Our experience with the mbira (the thumb piano) is pretty limited. As much as I'd like to go on and on about the history of the instrument and other essential mbira recordings, I just can't. But what I can tell you, is that this is one of the dreamiest, floatiest, head in the clouds records ever, and has been our main going to sleep record these last few weeks. And 'going to sleep music' is in no way a criticism. In fact, if anything, it's the opposite. I don't care what anyone tells you, few times in one's music listening day are as important or as sacred as the time before you fall asleep, when whatever music you put on soothes you and lulls you to sleep, and obviously some of those sounds you take with you into your dreams. Crandell's mbira is the perfect soundtrack to your dreams, as long as you dream of lush green glades, huge pools of crystal clear water, blue skies and slowly drifting clouds. Mbira Magic, while light and airy and very very dreamy and mellow, remains just on the right side of new age, with sweetly lyrical muted melodies that drift lazily into subtly complex patterns and drift apart into abstract soundscapes of soft plink plonk, rich with reverb and all warm and langorous. So so nice.
As much weird, loud, obtuse, and left of the margin music that we love and champion here, we also never shy away from music that we know is undeniably beautiful. Whether it's the majestic West African Kora music of Djibril Diabate and Lanaya or the evocative piano compositions of Lucian Cilio or the sweeping elegance of The Rachels. There is a long list of music that we cherish that manages to be both so beautiful and filled with soul. Richard Crandell deserves a spot right on the top of our all time beautiful music list. Playing the mbira (the thumb piano) to mesmerizing perfection, his last record was one of our favorites of 2004. Three years in the making and Spring Steel is another batch of stellar minimalist compositions that make us melt every time we hear them. There is a tenderness and focus to Crandell's playing that has the ability to make everything else in the world just fade away as you let his soft hypnotic sounds entrance you. Crandell is a rare performer, with such a delicate touch and impeccable taste.
Spring Steel sounds almost like Colleen paying homage to Steve Reich. Methodical and skilled yet so filled with soul and soothing power.
Colley is a self-taught sound artist from Sacramento, where he has slowly been building an extensive (if underappreciated) catalogue of dissonant rumbles and threatening drones out of lo-fi electronics (piezo microphones, malfunctioning speaker cones, buzzing wires). I admit a skepticism about Colley and the industrial bent of his earliest work. Yet, he, more than a lot of California noise artists, has stepped beyond the 'noise for noise' purism for an expressive and at times gentle broad band of electro-acoustic drones that have demonstrated the potential to parallel the awe-inspiring absolute concrete work of Francisco Lopez. "Everybody Gets What They Deserve" is Colley's fifth album which begins with demonstrations of the aforementioned lo-fi electronics and ends with an assortment of Hafler Trio-esque media collage cut ups.
Joe Colley (aka Crawl Unit) specialises in the internal feedback loop, showing masterful restraint, in keeping this simple sound generation technique from exploding in Merzbow's purposeful ugliness. Where fellow quiet feedback artist Arcane Device builds complex banks of electronic gear to transform and modulate these tones within controlled parameters, Crawl Unit plays fast and
"Trans History - Works 95-99" is a collection of singles and compilation tracks drawn from Crawl Unit's electroacoustic / noise 'n' drone work. A specialist in internal feedback systems, Crawl Unit sets up lo-tech / post-industrial looping patterns of granular textures and white hot electrical buzz. As all of this work had been commissioned as rather short pieces (a seven inch or
Split 3" cd-r of two hardcore technical grind outfits in extreme power electronics mode. Uum features Travis Ryan of San Diego's Cattle Decapitation. Three short tracks, one small price...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've carried some strange sounds in our shop. We've listed them in other reviews, but it definitely bears repeating, ice melting, drag racing, life support machines, bats, lots of frogs, insects in stored foodstuffs, EVP voices from beyond the grave, chanting cults, arcade ambience, applause, silence, purring kittens, shortwave broadcasts, the sounds of Symphony intermissions, deer in heat, singing power lines, guitars dragged behind trucks, the aurora borealis, blank tapes, monkeys, crackling fires, the ocean, elephants playing gamelans, vibrating docks and bridges, hollerin' and so much more. The one thing we've yet to carry is the sounds of a gun being fired. Until now.
But this isn't just some random sniper fire, or some yahoos firing their shotguns out in the woods. No these gunshots have a purpose. And that purpose is art. The shooter is a man called Walt Creel, who uses a rifle to perforate big pieces of sheet metal, and in doing so creates huge images from the bullet holes. Cool huh? The works are part of a concept called Deweaponizing The Gun, wherein the gun's destructive power is transformed into the power to create. In conjunction with the visual works, Creel decided to deweaponize the gun in another way, by capturing the sound, one that usually invokes panic and terror and recontextualizing it into something while maybe not musical, something distinctively sonic, and textural, percussive and strange.
And that it is. A one sided 12", featuring recordings of Creel firing his gun into metal, an auditory glimpse into the process of creating his art. Sonically, it's reminiscent of pop guns, or firecrackers, or a screen door slamming, not the huge roar and bang you hear in movies or on TV, instead, the sound is actually slight, tinny, high end, the shots fired create a strange spare soundscape of not quite rhythms, the recording hissy and lo-fi, adding texture and grit, not the easiest listening, but still pretty fascinating, in both concept and execution. Found sound and field recording enthusiasts will definitely dig.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES! Beautiful one sided black and white sleeves, each one hand numbered and signed by the artist, and each with a small cardstock antlered insert.
