When we were putting together our vintage New Arrivals list a few weeks back, the one with super short reviews like we used to write back in the day, we had planned on reviewing this reissue of the debut from Florida avant-primitive noise-core duo Harry Pussy, with this super succinct description: "SKROWWWWWWW, EEEEEEEEEEEEEE CLANGBLAPCLANG, SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK, SKRONK, GRRHHHTTTTTRFFHHHDEEEWWW OOOOOOOW CHHRRRGGGFFFGGG FGGGGGRRRRRRHHHHHHOOOOOWWWWWW BOOOOOOONGCRAAAAAASHBLANG EEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWWWEEEEEEE." What more is there to say really, the duo of Adris Hoyos and Bill Orcutt created some of the most visceral, most innovatively chaotic and confrontationally raw punk rock noise EVER. Whatever noise group you can think of - Hanatarash, Incapacitants, Borbetomagus - Harry Pussy could more than hold their own and deliver the equivalent audial destruction, as well as an amount of audience baiting that was nearly unprecedented, certainly in the experimental underground. Guitarist Bill Orcutt has more recently become a bit of an outsider solo guitar icon, with his primitive blues scrabble and deconstructed avant Appalachia, and if you're familiar with his solo stuff, imagine that plugged into a shitty amp, cranked to deafening volume, and then paired with some of the most frighteningly original drumming ever, courtesy of she-devil Adris Hoyos, her self-taught drum pummel the equivalent to laying at the bottom of an elevator shaft, while a dump truck unloads its payload of busted cymbals, warped drums, broken sticks, in a clattery, caustic cascade. AND then there's her banshee like vocals, fierce and feral.
But that's not to say HP traffic purely in unfettered, unstructured noise (although there is plenty of that too) - within these swirling squalls of sound, Hoyos and Orcutt continually lock into impossibly dense, mathed out anti-grooves, or spar maniacally with each other, a back and forth, tangled sonic wrestling match as swarms of skree and crape wind around octopoidal drum pound, the sounds occasionally winding down into distorted blues crawls, sometimes exploding into barrages of frazzled noise-jazz squiggles, and often just splintering into total face melting amp-destroying noise-fuck.
The strange thing is, as much as we remember this record being brutal and unrelenting and punishingly noisy listening to it again recently, it's revealed itself as truly and strangely lovely, textural and nuanced, a balance between melody and mayhem that might not be obvious on first listen, but there's a lot more going on here than first meets the ear. And for all the attitude, and legendarily violent performances, the actual music here is stunning, and weirdly magical, it's a rare sort of abstract, absurdist, psychedelic noise that manages to transcend the strictures of 'noise music', attaining the sort of beauty that would rarely be ascribed to such a fucked up slab of sound. Also contains one of the best Kraftwerk covers EVER.
Hmm, they're called Harsh Toke, they're on Tee Pee, huh, jammed out psychedelic stoner rock anyone? Yup you guessed it! Harsh Toke's music isn't itself a 'harsh toke', not if you dig stuff like Earthless. Harsh Toke are from San Diego too, and feature pro skater Figgy Figueroa on wailin' guitar. There's only four songs here, but except for the kickass 4:11 opener they're all pretty long, up to 14 and a half minutes for "Weight Of The Sun", which takes up the rest of side one. If you did that track you'll dig the whole record - it starts off with some hippie/kraut freeform flute flutter and drum circle percussion before taking off at about the 3 minute mark into stratospheric realms of distorted guitar. It's a real spaced out, riffed up jamdown.
The heaviness and Hawkwindiness continue on side two's two lengthy groovers, "Light Up And Live" and "Plug In To The Moon". Yes indeedy, the mostly-instrumental Harsh Toke sure do crank the amps and bash it out, their cosmic jams having a bit of jazziness to 'em, and a LOT of long haired feedback/FX abuse. Surefire stuff we think for fans of Acid Mothers Temple, Comets On Fire, Fuzz, the aforementioned Earthless.
Acousticity from strong-voiced gal on queer-punk label Mr. Lady. Yeah, it's middle of the road singer songwriter fare but it's good and it's better than Sheryl Crow.
Fallout is one of those reissue labels whose gargantuan output has some quality control issues but when they strike gold, we're always, like their catchphrase, blown away. Recent Fallout gems have been Malachi, Friar Tuck and Fraser and Debolt, but when this Harumi record came in, we knew it had to be good. And boy, is it! Recorded in New York in 1967 by Tom Wilson who helmed records by The Velvet Underground, Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel, the self-titled debut of Japanese musician and singer Harumi is one of the best instances of East-meets-West influences. Acid-tinged fuzzy folk pop with lots of phase shifting and reverbed vocals largely played on a range of traditional Far Eastern instruments, this album features plenty of sample-heavy passages. The album is anchored by the two final tracks. One a mesmerizing 13 minute sitar-soaked spoken word piece called "Twice Told Tales of The Pomegranate Forest" and the other the 17 minute garage rocker, "Samurai Memories" featuring extended bits of conversation in Japanese from members of Harumi's family. Highest Recommendation!!
Limited edition reissue of a rare Swedish psych rarity from the very late sixties (or very early seventies). Perhaps you read about or bought the Terry Riley-influenced Parson Sound double cd we raved about not long ago? Well, Harvester (after releasing
Musical missive number two (or three if you count the sidelong Fear Falls Burning remix from a few years back) from Harvestman, the cosmic folk space raga alter ego of Neurosis' Steve Von Till.
The first Harvestman record, A Grave Is A Grim Horse, was a dizzying confluence of delicate seventies British style folk, shimmery spaced out drift, and glacial doomdrone sprawl, a constantly evolving, organic song suite that seemed to exist in some glorious blissed out otherworld. On In A Dark Tongue, the glimmering strands of traditional folk music that tethered the first record become even more tenuous. Before, even at its spaciest, Harvestman seemed grounded and earthbound, certainly with an eye to the stars, but the sounds evoking frosty mountainsides, deep forests, blackened skies, as much as strange shapes in the heavens and mysterious galaxies, the soundtrack to a strange terrestrial world, lit by the contrails of mysterious bodies streaking across the heavens.
Like A Grave Is A Grim Horse, In A Dark Tongue is also a weathered megalithic sonic artifact of an unknowable culture, its symbols obscure yet magnetic, calling you into communion with its ancient spirit. Enduring, unnerving, moving. Evoking arcane rites, cold hazy sunrises, a god/dess visible only in the massive wheeling patterns of nature and sound. But Dark Tongue moves beyond its predecessor, creating a linked, yet wholly other sonic landscape, at once more abstract and ethereal, but also heavier and more dense, with a black hole intensity woven into the otherwise kaleidoscopic drift, the sound constantly shifting from woozy, bleary eyed psychedelia to loosely propulsive spacekraut groove, fluttery delicate thrum to wild metallic squall, all doused in effects, a warm fuzzy patina of gauzy blur and muted buzz.
It's almost as if the songs here are not so much songs as transmissions, broadcast from a lost land, messages from the original Harvestman, sprawling lysergic druidic rituals, wreathed in the sonic detritus of the sound's endless journey, a message home - or a message lost and drifting endlessly through the black expanses of time.
Recorded in the woods of Idaho, Harvestman draws from the surrounding landscape, unfurling softly buzzing spidery barely there melodies that hover in druggy expanses of Tangerine Dream warped guitar blur, druggy, woozy, hazy, delicate yet dark, an alien psych folk rendered in shades of space rock.
