Operating in the legendary Cyclone warehouse space near Hunter's Point in San Francisco, 7hz has functioned as one of the few SF venues that is exclusively dedicated to experimental sound art, and also has served as the live / work spaces (in the truest sense of the term) for Scott Arford (aka Radiosonde), Randy Yau (23five), and Michael Nine (aka Death Squad). During the fall of 2002, 7hz took their show on the road, as Arford, Yau, and Nine embarked on a European tour. This disc is essentially the tour support album, offering an exclusive sampling of each artist's work. Arford's sonic reconstitutions of video static have made for stunning audio / visual performances (almost unheard of in the visually sterile realm of laptop composition). Here, his contributions spit forth digitally corrosive bits of static and noise (which resemble remote control / shortwave detritus) along mechanized grids. Altogether, Arford's tracks resemble the pained electric noise of those collaborations between Zbigniew Karkowski and Pita Rehberg. Yau defines his work as an "action concrete," in which recordings of impromptu vocal outbursts have been dissected and reanimated through a number of electro-acoustic techniques, often sounding like a mutation of Robert Ashley's classic "Automatic Writing" with far more jarring and confrontational results. Michael Nine's work comes out of the Whitehouse / Con-Dom approach of primitive noise assaults as transgressive theater. All in all, an excellent introduction to these San Francisco artists.
An amazing lost artpunk artifact from the early eighties San Francisco punk rock scene, and we're talking really lost, as no one we know had even heard of these guys, but from the very first note we were smitten.
The opener is a super spare and spacious bit of post punk dub, subtly groovy, a throbbing new wave bass line, sounding like Gang Of Four or Interpol slowed waaaaaaaaay down, a simple krautrock beat peppered with handclaps, some dissonant guitar clang and a bit of moody post rock strum and jangle, with the occasional huge dissonant wash of atonal horns. Dark and creepy and almost danceable at times, that is if your dance of choice is some sort of zombie shuffle.
The other three tracks are not nearly as spare, but have the same sort of angular clang and low slung groove, the vocals sort of sung spoken, the rhythms loping and tribal, guitar harmonics ringing out, bits of angular riffage, vocals very reminiscent of Slint actually, laconic and buried way down in the mix. Stumblingly propulsive, the mix occasionally engulfed by some weird low end swell and some damaged electronics, the whole thing lurching and lumbering amidst a swirl of off kilter guitars and dubbed out ambience, it's sort of like Gang Of Four mixed with Slint mixed with This Heat. Which, we hardly need to tell you, is a very good thing indeed.
Dark Out is a dvd by indie filmmaker Chris Arnold, and the 45-minute film features the music of many fond, familiar SF faces... Jolie Holland, Sonny Smith, Mark Growden, Sean Hayes, Ara Anderson, Virgil Shaw and Mark Eitzel to name a few. Certainly worth getting for the music alone which fits well with the visuals, a contemplative, grainy, black and white film shot in the yes, dark depths of night.
Bay Area sound artist Art Lessing is one prolific d.i.y. fellow. Each year without fail he releases at least one cd-r of his living room recorded aural creations, and we've got his latest one. His musical roamings know no boundaries freewheelin' from neo-folk rambles ("Plastic Couch") to buzzy space rock ("Badly") to hazy contemplative minimal guitar resonance ("Tinkle Star") to Ween-ish pitch-shifted fuckery ("Moe The Slow"). Likewise, his battery of instruments includes many unconventional homemade implements. Ooooeeee, this is a strange one and it draws customer queries each time it's played in the store.
Local art pop outfit Art Museums know that a really great pop song can and maybe should be less then two minutes long, yet still be filled with so much punchy sonic style and flare. With "Dancing With A Hole In Your Heart" they have crafted one of the best 88 second pop songs we have heard in ages. It makes us think of early Magnetic Fields covering The Vaselines, in other words pure pop perfection!
The other two songs are no slouches either, in fact they are as strong as anything that was on their great full length debut, Rough Frame. This makes us excited for what a new album would sound like, as they seem to only be getting better with time... except we think maybe they just broke up, if so, bummer!
Sometimes it's easy to take the musicians who live in our city for granted. We see them around all the time, lots of them shop in the store, so the mystique and mystery that you usually have with bands from far away doesn't really exist. So when we found out that our pal Glenn Donaldson (Skygreen Leopards, Thuja, Blithe Sons) and Joseph Alper (Skygreen Leopards, Whysp) had begun a new off-kilter pop project we were thinking, "cool we're sure it's going to be good", but holy fuck, once we actually put it on we realized it was GREAT! And if we didn't know the folks involved it's the kind of listening experience that would have sent us right to the Internet to Google all the names of the players involved, to figure out who the hell these guys were, and even more importantly, what year this weird pop record was actually from!!
Art Museums use primitive 4-track recording techniques with equally rudimentary drum machines which serve as the perfect tools for their totally endearing, catchy yet understated songs that sounds so innocent and carefree and definitely harken back to the classic C86 days.... For sure looking to The Television Personalities and such as HUGE influences, but borrowing and paying homage to their pop forebears in such an incredibly fresh and vibrant way. These are the kind of songs that just keep growing on you and getting further and further under your skin on repeated listens. Like the best Chris Knox songs or if The Shins went way lo-fi and covered early Guided By Voices. Or Belle and Sebastian getting their XTC on, in like a lone lazy afternoon. Art Museums have created that rare recording, a pop album that is smart and rewarding yet also just so damn fun to listen to. An absolute must have!
