A no-frills and super down to earth debut. As the title states this is a half dozen tunes from Bay Area folksy folks The Finches. The duo of Ms Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and Aaron Morgan share the singin' and guitar playin' duties, and Morgan also handles the bass playin' too. Each of their songs is thoughtful, well-crafted and slightly rough around the edges much like Carolyn's lovely lino-cut cover art. Achingly intimate and pretty, and quite along the lines of folk-pop songstresses such as Cat Power or Julie Doiron. Nice!
Following up their debut cdep, last year's Pacemaker EP, these sprightly SF popsters continue to keep things short'n'sweet on their second release. This 7" features two snappy pop numbers with buzzing guitars, crisp drumming and emotive female vocals from Ms Carly Schneider. When they slow things down a bit on the b-side "March Into The Flames" they bring to mind a more brooding Sleater-Kinney. More please!
Limited pressing of 300 on ultra pale green clear vinyl.
These new SF band proudly let it be known that they in fact are spring chickens (their bio says that they "were born in the '80s, raised by the '90s"), and their youth definitely shows in Pacemaker's punchy energy level and wide-eyed vocal sweetness, but the band also shows some pop smarts beyond their years. Influences that they cite include Pavement, Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead and Cursive, and the impact of those bands is clearly evident. However, they fortunately haven't fallen into the easy trap of simply mocking their idols. They're not just a soundalike. Theirs is solid guitar driven indie pop defined by some interesting postrock-ish twists and graced by the swoonsome female vocals of Ms Carly Schneider (whose soft voice you might've also heard on the equally well-received debut release from another Bay Area band Empty Rooms). This EP fits well alongside fellow Bay Area smart pop upstarts Tartufi, and also recalls acclaimed 90's indie bands such as PEE and Velocity Girl. A very promising debut!
Onwards and upwards, Bay Area pop darlings Finest Dearest have returned with their second cd release, and it's filled with some terrific driving tunes! Indeed, since 2005's Pacemaker cdep and even last year's Off Sides 7", it sounds like they've gotten a whole lot darker and edgier, and the shadowier tones are evident right way with the cd packaging's deep hues and stylin' fontography. it's a definite marked contrast with the delicate homespun art of their previous releases, and yes, the music contained within follows suit. Led by Carly Schneider's sweetly biting vocals, the band definitely still recalls the early '90s indie pop dreams of Velocity Girl and Tsunami, but with more of the modern day sheen and wise-beyond-their years complexity of groups such as Tegan & Sara or Rilo Kiley.
Here's the super cool new issue of the young dvdzine Fingered! It features rad Bay Area indie bands Erase Errata (live clip and tour diary), Tussle, Clip'd Beaks, Fuckwolf, Lemonade, and Black Fiction; plus work from visual artists Olivia Park and Krak! May be best consumed in a somewhat altered state. To boot, the dvd-r comes in a cool screenprinted sewn canvas sleeve, perfect for toting your assorted amenities.
The debut album from this new Bay Area electronic pop band is brimming with confidence and solid songwriting. It starts out all sweet, chiming and heartfelt treading in the territory of bands such as Postal Service and Magnetic Fields with a little bit of Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard-ness too. There's definitely echoes of '80s Brit synth pop thoughout. That said, as the album progresses, things gradually shifts into and between a darker, more atmospheric, almost gothy feel a la Tindersticks and a heavier, more guitar driven sound. Nice.
These debut cd-r recordings from Bay Area band Fits sound like some long lost rural cousin of The Elephant 6 Collective (Olivia Tremor Control, Apples In Stereo, The Minders, et al). The seven members put their plethora of instruments to good use (in addition to the basic guitar-bass-drums, there's also various keyboards, pedal steel, synths, dobro, saw and lots of horns and strings). Each of the dozen tunes is an endearing folksy pop gem with vocals that reminded us of J Mascis.
Three drone-centric artists from three different parts of the world... Five Elements Music is a Russian isolationist / ambient project spawned by one of the members of the similarly minded Exit In Grey; Andrea Marutti is an Italian dark ambient practitioner with a number of occultish recordings under the moniker Amon; and Jim Haynes is a Bay Area artist who "rusts things" and also happens to work here at aQuarius. Both Marutti's and Haynes' compositions are responses to the piece made by Five Elements Music. A massive tectonic rumble emerges from the onset of the Russian track, as if the resonant echo from a meteor striking the heart of Siberia were captured through the felling of a million trees. Out of these frequencies, Five Elements Music evolves this sound into a growling dissonance more dialed into those rasping drones that Oren Ambarchi or Birchville Cat Motel might broadcast from time to time. Over the 23 minutes, this track becomes steadily more placid and inviting, eschewing the desolate horror at the beginning for something beautifully introspective. Marutti builds from the bleak horror where Five Elements Music began, producing cavernous hues of black and grey on amorphous clouds of mist and fog. Marutti's work parallels those blackened static movements of Yen Pox and Inade. For Haynes' part, the theatrical cloak and dagger of Thomas Koner's isolationism comes to mind in his response to the Five Elements Music track, albeit constructed from his distressed textures and fluttering shortwave radio manipulation. Easily the most dynamic piece of this triptych, Haynes deftly transitions pools of nocturnal drones into snarling crescendos of volatile motors, turbines, and Kevin Drumm-esque guitar dissonance which morph into an evocative movement of super-slow-motion heartbeat rhythm and radio frequencies detuned into sweeping, ghostly sinewaves, captured from within one of those WWII era bunkers that dot the California coast. Haynes presented a version of this at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in a collaborative, expanded cinema piece involving a massive diorama, lots of old scientific gear, a couple of surveillance cameras, and a toy train. Alas, there's little video documentation of that performance, but the audio here works amazingly well on its own.
