FINNISH INSTRUMENTAL CINEMATIC EPIC PROGROCK ALERT!!!
Okay, now that we've got your attention. When Andee was in Finland a few years back, Jussi from Circle took him to a tiny club to see a friend's band play, and the band totally destroyed, they were so epic, so massive, it was like seeing Godspeed! You Black Emperor play in a broom closet. Huge glowing swells of sound, totally memorable melodies, gorgeous arrangements, all swirled into majestic sweeping soaring emotional epics. Even back then, before the band even had a record out. Not soon after, they did in fact release a record, and we were immediately in love. The band was Magyar Posse, and that first record totally captured the majestic might of the band, while at the same time adding all sorts of sonic subtleties and even more dense layers of sound. A second record followed and somehow the band managed to sound even bigger and better. We had been hearing about a brand new record for a while, and were thrilled when a big box showed up a few days ago from Finland and inside was Random Avenger, the newest release from Magyar Posse. We were almost ready to be disappointed considering how much we dug those other records, or at least preparing ourselves to just be happy for more of the same, but if anything, the band have expanded their sound even further, coming up with epic soundscapes even more intense and epic and emotional than before.
This record, even more than the others, sounds like it just has to be a real soundtrack. Pop music is not meant to be so dense and rife with emotion, painting pictures with wordless music as vibrant as if there were in fact lyrics telling a story. The sound is very prog, intensely cinematic and while it is dark and dreamy it can also be strangely playful. Some moments, we're transported to some lost Bond film, others we find ourselves in some dusty Leone Western, while still others we're lost on some moonlit street running for our lives in a mysterious Italian giallo. The first track, "Whirlpool Of Terror And Tension" is a lush and dense, multilayered world of sound, with a strange sort of Bolero staccato rhythm, with strange scrabbly guitars, abstract sixties style female vocals, minor key guitar twangs, chimes and bells, keening guitars feedback, and simple propulsive drumming. The main riff is very Morricone, but is backed up by a thick wash of soaring strings and gorgeous glockenspiel, it's almost impossible not to close your eyes and see a cool sixties Mondrian style credit sequence for some Danger Diabolik style caper movie. That vibe definitely permeates the whole record, but each track definitely has it's own feel and distinct emotion. A handful of the tracks take Magyar's progressive post-rock into definite Goblin / Zombi territory with minor key strings, relentless rhythms, pulsing drums and new wave synths locked into angular krautrock grooves, while spacey sound effects swoop and swirl, strings soar and sing, and again we're just transported to whole new worlds, but worlds with totally kick ass soundtracks!
This is definitely still post-rock, and thus will appeal to fans of Tortoise and Godspeed and Cerberus Shoal and Cyann & Ben and Explosions In The Sky and the like but Magyar Posse have something totally their own going on. A unique sonic vision, an alternate musical universe, where a pair of headphones and a walkman transform you into a super spy or a wily seductress or a hired killer, and turns your boring neighborhood into 1960's Paris, or a dusty ghost town or a secret base in the Arctic. This is music as dense and as rich and as much of an escape as any book or any film could ever be, and music that can have such an incredible effect on the listener, is way too rare. And so very precious.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Yikes! No quiet forest folky revels here. Sure, last time we reviewed something by Finland's Maniacs Dream, an lp they did for HP Cycle a few years back, they were a sort of skronky psychedelic heavy freakout band, whose jams we likened to an unholy union of Faust and the Butthole Surfers. Well, on this disc they've gone a bit further down the freakout path. In fact, it seems like they set out to prove that Finnish peeps can make "Finnish noise" that's just as noisy as any Japanese noise. Turku Hold 'Em is just an all out assault on the ol' earholes, 68 and a half minutes of sheer feedbacking, crinking-cranking, screaming n' screeching N-O-I-S-E. Spread out over two long tracks with nary a respite, though sometimes the rumbling distortion will hold "steady" long enough to take the hardy listener into something of a drone trance zone. This happens more during track two (or maybe its that by track two, the listener is in a state of stunned submission anyway).
If this calorie-burning cavalade of chaos was by Japanese spasming noise outfit Incapacitants (subject of a recent 10cd box set), Allan here would buy this in a second. In fact, he's gonna buy it anyway. It's that good. And if good=noisy in your book, you might agree!
This Finnish duo don't make it easy to describe their music, that's for sure -- but at least we got the magic word "Finnish" in there right off!
The very first track here, "Kun Tulet Tarpeeksi Lahelle, Muutun Perhoseksi", explores moody, cinematic, improvised post-rock textures, building to a noisy, intense climax over the course of 13 minutes. The next, "Nurin Lentaa Lintu", is more of a droning electronic soundscape, abruptly joined by primitive percussion and guitar freakery. Some of the other tracks are even more abstract and ambient, constructed of hiss and crackle, cello and cassette sound collage. Or at one moment this will be all placid and mellow, maybe acoustic guitar and bongos to the fore, before switching with the next track to a weird percolating proggy funky free jazzy thing. A diverse success, and quite carefully crafted/edited, it seems. Fans of other weirdness from Finland (like Avarus and Doktor Kettu) and elsewhere for that matter should check this out.
We'd never normally accuse the Finders Keepers Label of being slow on the draw, having turned us on to so much stuff we wouldn't know about otherwise. But we thought it a bit odd that they just released this Jean-Pierre Massiera compilation so soon after the Mucho Gusto label released the two incredible Psychoses compilations (Discoids and Freakoids) showcasing the eccentric prog, pop and disco productions of this incredible French mad genius. Yet while there is some crossover (six songs here are also on the Freakoids comp; three are also on Discoids), there is about half of Midnight Massiera that's from other outfits not featured on those two previous comps. Some we've heard of (Les Maledictus Sound, who contribute two tracks), others we've heard of but didn't realize Massiera was involved in their production (Chico Magnetic Band and Chris Gallbert, the same track featured on the awesome earlier Mucho Gusto comp, Total Freak Out!), and finally there are a few groups totally new to us: the spaghetti western Moog weirdness of S.E.M. Studios; the one and only Jesus, who contributes two tracks - one loungey freak beat, the other melancholy folk; a percussive fuzz interlude by Atlantide, and the cinematic psych-folk of Afterlife. Visitors, Hermans Rocket, Human Egg, Basile (with two tracks) Les Chats, Les Monegasques, The Pyranhas, and The Starlights make repeat appearances. Folks who already have the two previous compilations (plus the Les Maledictus Sound, Visitors, and Chico Magnetic Band albums, as well as the Total Freak Out compilation), may not want to shell out more for this. But for a one-stop Massiera compilation, this is very wide ranging and well curated, featuring most of the best of the Mucho Gusto compilations, as well as our favorite tracks from Les Maledictus Sound. If you haven't already purchased any of the previous Massiera related releases available, and need a really good introduction, this one will do quite nicely!
We first heard the oddly named Meatbodies when they were still called Chad & The Meatbodies, on a split 7" with Ty Segall, C&TM being Segall's choice for next big thing. Well, now Chad, mainman for the Meatbodies, which is essentially Chad, who wrote all the songs and performs most of them on his own, with the occasional guest, including Segall, delivers his first full length, and it definitely delivers on that single, the sound not that far removed from the Castle Face axis of Segall / Cronin / Dwyer, rambunctious popper pop fused guitar rock crunch, with loads of melody and harmony, the sound ricocheting wildly from the woozy swirling psychedelic intro of "The Archer", to the swagger garage pop pound of "Disorder", to dirge, groovy, noise-pop metallic math-fuzz of "Mountain" (from the aforementioned single), right down to the harmonized lead guitars.
And yet as good as this is, and as much as we dig it, which is a whole hell of a lot, it's not like the Meatbodies are reinventing the garage rock wheel, but then that wheel doesn't yet need reinventing, or if it does, that's still gonna be left to someone else. Instead, the Meatbodies are trafficking in a formula similar to most of their sonic brethren, at times sounding dangerously close to Ty Segall or Thee Oh Sees, even some of Chad's affectations, the reversed yelps, and some of the glammy stomps, sound like straight up steals, but fuck it, it doesn't matter all that much considering how goddamn great these songs are, and how catchy and well crafted this whole record is, and honestly, repeated listens definitely position Meatbodies as its own thing, even if it's a bit beholden to what came before, but then what isn't? And really, the more we listen to this, the more these guys move to the front of the pack for us. Fans of all the Castle Face bands, as well as the most recent batch of In The Red releases and all things heavy, noisy, loud, rocking, poppy, punky, garage-y and fuzzed out will obviously dig big time.
