A brand new blast of filthy fug from this ex member of noise rock legends Wolf Eyes. Since Dilloway left the fold, his solo work has gotten more and more interesting, and more and more far out. Culminating in the confusional chaos that is Chain Shot. A two track 12", created using just tape loops, metal and horns. And it sounds nothing like you could possible imagine.
"Chain Shot" is a side long epic of grimey gruesome minimalism. A murky soundscape of creaking machinery, whirring industrial hum, and a loop of what sounds like that sound roller coasters make when the cars are being pulled up that first big hill, the various sounds looped and locked and repeated, sped up, slowed down, doused in grit and buzz and lots and lots of hiss. It sounds like some cracked field recording (which it sort of is), the various sounds and loops becoming more and more distorted, and getting louder and louder, eventually becoming more and more musical too, which seems sort of impossible, but it does. The harsher it gets, the more, listenable it gets. A symphony of grind and buzz and clank.
The B side, another extended dirge, "Execution Dock" begins with processed vocals, drenched in effects and looped into some weird almost funky groove, but as it's repeated, just like when you say a word over and over, it starts to make less and less sense and sound less 'funky' and more haunting and hypnotic. And very very creepy. The track dissipates into more field recordings, bits of clatter and shuffle, all subtly looped, in the distance a horn plays a mournful melody, the loops ramp up slightly, creating weirdly dreamy minimal rhythms beneath that waiting horn, until that all falls apart, leaving a series of fragmented and rapidly decaying loops, overlapping, falling apart, and eventually grinding to a halt.
Packaged in a SUPER thick, textured sleeve, with a bad ass painting of a pirate on the cover. Yaarrrrrrrr!
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.
Two AQ favorites team up together for one great lp that shows a more pensive side to these noise rock heavyweights: Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes) and C Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). Squid delivers on its title as the sounds on this lp make you feel like you're deep underwater tangled by up in the undersea world. Using tape loops, bowed tape, tape delay, violin, voice and electronics, Dilloway and Yeh create dark, moody textures brimming with mystery, suspense and restraint. We could totally hear this as the score to some Matthew Barney piece, as it shares much of the same influence as his films. As much as we love Wolf Eyes there is something pretty magical and always unexpected about what happens when Dilloway steps away from the world of his main band. And C Spencer Yeh continues to show that he has one of the most unique visions in the noise scene. And together it's pretty fucking magical. Excellent!
We loved this record when we first got it on LP which is sadly out of print now. But luckily it's finally been re-released on cd with a long bonus track tacked on for good measure!
Two AQ favorites team up together for one great record that demonstrates a more pensive side to these noise rock heavyweights: Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes) and C Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). Squid delivers on its title as the sounds on this lp make you feel like you're deep underwater tangled up in the undersea world. Using tape loops, bowed tape, tape delay, violin, voice and electronics, Dilloway and Yeh create dark, moody textures brimming with mystery, suspense and restraint. We could totally hear this as the score to some Matthew Barney piece, as it shares much of the same influence as his films. As much as we love Wolf Eyes there is something pretty magical and always unexpected about what happens when Dilloway steps away from his main band. And C Spencer Yeh continues to show us that he has one of the most unique visions in the noise scene. And together it's pretty fucking magical. Excellent!
Holy shit! This is a frightfully good piece of dark minimalism on par with Roland Kayn, Eliane Radigue, and the late period works from The Hafler Trio.
Dimmer is the collaborative project between Bay Area experimentalist Thomas Dimuzio and LAFMS icon Joseph Hammer, who have toured together on a semi-regular basis up and down the West Coast for the past decade or so. The two previous Dimmer albums were collected and edited from the numerous live gigs, documenting the real-time electronic synthesis from Dimuzio coupled with Hammer's tape loop manipulations. As impressive as Dimmer has been live and on those edited live recordings, we were completely floored by Ascent - their first collaborative venture into the studio. Restricting their sources to vintage analogue gear, Dimuzio and Hammer generate swarms of harmonic drones that they in turn filter through the abstracting tools of choice. For Dimuzio, it's his gear-junkie arsenal of digital samplers and sequencers; for Hammer, it's the humble tape deck. On the first couple of tracks, Dimmer issues deep cosmic tones with strange / strangulated fibrillations from Hammer's tape tricks that elongate, expand, and collapse in accordance with a grand, if slightly sinister vision of miniaturized symphonies for the birth and death of the universe. Gasping drones billowing with toxic fumes stream rapidly out of blackened voids with Dimuzio and Hammer making prolonged descents into near-silence, before rocketing forward with another grandiose swell of ever darkening compaction of processed synth tones. Where the album begins in the shimmeringly majesty of a Klaus Schulze composition, it ends much closer to something monstrous and cavernous like Lustmord. This is easily the best we've heard from either of these two stalwarts of the California avant-garde! Limited to 300 copies.
Not to be confused with the Dimmer that was born from NZ's Straightjacket Fits, this Dimmer brings together two stalwarts of the California experimental community: Thomas Dimuzio and Joseph Hammer. The former skirts the boundaries between electro-acoustic technologies and improvisational abstraction, having collaborated with the likes of Chris Cutler, Matmos, Wobbly, Scott Arford, Illusion Of Safety and countless others. Mr. Hammer is one of the prominent members of the willfully oblique Los Angeles Free Music Society, having participated in such projects as Solid Eye, Points Of Friction, and Steaming Coils. Hammer's instrument of choice is the reel-to-reel tape deck, through which he can muster an uncanny palette of sound, noise, and drone. The two have worked together off and on for a good part of the last decade, with a handful of performances throughout California and a couple of releases - Remissions being their second and collecting some of the best moments from those live gigs.
"Sky Wire" builds insectoid buzzes and creepily harmonic drones out of the interplay between Hammer's rough-hewn tape manipulation and Dimuzio's deftly rendered swells, somewhere between Machinefabriek and Christoph Heemann. "Sun Dog" grafts blackened noise onto an electrocutioner's hum, with Hammer's start 'n' stop tapes popping into view like a detached Burroughs cut-up. Both "Gases That Emit Light" and "Giant Eagle" continue along these same strategies with eerie clouds of drones that fold and collapse between harmonic resonance and dissonance with unsettled bursts of soft focus noise. This is really exceptional stuff, and certainly some of the best that we've encountered from either artists individually.
