Hurrah, here's the sophomore self-released album from Mist And Mast, fronted by Mr. Jason Lakis (formerly of The Red Thread and Half Film)! Action At A Distance almost sounds like it was plucked from some secret lost treasure trove of '90s college radio ready indie rock. We say "almost" because the very tastefully embellished and very modern recording production gives its true age away. Still, the strummy electric guitars, slightly elliptical and mathy melodies, and slouchy boyish vocals feel cozily familiar like a well-worn and beloved sweater. Some things are simply untethered to trendiness, and genuine heartfelt earnest indie rock songwriting is one of them! That's why Lou Barlow, Joe Pernice, Rob Crow and Jason Lakis and his crew are still goin' strong. Definitely recommended...
Latest record from this local indie rock combo (number three by our count), fronted by aQ pal Jason Lakis, who back in the day was also the frontman for a couple other aQ fave outfits, the Red Thread and Half Film, and while those bands tended toward the more brooding melancholy slowcore side of the spectrum, Mist And Mast traffic in more of a classic indie rock, a sound that to our ears is totally timeless, although perhaps it's more that the sounds are of a different time, specifically the nineties, an era that old folks like us look back upon wistfully, lamenting the passing of the days when bands like Mist And Mast got the sort of attention they deserved. Cuz holy cow, this record is great, and this band just keep getting better with every release, the songs here more fully realized than ever, deftly crafted and meticulously recorded, the sound lush and layered, rife with subtle impossibly memorable hooks, crazy catchy melodies, all wed to a gorgeous dark and dreamlike jangle, not to mention some awesome guitar harmonies, and Lakis's vocals sound better than ever, this is the sort of classic pop that fans of groups like Built To Spill, the Comas, the Shins, Modest Mouse and all the rest, should be flipping out over. If there's any justice, this will be the record that finally perks up the ears of all the folks who should already be listening to these guys. WAY recommended for anyone into classic pop, indie rock and warm wistful jangle. Stick around for record closer, "Red, Right, Returning", which finds Lakis taking Mist And Mast into some haunting, darkly brooding Earth / Barn Owl / Morricone territory, and it definitely suits them!
Beautifully packaged in handmade digipaks, each one adorned with a different map, and each one hand stamped and silkscreened. Also includes liner notes / lyrics also printed on an old map. Nice!
The Mits are a Bay Area combo with lots of crunchy guitars and feisty girl vocals... very much in the grand ol' Lookout! Records tradition of energetic East Bay / Gilman Street punk pop.
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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The sexy mustachioed Invisible Skratch Pikl, and now Beastie Boys DJ, breaks out with this excellent full length. As Oliver Wang rightly points out in the SF Bay Guardian, this record is worlds apart from the recent Shiggerfragger Skratch Piklz cd, which featured multi-turntable improvisations. Anti-Theft Device is more tightly composed, never lets up for a second -- it's clear that the Mix Master worked really hard on this record... and has come up with a full on car-stereo-worthy beatbox classic. Refreshingly free of "filler", and most of us here think it is much better than the Beastie Boys record. Lastly, the CD booklet folds out into a mini-poster.
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One of the very best, dynamic and exciting pieces from Mike's recent Anti Theft Device album, "Suprize Packidge" utilizes a cool sample from "The Taking of Pelham 123", and is here presented in its original form plus a remix by the ubiquitous Automator (we mean that in a nice way, Dan). Also included are three other pieces, at a very budget price for the cd format. You can't go wrong.
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3 turntablist pieces from the sexiest Skratch Pikl.
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There's a disembodied cartoon wrist on cover.
From right here in SF comes this kick ass debut of fuzzy, jangly, shoegazey, noisy, bliss pop, from a group called Modern Charms, who sound like they've been studying their nineties indie rock songbooks, in particular, the Swirlies, My Bloody Valentine, Curve, Lush, Slowdive, and really, if that reads like a list of your favorite bands, then Modern Charms are gonna knock your pop-gaze socks off. A few seconds into the first track, "When We Get There" should be all it takes, muted minor key riff, chiming harmonics, angelic ethereal female vox, softly swirling guitar textures, all blurred and smeared into epic billows of chordal swirl, and shot through with shards of feedback, and wild burst of noisy psychedelia, Modern Charms have the sound DOWN, in fact, if you told us this was actually some lost shoegaze gem from the nineties, we'd totally buy it. The music is pitch perfect, right down to the production, and while much of MC's sound is wispy and washed out, the band display plenty of musical muscle as well, with big crunchy riffs, and some seriously noisy psychedelic shoegaze freakouts. But the icing on this retro pop cake has to be the super distinctive voice of vocalist Inna Kurikova, whose gorgeous vocals drift ethereally through thick swaths of noise guitar, and wrap themselves languidly around moody, brooding jangle. And it's not just the sound, the songs too, plenty of subtle hookiness, catchy choruses, the group deftly transforming simple jangle pop into something much more epic and expansive, heady and hypnotic.
