A long look through a dark tunnel into the cloudy past of drone explorationists 5/5/2000, a duo made up of aQ pal Nathan Berliguette, formerly of tech grind outift Creation Is Crucifixion as well as the man responsible for bringing the glorious sounds of the Arboga Teenage Riot to these shores and our ears (and for that we he will never be forgiven, er... I mean forgotten) and Travis Ryan, frontman of gore soaked death metallers Cattle Decapitation and nominee for Sexiest Vegetarian In The World. But none of that really prepares you for the sound of 5/5/2000, named for a rare planetary alignment that was supposed to signal the coming of the Antichrist. Their sounds is not technical, not grind, not metal, instead, these three extended tracks explore different facets of the drone, from soft billowy tranquil ambience to soaring space like shimmer to creaking, corrosive machinelike whir to a thick whirl like the washed out fuzz of a million vacuum cleaners to the out of focus sepia toned drift of soft edged rumble and melancholy instrumental mumble. All three tracks are gorgeous, dense drones thick with swirling reverb, fuzzy tape hiss, and all manner of fragmented melodies and layer after layer of rich warm sound. While supplies last, you'll get the special limited edition version, limited to 100, hand numbered, packaged in an oversized sparkly silver, velcro sealed cardboard sleeve, with three pins affixed to the front. After those are gone it's back to the normal jewel case version...
This is the perfect sort of split record. Two bands who have very little in common sonically, but who both completely destroy! The first track is 5/5/2000 which is AQ pal Nathan, formerly of grind metallers Creation Is Crucifixion, and Travis who is currently in Cattle Decapitation. That pedigree doesn't really prepare you for the epic 20 minute droning soundscape this duo whipped up live a few years back. Dreamy but sinister, creepy and hypnotic, with rumbling tones, short wave broadcasts, buried melodies, and throbbing pulses, all of which occasionally erupt into swirling sheets of noise. Drone-heads will love this. I actually thought it sounded like a more brutal and satanic Kitaro record. Which may sound dubious but is in fact a great thing! Trust me. The smattering of applause at the end just makes you grateful that such an intensely powerful performance is getting heard by more than the handful of folks that actually witnessed it. And of course none of this prepares you for the utter chaotic brutality of Pizurlaun. A hyper-distorted avant-grind juggernaut. Buzzing guitars careen from speaker to speaker, while various noises and rhythms, cut out, or stutter like a skipping cd and all sorts of really affected and bizarre production turns what would have been an amzing grind metal record anyway, into a splattery, grinding metallic masterpiece. And apparently the drums tracks were made by recording real live drums, and then having a non-drummer assemble them on a computer. Which only adds to the freaked out weirdness, and utter mayhem. Like a Locust tape, that you left in your back pocket for 6 months, accidentally washed, and then taped Suffocation over. Then played it back on a malfunctioning tape player. It's that fucked sounding. And that great.
Here's the second fiery release from Kristin Hersh's rawked-up band 50 Foot Wave. Whereas the first was a six song ep, this is a full length (however please note that three of the eleven songs were plucked from the ep, the album's lead-off track "Long Painting", "Dog Days", and the ep's highlight "Clara Bow"). When we played this in the store, someone mistook it for L7. Does that give you some idea of what this sounds like? No? Well, how 'bout Hersh's screamed lyric "Shut the fuck up!"? Geeezus! While we wholly support 'gettin' it out' through your music, we're not sure if this style of hissy fit rock really suits Hersh's voice, and well... sometimes her feverish caterwauling just sounds like she's bringing up her lunch or a lung. Uh oh. To boot, Golden Ocean could really have done without the guitar noodly wank-offs that punctuate almost every song. Yikes. 50 Foot Wave were actually more effective on the ep format -- a quick sharp sock in the jaw versus a lengthy ear-tiring onslaught. They should've stuck with the original 50 Foot Wave plan of releasing an ep every few months. Ah well, this review will probably do little to dissuade her loyal fans (and may disgruntle a few), but this album will probably also do little to win her any new ones.
Not one to rest on her solo and Throwing Muses laurels, Kristin Hersh move onwards with a new project called 50 Foot Wave. This is their fired-up debut EP. Sounds like Ms Hersh's been smokin' a few packs a day, her voice sounds like a grunged-out Stevie Nicks! Six frantically-paced garage rawk tunes driven by hoarsely sneered vocals, down'n'dirty gritty guitars, and a thumpin' raunchy rhythm section. They keep things at full throttle from start to finish. This is even more raw and feisty than her early 'Muses albums. Sort of disorienting at first, it may take old fans a few listens to get accustomed to her new direction.
Detroit's 500 Ft. Of Pipe are another new band of hard-rockin' hopefuls in the crowded stoner rock arena, and they are better than most. What with their Motor City pedigree, they align more with Stooges-fans Monster Magnet than with Kyuss (Kyuss being the most
There's been a spurt of awesome old film soundtracks for awesome old films coming through our door in the last while -- Daisies, Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Blood On Satan's Claw, Bedazzled, The Hindenberg, and now this one! The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T! Not MR. T, mind you, as one customer thought! Hahaha, that would be a whole 'nother bizarre thing, wouldn't it? Nope, this is a children's movie musical from 1953, but it's one of the most enchantingest dream AND disturbingest nightmare kids' films ever. Makes total sense when you discover that the man behind it was noneother than Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss!!!).
