In the ever expanding catalog of the Hafler Trio, Kill The King may be the Hafler Trio's masterpiece. Originally released back in 1991 as a co-production between Staalplaat and Silent Records, Kill The King suffered the fate of many records pressed up at that time: digital bit-rot. In fact much of the Silent stock had to be destroyed; but thankfully Frans De Waard, who had been instrumental in the European half of the co-production, has now arranged for the reissue of this fantastic album on his Korm Plastics label.
Housed in the same oversized folio that came with the original, Andrew McKenzie -- currently the only member of the Trio, although Kill The King features some collaborative work with John Duncan and Zbigniew Karkowski -- wrapped this version in an extra vellum sleeve covered with his signature enigmatic texts. The sound program for Kill The King begins with a crackly, muffled recording of an unknown woman with a thick Northern European accent reciting a complex text in English. Her intentional monotone gives hints at the records theme: difficulties in communication; but as with all Hafler Trio narratives, they are not easily discerned. The voice is buried in hiss. Her accented monotone doesn't help matters, either. That said, this is a quintessential Hafler Trio strategy in setting the stage for the rest of the album. An influx of oxygenated drones usurps the voice and majestically claims the stereofield, resembling the same timbres of Jonathan Coleclough and Andrew Chalk's Sumac. Yet, the pacing of Kill The King is far more active than Sumac and thus more than the recent Halfer Trio productions, deftly shifting the stage to gravelly textures, data-crunched noises, dental drills, and cryptic voices run in reverse, all underpinned by various tones.
Kill The King is a difficult album to reduce to a few words, and with the band's no-mp3-samples policy, you can only take our word for it that this is one of his greatest works.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Does this man ever sleep? What are we at now? A release a month? More? We're seriously headed toward Acid Mothers Territory at this rate. The mysterious Hafler Trio (aka Andrew McKenzie) continue to explore the reaches of the dronological universe whilst raising money to cover his medicine and hospitalization, making up for his lack of health care (he's been quite ill for some time), this time with a brief, 19 minute piece, beautifully packaged as always, and pressed on a cool 3"cd embedded in 5" regular sized plastic cd. The sound is of course quite similar to recent h3o missives, but just different enough to keep things interesting. A shimmering barely audible industrial drone, shuddering and wheeing, is suddenly interrupted quite shockingly by a loud cough and then a smattering of applause. Not sure if that's some sort of veiled refernece to McKenzie's illness or he just thought it sounded cool. But it definitely interrupts the flow pretty dramatically. A static ticking soon starts up, wrapped in reverb and effects, stutters and then shifts back into the serene underwater thrum of the opening few minutes, with some less serene sonic embellishments: occasional buzzing short circuits, distorted telephone tones, chirping cricket high end whir, sputtery microphone glitch, murky half melodies and muffled distorted snippets of dialogue.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The gnostic censors have prohibited us from including MP3s of the Hafler Trio's work on the AQ website; so you'll just have to take our word that Normally is another exquisite Hafler Trio composition of psychoacoustically challenging dronework, this time entirely drawn from a series of vocalizations from Einstuerzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld. Only during a disruptive jolt on one of the two discs does Bargeld's inimitable voice become apparent, elsewhere the Halfer Trio has reduced the Bargeld voice into an eerie, extended drone. Of course, Andrew McKenzie -- the sole member of the 'trio' -- has included dozens of pages of ludicrously impossible to understand, post-rational / post-narrative texts for your amusement. Limited to 500 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
SUPER LIMITED!!!! WE ONLY HAVE A HANDFUL OF THESE IN STOCK AND MOST LIKELY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET MORE!!!!!
Yet another installment in the Hafler Trio's seemingly endless release schedule of late, all sonically amazing and brilliantly packaged and of course CRAZY EXPENSIVE. This one is no different. A double 10" meticulously packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve. Drones are still what it's all about soundwise, and you certainly won't hear any complaining from us! If you've picked up any of the recent Hafler Trio releases you'll have a good idea of where we are in the Trio's journey through the world of drones. As always a completely mesmerizing and soul stirring sonic experience.
And if you somehow missed the above warning, this is quite limited and once we run out they are most likely gone for good.
BACK IN STOCK!!! Originally released in 1985 as a set of 2 EPs on LAYLAH and reissued "wrongly" by Mute / Grey Area in 1992, Seven Hours Sleep marks yet another in the ongoing reissue campaign by Korm Plastics of work by The Hafler Trio. Seven Hours Sleep also happens to mark the last contributions from former Cabaret Voltaire member Chris Watson, although Andrew MacKenzie (the other founder of the 'trio') was still claiming that The Hafler Trio involved such fictional characters as Dr. Edward Moolenbeek and Robert Spridgeon. In recent years, MacKenzie has focused his activities upon the essentialization of the power of the human voice, as he has extracted intensely brilliant tonal fragments from the voices of Jonsi Birgisson, David Tibet, and Blixa Bargeld, stretching them into some of the most deliriously beautiful and acoustically powerful minimalism the world has ever witnessed. Well over two decades ago, the human voice was still central to MacKenzie's work in The Hafler Trio although in a slightly different context. Instead of focusing upon the essence of the human voice as a gnostic spark for enlightenment through sound, MacKenzie was far more interested in how perception and communication were intertwined, and how it was possible to create paranoiac atmospheres through the obfuscation of language's syntax. Within Seven Hours Sleep, MacKenzie rewires utterances, screams and megaphone broadcasts into a decentered collage of mediated fragments, rupturing flickering drones and unsettling field recordings. MacKenzie has demonstrated his power to confuse and delight through his complex laboratory of sound, mythology, and context; Seven Hours Sleep is no different. Sorry, no mp3 samples can be made available of the Hafler Trio's work.
It's been a while since anything from The Hafler Trio has come through our doors. So long in fact, we probably need to revisit the complex history into the Trio's work. There was never a time when The Hafler Trio was an actual trio, although the group's founders Andrew McKenzie and Chris Watson (then of Cabaret Voltaire fame and now the world's preeminent field recordist) had constructed the identity of a third member Dr. Edward Moolenbeek back in the early '80s. This Moolenbeek character was supposedly interested in the physical and psychological effects of sound upon the human populace, with an emphasis on presenting sound as an obfuscated means of communication through his research to the point of gnostic cryptography. Throughout the career of the Hafler Trio, a steady stream of interlocking and heavily encrypted set of allusions and allegories were conjured and manifested, but then all but disappeared from the public realm. Now, McKenzie (the sole pilot of the project for many years now) is offering his music solely as individual commissions to collectors who can pay a premium for his work.
Fortunately, Korm Plastics had reissued a good chunk of his back catalogue including the Hafler Trio's brilliant sound collage experiments Kill The King and Mastery Of Money. The Name Of Someone stands as the last in Korm Plastics reissue series, collecting three records that had been very difficult to find --Brainsong (1986, originally an lp on Touch), Kuklos (1988, also released through Touch), and (Antarctica) Brahma (1996, which was the accompaniment to a book whose contents are suitably elusive). We'll not belabor the conceptual agendas to each of these works, but the sounds are wholly compelling and well worth investigating. Brainsong is an oblique collage that begins with an overlapping of water field recordings sloshing against undulating drones, that are consumed within a caustic synth pattern that is sterile and bleak. Through a series of jump-cut edits, additions, and subtractions (a technique which is a signature of The Hafler Trio's work in the '80s), McKenzie offers a slow descent of tonebent drones seemingly built from the sustained wails of a female choir rendered as disjointed ghosts of a Cornelius Cardew piece of minimalism. Antarctica finds Hafler Trio in his long form compositional style of the late '90s and early '00s, structured from heavily layered filters and alien frequencies shot from other dimensions and / or other parts of the universe. One could think of Thomas Koner as someone operating in a similar field of desolate sound design and impeccable production techniques. Kuklos was also a soundtrack to a film about the graphic designer Neville Brody, and is a smear of thick grey drones and ghostly residues. It's hardly an 'ambient' record, but Kuklos is far less of the shapeshifting collage work that McKenzie had been producing around that time. All of his work comes highly recommended, even as it can be a difficult to get into... perhaps because it can be difficult to get into.
