Turkish psych fans! Here's another one for ya. We've already given the thumbs up to the wonderful Hurel Arsivi album from the Hur-el brothers. Now we've got a cd reissue of their first album, a self-titled longplayer from 196-. It's just as 'exotic' as Hurel Arsivi, but less overtly rock n' roll, being even more ethnic in flavor -- though it's very far from a purely traditional Turkish music recording! There's definitely Western '60s rock influences, but don't expect much in the way of heavy guitar fuzz-fests. Rather, you'll groove to a infectious rhythmic feast with melodious singing that's rooted in 'old school' Middle Eastern music but has a cool sixties pop-era vibe as well.
The sonorous vocals (all in Turkish) are highlighted, backed by every hipster's 'oriental' beat fantasy. 3 Hur-el are equally effective when playing uptempo dances, or much slower, moodier numbers, so the whole disc's a treat.
Without even reading this review, you probably know already if you're the sort of person who'd be interested in purchasing an album with song titles like "Destroy The Orcs", "Crazy Nights", "Axes Of Evil" and "Wykydtron". And if you are, AQ sez you should definitely buy this one! But read on for the details.
Listening to this album, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a German power metal troupe from 1985...but this disc is brand spankin' new, and the kids in 3 Inches Of Blood are from Vancouver! And their thanks list includes the likes of Teen Cthulhu, Goatsblood, and Harkonen. Presumably they followed the unlikely but ultimately excellent path from punk and hardcore to metalcore to, now, full on balls-in-a-vice, galloping guitars, swords and sorcery M to the E to the T to the A to the L. The singer screams and shrieks with the best of 'em (reminding us of Lizzie Borden, Udo and Metal Church's David Wayne), the music is both punishing and melodic, and a lot of the lyrics are even ABOUT metal, a la Manowar. So, the metalheads here at AQ were instantly hooked (oh yeah, it IS hooky). Not bad for some Canadian kids! Sure, great bands like Avenged Sevenfold and Darkest Hour and Mastodon have already allowed strains of '80s true heavy metal to seep into their metalcore mosh-math but 3 Inches Of Blood go waaaay beyond that. You will hear the metalcore origins in how this is tougher and heavier and noisier than their '80s inspirations, but still, it's pretty darn D&D.
What's really fucked up is, how'd they get on Roadrunner? This ain't nu metal, this ain't rap metal, this ain't even death metal. Not only that, someone spent some big bucks on it: produced by Neil Kernon (who has twiddled knobs for everyone from Hall and Oates to Macabre), mixed by Colin Richardson (another big name, most famous around here for his work with Carcass)...the cover art is even by the guy who did Megadeth's signature Vic Rattlehead cover paintings. Well, apparently this band somehow wound up touring with The Darkness, and loads of good press in the UK ensued, followed by this Roadrunner deal, after one previous indie-release we haven't been able to get a hold of yet. And sure, these guys are a bit tongue in cheek like The Darkness, but the music they are inspired by (no, not parody) isn't nearly as commercial and pop as the '80 hair metal and '70s cock rock The Darkness favors. The bands these guys emulate were way more underground and fast and heavy, stuff like good, old Helloween fer instance. Or (not so underground but important) Judas Priest's Painkiller album. All right, 'nuff said. Basically, it comes down to: "Destroy The Orcs", yay or nay? We say yay, destroy those pesky orcs!!
Right from the majestic, martial instrumental intro of "Through The Horned Gate" that begins this album, it's clear that the return of 3 Inches Of Blood is also the return of true, speedy, spikes n' leather metal in an updated '80s vein, hypercharged with aggressive modern metalcore technology. It's all about relentless shrieking, Maidenesque guitar frenzies, and song titles like "Night Marauders" and "Demon's Blade". Total galloping speed metal mayhem, and then some. It's like Judas Priest's Painkiller as performed by Converge!
Of course, 3 Inches Of Blood aren't the only band these days looking back to the glory days of the '80s for (ironic?) metal inspiration. But this Vancouver sextet is one of the best, most wholehearted, and surprisingly successful sales-wise (among North American bands anyway -- and this is way cooler than Dragonforce) and also have their own unique approach to this sound, which can be ascribed both to their hardcore heritage and to the presence of two vocalists (that's all they do!) in the band, doubling up on the mics, one a long-haired, raspy-but-melodic high-end falsetto specialist, the other short-haired one dealing in growlier throat abuse. And they kinda need two singers/screamers to compete with all the dual guitar fireworks going off around them.
Fire Up The Blades is a fine follow up to their breakthrough second album Advance and Vanquish, and is also already a definite headbanging AQ fave. We're into what seems to be an extra dose of, uh, rock n' roll riffage here -- there's some cowbell happenin' too. But it's still all pretty much rockin' at 150mph, pedal to the metal. This is one fierce, energetic album! For fans of everything from Accept to Children Of Bodom to Laaz Rockit to Darkest Hour to Lizzie Borden to Mastodon to Metal Church... gotta highlight this, as the FUN, fist-in-the-air quotient compared to some of the grim black metal we're always recommending is extremely high.
Ready for another ripping, rousing session of state of the art, orc slaughtering, ultra-metal action?? That's right, Canada's remarkably popular (both at AQ and elsewhere - they have their own signature Nike sneaker now, we're told!) 3 Inches Of Blood are back, let the headbanging commence! Their entertaining, energetic brand of '80s influenced power metal (birthed, though, from the modern metalcore scene) is as thrillingly, thrashingly over the top and unabashedly METAL as ever. Un-ironically so, we think, though the song title "All Of Them Witches" sounds like something The Fucking Champs would have come up with. Other titles though, like "Rock In Hell", "Fierce Defender" and "Battles And Brotherhood", are definitely sincere, face-value, heavy metal to the death declarations.
Shredding and shrieking, the eleven tracks of Here Waits Thy Doom pretty much all traffic in triumphant galloping glory. "Preachers Daughter" is a bit of a departure, more of a mid paced, blues metal stomp, in which we realize that the high pitched, always on the verge of a gargle vocals of the appropriately named Cam Pipes remind us slightly of a power metal version of Eric Wagner from Trouble. There's also an all-acoustic instrumental interlude (penultimate track "12:34") before the album concludes. So there's some variety, but what you'll mainly find here is an enjoyable overdose of balls to the wall speed metal from a band who owe a lot to the '80s but are definitely modern metal extremists as well.
Oh, and this is the first album without their other vocalist (they used to have two), the lanky short-haired guy who did the more growly hardcore/death metal vox. He retired or something, so now it's all ragged high-end, long-haired singer Pipes' show, although one of the guitarists does chip in with some more guttural backing vocals now and then.
Fuckin' awesome. And yes, our gratuitous use of such fuckin' language is perfectly suited to this album and band!
Latest from these San Francisco psychedelic space rockers, and yet another record that has us wondering what it is exactly that keeps these guys from being huge. Sure here at aQ, we sell TONS of 3 Leafs records, but they've yet to start getting the sort of broader attention bestowed on many of their spacey / psychedelic brethren. Carlton Melton, Wooden Shjips, White Hills, Burnt Hills, etc. If you're into ANY of those bands, or just into space rock and psych rock and have somehow managed to miss out on these guys, now's the time to remedy that. And Canal Smarts is as good a place to start as any. With the band expanded to a sextet, including Anthony from Ezeetiger, Tim Cohen of the Fresh & Onlys, and Chris Cones, Canal Smarts starts things off with a sidelong slowburn sprawl, that might be the best thing we've heard from these guys yet. A thick crunchy bassline is looped and sent drifting into the ether, the drums are super minimal, a skittery shuffle, the guitars aren't riffing or chugging, instead they're emitting clouds of vaporous drift, of crystalline shimmer, and blurred chordal whir, the whole thing laced with intercepted cell phone calls, of what sounds like whirring organs, the mix heavily panned so sounds seems to be drifting from speaker to speaker, there are vocals too, some ethereal and angelic, others reverbed and croony, and throughout, there seems to be a miasma of random sounds, voices, percussion, strange production, random FX, a heady blurred swirl of droned out psychedelia, that seems to us like one of those long form Miles Davis space-jazz mega jams reimagined via modern psychedelic drug rock. There also seems to be a bit of Necks going on, that same sort of super minimal looped jazziness, mesmerizing and hypnotic, repetitive and circular, the sidelong epic unfurling as a slowly building sonic smoldering, that spends its second half winding down, becoming more spare and sparse, the rhythms fragmenting, much of the effects heavy atmospheres dissipating, leaving something almost poppy, with some proper vocals, a sort of slow motion psych pop drift, that disappears into a cloud of tangled melody and gradually fading shimmer. And that's just the A side!
