This 2005 Circle album, out of print for a bit, is now newly reissued on cd, this time its jewel case wrapped in a spiffy slipcase, featuring some cool new artwork (and a "no posers" symbol)!
NWOFHM. That's what it says on the inside of the cd booklet, in big bold letters. NWOFHM? WTF? If you don't get the joke, explaining it won't help, but here goes: New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. Our Finnish friends Circle are apparently referencing the famed NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) that took the rock world by storm circa 1979, giving us Saxon, Angel Witch, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Venom, Samson, and many many many more. What's that got to do with the Can and Neu! pulsed space/prog/post-rock normally practiced by Circle?? Well Circle fans know that these guys have indeed established their very own trademark "circular" sound (repetitive, rhythmic, looping, hypnotic rock) that, whirlpool-like, pulls in all sorts of influences, from the aforementioned Krautrock forefathers to jazz and dub and lo-fi drone improv and, yes, metal. When you get a new Circle album, you kinda both know what to expect *and* never know what to expect. Well we'll tell you about Circle's latest studio effort, Tulikoria. In part, it's Circle donning the leather and spikes (metaphorically, perhaps, though they threatened to do so for real live on stage at their show in San Francisco that was happening the night we originally posted this review). Circle's love of metal, specifically the true, traditional heavy metal of the '80s, has borne fruit before, on several of the songs from their amazing Sunrise album released in 2002. So, the heavy metal component present on Tulikoira is precedented in the Circle discog. But, like Sunrise, this isn't just Circle "doing metal". It's a lot of other things besides! Nobody will confuse it for an "actual" metal album. But heavy metal is definitely, proudly an element here, amongst others. And graphically, too, it's an inspiration, as you'll see from Circle's new fangled, tough-looking symmetrical logo, which even incorporates a lightning bolt!
There's four tracks here, starting with "Rautakaarme", an atmospheric seven-minute cut featuring monkish chant, eerie drone, and energetic bursts of rock action. Second track "Tulilintu" is *entirely* active and energetic, really bringing in the headbanging, fist-pumping metal, complete with guitar leads and soaring screams in the manner of Rob Halford. Seriously. The lyrics are in Finnish (presumably) so we don't know how tongue-in-cheek-or-not they are. Track three, "Berserk", is kinda weird, another atmospheric exercise with some lines in English like "I'm a scorpion" and "I'm a crocodile" spoken over rather spooky, bass-heavy grooves. A lot of tension in this one. Could almost be a noirish film soundtrack from the '70s, but with additional "circular" electric guitar riffing. Then the final track "Puutiikeri" arrives, pretty much taking over the album since it's an epic 24 minute affair, beginning and ending with authentic heavy metal riffing, but journeying far and wide in-between. Creaky improv splatter, lush keyboards, gently whispering vocals, spacey electronic effects, chugging, pulsating rhythms (of course!), and even some quasi-techno beats (!) are stirred into this weird mix. Ranging in mood from calm tranquility to flat out rockin', this is a real trip, as is all of Tulikoira. If you've been following Circle's output in recent years, and rolling with all their eccentricities, from Sunrise to Guillotine to Forest to Empire, you'll be happy to add Tulikoria to your collection too!
ATTENTION FINNISH MUSIC FREEKS AND CIRCLE OBSESSIVES!!! ULTRA LIMITED CIRCLE 7" ALERT!!! Fans of these freaky Finns best act fast as this is a super limited, already out of print, brand new seven inch single featuring two preciously unreleased songs. In Trensmat's series of ultra limited 7", usually limited to 100 copies or less, we convinced the label to double their pressing, half of which came to aQuarius, but needless to say, like all things Circle, these will not last long, and once they are gone, they are gone forever...
So here you go, two new tracks, of that instantly recognizable motorik Circular hypnorock. No metal, or ambience, this is the classic Circle sound, the A side is Circle at their most stripped down, the drums and guitars locked into a constant loop, the bass following right along, so mesmerizing and seemingly endless, the vocals a barely there whisper, while off in the distance lurk all manner of random clatter and mysterious percussive events. Right in the middle there's an awesome stumbling atonal guitar 'solo' before the band slips right back into that same groove. Goes on and on and if we had our say it would have kept right on going and filled up both sides of a 12".
The flip side is another single riffed hypnojam, a bit less languorous and a little more propulsive, very krautrocky, with lots of harmonica (!) and the vocals much more of a focal point, higher in the mix and leading the groove behind them. Throughout the song are cool tripped out new wave-y synth washes, lazily draped over that impossible catchy Circle rhythm. The end though holds a bit of a surprise with a super bizarre harmonized low vocal coda, a bit like a chorus of Orcs, creepy and kind of what-the-fuck, cool to, and it's Circle, so you should be prepared for them to toss in an Orc chorus now and then.
Cool packaging, a very metal Circle logo, designed by Krypt (who we can only assume is Krypt Axeripper aka Jussi of Circle) sinking into a Finnish seaside, while on the flip is a strange pencil drawing of four guys who look nothing like Circle. Pressed on red vinyl, and as we mentioned above, SUPER SUPER LIMITED AND ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL!!!
Ultra limited release from local label Flenser, of the debut from this mysterious Bay Area trio, featuring members of Sutekh Hexen, Necrite and Swampwitch, and while that pedigree might have you imagining some sort of blacknoise blackbuzz blowout, this is actually something else altogether. Three long tracks of creeping, ambient ritualism, if you had to classify it as some sort of metal, it would definitely be doom, but only barely, there are thick, coruscating guitars, crumbling distortion, but they're not riffs so much as atmospheric smears of black sound. It's more a sort of blackdrone creep. The vocals a demonic bellow, the sound creeping and oozing over a backdrop of distant shimmer and muted rumble, the result like some sort of demonic ritual, performed by firelight in some mysterious cavern. The guitar erupting occasionally into wild tangles of noisy skree, but quickly settling back down into a more haunting tranquil drift. In fact the two tracks on the B side pretty much forego the downtuned slo-mo riffage entirely, instead, weaving spidery guitars, and hushed ambient shimmer, growled and mewled vox (sounding like more demonic Eugene from Oxbow), the sound much more spare and sparse, cinematic and soundtracky, the whole tape like some oozing black mass (both meaning intended), a gorgeously tripped out blackened sonic mystery that will probably appeal to the ambient doom set and weird drone fans more than metalheads, even though at it's core, this is some sort of super abstract atmospheric ethereal metal. Regardless, we dig big time.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The latest limited release from the the Handmade Birds label, a new and already insanely prolific sonic imprint run by Pyramids' R. Loren, comes from long time aQ faves, Finnish outsider black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. And a new record from CoO means it's time again to wonder why we even still consider these guys black metal, since it's been several years and many records since they were a proper black metal band (if they ever were at all). We are constantly baffled by groups like CoO, who are so beloved by so much of the black metal world, and we're talking the true grim hordes, yet they continue to create music that we imagine would not be pleasing AT ALL to such folk. Maybe we're selling black metallers short. Or it means the appeal is more than purely sonic. It speaks to the spirit of the sound, the black energy put into the music, which eventually must come out, even if it does as some sort of twisted Jandekian fractured folk or some minimal synth wave weirdness, at its core, the sound is dark, black, evil.
All of this talk in some ways is moot, as this latest record finds the band doing what they do, which is sort of black metal, sort of post rock, sort of whatthefuck, but it's all objective, and this music's 'blackness', or even its 'metalness', by most typically metal measures would be found wanting, but as far as we're concerned, this is exactly the sort of metallic blackness we love, murky, muddy, washed out and woozy, warped and stumbling, equal parts dark pop, fragmented folk, otherworldly creep, oh yeah and a little black buzz.
It only takes a few seconds to realize this is not at all like any black metal you've heard (unless of course you've heard lots of Circle Of Ouroborus!), the band launch into what almost sounds like Ariel Pink playing black metal, or some murky chunk of mysterious James Ferraro style lysergic pop, which just so happens to be laced with some evil vox, the riffs are blurry streaks of melody, that almost sound more like horns or keyboards (which they could be), warbly synths wheeze and sputter, the vocals alternate between gruff growl and dramatic croon, the drums distorted and stumbly, everything wreathed in a druggy haze, the sound like some alternate universe pop, or some strange mutant strain of new waves, especially when the drums switch to an almost disco beat, the blackness really only represented by the vokills, otherwise this is some gloriously warped melodic doom pop weirdness.