The Bay Area stalwart Thomas Dimuzio has long been known for his improvisation chops with electronics and live sampling strategies, sporting a discography littered with the who's who of the avant-garde elite (Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Matmos, Dan Burke, Wobbly, Joseph Hammer, Negativland, Psychic TV, amongst a litany of others). His albums can be filled with wildly colorful bursts of electrical jitter and post-Bayle clusterings; and at others, they can embrace the slow-motion rippling of the finest by the holy minimalists of the last century. Amid Zero Echo falls into the latter category, one that he has mastered within the Dimmer collaborative project with Joseph Hammer in particular. Guitars are what we are told to be the source material for this double 10" released on the ever reliable Substantia Innominata subsidiary of Drone Records. The four sides to this album each sport low rumbling dronecraft with variable hues and swarms, with streaks of machined feedback and motorized abrasion peppering the gravity-suck drone heaviness. Dimuzio tracks through his bleak / black spaces with glacially paced metallic buzz, evanescent mysteriousness, and some downright gorgeous chordal smolder that falls somewhere between the form destruction dronework of RST and the vacant space orchestrations from Thomas Koner.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Awesome solo piano recording from this NZ legend. Only 4 copies in stock.
The first in a four part lp reissue series compiling the early eighties singles from legendary (and surprisingly unknown and sadly underappreciated) NZ musician singer/songwriter Bill Direen, who in a perfect world would be held in the same regard as his countrymen Alistair Galbraith, Chris Knox, Peter Jeffries and the rest. The tracks here, originally released as a 7" limited to just 100 copies, are some primo eighties NZ underground post punk / garage pop, all 4-track Velvets jangle and Wire-y angular post punk, crunchy and droney and hypnotic, driven by minimal drum pound and economic arrangements, the songs here exude a brooding mesmer, even at their most kinetic, fusing classic seventies power pop to indie rock jangle and lo-fi psychedelia, pretty fantastic stuff, and well worthy of a wider audience. Sadly, these reissues, for as sonically pleasing and long overdue as they are, will very well price out a lot of folks, as it's 4 songs, 8 minutes, at 45 rpm, essentially a 7" cut deep and loud for maximum fidelity, which we totally dig, but realize that buying all four volumes will get you about 30 minutes of music for nearly $90. We'd say it's worth it, but here's hoping someone will take all these newly remastered singles and cram em all onto an affordable cd. Until then though, this is reservedly recommended!
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Yet another killer discovery from our pals at Medical Records, a lost synthpop / electropop gem from the duo Disco Volante, who existed briefly in the early eighties, and only ever released this one 7" in 1984, a dark and driving slab of DIY, lo-fi new wave pop, all skittery drum machines, pulsating synths, and snarly vox, the A side "No Motion" was definitely their coulda-been-a-hit, with a strange chorus, laced with cascading synths and swirling processed voices, the B-side "Click" is all dark pulsing synth buzz, wreathed in sound effects, laced with playful melodies, a loping rhythmic groove, and another twisted, not-exactly catchy chorus, but one that sticks in your head nonetheless. Longtime readers of the aQ list might find themselves reminded of the Jones Machine, which is NEVER a bad thing.
The extra live track on the B-side displays the group in their element, rocking some dark club, and sounding way more punk, the synth (or is that a guitar?), super distorted, the drum machine pounding away, the vocals wreathed in echo and reverb, and delivered even more stridently, in the background the carnivalesque synth swirls adding a definite psychedelic vibe, not to mention the FX drenched swirling synth freakout finale. Killer stuff! And finally widely available, for the first time essentially, after years of circulating as a low quality download and occasionally popping up as an outrageously priced eBay rarity. Get one before they're gone. Again.
Housed in a super heavy, full color sleeve, pressed on super thick black vinyl and LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As we've no doubt mentioned in the past, we're not really all that into 'noise music', especially the ultra brutal white noise face melting Merzbowian sort of noise music. But when noise is used as a tool, or as an instrument, or when it's twisted into all sorts of strange shapes and atypical sounds, well, that's when we really get interested.� So when someone takes noise and blackens it, and turns it into some super intense grinding industrial doom metal juggernaut, we're pretty much completely sold.�
Such is the case with Awake In Hell from legendary Japanese outfit Dissecting Table, aka one man noise metal machine Ichiro Tsuji, who here has unleashed four loooooooooooong, slow motion, ultra distorted jams, huge bass heavy riffs that slither and crawl over a field of broken glass production and a mine field of pounding percussion. Everything is harsh and jagged, sheets of stinging feedback and walls of crumbling distortion, maybe there are guitars, even vocals, but they're pulled apart into their constituent atomic particles and sent careening like pinballs made from liquid nitrogen and Marshall amps melted down into some caustic black buzz. Occasionally, the blown out blasts abate, leaving weird muted throbs and skittering synthesized loops, but blink and they're gone, replaced by a snarling black doom behemoth, fangs bared ready to swallow you whole.�
Holy shit this stuff is intense, it's like grindcore by way of Japanoise by way of ultradoom. Or that lost Pitchshifter record recorded by Masami Akita, of Godflesh backing up Masonna, or... oh fuck it, you know what we're getting at. This is devastatingly ultra destructive, noise drenched, grinding industrial doooooooooooooooom that KILLS. And makes bands like Bunkur and Khanate sound downright tame by comparison.�
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered and housed in a mini dvd style clamshell case with full color cover. Only got a handful of these, not sure we'll be able to get more.....
Sometimes it's easy to see an aQ Record Of The Week staring you in the face before even hearing a note. Case in point, this here album. All the indicators were immediately present: it was put out by Omni, whose masterful grasp of obscure country music is equaled only by their masterful grasp of obscure electronic awesomeness; a vague but intriguing album cover with the words "Song Of The Second Moon: The Sonic Vibrations Of Tom Dissevelt / Kid Baltan"; and, a quick glance at the back cover with song titles like "Moon Maid", "Sonik Re-Entry", "Twilight Ozone", and "Night Train Blues", recorded between 1957-1961. So yeah, we were pretty much sold, but as we read on it was clear that this would be even more rad than we could have hoped for. Before getting started on this album itself, it helps to start with some historical background, so here goes:
Holland's Phillips Research Laboratories ("Natuurkundig Laboratorium") was founded in 1914 with the goal of furthering technological innovation. To make a long story short, they did just that, having invented the first artificial reverberation, modern loudspeaker design, early attempts at surround sound, the cassette tape, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, among many other things. All very nice and essential to the way music effects our lives, for sure. But damn if the creation of this album isn't the coolest thing on that long list of achievements, leading us to wonder how exactly something this amazing could have remained such a mystery - not a soul among us was even aware of its existence, despite being great enough for Stanley Kubrick to consider using it as the soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey - ironic, as 2001 was the year Natuurkundig Laboratorium would go kaput. Perhaps not surprisingly given the way things often go Songs Of The Second Moon was a commercial failure, but we are thankful to have it presented here with the "rare" stereo mix, along with some outtakes and alternate versions.