If you're gonna own any Morricone soundtracks, or Spaghetti Western ones, or heck soundtracks in general, you gotta have this one - With its famous whistling theme, a motif which recurs throughout, Morricone's bombastic, evocative music for Sergio Leone's 1966 epic Western is what helped make it a classic - along with the performances of Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach as the titular characters, of course. Morricone's soundtrack too is a classic, and a good example of many aspects of the maestro's music that have had a big influence in various ways on such disparate artists as Sun City Girls, Grails, Barn Owl, John Zorn, and Bjorn Olsson.
This band is much better than their horrible name would imply. My Cat Is An Alien is the delicate avant-rock project of the Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who have garnered a considerable amount of respect from Sonic Youth. So much so that MCIAA has opened for SY on a number of recent Italian gigs, jammed with Kim Gordon during one of those tours, and got this album released through Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. The brothers open their album very quietly with quiet Slint / Tarentel guitar chords and lots of silence between the repeated stanzas. Equally spartan blurts of synthetic 8-bit noise emerge in congress with the guitars, eventually doubling up with a time-stretched / down-pitched reflection of itself. All of this very slowly gets smeared into a spiralling pattern of cosmic delay and tape-loop mechanisms. This track (or movement as MCIAA calls it) takes up all of side one, and is worth the prices of admission alone. The rest of the album is a bit of a turn downhill. Side two tumbles through a passage of lo-fi noise, sounding like a hand-cranked cheese grater being amplified with an occasional John Fahey-esque splutter behind it all. This lp had originally been released as a CD-R / demo before it was sent to Thurston Moore. The other LP is a one-sided affair with the band spitting out spastic sort-of-no-wave.
Released on the same label that put out the Starfuckers compilation Ordine '91-'96, one of our Records Of The Week this week, this collection of eps from Italian/British shoegaze dreampop duo My Violent Ego couldn't be more far removed from the gnarled experimental noise rock of the Starfuckers. MVE instead traffic in heavily processed, washed out effects drenched shimmer, dreamy abstract pop drift, and hushed ethereal pop ambience. 4AD loosed from its more traditional song like structures, the sounds allowed to float freely, blurred clouds of tangled melody, hushed angelic voices, looped melodic mesmer stretched into dreamy droned out drifts of ephemeral dreampop, many of the tracks here mere fragments, but even in fragmented form, so breathlessly lovely.
We knew the name My Violent Ego was familiar, but we couldn't quite remember why, but then it came to us, they were one of the bands who accused black metallers Velvet Cacoon of plagiarism! Remember those rumors of an unreleased VC demo that supposedly consisted of mostly borrowed/stolen music made by other people? The Velvet Cacoon folks copped to it too, admitting to being a total fraud, but knowing VC, it's hard to tell whether they're ever being genuine or always taking the piss, but finally hearing MVE it's easy to hear why Velvet Cacoon might be tempted, slather on a little black buzz, and this stuff would make the most divine and dreamily druggy black metal bliss, the sounds already warm and fuzzy, woozy and washed out, even a bit witch housey, the arrangements looped and circular, slipping from fully realized jangle pop drift, to blurred and smeared impressionistic shoegaze ambience, often melding the two, into some of the dreamiest dreampop we've heard.
There's definitely an old school Eighties vibe, but the band infuse their jangly drift with enough experimentalism that many of these tracks sound more like something you might hear on Touch or Kompakt than 4AD, taking single riffs, or simple loops, and treating them, dousing them in effects, and stretching them out into hushed expanses of mesmeric shimmer. So so nice. And so so totally recommended.
Third album (their first since '95, about time!) of jazz/klezmer/improv by these popular stalwarts of the "New Jewish Music" scene, featuring Ben Goldberg on clarinet, Kenny Wollesen on drums and Dan Seamans on bass.
Imagine the Charlie Daniels Band jammin' with Emperor. Or rather, playing at the same time in adjoining practice rooms -- out in the forest. The ancient forests of the Ukraine, to be precise. That's where Nokturnal Mortum hail from. This is their third album. You may remember the big fuss we made over the amazing Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra disc last year? Well, Mr. Varggoth is the main guy in this band Nokturnal Mortum. With "NeChrist", he and his comrades have created a unique sound, one that combines a raw, roaring black metal attack with the pipes and fiddles and "yee-haws" of folk/country music, Ukrainian style. And, to make us AQ-ers enjoy this EVEN MORE, all of a sudden all the music will stop and the middle part of a track will be occupied by the croaking of frogs! And you know we like frogs and the noises they make. Similarily, the final song on the disc is preceded by 78 short (3 sec.) tracks of twittering birdsounds and forest ambience. Therefore, if you play the disc in "shuffle" mode, you get lots of cut-up bird calls mixed with the occasional actual fantastic Nokturnal Mortum song! The unanimous AQ black metal pick of this lunar month!! Brilliant. Yee-haw! (Recommended.)
Garage punk from Denmark
sounds like a mix of early off-kilter Talking Heads and the ferociousness of the Cramps. Limited supply!
Another nice addition to the Rune Grammofon label, the music of Nils Okland is reminiscent of the soundtrack efforts of Carter Burwell (Fargo, etc.) Playing a hardanger fiddle, violin and accompanied by harmonium, piano, organ, trumpet and double bass plus occasonal vocals the music of Nils Okland sounds almost like an abstracted and drawn out Appalachian string band with Eastern European prog leanings.
The Okros Ensemble is a group (violins, double bass and viola) dedicated to the preservation of Transylvanian folk music. "I Left My Sweet Homeland" features three important guest musicians in the world of Transylvanian folk music. Most important is violinist
Nico meets Jandek in these beautifully introspective proto-goth dirges by an anonymous woman from Czechoslovakia who moved to Canada and self-released these songs on a series of singles in the late seventies and early eighties. Music was her outlet to deal with the depression and alienation she felt living away from her home country, and these songs are almost laughably dour, though also quite lovably naive. Mostly performed with delicate Eastern-European tinged organ drones, she later recorded under the name, The Triffids (no connection to The Australian group), with an instrumental track that includes percussion and synth. Early demos are also included here, and display a slightly brighter air with acoustic guitar and reverbed vocals that will appeal to fans of Liz Harris (aka Grouper). Perhaps not a record for everyone, but those with unusual and eccentric tastes towards obscure but sincere outsiders will find a lot to love here!
Comes with insert with lyric translations. Limited edition of 500.
Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum travelled to Bulgaria in August of 2001 and came back with this aural document of the Koprivshtitsa Festival. Impossibly high female voices arch over droning pipes and strings, at times in a chorus like chattering,
Perhaps most famous for his 1937 cantata, Carmina Burana (whose "O Fortuna" is the go-to score to represent medieval horror and fascist power in film), our favorite Carl Orff works are actually the musical exercises he developed with Gunild Keetman for educating young children. Developed in the 1920's and popularly known as "shulwerk", or "schoolwork", the music is elemental and combines movement, singing, playing, and improvisation. Often played on what is known as "the Orff instruments": glockenspiels, xylophones, metallophones, drinking glasses, violoncello, bells, cymbals, drums, and the triangle, but also plenty of hand-clapping, knee slapping and feet-stamping, the exercises were largely rhythmic and percussive in nature and were designed for instructors to tailor the material to the students specific needs and playing levels. Instructors were also allowed to add popular children's songs and rhymes from their home-country to the repertoire. Translated from the German by Margaret Murray and performed by the Chorus of the Children's Opera Group, The Speech Ensemble from the Italia Conti School, and The Instrumental Ensemble, this Trunk records reissue was originally released in 2 lp editions in 1958. Most songs are under a minute for a total of 85 songs (for this reissue, the lp version has been distilled to 48 tracks on a single lp, but you get 'em all on the cd version)! This UK version features many nursery rhymes like "Pat-A-Cake" and "Tinker-Tailor", but also has some old British folk songs lincluding the very oldest song "Sumer Is Icumen In" and some creepy ones like "The Witch Scene from Macbeth" and "Tommy's Fallen In The Pond", that give some of the singing a spooky feel. But it also hearkens back to a seemingly lost time, where music education for young children was a serious endeavor available and encouraged for everyone. Delightful!
