This mysterious three piece ensemble from Portland couldn't have chosen a more appropriate monicker for their deep listening inner space explorations. Everything about this single 40 minute track is ghostlike, from the drifting shimmer of the opening few minutes, where guitars hover and haunting keening faraway sounds drift past like stormclouds, to the stretch about halfway through, of warm white noise over muted melodies and hauntingly harmonious drones, to the final few minutes of muted murky creeping broken music box like lilt, all twisted and warped, slowed down and slithery. A dark fog blurring all the edges and laying down a fuzzy drift. So darkly lovely.
Limited to 100 copies, each copy hand numbered and all the covers are hand painted, each slightly different!
How awesome is the name Yarn Lazer?! If it wasn't already the name of this killer cd-r label, it would definitely be the name of my band, or my restaurant, or maybe my first born!! This is a super limited split between Portland drone ensemble Ghosting, a band AQ folks just can't seem to get enough of, and Irish stoned drone ensemble Bonecloud (also a possible name for the first born btw!).
Ghosting pretty much sound like their name. Their sound is a drone based wander through a ghost town, or better yet, a ghost world, the sound of floating wraithlike through a moonlit landscape, dreamlike and indistinct. Lovely but slightly ominous. Completely mesmerizing.
Bonecloud offer up their own sonic ghostworld, beginning as a shimmery high end drone, before slowly devolving into a murky subterranean crawl, muted voices, buzzing strings, thick whirs and pulsing white noise, all wrapped in a druggy fug and left to drift through along some Stygian stream, a dense murky fog, wrapping your head in muted fuzz and filling your ears with a warm thick sonic syrup. A bit like a modern day, lo-fi, cd-r Taj Mahal Travellers!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!! Packaged in screen
printed and spray painted sleeves with a photocopied insert.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Two AQ faves together for the first time: Portland Oregon's Ghosting and L.A.'s Robedoor.
Been a little while since we've heard from Ghosting and it's mighty fine to have them back. Their half of the split begins with warm whirring drones beneath buzzing and scraping steel strings, intense and dramatic, and maybe a bit more aggressive than their usual sound. The track grows in intensity, the drones becoming thicker and thicker, eventually becoming an almost Sunroof! style roar, swallowing up any of the drifting melodies completely.
Robedoor, a recent discovery, and a new favorite for sure, counter with what might be their -prettiest- track yet. Very serene, warm swells in the distance, strange submerged rhythms, silver streaks of muted feedback, moaned melodies way down in the mix, the whole thing crawling and slithering darkly through buzzy blurry murky cloud of sound.
Gorgeous packaging, hand screened, one side artfully torn, limited to 325 copies, each sleeve hand numbered, pressed on black streaked white vinyl. Nice!
Ye gods, how do they do it? Another great release, in of course both regular and deeeeeeeeeeluxe versions, from Time Released Sound, a local label specializing in obscure experimental/ambient loveliness from around the world, and also specializing in the most over the top, one-of-a-kind, labor intensive, hand made packaging for the deluxe releases we've ever seen (and the standard digipacks look nice too). Mr. Colin Herrick, take bow. He's the crazy guy who spends all his free time making these things, it's his label.
So, what's this one like? As usual with TRS stuff, this artist Ghostwriter (aka Mark Brend) and his accomplice here, Michael Paine, we weren't previously familiar with, but we believe they're British, and bit like another TRS disc last year, the one by The Inventors Of Aircraft, thematically, this concerns itself with England's faded past. Impressionistic, hushed atmospheres, melancholic and beautiful, inspired by sepia-toned mid-century memories of seaside holidays and gloomy country houses. Hence the vintage 1930's wallpaper worked into the deluxe edition packaging (each one different!!). Ghostwriter's "folktronic" approach finds melodic acoustic guitar and piano motifs
interwoven with field recording hum and other evocative samples. It's quite nice - again as usual with TRS stuff!
And then there's the packaging. What do you get for your 75 bucks if you spring for the deluxe art object option? Well, protected by two sheets of cardboard, you get a handworked 7" square translucent envelope containing a "uniquely hand distressed and antiqued hardcover booklet", with the cd inside in a "typewriter addressed, stamped and soiled envelope" (not too soiled, though!). Meanwhile, the aforementioned booklet's pages are collaged with that wallpaper and other images, AND comes with a small, round hand-stamped and colored jigsaw puzzle depicting a pastoral scene! Again each one different. Pretty special, and perfectly aligned with the mood of the music.
The deluxe edition is limited to just 80 copies, the digipack to 150.
Ye gods, how do they do it? Another great release, in of course both regular and deeeeeeeeeeluxe versions, from Time Released Sound, a local label specializing in obscure experimental/ambient loveliness from around the world, and also specializing in the most over the top, one-of-a-kind, labor intensive, hand made packaging for the deluxe releases we've ever seen (and the standard digipacks look nice too). Mr. Colin Herrick, take bow. He's the crazy guy who spends all his free time making these things, it's his label.
So, what's this one like? As usual with TRS stuff, this artist Ghostwriter (aka Mark Brend) and his accomplice here, Michael Paine, we weren't previously familiar with, but we believe they're British, and bit like another TRS disc last year, the one by The Inventors Of Aircraft, thematically, this concerns itself with England's faded past. Impressionistic, hushed atmospheres, melancholic and beautiful, inspired by sepia-toned mid-century memories of seaside holidays and gloomy country houses. Hence the vintage 1930's wallpaper worked into the deluxe edition packaging (each one different!!). Ghostwriter's "folktronic" approach finds melodic acoustic guitar and piano motifs
interwoven with field recording hum and other evocative samples. It's quite nice - again as usual with TRS stuff!
And then there's the packaging. What do you get for your 75 bucks if you spring for the deluxe art object option? Well, protected by two sheets of cardboard, you get a handworked 7" square translucent envelope containing a "uniquely hand distressed and antiqued hardcover booklet", with the cd inside in a "typewriter addressed, stamped and soiled envelope" (not too soiled, though!). Meanwhile, the aforementioned booklet's pages are collaged with that wallpaper and other images, AND comes with a small, round hand-stamped and colored jigsaw puzzle depicting a pastoral scene! Again each one different. Pretty special, and perfectly aligned with the mood of the music.
The deluxe edition is limited to just 80 copies, the digipack to 150.
Another 'metallic' masterpiece from the Battlecruiser label, the side label of Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, specializing in all things metal or sort of metal. However the metal found on Battlecrusier releases is not the metal of Maiden or Priest, nor is it the metal of Carcass or Napalm, instead, this is the metal that occurs when drone obsessed minimalist noisemakers take a stab at invoking the beast: everything from from ultra-repetitive riffing, to blissed out expanses of slow motion dooooooom, to smeary stabs of grind, to pounding industrial metal pummel.
The couldn't-be-more-aptly-named Ghoul hit us which just might be the creepiest BC release yet. A haunting plodding doomscape constructed from slowed down Krautrock and Skinny Puppy scraps, with rumbling bass thuds and a skeletal rhythm cobbled together from chopped and clipped vocals, malfunctioning synths, and a distant swirl of Earth-en guitars. Imagine an electro Skepticism, or Red Lorry Yellow Lorry jamming with Sunn 0))). Weird and weirdly hypnotic. Not heavy per se, but quite dark and evil and grim and spare and spooky. As with all things Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, this is VERY VERY LIMITED!!!