The men responsible for this album, Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaijmakers - aka Kid Baltan - were employed by the Natuurkundig Laboratorium to research acoustics, but eventually ventured into more exotic waters with some of the earliest synthesizer experiments. Using tone generators in addition to traditional instruments like a grand piano, the time consuming process of capturing and creating these strange and wondrous sounds was carried out over a period of about 3 years, during which time the composers experimented with tape loops (often for rhythmic purposes), delays, and filters to create something that went beyond just sound experimentation. Dissevelt himself had come to the job as a highly respected musician and arranger with an interest in Stockhausen's twelve-tone and serial compositions, while Raaijmakers is recognized as a pioneer in the field of electronic and tape based music. The greatest thing about the album is just how musical it is, with songcraft never taking a back seat to the all encompassing technological aspects of the project. Soundwise, things are on par with the majesty of Delia Derbyshire and other pioneers of BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, and anyone keeping up with recent reissues from Daphne Oram, F.C. Judd, and Bruce Haack (whose Electric Lucifer masterpiece was also rescued by Omni) will find plenty to obsess over. The 1950s idea of "The Future" is exactly what this sounds like, with adventurous electronic tones for the Cold War era. As such, there are the hints of the paranoia, tension, and fear that tend to accompany widespread technological innovation and a standoff between two trigger happy superpowers, with plenty of nightmarish melodies, electronic pulsing, and harrowing white noise. Of course, there are also moments that sound happy, fun, and quirky, like strange disembodied jazz music with heavy drones. This stuff could have (and probably did) inspire the electronic pop of Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley. The results are cinematic and elegant, while standing well on their own for a unique listening experience that STILL sounds light years ahead of us.
Kudos to Omni for introducing this lost classic to an unsuspecting but eternally grateful public. Record Of The Week indeed.
Two records from weirdo "post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal" one man band Disunicorps on this week's list, elsewhere you'll find the new record, Synonymy, and then there's this one, not precisely a remix record, more of an alternate version. When we were ordering the new record, Mr. Disunicorps, informed us that he also had a version of the first record "run through a crappy cassette deck and slowed way down", and if you're anything like us (and we're guessing you probably are), then you had the same reaction, YES PLEASE!
So here is Re:Try, the above mentioned cassette deck-ed slowed down version of Try, which we raved about way back when, and probably best for folks who never heard the original, to just describe that one first a bit, and then how it sounds in this reworked version.
Try was a gnarled chunk of churning frantic machinelike riffing and programmed blasting, croaked vocal rumbles, the guitars super distorted and crumbling, a pretty fierce blast of programmed black buzz, bubblegum at times for sure, minus the harsh vokills, it occasionally sounds like some sort of electro pop, or a less damaged Fastest (former aQ Record Of The Week!) even, major key melodies, bouncy jaunty rhythms, almost video game music at moments, but the vocals, and the weird echoey reverby production transform things into, well, into post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal, offering different shades of dirgey heaviness that sounds like a horror movie soundtrack, programmed loping rhythms that sound like some machine post rock, some seriously grinding blackness, goofy blackened fuzz pop that almost sounds like a black metal Dickies and fuzzy, washed out almost blissy 8-bit sounding new wave drift.
Sounds pretty amazing, cuz it is! Or was! Now all of those sounds have been rerouted through some old tape deck, and in the process, slowed down a bit, so essentially, the above still describes the sounds on Re:Try, the main difference is really that it all sounds a bit heavier and doomier and dirgier, the sound more raw and low fidelity, as a test, just check out the Del Shannon cover here, which sounds more like some sinister electro doom, the little main lilting melody somehow super creepy, the dirgey death metal vibe more prominent, everything sludgier and murkier, and for folks like us whole like everything better slowed down, maybe even better!
Not sure HOW essential this is if you own the other one, but odds are some of you are strange like us, and even the idea of this slower, tape deck-ier version had you flipping out a little, and thus, this is for you, and if you somehow missed Try the first time around, this might just hit the spot (oh yeah, and we do have a small handful of copies left of Try if you want one.
The latest from weirdo electro black metal warped pop weirdo Disunicorps, whose music we've described in the past as "post-post-digital black/death metal, and like the last 'new' record, not so much a new album, as a reinterpretation of a record we've already reviewed. Re-Try found the man behind Disunicorps taking his record Try, and slowing it down via crappy cassette deck, and somehow, the results were even better (and definitely weirder) that the original.
So when he recently contacted us to let us know, that his first record, Synonymy, had been redone, and the new version was "fucked up slowed down n fazed", we knew we had to get some. And guess what? As you might imagine, it's like the original, but more! More warped. More weird. More demented. More woozy. The opening track is a garbled FX heavy creep, everything slowed down and warbly, and then when the first song proper kicks in, the blasting digital metal of Synonymy becomes a murky blurred electro black doom, everything melty and oozy, the guitars muted and muddy, some definite 'creep' added to the mix, not to mention tons of echo, and reverb, and probably a phalanx of other misused and abused effects. What it ultimately does is remove the sheen of the original, which was super well recorded, and had a distinctly classic power metal feel, but here, those moments become something else entirely, there's still the weirdo progged out Champs-y tech metal thing going on, but it's been given a caveman makeover, and dipped in a vat of whatthefuck. To be fair, it's not all THAT far removed from the original, at least as much as we remember, but it's definitely weirder, and a weirder version of already pretty goddamn weird is never a bad thing.
You can check out our review of the original and listen to some sound samples, and see what you think, we're pretty sure most folks who dig that one, will feel the same about Sobotomy. But if you do, act fast, limited to FIFTEEN COPIES, of which we got all fifteen, each hand numbered, and housed in a spray painted, hand decorated paper sleeve.
A while back, we raved about a crazy cd by a one man band called Disunicorps, his cd-r just showing up in the mail one day, with this simple one sentence description: "post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal", needless to say, we were totally sold, and the record more than lived up to that too-good-to-be-true description. And to seal the deal, there was THEE most amazing cover of Del Shannon's "Runaway" (we still have copies of that first disc, as well as a new disc, which features the original run through a crappy old cassette player and slowed waaay down, that one is reviewed elsewhere on this week's list). But it wasn't just the cover, that whole record was a blast, a series of twisted buzzing pop flecked electro pop digi-metal jams, heavy and hooky, an impossible fusion of black metal buzz and hooky fuzz pop and glitchy electronics. We played that to death, and were super psyched to discover there was in fact a brand new Disunicorps record!