Limited to 400 copies (although some websites claim this to be limited to 300)...
Five Five 2000 is a duo from San Francisco, produding this very nice debut of dronologist electronica. Shortwave radio broadcasts of mechanized voices pinpointing time down to the second break up the freefloating, very dark washes of sound, and buried drum & bass skitter. Beautifully intense.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Wonderful! As is reflected in the icy blue cover art, this is a wintry album - contemplative and shimmering soundscapes populated by acoustic guitars, piano, fleeting vocal gasps and seemingly microscopic electronics. Imagine a not so distant Japanese cousin of the Diskont album by Germany's Oval. Yes, it's that good! Winding and unwinding like the delicate clockwork mechanics revealed amid the feathers of the diminutive birds on the cover, these ten tracks are simply gorgeous from start to finish... as has been pretty much everything released to date by this fine, young SF independent label. Needless to say, very recommended! A perfect fit for those who've also been enjoying the soothing immersion into the releases on labels such as A Room Forever and Mystery Sea.
Part of the Dynamophone Parcel series, the cdr comes beautifully packaged in a round metal tin with a ribbon attached inside to facilitate opening the tin and getting the disc out.
Holy smokin' haz-mat howdoyoudo's! This is the debut release from SF art-noise project Le Flange Du Mal... and quite an introduction it is. Despite their moniker, as far as we can tell none of the participants are French. A quick'n'dirty translation of their name is The Flange Of The Evil, but that's not quite as poetic, is it? Doesn't really slip as gracefully off the tongue. Anyways, the leader of Le Flange pack is Mr. Chris Rolls. He's the head honcho of the very varied SF indie label Kimosciotic Records (home to art-noisies Ezee Tiger and Crack W.A.R., electronic experimentalists Not Breathing, and hip hop lone wolf Unagi), and he's also been in the ranks of SF shit-disturbers Ziegenbock Kopf and Earwicker. He's joined by Chris Cones (also of Earwicker and Subarachnoid Space), Crack We Are Rock's Jason Stamberger and MurderMurder's Liz Allbee, and they make music that runs the gamut just as much as the artists whom he releases on his label. With their multi-barrelled toxic industrial-bootybass-sludge assault, they come careening right at you with their foot nowhere near the brakes, swerving woozily to avoid other vehicles in their path, cruising through the no wave and art rock zones, and through a musty gothy batcave (check out the track "Nightcrawler") too.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"On the 8th day the Lord created the voice and gave it to Gary Floyd", or so says the obi prominently displayed on this cd. But for some weird reason the obi doesn't mention that Gary was the singer for the punk group The Dicks, although it does namedrop his other much-loved-and-now-defunct group Sister Double Happiness. Gary's voice is in full display here as this record features mostly folksy country and blues material. Local folks will be happy to know it is available.
How can you resist a record with a sticker on the front proclaiming it to be "California doom folk"? Well, we sure as heck can't. And what if that sticker was pasted over a huge floating white-bearded head floating in the clouds like some spirit of Yahowha back from the dead to haunt our musical dreams. Well, you'd have us again. So we were pretty much sold before we got the disc to the player. But in all fairness, we should also mention that not only is Flying Canyon the project of one half of Golden Hotel, who we raved about on a past list, but that half also happens to be AQ regular Cayce Lindner, who you can see on the AQ customers page, and who haunts the hallowed halls of AQ on an almost daily basis.
But the fact that Cayce is a friend of ours isn't the reason we were so enamored of Golden Hotel, or the reason this slab of California doom folk has been kicking our asses. Nope. It's because Cayce has a way with a guitar and a killer knack for abstract free folk songsmithery. It helps too that in Flying Canyon he's teamed up with members of The Skygreen Leopards and Kelly Stoltz's band. Where Golden Hotel was dark and lugubrious, dreamy and droney, Flying Canyon is much more druggy and desert-y, twangy and sun baked, laid back and lysergic.
From the opening track, "In The Reflection", a dead ringer for Terry Reid's "Seed Of Memory", you're already wandering in a dreamlike daze, across some dusty windblown musical world, a wounded wasteland, that while inhospitable and rife with death and misery, is still strangely warm and safe, you find yourself clearing away some dust and rubble, dead leaves and brittle branches, laying back, eyes closed, the sun turning the inside of your eyelids a blood red, and letting the sun burn you away, bleaching your bones, as you become part of the landscape, your dust part of the swirling storm, the sound, a disembodied floating free folk, perfectly captured by the Flying Canyon.
The label website describes Flying Canyon as the Eagles on Robitussen, but it's a little closer to Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young on horse tranquilizers. A super lo-fi arid expanse of murky late afternoon haze and stoned fuzzy fug. The strainer on the snare drum rattles and drifts like the warning of a snake coiled up in the hot summer sun. The bass is thick like melted tar, a fuzzy fat rumble, warm warbly melodies wrapped around a soft focus folk drift, in the distance, fluttering flutes and warm swells of shimmering organ, like a musical mirage. All left all to hover in a lush field of room sound and drifting fuzz, above which float Lindner's ghostly vocals, an about-to-crack Neil Young warble, emotional and rich and honest, so much so that Lindner even manages to sing the words "rock and roll" in a song, without it sounding wrong. Instead, you can imagine that this is some sort of rock and roll. A rock and roll that was left in the sun too long, allowed to melt and change shape, a dusty, almost forgotten relic, that still retains some mysterious inner glow, a beauty that transcends the ravages of time. Go ahead. Sit back. Rest those weary bones, close those tired eyes. This is just about the perfect place for waitin' around to die...