Quite prim and tame by today's standards, but there's still some stretches that are downright disturbing and bizarre. For those unfamiliar with it, long story short, the tale centers around a young boy learning to play piano. As one might expect, the soundtrack is quite heavy on the tickling of ivories, but you'll also be swept up in sumptuous '50s orchestral and marching band numbers as well as parts of the storyline sung in loopy Dr. Seussian rhymes. Don't miss the "Elevator Song" and "Dressing Song Do-Me-Do Duds" (you might recall The Simpsons' Mr. Burns doing a rendition of that one!). A deliriously twee delight that's not just for kids.
Record number two from Michael Gibbons, of druggy space rockers Bardo Pond, another vinyl only release, as he continues to explore the more blissed out acoustic side of the whole ambient free floating space rock dream folk sound his main band has been such a crucial part of.
Side one of Apocatastisis almost plays out like some sort of sampler, each track, a facet of Gibbons' psych folk psyche, every one an homage to someone who informed his sound.
The opener is dark and minimal, disembodied bits of backwoods folk set amidst huge expanses of spacious ambience, bits of random sounds drift in the huge spaces between notes, the next track is a buzzing Eastern style raga, all dreamy and drawn out, the next simple muted chunk of folky strum and twang, the final track a full on blast of Henry Flynt style drone fiddle minimalism, keening and sawing relentlessly, emitting gorgeous wavery drones.
So if side A is a sampler, then side B demonstrates just what Gibbons can do, taking those influences and those sounds he loves and turning them into something distinctly his own. Two lengthy jams, the first begins with a thick sheet of fuzzy ambience, a muted noisy drone before drifting off leaving a simple mournful slide guitar, to unfurl super emotional melodies and weave a gorgeously folky dreamdrift. The second track is even more laid back, a back porch, lazy afternoon, rocking chair, just my guitar and the land as far as the eye can see, old timey, but sort of modern leaning Appalachian blues, melodic and melancholy, but with a strange twist at the end, the introduction of bizarre bits of spoken word, a man's voice drifting in and out amidst the slowly unwinding guitar melodies and distant buzz. Nice.
Apocatastisis is limited to 677 copies, but we managed to get a bunch of the SUPER LIMITED version, only 191 copies made (each hand numbered) which includes a bonus cd with an extra 15 minute track, and it's a corker!! Beginning with spidery steel string buzz over a thick wash of swirling shimmer, the guitar begins its slow thoughtful march, lazily meandering through all sorts of landscapes and backgrounds, little flutters of backwards guitar melody, dense clouds of spacey effects, crunchy slabs of crumbling distortion, the background continually shifting and transforming while the guitar remains simple and solid, sometimes getting a little distorted, buzzing a bit, but always settling back into its dreamy drift, weaving its way through a spaced out and abstract, gorgeously psychedelic soundscape.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Won't go into *too* much detail here since, as with most of the Eclipse lps, this probably won't be around for long. Michael Gibbons of space-drug-rockers Bardo Pond strikes out on his own, and the results are sublime. From Fahey-esque Appalachia, to buzzing throbbing droning ragas, to pulsing wall of guitar ambience. Definitely essential for Bardo fans, as well as everyone who's been digging the whole Glenn Jones / Jack Rose / Six Organs modern day guitar pickin' avant-psych-folk-hippy scene.
Is it a zip code? Nope. A padlock combination? We're not quite sure, but in the case of Bay Area artist 51717's also mysteriously numerically titled debut 557, the figures add up to seven atmospheric instrumental tracks of resonant bells, bassy shoves, prickly electronics and plucked strings. Ultra Spartan chiminess is gradually overtaken by more ominous cloudy distortions. Packaged in a handmade, hand-painted gold envelope.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The cover photo on this digipack release shows placid waters, probably some sheltered harbor near Boston, from whence this guitar-drums two-piece hail. The photo on the interior gatefold also depicts relatively calm seas. But the sonic waves that 5ive stir up are something else, bigger and meaner! 5ive's relentless and riff-repetitive, mostly-instrumental music is HEAVY all right. And thus, floats our boat, even as it tosses said boat about upon its stormy waves.
We've been waiting for some new 5ive for quite some time. This is their first full-length of new material in forever. 2006's Versus ep, featuring a couple remixes by Justin Broadrick (Jesu), only left us hankering for more... so we're glad to report that this new 5ive is finally here and it's got what we want. Thick n' distorted stoner rock meets post rock jams, full of loud soft dynamics for maximum sludgecore beauty and power. Tracks like "Heel" and "Big Sea" have plenty of rollicking psychedelic swing to 'em, after the pretty parts that set you up for the heavier hitting... and while the likes of "News II" gets up into the 12 minute range, even the shorter tunes here manage some epic, hypnotic heft. Fans of 5ive won't be disappointed, and if you haven't heard 'em before check this out if stuff like Pelican, Kinski, godheadSILO, Isis, Old Man Gloom, etc. is on your personal playlist.
Boston's 5ive (who may be changing their name to Continuum Research Project, as that's what the top obi on this li'l disc says -- I think the Euro boy band 5ive's lawyers might have something to do with that) unleash another super heavy and mesmerizing instrumental metallo-drone experience, consisting of the 23 minute track "Part I: The Hemophiliac Dream" and then "Part II", a quite worthwhile 14 minute remix done by the Jim O'Rourke of the avant-metal underground, James Plotkin (Phantomsmasher, Khanate, OLD, Joy Of Disease, Flux, Romance, Lotus Eaters, etc.), giving 5ive the computer/electronics treatment for some this-side-of-Merzbow-noisy (yet quite listenable), stereo-panning-gone-wild weirdness. A claustrophobic headphone trip. In sum, "The Hemophiliac Dream" is psychedelic, sludgy, and a little post-rock in places -- total beauty-in-heaviness stuff for fans of Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, Old Man Gloom, Melvins, Tarantula Hawk, Swans, Kyuss, all that.
