More electrified ragas from Earth Jerks, who now present themselves as the duo of Chris Dixon and Noel Harmonson. Both of these characters have long been part of the San Francisco scene with Dixon operating in the spaztastic spockmorgue calvacade which spawned Death Sentence Panda, Murder Murder, Total Shutdown, Cops, etc. and Harmonson is the much-revered knob twiddler from Comets On Fire and Sic Alps. The kosmische tumble for drone-on guitar and drone-on electronics drive the coyly named "Fighting A War We Can't Win" -- a long-form piece of undulating tone, fuzz, and blur that's as martial in demeanor as a ruby-red sunrise. An equally idiosyncratic title graces the toothsome minimalist fragment of "The People's Poet Is Dead." Poetic and concise for sure but hardly a funereal bone in its body, this languid duet for electronics and guitars swirling in the same universe of post-lysergic / astral projection wash conjured by Popul Vuh, Cluster, Manuel Gottsching, and whoever your favorite Krautrock magician may be at the moment. Mr. Dixon did pass on the VERY LAST copies of the first Earth Jerks discs for those of you who may have missed out on that one earlier. File #04 too is a super tiny run, and we may not be so lucky in the future.
Missive number six from Chris Dixon's Computer Tapes and his Earth Jerks project, now a fully fledged duo with Noel Harmonson (Comets On Fire, etc.), with the two method acting over overdriven organs, tone generation, feedback guitar harmonics, and a couple of pots of tea - all of which expressing the clarity of a focused mind that then slips down the rabbit hole of innervoid delirium. It's a braindrain, psychedelic fug from Earth Jerks, of sweeping ur-drone filtering along the lines of the mystical fog cast by Pink Floyd on "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" minus the hushed liturgy of Syd Barrett. Dixon is quick to point out that any comparisons to Popul Vuh, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze are missing the mark a bit; so we'll only allude to these in passing even as we drool over these fancifully crunchy drones bringing forth darkly ecstatic melodies that slowly unfurl on the 8 minute "Just Because It Isn't Mine, That Doesn't Make It Yours", followed by the Leslie speaker discombobulation of psychoactive holy minimalism quickly mapped out on three short tracks that have more of a Phill Niblock doing a 7" feel. Yeah, of course, it's great; and limited to just 100 copies, but now pressed on pro-duplicated cd-rs.
Another batch of WAY too limited cassette releases from Twonicorn, whose releases seem to go out of print in the blink of an eye. This time we managed to get even more copies, in fact we took most of the copies from each pressing, but considering the fact that the pressing usually run between 40 and 100 copies, you know these won't last long either way.
Earthen Sea, what a killer name, however, the tape's title, Seeking Enlightenment 12 Oz. At A Time, had us expecting some sort of lo-fi, damaged and drunken sludgerock slugfest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Earthen Sea craft delicately developing drones, that begin life as a droney ultra minimal krautrock / postrock hybrid, with lots of swirling low end, pulsing melodies, propulsive barely there rhythms, a murky kraut jam like listening to Neu! practice six floors below you in an -almost- soundproof rehearsal room. Those various elements eventually begin to come apart, and blur together, becoming a thick tangled swirl of low end grind and throbbing, rumbling thrum, shot through with subtle sonic colors and glistening melodic sparkles. Nice.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES. We got 25 and we will not be able to get any more.
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A gorgeous new batch of hazy transcendental keyboard dronemusic from this SF based one man band, once a member of Mi Ami and Black Eyes, although you'd never know it from these two sprawling minimalist explorations.
Unlike the propulsive almost krautrock-ish murk of his first tape, Waves is more a sort of barely moving, lush layered lysergic new age, the sort of keyboard kosmische that folks into Emeralds and Expo 70 should go nuts for. The melodies are subtle, the movements muted, the various tones and overtones float and hover and wash into one another like, well, waves. There's definitely a Niblock vibe too, but filtered through a more modern lo-fi space drone floorcore aesthetic. The A side for all its spaciness and dreaminess is also thick, and in its own way heavy the sounds raw, and a little abrasive, it's mesmerizing and ambient, but also intense.
The B side however is WAY more ethereal and ephemeral, those same waves of sound are now more monochromatic, pulsing in slow motion, woozy swells of muddy melody that mask a barely there propulsion, the track seems to fade and crumble, before finally switching gears as a distant melodic hum, the backdrop to a mysterious set of field recordings, a warm whirring bed for a soft swirling clouds of Philip Jeck like click and hiss. Nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!! We have less than a dozen, and once these are gone then that's it...
