Really? Carter Tutti and Foetus remixing Excepter? Yup, that's what you'll get on this 12" from the newly birthed Frkwys imprint (read Freakways as a play on Folkways). Carter Tutti (the re-named duo for Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, then and now of Throbbing Gristle fame) have tightened up the jammy industrial wanderings of Excepter's "Shors Ring" (from the Debt Dept. album) within their own rhythmicist precision that recalls some of the best work they've ever produced over the past 30 years (e.g. Heartbeat, Synaesthesia, The Space Between, etc.). Mr. Foetus twists Excepter's "Stretch" (also from Debt Dept.) into one of his manic marches of bombastic drum corps rhythms and huge melodic crescendos certainly not dissimilar from his twisted anthems of old. It's hard to hear much of the Excepter sounds within either track, but the productions from both remixing agents are so strong that it really doesn't matter.
Another No Neck Blues Band offshoot, this time spearheaded by ex-NNBB yokel John Fell Ryan, and this time, gone are those clattery, free-folk hippy drum circle jams, and in their place, throbbing, haunting, gothic soundscapes of sequenced drones and haunting vocals, muted pulsing grooves, like Can jamming at the bottom of a pool, noisy programmed beats under fuzzed out static and bleeping synths, and dreamy ethereal soundscapes. Unexpected and really nice!
Both Excepter 12"s finally on cd. Excepter is yet another No Neck Blues Band offshoot, this time spearheaded by ex-NNBB yokel John Fell Ryan, and this time, gone are those clattery, free-folk hippy drum circle jams, and in their place is some bizarre reverb drenched space dub, complete with throbbing, gothic soundscapes, sequenced drones, muted pulsing grooves, dubbed out drums, noisy programmed beats under fuzzed out static and bleeping synths, dreamy ethereal atmospheres and ghostly moaning vocals. Sort of like Can jamming at the bottom of an abandoned swimming pool recorded onto beat up cassettes that have been in the glovebox of your car for years, or maybe King Tubby manning the desk for a VERY STONED Sunburned Hand jam session. This is a gorgeously muddy, beautifully murky head on collision between krautrock propulsion, druggy dream dub, and damaged experimetal weirdness. Pretty fucking great.
More tripped out explorations from Excepter.
According to the band, "this is a house record". If it is, then raves must be way more scary and fucked up than I ever imagined. We've been digging Excepter's freeform avant space dub weirdness for a while now, and as much as the band would like to claim that this is a dance record, it's just as damaged and out there sounding as their last two full lengths. Throbbing synths, haunting reverbed vocals, warm warbly bass lines, creepy ghostly ambience, squiggly synths and all manner of bleeps and bloops. Muted mumbling vocalisations drift through pusling dronescapes until toward the end of the record, skittery drum machines spew spastic rhythms, pushing Self Destruction about as far dance-ward as it's gonna get, and even then, it's way to druggy and psychedelic to be dance music for anything but a wasted and stumbling, blood soaked, moonlit, satanic sacrifice, pagan ritual dance party. Which when you put it that way...
According to the band, "this is a house record". If it is, then raves must be way more scary and fucked up than I ever imagined. We've been digging Excepter's freeform avant space dub weirdness for a while now, and as much as the band would like to claim that this is a dance record, it's just as damaged and out there sounding as their last two full lengths. Throbbing synths, haunting reverbed vocals, warm warbly bass lines, creepy ghostly ambience, squiggly synths and all manner of bleeps and bloops. Muted mumbling vocalisations drift through pusling dronescapes until toward the end of the record, skittery drum machines spew spastic rhythms, pushing Self Destruction about as far dance-ward as it's gonna get, and even then, it's way to druggy and psychedelic to be dance music for anything but a wasted and stumbling, blood soaked, moonlit, satanic sacrifice, pagan ritual dance party. Which when you put it that way...
Streams 01 -- a newish double disc release from Excepter -- proves once again that New York has a near monopoly on almost-danceable, not-danceable dance music. Think Gang Gang Dance and Black Dice, too. While Streams isn't a radical departure from previous work, it does a great job of showcasing Excepter's free-something Kraut ramblings, drenched in dub and distortion. The reason that it literally is not a departure is that the two discs constitute a fractional archive of the group's work over a four-year period. Some live performances, some jams, and some other stuff. The world need bands and releases like this, ones that make psychedelic drugs seem almost obsolete, as time and space collide into a beautiful trainwreck clusterfuck of beeps, bleeps, yelps, and crunches. We're reminded of the title of a book put together by AQ employee Scott, "Good Times, Bad Trips."
Apparently recorded in one hour on a hot summer's day this new Excepter ep finds them with a slightly different lineup and in fine fucked up form. Sun soaked and dripping with melting casios, warped vocals and all sorts of effects they got hidden up their tricky sleeves. The last ep found them channeling the ghost of Third Eye Foundation while this time out it's a little less twisted dark dub and a little more twisted kaleidoscope of sounds. There's the inclusion of vocals on a few tracks that we're not sure how we feel about, but when the vocals fade away on tracks like "Dawn Patrol" it's fucked up and blissed out electronic tinged noise at its best. Excepter have this way of walking a fine line between half assed and totally off the cuff (they say they recorded this in one hour) and totally brilliant but when they hit their mark they hit is soooo hard that we keep coming back for more and more.
Second full length from these NY abstract free-rock, free-folk, free-whatever weirdos. Featuring ex No Neck Blues Bander John Fell Ryan, Excepter take the abstractions of the NNBB even further out. Way more abstract, way more blissed out, way more dreamy and ethereal. No clattery drum circle rhythms or pagan ritual folk, no this is drifting and deliriously unmoored. Female vocals hover ghost like over slowly rolling waves of electronic sound. Drones that pulse and weave and slither but mostly just drift. Outer space swooshes and simple percussive splashes demarcate the wide open expanses of each song. Like Hawkwind's space rock with all the rock removed, and in its place, even MORE space, as well as hushed and whispered vocals, shuffling electronic skitters, woozy distant melodies and lots of rumbling weirdness and whooshing swirl. Like the spirit of Can or Faust, a ghostly shimmer of krautrock, rhythmic and propulsive but with all the flesh pulled off, so the sounds are gauzy and barely there, a flicker of rhythmic urgency, now just a gorgeously ghostly amble.
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SORRY.No offense to Excepter but man oh man Panda Bear steals the show on this split 12"! Best known as one of the members of the Animal Collective and one half of Jane we got to say we think we are most in love with Noah Lennox in his Panda Bear existence. Acid soaked Beach Boys harmonies tweaked to utter perfection! If his side of this split is any indication of how great his new album is gonna be then wow we are excited! Excepter's side is more of their really good take on murky analog electronics gone no-wave.