The B side brings things down even further, unfurling a haunting mournful bit of balladic dirgery, the sound bleary and blurry and drowsily depressive, the vocals doused in echo, those weird keyboard/horn guitars continuing to undulate and oscillate, surge an swell, creating strange ethereal melodies, which remind us of synth guitar weirdos Xynfonica / Shevalreq, the same sort of medieval majesty, but here buried in sonic murk and mire, the vocals so expressive, and strangely plaintive, the drums slipping from lazy plod to urgent pound and back again. In fact, the B side seems pretty evenly split between druggy propulsive post pop warble, and downright dreamy drift, all ephemeral and gauzy, the whole thing laced with chiming harmonics, warped melodic tangles and weirdly fluctuating production, the sound occasionally slipping into near perfect (albeit extremely damaged) pop, but more often then not, oozing and billowing, the sound seeming to melt before our ears into a warm whirling, almost liquid sound. A strangely soporific and somnolent sprawl of blurred blackness and murky melodicism, that truly is some of the weirdest, most beautifully baffling shit you will ever hear.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Gorgeous packaging too, super striking artwork on a gatefold reverse board jacket, with a big booklet, featuring hand inked artwork, black and white, with gold and silver metallic detail. Gorgeous!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Once again, Finnish 'black metal' weirdos distance themselves even further from what most of us would consider to be black metal. This compiles two 'sides' originally recorded for 2 planned split lps with another bunch of outsider black metallers, Urfaust. For whatever reason, said splits failed to materialize, thus we have this, two part bit of oddness called Old Ghosts, not a new album technically (part 3 of the Shores - Stream - Islands trilogy is coming out soon) but heck, new album or not, this is in fact a new full length from our of our favorite purveyors of damaged, off kilter blackness.
And as we mentioned above, CoO were never really the black and buzzy type, instead they took those elements and fused them with their more sort of abstract folk flecked, Jandekian stumble, the result something we found genius, but a fair amount of TROO black metal warriors found to be hard to handle. Moody, noodily slow motion almost new wave sounding guitars, reminding us quite a bit of some lost Cure demo, dark and spidery and creepy, the vocals sort of sung/spoken, often slipping into weird out of tune crooning, it's easy to see how these jams were intended to be on a split with Urfaust, the same sort of dramatic poppiness, a lurching, bizarrely rendered bit of not very metal blackness.
After the first track, the drums kick in, there's then a bit more buzz, but other than that, the sound remains essentially the same, dour and depressive, stripped down, almost jangly, more a sort of lo-fi doom-pop than black metal, very much along the same lines as the last few Hypothermia records, or maybe Dead Reptile Shrine at their most folky and poppy.
For being two different records, the two sides flow together fairly seamlessly, a sprawling collection of lumbering, loping, downtuned depressive, jangle flecked, blackened, gothic new wave pop weirdness. Further cementing these guys' position as one of our favorite groups around. Both sides finish off with short bursts of urgently strummed atonal acoustic folk, that sounds a bit like a more fucked up blackened Mountain Goats?! So cool.
Comes with a printed insert, with liner notes and lyrics, and features one of the best covers we've EVER seen on a 'metal' record for sure.
Not any black metal band can share a split with the mighty and mighty bizarre Urfaust, with their blustery buzz and crazy crooning. But Finland's Circle Of Ouroborus were well up to the task. In fact they actually sound quite bit like Urfaust, albeit in a way more damaged way, which is saying a lot.
On the split with Urfaust we reviewed recently, Circle Of Ouroborus offered up their own cracked take on buzzing black metal, murky almost punky, super lo-fi, practice space production, mumble warbly guitars, drums tinny and buried in the mix, and a totally demented vocalist wailing in a growling cracked croon, WAY up in the mix, shouting and howling. We thought they sounded a bit like a grim black metal Fall.
On Shores, the band stretch out a bit, but still hew close to the sound they share with their sonic brethren in Urfaust, a loping lurching, midtempo buzz, sing songy melodies, a murky black swirl, downtuned and droney, but stumblingly propulsive. Seasick and swaying drunkenly, these tracks sound more like blackened versions of some eighties British post punk band than some cult black metal band. And when the vocals kick in it pretty much seals the deal. When Mark E. Smith dies, and the Fall are no more, he'll strike a deal with the devil, come back from the dead, and this is where he'll end up. Crooning, in that nasally whine, sing/speaking for some mysterious jangly black metal post punk rock band. And if there was any doubt, Circle Of Ouroborus cover "She's Lost Control" by Joy Division. It's not particularly black either, it's gloomy and gothy and propulsively punky, guitars slide and slither, the vocals a dark croon. It almost sounds like a lo-fi live recording of Interpol or some long lost Damned track. Which is a very good thing for sure. It's just weird that these guys exist as a underground, grim and cult black metal band, when sonically, they owe as much to punk rock, and goth rock, and new wave as they do Darkthrone or Mayhem. Sure there's plenty of buzz and suffocating black atmosphere, but to truly dig this you'll definitely need either a love of totally bizarre and not entirely black metal, or a soft spot for classic newwavepostpunk (Fall, Wire, Gang Of Four, Joy Division) or preferably BOTH! And we definitely have both in spades, so as you might imagine this is WAY recommended!
Along with the cd reissue of CoO's awesome Eleven Fingers album reviewed nearby on this week's list, comes this brand new, vinyl-only record from Finland's post black metal gloom pop weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus, whose sound really was barely ever actually all that black metal to begin with, but has continually been drifting further and further away, finally arriving here, at a sound that at this point is one distinctly their own, still subtly informed by black metal, but essentially pop music, a gloomy, occasionally buzzing, dour and darkly depressive pop music, but pop nonetheless. And with this record, that sound has mutated once again, taking their low fidelity a step further, and somehow wreathing it in a sonic murk, this new record impossible muffled, and muddied, womblike might be more accurate, the music is all soft focus, the sharp edges smoothed, the notes and chords, the various instruments, blurred and smeared into something more like an abstract chordal drift, the songs less songs, and more like impressions of songs. The only elements seemingly exempt are the vocals, still a haunting deep croon, and the drums, which occasionally stumble, occasionally pound, the combination is pretty stellar, and definitely bizarre, but it most certainly suits the group's dour blackened pop.
The vibe here extraordinarily woozy and warped, washed out and slurred, at times gauzy and nearly meditative, and when the band crank up the intensity, the hazy murk is dragged along as well, and instead of sounding heavy or rocking, it just sounds slightly heavier, but only really slightly. The songs tend toward the midtempo, and the dirge, but do occasionally erupt into some punky pound, but it's all behind a sheet of muffled murk, which again changes everything. The coolest moments are when the band introduce dueling vocals, clean and crooned, croaked and metallic, making for some strange harmonies, which are the perfect match for CoO's depressive blackened jangle pop, which throughout the record sounds alternately melty, detuned or oozing, often all three, a darkly and deliriously druggy songsuite that we're digging just as much as we did Eleven Fingers, which is a whole lot!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! The lps pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank textured card stock jacket, with a 7" x 7" booklet, printed on nice heavy paper, with illustrations and lyrics!
We've always held a special place in our darkened hearts for Finnish black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. The duo churns out a very strange brand of metal that would appear to share just as much, or maybe even more, with melancholy gloom merchants like Joy Division (who they have covered) and Dead Can Dance, as it does with black metal. They definitely share some of the influences of groups like Lifelover and Amesoeurs - you know, a gothy 4AD shimmer, cleanly arpeggiated guitar melodies, and vocals that don't rely exclusively on shrieks or growls - but to compare Circle Of Ouroborus to those bands, or anyone else really, is to neglect just how unique these guys are. For one, an ever present murkiness permeates all COO recordings, giving their songs a weird dreamy quality that seems to exist completely out of any time or place. The vocals, which have garnered understandable comparisons to the off kilter approach of Mark E. Smith, are hardly what you would expect from a "black metal" band, but there is obviously an acute awareness of the bleak realities of life that is TOTALLY black metal. Maybe more than anything, Circle Of Ouroborus have completely sidestepped any expectations of what a black metal band is supposed to be, and redefined it for their own purposes. In doing so, they have carved out a unique place in the metal underground and never failed to blow our minds with their bizarre sound. Now, after the completion of their Shores/Streams/Islands trilogy of records (we're still trying to track down Islands for y'all!), COO have progressed way beyond the awesome but at times amateur practice space sonics of some of their earlier work and delivered Tree Of Knowledge, not only their most accomplished and well thought out work to date, but certainly one of the best and most interesting metal releases we have heard this year.
