Somewhere in France, sometime in the '80s: a radical independent underground micro-scene peopled by creative teenagers who grew up listening to Kraftwerk, Throbbing Gristle, A Certain Ratio, Metal Urbain, and Cabaret Voltaire, making their own synth- and sample-based music, with heavy beats and noisy dubbed out FX, that's like a post-punk/industrial hybrid of old school hiphop, Detroit electro, and tape-splicing musique concrete experimentation, releasing it themselves on artfully packaged cassette tapes and occasional pieces of vinyl, in limited editions heard only by the most dedicated international networkers in that pre-internet age. Sound good? It is! That's what this release documents, remarkable DIY music that's been aptly described as "like Wild Style on dust". Or imagine some other underground '80s industrial experimentalists from France, like Le Syndicat, toning down the noise (a little) and trying to make tracks like Afrika Bambaataa.
And please don't get confused, either, 'cause noted turntablist, producer and crate digger Cut Chemist's name is on the cover. This isn't a DJ mix, or remix, or collaboration, or anything like that. Cut Chemist doesn't himself have anything to do with the music of the two closely related bands on here, Vox Populi! and Pacific 231, other than having discovered 'em on one of his record-buying excursions (specifically via finding Vox Populi!'s track "Megamix" on a rare compilation LP called Alternative Funk, released by VP!'s own Vox Man label), and then making it his mission to find out more about them and get their stuff reissued - which he did, after many years of research, and friendships forged with both Vox Populi's leader Axel Kyrou and his colleague Pierre Jolivet, whose own project Pacific 231 ran parallel to Vox Populi!, and was also an important part of the collective described above.
So, thanks to Cut Chemist, whose imprimatur will hopefully help get this music some additional well deserved attention, we've now got this fantastic anthology of twenty VP! and P231 tracks rescued & remastered from rare cassette and vinyl comps, eps, etc., with plenty of previously unreleased material too. It's a real treasure trove of headnodding, mindblowing, utterly rad stuff, what could be indeed called, "alternative funk". Make that, alternative WTF? funk. These wide-ranging tracks contain, in varying combinations and degrees, all manner of frizzled blip bloop electronics, propulsive drum machine rhythms, subversive cut-ups, spanking funk bass, gothic cold wave vocals, ambient synth trances, crazed echoing dub effects, and reel-to-reel tape manipulation (the DJ "scratching" sounds you'll hear). All we can say is, upon hearing this, we immediately understood Cut Chemist's obsession!
Musically, the French always seem to have their own unique, unusual take on things, whether it's disco or prog or black metal, and the hard-to-define genre this represents is no exception.
The thick cd booklet (or big lp insert) is full of detailed liner notes, graphics and photos, which should give one a good sense of the exciting artistic/cultural/musical milieu these folks inhabited. Highly, highly recommended. (Note, the double vinyl version comes with a bonus 7" of extra tracks, which are also included on the cd.)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Whoa! Scott Walker has certainly never been about meeting audience expectations, but we never expected hime to go in a direction this extreme, a lyrical and musical excursion so far out it's a little disconcerting. The Drift, his first release in 11 years has got to be some of the darkest and intensely uneasy soul-baring music we have heard lately, which is saying a lot for us. Visceral and highly visual, Walker seems to be channeling the decadent symbolist literature of Rimbaud, Verlaine or J.K. Huysmans as well as the surrealist existentialism of T. S. Eliot or Georges Bataille, as he takes us on a poisoned delirious absinthe-induced journey through the seasons of hell. Walker's voice recalls a strange mutation of Antony's (from Antony and the Johnsons) operatic theatrics and Jandek's sorrowful moans as it plays against orchestral arrangements that sound like Arvo Part, Morricone and Penderecki caught in a purgatorial bar-room brawl. Punctuated by deep resonant strings, concrete blocks pounding on wood, sounds of donkeys braying, and snippets of shortwave radio, Walker's arrangements vary from oppressive ambience to brutal stabs of orchestrated noise, as they cover a wide gamut of themes, characters and moods, from the reproachful condemnation of power to the painful humanity of love. The saving moment comes at the end with A Lover Loves, a spare but melodic ballad of voice and acoustic guitar that is the albums only peek back to the Scott Walker of old (in particular, Scott 4), and it kills!
Good, great, amazing, none of those are really useful superlatives in the case of The Drift, although it is all of those things and then some, as it definitely will not appeal to everyone, especially fans of Walker's first four solo records from the late sixties. But viewed as a work of art, with all the genuine brilliance and pretension that that may entail, this is extraordinary and astonishing uneasy listening!
Finally!!! The hotly anticipated debut full length from San Francisco weirdo electronic duo Water Borders, aka Amitai Heller and Loric Sih, formerly of SF rockers New Thrill Parade! And HOLY SHIT does Harbored Mantras deliver the goods! All of us around here have been eagerly awaiting this and are so psyched to finally be able to share this freakily futuristic and subversive bass goth with everybody. Hopefully, by now, avid aQ list readers are well familiar with the warped soundworld of Water Borders from past records on killer labels like Skrot Up, Disaro, and the Hungry For Power label run by kick ass blog 20 Jazz Funk Greats. While all that material was definitely amazing, and excitingly forward thinking, their proper debut, "Harbored Mantras", might just turn out to be a total game changer. It makes sense a bleeding edge label like Triangle would put it out, as it's an obvious attempt to diversify and re-direct their already stunning canon. The future is simply bigger than 'witch-house', and the keen eyes of the powers that be at Triangle seem to understand this all too well. (Also see the beautifully stark Ayshay ep featured elsewhere on this list for further evidence).
It's a rare sonic artifact that successfully bridges the gaps between such disparate and divergent influences and comes out on the other side as something utterly unique. but Harbored Mantras does just that, and then some. Most of the reviews thus far and even the press release from the band itself have gone over the groups influences ad nauseum, but for the most part, they are pretty right on, we too hear Coil, we hear modern UK bass music, we hear echoes of Gavin Friday at his most expressive and brooding. All apt comparisons for sure. But what's so interesting to us is the manner and method in which Water Borders implement these influences to effectively create a fresh crossover. Water Borders' sound successfully inhabits multiple musical universes in ways that are both subtle and surreal, yet somehow impossibly calculated and perfectly executed. It's a churning gothic weirdness, it's well informed dance music, it's textural and moody, while at the same time solidly rooted in lyric based song form. The songs that constitute "Harbored Mantras" solidly convey a dark vision of the present and future. Technophobic paranoia, social inequities, workaday drudgery, narcissistic identity crisis, and the ever-changing nature of communication are all strands that are woven into the spirit and soul of this record. There's much to be discovered in this piece of work... let's get to the tunes.
