The return of Matthew Bower's latest project, Black Sun Roof - post Skullflower, post Sunroof!, post Total. We've yet to pin down exactly what it is that BSR was sonically designed to do, other than kick up a fantastically psychedelic skree, which this new double disc most definitely does, and if anything, of all of Bower's recent releases, and even the last few Black Sun Roof records, this one is definitely the most varied, and most musical. Harkening back to that very first cd-r. There's still some of Bower's recent black metal obsession lurking around in the shadows, and of course elements of all those previous projects are still definitely present, but on these two records, Bower and his musical partner Samantha Davies, have cooked up some ultra fried, zoner psych of the highest order.
It's varied enough, that if any record deserved a track by track breakdown it's this one, but that's a whole lot of tracks, so let's just pick some highlights.
The opener definitely sets the stage, with some murky processed vocals, buried under heaving slabs of crumbling sound, distorted buzz, and squealing feedback, and then, slowly surface, some skittery drum machine, the guitars blossom into a weird grinding tangle of distorted melodies, as the drum machine unfurls a lockstep groove, the whole thing strangely loping and mesmeric, the main 'riff' sounding almost like burst of shorted out static, or black buzz chopped into weird grooves, the second half of the two part opener is more of the same, just cranking everything to 11, the vibe sort of folky, reminding us like a way more bleak and black take on recent Record Of The Weeker Dan Friel, or even Dan Higgs. A tranced out noise-dirge mantra that we could listen to forever.
And while a casual glancing listen to most any of these tracks might reveal nothing but bursts of noise, headphones help get lost in Bower's impossibly dense soundscapes, from grinding, looped locomotive buzz, soft noise drifts, to melting black metal slo-mo dirges, to dense, feedback drenched Sunroof! style ur-drone raga blow outs, all keening shards of jagged noise and heart of the sun howl, to downright post industrial prettiness, all woozy and warped, buried melodies, and slow shifting textures, haunting and seriously cinematic.
The second disc starts off as if to begin blasting black metal style, but instead, the insectoid riffing seems to ooze into a black swirling cloud, while the blast beat slows to a skittery dubbed out crawl, and over the top, a dark ominous cloud of low end bleat drifts in and out, might be our favorite track of the bunch! But then the rest of the second disc makes that an even tougher pick. From weird glitchy, swirls of dub-noise drift, croaking frog squelch and blurred blackbuzz shimmer, to glistening blasted shoegaze noise pop blurred into a near white noise blowout, to a murky industrial creep fused with some spaced out new wave, sounding a bit like Skullflower covering Soft Moon, to the final two part closer, a churning, droned out gloom-punk noise dirge, that's more hypnotic and trance-y than noisy, and again driven by roiling rhythms, before finishing off with a two minute blast of paint peeling skree, which close listening reveals to have a hidden hear of warm melody and lush texture. Fuck yeah.
Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Hototogisu, Voltigeurs, Total, etc.) returns under his Sunroof! guise, now seemingly expanded to Black Sun Roof (unclear if it's due to his interest in the black metal arts), and while much of the blissy drift and droned out ragas of past Sunroof! records is still present, it's been augmented with much of the noise that defines his other projects. The record opens with thick, buzz drenched, grinding drones, laid over looped mechanical melodies, which soon expand into full on shimmery blissout, heaving clouds of shimmering buzz over buried drums, keening melodies, all dense and darkly chaotic, murky and washed out, peppered with stretches of smeared psychedelic noise, the A side finishing off with a sprawl of churning murk-pop, sorta in the Dead C style, a minimal noise rock on the edge of total collapse, wreathed in static and hiss and hum, and glowing from within, lit by buried melodies barely obscured.
The flipside opens with another grinding stretch of noise drenched dronemusic, this time underpinned by wheezing ominous chordal swells, peppered with clanging bells, and all manner of buried percussion, swaddled in blown out guitar buzz, heavy and noisy, but as is the way with Sunroof! still impossibly blissful. Most of the side is taken up by an epic groove/dirge, loping caveman drum pound, garbled vox, clouds of whirring soft focus guitar noise, mesmerizing and almost meditative, the end of the song flecked with space-y synth shimmer, which gives the sound a definite cinematic vibe. The record closes with a short but sweet slab of lush, looped woozy murk, sounding like some lost Philip Jeck jam, a bleary, blurry symphony of muted turntable warble. So great!
And as if a new Sunroof! / Black Sun Roof wasn't enough, the lp comes with a bonus cd, of rare tracks hand selected by Matthew Bower himself, culled from various releases and comps, most rare and long out of print: Cloudz, Silver Bear Mist, Wings Over America, Optional Ingredients From A Vile Recipe Volume II, Splat!, Fatcat Split series #19, as well as a Total track from Glassy Warhead, and one brand new previously unreleased track, which is a gorgeous 8+ minute expanse of tangled, layered noiseguitar, keening feedback, fragmented riffage, and dense swirls of buzz and skree, all woven into a weirdly gorgeous slab of psychedelic freeform noise. The rest of the disc is all over the map, but all different shades of that sort of droned out dreamlike noisiness that Bower has mastered as Sunroof!, from the tinkling gauzy piano driven shimmer of "Machine", to the grinding low fidelity industrial noise drift of "Latex Unicorn", to the sci-fi bleep flecked churning almost doomy dreamy slow-mo space dirge of "She Is The Darkness / The Argument", to the hazy noise drenched swirlscape of "Marijuana Suicide", to the impossibly gorgeous, almost M83-ish bliss-noise / psych-pop dream ambience of "Trampled Dawns".
Essential for both the new lp, and the retrospective cd (from which all the below samples are taken), fans of Bower's many projects will be in psych / noise / bliss heaven!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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One of two new releases from Mr. Matthew Bower (Skullflower, Total, Sunroof! etc.), the other a killer blast of hypnotic blackbuzz reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, which, as several recent SF records have done, hints at Bower's growing interest in black metal, which is precisely why assumed that this new project, Black Sun Roof!, must be a black metal version of Bower's long running psychedelic ur-drone project Sunroof! Which while we have to admit sounds pretty goddamn good, is not in fact what Black Sun Roof! sounds like. Instead, it takes the blissy kosmische shimmer of Sunroof! and seems to meld it to the tripped out psychedelic jamminess of SF's Exquisite Fucking Boredom. Just check out the opener, "Crystal Docking Station", with its heavily flanged primitive riffing draped over simple soft focus chordal squalls, all wreathed in a druggy dreamy haze, and everything tethered to a super spare, skeletal, mostly buried in the mix rhythm. It's a glistening lo-fi sort of krautpsych mesmer that is seriously mesmerizing, one of those jams that definitely could have continued on well past its 6:40 termination point. "Fans Of Ego" is up next, and adds some industrial clatter, and low fidelity noisiness to the mix, a clattery stumbling rhythm surrounded on all sides by hiss and whir, and howl and hum, the effect is very much like some strange Dead C outtake, although Bower crafts it into something a bit more psychedelic and spaced out, a gorgeously heady feedback drenched blown out soft noise dirge, that like the opener, we could listen to forever. And finally, the disc finishes off with "Glassy Penetralia", which is the toughest of the bunch to describe, a swirling chunk of almost symphonic noisiness, the foundation a blown out riff, blurred and smeared into a bed of woozy washed out melody, while over the top, a tangle of jagged guitars, that sound more like strings, like some hellish string section, swaddled in blackened streaks of guitar noise, which sounds strangely like some impossible Kronos Quartet / Skullflower mashup. Awesome!
EXTREMELY LIMITED! As in 25 or 30 total made EVER. We have about 10 left and unless we can convince Bower to whip up more, these are the last copies we'll ever see. Housed in cool handpainted minisleeves with pasted on liner notes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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From Tony Dale's Australian Camera Obscura label (http://www.caber.net/obscura [http://www.caber.net/obscura]) comes this wonderful cd and the following description:
Camera Obscura is proud to bring you The Late Music (Volume One), a full-length CD of experimental/ambient tape manipulations by Olivia Tremor Control side-project Black Swan Network. In the unlikely case that you wondered what those strange interludes between the four-part harmony pop gems of OTC's Dusk at Cubist Castle would sound like developed into pieces in their own right, here is your chance to find out. The Late Music on conceptually from the two and four channel extravaganzas that can be found on the bonus disc of sound experiments shipped with early copies of the Dusk at Cubist Castle CD and also on OTC's The Opera House and Jumping Fences EPs. Any attempts to describe the seven pieces that make up this release are bound to fall short of the mark, because this is not much like anything we have ever heard before. The sounds created for this release only occasionally give any kind of clue about what was used to create them. For one track, Elephant 6 collective member Eric Ledford contributes an oblique cello improvisation. For another, the voices of infants laughing and crying are brilliantly multiplied and sequenced and processed for an effect that has been observed to create near hysteria in the listener. But on most of the seven tracks here, Black Swan Network have used the source material as an abstract resource to be sculpted into dreamlike Musique Concrete.
