Wow. We can't get over this incredibly cosmic, tripped-out debut cassette from KWJAZ. SF mastermind Peter Berends decides that space is the place and sets his sights for uncharted musical territory. Falling somewhere between outsider instrumental pop and dubbed-out psychedelic ethno-jazz, Berends leads a colorful excursion into the astral unknown. The two, side-long tracks unfold like some otherworldly mix-tape, deep basslines giving way to sizzling warbling drones, cut-up bits of rhythmic clatter ooze and materialize into slow grooving monuments to the stars. Chopped up samples and distorted swells melt into a lo-fi woozy web. Hazy, primitive beats (picture a slowed down Ethiopiques loop) rock and sway as horns, electric piano and weirdo samples add to the celestial crunk. And keep in mind, though KWJAZ is weird, far-out and strange, this humble cassette is overflowing with musicianship and close attention to layering and detail.
What makes all the tripped-out, genre defying weirdness so satisfying is Berends's ability to form these diverse elements into a propulsive, evocative musical journey through time and genre. Moments of cool jazz tranquility unexpectedly morph into trip-hop fantasy ballads, long-tone new age bliss suddenly shifts into West African romps, and somehow all these tangents seem impossibly and seamlessly linked. We can't recommend this one enough!
Limited to an edition of 121, fans of Hype Williams, Rangers or Ducktails will not want to miss out on this lysergic masterpiece!
We're so excited to finally be holding this long in the works release in our grubby little paws. A long term collaboration between Loren Chasse and Ray Guillette, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing was originally intended to be released as a picture disc on tUMULt, but through a series of strange circumstances, the picture disc series was put on hold indefinitely, and the L/R record just sort of languished on a dusty shelf somewhere, which was an absolute shame as this is a beautiful piece of work. Thankfully, the folks at Paha Porvari tracked this record down and decided to give it a proper release. While we sort of wish they had pressed this as a real cd, the cd-r format's transitive nature is perfectly suited to the record's sound and theme.
Culled from a series of field recordings collected at the site of a ruined factory in South San Francisco way back in 1996, When I Lift I Can Feel My Sunburn Singing is the document of several live performances in 1997 and 1998 assembled from those sounds.
L/R explore a world of thick washed out drones, swirling seas of whir, gorgeously shimmery expanses of sun dappled sound, all peppered with crackle and glitch, cavernous windblown soundscapes, haunting metallic chimes and muted percussive events, jagged shards of sound, recontextualized into haunting rhythmic grooves, a constantly shifting soundworld of mystery and magic, alternately jagged and caustic, soothing and dreamlike. Incredible stuff!
Gorgeously packaged in an oversized black on black cardstock sleeve, inside lots of beautiful full color inserts, drawings and etchings and paintings reproduced on super nice paper, as well as two delicate vellum inserts with liner notes and credits.
Fans of the late great Six Finger Satellite prick up your ears, John Dwyer's Castle Face label digs deep into Providence, Rhode Island underground rock history to unearth this rare unreleased record from 6FS offshoot La Machine, a two piece drum, bass, vocals and FX duo, who kicked out some seriously tranced out psychedelic bunkurfunk, stripped down minimal grooves, dubbed out and trancey, everything wreathed in flanger and phaser, like some seventies drum solo stretched out into some minimal cocaine dub-funk, the sound slipping from thick and bassy to brittle and crunchy, not sure if it on purpose or due to the old source tapes, but it's pretty cool regardless, the vocals, fragmented phrases ("Get drunk!", "Get High!"), doused in effects, heavily delayed and sent careening into the ether, dubstyle, each track a single bassline, a simple drum beat, locked tight, unfurling a fuzzed out groove, like the seriously heavy "Too Bad", driven by thick fuzz bass, all wound around some unfunky funky drumming, more echoe-y vocals, snarly and slithery, total late night, zoner party aktion, only the serious headz sticking around to get lost in these gangrenous grooves. "Supermaggot" might be THEE jam here, a bastardized "Maggotbrain" (or so we're probably just imagining), a looped, loopy bass line, over a noisy, clattery, skeletal rhythm, with some seriously Can like vox, modern retro kraut-funk that sounds like Six Finger Satellite stripped down to the bare essentials. Some of the tracks get fierce and noisy, like "Sucks To Come Down", which plays like a track designed for just that purpose, like as long as they keep playing, the comedown might never come, others get slithery and low slung, laced with blurts of electronic noise and malfunctioning electronics, but every track here a late night, divinely druggy sprawl of minimalist bunkurfunk that RULES!
A dark, spartan work of sonic disintegrations and accumulations. At times, very much akin to Village of Savoonga or Godspeed. Metallic abrasions, clouds of hiss and static, field recordings (of birds and airplanes), and short purring loops surface, mingle and dissipate. The two lengthy tracks are punctuated by the occasional appearance of frail A haunting and lovely 24 minutes from the duo of Dorothy Geller and Douglas Wolf, recorded in 1999.
Channeling the orchestral pop sound of many of the Elephant Six bands (Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples In Stereo, The Minders) this Bay Area five piece has got some mighty fine pop chops of their own. "Saber Ace" is probably our favorite of the bunch which is so delightfully sweet & sour and benefits from the somewhat lo-fi and dirty recording. They do a really nice job of sprinkling tasteful horns on a few of these tracks. Six sweet songs grace this red vinyl record which also comes with a code for a free download.
We first heard LA black metal horde Lake Of Blood on a split with aQ black metal faves Panopticon, but sadly, that split was so limited we were never able to get enough copies to list/review. So here it is two years later, and Lake Of Blood return with their first proper full length, in the form of a two song, 32 minute lp on local label The Flenser, where LoB prove to be a good fit, their epic slowburn doom flecked post black metal sounding right at home amidst other Flenser outfits like Panopticon, Bosse-De-Nage, Ghast, Necrite, Palace Of Worms, and Seidr.
The A side begins with the sound of surf, the soft white noise of crashing waves, which leads directly into a very wavelike progression of crashing lurching doom, plenty of lumbering stop/starts, angular riffage, crashing staccato heaviness, that almost sounds more like noise rock than black metal (we're hearing Dazzling Killmen for sure), it's not until about 4 minutes in that the band launch into some serious blackness, but even then, it's not the typical buzz and blast we were expecting, instead, the guitars are super bright sounding, and there's loads of melody, and even some acoustic guitars strumming away below the surface, and they pepper their blackened blasting with returns to the opening lurch and lumber. The song gets dense and mathy and pretty complex and proggy, with some seriously kick ass drumming, and over the course of the 17 minutes, the band slip easily from mathy blasting blackness, to stuttery abstract doom, to super melodic drift, to noise rocky crunch and to classic metal churn. All the while the strange production, and those mysterious buried acoustic guitars transforming the song into something all its own.