The flipside starts off with the oddly titled "Guacamole Window" (the band seem to have a thing for goofy titles), a surprisingly propulsive jam, urgent busy bassline over a skittery rhythmic shuffle forming the framework, while the rest of the band fill the rest of the space, with wildly looped samples, dense swirls of FX, clipped vox, plenty of industrial whir, more vocals, which give the song an almost old school post punk vibe, there are tangles of psyche guitar in there too, but so doused in effects they barely sound like guitars, spidery melodies underpin the proceedings, and near the song's end, the guitars grow more distorted and angular, the bass even buzzier and busier, the vocals sent careening back and forth, distorted and dubbed out, the song finishing off in a blaze of wild sonic chaos. And then finally, the comparatively low key title track finishes things off, with a slithery funky bassline, plenty of heavily effected percussion, and more vocals, another chunk of abstract psych pop, that seems to slowly coming apart, a dubbed out bit of psychedelic minimalism, that mixes classic melodies with fluttery dubbed out effects, guitars drift in and out, the whole thing delightfully druggy and dreamy, and the perfect spacey wind-down.
Yet another kick ass record from 3 Leafs, with apparently another one on the way any day now! We can't recommend these guys, or this record, highly enough, especially for all of you into spacey psych (and we know that's a LOT of you), and who knows, maybe this will be the record that finally pushes them to the next level. But heck, if not this one, maybe the next one, or the next one, or the next one...
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, each one hand numbered!
We've been waiting for this one for a while now. The infamous, and much talked about "mushroom record" from this SF improv psychedelic space rock collective. So called, because the entire thing was conceived, created, performed AND recorded while the entire band was under the influence of magic mushrooms.
Close to 40 minutes (edited down from much more than that, although it's unclear whether it was also edited in the same state), of gorgeous, tripped out, abstract psychedelia, sprawling swirls of kosmische drift, all blurred guitars, krautrock like pulses, streaks of druggy FX, throbbing propulsive bass, equal parts total spaced out ambience, and head nodding hypnotic motorik churn, the opening track "Fahren Bei Tag", starts off with nearly 5 minutes of hazy atmospheric exploration, before the drums finally kick in, and it's another minute or two before the band lock into a serious cosmic kraut groove, but when they do, it's exultant, the pulsing bass and stripped down drumming, surrounded by gorgeous peals of fragmented melody, thick corrosive swells of undulating high end, grinding chunks of feedback drenched chordal buzz, all winding down after about 13 minutes, leading directly into a bit of super melodic Neu! worship, with some washed out swirl and shimmer and a playful meditative main melody, this time the vibe much more new age-y and drifty, sun dappled and dreamy, the warm processed guitars conjuring up a lush layered bed of rapid pulses, over which synths whir and warble, and that main melody drifts on and on.
The title track, clocking in at 13+ minutes, is definitely the record's centerpiece, a dark brooding epic, haunting and otherworldly. The rhythm skeletal and spare, the wheezing keyboards hovering amidst rubbery basslines and glitch electronics, the vibe very gothic and gloomy, but shot through with bits of melody and light, it's a slow build, but not in the traditional sense, it doesn't get louder or heavier so much as subtly more intense, totally hypnotic and mesmerizing, the core sounds soon joined by bird calls and other field recordings, strange burbling liquids (bongs perhaps?), swooping streaks of electronics and processed effects, it sounds like it could have gone on for another 13 minutes (and probably did).
The final track, is another organ driven droner, dark and dense and deep, the drums more free and skittery, everything muted and washed out, the organs doing most of the melodic heavy lifting, and much of the textural as well, the bass thick and ropy, anchoring the whole thing, keeping it from drifting off into the stratosphere. Warm and whirring, dreamily druggy and so so good.
We tend to love everything 3 Leafs does, but this might just be their best. Although we can't vouch for how it sounds when listened to on mushrooms as well. Guess we'll leave that up to some of you out there.
Featuring members of the Fresh & Onlys, Tussle, Horn Of Dagoth, Amocoma, Citay and a bunch more. And most definitely recommended for fans of Expo 70, White Hills, the Heads, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Bardo Pond, Eternal Tapestry, Sleepy Sun, Burnt Hills, Gnod and other practitioners of modern kraut / space / psych. And it's probably pretty dang limited too...
We gave away a handful of these on Record Store Day, the most recent release from local SF psychedelic space rock minimalists 3 Leafs, and if you came by aQ on the Sunday after RSD, you might have caught them performing live in the shop (with a very special guest for part of the show, one year old Brix on the keyboard). But if you missed out on the free copies, and seeing 3 Leaves live, fear not, we now have copies for sale of En Super Forme, a live set recorded back in 2011 at Amnesia, right down the street from aQ. And while most 3 Leafs records are recorded live, and are thus essentially live records, much editing is involved before we get to lay our ears on it. So it's exciting to hear what these guys can manage in a live setting, no editing at ALL. And as you might not be surprised to discover, they sound much like they do on their records, if anything a bit more loose and loud. In this case definitely loud, cuz there was much talking going on in the crowd, and while the band started off quietly, the sound darkly rhythmic and peppered with field recordings, almost like an orchestra tuning up, it really only took a couple minutes for all the pieces to fall into place, the dubbed out bass, the busy skittery krautrock drumming, the thick billowing clouds of chordal shimmer, the Necks vibe we've mentioned in other reviews in full effect, spidery guitars, the sound exploding in little psychedelic squalls, while the rhythm section remains locked tight. About ten minutes in, the vocals (by Tim Cohen, also of The Fresh & Onlys, etc.) come in, a dark reverby croon, that here definitely have a bit of a Doors vibe, slipping into a falsetto before fading out.
The rest of the set unfurls similarly, the drums busy and tribal, gorgeous Eastern sounding guitar melodies drifting over sinewy basslines, and soft swirls of effects, the vocals giving the sound a definite pop vibe, but a sort of drifty psych pop vibe, in fact, the second track sounds a bit like a more blissed out Animal Collective in places, strangely enough, while the third track is very krautrocky, and very dubby too, a sort of krautdub, not funky necessarily, but certainly groovy. And finally, the band do their "Guacamole Window" from Canal Smarts, and it's the most propulsive of the bunch, reminding us at times of Tortoise, at times of This Heat, a sort of post punk psych jam, super rhythmic, and a killer closer. As always fantastic stuff. And thus highly recommended.
If we didn't know better we might think this was some lost psychrock gem recently discovered, dug up and put on cd for the first time. With an infectious tribal groove running throughout and a seriously drugged out vibe these five jams definitely sound like they could be from some Amon Duul rehearsal recorded on a boombox in a dirty old German garage filled with dirt, mildew, mushrooms and lots of good weed. But truth be told these are actually new sounds from a local supergroup of sorts made up of members from Horn of Dagoth, Black Fiction, Tussle and Citay. The no frills cd-r packaging and raw recording are the perfect visual analog to 3 Leafs' primitive take on deep in the woods psychedelic rock.
Super limited live cassette from aQ beloved psychedelic space rock drifters 3 Leafs! And by super limited, we mean FIFTY COPIES. We did get a bunch, but needless to say, these won't last long, so you might want to grab one before they're gone.
Recorded in December of 2011, right here in SF at the Cafe Du Nord, this tape offers up the entirety of the night's proceedings, repeated on both sides, a beautifully brooding slow burn / slow build epic. Dark swirls of abstract FX, warm synth swirl, buried voices, all blurred into a soft psych haze, before the drums and bass kick in, transforming the sound into something much more krautrock, sorta like the Necks meets Faust, or Can, mesmerizing and tranced out, laced with little bits of guitar filigree, dubbed out vox (courtesy of the Fresh & Onlys' Tim Cohen), some very Eastern style melodies, and some seriously nimble bass playing, the band locked into sprawling rhythmic kraut-psych workouts that slip deftly from hushed and hypnotic, to dense and driving, all the while wreathing the proceedings in swirling clouds of druggy spaced out shimmer and soft focus celestial murk, as always, fantastic stuff, and as we warned above, LIMITED TO 50 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.
Folks lucky enough to attend the 3 Leafs record release party for this latest lp, here in SF a few nights ago, were treated to an epic re-imagining of the group's favorite Metallica song, actually not even song, their favorite PART of a song, the group transforming that part, harmonized guitars and all, into a sprawling, metallic, repetitive psychedelic hypnorock epic, one that we can only hope the group eventually record. But as you might imagine, no such metallic shenanigans to be found here, just another collection of gorgeous tripped out psychedelic space rock, the group recording live with a stereo mic, no mixing and natural reverb, the space adding a warm glow to the proceedings, everything lush and lustrous. Opener "Traumvogel" offers some seriously dreamy kraut-age shimmer, a softly pulsing barely there rhythm, soft swirls of muted strum, the sky above filled with lovely little melodic tangles, and clouds of hushed cymbal shimmer, the Leafs at their most restrained, never exploding into something heavy, no driving rhythms, instead, just locked into this woozy, dreamily druggy drift.