Gorgeous split lp from these two drone combos, the A side is a single sprawling bit of foggy sonic murk, from local outfit Earthen Sea, whose most recent release, the Ocean Beach tape, channeled the cloudy coastline of SF in slow moving fields of softly psychedelic fug, and ES's sidelong track here explores much of the same, adding some deep low end pulsations to the mix, buried under layers of grey thrum and softly swirling melodies, a gradually unfurling, smoldering landscape of longform tones, and slow shifting layers, moody and muted, ethereal and gauzy, a hazy meditative bit of minimal mesmer, slightly sinister, the lush chordal swells swaddled in shadows, a ghostly overcast creep, that slips into something much more pretty and prismatic for the last few minutes.
Insect Factory, another one man band, changes things up dramatically, opening with a seriously sharp sine wave tone, keening and high pitched, while all around it weird little glitches and bits of fragmented melody bob and weave, tranced out in its own way, that main tone, soon seeming to fragment, and eventually joined by more tones, all tangled and gristly, glitchy and distorted, eventually erupting into what sounds like a wild blown out psychedelic swirl, reminding us of Amps For Christ or Dan Friel, crunchy and caustic and weirdly melodic, and ultimately strangely and inexorably mesmerizing. That abrasiveness is balanced by the much more tranquil and brief coda/closer, which is softly reverbed guitar, drifting in a field of barely there hum and shimmer, a sort of modern Appalachian solo guitar drift, that's really quite lovely, and nicely balances the crunch of the first track.
Fantastic stuff from both groups, and yeah, probably quite limited...
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San Francisco's Earwicker produce sounds that seem to lurk up from deep beneath the city streets. Damp, dank, and ominous.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Wow! Some sorta transformation has taken place with this band in the couple of years since their last release, the 2003 Mur Murs ep. They're definitely much more confident, complex and dynamic, and these developments are made more than apparent right from the get-go. Indeed, you need look/hear no further that the excellent lead-off track "Sonorous", but of course with such tantalizing edgy pop sounds you'll want to! It's a lengthy number (subsectioned into "Time To Echolocate" and "Ear Of The Other") that effectively presents the many facets of the band. They've veered away from they're former Chicago post-rock scene leanings, into something more un-pinpointable. Their increased attention to song structures and arrangements do much to define a sound of their own. Like an agile juggler they keep their atmospheres, time signature shifts and multi-part vocals aloft. Speaking of which, the vocals are definitely a key ingredient in Ebb & Flow's magic. The wonderful soaring female vocals contrast nicely with the male ones which approach a moody, withery Interpol-ness. Pretty darn great!
A short six-song introduction to this new SF band. This half dozen has a definite Chicago jazzy post-rock feel with some great horn accents, interesting textural details and arrangements. There's a nice vocal contrast from song to song too: breathy yet strong female leads on one, yearning, slouchy male voice takes over on another, a very Exene/John Doe-ish interplay on yet another. Me thinks, The Ebb And Flow would fit perfectly on a bill with Mates Of State and/or Call & Response (if they haven't already!). Very nice.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the label responsible for those Invisible Skratch Piklz Shiggar Fraggar show discs, comes this cd (no vinyl) by local SF turntablist DJ Eddie Def (of Space Travellers, El Stew, and Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters). It's compiled from Eddie's Hemp Lords mix tape series, and features "an extremely hardcore mix of '90s turntablism acrobatics and '80s megamix styles."
Eddie The Rat is a 12 piece art-rock / choral ensemble from San Francisco, arriving at a sloppy psychedelic ceremonial music and with plenty of post-industrial / Burning Man / San Francisco 'Fringe' overtones and purposefully oblique verbal conundrums and
Occult symbols on the cover of this black digipack... song titles like "Asmodeus: The Destroyer, King Of Demons"... covers of Black Sabbath's "Into The Void", Sepultura's "Roots Bloody Roots", and Spinal Tap's classic "Big Bottom" as bonus tracks... what is this, some sort of metal album? Well... no. It's not. And Edmund Welles isn't a person either (in this context), it's a band. A bass clarinet quartet to be exact. That's right. Four bass clarinets, that's it. So rather than metal, the weirdly dark and proggy and oddly groovy music on here ends up sounding more like some kind of '30s cabaret jazz meets 20th century classical chamber music, with some cartoon-soundtrack Carl Stalling stylings too... like if Raymond Scott was possessed by some Cthulhoid demon and outfitted his whole ensemble with bass clarinets, to pipe and hoot in worship of the Great Old Ones, both stutteringly and sinuously (and surreptitiously enough to still get nightclub gigs, swingin' it but still taking a toll on listeners' sanity). And as a nice touch, the very first track features an authentic helping of sampled, mixed-in "record crackle" to give this more of an antique, period feel.