The flipside offers up more of the same, if a bit more straight ahead, less mathiness, and less of that doomy vibe, and more blasting and thrashing, with the first 5 or 6 minutes veering into almost classic black metal territory, until the band change gears again, and unfurl a droned out bit of almost psychedelic sounding post rockiness, laced with spoken word, and long stretches of droned out buzz, and when the band slip back into some more black buzz, the sound seems to shift dramatically, that mysterious acoustic guitar returns, and the sound is suddenly way more progressive, the sound flitting from dirgey and doomy, to buzzy and mathy, to noisy and chaotic, to super melodic and almost poppy, finally slipping into another bout of classic metal riffing before finally fading out into the surf sounds that opened the record.
Perhaps one of the most recognizable figures from the old school SF punk scene -- if you've checked out Jim Jocoy's great photo book We're Desperate, you might've seen a snapshot of her from back in the day! -- Bambi Lake has just released a lounge cabaret-styled album of covers and originals including "Cockettes Remembrances", "The Golden Age Of Hustlers" and "I'm One Of God's Children (Who Hasn't Got Wings)". Recorded live at the Dark Room here in SF.
You might recognize Mr. Nyles Lannon from his time in Bay Area band Film School or as his laptoppin' folktronic alter ego n.lannon. When we'd play Chemical Friends (his 2004 debut album as a solo artist) in the store, it was frequently mistaken for a posthumous Elliott Smith release. Pressure is his second solo album. Far darker and heavier in mood, it will undoubtedly draw comparisons once again to the late singer/songwriter as well as bringing to mind the textured melodic qualities of Grizzly Bear and the sharp songwriting of fellow San Franciscan Kelly Stoltz. Pressure is a really strong album, without a dud in the batch. Subdued, withered and heartrending, but still very dreamy.
We've been meaning to review something from this SF duo for a while now, the mysteriously monickered Z.V.H. and V.J.C, who make up the equally mysterious Lascoviec (formerly Angkor Vat). But their demos disappeared before we had the chance, and we've yet to receive the forthcoming split with Hungarian black metal masters Marblebog, but thankfully, Dark Hidden Productions has compiled their first two demos, Gesamkunstwerk and Gunshots Ring Out Over Vinland Streets, both originally released in 2006, onto one cd, and added a few bonus tracks to sweeten the deal.
Lascoviec traffic in droning, hypnotic, trance like black metal buzz, the guitars long washed out streaks, the vocals a distorted croak, often sounding like another layer of static, the melodies are melancholy and sorrowful, some tracks have programmed drums, pounding away machine like under a buzzy blurry blanket of epic majestic chordal whir, others are harsh and chaotic, with the drums lost int he mix, leaving just a thick undulating sheet of acid riffing and tortured vokills. There are plenty of clean guitars, and tranquil folky interludes, but just as many grinding ultra raw blackened dirges, the guitars thick and viscous, the vocals more of a animalistic hiss, the drums a buried throb, here and there dreamy washes of synth surface, but far from being tranquil, they're fuzzy and distorted, and slightly ominous, with a definite Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck vibe. Elsewhere the band craft weird sort of new wave sounding reverbed guitar jam, but still subtly creepy and haunting. Swirls of strings build ominous tension before exploding into super sharp jagged shards of weirdly blown out clean guitar riffing over relentless blastbeats.
And that's sort of what's so amazing about these guys, their sound varies so dramatically, from record to record, but even from song to song, sort of like the EEE stuff, the texture and the production are as critical as the songs and the riff, some are muted and murky and bassy and lo fi, others are sharp and angular, the guitars sonically are all over the place, sometimes soft and subtle, sometimes downtuned and sludgy, sometimes buzzy and brittle, the drums more often than not are buried WAY down in the mix, but that just makes the songs sound freer, as if they could fall apart or drift away at any moment.
Grim and gorgeous, twisted and intense, dramatic and a bit fucked up, long sheets of buzzed out bliss butted up against short sharp raw blasts of true blurred blackness, often getting all tangled up within the same song. What's not to like, this is some seriously amazing shit. Buzzy and black enough for the grimmest of warriors, but tripped out enough for folks into freaky outsider blackness.
Fair warning: Lasoviec are on Dark Hidden Productions, a label with dubious political leanings, and with definite ties to the Pagan Front, the hub for all things NSBM, aka National Socialist Black Metal. Although the band seem to be more concerned with themes cosmic and spiritual, nature and mythology, there are definite racist implications, the link is undeniable, so regardless of the band's stance, the label's is clear, and thus, another instance where the listener has to decide if the music trumps the possible unpleasant politics.
Frostwinds Of The Apocalypse is the latest full length from SF black metal duo Lascowiec, and is introduced by a strangely martial bit of medieval sounding synth and drum machine driven fanfare, which sounds more like it should be the beginning of some power metal record, but instead ushers in another blast of frenzied grim black buzz from these aQ faves, the sound lo-fi, warm and washed out, the guitars a dense insectoid swirl, the drums buried in the mix, more a pulse than a blast, and the vocals a deep demonic rasp. The sound furious, epic, majestic, melodic. Minus the vocals, the sound is super tranced out and mesmerizing, almost shoegazey in places, as is the second track, the vocals here echo-drenched and weirdly psychedelic, the tempo slowed down, making the sound even more trancey, the blown out buzz utterly mesmerizing, the overall effect less headbanging and more hypnotic. And while most of the record is spent it black buzz mode, there are of course random bits of non metallic sound, the most interesting being the epic 6+ minute sort of title track closer, which essentially sounds like a black metal song proper, but played on a clean guitar with no distortion, wreathed in echo and reverb, the result surprisingly lovely, still totally recognizable as black metal, but in a wholly different form, one that's darkly dreamlike, and has us hankering for a whole record of stuff like this! As always, essential Bay Area USBM!
You might recall The Last Of The Blacksmiths' fine self-titled debut back in 2006. Despite this Bay Area band's name, The Last Of The Blacksmiths prove they're in no danger of extinction. They've stood strong for over two years and now have a sophomore cdep under their belt. If you've a hankering for some slow creeping soulful Americana, Young Family Song is for you. The band's brooding bleary folk-rock melancholia will bring you down in the best possible way. Steeped in hard liquor and salty tears, these are songs of slurred speech and blurred vision that cast a heady spell that linger long after this short ep is over.
The hospitable Bay Area country/folk stable grows and grows. There's such an awesome sense of kinship among the artists (think of sorta 'six degrees of Jolie Holland' - yes, she does make an appearance here on viola!). Garrett Pierce and Matt Bauer, the band's pals and terrific singer/songwriters in their own right, brought this in recently on the band's behalf, and we're glad they did. This self-titled, self-released album is quite an impressive debut. The Last Of The Blacksmiths' Americana sound which vacillates between woe begone twang and roots rock groove has much in common with the likes of Jason Molina, Jay Farrar and Will Oldham. Fans of those artists should definitely sit up and take notice.
Lateduster are a pleasingly lowkey, soothing local combo, and guess what? We've got not one, but two cds by them in stock - this right here is their new five song ep. Neither release veers too far from their path of mellowness, if anything, these newer tracks are a bit more active and at times tread on more solid ground than those that came before. Five Easy Pieces shows Lateduster shifting gears somewhat, trading in the soft washes and sparse twang of their self-titled debut for a more sinewy electric guitar sound and a definite overall jazzy feel.