The title track though does darken considerably, adding thick swaths of shadowy thrum, laced with crumbling distortion, and subtle swirling FX, the drums slowly gathering momentum, eventually settling into a quietly motorik groove, over which the rest of the band lay down clean guitar strums, layered drones and shimmery melodies.
It's not until the third track that Tim Cohen's (Fresh & Onlys, Amocoma, etc.) vocals first surface, echoey and softly reverbed, his vocal refrain drifting atop what sounds like a banjo, unfurling a lilting melodic loop, everyone locked into a simple, stripped down, minimal pulse, tinkling piano, swirling synths, wild squiggly FX surround the main melody/riff, minimal percussion, tinkling chimes, epic and a little bit folky, it's as if 3 Leafs were channeling some lost forest folk, through their own smoldering spaced out psychedelia, and it sounds GREAT.
The rest of the record follows suit, with the group stretching out a bit sonically. "Karlsoy Island" is all sun dappled synths, and pulsing bass grooves, a weirdly exotica vibe happening here, with some distorted guitar melodies draped over the top, laid back and hazily dreamy. "The Rose, The Crap, The Horse", though, is another darker one, all bowed metal and cymbal shimmer, tinkling music box melodies, clattery and clangy, before settling into something more abstract and almost free jazzy, xylophone (or vibes?) add some lush tonal color, the group eventually honing in on a cool skittery groove, that wraps distorted melodies around a skeletal rhythm, the group once again drifting into Necks territory, which is never a bad thing.
Finally, things finish off with the awesomely titled "You Will Be Mist", churning and tribal, with some fierce psych guitar swirl, lots of droned out buzz, some plodding percussion, atonal melodies, all wound up into a tense swirl of dark psych groovery, that ends way too soon after just 6+ minutes.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, each one hand numbered. Includes a download code as well!
We were a little bit blown away by the response we got to this Bay Area psychedelic space rock outfit's last record, the Canal Smarts lp, which we made our Record Of The Week on our last New Arrivals list. We couldn't keep it in stock, which is sort of the way we imagined it should be, especially considering considering that a portion of our review for that record was us lamenting the fact that these guys were not more well known, and didn't get the same sort of hype as other local psych-space combos like Carlton Melton and Wooden Shjips, not to mention groups like White Hills, Bardo Pond and the like. But for all the space-rocking 3 Leafs do, they seem to tend toward the blissed out, the meditative and abstract, for every stretch of propulsive krautrock like psychedelia, there's an even more sprawling segment of effects heavy drift, or looped jazzy mesmer, which bring us to Spaa, the soothing connotations no coincidence, as Spaa is in fact a single 45 minute jam, and one that spends most of its time in droned out raga mode, in fact, the band lock into a slow, haunting, darkly percussive groove from the onset, fading in gradually, as if this whole record was in fact cut from an even more epic and epically endless jam, the guitar buzz sitar-like, the bass woozy and elastic, thick and fluid, the drumming subtle and minimal, more a pulse really than a beat, and once the drums / bass / guitar are locked in place, the track unfurls hypnotically, while all around that central groove, all manner of sounds and textures shift and shimmer and swirl, cascades of glimmering glitchery, whooshing wind like whirs, disembodied vocals wrapped in echo and delay, the sound definitely reminding us of Aussie jazz minimalists The Necks, which is never a bad thing. Unlike most space jams, Spaa is not a slow build, peppered with explosive crescendos, instead, it lurks and meanders, creeps and slithers, shuffles and shimmers, the vibe mesmerizing, the groove utterly hypnotic, and while there is the occasional passage of wild FX or fluttery flute, as well as occasional strange tangles of melody, the only real sonic shift comes with a few minutes left, the sound becoming weirdly warped and woozy, almost new agey sounding, with thick swirls of hazy synth and chordal whir, that give the sound a sort of Goblin / Zombi vibe, finishing off with a wild squall of buzzing, blurred psychswirl chaos, before cutting out abruptly, as if someone just reached over and pushed stop on the recorder, leaving us to imagine the band playing on and on and on and on...
It's been a few years since we reviewed anything from these local spaced out psychrockers, and there have been at least a couple releases since Inward Sun, the last one we reviewed way back in 2007. Listening to Space Rock Tulip now, we're kicking ourselves big time. This stuff is awesome. Blissed out, effects flecked krauty space rock, heavy on the drift and shimmer and meander. Strings buzz, sounds swoop and stutter backwards, the drums are simple and motorik, synths whir, flutes flutter, the group slips from full on heart of the sun space jam, to Circle-esque hypnorock, to ethereal almost ambient groove, to Eastern style ur-drone to Santana sounding Latin tinged psychedelic rock to heavy tripped out metallic sounding stoner rock freakouts to full on trippy dubbiness, all woven into one extended and nearly seamless druggy outrock sprawl.
Anyone into The Heads, White Hills, Monster Magnet, Expo 70, White Hills, Burnt Hills, Titan, Gunslingers, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, or any of that kraut/space rock bliss, will definitely flip for these guys. Features a whole mess of local luminaries, who do or have done time in other bands like: the Fresh And Onlys, Tussle, Citay, Amocoma, Horn Of Dagoth, Black Fiction, Subarachnoid Space, Six Eye Columbia and more...
Latest from these local tranced out psychedelic space rock aQ faves, and don't let the awesome title fool you, there's no metal to be found here, technical or otherwise, just the usual sprawling abstract psych-scapes, two side long blowouts, brooding, and rhythmic, atmospheric and darkly melodic. And more than any of the other releases, this one sounds the most like an alaborate studio concoction, a 3 Leafs plunderphonic collage, mutliple sessions (including some of the aQ instore, which also just so happened to feature guest keyboards from our friend Pam's 1 year old son, Brix!), different recording qualities, multiple musicians, new jams AND old, all deftly woven into one single, and singular 3 Leafs epic, which weirdly is fast bacoming our favorite yet.
The A side, "Technical Death", starts out like some strange Eastern raga, all swirling and muted, laced with mysterious melodies and fluttering woodwinds, exotic instrumentation and gorgeous lush ambience, when the drums kick in, the sound is transformed to something distinctively more groovy, but without shedding that mysterious Eastern vibe. Space-y effects swoop in, and soon the track begins flitting sonically from sound to sound, as if some strange space rock overseer is flipping channels, weird falsetto vox, wheezing chordal shimmer, tangled analog squiggles, streaks of fuzzy hazy almost-pop, gurgling bass, clouds of cymbal shimmer, woozy acoustic guitar strum, a bit folky, but still droney and hypnotic, the sound melting into a weird collage of blurred sonic smears, electronic percussion, sine wave melodies, before blossoming into some Bitches Brew style groovery, and then finishing off with a wild tangle of skittery drums, bloopy electronics, and almost orchestral sounding strum. Wow.
The flipside is equally all over the map, beginning with a barely audible low end gurgle, before building into a Necks like churn, all dense percussion, and throbbing bass, wrapped in swirls of wah guitar, strange spacey chords, and a thick druggy haze, not to mention some washed out vox, the song seriously dense and driving, dark and churning, might be our favorite 3L jam yet, and then BAM, about 16 minutes in, the sound collapses into a weird swirl of drones and bleeps, before drifting back together in a new shape, this time sounding like some African street jam, like it could have come right off some tripped out Sublime Frequencies comp, albeit a little more tripped out and psychedelic. So good.
AND LIMITED TO JUST 100 COPIES!!!! Includes a download code as well.
3 Leafs have slowly become not only one of our favorite psychedelic bands in San Francisco, but maybe even worldwide. We've dug everything they've released so far, but it was with their last release, Eat The Earth, that we really realized something really special was being created via their approach to improv based spaced out psych. With Titular Lines, we get further proof that this is a group truly invested in the essence of psychedelic music making. Too many of their counterparts seem very connected to one specific moment or era of psych rock, but what makes 3 Leafs stand above the crowd is how they really are true aficionados of such a wide spanning range of mind melting sounds.