Of course, with all the metal signifiers present -- especially those aforementioned bonus tracks -- the easiest thing to do is to compare Edmund Welles to Apocalpytica, the Finnish cello quartet famed for their Metallica covers. (And they covered a Sepultura song too!) So, there is a slight resemblance of course. But we have to say that Edmund Welles really reminds us more maybe of some sort of John Zorn project, or chamber prog brainiacs Zs. Whereas Apocalyptica somehow seems -more- metal, maybe 'cause you're more likely to hear cellos than bass clarinets on metal records anyhow, and also 'cause their cellos are amplified and sometimes they even have a drummer. Bass clarinets are, indeed, bassy and droney -- but not as heavy as some amped up cellos sawing away.
So the Sabbath cover here is more like the Bad Plus's "Iron Man" than how it would sound if Apocalyptica did it.
Maybe it's just a cool gimmick, but we can't help but like it... and we can safely say this is the best bass clarinet quartet album we've ever heard!
What or who is Eesk? She was an integral part of SF's eccentric, eclectic, and highly entertaining Action Plus (note: her alias then was Ursula Blind). With Ghost Taxi, she continues in the A.P. tradition of the unrelenting style and mood melting pot. It's graced with multi-personality vocal acrobatics and definite overtones of international film music. She draws inspiration from wonderfully diverse sources to create an intelligent, finely composed and thoroughly engaging album. Very soundtrack-y! A little spine-tingling sinister at times, a bit strangely trippy at others, and ultra mellow loungey at still others. And although this is her solo album, she's by no means on her own. The album features a shining supporting cast too: skilled guitarist and producer Joe Gore (Action Plus, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, Eels, Tracy Chapman, Oranj Symphonette), Tin Hat Trio's Rob Burger (on keyboards) and Carla Kihlstedt (on violin), Creeper Lagoon's David Kostiner (on drums), Oranj Symphonette's Pat Campbell (also on drums), cellist Matthew Brubeck (Oranj Symphonette, Jewel, Sheryl Crow), and Joey Waronker (Beck, Smokey & Miho, REM, Elliott Smith, Badly Drawn Boy, and the list goes on and on). Nice!
We won't go into too much detail on this one as it was limited to 72 copies of which we got about a third of the pressing. Egghatcher is the work of Bay Area free folk avant noisemaker Robert Horton, and features some of the most sublime drones we've heard created from some of the least likely sources. A helicopter flying overhead, crystal glasses, old 78's, all smeared and smoothed into soft slippery slivers of sound. So lovely. A few tracks are not as dronelike, one features vocals, chopped and reassembled into a skittery soundscapes, with occasional blasts of corrosive squeal, while another is constructed from and played on a homemade 4 string guitar constructed from wood found on the street. All quite gorgeous as we've come to expect from Horton.
Again, LIMITED TO 72 COPIES, we have the last 20 or so. Comes packaged in a plastic sleeve with an insert, held together by a twig, and with a VERY strong smelling leaf inside, so each disc smells like flowers or potpourri!
One of the many diverse branches of Ms Beth Custer's formidable creative tree. This one takes her into a melting pot of electronics, dance and jazz.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
New album from former singer of American Music Club who now lives in New York.
Rich has the pleasure been, of late, to sit down with a new issuance from the stellar Digitalis Limited label. Sean Mccann's wobbly wonder "Flutter Oasis," and the last gem from the ever-unfolding Natural Snow Building's saga have had our ears smiling. And not least of all because they are cassettes. It seems re-aquaintance with any medium is accompanied by a degree of intentionality that peaks you to the details of the experience. And particularly in this case, the warmth of the cassette has been on display, with each of these releases huddling up close to the glowing embers of their mic settings slingshotting into the red. The effect can be quite comforting, as though panned to the far reaches are the sounds and feelings of a few angels blowing on a contact mic. We think it might be worth mentioning too, that the scientific name digitalis means "finger-like," and refers to the ease with which a flower of digitalis purpurea can be fitted over a human fingertip. If the music were fingers, and the flowers your ears, you'd be starting to get the picture.