Unfortunately, McKenzie does not allow anyone to post sound samples of his work, so you'll have to take our word on it: this is brilliant.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Sea Org is a curious document, even for the Hafler Trio. This was originally released as a 10" on Touch Records back in 1987, before The Hafler Trio and Touch ended their relationship very acrimoniously. Touch (through their affiliation with Mute's Grey Area reissue series in the early '90s) had published all of this material on a compendium of Hafler Trio loose ends entitled All Things That Rise Must Converge. The Sea Org was part of the Golden Hammer series, which was a loose taxonomic heading for some of the early Hafler Trio recordings. What specific allegorical connectivity exists between The Sea Org and fellow Golden Hammer recordings such as Bang! An Open Letter or Seven Hours Sleep is anybody's guess; however, there is a general similarity throughout the series in the Hafler Trio's research into media manipulation, forged scientific evidence, and conspiracy-driven paranoia.
At this time, The Hafler Trio may have included Chris Watson working alongside Andrew McKenzie, although verification of this or any fact about the 'Trio' is impossible to the point of being moot. Regardless, The Sea Org is one of the most inscrutible documents of The Hafler Trio. And that's saying something! The Trio offers long passages of varispeed pitched audio collages of cooing pigeons, weird pipe organ sounds, and mechanized creakings, which in turn are punctuated and broken by decontextualized media samples. Make of it what you will.
There are no MP3s available for Hafler Trio material. Boo.
In the early 80s, Andrew McKenzie of The Hafler Trio had developed a friendship with David Tibet, around the same time that Tibet was beginning the ideas that formed Current 93. As a result, the two had planned on a collaboration which was supposedly to be called Dogs Blood Rising, which Tibet later used as both a one-off live project as well as the title for one of the most chilling Current 93 records. The press releases cite that this project never materialized beyond a few works in progress "due to never explained circumstances." Yeah, it's the Hafler Trio, so the mysterious termination of this project has to go unexplained. Well, over twenty years go by and McKenzie resurrects the tapes in the form of Where Are You? within a Halfer Trio series based on voice, language, and what McKenzie qualifies as essense. Like Normally, the first in the h3o voice series, McKenzie stretches Tibet's voice into a beautifully crystalline drone. Sorry no MP3 samples, and this is limited to 500 copies.
Almost a year ago exactly, if you happened to glance at the calendar for San Francisco's Great American Music Hall, you might have spotted an upcoming performance by The Hafler Trio, marking the first time that The Hafler Trio played San Francisco since an infamous show featuring The Hafler Trio, Phauss, and Zbigniew Karkowski held at the Kennel Club way back in 1991. Plans had been drawn up for an entire US tour for The Hafler Trio, with Andrew McKenzie inviting Colin Potter (also of Nurse With Wound), Andrew Liles, and Matt Waldron (of irr. app. (ext.)) to join him as the supporting cast in the Trio; however, the logistics of the tour were doomed from the onset and the already scheduled dates had to be cancelled due to what the Hafler Trio called "extreme incompetence". Like pretty much every touring ensemble these days, The Hafler Trio planned on recording an album to be sold only at the performances. While the tour was cancelled, the recordings were fortunately not thrown out. McKenzie continued working with sound material provided by Liles and Potter (or at least that's what we assume), resulting in 3 Eggs.
The whistling drones modulating with an elegance and subtly indicative of the Hafler Trio's signature over the past six or seven years dominate the album; but McKenzie allows numerous instances for Liles and Potter to utter their own take on sonic sculpture, with deformed bits of vocalizations and samples of Victorian quirkiness appearing from the Liles camp, and deep throngs of gaping drones speaking to Potter's sensibility. The only question we have to ask is why Mr. Waldron was not invited to participate in this venture. Oh well. It's testament to the fact that the ill-fated 2005 tour would have been an amazing performance regardless of whatever that "extreme incompetence" actually consisted of.
Sorry, no MP3 samples of anything Hafler Trio related.
As we mention in our review of the Dante Augustus Scarlatti cassette (reviewed elsewhere on this list), Auris Apothecary is quickly becoming out fav new label, with a limited catalog, of exquisitely crafted releases, that are as much art as they are music, tape loops in vials, NES Nintendo soundtrack cassettes, tapes wrapped in warped 7"s, everything hand screened and assembled, drawn, painted, glued, whatever, every single release super unique. If you follow us on Facebook and/or Twitter (which you should, cuz we announce lots of things that may not make it to the list!), you probably saw the tape loop vial and the NES tapes, which both disappeared in a flash (although we might have one or two Castlevania tapes left, just ask), and for sure check out the Scarlatti tape, and then there's this, a double album from Hail Architeuthis, with the awesomely wordy title: Herald The Harbinger Of Impending Acoustics, The Horseman Who Revived Organic Institutions. And while we were expecting some sort of dark dronemusic or experimental ambience, instead what we got was some serious intense, mathy metal, or sort of math metal / noise rock hybrid, whatever you call it, it's a wildly chaotic, super dynamic blow out of churning riffs, pounding drumming, lots of droned out interludes and soaring layered riffing, head spinning progged out arrangements, the vocals howled and way down in the mix, these guys sounding sometimes like a more metal Lightning Bolt, other times like a wilder looser Don Cab, the sound raw and in the red, the cd version containing the band performing live, recorded live to analog tape, the songs sprawling and spic, slipping from hushed tense minor key shimmer, to post rock slow build to full on metallic noise math crunch. So ruling. The accompanying cassette is a whole different program, low fidelity and cinematic, a soundtrack of sorts to accompany the printed scroll that accompanies the cd/tape. Scroll? Well we did mention the AA packaging was over the top, and this is indeed pretty elaborate. We were gonna describe it, a cardboard box with a cd and a spray painted tape and a ribbon tied scroll affixed to the PRINTED inside of the box, but hell, let's give you the label description of the package:
"Five inch white reel to reel box with 3 color black/white/silver silk-screened wrap on light-grey or ice blue cardstock. Professionally replicated & glass-mastered CD's with full color offset printing on the disc face. Brushed metallic nickel spray-painted cassette tapes with rubber-stamped artwork in white ink. Scroll inkjet-printed on silver vellum in 2 colors. 2-color inserts in base of each side of reel box printed on clear vellum. Vellum obi-wrap around box with blue or black inkjet printing; serial number stamped in silver silkscreen ink or black ink and sealed with a silver wax seal."
And yeah, it's just as cool as that description makes it sound. And it's limited to, only 150 copies, and we're all a little late to the party, so not sure if we can get more once these are gone...
It's hard to not simply fall back upon the immediate observation that D. Haines' Emo album is the fictional remix that Wolfgang Voigt (aka Gas) should do for drone label Troum. With the Gas records (especially Konigsforst) and the Troum / Maeror Tri records
Release number 4 from this great new New Zealand label. Just like the first two (Rosy Parlane and Parmentier, reviewed in the last AQ-List) these are all-white packages of beautiful, minimal music.
D. Haines' disc is the lo-fi equivalent of Steve Reich, Colon Nancarrow, and LaMonte Young. Haines hammers out unswerving movements between two piano chords. It's hard to say if the recording is totally dry and the consonant throb is a but a psychoacoustic phenomenon or if Haines amplified and processed the piano, but Blither is damn good either way.
It's interesting for us to note that the last few releases we've had from black-clad Japanese psychedelic shaman* Keiji Haino have been big sellers, doing better even than usual for Haino discs here at AQ, perhaps on account of how they were put out by limited edition specialists aRCHIVE in super swank packaging (also, they were definitely excellent albums). So we've got to figure that a lot of folks who'd never before bought a Haino cd got one or both of those aRCHIVE releases as their first. Which is great, more people should definitely be getting into Haino's music -- he's an intense, impassioned talent (if an acquired taste...). It's funny, though, 'cause what he's really best known for is his searing guitar playing (and equally intense vocals). But those aRCHIVE cds, and several other of his recent releases, have highlighted other areas of creative exploration: electronics and hurdy-gurdy drones, solo percussion, a collaboration with a twenty-piece sitar orchestra, and primitive acoustic guitar improv... Not the heavy-duty, feedback-filled, freeform electric guitar he plays in Fushitsusha. As if on cue, this new solo release from Japan's PSF label documents just that: an hour-plus long set of electric guitar and vocals. So, Haino fans new and old, here's a must-have. Utilizing overdubbing (an infrequent technique for Haino), Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku starts all sinister and ominous, notes vibrating alone in the darkness, joined by more guitar lines, sounding totally HAUNTED but marching quietly forward, joined eventually by Haino's unique, plaintively tormented vocals (here sometimes hushed, sometimes oddly pretty). It builds and builds, becoming more urgent, more tense, more disturbed. Repetitive, feverish yawing, quite hypnotic. At about the halfway point, the volume gets dialed up, and there's an attack of swirling guitar violence... then back to the haunted void, and on, and onward... Haino fans will hear echoes his old classic Affection, and also the multilayered textures of his Next, Let's Try Changing The Shape and Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka solo albums. Good company indeed.