Yet another psychedelic dispatch from the mysterious world of Black Thread, aka Greg from space/kraut duo Von Himmel, who as Black Thread explores a soundworld well removed from the monolithic collaged-krautscapes of the VH mothership, specializing in a crumbling, super distorted world of washed out murky, of muddy melodies and blurred ambience, merging the faded Victrola flashback of The Caretaker with the psychedelic soft noise of Tim Hecker, but way more lo-fi and homebrewed, utilizing all manner of primitive analog recording gear, the sounds seemingly dubbed from tape to tape to tape, then perhaps played back on a microcassette player held up to another microcassette recorder, then onto an old VHS tape, played back through a crappy black and white TV, recorded onto an old answering machine, then re-recorded onto a busted up old 4 track, before being broadcast at extreme volume, where it was all then recaptured a final time, and recorded onto a good ol' cassette. At least that's what it sounds like to us.
Where the other Black Thread tapes tended toward the more melodic side of the soft noise spectrum, Aurora is definitely a bit more aggressive, and caustic, opening with a dense cloud of roiling grey noise, but with headphones on, or at least speakers cranked, this cloud seems to barely be obscuring all manner of softly tangled melodies, and slowly swirling textures. Eventually, the noise recedes, leaving some hushed staticky drift, some woozy foghorn like melodies, lots of crackle and muted feedback, the middle portion of the A side downright pretty, but soon that grey/brown noise rears its only mildly ugly head and wraps that prettiness in hazy sheets of pulsing buzz and near dreamy distortion, rendering the noisiness almost shoegazey.
The flipside follows a similar sonic path, balancing tranquil drift with blunted noise, the sound erupting into gorgeous blossoming billows of majestic sound, buried beneath layer upon layer of sonic grit and recording detritus, which only gives the sound a faded, sun bleached feel, the B side definitely wilder, getting super crunchy, the buried melodies transformed into wild distorted squiggles, a heady swirling skree of psychedelic soft noise that eventually fades out and gradually works its way through various stages of static, dense TV static white noise, transforming into a a field of hissy crackle, transforming again into barely there, warm, liquid thrum, before fading into a hushed, haunting slow fade to silence.
Like the other two recent Black Thread tapes, super limited of course, each cover is unique, all cut from a larger image. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Black Thread is a mysterious offshoot from the likewise mysterious Von Himmel, aQ faves who have graced us with some of the most amazing and least predictable psychedelic gems of the last few years. With so many of the bands we love, things are coming from a definite rock n' roll stance, but Von Himmel have always taken a more meditative approach based around pure sound and less obvious influences. Which brings us to this tape featuring two sidelong excursions of blown out blissful atmospheres, where the sound constantly builds and morphs over the length of each side. There is a certain hugeness overall while also sounding, in the best and most dramatic way imaginable, very fragile. Swells of washed out orchestral melodies are overtaken by noise and looped to gradually reshape the sounds into new forms. As we like to say, this is a good one to get lost in. Just zone out and let it overtake you. In the process you will note a strange and beautiful emotional resonance lacking in many other projects who attempt to play around with tape loops and effects pedals. No, this is composition, creation, and expression, maybe not with any clear narrative, but the result of patience, understanding, and pure dedication. The sounds of decay and rebirth featured here are strangely majestic and somewhat gloomy, but never depressing. Sonically, it fits perfectly within the Von Himmel family approach but will certainly appeal to fans of Leyland Kirby, William Basinski, Indignant Senility, Tim Hecker, and the like. Come to think of it, it sounds sort of like the new Buddha Machine. Highly recommended, and not surprisingly, quite limited!
Shadowy Von Himmel offshoot Black Thread returns with another tape of gorgeous blown out meditations, where kaleidoscopic melodies decay and regenerate in equal measure. Sounds collapse in on themselves and billow out of the fuzzy cinders in an interesting balance between control and chance. Unlike the previous tape, Black Antlers, Descending Heliotrope Shards is more melodic and pretty, though the huge walls of looped sound conjure a similar overall density that manages to stand alone as something unique. Utilizing two 4-track cassette decks for some uber-primitive sound-on-sound recording, basically the sonic equivalent of a dirty needle, there is an element of randomness here that's super exciting and unpredictable. The process, though, fascinating as it is, ultimately plays second fiddle to the songs themselves, which display an inherent sense of melody and structure amidst all the chaos. The sounds are majestic and pulsing, rhythmic with a forward momentum that gives them their own sort of lifespan, but also disembodied and free from both the constraints of conventional songcraft and wanky new age sungazing. The method of creating music fits well within Von Himmel's approach, but also displays influences, specifically some electronic ones, not as readily apparent on VH records, such as minimal techno, industrial grind, and a healthy dose of earsplitting harsh noise for a tape that throttles as it soothes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Latest mysterious musical missive from this offshoot of two time Record Of The Weekers Von Himmel, but unlike the spaced out psych of VH, Black Thread explore the dusty corners of the shadowy sonic underworld they inhabit, opening with what at first blush sounds like pure static, a TV playing between-channel snow, or a car radio unable to pick up any stations, but then the static begins to stutter and crackle, and suddenly it sounds like maybe an old record, spinning on a busted turntable, the provenance of said static though is not as important as the dreaminess that lurks beneath, as hushed hazy melodies drift and shimmer, surface softly and fade out. Imagine a sound somewhere between Philip Jeck, the Caretaker and William Basinski - a blurred, decayed, crumbling sonic beauty, the buried melodies wreathed in a warm haze of sonic detritus, those melodies gradually growing more and more distorted, eventually vying with the static for sonic supremacy, the final few minutes a gloriously blown out swirl of soft psychedelic noise.
The relatively short title track acts as a sort of buffer between the two epics on either side, another smeared sprawl of prismatic noise, washed out and gauzy, a dreamily distorted ambience, that seems to grow more distorted and decayed as the track goes on, even glitching out here and there, but like the first track, it's the sort of soft noise that's more dreamy than brutal.
And finally, BT delivers an opening salvo on the closer that reminds us of Skullflower, distorted and dense, albeit doused in hiss and hum and static, but then the underlying melodies quickly become the focal point, the song turning into a strange blown out lullaby, which quickly settles into a more subdued, tranquil Caretaker like drift, all faded and indistinct, washed out and weary, slowly working itself back to another crescendo, a shoegazey squall that fades out as quickly as it was created, leaving the tape to unwind in a fog of crackly noisy hum, which blends perfectly with the background tape hiss, for an ultra minimal final fade out...
Super limited of course, as tapes like this usually are. Each cover is unique, all cut from a larger image. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Another new tape from this local experimental soundscaper, whose 'day job' is playing in spaced out psych duo Von Himmel, but who, as Black Thread, tends toward a much more washed out and ethereally psychedelic ambience, the sound of Black Thread settling closer to folks like Tim Hecker, or Philip Jeck, or even more accurately, The Caretaker, as BT's sprawling soundcapes ooze the same sort of faded melencholia, sounding a bit like old records spinning lazily on broken dusty Victrolas, miraculously still spinning, as they sit in some old abandoned building, the sound drifting through the empty rooms, and out the broken windows, offering a fragmented glimpse of what once was.
Both sides of Pinkfire offer up a similarly wistful bit of audial ambience, the A side all gauzy and hazy and sun dappled, everything wreathed in hiss and hum, the melodies warbling beneath a patina of crackle and static, a sound out of time, the perfect lonely late night soundtrack, or alternately, the perfect score for a wander through some desolate city, an afternoon full of shadows painted by grey skies and impending darkness, gorgeously washed out and woozy, the sort of stuff we could listen to forever.
The flipside is a bit more abstract, as if someone was trying to broadcast the A side from another time, or another world, and the transmission arrives garbled, dragging much of the cosmic interference with it. More gristly and murky, the main melody a bit more pronounced but also more distorted and damaged, to some ears it might just sound like bad reception, but BT masterfully sculpts the original sounds, and the decaying crunch and crumble, into something that captures the same sort of emotion as the A side, loss and loneliness, faded memories, other times, other places, long forgotten. Fantastic as always. And LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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When we first discovered Black To Comm, they were described to us as sounding like Fennesz, Pimmon, and Earth jamming with Merzbow, which at the time wasn't all that far off. Since then, they seem to have dialed back on the Earth and Merzbow, leaving their sound much more shimmery and blissy and looped and electronic. Oval was another good comparison, with that same sort of underwater digital looped soft focus glitchscape vibe going on.
The band have also seemingly become more of a band, letting the organic instruments show through, processed sure, but allowed to ring out and resonate, which makes their move to the Type label all the more appropriate.
