Following up their bright punchy 3-song self-titled ep debut, Birdmonster deliver a full baker's dozen. With No Midnight, they do their best to keep the college rock fires burning -- meaning lots of crunchy, buzzing guitars and emotive male vocals churned out at a driving pace. Occasionally though they get into a bit more somber, sullen territory ("Balcony" and the title track for instance) than on their last release, but they also bring back a little rootsy rock into numbers such as "The Bar At The Back Of The Basement". Both are used to good effect. Note: one song from the debut ep makes a reappearance here ("All The Holes In The Walls").
Here's an all too brief introduction to this terrific new Bay Area band. These four boys churn out three fiery indie rock tunes with loads of energy, angst and passion. Birdmonster's music has frequently been compared to that of Modest Mouse, and we can definitely hear why (particularly in the vocal department), but they're actually far more rootsy and boot-stompin'. Probably pretty great live! Even from just this handful of songs, their finely tuned songcraft is more than apparent. A very promising debut.
Birds & Batteries kick off their debut album with a solid cover of Neil Young's "Heart Of Gold". It's a bit of an odd decision, but we guess it serves to illustrate an inspiration jumping off point for this SF band. Similar to that unpredictable Canadian singer/songwriter, B&B main man Mike Sempert has crafted a comfy blend of pop, traditional acoustic folk and country rock that is not without its share of gentle non-traditional twists. He seems to favor the latter a little more so here than on the previous Birds & Batteries cd-r release Nature Vs. Nature which interwove a rootsy singer/songwriter perspective with electronica and post rock elements. It's far more composed and cohesive. Nonetheless he keeps us on our toes, fleshing out and deepening some of the songs' timeless earthy folk atmospheres and melodies with occasional synth keyboard lines and textures. Sempert's songwriting is confident and engaging with lyrics drifting from the daydream-y contemplative to the yearningly melancholic. Highlights include the instrumental "Jungles (Oceans)" as well as "Star Clusters" and "Soft Surveillance".
Ah folks, proof that you shouldn't judge a book (or cd) by its cover! When Mike Sempert first dropped off a copy of this new release of his solo project Birds & Batteries its appearance (cover art, title, handmade sleeves, etc) initially struck us as perhaps a Jewelled Antler related or inspired release. Listening to it brought very different impressions. Blending together rootsy Americana, post-rock and electronica, the first song's stuttery programmed rhythms and hypnotic loops of arpeggiated melodies contrast well with Sempert's deep, melancholic vocals and guitar, bass and drums. Winding its way around the proceedings are some slippery stringy sounds that we guess is pedal steel or an e-bowed electric guitar or perhaps a synthesizer. He also enlists his friends to contribute saxophone, clarinet, female vocals (by Ms Heather Masse) and percussion in the form of a box of sugar! A very cool introduction to this recent SF transplant (from the far reaches of the Eastern Seaboard)!
Glenn Donaldson has been incredibly active lately in a number of San Francisco psychedelic / improv outfits (all with records out on the local Jewelled Antler cd-r label), including Thuja, the Knit Separates, the Blithe Sons, the Sky Green Leopards, Youth
Two man heavy riff-machine Black Cobra return with another pummeling release on At A Loss. Picking up right where Bestial left off, Feather And Stone shreds from the start. Brutally punishing circular riffs, heavy as all hell doomy moments, throat ripping screams, and incredibly hard hitting and precise drums. The fact that this massive sound comes from two fellas is pretty damn amazing. The album has all kinds of peaks and valleys. Amidst the constant time signature shifting, and brain-burning riff heavitude, there are a couple of beautifully dark intros and outros thrown in, giving the album a very balanced feeling. But it's mostly just crushingly heavy and ripping. If you can imagine a heavier, much more misanthropic Karp, that's kind of what they remind us of. Feather And Stone is a must for anybody needing a little taste of thrashing triumphant, sometimes doomy and dark, sometimes fast and techy, but always heavy and punk as fuck ROCK music. It tastes good. This is also an enhanced disc, including some pretty righteous footage of the Cobra ripping at Roadburn! Proving these guys really are that HEAVY, even with just the power of two! For fans of Cavity, Karp, Floor, Torche, and things that kill shit!
The latest from local label Valley King, is the first release from Black Elk Medicine Band, the solo project of Isaiah Mitchell of recent aQ Record Of The Weekers Golden Void, as well as psych rock shredders Earthless, and in BEMB, at least on this single, Mitchell is joined by Phil Manley (Trans Am, Life Coach, The Fucking Champs, etc.) and John McBain of the mighty Monster Magnet (and Carlton Melton!). You'd never know it on the B side, which just happens to be the one we listened to first - a dark, brooding, seventies sounding psychedelic drift, swirling soft tangles of slow burn guitar shred smolder, draped over a thick, ominous sprawl of sinister synth buzz, sounding like Mitchell's homage to Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain", the same sort of dark psych brood, tense and emotional and moody.