Some terrific pop from right here in SF! Featuring members formally of Blue Gum Art and Aerosal Species, Excuses For Skipping hit the ground running on their debut album Out Of Work Early. Their tunes balance an energetic punchiness and a breezy wistfulness. Their emotive vocals are sweet but not sugary. Actually they remind us quite a bit of some old faves Velocity Girl, Hazel, Metric, and the early poppiness of the Bay Area's Tartufi too (as opposed to their more proggy leanings). We also sense some of the soft, dreamy inspiration of Stereolab and Sarah Records. Really infectiously good!
Only the second album from this Godspeed You Black Emperor side project who've been around in some shape or form since the mid-'90s. Perhaps darker and more morosely droning than their self-titled debut. Layers of bass drones slowly shift, swell and dissipate. Occasional sparse rhythms flutter in and out along with strange electronic squidge'n'sputter that at times quite resembles ominous voices. No flippancy intended, but I really thought this would make a great haunted house soundtrack - oh so very sinister and gloomful.
Previously a vinyl-only release, now on cd. The side project of one of the drummers of Montreal post-rock/hippie sensations Godspeed You Black Emperor! Exhaust excels at surrounding the sparse yet propulsive cracks of their live breakbeats with thick brooding atmospheres. Another worthy addition to the constellation of, um, Constellation label stars (GSYBE, Do Make Say Think, A Silver Mt. Zion, Fly Pan Am).
The skronk-improv trio of Jon Rose (violin), Peril's Tony Buck (drums), and Joe Williamson (electric and acoustic bass).
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It's frustrating sometimes that lots of our all time favorite records came out well before the aQuarius list was established. We occasionally pick old favorites, like Rein Sanction, Archers Of Loaf, Hardship Post, Green River, stuff that's still available, and review them on the list. Cuz as far as we're concerned, released dates and the concept of 'new music' are pretty much useless. All records are new and exciting to someone who has never heard them. But often times those old favorites are long gone and out of print. So when one of those records does finally get reissued, we jump at the chance to be able celebrate and share that amazing music via the list. Which brings us to this double disc reissue from weirdo eco-radical doom drug grinders Exit-13.
A band we have loved for EVER (so much so, Allan even interviewed them for the first issue of his old fanzine, years and years ago), Exit-13 were only loosely a grind band, sure they were fast and furious, guitars buzzed, songs were short and complex, the vocals a monstrous gurgle, the lyrics way political, all about the environment, vegetarianism, etc.� But for a grind band, they sure spent a lot of time spewing huge gory gouts of buzzing doomic plod, as well as incorporating convoluted jazz weirdness, freaked out psychedelic leads, thrashing punk rock, bizarre interludes with croony vocals, skittery rhythms, and noodly guitar jams, bits of angular retard-funk, Black Flag-ish gnarled riffing as well as confusional cut ups, dizzying collages of chopped and recontextualized vocals, Jello Biafra, bits of Jeopardy music, the theme from Underdog, Led Zep pastiche and whatever else they felt like tossing in there.
The best way we can describe it is John Zorn meets diSEMBOWELMENT meets Brutal Truth.
The original discs came with stickers that summed up the Exit-13 sound pretty succinctly:
"Mind warping philosophically contemplative environmental brain food from Pennsylvania's unique smoking grind rock extremists" (from Don't Spare The Green Love) and "An 80 minute head explosion of absolutely unique sonic intelligence from Pennsylvania's environmental grind rock hedonists. This band smokes, bud!" (from Ethos Musick)
Hard to argue with that�
So, High Life collects almost everything the band has ever recorded (minus the ep of '20s and '30s cover songs, all about reefer, sung by the Pain Teens' Bliss Blood): their one proper full length, as well as all of their various singles, eps and splits (previously released as Don't Spare The Green Love). And by now, you've probably realized these guys were all about the pot. The songs buzz by in dense clouds of bong smoke, lots of samples about marijuana, lyrics about legalizing hemp and pot. The back of the booklet even features a huge pot leaf and the "Stop the madness - Legalize Marijuana" legend. But that's only one of their causes, a quick look through the lyrics, reveals a seriously 'green' agenda, environmentalism, vegetarianism, there's even a whole track that's just a snippet of the Phil Donahue show, on which he interviews members of Earth First!
But none of that would mean anything if this band didn't completely slay. And thankfully they do. Heavy and fucked, weird, but weirdly catchy, buzzing and blasting, then pounding and chugging. Furious blasts of blown out lightning fast grind are butted up against lurching doom sludge, peppered with super fucked up free jazz breakdowns. Guitars are serpentine, jagged and angular, the drums go from pound to blast beat and back
the vocals harsh and gurgly, there are bits of weirdly classic rock sounding jams, over sound samples, electronics and Goblin-like keyboards...
"Anthropocentric Ecocidal Conundrum" begins with an insistent folky strum over chirping birds and burbling brook, until the guttural death metal vocals kick in and the drums, then it's some sort of metallic death metal folk freakout, finally morphing into some gnarled convoluted math grind jam. Elsewhere, cool creepy acoustic guitars drift over moaning synths, and splattery drums, super cinematic and haunting on "Only Protest Gives A Hope Of Life". There is plenty of weirdness. Damaged is a descriptor that constantly springs to mind, as does demented, and most certainly fucked. Silly too. But at it's core, this is heavy, heady stuff. Brutal but musical, fierce and fractured, forward thinking and seriously far out.
The second disc is the older stuff, and is at once more furious and thrashing, much more grind, but also has lots more sound samples, songs dotted with all sorts of film snippets, voices, bits of dialogue all tangled up with the growling harsh vocals. "Spare The Wrench Surrender The Earth" is half funeral doom, before launching into a more grinding blast of punk rock. The stuff from the first 7" is almost like old school goregrind, with impossible gurgling loooooow vocals, the guitars a furious blur, the drums a furious splatter. Then there's "Fingernails" hinting at the weirdness to come, with its fake horns, and frog-like croaking super effected vocals, and that classic funeral march melody mixed into the chaotic rrroooaaar.
Any fan of heavy music, be it black, thrash, grind, doom, or sludge should be able to get into these guys. And they're just weird enough to maybe also appeal to the less metal inclined looking for something freaked out and heavy.
An interesting note: like any self-respecting grind band, Exit-13 made a regular practice of releasing records with different versions of the same songs, so the song "Disemboweling Party" appears three different times, while seven other tracks appear twice. But in most cases, the various versions, while not totally different, are varied enough to keep it interesting, even if it's just that one is super hot and in the red, and one is super muddy and lo-fi, or even just that different samples were used.
Our only complaint, is that this is only sort of the complete Exit-13, 'cause they left off the extended, potentially-speaker-damaging noisedrone jams that closed out both their records, the 28 minute "An Electronic Fugue For The Imminent Demise of Planet Earth" from Ethos Musick and the 21 minute "Snakes And Alligators" from the Just A Few More Hits ep. Most of us wouldn't have minded paying a few extra bucks for a third disc, and ruined speakers, but what can you do?