Latest from this underground super group. Featuring folks from the Magik Markers, Hototogisu and Double Leopards among others. This is probably the most laid back and mellow thing we've heard from these folks. The whole first side is a spare and spacious stretch of raga like drone and disembodied Appalachia. Guitars buzz way off in the distance, drifting amidst clouds of folky flutter, wheezing harmonicas, an almost Morricone Western vibe, desert-y and desolate, but mysteriously lush and lovely. The sounds grow in intensity here and there, getting more raucous and abrasive, the guitars scraped and metallic, all bathed in thick swells of whirring shimmer, but always seeming to settle back down into another dreamy drift.
The flip side is split into two movements, the first is a longform slab of chaotic free folk skree, the instruments all blurred and smeared into a constantly evolving and shifting swirl of sound, dense and layered and lovely, the second half a rumbling wall of thick guitar ambience, a whirling buzz that manages to be epic and majestic, while remaining minimal and mysterious.
All recorded live apparently, but also comes with a bonus 3" cd-r, of the band live in Seattle, in its own little full color minisleeve.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
GHQ is a name new to us, but apparently this free drone raga outfit has been lurking on the firnges of the new weird underground for a while now. GHQ just so happens to feature Marcia Bassett (Double leopards, Hototogisu, etc.) and Pete Nolan (Magik Markers, Vanishing Voice) so it's a little surprising this is their first proper release, but it's a good one. This is druggy, dreamy, shoegazey bliss folk, vocals are fuzzy and indistinct, guitar strum is strident and loop-like, even the proper songs devolve into raga like mesmerism, simple percussion, tamborine, shaker, does nothing but shuffle drowsily alongside the subtle pulse beneath the thick swaths of psych guitar and shimmery drone. Steel strings vibrate and the waves drift echolike across vast expanses of hovering tones and slow shifting overtones, warm and languid, a total dream drone drift. The sound on Cosmology Of Eye is completely unlike Bassett's full on free noise assaults as Hototogisu with Matthew Bower, and equally unlike Nolan's avant rock spazz splatter in the Magik Markers, instead it sounds like these two just turned off all the lights, smoked until the room was dense with drifting clouds of smoke, turned on their amps, laid down their guitars, spread their wings and just drifted heavenward. Surprisingly lilting and lovely.
Packaged with loving care, as are all things on Time Lag, in a cool two color screened black fold over letterpress sleeve, with an insert photo taken by Charalambides' Tom Carter.
Another gorgeous missive from GHQ, an outfit featuring Marcia from Hototogisu and Double Leopards and Pete from the Magik Markers and Wooden Wand, who combine drone-y noise with raga-like buzz, and never more perfectly than on Crystal Healing. Beginning with some swooshing backwards ambience, muted guitar and what sounds like harmonica, very dreamy and pretty, the record quickly settles into a haunting disembodied Appalachia, clouds of insect buzz and distant chantlike vocals woven into a lush backdrop for simple mournful steel string guitar, very dark, very wistful, gets a bit aggro toward the end but without losing any of it's drama or emotion. Imagine Jack Rose's Mr. Hyde and you'll get an idea. The rest of the record wanders from similarly dark acoustic dronefolk to wide open expanses of raga like drift, the former even introduces some actual vocals, an almost atonal stoned country drawl hovering over seasick fiddle and lazy strum, while the latter goes from dense swirls of guitar crumble and siren like melodies (sounding quite a bit like Vibracathedral or Sunroof!), to Jandekian sprawl, with distorted vocals, caveman percussion, detuned guitars all wrapped in plenty of grind and rumble and buzz, to the record's epic final track, a lengthy blissed out new age-y drift, a swirl of weightless melodies and long drawn out buzz.
LIMITED TO 855 COPIES! Pressed on ultra thick vinyl, and housed in a super heavy gatefold sleeve (hand numbered). While they last, the first 212 copies come with a bonus cd, 2 tracks, about 13 minutes, featuring more atonal Appalachia, raga-buzz, drifty drone and haunting vocals. The perfect coda to the record's expansive rambling drift. Once those are gone, they are GONE, and you'll receive the normal lp version.
We have to admit, we're not the biggest Magik Markers fans. But get MM's Pete Nolan in a room with Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards, Hototogisu) and the results are divine. A gloriously expansive free-drone raga, a swirling wall of buzz and squeal and keening high end guitars and roaring amps, thick washes of buzzing strings and wild streaks of upper register skree. Huge drifts of abstract sound, that manage to move and drive, within their almost static clouds of drone and shimmer lurk dreamy melodies, strange sonic whorls, and super simple percussion. Ultra divine drug drenched raga drone bliss out of the highest order. Not sure what else to say. This is like the best parts of Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Jazzfinger, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, boiled down to its utter essence, packed into pipes made out of monkey skulls and smoked. A potent blend of mysterious musicks, hidden in a cave at the top of some perilous peak, reachable by only the bravest of souls. Once in the cave, follow the light, and observe as the cave opens up into a star filled sky, a small spot where one can watch the light of the universe shift and shimmer. This is that sound. Essential.
Another mind expanding slab of raga like Ur-drone from Marcia Double Leopards and Pete Majik Markers and company. GHQ again channel the spirt of Henry Flynt and Angus Maclise, harnessing a slippery melodic buzz into a warm soundscape of sonic solar flares and a vast symphony of warm whir and creaking groaning magnificence. Like some shadowy cloaked figure standing at a podium like mound of dirt in the middle of a field, conducting nature: crickets and frogs and all of mother nature's noisemakers into a slow moving swirl of sound. And that's just the first track. The rest of the disc explores hippy krautrocky jams with muted buzzy steel string guitars, hand drums, drifting ethereal vocals, moody melancholy melodies, sitar-like buzz all cloaked in a gauzy timeless haze, like some long lost ESP freak folk classic.
Released on Hototogisu's Heavy Blossom label. As always, SUPER LIMITED. Packaged in a cool mini hard plastic DVD case with very crusty metal looking black and white artwork.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another new list, another fantastic new discovery from local boutique label Time Released Sound. This week, it comes by way of yet another hitherto unknown to us artist (we should really get TRS to do some A&R for aQ!) named Francesco Giannico, an Italian sound artist who conceived of this single 40 minute track as an installation, recording the entire route of one of the subway lines in Rome, using those recordings as the basis for this gorgeously serene sonic sprawl. While many of the recordings are left intact, field recordings in the background, others are transformed and re-contextualized, becoming as much a part of the surrounding sound, as the synths and guitars, the pianos and the violins, the piece structured in such a way that it almost sounds like each trip, from one station to the next, is in fact, the musical component, that music fading out and letting us hear the sound of the announcements, of the commuters shuffling from train to train, all the ambient sounds of each station, familiar to most everybody, before gradually disappearing, as the train leaves the station, transporting the listener once again into slow moving clouds of hazy, gauzy sound - at times, low slung, spidery fields of post rock guitar minimalism, at others dense droney, synthscapes, at others, melancholy string shimmer, and at others still, dreamlike fields of almost psychedelic sounding glimmer. In each iteration, the vibe is mesmerizing and hypnotic, the various pieces woven into a slow shifting whole, with some of those field recorded sounds becoming pulsing rhythms, or mysterious melodies, the whole thing a songsuite of sorts, a sonic travelogue, that instead of sounding like a ride on an Italian subway, sounds like something more ethereal and abstract, a journey into the ether, into the other, into the beyond. Fantastic!