Trauma finds long time no wave free jazz attackers the Flying Luttenbachers doing their usual brutal best to channel the spirits of Brotzmann and Ayler and Takayanagi and the like. It's primal stuff originally recorded in 2001, newly reissued on cd for those that missed it the first time, and want a taste of that intensely improv Luttenbachers phase (before their more recent forays into tech guitar mutant metal prog scifi spasms). On this disc, squealing saxophone and rumbling bass vie with the frenzied percussive pummel of bandleader Weasel Walter, the whole screaming machinegunning shebang never really letting up (the eleven tracks on this nearly 70 minute disc are aptly titled "Trauma 1" through "Trauma 11").
Go to YouTube to watch this (http://youtube.com/watch?v=PU4pVVM5wb4) brilliant video for a track from Trauma, depicting panic in the streets and the nightmarish effects of multiple nuclear blasts, for which the Luttenbacher's freeform blasting is the perfect soundtrack. The images, so scary in the '80s (they're all edited together from the TV movie The Day After, remember that?) hilariously, horrifically fit the music and vice versa. No more need be said by us, that should do the trick.
Holy crap. This is the Luttenbachers' fourteenth (we think) album release, the follow-up to 2004's The Void. Their instrumental insanity features as always drummer extraordinare Weasel Walter (Lake Of Dracula/Hatewave), this time assisted by these three equally high-level technicians: on guitars Ed Rodriguez (Gorge Trio/Colossamite/Iceburn) and Mick Barr (Ocrilim/Octis/Orthrelm/Crom Tech), and on bass Mike Green (Burmese). Together they're an unstoppable frenzied skronk attack, pulling stop-start ADD fretboard and percussive maneuvers off in their own blackened jazz sci-fi galaxy... It's like (heck, it is) metallic mathrockers practicing their scales, ensemble style, amidst a barrage of ominous dirge. The appropriate response at the end of each piece can only be "Whew!". If you haven't heard the Luttenbachers before (or only their earlier material with jazz horns and not so much electric guitar), but do like Mick Barr's various bands, you will like this -- Barr fans needn't hesitate!!
The song titles are ever so appropriate: "Demonic Velocities", "Insektoid Horror", "The Elimination Of Incompetence"... They are masters of their realm, that's for sure. And their special brand of heaviness is one that can go from a punishing rocker like "Interstellar War" into the relative calm and beauty of "Movement Four Of L'Ascension" (yes, an Olivier Messiaen cover).
By the way, despite the lack of lyrics, this is a concept album, just like their last few releases. Have you been following along, and learning the future fate of the Earth? No? Well don't say they didn't warn you...
As the Luttenbachers fly on and on into the void, they just get more and more metal, don't they? Now a Bay Area based trio (including one of the Mikes from Burmese on bass), they offer up their thirteenth album! This latest episode of Flying Luttenbacher insanity features nine tracks of feedback-filled, drum-blasting, chaotically complexified, metallic skree that can't be topped by almost anyone in the known universe -- heck parts of this even remind us a bit of Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha, which is a comparison we don't make too often. The Void is an all-instrumental tour-de-force that believe it or not could be the missing link between black metal and no-wave, surely band leader Weasel Walter's life's work. Track after track, each cut here builds and builds without much in the way of release, racheting tension to head-bursting levels. Judging from comments in the liner notes, perhaps this is Weasel's howling response to the Republican take-over of the United States. In any event, it's a serious dose of heavy, frenzied, jazz-damaged, post-rock, post-metal, mathy mayhem!
With this sophomore album it's nothing but onwards and upwards for this great SF band! These fellows sure do have a knack for the hooks 'n' harmonies. As opposed to their strong 2002 debut, the scales lean even more generously on the buoyant pop rather than twangin' Americana this time out. Perhaps they're following a similar path as that of Jeff Tweedy and co., as Don't Let Your Baby Down is reminiscent of Wilco's country tinged pop (as well as that of their pop cohorts The Minus 5 or in Andee's opinion, the Old 97s), whereas their first album Just Now Finding Out more closely resembled Wilco's predecessor Uncle Tupelo's pop-tinged country. Yes, it's a subtle shift of gears, but a notable and good one at that. The rollicking third song "Dusted" also brings to mind the frantic guitars and slouchy vocals of the Strokes. Wisely keeping the energy high and keeping their soaring multi-part vocals and full, warm guitar blend of crunchy electric and strummy acoustic intact, Fojimoto have offered up a much more consistent and catchy album. A perfect sunny day driving disc. Recommended!
What a pleasant surprise! The Bay Area's certainly rich in the pop department lately. Take for example the splendid new albums from Mr. John Vanderslice and this new group called Fojimoto. Their blend of country rock and sunny pop immediately brings to mind Uncle Tupelo, Weakerthans and even the Eagles. Indeed, there are some songs on Just Now Finding Out that are fantastic pure pop beauties. All jangling and jubilant, they're just slightly encumbered by the few slower numbers that aren't quite as engaging and break the firm hold of Fojimoto's infectious pop hooks which I quite fancy. Nice!
Great breezy indie pop sounds from this new San Francisco band. Foma explore a few different directions, from more spacious and dreamy sounds to a more straight ahead and catchy onslaught. Fans of folks like Arcade Fire, Grandaddy and Terror Twilight era Pavement will find lots to love on this debut. A few of the tracks here have caused customers to come up and ask what Death Cab For Cutie record we were listening to, as the vocals can definitely get into that super sweet Ben Gibbard territory. A very nice debut.
