Is it right to call The Mallard's final album a swan song? Wouldn't a duck call be a better metaphor? Even for the charmingly weirdo, garage-pop label empire Castle Face, The Mallard were an odd bird in a flock that includes Thee Oh Sees, Warm Soda, and Blasted Canyons. Finding Meaning In Deference is only the band's second album and its release is a posthumous one, after the band's somewhat public demise in the spring of 2013. The minor-chord jangliness that The Mallard churns out is a weird amalgamation of a whole lot of Flying Nun bands, all of whom are wholly misremembered in a drunken / drugged-out / art-damaged haze. One can pick out bits of The 3Ds, The Pin Group, and Straightjacket Fits, but it's always deranged into a woozy, yet totally groovy swarm of psychedelically tainted gloom pop, or gloom filled psyche-pop if you wanna approach from the other direction. Frontwoman Greer McGettrick finds herself half-asleep and half-awake in monotone melodies she croons between the swaths of spring reverb and analogue delay, while the band behind her jangles and lurches through the slithery, narcotic reinventions of garage-pop tropes. On "Out The Door," McGettrick wakes up enough to climb up and down a sublimely simple lo-fi vibrato that grates against the creepily skeletal guitar chords and zombie-stutter rhythms. The playfully elliptical basslines of "The Communist" with its fucked-up, lo-fi low-pass filter sweeping makes for a particularly woozy number. It's almost fitting that they end the album with the extended drone-rock epic "Iceberg" where The Mallard cruises in a holding pattern of Parson Sound hypno-rhythms, only to plummet back from the sky in an extended tumble of gasping vocal mantras, thrumming basslines, and Velvety minimalist jangle. A perfectly aQuarius record of imperfect pop perfection.
You may have seen the oddly named SF garage psych trio The Mallard opening for folks like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Blasted Canyons, thus it makes sense that they would end up on John Dwyer of the Oh Sees' Castle Face label, and once you get an earful off their twisted lo-fi FX drenched garage pop wooze, we imagine you'll be pretty smitten. Unlike many of the other female fronted garage rock combos, The Mallard don't get all warm and shimmery sixties girl group, instead they traffic in something much more off kilter and tweaked, sorta like Syd Barrett if he were a woman, fronting some twisted drug addled art rock combo, but here filtered through the occasional classic garage rock trope, although for every bit of poppy jangle or sweet harmony, there's a cracked bit of detuned stumble, or a bizarre stretch with droned out chords and strange alien vocal yips, and did we mention effects, at times it's like they stomped on a pedal and forgot all about it, until eventually and usually unexpectedly, the sound will shift and suddenly it's all low slug slithery groove, or dirgey gloom pop bounce, and the production too, just as fucked up, with various instruments and vocal parts exploding into shards of buzzing crunch, stretched out into blurry drones, pushed so loud it sounds like the speakers might blow, but somehow, even at its most demented and deliriously twisted, the songs, especially on repeated listens, blossom into some of the most imperfectly perfect pop we've heard in ages. And weirdly enough (or maybe not), fans of Thee Oh Sees with find that of all the groups out there doing this sort of thing, The Mallard's sound / style / songs might just come closest to the OCS mothership, which is absolutely not a bad thing.
Killer bear-barfing-blood cover art. Includes a download coupon so you can listen to these jamz on your computer.
We sorta spilled the Mamaleek beans, mistakenly reviewing their forthcoming full length last time, when in fact, we were meant to be reviewing THIS, a four song 12", just out on local label The Flenser, the latest (not counting the NOT OUT YET full length) from this local black metal brotherly duo whose sound has mutated over the course of their previous records, touching on blessed out metal gaze, avant black jazz, and pretty much every warped stop in between, and nothing gets less twisted, or less difficult to describe this time around, but they do seem to continue to move ever further from the black metal that birthed them, although to be fair, they were pretty well removed already with record number one, but on He Never Said A Mumblin' Word, the sound once again exists in some nether region, fusing, lurching distort beats, crumbling atonal riffage, bizarre vocals, damaged production, twisted on-the-verge-of-collapse arrangements, the vocals this time around even STRANGER, sounding like a chorus of croaking frogs, but here fused to one of the prettiest things we've heard from these guys, a lilting noise-doom dirge, that constantly devolves into a sort of industrial lumber, a sort-of-chorus perhaps, with the sounds even more distorted and blown out and in-the-red, but somehow remaining weirdly lovely, which seems to be these guys' specialty, making beautiful ugliness or vice versa.
Here's where we usually say, oh the rest of the record follows suit, but with these guys of course it doesn't, track two is all whispering winds, and acoustic guitars, a slow building swell of crumbling buzz, sampled operatic vocals, before exploding into some sort of blackened electro, with a programmed beat, more crumbling riffage, and some seriously harsh processed vocals, but again, some impossible poppiness swirled in, and eventually some almost black metal, but really, the sound is more like some sort of malfunctioning, avant, noise drenched electronica, with some madman growling and bellowingly demonically along, maybe black electro karaoke? Whatever it is, it's fucked up and fantastic.
The third song manages to be even MORE distorted, which once having heard the other two songs seems impossible, but the weirdly processed, crumbling, peaking riffage, becomes something weirdly textural and droned out, hear drifting atop swells of synth swirl and more hellish vokills, another delicate balancing act between twisted beauty, and harsh ugly heaviness. Finally, the duo wrap things up with a loping crumble-pop black-gloom dirge, that plants drum machine skitter beneath cascades of ultra distortion, soaring female vox, bellowed demonic vokills, the whole thing managing to sound sun dappled and dreamy, even though it also sounds like the insides of your speakers must be melting...
Heavy Santa Cruz psychonauts Mammatus have always been big faves here at aQ. But good grief, has it really been six years since their previous platter The Coast Explodes?? Well we guess time flies (or, actually, doesn't) when you're way out in space like Mammatus must have been. From our perspective maybe it's been six long years, but thanks to the theory of relativity, space travellers Mammatus haven't been gone that long. What we're saying its, it's about time (apparently this lp's tracks were written in 2007/2008, recorded in 2009, and mixed in 2013). What we're also saying, is they're spacey. But, actually it's inner space they've been traversing. Judging from the album title, and the song titles here - "Brain Drain", "Main Brain", "Brainbow", and "Brain Train" - they've got brains on the brain, eh? But not the way zombies are about brains, they're not zombies, or at least, we've never seen an episode of The Walking Dead where the titular shamblers picked up instruments and churned out stoner psychedelic prog rock jams (though that'd be cool). No, it's all about inner space travels, being waaaaaay psychedelic in presumably the most druggy sense of the term.
This vinyl-only (drat say the cd lovers here) third Mammatus opus consists of those four (long) songs, two per side. Get ready for something that sounds like the shimmering droned out ritual ceremonies of OM and the Boredoms meets the martial discipline of fusion-wanked prog metal technicality. Mind blowing, yep. And that's just the first track "Brain Drain". The label brings up The Fucking Champs as a comparison, but also McLaughlin/Santana spiritual jazzrock, so less heavy metal than, uh, heady mental, yeah!