One of two Lateduster cds that we have in stock right now! This is officially their full length debut, but it's actually a collection of two new songs and six remastered ones which were originally released on two previous eps. Are we making things more confusing than necessary? Let's make things a bit more straightforward then and say that this Bay Area trio have made some lovely pastoral soundscapes - soothing lengthy ones that allow you to sink in for a good five to ten minutes. They done so by skillfully blending together drifting waves of spartan lanky guitars, programmed beats, gently grooving bass, shuffling percussion, and electronic hiss and sputter - locking in with each other for a spell, then dispersing into the mist. Very nice!
This amazing album was originally issued in 1997 but it sounds so incredibly fresh even today -- I readily admit that I didn't recognize its true brilliance until now. Most of the members of the now-famous Solesides crew pitched in on this self-titled debut statement from Latyrx (MCs Lateef and Lyrics Born), including DJ Shadow who produces four stunning tracks, Chief Xcel, and Blackalicious. The two MCs often let their rhymes flow forth right on top of each other, a cool textural effect is produced, as if the production efforts weren't interesting sounding enough -- overall you're hearing Mo'Wax-style groove, smart samples, and advanced apocalyptic scariness that today's El-P and Cannibal Ox have perfected. Recommended!
All you really need to know about these Oakland sludge/doom merchants is what is being played, and what bands the various members hail from. So, howabout Graves At Sea, Brainoil and Pig Heart Transplant for a heavy low ended pedigree? And what exactly is employed to create this gloriously grim racket? "Overdriven string corrosion, ambient texture and documentation", "battering ram and subsonic transmissions", "low end frequency discharge, vocal disruption and auditory experimentation" and of course "battery acid, bellows and blasphemy". So yeah, you know where these crushers are coming from. Crushing, punishing doom infused sludge, laced with thick black drones and buzzing abject industrial ambience, all blurred into a massive heaving blackened brutal sonic beast.
Beginning with some sort of alien soundscape, until huge sheets of white noise take over, you're not sure if you hear the sounds of a guitar or maybe just overwhelming electronic wind-like sounds, all strange and buzzing and creepy.
Finally, weird little bits of abstract keyboard buzz and drift before the band kicks in. And WHAM, super heavy and sludgey, like black tar heroin, but also Eyehategod groovy; Khanate vokills that almost exude a black metal vibe. Lots of negative space to make things tense and uncomfortable. A second singer bellows in his best Neurosis voice, the perfect foil for the other more high pitched yowl, all tangled up with a cool. but weirdly sour guitar lick, giving the track a much more twisted vibe.
The record slips from crushing doom, to dense blackened rumble and back again, inserting angelic choral vocals, strange blurred electronics, super intense subsonic feedback, the bass thick and gritty and dirty, the sound here, when the band is rocking, is not at all that far removed from Burning Witch or Zoroaster, but the band pepper their sludgy crush with gorgeous black drone interludes, which makes this more of an EP, only one of epic doom-ic proportions, which renders it an EP that just so happens to stretch out to 50 minutes. Bad ass.
They say (i.e, the band's own reference points): Radiohead, Tindersticks and Nick Drake. We thought: Talk Talk and Chris Isaak. What seems to be the common ground with all of these artists we've singled out is that regardless of genre and instrumentation each has crafted their own deeply emotive and richly evocative music. So what does this say about Laughingstock? Well, that they do indeed have a knack for making sleek dramatic songs. Multi-layered lilting, oft-melancholic male vocals, distant textural sounds (a rainstick perhaps?), atmospheric droning strings, languid chapman stick, acoustic and programmed percussion all come together to make for some ambitious, lushly intricate slightly mysterious songs.
Gorgeous album! Lazarus is Trevor Montgomery (ex-Tarentel), the lanky, gravel-voiced troubadour of sadness who has here laid down some of the most poignant and heartfelt vocal and acoustic guitar tracks ever. And the album would be lovely left at that, but then to make it even better, Trevor asked Marty Anderson from the amazing local group Dilute to embellish the music: the results are quietly stunning. Marty adds his own barely-there creaky treble vocals -- he sounds like a wrinkled crone following creepily on Montgomery's every step (in a good way) -- and tiny dots of electric guitar squiggles. A singer songwriter record with fascinating audible touches that make it both hauntingly bittersweet and yet refreshingly cleansing. Another winner from the Temporary Residence label.
MPEG Download: "Poets the Liars" [/audio/lazaruspoets.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Poets the Liars" [/audio/lazaruspoets.m3u]
This is not new, but we never listed it before and we've always been fans of Trevor Montgomery's (Tarentel, The Drift, Believer) solo downer folk-blues project Lazarus, and seeing that he had a stash left of these, we jumped at the chance to share this beauty with you.
Trickster from 2009 is the third album from Lazarus and it's just as beautiful and heart-wrenching as the previous ones. Like a folkier Nick Cave, Trevor's baritone gothic blues-tinged croon is more refined but no less weary. Backed by simple lyrical guitar, organ, bells and shimmering electro-acoustic tones, the well-written songs display a despairing majesty that show glimmers of hope and redemption.
Limited to 300 copies on swirly smoke or blood colored vinyl, each cover uniquely hand-painted. Trevor has significantly less than 300 left so we don't know how long these will stick around. Highly Recommended!
The space-age sounds of Lazer Sword make us here at aQuarius recOrds feel like we are living in the kind of future where everyone has mohawks and wears plastic dresses and there is no light but flashing neon-colored spotlights. But, hey, we've been waiting for this record for what seems like years now, so we ARE living in the future, albeit one (slightly) less Blade Runner-esque. You'd never know that, though from the cover of Lazer Sword's self-titled debut, which looks like something out of Tron, or maybe Voltron (!). Former aQ employee Antaeus Roy and collaborator Bryant Rutledge have given us a record filled with beats and synths that don't so much throwback to as reinvent the '80s by chopping the hell out of them and reassembling the parts. On the surface somewhat akin to Flying Lotus or Zomby (the one with the "y", not the proggier one with the "i"), Lazer Sword's sampling is a bit more frenetic, though, and leans toward hip-hop rather than dub.
After opening the record with three mostly instrumental tracks, Lazer Sword brings in a bit of help from Turf Talk on "I'm Gone." The strange rhythm samples provide a perfect background for the catchy pitch-shifted hook: "Pass me that control / I'm in a fucking zone / I'm on my spaceship / I'm outta here I'm gone!" Just when you think the track is going to stay hot the whole way through, Lazer Sword takes it down a notch and drops the drums, leaving you floating in space for a minute and a half. The four or so tracks where Lazer Sword bring in outside guests (including Myka 9) to do vocals stand out, but not as much as you'd think because of the way LS incorporates sampled vocals into the layers of sound. This is a record that definitely requires either a dancefloor, a blunt, or quite possibly both.