Digging ever deeper into the EM back-catalog (just like this wonderful Japanese label digs ever deeper and deeper into the realm of obscure and out-of-print LPs, looking for weird gems like this to reissue), we are so psyched to finally review this disc, devoted to the music of Noah Creshevsky. Like the recently reviewed EM releases by Barton Smith and David Rosenberg, this Creshevsky guy is another eccentric electronic music pioneer -- just look at him on the cover, with his bald head, mustache, and little sweater vest! But appearances aside, the eight tracks of audio found on this cd definitely live up to the EM standard of wonderful weirdness as well. What you've got to know about Creshevsky is that he was totally into the gospel of ol' JC -- no, not Jesus Christ, we're talking about 20th century avant-garde composer John Cage. Chance and randomness! The thick cd booklet (pretty much all in Japanese, but heavily illustrated with pictures and graphics) includes a color photo of Creshevsky hanging out with his hero in 1986, and there's also a track here, 1976's "In Other Words (Portrait Of John Cage)", that consists of nine minutes of quietly ominous electronic drone backing some words from JC. That's probably the "calmest" cut on this disc, though, as the rest are much more in the mode of tape-spliced mayhem. You get a display of musique concrete as chop socky boom-bap on the cut-up, percussive first track, "Strategic Defense Initiative" (which with a title like that you won't be surprised to learn dates from 1986). Puts us in mind of early Boredoms, almost! The next track, "Highway" from 1979, brings in more snippets of speech, a collage of non-sequiturs sampled from TV and records. But track three, 1971's "Circuit", sources its sounds, layered and looped, from the chiming strings of the harpsichord only. It's a mesmerizing, maddening bit of music that verges on suspense movie spookiness (with sudden jarring jumps in volume). Other cuts here include "Drummer" (1985), a choppy battery of drumming, of course, plus ambient street sounds and screwy tape garble; the amusing "Great Performances" (1978), a cartoonish concert of sampled symphonic sounds and more spoken non-sequiturs; "Sonata" (1980) which continues the classical theme but adds drum machine blasts and a dose of Nyquil to the verbal component. And then things wind up with the last and latest piece found here, 1992's "Cantiga", another jagged "classical" piece that sounds like the work of an ADD-afflicted Carl Stalling, that manages to establish a nicely moody effect in the end. Overall, The Tape Music Of Noah Creshevsky is damaged, deranged, and full of a lot of detail to delve into. Today's breed of digital Plunderphonicans perhaps could claim Creshevsky as an ancestor, and certainly the pop-culture element here posits Noah Creshevsky as a precursor to the (pioneering themselves) Tape Beatles, for instance. Neat.
How could we resist a band called The Crevices Below, whose album is titled Below The Crevices? Hell, just check out album opener "Below The Crevices" (yes!!!), a creeping atmospheric synth heavy subterranean exploration, that does sound precisely like a field recording of what lurks just below the crevices, all blackened swirls, strange machine like rhythms, ominous melodies, anguished wails off in the distance, eventually spidery doomy guitars drift into the picture, and then suddenly, the song explodes in a frenzy of furious synth soaked black blasting, everything cavernous and echoey, the vocals a rasped bellow, the drums pounding, the guitars buzzing, but those thick droning synths transforming the sound into something weirdly alien and majestic. And then out of nowhere, in comes an impossibly melodic clean guitar part, again transforming the sound into something almost poppy, the sound slipping back and forth between that grim synthy buzz, and that soaring melodic poppiness, dense and heavy and droney and totally epic.
Not really sure how we discovered this Australian one man band, pretty sure it was based entirely on the band name, but our obsession spread, first Andee, then Allan, then fellow black metal weirdo Botanist, then aQ pal Monte. Soon after Andee played it on his radio show, and everyone wanted to know what the heck it was. And where they could get it.
So yeah, The Crevices Below, who besides being masters of synth heavy black metal majesty, also create a dark gloomy downer pop the likes of which we haven't heard since the amazing debut from Nuit Noire offshoot Soror Dolorosa, which is how most of Below The Crevices plays out: gothy, gloomy, Joy Divisiony dirges, long expanses of melancholic synthswirl doom pop, washed out and dreamily woozy,�over which a deep ominous croon, that sits right on the verge of hysteria,�wails and howls, occasionally blossoming into something much more black and buzzy, in fact most of the tracks here are a perfectly twisted fusion of goth pop and black buzz, heavy and darkly psychedelic, the synths really the driving force, swooping in to transform what ever buzzing blackness or dour broodery is taking place and turning it into something heavy and epic and mighty, and mighty twisted.
When you break it down, very little of Below The Crevices is truly black metal, several of the tracks strip away the buzz completely, leaving instead a sort of creeping poppy gloom, or some sort of softly hazy, almost shoegazey ambience. "Whispers Of Sorrow" is all spidery guitar melodies wreathed in thick swaths of synthdrone, all underpinned by skeletal drum skitter, while "Trapped In Suicidal Depths" is all gloomy and gothy, heavily effected downtuned guitars, low slung bass, croaked sinister vox, more Christian Death or Specimen than black metal, super spare, the guitars less buzzy and more warm and twangy, the vocals growing more and more anguished, and while there's a brief bit of buzzing guitars and pounding drums midway through, those quickly fade, leaving the rest of the track to unfold like some smeared eyeliner, gothic cabaret.
But bookending this goth-gloom two-fer, is one one side, "A Grand Cavernous Awakening", which might be the most black metal of the bunch, at least initially, the synths adding plenty of pomp to on otherwise grim sprawl of black buzz, while the second half of the song, slips back into moody melodic gothic doom pop, and on the other side, the record closer, the nearly eleven minute "Carrying The Cries Of The Lost", which starts off all hushed and folky, deep vox over acoustic guitar, and simple spare drumming, but then this track too explodes into some soaring buzzing blackness, those synths epic and triumphant, peeling away at one point, offering up the record's grimmest moments, pure metallic crush, only to then shift gears again, and slip into a more melodic half tempo groove, seconds later launching back into a blasting gallop, but instead of grim buzz, super dramatic crooned vox once again transform the sound into something much more gloomy and poppy, before a twisted squall of an ending, flitting from mathy angular crunch, to distorted buzz / synth swirl psychedelia.
So incredible, incredibly weird, and utterly recommended. Another black metal record of the year contender and it's only January (and yeah, we know this came out last year, but it only made it on the aQ list in 2012...)!!
Low-end ambient bassist Devin Sarno is Crib, helped on his new (third, we think) disc "Remnant" by AQ-fave guitarist Nels Cline (who did a pretty great duo album with Sarno a few years back) and other LA avant scenesters. There's three tracks, the first
This long time aQ fave now reissued on vinyl!!
Thanks to a fateful Joy Division gig, where Crispy Ambulance singer Alan Hempsal successfully and secretly subbed for a missing Ian Curtis, The Ambulance seemed to be cursed with a reputation as pale imitatiors of Joy Division. But while at moments, Crispy Ambulance *are* dead ringers for Joy Division's post-punk pop, they were even more adept at crafting truly creepy gloom and haunting sound sculptures. At their best, they could create unsettling almost sci-fi soundscapes, and at their worst they could hold their own with their early '80s cronies Joy Division, In Camera, Wolfgang Press, etc. Totally excellent. Still sounds as fantastic as ever!