They've just played some record release shows for this one, and the band say they'll actually be recording another record next year, so thankfully it won't be a six year wait for more.
Sometimes music is more than just pure sound, or the exposing of deep personal secrets and emotions, or even an homage to one's inspirations. Sometimes it's meant to tell a story... a vessel for a message. Then again sometimes music can combine all of those facets, AND MORE! Such is the case with Mammatus' sophomore effort, The Coast Explodes. On a purely sonic level, this record is absolutely amazing (we'll get there), but it's amazing on a conceptual level as well.
This record is the second installment of Mammatus' gradually unfolding tale of the battle between Light and Darkness. Goodly Light vs. the Evil of Man. Communion with Nature and the casting out of the corrosive agents of Man's doooom. The inhalation of divinity's smoke/breath... exhaling peace from every pore of the translucent flesh. Harnessing the power of Nature in your throat and fingers... swinging the sword to the heart of darkness. Bludgeon the dragon's foul heart! Mammatus is here to bare the Blade of Truth against nature's corrupters, and to ROCK against the cowardly haters of peace! Ahem, their "blade" is of course music, so lets talk about that for a sec.
This epic journey continues right where their self-titled debut left off. The first track "Dragon of the Deep part 3 (Excellent Swordfight)" is a continuation of the Dragon saga (the first album ending with "Dragon of the Deep" parts 1 and 2), and right off the bat you can hear the development. Holy shit! PROG!!!!! Where the last record was more of a trippy blend of hypno-kraut Can-ishness with the slaying heavitude of stoner lordz Sleep, this record somehow maintains that comparison and adds an incredible dose of YES! and YES!!! it rules! So the album starts with a creeping guitar drone, almost as if directly continued from part 2, before bursting in with a driving and hypnotic groove, a la Circle or the above mentioned Can, with little time change shreds at the end of each phrase (kinda proggy) and then suddenly the tempo breaks and we hear a killer stoptime, full-band SHRED! bringing us into another mesmeric groove with beautiful guitar leads soaring perfectly over the everchanging trance. The track builds and builds, ever climbing. Just when you think it can't get more ripping, another amazing riff is unearthed, the band playing so tightly we suspect they might share one cosmically unified mind. In tune with the alignment of the planets and such. All of this is building to something, you can feel it, when suddenly the song crescendos into a freeform cacophonous skronk! Cowbells, drums, and about 500 simultaneous guitar solos! FREAKOUT!
What emerges from this undulating swell is just about all a worshipper of heavy could hope for, an earth shaking riff with the first vocals of the record. Singer Nicky Emmert enters with his first cry to battle, calling us to raise the sword! The vocals are as trippy as ever, beautiful, as if sung from the back of a deep cave. This brutally sick aural climax ends almost as soon as it begins only to plunge axe first into the second track, "Pierce the Darkness", Starting with a gong crash and woodflute solo (!) then charging directly into another trance like groove. The vocals this time start right away, floating and glistening over the motorik pulse, again seemingly a call to arms. The track eventually develops into a blasting free time psychedelic guitar jam which then decompresses into some serious blissy drone.
And what happens next is one of the highlights of the record. The sound of synthesizers enter the drone and build up to a spine tingling harmonized guitar/Moog solo! You know the euphoric feeling you get when listening to shimmery synth part in Yes's "Close to the Edge", and the triumph in the pit of your stomach when Wakeman's church organ finally enters ("I get up, I get down")? A similar energy is in operation here. After this shining moment the song takes another turn towards the HEAVY and some kick ass riffage again fills the speakers. After a bit of strange synth tweakage, the mood of the album changes. Track 3, "The Changing Wind" is an all out drum circle folk jam! Acoustic guitars, propulsive hand drum rhythms, and another lilting melody from Nicky, praising mother nature and her unknowable ways. Hypnotic and blissful for sure. Suddenly the sounds of waves crashing and sea lions barking brings us seamlessly into the final movement, and title track, "The Coast Explodes". Starting with one of the catchiest "stoner" riffs we've heard for a long time. In fact this riff gets stuck in our heads for days at a time. So groovey and catchy, it makes the trees dance. Ahem. This song is a slow builder, rising subtly, and then dipping once more till it finally becomes an almost whisper. The vocals again invoking mother earth, sung in a beautiful falsetto. After this quiet respite the amps again get cranked to 11 and we are blessed with another monolithic slab of heaviness! So satisfying and perfect, it almost makes ya weep. At the end of this journey the chanting of some mythic and mysterious wizard is heard, as if belted out from the peak of a snow covered mountain, beckoning to the children of nature to rise up and join the crusade! The song then gently winds down and the whooshing sounds of the ocean again take over the mix, leaving the listener in a state of utter peace. SHIT! This album really takes you on some sort of transcendental adventure... We got lost there for a minute.
At the most basic level, Mammatus make some of the most inventive and inspired heavy music of our day. Combining diverse inspirations and molding them into something that comes across as totally genuine and pure, and of course TOTALLY RULING! Crushing and mesmerizing and beautiful all at the same time. The story behind the music makes the album all the more powerful. The listening experience of this record is akin to reading a super epic novel, one where the payoffs happen in all the right places. So duh, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!! For fans of Sleep, Yes, UFOmammut, Can, Circle, King Crimson, and all things heavy and trippy and shredding and rocking and ruling! And by the by, if you have not yet, catch them live for one of the best live shows ever! On tour now with Acid Mothers Temple in the USA!
Whoa, heavy!! This is a whole-body vibrating, brain-melting, serious amplifier worship ceremony! The first time I (Allan) saw these guys, last year sometime at the Hemlock here in San Francisco, I was blown away... I'd been told the were a heavy 'stoner rock' outfit from Santa Cruz and worth checking out, but I didn't realize they were gonna be quite so AMAZING. Hairy backwoods hippy dudes, the drummer wearing what looked to be a home-made Whysp t-shirt, guitars turning the air to cottage cheese a la Blue Cheer while creating a trance-zone worthy of Finland's Circle!! So good that I immediately bought the live cd-r they were selling... we were gonna try to get some for the store, in fact, but then we found out that local label Holy Mountain run by our pal JW was on the case already and would be issuing Mammatus's debut studio full-length cd Stateside (with Rocket Recordings, home to the most recent UFOmammut, putting it out in Europe).
So yeah, heavy stoner rock this is, but waaay psychedelic and Hawkwindy, kinda like what maybe you thought Circle side-project Pharaoh Overlord was gonna (and sometimes does) sound like. Loud, massive and mesmerizing, swirling sludge psych! Their songs, often of epic length, are ever chugging skyward, dripping molten goo, full of feedback and fx. Their energetic riffage and warm drones are adorned by drifting vox (not unlike Dead Meadow, with whom they share certain proclivities) and fantastic, metallic, progtastic imagery. Take note of titles like "Dragon Of The Deep" (parts one and two!) and the Roger Dean-esque cover art by Arik "Moonhawk" Roper.
