A long overdue reissue of this lost jazz classic, originally self released in 1974. Hannibal Peterson isn't much of a household name, even among jazzheads, which is a bit odd considering he's played with Roland Kirk, Elvin Jones, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and loads more. And it's a shame because this record is something else! Beautiful and bizarre. Traditional sounding at times, but quite experimental at others. A lush and tripped out orchestral free jazz with swelling strings, wild and clattery tribal percussion, some killer drumming, all joyful and jubilant, until about halfway through, when the orchestra fades out leaving just the sounds of bombs dropping, wild repetitive piano and a mournful female vocalist wailing operatically, eventually the vocals fade leaving a dense instrumental bed of buzzing sitar, tinkling chimes, fluttering flute, completely tranquil and dreamlike. The nearly twenty minute "Aftermath" though is the sonic centerpiece of the record, the first half a skittering post bop free jazz workout, almost funky in parts, the second half, an elegiac dirge of throbbing bass, moaning cello, wailing trumpet and a sizzling percussive crescendo, with gorgeous plaintive vocal coda.
Terence Hannum is one of the founding members of Locrian, an aQ beloved black ambient project from Chicago; and Hannum's solo work doesn't stray all that far from ominous dronescaping of Locrian, but one could say that Spectral Life is a bit more abstract in nature. "Invocation Of Deities" is a lumbering horror-score with slashed cymbals and washed out drones giving way to a persistent duotone, sub-bass synth-pulse that lends itself to the Wolf Eyes / Factrix / SPK axis of grim industrialisms. The sparkling tone constellations that Hannum constructs as a counterpoint to that brooding synth pulse eventually get sucked into the gravitational pull of Hannum's hefty thrum. "Total Dissolution" has a scabrous beginning with a mechanical noise-junk miasma that grinds in parallel to Organum's acoustic obliteration. A majestic, sci-fi ambience interjects itself into this grizzled tumble, gradually blossoming into a gorgeously unfurled swarm of buzzed guitars and chanted vocals extended and stretched into luminous, ceremonial drones and all blurred into a shoegaze smear of billowing, cinematic psychedelia. Certainly fans of Locrian will find plenty to meditate blankly and blackly on, but this album enjoys similarities with Tim Hecker, Machinefabriek, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Limited to 400 copies on the Belgian art-imprint label Shelter Press.
Brand new record from SF weirdos Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet, who according to most reliable sources include members of SF underground rock institution Caroliner Rainbow. Which makes sense when you see them live. Caroliner would perform amidst wild hand made cardboard and foam landscapes, whereas Hans Grusel perform with huge wooden houses on their heads, like a suburban Residents.
This latest disc is a brain melting chunk of avant what-the-fuck dada-esque soundscaping, pulsing underwater rhythms, lots of kitcheny clatter (sounding at times like a pots and pans This Heat), dolphin sounds processed into creeped out soundscapes, bits of shouting and wheezing music boxes, tapespeed warble and confusional stretches of atonal sonic collage. Just a synapse frying blast of gurgle and grind and hiss and drone and crunch and creak, like someone dosed Nurse With Wound and let Stapleton and company wander in some abandoned music shop armed with hammers, microcassette recorders and huge wooden houses to wear on their heads. Weird and wonderfully damaged.
It's not so much like staring into a funhouse mirror, it's more like bashing your head against it over and over and over until it shatters and you can finally see and hear exactly what strange things exist on the other side.
Pressed on thick clear vinyl and housed in a HUGE 6 panel fold out poster sleeve, one side adorned with angry anthropomorphic houses, the inside, those same houses rendered in full color, given bodies, and allowed to roam and misbehave in an eyepopping, bad trip, small town landscape!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
There are very few bands who truly baffle. Who confuse and confound, both musically and conceptually. Sure, plenty of bands are weird, or strange, or hard to describe, some might even be described as fucked up or damaged, but very very few truly baffle.
Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet is most definitely one of those bafflingly confusional elite. Supposedly featuring members of another baffling SF troupe, Caroliner Rainbow, Hans Grusel, and his Krankenkabinet create a bizarre cacophony of sound, theatrical, dramatic, noisy for sure, but weirdly melodic and playful and more than anything, confounding.
How to explain the peculiar world Herr Grusel inhabits? Hmmmm, abstract, obtuse, experimental, avant? All of those things for sure. The music of HGK is more sound than song, each 'piece' a slowly unfolding exploration of space, both inner and outer, rendered in synthesizers and effects, strange percussive thumps and grinding low end drones, all spread out across an expanse of scrapes and squeaks, and occasional squalls of buzz and glitch. Landscapes of twisted sound, tweaked and transformed, slipping from bloops and bleeps to abrasive crunch, what sounds like tables becomes fingers skittering across a fretboard, voices are processed and smeared into jagged streaks, bits of synth and electronics are chopped and looped into loping rhythms, faux horns unfurl minor key melodies, long stretches of minimal shimmer give way to a burbling concoction of malfunctioning keyboards and abstract clatter and thump, whirring alien machinery, the high end skitter of electronic crickets, warped tapes crumbling into warbly whirring flutters, bits of trumpet fanfare surface, and then get sucked under, bits of field recordings all tangled up with blurred buzz and thick sheets of reverberating low end.
This might be a collection of sorts, a few of the tracks are a soundtrack to Alice In Wonderland, which must add a whole 'nother harrowing aspect to the film, but even so, the whole thing plays like a proper album, all the tracks sort of melting into one another, like one massive sprawling musical bad trip.
More bizarre, musical macrame from the peculiar German gent known as Hansel Urnst Grusel! Happy As Pitch could easily be retitled When Wind-Up Toys Go 'Wrong'. While there's probably not any actual toys involved in Hans Grusel's Krankenkabinet, the assortment of drunken plinkety plonks, itchy clickety clacks, disgruntled grindings and dizzying whooshes sure bring them to mind. Played out on such instruments as a Resonator Neuronium and a Steim Crackelbox as well as more conventional horns, strings 'n' woodwinds and a battalion of analog synthesizers, The Krankenkabinet's compositions are mostly kookily tweaked roamings, punctuated by an occasional more menacing moment. Guest players include Liz Allbee on trumpet and Graham Connah on Moog Source Solo.
We had no idea what to expect from this record. It's on Sub Pop, the band's called Happy Birthday, the cover art is a sort of super DIY, bent musical note motif, like some weird eighties power pop demo, the back of the record is all scrawled pen and ink binder art, but what the heck, so we threw it on, and BLAAOW! Holy crap, total lo-fi nineties style power pop bliss out. Jangly guitar, lo-fi production, warbly boy vox and angelic female crooning, hooks galore, reminding us a lot of Nova Scotia pop, think Eric's Trip, Sloan, Super Friendz, Thrush Hermit, Hardship Post, the same sort of earnest, slightly melancholic, ramshackle pop that we never get tired of, and hardly anyone makes anymore (thank goodness for The Memories Attack!).
Every song is a cracked bit of peppy, bouncy, effervescent pop, with some angular guitar, some practice space drumming, warbly basslines, everything super distorted and fuzzed out, slipping from rollicking rocking, to in-the-red on-the-verge-of-collapse chaos, to woozy meandering minimal new wave (one track sounds like Ultravox via the more modern lo fi warped garage rock of the moment), lots of the songs have a distinctly eighties vibe, the vocals are sweet and always about to crack, slipping into a falsetto at every possible opportunity, keyboards wheeze and warble, the melodies are playful and serpentine, the production is hazy and reverby, but the band are constantly slipping in weird bursts of distorted crunch, or stretches of hushed crystalline drift, but always stumbling back into their irresistible fuzz pop. Record opener "Girls FM" is a total hit, a chorus that kills, not to mention an equally catchy verse/bridge combo, super sweet harmonies, a main riff that manages to crunch and jangle at the same time, weird fuzz bass that drops in and out, as well as all sorts of subtly twisted recording weirdness, only adding to the fun fucked up vibe.
The weird thing is that Happy Birthday is the project of Kyle Thomas, whose previous groups we've raved about in the past, Feathers, Witch, and King Tuff, but never did we expect that he might be capable of this kind of kick ass ultra catchy pure pop bliss out. But we're so pleasantly surprised, and damn if Happy Birthday didn't just leap into the running for pop record of the year!!
Most folks probably know of this Chicago trio by way of Steven Hess, who besides playing in Haptic, also plays in black metal / drone combo Locrian. And the sound of Haptic is occasionally not that far removed from the dronier side of Locrian. We reviewed Haptic's The Medium lp a while back, and were pretty taken by its dark minimalism, and rhythmic dronescapes. And while the sound on Scilens is definitely similar, the list of instruments takes up almost the whole inside of the J-card, and while it would take up way too much space here to list ALL the instruments used, a list of highlights might just prove enlightening: sparklers, strobe light, tuning forks, wine glass, wire brush, wooden clothespin, sand, sewing machine, electric fan, fabric, hurdy gurdy, leaf, marbles, metronome, paper, and then there's all manner of pianos and drums and effects and tape recorders and record players, found sounds, field recordings, harmonicas, guitars, basses, well you get the drift, that's a whole lot of stuff to make a record so hushed and minimal. The A side opens with a killer bit of dense drumming, but after that, the sound slips back down to a near whisper, distant drones, hushed minimal shimmer, all manner of random sounds, running water, scraped strings, chordal whir, sine wave like tones, rumbling SUNNO))) like buzz, hazy soft focus whirs, brief bursts of industrial clatter, lush lovely swirls and lots and lots of near silence. Not so much about music making, or song composition, instead, the three guys in Haptic are creating miniature soundworlds, imaginary installations, evoking all manner of images via deftly arranged objects, and the seemingly incidental sounds they produce, the fact that this is all surprisingly listenable speaks volumes about their skills as soundmakers. A gorgeous, abstract, challenging listen for sure. But one that fans of ultra minimalism, abstract dronemusic and lowercase sound will no doubt find quite satisfying.
