We just love it when a plan comes together. Somebody thought it would be a good idea for these three Norwegians and one American to form a band and knock out some killer electric avant jazz improv jams. And indeed it was! Of course, just WHO these Norwegians and American were made a big difference: Box consists of guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim (Scorch Trio and a million other projects over the years), bassist Trevor Dunn (Fantomas, Secret Chiefs 3, Mr. Bungle, etc. etc.), drummer Morgan Agren (Mats//Morgan Band), and on electronics & keyboards, Stale Storlokken (Supersilent, Humcrush). None of 'em novices at acting and reacting as interesting sound-makers in diverse contexts.
The first track, "Untitled 9", is the longest, at 17 minutes, and pretty much says "Shred". Loud and clear. If you liked the Scorch Trio's scorching disc on Rune Grammofon, you'll probably dig this too. And the remaining five tracks here are also worthy, offering up plenty more moody bass burble, glitchy synth textures, threatening electric guitar, and percussive percolation. And though the disc is entitled Studio 1, we should note that this was all improvised live to analog tape with no overdubs or edits. Just pure badass instrumental interplay from four dudes who know what they're doin'.
The return of these Pittsburgh heavies, the oddly named Br0wn Angel (yup, that's a zero), who deliver their swansong in the form of this epic and darkly melodic chunk of churning low-end heaviness, having recently called it a day. But what a note to go out on! And what a change from their self titled debut. That record (which is included here on the accompanying cd-r) was a sick and sinister chunk of superdistorted sludge, equal parts industrial pummel and droned out black crawl, with the band equally capable of kicking some seriously dense mathrock jams as they are churning, downtuned ultradoom. But the first track here, at least the first few minutes, displays a side of the band only hinted at on the first record. Starting with some mysterious field recordings, the band unfurl a thick sprawl of minor key buzz, and washed out melancholic heaviness, the title "You Can Find Heartbreak Anywhere" suits the sound perfectly, the vocals a weary croon, in a different context this would be some woozy dreamlike slowcore, but here, wreathed in thick, crumbling swaths of guitarnoise, squalls of feedback, and massive drum pound, it somehow makes it sound even that much more moody and malevolent. But then again, this is Br0wn Angel, so halfway through, the song splinters into a woozy start/stop, with squealing feedback, and harsh vokills, before again switching gears, and adding some chiming melodies to the proceedings, giving the sound a sort of ultra melodic Godflesh style industrial vibe, maybe Godflesh fused to Interpol, which sounds like a weird, but an AWESOME combo, especially the final salvo, where the vocals are belted out, and the song is transformed into something seriously dark and emotional.
The rest of the record is equally progressive and emotional and WEIRD, the second track is a dense slab of math metal chug and churn, a definite AmRep thing going on, but much more abject and downtuned, and like that first track, the band deftly incorporate all sorts of unlikely melody and still more clean vox. From there on out, it's a constant battle between light and dark, noise and melody, the sort of sonic tension that makes for compelling heaviness, "Days Of Vagrancy" taking those massive drums, and wreathing them in woozy, heavily effected guitars, and thick caustic bass buzz, the result more atmospheric than brutal, at times reminding us of eternal aQ faves Geronimo, that sort of almost motorik pound and mesmerizing bassline, surrounding by swirling clouds of noise and FX. "Did You Ever Need Me" is some seriously heartfelt indie rock / post rock in industrialblacknoise's clothing, stripped of the huge drums and buzzing guitars, it might pass for pure indie rock, but but instead, the sonic heft and underpinning darkness elevate Br0wn Angel's sound to something much more intense, and emotionally resonant. The last two tracks offer up more of BA's new twisted industrial / metal / gloom pop hybrid, seems like exactly the sort of thing fans of Pinkish Black and Wreck And Reference would dig big time.
Sad that this is the last we'll hear from these guys, but like we said, we couldn't have hoped for a better final missive. The lp includes a cd-r, that contains both the new record, AND the self titled debut, which we described thusly:
Br0wn Angel (yeah, that's Br0wn with a zero) hail from Pittsburgh, and offer up a heaving helping of blown out, super industrial metallic crunch, some strange hybrid of Godflesh, Author & Punisher, Big Black, and Jesu, but they add all sorts of unlikely stuff that makes this SO much more than just wannabe Streetcleaner. The opening track alone should have metaldrone obsessives in a trance, it's a blackened doomdrone raga, that finds these guys weaving a sprawling landscape of crumbling, superdistorted guitar crunch, a bit like SUNNO))) but way more melodic, infusing this blackened crawl with chiming melodies, strangely melodic seeing as they're set amidst barren fields of crumble and pound, the sound thick, gristly, but warm, and thick, and then the vocals come in, and they're quite unexpected, a monk-like chant, transforming the song into something way more ritualistic and spiritual, and we can tell you, if that first song had been stretched out to fill up both sides, we would have been pleased as punch, but instead, the band do get way more metallic and propulsive, the sound thickening into a sort of slowed down tarpit Austerity Program, thick guitars, lots of harmonics, streaks of feedback, starts and stops, ultra dynamic, sheets of guitar skree over black industrial creeps and proto industrial metal pummel, which again would have been just fine, but these guys continue to twist and tangle up their sound, occasionally launching into full on progged out math rock, but just as often slipping into some sort of super sludge death march, the interesting part is how those two sides bleed into that plodding, industrial core, creating a fucked up hybrid that is all their own.
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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A few lists back, we reviewed the debut lp from Pittsburgh heavies Br0wn Angel (and yeah, that's brown with a zero, not an 'o'), a fantastic and fantastically heavy chunk of industrial metallic crunch, that reminded us of everyone from Swans to Godflesh to SUNNO))) to Jesu, a perfect blend of hazy washed out melody and lumbering Teutonic crush, rhythmic and ritualistic, even a little proggy/mathy at points. Well, the band got in touch with us, and sent us their VERY LAST copies of their first demo, the wonderfully titled Vomitter, and while the vibe is similar, the sound is definitely way more raw and lo-fi. The opening track is a surprisingly warm and dreamy bit of buzz drenched crumble, all glitchy and rapidly decaying, like the guys plugged their guitars directly into an old transistor radio with dying batteries, making it sound like some alien Appalachia, definitely reminding us of Amps For Christ, but the sound finally switches to something more in keeping with their lp, twisted shards of feedback, barely audible drum pummel, super distorted voices, the tape hiss and warped recording more prominent than the instruments themselves, the songs really only barely audible through the cloud of crunch and buzz and whir and rumble, the sound peaking, and those peaks becoming just another blown out rhythm. Not heavy so much as distorted to fucking high heaven, and in the process transformed into some sort of experimental textural rhythmic outsider drone-noise weirdness. They do an Arab On Radar cover too apparently, although you'd be hard pressed to tell.