The album opens up with the slow burn of "Tread on Them". We're greeted with the sounds of long forgotten bones clattering in a blackened wind, while a ritualistic metallic clang creeps into the foreground. Heller's creepy baritone enters atop this hissing texture and suddenly with the introduction of bass we're sent falling into WB's bottomless sound-cave. The low end frequency is a dark and dubby stomach ache drone, creating a different type of club vibe. Euphoria replaced with claustrophobia. The sound is functionally cathartic, like good dance music ought to be, but the feeling is still foreboding. "Yelling long live success" as we waltz on top of the vanquished, feeling a deep shame all the while for acts willfully committed to arrive at the top of this heap... "What Wiwant" ups the energy with a nervously syncopated 2-step. Disassociated hand percussion and the ever-present bass wobble creating an absolutely hypnotic head-nod trance. The song is a driving banger swaddled in ominous synth textures, working you up to a frenzy while never letting you leave the hazy nightmare. "Waldenpond.com" is a brief respite from the chaos, offering up a beautiful slab of gloomy triphop. The guest vocals from Group Rhoda are a gorgeous addition to the WB's sound, strongly contrasting Heller's guttural croon with plaintive melody. The tempo is slower here, kind of a groovy, opiated dream state where melodies and textures swirl atop a dubbed out rhythm track. The vocal production is particularly stunning on this one. For the first half of the tune Group Rhoda's vocals are shimmery and ghost like, floating atop the beat with dense reverberation and spacious delay. About half way through the track the vocals are sampled and arranged rhythmically, becoming part of the beat itself. This clever production tactic lends itself well to creating an arc within the song... where we once sought comfort in the gauzy atmospherics we now are suddenly bucked off that cloud, hurled into a more jarring moment. The line "I hate the night" bouncing in our brains, awakening visions of a parallel world where identity is fragmented and "reality" is confused. And that BASS! Caustic, deep rumbles shaking us to the core. All elements combining to give an overall feeling of discomfort, albeit one that you can get down to. "Bad Ethos" is a harshly negative slo-mo industrial track. Lots of noisy mids and highs droning on and on with some seriously demented histrionics going on with Heller's vocals, the deep dark bellow replaced with a high end evil screech. Next up is arguably THEE cut of the record, "Even in the Dark". Originally featured on the group's Disaro disc, but now revamped and made even more MASSIVE! Starting with a minor key arpeggiation, the bass slowly creeping in and the vocals murky and misanthropic. Suddenly those same vocals become more discernible, albeit DRENCHED in a reverb glaze, revealing probably the strongest melodic moments of the record. The underpinning is still the throbbing pulsations heard throughout, but now with an intense element of high end melodic skree, tom toms ping ponging across a vast cavern, synths clawing at the ears, a cacophonous tumult resulting in an undeniable urge to erase the self and finally dance off that cliff that "Harbored Mantras" has been beckoning you toward throughout.�
From here on out, the album remains driven towards this death trance mood, incredibly focused in its intent. It's alienating and disturbing but at the same time engaging and creative. Moments of beauty, moments of chaos...a fully developed record with an incredibly consistent vibe. This is what we mean by game-changer. It's at once a part of the now, but also something wholly different and utterly challenging, not easy listening at all. Never pandering to the trends, but at the same time so current and powerful! An infinitely rewarding debut record from an outfit that promises to keep on pushing their futuristic sonic agenda. Absolutely essential!!!
"Wilt's new album is also their first as a band, with the electronic experimentation being combined with acoustic walls of bass and noise. Wide, dusty and dark, "Dark Meadows" displays Wilt's new psychedelic and atmospheric approach to its deeply textured ambiances. "Dark Meadows" is one the most rewarding and sombre of works of Wilt, for it marries it organic darkness with an acute sense of melody and an ever-present cavernous bass. A massive, encompassing and profound work of art."
Might as well start out by saying this is most definitely the prettiest Wolf Eyes record we've ever heard. And certainly the most listenable, but of course, both of those descriptors are pretty subjective, especially when applied to a group like Wolf Eyes, who are as capable of conjuring up sheets of face melting noise as they are blissed out industrial shimmer. But for No Answer-Lower Floors, it sounds like they've tried something entirely different. The vibe is droney, and darkly psychedelic, the noise elements are muted, or sculpted into melodies, the opener sounds like Wolf Eyes via Can, a sort of kraut-noise, a simpler rhythm, wreathed in strange bits of buzz and thrum, the occasional streak of high end skree, the vocals laid back and laconic, almost spoken, a sort of woozy croon, the vibe is a mellower Dead C, or a super abstract lo-fi This Heat, weirdly hypnotic and trancey, minimal and murky, it's almost a sort of chill out version of Wolf Eyes, and we dig it a lot.
There are some brief song fragments, interludes maybe, that find the group digging into their slightly noisier bag of tricks, one is a sort of pounding muted pop song, laced with wild malfunctioning FX and electronic squiggles, but retains the vibe of the opener. One is a weird collaged of fragmented voices and weird swirling clouds of high end bleeps, all chopped and layered, but then there's "Chattering Lead" which is even more mellow and trance-y than the opener, whirling organ shimmer, over a muted pulse, a skittery electro rhythm, all manner of chitter and bleep swirling in the background, more of those druggy disembodied vox, it's a gorgeously soporific sprawl of minimal creep-pop dirge, reminding us of our favorite Gate tracks, that same sort of sad boy indie rock slowed way down and blurred into a hazy drift. "Confession Of The Informer" is another minimal drifter, this one a bit more creepy and cinematic, lots of space, and ominous rumbles, strange minor key melodies, and soundtracky ambience, there's a pulse, a spaced out rhythm, over which a strange swirl of voices and sounds drift and shift, dark and minimal and moody, hushed and haunting.
