetic tones. Yen Pox's "New Dark Age" is a futurist vision of what life would be on the outskirts of solar system: awe-inspiring, isolated, and hostile.
Universal Emptiness is an apt title for this limited 10" from this stalwart, if far from prolific dark ambient project. The Yen Pox duo of Michael Hensley and Steven Hall began craf their Lovecraftian atmospheres with cavernous washes of sound, ashen drone, and a sonic death-drive to match anything emanating from early Cold Meat Industries or Brian Lustmord's laboratory for the dark arts. With protracting gaspings and bellowings, Yen Pox articulate soundtracks for nightmares where these ventilating references could be bodily, industrial, alien, chimerical, oceanic, or something profoundly unknown. On both sides of this 10", Yen Pox present a metaphysical emptiness, but this is certainly not an emptiness that is devoid of sound. Their constructed ambience has the weight and fluidity of cold plasma - as it's constantly shifting to the foreground from the blackest spots on the event horizon and churning through luminous hazes akin to the chemical afterglow of phosphorescent magnesium. As could be seen on Hensley's latest album as Blood Box, the horror laid within their sonic darkness tends to dissipate as you sit in their drones and let the heavy waters wash over you. First edition of 500 copies.
Another Celebrate Psi Phenomena expat (having shared a terrific split cd-r with MCMS, now out of print) finds their way to our pals Last Visible Dog. Yermo offer up a glorious wash of cascading upper register dreaminess, like the sound of rubbed champagne glasses, crystalline and delicate, over an mesmerising thrum that subtly oscillates, creating an hypnotic almost-rhythm. The whole thing slowly builds in intensity until it's a howling storm of feedback and buzz, dotted with thick bursts of jagged NOISE, all washing over you in a wave of thick warm sound. Fans of Total, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof!, the Dead C and the like bset start paying close attention to Yermo, 'cause they have yet to disappoint!
This is a split between the curiously monikered Yermo and the also curiously monikered M.C.M.S. But they seem to be a perfect match and this is possible one of the best discs in this series. Yermo presents one thirty minute piece, a wall of shimmering
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We went a little nuts for the skewed not-quite-black-metal of the oddly monickered Yoga, whose split with Ghast we reviewed a while back. Their sound not really buzzy and brutal as much as warped and twisted and blackened, more like a blurry shadow of black metal, the murky muddy underbelly of a sound more traditionally buzzy and black. Or as someone here opined, it's not black metal, but it wouldn't exist without black metal.
We'd been anxiously awaiting more, having played that split to DEATH, this full length definitely one of our most anticipated records of the year, and an inevitable Record Of The Week. The band do not disappoint. Once again, exploring all manner of spaced out otherworldliness, the blackness more implied, the buzz doused in druggy FX and wrapped around twisted streaks of fragmented pop and sprawling deconstructed dronemuisc. The core of the sound a sort of blissed out, uneasy, lo-fi dronescape, infused with fragmented riffage, pounding drum detritus, and super effected howling vox. There are definitely moments on Megafauna where Yoga begin to resemble an actual and proper metal band, but even then the sound is ragged and off kilter, effects swooping and swirling, the repetitive buzz becoming mantra like, the various strands of melody unraveling before your ears, like a live, metal, Disintegration Loop, with sounds crumbling and falling to pieces, the sound of dissolution and destruction rendered in abstract sound.
Imagine Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, filtered through a grim black bedroom black metal aesthetic. Or better yet, Jeck in full corpse paint, hunkered over a row of black turntables, candles guttering in the evening breeze, lit from below like some hellish visage, the sounds emanating from his warped vinyl manipulations, being these: fuzzy, gauzy smears of indistinct shimmer and ghostly shadow, haunted music box missives, grim buzzscapes underpinned by heaving swells of crumbling blackness, abstruse sonic alchemy begetting bursts of almost orchestral crush, as well as long stretches of fun house mirror hum and whir, all gathered into a loose songsuite that oozes and drifts, interrupted only by the occasional squall of buzzing metal pound, either looped and frenzied sounding, or lurching and doom-ic, the drums a murky plod, the guitar slippery and shimmery, the riffs melty and viscous, the arrangements endless and lysergic, the sound washed out and shoegazey, a sort of hybridized black metal space rock trip out, that may lumber or blast or crunch, but always eventually slips back into a sound more abstract and metaphysical, psychedelic and darkly dreamy. Yeah!
Oh how we love Minneapolis' Michael Yonkers. Especially for the acid fried, outsider garage psych guitar excess that he unleashed on the all time AQ fave Microminiature Love, originally recorded back in 1969 (and which he's still a master, witness the Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons album he waxed with backing band The Blind Shake not too long ago, which stomped and throbbed like '69 was just yesterday). But also we dug the weird acoustic folk bag he got into on another long lost, recently reissued 1969 set, Grimwood.
Turns out we hadn't yet heard all sides of Yonkers... here's a brand new recording, a limited edition cd released by the Portuguese experimental label Ruby Red Editora (who recently brought us a cool disc by Tabata Mitsuru of Acid Mothers Temple). Taking the "psych guitar excess" mentioned above as a starting point, this is a full-on solo guitar, instrumental NOISE album. Really extreme and out there, the loud blasts of distortion on here putting Yonkers into the league of such heavy hitters as Rudoph Grey, Jojo Hiroshige, Keiji Haino, and Lou Reed (on Metal Machine Music only). This isn't "garage rock", unless the garage in question was collapsing under the weight of an apocalyptic UFO invader (summoned by the automatic door opener?) landing on the roof and spraying the neighborhood with death rays...