The album begins with "A Root Casket", and it pretty much sounds like a more beefed up (and better) version of the COO we originally lost our shit over. The band sounds full and spacious, but still raw and lo-fi, like a ninth generation cassette dub of a lost Factory Records band. A catchy keyboard melody carries the song majestically, while murky guitars spin a sustained droniness that works perfectly with the vocals. At the same time, it manages to give a glimpse into their weird folky side. The seasick queasiness of the band's past releases endures, it just seems like they've better grasped how to work with their limited recording technology. "Demon In Iron" is a slightly atonal piece that makes perfect use of the band's cyclical guitar riffs and shimmery keyboards. It's so melodic and sad, but just BEAUTIFUL and even a bit punky, and you'd be forgiven if you mistook this one for some gloomy as hell indie band from the early '90s. "Show Me The Way To The Wishing Wall" is a midtempo downer with more cool circular guitar and steady, midtempo drumming. The singer's croon goes perfectly with the hazed out nature of the songs, and the natural overdrive on the otherwise clean guitars definitely help to make COO sound unlike most metal bands. Of course, around the 4 minute mark a Xasthurian black metal croak reminds you that, yes, this is some evil shit and not just another shoegazey black metal band. "Dead Eyes, Dead Soul" (how's that for further Joy Division comparisons?) follows another beautifully sad melody with phased out guitars and a discordant chorus that offers a cool transition to the tunefulness of the rest of the song. Instrumental number "Summer Graves" features sustained synth strings and an exotic touch with guitars that, at moments, *almost* brought to mind Polvo... Weird, but not quite as weird as the addition of a trumpet on the closing song, "Through My Fingers". Slow picked guitars and a chorus that manages to throw in some metal as fuck pinch harmonics with the contemplative dreaminess are accompanied by the sustained trumpet melodies that seem almost hopeful. Of course, the lyrics prove otherwise...
Like all COO releases, Tree Of Knowledge features totally amazing artwork, with 8 unique icons (each corresponding to a different song, it would seem) wrapped in the roots of a broken tree. It's rare that a band is able to achieve such a unique and perfectly realized vision, especially within a genre known for its dogmatically orthodox bullshit. But Circle Of Ouroborus are hardly just another band, and with Tree Of Knowledge, they have made that abundantly clear.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The return of weirdo Finnish black metal outsiders Circle Of Ouroborus, whose sound continues to mutate, and move well beyond the bounds of black metal. In fact, the opening track here sounds like some lost eighties minimal synth wave jam, with it's weezing keyboards, reverbed Teutonic percussion, and dual vocals, one crooned, the other spoken, all the folks who have been snapping up the vinyl reissues on Dark Entries might be surprised and converted to the way of CoO. The sound is super saturated and ultra distorted, in a way that makes it sound warm and whirling and washed out.
The follow up track is ostensibly more black metal, but it mostly just ups the tempo and wraps the guitars in a little blackened buzz, but the vocals are still cold and crooned, the sound fantastically murky, the crashing climaxes causing the sound to buckle and crumble, a propulsive bit of cold wave punkishness. The rest of CoO's half of this split follows suit, from brooding minimal crush, to loping meandery murk, the vocals atonal and bordering on Anton Maiden-ish at times, but just as often lush and gorgeously crooned, accompanied by a sound that while constantly distressed and distorted, veers from washed out brittle shimmer, to thick molasses-y mush, but always minor key and melancholy and moody, and just like all the other Circle of Ouroborus releases, twisted, and bafflingly brilliant.
Some of you probably remember the group Frail, who we described as sounding exactly like the Cure, just with harsh black metal vokills. Well Frail has transformed into Crooked Necks, and guess what? They still sound just like the Cure, new wave-y and jangly, a little dark wavey and goth poppy, the guitars chiming, the bass all Joy Divisiony, the drums propulsive and motorik, and of course the vocals, still harsh occasionally, but also, clean crooning here and there. The new sound is slightly more polished, still quite melodic, the perfect match for Circle Of Ouroborus's new more gothy cold wave-y sound. There are some heavier more black metal moments, but it's more like Lifelover style black metal pop than traditionally blasting and buzzing grimness, and the rest of Crooked Necks' sound could have been lifted straight off some goth rock / eighties new wave mix tape, The Cure, Echo And The Bunnymen, Icicle Works, if it wasn't for the vocals, these guys could be on Captured Tracks or Sacred Bones, and could be opening for Cold Cave or Blessure Grave, hell, maybe they still could be...
It's been a good long while since we've heard from aQ faves Circle Of Ouroborus, a damaged outsider blackened folk flecked post metal combo who confound in creating gorgeously fractured ritualistic soundworlds.
This latest missive is one half of a split 12" with the equally mysterious Somnivore. When we last heard from CoO, they sounded a bit like a black metal version of Jandek or the Fall, but things have definitely changed, the sound is not so lo-fi, and the sonics are definitely much improved, but without losing any of their signature damaged weirdness.
Chant like vocals, very reminiscent of older Swans, drift over dark distorted spidery guitar lines, the drums, only occasional, dubbed out and also distorted, while in the background lurk slither little minor key melodies, before in swoops a swirl of clean detuned guitars, being strummed frantically black metal style, but instead of buzzing, the sound blurs and smears into a bleary eyed wash, crooned Jandekian vocals soaked in reverb clamber over the top, and the result is something more like some ost nineties Homestead band than a black metal band. But soon CoO kick into gear and offer up the first hints of anything remotely metallic, distorted drumming, buzzing black riffs, but again, less buzzing as much as muted and muddy, the vocals crooned and dramatic, veering into Urfaust territory. Eventually, the buzz fades to a fuzzy washed out drone, that shimmers and drifts before a clean riffy buzz re-emerges accompanied by more deep crooning vocals, emitting a sort of not very black, and not very metal black metal, that seems to be CoO's specialty. Difficult to describe for sure, but we can't seem to get enough.
Somnivore take up the flipside, the first half is all crystalline clean guitar, urgently strummed, strange whispered vocals, chimes and bells, subtle percussion. All very strident and apocalyptic, like a more ominous and creepy Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat. Effects everywhere, the track eventually devolving into a swirling morass of deep drones, shifting from hushed whirs to barely there shimmer, to throbbing rumble, eventually dissipating in a cloud of delicate glimmering hush. Nice!
Gorgeous full color cover, printed full color insert, with lyrics and liner notes, and LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!!!!
Circulation Of Light is the latest project from Nathaniel Ritter, who also performs in Kinit Her and Burial Hex, offers up a gorgeous collection of dark ritualism for his Black Horizons debut. Haunting and ominous, long low buzzing sitar like tones spread out into woozy undulating layers of metallic shimmer, rife with subtle pulsations, keening barely there melodies, the various tone and overtones, swirling in slow motion above the abyss, glimmering and glistening, a glowing black billow of softly swelling chordal thrum. Meditative and serene, but ominous and darkly mesmerizing, chiming melodies surface from the softly roiling blackness, the sound lush and layered, washing over you, enveloping you, allowing you to get lost in its blackened grandeur.
Music box melodies drift atop a slowly building churn of buzz and rumble, those melodies seeming to lose cohesion, the notes falling to the wayside, disappearing beneath black surface, that surface growing more and more agitated, the sounds buzzier and blacker, high end keening over groaning moaning slabs of crumbling distortion and corrosive low end pulses, locking into a strangely rhythmic dronescape, a washed out darkly psychedelic soft focus blacknoise that manages the perilous balance of grim malevolence and delicate beauty.
Like all Black Horizons releases, gorgeously packaged, housed in a hand screened sparkly gold paper insert, the tape with metallic silver stickers, and of course LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Warehouse find! Here's a great release from a few years back, released as part of Drone Records 10" series. Cisfinitum is the work of the Russian dark ambient practitioner Evgeny Voronovsky, who augments his sound design with a grim intensity with more than a few industrialist illusions. During a concert that Voronovsky presented in Germany for a Drone Records showcase, it's been reported that he managed to empty the room through the cross-contanimation of his deleterious frequencies. We gotta wonder just what the hell he did, as the audience who would go to Drone performance in 2005 would surely know what they're getting themselves into!
Devotio was clearly not the recording that he presented there. While psychologically dark, both of these extended tracks are sourced entirely from church bells. Voronovsky stretches out the incredibly rich resonance and compacts dense layers of these drones whose fundamental frequencies begin to detour away from harmonic purity and into uneasy dissonance. This isn't a dissonance of scraped metal or overblown distortion, but rather a finely tuned cross-hatching of frequencies beating against each other. Voronovsky couples this slow development of aggressively tuned minimalism with additional layerings from alarm bells (or he's processed his church bells to sound like alarms), and growling swells of blackened noise. Certainly for fans of Hazard, Troum / Maeror Tri, any of the more clinical aspects of Cold Meat Industries, and the headspace of Lustmord. Highly recommended!
Housed in a cryptic and totally beautiful oversized booklet, the sounds within the dolefully monickered Cities Last Broadcast's likewise doleful The Cancelled Earth conjure an atmosphere of post-industrial hopelessness where you, the engaged listener, are the only human being left amidst seepia-toned urban decay. Empty, dilapidated buildings with broken windows sprawled out across a dusky horizon of condensed nothingness stand without any distinction as the city takes in its final gasps. Strange, creaking sounds, and washes of gauzy atmosphere creep out like a fog, cloaking everything in a thick, inescapable grime.
The work of Swede Par Bostrom, who also makes music in a project called Kammarheit, The Cancelled Earth is a collection of pieces recorded between 1999 and 2008. Though quite bleak, the songs move as if they are alive, albeit dying, like some sort of creature sticking its head out of the rubble to emotionlessly assess the end of a society. Hey, we'll be there soon enough. The swaying soundscapes may appeal to those who familiar with Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic, while they also bring to mind the murky ambiance of Wolfgang Voigt's Gas, without any sort of rhythmic propulsion, the movement of the pieces instead resembling a once mighty machine simply shutting down from old age and neglect. Though desolate as all hell, The Cancelled Earth is also quite beautiful and perfect listening for long, lonely nights...