Their sound is still woozy and washed out and hazy and warbly, but on the opening track, everything is driven by a piano, it's notes reverbed and repetitive, a sort of chamber music set amidst a field of static and crackle, the delicate melodies, wreathed in constantly shifting clouds of electrical interference. The second track loops backwards guitars over a field of warm crackle, letting the loop define the haunting melody, the background buzz gradually intensifying, eventually building to a blinding, glimmering high end ur-drone, all the edges rounded so instead of a field of skree, it's pulsing wall of crystalline shimmer and buzz.
Like a warped music box, the record plays out like some half remembered dream, delicate little melodies drift through a haze of moaning distant guitars, murky post rock is pulled apart into some strange spidery lo-fi dirgescape, pizzicato strings and urgently strummed harps are wound into a tense cinematic swirl, long streaks of clanging reverberating metal are laid atop warm vacuum cleaner drones, surrounded by clouds of clatter and clang, deep brooding rumbles finally give way to crackle and pop flecked soft focus easy listening pop ambience.
Another gorgeous collection of mysterious musical manipulation, essential listening for any one into dronemusic, minimal ambience, abstract electronica or just strange and beautiful far out sounds...
A brand new disc from this mysterious German outfit, long time aQ faves Black To Comm, who you might assume might be some sort of garagey rock thing based on their name, but nope, these guys make drones, epic twisting layered expansive beautiful drones, three guys, tones of instruments, but you might not know it by listening. Organ, tape loops, electronics, metal percussion, violin, toys, water, shruti box, bells, whistles, feedback and pictaphone, the recipe for sort of cacophonous Avarus style foresty free folk freakout is some hands, but in the hands of this trio, the sounds conjured up with those instruments is melted down, swirled and shimmered, smeared and blurred, into a looooooong single track. A gorgeously blissful hazy drift, at the center of it all is THE DRONE, a lush, softly shifting stream of layered tones, fluttering flickering notes and melodies, warm whirring textures and all manner of muted overtones, but all around it, a sea of other sounds swirl and spin, high end trills, mechanical creaks, slivers of feedback, glitchy electronics, and what starts out as serene and dreamy, grows ever so much more ominous, the sounds filling out, the edges sharpening, the heft seeming to expand exponentially.
Instead of some sort of lowercase minimal dronemusic, the sound here is epic, majestic, sprawling spacedrone, blinding blistering sonic effulgence, a whirling ur-drone rife with strange FX, and a dense throbbing core.
The last few minutes finds the spaced out drone wreathed in a soft cacophony of blurred noise, a patina of washed out distortion, a wild tangle of squiggly high end, the entire track a lurching, slow swelling spaced out loop, totally mesmerizing, and in its own way heavy and dense and intense. It's hard to get a feel for the power at work here with only a fleeting listen, but taken as a whole, these sounds surround you, and suck you in. Strap on your headphones and you'll find yourself falling willingly under Black To Comm's tripped out space drone spell, drifting endlessly throughout their gloriously and deliriously hazy, woozy and wildly psychedelic world of sound.
The latest from longtime aQ faves Black To Comm is a bit of a departure, a soundtrack for a Singaporean silent film (one that has been soundtracked by other artists in the past, including Oren Ambarchi among others), which was apparently recorded while Marc Richter, aka Black To Comm, was under sedation and on heavy pain killers recovering from an injury, which seemed appropriate considering the film itself was about slowness and decay, sleep and death, and while we have yet to see the film, the music on its own is quite striking. A dizzying collage of samples and electronics, singing bowls and singing saw, and some singing too, the result is heady and psychedelic, dark and droney, grim and gristly. The opening track drapes some woozy crooning over a shimmering dronescape laced with wheezing melodies, glitched out electronics and random rhythmic clatter. The follow up track is much more contemplative and spare, softly processed acoustic guitar, gently glitchy, hints of Oval and Ambarchi, swooping backwards effects, a crystalline psychedelic folk, drifting along side more of those hauntingly crooned vox, those vox getting deeper and more dramatic and weirder and weirder. The music seeming to detune alongside. From there, the soundtrack drifts dreamily, delicate piano floats serenely through soft clouds of static, over lush chordal swells, all hazy and crystalline, the vox a dark dreamy croon, a strange sort of almost Caretaker sounding ballad, before expanding into an almost Our Love Will Destroy The World sounding soft cacophony, swirling swaths of tinkling chimes and woozy loops, layered high end shimmer and lush soft focus thrum, the vocals this time drifting way down in the mix, and finally, the score finishes off with a gorgeous bit of druggy cabaret, gauzy and bleary and gently blurred into a softly churning driftscape, rife with strange animal sounds, buried rhythmic pulses, and dark delicate vocalizations, maybe our favorite track of the bunch.
Definitely a lot different than past B2C releases in some ways, especially the vocals, which for some here were a dealbreaker, but to most of us, it sounds a bit like Antony from Antony & The Johnsons singing over a strange swirl of dark electronics and abstract psychedelic loopscaping, a gorgeously haunting songsuite of dark electroballads blurred and smeared into something much more abstract and atmospheric, which we are digging quite a bit!
A brand new record from this weirdo German drone combo (or maybe it's a one man band), and it's a doozy. We have been pretty into everything we've heard from BTC, so we were pretty excited to get out hands on this new one.
In the past, we, and other folks have compares Black To Comm to groups like Oval, Pimmon, Fennesz, Earth and Merzbow, but the truth is in fact much stranger, and much more difficult to describe. This is definitely drone music, but it's so mysterious sounding, not all low end rumbles or shimmering high end skree, instead, it's a seemingly haphazard assemblage of sounds and musical fragments, looped and processed and chopped up, then woven into looooong undulating dronescapes, that churn and shimmer and buzz and whir, but also twist themselves into strange shapes, offering up incidental melodic overtones and subtle rhythms. And the strange thing is the parts really don't matter so much, in that they are eventually transformed into something entirely new. It reminds us of an exhibit at the museum, where a voice would repeat a single word or phrase over and over, and you would try to pick out the word, but it was practically impossible, the looped speech immediately turned into something sonically mysterious and impenetrable. Fractal Hair Geometry is similar in that the source sounds are super varied, but within minutes, even seconds, the source becomes meaningless, instead it is simple an element in a swooning and swaying and woozily hypnotic whole. Chanted vocals, whirring organs, mysterious shimmers, squiggly melodies, buzzing Theremins, electronic glitches, analog synths, wheezing harmoniums, and those are just guesses, cuz just like that museum exhibit, it's difficult to tell what the source sounds are. We also didn't try that hard. It's like trying to peek under the table to see how a magician does a trick. We don't want to know. It's more fun to get lost in these mysterious sounds. One track even introduces a muted techno throb, and for a brief second it sounds like the weirdest record Kompakt never released. It's really hard to describe this stuff, which is probably why we like it so much, check out the sound samples, and hear for yourself!
Yeah, it's a legendary MC5 track, and sure, it's also a cool music 'zine, but now it's also a mysterious drone outfit from Germany. We were kind of intrigued when we read a description that described Black To Comm as sounding a bit like Fennesz, Pimmon, and Earth jamming with Merzbow. That's a lot to live up to, and while maybe that's not how we'd describe it, this disc is still pretty dang amazing. Dense collages of manipulated sound, processed samples and digital electronic improvisations, all woven into gorgeous dreamy drones and subtlely melodic sonic drifts.
The first thing that came to mind was Oval, but where Oval created lush underwater symphonies out of skipping cds, Black To Comm are starting out with source sounds that are more organic, so the resulting sounds and songs are that much richer and more sonically detailed. Dense soundscapes of looped samples are stretched and smeared, twisted and tangled until the constituent parts became something totally new, and are reborn into new sonic shapes, some warm and sun dappled, others cool and moonlit, all of them dreamlike and otherworldly.
And that's exactly why this record is so magical. The process may be fascinating, but it is quickly forgotten, once you're submerged in some murky mysterious new world of sound. There's nothing to do but look, and listen, to let the sounds and sights slowly sink in, like wandering through some alien world, where everything is fresh and new, every sound is a mystery. Each track is massive in microscopic scope. Look close and you can see forever in each of these songs, climb into your stereo and carefully work your way down, layer by layer, each layer a magical new world, until you arrive at the heart of the song, a warm, soft, dreamlike place, where you can lay down and curl up, and let the layers and sonic worlds wrap tight around you, drinking you in until you become part of the music.
One of two new seven inches from Irish label Trensmat, who most recently brought us those bad ass Hawkwind tribute 7"s. Elsewhere on this list you'll find the brand new Expo 70 "Sunglasses" 7", and this here's a new two tracker from German experimental dronelords Black To Comm, two mesmerizing loopscapes, strangely titled "The Soba Noodle Shop Incident" and "The Convenience Store Incident", both seemingly linked sonically and thematically, each crafter from a dense flurry of looped and repeated Reich / Riley style dronescapes.
The A side is like Riley doing Sunroof!, a high end symphony of overlapping tones, locked and looped, mesmerizingly repetitive, all underpinned by strange percussive bloops and blurred streaks of creak and squeak, eventually, the sound of whirring machinery surfaces and transforms the track into an almost Boards Of Canada bit of squelch and skitter.