And yeah, it's Time Released Sound, so you can bet the packaging is over the top. And as always, there are two versions, the first, an ULTRA limited deluxe version, limited to just 75 copies, which includes hand silkscreened square prints of photos from the actual subway where these sounds were recorded, each print on a different sort of paper, music sheets, vellum, ancient ledgers, all housed in a vintage, hand stamped 7" sleeve, from sixty year old vinyl binder (!), then each one is tied with string, to which is attached a used ticket from the Rome metro, again, from which all these sounds were sourced. Also inside are random ephemera an scraps of paper found on various trains and platforms during the recording process. There's also a less limited, more affordable version, that comes housed in a swank, full color digipak, and is limited to 150 copies!
Another new list, another fantastic new discovery from local boutique label Time Released Sound. This week, it comes by way of yet another hitherto unknown to us artist (we should really get TRS to do some A&R for aQ!) named Francesco Giannico, an Italian sound artist who conceived of this single 40 minute track as an installation, recording the entire route of one of the subway lines in Rome, using those recordings as the basis for this gorgeously serene sonic sprawl. While many of the recordings are left intact, field recordings in the background, others are transformed and re-contextualized, becoming as much a part of the surrounding sound, as the synths and guitars, the pianos and the violins, the piece structured in such a way that it almost sounds like each trip, from one station to the next, is in fact, the musical component, that music fading out and letting us hear the sound of the announcements, of the commuters shuffling from train to train, all the ambient sounds of each station, familiar to most everybody, before gradually disappearing, as the train leaves the station, transporting the listener once again into slow moving clouds of hazy, gauzy sound - at times, low slung, spidery fields of post rock guitar minimalism, at others dense droney, synthscapes, at others, melancholy string shimmer, and at others still, dreamlike fields of almost psychedelic sounding glimmer. In each iteration, the vibe is mesmerizing and hypnotic, the various pieces woven into a slow shifting whole, with some of those field recorded sounds becoming pulsing rhythms, or mysterious melodies, the whole thing a songsuite of sorts, a sonic travelogue, that instead of sounding like a ride on an Italian subway, sounds like something more ethereal and abstract, a journey into the ether, into the other, into the beyond. Fantastic!
And yeah, it's Time Released Sound, so you can bet the packaging is over the top. And as always, there are two versions, the first, an ULTRA limited deluxe version, limited to just 75 copies, which includes hand silkscreened square prints of photos from the actual subway where these sounds were recorded, each print on a different sort of paper, music sheets, vellum, ancient ledgers, all housed in a vintage, hand stamped 7" sleeve, from sixty year old vinyl binder (!), then each one is tied with string, to which is attached a used ticket from the Rome metro, again, from which all these sounds were sourced. Also inside are random ephemera an scraps of paper found on various trains and platforms during the recording process. There's also a less limited, more affordable version, that comes housed in a swank, full color digipak, and is limited to 150 copies!
We've long been fans of weirdo murk merchants Net Shaker, a duo who traffic in twisted Starfuckers style abstractions and echo drenched downtempo 'electronica', but of a sort you've likely never heard. Warped, and woozy, fractured, and gloriously fucked up. Well, Ernest Gibson, one half of Net Shaker struck out on his own, and delivered two cd-r's, both equaling the balls out weirdness of the Net Shaker mothership, but definitely digging a little deeper, although as we mentioned in our review of the most recent cd-r, the sound is not that far removed from Net Shaker, so much so, that at one point it had us mistakenly assuming Net Shaker was in fact just Gibson anyway. Apologies to the other half of Net Shaker! But fans of Net Shaker, and either of those two cd-r's will not be disappointed with Island Records, which begins with probably the most 'rocking' jam we've heard from Gibson or Net Shaker, all churning loping rhythm, detuned swamp guitar, mumbled FX drenched vox, and reverby twang, it sort of sounds like a more minimalist Woven Hand, it's got a similar swagger, a creepy apocalyptic vibe, but it's way more smeared and blurry and indistinct, the krautrock vibe is huge, super motorik and mesmerizing, it's the sort of thing we could listen to forever. It actually also reminds us of that Tony Conrad / Faust collaboration, but again, a bit more druggy and warped.
And while we'd like to say the rest of the record follows suit, it really doesn't, the sound does remain echo-y and swampy, reverby and darkly psychedelic, but the songs themselves seem to deconstruct before our very ears, sprawling into oozing expanses of jittery skitter, and moaning guitar thrum, bleary, baffling, slo-mo blooze-y stomp. There's lost of abstract drift, like disembodied pop songs via Nurse With Wound, all creaking and shimmering, crystalline sonic structures seemingly melting and crumbling in slow motion, the songs like time lapse recordings of these psychedelic implosions.
That krautrock vibe does surface throughout, "Groupwork" is like Moon Duo on thorazine, and "All Of Us Together" is like a slightly souped up Suicide, but in-between, rubbery basslines billow into clouds of slo-mo thrum, thick, twang guitar hovers over garbled vox and dense textural swirls and chordal swells, with some tracks delving into full on dub territory, but then it's like some sort of Spacemen 3 via the Scientist as re-envisioned by the Climax Golden Twins, warped and woozy and seriously sonically wonderful.
Includes a download code!
Back in January of 2010, we discovered a mysterious group of noisemakers called Net Shaker, their record having shown up in the mail one day, a dark and twisted minimal assemblage of gnarled detuned guitars, murky rhythms, moaning melodies, glitched out electronics, the various elements constantly shifting as if someone was messing with the tape speed, but all woven into a blurred but of hypnotic krautdrone, space drift whatthefuck, so much so, that we had a lot of trouble describing it, and figuring out any bands to compare them too. Since then, we've begun to imagine them as beholden to the mighty Starfuckers, and we're sure fans of that band would no doubt enjoy Net Shaker, but somehow, Net Shaker seemed even more twisted and confusional. Needless to say, we played that disc to death, and sold a ton, so we were pretty excited when Net Shaker mainman dropped us a line to let us know he had a new solo record, which is this right here, cryptically titled Operator, and wouldn't you know it, the solo apple doesn't fall far from the Net Shaker tree. In fact, we wouldn't have batted an eye had Gibson told us this was the new Net Shaker. Just check out the opener, "Low Mote House", a looped warbly bassline, wreathed in swaths of random sound, of swirled shimmer, of industrial whir, the sounds again seeming to melt and speed up and slow down, we describe a lot of things as woozy, but this really IS woozy, the melodic component in constant motion, whirling and swirling, while that relentless bass anchors all the strange and ever shifting proceedings, and like Net Shaker, it seems Gibson on his own is not as concerned with songsmithery as he is at creating truly strange sonic events, which do seem to contain songlike elements, but are much more textural, more about mood and ambience, with strange swells of warbly melodies, bizarre tangles of noise, what sounds like multiple tape experiments all piled on top of each other. But also like Net Shaker, this is far from noise for noise' sake, with most of the tracks coalescing into something more rhythmic or hypnotic, often reminding us of Strotter Inst and his prepared turntables, the same sort of robotic anti-groove, but often blossoming into something impossibly lovely. Check out "Lake Scene" which wreaths it's pulsing rhythm in hazy swirls of smeared melody and dreamlike shimmer, or "Lit Trees" which sounds like a soundtrack for some filmic nightmare, all ominous and sinister but again, strangely lovely. Many of the tracks are super brief, more like little experiments or interludes, but they are deftly woven into the fabric of the whole record, often serving more as a sonic segue, joining two disparate movements, and even sometimes blurring the boundaries between songs and sounds. There's some heaviness hidden throughout, like the horn driven dirge of "Everyone In Here", there's also the careening lurching rhythmic lumber of "Way I Walk there Sick" and the super scary blackened creepscape that is "Your Voice On Tape", which definitely uses shifting tape speed to create haunting melodies, wound up in disembodied guitar twang, and vocal driven drones, it's all pretty fantastic.