Not to be confused with the identically named "ladband" we discovered while trying to look up info on this one on the internet -- no, this 5ive are no boyband, they're a Boston psychedelic-doom-core duo making their cd debut after releasing one amazingly heavy
It's been almost a year since we heard anything from instru-metal rockers 5ive, and even then it was just a weird remix thing with Kid 606. The last proper record they did was way back in 2002! So what the heck have those guys been up to for the last 4 years? Not recording a whole lot of new music that's for sure, as this new release is also a sort of remix ep. But we're not gonna complain. We've been dying for new material from this heavy as hell drums and guitar duo, so we'll take what we can get. And what you get here is 4 tracks, 25 minutes, of epic and spacious, almost cinematic doom bliss. Two 5ive tracks and two "remixes" of 5ive tracks by Justin Broadrick of Jesu. The opening track, one of the two remixes sounds like some metallicized Morricone / Goblin hybrid. Swirling sound fx, and a simple plodding rhythm. You can definitely hear some Jesu in there. The second track is WAY more classic 5ive, a groovy loping post rock workout, that builds and builds into huge lurching staggering stoner rock. Part way through everything sort of blisses-out into a keening tribal drum, guitar jangle drift, that slowly grows in intensity into a huge wall of massive churning guitar, which becomes a super tense stop start doom thing, before exploding back into full on metal groove. The second track "Soma" is the original from which the two Broadrick remixes are culled. A convoluted doomic dirge, grinding and slithering, thrashing and grooving, equal parts Dazzling Killmen, Isis, Lightning Bolt and Laddio Bolocko, a relentless chaotic dirge thrash, swirling and pounding, dense and ultra heavy. For the final track, Broadrick removes most of the heavy guitars, leaving just the simple clean guitar melody and a hypnotic looped drum line. Over that he drapes sheets of sonic shimmer and clouds of fuzzy ambience, an epic ambient plodding doom soundtrack to the end of the world, like a more metallic Mogwai / Brian Eno mashup. Totally gorgeous. But not enough!! Now we're completely jonesing for more 5ive AND more Jesu! C'MON! WE NEED IT!!!
Not to be confused with the identically named "ladband" we discovered while trying to look up info on this one on the internet -- no, this 5ive are no boyband, they're a Boston psychedelic-doom-core duo making their cd debut after releasing one amazingly heavy
Of our many guilty pleasures around here, one which we have little opportunity to highlight is our mad love for sixties mainstream pop. Not the little known obscurities necessarily, but the big budget LA productions as performed by groups like Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66, The Mamas and The Papas, The Turtles, The Association, Spanky and Our Gang, and The 5th Dimension. While they all had charted hits, they all performed at a time when the musical landscape was changing, and their charted successes gave them the ability to explore less industry-influenced album-oriented material. They all had that odd record, most likely their least successful, but at least one truly stands the test of time, and because of its lack of commercial familiarity, actually sounds the most fresh of the bunch. Case in point, this wonderful soft psych Jimmy Webb-penned song cycle from The 5th Dimension. Basically the soulful black counterpart to The Mamas and The Papas, The 5th Dimension and Jimmy Webb had such an initial breakout hit and such award-winning success with their debut album, "Up Up and Away", that Jimmy Webb was handed complete arrangement and total writing control for the groups follow-up record, The Magic Garden. With production by Bones Howe, who helmed albums by The Association and The Turtles, The Magic Garden could easily be called the best record the 5th Dimension released, even though it was far from successful. Webb, struggling with manic-depression and a bitter breakup, used the song cycle format to chart his fragmented relationship with love. Using soft psych-tinged orchestral arrangements (including sitars!), dreamy harmonies and surrealistic lyrics, the songs weave together intricately, yet belie a darker sentiment underneath all the flower child imagery. For example, the only minor hit on here, the upbeat, "Carpet Man", is about a man who lets the women in his life walk all over him, While "The Worst That Can Happen" is about a former lover getting married to someone else. The best song however is the heart-stabbing Isleys-meet Scott Walker dark orchestral funk ballad, "Requiem: 820 Latham" that is atypical of the 5th Dimension's normally sunny hits. Filled with amazing orchestral breaks that beg to be sampled, this record was recently revealed in a Nick Drake biography to be one of his favorite records to listen to (along with Love's Forever Changes, and Van Morrison's Astral Weeks) due to its stellar orchestral production. And a bonus here is that Rev-Ola took the liberty of moving the contractually obligated cover, The Beatles "Ticket to Ride" to the end of the song cycle from its original location in the middle. The Carpenters always had the better approach to that cover (dour and depressed) anyway, so it's just best to skip that track altogether. Other than that, this is one of those bittersweet gems that fans of sixties pop and production will love!!!!!!
The latest ultra limited and lovingly handmade release from SF one man label Time Released Sound. And actually, calling TRS merely a label does not at all do justice to the things he puts out. In some ways it's almost more art than music. Sure we're a record store, so we get these and think, wow, this amazing record has the most incredible packaging. But taking a step back, it's easy to imagine just the opposite, the man behind TRS is an artist, and each new 'piece' just so happens to be accompanied by a soundtrack. Either way, it's pretty impossible to resist, and pretty much every music nerd we know, has gone nuts for this stuff, and a little bit obsessed with the label, so much so that we have standing orders for ANYTHING Time Released Sound puts out (just ask, we can add you to the list).