And so, with all that said, it was with obvious excitement that we received a new installment from Digitalis. And from a store favorite and friend no less, Evan of Barn Owl! Elsewhere on this list you'll find their new full length lp on the awesome Not Not Fun label from LA. Buried Light is a decidedly more droney affair than the last two Barn Owl full lengths, but still very much in keeping with their broader vocabulary. The opening track is like listening to the oscillating resonance frequencies of a massive bell breathing. And in time, its host emerges, an ambiguous and ghostly voice, weaving and wandering on broad syllables through the dense murk. On other tracks, this dynamic is extended to the accompaniment of some Tacoma-like guitar picking, giving the tape a faint western vibe. In fact there are parts of the tape that could be comfortably inserted into one of the more recent Earth records or even Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack. In all cases the pace and depths of the tone relationships are entirely transporting. Evan excels in evoking the texture, pace, and scale of the elements, without attaching the songs to anything too specific. In this manner we are free to imagine them as the soundtracks to a kind of collapsed landscape where the wind of water blows ripples across a lake of sand. What is miraculous about Evan, and Barn Owl, at their most abstract and disintegrated, is the profound ambiguity of their temper. They live at the 360th degree, when you've wandered all the way to end of the light, and things start getting dark. What's more engrossing, perhaps, is you may not even remember if you started out towards the dark or the light in the first place. It's the liminal plane on which we witness the gathering of a cadre of genres; folk, metal, and drone, and watch them sculpt with the naked vibrational core of sound. It's purity, and spiritually relative qualities, align it with the antecedents of some new age music, but rather than easy listening, we might beg you to follow us out onto the thin branch of a pun and call it hard blisstening. It's what it is.
We've only got fifteen of these, so act fast. After that they are gone FOREVER!
First issue of a new local San Francisco based zine that covers the underground music scenes of various locales around the country and beyond. Features articles and interviews with Sun Araw, Wet Hair, Thurston Moore, Henry Rollins, Emeralds and Nomen Dubium, with columns and scene reports from Cleveland and Iowa. Photocopied with hand-drawn borders and artwork on old school folded newsprint. Rad!
A split release between SF's boyish emo-popsters The Get-Go and Japan's considerably more fired up'n'crazed, crunchy guitar-slingin' Electric Eel Shock (not to be confused with Electric Eels). This is where the melodic meets the manic, the catchy meets the chaotic, the... you get the picture. I personally leaned more towards the Electric Eel Shock camp, but you might lean differently. The tracks are split evenly between the two bands -- five apiece -- for a total head-to-head match.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Local musician Sharon Cheslow (also of Red Eye). Electrolettes is her guitar/tapes/drums project: infectiously charming punk meets beatbox goodness.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Cassette from the talented Sharon Cheslow. The Electrolettes are a duo on guitar, drums and tape loops. Angular, fiery shards of tumbling guitar and impassioned voice together with a compelling sense of melody make up the Electrolettes' energizing sound. Soon to have a single out on Kill Rock Stars, but you can hear them first.
Elephone follow up their Shivering cdep with... bunny ears? Wha'?! Not sure if the cover art's intended for Easter time or maybe the band's been hangin' out with Hefner. Hey, that's a pretty good song title, innit? Anyways, these SF fellas have generously offered up a limited edition combo set of 7" record and cd-r (both with the same music). Sort of a return to their earlier more punchy and poppy selves, but also a bit more edgy and angular than their more dramatic, moody recent offerings. Includes a cover of U2's "Seconds". Limited to 200.
The latest album from this veteran Bay Area indie rock combo finds the band on a slightly different path. Most notable is the addition of female vocals courtesy of new band member Sierra Frost who also fleshes out things further on keyboards. Elephone has always been pretty darn punchy yet also well-crafted and dramatic, but these days they're even more so -- easily bringing to mind bands such as The Pixies and Arcade Fire. Heck, who doesn't love intelligent indie pop rock with boy-girl vocals and infectious hooks? This band always delivers the goods!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Check out this emotive power pop EP from this Bay Area quintet who, as hinted at in the title, clearly enjoy a drink or three. This is the follow-up to their well-received album A Far Distant Parade. Although the very Devendra-Banhart-meets-Violent-Femmes'-Gordon-Dano high nasal male lead vocals might be considered an acquired taste, particularly on the first song, things seem much more locked in when other vocalists join into the slightly trippy, energetic fray. These are three solid, well-crafted and dramatic songs, the third brings things to a close with a solemnly meandering piano outro.
