The lovely Vancouver singer/songwriter Ida Nilsen came through town while on tour opening for The Waterboys. Why? Well, story has it that she covered one of their songs on her last album, and band leader Mike Scott caught pleasant wind of it. He also invited her to help out with the recording of their new album.
Anyhoo, Ms Ida kindly dropped off a batch of her new full length How They Fly, and it's terrific! She's buddies with many Canadian aQ faves too, particularly from the Mint Records stable of artists. Everything is warm and comforting about Great Aunt Ida's music -- her singing, the well-placed entrance of horns, a nicely recorded piano, some understated electric guitar. We can see why Mr. Scott among others have taken a shine to her music. While it's rooted in country folk, there's also glimmers of '70s West Coast soft rock and '90s indie girl pop. So nice, she just might become our new Canadian darling!
With the teeny-tiny baroque logo on the back branding Great Lakes as a member of the Elephant 6 collective, The Great Lakes provide a smidgen of 60s psychedelia, an instantly forgettable pop hook or two, and the envy of wanting to be as good as Jeff Magnum (Neutral Milk Hotel), but not really coming close.
The Great Northwest combine hazily effected guitar textures, clean acoustic pick'n'strum, chiming toy box melodies, and sleepy head vocals into one lush, lullingly lovely listen. So inviting, you can't resist melting into these warm, drowsy songs. Each one is drenched with dreamy atmosphere, but never drifts too far from its central pop song structure. Grand and expansive. Whimsical and intimate with a gentle plaintiveness. We sense that the band draws ample inspiration from the Beatles and Pink Floyd as well as the unmistakably '70s west coast soft rock. Thus, they fits in splendidly alongside bands such as Radar Brothers, Sparklehorse or their labelmates Fredrik. Speaking of which, this was released on The Kora Records who treated us to the sounds of Fredrik and Stricken City a few months back. With such a wonderful recent one-two punch, we figured we'd better pay closer attention to this fine label who also put out the Aidan Baker Scalpel cd and a couple of Gregor Samsa albums a few years back. What a terrific track record so far! So yeah, we're backtrackin' a little bit, but figure even though this came out in 2008, it's still new to us and perhaps to you as well. Very recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
'80s punk-folk ala the Shimmy Disc canon, but from Columbus, Ohio. Come on, you remember: Great Plains were the ones who asked the eternal question "Why do punk rock boys go out with new wave girls?" And Great Plains guy Ron House went on to front The Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments. This double cd collection includes most of the songs from their Homestead and Shadowline releases in addition to a few some more hard-to-find songs. 'Bout time this stuff was reissued!
All it takes is about 30 seconds of the opening track, the awesomely titled "Temple Lurker", on this debut full length from Chicago psych rockers The Great Society Mind Destroyers, to realize these guys are serious psych freeks and are here to drag us into a drugged out sonic stupor of unparalleled proportions. Their initial squall of White Heaven like freak-out had us expecting a nonstop barrage of wild shred and drum chaos, but instead, the band settle into something much more trancey and hypnotic, thick undulating basslines, wah wah guitars, and dense busy drumming, all blurred into a thick cloud of propulsive psychedelic mesmer, the sort of motorik spaced out psych that should have fans of Wooden Shjips, Comets On Fire, and the like losing their shit. And while TGSMD share much with those groups, their sound is also much more poppy, definitely reminding us of Bardo Pond too in that sort hazy washed out dreaminess, but the band do have some freak-out in them, after lulling you into a dreamy drugged out state, they'll blast you with another blown out burst of psych-noise chaos, only to slip right back into the groove. And it's only the first track!
"Divinorum" offers up more of the same, but this time more rocking, reminding us of Loop, or a heavier Spacemen 3, the band locked tight, the drums a force to be reckoned with, somehow as psychedelic as the guitars, the groop getting lost in endless jams, we're talking White Hills, Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, Burnt Hills, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, 3 Leafs, The Heads, in a perfect world, these guys would be just as well know, as it is we can only imagine it's just a matter of time.
"Samsara Drag" is the shortest track here, and also maybe the poppiest, but even this brief blast of popsyke displays much of what makes these guys so good, soaring swirling guitars, shuffling propulsive drumming, those hazy dreamlike vox, the only difference is, the song never explodes into a heart of the sun psychedelic freak-out, but then, that's what the rest of the record is for. "Equation Of Time" is another short(ish) one, at nearly six minutes, and the band meld a woozy almost droney dirge, and a delicate washed out intro, to wicked gouts of wild distorted psych, evolving into a fierce blown out jam, that sounds like it could have gone on forever. "Now Riot!" finds the band doing what they do best, seemingly continuing on from the album opener, before slipping into "Mystic Warriors", which sounds remarkably like aQ faves Cave, which makes sense, as there is definitely a Cave / TGSMD connection, but where Cave take their sound, lock it in, and get lost in a sort of krautbliss, these guys add hazy vocals, wrap everything in dense wah guitar, let the sounds slowly ooze and spread, everything seeming the bleed and blur, the drums the main constant, pounding and anchoring and keeping everything else from just floating away.
And then finally, there's the nearly 10 minute closer "Higher Bodies", which starts out a slow abstract brooder, then gradually evolves into a field of distorted guitar skree, before finally blossoming into a gorgeous expanse of dreamy, gauzy psych pop, woozy and laid back, sun dappled and drug drenched, and while this might be THE JAM, drawn out and droney, the sort of set ender that depending on the crowd could extend into the wee hours, but the band gets to stretch out big time, the effects are everywhere, the vocals loose and dreamily chaotic, the song splintering midway through, into what sounds like a symphony of malfunctioning tape players, but the band plays on, that loping psychedelic groove, swaddled in a tripped out cloud of shimmer and glitch and that gloriously twisted tape manipulation, heady and hypnotic, and again, the sort of sound you never want to end.
Super sweet packaging, nice full color psychedelic matte jackets, with a printed lyric sheet / poster inside, and if you're lucky, mixed in with the black wax are a few copies on tripped out gold and red splatter wax! Don't ask for colored vinyl, it's random, just cross your fingers (or don't worry about it since black wax sounds better anyway!!)...