This one begins all warped slowed down vocals tangled up with think swirling tendrils of woozy synth, a garbled psychedelic into, that leads right into the opening jam, a synth heavy metallic churn, circusy melodies, over programmed pounds, processed vox, and once again hooks galore, there's definitely a classic/power metal vibe in the progged out synths and majestic melodies, but it's all tangled up and blackened, blurred and warped, which is pretty much how the whole record plays out, weirdly woozily melodic, chugging mathy metallics infused with playful poppy hooks, the songs lurching from blasting metal to bouncy electro pop buzz to washed out lo-fi electronic death metal, usually some dizzying simultaneous hybrid of all of those sounds, fantastically confusional, heavy as fuck, but also wildly goofy and super fun, the sort of thing, that gets crazy attention every time we play it in the store. And fear not, this is not some joke metal thing, there's plenty of classic riffing and real metal going on, it's just that all of THAT stuff is all tangled up with all of that OTHER, less metal stuff. The result is pretty fantastic though, twisted and kaleidoscopic, definitely psychedelic, with a pretty high whatthefuck quotient, which is always a good thing. Everyone who bought the first one, should probably just buy this one too, and if you missed out on Disunicorps the first time around, give this one a listen, odds are you'll flip out like we did, and most likely end up wanting both!
LIMITED TO 15 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered!
This was another mystery submission, originally presented to us described (maybe not so) simply as "post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal". And while the first track had us thinking that description was WAY off, a gnarled chunk of churning frantic machinelike riffing and programmed blasting, croaked vocal rumbles, the guitars super distorted and crumbling, a pretty fierce little chunk of programmed black buzz. But then BAM, in comes the second track, and it makes way more sense, bubblegum for sure, minus the harsh vokills, it sounds like some sort of electro pop, or a less damaged Fastest even, the major key melody, the bouncy jaunty rhythm, almost video game music at moments, but those vocals, and the weird echoey reverby production transform it into, well, into post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal.
And if you needed even further proof of this record's PPDBGBDM sound, skip all the way to the last track, a totally ruling, and bafflingly brilliant, cover of Del Shannon's "Runaway", totally transformed into a buzzy, dirgey epic, and when the weird guitar/synth finally plays that immediately recognizable back ground vocal "Wah Wah Wah Wah Wonder" melody, you sort of want to laugh and bang your head at the same time, and then when the track locks into the super frenzied version of the original song's bridge, it's about the coolest heaviest thing ever, oh and the end of the chorus is transformed into a cool descending depressive riff that totally changes the feel of the whole song.
And in between the opening salvo, and the Del Shannon cover, are a whole mess of twisted, bedroom brewed black metal weirdness, from dirgey heaviness that sounds like a horror movie soundtrack, to programmed loping rhythms that sound like some machine post rock, which slips into some seriously grinding blackness, or from goofy blackened fuzz pop that almost sounds like a black metal Dickies to fuzzy, washed out almost blissy 8-bit sounding new wave drift. It's pretty nuts, and any metalheads who bough the Fastest record, even though it's resolutely NOT metal, will LOVE this, and anyone into twisted weirdo outsider black metal, or post-post-digital bubblegum black/death metal, well, this is for YOU.
The latest from DJ Female Convict Scorpion comes in the form of this SUPER limited cassette, one that requires some work on the part of the listener to truly enjoy, or at least enjoy as the artist intended. That artist being Josh Pollock, member of psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs and weirdo noisescapers White Pee, among others, but as DJ Female Convict Scorpion, he concocts lush landscapes of cinematic sound, purloining various bits from other songs, and movies, playing some bits himself, a lo-fi DJ Shadow of sorts, whose past outings have blown our minds and been hugely popular around here. This new one looks to be no different, the rub this time around being, that BOTH sides of the cassette are meant to be played simultaneously, a la Zaireeka or something. So you have several options, the first of course means buying two tapes, and playing them on two tape players, the second is buying just one tape, and using the link that comes with the tape to play the other side on your computer, while you play the first side on your tape player. Phew! A third option, is to attend the upcoming debut performance of Los Balls Del Norte, happening across the street at Lost Weekend, during which, both sides will be played, accompanied by a special film created just for the occasion. More info can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/147509788771228/?fref=ts
And finally, one last option, one that isn't mutually exclusive, which is to listen to each side of the tape on its own. We did, and both sides sound great, killer breakbeats, shifting textures, mysterious voices, movie samples, vocal snippets, dizzying sonic collages that unwind like psychedelic krautrock grooves and funky heavy soul breakdowns, dreamy lullabies sung in other languages, banging gongs, shimmering FX, woozy slowed down basslines, soft symphonic swirls, muted ambient murk, loose free jazz drum freakouts, squiggly theremin like melodies, rumbling crumbling distorted low end, new wave-y electronics, swirling cosmic synths, and more more more more more!
But what does it sound like all together? A seriously warped psychedelic sonic headtrip. Check out the sample, that's a little snippet of the two sides in perfect sync, which ultimately they never will be, which is part of the joy, every listen the sounds will shift, and interact differently, a perpetually unique recording, in fact, essentially MULTIPLE recordings, all of them super cool, one side, both sides, one side started 5 minutes in, 10 minutes, hell, play one backwards, every variation is its own special warped lysergic soundworld to get lost in, over and over and over and over...
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.
We've been meaning to list this for a while now, but we kept selling out of it, over and over, we could barely keep it in stock, and for good reason, as far as modern mixers and DJ's go, DJ /Rupture is one of our faves, so when he offers up a mix heavy on the dubstep, you know it's gonna rule, and rule it does. Bunch of new names, some old ones too, some surprises as well, here's who we know: Scuba, Timeblind, Shackleton, Ghislain Poirier, We, Lloop, Ekkehard Ehlers, and here's who we don't: Baby Kites And Nokea, Clouds, Istari Lasterfahrer, Maga Bo, ATK12, Ekstrak, Frescoe, Iron Shirt, Jenny Jones, Stalker, Filastine, Brent Arnold, Quest, Moving Ninja, Dead Leaf and Prefessor Shehab.