Killer packaging, all the original photos, images, lyrics, quotes and propaganda reproduced in a huge booklet.
Previously unreleased 3rd (double) album from cult krautrock trio Exmagma (no relation to French prog masters Magma). Recorded in 1975 at Conny Plank's studio, this excellently-produced opus somehow eluded release for over thirty years. Now finally here it is, with vintage artwork, informative liner notes, and most importantly, 17 tracks, 69 minutes of quirkily wacky krautrock that had lain dormant for far too long. If you've heard either of their first two albums (the self-titled from '73 or Goldball from '74, both of which were once available together on a single cd reissue that's now sadly out of print) then you know they're a freaky band, a bit like Guru Guru but with more jazz-fusion stuff going on. This is still pretty jazzy but more rock than before -- with more singing too. Definitely betrays the influence of Captain Beefheart (with the track "Torpedo Tits" perhaps coming uncomfortably close to Frank Zappa lyrical territory) but also that of Miles Davis as well. A lost krautrock effort that we'd wager doesn't sound like too much else in your cd collection, with hard, angular grooves, druggy concepts, zany rock, confusional hippie humor, and journeyman jazz chops -- for a gonzo Frankenstein of an album only Exmagma would dare design and build.
Back in stock, now way cheaper than before!
Ok, let's get the first question everybody has about this band out of the way: they've got nothing to do with our favorite Seventies proggers, Magma from France. The trio Exmagma was also from the '70s, but from Germany (featuring an expatriate African-American drummer though) and are known as Exmagma simply because they had originally called themselves Magma, until they found out about the French group and changed the name! Some understandable confusion resulted, we're told, because Exmagma's second record Goldball was only released on a French label...and the "real" Magma kinda sound more German than French what with their Wagner influence. Anyway, THIS band was more of an acid rock meets (free) jazz fusion kind of thing. Freaky, wild, and groovy. Laid back weirdness, some sax, lots of electric organ and piano, doublenecked bass/guitar...Mostly instrumental, with only some very rare Faust-like vocal parts. This disc contains their two albums, both recorded by Krautrock production maestro Conny Plank, with the first self-titled one from '73 being perhaps the more far-out and abstract, while 1974's Goldball more solidly grooved. Maybe. However, both LPs are "drug jazz" classics. Also, on the cover to Goldball (reproduced in miniature here) the band sports the craziest bellbottoms we've ever seen...they're on stilts under them I guess!
This noise rock duo from Mexico are exactly what all you aQ noise rock nerds want in a band. Thick grinding downtuned bass, dense drumming, and bellowed vox, not so much songs, as riffs upon rhythms, unwinding grooves and blown out metallic crunch, all wound up into tense cyclical hypno-rock workouts, most tracks just a single part, almost like a meaner, more metal Lungfish. The slabs of distorted heaviness (some abrasive caustic crunch, others doom metal lumber) are balanced by skeletal psychedelic drift and experimental Ride For Revenge style metallic/rhythmic abstraction. Add these guys to the short list of dynamic duos we can't get enough of.
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Death of a Robot... is a surprisingly good E.A.R. record not nearly as tinny as some of his other records. Here Sonic Boom and E.A.R. make two long tracks in the drone tradition of early electronic composers like Ussachevsky or Xenakis.
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And thus spake Sonic Boom on Speak & Spell, "The sound collages on this disc were created using 8 human voice synthesizing toys originally marketed by Texas Instruments as the 'Speak & Spell' range during the 1970's. These instruments have been customized with added switches, buttons, knobs, & wiring to give phoneme looping, random phase generation, various modulation, pitch shifting, & other non-standard effects."
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Sonic Boom's E.A.R. (featuring members of AMM, God, and My Bloody Valentine) team up with European electronic composer Thomas Koner to try to prove some lovely hypothesis about ambient drone music.
Oakland's Experimental Dental School come crashing in with their latest twisted concoction. They've done split releases with Japan's Limited Express in the past, and that entirely makes sense as they're very much of the same imaginative art-rock ilk. Their music also brings to mind the rollercoaster-y quirks of Melt Banana and Deerhoof -- actually the latter band's Greg Saunier makes a guest appearance on a few songs. Drawing influence from both the carnivalesque multi-personalities of Mr. Bungle and the dissonant angst of Sonic Youth, 2 1/2 Creatures confirms that E.D.S. are more than capable of making themselves equally at home in indie post-rock and no wave basements, jazz joints and circus tents. The first song sprints out of the gate with some very frantic organ playing that sounds like a disjointed "Flight of the Bumblebee". Their effected high trebly vocals, pinchy electric guitars and keyboards balance precariously atop the loosely strung bass and thick synth lines. Very cool!
Two tracks each from SF's own Experimental Dental School and Limited Express (Has Gone?) from Kyoto, Japan, whose Tzadik release from last year we likened to Melt Banana and Deerhoof. It's like an exchange program for avant-rock zaniness. Limited stock.
Shattered is the posthumous release by this young punky power pop four piece, three of whom were killed in a highway accident driving home to Seattle after a show at the Bottom Of The Hill here in SF on July 17, 2003. This 16-song cd compiles a bunch of unreleased tracks and alternate versions. Really really good retro power pop with lots of guitars and sweet boy gang vocals. Seemingly inspired by the likes of The Buzzcocks, early Elvis Costello and Superchunk, The Exploding Hearts overflowed with raw youthful energetic fun.
Needless to say, listening to this is both utterly heartbreaking and uplifting, but making it even more so is the addition of live video footage of the band performing at the Bottom only hours before the tragic accident. Includes a terrific cover of Paul Collins & The Breakaways' "Walking Out On Love".
What hath the Skaters wrought? In the wake of that group's ever expanding body of work, both as a duo and each member solo, has risen a whole movement of musicians channeling similar sounds and melding many of the same influences into that ethereal collaged anti-pop that the Skaters if not invented, popularized. A symptom of today's MySpace world, where the minute one group, or one sound, gets hyped, a million bedroom 4-trackers take it upon themselves to do something similar. See the recent lo-fi garage pop explosion for example. But heck, stealing from the bands you love is a tried and true rock and roll tradition, the key being stealing from bands YOU LOVE, not from bands that are suddenly popular and you want to be popular too. That shit is transparent. That's why in an avalanche of wannabe's there are always a few who shine, whose creativity had seemingly lain dormant just waiting for a trigger. Sometimes hearing a sound, makes you realize that someone else hears the same sort of sounds you've been hearing in your head.
