You may have seen the oddly named SF garage psych trio The Mallard opening for folks like Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Blasted Canyons, thus it makes sense that they would end up on John Dwyer of the Oh Sees' Castle Face label, and once you get an earful off their twisted lo-fi FX drenched garage pop wooze, we imagine you'll be pretty smitten. Unlike many of the other female fronted garage rock combos, The Mallard don't get all warm and shimmery sixties girl group, instead they traffic in something much more off kilter and tweaked, sorta like Syd Barrett if he were a woman, fronting some twisted drug addled art rock combo, but here filtered through the occasional classic garage rock trope, although for every bit of poppy jangle or sweet harmony, there's a cracked bit of detuned stumble, or a bizarre stretch with droned out chords and strange alien vocal yips, and did we mention effects, at times it's like they stomped on a pedal and forgot all about it, until eventually and usually unexpectedly, the sound will shift and suddenly it's all low slug slithery groove, or dirgey gloom pop bounce, and the production too, just as fucked up, with various instruments and vocal parts exploding into shards of buzzing crunch, stretched out into blurry drones, pushed so loud it sounds like the speakers might blow, but somehow, even at its most demented and deliriously twisted, the songs, especially on repeated listens, blossom into some of the most imperfectly perfect pop we've heard in ages. And weirdly enough (or maybe not), fans of Thee Oh Sees with find that of all the groups out there doing this sort of thing, The Mallard's sound / style / songs might just come closest to the OCS mothership, which is absolutely not a bad thing.
Killer bear-barfing-blood cover art. Includes a download coupon so you can listen to these jamz on your computer.
Like it or not, Marilyn Manson has become a prophet for the white teenage disenfranchised, preaching all sorts of ill-conceived / anti-establishment messages against the existence of God, the authority of family, school, or state, and anything that the right wing of mainstream America would qualify as morally upstanding. It would be another thing if Marilyn Manson the prophet could actually incite revolutionary thought or action, rather than highly theatrical shock tactics, but he doesn't. Marilyn Manson is pure entertainment, and there's no way that he could deny that.
I think it's a stretch to discuss Manson within the discourse of the Gothic, simply because in my opinion, he fails to invoke terror or horror (except in the minds of the right wing -- but what doesn't startle them?). It would be far more repulsive, abject, and grotesque if all of the things which Manson professes to worship were done within a belief system which attempted to understand the nature of God and of divine punishment. Then the damnation which he has already put upon his head would actually mean something.
Without any guiding belief system or agenda of existential questioning, Marilyn Manson is nothing but a run of the mill Relativist, which -- while antithetical to Christianity -- does not make Manson a Satanist or the Anti-Christ.
Musically is where Manson has the better chance of success -- and yeah, it's pretty catchy -- sorta like a pop grindcore version of Adam Ant. Lead single "Disposable Teens" is a carbon copy of "Beautiful People". But no, it's certainly not scary.
No, not some quaint, lovey-dovey coupling between a waif-like chanteuse and her mustachioed beau-hunk. This is an Oakland minimal wave duo, whose emotional detachment through cold electronics and monotone vocals is hardly the stuff of romance. The former half of this duo is Max Brotman, who had released a pretty fantastic album of Sheffield-influenced synth-punk under the banner Brotman & Short. As good as that record (and this record is), we gotta wonder about the lack of imagination when it comes to naming his projects. Anyway, the latter is Mara Barenbaum, who records her Not Not Fun approved work of pop-surrealism as Group Rhoda. Let's hope this is not some one-off collaboration, as Brotman really seems to bring a sense of clarity and structural direction, and Barenbaum has plenty of weird-girl cards up her sleeve at any given time. The two come up with some choice synth-pop sequences on vintage gear reflecting a Chris Carter / Clock DVA sense of robo-funk. One of the rare outings from Dark Entries of contemporary work, but easily lives up to rest of the label's impressive catalog.
For their sophomore full length, Canada's Menace Ruine return not exactly as the heavy noise inspired black metal band you know and love, but as a neo-folk, noise-rock powerhouse. You may be wondering like us: did we miss something? And what exactly is the link? Well, maybe it's the misanthropic, anti-humanist ethos shared by both neo-folk and black metal artists that somehow ties them together. Or maybe it's the fascination with all things medieval. Or maybe it's the general brooding and ever-present sense of darkness. Could it be written off as a shared love of sonic tension? Wait, wait ... there is a difference between them somewhere, right? As the label astutely points out, in the wake of both Leviathan and Nachtmystium covering Death in June, this sort of explicit crossover makes tons of sense. And really, it might be a tad reductive to simply say that this sounds like a black metal band that wrote songs for Der Blutharsch, but it's not too far off the mark. Menace Ruine probably couldn't escape their uber-noise tendencies even if they wanted to, but other than that, the comparison essentially holds true. It is also worth noting that the label mentions an upcoming Merzbow collaboration. Woah! Man, you know a record is good when it isn't simply good, but it leaves your head spinning trying to figure out what just fucking happened, and if you've read this far then you've seen all our questions. This is what you'd hear if Moss, The Dead C, and Douglas P were caught in the middle of some bizarre, church burning audial orgy. Potential fans of something that could convolutedly be described as tortured, grim, militaristic folk-noise will absolutely want this. And if that doesn't scream recommended, then we're not really sure what the hell does.
Not quite black metal, though doubtless Menace Ruine would happily bask in the smoldering embers of a charred church somewheres up north. Not exactly militaristic neo-folk either. Nor are they a noise band. Well, maybe noise. But that's only part of it. Their dark, distorted drone textures are also often adorned with witchy female vocals, a la Jex Thoth. So, three albums in, this Quebec girl-boy duo of Genevive and S. de la Moth are still quite hard to define, though we know we like 'em, and the Menace Ruine music they make (indeed a mix of noise, drone, folk, and black metal moves) is grim as well as sometimes quite gorgeous, that is if you're like us and can find the beauty in ten-minute long tracks of misanthropic sonic miasma. Perhaps it's the way the ceremonial lamentation of Genevive's gentle singing merges with the slowly churning electronic extremes of intense, dense distortion and feedback... Certainly this new release via Aurora Borealis (following previous efforts on Alien8 and Tour De Garde) is a fine continuation of their unique post-black metal noise-folk aesthetic. If you liked The Die Is Cast that came before this, you'll probably like this too. And fans of bands as diverse as Burial Hex, Dead Raven Choir, Velvet Cacoon, Current 93, Wolf Eyes, and Alcest, among others, ought to check out Menace Ruine if you haven't already.
Probably for diehard, longtime Ministry fanatics only! Early Trax is the very-similarly packaged companion disc to Side Trax (which we reviewed in the last AQ List). This compilation of, yes, early '80s Ministry 12" faves features multiple mixes of "Every Day Is Halloween", "All Day", Nature Of Love", and "I'm Falling", plus individual versions of "He's Angry", "Move" and "Overkill". Definitely from their more gothy, less overtly politicized, dancing-in-the-batcave days than their later times of harder living, sharp-tongued nu-metal. Recent Ministry fans might find their young synth and drum machine sound a bit too foreign and fey for their fist-pumpin' aggro taste, but for those whose black pointy toed buckle boots still lurk in their closets' shadowy depths, it's pretty great to have these tracks available once more along with four previously unreleased.