Soft whispery steel string strum gives way to ultra distorted ur-drone ragas, the guitars super saturated and crumbling, leads that sound more like bagpipes than guitars, the sound warped and blown out, but still warm and tranquil.
Fluttering mellotronic flutes flit dreamily around slow shifting sheets of soft swelling chords, smeared with streaks of glitch and whir. Slowly sprawling grooves underpinned by squalls of outer space FX and upper register feedback, all draped over brittle layers of jagged crunch, throbbing motorik beats wrapped in thick swaths of delay, decay and rumble, everything locked into hypnotic lurching loops.
The vocals are sparse, in fact on Dark Tongue the vocals creep to the surface on only one track, the brooding expansive "By Wind And Sun." Von Till's raspy croon, equal parts weathered Tom Waits-ian bellow and Neurosis style metallic howl, rough and raw, but still soulful and dramatic, a haunting ritualistic chant, although as the song progresses, Von Till's voice begins to transform and splinter into strange fragmented shapes, the various shards sent spinning into the ether, gradually evolving into another washed out and heavily effected layer of sound, that seems to melt into the swirling and whirling sounds all around it.
There's even one track with what sounds like a Koto, super spare and abstract, channeling Eastern classical music, but layered with slivers of minor key guitar growl, the whole thing eventually erupting into a malfunctioning electronic freakout. The whole record a constantly shifting sprawl of electric guitars and synthesizers, dulcimers and ring modulators, loops and vocals, delay and distortion. Members of the Grails and Om contribute, but here they play acolytes to Von Till's high priest, together invoking the spirit of German Oak, Amps For Christ, Can, Six Organs Of Admittance, SUNN))), Faust, Growing, Amon Duul, their sonic shadows dancing on the looming stones assembled in the flickering firelight, beneath a sky of diamond and obsidian.
In A Dark Tongue is a gorgeous slow burning psychedelic song cycle, smoldering minor key epics, the sounds lustrous and organic, the guitars viscous and virulent, the atmosphere murky and mysterious, all the while strangely sun dappled and dreamlike. Strings soar and sing, melodic fragments are hurled into the abyss, monolithic guitar drones flow into fields of ephemeral stasis, a sound not heavy so much as darkly effulgent.
The two longest tracks appear to be the space rock centerpieces, channeling the extended heart-of-the-sun outros of Hawkwind and the smoked out stomp of old Monster Magnet into classic krautrock heaviness, each a mesmerizing soundtrack to some seemingly and perhaps ultimately doomed mission into the unknown, both rife with relentless rhythms, roiling psych drone tumult and thick warbly synths, underpinning moody meandering melodies and frictive soft focus textures.
While Harvestman most definitely exists within an esteemed sonic brotherhood, the sound here most definitely transcends, Von Till proving a master of more than massive pummeling heaviness, displaying a flair for the delicate, the tenebrous, the contemplative and the hallucinatory, having created with In A Dark Tongue a sound both portentous and elegiac, an arcane and esoteric bit of beauty, of dark hued mystery, of folk flecked abstraction and churning leviathan heft. A breathtaking and expansive glimpse beyond the firmament, into the soul of a sound, where the already blurred lines between drone and doom and drift and psych and kraut and space cease to exist at all.
Other RIYL: Expo '70, La Otracina, Acid Mothers Temple, and the myriad of underground cd-r drone / drift / psych combos�
Best known as the bearded, kinda imposing guitarist/vocalist/viking in the art-metal institution known as Neurosis, Steve Von Till is always working on other projects as well... Harvestman being his latest musical incarnation (with help from friends, including members of Amber Asylum), devoted to making psychedelic, electronic spacerock with a traditional folk heritage. It's like pagans were picked up at Stonehenge by an alien spaceship and deposited on some far off planet aeons hence to make music on futuristic instruments (that we call electric guitars and synthesizers). Lashing The Rye is mostly instrumental, with just two female vocal visitations and (on one song) the sampled voice of Bert Jansch. Also SVT "narrates" on one track, a la Current 93 or something. The twelve tracks here may have titles like "Scarborough Fair" and "Sheep-Crook and Black Dog" (Harvestman's renderings of those two inspired by versions recorded by John Renbourn and Steeleye Span, respectively) but while many of the tunes here may be traditional, Harvestman's interpretation and instrumentation sure ain't! Though there's some delicate guitar and piano (and searing bagpipe) this isn't all that "acoustic" -- there's also plenty of droning electronic spaciness and heavy waves of distorted electric guitar. It's calm, and quite pretty, but massive. Folk-drone for giants. Imagine Amps For Christ teamed up with Kinski. Parts even hint at the density of SUNNO))) or Boris. Recommended!
We've got a bountiful harvest of, ah, Harvestman this list, two releases from the psychedelic alter ego of menacing Neurosis guitarist Steve Von Till, and that's very much okay by us, seeing as how we loved the first Harvestman album Lashing The Rye, and then utterly freaked out over the second one, In A Dark Tongue (made it a Record Of The Week in fact). Now, this week we've got Harvestman doing Hawkwind covers on a three-way split with U.S. Christmas and Minsk (highlighted nearby) and this, the third "official" Harvestman full-length. So far, they've all been a bit different, beginning with the druidic Brit-folk elements of the debut, morphing into the mindblowing space rock mantras of album number two, and now, an Italian horror soundtrack??? Literally, yes! Not long ago, Von Till received a commission to score an Italian film of psychological suspense oddly entitled h2Odio (or, for English speaking audiences, Hate 2 O). So, he entered his remote upper Idaho home studio and basically let his beard take over, eventually resulting in this instrumental soundtrack... don't expect spooky prog-funk a la Goblin, though! This seems more inspired by the cosmic kraut soundtracks of Popol Vuh. It's a spacey, mellowed out affair, hushed and hypnotic, full of quietly meandering psych guitar, ghostly synth pulsations, and washes of distorted drone, lovely and dark... it's not really scary scary music, just somewhat sinister, but equally soothing. We don't know much about the movie itself, this soundtrack is sufficient pleasure for us anyway, but we do imagine that if the characters/victims in the film could actually hear this music, they'd probably feel quite resigned to their fates.
And now it's been released in a numbered, limited edition, in a spiffy black cardstock wallet. 71 minutes, 16 tracks, of which five, however, originally appeared on Lashing The Rye (we'd guess the director especially wanted those in his film, and then asked Von Till for more?). Listen meditatively, and become resigned to YOUR fate.
It would be pretty much impossible to fuck this one up. Steve Von Till's (of Neurosis) Harvestman, along with psych heavies U.S. Christmas, and sludgy metallic post rockers Minsk, all covering their favorite Hawkwind jams. Exactly. We didn't even really have to hear this to know we needed it. And we were not disappointed.
U.S. Christmas are definitely right at home tackling these Hawkwind tracks, as there's plenty of Hawkwind in their sound anyway. Musically, their versions are dead ringers, the same sort of urgent guitar crunch, the swirling clouds of effects, the big difference is the vocals, sounding more like a super harmonized Paul Stanley, which is not a bad thing, but it's definitely a bit weird, and does help to make these songs their own. And the songs they picked, tough to beat: "Master Of The Universe", "Psychedelic Warlords", "Orgone Accumulator" and "You Shouldn't Do That" (notable also for the specificity of vocal duties described in the liner notes: "Do That"s, "Shouldn't Do That"s and "You Shouldn't Do"s, all split between various band members). Needless to say, if this was just a U.S. Christmas Hawkwind ep, we'd be in, but there's more more more.
