This Russian dark-ambient duo have named themselves after two mathematicians (Eugenio Calabi and Shing-Tung Yau) who specialized in differential geometry and collaborated on defining a hypertechnical thesis which was later expanded through string theory. It's unclear whether these electronic cosmonauts have a background in high-level mathematics, although they do give a rudimentary explanation (in English) as to the metaphors that they are seeking through their music towards their namesake's research: as string theory describes poly-dimensional spacetime as coiled up and unobservable amidst those dimensions which are able to be seen. A clinical distance is duly noted in the sounds grafted onto this CD, as billowing clouds of synthetic mist and slow-motion shadow streaked across the refined surface of this album. But at the same time, Compactified isn't a completely detached piece of inhuman computer music trapped by the restraints of pure mimicry. There is a sense of the sublime which hovers throughout the album, the mystery of what we do not know about our own universe even as science makes great advances as to its origins, and the cosmological beauty which parallels the subatomic and the galactic. At times, Calabi-Yau recalls some of Lustmord's investigations of sound minus the death obsession; at times, Aidan Baker's softly modelled ambience is not far from earshot.
Kevin Shields! There's a name that garners a lot of attention; and it's pretty obvious why Eva Aguila uses that moniker for her scalding noise ventures which she has broadcast up and down the West Coast. We're sure that a few must have stumbled into grimy warehouse noise shows expecting The Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine to be slumming it, instead to find a woman behind a table of pedals and some weird typewriter looking thing, all of which sizzle and shriek with a blaring electricity. So, if the ruse has ever drawn anybody in, were they pissed? Bemused? Hard to guess, but in addition to her activities as Kevin Shields, Aguila also records and performs in the duo Caldera Lakes with Brittany Gould. Here, they swing between deconstructed dream-time, avant-folk meanderings and full-on noise mode. Everything on this tape is swimming in a suitably lo-fi soup that could be the shittiness of this cassette (ostensibly a 'professional' duplication job) or the antique haze purposefully grafted onto the production. Detached folksongs strummed in monotone on guitar, with spluttered events, eerie tones, and haunted voices that drone-on creating a vibe that's not too far from those of Christina Carter or Grouper; but as these tracks proceed, convulsive noises ramp their activity from minor overloads on a four-track into concussion bomb explosions muffled through the constant gauze of tape hiss. Elsewhere, percussive scrabblings trickle through a multitude of delay pedals, forming stoned / hypnogogic patterns in keeping with some of the early experiments by Zoviet France (e.g. Eostre, Signal Gesture Threat, etc.). Static electricity cracks the ether around these phasing delays gradually building into another swelling cloud of ominous charged particles. Limited to 100 copies!
Second in a three-disc series of recordings culled from John Cale's personal archive of material from the late '60s. Upon listening to these visceral documents, one realizes that Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, was more likely than
If you're a fan of the noise-loving modern heirs to the Cale droneologist throne, bands such as Skullflower, Pelt, and Sunroof!, you've got to hear this. Recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Totally gorgeous vinyl reissue of the three archival cds released by Table Of The Elements a few years back, that documented Cale's early sixties minimal explorations. This new version comes housed in a black lacquered 12" box, beautifully silkscreened, with a hand screened oversized booklet (including extensive liner notes and a libretto) inside as well. In addition to the material from the three cds, there are two bonus tracks also previously released, that appeared originally on the Jack Smith compilations also on Table Of The Elements. Here's what we had to say about the three volumes originally.
John Cale's "Sun Blindness Music" is the first in a trilogy of archival recordings from this founder of the Velvet Underground. Much has been made already about Cale's contribution to both the history of rock and the history of minimalism, so we'll cut to the chase and get to the contents of this album, which features three of Cale's earliest compositions from the mid to late '60s. The title track spans almost 45 minutes, with Cale sustaining clusters of notes on a Vox Continental Organ, before indeterminately hammering down Phillip Glass-esque arpeggiations and then returning to the open ended drone. The two following tracks are quite good representations of '60s minimalism - with the proto-Amon Duul guitar strum of "Summer Heat" and the eerie electronic modulations on "Second Fortress."
Second in this trilogy of recordings culled from John Cale's personal archive of material from the late '60s. Upon listening to these visceral documents, one realizes that Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, was more likely than not the one responsible for the wailing screech and howl that makes such Velvets songs as "Sister Ray" so stunning, and that it was the push and pull of his drone-leanings balanced with Lou Reed's more conventional songwriting that made the band great. Here, the Welshman Cale bestows upon us two pieces recorded with kindred spirit Tony Conrad on violin, and Cale on viola -- their twenty minute "Dream Interpretation" is a wonderful shimmering drone that is at once warm and organic yet also metallic and grating. "Ex-Cathedra", our favorite track here, is from 1967/68 and features Cale simply pumping on Vox organ, conjuring up yet another tense yet melodic, trebly drone that's macabre (isn't the sound of an organ often delightfully macabre?) and strangely lulling. Other tracks include Cale making solo electronic sounds, and a 'duet' with Angus Maclise (another founding member of the Velvet Underground) on cimbalon, an Eastern European hammered dulcimer. The only dud features Cale "playing" piano, innards and all, a rather been-there-done-that idea even in the late '60s.
As with volume II of this series, there are a few great tracks on volume III that make the price of ths disc worth it, and some throwaways that are of limited interest. The 10-minute "Stainless Steel Gamelan" track is the highlight here, and it's excellent even though it has nothing to do with gamelan per se. It features the Velvet's Sterling Morrison and Cale both "playing" the same guitar at the same time, an experiment which resulted in shimmering atmospherics and metallic percussive pulses, sounds that're as usefully evocative for today's DJ Shadow or Aphex Twin as they are here, maybe 30 years earlier. Also included on this disc is a funny hoedown of a piece wherein Cale plays with tape delay, Angus Maclise pounds various hand drums, and Terry Jennings -- a free saxophonist and crony of Lamonte Young -- sings on soprano sax. There's also a tremendous piece with Tony Conrad on a Vox reverb unit and Cale on electric piano -- it sounds like the soundtrack to a nightmare that won't end.
If you're a fan of the noise-loving modern heirs to the Cale droneologist throne, bands such as Skullflower, Pelt, and Sunroof!, you've got to hear this. Recommended.
Third in a three-disc series of recordings culled from John Cale's personal archive of material from the late '60s. Upon listening to these visceral documents, one realizes that Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, was more likely than not the one
As with volume II of this series, there are a few great tracks here that make the price of ths disc worth it, and some throwaways that're of limited interest. The 10-minute "Stainless Steel Gamelan" track is the highlight here, and it's excellent even thought it has nothing to do with gamelan per se. It features the Velvet's Sterling Morrison and Cale both "playing" the same guitar at the same time, an experiment which resulted in shimmering atmospherics and metallic percussive pulses, sounds that're as usefully evocative for today's DJ Shadow or the Aphex Twin as they are here, maybe 30 years earlier. Also included on this disc is a funny hoedown of a piece wherein Cale plays with tape delay, Angus Maclise pounds various hand drums, and Terry Jennings -- a free saxophonist and crony of Lamonte Young -- sings on soprano sax. There's also a tremendous piece with Tony Conrad on a Vox reverb unit and Cale on electric piano -- it sounds like the soundtrack to a nightmare that won't end.
If you're a fan of the noise-loving modern heirs to the Cale droneologist throne, bands such as Skullflower, Pelt, and Sunroof!, you've got to hear this. Recommended.
John Cale's "Sun Blindness Music" is the first release in a planned trilogy of archival recordings from this founder of the Velvet Underground. Much has been made already about Cale's contribution to both the history of rock and the history of minimalism, so
As on the archival recordings of The Dream Syndicate excavated by Table of the Elements, the recording quality of "Sun Blindness Music" is not all that good, but at least here it's much more listenable.
We've been trying to get these in stock for a while now, solo record number two from Evan Caminiti, one half of psychedelic doom drone duo Barn Owl. The other Caminiti solo record, Psychic Mud Shrine, introduced us to a world not all that far removed from Barn Owl, or Elm, the solo project from Caminiti's partner in Barn Owl Jon Porras (who just so happens to work at aQ!), and Digging The Void does indeed delve even further into that same blissy druggy void.
Long, low, slow tones, throb, and pulse, layered tones emit subtle overtones, melodies are spidery and barely there, visible through the gauzy whir of the droning guitars, a series of spaced out otherworldly ragas, super minimal and intimate, but at the same time, sweeping and epic. Unlike Elm's, and to a lesser extent, Barn Owl's tendency to get HEAVY, and to dabble in some SUNNO)))-like density, Caminiti keeps it hushed and scaled back, these sonic rituals are not meant to conjure up the same sort of blackened mystery, instead they drift through soft clouds of hum and whir, fragments of Appalachian folk hover over deep rumbles, the sounds are ghostly, the arrangements spectral and ethereal, laced with twang, but just as likely to smooth all the notes and melodies into softened streaks of monochrome blur, and on at least one track, the drone is jettisoned, and an acoustic guitar unfurls long tendrils of steel string buzz and classic folky melody, a darkly mysterious coda, to an already haunting and murky songsuite. So gorgeous.