We all loved Ministry at some point or another. Whether it was the deathlike disco of "Every Day Is Halloween", the pummelling metal/techno hybrid of The Land Of Rape And Honey and The Mind Is Terrible Thing To Taste, or the goofy White Zombie-ish "Jesus Built My Hotrod". But it was easy to miss some of Al Jougenson's finest moments as they didn't necessarily occur in Ministry. There were a handful of side projects that are as good as, if not better than the best Ministry. There was Pailhead, a slowly building powderkeg of emo aggression and soul shearing cascades of metal guitar and big beat pummel, featuring Fugazi's Ian Mackaye on vocals and folks from Naked Raygun. And wwho can forget 1000 Homo DJs, who reinvent Black Sabbath's "Supernaut" as a relentless, crushing industrial metal hybrid! This collection also includes tracks from PTP, a very early nineties sounding industrial pop, featuring Chris Connelly and Ogre from Skinny Puppy, and Acid Horse, which teamed up Ministry and Cabaret Voltaire for some gothy techno goofiness, complete with deep vocals and simple 4/4 rhythms and surfy guitar, sort of like Ministry with a Depeche Mode makeover. All cool stuff, but the 1000 Homo DJs and Pailhead tracks are all you really need. In fact, just throw on "Supernaut", crank your stereo, and find yourself in an alternate universe where Black Sabbath were not just metal demigods, but also dance floor destroyers!
It was a lot easier to fuck with the mainstream media back in the '80s. Negativland certainly had the most success thanks to the hoax that surrounded the cancellation of their 1988 tour as the band were under scrutiny by Federal agent Dick Jordan for their connection to a murders that took place in Minnesota by a presumed fan. While the crime was true, the idiocy and lackluster fact finding from the national media made Negativland an underground sensation, all of which was exposed on their 1989 album Helter Stupid. The NYC anarcho-industrial outfit Missing Foundation had their fun with CBS in 1988 who ran a ludicrously unchecked expose on the band, aligning their political declarations of classist warfare with Satanism and accusing them of being the root of most every problem in New York (drugs, blight, graffiti, vandalism, and of course those rampant Satanists who were lurking at every corner). Such is a commonplace error in discussing transgressive art - that the work at hand causes social diseases and not as the artist often intends for the work to be a mirror of the conditions that led to social collapse and malaise. It made for a sensational media event for Missing Foundation, whose relative high profile for a noise-junk industrial noise band led them to a publishing deal with Restless in 1990.
Missing Foundation's second outing 1933 was the album that set the stage for that CBS interview. It was released originally on vinyl in 1988 by the gritty scum-noise-punk label Purge/Sound League (later reissued in a campaign by Restless as well), and those Missing Foundation slabs of wax ironically became very collectible records. Where the debut smashed everything to bits and scattered the remnants of noise and rhythm to tape, 1933 was considerably more militant in the junkyard bashing, which provided much more comparisons to Einsturzende Neubauten and Test Dept. The infernally smoldering guitars are still present, but lockstep effectively with the bashed rhythms. "Martyr Of The City" and "Turmoil" entertain an aggro-hardcore / mosh-pit sound to the chugging guitar riffs, explosive drums, and the bullhorn vocals from Peter Missing. It can be very hypnotic, but it's also utterly nihilistic. Elsewhere, the sounds collapse into oil-stained and bum-trash strewn recordings of guttural distortion, indeterminate scraping, and throat mangled yelps that could be the sordid, psychic field recordings of New York's social malaise that festered in the late '80s. The Lower-East side of Manhattan will probably never sound like this ever again.
The logo of the upside-down martini glass that graces the cover of Missing Foundation's debut album was a ubiquitous graffiti tag in New York City during the band's zenith in the late '80s. The tagging of that logo went hand in hand with pre-Occupy movement declarations that "Your House Is Mine," "1988 = 1933," and "The Party Is Over" (the pictogrammatic translation of their logo) on buildings that were once squats or cheap rentals which speculators were looking to flip in the gentrification of Manhattan. Missing Foundation's politics may have anticipated those of the Occupy Movement, but their anarchic strategies were far more hostile, uncompromising and heroically degenerate. So much so that they were actually accused of starting the Tompkins Square Park Riot in August 1988. The band's figurehead Peter Missing had helped organize a demonstration protesting the police crackdown of the homeless through a curfew placed on the park. Missing Foundation was one of several bands that performed during the protest and the intensity of their metal bashing, industrial noise riffage, and sloganeering bullhorn vocals may have agitated the protesters into action; but the riot that took place probably would have happened one way or the other. It's a great urban legend that these squalid industrial art-punks started a riot, but that's not exactly true.
For all of the legends, lies, and myths that surrounded Missing Foundation, their recordings were every bit the sonic assault they were regarded as. The eponymous album from 1987 originally came out on the Purge/Sound League label which also put out albums from Borbetomagus and Rat At Rat R, which actually makes for a pretty good triangulation for Missing Foundation. Their first album emerges out of the whole pig-fuck sound of Live Skull and Pussy Galore with formless clouds of guitar negativity, loping basslines that might be traced to NYC hardcore or maybe across the country to Flipper, and junked metal percussion all tossed into a Bellvue bedlam of the No Wave anti-structures from Mars or even the more oblique moments from No Trend. The album's closing tracks "Waco Waco" and "Perversion" are probably the closest to something which might get confused with song as Missing Foundation wrenches Swans brutalism from their early Filth / Cop period into a hammered guitar / bass / junk plod. The originals of this album were going for a pretty penny on the collector's market, but for the time being Dais has this reissue in print. Bad vibes all around.
Latest from this local boy/girl, goth-glam, dayglo duo, who traffic in a twisted strain of dirgey gothic gloomrock, all churning dolled up deathrock rhythms and echo drenched vox, sounding like they could have been transported straight from LA or London circa 1985. Think 45 Grave or Specimen maybe, the sound churning and rhythmic, their droned out rhythmic gloominess peppered with some Siouxsie like vocal trills, and Budgie like tribal drum pound, there's plenty of bass buzz too, even some snake-charmer horns, all wound up into a collection of druggy, lo-fi, gothic, psychedelic gl(oom)(am)...
First off, go see these guys if you get the chance. It's a crazed rock spectacle, kinda like Japan's DMBQ but more dangerous, or at least shirtless. They live up to the hype you may have heard about their live performances, that's for sure. This guitar/drums/vocals trio from Israel are very, very rock n' roll, and they know how to put on a show. Probably everyone who's ever seen them has a good story, likely to include the drummer soloing whilst simultaneously crowd surfing, and the band's wiry, longhaired, mustachioed frontman (who looks like a cross between Iggy Pop and Doug Henning) energetically scampering about, spilling many, many audience members' beers (grabbing 'em with his teeth and tossing them back over his head, usually, at least if they're served in plastic cups). Allan's Monotonix show story even involves a goat!
But, the question remains, does any of that translate on record? Well this six song, 24 minute Drag City debut should answer that question. It reveals some depth to the riffy, hard and heavy, good times rock they dish out at their shows, with more melody and intricacy certainly (surprisingly). The title track, ferinstance, is almost prog pop! Yet, they don't stint on the fuzzy guitar and pounding drums we were expecting either, so if you play it loud, you might manage to spill a beer or two on yourself at home. If you just see 'em live, what you'll remember is how they played, not what they played. But spin this a few times, and some of these riffs may get stuck in your bangin' head. However, Monotonix live is a tough act to follow, which is their own damn fault, and so this still seems a bit secondary, like, they've gotta make records, if only to have something to sell on tour. But it is nice to see that they've put some effort into this aspect of the Monotonix experience too, instead of totally coasting on their live insanity.