The former core trio of post rock combo Tarentel (Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Danny Paul Grody and Trevor Montgomery) have been on a roll lately, releasing tons of solo, side projects and collaborative efforts! Danny and Trevor are both in The Drift and synth duo Believer, which both have new releases out or coming soon. Danny has got a new solo album on Students of Decay that'll be here shortly. Trevor has been on the last two Date Palms records and released the Isidore Ducasse lp with Jefre, and Jefre has released recently a solo album on Type and a record with his other outfit, The Alps on Mexican Summer. Hardest working local musicians? Maybe so now that the three of them have reunited together in this new outfit, Moholy-Nagy (rhymes with mirage, hence the title of the album, Like Mirage). Named after the Bauhaus artist and professor whose photogram experiments and industrial design aesthetic have made him known as one of the fathers of Light Art, the band have made a gorgeous record of light-searching cosmic excursions utilizing synths, piano, pastoral guitar and drum machine. Dreamy and drifting but also focused and grounded, Like Mirage hones the strongest sensibilities of each member into something truly collaborative. And though cosmically charged music has been the modus operandi of all three members through most of their side and solo projects and labels, Like Mirage manages to sound completely distinctive from their other projects which is a strong indicator of the masterful musicianship each one brings to the table. Beautiful stuff!
Latest from this local boy/girl, goth-glam, dayglo duo, who traffic in a twisted strain of dirgey gothic gloomrock, all churning dolled up deathrock rhythms and echo drenched vox, sounding like they could have been transported straight from LA or London circa 1985. Think 45 Grave or Specimen maybe, the sound churning and rhythmic, their droned out rhythmic gloominess peppered with some Siouxsie like vocal trills, and Budgie like tribal drum pound, there's plenty of bass buzz too, even some snake-charmer horns, all wound up into a collection of druggy, lo-fi, gothic, psychedelic gl(oom)(am)...
Do you like your rock 'n' roll a little, um, weird? Moira Scar, the catchily jarring new project from Roxy and LuLu of Floating Corpses infamy, touch all the right nerves with their first self-titled release. The opening number, "Salley Meander", sounds like The Crystal Stilts if Brad Hargett sang in falsetto. "You Make Me Scream" channels The Cramps pretty heavily and is complimented by some free-floating psychedelic synths and horns. "Blood Moon" finishes off the first side nicely with more horns, a cacophony of horns, in fact, one that brings to mind the jazzier moments of The Nation of Ulysses or Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes. By far the best track on the record, "Gnu Groove (Wildebeest Wiggle)", opens up the second side. Roxy's vocals flow from falsetto to baritone to passionate screaming all within about ten seconds, riding the wave of jangly guitars and a simple but effective drum beat. Not to mention the awesomely anticlimactic guitar solo..... This record, clocking in at just under 23 minutes, will have you flipping back to side A just after side B spins to a close. Highly recommended!
Finally reissued and available once again, thanks to the fine folks at Slumberland, this time on colored vinyl [whoops, almost all gone already, being repressed though], and CASSETTE!!
Fans of local pop geniuses the Ovens, which are a whole lot of you, but should really be ALL of you, rejoice, and enjoy another incredible blast of noise pop songsmithery courtesy of Ovens mainman Tony Molina, whose solo sound is essentially, and really EXACTLY like the Ovens, fuzzed out pop, metallic chugging, soaring harmonized guitars, a dreamy croon, and ridiculous self deprecating lyrics, INCREDIBLE hooks, and the sort of poppiness that will get lodged in your head forEVER. SO yeah, anyone who bought and loved the Ovens cd Andee released on his tUMULt label, well, you're gonna want, nay, NEED this. As always, Molina's songs (and by extension, the Ovens' as well) are equal parts Weezer, Thin Lizzy, the Beatles, Guided By Voices, Dinosaur Jr, Teenage Fanclub, and pretty much every other fuzzy jangly pop band you ever loved, but all that boiled down and rendered into ultra brief, fragmented blasts of micro pop brevity, and we're talking boiled down as in thirteen songs in twelve minutes! One of those records you'll no doubt play over and over and over.
There are tracks like opener "Nowhere To Go", which sounds like it could have been plucked right off the Ovens cd proper, so much crammed into so little time, soaring harmonized guitars, the occasional metallic chug, the fuzzy main riff, the laid back vox, the melodies impossible to resist, and like many Ovens songs, blink and you'll miss it. None of that verse chorus verse shit, if you're lucky, you'll get verse chorus. Sometimes just verse! Like on tracks like "Sick As Riff", where you don't even get a riff, more like a dreamy little acoustic guitar interlude. Check out "Change My Ways", which should most definitely have J Mascis looking over his shoulder, the Dinosaur Jr vibe HUGE, right down to the guitar tone. And like we've said before, if Tony wasn't so brilliantly ADD, and could make a song longer than 90 seconds, he and the Ovens could/would/should be HUGE. But we're not complaining, it's part of their charm, the barrage of crazy hooks, perfect melodies, definitely pushing a lot of the same buttons Guided By Voices do.
So yeah, needless to say, these 12 minutes the probably gonna be our favorite 12 minutes of pop music this year, so grab one of these before they're gone, and leave a little space at the top of your 2013 year end lists, cuz even only two months in, and we're pretty sure, unless there's a new Ovens record that somehow pops up, this one's gonna be tough to beat.
Fans of local pop geniuses the Ovens, which are a whole lot of you, but should really be ALL of you, rejoice, and enjoy another incredible blast of noise pop songsmithery courtesy of Ovens mainman Tony Molina, whose solo sound is essentially, and really EXACTLY like the Ovens, fuzzed out pop, metallic chugging, soaring harmonized guitars, a dreamy croon, and ridiculous self deprecating lyrics, INCREDIBLE hooks, and the sort of poppiness that will get lodged in your head forEVER. SO yeah, anyone who bought and loved the Ovens cd Andee released on his tUMULt label, well, you're gonna want, nay, NEED this. As always, Molina's songs (and by extension, the Ovens' as well) are equal parts Weezer, Thin Lizzy, the Beatles, Guided By Voices, Dinosaur Jr, Teenage Fanclub, and pretty much every other fuzzy jangly pop band you ever loved, but all that boiled down and rendered into ultra brief, fragmented blasts of micro pop brevity, and we're talking boiled down as in thirteen songs in twelve minutes! One of those records you'll no doubt play over and over and over.
