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. Both Pesteg Dred and SS-Say were very short-lived projects in the early '80s. Pesteg Dred was a trio that revolved around Hall 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.
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 of 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.
SS-Say released only one single in 1985, and that material rounds out the cd. Here, Hall is working again with Inge Shannon, for a more baroque, anthemic number wrought with Siouxsie-esque operatics and wah-wah guitar scratching above the catwalk disco rhythms. With its cocaine strung synths, "Care" is definitely the gem amongst the SS-Say tracks, which showcase much more polish as a Studio 54 / Batcave hybrid than Pesteg Dred, but with just as much post-punk bombast.
The Pesteg Dred material was reissued by Dark Entries on vinyl in 2010, and now it's available on cd for the first time with the SS-Say tracks that didn't appear on the lp reish.
Here's one of the 2 new releases from beloved experimental label Utech that we're listing this week, the other being by Suzuki Juzno. Now, before we heard this one, we expected it to be good, 'cause it's on Utech after all, but knowing it was by eclectic French composer Philippe Petite, we didn't know WHAT exactly to expect in terms of sounds - was it gonna be glitchy laptopped electronica? Noisy avant-rock? Droned out soundscapery? Something else? All of the above? Petit has done a lot of things over the years, running both the Pandemonium and Bip-Hop labels, most recently playing in dronesters Strings Of Consciousness... And this is perhaps the heaviest, harshest thing he's been involved with yet, and "all of the above" does just about cover it.
The very first track, "Murmurs", is a collaboration with Justin Broadrick of Jesu/Godflesh/Final/etc. infamy, and that sets the super dark, distorted tone for the whole disc, which consists of 45 minutes of groaning, grinding, grainy, atmospheric instrumental industrial sludge spread over 5 tracks, made with guitars, organs, turntables, percussion, electronic processing, backwards effects, etc... In other words, delightful! That is, if your taste in abstract abrasiveness is at all like ours, partial to passages of subterranean rhythmic skitter mixed with moments of sheer Merzbowian intensity.
The centerpiece of this "Symphonia" is the 16+ minute "Fear Has Fallen", with its martial drumming buried under a sinister miasmic muzz, but the whole disc is quite noisily satisfying throughout. The black clouds of the sleeve art are highly appropriate imagery. Highly recommended!!
A hellish new-wave circus. The Screamers meets the Butthole Surfers? No, it's not as good that would be, but Oakland's Phantom Limbs are pretty cool, with interesting and freakish vocals over carnival organ punk. Entertaining live too. With Jello Biafra's
Didn't like it as much as her first.
Five years in the making, Illusion Is a Natural Condition brings together two of the finest noise artists the world has ever witnessed. Sure, Merzbow and Hijokaidan can hit you with their molten sounds of psychedelic excess; but San Francisco's Randy Yau and Switzerland's Dave Phillips achieve their tempestous recordings through a violent dichotomy between silence and sound. This sharp contrast effectively puts you on edge throughout the listening experience, as you never know when the next attack is going to arrive. In any given track, Yau and Phillips pack together recordings of their gutteral screams and dribbling gurgles of one of the actionists shoving something down his throat that just doesn't belong there. Occasionally, the sound of flies circle around the sickened vocalizations, as if investigating a hospital patient with a sucking chest wound. Pigs squeal. Demons roar. All of these sounds are compressed into track rarely longer than a minute, punctured by extended silences and ruptured by terse blasts of motorized noise and absurdly rendered ultra-violence that would bring joy (or is that pain?) to die-hard Wolf Eyes' fans. Recommended noise for those with a very strong stomach.
Self described as 'industrial doom', the French outfit known as P.H.O.B.O.S. take the industrial pummel and clattery chaos of classic Godflesh, the serpentine song structures of Voivod and the grim grating brutality of the most bizarre black metal, and wind it all into a dense, hateful, slow motion black hole beast, plodding and pounding mercilessly, like some sort of unstoppable behemoth, crushing everything in its path, sucking life, spitting fire, spewing jagged shards of metallic blackness. The sound of a million monstrous jackboots, marching endlessly toward some unspeakably bleak final destination. The stretched out feedback soaked abstract doom of Khanate, given an industrial makeover, throbbing Teutonic rhythms, never even coming close to midtempo, instead pounding out impossibly slow rhythms, the whole thing wrapped in white hot sheets of feedback, and churning tarpit riffage, with the occasional melody tossed in, surviving only briefly, like a cow thrown into a river full of pirahnna, the whole thing exploding in a churning, bloody froth before settling back into the relentless machine like crush. And despite all that brutality, it's also amazingly hypnotic and listenable, with some of the beauty of the post-Godflesh outfit Jesu wethinks.
Originally released on the Appease Me label, run by Phobos' French metal brethren Blut Aus Nord.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With last year's artistic triumph "Low Birth Weight" (avant-rock nursery rhymes doused with macabre Victorian antiquity), Piano Magic delivered on the promise of their stunning debut, the updated-for-the-nineties Young Marble Giants-influenced "Popular Mechanics." So we had high hopes for the third album. But it's records like "Artists' Rifles" that propagate the myths of certain musicians as morose pasty whiners who sound as if they can't do much but shoot heroin, barely get out of bed, and be self-proclaimed geniuses. The record completely falters in stepping well beyond the boundaries of self-pity to encompass a sound that wouldn't be far from King Missile if they wrote funeral dirges (and not charmingly dorky pop ditties) for 4AD all the while convincing Kramer to add that shimmering reverb excess. Oh well.
We knew nothing about these guys when we first heard them, we were definitely intrigued by the band name, and the song title, "Tell Her I'm Dead", and then when the music started, thick, buzzing, almost synth sounding guitars (or maybe actual synths, hard to tell), with big booming drums, sound like some sort of metal / cold wave fusion, and when the song proper started, that only furthered that idea, the churning distorted bass line, soft focus synth swirl, churning propulsive rhythm, and super dramatic crooned vox, when all of a sudden, the song exploded into a burst of furious blasting, a sort of black metal cold wave, accompanied by some strange sci-fi squiggles, and as soon as it started, it was right back into that gorgeously miserablist mope rock. The second time that burst/blast surfaces, it's accompanied by hellish shrieks, and then explodes right into a crazy drum/synth jam, with the drums pounding wildly in a field of swirling new wave synths, a twisted hybrid that somehow is something we always wanted to hear, but never knew it. The song continues to confound, with creepy falsetto vocals, over a synth heavy doom creep, before finishing off in a squall of FX swirl and psych wave weirdness.
Holy shit, one song is all it took, and the rest of the tracks here are just as good. A little digging revealed that Pinkish Black is in fact a group with roots in an old aQ favorite, the late great Texas prog-psych outfit Yeti, and suddenly the sound of PB made a lot more sense. After Yeti, came The Great Tyrant, and it seems like every band these guys were in, endured all sorts of personal tragedy and loss of life, the sort of thing that would most definitely inspire the sort of gloom and doom Pinkish Black traffic in, and while based on Yeti, it's hard to see just what may have influenced the actual sound here, the last record from The Great Tyrant found them delving into similar territory, super gothy and dramatic, but not so fully realized, PB sounds like where The Great Tyrant might have eventually ended up, the whole record held together with that impossibly distorted buzz, be it synth or bass or guitar, it's a constant presence, whether churning malevolently, or droning blissfully, it's what gives the sound of PB its heft, it's grim black energy, and it's the drums that drive everything else, the playing dense and intricate, powerful and mathy, by turns metallic and brutal, deft and almost krautrocky, those two combined are the framework, over which all manner of soundtracky synth melodies drift and squiggle, and the vocals, a dark soporific croon one second, a washed out almost shoegazey reverbed bellow the next, the songs slipping from dense driving gloom rock to tripped out psych-goth space jams, often some dizzying mix of the two.