Further musical comparisions aren't hard to come up with -- Mammatus belong in the company of such bastions of cosmic heaviness as Sleep, Boris, YOB, UFOmammut, Earthless, old Monster Magnet, Acid Mothers Temple (at AMT's heaviest, like on Starless & Bible Black Sabbath), Tarantula Hawk, and even Amon Duul (especially on the druggy, krautrocky jam "The Outer Rim"). And of course they're now labelmates with OM, which also makes perfect sense. If you love many, or even just any, of those bands and the sounds they make, this comes highly recommended.
Time sensitive note: Mammatus are playing tomorrow, Saturday April 1st again at the Hemlock with AQ faves the Grey Daturas!
Single number two from these Oakland punk poppers, and while their first 7"s was beholden to the Replacements and the Velvet Underground, this one is definitely more on the punk side of the equation, three chords, pounding drums, rollicking and a little ramshackle, BUT, then thee's the vocals, which change everything. The vocals are not shouted or grunted or howled, instead they're delivered in a dramatic sung-spoken croon, reminding us a little of Morrisey, but a lot of the the singer from the Smoking Popes (who always reminded us of Morrissey anyway), and the effects is pretty instantaneous, turning furious punk energy into something a bit more twee poppy, even the second track, which is more furiously punky, is pushed popward by the vox, the lyrics too, goofy and silly and fun, the second track is called "Chased By Anderson Cooper" after all.
Minus those vocals, we can't imagine this being in Slumberland, but with them, it makes perfect sense. Oh did we mention this is a flexi disc? Well, it is, one sided, two songs on the one side, still housed in a proper 7" sleeve and jacket.
Y'know there are people who aren't just nice guys, but who exude such a positive vibe that it's downright contagious? Shaggy Manatee is one of them. He's the man behind the Quaketrap label (featuring hip hop and electronic artists such as Australia's Macromantics, Yoko Solo, Thug Emporium and the man himself). Since he's a neighbor of ours (psst, he's also a purveyor of yummy breakfast delights), we see him often and regardless of the time of day, he's always bursting with energy and enthusiasm. And that vibe is all over In Between.
We've had this album on vinyl for a spell, but we're pleased to report that it's now on cd too with a handful of bonus tracks! One of them ("Breathe") is a collaboration between Shaggy Manatee and Macromantics, and we've come to realize that their combined forces never fail to dish out the good stuff. As a whole, In Between is a stimulating concoction of good times, heady atmospheres, and varied beats galore... and the joint efforts of Shaggy and his many guests effectively conveys the Quake Trap crew's social conscience too. However, even when things darken in Manatee land there's a bit of levity that shines through.
Digipack reissue of 1999 album on Manifold from these local weirdos!
On its surface Mandrake's music may ring familiar with elements of Americana folk and pop traditions, but to categorize this East Bay foursome as a folk pop band would be far too simplistic. In fact, that's why it's taken us this long to find words to write about their impressive debut album Featherweight. We should have known from their Prelude cdep which came out a couple years ago. Its title suggested beginnings, and we drew from it a sense of eager anticipation for things to come. Indeed, it and this full length prove 'twas no beginner's luck. They resonate with a depth, composition and composure far beyond their years. The songs echo with, but are not enslaved to the influences of greats such as Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens and Gram Parsons. As has become the norm for contemporary bands, the standard pop/rock instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums and vocals opens its arms to embrace strings of other sorts, horns and such. However, Mandrake never falls prey to empty accessorizing. They fully integrate each one tastefully into their often subtly prog-leaning, but very earthy songs. Each member's exceptional musicianship allows the band to ably leap from skeletal voice and guitar intimacies to fully fleshed rock numbers in a flash. Heavy in mood and emotion, dark in tone and lyrical matter, need we say, this album's title is a misnomer! Recommended for those that dig the more recent sounds of Bright Eyes, Jason Molina and My Morning Jacket.
Here's the debut solo album by singer/songwriter Jake Mann formerly of Bay Area band The Zim-Zims (you might recall he stepped out on his own for the cdr release Solo Electric EP). If you dig indie rock'n'pop, this gent's your ears' new best buddy! The super fuzzed out guitar lines on songs like "Satellite In Bloomington" could easily be mistaken for something comin' from Sam Coombes and Quasi. Mann keeps his pop tunes' buoyancy weighted down by minor chords and charming hushed vocals. Later in the album, "Mudflat" perks things up a bit, offering sounds akin to the bright, slightly tweaked pop of Olivia Tremor Control. Nicely varied, low-key popcraft.
Jake Mann is a member of Bay Area indie rock band Zim-Zims, but occasionally he's been known to step out on his own to do a little solo action... just him and his trusty electric guitar. His mellow croon is pretty darn reminiscent of Pat Fish from the late 80s/early 90s awesome Brits The Jazz Butcher. This six-song cd-r gives the shut-ins and out-of-towners a chance to hear him all by his lonesome, and preps our ears for his forthcoming full length later this summer. To end your listening experience on an up-note, we might recommend you press 'stop' after the fifth song 'cause right after that Mann does what we wish no one would do... he covers "I Can't Wait" by Nu Shooz.
Released as a part of a 7" series of modern ambient artists inspired by Brian Eno's groundbreaking Ambient series, local San Francisco painter and sound artist Marc Manning (formerly of Tied To The Branches) delivers this epic slice of cosmic gloom. Four hazy planetary lullabies of soft-edged electronics and guitarwork, cut by distant floating vocals and a wayward descending trajectory. In addition to the 7" there is a cd of one long 70 minute track called "October", which sounds like the doomed travels of a silent running spaceship far from home. Beautifully packaged with a 33rpm hand stamped 4 track 7", a 70 minute cd, artist portrait, double sided insert, 'ambience letter' insert, and a download code. Limited to 150 copies!
Last year we got turned on to the music of Marc Manning, and we instantly fell in love with his wonderful music. He's got quite the touch for creating dark, haunting and mesmerizing tracks both on his own and with his band Tied To Branches. His newest solo outing might be his moodiest release yet, slow and creeping songs with buried vocals, and a dark tinged shoegaze vibe that we love so much. Imagine tracks by Spiritualized and Felt slowed way down and doused in heavy sonic molasses and an extra narcotic haze. We also think folks who dig records by Rameses III, Jon Poras, Windy & Carl, Scott Tuma, and Grouper should check this out right away. This is one of those awesome records that makes just as much sense to listen to first thing in the morning or in the depths of a bleak, sleepless night.
Slowcore might have disappeared, but damn, Manning is doing an amazing job of bringing it back. But this is no rehash as he brings synths, rustic guitar, drone and dream pop all together in a seamless mix, making for an album that's going to be near our side all winter long. Highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Totally moving, ominous and breathtaking sounds from this San Francisco artist who uses his voice, guitars, delay, and feedback to create wonderfully mysterious, haunting and beautiful music. Imagine a stripped down version of Earth joining forces with a Grouper, all dazed and dreamy and stately, and you start to get an idea of the soundworld Manning is exploring here. And it's not just a simple take on any one genre, not straight drone, or noise, or pop, or post-rock or goth, or doom, yet it combines elements of all of those to create something unlike most of the sounds being created by the new wave of underground bedroom lo-fi music makers.