There are tracks like opener "Nowhere To Go", which sounds like it could have been plucked right off the Ovens cd proper, so much crammed into so little time, soaring harmonized guitars, the occasional metallic chug, the fuzzy main riff, the laid back vox, the melodies impossible to resist, and like many Ovens songs, blink and you'll miss it. None of that verse chorus verse shit, if you're lucky, you'll get verse chorus. Sometimes just verse! Like on tracks like "Sick As Riff", where you don't even get a riff, more like a dreamy little acoustic guitar interlude. Check out "Change My Ways", which should most definitely have J Mascis looking over his shoulder, the Dinosaur Jr vibe HUGE, right down to the guitar tone. And like we've said before, if Tony wasn't so brilliantly ADD, and could make a song longer than 90 seconds, he and the Ovens could/would/should be HUGE. But we're not complaining, it's part of their charm, the barrage of crazy hooks, perfect melodies, definitely pushing a lot of the same buttons Guided By Voices do.
So yeah, needless to say, these 12 minutes the probably gonna be our favorite 12 minutes of pop music this year, so grab one of these before they're gone, and leave a little space at the top of your 2013 year end lists, cuz even only two months in, and we're pretty sure, unless there's a new Ovens record that somehow pops up, this one's gonna be tough to beat.
Over the last couple years San Francisco's Mon Cousin Belge have earned quite the reputation for their raucous, theatrical and dazzling live performances. And in a city that's got such a great history for campy, subversive and wonderfully queer art and music it's actually kind of sad to say that it's becoming more rare to find a really good charged and dazzling homo-rock band around these parts lately. Luckily Mon Cousin Belge have been filling that void quite nicely. With a sound equally influenced by glam-rock, torch songs and the sparkling seedy side of high octane pop, Quelle Horreur is an action packed flamboyant and proud album that fits perfectly in any record collection containing the soundtrack to Hedwig & The Angry Inch, Ziggy Stardust era Bowie, Sparks, B-52's and Nina Hagen. With song titles like "Tweaker Bitch", "Sodomy" and "Pigdog" and the trashy chops to back it all up, someone really needs to get this in the hands of John Cameron Mitchell and John Waters as this could be their new favorite band!
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Brand new lp by East Bay's Mono Pause. Taking cues from the early days of Thinking Fellers and Sun City Girls then building on it, Mono Pause's compositions range from off kilter ethno-prankster-rock, to seemingly semi-German classic psych, to improv skronk. The multitude of such musical tangents are at times discreet and others brilliantly blended. Quite good.
Split between east-bay ethno-rockers Mono Pause and Icelandic organ power-trio Aavikko, with each band covering the other's work. Mono Pause takes a mighty fine stab at "El Cebo", slowing down the tempo and filling out the arrangement with guitar, ud (mandolin? other ethnic-lute-thingy?), whacked synths, drums, bass, trumpet and more. After a Kraftwerk style vocoder intro, Aavikko, for their part, do almost the opposite with their arrangement of their chosen Mono Pause tune: stripping it down to fit their organ, organ and drum format and speeding up the tempo to a lively jaunt. Very purdy cover art on this Seeland release, makes it worth the slightly steep 7" price. We wonder if Seeland has designs on possibly reissuing some of that out of print Aavikko stuff.
Brand new band from our own backyard brings us 9 impeccable pop songs. Their debut album, "Here Comes The Monolith" sounds more like the work of a seasoned rock mainstay than a rookie's first time at bat. The Monolith successfully harken the sounds of Cheap Trick, Beatles, E.L.O., Big Star and more recently, The New Pornographers. The latter probably most noticably distinguished by the silky vocal harmonies present in every song. Superbly crafted pop arrangements with heart-snagging hooks, bridges & choruses filled with horn sections and strings are merely the icing on the cake. The cherry on the top is the gorgeous production that is so often sadly lacking from debut releases. Highly recommended!
Oh the yummy pop power of The Monolith! They continue to dish it out in heaping spoonfuls on this their second album. This terrific Bay Area foursome take the standard pop band instrumentation of vocals, guitar, bass and drums, and plush it up so nicely with horns, keyboards and strings. The Monolith sound is alternately reminiscent of Quasi, Apples In Stereo, Big Star, Beatles, Beach Boys, maybe even a bit of Bread too -- y'know, all the best popsters! Bright, bouncy, harmony filled sweetness. Meet you there? You bet!
A massive scuzzy, sloppy, fuzzed out, psychedelic, deleriously damaged blast of spaced out garage rock from the (not so) legendary Monoshock. This collection gathers up all the singles, compilation tracks and demos from this criminally under appreciated band. Overblown, and lo-fi, stumblingly brilliant, psych rock jams of the highest order. All chaos guitar and splattery drums, howled vocals, and a surprisng amount of hooks buried under all the fuzz and grit and blown speaker detritus. Think Hawkwind played by the Stooges, recorded on a boombox. They even cover the Hawkwind classic "Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)".