But a tough one to describe for sure, it definitely seems like the sort of stuff that would appeal to fans of all strains of looped mesmer, Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, the aforementioned Strotter Inst, but the rhythmic element make this equally appealing for folks into dark minimal hypnorock, Gibson's sound like a murky, minimal, slo-mo analog to Circle's repetitive rock mantras, but somehow WAY weirder.
Solo record number two from Ernest Gibson, a name you might be familiar with as a long time reader of the aQ list, especially if your idea of easy listening is gnarled lo-fi murk, or creeping dirgey minimalism, or abstract blackened drift, cuz that's precisely the sort of stuff Gibson and his group Net Shaker traffic in. A sort of Starfuckers style anti-rock minimalism, that wreaths skeletal barely there rhythms in shrouds of whirring thrum, and conjures up ghostly expanses of Hecker / Jeck like atmospheres, infusing those sounds with a sort of spectral ghost pop drag, warbled vocals and swirling constantly morphing textures. We may be describing Net Shaker, or Gibson's solo material, the rotten apple doesn't fall far from the gnarled, withered tree after all.
And while Gibson's first solo record did in fact sound like it could have been a Net Shaker record proper, Sail Thru Izapa takes all of those same sounds and reworks them into something much lovelier, and strangely delicate, creating a sort of slowcore murk pop, bass pulses drift in expanses of blurred static, fluttering flute like melodies surface and then fade out, vocals, laconic and laid back, intone hauntingly over bleak blurs, rife with warped tolling bells, in some weird way much of this sounds like Kode9 or Burial, but way more tweaked, and glacial and drugged out, the vocals a deathbed croon one second, a monk like chant the next, the music being dragged along in its muddy wake, woozy tendrils of sound, pocked with bits of buzz and glitch and hum. Occasionally, the pace is picked up a bit, the drums more propulsive, those beats wreathed in malfunctioning electronics, the vocals yelped, a curiously ramshackle shuffling anti-rock loose-groove stumble, but even then, everything is painted in greys and blacks, the tape speed constantly shifting, as if the batteries were dying, or the motor was gradually wearing out. And as we mentioned in the review of Gibson's other record, this stuff is really hard to describe, because it is so unlike anything else we've heard. A feverdream in sound, imagine some nightmarish psychological low budget art film, this could very well be the score, nightmarish, brooding, mysterious, otherworldly, mesmerizing and terrifying in equal measure, a totally entrancing soundworld that creates a gorgeous series of movements in murk, a slo-mo beat driven drift, the sort of shit that must be spinning eternally, by some black robed DJ on the empty dancefloor at the edge of the world, where time has no meaning, and sound, these sounds, ease you into the endless blackness below.
One of three new releases on UK cassette label The Tapeworm, this one featuring two sprawling side long excursions into just intonation drone from Brooklyn composer Randy Gibson, a student of legendary minimalist composer La Monte Young. Gibson fuses the traditional concepts of prime harmonic just intonation with modern tape manipulation, the tones as important as the mechanisms producing them, the sounds lush and layered, heaving and undulating, overtones and subtle sonic colors, rife with subtle shifts, tape speed inconsistencies, peppered with bits of hum and hiss, crunch and creak, a sound more organic and human than clinical and composed, the sounds seeming to breathe and expand, some serious deep kosmische drift for sure.
The two sides here are created from 18 hours of recordings condensed into two half hour epic swaths of deeeeeep rage like dronemusic, the sound constantly evolving and mutating and subtly shifting, from ethereal hazy shimmer to thick reverberating metallic buzz, a gorgeously expansive dronescape created using just voice, cassette boomboxes and just intonation toy organs. Wow.
Total deep drone blissout for sure. Essential listening for the aQ dronemusic faithful...
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!
The return of Fflint!! The first release in almost a year from our hands down, favorite fucked outsider electronic label. Avid readers of the AQ list need only see the names Berkowitz Lake And Dahmer, Cavendish Sanguine, Pendro, Cousin Silas and of course the Gideon Leeches, to know what sort of mind bending, ear shredding electronic fuckery these freaks have in store for us.
The Gideon Leeches, aka Steve Nuttall, was the first group on Fflint, not in some way made up of one (or both) of the two shadowy souls behind the Fflint curtain. But hearing this (and the previous disc, The Freezing Point) one would be forgiven for assuming that it was actually a like minded trio responsible for all of these sounds. Some sort of freakish three headed calf, plopped down behind some busted up turntables, an old sampler and a mixing desk, kept alive with a steady diet of crisps and beer. The results are suitably damaged and off kilter. And glorious!!!
So here we have Blessed Is The Noise, the work of one of those three heads, and what a piece of work it is too. Like most Fflint discs, it's a very fine balance between droning beauty and complete chaos, and as we might expect (and hope), the Leeches have no problem diving headfirst into either. Or both. It's electronic music, but it's sure as heel not 'danceable', it's dark and droney, but not really soothing and tranquil. But then again, it sort of is. Both. Soothing AND tranquil. And danceable. OK, not really danceable.
Vocals are chopped and sliced and diced and reassembled into some sort of damaged robotic Portishead thing, and set adrift amidst a soft shimmery backdrop, before the backdrop revolts and becomes dense and corrosive, moaning like bowed sheets of metal, but remaining still somehow droney and dreamy. Thick swaths of sparkling sunbaked sound are wrapped around a relentlessly catchy nursery rhyme melody, like an ice cream truck driving directly into the center of the sun. A vast expanse of vibrating rods, all shimmering and quivering and letting off soft metallic whirs, is submerged beneath 6 inches of muddy water, while a row of parked cars honks along, the whole thing recorded on a wax cylinder and played back through a hearing aid. Elsewhere, an orchestra of keening high end tones is wrapped around a throbbing rumbling whir, the sound of a crying child is subsumed by a million skipping cds, their skipping creating a warm womb like whir, while also unleashing inadvertent subtly rhythmic pulses. Gorgeous blurry drifts of muted melody are stretched into gauzy sheets and draped over ghostly vocals. A Sunroof! like din is channelled through the spirit of a player piano, resulting in a strange old timey abstract free noise Ur-drone, and so much more...
Blessed Is The Noise is nearly indescribable, or more precisely seems to be more easily described in terms of rods and player pianos and honking horns and ice cream trucks, than tone and timbre, but that's precisely what makes it so magical. Like all of the Fflint stuff, it's gorgeous and confusional, lovely, yet cracked, far out, but completely catchy at the same time. And also, as with all of the Fflint stuff, so wholeheartedly recommended!