For Stars have done it again -- improved on that which came before. Their third album unfolds gradually, both expanding on and refining the already wonderful lush pop melacholia of their last full length We Are All Beautiful People. Their mellowness is sounding at times a little more 'shoegazer' than 'slowcore' this time out. On each of the eight songs, they take a contemplative pace as if that's all they can muster under the weight of their collective heart's burdens, and they don't hesitate to add a dissonant tone here and there effectively building tension and atmosphere. Their soaring, lilting multi-part vocals and textural flourishes are in many ways very post-Radiohead's OK Computer, and Flaming Lips' Soft Bulletin. As well, the seventh song also brought to mind a more elaborate Guided By Voices, but they're by no means simple soundalikes. Their well-crafted achingly lovely songs glow in their own right.
Honestly, the moment I heard the first few strains of the opening track of this album, I was transported back many a year to my childhood. Summer days spent listening to the radio, strains of Carly Simon or Bread. Not a bad thing... no, this album nudges you into bittersweet reminiscence with its slowly creeping, lonely melodies. Local slowcore, for fans of Smog and Palace; recommended.
We've sad it before and we'll say it again. We love Maria Forde. She can draw anything. Famous directors, zombies, vegetables, and eventually, she's gonna draw all of us! You'll be able to see all the various AQ folks rendered in Maria's inimitable style.
But until then, you can count down the days with this bad ass Maria Forde calendar. A Cautionary Calendar About Junk Food you can hang on your wall, small enough to keep in your bag or even your pocket, and packed with awesome drawings. And it's not just the drawings, it's the subject matter. Just like her various series of directors, actors, her choices are unlikely but so so perfect.
So here we have a year's worth of images, legends and misfires of the junk food world: the inventor of Dubble Bubble (originally called Blibber Blubber!), Hostess cupcakes, Frosted Flakes, Lik-M-Aid, the man who invented the process of freezing McDonalds French fries, and helped create Cheez Wiz, the inventor of sliced bread, Baby Ruth bars, one of the possible inventors of the TV dinner, the inventor of Mountain Dew, Gene Hackman as Willy Wonka and more!!!
We're having a snack attack already!
You may remember us pimping our pal Maria Forde's artshow a list or two back, featuring sketches of veggies and things. And if you live in the neighborhood, you for sure have seen her bad ass drawings and paintings of various classic movie stars and starlets, as well as some wicked zombie drawings, which have found their way onto shirts and buttons. We're even discussing having here do a series of AQ employees and AQ favorite records!! She also even painted a portrait of our very own Andee which you can see on the very out of date staff page on the AQ website.
We've had random bits of here art here in the store over the years, she's still quite partial to the zine, and heres are always amazing, super detailed, ultra personal, intimate and funny, fun to read and packed with awesome drawings and weird shapes and ideas.
Read This To Get Your Enjoys is the latest from Forde and her merry band of like minded collaborators, various writers and artists. Packed with stories, and drawings, comics, photos, with gorgeous colored pencil full color front and back, inside and out covers, the front even has a little pocket with a stick of gum for you to chew on while you curl up and dig in. The back cover has a little pocket too, that one has a little tiny mini zine in there, to check out once you've worked your way through. We'd tell you more, but you should just buy it, and discover all the special hidden things inside for yourself. Limited to only 50 copies, each signed and hand numbered, and a total STEAL at only four bucks...
One of our favorite local artists returns with volume two of her Read This To Get Your Enjoys zine. The first one was a huge hit around here (we still have a few left, just ask), killer art, funny stories, even a piece of gum! Local folks might know Maria Forde from her drawings of movie stars and directors that have graced walls, shirts and buttons, across the street at video shop Lost Weekend, her art an impossible blend of playful childlike wonder, super technical focus, and poignant whimsy for sure.
This time around, for number two, everything is a little bit bigger and better. Full color covers, inside and out, lots of contributors, an extra full color mini-zine insert, and even a cd-r mix tape.
And just like mixtapes, we never get tired of zines, super personal and intimate, cleverly laid out, creatively designed, sometimes super sleek and smooth, other times more scribbly and lo-fi, found letters, photos, doodles, elaborate illustrations, it's easy to tell from looking at Read This... that Maria and her crew love the form and are helping it to thrive and flourish. We could describe each piece and part, but it's sort of pointless, if you're into zines, and cool art, and like us don't get nearly enough small press bliss, pick this up. Funny, weird, sad, melancholy, goofy, playful, earnest, heartfelt, beautifully drawn, and lovingly assembled. Plus a bad ass disc, in a little pocket inside the back cover, filled with killer hip hop from one of the zine's contributors, part of his answer to the question posed to him as to why he makes hip hop. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a song must be worth a million.
Just like the first issue, WAY recommended.
A couple years ago, San Francisco minimal-wave / shoegaze outfit Foreign Cinema handed us a 4 song ep - Non-Synchronous Sound - which quickly became a staff favorite around here, with its wintery atmospherics wrapped around sublime songs that reminded us of The Cure (circa Faith / Seventeen Seconds), Slowdive, and Crystal Stilts. With just four songs, we did keep on wondering (sometimes aloud to the band when they dropped off more and more copies of Non-Synchronous Sound), when a full album would come out. While we're totally stoked that the band has finished a full album, we're still somewhat scratching our heads why Foreign Cinema hasn't caught the attention of somebody like Sacred Bones, Captured Tracks, or hell 4AD for that matter. Yeah, they really are that good!