This 11 track assault lasts 37+ minutes, and it's all an echoing, swirling, billowing miasma of sheer amped-up volume n' distortion... some tracks are sooo utterly droning and destructive that it'd be hard to tell what sort of electronic device was used to produce 'em - it's not necessarily recognizable as guitar. Others, like "Steer It" seem to hint at something a bit more "musical" (and may involve either overdubs or live looping). Either way it's clear that Mr. Michael Yonkers, when appropriately armed with a guitar and amp and electricity, is still darn dangerous and extreme even 38 years after Microminature Love, an underground guitar hero as far as we're concerned. We can see fans of everything from Wolf Eyes to the Dead C to Solmania to Howlin' Magic bowing down to this.
We just woke up. It's like 7am and we're pretty sleepy - but tomorrow's "list day" and there's still records to be reviewed... Let's see what effect this Michael Yonkers + GR lp will have on us.... woah! Better'n coffee... these two plug their electric guitars directly into your frontal lobes! With incessant, reverbed, choo-choo train rhythms on rattling percussion to make you get up and go. Alien distortodelic rock n' roll. Yowza.
Or, maybe, we're still asleep... 'cause we've GOTTA be dreaming. Is it really true that outsider underground guitar wranglers Michael Yonkers and Gregory Raimo team up on this lp? Yes indeed they do! Milwaukee's Yonkers is a big AQ fave best beloved for his 1969 proto-punk Microminiature Love album, and continues to kick out the jams 40 years later. Youthful French motorpsychoguitarist Gregory Raimo we also really dig, both in his badass band Gunslingers and for his krauty solo album GR & Full-Blown Expansion. That these two would collaborate actually makes perfect sense. A couple months of trans-Atlantic 4-track tape trading by these two resulted in the 9 songs on this record, that alternate between Yonkers and Raimo compositions, not that you can tell. Each added their own elements to each other's songs, frying 'em even further, as you can imagine when, besides mere guitars, the two are credited with such things as "drumming feedback" and "wall of noise".
We already alluded to the rattling perc, and pedal-mashed muzz of distortion that's ever-present. Perhaps redundantly, GR wrote a song entitled "Distortion, Blow My Mind!". Based on his Gallic ranting amidst gurgling geetar skree, we're of the opinion it already did! Meanwhile, Yonkers sounds as wearily Iggyish as ever on the gunked up garage of "Why Didn't", and kinda old-timey too, on the gospel-blues-punk (?) of "The News". And like that awesome GR&FBX disc, this lp mixes Bo Diddleyisms with hypnotic psych drone.
Whoa. Haven't even had breakfast yet, and we feel like we've already definitely gotten our daily dose and more of slashing distorted guitars and trance inducing rhythmic in the red blowouts. It's gonna be a good day.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Local music journalist and AQ pal Will York finally slaps on a wacky costume and steps up to the mic, releasing a debut solo album that confounds as much as it confuses. An interview, but in the form of a wildly imagined rock opera. Imagine a cross between Lester Bangs, David Fricke, Charlie Rose and early Burzum, and you'll have an idea of the interviewing skills at work here. Imagine a cross between Skullflower, John Fahey, Drop Dead and Merzbow and you'll get some idea of what this interview sounds like. It's that good. It's that heavy. The dialogue between these two individuals is so dense and fucked up. Dark and drone-y and caked in lo-fi tape hiss. Totally incomprehensible, yet completely catchy. Fucking essential.
We're all big time Radiohead fans, and thus were pretty into RH frontman Thom Yorke's Eraser record, what could very well have been a proper Radiohead record, but instead turned out a more electronic stripped down gem, lush and dark and dreamy, his voice drifting ethereally over all manner of drift and buzz and skitter.
It seemed inevitable that some of the tracks would get remixed, and whattayaknow, soon there was indeed a serious of remix 12"s, and lo and behold, the remixes were almost better than the originals, the lineup of remixers featuring a who's who of aQ faves: Burial, The Bug, FourTet, The Field and more.
It's worth it for the Burial remix alone - murky and dark, the rhythms skittery and mechanical, plenty of distant whir and drone, thick squalls of buzzing dubstep bass. It has us wondering what that second Burial record would have sounded like had Yorke been picked to contribute all the vocals. Pretty amazing we'd guess. And yeah, while we can barely get ourselves to stop playing the Burial remix over and over, the rest of the disc is pretty excellent as well. Surgeon adds a thick glitchy house-y groove, and makes Yorke's mysterious humming the main melodic component. The Bug doesn't go all ragga like we expected, instead taking the 'hit' from that record, adding plenty of record crackle, and a super spare beat, rife with all sorts of old school filigree and lots of heavy crunchy bass. FourTet add all sorts of tribal rhythms, adding soft swoops of backwards melody, and a lush glimmering gauze over the whole song, letting the vocals soar WAY up top over the mix, the instrumental mix reminding us a bit of vintage Tortoise. The Field totally reinvent "Cymbal Rush" chopping it up into a gorgeous Oval like stuttery soft house, dizzying washed out and melodic, total Kompakt bliss, the original barely recognizable unless you know to listen for it, so good. Christian Vogel adds a heavy motorik beat, and a thick backdrop of processed chiming guitars, dipping the vocals in effects, the result very looped and lush and hypnotic. Modeselektor pull their track totally apart and reassemble it into a strange jagged stutterscape, glitchy and skittery, with warm fuzzy bass, super processed vocals, and some seriously twisted arrangements, quickly becoming another favorite mix. The Various remix finds the original chopped and looped, so it almost sounds like the signal is dropping out over and over, creating a woozy moody pulse, the melody fragmented and abstract. And finally, Christian Vogel has another go on the same track he remixed earlier, crafting a whole array of new beats, using just the barest bits of the original song for texture and melody, a killer choppy groove, with little flurries of glitchy skitter, bit for the most part, pretty minimal and hypnotic.