Another one of our all time favorite Italian prog records, by one of our all time favorite Italian prog bands, reissued on vinyl! The cds have ben out of print for ages, so it seems this might be the only way to get this for now...
"Allan and Andee's all time favorite prog band", is how we boldly described Osanna in our review of another Italian prog rock fave, Il Balleto Di Bronzo. We've now got Osanna's L'uomo in stock on vinyl, so you can judge for yourself. Even limiting our discussion to the realm of Italian prog, it would be difficult to claim that Osanna are objectively better than the also amazing likes of Il Balleto, Le Orme, Area, New Trolls, Franco Battiato, Goblin, I Teoremi, RDM, Museo Rosenbach, etc. But, Osanna do somehow combine the key elements of what we like about those bands and prog in general into these three crazy, colorful records, and thus deserve our hype. Ripping flute and sax solos, heavy psych guitar, powerful vocal choruses, hard rockin' prog drumming, weird musical changes and juxtapositions, electronic synth experimentation... Catchy, fun, fucked up prog from five nutty Italians, who want to rock out as much as be arty and display their adept musicanship.
The wonders of Italian prog have been revealed to us in a gradual process of discovery -- finding a used cd with a cool cover, or reading somwhere about another strange band, or getting a recommendation from a friend or customer. Neither of us grew up in Italy, or had a geeky older brother to hand down his PFM and Goblin LPs. In the case of Osanna, Andee's the one who came across 'em first, while travelling in Japan, actually. Rather randomly, the guy from the Boredoms-meets-St. Vitus doom/trance band Solar Anus (released on Andee's tUMULt label) gave Andee a tape of Osanna to take home, promising him he'd like it. Well, Solar Anus dude knew whereof he spoke! Soon we were on-line, trying to track down the LPs, or cd reissues. Not long thereafter, Andee and Allan both possessed the complete works of Osanna. Ever since we've been super psyched to share our Osanna-excitement with you, our prog-lovin' customers... Actually we hope that self-proclaimed "prog" dedication is not necessary for enjoyment of Osanna, as we think that these discs are good and weird and silly enough for AQ-customers into whatever sort of musical extremity (experimental, krautrock, psych, metal, classic rock) to dig.
Osanna's 1971 debut "L'Uomo" may be the most song-oriented of the first three 'essential' albums, their Crimson and Tull influences easy to spot. They sound a bit like a proggier, Italian version of Mexican contemporaries Dug Dugs, if that's of any help -- equally into weird psychedelic effects, hard rock, and pop. A couple of the poppier songs are sung in English, and those might result in a few uncomfortable moments of "what am I listening to here?" panic. But the sheer exuberance and fuzzed out riffing of "L'Uomo" as a whole can't be argued with!
More medieval minstrelry!! Last list we reviewed the cd reissue of the first two albums by Germany's Ougenweide, early '70s German krautfolksters produced by Achim Reichel. Here's the another disc of their mainly acoustic "Mittelalter-Rock", featuring their third and fourth albums Ohrenschmaus and Eulenspiegel, both from 1976. Again this cd is a delight for anyone who can dig a Teutonic twist on ye olde folk, with dash of hippie psych/prog, played by people who wouldn't look out of place in a Joanna Newsom video.
Singing in Old German -- sometimes in Latin -- Ougenweide took their obsession with the Middle Ages quite seriously indeed. They set old poetry to music, putting 'em in the same realm as that wonderful Kay Hoffman album Floret Silva from circa '77 we reviewed last year, and also reminding us a bit of the approach taken by a more recent (and more metallic!) German band, In Extremo -- remember them?
The vocals are lovely, the various stringed things in the band get an, um, incredible workout, alongside hornpipes and jangling percussion... the mood ranges from melancholic atmosphere to pure reeling energy, and if you let yourself get into it, let your mind dance about in Ougenweide's ancient forest glade, you'll find that their melodies and rhythms are utterly infectious.
Germany's Bear Family label, best known for their elaborate (and expensive) box sets, of course do a nice job with the packaging here, the thick cd booklet full of liner notes (in English and German), lyrics (not in English), and photos. Just turn to page 33 in the booklet for a gander at the appalling original album cover of Eulenspiegel -- the band playing tug-o-war in full RenFaire get-up, with a jester-garbed child dancing on the rope! This is a LOT cooler, and generally less silly, than that picture would suggest!
Medieval minstrelry!! Andee has been making fun of Allan for liking this so much, so if you want to get into the middle of that argument, give this a listen. This cd reissues the first two albums by Germany's Ougenweide, an early '70s folk-rock act who were sort of a Germanic version of contemporaneous UK folk-rockers Fairport Convention or Pentangle, perhaps. Gryphon, definitely. Or maybe you remember the Norwegian band Kong Lavring, reviewed here some time ago? Ougenweide are sorta like that, but German. (Another parallel would be France's Malicorne.)
Sweet female vocals, bombastic male ones, flutes n' lutes, lots of ye olde melodiousness and harmoniousness, alongside some fairly rippin', energetic "hoedown" parts that will kick your ass for thinking this is even a wee bit too twee, though twee it often is. Those plugged-in interludes allow us to consider this troupe a krautrock as well as a krautfolk (?) band. And speaking of krautrock, their first record was produced by none other than Achim Reichel (of A.R. & Machines fame!).
So we'll sum up Ougenwiede as dexterous and delightful music made by prancing hippies obsessed with the Middle Ages but willing to throw some fuzz bass in where it will do the most good. Pretty cool if you don't mind your acid folk to have strong RenFaire leanings! (It helps that it's all in German, we think.)
The 22 tracks here come from their self-titled debut from 1973 and its 1974 follow-up All Die Weil Ich Mag, and it's the first time on cd for both of 'em. And since this is a Bear Family reissue, it's about as nicely done as a reissue can be, packaged with a 38 page booklet stuffed with liner notes (in English and German), lyrics, and vintage photos. Appropriately, the booklet is styled after an illuminated manuscript and decorated with medieval woodcuts.
Many of us can still remember the exact moment three summers ago that the Finnish group Paavoharju entered our lives. Their debut album Yha Hamaraa seemed to have come out of nowhere and soon became one of those records that we turned to again and again for an enveloping aural escape. So needless to say we've been anxiously anticipating this follow-up, and we're thrilled to say it's finally here. And in a day and age where quality control has been thrown out the window, it's actually pretty refreshing to find that there are still some folks out there with the patience and commitment to take their time in crafting their art, ensuring that it will live on in our ears and hearts for years and years to come. Paavoharju have done just that with their follow-up to Yha Hamaraa. With the subtly familiar yet fresh sounding Laulu Laakson Kukista, they have somehow raised the bar even higher, with a record that truly inhabits its own world. A place that is filled with flashbacks to a romantic and tragic old world, an oceanic daydream and a wide aerial view of lush green open fields where down below a secret magical world exists. It's actually quite tricky to try to describe the sound of this record as almost every song offers another view of their deliciously unique soundworld. Listening to Laulu Laakson Kukista is sort of like watching a Guy Maddin film, as the songs and sounds on the album feel as if they are at times in classic grainy black & white and other times in the most stunning and vibrant technicolor. There are songs that you could actually kind of maybe dance to ("Kevatrumpu"), songs that should be the theme of the Olympics the next time it's in Finland ("Uskallan"), and songs that conjure images of lost fairytales, musical radio plays, epic voyages, fantastical moments and interrupted daydreams.
It's actually so damn rare these days for a group to truly have its own sound but you just can't really compare Paavoharju to almost anyone else around. It might have been subconscious but after listening to this record several times we started hanging out a lot with David Bowie's album Low. As the otherworldly second side of that album brings us to a similar space as Laulu. We also imagine Kate Bush, Bjork, Robert Wyatt, Edith Piaf and Kurt Weill at the twilight of their careers, transported into the middle of nowhere in Northeast Europe, and dosed with some magic mushrooms before entering the forest to record a record together.
It's been a long while since a new recording has captured our imagination and allowed us to get as lost in its vision as this one has. Once again Paavoharju have created a collection of magical sounds that will continue to keep us warmly embraced and mesmerized with each subsequent listen!