Lazyboy is the work of MX-80's Bruce Anderson and Dale Sophiea, with the former providing spidery guitar melodies and cascades of sinewy drone and the latter a vertiginous wash of cloak-n-dagger electronics. The two have also worked in a live soundtrack project called Grale, which is closer to MX-80 as a reference informing where these two are coming from. Sophiea's sound design meanders from an industrial dub introduction that recalls some of the earlier engineering that Kevin Martin did as Techno Animal, Ice, and God, with all of those digital effect-laden abstractions of samples and guitars smeared into slithering tones and drones cast amidst thunderously plodding electronic rhythms. As these heavier electronic beats subside, the two slide into the dreamtime space neighboring O Yuki Conjugate's ritualized ambience of temple bells and clattering wooden rhythms. Toward the end of the 20 minute piece, Anderson's shimmering guitars pulls back the curtains on Sophiea's production prowess with shifting beds of grumbling distortion grounding his radioluminescent melodies. Limited and numbered to 70 copies!
Now a visually-augmented dvd-r release, this music was originally released on vinyl via the Gneiss Things label, run by Emeralds' Steve Hauschildt (whose solo Kranky debut we reviewed here recently). Fictions is release number two of gorgeous kosmische synth drift from this former member of Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fly Pan Am, whose previous release, a way too limited cassette on Root Strata, had most of the folks here flipping out. Le Revelateur, aka Roger Tellier-Craig, also performed at last year's On Land Festival here in SF, and amidst a pretty incredible lineup, managed, at least as far as many of us were concerned, to steal the show.
And those who did see the show, also got to witness the accompanying visuals, a gorgeous collection of films created by Teller-Craig's partner Sabrina Ratte, whose fantastical prismatic impressionism is the perfect visual accompaniment for Teller-Craig's futuristic kosmische. synthscapery. Let's revisit the music first, as the music here is the same as on the lp:
The three tracks on Fictions plays like a single track, separated into movements, which is appropriate considering in some ways it's a modern reimagining of the classic seventies synth work of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and all the rest, and of course, the sounds of Le Revelateur will most definitely appeal to fans of other modern synth retro-revisionists, like Mist, Emeralds, Innercity, Oneohtrix Point Never et all, but there's something about Le Revelateur's sound that manages to elevate it above its sonic brethren, Tellier-Craig so adept at unfurling sounds and gradually building these epic, dreamlike celestial synthscapes, and the thing is, it's not all static tones, and long layered shimmer, no, the synths here are surprisingly active, emitting flurries of notes, glimmering squalls of psychedelic swirl, but those are all woven into these epic expanses of spaced out dreamdrone drift, the first track, an 18 minute epic, spends its first half drifting ethereally, before a pulsing synth rhythm finally surface, adding a bit of propulsion to the mix, and transforming new age shimmer into swirling buzzing pulsating krautdrone bliss, the sound getting downright noisy near the end, the edges sharper and slightly more abrasive, only to then quickly dissipate in a gorgeous blissed out high end raga like coda.
The second track starts off with a whirling starfield of softly swirling notes, a blurry tangle of psychedelic synths, layered and textural, offering up brief flurries of soaring melody, getting darkly proggy and droney about halfway through, only to finish off with an epic sprawl of Sunroof!-like upper register spacekraut raga, before finishing off with the comparatively more muted final track, which begins sounding a bit like the music from some seventies planetarium show, only to blossom into a gorgeously rhythmic stretch of percolating retro synthscapery, a pulsing futuristic soundworld that also builds and builds to a near psychedelic climax, before finally finishing off in a hazy cloud of soft focus synth swirl.
And Ratte's visuals, as mentioned above, could almost be described in the same way, the images and colors and moving shapes, are almost musical, flickering and slowly shifting, with rainbow solar flares, and vintage video game grids, mysterious shapes and flashing colors, it's like equal parts video game and fever dream, some of it looks like a James Ferraro album cover come to life, bold and bright colors and shapes, all retro VHS / late night cable psychedelia, a head spinning, mind melting feast for the (third?) eyes. Gorgeous, sonically AND visually.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, comes in a slim dvd style case, with full color art inside and out, as well as a printed clear plastic insert.
You may not recognize the name J.C. Ledesma. But how about the name Jefre Cantu Ledesma? Ring any bells now? Okay, well how about the name the-guy-from-Tarentel? Okay, now we're getting somewhere. J.C. Ledesma is indeed on half of the core duo that drives ambient space rock experimentalists Tarentel, and on this, his first record under this name (not his first solo record however), as well as the first record on his very own label Root Strata, Ledesma takes the ambience of his main outfit and stretches it out even further, creating "Voice Sutra" a half hour long, slowly building drone piece constructed from vocals, shruti box, percussion and electronics. A dreamy and tranquil, but still think and fuzzy, slowly shifting soundscape that spends the first fifteen minutes writhing and squirming like a downed electrical wire, buzzing with electronic fuzz and spitting sonic sparks, emitting a thick wash of sonic skree not unlike Total, eventually calming down into a more tranquil ambience, shimmering and simmering and slowly fading to black. Quite nice. Droneheads obviously need this. Packaged in hand screened cardboard sleeves, and VERY LIMITED (we have the last 20 or so copies)!
Just a brief word about this one as it was limited to 50 copies, is already out of print, and we only have about 10 copies left. The second in a series, Tarentel's Jefre Cantu Ledesma joins up with filmmaker Paul Clipson, to drift dreamlike through a dense visual latticework of plants, chainlink fences, branches, leaves, stoplights, neon signs, a delirious series of slow motion visual tangles and patterns. A bug's eye view of the world mysterious and wonderful, like cutting room floor super-8 plant studies and urban landscapes woven into soft focus home movies. All set to the warm glow of Ledesma's swelling dronescapes. So gorgeous.
Packaged in a lovely folded vellum sleeve printed with images of dried leaves.
Again, we only have about 10 of these, so prepare to be disappointed.
Latest tape from Jefre Cantu Ledesma, a member of long running post rockers Tarentel, one of the head honchos of the Root Strata label, and a sublime crafter of divine dronemusic on his own, here rechristened 'Sei Getsu', Cantu utilizes "motorized electric guitar" to conjure up a lovely collection of blissful brooding evening ambience.
Like the Caboladies / Oneohtrix tape reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, Cantu's tape went through a whole pressing (albeit only 100 copies) before we got wind of it, and thankfully the label deigned to make another batch, which will no doubt disappear as quickly as the first.
Hushed and minimal, but more intense than much of what we've heard from Cantu, thick swells of rumbling low end, deep swaths of burnished buzz, glistening and glimmering, delicate sheets of shimmer draped over something much more dark and grim, a heaving roiling blackness, that swirls and pulses, its barbs muted and smoothed, but that darkness definitely infuses the proceedings with a ghostly, even ghastly vibe. Even so, the sounds manage to remain meditative and abstract, it's almost like SUNNO))) stripped down and mellowed out, still heavy, but more dense and intense than outwardly crushing. Gorgeous stuff, but sadly, crazy limited and maybe gone for good before you know it.