This latest release/art object comes courtesy of a duo from the Northeast US who call themselves 5Turns25, and who specialize in a sort of electronic flecked ambient folk, reminding us a bit at times of aQ beloved Rameses III, the same sort of pastoral drift, skeletal acoustic guitars, thick undulating drones, swirls of washed out shimmer, a sort of droney drifty Appalachia at times, something much more hushed and intimate at others, the sound lush and expansive, as capable of blossoming into a rich majestic epic as floating lazy through soft clouds of whir and thrum. Some of the tracks have a sort of Avarus vibe, not so clattery or free, but a kind of foresty folk. The guitar here is the main instrument, weaving gorgeous lilting melodies, swirls of chordal hum, all over a constantly shifting bed of muted industrial sounds, hushed FX and blurred dreamlike ambience. The band records in an old barn, and the music is thus peppered with sonic evidence of their location, creaks and groans woven right into the music. Crystalline and glimmering and so lovely, which is of course reflected in the insanely elaborate and impossibly meticulously crafted packaging. Where to begin?
The cd-r itself has a full color face, and is housed in a fabric sleeve, there are two inserts, printed on thick textured paper, with strange stickers affixed in various places to interact with the printed images, with art, and liner notes, a discography, there's also a hand worked / collaged notebook page with original art, each one unique. Affixed to the notebook page are a pair of mismatched clock hands, everything housed in an oversized vellum sleeve, printed and stamped, this one featuring an elaborately cut front panel, with the images of clocks punched out of a smoked white sheet of plastic, held to the vellum sleeve by a hand printed Japanese style obi. Phew! So wonderful, sonically and visually, worth every penny!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, we have just 15, and that's all we'll be able to get!
60 Watt Kid arm themselves with some krautrock and psychedelic inspirations among other things, and put them through the rough'n'tumble settings of indie rock. Heaps of effected guitars, oozy keyboards, loosely drummed rhythms, processed samples, and distorted hoot'n'holler vocals. Very trippily mix'n'match, and very much along the oddly angled slant of bands such as Oneida and Liars. Mid-album album they go through a brief personality change, coming back down to earth as they drift off on a wistful folksy number "North American Road". Later still, they morph into Sea And Cake-ish post-rockers for a spell. They strike us as a very antsy, but they always find their way back to their strange space-psych stew.
Another bad ass live set, equal parts weirdo mash up, speaker rattling dubstep and dancehall, pounding old school jungle, abstract hip hop, all wound into an action packed hour long ass shaking, bass heavy, big beat blow out. Courtesy of our pals at Lo Dubs, who brought us the atmospheric dubstep of Clubroot, the bad ass Starkey mix from a while back, as well as a mess of killer 12"s. This live set is packed with tons of unreleased dubplates, mixed with a handful of classics. Dismiss the opening chunk of Rush's "Tom Sawyer", at least until it gets all tangled up with some rad jungle beats and we're off, Ice Cube, Ninja Man, Shabba Ranks, Cutty Ranks, Mobb Deep, Capleton, Dread Foxx, Pharoahe Monch and more, but even the tracks we recognize are all chopped up and slung over different beats, records are stuttered and stopped, rewound and played again, over a different beat, or a different vocal, classic hip hop gets all dubbed out, toasting, drill and bass, classic jungle, all wrapped around wild flows, the beats are big, the bass thick and wobbly, when the mix slips into dubstep, it's some of the heaviest sickest shit you've heard, skittery, stuttery and downright heavy, woven into old school dub, or pulled apart into super spaced out minimal pulses, wild and totally all over the map, but heavy on the bass, and the big beats, the dubstep and the DUB. Easily one of the coolest mixes we've heard lately. And CRAZY LIMITED, pressed up for a tour, we have a handful of copies, but odds are these will be the last ones we see...
Here's another band who have released about a million limited cd-r's, but this is the very first one we've managed to get for the store. Australian outfit 6Majik9, sound to us like they could be from Finland. We hear lots of Avarus and Anaksimandros, Uton, but we also hear some Dead C, and more importantly a bunch of stuff we're not sure we've actually heard before.
Short tracks, each a stumbling abstract free jam, sometimes noisy and intense, other times blissy and blown out. Brief bursts of wheezing clattery folk drenched in angular detuned guitar jut up against wild free jazz space rock freakouts, complete with FX drenched guitar squalls, wild octopoidal drumming and mumbled caveman vocals. Wild tribal free for all's peppered with skronky horns and distant clatter morph into ultra minimal found soundscapes, laced with bits of barely there percussion, and distant simple strummed melodies. Elsewhere, these guys unfurl huge murky expanses of drone-y whir, draped over dark piano figures and simple jazzy horns, or create dizzying demented almost cartoon music from processed vocals, pounded piano and swirls of dense effects.
The sounds are all over the place on first listen, but there is some skewed thread of sonic logic that runs through this whole disc, and while it might not be obvious what it is, or how it actually makes these disparate sounds all work together, it does. And we like it. A lot.
Packaged in a red textured sleeve with a fancy printed insert, tied to the sleeve with twine, and containing a bit of tree bark and a very fragrant pod of some sort. An easy way to make your AQ package smell like potpourri...
LIMITED TO 93 COPIES!!