Such harrowing atmosphere. Such dark beauty. Such power -and- restraint. So emotional, so expressive, and all from one person -- well if there was more than one Haino could the world bear the weight? Hear this, feel it, and maybe you'll understand what we mean.
*shaman, dark lord, some title like that always seems appropriate in describing him!
Hey, these three must really like playing together (and WE really like 'em playing together too). 'Cause this Haino/O'Rourke/Ambarchi collaboration has turned out to be not a one-off, or even two-off; this international power trio are on their fourth full album, now, in just four years. And just getting better and better it seems. This outing again combines the colossal void-sculpting electric guitar & emotive, echoing vocal yawp of Japanese psych shaman Haino, with sturdy rhythm section backup from indie/experimental superstars Jim O'Rourke (bass) and Oren Ambarchi (drums). You can imagine the latter two doing the whole 'we're not worthy' routine in the face of Haino's overpowering black-on-black aesthetic, but actually they ARE pretty worthy, O'Rourke's Brise-Glace background (and oh, yeah stint in Sonic Youth) aligning with dronester-by-day Ambarchi's interest in motorik krautrock percussion stylings (e.g. Sagittarian Domain) to definitely hold up their end and provide plenty of interest and umph to the improvised (?) soundscapes through which Haino's guitar carves wide swaths.
This time round, there's some surprises, too - including a cameo appearance by famed minimalist drone-pioneer Charlemagne Palestine! That's on the opening, nearly 10 minute track, which also features Japanese guest Eiko Ishibashi, both playing wine glasses (yes wine glasses) making dulcet drones over which Haino gently (yes gently) sings and plays guitar. That's another surprise, how quietly and peacefully this begins, and continues, on the spacious second track too, where Haino plays flute (yes flute)� quite nice. But have no fears, fans of the Fushitsusha-freakout-mode of Haino's guitaring, as despite the relative restraint and loveliness of those first two tracks, this set does get heavy and noisy as it goes on, the group erupting into amped-up action by the time track three rolls around, replete with the choppy attack and grinding tones of Haino's guitar. Ambarchi provides a steady beat, steadier than on your usual Fushitsusha fare, pounding away alongside the distorted bass of O'Rourke in cyclic rhythmic grooves, providing compelling, mesmeric support for Haino to do 'his thing' - and this is very much his thing - as the cryptic/poetic song titles will attest. Somewhat in contrast to Haino's reactivated Fushitsusha unit, which has gone in the direction of dealing in beautifully difficult, short, sharp shocks, getting almost no-wavy on their two recent Heartfast label albums, this Fushitsusha-like trio has stayed more in stretched-out jam territory, all right with us too. So, recommended for any fan of Fushitsusha OR this band, and we do consider them a band at this point, albeit as mentioned, and as it should be, a Haino-centric one.
NOW ON VINYL!!! The 4th album from this all-star international improv unit. We're fans of Jim O'Rourke (bass) and Black Truffle label head Oren Ambarchi (drums) of course, but we're even bigger fans of dark lord of Japanese psych Keiji Haino (guitar, vocals), which is good - 'cause, as should come as no surprise, he's the dominant personality in this trio. This formation - and its slight variant, with Stephen O'Malley in place of O'Rourke - has become one of the best sources for a reliable Haino-fix. This disc (on cd for now, vinyl upcoming) consists of one 40+ minute track, that begins blissfully, with sparse, Eastern-sounding string pluck and sudden strum, eventually joined by gentle, more-melodic-than-usual singing from Haino. But does it stay that way? Of course not. Haino steps away from the mic, his guitarwork gets more tangled, the drumming more insistent, heavier bass tones begin to resonate, and then at about the 14 minute mark, some (still relatively mild) feedback amp action kicks in as well. A storm is not unleashed, not yet, but dark clouds gather on the horizon, and the air becomes thick with anticipation. Ambarchi keeps up a nervous pulse, steadily skittering away, as Haino and O'Rourke build up drones, high and low. Electronic bleepage and sci-fi FX wander in from somewhere, and we're expecting immanent cataclysm. But nay, the trio pull back, Haino returns to the mic, hushed at first, his vocals backed by Jandekian fractured folk that then gets hectic and no-wavey in recent Fushitsusha tradition. More extreme noisiness briefly erupts at about the half-hour mark, but fades, heralding a humid jungle jam, Haino on flute we think (or recorder?), Ambarchi's beats getting bongo-y. Nice.
Side stepping some of our usual expectations, but not nearly all of 'em, this one's another interesting addition to this trio's oeuvre, and we're left wanting more.
At the end of our review of this trio's previous recording, Only Wanting To Melt Beautifully Away Is It A Lack Of Contentment That Stirs Affection For Those Things Said To Be As Of Yet Unseen, we wrote, "we're left wanting more", and now, less than a year later, more is upon us!
Vinyl-only for now, Tea Time For Those Determined To Completely Exhaust Every Bit Of This Body They've Been Given (that title, is it Haino's goofiest yet? Tea Time??) again sees this by-now well-established trio doing what they do, which is generally what guitarist/vocalist/flautist Haino does: abstract, intense, shamanic 'outrock'. He's the dominant personality, as usual, but the contributions of the O'Rourke/Ambarchi rhythm section are immense, neither of those dudes being slouches at playing their instruments or being creative, either. Facility with all the appropriate free jazz, post rock, and neo-kraut idioms are no problem for them, needless to say.
Recorded live in March 2013 in Tokyo, this lp is, in fact, the second set the trio played that night, the first having been released as Only Wanting To Melt Beautifully Away... album - thus this follows on from that about as closely as possible, indeed. It features 3 long tracks (with long track titles too!), the third taking up an entire album side. Much magic ensues, as the already-obsessed can imagine.
Encore! (Again!)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
For some folks (you know who you are), this has got to be the most exciting entry on this week's New Arrivals list. The second recorded collaboration by this heavy duty international trio, each with their own dedicated following. But let's not kid ourselves. Only one is truly a cult, he of the dark shades and bangs. And, not to discount the impassioned contributions of Mssrs. O'Rourke and Ambarchi, both talented musicians and noisemakers in their own right, this is, as all such collaborations ultimately are, Keiji Haino's album, he's the star of the show (cf. Keiji Haino & Boris, Keiji Haino & Pan Sonic, Keiji Haino with Bill Laswell & Rashied Ali...). This is how it should be, how it must be, how it always shall be. So, if, say you were interested in an Ambarchi or O'Rourke record that just happens to have the Dark Lord of Japanese psych playing a little guitar on it, this isn't it. This is a new Haino album, with O'Rourke and Ambarchi in the roles of very capable sidemen, essentially manifesting a 2011 version of Haino's classic power trio, Fushitsusha! And O'Rourke and Ambarchi are here for a reason (for the 2nd time). That reason, being to bask in the darkly-shining psychedelic magnificence channelled uniquely by Haino, to be a part of that, to experience and share in it, and probably be changed by it. For the same reason we listen, but more so. O'Rourke, whose usual instrument is guitar, plays bass (as he did in Sonic Youth). Ambarchi, best known for his guitar-based dronemongering, plays drums. The implication is obvious. Both do their utmost to help Haino achieve, well, Haino-ness. And he does. On these four loooong tracks, recorded live in Tokyo, January 2011, washes of distortion and feedback are sculpted with eerie otherworldly angles only possible in some non-Euclidean musical geometry... shrill, sparking tendrils of guitar cascade over steady percussive plod and skitter. Haino's emotive vocal shriek is wrenched forth poetically o'er some select passages, but mostly this is about the ominous glorious grinding interplay of the three instruments. There's quiet stretches, and rocked-out bass-heavy ones; rhythmic moments of softly pulsating distorted shuffle, others where all players meld in one slomo explosion of dense churning muzz. Fans of Haino, fans of Fushitsusha, you want this. Those more familiar with the *other* two guys, well, they're introducing you to something special... And if your soul has ever cried out in the void, you'll like it. (PS if it's not obvious, a huge Haino fanboy here wrote this review!)