Anyway as for Monochromatic, the spatiousness and spectral songs which we loved so much on Non-Synchronous Sounds continue here. The songs all have a complexity that along with those earlier references seem to meld the artful tumble of Wire with the post-rock dynamics of Bark Psychosis. Rolling basslines that slide out of noir-tinged melodies into a low-slung, darkened dub countering the synth and drum machines, all given a good old Martin Hannett style production. The spindly guitars of Dave Han leap out of the songs with a simple, graceful sadness to match his distantly mixed, minor key vocals. For all of the referecnes to darkened atmospheric pop, Foreign Cinema conjure a sound that is pretty much all their own. We'll be ballyhooing this one as much as we did the earlier ep, until they sell out of the 300 copies they pressed up for the lp, which also comes with a cd-r of the entire album.
You can probably imagine that we get lots of bands sending and dropping off their cd's for us to check out. As painstaking and time consuming as it can be, we really do try to listen to every single thing that ends up in our hands, even though it sometimes takes us forever to do so. But damn we've been reminded why all that listening is worth while, as buried deep in a stack of cd's to check out from months ago laid this absolute shoegaze gem from a local San Francisco duo who deserve to get some major attention with this stunning ep.
Reminding us in equal parts of Slowdive and The Cure circa Faith, these are songs to get lost to, bathing the listener in a perfect seductive daze. We've got to say we've become big fans of ep's as of late, a format that requires the musician make the most of every single moment, as the four songs/twenty minutes of music on Non-Synchronous Sound are all absolutely hypnotic and satisfying. Reminding us of the heyday of Sara records or a more shoegazey Pains of Being Pure At Heart joining forces with a less rock minded and more blissed out Crystal Stilts.
Slumberland, Matador, 4AD, Captured Tracks, if we were your A&R reps we would be begging you to sign this duo, as this is a band who deserves to get their music out to a way wider audience. Totally stunning!
Foreign Cinema's debut ep was a huge hit around here, about a year ago when we finally realized it had been sitting in a box of cds to check out for way to long, we put it on and were totally blown away. In fact it's become one of those cds that pretty much gets played in the store every week at some point. It's just so perfect in its shoegaze, daydream perfection. They seem to be taking their time crafting a proper first full length (The Soft Moon were equally wise in releasing a handful of 7"s before their first album). These two new songs show there's plenty of wonderful, dark and breezy shoegaze pop to come from this awesome duo in the near future (we hope). We gotta give them extra props for naming the A side "Palace Of Fine Junk" after our favorite random junk/thrift store in the Tenderloin. In fact listening to Foreign Cinema is a lot like taking a dazed and hazy late afternoon walk through this city. "Velvet Sky" may be on the B side, but damn if it's not one of the most seductive and sensual slow burners of the year!
Beautifully packaged, hand stamped, and limited. So grab one while you can.
Limited cd-r pressing of 300! We've just received two releases from these young post rock instrumentalists! Recirc is their limited edition ep on the terrific Bay Area indie label Three Ring Records. As with their debut album The Form And Fate Of Lakes which we've also got, Recirc featured somber black and white photography on the cover and it suits the music well -- moody expanses which when observed closer burst with textures and dynamics. Fiery and jagged at times, thick and brooding at others, all tempered by delicately picked lilting guitar passages. Sure, we've heard the 'loud-quiet-loud' done a-plenty but we're not complaining 'cause these guys do it exceptionally well!
We've just received two releases from these young post rock instrumentalists! This one is their full length debut on the terrific Bay Area indie label Three Ring Records (we've also got a limited cd-r, the Recirc ep). The black and white photography of distant glacial landscapes featured on the cover suits the music well -- moody expanses which when observed closer burst with textures and dynamics. Fiery and jagged at times, thick and brooding at others, all tempered by delicately picked lilting guitar passages. Sure, we've heard the 'loud-quiet-loud' done a-plenty but we're not complaining 'cause these guys do it exceptionally well!
Regarding the title and the cover art here, Ferrara Brain Pan - the lone pilot of San Francisco's obscurant project Forms Of Things Unknown - is taking the piss out of the perennial flirtations of Nazi culture found in experimental and post-punk musics over the past 30 or 40 years. It's an odd form of humor, but one that stops at the cover art, never to be brought up within these eccentric and disparate tracks that harken back to the early days of United Daires. Whimsical collages, complete with bongo-boy rhythms and cut-up vocal samples (which really could be an extract from Nurse With Wound's Funeral Music For Perez Prado), are juxtaposed against icy cold electronic tone workouts that draw from the precisely constructed, psychoacoustic experiments of Ryoji Ikeda or John Duncan. Ferrara also interjects his favorite instrument, the bass clarinet, on a few somber pieces that warp the brassy notes of a maudlin funereal passage into air raid sirens. As beautiful as some of these pieces can be, Ferrara's deft use of electronics and the digital razor blade is all the better. All of these tracks are demos, outtakes, or compilation rarities, including the Forms Of Things Unknown contribution to the Nurse With Wound remix album of Two Shaves And A Shine. While there is a disjointed quality to the album, this is a well needed investigation into this music of this seldom heard musician.
"Cross Purposes" is an half-hour of weird, spooky music from longtime AQ patron and obscure music-maker Ferrara Brain Pan. Yes, that's his name -- but here he goes by the Forms Of Things Unknown moniker, a suitably vague and creepy name for this disc of Gothic dark ambient experimentation, that seems to be vying for retroactive inclusion on the famed "Nurse With Wound list". Indeed, NWW's Stephen "Babs Santini" Stapleton makes a guest appearance somewhere on here (see if you can find it)!