We carried a cd-r version of Temporal Exclusion a short time ago, but the Paradigms label has scooped it up for a proper cd release, albeit a limited pressing of 750. In the interim, mainman Kris Berry fleshed out the 4-track ep into a 7-track full length. It now comes in cardboard sleeve within one of the series' now familiar printed envelopes.
Berry is joined by Ronald Aveling (voices and samples), percussionists Ches Smith, Stephen Flinn and Mike Hoffman, Faraz Minooei on Santour, and Monica Aiken on cello. Their strings, percussion, vocals and collaged samples weave together and apart in this an industrial edged dismemberment which inhabits a dank, gloom filled theatrical setting. It's a work haunted by intercepted television or radio broadcasts and other mysterious transmissions encountering pregnant pause piano strikes, the chanting of monks, deep choral intonations and other anguished distorted voices which often offer more texture than words. Enshrouded and somber.
In January 2009, the Bay Area sound-artist and composer Cheryl Leonard embarked on a residency program at the Palmer Station in Antarctica. There, she took every opportunity to venture out into the summer's perpetual daylight to make as many field recordings as possible and to collect an array of penguin bones (with the permission of the Palmer Station, of course) to use in her rather elegant, beguiling compositions. In the past, Leonard had used a variety of branches, rocks, and other natural elements in these beautifully textured compositions whereby she would bow and clink those objects into masses of textures that came across somewhere between the work of Loren Chasse, Jeph Jerman, and Small Cruel Party. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that she actually released a split 7" with SMC's Key Ransome some 15 years ago.
While Chattermarks is a collection of pure field recordings, the use of those abraded sounds within a composed swarm points to what she was listening for in Antarctica. In hearing Leonard talk about her Antarctic adventure, she is quick to describe the brutality of the wind and the intensity of the cold, all of which wreaked havoc upon her binaural mics and hydraphones. Many of her recordings feature the noises of Antarctic animal life: adelie penguins, elephant seals, skuas, and gulls. The slumbering snore from a couple of the elephant seals is particularly striking as are their bellowing barks and guttural thrumbings. But the sounds of ice are probably the most intriguing recordings on Chattermarks, from the huge rumbles of a glacier that crumbles into the ocean with smaller tinklings of ice racing down an embankment to the searing hiss of millions of shards of ice clattering together next to a disintegrating wall of packed snow. The only document of the Antarctic wind was captured in a haunting recording of wind whipping around an antenna punctuated by the booms of a glacier splitting in two somewhere in the distance. An obvious treat for anyone keen on Douglas Quin's polar recordings, but Leonard has an excellent flair for subtle drama that's also heard in those impeccable Chris Watson field recordings. Highly recommended!
Ambitious power-prog-pop!?! Mixing elements of everything from Magma to the Fiery Furnaces, The Boredoms to the Dirty Projectors, Van Dyke Parks to Heavy Vegetable. A fun and colorful ride.
This is strange indeed. The last Less record (reviewed 2+ years ago) was a blast of MTV ready prog-gloom post-metal, equal parts Tool, Rage Against The Machine and Nine Inch Nails with strange and wonderful math rock filligree a la Don Caballero. We predicted that in a couple years we'd probably be seeing them all over MTV if there was any justice in this world. So you can imagine how surprised we were when we first threw this, the new Less record, on. A completely different beast altogether. Well, not completely. First off, there's not a distorted guitar to be found. Anywhere. And all traces of pounding percussion have been replaced by skittery brushwork and delicate whispery shuffles. The riffs remain, still sort of doomy and heavy, but slowed down, played on a steel string guitar, giving them a sort of backwoods mystery and acoustic urgency. This may be stripped down and acoustic, but it's definitely not wimpy. This is dark and heavy and groovy, grim and sinister, creepy and crawly. Slightly distorted/reverbed vocals wail minor key laments over dirgy minor key doomscapes, vocals slithering between the riffs, tense and intense. Lots of ambient murk, backwoods twang, and sinister groove. Think Sixteen Horsepower crossed with Deadboy And the Elephantmen, or Woven Hand mixed with Agents Of Oblivion, or an even darker, creepier version of Alice In Chains' acoustic record Sap. Recommended.
So here it is. The new Lesser record. On Matador no less. We were all a little afraid, that not wanting to blow his big chance (it's quite a leap from Vinyl Communications to Matador), Jay Lesser was going to soften his attack, blunt his weapons, and make a 'nice' record (one the Plaid/Plone/Boards of Canada crowd could get into) which probably would be okay, but lacking the confusional chaos that we here at AQ love so much but which most people have trouble getting their heads around. Fear not. This is THE record Lesser has been trying to make for years. It all comes together just right. Gone is most of the drum 'n bass dabbling of the last record, and in its place a tangled mess of skittering beats (like a malfunctioning Autechre), funky hiccupping beats patched together from a thousand skipping cds, long stretches of ambient noise, radio interference and just completely random sound. Probably the most difficult Lesser record yet. Certainly the most difficult thing you've heard on Matador. But it's worth the work, because underneath all this mayhem and confusion are some amazing songs, catchy melodies super funky beats, hilarious (usually unrecognizable) samples, and some of the most unique amazing 'sound' you've ever heard. Imagine an Autechre / Merzbow soundclash on New Years Eve, in Central Park, and for some reason their rig is intercepting thousands of cellular phone calls / radio transmissions / crowd sounds, and then it begins to rain, and the whole thing short circuits, causing an ungodly assortment of sizzle and crackle and white noise and total mayhem. It's kind of like that, but with a few pretty parts.
I mean, any record that gets a review calling it "a detriment to humanity" (Stanford Intermission) has got to be great. Most musicians, kings, presidents, criminals and supervillains work their whole lives towards that end and still don't make it.
Hopefully this record will steal some of the Kid606 / Matmos / Blechdom / Kit Clayton thunder and put it back where it probably belonged all along.
Fucking essential.
For me (Andee), this record brings back terrifying memories of driving across the United States with Lesser. Everytime it was his turn to drive (driver controls the stereo, you know the rule) he would play Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 music full blast. It got so no matter how tired we were, we would still drive, just to keep control of the stereo away from Lesser! So years later, some of that stuff sees a proper release on Kid606's Tigerbeat 6 label. And out of the context of being exhausted and hungry in Nebraska, this stuff sounds pretty darn good. While still mildy irritating (as all video game music is to a certain degree) this is cool and kitschy and pretty fun stuff. Sounds like a Mario Brothers rave or a Sonic The Hedgehog dance party. We love Lesser.
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.
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.