Record number two from this NYC abstract electronic alchemist, who as we mentioned in our review of his debut, Gray Panic, counts Porter Ricks, Skullflower, Techno Animal, Portal, Main, Pan American, Scanner AND Bark Psychosis as influences. And while lists of influences are generally impossibly hyperbolic, somehow Gray Panic actually did manage to live up to the promise of the groups that informed its sound. So when City Surgical got in touch with a new album, describing it as even murkier an druggier than the first, we were pretty much already sold.
And once again, we were not at all disappointed, after a brief opening of blurred shimmery and gauzy ambience, the sound coalesces into a sort of mumbled skitter, all muted throb and skeletal pulse, with the promise of some sort of impending big beat, but instead, the tension is gradually ratcheted up, the sounds swirling and ethereal, it's not really until part three of the opening four part 17+ minute title track song suite, that any sort of actual beat coalesces, and even then, it's a murky bit digital dub wreathed in gnarled static never fully coalescing, instead seeming to fade in and out like bad radio reception, giving the sound a lost ghost like quality, tending more toward Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, with the beats existing more as some strange sonic artifact, the woozy pulsing synthiness which also surfaces in part three seeming to channel a little Goblin / John Carpenter too, before devolving into a deep murky pulse. Part four is like an ultra minimal reinterpretation of Chain Reaction style heroin house, peppered with strange bits of glitch and squelch, more ethereal and ambient than rhythmic, the various submerged rhythms more adding texture than propulsion.
The final two, non title track numbers, continue in a similarly woozy, washed out, dreamily druggy direction, draping chiming metallic melodies over rhythmic backwards swoops and a sea of thick gristly sonic swirl, a haunting robotic lullaby, that morphs into the gorgeous final track, a thick sprawl of gristled low end, roiling beneath some dark dubbed out rhythms, stuttering chopped and looped pulsations, and multiple layers of hazy and gauze and shimmer, the sound a constant dreamlike swirl that coalesces into a Raster-Noton like stretch of gorgeous electronic late night minimalism, that once again has us wondering why City Surgical is not a way bigger deal. So great!
Packaged in striking hand screened three color origami like sleeves, with color printed cardstock inserts. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
It's tough to argue with a band whose influences include Porter Ricks, Pan American, Skullflower, Techno Animal, Portal, Scanner, Main, and Bark Psychosis, and even tougher when somehow, against all odds, the band actually manages to sort of sound like a bastard mix of all of those.
Such is the case with NYC one man avant abstract electronica outfit City Surgical, whose sound is not so much electronica as it is created electronically, if that makes any sense, sure there's buzz and skitter and glitch, but the way those elements are assembled makes the sounds on Gray Panic sound more organic, more mysterious. Right from the get go, "Our Blood Will Roar In The Pipes" is a strange bit of pulsing ambience, but the pulses are thick rumbles and muted roars, wreathed in strange muffled skree, and in between there's lots of space, filled with some barely audible hiss and fuzz, like some lost transmissions, barely making it through the ether, very haunting and creepy, and with a definite nineties Pathological vibe. "Pi Needle" offers up something similar, a strange electronic buzzscape, the rhythms skeletal skitters, that slowly build to something more substantial, while the bass whirs and throbs, and smeared melodies expand and contract all around. "Low In Silhouette, Irregular In Shape", begins as a stuttery bit of low slung skitter, but then the track skids to a halt, and shifts gears, expelling think swaths of industrial creak and warm melodic buzz, a lurching start stop, that is soon joined again by a muted rhythm, and a woozy bassline, only to get more and more distorted and abstract as the track progresses.
And so goes the rest of the record, a twisted collection of post industrial electronica, of skeletal abstract bass music, of muted blackened ambience, Kompakt style minimal pulses wind around haunting late night drift and darkly groovy basslines, dubbed out minimal crunch splinters into fragments that are left to float through hazy fields of FX and ghostly melody, creaking, crumbling haunted house ambience is wrapped around little flurries of electronic glitch and tangled melody, while thick streaks of warm liquid buzz hover over moaning sheets of feedback and delicate rhythmic frameworks, super distorted hiss drenched buzz swirls around dizzying flurries of rapidfire skitter, and finally, the record unwinds in a tangled blowout of throbbing bass heavy grooves and seriously corrosive blasts of crumbling psychedelic soft noise...
Killer stuff.
CJA is one half of the NZ noise rock outfit Armpit that we raved about a few lists back. This 3" twenty minute blast starts off with a Sunn-ish slow-motion guitars-against-amps-feedback drone and soon dissipates into ambient shimmer, buzzing guitar hum with metronomic cymbal splatters, slow dour jangle, and strummed and miserable song fragments reminiscent of eighties NZ pop. Really nice.
MPEG Download: "Track Two" [/audio/cjatrack2.mp3]
Clayton Noone, aka CJA, has a long and varied history in the New Zealand underground free-rock scene. He's been making an unholy racket for years, is also one half of Armpit as well as a member of avant new wavers the Futurians. But Ironclad, a reissue of a long out of print cd-r, is probably his prettiest, and quietest record. And probably our favorite! A stumbling, shambling, purposefully strummed, sun dappled, reverb soaked, warbly voiced slab of simple and simply lovely bedroom folk. The guitars quiver and waver, barely in tune, creating shimmery folk rock frameworks, which in turn support subtle distant melodies, occasional flanged electric guitar, slurred emotional vocals, all hushed and mournful, dreamy and minimal. Notes climb warily from the strings and assemble themselves into repetitive figures, pulsing and drifting tentatively earward. CJA sounds a bit like Alastair Galbraith after a night of hard drugs and too much drink, holed up in the corner of his living room on a sweltering summer day, with the shades drawn tight, shafts of sunlight sneaking through the blinds, every mote of dust illuminated like a tiny musical note drifting to the ground. The guitar, the hiss of the four track and the murky remnants of the night before becoming one drifting dreamy dolorous set of notes, picked carefully one by one, becoming a sublty sleepy soundscape of bliss and beatitude.
We love CJA, aka Clayton Noone, aka one half of New Zealand free rock combo Armpit�as well as a member of weirdo new wavers the Futurians. CJA releases have varied considerably in tone and texture, from dark and contemplative dreamy drone, to more corrosive free and furious noise. We weren't really sure what to expect with this, the latest from CJA, a massive double cd-r called Pink Metal, wrapped in a super goofy garish hand drawn heavy metal style handmade sleeve. We were super psyched, imagining it might be some demented Kiwi freaked out what-the-fuck blast of damaged metal, and while it is heavy at times, and could most definitely be considered metallic in places, the 'metal' of Pink Metal has much more in common with bands like SUNNO))) and countrymen Black Boned Angel. And those chunk of metallic pummel are spread out, and scattered amidst all sorts of other strange sounds and mysterious soundscapes.
The opening track on disc one starts things off in a distinctly non-metallic style, it's all dark and quiet, expansive and shimmering, guitars unwinding into lazy drawn out swoons and shimmers, skeletal melodies spread out over barely there ambience. But the second track quickly sets things right, a sort of ultra lo-fi Godflesh style industrial trudge, huge booming trash can lid percussion, over murky muddy downtuned riffing. Not so much heavy as it is intense and relentless. But before you know it, Noone switches back to acoustic guitar strum, weaving a folky little interlude before shifting into a strange stuttering guitarscape, hypnotic and repetitive. There are a few brief blasts of buzzed out riffage, crumbling and thick, caustic and dense, but for the most part, Noone veers between haunting folk flecked lo-fi deconstructed pop and abstract ambient drone music, only peppering it with chunks of grainy heaviness.�
The�second disc is a similarly dizzying sonic spectrum, beginning with a cool, super tense, weirdly dramatic solo guitar drone, but instead of low end rumble, it's crashing drawn out chords, distorted and melodic, repetitive, and overlapping, riffs pulled apart into slabs of melodic sound, before coalescing near the end into a killer hook. Then we're off again, fractured twee folk, stumbling lo-fi strum and clatter, thick swells of industrial whir, Dead C style chaotic murky noisiness, finishing off with an extended low end hiss drenched slab of grinding, growling, throbbing, super distorted pummel, complete with sludge riffing and propulsive buried in the mix�drumming. As always, awesome!
Packaged in an oversized thick paper, black, white and purple multi page booklet, adorned with awesome high school binder heavy metal / Dungeons And Dragons imagery, huge muscled demon warriors, swords and�maces, and slain foes laying heaps on the ground, strange fiery aliens, Silver Surfer like creatures firing lazers from their fingertips, spike headed beasts, samurai warriors, cloaked demons, dragons, and growling�wolf beasts, ultra violence, and decapitations, skeletons, zombies, ninjas and more. All black and white, but with all the text in a garish bright purple (or pink maybe it's meant to be), blood dripping metal font. The cds housed in plastic sleeves affixed to the insides of the front and back covers.