The first track, evocatively named "Black Candles & Pentagrams 'n Shit", is sixteen minutes of sinister drone and wind instrument dolefulness. On this album, Ferrara plays bass clarinet, flutes, recorders, saxophones, along with various other mostly archaic and/or ethnic instruments -- and electronics too of course. Perhaps to illustrate that FoTU's influences are eclectic and extend back further than the goth/industrial heyday, "Black Candles..." is followed by an anonymous 14th century composition in both instrumental and vocal versions -- the vocal by lovely soprano Shannon Wolfe, not Ferrara. It's somewhat sombre, but not scary like the first piece. Rather beautiful. Then, again shifting gears and displaying esoteric influence, this disc's final cut turns out to be a moody cover of "Stupid Blood", a song from the Beast Box album by Howard Devoto's post-Buzzcocks band Luxuria. With one Bob Ayres handling the portentous baritone vox, and Ferrara's horns and flutes, this track could just as easily be taken as a tribute to Peter Hammill's Van Der Graaf Generator!
First things first, we'll be frank, young SF band The Frail almost received an immediate Gong Show gong from us on the opening track of their debut ep. Anyone who samples/butchers Erik Satie's gorgeous classical piano work "Gymnopedies" in such a wanton dance-fied fashion should be strung up by their fingernails! We bit our tongue and resisted the urge to hit the 'stop' button. Needless to say, not the best introduction! Anyways, get past that first awkward moment, and you'll find this new Bay Area pop-tronic duo combining the sweet and dreamy side of pop with the comparatively harder thump of electronic rock. Their gently persistent unwavering programmed beats and boyish vocals draws easy descriptions of The Faint meets Postal Service. Definitely for fans of those bands as well as the electro-pop bands on the German Morr Music label!
The Franciscan Hobbies are one of the more anarchistic manifestations of the Jewelled Antler 'collective', The Hobbies themselves being a free-form, free-wheeling group of variable membership that turns idyllic nature excursions into documents of magical, improv folk psych. At The World's End comes by way of New Zealand cd-r label PseudoArcana, and this time around The Hobbies include 3 of the 4 members of Thuja, plus a bunch of their friends, including Donovan Quinn (Skygreen Leopards), Greg Bianchini (The Muons), and Cole Palme (Factrix). However, whoever's present on this recording isn't all that important, as they meld into a very relaxed communal music-making clan. Furthermore, discussion of instruments and techniques would seemingly convey less of a sense of what the Hobbies sound like than more poetic allusions to damp moss and dry leaves. Imagine napping in the undergrowth of a forest, dreaming drones and fractured melodies. Theirs is a drifting, indirect music, more hints and haunts than songs per se. And, we ask, how can you not love a record with a track entitled "The Unicorn Murders"??
Courtesy of new Florida-based label Soft Abuse, "Masks And Meanings" is the first full-length "real" cd from San Francisco's wonderfully dreamy improvisors The Franciscan Hobbies, following the "Caterpillars Of The Oak Beauty" cd-r on their own Jewelled Antler label. Featuring members of Thuja (Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, Rob Reger) and others, including Greg Bianchini from SF folk troubadours The Muons, you can perhaps guess what this sounds like. Somewhere between the psychedelic forest drones of Thuja and the folkiness of Glenn and Loren's Blithe Sons project. Abstract, droney, relaxing. Gently plucked guitar strings, rattling and rustling noises of indeterminate origin, very organic and natural sounding. Field recordings and non-instrument sound making fill sonic spaces alongside what might be mellow kraut/hippy jams on guitars and percussion, if they weren't so damaged and sparse and loosely structured. It's music, like sunlight, filtering down through the leafy branches of the forest canopy, into a grassy nest the Hobbies have burrowed out and furnished with antiques. Afternoon light, and shadowed darkness and dust. Indeed, like most of the J.A. projects, The Hobbies often record out-of-doors, in meadows in Golden Gate Park for instance. They came up with their name, actually, from a piece of wood they randomly found on the site of one of their recording sessions, upon which the words "Franciscan Hobbies" were printed. Their music's mysterious yet oddly whimsical vibe is carried through the collage artwork and song titles ("Wasp Embodiment", "Plough Drawn By Toads"). Very nice. That some tracks end with abrupt edits would be about our only complaint... Definitely for fans of Tower Recordings, Kemialliset Ystavat, the whole Jewelled Antler "collective" and suchlike. You know who you are/what this is.
MPEG Download: "A Preordained Sequence" [/audio/franciscanpreordained.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "A Preordained Sequence" [/audio/franciscanpreordained.m3u]
Jewelled Antler picnic-party The Franciscan Hobbies are certainly the biggest and vaguest, most free-form collective in the "collective". The Hobbies' albums are where Thujans and Muons and Blithe Sons and Skygreen Leopards and Child Readers and Buried Civilizations and all of 'em go to let it hang loose...or looser than usual. Even moreso than the other "bands" found under the umbrella of the San Francisco experimental-improv-folk-psych Jewelled Antler family, The Franciscan Hobbies have a indeterminate, open-ended membership, and make suitably organic, sprawling, abstract music... much of it quite as lovely as anything in the Jewelled Antler canon: dark and dreamy, with noise-textures and fragmented melodies played on acoustic and electric instruments both drifting in and out of these pieces like nature-sounds in the forest, in a manner perhaps akin to their Finnish brethren and sistren (?) Kemialliset Ystavat and Avarus and Uton. This new Hobbies cd, their fourth disc, was recorded over the past three years in various places with various persons participating -- among those persons, members of all the aforementioned groups. And AQ's own Allan even shows up singing on "Goat With The Dolphin Face", recorded in a wooden teepee on a beach up in Point Reyes. (Not that you can tell that it's him...or in a teepee.) And that's also got nothing to do with why we're going to tell you that this is highly recommended, particularily to those of you for whom the more abstract edges of the Jewelled Antler thing appeal. Intimate, hushed and full of quiet clankings and fragile drones...meandering, mesmerizing guitar-plucked lullabies...bowed strings and rustling sticks...indistinct vocalizations...all carefully edited and mixed by Glenn Donaldson (the track "Satan Crystals" by Loren Chasse). So nice.