After Vaura's recent aQ Record Of The Week, we might not have been surprised to find this being released on Wierd Records, cuz for all its metallisms, and its punk/metal pedigree, this is essentially a super dark, super heavy new wave record, the synth melodies especially had us imagining what a Gary Numan record might have sounded like had he been making his first records 30 years later, and we definitely think they might have sounded something like this. Instead it's on the limited edition Handmade Birds label, run by the guy from Pyramids, who always bring us interesting stuff.
Haunting and heavy, brooding and brutal, imagine some sort of black metal / new wave hybrid, or perhaps a sort of noise rock / goth rock fusion, fans of all that Goblin / John Carpenter worship who might be into something much darker and heavier should check this out, but really, everyone who digs gloomy heaviness will dig this big time, and and if like us, the thought of a sort of metallic new wave gets you all riled up, then this just might be your new favorite record. It is ours!
The reunion / reissue onslaught seems like it might never end. But when bands like Polvo decide to get back together, why would we ever want it to?
Easily one of our favorite math rock bands from the nineties, whose sound was truly unique, tangled Eastern sounding guitars, slippery riffs, complicated song structures, weary laid back vox, all wound tight into some of the catchiest, most unlikely indie rock songs ever.
We knew Polvo had gotten back together, and then we found out they were recording a brand new record, which could definitely have been a disappointment, but this is most definitely not a disappointment. Not at all. There are awesome reunion records for sure, but this isn't just an awesome *reunion* record, In Prism totally stands up to the rest of their catalog, Today's Active Lifestyles, Shapes, Exploded Drawing, only the pickiest of ears would be able to pick one of the In Prism songs out as not belonging, and only then it would probably be mostly because they didn't know it by heart like the rest of the catalog. Which is sort of the magic of Polvo, their music is so NOT typically catchy or poppy, it's obtuse, angular, off kilter, twisted, tangled, but somehow it IS both catchy and poppy. Those slithery woozy riffs get stuck in your head as hard as any radio hit pop song.
And yeah, In Prism carries on that tradition, another kick ass set of songs, hooky and heavy, warped and mathy, with a bit of a classic rock vibe going on, which we didn't really notice until someone pointed it out to us. But goddamn this stuff is awesome. Opener "Right The Relation" is perfect Polvo, with one of THOSE riffs, vocals and guitar lines getting all tangled up, and some incredible drumming. And then there's "Beggar's Bowl", the most classic Polvo track of all the jams here, with one of the best riffs ever, draped over shimmery high end guitar whir, super rad jagged start stop arrangements, hazy production, layered lush guitars, and a main hook that slays.
Anyone who loved Polvo back in the day, or who still loves Polvo (which we imagine must be everyone right?) will go nuts for In Prism, and folks into mathy, crunchy, indie post rock and have somehow never heard Polvo before, this might be an introduction to your new favorite band.
Portion Control were always an obscure proposition despite their longevity. This British trio started in the early '80s crafting a hyper minimal form of claustrophobic electronica that proved to be a huge influence on the work of Skinny Puppy and Depeche Mode; but their influence on these acts never trickled down to bring them greater acclaim over the duration of their career. During the '80s, they issued a handful inventively reductivist / muscular electronics girded by proto-techno rhythms and fleshed out through filtered and flanged electronics. The monotone barked vocals have been hyper compressed and shoved way in the back of the mix are pretty much the same technique that Nivek Ogre brought to Skinny Puppy a few years later. Portion Control were never intending on making poptunes of the shock-horror model or angsty youth model that those bands they influenced became so known for; instead, Portion Control's skeletal, hard rhythms thrusts immediately to the foreground with the metallic-flanged vocals, idiosyncratic / disjointed sequencing, and unidentifiable police scanner activity muffled at the background. When a melody comes along as on the strident "He Is Patriotic" or on the jittery death-dub of "Mass Disorder" or the proto-acid squelchiness of "Fiends", it can be quite a shocking juxtaposition given the calculated minimalism throughout the rest of this work. Imagine an even more stripped down DAF or Liaisons Dangereuses, with those Skinny Puppy vocals! The Portion Control back catalogue has gone through various reissue campaigns, including a ponderous 7lp boxset on Vinyl On Demand; and an even more comprehensive 5cd boxset, with I Staggered Mentally featured prominently on both sets. But here, we get another excellent reissue from Dark Entries, who give it a great remastering job, a booklet with tons of information, and a bonus track!
Fans of abject, chaotic, doomed-out noiserock/industrial heaviness a la Zeni Geva, early Swans, IIIrd Gatekeeper era Skullflower, old Godflesh, Splintered, and Lewd, you're gonna want to batten down the hatches and cuddle up with this!!! A super limited edition (300 copies only) double vinyl reissue of a cd originally released by this Dutch band in 1997 via the Supreme Tool Supplies label, pretty rare & obscure - we had never heard of it, and we were pretty into this sort of stuff back in the day. And it's really good. Six long tracks, each one a harrowing descent into feedback-laden, pounding sludge madness, with churning, clangorous rhythms, headcaving riffs, and anguished vokills that would give even the ultradoom stylings of Alan Dubin in Khanate some competition. On each song, a monster has been stirred from slumber, a nightmare given "musical" form, sorrowful screams coming from all throats and instruments all at once. So sickened, seasawing, distorted and distressed! The 1997 date almost seems too late, this really sounds like something that would have come out on Pathological in like, '89. Agonized, abrasive, cathartic, and car-crash compelling. Would you also believe catchy? Well, maybe, once you're in its dismal, lurching, heavy embrace!
Big thanks to the fine freaks at Israel's Heart & Crossbone label for bringing this black hole of intense industrial rock to "light". Remastered by, yep, Khanate's James Plotkin, who was probably thinking, damn, my kind of shit! Us too. Recommended!!
(Turns out, the singer/guitarist in this band, had also been in Lewd, who did a split with Zeni Geva once upon a time... see it all makes sense.)
Who loves Coldwave? We Do! And we just got a handful of these 7" from Russian synth duo Private Entertainment. If you liked the female sung side of Cold Cave, Nini Raviolette, or Gina X Performance, then you should check out the icy shimmer of this Soviet male/female duo. On one track, they even remind us of "Me and My Rhythm Box" from the Liquid Sky soundtrack! So good!