The record starts off with a warm and woozy jam that sounds like some amazing lost outtake from a Miles Davis recording circa Live-Evil / Bitches Brew. As the record continues it shifts, twists and turns into hypnotic spells of sound that take us on a magical ride through a landscape of sonic wonder, rife with moments that recall Ennio Morricone, the Necks, Ash Ra Temple, Magma, Blues Control, Parson Sound, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Ariel Kalma, Eternal Tapestry, Sun Araw, the Organisation, White Hills, and others. We love how there is patience and an elegant pacing to the music of 3 Leafs. While others want to hit you over the head with just how 'psych' and 'weird' they are, 3 Leafs allow their tracks to slowly evolve with layer upon layer, allowing you to more deeply feel the evolved feeling of these sounds. This group definitely has the ability to sound shimmering and majestic as well as raw and haunting. So many other psych bands right now are getting all kinds of wide spread praise and acclaim, but we feel 3 Leafs deserves just as much attention as this is psych made with a deeper understanding and a long lasting impact.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest blast of cosmic hypno-psych from these local psychedelic space rock explorers find them continuing to push their sound in new directions, the first track here driven by the distinctive sounds of the Omnichord, a cool little electronic autoharp/drum machine combo, which lays down a playful percolating motorik Casio rhythm, swathed in the instrument's weird harp-like electronic strum. The band augments its woozy groove with soft swirls of tonal shimmer, little squiggles of guitar filigree, and a cool softly buzzy riff/refrain that surfaces occasionally. It's like a lo-fi home brewed giallo soundtrack almost, the beat finally slowing way down, the electronic chordal thrum mostly fading out, leaving soft streaks of twang flecked, FX wreathed guitars, which sprawl into a dreamy freeform chunk of cinematic drift, still anchored by the dying battery slow motion pulse of the Omnichord, creeping through a pulsing cloud druggy washed out psychedelia.
The second track pairs echo drenched pop vox, with some thick groovy bass, some buried in the mix drumming, and a skyfull of what sounds like animal sounds, lots of shimmery FX, simple percussion, all blurred into a dubbed out sonic headtrip, that partway through coalesces into a cool krautrock groove, rife with backwards guitars, and super distorted drumming, the result not that far removed from some super blown out, ultra abstract Flaming Lips jam! Which brings us to the 13 minute "Golden Weapons", which begins as a strange collaged swirl, fields of cymbal shimmer, blurred effects, sculpted feedback, the drums kicking, wild and octopoidal, over a bed of swirling noise, and then BAM, the bass swoops in, and it's a killer dubbed out noise groove, that bass sounding not unlike Paul Simonon from the Clash - which may sound weird, but imagine the Clash at their very dubbiest, then mix in some roiling rhythmic freakout a la the Boredoms and some Butthole Surfers-ish slow burn psych dirge tribal noise jam, and somehow craft all of those disparate parts into a hazy, driving, psych-kraut groove, toss in some of Tim Cohen's reverbed vocal croons on top, as well as dense clouds of guitar blur and layered constantly shifting textures, and smear it all into a gorgeously hazy expanse of minimal drone-dub hypno-rock bliss out. Near the end of the track, the song settles down into something much more minimal and tranced, out, a little jazzy even, once again, like some past 3 Leafs jams, reminding us of the Necks, albeit a bit more lo-fi and lysergically spaced out. Great stuff as always, and of course absolutely recommended!!!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Another new 7" on Negative Guest List, this one some early nineties thud rock from this Aussie outfit, who sound like they should have ended up on Siltbreeze, thick distorto bass, big caveman drums, two covers, the A side a Gary Glitter jam transformed from glam anthem into a knuckledragging dirge, gloomy and sludgey, with a sort of Sonic Youth-y vibe in some of the weird chords. The B side is a killer version of Pere Ubu's "Non Alignment Pact", with some loose drumming wound around some killer slippery guitar work, swaggery and slithery, crunchy and fuzzy and heavy, almost digging it more than the original.
Housed in fancy hand glittered covers!
Another list, another fantastic new release from local label Time Released Sound. By now, regular readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with the musical focus of TRS: gorgeous field recording flecked ambience, pastoral dream folk, hushed, haunting dronemusic, gentle electronic soundscapery, lush cinematic shimmers; each record another glimmering facet in TRS's prismatic world of sound. Their latest melancholy musical missive comes from Japanese pianist/soundscaper Masashi Shiraishi, aka 3+, who sets his delicate crystalline piano pieces amidst the rustle of crashing waves, letting his softly reverbed notes drift through fields of ephemeral electronics, or settle gracefully like leaves falling from Autumn trees. Imagine Ryuichi Sakamoto, set up on a grassy hilltop on the coast, above a grey sea, the waves crashing on the rocks far below. Occasionally strings drift in, adding a bit of near symphonic gravitas. In places, this blissed out melancholia is threatened by swaths of deep resonant buzz, or alternately flecked with the distinctive twang of a mouth harp, or even woven into a brooding dark jazz reminiscent of The Necks or Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. There are moments of soundtrack like mood music, heart wrenching and dreamlike, there are moments where the piano is wrapped in a dense fog of modern minimalism, all rib cage rattling low end, and gristly, glitchy static, and there are moments where the individual notes seem to bleed and blur into woozy swaths of sound, but throughout it all, Shiraishi proves a master of mood and melancholy, the sounds here grey and cloudy and windswept, darkly dreamy and really quite divine.
As always, there are two versions, the standard, which comes in a full color digipak and is limited to 200 copies, and the ultra fancy, meticulously handmade, deluxe version, limited to just 90 copies, of which we have a tiny handful, housed in a 6" square collaged green envelope, which in turn is wrapped in a hand stamped and tagged, translucent vellum outer envelope, held shut by a full tissue 'obi' made from the pages of a 50 year old book on Bonseki (tray landscape art, a little like Bonsai). The 'obi' can be removed, and wrapped around a votive candle to make a miniature paper lantern. There's also a second inner sleeve made from the pages of a vintage book of Japanese flower and pattern design! Phew!
Fans of Anton Batagov and Lubomyr Melnyk, this comes HIGHLY recommended!!
Another list, another fantastic new release from local label Time Released Sound. By now, regular readers of the aQ list are no doubt familiar with the musical focus of TRS: gorgeous field recording flecked ambience, pastoral dream folk, hushed, haunting dronemusic, gentle electronic soundscapery, lush cinematic shimmers; each record another glimmering facet in TRS's prismatic world of sound. Their latest melancholy musical missive comes from Japanese pianist/soundscaper Masashi Shiraishi, aka 3+, who sets his delicate crystalline piano pieces amidst the rustle of crashing waves, letting his softly reverbed notes drift through fields of ephemeral electronics, or settle gracefully like leaves falling from Autumn trees. Imagine Ryuichi Sakamoto, set up on a grassy hilltop on the coast, above a grey sea, the waves crashing on the rocks far below. Occasionally strings drift in, adding a bit of near symphonic gravitas. In places, this blissed out melancholia is threatened by swaths of deep resonant buzz, or alternately flecked with the distinctive twang of a mouth harp, or even woven into a brooding dark jazz reminiscent of The Necks or Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. There are moments of soundtrack like mood music, heart wrenching and dreamlike, there are moments where the piano is wrapped in a dense fog of modern minimalism, all rib cage rattling low end, and gristly, glitchy static, and there are moments where the individual notes seem to bleed and blur into woozy swaths of sound, but throughout it all, Shiraishi proves a master of mood and melancholy, the sounds here grey and cloudy and windswept, darkly dreamy and really quite divine.
As always, there are two versions, the standard, which comes in a full color digipak and is limited to 200 copies, and the ultra fancy, meticulously handmade, deluxe version, limited to just 90 copies, of which we have a tiny handful, housed in a 6" square collaged green envelope, which in turn is wrapped in a hand stamped and tagged, translucent vellum outer envelope, held shut by a full tissue 'obi' made from the pages of a 50 year old book on Bonseki (tray landscape art, a little like Bonsai). The 'obi' can be removed, and wrapped around a votive candle to make a miniature paper lantern. There's also a second inner sleeve made from the pages of a vintage book of Japanese flower and pattern design! Whew!
Fans of Anton Batagov and Lubomyr Melnyk, this comes HIGHLY recommended!!
Oooh. Breathtaking stuff here for those who like their music to have a hazy, vague, mysterious aura, and to combine delicate indie-rock "pop" elements (moody vocals, slow-motion melody) with more experimental, fragmented structures and textures... It's the work of a four-piece outfit from Italy, who immerse their murky, mostly instrumental post-rock electro-acoustic playing in droney field recordings, blurring the boundaries, with tree frogs or crickets, and what sounds like hissing, escaping gasses, and other noises that require some imagination to describe playing an important role alongside more obvious instruments like guitars and drums and turntables. There's a definite Jewelled Antler feel, that sort of organic, wandering-in-the-woods, letting-our-ears-find-the-way songmaking process, but with more palpable tension, bringing in a bit of the percussive skitteriness of fellow Italians and Hapna labelmates Sinistri/Starfuckers. We can compare this with lots of other things we love: Radian meets Richard Youngs? Kemialliset Ysatvat teamed up with Tape? Blithe Sons, Larsen, Sigur Ros, Village Of Savoogna, Dean Roberts... we're reminded in ways of all of 'em.