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For us, the big musical surprise of last week was not Beyonce's new album, but the release of Dam-Funk and Snoop Dogg's throwback collaboration, 7 Days Of Funk. Working with a single producer for the first time since his debut, Snoop Dogg (billed here as Snoopzilla in homage to Bootsy "Bootzilla" Collins, and of whom Snoop also does a great impression of throughout) and Dam-Funk channel late seventies P-Funk as well as the smoother synth-funk iterations that came after in the early eighties, territory that Dam-Funk traversed with great success on his debut Toeachizown. It's hard not to love a production that is all about getting high and having a good time, especially when the grooves are so laid back, stoned-out and infectious. The match-up is pretty damn perfect, and for all of Snoop Dogg's indulgent musical excursions of late, like the reggae-inspired Snoop Lion, this is the one we have been digging the most.
A Bay Area super group of sorts featuring Rob Fisk (ex-Deerhoof, Badgerlore), Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), Kelly Goodefisk (ex-Deerhoof), Chest Smith (superstar drummer, he's played with Tom Waits, John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Nels Cline, Fred Frith, etc.) and George Chen (k.i.t., man about town). Ok now that we've got that out of the way on to the music. This is lovely and dark folk rock. You can for sure hear the remnants of the Deerhoof past that some of the members share, and a collective art-punk past that recalls moments of Saccharine Trust / the weirder side of SST, all delivered in a much more dusky, dusty woods kind of way. With one foot planted in improv free rock and another in darkwoods folk, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle hold tight to their punk roots with one hand while their other runs it fingers through dirt, leaves and soil.
It takes a lot of...well guts maybe, to be a fucking ultra-tight, super brutal grind metal powerhouse and to purposefully alienate/annoy a huge legion of possible fans by not taking your metal seriosly enough: by telling jokes, talking about cocks,
This is record number two from the Rats (following 'Fanning the Flames of Fire', a joint release between Caroline and Chicago's Up Jumps the Devil) and it's a doozy. Imagine the spazz inflicted genre hopping of Mr. Bungle, only more black metal and Venom, more Thin Lizzy, more comedy and more like your older hesh brother that's been working at the 7-11 since he dropped out of high school. The jokes are funny (kind of) and the music is punishing and furiously brutal (when it's not silly and moronic). With song titles like "Gary Drug Abusey", "Uncle Tom's of Finland", "Paper Thin Lizzy", "Straight Up Comedy Grind" and an 80's metal cover of the theme song to Beverly Hills 90210 (with a 90210 sample poking fun at fellow midwestern grinder Weasel Walter -- he of the Flying Luttenbachers, Lake of Dracula and Hatewave, among others), you might be inclined to pass off 7KDR as a novelty item -- but take out the comedic element, and you'd have a hellish, brutal metal record, better than most of their more serious minded contemporaries. I mean, if they dropped their comedy schtick and just played straight up grind/metal, they would be huge. Probably on Relapse, and selling hundreds of thousands of records. But thanks to those guts, they're on tUMULt, and Toyo and they're liable to sell more than a thousand records!!! Fans of Anal Cunt, Pig Destroyer, Drop Dead, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Dying Fetus, Bathtub Shitter, Fuck...I'm Dead, Mr. Bungle, Faxed Head and Neil Hamburger will love this.
A seriously corrosive chunk of ultra blown out frenzied power violence from down under. Or as the sleeve proclaims over and over around the border "raw-grind-violence". And that's just what this is, violent, raw, and grind. Recorded live on the radio, 7 tracks, 12 minutes, of buzzing blown out riffage, churning chugging guitars, screeched shrieks, bellowed howls, furious octopoidal drumming, relentless blastbeats, pounding doomy plod, all wound up into a face melting explosion of power violence fury.
Fans of any of the recent crop of power violence warriors will definitely dig: Iron Lung, Endless Blockade, and it's always good to know the spirit of Crossed Out, MITB, Drop Dead, No Comment still burns bright worldwide.
Super limited cd-r, pretty sure it's out of print already, we only have a handful of copies...
On tour with Modest Mouse, fellow Pacific Northwest pop heroes.
Yet another cool band from China! 8 Eye Spy, like the awesome Muscle Snog, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, tend toward the weirder side of the sonic spectrum. Where lots of the Chinese bands channel the spirit and sound of classic nineties US indie rock, 8 Eye Spy fall somewhere between the urgent bash and howl of Riot Grrl, and early Kim Gordon fronted Sonic Youth. The guitars are wild squalls of noisy crunch, and spidery angular minor key melody, the arrangements are fragmented and almost proggy, imagine Polvo covering Huggy Bear maybe? Or Pitchblende songs played by Heavens To Betsy, or even Sonic Youth if they were from North Carolina and recorded for Merge in the nineties. All of this tangly riffage, start stop crunch and chug, wild, loose limbed drumming, and woozy atmospheric ambience is woven into something that does actually at least touch on that era of American underground rock, but pulls it apart, and reassembles it in wholly new shapes, with LOTS of extreme noisiness, thick squalls of psychedelic swirl, perfectly structured songs will collapse partway through and devolve into blown out, feedback drenched noisescapes, and those selfsame noisescapes, will somehow transform and take the shape of proper pop songs, ones that will no doubt themselves splinter into something much more difficult and damaged. Shades of Melt-Banana surface throughout, that same sort of mathy, metallic skronk and bleat, but also much more mellow moodiness, droned out guitarscapes, simple tribal drumming, chiming harmonics, skittery rhythms, not to mention plenty of frenetic post punk crunch, alternatingly slipping into grinding punky pound, or totally abstract, falling-apart, noise drenched drift, and in most cases, some dizzying mix of the two.