Finally, the record finishes with another stretch of rhythmic post industrial dirgery, this one flecked with bursts of what sounds like buzzsaw electronics, beneath which, another minimal rhythm unfurls, a dark somnambulant lope, looped and cyclical, a sort of power electronics hypno-drift, and while that relentless blast of electronics is mildly harsh, somehow, it ends up being more soothing and mesmerizing, the whole thing like some caveman This Heat. Definitely our new favorite Wolf Eyes record, and very likely the sort of record that could convince unsuspecting innocents to finally decide they like 'noise music'...
The apocalypse has come to mean 'the end of the world' but its original Greek definition is that of 'revelation,' albeit a really fucking heavy revelation of how the world is going to end. The differences between the pop-cultural definition and the biblical definition are somewhat semantic, but it's apt to mention in regards to Chelsea Wolfe's second record which situates the title in the context of the Greek alphabet. It's pretty clear that the revelations that Chelsea Wolfe spills across her brilliant doom-folk album don't aspire to the allegories and mystical visions pronounced by David Tibet, rather she seems to be clamoring about the conditions leading up to the end of the world. With demonic possession, toxic wastelands, and haunted sexuality being so prevalent in her ghastly world view, it's no wonder she's bellowing that the end is near.
Wolfe's first record - The Grime And The Glow - was a home-recorded affair, whose tape murk added to the choking-on-smog atmosphere of the dour songs. The sparse arrangements aggressively strummed on acoustic guitar shot all of the attention back on Wolfe's beguiling voice which takes cues from PJ Harvey, but way darker and witchier. The songs did liken themselves to the early apocalyptic folk aesthetics of Sol Invictus and Current 93; and that's still the case for Apokalypsis, although she has fleshed out her sound with a full band, capable of delivering minimalist Goth ballads, swamp-rock menace, and harrowing bursts of distortion to match the mood of her songs. Wolfe twists the fairytail beginning of "Tracks (Tall Bodies)" into gritty depressive dirges, reflective of the goth sound of her native LA some two decades ago (e.g. Abecedarians, Kommunity FK, etc.). She also reprises two songs from The Grime And The Glow, including the infernal barnburner "Demons" and the antebellum blues number "Moses" which retains its minor-key mope and slavehouse misery. The stalking-in-the snow pace of "Pale On Pale" lurches at a pace even slower than that of True Widow, with Wolfe's mournful voice lifting above the churning, blackened guitars. There's a grit and a severity to Chelsea Wolfe that makes her a very compelling figure in contemporary music, almost like a musical reincarnation of The Process Church in neo-goth form. Very highly recommended.
Much better than Zola Jesus' recent rebranding of old songs with a string quartet, is Chelsea Wolfe's Pain Is Beauty. These two records have emerged at about the same time, at summer's end of 2013, and these two personalities seem to share the headlines of whatever glossy blogspottumblffeedtweeterbirdpitchfulking thing you might frequent. Yeah, the goth subcultures have long enabled their ice queens to emerge as fashion icons of a cold hedonism and sexually charged detachment, all the while looking fantastic in smeared coal-eyed make-up and frost-white skin. For now, it's these two ladies who are holding court in the land of the gloomy; but when it comes to delivering the art, Chelsea Wolfe has stepped up her game on Pain Is Beauty, easily bettering Zola Jesus' tepid stringed album and producing what is probably the best album of her young career. Her last album of acoustically driven songs - Unknown Rooms - showcased her songwriting chops and an elegant quivering falsetto that wrapped around her plaintive death-folk ballads. In fleshing out these songs with drums, bass, electronics, and yes some strings, Wolfe's songs all amass into a delicious album of moody witchiness and haughty debauchery, while retaining the magickal aura of her unhinged apocalyptic howl that manifested out of some arcane blood ritual. The use of electronics on the album is particularly striking, to the point where we have begun to hope for a full album with just purely electronic minimal wave arrangements. The opening number "Feral Love" is engineered upon a hammering blastbeat although the volume is dialed down beneath the infernal guitar noises and her bleak siren song. "The Warden" is another electronic track that hypnotically cycles through chorale vocals, a taut dulcimer riff, and sparkle-clad rhythms. Yeah, it's brighter than anything else she's done, but there's plenty of doomified plod, bad-ass villain vibes, and ravenously empty folk tunes that haunt the rest of the album. Time to break out the black nail polish again.
Reissued once again! Here's what we said the first time around:
Yeah, she covered a Burzum song before releasing this album, but there's a hell of lot more to Chelsea Wolfe than copping a few moves from Mr. Vikernes. This Los Angeles minstrel has quipped she writes "spiritual realm funeral songs," and that's a pretty apt description given the acoustic guitar dourness, doom-laden atmospheres, grimy production values, and witchy goth-folk vocals that come together as the perfect hybridization of Zola Jesus and PJ Harvey. Her arrangements are pretty stripped down with little more than acoustic and / or electric guitar occasionally fleshed out with a rhythm section. She puts an outsider folk spin on her songwriting, as if she were penning acoustic black metal songs channeled through the freak-folk mysticism of Topanga Canyon. This also has a lot of similarities to the apocalyptic folk stylings of Death In June / Sol Invictus / Current 93 circa 1992 although Chelsea Wolfe is far less precious with the song and is not afraid to let some blood spill as she violently scrapes her knuckles on the guitar strings. In so many ways, what she does is so much better than what Douglas P and Tony Wakeford could conjure through their cryptic folk songs. The haunting "Cousins Of The Antichrist" is one track that effortlessly exceeds the songwriting achievements of those aforementioned British esoteric musicians, with the urgency of the violent strum on her acoustic guitar stuck in minor chords buttressing the soaring vocals.