Gorgeous new album of sprawling abstract ambience from this mysterious trio, featuring one member of Pan American and also Necks drummer Tony Buck, and it's on Flingco which in the past has brought us lps by outsider black metal horde Wrnlrd and buzz heavy dronesters Cristal (plus the guy who runs Flingco used to run Kranky!). Phew, pretty bad ass and we haven't even gotten to the music yet!
And the music here is truly strange, delicate, spacious, spare, minimal, but lush and expansive, The Necks is not a bad jumping off point, there is a sort of cyclical feel to the dronemusic here, Bucks drumming is similarly restrained and abstract, offering up a steady stream of snare skitter, or softly billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, using percussion to create more layers of drone, while the rest of the band coax warm, soft focus swells from their instruments, the players creating a moody ebb and flow, chiming notes and bits of melody drift along the slow moving sonic currents, the whole side unfurling in gorgeous hazy slow motion.
The flip side is even more dark and minimal, again, the focus is on deep bell like tones, the subtle interactions of the notes, the incidental melodies, a warm bleary eyed murk, that grows deeper and deeper, until it's more felt than heard, which is when the percussion becomes the focal point again, a muted cacophony of thumps, a flurry of chimes, the click and clatter of wood on wood, eventually fading out, leaving just a smear of ultra low drift. So nice.
And while they last, we have the SUPER LIMITED version, only 100 copies made, that come with a dvd-r, featuring a live video mix recorded at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in 2007, a cool video that accompanied the band, sourced from manipulated found footage with a live analog VHS loop mix.
Oh yeah, each lp comes with a download card, so you can get a digital version for your computer!
If your thing is rock music (or pop, or rap, or country, or whatever) and you're inclined to make music, well that's probably the genre of music you're going to be making, right? So if someone's super into "world music", and can't get enough Javanese gamelan or Morroccan trance or Indian raga or Tuvan throat singing... well then that someone would probably come up with their own music in that vein, and that might sound a lot like Harappian Night Recordings! Imagine the murky improvs of Thuja or Kemiallisat Ystavat going full tilt into anything goes "ethnological forgery" territory, an experimental exercise in dronological DIY exotica.
The Bo'Weavil label is known for both reissued old time folk and modern day folky sounds from around the globe, every thing from Anne Briggs to Zadik Zecharia. This fits right in, the music of Harappian Night Recordings aka the UK's Dr. Syed Kamran Ali being a one-man synthesis of sounds both East and West, mostly East... with a collection of ethnic instruments from around the globe and an equally broad range of musical-cultural influences, HNR generates mysterious, lively soundscapes both rhythmic and droning. There's sixteen tracks here in this disc's approximately 42 minutes, some brief atmospheric interludes, others more fully-developed songs that could be dances and ceremonies of ancient origin. While you might think this was the work of a DJ with a collection of dusty international 78s to sample, apparently this only SOUNDS like a mix of authentic field recordings, instead all of it was composed and performed by HNR's Dr. Ali! (We say apparently 'cause we still suspect that some of this must be sampled.)
He rattles drums and twitters flutes and strums ouds and pumps harmoniums... and occasionally chants and sings as well - the track "The Widow Chang, Lady Pirate" boasting maniacal vocals that wouldn't be out of place on a Sun City Girls album, and in fact we're sure that much of this disc will appeal to SCGs fans, the whole thing coming across as it does like a mashup of music culled from the Sublime Frequencies library! In a similar spirit as the SCGs, this is done with a slightly hallucinatory, gonzo intensity (the Bo'Weavil press release likens HNR's music to "a Cuban guerilla force stepping on Eisenhower's throat, emptying their glorious bladders on his face" among other things). And certainly the warp and warble and distortion inherent in the lo-fi production adds to that sometimes dark atmosphere, though HNR's music is melodic too, often quite catchy, bouncing along ecstatically. Along with the SCG's, we'd recommend this to fans of Siamese Temple Ball (another, possibly, faux-ethnic recording) and the cross-cultural mythmaking of Hungarian composer Laszlo Hortobagyi. But while Hortobagyi invented his own, unknown fake culture, the folk music of which he purported to "document", the HNR's hybrid sounds don't pretend to be from anywhere in particular, making overt if cryptic allusions to many traditions from the far corners of the real world... A quick trip over to Wikipedia clued us in to the meaning of this disc's title, also the name of one of its songs, it comes from a fairly bizarre bit of Indonesian mythology - Hainwele the "Coconut Girl" being a mythical being who had the ability to, ahem, excrete valuables, such items as golden earrings, coral, porcelain dishes, and, indeed, "glorious gongs"! No doubt the other track titles are referencing equally interesting folklore... but even without doing further internet research, your imagination will have much to work with from the sounds and music here alone. Fantastic, in the several senses of the word. But if you would like some visual input, a cinematic analog to the sort of field recording collage that these Harappian Night Recordings resemble, check out the YouTube video for HNR's track "Headless Mule" found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AzLV7zDMtM
The last we heard from Gareth Hardwick, and actually also the first we heard, was on a collaborative lp with long time aQ fave Machinefabriek (we have a few copies left, see elsewhere on the aQ site), the two made for a good combination, each offering up their own take on modern minimalism and abstract dronemusic.
But in that context, with two sonically like minded composers, it was difficult to figure out who was bringing what to the sound of that record.
So this is the first glimpse we've gotten of Hardwick solo and we're quite smitten. Two loooong tracks, both recorded live in 2007, both quite beautiful and sublime. The first is a pure, barely shifting drone, at least initially, very Niblock like, but focusing more on the purity of the tones instead of how they interact. Deep slow motion swells, the tones warm and glowing, rich and lush, but simple and streamlined. The track shifts here and there, the tones shifting subtly, some stretches sounding almost chordal, others so simple and quiet, the tones seem to be drifting through a vacuum. Near the end, streks of high end are draped over the warm languid swells, offering up a brief subtle counterpoint, adding a bit of soft tension.
The second track is similarly structured, but the tones sound more like notes coaxed from a guitar and allowed to drift lazily, ring out almost endlessly, stretched and smeared into deep soft blurs, again toward the end, the various tones seem to come together into chords and the sound becomes gently lush and sun dappled, dreamy and soft focus before fading out completely.
So so lovely. Fans of muted, minimal drone music, Coleclough, Chalk, Murray and the like, should definitely explore the sounds of Gareth Hardwick, and folks into the hazy drift of Pop Ambient style shimmer, might just dig this more minimal take on that sound as well.
Fantastic packaging too. A printed full color cd-r, housed in a plain black sleeve, with a full color textured plastic transparent insert, slightly longer than the sleeve so the transparent top edge sticks out.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Another month, and another new Machinefabriek release. This time though it's not a cd-r, instead it's a lovely lp, split with fellow dronescaper Gareth Hardwick. Each takes a side, and both come up with something sublime and gorgeous, each perfectly complimenting the other.
We were pretty sure we were gonna dig the Machinefabriek track anyway, he's yet to steer us wrong, so the real surprise here was the Hardwick track, a super slow, drawn out languorous soundscape of deep warm melodic swells. Soft and rounded, muted and dreamlike, endless and repetitive. Simple melodies, pulled apart into abstract notes, allowed to surface one at a time, like sonic detritus in an expansive sea of sound. Reminds us quite a bit of Stars Of The Lid, or maybe a Philip Glass piece slowed waaaaay down.
The Machinefabriek track is indeed also fantastic, another sidelong epic, it mirrors Hardwick's track sonically, a spare soundscape of soft swells, but of course, MF's treatment is not so tranquil and serene, instead, it sounds decayed, bits of glitch and hiss, crackle and tape drop out, add all sorts of unlikely texture and fuzzy distortion, still beautiful, but in that distinctly crumbling Machinefabriek way.
Pressed on super super thick clear vinyl, the sound is crisp and vibrant and amazing, housed in a super simple striking duotone sleeve. LIMITED TO ONLY 450 COPIES!!!
Darkly resonant and fascinating. The seventeen tracks of Brian Harnetty's American Winter album are like the slowly disintegrating pages of a stranger's scrapbook. Harnetty artfully and respectfully pieced together segments of dialogue, field recordings and radio transmissions among other things which he drew from the vast audio archives of Berea College where he is a member of the Appalachian Music Fellowship Program. Highlights such as "I'll Have To Go Off And Be Gone Tonight" feature fragments of oral histories from Appalachian folks accompanied by the gentle wheeze of what sounds like an accordion and the tinkling of a toy piano. The audio collages slowly drift in and out of focus, and the results are both engaging in the documentary sense and hauntingly spectral. Recommended!
Years back, we reviewed a strange record by a musician/soundscaper/sound artist named Brian Harnetty. That record was called American Winter, and consisted of various recordings, radio transmissions, oral histories, that Harnetty gathered from the audio archives at Berea College where he was a member of the Appalachian Music Fellowship Program, he then took those recordings and used them to create what we described as sounding 'like the slowly disintegrating pages of a stranger's scrapbook', a haunting collection of dark sonic landscapes wrapped around these voices and transmissions, to this day we still haven't heard anything like it.