The B side begins as another stretch of looped stuttering tones, faster and more frenetic this time, and within those looped tones, another series of strange sounds lurks, a fragmented melody, an off kilter counterpoint, playing out beneath, also chopped and looped, but strangely vocal sounding, as if it was some weirdly processed alien voice, the result is equally hypnotic and mesmerizing.
Cool stuff for sure, a dizzying hybrid of Sunroof!, Boards Of Canada and Terry Riley, meditative and space-y, but dense and very very layered and kinetic.
Packaged in cool full color sleeves, super LIMITED of course, already sold out at the label, so these are likely the last copies we'll see.
A brand new record from one of our new favorite drone outfits, the strangely named Black To Comm, who do indeed share their monicker with a killer MC5 track and a bad ass magazine, but whose sound is well removed from any sort of garage stomp, instead, these guys occupy some glorious netherworld where the sounds of Fennesz, SUNNO))), Earth, Merzbow and Troum all blend into one epic organic whole.
Utilizing a relatively limited musical palette, organ, tape loops, feedback, vinyl loops, computers, voice as well as the less obvious kitchen gamelan and harmophon, Black To Comm weave epic slow motion doomscapes, as textural and dreamy as they are dense and heavy.
The disc opens with huge organ drones, reminiscent of Niblock or Palestine, rumbling and whirring, massive waves of thick sound, while beneath lurk microscopic squeaks and creaks. The tones and layers subtly shift as does the stereo panning, making the sound intensely immersive and almost dizzying. It eventually builds into an impressive squall, with the addition of swooping and bleeping spacey FX buried beneath the cascading organ tones. And that's just the first track!
The second track begins with a constant foghorn tone, mesmerizing and thickly layered, while far off in the distance tiny sonic events occur, melancholy pianos record crackle, the whole thing transforms into a cacophony off brass-like skree, piled atop warbly snippets of sound, somehow managing to remain dreamy and hypnotic, even at its most chaotic.
The flip side of the first disc begins with a super dense blast of blinding sonic effulgence, so rich and thick and glistening, sparkling with a million fluttering notes all swirling and whirling and beginning to crumble in that gorgeous dying sun sort of way. This intensity eventually gives way to a strange acoustic second half, all serene steel strings and distant kitchen sink clatter.
Side C is all rumbling low end warble, draped thickly over strangely twisted fun-house-mirror melodies and little alien squiggles of sound, the low end pulsing and beating offering up super subtle almost-rhythms.
And finally, the record closer, which takes up ALL of side 4, and epic droning monster, that begins like just another slab of rumble and shimmer, before some serious dissonance is introduced, more brass-like tones that give the sound a very Nitsch like quality. If you can imagine a Pop Ambient Hermann Nitsch you might be close. And c'mon! Pop Ambient and Hermann Nitsch in the same sentence, in the same review, that is all you should need to hear. Way recommended.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Whereas past BtC releases have reminded us of Oval, in their manipulated glitchery and warm underwater shimmer, this latest, a split with Aosuke, is quite different, while managing to incorporate many of the same elements we loved so much about past releases.
A nearly sidelong track that begins with a wavering Goblin-y synth, that buzzes warmly and endlessly, an epic stretch of near static drone, drenched in overtones and subtly flickering variations in texture, and surrounded on all sides by distant barely audible sci fi melodies and field recordings. Eventually this synthdrone is joined by another tone, this one more grinding and distorted, that slowly builds and builds along side the first, the intensity growing and growing as well as the volume, and the various surrounding sonic events seem much more frenzied, until everything levels off in some sort of Niblock style drone, the various layers beating against one another, notes and tones shifting subtly, the sound seemingly alive, flecked with shards of melody and bits of buzz and swirling effects. It's a glorious sound that enraptures and entrances, eventually, fading out and releasing the listener from their glorious trance.
The side finishes off with a brief coda of humid late night soundscaping, the sound of the moors, or the plains, some mysterious dark emptiness, droning and ominous, with creepy reverbed vocals and all sorts of night sounds tangled up in the track's undulating shimmer.
The flip side features a group called Aosuke, who we weren't all that familiar with, but whose sounds are as dark and gorgeous and Black To Comm's. But where BtC focus on sound and drone, Aosuke focus on melody as much as texture, with guitar being the focal point, a blissy soft focus guitar ambience, crystalline notes drifting through clouds of space-y effects and strange processed and blurred vocals, it sounds almost like how you might imagine a Durutti Column record on Morr Music might sound. Organic melodies, natural sounds, all tangled up in strange electronic soundscapes, very meditative, a little krautrocky at times, and so so pretty.
These oddly monikered aQ faves return with a brand new full length, and return to the True Sheffield Black Psychedelia fold, aka their original label Frequency Thirteen, after a release on aQ beloved and now sadly defunct label Rusty Axe. And what a return! Like past records, Black Vomit's sound is one that's tough to pin down, an ever shifting tangle of blurred and blackened sound collage, blown out super rhythmic noise rock, field recording flecked spaced out psychedelia, they pretty much all apply at one point or another, and impossibly sometimes all at once. It takes a while for things to get rolling, a weird creeping noise drenched into, all strange samples and shimmery layered low end, all glitchy and warbly, then some Sunroof! style high end raga drone, then finally, a thick low slung bassline slithers into action, beneath a black cloud of growling croaked disembodied vox, and then finally, true to the track's title "Forbidden Dub", the various sounds peel off, leaving just a tripped out spaced out dub, everything wreathed in echo and reverb, the drums careening wildly through clouds of cymbal sizzle, more mysterious samples, moaning guitar melodies, it's like a way more grim and blackened version of Sun Araw almost, a bastardized dub, that is teetering on the edge of collapsing into full on doomy dirge.
Which is where things seem to be heading until the next track, "Riding Below A Sky Threatening Snow To The Very End Of An Empty World", explodes into what quickly reveals itself as some sort of fucked up dubstep jam, but Black Vomitized, so the sounds are all blurred and tangled, chaotic and abstract, a thick bass warble holding everything together, while beats stutter and stagger, and all of the other sounds blown out and in the red, before the record switches gears once again, laying down a bit of shimmery abstraction, before an avalanche of super distorted drums come crashing through a field of swirling electronics, the whole thing like an IDM Lightning Bolt. And so it goes, every song something entirely different, yet somehow linked to the song before it, and to the whole, a twisted songsuite of beats and buzz, of low end rumble and caustic crunch, slipping from synth heavy shoegaze blur, to tripped out reverb heavy space rock jangle, from creepy almost John Carpenter-ish soundscapery to bleary minimal low slung creep, and from distorted sun dappled dreambuzz ambience, to a final 20 minute slab of abstract synth-squelch, blur-bliss shimmer. So good.
SUPER DUPER LIMITED too, ONLY 40 COPIES!! we got 20 of those, which won't last long...
More True Sheffield Black Psychedelia!!! Which is quickly becoming our new favorite microgenre. As the name implies, the sound is black metal, psychedelic, and of course from Sheffield in the UK. Although black and psychedelic only barely scratch the surface of what's going on with these discs. Post rock, blacknoize, krautrock, furious grind, blissed out ambience, hypnorock, all tangled up into fierce blasts of whatthefuck atmospheric heaviness. We've already listed amazing releases from Ice Bound Majesty, Skultroll and a split between Dukkha and Black Vomit (see the reviews on the AQ website for more on Treu Sheffield Black Psychedelia). And we were so smitten with Black Vomit, we figured we'd track down more from them.
So here's another blast of Black Vomit, this time teamed up with the equally distastefully monickered Rape Rack.
Black Vomit start things off with some haunting ambience, that quickly gives way to some crusty fuzzy drone, eventually erupting into some fuzzed out metallic groove, which transforms into some grunting psych power violence, the programmed drums occasionally shorting out DHR style, a blur of garage fuzz pound, murky blackness, and relentless hyperspeed krautrock. After a brief bit of ambience, the band kick out the jams on a super space-y, hyper processed Circle-style jam. Hypnotic, and relentless, the riff wrapped in FX, the drums slipping from motorik pulse to furious blast and back again, over the top, harsh howled demon vox, a weird washed out blackened krautrock, that after another brief bit of drone tranquility explodes into some straight up black buzz. Awesome. Black Vomit are like Immortal's Blizzard Beasts crossed with Circle's Zopalki. We definitely need a full length from these guys.
Rape Rack offer up their own take on black psychedelia, eschewing drums completely, for some intense textural black ambience, rough and gritty, hissy and crumbling, distorted and buzzing, melodies falling to pieces, being sucked under corrosive drones, the 16 minute epic that finishes things off, is smoother than all that, glistening shimmering cavernous expanses of digital buzz smeared into soft streaks of shadowy grey streaks.