Homegoing is the most recent full length from these avant dronescapers, whose Re-Ups lp on Flingco was a big hit around here. The group counts members of the late great Labradford amongst their membership, and as we mentioned in our review of Re-Ups, there does seem to be a sonic thread connecting both groups.
Cristal explore much of the same ground as other dronelords like SUNNO))) and Locrian, but Cristal focus less on the heavy, and more on the atmosphere, and the texture, the sounds here unfurling, and unfolding, revealing fragmented melodies, and mysterious song-like shapes drifting amidst the fields of low end thrum and keening shimmer.
The opener sounds almost classical, like Wolf Eyes performing with the symphony, a symphony forced to play old rusted metal and weird found implements, the result is a black, foggy creep, with moaning cellos and creaking streaks of high end, all wreathed in lush swirls of blackened sound, ethereal and ephemeral, a lushly ominous broodscape the sounds poised to exploded into something epic, but instead, seems to drift ever inward, collapsing into a brief bit of almost new age sounding drift, all hazy hushed thrum, before splintering into an epic sprawl of softly churning rumble, laced with layered pulsations, all blurred and smeared into a slow heaving swell of softly crumbling low end, wreathed in a halo of hushed high end shimmer. Gorgeous and harrowing.
The second half of the record begins with a field of cavernous subterranean low end reverberations, the sound almost ritualistic, the tones sounding almost like human voices processed by the natural deformations in whatever cave these sounds were excavated from, the sound shifts to something even more minimal, a field of softly undulating swells, brooding, moody and mysteriously cinematic, all bleeding into a hazy prismatic drift, all muted high end skree, sculpted into dreamlike shapes and set adrift on soft focus billows of weightless sound, the airiness giving way to something more warm and washed out, dreamlike and melancholic, before shifting into the epic near 11 minute closer, which starts off barely there, but quickly builds to something epic and majestic, a swirling serene squall of dense psychedelic shimmer, and slow shifting layers of glimmering, chordal whir, all hazy and heady and heavenly...
Not sure about you, but Cristal for us conjures up images of MTV Cribs and Jay-Z and 50 Cent partying at some exclusive club, or hot babes in bikinis sipping drinks on a yacht moored right off Miami Beach, but most definitely evoke the dark blackened sonic abyss that is this, the first release from the oddly monickered Cristal, a trio that just so happens to feature one member of long time aQ faves Labradford.
And Labradford is a good jumping off point for Cristal, there's a definitely sonic connection, but where Labradford built on the most minimal of sounds, this trio seems to break the sound down into the smallest possible parts, creating, hyper detailed microscopic droneworlds that virtually REQUIRE headphones.
Lots of blurbs have referenced SUNNO))) but the sound of Cristal is less about power and force, more about texture and timbre, whereas SUNNO))) explode outward, Cristal collapse inward, like that ride at Disneyland, where you travel into the microscope. This is minimal microscopic, but incredibly rich and detailed sound.
Ultra deep ambience, a sound both subterranean and subaquatic, metallic shimmering high end washes over everything like some sort of alien sheen, fields of glistening cricket like chitter adds texture to otherwise slow shifting smooth expanses of warm soft swirl, dreamy and ethereal, fields of high tones surface here and there like a symphony of gently rubbed wine glasses, the only real jarring moment is at the beginning of side 2, the opening track an ear splitting burst of super hot white noise hiss, almost Merzbowian in its intensity, all chaotic and crumbling and buzzy, but the disc quickly returns to it's more tranquil drift for the remainder of side 2, a wash of low end whispers, of textured blurred melodies, sounding quite a bit like some Ligeti choral piece sloooooowed way down. Really quite lovely. Just be prepared for that brief blast, otherwise, a gorgeously deep dark minimal dronescape that will for sure hit the spot for the slow and low obsessed.
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed black on black!
Thought we should mention that we have this slab of classic weirdness on vinyl now too... a favorite old ESP release, not a free jazz session but a freaky hippie jam that couldn't be replicated in this day and age. Here's some of what we had to say about one of the previous cd editions (and it is still in stock in that format, btw):
An anomaly, even on the always far out ESP label, Cromagnon was the result of two top 40 songwriters (accustomed to producing bubblegum pop) who seemed to have completely lost their minds. I mean they must have, to produce something as wacked as this record. Austin Grasmere, Brian Elliot, and their mysterious 'Connecticut Tribe' spewed forth 50 minutes of primitive dada-ist folk psych.
Chanting, tribal percussion, short wave radio, maniacal, almost black metal vocals, hysterical laughter, bagpipes all coalesce into something ridiculous and amazing.
Track one "Caledonia" sounds like a strange hybrid of Comus and In Extremo, with bagpipes, jaw harp, crickets, raspy chants and teutonic percussion ("Caledonia" was even covered later by industrialists Test Department). Later on in the record is an alternate version of "Caledonia" from the b-side of the original lp, slowed down to a third of the speed, producing an impenetratable swampy murk. "Ritual Feast of The Libido" features a groaning and moaning vocal over whirring and rumbling machinery. Then comes "Fantasy", where a faux Beach Boys intro almost convinces us that Grasmere and Elliot have returned to their bubblegum roots, that is until it devolves into a messy seven minutes of garbled laughter and clattering percussion. Today this all still seems pretty damn crazy, so back in 1968 when it was recorded it must have really freaked people out, even despite the pervasive drug culture of the time... definitely for those of you who were blown away by the Comus, and for everyone who is in need of a new favorite fucked record, this is it. Now a unanimous AQ fave.