Similarly, "Deep Talks" works its blown out 4-track recording of her grab-every-string-on-the-guitar-and-pull method of playing along with her wordless vocal delivery that's as impressionistic as Grouper, but with Grouper's narcolepsy replaced by night terrors. "Moses" (a track which interestingly follows "Cousins Of The Antichrist") plays on stomping Southern spirituals but turned ashen and turgid in pace and demeanor. And the album's closing number "Widow" is a bleak, half-whispered song mired in morose atmospheres and just the right amount of narcotic smoke and exhumed-from-a-swamp 4 track production values, sounding a lot like the criminally underappreciated Corpses As Bedmates (whose sole album was reissued under an entirely different band name - Venus Handcuffs, probably worsening things for the band, but we digress). The short of it is that Chelsea Wolfe's The Grime And The Glow is fucking great, highly recommended!
Yeah, she covered a Burzum song before releasing this album, but there's a hell of lot more to Chelsea Wolfe than copping a few moves from Mr. Vikernes. This Los Angeles minstrel has quipped she writes "spiritual realm funeral songs," and that's a pretty apt description given the acoustic guitar dourness, doom-laden atmospheres, grimy production values, and witchy goth-folk vocals that come together as the perfect hybridization of Zola Jesus and PJ Harvey. Her arrangements are pretty stripped down with little more than acoustic and / or electric guitar occasionally fleshed out with a rhythm section. She puts an outsider folk spin on her songwriting, as if she were penning acoustic black metal songs channeled through the freak-folk mysticism of Topanga Canyon. This also has a lot of similarities to the apocalyptic folk stylings of Death In June / Sol Invictus / Current 93 circa 1992 although Chelsea Wolfe is far less precious with the song and is not afraid to let some blood spill as she violently scrapes her knuckles on the guitar strings. In so many ways, what she does is so much better than what Douglas P and Tony Wakeford could conjure through their cryptic folk songs. The haunting "Cousins Of The Antichrist" is one track that effortlessly exceeds the songwriting achievements of those aforementioned British esoteric musicians, with the urgency of the violent strum on her acoustic guitar stuck in minor chords buttressing the soaring vocals.
Similarly, "Deep Talks" works its blown out 4-track recording of her grab-every-string-on-the-guitar-and-pull method of playing along with her wordless vocal delivery that's as impressionistic as Grouper, but with Grouper's narcolepsy replaced by night terrors. "Moses" (a track which interestingly follows "Cousins Of The Antichrist") plays on stomping Southern spirituals but turned ashen and turgid in pace and demeanor. And the album's closing number "Widow" is a bleak, half-whispered song mired in morose atmospheres and just the right amount of narcotic smoke and exhumed-from-a-swamp 4 track production values, sounding a lot like the criminally underappreciated Corpses As Bedmates (whose sole album was reissued under an entirely different band name - Venus Handcuffs, probably worsening things for the band, but we digress). The short of it is that Chelsea Wolfe's The Grime And The Glow is fucking great and marks another killer release in the growing catalogue of witchy releases by Pendu Sound, following an lp from Sasha Grey's Atelecine and a single from witch house maven Mater Suspiria Vision. Highly Recommended!
Another killer chunk of dark brooding gloom prog post metal creep from this Los Angeles duo, with the A side, "Absurdities & Echo" sounding a bit like Godflesh via Pinkish Black, with a little This Heat going on too, which actually sorta describes their sound in general, killer mathy drumming, thick swaths of rumbling buzzing synths, the vibe super sinister and atmospheric, the vocals an ultra dramatic anguished howl, this is the sort of sound we imagine would have gone over gangbusters back in the hey day of the LA goth scene, not hard to imagine these guys playing at the Scream, a dense crowd of black clad kids swooning and tranced out, headbanging really slowly. Heavy as fuck, but with lots of space, the drumming driving things for sure, murky and moody, a tortured slab of gothic metallic downer-rock that reminds us once again why we dig these guys so much.
And while we often wonder why these guys ever got classified as black metal, it's tracks like the B side "Abhorrence", that reminds us that these guys can actually kick up a pretty serious black buzz, but of course even then, it's their twisted version, with flurries of drum splatter, swooning soaring synths (or are they guitars? Hard to tell...), the vokills a hellish rasp, the arrangement, like the A side weirdly mathy and proggy, with some cool stop / start breakdowns that ooze into thick tarpit trudges, before returning to the shrieking swirling howling blackness.
Hark! Courtesy of the ever reliable Flenser Records comes the gravely unsettling return of this boldly unclassifiable unit, hazily haunting the very outermost fringes of metal, goth, noise rock and industrial, and most certainly on our shortlist of bands that everyone should be listening to that not nearly enough people are (although a current stint opening for Deafheaven will hopefully change that!). For those uninitiated, W&R are a two piece loosely based in Los Angeles comprised solely of a live drummer and a man with a sample pad (live it looks like he's playing a giant light up calculator!), both gifted with a talent for terrifying screams, howls and yelps, who manage to sound as dense and textural as any full band. Want assaults you immediately with a burst of disorienting percussive soundscapes, the vocals an exhausted world-weary yell, the music (if it can be called that) a collage of white noise, Hawkwind style cosmic swirling dust, and a synthesized monolithic chanting that is either coming from a human or a machine, it is almost impossible to say. And that's just the first couple minutes of a wildly dense, emotionally ravaged technological avalanche of a record. There are moments of relative restraint, but these are perhaps even more emotionally intense. Funereal piano lilts under stream-of-consciousness spoken word, clattering cymbals and agonized screams. Sparse robotic percussion hammers cold and steadfast under unnerving atonal singing and a shrieking digital cacophony, like musical notes malfunctioning, rotten with cancerous programming. Lonely nocturnal melodies drift above spidery rhythms eerily offset by freeform howling. The songs can be lush, almost beautiful in their own oily alien way, but never without a sense of foreboding, a constant dissonant creep leaking into the foliage. They can be contemplative and desolate, like some sort of future wasteland, all barren metals and burned out circuitry. At other times the record is almost operatic and martial, sounding like some warped Soviet anthem infested with insectoid parasites, pulsating like an anxious transparent heart - an orchestra sucked of all its triumph and hope, sometimes even recalling something from Burzum's Filosofem, but completely rewired - sparking and glistening in a damp windowless room. Want is like a collage - some tracks feeling like snippets or fragments of ideas and memories, the kind we do our best to keep buried. It is a lonesome technological assault, the black oil of crackling urban despair seeping into the pores of every moment. The ominous hungry march of progress that will consume us all! Very highly recommended for fans of Pinkish Black and other recent Flenser faves like Have A Nice Life and Planning For Burial...