We're digging this a lot, and imagining, that it might not be nearly so amazing sans the noise and sonic detritus. Features members of the Microwaves and Creation Is Crucifixion, and is already out of print, we have the last 7 or 8 copies. Each one hand painted.
Two of these names sound familiar as members of the mighty Vibracathedral Orchestra, and with the addition of one Sticky Foster, this trio kicks up a very VCO-like din. Clattery drone with a distinctly Dead C like vibe, due in no small part to the lo-fi recording, as well as the gritty, grimy ambience. Pulses and throbs are woven into a thick, heady drone, with chimes and tinkles, shimmers and skree, and splattershot cardboard box percussion. Noisy and lovely and hypnotic.
Taking a cue from fellow British drone alchemist Andrew Chalk, Paul Bradley offers an elegant miasma of elongated tones from guitar and piano, the latter of which was contributed by Current 93's Maja Elliott. The overall feel of Sketches From Dust is thoroughly amorphous in its strategy for a pure ambience (in keeping true to the Brian Eno ethos of such early masterpieces as On Land and Thursday Afternoon). After stretching the timbral monochrome from piano and guitar into a shimmering chorale, Bradley gingerly places these sounds in a loosened compositional framework that shares some similarities to how Mr. Chalk arranged his abstracted piano on Blue Eyes Of The March. On occasion, Bradley allows for clusters of Elliott's piano to flicker within the freefloating drone breathing with the quality of billowing clouds and transient early morning fog whose refracted light through water vapor makes everything obfuscated and luminous at the same time. Very nicely done.
Another fantastic release that somehow slipped through the cracks, this one from Paul Bradley, who besides performing and recording in Monos, with Colin Potter (Nurse With Wound, Ora, etc), has released an amazing amount of gorgeous releases on his own, pastandpresentcollide most definitely being one of them.
A lush, gorgeously hushed expanse of smooth muted minimal dronemusic, a sort of smeared new age shimmer, deep swells of stretched out melodies, a slow burning barely there bit of tonal thrum, an absolutely perfect late night drifting off soundtrack, resonant, reverberant, the tones overlapping, layered, bleeding into one another, the notes melting into one epic softly swirling organic whole, close listening reveals some mysterious ghostly voices, drifting way below the softly undulating dronescape, mesmerizing, soothing, tranquil, so so lovely.
Any one into deep minimal dronemusic will love this. Certainly essential for fans of Jonathan Coleclough, Ora Monos, Machinefabriek, Main, Darren Tate, and the like.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES when it first came out!! We have about 6 or 7, not sure if we'll be able to get more...
Colin Potter and Paul Bradley have been collaborating over the past eight or nine years, between Potter's ongoing involvement in Nurse With Wound. On previous releases, Potter and Bradley have mustered monolithic, clinical studies in tectonic low-end rumblings and unsettled drone vibration work. The drone is still the principle sound element for The Simple Plan; but, here the two set out to record in real-time with synths, guitars, and a bunch of effects. The five extended renderings are dreamy driftscapes that certainly harken to the '70s mantras of psychedelic ambience touched with phased guitar dissonance, glistening surfaces of reflecting-pool ambience, and meditative looping jams. The massive 18 minute "Gloaming" is the center piece of the album with sitar-like harmonic overtones arching out of a pastoral set of interwoven loops with smaller glistens, shivers, and sparkles glowing from the underbelly of this cinematically expansive piece of psychedelidronemusik. Certainly, those Eno collaborations with Cluster and Robert Fripp come to mind (especially Evening Star); but even the recent crop of psychedelic dreamscapers like Emeralds, Celer, and William Fowler Collins draw comparisons to this nice piece of work. Lovely!
The first 135 copies of The Simple Plan also come with a bonus disc with solo reworkings of this material from both artists.
It has been far too long since we've heard anything from Jonathan Coleclough. So long in fact that we probably need to refresh some of our readership on this stalwart British drone artist, whose name alone became a shorthand for mesmerism that deftly balanced dissonance with sympathetic tones and a subtle use of melody drifting ever so slightly within a narrow band of frequencies. Yup, that's what Coleclough delivers; and for many years now, we've cited his work as the gold-standard of dronemuzik, with perhaps Tim Hecker as the only other experimental musician to get cross-referenced in more instances. Those lovely tones and eerie metallic shimmers that enamored us to Coleclough are firmly entrenched on this album, which also features some other pretty heavy hitters. Colin Potter is another British experimental chap whom everyone should know, not only because he's responsible for working on some of the best Nurse With Wound albums (e.g. Salt Marie Celeste, Thunder Perfect Mind, etc.) but also because he's crafted some intoxicating electronic albums over the years of kosmiche brainbending and full-thrum minimalism that would give Manuel Gottsching and Coil a run for their money. Hitoshi Kojo is the Japanese drone-minstrel who has alternately worked under the solo moniker Spiracle and in the duo Juppala Kappio, slipping between the glassy acoustic mantras of Organum and the freak-folk ragas of most any album on Fonal. Paul Bradley may be the least well known contributor, here; but this British drone musician has done exceptional work over the years with both Potter and Coleclough in various guises.
This album was recorded back in 2006 in Colin Potter's former studio, which literally was a water tower with all four parties conjuring their various shadow-clad drones, shivering phase patterns, spectral frequencies, and lonely textures. Water Mountain feels very much like a thoughtful Conny Plank production in which an organic dreaminess flows through all of these sounds, which seem to be transmitted by each individual through whatever means, and effortlessly molded into a eerily blissed out drone album. Watery gurgles, bowed metal trills, and crumbled soil stain the sparkling hums and stretched occlusions throughout both discs, gliding in and out of hallowed, church organ minimalism, tectonic rumblings, and one blustery crescendo of atomically cracked distortion that fires up near the end of disc one. Altogether, this is a magnificent set of recordings and one that will pull Coleclough back into the public spotlight by hook or by crook. Super limited pressing of just 250 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's a nice pairing, featuring Expo 70, who needs no introduction to the aQ readership, and Brainworlds, an Atlanta based guitarist whose work at least here rivals that of Expo 70. Both of these long tracks are recordings from a night of cosmic meditation in 2010 at the seminal performance space Eyedrum in Atlanta. Brainworlds' deep guitar tones float weightlessly in a shimmering expanse from his hypnotic loops and evocative cosmic solo work outs that come across like some lost Ash Ra Tempel jam getting remixed by Troum at their most stratospheric. Really stunning work, and this would have been great to see live given the reverberant acoustics of Eyedrum. Justin Wright was in more of a cosmic mindset for that performance too. Wright's guitars take after some of Michael Rother's phrasing at the beginning of his set, locking into a darker heavier mantra as the performance moves forward with a pulsing rhythm and heavy chords reminiscent of Expo 70's masterful album Black Ohm. Classic drugged-out space drone bliss from both Brainworlds and Expo 70. We're pretty sure this is a 60 minute tape; it's damn long regardless... but it's limited too, just 100 copies released from the Hooker Vision imprint run in part by Rachel Evans of Motion Sickness of Time Travel.