This came out a while ago, and� it was of course pretty limited to start with. We have a bunch, but there's a definite chance that once these are gone we won't be able to get more...
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We found a stash of these, and realized once again, that we hadn't listed these yet, it came out last year, and is now WELL out of print, so these are the last 8 or 9 copies we'll ever get.
CJA for those who don't already know is Clayton Noone, who also plays in aQ faves Armpit and NZ new wavers the Futurians. On past solo joints, Noone offered up a stumbling lo-fi bedroom folk, rife with all sorts of random noise and random production fuckery, and Vintermanederne follows a similar course, but manages to be even more abstract.
The opener is a 20 minute sprawl, that seems to be mostly field recordings of rainfall, occasionally interrupted by fragments of fractured lo-fi folk, underpinned by distant shimmer, which eventually builds to a roar (maybe that's the wind whipping by the microphone), before slipping back into some sort of murky dronemusic, ending with some folky flutter and still more rainfall. The second track is much more straight ahead, simple acoustic guitar, and sweet crooned vocals, soft downer bedroom folk for sure, really quite pretty. The record finished off with some lo-fi indie jangle, muted electric guitar, a gorgeous vocal mantra, all very reminiscent of Alastair Galbraith, before some percussion enters the mix, and song spreads out growing gradually more and more abstract.
Fans of Galbraith, Milton, Noone, Horton, Carter will definitely dig, and there's enough field recording sound manipulation weirdness to keep it interesting for the free-noise cd-r set.
And again, already OUT OF PRINT, these are the last copies ever.
Record number three from this drug driven blurwave blackgaze Velvet Cacoon offshoot. Longtime readers of the aQ list are no doubt already familiar with that Northwestern horde, whose exploits, sonic and otherwise, included a ridiculous band backstory (eco-terrorists?), made up instrumentation (diesel harp?) some purportedly plagiarized sounds (a whole record supposedly stolen and redone as VC), not to mention a whole mess of angry, bitter and confused black metallers in their wake. And while we bought into it all, when the truth was revealed, that VC was in fact, just a guy and a gal, taking lots of drugs and making some blissed out black buzz, we actually thought it was funny. The for some strange reason, VC mainman Josh decided to disband Velvet Cacoon, and immediately created Clair Cassis, a band that was quite sonically similar, the same sort of washed out buzz, droney black mesmer, the biggest difference being that CC trafficked in WAY shorter songs, and those songs were WAY heavy on the bass (infamous for it's absence in almost all black metal) and traded in much of the drone and drift for something distinctly more poppy. And we were, and are, pretty into it. Dense thick whirling hazy black metal, formed into dark almost new wavy chunks of blackbuzzpop, sure still black and buzzy on the outside, but strap on some headphones, and the basslines become sinewy and serpentine, the melodies and buried hooks reveal themselves, step back and its a glorious blackened blur.
After two self titled eps, comes this, Luxury Absolute, another short (ish) collection of CC's unique brand of black and buzzy, midtempo dronegaze doompop, the sound here though even more tripped out and psychedelic than on past releases, with the bass MASSIVE, even moreso than usual, with the sound so blown out and in the red, that the sound continually peaks, and clips, the sounds distorting and crumbling, adding a strange sort of bleary, blurry decay vibe to the already woozy minor key proceedings. Just check out opener "Antique Sea Smoke", a warped lumbering almost dirger, with the guitar melodies swirling amidst grey clouds of whir and thrum, the bass thick, and driving, the drums distorting like crazy, all of that overblown sound pushing CC even further into shoegaze territory.
The rest of the record follows suit, barring a few creepy stretches of haunting rumbling black ambience, the rest of Luxury Absolute unfolds as a series of brief dreamlike black blurs, melancholic and mesmerizing, the drums a lurching programmed pound, the vokills a demonic croak, but the guitars, so warm and whirling, thick and layered, the doom vibe is huge here too, partially because of the tendency toward dirgery, but also cuz the sound is so thick and viscous, imagine diSEMBOWELMENT or Skepticism trying their hand and shoegaze cold wave, and you might be getting close. Either way, this is some awesome stuff. Occasionally frustrating, cuz the songs are so short (longest 3:31, shortest 1:51, 19 minutes total), and we would love to hear these jams stretched out into tranced out dronepop blackbuzz drifts, but the brevity seems to reinforce than in their own twisted and fucked up way, these really are just pop songs, albeit, buzzy, and sludgey, and dirgey and BLACK. Might be our favorite CC yet. Hope it's not their last.
Packaged in a super swank DVD sized digipak. LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
The latest from local soundmaker Dan Vallor, whose last two releases we could barely keep in stock, including one that came housed in an actual tape player, and that tape player wrapped in a melted/warped vinyl record! We had long been a fan of Vallor's mysterious music, a music that eventually found him more than one home away from home on labels like Celebrate Psi Phenomenon and Ecstatic Peace!, so it's easy to imagine the sort of spaced out minimal abstract soundscaping and tripped out droneworlds Vallor has conjured up on past releases, although this new one is something else entirely.
As the title suggests, DNA on DNA is a track-for-track reimagining of DNA's legendary DNA On DNA record, and, as the cover art hints, Vallor is paying homage to those songs in the form of abstract freeform solo piano(!), with each track the same length as the original, but here, it really is just piano, and it's pretty fantastic. Not sure if DNA fans will necessarily dig this, but hell, some probably will, Vallor weaving strange, mysterious, and quite lovely landscapes of twisted melody, of lush shimmer and bombastic chordal pound, plenty of atonal free jazz freakout, it is after all meant to pay homage to one of the cornerstones of No Wave, but for every burst of dizzying minor key splatter, there are gorgeous stretches of contemplative moodiness, the sound shot through with subtle drones, swirling overtones, very minimal and spare, lots of space, the sound drifting, slipping into wild squalls, and then settling right back down again.
Included as a bonus, is a second disc called Retrospekt, which sonically falls more in line with other Clarinette releases, which makes sense since it is in fact a greatest hits of course, sampling tracks from EVERY single Clarinette release, as well as including a handful of previously unreleased songs. The sounds as you might imagine are quite varied, from experimental bursts of crunch and rumble, to beautiful sprawls of swirling shimmer, from spaced out psychedelic drift, to echo heavy distorted crumble, and from ethereal almost pop ambience, to dizzying modern minimalism a la Reich Or Riley. If you weren't a fan already, this disc will change that for sure.
LIMITED TO 125 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and housed in a super striking full color printed transparent plastic sleeve, adorned with some super cool (and funny) Peanuts / DNA artwork.
We sold a ton of the last Clarinette release, which not only came as a double cd-r, but also in a crazy limited cassette run, with each cassette housed in actual Walkman tape player, and then that tape player wrapped in a warped and melted colored vinyl 7", each and every one hand sanded and silkscreened. And the music inside was definitely worth all that extra effort. So now we have yet another double album (no over the top tape edition for this one sadly), from Mr. Dan Vallor, aka Clarinette, this one according to the liner notes, dedicated to sixties Dutch art collective Nul, who in turn were influenced by the German Zero Movement, based on, again according to the liner notes "Working with a mono- or di-chromatic palette" and embracing "repetition and reproduction, seeking to validate reality by isolating its parts and displaying them without form, context or subjective judgment".
Thankfully, you don't actually need a degree in art history to dig into Clarinette's gorgeous minimal soundworld, fans of the now out of print The Clarinette Anti-Cassette Act Of 2012 will definitely want to grab one of these before they're gone, and anyone into spaced out minimal abstraction, and lush layered dronescapery will find much to love here, long tones, lush landscapes of subtly shifting overtones, dark and soporific, thick and heavy in a slow motion black whole drift sort of way, funereal and elegiac in places, blurred and blackened in others, and almost blissed out and kosmische in still others. The final track on the first disc unfurls a sprawl of low end that given the proper stereo might just set off car alarms several blocks away, a dense pulsing thrum that even in headphones is so deep and thick it almost makes you dizzy.
The second disc offers up more epic longform dronescapes, and listening to them here, it's easy to understand why some early Clarinette records ended up on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, definitely a Birchville vibe going on, a sort of smeared softly psychedelic blissed out raga, that on one track can explode in a prismatic burst of high end Sunroof!-like skree, while on another, gradually blossom like a time-lapse filmstrip of a dying star.
Gorgeous hypnotic stuff. And again, ULTRA limited. Only 105 copies, each one hand numbered, and housed in striking hand painted green sleeves.