Harvestman too are no stranger to psychedelia, and we can bet Steve Von Till has a pretty serious Hawkwind collection, and he proves it with some cool versions of some of our HW faves, "D Rider" sounds like a Von Till original here, stripped down and acoustic but with plenty of effects, and that unmistakable rasp. "Down Through The Night" also sounds like just acoustic guitar, but wrapped in a thick swirl of hissing space psych effects, and some awesome vox, "The Watcher" is bluesy and slithery, and sounds like Hawkwind via Tom Waits, while "Magnu" is all propulsive crunch and psychedelic swirl.
Finally Minsk drop the hammer, on "7X7", "Assault & Battery / The Golden Void", and "Children Of The Sun", and get all spaced out and druggy and psychedelic, letting their pounding post rock get swallowed up in clouds of buzz and blur and his, they even let loose with some sax! Finishing off with a straight up acoustic "Children Of The Sun", which is all sun dappled and dream, until near the end, when it transforms into a churning chugging psych space stomp.
Anyone who dug those Trensmat Hawkwind covers singles is gonna want to check this out, and if you love Hawkwind as much as we do, and as these guys obviously do, you're probably not gonna be able to resist. So why try? You shouldn't do that.
When faced with a new Harvey Milk record, we're flooded with various feelings and emotions. The first being pure exultant joy, seeing as these guys are quite possibly one of our all time favorite bands EVER. Heavy, melodic, so weird, willfully difficult listening that seems to be impossibly listenable as if to spite itself. Another being a sort of incredulousness, that for all intents and purposes this band ceased to exist, a handful of old records, all that was left of their substantial but unsung legacy, hard to imagine now, but not that long ago, it took a LOT of digging to track down HM records. And finally, we're faced with the sort of feeling we get more and more often, "how the hell are we supposed to review this?", or "what the hell can we say about these guys that we haven't already said?" Well, the practical answer is not much. You can go back and read all of our expansive, wordy, gushing reviews of every Harvey Milk record, and all of that stuff still applies, but the band have obviously grown and changed, their sound while still similar enough, that every new record is worth celebrating and obsessing over, each one is still just different enough to avoid being nothing more than just a Courtesy And Good Will Part 3 or 4...
The untitled opener here is crazy melodic, and instrumental, with a super catchy main riff, minimal drumming, the song sort of swings, eventually the riff is joined by a shimmering layer of buzz, and the song gets just a little bit shoegazey, before returning to the sort of slow doomy, melodic mathy meander. But "I Just Want To Go Home" is more recognizable HM territory, beginning with some super low slung bass creep, before the drums begin to pound, the guitars start to soar and howl, and then those vocals, folks who have yet to hear Creston Spiers vocalize, are in for a treat, or at least a surprise, a gruff howl, weirdly melodic, but so tortured and gloriously emotional, one of the few voices that is totally and utterly unique, here draped over that skeletal rhythm and that rumbling bass, a ghostly sort of abstract doom ballad that creeps and crawls and manages to be both heavy and haunting.
"I'm Sick Of All This Too" is classic HM, super mathy, but impossibly abstract, little squalls of gnarled riffage and drum pound, unfurling bursts of short sharp mathy heaviness, only to ring out, and leave huge spaces, repeated, but seemingly never in the same way twice, finally shifting gears during the last few seconds and turning gorgeously melodic and intense. Only 2 minutes, but the sort of song that could take up a whole side and we'd be psyched.
We could definitely go track by track, minute by minute, but in some ways that sort of reductive description takes away from the magic of Harvey Milk, it's not really what they do, more how they do it. The constituent parts are the same as a million other bands, but there's no mistaking these guys for anyone else. Whatever they decide to do with those parts, their songs, it always turns out sounding ONLY like them. From super melodic slowcore doom pop ("I Know This Is No Place For You" might be their prettiest song yet), to churning, chugging lumbering post doom dirgery, to twisted synth driven dronerock, that gives way to hushed, super intimate, piano driven barely there balladry, to epic, 'classic' rock majesty, sounding a bit like a Queen record left out in the sun, all harmonies, and huge choruses, and big guitars, but all sort of blurred and oozy and melted, into something gloriously warped, and like the rest of the tracks here, something that could only be Harvey Milk.
So it took the rest of the world a while to catch on. Don't be too hard on them. Harvey Milk are one difficult proposition. Don't blame us though. We've been there all along trying to convince everybody just how brilliant this bafflingly bizarre sludge combo really was. Andee even reissued their seminal Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men album on his tUMULt label. And don't blame Henry at Chunklet, the man responsible for this here document. In fact he was right there every step of the way, a one man Harvey Milk archivist and booster club. And of course we don't blame you, loyal AQ list readers, cuz we know you feel the same way we do, you just can't get enough of Harvey Milk's pummeling, crushing, obtuse and confusional heaviness. Well for you, and for us, and for the heavy music lovers of the world who have yet to discover the difficult joy of Harvey Milk, life is is about to get a whole lot sweeter.
Courtesy And Good Will is getting reissued again, on Relapse, any day now, there's a BRAND NEW Harvey Milk record due sometime in the next month or so, there are rumors of a deluxe reissue of the long out of print Harvey Milk debut, a serious holy grail, My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be, maybe with an extra disc, and then there's THIS. Four long years in the making, and it was worth every single second. Most of us who dig Harvey Milk, even those of us who might go so far as to say we are obsessed, never actually got to see the band play live. And this three and a half hour DVD collection of live shows spanning over 12 years is just as much a revelation as we knew it would be.
From super grainy early live footage, when the band was much more of a punk rock, Touch And Go / AmRep sort of beast, you can, out of the corner of your eye, see the sludginess and fuckedupness creep up through the music, slowly and subtly infusing every song and sound with some ineffable something, that helped turn Harvey Milk into a band that sounded unlike any other band, then or now. Theirs was a career trajectory based entirely on getting weirder and sludgier and more obtuse and WAY more difficult and fucked up, a bit like the Melvins, but without the unexpected mainstream success and major label deal. Harvey Milk also unexpectedly shifted gears for a while, letting their ZZ Top obsession take control, and becoming impossibly groovy and rocking, which only lasted a single record before the band returned EVEN MORE damaged and slow and brutal, as if that was even possible.
The band look so unassuming, frontman Creston Spiers just an every day Joe until he opens his mouth and unleashes that impossible low banshee-like howl, bass player Stephen Tanner, with his weird, fey, Doogie Howser look, goofy smile and even goofier sexy hip swivel. And the drums, the drummers... Harvey Milk's songs are so full of space, so slow and stretched out, the drums are often the only thing holding the songs together. Whether they are shuffling in the background, or pounding out a massive slow motion throb, it's the drums that allow the guitars to spin off into space and the songs to unfurl into confusing super spacious epics.
Probably the most amazing part of the disc is when Creston wields a sledgehammer, pounding an anvil in time with the downtuned bass and pounding drums, while howling in that anguished banshee wail of his. Normally it would be weird to see a band set-up like that -- bass, drums and sledgehammer -- but somehow, for Harvey Milk it seems perfect. Creston swaying back and forth, cradling the hammer like it was a guitar, while the band pounds out a sludgy dirge behind him. So good! Woven in to the older material are plenty of long slow drawn out moody post rockisms, with drifting simple mournful melodies, and mumbled crooned vocals that eventually build into the epic whirls of swirling sludge we hold so near and dear to our hearts.