Definitely essential for the Burial mix, and The Field mix, but dig into all of these reimagined versions, and enjoy one of the very few remix records that is the perfect compliment to the original, as well being a fantastic record in its own right, one that just might be better than the original.
A band that uses the X-Acto blade as much as the guitar, You Fantastic extends the musique concrete / punk fusions of This Heat. This Chicago trio melds mutant hardcore (which is not hard to imagine as You Fantastic member Darin Grey was in Dazzling Killmen when they were functioning), trumpet freakouts, and self-referential explications of the recording process of this album. Also for fans of Village of Savoonga. One of the best records to come out of Chicago in a very long time!
What a great band name! Are they named after the Hammers Of Misfortune song? We're pretty darn sure they are. And it's a fairly appropriate name too for this new release from Campbell Kneale's (Birchville Cat Motel) 'metal' label Battlecruiser. Imagine the mightiest, heaviest intro riff from the best NWOBHM song you've ever heard. Okay then repeat. And repeat again. And again. Now play that riff for 15 minutes straight. YES!!! TOTAL STEVE REICH DRONE METAL MESMER! Okay, so at about 13 minutes, introduce a crazy drum machine fill, all spastic toms and double kick, now repeat that loop. Over and over and over. Making the whole thing even weirder and off kilter, and somehow strangely more hypnotic. SUPER LIMITED. We only got 15 and will not be able to get more.
From our pals at Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin comes an Italian import of this minimal masterpiece, available on tape for the first time ever. Composed in 1962, recorded in 1984, The 2nd Dream Of The High Tension Line... is classic LMY, a sprawling longform field of tranced out, spiritual dronemusic, single notes stretched out for ages, a softly and subtly shifting field of overtones and microtones, drifting textures, an epic expanse of super intense, innerspace, deep listening, zoner, psychedelic, minimal drift bliss of the highest order, so simple, yet so sonically rich and deeply and melodically complex, seemingly static for long stretches but surprisingly dynamic and utterly and totally mesmerizing. Music to get lost in, to let carry you away, anyone into modern dronemusic who has yet to experience the music of the master, this is the perfect place to start.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! Nice full color J-card with minimal liner notes.
We dug the second volume of Nate Young's Regression series (Stay Asleep, on NNA), but volume three is even better, taking the zombified beats and creepy plodding of that record and pulling it apart into something even more abstract, transforming it into some sort of hauntological musique concrete, which so impressed the dudes from Demdike Stare, that not only did they release it on their label, but they also contributed their own track / remix. And in fact, when listening to the record all the way through, Demdike's track is almost indistinguishable from Young's, the whole of Regression Volume 3 in keeping with Demdike's idiosyncratic approach to soundscaping, albeit filtered through Young's Wolf Eyes style junkyard aesthetic. And in some ways, this does bear some similarities to our favorite Wolf Eyes records, but here Young is using some of those sounds, as well as a whole bunch of new ones, to craft a seriously bizarre alien sound world. Minimal percussion forms the basis of most of the record, creating a sort-of-electronica, but super slow, woozy and stumbling, some tracks laced with ominous synths, giving the the feel of more recent Carpenter/Goblin worshippers, but something altogether more fucked and fractured, while throughout, bursts of static, fields of hiss and thrum, squiggles or radio interference, damaged FX, all get tangled into the spare and spacious mix, of what is in some ways a noise record, but a surprisingly lovely, textured and nuanced one, some tracks sound like field recordings, reminding us of the Conet Project, or the S.E.T.I. recordings, others are pure power electronics, gouts of buzz streaked with high end squiggles, grinding low end peppered with caustic pulsations, and still others are murky plods, wreathed in clouds of shimmering effects, and driven by thick swells of deep rib cage rattling rumbles. In some ways, this is a perfect companion for the recent Will Over Matter record we made Record Of The Week, a similarly twisted collection of outsider electronic minimalism, but where WoM was an exercise in longform tones and caustic dronology, Regression Volume 3 is in some ways much more nuanced, with almost proper songs, some surprisingly melodic moments, with much of the record classifiable as actually being lovely, which is definitely not a descriptor that gets hauled out very often for Young and his Wolf Eyes compatriots.
A fantastic, and fantastically abstract collection of hauntological minimal outsider electronic soundscapery, that we have been listening to like crazy! Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold jacket, the vinyl lps pressed on two different colored vinyl, one clear, one black.
Founding member of Wolf Eyes, Nate Young, offers a stark, acid flashback of the bleakest moments of industrial cassette culture circa 1985 on Stay Asleep. His nightmarish, atonal melodies have been stripped bare of brutalist, rabid noise; but the primitive approach to structure is right out of the Wolf Eyes playbook with the woozy melodies and rhythms always hitting on the first beat of the lethargic pace. Young's engineering is one that takes Cabaret Voltaire's desiccation of sound to a zombified extreme. So much so, it seems that Young might be going for clubtrax for zombies. Step one, lurch two. "Brains!" Step one, lurch two. For all of the creepy-crawly plodding of this album, there are occasionally weird moments where the clunked atonality of it all is just plain goofy. Not exactly what's been expected from Nate Young, but a pretty compelling record nonetheless. Oh yeah, it's cut at 45 RPM; so if you want to this really fucking slow, make sure to drop it down to 33, where it takes on the funereal crawl of a ridiculously Spartan electro-doom number, if such a thing exists.