Here's A Breaking Sound also has this awesome vibe and atmosphere that sounds a little like some of our favorite Swans records playing at a WAY slower speed or perhaps bands like Low and Codeine swathed in gobs of fuzz and distortion. We also can't help but hear bits of Hala Strana, Christina Carter's Bastard Wing project, and Tom Carter music stripped down bare bones, fused with elements or a much more primitive Loren Mazzacane Conners. There is this sprawling loner country vibe that runs through the record in such an amazing way. Like Flying Saucer Attack wandering all alone through the desert and setting up one amp in the middle of nowhere to play these mesmerizing songs to the earth and sky and spirits.
There is also a warmth and sense of song that is so much missing in many similar minded projects. What makes Here's A Breaking Sound really stand out is that you really do feel an emotional response to the songs. They don't hit you over the head or try to impress you with their extremity, but instead they understand the power of starkness and subtlety, a potent musical mood that brings evokes such darkly rustic daydreams. Highly recommended!
Oh, and each cover is hand drawn and we're not sure how many of these he made so better to act fast on this one.
San Francisco-based artist and sound-scapist, Marc Manning delivers a new tape of beautiful feedback-drenched gloom rock dirges. Using what sounds like processed keyboards and guitars, the 5 pieces here range in duration from just under a minute to the side-long blackened interplanetary transmission, "Jupiter". And it covers just as much sonic terrain from weary sonambulent passages to narcoleptic synth-rock with buried vocals to galactic wails of noisy buzzing distortion. Heavy on the shoegaze vibe, but resulting in something much doomier, the pieces on this new tape also carry a quality of bleak prettiness, in that given the right volume we can be lulled to a lucid dreaming state of restless bliss through its dark majestic sojourn of sound. Limited to 50 copies, each one a red tape in a soft plastic case with a pasted unique handdrawn cover.
Poly.Sci.187? Hmmm, instead of political science, we get the impression that the lesson Mansbestfriend (aka Sole) is teachin' on this cd is that this is what DJ Shadow's album after Endtroducing -should- have sounded like. It's a lush, but somewhat lo-fi, sample laden instrumental doom hop collage. Alternately bleary and bracing. Pretty fucking great...
Jeffrey Manson is a new indie folk troubadour from right here in SF. This lo-fi home recorded album is filled with rootsy, rough hewn tunes which seems very much inspired by the earnest heart baring voice of Jeff Mangum. Best listened to in the great outdoors, far from the roar of the city. Dozing In The Abandoned Gunnery was released on the new indie label Recolote Music whose roster already includes a number of other likeminded homespun Bay Area artists such as Chinatown Bakeries, Ryan Stively & His Poison Band, and Port O'Brien. They release mostly limited run cdrs in lovingly handmade packaging.
Full length number two from these beloved SF psychedelic jangle poppers, and like their debut on Siltbreeze, Long Enough To Leave is another gorgeously fuzzy retro-pop garage-psych throwback, which sounds even more like some lost popsike reissue this time around, the group seemingly finding the perfect home on local pop label Slumberland. Unlike the more fuzzed out crunch of local outfits like Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall, the Mantles seem more aligned with modern jangle poppers like Woods or The Babies, and so so so reminiscent of classic jangle poppers on labels like Sarah and Flying Nun, as well as the Swell Maps and the Velvet Underground, a little bit lo-fi but still strangely warm and lushly layered, all dreamily druggy and laid back, their arrangements stripped down and minimal, every song warm and fuzzy, shimmery, summery and softly psychedelic, hooks galore, but those hooks tucked away, and employed subtly, the vibe more tranced out and hypnotic, the catchiness surfacing more and more with each repeated listen, eventually transforming their jangly hypno-pop into pure perfect pop gems, like "Brown Balloon", which over the course of 3:34 lodges itself in your head permanently, the catchiest part a single little guitar lick, that is the key to unlocking just how goddamn catchy every other part of the song truly is. "Bad Design" too, which right out of the gate delivers some classic pop catchiness, which somehow only gets more and more catchy over the next two minutes.
Repeated listens yields still more hooks, and reveals Long Enough To Leave as a fuzzy, psychedelic jangle pop (soon to be) classic!
Latest from the Mexican Summer label, in their ongoing campaign to seemingly release at least one record by every one of the coolest bands around these days, which has been a pretty serious success so far (barring the always inordinately OUCH-worthy Mexican Summer pricetag), and continues to be, with this, a brand new ep from SF power pop drone rockers The Mantles, who with the opening track, "Cascades", a brief two minute blast of some seriously perfect pop, render the aforementioned pricetag a non issue, cuz, you NEED this track, and if there was ever a $26 jam, this is it. Easy, the shortest, sharpest, catchiest track the Mantles have produced, it's still got some of that Velvet Underground swagger, but it's doused in power pop perfection, a crazy killer main melody, some sweet "ooooooh" background vocals, propulsive drumming, all wrapped in a dreamy haze, we'd be surprised if you didn't find yourself playing that one track over and over and over. But once you've got that out of your system, you can dig a bit deeper, the very Wipers sounding "Situations", all dour and minor key, the sun dappled hypnorock of "Lily Never Married, sounding a bit like a slightly more upbeat Spacemen 3, "Summer Read" all fuzzy and retro, with another cool tangly guitar melody, the sound crunchy and raw and urgent, a little Swell Maps, and still a lots Velvets, and finally, "Waiting Out The Storm", a brooding dirgey slowpop gem, all minimal drumming, and super distorted low slung riffage, laconic vocals, laid back and woozy and druggy, think Loop or Spacemen 3 again, but even slower and more washed out and lysergic, the sort of jam that live could get stretched out forEVER... Rad stuff. Way recommended. But remember, it's on Mexican Summer, so it's limited and odds are it will be gone in a flash...
Freshly back from Europe, these SF locals offer up another couple short sharp blasts of their jangly dreamy retro pop, the first release on French label SDZ. The A side is a woozy, washed out, laid back bit of hazy sixties style murk pop, woozy organ laid over crunchy guitars, shuffling rhythms, the vocals dreamy and way down in the mix, a Velvetsy bit of druggy jangle and crunch, the sort of song you'll find yourself playing over and over and over.
The B side, while still sunshiney and jangly, is a bit darker, the guitars are a bit more buzzy, the vibe a bit broodier, sounds like the Wipers, or maybe some lost Flying Nun NZ pop band, all angular crunch, sung/spoken vox, low slung, everything blurred and buzzy, the whole sound lo-fi and fantastically muddy and murky, with an awesome, mid-song, psychedelic guitar squall, that returns at the end for a final blow out, the sort of inspired freakout that should have gone on for another 10 minutes (maybe live they stretch it way out).
Regardless, two great new jams from one of our favorite local pop combos, which should tide you over until their upcoming Slumberland full length.
Second 7" from local San Francisco power pop group The Mantles, who will soon have their debut full length released on Siltbreeze. Not sure why this is called Trust, as that title is not mentioned anywhere, and the songs are "Don't Lie" on the A-side and "Secret Heart" on the B-side. But this is a band that likes to play with a bit of mystery, often sounding like they're from the seventies or eighties. Garnering comparisons to The Clean, or Big Star, they have also been called San Francisco's answer to The Crystal Stilts, which is apt as they seem to be mining similar retro sounds, although with the singing less mournful than you find on the Stilts releases. Engineered by Jason Quever from The Papercuts, this 7" is sure to please folks into the current wave of garage-pop bands on Woodsist, Slumberland, In The Red and of course Siltbreeze.