But flip the record over, and Mitchell and crew let loose with a heady barrage of spaced out psych that wouldn't sound out of place on a Golden Void or Earthless record. A simple skeletal programed rhythm pulses away beneath clouds of heavily flanged riffage, and yep, some seriously soaring heart of the sun shredding, sounding almost like a snippet of a much longer jam, fading in, the action already underway, the band locked into some seriously tripped out psychedelic mesmer, Mitchell laying down another blast of tangled super emotive guitar god leads, over a tranced out motorik background, eventually fading out, as if the actual jam, the one we just got a single side glimpse of, continued well on into the forever.
LIMITED TO 500 NUMBERED COPIES!! In a swank sleeve featuring all new artwork from artist Alan Forbes, each one signed!
Joining our beloved Mission District neighbors Ray's Vast Basement and The Modular Set on SF label (and arts collective!) Howell's Transmitter are two fine new groups, Black Fiction and Michael Zapruder's Rain Of Frogs.
Ghost Ride is Black Fiction's second full length (their self-titled debut came out last year). These curious popsters do their fair share of exploring and incorporating bits and bites of countless musical styles. When the dust settles and all the pieces settle, the outcome follows a similar patchwork-y path as Beck, Animal Collective and/or Elephant Six Collective (Olivia Tremor Control, Apples In Stereo, et al). Indeed, they might insert a tabla rhythm and a slice of soul here or a shufflin' hip hop beat there, but their sweet melodies and twee boy vocals reveal an indie pop core. Overall the album takes a laidback loping pace, however while that may be the case most of the time, occasionally it's as if a bright sunbeam comes along and stirs them into a minor frenzy of frolicking. Check out the ninth tune "Something Else" for an example of such an outburst. A delight.
Meanwhile, Back In The States... is the second release from The Black Furies, and it reveals a bit of a shift in direction. Tighter and punchier, their new sound borders on the cock rock party action of The Hives, The Hellacopters or even Turbonegro. Gooood times! So, the news that the band has recently signed to Gearhead Records makes total sense... much more so than if we'd heard the news following their last cd which was more of a straight forward punk rawk rally. They've sharpened their pop hooks, Turtle-waxed their guitars to a super gleam, and put a bit more imagination into their packaging to boot.
The Black Furies are a total no-frills band churning out straight-up beefy punk rawk. On this their debut album they come tearing outta the gates, seemingly ready to steamroll anyone and anything in their path. Their songs bring to mind the reckless energy of oldschoolers like the Stooges, D.O.A. and Black Flag or more recent brethren The Hellacopters and Turbonegro. Definitely the product of calloused fingers, bloodied knuckles and blistered vocal cords. Rad!
We had never heard of this eighties art punk / weirdo industrial SF outfit, but HOLY SHIT, this is some seriously fucked up psychedelic noise drenched punk weirdness/radness. Initially released in a run of 1000 lps, each one hand painted with thick gobs of paint and whatever the band members could find around the house (feathers, dirt, trash, flyers, etc.), it's now been reissued by a new local label Superior Viaduct, and what a record to announce your arrival, a creeping, dirgey, occasionally drum machine driven collection of noisy chaotic stumbling ferocity, with loping low slung basslines, jagged, crumbling guitars, a vocalist whose caterwaul is a dead ringer for Kurt Kobain at his most ravaged, his feral yowl tortured and anguished, everything tangled up into a head spinning barrage of post punk stomps, gloomy industrial lumbers, moody murky creeps, dizzying spoken word freakouts and tripped out collaged whatthefuck weirdness.
Just check out the opener, "Undancing In The Dirt", a lumbering creep, gloomy and harrowing, the guitars in a constant state of chaos, the drum machine and woozy bass locked tight beneath a death march pound, not to mention the weird break in the middle with the sound of tolling bells and what sounds like some sort of machinery, the rest of the record careens wildly between similarly woozy outsider industrial creeps and more frenetic artpunk mouth breathing thudrock, most definitely beholden to other local groups of the time like Flipper and Factrix, but also displaying hints of what was going on in Cleveland at the time (Electric Eels, the Pagans, etc.). And on top of that, peppered throughout are some seriously unhinged experiments, weird tape manipulation, free noise fuckery, chaotic clatter and dark droned out minimalism, culminating in "KILL THEM!!!" an almost Negativland worthy mash up of spoken word sloganeering, a serious message presented as some conservative / poseur button pushing, super intense and bizarre, funny and fucked up.
Love God - Love One Another is a seriously twisted slab of SF punk rock history, and easily one of our favorite reissues in recent memory!
Packaged with the original unused cover art, a super striking image of Ronald Reagan holding a cross in front of an American flag with swastikas where the stars normally are, the inside also adorned with a swastika made out of crutches. Comes with two inserts, including new liner notes, the original lp liner notes (explaining the charge imagery and the inspiration for each song), and the Maximum Rock N Roll review that first got them noticed, as well as offending some of the more sensitive punks, one of which has their angry letter reprinted here, along with the response from the original reviewer, in defense of said review.