It's been ages since we've heard from Yeti, the killer bombastic space/psych/prog rock band from Texas. The Great Tyrant features two of the fomer Yetis and if anything is even more bombastic, but in a bit of a new direction. Yeti definitely had some musical drama going on, a hint of Goblin, but this new band takes it WAY farther, into something weirder, more gothic and WAY more dramatic, crooned vocals, lots of piano, bells and chimes, but wrapped around some off kilter metal, a sort of blackened circusy metal, blast beats over swirling dizzying melodies, the sound weirdly new wave-y and a bit punky, with synths and twisted textures, a very dense tripped out slab of doomy blackend space pop? Or something. It's hard to describe so that must be a good thing, definitely want to hear more from these guys. The swirled colored vinyl 7" comes with a cd-r featuring 3 extra tracks and A MAGMA COVER!!!
More from the Flying Nun archives and we couldn't be happier. This particular artifact comes courtesy of David and Hamish Kilgour, who formed the Great Unwashed right after the break up of legendary pop group the Clean, this record recorded in 1983, and fans of the Clean will of course hear much of that group in the Great Unwashed. In fact, folks who have flipped out over the recent Flying Nun collections Tally Ho and Time To Go, most likely dug the killer GU tracks included on both (both included here). The vibe of the Great Unwashed is a sort of woozy home brewed effects laced psychedelic jangle pop, heavy on the Syd Barrett vibe, the music loose and ramshackle, lush and layered and jangly one second, more woozy and minor key the next, the vox a sort of mumbled croon, occasionally slipping into a haunting falsetto, the music drifting easily into some haunting Pink Floyd like psych pop just as easily as something more distinctly classic NZ indie pop sounding. And like much of the NZ pop of the time, while on the surface everything may seem jangly and super poppy, there's a dark undercurrent of droniness and subtle minor key malevolence, whether it's simply a sort of Velvets style droned out hypno-strum or some dark almost Birthday Party-ish twang draped over the otherwise dreamy jangle, or even the occasional bit of tripped out psychedelic effects, or in places a bit of gloomy dirgery (moments definitely remind us of fellow Kiwis the Pin Group).
Another essential Flying Nun / NZ indie rock classic, finally available again. Pressed on thick vinyl, and housed in an old school Stoughton tip on style sleeve. Sadly, no download coupon though.
We're constantly shocked by the fetishization of the eighties, the music, the fashion, it was really only a matter of time, and yeah, folks who didn't grow up in the eighties probably have a way different perspective, but we're even more shocked by how good some of the new wave of eighties worship has been sounding to us lately. Culminating in this, a new 7" from Greatest Hits, a pretty apropos name considering, they sort of do sound like a strange amalgamation of various eighties hits.
Beginning as if it was coming out of an old transistor radio, the song quickly swoops out and explodes from the speakers, a fantastically cheesy burst of kaleidoscopic sound, a sort of super danceable eighties pop, fuzzy, and groovy, and crazy catchy, lots of electronics, drum machines, even some 'scratching'(!), but it's all just a little twisted up, the vocals sometimes chopped and looped, the sounds a bit distorted, everything a little bit twisted, but at its core, it's total weirdo retro MTV eighties dance pop. The second track is murkier and darker, but still rhythmic, with woozy, funky bass, and cool strangely twisted guitars. The next track is all fuzzy and squelchy, rife with cheesy synths, girl vox, minimal drum machines, it sort of sounds a little like a weirder Vanity 6 of all things. And finally, the final track returns to the exuberant energy of the opener, sounding almost punky, with a total "Video Killed The Radio Star" or "Dancing In Heaven (Orbital Be-Bop)" vibe, lots of weird sound effects, wildly manic drum programming, some killer vocals, lots of warbly synths, all strangely reminiscent of our misspent teenage years.
As summer comes to an end, we're left with those lingering nights that offer up so much room for wandering reflection, and early mornings where all you want to do is gaze out the window and watch birds and butterflies fly free in the sky. This new outing from Green Blossoms is proving to be the absolute perfect soundtrack for those days of hazy daydreams, letting your memory and imagination flow so easily. The Green Blossoms' sound and aesthetic explores similar pastoral bliss as equally delicate and rewarding music makers like Tenniscoats, Eddie Marcon, Miko, Ethan Rose, Nagisa Ni Te, crafting a sound that has us imagining Mum, if they ditched the electronics and found a path to organic pastoral bliss.
Many wonderful sparse yet finely textured instrumentals here as well as a few stunningly beautiful tracks with Aiko Koga's vocals, that even those of us who don't understand Japanese can still totally understand, emotional and passionate, evoking the simple themes and understanding of nature and the life around us. The music of Green Blossoms is such a great reminder that sometimes the most powerful moments are conjured by the most delicate and quiet of creators. Beyond lovely! And rife with a richness that keeps us turning to this album for early afternoon naps in the park, the kind we wish we could have every single day of forever...
Some of us still remember seeing Green Day play at Gilman St. or small $5 all-ages shows in our hometowns (Phoenix, San Diego, etc.) and what a crazy evolution: from bratty, catchy pop-punk band on Lookout! to one of the most famous rock 'n' roll bands on the planet. We have to say mainstream rock could do a lot worse then Green Day, whose sound has adapted to fit the large arenas they now find themselves rocking all across the globe. For their latest you can tell they looked to the big guns of arena rock for inspiration, plenty of huge Who and Queen moments busting out on 21st Century Breakdown as well as a healthy dose of The Clash (of course). It does go on a bit longer then we think it needs to but we guess that's what all that arena rock excess is all about, right? There are definitely songs here that are already somehow stuck in our heads, and hell, for polished commercial radio rock Green Day still stand far above the rest.
This new Green Day release has a pretty amazing story attached to its making. Apparently the band completed a full album only to have it subsequently stolen. Egads! What's a band to do under those devastating circumstances? Some bands would surely throw in the towel, but if you're the Green Day boys, you do nothing of the sort. No! You start over from scratch. The results? American Idiot -- a taut, full throttle, politically and personally charged album with some really really great songs like the title track as well as "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" and the two lengthy multi-chaptered songs "Jesus Of Suburbia" and "Homecoming" that open and close the album (well, sort of, they come second and second to last). Billie Joe Armstrong has always been a razor-sharp songwriter (albeit a criminally underrated one) able to articulate his observations of both the big and small picture -- not to mention, bringing the fist-pumpin' punks and the mushy romantics together in one room without too much bloodshed -- and he more than rises to the occasion for American Idiot. His voice is in top form too as are the performances of his bandmates Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt. It's definitely their most focussed, fervent and eloquent album to date.
A side note: Andee and Elliott both noted that part of the aforementioned second song is a deadringer for "On With The Show" from the first Motley Crue record... which is definitely a good thing!