With a name that's quite a mouthful, this new SF band bursts forth with more than an earful of complex pop smarts. Imagine a right-on blend of Archer Prewitt, Thingy and Built To Spill (recently though, they were witnessed in kick-ass live mode adding a considerable dose of angstful energy much like BTS' Doug Martsch's old band Tree People)! Piqued your interest? Indeed! Making smooth and swift shifts from incredibly pretty lilting melodies to intricate mathy rhythm terrain and back again, the four individuals craftily flesh out the Maogojiata sound. Buoyant acoustic and crunchy electric guitars weave around the tight rhythm section's twists and turns while vocals swoop from high emotive wail like that of New Pornographers' Carl Newman to a soft, boyishness reminiscent of Sea & Cake's Sam Prekop. A very refreshing debut!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Koto virtuoso Masaoka teams up with jazz greats Reggie Workman (bass) and Andrew Cyrille (drums) to explore tunes from (or inspired by) both Thelonious Monk & Japanese folk music.
Madeline is the first release from these two Japanese gals currently calling SF their home. Prior to moving to the States, the pair were in a band called Small Universe, and one member is also currently the bassist for The Ass Baboons Of Venus! They dish out five very short (and only occasionally sweet) jolts of super raucous and lo-lo-fi, truly garage-style pop. Primitive thumpin' drumbeats, trashy guitar chords, girl gang vocals and the howl of uncontrolled feedback.
This fierce, frenetic Oakland band isn't afraid to take a kitchen sink approach to their brand of avant-garde metalcore... ok, maybe they don't include the metaphorical kitchen sink but they do cram in lots and lots of saxophone! That's on top of a heavy, mean, rockin' blend of grind, punk, black metal, prog, etc.
Dunno if they ever really exceed being just the sum of their overt influences (we'd guess the likes of Dillinger Escape Plan, John Zorn, King Crimson, Botch, Guapo, Motorhead, Slayer...) but they do make a nasty racket that even metalheads normally adverse to jazz and/or saxophones might find headbangingly worthy. So if "Yakety Sax" meets metal sounds good (or good n' weird) to you, check this out! As a bonus, this includes a Quicktime live video for their track "We Enslaved Elves To Build Our Death Machine"!
Long lost third record from this Bay Area crew, who back in the day (mid 2000's) released two killer blasts of grinding sax flecked grind metal crush, both released on the always stellar Crucial Blast label (licensed from UK label Monotreme), and Holocene, recorded right before the band broke up, and originally 'released' in 2007 (these copies come from the band's stash), finds the group still in fine form, continuing on from where record #2, Perfect Picture Of Wisdom & Boldness, left off - a dizzying assemblage of tangled math metal, blown out noise rock, mathy post-hardcore, all wound up into four blasts of furious pounding pummel, laced with plenty of avant experimentalism, little brief bits of almost jazziness here and there, long stretches of droned out metallic hypno-rock churn, flurries of chugging riffage draped over wild octopoidal tribal drum damage, the songs and sound lurching from near death metal blasts to knuckle dragging, bass heavy throb, often splintering into weird atonal mathy breakdowns, and often that's when the sax swoops in, the sound suddenly getting sort of death-jazz, before exploding right back into it.
The centerpiece here is for sure the nearly 12 minute closer, with its opening doom/sludge dirge, a downtuned trudge, subtle mathed out, the timing in constant flux, that mathiness gradually taking over, until it's a wild, neck snapping, math-metal blowout, only to slip right back into an even doomier sludgier creep, replete with sick, FX heavy vokills, the sort of thing current bands like Indian and The Body specialize in, but this is the Mass after all, so about halfway through, the sound shifts again, the guitar locked into a muted chug, then in comes the sax, the vibe is weird, and weirdly catchy, an avant doomjazz that quickly explodes into something much noisier, underpinning some wild guitar shred, before slipping right back into that dirge-y chug, which gradually crumbles, and distorts, the sounds more and more blown out and in the red until they finally devolve into near Merzbow digital blacknoize.
Killer, creepy artwork by comic artist Jon Wayshak, who not only did the front and back covers, but also did some awesomely gruesome portraits of each of the band members inside the booklet.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!!
How can you resist a hyperbolically boastful black metal title like Barbaric Usurpation Of The Hypereonic Black Metal Throne? Andee's tUMULt label continues to dig deep into the Bay Area black metal underground, after introducing the rest of the world to such USBM luminaries as Weakling, Leviathan, Draugar and Crebain, now prepare yourself to bow before the mighty Mastery. Another one man band, known (not so) simply as Domignostika, who also does time as vocalist in local corpse painted horde Pale Chalice, as well as being the one man behind the only REAL one man black metal band (as in he plays guitar and sings while playing blast beats with his feet) Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, and who had previously played bass and sung for the late great Horn Of Dagoth (which also featured members of Crebain and Kerasphorus), Mastery is Domignostika's long running project, which over the last six years released 5 extremely limited cd-r demos, all of which are collected here, remastered, and widely available outside of the Bay Area for the very first time.
Barbaric Usurpation Of The Hypereonic Black Metal Throne? A serious claim of musical supremacy? A tongue in cheek poke at the constant battle for supreme grimness and kvltness, or taking the piss? Hard to tell, but considering the sheer brutality and relentless buzz of Mastery's frenzied black onslaught, we're leaning toward that title being a serious claim. After a strange, ambient intro, a sort of John Carpenter-ish bit of creeped out synthscapery, Mastery launches into the most recent demo, from 2009, the simply titled 'I' (all the tracks here a confusionally titled with Roman numerals), a frantic, frenzied freak out of swirling chaotic black buzz, a sound that at first blush sounds like some bastard hybrid of Inquisition and Vondur and Ocrilim. Six plus minutes of relentless gnarled buzzing, the vocals a sinister beastly croak, the drums a furious buried blast, but it's the guitars, insanely tangled and twisted, not so much riffs as a continuous serious of constantly mutating rapidfire runs, with much of the 'riffing' sounding more like multiple guitars maniacally soloing, spitting off pick harmonics and jagged squeals without ever looking back. Minus the drums and the vokills, this could definitely be some sort of avant experimental guitar record, but as it is, it becomes a demented slab of blurred, blown out, frenzied and fucked up black metal weirdness. The second track is way heavier on the low end, but no less flipped out, the riffing impossibly hyper, once again a swirling chaos of gnarled blackness and nearly psychedelic abstract avant shreddery. Mastery is total berzerker black metal, rooted in the tradition of true grim blackness, but filtered through Mastery's cracked perception, transforming this into something beyond true, a droned out and damaged, outsider blackness, that sounds pretty much unlike almost any other black metal.