Finally!!! More skull cracking, mind bending, feelings hurting, shin kicking, hair pulling, back stabbing, ass kicking, ribcage rattling, ear piercing, eye gouging, bowel loosening electronic mayhem from our favorite lovable miscreants FFlint Central! This time from the mysterious entity known as The Gideon Leeches. We heard a little bit from the Leeches on the amazing Unholy Trinity compilation reviewed a few lists back and could hardly wait for the full length. And we are not disappointed. In fact I might go so far as to proclaim this one of the best releases on Fflint so far. And that's saying a lot, knowing, as you do, how much we LOVE Berkowitz, Lake and Dahmer, Pendro, Cavendish Sanguine, and the whole lot. But the proof's in the pudding. And the pudding here is a thick, miasmic pool of shimmers and rumbles, buzzing and tinkling, howling and keening. We are suckers for this stuff, at least when it's done right. And believe me, this is done so right. Huge expanses of static sound, with swirling, ever-shifting layers of feedback, buzzing electronic drones, throbbing low end pulses, warbly melodies, creaking machinery and what sounds like swarms of sitars, careening madly above a warm and tranquil blanket of gauzy dreaminess. But with a dark and ominous edge. This has AQ favorite written all over it. Think Sunroof!, Skullflower, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Birchville Cat Motel, Pelt, Peter Wright, and all of those other folks who traffic in deep, dark, organic' free-drone. Fans of the above will definitely LOVE this! And again, our pals at Fflint continue to impress, and we're beginning to think that Fflint just may be one of the only labels we know of with a perfect record (except for tUMULt of course!! - Andee). Can't wait to hear what they come up with next. But in the meantime, BUY THIS!
MPEG Download: "The Freezing Point Of Sound" [/audio/gideonfreezing.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "The Freezing Point Of Sound" [/audio/gideonfreezing.m3u]
MPEG Download: "Scowring And Flux" [/audio/gideonscowring.mp3]
On Adult Life, Brooklyn's noise king Carlos Giffoni has made a purposeful shift away from the clobbering sound assaults and sustained concrete block explosions. This is his pure analog synth record; and despite the shift in source material, Adult Life cannot and should not be taken lightly. Giffoni has cited Cluster, Tangerine Dream, and Eno as his inspiration for this album; but these references are not really close to how this album ends up. The kosmische electronics of those pioneering composers has been injected with steroids or blasted with high doses of x-rays or anything really that would give these sounds diabolical super powers. In actuality, Giffoni's industrial-grade lazer blasts and heavily compressed LFO sweeps aren't too far from where Whitehouse started out, but without the blessing and curse of William Bennett. Adult Life begins with a terse police siren which noxiously ping-pongs against mercurial electronic tones and metallic flanges, setting the stage for a head-pounding excursion into the hypnotic and relentless. Throughout the album, Giffoni rotates sawtooth LFO patterns of blistering electricity, rudimentary structuralist patterns adrift on a magnetic sea, and buzzing squigglings from brain-frying modulations.
Not sure how we managed to miss this one. Only just realized we had a batch of these stashed in the store, and somehow they never got listed. Needless to say these are probably the last copies EVER as this came out on aRCHIVE and was of course crazy limited, and since that stuff routinely sells out in NO TIME, and according to the aRCHIVE website this is indeed out of print, this may very well be it for these, but at least a handful of lucky folks, who enjoy ruining their hearing, punishing their poor speakers, and of course annoying their neighbors, will be in N.O.I.S.E. heaven.
A pretty serious match up, noiseniks should know both these guys by now, NY noise legend Carlos Giffoni, and Scandinavian speaker shredder Lasse Marhaug. So you might expect a punishing blast of Merzbowian white noise, but in fact this is pretty listenable, and really strange and wondrous. There are definitely brutal moments, but there are gorgeous, almost tranquil moments as well.
From a crunchy thump that sounds like a fetal heartbeat run through a busted amp, to a field of decaying glitch and hiss, beneath which, strange metallic melodies drift and shimmer, to washed out crunchy almost Oval like digital skitter, to huge tangled streaks of detuned guitar and full on blown out black buzz, to dense fields of electromagnetic disturbance and malfunctioning machinery, howled voices and glitchy squiggles, grinding industrial clatter and fuzzy swaths of corrosive blacknoise, but all deftly arranged into what sound like actual songs. Melodies mysterious surface here and there, rhythms coalesce out of seemingly abstract sounds, it's pretty dang cool. But be warned, it most certainly is still NOISY. So if you have an aversion to noise, this might be too much for you, otherwise, a wicked slab of gorgeous grinding corrosion and lurching chaotic crunch. More musical manna for the iron eared.
Packaged in a cool 6 panel aRCHIVE style gatefold. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Already out of print. We have a handful left...
By all accounts, this double LP of pure brutality finds the Canadian noise outfit The Rita remixing source sounds from Brooklyn noise king Carlos Giffoni and vice versa. In the press release for this album, The Rita's Sam McKinlay offers a cogent argument about the aesthetic differences which stem from The Rita's 'dirty' methods of overdriving sound through daisy-chains of pedals contrasted against Carlos Giffoni's pulsing synths which cruise beneath the turbulent noise surfaces. While there are some notable differences on both of these pieces of vinyl, they are secondary to the overwhelmingly harsh noise which persists throughout. This is all about the noise, and this noise is an abject, blackened sound which has the feeling of particulate soot from a very dirty coal power plant given to the force of a sandblaster used not on a brickwall, but your eardrums to penetrate as a viral agent. On occasion, thicker chunks enter this jet-powered stream of sound, smashing against each other like massive sheets of shattering glass. The first of the two LPs uses these sounds within a series of erratic compositions that gradually build to cut-the-power conclusions. The second LP unleashes the flood gates from beginning to end with very little variation to the punishment. In both cases, it's still all about the quality of that noise, as an extremely aggressive tool of harsh, ugly, vile blackness. Limited to 300 copies!
One hails from the rust belt of Michigan, fostering all sorts of sick tones through his Chondritic Sound imprint; and the other inflicts an acerbic noise through his internationally acclaimed No Fun Festival and the accompanying label No Fun Productions. Together, Hive Mind and Giffoni join forces for a rather misanthropic, grim, oppressive set of crunched noises and radioscopic synth throb.
Both tracks incrementally build up lurches of distortion that push out oozing rumbles of low-end and bristling amplifications of electrical static. Heavy synth with an industrial / power electronic mindset that's exactly where you expect Giffoni and Hive Mind to meet. Also see Broken Flag era Ramleh, Whitehouse, and Wolf Eyes. As with all Ultra Eczema titles, this sports a very nicely silkscreened cover. Only 300 copies in print. We will probably not be able to restock this!!!
Table Of The Elements is a label that tends to provoke strong reactions in lots of folks, for here is a label that consistently offers great ideas that sometimes fall short of their grandiose expectations when finally realized. Typically, these shortcomings are the result of a systemic lack of organizational skills, an inability to follow through on those ideas, and occasional pandering to the institutionality of the stodgy contingents of the avant-garde. A case in point would be the two year gap in between the 2nd and 3rd volumes of the TOTE Captain Beefheart vinyl. Another example is the Lanthinides series unwisely packaged in brittle plastic sleeves that inevitably wore through and cracked as well as being a rather narrow exploration of the incredibly rich history of avant-garde music.