Oh dear, quite a disappointment. The title track's guitar line is a deadringer for The Kinks' "Picture Book"... except it's not a cover. Track #2 sounds not unlike a Cheap Trick tune. Plus it sounds like they've utilized that very overused Cher "Believe" vocal effect. Alas, from a band whose own sound was replicated ad infinitum by endless copycat "punk" bands. And alas, from a band whose last album was not without some fresh new sounds and directions.
Got three new releases from the Carbon label on this week's list, one being this kick ass one sided silk screened 12" from an outfit called Green Dreams, who take old school AmRep style noise rock and inject it with some serious poppiness, reminding us at times of Alice Donut (especially the vocals) and another recent aQ fave Roomrunner. Seven songs in 16 minutes, thick distorto bass, fuzzy crunchy guitars, frenetic drumming, and some seriously cool/weird vox, each song a churning tangle of wild riffage and animalistic drum pound, but rife with some serious hookiness, as well as some muscly metallic moments as well. The vibe is seriously reminiscent of Nirvana's Bleach for sure, but the whiney nasally vox definitely give the sound its own distinctive vibe. Crazy catchy and seriously infectious, heavy and noise rocking in a style that seems to be making a resurgence of late - the nineties never sounded so good!!!
The packaging is super sweet too. A folded over silkscreened eye popping almost 3D looking sleeve, the vinyl silkscreened on the B side, includes a xeroxed insert and a download code as well.
Frogs!!! Can AQ-customers resist frog recordings? We think not. Certainly we can't. This cute lil' 3" cd is the first in a series dubbed the "Jewelled Antler Library" from our fave SF cd-r label of the same name. The idea being to release stuff that stands alone in twenty-minute doses and doesn't need to be padded out to full-cd length. There'll be entries from Jewelled Antler regulars like Thuja, likeminded folks such as Dead Raven Choir and Antony Milton, and also odd, one-off quirky projects like this one, for instance. Green Laughter is primarily frog field recordings made and edited by Loren Chasse (Thuja, Id Battery, Of, Blithe Sons, etc.). It's twenty minutes of the call of the wild (featuring frogs, cicadas, and perhaps birds), starting off as a fairly straight documentary and then blending into a computer-processed drone-wash constructed by Chasse from his original recordings. It's like wandering in a dense creature-inhabited forest back East somewhere in the summertime, your ears overwhelmed by the natural sounds, you getting dizzy and almost passing out, the ribitting and chirping and buzzing and tweeting taking over your mind. But it eventually dissolves back into a blissful background ambience. Real nice. And many of the sounds on here that sound insect-like or electronic Loren assures us are in fact frogs. It's nature's electronic music, the sound of a laptop computer overwhelmed by heat and long grasses and the green laughter. Just the thing for when I (Allan) get homesick for Pennsylvania.
MPEG Download: "Green Laughter" [/audio/greenlaughter.mp3]
This second full-length album from Japan's Green Milk From The Planet Orange proclaims boldly on its sleeve that "Progressive Rock Is Not Dead"! Well, WE never thought it was anyhow, but if you yourself have doubts, a loud dose of this should correct your thinking. Though, while quite lively (and rather live-sounding too, on this recording), GMFTPO's brand of prog rock definitely does look to the past for inspiration, from cosmic psych-scapes of krautrock to the precision epics of Yes. And we're also hearing some not-entirely-welcome No Wave-ish yelping dissonance on one track here as well. But when song-lengths can hit the double digits as they do here (there's four tracks, the shortest clocking in an prog-respectable seven minutes and the longest stretching out to over 38!!) and you've got musicians capable of turning on a dime like these guys, something ELSE is gonna happen before the song's over for sure. So you get tripped out atmospheres AND fully cranked acid-rock electric guitar mayhem, prog-complex song constructs and punk raucousness. Some will find this eclecticism exhilirating (and of course somewhat typical of the genre-bending Japanese underground that we've been fans ever since the Boredoms first freaked us out years ago) while others might wish that they'd stick to one thing -- taking the Yessism all the way, or the psych guitar skree. But check 'em out (live too if possible -- they've toured the US a couple times already, and knocked out a great instore performance here at AQ last year, with the drummer playing a 'kit' jerry-rigged from empty soda cans, a tamborine, and duct tape) and see what you think... fans of AMT and DMBQ both might quite like.
Seattle quartet last seen on the Ptolemaic Terrascope's Succour compilation, who play breathtakingly-lovely, Beatles-inspired crystal clear tunes, with the occasional bonus of refreshing sitar. Will please young and old alike, we promise. And for those of you who've been ahankerin' for another Olivia Tremor Control pop (as opposed to ambient experimental) record, look no further. Green Pajamas are all that (minus the OTC's noisy edge) and more. Very Highly Recommended.
Seattle's Green Pajamas are still making their flawless blend of pretty, '60s-influenced psych-pop after 17 years and eight albums. Despite the past few years' popular resurgence of sweet pop stylings, the Green Pajamas are still sadly underappreciated, which is a pity cos they're *so good*! Imagine the Pretty Things mixed with the Kinks and the Olivia Tremor Control. This time
I don't know about you, but I was so into the grunge rock of the late eighties. Not the bandwagon jumping, flannel shirt wearing bullshit that came a little later (that's the crap that deservedly caused the grunge backlash), I'm talking the first wave, the small group of bands that melded snotty punk rock and huge Sabbathy riffs, head banging and slam dancing, sloppy drunken free-for-alls and actual songwriting chops: Soundgarden (before they became an MTV cartoon), Tad, the Fluid, Blood Circus, Afghan Whigs, Nirvana, Skin Yard, Love Battery, Coffin Break, Codeine, Seaweed, Green Magnet School, Swallow and all of that stuff. But for me, no one (not even Nirvana) could touch Green River. Soundgarden had the metal side of the equation all sewn up, with their monster riffs and Chris Cornell's air raid siren wail, but Green River just seemed way more dangerous: sloppy and snotty, grungy and sludgy, soulful and bluesy, but bluesy the way Pussy Galore were bluesy, all ramshackle and dangerously close to just degenerating into a full-on musical brawl, and they just seemed really, really SCARY. Plus they had vocalist Mark Arm, who had the wickedest, raspiest, whiniest growl I'd ever heard (and to this day has one of the best/most unique rock voices ever), slipping and slithering from creepy, guttural growl, to banshee like howl, spitting bile and vitriol like he had a chip on his shoulder the size of a manhole cover. Plus all the awesome Charles Peterson blurry photos made them seem so mysterious. But it's always comes down to the songs, and these songs KILL. Grungy, bluesy, heavy, and super catchy, but not obviously so. Think New York Dolls mixed with a little Black Sabbath and a little Pussy Galore with just a dash of the Beatles or the Stones. Mix in a whole lot of alcohol and probably a handful of downers, and you begin to approximate Green River's druggy sludgy din. Hard to believe Pearl Jam was born of this beast, but Mudhoney was too, and seemed a more logical progression. This disc compiles the Dry As A Bone ep, the Rehab Doll lp, as well as three extra tracks, including a Dead Boys cover and a Bowie cover. This isn't really new or anything, but this record informs so much of the music I love and have loved for years that I really wanted to get copies for the store. It's been sixteen years, and this record still kicks ass and sounds totally fresh (in a dank, sludgy, crusty, scummy way!) and even after all that time, there's hardly any bands that even come close......