Here's the third fine full length from Ms Paula Frazer (also of Tarnation). We've mentioned before that her soaring vocal delivery brings to mind a female counterpart to Chris Isaak, and it still does. Seemingly effortless. She also continues to draw inspiration from various eras of Americana -- from the fluttering ruffles on the ladies' elegant gowns at the Grand Ol' Opry to '70s soft rock horns of bands such as Chicago -- bringing it all together under her own captivating umbrella and distinguishing it with the lush sounds Rhodes keyboards, pedal steel and some tasteful tambourine. She's assembled quite a luminous cast of players too including American Music Club's Marc Capelle, Court & Spark's James Kim and Scott Hirsch, the Moore Brothers, Oranger's John Hofer, and former Kronos Quartet cellist Joan Jeanrenaud.
The occasionalist project French Radio is the semi-improvised work of Bruce Anderson, Jim Kaiser, and A.C. Way. Anderson, of course, is the stalwart art-punk guitarist from MX-80; Kaiser and Way are two of the more prolific participants in the damaged improv / noise scene in the Bay Area. As all three of these gentlemen of the avant-garde have their fingers in too many pies to count here, French Radio gigs have been few and far between; and Abandonded Children is only the second album from the trio. Fortunately, they are making up for lost time with two discs worth of gloop, din, murk, and turgid abstraction. The instrumentation for French Radio puts Anderson behind a large semi-circle of effects pedals that occasionally do allow for archetypal sounds to come from the guitar that connects them; Kaiser wields his now signature bicycle wheel with contact mic contraption and some reel-to-reel tape decks; and Way has a lo-tech set-up for turntable, cheap samplers, and microphones through which he utters monotone howls bathed in blackened reverb. The trio is at their best when they dive deep into a subterranean noise, nearing the depths of something oozing from Locrian or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, as metallic clanks from Kaiser's wheel lumber against strangely soothing blasts of cold noise; but when Anderson's lonesome guitar strums through the din, French Radio is as compelling as anything that Barn Owl has mustered. Each of the three lengthy tracks were studio recordings, made without any overdubs. A limited cd-r release, mind you!
An album many years in the making, Elements is the debut offering from French Radio, a collaborative effort between Bruce Anderson (MX80), Jim Kaiser (Petit Mal), and Andy Way (Maleficia). The record has finally been released, graced with cover art featuring the ever-eccentric drawings of M.S. Waldron / irr.app.(ext.). In many ways, the album is curiously prescient of our recent fascination with all things on the Lampse label, in particular that Jasper, TX record I'll Be Long Gone Before My Light Reaches You although realized through the context of grizzled improvisation instead of a loosely sutured structuralism. Each of the four tracks on Elements represent the primordial fundamentals: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Through their constructions of guitar, turntable, tapes, and boat-loads of effects, French Radio conjures an interconnected sound between all of their base elements. The flanging tone-float activity of mangled electricity into distant clouds of din, crackle, and spectral dust has the threatening aura of an electrocutioner's chamber buzzing with high-voltage tension. Unrecognizably abstracted vocal collages culled from varispeed tapes and reverse spun turntables spiral in and out of the ominous clouds, topped with squalid layers of thunderous distortion alternating with mournful half-melodies strummed on Anderson's guitar. Limited to 100 copies.
By the time we had finally heard the Fresh & Onlys, there was already some sort of mania for them going on, that we found ourselves in the midst of, all their records were sold out, we couldn't get more, out of print 7"s were popping up on eBay, the sort of thing that we might expect to happen with super popular ultra hip bands, but this local band who only had a couple 7"s?? We were skeptical, until we heard 'em, then it all made sense. These guys rule. And rock. They have sort of fallen in with the new breed of noise pop lo-fi tweakers, but the Fresh & Onlys are way more about classic pop songs, their sound channeling vintage sixties pop, the early eighties LA sound, classic power pop, garage rock. The production is most definitely not lo-fi, the guitars are thick and loud and ring out, the bass throbs, the drums are simple and understated, the vocals are down in the mix, but not buried, there are plenty of harmonies, falsettos, cool little spidery guitar leads, the overall sound is just a tiny bit fuzzed out. We never noticed it before, but the band that we're most reminded of is the Leaving Trains, easily one of our favorite bands ever, criminally under appreciated for sure (Kill Tunes and Fuck are two all time stone cold classics). Tim Cohen's vocals are a dead ringer for the Leaving Trains' Falling James, and the sound too has that sort of punk rock morphed into fuzz pop sound. They also share lots of sonic elements with local pals Thee Oh Sees, that sort of washed out wall of sound classic Spector sound, plenty of fuzzy organs, strummed steel string guitars, reverby girl group back up vox, as well as some seriously garage guitar crunch all over the place. We dig BIGTIME!