Gary Floyd (Sister Double Happiness, The Dicks) revisits punk rock roots with this ragin' disc. Lynn Perko (Sister Double Happiness) guests on vocals.
Passenger is the debut full length from this Oakland based crusty melodic black metal project, comprised solely of onetime Deafheaven touring guitarist Gary Bettencourt; it's also the debut release from the label All Black, founded by current Deafheaven singer George Clarke. So with that sort of pedigree you may be expecting a platter of glorious soaring shoegaze tinged black metal / black metal tinged shoegaze, but Passenger is in fact a much grittier affair. After a brief intro of looming grinding noise pulsing over ominous shortwave radio static, this record launches into a pummeling, overdriven assault of blown out blast beats, anguished d-beat crust punk and mournful melodic black metal. At first one might be forgiven for thinking Black Monolith are yet another band in the orthodox Sargeist mold (albeit a very good one), but as the album grinds along other elements start creeping in - a driving uptempo punk rock beat provides a rigid spine to a hammering bittersweet riff, which in turn leads to a moment of throbbing ambient calm, before launching into the kind of crust punk / black metal hybrid that would make latter day Darkthrone proud. But then those haunting melodies start to seep in again, and as the blast beats re-emerge and the guitars pile on top of each other, the song shifts into something much more poignant and morose. The beauty of this album seems to blossom more and more as it progresses. By the album's midway point it seems to have accomplished the strange and dangerous task of morphing very subtly from some filthy black crust into an ethereal flurry of bittersweet melodies, driving hypnotic drums and buried muffled howls. And although those dirt-flecked HxC riffs are never far away, lending a genuine vitriol to the moments of comparative serenity, by the record's end the grit has given way to a complete immersion into gorgeous heavy post rock, like the heartbreak gleam of Deafheaven's Sunbather filtered through a much more huddled claustrophobic spectrum. The beauty hidden under layers of decay. Fans of the crustier side of melodic black metal (i.e. Panopticon, Ludicra, Lluvia) would do well to check this out. Highly recommended!
The debut from Bay Area indie rock foursome The Black Plastics reveals something of a split personality. The band jumps back and forth between two distinct styles -- ramshackle lilting jangly post-rock songs and much more angstful, harder edged numbers. The former brings to mind bands such as Modest Mouse or Built To Spill, whereas the latter is more akin to Unwound, Cursive or Doug Martsch's pre-B.T.S. band Treepeople. Perhaps there's two different members handling the songwriting duties? Can't really tell from the liner notes as all the songs are credited to the band as a whole. Nonetheless, they execute both styles with ease, making for quite an enjoyable listen. One thing we do know though is that this album was recorded by the more than capable folks at indie rock studio heaven Tiny Telephone Studios. Way to go!
The up and coming local metal/punk/experimental label Catastrophic Sound releases its second cd, following the debut by death metallers Sangre Amado. This one is a four-song ep by another local band, Black Queen, who have perfected a black metal influenced, somewhat weird and skronky assault. Choppy rhythmic complexity and a near-constantly deployed guitar squeal are the band's most obvious trademarks, but these four tracks range from raging death metal brutality complete with guttural vocal growling to some quieter, textural instrumental passages. "The Anthropocalypse" is heavy, varied and quite interesting. I've yet to see 'em play live but if this disc is any indication they must be pretty great on stage. On the other hand, I hope they spend their free time in the recording studio so we will someday have a full-length album to behold.
The answer to the title's question appears to be... The Black Swans! Although this band has been together since 1999, this is their debut album. Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? contains some of the darkest, slowest and most brooding music this side of Tindersticks and the Dirty 3. In fact, lead singer Jerry DeCicca's deeeeep vocals are practically a deadringer for Stuart Staples' of the aforementioned band. For those in the most somber of moods (or for those wishing to be made so)!
Yet another psychedelic dispatch from the mysterious world of Black Thread, aka Greg from space/kraut duo Von Himmel, who as Black Thread explores a soundworld well removed from the monolithic collaged-krautscapes of the VH mothership, specializing in a crumbling, super distorted world of washed out murky, of muddy melodies and blurred ambience, merging the faded Victrola flashback of The Caretaker with the psychedelic soft noise of Tim Hecker, but way more lo-fi and homebrewed, utilizing all manner of primitive analog recording gear, the sounds seemingly dubbed from tape to tape to tape, then perhaps played back on a microcassette player held up to another microcassette recorder, then onto an old VHS tape, played back through a crappy black and white TV, recorded onto an old answering machine, then re-recorded onto a busted up old 4 track, before being broadcast at extreme volume, where it was all then recaptured a final time, and recorded onto a good ol' cassette. At least that's what it sounds like to us.