The biggest surprise here is how much footage there is from the band's "ZZ Top period," a stretch that on record only lasted a single album, but live seemed to have spanned several years. A wild and hair twirling, head banging super groovy sort-of-Southern rock with howled and yelped superrock vocals, less obviously sludgy, but still ultra heavy. This was never really a favorite sound for lots of Milk fans (although it is Allan's favorite) but seeing these songs performed live is enough to convince us that maybe we were WAY off and this stuff is some of the best Harvey Milk EVER!!!
It sounds like southern rock filtered through the Melvins. Or Ram Jam played by the Corrupted. It's just so awesome to watch with drummer Kyle Spence's massive Boham-esque kit (complete with Bonham's logo on the bass drum head) a huge gong, just tearing it up Bill Ward style holding the whole thing together... And because of the film stock and the sound and the style, it's almost feels like watching some recently unearthed German television footage of some ultra heavy long lost proto metal band from the seventies, they even whip out a little "Pinball Wizard!" Someone needs to reissue The Pleaser now. C'mon!! Maybe we just weren't in the right frame of mind when it first came out, but we're pretty sure that record would kick our asses now!
After that, the band sort of drifted off and disappeared, before resurfacing in 2005, as a much grungier, hairier looking Milk, all jeans and long hair and Voivod t-shirts, and they sound like it too. A return to the impossibly glacial dirge of Courtesy, but even heavier and somehow more even more fucked up sounding. Like Sabbath at 16rpm, massive lumbering, blown out sludgerock divinity. How many ways can we say it. WE LOVE HARVEY MILK!!! THEY ARE WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE GREATEST BANDS OF THE LAST 20 YEARS!!
There's also a DVD Easter egg (thanks Jace!): just go to the credits menu and push up until "40 Watt '93" is highlighted, for some footage from an April Fool's show where the band tackle three R.E.M. covers, taken from a show where the band covered R.E.M.'s Reckoning in its entirety. Seriously! (the also once did a whole set of Hank Williams covers, let's pray someone has a tape of that stashed!) It's pretty dang cool to see one generation of Athens rock take on another. And they don't really sludge it up all that much, playing 'em pretty straight, but managing to make them -almost- sound like Harvey Milk originals!
Also included is a four song 3"cd containing previously unreleased, super rare tracks, one of which is their version of R.E.M.'s "South Central Rain"!!!
And of course the packaging is breathtaking. Designed by Stephen O'Malley and Henry Chunklet, it's a gorgeous oversized DVD style, fold over interlocking cardstock sleeve, greenish brown, with O'Malley's instantly recognizable graphic shards in dark brown, the title in embossed reflective silver, inside copious liner notes from Henry printed in metallic silver, the back has an angular H and M diecut, through which you can see the inside sleeve, a black folded cardstock gatefold with silver metallic ink which houses both the DVD and the 3" cd affixed to the inside on little nubs. So awesome!
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 1000 COPIES!!!!!!!!
We love doom sludge dirgelords Harvey Milk. That should be painfully self evident by now. So you can imagine how thrilled we've been with the recent spate of HM action. A brand new record!! (reviewed elsewhere on this list) A mind blowing DVD documentary (last week's record of the week) and this, a deluxe reissue of perhaps Harvey Milk's finest moment, an all time doom dirge slowcore sludge classic, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men. Until recently, Courtesy was available on our very own Andee's tUMULt label, in a super swank, hand assembled, die cut, letter pressed sleeve, designed to replicate the original vinyl release. But as the supply of those dwindled, and interest in the Milk began to soar, Relapse leapt into the fray and offered to re-issue it with a bonus disc! So here we have it. The packaging, while maybe not as cool as the handmade version, is still quite striking, but the real attraction here is the addition of a bonus disc, Live At TT The Bears, a previously cd-r only release, long out of print, that features HM at their Courtesy prime, completely laying waste, proving they could create the same malevolent beauty live, in front of a crowd that sounds like it couldn't number more than 20 people. But oh how we envy those lucky souls. So basically, if you're new to Harvey Milk, but are a fan of any sort of slow, heaviness, that for the love of all that is unholy, pick this up, it is your new favorite record. And if you already have a copy, well, if you're as obsessed with HM as we are, you'll just have to buy it again. The bonus disc is SO worth it. Here's us gushing about Courtesy way back when the tUMULt version first came out:
Crushing and pummeling majestic beauty, interspersed with delicate moments of hushed whispery strum. Lumbering downtuned hyper-rhythmic skull crack dropped delicately into suffocating expanses of near silence. Delicate pointillist piano mutates into a dirgey exercise in tension that sounds like a lost Dario Argento soundtrack performed by the Melvins. Lilting and melancholy near-ballads are disrupted by incessant and brutally heavy riffs. Amidst the pummel and beneath the negative space swirls a barely audible maelstrom of whispered vocals, warbling turntables and whirring vacuum cleaners, all adding to the confusional brilliance that is Harvey Milk. And their heart wrenching cover of Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" features what has to be the most tortured and anguished vocal performance ever recorded.
Too heavy to be post rock. Too weird to be metal. Too everything to be anything, Harvey Milk are unconventional and wholly unique, both structurally and sonically, touching on territory mined by the likes of Gastr Del Sol, Codeine, Queen, Husker Du, Man Is The Bastard, the Melvins, and ZZ Top, but slowing it down, making it HEAVY, and fucking it up. Making it more beautiful, while making it difficult to listen to at all.
Hypnotic, repetitive and jarring. Unpredictable, exhausting and perplexing.
And although we do get carried away now and again, and declare certain records best ever, and weirdest ever, without any trace of hyperbole or irony, we can unequivocally proclaim that Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men is quite possibly, the greatest, heaviest, weirdest, saddest, most beautiful record ever made. Seriously.
The droning dirgelike beauty that is Harvey Milk's legendary Courtesy and Good Will Toward Men record, finally get's a deluxe digital reissue on our very own Andee's tUMULt label!
Crushing and pummeling majestic beauty, interspersed with delicate moments of hushed whispery strum. Lumbering down-tuned hyper-rhythmic skull crack dropped delicately into suffocating expanses of near silence. Delicate pointillist piano mutates into a dirgey exercise in tension that sounds like a lost Dario Argento soundtrack performed by the Melvins. Lilting and
melancholy near-ballads are disrupted by incessant and brutally heavy riffs. Amidst the pummel and beneath the negative space swirls a barely audible maelstrom of whispered vocals, warbling turntables and whirring vacuum cleaners, all adding to the confusional brilliance that was Harvey Milk. And their heart wrenching cover of Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" features what has to be the most tortured and anguished vocal performance ever recorded.
Too heavy to be post rock. Too weird to be metal. Too everything to be anything, Harvey Milk were unconventional and wholly unique, both structurally and sonically, touching on territory mined by the likes of Gastr Del Sol, Codeine, Queen, Husker Du, Man Is The Bastard, the Melvins, and ZZ Top, but slowing it down, making it HEAVY, and fucking it up. Making it more beautiful, while making it difficult to listen to at all.
Hypnotic, repetitive and jarring. Unpredictable, exhausting and perplexing.