Another choice slab of gnarled industrial dekompositions from Black Horizons! Crooked Columns is a new project to us, hailing from Portland, Oregon with handful of equally unknown ancillary projects from the various members. Searing synth tones, crushing noise concoctions, and an occasional rhythmic outburst of militaristic aplomb set the stage for a cassette that could easily be passed off as something with origins dating back to 1984 from some armpit town in sodden England or from some death-obsessed Italian miserably enduring the Mediterranean sun. Even with all of the noise and grind and toxic bloom, Crooked Columns muster some intriguing variations on their core strategies of loops and noise. Sure there's plenty of references to MB's mechanical lurchings from back in the day, but that extended track with pronounced rhythms has more of a Konstruktivists feel topped with atonal horns and plenty of scabrous blurts of noise. Warbling loops and heart-beat pulses lead into smashed amplifier destruction on the second side of the tape, with plenty of horror-score sound design vibes tossed in for good measure. Really great stuff, we have to say. And as is the case with all of the Black Horizons tapes these days, very nice packaging with gold offset printing on metallic blue paper. Careful though of the drug-sized baggie tucked away inside the J-card. Supposedly, the rusted metal has been dosed with tetanus. Don't tempt fate, please. As with all the Black Horizons tapes... LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
Second release on Handmade Birds from this post (sort of) black metal outfit, formerly called Frail, when they were black metal only in as much as they had shrieked vokills, musically, their sound was much more in line with the Cure or Depeche Mode, dark depressive almost new wave, and wait a second� that's basically true of Crooked Necks as well, after a whole record of Joy Division covers (the recently reviewed Something Must Break 12"), this brand new full length doesn't sound all that far removed, dark shimmery bass lines, lots of chiming melodies and gloom pop guitar jangle, crooned vocals, a little reverby shimmer, softly propulsive rhythms, Crooked Necks are one of those rare bands that all metalheads seem to like, even though they're not even remotely metal. It's that weird heavy metal rule that states all metalheads must like the Cure and Depeche Mode, but just applied to a more modern band, which does make sense cuz again, take those shrieked vocals away, and this record could have come out on Sacred Bones or Captured Tracks or Wierd. But hey, that's fine with us, we're merely questioning why these guys are classified as metal, black or otherwise, maybe they're not so much anymore, regardless, we love this stuff, dreamy blissed out gloom pop, the weird thing is we'd almost even like it more sans the harsh vox, then it would just be pure crystalline jangle pop, a little gloomy, a little gothy, but pretty much total pop. The vocals definitely give it an edge, and there is some cool, slightly weirder stuff going on as well, some strange production, backwards swoops an swirls, but for the most part this is just a great new wave downer pop record, that yeah, if you're an adventurous metalhead, you just might dig, and if you're a popkid, and don't mind a bit of black screech, this could definitely be a new fave.
Supposedly the final recording from these post-black metallers, born of a sonically similar outfit we reviewed ages ago called Frail, who were already crafting a sound that at the time we described as sounding exactly like The Cure, only with harsh shrieked BM vokills. Crooked Necks took that sound and ran with it, ending up even further removed from anything remotely black metal, a woozy, swirling, gothic gloom pop, all chiming shoegaze guitars, deep bellowed vox, chiming minor key melodies, moody and broody, soaring and shimmery, we're immediately reminded of Beyond Dawn, Katatonia too, but Crooked Necks still retains some of those harsh vokills, their sound a bit more murky and buzzy, but those elements are subtle, and deftly woven into an epic, majestic sort of blissed out post-BM metalgaze, that is most definitely more aligned with outfits like Alcest and Deafheaven and the like. Gorgeously gloomy stuff.
As with all Black Horizons releases, beautifully packaged, a silver metallic ink on matte green paper 8 panel J-card, the tapes stickered green cassettes, with a printed glossy insert, and of course LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
We first heard from Crooked Necks on their split with Finnish (sort of) black metal weirdos Circle Of Ouroborus. And as CoO made their way to the new Handmade Birds label, it makes sense that Crooked Necks would too. Born of the band Frail, who we raved about a while back on the list, who essentially sounded like a black metal Cure, or more accurately, they sounded exactly like the Cure, or a similarly dour new wave band, just with black metal shrieks instead of the typical deep gothic croon. That band transformed into Crooked Necks, and while the sound didn't change all that much, the vox were dialed back a bit, and the band began to sound more and more like an actual cold/new wave band, with the occasional BM tendencies, instead of the other way around.
This brand new 12", launching Handmade Birds' new White Label series, was apparently recorded a long time ago, and was born of some unnamed tragedy, and because of that was shelved for years, only now finally seeing the light of day. The most interesting part is that it's a collection of Joy Division covers, presented pretty true to the originals, but reimagined enough to make them interesting and a bit weirder. The A side is a bit more upbeat, so much so that we had trouble realizing that it was in fact meant to play at 45rpm, but the band definitely make these their own, which really is no great feat since they sort of sounded like Joy Division to begin with, but the drum programing is creative, the strange effects add a twisted vibe, it's mostly instrumental, but then the vocals do appear, they're buried in the mix, and heavily reverbed, ominous and mysterious and dramatic. The B-side is where it gets great, the band take on "New Dawn Fades" and "The Eternal", gloomy and dirgey and darkly haunting, emotional and melancholy, "The Eternal" especially, all spaced out and abstract, there are some shrieks on the B side, but just a few, and at first it was hard to tell they were voices, it could have been some sheet of high end guitar, but instead of distracting, it simply adds more emotion and passion.
The weird thing is that these guys are beloved by metallers, and that it ended up on Handmade Birds, when it almost sounds like it could have been some unearthed rarity reissued on Dark Entries. Gorgeous, haunting stuff. Fans of gloom rock and doom pop and the various waves (cold, synth, new, etc.) will definitely dig.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, in plain black sleeves, with no labels, simple black and white stickers on the front and back.
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.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Crucial Bliss is an offshoot of the Crucial Blast label, who normally specialize in all things heavy, sludgy, grinding, brutal... well, you get the idea. In the past we've reviewed Crucial Blast titles from Burmese, Genghis Tron, The Goslings, Skullflower and a bunch more. Crucial Bliss focuses on stuff that is more... well, blissful. But not always blissful in the strictest sense. Sure we reviewed Aidan Baker's Periodic a few lists back and that was indeed blissful. But now we've got the latest from Crown Of Amaranth, which while still blissful, is hardly peaceful or dreamy or any of the other descriptors you might associate with bliss.
Amaranth, is a grain, but not just any grain. It was used by the Aztecs, mixed with other ingredients to form edible idols that were consumed before human sacrifices. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, they banned the evil grain thinking it would stop the human sacrifice. Quite a lot of historical baggage for a little old grain. But that bloody bit of history is somehow appropriate considering Crown Of Amaranth's sound, a harsh and harrowing, ominous and foreboding set of drones. Miniature epic soundscapes of disembodied guitar fragments set adrift amidst a sea of hissing white noise and muted industrial scrape, fuzzy indistinct broadcasts from the ether, mumbled scratchy abstract missives rendered in crumbling melodies and washes of swirling static, church organs drift and dissipate into haunting junglescapes tangled up with bits of crooned vocals and processed slabs of grinding droning crunch. The last few tracks up the ante aggression-wise, and dip bruised and bloodied toes into a black pool of serious noise, emitting bursts of full on shriek and hiss, but almost always tempered by stretches of dark tranquility and brutal bliss.