A truly gorgeous album that has the potential to appeal to a lot of different tastes, finding the wonderfully, naturally imperfect intersection of song and improv and field recording drone. This being their second release (first for Hapna, who've released this in the Swedish label's usual nice slim-sleeve packaging), we're going to have to track down their previous one... just as soon as A Year Of The Aural Gauge Operation's sheer dreaminess lets go its hold on our thoughts.
With this, their fourth album, these previous AQ Record Of The Week honorees, the oddly named Italian group 3/4HadBeenEliminated, have again given us a precious glimpse into their sonic dreamworld, and we say YAY to that. Kinda wish we could stay there forever, this music has such an engaging embrace, part abstract soundscape, part gentle melodiousness, part drone, part indie-pop, definitely not too far removed from some Jewelled Antler output, with a little This Heat or Village Of Savoonga mixed in. Our idea of blissful "oblivion" indeed, these mysterious and experimental lullabies of hum, hiss, buzz.
Various instruments, field recordings, electronics, turntables, percussion, the human voice, all are utilized to create the four tracks on this tightly crafted 39 minute disc. The very first piece, the longest at 17 minutes, introduces all the ingredients... gentle vinyl crackles, looping along with shimmering swells of strings and synth. Occasional hits of a snare. Hints of piano melody, amidst equally restrained electronic glitch. Environmental noises, tape manipulations. Bringing this somehow into an avant pop orbit, there's layers of vague vocals, or even simply sometimes just the breathy suggestion of vocals, that in this sonic setting recall to us Richard Youngs and Robert Wyatt, with their ghostly fragility.
Definitely a wonderful reminder of why we've always loved this band so much, highly recommended!
Italian avant outfit 3/4hadbeeneliminated offer up a new cd... it's a little pricey but that's 'cause they splurged on the packaging. We'll talk about that in a second, but first the music. If you've heard their previous work, like the Hapna release A Year Of The Aural Gauge Operation (an AQ Record Of The Week in 2005), you'll know to expect fractured and mysterious soundscapes, a densely textured drone-zone constructed from field recordings, record crackle, improvised acoustic instruments, radio static, fragments of piano melody, electronic treatments, whispered Italian voices, turntable scratchings, reel-to-reel tape manipulation, synthesizer sinewaves, scattered percussion, and more. That's a zone we LOVE to visit. There's two long tracks, lots to explore, all manner of curious creakings and cracklings, shifting rhythms and rumblings abounding within 3/4hadbeeneliminated's carefully crafted and/or improvised music. At times quiet and meditative, at others noisier and distorted, but always (to our ears) utterly gorgeous and compelling. Aligns quite nicely with the likes of the Jewelled Antler collective, the Finnish forest foraging of Kemialliset Ystavat, and of course others in the experimental underground Italian scene of which the members of 3/4hadbeeneliminated are a part.
As for the packaging, start with a plain cardboard box, a little over six inches square and one inch deep. Open it up and you'll find a slightly smaller hinged wooden box, each one hand-painted with wax paper decoration. Open that up and there's the cd, in a colorful fabric sleeve, with a paper insert listing the track titles (revealing each one to be a suite of sorts btw). Certainly nicer than the standard jewel case... though one slight drawback is that the cd itself is likely to be coated with a layer of dust from the wooden box, so you'll have to gently wipe it clean or you might find it skipping and glitching out (which would fit in with some of their musical methodology, actually). Indeed, this rustic, elaborate cottage industry packaging is certainly reflective of the rough-hewn, intricate mystery of their music, which deserves such unique treatment.
By the way, there's also an even more expensive new vinyl-only limited edition LP by these folks, a totally different album using these recordings as a basis for recomposition, called The Religious Experience, simultaneously released on Soleilmoon. We just a have a couple in stock right now but hopefully can get more and give it a review sometime soon, although simply we can say it's a nice companion to this...
The new, 2nd album from this Portland (OR) trio sure has gotten under Allan's skin (in a good way). Is that because of the incessant, complex bass lines? The strident yet often lovely vocals? The classically-influenced details? The band's infectious prog-pop chutzpah? All that and more. Yes indeedy, 31 Knots play indie-pop with healthy helpings of prog. That's right, prog -- as in Yes for instance. The press we've seen on this plays up the Yes comparisons, and we'd have to agree, though there's much else going on as well as "Fragile" and "Close To The Edge" worship. Inspiration is drawn from the '80s as well as the '70s, as this possesses a New Wavish pop/punk energy that makes some of this sound like, say, Hot Hot Heat meets Yes. Other names to drop in a review of 31Knots might include: Circus Lupus, Convocation of, King Crimson (their "funkier" side), The Police, Modest Mouse, Party of Helicopters, and Gang Of Four. Maybe. What we're sure of is that 31 Knots are mathy yet catchy, way more compelling and poppy than most post and/or math rock outfits you can imagine. Their sinewy, elegant songwriting is backed up by impressive, precise playing, but, like the best proggers in the '70s, they don't let their obvious instrumental prowess get in the way of writing really good songs, ones with melodic content and emotional depth. There are *lots* of good songs on here -- it was hard to pick the two to make sound samples from! As mentioned above, this is their second album (introducing a new drummer, the guy from Dilute & Natural Dreamers). Somehow we missed their first album but we'll rectify that error asap!
Yay, four more (five if you count the atmospherically stutterin' intro) tracks of the sinuous, powerful post-punk poppy progginess that Portland's 31 Knots has always wowed us with! They still sound like some weird, choppy blend of Yes and Fugazi (to use the usual shorthand), and their arty experimentation and sheer sonic bombast hasn't lost any of its punch or pleasurableness. And oooh, it's one of those cool lookin' 3" cds, with the extra clear plastic rim 'round the outside to give it the regular cd 5" diameter total. You'll understand what we're talking about when you see it.
This came out at the tail end of 2006, so we're hoping that they're pretty much ready to unleash the new full-length for which this has whet our appetites!
Quickly following up their fine The Curse Of The Longest Day ep with this excellent new full-length, Portland, Oregon's 31 Knots are satisfying all our abundant cravings for pop-smart, sonically rich indie rock gone prog. Prog as in Yes, to whom these guys have often been compared. And that's a good thing (if you aren't sure that's the case, you really should check out Fragile or Close To The Edge, to mention just two of the great Yes albums of the early '70s). As with such ye olde prog, the 31 Knots guys are top knotch instrumentalists... and no slouches at singing and writing songs either. Their Yessisms are more like hints of Yes (both their complexity and melodicism) informing and subverting songs that a less ambitious band might have crafted into more typical examples of the current "new wave" of white belted indie dance rock. And along with the pull of prog, this material is also shaped by the push of (arty) punk rock aggression as well. Fugazi, Yes, and I dunno, Elvis Costello might make strange bedfellows but 31 Knots make it seem like such a pajama party would be a good idea. Talk Like Blood's ten tracks bombastically blend heartfelt vocals, rubbery basslines, precise drumming, classical piano, electronic glitchscapes and lots more besides, always making moody and powerful and undeniably poppy music.
Polyvinyl offers up a 21 minute ep from new signings 31 Knots of Portland, OR. We were already fans of these guys after getting hip to them via their second album It Was High Time To Escape a couple of years ago. They haven't messed much with their prog-infused, hooky indie-pop formula with these new songs (thankfully!). Marked by the strong, emotive, confident voice of guitarist Joe Haege (not to mention his accomplished guitar playing and effective deployment on piano as well) and the powerful, precise rhythm section of Jay Pellicci on drums and Jay Winebrenner on bass, these four songs (and one shorter instrumental interlude of sampled strings/electronic loops/glitchy noises) are big and bold when they need to be, complex and textured too. Melody lines swoop about within song structures that are well fitted with stops and starts and sudden dynamic changes, that should appeal to fans of everybody from OK Computer era Radiohead to Deerhoof (whose Greg Saunier helped mix and master this ep) to Blonde Redhead to Shudder To Think to The Mars Volta -- though the well-written, compelling compositions of 31 Knots are, for our money, a better application of prog to indie rock than the sometimes overcooked brand practised by the latter. Our only complaint here is that it's just an ep! But there's a new full-length on the horizon, so that's cool.
We've always been impressed by the audacious emo-prog of this Portland, Oregon outfit. A mashup of mathy chops and melodramatic, melodic pop, 31 Knots' latest is a worthy addition to their discography, building on their distinctive sound with what seems like at least one unpredictable new twist per track, writing exhilarating songs that variously incorporate piano, horns, and well-placed electronic glitch... Fans know they need this, noobs should start here or with 2005's Talk Like Blood (or, if you're on a budget, one of the band's several excellent eps). In a perfect world, these guys would be as big as the Mars Volta!