Yet another DIY electronic-industrial album from the wacked archives of Alain Neffe. This Belgian was a mover and shaker in the cassette culture of all things industrial, post-punk, minimal wave, and otherwise zonked musics in the '80s. His Insane Music imprint released something close to 60 cassettes, most of which were compilations of his own constellation of projects including Bene Gesserit, Cortex, Human Flesh, and Pseudo Code. His work garnered one of the early Vinyl On Demand boxset; but that only covered a small sliver of Neffe's output and a number of labels have embarked on the daunting task of sifting through all of that material. Pinkity Plonk has now published three such Neffe / Insane reissues, first being that wistful Cortex collection of sci-fi tone poems (which we lauded as a Record Of The Week back in early 2012), the second being a Human Flesh album (albeit with that project 'pretending' to be Pseudo Code), and now a proper collection of Pseudo Code material. Pseudo Code was ostensibly a trio of Neffe, Xavier S., and Guy-Marc Hinant (who later went on to found Sub Rosa Records), and With Helpful Hands finds that trio augmented by some of Neffe's other cohorts. Pseudo Code operates well within Neffe's visionary pursuits of snaking drum machine rhythms, ominous synth chords, and scatterings of judiciously extemporaneous sci-fi guitars. These four lengthy tracks including one drugged-out, 34-minute voyage of inner/outerspace explorations simultaneously recalling Conrad Schnitzler, the Legendary Pink Dots, and Cabaret Voltaire. Limited to just 300 copies, we might add!
Before Dwayne Gottel re-engineered synth-pop to embrace a signature aesthetic of shock and horror in Skinny Puppy, he proved to be a thorny creative foil for the Huss brothers of Edmonton, Canada. Stephen and Darrin Huss met Dwayne in their late teens in high school, after the Huss brothers ditched early attempts at standard punk in favor of something akin to the darker elements of UK new wave (i.e. Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, OMD, etc.). In the naive and earnest diary entries found in the Xeroxed booklet (a very nice touch of punk memorabilia we might add), Darrin writes in the third person that it was Dwayne who first christened the band The Pinstripe Club after a British nudie bar. The band changed names and managed to gig around Edmonton with a notable opening slot for Moev, the Canadian synth-punk band who were always on the verge of something great throughout the '80s. The early '80s founds a lot of creative disagreements between the three members of Psyche, but they did manage to convince somebody to record them onto a 4 track. By the end of 1983, Gottel had split for good, heading to Vancouver, only to join up with Skinny Puppy a couple years later. The Huss brother continued on, exhibiting considerable promise early on. But the band proved to be much better in slicing up eyeballs than crooning to the pretty goth boys and girls; nonetheless, that's where Psyche ended up.
Re-Membering Dwayne is a collection of the 8 tracks that the band recorded back in 1983 with Gottel. The swarming synth noise, John Carpenter-esque / psychologically tense sequences, whipcrack electronic snares, and aggressive percolations which soon became the backbone to Skinny Puppy's first recordings and demos can be tracked back to these pieces. Gottel seems to have sung on at least one track - the very primitive synth-punk number "Screaming Fire" noted for its brusque, guttural vocals, with Darrin Huss taking up the vocal duties elsewhere vamping effectively like Marc Almond. Another remarkable find from Dark Entries, who present this collection, as always, with a great remastering job by George Horn!
We first heard Philly psychedelic shoegaze death rockers via their VHS tape (!) released on Video Horror Show, and as we mentioned in that review, the band describe themselves as sounding like "the time you saw your creepy metalhead brother at 80's night", which while hilarious is really pretty spot on. The guys are most definitely gloomy and gothy, thick Joy Division-y basslines, reverbed dramatic vox, all moody and minor key, but beyond that, they buck lots of gloom pop and goth rock convention by tethering that stuff to big muscled drum pound, clouds of wild psychedelic guitar freakout, not to mention dense distorted guitars, reminding us at time of Bailter Space, thus the shoegaze vibe, the result a sort of eighties death rock, cranked up and spaced out and metalized, in fact that Bailter Space comparison definitely taps into what makes us dig these guys so much, cuz in some ways, with the noisy guitars and thick bass, and the deep vox, they almost sound more like some super obscure Flying Nun band from the eighties, who put out one lp that no one really heard but that still pretty much destroys everything else you've heard. They also remind us of AmRep Aussies Kingsnakeroost and Lubricated Goat, that sort of noise rock blues stomp just gothed up a bit. Plus they pepper their gloomy crush with blasts of almost punk sounding crunch, which makes them seem even heavier when they slip back into the churn and pound. These guys must kill live, which definitely seemed to be the case from what we could discern from that VHS tape (of which we have a few copies left), and this record oozes the sort of live energy most recordings lack, which of course means this is WAY recommended, for fans of gloomy heaviness, metallic gothrock, psychedelic shoegaze deathrock and other sonically similar genres we just made up!
Pressed on white vinyl, housed in a cool striking heart-art cover, with a big white 'x' affixed to the outer sleeve. Includes a download coupon as well!
Newly available on vinyl again, the 1983 second album from Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson's experimental collective Psychic TV after the demise of Throbbing Gristle remains one of our very favorite aural documents from the entire post-TG catalog. It almost reads as a companion piece to TG's 20 Jazz Funk Greats in that it invites unusually accessible chamber folk and pop tropes into their sound only to subversively twist them into something much more underlyingly sinister. Recorded using Zuccarelli Holophonic technology to create an atmospheric spatiality of near and faraway sounds (this is a headphones record if there ever was one!), the group was then able to record in some very unusual places like The Hellfire Club Caves (a notorious British site of aristocratic Satanic liturgies and hedonistic ritual) and take advantage of the systems 3D effect. The album's mixture of sweetness and light with ritual creep and foreboding is at once beautiful and deeply unsettling and on first listen it's hard to decipher what you are hearing and its mystery still beguiles 21 years later. We're invited in by the melancholy pastoral chamber pop of "The Orchids" with its vibraphone, guitar and oboe and Genesis' dueling vocals welcoming the morning light in innocent VU "Sunday Morning" fashion. But then the totality of the album swings from reverential to eldritchly mystical and from remotely animalistic to eerily brutal and back again mimicking the cycle of a day or a season as it moves between songs and strange far-off occultish musique concrete. There are lots of guest appearances both real and invoked. Monte Cazazza is heard reciting lyrics over the phone, and one can hear Jhonn Balance of Coil getting a tattoo. There is an angelic choirboy singing a Charles Manson song, and most notably on the track "White Nights", a sweet Christmas-y pop number is sung by Genesis (with doo-wop backing vocals, no less!) with lyrics creepily taken from Jim Jones final sermon at Jonestown. Throughout, bells intone, chants are muttered, a lot of acoustic exotic instruments are played with atmospheric intentions more than melodic ones. But the full power of the collective's brutal aural abilities culminates in the penultimate track - "In The Nursery" - which invokes fairytale symbolism and ritual and industrial soundscapes in a nightmarish blend of hellish terror. Essential listening!
A throwback of sorts to the ritual esoterica of late 80s industrial culture, Psychonaut sets down trance inducing percussive tracks of tribal drums, Tibetan horns, and Crowleyian incantations not unlike the earliest Current 93 or ritual Psychic TV recordings.
Iceland's synth-punk outfit Q4U issued their one and only album Q1 back in 1982, and now those recordings (along with a bunch of tracks from the same period) get a glorious makeover courtesy of the premiere, minimal wave reissue label Dark Entries. Inspired by the British punk scene, Q4U adopted an aggressively propulsive rhythm section and maniacally jagged guitars all fronted by the snarled vocals of Elinborg Halldorsdottir. She was definitely listening to her Siouxsie & The Banshees and X-Ray Spex records, slanting towards the detached gothic monotone that would also develop out of the under appreciated X Mal Deutschland. Had Hallsdordottir sung in English and not Icelandic, the band might have developed a much broader audience, but she was committed to speak to the political inequities of Iceland in her own language. While the band originally began as an archetypal punk four-piece, the drums were abandoned by the time they recorded Q1 in favor of a drum machine (christened Elisabeth II) and plenty of synths. These icy synth melodies and motorik rhythms were much better suited to the Teutonic belting from Halldorsdottir. The 'deluxe edition' of Q1 does feature a bunch of the tracks that featured their original drummer, with the band caught in a spirited if sloppy punk furor. By the time, the electronics entered the mix, Q4U was a sharpened, synth-punk machine. It's a shame the band called it quits by the end of 1983, but at least we have this lost gem! Highly recommended!