These warnings are beginning to sound like mantras: THIS IS VERY LIMITED. THIS WILL MOST LIKELY ALREADY BE OUT OF PRINT BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS. WE GOT THE LAST 50 COPIES AND WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO GET MORE!! LIMITED LIMITED LIMITED!!! But like all good mantras, it pays to heed the sage advice contained within, and in this case the advice would be pick one of these up quick like before they're gone for good. A Silhouette In Splinters is the long in the works "ambient" record from Leviathan, released on Canadian label Profound Lore, lp only, pressed on thick red vinyl and as you may have surmised EXTREMELY LIMITED. Part of what makes Leviathan records so powerful and mesmerizing is Wrest's mastery of mood and ambience, so here he gets to explore an entire album of bleak and depressive atmospheres. But this is not pure ambient music, its ambience is only obvious when compared to the dense complex sound world of other Leviathan releases. This is not static ambience, not in the least, these are actual songs, not just creepy swooshings and simple drones. Silhouette is like an entire record made up of the best black metal intros ever, but here, each one is fleshed out into actual musical narratives. Skeletal guitar figures, drift and shimmer darkly over ominous swells of mournful minor key lament. What little percussion there is, hovers ghostlike beneath a wash of blackened swirl. The entire record is wrapped in a foggy cloak of starlit skies and murky underground passages. A haunting soundtrack to misery and horror, death and dying.
First off, this is indeed a CASSETTE. Second of all this is EXTREMELY LIMITED. Extremely. Originally intended to be released along with the most recent issue of Oaken Throne Magazine, due to some unforseen manufacturing delays, Demos - 2000 is now available all on its own. And for a tiny piece of plastic this tape packs a mighty blackened wallop. Culled from the same material as Leviathan's debut 2cd Verrater (now out of print), these early demos are just as dark and bleak and weird and amazing as his subsequent releases. Maybe a little murkier, a little more buzzy and lo-fi, but hell, this is a BLACK METAL TAPE after all!!! Limited to 500 copies, of which we got the last handful. There is a forthcoming cd of demos on Moribund, but these tracks are -exclusive- to this cassette, unless of course you're one of the lucky few with a secret stash of early Leviathan tapes and cd-r's. But since you're probably not, odds are YOU NEED THIS!! AS with all things Leviathan, absolutely essential black metal listening!
Now available on vinyl for a super limited time. Only 500 copies made so act fast (and be aware that the vinyl contains 2 less tracks than the cd)!
Everyone wants a glimpse into the blackened Leviathan vaults, containing the legendary 20 or so cd-r's and cassettes recorded and released during the years 2000-2002, early demos that played more like full-on proper albums, hell they WERE full-on albums, highlights of which were released as the two disc Verrater (soon to be repressed!) on tUMULt a few years back. But Wrest from Leviathan has made it clear that those were then, and averaging a new release every few months, including full lengths and splits, is now. Well, that is, except for this. Probably your only chance, outside Verrater, to hear where it all began. Howl Mockery At The Cross is an essential shard of the mysterious obscured blackened history of Leviathan, and while sonically a bit rougher than the more recent records, it's still a dark and twisting, buzzing and howling serpentine trip through the black, bleak and brutal sonic world of Wrest and Leviathan. Some of these tracks were actually first choices to be included on Verrater, but at the time Wrest had planned on re-recording them. But with each new record, and after a few aborted attempts, the idea of going back to old songs seemed less and less appealing. So this is now the only place to hear those amazing tracks. Lots of that blackened buzz we love so much, but as with all Leviathan records, there are plenty of distinctly un-BM parts all over the place: dense mathrockisms, blissed out droning breakdowns, sludgy doom, bizarre times signatures, impossibly complex drumming, mournful minor key melodies, that immediately recognizable heavily affected demonic howl, all twisted into a gorgeously dark and demented, moody and murky blackened squall. Even includes a Death In June cover, properly drenched in buzz and blackness, so much so that it sounds like it could have been penned by Wrest himself. Striking metallic silver cover with the Leviathan upside down cross and dripping moon logo.
We talk about 'long awaited' releases all the time, records we hear about well before their actual release date, forcing us to wait and wait and wait, but few records have been as eagerly anticipated, or generated so many emails from customers as this, the latest from SF black metal behemoth Leviathan. Especially considering the rumors circulating that this may indeed be the final recording from Wrest and his one man band, Leviathan. If it is indeed a swansong, it's hard to imagine a more fitting or more powerful farewell-and-fuck-off.
Even being a huge fan and voracious devourer of black metal, we would be hard pressed to tell lots of BM bands apart. It's the nature of the beast in some ways. But the second we threw this on, even if we hadn't known what was playing, there's no mistaking the sound of Leviathan, the guitar tone, those demonic croaked vocals, the dizzying lush black buzzscapes, the convoluted song structures, the weird mathy rhythms and the incredible riffs.
Massive Conspiracy is not a huge departure from the sound of Tentacles Of Whorror, if anything, it just takes all the elements of that record and pushes them just that much further out. The sound is a bit more dense, more epic, the drumming is amazing (especially after the switch from electronic drums to real drums) the compositions more sprawling and expansive in scope. Which is saying a lot since past Leviathan records were pretty dang epic and sprawling already.
The sheer hatred of the titles is certainly expressed in the music as well, this is some scathing, hateful furious sound.
The record begins with some strange static, hissing drone-like buzz, ominous ambience beneath it, a haunting melody, then Wrest's howl and the record explodes in a flurry of rapid fire riffing and relentless blasting, but only briefly, the song immediately switches gear into a lurching lope, then right back into the blast. The song is peppered with super dense squalls of high end buzz, streaks of ultradistorted skree, while beneath all sorts of murky melodies lurk, almost like some old 78 was left playing in the background, giving the track an incredible creepy vibe, the last half of the song wraps itself around a slithery downtuned staccato riff, a gorgeously grim dirge that pounds its way to a burst of black chaos at the finish.
The second track is all whirring synths, loping drums, and Wrest's gurgling growl, a weird skeletal ambient dirge that is soon swallowed up by keening high end guitars, crunching downtuned churn, and some super freaky almost operatic vocals, the middle of the song is all full speed freaked out intensity, before again, the song locks into a super riffy groove, much like the opener, before finishing off in another black blaze.
The rest of the record follows suit, weaving super elaborate soundscapes of black metal buzz, and moody mathy meandering, dense black ambience, and swirling low end drones, the tracks rife with parts and bridges and confusional changes, all masterfully wound up into dense convoluted blackened, that while on their own are strange enough, are also peppered will all manner of sonic weirdness, be it slippery peals of woozy, dizzying melody, garbled vocal fragments, soaring harmony guitar melodies, super obtuse dynamics,
All culminating in the final two tracks. "Vulgar Asceticism" is definitely the most fucked, and maybe most amazing song Wrest has ever recorded. Even the opening, with its muted riffing and murky bass throb, staccato riff, and weird Greg Ginn-ish scrape and grind, before the song takes off. And the main riff is super warbly, almost sounding like he's playing with a slide, the notes wavering and detuning, only to be yanked back in line, and then bent way out of tune again, the result a blurry seasick lurch, exacerbated by the dynamics, the riffs often slipping into strange start stop stutters, until the song reaches it's middle stretch, the bass and drums locked into a relentless midtempo blast, while layers of guitars, and various riffs slip and slide, waver and warble, a super dizzy expanse of funhouse mirror blackness that is as fucked up and far out as it is amazing and masterful.