And of course, ULTRA LIMITED! These are probably the last copies we can get our hands on, you have been warned...
Barn Owl are turning into a regular cottage industry, with a record just out, a new one on the way, and a seemingly never ending procession of solo records from both Jon Porras and Evan Caminiti. Not that were complaining. We love this stuff and can't get enough. And seems like most folks out there feel the same. Which brings us to this, one of two new 7"s on Irish label Trensmat (the other is from Astral Social Club and is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), the latest missive from Caminiti, and it's a good one, the A side is a thick billowing cloud of soft guitar noise, of swirling guitar whir, shot through with streaks of minor key melody, shards of buzz, the vibe is hazy and thick, and almost caustic in places, before giving way to a super serene bit of shimmery drift, all minimal thrum and slow motion melody, the whole track sounding like it could have come from the same sessions that produced Caminiti's most recent full length.
The flipside is another bit of hazy guitar sprawl, this one way more reminiscent of Caminiti's duo Barn Owl, with plenty of Earth-y twang, the sound deserty and desolate sounding, drifting and dusty, sun dapped and hauntingly cinematic, again finishing off with a more muted and minimal, darkly tranquil outro.
SUPER LIMITED, the label doesn't say how many exactly, but there's a good chance that these are the only copies we'll be able to get since we had to pre-order these, and the label only made as many as were ordered...
Dreamless Sleep is the latest from Caminiti, whose day job is as one half of twang flecked drone duo Barn Owl, and like his partner in Barn Owl, Jon Porras, Caminiti's solo records don't always deviate too much from the Barn Owl M.O., offering up variations of the duo's distinctive dusky sound, with the various individual solo records often easily mistaken for proper Barn Owl record, which is not a bad thing at all, Caminiti and Porras have undeniable musical chemistry, and both have proven to be perfectly capable on their own, both experimenting more with keyboards and synthesizers lately, which of course ironically seems to have been influencing their work as a duo as well.
All of that said, Dreamless Sleep definitely finds Caminiti pushing his sounds into uncharted territories, ditching much of the twang, and the droned out mesmer for something way more kosmische and downright new age-y at times. In fact, if it weren't for the fierce guitar tones and muted buzz, the sounds here could easily slip into full on new age bliss out. Thankfully, Caminiti takes that new age drift, and weds it to his dense guitarscapery, letting neither overshadow the other, resulting in tracks that manage to be both dreamy and ethereal, dark and cinematic, wrapping washed out shimmering synths in spidery sinister melodies, and wreathing hushed ethereal ambience in clouds of ominous thrum, the recordings adding even more texture and density, gristly and on the verge of slipping into the red, the sounds blown out and occasionally corrosive, with some of the tracks slipping into near SUNNO)))-like heft, only you have the shimmery swirl hold it back, and conversely, some of the tracks are so airy and ethereal, it's often just a single slab of crumbling, rumbling blackened thrum, that keeps things safely on the darkside. It's like the perfect music for some seriously psychedelic planetarium show, the music evoking massive sprawls of space, and the ever shifting cosmos, dying stars and black holes, planets being born and epic swaths of glimmering starfields.
Latest solo outing from one half of SF dronedoom duo Barn Owl, coming right on the heels of another solo record, that one from the OTHER half of Barn Owl, Jon Porras, a former aQ-er, whose Black Mesa we dug quite a bit. It would be tempting to try some rock nerd math, and imagine that Black Mesa plus Night Dust might simply BE Barn Owl, but strangely enough, the sounds Porras and Caminiti conjure up on their own, while not really deviating sonically too much from the soundworld they've created with their group, do end up being markedly different. And in many case more experimental and abstract than the twang flecked smolder and drift the two conjure up together. Caminiti's new one might be the strangest (and perhaps coolest) of the bunch, although that strangeness definitely creeps up on you, as the opener, "Near Dark" does sound like it could have been plucked right off a Barn owl record, all billowy clouds of warm softly roiling guitar thrum, shot through with streaks of high end melody, and a warm washed out haze, but even hear, Caminiti pushes the sounds, and the sound itself, pegging the needles, and moving WAY into the red, with sound buzzing and distorting in a way that gives the song a strange outsider psych vibe. But it's on the next track "Returning Spirits" where things get really good. A haunting sprawl of ethereal shimmer, peppered with deep pulsations, and dubbed out percussion, the guitars unfurling little tangles of melody, which get super distorted, a gorgeously muted blown out space-psych (those sounds could be synths, hard to tell, but both Porras and Caminiti, have been experimenting with synths, in Barn Owl, and on their own), but those little soft squalls are gorgeous, and haunting, the vibe super cinematic, dark and otherwordly. Then Caminiti lets loose with a glimmering starfield of super high glistening harmonics, that sound almost like chimes, all over a slow building swell of lush chordal thrum, just might be our favorite Caminiti track yet. But don't want to speak too soon. The rest of the record definitely continues to explore less familiar territory, the pulsing glitchy synths that underpin the warm guitar whorls on "A Memory Or A Mirage", the dense, crumbling, super distorted organ like wall of sound, that churns its way through "Star Circle", the brief blast of wild Neil Young like guitars draped over a woozy tranquil low end drift on "Moon Is The Hunter", the almost Nadja like doomgaze of "Last Blue Moments", the haunting blackened kosmische of "Slow Fade Of Stars", that sounds like Loren Mazzacane Connors playing in some massive cave, wreathed in thick, warm reverb, delicate and skeletal, drowsy and dreamlike, and finally, the two part closer "First Light", which stretches out incendiary guitars into keening dronescapes, again laced with glimmering harmonics, and deep mesmerizing tones, before drifting off into the ether with a final few minutes of spare, soft focus drone-psych blues, wreathed in clouds of whir and hiss, a haunting lo-fi soft noise coda.
Gorgeous full color gatefold sleeves with super striking original art by Caminiti. Includes a download coupon.
The first proper cd full length release from Evan Caminiti, who is 1/2 of drone duo Barn Owl, along with Jon Porras, who records solo as Elm. It seems like Elm has been cranking them out, but Caminiti has too, we just haven't been able to get his more limited cd-r releases, but we're so happy to finally get this. A dark and brooding psychedelic drone epic. Four tracks, nearly fifty minutes of heavy smoldering droneguitar bliss.
Long blurred chords, arcing streaks of feedback, slowly unfurling minor key melodies, thick blurry buzz smeared into drifting clouds of gauzy shimmer, layered and textured and expansive, the heavier moments remind us a bit of Skullflower or To Blacken The Pages or Fear Falls Burning, albeit with a folkier vibe, more melody infused into the coruscating buzz, while the prettier more delicate moments recall Steven R. Smith, Six Organs Of Admittance and other folkdrone guitarists.
The record drifts into shimmery contemplative twang here and there, evoking the open road, endless moonlit nights, loneliness and heartbreak, the blur of life moving past, the glimmer of reflections set in the endless black of night, but even those moments soon expand into full blown walls of guitardrone, of sheets of feedback melting into smears of high end glimmer. Elsewhere, deep abstract ambience is laced with minimal guitar twang, moaning distant melodies, sitar like buzz, only again to build into an avalanche of crumbling distortion and heart of the sunn soft focus skree, before slipping into a coda of warm, soft meditative buzz, and dreamlike drones. So gorgeous. So recommended for fans of Earth, Six Organs, Steve R. Smith and like minded dronescapers, and of course, if you love Barn Owl and Elm, then this is pretty much essential as well.
Another gorgeous sprawling collection of smoldering guitarscapes and warm liquid lysergic drones from Evan Caminiti, one half of psychedelic drone-doom-duo Barn Owl, and while West Winds does in fact touch on some of the same sonic territory as past solo efforts, it definitely moves in a much darker, much heavier direction, exploring blackened sonic vistas that have only been hinted at in Barn Owl but that have been gradually becoming more of a focal point on Caminiti's solo ventures. Which is obvious from the opening track, "Night Of The Archon", which begins all tranquil and serene, spidery tendrils of guitars unfurling in a reverbed expanse of billowing shimmer and layered chordal drift, before the guitars begin to rumble and grind, the distortion a living breathing thing, crumbling and glowing like sonic magma, moving glacially, and engulfing the sounds all around, spitting sparks of fragmented melody, before finally spiraling back to ground, the crush receding, leaving an ethereal cloud of chiming harmonics and distant hushed whirr.