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Ready Set Disengage is a brand new, and super limited release, created especially for aQ for this year's Record Store Day (the title a play on the abbreviation for Record Store Day, you'll notice), and unlike a lot of the RSD releases, we DO have a bunch of these, for all you loyal aQ-ers who couldn't be here in person on the big day. That said, this is SUPER limited, just FIFTY copies total, each one beautifully hand packaged and numbered by the band/man himself, and available ONLY from aQ!!
We'd long been a fan of Clarinette, aka Dan Vallor, long before it was revealed he was actually a local, his releases tended to find their way onto faraway micro labels, like Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, so we always sort of assumed that he was in fact from NZ, and in many ways, Vallor's mysterious sprawling psychedelic noisescapes did nothing to dissuade that notion, sounding right at home amongst groups like Birchville Cat Motel, 1/3 Octave Band, Omit, With Throats As Fine As Needles, RST, and lots of other aQ NZ faves. This latest is yet another mysterious missive from this audio alchemist, a fantastical collection of deftly linked, meticulously designed miniature sound worlds, and while there is definitely a sonic thread tying it to those past releases, it definitely forges its own distinctive path.
Opening with a haunting collage of effected pianos, swirling ominously, darkly cinematic and dreamily melancholy, panned heavily, the sounds drifting from speaker to speaker, Vallor is like a slo-mo Lubomyr Melnyk, adding lots of space and dousing the notes in a blurred dubbiness, all underpinned by a sinister low end melody, we would have been happy if the whole record had just been an hour long version of the first track. And in a way, it is, with that smeared dubby piano the focus of many of tracks here, but Vallor adds skittery drums, and glitchy skipping melodies, to turn one track into a sort of abstract cut and paste Necks, all looped and mesmeric, a loose tangle of melodies drifting above a slipstream of slow shifting layers and a dark jazzy shuffle, reminding us a lot of some of the jazzier recent releases from Aidan Baker. Elsewhere the sounds are layered into thick billowing clouds of swirling notes and bleary chords, the comparisons to Melnyk particularly apt on tracks like "A New Reason For Existence", that essentially sounds like a psychedelic collage of multiple skipping Melnyk cds, there's a bit of an Oval vibe as well, but the piano continues to lend even the most abstract moments a hint of jazziness.
At one point, deep into the record, those sounds melt and ooze into swaths of crumbling blackness, hazy washed out melodies buried beneath heaving slo-mo swells of dense low end thrum, sounding almost like the Caretaker at 16rpm, crackly, and warbly, and gorgeously gauzy, then the sound shifts once again, becoming a dizzying bit of tranquil ambience, all disembodied guitar strum, sampled birdsong, warbly rumbling drones, the various sounds a bit atonal and detuned, giving the sound a definite creepy, almost carnivalesque vibe, once again, very cinematic, before bleeding into the 20 minute closer, an epic brooding sprawl, that mesmeric Necks feel returns, but this time way more minimal and blackened, the piano sounds drifting in fields of rumble and hum, dense black pulsations, an epic slowly unfurling blackened classical creep, hazy and droney, dense and tense and bleakly beautiful, an abstract ambient dronescape that should definitely hit the spot for all you dronelords, and anyone obsessed with the slow and low, will likely find themselves playing that track (and this whole record) over and over and over...
LIMITED TO FIFTY COPIES, ONLY AVAILABLE AT aQ!! The cd is housed in a textured paper inner sleeve, housed in a printed, stickered, and hand numbered envelope!
We always just assumed Clarinette was from New Zealand, probably because our first exposure to this one man soundscaper was via Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label (although before that he had released an lp on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label) but in fact the man behind Clarinette, aka Dan Vallor, comes from right here in the Bay Area. The sound of Clarinette might throw you off as well, as Vallor takes gorgeous layered drifts of mutated field recordings, deftly processed loops and all manner of noise making devices and weaves them into something darkly expansive and hauntingly mysterious. This awesomely titled double cd-r / cassette offers up two sprawling sidelong tracks, the first, uses as its focus, what sound like a field recording of a train (much like the recent Chris Watson record El Tren Fantasma), but here the chugging of the train is blurred and smeared and looped into a blackened expanse of rhythmic thrum, over which foghorn tones moan and bellow, those tones constantly shifting and mutating, occasionally coalescing into almost-melodies, but just as often keening mournfully and then fading out. The whole side is based on this chugging softly churning mesmer, but throughout, Vallor introduces all manner of sonic subtleties, whether it's some krautrock like motorik drumming, some wah-wah-ed chordal swirls or some blackened soft focus shimmers, the whole track remains at a constant low level thrum, sans headphones it's a soothing washed out drone, but closer listening reveals a depth to Vallor's sonic construction that is quite breathtaking.
The second disc/side is much more abstract, with Vallor moving deftly through various drone permutations, starting out with a dense squall of hissing swirl, the sound soon shifts to dizzying echoey shimmer, and then more looped mesmer, the timbre changing in many cases more than the actual sound, slipping from caustic and crunchy, to muddy and murky, to glistening and shimmery, to dense and droney, the noisier parts rife with a sort of unhinged psychedelia, while the quieter parts darkly contemplative, a hushed blurred drift, that more often than not slowly blossoms into something much more intense. The whole track constantly seesawing between the two polarities, dragging the listener along on a harrowing hypnotic sonic journey, that again, benefits greatly from headphones, Vallor's sound world deep and dense and well worth getting lost in.
The packaging on both formats is incredible. The cd-r version comes in a cool silkscreened transparent sleeve, a green vinyl record printed on the front, seemingly to mirror the cassette packaging which is more expensive for a reason, not only is it more limited, but the cassette comes INSIDE ITS OWN WALKMAN STYLE CASSETTE PLAYER, then that cassette player is wrapped in a melted colored vinyl record, warped in a way that makes it act as a sort of stand, and that record is then silkscreened. WOW! The cd-r is limited 50 copies and hand numbered, the tape/tape player/warped record version is also hand numbered, but limited to just SIXTEEN copies!!!!
This is a special musical valentine from aQ pal Dan Valor, aka Clarinette, to all the aQ customers out there (actually it's to his wife, but he decided to share it with us, and you!). This Valentine's Day release is only available from us, and only as long as this single batch lasts (a single batch of just 18 COPIES!), which we're guessing won't be long. And you should definitely not sleep on this, cuz it's a doozy. Not necessarily romantic in the traditional sense, but we're guessing this heaving slab of lush layered drones would be a lot more exciting than a bunch of chalky candy hearts, the first track here, mixed live on WFMU, finds Vallor taking what has to be his thickest and darkest piece yet, originally on his cd-r Nul, and recontextualizing this swirling psychedelic tangle, near metallic in places, but shot through with multiple melodies, a murky expanse of blackened shimmer that should have all you aQ dronelords in heaven. Nearly sixteen minutes of undulating low end, and constantly shifting longform tones, the overlapping sounds producing all manner of pulses and pulsations, giving the sound a sort of spectral momentum, that is utterly entrancing. Then about nine minutes in, the voice of Gertrude Stein surfaces, drifting atop the churning drones, delivering her spoken valentine to her friend, the writer Sherwood Anderson, the perfect valentine, celebrating a strange and unlikely friendship, as all the best friendships are. The voice soon fades, leaving the drone to play out to the end, augmented for the last few minutes by the sounds of machinery, a gorgeous mechanized dreamdrone collage.
The second track seems to harken back to Vallor's recent piano tribute to DNA, delivering a sonic valentine to his true love in the form of "Crepuscule With Shannon", a gorgeous stretch of abstract piano, wreathed in reverb, flurries of notes, billowing above more subtle melodic constructs, haunting, and elegiac, minor key, wistful and yeah, kinda romantic.
Comes housed in a die cut, two part, hand made paper sleeve, the inside part printed with liner notes, credit and minimal artwork, viewed through the outside sleeve, in red and pink of course, and again, EXTREMELY LIMITED! ONLY EIGHTEEN COPIES and THAT'S IT!! And only available here...
Listening to Clarinette, is kind of like listening to a speed metal band called Tuba, or some intense drum and bass DJ called Piccolo. You're just gonna have your head spun if you're expecting the band to sound like the name. Several years after releasing an lp on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label, Clarinette aka Dan Vallor returns with a weird and wild, sonically expansive cd-r for Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label. This is beautiful challenging stuff, all over the place, but no hint of clarinets that's for sure....
