Brian Pyle is a musician with far too many ideas bouncing in his head to let them lie still. He's best known as one of the Starving Weirdos, specializing in druggy and junked avant-drone work, which we have championed for years. But he's also produced equally impressive sonic opiates through the nature-jam project RV Paintings and his solo outing Ensemble Economique. There are obvious similarities in all of the Pyle projects, found in the foggy psychedelia oozing from the sodden landscape of his native Humboldt County and into the billowing passages of guitar drones that perch between overcast industrialism and stoned wanderlust. Standing Still, Facing Forward leans a bit more toward the early experiments of krautrock electronics, especially in comparison to Holger Czukay's oft forgotten masterpiece Canaxis.
The album opens with a set of somber strings overlapping and colliding into a filmic melancholy, transitioning into an Andromeda Strain type of sonic paranoia with electronic twinklings dispersed upon a ghostly drone smear. The noir horns that repeat throughout "Angkor Wat, In The Mist" harken to a slow-motion John Barry at his peak and certainly the facet of Morricone's work for Italian slasher films. Pyle furthers the tension of those allusions with a sustained rasp from a Tambura and a weird chirping from what sound like electric birds. The finale of minor-key synth tones grafted to a harmonica transmitting extended tones through waves of echo and reverb. Mysterious, haunting, and recommended as with pretty much everything that Mr. Pyle touches.
Love the cover on this one! An homage to those Sisters Of Mercy singles on Merciful Release back in the mid '80s, in particular the bleakest Sisters release The Reptile House EP. That's about as Goth as you get for a reference, and the druggist mania from Ensemble Economique touches on the existential void and the spatialized darkness that the Sisters Of Mercy crooned on that EP. Yet, EE bends the Goth into an unhinged, fractal-spinning universe that plays equal parts to ritualized psychedelia, autodidactic electronica, misremembered '80s pop hits, and drone-splattered horror scores. This 'Ensemble', as many of you will know, is the solo work of the Northern California mad-genius Brian Pyle, who's mostly been recording and touring solo in recent years but has an extensive back catalogue through the epic collective The Starving Weirdos and the animist hypnogogia of RV Paintings. Here on The Fever Logic LP, Pyle layers disheveled heaps of melodic synth loops on top of reverb-soaked drum tracks, with his pleading vocals and occasional strums on the guitar breaking into the mix. While the production is very much in keeping with Pyle's everything-at-once approach, the atmosphere he crafts dwells in that realm of the pharmaceutical miserablism that the Sisters Of Mercy brought to that aforementioned Reptile House EP as well as those Cure style introspective interludes that dot Faith and Seventeen Seconds. When we were playing this in the shop, an astute customer commented that this was like a goth version of Broadcast! Well said!
Ultra limited cassette from Ensemble Economique, aka Brian Pyle, 1/2 of Humboldt avant abstractionists Starving Weirdos and RV Paintings. We've long loved the SW's sprawling rhythmic dronescapery, and on his own, Pyle explores similar sonic territory, but Pyle's approach sans partners seems to be more dense and dark, caustic and abrasive, the rhythmic element balancing the atmospheric elements, like here on the title track, which spreads out over all of the first side. A thick, swirling low end thrum oozes and undulates, it's a hazy blurred rumble, over which Pyle layers heaving shards of crunch, thick throbs, deep bell-like tones, rhythmic machine gun stutters, all of which pile up and overlap, creating a soft cacophony of clatter and crunch, chug and churn, a strangely haunting, and sorta noisy, almost industrial creepscape, that sounds like some weird hybrid of Wolf Eyes, Philip Jeck and Umberto performed by some strange robotic minimalist chamber ensemble. A swirling, heady, and darkly psychedelic barrage of loops and rhythms, layers and textures, mesmerizing and intense.
The flipside is another permutation of Pyle's abstract beat laden drones, another thick swirling morass of sitar-like buzz and sci-fi synth squelch, this time the beats buried, little flurries of stutter and shuffle, squalls of glitchy tangle, more coloring the proceedings than driving them. The last track is a tense soundtracky stretch of layered buzz, haunting melody, a sprawl of pulsing high end over deep ominous rumbles, like the music from the scariest moment in some lost Italian giallo, stretched out into minutes instead of seconds, all tension, no release, brooding and intense, haunting and mesmerizing, fantastic stuff.
LIMITED TO 120 COPIES! We only have a handful direct from Mr. Pyle himself when he was in town, and it's very likely that these are the last copies we'll be able to get...
Avant guitar great Fred Frith, along with Ikue Mori (drum machines) and Zeena Parkins (harp), join one of Germany's premier new music ensembles (the aptly named Ensemble Modern) for what sounds amazingly like, if you can imagine, Aaron Copland at the Knitting Factory. A downtown NYC jazz take on 20th century classical, verging into Carl Stalling cartoon-music territory at moments. Not silly-sounding though, rather it's beautiful, pastoral and grand. Really great. On Winter & Winter, with their distinctive packaging. Dedicated in part to the memory of cellist Tom Cora.
Ensemble Pearl is a new psychedelic supergroup of sorts, featuring SUNNO))) guitarist Stephen O'Malley, Boris basher Atsuo, legendary Japanese psychedelic axeman Michio Kurihara, and William Herzog (guitarist for Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter) along with a handful of guests including violinist extraordinare Eyvind Kang. This unlikely collective have whipped up a heady brew of smoldering slow motion doom psych lumber and blackened kosmische drift, all murky and muddy, wasted and washed out, the core sound a smoldering, twang flecked tarpit trudge, a little bit Earth, a little bit Barn Owl, a little bit former Record Of The Weekers Torlesse Super Group - the same sort of windswept, apocalyptic, desert drone dirge, only this time, imbued with a pulsing psychedelic cosmic energy, a ferocity and intensity that seems to lurk just below the surface, as if barely restrained, a glowing black heart beating within Ensemble Pearl's bleak, bleary, blackly blissful exterior.
The sounds here are dense and dark, and yet simultaneously free and abstract, a trudging rhythmic plod, offering the only real structure, the sounds only tenuously moored to the surface, as if all it would take is a subtle shift in the solar winds, for the whole thing to drift heavenward, which it does at several points, the sound then seeming to blur into a more spaced out version of modern minimal dronemusic, almost like a more blackened, demonic Tangerine Dream, or a seriously sinister Phill Niblock, a hazy, softly churning kosmische thrum, lush and layered, pulsing and rich with chordal coloration and slow shifting overtones, laced with all manner of mysterious tonal shifts, like the soundtrack to some super abstract sci-fi art film, those stretches of droned out buzz could be the music of the cosmos, the streaks and contrails in the night sky translated into sound, a haunting, serene sonic stasis, that still somehow seems to be in perpetual motion, tranquil, slow swirling clouds of sonic debris, imbued with a warm glow of divine dreaminess.
But those sounds invariably coalesce into the dark dirgery that defines Ensemble Pearl's soundworld, the record bookended by to slowburn epics, the closer maybe our favorite, an epic sprawl of smolder and shimmer, a dreamy sonic death march, the guitars doused in reverb, the drums subtly dubbed out, the whole thing a woozy weary wander, a skeletal slo-mo lope through softly undulating swirls of smokey chordal shimmer, and heaving hushed drones, wreathed, like the opener, in fragmented shards of blurry ambience, spidery melodic tangles, the soaring sheets of keening high end here muted and smeared into distant glimmers, the occasional howl of feedback, or soft squalls of achingly keening high end guitarnoise, disappearing into fields of dubdrone blur, before returning to the motorik dirge creep that churns ever onward, gradually disappearing into a hushed field of atmospheric black buzz, warm and darkly billowing.