Now available again on vinyl, the only proper full length from this legendary crew of SF psychedelic punks whose sound was a drunken and drugged out freakout equal part the Stooges, Flipper and Hawkwind, makes sense that some of these guys also play(ed) in the equally noisy and fucked up psych rock garage punk outfit Liquorball!
Needless to say, if you love Liquorball, you'll definitely want to get a load of these guys, who sound like a more fucked up and freaked out Comets On Fire, every track a full bore psych-punk blowout, dirgey and crusty and droned out, the drums and bass locked into endless grooves, the vocals a distorted bark, the guitars though� wild swirls of wah wah everywhere, constant leads, shredding one second, spitting gouts of textural noise the next, slipping easily from hypno-rock crunch to loose almost free form psychedelic space rock, or dirgey swaggery Stooges-y churn. Gloriously loose and ramshackle, lo-fi and noisy, atonal and angular, the sound constantly on the verge of collapse, but for every stretch of fractured damaged psych, the band were capable of conjuring some equally genius blissed out drug rock radness, often impossible to tell which was which. While maybe a bit too lose and fucked up for the current crop of psychedelic space rockers, this stuff is fierce and feral and delivers the kind of true psych few bands were or are able to conjure.
This is the debut release from this young local outfit, and it's a doozy. Obviously influenced by the post-metal heavies like Neurosis and Isis, they also infuse their sound with some seriously atmospheric twang flecked dreaminess a la Earth or Barn Owl. Two side long epics, each one a brooding slow build. Doomy for sure, but also atmospheric, and darkly psychedelic. Clouds of downtuned guitar shimmer ride atop, loping rhythms, all wreathed in a swirl of distant guitar shimmer. Opener "White Owl" begins total True Widow style slowcore, and we would have been perfectly happy if it just kept plodding along like that, hypnotic low slung doom-dirge mesmer, totally tranced out and dreamy. But then about four minutes in, the guitars com crashing down, blown out and in the red, huge heaving walls of cascading riffage. We sorta expected the band to stay locked into that doomy trudge, but instead, things settle down into that opening psychedelia again, before bursting into something much more math/post rocky, replete with some super tense leads, emotional and minor key, adds some serious pathos and drama to the proceedings, and again, we would have been just as happy if it never got heavy/loud again, but obviously it does, and we were pretty darn happy about that too, a dense, chugging mathy tangle, that explodes into a churning doomy groove, complete with bellowed, glass gargling vox, eventually slowing down to an almost ultra-doom sludge, before once again, returning to the dark psych-dirge opening, only to surprise with one final burst of skull caving heaviness right at the end.
The flipside offers up another variation, similarly structured but a bit more riffy, the vocals swooping in much earlier this time, the sound a bit like a more raw, and more fierce Katatonia, but with the same sort of minor key melodicism, and like the first side/track, the song seems to swing back and forth between the two, mixing it up here, by wedding those bellowed vokills to the clean guitar and rums breakdown, before once again bursting into some seriously headbanging riffery and some soaring, emotional Godspeed style crescendos.
Fans of all things slow and low, heavy and sludge-y, post metal and metallic post rock, will wonder where these guys have been all their lives. And as mentioned above, clear a little space between your Isis and Neurosis records, cuz while this might not be the most original sound ever, these guys do it really well, and add their own sonic twists, and while this is pretty great for a first record, it definitely points toward some bigger and better things to come.
Brand new split from local heavies Monuments Collapse, whose debut lp was a big hit around here, fusing Neurosis / Isis style post metal heaviness, with brooding psychedelic slowcore a la True Widow. Their half of this new split finds them in equally fine form, opening with a gorgeous bit of psych folk ambience, before launching into some epic, majestic, crushing heaviness, all throat shredding howl, and blown out, lumbering doomic crush, but like that debut, MC's sound manages to remain rife with melody, the vibe melancholic, the sound laced with droned out, downtuned thrum, not to mention some extended space jam mesmer, chugging, churning, soaring metallic majesty. They close their side of the split with the 10+ minute "Pathos", that begins all meandering post rock drift, chiming melodies, subtle percussion, a stripped down rhythm, and thick, rumbling bass, totally tranced out and moody, the sound building slowly to some serious epic metallic mathiness, the sound blossoming into full on Godspeed style metallic epicry, that stretches out for the remainder of the track/side. So great. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the world catches on.
The flipside comes from Breag Naofa, a progged out doom sludge combo from the Pacific Northwest, who were a big surprise for sure, their sound equalling Monuments Collapse in terms of metallic heft and sonic majesty, the opening few minutes, super melodic and mathy, unwinding an epic instrumental jam, that sounds a bit like a way more metal Mogwai, until the vocals come swooping in, a monstrous bellow, the music following suit, thick downtuned riffage, massive drum pound, the song churning and roiling malevolently (but still melodically), before slipping into a washed out post rocky sprawl, all muted steel string strum, chiming chords, and sinewy, spidery bassline, eventually working its way back up to an epic and emotional coda, plaintive and melancholic, sounding a bit like Neurosis crossed with Alcest...
The second track is more of the same. Opening with a rumbling raga like buzz, punctuated by monster drum pound, thick sprawling guitar buzz, and some strange percussion, before exploding into a tarpit trudge, thick chugging guitars and keening high end leads, definitely reminiscent of Neurosis (circa Enemy Of The Sun), brooding and massive, like the first track, it winds down into some spaced out psychedelic drift, and once again works its way back to one final blast of pound and pummel, all dense guitar chug and churning double kick drumming, locked into a seriously crusty doom-ic groove, before gradually fading to nothing. Killer stuff from both bands for sure, and man do we want to hear more from Breag Naofa...