Sure on the surface, it's blast and buzz, but as you sink into these extended black sprawls, the songs seem to unfold, and expand, buzzing blackness that blossoms into something wholly other, in such a way, that one has to fight the urge to try and figure out how these songs work, or how they're arranged, they sound almost improvised, but they're impossibly dense, and the arrangement, however esoteric, seems to be structured, but in some way that out pitiful human brains can not hope to comprehend.
Of course the newest demo is the most polished, but the older demos, for what they lack in polish, they seem to make up for in sheer whatthefuckness, demo four is another series of black blasts that twist and turn, and mutate before your ears, a glancing listen will reveal some of THEE fastest and most furious BM you may have heard, but again, the riffs seem to be constantly twisting and turning, the vocals to, hateful and harsh as befitting BM, but also completely baffling and utterly alien. But demo 3, a single 33 minute epic is something else entirely, with much of the record being made up of glitched out, harrowing black ambience, crunchy and distorted, with howled raspy vox, when the guitar do kick in, the buzz and drone, with the drums sounding almost electronic, looped way down in the mix, the sound weirdly hypnotic, before slipping into something slightly more black, and then back into some creepy ambience, before launching into a long stretch of blown out black majesty, which like much of the record, as much to offer upon deep listening, revealing all manner of hidden melody, lush textures, and most notably some strange strange riffs, this track in particular, though adding a super mesmerizing trancelike element, which is in fact present throughout all the demos, in lesser measure.
The second disc is made up of the first two demos, and thus finds Mastery at their (his?) most traditionally black metal, but again, it's all relative, so while much of this disc is spent chugging and blasting, raw and grim, all brittle buzz and brutal blast, the twisted sounds that would come to define Mastery's baffling sound begin to surface, strange gnarled riffs, some cool drum/guitar interplay, plenty of wild tangled squiggle guitar weirdness (especially on the first track of demo 2), which mixes in maniacally shredding guitars with more o that tranced/droned out atmosphere, not to mention some of the most anguished vokills yet, the whole collection finishing with the downright doomy final track from the second demo, a crumbling super distorted death march, with somehow even MORE anguished vocals, a woozy, washed out, blackened plod, that explodes in the final two minutes for one final burst of blasting, maniacal, demoniac blackness.
Killer black, red and white space / wolf / spacewolf cover art.
It's been a really long wait, but it's finally here, the debut full length from SF one man black metal horde Mastery. After a collection of demos on Andee's tUMULt label, and splits with Palace of Worms and Skullflower, we now have Valis, which, if anything, has pushed an already confusional sound further into the realms of total WTF? unreality. That tUMULt demo collection was impossibly next level, and Valis is definitely a progression, into something twisted and cosmic, less songs as much as sprawling pieces, partially (perhaps wholly?) improvised, riff after riff after riff, the 18 minute opener boasting what has to be a hundred different riffs, some buzzy and black, others atonal and Greg Ginn-ish, all wound around each other in furious tangles, croaked vokills and wild drumming only adding to the cacophony, the end result almost like multiple black metal bands playing at once, but somehow orchestrated into something strangely cohesive, brutal and punishing, but also mesmerizing and trancelike, a prismatic sonic blur, undulating wildly, occasionally coalescing into proper blast and buzz, but more often splintering into wild gouts of blacknoize or arcing sheets of black psych freakout. It definitely might be too much for the meat and potatoes metalheads out there. This is most definitely AVANT, whether it's the sudden intrusion of acoustic guitar above simple snare roll, or the swirling kosmische interludes, the blasts of head spinning squiggly shred, or the slippery melodies, that sound like multiple slide guitars run through a battery of busted distortion pedals, the lurching, lumbering doom that oozes like the instruments are melting as they're being played, wild bursts of distorted crumble or the frantic Bernard Hermann like intro to the record, or just the sheer fury and velocity of some of the black buzz here, making other black metal bands sound like they're trudging through tar... Valis is less like black metal and more like a constellation of sonic smears and brutal blurs, all layered into one of the strangest, most challenging, and definitely one of the most deliriously demented outsider/experimental/avant black metal records EVER.
Killer cover art too.
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A short sweet -- ok the only word for it is quirky -- Randy Newman cover is side A of this single, but I like side B, an original, much better. Trademark boy girl razors-dipped-in-honey harmonies, pretty plinking piano and staccato drums. For fans of Rainer Maria, PEE, Death Cab for Cutie. Awesome time signature changes and amazing songwriting / lyric talents from married folks Jason and Kori. Highly recommended, as is their full length.
Up until this album Bay Area pop couple Mates Of State have pretty much stuck to their trademark approach of portraying two sweethearts gazing gooily into each others' eyes singing heart-shaped pop songs to each other. Back in 2000 their first album My Solo Project, filled with terrific bright pop tunes, was a sugary shot in the arm for the jaded stone-faced indie crowd. With their subsequent albums Our Constant Concern and Team Boo, although Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner's mutual adoration remained unquestionable, their behavior became something of a one trick pony -- y'know when your best friend won't stop fawning over his/her honeypie in your presence. You roll your eyes and think, "there they go again!" You just wanna shout, "stop being so damn cute!" Their emotive boy/girl vocals atop organ and drums instrumentation could sometimes be somewhat one dimensional. But despite some of us having a tummyache from all the buttercream frosted earnestness, we held our tongue. Heck, clearly many folks haven't had a problem with their lovey-dovey-ness. Their fans are pretty diehard. But we've just felt that they had the potential for more, and would get around to it sooner or later. On Bring It Back we hear the duo blossoming! Instead of public displays of affection (with the exception of the back cover photo and the re-creation of an old ABBA photo inside), their personal bond makes itself felt in less obvious ways -- two tunesmiths on the same wavelength, not only exploring it together but also inviting their musician friends along on their refreshing hook'n'harmony filled adventures (adding other vocalists, horns, stringed instruments, even some kazoo and didgeridoo!). Old fans, don't you fret. We're not talking any radical changes... just a bit more going on, more polish, embellishments and such. Despite both the (in our opinion) somewhat misleading grainy cover photo that makes the couple look like some '60s Serge Gainsbourg pop duo and the abovementioned '70s ABBA photo replica, today's Mates Of State are far from retro Euro-pop sounding (specifically of the French or Swedish persuasion). No, it's simply sunny California emo pop filling up this their most deliciously composed and crafted, not to mention prettiest album to date!
Rejoice! For here is the second full length album from the local duo Mates of State. We've raved on and on about their debut, and are happy to report the new album is equally wonderful. This is just shiningly-great power pop that is remarkable not only for
The Bay Area dreamy pop duo of Jaime Borschuk and P.F. Dumanis are back with their third full length. While the first two were delivered to our ears on cd, this one comes spinning on wonderful limited edition vinyl. Only 250 were pressed, so act fast! All These Days starts rolling in gentle fashion with "Fleeting", a lullaby tempo'd number that brings to mind the drowsy blanketing embrace of Yo La Tengo or Low. Wistful verging on downright melancholic. Then they get the toe tappin' and guitar strummin' on the considerably more upbeat second tune "Can i Love You Yet?" It's definitely more like what we recall from their previous releases. However, the bright burst of springy sunshine swiftly give way to the autumnal feel of the opening track, as the pair brings things back down again for the next tune. They stick to this slower, somber pace for the rest of the nine songs. While we certainly dig The Matinees' peppier side, on this album they prove to be just as engaging treading the more shadowier paths of pop.