Fans of minimal drone smolder and abstract cosmic psychedelic space-doom drift will be in heaven.
From the minute we saw the cover, we knew this had to be something special! I mean we can easily see this psychedelic graphic of a hooded horn-playing figure with a gnarled tree emanating from below being a new record by any number of druggy experimental outfits from psych-folk to pagan eco-metal, but this Smithsonian Folkways reissue is from the Entourage Music and Theatre Ensemble, a modern ambient classical outfit who hailed from Baltimore. Recorded in 1973, the ensemble of musicians performed with a dance troupe making these strange tripped out pieces of abstracted sound and movement heavy on viola, keyboards, percussion and guitar, with an emphasis on interesting harmonics, organic percussion and textured melody. The music is impressionistically gorgeous conjuring all kinds of mental sound pictures, reminding us of a combination of The Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Harry Partch, but also Barton Smith, or perhaps a hippie folk version of Philip Glass. The ensemble was active until 1983 when the founder and director Joe Clark died. They put out two records, this and The Neptune Collection from 1975, both produced by Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, and both incredibly amazing!!
Here's one of those few instances in which I would have to scold Drone Records for their adamant adherence to releasing this sort of music on 7"s. The debut recording of Entrelacs -- a collaborative effort between dronologist Michael Northamï and field recordist Yannick Dauby -- is too good for just a 7". The parallel between Entrelacs and Organum are so profound as to bring back to me all of my frustration with Organum's insistence upon releasing just 3 minutes of the most sublime chorales of screeching metals when those sounds want to extend toward infinity like LaMonte Young or Phil Niblock. Entrelacs presents a similarly dynamic sound, that is so perfectly self-contained with its timbral massings from long-stringed instruments and clamorous details of various rocks and leaves. Perhaps no media can really contain these sounds, and I would be making a similar critique even if this were released on CD. This highly recommended single is limited to 300 copies, with this first edition pressed on clear vinyl. VERY FEW OF THESE IN STOCK!!
Entrelacs is the sporadically operational collaboration between longtime aQ fave eco-dronologist Michael Northam and phonographer Yannick Dauby, as Northam is perpetually wandering back and forth between North America and Europe, and with Dauby residing in Taiwan. These recordings actually date back to 2003, made "along a fallen tree in Courbet, Oregon and [at] a conversation with found objects in Paris." The Entrelacs project begins with the collection of found objects, continues through the manifestation of tactile sounds from those objects aided by some use of digital manipulation, and concludes when the objects are returned from where they were found. This lends itself well to the discovery of previously unknown sounds in new regions, especially when these two would perform live. On their website, they site an impressive array of atypical sound making devices that would give Matmos more than a few good ideas for their electro-acoustic madness. Amplified chimney sweeps, bowed escargot, obsidian shards, dried chardons, and needles piercing leaves are just a few of the more interesting ones. We're very curious to know where those bowed snails are in the mix! Underleaf unfurls slowly through a slow crunching of organic materials occasionally jolted with the sharp tinkling of what must be those obsidian fragments. Aggregated masses of those textures blossom throughout the 49 minute track in blurry drones that settle in the background of those tactile sounds, eventually giving way to a bowed metal chorale near the 30 minute mark that has all the right Organum / Andrew Chalk references. Very lovely and very limited stock on this one!
This here's the first we've heard from the strangely monickered Envenomist, but already it sounds like something we could do with a whole lot more of. And certainly the sounds here fit perfectly amidst the rest of the Twonicorn roster: Changeling, Brendan Murray, Glass Organ, Bonecloud, Tombi, Taiga Remains, etc...
Three tracks of shimmering steel string buzz, distant moaning train horn drone, thick clouds of buzzing swirl and fragmented melodies, looped krautrock like grit and grim doomy low end swells, thick and viscous, all layered into a harrowing and haunting sonic journey. Veering from FX drenched alien psychscape, to creepy modulated drones, to dense slow moving landscapes of buzz drenched melodies and slithering low end whir, to crackling fields of metallic buzz and warm whorls of thick soft focus ambience....
As with all Twonicorn, gorgeously packaged, pro printed tapes, textured paper sleeves, and of course super limited, ONLY 100 COPIES!! Each tape hand numbered.
Holy shit is this Killer Pimp label kicking our ass. First the recent Dead Letters cd that we made Record Of The Week, then the gorgeous Aidan Baker / Thisquietarmy collaboration, before that there was the A Place To Bury Strangers record, and now this new Envenomist disc! (There are a few others on deck too, to be reviewed soon we hope).
Pretty bad ass for a first batch of releases we think. We'd been dying to hear more from Envenomist, who we haven't heard from since we reviewed the Black Bile tape way back in 2007. Sonically very little has changed, extended soundscapes of shimmery metallic buzz over deep low end thrum, layered into softly undulating sonic swells, ominous and haunting and so cinematic. As we most certainly have mentioned before, movie makers should be looking to the underground music scene for truly original, and in the case of Envenomist, truly frightening music for their films.
The sounds of Envenomist are noisy, but the noise is blurred and smeared, muted and dulled, a soft noise that is so evocative, of ashen skies, burning wastelands, cold barren landscapes, mysterious otherworlds, lost planets, underground caverns, these sounds are so subtly harrowing and haunting, conjuring a sense of doom, of loneliness, of death and destruction, of sadness and sorrow, the long tones build tension, creating a sense of an impending end, to life, to everything, but while creating this palpable sense of dread, Envenomist manages to create a sound that is also beautiful, perhaps blackly beautiful, but beautiful nonetheless, hypnotic and mesmerizing, mysterious and truly creepy, but again, soothing and meditative, a sort of doom-ic new age perhaps, whatever you call it, it's pretty fantastic, and has been a constant late night listen since we first got it in. And another winner from Killer Pimp...
Another blast of glorious noisy weirdness from the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis...Don't! label, this time from the strangely name EOH (named for Rob from the Daturas' son Max's imaginary friend! cool), a trio of drinking buddies (featuring Rob from the Daturas) who channel their drunken unruliness into recording session after recording session. This 20 minute chunk of dark drones and abstract free noise was culled from hours and hours of wild drunken recording, and the results are surprisingly cohesive and listenable. Still dense and noisy and intense, but with a soft touch. More whisper than roar, more drone than screech. A Wolf Eyesian industrial murk march. Dense swirling layers of thick pulsing guitar distortion, wavering and warbling in thick sheets laid over everything, peppered with occasional cymbal crashes and what sounds like some sort of throat singing. This is some seriously massive ur-drone shit. Huge industrial wastescapes, abstract spare stretches of low end rumble swirling like black fog over ruined landscapes of damaged amplifiers and detuned guitars. Haunting, and desolate but strangely lovely. Essential listening for the drone obsessed among you.
Packaged in thick textured paper grey mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
And as always, this is SUPER LIMITED, and odds are we won't be able to get more. We did get a whole bunch, but don't let that keep you from ordering it now or you'll be kicking yourself when these are gone...
Eostre is the name of an old Germanic fertility goddess; but in more recent times, it was pegged as the title for a :zoviet*france: album. Given the disquieting tone of lurched drum machine, industrial monochromaticism, and rudimentary synth offerings, this latter reference is much more apt as a launching point for the Belgian project helmed by one Sebastien Schmit. The structures to the pieces on They Were Made Of White Cloth are built from dissonant sequences of clanging rhythm and blorping radiophonia that hold plenty of similarities to the more zombified work of super early Cabaret Voltaire, with the tape collages spinning their way off the reels and the guitar+synth combos swarmed into a sinister buzz. There's plenty of unexpected turns on the album, such as the pummelled beat of "Tree Bark" that hedges against a squall of kosmische step-sequencing; and there's the salacious clattering of computerized randomness lumped onto an un-nuanced, Dilloway plod of dour proportions on the album's two part "Durch Die Meere". The whispering vocals pushed to the foreground provided an unsettlingly voyeuristic feel to a good portion of these oil-stained, retro-garde works of modern day minimal wave. Limited to 100 copies!