But even with the darker vibe, and the heavier overall sound, none of the emotional resonance has been lost, even the heaving slabs of rumble and crush, are shot through with subtle harmonies, with lush layered textures, the tracks slipping from thick swells of almost post industrial sounding blackdrone to gorgeous Arvo Part sounding chorales, a constantly shifting landscape of hazy streaks of blurred melody, gauzy flecks of folk, soft tangles of reverbed twang, slow motion melodies rendered in thick slabs of coruscating guitar crunch, blissed out dronedrifts laced with almost pop like melodies, a little shoegazey, a little Morricone, a little Earth, a little SUNNO))), and a lot of Barn Owl, this is epic, expansive, highly personal music for the soul, evoking the desert, of starry nights and of the landscape painted red with the blood of an burnt orange sun, "Path To The Sea" is maybe the most propulsive, like the score to a post apocalyptic Leone flick, wheezing harmonium melodies over rumbling burnt black guitars, bits of twang laid upon a woozy almost Western lope, which leads directly into the 10+ minute closer "Black Desert Blooming", which does in fact live up to its title, the vibe arid and sun baked, the sound black and bleak, beginning as maybe the most harrowing and intense track on the record, only to blossom into the most abstract, the thick rumbling crush peeling away, leaving just soft swirls of layered guitars, to overlap and intertwine hypnotically, a minimal blurred loopscape, growing ever more indistinct, and ever more hushed, until even the guitars drift off, leaving a gradually dissipating cloud of blackened rumbles, of distant metallic blur, all keening and moaning and finally fading out completely.
LIMITED TO 600 COPIES, pressed on thick vinyl, housed in a gorgeous matte jacket with original artwork by Caminiti, includes a printed insert and a download card. Plus, it's available at aQ two weeks before the official release date!!
Latest solo record from Barn Owl and Higuma member Evan Caminiti, and one of the first releases on Handmade Birds, a new label launched by R. Loren of Pyramids, White Moth and Sailors With Wax Wings. When California Falls Into The Sea finds Caminiti ditching the billowing brooding drones of recent Barn Owl records, and the humid dronedrift twang of past solo efforts, and instead, stripping his sound way down, crafting something much more intimate and contemplative, abstract and atmospheric, as rife with space and drift as notes and chords, the tone is still dark, and the sound lush, and there is a bit of abstract twang, bit these tracks are more like smoldering folk flecked ragas, smoldering swells of crumbling melody, spare serene stretches of hushed shimmer, hazy sprawls of hushed melancholia, spidery guitars underpinned by distant swells, streaks of fragmented melody, all wreathed in delicate echo, swaddled in spacey reverb, the sound soft, and soft focus, crystalline and fragile, but infused with a dark energy, a subtle power, that transforms muted minimal thrum into a sort of blackened blues. The various sounds shot through with serpentine tendrils, the chords drifting apart, into blurred and smeared expanses of dark moonlit sound.
A fantastic collection of introspective electric guitar meditations, each a hushed and haunting, otherworldly and tranquil, meditative and mesmerizing blackened spectral emanation. And every one spectacularly lovely.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Founding member of the A Band, Sunroof, and Vibracathedral Orchestra, Campbell has been a stalwart in the British campaign for tinnitus alongside Matthew Bower and Simon Wickham-Smith. "Itinerant String Section" certainly falls into the catagory of amorphous gritty tonal screeches recorded with questionably wired equipment. The first track is dominated by a backing tape of one of the more noxious examples of shortwave radio jamming upon a morse code numbers station. Top it all off with Campbell scraping a rusty can across his pick-ups and some cheap effects boxes, and the result is some fine noise / grate / drone work. Yup, it's a cd-r.
From our pals at Lal Lal Lal, the Finnish label that introduced us to the mighty Avarus, and has released records by AQ faves Kemialliset Ystvat and Anaksimandros, who are kind of like the Finnish No Neck Blues Band, comes a limited 12" from the Vibracathedral Orchestra's Neil Campbell. And it's definitely some of his nicest stuff. A gorgeous shimmering ambience of burbling and bubbling tones and melodies. Dreamy and hypnotic. A bit more soothing and 'ambient' than Vibracathedral but still with the same ur-drone aesthetic. There are couple tracks that stick out though, one is a rhythmic Krautrock workout complete with pulsing drum beat and looped guitar, and the other is an almost-techno track that sounds like with a little less resistance it could've become a house track! Another gorgeous drone record and another fine addition to the Lal Lal Lal catalog. Be warned, this is very limted and won't be around for long!
Brand new collaboration from Mr. Neil Campbell, he formerly of Astral Social Club, and fellow noisemaker/soundscaper Robert Horton. Typically in the past when we would review a Robert Horton record, we would list all the silly shit he plays, we won't do that here, but rest assured he still does (weevils, boot, etc.). The two open up the proceedings with a spaced out psychedelic dancefloor number that seems to find the duo exploring similar territory as Campbell has done on recent ASC releases, a cosmic electronica, all skeletal beats and looped layers. But we may have called it too soon, as the rest of the record is sort of all over the place, from glitched out electro-folk, to wild tangles of piano, from gnarled static and keening high end, to strange noise drenched house music (as if Our Love Will Destroy The World were DJing a rave), with chugging distorted guitars, truncated samples and strange vocal snippets, all woven into something stuttery and not at all groovy (and we mean that in a good way). The B side finishes off with a gorgeous bit of dizzying trip out that sounds a bit like a sped up Appalachia, as if Philip Jeck were spinning a handful of Fahey lps at 78rpm, woozy and warped and strangely mesmerizing.
Two of the three tracks on the B side find Horton and Campbell working their way back to the dancefloor, but it's the extended opener on side 2 that might be THEE jam here, starting out with a druggy beatscape, that gets blissed out into a hazy bit of kosmische shimmer, only to have the beat drift back to the surface, pulsing away just beneath the surface, a weirdly glistening bit of layered psychedelia, draped over a churning muted rhythm, so awesome, and while it's the longest track here, it still ends way too soon.
The true heirs to the Cale / Conrad / Maclise / Palestine / Flynt throne just happen to be kindred souls thousands of miles apart. And in cosmic slip up (or inside joke) they've both been given the same name, only transposed! I mean, come on, it was only a matter of time before Campbell and Kneale (or Neil and Campbell) would realise their destinies, and realise how perfect this collaboration would be aesthetically, as well as sonically! And it couldn't be more perfect. Tinkling chimes, shimmery cymbals and bells, creaking feedback, wild splattery percussion, bowel loosening rumbles, warm late night drones, all woven together into a wild and free, gorgeously invigorating, but completely soothing, otherworldly tranced out raga. Absolutely sublime. Fans of NC's Vibracathedral Orchestra or CK's Birchville Cat Motel need this for sure.
Flutes. For Andee that seems to be all that really matters for a record to be incredible. But for the rest of us who need a little more than flutes to convince of a piece of music's merits, we're quite pleased that Neil Campbell and Richard Youngs seemed to
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
SUPER LIMITED CD-R FROM NEIL CAMPBELL OF THE VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA!!
Should be enough right there, as this is indeed quite limited, only 50 copies were made, of which we managed to get only 15! An old Campbell piece, originally 7 or 8 minutes long, but here reworked and revamped into an epic hour long ur-drone. This piece was composed to accompany an installation of photos by Spencer Clark, which is part of the reason for the $15 price of a cd-r, as each cd comes with an original photo, all different, all totally beautiful. And the sound is vintage Campbell, a huge and expansive, slowly developing multi-layered drone, shimmering and humming, rumbling and keening. Absolutely stunning as always!
A really nice surprise from the mysteriously monickered Campfire Songs. Featuring members of Avey Tare And Panda Bear (reviewed a few lists back) and the Animal Collective to which they apparently belong. Unlike the fractured electronic glitchery and damaged pop of Avey Tare and the costume rock buffoonery of many of their contemporaries, Campfire Songs is more akin to the murky Fahey-on-qualudes of World (Of Dreams) reviewed way back on list 81, or the dreamy, strummy ambient blur of Scott Tuma, but with a way more washed out, late night free-folk feel. Which makes sense since this was recorded late at night, live to three minidiscs, on a screened in porch in rural Maryland. Very repetitive and hypnotic, with lots of Sunroof!-ish shimmer and plaintive vocals, rhythmic strumming, and field recordings of the surrounding forest. Equal parts sixties hippy folk, nineties ambient free noise and deconstructed indie rock twang. Good stuff.
MPEG Download: "Doggy" [/audio/campfiresongsdoggy.mp3]
As always, these Ultra Eczema lps are amazingly packaged, in gorgeously designed sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and limited to 400 copies, most of which are sold before we even realize they're out. So we only got a tiny handful of these (5-10 copies) so don't get your hopes up.
Soundartist / performer / designer Jessica Rylan gives us a super intimate disc of her peculiar brand of balladry. From vocal / piano duets, with extremely strained vocals and soft, lilting piano, to super abstract, ultradistorted solo vocal explorations, with her voice buried in muffled muted murk and stuttering squeaking electronics, with random bits of drum kit tossed in, to what sounds like some dark fuzzed out electronic dronegrind, a pulsing thick electronic industrial soundscape, to solo vocals, unadorned, swathed in natural reverb. Pretty weird, and alternatingly harsh and lovely.
Liner notes by Thurston Moore.