PS: The vinyl came and went and we're waiting for more...
Oh how we adore the Finnish label Fonal Records -- home to the likes of Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja, Kiila and Es. And now, won't you please kindly welcome the newest addition to the Fonal roster, Paavoharju! We can say that that welcoming 'em is not such a difficult thing to do 'cause they sure do make some wonderful music! In fact, Cup (and Jim for that matter) has listened to it almost every day since its arrival. It's true!
Note: We don't want to deny anyone the pristine 'first listen' magic that we experienced. We can attest that it was a sheer delight packed with many surprises, and our fondness has only grown with each listen. So if you want your introductory spin to be 'pure', please be forewarned that this review contains what some might call spoilers... that means stop reading now!
In many ways Paavoharju can be likened to fellow enchanting Finnish artists Lau Nau and Fonal labelmates Islaja, but their finely detailed yet loosely strung music is considerably more melted and collaged and electronic. Listening to Yha Hamaraa is almost like eavesdropping on a dream... or having someone else's heartbreaking memories come back to hazily haunt you. Sounds, voices and melodies drift in and out of focus, occasionally overlapping and seeping into one another. Sometimes it seems like you're listening to a rickety old radio with the dial set between stations so that the sounds somehow magically fit together. Odd faintly familiar elements make their presence felt such as in the ninth song where the male vocal melody brought to mind a twisted folk (and of course very Finnish) version of "Stairway To Heaven". The swooping, trebly female vocals find their own special place between Indian film music singers and the Southeast Asian voices that surface on the similarly (un)structured Sublime Frequencies travelogue field recording compilations. And reference must be made to Bjork as well! Now after having read this far in our review, you might find the very first track with its swell of distorted static-y noise to be somewhat unexpected, disorienting even, but we encourage you to go with it (and with us). Allow the wash of sounds to transport you into Paavoharju's intoxicating world. Completely and utterly breathtaking.
FINNISH MUSIC FREEKS HEADS UP!!! A brand new release from a name you may not recognize, but you definitely know some of the bands he spent time in: Avarus, Anaksimandros, Maniac's Dream�
Fricara Pacchu may have a pretty illustrious Finnish underground musical resume, but weirdly enough, he began his musical career as a rapper, though you'd be hard pressed to tell from this, his debut solo 7".
And while you can definitely hear some of the above mentioned bands in these three songs, the sound is something else entirely, much more jangly and poppy, three little chunks of druggy, dreamy psychedelic confection. The opening track has a bit of a Krautrocky groove, some Eastern sounding sitar-like buzz, and swirling clouds of trippy FX, but they're wrapped around some sunshine-y jangle, it's like Avarus playing Olivia Tremor Control. The second track is more lo-fi and druggy, a gorgeously plodding tripped out drift of woozy piano, still MORE effects, spidery guitars, all coated in morning dew and dappled with sunlight.
The flipside is a bit less poppy, a sort of noisy soft industrial, lots of smeared grind and clank, but piled atop lovely melodies and hazy ambience, and distant moaning guitars, and with a strange staticky rhythm holding it all together. It definitely reminds us of our favorite Finnish free folk, but also like the Storm Bugs or some lost recording you might hear on one of those deluxe Vinyl On Demand reissues. A gorgeous slab of damaged experimental psychpop jangle, we can hardly wait for a full length.
The packaging is extra special. Included with the full color sleeve is a thick eye popping book of Pacchu's artwork, 7" x 4", stapled but on thick matte paper, drawings, collages, photos, squiggles, snakes, motorcycles, garish colors, intricate patterns, negative images and more. Folks who dug the Glomp books of Finnish art will definitely dig this too, and the images in the booklet seem like what you might see if you closed your eyes and played the record. The perfect visual analogue for Pacchu's druggy trippy soundworld.
Funnily enough, both Allan and Andee independently reviewed this, each unaware that the other was also writing a review. Whoops. The above is Andee's, below is Allan's for comparison (turns out their duplication of effort was remarkably similar, which is as it should be we suppose!):
First off, that cover art makes this pretty hard to resist. A simple painting of a weird-looking furry cat sitting next to a daisy... with the artist's incongruously black-metal suggestive logo floating overhead. That this 3 track, 11 minute 7" is from Finland, and on the ever-reliable Fonal label, is also a good thing. Fricara Pacchu being a member of such illustrious underground Finnish outfits as Anaksimandros, Avarus, and Maniacs Dream is further reason to be interested. But the proof's really in the pudding, or in our business, the music, so let's take a listen....
First track "Bianca's Beachparty" is an uptempo, uplifting utterly psychedelic instrumental home-recorded techno-disco number that immediately makes us think BOREDOMS. Crunchy, burbling synths zig and zag over a steady, insistent rhythm. Magic. We're sold. The other two tracks, "Upsidedown Wind" and "Text-Message From Beyond", are equally cool, woozy instrumental space-outs, not quite so "techno" tho. And what's also pretty cool is the 42-page, full-color booklet of Pacchu's cartoon/comic/collage art that comes with this 7"! Lots of insane eyeball-joy to be had here. If you liked those Glomp books we've listed, you'll dig this. This 7" package is presumably limited, we have just a few and may or may not be able to get more...
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT** **MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Another fantastic release from Mississippi, this one a collection of recordings from Greek folk singer
Marika Papagika, who was born in 1890 and was one of the first Greek women singers to be heard on sound recordings, and who over the course of her career, toured extensively, owned her own club, with her husband (who also played in her band), recorded 225 performances, yet somehow remains sadly for the most part overlooked and underappreciated. The liner notes (by Ian Nagoski, whose records this collection was compiled from, and who also helped put together a whole mess of other amazing compilations including Black Mirror, String Of Pearls, Unheard Ofs & Forgotten Abouts among others) are extensive, and chronicle her life (what is known about it) as well as the recordings, performances and instrumentation.
The music is of course hauntingly lovely and mystical, emotional and dramatic, her voice gorgeous and powerful, and the instrumentation perfect, simple, just cello, violin, clarinet and cymbalon (a sort of hammered dulcimer).
Everything is bathed in that warm scratchy old record sound, but it only makes the music that much more beautiful, on some tracks you can actually hear birds chirping in the background, as if they had recorded outdoors, the songs are spare yet somehow so lush, moving and moody, just fantastic, fans of Greek folk music and Rembetika will of course need this, but anyone just looking for music that's both haunting and pretty, these songs totally transcend any sort of classification really, they're just beautiful songs, performed impeccably by an incredible band, and sung by one of the finest vocalists you've probably never heard of.
Pressed on heavy vinyl, and housed in a thick sturdy jacket, with a massive oversized printed booklet, featuring extensive liner notes, as well as all the know photographs of Papagika.
Ok, this item has a fairly self-explanatory title, eh? Also, here's the subtitle: "From Psychedelic Experiments To Political Propaganda". Interested? If so, then all that really remains for us to say is, yeah, you should seriously consider picking this up, it's really well done and a good value for the money. Physically, this is a gorgeous tome, and all signs point to it being quite accurate and thorough information-wise.
If you're at all like us you're aware that in recent years the spate of reissues from the Swedish psych / prog scene -- like for instance the whole amazing Parson Sound / International Harvester / Harvester / Trad Gras Och Stenar axis -- has been pretty thrilling. Having a guide to both the bands we've heard of and the many, many more that we haven't is pretty great. Also if you're like us you LOVE books full of pictures of record sleeves, wherever they're from and whatever they are. And this book's got tons of album covers, many of them psychedelically sensational, reproduced in full color!
Plus there's loads of factual info for those curious about the bands, or for record collector types trying to figure out what the original vinyl is worth. Each entry consists of info on the band's line-up, a descriptive paragraph discussing their music and history, as well as a detailed discography. Algarnas Tradgard, Arbete & Fritid, Aunt Sally, Charlie & Esdor, Bo Hansson, Kebnekajse, Life, November, Mikael Ramel, Pugh Rogefeldt, Samla Mammas Manna, Trettioariga Kriget, Turid... they're all here and of course plenty more we'd never heard of before.