Surrealistic solo artist The Bran (Another plight of medic's...) Pos, aka AQ-customer Jake Rodriguez (who helps to run & book the Clit Stop venue here in SF), has released what I think is his actual debut cd, after a variety of cd-r releases. Experimental to the core, in live performances Jake's a veritable Tasmanian Devil of insane vocal manipulations and electronic effects. Here, the vocals take a back seat (or can't be differentiated from the electronics!), it's pretty much all outer-space distortion and chaos-collage, like a Masonna intent on making 'weird' noises instead of painful ones. One track features his free improv duo Compomicro-Dexall. For fans of Mike Patton and other John Zorn-approved avant garde noise craziness. Good stuff. Comes packaged in one of those clear plastic clam-shell cases.
Aaah, the fountain overflows with a facetious flood of tweaked tunes from Mr. Mildred Pit and Mr. Otis F. Odder. Together they are the Bran Flakes from Seattle, WA. Giving a tip of the hat to Irwin Chusid (radio host and champion of musical eccentrics everywhere ---Raymond Scott to name but one), they plunder and paste melodic incongruities (what was that?! a tv show theme? and
Seattle-based duo The Bran Flakes have put together another cherry of an album. Sonic plunderers who must have ridiculous amounts of thrift-store $1 records, The Bran Flakes painstakingly yet assuredly cut everything up -- macabre children's songs, sleigh bells, latin percussive rattles, afro cuban drumming, tooting horns, minor key strings, occasional drum 'n bass, bad disco, some goofy approximations of dub, wurlitzer organ, noir film samples, oompah oompah in the left channel, funky drummer-style breakbeat on the right -- and arrange everything into precise sonic juxtapositions, resulting in a very confident and enjoyable trip from beginning to end (in fact the end is a three minute long recitation of people's names, jesus how long did it take them to cut *that* stuff together?)
The album's highest point comes when they cut up (Terry Riley "You're Nogood"-style!) everyone's favorite muppets Kermit and Fozzie Bear singing "Movin' right along...". It's so frickin' wonderful and happy go lucky -- can't you just see 'em in the Studebaker? While most comparisons to fellow cut 'n pasters involve names like Wobbly and Negativland, I think the group will fit nicely right next to your Kid Koala tape, your People Like Us cd, and maybe even your 12" collection of solemn DJ Shadow, who uses the same tools -- vinyl -- but never cracks a smile, whereas The Bran Flakes are all about hilarity. Look at what moog pioneer Jean Jacques Perrey says about 'em:
"I enjoyed your record very much, it is so fresh, so cool, made for people who have a 'child soul' and at the same time perfectly elaborated harmonically and technically with some funny winks to other composers."
Recommended for the lighthearted!
Class is now in session with the much anticipated vinyl reissue of Glenn Branca's seminal 1980 debut of post-modern no-wave composition, Lesson No.1. The first release on legendary New York label 99 Records (who also introduced Liquid Liquid and ESG to the world), Lesson No.1 combined the New York school of minimalist composition (Terry Riley and La Monte Young) with the burgeoning ferocity of dissonance and feedback prevalent in no-wave and punk of the time (Sonic Youth, Theoretical Girls, and The Static). While Branca was not the first to combine modern composition and rock tropes, or lead bands with multiple guitarists (Rhys Chatham was doing that first, though his Guitar Trio recording was released much later), Branca's compositions tended to wield much more sonic power and hefty brutal dynamics than Chatham, leaning more toward heavy ear-shattering club performances at CBGB's than respectful art-spaces like The Kitchen.
This reissue includes an extra one-sided 12" of the 16 minute bonus track, "Bad Smells", originally on a John Giorno compilation, Who Are you Staring At? which was commissioned for a Twyla Tharp dance piece. It also features the guitar work of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo who played in many of Branca's performing bands before forming Sonic Youth. You can hear the churning origins of Sonic Youth's trademark chiming dissonance in every one of Glenn Branca's early big bang epics. Essential!
There's been quite a little resurgence of interest in the eighties downtown NY scene, specifically the guitar orchestras and proto-post rock of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. This DVD features two live performances recorded in 1995 with an unknown (at least to us) ensemble with Branca at the helm conducting. The music is fantastic, dark and propulsive. Repetitive and trance-like, with churning guitars and tribal drums. Sound remarkably similar to AQ favorites Circle or Salvatore. Visually, there's not a whole lot to see, although it is cool to hear what sounds like your basic rock band, but is in fact a large ensemble, with guitar players struggling to 'rock out' but stuck behind their music stands. The visuals do reflect the music quite nicely though, dark and brooding, with spare lighting and lots of empty space on the screen.
I only ever knew Glenn Branca as "the guitar orchestra guy" responsible for assembling huge groups of guitarists (often well known rock guitarists), to perform huge, throbbing, hypnotic and repetitive compositions -- some for ten guitarists, fifty guitarists, even one hundred guitarists. The recent Rhys Chatham box, reviewed a few lists back, suggested that perhaps Branca's guitar orchestra concept was 'borrowed' from Chatham, as Branca had performed in many of Chatham's multiple guitar ensembles. But in much the same way that we were surprised by the rock-ness of the early Chatham material, this early recording from Branca and his four guitar/bass/drums outfit has much more in common with noisy post punk/post rock: Bastro, Bitch Magnet, Slint and the like, than Ligeti, Penderecki, Messiaen or any of the other names dropped in Lee Ranaldo's liner notes. Extended drony, atonal rhythmic explorations stretch on and on, building horror-movie-minor-key tension, building and building and building, before bursting into unrelenting rock rhythm/riffs. Lots of the more rock parts sound like an instrumental version of North Western punk rockers The Wipers, but with lots of odd dynamics ala Bastro or Slint and with the extended riff repetition of modern minimalism stretching the songs into droning, hypnotic master works. Throbbing and relentless, pounding and intricate, weaving back and forth between ferocious, unrelenting rock-action, and epic, complex geometric stop/start, hypno-minimalism.