This could all be bullshit, but the second we first threw on this Explorers records, we couldn't help but think of the Skaters. But like any good band, taking influence from another, it's not the sounds you steal or the ideas you borrow, it's what you do with them that counts, and the Explorers definitely do their own sort of fractured soundscapery as good as, if not even better than their forebears. Layered tangles of tones and squiggly melodies, wheezing textures and buried stumbling drumloops, a swirling soft chaos of blurred sounds smeared into streaked landscapes of broken tape deck new age, deep dense outer space buzz and washed out dream drone, the sift from sound to sound is sudden and sharp, like flipping the channel or changing the station. Imagine the sound of sound remote research station, all the machines left running, whirring in the darkness, pointed heavenward, as they sample and intercept transmissions and broadcasts from alien worlds and alternate dimensions. Gloriously tripped out and deliriously druggy. For fans of the Skaters for sure, but also anyone into weird and wonderful, freaked out and far flung sonic explorations (they don't call them Explorers for nothing apparently).
LIMITED TO 330 COPIES.
We've always been fans of Explosions In The Sky. One of the post Mogwai, post Godspeed outfits so adept at crafting super epic and emotional instrumental soundscapes -- post rock, math rock, jangly pop, chamber music, all sort of whipped into grandiose cinematic swells. But past records, while sounding amazing, with the right balance of mood and metal, hush and heaviness, still stuck a little too close to the template of their forbears. EITS were like the perfect mix of Godspeed and old more bombastic Mogwai. And not much more. Nothing wrong with that really, it just never totally blew us away.
But All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is different. And it does blow us away. In a big way. It still sounds like EITS, and thus still sounds a bit like Godspeed and Mogwai, but like any great band in the last 20 years, it's not who you steal from, or what you steal, it's how you make what you steal your own. And EITS have made epic instrumental post rock all their own. The opener is everything this sort of music could and should be. Super dense and dramatic, spacious and emotional, opening with keening high end melodies over big jangly guitar strum and huge percussive For Those About To Rock blasts, the guitars slowly intertwining and drifting off, fading to a moody minor key post rock drift, underpinned by layer after layer of fuzzy blissy guitar and a motorik rhythmic shuffle before the completely perfect bridge, a spaced out melody, all dynamic and epic, that will definitely give you goosebumps, before launching into a full on heavy math rock groove, incorporating that same hair raising melody, with some killer drumming and a veritable orchestra of guitars.
The rest of the record plays out in similar, albeit slightly less bombastic fashion. Each track perfectly leading into the next, an expansive post rock epic, separated into movements, chiming guitars, thick riffs, each track gloriously tangled and emotional, with long stretches of cinematic ambience, some shimmering strings, glistening melodies, lush harmonies, bits of piano, and some amazingly expressive drumming.
All Of A Sudden also includes a bonus disc, an entire remix of the album, each track reworked by a different artist. Jesu turns the epic opener into a fuzzier, blissier, and toward the end a MUCH heavier beast. Adem's remix is all low key and abstract, acoustic guitars, simple percussion and glistening chimes, a whispery shadow of the original. The Paper Chase wraps the original track in a glorious swirl of murky ambience, adding a stuttery drum machine rhythm and all sorts of strange sonic filigree. Mountains gives their track a serious Pop Ambient makeover, stretched out and languorous, swirling and shimmery, ending with a long expanse of solo piano. Four Tet's reimagination is the most dramatic, a blissed out shuffling electronic workout, all processed drums, shuffling and skittering, with the original track nestled beneath layers of synth fuzz and strange subtle FX. Finally, labelmates Eluvium transform the album closer into a fuzzy smear of pixelated ambience, that builds and builds, much like the original, but in this version, into a blown out, super distorted fuzzy dreamscape.
Two version of the same record, both stunning! So recommended.
Now available on vinyl! And the lp version also includes the bonus remix cd...
We've always been fans of Explosions In The Sky. One of the post Mogwai, post Godspeed outfits so adept at crafting super epic and emotional instrumental soundscapes -- post rock, math rock, jangly pop, chamber music, all sort of whipped into grandiose cinematic swells. But past records, while sounding amazing, with the right balance of mood and metal, hush and heaviness, still stuck a little too close to the template of their forbears. EITS were like the perfect mix of Godspeed and old more bombastic Mogwai. And not much more. Nothing wrong with that really, it just never totally blew us away.
But All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is different. And it does blow us away. In a big way. It still sounds like EITS, and thus still sounds a bit like Godspeed and Mogwai, but like any great band in the last 20 years, it's not who you steal from, or what you steal, it's how you make what you steal your own. And EITS have made epic instrumental post rock all their own. The opener is everything this sort of music could and should be. Super dense and dramatic, spacious and emotional, opening with keening high end melodies over big jangly guitar strum and huge percussive For Those About To Rock blasts, the guitars slowly intertwining and drifting off, fading to a moody minor key post rock drift, underpinned by layer after layer of fuzzy blissy guitar and a motorik rhythmic shuffle before the completely perfect bridge, a spaced out melody, all dynamic and epic, that will definitely give you goosebumps, before launching into a full on heavy math rock groove, incorporating that same hair raising melody, with some killer drumming and a veritable orchestra of guitars.
The rest of the record plays out in similar, albeit slightly less bombastic fashion. Each track perfectly leading into the next, an expansive post rock epic, separated into movements, chiming guitars, thick riffs, each track gloriously tangled and emotional, with long stretches of cinematic ambience, some shimmering strings, glistening melodies, lush harmonies, bits of piano, and some amazingly expressive drumming.
The All Of A Sudden lp also includes a cd, which contains an entire remix of the album, each track reworked by a different artist. Jesu turns the epic opener into a fuzzier, blissier, and toward the end a MUCH heavier beast. Adem's remix is all low key and abstract, acoustic guitars, simple percussion and glistening chimes, a whispery shadow of the original. The Paper Chase wraps the original track in a glorious swirl of murky ambience, adding a stuttery drum machine rhythm and all sorts of strange sonic filigree. Mountains gives their track a serious Pop Ambient makeover, stretched out and languorous, swirling and shimmery, ending with a long expanse of solo piano. Four Tet's reimagination is the most dramatic, a blissed out shuffling electronic workout, all processed drums, shuffling and skittering, with the original track nestled beneath layers of synth fuzz and strange subtle FX. Finally, labelmates Eluvium transform the album closer into a fuzzy smear of pixelated ambience, that builds and builds, much like the original, but in this version, into a blown out, super distorted fuzzy dreamscape.
Two versions of the same record, both stunning! So recommended.