The indie pop garden continues to blossom in the Bay Area! The Matinees' sophomore full length catches a ride on the fleeting warm sunbeams that visit SF around this time of year. Bask with us in some really good girl/boy sung tunes. On songs such as "Mission Beach" they're very much in the vein of Quasi, and take a more reeling whimsical spin more akin to Fiery Furnaces on "Fair Weather Friend". As for their drowsy pop rendition of David Bowie's "Modern Love"... well, we're not quite sure how we feel about that, but the rest of the album sure sounds sweet. Much more polished and composed than 2007's Sleepy Seeds. The album was recorded and co-produced by Greg Ashley, and features guests from local pals Love Is Chemical, Scrabbel, Invisible Cities, and Agent Ribbons.
If The Matinees might look and sound a bit familiar to you, it might be because you're already familiar with the individual members' other musical endeavors -- local bands Blue Period, Plan To Pink and The Bright Grey Wing. The SF duo make old style jangly indie pop, and by 'old style' we mean the girl/boy sung college radio delights of the early '90s. If you dig Unrest and the many other Mark Robinson fronted pop combos, you'll probably welcome The Matinees's debut album which made us think they were not so distant cousins of Mr. Robinson. Nice and sweet.
This limited pressing 3" cd from local sound alchemists Matmos continues in the same conceptual vein as their last major release, The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast, where each track was dedicated to a musical, philosophical or literary figure (Boyd McDonald, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, etc.). The material for this cd was originally commissioned by members of The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Matmos took the opportunity to create three pieces for one of their scientific heroes, Alan Turing. Who is Alan Turing, you ask? Well, Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer who became a pioeering figure in modern computing, and who contributed much to the debate about artificial intelligence and whether machines could ever develop consciousness and independently think (ever hear of the Turing Test?). But what makes Alan Turing an even more interesting and ultimately tragic figure for Matmos is the charges that were brought against him in the early fifties of "acts of gross indecency" for admitting to a sexual relationship with another man. After being put on probation and ordered to undergo hormone therapy, Turing ate an apple laced with cyanide. His death was ruled a suicide. Taking cues from Turing's work with cryptographic devices (otherwise known as the Enigma Machine) and his personal effects including postcards he sent to his lover before his suicide entitled Messages From The Unseen World, Matmos gained access to an actual Enigma machine and were able to use its sound for this recording. Enlisting help from David Tibet of Current 93, and Clodagh Simonds of Fovea Hex, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Matthew Curry and Mark Lightcap, Matmos have created three beautiful and touching pieces paying tribute this important and tragic figure. Limited to 1000 copies, and highly recommended!!!
San Francisco's darling electronic conceptualists Matmos have crafted an ambitious collection of audio portraits for their 6th full album, allowing their baroque sampling tricknology to articulate the metaphors in mapping out the complexities of each of the portraits. The collection of audio portraits represents the inspiration pantheon for Matmos, ranging from the ivory tower of academia to far reaches of underground culture. Hence, there's analytical philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the scabrous feminist Valarie Solanas, New York house legend Larry Levan, Germs' frontman Darby Crash, homoerotic photographer James Bidgood, eccentric producer Joe Meek, gay chronicler Boyd McDonald, countercultural godfather William S. Burroughs, and noir-thriller novelist Patricia Highsmith. Matmos' work has always been a cavalcade of electro-acoustic stunts directed within a studied and adventurous reading of contemporary electronica tinged with comedic overtones, ranging from black humour to slapstick antics. The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast is no different, romping through wah-wah splattered porno funk, mutant disco beats clipped with diva-house vocals, noirish concrete-collages, and tracks literally wrapped in semen stained sheets. As Matmos deconstructs and compresses the dense histories of each of their portrait subjects into the context of a six to ten minute electronica tracks, it's the details that Matmos amass that give each of their portraits such charm and pleasure. Very well done, indeed!
At long last, possibly our favorite Matmos record ever is back in print! The West is by far the most sprawling and highway ready record in their illustrious back catalog. With all the well deserved attention they've received over the years for their innovative methods and countless collaborations one thing that's often overlooked is how well their records tend to predict and predate what's about to come floating up from the musical underground. Recorded and released a few years before the big new weird America/freak folk movement took off and before everyone was using laptops to create folktronica, Matmos made this amazing album that perfectly melds their leftfield electronic roots with spacious and trance inducing guitar to create the kind of record you would imagine might have been made if Henry Flynt and Jim O'Rourke were to collaborate or if Christian Fennesz got to twist knobs while John Fahey was playing in one of his most exploratory moments. With a long list of guests including J. Lesser and David Pajo (Slint, Papa M) on board for the record, Drew & Martin once again demonstrate how great they are at letting others into their world and being open to where the sounds will take them while still maintaining a distinct vision.
The West is for sure one of our favorite roadtrip records of all time. "Sun on 5 at 152" really does sound exactly how it feels when the sun is blasting through your dirty windshield and you can't really see what's ahead but you keep your foot on the pedal and just follow the road to wherever it may lead you. While no two Matmos records are alike The West probably finds its most kindred spirit in The Civil War, another Matmos record that proves there is much more to these great music makers then simply synths and samples. No matter what they create, soul seeps richly through their fractured sounds and in our opinion The West may be their most soulful, satisfying and resonating release EVER. Highly recommended!
This is one of our unanimous store favorites, a very accesible, murky electronic record inspired by electro and the sounds of hair, breathing and Polish trains. Recommended without reservation, this is some of the best of the bunch.
This limited edition collection of live material from Matmos with J Lesser (and a couple of guests) exposes the improvisational ability of this San Francisco electronica duo (or trio if you count Lesser) who are mostly reknowned for their transmutation of
Matmos wanted to keep this a limited release, only selling these to a handful of shops across the globe. While not quite exclusive to Aquarius, this album isn't terribly likely to be showing up at many other shops! Act fast!
Ed Mattson's debut cd features eleven laidback, down-homey country folk numbers. Joining him in the playing and producing duties is fellow Bay Area based indie rootsy singer/songwriter Clay Hawkins. Many of the songs bring to mind a more barebones brethren of warm, weathered Americana bands such as Red House Painters or American Music Club. Released on the new SF label and music collective Visionguild.
We've been getting tons of requests for this, and after many attempts at contacting the band, we've finally got copies of their full length vinyl debut!! Maus Haus is a local San Francisco experimental pop six piece group, whose analogue synth-driven sounds lend themselves to comparisons to bands like Hot Chip, Stereolab, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Aavikko and Grizzly Bear. They're sure garnering a popular following with floor-filling live club gigs and word-of-mouth buzz!! But Maus Haus also mine a more off-kilter chamber pop sound that often forays into adventurous noirish British jazz territory that set the group apart from their perhaps better known contemporaries and influences. Whipsmart lyrics, soulful harmonies and tightly shifting musical arrangements (pensive harpsichords, far-off flutes and hypnotic saxophone hooks weave throughout) aptly display the group's fine-tuned musicianship and makes this local band definitely one to watch! Each LP comes with a mp3 download card for those who are vinyl-impaired! Very Recommended!