Of all the lo-fi left-field pop records that have come out in the last few years, the debut by Art Museums really has stayed with us and remained so satisfying listen after listen. So were stoked to get two brand new tracks. We actually got to hear the A side several months ago when we first saw the awesome video, directed by former AQer Kerry McLaughlin. That song, "S.H.O.P.P.I.N.G." is a quick blast of C-86 inspired glory. The B side "Feel Like Dreams" is more of a warm burner somewhere between The Chills and Television Personalities. We've been flipping it over and over as both songs have already gotten deep under our skin. So good!
Landscape Removal is a split release between Minneapolis band Artifact Shore and Bay Area solo artist Linedotstar. You get four tracks apiece. Be forewarned, the pale green blue hued cover doesn't really offer any indication of the sounds contained within. The cd begins with a blast of abrasive industrial noise from the former. Artifact Shore's four tracks are propelled by a stormy rhythmic undercurrent and bristly effected angstful male vocals. Linedotstar's aural offerings are considerably more gentle composed of stuttery electronics, guitar samples, airy drones and wispy melodies. Quite a contrast of dark and light, imposing solid masses and soothing vaporous ephemera.
This first release from local black metal horde Artificium Sanguine was a pleasant surprise. Well, as pleasant as a spiked gauntlet to the gut can be. We were a little skeptical with such a joke-y title, after all, how grim could it be? Well, pretty grim actually. Very lo-fi, and buzzy and hyper blown out, this recording manages to capture the fury and majesty we've witnessed Artificium Sanguis struggle to exude live. Which isn't surprising, since black metal has never really existed as a live experience anyway. It's all about the home recorded misanthropy, spread by word of mouth, cd-r and tape trading, and Ye Olde Demo Taype (I chuckle/cringe even typing it) follows in well worn frosty footprints. While not quite as fucked up and dementedly genius as San Franciso black metal legends Weakling or any of the local scene's current one man bands (Leviathan, Crebain, Draugar, etc.), this is pretty fierce and dark, channelling the spirt of Bathory and Celtic Frost through classic Norwegian black metal and into something properly head banging and soul crushing.
A stellar follow-up to 2010's REDACTED on REDACTED, REDACTED from this local REDACTED drone duo, REDACTED and REDACTED, aka ARTIST 06, finds theses two with an even more focused and nuanced dynamic sensibility. Of course that sensibility centers around REDACTED's classically trained koto playing, which plays a large part in ARTIST 06's overall sound, but here that element is really given ample room to stretch out and breathe. Instead of being merely one component in a layering process of cascading shifting dronescapes, the high relief sound of the texture of strings, the slow growing lyrical motifs and the solemn resonant pauses between phrases set up the pieces as they bloom into delicate shimmers and then oceanic swells of drifting unsettled moods. Pushing the momentum along on the first track, "REDACTED" is the loping bass pulse of REDACTED (REDACTED, REDACTED, REDACTED), that has us surfing waves of sound before settling into a swirling miasma of crystalline tones and airy phases. Taking us to the final track, "REDACTED", the longest track at 20 minutes is set up by a long introduction of gorgeous and breathtakingly spacious koto playing that like falling leaves in gusts of winds unfurl into bellows of sky high cloud drones, gathering and darkening in fields of rich pulsating grey thunderous tones and then watercolor washes of blissful ambiance, the storm cleared and fading away, set to awaken in some far-off place. Beautiful!
The posthumous debut from (and, thus, swansong of) REDACTED's most cult black metal act, ARTIST 09. Despite their REDACTED, non-forested, non-wintry origins, ARTIST 09 was a band capable of destroying the best Scandinavia has to offer (as we witnessed upon two occasions, when ARTIST 09 had the honor of opening the REDACTED shows by Norweigans REDACTED and REDACTED, and proceeded to make both bands look like punk rockers in comparison! ARTIST 09 were so much more epic and intense). All this without any of the ignorant posturing or hackneyed corpsepaint of their peers.
Ghastly, anguished vocals and bloodchilling keyboards combine with dual trebly buzzsaw guitars and inhuman trance inducing drumming to create an atmosphere of utter grinding grimness. ARTIST 09 draws upon '90s black metal in the Norwegian tradition (especially the raw and primitive likes of Darkthrone, Burzum and Immortal) and then creates uniquely fucked song structures of epic length (20 minutes per, in some cases).
And, like the best music, ARTIST 09 also transcends genre. In some ways, REDACTED possesses elements that can be considered akin to the avant garde, experimental creations of the Swans, Skullflower, Steve Reich, or even Yoko Ono. Imagine an extensive, utterly mesmerizing Hermann Nitsch piece, composed for black metal band.
It's a suffocating soundscape of riffing and drone. Subterranean satanic art rock that equals metal. Nihilistic, depressive and never ending.
Featuring REDACTED formerly of REDACTED as well as drummer REDACTED from local death metallers REDACTED (R.I.P) and REDACTED. And of course, REDACTED of...well, REDACTED. (And REDACTED / REDACTED / REDACTED / REDACTED) REDACTED black metal maniac/death rocker extraordinaire. ARTIST 09 is largely the result of his devotion to black metal dementia.