You might already be a big fan of Explosions In The Sky, or you might already unknowingly be familiar with the swelling post-rock sounds of this Austin, TX band via the telly... Either way you'll surely welcome How Strange Innocence. Now a few albums under their belt, E.I.T.S.'s debut full length gets a warm (remastered, repackaged and reissued) 'welcome back' by those fine folks at Temporary Residence Ltd. We've said it before with regards to the band's later releases and we'll say it again about this one, if you dig epic, atmospheric instrumentals a la those of sprawlingly expansive Scots Mogwai, E.I.T.S. very adeptly fills the bill as their American counterpart. An impressive feat to accomplish on a debut.
It's hard to know what to say about these guys. Every record of theirs is great, moody, emotional, lush and layered, smoldering one second, explosive the next, and while instrumental post rock bands may be a dime a dozen, few can match the depth and emotion of EITS (or Mogwai, or Godspeed for that matter). It says something that even though there are a million bands doing something similar, it only takes a few seconds to recognize Explosions. Not sure if it's the sound, the arrangements, the production, or all of those, but they have a sound that is so distinctly their own, all they have to do is play, and we're whisked away.
The opening track here is actually quite a weird one by EITS standards, beginning with some strange samples, a looped rhythm, before the drums come in, some stately piano, and some soaring high end guitar, within seconds the vibe is stirring and intense, a chiming reverbed melody drifts in, and we're gone, this is the sound of warm Summer days, of walking through the woods with friends, it's the musical version of Super8 films of small towns, and late nights, the sound so evocative and expressive, shimmering chords all hazy and washed out, the rhythm oddly loping, everything fading out leaving just fingerpicked acoustic guitar, a weird hiccuping rhythm, distant whirs, some softly tangled melodies, and then when the song picks up again, it's crystalline and sun dappled and so gorgeous, the sound growing more and more lush and layered, not necessarily loud or bombastic, before finally fading out.
The rest of the record plays out exactly how you might expect/hope, warm languid chords drift over hazy dreamy expanses of blissy ambience, big drums pound over lush soaring chords and woozy melodies, post rockisms abound, those sort of loping rhythms, and that distinctive guitar/drum interplay, but EITS add all sorts of subtle (and not so subtle) colorations, little bits of electronic flutter, lush liquid horn like melodies, thick chordal swells, tribal tom fills, layer after layer of guitars crating strangely haunting harmonies, a few bursts of almost explosive heaviness, the final track maybe our favorite of the bunch, with weirdly processed voices, blurred into an atmospheric haze, the drums subtle and skittery, the guitars almost jazzy, soft piano chords, very softly psychedelic, sort of droned out and dreamy, and the track does have a few crescendos, crunchy and heavy and soaring, but those moments are brief, with most of the track spent drifting and brooding. A gorgeous sonic denouement, hushed and haunting, and so so good.
Some of the most amazing packaging EVER. Both the cd and the lp sleeves fold out into a little house, the artwork on the outside of the house, all wood and stone, ivy, a chimney, the wooden door, a mailbox full of letters, some old bikes leaned against the house, inside a fireplace, some old frames leaning against the wall, hardwood floors, an old telephone, with the receiver off the hook, the window and the door open revealing storm clouds and a tornado in the distance. Even the underneath is printed with the framing under the floor of the house. And there's a poster of the land the house sits on, right down to the empty foundation and the surrounding land on one side, the dirt and roots on the other. WOW.
The second full length from these Austin, Texas post-rockers is quite simply gorgeous. Five ultra dreamy and dynamic and lengthy instrumentals that are totally steeped in hopefulness and longing. They introduce The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place with a delicate lonely guitar line which is gradually joined by the rest of the band, building the heartrending tension for nearly six minutes at which time things give way leaving only the bass guitar with the original solitary guitar. Further into the proceedings that same prettily picked guitar climbs the other mighty effected guitars like ivy on the formidable walls of an old British Manor. Pretty darn great!
So o.k., there's nothing new about post rock. There's a million bands that sound like Mogwai. There's a million bands that sound like Godspeed You Black Emperor. Every other band we see has q-u-i-e-t parts...and...then...LOUD CRASHING parts. You know the
It shouldn't come as a huge surprise to anyone to discover that Texas epic post rockers Explosions In The Sky have scored a film, after all, they're probably best know for providing the dramatic sonic accompaniment to the TV show Friday Night Lights, not to mention having various songs of theirs popping up all over the pop culture landscape. But hell, why not, their music is epic and moving, sprawling and explosive, understated and majestic,, who wouldn't look to EITS for a few seconds of epic instrumental swell, or brooding emo majesty, their music even sans imagery, evokes on its own the sort of heart wrenching emotion and fragility that indie film makers have been trafficking in for ever. The key being, that somehow these guys could make that music sound true and heartfelt, deep and original, in a field populated by hundreds of EITS wannabes, only Explosions themselves have truly nailed it, masters of gorgeous and emotional post rock soundscapery, which again, makes it not so surprising that some indie filmmaker would tap them for a score/soundtrack. What IS sort of surprising, is that Prince Avalanche is mostly acoustic, with songs that generally hover around the two minute mark, never going longer than five minutes, with the instrumentation mostly piano and acoustic guitar, with most of the tracks hushed and spare and delicate. We're not sure who David Wingo is, but we're guessing he's a piano player, considering that much of Prince Avalanche is driven by lovely lyrical piano lines.
There is still definitely an Explosions feel to the compositions, but as short as they are, much of the brooding slowbuilds that defined their sound as been swapped out in favor of something more intimate, and immediately dramatic, haunting minor key guitars are strummed and gently fingerpicked, beneath dreamy washes of melancholic piano, there are strings here and there, woodwinds too, it does sound very 'indie film' which is not a bad thing, but at times, you can almost picture the trailer in your head. Elsewhere Explosions and Wingo make that sound their own, like on the very Explosions sounding "Join Me On My Avalanche", one of the only tracks with drums, and one of the few to extend beyond 2 minutes, but it's got a classic Explosions feel, a sprawling brooder, with driving drums, percolating synths, a sort of post rock / kosmische hybrid, underpinned by more minor key acoustic guitar strum and some Polyphonic Spree like vox, and yet even here, it's somehow still easy to imagine that part in the movie's trailer (which we haven't seen) when everything comes to a head, and gets really dramatic, the music here perfectly capturing that emotional tension and cathartic release. Gorgeous stuff for sure. Not as bombastic and epic as other Explosions records, but then these songs were meant for something else entirely. Lovely stuff. Includes a fold out insert and a sticker. And for local folks, while they last, we've got passes to the movie's SF screenings, free with purchase!