Wreck And Reference's Black Cassette record was a big hit around here, a blackened gloomy, electronic flecked sludge, that managed to infuse it's outsider metal with plenty of goth pop weirdness, haunting slowcore creep and industrial post rock churn, so much so that an argument could be made for whether it was in fact a metal record at all. And really it hardly matters to us. In fact, it was precisely, all the non metal elements that really made it so distinctive and cool. And if anything, the duo's new record No Youth moves even further from a sound that could be considered 'metal'. The opening track is the perfect example, the only bit of actual metal, a brief bout of blackened screeched vokills, but other than that, it's all creaking industrial crunch, processed FX heavy loops, psychedelic ambience, muted guitar strum, clean vocal croon, distorted buzz stretched out into pulsing drones, tribal, almost jazzy drumming and then a wild chaotic squall of noise rock freakout. Bam. That's it. And it's great! The second track too, a creepy gauzey slowcore drift, al crumbling muted thrum, and muted feedback, again some metal elements surface, this time a blast beat, but it just so happens, the blast beat is blasting away beneath a creepy crawly droned out melody, and darkly dramatic crooned vocals, the song winding down into a slow fade, before launching into another non-metal jam. A loping post/math rock lope, all snarly, gothic vox, and processed background, the final few minutes slipping into a near metallic churn, but again, it's more dark and woozy and gothic and hauntingly heavy. Okay, now that we've established that W&R are NOT a metal band, at least by any traditional definition, we can simply enjoy their wonderfully warped, super progressive, experimental avant heaviness, and wonderful and avant it is. We're most reminded of Pinkish Black, a recent aQ Record Of The Week, whose sound also took metal as their launching point, and then stopped concerning themselves with anything other than making heavy, tripped out, amazing music.
And Wreck And Reference have definitely blossomed into something special, a band that we imagine must be pretty divisive, even though they're dark and heavy, and near metallic at times, they have a pop streak a mile wide, and a similar gloomy gothy streak, not to mention a thing for electronics, and programming, and transforming perfectly serviceable riffs into stuttering progged out blurs, and they obviously like real singing, and they like that singing to be dramatic and intense and melodic most of the time, and the thing is, when the band to indulge in some pure metallic crush, they do it so convincingly, it's easy to think they were a metal band who got weird, instead of the other way around, which is how they sound to us. Even better than the Black Cassette, which we dug big time, and everyone who bought that Pinkish Black record, even though this doesn't sound at all like it, seems like something most of you could very well end up digging A LOT.
A few weeks back we listed an amazing French synth-pop rarity on the Dark Entries label called The Dream Machine by duo X Ray Pop, a compilation of early singles and demos that was equal parts Les Rita Mitsouko, Mo-dettes and Stereo Total. Now Finders Keepers follows that up with a reissue of the band's first full length, Pirate!, from 1985. Pirate! was originally released on cassette in a small edition of 100 copies, so it went down the rabbithole of obscurities pretty quickly. So it's awesome that it's getting reissued! We did notice that 5 of the tracks on both releases were the same, but then a glance at the subtitle on this release, The Dark Side Of The X, clued us into the fact that while the songs are the same, they are VERY different versions. The Dream Machine demos were more stripped down and gave a lighter touch to the French pop created by vocalist Zouka Dzaza and instrumentalist Doc Pilot. On Pirate! however, the songs have more overdriven synthesizers creating a much darker Suicide-ish feel heightened by the rapid-fire drum machines. Still catchy and cool, but closer to the cold wave of Deux and Gina X on this go round than the way they were to Pizzacato 5 and Stereolab was on the last one.
A few weeks back we listed an amazing French synth-pop rarity on the Dark Entries label called The Dream Machine by duo X Ray Pop, a compilation of early singles and demos that was equal parts Les Rita Mitsouko, Mo-dettes and Stereo Total. Now Finders Keepers follows that up with a reissue of the band's first full length, Pirate!, from 1985. Pirate! was originally released on cassette in a small edition of 100 copies, so it went down the rabbithole of obscurities pretty quickly. So it's awesome that it's getting reissued! We did notice that 5 of the tracks on both releases were the same, but then a glance at the subtitle on this release, The Dark Side Of The X, clued us into the fact that while the songs are the same, they are VERY different versions. The Dream Machine demos were more stripped down and gave a lighter touch to the French pop created by vocalist Zouka Dzaza and instrumentalist Doc Pilot. On Pirate! however, the songs have more overdriven synthesizers creating a much darker Suicide-ish feel heightened by the rapid-fire drum machines. Still catchy and cool, but closer to the cold wave of Deux and Gina X on this go round than the way they were to Pizzacato 5 and Stereolab was on the last one.
Long in the works, this last ever Throbbing Gristle project, which was to be a fully realized cover album of the legendary Nico record from 1970, has had more than its fair share of controversy and drama within the confines of the remaining members of the group (Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson). Not only by the death of key member and project leader Christopherson, but also the decision of Chris and Cosey to continue the project on their own as a tribute to "Sleazy" sparking a widely publicized twitter feud with former Throbbing Gristle member Genesis P-Orridge. Already the name X-TG was christened due to P-Orridge's unwillingness to continue to tour with the reenergized Throbbing Gristle in late 2010, and the remaining members continued on, under the new moniker, with a desire to mold new sounds in the studio. The Desertshore album was in fact instigated several years before, back in 2006 for an art installation, but the results were unsatisfactory and thus re-recorded two years later. With Sleazy's death occurring before the project was finished, it became a tribute with vocals given to an array of familiar guests. What seemed at first like a dream project, has since been altered so far away from its original intentions, that while on one hand it's great to see a long involved project finally realized, we can't help but wonder what could have been.
The problem being that with so many guest vocals, it's impossible to be immersed into a singular sound world that the original Desertshore demands, as the changes among vocalists create an unwanted distraction. The sound that X-TG created for themselves is beautifully exquisite, and on some tracks, especially the Antony led, "Janitor of Lunacy", the total effect is mesmerizing. But between the bravado of Marc Almond, the tepidness of Sasha Gray, and the wildly fluctuating moods of other guests including Blixa Bargeld and Argentine cinema provocateur, Gaspar Noe, it's difficult to feel satisfied overall. The biggest question for us is why didn't Cosey just sing the whole thing? Her vocal contributions are among the best of the lot and might have led to the project having some much needed continuity. Perhaps perfect closure was too much of an unattainable goal in the post-TG world for us to expect.