Sometimes you know a record is gonna blow your mind before you even throw it on. Such is most definitely the case with Isophonic Boogie Woogie by Roland P. Young. Heck, it's called Isophonic Boogie Woogie after all! And it's on the seemingly infallible (and impossible to pin down) EM records from Japan who have quickly become our new favorite label, having released Jim Fassett's Symphony Of The Birds, Moolah's Woe Ye Demons Possessed and Sam Moore's MOOOHIEEE! and those are just the ones we've reviewed so far. Plus it's got super tripped out black and white hand drawn cover art, three heads, presumably all Mr. Young, one with a well groomed afro, one with headphones, one with crazy hair that drifts skyward like tentacles, and a third eye right in the center of his forehead, while surrounding the heads are leaves and electronic equipment, and ankhs, and black suns, scorpions, saxophones, sailing ships and cars and pyramids, and a bunch of little Roland P. Young's walking up hillsides, jamming on guitars, getting into cars... you get the idea. This is some seriously far out stuff, and we haven't even heard a note of music, and that's a heck of a lot of trippiness to live up to.
Thankfully, Isophonic Boogie Woogie is as weird and as wacked as all the above business would lead you to believe. Originally released in 1980, Isophonic Boogie Woogie was the first realization of Young's unique version of free jazz music, which he referred to as "Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music" which on closer listening is WAY more spot on. Young employs an unlikely arsenal: Kalimba, saxophone, voice, clarinet, electronic bass clarinet, bells, chimes, electronic drones, electronic pulse and electronic accoutrements (!), to craft his spaced out free jazz minimalism. The first track is a warm melodic fugue, woven from the reverberating steel of the kalimba (sounding like a muted mellow version of Konono No.1 actually) with soaring falsetto vocals, before eventually a saxophone joins in, playing soft moody melodies over the rich bed of the kalimba. So nice. Wouldn't mind a whole record of this. But Young has different ideas. The second track is a brief but aggressive blast of solo clarinet, emitting gritty rumbles, a series of droney duck calls, very textural and oblique, and really mysterious sounding. As is the next track, an ominous low end groove, warm distorted and muted melodies, the electronic bass clarinet strangely alien sounding, a groovy jazzy thrum, pulsing and throbbing each note with a strange texture and a bizarre electronic after image that makes the whole thing sound that much more dark and droney. The record's centerpiece (and longest track) is "Loveliness", a 15 minute drift of dense ambient whirs, subtle drones, tinkling chimes, softly struck bells, sizzling cymbals and all sorts of percussive clatter, all beneath a wild free jazz workout, skronks and squeaks and trills, impossible melodies, a tangled free form melodic freakout. Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music indeed! The last track is another long one, with more of that alien sounding electronic bass clarinet, the notes and tones low and rough, with lots of reverbed echoes, the track starts as a thick corrosive drone of rumbling warbling horns, mumbled vocals and all sorts of spacey effects, swooping and swooning, before the clarinet begins to explore its freedom and offers up a litany of strange sounds, from free jazz skronk to percussive patter to playful melodic figures, before drifting back into a droning murky swirl.
Some of the coolest, weirdest, most far out free jazz we've heard for sure, and another check in the 'right fucking on!' column for EM!
This reissue includes two bonus tracks, one a shuffling funky rhythm, with primitive drum machine over a warm distant sonic glow. swooning sax, like mood music from some long forgotten eighties soundtrack, the other a soft stretch of dreamy mediation music, subtle electronic pulses beneath a swirling wash of moaning horns and shifting subtle tones. Both more melodic and less tripped out than the original tracks but cool nonetheless.
Like all the EM reissues, this includes extensive liner notes (all in Japanese, sorry), tons of photos, original album artwork and more.
Sometimes records get lumped in the "New Age" category because they just don't quite fit anywhere else, even if they have noting to do with meditation, relaxation or spiritual transcendence. Many times it's because the music inside is so out of step with what's happening at the current moment, not necessarily ahead of its time but rather a seemingly latent arrival to a currently unfashionable style that no one knows quite what to make of it. Medieval electronic folk music from the mid-eighties? Sounds awful on paper, but we'd most likely feel differently if it was say, from the early seventies and from Germany, right? Well then, thank goodness for the cyclical nature of musical taste to see this unusual record see the light of day again, sounding better than ever. And thanks to Yoga records who in a bold move over the years have bought up the rights to many private pressings of leftfield "new age folk" music (they brought us the Collie Ryan reissues a while back), foreseeing that these eccentric gems would soon have a new much more appreciative audience.
Matthew Young's Traveler's Advisory hails from 1986 and its opening track, "Objects In Mirror", of delayed hammer dulcimer, casio and drum machine with hazy lyrics taken from found phrases and instruction manuals may sound like a song you might hear from any one of the current crop of bedroom pop practitioners such as Ariel Pink or Washed Out. Except Young's mellow voice, inspired more by Michael Hurley (Young covers Hurley's "Werewolf") and Medieval folksong, than OMD and New Order, speaks to a much more world-weary experience than any sincere/ironic hybridizing of past and present styles. Recorded at home, Young only sings on a few cuts here, most of the tracks are long atmospheric instrumentals of delayed dulcimer and banjo, sounding closer to that Edward Larry Gordon (aka Laraaji) reissue we listed awhile back. Beautifully dreamy, hypnotic and strange, we think folks who dug the past few Drag City reissues from Gary Higgins to The George-Edwards Group, or other latent new-agers like J. D. Emmanuel and Iasos will really dig this. Recommended!