We were sent a whole batch of cd-r's from this mysterious group Expo '70, and all the various cd-r covers were designed to look like old seventies krautrock or free jazz records. Which definitely grabbed our attention. Plus they're called Expo '70, so while we weren't exactly sure what to expect, we were definitely thinking it was bound to be good. And boy were we right. This is good. Great in fact. But that wasn't all, the faux vintage covers and the band name ended up being seriously indicative of the sounds within. Gorgeous drifting ethereal krautrocky ambience is what Expo '70 is all about, and eyes closed, you'd be hard pressed to not think this was some Ash Ra Tempel disc or some long lost A.R. and The Machines lp. Crafted entirely from guitars, sitar and Moog, each track here is some sort of lengthy, mesmerizingingly blissed out minimal drone jam. Guitar figures are looped into hypnotic cycles, over shimmery whirls of fuzzy sound and distant drones, the looped riffs slowly shifting and gently changing shape. It's almost like some sort of new age space rock Steve Reich. Swirling FX surround warm deep guitar tones floating weightless in a glistening expanse of muted color and twinkling sonic sparkles. So completely blissful and dreamlike and captivating. One of our favorite new discoveries.
Fans of far out krautrock, deep dark drone, and outerspace guitar exploration will be in absolute heaven, or at the very least in some darkened room, in a trance, drifting off to some druggy dreamy other dimension...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've sort of been inundated with dreamy new sounds from this one man drugblissdrone krautrock revivalist outfit. We're definitely not complaining though. We absolutely can NOT get enough of Expo 70's drawn out guitarscapes, extended spaced out kraut raga drones, churning and pulsing and throbbing, spacey synths and thick rumbling guitars all tangled into haunting sonic transmissions. We're just sort of scrambling to get them all reviewed. So we figured we'd start with this one, the latest, a two track missive that is so dense and layered it might as well be two HUNDRED tracks. Especially since we find ourselves setting the cd player to repeat and just drifting off...
The two tracks here are further examples of Expo 70's washed out space rock SUNNO))) sound, both tracks begin as soft swirls of synth and FX, tripped out and abstract, keening high end, rumbling low end, guitars wiggle and squiggle, all very chaotic but still drone-y and meditative, the first track doesn't deviate too much, the guitars are warm throbs, underpinned by a thick wash of buzzing synth, eventually sloughing off all the FX, leaving just a gorgeous Niblock like minimal drone. But the second track, is quickly subsumed by huge walls of crumbling fuzzed out slow motion riffage, super processed though, so instead of sounding downtuned or even heavy, it just sounds even MORE spacey, and thick and warm and druggy, a single riff, pulled apart and looped over and over and over, super mesmerizing, droning and drifting along through a field of distant fuzz and buzz and warm swaths of subtle synth, eventually fading out leaving nothing but tolling bells... So great.
Packaged in thick textured blue paper mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi.
And as always, these are of course SUPER LIMITED -- just a mere 100 copies, of which we got a majority share! -- and will most likely fly out of here...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Another gorgeous slab of spaced out krautrocky ambience from Expo' 70, this one a live, completely improvised performance back in 2004, with the band expanded to a trio. And if folks' reaction to the first three Expo 70's releases is anything to go by, then these will be flying out of here in no time as well.
For those yet to discover the sublime joys of Expo '70, these guys (usually just one guy, Justin Wright) traffic in glistening dreamlike kosmiche drift. A krautrock that is less about propulsion and rhythm and more about texture and ambience, think Ash Ra Tempel, AR & The Machines, Tangerine Dream, Eno, Popol Vuh. Guitars aren't strummed and picked, they are sort of allowed to unwind, long glistening strands of reverberating buzz unfurl and float into the hazy ether. Synthesizers unleash a similarly disembodied sonic vibe, soft clouds of fuzzy whir and distant chordal warmth. Very much the sonic equivalent to drifting down a warm summer stream, on your back, watching the clouds drift by, the trees on the shore shimmer and sway. Or maybe more accurately, floating in the vacuum of space, everything weightless, untethered and drifting lazily through the inky blackness. The light of stars and suns bends and twists, slowly cycling through the visible spectrum, disobeying all laws of physics, wrapping you in a thick swirl of sonic brilliance. This music has to be the work of some immortal group of dronelords, sitting in their multidimensional fortress, atop some mysterious lost mountain, who in their infinite wisdom, allow their dreamlike drones and angelic ambience to fall from the sky and settle over us like a light dusting of snow...
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We LOVE Expo '70. They're playing in SF this week, two shows that will be over by the time you read this. And we might not even get to go, 'cause we're too busy writing reviews, like this one... oh the bitter irony. But even if we miss them live (which would be a shame) we're still in Expo '70 heaven 'cause they've brought us two brand new cd-rs!! (And, there's also a new release on a real cd too, Animism, which we'll list next time!) Wow. That's a lot of Expo '70, but their krautrock inspired instrumental ambience is an expansive sound, that can easily sprawl across the full length of a cd or cd-r in just a track or two...and therefore can also spread beyond, occupying several near-simultaneous releases with no diminishment to our enjoyment. We're happy to hear it go on, and on, and on eternally. Expo overload, no, too much is never enough.
So, this one... Mystical Amplification. With song titles making reference to such things as "Mountainous Caverns Of Black Arts" and Konstantin Raudive's research into EVP (a la the Ghost Orchid) it's easy enough to say things like this music is haunting and mystical... mystical amplification, heck that's the title. The Expo '70 guys are doing all our work for us. The four long tracks (we like how the songs are split into a "side 1" and "side 2" when listed on the sleeve, even though it's of course all on one side of this cd-r) are all one-take improvs, with mainman Justin Wright on electric guitar ("with plenty of effects", all right) and his current Expo associate McKinley Jones playing a Moog synth. Spaced out and psychedelic trips much more on the "kosmische" tip than their Kansas City origin would suggest... this is all buzzing droning bliss, no drums or vocals to reign it in to human scale, just cosmic textures galore, often soothing, and a little bit ominous. There are moments that vaguely sound like Robert Fripp or Eddie Hazel jamming with Klaus Schulze, both of 'em dreamy and drowsy from drugs. Or imagine a mellower SUNNO))), teamed up with Space Machine, perhaps, getting all yogic on us with some abstract instrumental, electronic om-chants. Sleepy, slowly swirling, hissing and purring over quietly churning low-end depths...
By the way, this is slightly (a buck) more expensive than all the other Expo '70 cd-rs 'cause of the attractive vinyl-style gatefold packaging.
Finally! A new record from one of our favorite purveyors of kosmische kraut-psych and spaced out synthscapery, Expo '70! AND it's on one of our favorite labels, Essence (along with a new one from Japanese psych crew Up-Tight, elsewhere on this week's list). And while we'll have the standard version of this new Expo '70, this is in fact a PRE-ORDER for the super deluxe, super fancy, handmade BOX SET version, which comes not only with a bonus disc, but also housed in a crazy pyramid shaped box. It's limited to 99 copies and that's IT. We might be able to get 20, but we're only getting as many as we get pre-orders for, so if you want one, order it now, we'll get them in sometime in the next few weeks, and they can either ship with your current order, or on their own. You will be charged for the box now, but then the shipping will be sorted out when we actually send the box (and it'll ship by weight, not as 1 item). And if you're already a fan, you're definitely gonna want one of these, the pyramid box is super striking, psychedelic inks and textures, in a carefully constructed 'handmade cosmic pyramidal boxset', that unfolds revealing still more artwork, and along with the new record proper, it also includes an exclusive bonus album, a cd-r called All Hues From Beneath A Velvet Cloud, and is ONLY available in this box. So needless to say, Expo nerds grab one before they are gone.