Unlike the other declarations of finality, disc two in this double disc set is in fact The Final Report for the remnants of Throbbing Gristle. The sketches of The Final Report were mapped out during studio sessions from 2009 through 2010 up until Sleazy's death, with Chris and Cosey completing the album themselves. In many ways, it's a considerable improvement upon the Third Mind Movements by Throbbing Gristle from 2009, with flickering, mirage-like electronic tones and deconstructed samples sliding in and out of focus around the orbit of the lumbering rhythms. While the technology and the ability to use it has improved, the band continue to build from primitive pulses and scaffolding that are plastered with uneasy sounds, subliminal vocalizations, and mutant electronica -- all very much in keeping with the Industrial agenda of 1978, but with current technology. "E.H.S." sounds very much like what Throbbing Gristle revamped today would sound like, with unsettled vocalizations lurking at the perimeter of perception and Cosey's atonal guitar bursting through the cybernetic, lurching rhythm in chunky blocks of bent sound. "What He Said" is a noirish piece of futurist electronica with a heart-beat pulse gradually building in intensity with elongated coronet tones and skittered echoings of caustic noise bouncing throughout. The Final Report is pretty much a unified album, which is a strange thing to say about a Throbbing Gristle record, which in the past were known to be distinctly disjointed and multi-faceted. Here, the vision is consistent with a morose soot covering both man and machine alike. Let's hope the next Chris & Cosey record picks up where this one leaves off!
Xeno & Oaklander were born in the wrong decade and on the wrong continent, but that hasn't stopped them from constructing brilliantly haunted minimal-wave tracks which lead directly back to Belgium (or France, or Germany, or England, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter) circa 1982 through all sorts of analog synths, drum machines, and sequencers. Vinyl of course is the right medium for a band that seeks the vintage pleasures of forgotten futures; but Vigils was originally just a cd-r self-released back in 2006. It quickly became a staple at the Wierd Records parties in New York, and some of the tracks here had appeared in slightly different forms on the two Wierd Records compilations from about that same time. Since then, Xeno & Oaklander have seen their stock rise thanks to a number of retrogarde forces at work, including the reissue campaigns from Minimal Wave and Dark Entries, as well as the huge success of fellow dark-synth technicians Cold Cave. While their 2009 album Sentinelle was received with considerable critical acclaim, Vigils is a much better album altogether. Arpeggiating synth lines and skeletal drum machines form the basic structures of all of the Xeno & Oaklander songs, whose uptempo rhythms belie the aching melancholy formed out of the intertwining melodies and detached vocals from both Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride. In all of these echo-plexed pulse-tone synths, stark atmospheres, and romantic pop detachment, Xeno & Oaklander unabashedly channel the spirits of Chris & Cosey, Ruth, and Depeche Mode, with the European desire furthered by lyrics in French and German as well as English.
It's a shame that this is merely a cd-r, as Black Book is the best Xeno Volcano album that has come through these doors, although his website indicates that a proper pressing might be in the works. While his origins lie in the San Francisco Bay Area, Xeno Volcano currently lives in Zurich, Switzerland where he has worked with Black Sun Productions (who in turn offer their sexual magick for Coil's stage show) and makes soundtracks for automobile accident prevention videos. Needless to say, Xeno Volcano's tastes find comfort in the transgressive behavior of post-industrial culture. Black Book is buried in dark overtones, as eerie drones flicker across the barren expanses of Xeno Volcano's electronic landscape, sounding not all that far off from Lustmord's classic dark ambient recording The Place Where The Black Stars Hang.
Xex was the experimental synthpop creation of three high-school misfits living in central New Jersey during the mid-'70s, having survived their teen years of suburban boredom with plenty of drugs and eye-opening excursions to New York. Liberated by the spirit of punk, this outfit - pseudonymously known as Waw Pierogi, Thumbalina Gugielmo, and Alex Zander (later joined by Jon-Boy Diode and David Anderson) - took up the task of infusing a smarty-pants cynicism to hyper-primitive arrangements on a small assortment of synths and drum machines. No guitars whatsoever, the sound of Xex is one of skewed melodicism and incessant repetition. This combined with a typically monotone vocal sensibility put Xex in the same synthpunk orbit as The Units and Crash Course In Science. It's a very American sound, to look back upon all of these records. In Europe, the new wave and synthpop was far more self-possessed, even amongst the DIY circles, but for a certain subset in the States, the nerds had become emboldened in punk to use science and math as a spasmodic, future-shock means for nihilist poetics and cathartic release - hence, Devo, Dark Day, Nervous Gender, the aforementioned Crash Course In Science, and Xex. With the exception of Primitive Calculators and Severed Heads in Australia, there's hardly a parallel anywhere else in the world to this synthpunk sound; and Xex were certainly exceptional at it.
Group Xex was the only record they released, although the band recorded a second album but never released it (unfortunately the tapes of that second album had deteriorated beyond repair). Self-released in 1980, the album was sold pretty much exclusively in Manhattan and North Jersey, with an edition of a 1000 copies disappearing quickly. The album did get a cd reish in 1995 after Tom Smith championed the record after discovering it in the vaults at WFMU. It's a very quizzical album of purposefully simple electronic tunes played upon whipcrack drum machines and minimally percolating synths matched by the alternatinge female and male vocals, which are always thin, reedy, and metallic. Thumbalina's girly vocals bounce through the motorik synthpop ditty "Fashion Hurts" whose singsonginess is immediately countered by the unwavering robotic monotone that Pierogi presents on the cybernetic "You Think", and the grim, paranoiac poetry on "SNGA" (which stands for Soviet Nerve Gas Attack).
Another great find from the always impressive Dark Entries label! Definitely for fans of Devo and the Units. Limited to 500 copies with a great looking new wave booklet with lyrics, a band history, and some amusing tidbits thrown in for good measure.