We are not engaging in baseless hyperbole when we say: this should be crowned black metal album of the year. Any year. EVERY YEAR! FOREVER!!!! Seriously. Essential.
Medicine Fuck Dream is the debut recording for the Texan ex-patriot Greg Ashley, who now calls Oakland his home. With the current roster of multi-faceted psychedelia spread throughout Northern California (i.e. Jewelled Antler, Six Organs Of Admittance, Kelly Stoltz, etc.), the East Bay seems well suited to Ashley's druggist songwriting. Yup, the whole album seems to be cast in a fog of pot smoke; but, Ashley's craft is in pulling together a great range of influences from the haze and turning it into his own. Big Star stands strong in his pantheon, as does the Opal / Mazzy Star sound of dreamy troubaour folk. A couple of the tracks reflect Syd Barrett's flair for the stumblingly comical, but always cast under the doped-to-oblivion spell of Spacemen 3. Ashley's fluttering whisper of a voice may not be the finest in the world, but his eccentric production with massive Joe Meek reverb bathing some of his tracks and fizzling tape hiss on the others, more than makes up for what he lacks on that front. A great debut!
Greg Ashley has a sound and knack for songwriting that's wise way beyond his years. His records with his excellent band The Gris Gris and his debut solo outing a few years back prove his ability to write songs that are both smart and trippy, rocking and subdued. He's been compared to Roky Erickson, who casts a mighty long shadow, yet one of Ashley's greatest strengths is how he always makes it sound so easy. There is an effortless and natural grace to the way Ashley's songs are delivered that never feels forced or calculated, but instead sounds like they've been locked in some deep vault for decades just waiting for someone to discover. Painted Garden reveals a more acoustic and seductive side to Ashley's songwriting, demonstrating that there are other ways to achieve psychedelic states without relying exclusively on freakouts and feedback. Painted Garden is filled with elegant songs that should definitely appeal to fans of Vetiver and Yo La Tengo. Ashley is by no means a one trick pony though, his willingness to explore different sides of his songwriting persona is something we can't help but love. "Sailing With Bobby" has such a wonderful and dizzying melody, it immediately made us think of Sonic Youth's "Little Trouble Girl". We think it's safe to say that no matter what the current trend in the indie music scene might be (freak folk, psych rock, indie pop, etc.) Ashley will continue to make music his own way, transcending all the hype and thriving for a long time to come!
We're beginning to consider Greg Ashley to be one of the most underrated musical minds of the past decade. Whether with his band The Gris Gris or on his own great solo recordings, Ashley has demonstrated so much versatility and creativity in conjuring up the most sublime psychedelic sounds. Requiem Mass And Other Experiments is an instrumental outing that finds Ashley crafting a powerful work that evokes the dramatic and kaleidoscopic side of Ennio Morricone, the winding prog odysseys of Bo Hansson and the more cinematic moments of Pink Floyd, like on More and Obscured By Clouds. But Ashley has a distinct and instantly recognizable guitar sound and knows his way around swirling melodies, so that the sound becomes totally his own. And even beyond his own instrumental prowess, Ashley is able to set all of those other elements in such a warm and intimate sound. It's no surprise that so many Bay Area bands are turning to him to record their records, because he really does understand the beauty of analog warmth and is uniquely able to capture a timeless quality in overall sound. While it's a sprawling, pastoral and haunting ride, what makes Requiem Mass And Other Experiments such a satisfying listen is the way in which Ashley also understands restraint and constantly displays such exquisite taste. Its paced so well and ends before you want it to, which in our book is always a good thing, because then you want to go on the ride again and again instead of burning out on an overstretched vision. So good!
It's hard not to love a band called Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, especially when they sound like some long lost seriously blown out bluesfuzzspacerock behemoth transported through some fluctuating rift in time, sucked straight out of the Fillmore West circa 1967, and transported to the right here and right now. But if every science fiction story EVER has taught us one thing, it's that rifts in time are tricky, and are more often than not unpredictable, so it seems that somehow on the way here, Assemble Head's rock DNA got all mixed up with the tangled genetic codes of other hippy jamming space time explorers like Monster Magnet, Blue Oyster Cult, the Outlaws, Neil Young and about a million others.
The result is a divine, occasionally laid back, more often than not super charged Californian drug fueled psych rock jam, that takes its various influences and shuffles em all up from song to song, managing to sound close enough to the originals to feel all warm and fuzzy and familiar, but just twisted and tweaked enough to sound like it could have only come from Assemble Head's kick ass world of Sunburst Sound....