A few weeks ago, Harnetty got in touch to let us know about this, his latest project, another collection of recordings, this time culled from the Sun Ra / El Saturn archives, which is a collection of rare Sun Ra rehearsal tapes, studio recordings, recitations, live recordings, as well as tons of unlabeled sonic mysteries. Harnetty and a handful of musicians (including Fred Lonberg-Holm) got together to record some accompaniment to these recordings, employing piano, celesta, saxophone, flute, cello, bass clarinet and vibraphone, all woven into a dark jazz backdrop, which when all mixed up with the original recordings, makes for a super psychedelic sonic trip, where it's often difficult to tell whether it's Harnetty and his crew or Sun Ra's band or both. One can only imagine that at times, it's the modern band playing along with those old recordings, but just as often one or the other, the songs in constant flux, voices, and studio directions, varying degrees of audio fidelity, what sound like commercials or instructional tapes, fragmented plunderphonic collages, some gorgeous stretches of jazzy bliss, paired with still more mysterious voices, awesome rehearsals, killer breakbeats, the original tapes crumbly and staticky so it sometimes sounds like Tim Hecker gone jazz, it's hard to describe, other than to say it's a pretty fantastical trip through the past via the present, a glimpse of what went on behind the curtain, as interpreted by modern day sonic archaeologists, unafraid to join in, the resulting sonic document, unendingly fascinating, and the sort of thing that should appeal to classic jazz lovers as much as outsider avant/experimental music obsessives. So cool!
The last Brian Harnetty record was a sleeper hit around here, fusing sampled bits of Appalachia and fragments of oral histories with dark brooding collaged soundscapes, the results were haunting and captivating, the two sounds working surprisingly well together, creating a sort of ghostly old world folk, the cracked and weathered voices wrapped in warm whirs and spectral ambience.
For his latest record (which has taken us a while to get in to list), Harnetty has assembled a conventional band and composed a set of gorgeous and dark chamber rock / dark jazz vignettes, utilizing piano, accordion, clarinet, trumpet, violin, drums, bells, vibes as well as vocals on a few tracks courtesy of Mr. Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy, but more on that in a second.
Harnetty hasn't abandoned his use of the strange old time samples either, they pop up throughout the record, a little burst of old timey Appalachia, a cute introduction from the bandstand of some dance, wild sawing fiddles, it sounds like a strange fit, but it weirdly sort of works. The record opens with a haunting ballad, all softly reverbed piano, and droning strings, shuffling drums, super moody and mysterious, when all of a sudden, right at the end, some old timey fiddle music fades while the song proper fades out, and the player says a few words and then we're already into the next song, another dark brooding drift. The whole record is pretty haunting and moody, a little Dirty 3, a little Max Richter, quite lovely, with the various old timey samples just adding a little bit of odd mystery.
As for the vocals, Will Oldham actually only sings on 3 of the 12 tracks, not sure it's worthy of co-credit, but his songs are in fact quite nice, his creaking about-to-break croon perfectly complimenting Harnetty's dark and dreamy arrangements. And in some ways, Oldham's songs as well as his voice manage to sound as old and dusty as the sampled songs and voices...
Super tweaked out electronic lunacy from Twig, the male half of Chicago knob twiddlers Nautical Almanac. Recorded using a Commodore 64 and modified electronic equipment, which were then sent to friends for additional productions, the ten tracks
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Unanimous aQ favorite Daniel Higgs, he of the mighty Lungfish and more recently a prolific solo artist, returns with a collaboration featuring fellow Baltimore noisenik Twig Harper, best known for his work in Nautical Almanac. Anyone keeping up with Higgs' output is undoubtedly aware of his brilliant grasp of minimalism, and with a voice like that, few people are complaining. While his recent solo work has included instruments like banjo, a shruti box, Jew's harp, and some spacey electronics, the emphasis here is on Higgs' voice and his words. Harper's sparse electronic accompaniment works perfectly on these performances, adding subtle layers of sound that never venture too far into full on noise territory while adding some necessary dimensions to Higgs' spiritual narratives.
Comprised of seven pieces, Clairaudience Fellowship represents another evolutionary step for these two artists, utilizing spaciousness to a new effect. Higgs' voice is the one constant, mutating electronically throughout the record and sounding kind of like an alien delivering a religious sermon underwater. We're not entirely sure how Harper's sounds are made, but they often come off like field recordings of watery drips and breathy repetitions that soon change into clipped electronic noises, causing you to wonder what it is you are really hearing. Musically, one can detect similarities to the experiments of a wide range of groups like Cromagnon, the Red Krayola, Yahowha 13, and more recently, Amps For Christ. It might be misleading to call this "folk music", but then you have to wonder what such a term even means in 2010, and in a more abstract way, it seems pretty apt for this stuff. By the end of the record, Higgs' voice is warped beyond comprehension with only the occasional decipherable word popping up. Still, you know whatever it is he's saying, Higgs is speaking the truth steadily and surely. While it's hardly the feel good hit of the year, Clairaudience Fellowship is an amazing and engaging listen to anyone willing to sit down and pay attention. By now we can always count on Daniel Higgs to keep things surprising and interesting. Harper ain't no slouch either. Highest possible recommendation.
We barely need to write anything for this one really. Everyone we know, has wanted one of these without even hearing it. Hell, Andee even ordered one from overseas without hearing a note. They're called Harpsicorpse, which would probably be the best band name ever, even if this wasn't solo harpsichord. But it IS. SOLO HARPSICHORD. Solo ELECTRIC harpsichord, played by a guy who when he's not crafting solo electric harpsichord music, is creating crazed breakcore using samples of classical music (and yeah, that stuff rules too, will try to get copies in to review!).
So yeah, Andee got a copy of this played it on his radio show, played it for everyone he knew, and we all became a bit obsessed, and so we ordered a bunch for the store, and when they finally showed up, it was like music nerd Christmas! So what is it exactly beyond the above mentioned obvious stuff, that had us all flipping out? Well, the harpsichord is an amazing instrument, and this electronic version not only offers a weirdly buzzy distorted version of the actual sounds, it also makes the player able to unfurl impossible super fast flurries of notes, the result is somewhere between a creepy soundtrack for exploring some old abandoned house in the middle of a lightning storm, complete with levitating candelabras, cobwebs, creaking doors and wailing spirits, the music from some demented post battle feast/orgy with all the knights, in your crumbling castle in the time of King Arthur, or an 8 bit Nintendo soundtrack for some alternate universe version of Castlevania. However it strikes you, it's awesome, bizarre, beautiful, demented, baffling, but absolutely one of the most amazing things we've heard. When things really get going it almost sounds like someone took a chunk of Venetian Snares style drill and bass, and replaced all the beats with harpsichord sounds, while at it's most creepy and ambient, it couldn't be more scary, a total horror movie soundtrack, late night drive in movie freakfest bliss out. And the tracks that feature a lot of low end, those are the notes that don't really sound like a real harpsichord at all, and instead sound like some sort of ominous buzz/drone weirdness, which again, only adds to the WTF factor.
But to be fair, beyond all the weirdness (of which there is plenty), this is definitely some cool, beautiful, haunting stuff, and odds are if you're like us, and EVERYbody we've played this for, all it's gonna take is one listen, and you will be as crazy obsessed as we are!
WARNING: These lps seem to have had a long difficult journey across the ocean all the way from Europe, and the sleeves are a bit worn after such an arduous trip. So there are some dented corners, and while for the most part it's not really that dramatic at all, if you require your records to be in pristine, ultra mint, record collector nerd condition, then you just might have to pass on this, which would be a bummer, cuz it's AMAZING�
Considering how quick Grouper stuff blows out of here, this one most likely doesn't need too much of a description. Divide is the first book of original artwork from Liz Harris (aka Grouper), black and white, and super striking, intricate branch like patterns, washed out water colors, tangled knots, mysterious patterned mandalas, crystalline arrangements of lines and space, a style most aQ-ers will recognize from various Grouper releases. The softcover book measures 7" by 7", and has beautiful full color front and back covers, and includes a dvd, featuring an original video by Harris, accompanied by a gorgeous Grouper soundtrack (featuring Rob Fisk from Common Eider, King Eider on viola), and as you might expect, it's another fantastic dreamlike sonic drift, all warm whirling otherworldly haze and gauzy ethereal shimmer. So nice.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, we have less than 10, and most likely will NOT be able 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.
Only a few copies of this one left!
The final release from a series of collaborations commissioned by the Canadian hard-electronica label Hushush finds Mick Harris (Scorn, Lull, Quiot, etc.) working with Belgian industrialists Ambre. It appears that Ambre supplied a large arsenal of samples to
Xander Harris's recent Urban Gothic lp ranked among our favorites of the new wave of cinematic sci-fi Euro disco Carpenter/Goblin worshipping soundtracky electronica, precisely because Harris seemed to ditch much of the whole dance/disco vibe in favor of something much more creepy and cinematic. But on this 12"s, those very elements are shined and polished and put on display, this side of Harris' sound positioning him even more appropriately alongside folks like Umberto and Zombi. "I Want More Than Just Blood", maybe the danciest track on Urban Gothic, gets stretched out to almost 11 minutes, creepy vocodered vox over pulsing eighties synths, the sound still hypnotic and minimal, but the groove, and the beat, jacked up a bit, lush melodic swells, swirling effects, almost a sort of euro disco space prog, especially with the epic noodly synth jams sprinkled throughout.
The B side is more of the same, the first track another stretch of Euro synth sci-fi space groove, whooshing and hazy and softly psychedelic, rife with plenty of lazer like sound effects all lashed to that relentless Eighties kraut-wave pulse, while the second track is even more spare and skeletal, a cinematic groove that might be the cheesiest of the bunch, but in a good way, the Eighties Carpenter/Goblin worship in full effect.
Comes in a super cool, full color disco 12" style sleeve, this one of course adorned with imagery much more sinister and sexy than most disco 12"s though...