Not sure about the last track, it's definitely too heavy and fucked up to be Rape Rack, maybe it's the two bands together, but it's a killer, furious lightspeed buzz, processed and heavily effected, the vocals deranged and over the top, huge echo-y bellows howling in clouds of reverb and delay, threatening to drown out the din below. A furious black coda, that leaves us wanting WAY more.
While we all wait patiently for a new slab of abstract heaviness to come our way from the lovely folks who comprise the Grey Daturas trio, we can spend a little time immersing ourselves in the dronier dirgier darker side of Rob MacManus, aka one third of the aforementioned Gray Daturas.
So far we've only heard from BW (not to be confused with the -other- black widow), on a pair of collaborations with fellow Aussie noisemaker Blarke Bayer, so this here is the first real chance we've had to hear what BW is really all about, and we're psyched to discover it's all about the massive slow motion downtuned heavy dirgedrone. Like old Earth, or Sunn 0))) that sort of drawn out guitar drone action, but MacManus give it his own twist, sometimes letting the guitar just ooze and sprawl like some sort of viscous blackness, other times, offering some weird angular disembodied steel string thrum, but still drifting on a sea of droning shimmer, and still other times, unfurling a grinding, crumbling super distorted slow motion riff. Whichever way the sound veers, it's always infused with some haunting abstract melodic element, that in some cases is quashed by the sheer heaviness, while in others, it manages to float to the surface, glimmering and shimmering, while the grind and throb is relegated to the background. Good stuff, and more essential listening for the guitardrone legions...
Sure, all you drone obsessives and out rock freaks can't get enough Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, an endless fount of whir and rumble and skree and grrr and rrroooaarrr. But this new record from James Blackshaw is a whole 'nother ball of... um.. steel strings apparently. Celeste is made up of two 15 minute tracks (one played in open C major tuning, the other in open C minor) of totally mesmerizing Appalachian raga folk, performed mainly on 12-string acoustic guitar with occasional farfisa organ and cymbals. Fans of John Fahey, Jack Rose, Matt Valentine and all things free folk will be completely blown away. There's still an element of drone in the repetitive raga-like riffing, but this is mainly and most definitely a weird and wonderful modern avant bluegrass / folk record. Lovely! SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
NOW ON VINYL!! (Includes free cd of the album too!)
So on his last album, Blackshaw stepped into new territory with some orchestral instrumentation, even laying down a few piano tracks. And even though we didn't think it was possible, he just might have outdone himself, yet again, with his most dynamic album to date, The Glass Bead Game, released on the infamous Young God Records. Most aQ costumers are well aware of the talent and mystery that surrounds Mr. Blackshaw and his twelve-string mastery. And while we've really dug all of his numerous past albums, it seems like Blackshaw has never sounded so confident in his mantra-like finger picking and ornate compositions. With the freedom to compose works for piano, strings, flute, clarinet and a choir, Blackshaw's vision has grown from a small sprout into a sea of blooming vines.
It baffles us how cinematic this stuff is. These tracks all tell epic tales of being lost at sea, nighttime woodland campfires, sad goodbyes and lonely mornings, all without any lyrics. Sometimes there are these moments where Blackshaw will simply change chords and suddenly the piece takes on a whole new feel, a whole new sound, and you can't help but feel emotionally struck. His playing is so recognizable and distinguished from his solo-guitar peers, a perfect marriage of patients and skill, droning and droning on one chord only to build suspense and anticipation before suddenly revealing the next movement, so good! And there's something about his playing that is so European, so different from the Americana-type sound of other finger pickin' contemporaries. Blackshaw's pieces seem to shimmer with an ethereal haze that faintly glows like an old lantern in the woods, casting flickering light on faces of spirits in the night.
The Glass Bead Games starts things off running with a lush harmonium drone and Blackshaw's quick, raga-esque finger picking soaring above. Gradually female vocals and strings creep in to blanket Blackshaw's guitar in a silky ambience, creating an almost dreamlike experience. We really love how the vocals have this Philip Glass or Steve Reich orchestral kind of vibe. Instead of long swells the voices are short, repetitive wordless ohs and ahs, kind of like some carousel organ or angelic harp. "Cross" builds and retreats in some cosmic ebb and flow, continually swirling with deep, melodic range and heartfelt emotion, all with the twelve string at its glowing core. "Bled", the second track, begins with a slow, contemplative mood. Notes plucked then left to dissipate into thin air. Somber and desolate, the piece only grows into a dark journey through Eastern ragas and into celestial radiance, only to return in the 9th minute to the opening, contemplative passage. ��
The album comes to a gorgeous close with the 18 minute "Arc". With James on the piano, he builds from quiet contemplative drops of rain into huge waves of quickly flourishing arpeggios, not all that different sounding from his guitar picking. We totally love how his style and aesthetic remains intact, whether he's sitting at the piano or with a guitar on his knee, his close attention to detail and use of hypnotic, emotionally captivating melodies shines throughout. Notes flickering and shimmering about as overtones soar above like clouds. There's so much about this record that you can get fully wrapped up in, so much detail it would be impossible to absorb it all in just one listen. We've already been listening to Glass Bead Game for over a week, and still new details keep popping out of the woodwork. And to top it off, beautifully fitting, earth-toned artwork of various birds of prey perfectly adorns the album with some magical visual hex. By far our favorite Blackshaw album to date and quite possibly his best, highly and fully recommended!
Of these three new James Blackshaw cd reissues of long out of print cd-r's, Lost Prayers & Motionless Dances is the only one of the three that we never managed to carry at all. We've long gone on and on about how records this good deserve to be heard by more than the 100 or 200 lucky folks who manage to get their hands on the limited cd-r's, and finally, someone (thanks Tompkins Square!) had the good sense to gussy these discs up and give them the actual proper cd reissue they so deserve.
Originally released as a cd-r on Digitalis, limited to 200 copies in 2004, this one slipped right under our radar, which is a huge shame as it is just as good as Sunshrine or Celeste. But it's also quite different. Where as the other discs focus on Blackshaw's deft fingerpicking, and mastery of the steel string guitar, this disc is just as much about the drone and the ambience. Not to say, Blackshaw doesn't get to unleash dexterous little tangles of Appalachian filigree, but those stretches of strum and shimmer are set amidst thick harmonium drones and blissed out field recordings.
The disc begins with a warm whirring drone, all thick wheezes and rich lustrous chords, Eastern melodies, drawn way out into long soft smears. Eventually the guitar joins in, but simple spare strums, soft chords, and gentle fingerpicking, nestled amidst the softly undulating harmonium in the background, the sounds of crickets chirping in the distance, bits of slippery sitar style squiggles. The sound gradually slips into something much more familiar, 'that' Blackshaw sound we love so much, a lot like the other reissued discs, until the guitar fades out, leaving a murky muted shimmer, which soon fades out as well, leaving nothing a strange high end hiss-scape of weird processed percussion and shortwave radio, peppered with bits of high end jangle and distant upper register guitar scrape and disembodied clatter, before the track finally shifts gears once again, filling the last few minutes with urgently strummed guitar, big chunky chords, moaning harmoniums, and billowing splashes of deep resonant cymbal shimmer, a glorious kinetic finish to a another gorgeous sprawling languorous guitardronedrift.
Remastered and with new artwork.
We often lament the state of musical affairs that would render records that are as good as anything and everything we've heard by James Blackshaw to be so limited as to only be heard by a mere handful of people. But until now that has indeed been the case. Cd-r after gorgeous cd-r, limited to 200 copies, 100 copies, even less in some instances. But music this beautiful, this lush, this lovely definitely deserves a wider audience, even if its cd-r / underground / outsider / avant folk / new weird America cache suffers accordingly. Who cares? Who -can- care when faced with the sounds on O True Believers. Over the last few years, Blackshaw has found a home amongst free noise fellows and their fans (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Birchville Cat Motel, Rameses III, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof!, Avarus, etc.) even though his sound hewed much closer to Fahey and the like, a stark but sweet steel string Appalachia. Here, that sound is even more stark, more spare and oh so even sweeter. The opening two tracks will have you swooning, or drifting off, or swaying in some glorious mesmerized state or whatever it is you do when you find yourself submerged in some lush swirl of tonal dreaminess, 30 full minutes of guitar, mostly just guitar, spacious and grand, lilting and delicate, no whir or fuzz or rumble or any of the other sonic detritus that usually decorates most of the music like this we love -- no this is crystal clear and crystalline, shimmering and glistening, as if Blackshaw was some strange musical alchemist who discovered how to use a guitar to describe leaves covered in dew, green grass sparkling with morning frost, the sun reflecting on a placid pond, silvery streaks of sunlight filtered through the interwoven branches overhead. It's like wandering into a lost glade, laying in a thick soft patch of grass, and slowly sinking into the ground, until you BECOME the forest around you, sinking into a warm, wash of tranquil otherworldliness. Towards the end of track two, the guitars are joined by cymbalon, tamboura, and bells, and what was only moments earlier some sort of mysterious Appalachian folk, becomes a slow burning blissed out raga, steel strings buzz, each note smeared into warm drones, then sprinkled with delicate chimes and reverberating bells. Track three is equally as blissful, but is constructed quite differently, the guitar lines speed up and become intense and intricate tangles of notes, so snug that the melodies blur and stretch out melodic whirs, while lush major key swells, ebb and flow in the background, a swaying swooning sweetness. The final track is almost jubilant by comparison and 'rocks' as much as any foresty free folk Appalachia can be thought to rock, dense steel string strums, a simple percussive framework of cymbals and chimes, the whole thing wrapped in the wonderfully warm wheeze of a harmonium, adding a thick warm fuzzy patina to the sparkling steel shimmer beneath.