Having recorded a handful of albums for continously grim Cold Meat Industries label in Sweden, Raison D'Etre's sound is darkwave / industrial score for bleak artic netherlands with grievous keyboard bleakness, desolate noises from churning factories, and chants from Catholic masses.
No we're not kidding -- we love Rammstein! Here's the new album from these scary German industrial/metal dudes. Fire! Fire! It's surprising that they're as popular in this country as they are, considering that they sing in German. But I guess their theatrics and heavier-than-nu-metal are a universal language... Ridiculous but great.
How can you not love Rammstein? Huge metallic riffs. Pounding thunderous Teutonic rhythms. Uber-grandiose fist pumping anthems. Crystal clear perfect production. And let's not forget the live spectacle of flames and explosions and fireworks (and of course the infamous flame-throwing codpiece). They are the perfect blend of orchestral black metal bombast a la Cradle Of Filth / Dimmu Borgir and Laibach style Wagnerian industrial pomp. Plus when they lock into a groove, they sound strangely like Finnish hypno-rockers Circle. Which is ALWAYS a good thing. This is probably the best Rammstein record yet. The songs are heavy and catchy and weird and really really good. All of the above sonic elements are in full effect, with lots of that Circle-ish mesmer we can't get enough of, as well as a couple standout tracks, a really biting anti-America song that is sung in English, with lyrics that reference the Wonderbra (!) and Coca-Cola and explain that "This is not a love song, I don't sing my mother tongue", a track sung partially in Russian, as well as a really amazing track with killer female vocal counterpoint. Plus strings, a choir, a full orchestra, and of course vocalist Till Lindemann's instantly recognizable, totally menacing, low low low growl. So good. Another band who if you can get beyond the endless 'hype' and media bullshit, will totally and completely kick your ass.
Post-punk technician and multi-instrumentalist Eric Random hailed from Manchester in the late '70s, having collaborated with Pete Shelley in The Tiller Boys (an experimental electronic project more akin to Shelley's Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners output); but Random's most enduring relationship was with Cabaret Voltaire, whose development from DIY horror-electronics into sensual proto-electronica and disjointed-funk pulled a number of artists in their influential wake, including the likes of Hula, Clock DVA, and Eric Random's various projects. The Bedlamites began in the early '80s, with Time Splice being the band's second album recorded and produced by Richard H. Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire in 1984, getting released on Double Vision that same year. The album veered in a number of directions including post-punk dub explorations, sitar-driven dervishes for electronic headiness, and subversive disco-pop laced with antiestablishment samples amidst the cybotron rhythm box workouts. The bulk of the album is instrumental, through Random has employed the talents of vocalist Lynne Walton, who adopted the ballsy stage name Stagger Lynne as a female counterpart to the murder ballad anti-hero Stagger Lee. Her icy, minimal wave vocals hold a commanding presence amidst the complex step-sequences and punchy, industrial-pop intervals; and had she been used more in the context of the band, she might be remembered alongside Danielle Dax and Anne Clark as an exemplary eccentric of British female pop singers. Perhaps Walton stepped outside the limelight due to the Bedlamites stepping into the role of being Nico's touring / backing ensemble from 1982-1988 right up to her untimely death. A very interesting footnote to one of the better reissues from the whole minimal wave rejuvenation. The Mad As Mankind single (also produced for Double Vision in 1984 by R.H. Kirk) is included as the bonus to the fully remastered Time Splice album.
The sticker on the front of this archival collection by the band Retsepti, from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, states that it's "dark punk / wave". But we had been lead to believe it was more of a garagey metal thing. And the distributor we got our copies from, happens to be those noted purveyors of soul and funk, Numero Group! So what's Retsepti (which means "Recipe" or "Prescription") actually all about? Well, some kind of darkwave post-punk is about right, with gritty guitars that can riff it up in rollicking fashion but take a backseat to nervy new wavy keyboards at other times. The vocals are coarse but dramatically expressive, melodic and emotional in a raw, rough hewn way, just like the music (though things get smoother as the disc progresses, even incorporating saxophone on one song near the end). And the vibe is definitely what you might expect, dark, desperate yet defiant, from folks making art under trying circumstances (civil war for one thing). So while they didn't turn out to be the Iron Curtain Iron Maiden we'd been mistakenly hoping for, Retsepti are still worthy of attention.
This disc contains their entire recorded output, carefully restored and remastered from their original cassette tape releases and other obscure sources. The cd's handstamped gatefold sleeve contains a 16 page booklet, with liner notes detailing the band's fascinating history, along with lyrics and vintage photos.
The gloomy post-punk monochromaticism of Ritual Howls has its antecedents - the ominous decadence of the Red Lorry Yellow Lorry and Sisters Of Mercy, meshed with the low-slung swagger of the Lynch / Badalamenti incidental musics from Lost Highway or Wild At Heart. Yes, those are very welcome things for the black-clad denizens of the world; and Ritual Howls makes good in their application of these references. Turkish Leather follows a handful of suitably sub-underground cassettes, including several on the cult industrial-noise publishing house Nostivelo. On those cassettes, Ritual Howls thrived in the catacomb murk of overblown production with a single microphone picking up a thunderously loud session a la Les Rallizes Denudes. Here on Turkish Leather, Ritual Howls did find themselves in a studio, which allows them plenty of room to breath in all of the asbestos, nuclear fallout, or swamp gas, depending on what post-apocalyptic scenario you'd want to locate Ritual Howls. Of course, their home town of Detroit all serves them well in that regard, though there's very much a southwestern tremolo-laden twanginess that echoes through these propellant goth-punk tunes. Had these lads been from Los Angeles gigging at the Scream in the '80s, they would have been right at home.
We look to Medical Records for all sorts of fantastic electronic music reissues, and find ourselves digging pretty much everything they dig up. So much so that a bunch of Medical releases have ended up aQ Records Of the Week. But recently, Medical has been dabbling in contemporary recordings, their first was a record from darkwave/synthwave outfit Illustration Sonore that we reviewed recently. And while contemporary releases from reissue labels hasn't always worked out so well, so far, Medical's foray into the present, has been a big success, and this, the debut from Texas duo Roladex, keeps that streak going.
The label describes Roladex as sounding like Kraftwerk covering Magnetic Fields, which is really not that far off, the songs minimal and melancholy, the music bleepy bloopy, analog kraut-synth, boy / girl vocals, but we also hear Human League and other outfits from that era. Ultimately though, that label description is pretty spot on, the music fantastically robotic and krautrocky, and with the deep dramatic vocals, it's hard not to hear a little Stephen Merritt. But then there are tracks like the John Carpenter-gone-electro of "Empty Streets", or the groovy electro disco-kraut of "Nuke It Out", with its electronic squiggles, laser blast bleeps, and cascading synths, that definitely give this it's own distinct sound. The crazy thing is, that sound is so perfectly and accurately crafted, we never would have assumed this was contemporary, in every way, it sounds like some lost electro-pop / new wave rarity from back in the day, which is probably why we're digging it so much, and what makes it such a perfect fit with the rest of Medical's reissue roster!