SUPER LIMITED. We got these direct from the band. Not sure how long they will last or if we'll ever be able to get more...
From the folks behind Gog And Servile Sect, both big time faves around here, comes another curious bit of abstract heaviness, the curiously monickered Crowned Heads Of Europe. A CRAZY limited lp, only 100 copies, and for a quick idea of what you're in for, have a look at the legend on the back of the sleeve: "dROne. aRT/dOOM. experiMENTAL. sataniC/celestial." Indeed. We're sold already. Helps too that the packaging is pretty elaborate and trippy too, a thick gold metallic fold over sleeve, printed in black ink, the back side is only a half sleeve, revealing the black vinyl lp within, but also revealing a layer of textured prismatic holographic plastic.
So what exactly are The Crowned Heads Of Europe all about. Is it art doom drone satanic celestial experimental? Yeah, pretty much. Deep drones, recorded so hot and in the red, that the sound crumbles, wrapped in hiss and distortion, wreathed in soft edged feedback, the melodies abstract, a reverb drenched chiming blur, that gives way to a thick caustic downtuned crumbling sonic churn, a black ambience equal parts MZ412 and Wolf Eyes, a subtle industrial vibe, and plenty of shimmer surrounding the heavy grinding core. As the record progresses, no matter how heavy and corrosive the sound, it also manages to be weirdly pretty, a little psychedelic too. The record offers up brief squalls of squiggly distorted high end, only to follow with a lurching slow motion bass dirge, trudging through a creepscape rife with ghostly voices and melodies, processed vocals drown beneath slabs of FX drenched crush, super minimal doomic drones a la Trollmann, blossom into shimmery stretches of soft swirl and dreamy ambience, finishing off with a longform blast of crumbling in-the-red dronedirgedoom, the sounds so blown out, the overtones seem to add a whole layer of accidental melody, and the tones beating against one another create strange stuttering rhythms, everything buried beneath layers of filthy distorted murk and buzz, before slipping into something soft and hauntingly pretty, fading out in a blur of minimal cinematic creep.
LIMITED TO 100!!! Each lp comes with a cd-r containing all the music on the record.
Originally released as a crazy limited cassette, this twisted slab of retro electro synth pop psychedelia is now available on vinyl, on the same label that brought us the vinyl reissue of Mater Suspiria Vision's Crack Witch, and while Crypt Thing are less witchy, they're definitely no less twisted.
The work of a British teenager, Crypt Thing start things off with a blast of warped, witchy, house-y (and yeah a little witch house-y), stuttering, druggy electro weirdness, that definitely sets things up for something dark and damaged, but it doesn't take long for the sound to shift to something much more old school eighties electo, or classic MTV synth pop, or even slowed down soul, but all filtered through CT's seriously warped sonic sensibilities. The pitch seems to constantly warble, the vibe is psychedelic for sure, but a sort of cheesy retro pop style psychedelia, as if some future civilization was trying to reconstruct eighties pop music from garbled fragments transmitted across light years, the result like a twisted tangle of Prince, Simple Minds, Rick Astley, Naked Eyes, Kajagoogoo and Heaven 17, but the a futuristic alien interpretation, all woozy and warbly, occasionally peppered with echo drenched falsetto vox, but more often than not left to pulse and buzz, jangle and thump, the soundtrack to some lost interplanetary prom, a collection of dreamily divine, desolate dancefloor, roller rink couples skate, drugpsych electro retro pop bliss out jams, that should most definitely appeal to Hype Williams, Ariel Pink, Greatest Hits, Craft Spells, D'Eon, Games, Outer Limits Recordings, Gary War, Gatekeeper, Blank Dogs, Pink Skull, Soft Metals, How To Dress Well, Laurel Halo and all the rest...
We love pretty much everything on Japanese label Zero Gravity, including this recent disc. But unlike the abstract electronics found on most Zero Gravity releases, Crystal Fist's album is an electro-acoustic hippie jam that owes more to the No Neck Blues Band, Amon Duul, and the Taj Mahal Travellers than to Ryoji Ikeda. Featuring the stumbling, 'free' drumming of Merzbow's Masami Akita (here leaving his noise persona behind for his first love, psychedelic rock), this single thirty three minute piece is a druggy, spacey, hypnotic masterpiece, that starts as a murky, otherworldly soundscape; all chirping crickets and ambient murmur. The sound is soon bolstered by the drone of Huun Huur Tu -like faux throat singing, whirring feedback, and the hum of rumbling turntables and abused cd players. This pagan ritual reaches a fever pitch as various percussion elements are introduced, and Akita's style of brain-damaged-Jaki Leibezeit drumming builds a rickety framework around the whole ceremony.
What's amazing is that this sounds so much like it was recorded in the seventies....not in 1997. And it most certainly doesn't sound like turntables and cd players, it sounds more like rickety old amps, and bowed metal, and the vocalizations of lysergically enhanced druids. So recommended!
The latest chunk of strange sonic sweetness from aQ beloved cd-r label Debacle, comes from Seattle one man band Crystal Hell Pool (first recommended to us by aQ pal Hank), whose Domain is a fantastic slab of zoned out psychedelic new age, retro electronic industrialism, that reminds us of Giorgio Moroder or Zombi one second, and then Skinny Puppy the next, with pulsing electronic grooves, rumbling buzzing bass drones, swirling atmospheric synths, ominous atmospheres and hazy washed out melodies. Every track here is darkly cinematic and hauntingly atmospheric, with opener "Zentrum" lulling us in with some sun dappled celestial synth shimmer, before "Life In Silence" drags us down into some strange horror movie swirl of creeping, rhythmic lurch, and thick synthy thrum, dizzying and deliriously nightmarish, the perfect soundtrack for some strange convoluted chase through crawl spaces in a lost seventies giallo. And then BAM! It's right back to more pulsing eighties style retro-futuristic grooviness, but even those groovier moments are still infused with a looming dread, the sound shifting from blurred shimmer, to caustic corrosive crunch, but always sinister, and grimly groovy, that Skinny Puppy vibe, a sort of claustrophobic tension and soul stirring unease, seems to grow more intense as the record progresses, culminating in the churning murky closer, "Melting Face, Melting Hands", which is fantastically moody and eerie, and ends far too soon...
There are plenty of ways to make noise with a guitar. Lord knows the aQ list is proof of that. Whether it's running a guitar through a computer the spews out soft pixelated hum, or leaning a guitar against an amp and letting huge waves of black buzz pour out, or strapping one to a table and attacking it with all manner of toys and implements resulting in plenty of scrape and scrabble, or just running a guitar through a million effects pedals until what comes out the other side is nothing but streaks and blurs and rumbles and roars and barely retains any guitarness at all.