More gorgeously lush neo-Appalachia from James Blackshaw, finally released on a real cd instead of an ultralimited cd-r, which makes perfect sense as this is way too good to be so limited. Two tracks, the first an extended thirty minute epic, a lush and completely gorgeous steel string raga, huge dense sweeps of intricately finger picked guitar, dense with reverb, accompanied by sarod, harmonium, Farfisa organ, glockenspiel, bells and bowed cymbals. Overwhelmingly beautiful and impossibly otherworldly. Expressive and aggressive but completely delicate and introspective at the same time. The end of the track is especially powerful when the guitars fade out and all that is left is the thick wheezing drone of the harmonium and a cloud of tinkling bells. The final three minutes is a very Fahey-esque, steel string guitar workout, gorgeous folky twang, simple and so lovely.
Packaged in a gold metallic paper sleeve with a small printed insert.
We're huge fans of pianist and composer Lubomyr Melnyk, his playing so distinctive, his Continuous Music System and the way he creates dense flurries of notes, and lush chordal cascades - it's transcendent, a sort of swirling, almost psychedelic modern classical / new age hybrid, the sound dreamlike but rife with melodic subtleties and tonal colorations that make his music prismatic and expansive and impossible to mistake for anybody else. We also love Blackshaw, in a field of modern minimal guitarists, mining classic Americana, we often find ourselves drawn to his interpretation, one that's not always so minimal, slipping easily from a Melnyk like style of whipping up clouds of swirling chords and notes, to weaving lush landscapes of dark dreamlike chamber music.
Not sure whose idea it was to put these guys together, or if they were simply the sort of like minded artists who eventually find each other, but whatever the reason, or whoever is responsible, we're so grateful, and glad that this sonic summit took place. And it's just about as fantastic as you might hope. Four long form compositions, both Melnyk and Blackshaw effortlessly unfurling lush swaths of swirling melody, Blackshaw's guitar bathed in the reverb and overtones of Melnyk's piano, the sound sometimes so blurred it's hard to tell who's playing what, and that constant shift is part of what makes this so mesmerizing, the tracks hypnotic and tranced out, dreamy and melodic and woozily tranquil, but still sonically super active, each track is like a thick billowing cloud of dreamy melodic drift, the musical equivalent of a jar of fireflies, look away, and the world is lit by a soft warm glow, but look closely and that light is revealed as a dense whorl of tiny little lights, swooping and shimmering. The sound these two conjure up occasionally slips into something more folky, or more classical, but most often meets right in the middle, heavenly and hypnotic, rife with lilting melodies, and warm sonic swells. When things do slow down, the music settles into a moody melancholy shimmer, but those moments are fleeting, with the two tending to slowly add and build until the sound swirls and swoops and soars skyward, and blossoms once again into something truly transcendent.
The vinyl version is limited to 500 copies.
They had us at Blackwolfgoat, pretty much! We had to check it out. And it lives up to the name, in fact, surpasses it, 'cause that moniker, while suggestive of darkness and evil, is just a bit silly too, ain't it? Silly isn't how we'd describe Blackwolfgoat's droned-out heavy psych guitar hypnosis, though. Somnambulant, spacey, sinister, solitary, but not silly. Still we like the name. Also, this comes to us via the reliable stoner rock label Small Stone, a good mark of quality heaviness. And this is stoner all right, but not quite rock, falling on the more abstract and experimental, drone-dirgery side of things than Small Stone's usual fare, the shadowy psychedelic nature of this music coming closest to the label's left-fielders like Tia Carrera and Los Natas, but with a vibe that's blacker, bleaker, yet still beautiful.
The half dozen tracks here, almost all built up of looping layers of blown out guitar grind, are what sound like minimalist one-man-and-amp instrumentals, playing riffs so slow and sludgey and slidey that they're often more like waves of distortion sometimes adorned with electronic feedbacky blips... it's not just swampy, it's SwampTHINGy. It's like this Blackwolfgoat guy (we're assuming it's a guy) is just jamming out, doing his thing that maybe you too, if you're a guitar player could do, but are you? No. And maybe you shoulda. 'Cause it's pretty cool. But do you share this psychedelic hermit's black void vision?
There's enough variety across these six tracks to keep it interesting, if you're in danger of utterly nodding off then wham, what about the primitive percussive "Aspirin Forever", with crinkly noise and clanky beats, a brief interlude of weirdly rhythmic, out of nowhere WTF?-ness that threw us for a loop (or loops). That's followed by the lovely album ender "Hotel Anhedonia", a super relaxed, druggy, jangly (if something this thick can jangle), kinda poppy, mantric meandering 10+ minute solo, the cleanest guitar on here so far, as the track slowly fades out and Blackwolfgoat rides off into the the glowing sunset.
Reminds us of / possibly influenced by, the likes of Earth, SUNNO))), Barn Owl, Boris, Sleep, Davis Redford Triad, Ulaan Khol.... but (we'll repeat) especially Earth, particularly circa Phase III: Thrones And Dominions, or the Hendrix-worship of parts of Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons.
Oh, and we just checked the credits, it IS just one guy, who furthermore recorded all "songs/sounds" on this album live in the studio, with no overdubs at all.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We all kinda flipped when we discovered Blackwolfgoat, and proceeded to gush about BWG's Dragonwizardsleeve record back on list #369, an album that definitely threw us for a loop, cuz with a name like Blackwolfgoat, and on a mostly stoner rock label, we were expecting some sort of crust metal or retro thrash or stoner doom, but instead, BWG, aka guitarist Darryl Shepard, offered up a gorgeous droned out, heavily layered solo guitar record, definitely heavy, at least in places, but more mesmerizing and cyclical, droney and psychedelic, slipping from SUNNO))) like dronesludge to almost krautrocky hypnodrift.
So we were super excited to discover there was a new album - only to discover it was a cd-r, and had been limited to just 100 copies, waah. We basically gave up on ever getting copies for the store, when lo and behold, Mr. Blackwolfgoat himself got in touch and offered us his last copies! So of course we said hell yeah, and now submit to you, Dronolith, another disc of churning repetition, and cosmic looped mesmer that should most definitely appeal to all you aQ headz into drone/metal/psych/kraut, but be warned, we have about 10 copies and then that's it!
The first track starts things off with a gorgeously murky stoner rock riff, that instead of launching into a song proper, just repeats, trancelike, while Shepard layers spidery melodies, and psychedelic streaks over the top, the track drifting closer and closer to heart of the sun spacerock. The next track is all clean guitar, and sounds a little like a sketch for a Circle song, but gradually blossoms into a hazy sprawl of sun dappled psychedelia. There are some moments of extreme distortion, and creeping slo-mo riff sludge, but those moments are brief, with Shepard instead focusing on motorik krautdrone, woozy, gauzy cosmic buzz, and dreamy druggy atmospheric drift. Even the title track which had is imagining Sleep in their prime, begins all shimmery and swirly, but does fulfill the promise of the title by exploding into full on amp melting supersludge, oozing tarpit riffage that splinters into a full on blacknoise blowout.
Fucking AWESOME. Such a shame that it's so limited (ONLY 100 COPIES!). But it is, so grab one quick. They come in nice printed full color jackets, and each copy is hand numbered.
Sure, spelling errors and grammatical mishaps may (and most likely do) pop up all the time on the aQ website; but we can be certain that we have correctly transcribed the name of Wayne Grim's art-prog project Blakcpullet Grimoire. Admittedly, this is one of the first projects that's come our way from Mr. Grim even though he's been very active in the Bay Area avant-garde scoring films, building installations, performing in countless guises, and appearing in this production or that. There are a ton of musical ideas splattered throughout Eating Whole Villages, beginning with a heavy, chugging guitar set against the old-school noise a dial-up modem generates, giving the album a Melvins / Mike Patton vibe from the get go. This is followed by a hissing track of noise and static aerations, muddling a delay saturated lecture from Buckminster Fuller captured on cassette. Then, you'll find electronic yawnings of bassbin rattling frequencies, bleeping glitches, and floorscraped noises barely coalescing upon their sparse structure countered by snippets from Kurt Schwitters' seminal sound poem Ursonate. These perpetual detours from track to track continue through the album, which really opens up after the rather claustrophobic beginning into some lovely stripped down acoustic guitar plucking and continues through an expanded passage of stereo-phased amplifier distortion ruptured with controlled attacks on a drum kit. Frippertronic styled guitar drones cascade out of the speakers later on as if they were from No Pussyfooting. Contemplative and enveloping, it's hard to imagine this as the same record, the end so far removed from the opening corroded heavy sounds. Confounding yes, but certainly rewarding!