Bay Area folks might remember Derek Monypeny from the ferociously explosive, improvisational trio Oaxacan. Their fiery brand of Eastern flecked, face-melting psych mastery was truly amazing to behold live. Sadly their time as a band was short-lived, but guitarist Derek Monypeny continues his journey into the desert cosmos with his debut lp of solo oud. Though he has also played guitar in Sir Richard Bishop's touring band, Mr. Monypeny decided to put the blaring fuzz and virtuosic six-string tendencies aside and opted for a more traditional approach here. These beautifully minimal pieces of eloquent, contemplative oud unfold like ancient narratives, evoking dramatic images of ghostly mirages, shimmering horizons and the desert sun sinking under pale dunes.
Side A unfolds with gorgeously sparse, delicate movements of slowly picked oud, each note rising up then dropping down like diamonds in the sand. We love the patient, reflective pace of the songs, each note carefully plucked and sent off like a gentle offering into the night. While side A reveals Monypeny employing the art of restraint and patience, side B finds Monypeny on the periphery of tradition, drenching the oud in hazy reverb and other effects that tastefully reiterate the instrument's Saharan roots. Reminiscent of Sandy Bull's oud outings, these final two pieces warble and melt in the hot sun, tremolo washes and smeared melody hover in the arid sky as the rhythmic haze and gentle noise lull you deeper into the cosmic badlands. So gorgeous and so perfect. Highly recommended for fans of anything related to Sublime Frequencies for sure. Limited to an edition of 250, don't be left in the Saharan dust!
What do you really need to know here? A NEW MOON DUO 7" (their first?), and the inaugural release for new UK label Agitated Records. We know by now that the Moon Duo of Erik "Ripley" Johnson (um, of Wooden Shjips if you haven't already heard...) and Sanae Yamada are unstoppable, and once again, they deliver. "Catch As Catch Can" is the band's most energetic song to date with a super distorted fuzz organ riff and a guitar that sounds like a shimmering sheet of white noise. It's relentless and catchy as hell, sure to stick in your mind for days. The B-side is a cover of a Scientists tune, and in contrast to the A-side, this represents Moon Duo's slower, more groove oriented persona. The stuttered beat is accompanied by heavily saturated fuzz chords and pleasant little synth blips before rising to a crazy and amazing fuzz solo. Bonus points for the cool as fuck magic eye cover art. Yep, this one kills, and at only 1000 copies worldwide, just know it won't be sticking around for long.
Right on. Moon Duo are back with another four song blast of spaced out, super rhythmic psychedelic goodness. Escape arrives on the heels of two 12" eps, and it is by far their best effort yet. Of course we loved those previous releases, but Escape is the sound of a band who has really hit their stride now, and the songs are more mysterious, more relentless, and just more rocking than anything up to this point. We're not sure if there are real drums on this release (yes?) instead of a drum machine, but whatever the case, the rhythms here just grab hold and throttle you, while Ripley Johnson, he of local favorites Wooden Shjips, takes things beyond the stratosphere with his trademark fuzz solos, which are among the best you will currently hear on planet Earth.
"Motorcycle, I Love You" opens the album in perfect fashion with a vaguely evil two note riff, murky vocals bubbling out of the haze, swirling keyboard drones, and yeah, an awesome extended solo that kicks in and stays there. Goddamn. "In The Trees" is a steady rocker, like a hyped up Velvet Underground jam simplified and done west coast style. A nice tambourine hit accents the pounding drums, while the spacey guitar builds an impenetrable wall of beautiful, melodic white noise. "Stumbling 22nd St" - hey, that sounds familiar - is driven by a simple keyboard melody riding above subsonic fuzz guitar and a tight rhythm. When the riff switches to riff #2 (there aren't really choruses or any of that unnecessary shit here), you will know why we think this is the best stuff Moon Duo has produced so far. The changes in their songs, subtle as they may often be, are what make it clear that this isn't just stupid psychedelic rambling. There is some awesome songcraft going on, and we love it. The title track brings the album to its end. "Escape" is by far the poppiest and most upbeat song on the album, sounding like an extended take of the best pop song in the world working its way through some phased out vortex. The recording quality, lo-fi but perfectly appropriate, definitely gives this a nice timeless quality. It sounds like this stuff could have been recorded at any point within the last 40 years, while never sounding anything but current. Good stuff for sure.
Yeah, it's easy to see why people are digging Moon Duo so much. There is nothing not to like, and while this type of music can be rendered totally boring in the wrong hands, some people just know what's up. Moon Duo knows what's up.
FINALLY AVAILABLE ON CD! Here's what we said when we reviewed the now out of print vinyl 12" version:
All right! Moon Duo returns with another hazed out transmission from some lost dimension (otherwise known as San Francisco), this one courtesy of the always cool Sacred Bones label. The duo (obviously) features Ripley Johnson from local heroes Wooden Shjips, and their sound is not too far removed from Ripley's main band, maybe a little more ethereal and not quite as overtly "rocking", but definitely following a similar path of hypnotic, fuzzy repetition that we can't get enough of.