Portland's 31 Knots are one of those bands that just keeps plugging away, making amazing albums, to the great pleasure of their loyal fans of course, but we wonder why they don't in the course of things also, you know, get BIG. More fans, more pleasure. They should, or would, be huge if rock n' roll was a meritocracy (which it obviously isn't). This is their sixth full-length release, since their debut about a decade ago, and once again it's a enjoyable example of their trademark "Fugazi-meet-Yes", indie rock gone no wave prog sound. Hmm, maybe that explains why they aren't BIG... that's too weird of a formula. But then again, Radiohead, Muse, Mars Volta, Coheed and Cambria, they're popular, so folks who like the likes of them, should check out 31 Knots for something maybe knottier (though in no way naughtier, they're not that sort of band). Out of the 31 Knots discography, Trump Harm is as good as any (though maybe the cover art isn't), it's assuredly poppy, yet complex and bombastic, offering up ten new tracks that satisfy all our 31 Knots expectations, of earworminess and angularity, mathiness and melody, electricity and emotion. It's thinking (and feeling) man's pop music, that kicks ass too, with arty post-punkish power and precision. If just one person reading this review who has never heard 31 Knot before, decides to check 'em out and becomes a fan, we'll be happy. 100 people, that'd be even better!
Ooohh. After four full lengths and a handful of eps, this Portland-based indie-pop-prog act has pretty much proven themselves a sure bet, for intelligent, complex, catchy music that's equally, seemingly effortlessly at ease with today's electronic glitch, '70s prog inspired bombast, and quirky post-punk groove. This latest, Worried Well does not break that streak. No worries, if you love the 31 Knots thing, like we do. Plenty of nervous piano, lush arrangements, noisy guitars, mathy drums, theatrical vocals, all the works in other words. True, some might find 31 Knots a bit too much, too pretentious or peculiar or puzzling or poncy or something. Personally, though, whatever 31 Knots is too much of, we want more. But maybe this one works better if you're already into their other albums as well. If you do, dive right in. And besides, you've gotta love an album where in one song ("Compass Commands") what sounds like a chorus of little girls yells "Kill or be killed!" in response to the singer's schoolteacher-ish question "Who can tell me the universal rule of thumb?".
With Kruder & Dorfmeister and Thievery Corporation striving for the lowest common denominator, trip hop hasn't been an arena of adventurous music for many years now. It could be due to hip hop's increasing appetite for eccentric production (see the latest Missy Elliot record, Anticon, Chocolate Industries, etc), which has diminished the interest in instrumental hip hop (a slightly
Simply subtitled "Short Stories by 310," "Nothing To See Here" lives up to its name as a series of short tracks culled from processed field recordings of waves crashing, creaking floors, crickets, Southern gospel call-and-response choirs, distant church
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest and definitely greatest from these old school Japanese grind thrashers. Noisy, heavy, brutal, punishing, and weirdly catchy.
This is post rock. Nothing more, nothing less. Instrumental? Of course. Sure it's lovely, but we've heard it all before. And just because you play quiet music, doesn't mean it can't be imbued with some sort of intensity and fire, some sort of desperate need to share the sounds you're creating. The problem here is a lack of passion. The lack of any sort of joy to be playing music.
It's sexless and emotionless and hollow sounding. Sure it's well played and technically proficient and compositionally interesting, but I think the title sums it up nicely, they're just playing music.
We first heard about 39 Clocks (or "The" 39 Clocks according to the cover here) a few months back
with the release of their career spanning collection Zoned, and we were surprised to come across a group that managed to embody so many elements of what we love about various styles music while still managing to sound unique and delightfully out of time. The German duo's most notable characteristic was their pre-1966 take on hard driving beat music, delivered through a punkish art school filter on a couple tabs of acid. They managed to be catchy but nihilistic, familiar yet obscure, and we still stand by our assertion of them sounding like "Modern Lovers on Quaaludes with the guy from Faust singing," the liner notes here accurately describe them as "the natural successors to the Velvet Underground (minus Nico), ? And The Mysterions, and Suicide." Can't argue there.
Pain It Dark is the group's debut album, released back in 1981. From a historical perspective, it makes sense for this to have been reissued, but to those who purchased Zoned, be warned that eight of Pain It Dark's 12 songs were featured on that collection. For those of you hesitated for some reason or other, however, Pain It Dark might be the way to go, as the general flow and overall feel of the album help to paint a stronger picture than some of the more rambling songs featured on Zoned.
The album begins with "Shake The Hippie," an upbeat number with the band's trademark lazy German guy vocals. The next song, "DNS," is where things really take off, featuring a sleazy sax lead and a super rhythmic combination of real drums and drum machines. It's druggy in its own way, and its aggressive attack definitely makes this one of the stand out songs on the album. The Velvet Underground influence is also made pretty clear on "78 Soldier Dead," which alternates between a self-penned riff and the one from "Sweet Jane". "Stupid Art" sounds a bit like the Fun House-era Stooges, especially with its use of saxophone, while the band's warped pop sense is further illustrated on the awesomely titled "Radical Student Mob In Satin Boots" with a slashing little keyboard melody and percussion that could very easily not work in less skilled hands.
While we are slightly confused by the timing of this reissue with Zoned, Pain It Dark is a good place to start for the uninitiated, and hopefully marks the beginning of an extensive reissue campaign for this mysterious German duo.
Yet another chapter in the 39 Clocks saga, Subnarcotic being the band's second album, originally released in 1982, and now reissued. The German duo appears to be operating at full blast here, with the liner notes in fact quoting our own review of the band's career spanning anthology Zoned, wherein we postulated 1982 as perhaps the "boys' most fertile drug period"!
The greatest thing about 39 Clocks is how blissfully - or maybe nihilistically - out of touch they are with the 1980s, and if this band had formed at any point within the last five years, they would be ruling the garage punk scene, no question. An innate understanding of rhythm is one of their greatest strengths, informing pretty much everything you hear from the slashing guitars to the buzzing organs to the heavily accented German vocals. They sound equally at home with a drum machine or a real drummer, and the shambolic approach to songcraft seems to draw as much from their krautrock predecessors as it does from the Velvet Underground, the Godz, and the harder side of the Nuggets spectrum. They know how to launch into a sleazy groove and gussy it up with dark psychedelic flourishes while rarely being anything other than really fucking catchy. Plus, they look like a couple of badasses, dark shades and Beatle Boots, rail thin with messy hair and pseudonyms indebted to LSD. The live bonus track of the song "Past Tense Hope & Instant Fears On 42nd Street" gives a perfect idea of their animalistic power onstage. Subnarcotic is another tantalizing glimpse into the world of this strange and amazing band, and we're already jonesing to hear more!
Well, this is certainly a strange one, in the best of ways. It probably goes without saying that most of you have never heard of 39 Clocks. We sure hadn't. But one day a promo copy of Zoned showed up and pretty much knocked us on our asses. Who was this strange band that sounded like the Modern Lovers on Quaaludes with the guy from Faust singing? It wasn't until we received the actual album that we figured we could go about piecing together a loose history of this obscure German duo...but the liner notes, not to mention a dearth of information online (the gist of it all is that they seemed to stir shit up), do little except make it abundantly clear that these weirdos will remain a mystery. Without any external details to worry about, we can instead focus on what matters most: the music, natch!
We're sure plenty of you remember the killer Onna 7" Holy Mountain reissued a few months ago. Well, if Onna were a couple of German dudes who set their sights on reinterpreting '60s proto-punk with an unhealthy amount of dissonant NOISE and a smart ass sense of humor, they might have sounded a bit like 39 Clocks. The band pumps out catchy songs based on simple riffs and wraps them in ungodly noise, the results sounding like they were recorded in some grimey, post-industrial slaughterhouse. Like Onna, 39 Clocks appear as a total anomaly during the 1980s, and these selected recordings, represented chronologically backwards from 1987-1980, are a delightfully confusing, slightly disturbing example of psychedelia's true legacy during a time when many bands were participating in a rather unfortunate psych revival based on superficial and idealized evaluations of the 1960s - you know, just like today. 39 Clocks, instead, were damaged, druggy, and fully willing to emphasize repetitive, droning grooves that submerge themselves deep within your sick brain. Time is kept with primitive drum machines (and occasionally real drums) and, not surprisingly, the rhythmic flow is heavily indebted to many of their Krautrock predecessors. At various other points, the band conjures everyone from Suicide to the Velvet Underground to Syd Barrett's solo work. But when the smoke clears, 39 Clocks are very much their own fucked up band.