Where the other Black Thread tapes tended toward the more melodic side of the soft noise spectrum, Aurora is definitely a bit more aggressive, and caustic, opening with a dense cloud of roiling grey noise, but with headphones on, or at least speakers cranked, this cloud seems to barely be obscuring all manner of softly tangled melodies, and slowly swirling textures. Eventually, the noise recedes, leaving some hushed staticky drift, some woozy foghorn like melodies, lots of crackle and muted feedback, the middle portion of the A side downright pretty, but soon that grey/brown noise rears its only mildly ugly head and wraps that prettiness in hazy sheets of pulsing buzz and near dreamy distortion, rendering the noisiness almost shoegazey.
The flipside follows a similar sonic path, balancing tranquil drift with blunted noise, the sound erupting into gorgeous blossoming billows of majestic sound, buried beneath layer upon layer of sonic grit and recording detritus, which only gives the sound a faded, sun bleached feel, the B side definitely wilder, getting super crunchy, the buried melodies transformed into wild distorted squiggles, a heady swirling skree of psychedelic soft noise that eventually fades out and gradually works its way through various stages of static, dense TV static white noise, transforming into a a field of hissy crackle, transforming again into barely there, warm, liquid thrum, before fading into a hushed, haunting slow fade to silence.
Like the other two recent Black Thread tapes, super limited of course, each cover is unique, all cut from a larger image. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Shadowy Von Himmel offshoot Black Thread returns with another tape of gorgeous blown out meditations, where kaleidoscopic melodies decay and regenerate in equal measure. Sounds collapse in on themselves and billow out of the fuzzy cinders in an interesting balance between control and chance. Unlike the previous tape, Black Antlers, Descending Heliotrope Shards is more melodic and pretty, though the huge walls of looped sound conjure a similar overall density that manages to stand alone as something unique. Utilizing two 4-track cassette decks for some uber-primitive sound-on-sound recording, basically the sonic equivalent of a dirty needle, there is an element of randomness here that's super exciting and unpredictable. The process, though, fascinating as it is, ultimately plays second fiddle to the songs themselves, which display an inherent sense of melody and structure amidst all the chaos. The sounds are majestic and pulsing, rhythmic with a forward momentum that gives them their own sort of lifespan, but also disembodied and free from both the constraints of conventional songcraft and wanky new age sungazing. The method of creating music fits well within Von Himmel's approach, but also displays influences, specifically some electronic ones, not as readily apparent on VH records, such as minimal techno, industrial grind, and a healthy dose of earsplitting harsh noise for a tape that throttles as it soothes.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest mysterious musical missive from this offshoot of two time Record Of The Weekers Von Himmel, but unlike the spaced out psych of VH, Black Thread explore the dusty corners of the shadowy sonic underworld they inhabit, opening with what at first blush sounds like pure static, a TV playing between-channel snow, or a car radio unable to pick up any stations, but then the static begins to stutter and crackle, and suddenly it sounds like maybe an old record, spinning on a busted turntable, the provenance of said static though is not as important as the dreaminess that lurks beneath, as hushed hazy melodies drift and shimmer, surface softly and fade out. Imagine a sound somewhere between Philip Jeck, the Caretaker and William Basinski - a blurred, decayed, crumbling sonic beauty, the buried melodies wreathed in a warm haze of sonic detritus, those melodies gradually growing more and more distorted, eventually vying with the static for sonic supremacy, the final few minutes a gloriously blown out swirl of soft psychedelic noise.
The relatively short title track acts as a sort of buffer between the two epics on either side, another smeared sprawl of prismatic noise, washed out and gauzy, a dreamily distorted ambience, that seems to grow more distorted and decayed as the track goes on, even glitching out here and there, but like the first track, it's the sort of soft noise that's more dreamy than brutal.
And finally, BT delivers an opening salvo on the closer that reminds us of Skullflower, distorted and dense, albeit doused in hiss and hum and static, but then the underlying melodies quickly become the focal point, the song turning into a strange blown out lullaby, which quickly settles into a more subdued, tranquil Caretaker like drift, all faded and indistinct, washed out and weary, slowly working itself back to another crescendo, a shoegazey squall that fades out as quickly as it was created, leaving the tape to unwind in a fog of crackly noisy hum, which blends perfectly with the background tape hiss, for an ultra minimal final fade out...
Super limited of course, as tapes like this usually are. Each cover is unique, all cut from a larger image. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Another new tape from this local experimental soundscaper, whose 'day job' is playing in spaced out psych duo Von Himmel, but who, as Black Thread, tends toward a much more washed out and ethereally psychedelic ambience, the sound of Black Thread settling closer to folks like Tim Hecker, or Philip Jeck, or even more accurately, The Caretaker, as BT's sprawling soundcapes ooze the same sort of faded melencholia, sounding a bit like old records spinning lazily on broken dusty Victrolas, miraculously still spinning, as they sit in some old abandoned building, the sound drifting through the empty rooms, and out the broken windows, offering a fragmented glimpse of what once was.