In addition to this A-Z of bands, there's a band member index and label discographies as well, with that of the Silence label being the most impressive. And, there's also an introductory essay dealing with the political dimension shared by a lot of the music from the Swedish scene. Apparently, in Sweden there was a difference between "prog" with one g and "progg" with two g's, with the former referring as usual to progressive rock bands like ELP and Yes, latter being a distinctly Swedish concept of (not-necessarily virtuosic or complex) music that reflected the ideals of the left-wing Movement of the times.
All in all, very intriguing and tantalizing, leaving us to look at the those album covers and begin dreaming record collector dreams!
235 pages, hardback, 8 1/2" x 12". Full color EVERYWHERE, and lots of cool b&w photos too. A deluxe production indeed. And there's a bonus cd included as well, featuring the obscure jamming psych band Baby Grandmothers, with three previously unreleased live tracks from 1967 (different from the stuff on their archival Subliminal Sounds cd release also reviewed this list).
If only there was a book like this for EVERY cool musical scene past and present...
NB. mailorder customers, be aware that due to the size and weight of this book, it counts as more than one item for freight purposes -- so any order that includes this book will ship UPS at the 3+ items rate of $6.50 for shipping & handling.
Most aQ customers by now are familiar with (and fanatic about) both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord. Kind of like Parliament-Funkadelic, the two Finnish groups are more-or-less the same band really, making more-or-less the same kind of music, the Circle-Pharaoh Overlord thang all about repetitive, "circular", psychedelic sounds. Sharing members and a mesmeric M.O., both Circle and Pharaoh Overlord are masters of spacey hypno-rock, often heavy, sometimes "metal", frequently quite WTF?, all of which is what you get here for sure, in both cases, on this pair of vinyl-only live records with similar, sharp cover graphics and the same dang title. Turns out these are the first two in what promises to be a series of "high quality, multi-channel 'live' recordings" under the 6000 km/h banner (a name meant to connote "speed, dynamism and goal-orientedness" according to the tongue-in-cheek corporate jargon employed by the label's press release).
Pharaoh Overlord's 6000 km/h release documents the band's performance at a festival in Turku, Finland, Summer 2014. There's four songs here (one straddling two sides), all of them exclusive "world premieres". Typically it's jazz groups who make live albums that are actually 'new albums' in that sense; rock bands doing live recordings historically tend towards greatest/latest hits collections - not that that's what you get with Circle's 6000 km/h, either, even though they're not (all) new songs on there� Anyway, there's something jazzy about this, and proggy and noisy too, PO sounding both epic and experimental on such cuts as the 16+ minute "No Ota Sitten Kolmekymppia" (that's the one that starts on one side and ends on the other). Groovy, dense, strange...
Oh, and we love that it admits on the sleeve that there are "a couple of overdubs... but who gives a **** anyway!"
Black vinyl is what we've got, limited to 350 copies only!
Prog rock and/or Magma fans, pay attention: what we've got here is a smokin' live album from a three-piece instrumental group featuring current Magma guitarist James MacGaw. He's on electric bass here, joined by drummer Daniel Jeand'heur and Thierry Bruneau on "vielle a roue". What's that? Some sort of traditional French hurdy-gurdy type of instrument, apparently. And that's what gives the Pienza Ethnorkestra their special flavor. MacGaw's burbling, burping basslines and Jeand'heur's propulsive, peppery battery are exciting enough, but add to that the wild fiddle-ish flights of melody and stretches of melancholic drone from Bruneau's ancient instrument and you've got an amazing hybrid of a Magmoid rhythm section and a Balkan gypsy wedding band. Indeed, several of the tracks here are traditional Bulgarian and Hungarian folk tunes, fitting in perfectly with the originals written by this "ethnorkestra".
To reference two AQ faves with Eastern European influences, we'd say that the frenzied energy with which Pienza Ethnorkestra approach this material (and the occasional electric-guitar like distortion applied to the vielle a roue) make this sound more like Tatsuya Yoshida's Koenjihyakkei (with strings) than it does like Steven R. Smith's Hala Strana. That this is a live recording only increases our amazement at how much these three kick ass. And the audience whoops it up appropriately. You might too, listening to his at home.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Multi-cultural folk-prog-rock from this unique Czech band. Male vocals in a hushed French voice, wild female vocals a la Bjork, bombastic arrangements incorporating strings and guitar, plus ethnic instruments and percussion. Quite dramatic.
Total '80s gloss thing going on (Andee thought it sounded like The Fixx!) here from these two members of Circle, sorta Talking Heads / Sparks / Oingo Bongo -ish... maybe even Barnes and Barnes? As as Christine put it: "fucked up aerobics music" with "Finnish goth" vocals! Or imagine Circle in tuxes and feathers, with Mika Ratto singing in a Popeye voice. Weird!
The sticker on the front of this archival collection by the band Retsepti, from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, states that it's "dark punk / wave". But we had been lead to believe it was more of a garagey metal thing. And the distributor we got our copies from, happens to be those noted purveyors of soul and funk, Numero Group! So what's Retsepti (which means "Recipe" or "Prescription") actually all about? Well, some kind of darkwave post-punk is about right, with gritty guitars that can riff it up in rollicking fashion but take a backseat to nervy new wavy keyboards at other times. The vocals are coarse but dramatically expressive, melodic and emotional in a raw, rough hewn way, just like the music (though things get smoother as the disc progresses, even incorporating saxophone on one song near the end). And the vibe is definitely what you might expect, dark, desperate yet defiant, from folks making art under trying circumstances (civil war for one thing). So while they didn't turn out to be the Iron Curtain Iron Maiden we'd been mistakenly hoping for, Retsepti are still worthy of attention.
This disc contains their entire recorded output, carefully restored and remastered from their original cassette tape releases and other obscure sources. The cd's handstamped gatefold sleeve contains a 16 page booklet, with liner notes detailing the band's fascinating history, along with lyrics and vintage photos.
Import of Greek folk artist that the Forced Exposure crowd is all over.
OK, here's an Aquarius-approved 'high concept' album, all right: Estonian medieval music group Rondellus performing covers of Ozzy-era BLACK SABBATH songs translated into Latin!!! Now *this* sounds like a Black Mass! Backed by lute, harmonium, psaltery,
One of the best, and most original, 'tribute' records ever. Now they should go on tour with Apocalyptica (the Finnish cello quartet that does Metallica covers)!
Along with the Harmonia Live 1974 cd that we're making Record Of The Week, the Water label has reissued the first four solo records of Harmonia, Kraftwerk, and Neu! veteran, Michael Rother. We're reviewing our two favorites here, the others we should get to on a later list.
We'd assume that the majority of AQ regulars are largely familiar with at least one of Michael Rother's projects. Whether it be his his work with Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster, or Harmonia, Rother's contributions to the last 30 plus years of music are innumerable. Still, his solo work that has been conspicuously absent from most write-ups and record shelves. Perhaps that's because the early '80s saw Rother in a bit of transition period from his Krautrock glory days to a point where he embraced New Age with arms wide open. Despite naysayers, New Age isn't necessarily a four letter word. Not necessarily. But fear not, while embracing New Age, Rother didn't -- or perhaps couldn't -- completely abandon his musical past. Thankfully, the fine people at Water have made the first four Rother albums available once again, lovingly remastered and repackaged with original art and new liner notes.
Like the three preceding releases, 1981's Fernwarme finds Rother accompanied by drummer Jaki Leibezeit of fellow uber-famous Krautrockerers Can. Unlike the first three solo albums, this one shows Rother returning much closer to his days with Harmonia than attempting to incorporate elements from anything like, say, Kitaro. In fact, despite the lead guitar of opening number "Silberstreif" relying heavily upon the "Do-Re-Mi" tune taught in grade school music class, Fernwarme is an excellent contribution to an incredibly impressive career, full of simple beauty, a warm embrace of blissed-out pop melodies. Jaki's lightly propulsive motorik shuffle is the heartbeat pulse that underpins the harmonized guitar lines spun by Rother, his harmonies at times making us think of Citay's most exquisite moments... elsewhere Rother delves into darkly droning keyboards, and Fernwarme starts to sound not unlike a much mellower Zombi. Very very nice, a highly recommended early '80s spacey prog kraut classic!!