The opener is a seriously drug addled blast of FX drenched Stooges-y stomp, the vocals soaring, the guitars grinding out slithery riffs, the drums a relentless pound, all wrapped up in a dense cloud of bleary eyed pot smoke shimmer. Some serious Monster Magnet worship for sure, right down to the Dave Wyndorf-esque vocals. We're not complaining, the world can always use more of that satanic drug rock for sure... The next track though takes everything in a whole different direction, spinning a fuzzy web of indie jangle and grunge-y groove, sounding like some weird mix of Screaming Trees and Dinosaur Jr. But later still, the band changes direction again, and stretches out into extended groovy, organ laced Southern Rock jams, the guitars a slow drawl, everything still hazy and buzzy, but less kinetic and more stoned. But then a song later, and the band are strapped back in and headed for the heart of the sun, with huge fuzzy arcs of white hot guitar and dense swirls of blurry FX and killer acid fried riffing.�
Just have a quick gander at the tripped out psychedelic cover art, huge mountain faces, swirling stormclouds, erupting volcanos, futuristic cities, floating heads shooting lazers from their eyes, a metallic moon half buried on a sandy beach, a wall of human faces, a pirate ship in a fiery sky, it definitely gives the listener a good idea of what to expect, what sort of�gloriously wild and wooly, spaced out, tangled up dirgey fuzzy sprawl lurks inside.�
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Local psych merchants vinyl-only debut. For Comets fans!
Most folks know that we are pretty picky and particular when it comes to contemporary jazz. Of course we're not that into it when it's too straight ahead, but we're also not the biggest fan of wanky, aimless skronk sessions. So it takes a lot for a new jazz album to win us over, but these two long jams by San Francisco's Astronaut Body Four, are really hitting the spot, some seriously forward thinking, left-field jazz for sure. The A side is the 18 minute track "Citizen's Day Parade" which starts off like some lost vintage early '70s psych-jazz complete with awesome mystical sounding flute, and as it progresses a really odd but wonderful keyboard that sounds as if its being channeled from another planet, enters the fold and along with the sax, bass and drums the track takes all kinds of twists and turns, including some serious skronk, which instead of being annoying actually serve as great moments of tension building and release.
The B side is another long one, the 20 minute track "Murder City Planetarium" which starts with a very moody and voyeuristic vibe, reminding us of moments from one of our very favorite films of all time, "The Conversation." As the track continues on it maintains that subtle sense of suspense, leading up to a charged, chaotic freak out, and then ending on a note of deranged elegance. Awesome.
Deep, depressive, uber-heavy doom-death from this Bay Area outfit featuring in their ranks none other than John Gossard, fomerly of cult black metallers and AQ faves Weakling! He's no stranger to ten-minute-plus track lengths and that's what you get here, three atmospheric doom epicks (plus one ambient, almost inaudible bonus track), the shortest about twelve minutes, the longest around fifteen. And when you think that Asunder's slowed-down sickness couldn't get any more mournful, they kick in with the cellos! That's right, funereal doom with a string section. Gotta love it...to death.
Oakland's doooooooooooooooooooomiest, Asunder, return with their second full-length album. Just back from a tour of Japan with none other than cultish doom-crust behemoth Corrupted, Asunder further cement their doom bonafides with Works Will Come Undone, which features just two tracks, one of 'em ("Rite Of Finality") almost a full-length itself at 50 minutes duration! The other track ("A Famine") isn't quite so long -- a mere 20 minutes. That's more than enough time for these guys and gal to squeeze in a few lugubrious riffs, even at the glacial pace with with they play their morose metallic funeral marches.
Asunder are all about atmosphere, allowing some really pretty and mellow parts into their crushingly heavy and depressed, slow-moving sound-world. The use of cello (played by Jackie Perez-Gratz, also of Amber Asylum) is one of Asunder's trademarks, and for giving an extra-mournful, classically elegant dimension to their doom it's hard to beat. The guitarists successfully venture to enter that sublime realm as well. Meanwhile the vocalist recalls the phlegmy throat of Forest Of Equilibrium era Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, mixing the rough with the smooth as it were...
For those unaware, we should also note the presence of former Weakling guitarist/vocalist John Gossard. What Weakling was to trance-inducingly epic Norwegian style black metal, Asunder is to trance-inducingly epic Finnish style doom metal!! Or maybe we should just say Oakland style, since this genre of doom has its roots all over, from Finland's Thergothon to Australia's Disembowelment and Long Island's Winter...
Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland).
The Volume 7 - March, 2005 edition features a half dozen tunes from Audio Out Send, five from !Go Mexico! and three from Gibson Cuyler.
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Here's the debut release from SF folk singer/songwriter Seth Augustus. Having extensively studied Tuvan throat singing, he ably applies this captivating vocal delivery into his rootsy Americana sound. Unlike many other artists who attempt to add seeming incongruous international elements to a traditional western style of music, but whose attempts end up drawing too much attention to it, Augustus integrates the two well, imbuing his songs with a haunting comfort. Also although the cover art is a busy, brightly colored collage, the music itself is anything but that. Very barebones and earthy. Includes covers of Tom Waits and Charlie Patton songs.
People went nuts for the most recent record from local psychedelic space rockers 3 Leafs, and rightfully so, a primo clutch of tripped out, druggy drift. The Auricle finds one of those Leafs exploring another quadrant of the outer reaches, this time with a drastically different arsenal, violin, French horn, ukulele and sampler, sounds strange, but this trio makes it work, a healthy dollop of reverb, a little delay, the violin unfurling loooooong velvety ribbons of sound, the French horn moaning out melancholy melodies, the Ukulele spinning out little upper register trills, sent spiraling into the ether, the sampler... well, not sure what it's doing, probably just taking all of the rest of the sounds and subtly twisting and transforming, the end result is something that is definitely space-y, abstract and atmospheric, haunting, playful pizzicato melodies surface here and there, the violin sometimes drifting into more traditional sounds, making this sound like a chamber ensemble drifting through space, and that's just the first track.