Comes in a beautiful gatefold, letterpressed, silkscreened cover, replicating (in miniature) the LPs original cover.
2005 postscript: Harvey Milk freaks rejoice!! With the sudden surge in interest in all things sludge-y and doomy and drone-y, as well as loads of HM-specific attention, Harvey Milk have decided to reform, tour and record a brand new album!! FUCK YEAH!
Super limited single from the brand new Harvey Milk album. HOLY SHIT!! Did you hear that? BRAND NEW HARVEY MILK ALBUM!!! See elsewhere on this list for a review of HM's Special Wishes. This single features the killer first track from Special Wishes, "I've Got A Love", but the real reason to pick this up is the exclusive B side, a crushingly downtuned, utterly and breathtakingly beautiful dreamsludge version of Leonard Cohen's "The Old Revolution". HM fans already remember and cherish the heartbreaking version of Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" on Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men and thus know what HM can do with a Leonard Cohen song. Don't blow it. This is limited to 1000 copies and will be gone before you know it.
It's weird to think that there was a time when it was practically impossible to get a Harvey Milk record. We spent ages trying to track down any information about these guys, looking for their Courtesy And Good Will lp, trying to decipher the mystery of the My Love Is Higher album cover. A random sequence of events led to Andee reissuing Courtesy on tUMULt, which was later snapped up by Relapse. And after that, things started to snowball, singles collections, reissues, and lo and behold a new album, the band back together again, and touring! Finally taking their rightful place at the head of the heavy rock table where they always belonged. Only now, they're the elder statesmen instead of the young upstarts. But hell, they still sound way heavier and more alive than any of the current crop of heavies. And this brand new disc just seals the deal.
And as if the band weren't heavy enough, they've added Mr. Joe Preston (Thrones/Melvins/Earth/High On Fire/etc.) to the group. And the results are pretty stellar. Not only do the band still crush and destroy (they couldn't really get any heavier, could they?) but they're even more melodic. In some strange twist, they seem to have melded the classic rock tendencies of Pleaser era Milk, with the infuriatingly and brilliantly repetitive dirge of Courtesy, creating something both epic and catchy, hooky and heavy, and insanely obtuse and difficult.
The opening track begins with Creston singing in a delicate falsetto, over simple strummed guitar, and then the bomb drops, and the band explode into some post-Melvins, post-Killdozer dirgey crawl, but even at their most sludgiest, they still manage to sound incredible. It's like some pop band got flayed alive and shoved in a bubbling tar pit. Only to emerge a stumbling lurching dripping beast. Epic grinding riffage and classic rock leads give way to an extended chugscape, over and over and over, the vocals suddenly sounding all Gibby-like, the guitar so distorted it crumbles and falls like sodden chunks through the grill of your speaker, until the very end when the vocals transform into a line from the Beatles' "A Day In The Life", and then they finish off with their own version of -that- famous chord. What the fuck?
The next track begins all Led Zep, huge booming drums, until in swings the riff, and vocalist Creston Spiers wounded howl. Then there's "After All I've Done For You" a super dense tangled riffscape that recalls Don Caballero or Bastro, with it's furious mathiness, but it is Harvey Milk, so it of course mutates into a slow motion doomdirge complete with fucked up backwards production.
Our favorite track might be "Motown", with it's soaring melody, and super hooky main riff. A total pop classic albeit one bathed in guitar crunch, and delivered in a feral croon. Some killer leads seal the deal, and some almost Eagles like guitar harmonies. Then there's "Roses", which begins all gentle piano, and guitar harmonics, and Creston's plaintive warble, before slipping into something a little sludgier and sloooooooooooow. Very Courtesy sounding for sure. Near the end, "Barn Burner explodes into another frenzy of mathy riffage, proving again that HM are not a slow motion one trick pony. But it's not just a riff fest, there are some gorgeous harmonies, and some amazing guitar playing going on.
Finally the band finish off with a bang. The nearly nine minute "Good Bye Blues", an impossible slow trudge, peppered with little jagged chunks of riff, plenty of space, stop start weirdness, an almost classic rock sounding bridge, all tangled soaring leads and manic drumming, only to slip back into epic dirgery, and finishing off with a goofy little burst of 'Milked polka and a big Gong Show goooooong. Irreverent, goofy, funny, but somehow still deadly serious, musically merciless, creating epic skull crushing doomscapes one second, whispered balladry the next, and fucked up mathy what-the-fuck the very next, and thus remaining still, without a doubt, one of the best bands in the world.
This is the fancy Japanese double disc edition, which is the only one we're carrying right now, since we figured that most folks into Harvey Milk are WAY into Harvey Milk, and wouldn't mind paying a little extra for a whole extra disc, not to mention some fancy Japanese gatefold packaging. If you really want the cheaper domestic single disc version, just ask, we can order it for you, but heck? Why would you. Who can argue with MORE Harvey Milk? Not us. SO here we have a whole second disc of MORE. Basically, it's the whole record, in demo form, which means, that it's instrumental, and that the arrangements and recordings are dramatically different. Some songs are truncated, others are way stretched out, some changed dramatically between the demo and the album, some remained almost the same, but in both cases, these versions are fantastic. And you know it's something when a band's demos sound better than most other band's actual albums. But as if that weren't enough, there's also an unreleased Leonard Cohen cover! "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" And HM fans will remember what these guys can do with a Cohen track, as is evidenced by "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" on Courtesy. This one is similar, not quite as anguished, but close, dark and strangely haunting, Creston's vocals more retrained, but still raw and raspy and deep, over a simple strummed guitar, a mournful lament, which in true HM fashion finishes off with some retarded super effected riffing that sort of grinds and noodles until a computer voice intones "This cellphone is a piece of shit."
How can you not love Harvey Milk?! You can't. You just can't. So buy this. It's probably the best record you'll buy this year, and for lots of you, it will immediately become the best record you own. All hail the Milk!
As mentioned above, this comes in a super swank full color Japanese style mini gatefold, with an obi, and multiple printed inserts, track listing, a bunch of Japanese text, and lyrics in English!
Around these parts, a new record from sludgelords Harvey Milk barely requires a review. They are the rulers of the slow and low, every record equally heavy and catchy, crushing and complex, glacial and epic. And this live set is no different. Their very first European performance EVER, recorded last year, jam packed with tons of our favorite HM jams, very little stage banter, or even crowd sounds, the band just plow through song after song, barely pausing to catch their breath, and as you might imagine, it's breathtaking, and the sound is as good as any of their records proper, the drums dense and chaotic, the guitars impossibly massive and downtuned, the bass a wall of rib cage rattling rumble, and the vocals, Creston Spiers and Joe Preston offer up some incredible harmonies, incredible mostly cuz the two of them have voices like molasses being poured out of a cement mixer, growly and raspy moaning bellows, but together, they sound practically angelic (if you're imagining filth encrusted fallen angels drowning in a tarpit, that is). The sound is ace, the band is tight as fuck, what more do you need to know? Well, probably that it's wicked limited, pressed on clear yellow vinyl, comes with a printed insert with photos and liner notes from both the label and the band, and if that all's not enough, they totally nail a crushing grinding blown out cover of Fear's "We Destroy The Family"! WAY RECOMMENDED, grab one while you can...