James Blake is a curious case. We wonder if he had some standard folk guitar or piano backing to his frigid soul songs, would we be into this that much? But Blake's songs are far from standard, and despite the mainstream pop and RnB vocabulary he borrows heavily from (Auto-Tune, guest rapper stints, the gospel-tinged vocalizations), he creates something quite unpredictable and beautifully unique in the strange fractured arrangements. Like Nina Simone in reservedly dramatic avant-electronica mode, Blake keeps his songwriting emotionally effective while keeping enough distance so as not to become vocally overwrought or musically anthemic. The chilled production evokes an atmosphere of dreamy spaciousness, pillowy clouds of piano, filtered samples, bass pulses and far away post-dubstep rhythms. Blake is as close as we're probably going to get to Arthur Russell and Burial having a beautiful musical child together.
Following up last year's Teen Sounds, SF's Blanketship comes cruisin' along with more delightful aural collage adventures. This time things are a bit more drivin', maybe a bit darker and more aggressive. And unlike many of his past recordings which kept the listener constantly teetering off-kilter with their rapid fire juggling together of puzzle piece samples and mad rhythms, the nine tracks that comprise The Sound Of Fun Surrounds You has a few longer stretches that your ears and toes can catch a grasp of and groove along to for a few bars at least. But that's not to say this cd-r is without its fair share of surprise bursts and giggly bits, those come in spades on the Klangwunder half! Those eight tracks were composed with like-minded People Like Us on WFMU! Always a deliriously good time!
We've delighted to the many eclectic eccentric musical personas of the gents behind Bay Area indie label Gigante Sound (Dominic Cramp and Jared Blum) -- Qulfus, Borful Tang, Vulcanus 68, and Blanketship to name a few. Here's the latest from the latter with Mr. Blum at the helm. Teen Sounds is a jumbled, tumbled baker's dozen aural hijinksin' collages. Very strange and strangely varied, each is possessed with its own ample dose of the absurd. Much more dense and stewy that any of the previous Blanketship releases which were more breezy and exotica tinged. Quite reminiscent of Negativland, The Residents or John Oswald's Plunderphonics!
Massive and gorgeous glacial drone exploration from these two Australian one man bands, combined to form, well... a two man band.�Black Widow is Rob MacManus from AQ faves the Grey Daturas, and he teams up with�Ben Andrews aka�Blarke Bayer who spends most of his time in�Aussie grinders Agents of Abhorrence. But if you just think Grey Daturas plus AoA, you definitely won't have imagined this. Some glorious bastardized blend of Taj Mahal Travellers organic drift and Lustmordian black ambience.
Three long tracks, the first a slow burning sprawl, guitars grinding out long whorls of low end buzz, slowwly undulating, a sort of more subdued SUNNO))) sort of sound, streaked with bits of smeared feedback, and random bits of muted percussion, a gorgeously expansive bit of minimal whir that has everyone in the store totally entranced every time it plays. The second sounds like the guys exploring the inside of a piano, buzzing strings and struck tones, with those distinctly guts-of-a-keyboard overtones, shimmering clouds of tonal drift that occasionally coalesce into fleeting melodies, while elsewhere, the actual keys of the keyboard are struck to add a slightly out of tune counter point, making� the whole thing trippy and slightly off kilter.
The final track is downright pretty, and almost Dirty Three style minor key dirge, strummed reverbed guitars shifting and drifting in an expanse of distant rumbles and bits of fuzz and tape hiss. Moody, minor key, melancholy and simply gorgeous.�
It's been a while since we've heard from Australia's Grey Daturas or any of the various related combos. It's only really because for a year or two, it was almost like they lived here. Constantly on tour, using SF as home base. We'd see them at shows, in the shop. And we haven't had much new besides the Neurot full length, but we do have a big order of Daturas and other goodies waiting to ship, so that'll take care of that.
But for those who just can't wait, we have collab number two from Blarke Bayer and Black Widow (we might have one or two copies of the first one, see elsewhere on the site), BB being Ben Andrews of down under grind commando unit Agents of Abhorrence, and Black Widow being Rob MacManus from the Grey Daturas, and it's another set of three songs, clocking in at just less than a half hour, and is just as sonically varied (but slightly jazzier, more on that in a minute) as their first tete a tete.
The opener is a skittery free jazz drift, little fragments of piano drifting in a black expanse, the drums chaotic and powerful, very free, shuffling subtly one second, exploding into frenzied fills the next, all the while a sax moans and bleats and skronks, its long tones laid over the proceedings like high end streaks, giving the track a weird free jazz drone vibe. The second track is more of a thick guitary drone, the drums relegated to mute throb and pulse, demarcating a slowly smoldering smear of shimmering strings, swirling feedback, abstract melodic fragments, some post rock lope, some Morricone-ish twang, some crackle and hiss, the drums lazy and laid back, some sort of doomed minimal slowcore drift. Quite lovely. Wouldn't mind a whole disc of this stuff. The duo finish off with a super minimal low end exploration, so minimal we hesitate to describe it as a drone, it's more like a collection of ambient sounds, the distant whir of a building's machinery, the sound of air circulating, the distant murmur of conversation, but take all that and blur it and mute it into a barely there ghost of sound, over which a series of electrical impulses are transmitted, glitch, crackle, super subtle electronic textures drifting above a music so subtle and minimal it could almost be the sound of your speakers humming. Intense and quite beautiful, but may require some high powered headphones to truly appreciate.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More amazing and freaked out noisy bliss from down under, this time a tag team match up between Black Widow, aka Rob MacManus from the Grey Daturas, and Blarke Bayer, Ben from Aussie grinders Agents Of Abhorrence, who have probably toured together a million times and played in tons of bands together, but this is the first recorded document we've seen of the two teaming up for some serious noisemaking.
Although noisemaking might be misleading, as this is actually more drone-y and ambient than it is noisy. Thick washes of crumbling guitars move glacially over bits of percussive skitter, slivers of feedback surface here and there, some simple tribal thump, all nestled amidst lots of low end rumble. Imagine a much more subdued SUNNO))) and you might have a rough idea. But that's only the first track (of three). The second track sounds like someone playing the inside of a piano, lots of buzzing steel strings, scraping and haunting low end reverberations, someone is obviously on the outside of the piano too, pounding out simple creepy low end chords, the result is like some super abstract Argento soundtrack, moody, mysterious and intense, becoming more and more abstract and 'free' as the piece progresses, as if each player, on the inside AND outside of the piano are quickly pulling it apart into a pile of splintered wood and broken steel strings.
The final track, the shortest of the three, is also the dreamiest, with a simple minor key guitar figure drifting in a wide open expanse of muted percussive swirls, and dense tangles of finger picked melodies, the whole thing sounding like the soundtrack to some experimental western, like if anyone ever dared remake Jodorowsky, it wouldn't be a long stretch to imagine this as the perfect music to accompany some of that gorgeously unsettling Jodorowsky imagery.
Surprisingly subtle and really cool.
Originally released in 2008 and reissued on Cold Spring with a bonus track, haunting modern chamber music from this one man composer / soundscaper. Looped pianos, layered strings, barely there vox, and all sorts of manipulated atmospheres. Soft noise and lush landscapes of sound, dark and mysterious and quite lovely. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES.
You know how you can 'hear the sea' when you hold a conch shell up to your ear? Well imagine listening to a conch shell and hearing not just surf but also some gentle, haunting improvised psych-folk sounds inside there as well. That's what you get with this new Blithe Sons disc. Yes, Jewelled Antler drone minstrels Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson (1/2 of Thuja) return again with recordings from their travels to some of the more scenic, out of the way spots in the Bay Area. Did I say scenic? I mean sonic. The darkness of a dank old abandoned army bunker might not be the most picturesque sight 'round these parts, but the sounds Loren and Glenn conjure within its confines are a moody delight. Of course that bunker (and other sites these two visited) are near the quite picturesque Pacific, the ocean providing the seashore/undersea imagery and inspiration for Arm Of The Starfish. The hiss and hum of the Blithe Sons' field recordings of their own musical activities could be the sea in the distance... This cd is really lovely and droney and it makes me imagine that they have overloaded a ramshackle rowboat with their 'instruments' -- guitars, harmonium, bells, tape recorders, bits of driftwood, glassy pebbles, rusted metal, who knows? we're just guessing -- and floated out on an ancient lake, becalmed in the evening dusk, to sing softly as their boat slowly sinks and the sun sets.