The Camera Behind The Camera Behind The Camera is by far this SF band's most composed and focussed release to date. Tight and punchy (with the exception of the eighth song "Hollyhock" whose first half is slow and pretty and the vocal'n'guitar album closer "Something About Fire"), Elephone have smoothed out the rough edges in the vocals, tightened up the rhythm section and applied more attention to detail on each song's arrangement. The dynamics in the big sinewy guitars, synths and solid drumming are more pronounced and effective. The album as a whole is propelled by a brooding verve. On a bunch of these songs with their solid thumpin' beat, Elephone will have the indie rock kids making their way to the dancefloor in no time! Fits really well alongside the recent self-titled debut from their local pals (and frequent show bill sharers) Madelia.
Psst, the official release date is July 11, but we've got some now!
Here's the new 5-song ep from local combo Elephone which treads a different, more expansive path than their last self-released ep 2003's Still Life with Vodka and its full length predecessor A Far Distant Parade (both now sadly out of print). The first two songs are very dramatic and surprisingly early/mid-Radiohead-eque, but on the third the band shifts into quite a different space... and for fans of the Elephone of old, it's a welcome one! The song "Style Style" is definitely more pop-oriented and more like their past efforts, but much more composed and crisply executed. High on energy and emotion. With cool artwork featuring a gasmasked frog and a goggled bird.
San Francisco's The Mallard called it quits recently; they being something of a weirdo outlier of drone-rock + fuzz-pop on the beloved Castle Face label. That said, they were long one of our personal favorites on Castle Face, given their charmingly stoned take on The Pin Group or Bailter Space, or hell even Stereolab for that matter. Thankfully, this was not the end of the creative spirit for those who left the band. The Mallard's frontwoman Greer McGettrick has re-christened herself Eline Cout, delivering her first set of recordings in a micro-edition slab of vinyl on Pretty Penny Records. While there are hints of The Mallard's lo-fi dreamy droniness are found throughout the Eline Cout tracks, this is starkly mechanical album of analog synth crunch, noise-pulse rhythms, and murky industrial strategies circa 1982. McGettrick quips on the back of the record that this is "to be listened to loudly in one room, while working on a monotonous task in another." Thirteen untitled tracks of quasi-instrumental tracks for chiming monotone guitars, bass-throb, primitive synths, and drums with strange / strangled tape-splice interjections of stolen voices, found sounds, and other utterances that may be confused as lyrics. While there is a certain adherence to structure, McGettrick is stripping away all of the melody from what she brought to The Mallard, engaged in a similar punk deconstructionist adventure that Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert began in their Dome recordings. Match that with the squalid noise-junk dourness of Maria Zerfall (seriously, look her up!) and the tumbled-rock percussion of Mars, and there's something close to Eline Cout.
Super limited pressing of 100 copies with each album sporting a unique woodcut print of a 10x10 inch square grid, with one square taken away during each pass through the printing press, amounting to different grid configuration cover art for each piece of vinyl. And, each record includes the wooden square removed for the printing of that particular cover, in a little baggie. We've only got a handful of these! A very cool record all around!
Brand new disc of narcotic psychedelic somnambulant guitar drift from Elm, aka Jon Porras, one half of similarly sonically inclined duo Barn Owl, and also one of your faithful aQuarians. Whereas past missives from Elm were brooding and minimal, they crept and crawled and oozed and sprawled, Nemcatacoa immediately sounds more epic, more song based instead of sound based, channeling both the slow burn guitar drone of groups like SUNNO))) and Vulture Club and Fear Falls Burning, as well as the epic post rock build of groups like Godspeed. The sound is much closer to live Barn Owl, humid and hazy and HEAVY, distortion wreathing all of the melodies, there's even some drums, buried way down in the mix, offering up a skeletal framework for Porras' blackened guitarscapes.
It's not all heavy and dense though, some of the tracks are breathlessly lovely, spacious and spare, the notes drifting weightlessly, strung together by hazy contrails of reverb and soft focus feedback, hushed and reverent and meditative. But often those quiet moments splinter into heaving swells of crumbling distortion, or arcing streaks of burnished black melody. The sound is humid and heady, a constantly shifting dronescape, that goes from barely there folk flutter to blurred buzz drenched haze and back again. So awesome. Definitely has us excited for the forthcoming Barn Owl lp as well...
As always, SUPER LIMITED, packaged in a cool arigato style screen printed cardstock sleeve, with wolves and trees and an animal skull, all printed in metallic silver ink. Nice!
Second solo record from our very own Jon Porras, half of dronefolk duo Barn Owl, after his first disc on Digitalis, Bxogonoas, sold out in a matter of days. This one is crazy limited too, so if you want one, better be quick.