Not the long suffering, crushed out sidekick of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, this Xander Harris is yet another addition to the new movement of John Carpenter worshipping retro eighties sci-fi soundtrackery, also practiced by folks like Umberto, Zombi, Majeure, Blizaro, Dylan Ettinger, Gatekeeper, Roll The Dice, Twins, and plenty of others. And while it's getting to be pretty crowded, for now, we can't seem to get enough, so we're pretty psyched on this Not Not Fun release, and for all of its similarities to those other artists, there is definitely something special about Urban Gothic.
It might be that it eschews the whole horror disco vibe, ditching the dancefloor almost completely, and weaving a series of imaginary soundtracks, that sound like they could actually be from some long lost straight to video Argento giallo, channeling Goblin and Carpenter, but in a way, that the results are truly haunting and ominous, and very very soundtracky. Many of the elements may be the same, but XH excels at assembling them into compelling, realistic scores for imaginary horror movies. Halloween-like repeating motifs, lots of swirling atmospheric synth shimmer, minimal programmed percussion, haunting chant like vox, pulsing menacing melodies, all woven into cinematic mini epics that are truly harrowing and spine tingling.
And that content is hinted at by the equally evocative song titles: "I Want More Than Just Blood", "Fucking Eat Your Face", "When The Hammer Starts To Swing", "Tanned Skin Dress", "Hatchet In The Teeth", "Splatter In The Mouth" and more
So yeah, maybe this sound isn't the most original these days, but Xander Harris' take is definitely one of the more exciting variations we've heard. Which has us picturing Umberto and Zombi and Blizarro, all creeping though an old decrepit mansion, trying desperately to survive until sunup, running from various shadows and hidden monstrosities, all to the strains of Xander Harris...
My God, this release has been blowing our minds! A 72 minute solo piano epic by this protege of LaMonte Young and disciple of the late Pandit Pran Nath, Michael Harrison. Michael Harrison is probably not as well known of the second generation minimalist composers after Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Charlemagne Palestine, but his mastery of Indian Classical Musical and his design and invention of the harmonic piano, an extensively modified grand piano with the ability to alternate between two different tunings to play 24 notes per octave on a conventional keyboard, has earned him much respect in new music circles. Revelation is arguably his master work, utilizing the tuning system of 'just intonation' to conjure beautifully melodic and mesmerizing tonal clusters of sound. Just intonation is, on the basic level, any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of whole numbers. While we here are not completely able to wrap our heads around the theory behind the Pythagorean principles of harmonic resonance, the tones in the scales applied here are far from conventional, and the shifting patterns of harmonic overtones as they bounce against each other create oddly-tuned and haunting harmonies. Revelation starts deliberately slow. The first track, "Revealing The Tones" is just that taking the time to visit each note than a pairing of notes, then finally triads. But it's not all just about academics, some tracks evoke the mysteries of night or desert solitude, creating lilting passages of melody similar in feel to Harold Budd's best work. Some use percussive Eastern scales as if the piano was being played as a gamelan. But with each track, the beauty of the tones gains in intensity so that by the finale, it sounds like three pianos are being played in an almost Lubomyr Melnyk-like technique of 'continuous music', which is incredible because in fact no effects or overdubs were used in the recording. It's been a while since we were blown away by a contemporary recording of minimalist composition, and any fans of any of the folks mentioned above, should definitely check this out!
Who doesn't love Harry Pussy? Actually probably a lot of folks, but don't count us among them. One of the finest noise rock bands ever, with a strange flair for infusing their racket with something special, not melody necessarily, or musicality, something more ineffable, and something much more abrasive and harsh. But heck, female fronted noise rock was a rarity back then (and still is sadly), and Adris Hoyos, was a whirling dervish of damaged drumming and freaked out vocalizations, and their sound was totally unique, a stumbling super distorted acid fried feedback drenched blow out, and this here disc captures the band at their best, live and out of control, on their last tour, live in Texas in 1998.
The music is amazing of course. Fucking heavy as shit, a maelstrom of drum chaos and super distorted guitars, the recording SO in the red, but the best part is probably Adris' crowd baiting, so much shit talking, calling the crowd a bunch of assholes who dress like jocks, but in the same breath trying to pimp shirts and records, usually met with a chorus of "FUCK YOU"s, before launching back into an explosion of fucked up glorious pounding noise rock.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES, but beautifully packaged in a full color sleeve, with a cool printed insert.
The latest release from Bill Orcutt's Palilalia label is a sprawling double lp collection of mostly unreleased tracks from his old band, legendary Miami noise rock duo (or sometimes trio, sometimes more) Harry Pussy. Whose bizarre, and somewhat sonically unrepresentative, vocal driven computer drone album Let's Build A Pussy was recently released on Editions Mego. But fear not faithful noise rock fanatics, One Plus One is no high concept low brow art piece (or is it?), this is some serious raw, heavy, blown out, chaotic and crushing freeform noise rock bliss out audial punishment from HP, in their duo form: Orcutt on guitar, Adris Hoyos on drums and vocals. Recorded between 1992-1994, all sounds captured on a beat up old Walkman, some of the tracks here popped up on some early (and insanely limited) releases, like the Vigilance cassette on Chocolate Monk, as well as a couple singles (both untitled, one with the lady holding a frog, the other with the stereos and speakers lined up in a field), but over 40 minutes of these jams (apparently culled from HOURS of material) are previously released, and so odds are those tape and singles tracks are new to most folks.
So yeah, it's noisy, and chaotic, and lo-fi, heavy and punky and free form, but with some serious riffing and some surprising beauty. Some of the tracks are swaggery and Stooges-y, eventually morphing into driving drum pound wreathed in squalls of detuned guitar damage freakout. Elsewhere clouds of caustic guitarnoise, crumble and grind over wild free form drum splatter, everything woozy and atonal and angular, but more often that one might expect, slipping into some surprisingly melodic passages, and at a few points, when the band slows it way down, and strips away some of the noise, it almost sounds like some twang flecked fusion of Pavement and Barn Owl, albeit seriously fractured and fucked up. The sound can be almost downright anthemic at times, but at others, a melting woozy morass of sound, with Hoyos' vocals mostly buried in the mix, beneath Orcutt's non stop axe destroying barrage, but when her vocal do come to the fore, they are TERRIFYING. Like hysterical horror movie scream queen by way of Yoko Ono, flitting from ear piercing impossibly high shriek, to weirdly guttural speaking in tongues, feral yelp to bleated bellow, fierce and freaked out and fucking amazing. Especially on one track, where it's just drums and vocals, over a bed of Orcutt's amp buzz. Total avant garde noise rock minimalist genius!
Peppered throughout are also some seriously mesmerizing long form jams that channel the spirit (and sound to a degree) of the Dead C, transforming the otherwise caustic crunch and feedback drenched skree into thick lush billows of blissed out, borderline dreamy noise.
Gorgeously packaged, pressed on heavy black vinyl, and housed in a super thick, black and white, deluxe gatefold jacket. And we're guessing, as with most stuff on Palilalia, probably pretty limited!
Musical missive number two (or three if you count the sidelong Fear Falls Burning remix from a few years back) from Harvestman, the cosmic folk space raga alter ego of Neurosis' Steve Von Till.
The first Harvestman record, A Grave Is A Grim Horse, was a dizzying confluence of delicate seventies British style folk, shimmery spaced out drift, and glacial doomdrone sprawl, a constantly evolving, organic song suite that seemed to exist in some glorious blissed out otherworld. On In A Dark Tongue, the glimmering strands of traditional folk music that tethered the first record become even more tenuous. Before, even at its spaciest, Harvestman seemed grounded and earthbound, certainly with an eye to the stars, but the sounds evoking frosty mountainsides, deep forests, blackened skies, as much as strange shapes in the heavens and mysterious galaxies, the soundtrack to a strange terrestrial world, lit by the contrails of mysterious bodies streaking across the heavens.
Like A Grave Is A Grim Horse, In A Dark Tongue is also a weathered megalithic sonic artifact of an unknowable culture, its symbols obscure yet magnetic, calling you into communion with its ancient spirit. Enduring, unnerving, moving. Evoking arcane rites, cold hazy sunrises, a god/dess visible only in the massive wheeling patterns of nature and sound. But Dark Tongue moves beyond its predecessor, creating a linked, yet wholly other sonic landscape, at once more abstract and ethereal, but also heavier and more dense, with a black hole intensity woven into the otherwise kaleidoscopic drift, the sound constantly shifting from woozy, bleary eyed psychedelia to loosely propulsive spacekraut groove, fluttery delicate thrum to wild metallic squall, all doused in effects, a warm fuzzy patina of gauzy blur and muted buzz.
It's almost as if the songs here are not so much songs as transmissions, broadcast from a lost land, messages from the original Harvestman, sprawling lysergic druidic rituals, wreathed in the sonic detritus of the sound's endless journey, a message home - or a message lost and drifting endlessly through the black expanses of time.
Recorded in the woods of Idaho, Harvestman draws from the surrounding landscape, unfurling softly buzzing spidery barely there melodies that hover in druggy expanses of Tangerine Dream warped guitar blur, druggy, woozy, hazy, delicate yet dark, an alien psych folk rendered in shades of space rock.
Soft whispery steel string strum gives way to ultra distorted ur-drone ragas, the guitars super saturated and crumbling, leads that sound more like bagpipes than guitars, the sound warped and blown out, but still warm and tranquil.
Fluttering mellotronic flutes flit dreamily around slow shifting sheets of soft swelling chords, smeared with streaks of glitch and whir. Slowly sprawling grooves underpinned by squalls of outer space FX and upper register feedback, all draped over brittle layers of jagged crunch, throbbing motorik beats wrapped in thick swaths of delay, decay and rumble, everything locked into hypnotic lurching loops.