My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. What an awesome title. And the record cover, a bull and a rooster and an ornate candle, the words Harvey Milk in tiny blue type over the rooster. On the cd, the text: "Harvey Milk is Cronos, Mantis, Abadon". Song titles like�"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I",�"The Anvil Will Fall" and "Merlin Is Magic". By now most avid AQ customers are very familiar with the mysterious sludge rock power trio Harvey Milk, but when we first laid hands on this disc, back in 1994, we had no idea what to think. As if�the artwork wasn't enough to have us scratching our heads, the music inside was even more willfully difficult. And still is. Obviously borne of some serious Melvins worship, Harvey Milk, took the already difficult sound of the Melvins to new heights, or depths, crafting lengthy sludge jams, packed with as much space as riffs, long expanses of spastic John Bonham like drumming, vocals a whiskey soaked gravelly bellow, guitars thick black sheets. This was without a doubt some of the strangest music we had ever heard. But at the same time, somehow the most beautiful. The sound�of Harvey Milk was some impossible blend of noise rock, math rock, post rock, punk rock, twentieth century composition and METAL. All tangled into one huge gnarled black hole of sound. A sound that crawls more than it rocks, but when it does rock, it blows away pretty much any other band in the land.�
Lots of you no doubt already own Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men, arguably one of the greatest records EVER, heavy, sludgy or otherwise. If you don't you need to stop reading for a second and go buy it right now. We'll wait...........
Okay, Courtesy was HM record number two, and found the band 'tightening' up their sound, taking the chaos of My Love, and crafting it into, well, more chaos. It's hard to say how they changed between these two records. My Love is a tiny bit faster. The best way to describe it is like this:�My Love is to Courtesy, the way Nirvana's Bleach is to Nevermind, more immediate and raw, but with some of the best songs the band ever wrote, and like Bleach, it's a record that tons of fans continue to insist is the best thing they've ever done. And while we are of the mind that Courtesy is in fact the best Harvey Milk record ever (unless you ask Allan, who would probably say The Pleaser, the -other- HM reissue this week, a killer disc of Harvey Milked ZZ Top worship) returning to My Love has us maybe reconsidering. We can't actually decide. There are so many amazing songs on My Love that we had forgotten about, as good as anything on Courtesy. It would probably be more realistic to proclaim�My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be /�Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men as the ultimate math-sludge-slow-motion-dirge-doom-whatever one-two punch EVER. Maybe the greatest first and second record combo of all time. Needless to say, if you're at all into the current crop of slow motion doom mongers, and have somehow missed out on these records, you will lose your fucking mind (and odds are loads of you have never heard My Love as it's been out of print for ages). It's no exaggeration when we say every song on My Love is darn near perfect. But a few of our favorites:
"A Small Turn Of Human Kindness" was the absolute first peep we ever heard out of HM, and it's brutal and beautiful, so utterly confusing and unlike anything ever. A�frustratingly obtuse abstract jam, even calling it a jam is stretching the definition of the word jam, there's LOTS of space, the track begins with a minute of weird electronic noodling, a huge wash of cymbals and guitar scrape, a killer BIG drum fill, and then... nothing... a weird barely there buzz, some cymbal dings, a moaning cello.... How amazing is that?!?!? It isn't until halfway through the song before the riff finally kicks in, and even then, it's like pulling teeth to get these guys to let loose and rock. In fact, it's not until the last two minutes that the band really go for it. And it was worth the wait, but before you know it comes�"Women Dig it", slowing everything waaaaaaaaay back down. A super drawn out exercise in tension and release, with long stretches of just drums, big Zeppelin style drums, accompanied by mewled vocal, but which features one of the most awesome riffs EVER, so much so, that when it kicks in, it makes you want to rock the fuck out, which you could do if it wasn't just played once every couple minutes.... oh the glorious frustration!!! It's the sort of riff most bands would not only kill for, but that most bands would repeat over and over and over and base a whole song� around, whereas the Milk kick out that riff maybe twenty times, in the whole song, and all clumped together, with the rest of the song spent plodding and drifting and doing anything but locking into a killer groove. But that's what makes Harvey Milk so great, when that riff DOES drop, it's a ridiculous release, like an orgasm, this unbelievable rock-out relief, but like with most things it's the wait, the build up, that is the best part. Or at least the 'other' best part.
Another classic Milk track is�"The Anvil Will Fall", a moody drifting whispery ballad, peppered by huge bursts of downtuned pummel,�when out of nowhere, in come the strings, some patriotic hymn, an almost recognizable tune that Creston sings along too in his warbly raspy croon, even kicking it up into a wicked falsetto, before petering back out into the original hushed crawl, eventually launching into a super moving moody goddamned ANTHEM. The sort of song that should have sludge fans teary eyed with hat in hand, and hand over heart. And finally...
"Where The Bee Sucks, There Suck I", besides being the best song title maybe EVER, it's also one of the greatest songs ever, a really really�fucking weird song, howled tortured vocals over a relentless tribal drum fill with occasional bursts of Zeppelin like riffage,�before the guitar transforms into a static rumbling drone, and the drums just sort of do whatever the hell they want, for ever it feels like...�and then the band launches back into it and it's some relentless bastardized groovy Southern sludge jam, but like all HM songs, they stop not long after to just sort of wander, and plod and wait, and pause, before doing it all over again....
We could go one and on, and get all mushy and fanboy about every single song on�My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be, but you get the drift. This record is magical. Majestic. Freaked out. Furious. Heavy as anything you've ever heard. Strangely pretty. Mind meltingly difficult. Crushing. Confusing. Baffling. Brutal. And pretty much one of our favorite records ever...
It's funny, for years, you couldn't find a Harvey Milk record to save your life. Reissues, cd-r's, rumors about the band all trickled out and were lapped up by all of us ravenous doomdrone hounds desperate for more music from this mysterious Southern dirge rock behemoth. Then suddenly, a few years back, things began to change, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men got reissued on Andee's tUMULt label, a cd compilation of singles came out, and then the Kelly Sessions. We were loving it. But then it all stopped. Nothing. Until we started hearing rumors again about reissues and more excitingly, a reformed HM and a new record!! And you know what? The rumors were true, the band is back together, and just released this here brand new album. Hot on the heels of the amazing DVD we raved about last list, and alongside a double disc reissue of Courtesy (with a bonus live disc!) reviewed elsewhere on this list, Special Wishes makes us want to just lay down and weep. That's how much we love this band. And how long we have been dreaming about this day. Very few bands can inspire such ridiculous loyalty and utter fanboy obsession. But Harvey Milk are pretty much unlike any band ever. When ranking the weirdest heaviest, GREATEST bands of all time in our heads, Harvey Milk are ALWAYS there, and almost always in the top 5, and depending on our mood, often in the number one spot.
With most bands, we tend to recommend older albums, you know, the new one is for fans only, but if you don't already own any records start with this other one. But even if you've never heard Harvey Milk, Special Wishes will undoubtedly convert you to the way of the Milk. And you WILL have a new favorite band.