Then comes Ordier, an album that causes us to suspend our criticisms of Table of the Elements... at least for this release. I (Jim) should offer the humble preamble that I believe Bruce Gilbert to be an artist whose failures are better than most of his contemporaries' successes. Gilbert is best known for his work in Wire, whose Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154 albums are essential punk listening. He also authored a handful of post-punk / proto-electronica gems in collaboration with fellow Wire-man Graham Lewis in Dome and He Said. Ordier is the documentation of Gilbert's minimalist side, which he has occasionally expressed in the past, on his solo Ab Ovo album as well as a number of ballet scores throughout the last three decades. This album was recorded back in 1996 during a Table of the Elements festival and subsequently lost by the label (way to go, guys!). Gilbert runs primitive electronic tones through a series of effects and guitar pedals which provide him with a remarkable amount of finetuning and filtering. With a monochromatic composition of variable buzzings and fluttering chimes which rumble beautifully for over an hour, Ordier emerges as a hot-wired variation on the aesthetic ideas of the Hafler Trio, and stands out as yet another great record for B.C. Gilbert.
Packaged elaborately in a silkscreened wooden box, this will undoubtably cause problems when it's time for a repress so buy it now before the first pressing runs out.
One of the earliest releases from the nascent 4AD label, issued in late 1980, 3R4 marked one of many facets to the structuralist experiments of Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis. Those two had parted ways with the other half of Wire in 1979, bringing forth a deluge of exemplary projects of adventurous post-punk including Dome, Duet Emmo, and Cupol, with this album being one of the few things ascribed to their birth names. It follows relatively closely - or rather as closely as one could - to the deconstructionist approach to the song espoused by Dome, with angular mechanical noises, tape loop miasma, psychological-drone slumber, and flanged noise engineering. The pastoral swell that grounds the first half of "3.4" could very easily have been the inspiration for William Basinski's baroque anthology of crumbling tape loops, through a languid melodic fragment whose origins could hail from a similarly decontextualized Muzak via slow-motion pitchshifting. It's quite a stately progression that takes a rather lumbering turn upon the introduction of a series of tape loops of orchestral flourishes, wooden rhythms, and a hypnotic lurch that tumbles out from Lewis' bass. The flipside "R" builds on a rhythmic interplay between two chiming sets of guitars glides from urban gamelan grittiness to flanged tape loop exploration with a drone-on dubbiness that easily parallels the anti-rock stupor of This Heat's posthumous album Repeat. Another necessary reissue from Superior Viaduct!
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Our pals at Conspiracy Records, a label/distro based in Belgium, who in the past have brought us records by Boris, Jesu, Shora and more, are this year celebrating their 10 year anniversary. A decade of amazing music. From a bedroom based punk rock label, to one of Europe's most important and influential labels and distros, all we can say is HURRAY! And HUZZAH! It's always so exciting, when a bunch of folks get together to spread the word about great music, great WEIRD music, and survive, even thrive. Such is the case with Conspiracy. And as if that weren't already enough, just knowing that some great people were selling some amazing music, those sweeties at Conspiracy have decided to share the love with us. And you.
To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they've decided to do a super limited subscription series, 12 records over 12 months, each limited to somewhere between 200-500 copies, ONLY available to series subscribers. EXCEPT, they've decided to let AQ have 20 copies of each, we're the only store with copies of these subscriber only lps, and for a brief moment, we can offer them to you, our loyal AQ customers. Needless to say we are thrilled, as the series lineup reads like a who's who of AQ faves, as well as including a handful of lesser knowns. All pressed on super thick vinyl, and packaged in killer hand screened original art sleeves. But be warned, we only got 20 of each, and we will run out fast and we will not be able to get more. When we do run out, there is a chance you can still get one from Conspiracy direct, but what that means is act fast and prepare to leave empty handed.
Almost not worth listing this one at all. We only got 20, almost 10 were gone almost before they hit the shelves. This latest GInnungagap is Mr. Stephen O'Malley of SUNNO))), Khanate and assorted other outfits. This one sided 12" is mostly solo piano, heavily reverbed, dense clouds of overtones, drifting and shimmery, with abstract bits of percussion and haunting barely there melodies. It actually sounds a bit like a Lubomyr Melnyk piece, played at 16rpm, little slow motion flurries of notes like snowflakes falling through a pitch black sky. Originally the sound component of an art show featuring O'Malley and Seldon Hunt, who also took the gorgeous cover photos, and who's crazy drawing is silkscreened in silver ink on the B side of this 12" Limited to 500 copies. Gone before you know it...
We shouldn't really have to say anything about this SUNNO))) SIDE PROJECT!!!! But we will, because it's pretty different that the various members' other bands, and it's really fucking great.
There have been a handful of Ginnungagap releases over the last few years, all of them featuring various lineups, and all of them invariably WAY too limited and selling for a fortune on eBay. We imagine this super limited lp won't be any different. Which is funny since this is actually a vinyl reissue of one of those long out of print and selling for way too much on eBay releases. Originally an installment in Southern's Latitudes series, this incarnation of Ginnungagap features SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley, Tony Sylvester (Iron Monkey, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine) and Alexander Tucker. A pretty cool group for sure, which is why the music on this disc is all the more surprising. A laid back, outer space, drifting buzzing abstract raga. Droney, dreamy and so hypnotic. Eclectic instrumentation (tamboura, harmonium, mandolin) helps the band weave a dense swirling drone from layers of buzzing steel strings, and wheezing chords, while above and throughout and within float tiny melodic fragments, a bit of buzz here, a little detuned twang there, all adding to the overall mesmeric drone. Eastern melodies materialize once in a while, only to drift into the ether as subtly as they appeared. SO NICE.
As with all Aurora Borealis lps, this is gorgeously packaged, gold ink on a vellum sleeve, packed in a thick clear sleeve, the vinyl is a glow in the dark looking milky white, the whole thing quite striking. And as always. VERY VERY LIMITED. ONLY 700 COPIES MADE! We got 40 copies, most likely never to get more.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The music from Ginnungagap's long out of print Return To Nothing cd is available again, however briefly, on vinyl, super swank swirled yellow vinyl in fact, and limited to 500 copies...
Ginnungagap is a term from Norse mythology that means something like "seeming emptiness" and that's a great name for this project, which sounds like it emanates from some abyssal void or abandoned cave or something. Ambient sinister drone improv, reminding us a little bit of House of Low Culture or even Thuja, if they were more creepy and liquid-sounding. Ginnungagap is a trio consisting of Khanate / SUNNO))) dude Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Khanate's Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, and Gerritt Wittmer (who runs the Misanthropic Agenda label, and records solo as Gerritt) on computer. Packaged in a gold-printed, flat oversized cardstock sleeve, this disc consists of two tracks: "Return To Nothing" being a live recording about a half-hour in length, followed by Gerritt's remix "Nothing To Return" for about 20 minutes more. Like so much Khanate / SUNNO))) related stuff, it's of course a limited edition release...