The vocals are sparse, in fact on Dark Tongue the vocals creep to the surface on only one track, the brooding expansive "By Wind And Sun." Von Till's raspy croon, equal parts weathered Tom Waits-ian bellow and Neurosis style metallic howl, rough and raw, but still soulful and dramatic, a haunting ritualistic chant, although as the song progresses, Von Till's voice begins to transform and splinter into strange fragmented shapes, the various shards sent spinning into the ether, gradually evolving into another washed out and heavily effected layer of sound, that seems to melt into the swirling and whirling sounds all around it.
There's even one track with what sounds like a Koto, super spare and abstract, channeling Eastern classical music, but layered with slivers of minor key guitar growl, the whole thing eventually erupting into a malfunctioning electronic freakout. The whole record a constantly shifting sprawl of electric guitars and synthesizers, dulcimers and ring modulators, loops and vocals, delay and distortion. Members of the Grails and Om contribute, but here they play acolytes to Von Till's high priest, together invoking the spirit of German Oak, Amps For Christ, Can, Six Organs Of Admittance, SUNN))), Faust, Growing, Amon Duul, their sonic shadows dancing on the looming stones assembled in the flickering firelight, beneath a sky of diamond and obsidian.
In A Dark Tongue is a gorgeous slow burning psychedelic song cycle, smoldering minor key epics, the sounds lustrous and organic, the guitars viscous and virulent, the atmosphere murky and mysterious, all the while strangely sun dappled and dreamlike. Strings soar and sing, melodic fragments are hurled into the abyss, monolithic guitar drones flow into fields of ephemeral stasis, a sound not heavy so much as darkly effulgent.
The two longest tracks appear to be the space rock centerpieces, channeling the extended heart-of-the-sun outros of Hawkwind and the smoked out stomp of old Monster Magnet into classic krautrock heaviness, each a mesmerizing soundtrack to some seemingly and perhaps ultimately doomed mission into the unknown, both rife with relentless rhythms, roiling psych drone tumult and thick warbly synths, underpinning moody meandering melodies and frictive soft focus textures.
While Harvestman most definitely exists within an esteemed sonic brotherhood, the sound here most definitely transcends, Von Till proving a master of more than massive pummeling heaviness, displaying a flair for the delicate, the tenebrous, the contemplative and the hallucinatory, having created with In A Dark Tongue a sound both portentous and elegiac, an arcane and esoteric bit of beauty, of dark hued mystery, of folk flecked abstraction and churning leviathan heft. A breathtaking and expansive glimpse beyond the firmament, into the soul of a sound, where the already blurred lines between drone and doom and drift and psych and kraut and space cease to exist at all.
Other RIYL: Expo '70, La Otracina, Acid Mothers Temple, and the myriad of underground cd-r drone / drift / psych combos�
Best known as the bearded, kinda imposing guitarist/vocalist/viking in the art-metal institution known as Neurosis, Steve Von Till is always working on other projects as well... Harvestman being his latest musical incarnation (with help from friends, including members of Amber Asylum), devoted to making psychedelic, electronic spacerock with a traditional folk heritage. It's like pagans were picked up at Stonehenge by an alien spaceship and deposited on some far off planet aeons hence to make music on futuristic instruments (that we call electric guitars and synthesizers). Lashing The Rye is mostly instrumental, with just two female vocal visitations and (on one song) the sampled voice of Bert Jansch. Also SVT "narrates" on one track, a la Current 93 or something. The twelve tracks here may have titles like "Scarborough Fair" and "Sheep-Crook and Black Dog" (Harvestman's renderings of those two inspired by versions recorded by John Renbourn and Steeleye Span, respectively) but while many of the tunes here may be traditional, Harvestman's interpretation and instrumentation sure ain't! Though there's some delicate guitar and piano (and searing bagpipe) this isn't all that "acoustic" -- there's also plenty of droning electronic spaciness and heavy waves of distorted electric guitar. It's calm, and quite pretty, but massive. Folk-drone for giants. Imagine Amps For Christ teamed up with Kinski. Parts even hint at the density of SUNNO))) or Boris. Recommended!
So it took the rest of the world a while to catch on. Don't be too hard on them. Harvey Milk are one difficult proposition. Don't blame us though. We've been there all along trying to convince everybody just how brilliant this bafflingly bizarre sludge combo really was. Andee even reissued their seminal Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men album on his tUMULt label. And don't blame Henry at Chunklet, the man responsible for this here document. In fact he was right there every step of the way, a one man Harvey Milk archivist and booster club. And of course we don't blame you, loyal AQ list readers, cuz we know you feel the same way we do, you just can't get enough of Harvey Milk's pummeling, crushing, obtuse and confusional heaviness. Well for you, and for us, and for the heavy music lovers of the world who have yet to discover the difficult joy of Harvey Milk, life is is about to get a whole lot sweeter.
Courtesy And Good Will is getting reissued again, on Relapse, any day now, there's a BRAND NEW Harvey Milk record due sometime in the next month or so, there are rumors of a deluxe reissue of the long out of print Harvey Milk debut, a serious holy grail, My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be, maybe with an extra disc, and then there's THIS. Four long years in the making, and it was worth every single second. Most of us who dig Harvey Milk, even those of us who might go so far as to say we are obsessed, never actually got to see the band play live. And this three and a half hour DVD collection of live shows spanning over 12 years is just as much a revelation as we knew it would be.
From super grainy early live footage, when the band was much more of a punk rock, Touch And Go / AmRep sort of beast, you can, out of the corner of your eye, see the sludginess and fuckedupness creep up through the music, slowly and subtly infusing every song and sound with some ineffable something, that helped turn Harvey Milk into a band that sounded unlike any other band, then or now. Theirs was a career trajectory based entirely on getting weirder and sludgier and more obtuse and WAY more difficult and fucked up, a bit like the Melvins, but without the unexpected mainstream success and major label deal. Harvey Milk also unexpectedly shifted gears for a while, letting their ZZ Top obsession take control, and becoming impossibly groovy and rocking, which only lasted a single record before the band returned EVEN MORE damaged and slow and brutal, as if that was even possible.
The band look so unassuming, frontman Creston Spiers just an every day Joe until he opens his mouth and unleashes that impossible low banshee-like howl, bass player Stephen Tanner, with his weird, fey, Doogie Howser look, goofy smile and even goofier sexy hip swivel. And the drums, the drummers... Harvey Milk's songs are so full of space, so slow and stretched out, the drums are often the only thing holding the songs together. Whether they are shuffling in the background, or pounding out a massive slow motion throb, it's the drums that allow the guitars to spin off into space and the songs to unfurl into confusing super spacious epics.
Probably the most amazing part of the disc is when Creston wields a sledgehammer, pounding an anvil in time with the downtuned bass and pounding drums, while howling in that anguished banshee wail of his. Normally it would be weird to see a band set-up like that -- bass, drums and sledgehammer -- but somehow, for Harvey Milk it seems perfect. Creston swaying back and forth, cradling the hammer like it was a guitar, while the band pounds out a sludgy dirge behind him. So good! Woven in to the older material are plenty of long slow drawn out moody post rockisms, with drifting simple mournful melodies, and mumbled crooned vocals that eventually build into the epic whirls of swirling sludge we hold so near and dear to our hearts.
The biggest surprise here is how much footage there is from the band's "ZZ Top period," a stretch that on record only lasted a single album, but live seemed to have spanned several years. A wild and hair twirling, head banging super groovy sort-of-Southern rock with howled and yelped superrock vocals, less obviously sludgy, but still ultra heavy. This was never really a favorite sound for lots of Milk fans (although it is Allan's favorite) but seeing these songs performed live is enough to convince us that maybe we were WAY off and this stuff is some of the best Harvey Milk EVER!!!
It sounds like southern rock filtered through the Melvins. Or Ram Jam played by the Corrupted. It's just so awesome to watch with drummer Kyle Spence's massive Boham-esque kit (complete with Bonham's logo on the bass drum head) a huge gong, just tearing it up Bill Ward style holding the whole thing together... And because of the film stock and the sound and the style, it's almost feels like watching some recently unearthed German television footage of some ultra heavy long lost proto metal band from the seventies, they even whip out a little "Pinball Wizard!" Someone needs to reissue The Pleaser now. C'mon!! Maybe we just weren't in the right frame of mind when it first came out, but we're pretty sure that record would kick our asses now!
After that, the band sort of drifted off and disappeared, before resurfacing in 2005, as a much grungier, hairier looking Milk, all jeans and long hair and Voivod t-shirts, and they sound like it too. A return to the impossibly glacial dirge of Courtesy, but even heavier and somehow more even more fucked up sounding. Like Sabbath at 16rpm, massive lumbering, blown out sludgerock divinity. How many ways can we say it. WE LOVE HARVEY MILK!!! THEY ARE WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE GREATEST BANDS OF THE LAST 20 YEARS!!
There's also a DVD Easter egg (thanks Jace!): just go to the credits menu and push up until "40 Watt '93" is highlighted, for some footage from an April Fool's show where the band tackle three R.E.M. covers, taken from a show where the band covered R.E.M.'s Reckoning in its entirety. Seriously! (the also once did a whole set of Hank Williams covers, let's pray someone has a tape of that stashed!) It's pretty dang cool to see one generation of Athens rock take on another. And they don't really sludge it up all that much, playing 'em pretty straight, but managing to make them -almost- sound like Harvey Milk originals!
Also included is a four song 3"cd containing previously unreleased, super rare tracks, one of which is their version of R.E.M.'s "South Central Rain"!!!