Plux Quba is a record that after the nearly 30 years of its existence remains impossible to categorize. It's almost as if it was an alien broadcast beamed in from another planet. Little is known about its creator, Nuno Canavarro, outside of his native Portugal, and its discovery is so unbelievably legendary and riddled with hearsay that it's easy to dismiss this as a probable hoax.
Recorded in 1988 and released on a private label, it was believed to be discovered in 1991 by Jim O'Rourke while traveling through Europe with Jan St. Werner (Microstoria, Mouse On Mars) and Carsten Schulz (C-Shultz and Hajsch). Liking what he heard, Rourke eventually started a label call Moikai in 1998 and the first release was Plux Quba remastered by Portuguese guitarist and composer Rafael Toral. That the sounds contained on Plux Quba would go on to heavily influence the sound of all three artists' later output (not to mention bearing a strong sonic resemblance to Aphex Twin's early ambient pieces, Boards of Canada's nostalgic filmstrip melodies, Prefuse 73's glitch-hop, and Christian Fennesz's sublime Endless Summer) is a bizarre case of cosmic synchronicity. Rumors that this was an elaborate prank by the three electronic artists have since been quelled by enough evidence of Canavarro's existence as an architectural student, a member of semi-popular Portuguese new wave bands, and his subsequent compositional work in Portuguese cinema.
Indeed, the 15 tracks (8 of which are untitled - many clock in just over a minute) of Plux Quba can be seen as a bridge between the electro-acoustic computer-processing works of Robert Ashley (1979's Automatic Writing) and David Behrman (1984's Leapday Night) on the Lovely music label, and the advent of laptop-based electronica of the nineties. Yet Plux Quba seems less aware than that, as if created in a total vacuum. Its mystery remains one of its key attractions.
I (Scott) was turned on to this by friend and Alps band-mate Jefre Cantu-Ledesma in the nineties when he dubbed it to cassette for me, after raving about it endlessly. At first, I didn't understand the appeal. It doesn't endear itself to the listener right away. Each track is its own micro-universe of texture and mood. The first bursts of high piercing squelches, random cluster tones, bell drones and squeals, come off as abrasive and abstract, appear than disappear. Its soft-volume minimal experiments are heightened by pauses of pregnant silence that are not easy on casual listeners. It's not until about five short tracks in that processed disembodied voices, bird-like chirps and chord washes begin to emote a tangible melancholy melody, and that's when Plux Quba begins to work its magic. It took so many concentrated listens to that tape before I was finally under its spell.
Made with electronics, melodica, and pre-recorded tapes of acoustic instruments such as harp, flute, bells, marimbas, organ, an out of tune toy piano, and accordion, the overall sound is augmented by whispered transmitted voices, abstracted squeals, glitchy computerized electronics, toy instruments, crying children, animal noises, Conet Project style shortwave babble, and off-kilter hand percussion. It's almost as if a computer was fed some primitive bedroom recordings performed by children and asked to mimic the results. The cover art with its childlike drawing and strange font layouts doesn't offer any clues either, unless one is versed in Portuguese perhaps. But even then, Plux Quba seems to be mining a territory where language is useless as an orienting factor, but trades on a highly prevalent universality of emotion. It remains a singular and beguiling artifact that won't appeal to everybody, but offers massive rewards to the curious, adventurous and patient.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"If you happen to live outside of the confines of the Australian experimental music scene, you'd be forgiven for uttering the word "Who?" when the name David Brown is mentioned. All others shall see me after class. Mr. Brown is one of the lynchpins in the Australian avant-garde, and has been for well over a decade.
Now in his mid '40s, his first big break, so to speak, was playing with AC/DC for roughly a month back in 1976; but, skip roughly ten years, in which he played around with various obscure jazz and experimental ensembles and concentrated heavily on his visual art (another story in itself), and land yourself in late '80s Melbourne. Definitely one of the most white-hot bands of their time, and one sadly obscured to just about everyone but to-the-letter obsessives like myself, were power-trio extraordinares, Dumb and the Ugly. With a wildly grimacing Brown on bass, six-string poser (and concurrent member in Ollie Olsen's No at the time) Michael Sheridan on guitar, and Man About Town (and elsewhere) John Murphy on drums (he being ex-News, Whitehouse, Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Nico and pretty much everyone else on earth), their mixture of Hendrix-style trio guitar psych and Swans-esque lard-arsed whump was an experience to witness and a pleasure to whack on one's turntable.
Cuurently, David Brown has recorded this solo CD under the name Candlesnuffer. Consisting mainly of heavily treated (and often unrecognisable) guitar spliced up occassionally with some percussion and other effects, the fourteen songs contained within run the gamut from A-Z: from Bailey/Chadbourne-esque guitar noodling to This Heat-meets-Touch/Mego electro experiments to NWW/Kraut-style drones to intense noise blasts and roughly all the points in between. I rarely ever listen to any "contemporary" experimental albums, much less purchase them. They simply don't hold my interest for usually more than a song or two. With painstaking attention to detail, the ability to really compose an otherwise seemingly disjointed piece of music, to pastiche all the different elements together to create a total album's worth of interesting material and make the songs move along, David Brown, AKA Candlesnuffer, has made a contemporary experimental album I've not only played many times, but one I'd be happy to purchase. I couldn't think of higher praise." - Dave Lang / Opprobrium
Culture of Pink is the second full length from Cankun, aka Vincent Caylet. He's a studio mad scientist who has whipped up a warm, woozy, otherworldly post punk sound here, that plays as if it really could be some lost eighties lp beamed here directly from another decade, a sound that on the surface wouldn't be out of place on Captured Tracks or Sacred Bones. It definitely seems to be channeling another era, the guitar chime and soar and swoon, most definitely reminding us of the Durutti Column, but here filtered through an aesthetic much closer to say someone like James Ferraro, and the percolating rhythms a cascade of tangled drum machines, that almost sounds like a more lo-fi home brewed Soft Moon, but as the tracks play, they seem to unravel, just a bit, seeming to reveal the strange sonic machinations lurking beneath. The opener "Agave Sticks" is all low slung bass groove, chiming distorted guitar buzz, wreathed in sheet of chordal thrum, and driven by buzzing rock riffs in the background, the rhythms cranked up so it almost sounds like machines creating this alien post punk, and near the end of the song, those rhythms are pushed to the fore, and grow more erratic and chaotic, and soon they're grinding along through billowing clouds of guitar shimmer, at once, tripped out and off kilter, but also dreamy and weirdly tranquil.
It definitely sets the stage perfectly for the rest of the record, which unfurls as a collection of woozy, rhythmic, almost new wave soundscapes, of overlapping loops, sampled horn blurts, swirls of reverbed synths, sounds chopped up and reassembled into weirdly rhythmic stutters, many of the songs building to almost tropical blowouts, like multiple Martin Denny records spinning simultaneously with someone like Philip Jeck at the controls, while others lay down skeletal robotic drum machines, and wrap them in spidery minor key melodies, and deep sinewy bass slither. There's even vocals here and there, doused in echo and reverb, deep and dramatic, buried way down in the mix, giving those tracks even more of a gloom pop electro goth feel. But there's also plenty of lush ambience, long stretches of collaged sound, droned and whirs, breakbeats, twangy guitars, on tracks like "Acinom" or "Save My Day" it almost sounds like Dirty Beaches by way of DJ Shadow, while others get fully dubbed out, upstroke guitars, faux horns, even almost toasting-like vox, but even there, the sounds are warped and woozy, low fidelity and fantastically and dreamily murky, reminding us of an even more tweaked and drugged out Sun Araw maybe. And so it goes for the record of the record, a hazy, drowsy sprawl of tripped out, darky dubby, rhythmically off kilter, melancholic, new wave flecked, FX heavy psychedelic tropical dream-murk weirdness that we are digging BIG TIME.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
If you're familiar with the radio show Glossolalia on KXLU in LA then you just might have heard some of the sound snippets that've found their home on this chunk of vinyl. A mad scientist's experiment gone a wee bit awry? This sonic collage was created by the
A Year With 13 Moons is Cantu-Ledesma's first major release since his debut for Type, Love Is A Stream, back in 2010. Of course he has been busy in between those years, releasing limited tapes, cd-rs and split lps, touring and collaborating, co-running the Root Strata label and moving restlessly from San Francisco to Berlin, to Munich, back to San Francisco and finally settling (for the time being anyway) in Brooklyn. In many ways, A Year Of 13 Moons is the other side of the same coin of Love Is A Stream's glorious embrace of the shoegaze tidal waves of Flying Saucer Attack, Cocteau Twins and Lovesliescrushing. Sonically, they share a kinship. But where the first album appeared to be about the blossoming of new love and the changes it brings, this new one seems more about the dissolution of that love and the moving on from its aftermath; what disappears and what lingers.