Angular, atonal, aggressive, abstract, avant prog-punk weirdo pop, that is fast becoming another favorite. And stick around for the nearly 14 minute closer, that weds plink plonk melodies, to sheets of grinding feedback, simple guitar strums to wailed vocals, gradually building from hushed and contemplative, to full bore speaker shredding psychedelic guitarnoise. Fuck yeah!
Here's the soundtrack to 8 mile, Em's new hit, semiautobiographical movie. I have yet to see it, but even our pickiest friends liked it and it made something crazy like 54 million the first weekend at the boxoffice. Eminem donated three new songs to this soundtrack, Lose Yourself is the first on the disc and is already all over the radio, a totally great song. He also produced much of the album, which includes Gang Starr, Jay-Z, Rakim, Nas, Xzibit, D12 and Macy Gray. Em's Shady Records signees 50 Cent and Obie Trice are featured throughout. Obie was on Eminem's song "Drips," from The Eminem Show album. 50 cent is a New York artist who Dr. Dre and Eminem co signed to their labels. He's been self promoting with mix tapes, and apparently has cred in NY. Eminem says he wrote these three songs through his character "Rabbit's" voice. Comes with Shady / Aftermath artist sampler.
8-bit tribute to Kraftwerk. Almost sounds TOO Kraftwerky if you know what we mean. How 'bout an 8-bit tribute to, uh, Amon Duul, now that would be interesting.
86 is a local quartet who play a down home concoction of sweetly sincere male harmonies over a rollicking twangy rock backdrop, made with chiming strummed guitars and fingerpicked banjo. Eschewing pretentiousness, their lyrics instead celebrate the mundane
After a couple singles and a stellar EP, Chicago art-punks The 90 Day Men finally release their debut album. And it's chock full of jerky rhythms, lo-fi guitar screech and fake British accents. Judging from the cover art, it seems like they're going for the cute boy band aesthetic, but the recording is nothing short of awful and the dynamics of the songs suffer because of it. The songs are so good, but the recording is so distracting. See them live first.
90 Day Men have been firmly rooted in the Chicago post-rock / math-rock scene since 1995. Always a bit more challenging than most of their scene brethren, you gotta give them props not only for choosing their own distinct path -- and with this album in particular venturing into wholly different territory for themselves -- but also for shaking up the indie rock status quo with their bold choices. Granted some of said choices might fall short of their marks or fall in the 'acquired taste' category, but when they do nail them, 90 Day Men can be quite something to behold. With Panda Park they've gone through a transformation of sorts into something akin to baroque space-rock characterized by dramatic cascading keyboards. Where the highs and lows are most notable are in the vocal performances. They start off with deeply soulful vocals that soar and swoop (although 90DM's lead vocalist is male, we initially thought the singing on the lead off track was by a female vocalist, but nothing has confirmed this), then there's the more easy-on-the-ears moody hushed male vocals (very Mark Lanegan / Steve Von Till) on "When Your Luck Runs Out" and a very Bowie-esque "Silver and Snow" (some here even likened it to Harvey Sid Fisher or an unwell Scott Walker). At times elaborate, strange, arty and dissonant.
It's been a while since we've heard from Boris, mostly because they've seemingly been touring non stop for the last few years, but it looks like finally some new music is happening, including a forthcoming split with low end sludge popppers Torche, and this, another split with a Japanese band we've never heard of called 9DW, who as far as we can tell is sonically about as far removed from Boris as any band could be. A sort of eighties cosmic disco, like a way less edgier Justice maybe. More on those tracks in a second, since odds are most aQ customers will be all over this for the two brand new Boris tracks.
But be warned, not sure if it's a general shift in sound, or they were just trying to mix it up for this split, but this is Boris like you've never heard them. The first Boris track, "Tokyo Wonder Land", in a blind listening test, everyone here, when asked who they though it was, invariably said Ariel Pink, or John Maus, yep, a warbly warped blurry lo fi alien FM radio pop, with primitive drum machine, mumbled vocals, shimmery eighties production, whirring synths, jangly reverbed guitar, buzzy rubbery cop show basslines, super woozy and trippy and WAY druggy, there are even some falsetto 'oooh's. It only really gets Boris-y briefly in the middle with a wild tangle of super distorted psychedelic leads. Woah, What the fuck? Not sure what's going on, or what happened, but we are digging it BIG time, in fact, we might go so far as to say, this is one of our favorite Boris jams in ages, as is the second track here, "Akirame Flower", which finds Boris in full on washed out bleary eared nineties shoegaze mode, My Bloody Valentine, Bailter Space, fuzz guitar, weary vox, tons of delay and reverb and effects, all smeared and blurred into a gorgeous hazy 16 Candles / Dinosaur Jr / M83 soft focus, dream jam. Fuck. Awesome.
So what the heck are Boris doing with a band like 9DW? Can't say, and can't really say, how often we'll find ourselves listening to their two tracks, groovy, slightly jazzy, a little house-y, definitely eighties, not one guy, an actual band, sounds a bit like M83 if he were to do a techno record, stir in a little Justice stomp, some post rocky skittery, looped synths, and some total eighties MTV new romantic guitar jangle, a little Shadowfax and some worrisome funkiness...
But fuck it, Boris is why you're here, and if you're an adventurous Boris fan, who won't be disappointed by the lack of fuzzed out buzzy psych rock, then two Boris jams will kick your ass something good. Dying to hear if they continue on in this direction, and give the rest of the warbly new wave noise pop outsiders a run for their warped druggy money.