We rarely get hate mail, but when we do, it's usually pretty good. And our positive review of Morbid Angel's most recent record, Illud Divinum Insanus, elicited some of the best hate mail ever. We were accused, among other things, of being poseurs, of being the whole problem with San Francisco, and why no one wants to live here, and of liking that Morbid Angel record ironically (all somehow connected). We'd like to believe none of that is true, especially the part about our ironic love of that Morbid Angel album. As long time readers of the aQ list must certainly know by now, we tend to love lots of ridiculous, crazy, stupid, demented shit, and if anything qualified as all of those, it was Illud Divinum Insanus. Have a look at that review if you missed it the first time, and you can see what all the hubbub was about. Sure that record had some classic death metal, but it also had some weird nineties style industrialisms, and some (sort of) rapping. Even the folks here that hated that record, were perversely obsessed with it. And the folks who loved it were also perversely obsessed with it, and even THOSE folks found at least one of the tracks nearly impossible to like. So really, it came as no surprise that the whole record was due for a double disc remix, with all the tracks redone, remixed, reimagined and reworked by all manner of industrial / techno musicians / producers. And again, the haters were appalled, but strangely intrigued, and the rest of us, well, we were pushing it for Record Of The Week, cuz really, this is some Judgement Night style shit, a maybe bad idea pushed about as far as it could go, and in the process, becoming something strangely cool, and surprisingly listenable (for some of us, at least).
So yeah, the vestiges of the originals are nearly wiped completely away on most of these tracks, and what's left is usually just a riff, or only the vocals, the originals totally transformed into pounding gabber, or martial industrial, or creepy electronica, or glitched out weirdness, the sound definitely heavily nineties, hard to avoid when the core of the sound is electronica/industrial crossed with metal guitars, the Ministry vibe looms large, but somehow, these songs work better as nineties industrial metal jams than death metal, especially the more problematic tracks like "Too Extreme". No matter what, or how much, we write, most haters will not be swayed, which is totally fine, but for folks into the WAY weirder/demented side of metal, or who dig nineties industrial metal, or even folks just into the whole traffic accident can't look away vibe of this ridiculous release, this is pretty fucking cool/weird. And if it wasn't actually a Morbid Angel record, and was instead just some super fucked up comp of metal industrial, we imagine lots of folks might be a little obsessed. Cuz lots of this is really fucking cool.
Igorrr (1/2 of aQ faves Whourkr) turn their track into a dizzying chopped up, head spinning collage of stuttering guitars and processed riffs, the sound blenderized and junglized and blasted into a squall of fractured melodies and skittery beats, a track then sounds like it could have come off the Igorrr record proper. The Laibach remix is incredible, adding harpsichord, flutes, swooping backwards guitars, and the vox from the original into a dizzying psychedelic Teutonic pound that KILLS. cEvin Key of Skinny Puppy takes his track and adds a tolling bell, chanted vox, squiggly sci-fi effects, and transforms it into a weirdly cinematic string laden dirge. Tek-One adds thick rib cage rattling bass warble for a bad ass death metaldubstep mash-up, DJ Ruffneck goes full on gabber, pounding and relentless, laced with shards of guitar solos from the original, Black Lung takes the original and blurs it into a murky smear, and spreads that out beneath a heavy house music churn, while Mondkopf buries the original in squelches and low end buzz, turning it into a lurching low end creep, Scott Brown turns his track into full on HI-NRG rave, which is hilarious, but kind of awesome, Fixhead offers up another crazy head spinning heavy dubstep workout, we could go on and on, but they're all pretty great, and weird, and while some are dumb and fun, others are dark and fucked up and fierce, others still tripped out and confusional. Folks who hated the original, and who were offended by our UN-ironic love of that record (we're not poseurs dude - we're TOO EXTREME!!) will most definitely want to steer WELL clear of this monstrosity, but for everyone else, we have to say, we've been listening to this like crazy, nonstop, and that shows no sign of changing any time soon, which always the real measure of a record. In fact, folks who hated Illud Divinum Insanus for being a mockery of a Morbid Angel album, might be able to like this, since it's not even pretending to be death metal.
Includes a download coupon for even MORE remixes, not included on the discs proper.
Spit is the debut full length from Ron Morelli, probably best know as the man who runs the L.I.E.S. label, whose American Noise / Volume One 2cd comp was a big hit around here, but instead of doing the record himself, Morelli found his way to Dom Fernow's Hospital label, and it's a really good fit, Morelli's murky electronic minimalism definitely in keeping with the music Fernow makes and releases, fans of Vatican Shadow, Christian Cosmos, Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, Silent Servant will find much to dig here. The opening track "Radar Version", in fact sounds like it could be Fernow, all gothed out industrial gloom, skeletal pulsations over woozy buried melodies, everything dubbed out and doused in effects, and swathed in a grey ambience, which by the end of the track is also buried beneath soft synth shimmers and blasts of electronic noise. The tempo is cranked up a bit for the second track, "Modern Paranoia", a sort of lo-fi, ultra minimal electro, but even then, it's soon joined by some garbled bass warble, like a a dubstep wobble, all melting and oozing and slowed way down, soon there are handclaps and weird percussion, and that rhythm reveals itself as some super cheesy Casio style beat, still beneath that woozy bass. And from there on out, it only gets better, the crunchy acid-y electronic squelch and motorik pulsations of "Crack Microbes", the churning looped industrial noisescapery of "Sledgehammer II", the abstract electro dub weirdness of "Fake Rush", the blooping, bleeping, sample laced primitive early electronics worship of "Director Of...", the gritty, gristly, night-kraut, goth-groove of "No Real Reason", and finally, the blurred, grey-noise drone-drift ambience of "Slow Drown." So good. Totally recommended for Hospital label obsessives, fans of Fernow's various projects, and anyone into grim, gothic industrial minimalism, or if you're like us, all three!
What can one say about Mortiis? Hmmm, he's apparently acquired a new set of ears since his last pair were stolen while on tour many moons ago. But one may ask, "has along with his new elfin ears come a new look and sound too?" An emphatic "yes!" From the
Klunk, the debut from the Sprocketsy electronic duo Motor, was the unexpected dancefloor hit last year here -- that is if AQ had a dancefloor and if you asked Allan what the hit was. Unexpected especially since Allan's not known for his love of club music. Now Motor are back with a new album, Unhuman, and it's got the same distorted techno beat buzz and bleep goin' on, from the jittering funk that is "Bleep #1" to the sinister, more song-y "Night Drive" to the power tool robotics of "Flashback" (other evocative titles include "Drug Punk", "20 Volts Of Steel", and "Sikk"). There's obvious Detroit and Kraftwerk influences, and certainly lots of folks have regurgitated sounds like these since the '80s, but Motor have a special knack for this all right. It's the rigid, relentless, crunching beats, and the synth sizzle... going and going and going... in fact it's hard to write this review as I'm trancing out as I type thisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisis....
Fresh off tour (including a stint opening for industrial icons Nitzer Ebb), these guys are proud of their live, "punk" energy. It's stressed that Motor are a real band not purely the product of a computer or a DJ spinning stuff. As a result they've perhaps incorporated more melody (and vocals, sometimes scarily processed) into the mix this time 'round, but the more machine-like, brutal aspects of the debut haven't been disposed of either, so Allan says thumbs up on this one as well. Definitely get this if you liked their debut as much as he did.