Two new songs from this local Oakland sextet who are not afraid of tight and compositionally complex pop epics. Like a mix of Aavikko's energetic synthetic pop, Grizzly Bear's vocal harmonies and Liars urgent avant leanings, Maus Haus are probably amongst the hardest working local musicians and it shows! This white vinyl 7" comes with a download card for both songs plus three other brand new tracks from their Sea Sides EP. That's a lot of bang for your bucks!
Originally released as super limited cd-r's back in 2008, these killer slabs of twisted, outsider fuzz-pop black-gloom weirdness/genius are finally available again, now on the kvltest of formats, the cassette! Two cd-r's on a single tape! Here's what we had to say about I Am The Mausoleums back when we first reviewed it on New Arrivals List #276:
You think Wold and Velvet Cacoon know a thing or two about buzz and distortion, well, those guys have nothing on the Mausoleums...
It's hard to even quantify how blown out and buzzy the sound is here, it might make more sense to reference Japanese noise music cuz this almost sounds like straight up super distorted speaker melting N.O.I.S.E., on the surface at least. Until you notice a roiling whirlpool of blackened riffing and howled vocalizing, just beneath all that harsh hiss and brutal buzz. It's almost like Ildjarn or Beherit recorded by Masonna and produced by Merzbow. Blasting and relentless, face melting fury, guitars so distorted they sound like they might crumble into jagged shards, drums that sound like bursts of white noise, but all deftly shaped into riffs and songs and chunks of seriously scalding blackened metal.
But then the band will unleash something like "Cicada", a gorgeous loping slowcore jam, again doused with delay and buried under a layer of distorted grit, but strangely lovely, with a bit of melancholy twang mixed in.
Or the freaked out blackpsych blast of "Joan Of Arc" a track that sounds like a dense slab of pure black buzz and howl, until suddenly a gorgeous chunk of indie jangle surfaces, still dripping with distorted buzz, but so goddamn dreamy and melodic, like an even more distorted damaged My Bloody Valentine, the drums and cymbals so corroded and decayed, they balance out the dreamy jangle. Elsewhere, riffs are dipped in molten hellfire and pushed all the way into the red, crumbling distortion is draped over lilting minor key guitar, strange Greg Ginn-ish angular guitars are twisted and melted down into more black buzz...
And while the majority of the record is some of the filthiest, blackest buzzingest metal you'll ever hear, the buzzing blackness is split up by all sorts of unlikely and not that black jams, the strangely skeletal Stereolab-ish post rock of "Lenin Not Lennon", the creepy black electro (replete with strangely Beatles-esque guitar) of "Insignificance", the metalized buzz wrapped Neu!-isms of "Running Through The Reeds", the warbly organ flecked garage stomp of "I Guess I'm Like A Prince, Maybe" and the Spacemen 3 like druggy drone of "Like A Prince", all seemingly out of place, but when listened to as a whole, seem to perfectly balance the extreme brutal buzz of the rest of the disc.
Maybe too fucked up and far out for most metal heads, but folks into super damaged heaviness, and freaked out whatthefuck metal will dig this BIG TIME.
And here's what we had to say about Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire back on aQ New Arrivals List #288:
The long overdue return of aQ faves The Mausoleums, whose last record was a confusional swirl of grim black buzz and weird jangle pop, blown out bliss and thick dense noise. For this second record, the Mausoleums seem to have turned down the buzz (just a bit) and turned up the pop. That's right. POP. Not that there wasn't pop all over the last Mausoleums disc I Am The Mausoleum, but the opening track on Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire, "Livelihood", is a gorgeous organ drenched slab of crunchy distorted shoegaze jangle. And we're not talking about the new wave of "metalgaze" that so many metal bands seem to be glomming onto, this is just glorious and resplendent and soaring, shimmering blisspop nirvana, the guitars jangly but washed out and fierce, the melodies sprawling and sun drenched, the sound crumbling and gloriously distorted. In fact, one song in and we're thinking it well worth the price of admission.
But it doesn't take long for the band to dip back into their other true love, the next track, "The One Who Sees", finds the band returning to a furious blackened buzz, howled vocals, pounding drums, insect like riffage, but even then, the sound is still rife with disembodied pop jangle and soaring guitar buzz, an impossible hybrid that sounds way better than it should. The next track is neither, instead a dense processed soundscape of soaring guitar feedback, little curlicues of buzzing melody, looped stuttering drums, dizzying minor key strum, all tangled up in a gloriously seasick hypnotic whirl.
"Thief" begins as straight up pop, like some super distorted Pavement outtake, or lost Sebadoh jam, all fuzzy jangle and simple propulsive drumming, until the vocals come in, a super distorted black metal shriek, bringing with it another layer of buzzing blown out distortion.
And so it goes for the rest of the record, careening from glorious shoegaze distortion drenched buzz pop, to in-the-red lo-fi black metal crunch, but with those two various sonic strains constantly bleeding and leeching into the other, resulting in the record's finest moments, the impossibly dense, epic, majestic guitar drone shoegaze blowout of "Old Woman In The Woods", impossibly heavy, yet gorgeously melodic at the same time, the strange distorted folky raga buzz of "His Reward", the frenetic ultra distorted surfy twang of "Skeletal" and finally the brief closer, "The Bees", a lovely chunk of overdriven steel string Appalachia that near the end explodes into a brief blown out buzz-drenched burst of looped digital fuzz.
The Mausoleums are back with a new collection of hypnosis-inducing riffs and sonorous tape-saturated grit transmissions in tow. With this, their fourth outing, The Mausoleums continue to refine the ball-lightning-like blown out energy of their earlier missives' psychedelic black metal into a somewhat more dynamic nuanced approach consisting of heavy doses of fried amp guitar buzz, churning organ, bass and percussion. Even with the feeling of simplicity achieved via elemental reduction and experiments in fidelity shift, the result is equal parts fist-pumping and cerebral, like a foggy haze trapped in a perpetually ascending NASA shuttle. This album retains the feeling of claustrophobia and paranoia of earlier ones; yet, more than before, production accentuates mood, providing just enough space for the sounds to breathe and create texture and depth, particularly in the buried yet aggressively melodic, occasionally double-tracked, vocals. There's a strange sense of reassurance in the music; the knowledge of plant growth overrunning remnants of civilization, perhaps, while Hawkwind riffs warble on the last Victrola. While the Mausoleums have always felt like an unearthed, organic compost of sound, elements of rural black dirt psychedelia and even Appalachia drape like a shrouds of mist on this record more heavily than before, alongside wafting echoes and half-remembered dreams of other distinctly domestic traditions: Detroit Rock, Southern Blues, metal, and hardcore, among others. And the Mausoleums' dirt-under-the-nails approach extends beyond the sonics; in spite of the diversity of influences and implications of cross-pollination, the Mausoleums seem to exist wholly on their own terms, offering a compelling statement in support of the simplicity of homegrown songcraft, production, and maintaining a singular vision in an era of hyper-aware referential complexity.