Both sides of Pinkfire offer up a similarly wistful bit of audial ambience, the A side all gauzy and hazy and sun dappled, everything wreathed in hiss and hum, the melodies warbling beneath a patina of crackle and static, a sound out of time, the perfect lonely late night soundtrack, or alternately, the perfect score for a wander through some desolate city, an afternoon full of shadows painted by grey skies and impending darkness, gorgeously washed out and woozy, the sort of stuff we could listen to forever.
The flipside is a bit more abstract, as if someone was trying to broadcast the A side from another time, or another world, and the transmission arrives garbled, dragging much of the cosmic interference with it. More gristly and murky, the main melody a bit more pronounced but also more distorted and damaged, to some ears it might just sound like bad reception, but BT masterfully sculpts the original sounds, and the decaying crunch and crumble, into something that captures the same sort of emotion as the A side, loss and loneliness, faded memories, other times, other places, long forgotten. Fantastic as always. And LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Blackalicious, the duo of producer / musicmaker Chief Xcel along with lyricist Gift of Gab, here release their highly anticipated major label debut (anyone know why they didn't stay with Quannum?). Uplifting, substantial hip hop that's made catchy by Chief Xcel's obvious talent with beatmaking, distortion, and melody. Half of the tracks, however, feature guest vocalists, players or producers who all have their own signature styles that're more established than Blackalicious' style -- drowning the personality of the duo before we've even got a chance to appreciate / learn it. Most of the album sounds catchy and charmingly unpretentious, the music never too easy or boring. (There are a couple of bad slow jams on the record with the requisite predictable diva vocalists, but they're easily programmed out if you're so inclined.) And the album *really* finds its legs in the latter half, with four or five consecutive tracks that just kick butt.
With Gil Scott Heron, Cut Chemist, Zack de la Rocha, Saul Williams, Lyrics Born (of Latyrx), Rakaa and Babu (of Dilated Peoples), Jaguar Wright (vocalist last seen doing backup on Jay-Z Unplugged), Chali 2na of Jurassic5, Money Mark, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto, and more.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY. While we're waiting to get restocked on the cd version of this killer split (in the next week or two!), which flew out of here after our last list, we managed to get 30 copies of the picture disc vinyl version. Unfortunately that's all we're ever gonna get, so as always, act fast!
Hard to know what to say about Leviathan that we haven't said already. Quite possibly the most innovative outfit in black metal today. The man behind Leviathan, Wrest, has taken traditional black metal and turned it into something new and strange and completely out there, while somehow remaining totally grim and true to the black metal tradition. Here, he is teamed up with Russian black metal group Blackdeath, who specialize in extremely primitive buzzy and blurry black metal a la Burzum, Darkthrone and the like. The most remarkable thing about Blackdeath besides their simple droning fuzzed out riffs, and frosty atmosphere, is the vocals, a weird raspy warble, that slips from black metal shriek to weirdly anguished falsetto, reminding us a lot of SF BM legends Weakling. And the guitars are so thick and buzzy and blown out that you almost can't hear the drums, which lends the whole thing a super hypnotic drone quality that we LOVE. As if playing off of Blackdeath's primitive grimness, Leviathan hits right back with four tracks of his own full on grim buzz, but as with everything he does, no matter how true and grim the sound is, no matter how blasting the drums or buzzing the guitars are, there is always lots of stuff going on beneath the surface, or in the arrangements, not always easy to explain, just this intangible something that makes Leviathan's sound so unique and so much creepier and intense. Minor key melodies, weird stretches of industrial ambience, strangely affected vocals, haunting drones and bizarre soundscapes, all woven into the already twisted framework of Leviathan's uniquely hellish black metal.
WE WERE ONLY ABLE TO GET 25 COPIES. ONCE THEY ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!!!
This new SF trio whip out some down'n'dirty trash tunes with the rock'n'roll basics -- vocals, guitar, drums and tambourine. The vocals are delivered in a deliciously distressed, smeared sneer. Just imagine a female fronted piss'n'vinegar descendant of Jesus And Mary Chain, and you'll have some idea of where The Blacks are comin' from. We think they would fit great at a gig alongside fellow Bay Area hotties The Husbands and Von Iva.