Yet another Fleet Foxes offshoot whose sound doesn't fall that far from the FF tree. And we're not complaining. It took us a while to decide that we did indeed love the Fleet Foxes, but once we did, we couldn't get enough, which makes this proliferation of sort-of-sound-alikes good news for folks like us who love THAT sound and want more. But like the Poor Moon record we reviewed recently, Father John Misty, the work of former FF drummer Joshua Tillman, who seems to effortlessly capture the same sort of timeless sounding folk pop as the FF mothership. But where Fleet Foxes tended more toward traditional folk sounds, Father John Misty is definitely on the pop side of the spectrum, the arrangements lush and expansive, strings and percussion, piano and all manner of studio filigree, the songs rife with rich layered drones, lush old fashioned production, and Tillman's voice is fantastic, spending much of its time in the upper registers, sounding not unlike Roy Orbison at times, the music appropriately orchestral, and then there are the lyrics, which pop out once in a while, especially when Tillman is singing something about punching himself in the face, or something about Jesus Christ, but delivered in that gorgeous velvety croon, over some lush dreamy twang flecked pop, it's hard not to love. Lots of dreamy ooooh's and aaaah's, cool crunchy guitars, big bombastic drumming (just check out "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings", which might be our favorite track), wheezing organs, groovy electric pianos, programmed beats here and there, slippery slide guitar, the songs all over the map, stripped down folk, fuzzy almost indie pop, dark country, lush chamber pop, sixties psychedelic rock, and more often than not, some mix of them all.
Super cool eye popping psychedelic cover art too!
First we've heard from this mysterious outfit, but somehow from the strange name, and symbol heavy spelling, we were expecting something heavy, which is precisely what we got. A churning, death march plod, sort of Godflesh-y, pounding caveman pummel beneath thick caustic downtuned riffage, blurred into heaving swells of droned out thrum. This is a some serious slo-mo, abject doom-dirge heaviness, the opening track eventually shifting into something more majestic, the droned out riffs, soaring heavenward, wreathed in feedback, the vibe very Harvey Milk, as if they might break out into some twisted Leonard Cohen number at any second, but instead, the band unfurl a woozy bassline, that drifts below streaks of feedback, as the whole track oozes malevolently, into a stripped down creep, laced with whispered vokills, squalls of tribal drumming, all driven by that distorted bass buzz, before finally exploding into a sort of anguished doom ballad, the vocals a mournful wail, over the lumbering doomic creep.
We kind of expected the second song to be more of the same, but wow, the instrumentation is the same, but the vocals, epic, soaring, belted out, this could be a doom metal Circle, the same sort of near ridiculous almost operatic bombast, but here it transforms the sludge into some sort of epic doom-prog, or a more rocking Harvey Milk maybe, it even reminds us at points of Magma! The final track mixes it up again, laying down a murky dirge of muted guitar chug, swirling almost psychedelic shimmer, before blossoming into some slow near metallic churn, and those vocals again, swoop in, dramatic and over the top, and transform everything, suddenly it's some warped ultra heavy doom ballad, a little bit mathy, a lot bit moody, darkly dramatic, eventually shedding much of the heaviness, and finishing with a strange stretch of stripped down minimal syncopation. Seriously cool, and seriously warped stuff. Fans of twisted doomy dramatic heaviness will go nuts for these guys, Harvey Milk, Pinkish Black, Eagle Twin, Like A Kind Of Matador, etc.
Be warned, the jackets are not perfect, some have slightly dinged corners, some slightly split seams, we weren't able to get replacement covers, so we're selling these at a serious discount, but if you are AT ALL anal, you might not want to buy one of these, but even with the slightly dinged up sleeves, this is WAY recommended!! Includes a download code!
It took us a while to suss out the name of this band, as the way it's written is actually a series of lines and dots and squares, which somehow equate to Night Toilet. It's almost better not knowing, as the music here is much better represented by the mysterious Morse code like moniker, a sprawling collection of abstract guitar/drum experimentation, that ranges from the spare, minimal, skeletal kraut-pop of the opener, all simple abstract drumming (apparently played by two drummers, sharing one and a half drum kits simultaneously), the guitars clean and shimmery, spidery melodies, pocked with the occasional chordal soft squall, to dirgey NZ style noise rock, all knuckle-dragging drum thud, and wild tangles of guitarnoise, sputtering, stuttering, avant-rhythmic doom-dirges that occasionally blossom into something much more fierce, as often as they (d)evolve into something more blissed out and dreamy, whether that be long stretches of softly tangled kosmiche shimmer, of abstract, nocturnal ambient drift...
Some good band math might be Dead C meets Aluk Todolo meets Geronimo? Or This Heat meets Bastard Noise? But then all the pretty parts should appeal to fans of all strains of drifty dreaminess... Grinding, crumbly, noisy, loose, free, but also dense and driving and repetitive, circular and mesmeric, hazy, atmospheric, cinematic, there even seems to be what sounds like horns, bleating forlornly on some of the tracks, we won't say too much, cuz we only have THREE copies. And can't get more, but wanted at least three of you our there, with a thirst for abstract instrumental drone-noise WTF outsider damaged psychedelia, to get a chance to get your hands on one of these. The packaging too is over the top: super thick, gatefold sleeves, paired with a heavy two sided silkscreened chipboard insert. Grab one quick if you can, before they're gone for good.