The rest of the record definitely branches out a little, from warped minimal sort-of-bluegrass, looped and hypnotic, to otherworldly music box like warble, to clattery almost industrial sounding machinemusic, to deep almost new age sounding ethereal ambience, to strangely drone-y old timey back porch blues, to slow spaced out slowcore lullabies, all tied together by the woozy washed out reverby production, and the strange and wonderful instrumentation.
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With a title such as that you know the music is ferociously cool. Local boy and frequent Mo'Wax engineer/remix-savant Dan Nakamura recently broke out with this exciting ep. He says it pushes OUTward the boundaries of (american) hip hop, a very good thing to do, no? If you dig the Dr. Octagon record, then you'll like this one -- Dan along with Kool Keith are the principals on both albums.
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While I was listening to this the first time, I found myself literally singing along, making up words, something like "I love noise rock, I surely do" kind of facetiously, but as this record played on, I realized I actually still do. And this here slab of noise rock in particular. Dug the recent Axolotl cd and this cd-r is just as good. A swirling mess of drones and clatter and deconstructed melodies and propulsive almost rhythms and weird snatches of sonic detritus, all muddled up into a totally listenable, surprisingly catchy, really fucking good burst of avant/free/folk/noise/rock!
We totally dig local free noise one man band Axolotl, and were ready for another blast of gorgeously abstract drone, clatter and skree when we threw this on, but holy cow is this record completely something else. We had to keep checking to see what we were listening to.
Some of the elements are certainly similar, but it's way dreamier and laid back, muted and murky, subtly propulsive, it actually sounds quite a bit like Oval or Gas! Which is a VERY good thing. Slow shifting underwater drift, a looped hypnotic dreamworld, rich waves of warm sound, a totally gorgeous abstract minimal ambience. So so so good!
SUPER LIMITED! 525 COPIES. Each copy is hand numbered and has a cool paste on cover.
Not sure what happened to Axolotl, but at some point his noises got way less noisy, and everything started to sound a lot fuzzier and beautifully disoriented, almost like a few records back, the band stepped into a thick puddle of sonic quicksand, and every record they've sunk a little bit deeper, everything getting more and more fuzzed out and murky, buzzy and indistinct, until now, heck they must be neck deep, cuz everything sounds about as blissed out as can be.
Like an indie rock underground version of Mink Ink's Gas, Axolotl are now firmly in the Pop Ambient camp as far as we're concerned. Thick swirling sheets of ambience, guitars are fuzzy and drift like fat soft clouds, melodies are buried all the way at the bottom of about a million layers of grit and hum and whir, allowing us only brief glimpses, and letting occasional fragments float to the surface. Within this warm dense swirl is a pulse, a beat, a rhythm, often impossible to pick out, occasionally just loud enough to be heard over the soft din, a little like hearing a heartbeat through someone's down overcoat, a distant blurry thump, that almost just sounds like a random dynamic disturbance in the dreamlike hiss of each song's tranquil drift.
There are always a lot of amazing records vying for the coveted late night listening position, you know the perfect disc to relax to, to read along with, or best of all, to free your mind and send you drifting off into some relaxed, not-quite-sleep but dreamily blissed out headspace, and this Axolotl disc (a reissue of a super limited, out of print cd-r) has has pretty much knocked out all other contenders!
Amazingly gorgeous packaging too, a white folded over sleeve with embossed reflective silver printing, a textured pattern on the front, bold type on the back. Really striking.
A brand new full length from local noisemaker Axolotl. We've carried loads of releases from this one man band, almost all of them cd-r's and thus almost all of them now out of print. Way Blank is actually, as far as we can tell, only the second proper cd (not cd-r) release so far, and we're glad it's a real cd, cuz it's pretty awesome.
Following up the Chemical Theater 12", Axolotly continues on the road toward a fuzzier dreamier place, more Gas and M83 and Tim Hecker than Yellow Swans and Wolf Eyes.
Everything is soft and fuzzy and bathed in a warm whirring glow. The opener "Penuma" sounds like it could have been plucked right off one of the Pop Ambient collections. Buried vocals, drifting melodic murk, all wrapped in thick slow shifting layers of fuzzy glistening sonic gauze. The second track is similarly murk and indistinct, but manages to build abstract rhythms out of crumbling distorted sonic fragments, a rumbling, creaking, whirring soundscape that builds into a massive wall of pitch shifting fuzz. Pretty glorious sounding actually. Massive and dramatic and so dreamy.
The rest of the tracks are all variations on the same glorious theme, blurry indistinct smears of foggy soft focus sound, buried melodies and distant sonic shadows, everything whirling and swirling, a cloudy ambient abstract drift through a warbly world of warm colors. A gorgeous new direction for Axolotl, one we definitely hope he'll continue to explore, joining his new sonic brethren, Gas, Tim Hecker, Fennesz, Basinski, et al., as they chart meandering dreamlike journeys into unknown worlds of sound.