Recorded during a residency at the Headlands Art Center he shared with filmmaker and visual collaborator, Paul Clipson, the first and longest track, "The Last Time I Saw Your Face" sets the tone with a slow-fading white-hot burst of solar distortion topped by a lilting electric melody that suggests the rushing in of a loving yet painful memory, but half-way through sputters, flickers and changes course in a way that the sound appears to move past you and gets farther away, leaving one adrift both aurally and physically. That trajectory of smoldering intensity, combining a soaring but battered angelic Cocteau Twins-ish guitar drift with the quasar-laden feedback void of magnetic static conveys us through the albums many peaks and valleys, which at times touch on the romantic melancholy of Durutti Column's pastoral guitar and drum machine as well as Main's ominous and sometimes airless ambience. It's a beautiful and heartfelt record, gorgeously realized but one that does not try to endear the listener to its many complex moods. In fact, its blown out acoustics seem designed to be played in big echoing halls as loud as they can. It's face-meltingly bittersweet. (Note: also on vinyl, but we're running low...)
We were only able to get ten of these and odds are we won't be able to get more, so we'll keep this brief. Needless to say, you might want to grab one of these before they're gone, cuz the A side Finds Cantu-Ledesma unfurling a gorgeous slab of Lovesliescrushing style prismatic dreampop shimmer, skeletal rhythms suspended in crystalline fields of bleary sundappled rainbow synth swaddled guitartroniks, thick swaths of chordal thrum, whirls lazily over a warm billowy background of keening melodies and abstract ethereal ambience. Distorted and dreamily blown out, noisy, but a sort of gauzy soft focus noisiness that makes it sound like the sounds are melting into deliriously colorful fractals before your very ears. Some heady sonic confection for sure, and miles removed from the minimal contemplation of many of Cantu-Ledesma's other releases.
The flipside merges the two, the more subdued ambience of earlier works with the above mentioned blissed out 4AD blur/blear/bliss, the resulting track is a dark, Twin Peaks like drift, all lush soft swirls, fractured dubbed out rhythms, hazy sonic smears, all druggy and droney, a lovely lysergic comedown from the A side's more effervescent sonic swirl.
EXTREMELY LIMITED!!! These are very likely the only copies we'll ever get, includes a printed insert, and comes housed in a swank, thick, full color sleeve.
Only got a little handful of these. 150 copies total, already out of print and we have less than 10. Latest bit of ultra minimal bliss out dronemusic from Cantu, he of Tarentel, the Alps and the mighty Root Strata label. On Bloodstream Sermon, Cantu creates softly billowing stretches of lush shimmer, using only a Roland Juno 60 synth, a pure wave oscillator and a handful of electronics, each of the two tracks gorgeous and hazy and warm, soft swells of dreamlike sound, constantly shifting tones and overtones, utterly tranquil and hypnotic, the first side much more dense and layered, a thick undulating sprawl of deeeeeep tones. While the second side/track is more abstract, a bit more whir and glitch, ambient and almost industrial sounding. A blurred symphony of muted machine-like buzz and rumble, peppered with little glimmers of glitch, all wrapped in a gauzy patina of washed out thrum. So lovely.
Commissioned for a special event at the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, this 'soundtrack' of sorts offers up a gorgeous collection of new age ambience and blissed out soft focus kosmische drift, five tracks, 55 minutes, each piece a hazy bit of looped guitar shimmer, equal parts ambient krautdrone and warm whirling dreamscapery. Cantu-Ledesma, a member of late great post rockers Tarentel, as well as one of the folks behind the Root Strata label, now has a handful of solo records under his belt, running the gamut from deep dark dronemusic to blown out shoegaze guitadrone, but this is most definitely his most hushed and intimate, delicate and crystalline. A series of slow soft focus smears of prismatic glimmer, hushed arrangements of softly tangled guitar harmonies and slow shifting textures, glorious slow motion cascades of echo drenched melody and hazy indistinct chordal swells, like watching a time lapse film of the universe being born, a slowly developing landscape of colors and shapes, all seeming to float weightlessly in a wide open expanse of star flecked emptiness, the swirling contrails of the drifting notes blurring and oozing into one another, transforming the sky into softly swirling clouds of washed out sound, an endless expanse of ebb and flow, the sound wrapping up everything in their warm ethereal embrace. So lovely.
Real cds too, not cd-r's, housed in simple handmade sleeves, and of course, LIMITED!!
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Another batch of WAY too limited cassette releases from Twonicorn, whose releases seem to go out of print in the blink of an eye. This time we managed to get even more copies, in fact we took most of the copies from each pressing, but considering the fact that the pressing usually run between 40 and 100 copies, you know these won't last long either way.
Mr. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma should need no introduction by now. Not only does he play in AQ beloved blissed out drone rockers Tarentel, he also runs the kick ass Root Strata label (Starving Weirdos, Bonus, My Cat Is An Alien, John Davis, etc.). On Floating Weeds, JCL gives us super blissed out, ultra minimal drones, stretched out and darkly glistening, deep resonant tones intertwine into soft sonorous drifts of sound. Like staring at the sun with your eyes closed, a thick muted warmth that suffuses all your senses. So totally lovely.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES. We got almost half the pressing and we will not be able to get any more.
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Before we blather on like we so often do, it seemed like it might be good to just toss out a first impression of Love Is A Stream, the fantastic new record from Root Strata label Head Honcho Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, his first for the type label. And heck, that first impression might be all you need:
Lovesliescrushing meets Flying Saucer Attack.
There. Hard to argue with that. Warped warbly, blurred shoegazey drift, long stretches of incendiary psychedelic guitar drone, streaks of soft noise, buried melodies, ethereal vocals, lush layered textures, dense and explosive, expansive and dreamily hazy, and in its own way, gorgeously heavy.
A new side of Cantu-Ledesma for sure, whose past records seemed to hover in a much more tranquil serene otherworld, unfurling hushed landscapes of whispery minimalism, of delicate crystalline shimmer, and of barely there soft focus ambient drift. Love Is A Stream is anything but, a fiery, fierce, yet ultimately lush and washed out series of bold shoegaze dreamnoise experiments, not so much pop songs swathed in distortion and effects, as carefully crafted sonic impressions, a series of gorgeous miniature epics, each a brief expanse of prismatic hypnogogic psychedelia, every one a unique a roiling concoction of fuzzpopbliss and murky melodic churn. On the surface, the record plays out like a series of textures, from warm whirling hum, to crumbling blown out white noise blur, to grinding muted pulse and throb, to gauzy bleary haze, to thick billowy low end rumble, to superdistorted effects-drenched synthnoise, and yeah, you're reading right, this is in fact a noisy record, but it's an artfully crafted, carefully sculpted noise. A thick, billowing, warm and gloriously enveloping melodic noise, like sinking into a swirling sea of burnished muted crush, a nearly overwhelming avalanche of whirling swirling crumbling throb and thrum, beneath it all lurk delicate melodies, tendrils of minor key guitar, ghostly voices, whirring synths, they rise to the surface here and there, but for the most part exist as shadowy impressions, infusing the noisy textures with a melodic core, a warm glowing sonic heart, which is what transforms these heaving slabs of shoegazey heaviness into something divine, and divinely dreamy.
There are brief moments, where the surface noise, and the distortion, and the walls of effects peel back, and we get to peek behind the curtain, which reveals the lush minimal underpinnings of the songs, a brief melodic smear here, a hushed little fragment of guitar there, but a glimpse is all we get, and really all we want, because it's how those bits of minimal songcraft interact with the intense sonic effulgence that is truly the magic that Cantu-Ledesma wields in conjuring up the sounds here. And like all magic, the joy is not in how it was done, but it how it makes us feel.
The lp version comes with a bonus cd, a collaboration with Type label mainman Xela, who took source material provided by Cantu-Ledesma, and fashioned his own bit of ambient dronemusic. Nearly 50 minutes of haunting drift, after a short burst of caustic super distorted crunch, Xela settles into a slow burning sprawl of washed out chordal shimmer, deep rumbling thrum and lush streaks of shoegazey buzz, a few moments as dense and psychedelic as the record proper, but for the most part, more of a chill out wind down coda, the perfect addendum to an already practically perfect record. Really quite lovely.
A brand new, brief and lovely missive from Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, frontman of Tarentel, member of The Alps, The Holy See, Two Suns, head honcho of the Root Strata label and a pretty handy drone alchemist on his own, this little 3" is no different.
Utilizing a borrowed autoharp and a handful of electronics, Phantom Harp is all glistening glimmering solar flares, shimmering sunlight filtered through green fields sparkling with dewdrops, a gorgeous soft focus glacial drift, an otherworldly, slowed down Appalachia, the chords slowly drifting apart, notes carried skyward like leaves on a summer breeze, sleep, bleary eyed dreaminess, which all gives way to a washed out, lugubrious lowercase smear of fluttering drones, and creeping moonlit fog, hushed and dreamy, an oceanic seascape of twinkling muted melody and near static shimmer. All arranged into a single twenty minute track, multiple movements woven into an epic organic constantly evolving sonic dreamscape. Gorgeous.
Packaged in a beautiful black on black fold over thick paper sleeve, inside a 3" cd in a tiny plastic jacket, and a printed insert.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!