Moon Duo are capable of creating powerful songs from very little and they obviously understand the power of simplicity. Each of the four songs on this ep utilize the same hypnotic drum machine groove, altered to various pitches and speeds to accommodate each individual song. The result is like a mechanical heartbeat, throbbing relentlessly with krauty precision, and almost serving as some sort of chain to link each of the songs together. The record begins with "Killing Time", which sounds a bit like a Joy Division part looped forever as the soft, distorted vocals lurk beneath melodic guitars and fuzzy background static. With its buzzing organ and controlled feedback, "Speed" rocks a bit like Suicide augmented by shrieking guitar pulses and, uh, harmonica? Maybe. The cool thing here is how sounds blend together in a cyclone of warm, pulsating analog goodness. At times you are unaware of what you're hearing, and even though it gets noisy and overblown, the results are always catchy and super melodic.
Side 2 begins with "Dead West", which has a cool underwater feel. The song fucks with your perception of time and place, as it could have been recorded 40 years ago or 40 years from now. Sonically, it is a bit reminiscent of fellow California space travelers Sun Araw with its percussive guitar strumming and shimmering psychedelic feel, as a little keyboard melody stands at the center of things while the rest of the sounds oscillate all over the place. "Ripples" gives off a Spacemen 3 vibe as the drumbeat is slowed significantly. The guitars have a nice bit of twang to them, and the sounds once again appear to get caught in some sort of musical whirlpool as they merge together before a cool fadeout.
Picking up where the last ep left off, Killing Time finds Moon Duo descending even deeper into a state of super rhythmic, dreamy psychedelia. Just the way we like it.
We'll just spare the long-winded build up and get straight to the point: Moon Duo is the new side project from Ripley, guitarist for San Francisco's psychedelic heroes Wooden Shjips, and it kicks plenty of ass. This lengthy two song ep rocks in a similar, albeit slightly more stripped down way, and like the Shjips, Moon Duo is all about super hypnotic, highly rhythmic repetition with plenty of awesome fuzz guitars and simple but powerful drumming. And like all vinyl only offerings from Ripley's main gig, this is also coming to you in highly limited numbers, so act now or suffer later.
The first track, "Love On The Sea," previously appeared in edited form on a recent Yeti magazine compilation. But really, why would anyone want something coming from a Wooden Shjips dude to be slimmed down to fit on a cd with other groups? Thankfully, the version here uses an entire side to help you get even further lost in its endless melodic grooves. The song comes off as the perfect mix of krauty propulsion with fuzzed out, druggy American garage rock from the '60s, and the lo-fi recording works really well to get you nice and disoriented. Murky vocals, swirling organs and bright guitar accents give you the impression of what it would be like to relax in a room full of strobe lights going full blast, and after a while you can't tell whether the drums are a thumping backbeat or a straightforward groove. Whatever the case, it's sounding damn good to our ears.
On side 2 we have "E-Z Street Ext," which actually sounds a bit like an instrumental minor key version of the song "Down By The Sea" from the Shjips' recent Dos record. There's a nice dose of wild fuzz guitar action, but here the organ takes center stage with its awesome underwater sound. The drums are a steady pound, and as the guitar begins to decay into crumpling waves of distortion, things seem to speed up and build in intensity before arriving at a prolonged cymbal loop which itself appropriately ends in a locked groove.
Again, this is super limited, and if you couldn't already tell, it is absolutely required listening for those who can't get enough Wooden Shjips.
Moon Duo return with their second proper full length, and if you needed any further proof of their masterful grasp of fuzzed out hypnotic grooves, well, look no further. It's almost as if Moon Duo set out to link every one of their records together as one gigantic pulsating trip into your mind, and Mazes takes you further in. Mazes. Hmm. Like the magic eye cover for their Catch As Catch Can single, the eyeball warping artwork seems to be a perfect visual accompaniment to the awesome brain-melting confusion of the music itself.
Kicking off with "Seer", the duo conjure the hazy underwater sound they've utilized before with a rhythm that walks the line between spaced out acid rock and minimal electro grooves with some of the clearest Moon Duo vocals to date. "Mazes" offers a slight departure from the usual murk, sounding poppy and jangly in the vein of other San Francisco popsmiths like the Fresh And Onlys or the Mantles. It rides out with a sort of pre-1965 surf rock feel that makes this a perfect jam for your next sun baked road trip. "Scars" shifts the mood into darker terrain like some fractured Suicide / Doors hybrid. The heavy vibrato keeps things percolating while the organ occasionally shifts into a spooky little interlude recalling Kraftwerk's "The Model". The song also strangely makes us think of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild", an association which is taken to the next logical step with the aggressive "Fallout". The album concludes with "Goners", a midtempo jam that makes it feel like you are walking into the perfect fadeout to an album which will remain playing in your head nonstop for quite some time. Moon Duo have never let us down, and it doesn't seem that'll change anytime soon...
The hypnotically throbbing sound of Moon Duo might seem deceptively simple (but effective!) and yeah, we kinda knew we would know what to expect on this, Moon Duo's third full-length studio album, which boasts a cool cover painting that looks like it belongs on some '70s psychology textbook. The checklist: steady, mesmerizing rhythms (this time, involving a live drummer in lieu of their previous drum machine, making the Duo now in fact a trio), lots of tripped out guitar (from the Wooden Shijps saijlor in the band, Ripley Johnson, a past master of psychedelic guitar soloing), dueting angelic/stoned male and female vocals, and glorious droning keyboards, all bringing back memories of the likes of Neu!, Suicide, and the Spacemen 3.