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First record from this mysterious troupe, and it's a good one. We heard a little from them on that recent Space Is No Place compilation, but Axolotl is the sort of band that requires a whole record to truly unwind and explore and get us to where we want to go. This is classic, minimal, creepy out-rock music, but minus most of the rock. Damaged drones constructed from warbling synths and moaning ambient flutter, garbled melodies of chopped up voices, excited strings and all sorts of minimally percussive scrabble. There are drones but this is most definitely NOT a drone record, it's far too unsettling and dynamic. The drones are just one of the many elements of Axolotl's otherworldly miasma of sonic muddle and seemingly random sound. Occasionally a machine like rrrroooaaarr emerges from the murk, but manages to remain somehow pleasingly but not at all obviously melodic (a la the Dead C) like an anvil dipped in tar and wrapped in feathers.
This long sought after, long out of print cd-r, released originally on the Jyrk label way back in 2005, is available again for a limited time -- now as a super swank, ultra limited lp from Jefre Cantu Ledesma's (Tarentel) Root Strata label.
Triple threat SF free noise cd-r tag team match up between some names you should probably know by now, Axolotl, the Yellow Swans, and Gerritt. With three times the firepower you might think that would mean three times the noise, but be prepared to be surprised! And soothed. That's right, three lengthy tracks that lean more toward the dreamy minimal drone and the shimmering sheets of sonic skree than the all out noise attack. The first track is a slowly shifting gritty electronic soundscape of hazy melody and electronic buzz and hiss, eventually building into a louder, yet no less swath of drone and glitch hiss. Track two is a bit more in your face, with rich slabs of distorted chords and warm warbly drones, with swooping melodies and electronic mosquito buzz. The final track is twenty minutes of thick churning low end grind and grumble, pulsing with some buried beat, until the whole thing explodes into a huge wall of thick electrogrit and fuzzed out feedback screech. Wow. Really nice.
Limited to 500 copies we think.
We managed to get just a handful of these super limited (and seemingly already out of print, arghh!) cd-r's documenting this particular abstract free noise summit, that took place earlier this year live on the air at KDVS in Sacramento. Featuring names you should all be familiar with by now, Axolotl, Mouthus and the Skaters. Not as noisy as one might expect, instead this is some strange ambient industrial workout, murky and muddy, lots of processed vocals, clanging percussion, and weird swells of sound, cloaked in a dense swirl of lo-fi hiss. Sounds like it could be some lost live Throbbing Gristle outtake. Thick squirming guitars, creep and crawl through a craggy soundscape of thick gritty drones and jagged streaks of feedback, while haunting vocals moan and howl above the crepuscular din.
Some vinyl tag team action from these two Bay area based frenzies heavyweights. Axolotl offer up three lengthy tracks, a warped warbly hiss drenched ambient drift with distant singsongy vocals, a soft shimmery cinematic soundscapes, all soft edges, sparkling and glistening, and a crunchy super distorted blown out bliss out. All different but with a distinct certain something that ties them all together and makes them uniquely Axolotl. The Skaters counter with a side long epic, weird birdlike electronics trill and flutter, affected guitar jangles and floats dreamlike, hypnotic vocal loops, lurch and shimmy and eventually blend into a single smeary sound, the whole track dense and murky and warbly and lo-fi but as always so totally soft on the ears.
Gorgeously packaged as are all things on Catsup Plate, this time, metallic textured gold ink on a black sleeve, hand screened with a photocopied insert. SUPER LIMITED. Already out of print at the label, so we might not be able to get more unless they press more!
The War On Huh? is the first full length from Bad Grid (aka Mark Nemeth and Paul Brown) and it's comprised of a baker's dozen lo-fi, electronic pop/rock songs laden with socio-political commentary on "Generals And CEOs", "Barbara Bush" and "Radical Republicans" with plenty of newsreel soundbites (unfortunately they've included a bunch of already way too over-played Bush clips). The vocals are delivered in a low, somewhat sullen speak-sing style reminiscent of Daniel Ash. As a result their statements in songs such as "Solution Song" and "Enjoy Your Life" occasionally come across as somewhat passive or defeatist rather than rallying. May seem a bit contradictory, but they get their message across -- raising awareness while keepin' things downbeat.
Another beefy dose of industrial rhythms and bad vibes from San Francisco's Bad News, who as we mentioned before have nothing to do with the British comedy troupe of the same name that brilliantly parodied all of the cliches of heavy metal back in the early '80s. This single takes up a Crash Worship frenzy of drums extracted from the pagans and programmed into the machines of the Hypo Luxa & Hermes Pan school of Wax Trax productions circa 1989. Clipped, machine-gun snare fills and metal-bashed samples stand at the foreground of the A side, with the vocals from Sarah Bernat warped from her already diabolical chant through a square-waved tremolo pattern. The B side is a remix, with the vocals pushed towards the foreground for more of a cold-wave feel buttressed by swarming synths provided by Marc Manning; and the aggression of the programmed drums certainly remain. Super limited pressing on lead-gray vinyl. Download code? Yes and thank you.