We have an EXTREMELY limited number of these, just a handful, so we won't get into too much detail, and if you want one, by all means, be quick, cuz these will be gone before you know it. The latest from longtime aQ pal Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, formerly of post rockers Tarentel, and one of the fellas behind the Root Strata label, is a piece Cantu-Ledesma composed for the SF Museum Of Modern Art, and is a gorgeous composition for violin and tape, with violinist Tony Cross laying down gorgeously haunting long tones, processed and layered by Cantu-Ledesma, who also contributes tapes and various effects. The piece itself is simple and stunning, reminiscent of Basinski's Disintegration Loops, a single melodic figure, repeated over and over, the tone and timbre constantly shifting, a sprawl of slow, soft swells, minor key and melancholy, tense, and dramatic and quite cinematic, a mesmerizing stretch of minimal mood music, that manages to be surprisingly sonically active, while at the same time, darkly tranquil and mesmerizing. It's easy to get immediately lost in the sound, and even at eight minutes, it ends far too soon. Truly gorgeous stuff. Sadly, as we said, this is EXTREMELY limited, art gallery style. It's a nicely appointed one sided 10", with a screen printed B-side, includes a digital download, photograph, numbered insert, and there are only 300 COPIES!!! We got what we could, which wasn't many, so odds are, this is likely our, and thus your, only chance to nab a copy. You know what that means...
Another super limited sonic transmission from right here in the Bay Area, from AQ fave Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the man behind Tarentel, and the Root Strata label. Those familiar with Cantu-Ledesma's music, knows that he usually speakers in hushed whispers, breathy and breathless, soft sonic shimmers allowed to drift like billowy clouds into your ears. But here, CL is no longer whispering, instead he's breathing fire, his guitar a newly minted incendiary device. A sonic flame thrower, each track a layered assemblage of thick peals of sound, glowing tongues of distorted flame. A sonic assault more similar to Total or Sunroof! Than CL's usual output. Makes sense that the first song is dedicated to Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans (who also mastered it).
But all of this talk of fire and flame shouldn't scare you off, there is still plenty of delicate beauty to be had, it's just wrapped in thick sheets of sonic napalm, the guitar effulgent and glowing white hot, the chords washed out and the distortion crumbling. Melodies are jagged and dripping with hissy buzz, each track a glacial guitarscape turning your speakers to ash.
There are a few tracks, almost half of the 8 here, that drift in a soporific haze, and hew closer to CL's usual aesthetic, but here, they sound less like individual pieces, and more like interludes, brief moments of tranquility, a chance to catch your breath, let your ears heal, allow time for your speakers to re-solidify, before launching the next buzzing crumbling divinely distorted salvo of gorgeous blown out guitar bliss.
Fans of stuff like Nadja, the Yellow Swans, Tim Hecker, the Angelic Process, Fear Falls Burning, will be quite pleased with Cantu-Ledesma's visit to the sonic dark side.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Packaged in full color cardboard sleeves, with printed inserts.
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has always been a musical chameleon. Aside from loose adjectives like "dreamy" and "ethereal," the aesthetic framework for each of his albums is slippery, although the quality is always topnotch. This would include the expansive avant-shoegazing propositions for his work in Tarentel or the cinematic psychedelia from The Alps or gossamer-crush from his dream-pop distillations in Raum or that Love Is A Stream album he did for Type a while back. Songs Of Remembrance collects half-forgotten / half-dreamt / half-remembered melodies and builds hazy, gauzy fragments of songs, set along the oceanic current of the '80s synth ballad, draped with maudlin electronics and murky guitar smears. The sounds are cinematic and melancholy, and most are fused to primitive drum machine rhythms. Lovely Durutti Column like guitar figures dot hushed dronescapes, which in turn are peppered with strange electronics and bits of glitch, with some of this sounding like an alternate soundtrack to Twin Peaks, check out the brief opening few minutes, with its very eighties sounding, reverb heavy drift, echoey guitars floating above loping programmed rhythms, and laced with mysterious almost 8-bit sounding sonic filigree, and it continues to drift dreamily from there, the sound a woozy sprawl of chiming distant chords, and barely there melodies, minus the strange squelches, it would be downright tranquil and serene, the drum machines swoop back in throughout, and again, each time, we're transported back to some alternate universe eighties, all dark streets and cloud choked skies, dingy all-night dives and late night wandering. The 'songs' here are ultra brief, some barely a minute or two, playing more like a strange compilation of sonic vignettes, musical short stories, Cantu-Ledesma displaying a knack for creating lush atmospheres in a matter of seconds, and then letting them fade into nothingness just as we're getting settled in. It says something that we wish almost every track here kept going and going and going�
Lots of the tracks here have a very M83 feel to them as well, lost in time, faded memories, soundtracky, but seventies art film soundtracky, long Super-8 shots of the landscape rushing by through a train window, of glittering city lights, we find ourselves imagining this music set to the films of Paul Clipson, Cantu's long time collaborator, the sounds here evoking similarly abstract and melancholic visuals. There are some 'noise' pieces too, but even then, it's more soft noise, and usually those segue right back into some reverby eighties drum machine drift.
Songs Of Remembrance seems to reprise the fictional USSR electronica of Oneohtrix Point Never, the unintentionally brilliant moments of hypnogogic-pop from James Ferrara, and of course, the delusional, sunshine-noir aspirations from Ensemble Economique!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Already out of print at the label, so these are the last copies we'll be able to get!!! Includes a download too...
After a couple of super limited cd-r's and tapes, a release or two as Colophon, and a bunch as records as a member of the Alps and Tarentel, The Garden Of Forking Paths is Cantu-Ledesma's first proper full length, and it's a doozy. A subtle and immersive sound that belies the huge array of instruments used. Electric guitars, acoustic guitars, gong, sruti box, harmonium, singing bowl, cassette, microcassette, reel to reel tape machine, electronics, sound booster and ride cymbal, with help on one track with percussion, tapes and electronics. Somehow, all of those bits and baubles are melted down into a gorgeously lush, yet minimal series of slow crawls, deep rich drones, each adorned with subtle variations and bits of sonic color.
The multitude of tape machines used in the creation of this record gives the proceedings a raw, fuzzy analog vibe that definitely hits our Jeck-Hecker-Basinski spot. Fuzzy and indistinct, thick smeared sonic drifts, that occasionally glow with some sort of diffused inner light, but for the most part, slither darkly through the shadowy corners of your speakers. Here and there, some of the sound will spill from your speakers like black ink, shiny and shimmery, staining you ears with a mysterious darkness. The final track is the only track where you can hear the guitar, a mumbling buzzy melody buried way down in the mix, creeping through a moonlit landscape of shimmering warble and distant barely-there hum. A gorgeously murky minimal world of slow moving tape, vibrating metal, creaking buzz, whirling whispers and abstract dreamy drift.
Packaged in a cool, sleek oversized digipak style folder.
Second dvd collaboration from film maker Paul Clipson and Root Strata / Tarentel head honcho Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Another gorgeous and sonically blissed out tag team, Clipson's films this time around, again on Super-8, shot entirely in NYC, impressionistic shots of cityscapes, rolling hills, the texture of water, sun dappled evening skies, many of the shots textural, extreme close ups, patterns as much as images and shapes, sunspots, shadows, reflections, very active, the world flying past out the window of a train, power lines and bridges slipping out of eyeshot, setting suns and colored clouds, so lovely and dreamy.
Cantu-Ledesma offers up the perfect soundtrack, music culled from the same sessions that produced the huge aQ fave Shining Skull Breath, so even folks who don't care about the dvd, will want this for the sounds, which are thick and dense, whirring dronescapes, textured and layered, slipping from minimal shimmer to buzzing roar and back again, very much active, the intensity and propulsion of the sounds perfectly matching the motion of the visuals, in some cases, seemingly slowing it down, the drone dragging the landscape flashing by into sudden focus before letting it go again.
Either of these elements would be fantastic on their own, we can only imagine seeing these films projected against the side of a building, or on a huge movie screen, and these sounds would kill broadcast through some massive PA, the thick roiling drones washing over us, filling our ears with grit and grime, but together they work even better, even just viewed on the tiny screen of our computer, sonically and visually evoking all sorts of deep feelings and lost memories, of places never visited, of better times, of lost loves and of a past that keeps slipping further and further away. So lovely.
Packaged in an folded up origami style vellum sleeve with a printed insert. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! Already sold out at the label so these are the last copies EVER!
In the age of YouTube and MySpace, the idea of the music video has changed dramatically since the days of MTV (or at least the days when MTV actually played videos). In the past, only bands on major labels could make a video, often hiring a real director and dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, plenty of bands have videos before they even have a record out. Super 8, digital video, Final Cut Pro, anyone can put together their own video and have it look as good if not better than the classic videos of old.
Old news maybe, but the thing is, most bands seems to use the video as simply a promotional tactic, or an excuse to fuck around and film it. Instead of, dare we say, ART. In the underground though, it's not at all uncommon for like minded musicians and filmmakers to join forces. In fact, with the advent of live performances featuring laptops and other sedimentary sound making devices (when is someone gonna make a laptop guitar, so left out laptoppers can windmill and leap about with the rest of the band?), often it's the accompanying films that are way more compelling. Often, a show is touted as some band performing "with films by so and so", but in fact, more often than not, it plays out more like seeing a film, that just so happens to feature live accompaniment by some band.