But heck, it hardly matters what songs and which artists, if Rupture picks 'em you know they're good (this man must have a mindblowing record collection), and then all mixed up they're transformed into a constantly shifting dubbed out bass heavy groove that goes on and on and on. Lots of thick fuzzed out synth bass, various permutations of THAT dubstep beat, some toasting here and there, Ehlers offers up some swoonsome strings, there's some Eastern skitter, some chopped up and stuttery techno, a little ragga, some murky mumbly doom-step, a bit of dreamy downtempo drift, some slow motion old school jungle, but it's all held together by a dubstep framework, so no matter what tripped out tangent the mix takes, it always finds its way back to the dub. Killer mix as always, and as with most Rupture stuff, WAY recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Along with the Rhythmania disc by J.D. Robb we recently reviewed, Locust has reissued on cd another example of early 'electronica', this 1961 Folkways LP by famed tape music pioneer Tod Dockstader, whose experiments in musique concrete and pure electronics are always lively and dramatic. The simply if accurately titled Eight Electronic Pieces is a work of abstract sonic theatre constructed from a large library of tape 'cells' -- 12,000 feet of tape in total -- sourced from recordings made both in the studio and out. All the noise and chaos of the big city (the Big Apple in this case) seems to be swept up in these compositions, with the tape speed manipulations corresponding to the flow of traffic, although little you hear is readily identifiable, even if evocative of the roar of a jet plane overhead, or animals in the wild. Most of the sounds are suggestive only of the pings and pongs and oscillations that they are. Laboratory Music you might call it. Laborious at any rate, when you think of the hours of craft and creativity that Dockstader devoted to works like this, sustained really by his own excitement at the possibilities inherent the genre he was helping to invent, wherein the role of the engineer (composer) utterly supercedes that of the not-now-so-necessary musicians. Listening to sound, and editing sound, replaces writing music (or becomes a way of 'writing' music). In other words, we wouldn't have, say, Matmos today without the likes of Tod Dockstader back when. But not only is his stuff, like Eight Electronic Pieces, worth checking out for historical reasons, it's gonna give your ears something to chew on that's still vital forty years later.
Now here is indeed a deliberately odd release... from the French/Japanese label that last brought us that Tabata und Guilty Connector collaboration comes an even more absurd team-up, a three-way remix-and-mismatch conjunction of the following international audio fiends: Chris Dodge (guitarist from the goofy American "fastcore" band Spazz), Solmania (Japanese noisician who builds his own mutant guitars), and the UK's DJ Speedranch (of Phantomsmasher and Speedranch & Jansky Noise). Three artists, from three continents (or islands near continents), all sharing a "what the heck, let's make some noise!" aesthetic.
Chris Dodge's dozen tracks are a blend of punk/metal and electronically-assisted, noisy chaos. Something along the lines of Melt Banana comes to mind. Then, Solmania's 11-minute "Ice Cream" is a crunkly, lurching, seasick soundscape of dirge, distortion and feedback. Lastly, Speedranch wraps things up with three tracks of distorted beat mayhem whose source material derives from both Chris Dodge's stuff earlier on the disc, and the Solmania album Trembling Tongues. Chaotic and crazed as you might imagine, Speedranch samples various spoken non-sequiturs and sci-fi fx into something along the lines of what we used to call "industrial" music before the rise of the DJ.
For some (the more serious-minded?), the more textural Solmania track will be the stand-out, for others who love low-attention-span-spazz the Dodge and Speedranch constructions will be the real ear-ticklers. A pleasantly maddening experience for fans of all forms of severe noise-fuckery.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
20 City Records presents a trio of sound artists for their second release. Doe produces bass heavy drones with subtle melodic repititions woven into the ashen tapestry of sound, that sounds like Maeror Tri / Troum at a much slower speed. Eso Steel presents subtle sampled droning loops topped with tiny feedback events and metal scrapings for a interesting fusion of the synthetic and the organic much like Hazard. Birchville Cat Motel is the only previously known entity for this album with a few records of nauseating high-end squallor. Here, the New Zealand outfit presents more of a tone float improvisation for guitar, violin, and some kind of distorted toy synthesizer. Not unlike the latest Total / Sunroof work. Nice.
So far, the only thing we've reviewed on the awesome Ormolycka label, run by aQ pal Jason, was the cassette version of Liturgy's Renihilation, the one that featured a bad ass Liturgy jungle remix courtesy of our very own Andee. But we do carry everything else on the label, we just get such limited copies, they never make it onto the list, tapes by Pistol Disko, Anthro Rex, Synt.Tofs, Shams, M Ax Noi Mach, Modern Witch, Dubknowdub, GDFX, Pushups, Diamond Black Hearted Boy, A Magic Whistle, Juiceboxx, Frak, Narwhalz, Death Grips, Pictureplane, Kalambya Sisters and more! Phew. Ormolycka has also just started doing 7"s, the first two of which we have in stock, and we've go just enough to list!
Don't know much about the oddly named Dog Leather, other than they follow in the footsteps of other snotty white rappers like the aQ beloved Hawd Gankstuh Rappuh Emsees Wid Ghatz. Whiney and bratty, but the music changes everything, on the A side it's a killer lo-fi / hip hop tripout, all low slung, echoey and distorted, stripped down and super rhythmic, noisy groovy and distorted, sounding almost like hip hop via Animal Collective or Wavves or something. The flipside is all dubbed out, boomin' system low rider style, still fucked up and lo-fi and a bit electro, but way more banging, while Dog Leather flow over the top.
Limited of course, and pressed on fancy gold vinyl!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super Metsa is the new cd-r label run by our Finnish friend Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Ektro label, etc.) and one of his pals. For their first batch of releases, they've hit us with three titles by the previously-unknown-to-us band Doktor Kettu, each cd-r in a limited edition of 100. Purposefully mysterious, we can't tell you anything about who's in Doktor Kettu, but we did find out that Kettu is Finnish for 'fox'.
Running about an hour and featuring two or three tracks apiece, all three are pretty great for those into this sort of thing. What sort of thing is that? Well, Jussi describes Doktor Kettu as being an "apocalyptic drone-free-psychedelic-low-fi-massacre..... three guitars, bass and drums" and they do indeed make some very *murky* (not just the production, as much as the music itelf) instrumental improv space rock with a high drone-quotient. Imagine a cross between Circle and Thuja, perhaps, if that could possibly mean anything to you. Doktor Kettu (with two MORE Super Metsa releases in the pipeline) may become Finland's answer to the USA's Sunburned Hand Of The Man, if Avarus doesn't object.