And of course the packaging is breathtaking. Designed by Stephen O'Malley and Henry Chunklet, it's a gorgeous oversized DVD style, fold over interlocking cardstock sleeve, greenish brown, with O'Malley's instantly recognizable graphic shards in dark brown, the title in embossed reflective silver, inside copious liner notes from Henry printed in metallic silver, the back has an angular H and M diecut, through which you can see the inside sleeve, a black folded cardstock gatefold with silver metallic ink which houses both the DVD and the 3" cd affixed to the inside on little nubs. So awesome!
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 1000 COPIES!!!!!!!!
The droning dirgelike beauty that is Harvey Milk's legendary Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men record, finally get's a deluxe digital reissue on our very own Andee's tUMULt label!
Crushing and pummeling majestic beauty, interspersed with delicate moments of hushed whispery strum. Lumbering down-tuned hyper-rhythmic skull crack dropped delicately into suffocating expanses of near silence. Delicate pointillist piano mutates into a dirgey exercise in tension that sounds like a lost Dario Argento soundtrack performed by the Melvins. Lilting and
melancholy near-ballads are disrupted by incessant and brutally heavy riffs. Amidst the pummel and beneath the negative space swirls a barely audible maelstrom of whispered vocals, warbling turntables and whirring vacuum cleaners, all adding to the confusional brilliance that was Harvey Milk. And their heart wrenching cover of Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" features what has to be the most tortured and anguished vocal performance ever recorded.
Too heavy to be post rock. Too weird to be metal. Too everything to be anything, Harvey Milk were unconventional and wholly unique, both structurally and sonically, touching on territory mined by the likes of Gastr Del Sol, Codeine, Queen, Husker Du, Man Is The Bastard, the Melvins, and ZZ Top, but slowing it down, making it HEAVY, and fucking it up. Making it more beautiful, while making it difficult to listen to at all.
Hypnotic, repetitive and jarring. Unpredictable, exhausting and perplexing.
Comes in a beautiful gatefold, letterpressed, silkscreened cover, replicating (in miniature) the LPs original cover.
2005 postscript: Harvey Milk freaks rejoice!! With the sudden surge in interest in all things sludge-y and doomy and drone-y, as well as loads of HM-specific attention, Harvey Milk have decided to reform, tour and record a brand new album!! FUCK YEAH!
Super limited single from the brand new Harvey Milk album. HOLY SHIT!! Did you hear that? BRAND NEW HARVEY MILK ALBUM!!! See elsewhere on this list for a review of HM's Special Wishes. This single features the killer first track from Special Wishes, "I've Got A Love", but the real reason to pick this up is the exclusive B side, a crushingly downtuned, utterly and breathtakingly beautiful dreamsludge version of Leonard Cohen's "The Old Revolution". HM fans already remember and cherish the heartbreaking version of Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" on Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men and thus know what HM can do with a Leonard Cohen song. Don't blow it. This is limited to 1000 copies and will be gone before you know it.
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. What an awesome title. And the record cover, a bull and a rooster and an ornate candle, the words Harvey Milk in tiny blue type over the rooster. On the cd, the text: "Harvey Milk is Cronos, Mantis, Abadon". Song titles like�"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I",�"The Anvil Will Fall" and "Merlin Is Magic". By now most avid AQ customers are very familiar with the mysterious sludge rock power trio Harvey Milk, but when we first laid hands on this disc, back in 1994, we had no idea what to think. As if�the artwork wasn't enough to have us scratching our heads, the music inside was even more willfully difficult. And still is. Obviously borne of some serious Melvins worship, Harvey Milk, took the already difficult sound of the Melvins to new heights, or depths, crafting lengthy sludge jams, packed with as much space as riffs, long expanses of spastic John Bonham like drumming, vocals a whiskey soaked gravelly bellow, guitars thick black sheets. This was without a doubt some of the strangest music we had ever heard. But at the same time, somehow the most beautiful. The sound�of Harvey Milk was some impossible blend of noise rock, math rock, post rock, punk rock, twentieth century composition and METAL. All tangled into one huge gnarled black hole of sound. A sound that crawls more than it rocks, but when it does rock, it blows away pretty much any other band in the land.�
Lots of you no doubt already own Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men, arguably one of the greatest records EVER, heavy, sludgy or otherwise. If you don't you need to stop reading for a second and go buy it right now. We'll wait...........
Okay, Courtesy was HM record number two, and found the band 'tightening' up their sound, taking the chaos of My Love, and crafting it into, well, more chaos. It's hard to say how they changed between these two records. My Love is a tiny bit faster. The best way to describe it is like this:�My Love is to Courtesy, the way Nirvana's Bleach is to Nevermind, more immediate and raw, but with some of the best songs the band ever wrote, and like Bleach, it's a record that tons of fans continue to insist is the best thing they've ever done. And while we are of the mind that Courtesy is in fact the best Harvey Milk record ever (unless you ask Allan, who would probably say The Pleaser, the -other- HM reissue this week, a killer disc of Harvey Milked ZZ Top worship) returning to My Love has us maybe reconsidering. We can't actually decide. There are so many amazing songs on My Love that we had forgotten about, as good as anything on Courtesy. It would probably be more realistic to proclaim�My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be /�Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men as the ultimate math-sludge-slow-motion-dirge-doom-whatever one-two punch EVER. Maybe the greatest first and second record combo of all time. Needless to say, if you're at all into the current crop of slow motion doom mongers, and have somehow missed out on these records, you will lose your fucking mind (and odds are loads of you have never heard My Love as it's been out of print for ages). It's no exaggeration when we say every song on My Love is darn near perfect. But a few of our favorites:
"A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" was the absolute first peep we ever heard out of HM, and it's brutal and beautiful, so utterly confusing and unlike anything ever. A�frustratingly obtuse abstract jam, even calling it a jam is stretching the definition of the word jam, there's LOTS of space, the track begins with a minute of weird electronic noodling, a huge wash of cymbals and guitar scrape, a killer BIG drum fill, and then... nothing... a weird barely there buzz, some cymbal dings, a moaning cello.... How amazing is that?!?!? It isn't until halfway through the song before the riff finally kicks in, and even then, it's like pulling teeth to get these guys to let loose and rock. In fact, it's not until the last two minutes that the band really go for it. And it was worth the wait, but before you know it comes�"Women Dig it", slowing everything waaaaaaaaay back down. A super drawn out exercise in tension and release, with long stretches of just drums, big Zeppelin style drums, accompanied by mewled vocal, but which features one of the most awesome riffs EVER, so much so, that when it kicks in, it makes you want to rock the fuck out, which you could do if it wasn't just played once every couple minutes.... oh the glorious frustration!!! It's the sort of riff most bands would not only kill for, but that most bands would repeat over and over and over and base a whole song� around, whereas the Milk kick out that riff maybe twenty times, in the whole song, and all clumped together, with the rest of the song spent plodding and drifting and doing anything but locking into a killer groove. But that's what makes Harvey Milk so great, when that riff DOES drop, it's a ridiculous release, like an orgasm, this unbelievable rock-out relief, but like with most things it's the wait, the build up, that is the best part. Or at least the 'other' best part.
Another classic Milk track is�"The Anvil Will Fall", a moody drifting whispery ballad, peppered by huge bursts of downtuned pummel,�when out of nowhere, in come the strings, some patriotic hymn, an almost recognizable tune that Creston sings along too in his warbly raspy croon, even kicking it up into a wicked falsetto, before petering back out into the original hushed crawl, eventually launching into a super moving moody goddamned ANTHEM. The sort of song that should have sludge fans teary eyed with hat in hand, and hand over heart. And finally...
"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", besides being the best song title maybe EVER, it's also one of the greatest songs ever, a really really�fucking weird song, howled tortured vocals over a relentless tribal drum fill with occasional bursts of Zeppelin like riffage,�before the guitar transforms into a static rumbling drone, and the drums just sort of do whatever the hell they want, for ever it feels like...�and then the band launches back into it and it's some relentless bastardized groovy Southern sludge jam, but like all HM songs, they stop not long after to just sort of wander, and plod and wait, and pause, before doing it all over again....
We could go one and on, and get all mushy and fanboy about every single song on�My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be, but you get the drift. This record is magical. Majestic. Freaked out. Furious. Heavy as anything you've ever heard. Strangely pretty. Mind meltingly difficult. Crushing. Confusing. Baffling. Brutal. And pretty much one of our favorite records ever...
It's funny, for years, you couldn't find a Harvey Milk record to save your life. Reissues, cd-r's, rumors about the band all trickled out and were lapped up by all of us ravenous doomdrone hounds desperate for more music from this mysterious Southern dirge rock behemoth. Then suddenly, a few years back, things began to change, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men got reissued on Andee's tUMULt label, a cd compilation of singles came out, and then the Kelly Sessions. We were loving it. But then it all stopped. Nothing. Until we started hearing rumors again about reissues and more excitingly, a reformed HM and a new record!! And you know what? The rumors were true, the band is back together, and just released this here brand new album. Hot on the heels of the amazing DVD we raved about last list, and alongside a double disc reissue of Courtesy (with a bonus live disc!) reviewed elsewhere on this list, Special Wishes makes us want to just lay down and weep. That's how much we love this band. And how long we have been dreaming about this day. Very few bands can inspire such ridiculous loyalty and utter fanboy obsession. But Harvey Milk are pretty much unlike any band ever. When ranking the weirdest heaviest, GREATEST bands of all time in our heads, Harvey Milk are ALWAYS there, and almost always in the top 5, and depending on our mood, often in the number one spot.
With most bands, we tend to recommend older albums, you know, the new one is for fans only, but if you don't already own any records start with this other one. But even if you've never heard Harvey Milk, Special Wishes will undoubtedly convert you to the way of the Milk. And you WILL have a new favorite band.