Achtung Krautrock heads! Previously unreleased live recordings by this way-out-there, pioneering German band. Xhol Caravan, who started life playing R&B as Soul Caravan in the late sixties and then mutated into Xhol Caravan (and finally, just Xhol) as their
!!!COLD CAVE ALERT!!!!
Hopefully that got your attention, not only because the world seems to be going totally batshit for minimalist synth poppers Cold Cave, but ALSO because we only have a scant 15 COPIES of this pre-CC group, and it's looking like that will probably be it for all of history, or until someone else decides to come along and reissue it. So you probably want to act now or miss out.
Ye Olde Maids follow a similar path as Cold Cave, in fact you might be hard pressed to tell the difference. But hey, we're not complaining, because like everyone else, we're too busy digging these propulsive, gloomy as hell lo-fi jams. Like Cold Cave, you might want to compare this to New Order or the Cure in terms of atmosphere and in their overall approach. It's easy to see that this is where Wes Eisold began to solidify all his new wavey inclinations after years of playing in hardcore bands, though the songs definitely stand strongly enough on their own. Things are probably a little more noisy and disjointed than what has been perfected with Cold Cave, but for those who can't get enough CC, you will definitely want to grab this one fast. Did we mention that we had only 15 copies?
A super limited tour only ep head to head matchup between Australia's Grey Daturas (whose most recent record Dead In The Woods was an aQ record of the week a while back) and Bay Area free noise duo the Yellow Swans, who just returned from a month on the road with their pals in the Daturas. This ep was only on sale at their shows in Australia and New Zealand, but we managed to get the last of their left over copies.
The first track is the Yellow Swans along with their pal White Rainbow, and together they stir up a static expanse of white noise and amp buzz and pink fuzz, a swirling ambient shhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrr with various melodies and bits of guitar feedback and little snippets of noise and shards of sound drifting above and below and within the muted skree. Darn near tranquil in the Yellow Swans' universe, but by any one else's standards this is still a blast of white noise.
The Daturas take track two and they offer up a dual guitar dronefest, that sounds quite a bit like that weird tuning fork interdimensional transport thingie in the movie Phantasm. The sound of that thing was so appealing even when we were kids, maybe that's why we grew up to enjoy thick slabs of distorted guitar droning endlessly. But that's only the first half of the track, the second 8 minutes or so is a throbbing pummeling downtuned dirge with guitars squealing and churning and chugging and shrieking like two wild beats in a battle to the death over a fiercely pounding beat. An amazing slab of dreamy droney minimal stoner psych rock, for sure. Packaged in a cool oversize cardboard sleeve.
SUPER LIMITED. THESE ARE OUT OF PRINT AND LONG GONE. WE HAVE THE LAST 30 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD.
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Yen Pox took five years to follow up their devastating drone album "Blood Music" with the just released "New Dark Age" and it's been well worth the wait. This has already been hailed as the record of the year by Stefan Knappe of Troum / Drone Records. And if you are looking for something to fall neatly alongside Troum, Noisegate, and Lustmord, this is a perfect fit! Yen Pox -- the duo of Michael Hensley and Steven Hall -- have masterfully created a very cold album that is as majestic as it is bleak. Huge gaping drones swallow up reverb saturated metallic clanging, slow moving melodic figures, and frozen synthetic tones. Yen Pox's "New Dark Age" is a futurist vision of what life would be on the outskirts of solar system: awe-inspiring, isolated, and hostile.
"When in doubt - Front 242". Yup, that was the epithet Youth Code pasted at the bottom of their demo cassette which had been floating around over the past year. So, there's not much left to the imagination as to where this LA electronic duo situates themselves. Theirs is a sound which wholeheartedly reconstitutes the aggro-industrial and electronic body music of 1986 and 1987, when Ministry released Twitch, Nitzer Ebb produced Belief, Front 242 issued Official Version, and Skinny Puppy put out Cleanse, Fold, And Manipulate. Youth Code's electronics are those square waved sequencing, bass synth monochord stabbings, and LinnDrum emulation, with minimal amounts of melody cast through a jacked aggression and produced with a fright-show claustrophobia. The vocals from both Sara Taylor and Ryan George are virtually indistinguishable as throaty and blood curdling punk exhortations, hyper compressed and garbled with a tight distortion. As we mentioned in our review of Bad News, there are some aesthetics which we completely understand as needing to come back into the fold once again in the cyclical nature of musical trends; but this was one that we were pretty sure was gonna be just another glorious guilty pleasure. Nivek Ogre should be proud.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Review courtesy of AQ pal / Soft Pink Truth mastermind / Matmos co-mastermind Mr. Drew Daniel:
I've never seen an honest to God minstrel show in which white people dress up and perform as stereotypical black people. But the last show I saw by Zeigenbock Kopf was the queer equivalent. Ostensibly straight scenester cutie-pie John Dwyer (also of Coachwhips, ex-Pink and Brown, etc.) kitted out as Hans Bunschlapen in mustache and mirrorshades and backed up by shirtless go go dancers, pretended to be a gay German clone of the 70s, barking sadomasochistic slogans over superdistorted electronic chugging courtesy of bandmates Ulrich Bunschlapen and beatmaker Detlef. When Dwyer stays in character as Hans, Zeigenbock Kopf is some funny shit: imagine the "Sprockets" guy in leather chaps pulling a train on a Munich motorcycle gang after too much coke. To give Dwyer and co. their due, 70s gay clone culture and chilly German electro posturing *are* kinda silly, no doubt; the first Zeigenbock Kopf cassette "The Architecture of Dark Dance" ran with these clich�s as far as they could feasibly go, and rocked to boot with hard, dark synth/gabber minimalism overdriven into Incapacitants territory. Funny and disturbing in equal measure, that cassette entered this particular fag's select pantheon of uncomfortably indeterminate queer-baiting comedy along with The Meatmen's "Tooling for Anus", The Angry Samoans "Homosexual" and The Frogs' "It's Only Right and Natural".