Woah. The "what the fuck?!" meter is going off the scale here. Ephel Duath -- no, we don't know what that name means exactly -- are from Italy and this is their second album. They're a black metal band. So far, so good, so what. Then take a listen. THIS is black metal?? More like metalcore (the screaming vocals), prog (the schitzo song structures), and/or jazz (the horns, the drumming). Let's talk about the drummer -- the dude's a jazz drummer pushing 50, who never played a metal "date" before. Well, he shows up quite a few metal drummers with this performance. And, to backtrack, yes we said horns. Total Miles Davis In A Silent Way trumpet, y'know... Then there's also everything from prettily melodic sensitive male vocals to skittering electronic beats to funk bass to ambient synth drone to, oh yeah, epic symphonic black metal thrown in. Could be a mess, yet somehow, somehow, it works, for us anyway. They just have a knack for mixing all these ingredients just right so that the results stick in your ear. Call 'em songs, even though they don't sound much like most songs out there. So, if your listening diet contains some or better yet all of the following, you're pretty much meant to buy this Ephel Duath disc: Arcturus, Naked City, Maudlin Of The Well, Mr. Bungle, Melt Banana, Yakuza, Neurosis, Sigh, Dillinger Escape Plan, Radiohead, Opeth, Emperor... Yeah, Opeth with jazzy trumpet and more of an ADD, John Zorn styled songwriting approach, that might be a good shorthand description of this Ephel Duath thingie.
We first discovered Epileptinomicon years ago, when some mysterious cd-r's showed up in the mail, all handmade, with very little info, but how could we not be intrigued by a band called Epileptinomicon? So we threw it on and were totally blown away, dark, and droney, heavy and dense, spaced out and psychedelic, a little krautrocky, lo-fi, but definitely well crafted, some seriously blackened ambient dronemusic for sure.
So we tried to get in touch with this Epileptinomicon, but had no luck, emailed went unreturned, no trace on the web, Google searches turned up two mentions on the aQuarius site. So we assumed the worst, and gave up. The at last year's aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase, who should show up, but none other than Epileptinomicon, so we hung out, agreed to keep in touch, and arranged for us to order a bunch of records for the shop. Well, then what do you know? The mysterious Epileptinomicon disappears again, no word, no sign, no nothing.
But finally, the connection has been made, via of all people, recent aQ thrash faves Speedwolf, who live in the same town as E-con, and are weirdly enough touring together with 'em, so we now have a limited selection of two different Epileptinomicon cd-r's the first one, titled II, that we initially heard years ago, and a more recent tour disc, both of them awesome. And unfortunately, both extremely limited...
Changeling House Summer is the more recent of the two E-con discs, and shows a whole new side to what we remember as more of a drone / doom / ambient sound, that stuff is still present, loads of low end, thick rumbles, and dense shimmers, but there seems to be more of a focus on rhythm, from simple minimal pulses, to strange skeletal skitters. Reminding us of current synth drone outfits like Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds, Pulse Emitter, Emaciator and the like, but more slow and low and blackened.
"Changeling House" is sprawling field of murky drones, and muted melodies, that seems to be peppered with bits of glitch and crackle, until those glitches and crackles coalesce into a strange rhythm, brittle and almost techno like, the sound reminding us of a much more raw, blackened Chain Reaction, the 'beat' looped and hypnotic, over a churning sea of crumbling distortion, and swirling fragmented melodies. Some sort of murky alien dancemusic perhaps, or more accurately, some minimal rhythmic space doom. The pulses spread further and further out, the background noise grows considerable smoother, and suddenly, the track has returned to its initial dronestate, where it hovers before blinking out.
"Summer House" is more obviously recorded live, and begins with a scraped rhythm, and what sounds like a fucked up human beatbox, before both are joined by thick throbbing bass, so dense and blown out it nearly swallows the rest of the sounds whole. And so it remains for the remainder of the track, that rhythm locked solid, looped endlessly, while all around it the low end rumbles grow more and more aggressive, as well as bursts of crackle and hiss, muted feedback squeals, all in a never ending tangle, constantly shifting and mutating, before dissipating in a burst of super distorted buzz.
Finally, there's the 22 minute closer "Perfect Hell", another sprawling expanse of whirling layered low end, grinding guitar buzz, shards of feedback, but with much more melody this time, a glacial tarpit dirge, but infused with all manner of subtle melody. The second half of the track finds an extra element introduced, a groaning, creaking drone, wreathed in effects, that slips from hushed rumble to strangely gnarled slow motion squiggle, underpinned by a glitch driven rhythm, subtle, simple, and weirdly haunting.
CRAZY LIMITED, we got a bunch of these, but not sure how long they'll last, in cool hand stamped xerox sleeves, the discs themselves also stamped.
We first discovered Epileptinomicon years ago, when some mysterious cd-r's showed up in the mail, all handmade, with very little info, but how could we not be intrigued by a band called Epileptinomicon? So we threw it on and were totally blown away, dark, and droney, heavy and dense, spaced out and psychedelic, a little krautrocky, lo-fi, but definitely well crafted, some seriously blackened ambient dronemusic for sure.
So we tried to get in touch with this Epileptinomicon, but had no luck, emailed went unreturned, no trace on the web, Google searches turned up two mentions on the aQuarius site. So we assumed the worst, and gave up. The at last year's aQuarius / WFMU South By Southwest showcase, who should show up, but none other than Epileptinomicon, so we hung out, agreed to keep in touch, and arranged for us to order a bunch of records for the shop. Well, then what do you know? The mysterious Epileptinomicon disappears again, no word, no sign, no nothing.
But finally, the connection has been made, via of all people, recent aQ thrash faves Speedwolf, who live in the same town as E-con, and are weirdly enough touring together with 'em, so we now have a limited selection of two different Epileptinomicon cd-r's the first one, titled II, that we initially heard years ago, and a more recent tour disc, both of them awesome. And unfortunately, both extremely limited...
II was the very same disc that just showed up in the mail, the one that originally got us so psyched on these guys (this guy), it ended up getting played all the time in the shop, and even on Andee's radio show, after a loooong while, it was weird to return to this, in some ways if felt like we had already listed it, when in fact, we never got enough to review until now.
The sound here is a sort of abstract minimal drone drift, with a bit of lo-fi dub going on. Slow smeared tones, layered over one another, a strange muted pulse way off in the distance, all beneath slow wheezing barely there melodies, and a strange reverbed dubby little percussive thump, that seems in its own way to drive the whole track. Headphones help, an immersive sound world, of drift and shimmer and throb, ambient for sure, space-y as well, but weirdly (and very subtly) propulsive. The sound is murky and muddy and muted, until about halfway through when a shimmering crystalline guitar surfaces, a simple strummed chord that is dosed in delay, sent echoing into the ether, adding a distinctly pop element to what was otherwise something black and bare, and only minimally melodic.