The record starts with "I've Got A Love" a crushing pounding slow motion jam, with howled anguished vocals (that Allan thought sounded like Eugene from Oxbow) and thick walls of downtuned guitar, and some weird grinding background drone. SO heavy and glacial it makes the Melvins sound like Blink 182. OK, maybe that's not entirely true, but you know what we're getting at. The next two tracks are equally dirgey, and brutal and impossibly, infuriatingly slow and heavy. But then comes "Once In A While" a groovy classic rock / Southern rock jam, that sounds like Paw on 16 rpm, pretty and melodic, but somehow still way too heavy and creepily ominous. Up next is the appropriately titled "Instrumental" which combines HM's pummeling sludge, with some seriously acrobatic prog rock arrangements, like a super heavy Don Cab. Two more tracks of crushing glacial beauty, plodding brutality, pop hooks buried beneath two tons of guitar sludge, completely and mesmerizingly pulverizing. Then it's The One. Our favorite song of the year. A song so completely unlike anything Harvey Milk has ever recorded, but somehow a song that couldn't have come from anyone else. "Old Glory", the tale of a flag, or THE flag, a strangely beautiful pop song, finger picked acoustic guitar, gorgeous melodic crooning, and a sudden burst of lush psychedelic guitar harmonies, eventually the band kicks in, with massive guitars and probably the most kick ass classic rock guitar lead to ever grace an underground rock record. Full on "Freebird" shit. Wow. One of those songs that we listen to over and over and over. A song that sounded so totally out of place on first listen (although we loved it immediately) but became sort of the heart of the record for us. The final track is almost even weirder. "Mother's Day" is a massive and majestic epic, warm warbly organs, dreamy violin playing a mournful melody, with "God Bless America" melodies all over the place, when the band finally kicks in, it's like the underground doomdirgesludge version of that last song all cock rock and classic rock bands play live, huge soaring chords, everyone swaying back and forth, lighters held high, it sounds like a pisstake, but at the same time it sounds so fucking good. Which is pretty much an apt description of Harvey Milk in general. Confusing and confounding, crushing and majestic. But totally fucked up and emotional and brilliant, and still as far as we're concerned quite possibly the greatest band EVER.
Anyone who has been paying even a lick of attention to the AQ list, or to Andee's tUMULt label, or hell, to heavy music in general, will all feel a little collective shiver when we utter the words...Harvey Milk. And that shiver will most likely turn into some sort of serious convulsion when we mention that this is a brand new release, collecting a lost rare recording from the heaviest, slowest, most fucked up, most brilliant and most criminally overlooked band EVER! EVER!!!!! Harvey Milk took the Melvins at their slowest and most damaged, and then somehow did even more damage and slowed things down even more! A band that spit out gorgeously lugubrious tarpit dirges that stretched to ten minutes or more and often consisted of the same figure repeated for eight of those ten minutes, a band who would follow a song of planet crushing intensity with a Leonard Cohen ballad, spare and acoustic with howled anguished vocals on the verge of cracking. Speaking of vocals. Creston, the leader of Harvey Milk, has a voice that sounds exactly like the sound in movies where someone is howling in pain, but the whole thing is in slow motion, even the sound. So amazing. And then there's the guitars, the Milk's guitars are tuned so low that it sounds like your speakers are literally crumbling to pieces as you listen! The Kelly Sessions have been circulating for years as a bootleg tape/cd-r and have only now been cleaned up and properly released. Most of these songs are on other Harvey Milk records (only one of which, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men, on Andee's tUMULt label, is still actually available), but we'll bet most of you haven't heard the majority of these songs, and the ones you have heard are pretty different. There are also an amazing amount of leads! Really good, ripping leads, which would surface later on in their more ROCK phase, but which sound so great forced into unlikely cooperation with the older, sludgier, less leads-likely sound. This recording perfectly captures the transition from impossibly and brilliantly frustrating slow motion what-the-fuck rock to their later incarnation as ZZ Top worshipping rock and rollers on their final album, The Pleaser (also out of print). Although thankfully the sound here, except for a few accelerated tunes, definitely tends toward the tarpit black hole end of the sonic spectrum. Which is good thing. A VERY GOOD THING!
Got a few more copies of this final Harvey Milk album from '97. It's very different from their tUMULt release (the cd reissue of the '95 "Goodwill And Courtesy..." LP) which was super-heavy dronemetal to outdo the Melvins, but "The Pleaser" is still a great
Who would've though this would ever come to pass?! Those of you who love things slow and sludgy and heavy, should be on your knees, thanking whatever god you pray to, for allowing this divine musical covenant to be placed in your dirty, filthy unworthy hands!
Harvey Milk were Atlanta's answer to the Melvins, but slowed waaaaaaaay down and spaced waaaaaay out. Songs so spare but somehow so impossibly heavy, riffs so thick that they threaten to clog your speakers and rhythms so stretched out that they can barely be called rhythms. Add in a serious free jazz + ZZ Top obsession and you've got the recipe for one of the greatest, heaviest bands EVER. They recorded two brilliant full lengths (with their original lineup), one of which was re-issued on Andee's tUMULt label a couple years ago. And we thought then, sadly that we had heard the end of HM forever. But along comes Relapse to save the day, collecting all of Harvey Milk's impossibly rare 7"s and compilation tracks onto one black-hole-heavy chunk of aluminum. Most singles collections allow you to trace the development of a band, watching them slowly turn into the band you already know and love, but this collection proves that HM spontaneously combusted, emerging from their tarpit womb a fully formed, lumbering, molten, sludge rock colossus. From plodding, 3 mph sludgy, dirgy Melvins's worship, to chaotic noisy caveman thud, to Codeine-ish slow motion mood rock, to spare, rhythmic bass and drums space-scapes with demonic, anguished howls and Hendrix like riffs dipped in tar and sprinkled with wild peals of head-shearing feedback, to semi-acoustic tear jerkers, with warbly barely-in-key vocals, I mean, they even do a fucking Peter Criss solo song! How brilliant is that! Harvey Milk confounds as much as they just flat out destroy. How the fuck does a three piece rock band actually sound like they're playing on the wrong speed?! It's as if the entire band had a pitch control knob, and they keep turning it down and down and dooooown. And playing drums for this band must be utter hell. Massive expanses of space, demarcated by pounding beats, spread so far apart they just barely make up a rhythm, with enough space between beats for the drummer to get up, go to the bar, have a cigarette, and make it back in plenty of time for the next beat. So minimal and hypnotic and difficult and heavy, it just blows all other sludge rock hopefuls back to the stoneage. And even in the context of a 'singles collection', songs that were never meant to be together on a record, this stuff falls so perfectlyinto place, you would never know this wasn't conceived as a proper record. Yet another testimony to the under-appreciated genius of the mighty Harvey Milk. Liner notes from AQ pal and Chunklet head honcho Henry Owings. Essential for those of you who love Boris, Corrupted, Earth, Sunn 0))) and the like, as well as their massively head crushing opus Courtesy And Goodwill Towards Men!
It's kind of a no brainer around here, a new Harvey Milk is cause for much rejoicing, and often means shoo-in for Record Of The Week. What can we say? We LOVE these guys. Perhaps one of our favorite heavy weirdo sludge bands ever. Andee even released their legendary Courtesy And Goodwill Toward Men on his tUMULt label, before Relapse swooped in and snatched it up. NO ONE sounds like Harvey Milk, NO ONE, and it's ironic that pretty much every band these days wants to, cuz they've sounded the same for years and years and remained patently unpopular almost the whole time.
As if to drive that fact home (not the unpopular fact, the 'always sounded like this' fact), here's the Harvey Milk holy grail, the original debut record, recorded by Bob Weston in the early nineties, after which the band took it home and promptly lost it. And lost it remained, barring a few dubious and crap sounding bootlegs, and more recently some posted downloads of the same crappy recordings. Since folks were gonna listen to it anyway, the band figured what the fuck, they oughta take the best sounding tape they had, and get it all remastered and gussied up and released properly. And voila, the long lost self titled Harvey Milk record, featuring on its cover, perhaps THE tape where it all started.