Sure, spelling errors and grammatical mishaps may (and most likely do) pop up all the time on the aQ website; but we can be certain that we have correctly transcribed the name of Wayne Grim's art-prog project Blakcpullet Grimoire. Admittedly, this is one of the first projects that's come our way from Mr. Grim even though he's been very active in the Bay Area avant-garde scoring films, building installations, performing in countless guises, and appearing in this production or that. There are a ton of musical ideas splattered throughout Eating Whole Villages, beginning with a heavy, chugging guitar set against the old-school noise a dial-up modem generates, giving the album a Melvins / Mike Patton vibe from the get go. This is followed by a hissing track of noise and static aerations, muddling a delay saturated lecture from Buckminster Fuller captured on cassette. Then, you'll find electronic yawnings of bassbin rattling frequencies, bleeping glitches, and floorscraped noises barely coalescing upon their sparse structure countered by snippets from Kurt Schwitters' seminal sound poem Ursonate. These perpetual detours from track to track continue through the album, which really opens up after the rather claustrophobic beginning into some lovely stripped down acoustic guitar plucking and continues through an expanded passage of stereo-phased amplifier distortion ruptured with controlled attacks on a drum kit. Frippertronic styled guitar drones cascade out of the speakers later on as if they were from No Pussyfooting. Contemplative and enveloping, it's hard to imagine this as the same record, the end so far removed from the opening corroded heavy sounds. Confounding yes, but certainly rewarding!
This is how we like our indie pop. Raw and earnest, lush and hook filled, recorded on cassette tape then transferred to an old 8-track, the second album from Matt Adams expands on his debut from a couple years back that we dug big time. Now living in San Francisco after leaving Orange County, he has quickly become one of the finest songwriters in town. While he draws from greats like The Zombies, the Kinks and The Byrds, he manages to not sound like some nostalgic act. In fact there is a freshness and earnest quality to his songs that give them a very timeless feel. Kind of like Vetiver covering power poppers Zumpano. If anyone at Sub Pop is reading this, get the Blank Tapes on tour with The Shins, it will be a match made in pop heaven.
Following up last year's Teen Sounds, SF's Blanketship comes cruisin' along with more delightful aural collage adventures. This time things are a bit more drivin', maybe a bit darker and more aggressive. And unlike many of his past recordings which kept the listener constantly teetering off-kilter with their rapid fire juggling together of puzzle piece samples and mad rhythms, the nine tracks that comprise The Sound Of Fun Surrounds You has a few longer stretches that your ears and toes can catch a grasp of and groove along to for a few bars at least. But that's not to say this cd-r is without its fair share of surprise bursts and giggly bits, those come in spades on the Klangwunder half! Those eight tracks were composed with like-minded People Like Us on WFMU! Always a deliriously good time!
Blanketship's second album starts off in a much more funky and trip-hop-y fashion than anything found on his previous cd Threeps, but it definitely doesn't stay put. This one-man band aka Jared Blum keeps things moving along, drawing from a plethora of inspirations and sound sources, but always keeping thoughts of pop in the back of his mind. Incorporating samples of psychedelia, jazz, earthen folk, field recordings, and world beat, he's pieced together each track on Summer Set, with some considerably more structured than others. Catchily groovy and playfully spirited.
We've delighted to the many eclectic eccentric musical personas of the gents behind Bay Area indie label Gigante Sound (Dominic Cramp and Jared Blum) -- Qulfus, Borful Tang, Vulcanus 68, and Blanketship to name a few. Here's the latest from the latter with Mr. Blum at the helm. Teen Sounds is a jumbled, tumbled baker's dozen aural hijinksin' collages. Very strange and strangely varied, each is possessed with its own ample dose of the absurd. Much more dense and stewy that any of the previous Blanketship releases which were more breezy and exotica tinged. Quite reminiscent of Negativland, The Residents or John Oswald's Plunderphonics!
This new cd from SF's one man band Blanketship compiles three of his cd-r and cassette eps (hence the title, get it?) from the last couple of years. In chronological order, they are: L'Homme Invisible, Captain Assure, and Willow Bend. However, the tracks -- 25 in all -- have been jumbled together into an all new running order. It flows very well, making for a delightful full length. Maybe Cup's gone a little bit nutty, but she thought she heard lil' kitties mewing throughout this cd (particularly on the track "Dwarfism"). Then again maybe it was all due to the fact that just moments earlier we were listening to the plentiful meowing on the Cats & Kittens cd. Nonetheless, this is not a bad thing! The sounds, whether they are indeed meows or not, totally complemented the overall soft 'n' soothing atmosphere. On each track, Blanketship craftily arranges a soundscape of electronic melodies, sampled sounds, programmed rhythms among other things resulting in an airy collage. Sometimes a bit ghostly, sometimes a bit '60s British mystery movie-esque, sometimes a bit like a kranky ol' videogame, quite often playful and novel. Nice!
Following up 2006's delightful Summer Set, Bay Area artist Blanketship returns with Music With A Message! This time he's got The Dollson Family Singers in tow for another aural collage of off-kilter, genre-jumpin' frolics. The one dozen hymns on Music With A Message chug along like a feel good wagon with a slightly wonky wheel rolling over hills and through towns with heads in the clouds, toes tapping and hugs aplenty. Sorta like Danielson Family taking Polyphonic Spree to Sunday School but not without a secret intoxicating visit to Bruce Haack and Perrey & Kingsley's exotica tiki lounge beforehand!