No, not the same Bad News which offered up a British version of Spinal Tap's heavy metal stupidity and awesomeness; although there is a certain incredulity about this Bad News as well. Of course, styles come and go with each season, and many of the sounds that defined the '60s, '70s, and '80s have eventually come back around through whatever cultural zeitgeist is spurning them on. So, this Bad News is one of several bands currently at the forefront of a minor movement that is pushing beyond the minimal wave aesthetic out of the early '80s and into the more aggressive, blustery sounds of industrial uttered by Wax Trax, PIAS, and Nettwerk from 1986 to 1990. Yeah, think Vivisect 6 era Skinny Puppy or Twitch era Ministry. Bad News is the work of Alex Lucas and Sarah Bernat, the latter being renowned for her work in the chairkickingly punk-as-fuck noise trio 16 Bitch Pile-up; and her bad-ass swagger on vocals and guitar is amply matched by the heavy sequencing and blister-popped electronics from Lucas. "Decay" sports a Missing Foundation / Skullflower guitar churn amidst a slow dive bomb squalor of electric noise and Bernat's gray-colored monotone vocals, with the rhythms and electronics embued with a heavy, machined plod. Sweaty. Smelly. Greasy. The title track throws a monophunk basskick into the foreground with hypnotically aggressive intentions matched by what could only be seen as an industrial strength / megaphone raga in which Bernat chants those titular words. "Typical Illusion" is Bad News' finest moment of post-hardcore riffage affixed to militantly double-timed rhythms and cluster bombs of heavy noise, electronic confusion, and ill will. If anybody remembers when Controlled Bleeding released a couple of really ho-hum records on Wax Trax in 1989, THIS is what Paul Lemos, et al. should have been doing.
We had this on cassette briefly, and we gotta say that the vinyl mastering job renders a truly superior product. Fucking rad.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Local favorites, loud, raw, and crunchy, packaged in a pretty cardboard'n'gold digipak.
Two gorgeous longform tracks of psychedelic nu-age made with electric guitar, synths and field recordings from this Bay-Area based multi-instrumentalist and Psychic Arts label-head. The A-side, a deep excursion into synth drones that leads to an exuberant takeoff of ecstatic and majestic electric guitar leads, was only released on vinyl in an edition of ONE for his girlfriend/wife, so we can basically say these two tracks have not been widely available to a large audience. The B-side is more meditative with delicate filigrees of guitar widely spaced between long passages of field recordings of bird sounds and ocean waves. Both tracks filling up either side of the tape, these are two keen examples of intrepid guitar and synth wizardry from one of the Bay Area's finest practitioners. Limited!
Man, Matt Baldwin just seems to get better and better, taking his already wonderful celestial spaced out guitar playing and constantly pushing his sound further and further out. This super limited self released outing finds Baldwin positioning one short track inbetween two epic 15 minute sprawls which evoke the spirit of Robert Fripp playing a Terry Riley composition or Michael Rother and Steve Reich teaming up for some hypnotic psychedelic kraut guitar drift. Exploring cosmic guitar explorations similar to folks like Mark McGuire and Phil Manley, this is such a wonderful record of truly tripped out and densely dreamy solo guitar. We could go on and on about how much we love this, but considering these are the very last copies left of this cd-r we should probably just say act super fast as we only have ten of these left!
Second collaboration from longtime aQ fave Matt Baldwin and his multi instrumentalist co-conspirator, and like Year Of The Dog before it, Dream Still is another mesmerizing blur of psychedelic layers and swirling looped ambience, think Fripp, Rother, Gottsching and of course Reich and Riley. But instead of en exercise in rigid minimalism, this is some seriously freaky far out psychedelia. Listening to opener "Notes On Entering The Tower", it's not hard to imagine this as some lost recording from the seventies, it's got a little Miles Davis going on, a little Herbie Hancock circa Sextant, Baldwin and Georis delivering a sort of washed out kosmische psych-funk groove that comes in waves, most of the track spent blissfully looping, trance-y and hypnotic, but then the drums slip in and sound builds to something more propulsive and druggy and mesmerizing. Total seventies style psych groove bliss out.
The two part "Dream Still" suite is a bit less druggy, and instead is delicate and dreamlike, the first part almost like classic Appalachia, but the fingerpicked steel string melodies, laced with hushed piano melodies, and wreathed in clouds of swirling sci-fi FX and warm spaced out synth shimmer, while the second part, pushes the sound back into a sort of psychedelic krautrock territory, another loopscape of pulsing synths and layered guitar, hushed and minimal and motorik, with just a hint of that groove from the first track.
Until finally, Baldwin and Georis finish things off with the sprawling 13+ minute "Boogie Corporation", which adds some primitive programmed rhythms to the mix, sounding like a groovier more seventies sounding Expo 70, the guitars layered and looped, not quite a 'boogie', but definitely with some groove going on, and very much in line with the opening track, warm washes of synth shimmer beneath almost-funky guitars, with melodies and textures piling up and constantly shifting, the sounds swirling and space-y, the keyboards dreamily tangled up with the spidery guitars, total trip out celestial psych kraut mesmer, that even at 13 minutes ends way too soon.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Housed in plain cardstock origami style fold over sleeves, with black and white paste on artwork and a photocopied insert.
After falling so deeply in love with Matt Baldwin's recent cd-r release, Imaginary Psychology, earlier this year, we knew that this bay area guitar wizard had really come into his own, exploring exciting new terrain in reaching epic psychedelic bliss.