Lordship And Bondage is filled with images of the most garish of theatrics, tattered velvet drapes and torn gowns stained with red wine and smeared rouge. Like an errant banshee, Mannequin Lamar'sïaffected, operatic vocals hold unstable court over the erratic gothmetal assembly. One dozen mean and dirty cabaret indulgences primarily driven by an industrial rock stomp. Imagine if Klaus Nomi were an overwrought goth fronting Marilyn Manson's band. You may find yourself asking "Are these guys from Florida or SF's Mission District?"ï
It seems that something is keeping me from enjoying the 'Mannequins intended pursuits, however. Hindered by an overt self-awareness? A forced eccentricity? Not unlike spotting an immaculately coiffed and perfumed dandy in a full tailored suit strolling proudly down the street, but as your eyes drink in this vision they fall to his feet and are disappointed to find the most scuffed, unkempt boots - promising, but the image is marred. Cover art features the same Man Ray photograph that John Zorn chose for his 1993 album, Radio.
I, Sadie, am reviewing this record as a devout fan of goth music and soundtracks, who is not that knowledgeable or interested in metal. The name My Dying Bride intrigued me, and I find that their music does too -- the songs are long and gloomy, with beautiful
Not our favorite Current 93 related release ever, despite the presence of James Blackshaw here along with C93's David Tibet.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Corpse-painted industrial Scandinavians. Title kinda sums it up.
Covers records can definitely be a cop out. They're easy, and fun, and who doesn't want to just jam out to their favorite tunes. But some covers records do transcend, whether it's song choice, theme, or those particular versions and interpretation, the right covers, played the right way, can be as good if not better than a band's records proper. Which makes sense as you're typically covering songs that are, at least to you, if not everyone, 'classics.'
Which brings us to When I See The Sun Always Shines On TV, which is in fact, a collection of covers, many of which might seem like super obvious choices. Which is okay, it's as if Nadja wanted to acknowledge their influences loudly and proudly in the face of folks who accuse them of ripping off some of these very same bands. And at least half of these tracks are actually by bands that we've compared Nadja to in past reviews. So we were sort of psyched to see how instead of infusing their own music with the influences of other bands, they might approach it the other way around, taking these songs and bands they love, and filtering them through their own sound. Alongside those obvious choices though are some totally out of left field choices, that on the surface seem to make no sense, but in the context of this collection fit perfectly, and when heard all buzzy and blissy and Nadja'd up, sometimes sound better than the originals.
The album opens with My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow", and Nadja make it their own, which is no small feat considering how iconic that main riff is, but heck, in the past we'v talked about how everything sounds better slower, well imagine that jam, slowed way down, and beefed WAY up, so what was already THEE shoegaze anthem of all time, is transformed into a lurching, heaving, crumbling mass of glorious blurred and blown out soft focus heaviness. Then comes Codeine's "Pea", another obvious Nadja influence, we would have gone for "Cave In", some doom band needs to cover that one, but "Pea" suits them, they don't even rock it out that much, it's a bit heavier, but not much slower, and Aidan Baker's soft tentative croon is a dead ringer for Codeine's Stephen Immerwahr. The band also tackle the Swans, and the Cure, the latter's "Faith" stretched out to almost 13 minutes, and expansive glorious woozy gloomy sprawl.
But it's the unlikely choices that seal the deal. A-Ha? It's the track that gives this comp its title, and although we're not familiar with the original, the Nadja version is gorgeous, heavy and poppy and gloriously blown out.
Then there's the Slayer cover, "Dead Skin Mask" from Seasons In The Abyss, not as obvious a choice as "Raining Blood" or "Angel Of Death", but for Nadja a much more suitable choice, that main riff, sounds soooooo good, all sludgey and washed out, that main melody even more seasick and woozy sounding, the new version somehow even creepier than the original. However our favorite two tracks here are definitely the least likely, one you may have heard, one you most likely haven't.
First, Elliott Smith's "Needle In The Hay", which of course is a fantastic song, but in Nadja's capable hands, it becomes even more harrowing, much more minor key, the vocals worn and weary, the drums a trudging death march, all beneath a thick layer of droning buzz and keening keyboards, and then that main hook, so epic and mysterious and sorrowful. You can almost imagine this is what Smith was imagining when he wrote it. And as much as we love this whole disc, this is the one we keep returning to.
And then there's "Long Dark Twenties", which was previously releases as a super limited 7", and which just happens to be a cover of a song from the Kids In The Hall movie, and yeah, that makes no sense at all, but as far as we're concerned it's become a Nadja song, we actually reviewed that song in depth when we had the 7", so let's revisit that briefly:
Folks who managed to catch Nadja performing live at aQuarius not too long ago, were treated to quite possibly the heaviest, catchiest, grooviest Nadja track yet. An awesome hook filled seventies rock style ultra jam, wrapped in thick clouds of billowing distortion and anchored by the crunch and pound of programmed beats, Aidan Baker's vocals a whispered croon, Leah Buckareff's bass throbbing and rumbling, but the main riff, SHIT, unbelievable, even after our ears stopped ringing, we were all humming that riff for days...
Well the funny thing we learned later, was that there song was in fact a cover. And an incredibly unlikely cover at that. The only obvious link between the original and the band covering it? Canada. The song, some of you might remember, is in fact from the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy, and proves that Nadja can turn hooky pop into hooky sludge-y doom. The chorus is an absolute killer, and similar to how Torche transform pop into skullcrushing hook filled heaviness, Nadja take that pop and wrap it all up in some of their distinctive blissed out fuzz and we're talking HIT. Well, a hit if there were actually some sort of blissdoomdronesludgepop chart. Which there should be. And there sort of is, in our heads, but anyway...
So yeah, for folks who missed out on that single, or who just want to have it on cd instead of vinyl, well, it's worth the price of admission for just that jam. But thankfully, every song on here is a crushing doom drenched, pop infused, slow motion chunk of dreamy blissed out, ultra catchy heaviness. And even though it's not technically a proper Nadja record, it just may well be our favorite Nadja record yet.
Something of a musical chameleon, Andrew Lagowski has popped up in a bunch unlikely places since the mid-'80s. He worked with Brian Lustmord on a couple of his seminal records (including the dark ambient classic Heresy and the brutalist industrial project Terror Against Terror), and shortly thereafter produced some thumping techno singles for the Warp-lookalike label GPR, only to produce an incredible series of paranoiac electro-acoustic work on Touch under his moniker SETI in the late '90s. Nagamatzu represents Lagowski's earliest recordings, dating back to 1986, and these sound nothing like anything that he's done since. This was his minimal wave / post-punk project, working with bassist Stephen Jarvis. Drum machines, claustrophobic electronics, horror-movie / newsreel samples, and a few droning licks on the guitar all work through these instrumental pieces, with most every track driven by Jarvis' low-slung melodies that come directly out of the Peter Hook and Simon Gallup schools of goth-inflected basslines. Not surprising, "Sacred Islands Of The Mad" comes across as an incredible collection of what could have been lost Joy Division or Cure demos minus the vocals. Every track is met with dour moods and melodies grafted onto comparatively uptempo rhythm tracks. There was an mp3 rip of the cassette posted by Mutantsounds a couple years back, and the remastering job that George Horn did on the recordings is a huge improvement on those pretty crappy sounding files. Yup, Dark Entries has delivered another kick-ass album from the farthest regions of '80s dark/minimal/cold wave.