If you never heard of this obscure eighties female fronted world-pop outfit, get in line. An unlikely mix of Teutonic new wave and dubby balearic dance pop created in Bremen, Germany, Saada Bonaire only released one single in their lifetime. Now Captured Tracks, through its new imprint Fantasy Memory, has brought to us the complete recordings of this short-lived outfit, and it's pretty amazing, especially if you are into lost post-punk disco rarities as much as we are. Created by Bremen DJ Ralf Behrendt in 1982, and recorded in Kraftwerk's studio by legendary dub-punk producer Dennis Bovell (The Pop Group, The Slits) featuring an array of jazz and world musicians hired from the local immigrant center, Saada Bonaire was fronted by Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfield, whose sultry but blase delivery make their sound a sort of hybrid between the domineering dance music of Gina X and Grace Jones and the breezy dub of Brenda Ray. The aforementioned single "You Can Be More As You Are" is an infectious post-disco club classic, that probably had a lot more traction in southern Europe than in the west. Their music, with its exotic flourishes and dreamy tropical rhythms, seems tailor-made for warmer climates, and we can easily see these tracks being played in sunrise dance sets after a long night of clubbing. Definitely a band that should have been a lot bigger than they were, their lack of success the fault of EMI's A&R man who notoriously went over budget with the acts he developed. After going over 5x the budget for Tina Turner's Private Dancer, EMI pulled the plug on Saada Bonnaire and they were rarely heard from since. This anthology covers everything the band recorded between 1982 and 1985, but still remains surprisingly modern sounding for being 30 years old.
Yes, more delicate spectral music from Finland! Sala-Arhimo are a branch off of the Islaja tree... and if you're at all familiar with us here at AQ you know we're mighty fond of 'em. This self titled album is very hazy, Spartan and folk-tinged much like Islaja, but perhaps a bit darker, more somber and mournful. Lovely.
C'mon, how can a record called Hard Blood Shock NOT be good? Especially when it's a collection of crazy punk rock music from the former Yugoslavia, all by this guy, a singer with the stage name of Satan Panonski (aka Ivica Culjak), who was about as alternative & subversive & punk rock as you can get, particularly in a communist dictatorship: a self-mutilating body artist, avowed homosexual, underground poet, painter, and asylum/prison inmate (he'd killed a man in a fight in self-defense and wound up in a state mental hospital for criminals for nearly a decade). Apparently, though, they'd let him out on weekends, so he could continue his punk rock career, playing live and recording several cassettes and lps with Croatia's top punk musicians.
Unfortunately for him, perhaps the only conventional thing he ever did was to join the army to fight against the Serbs when they invaded Croatia during the break up of Yugoslavia in the early '90s, that's how he died in 1992 at the age of 32, a victim of the Balkan Wars.
This lp-only release on S-S (no cd, no download) is a 'best of' this tragic Croatian punk legend, drawn from his rare late '80s/early '90s releases, transferred from original tapes. And as you might expect, it's hard, bloody, and shocking. Of the 18 tracks, only a few have titles in English, including one called "Kiss My Cock", which might give one an idea of the attitude on display. Satan Panonski's music blends snarling old school punk (a la Sex Pistols) with some ethnic Croatian folk bits and noisy, experimental weirdness. It's pretty wild and rockin'. A rager.
Included is a 16 page booklet with biographical essay, translated lyrics, drawings, photos, etc. Anyone with an interest in Eastern European punk ought to check this out.
Usually here at AQ, when we have a record that's pertains to witches and/or witchcraft in some way, it's from a metal band... like, obviously, Acid Witch, or Witchcraft, or Witch... then there's the "hauntological" likes of Broadcast & The Focus Group, and Demdike Stare, and let's not forget witch house... And, ok, the '70s Afro-fuzz of the other, original Witch from Zambia.
But THIS witchy record isn't like any of those, at all. It's a B-Music release and has a lot more in common with another B-Music fave, the soundtrack to Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders! This is a soundtrack too, and also from a cult New Wave Of Czech cinema flick from the early '70s. Unlike Valerie, we've never seen this movie, but we'd like to, based on this quirky, cool soundtrack. The music for Valerie was dreamy and delirious, suitable for a phantasmagorical, dark fairytale, and some of this is too. But since Saxana is about the more lighthearted adventures of a very modern teenage witch (we're thinking Daisies meets Harry Potter??), it gets a more suitably groovy, modish, jazzy score, with "psychedelic effects". There's lots of spooky and/or sprightly instrumental interludes, with titles like "Rats And Rodents", "Haxipola's Trip", and "Algebraic Airbrush", along with a couple songs sung by Czech chanteuse Petra Cernocka, including a version of the film's infectious theme song. Of the 27 tracks here (including one bonus cut from a 45rpm single), five of 'em, interspersed throughout, aren't actually songs or music, but "spells" - Latin sounding arcane incantations presumably uttered by teen witch of the title, each one heralded by those psychedelic effects, ominous echoings conveying magickal mysteries. Quite (literally) charming, as is this whole previously unreleased soundtrack, and nicely presented here with a thick booklet of text and graphics, by Finders Keepers/B-Music (of course). Oh, and there's an import vinyl version on the way, we'll have it soon too.
Weird (and Finnish, so of course) album of drum machine beats and quirky samples, sorta dancey, sorta experimental, can't really decide what to make of it!
*Acid Mothers Temple Alert*
Seven That Spells is a psych rock outfit from Croatia. But they sound a heckuva lot like Japanese kraut-channellers Acid Mothers Temple. And guess what? They've got AMT guitar guru Makoto Kawabata on hand as a special guest! He obviously feels right at home jamming with these Croatian freaks, together stirring up billowing smoke-clouds of droning space rock, the babbled and chanted vocals giving this the feel of some sort of medieval folk ritual, zapped with swirling electronic FX. And when it comes time for the guitar solo (and that time comes often) Kawabata and co. hold nothin' back. Spaced OUUUUUUT maaaaaan.
Packaging is sorta swank: the cd rests on a foam numb affixed to the inside of a heavy-duty gatefold kind of sleeve, adorned with busty, naked hippie ladies (again, in the Acid Mothers Temple tradition!).
Frosty, shimmering and yes, oh so distinctly Icelandic. This is the new album from Valgeir Sigurdsson. An unfamiliar name perhaps? Well, if you looked closely to the credits for some of your favorite Icelandic artists' albums, you'd probably find his name listed as the producer, engineer, collaborator among other roles... particularly for Sigur Ros, Mum and one Ms Bjork! Sigurdsson steps to the other side of the recording studio console to make his solo debut. It's a tapestry of delicate, stuttery IDM waves and chiming melodies. On tracks such as "Focal Point" the airiness is countered by the sound of heavy fingers on (toy?) piano keys. Enchanting!
Features guest appearances by Bonnie Prince Billy and Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables!
Even if we didn't make this Record of the Week, we'd probably still be selling quite a few of 'em, as we're sure we've got a lot of knowledgeable record-collector-type customers for whom adding this to cart will be but the work of a second, the second after their eyes bug out upon seeing the artist and title listed above. But since this reissue is not only of an incredible rarity but also of an incredible record, we wanted to make sure everybody heard about it, besides those for whom it's already a "holy grail". Yep, Joakim Skogberg's original 1972 Jola Rota LP definitely falls into the highly obscure "holy grail" category, a lost treasure for lovers of weird, wonderful acid-folk and underground psychedelia. The sort of thing that develops a legend that it can't possibly live up to... but then DOES, blowing minds when it's finally reissued. The sort of thing that's whispered about among connoisseurs of psych, written of in a few select fanzines and blogs, heard only by a lucky few who got an Nth generation cassette dub or cd-r burn from a friend, who got it from a friend, and so on. The sort of thing, that even a few years after a brief exposure to its wonders, will make you stop and think every once in a while, dang when is someone finally gonna reissue that amazing obscure album??? Some other recently excavated examples would include Moolah's Woe Ye Demons Possessed, Bobb Trimble's Harvest Of Dreams, and Gary Higgins's Red Hash... and before that, once upon a time Comus's First Utterance too would have fallen into that category. Bruce Haack's Electric Lucifer as well, though originals of that were and are much MUCH easier to come by. Whereas *this* album was originally pressed in an edition of around just one thousand copies -- of which only a few hundred were ever sold back in the day, with the remainder of the pressing being, gasp, melted down to be recycled into other LPs!