Then there's whatever the hell Alex Nagle does to his guitar that transforms it into Csection. Nagle's name might be familiar to you as the man behind the genius Flittermice Of Eld, a 'group' who took a handful of notes from a Darkthrone song and turned them into a heaving mass of dark drones and fractured buzz. Csection finds Nagle again doing unspeakable and confusional things to his guitar, and again the results are pretty fantastic.
A single 25 minute track, beginning with some weirdly digitized distortion drenched guitar shredding, that sounds a bit like it's been run through a Commodore 64, sheets of high spread out over all manner of strange crumbling low end, detuned riffage, that high end spiraling into squiggly clusters of rapid fire notes one second, sprawling out into a shimmering stretch of soft noise the next. Over the course of the track, the guitar becomes less and less recognizable, at one point shifting into a gloriously burnished field of high end streaks, all assembled into some strange alien melody, while within, various overtones clash and collide, blend and beat feverishly against one another. Imagine Phil Niblock composing for high end shred guitar, or a droned out more static version of one of Mick Barr's maniacal projects (Orthrelm, Octis, Orcrilim).
There are moments here and there, when the high end drops out, and the sound briefly becoming more of a gnarled angular drift, with Marc Ribot like guitars floating in spaced out fields of reverb, atonal, and haltingly melodic, but those interludes are usually quite fleeting, quickly subsumed by still more squalls of Nagle's frazzled and fucked up digital buzz.
This is a super limited cd-r, we've had them a while, so there's a good chance that when we sell out we won't be able to get more. Packaged in cool hand screened red and silver digipacks...
Third re-issue (first in a jewel case) of this seminal release of Amon Tobin's under the moniker of "Cujo." Very mo-waxy, down-tempo drum and bass with lots of lifted jazz breaks. An excellent album that has aged much finer than most of its contemporaries from 1997.
Damn, it's hard to believe this album is fourteen years old! Back in print after many years, Cul De Sac's ambitious debut sounds fresher than ever. One of the first bands to directly reference the rhythmic propulsions of Can, while at the same time expanding their musical arsenal to include surf music, psychedelic post-rock, Mediterranean trance music and folk, Cul De Sac have been faves here forever. Ecim reads like a drug-induced travelogue through non-linear time with each song setting up a unique feel distinct from each other yet oddly connected. Covers of Tim Buckley's "Song of the Siren" and "The Portland Cement Factory, at Monolith, California" by John Fahey (with whom they would subsequently collaborate) provide some familiar ground while at the same time offering something completely unexpected. Recommended! And oh yeah, this remastered reissue's got three previously unreleased bonus tracks from 1991, and brand new liner notes!
Named, for some reason, after a Revolutionary War spy cell, Culper Ring is an experimental collaborative side project from three Bay Area underground music notables: Steve Von Till of Neurosis/Tribes Of Neurot, Kris Force of Amber Asylum, and Mason Jones of Subarachnoid Space. There's none of Neurosis's crusty metal grind to be found here, so this might appeal more to fans of Subarachnoid's space rock and Amber Asylum's gothic chamber strings, with the spacey folky vibe these three conjure up. Apparently inspired by the likes of Coil, Nurse With Wound and Current 93, Culper Ring utilize violin, effects-laden guitars, haunting female vocals and some electronic noises to generate a soundworld that's melancholic, dark, a bit droney and "psych". It's actually quite pretty and mellow, with eight untitled tracks to wander through your ears. Not bad at all for a project that we suspect got its start just 'cause the principals all happened to share a practice space.
MPEG Download: "track eight" [/audio/culperring8.mp3]
Brand new single from this East coast, neo-folk post industrial outfit, whose first record, released on Sacred Bones earlier this year, was a big hit around here, channeling the spirit of industrial legends Death In June through the more modern vibe of their SB labelmates. And the A side here doesn't change up the formula all that much, urgently strummed guitars, deep dramatic crooned vocals, minimal martial percussion, reminding us as much of New Model Army actually as Death In June, mournful horns drifting over a surprisingly wistful melancholic folk, with that minimal percussion building over the course of the song, surrounded by swirls of tinkling melody, finally exploding into some seriously epic industrial folk majesty.
The B side is the big surprise here, a sound well removed from the strum and croon of the flipside, which made more sense once we discovered it was a cover of another aQ fave, Martial Canterel, that band's synthy cold wave reimagined sans synth, the resulting sound a strummy eighties style jangle pop / new wave hybrid, it translates surprisingly well, and it's easy to imagine CoY playing that sort of stuff all the time, but CoY's dour industrialisms definitely seep into the sound, which leads to the kick ass final stretch, a seriously heavy epic coda.
Comes with a download coupon as well.
You wouldn't expect an ensemble of 14 year old school girls playing all manner of vibraphones, marimbas, glockenspiels, xylophones and timpani drums to have a name like Cults Percussion Ensemble, but it's highly appropriate as this is not only a totally obscure record from 1979 sold only on European festival tours, but Cults also happens to be the name of the Scottish suburb of Aberdeen that the group and their bandleader, Rob Forbes, hailed from. And it makes perfect sense that it would end up getting reissued on the uber eclectic Trunk label. This is a beautifully charming new releases of hypnotically cascading mallet music that is shimmering and strange, dreamlike and diaphanous, so pretty but also at times a little cartoony, reminding us of Carl Orff's wonderful children's music, Sea World's Sparklett's Dancing Water Show (a fave attraction from our childhood, now sadly dismantled) or the incidental music on the Addam's Family. The girls' deft performances and light airy touch are delightfully enchanting, and though not as sinister or as ominous as the title would suggest, the music is nonetheless spellbinding and mysterious and comes highly recommended!!
Cultural Amnesia would have certainly disappeared entirely, but one of the band's earliest supporters was an 18 year old kid named Geoff Rushton, who later changed his name to John Balance when he formed Coil in 1983 (the same year that Cultural Amnesia ceased activities). Cultural Amnesia managed three cassettes, some compilation tracks, and a half-finished album during that time period, with one of those cassettes being released through Rushton's Hearsay And Heresy label. In all likelihood, Coil completists had come across these cassettes and brought them to light over two decades later. Vinyl On Demand was responsible for one of the anthologies of Cultural Amnesia material, but the better collection was Enormous Savages first released on vinyl by Anna Logue in 2006. This cd version through Klanggalerie flushes out the comp with five tracks recorded in recent years, now that they've gotten back together.