Nagamatzu was the duo of Steven Jarvis and Andrew Lagowski, the latter going on to collaborate with Lustmord on a few projects, to pen some rather muscular techno tracks in the early '90s under his own name, and engineer the exceptional sci-fi bleakness of his S.E.T.I. and Legion records. A couple years back, Dark Entries re-mastered and reissued the second Nagamatzu cassette; and here, they've given the same treatment to the first, originally self-released in 1983. Nagamatzu's skeletal post-punk developed through bass, electronics, and the occasional voice, all inspired by a mutual appreciation of Clock DVA, Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, and OMD. Yes, that's a very good place for anybody to start. The liner notes sport a handful of reviews from back in the day, pointing out the comparisons of Nagamatzu to The Cocteau Twins. In 1983, this comparison would have been quite apt as the Twins contemporary album Garlands was a bleak affair, pushing the bass and mechanical rhythms to the foreground with none of the ethereal dream-pop that became their signature. But back to the matter at hand, Nagamatzu's electronics for skittering arpeggiations, clockwork drum programming, and string-pad sustained synths were countered by the foregrounded basslines from Jarvis, whose haircut was not the only thing he borrowed from Simon Gallup. Where the latter Nagamatzu work filled in the blanks with cut-up collages of radio broadcasts and slasher film screams, Shatter Days is darkly hollowed out. The original tape was just 5 tracks, and Dark Entries has fleshed it out into a full album with songs from compilations and unreleased tracks from the same period, all of which hold up very well under historical scrutiny. Another gem from Dark Entries.
One of the more eccentric acts to emerge from the Belgian EMB scene in the late '80s, The Neon Judgement developed a stylized sound of electronics melded to an Americana swagger with patinas of country-fried twang working into leather-clad industrialisms. At times, Neon Judgement were brilliant in this approach, other times it was a contrived dud. Yet, this sound was one that was developed over time, as their earliest recordings took on the more of synth punk idioms that were held by contemporaries in Cabaret Voltaire, Absolute Body Control, Siglo XX, Suicide, and even bits of Gary Numan. This LP contains all the tracks from the two cassettes that Neon Judgement released in 1981-1982 (TV Treated and Suffering), and it makes perfect sense that the exceptional ears at Dark Entries would seek out the finest moments from Neon Judgement's beginnings. At this time, the band was considerably more raw, with jagged guitar riffs coupled to the overdriven synth chords and jabbing arppegiations. It sounds like Neon Judgement had been listening to that first Suicide record, and wanted to try to figure out how to reinterpret the zombified rockabilly through electronics as well, without resorting to a pure homage. The minimalist spiralling of Neon Judgement's electronics holds some of Suicide's simplicity, although Neon Judgement's rock sensibility is purely showcased through the guitar and not the songwriting, which is much more tuned (at least here) to the European approaches of coldwave detachment. A couple of the tracks (e.g. "Factory Walk" and "TV Treated") had made appearances on later albums with more polish on the production, but there's something better suited to the stilted gait and agitated guitar pluckings on "Factory Walk" that make these recordings more expressive. As with all Dark Entries titles, limited to 500 copies.
Reissue of this all-time-classic by the Bay Area's (and America's!) number one most popular underground metal outfit. Tribal punk/metal with chamber-prog rock leanings? Super heavy and full of atmosphere. I, Allan, personally think that if you're going to own just one Neurosis album, this is it.
"Locust Star" IS a great song.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Local heroes Neurosis (the biggest underground "metal" band in the country?) return with a new digital slab of heaviness, dark and grinding like Slayer on 33. Yet they incorporate elements of their Tribes of Neurot alter-ego, lending Times of Grace a much more melodic sound, with swashes of delicate ambience. Compared to their last record, Through Silver In Blood, this is superior, making for a much better follow-up to their great Enemy Of The Sun lp. Tribal metal psychedelia, uniquely Neurosis. Recommended.
Oh, we should add that to expand this listening experience, you might also want to accompany Times Of Grace with Grace, the companion album by the Neurosis' ambient experimental alter ego, Tribes Of Neurot. They're intended to be played simultaneously!
It was a teasing single, that one-sided picture disc which showcased one hell of a darkwave track enriched by the sonorous baritone from Never Knows architect and principal Marc Kate. That voice and those synth-pop aspirations / devolutions run throughout the much anticipated debut album from this former aQ staffer as well. Ink does feature a different mix of the aforementioned single "Still Life" buttressed by a myriad of tracks rich with solemnly Numanoid downbeats, Violator-era miserablism, goth-dub grooviness, and a smattering of witchy / dark-eyed techno overtures. Two instrumental tracks bookend the album, leading with "Into" a dour track of sunken electro-clad breaks and closing with the black-clad, minimal-techno wash "Exeunt" with its thoughtful nods to Monolake and Regis. Between this, Kate takes a deep breath and exhales with a voice that we likened in the past to Dave Gahan; and yes, he still croons with an impassioned vibrato of equal portent. Along with the zombie-sect hymn of "Still Life," "Becoming" is one of the more dramatic numbers on the album with a slow build of maudlin half-melodies transforming into an urgent surge of basslines and drum programming to match Kate's quickened delivery. The skittering (dare we call them 'Amen'?) breaks of "Awake" brighten the overall mood towards the end of the album, making us wonder what the hell happened to Andrea Parker after she made a couple of particularly dark albums for Mo' Wax in the late '90s. We could research it, but we didn't; and in any case here we have an opulent gem of dark atmospheres, spilling from Ink.
Still Life is the first physical offering from former aQ-staffer Marc Kate. For a couple years now, he has run the digital imprint Untitled & After, which branded itself as wanting to be the 4AD of techno when it grows up. Deep house, minimal techno, and a smattering of ambient tracks ripple through his understated, yet finely curated catalogue. But that's not what you're gonna get with Never Knows or at least with this one-sided single. Here, Kate supplies a grizzled, minimal wave cut driven by his crooning baritone, which is uncannily similar to Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode. It was never a secret (at least to us) that Marc's youth was shaped by the dark romance of new wave; but we never knew (sorry, pun intended) that he could sing it too! Musically, Kate takes after the more angular arrangements of John Foxx and Fad Gadget all grafted with an ominous synth noise scab picked off of the scraped knee from any number of the old kids who grew up in Sheffield circa 1979 (e.g. Clock DVA, Hula, Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, etc.). Hypnotic, seductive, gritty, and transgressively groovy. The track foreshadows a full album that is slated for the spring of 2014; and if this single is any indication, that album should be a fucking corker! The flipside to the album sports of silkscreen of a splattered image of Marc suffering the consequences of having a bucket of black paint dumped on his razor shorn head. Limited to a mere 250 copies, and comes with a download!
Release me now from my mortal flesh, where all my thoughts look towards death. This blackened void in which I gasp for breath, death release me NOW! Oh, what I mean is, this is the newest release from San Francisco's own twisted goth, mindfreakin art damaged, sorrowfully psychedelic Death Rockers, The New Thrill Parade! Whoa. Woe.
We have reviewed all their previous releases up until now, and luckily for us things just keep getting weirder and weirder and more and more demented in the New Thrill Parade commune. The sound is an angular misanthropic romp. Bass and drums churning out urgent, fractured rhythms, while the guitar cuts the throat of any soul with open ears, with piercing, discordant, mind-bending leads. Everything swirling, and seething madly, till the brain leaks out of the ears, and any thoughts you had before, about music, life, social relations, death, sex, are completely mutated and subverted. It's a jubilant sonic experience, but travels dark roads to come to it. This explanation of NTP's sound world is not unlike those of our past reviews (which you should check out), but Slumber In Colorland presents a marked development in both the bands sound and aesthetic. The intensely orchestrated, and inspired song craft fuckery of this latest venture show the band maturing and really finding their own unique mode of operation, giving this album a consistency not yet found in their previous works. It's like gothy deathrock darkness has finally met its blurry-brained, altered state, tripped out, color smeared polar blood brother! The songs range from depressive dark jazz sounding crooners, to completely fucked up rock fury, with mutilated melodies and disjointed noises. Heavily warped shit! Not so much genre defying, as it is genre defining!