The second track, the 17 minute "Lunar Menagerie", begins again as a hushed, stuttery underwater sounding bass pulse, and for the first 7 or 8 minutes remains underwater, or perhaps it's meant to emulate the sounds on the surface of the moon, either way, it's a gloriously rumbly, soft swirling sea of tangled synaptic misfires and heartbeat pulses, launched into the cosmos and allowed to reflect and refract starlight into gorgeous prismatic pulses. The second half of the track gets way more psychedelic, with a guitar unleashing strange squalls of swirling notes, wailing streaks of high end sound, like some classic psych rock guitar solo, removed from its track, untangled and unfurled into the weightlessness of space, where it floats and tumbles, spinning out bits of melody and warmly textured fragments, and inadvertently channeling other psych drone explorers like Expo 70. Gorgeous stuff.
As me mentioned, EXTREMELY LIMITED, two versions, one in a hand made paper sleeve, the other in a dvd style case, they're both essentially the same, it's random which one you'll get, and odds are we'll be out of both before you know it.
After a handful of weird and wonderful unearthed sonic rarities rescued and reissued by the Dead-Cert label, run by aQ faves Demdike Stare and Finders Keepers label head honcho Andy Votel, which included rare experimental radiophonic electronic recordings from Suzanne Ciani, an early eighties souvenir recording from a sculptural installation project that utilized stainless steel sculptures, and a reissue of a rare eighties Folkways release that mixed modular synth, tape manipulations, field recordings and traditional Persian string instruments, comes this collection of early space music / new age from the boyfriend / girlfriend duo of Kat Epple and Bob Stohl, who would later go on to some measure of cult fame with their group Emerald Web, but these recordings predate the formation of that group, documenting some of the earliest recordings from Epple and Stohl, a couple of the first musicians to combine synthesizers with organic instruments like flute, guitar, percussion and of course the human voice. The liner notes mention the music of Epple and Stohl, as well as their subsequent group Emerald Web, fitting more in the 'space music' scene, than the new age scene (which definitely embraced them), and we can definitely see that, the sounds here are cosmic and expansive, darkly psychedelic. Shades of current groups like Expo 70 are all over Sanctu Spiritus, deep swirling ambience, the synths fuzzy and buzzy (or are those effected guitars?). This record consists of five long tracks, each a sprawling, smoldering drift rife with deep low end pulsations, sizzling arcs of melody, drifting through soft clouds of washed out chordal shimmer, the vibe softly psychedelic and mesmerically melancholic.
Which is not to say much of the music here is not new agey, it most definitely is, but it's less relaxation massage style new age and more interdimensional cosmic drift new age, with glimmering fields of softly cascading synth textures, tinkling chimes, harp like shimmery strum, fields of fluttery flute, super chilled out and almost jazzy in places, a little folky in others, some seriously dreamy zoner drift for sure, and for every bit of new age fluff, there's some brooding, ominous moaning low end, like the brief closer on side one, a seriously dark ambient drift that's surprisingly menacing considering the context, foghorn like tones over the muted rumble of what sound like reverberating metal, thick slow moving sonic swells, and dense almost noisy crescendos.
But then the second side shifts toward something more airy and ethereal, the first half soft and swirly and slowly unfurling, but by the second half, clouds begin to gather, the same new agey drift now wreathed in shadow, moodily brooding, a cosmic dark jazz drift wreathed in the subtle sound of whipping wind, and slow moving fields of shimmering sci-fi FX.
LIMITED TO 700 COPIES!!!
Magic with a K, audial indulgence describes Equimanthorn's Second Sephira Cella. It's sonick Sumerian mystery from several necromantically exalted members of the Texas occult metal act Absu, including Emperor Proscriptor Magikus, whose absurd genius has been trumpeted here before. Is Equimanthorn also an "act"? Or it in fact something more serious? Whatever it is, it's certainly NOT a black metal album. No metal on here at all, actually. It's all quite atmospheric (but musical), creepy, ritualistic material... The resemblance to, say, Absu is all in the lyrickal text, the ancient sorceries evoked and invoked. Ridiculous it (probably) is, but at least these adepts have done their homework. You can argue with them about the significance of the Sixth Throne Of Asaru or the Rule Of Utukagaba but I'll stay out of it. Professing a belief in supernatural arts or not, the sheer sonics should seduce many a listener. Divided among the three members of Equimanthorn (Proscriptor, Equitant, and Ekimmu Abstractum), the tracks here are all deep and dark ritual soundtracks, resplendent with droning synths, 'unseen voices', mellotron, 'six-fold bows', and varieties of exotic Eastern instrumentation. We're reminded of such diverse artists as Goblin, Laszlo Hortobagyi, and a host of World Serpents... The music and its meaning are well matched. Equimanthorn is at ease with obscure, occult Esoterica in a way that, say, The Secret Chiefs 3 would like us to think they are but never will be. Advanced, impressive, and -- regardless of any reality-altering aspects -- excellent, candlelit entertainment.
We didn't realize how much we had been missing this beloved Bay Area post-punk trio. It's been over EIGHT years since their last album, but the moment Lost Weekend came ringing out our speakers, we were again enveloped into the band's familiar warm & urgent sounds, and after just a few listens we could feel these songs digging deeper and deeper into our brains/hearts/souls in a way we knew wasn't going to stop.
While the previous Erase Errata albums that we love so much were marked with more of a herky-jerky and angular disposition, this is a different and even more potent beast. The songs and playing are more assured, a slow burn is thrown into the mix, and the riffs are as heavy and chunky as they are punchy and catchy. The darker elements of their sound that came to the surface on Night Time, their last lp all those years ago, is present here with even more of a hypnotic and propelling glow.
It goes without saying that a lot has happened in the 8 years since their last release. The face of San Francisco has changed, as has much of the lives of the three members of Erase Errata. While not all the members of the band live in the Bay anymore, there is something forever San Francisco about their sound and energy. The band's vocalist/guitar shredder Jenny Hoyston moved to Texas but the legacy she left in the city working and booking shows at El Rio makes us remember a more inspired and hopeful time in the city. The band's drummer, Bianca Sparta, became a proud mama, and it's no accident that the record's title Lost Weekend is the name of our all-time favorite video store of the same name, which is located right across the street from aQ, as Bianca worked their for years.
On this record the band taps into a psychedelic groove that's both swirling, steady, direct, and deep cutting, but with room to twirl and freak out. They continue to show how they are masters of musical economy as there is not a wasted note or second on the album, yet it feels like the most expansive and wide reaching set of songs they have created yet. We've been listening to Lost Weekend alongside classic albums by bands like Wire, The Fall, The Ex, Sonic Youth, and Siouxsie & The Banshees and the quality and space those bands were able to tap into so very much resonates on this album too. It's kind of crazy how much this record has grabbed a hold of us, as we find ourselves listening to it over and over and over and still not getting sick of a single second. Much like Deerhoof, another of our favorite all-time bands that began during what is a very special era for many of us in the city, the second you hear an Erase Errata song you know it's them. It goes beyond just their distinct playing, tuning, and style and into those intangible qualities like spirit, soul, and electric energy. They have kept the potent intensity of what we love about punk rock but have always found a way to transcend the limitations of genre and create music that rings with relentless and purposeful intention.
One of two new tapes on this week's list from local label Black Horizons, the other being a new one from local psychedelic drone folk drifters Common Eider, King Eider, and this one, the first we've heard from Victor Eremita, the moniker for a mysterious Swedish soundscaper, who delivers a cold, haunting, minimal ritualistic industrial music, all murky pulses, abstract scrapes and creaks, whirring shimmers, at times sounding like super abstract house music slowed to a crawl and then fused to Ghost Orchid style EVP recordings, at others, like some haunting machinemusic, a softly churning barely there rhythm, wreathed in clouds of keening high end thrum, and blurred layers of rumble and whir, haunting but not so much harrowing, as ominously entrancing.