Had it not been for their early demise, this was a band that could have followed in the footsteps of Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, Dome, and Cabaret Voltaire circa 1981, as a blank austerity followed through the eccentric darkness grafted onto post-punk songs bristling with inventive if cheap electronics. Choppy sparkplug guitars influenced by Keith Levene's work on PiL's Metal Box punctuate the synthetic melodies, drum machinations, and motorik electronics. Lyrically, these are abject tales of blood, scars, alienation, and British misery, with some of the lyrics penned by Rushton himself. Those painfully eloquent songs are prescient of what Rushton was to bring to Coil's early work on Scatology, but they serve Cultural Amnesia very well on their own. The band had reformed in 2000, and offered 5 new tracks, which actually seem to pick up right where they left off, moving more towards the Pop Group's muscular grooves and fidgety funk, with the same Spartan tape recording which dominated their early work. A very welcome document from Britain's cassette culture.
Latest blast of abstract sounds from the murky and mysterious musical world of Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, this one from UK dronelord Culver, who tries his hand, according to the blurb on the website, at some atmospheric ambient 'metal', there's even an Abruptum namedrop which obviously sets the bar pretty dang high. It is true, Abruptum, among others, has definitely proven that mood and atmosphere can be just as heavy and grim as riffs and shrieks, although we're not so sure this is -quite- as evil as that Abruptum reference would have led us to believe. That said, this may not be -evil- but it's still incredibly dark and ominous and droney. And that's definitely enough for us. The first track is all acoustic guitar, plucking out a funereal threnody, a creeping mournful melody, droney and dirgey in an atmospherically acoustic way, over the course of 14 minutes the notes buzz a little more and the melody blurs slightly into an even more fuzzy and haunting acoustic dirge. Not heavy perhaps, but really fucking awesome. And subtly scary in its own way. The second track is a keening shimmering buzz, a nine minute exercise in building tension, sounding like some sort of minimalist horror movie music, tense and gorgeously static, while under the surface lurk subtle sonic shits and distant droning rumble. The final track is a 20+ minute whir, warm and thick and layered, like a super super lo-fi SUNNO)), a churning metallic riff, slowed waaaaaaay down and sort of blurred into a swirling sea of black buzz. Super hypnotic and mesmerizingly seasick, a slow neverending ebb and flow of crumbling fuzz drenched drone. The kind of song/sound you wish would play forever. The ultimate minimalist dronemetal trance jam!
SUPER LIMITED! WE GOT ABOUT 30 COPIES, WHEN THOSE ARE GONE THAT'S IT. ALREADY SOLD OUT AT THE LABEL!
First proper cd release from either of these bands. Culver you may know by name, and years of limited cd-r and hard to find vinyl releases, but maybe you don't realize that Culver is in fact Lee Stokoe, who also plays in long time faves Marzuraan, as well as being a member of the most recent version of the mighty Skullflower! Holy shit, that is one serioius noise rock underground cred resume if we've ever seen one.
We listed a Culver cd-r years ago, on the now defunct Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label (we actually have 3 or 4 left, if you're interested, just ask!), but haven't really managed to get anything else in since, at least until now. For his half of the split, Stokoe offers up a 31 minute, crushing, ultra heavy, super dense DRONE, corrosive and crunchy, crumbling and bristling with energy, thick slabs of teutonic low end suspended in a field of sonic tar, it almost sounds like black metal riffs blurred into thick streaks of sound, a near static crush, that seems to heave as if at any minute the whole thing could just crumble to pieces. About halfway through the sharp edges beging to wear away, the sound growing smoother, cleaner, yet somehow ever more harrowing and ominous. The track finishing off with a long stretch of near black shimmer, all smeared and woven into ropy tendrils of rumble and hum.
Seppuku counter with something much heavier, and way more metallic, their first joint, begins with a squall of electronics, some looped industrial thrum, soon gives way to a thick cloud of swirling glitch and buzz and hum, eventually dissipating leaving some seriously glacial ultradoom, left to lumber and lurch and pound its way through nearly ten minutes of amp shredding ear drum destroying glacial crawl, monstrous vocals, caveman drums, and all sorts of strange effects and electronics swirling and whirling... So slooooow and so so heavy.
The second Seppuku jam is much more of a power electronics sort of thing, tons of crumbling distortion, heavily processed vocals, all of staitc guitar buzz, loads of feedback, the sound growing ever blacker and more frantic, a grim industrial noisescape that seems to occasionally explode into flurries of murky blown out grind, before splintering back into caustic free noise. Phew.
Some serious heaviness, and some equally serious noise. In some very saucy packaging. Very little in the way of liner notes, but page after page after page, of scantily clad and mostly bare breasted euro babes!
Super limited lp from Anla Courtis, of AQ faves Reynols, teamed up here with UK noisemaker Culver, for a disc of surprisingly serene shimmer, all rumblig shifting sonic swells and gently dulcet drones, drifitng and hazy and gorgeously indistinct. Four tracks, almost an hour of sweet sweet bliss out. This is a reissue of a very limited and long out of print self-released cassette!
Yet another fantastical bit of mysterious audio alchemy from the always weird and wonderful UK tape label The Tapeworm, this one from Australian composer/sound artist Robert Curgenven, who, armed with pipe organs, industrial fans, old acetate 78's, resonating dubplates, stereo test lps, custom made oscillators, and a handful of turntables, crafts some gorgeously lush hyperminimalism that exists somewhere between the woozy turntablism of Philip Jeck, the gauzy washed out ambience of the Caretaker, and the fields of industrial hiss and crackle of Restgeraeusch. Slow shifting fields of static, underpinned by softly pulsing chordal thrum, soft swirls of blurred, bleary shimmer, morphing into wheezing clouds of droning organs, stately and haunting, hushed and atmospheric, definitely headphone listening, or at least LOUD speakers in a quiet room, but it's worth it, some seriously mesmeric deep listening lowercase loveliness.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY. [/cat/20thcenturycomposers4.html]
"A Little Menstrual Night Music" is a remix of Current 93's "In Menstrual Night," a record that has long been thought of as the most oblique of Current 93's pre-folk recordings, dominated by liturgical choral loops and clunking rhythmic couplings of piano and drums. The original album was produced back in 1986, as an exploration of the question of where dreams go when they die; yet this remix, produced by Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter for Current 93's recent San Francisco performances, emphasize the dreaminess of the recordings, having filtered out most of the percussive aspects and allowing only a few vocal snippets from Ruby Wallis and Rose McDowell to emerge from the thick cloud of reverb that swallowed the original. And, the usually omnipresent voice of C93's David Tibet is surprisingly absent in this fantastic piece of sonic hypnogogia.