Everyone remembers Lorne Greene as Ben Cartwright, big boss of the Ponderosa Ranch on the TV show Bonanza. He cut a striking figure, salt and pepper hair, deep stentorian voice, broad shouldered and ruggedly handsome, so of course like most stars of the time (and really ANY time), Greene set out to be a recording star as well as a television star, and is the case with so many wouldbe rockstars, or country stars, Greene managed a few records, might have even had a hit or two, but it just wasn't in the cards. It's not really that he's a bad singer, although he does seem to slip into a more sung/spoken thing that actually belting it out, and it's not that these are bad songs, some of these jams are CRAZY catchy, it seems like maybe he was mismarketed at the time, instead of separating his singing career from his TV career, someone made the choice that Greene would be a singing cowboy, singing about the sort of stuff that Ben Cartwright might have sung about. The result being some serious (silly) kitsch, almost every song features a spoken word intro by Greene, his voice booming, reverbed, as if speaking from on high, and every song is about working on the railroad, or mining, or being in prison, or playing poker in a saloon, or a love song from a cowboy to his gal, then there's the music, fuzzy guitars, weird doo wop background vocals, gorgeous harmonies, a little bit of exotica, some goofy sound effects, some definite Morricone-isms (how could there not be, the twangy whistly Western vibe is all over these tracks obviously), and of course Greene crooning over the top, again spending much of his time sing/speaking, but when he does let loose, he almost sounds like Thurl Ravenscroft (who sang the them from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas), and at times some of these tracks even sound a bit like Screamin' Jay Hawkins, really good stuff for sure, and so fun, definite mix tape / party music, we've been playing this non stop, thankfully it doesn't quite devolve into a vanity vehicle like the William Shatner / Leonard Nimoy records. Instead it plays like some awesome, slightly cheesy, way over the top, catchy as all get out, lost country record, which it basically is.
Anyone who dug the Plantation Gold comp we made Record Of The Week a while back will WAY dig this. Another killer job from Omni, whose reissues have set a new standard, tons of photos, a long vintage interview with Greene and tons more. The Man collects two albums in their entirety, as well as a handful of tracks from several later records, a killer package for sure. Now, if only Omni would put together an Eddie Noack collection!!! One of the most amazing (and sickest) country rockabilly legends ever...
From the streets of SF comes this powerhouse of a rock outfit. Tighter than a squadron of B-52s in formation, Greenlight the Bombers deliver five tracks of seamless post-hardcore with angular guitar lines, loud-to-quiet dynamics and sinister basslines in the classic vein of bands like Drive Like Jehu, Quicksand, Fugazi and Shellac. Title track "American Executive" is a stand-out with a wickedly haunting vocal chant over menacing bass and drums that kicks into a solid heavy churn before dissipating into some sparse June of 44 type spaciness and then coming back with the rock in the end. Definitely one of the better new upcoming bands in this city, and do these guys have the coolest band name or what?
A peripatetic and a workaholic, Kevin Greenspon is constantly touring around California and hocking a small library of post-noise / blistered ambient cassettes & cd-rs that he's been producing over the past couple of years. Having performed alongside the likes of Pedestrian Deposit and Infinite Body, his smoldering, sorta-shoegazing dronescapes make a lot of sense. The A-side of this tape begins with a creeping two-note guitar melody, accompanying a muffled crackle and occasional interruptions of short noise transmissions. Out of the compressed noise and overdriven distortion pedals, a summery lullaby emerges from the tape murk and grime that blossoms through harmonic clouds of organ/synth drones and guitar smear. Yeah, comparisons to Infinite Body's prickly noise-pop hybrids are definitely apt. The B-side continues with these same ideas, as serene washes of distorted noise allude to something sinister just seething below all of the shimmer, twinkle, and glisten. 25 minutes in duration, and another great tape released through Monorail Trespassing!
Jonny Greenwood, of alt/art pop heroes Radiohead, steps out from behind enigmatic frontman Thom Yorke to pen the music to the indie art film Bodysong. Haven't seen the movie other than the 8 minute clip found on the cd but it looks to be quite cool. A dreamy assemblage of movement, African shamans, tribal rituals, Times Square revellers, grainy antique footage of dances and performance. All slowed down and hypnotic. The perfect visual match for Greenwood's hazy post-'Head ambient melancholia. The dreamy creepy crawl of Radiohead is definitely present, although sort of tripped out and spaced out. Less angst and more subtle moodiness. It is a soundtrack after all. And the soundtrack is all over the place, probably makes a lot more sense seen with the film, which is not to say this isn't an amzing listen. Breezy Parisian melodies flutter through the cool Spring breeze, with some shuffling acid jazz over warm static chordal drones. Militaristic, almost industrial percussion occasionally keeps things in line.
Asian stringed instruments pluck out simple looping rhythms over simple funky drums locked in a hiccuppy rhythm interrupted every once in a while by some wild boppy Miles Davis-ish jazz. All nestled amidst lush chunks of glitchy dubbed out electronic ambience, with Kraftwerkian melodies and pizzicato strings. The closest comparison that comes to mind is UNKLE, but Greenwood's Bodysong is a lot more subtle and focused, a lot stranger and aimed squarely at the heart or the head, not the hips.
We haven't seen the new film from Paul Thomas Anderson yet but judging by the string heavy, super intense score composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood we get the feeling this is going to be one serious and probably very bloody filmic experience. Unlike his prior venture into the world of film soundtracks with his eclectic and imaginative score to Bodysong, this has a much more grand and classic quality to it, recalling the sounds of some Stanley Kubrick films with a very in your face, Penderecki-styled attack of string sounds. Meticulously executed, you would think Greenwood had been scoring films for decades.