Pressed on 180 gram transparent electric blue vinyl, housed in a heavy full color sleeve, includes a poster/insert as well.
Easily one of our favorite post punk / death rock groups EVER. Tense and angular, angry and ominous, sinister and sinuous, dark and gothic, every song here a stone cold gloom punk classic, the bass thick and almost new wavey, the guitars jagged, fuzzy and distorted, raw riffage and driving drum pound, all in support of the twisted vocals of Nick Blinko, whose distinctive vocals are only rivaled by his even more distinctive artwork, which adorns the cover (and the cover of all their records), a dizzyingly meticulous black and white horrorscape, that perfectly captures the world of nightmarish, anxiety ridden terror that lurks within the grooves of Death Church, and presumably within Blinko's mind as well, which is probably what resulted in several stints in mental institutions.
Even all these years later, Rudimentary Peni sound so good, their music so relevant, and whether consciously or not, aped by far too many modern bands to count, powerful and personal, depressive and kicking-against-the-pricks pissed off, and catchy as fuck, this record has lost none of its twisted black energy in the nearly twenty years since it was first released.
If you never heard of this obscure eighties female fronted world-pop outfit, get in line. An unlikely mix of Teutonic new wave and dubby balearic dance pop created in Bremen, Germany, Saada Bonaire only released one single in their lifetime. Now Captured Tracks, through its new imprint Fantasy Memory, has brought to us the complete recordings of this short-lived outfit, and it's pretty amazing, especially if you are into lost post-punk disco rarities as much as we are. Created by Bremen DJ Ralf Behrendt in 1982, and recorded in Kraftwerk's studio by legendary dub-punk producer Dennis Bovell (The Pop Group, The Slits) featuring an array of jazz and world musicians hired from the local immigrant center, Saada Bonaire was fronted by Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfield, whose sultry but blase delivery make their sound a sort of hybrid between the domineering dance music of Gina X and Grace Jones and the breezy dub of Brenda Ray. The aforementioned single "You Can Be More As You Are" is an infectious post-disco club classic, that probably had a lot more traction in southern Europe than in the west. Their music, with its exotic flourishes and dreamy tropical rhythms, seems tailor-made for warmer climates, and we can easily see these tracks being played in sunrise dance sets after a long night of clubbing. Definitely a band that should have been a lot bigger than they were, their lack of success the fault of EMI's A&R man who notoriously went over budget with the acts he developed. After going over 5x the budget for Tina Turner's Private Dancer, EMI pulled the plug on Saada Bonnaire and they were rarely heard from since. This anthology covers everything the band recorded between 1982 and 1985, but still remains surprisingly modern sounding for being 30 years old.
Oranur III is a classic postindustrial album from Schloss Tegal, a cryptic American duo who traded in death-shroud ambience and paranoiac aesthetics - both of which feature prominently here. Originally, released back in 1995, the album drew inspiration from the latter day ideas of Wilhelm Reich. This Austrian psychoanalyst from the early 20th Century had attempted to reconcile Marxism and psychoanalysis, causing the beginning of a rift with some of the more conservative elements within his field. Over time, his ideas about human sexuality and the energies of the human body became more radical and more bizarre, including such notions of orgone energy and its convoluted mythological system that included extraterrestrial beings, UFO manifestations, deadly forms of radiation, and his tool to fight such nefarious entities - Reich's cloudbuster.
It's these more metaphysically loaded ideas that Schloss Tegal are employing as allegory for the demise / deterioriorization of society, paralleling much of the critiques mapped out by Genesis P-Orridge, SPK, and Monte Cazzaza in the heyday of industrial culture. Schloss Tegal settles all of their tracks with a heavy, foggy atmosphere that gives the sense of being anesthetized whilst various engineers and technicians probe, prod, and invade the body. Murky repetitive samples, some of which speak directly to experiences with extraterrestrial beings, cycle throughout Schloss Tegal's mercury poisoned dronings and irradiated windstorms of blurred noise. The work is not quite as oppressively dark as Brighter Death Now, but embraces a similar existential horror. Great to have this one back in print, now with two bonus tracks not found on the originals.
Dark Entries made their debut as a label several months ago with the awesome reissue of the Eleven Pond LP and with that single release we knew we were witnessing the birth of a an awesome reissue label, one with its heart set on finding obscure synth-pop and darkwave and and shining the spotlight on records that never got the love, attention or distribution they deserved the first time around.
Second Decay were a German electronic-pop group who formed in the late 1980's dedicated to the sound of analog synthisizers, the album's back cover proudly remarks 'This album was produced without MIDI. It is dedicated to our beloved synthesizers.' And there is no doubt these guys had deep love for the sounds of synthesizers as they used them to craft very infectious, dark new wave with full on pop chops. While there have been tons of reissues and attention paid to the amazing music that was made in Germany in the 70's it's really cool to see someone digging up some of the gold in a post-Kraftwerk Germany as Second Decay have a sound that brings Neue Deutsche Welle to mind (e.g. Grauzone, Liaisons Dangereuses, etc.) and the more dark tinged blasts of electro-pop that folks like Depeche Mode and The Human League were making on their early records, or even early 80's Cabaret Voilatire, and of course you can tell they were WAY influenced by the mighty Kraftwerk. We also hear a cool similarity to the recently reissued Patrick Cowley & Jorge Socarras record Catholic, which kind of makes perfect sense as the man behind Dark Entries was instrumental in saving and preserving the cache of Cowley tapes from which that record was culled.
With new bands like Cold Cave and Xeno & Oaklander grabbing our attention lately with their awesome updated version of that classic vintage synthwave sound, it's pretty rad and perfect timing to hear a lost classic from folks who were making that sound almost twenty years ago. Limited to just 500 copies all screen printed and with an amazing remastered sound thanks to the work of the legendary George Horn at Fantasy Studios. This will make you want to wear all black and dance all night. Minimal wave/gothpop at its best!
Severed Heads never really fit comfortably with any particular convention of the post-punk aesthetics; and when the project quietly disappeared in 2008, their demise was announced without much in the way of fanfare. Essentially a solo project of Australian electronic musician Tom Ellard, Severed Heads began in Sydney back in 1979 with Ellard experimenting with tape loops, DIY electronic kits, and rudimentary noise making devices all finding something of a commonality through lurching rhythms within this primordial soup of sound-making. Eventually, samplers and drum machines made their way into the Severed Heads repertoire, the group's best years from 1983 to 1988 or thereabouts, thanks to their avant-garde smarts throwing a monkey-wrench into synth-punk conventions. City Slab Horror (1985) was the second album that Severed Heads produced for Ink Records (and later reissued through Nettwerk). A deliberately imperfect record, City Slab Horror seeks to work against the latticework of rhythmic structures and melodic fluidity, with samples firing at irregular intervals and atonal pitches running rampant throughout the record. Exposing the rigidity of the mechanized form was one of the common strategems for synth-punk practitioners, with Fad Gadget and The Flying Lizards doing similarly disjointed avant-pop projects. While Severed Heads would eventually streamline into a sensible synth-pop project, City Slab Horror showcased how engaging Ellard could be in his wanderings through mad scientist archetypes, comic book horrorscaping, hiccupping sequencing, and inelegantly playful tunes.