It's always a challenge to delve into the polyglot mythologies of David Tibet, as the visions in his lyrics reference a host of esoteric subjects: the gnostic Christian texts of the early 2nd Century, Thelemic citations from Aleister Crowley, snippets of Coptic, and plenty of Tibet's feverish dislocations of images delivered in stream of consciousness. The central protagonist here is Aleph, a character with a slippery persona, one that may be acting before God set the universe in order, one that may be acting as a dopplerganger to Adam, one that may be the murderous precursor of Cain, one that may spell out an alternate origin of Lucifer, or one that is unique to Current 93. To avid Current 93 fans, these mysteries and contradictions are commonplace; but the biggest shift for Current 93 is in the musical arrangements. Gone are the fairy-dusted madrigals for just piano, 12-string guitar, and violin. Tibet has now grasped onto a blistering, occasionally sprawling psychedelia centered upon heavy, proto-metal riffs. Amon Duul's Yeti, the psychedelic moments of Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, and certainly early Alice Cooper all factor into Current 93's arrangements. Given the '70s laden heaviness of this album, it's a little hard to believe that Al Cisneros (Om, Sleep) who had previously collaborated with Tibet isn't present. Instead, Tibet has brought on board Alex Neilson, Andrew WK, Keith Wood, Matt Sweeney, Rickey Lee Jones, James Blackshaw, porn-star Sasha Gray, and a host of others. Once again, Steven Stapleton is at the helm of the production with Andrew Liles adding his deft hand in the mix as well. Alex Neilson's presence on drums is of particular note, as his heavy-handed fills and lumbering gate does away with the taut precision which gave some Current 93 albums an anal retentive quality. Neilson in conjunction with the army of guitarists churning through these heavy, psychedelic riffs makes this album as good as it is.
Current 93 records require a considerable amount of effort in order to dig into the allegorical poetics of David Tibet. For 25 years now, Tibet has been exploring religious and philosophical esoterica, situating Biblical thought next to the theosophy of Crowley. But this dualism has been brushed under the rug over the past decade thanks to an interest in the gnostic texts originally penned in the ancient Coptic language. As to the background to Baalstorm - ostensibly the principle character of Current 93's 2010 album - we can't really say that we have any clue. Perhaps, a minor archon in a pantheon of deities lost for many generations? Yes, Tibet's visions continue to flow unabated across arrangements produced by a revolving cast of characters. The previous album, Aleph at Hallucinatory Mountain, was a boiling cauldron of proto-metal riffs with numerous musical allusions to Blue Oyster Cult, Chrome, and Black Sabbath; and Baalstorm somewhat splits the difference between that album and the fairy-folk darkness of albums like Soft Black Stars. The compositions from the likes of James Blackshaw, Alex Neilson, John Contreras, Baby Dee, and Andrew Liles are delicate and occasionally twist into comparatively tense minstrals for cello, acoustic guitar, hand drums, and a spare amount of electronics.
Current 93's David Tibet is an apocalyptic poet in the truest definition, as his work hinges upon his obsessive desire to transcribe and translate the revelations, visions, nightmares, and dreams that have come to him over the past two decades. The apocalyptic genres of art have come to define the possibilities of how the world as we know it might come to an end (e.g. astrophysical disasters, nuclear war, zombies, fire-ants, etc.); however, in the earliest manifestations of apocalyptic art, it was simply the chronicling of revelations given from the heavens to man below. Throughout his numerous recordings in Current 93, Tibet has embodied the whole apocalyptic tradition, all the while strengthening his admittedly heretical belief in a Patripassianist Christ, who suffers beyond the crucifixion of Jesus throughout the aeons until his second coming (NB. this is but a brief synopsis of Tibet's complicated, Gnostic, and poetic theology).
Black Ships Ate The Sky has been in the works for almost four years, with Tibet's great friend and long-time collaborator Steven Stapleton proclaiming this to be a fantastic recording. Lo and behold, Black Ships Ate The Sky *is* a magnificent album, returning to the somber acid folk stylings haunted by the shadows and smoke last heard on the earlier masterpieces Thunder Perfect Mind and Earth Covers Earth. As on all of the Current 93 albums, Tibet surrounds himself with an impressive battery of musicians that reads like a who's who of alt-folk-avant-rock greats: Will Oldham, Ben Chasny, Antony (as in .. And The Johnsons), Shirley Collins, Cosey Fanni Tutti, William Basinski, Al Cisneros (from Om), and the aforementioned Steven Stapleton. Black Ships Ate The Sky is thematically based upon Tibet's vision aptly described in the title as it relates to a Christian hymn by Charles Wesley called "Idumae" which repeats itself seven times (eight if you count "Black Ships Were Sinking Into Idumae" sung by Cosey Fanni Tutti), as sung by Tibet's numerous guest vocalists. As strong as many of the versions of "Idumae" are, Tibet and his peculiar voice are central to Black Ships. He's impassioned throughout, occasionally possessed with an infernal rage as on the second version of the title track, and elsewhere adopting a gentle delicacy. The music swirls around simple guitar arrangements, laced with Chasny's acidic guitar leads and Stapleton's sidereal productions... and it's stunningly good together. Time will tell if this will be the greatest Current 93 record Tibet has produced (as many have already claimed); but it's clearly in the running.
Dance mixes of Current 93? Really? Yup, this is a dual disc CD/DVD combo with remixes of the Current 93 epic Black Ships Ate The Sky. JG Thirlwell (aka Foetus) offers up two industrial strength remixes, which are pretty much identical in terms of sound although one is a couple of minutes longer. The hammering drum machines and dense electronic overdrive recall the Al Jourgensen / Paul Barker productions of the Wax Trax! sound, with David Tibet ominously reciting the title of that aforementioned album. Matmos delivers a remix of that same track giving it a slippery funk that David Tibet's voice has never experienced before. The Matmos duo also rework Antony's contribution to that very same album. The DVD features two videos produced by Cam Archer.
Two songs from Current 93, and both are covers of Simon Finn songs, neither of which are as good as the epic acid folk originals but maybe still worth checking out for C93 fans!