But that doesn't make it any less enjoyable, and actually Shadow Of The Sun, while keeping to the successful Moon Duo formula, offers a range of pleasurable variants, some tracks like "Wilding" highlighting the meandering hippie guitar element, others like "Zero" honing in on a post punk, cold wave vibe - which gets even more intense on the urgent, uptempo "Animal" (that's the album-closer on the cd edition, and the song on the 7" single that comes with the vinyl version). And earlier in the set, "Free The Skull" brings out Moon Duo's modish '60s organ groove for go-go dancers side, kind of, amidst the hypno-jamming. Plus there's great melodies to be found on here, all over the place. So chalk another one up for Moon Duo, long may they vibrate!
Note: LP is limited edition red vinyl while they last, and comes with that "Animal" 7", and a digital download. The cd includes "Animal" too, and doesn't need a download.
Just in! 2nd pressing, now on red instead of green vinyl! If you've still got the holiday spirit, and haven't grabbed one yet, now's your chance before they're gone again...
Along with the recently reissued 12" of holiday faves by Wooden Shjips, WS mainman Ripley Johnson gets similarly festive with his WS offshoot spacekraut combo Moon Duo, which finds Johnson and his partner Sanae Yamada tackling one Christmas classic, and another obscure winter themed cover.
Up first is "Silver Bells, which we had heard described as "Silver Bells meets Silver Machine", but barring the swirls of reverb and the echo-ey vox, the band play it pretty straight, offering up one of the poppiest bounciest jams we've heard from these two. The perfect hazy blur of wasted Christmas cheer for sure.
The flipside finds the band tackling a fairly obscure Rolling Stones track, titled appropriately enough, "Winter", from the Stones' Goats Head Soup record, no one here remembers what the original sounds like exactly (the label describes it accurately as a 'deep cut'), but in the Moon Duo's hands it just becomes another gorgeously washed out smear of spidery glistening guitars, whirling gauzy keyboards, and tripped out reverbed vocal mumbles, all drifting in a wastedly warbly haze, that reminds us way more of the Velvets than the Stones.
A little spacey, a little krautrocky, a little dream poppy, a little Christmasy, but as always, droning and druggy and divine...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Is 'Moon' the new 'Wolf' or 'Skull'?, could be, as lately some of our favorite records have been coming from bands like Moon Duo, Moon Unit and The Soft Moon. Now we get to add Moonbell to the awesome list of psych driven moon moniker bands that we've been digging. We'd been having a lot of folks asking us about this band before we heard them, seems folks around town knew that this was a great new San Francisco band to take notice of. With a sound equally influenced by shoegaze and drugged out rock, Moonbell sound exists in some really awesome place right between Spacemen 3 and early Ride, Swervedriver, and Chapterhouse. Lilting vocals, soaring and dazed guitars all in a smoky vapor of entrancement. Such a great debut!
We sorta flipped for these local shoegazers when we first heard their Figurine ep a while back, and had been anxiously waiting for a full length ever since, and now that it's here, we're happy to report that it more than fulfills the promise of those first four songs, the hazy drug rock of that debut even more lush and lustrous this time around, the production cranked way up, the guitars thick and layered and lustrous, the vocals reverbed and echo drenched, Moonbell's 4AD shimmer wreathed in a gauzey otherworldly blur, still obviously beholden to nineties shoegazers like Ride, Swervedriver, Medicine and of course the godfathers of slow-mo drug rock Spacemen 3, but taking the sound and adding their own twist, the ethereal female vocals and the buzzing guitars a heady mix, and when wedded to a lumbering skeletal beat, the sound becomes a blissed out psychedelic slowcore dreampop, while on other tracks, the group up the tempo and crank the FX and send pinwheels of smeared melody and chiming guitars into the ether.
Our favorites definitely tend to be the slower jams, the group locked into mesmerizing hypnorock grooves, pulsing and pulsating through billowing clouds of wild guitar tangle beneath thick crumbling chordal swells, minor key and melancholic, the sounds swirling drowsily in epic expanses of glimmering sonic bliss, culminating in the chiming shimmerpop of closer "White Light", which infuses the group's sound with long streaks of thick layerd buzz and shards of crumbling distortion, all underpinned by a soft almost lullaby like melody. Gorgeous stuff.
Includes a download coupon (and there may also be a cd version we'll be able to get too).
The Bros. do "Fishes With Faces", VNC do "Harm Guitar".
Watch out Girls (the band!) cause there's another sweet sounding Bay Area pop band we think could be the next big 'breakout' Bay Area band. Well, except for the fact that they've moved away to Brooklyn or someplace already. With Big Echo, their Rough Trade debut, The Morning Benders have created a sweeping and sensational indie pop record that brings to mind a more driving, sunshiney Grizzly Bear, The Shins at their most effervescent, and Death Cab For Cutie at their most triumphant. While there has been no shortage of bands drawing from similar influences, there is something so warm and sincere about The Morning Benders' sound. The songs never feel forced and resonate with an authentic heartfelt quality. The album brimming with totally catchy hooks, the kind that should be blasting all over commercial radio in a perfect world. If (like us) you love exquisite indie pop that stays in your head and just begs to find its way on to a mix tape for your secret crush, you can't do much better than The Morning Benders!