Woven Into Light is more of the glorious same, a druggy, bleary eyed hybrid of slow shimmery free folk and deep minimal dronemusick, taking later period Earth somewhere much dreamier and darker. Muted twang and deep smoldering shimmer, all stretched out in diaphanous sheets across heavy clouded moonlit skies. Spidery tendrils of skeletal guitar spread out like branches on leafless trees, but rather than sounding wintry, Porras wreathes his guitars in soft billows of warm whir, gauzy and lightly blurred, where other bands might turn these downtuned tones into something doomy, Porras lets them drift wraithlike, the sound windswept and barren, the sound of flickering lights above the never ending expanse of desert.
Occasionally, the guitars wind into thick sinewy streaks of coruscating buzz, spitting sparks but still wreathed in a halo or reverb and delay, soft whispery strum transformed into squalls of muted psychguitar and slow shifting almost symphonic buzz. The sound touches on some familiar territory, Sunroof!, Fear Falls Burning, Earth, Nadja, Birchville Cat Motel, and the like, there's some hints of Morricone, Scenic, but Elm most definitely occupies it's own magical mysterious sonic space.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES. and if past releases are any indication, these will sell out quick, and there's a good chance this might be the last copies we ever see...
New SF band Empty Rooms made quite an impressive first impression when we pressed play on this, their self-titled debut five-song EP. The band oozes with composure as they unfurl their solemnly brooding, verging on goth style of rock. They'll undoubtably draw plenty comparisons to the moody likes of Interpol and their forefathers Joy Division and Bauhaus. One song that particularly stands out is the second to last, "Form Has Two Faces" features additional female vocals from Carly Schneider which offer an effective counterpart to lead singer Andy Beyers' deep dour delivery. Hopefully she'll surface again (and more frequently) on their next release. Another highlight is the final song "Black Sugar", a super catchy smoldering pop song.
A stellar follow-up to 2010's The Absent Coast on Root Strata, Already Gone from this local San Francisco drone duo, Maxwell Croy and James Devane, aka EN, finds theses two with an even more focused and nuanced dynamic sensibility. Of course that sensibility centers around Croy's classically trained koto playing, which plays a large part in EN's overall sound, but here that element is really given ample room to stretch out and breathe. Instead of being merely one component in a layering process of cascading shifting dronescapes, the high relief sound of the texture of strings, the slow growing lyrical motifs and the solemn resonant pauses between phrases set up the pieces as they bloom into delicate shimmers and then oceanic swells of drifting unsettled moods. Pushing the momentum along on the first track, "Lodi" is the loping bass pulse of Trevor Montgomery (The Drift, Date Palms, Tarantel), that has us surfing waves of sound before settling into a swirling miasma of crystalline tones and airy phases. Taking us to the final track, "Elysia", the longest track at 20 minutes is set up by a long introduction of gorgeous and breathtakingly spacious koto playing that like falling leaves in gusts of winds unfurl into bellows of sky high cloud drones, gathering and darkening in fields of rich pulsating grey thunderous tones and then watercolor washes of blissful ambiance, the storm cleared and fading away, set to awaken in some far-off place. Beautiful!
The Absent Coast is the debut recording from the duo En, made up of James Devane and Maxwell Croy (one half of the duo that runs the Root Strata label), and is a gorgeous collection of melancholy, otherworldly dronemusic, a varied selection of miniature epics, each an evocative and emotional travelogue in sound, utilizing organs, melodica, piano, guitar, vocals, koto and various other instruments and devices, the duo weave lush expanses of layered, organic sonic energy, warm buzzing tones stretched into sheer blissy shimmer and lush chordal swells blurred into gauzy slow motion melodies become an ever shifting soundtrack to a series of fading memories, brief flickering filmstrips in sound, the indistinct images allowing the listener short glimpses of stories untold, decisions unmade, lives yet to be lived.
The opener is a rich crumbling landscape of layered shimmer, crackling with electrical energy, an energy which gradually dissipates, eventually leaving a smooth glassy stretch of gently pulsing thrum, eventually fading out completely, the resulting vacuum filled with a miniature symphony of scraped steel strings, their overtones ringing out in the ether, leaving shadowy melodic traces, those strangely melodic metal scrapings overflowing into yet another sprawl of lush layered longform dronemusic, a sea of softly undulating buzz, a mesmerizing field of sympathetic steel, which then itself blossoms into yet another bit of drone, this one a sun dappled bit of ethereal ambience, peppered with deep distorted notes, and flitting electrical fields, all wrapped in a woozy cocoon of burnished blur.