A dreamworld of rusted automatons, animated by some dark spirit, and compelled to create this soft focus din, an otherworldly sonic ritual, an ethereal, skeletal krautrock style churn, blurred and smeared into soft focus streaks of haunting mesmer, which are ghostlike and spectral, and seem to have been conjured from a realm free of human interference, their presence less musical, and more spiritual, the remains of a mad sonic scientists lab, imbued with the dying spark of his soul, which has somehow kept everything barely working, a strange workshop, a perpetual musical motion machine, gradually running down, captured here in the throes of slow expiration, and a gradual drift to the other side. Haunting and darkly lovely.
And as with all Black Horizons releases, super swank packaging, this time the tape is all clear, with no sticker or printing, housed in a silver and black printed vellum J-card, which holds several printed cardstock inserts. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Coming out of the same Finnish scene that spawned AQ-faves Circle and Ektroverde, Es is the work of Sami Sanpakkila, who in addition to this solo project, also plays in various bands like Kiila and Velvolino. He also runs Fonal records. (I guess all that
Es is the work of Finland's Sami Sanpakkila. This is the first work that we've encountered from Es, though Sanpakkila is closely connected to the out-rock ensembles of Circle and Ektroverde. The nine tracks are hermetic sculptures built out of beautifully gossamer guitar playing with Zoviet France like backing loops and atmospheres. Fans of early Durutti Column or Steven R. Smith's evocative work should definitely take note.
Here's the third album from our Finnish friend Sami Sanpakkila, who is also a member of Kiila and Kemialliset Ystavat, and runs the excellent Fonal label. Excellent 'cause of releasing wonderful records like this, his new effort under the name Es. The previous two Es albums, Flick and A Love Cycle, were all about mesmerizing, looping soundscapes. Now Kaikkeuden Kauneus Ja Kasittamattomyys -- in English, The Beauty and Inconceivableness of Everything -- continues Sami's explorations in meditative modern psychedelia, somewhat sad but beautiful, with guitar, some very lovely piano, and various field recordings mixed in. On some tracks, this sounds like Sami has dragged a few of A Love Cycle's turntables out into his garden, where he sits with the birds and plants and makes music while a female friend sings so nicely. It's like Philip Jeck meets Jewelled Antler. Definitely for fans of JA, as well as Kemialliset and the recent Kiila record. As always, we say, yay Finland!
Brand new record from this Finnish aQ fave, every new album a slowly blossoming mystery in sound, whether it's manipulated chunks of old vinyl, rickety campfire psychedelia, or expansive soundscapes of delicate crystalline shimmer. Es is the musical monicker of Sami Sanpakkila, who also plays in some other aQ Finnish favorites, most notably Kemialliset Ystavat and Kiila, and who is often joined by various members of the ever shifting and constantly collaborating Finnish underground community.
Kesamaan Lapset seems to be a record composed and performed entirely on keyboards and synthesizers, the opening track is a gloriously sun dappled chunk of skittery sunshiney new age synths, lush swoonsome swells of fuzzy whir, tinkling little melodies, and soft tangles of squiggly glitches, looped and chopped, like a more kinetic caffeinated Oval. The follow up begins with some circusy lo-fi keyboard melodies, that get more and more dense and intricate before the vocals swoop in, super effected and lush, wrapped in delay and reverb, ghostly and otherworldly, drifting lazily and dreamily over the softly chaotic jumble of tones and melodic fragments, managing to be pretty and soft, but fractured and off kilter at the same time.
The first of the two long tracks is a slow building dronescape, thick swells of warm lush organ whir, beneath delicate spidery piano melodies, the whole thing growing ever brighter and more insistent, various keyboards beginning to stutter and skitter creating all manner of incidental rhythms before finishing off in a dense swirl of hissy soft focus drift.
The 21 minute title track is all woozy dream pop, female vocals, over a constantly undulating bed of looped pianos and swirling synths, male vocals offer up some unlikely harmonies, horns slowly surface as do gauzy clouds of effects, before transforming into a deep, dark, almost brooding bit of keyboard driven drift, replete with all manner of Oval like digital glitch, warbly and underwater sounding, super hypnotic and intense, eventually giving way to a strange bit of majestic fanfare before fading out in a brief blur of warm abstract melody.
The final brief track is a buzzed out coda, all electronic glitchery, fuzzy drones, plonked electric piano, howled vocals buried in the mix, tons of grit and texture, buzz and whir, like a way more abstract Animal Collective.
Certainly a bit different than any of the other Es releases, but in its own warm and warped, tripped out and twisted way, a logical extension of Es's ever expanding soundworld. And we dig it.
As always, the packaging is super cool full color 4 panel gatefold, with some amazing childhood photos, printed insert with more cool art and liner notes, and a gold and white printed obi.
Yet more transmisssions from the wonderful world of Finland, from a name most AQ list readers should be familiar with by now, Es, the group headed by Sami Sanpakkila, who happens to run the amazing Fonal label who has brought us releases from Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja and Paavoharju, and featuring luminaries from other Finnish free rock outfits like Avarus, Kemialliset and Anaksimandros. This vinyl only (for now) release compiles an entire lp's worth of newwly recorded material, as well as a sidelong piece from a few years back and live on the radio recordings from the recent Es tour of the States.
The new tracks are as lovely as anything we've heard, Christmas carol like harmony vocals, lilting and folky, delicate tangles of steel string guitar and tinkling piano, that slowly untangle into wispy smears of droney dreamy psych folk. Long languid organ drones laid across a field of tape hiss and record crackle, while hovering just beneath are sqeaking reeds, quavering strings, plonked piano, all so gorgeously lovely.
The live on the radio tracks sound like some lost pagan artifact, deliberately strummed guitars, insistent rhythms, an angelic chorus of female vocals all with a distinctly krautrock style pulse beneath.
The final track is a side long drone, constructed from two guitar tracks, played by not touching the stings, only brushing the knobs and strumming way up on the neck of the guitar. Haunting and creepy, warm, dark and lugubrious.
Luxuriously packaged in a thick matte finish gatefold (with printed inner sleeves, photos and linernotes) with dreamlike watercolor paintings of the band members in different states of psychedelic repose, over branches in trees, wrapped in a scarf or rainbows or with rainbows coming from their fingers!
It's weird how everyone is so into goth now, maybe it's part and parcel of the whole eighties resurgence, but Goths were once the outcasts, at least when we were in high school, wearing all black, listening to Sisters Of Mercy and the Mission UK and the Cure and Depeche Mode, and clomping around in Doc Martins, lots of skulls and leather jackets, sitting in their own little group at lunch, getting picked on by jocks, who knows that might still be true, but in underground music, and even these days in mainstream culture, the Goths rule, from Hot Topic to Twilight, Zola Jesus to Cold Cave, Blessure Grave to cold wave, and for those of us who dug it back in the day, we're definitely into this new wave of gothic rock, taking all the stuff we dug about it the first time around, and sort of revamping it and modernizing it. Like all the musical movements of late, the word spreads like wildfire and suddenly there are way too many bands playing whatever super hyped sound is the flavor of the day/week/month, and most of them not playing it very well. The same could be said of this new goth wave, the cream definitely floating to the top, Cold Cave, Blessure Grave, Zola Jesus, and now UK Goths Esben And The Witch, named for a Danish fairy tale, which told the story of Esben and his 11 brothers, and their (mis)adventures, EATW conjure up a gorgeously expansive and explosive sound, lush and shoegazey, the guitars chiming and shimmery, the drums heavy and tribal, the vocals reminiscent of Zola Jesus, all woven into huge swirls of gothic psychedelia.