2nd Place is the follow ep to the previous Record Of The Week from these SF sci-fi synthprog garage poppers, and while there's nothing quite as freaked out and far out as THAT track from their debut, it is another kick ass collection of super catchy, garage pop new wave that we can't stop listening too. Opener "Get High" sounds like a much more raw and garage rock version of Interpol, the deep crooned vox and the main melody the main culprits, but BC add all sorts of swirling female background vox, and lots more jangle and crunch, and while most of the track is fuzzy garage pop, the chorus is such a killer blast of new wave radness, not to mention the synth melody at the end. This may be only six songs, but one song in and we're already thinking this might be our new favorite record. And thankfully the rest of the record does nothing to change our minds. "Liquid Fiend" is a blown out blast of garage wave jangle and crunch, with hooks galore, and a sound that's distorted and crumbly, but warm and lush at the same time. "Holy Geometry" channels classic power pop through BC's cracked crunch and wild buzz drenched jangle, and "Finken's Lament" might be the weirdest of the bunch, what sounds like programmed drums, stumbling and pounding over swirling synths and buzzing drones and frantic guitar strum and garbled vox, all blurred into a druggy psych-wave blowout. "Manson Eyes" is another slab of synth soaked jangle pop, and finally, "Glass On Your Pillow" finds BC doing their best Oh Sees, at least at fist, with pounding drums, and a big buzzy bluesy garage rock riff, but suddenly the whole song is swallowed up by a thick low end drone, all the sounds saturated and in the red, thos deep crooned vox come in, and it's total gloom pop bliss, with a killer catchy chorus that manages to be impossibly hooky while being about as blown out as possible, a glorious cacophonous hook, that pretty much explains just why we love these guys (and gal) so much.
Includes a download coupon as well.
Ok, so they're called Blasted Canyons, the record is on John Dwyer's (Thee Oh Sees) Castle Face records, and has eye popping rainbow lazer psychedelic-smash cover art (courtesy Castle Face art dude William Keihn), one member of Blasted Canyons also does time in garage pop masters Bare Wires, so we were pretty much already sold, but then we threw it on, and well, we were definitely expecting some cool kick ass garage rock, but were totally unprepared for the tripped out psychedelic garage-prog synth-punk space-pop radness these guys and gal kick out.
The first track, awesomely titled "The Artist Formerly Known As Satan", should pretty much seal the deal, huge bombastic crashing distorted chords, almost metal sounding, but more like a fuzzy space rock dirge, swirling effects-drenched boy girl vocal harmonies that turn it it into some sort of twisted pop, pounding drums, druggy and dreamy, but heavy and fuzzy and catchy as hell, and when the track shifts gears, and they launch into some buzzy distorto garage pop crunch, with echo-y vocals, and woozy sweetly melodic background vox, not to mention some wicked melodic hooks, it's a total head banging hip swinging sonic bliss out, and then bam, it's right into that strangely epic and bombastic garage pop dirge which leads to one final buzzy blast. Might just be our jam of the year so far. Fuzzed out swaggery lowslung Stooges-y stomp fused to power pop jangle and lo-fi space-synth-prog, so good we can barely bring ourselves to listen to the rest of the record, but once we did...
The second track, "Blood On The Wall" is a synth driven chunk of angular garage-y new wave crunch, with a killer chorus, the howled distorto female vox and buzzing synth definitely reminding us of Black Bug, while "Consider Drowning" is a primo slab of surfy garage groove, with the vocals all deep and echoey reminding us of Crystal Stilts, but the chugging murky guitars, swirling spacey synth and pounding drums transforming it into something way more tripped out and primal. And so it goes, the whole record a wild ride through Oh Sees style sweat-soaked distorto-garage jangle pop, tripped out murkscapes of pulsing crumbling synths and pitch shifted vox, fuzzy classic post punk power pop laced with hazy oooh's and aaah's, noisy sci-fi-synth-wreathed punky pound, dirgey 4-tracked rhythmic experiments, wild, reverbed, feedback soaked girl group noise pop groove, twisted angular synth driven new wave, and finally finishing off with another bit of sonic weirdness, a perfect bookend for that opening blast of garage prog bombast, a swirling, dirgey, lysergic FX heavy synthswirl outro. So goddamn good. Record Of The Week for sure, but we're thinking maybe Record Of The Year too...!
Vinyl-only for now, here's hoping they'll also press up some cds soon as well...
Stunning new two track single from one half of, duh, Blectum From Blechdom. Fluttering, wondrous instumental synth lullabies that evoke the electronic work of Raymond Scott, the player piano compositions of Conlon Nancarrow, and even traces of Kurt Weill, but with a contemporary Schematic twist. Make sense? Remember a time in life when electronic synthesizers were accessible to the public and everyone had this crazy idea of what the year 2000 was going to be like? We were gonna live on the moon and live in capsules and wear spacesuits, we were preparing for the FUTURE! Well, I'm actually too young to remember, but these songs make me think about that kind of exhilarating bewilderment. Yeah, it's kinda like that...