The Vienna improv-glitch squad strikes again! From some of the same folks in the bands Radian and Trapist, including the duo responsible for the Too Beautiful To Burn disc on Erstwhile, Die Instabilit�t der Symmetrie (The Instability of Symmetry) is another freakin' great disc of what we might call laboratory jazz. You know, improv music where the notes played on instruments are suspended over what sounds like crackling chemical reactions and Geiger counter clicks. These four live musicians (playing guitar, double bass, lap steel, synth, drums and percussion) interact with each other and their own electronic/computer processing, creating a beautiful low-key soundscape, full of ominous doomful droning and abstract minimal melody, like gathered stormclouds sending down glitchy streaks of rain... There's a quiet, haunting beauty to much of this, with circling tones and the rattle of bells, restrained percussion sketching broken grooves. It's lulling, but beware the sudden pulsing squall of static. Definitely recommended, specifically to all into the likes of the aforementioned Radian/Trapist, Starfuckers, Supersilent, and Spring Heel Jack's Blue Series recordings. And while a brief liner note from Siewert says something academically cryptic about this being a site-specific audiovisual project, the sound on this disc is completely sufficient for home listening enjoyment!
Edited by West Coast sound artists Brandon LaBelle and Steve Roden, "Site of Sound" is a compendium of theoretical discourses within conceptually based sound art. Along with the rather dense and at times poetic texts, the book also features a cd of work by the authors. Featured both on cd and in print are Achim Wollscheid, Christina Kubisch, RLW, John Hudak, Toshiya Tsonuda, Christof Migone, Steve Peters, m/s, and others. Text only contributers include Loren Chasse, Giancarlo Toniuitti, CM von Hausswolff, Leif Elgrenn, David Dunn, etc.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Of Norwegian decent, though a current resident of Northern Ireland, Kjetil D. Brandsdal constructs ominous lo-fi droning tape loops similar to a gritty variant of Omit accompanied by throbbing de-tuned bass and occasional post-VU strum. A very nice introduction / documentation on the perennially great Corpus Hermeticum!
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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This compiles two hard to find vinyl only records from the Norwegian experimentalist Kjetil D. Brandsdal. With a freefloating agenda of subconsciously exploring sound (not far from Nurse With Wound's earliest sonic freakouts but with the sound of NZ freenoise artists), Brandsdal giddily wallows in the muck of cable buzz, overblown 4-track recordings for organ & guitar, and feedback from malfucntioning amplifiers. All the while managing to elicit simple melodic passages. Difficult but enjoyable listening.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace presents the fourth album from the mysterious experimentalist Kjetil D. Brandstal who hails from Norway. Brandsdal's gritty lo-fi dinscapes for cracked guitar feedback drone and turntable damage (don't expect any Skratch Piklz wizardry, rather it sounds as though he's applying thick balls of dust to the needle to force skips and loops) appear devoid of structure, beginning, or end. Freefloating stuff along the same lines as Gate, Total/Skullflower, and No Neck Blues Band.
We recently discovered this little label in Germany called Gruenrekorder, who specialize in "Phonography and Audio Art" which translates to field recordings, turntablism and audio installations, which definitely sounded right up our alley. We then discovered that they had 60 or 70 releases, probably more by the time of this review, most cd-r's and all incredibly limited, usually to 50 or less. Yikes. Had to do some quick thinking, so we picked two of the most promising sounding and got a bunch of those (a bunch meaning 25 copies, which is half of the pressing). So elsewhere on this list you'll find the other Gruenrekorder release, a field recording of bats (and you know our love of bats is second only to our love of frogs!), which somehow seems to perfectly balance this one right here, a live recording of a sound installation for turntables, records and... plastic angels.
The set up goes like this, a bunch of turntables, all set up on a small dais, each with a plastic angel spinning in the middle of the lp, and each angel with a weight hung between its wings, which shifts with each rotation, and causes various loops to alter, drift, shift, change duration, overlap, all the while, Brandstifter, the man responsible, crawls around moving the angels, replacing the records, changing speeds, the result is pretty magnificent, a looped hypnotic soundscape of operatic voices, fluttering flutes and fiddles, droning whirs, hiccupping song snippets, skipping stuttering rhythms, the vibe very festive, as most of the discs are choral, the voices locked into hypnotic mantras, the various cracks and skips adding percussive filigree. Some passages are epic and triumphant, voices soaring, while others are murky and mumbled, sounding like they could have been yanked from some mysterious Finnish free folk record or from some blurred Philip Jeck turntable landscape.
Haunting and eerie, like some damaged funhouse mirror holiday soundscape, Christmas carols twisted and gnarled, holiday favorites scratched up and looped, bits of opera looped into fuzzy repetitive seasick mantras, you can almost imagine some Tim Burton-ish mad scientist armed with a bunch of dusty scratched up records and weird old fashioned turntables and all those painted angels, hovering in a dark cobwebby corner of some old seventies mall, families and children steering clear of the crazy man in the corner and his murky muddy choral din. SO AWESOME!!!
Beautifully packaged, printed cd-r, full color sleeve, but again, LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! So once these are gone, that's it...
Polish "lounge-psych" on Last Visible Dog.
Another new release on Oakland tape label Sanity Muffin (along with Moevot, Starlite Coffins, Rich Jacobs and more on this week's list!), this one from new to us Oakland outfit Bre'r, who traffics in the sort of sound we can't ever seem to get enough of, sun dappled and dusty expanses of hazy drift, washed out and softly psychedelic, faded and wreathed in a sort of soft focus gauze, sounding a little like Stars Of The Lid recorded By Tim Hecker, or something that might end up on Time Released Sound, pastoral smoldering drifts of reverbed guitars, floating above soft swirls of rumbling drones and roiling soft noise shimmer, meditative and tranquil, darkly contemplative, blissfully burnt zoner drift of the highest order, the perfect late night soundtrack, the ideal headphone score for a lonely wander through the empty streets of some mysterious city, lush and lovely, but with just a hint of sinister sonic shadow. Gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!
Blurry, dusty, and hazy. That's how we like 'em. It's no secret that we've long had a soft spot for the woozily droning psychedelic sounds of Stars Of The Lid and Tim Hecker, and this template for ambient driftscapes can be all the more effective when dumped onto cassette with all of the tape hiss and aural detritus adding to the dreaminess of it all. Mobility In Six Parts by Oakland's Bre'r falls down this aesthetic rabbit hole thanks once again to Sanity Muffin. These longform, meditative tracks swirl and whirl with hypnotic slow-burning melodies repeating through the shimmering guitars and lonely soft-noise smolder. It's hardly the shoegaze model of overblown distortion denatured through an excess of reverb; Bre'r is far more of a lush minimalism run through pools of echo and the ambient hushed shadowiness of a late-night recording session in a rumpled bedroom studio in constructing an emotional soundtrack for somebody's personal communion with a lonely street light whose luminous sulfur glows in the night sky, oblivious to everything around it. Somewhere near the drum-less space of Tarentel and the instrumental folk-drone of Natural Snow Buildings. Limited to just 100 copies as well.