A joke band's only job is to be funny, but woe to the joke band that isn't funny anymore. On this release, Zeigenbock Kopf teeter on that brink, but at 23 minutes total they cut things off before it wears out completely. The motto this time around seems to be: darker, harder, dumber, and when Z. K. decide that just saying the words "I Dig Men" is, like, totally hilarious, the shtick threatens to wear thin, curdling into something just perfect for "Skit Night" at the frat house. I guess straight white male privilege and the appropriation of funny/"exotic" otherness go together like Crisco and fisting. If you can bracket the creepy/phony aspect of this project, the saving grace is that the music still rocks like a bastard: Whitehouse-ish scree spurts and Esplendor Geometrico-ish crunched beats and DJ Scud-ish breakcore and Suicide-ish synths and basslines fight for attention while Dwyer spits tuff, horny nonsense about what a hair-pulling, ass-slapping queer stud he is. Maybe when the penny drops and he comes out of the closet we can look forward to his "comedy straight guy" band in which he emotes about downloading Catholic schoolgirl web porn, fixed rate mortgages, and finding the right babysitter over bland MOR rock. Heaven help us . . .
As we enter fall on our way to winter, we anxiously await some new records from some amazingly strong female forces of musical nature, records that will most certainly be by our side as the cold begins to overtake us. With both Bjork and Kate Bush releasing new albums in the upcoming weeks, it's so fitting Zola Jesus join that elite pantheon, as she's proven to be one of the newer generation's most singular and stunning artists. Taking ideas from goth, industrial and post-punk as launching points, yet making music that transcends any one genre, scene, or aesthetic. After two amazing ep's, including former aQ record of the week, Stridulum, Zola Jesus returns with her first full length in a few years. It's filled with an intensity and sense of purpose that makes so many other releases we dig just seem sort of frivolous and forgettable. Zola Jesus hits you in the gut with her music. There's no fluff, no excess fat, she gets right in there and twists, turns and reaches deep inside, extracting sounds and songs that grab you by the throat as they seduce and scare you at the same time.�
Conatus is like a continuous sonic pulsation, a field of sound waves that soothe and envelop, penetrating to the core of your soul and forcing you to look deep into the sound's clear vision of intensity, where it then has this magical ability to make you feel that you can finally face ghosts that have been haunting you and conquer the night no matter how cold and alone you may be. Simply stunning.
It seems like only yesterday that Nika Rosa Danilova was thrilling us with her outsider gothic basement recordings. Now, she's a full-fledged international pop diva working with none other than David Lynch! Danilova seems to be dealing with her new recognition well. Her live shows have gotten consistently better and better, her songwriting has become more focused and has not lost its edge, despite losing most of its reverb. The Zola Jesus aesthetic - the beauty within the noise, the darkness behind the veneer - seems to fit right in with Lynch's work, both sonic and visual, without much of a struggle. The A side here is a head-bobbing, booty shaking synth-pop classic: one of those songs that no matter how shitty your day was, it'll make you tap your feet and/or dance like crazy. For the B side, David Lynch slows the tempo a bit and adds a bit of dreaminess. The drums are smoother and less frenetic. Lynch's (now somewhat trademark) reverb-laden guitar replaces some of the synth pads. A must have for any Zola Jesus fan and a good starting place for those (few) of you who haven't yet fallen in love.
Not a bad record; just not a good Zola Jesus record. And that's coming from this store's biggest Zola Jesus fan. Other ZJ fans who want to come in and argue with him, let us know, we'll set it up.
Crescendo. That's the word that most aptly fits Valusia, the latest ep by wunderkind Nika Rosa Danilova, aka Zola Jesus. Building layer upon layer upon layer of synths and drums and vocals, Valusia, honestly, gets better the more times we spin it. Her career is on the upswing as well, with no signs of a de-crescendo: tours with Fever Ray, Wolf Parade, among other big names. The four songs on this 18 minute record stand with the best Zola Jesus has released. The "cleaner" sound of the Stridulum ep carries over into this new recording, with some slight throwbacks into the dirtier drum machine sounds of The Spoils. "Poor Animal" opens the ep with swishy synths that jump straight into a pulsing four-on-the-floor kick drum beat. This expands into something a bit bouncier, and the layers of synths and vocals just keep coming until it's almost overwhelming. Just when your head rolls back in sonic ecstasy, however, she pulls back a bit, only to punch back in with a perfectly timed and executed outro. The sounds on "Tower," the synths especially, sound closer akin to The Spoils: a bit gothier, crunchier, less poppy, her voice drenched in reverb. A slow dirge dedicated to gothic loneliness. The chorus of "Sea Talk" is so catchy and sad it hurts to listen to it, but it hurts more NOT to listen to it. Finishing out the four songs is "Lightstick", what one aQ-er has affectionately dubbed "goth girl piano recital." Almost droney, it bangs out the same basic piano riff for four minutes, with layers of synths and vocals fading in and out to provide the landscape. Any fan of Zola Jesus' work to date needs this record. Any of you that haven't heard of her (really?), this release is an excellent introduction to one of the most talented young songwriters working today.
While revered by hardcore fanatics of '80s synth/dark wave sounds, none of us here were familiar with Zwischenfall, an early '80s band out of Germany with a Danish lead singer who made some totally engaging and compelling synth based sounds back int he day. What's striking us the most about this record which originally came out in 1983, is how organic it all sounds. Yes they were very interested in synthesizers and used them with amazing results, but they also incorporated acoustic and electric guitar, trumpet, and bass, years before others really grasped how to intertwine the use of electronics and more traditional instruments in a very fluid and moving way.
Some of the tracks come off like a less stiff Tuxedomoon or an electronic version of 23 Skidoo (the untrained post-Cosey trumpet blurting on "Heimatlose" lends to that reference). We are also reminded of Fad Gadget's synthetic quirkiness, and the early albums of Front 242, which makes sense as Patrick Codney of Front 242 was one of the band's biggest cheerleaders and producers.
There is a dramatic and emotional quality that makes us really fall hard for the songs of Zwischenfall. The emotive vocal delivery of Martin Urban was even compared to Klaus Nomi back in the day (we don't really hear that so much though) but it is for sure a strong and forceful presence that sometimes makes us think of the same kind of drama that folks like Japan were able to communicate through their music. Like all the great releases on Dark Entries the album is lovingly packaged, this time with the bands original press kit, and is quite limited, only 500 copies... so act fast!