The record opens with "Argyria", which begins, all broody and jangly, minimal and hushed, shimmery and drifty and warm and woozy, before building and building and finally exploding into a massive and surprisingly heavy squall of dense, shoegazey wailing, the vocals howled and buried in the mix, before winding down into a skeletal bit of pulsing electronic gothy drift, haunting and otherworldly and gorgeously creepy.
"Marching Song" is the band's big hit, with it's crunchy main riff, and tribal drum pound, the song gets slow and low for the verses, with the vocals delivered in a deep witchy croon, over a Joy Divisiony bassline, and wreathed in swirling spectral vocal harmonies before launching into more epic, majestic choruses, and a killer percussion heavy outro.
"Light Streams" is all hazy and washed out, druggy and dreamy, the ethereal female vocals, backed up by strange processed demonic male background vox, before becoming engulfed in echo and reverb and spinning out of control into a pounding blown out swirl of gothpsych haze, grounded by a gorgeous repeated high end guitar figure. "Hexagons IV" weds dirgey gothy shoegaze to murky electronic pulses, as does "Chorea", but like the rest of the record, they eventually spiral into full on buzzy, fuzzy blissed out blown out shimmer. "Eumenides" is an experimental dronescape that's equal parts druggy drift and chaotic crunch, an extended bit of swirling lysergic ambience, that give way to the gorgeously brooding closer, "Swans", the vocals VERY Zola Jesus here, but much more expressive and acrobatic, laced over some deserty guitar twang, some deep rumbling drones, and clouds of abstract percussion, the sound eventually transforming into a hazy, end-of-the-world choral drift, dense and dramatic, dark and dolorous, winding down slowly, the harmonies and spidery guitars seeming to melt into each other before fading away completely.
Modern goth has rarely sounded so good. Definitely recommended for fans of any of the abovementioned gothics, but also, anyone into moody, shoegazey, dreamy, dramatic darkness.
Working with contact microphones and field recordings, Richard Francis -- the New Zealander now living in Japan who has claimed the moniker Eso Steel -- emerges as an interesting member of the lowercase aesthetic, somewhere between the sonic intensity of Francisco Lopez (that is when Lopez hasn't consigned himself to arenas of silence) and the empathic resonances of Loren Chasse or Steve Roden. All of his recordings are based upon his late night excursions through Tokyo, where he is left alone to record the sound artifacts of a giant city that has fallen asleep. Pulsing loops of electrical hums, timestretched drones, and peripheral buzzings build into kinetic motifs of gritty distortions, that nevertheless maintain an overall hypnotic sensibility.
Armed with a couple of microphones and a DAT recorder, New Zealand ex-pat Richard Francis can be found scouring the late night desolate streets of Tokyo, captured various textural striations and quiet electrical hums while the rest of the city sleeps. Working under his moniker Eso Steel, Francis transforms his field recordings into a bristling catalogue of experimental minimalism
Very much indebted to irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound, Esperik Glare offer two meticulously crafted collages of overlapping vibration, clattering objects, and unsettling tones, all of which allude to the swarming insects of the title. There's certainly a blackened, post-Industrial sensibility in these sounds which could contend with any of the Russian dark-ambient projects that occasionally pop up as a Drone Records single. Making the package complete is the b-side which features Monte Cazazza, who reads from an Edgar Allan Poe poem behind seasick bells and darkened synthetic tones.
For those of you, like us, who may only know the Swedish cellist Helena Espvall from her work with the recent crop of neo-psych folk artists like Espers, Fursaxa, and Samara Lubelski, as well as being a member of Vashti Bunyan's touring band, you may be surprised, like we were, at the avant-garde leanings on her solo debut Nimis & Arx. However, after learning that Espvall has played with numerous free improv, dance and theater groups as well as with 20th century avant luminaries Pauline Oliveros and Eugene Chadbourne, we shouldn't really be surprised at all. With production and electronics provided by George Korein of Infidel?/Castro!, Nimis & Arx is a free improv maelstrom of cello, recorder, guitar and voice that is equal parts beautiful, difficult, tense and transcendent. Even the late, great Arthur Russell had not dragged his cello this far out into uncharted waters and that's saying something!
You might be asking yourself just who Esther Chlorine is, and this project is definitely shrouded in mystery. One thing that will no doubt pique your interest is a connection to recent ROTW honorees Von Himmel, whose Space Communion lp we sold TONS of. Esther Chlorine follows a decidedly less band oriented path and looms with a disembodied ambience that sounds like something you might hear in a Jan Svankmeyer film. Strange pulsations and scraping piano string type sounds give the project the vibe of an abstract classical sound collage. Like Von Himmel, one can detect a spirit of ESP styled free jazz dissonance, but the two sidelong pieces also move back and forth with a quasi industrial feel. A strange slowed down voice percolates in a percussive manner giving the impression of someone being trapped within a spiraling tunnel of sound. And like Space Communion, we are reminded of the amazing Sun Ra disc Space Probe, which found him experimenting with the then new Moog synth. Esther Chlorine's MO exists outside of any real timeline, sounding like it could have been recorded at any point within the last century. It is this awesome sense of detachment that gives the project a sound and feel unique to itself. Coming to us from the equally mysterious Donkey Disk imprint, this is highly recommended!
Quite the intriguing reissue here. It's a San Francisco '60s artifact that could be just as easily be something brand-new from one of the underground acid-folk artists beloved by all you Ptolemaic Terrascope/Broken Face readers, like Six Organs of Admittance or Jack Rose. Anyone who likes them will want this! Likewise if you're into Fahey and Basho and other Takoma label string-pickers. Gene Estribou and Jean-Paul Pickens each took a side to themselves of the original LP release to ramble down some dusty old roads that lead them to acoustic Delta Blues, Indian raga, and Appalachian country-folk. Both these guys sure are fleet of finger, Estribou playing acoustic guitar and Pickens (is that his real name?) doing his thing on the banjo. Imagine David Rawlings (of Gillian Welch fame) hopped up on moonshine and just ripping... Wow. Intensifications indeed. Another excellent Locust release (they just keep 'em coming!) but we've gotta give them a packaging demerit 'cause of the one-sheet insert they opted for instead of a proper cd booklet. Otherwise, great.
God Damn You Black Side Projects!!! No longer can we simply go by the somewhat telling label Constellation Records to raise the Godspeed You Black Emperor antennae. No, now Alexandre St-Onge and Roger Tellier-Craig (of Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Fly Pan
Can't really tell you much about Etat Brut, other than the limited information provided by Sub Rosa. EB were an obscure industrial duo from Belgium operating between 1978 and 1983, with connections to the transgressive collective Club Moral and the Cabs-inspired Pseudo Code. Supposedly, both of the individuals in Etat Brut were named Phillipe and went on to become science teachers after leaving all of this junk, noise, and squalid rhythm behind. But that's all the information we could dig up, which is a bit disappointing, as we'd love to know more about these guys, we imagine Club Moral must have published something about the group in their Force Mental zine. Anyway, for those keen on the more brutal / guttural / abject side of industrial culture (e.g. TG's Second Annual Report, Factrix' Sheintot, or SPK's Leichenshrei), this is a very compelling document of primitive sound-demolition with an equally primitive approach to deconstructing music into its rawest elements - noise, rhythm, screams, more noise, and plenty of aggro / provocateur antics. The post-punk monochord basslines and drum machine anti-groove of "Homme Nus" is a compellingly bleak track of Frankensteinian proportions, where "Crash" conveys a dehumanized atmosphere through grim blorping electronics, musique concrete techniques, and cut-up dialogue that could very well allude to JG Ballard if only we understood French. Crumbling tape machinations, rhythms looped from shortwave radio beacons, fucked-up noise, and guttural vocalizations fill in the blanks, very prescient of what Atelecine is attempting to recreate nowadays and holding up very well against the better known projects we listed earlier.