We're not sure what message is sent by naming your band Gregor Samsa, but judging from this, the first proper full length from these Virginia post-math-mope rockers, it could be as simple and obvious as 'metamorphosis'. Each track here is a lush, lugubrious crawl, slithery and subtle, dark reverbed chords drift in wide open spaces, a blurry druggy soundscape, the drums sort of creep along WAY back in the background, a distant thud, a simple pulse, ethereal female vocals drift soft and angelic, sometimes hovering sweetly beside the whispery croon of her male foil, but most of the tracks shift at some point, build into a darkly brooding wave of thick guitars and keening melodies. But this isn't your typical post rock, quiet soft / loud heavy thing, as GS never really get heavy, insead they deftly ratchet up the emotion, choosing to not stomp on the fuzz box, but instead to quietly maneuver the music into a much more intense space. It's this intensity that manages to convey more pathos than a distorted guitar ever could in this context. This is dreamy and dreary, lovely and secretly dark and foreboding, with occasional swells of thick guitar, keening melody and a brooding malevolence, like Low with Mogwai tendencies, or drifting on a black, musical moonlit sea, slow and serene and absolutely breathtaking.Ô
Packaged in a gorgeous letterpressed thick cardstock sleeve, with a silver inked Japanese style obi. Wow!
Cool, non-music related footnote: this full length. 55:12, is exactly twice the length of their prior ep, 27:36!
This split is a super interesting match up, pairing two bands who ostensibly play the same sort of music, but who have dramatically different approaches to their sound.
Up first are the Red Sparowes, who take the metallic post rock angle, stretching their tracks out into loping epics, that loop and repeat hypnotically building to a massive crescendo, all soaring guitars and keening melodies. Eventually breaking back down into mesmerizingly mathy rhythms and melancholy ambience. The drumming is awesome, Simple but so powerful and propulsive, definitely driving the band, helping shape these aggressive epics.
Gregor Samsa, come at their post rock from a whole 'nother direction, choosing to drift instead of pummel, to float and hover instead of pound and wail. In addition to the typical rock band instrumentation, GS are augmented by cello, violin and upright bass, which adds to their simple understated majesty. Both tracks here are spacious near ambient affairs. Simple, spare reverbed guitars, tons of glistening reverb, hushed, near whispered vocals, sounding very much Low or Galaxie 500. So dreamy and lush and laid back. Eventually the first track builds into a super dramatic sweep of soaring strings and crashing drums, not heavy, just intense and emotional. So nice. The second track starts with a blissed out drone, shimmering and sparkling, before the drums and guitars kick in, turning the track into something more Loop or Spacemen 3 or Swervedriver than any sort of metallic post rock. Again the strings swoop in to add all sorts of emotion and urgency, turning the track into a fuzzy minor key dreamdrone fuzz rock epic! Man, we love this band. In fact we love BOTH these bands. An absolutely killer split.
The more we listen to the Grey Daturas, the more we see them play live, the more times we hear and their records and the more they perform and interact with other musicians and performers, the more we realize the Daturas aren't really a band. Or more specifically aren't -just- a band. They are music makers certainly, but they seem to approach music from a distinctly non rock band perspective. There are drums and synths and bass and guitars, oh! are there guitars, but the sounds they make and the 'songs' they craft have as much in common with the Dead C or SUNNO))) as they do with the drone of Sunroof! or Jonathan Coleclough or the abstract minimalism of Morton Feldman or Steve Reich. This two song live ep demonstrates that yet again. The first track is a swirling snarling tangle of slowly shifting guitar feedback, distorted waves of sonic rumble and squeal unfurl and just sort of drift and sway, slipping under and over and around each other, dense and active, but subtly so, almost tranquil, a dreamy drift of electric guitar thrum. The drums begin as just some sort of sonic garnish, a little splash here or there, before kicking into a fully rocking, totally propulsive pounding spacerock groove, the guitar and bass following suit, the track now a distorted prickly static throb, wrapped in squalls of Hendrixian guitar freakout and huge slabs of bass, lumbering skyward like a more minimal and more metal Hawkwind. The second track follows a similar path, but this time the drums are more of a chaotic presence, spitting fills in every direction, cymbal sizzle drenching everything within earshot, the guitars whipped into an impossible frenzy, so loud and recorded so hot, that the sound itself begins to crumble, a blown out blast of space rock psych fuzz sludge.
Two 14 minute tracks. Hand numbered and limited to 150 copies (of which we took almost 1/3 of the pressing!). Packaged in a cool hand painted faux blood splattered digipak.
And as much as we hate to belabor the point, this is SUPER LIMITED! Once these are gone they are gone gone gone.
It's weird to think about the world before the Internet. Little pockets of bands in out of the way places, producing wild and wonderful music, that outside of a few tape traders and cool record stores just didn't get heard. In some ways the advent of immediate world wide communication has been a wellspring of amazing music, since now, some kid who records in his bedroom in Finland, can now be heard by anyone in the world. Anywhere. Any time. The downside is of course the proliferation of bands whose material maybe didn't need worldwide exposure, music that was just fine where it was, in the bedroom or the basement. Thankfully this particular release is a definite example of the former. Australia has produced some killer rock over the years, from AC/DC to Radio Birdman to Lubricated Goat (one of Allan and Andee's favorites) to the Dirty Three to more obscure noiserock bands like Budd or the Dumb And The Ugly or Primitive Calculators. A few lists back we reviewed an awesome disc by the band Whitehorse, whose epic sludge-y, drone-y dirge definitely hit the Sunn 0))) / Earth / Corrupted / Khanate spot. The guys in Whitehorse suggested we check out another Aussie outift (also from Melbourne) a two guys and a gal trio called the Grey Daturas, who only a few weeks later just showed up in our store with a box full of cds, about to embark on their first US tour (some of the dates with Sunn 0))), see elsewhere on this list for tour dates). And while the Daturas are indeed heavy and droney, their sound is less slow motion sludge and more blown out fuzzy psych rock. A blurry druggy mix of Hawkwind, the Dead C, Comets On Fire, Residual Echoes, Dead Meadow and Bardo Pond. The Daturas' sound is all over the map, from churning, throbbing fuzzdrug churn, with squealing feedback and choppy uneven riffing, to drifting dreamy stripped down post rock, all careening wildly between thick swaths of super overdriven psych fuzz, and drenched in crumbly distortion and all manner of wah. When they kick out the jams, it's fierce and mesmerizing, pounding and relentless, with simple propulsive percussion and spaced out swirl. Often stretching out into head nodding Krautrock jams, spacious and hypnotic. When the storms calm and the band drifts off and just sort of meanders, we're reminded of Codeine and other like minded practitioners of drowsy, druggy slow core. Still noisy, but mellow and intense, brooding and subtly aggressive.