Gorgeous heavily affected solo piano, crumbly, grimy slabs of distorted fuzz chopped and delivered in strange stuttery melodies, fuzzy lo-fi drones, angular free jazz piano freakouts, gentle pastoral almost new age soundscapes of piano and lots and lots of echo, in fact we're tempted to think Mr. Vallor is in fact a piano player. This could be like George Winston and Cecil Taylor getting together, dropping acid and playing through a very bad trip, jamming with some equally doped up noiserock friends. The whole thing a tripped out, druggy and dreamy soundscape, all wrapped in pillows of thick reverb and every note dipped in ECHO and flung into the musical pond sending out ripples that go on forever. SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
Just when you were thinking that the next installment in the Jewelled Antler Library was, um, overdue, comes this new 3" cd-r in the series. Volume 8 hails from New Zealand -- it seems Jewelled Antler have found some kindred souls Down Under, no not Gandalf and Frodo but in this case Antony Milton (who runs a cd-r label himself, Pseudoarcana) and Clayton Noone (C.J.A., Armpit) who together are known as Claypipe. Repetition and drone and field recording grit coexist with lovely acoustic guitar -- it's real nice. With wistful, earnest vocals, some distorted and layered, this is neither indie-pop nor environmental ambient, but a hybrid that totally fits with Jewelled Antler 'groups' like the Blithe Sons and Child Readers, while possessing that special New Zealand magic we all adore. Seven tracks, 20 minutes, and you're left wishing it were longer.
Here's the long-awaited follow up to Windswept Trees And Houses and Heat & Birds, those being the two previous, and now long out of print, "friends and family" compilations of music and field recordings (two things not mutually exclusive in the methodology of these artists for sure!) from the Jewelled Antler camp. Now that Jewelled Antler isn't the prolific cd-r label it once was (though the various members of the so-called Jewelled Antler Collective are still quite active) the Music Fellowship label has stepped in to release this new disc, as a proper cd by the way, and it's a terrific third in the "series", bringing together the fantastical sounds of three far-flung artists: Claypipe (New Zealand), Pekko Kappi (Finland), and The Blithe Sons (California). It's an "amazed map" indeed that links those people and places, all so magical from the musical standpoint as we're sure most Aquarius customers will concur. NZ/Finland/California, the current psych-folk-drone axis of awesomeness! Several tracks of nature sounds field-recorded by Tony Endless and (former AQ'er) Byram Abbot also appear here, adding some extra ecological, dronological mystery to a disc hardly lacking in such, acting as purely environmental interludes between the rather diverse yet linked-in-spirit works of the three main musical artists. First up are New Zealanders Claypipe, a duo of consisting of Antony Milton (overlord of the PseudoArcana cd-r label) and Clayton Noone (CJA, Armpit, Futurians), whose tracks here range from lo-fi almost indie-pop to droned-out experimentation. Then Pekko Kappi (Lau Nau, Paivansade) invites listeners to a campfire concert wherein he and his trusty horsehair lyre perform a wonderful set of traditional Finnish folk music, for us perhaps the highlight of this disc, itself a highlight on our list. Finally this disc's unofficial hosts, Jewelled Antler's Blithe Sons (Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson) wrap things up with their murky yet microscopically detailed, indoor-outdoor mix of lovely song-like drones, drone-like songs. It's the first we've heard from this collaboration since their Arm Of The Starfish cd on Family Vineyard a few years ago and we hope it's not the last.
If only Music Fellowship could also arrange to reissue on cd this disc's two cd-r prequels, which featured the likes of Avarus, Kemialliset Ystavat, Markus, Golden Hotel, Franciscan Hobbies, The Floating Birthday Children, Hala Strana, Thuja, Of, The Blithe Sons & Daughters, Child Readers, Entlang, Silt, and The Billy Crosby's amongst others! And by the way, that also reminds us -- when are all the out-of-print Jewelled Antler "Library" series of 3" cd-rs going to be compiled into a cd box set or something? We're pretty sure lots of folks are dying to get their ears on those...
"Lakte" is definitely something completely new from Kit Clayton, whose last few recordings delved deep into the melancholic dub of Pole and Monolake. Clayton himself describes this 4 song ep with the following: "Scraping your head against the ground, you hear sounds you do not tend to find while scurrying amongst carefully constructed and willfully digested worlds. Puddles of knobs, twigs, paperclips, loose change, and other items unnamed. What you were listening for is sidestepped by environmental residue's unwavering determination to be heard. Background and foreground are reversed. And reversed again. And again." Mostly arrthymic and atonal, "Lakte" is a willfully difficult piece of avant-electronica recalling the likes of '60s tape-music pioneer Tod Dockstader much more than current artists like Autechre.
The return of the Finland's premiere troupe of music making, crossdressers, who perform all gussied up, you know in makeup, housecoats, stockings and everything, and whose instruments of choice are modified and mic'ed up clothes racks and every day household appliances. That's right, it's the Cleaning Women, whose first record was a runaway hit here at AQ a few months back, so we're super psyched to be listing the even better follow up "Aelita - The Queen Of Mars", a record inspired, according to the liner notes, by the Russian film "Aelita" directed by Jakov Protazanov in 1924. And some of it definitely sounds like it...
Sonically similar to their debut, bit somehow more varied and fully realized, "Aelita" is a dizzying schizophrenic travelogue through a million different musical personalities. the opener is a brooding Arabesque soundscape, all soaring strings and playful percussion, Eastern guitars and strange fuzz guitars. Then all of a sudden, the second track kicks in, a dark brooding bass heavy groove, with whispered vocals, and lo and behold the Cleaning Woman sound a little like Tool, albeit with some strange homemade percussion, but just like a Tool track it builds to a super heavy chorus and then slips back into a moody groove. Hot on the heels of that track is a sort of croony Spaghetti Western style number peppered with gypsy strings and angular guitar. Later on they bust out some super heavy mathy shit that sounds like it could be NoMeansNo or Victim's Family. But for the Cleaning Women, it's all about rhythms, so every track is rife with all sort of rhythms. Some tracks are defined by the rhythm, some are nothing but the rhythms, others incorporate the rhythms subtlely into the bigger picture. But no matter how they do it, each track is a delight. Dizzying and confusional, wild and weird as fuck. The best tracks are the ones where everything drops out and the band go completely nuts on their various rhythmic devices, which must be amazing to see live, it's like the Blue Man Group crossed with Stomp, only if they were transvestites, and were meaner, and less blue, and WAY more punk, armed with fuzz guitars and a stage full of washing machines and dishwashers.
Needless to say, SO recommended!
INSANE FINNISH MUSIC ALERT!!! Yeah sure, Circle can get pretty darn weird, and Aavikko are completely nuts, and of course Keukhot definitely exists in some seriously damaged alternate universe, and that whole forest folk scene, Avarus, Uton, Anaksimandros, Tivol, and all the rest, very very strange indeed.
But then there's the Cleaning Women. A power trio of crossdressing Finns, makeup, housecoats, stockings, the whole bit, you know, CLEANING WOMEN, who play an arsenal of customized clotheshorses, drying racks, and household appliances. Woah. That would almost be enough right there, but thankfully these sort-of-ladies have the chops to back it up.
But how to describe what this sounds like is a whole 'nother problem. The core sound is the insane processed percussion produced from wildly beating on the mic'ed cleaning implements. Funky and chaotic. Like some sort of gamelan gone haywire. Complex rhythm and polyrhythms all over the place, the beats changing pitch sometimes mid beat. Totally wild. Definitely some nods to the manic energy of Aavikko. But then add in some super distorted fuzz bass, some squelchy analog synths, some crunchy garage rock guitar here and there, and then some truly strange very dramatic crooned vocals, in Finnish of course, sounding like some mix of Circle's Mika Ratto and the vocalist from Midnight Oil, weaving theatrically in and out of the dense tribal rhythmscapes. And while the record hews pretty close to a maniacal rhythms / fuzzy riffage combo, the songs and sounds are pretty dang varied, from groovey blown out percussive dirges, to fuzzy metallic sambas, weird tribal chants, to weird blurpy Beefheartian jams, to killer electro analog grooves. And the opening track "Ricewestern" might just be the catchiest transvestite tribal kitchensink psychedelic fuzz jam ever!!
We're a sucker for pretty much anything Finnish. The weirder the better. So when we discovered Cleaning Women, a trio of Finns, who dressed up like ladies, housecoats, stockings, the whole nine yards, and who performed on an assemblage of customized kitchen appliances and household items, stoves, ironing boards. drying racks, clothes horses, we were sold before we even heard a note.
Luckily they had the music to back up their eccentric presentation, a strange chaos of wild percussion, blown out fuzz bass, and crooned vocals. Their second record was a soundtrack of sorts, and ended up being way more varied and schizophrenic than their debut, and once again, for record number three, the simply titled U, they've shifted gears again, and really hit their stride. Where as before, it seemed like the music was secondary to the concept, here, the music is dark and brooding and hypnotic, poppy and melodic, minimal and mesmerizing, they even seemed to have ditched the drag, if the band photo is any indication, they're still glamorous, and odd looking, but in a sort of Euro vampire glam rock way. But the music. Wow. Everything we loved about the first two records distilled and compressed into something magical.
The opening track is like a super minimal junkyard Circle, with its endlessly repeating main riff, the clanky percussion, the woozy seasick rhythm, there's even a creepy interlude partway through, with tolling bells, booming metallic rumbles and mysterious reverbed whistles, before the band launch back into it, this time adding vocals, the Circle comparison becoming even more apt, like an industrial Circle covering Morricone or something? However you slice it, it's amazing.