The flow of this anthology is surprisingly fluid, the unifying thread being 39 Clocks' skewed approach to music making. On "My Tears Will Drown The World", the first and possibly most "normal" song on the album, acoustic guitars accompany deadpan vocals with sustained guitar drones, as brilliantly sampled orchestral movements and percussion provided by the sounds of soldiers marching send things into another dimension. The demented "78 Soldier Dead" thrashes about drunkenly before unexpectedly switching into the riff to "Sweet Jane". They even offer a totally warped cover of "Twist & Shout", all detached and super German, somehow finding the ability to take all the sweat and emotion out of a frantic crowd pleaser, making it almost clinical. The song begins to sound like it is coming to life with an overblown guitar playing the main melody before everything is overtaken by earsplitting feedback. Elsewhere we find extensive use of trashy guitars in the vein of Pussy Galore, some wailing harmonicas, and hilarious but acidic lyrics conveying a nihilistic interpretation of recent world history (probably that whole being from Germany thing...) The songs represented from 1982 seem to indicate the boys' most fertile drug period, as the mostly 7+ minute songs bring to mind shambolic '60s punks the Godz, meaning a heavy emphasis on noise and atonality which may or may not be as intellectual as some people make it out to be, but kills nonetheless.
Wrapping up this review makes it clear how difficult it is trying to accurately describe a band like 39 Clocks. We realize how often we used the word "noise" in this review, and even comparisons to other bands can't really evaluate the unique vibe of this album. It certainly won't be for everyone, but we know their are enough adventurous aQ customers who will totally love this expansive collection of bizarre rockers. In fact, your assessment of whether or not this is for you could be based on how you respond to lyrics like "I'm the best of all genetic chimps". We dig.
Any indie rocker worth their salt already knows, and most likely loves, noisy NZ jangle poppers the 3Ds, their sound unknowingly a template for much of what was to follow in their wake. This collection was compiled by the Dead C's Bruce Russell, whose first label Xpressway was briefly home to the 3Ds, and while for most folks the 3Ds were always considered a Flying Nun band, many of the tracks here were recorded for Xpressway. Included are remastered versions of the band's first two eps (Fish Tails and Swarthy Songs For Swabs) as well as a whole mess of unreleased demo and comp tracks.
For those who've never heard the 3Ds, you might be shocked by their sound, considering how many bands we know and love seem to have borrowed quite a bit from them, Pavement to Superchunk, indie rock as we know it definitely owes a huge debt, plus the usual croon and jangle is augmented by distinctly dour Wipers-ish miserablism not to mention some swaths of good old NZ noise. Have a listen to the first few tracks and odds are you'll be smitten, or if you're already a fan, it'll remind you just why you (and we) loved these guys so much in the first place.
"Meluzina Man", the version from the Xpressway Pile Up compilation, is as close to perfect as this stuff gets, hushed and dreamily jangly, with sweet boy/girl harmonies, slithery Joy Division basslines, thick buzzy guitars, a hushed haunting first half gives way to an explosive second half, noisy and distorted, wildly psychedelic, dark and droney, the crooned vocals transformed into a passionate howl. The perfect mix of jangle and buzz, of brooding darkness and sweet melodicism. Up next is "First Church", from the first ep, and finds the band fierce and rocking, the guitar super fuzzy and distorted, the drums pounding, all over a roiling backdrop of swirling sounds and mysterious voices, the vibe snarly and swaggery, a little bit sludgey and dirgey, and those vocals, a little reminiscent of Gordon Gano from Violent Femmes, the perfect balance to the churning low slung buzz, propulsive and hypnotic, almost like some indie rock band channeling Hawkwind. And then there's the equally awesome "Evocation Of W.C. Fields", the demo version a super lo-fi version of what is essentially some perfect NZ pop, quirky, a little bit new wavey, with driving basslines and killer fuzzjangle guitar. Later on there's a proper studio version, which is different, more lush and heavy and a little bit shoegazey, but that demo version, there's something special about it. Hell there's something special about all these tracks. We've been playing this like crazy, and going through a little bit of a 3Ds revival. So great!
Includes a massive booklet with extensive liner notes by Brice Russell, all about the early years of the band!
With this recent vinyl resurgence / renaissance, all sorts of classic hip hop records have been getting reissued, which has had us listening to lots of old favorites, and debating which are the best classic hip hop records. Sure Public Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions was mentioned, as was De La Soul's 3 Feet High And Rising. Scott suggested Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders. We even got to discussing more obscure selections, the D.O.C.'s No One Can Do It Better, Son Of Bazerk's Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk (remember "The Band Get Swivey On The Wheels"?), Allan even suggested Kwame, which got us talking about the Black Sheep, the Dream Warriors, anyway, we were deep in one of these debates, when what should show up in the shop, but The Cactus Album by 3rd Bass. And at least for one of us, the decision was made.
Two white Jewish kids from Brooklyn, who somehow made one of the coolest, hookiest, funnest and funniest records of that era. All it should take is a quick listen to "Sons Of 3rd Bass", the whole song built from samples of Blood, Sweat And Tears' "Spinning Wheel", and holy shit it's so good, the bleating horns, the ominous piano, the way they take the horn part, loop it and turn it into a crazy stuttery melody, and the flows of both MC's, Serch and Prime Minister Pete Nice, Serch is the goofy one, but with a crazy nimble tongue, while Pete Nice's deliver is darker and more serious, perfect foils, and the lyrics are equal parts clever wordplay and cutting disses, and the music, no surprise it's so good as it's produced by both Prince Paul AND the Bomb Squad.
You've probably heard "The Gas Face", which was the big hit, it's a goofy jam, but it's also pretty great, another meticulously arranged sample heavy jam, with some sweet disses (the whole song is essentially a dis), but beyond the goofiness of that track, and the various skits, there's some seriously classic hip hop going on, the loping, jazzy, almost LL Cool J sounding "Monte Hall", the drum heavy stutter of "Soul In The Hole", and then there's the other 'hit' single, "Wordz Of Wizdom", the other classic on the Cactus Album, with samples of "Dream Weaver", even some Steely Dan, the whole thing (like a lot of hip hop of the time) wound around the 'Amen' break by The Winstons, then there's the horn flecked, woozy bass driven groover "Product Of The Environment", we could go on, but pretty much every track here is killer. And while they sample all the usual suspects, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the Commodores, the Meters, Kool & The Gang, they also get pretty weird, nabbing samples from Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, the Doors, even Steve Martin!
So yeah, so many great records from that era, but for now, we've voting 3rd Bass, and giving all those others the Gas Face!!!
Gosh. We're just constantly amazed at the wealth of obscure psych/prog "buried treasure" from all over the world that's continually being unearthed by all the industrious reissue labels out there. Lion Productions in particular has a darn good track record, we'd say (they blew us away earlier this year with the Classical M disc, amongst other cool reissues). Here's a great example, as out of the blue they present us the lone album by a Greek band called The 4 Levels Of Existence, originally released as a (now very rare and expensive) private press LP in 1976. And while a few of our far-gone record collector geek friends knew about this already, we sure hadn't ever heard of it before, but we're glad to get introduced to it now! It's a real folk-flavored fuzz monster, full of wailing guitar leads, melancholic lyrics (sung in their native Greek), majestic melodies, acoustic interludes, and did we say FUZZ? With all the fuzz this is fairly hard and heavy, but in a '60s garage band sorta way (despite being from the mid-'70s, this sounds earlier). Pretty much exactly what you'd hope a bunch of young, basement dwelling longhairs from an Athens suburb would create if they spent all their time jamming, studying philosophy, and drinking ouzo, as we can pretty much assume was the case here. Prog-laced and imbued with traditional folk melody, in a lot of ways this has got a similar vibe to the many awesome '60s and '70s Turkish psych bands we dig, even though Turkey and Greece have been far from friendly neighbors historically.
This legendary record (as we now know it to be) certainly is one of the coolest things we've heard from Greece from back when, alongside Socrates Drank The Conium and Aphrodite's Child. And as we've come to expect from Lion, this reish is no shoddy package. It comes with a thick booklet of liner notes (scribed by 4 Levels' rhythm/acoustic guitarist Athanasios Alatas), lyrics (in both Greek and translated into English too), and photos. Recommended.
The Inside Room is the debut from highly touted UK melodic doom outfit 40 Watt Sun, a group born from the dissolution of the late great Warning, both bands fronted by vocalist Patrick Walker, whose unique and passionate singing style pretty much defined Warning and continues to define his new band. Unlike most doom bands, who employ either an over the top near operatic wail, or conversely, some sort of demonic guttural gurgle, Walker actually sings, his voice emotional, but not ridiculously dramatic, he definitely sounds like a proper pop singer, who just so happened to start a doom band. Which will no doubt rub some troo doomlords the wrong way, but for the rest of us, it's pretty awesome. Definitely reminding us of Katatonia, the same sort of sweeping bombast, a similarly mournful melancholia, but that voice, it's really all about the voice, driving the songs, defining them, passionate and emotive, it helps that those vocals are supported by big booming drums, guitars so thick, and so distorted, the chords seem to crumble, occasionally wreathed in a sitar-like buzz. It's actually a little difficult to keep from imagining these songs sans distortion and drums, just say an acoustic guitar and vocals, these would be instantly transformed into some sort of heart rending ballads, but when coupled to some churning downtuned heaviness, the sound becomes a sort of glorious, emotional doom pop, or gloom pop, the pop element is definitely everywhere, and while the sound is definitely not that far removed from the sound of Warning, it is most definitely poppier, and Walker's vocals much improved, his delivery so heartfelt, like a soul laid bare, definitely transforms this from run of the mill doom, to something special. If there was ever an actual doom band that had the potential for some sort of crossover appeal, it would be these guys (there's a sort of Alice In Chains gone doom vibe going on that's actually pretty pleasing), with their keen melodic sense, and that voice. And while the track do occasionally get dynamic, with some cool stop/start arrangements, for the most part the music is languid and flows darkly, thick layered chords, a lush doomscape that perfectly meshes with Walker's gorgeous vox.