Few labels have really taken advantage of this new technology as much as Root Strata, who have quietly and steadily been releasing a series of super limited dvd-r's, each featuring new compositions by a small handful of artists, coupled with original films. The results have been pretty sublime, the films tending toward the abstract and impressionistic, the music following suit. When watching / listening to these, it's hard not to imagine laying on the floor, propped up on cushions, lights low, the film being projected on a huge blank wall, the band hunkered over their instruments in the corner, which makes sense as that's most likely how these films/sounds were conceived.�
So we have two new super limited dvd-r releases, one from Zelienople and one from Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Paul Clipson, both limited to 100 copies, both already out of print, so these are the only copies we'll ever get.�
This is the third collaboration between filmmaker Paul Clipson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, who also plays in Tarentel, and runs Root Strata with his partner Maxwell Croy.�
The Phantom Harp, as the title might lead you to believe, is in fact a reworking of the piece of the same name, originally released as a 3" cd-r and now out of print. Not only has the piece been reworked, but no it is accompanied by Clipson's gorgeous abstract images. The Phantom Harp is a super minimal sun dappled stretch of glimmering shimmering dreaminess, soft notes float like leaves in the summer sun, smears of high end wreath each note in glimmering sonic haloes, the pace is glacial, the melodies stretched out over minutes instead of seconds, a little ambient, a little new age, a little free drone, all deftly blurred into one smoldering sonic dreamscape. The visuals are super striking, and manage to fit perfectly with the sounds, all black and white, images of rain slicked streets, sun shining through the treetops, car headlights at night, images sometimes overexposed, blurred, superimposed, but mostly left to just play out, cityscapes, buildings, people rushing to and fro, light reflecting on water, shapes and textures, walls, grills, neon signs, restaurants, a soft, a dreamy faded super-8 travelogue. So nice.
Packaged in printed, folded papers sleeves, and again, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, and already out of print.
Finally available, this long in the works compilation of the various collaborations between super 8 filmmaker Paul Clipson and musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, he of Tarentel and the Alps as well as one half of the team that runs the Root Strata label. Many (if not all) of these collaborations were previously available as ultra limited dvd-r's, some so limited (as in 50 copies!) we only got a handful, some so limited we never got ANY. This is the first time they've all been compiled on a proper REAL dvd (not a dvd-r), and we're the only store that has the ultra limited version which comes with a bonus 3" cd-r, but more on that in bit.
First, let's talk about the films and the music included here. First, The Phantom Harp from 2007. The Phantom Harp, was in fact a reworking of the piece of the same name, originally released as a 3" cd-r and long out of print. The reworked version found the music accompanied by Clipson's gorgeous abstract images. The Phantom Harp is a super minimal sun dappled stretch of glimmering shimmering dreaminess, soft notes float like leaves in the summer sun, smears of high end wreath each note in glimmering sonic haloes, the pace is glacial, the melodies stretched out over minutes instead of seconds, a little ambient, a little new age, a little free drone, all deftly blurred into one smoldering sonic dreamscape. The visuals are super striking, and manage to fit perfectly with the sounds, all black and white, images of rain slicked streets, sun shining through the treetops, car headlights at night, images sometimes overexposed, blurred, superimposed, but mostly left to just play out, cityscapes, buildings, people rushing to and fro, light reflecting on water, shapes and textures, walls, grills, neon signs, restaurants, a soft, a dreamy faded super-8 travelogue.
Then there's Corridors, also from 2007, which was the second dvd collaboration between Clipson and Cantu-Ledesma. Another gorgeous and sonically blissed out tag team, Clipson's films, again on Super-8, were shot entirely in NYC, impressionistic shots of cityscapes, rolling hills, the texture of water, sun dappled evening skies, many of the shots textural, extreme close ups, patterns as much as images and shapes, sunspots, shadows, reflections, very active, the world flying past out the window of a train, power lines and bridges slipping out of eyeshot, setting suns and colored clouds, so lovely and dreamy. Cantu-Ledesma offers up the perfect soundtrack, music culled from the same sessions that produced the huge aQ fave Shining Skull Breath, thick and dense, whirring dronescapes, textured and layered, slipping from minimal shimmer to buzzing roar and back again, very much active, the intensity and propulsion of the sounds perfectly matching the motion of the visuals, in some cases, seemingly slowing it down, the drone dragging the landscape flashing by into sudden focus before letting it go again.
Two Suns from 2005: A beautifully abstract and paranoid impression of Southern California, filmed on grainy Super8, with lots of dizzyingly hypnotic footage of telephone wires, helicopters, cityscapes, gorgeously blurred out traffic lights and tail lights and street lights. There's late afternoon silhouettes, fuzzy smears of neon, rain drops on glass, cranes and docks, abstract streaks of passing cars and slick roadways, hillsides covered in windmills, the sun reflected on the sea, highways and green hills. So lovely. And haunting. As are the accompanying sounds created, an ominous, buzzing, vocal drone, affected to the point that it still sounds organic, but not like a voice, more like streaks of sound, greys and blacks and browns, all smeared into blurred soundscapes of purr and whir and thrum, that perfectly compliment the shaky camera work, the grainy film stock, and the gorgeously and ominously mundane subject matter.
Constellations from 2006: A dreamlike drift through a dense visual latticework of plants, chainlink fences, branches, leaves, stoplights, neon signs, a delirious series of slow motion visual tangles and patterns. A bug's eye view of the world mysterious and wonderful, like cutting room floor super-8 plant studies and urban landscapes woven into soft focus home movies. All set to the warm glow of Ledesma's swelling dronescapes.
The other three films here may have been released before, but are new to us, Sphinx On The Seine from 2008, is another collection of gorgeous hazy landscapes, in washed out color and start black and white, the films flitting back and forth, industrial structures, glowing lights, moving textures and solar flares, all set to a dark and haunting melody laced low end thrum, meditative and ominous. There's also Within Mirrors, which is also from 2008, and is much more impressionistic, branches and leaves, constantly shifting in and out of focus, while Cantu-Ledesma's score shifts accordingly, from pulsing looped mesmer to warm washed out dreaminess.
And finally, there's Lights & Perfections from 2006, more patterns, this time a journey through ever shifting foliage, another bug's eye view, flowers and grass, and shifting leaves, blossoms, everything swaying gently in the breeze, the soundtrack equally breezy, soft focus, hushed and dreamy, soothing and tranquil and so lovely. In fact all the sights and sounds here are gorgeous. And as if that weren't enough, we have the super limited version, which comes with a bonus 3" cd-r, featuring an exclusive 17 minute track, a gorgeous hazy dronescape, of pulsing softly psychedelic shimmer, of strange hushed industrial whir, of grinding shoegazey crunch, of barely there whispery drift, of staticky dreamlike shimmer, so gorgeous.
EXTREMELY LIMITED, at least the deluxe version with the bonus disc, so grab one quick if you want the extra disc! The packaging is super swank too, an oversized complex multipocketed origami style cardstock sleeve, printed front and back. Nice!
Halation is the debut release from Japanese dronologist Hiroshi Tanaka, aka Capricornus, and is two tracks and 41 minutes of gorgeously minimal, hazy, gauzy, ethereal, free floating, hushed ambient drift. Long tones are layered into gently undulating sonic swells woven into a blurred, meditative new age, melodies playing out over minutes instead of seconds, the overtones, creating subtly kaleidoscopic shades amidst the glacially unfolding drowsy tranquility, occasionally what sounds like guitars surface, but all the edges are worn away, transforming the chordal steel string whir into yet another layer of soft sound. The second track is a bit more moody, slightly darker, the sounds interacting similarly, muted and murmuring, drifting dreamily, but the tones have a melancholic cast, as if clouds had drifted over the opening track, still warm and lush and dreamlike, but more rainy day than sun dappled summer afternoon. Both equally lovely, a fantastic debut of washed out ambient dreamdronedrift.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
For nearly twenty years now, Eugene Carchesio and Leighton Craig have been creating wayward recordings in barely-released editions on cassette and cd-r for their exploratory free-folk / semi-improvisational communions with the Australian landscape. Only recently have any of their recordings made their way across the Pacific, mostly by way of their contributions in the group Lost Domain, whose drifting, monochromatic ragas have been released by such shambolic stalwarts as Digitalis Recordings and PseudoArcana. Leaves is another such entry in their humbly spectacular wanderings; this time, it's through the exceptional Australian label Naturestrip. The easiest comparison that anyone could make to Leaves would be to The Blithe Sons, where two dedicated listeners creating droning harmonics alongside the unpredictability of natural events. Carchesio and Craig often are found slumped over their battery powered keyboards, creating shimmering drone vibrations that accompany the cacophony of lorikeets, crows, cicadas, and wind in Leighton's Brisbane backyard, where these recordings were made. When the birds and insects allow it, Carchesio and Craig pick up an acoustic guitar, violin, and recorder (amongst other instruments) for some purposefully primitive arrangements pocked with dreamily psychedelic references and quietly clattered improv. Really, really nice!