A couple lists back, we reviewed a Brainbombs related record called Regler, which was a terrifically and geniusly difficult listen (and yeah, we still have a few copies left, just ask), consisting of one side a continuous, blasting D-beat noise jam, the other side near silence, a high concept sprawl of musique concrete, ostensibly made up of all the cutting room floor between song silences, but c'mon, why wouldn't you expect difficult listening from one of the Brainbombs?
Somehow we missed out on the debut from this -other- Brainbombs offshoot, which is a much easier sonic pill to swallow for sure, but still plenty weird. In fact, if you can imagine the droned out miserablist garage sludge of that band, recast as something more tripped out and krautrocky, well, then Bremen is right up your alley. Long tracks, consisting of loping basslines, motorik rhythms, woozy, psychedelic organs, all blurred into hazy mesmeric grooves, with some weird fixation on space, so there's definitely something kosmische going on, but it's murky, and muddy, lo-fi, tranced out and darkly druggy, long layered tones draped over skeletal rhythms, and wreathed in thick siren like swirls, and nestled in thick, syrupy low-end. And that's just the first track.
The sound slips into something much more ambient and downright dreamy, a swirling hazy of disembodied guitar buzz, and smeared organ chords, slivers of reversed twang, all stretched way out into a dark, mellifluous thrum, haunting and downright lovely, eventually, blossoming into sweetly soaring, harmonic flecked psychedelic shimmer. For the rest of the lp, the sound remains rooted firmly in the abstract, ditching the drums completely, instead unfurling lush waves of psychedelic space drift, droned out kraut-psych, and softly swirling cosmic ambience, only slipping into something rhythmic right near the end, a pulsing tribal rhythm surfacing amidst the pulsing murk.
And so it goes, the 3rd side sounds like some strange hybrid of Expo '70 and Earth, lacing shimmering synths, with twang flecked riffage, a sprawling ambience, that sounds like the soundtrack to a moonlit desert beneath a field of stars. And that track is also pocked with coughing, as if this was just a couple guys messing around, which maybe it is, but it's also sort of weirdly transcendent and beautiful, especially considering it's the guy from the Brainbombs!!! The final side is even more blessed out and pretty, a spare, almost Durutti Column-ish guitarscape, that drifts and glimmers and shimmers, all washed out and sound dappled and impossibly lovely. Wow.
Unexpected, and unexpectedly fantastic. Not at all necessarily recommended for fans of the Brainbombs, but anyone into spacey, shimmery prettiness, and psychedelic cosmic ambience, this will definitely hit the spot.
Finally managed to get enough of these to list, the debut release from the oddly monikered Brennendes Gehirn, aka Matt Harries, who in his guise as BG, creates dense, stormy landscapes of sound, crumbling distorted atmospheres and murky buried melodies, squall of bristling chaotic blacknoise, and dark sprawls of haunting minimal drift. A mix of black ambience, post industrial, and electronic soundscaping, BG is the sort of thing that should appeal to fans of Tenhornedbeast, MZ412, Wolf Eyes, Wraiths, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Scorn and the like. Scorn seems like an odd one to include, but it's an occasional tendency toward a sort of beat driven sound that makes this truly unique, while the opening track follows a fairly standard slow build, from creeping drone-y dread to explosive roiling heaviness, the second track mixes it up, launching right into a blast of blaring howl and skree, but letting those sounds settle, and blur into each other, creating a sort of gauzy sonic patina beneath which melodies drift and unfurl, layers shift and transform, it's a drone, and a noisy one at that, but it's super active and constantly in motion, with the sort of momentum that this sort of sound usually lacks.
"Annihilation (Awakens New Life)" is where it starts to get REALLY good, a looped sample of some sort of zither, over a simple hand drum rhythm, all over a dense undulating sprawl of crumbling superdistorted blackness, then some female vocals come in, are doused with effects, and the track lurches into motion, a sort of Muslimgauze via Merzbow, tripped out and heavy, but darkly rhythmic, the noise is peeled away, the drums skitter and shuffle, and then the noise returns TENfold, a massive cascade of churning almost metallic sounding riffage (although it sounds like some strange sample), before drifting off in a haze of blur and buzz. Then there's "Elegie Fur Clemens Scheitz", which is a fantastically grimy slab of downtempo loop-age, like Portishead looped and spinning at 16 rpm, super druggy and totally mesmerizing, the beat and groove surrounded on all sides by heaving barrages of noise, might be the coolest track here.
But hang on for the epic 21 minute closer, that again sets a super abstract echo drenched beat down, in a wide open expanse of weird reverby emptiness, the beat never really gaining any sort of momentum, instead, the sounds seem to get more and more low fidelity, the track a slow smoldering ur-drone, constantly changing timbre, from murky and muddy, to bright and brittle, and finally to psychedelic cacophony. Interestingly enough, that 'beat' surfaces subtly throughout, as does a strange sampled voice (from Mullholland Drive), finishing off with some melancholic piano, and a surprising final burst of caustic noise.
Beautifully packaged in hand stamped cardstock digpak style sleeves, released on Ordo Pestilentia, the label run by Wraiths, and most likely very very limited.
Now available on vinyl!!!
The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!
Brethren indeed. This is the work of two consummate stringed instrument manipulators working in the improvised avant-folk idiom... Brother #1, from England, AQ fave James Blackshaw (who just blew us away with an amazing solo instore performance two weeks ago!), a dexterous master of the 12 string guitar. Brother #2, from Belgium, Renaissance lute player Jozef Van Wissem (who was also recently scheduled for an AQ instore alongside his pal Tetuzi Akiyama but unfortunately had to cancel due to a bad cold or flu). Van Wissem has received acclaim from us and others for his solo recordings incorporating electronics and field recordings alongside his innovations on classical lute improvisation.
Together, it's a perfect pairing, Blackshaw and Van Wissem conjuring a delicately dense intertwining of forward-flowing fingerpicked minimalist melodies... stately spiritual praises that are all instrumental but for a brief Current 93ish spoken coda to track one, "...The Lifting Of The Veil". And track three, "How The Unencumbered Soul Advises That One Not Refuse The Calls Of A Good Spirit", is more of an electrically-charged, expansive soundscape of moody string-strike. Electronics, "tennis edits" (??) and the "feline vocals" of one Bun Bun are also woven into the mix with Blackshaw's 12 string and Van Wissem's baroque lute.