The Grey Daturas are all instrumental which as you probably know we tend to dig, since there's nothing like a bad singer to ruin a perfectly good band, but there's always the risk of bands with no vocalists to be really really boring. But because a lot of the Daturas' tunes are improvised, and the band is willing to take all kinds of musical chances (they often switch instruments, sometimes perform as a duo with no drummer, etc...) it never gets boring, instead it becomes the perfect mix of droning free rock, kick ass instrumental post rock, buzzing druggy psych and even occasional blasts of full on metal. Mix in some cool song titles: "The Hanging Man Is No Peacock", "Force Is A Weapon Of The Weak", as well as some oddly political song titles (but more sort of Sixties politics): "For Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale", "Night Of The Barricade: Paris 1968", a gorgeous washed out black, brown and grey cardboard sleeve, and a totally kick ass live show (they performed admirably with a handful of fill-in drummers here, even teaming up with art noise outfit the Yellow Swans for one show), and you've got one of our favorite new bands / releases. AND they're recording a new record right here in SF when they get back from tour...yay!
As we've mentioned before, Australia's Grey Daturas are an amazing live band. And no matter how great their records are (and they are great), they can't compare the the furious improvised heavy-as-fuck spectacle of the live Daturas experience. Bonnie is a seriously formidable axemaster, emitting the unholiest of heaviness from her guitar, pealing washes of coruscating distortion, dreamy swaths of washed out chordal blur, while the two Rob's do their own brand of damage, throbbing pulsing low end bass, and bombastic drum fury...
So any chance to see these guys live, or even hear them live is one to not be passed up. Here we have a document from their 2006 tour, recorded live in Austin at Emo's, 35 minutes or primo Daturas beautiful brutality.
Beginning with a blown out wall of guitar and freaked out feedback, crumbling and distorted, roiling and billowing, the drums kick in around minute 6 and the band launch into some serious sub-Stooges stomp, plowing through dense washes of downtuned buzz, the band plod and pound, the guitar not so much riffing as freaking out, huge clouds of psychedelic skree, the bass holding down the central riff, this is Dead C meets the Brainbombs, furious and heavy and brutal as fuck. But after about 10 minutes the drums peter out, and we're back in abstract free noise guitarscape territory and it's awesome. Glorious and epic. But before too long, the drums gradually return, the guitar slowly transforming into some sort of mid tempo riffage, and before you know it, the band are pounding out another garage-y noise rock psych drone barrage, and again the guitar seems dead set on getting away, squealing and flailing and freaking out over the relentless metallic trudge beneath it. As always, so fucking awesome. Can't wait to see these guys again...
Limited as all get out, just like always, packaged in plain brown sleeves, the artwork a torn scrap of paper with the liner notes, in the style of all the Diagnosis... Don't! releases.
Anyone who has seen the Grey Daturas live knows that live is where the band really shine, whether it involves songs from their records, pulled apart and reconstructed into impossibly free soundscapes, swapping instruments and exploding into a brutal NZ noise pummel, or just channeling their perfect freerock chemistry into some of the most gorgeous, kick ass avant rock we've heard in ages, organic and of the moment, hard to capture in the studio but seemingly no big thing for these guys live. SO here we have a double 3" cd-r collecting two long out of print recordings originally released a few years back of a performance back in 2002, and as the preceding bit might lead you to believe it's utterly astounding. The first disc is a three part epic, one part random preshow clatter, cord buzz, shuffling feet and hunkering down, one part sprawling low end drone beneath shuffling abstract drumming and occasional synth squiggle, super minimal and brooding, like the Dead C covering the Necks, the final track a massive sheet of static sound, pusling and glacial, guitars keen and whine over a black pool of low end, while in the background chimes and bells twinkle like sonic stars, as the guitars get more and more pronounced, and the track gets gradually heavier and heavier before collapsing completely into a barely there thrum that finally blinks out completely. The second disc is one long track, also on the abstract side, strange guitar sounds growl and grate, throb and flutter, a dense drone constructed of heavily effected guitar glitch and bass rumble, looped static and ambient swirl, cascading feedback and streaks of spacey synth, eventually the guitars take on riff form, the drums coalesce into a laid back krautrocky rhythm, and the track is transformed into a loping, melancholy almost post rock groove, albeit buried beneath layer after layer of guitar fuzz and distorted amp grit and grime. Awesome.
SUPER LIMITED. We got 30 copies and after that these are gone!
It's hard for us to come to terms with the fact that the Grey Daturas are from Australia, it seems like they're always on tour, always in the US, and always in aQ! I We feel like they must live just down the street, we see them more than some of us see our own families. Part of it is because SF is their homebase when they're not at home. But part of it is that they ARE indeed always on tour. And as most folks realize, the more a band tours, the tighter they get, and while we loved the Daturas from day one, their shambolic improvised psychedelic drone rock always on the verge of total chaos, they have continued to get better and better, their sound constantly evolving, able to pummel and destroy with the best of them, but also perfectly capable of weaving drifting drone-y ambience, which is what they do here. Mostly.
This limited lp only release, finds the Daturas in Texas, and unlike most bands, who on their days off, drink, and record shop and fuck around, the Dats record. Often with other like minded bands in whatever town they happen to be holed up in. So while the Daturas were in Texas, they borrowed some equipment, and recorded these two sidelong epics. Two halves of what was probably an extensive ambient space jam, surprisingly tranquil for these noiseniks, but not entirely.
The A side is all guitar, no drums at all, an epic expanse of various texture and timbres, of feedback and long drawn out notes, of billowing chords and downtuned buzz, all shifting and drifting glacially, dreamy and druggy, not really menacing or ominous at all, more sort of washed out and sun dappled, rich warm and inviting, really really pretty, quite reminiscent of Fear Falls Burning in fact�
The B side is more of the same, beginning almost exactly where the A side left off, except for a big chunk in the middle, where the guitars are whipped up into a psychedelic frenzy, and the drums finally come crashing in, not so much pounding out a beat as offering another layer of percussive texture, loose stumbling rhythms, little flurries of fills, nearly buried by the barrage of dense guitars, sounding a bit like a Loop vs. Dead C jam, only to have the drums drop out again, letting the guitars slip back into their abstract, near-ambient drift.
Awesome.