The record starts with "I've Got A Love" a crushing pounding slow motion jam, with howled anguished vocals (that Allan thought sounded like Eugene from Oxbow) and thick walls of downtuned guitar, and some weird grinding background drone. SO heavy and glacial it makes the Melvins sound like Blink 182. OK, maybe that's not entirely true, but you know what we're getting at. The next two tracks are equally dirgey, and brutal and impossibly, infuriatingly slow and heavy. But then comes "Once In A While" a groovy classic rock / Southern rock jam, that sounds like Paw on 16 rpm, pretty and melodic, but somehow still way too heavy and creepily ominous. Up next is the appropriately titled "Instrumental" which combines HM's pummeling sludge, with some seriously acrobatic prog rock arrangements, like a super heavy Don Cab. Two more tracks of crushing glacial beauty, plodding brutality, pop hooks buried beneath two tons of guitar sludge, completely and mesmerizingly pulverizing. Then it's The One. Our favorite song of the year. A song so completely unlike anything Harvey Milk has ever recorded, but somehow a song that couldn't have come from anyone else. "Old Glory", the tale of a flag, or THE flag, a strangely beautiful pop song, finger picked acoustic guitar, gorgeous melodic crooning, and a sudden burst of lush psychedelic guitar harmonies, eventually the band kicks in, with massive guitars and probably the most kick ass classic rock guitar lead to ever grace an underground rock record. Full on "Freebird" shit. Wow. One of those songs that we listen to over and over and over. A song that sounded so totally out of place on first listen (although we loved it immediately) but became sort of the heart of the record for us. The final track is almost even weirder. "Mother's Day" is a massive and majestic epic, warm warbly organs, dreamy violin playing a mournful melody, with "God Bless America" melodies all over the place, when the band finally kicks in, it's like the underground doomdirgesludge version of that last song all cock rock and classic rock bands play live, huge soaring chords, everyone swaying back and forth, lighters held high, it sounds like a pisstake, but at the same time it sounds so fucking good. Which is pretty much an apt description of Harvey Milk in general. Confusing and confounding, crushing and majestic. But totally fucked up and emotional and brilliant, and still as far as we're concerned quite possibly the greatest band EVER.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY. [/cat/experimental80.html]
This is volume two in God Is Myth's 3" cd-r series paying homage to the late great H.P Lovecraft. The first came courtesy of UK experimental black metal outfit Caina, this, the second comes via Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist. Based, according to the label website, on awakening/conjuring of the "Outer Gods": Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu (who is actually one of the Great Old Ones, according to our resident Lovecraft Mythos expert Allan). So what does that sound like? Well for Harvist, that sounds like relentlessly pounding black buzz, thick washes of overblown guitars, chugging downtuned riffs, killer blast beats and some seriously anguished howls. Also plenty of grunts and "uuuh"s. Wrest from Leviathan might call this "goat metal", but it's fast and black and furious, heavy and epic.
The first two tracks a straight ahead grim frosty old skool black metal. Raw and brutal. The third track adds keyboards and tolling bells, and is more melodic and moody, but it's track 4 that pushes this over the edge, an 'actual' Chaos Magic Ritual dedicated to the awakening of the essence of Cthulhu!! Lots of ambient sound, what could be surf (but also sounds like cars driving by), whispering wind, massive rumbling drones and of course, creepy processed vocals, reciting the unholy incantation to summon the mighty Cthulhu! Pretty weird. But the perfect tribute to the genius and legacy of Lovecraft.
Awesome cover painting of Cthulhu, and each disc includes an insert with information on Lovecraft as well as a killer creepy portrait.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We only got 15 and it's already out of print from the label so once these are gone we will not be able to get more.
A strange split between the stalwart Japanese noise artist Hiroshi Hasegawa (of C.C.C.C. and Astro infamy and also half of the Hasegawa-Shizuo duo with a couple of exceptional albums on Utech) and the dreamy ambient composer Sasha Darko. The Hasegawa side is a monster of a piece as oceanic grey chunks of hissing noise with crumbled distortion dramatically build through an intensity of dense layering and compressed noise chomp augmented with pulsar-driven oscillations and industrial ventilator churns. More Prurient than Merzbow, landing on the dynamic, theatrical side of noise construction. Great stuff we should add. The Sasha Darko half is a drifting excerpt of pretty twinkling electronics graced with kosmische overtures. Some of Darko's previous albums retain overt allusions to deep-sea imagery complete with dolphin and whale tones (eek!), and it's seagulls he's going for on this tape of lulling patterns and sea-green serenades. This one clocks in at just 10 minutes, and the artwork from Black Horizons is top-notch, with offset silver printing on black linen paper.
Reissued and remastered for the first time on vinyl since its initial 1980 release, and previously long out of print on cd too, this beautiful collaboration between minimalist composer / experimental trumpeter Jon Hassell and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno has never sounded better! Such a gorgeous classic. Made between Eno's production work on Larajji's Ambient 3: Days of Radiance and the David Byrne collaboration, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, Possible Musics was an early investigation into world music influences tempered through modern, Western studio techniques (synth treatments, tape delay, echo effects) resulting in a music of a borderless hybrid world of geographical intrigue. It greatly influenced the future-primitive recordings of My Life In The Bush of Ghosts made only ten days after the Fourth World sessions finished, though really they are different sides of the same coin.
Hassell, studied under Pandit Pran Nath and learned to transcribe Indian classical vocal techniques to the sound of the trumpet. Through various effects, he is able to conjure a vast array of sounds and textures, animalistic and mystical, sometimes flute-ish and even didgeridoo-ish. It never once sounds like a trumpet. There are definitely influences of Aboriginal, African, island and tribal music, but the aim feels more topographical than ethnological. The slow and deep attention to detail like the timbre of strings, the deep pulse of water drums and the loping liquid rhythms suggest big expanses of weather and terrain, movement and landscape. Hassell's trumpet treatments processed through Frippertronic-like tape loops and reverse echo effects are like deep rain clouds slowly moving across sparse tundra but seen and heard at a far distance. And indeed the whole album has this remote field recording quality like one is witness to something far-off, slightly foreboding, perhaps mystical, but also magnetic and alien, especially felt on the final side-long track "Charm (Over 'Burundi Cloud')". One of our favorites of the whole Eno/Ambient catalog!! Vinyl version comes with a copy of the cd.
The musical equivalent of a young leaf drifting along on a slow flowing brook. Shuta Hasunuma's music is as minimal yet richly expressive as a haiku -- stirring a collective "ahhhh" from all within earshot. Each track is composed from tiny fragments of field recordings that he captured in both rural and urban Japanese environments. Meditative. Contemplative. Beautiful.
Collected works (live, as the title states) from the man behind OR Records (responsible for a slew of excellent experimental / electronic discs from artists like Zbigniew Karkowski, Francisco Lopez, Farmer's Manual, CD_Slopper, etc.). You might recognize Haswell's name as he's remixed Merzbow (Scumtron) and Thurston Moore (Root) as well as collaborated with the former on a 12" put
Another list, another lovely sonic missive from local boutique label Time Released Sound, and odds are, long time readers of the list know just what to expect from a TRS release, something drifty and dreamy, ambient and cinematic, blissed out and shimmery, subtle electronics, maybe strings, hushed dronemusic, maybe pastoral, maybe subtly sinister, sometime sun dappled and tranquil, other times dark and melancholic, but always sonically stunning, and of course, elaborately packaged.
This time around, it's another new discovery, at least for us, a soundscaper from Iran named Porya Hatami, who weaves delicate expanses of crystalline ambience, lush, billowy smears of soft focus thrum, beneath softly reverbed piano, subtle swoonsome strings, the sound a languorous slow build, but not to any bombastic climax, instead, setting layer upon layer, the sound growing ever more dense, and deep, with swirls of spacey synth deftly woven into sprawls of dreamlike, nocturnal swells. Haunting, softly distorted pulsations spread out like beacons in a thick sonic fog, the overtones bleeding into one another and creating a thick blanket of warm reveberant shimmer, each track here part of a greater whole, a lush, tranquil, serenely psychedelic kosmische ambience that seems to expand ever outward, enveloping the listener in an electronic flecked, dream-ambient web of ethereal sound.
As always, there are two versions, both fantastically packaged, the deluxe version this time around, limited to just 75 copies, comes housed in a hand assembled and 'artified' sewn booklet full of aeronautic ephemera, this is in turn housed in a laser-cut, vintage hardback book cover, each inset with an antique glass identification slide. Inside there's lots more, runway diagrams, old airport photos, flight instruction manuals as well as actual pages from vintage pilot's logbooks, and finally a vintage aeronautic snapshot as well. As if that weren't enough, the cd comes in a vintage airmail envelope, and in the spine of each booklet is a vintage pencil! Phew! There's also a standard version, that one limited to 150 copies, the disc housed in a swank full color digipak.
Another list, another lovely sonic missive from local boutique label Time Released Sound, and odds are, long time readers of the list know just what to expect from a TRS release, something drifty and dreamy, ambient and cinematic, blissed out and shimmery, subtle electronics, maybe strings, hushed dronemusic, maybe pastoral, maybe subtly sinister, sometime sun dappled and tranquil, other times dark and melancholic, but always sonically stunning, and of course, elaborately packaged.