Severed Heads were born from a what-the-fuck project called Mr. And Mrs. No Smoking Sign in the punk diaspora circa 1979, with both groups taking on those names as piss-take stratagems of invoking the horror industrial culture for the former, and downright awkwardness for the latter. Tape loops and mediated collages were the crux of MAMNSS and Severed Heads, which never really settled into the gravity-well of industrial culture, maintaining a sometimes overt sense of humor and a number of forays into legitimately brilliant minimal-wave / synth-pop tunes. By the early 80s though, the founding members Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright parted ways with Tom Ellard, who kept Severed Heads going through the '80s and beyond. It seemed Wright left because he wanted the project to move in a more musical direction; and Fielding thought just the opposite, leading to his anti-performance project called The Nobodies where he would set up automatons to perform in his absence.
Since The Accident (1983) was the first major album for Ellard / Severed Heads coming on the heels of a handful of tapes that warbled between primitive electro-pop and tape loop deconstructions. The most notable track on Since The Accident was essentially an afterthought -- the bouncy OMD-esque number "Dead Eyes Opened" which Ellard tacked on to fill up some space on the tape submitted to the label that originally released the album. It quickly became a hit on Australian radio and opened up a considerable amount of doors for Severed Heads (including an opening tour spot for Skinny Puppy). Throughout Since The Accident, there are numerous avant-pop excursions of layering tape loops in varying stages of synchronicity with drum machines and sequences, including the deftly produced tracks "Exploring The Secrets Of Treating Deaf Mutes" and "A Million Angels." But there were also the vertiginous tape loop / turntablist mantras reminiscent of early Christian Marclay / Gum tracks as heard on "Brassiere, In Rome" and "Gashing The Old Mae West" (the latter of which was released as an insane 21 minute "Marathon Mix" of hypno-psychosis on another 12", which obviously couldn't make it onto the reissue of the original lp). Weird and brilliant stuff.
Sadly, rock has always been a bit of a boy's club. Sure most things are, but rock especially. And it only gets worse as you move toward the heavier and darker side of the sonic spectrum, metal, industrial, noise, women are few and far between. That's not to say there aren't woman making serious noise in those realms, there most definitely are, maybe none more fearsome than Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose who traffics in some of the darkest, heaviest, filthiest sludge, blackened doom and abstract industrial we've heard, and whose particular brand of abject blackened noise is on full display here, a collection of various live performances over the years 2009-2010, and finds Rose, backed up by a full band, and engaging in some seriously harrowing soundmaking.
The opening track begins all thick bass buzz and keening feedback, soon industrial percussion emerges, and Rose's echo drenched wail, the bass buzz coalescing into sludgey dirgey riffage, while all around it guitars and samplers and effects fill the blackened sky with all manner of blackly psychedelic noise, the sound lumbers and lurches, before shifting gears in a flurry of horror movie shrieks, becoming more of a blackdrone, all layered hiss and skree and rumble, chaotic but weirdly hypnotic. The second track, the relatively brief "We Ate Their Eyes", introduces more of a groove, albeit just barely, more like a monstrous dirge, rhythmic and grimly propulsive, buried beneath an avalanche of shrieked vox and caustic low end crumble, before giving way to "Mother Agony" that channels Laibach and Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten into a Swans like creep, all hazy and washed out, the sound laced with streaks of high end, of sonar like pings, of gristly crunch and super distorted buzz, there's a definite Wolf Eyes vibe too, and then the vocals swoop back in, hysterical and terrifying, curdled with effects, it manages to be the most mesmerizingly hypnotic track here, while still retaining an unhinged mania.
The epic "Chained To The Cage Of Existence / A Lifeless Dreaming" seems to be the centerpiece here clocking in at 16+ minutes, and again begins as a blackened rumble, all buzz and blur, peppered with strange industrial clanks and clunks, before erupting into another grinding dirge, Rose's haunting deathlike vox adding a serious creep factor, the song a droned out rift, that seems like it might go on like that forever, until it splinters suddenly into a full on drum driven chunk of blackened noise metal crush, lurching, lumbering, shrieks and atonal riffage nestled amidst swells of black buzz and pounding rhythms and lots of feedback, before slipping right back into a sonic death march that continues until the end of the track, loping and minimal, laced with some cool metallic melodies, again slathered in feedback, and Rose's vox, that here remind us of the hysterical shrieks of black metal horde Bethlehem. And then finally, "Slavepiece" finishes things off, the most metal of the bunch, but sounding like it was recorded on a wax cylinder, the sound brittle and blown out, the band locked into a super in-the-red, feedback drenched riff heavy dirge, that sounds like an even more unhinged take on Brainbombs / No Balls. Fucking awesome, but most definitely only for the iron eared.
Fans of other blackened filth like Gnaw Their Tongues, Aderlating, Demonologists, Gorgontongue, and Hallowed Butchery as well as classic industrial / noise / blacknoise weirdness will be in heaven...
Elsewhere on this week's list (in fact, probably right above this review) you'll find the Disciples Of Shit cd, a collection of live recordings from blackened industrial noisescaper Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose, a seriously brutal, but blackly beautiful collection of caustic live performances. Now that you know what Rose is capable of on stage, here's a glimpse of what she can do in the studio, and as you might expect, it's not to far removed, if anything, it's darker, heavier and LOUDER. But otherwise the same sort of droned out industrial crush, a bleak cinematic blackness that definitely reminds us of Gnaw Their Tongues, lots of industrial clank and clatter, a keening distant high end tone that seems to drift atop monstrous hissed vokills and streaks of blackened sound, the long stretches of buzz and crush infused with mysterious melodies.
The flipside is more riffy and dirgey, with some seriously creepy (and weirdly sexy) whispered vox, the buzz thick and corrosive, all tethered to a lurching mechanical rhythm, all within thick clouds of hiss and hum and whir, the vibe moody and murky and very soundtracky, but still bleak and menacing and seriously harrowing, shades of Wolf Eyes too, but the more we here from Sewer Goddess, the more we're beginning to think she really sounds like nobody else.
SUPER LIMITED, comes in a cool silkscreened jacket with a printed fold out insert.
When we first heard about a band called Sex Church on Load Records, we were pretty much expecting a wild costumed troupe spitting out gouts of speaker shredding cacophony and grinding metallic noise, and while there is a certain amount of noise and cacophony going on here, these guys traffic in something wholly different, a gloomy post punky sort of downer pop (much like Daily Life, who also had a record on Load), all clanging minor key chords, pounding dirgey rhythms and buzzing swirling synths, the opening track sounds like a slightly noisier take on some lost Joy Division live jam, or some classic goth group revved up and supercharged. And then when the vocals finally kick in, all deep and dramatic, wreathed in echo and delay, the mood grows dark and doomy, the drums pounding out a tribal rhythm, the bass lurching and lumbering in throbs and thrums, the sound building to explosive psychedelic crescendos before slipping back into slithery deathrock grooves or loping postpunk crunch. Fans of outfits like Naked On The Vague, Crystal Stilts, Total Control, Soft Moon and the like should go apeshit for these guys, and while they definitely borrow heavily from the gloom/goth classics, think Kommunity FK, the Mission UK, Birthday Party, Sisters Of Mercy, Wipers, Scientists, Bauhaus, Fields Of The Nephilim, once those sounds are filtered through a more noise rock / post punk aesthetic, it ends up pretty heavy, hooky, noisy, darkly poppy and sorta irresistible.