Nice graphics/design by Stephen O'Malley. Cd in digipack; vinyl in nice gatefold, cut at Dub Plates and Mastering, Berlin.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've never been that into Hair Police, but this 12" has been weirdly getting tons of repeat play. Gorgeously packaged, some crazy squiggly luminescent blue on black artwork, it's one sided, the B side is a cool etching, and the music is pretty freaky and dark, droney and weird.
Downtuned guitar rumble and buzzy synth wound into thick undulating backdrops for all manner of fucked up electronics, lots of glitch and squelch, some strange alien melodies, the low end constantly heaving and pulsing, the clouds of effects and electronics alternating between shimmer and skree, the whole thing very creepy and ominous and cinematic, occasionally slipping into some serious NOISE and some intense Wolf Eyesian grind and rumble, lots of feedback and tons of tripped out FX, eventually drifting back into a jagged synthbuzzdrone. Cool stuff!
We only have SEVEN copies of this. It's no brand new, so odds are these are the last copies, which means if you really want one of these, act fast.
Primitive electric no wave noise planes. Sound pretty good huh? It is, actually! For certain moods, certain people, certain places, times and things.
The Lexington, KY trio of Robert Beatty, Mike Connelly (Wolf Eyes) and Trevor Tremaine open our ears enough to bleed all over the place with this penetrating severist noise. You can even catch Wolf Eyes' John Olsen for a brutal saxophone cameo on the title track. Constantly Terrified will be most utterly enjoyed by brutal noise fans and others who heart the pummelling noise/rock of Burmese, Wolf Eyes, Dead Machines, etc.
Hair Police bring us a fucked-up sludgey noise jam in the Wolf Eyes/1996-era Black Dice vein. Not bad, but not really anything new sounding. There's no dynamicism on Drawn Dead, though maybe that is the point. If you're a noise enthusiast you could be interested in its abrasive, suffocating tape sludge. Or not. It's possible that their newer recording, Constantly Terrifed (scheduled for release soon on Troubleman) will be more... uh, better?
Hair Police are the midwestern noise trio of Mike Connelly (Failing Lights, Wolf Eyes, etc), Robert Beatty, and Trevor Tremaine; and as with most of the American Tapes / Hanson horde, Hair Police has been content with the smattering of cassettes and hand-burned cd-rs between the larger editions on the usual suspects of No Fun, Ultra Eczema, and Hospital Productions. We've mentioned before that they never really stirred much more than "that's a stupid name" response from us (not that stupid band names have prevented adoration here at Aquarius Records. take Terminal Cheesecake, Solar Anus, Shit & Shine); but with the endorsement of the ever reliable ears of John Twells at Type Records, we had to take another listen at what they're up to. Side One opens with a subterranean clank that lumbers forward into a noise-doom dirge for bass / drum sludginess and feedback laden feral vocal delivery that harkens back to the earlier Wolf Eyes / Factrix monstrosities. The lo-fi, death industrial marches continue throughout much of the rest of the album with plenty of dark electronic overtures, circuit-bent noise overload, and ominous rhythmic disintegrations. The psychic crumbling that Hair Police addressed throughout these tracks is actualized in a couple of amorphous tracks of LAFMS-styled splutter and metal scraping which conclude the album. This is some seriously dark shit for sure.
"Nineteen American Waysides" features 19 recordings from highway rest-areas made all across the US, including insect choruses, garbage truck hydraulics, twittering birds, gentle rain storms, and lots of rushing din from the nearby freeways. Occasionally, Haire played back processed versions of the "Victrola Favorites" cassettes curated from the Climax Golden Twins' collection of Victrola 78s. These murky waltzes, operatic arias, and spoken word snippets -- all swimming in the lo-fi grime of antique 78s -- are wonderful and wistful sounds, that contrast nicely with the clarity of the rest of Haire's recordings. A curious but meditative piece of recording that is well worth checking out.
Having worked as a studio engineer and producer in Seattle for the past 15 years for a broad array of musicians such as Joe McPhee, Jeff Grienke, Carl Stone, Kill Switch...Klick, and Eyvind Kang, Doug Haire is a man obsessed with the nature of sound. While professionally he deals with relatively traditional realms of composition, his obession lies in field recordings, as he explores "the ways in which we recognize, differentiate, map and navigate our sonic environment," to quote the manifesto of the Seattle organization Phonographers' Union, which Haire belongs to. Not as much a purist as Douglas Quinn or Chris Watson, but far less process oriented than Eric La Casa, Haire has built a series of pristinely recorded and produced collages which elegantly crossfade between environmental focal points.
Super limited so don't dawdle.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In terms of 'keywords' this review should go something like this: Hala Strana, Jewelled Antler, Thuja, Steven R. Smith, Mirza, limited edition cd-rs, Eastern European folk music. Eh? Ok, now some of you are already clicking ADD TO CART or headin' down to our store. But if all that was more-or-less gobbledygook to you, let's elaborate. Hala Strana, which you may already have encountered as an entry in the Jewelled Antler Library series of 3" cdrs, is a project of LA-based multi-instrumentalist (and multi-instrument builder) Steven R. Smith, who is a member of Jewelled Antler flagship improv psych group Thuja and a solo artist in his own right. Hala Strana is his vehicle for instrumental droned-out Eastern European folk music appreciation/interpretation, and really represents some of his finest work to date. Multitracking turns Steven R. Smith into a one-man village orchestra, playing everything from violin to optigan, bul bul tarang to gourd guitar, harpsichord to clay flowerpots! Bouzouki, cello, harmonium, percussion, etc. These songs also incorporate snippets of field recording tapes and sampled recordings of traditional music. Plus some of his Thuja cohorts also show up to help out.
Many of the tracks are based on traditional folk tunes from Hungary, Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, and other Balkan backwaters. If you've heard any of the wonderful Muszikas records, you'll understand Steven R. Smith's inspirations. His arrangements and instrumention turn 'em into total folk-psych gems, reminding us of certain krautrock bands, International Harvester, the Dirty Three, Kemialliset Ystavat, Black Forest/Black Sea, all sorts of good things. Utter old world beauty meets underground drone aesthetics = some kind of Transylvanian trance music. Really nice. And we're looking forward to *another* new Hala Strana disc, a cd being released on Emperor Jones next week. That one's gonna be good too. But Fielding is hard to top. After all, there's TWO discs worth of music, and a handsome, handmade lil' booklet of art and text included. Unfortunately, there's only about 25 of these still available, so act fast!
The fourth in the Jewelled Antler Library series of 3" cd-r releases comes from Thuja's Steven R. Smith, who has taken up the Hala Strana moniker for his Eastern European-folk music inspired meditations. "Karst" continues down the path of his previous Jewelled Antler production "Kohl" (which is slated for a reissue on 12" by Emperor Jones) with a more ramshackle production for his dense acoustic arrangements for guitar and scratchy violin, which often hints at Eastern European timbres but as played by Nikki Sudden. In fact two of Smith's tracks are versions of traditional Polish and Romanian folk songs. Often beginning with a clutter of loose sounds, Smith coaxes his orchestrations into melancholic melodies and has smothered everything with an unusual patina of crunchy vinyl static, giving the 18 minutes a distinctly antiquated feel. A great entry in a great series.
MPEG Download: "Sztajer" [/audio/halastranasztajer.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Sztajer" [/audio/halastranasztajer.m3u]
Ok, here's a Hala Strana cd that we won't (or shouldn't) run out of, unlike the super-limited Jewelled Antler double cd-r release we reviewed last list. But hurry up n' buy it anyway, 'cause it's also a good one! As splendid as the double, if less sprawling.