Back with their sixth album, these local boys are still sounding pretty fresh - whilst also sounding so very comfortably familiar. House Of Spirits finds Tim, Wymond, Kyle and Shayde kicking out another set of sweetly wistful indie pop jams/gems, replete with the usual head-nodding melodies, guitar jangle and (soft) fuzz... This time 'round, it sounds like they've been listening to a lot of The Cure, early Cure, yep that's what we're hearing here, it's just a bit downer-moody, their once-apon-a-time garaginess gone kinda gloomy, Tim's lyrics suitably strange and spooky. But the F&O's still can't help but let some sun shine in, some of the time. Nice stuff, as usual, even if a bit different!
We just realized, these guys have recorded full-lengths and singles for the following labels: Castle Face, Woodsist, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones, In The Red, Hardly Art, Hozac, Agitated, Trouble In Mind, and (their current home) Mexican Summer, among others. Wow, could they possibly have MORE indie cred?
It's easy to forget that The Fresh & Only's are a new band as the songs they've been cranking out have the self-assuredness of a band who's been around for decades. Two new cuts of their garage pop sprinkled with enough punk spirit and weirdo undertones to make their songs always piques our interest. We hear a really cool Joe Meek influence in the sound of "I Saw You Seeing Me" proving that just because these folks are zoning in on some pure garage pop delight they haven't forgotten how to infuse nice touches of their wide range of musical influences into the mix. Can't seem to keep Fresh & Only's vinyl in stock too long, they're already flying out the door, so better grab one of these while you can.
What more can we say about these SF garage poppers that we haven't already? This here's another double shot of pretty much perfect pop music, less and less garage rock sounding with every release, conjuring up that perfect mix of a little bit 'now', fuzzy, reverby, crunchy, and a little bit 'then', lush harmonies, timeless hooks, wall of sound production, female back up vox... not to mention plenty of jangle and strum, ooohs and aaahs, and songs that stick in your head like crazy.
The A-side is all propulsive drumming, fuzzy organs, chiming guitars, some low slung Joy Divisiony basslines, and an almost new wave croon, dreamy falsetto back up vox, and of course everything wreathed in echo and soft focus effects, transforming classic sounding jangle pop into something slightly more swirly and psychedelic. The B-side is much more swaggery and groovy and surfy, with one of those riffs you know you've heard somewhere before, total old school classic Beatles-esque pop, weary heartfelt vocals, some tinkling xylophone style melodies, and the back up vox steal the show, wrapping the track in an irresistible almost ethereal sounding sixties girl group haze. So good. Any other band this prolific, close to 10 releases in less than 2 years, might be hitting some sort of saturation point, but with these guys, we still can't ever seem to get enough.
Another blast of fuzzed out garage pop from these SF noise poppers, this one short and sweet, two super hooky catchy jams, the first all old school garage rock (via the new breed of retro new wave pop garage weirdos), throbbing bass, tons of Farfisa organs way up in the mix, heavily reverbed vocals, a catchy chorus (and a pretty catchy verse as well), and a super twisted laughing vocal part.
The flipside is an Oh Sees style rocker, heavy on the fifties fuzz and the falsetto back up vox, all wound around a frantic beat, but with some cool unexpected angular atonal melodies. Probably pretty dang limited so don't dawdle, no idea how long these will last, which makes sense, a 7" is pretty much the perfect way to experience a band like the F&O's, little frenetic bursts of rocking pop perfection.
Comes with a download card too, so you can cram these jams onto your computer.
This latest from these prolific San Francisco indie popsters is perhaps a bit less garagey and fuzzy than some of their past works. Long Slow Dance is an apt title, for Tim, Shayde, Kyle and Wymond's brand of dreamy indie jangle here, soaring from softly crooned heartache to powerful euphoria. In fact, "Euphoria" is the name of one of the songs.
It's a record full of folky lushness that reminds us a bit of Fleet Foxes for sure. So fans of both bands ought to dig this. Each song is strummed and sung to moody, catchy pop perfection, destined to get stuck on 'repeat' if you give it a chance.
Another stellar outing from the F&O boys!
Lately it seems that between Captured Tracks and Sacred Bones, there's some sort of label competition to see who can release the most stuff. It's definitely a close race, with both constantly churning out record after record, the weird thing is, it's pretty much all great. This latest one from SF's own Fresh & Onlys though, just might be the best yet. It's definitely the best F&O record so far, the songs, the vibe, the sound, the production. Everything that was hinted at on past records seems fully realized here. It's short, a 6 song 12" at 45 rpm, but it's plenty.
As always, the songs are ace, catchy and hooky, the guitars jangle and crunch, the vocals wrapped in reverb, the drumming propulsive, the bass fuzzy, but it's a lot darker and more minor key that past F&O records, it's also the lushest and loudest recording, which all contribute to making this the perfect F&O to end up on Captured Tracks.
While still jangly and poppy, it's also a little gloomy, a lot new wave, with buzzy Joy Divison bass, squalls of wild psychedelic guitar, plenty of ooooh's and aaaah's, tribal drumming, angular riffing, a perfect mix of sixties jangle, and cold/new wave gloom. The production is lush, but also weird, and tripped out, ethereal and gauzy, and this time around the sound reminds us not just of other likeminded contemporaries, but also of darker groups, like the Wipers, Abecedarians, Kommunity FK, that sort of thing, albeit filtered through the F&O's perfect pop jangle. It's heady and hypnotic, kick ass and catchy, but also haunting and moody and a bit murky. That and the fact that these might be the best songs Tim Cohen and company have written so far, make this a definite contender for year end best ofs, even though it's only April. WAY recommended.