Kevin Blechdom's latest album comes in the form of a frantic electronic-rock opera-style extravaganza. In contrast to her past recordings that frequently teetered into juvenile booby-joke, one-trick-pony territory (also a problem we've had with the music of Chicks On Speed whose label released this cd), this comes across as considerably more mature and composed... but no less kooky. Uhh, but we should let you know that breasts (her own) do make an appearance on this album's cover photo. Also on prominent display here... musically, is her startlingly broad stylistic spectrum. She delves robustly into diva drama, beefy rock, singy-songy pop, distorted funk, electro-kitsch and beyond. Finally, a Blechdom album with tracks that bear repeat listens, and with a number of compositions that are worthy of the critical acclaim that has been bestowed upon her in the past. That said, this is still something of an acquired taste. Check out the audio clips to see if your palate welcomes the camp-o-phonic sounds of Ms Blechdom.
We told it like it really is last time with our harsh-but-honest assessment of Kevin Blechdom's "Your Butt" ep...so there's no going back now. But perhaps this new disc from quite a few people's favorite female Oakland electronics and cabaret duo is deserving of a better fate. Or perhaps not. From the vaginal themed artwork to song titles like "Shithole" and "Toilet Trouble" this celebrates the side of BFB that we just don't appreciate, their not so much childlike as childish aesthetic... Of course, ample warning is given where it says on the sleeve that "this is a compilation of BFB's most drunken and messy live musical moments." Still, the resulting glitchy sound-world of computers gone bad features plenty of crunchy bleepy beats and drones, that, seemingly mechanical and random as they are, aren't unpleasant. But, when the duo start singing, that's when this slides from "kinda cool, kitschy instrumental electronica act" to "annoying, noisy joke band that's just not for us"... Again though, it can't be denied that BFB do indeed have their fans, and doubtless fans will want and need this disc, more power to 'em. We'll just agree to disagree, no hard feelings. Apparently, this is to be the last ever BFB release, but now have two separate full-fledged solo careers to, er, look forward to.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
You know how you can 'hear the sea' when you hold a conch shell up to your ear? Well imagine listening to a conch shell and hearing not just surf but also some gentle, haunting improvised psych-folk sounds inside there as well. That's what you get with this new Blithe Sons disc. Yes, Jewelled Antler drone minstrels Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson (1/2 of Thuja) return again with recordings from their travels to some of the more scenic, out of the way spots in the Bay Area. Did I say scenic? I mean sonic. The darkness of a dank old abandoned army bunker might not be the most picturesque sight 'round these parts, but the sounds Loren and Glenn conjure within its confines are a moody delight. Of course that bunker (and other sites these two visited) are near the quite picturesque Pacific, the ocean providing the seashore/undersea imagery and inspiration for Arm Of The Starfish. The hiss and hum of the Blithe Sons' field recordings of their own musical activities could be the sea in the distance... This cd is really lovely and droney and it makes me imagine that they have overloaded a ramshackle rowboat with their 'instruments' -- guitars, harmonium, bells, tape recorders, bits of driftwood, glassy pebbles, rusted metal, who knows? we're just guessing -- and floated out on an ancient lake, becalmed in the evening dusk, to sing softly as their boat slowly sinks and the sun sets.
Blithe Sons are the duo of Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson, who last graced us with the lovely We Walk The Young Earth disc on Family Vineyard back in March. You know Loren and Glenn from Thuja and Franciscan Hobbies and much else as well. Now they're back with another Blithe Sons installment on their own Jewelled Antler cd-r label. And not only is it a great record in its own right, it's also a sort of present to us here at Aquarius, Loren and Glenn's way of celebrating Andee and Allan taking over the biz, as it's only gonna be sold here and we're burning the discs ourselves and reaping the profits -- it's sort of an AQ benefit disc, really. Thanks guys!!
As they tell it, the story of Green Mansions is thus: somehow (via a secret garden? a rabbit hole? a mystical waredrobe?) Loren and Glenn found themselves alone at an empty English manor house. Going out on the grounds of the estate, they set up various stringed instruments in the fields, strewing them with grains so as to attract woodland creatures to venture forth in the dusk to "play" the instruments. A nice story...and sure, yeah, Green Mansions does sound a bit like that! Magical, natural. Glenn's delicate, wispy vocals and the general folk-psych atmosphere remind us of Richard Youngs, and even Jandek a bit (in a good way). Warm warbly tape hiss, acoustic guitar, bell-like synth, harmonium, and field recordings amongst other sound sources are blended into beds of shimmering drones that make us imagine the pastel sounds of a child's mobile slowly twirling in the "heavens". Really really nice in other words, and we're not just saying that since it's "our" release. Seriously recommended.