We just LOVE British experimental eccentric Richard Youngs around here, whether he's making droning noise or plaintive folk or whatever else he gets up to. His last record was even an AQ record of the week! But even we were skeptical about this limited 10". Basically, what you have here is a 1990 live recording of Youngs, in front of a small, but VERY enthusiastic audience, reading 171 used train tickets. That's it. Nothing else. No music. It's not 'processed' or anything. It's a little bit like stand up comedy, without most of the comedy. But it is kind of funny. And actually pretty fun to listen to. Youngs hams it up, poetry-slam style, putting lots of emotion into reading nothing but the names of the various train stops. People shout for their favorites. And he even does a sort of encore, supposedly as a request from an audience member. Not sure about the replayability factor of this one, but it's pretty cool. The vinyl is one sided, the other side is an etching of a train map! So you can follow him along on his travels. ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
In our book, any Richard Youngs you don't have is Richard Youngs you SHOULD have. But this one especially is a crucial Youngs document: it's a reissue of Youngs' first ever LP, originally released in a vinyl-only edition of 300 copies on his own No Fans record label. This is actually the second time this has been reissued on cd -- Table Of The Elements did it before, but let it go out of print. So Jagjaguwar gets kudos for bringing it back, as it's an important and amazing release in the body of work of someone we at AQ consider a bit of a genius. You NEED it. Especially if you've already fallen in love with Youngs unique brand of experimental, folkish improv music. Here it's almost a religious rite, a 3-part droning minimalist mantra that incorporates (in a gradually additive fashion) piano, voice, oboe and electric guitar. Its repetitive beauty put it in Alan Licht's "Minimalist Top Ten" article in Halana magazine some ways back... and it is a primal example of what we find always so compelling about Richard Youngs' records. Although it doesn't emulate the raga form, Advent does seem like it might be perhaps meant for a specific time of day, and has that special spiritual/contemplative quality -- though some listeners might not be able to meditate so well with Youngs' bagpipe-like oboe keening away! Slow, simple (and simply gorgeous), and most of all so very sincere-sounding, Advent was the wonderful beginning to what has been an uncommon career.
Scotland's Richard Youngs, besides being quite prolific (we have, like, two other new RY records in stock as well!), is also a true original. From release to release, you can sometimes predict what they might sound like - and sometimes not, not quite. While, as on the recent Summer Through My Mind, he's often in 'avant-folk troubadour with acoustic guitar and wistful voice' mode, his music can also take other, more difficult, droned-out and experimental paths - as it does here on Calmont Breakdown, a buzz/blip filled disc of lo-fi shimmering soundscapes and haphazard electronic rhythms, however one that's still generally blissful and occasionally graced with Youngs' gentle voice.
The album begins with the softly cacophonous broken-down beats of "Distress", sounding a bit like multiple layers of Morse code tapped out on children's toy instruments, a chittering instrumental with one brief dubbed-out vocal interjection. The next track, "Car Park", adds wordless, moan-like singing while the melodic buzz and bleep backdrop becomes less dense - someone hearing this for the first time, unfamiliar with Youngs, could almost construe it as a parody of Thom Yorke, like an extreme brain-damaged abstraction of an Atoms For Peace track or something.
Then, there's the off-kilter piano plink, "air-puff" electronic noises and sparse drum machinery of track 3, "In Containers", followed by "Theme From Pleasure Lands", which kind of continues in that vein; and really, each of this album's five tracks manage to flow nicely together, creating their own confusional sonic world, from an alternate universe of music making, for those who groove on WTF? albums like Sun Araw's Inner Treaty or Blues Control's Valley Tangents.
For Clamont Breakdown's grand finale, the glitchily epic 19 minutes of "Deep Inspiration Of Nothingness", some extra distortion fuzz enters the woozily repetitive rhythmic mix, and a simple four-note motif cycles endlessly as all sorts of FX blink around the edges. It's maddeningly mesmeric, and like the whole album, beautiful and strange.
Heck, we pretty much like anything and everything Richard Youngs does, so of course this is recommended, but we get especially happy when he finds that experimentally weird-but-not-too-weird sweet spot, like here (we think).
Limited to 300 copies only!
We've always been huge fans of the prolific, idiosyncratic Scottish experimental folk troubadour Richard Youngs, and endeavor to review all of his many releases, though there's a few we've missed. Couldn't miss this though. First, due to the fact that it's on the reliable Root Strata label, and also, 'cause some have called this Richard Youngs' "metal" album. Hmm. We wouldn't go that far, no (though we of course would love to hear such an album from Mr. Youngs!).
But, the idiosyncratic Scottish experimental folk troubadour does allow his distinctive voice here to wander melodically, in his usual questing, fragile fashion, o'er a backing soundscape that DOES have its unexpectedly heavy elements... composed of churning industrial loops, distorted guitar chords (coming closest to an actual, plodding doom metal riff on "We Are The Messengers"), and dense, skittering, sped-up rhythmics that actually remind us a lot more of jungle, a la DJ Zinc, or Ed Rush or Dillinja or something, than metal, though we suppose there's folks who might think compressed "death metal drumming" when they hear it. Those parts sound something like Speedranch producing a Richard Youngs record, maybe. Yet, these seven songs, even with all their dark and difficult textures, still resemble true hymns and prayers, Richard Youngs blessing us always with his gorgeous, glowing vision.
While writing this review, we realized that we've never yet made a Richard Youngs album a Record Of The Week. How can that be??! Looking back, there's quite a few that shoulda been. And we were tempted to so designate this one, but worried that as it's a bit "edgier" than some of the Youngs albums (with placid piano, or acoustic strum, or even delicate electronic drone) that we've recommended in the past, it might not be the perfect one to pick... but then again, nothing wrong with edgy. Nor is this nearly as noisy as some of RY's more extreme early experiments, 'specially his collabs with Simon Wickham-Smith, either. We're just talking repetitive claustrophobic loops, clangorous but mesmeric factory ambience, and atonal electric guitar - the track "Forever Hills Of Everyday" in particular has got some out there guitar soloing that could be off a very warped late '70s/early '80s King Crimson effort... So while not "metal" this is at least "rock". Indeed, "The Healing Of Everyone", at the end of side two, is a throbbing fuzz epic over 11 minutes long, making for a grand finale indeed, a dose of psychedelic drone space rock hypnosis worthy of any of our faves in that realm. Moon Duo fans should dig it. So, yes, a good one. Highly recommended. And LIMITED TO JUST 500 COPIES, vinyl-only!