To be completely honest, this record was released well over a year ago; but for reasons not known to us, Kantamoinen has only now just been made available here in the US. Ø is the work of Mika Vainio, the Finnish electronic artist who hails from the techno-brutalist duo Pan Sonic and has produced some amazing solo records for Touch. It's been a very long time since Vainio has taken up the Ø moniker, best known for producing the seminal Metri album back in the mid-'90s. Where Metri was a minimalist techno masterpiece of phase shifting arpeggiations of fragile electric tones topping skeletal 808 rhythms, Kantamoinen is far closer to the albums Vainio recorded for Touch, where shivering swathes of arctic ambience and abstracted tone poems emerge from Vainio's sleepless fits of mad-scientist energy. Occasionally, Vainio grounds his plasma and gamma-ray experiments on slow-motion and very sparse electro rhythms, with little of the swagger and groove heard in the Pan Sonic drum machine attacks. Rather, the rhythm on Kantamoinen is a sleepy affair, barely holding the gravitational pull on his weightless electronics. If it weren't for all of those Touch releases in between Metri and this, Kantamoinen wouldn't make much sense at all; but in the context of Vainio's catalogue, Kantamoinen is another wonderful and weird piece of electronic music.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Fortunately kept back in circulation with a little more regularity, this is the first (and perhaps best) album from Mika Vainio. As with his work in Pan Sonic, Vainio's techno minimalism holds a crystalline purity due to the use of several handbuilt random noise generators. Vainio situates these seemingly delicate high-end pulses within Steve Reich-esque phase shifting and then sets down rigid techno structure similar to early Plastikman or even the Profan sound of Wolfgang Voigt. Hypnotic techno achieving the drone supreme.
If you happen to be reading this review online and you get some unkempt bit of jibberish for the artist's name, this is Mika Vaino using his moniker of just an O with Slash through it. While the ascii may come out all screwy, we've been told that the correct pronunciation is "ohm." Anyway, Mika Vainio is the Finnish electronic genius who began recording in 1993 under this moniker with a handful of absolutely essential singles matching the equally essential Metri cd from 1994. Along with Ilpo Vaisanen, Vainio is also responsible for the equally Arctic but considerably more muscular techno project Pan Sonic (nee Panasonic). The records he's best known for embarked on a hyper minimal techno of 4/4 pulses smashing through phase-shifting patterns from his self-built synthesizers and so called "complex sound generators." Recently, the rigidity of Vainio's techno architecture has given way to slinkier grooves of variable breakbeats and plenty of excursions into electro-acoustic abstraction. As cool as his devices are, he's never been one to muster anything truly exceptional without being grounded upon rhythmic principles; and for the most part, Vainio delivers the beat. And he delivers a mighty fine album of frozen electronica. The tracks are dominated by very groovy breakbeats with pristine electronic melodies, frigid ambient gestures and descending icy tones with slinky basslines. It's certainly more captivating than Alva Noto or Ryoji Ikeda, but coming from a similar place. Vainio also offers a mighty fine cover of Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls To The Heart Of The Sun" with the vocals cast as an downer electroid riff laced with acid squiggle. Recommended!
� is one of the many monikers of Mika Vainio, who is one of the figureheads of the Finnish techno scene, having first recorded in 1991 and forming the group Panasonic in 1993 (now referred to as Pan Sonic for obvious reasons) "Tulkinta" compiles the now impossible to find tracks off
of Sahko 001 & Sahko 002 onto CD + 6 unreleased tracks. All of the Vainio projects have involved a number of one of a kind electronic devices which generate crystalline tones and "pure dream-crackle" (according to Forced Exposure) within phase shifted Techno format, emulating the Reichian experiments within an electronica format. This is an essential listen for anyone interested in the 90s vangarde of electronica.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Beautiful hyperminimal electronica between Ø (aka Mika Vainio, who is one third of Panasonic and runs the Sähkö label in Finland) doing glacial drones from his unique hand crafted tone generators, and Noto making abstract clicks and clacks much like Oval's skipping discs and gum smacking. Not to be missed!
While "Mikro Makro" gives the false impression that Mika Vainio (aka � and half of Pan Sonic) and Carsten Nicolai (Noto) actually collaborated together for that album, "Wohltemperiert" is technically the first documented collaboration between these two figureheads of the minimalist electronica pulse. Mostly recorded in the winter of 1998 during an extended stay in New York, Vainio and Nicolai did not employ any of their own gear, instead using equipment provided by their friend Lary Seven.
While both artists have made previous works that openly explored the clean schematics of archetectural forms within a crystalline techno, they have mostly done away with the archetypes of purist techno on "Wohltemperiert." It's quite possible that Nicolai has subjugated himself underneath Vainio's recent predilections for much more private procedures of coaxing little accidents out of mis-configured analogue equipment and ill-grounded cables. Much like the preceding Vainio albums "Onko" and "Kajo," "Wohltemperiert" ripples with buzzing electrical drones, twin-tone melodic vibrations, the occasional glisten of a technotic pulse, and vast extended crackles, resulting in an album that is surprisingly dark for these two. Take away much of the death / abject imagry from the industrial masterpieces by MB or SPK, and you come close to the wintery bleak atmospheres found here.
"Wohltemperiert" is a welcome diversion from the Raster-Noton sound, which has been running the risk of self-parody and self-reflexivity as of recent.
Checksum is the collaboration between San Francisco leftfield indie mainstays Jeff Palmer (Granfaloon Bus, Sunny Day Real Estate) and Greg Freeman (Pell Mell, Virginia Dare, Lowdown Studios), taking spartan instrumentation not far from late period Talk Talk or the first Tortoise record to occasional lap top / dubby trickery.