Welcome to New Weird Santa Cruz! New Thrill Parade are not your typical bowl-roasting beach bums. They're more likely to smear their faces with cherry red lip stick and hang out under that bridge from the movie Lost Boys, drinking goats blood and cutting themselves. This shit is GOTH. Fuck yeah. The sound of this record is actually a bit of a tough one to describe. The heart of New Thrill Parade's music lies in the pounding, arrhythmic dark dance created by the sexually charged rhythm section, compelling you to move as though you were mounted by some sort of Yoruba diety. Super discordant guitar lines, soaked in reverb and chorus float atop this propulsive thump. The sax squawks, the sounds of a knife being dragged against a piece of sheet metal creeps through the mix at points, and the vocals HOWL! Vocalist Amitai's yelps and croons push the band's already amazing sound WAY over the top...his lyrics are perfectly dramatic and dark, and his sense of delivery conveys the fucked up, twisted world this band seems to exist in. Favorite tracks include the slow building creep fest "Peace Punch", and the twisted fucked up "Body Ship", which sounds like some evil bubble gum music you might hear in a nightmare after watching too much Twin Peaks. But all the tracks are killer!! For fans of The Birthday Party, Christian Death, and the Butthole Surfers...and any other freaky, fucked up insane band that rules. Also, if you get the chance, SEE THEM LIVE! Amazing theater for sure.
This is a mind fuck of a 12"! We just got our hands on this, The New Thrill Parade's first ever document of their brand of head-trippy angular goth madness, and we could not be more pleased. This EP brings the listener to the edge of neurotic insanity, the place in your mind where shameful thoughts and nervous feelings are waging endless war. Dark, creeping discordances pummeling one and other, skull drilling guitar lines, saxophone squawking, and crooning vocals desperately narrating the most tenebrous thought processes of the human psyche. Heavy.
The ep begins with the drunken swagger of "Gift Horse". Starting slow and low, at a sort of swung pace, vocals sighing deeply, specks of reverby guitar and flittering sax punctuating the creeping crawl of the rhythm section. The chorus bursts in suddenly with a jagged romp, piercing guitars and guttural whoops, reminding us of The Birthday Party at their most frenetic. The second track, "Jealous Brothers" is a bit more rocking, the fucked up guitar lines becoming a little more strident and noisy. The bass lines on this one are throbbingly heavy, with the drummer playing a sort methamphetamine cowboy shuffle. Rounding out the a-side is "Spare My Teeth", starting off with a twisted spazzy groove, guitar wailing, drums churning out a clatter of syncopation, before everything pretty much drops off, and the tempo becomes stretched and abstracted, pushing and pulling with howling vocal lines, and then snapping back into the rocking tempo of the beginning. The song slowly dies, twisting and curling like the end of a fragmented dream.
The b-side starts up where the a-side left off, "Moat" is a riff heavy stomper, but maintains the abstract form of "Spare My Teeth". The tempo is stretched to hell, noisy and arrhythmic at times. The closing track is far and away our favorite. "Little Dancer, Age 14" is a creepfest! Dark and heavy as fuck, starting off with just twangy strung out guitar stabs and funerary sounding organ carrying out the progression, the vocals murmuring in deep tones, lamenting some horrific train of thought. The song has an overwhelmingly elegiac feeling, drifting along like a Lynchian dream (nightmare?), fractured and abstracted. The piece ends beautifully, with tremolo picked wailing guitar melodies, outlining a more major sounding chord progression. A stark contrast from the rest of this minor sounding document. Killer!
This band recently moved to San Francisco from the nefarious beaches of Santa Cruz, and we are glad to have them. They are quickly becoming one of the most interesting and confounding local acts. While a little more raw then the debut full-length (reviewed on list #252) the dark intensity has been present from the beginning. This record is a bad trip, but in the best way! Like the type of nightmare you don't want to wake up from. Fractured and fucked up, noisy and scattered, and all together AMAZING! For fans of The Birthday Party, Public Image Ltd., Swans, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Lydia Lunch, and all jams damaged and demented. Recommended!
Like Radiohead before them, Nine Inch Nails decided to embrace the digital download delivery method as a preamble to the 'proper' CD release. In addition to a super cheap download price -- $5.00 for all of the material on 2 discs -- Trent Reznor also offered a hyper-commodity in the form of an overpackaged vinyl set costing something like $300.00 a pop. As novel as these forays into the brave new world of e-commerce are, it's just a shame that Nine Inch Nails made such a boring record. Sure, Trent Reznor has demonstrated some great taste in early Autechre and Coil, but his ability to manufacture an instrumental record like his influences is woefully lacking. Yes, Ghosts I-IV wants to be an ambitious double cd set of instrumentals; but the lock-step electronic loops, hackneyed sequencing circa 1991, and ambient smoke & shadow lack any real direction. At its best, Ghosts I-IV comes across like a more jet-black cyborg version of Labradford, but the languid guitar moments are few next to the tepid electronics. Maybe this is a post-modern throwback to the early '80s when post-punk and new-wave were experiments with what could be done through minimal equipment; but why not write a decent song? Considering that all of those recent compilations of French electro-punk from back in the day totally kick the ass of this sad-sack record, there's little point...
It's a little difficult to consider Noisegate a metal band. Although their live persona, which features lots of slow motion headbanging while they hold down various keys on their samplers, clearly gives reason to peg them as metallers, a careful
Stefan Senf, founder of Suburban Trash Industries and longtime veteran producer of many, many fucked up hardcore d'n'b/gabba/fuckstep singles on labels like Zod, Appareil, SixSixtySix, Brutal Chud, etc., has been picked up for a long overdue full length by London's king of brutal hardcore mashup DJ Scud and his Ambush imprint. Clocking in at just under a half hour, "Deferred Media" is a unrelenting onslaught of distorted beats, ripping shards of harsh noise and bass -- tons of bass! Certainly for fans of Ambush, DHR, Praxis, Brooklyn Beats, et al.
Aside from its awesome cover photo (love the red leather gloves!), most folks are probably most excited about this reissue because of its status as a legendary collection of early '80s synthesizer / computer music, which of course we find exciting as well, but truth be told, we were even more intrigued by the fact that Doris Norton was a member of mysterious Italian prog-psych-proto-metal doomlords Jacula, whose In Cauda Semper Stat Venenum record from supposedly the late '60s, we once made a Record Of The Week, a disc that still confounds and fascinates. She also was apparently sponsored by Apple during the '80s!