Now on vinyl! Another Richard Youngs fave of ours... here's what we said about the cd when it came out the first time:
Exquisitely beautiful! Richard Youngs has left the angular noisy twang of his collaborations with Simon Wickham-Smith for this eulogy for a dog, Sapphie, who he grew to love. In spite of the pathos of this concept, this is a perfect piece of melancholia for classical guitar and Youngs' haunting voice, that fits in quite nicely with fellow Scottish mope rockers Arab Strap and Mogwai.
We talk a lot about music that puts us in a spell, or drones that elevate us to some hypnotic state of mind, but what's much even more rare, is to achieve one of those states, while also tapping into something more personal and immediate and intimate and haunting. Richard Youngs is a sonic shamen, conjuring up musical rituals that never fail to entrance and ensorcell us, we've raved about so many of his records in the past and his newest outing is definitely another winner, and is striking such a deep chord with us. His use of vocal repetition transforms these songs into otherworldly mantras, that we find ourselves NEEDING to listen to on a daily basis. With hazy instrumentation and hypnotic loops as the musical bed, Under Stellar Stream sounds like a magical collaboration between Robert Wyatt and William Basinski, as Youngs manages to merge a deep emotional impact with shimmery, softly nuanced dreaminess.
Listening to Under Stellar Stream evokes the sensation of watching an incredibly intense and beautiful film. Understated and emotional piano fluttering delicately, the sound restrained, yet expansive, the last two tracks if stripped of the vocals would sound right at home on an Andrew Chalk record. While Youngs definitely has a large devoted following we really think folks who might not have heard his records, but love the more haunting side of folks like Bonnie Prince Billy and Smog, might find much to love in the mysterious sound world of Richard Youngs. So fitting that the day we got this it was pouring outside as these are sounds so perfect for grey skies and rainfall, just standing beneath the bruised sky letting the raindrops fall where they may. Totally moving and gorgeous!
Elsewhere on this list you'll find Scottish experimental folk singer Richard Youngs' latest proper solo album reviewed, the fantastic River Through Howling Sky. Here, though, if that wasn't enough, is kind of a surprise bonus release from Mr. Youngs. He and his percussionist friend Alexander Neilson originally recorded this live set for broadcast on a British radio show. Fortunately for those of us who didn't (or couldn't) tune in -- or who did, for that matter -- VHF has now put this music out on cd! Which is where it belongs for posterity's sake.
Above, for convenience, we refered to Youngs as an "experimental folk singer" but that's a meager and misleading (not to mention vague) description of what he's all about. In the past, often in collaboration with Simon Wickham-Smith, he's proved himself capable of some uniquely bizarre and intense noisiness. Over the past decade, though, his output has gotten more and more "musical" though no less unique. Ourselves is perhaps one for those with fond memories of his noisier days, though. Electric guitar, bowed cymbals, bells, and more are used to create three long, dense, droning tracks of utter abstract psychedelic beauty. This disc is definitely likely to be liked by fans of VHF's Vibracathedral Orchestra! And those who adore Young's haunting singing, and his take on trad-folk stylings, will find the final hymn-like track "God Bless The Master" especially pleasing.
Because of their prolific nature it has become easy to take a new record from both Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-Smith for granted, but the truth is they both have been putting out some mind blowing albums over the last several years and put to shame in quality & excellence many of their equally ambitious peers. Over the last 5 years Youngs and Wickham-Smith set out to meet once a year and record a ten minute track together. This recording is the culmination of those 5 years with each track named for the year it was created in. And wow how we love the results! This is the kind of record you want to make all aspiring experimental, knob twiddling, improv jamming, tape manipulating, concept having musicians to sit down, listen closely and take notes. Youngs & Wickham-Smith know so well how to reward patience by giving you these transcendent moments of total beauty. They get a trance going that becomes all encompassing and the next thing you know, you are totally wrapped up it its weird beautiful glory.
Since these two are known so well for their prolific nature it's nice to get to hear a project where patience and the passing of time come into play in such a nice way. Both Youngs and Wickham-Smith continue to flex their creative muscles, demonstrating an amazing ability to take experimental, manipulated sounds imbue them with a truly organic feel. Highly recommended!
The duo of Simon Wickham-Smith and Richard Youngs self-released this double album ten years ago to little acclaim until a Forced Exposure review enlightened the world (or well, at least the 300 people who bought out the only pressing). Reissued in cd format, this should enlighten the rest of us to the brilliance of these lauded British backcountry improv noisicians who have gone on to record amazing droneological experiments in recent years. Lake contains glockenspiel, handdrums, clocks, "scraper things", penny whistles, out of tune clock chimes, sampled collages, tons of fuzzed out guitar, and heaping doses of droning noises to please those who've learned to hear the lush textural beauty behind what others might call chaos.
Four lengthy tracks of ambient electronic shimmer. Gorgeous and dreamily exploratory. The first track features Youngs' tentative warble over a haunting theremin like drone, demarcated by a simple thudding rhythm and mellow chiming percussion. Like an Irish folk song performed acapella alongside a super subdued Wolf Eyes or an extra minimal Sunroof!. The rest of the record is mostly instrumental and filled with free form clouds of dreamy psychedelia woven from pealing feedback, ambient electronic chatter, complex shuffling rhythms, all keening and swirling lazily in the still air, very high up and very far out.