And so The Absent Coast unfolds, waves of hissy white noise wash over plaintive piano like some late afternoon sonic sea, glistening fields of celestial glimmer shed notes like falling stars, the result a prismatic cascade of unfulfilled wishes rendered in sound, deep drifts of muted melody are stretched and pulled apart, letting the light from within infuse the sounds all around them, ghostlike drones change color before our very ears, like the leaves turning, Jeckian dirges crawl glacially through moonlight, spitting sparks that smolder in blues and greens, leaving the glow of gradually dying embers, a delicate piano's notes send sonic ripples into the ether, the melodies overlapping and intertwining creating subtle ever shifting patterns that gradually flicker and fade, and finally, hushed sonic shadows give way to a soft sun dappled blush, which in turn becomes a slowly intensifying radiance, a sky full of luminous flares, a visual symphony of sound, lush and rich and almost orchestral, only to finally dissolve, the colors fading to brown, then black, the sound following suit. So so nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This limited one-sided collaboration between artist Chris Johanson and local SF literary punks The Enablers is the second release on Johanson's record label, Awesome Vistas. Starting as a request to write a song that he could illustrate, Johanson and The Enablers instead came up with a more open idea for a piece where both parties would riff off of each other's work as it happened. Reading the lyric sheet for "The Achievement", the colorfully damaged South of Market characters seem directly inspired by Johanson's drawings of San Francisco streets, while the cover art by Johanson is more bruised, urgent and damaged, with all the process of mistakes and ideas vibrantly displayed Fitting right in line with the Enablers distorted amp squalls and Slint like sludge.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
EnemyMine is one guy from LOW and one guy from godheadSilo doing pretty much what you'd expect.
Paul Gonzenbach is the gent responsible for the guitar, vocals and piano in Bay Area band Jim Yoshii Pile Up. They've been on an indefinite hiatus for a while, so a couple of years ago he busted out on his own solo mission under the moniker Enforcer with this album called Baby Panda! However, there's another band with that same name who recently released a cd too - reviewed here last list, they're a Maideny metal band - hence, he's now making music as Baby Panda. Anyhoo, here's his solo debut album! It's a moody, slow paced indie rock beauty... in turn, it's a bit reminiscent of Seam, Built To Spill, Death Cab For Cutie, and yes, JYP. Earnest, sensitive, well crafted with subtle dynamics. Hopefully we'll get his more recent releases soon!
As Erase Errata is another awesome Bay Area band whose tight, jagged sound defies you not to shake your bee-hind, what we said about the Numbers remix album a few lists back also applies--(Erase Errata), all by themselves, have a firm handle on taking the tools of punk rock and using them as instruments of total dancefloor destruction, making them prime candidates for re-interpretions of their songs that highlight, rather than obliterate, their inherent status as dance tunes-- although it ends up that most of the songs on this disc were actually more danceable *before* being put through the remix grinder. Coming in at opposite ends of the "dance" remix spectrum on this release are Adult and Kevin Blechdom. Adult's fairly subtle remix is the track most deserving the title "Dancing Machine," taking Erase Errata's angular, funky bassline and urgent vocals and coating the whole thing in a crisp synth veneer. Robotic boogie mania ensues. The Blechdom track, on the other hand, is a backwards tape scrubbin' hyper sped-up electronic noise fest, with out-of-control video game bursts, soprano ooh-ing, and a snippet of the song in its original form alluded to in the mix here and there, all topped off with some nice country fiddle (crossed over from Wobbly et al's Wide Open Spaces?). Thoroughly deconstructed and rearranged according to her unique sonic worldview, Blechdom makes the Erase Errata material entirely her own. "Dancing Machine" also includes mixes by Matmos and Kid 606.
MPEG Stream: "Marathon (Adult Remix)" [/audio/adultmarathon.m3u]
It's been a few years since Erase Errata's dazzling "Crystal Ships" and since then they've lost band member Sara Jaffe, toyed with the replacing her with another person, then wisely decided to forge ahead as a trio and keep the original EE spirit alive. This is their first outing for Kill Rock Stars and it's definitely a perfect fit. As their politics and guitars are sounding as sharp, angular, and urgent as ever. While they have always held their politics close to their hearts, on Nightlife they are even more up front and in command with pointed words backed up by tough sounding guitars. This is a much leaner meaner sounding Erase Errata. While many of their contemporaries have gotten softer, fluffier, more primed for MTV, we're happy to say that EE is keeping it real and as always with them so irresistibly passionate. Punk rock may have fallen in the hands of some pretty half hearted unimaginative folks over the years but Erase Errata are here to show us that the possibility and potential of punk can still pack a brilliant punch!