To sum up: alchemical loveliness, utterly mesmeric! Really our only complaint about this is also a compliment: at just under a half hour total (28:39), we wish it were longer! The trance-like reveries this induces are too soon interrupted unless we set our cd player on repeat... (not an option with the super-limited vinyl version of this of course.) That's right, the lp version is LIMITED TO 330 COPIES. Whereas the cd is limited to a mere 1000. And we only have a few of the vinyl...
The hermetic concern with dualities, whether they be natural and spiritual, mysteries veiled and revealed, fertility and drought, or as the the title of this disc alludes to the religiously symbolic wolf and lamb, greatly inform this collaboration between avant-lutist Jozef Van Wissem and twelve-string wunderkind James Blackshaw. Named after a 13th century cult of Northern European heretics, this is the second installment for the duo, who give us four more pieces to mirror the four from the first installment. Where on their debut disc we felt the sonic fullness of Blackshaw's cascading twelve string repetitions and on one track Van Wissem's progressive use of distorted electronics, on this new album, the sound is more ascetically restrained, favoring Van Wissem's use of reconfigured medieval and classical renaissance compositions into spiraling but lyrically melodic motifs in which Blackshaw adds interlocking labyrinthian figures in DADEAD tuning. This is sacred music for mad monks!
The first new recordings from Brighter Death Now in how many years? The monsterous collection Very Little Fun tracked material up until 2005, but wasn't released until 2011; so it was probably 2007 when BDN published the blacknoise assault 1890. Brighter Death Now, of course, is the solo black-ambient / death-industrial project for Roger Karmanik, the founder of the seminal imprint Cold Meat Industries. Karmanik closed down CMI in late 2013 / early 2014 as he was suffering mentally and physically from the drain of running the label. The terminus of the label, however, brought focus back on his own work which had been dormant for so long. By the end of 2014, Karmanik had fully immersed himself within the shroud of Brighter Death Now, completing this album and announcing the birth of his new label Familjegraven whose sole purpose is to release his own projects, including rarities, reissues, and new recordings. With Promises Of Death begins with a burst of power electronics might and fury of Swedish / English sloganeering blurting above a vertiginous torrent of thrummed black noise and deafening reverberation. It's somewhat atypical for BDN to encroach into the territories of Con-Dom or Grey Wolves, as is the locomotive noise-futurism of "Hate Is For Beginners." The raw-nerve intensity of poorly grounded electronics cycling a diabolical hum collapses amidst the signature BDN collages of true crime / confessional dialogue buried deeply in the mix; and by the end of the album, Karmanik has slowly shifted to those engulfing shadows and fear-mongering orchestrations of coal-black monotone. It's all so deliciously morose, this Brighter Death Now.
Psychedelic Pig has had a great track record of uncovering wonderful and rare recordings of avant-esoterica. The first PP reissue was the Metgumbnerbone album which found The New Blockaders' Richard Rupenus working with a bunch of occultishly minded individuals for a fantasticly creepy ritual music for found percussion and Tibetan horns. Then, there was the unreleased material from the idiot-savant-garde ensemble Die Todliche Doris; but now, they've chosen to dig up this album from the Dadaist realm of the Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa. It's unclear who Brigitte is but supposedly she had worked with H.N.A.S. at sometime, and the Hansen Experience does feature the H.N.A.S.' mainstay Achim P. Li Khan. Let's just say that if you like H.N.A.S. then you'll love this album, as it sounds very similar to The Book Of Dingenskirchen and Kuttel Im Frost with lots of asynchonous tape loops whirling sickly in elliptical patterns, prog-rock basslines, fumbled drum-kit workouts, and a ubiquitous delay pedal that casts every sound in the pedestrial, Experimental 101 atmosphere of ECHO, Echo, echo, e-c-h-o, ECHO, Echo, echo, e-c-h-o, etc. If you're simply curious about how Surrealism and Dadaism can be applied to sound, look to Nurse With Wound and irr. app. (ext.); otherwise this is mostly for adventurous listeners and H.N.A.S. fans / completists.
Along with the new batch of Our Love Will Destroy The World cd-r's (4 in total, the first listed elsewhere on this week's list) came this mysterious little disc, the work of some group called Brilliant Swords, seven songs in thirteen minutes, and not at all what you might expect from Campbell Kneale's Don't Fuck With Magic Label. Instead of thick clouds of abstract free noise, or twisted dronescapes of blown out loops and buried rhythms, Brilliant Swords are a pop band. Yep, a pop band. Fuzzy and noisy for sure, but this is totally buzz drenched noise pop, and it's pretty goddamn great. A little bit Husker Du, a little bit nineties indie rock, the guitars are super distorted, the vocals super melodic, the songs are short sharp and hooky as hell, the longest clocking in at 2:53, the shortest at :58, but pop music like this doesn't need any more than that.
We couldn't find out anything about these guys, or this guy, the liner notes simply state that each song was written, recorded and mixed in less than two hours, and heck it sounds like it, which is not a bad thing, the songs are super intense, passionate, catchy bursts of fuzzy lo-fi power pop, we hear some My Dad Is Dead, Hard Ons, Buffalo Tom, a little Nova Scotia jangle (Eric's Trip et al), all wound into some seriously kick ass pop. The sort of pop that if it found its way from a super limited release on an obscure micro cd-r label to the right ears, these guys could definitely be huge, or could have 15 years ago. Either way, we're loving this a LOT. It's short, but that just means we've been listening to it over and over.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES! We're the only source for these in the US and we only got 20 copies, so once those are gone, that's it.
We recently made Thomas Brinkman's Klick Revolution an AQ Record of the Week, and have been listening to it pretty much non stop. So much so that we almost forgot that we had previously reviewed his first "Klick" record from 2000, which while maybe not some strange tribute to pinball, still manages to be a glorious collection of clicks and pop and whir and hiss. Anyone who has been digging Klick Revolution will definitely want to pick its precursor up as well. Here's what we had to say about it when we first listed a while back:
On Klick, Thomas Brinkmann borrows Christian Marclay's technique of literally slicing the grooves of his records with a razorblade to add some new elements to his sterile techno minimalism. While this may be Brinkmann's most sonically unsettling record, it manages to retain his trademark techno structuralism, albeit sounding as if the needle is struggling through a thick layer of grime. The erratic glitches of surface noise and the lulling stutter of run out grooves stand much more in the forefront of Brinkmann's Klick than on previous works. His sterile dub techniques dissolve fragments of surface noise into ghostly decay and generate a delicate flutter much like distant helicopter blades or the choral chatter of locusts. All in all, this is a successful departure for Brinkmann, one that takes him outside of the cold rigidity of most techno minimalism and into the sloppiness of the natural world. Fans of Philip Jeck will definitely appreciate.