So, here it is, artist Joakim Skogsberg's lone album Jola Rota finally, officially reissued for the very first time! Our hearts went pitter pat when we found out. We first heard this when our friend Loren Chasse (of Of/Thuja/Jewelled Antler/etc. fame) floated us a cd-r burn he had gotten from a pal overseas a couple years ago, as per the scenario outlined above. He figured we'd like it, and of course he was right. What's not to like? Swedish-forest-folk hippie ritual mixed with droned-out psych guitar. Truly strange, and captivating, vocal mumble. And, get this, it was actually mostly recorded out in a forest, on portable reel-to-reel gear!! Once out of the woods, the raw recordings were overdubbed (Skogsberg being responsible for all sounds on this album) in studio, but remain quite raw, the mystery and majesty of northern landscapes, dark shadowy places, placid lakes, tall trees and moss-covered rocks utterly alive in the music of the nature-loving Skogsberg.
Side One starts off with "Jola Fran Ingbo", which introduces Joakim's unusual "Jola" singing style derived from Swedish trad folk, also heavily influenced by Buddhist chant, accompanied by staccato bowings of ominous violin. Immediately this is waaaay darker than most other Swedish folk/psych we've heard! Seriously droney and austere. That's followed by the more freaked out, rockier "Offer Rota", which finds Skogsberg singing whilst pounding away on percussion and unfurling a thick layer of distorted guitar murk, with what sounds like a Jew's Harp warbling in the background. The next piece, "Fridens Lijor", on the other hand, is an unaccompanied vocal piece, close-miced and intimate, all about Skogsberg's fragile Jola babble...
Beginning side two, "Besvarjelse Rota" builds up a dubby, bassy electronic rhythmic whomp-whomp throb beneath its damaged psych guitar wail, that (in our warped imagination) foreshadows modern minimal techno a la Chain Reaction, "heroin house" beats.... could almost be Pole jamming with Algarnas Tradgard or something! Later, the lengthy "Jola Fran Stensate" harkens back to the solemnity of the album's first track, and then "Jola Fran Leksand" winds up this unique, amazing trip with something of a pagan campfire dance piece, for folky fiddle and rattling hand percussion.
Overall, though, Jola Rota's mood is solitary and ceremonial. Skogsberg not a guru leading his followers, but rather one man, inspired, singing devotional songs to nature, in personal communion with the ancient deities of Sweden and the universe... it IS universal, probably why it sounds simultaneously like krautrock and Tibetan worship and Native American prayer-songs. The universality of the drone, and the human voice in spiritual reverence regardless of language. At its droniest, many moments here recall Parson Sound or the aforementioned Moolah. Totally, magically mesmeric. Wow... EVERYONE who's heard this since we got it in has been entranced.
And we're extra happy that not only has this been reissued, but that the reissue was done by our pal Johan's Tokyo-based Tiliqua Records (along with EM Records, one of our absolute favorite reissue labels from that part of the world, or anywhere else). Which means, it's done up deluxe, packaged in a swank miniature gatefold LP-style sleeve, and it's been remastered from the original tapes with the help of Skogsberg himself. There's also new liner notes and previously unpublished photos of the long haired and bearded (of course) Skogsberg included. Nice! Sadly, this too is limited to a one-time pressing of only 1,000 copies... and unlike the original vinyl edition, we doubt the label will be left with any unsold copies to recycle!
FYI there will also be a super, super limited (and expensive) vinyl version of this coming on on Tiliqua in May, not sure if we'll be able to get any of those at all or if they'll be a label-direct preorder thing only...
Some early '70s vintage, groovy orchestrated French psych-pop sound good to you? Maybe even better if created by a very hip, mystic-minded musician (Skornik) inspired by LSD and the esoteric writings of a controversial Gurdjieff disciple (Louis Pauwels, author of counterculture bestseller The Morning Of The Magicians)? Well then have we got a reissue for you!! Guy Skornik's Pour Pauwels is a fantastic progressive pop opus, its symphonic, psychedelic sounds mixing together dramatic French vocals (both spoken and sung), romantic piano, moody melodies, jaunty horns, sudden curlicues of psych guitar wail, and more. A song-based soundscape, almost cinematic, it's for fans of the freakier side of the Serge Gainsbourg oeuvre for sure, a la Historie De Melody Nelson. Freakier than that, really - this was originally issued in 1970 by the Pathe label, who around the same time also released records by Igor Wakhevtich and Gerard Manset, and this fits right in with the likes of them. If you're like us, oui oui this sounds good, in fact it's pretty much irresistible.
The thick cd booklet, in both French and English, features very interesting and extensive liner notes, delving into the careers of both Skornik and Pauwels, including an in-depth, present-day interview with the former.
There are very few bands we can think of who have so fully and utterly invented a sound for themselves, sounding like nothing else on earth before, and possibly since. Italy's Starfuckers are such a band. And it's a sound that fascinates us. Unique, true originals. One of our favorite bands (and by "our" we mean us, and anyone who belongs to the secret club of possibly demented Starfuckers lovers). Which goes a long way to explaining why we're making this Record Of The Week, a disc by a band with such incongruous and impolite name, and a perhaps problematic sound as well, for some. This disc consists of a reissue of their best / most definitive albums, 1994's Sinistri, and a never-before-on-cd mini-lp that preceded it, plus other, extra rare tracks. 16 tracks in total, almost 70 minutes of music. Or since it's the Starfuckers, should we say "music"? One definition of music is organized sound, and this stuff is organized in its seeming DIS-organization. Deconstructed music. Counter-intuitive rock n' roll. Genius. Here's what we've said about 'em before, in a review of their final album, 2002's Infinitive Sessions, currently out of print:
"Starfuckers...play an abstract, sparse, and totally unique brand of what they term 'rock concrete', something that kind of sounds like This Heat falling down the stairs, but trying to be really quiet about it. Percussive and full of near-silences, their almost-randomly-improvised-sounding music uses guitar, drums, and electronics to take the 'glitch' aesthetic out of the laptop arena and into that of the live band. It's as if they played 'normal' songs, then removed about 70 percent of the music, and shuffled the remaining sounds around. It's counter-intuitive, disjointed stuff, yet every dissonant chord played on the guitar, every bassy electronic rumble, every drum hit seems to have meaning, unknowable meaning. Attentive listening will reveal compelling rhythms and structures."
Yes, indeed, but that's only part of the story, and why this disc is THEE Starfuckers disc to get, if you're ever gonna get any Starfuckers, and you should. We said they established their own sound, but they built up to it from a more familiar basis. The earlier tracks here demonstrate that, while the Sinistri stuff is the best example of the special qualities of Starfuckers alluded to above.
Those earliest tracks, the first 6 here, come from the band's 1991 mini-lp, Brodo Di Cagne Strategico. They're indicative of the band's roots in all things Stooges-y, being totally badass, driving, dark post-punkish numbers laced with shards of noisy, "out" guitar and free jazz saxophone squall... This is the sort of Starfuckers splooge that our pal JW, now head of the Holy Mountain label, once so succinctly dubbed "Funhausen" (i.e. the Stooges' Funhouse meets experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen). Spacemen 3 fans should dig as well. And that avant-garde, Stockhausen side of the equation comes more and more to the fore as this disc progresses...
The Bordo Di Cagne Strategico tracks are followed by two compilation appearances, both "covers". You get their utterly unrecognizable (what did you expect?) version of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence" from a cd that came with Bananafish magazine #11, and also their appropriately monomaniacal take on "Mechanical Man", from a Charles Manson tribute upon which they appeared alongside the likes of Skullflower, Controlled Bleeding, and Eugene Chadbourne, among others. We'd like to think that John Lennon would have dug the Starfuckers (if any Beatle would, Yoko Ono's husband would). Maybe Charlie would too, he's crazy enough.
Then, tracks 9-15 are from Sinistri. The main course. The masterpiece. The Starfuckers aesthetic, fully realized, celebrates 'asynchrony' and minimalism, and that's what you get here. Are you ready? It's a mysterious, compelling soundworld, one that stokes the imagination and seems somehow unassailable in its avant garde gravitas. Serious stuff, but still somehow rock n' roll. In spirit, more than anything else. Anti-rock too (with the slogan printed here: "new music means destruction of ego"). These songs/sounds are quite curious, cryptic... Blats and bursts of chiming, chunking guitar. Blips and bloops of eerie electronics. Sudden percussion, sudden silence. Feedback. Suspenseful rhythmic passages. Much moody rumble and hiss. Bassy detonations, chaotic jumbles of piano. And, crucially, the calm, semi-spoken vocals, deadpan declamations in Italian, like we're being poetically lectured by one of the Starfuckers while the rest of 'em disassemble rock n' roll as we know it. How can we describe the Starfucker's Sinistri further? We don't even understand it. But we love it.