Even though Cornelius Cardew composed this piece from 1963 - 1967, the world premier complete recording of "Treatise" did not see the light of day long after his death in 1998. That's not surprising, considering that the manuscript of the score is 193 pages long, and serves as an open ended graphical display rather than a collection of specific notations. There are no suggestions as to
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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The Cortical Foundation has been reissuing some amazing documents of avant-garde sound art from the past century, including this composition from Scratch Orchestra ringleader and AMM memeber Cornelius Cardew. This work presents three paragraphs from the much larger musical text of "The Great Learning" and is composed of sustained pipe organ tones in particularly malevolent chords, short stabs of police whistles, sheets of hammering tribal drums with human voices howling against the drums, and complex vocal choirs. All of the text that runs through the compositions are incantations from the Confucian text "The Great Learning" which lays down a basic ethical and political code. However, the recitation of these texts sounds very much like the perversions of Catholic liturgies from the black masses of the Satanic Church with an authoritative delivery, an almost Gnostic indecipherability, and a bleakly somber overtone. Cardew's intentions for using this text are to express the inherent human failings of attempting to live up to the most basic of moral codes. Despite his pairing the metaphor of failure with the distinctly sprirtual overtones in the work, Cardew may not be actually talking about spiritual collapse or the failure of religions. Rather, "The Great Learning" postulates that if there is a higher state than mankind, then it will be our goal to attempt to find a means to that state, even if that is an impossible goal. Altogether, this is an wonderful if at times terrifying work.
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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Now available on cd, record number two from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project, whose last record, Persistent Repetition Of Phrases, was a unanimous aQ fave, and was of course one of Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, and was, and still is, one of our best sellers, and it looks like this one is likely to follow suit.
A sonic meditation on memory and loss, The Caretaker, takes old jazz records, various effects, and what sounds like a battery of old beat up Victrolas, and weaves Philip Jeck like soundscapes, but unlike Jeck, the source sounds here are not obfuscated, in fact, in some respects, The Caretaker records are almost like spectral spiritual otherworldly mix tapes, especially on this new one, which sounds like old 78s left to play in a big old auditorium, the room's reverb lovingly wreathing the music in a gauzy old timey haze, the surface noise, hiss and crackle and pop, somehow accentuated by the cavernous space. Better yet, replace the auditorium with an old abandoned mansion. Imagine the great room, animal heads on the walls, old oil paintings, a massive fireplace, charred black, old decaying rugs, all the furniture covered in white cloths, looking like ghosts, cobwebs in all the corners, the floor beneath a layer of dust, and in the corner, an old record player, lit up, its turntable spinning slowly, some old dusty record, to a room full of spirits, a sonic requiem for a time that once was, the music seeming to reflect the ever fading memories, and that's what these songs sound like, some sort of haunted house jazz, old timey seance blues, mournful melodies played on an old piano, muted trumpet, swoonsome strings, shuffling drums, a slow motion big band performing live in the ether, a spectral band playing lament after lament, dedicating it to their lost loves, and loves lost.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World plays like some archival collection of lost 78's, but where the records' provenance is unknown, timeless music that could have come from anytime, and anywhere, the imperfections and inconsistencies as much a part of the sound as the music itself, all of that hiss and crackle a warm wreath of time-transformed-into-sound detritus, the passing of time mad physical, a sonic memorial to the past. So utterly gorgeous.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Repressed and back in print.
Record number two from Leyland Kirby's Caretaker project, whose last record, Persistent Repetition Of Phrases, was a unanimous aQ fave, and was of course one of Wire magazine's top 10 albums of 2008, and was, and still is, one of our best sellers, and it looks like this one is likely to follow suit.
A sonic meditation on memory and loss, The Caretaker, takes old jazz records, various effects, and what sounds like a battery of old beat up Victrolas, and weaves Philip Jeck like soundscapes, but unlike Jeck, the source sounds here are not obfuscated, in fact, in some respects, The Caretaker records are almost like spectral spiritual otherworldly mix tapes, especially on this new one, which sounds like old 78s left to play in a big old auditorium, the room's reverb lovingly wreathing the music in a gauzy old timey haze, the surface noise, hiss and crackle and pop, somehow accentuated by the cavernous space. Better yet, replace the auditorium with an old abandoned mansion. Imagine the great room, animal heads on the walls, old oil paintings, a massive fireplace, charred black, old decaying rugs, all the furniture covered in white cloths, looking like ghosts, cobwebs in all the corners, the floor beneath a layer of dust, and in the corner, an old record player, lit up, its turntable spinning slowly, some old dusty record, to a room full of spirits, a sonic requiem for a time that once was, the music seeming to reflect the ever fading memories, and that's what these songs sound like, some sort of haunted house jazz, old timey seance blues, mournful melodies played on an old piano, muted trumpet, swoonsome strings, shuffling drums, a slow motion big band performing live in the ether, a spectral band playing lament after lament, dedicating it to their lost loves, and loves lost.
An Empty Bliss Beyond This World plays like some archival collection of lost 78's, but where the records' provenance is unknown, timeless music that could have come from anytime, and anywhere, the imperfections and inconsistencies as much a part of the sound as the music itself, all of that hiss and crackle a warm wreath of time-transformed-into-sound detritus, the passing of time mad physical, a sonic memorial to the past. So utterly gorgeous.
One of Wire magazine's records of 2008, the Caretaker's Persistent Repetition Of Phrases was in fact, when we finally got to hear it, incredible. Gorgeous, hazy, mysterious, destined to be one of OUR favorites as well. Unfortunately, when we tried to order it, intending to feature it prominently on the list, we discovered that it was in fact so limited that it was already out of print, not to be repressed. Argghhh.
Thankfully, the vinyl version showed up recently, so we grabbed as many as we could, so we could shower it with the praise it most definitely deserves. CD only folks are shit out of luck, but for now (and we mean NOW, these are crazy limited too) we have the vinyl, so grab one before they disappear.
The Caretaker has two modes, slow shimmery gauzy ambience, and slowed down warped and blurred big band and jazz. Often combing the two into some sort of otherworldly slow motion spectral dream jazz. We've been joking that the Caretaker is sort of like the DJ Screw of the avant underground, seeing as he takes scratchy old jazz records and reworks them Philip Jeck style into, woozy buried drifts of jazz shadows and haunting otherworldly vocals. Most of the jazzier tracks, sound like the soundtrack to some super creepy dream sequence, a la the Shining, like when Nicholson finds himself in that bar filled with ghosts, you can almost imagine, a dusty old saloon, broken mirrors, cigarette burned tables, sawdust floors, a lone figure sitting alone, hunched over in a dark corner, while all around him, nearly transparent figures move about as if still alive, a ballet of phantom familiarity, spirits unaware that they've moved on, going on with the machinations of daily life, their essence flickery and indistinct, like an old filmstrip. And a filmstrip soundtrack is exactly what the music of the Caretaker evokes, warm, effusive, burnished, old timey, antiquated, the sounds are dark and woozy and and bleed together, blurring into fuzzy stretches of lost memory, of suspended time. The music here is the sound of faded old photographs, of old super 8 movies projected on a wall in a dark and dusty old room, of abandoned skating rinks, of boarded up windows, of black clouds filling a slate grey sky, of life slowing to a crawl, before ven more slowly fading away. Absolutely and utterly breathtaking.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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The Caretaker spins really old vinyl for the most part much slower than intended and affects the lugubrious pace with assorted warbly effects. This collage of slo-mo waltzes and antique crackles is punctuated by a spartan use of distorto-breakbeat-crunch. Released on V/VM's label and certainly follows the V/VM - Speedranch - Janski Noise aethetic of neo-dada electronica, yet presented with a very sad overtone. In the end this could easily be some gossamer soundtrack to a deep sea nature show or an alternate score to the ballroom scenes in "The Shining".
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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Lots of radiophonic blorp, orbital bleep, and weird science are to be found on Matt Carlson's solo lp Particle Language. Carlson ranks amongst the more prolific members of the Portland experimental scene, starting out in the heavy-drone trio Bonus and moving onto the Vangelis-esque progressive electronic outfit Golden Retriever and the spasmodic DIY electronics of the Oregon Painting Society. Particle Language follows the retro-clad affairs of Golden Retriever, but his modular synths are dialed into a more cerebral, more academic approach to electronic music, with swarms of spiralling oscillations firing at every conceivable trajectory. Carlson gives the impression that he's set all of his careening, spiralling sounds in motion and allows them to crash into each other with regularity, as if they were all toy robots and remote control cars banging together. The violence of this atonal, electronic cacophony is all comedy, recalling the most playful explorations of Conrad Schnitzler in the '80s and the most angular / obtuse productions of Oneohtrix Point Never.