The cd comes with two bonus tracks not found on the vinyl, btw.
Latest from these Portland psych rockers, their first for new label Thrill jockey, which is where they now call home, alongside their pals, SF dronerockers Barn Owl.
For Beyond The 4th Door, these guys haven't really changed their MO all that much, but then as they say, why fix what ain't broke? The opener is a sprawling smoldering psychedelic drift, all minimal stripped down drums, effected guitar, processed vox, deep low end buzz, and helicopter like thrum, the sound twangy and sun baked, almost like they're taking a page from label mates Barn Owl, the same sort of deserty drift, but ET augment their drift with strange effects, whirring synths, culminating in a thick buzzing denouement, before slipping right back into a slowly fading outro.
That track bleeds right into the next, another chunk of psychedelic smolder, this time the guitars more distorted, a sound that reminds us of Flower Travellin' Band actually, like those wailing vox could swoop in at any second. Instead, the song unfurls, a mesmerizing chunk of hypo psychedelia, which again blurs right into the next track, a hazy slow burner, all tangled psych guitars, and shuffling skeletal rhythms, and finally on this one, the band get heavy (not crazy heavy, but heaviER), there's some sax here too, but it almost sounds just like another guitar, the band unleashing loose softly chaotic squalls of dueling guitars/sax, the whole thing hazy and druggy and pretty excellent, the sort of modern shit that should moss definitely appeal to all the Japrock obsessives who worship at the alter of Les Rallizes.
The record finishes with two sprawling epics, "Reflections In A Mirage", a droney, twangy, stretch of minimal, spacious shuffle, vocals return, to chant, and moan ominously, while the guitars warble and buzz, all tangled an spidery, draped over swirls of shimmery drone, the song never explodes or climaxes, which only makes it cooler, the instruments gradually blurring together and finally coalescing into a closing stretch of layered drone. The comes "Time Winds Through A Glass, Clearly", topping out at 12 minutes, beginning like some strange sort of country jam, loping low slung bass, and twangy reverbed guitars, soon sizzling clouds of cymbal shimmer drift overhead, the saxophone returns and skronks off in the distance, the song drifts and lopes and meanders, slowly picking up steam, but staying mostly restrained, until the last few minutes, where the band do let loose again, the drums pounding, the guitars distorted, wild streaks of psychedelic leads everywhere, a serious sonic squall, but only briefly, before things quickly settle back down and the track unwinds in a soft psychedelic haze. Great stuff. And refreshing that they managed to avoid the ubiquitous soft/loud, slow build, explosive ending thing that seems to be the way most bands do psychedelic space rock, instead, each song was a expansive sprawling epics that were both hypnotic and heavy, mesmerizing and mysterious�
Ether's "Music For Air Raids" could easily be an open letter to Caspar Brotzmann, asking him to consider that Ether be the new backing band for his guitar pyrotechnics. This six piece ensemble fits all of the Caspar Brotzmann Massaker requirements -- big tribal rhythms, plodding basslines, interesting production tricks, and an overall masculinity that propels Ether's sound. A sound that's complete in itself, without the added Brotzmann guitar that we find ourselves fantasizing about.
We've never reviewed anything by Ethernet before, but now upon the release of ambient composer Tim Gray's third album under the moniker and second for the Kranky label, we wonder to ourselves why it took us so long. Opus 2 is cut from the same cloth as many ambient drone composers we've loved so much in the past: Aphex Twin, Tim Hecker, Gas, White Rainbow, Boards of Canada, etc. In fact it reminds us some of BoC's polygonal musical forms, but pulled apart under layers of the kind of warm propulsive chill often explored in the Kompakt label's Ambient Pop series. Largely composed in a process of self-hypnotic improvisation, the resulting pieces are culled of overtly compositional elements, so instead we hear layers of polished down melodic forms and rhythmic pulsations under a brilliant haze of wondrous sonic drift. Beginning gently with waves of airy exploratory melodies that soon become overwhelmed by an embryonic vastness of sound that is both pastoral and bleak, the sun-dappled vibrancy soon mired in weathered earthy textures and slow windswept turbulence that gradually darken in gorgeous decay. Quite lovely!
Anthony Di Franco is probably best known as a member of British noise rockers Ramleh, as well as the legendary Skullflower, playing on that band's seminal, industrial sludge records including Obsidian Shaking Codex, a bunch of impossible to find singles, and the universally revered IIIrd Gatekeeper. Di Franco also had a couple of other solo projects in Ax and Novatron, the latter has proven to be an awesome, if rarely heard slab of headrinsing, low-end noise, and Ax, holy shit, so punishingly good, c'mon someone, reissue those NOW!!!
Di Franco was also the man responsible for the power electronics noise project Ethnic Acid, which existed for a short two year period from 1986 to 1988 but managed eight cassettes during that time period. A couple of those tapes were self-released through Di Franco's own JFK imprint; and most importantly as a historical note, one of those cassettes was released by Broken Flag. It's most likely due to Di Franco's working relationship with Broken Flag's Gary Mundy, that he become one of the revolving members of Mundy's Ramleh. Outside of his better known bands, Di Franco's solo work has always been very worthwhile, and these early recordings of tape splatter and electronic bloodletting do not disappoint! Managing to be heavy and noisy and caustic, but also surprisingly listenable. As we've mentioned before in the past, we're not always that into full on noise / power electronics, we're way more into texture and timbre and dynamics, and thankfully, for every spurt of face melting crush found on Power-Works, there's a long stretch of rumbling drone, or strange stuttering collaged heaviness.
Di Franco's pedigree should probably be enough to get most folks on board, and noiseniks were probably already anxiously awaiting this collection, but for the rest of you, definitely check this out, if you're not into noisemusic AT ALL, this might not be your thing, but anyone into dronemusic and dark ambience, and experimental tape music, this is some seriously powerful and varied stuff. From heaving digital crunch, to stuttering almost metallic sounding loops, to murky stumble and blackened rumble, to spaced out soundscapes of sine waves and looped classical music, to wild squalls of distorted sort-of-riffage, to whispered industrial whir, to smeared and blurred dronescapes, it's all pretty fantastic and heady stuff, especially for being 20 years old. And anyone who's been digging Skullflower's recent return to noisiness (Vile Veil, Malediction, The Paris Working, Desire For A Holy Warm, Pure Imperial Reform) will most likely find lots to love here, although in comparison to those discs, lots of this stuff is downright pretty!
Originally released on cassette, this chunk of psychedelic atmospheric synth-fi futurism has been gussied up, the original tracks, remixed and/or re-recorded with more parts, more music, subtle alterations here and there, not so subtle changes as well, but since we missed out on the cassette completely, it hardly matters, and according to the label, this is indeed the definitive version.
So who the heck is Dylan Ettinger? We have no idea, but what we do know, is that New Age Outlaws is a fantastic collection of synth driven sc-fi new age/wave atmospherics. Fans of Majeure, Zombi, Umberto and similarly minded retro futurists will definitely dig.
Just check out the sprawling nearly 12 minute opener, "City Lights, City Streets", that ends up sounding like Expo 70 covering Zombi, droned out and mesmerizing, thick layered synths, slowly unfurling melodies, a simple robotic rhythm, bits of psychedelic wah guitar, thick swells of rumbling crumbling low end, a slow burning epic, that only really shifts gears _ of the way through, when some of the low end drops out leaving the high end to shimmer and soar and glisten, infused with some swirling minor key melodies, only to build to a Sunroof!-like climax, with synth melodies that sound weirdly like sun baked steel drums, everything hazy and washed out and gorgeously blissy.