The closer, "Noisome Ash Crown" is an appropriately somber end to Massive Conspiracy, maybe even Leviathan itself. The whole first half a funereal crawl, a bleak grim landscape of whirring thick black ambience, and strange squalls of processed vocals, squiggles of distorted guitar, the drums a solid framework for the drifting abyss above. A strange washed out, gauzy black ambient bridge, gives way to a crushing almost industrial dirge, the melodies majestic and sorrowful, the vocals harrowing and harsh, the drums furiously flailing before transforming into muted little tangles, the rest of the song following suit, a dark minor key outro that gives way to the same black static that started the record.
The first limited pressing comes in a red digipak, featuring some seriously twisted original artwork from Wrest on the cover. Inside lurks a 12 page full color booklet, with more freaky drawings, lyrics and no liner notes.
NB. this officially comes out on Tuesday (3/25) so we can't sell any in the store 'til then, but of course mailorder folks can go ahead and order it now, to get in the mailorder queue...
Now on limited edition import double vinyl (blood red vinyl too!) -- with a vinyl-only BONUS TRACK! What we said when the cd version came out:
Summer may just have begun here in San Francisco, but with the release of this new album from local one-man black metal act Leviathan, it sure seems like winter time (plus you all know what Mark Twain said about summer in San Francisco anyway). Brrr. The frosty riffs and blood freezing atmospheres are warmed only by the blasting drums... But you know what, Leviathan hardly needs our attempts at cliched black metal hyperbole to stand proud amid the clutter of corpse-painted pretenders. Leave aside all that and listen: this is keenly crafted, weirdly artful, utterly uncompromising metal. From mathy mayhem to slow, doomy dirge, Leviathan displays unfettered creativity, immense musical skill, and intense emotional involvement in his art (those being dark emotions, if you have to ask). In the evolution of Leviathan, this brings in a torrent of old-school riffage (i.e. Celtic Frost and Slayer) and wired-for-Destruction song constructs while also slowing down more than even before to bathe in ambient weirdness and melody. Vocally, Leviathan's exhalations are like exhumations, the bringing forth of seemingly wordless death (though in fact, Leviathan has lyrics and they're so interestingly twisted). More proof, if any was needed, why Leviathan is in absolute fact one of not only our favorite black metal acts (enough so that Andee released the debut Verratter on his tUMULt label) but also considered so by many others across the globe. And is that some amazing Comus-ish cover art or what? Its stark, disturbed violence and eccentricity perfectly captures this album's whorror.
Summer may just have begun here in San Francisco, but with the release of this new album from local one-man black metal act Leviathan, it sure seems like winter time (plus you all know what Mark Twain said about summer in San Francisco anyway). Brrr. The frosty riffs and blood freezing atmospheres are warmed only by the blasting drums... But you know what, Leviathan hardly needs our attempts at cliched black metal hyperbole to stand proud amid the clutter of corpse-painted pretenders. Leave aside all that and listen: this is keenly crafted, weirdly artful, utterly uncompromising metal. From mathy mayhem to slow, doomy dirge, Leviathan displays unfettered creativity, immense musical skill, and intense emotional involvement in his art (those being dark emotions, if you have to ask). In the evolution of Leviathan, this brings in a torrent of old-school riffage (i.e. Celtic Frost and Slayer) and wired-for-Destruction song constructs while also slowing down more than even before to bathe in ambient weirdness and melody. Vocally, Leviathan's exhalations are like exhumations, the bringing forth of seemingly wordless death (though in fact, Leviathan has lyrics and they're so interestingly twisted). More proof, if any was needed, why Leviathan is in absolute fact one of not only our favorite black metal acts (enough so that Andee released the debut Verratter on his tUMULt label) but also considered so by many others across the globe. And is that some amazing Comus-ish cover art or what? It's by Dan Higgs of Lungfish, and its stark, disturbed violence and eccentricity perfectly captures this album's whorror.
Before everybody has a big ol' black metal meltdown, this is NOT a brand new Leviathan record (although there is a new one coming soon). This is in fact the Leviathan half of the recent split with Sapthuran released on Battle Kommand Records a little while back. However, it is the first (and only) time these songs will be available all by themselves, and on vinyl! And what a gorgeous slab of vinyl it is. A brand new painting by Wrest, the man behind Leviathan, adorns the cover, and it is truly gorgeous and horrifying, some sort of shadowy horned thing, a nice thick sleeve with the text printed in reflective gloss over the image. Very striking. The vinyl is either half red / half green, or half green / half black, and no you can't specify which color you want. It's random. Which means DO NOT ASK for a specific color, you will get whichever one gets grabbed at random, and of course, it's super limited, so only one per customer. So now that that's all out of the way we can explain just why you absolutely NEED this record:
The mighty Wrest and his black metal behemoth Leviathan resurfaces once again, and once again Wrest does not disappoint. In fact if anything (and if it's even possible at this point) the Leviathan material on The Blind Wound is even more fucked up and out there than ever. That Leviathan sound is present and in full effect, a blurry swirling buzz of crazy riffs, impossible drumming, those insane vocals, and completely bizarre song structures, almost proggy at points, never hesitating to stop and start, stutter through some improbably complex series of time signatures or bliss out into some strange ambient soundscape. And as if Wrest's compositional style and playing weren't unique enough, every track is rife with all manner of weird parts, bizarre sounds and fucked up sonic detritus. From strange tripped out drone-ambience, angular almost Greg Ginnish guitar freakouts, impossibly tortured and affected vocals that go from guttural rumble to hellish howl, to creepy otherworldly keyboard like backgrounds, to sludgy almost doomlike breakdowns to full on krautrock / mathrock workouts, albeit slathered in plenty of buzz and fuzz. The final track finishes things off in a completely unexpected way, with a warm and fuzzy slow motion smear of gauzy muted My Bloody Valentine / M83 guitars and simple blown out drumming. As always, amazing!
A long while back we reviewed a split cd by SF black metal legend Leviathan and the Bathory worshipping Polish horde Iuvenes. As much as we may have dug the Iuvenes stuff, the Leviathan material was the real reason we all tuned in. So now Viva Hate have gone and taken just Wrest's half of the split and released it on vinyl (this is either the second or third, and supposedly final pressing), with all new art, printed inner sleeves, and pressed on INSANELY thick clear vinyl. Here's what we had to say about this stuff first time around:
Finally a little more Leviathan to hold us over until his next forthcoming full length, Tentacles of Whorror! This time around it's a split with European old schoolers Iuvenes who traffic in buzzy blurry black metal, Bathory style. But let's not kid ourselves, Leviathan is why we're here and Wrest does not disappoint. Grinding suffocating swarms of buzzing guitars, ultra creepy, deeply depressing ambience, completely and brilliantly fucked drumming, haunting Burzum-y keyboards, and that inhuman bowels-of-hell rasp that occasionally erupts into an utterly terrifying demonic shriek. But it's the songs, the songs are just so fucking good. So many black metal bands make all the right sounds, but can't actually write real songs. Wrest continues to explore and push the boundaries of black metal with Leviathan, exploring distinctly non-black metal sounds and ideas, but manages to stay grim and true the whole time. The songs here are punishing and crushingly dense, disturbing and evil as fuck, but days later, you'll find these riffs stuck in your head like a crown of thorns! Essential!