Australia's Grey Daturas are like our very own noise rock Santa Claus. They come about once a year, and every time they show up, they have a huge bag of sonic goodies. And while Santa probably doesn't come to punish our ear drums and pummel us to within an inch of our lives, crammed into some smokey sweaty little club, we'd probably have to take the Daturas over Santa any day!!! Unless this year is the year we finally get that pony...
This time, the band brought with them a brand new record, technically an EP, but at nearly 40 minutes it's plenty long enough to be a record proper. And as always it's a corker. Somehow, it seems to be their most structured and least chaotic, which in no way is a bad thing, nor does it mean that it still isn't packed freaked out noise rock or vast expanses of abstract psych guitar because it is. And then some.
The opener is definitely the Daturas at their most rock. Simple driving drums beneath an impossible dense swirl of HEAVY guitars, drenched in FX and churning wildly. It's like the blown out psych rock endless jam outro of every Hawkwind song jacked up and compressed into seven minutes. The rest of the record is a bit less rock, returning to their abstract noise rock ambience, like a heaver, more psychedelic Dead C, from abstract guitar jangle drift wrapped around random bits of drum flutter to an explosive noisrockmindfuck halfway through the disc, thick peals of distorted guitar that crash and crush but are almost immediately turned inside out and become a strange backwards guitar squall, all warped and warbly My Bloody Valentine / Teenage Filmstars blowout, with strange rhythms created from the ssssshhhhhht sound of the guitars being sucked through time in reverse. After that it gets a bit more minimal for a stretch, with some dark rumbling dronescapes, more snippets of backward guitar, distant swirling FX, some angular Sonic Youth style guitar rock until the final track, a massive and ultra dense guitarscape, rife with acidic riffs and distorted melodies, thick clouds of clang and rrrooooaaar, each guitar piled atop one another, layer after layer of rumbling, reverberating, shrieking, shimmering, coruscating steel string skree, a bit like Skullflower at their riffiest mashed up with Acid Mothers Temple at their least. Amazing.
Huzzah! Our favorite instrumental down-under doom-bringers return (to disruption) with this new
full-length, the prolific Melbourne trio's debut for Neurosis' Neurot label. It's a good fit, of course, this should go over well with the whole post-rock/metal crowd, this album often grindingly hypnotic, the Grey Daturas' lumbering sheets of distorto-drone skullflowering forth over a roiling bed of precision percussive clangor right from the get-go! Their threatening waves of pure heaviness, sharpened into a drill-drone of an attack, also occasionally take detours into areas of abstract ambience, the guitars of Bonnie Mercer and Rob MacManus carving psychedelic feedback sculptures, then tightening again back into full metallic impact, driven by the skittering drums of Robert Manson.
As heavy as they are (which is HEAVY) you can't really call the Grey Dats a metal band. They're in that quasi-metal realm with the likes of SUNNO))), Boris, Harvey Milk, and Nadja, perhaps, with a certain amount of experimental lo-fi fuckery going on that reminds us of many of their freenoise comrades over in nearby New Zealand... The title track itself is a clattering, pottering about, like something the Dead C would come up with, while the track called "Undisturbed" is anything but, sounding like a violin or creaking door hinge dying a slow and dismal death. And the high-end scraping skree of "Balance Of Convenience" should peel some paint. And then, as already mentioned, there's all the juggernaut, trance-inducing, spaced-out, instrumental doom rock post rock surging through tracks like "Beyond And Into The Ulimate" and "Neuralgia".
The Grey Daturas definitely like all the varieties of drone! And fans of, what should we call it, avant-doom, or drone-doom, or whatever, should like all varieties of the Grey Daturas, starting with this disc if you haven't already made their acquaintance, covering all the bases as it does!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Not too long ago we made Austalia's Grey Daturas record of the week with their killer Dead In The Woods record (now available again for a limited time), a perfect mix of churning metallic rock, New Zealand style free noise, freaked out psychedelic space rock and buzzing rumbling drone rock. So so good. We knew there were other Daturas recordings floating around but we couldn't figure out how to track 'em down. Finally the band returned from tour and managed to dig up their last copies of their two previous releases, their debut record and a 30 minute ep, so we took all of 'em and they finally showed up. So act fast as these will be gone in no time.
This is the band's first full length from way back in 2002, and finds the band in a much driftier dronier place. The first two tracks are extended guitar workouts, slow shifting waves of distorted guitar and rumbling bass, alternately ominous and atonal, and lilting and lovely, it's not until track three when the drums kick in, just sort of offering a bare bones framework for the super saturated sludge guitar, a SUNNO))) worthy guitar drone indeed. Not long after that the band gets seriously revved and kicks out the drug addled psych space jams, with wild super nova guitars, acid fried riffs and pounding relentless drumming. The last two tracks, clocking in at 20 minutes each, are pretty much the core of the record. The second to last track "I Talk To The Voices" is a haunting soundscape of heavily affected guitars, simple percussion, that builds and builds and builds into a swirl of psychedelic fuzz, before splintering into a sixties freakout of delay and splattery free drumming. The final track "Bloodcloth", is about as heavy and harsh as the Daturas get, a full on freaked out ultra noise deconstructed Dead C sort of racket, strangled squealing guitars, weirdly atonal piano, layer after layer of fuzz and feedback and noise and hiss, all mixed up into a dizzyingly chaotic swirl.
SUPER LIMITED. THESE ARE OUT OF PRINT AND LONG GONE. WE HAVE THE LAST 30 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD.
A while ago we were informed that French ultradoom combo Monarch had called it a day. We were crushed. One of our favorite purveyors of filthy slow motion doooooooooom, fronted by a woman, a rarity in doom for sure, and with a penchant for smiley skulls and Hello Kitty. A band that seemed tailor made for the very bizarre tastes of the AQ faithful, seemed to be no more.�
But before we could begin our campaign of mourning, black clothes spray painted with cute skulls, black Hello Kitty armbands, we discovered that in fact we were misinformed, or maybe the band had taken a break, or something, but we cared not, for whatever reason, Monarch was still alive, and would live to doom another day. And doom they did. Gracing us with more and more glorious downtuned heaviness, including their bad ass cover of Turbonegro's "I Got Erection"!