This time around, it's another new discovery, at least for us, a soundscaper from Iran named Porya Hatami, who weaves delicate expanses of crystalline ambience, lush, billowy smears of soft focus thrum, beneath softly reverbed piano, subtle swoonsome strings, the sound a languorous slow build, but not to any bombastic climax, instead, setting layer upon layer, the sound growing ever more dense, and deep, with swirls of spacey synth deftly woven into sprawls of dreamlike, nocturnal swells. Haunting, softly distorted pulsations spread out like beacons in a thick sonic fog, the overtones bleeding into one another and creating a thick blanket of warm reveberant shimmer, each track here part of a greater whole, a lush, tranquil, serenely psychedelic kosmische ambience that seems to expand ever outward, enveloping the listener in an electronic flecked, dream-ambient web of ethereal sound.
As always, there are two versions, both fantastically packaged, the deluxe version this time around, limited to just 75 copies, comes housed in a hand assembled and 'artified' sewn booklet full of aeronautic ephemera, this is in turn housed in a laser-cut, vintage hardback book cover, each inset with an antique glass identification slide. Inside there's lots more, runway diagrams, old airport photos, flight instruction manuals as well as actual pages from vintage pilot's logbooks, and finally a vintage aeronautic snapshot as well. As if that weren't enough, the cd comes in a vintage airmail envelope, and in the spine of each booklet is a vintage pencil! Phew! There's also a standard version, that one limited to 150 copies, the disc housed in a swank full color digipak.
Before Hatewave became a grinding mathy metal juggernaut (with a killer record on tUMULt), they were, well, THIS. Something much more fucked up and damaged. Retarded and demented. Still sort of metal, but way more lo-fi and noisy, splattery confusional and bizarre.
Before Weasel Walter was in the band, they were fronted by the mysterious and brilliantly demented Nondor Nevai. As the liner notes to this archival release so eloquently state: "Fuck metal." And indeed, most metalheads, even ones who dug the twisted blackmathgrind of the tUMULt recording, will find this stuff too tweaked and twisted.
The guitars are muddy smears, not so much riffing as spewing gouts of buzz and fuzz, gnarled melodies and sheets of lo-fi crumbling distortion, the drums, if they are real drums, are an avalanche of thuds, of splattery skittery chaos, the vocals howled and moaned and shrieked, this is some seriously fucked up stuff.
Probably the closest comparison would be Faxed Head. In fact, twice when we were listening to this, people came up and asked us if it was Faxed Head. But even compared to Faxed Head this stuff is grimier, more mental, a sick onslaught of furious relentless pound and grind and grunt and stumble and what-the-fuck.
Definitely might be too much for all but the strangest and most adventurous metalheads, but noiseniks and grind freaks and anyone into utter aural insanity should just go ahead and dig in.
Also be warned: super gnarly, somewhat problematic cover art, inside and out, nudity, blood, violation, and some awesomely shitty layout!
Recommended, but only for the sick, chosen few.
For much of industrial culture, the Berlin Wall was an allegory for the severance of the self from society, whether that rupture be self-imposed or enforced by greater social forces. Even for those bands not residing in Berlin or Germany, the dismantling of the Wall marked a shift in aesthetics that was not quite so abject. Einsturzende Neubauten, for sure, marched to an entirely different beat after the Wall came down; but so did Coil and Test Dept. and Cabaret Voltaire, consciously or not. Yes, the jackbooted young men and women started to dance. But for those from Eastern Bloc countries, the mythologies, symbols, and rituals of industrial culture seem to speak beyond a particular time and place. Russia, in particular, has developed a lively underground of malcontents with DIY electronics making all sorts of nasty noises as well as ritualized meditations through metal bashing that have trickled into the West at a very slow rate. There are probably a number of cultural and social factors for these aesthetic and conceptual frameworks in Eastern Europe; but we are more keen on the results. Hati represent one mighty fine continuation of an industrial state of mind. This Polish duo of Rafal Iwanski and Darek Wojtas operate somewhere near the Thelemic practices of esoteric rites through sound with a slant towards the TOPY sects (hence the Magick in the title) in their ritual-industrial klang on junkyard metal, bellowing through animal bone horns, gongs, bells, etc. Not surprisingly, they have a long-standing relationship with Z'ev, whose clearly been a major influence on their work alongside the death obsessed exploration from Metgumbnerbone, Coil's energy rituals found on How To Destroy Angels, and even some of the pine-cone droning of Thuja and Jeph Jerman. There seems to be very little processing, maybe some back-masking and some judicious EQ, but that seems to be it for Hati who give the impression they are recording in the caves that were used for ancient invocations by early Visigoths, so transcendent is their reverb.
This disc compiles two very hard to find documents - the Zero Coma Zero recordings which lands more on the slow mantras of ritualized rhythm and Recycled Magick Emissions which drones through the vibrations of metal.
Hatred is another Wolf Eyes side project, this time, it's Nate Young of Wolf Eyes along with his special lady Alivia Zyvich, and if this record is any indication, the Young/Zyvich household must be one
The disc begins with what sounds like some ultra lo-fi Ryoji Ikeda style minimalism, with piercing high end tones and barely audible low end pulses, all woven into mysterious minimal harmonies and slowly shifting microscopic textures, before launching into a dense loopscape of what sounds like snatches of other songs, short sharp samples, chopped and sped up, distorted and bathed in effects, transformed into a glitchy hiccuping hiss-scape peppered with little bursts of sizzling percussion. But most of the record is taken up by a looooooong burbling swampy low end smear of sound, extended stretches of squelchy keyboard electronic grit and looped fuzz, with haunting distant bells shimmering way in the background. It sounds a bit like Italian creep-prog outfit Goblin being held underwater in the bathtub, or a super damaged noise rock record on Kompakt. Awesome.
Packaged in a MASSIVE fold out, thick paper poster, the outside adorned with black and orange monster faces, snarling and grimacing in a field of sloppy cross hatching and chicken scratch, inside, and eyeball melting monster head rendered in that sort of 3D without the glasses green and red, that moves every time you look at it and makes your eyes ACHE!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Already out of print and sold out at the label so these are the last copies ever...
From the same label that brought us the avant ambient dubstep of Clubroot and Swarms, comes the debut solo 7" from John Haughm, the guitarist for black metal outfit Agalloch. If that sounds like a weird mix, you might not think so as much once you've heard it, as this finds Haughm trying some spaced out solo guitar on for size. A looped bit of almost krautrocky kosmische mesmer. you can definitely hear some Agalloch-isms in the sound, and the mood and vibe does get dark and ominous, and you can almost imagine the band suddenly crashing in all chug and pound and howl, but it's not to be, this is just a gorgeous little chunk of hypnotic solo guitar, the sounds looped and layered, subtly processed, melodies intertwined, tones run through the computer and spit out a little bit Fennesz-y on the other end. The result is pretty dreamy, even for non-metalheads, or metalheads who don't really care for Agalloch, the only bummer is that it's so short, it's the sort of sound that once stretched out to the length of a cd, or a whole side of an lp, would be the ultimate loopguitar krautpsych bliss out. Let's just hope this is a teaser of more to come.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! It's a one sided 7" with the B-side silkscreened and hand numbered, housed in a swank, super striking sleeve, with a download code to boot!
We have to admit, we don't know too much about Haunted Castle, other than they shared a killer 10" split with the band Grey Skull a while back (which featured a cut out and hairy (!) sleeve), and more recently collaborated with recent AQ faves Robedoor on a killer droney ambient lp. But on that record it was tough to tell who was doing what. Robedoor tended to be a noisier heavier proposition, so we just sort of assumed that Haunted Castle were the quiet ones, getting Robedoor to mellow a bit and bliss out. But based on Void Lake, now we're not so sure. Four lengthy, brutal and caustic face melting blasts of psychnoise guitar damage, ultra blown out, dripping with crumbling distortion, all downtuned, and strangely processed, wrapped in thick clouds of, well, more guitar we'd guess. Shimmery streaks of high end feed back and grinding growling guitar fug, bits of muted percussion, what sounds like bizarre vocals and little scrapes and scratches, but it's mostly guitar, squealing and strangled, beaten and mangled, the instrument's anguished cries a huge squall of musical pain and abject fury, with big crashing chunks of industrial clatter dropped into the melee here and there for good measure. It's like Keiji Haino jamming with Heavy Winged, Mouthus, Vulture Club, Burmese, Whitehouse and Liquor Ball, after a night of serious drinking and way too much horse tranquilizer, and maybe with some frontal lobotomies to boot. Damaged free form psych that should appeal to the Brooklyn hipster noiseniks as well as old school Japanoise fanatics and everyone in between.�
Packaged in a hand painted collaged cardboard sleeve, the discs themselves hand painted as well, the sleeve nestled in a hand screened and hand sewn fabric bag. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A 'repress' of a cd-r that we never got the first time around. Mr. Hauschildt is one of the three members of Emeralds; but unlike John Elliott and Mark McGuire, he doesn't seem to be as prolific in terms of solo and side projects, with less than a half-dozen tape and cd-r releases to speak of (compared to mountains of material from those other two). With The Critique Of The Beautiful, Hauschildt doesn't stray too far from the Emeralds sound of kosmiche dronescaping through analog synths and pedals. The album is dying to be made into a piece of vinyl, with the first four pieces acting as one suite that would be nicely matched by the lengthy finale. One of those first four - "What One Does To Another" - has almost a brightened Tim Hecker feel with percolating melodic phases piled below a thickened mass of warmly buzzed distortion. This is followed by "Runway" lovely post-Cluster track of pastoral synthesis built from a rhythmic arpeggiation anchored by a spiralling set of sequential notes and tone-bent phrases. And that extended finale opens with an oscillating flange of church organ minimalism, settling upon a melancholy melody which slowly shifts between just a few minor key notes which gradually wanders into zoned-out passages of electronic bubbling and fizzed textures. Very beautiful, very moving stuff.
Limited stock on this, so don't be surprised when this one sells out.