Blithe Sons are the duo of Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson, who last graced us with the lovely We Walk The Young Earth disc on Family Vineyard back in March. You know Loren and Glenn from Thuja and Franciscan Hobbies and much else as well. Now they're back with another Blithe Sons installment on their own Jewelled Antler cd-r label. And not only is it a great record in its own right, it's also a sort of present to us here at Aquarius, Loren and Glenn's way of celebrating Andee and Allan taking over the biz, as it's only gonna be sold here and we're burning the discs ourselves and reaping the profits -- it's sort of an AQ benefit disc, really. Thanks guys!!
As they tell it, the story of Green Mansions is thus: somehow (via a secret garden? a rabbit hole? a mystical waredrobe?) Loren and Glenn found themselves alone at an empty English manor house. Going out on the grounds of the estate, they set up various stringed instruments in the fields, strewing them with grains so as to attract woodland creatures to venture forth in the dusk to "play" the instruments. A nice story...and sure, yeah, Green Mansions does sound a bit like that! Magical, natural. Glenn's delicate, wispy vocals and the general folk-psych atmosphere remind us of Richard Youngs, and even Jandek a bit (in a good way). Warm warbly tape hiss, acoustic guitar, bell-like synth, harmonium, and field recordings amongst other sound sources are blended into beds of shimmering drones that make us imagine the pastel sounds of a child's mobile slowly twirling in the "heavens". Really really nice in other words, and we're not just saying that since it's "our" release. Seriously recommended.
Recorded this past spring in the open air of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Waves of Grass is the second release from The Blithe Sons, an offshoot of the improv-drone ensemble Thuja, featuring Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson. Like miniatures of the
Lo, the Great Orthochromatic Wheel (?) dost turn! And with it, comes a happenstance that shall bring happiness to Jewelled Antler fanciers the world over: yes, a new album from the very special Blithe Sons duo, our friends Loren Chasse (Of, Ov, Thuja, Child Readers, etc. etc. ETC.) and Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards, Thuja, The Ivytree, Jex Thoth, etc., etc., ETC.). They'd been on a bit of an unofficial hiatus for far too long, taking a little 'time out' as it were, and we were both surprised and pleased to hear tell of not only this album's impending release but also to attend the 'reunion' show they did a couple months back, opening for Van Der Graaf's Peter Hammill at The Great American Music Hall here in SF. At that show they previewed some of what you'll hear here, and it's the usual Blithe Sons naturalistic improv-folk magick conjured from stones and branches well as actual instruments like acoustic guitar, harmonium and recorder. Field recordings suggest the hum of twilight grasses, a pleasant place to find Glenn's gentle Richard Youngish vocals whispering elegiacally o'er the drones and chimes of the Blithe Sons' abstract, organic, mutedly melodic soundworld.
And, they've woven some cover material into their own compositions/improvisations here, doing Jewelled Antlerized interpretations of ye olde progge songs by, we believe Genesis, and perhaps others... prog fans, listen close. Makes sense they'd play with P. Hammill!
There's no cd version of this LP, but it does come with a coupon to allow you to download mp3s of these tracks to your computer.
These days, any band that uses improvisation with heavy doses of loose, opiated psychedelia, lazy comparisons will inevitably be drawn to the No Neck Blues Band. It has to be said that The Blithe Sons, who have warranted a number of such comparisons, sound ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the No Neck Blues Band. And actually they are much better off because of it... The Blithe Sons, of course, are the Jewelled Antler Collective's most active members Loren Chasse (Thuja, Child Readers, Id Battery, Coelacanth, etc.) and Glenn Donaldson (Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Bird / Ivy / Olivetree, etc.), having literally embraced their philosophy that "making music should be a picnic." Thus, they've taken to hiking all across coastal California, recording their pastoral avant-folk songs and empathic minimalist actions in direct communion with the landscape around them. The two sites which are particular to the Sons' third album "We Walk The Young Earth" were a wooden bridge in San Gregorio and the concrete bunkers scattered throughout the Marin Headlands. The latter were sites that have played a large role in many of the textural amplifications that Chasse produced in Id Battery; however, Chasse doesn't return the Blithe Sons to the smoldering abrasions of Id Battery. Rather, "We Walked The Young Earth" turns their minimalist hymns and melancholic drones toward a space that is even quieter, more introspective than anything yet produced by the Jewelled Antler collective, as if they've become hypnotized by their own reverberating drones in the confines of the bunker. It's true that in these spaces, Chasse and Donaldson spend a considerable amount of time listening to the environment around them, and shaping sounds that are sympathetic to those spaces. That's something with which the No Neck Blues Band has never really ever succeeded, instead opting for more of a druggy improv stumble. A sleepy album for sure, "We Walk The Young Earth" is another gorgeous album from these perennial AQ staff favorites.
It's unfortunate that we've not reviewed any of the material from electro-acoustic composer Olivia Block. She had begun making music in Austin in the early '90s, having started a guttural shoegaze project called The Marble Index, but shelved that project upon meeting Michael Northam, John Grzinich, and Seth Nehil. Those three had begun their explorations with field recordings, electrical vibration, found object ruminations, volatile drone, and organized decay, and it was this sensibility that inspired Block to leap into piles of rubble armed with little more than a contact microphone. While all four of these artists emerged from a similar aesthetic, each has wandered down his or her own path, with Block taking more of a musique concrete approach, often bringing in various instrumentalists to provide a particular timbre to accompany her tape machinations, not unlike the early Jim O'Rourke compositions Tamper, Scend, and Disengage. One of those chamber musicians who Block had employed was Kyle Bruckmann. The two had met in Chicago in the late '90s, with Bruckmann contributing to almost all of Block's compositions since 1999. Bruckmann, now based in San Francisco, has quite the career in the realms of avant-jazz / new music / classical-experimentation / whatnot. Despite their decade long collaboration, Teem marks their first proper collaborative body of work.
At the beginning of the record, a scrabbling of small metallic objects builds upon a spiralling drone from Bruckmann's circular breathing through the oboe, followed by a series of descending, purposefully off-kilter melodic phrases from that same oboe. As painterly as this piece is, the second track uses Bruckmann's circular breathing for a far more atonal, bruitist attack through a head-throbbing elongated blurt, that recalls those Hermann Nitsch symphonic noise assaults or Penderecki's scabrous crescendos. Block's sensibility speaks more on this track through the oblique noise attack and transitions into passages of concrete noises from various pre-industrial machines struggling to get started. Glowing drones of feedback hang upon a muffling passage of woodwind errata, eventually building through jittery abrasions again reprising that Nitsch-like howl.
We here at Aquarius Records can be proud that we have an audience who is just as passionate and devoted as we are to a broad spectrum of musics. As much as we would like to, we just can't completely cover every amazing genre, sub-genre, regional dialect, and radical enclave of the world's musical community. We definitely try our best, but just imagine if we did somehow manage, those biweekly email lists would easily triple in size with our fingers spread even further than they already are. While it would be nice to expand our little aesthetic fiefdom, we have to admit that there are plenty of shops around the globe that fill in the gaps. One of those is London's Sound 323, whose niche market emphasizes all things dealing with academic composition, free improv, electro-acoustics, and in particular the pristine aspects of what has been dubbed the "New London Silence." In fact, one of chief protagonists of this London circle of Feldman-esque composers is Sound 323's proprietor Mark Wastell. He along with The Wire's scribe Brian Marley are the editors of a brick of a book published by Sound 323, handsomely designed as an art edition monograph and filled with articles by David Toop, Clive Bell, Brian Marley, Dan Warburton, Andy Hamilton and Will Montgomery as well as texts expounding upon the eroding distinction between improvisation and composition from the likes of Otomo Yoshihide, Bernhard Gunter, Phil Durrant, Steve Roden, Jerome Noetinger, Mattin, and many many other. The book also features a DVD of concert footage from the likes of Keith Rowe, Evan Parker, John Tilbury, Tetuzi Akiyama, Eddie Prevost, John Butcher, and more. Hmm, curious that all of the latest members of AMM make appearances, but no footage from the ensemble that pretty much started the whole push toward the decentered notion of what is composed beforehand and what is created in the moment.
With sound art becoming more and more of a cultural force in the art world (perhaps that should be art with a capital 'A'), Blocks Of Consciousness And The Unbroken Continuum is bound to be one of those historically important documents, detailing one particular cultural phenomenon as it happens by those who are making it happen. At 350+ pages bound in a hefty hardcover book, this is no easy tome to digest; but is well the effort you'll put into it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Solo experimentalism from Joe Bloggs, (rhBand, ex-Ralph Haxton Collective). In keeping with rhBand's drone/krautrock intent, Bloggs utilizes metal bowls, contact mics, woodwinds, harmonium, pvc pipe, and more to create some lovely, repetitive, organic sounds.