So now that we're pretty comfortable with the continued existence of our favorite cute doomsters, we can wait patiently for each new, massive slab of harsh slow motion glacial dooooooooooooooooooooom. And for folks new to Monarch, don't go expecting this to actually -sound- cute. They may be fronted by an adorable French girl, who spins playfully on the beach in their videos, but when she opens her mouth to sing, it's the sound of blackness and misery, a demonic caterwaul, unrivaled by most male metal vocalists. And sure the art on their records may be cute cartoon burning churches and big eyed ghosts, but the sounds inside are slow and black as tar, guitars tuned so low they rumble instead of roar, drum beats so far apart, the drummer can probably smoke a cigarette between beats.�And we're happy to report that this 16+ minute chunk of doom is all that and more. The more being the haunting ethereal female vocals partway through... Crushingly heavy, weirdly beautiful. A plodding symphony in slow motion. Essential Monarch beautiful brutality.
The surprise here is the Grey Daturas track, also a 16 minute epic, that on first listen sounds surprisingly doomy, and a lot like the Monarch track. The Daturas are often heavy, but rarely doomy like this, but it suits them. And they pepper their doom with all sorts of sonic weirdness, bits of electronic fuckery, strange modulated feedback, subtle FX, until about 13 minutes in, when the song suddenly morphs into a muted wall of smeared and crumbling white noise, a blast of blurred sound that eventually fades into nothingness.�
Pretty amazing stuff, from both bands. Doom hounds will be well pleased. Super fancy gold inked black cardstock gatefold sleeve too...
A dark and dreamy drift through a late night world of moonlit sound from this UK driftrock slowcore duo. Silky serpentine guitar lines, moody meandering dreaminess, hushed whispery vocals, simple brooding dark ambient swirl, disembodied melodies. So so lovely. Like your favorite Low songs, set adrift in outer space, reflecting the twinkle of distant stars, shimmering in the soft vacuum of space. So absolutely gorgeous and otherworldly.
Packaged in a hand numbered black digipak with a tiny square piece of mirror affixed to the front.
What may unfortunately be a one-off project, The Greys are (were?) a trio featuring Jed Bindeman, Barbara Kinzle, and Birch Cooper. Bindeman is a man-about-town in Portland, Oregon, having his avant-rock fingers in Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Operative, and Jackie-O Motherfucker; while Kinzle and Cooper had been recording as the heavy-dream-pop duo The Slaves. Unfortunately, Kinzle and Cooper broke off their romantic relationship, leading to the likelihood that their creative relationship may have also terminated. Meaning that The Greys (and The Slaves for that matter) may be just a brilliant flash of dissonant beauty which will offer the world this one and only recording. In The Greys, Kinzle and Cooper build off what they had done in The Slaves with those oceanic, engulfing song-drifts and crank that through a fucking huge wall of noise. On the first side of this tape, if Bindeman is supposed to be behind the drumkit, he's clearly been knocked on the floor by the heavy-as-fuck guitar churn that is somewhere between the industrial sludge of early Skullflower or Terminal Cheesecake and the accelerant buzz of Cascadian black metal. We suspect that Bindeman is actually adding to the frenzy of guitars. Kinzle's voice does flicker through the overblown mix, but it's hardly the ethereal beauty one hears from The Slaves. Here, she's uttering more of a shrieking caterwaul to complement the torrent of discordant noise. Side two opens with something closer to an unhinged Nadja with a slow-crawling riff that blisters with noise, distortion, and multiple lines of feedback squalor rising from below. Here, Bindeman is definitely heard bashing away at his kit, but even so, he's way buried in the mix, which has been recorded Les Rallizes Denudes style, with just a mic in a room, all oversaturated and overdriven. Seriously, SOMEBODY has got to convince this band to continue recording and making more of this awesome soft-doom-noise-blur-rock. Yup, this tape is pretty limited, too.
We've said it before and we'll say it again, but oh how are grindcore hearts were broken when Discordance Axis called it a day. Sure there were plenty of grind bands, but few were able to capture the magic, and conjure the sort of grind metal magic those guys could. Even the briefest songs were jammed with intricate rhythms, and incredible melodies, so impossibly fast and furious, but catchy as fuck. Various Disc Ax members went on to do other things, most notably drum god Dave Witte, but even with him behind the kit, none of the post-Disc Ax bands pulled it off in quite the same way. Until recently. Until vocalist Jon Chang joined the living, returning with his insane Japanese hyper metal outfit, Hayaino Daisuki, who melded the techgrind of DA with total over the top power metal. Seems like a bad idea, but au contraire, we hadn't heard anything that fresh, that fucked up and gloriously heavy in forever. So here we are with another of Chang's new bands, one that has been in the works seemingly since the death of DA, seeing as there was a Gridlink track on that posthumous DA collection that came out way back in 2005. Even then we were thrilled at how much Gridlink seemed to channel the sound of DA, they seemed to be THE band poised to carry on Discordance's art-grind torch, but then nothing. For three years. But now. Shit. We feel silly saying it was worth waiting three years for 11 minutes of music, but the more we listen to this the more we're convinced it actually was.�
This is mindblowing. So heavy and insanely fast, so complex and furious, more than 12 minutes would probably kill you. Or maybe not, as we've been listening to this on repeat nonstop. Beyond just being brutal and lightning fast, it's also insanely dynamic, and so catchy, little squalls of grinding metallic mayhem offer up unlikely harmonies, killer hooks, some Maidenish guitar parts, Chang's vocals a hysterical banshee like shriek. And actually, Gridlink does seem to be the sonic link between Discordance and Hayaino, the over power metalisms of Hayaino tempered into something much less over the top, and the obtuse artiness of DA reigned in a bit, both sounds forced into one swirling sparks-spitting white hot ball of mind melting metallic art grind genius. So recommended. As is setting your cd on repeat and listening to this 5 or 6 times at each sitting!
We weren't familiar at all with Jason Grier, but seeing him teamed up with Nite Jewel on this outing definitely grabbed our attention, as she's for sure one of our favorite left-field hazy dance floor peddlers. Grier gives us a nice peek at how great Nite Jewel sounds in a more uptempo setting. But not to fear, there are still those great valium-on-the-disco-dance-floor moments, like the ten minute syrupy jam "On And On", and the sizzling slow burn of "Midnight Blue". In fact this ep has pretty much perfect pacing, starting off with the more poppy dance jams and then easing into a more atmospheric post-disco comedown. Nice.
T. Griffin has spent many a long night writing his restrained and ruffled-around-the-edges pop songs in his tiny Brooklyn bedroom. This singer/songwriter seems to be equal parts Elliott Smith, Tom Waits, and Calexico (he even samples Calexico on one track).
Collected unreleased demos and suchlike from the former Pentagram, current Place Of Skulls guitarist. He's a riff master all right. Interesting to compare his original demo versions of songs that ended up on Pentagram albums like Be Forwarned.