Oh, towards the end, Sinistri's got the Starfuckers "hit single" (as far as we're concerned!), the song "Ordine Pubblico", also released on a Drunken Fish 7" back in the day... harking back to the Brodo Di Cagne material, "Ordine" is a sinister, cyclic, claustrophobic rock song, the brilliant last gasp of their Stooges-ness, hypnotic and handclap driven, with subversive lyrics that go something like this: "Criminale / Comunisti / Vagabondi / Terroristi / Prostitute / Extremisti / grazie / grazie..." You don't need to know Italian to know what he's saying.
That's all followed by Sinistri's final track, "Macrofoneie Ia", which sounds like what might happen in the studio after the musicians had all gone home or passed out, if the machines then started "playing" themselves. Clicks and buzzings, as of patch cords being unplugged, or plugged in. Or, you could say it takes the Starfuckers "Eternal Soundcheck" (a song title of theirs on another album) notion to an extreme, as if you recorded not the soundcheck at a show, but the band just setting up beforehand, in near silence but for when electrical connections are being made. Then, the disc ends with a previously unreleased track from 1996 that certainly wouldn't have been out of place on the original issue of Sinistri.
Hearing Starfuckers for the first time isn't just like hearing music you haven't heard before. It's also like hearing an IDEA of music that you've never had before. And, better yet, listening to Starfuckers for the 100th time, it remains fresh/strange, you still are piecing together the hidden structures of what's going on...
While we said that they sound like no-one else, we HAVE referenced 'em in various reviews, to say that other bands maybe remind us a bit of them, usually due to their fractured and confusional compositional ways... Radian, US Maple, Supersilent, Sim+Otomo, even Tony Tears, have all garnered comparisons by us to Starfuckers for some reason or other, but still none of 'em (and nobody) really does what the Starfuckers do. Or ever will.
If you've never heard Starfuckers, and are at all curious (you should be, if we're doing our job) this is the disc to get, as we said. And even if you are a fan, who already owns the long out of print Sinistri cd, you probably need this anyway for all the other rare tracks included. Record Of The Week? Reissue Of The Year! Well, maybe not for everyone, but those select few who 'get it' will really be grateful. And this, with the inclusion of their earliest, most rockin' material, is the most 'accessible' Starfuckers we could suggest.
Italy's Sometimes Records (who were thrilled that we appreciate the Starfuckers as much as they do), have packaged this with a cd booklet containing everything we could expect in the way of photos, graphics, credits, lyrics, and liner notes... the latter in Italian, though we glean references to the Stooges and Demetrio Stratos of '70s Italian proggers Area, possibly another inspiration to them.
FYI, btw, Holy Mountain will soon be doing a vinyl reissue of the Starfuckers rare 1990 debut lp Metallic Diseases, so watch out for that as well!
The name sure sounds like one of those Norwegian black metal bands we like so much, doesn't it? Well, Svalastog are indeed from Norway, but they're not a black metal band. Definitely not. (Though we'd love to hear what a black metal band on Rune Gramofon would be like!)
This could go under an electronica/experimental/just-a-wee-bit-folk category, we'd suppose. Svalastog (who is actually a he not a they, being one guy, Per Henrik Svalastog) has taken several traditional Norwegian folk instruments -- very old fashioned indeed, primitive even, including a ram's horn (Bukkehorn) and a cow's horn (Kuhorn, duh), and also a Norwegian zither called a Harpeleik that apparently belonged to his grandfather -- and played them into his computer, chopping and looping and processing them into glitchily rhythmic, swooping, loping electronica. The idea, to bring the sounds of the rustic Nordic past into the modern musical laboratory of bits and bytes, clicks and cuts, works pretty darn well we'd say. This is moody, mysterious, also quite lively and lovely. Given the concept behind this, we -might- have hoped for something a little -less- processed and smoothed-out, a little more obviously "outdoorsy" or ancient-sounding, than what we get here, if only this wasn't so nice and soothing the way it is!
Taraf De Haidouks are a 13 piece ensemble (not including vocalists) of Gypsy musicians who hail from the land encompassed by the country of Romania. Oft dismissed within their home country as "ragged Gypsies", they've nonetheless managed to acquire international acclaim, with four albums under their collective belt up to now and a featured appearance in the film Latcho Drom.
Well, of course you have no doubt that they succeeded because we wouldn't be listening to the cd here in the store and I wouldn't be writing all this now if they hadn't. Some of the best, most kick-ass eastern European blues and breakdowns that we've heard in a month of Sundays. A veritable Gypsy supergroup with more violin, cymbalum, accordion, flute, double bass, clarinet, darbuka, saxophone, baritone tuba, bass tuba, trumpet, tapan and vocal virtuosity than you can shake an encyclopedia of organology at. Shit yeah!
No, not the soundtrack to the Romanian version of the Jim Carrey comedy...rather, the long-awaited third album from these wonderful Gypsy musicians. Many guests feature on this disc, including a troupe who "are part of the poorest and most despised group of Gypsies, the ursari, who descend from the ancient brotherhood of the bear-tamers. Their old trade has now disappeared and, as they are too poor to hire musicians in order to celebrate life's great events, they sing their own songs and accompany themselves on makeshift percussion instruments (barrels, chairs, spoons) or by producing rhythms with various parts of their bodies (hands, feet, mouth)." These and the other guests make "Dumbala Dumba" an exciting addition to the Taraf's discography.
Ghedalia Tazartes' Diasporas might be most famous at this point for being included on the infamous Nurse With Wound list, a list of artists that was included with NWW's 1979 classic album Chance Meeting on a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and an Umbrella, and was basically a list of musicians and groups that NWW head honcho Steven Stapleton was influenced by. Looking at it now, it almost reads like an aQ list: Agitation Free, Algarnas Tradgard, Zweistein, Iannis Xenakis, Throbbing Gristle, This Heat, Igor Wakhevitch, Ya Ho Wha 13, Taj Mahal Travellers, Supersister, Der Plan, Sperm, Achim Reichel, Moolah, Magical Power Mako, Basil Kirchin, Jan Dukes De Grey, Exmagma, Cromagnon, Crass, Il Balletto Di Bronzo and so many more.
And Ghedalia Tazartes fits perfectly amidst such esteemed and such gloriously twisted company, a French ethno-experimentalist and composer, whose sound is a dizzying concoction of mysterious vocal chants, traditional gypsy folk music, bizarre sonic rituals, sound collages and tangled tape loops, his records playing out like alien field recordings, often layering multiple sound sources into twisted psychedelic freakouts. Diasporas, originally released in 1979 (recorded in 1977), is the perfect example of Tazartes' idiosyncratic sound, a thick layered stretch of multiple voices starts things off, his gypsy croon wailing over a lopped snippets of opera, as well as looped growls and, sampled strings, the sound building to a deafening crescendo, before settling into a strange bit of hypnodrone, with the operatic vocals relegated to a clipped pulse, the sampled strings creating a hauntingly repetitive melody, over which he mumbles and growls, the sound building and building until somehow it's just piano, and strangely processed voices stretched out into a swirling undulating drone.
And it continues on in a similar fashion, each track beginning like some field recording, simple percussion, strange vocals, like some abstract alien world music, those voices underpinned by drones and murky loops, which seem to become more pronounced as the tracks progress.
A few of the tracks to play out almost like straight folk music, but even then, there's something slightly off kilter, whether it's the production, the arrangement, or some subtle sonics lurking below the surface but it's never long before the sound returns to something much more twisted, be it some growled almost throat singing, blurred into a weird almost scat singing dronescape, or thick squalls of rumbling growls over which, samples are draped, and Tazartes' feral wail, or machine like loops and mechanical skitter wound around super passionate howls and looped baby talk.
It's definitely WAY out there, but there's a reason even back in 1979 Stapleton had this on his list, cuz it's one of the strangest, most hauntingly beautiful and fantastically disturbing listens EVER.