Jim O'Rourke has never been shy in announcing who is the primary muse for each of his multi-faceted musical adventures. There was Bad Timing, which pretty much appropriated wholesale John Fahey's idiosyncratic bluegrass style; his Eureka record tapped into the '70s AM radio sounds of Steely Dan and Bread; and then there was the often overlooked Brise-Glace, now reissued. Around the time that he formed the tape-spliced avant-rock project Brise-Glace, O'Rourke released a collaborative album with KK Null entitled A New Kind Of Water, which also happens to be the name of a mighty fine This Heat song. Couple that reference with the name Brise-Glace also being the title of a composition of musique concrete by Luc Ferrari, and you might have a pretty good idea of where O'Rourke's mindset was during the recording of When In Vanitas. Then living in Chicago, O'Rourke gathered together Darin Gray of Dazzling Killmen and Dylan Posa & Thymme Jones of Cheer-Accident in crafting a muscular buzz-saw field of sound that O'Rourke radically cut up (with a razor blade!) into the math-rock structures found on When In Vanitas. So yeah, Brise-Glace does sound a lot like This Heat especially in the tense, angular riffs, balanced with plenty of languid strumming pointing back to Slint; but more often than not, Brise-Glace eeriely predates the jagged art-rock epics of Laddio Bollocko. Originally released back in 1994, When In Vanitas remains the only record from Brise-Glace, although O'Rourke did also produce a similar project with similar people (including members of Zeni Geva) called Yona Kit, again released on Skin Graft and currently out of print as far as we know. But thankfully, Skin Graft have been wise enough to at last reissue this, one of the very best records in their back catalogue.
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Originally released in 2008 by the always impressive Type Records, Peter Broderick's debut album gets a deserved reissue, and sonic update, courtesy of the post-classical imprint Erased Tapes. Broderick has recently gone on to some rather quirky albums of indie-minded songwriting laced with classical idioms and charming bits of electronics. We first came across his work through a collaboration with Machinefabriek, although the dark grandiosity of that album is a considerable detour within Broderick's oeuvre. Entirely instrumental and mostly scored on piano, Float could very well be an ersatz soundtrack to any number of IFC produced films for bittersweet whimsy steeped in unresolved tragedy. There is a lush sentimentality to Broderick's motifs which are occasionally jaunty but often lilting with subtle augmentation from various strings and electronics. At times, he exhibits the orchestrated spaciousness found in the more celebratory hymns of Godspeed! You Black Emperor; but often, there is a hushed delicacy like that found in library music anthologies and '70s film scores alike.
One of FIVE new releases on Ormolycka, and another contender for most fucked up and confusional, which by now, having been exposed to the mutated musical gene pool that produces these warped and wonderful tapes, you know that means a lot. A sort of damaged DJ collage, BT is all primitive analog lo-fi hip hop loopscapes, but with little regard for groove, or beat, instead, it's like if one of the guys in Faxed Head did a solo electronic record. Plunderphonic weirdness galore, mutated samples, the tape physically being stopped and primitively scratched, synths that buzz and burble, snippets and sample colliding and then crumbling, the various random chunks of sounds loosely organized into some sort of stumbling downer funk, like a brain damaged DJ Shadow, Dubs Absoludicrous is like a caveman Endtroducing, made with boom boxes, a broken 4 track, and a handful of old tapes, woozy, druggy, fractured and freaky, our favorite part is when all the beats seem to ooze into one billowy black mass, and then transform into a lurching low end thrum, squelchy and blurpy, a synth bass slowed down and captured on tape, while the tape is just dragged back and forth over the tape head, weirdly hypnotic and rib cage rattlingly dense.
Fucked and fantastic, and peep the awesome photo inside, of a corpsepainted metalhead sitting in an old faded grandma chair, watching a tiny red TV in his crappy apartment! Six different covers!
An intriguing collage of manipulated field recordings and mysteriously generated acoustic noises, this release is purported to be authored by the exquisitely named Andy Bronofksi and Fjordor Polygrafovic, who might as well be hitherto unknown Slovakian literary dissidents whose subversive post-structuralists texts led them to the utter dissolution of the written word in favor of the polyglottal mumblings and aural tumors from the urban landscape. Local smokestack Jim Kaiser was responsible for discovering these recordings, and piecing together some of the rougher patches in the Bronofksi / Polygrafovic melange of tape disintegration. Plausible or otherwise, the spacious sound design that these two have produced is a pretty impeccable document falling somewhere near the unsettled tape machinations of Chris Watson era Hafler Trio. The recognizable sounds are few and far between, with cathedral bells chiming away on one interlude and the reverb-clad mutterings of conversations in a bar, cut-up between strange metallic creakings, motorized hissing vibrations, and fingers-on-the-chalkboard abrasions. About halfway through, the duo recontextualize the found text of an unknown woman whispering in monotone in an unknown language. While the content is lost, the intonation of her monotone is that of Dion McGregor's somniloquies, whereby the dreamer speaks to the waking world of what is occurring in her dreams. Burroughs would be very proud... Limited to 70 copies.
Latest on Dom Fernow's (Prurient, Cold Cave, etc.) Bed Of Nails label comes from Kris Lapke, aka Bronze Age, whose three song 12"s is a fierce slab of Teutonic gothic techno, pulsing four on the floor synth squelch, backed by ethereal swirling melodies, peppered with low end percussive stutter, dense and driving and super hypnotic, definitely an extension of Fernow's Vatican Shadow, albeit much more intense. The second track is probably our favorite, a creepy slab of dour techno pop, a rhythmic drag that churns and chugs, moody, murky, morose, dubbed out, rife with plenty of skitter and hand clap rhythms, it's a dark drowsy pulsing techno trance out, that we almost wish went on for way longer.
The side long third track is super spare, still plenty housey, but with a seriously anthemic vibe; it's propulsive and stuttery, a bit spaced out, but still driving and hypnotic.
And since we accidentally spun this at 33 instead of 45, we can tell you it sounds even better slowed down, the side long track becomes some lost Burial jam, a gorgeous washed out dub dirge, while the other two sound like doomy Depeche Mode and murk step creepiness respectively! Either way, super rad.