Wrest and his one-man-black-metal-band Leviathan return, with the corpses of Christians and poseurs littering the bleak landscape evoked by his sonic barrage of inhuman vokills, majestic riffing, and punishing drums. Pure misanthropic musical mayhem. Surely you remember Leviathan -- Andee put out the debut double cd Verrater on tUMULt only nine months ago, and that's been a very successful release. But Verrater was only the tip of the blackened iceberg that is Wrest/Leviathan's ability and need to make intelligent and emotional extreme rock music. Hence, this suicidal statement spawned so soon. At AQ, we fancy ourselves connoisseurs of this kind of stuff, and believe us -- this guy is good (and evil)!! What we mean is, as raw as it gets, there's some intense talent on display here. Lots of San Francisco bands have gotten hyped recently, but here's one that really deserves worship. Chaotically complex, pitilessly crafted tracks like the nine-minute long "Sardoniscorn" somehow maintain this music's one-foot-in-the-grave old school spikes n' corpsepaint directive while simultaneously getting totally arty and out there with epic, prog, avant-garde elements. Doomy drone, weird downtempo percussive interludes, atonal piano, ambient psychedelia, extreme vocal unpleasantness, lots of distortion and feedback. Yes! So it's no surprise that tUMULt and Aquarius (and our customers) weren't the only entities to appreciate the grim genius of Leviathan, as Wrest's project has now been signed to multi-album deals with two black metal specialists, Moribund in the States and Drakkar over in Europe, this album being the first fruit of that deal. We even recently discovered that none other than pagan pop star and psych/krautrock maniac Julian Cope is a big Leviathan fan, recommending Verrater on his website! So, this is another one for both black metal freaks (who will find this worthy of keeping company with your Burzum, Satyricon, Immortal, etc. records) as well as any other adventurous music-lovers unafraid of dabbling in the weird and wretched...
Those of you who live in San Francisco may have seen or even bought some of the many self released casettes by the mysterious one man black metal band called Leviathan. Or some of you may have seen Andee or Allan sporting their Leviathan shirts, or you may have even seen Wrest, the man behind Leviathan lurking around AQ...regardless, Leviathan is the latest and certainly one of the greatest of the Bay Area black metal bands (Ludicra, Sangre Amado, the godlike Weakling [also on tUMULt], etc...) who seem to exist in some sort of vacuum here while elsewhere, band after unoriginal band keep getting signed to huge labels and hyped to death even though most of them suck.
For this release Andee and Wrest went through the 13 full length Leviathan cassettes/cd-r's (as of today that number has leapt to 15!) Leviathan had recorded since 1998 to compile a good overview. But they couldn't whittle it down enough so one disc became two, with the first disc being the newer stuff, and disc two being the older, raw-er material.
Verrater is pure, primitive, cult, home recorded evil. Two discs, twenty two tracks, one hundred and forty three minutes of buzzing, howling, pummelling, black metal. Think Burzum, Darkthrone, Immortal, that sort of thing, but with all sorts of weird twists and sonic surprises. Yes, Leviathan is grimmer than grim metal that the frost & forest lords of Norway should bow down to, but it's also pure expression unfettered by genre restraints, although informed and inspired by them. Like Weakling, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Ludicra, Potentiam, Enslaved, and some other AQ-championed black metal acts, this is not just one for fans of black metal only! It's dark, weird, noisy, disturbing art embodying one man's vision that should be heard by anyone into avantgarde, experimental, psycically and physically powerful rock music. From blasting howling fury to moody ambient blackness to off kilter weirdness to droning riffery to soul crushing heaviness. What's truly remarkable is that one man, playing all the instruments himself, and recording at home, can evoke such strong emotions and invoke such musical demons. Original, evil, hateful, misanthropic, bizarre and truly black metal.
Managed to get just a few more of these in stock! Direct from Wrest of Leviathan. And we are told these will be the last copies ever so don't miss out AGAIN. Here's what we had to say about this split when we first got it in:
Finally a little more Leviathan to hold us over until his next forthcoming full length, Tentacles of Whorror! This time a round it's a split with European old schoolers Iuvenes who traffic in buzzy blurry black metal, Bathory style. Really simple blast beats over superdistrorted riffs and growled gutteral vocals with squiggly leads buried waaaay doooown in the mix. Droning and repetetive and very hypontic. But let's not kid ourselves, Leviathan is why we're here and Wrest does not diappoint. Grinding suffocating swarms of buzzing guitars, ultra creepy, deeply depressing ambience, completely and brilliantly fucked drumming, haunting Burzum-y keyboards, and that inhuman bowels-of-hell rasp that occasionally erupts into an utterly terrifying demonic shriek. But it's the songs, the songs are just so fucking good. So many black metal bands make all the right sounds, but can't actually write real songs. Wrest continues to explore and push the boundaries of black metal with Leviathan, exploring distinctly non-black metal sounds and ideas, but manages to stay grim and true the whole time. The songs here are punishing and crushingly dense, disturbing and evil as fuck, but days later, you'll find these riffs stuck in your head like a crown of thorns! Essential!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The mighty Wrest and his black metal behemoth Leviathan resurfaces once again, this time teamed up with fellow USBM outift Sapthuran. It's a good matchup in so much as Sapthuran sounds quite a bit like the current crop of West Coast black metal (Xasthur, Crebain, Draugar, etc.) which is definitely a good thing. Midtempo buzz and blur, with haunting clean guitar melodies in the background, that come to the forefront briefly on the second folky ambient track, only to be summarily obliterated by Sapthuran's closer, a dizzying blurry buzz of droning riffs buried vocal howl and splattery blast beats. Definitly need to hear more from these guys (we actually have Sapthuran's full length in stock, just ask).
But as always, Leviathan is the main event, the reason we all showed up, and once again Wrest does not disappoint. In fact if anything (and if it's even possible at this point) the Leviathan material on this split is even more fucked up and out there than ever. That Leviathan sound is present and in full effect, a blurry swirling buzz of crazy riffs, impossible drumming, those insane vocals, and completely bizarre song structures, almost proggy at points, never hesitating to stop and start, stutter through some improbably complex series of time signatures or bliss out into some strange ambient soundscape. And as if Wrest's compositional style and playing weren't unique enough, every track is rife with all manner of weird parts, bizarre sounds and fucked up sonic detritus. From strange tripped out drone-ambience, angular almost Greg Ginnish guitar freakouts, impossibly tortured and affected vocals that go from gutteral rumble to hellish howl, to creepy otherworldly keyboard like backgrounds, to sludgy almost doomlike breakdowns to full on krautrock / mathrock workouts, albeit slathered in plenty of buzz and fuzz. The final track finishes things off in a completely unexpected way, with a warm and fuzzy slow motion smear of gauzy muted My Bloody Valentine / M83 guitars and simple blown out drumming. As always, amazing!