Jandek's rhythm section (when Jandek's in Scotland, anyway) can be heard on their own, again, with this fine follow up to their previous VHF release, 2004's Ourselves. Richard Youngs is the better known half of this duo, being a big fave here at AQ for both his gorgeous avant-folk recordings and his more (?) experimental, dronier works -- styles that tend to overlap often in his music, as they certainly do here on Partick Rain Dance. In the mix you'll hear, among other things, distorted Sun Ra-like synth, moaning vocals, free jazzy percussion, and what sounds like a belt sander. If we had to pick a favorite track, it would probably be the sixteen minute "Music Of The Last Sun" which features Youngs' usual beautiful vocals and guitar surrounded by wigged out electronics, hissing drones and free improv. But there's lots more to like on this cd for people who consider themselves fans of, say, both The Wicker Man and Wolf Eyes... For sheer abstract abrasiveness you've got "Big Aeroplanes" which layers feedback and what sounds like garbled shortwave static, while one of the prettier pieces on the disc would have to be "Noatak Beacon", a very ceremonial-sounding track for repeating voice and bells.
We've yet to review a record from Tirath Singh Nirmala (aka John Clyde-Evans) which is quite a feat considering the substantial body of work he's been amassing of late (mostly cd-r's) but it sort of makes sense that the first recording to be featured on our list would be the one that finds Nirmala teamed up with AQ fave Richard Youngs. The two are so suitably matched, it's tough to tell who's doing what, and ultimately, it matters not a whit, as for the duration of this disc, these two have become one, and seem to effortlessly conjure up a perfectly blissful and bucolic primal forest ambience. It's tough not to hear shades of Avarus, Anaksimandros, No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, but Nirmala and Youngs manage to explore similar territory in their own unique way. The sound is at once primal, tribal and primitive. Simple percussion, reedy drones drifting over murky landscapes, wheezing wind instruments, breathy reeds and fluttering flutes, clattery hypnotic rhythms, slippery analog synths and swooping spacey FX, processed vocals, dense ambience and melancholy melodies, all woven into a gloriously glistening, and subtly tripped out, prismatic tapestry of sound. Wonderful.
Packaged in a gorgeous full color sleeve, with a tiny mysterious screen printed insert. ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
The first thing you notice on Relayer is that oh so familiar Bower 'shimmer' from so many Skullflower/Total/Hototogisu/Sunroof! records. But this collaboration with Richard Youngs keeps things firmly in 'shimmer' without ever pulling out the stops and letting loose with a torrent of free-noise-jazz-skree as both are wont to do. Youngs contributes his usual melodic playfulness adding an almost festive/Christmas-y feel. The whole record in fact exudes that sort of vibe, shimmery dreamy ambience, with curious but appealing instrumentation like calypso casio beats, noodly keyboard melodies, steady ch-ch-ch rhythms, far away guitar freakouts, and all sorts of hum and buzz. Noise-y but joyous and warm. Almost new-agey but in a good way. A VERY GOOD way. Maybe think George Winston on peyote!! Or a Total record on Windham Hill. Sounds bad maybe, but coming from me (Andee) you know those comments are high praise indeed. Really really great!
RealAudio clip: "Eagle Like A Fly" [/audio/youngsbowereagle.rm]
RealAudio clip: "Iridescent Hosedown" [/audio/youngsbowerhosedown.rm] ----* ----* Incredible String Band Reissues : ----* England's Incredible String Band were a late sixties / early seventies outfit who blended folk rock, psychedelia, and Eastern ethnic musics.
Very sixties, very hippy -- they played at Woodstock, in fact. With their folky male and female vocals and expertise with a plethora of exotic stringed instruments, a shorthand description might be that ISB was kinda like Fairport Convention with sitars, and crazy costumes. But then, as they say, there's more: their music encompasses traditional British folk, Indian ragas, Dylan, blues, country, hoedowns, etc. -- an eclectic stew indeed. Sometimes ISB can come off as a little *too* varied: you might be digging some Eastern drone track and find an abrupt switch to, say, music-hall country a bit jarrring. But that just means there's plenty of different things on these discs to like.
We're always mentioning ISB in reviews of other folk-psych albums past and present, from Forest and Trees to P.G. Six and Tower Recordings, so it's nice to finally get these listed in our catalog...definitely if you're into that British folk-psych vibe you need to investigate this band if you haven't already!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In the early '80s, Z'ev had developed the Uns persona to stand outside of the percussive heavy physicality of Z'ev. Uns built a portable unit of 4 Lenco turntables (which have the unique ability to pitch speeds from 0 - 78 rpm), a few tape decks, echo-plex, and a fire-damaged organ to generate a scraping mid-range rumble over which he barked out a cyclical stream of fragmented vocal elements. While the noise elements definitely predate / parallel some of the early noise constructions from Merzbow, the vocals are what keep this record interesting -- as Z'ev would rant and mumble as if caught in a manic fit of Tourette's Syndrome, before catching one interesting phrase in a lock groove for a four or five repetitions ("and you don't know my problem - and it's like crash grass - it's like crash glass - it's like crash glass - and it's uh a clean cut") before continuing on the strange vocalizations. While the noise elements from all of the tracks retain a very similar timbre, the vocals offer the major differentiation for Uns. Fortunately, this piece has ample room between the numerous (99?) tracks for the audience to catch its breath before Z'ev picks up with another semi-comprehensivle ramble. This holds up quite well under the test of time, inspite of / because of the fact that Uns sounds like any of the totally flyin' speed freaks that buzz around the 16th & Mission Bart station.