This is definitely WAY too melodic for the most extreme of ultradoomlords out there, but for anyone after some darkly melodic heaviness, this might just hit the spot! Domestic cd release and import vinyl available.
No genuine angels nor devils are to be found in the ranks of 400 Blows nor is there anything remotely resembling a brass instrument. This L.A. trio is made up of mere mortals, three angry hardcore boys equipped with the punk rock basics. No superhuman strength, no kid gloves, but with just electric guitar, bass, drums and a mean set of vocal chords these guys churn out some ultra lean aggro sounds. In fact these eleven songs just might leave you more than a little bristly, bare fisted and bloody nosed.
Been hearing about this band for a while now. And I have to admit I was a bit skeptical. But this record pretty much erases all doubt from my mind. Crushing, pummelling low-fi math metal with lots of super complex arrangements, some serious riffage and some almost-catchy songs! Another band with the pointless guitar/drums/vocals/NO BASS lineup, but they manage to overcome the handicap of being a BASS-less heavy-rock band and whip up a minimal, spastic, sludgy and brutally lowend masterpiece.
4G. The Four Gentleman Of The Guitar. Or maybe just Four Gentlemen. Or perhaps simply Four guitars. Or better yet, howabout just Four Guys. But however whatever you decide to make the 4 and the G stand for, just who are these four G's? All names that should be quite familiar to faithful readers of the AQ list: Keith Rowe (from AMM), Oren Ambarchi, Christian Fennesz and Toshimaru Nakamura. Hmmm, one of these fellas doesn't seem to fit. Maybe the one who performs with a no-input mixing board perhaps? Well, the 4G actually refers to these four performers who all started out as traditional guitarists before either taking their instrument in new directions or perhaps abandoning it completely, but applying many of the techniques and theories of the guitar to their new direction / instrument. So what we have here is a very unguitar guitar record. Made with guitars of course, but also plenty of electronics and laptops. A guitar-based record sans strums or licks or riffs or any recognizable guitar sounds at all. Instead Cloud is exactly what you would imagine a mix of these four artists would sound like. Fennesz's warm fuzzy clouds of disembodied guitar chords, reduced to drifing particles glinting in a late afternoon sun, Ambarchi's delicate melodicism smeared into gauzy drones, Nakamura supplys the high ends skree and the barely audible dog whistle drones, and Rowe gives us occasional scrapes and feedback squeals. All four of these distinct sounds manage blend perfectly into lengthy delicate dronescapes, with occasional sonic flares, but for the most part, just gorgeous, haunting drifting expanses of dark rumbles, warm static, and lots of floating abstract steel string effluvia. 4G performed four shows together, three of which are contained here, all quite long (20 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes) and all incredibly dense and deep, requiring close and repeated listening.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of the cd-r releases from Phthalo with an edition of 250, 4mod3 is the work of SF electronica genius Kit Clayton. Recorded in early 1999, "A Translation of Simpilicity" is a precursor to the neo-dub mastered on Clayton's albums for Scape. Setting up what could be an aquatic virtual sound arena, Clayton's highly processed glitches float to the surface with all of the erratic behaviour of air bubbles around reverberant sonar-dub tones and hypnotic downtempo rhythms. Brilliant as always.
We've never been much for musicals. Sure Jesus Christ Superstar had its moments. So did Godspell. And Hair. Hell, some of us even saw Annie and Evita when we were kids. But musicals definitely just seem to rub us the wrong way. Overly dramatic and hammy, the songs cloying and annoyingly earwormy. But then there's this. A live action motion picture musical, conceived of, and written by, none other than Dr. Seuss! A twisted Technicolor fantasy, the story of a young boy who hated practicing the piano, and the evil piano teacher who kidnaps him, and 499 other children, to play his insidious tune on a custom built 5000 key piano, and who also kidnaps and brainwashes the boy's mother, only to be rescued (spoiler alert) by a friendly sympathetic plumber! The movie was a only a middling success when it was first released in 1953, as it turned out to be a bit too scary for children (it's practically psychedelic as well), and thus ended up a cult classic, with viewings playing out like Rocky Horror screenings, the crowd singing along and reciting the dialogue along with the characters. The interesting thing is, that much of the music composed for the film was cut from the final edit, and when we originally carried the single disc version of this soundtrack way back when, it was woefully incomplete. But this right here is as about as complete as it gets, delivering not only the soundtrack as it's heard in the film, but also alternate versions, composer sketches, preproduction material, instrumental orchestral tracks, and most excitingly of all, the soundtrack as it was originally conceived and composed, with all the original cues, songs, ballets, and more. It's fantastical and over the top: sumptuous '50s orchestral arrangements meet soaring swoonsome strings meet marching band numbers and of course there are the various numbers sung in loopy Dr. Seussian rhymes, it's pretty far out, a twisted Seussian musical, that even removed from the incredible visuals, still sounds so fantastic.
Originally, the movie was planned to be a vehicle for Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby (as the evil Dr. T and the plumber, respectively... how crazy would that have been?!), but they ended up casting relative unknowns, and the story itself was both an anti-Hitler allegory and an all encompassing anti authoritarian manifesto (focused specifically on the looming threat of the atomic bomb), but all of that stuff was very subtle, hidden underneath clever wordplay, a fantastical plot, and incredible costumes and sets. If you haven't seen it, you should, it's fun and funny and freaky, often compared to The Wizard Of Oz too, for its whole "It was all just a dream... Or was it???" premise, but all told, it's definitely the music that seals the deal, composed by Frederick Hollander, it's creative and inventive and playful and occasionally over the top, occasionally sweeping and dramatic, but always totally mesmerizing and catchy, whether goofy and fun and frolicky, or ominous and sinister.
First check out "Ten Happy Fingers", that's the song Dr. T plans on having his kidnapped children play on the giant piano, it's super catchy, and that melody resurfaces throughout, but quickly, the soundtrack shifts, and the orchestra begins to weave gorgeous soundscapes of shimmery strings, and moaning horns, classic soundtrack stuff for sure, epic and majestic and darkly moody, sweeping and soaring, lovely and dreamy and mysterious, there are ballads, "Many Questions" is all torch songy, "Hypnotic Chant" sounds like a classic movie musical duet, but just a little bit twisted, it is the part where Dr. T is hypnotizing the mother after all! Then there's Dr. T's "Do Re Mi" where he sings about his favorite note, which is of course ME. Probably the most famous song is "Dungeon Shlim Shlam" also known as "The Dungeon Ballet", which is one of the best parts of the movie, where all the NON piano players are sent to a dungeon to play, well "What other instruments are there??", so they end up playing all sorts of fantastical made up instruments. "The Dressing Song" is one of the wackier tracks, and the one with the most obviously Seussian lyrics, "Get Together Weather" is another track with Seuss heavy wordplay, and so it goes.
We could go track by track by track, but it's all just so good. Old timey for sure, but a lot of this stuff definitely sounds timeless. And the extras, WOW. The alternate versions are definitely worthwhile, and the liner notes go into extraordinary detail about just how they differ, and why there are multiple versions. And then there are the orchestral tracks, which are gorgeous, so lush and lovely and beautifully orchestrated, but it's the composer sketches and pre production material that we find ourselves listening to more than we expected, low fidelity recordings, very scratchy, but so lovely, just solo piano versions of the various tracks, which speaks to their timelessness, even sans orchestra and vocalists, these songs are incredible, and those skeletal versions definitely offer a unique glimpse into the process. And then of course, for folks who just want to listen to the songs EXACTLY the way they are in the movie, there is a soundtrack cut, with all the extras and cut songs and alternate versions removed, so it plays just like the film.
So incredible, and incredibly curated. A true labor of love. The liner notes are extensive and super interesting, the story of the composer, of the film, and most impressively, track by track notes about each song's placement, and inspiration, and what scene it accompanies in the film. Tons of photos and anecdotes and pretty much anything and everything you could ever want to know about what is quite possibly one of the most enchantingly dreamy AND disturbingly nightmarish kids' films ever. And most definitely one of our all time faves!