But regardless of the Jacula connection, or the Apple one too, Norton's 1983 Nortoncomputerforpeace lp is in fact a fantastic chunk of vintage new wavy electronic music, and it's easy to see why folks have been freaking out over it, cuz it's exactly what all the kids are trying to pull off these days, to varying degrees of success. Pulsing synths, cascading melodies, simple robotic programmed drums, vocoder-ed machine like vocals, but even amongst similar sounding records, Norton lets her psychedelic prog flag fly, peppering her compositions with occasional wild squalls of shredding synths solos, especially on the first few tracks, which really gives the sound a serious PROG vibe. Much of the record finds itself in that eighties VHS synthscape sci-fi soundtrack territory, all pulsing and motorik, minor key and hauntingly cinematic, seriously retro soundtracky, but again, Norton laces her compositions with dense melodic squiggles, or almost disco-y breakdowns, check out the end of "Don't Shoot The Animals", crazy funky! The rest of the record slips easily from 8 bit sounding video game music, to synthprog freakouts, to creepy droned out ambience, to full on Carpenter / Goblin style synth workouts, to rad cheesy lo-fi disco synth pop jams. Fans of Umberto, Zombi, Gatekeeper, Majeure, Innercity, Axxess, Roll The Dice, Dylan Ettinger and all the rest, grab one of these before they're gone!!
For some reason, it has been frustratingly difficult to restock last year's outing by Noveller, Desert Fires, which is such a shame as it was truly one of the years best drifting and dreamy albums. Here's hoping that her new record, this one right here, Glacial Wave, will not suffer the same distribution problems, as she has again crafted another exquisite collection of some of the most substantial blissed out sounds you are liable to hear all year long.
It's been so nice to witness the evolution of Noveller's music, from her much noisier, harsh and slightly unfocused beginnings to the much more serene, spaced out and majestic tones and songs she's creating now. But we think that background in the noise scene has helped her create such a strong core and depth to these beautifully ethereal soundscapes. There is something both so mournful and harrowing about the sounds on Glacial Glow. Much like Grouper and Windy & Carl, Noveller has this amazing ability to create utterly haunting and mesmerizing moods in her music. We've been playing this as we go to sleep, as we wake up and actually at all hours in between as there's no better sounds for when we are feeling dazed and glazed. Highly recommended!
Sigh. Here it is, the new full length from Gary Numan. Despite his recent escapades with the likes of Fear Factory (who covered his hit single "Cars") and because of his more recent involvement with Stephin Merritt's Sixths project, I had such high hopes for this record, but those hopes were quickly dashed. From the bad demo-like package design (ugly font, ugly photos) to the disappointing music. It seems this album should have been released back in the mid-80s. In fact, track 7 is a deadringer for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence". There are brief moments when the Numan of old shines through, but those moments are so few and far between. Sadly most of the time, the vocals are overly effected and affected. The music, paint by numbers neo-industrial (think "Antichrist Superstar" Marilyn Manson). By the time I got to the second to last song my heart had sunk so low, but it was about to sink even lower 'cause that song "Little In Vitro" sounds so creepily like that overplayed Chris Isaak "I Don't Want to Fall in Love" song... no no no. Too much to bear.
Around here at aQ we live for the moments of musical discovery that seem to appear out of nowhere. On a rare occasion those moments are created by an artifact dropped off in the store by the creator himself. In our age of internet buzz and blogosphere strip mining, it's exciting and refreshing to be floored by a piece of proper wax passed on in person, without us knowing a damn thing about it beforehand. This record represents one of these moments, and Laws, the brand new lp from LA's William Marshall, aka Octavius, is really blowing our minds right now, so much so that we absolutely had to jump on the chance to make it record of the week! A dizzying assemblage of fucked up outsider post witch house, damaged and deranged avant industrial and whispered, hiss-wreathed melancholic brooding downer experi-techno-pop!
Laws is a multidimensional excursion through the depths of urban isolationism. The dead dreams of metropolis living and lifelong plans falling apart seem to be woven into the sonic fabric. You're all alone in this burned out city, and it's a dark, dark time. The sound is grinding, buzzing, thumping and industrial. The beats are constructed with rusted rebar shards, rattling about the charnel house floor, like some subwoofer-shook bones long forgotten. Octavius' caustic and restrained sound world creates an intensely claustrophobic mood. On tracks like "Apartments" and "Of Mask and Money", the sounds of sharpening knives and blistering white noise blasts commingle with a tense, gasping for breath vocal delivery. As the songs flow onward, layer upon layer of noisy mechanical skree stack up against beautifully stark and forlorn melodies. Haunting, discordant synth stabs add subtle harmonic depth to the tunes, as the vocals, seemingly hacked to bits, syllables left out or cut short, writhe to the beat. The sounds are abrasive and damaged and robotic, but there is never too much going on at one time and everything sits in the mix in such a way that the songs really breathe. It's got that hypnotic sonic subtlety of Berlin era Bowie mixed with the pulsating noisy gnash of Throbbing Gristle. Speaking of Bowie, one of the raddest moments on Laws comes in the form of a "cover" of "Breaking Glass". The low slung, heroin sheen funk of the original is replaced by a fiercely mechanical drum machine stomp, some heavy as fuck JK Flesh-like digitally distorted guitar chugs bashing with the beat, while cascading doppler blips and scraping synths swirl around the stereo field. The only recognizable element are the lyrics, although delivered in the by now signature manner in which Octavius uses his voice, and that is to say fractured and corrosive, hissing hypnosis. Totally bent and completely AMAZING!
There are moments of dark meditation, such as "CCC CCC" and "331 155". Moody, drifting soundscapes of splintered metallic klang, ping-ponging singing bowls, bolstered with aphotic, creepy crawly Carpenter-like synth drones. Beautifully oscillating cinematic ambience laid over what sounds like a far off string section unfurling some somber, elegiac melody. Psychic TV's "Silver and Gold" comes to mind, except with a mechanical bass drum throb twisting beneath the surface. These hazy, murky moments of sonic darkness serve as tension builders. Haunting and anxious and mesmerizing respites from the churning corrosive elements that make up the bulk of Laws.
"Liars & Thieves" is definitely the centerpiece of Laws. Abusive electro-psychosis, uncomfortable and polluted with an industrialized cacophony, and scrap metal pounding rhythms, Octavius allows his reflections on failure and anonymity to unravel in a harrowing, stream of conscious cypher. Imagine Tricky rapping over Coil's "Fire Of The Green Dragon". Paranoid and demented, the noise and words melding to create a bleak miasma of isolation. Moody and tense and wholly original.
Laws pushes all the right buttons for us. It references the WAVES (minimal/NO/cold/synth), without getting mired in any particular sub-genre. It's noisy and abrasive and grim, reminding us of the gnarlier moments of Coil and TG, but produced in such a subtle manner that new layers of sound present themselves with each listen. It's got enough Suicide like swagger as not to get totally bogged down in its mechanized, vitriol pummel. Hypnotic and tensely mesmerizing, the album as a whole is so consistent in its vibe, we find ourselves listening to it over and over and over again, just to get lost, deeper and deeper, in its seedy sonic underbelly.
Packaged lovingly in a minimalist, silver embossed white card stock sleeve, with a beautiful 16 page book of lyrics as well as some killer collage work by Brooklyn based artist Justin Sloane. Do yourself a favor and snatch this twisted gem up quick, really some of the most mind fuckingly special and original music we've heard around here in a long time!