Here's the debut album from this SF sweet sunny group. The male and female lead singers take turns charming the listener with their very dissimilar singing styles. It actually sounds like two completely different bands. The male sung songs sound a lot like Destroyer or Mountain Goats. Very folky and wistful. In sharp contrast, the female sung tunes are much more toothsome 'n' perky. Very much like K Records' Pacific Northwest-y lo-fi pop. It'll be interesting to see on future recordings if either one ends up becoming the dominant sound of the band or if they continue to keep things as markedly split personality.
If you recall Morning Spy's debut cd Subsequent Light from 2004, you may remember this SF band having something of a split personality (with each side defined mostly by boy versus girl vocals and folksy versus pop styles)... and they still do, although as we predicted, they're leaning more heavily to one side these days (psst, it's the boy-sung side). For those who're unfamiliar with this bright'n'breezy band, here's the lowdown: when the fella sings (on songs such as "Ask Us To Dance"), Morning Spy sound totally like a fine hybrid of Luna and Destroyer (albeit minus Dan Bejar's tweaked lyrics). When the gal sings it's a much more pastel-hued pop affair a la K Records' International Pop Underground circa 1992. A great sophomore release!
The debut full length from the Moth Wranglers, otherwise known as AQ-pal Chris Xefos (ex-King Missile) and LD Beghtol (Flare, and also one of the four vocalists from the Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs box). They have made a polished mellow record in a variety
Rachel Evans has definitely been on a roll recently, with a very steady and very consistent stream of cassette only releases and with a proper slab of vinyl seeming to come out about once a year for her impeccable Motion Sickness Of Time Travel project. While we try our best to get a good amount of stock for each and every one of her records, it's not always possible. Some escape our grasp, some we only can get a two or three copies which quickly disappear as soon as they hit the floor. But, sometimes we can actually get a bunch. This cassette is definitely of the latter, with is thankfully the case with this new one on Constellation Tatsu, limited this time to a more sensible 250 copies, meaning it'll be around for a little longer than usual. Here, Evans presents a split release with her long-time friend Lynn Fister, the Southern transplant now living in the Bay Area who records under the moniker Aloonaluna. Like Evans, Fister pedals in a bleary dream-pop / komische deconstruction with ethereal, and at times witchy vocals that wordlessly orbit the amorphous synth sequencing and fizzing electronics. The Motion Sickness track is a rare instrumental for Evans, with her streaming waves of sparking synthing tones and slippery undulations of drone-pop narcotic. So nice!
Mount Vicious certainly have a lot of fun. Their live shows feature (count 'em) three guitar players, one of whom (Conan) usually rips his shirt off and throws his guitar down to more easily interact with the crowd. The other two often play back to back, axe necks bobbing in unison. Really, with song titles like "Steroid Unicorn," "Wherewolf," and "We Enjoy Fucking (To This Music)" how can YOU not have fun listening (or maybe fucking?) to this music? Mount Vicious features Conan Neutron and Chris Bolig of local loudnicks Replicator and Alli Pheteplace of The Holy Kiss, both of which are now, sadly, defunct. Mount Vicious plays a more straightforward (a.k.a. fistpumping) brand of hard rock than either of those two outfits, well utilizing the technique of the harmonized guitar solo. Conan sounds surprisingly like a Misfits-era Glenn Danzig, with a little Mike Patton thrown in for good measure. Listen to this record at high volume.
Certainly music doesn't get any more brilliant, epic, meticulous, and retarded than this. Really. Absolutely unbelievably genius musicianship, twisted imagination and craft. Always recommended!
a.k.a.. Brian of the Thinking Fellers.
Wow. We just did the math, and the four members of Mudsuckers, Pete and Gabe from the Yellow Swans, Tom Carter from Charalambides, and Robert Horton, have between the four of them, released over 27,000 cd-r's. Or at least it seems like it. We're not complaining though (okay, maybe we are a little since we seem to constantly be scrambling to get all of these guys' records reviewed) 'cuz pretty much everything we've heard, we've dug, a lot. The Mudsuckers sounds a bit like an extension of the Yellow Swans, so any YS obsessive who have been hankering might do well to grab this right now. Horton and Carter seem to have dived right in, contributing their own bits of thick murky sound to the melee, the first half of the disc is dense with thick swirls of muddy guitar grrr, blown out synth, and lots of Crash Worshiping drum damage, about midway through, the sound is stretched out, still murky and muddy, but much more glistening and sparkly, hiss and fuzz and buzz and whir all shined up real pretty and let loose to drift dreamily. The second to last track features some tortured Jandekian guitar, whose angular riffing gradually melts into thick pools of dirgey drone. The final 16 minute closer, is a slow building wall of N.O.I.S.E., starting out delicate and dark, but growing into a hissy beast, but close listening reveals all sorts of melodic action and rhythmic shuffling beneath the surface of the Mudsuckers' roiling and caustic sonic sea. Nice!
Punked-out garage stomp done by three fellas wrapped in bandages. Do you gotta be good when you've got a gimmick like that? Well, I guess they think so, that is if your idea of good is the same as theirs -- crazy raw manic distorto rawk with song titles like "Die!" and "Food, Sickles & Girls". Lo-fi, low-brow, and proud. They never cross that line into truly absurd avant-garde mayhem a la Guitar Wolf, they're just a little too vulgar and frat-house for that. But their brand of sickness is still gonna always sound good with a beer cracked. This disc collects 22 or so tracks taken from rare out-of-print 7" vinyl, dug up from the Mummies' Daly City, CA tomb for your pleasure.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