This new outing finds Baldwin collaborating with multi-instrumentalist Nico Georgis, as they create two long form pieces that explore a more textured and layered sort of kosmische drift. The first track, "Year Of The Dog", finds Baldwin employing guitar, guitar-synth, as well as loops and delay, while Georis contributes clavinet, Wurlitzer piano, percussion, a Prophet 600, and a MicroKorg to create a meditative movement that's like some pulsating dreamscape conjured up by Robert Fripp, Michael Rother, Ash Ra Tempel, Manuel Gottsching, and/or John Cale. It taps into a sound that folks like Mark McGuire/Emeralds, White Rainbow, Bitchin Bajas, and Arp have been exploring, but with a much more organic and warm approach.
"Juan Carlos" is the other massive track here, an improv psych-jam, that features Juan Carlos Morales Tablada on congas and percussion. It starts with a slow build that immediately entrances as its sounds are both so connected to the earth, yet do such an amazing job of taking you to another dimension. In some ways the vibe makes us think of another one of our favorite cd-r releases from this year, Eat The Earth, by fellow San Francisco psych improv masters 3 Leafs.
Hand numbered and limited to 50 copies, this one is a no brainer. Don't miss out!
Not a geographic location, Balthrop, Alabama is a singer/songwriter! Joining in the band naming tradition of the likes of Boston, Chicago, Kansas et al, former Bay Area now Brooklyn based solo singer/songwriter Pascal Balthrop's latest musical moniker is a place, but a fictional one, mind you! You might know him under his previous musical alias which was simply Pascal. With a new name and new hometown come new sounds, a broader scope, instrument palette and group of musicians to accompany him. On his brand new sprawling concept double (!) cd about big city encroachment on a small town, Balthrop's acoustic songcraft is definitely still very very indebted to Jeff Mangum, John Darnielle and the Elephant 6 Collective, but the telltale signs -- such as a very distinctly emotive singing delivery combined with unabashedly blatty horns -- are a little bit more subsumed into his own realm. His lyrical storytelling is less cryptic or surreal, and the downhome-y album unfolds like an indie pop country fair stage play. Some folks have likened his new songs such as "Love To Love You" to the Hidden Cameras in its peppy exuberance. Fans of all of the abovementioned, hop aboard!
Sadly, the last ever ish (so we're told) of this long-running avantgarde music n' art magazine... And it remains entertainingly dense with confusion to the last. Obscure isn't obscure until it's been celebrated (and futher obscured) in the pages of Bananafish. This final issue leaves us with info and interviews with Jim Leftwich ("experimental writer, visual poet..."), Burning Star Core ("violin/electronics/voice iconoclast"), Nelson Gastaldi ("Argentinean psych-spatial composer"), Montract ("group of beach-blanket acidheads"), and Joe Colley ("ex-Crawl Unit noise mumbler"). There's also "surreal, interdisiplinary" comics from Mecca Normal guitarist David Lester and of course pages and pages of reviews of all kinds of noisy, fucked up music -- reviews that quite often are more interesting than the music itself, we sometimes suspect. Plus the requisite bonus cd that comes with the magazine, with stuff from all the above mentioned artists, including lots of excerpts from cassettes found by Joe Colley. Ah Bananfish, we'll miss ya.
One of two splits on this week's list from local psychedelic space rockers and aQ faves Carlton Melton, both amazingly appropriate team-ups. The other one is a super limited 7" with UK space rockers Mugstar, and then there's this, a vinyl-only split with legendary Phillie psych rockers Bardo Pond, who prove to be the perfect match for Carlton Melton slow burning laid back psychedelic drift.
CM's side-long "Slow Growth" (a title by way of an early AQ Carlton Melton review by our very own Scott) definitely describes CM's sidelong jam here, easily one of their best, and most musically cohesive, finding sharp sonic focus even amidst the seemingly freeform drift, the track beginning as a soft hazy swirl, softly churning guitars over what sounds like whipping wind, the vibe tense and ominous and darkly dreamy, it takes a few minutes for the song proper to kick in, but when it does, the guitars immediately swoop in and distort, blossoming into massive crumbling swells, heaving and howling over delicate crystalline strum and simple propulsive motorik drumming. The drums eventually drop out, leaving the sound to slowly implode, growing muddier and murkier, stretched way out into muted drones, laced with shards of feedback and little fragmented melodies, all before another slow build, back into a seriously dense sonic squall, still muted and murky, but seriously black hole dense, a roiling cloud of blackened psych, which billows wildly until the drums gradually return, offering a rhythmic anchor and guiding the track to its final resting place.
Bardo Pond counter with one of the best tracks we've heard from them, the sound fierce and epic and lush and SO heavy, launching immediately into a gorgeous sprawl of free form psychedelia, clouds of swirling guitars, tangled melodies, the drums loose and free and awesomely wild, but still managing to somehow hold everything together, but just barely. The vibe is blissed out and druggy, it's the sort of jam, that could go on forever, and sort of does, and is somehow simultaneously static and hypnotic, but also impossibly active and constantly shifting, a swirl of melodies and textures, the guitars unleashing some seriously kick ass leads, filling the sky with sonic contrails and swirling chordal clouds, the flute shows up late, and flutters subtly beneath the ever intensifying guitar freakouts, the vocals come in even later, and then only briefly, but add the perfect sort of gauzy / ethereal vibe to the proceedings, the song seeming to just organically wind down, leaving us to imagine that somewhere else there's a version, that does in fact go on forever.
LIMITED TO 800 COPIES!!! ----* ----* Highlights : ----*