The rest of the record explores similarly spacey and psychedelic territory, the sound raw and buzzy, "Rico's Pawn Shop" loops a strange stuttery bit of melody, beneath warm whirring chords, and some rubbery synth bass, that man loop never letting up, while the various other synths tangle and intertwine. "Gordon's Theme" is more mellow, more muted and minimal, but again, anchored to a simple synth loop that entrances while the various surrounding sounds paint in the rest of the picture, adding warm lustrous ambience, deep layered textures, a gorgeous hazy sonic drift.
Imagine James Ferraro trying his hand at this sort of Carpenter/Goblin style synth wave, primitive loops, strange hypnogogic melodies, not sleek and polished, more home brewed, which is precisely what makes New Age Outlaws so unique, so strange and so good.
LIMITED TO 490 COPIES!!
On the same label as the more spaced out free-form black jazz ambience of Hodag (reviewed elsewhere on this list), Ettrick on the surface seems like they must be a way more metal proposition, the record's called Infinite Horned Abomination for chrissakes! And their logo is of the spiky illegible classic metal style, but in fact, this is way more of a sputtery skronky free jazz, with wild horns and chaotic bursts of sputtering drum splatter. Each half of this duo handles both sax and drums, each player safely ensconced in their own channel, sometimes it's two horns, sometimes it's horn and drums, sometimes all drums, a dizzying barrage coming scattershot from both the left and right channels, as if there were some sort of free jazz monkeys screaming and beating their chests wildly in each channel, pelting the listener with sonic stones and hurling great handfuls of free jazz dung! Intense and aggressive and furiously freaked out. You might think you're tough, jazz sissy, and we're happy to let you have a go, but this stuff is dangerous, and sharp, and sort of scary, so stand back and let the more highly decorated free jazz warriors step forward, unless you're feeling particularly brave today...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! Each disc packaged in a cool hand screened cardboard sleeve.
Another gorgeous mysterious little gem from Japanese label Spekk, who also released the Texture In Glass Tubes And Reed Organ reviewed elsewhere on this list. As we mentioned in that review as well, Spekk has staked out a nice little niche, a surprisingly varied one, including releases by free folk SF collective The Alps, a solo disc from Jefre Cantu of Tarentel, as well as a killer comp of electronic lullabies.
This disc by Yair Etziony, as the title might suggest, embraces mistakes and malfunctions, turning them into music both haunting and lovely. Even the track title point to some sort of assemblage of misfires: "Corrosion", "Broken", "Flawed", "Dirt" etc. but if you weren't aware of the genesis of these tracks, it's very unlikely you would assume they were borne of mistakes.
Instead, the sounds here are dark and brooding, muted and underwater sounding, hovering in some ghostly realm situated right in between the aquatic skipping cd-scapes of Oval, the glimmering gauzy shimmer of Pop Ambient, and the murky pulse of Chain Reaction. Most of the tracks shimmer dreamlike, some hushed and ephemeral, others more skittery and spidery, the various tracks peppered with bits of glitch and crackle. The prettier tracks remind us of a super tranquil Boards Of Canada, the darker tracks have a definite Oval via Chain Reaction vibe, with some parts splintering into super abstract dubbed out drift, others locking into looped motorik pulses, others still like some mysterious haunted house music, creepy and atmospheric, but always bleary eyed and softly blurred, layers of fuzz and whir wrapped around delicate melodies and barely there beats. Super nice.
Packaged in a cool, sleek oversized digipak style folder.
You might not recognize these two names, but you probably recognize the bands they call home, all big time AQ faves. Bryan Eubanks is the man behind GOD, whose last disc on Jyrk we raved about a while back, and J.P. Jenkins is a member of Portland outfit Ghosting (as well as the Portland Bike Ensemble).
Two sidelong tracks, both lovely, and neither are all that far removed from these guys' actual bands. Eubanks side is a never ending (well, almost) wall of grinding low level hum, a relentless buzz, warm and layered and slowly shifting, sounding like a lo-fi Phill Niblock, blissful and meditative, the sort of track that when it stops, your ears almost pop, so suddenly deprived of the drone that was filling them moments earlier. Sometimes the simplest sounds are the most pleasing, and this sort of fuzzy hum is the sort of thing we could listen to forever (and we listened to it with the record reverser, which we also sell, and it sounded even cooler backwards! But then again, what doesn't?!)
Jenkins side sounds like it could have come straight off a Ghosting record, which is not at all a bad thing. A cloudy expanse of simple finger picked guitar nestled amidst soft focus billows of reverberating metallic hum. Eventually the hum dissipates, and what's left is some haunting alien Appalachia, with various notes hurled skyward and stretched into long peals of moaning high end drift. So nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Each one stamped on the lp label, housed in hand assembled and hand screened sleeves with a printed insert, two different color sleeves: gold on black cover or blue on white.
Another fine cassette of home-droned electronics from Hooker Vision founder Grant Evans (aka Nova Scotian Arms, Crippling, and half of Quiet Evenings). What sounds like guitar, synth, and maybe even a bit of piano seems to get into the loops that Evans cycles with the same languid pacing that William Basinski presents via his own tape loop miasma. An underbelly of smoldering grit and amplifier distortion haunts the distant regions of some of the loops as if they were bleed-through artifacts from a previous noise construction that refused to be erased from the tape and points to a latent psychic violence that runs counter to the dreamy, lulling drones which receive a minimal amount of information as to their origin from Evans "soft sounds from 1/4" tape." Super limited pressing of 50 copies, and it's already sold out at the source, these are the last copies.
This super limited tape was released by the new Room 40 cassette imprint A Guide To Saints. It's already out of print at the source, and we've only got a small amount so we won't dwell too much on this. Grant Evans, of course, is one of the proprietors of the incredible Hooker Vision label out of Georgia, and he's also responsible for the druggy, dreamy dronemuzik under the guises Nova Scotia Arms, Crippling, and Quiet Evenings (this being in collaboration with his wife Rachel aka Motion Sickness Of Time Travel). The A side sports contemplative synth lines with innervision pursuits that are buried through thick pedal effects of phase-shifted oscillations and low-pass distortion, giving a decidedly lo-fi spell of rural psychedelia. The B-side is a more gnarled affair with scabrous drones swarming with tight flanges and corrosive textures. The cosmic synths do reemerge through these thickets of noise, with Evans still conjuring the darker facets of Maeror Tri. Thirty-eight minutes in length. Too bad we couldn't get more.
There's nothing like a visit to hospital and the clinical confrontation with ones own mortality to provide a profound sense of clarity. The Georgian tape-minstrel Grant Evans completed Lacerations after such an excursion. Much of the source material for the album was intended to be released on an unnamed label, who ceased communication with Evans after the masters were supplied. While it remains to be seen if Evans will be donning his kosmische / new age cap once again (especially in the placid electronic hymnals recorded under the moniker Quiet Evenings with his wife Rachel Evans / Motion Sickness Of Time Travel), Lacerations is very far removed from anything remotely new age. Torn scabs of noise are scattered liberally through Grant Evans' corroded drones and tape-scum splutter. It appears that Evans is bouncing sordid field recordings (seemingly nocturnal investigations into resonant warehouses full of wood, metal, and glass to be tossed around) and computer sourced data-streaming onto those tapes, which sound exhumed from the bottom of some brackish sinkhole, flush with blind salamanders, translucent crayfish, and decomposed limestone. The digital-to-analog degradation recalls some of the more cerebral savages of US noise (e.g. Crawl Unit, Pedestrian Deposit, Howard Stelzer, etc.) with exemplary results made evident throughout the pronounced tape warble of Lacerations. Limited to 100 copies...