Hala Strana, for those just tuning in, is the Eastern European inspired psych-folk-drone project of the prolific and talented Steven R. Smith (Thuja, Mirza, his own self). SRS wrote all but two of the 13 tunes on here (there's a trad. Moravian and trad. Transylvanian credit for those two) and plays ALL the myriad instruments, from guitar to harmonium to cello to drums to accordion to melodica to glockenspiel... With the magic of overdubbing, he's a one man orchestra. But we wish this was a band, just 'cause we'd *love* to hear this music live!
Though only two of the tracks are actually based on traditional Eastern European folk, they all share that spirit, the "Transylvanian trance" lure mentioned in the review of that other Hala Strana. Some of the songs have an epic vibe that comes across like a Balkan Godspeed You Black Emperor!, others are more intimate, with melodic hooks that make 'em sound a bit like instrumental Decemberists tracks -- maybe that's the accordion making us think that. Very recommended.
As much as we love downtuned sludge and the whole dronedoomdirge static guitar buzz thing, and we do, believe us, we do, we love it even more when bands take that sound and warp it into something completely new. Such is the case with Aphotic Leech, a 35 minute single track from the duo known as Half Makeshift. Well, not sure if it's a duo as one guy is credited with piano, guitar, organ, glitch work and manipulation, while the other guy apparently "unknowningly provided all [the] percussion". Strange...
As is this disc. It begins with a sudden flurry of glitchy static that quickly gives way to dark dolorous piano, picking out a mournful, funereal melody, the notes drifting over simple chiming percussion, while beneath hover stretched out marimba melodies and a low distant thunderous rumbling. This dour march is occasionally enveloped in dense clouds of crumbling distortion and thick swaths of damaged electronics, always returning to it's spacious dark lilt. It's all very dynamic as well, with dark clusters of notes punching through the shimmery moodiness every once in a while, always retreating to a glacial drift. The notes on the piano gradually change form, wreathed in glitch, turned inside out, flipped backwards, often just subtly altered to flicker like some old projector, eventually erupting in a thick, grinding low end drone, the notes completely obscured, wrapped in thick swaths of crackle and glitch, the whole thing threatening to split apart, like watching the sky blacken and crumble above you, not long after the piano is swallowed up by a thick molten flow of black downtuned guitar drone, and you may think SUNNO))) is heavy? But this is more than heavy, caustic and black, a dense sludge so thick it barely makes it out of the speakers, but this low-end assault is peppered with strange production glitches, malfunctioning electronics, the notes, the sounds, all damaged and decaying, as if they might fall to the ground and break into a million pieces, but as long as they retain their shape, they are capable of crushing everything in their path.
Eventually the piano returns, but the notes are chopped into strange skipping rhythms, the rumbling, guitar crumble relegated to a swirling black backdrop, and finally, after one brief blast of black hole guitar grime, the track reverts to it's blissed out black ramble, culminating in a dark stuttering piano fade out....
Absolutely essential for the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined, fans of all things SUNNO))), Nadja, Fear Falls Burning, Trollmann, Boris, Marzuraan... Packaged in a super striking fold over sleeve, with a black on gold jellyfish on one side, and a truly revolting, but gorgeous penis-head-mask thing on the other, an amazing photograph by Max Aguilera-Hellweg, who was also responsible for the amazing photos on the sleeve of Fantomas' Delerium Cordia.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
We mention elsewhere on this list, about the strange viral spread of underground bands via cd-r labels. One super hyped release is all it takes, suddenly more releases begin popping up on all the other usual cd-r labels. Thankfully this usually happens to bands who deserve it, and who we can't get enough of, so more releases in that instance is definitely good news.
Such is the case with Half Makeshift, who actually started out with some proper full length cd releases, before they began dabbling in limited cd-r releases. We've listed two of their discs so far, both fantastic, dark and heavy, dense and thick, ominous and intense. Much heavier and more aggressive than your typical cd-r floorcore fare.
And 'they' is actually a 'he', he being Nathan Michael, who takes sounds low and slow, and assembles them into strangely propulsive downtuned dirges, hovering sonically somewhere between the glacial sludge of SUNNO))) and the muted minimal shimmer of folks like Aidan Baker or Jonathan Coleclough.
On Final, Michael explores a bit of both. The opener is a fierce plodding lurch, slowed way down to an almost crawl, the beats are big and effected, but they are buried in the mix, and pitched down, above the beats, guitars grind woozily and swirl weightlessly, it almost sounds like a Nadja 45 spinning at 33, or Jesu slowed way dooooooooown. A blissed out post industrial shoegazey doom, more pretty than heavy, but still shot through with bits of sharp riffage and thick crunch, but by the end, the track has transformed into a muted minor key drift, soft and serene. The second track takes the end of the first and stretches it out into a whole track of whispered whir and warm chordal swells.
The third track of four begins with piano, processed and spun backwards, a dreamily dizzy bit of swell and swoop, that continues throughout the whole track, at one point passing through thick black clouds of low end rumble, before emerging on the other side spare and sparse and hovering in an austere wide open space.
The final track, the title track, appropriately called "Final", is another piano driven jam, more moody and murky, a funereal dirge, a somber musical death march, the sounds changing timbre and tone subtly, the various notes wrapped in effects and slipped back into the melodies, gorgeously forlorn and sweetly sinister.
Like all Small Doses discs, incredible packaging, two different colored and textured paper rectangles, glued together and then folded to create a super striking two tone layered sleeve, printed with gorgeous austere photos, each copy hand numbered. LIMITED TO 151 COPIES!
Last year we raved about this oddly named, mysterious one-man-band's debut disc on Utech, entitled Aphotic Leech, saying stuff like "Absolutely essential for the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined, fans of all things SUNNO))), Nadja, Fear Falls Burning, Trollmann, Boris, Marzuraan". We've been letting Half Makeshift's second cd (four tracks this time, instead of one long one) sink in for a while now, and are convinced that it's just as amazing, even more spacious and atmospheric. Though maybe we should stress that while we think that the drone-doom-death-dirge inclined are likely to dig this, it ISN'T really all that heavy. More super moody and slow and atmospheric. It's not until like the end of the seventeen minute track 1 "The Whale's Heart", and again halfway through the 14 minutes of track 3, the title track, that some truly loud and heavy guitar destruction is heard. A lot of the rest of the time, this is way more restrained. The first track, for instance: Chiming tones and majestic chords, slow and gorgeous. Building slowly, ponderously, into a massive cloud of distorted rumble, joined by a broken, staccato rhythm track right, blast beat style, at the end that eventually glitches out as the song fades away, piano notes suspended amidst the silence hum reverie in silent reverie. Later on, you get gentle music box melodies combined with fuzzed guitar worthy of a black metal horde. And slo-mo doom, with seagulls and ocean samples, that's mesmeric but never all that heavy.
It's all the work of one guy, Nathan Michael, who is credited with piano, organ, strings, drone, machines, manipulation, glitch work. He hails from Maryland, a hotbed of old school doom, but Half Makeshift is closer to Nadja than Pentagram. Also way more post-rock! Sorta like Coh meets SUNNO))). Heck not too unlike KTL.
Mastered by James Plotkin, and packaged much like an aRCHIVE release, in an oversized rectangular 4 panel cardboard sleeve with four postcard-like arty photo inserts featuring super striking images of towers and piers and tunnels and back alleys...
We have yet to be disappointed by the restrained, doomic ambience that Half Makeshift (aka Nathan Michael) provides. More atmospheric than absolutely heavy (most of the time), Half Makeshift makes chilling chill out albums for the SUNNO))) scene. This new one is called Omen and it is indeed quite... ominous. It lets you get about 8 minutes into the first track before the crashing waves of distortion kick in. Even then, despite the volume, it still seems somehow hushed. And before the track is over, it retreats again into a melodic, melancholic realm of looping loveliness for guitar; spare and spacious and unhurried. Elsewhere on this album that pattern repeats itself, this moody work having a stretched-out set of dynamics like a somnolent post-rock band... it's quietly droning much of the time, adorned with plaintive piano and guitar, building a seductive sense of despair, that occasionally reaches level of cathartic release when Half Makeshift so subtly cranks it up and gets heavy. Loops and backwards effects and digital glitch figure into the mix throughout, but no vocals. Omen has a baleful prettiness to it that could appeal to fans of recent Earth, KTL, Fear Falls Burning, Nadja, Fun Years, and Oren Ambarchi amongst others.