Although the opening track "HiLO" seems to start things out in a similar fashion, as a whole SunnyPsyOp is definitely not as Numanesque and pop-oriented as Ohgr's previous album Welt. So if you were craving more of the same, unfortunately you'll just have to keep spinning the former 'cause this takes a somewhat different path. However, it's not completely off the map of Ohgr. If you're seeking more of a bridge between Skinny Puppy (the project that Ohgr is best know for, where he recorded as Nivek Ogre) and the abovementioned album - something somewhat more somber and abstract, more skin-crawling and mind-bending - this might be for you. Whereas Welt might've made you want to get up and move about, SunnyPsyOp might make you want to settle down into brood mode with a sturdy set of headphones. Shades of Nivek Ogre's Skinny Puppy roots surface here - perhaps as a result of the recent reunion of said group (that's right, we can expect a new album from Cevin Key, Ogre and co. very shortly! - listen... are those celebratory cheers coming up from the catacombs?). Of course it sounds great. Much like his SP bandmate, sonic craftsman / mad genius Key, Ogre's gained another well-suited, producer / multi-instrumentalist in Mark Walk (Pigface, Ruby). He skillfully fills your ears with rich synthesizer textures, sharply puncturing beats and intricate details and captures Ogre's deeply emotive and affected voice in fine form. With cover art by Camille Rose Garcia. Includes a video for the track "Majik".
Throughout the '80's/90's, Vancouver surrealists Skinny Puppy were a group ahead of their time. Laced with film dialogue samples (one of the first and best, if you ask me) and seething emotion, their highly visceral and visual music seemed to reverberate from the future much like that of Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, and Cabaret Voltaire before them. Much more experimental and sonically
Now this is the kind of DJ mix cd we like! Optimo (a pair of Glaswegian DJs, though only one of 'em is responsible for this release) have already proved, with mixes like last year's Psyche Out, that they can throw down some proto-industrial or psychedelic rock tracks into a seamless set of mainly modern electronic dance stuff and make it work just fine, perking our ears up for sure. On this disc, Optimo start off with some vintage Throbbing Gristle from TG's 1979 debut LP, then skipping years (but not changing gears, that much) follow it with a recent cut by Kompakt artist Grungerman (aka Wolfgang Voigt). And so it goes. An eclectic, eccentric mix indeed. Other artists on here include: Suicide, Herbert, Black Dice, Marc Houle, Like A Tim, Godsy, Databrain, Leny Dee & Nicolai Vorkapich, 6K, Shane Berry, and Eventell and Metaboman. And Finland is represented by both Pan Sonic and Philius. At about the halfway point, Optimo even manage to include something by Japanese psych-heavies Boris! "My Machine" off of Pink, which though fuzzed-out and beat-less, somehow segues smoothly betwixt the much more dance-friendly tracks found to either end of it. Maybe the only unintentional glitch in the program is the track by Thomas Brinkmann -- though y'know we love him, his "Momomexico" included here is a bit of a party-pooper, unless a voice intoning "Mexico... Mexico... Mexico..." is your idea of a dancefloor filler. But once past that repetitious voice bit, it's a good 'un. And really, the idea isn't really that you're gonna put this on to dance to, is it? That's the question with a lot of electronic "dance" music we sell I suppose. Maybe drive, work out, jog, something like that though.
And as techno-y and house-y as a lot of this is, there's a healthy amount of grinding droning experimental bzzzz everywhere on here too. We imagine that at an Optimo night in Glasgow, there's probably people dancing, but just as many sitting there nodding their heads, spacing out. If you're like us, you might pick this up 'cause of the names you know and as a result get introduced to some cool stuff you wouldn't otherwise have heard. Recommended.
An exceptional album from this Swedish dark ambient outfit (featuring Tomas from Archon Satani) whose thematic usage of bondage and religious / occult imagery is done much better than the run of the mill Goth-with-a-sampler ensemble. Ritual chants, Sol Invictus-inspired angst-filled guitar strum, and monstrous washes of darkness invoked from the abyss.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Creepy German folk-music band with industrial and experimental leanings. On Germany's Prophecy Productions label, who seem to specialize in this sort of autumnal dark pagan bombast and beauty (Tenhi, Empyrium, Gods Tower). Militaristic drumming, droning synths, male and female choir-style vocals, whinnying horses, doleful folk melodies, acoustic guitar, and weird surprises...lovely and doomful. Titles and lyrics in German. Equally for fans of World Serpent label stuff and black metal atmospheres (a la old Ulver). Andee and Allan both bought one.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Finnish band Paine (which in their language means not Pain, but Pressure) features at least three ex-members of Circle...and you can tell. Like Circle, Paine construct tight, repetitive riffs and rhythms, mostly instrumental. Darker and scarier though, with bombastic grooves and distorted vocal snippets. It's a sort of mechanical brutality, like Circle gone Industrial. Paine march in endless, relentless circles in a sci-fi wasteland. Paine, pressure, pleasure. This six-song cd-r is actually a reissue (with 2 additional tracks and new, fancy oversized packaging -- a blue vellum envelope with acetate inserts) of a previous limited cd-r release. This one's limited too (there's 150 of 'em), we've only got what we've got -- 12 copies -- and that's it.
Parade Ground are a Belgian duo, born in the new wave / post-punk explosion in the early '80s finding a sympathetic ear and an ongoing relationship with Patrick Coydens and Daniel B of Front 242. Despite the members of 242 encouraging, producing, and collaborating with Parade Ground, these Belgian lads didn't really fit within the EBM crowd that began to flourish in the mid-to-late '80s in their country. Their synth-pop melodicism drew more from the Brits, especially Wire and OMD. This collection, curated and released by Dark Entries, maps out Parade Ground's development from spiky post-punk into darkly tinged synth pop. Their 1987 anthem "Gold Rush" is featured here, as are the two collaborative tracks Parade Ground did with Colin Newman of Wire.
A track from local club kids Paradise Boys' The Young & The Guest List album gets the remix treatment from Daum Bentley and Modeselektor (bpitchcontrol). If you dug the full length, you'll surely shake a rump to this too. The A-side features the album version of "2 O'Clock" as well as Bentley's "2 O'Coke Remix". The B-side is the stronger of the two with Bentley's brooding "Running Lovers Dub Mix" and Modeselektor's "6pm Remix" grooving darkly and creating a more mysterious and shadowy atmosphere.
Martin Hall appears to be the figure who defined the Danish New Wave scene, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that any of the projects he worked in found much traction outside of Denmark. Ballet Mecanique was one such project, And Then Again was another; of course, there were a couple of solo outings too. Pesteg Dred was a very short-lived project, as the trio that revolved around Hall got together in 1981 with electronics wrangler Per Hendrichsen and vocalist Inge Shannon. During one weekend, the three landed in a studio and banged out an album but didn't have the ability to pay the bill. So the tapes sat until Hall could negotiate something with the owners of the studio. A cassette of the material surfaced as a bonus with an art magazine in 1985, but otherwise, the recordings languished while all three members went onto other projects. We've never heard of any of Hall's other projects; but if any were half as good as Pesteg Dred, they'd be worth the price of admission.
The dark storm of post-punk had certainly come to Denmark, with Hall admitting an early infatuation with Cabaret Voltaire and A Certain Ratio (well, he did name one his later projects And Then Again after an A Certain Ratio tune); but The Pop Group and The Ex must have made a big impact as well. The band is essentially a mutant rhythm section of rumbling, discordant funk basslines and unschooled percussive fills that showcase way more fury than skill, with a series of weirdly skittered electronics flushed between the rhythms with murky modular sweeps, distorted drones, and delay-rippled bloop. Inge's vocals are a cold monotone bellow that aren't too far from Bettina Koster of Malaria, making a perfect fit for the darkly, cacophonous agit-punk of Pesteg Dred. The lengthy "Light, More Light" is very much in the vein of the best A Certain Ratio, with breakneck post-disco rhythm, neck-strangling basslines, jittery guitars, and even some atonal blurts from a trumpet. Death disco? You bet!
Dark Entries scores yet again with a really great re-discovery on Pested Dred.