The second track almost sounds like an analog Kraftwerk, with it's blooping bassline, and motorik melody, mix in a little twangy guitar, swirling synths, super cinematic and dramatic. The third track is a pop gem, with it's dreamy vocal melody, and softly propulsive rhythm, and pizzicato strings, it almost reminds us of Uz Jsme Doma, but way more mellow and shimmery.
"The Miners' Song" sounds like a warped Pink Floyd outtake, until the main riff kicks in, fuzzy and fierce and downright heavy, and suddenly we're back in hypnorock territory, but with a distinctly playful pop edge.
The second half of the record is more of the same, from super minimal bowed string dronescapes, rife with surfy twang and delicate shimmer, to strange otherworldly cabaret pop, with xylophone like percussion, and cool Eastern melodies, to clattery math pop workouts that sound like some mad mix of Nomeansno and Sparks, to the eight minute closer "Scythians", which again veers into Circle territory, spidery looped melodies over simple motorik rhythms, reverbed and softly woozy, before shifting gears, introducing chanted vocals and slipping into a super dramatic slow build, culminating in a cool hauntingly harmonized choral outro.
Absolutely WAY recommended.
Like all Sunburned Hand Of The Man releases, this is another fleeting glimpse into the mad, sonic abstract sound world of these psych rock ne'er do wells. And like all SHOTM releases, we grabbed as many of these as we could from the band when they were drifting through, probably never to get more. And we got about 15 copies which is all they had left, so if you want one of these, act fast and be prepared to be disappointed.
Not a SHOTM record proper, this is some sort of Sunburned offshoot, featuring mainman John Moloney and a few other folks, using mostly voices and electronics, a bit or percussive clatter and some grinding guitar fuzz, to cobble together a bizarre growling, grumbling, squeaking, skronking, belching, squeaking, swirling soundscape of abstract vocalizations, mysterious buzz, kitchen sink clang, and instrument buzz and whir. Pretty far out even by already damaged SHOTM standards.
Packaged in that instantly recognizable brown cardstock sleeve with color artwork affixed to the front, and two inserts, one xeroxed and one a little transparency.
And again, we only got about 15 of these, probably never to get more so don't dawdle!!
Breaking Day is record number two from Cleared, the duo of Steven Hess (Locrian, Haptic) and Michael Vallera, and much like their self titled debut (reviewed elsewhere on the aQ site), this record finds the duo weaving longform landscapes of rhythm and sound, texture and noise, drawing influence from abstract ambient electronica as much as lo-fi floor-core noise. In fact, in many ways, Breaking Day feels like a continuation of that first record, touching on many of the same elements, but here having honed those elements into something spectacular.
Born of live performances in the studio, employing both live drums and sampled percussion, as well as atmospheric guitar work and all manner of droned out soundscaping, Cleared create gorgeous expanses of minimal krautdrone noise-dub, that weds rhythmic mesmer to lush layered minimalism, churning hypnorock throb to gauzy softly caustic ambience.
Opening track "Rogues" is pretty much all we've been listening to lately, a slow building sprawl of chiming soft focus shimmer, peppered with squalls of white noise, and wreathed in washed out sine wave tones, the bursts of static building a barely there rhythm, that gradually solidifies into a Necks style jazzy skitter, the sounds growing more and more dense and intense, and when the rhythm proper comes in, it's epic, a simple stuttery pulse, but it changes the whole tone of the piece, giving it some serious heft and momentum, mix in some dubbed out snares, add layer after layer of hiss and hum, and it's total psych-jazz-kraut-noise bliss. Ten minutes is way too short. This could have been the whole record, had they stretched it out to 40 minutes and it STILL would have been Record Of The Week.
The group explore similar territory on the rest of the record, but in smaller chunks, "Sighted" is a churning expanse of tinkling melodies, wavery low end thrum, and buzzing static, blurred into some seriously mesmerizing (and subtly propulsive) ambience, the title track veers into a sort of This Heat beholden post rock / post punk, all big chiming brittle guitars, woozy rhythmic churn and gloomy atmosphere. "No Path To Claim" revisits the vibe of the opener, creating a sort of soft noise raga, laced with chimes and bells, the churning low end miasma lush and textured, the track's propulsion more implied than explicit, finishing off with a haunting swirl of psychedelic guitar drift and woozy low end pulsations. "Quartz" lays down a gorgeously dense stretch of grinding minimal dronemusic, thick and viscous, but weirdly warm and hypnotic, underpinned by soft shimmery chordal swells, and the record finally finishes off with "The Harvest", the most abstract of the bunch, and one which sounds strangely like another one of this week's Records Of The Week, the bowed reindeer antler music of Hornorkesteret, with its creaking and rumbling, dark swirls of rumble and drone, distant keening melodies, what sounds like field recordings of clatter and shuffle, hints of some creaking ship abound, it's haunting, atmospheric and very evocative of some ancient mysterious ritual. Fantastic stuff!
We've been consistently impressed with past Immune releases including Expo 70's latest Where Does Your Mind Go? and Steven R. Smith's Cities. So it's no surprise this debut release from Chicago duo Cleared is another noteworthy addition to the Immune catalog. Cold, bleak and utterly gorgeous long tone music from Steven Hess, a member of On, Haptic and Ural Umbo, and Michael Vallera, a solo artist who has released numerous recordings on Complacency Records and Catholic Tapes, to name a few. Champions of the blurred, electronic soundscape, the duo patiently craft five carefully composed pieces that recall the melodic density of Wolfgang Voigt's GAS in cahoots with the percussive, noise-dub antics of the late Yellow Swans. Sweeping washes of white noise, field recordings slowed down and filtered through an opaque haze, veils of distant synth tones reflecting white light and cold tones into the night air. Chiming bells and glistening echoes offer a gentle lull into an utterly grey world. Cleared certainly deliver the dense, gleaming walls of droney, melodic wash that we can't get enough of, but there is a fragile quality to this self-titled debut, an attention to melodic detail. This focus on detail, in combination with a keen rhythmic sensibility filtered through an industrial lens, results in what we'll call spectral dub. A disoriented pairing of urban decay against fog-shrouded landscapes, visions of grey, snow covered roads and ghost inhabited warehouses, abandoned suburbia under a moonless sky.
While most of the album's percussive elements remain masked in distortion, reverb and filth, "False Mornings" reveals the only shinning glimpse of an apparent drum kit. Rolling toms, splashing cymbals, hypnotic repetition and creepy synth-craft guide the slow-paced procession into the bleak caves of the 'Occult-kraut' underworld. Limited to an edition of 500 lps on top quality white vinyl, don't miss out on this ghostly gem. �
San Francisco based visual artist and composer, Ishan Clemenco, in conjunction with a show at NOMA Gallery has released this special edition 10" on dandelion-yellow color vinyl. Consisting of two pieces, the first, "Afterlight (for Henning Christiansen)" is a 7-minute fragment of a longer work for found pianos. Taken from recordings of pianos found in old churches, music rooms and theatres and atmospherically clustered in soft-focus overlapping arrangements, the cloudlike acoustical effects of layered random pianos creates a gentle building upon of harmonic overtones in an almost raga-like structure that is really quite beautiful.
The B-side, "Untitled (Typewriter), is dedicated to Samuel Beckett and is like the title implies, a work based on the rhythms made on an Hermes "baby" typewriter. Recorded during a residency at The Headlands Center For The Arts, the rhythms of the the taps, spaces and returns (ding!) of the old analog typewriter, based on karnatic musical structures bounce against the former military bunker walls in beautiful reverberations. So nice! Limited to 50 copies, this is a bit on the expensive side, but it is basically a limited edition artwork and they won't be around long. Beautifully packaged with an essay by artist Dean Smith.
More '70s Italian avant-garde composition nicely reissued by the Die Schachtel label.
Cliffsides is the solo work of Ryan McGill, a Georgia native currently residing Brooklyn who is half of the kosmische synth project Afterlife. Where Afterlife tightly wound itself around the post Manuel Gottsching / Klaus Schulze ethos that led into so many of those great Emeralds related projects, McGill's solo work is all sleepwalking sprawl and narcotic mist. Bubbling abstractions, big sweeping oscillations, and lazer-shot synth tones work through the variable curtains of delay and echo effects that McGill pours over all of the synthesized sounds. Vast empty spaces with distant vocal and guitar signals cascade through those delay patterns creating a 'floating in outerspace' vibe from the onset, only to glide into a very choice step sequence of Schnitzler-esque melodicism.
By the second side, McGill offers forth some midnight electronica / sci-fi worship channelling Tangerine Dream's Zeit only to turn that into a very dark set of ambient passages, complete with ritualized chanting and industrially grim sawtooth synth lines. There's lots to cover on this tape, as McGill sprawls and drones for over 80 minutes here. Nice that somebody is using the long form medium of the cassette to its fullest potential! Limited to 100 copies; and like most everything on Hooker Vision, this will not last long.