Two tracks on this, the second Doktor Kettu cd-r. English titles. The 17 minute "Moonwork" sounds like Father Moo in a pipefight, and that's just the drumming. The 39 minute "Battle Of Clouds" *does* sound like a battle of clouds, with some heavy artillery up there in the heavens. Dunno what more to say -- these are hard to review. The music is softly throbbing, repetition fx in gear. So is my brain. Throbbing. I need to sit down to keep listening. Yeah. Turn it up. Thanks.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another foray into the drugged-out, lo-fi spacerock improv murk that is the Doktor Kettu experience. This mysterious Finnish ensemble (which may or may not include members of Circle) offer up their sixth full-length, limited-edition cd-r document, this one released by the Finnish label Haamumaa. Their previous discs are now all out of print and surely this one is destined to follow that same path into the mists of obscurity, and it's fairly misty music to begin with. Imagine Hawkwind or Acid Mothers Temple locked in a cave with broken instruments, some of their limbs bound behind their backs, given super-slow-motion-inducing drugs and commanded to make music -- but quietly and not quite. That's the three tracks (12, 20 and 19 minutes) that you get here. Rumbling droning free-form psych, the night cries and murmers of some large, scary-looking but perhaps friendly beast... Safe to say that if you are the proud owner of all five of the good Doktor's previous, now out-of-print Super Metsa cd-rs, you need this too -- or if you missed those but are falling for the freaky allure of the Finnish forest-folk scene and want to explore its darker depths, then you'll want this too!
For those who've only just surfaced from the daze imposed upon them by the sonics of Doktor Kettu's previous three cd-rs, well the Doktor is back and your therapy can continue! For those new to Doktor Kettu, be aware that the Doktor's drug of choice involves hazy electric guitars and stumbling drums improvising organically, like some Fushit-Thuja hybrid, to make a punny and obscure reference. From Finland, the mysterious Doktor is a group that may or may not include members of AQ-faves Circle. What we do know is that so far DK discs have been the sole output of the Super Metsa cd-r label, partly run by Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo. All five cd-rs so far seem like installments from some massive on-going jam still happening right now in a dingy Finnish basement, or perhaps outdoors under the ever-dark winter sky. Their music is the murky drone of armored seagulls, flying over electric waves of distortion and hiss.
High Revolution features three long tracks, all in the lo-fi, low-key freakout mode we've come to expect. Lonely caverns are slowly filled with an unknown gas. Distant apes play with sticks and then pass out. Jurassic cries emerge from deep beneath rocks and stones. Moss talks to moss. In similar fashion, I Really Like Diamonds consists of but one track ("Severed Minds") stretching out for 43 minutes -- and don't ask why a one-track album has a different title than the track itself. Like a lot of things to do with this band, we have the feeling that it's a Finnish drug thing you wouldn't understand. Each disc limited to 100 copies, fyi.
For those who've only just surfaced from the daze imposed upon them by the sonics of Doktor Kettu's previous three cd-rs, well the Doktor is back and your therapy can continue! For those new to Doktor Kettu, be aware that the Doktor's drug of choice involves hazy electric guitars and stumbling drums improvising organically, like some Fushit-Thuja hybrid, to make a punny and obscure reference. From Finland, the mysterious Doktor is a group that may or may not include members of AQ-faves Circle. What we do know is that so far DK discs have been the sole output of the Super Metsa cd-r label, partly run by Circle's Jussi Lehtisalo. All five cd-rs so far seem like installments from some massive on-going jam still happening right now in a dingy Finnish basement, or perhaps outdoors under the ever-dark winter sky. Their music is the murky drone of armored seagulls, flying over electric waves of distortion and hiss.
High Revolution features three long tracks, all in the lo-fi, low-key freakout mode we've come to expect. Lonely caverns are slowly filled with an unknown gas. Distant apes play with sticks and then pass out. Jurassic cries emerge from deep beneath rocks and stones. Moss talks to moss. In similar fashion, I Really Like Diamonds consists of but one track ("Severed Minds") stretching out for 43 minutes -- and don't ask why a one-track album has a different title than the track itself. Like a lot of things to do with this band, we have the feeling that it's a Finnish drug thing you wouldn't understand. Each disc limited to 100 copies, fyi.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Super Metsa is the new cd-r label run by our Finnish friend Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharoah Overlord, Ektro label, etc.) and one of his pals. For their first batch of releases, they've hit us with three titles by the previously-unknown-to-us band Doktor Kettu, each cd-r in a limited edition of 100. Purposefully mysterious, we can't tell you anything about who's in Doktor Kettu, but we did find out that Kettu is Finnish for 'fox'.
Running about an hour and featuring two or three tracks apiece, all three are pretty great for those into this sort of thing. What sort of thing is that? Well, Jussi describes Doktor Kettu as being an "apocalyptic drone-free-psychedelic-low-fi-massacre..... three guitars, bass and drums" and they do indeed make some very *murky* (not just the production, as much as the music itelf) instrumental improv space rock with a high drone-quotient. Imagine a cross between Circle and Thuja, perhaps, if that could possibly mean anything to you. Doktor Kettu (with two MORE Super Metsa releases in the pipeline) may become Finland's answer to the USA's Sunburned Hand Of The Man, if Avarus doesn't object.
Super Metsa Doktor Kettu number three has got German titles, and three tracks. Imagine if you had neighbors who lived below you in a WWII bunker and all they did all day was listen to certain Fushitsusha albums, this is what you might hear through the floor. Muted a la some Zoviet France stuff. A hazy wash of sound. Nice.
Many of you will recall that a few years back, we had the pleasure of reviewing six (6) different limited edition cd-r releases by this murky and mysterious improvised instrumental free rock ensemble from Finland, which features members (we eventually determined for sure) of mega AQ faves Circle! In those reviews, which taxed our powers of description, we said things like:
"A Finnish drug thing you wouldn't understand."
"Lo-fi, low-key freakout."
"Imagine a cross between Circle and Thuja."
"Imagine Hawkwind or Acid Mothers Temple locked in a cave with broken instruments."
"Installments from some massive on-going jam still happening right now... outdoors under the ever-dark winter sky."
"Slow, meandering, very stoned ambient psych jamming to the max."
"Imagine if you had neighbors who lived below you in a WWII bunker and all they did all day was listen to certain Fushitsusha albums, this is what you might hear through the floor."