And this time Half Makeshift makes its home on the Profound Lore label, who, not unlike the likes of Southern Lord, 20 Buck Spin, and often tUMULt, teeters on various edges of the metal/doom/drone/blackened/experimental zone, with releases from the likes of Alcest, Atavist, Nadja, Wold, and (reviewed last list) Krallice.
Graham Halliwell is one of the practitioners of what has been dubbed the New London Silence, a taxonomic distinction which may have more to do with geography than stylistic differences. Lowercase, microwave, and onkyo have been other adjectives applied to Halliwell's particular sensibility, in defining quiet compositions and improvisations within the avant-garde (e.g. Alvin Lucier, Morton Feldman, Phill Niblock, etc.). Regardless of what you want to call it, Halliwell has applied a reductionist methodology to his instrument of choice: the saxophone. On Recorded Delivery, Halliwell presents a series of duets with likeminded musicians, two of which could fit into the New London Silence school as well (being that they're also from London) and the other being the Los Angeles sound artist Steve Roden. The first track finds Halliwell with harpist Rhodi Davies; and the two generate a quiet soundfield that is deceptively dangerous as the intersection of their acoustic drones from sax feedback and ebowed harp can manifest headsplitting frequencies even at very low volumes due to the purity of those sounds. The second duet is between Halliwell and Steve Roden; and while Halliwell's input appears to be minimal (perhaps just giving Roden some quiet tones), Roden's manipulation of Halliwell's sound is spectacular. If you've ever had the opportunity to see Roden live (and in all likelihood, been blown away by his breathtakingly minimal / gorgeous sets), then you'll know what to expect. He's got two delay pedals through which he captures looping passages that build into a mass of hypnotic shimmer and mirrored sinewave drone that have an impressive melodic quality. The third and final contribution is between Halliwell and tam-tam player Mark Wastell, who together concoct a sparkling drone of metallic vibration and wave pattern. Beautifully done.
Does that name sound familiar to you? It should. After all, "Hallo Gallo" was the opening track on Neu!'s legendary debut album. So who would have the gall to name their band after a Neu! track (besides Negativland we mean), well, Hallo Gallo 2010 just so happens to be the new band of Neu!'s Michael Rother, who is joined by Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley (whose Vampire Blues label released this) and Aaron Mullen from Tall Firs, for some modern day krautrocking, Neu! style, and somehow it does manage to channel the classic sound and spirit of the original with something more dense and psychedelic. Motorik and rhythmic (of course), "Blinkgurtel" is gorgeous and hazy and washed out and mesmerizing, Shelley's simple solid drumming perfectly locked in with Mullen's warm fluid basslines, and Rothers's incendiary guitars, thick thrumming riffs, soaring psychedelic melodies, all gently phased and flanged into something gorgeously trippy and otherworldly, getting downright rocking near the end.
"Drone Schlager" is much more muted and restrained, a simple pulse like groove, with little rhythmic flurries here and there, the bass a deep throb, the guitars, cyclical and looped, strange production has the guitars dropping out and swooping into the foreground, totally stripped down and utterly mesmerizing, another one of those tracks that could go on forever, but instead, winds down after 5 minutes, pretty much ensuring you'll have to play it again. So good, and not just past laurels good, this is as dark and mesmerizing and hypnotic as anything out today. Circle fans especially will probably go nuts for this.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, housed in hand screened covers, comes with a download card too!
Latest from upstart UK import label MIE, who have been killing it lately. The recent reissue of Gate's Dew Line, which we made a Record Of The Week, the even more recent Pelt double lp, also records from Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides and Pelican offshoot Chord, and now this, a vinyl reissue of Hallock Hill's debut, a gorgeous collection of layered slowburn psychedelia, acoustic and electric guitars, reverb and echo and delay, all deftly woven into sweetly smoldering, improvised soundscapes, that remind us alternately of Scott Tuma, Jack Rose, Steven R. Smith, Ben Chasny. Hallock Hill is a fellow named Tom Lecky, a name you probably don't know, but after hearing this, we can't imagine it will be too long before he's mentioned in the same breath as Tuma and Rose and Chasny and all the rest.
The tracks here all seem to bleed into one another, from echo drenched abstract psychedelic drifts, to dark brooding folk flecked shimmer, to lush dense intricate Appalachia. Haunting and hushed one second, loose and freeform the next, little flurries of notes wreathed in drifting harmonics, strings are scraped and plucked, the body of the guitar thumped, lots of buzz and hum and shimmer, but all wrapped around gorgeous bits of melancholic melody, notes allowed to ring out, swimming in swirling seas of overtones, the occasional backward studio swoop adding some subtle trippiness, but for the most part, it's Lecky's deft arrangements that drive these lovely landscapes of psychedelic folk, a hazy early evening, cloud cloaked sky sort of vibe that occasionally blossoms into something sunshinier, but utterly dreamy throughout.
Another essential addition to your modern psych / psych guitar collection.
Packaged in a super swank heavy gatefold, and includes a glossy book of photos and poetry (lyrics?).
This is some serious grim and brutal business, this here new Halo record. So slow, and chaotic, and sludgy and crushing. With feedback spraying wildly from beneath the hyper-dense black hole riffs, tortured vocals, clawing their way up in the mix, fingers bleeding and bruised, a bass sound that is like puncturing your skull and filling it with concrete, and drums that sound like John Bonham trying to beat his way out of a tar pit. Think Godflesh, Swans, Skepticism, but then slow it down, drug it, down tune it, and get the fuck out of the way. This is doom metal played by crusty punks, industrial music played by Eyehategod, the Butthole Surfers covering Earth. The almost industrial precision of their first record has eroded just enough to let the band sort of sprawl, and throb, the sound is psychedelic, but not in the traditional sense, this is dark and druggy and hypnotic, and lulls you to sleep as much as it makes you want to overturn cop cars and set them on fire.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've had these for a while now, but are only getting around to listing it now. And unfortunately it's been so long we can't remember any of the details about who these guys are. Web searches have revealed very little as well, but as usual, it hardly matters once we get down to the sounds, which are awesome. A stumbling noiserock, light on the noise, a sort of loping, meandering postrock, the drums simple and spare, while all over the place electronics swoop and buzz, guitars clang and chime, a sort of slowcore crossed with some abstract electronic noise... Imagine a more post rock less machinelike Geronimo, or a prettier, WAY less chaotic Dead C, woozy and weary, and washed out, slow motion math rock dipped in glitch and skree and left to wander aimlessly. Really weird and atonal but pretty and subtly tripped out. There's definitely some Godspeed moments, and some distinctly Dead C sounds (or at least NZ noise rock sounds), but the way that they're arranged, it almost sounds like a normal everyday post rock band gradually and gloriously going haywire. Hard to explain, but this dusty little back room find is suddenly a new fave!
SUPER LIMITED and now discontinued and out of print. We only have a handful, so grab 'em while you can...
Second record from these mysterious medieval liturgical soundscapers, who at one time were members of the awesomely avant black metal horde Emit. As we mentioned in the review of the first Emit record, that band was only tangentially 'black metal', choosing instead to take black metal elements and weave them into something more ritualistic and abstract. Well, Hammemit is the logical extension, ejecting all the black metal elements, minus some ominous black ambience, focusing more on mood and texture, creating a song suite that sounds like a collection of ancient hymns, the sounds of haunted cathedrals, the crumbling spires and broken stained glass, still imbued with the spirits and souls that had passed through before.
It's not hard to imagine wandering through some ruined stone church, at dusk, the moon bringing the shadows to life, the splintered pews in small bonfire ready piles, pages from hymnals scattered like dead leaves, when suddenly strange sounds come wafting down from the choir, shards of detuned guitar, deep rumbling drones, monk like chants, the occasional raspy whisper, warm whirling off kilter chordal whirs, washed out reverb drenched drifts of buzzing steel strings and moaned ghostlike voices, soft flutters of out of tune piano tumbling over soft crystalline shimmers, dark heaving slabs of ominous buzz, shot through with growled vocals and more spidery detuned warble and thick swirls of church organ. Gorgeous and ancient and haunting and mystical. Mood music for ruin'd cathedrals, a soundtrack for midnite pagan rituals, or as the legend on the cd sleeve reads: "Mediaeval Music For Modern Sensibilites"!