After the last batch of releases on Hospital, you'd likely be expecting some sort of grim electronica, or downcast techno murk from this UK outfit, but the punky cover art is your first hint that this might just be a bit different. Which it most certainly is. Sure it's grim and murky, but instead of minimal beats and bleak atmospheres, this is classic old school death punk / crust, a la Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Christian Death, etc. Filthy, fuzzy guitars, simple drum pound, total nihilistic leather jacketed, spikes and denim, backpatch crusty punk, gloomy and atmospheric, with some dark woozy passages, but otherwise a fierce blast of knuckle dragging smash-the-state ferocity, the sprawling B-side spending much of its time in a downtuned crust punk death march ballad, all echo drenched vocals, weird spluttery drumming, down tuned guitar-noise, streaks of feedback, all anchored by a simple, caveman beat, and eventually disappearing in a clouds of primitive electronics.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!!
Some of you who were living in San Francisco a while back, might just remember these guys. Sharkbait. It's been a long time since we'd heard, or even really thought about these guys. The way we remember it, was they were a sort of industrial post punk rock band, maybe like a West Coast version of Cop Shoot Cop, all junkyard percussion, howled vocals, crunchy guitars, skeletal, noisy and slightly funky. And the truth is pretty close to that.
So a customer of ours discovered a box of Sharkbait tapes, still sealed, stashed and covered in dust, and thought that since folks were digging cassettes so much lately around here, and that Sharkbait were a seminal eighties SF outfit, that he would bequeath them to us, so we could disseminate them to hungry ears that might want a little taste of what the SF scene was like back in 1988. For some of us, it was all about funk metal, bands like Mordred tearing it up, or thrash, but there was a whole 'nother thing going on in the underground. Bands like Bomb, Tragic Mulatto, the Skatenigs, and of course Sharkbait. And Sharkbait were indeed a sort of proto industrial punk rock band. Lots of samples. Lots of tribal percussion, some Cash Worship going on here and there, throbbing basslines, crunchy guitars, and howled sloganeering vocals, sort of political, definitely punk rock. It sounds dated sure, but it still sounds pretty cool. There's some art of Noise percussion, some weird spoken word, slabs of feedback, droning ambience, but all wrapped up in a pounding churning post punk caterwaul.
Peter Christopherson, John Balance, and Boyd Rice recorded three tracks in 1985 under the moniker Sickness Of Snakes for a split single with Current 93 entitled Nightmare Culture, which understandably has been long out of print. According to the liner notes by Boyd Rice, there had been talk of the three continuing their collaboration by travelling to Calcutta and hiring a really cheap orchestra to perform some sort of atonal mass, whose content and score had yet to be determined. The adventure never took place, leaving the sum total of the Sickness Of Snakes material at very small amount of material (a fourth track was created for a German compilation around that same time, but strangely is not included here). While this reissue from Soleilmoon is commendable in uncovering these rare and quite impressive tracks, the price of admission is rather steep.
When the trio went into the studio, they had rented one of the Fairlight samplers which had been making the rounds in England, and they happened to get the machine right after Kate Bush had used it for her Hounds Of Love album. Samples of tubular bells, noir trumpets, and saccharine strings got repurposed for Sickness Of Snakes, whose opening track "Various Hands" is very typical of what Coil would have crafted on their debut Scatology, with lugubrious sampled strings marching through a doleful electronic sonata, but topped with the sounds of bombs being dropped into the WWII trenches. Those noir horns and electronic bells spill into an elegaic atmosphere on "The Swelling Of Leeches;" and "The Pope Held Upside Down" is a mangled collage of pigs squealling, for an unsettling coda to this unduly short collaboration. In full disclosure, Coil reissued these tracks on their Unnatural History compilation (also out of print), and Boyd Rice tossed "Various Hands" onto his compendium The Way I Feel. If only there were more tape to be scraped off the studio floor.
A self-explanatory collection that recounts the twenty year history of Steve Severin, Budgie and the ice queen herself, Siouxsie Sioux. All of the favorites are here, spanning from the incisive post-punk of tracks like "Arabian Knights" and "Happy House" to the glamorous Euro-club favorites like "Kiss Them For Me" (which I never realized was based on the breakbeat from Schooly D's "Saturday Night") and "Peek-A-Boo." Disc two will be of added interest to Siouxsie's collectors, as that disc featured a number of the hard-to-find extended mixes and remixes of their singles.
Now here on cd! Here's What We Had To Say about the vinyl version a few years ago:
This 3 piece from Oakland CA play arty, chaotic, somewhat dark, noisy sort-of-punk-rock. The influence of electro, goth, darkwave, new wave and post-punk all do battle in a Sixteens song, and the outcome is inevitably a draw. Not surprisingly the trio are friends and musical allies of SF local scary ones The Vanishing, The Phantom Limbs, and Black Ice. Intense girl and boy vocals over hectic, deranged sludgy noise. 8 songs = 51 minutes.
Bay area black metal masters Von were responsible for two of the most important USBM documents ever, the Satanic Blood and Blood Angel demos, considered by many to be the first US black metal record(s), and to this day, those records continue to inspire a legion of musical hordes, who strive to emulate that furious idiosyncratic raw that few can reproduce. What few people know, is that right after the release of those demos, the members of Von shifted their focus to another project, with a way different sound and vibe, called Sixx, which was anything but black metal, instead a dark, creepy, brooding, gothic deathrock, think Bauhaus, Christian Death, Specimen, all minor key spidery guitars, swirling dark ambience, pounding new wave drums, and of course, super dramatic crooned vocals.
It seems almost prescient, considering that this sound is enjoying a pretty serious resurgence these days: past Record Of The Weekers Soror Dolorosa, Hateful Abandon, Factums, Dial M For Murder, Cold Cave, Crystal Stilts, etc. But this demo, recorded in 1991, was as mentioned above, recorded hot on the heels of two of the most grim and raw, blasting black metal records ever! And while it may not directly inform the actual sound, it does speak to what a strange and special record the Sixx demo was and is. Chiming guitars and krauty rhythms, lots of reverb and delay, a dark brooding ambience, we hear lots of classic goth and darkwave and new wave, Kommunity FK, Human Drama, Tones On Tail, and the more we listen to it, the more the link between Sixx and Von crystallizes, both bands trafficked in simple stripped down songs, most with only one or two parts, vocals repetitive and mantric, in fact, in some ways, Sixx almost sounds like Von with all the distortion removed, right down to those classic Von goaty grunts. That said, just 'cause you like Von, doesn't necessarily mean you'll like Sixx, but if you dig that sound, and any of the above mentioned bands, then Sixx's Sister Devil might just be your lost reissue / rediscovered gem of the year.
Ski Patrol was a shortlived British post-punk project, formed in 1979 by vocalist Ian Lowery, guitarist Nick Clift, Peter Balmer on bass, and a revolving door of drummers. They crafted an angular, paranoiac sound which equally mined the dub-inflected manic jitteriness of Gang of Four, The Scars, and Killing Joke. After the band self-released their first single, they garnered the attention of Malicious Damage, which had actually released the first handful of Killing Joke singles. By 1981, the band had undergone considerable changes with Balmer splitting to join Fad Gadget and Clift moving into the more business side of things by taking a gig at Rough Trade. The band members who found themselves around Lowery rechristened themselves as The Folk Devils.