Z'ev is so admamant that you MUST listen to Headphone Musics, 1 to 6 through state-of-the art headphones that he gripes to any potential reviewer, "If you can't be bothered to listen to this music using headphones, please don't bother to write about it." Well, here I (Jim) am listening to Headphone Music through the Aquarius sound system, -not headphones-, which is admittedly not the best in the world, but certainly not the worst; and I'm writing about this record. Tough shit Z'ev. While working under the banner of arcane mysticism and the principals of what he calls "rhythmajik," Z'ev has manifested a multi-faceted approach to his sound productions which ranges from physically exhausting percussive workouts with huge chains and tumbling metal drums to varispeed minimalist concoctions for feedback and tape hiss. This collection of Headphone Music falls smack in the middle of those two extremes with plenty of textural gestures delivered from his arsenal of scavenged metals which dissolve into disarmingly contemplative pieces of aggregate dronemusik.
Z'ev's right, the general sound quality of this with its concentration of mid-range frequencies and the compositional/spatial density of sound does lend itself to headphone listening; but it can also be appreciated in different contexts too as it turns out.
Production And Decay Of Spacial Relations was the very first studio recording (circa 1981) from the avant-percussionist Z'ev, whose heavy metal bashing and interest in occult literature has often earned him a perceived association with industrial culture even though Z'ev is far too much of an individualist to allow himself to be aligned with any particular movement. Definitely far removed from industrial bashers Einsturzende Neubauten and Test Dept., Z'ev wasn't interested at all in how the atonal qualities of his metal percussion could be fused with the context of a song. His work has always been much more about the exploration of sound and spirituality, no matter how convoluted that quest might seem. On this reissue of his first album, Z'ev has joined the seven tracks from the original album with six 'recordings' from 2006 which integrate much of the original source material and incorporate Z'ev's new found interest in digital technology. While Z'ev's digital work resulted in some interesting DSP convolution adding glassy textures to his metallic clang and drone, the original sounds are the reason to check this out. In those percussive metal workouts, Z'ev presents complex interwoven forms that can sometimes be hard to understand, but Z'ev does offer small grooves throughout here and there, scattered throughout his polyrhythmic attacks, which allow the listener access from time to time. Despite the density of these clinks and hammerings, there's something almost tranquil and hypnotic to the work. At the moment, we've got the limited edition version of this release, with the cd in an LP sized package and which comes with a bonus disc of rare and unreleased material from back in the day.
Rhythmajik is self-designed form of metaphysical research for the avant-percussionist Z'ev, who states that his ideas only ask that the listener approach Rhythmajik with "the ability to count and the desire to achieve an intentionally considerate consciousness." While based on the esoteric theologies of Qabbala, Z'ev presented Rhythmajik as an aesthetic form which has much of the convoluted mysticism removed and is thus attempting to demonstrate the trance-enducing / healing properties that are endemic to Rhythmajik. Needless to say, when approaching this CD documenting the percussive / textural applications of his interests in Qabbalist numerology, it is impossible not to get wrapped up in the back-end mythologies behind each track, as the first nine pieces relate to the 9 Stones which in turn refer to numbers 1 through 9, the next 22 pieces reflect the 12 astrological houses, 7 planets, and the 3 primal elements (air, water, and fire), and the album ends on a divination / meditation for the 9 Chambers.
Z'ev's ideas behind Rhythmajik are so involved that he actually wrote a book called Rhythmajik, which was published back in 1992 by Temple Press; and it's not all that clear if Small Voices (the label who released this CD) will actually be publishing an Italian version of the Rhythmajik book, but they did fund Z'ev's foray into the studio to record the musical manifestations of these ideas. Z'ev has long been praised for his dynamic percussive talents which sound entirely chaotic and clattering despite the rigorous methodologies that go into his music. Unlike the metal bashing and oil-barrel tumbling which perpetuates any ideas about Z'ev's freeform ethos, the CD program for Rhythmajik is an exceptional album of textual scrapings and metallic resonance with subtle surges of rhythmic repetitions. Barring some backwards-masked overdubbing, the bulk of the recordings appear to be unaltered from their original performative nature, almost giving Rhythmajik the feel of a Keiji Haino record where the performer is alone in a cavernous room communing with the spirits that move him.
Z'ev set out to make Sum Things to be his 'dark ambient' record, but with a few restrictions that he imposed upon himself. The first was to use only sources from his vast archive of percussive rituals and explorations with metallic resonance; the second was to use a limited sampling strategy of time-stretching and pitch shifting his sources. With reverb being so central to so many dark ambient projects (most notably Lustmord's recordings of catacombs and subterranean caves specifically for their dank reverberations), Z'ev's reductions are duly noted throughout Sum Things; and at the same time, he's left behind much of the digital artifacts endemic to his sampling tricks. The thunderous metallic rumbles and slippery timbral slashes of sound evolve into shimmering pools of sustained sound. Many of his metallic sounds chime with the sonorous quality of Javanese gamelan, although with the aid of Z'ev's timestretching, he's rendered these sounds into darkly beautiful sets of arcing drones. With more allusions to the wire recordings of Alan Lamb, the sound sculptures of Harry Bertoia, and even some of Andrew Chalk's more aggressive pieces, Sum Things ranks as one of Z'ev's best productions in years.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super limited blast of clang and clatter from legendary artist/percussionist/performer Z'ev. Limited to 333 copies and packaged between two thick slabs of metal, stamped/numbered. We only got a handful so if you want one act fast. Released in conjuction with an art show in Chicago, this 10" is mostly a clattery percussive workout in a bit ol' room, with lots of natural reverb, however, right in the middle of all this 'pipe fighting' and metallic racket comes a beautifull tranquil drone section of shimmering bowed metals and rumbling reverberations. Quite beautiful.