Emit were never really a proper black metal band, so much so that it often seemed quite curious that they were so embraced by that scene, when there sound was something much more abstract and ambient, ritualistic and distinctly not heavy, at least in the traditional sense. This UK horde trafficked in a sort of abstract ambient doom, there were riffs, to be certain, but they were not strung together into long buzzing progressions, instead they were banged out one at a time, often left to decay and sprawl into shimmering black ripples, and just as often there were no riffs at all, instead opting for some effects drenched dubbed out free blackness. Once in a while, the sounds and atmospheres would coalesce into something definitely black metal, but even then, the blast beats and buzzing riffs were stumbly and chaotic and doused in reverb and sent lurching though heaving seas of crunch and crumble, everything moaning and creaking and squealing and seeming to gradually implode. Emit were indeed one of a kind, and it's unclear what exactly caused them to hang it up, but a few of those Emitters went on to create this entity right here, now called Hammemit, a somewhat logical extension of Emit's more abstract ritualistic side, forgoing riffs and metal and buzz almost completely, opting instead for something much more primitive and minimal, haunting and spiritual.
Spires Over The Burial Womb unveils a mysterious black form of liturgical music, drawing heavily on traditional religious musics throughout the ages, wheezing church organs, chanted monklike vocals, choral voices, lots of echo and reverb as if these pieces were indeed performed in some sort of temple or church, some of the songs thick and swirling, dense and intense, others spare and spidery, with simple spidery melodies hovering in wide open expanses of shimmering reverb and deep cavernous echo. All of the sounds here are dark, haunting, creepy, mysterious, deep distant drones twist and turn like monstrous black shapes hidden in the shadows, the voices chant and invocate, offering up prayer perhaps to some other gods, the voices and the drones beneath inexorably interwoven. There is guitar, but it's often detuned, fractured, effected, smeared and blurred into another layer of creeping blackness. The most traditionally musical movements, sound a bit like Skepticism, but with all the distortion stripped away, the drums removed, slowed way down, and performed in some massive stone cathedral, every note slathered in natural reverb and dusty delay, allowed to drift ethereally until the next note emerges to follow along in it's ghostly black wake. While the rest of the tracks play out like ancient masses conducted by reanimated specters risen from the grave, primitive rituals performed in the black of night, in the dead of winter, in a church full of empty pews, with broken stained glass windows, and drifts of snow moving like a white sea across the cut stone floor, a swirling white abyss that swallows the black sounds drifting above.
A truly beautiful and haunting collection of blackened rites and rituals and mysterious nokturnal sonic ceremonies.
Sound artist Joseph Hammer was a member of the legendary/infamous LAFMS (Los Angeles Free Music Society), and on I Love You, Please Love Me Too, he takes everyday sounds, and creates something far from everyday. It's a gloriously head spinning Plunderphonic style collage of loops and snippets and samples, old dusty records, snatches of radio broadcasts, tapes of old performances, all layered and mashed into a swirling sonic stew, repeated motifs melt into warped and warbly murk, pianos tinkle, vocals swoop and soar, different languages, jazzy horns, chugging metal guitars, skittery programmed drums, jangle and crunch and grind and swoon. RnB gives way to nu-metal, yacht rock gives way to new age, but chopped and sliced and diced and recontextualized so each element is just a part of the bigger, constantly mutating whole. The A side seems more jumbled, a relentless onslaught of stuttering sound, a swirling flurry of tangled melodies and ever shifting voices and instruments, flurries of shards and fragments in constant motion, while somehow, the second side seems more serene, the sounds blurred and smeared into something slightly more linear, the pitch and speed still constantly changing, a warped woozy sprawl of psychedelic, ADD plunderphonic pop.
LIMITED TO 330 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and like all releases on Pan, the vinyl is 140 gram, and is housed in a thick jacket, which itself is presented in a super elaborate and psychedelic two colored PVC plastic sleeve, with eye popping tripped out geometric designs.
The former lead guitarist for Loop has been on quite a journey of sonic deconstruction over the years, beginning in the mid-'80s through the drone-rock hypnosis of black sun psychedelia via Loop which dissolved into the equally hypnotic, but incrementally decentered project Main; and now recording under his given name, Hampson has ventured into the hallowed GRM studios in Paris. It is definitely the aesthetic of Michel Chion, Bernard Parmegiani, and Pierre Schaefer that guides this album, and not those of The Stooges or 13th Floor Elevators. We have heard rumors that Hampson intends to resurrect Main (possibly with Stefan Mathieu in tow); but until then, we'll be very content with the acousmatic abstractions of Repercussions. The title track bristles with thorough abstractions of percussive objects - piano, drums, gamelan, metal grates are all cited; and the rhythmic potential of those objects is reflected, refracted, smeared, and cracked into luminous frequencies and churning vibrations that are very similar in scope to the electronic cosmology that Parmegiani forged through his seminal records in the '70s. The second track continues down this line with deep space transmissions of sound that was in fact commissioned for a piece by the Planetarium in Poitiers, France. Yeah, it is the sound of solar flares, pulsars, nebula, red giants, and black holes, with all of the complexities of astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and string theory intertwined in the dense network of overlapping tones, drones, crackles, and negations. The third piece was originally released on the split 10" with Cindytalk, a glacial piano piece that draws inspiration from those beautiful and haunting piano / ambient pieces from Cindytalk. It's the closest to a structured song that Hampson has done in nearly 20 years, and it's fantastic way to end this album.
Editions Mego presents this in both a stereo format on a regular cd, and as a 5.1 surround experience on dvd. The cd sounds pretty fucking stellar, and we can only imagine the 5.1 version will sound even better.
Back in the early '90s, Robert Hampson made a very conscious transition in how he made music, willfully deconstructing the hypnotic psychedelia he pioneered in his defunct, but still awesome band Loop (whose last two records have just been reissued and are 2 of this week's Records Of The Week!). Initially, these deconstructed songs recorded under the new guise of Main spatialized texturally looped guitars, tricked out electronic effects, and heavy-lidded drones against an architecture of Spartan drums and downtuned bass lines. The first two albums - Hydra-Calm and Motion Pool - offered a competing strategy for what might be defined as 'post-rock,' nestling with the contemporary sounds in Disco Inferno, Seefeel, and the last Slowdive record as a confluence of avant-garde electronics, dark shoegazing ephemera, and British post-punk experimentation. There were hints of Loop's cyclical song-structure flickering within Main's barren albums, and Hampson seemed inclined to make a slow retreat from those rhythmic structures, leaving behind swarms of amorphous tones and vast expanses, razor cut into an homage to the musique concrete masters. Even though Hampson ended the Main project back in 2006, the same strategies are at work in Robert Hampson's "solo" venture. On Vectors, Hampson teases with repetitions of astronaut bleeps, electrical warblings, digitally vaporous static, and wisps of sound design that could build into something off of Hydra-Calm or Motion Pool, but don't. Many folks (including some here) have been frustrated by Hampson's work after Motion Pool, and that sentiment probably won't be changed with Vectors. The three lengthy pieces on Vectors are all commissions with lofty goals of avant electronics; and two of the commissions came by way of the legendary GRM studio in France. In this context as opposed to the Loop / Main axis, Vectors turns out to be a smoldering musique concrete album with acousmatic allusions to the work of Michel Chion and Luc Ferrari.