Now, all six of those cd-r's have been out of print for some time now. But Doktor Kettu's spacey jamming is indeed on-going, and now they're back with a brand new disc, Soft Delirium, and ALL our lines quoted above could easily apply, again. This time it's a real cd, not a cd-r, from Super-Metsa, a division of our friend Jussi's Ektro label that brings us so much stuff by his band Circle and other strange treats. In the typical Doktor Kettu tradition, there's but three long tracks on this disc, each of them an extended, wandering journey through darkness and light. The twelve minute, 44 second "Wulff" which opens the disc, billows forth, amplifier hum and droning chords riding abstract waves of percussive tinkerings to eventually unleash some seriously dense, distorted muzz. Someone's having a Tokyo Flashback, even though these guys are from Finland! Track two, "Triggeri" (9:56) is a bit gentler. Rather pretty, reminding us a bit of Circle's exquisite Miljard. Quiet music you'll want to play loud. And then the disc's third and final track "Kosmonaut", provides even more brooding ambience, exhibiting the ominous, twilight moodiness of another AQ fave, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. It's over seventeen minutes long, but for us that's barely long enough. These pale rumblings, with surges of percussive texture and slow, slow hints of melody, could flow on endlessly and we'd be forever entranced...
By now we've listed numerous recordings from Bali already, and with good reason: the people of Bali live and breathe music and art. It's no wonder that they've been the source of fascination from artists dating back to Walter Spies and are currently inundated with the clumsey feet of foreign tourists who flock to the island every year. Much like the beloved Indonesian Soundscapes, Night Recordings From Bali is a collection of field recordings -- made by Alan Bishop and Manford Cain in 1989 -- of the sort not likely to be captured by traditional "ethnomusicologists" or found on the likes of an Explorer or even Smithsonian Folkways disc. For instance: "Rubber Television", a recording of a television drama or soap opera accompanied by gamelan, dripping water sound effects that warbles pathetically like they were being recorded with a dying cassette deck (courtesy of Bali's notorious humidity maybe?) While many of the other recordings are of Bali's numerous, well exposed gamelan and sundry other music ensembles like anklung, kebyar and kecak, the man-on-the-spot style recording fuses the sounds of the frogs and insects to the performances where another recordist might have isolated the ensemble. Additionally, there are recordings here of wild life segueing between musical performances and even a recording of a cremation ceremony where the surviving loved ones battle in a traditional tug of war between those wishing to bring the body to the pyre and those resisting the inevitable final journey.
Holy Shit! This release is just as amazing as we had expected, maybe even more so, and how could it not be? An incredible mixture of modular synth, tape manipulations, field recordings and traditional Persian string instruments of Tar and Sehtar. Originally released on Folkways in 1985, this rare avant-garde release gets a deluxe reissue by the mythical vinyl conjurers of Dead-Cert (whose previous resurrections of works by Suzanne Ciani, and Bruno Spoerri & Betha Sarasin were equally awesome). The combination of instruments bridge worlds of spirituality and science that hitherto had been unheard of in Middle Eastern music and the results are quite mesmerizing. By allowing the basic elements of the instruments' musical nature to determine the composition, instead of applying a pre-written organisation upon them, Dolat-Shahi uses the repetitive motif of strings as a progressive invitation into a world of hypnotic textures and otherworldly moods, employing robotic modulations, musique concrete and sounds of oceans and birds into a unified field of neo-tantric drones and blissful primitive exotica. Housed in an oversized sleeve with wrap around print to look like the original Folkways sleeve and includes the original liner notes, Fan-Fuck-Ing-Tastic!!
This long out of print lp, now available on cd, thanks to our pals at Fonal Records in Finland. Here's our review from when we first reviewed the vinyl way back in the beginning of 2011...
Hard to believe, but this is the very first release from Dolphins Into The Future that we've managed to get enough of to review and list. That's after about a bajillion cd-r's and tapes and limited lps...
Dolphins Into The Future operate in the same orbit as James Ferraro and Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Explorers and High Wolf, and all the other similarly sonic minded floorcore combos, crafting druggy lysergic soundscapes made up of primitive synths, and analog loops, tape manipulation and malfunctioning samplers, and while each of those bands definitely has their own method, and methodology, Dolphins mainman (and only man) Lieven Martens seems to take his moniker seriously, not only incorporating the sounds of dolphins and the surf and seagulls, but also creating a sound that evokes undersea life, as much as we can imagine it. On the surface, it's a synthy new agey drift, all warm whirling soft focus melodies, steel drum like tones, washed out synth swirl, tranquil melodies and dreamlike drift, like an updated slightly more avant version of those old meditation tapes you might find in a new age bookstore, which, we would imagine is precisely what Martens and his sonic compatriots are going for. That said, for every bit of super simple new age shimmer, there's a bit of crumbing, weirdly looped crunch, or warped woozy almost Oval like swoon, all the sounds, on this record at least, held together by the sound of life on the shore, or on the deck of a boat, these slowly unfurling new age-scapes, are lush and laid back, minimal and mysteriously lovely, and the perfect soundtrack to bright sun, blue water and not a care in the world...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hard to believe, but this is the very first release from Dolphins Into The Future that we've managed to get enough of to review and list. That's after about a bajillion cd-r's and tapes and limited lps, in fact this is actually a repress of an lp we missed out on the first time around, but heck, if we missed out on it, odds are some of you did too.
Dolphins Into The Future operate in the same orbit as James Ferraro and Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Explorers and High Wolf, and all the other similarly sonic minded floorcore combos, crafting druggy lysergic soundscapes made up of primitive synths, and analog loops, tape manipulation and malfunctioning samplers, and while each of those bands definitely has their own method, and methodology, Dolphins mainman (and only man) Lieven Martens seems to take his moniker seriously, not only incorporating the sounds of dolphins and the surf and seagulls, but also creating a sound that evokes undersea life, as much as we can imagine it. On the surface, it's a synthy new agey drift, all warm whirling soft focus melodies, steel drum like tones, washed out synth swirl, tranquil melodies and dreamlike drift, like an updated slightly more avant version of those old meditation tapes you might find in a new age bookstore, which, we would imagine is precisely what Martens and his sonic compatriots are going for. That said, for every bit of super simple new age shimmer, there's a bit of crumbing, weirdly looped crunch, or warped woozy almost Oval like swoon, all the sounds, on this record at least, held together by the sound of life on the shore, or on the deck of a boat, these slowly unfurling new age-scapes, are lush and laid back, minimal and mysteriously lovely, and the perfect soundtrack to bright sun, blue water and not a care in the world...