Latest expansive excursion into the wild forests of sound and the unexplored sonic wilderness of this Australian outfit. We first heard Brothers Of The Occult Sisterhood back in 2005, when they released a disc on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, and since then a slow but steady stream of releases have surfaced on other underground labels like Root Strata, Digitalis, Students Of Decay and now Music Your Mind Will Love. Fans of any or all of those labels will undoubtedly know what to expect, a ramshackle assemblage of fractured folk, abstract ambience, and rambling shambling free rock drift. Much like the title,�Enter The Cult Until The Dust To Represent The World Has Discovered The Hallucinogens And Bent Us To Their Use, this musical missive is looooong, a massive triple disc sonic sprawl, the band's sound allowed to unfurl and spread out unchecked, and as with most bands of this ilk, it suits them, they definitely flourish given enough space, their music like weeds in a garden, getting all tangled up with everything, and then when you least expect it, blossoming with multi colored flowers and gorgeous foliage.�
A dizzying swirl of stumbling acoustic guitar, fluttering flute. simple childlike rhythms, voices chanting and shouting as often as singing, primitive FX, analog synths, hand drums, shakers and chimes, handmade electronics, crumbling distortion, industrial clatter, psychrock guitars, all cobbled together into a super inventive, Rube Goldberg-esque musical contraption held together by vines and branches, sticks and twigs and stones, that emits, delicate spidery folk rock, intense damaged psychedelic freakout, wandering ambient clatter, percussive free noise, primitive tribalism and every variation in between.�
No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat all travel a similarly shambolic and spiritual sonic path... so amazing.�
Super limited, packaged in a massive eight panel handpainted fold out sleeve, every one unique, with two printed inserts and held shut by a textured paper obi.
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After a series of super limited cd-r releases, this Australian brother/sister duo return with their first actual proper real-cd full length. Don't expect any White Stripes or Carpenters or whatever brother/sister musical ensemble comes to mind. These siblings are high on PCP and armed with a wicked arsenal of psychfuzz guitar, and splattery tribal acid fried drumming. Wide open expanses of space rock drift, shimmery woodwinds and abstract guitar figures floating above a dense whirl of Amon Duul like rhythms, this is NNCK lost in the Australian outback desperately jamming in the hopes of some passing plane overhead hearing the ruckus and coming in for a closer look, or Sunburned Hand Of The Man gone native, trying to appease the Gods with their mysterious musical offering. Free forest folk hovering in a dense cloud of bong smoke, krautrocky jams that just sort of splintered into pieces and became a weightless jumble of chimes and clatter and guitar rumble and twang. The final track is a near twenty minute epic that begins life dense and jumbled, thick with buzz and growl before dissipating into a hazy shimmer of instrument buzz and warm ambient swells.
The first 500 copies come in hand screened sleeves printed by New Zealand art/music collective United Fairy Moons.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
More mysterious and otherworldy sounds from our favorite Australian free folk brother / sister duo, and it sounds just as good as ever. Their sound is still like a down under cousin to the foresty folk of Finnish groups like Avarus and Anaksimandros, which makes a lot of sense since both groups end up releasing records on many of the same labels.
This is BOTOS's first release for Italian cd-r label Akoustic Desease (another AD release, Siddhi, is reviewed elsewhere on this list) and it's a beaut. Mixing soft shimmery strum, convoluted glitched out electronic stutter, dark ominous drones, tribal rhythms, abstract ambience into a sprawling exploration of lost sonic rituals and stumbling noise making free for alls.
The percussion is mostly found (at least it sounds that way), clanks and clunks, rattles and scrapes, here and there some actual drumming surface, but even then it's simple and muted, various strings buzz and creak and scrape, bits of twang, atonal strum, detuned chords, all wound into stretched out melodic tangles, above it all, flutes flutter, horns moan and whistle, it's all gloriously ramshackle, the vibe is a bunch of folks gathered around a pile of noisemakers, in the shade of a big tree beneath a blue sky and Summer sun. It's not at all dark or creepy or ominous, it's more festive and celebratory, voices drift in and out, chimes tinkle, bells ring, drums skitter, occasionally everything locks into a distinct groove, sounding almost like some skeletal krautrock, but for the most part, the sound meanders and drifts, lazy and lost, laid back and content, carefree and happy.
Housed in an oversized ultra thick fold over cardstock sleeve, the cd affixed to a nub inside, LIMITED TO 116 COPIES, each one hand numbered!!
This mysterious Australian free folk, abstract noise rock combo, once a brother/sister duo and recently expanded to include an ever shifting lineup of like minded noise makers, finally returns with a brand new cd, this time on Root Strata, the label of Tarentel head honcho Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. And everything we loved about these ramshackle noiseniks is still in full effect, but if anything, they sound better than ever, more polished, a bit weirder, the sound a lot more lush, but without losing any of their stumbling charm. Much of the record sound like it would have been just as at home in the Finnish forest, with it's slow motion Dead C kitchen sink clatter percussion, crackle and hiss production and detuned guitar strum, but the record is rife with distinctly Brotherhood moments, like the�strangely tranquil wash of softly strummed angelic strings, slightly out of tune and warbling hypnotically in the first track, or the dueling alien FX and duck call drones of track two, the hushed falsetto vocals on track six, or the wild tribal free for all, with dense drumming and fluttering flute that finishes off the disc. Elsewhere it's lots of sonic elements we can't seem to get enough of, No Neck like jams stumbling drunkenly through shadowy glades, long shimmering stretches of whirring drones and muted melody, strange chimes and splattery abstract percussion, snippets of female vocals floating on swirling swells of gentle guitar thrum, dreamy twang flecked folk, moaning strings and swirls of low end rumble, and wide open expanses of slow burning dark ambience, shifting and drifting beneath delicate sonic glimmers and glistening layers of buzz and hiss.
We always complain about bands releasing a cd-r every few weeks, but to be totally honest, if we could afford it, we'd hire these guys to record a new disc for us every day, a fresh batch of beautiful abstract sounds, and one day, eventually, we'd have enough music so that we could play them all in a row, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, forever and ever and ever...
Definitely one of the best band names ever, this Australian group channels much of the same sonic spirituality as the No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, cobbling together four lengthy tracks of transcendent free folk, avant rock clatter. Creepy and sun dappled, like a furtive glimpse past the drawn shades in the window of the old creepy house on the hill, offering up the briefest peeks into past lives, creaking doors, distant footsteps, a rusty music box, all set to mysterious otherworldly musicks, nonsensical vocals coupled with detuned guitars, tiny xylophone melodies arranged haphazardly between shuffled snare drums and woozy acoustic guitars. Druggy and drowsy and dreamy, a stumbling musical meander through free folk, modern minimalism, DIY noise, and drunken indie jangle. SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