We originally said that about the cd, but in fact, by the time you read this, the lp too will probably already be out of print. So...act fast if you want one.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
These noisy weirdos, an eclectic, electronic cabal including Bananafish 'zine ringleader Seymour Glass, Barbara Manning, and Siltbreeze's Tom Lax, unleash some "plunderphonic improv" here on this limited Ultra Excema album from late 2009 that we accidentally forgot to list. Now we've got 2 copies left, act quick to abuse (and sometimes soothe) your earholes with this wax. We put it on sale too, just 'cause. Used to be the usual UE not so nice price of $27...
Seymour Glass's Glands Of External Secretion comes from the weirdo surreal art-punk primordial goo that birthed the likes of the Sun City Girls, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Porest / Monopause, irr.app.(ext.), and Caroliner. The Glands loiter in the funhouse of culture, picking and choosing the most bizarre bits to appropriate into strange, nauseous collages and splattered songwriting, and as one could gather from the project's name, scatology is never far away. Reverse Atheism could hardly be called a treatise on anything, despite the multitude of religious, atheistic, and existential themes, as Glass hurls everything at his disposal against the wall with a hard splat and an oozing trail down to the floor. Everything gets treated with the same disregard and clownish pie-tossing attitude. Such was commonplace when Glass published the seminal magazine Bananafish, complete with nonsensical reviews that talked more about rhinoceros foot bacteria (for example) than the merits of some mediocre indie band.
Here on Reverse Atheism, there are reinterpretations of biblical tracts, old gospel hymns, and cult-spawn texts (from Elizabeth Clare Prophet and L. Ron Hubbard, no less) alongside punk-era tirades against God and religion - the latter include mutant covers of XTC's "Dear God," God's Gifts "No God," and The Birthday Party's "Mutiny In Heaven." Glass has long worked with the far more sensible singer-songwriter Barbara Manning, bringing her beautifully languid voice into the warbling, asynchronous, fucked-up loops of various plonks and deconstructed song. He's also employed help from Bruce Russell (Dead C), Alastair Galbraith, and Scott Simmons (Eat Skull) amongst lots of other guests and vagrants. In the calliope of tongue-in-cheek references, Glass uniformly slices apart everything - transcendence, salvation, the end of the world, conspiracy theories, mind control, Darwinism, and any pretty much everything in between. The result is more of a mess of entrails than anything cohesive; of course, that's the way Seymour Glass views the world. A compelling and convoluted album for sure.
Fuzzed, flanged fusion fireballs, blowing shit up! Mentioned last list in our review of Gary Smith and Aufgehoben No Process's distorted death match "Magnetic Mountain", here's the Glass Cage cd: the instrumental improv trio of guitarist Smith, former Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper, and famed Japanese free jazz/rock percussionist Shoji Hano (you might know from collaborations with Keiji Haino, or his stint drumming with Nanjo Asahito's High Rise). The family tree that brought these three together must have some tangled roots indeed, but we're glad they found each other (actually, Smith and Hano have played together before, in a trio with Nanjo in fact, and presumably Hopper and Smith know each other from the UK avant-garde scene). The music they play is chaotic, but beautiful; noodly, but heavy (Hopper's thick fuzz bass sounds like that of the Ruins circa "Stonehenge"). Smith's "stereo" guitar veers wildly though the flak thrown about by the Hopper-Hano rhythm section. "Out" rock enthusiasts, like Nels Cline fans for instance, ought to investigate. Earplugs required.
First proper full length from this mysterious ambient drone noise ensemble. After a super limited cd-r and an also quite limited lp, this cd offers up 33 minutes of Glass Organ's crumbling corrosive drones, ambient, but -active- ambience, bordering on speaker shredding noise at moments, but spending much of its time drifting through dark and murky landscapes of minimal shimmer and subterranean rumble.�
Three tracks, each 11:11 long, this Devillock side project is ultimately a drone record, but GO's drones are twisted into all sorts of different shapes and sounds. The opening track begins with a dense hot static white noise keening feedback burst of blinding grind and roar, before suddenly transforming into burbling underwater whirs, before the corrosive noise of the opening returns, only this time looped into some almost melodies, making it sounds like some sort of damaged My Bloody Valentine outtake.�
The second chunk of 11 minutes and 11 seconds begins in moody mumble minimal mode, before bits of crumbling distortion begin to surface, eventually taking over completely turning the tranquil ambience into some serious blown out guitar drone a la Sunroof! / Hototogisu, all keening high end and grinding abrasive guitar growl. The final 11 minutes (and ii seconds!) is like part two of the second track, the same sort of ultra skree starting�out, this time way lower in the mix, a sort of low level rumble and scrape, which is soon joined by some super distorted psychedelic guitars, noodling and slithering and generally wrapping the low end rumble in sparkling tendrils of white hot guitar buzz. Surprisingly melodic and blissed out.�
Definitely for fans of Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Hototogisu, Burning Star Core, Wolf Eyes and similar practitioners of high end raga skree...
Packaged in a gorgeous and ultra minimal fold together cardstock sleeve, embossed design and text on a white sleeve, very white on white and quite striking. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
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For those of you who missed out on the amazing Glass Organ cassette (released on bad ass tape label Twonicorn) that we reviewed a while back, which we're guessing is probably most of you since it was limited to 45 copies and we only got about half, that amazing chunk of dreamy drifting droning weirdness is now available on vinyl! Just to refresh your memory, Glass Organ traffic in "slow moving washes of bleak ambience, creaking splintered abstract sound, dotted with bursts of acid fried corrosive synth meltdown, all heated up and poured tar like into your ears, a gurgling, burbling cauldron of warm murk and drooling grime. Filthy, fuzzy, freaked out innerspace ambience." Indeed! And that tape only takes up one side of this here lp, so on the other side, you get another long out of print Glass Organ tape, originally released on Tone Filth in a run of 100 copies (of which we got precisely NONE). It too is a gorgeous slab of corroded drones and fried song fragments. A crumbling mass of degraded sound, pretty little music box melodies drenched in static and hiss, blown out and in the red, constantly drifting from muddy and murky to super hot and fuzzed out, and the whole while slowly falling to pieces. So amazing.
And while these two tapes are finally available again, it doesn't mean they'll be around for long. Of course not. LIMITED TO 365 COPIES!! We got a bunch but odds are we won't be able to get more.
Packaged in super spare hand screened covers with printed black and white inserts.
It's hard to know exactly what to say about Glass Organ, an offshoot of noise combo Devillock (who we have yet to review on the list, we're working on it). We've had a handful of releases, all of them amazing, and all offering up subtle variations on Glass Organ's peculiar sound. And it's that sound that's a bit hard to describe. Which is maybe why we like it so much.�
Imagine a tiny room stuffed full of malfunctioning synthesizers, the din from inside seeping through the cracks, a�white hot, overblown soundscapes of synth damage and melting keyboard murk. Grinding and furious, blinding flurries of overblown glitch and squelch and squiggle. Corroded bits of melodies, and jagged chunks of what might have been songs in some other reality, all careening wildly Against, into, and around each other. It almost sounds like that point when you're listening to the car radio and you drive past a radio tower or something, and suddenly the radio goes haywire, the music becomes jumbled and distorted and unrecognizable, all sorts of random electronic interference starts jumping and skittering and streaking through the speakers, the sound is dizzying and intense, one of the things that convinces folks they made contact with aliens. It sounds a bit like that, if you then ran it through a distortion pedal and broadcast it through a million damaged speakers. But Glass Organ also takes those freaked out synths and smears them into muted�stretches of ultra creepy dark ambience,�intense roiling low end whirs, crumbling and burbling, doused in static and glitch, but strangely pretty, almost like an ultra minimal Goblin. And the sound weaves back and forth between these two extremes, often straddling the two resulting in some seriously creepy, pretty, glitchy noise!