Two songs each from Erase Errata and Numbers on the mildly annoying 3" cd format (maybe I have an unhealthy attatchment to my record player, but these brief tunes would've fit beeyootifully on a 7"...) Numbers are great, and "Goin' Insane" and "Palo Alto" give you all the crunchy moog basslines and shouty, distorted boy/girl vocals you could ask for in a space so tight it's claustrophobic, but Erase Errata... damn, they are SUPER hot!
Strong, continuously inventive basslines & super tight drumming form the backbone, enhanced by guitar that provides jagged texture rather than structure. Then the vocals: commanding, Mark E. Smith style commentary that might, for a brief moment, turn into full, vibratoed song before turning back into a sharp, observatory talk/rant. Kick ass. The brevity, skimpy packaging, and questionable format may work against my ability to recommend that you shell out $6.98 for this release, but let me say that the songs from two of the Bay Area's finest definitely deliver.
"Live from the Estradasphere archives", a cd AND a dvd of this Mr. Bungle-approved band of wacky hotshots showing off their chops!
When we ordered this Japanese import, we were like, a split release between Japanese psychedelic stoner/doom rockers Eternal Elysium and San Francisco's own metalcore two-piece Black Cobra? Gotta get that! When it showed up, we were surprised to discover that the entire Black Cobra half had exactly the same tracks as those found on their recent full-length Feather And Stone, which we've already reviewed and raved about. Whoops. So... some of you already have that. However, if you want to get it again, you'll also get 23 minutes of Eternal Elysium material that only appears here. More likely, this is a good call for those who haven't yet picked up the Black Cobra album and also like (or think they might like) EE. Or simply for EE fans who don't mind getting the Black Cobra stuff as well (why would you?) as a bonus. Even at the import price, it's still 2 for the price of 2 (or 1.5 more like it) on one handy disc, not too shabby of a deal, really. So, let's say somethin' about the music for those ignorant of EE and/or BC:
Eternal Elysium always has us a little confused. Strange band. Sometimes they're straight up Sabbath-meets-grunge complete with vocals hinting at Alice In Chains or Soundgarden... and then there's the NWOBHM influences... and the groovy retro-sixties stuff... that's all here, plus of course random weirdness like the brief track "Golden Seaweed", with sped-up chipmunk voices. They try hard to make a stoner drug thing you wouldn't understand, but certainly something that fans of Boris, Solar Anus, and Church Of Misery should check into, to rock out to.
As to the BC half, here's what we said about Feathers And Stone before: Two man heavy riff-machine Black Cobra return with another pummeling release... Picking up right where Bestial left off, Feather And Stone shreds from the start. Brutally punishing circular riffs, heavy as all hell doomy moments, throat ripping screams, and incredibly hard hitting and precise drums. The fact that this massive sound comes from two fellas is pretty damn amazing. The album has all kinds of peaks and valleys. Amidst the constant time signature shifting, and brain-burning riff heavitude, there are a couple of beautifully dark intros and outros thrown in, giving the album a very balanced feeling. But it's mostly just crushingly heavy and ripping. If you can imagine a heavier, much more misanthropic Karp, that's kind of what they remind us of. Feather And Stone is a must for anybody needing a little taste of thrashing triumphant, sometimes doomy and dark, sometimes fast and techy, but always heavy and punk as fuck ROCK music... For fans of Cavity, Karp, Floor, Torche, and things that kill shit! (Note though that unlike the domestic edition of the BC album, there's no cd-rom live footage included.)
On the same label as the more spaced out free-form black jazz ambience of Hodag (reviewed elsewhere on this list), Ettrick on the surface seems like they must be a way more metal proposition, the record's called Infinite Horned Abomination for chrissakes! And their logo is of the spiky illegible classic metal style, but in fact, this is way more of a sputtery skronky free jazz, with wild horns and chaotic bursts of sputtering drum splatter. Each half of this duo handles both sax and drums, each player safely ensconced in their own channel, sometimes it's two horns, sometimes it's horn and drums, sometimes all drums, a dizzying barrage coming scattershot from both the left and right channels, as if there were some sort of free jazz monkeys screaming and beating their chests wildly in each channel, pelting the listener with sonic stones and hurling great handfuls of free jazz dung! Intense and aggressive and furiously freaked out. You might think you're tough, jazz sissy, and we're happy to let you have a go, but this stuff is dangerous, and sharp, and sort of scary, so stand back and let the more highly decorated free jazz warriors step forward, unless you're feeling particularly brave today...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! Each disc packaged in a cool hand screened cardboard sleeve.