After Robert Hampson dissolved the blackened psychedelic ensemble Loop, he quickly returned with the hypnotic, riff-heavy, drone spaces of Main. The template from the first few albums by Main (Hydra-Calm and Motion Pool, both of which are criminally out of print) still resonates loudly through the work of Black Boned Angel, Nadja, Troum, and even tricked-out digital sculptors such as Christian Fennesz and Tim Hecker. Yet after those albums, Hampson plunged into the realms of thoroughly obtuse electro-acoustics, culminating in a oblique whirlpool of a collaboration with Janek Schaeffer called Comae. Many have pined for Hampson to pick up the guitar again as an instrument for chugging propulsion; and for those of you with such a nostalgia for Hampson's early work, the collaboration with Steven Hess may not entirely float your boat. That said, this eponymous collaboration does exhibit a much greater reliance upon a skeletal structure of chiming loops (perhaps the closet things that Hampson will come to the early Main guitar work) and Harry Bertoia-esque vibrations coddled into a web of overlapping patterns. Hess and Hampson push the brief 19 minute composition up to a dense kaleidoscope of ring modulated tonalities and paranoiac drones. Quite nice indeed.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Colorfully packaged, long-awaited album from Eye of the Boredoms infamous solo noise project. Unlike the violent noise and/or musical collage of prior Hanatarash recordings, 5 is one long whooshing track that sounds like a rocket blasting off, speeding up, entering hyperspace, slowing down, speeding up again, then spiralling off through another galaxy. Relentless and beautiful.
Killer reissue of two long out of print full lengths from this long running New Zealand free noise duo, consisting of Bruce Campbell, he of the mighty Dead C, and longtime aQ fave Alastair Galbraith, shedding his usual songsmithery for something a lot more abstract and noisy.
The two have been performing on and off together since the early nineties, these two discs collect The Philosophick Mercury from 1994, and Now Gods, Stand Up For Bastards, from 1995. Both recorded live, utilizing guitars, violin, electronics and voice, with the occasional bit of drumming from yet another NZ noise luminary, Peter Stapleton, who's played in pretty much every NZ band of note, from Dadamah to Pin Group to Flies Inside The Sun to The Terminals.
The template for A Handful Of Dust seems to be long drawn out tones, plenty of space, loads of feedback, letting the amp and the body of the guitar and the room shape the sounds as much as the player. Later groups like Sunroof! would harness this same sort of free music energy, this primal ur-drone, but there's something about A Handful Of Dust, that makes the sounds seem more alive, more feral, dangerous and dense. There's plenty of scrape and skree, mostly high end, layers upon layers, overtones shifting and drifting and billowing up in huge clouds of static buzz and shimmering squiggles of violin. The pace is glacial, but this music is not about movement or momentum so much as space and time, when there are drums, they don't really propel the song, instead they offer up a sort of loose framework, a crumbling skeleton around which the various buzzing strings and howling amps hang their shimmering sheets of sound. It's hard not to hear some Dead C in the be-drummed tunes (there are only two), but the drums here are WAY more loose, almost free jazz in feel, lending a psychedelic vibe to a music already pretty fucking psychedelic.
A few of the tracks offer up some low end rumbles and deep drone, but those sounds are soon infused with streaks of jagged shriek and sharp hissy high end, the two sides not so much battling as swirling warily around each other eventually becoming one, and on rare occasions, melding into something almost rifflike. The closing track on No Gods begins as a total guitar destroying free for all, before transforming into some super tripped out buzz drenched psychedelic warped krautdrone, but only briefly, before it slips back into fractured deconstructed free noise once again.
No Gods is definitely the more refined of the two (but only just barely). Philosophick is way more brittle and bizarre, two 30 minute jams, the first features lots of amp buzz, and stuttery shards of feedback, plenty of Derek Bailey like scrabbling, strange processed vocals, some sort-of-chanting, very minimal and textureal considering how noisy it is. The second track is total chaos, a band going all out in a huge room, all the instruments rendered blurs and smears by the distorted amps and the room reverb, the long stretches of feedback and the low low low fidelity recording only add more hiss and blur and texture. The guitars sounding alternately like accordions or bagpipes, sometimes like lowing cattle, the pound of the drums a buried muffled pulse, the cymbals glazing the cacophony with another sizzly layer of sibilance.
Beautiful oversized Japanese style mini lp gatefold style packaging with new liner notes from Marc Masters.
Some DIFFICULT listening from a duo who's whole career is based on making difficult sounds. Bruce Russell from the Dead C, and his countryman Alastair Galbraith, team up for two long form explorations, all improvised, glass harmonica, violin, guitar and clavioline. The first track is a stumbling chaotic minimal assemblage of tones, and lots of space, streaks of feedback, little curlicues of high end guitar, amp buzz, bits of clatter and crunch, thump and rattle, at moments it sounds like the duo gearing up to play, the avant rock version of an orchestra tuning up, but then they'll come together and for a brief moment, offer up a bit of strange melody or buzzing texture.
The second track though is much more musical, after a slow start of truncated melodies and random noisemaking, the sounds begin to sprawl and open up, loooong high tones overlap, the layers shifting and changing timbre, gradually, overtones loosed from their moorings and hovering over the proceedings, a gorgeous tangle of high end feedback, that manages to be quite hypnotic, especially when the band shifts gears, and introduce some buzzing low end, the rest of the track, a slow shifting shimmering expanse of high end tones, and occasional bassy rumbles, the propulsion and rhythm a direct result of the tones interacting.
Weird stuff, and quite difficult for sure, but patient ears will discover a weird bit of unlikely loveliness hidden amidst the sonic brambles.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Possibly also titled "Jerusalem: Street Of Graves"...this New Zealand experimental trio's new recording is far more structured than previous A Handful of Dust productions of scrape-drone-and-bang style free noise. Peter Stapleton has well infiltrated the band with his freewheelin' drum work that ebbs and flows with a controlling direction over Alastair Galbraith's violin shriek and the feedback of Bruce Russell (Dead C).
First we've heard from this Chicago heavy psych crew, and for fans of blown out acid drenched sonic destruction, this will definitely hit the spot. After a brief bit of Spanish sounding guitar, the group, gradual unfurl a seriously ominous sprawl of rumbling chords, pounding drums, reverb drenched shred, loose and free, and gradually taking shape, eventually locking into a sort of downtuned kraut-sludge groove, loping and mesmeric, the rhythm section minimal and spare, but solid as shit, while the guitars arc and swirl, occasionally splintering into little shreddy squalls. The vocals are doused in FX, and drift over the top, sort of wasted and spectral, the sound not your typical slow build to a freak out, instead, it stays pretty stead, total droned out psychedelic hypnorock of the highest order. A few of the tracks ramp up the tempo a bit, certain moments definitely tap into the Hawkwind continuum, tracks like "Truth In Lies", sounds like a more metallic psych rock version of Neu!, while "Toronto Jeff's Dark Revival" sounds like a meaner, more slithery Doors, swagger and spacey, dark and brooding, the tape finishing off with some serious proto-metal style heaviness in the form of "Burning Witches", with wild tribal drumming, thick, tarpit riffage, swirling FX, and tons of mud and murk, the vocals surprisingly clean, giving the song an Uncle Acid vibe, the second half of the track (d)evoking into an endless shredtastic, howled vox, downer rock, heavy psych outro that we sort of wish would go on forEVER.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!!
Damn, girl, what took you so long? Strangelands is Camilla Hannan's first full album in close to a decade, with a smattering of compilation tracks dotting the way back to her debut album More Songs About Factories which was released in 2005. It has to be said that the Etsy-craftsy-cutesy cover of a felt collage of a cuddly human couple with teddy-bear heads is about as far removed from what Hannan has constructed on Strangelands as can be. No twee-pop balladeering about lunchroom crushes and pigeon toed growth spurts to be found here; this is a bleak and artfully composed album of environmental toxicity and greasily machined rumble. Think Organum. Think Francisco Lopez. Think BJ Nilsen. Hannan plays up the psychogeographical references of her native Australia being situated at the end of the world (both navigationally and eschatologically) with plenty of citations of outback desolation marked with wild-eyed slashes of Road Warrior violence. Hannan's work begins with field recordings, so filled with vivid cinematic details that she easily builds allusions of the aftermath from a nuclear holocaust through her recordings of abandoned warehouses populated by swarming flies, rank sewer pipes that resonate the thrum of some leviathan breathing apparatus churning 20 miles below the surface of the sea, creaking harbors on the verge of rusting into the sea, and uninhabited islands that are uninhabited for being so uninhabitable. Dingy, grimy, and fucking bloody knuckled, let's go to Australia!
Pro-duplicated cd-r in a nice die-cut sleeve with the aforementioned felt collage imagery.