As for Virtually From The Unknown, it's another gorgeously sprawling cosmic sonic missive, the opening track clocking in at 31 minutes, a smoldering slow burning epic, all swirling synths, cascading keyboard textures, minimum motorik drumming, layers and drones, the sound eventually building to a dark dolorous psych-kraut drift, and then exploding into some seriously muscular space rock, all deep rumbling drones, powerful drumming, thick almost SUNNO))) like riffage, eventually launching into a full on navy psych blowout, all wild drum damage and thick squalls of freakout guitar, tethered to a furious galloping groove. Worth it for that track alone for sure, but there's of course more. The stonery psych of "Closet Full Of Candles" is a loping space doom juggernaut, with some wild distort leads, and some sick, thick bass buzz, sorta like Kyuss via Hawkwind, slowly working its way up to another in-the-red crescendo. Finally, there's the 17 + minute closer, awesomely titled "Planet Ego, The Astral Return To Yourself", which lays down distant guitar rumbles, beneath swirls of alien FX and squiggly laser blast blort, the background guitar buzz gradually gaining momentum, a thick slow moving swell, eventually overtaking the sound effects, and finishing off as a blurred, downtuned space-drone, before gradually drifting off, and leaving shimmery contrails of fast fading FX. So good, of course. And as we mentioned above, we'll be able to get about 20 copies of this box, and that's IT. So if you want one, order it now. We'll charge you and let you know when it arrives. If you're after the normal version, let us know that too, and we can put you down for one of those, but this listing is specifically for folks who want to nab one of the boxes before they're gone for good.
This latest cosmic missive of astral axe exploration and celestial synth trippery finds Expo 70 once again in one man band mode (after a handful of releases as a duo). For this improvised sonic excursion, it's once again just Expo 70 mainman Justin Wright, manning the controls (which in this case, means guitar, analog drum machine and synthesizers), and weaving thick droned out heaviness alongside more abstract shimmer. The opening track "mark Of The Rising Mantis", begins with a swirl of bleeps and bloops, a constant cascade of glittering electronics, hazy and spacey, when all of a sudden, the guitar comes swooping in, distorted and crumbling, the vibe thick and SUNN-like, we were prepared for some serious epic dirgery, but instead, it fades out after a few cycles, only to drift directly into "Luminous Traveler", which much more serene and meditative, a muted starfield of percolating melodies, a slow build to something much more seventies new age krautrock sounding, spidery guitars wound around thick cinematic synth swirls, a gauzy droned out alien raga that builds and builds before fading back into the ether, the sound thick and heavily layered (the tracks here created from multiple improvs), dense and dark and ominously dreamy, like other Expo jams, the soundtrack to drifting into the blackness of space.
After a brief bit of washed out abstract outer space ambience, chugging guitars floating in a field of flute like melodies and woozy electronic pulsars, a deepening drone, growing ever more dense, the record shifts gears a bit, with "Backmasking Deeper Than Darkness", which starts out as another bleary bit of guitarsynth drift, only to quickly gain momentum, the sound coalescing into an old school style soundtracky synth soundtracky synthscape, pulsing melodies suddenly bolstered by the appearance of the drum machine, a murky throb, that gives the track a sinister motorik momentum, that plays out like the score to some chase through the stars. Those drum machines move to the fore on the final track, the evocatively titled "Pulsing Rings Of Ice", which like the previous tracks, definitely have us imagining some strange alien world, in this case, an abandoned ice planet, where the listener is stranded alone, or ALMOST alone. Ominous and brooding, the skeletal almost-rhythm anchoring the billowing clouds of warm chordal thrum in the first few minutes, builds to a tranced out krautdrone pulse, a skittery stripped down beat that drives this sprawl of future-synth tension, super cinematic, the final chase through the icy caves beneath the surface, flickering shadows, and a terrifyingly unknowable future.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!! These are very likely the only copies we'll be able to get. Pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl, and includes a download code!!
It's been harder and harder to know what to write about Expo 70 records lately. Besides being uber prolific, we've pretty much exhausted out psychedelic stoner space rock thesaurus. Thankfully, this new one changes things up enough to give us something new to work with. Mostly the addition of rhythm, which the band have employed in the past, but never to such an extent. Sure they remain spacey, and psychedelic, and new age-y, and drifty and dreamy, and druggy, and washed out, hazy and gauzy and cosmic and kosmiche, and we could go on, but here, they open up their latest record with what might be their most chaotic and sonically dense jam yet. Starting off all stumbly and abstract, with skittery programmed beats, and loosely strummed guitars, some amp buzz and bits of glitch and random crunch, but then those sounds gradually begin to coalesce, the guitars super reverbed, the rhythms looped and mesmeric, the guitars getting more intense, and more driving, multiple loops and melodies layered, eventually some proper riffs entering the equation, churning beneath clouds of those looped melodies, all the while, that rhythm skitters away, the song getting louder and louder, more intense, easily on of the heaviest things we've heard from these guys in a while, bordering on White Hills / Heads territory there for a minute, before fading back into something much more tranced out and meditative.
And while the rest of the record isn't quite so dense or heavy, the songs definitely display both a cool sort of jammy looseness, as well a penchant for something darker and more dense than usual. "Seven Serpents" minus some spidery guitars is a lush undulating expanse of layered synths, and warm whirling dronemusic, definitely cosmic, and spaced out, minimal, and super mesmerizing. "Growing Mushrooms Of Potency" starts off with a sky full of BBC Radiophonic Workshop / sci-fi bleeps and bloops, before another lo-fi skittery rhythm comes in, and then finally some low slung bass, and some shimmery organ, and we're in full on intergalactic drift mode, dodging stray FX and clouds of celestial glimmer, and then at the very end, the sound shifts, and becomes intensely dark and ominous, like some sort of soundtracky Umberto style creepdrone, which fades out WAY to soon. And then finally, "Heartfelt Moon Tripper" finishes things off with what begins as a hazy big of new age-y shimmer, all glistening crystalline clouds and warm whirring chordal drifts, until about half way through, a dark heartbeat like pulse surfaces, and dense little guitar tangles begin to loop and layer, until the hazy opening layers are shed completely, and replaced with a deep ominous thrum, wound around that sinister pulse, all surrounded by streaks of jagged melody and howling echo drenched sheets of guitar swirl, until a brief bit of Zombi / Goblin like cinematic synthscapery ushers the song to its more ethereal conclusion.