Versions Of A Life is an abridged collection of Ski Patrol's recorded output including the band's first two singles, previously unreleased mixes of their third single, and some unreleased songs from their final studio session. "Agent Orange" was the lead track on their second single and featured Jaz Coleman of Killing Joke on synths. This track with its slow building death-disco rhythm section of dub-punk basslines and motorik drums is simple, effective, and super catchy in a deathrock kind of way, complete with macabre / socially critical lyrics. "Everything Is Temporary" was the A side to the band's first single, holding court with the sparse art-punk leanings of Essential Logic or maybe In Camera (the pre-Wolfgang Press project). The whole collection is an eye-opener, introducing us to a band that had escaped our knowledge almost entirely and made us more than curious as to what Lowery, et al had done in Ski Patrol's wake. Another gem from Dark Entries!
When over the course of many years a cutting edge band's signature edge has been shamelessly pillaged -- and in turn become a mainstay of the edge-of-mainstream -- what are they to do when they decide to reunite? March out the old standards? Hopefully not. Resurface with a potent new strain? Perhaps. Ideally not end up sounding like a shadow of their former selves and a sound alike of younger upstarts. Unlike other veteran bands who've reformed after lengthy absences, Skinny Puppy fortunately haven't done the former. However, unlike other groundbreaking phoenixes such as Killing Joke, they also haven't returned to their fiery pulpit to school the new generation.
SP has always been detailed, monumentally monstrous and rich in intriguing sounds, but for Mythmaker, the group's interplay of chance/cut-ups and spin-the-radio-dial distortion adventures seem to have vanished. The difference seems to mostly lie in the choice to stop using tapes of media sources -- documentary television, radio, European and Canadian underground psychological horror films, and underreported war-reality-radio-broadcasts as surrealistic textures. This is most noticeable in two vital areas: the group's trademark collaged soundscapes crafted by Cevin Key -- now so few and far between, but markedly more than on 2004's reunion album The Greater Wrong Of The Right -- sound much less 'hands on' sculpted and more reliant on software rubik's-grids. In general, there's an absence of friction, tension and of ill-tempered spectral presences. As well, Nivek Ogre's 'singing' (i.e, not his former textural guttural Artaud-isms) are almost completely audible, being processed through a vocoder, with a heavy dose of 'stutter-edit' and auto-tune set to 'death grip' (we actually wish that they were even further effected, preferably to the point of incoherence because some of the rhyming lyrics are shockingly simplistic. Hard to believe that they came from the same poison pen as "Testure", "Harsh Stone White" or "Who's Laughing Now?" from VIVIsectVI, 1988). Ultimately, Mythmaker's atmospheres feel something like Richard Devine's industrial IDM processed through a faux-metal 'zombie America' video game soundtrack. One thing that has returned to a more prominent and welcome role is Key's artfully crafted drumming and percussion sounds. No playing shows up like the mesmerizing kraut-funk of Tear Garden's Last Man To Fly era recordings, mind you, but it's nice to hear some wood and metal mixed in with the filter swept electro-raindrop snares. Some of Ken Marshall's best mixing work can usually be found on Cevin Key's projects, and as usual, it slams. Overall, Mythmaker is a better record than its predecessor (although it does have a couple of 'oops' songs unfortunately and weirdly one is the opener "Magnifishit"!), and shows the group to be at the stylistic apex / end of this particular version of the 'Puppy sound.
Yep, SP are doing things they haven't done before, and for better or for worse -- you decide -- they've moved on, and are leaving the Skinny Puppy of old on the mantle to continue its disembodied haunt.
Here it is... the long overdue, highly anticipated, never expected to actually happen new album from the reunited Skinny Puppy! Yes, the surviving bandmates' differences appear to have been set aside. So now, eight long years after their split and fifteen after their masterpiece, VIVIsect VI, what does the 'Puppy sound like? Well, one word that might be fitting is "reinvented", as thankfully this is not a memory lane trip. Actually, it seems as though The Greater Wrong Of The Right could have been called the third 'Ohgr' album rather than the return of Skinny Puppy. For one thing (much like on his solo albums) Nivek Ogre is mostly singing rather than vocalizing in gutteral gasps and inhuman hisses. Whereas the vocals used to often be another mysterious texture, they are now up-front and decidedly 'songy'. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the noses of hardcore Puppy fans might get a little out of joint when they also discover that their beloved band's former trademark unsettling / confrontational elements are for the most part absent from this album. Heavy and dramatic, yes. Sinister and atmospheric, no. Skinny Puppy with the lights on? Also gone are the soundtrack-style interludes which gave previous albums such an intense bad-dream setting. Nonetheless, Cevin Key's mastery of sound craft is in full effect, and he's given an excellent, detailed mix by long-time Puppy (and more recently I Am Spoonbender) collaborator Ken Marshall. Producer Mark Walk (Ohgr) is clearly responsible for the vocal range leap achieved here by singer Ogre, and demonstrates the most visible break between 'now' Puppy and 'then' Puppy. Not surprisingly, the results are huge, intricately detailed works. However, whereas this band's recordings used to be some of the most difficult, groundbreaking and influential mood music around -- somehow
both genre-defining and genre-defying -- on a vast number of these tracks they now sound more like 'one of the (nu-metal / modern rock) gang'. Very leather'n'latex, Matrix / Blade 2 movie soundtrack-ready, by way of the Schematics Records IDM camp. Still, quality stuff. Appropriately, guests include Otto Von Schirach and weirdly, members of Static-X, Tool, and Collide.
Ultra limited picture disc 10" from this damaged and demented avant black doom outfit featuring former Mayhem frontman Maniac, Niklas Kvarforth from black metal outfit Shining, and Current 93's David Tibet among others. One side features an introductory collage created by David Tibet / Current 93, that the band used for an intro at their shows, and it's classic Current 93, a sort of demented slowly decaying gypsy folk, with Tibet's increasingly anxious and frantic vocalizing, his vocals multitracked so the track builds to a frenzied climax, with multiple Tibets howling and shrieking "Who will deliver me from myself?!". The other two tracks are alternate versions of tracks on Skandinavisk Misantropi, one a demo, and one an alternate mix, but they kind of sound better here, the guitars more raw, the sound more fierce and feral, the vocals SICK, the band unfurling lurching lumbering doomy blackness, but laced with unlikely melodies, "Slow Pain Coming" manages to be fucked up and hateful, the vocals especially harsh, but the music is surprisingly melodic, and there's an awesome breakdown partway through where the band lurches and starts and stops, while the vocals just gargle and rasp and howl. The demo of "A Valley Below" is way more low fidelity, but again, it sounds so much more fucked up and frightening, the vocals especially again, even more inhuman, makes you wonder what they did on the record proper, cuz here, they just ooze and drip, super intense and freaky, perfectly suiting the low slung slither underneath. Makes us want to go back and listen to the full length again, Or just keep listening to these two tracks over and over.
Super nice artwork on the picture disc, an appropriately gruesome painting on one side, and an original David Tibet painting on the other. LIMITED TO 777 COPIES!!!