Packaged in gorgeous thick shimmery paper, metallic printing, trippy psychedelic design. Recorded live, and...
LIMITED TO 130 COPIES!!!
Dreamdrone side project of Panther Skull folks. A haunting drift of fluttering synths, soft and wispy. Slow moving, washes of bleak ambience, creaking splintered abstract sound, dotted with bursts of acid fried corrosive synth meltdown, all heated up and poured tar like into your ears, a gurgling, burbling cauldren of warm murk and drooling grime. Filthy, fuzzy, freaked out innerspace ambience.
2ND EDITION, LIMITED TO 25 COPIES!!!
Music by Mr. Glass composed as a new soundtrack to the Bela Lugosi vampire classic, as performed by Kronos. Did you know that the 'Bela Lugosi' and 'Bela Lugosi as Dracula' characters, names, and all related indicia are trademarks of one Bela G. Lugosi, presumably a descendant of the actor?
The last Glitterbug record showed up in the midst of some sort of electronica renaissance, with fantastic new records from Pantha Du Prince, Actress, Klimek, T++ (sad we haven't heard anything else from them/him) and a bunch more, so Glitterbug, the work of a German DJ/producer fit perfectly with all of those, the sound lush and layered, softly psychedelic, cosmic with a definitely Pop Ambient vibe. We played that record to death. This record looks to follow suit, but unlike that first one, which was more a full self contained sound world, woven from both studio work and live recordings, this record, Cancerboy, is a much more personal collection, focusing on Glitterbug's struggle with cancer as a boy (hence the title). The record even starts off with what sounds like the ambient sound of a hospital room, the wheezing and beeping of machines, the voices of doctors and nurses, which gives way to the opening track "To Guess", which takes some of those sounds and weaves them into a dark, droney stretch of moody electronic melancholia, a hushed rhythmic shuffle, warm shimmery drones, little flecks of glitchery here and there, a super simple kick drum pulse, tinkling chimes, and ethereal melodies, quite haunting and cinematic, and an appropriately somber opening for a record with such a dark focus. But the darkness is not all encompassing, the record slips into more sort of Kompakt style minimal techno on "Abyss", a grid of pulse and click, wreathed in dark melodic swirls and brooding low end thrum, but as the song progresses, the melodies percolate wildly, the song grows more distorted and the vibe more frantic.
"Undertow" brings it back down, another Kompakt style shuffle, a woozy moody robotic groove, laced with a spidery minor key melody, the beats and loops in constant flux, sometimes sleek and clinical, other times noisy and rough around the edges, the vibe definitely cool and late night, but seemingly always underpinned by a melancholia that infuses the whole record. Much of the record could very well pass for some modern minimal techno, not knowing the background or the source of the title, but the record is rife with tracks that are a bit more moody and brooding, tracks that peel back the skitter and stutter to reveal the darkness underneath, like on "From Here On", that loops a strange echo drenched hand clap beat, and then drapes it with thick washes of low end rumble and waves of metallic buzz, as well as some delicate chiming melodies, or on "Dragged Along", which is a hushed sprawl of super spare dubbed out ambience, that skitters amidst vast swirls of barely there sonic shimmer, only coalescing into a proper beat near the end, and even then, wreathed in wistful melodies, or on "Outside My Window", which is a lush collage of tangled beats and murky swirling melodies and blurred psychedelic textures, that seem to gradually bleed into one another.
For whatever reason, we were expecting this to be some sort of fuzzy jangle pop, maybe it was the name? But this is in fact nothing of the sort, instead, Glochids, aka sonic mad scientist James Roemer, conjures up a seriously twisted, and gorgeously noisy collection of field recording driven, 20th century beholden, fractured avant collage soundscapery. The backdrop for most of these tracks do seem to be field recordings, gathered, we discovered via the label, from locales as diverse as South American bus stations, Wisconsin in the winter and the Sonoran desert to name just a few. But those recordings are reworked and reimagined, and while recognizable on some tracks, on others they're transformed into woozy smears, or crumbling, corrosive ambience, over which Roemer plays an assortment of instruments, piano and guitar, but also primitive computers, gamelan, even cactus quills, it could be a case where the making of is much more interesting than the actual music, but thankfully, Roemer weaves all of that random instrumentation, and the various processed field recordings into something quite mysterious and lovely. Some tracks are dark psychedelic blurs, others are chiming bell like melodies, still others seem to be formed from chopped up vocals tangled up with splattery percussion, and still others are murky staticky drones, laced with buried melodies and random rhythms, there are noisy bits for sure, but even then the sound is textured and nuanced.
Most of the record seems to exist in some weird faux early music / avant garde soundworld, as if this was some alien Folkways collection, gathered up on various trips, going door to door, or maybe planet to planet, capturing songs on porches and in fields, in spacecraft? And then sending them back via wormhole, where they get garbled and recontextualized, before they emerge here, in this time, gloriously corroded and splintered, doused in all manner of cosmic sonic detritus, the resulting abstract experimental folk music a strange strain of lovely, one that's often difficult, but deep listening is definitely rewarded.
We're actually reminded of an old aQ favorite, Brian Harnetty's American Winter, which took snippets of dialogue and oral histories, and wove them into field recordings and radio transmissions, wheezing chords and toy instruments. Glochids sounds a lot like a deconstructed, more Nurse With Wounded version of Harnetty's haunting collages. Which is a very good thing. Wonderfully weird and warped, and in its own twisted way, quite lovely as well.
Pressed on 160 gram vinyl, includes a download code and is LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!
One of six records which were originally part of a multi part release from local label Time Released Sound, whose releases are initially presented as deluxe hand crafted art editions, which we carry when we can, but in the case of this series, dubbed the 'chocolate box' series, which found each record pressed onto 3" cd-r's and packaged in a mini chocolate box, every box hand assembled, and every one different, the set had a seriously hefty price tag, and sold out super quick anyway, so while we weren't able to get our hands on the deluxe versions, thankfully the records were also available as proper cds in more modest packaging. We already reviewed the first two installments on the last New Arrivals List, Taskerlands and David Newlyn, and this week, we have the other four.
One of which is this one, from Rezo Glonti, a Georgian sound artist (as in the republic of Georgia, not GEORGIA), whose sound is a lush and lovely hybrid of warm washed out swells and mysterious electronic glitchery. Hazy dreamlike shimmers wreathed in swirls of static give way to hushed delicate ambient folk peppered with lush textures, buried field recordings surface and fade away, the vibe is almost choral, the sounds stately and serene, the strange clouds of electronics transforming a muted minimalism into something much more abstract and mysterious, as if they were lost broadcasts, being intercepted from some alternate universe or being sent forward from the past. The gauzy patina that surrounds most of these songs give them the feel of an antiquated unearthed recording, we hear shades of TIm Hecker and Philip Jeck, the same sort of soft focus staticky shimmer and woozy warbled melodies, all smeared into a bleary bit of electronic ambient drift, that is quite entrancing and mesmerizing.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!