After producing three seminal art-punk records from 1977 to 1980 that moved in rapid trajectory away from the short-sharp economy of Pink Flag to the tongue-twisting surfaces of 154, Wire dissolved for the first time. Call it a hiatus, call it an acrimonious break-up, call it a fuck-you to the major label that signed them; but regardless of what may or may have transpired in 1980, there were just too many ideas in those four blokes to be contained in the trappings of a four-piece punk band. Given what came immediately after 154, it's pretty clear where all of those radical shifts came from - Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert. Sure, Colin Newman produced a pretty decent solo record in A-Z, but in all of the projects that Lewis & Gilbert produced, there was a torrent of amazing material that included Duet Emmo, Cupol, P'O, and what proved to the best of the lot - Dome.
In quick succession, Dome produced four albums between 1980 and 1982, all of which now are just referred to by their numerical order, although Dome 4 was originally released under the title Will You Speak This World. As much as these records were explorations of deconstructing the punk song into drone, atonality, minimal synth abrasion, and polyglot perversity, Lewis & Gilbert would also tease with hints at what Wire had previously manifested. This audience baiting was also demonstrated on Wire's live lp Document & Eyewitness which condensed the classic Wire songs "12xU" down to 15 second fragment that never launched into that pogo-punk beat. As such, Dome would build songs out of repetitive guitar & bass patterns that would parallel one of the exuberant numbers like "Outdoor Miner" or "Mannequin" but the song would then detour into ellipsis with alien drones and discordant counterpoints. "Here We Go" from Dome 1 was a prime example of this punk-tease, furthered by tracks like the wild-eyed delirium of Lewis' ranting on "Cancel Your Order" also from Dome 1. The much ballyhooed highlight from that first record is the sublime track "Cruel When Complete" sung by Angela Conway, who coos breathily over an elegant if very cold electronic pattern with quintessential minimal wave detachment. Dome 2 continues along the convoluted art-punk abstraction through the two part "Red Tent" framed by plenty of abstracted electronic fragments and rhythmic work-outs that parallel what This Heat was doing at the same time.
Dome 3 found the duo hitting their stride, where the synthetic rhythms and loops play a central role in the arrangements accompanied by weird percussion, distorted vocals, feverish minimalism, abstractionist drones, and industrial overtures. All of the tracks are given names more fitting to Kurt Schwitters "Ursonate" such as "Ar-Gu," "Roos-An," and "An-An-An-D-D-D," providing more of a connection to Dada than to punk. Through these synthetic noises, Dome find them the perfect bridge between Throbbing Gristle and Zoviet France. Dome 4 stretches out the fragmentary brilliance of Dome 3 into longer, more thoughtfully composed pieces such as the archaic sounding folk-hymnal "To Speak" where Lewis' baritone intertwines with a languid violin and lots of cathedral reverberations.
Jump some 8 years to when Wire had reformed to produce a couple of fantastic art-pop records, when Dome also reconvened with the aid of late-80s technology: samplers and MIDI sequencing (as opposed to the tape loop and primitive synth work of the early recordings); and they recorded an album entitled Yclept which didn't get released for another decade. Here, the machined rhythms, repetitive noise collages, and loping basslines rejoin the realm of the song, albeit fractured somewhere between Aphex Twin, Greater Than One, and SPK, with Lewis crooning as he would occasionally do in Wire and on his under-appreciated He Said solo projects.
These 5 lps come packaged in large box filled with photographs, posters, and liner notes plus the requisite download coupon and inexplicably a box of matches. Don't set yourself on fire, please.
We all love the Sublime Frequencies, pretty much every release offers up something new and exciting, and we really don't know a single person who hasn't gone nuts over at least something on SF, be they metalhead or dronelord, pop kid or indie rocker, the sounds Sublime Frequencies discover and disseminate are strangely effecting and truly universal. So it would make sense that other soundmakers would become even more obsessed, not just with the songs and the groups, but with the sounds themselves, and in some cases, might just be inspired to create their own sonic tribute to the label, and the releases.
Which brings us to Subprime Frequencies, a strange collaged audio experiment, created without the use of computers, all done old school, with every sound sourced from a Sublime Frequencies release, including Radio Palestine, Radio Pyongyang, Guitars Of The Golden Triangle, Radio India, Bush Taxi Mali and Latinamericarpet, all manipulated and arranged by Dereck Donohue, who eagle eyed aQ-ers might know from his groups Horseflesh, Ozmadawn and Perineum, all of whom we've raved about on the aQ list, and which is how we know he is a master sonic manipulator, which is even more obvious here, as he transforms these collections of world music into gorgeous gristly soundscapes and blown out drones and dirges. Don't let the opening track scare you off, it's a noisy one, but it's strangely pretty too, a crumbling distorted filed of glistening melodies, all crunchy and buzzy, an in-the-red distorto-raga that sounds a bit like some strange Sunroof! / Our Love Will Destroy the World mash up. The second track is differently dreamy, the sounds muted and woozy and washed out, a jumble of layered percussion, and swirling overtones, one that builds gradually to a soaring swirling majestic high end bliss out, before slipping into the next track, which takes a playful jingle and explodes it, turning it inside out, and transforming it into something fierce and ferocious, a wild tangled of buzzing melodies and grinding tones. The rest of the record unwinds dreamily, but like some sort of sonic fever dream, "Burning Voice" is a slow motion undulating swell of blurred voices, disembodied harmonies smeared into a Jeck like warble, while "Jungle Dream Machine" is all churning rhythms, skeletal and looped and darkly hypnotic. "Hermit Kingdom Choir" is a dreamy sun dappled shimmer of softly swirling voices and hazy washed out melodies, which eases you into "Slice Of Calcutta", a crumbling drone, rife with melodic buzz, the track blossoming into a dizzying whirl of lush chordal thrum, before collapsing back into "Golden Hallucination, which is truly hallucinatory, a dense wall of ever shifting layers, of tangled melodies, dense overtones and lots of buzz and hiss, and finally, the collection closes with "Crescent Of Fertility", a 9+ minute epic, that is super melodic, the melodies wreathed in fuzz and hum, slipping from proggy crunchy whorls, to cascading sheets of glimmering, glistening high end, to deep vocal laced cavernous dronemusic, epic and weirdly haunting. Gorgeous stuff.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in fact, each one comes with a whole booklet, written out by hand, tracklist, liner notes, credits and everything, hand stamped and housed in a black digipak with a paste on front cover.