Cassette version coming soon too, btw.
More epic and dense heart-of-the-sun blissed out heavy space drones from Expo 70. And the thing is, we're running out of superlatives, we can only gush so much before we run out of new things to say, which is especially difficult when every record is as good as if not better than the last. So do forgive us if we're repeating ourselves, but hell, any one into spaced out heaviness, and droneprogbliss, who hasn't heard Expo 70 is missing out on one might just be their favorite band EVER.
Like past records, Expo 70 suck the essence out of every Hawkwind record, the soul of every Tangerine Dream record, and filter it through filter of SUNNO))) black hole heaviness, and come up with their own unique psychedelic space rock krautdrone, a sound we just can't get enough of. Expansive and sprawling, dark and meditative, washed out and dreamy, heavy and layered, the opening track on Sonic Messenger is a crushing chunk of low end rumble and pulse, which immediately gives way to some ultra hushed bliss, which smolders and flickers and expands in slow motion like a time lapse film of a planet being birthed. And so it goes, rhythms surface and blink out, guitars groan and whir and weep, synths wheeze and unfurl glimmering sheets of sound, the guitars sometimes coalesce into psychedelic almost-leads, but more often than not fade into clouds of hazy reverb and ethereal delay, the record closes with a 21 minute slow burn that is subtly fierce, a muted ominous swell of sound, wrapped in airy tendrils of fragmented melody, and swaths of gritty texture, a brooding and intense stretch of dreamy darkness.
Once again Expo 70 deliver the divine drugged out sonic space drone bliss.
And while they last (only 150 copies!!), included is a whole extra disc, an actual cd, not a cd-r, 50 more minutes of blissed out krautdrone space psych ambience. Three long long long songs, much more hushed and almost new age sounding that the record proper, except for the first 22 minute jam, that builds to a frenzied psychedelic freak out coda.
Deluxe packaging too, a glossy full color mini hardcover book-like sleeve, while the bonus disc comes in a cardboard sleeve, but there are instructions how to get some bonus stuff for the limited cd via the label's website. Cool!
Latest (vinyl-only) chunk of kosmische spacekraut exploration from long time aQ faves Expo 70, for this recording expanded to a duo, consisting of Expo 70 main man Justin Wright, along with his occasional collaborator Matt Hill, aka recent Record Of The Week honoree Umberto. Together they conjure four sprawling smoldering tracks of galaxian space drone mesmer spread out over four vinyl sides. While it seemed like on other recent Expo 70 records, that Wright and Co. were slowly moving toward a heavier sound, dipping into occasional SUNNO))) territory, the sounds here are seem more tranquil and blissed out, although the addition of Hill gives some of these songs a distinctly haunting soundtrack vibe...
The opening track offers up some subtle minimal drum machines, more textural than rhythmic, drifting on a warm whirling sea of shimmering sonic swells and hazy soft focus drones, everything gauzy and washed out, the soundtrack to a sky full of solar flares, blurred and indistinct, bleary eyed and blissful The guitars do gain some momentum, wrapped in reverb and sent spinning into the ether, but everything stays grounded, a dreamlike abstract soft sonic drift.
The second track definitely seems to reflect the presence of Umberto mainman Hill, immediately unfurling a thick swatch of buzzing drone, a haunting ominous tense bit of ambience, streaks of minor key melody, all underpinned by squelchy low end synths and warm washes of synthesized strings, the whole thing sounding like Umberto or Zombi filtered through Expo 70. There are some brief stretches where the low end becomes a bit more corrosive, but it dissipates quickly, leaving synth shadows and melodic traces, to gradually fade into the cosmos.
The second record begins again with some thick droning synths, layered into softly pulsing streaks, wheezing and whirring elegantly, and ominously, building a mysterious background, over which the duo lay swoonsome strings and maudlin piano, it's all very cinematic and soundtracky and classical, like the score to some lost Italian giallo, again like some hybrid of Umberto and Expo 70 (which it essentially is), one can almost picture the strange psychedelic colors, and constantly flitting shadows, some crumbling old villa set atop a hill, beneath a burnt black sky, tense and moody and gloriously creepy.
The final track/side begins with a cloud of processed guitars, wreathed in delay and reverb, a warm swirl of buzz and pulse, that gradually grows more lush and full, hazy and druggy, the drum machine from the first track returns, again adding texture (but this time a little propulsion as well), the swirl of guitars smooth out into something much more hypnotic, before everything seems to meltdown in a soft psychedelic squall, streaks of spaced out effects, fragmented melodies, shuffling rhythms buried beneath clouds of hiss and whir and static buzz, a warm whirling stretch of soft chaos, that soon morphs into a muted murky bit of outer space shimmer, that gradually disappears into the vast endless blackness, like a dying star. Epic and fantastic.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, pressed on super thick virgin vinyl, and housed in a fancy old style tip-on gatefold jackets. Includes a download code as well...
Most folks probably know Pat Maherr (if they know the name at all) as the man behind Indignant Senility, whose Caretaker like vinyl manipulations and alterations has us smitten, his Plays Wagner found him taking old dusty record of Wagner symphonies and operas and processing them and running them through filters and twisting them all up and layering them into gorgeous washed out ephemeral ambience. But apparently when Maherr is not manipulating old classical records and crafting strangely baroque ambience, he has a bit of a thing for hip hop. And not just ANY hip hop, no the strain of hip hop affectionately referred to as 'chopped & screwed', named for the late great DJ Screw, who would take popular rap records and slow em way down, creating something way more druggy and tripped out, the perfect soundtrack for sipping sizurp, a distinctly Southern concoction which involves mixing cough syrup with soda, and sometimes Jolly Ranchers!
Maherr adopted the bizarre pseudonym Expressway Yo-Yo Dieting for his own experiments with screwed hip hop. And as if you even needed to be told, this shit is WAY more tweaked and warped, not just slowed down, but all twisted up, the beats pulled apart, the voices all messed up, the originals totally unrecognizable, the result of Maherr's manipulations, is some woozy, warbly, warped electronic lurch and lumber, the voices syrupy and moan-some, the beats, crackly and skittery, all the other sounds blurred and smeared into strange shapes, weird textures. It sounds a lot like an Indignant Senility hip hop remix, or a bit like how you might imagine it would feel to down extensive quantities of horse tranquilizers and super potent acid, before floating in a swimming pool in the middle of the night listening to KMEL or WILD 94.9 on a seriously booming system, with your ears just under the surface of the water. Totally wacked and demented and tripped out and awesome. Not necessarily for hip hop heads, but for anyone into druggy beats and fiercely fucked up weirdness.