Fair warning to the uninitiated, lots of these songs were reworked and re-recorded for other albums, this record was lost after all, so a bunch of these, in altered forms, made it onto My Love, Courtesy, the Kelly Sessions, but it's a gas to hear them here, rough and raw, in some cases dramatically different than their later versions, but that probably only matters to HM newbies, the cult of HM (ourselves included) are a dedicated and obsessed bunch, and even though we have most of these songs, we HAD to have it, and odds are a lot of you will feel the same. Plus, we have to say, the rough and raw recording definitely suits these jams. And the sound, so heavy and punishing, it's hard to imagine what folks thought of these guys back in the day, not very much we'd imagine. This crushing difficult heaviness, exactly what made them our immediate favorite band from first listen is precisely what turns off most other folks.
But if you've made it this far, we'll assume you, like us, have a think for Harvey Milk. And thus, you NEED this, everything about HM that you love is already fully formed even nearly 20 years ago, the crushing glacial pummel, the killer drum pound, the impossibly slow and yet ultra complex arrangements, the insanely emotive howled vocals, it's like these guys emerged fully formed from the band womb.
But a quick whip through the tracks should sway any nonbeliever, "Merlin Is Magic" is an epic melodic sludge prog masterpiece, with weirdly melodic vocals, and lurching hypnotic arrangement, "Dating Pressures" is total classic noiserock, laced with downtuned chug, pounding drum damage, but all Milked up with a howling vocal, and some lurching convoluted progginess, "Plastic Eggs" is the quintessential Milk slow motion doomjam, so slow, so anguished, so heavy, "Anthem" is downright jangly, but still a crushing bruiser, fuck it, you should know by now that this is essential, if you already dig the band, you're gonna go nuts for this, if you've never heard HM before, we might recommend Courtesy or My Love first, but at the same time, we can't imagine anyone listening to this, and not losing their shit and becoming immediately obsessed, and if for some reason, a person did hear this and was not utterly blown away, well, then we think the problem must be you!
Cool mini, lp style sleeve, with a simple photo of a (THE?) Harvey Milk cassette on the cover, the inside sleeve with liner notes on one side and a picture of the Milk van on the other, and last but not least, a mini reproduction of what looks like a promotional HM photo, complete with 'For booking call:' info, which is hilarious whether it's a joke or not.
All most folks will need to know about this, is BRAND NEW HARVEY MILK TRACK. And maybe LIMITED TO 550 COPIES and ALREADY ALMOST OUT OF PRINT. If you're a long time aQ New Arrivals list reader, then the deal will no doubt be further sealed by these words: BRAND NEW WILDILDLIFE TRACK. Okay, that's enough all caps for one review. But that's it in a nutshell, killer new super limited split 7" from the gods of epic slow motion majestic sludge, and the up and coming masters of chaotic tripped out psychedelic metallic noise pop. Both bands bringing their A game, with tracks that sound like they could have come off either of their kick ass last albums.
So Harvey Milk, if you need an introduction, have a gander at the multitude of gushing reviews elsewhere on the aQ website, needless to say, there are a handful of bands who practically define aQ, who embody everything we love about music, and Harvey Milk is definitely one of those bands. And even in one side of a 7" it's easy to understand why. Even at 45, it still almost sounds too slow. And while it most certainly is sludgey and doomy and drone-y and dirgey it's also super catchy, with killer vocal harmonies, but those weird harmonies only HM can pull off, rough and raw and howled but still somehow harmonious, the sound and song majestic and epic, slow burning and emotional, like some classic rock staple slowed waaaaaaaaay doooooooown. So good.
Wildildlife counter with probably their poppiest song ever, still with that lysergic Butthole Surfers vibe, but WAY more hooky and bubblegummy, this track too has a classic rock vibe, but also a little Janes Addiction, sludgey guitars (that also sound a bit Aerosmith-y), chaotic drumming, tangled vocal lines, some clean and clear and crooned, others processed and sped up, all a little tripped out, with some killer squiggly guitar leads, lots of effects, delay and reverb all over the place, a dense, heavy, catchy hook filled pop psych jam that totally slays. Produced by Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux btw (she's also producing their forthcoming full length).
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES. Each one hand numbered. Weird cover art: HM dude eating toast on one side, corpse painted cat on the other, some tripped out illustrations and liner notes inside. Will be gone before you know it.
Ex-Bad Seed's pretty good (English) interpretations of Serge Gainsbourg classics. Anita Lane contributes her clear voice to several tracks. We applaud Mick's restraint and consideration in *not* covering "Je T'aime" cos really, no one oughta be allowed to do that but Serge himself (and Barry Adamson of course).
Even more mellow than To Bring You My Love. Please note that we usually have all of PJ's albums in stock, just ask!
Over the last decade, PJ Harvey has proven to be one of the most versatile, unpredictable and unique artists around. From polished and poppy (Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea), to lo-fi (Uh Huh Her), to raw, intimate and devastating (White Chalk), along with an amazing ongoing collaboration with John Parish. So we had no idea which side of PJ Harvey would emerge on this long awaited new full length, and that's actually now part of the fun when anticipating a new record from her. There is no question it will be great, it's just a matter of what shape of great it will be.
Let England Shake is a song cycle about England that takes its cues from battle hymns and as always Harvey's lyrics are both cryptic and complex, without being overbearing. Alongside her longtime collaborators Flood, Mick Harvey and again John Parish, this is a record that sounds like it was made by a proper band, unlike the ultra personal presentation of White Chalk. But just like everything PJ Harvey has released over the years, its an album that reveals its intimacy and emotion upon repeated listens, an album that is already getting under our skin in the best of ways.
PJ Harvey's highly anticipated new album marks somewhat of a change in her trademark intense style of rock music. Here she softens her edges; there's less growl and abrasive angst... yet in a way it's still her most rockin' record since 1993's Albini-produced "Rid of Me". She's really SINGING on "Stories...", her signature wailing sounding like a more loquacious Chrissie Hynde, like Courtney Love without the snideness, like Patti Smith without the doomsaying. The instrumental accompaniment is pleasantly tight and heavy. Bad Seeds veteran Mick Harvey supplies bass and percussion, PJ Harvey-band veteran Rob Ellis drums, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke guest vocalises on three tracks. It's different, but I like it a lot (not everyone will, though).
On the BBC website, there's a John Peel quote "I just want to hear something I haven't heard before". Wonderful words to live by! And few artists truly fit that bill like Ms Polly Jean Harvey. Although she recorded nine Peel Sessions over the years, this collection of eleven songs personally chosen by Ms Harvey revisits just four of them, but damn, they are a potent few! Hearing her singing "Sheela-Na-Gig" is not only a total blast from the past, but it continues to be an inspiration today. Such brutal rawness and emotional grit is so seldom heard in popular music. The volatility of these live recordings reminds us just how fierce an artist she was in the early '90s. And the songs! Oh the songs! This is cathartic, beautiful music that confronts the listener, lifts you up, and shoves you back into your seat. Both moving and arresting. The album closes with a stunning rendition of "You Come Through" the lone nonofficial Peel Session track which was recorded at a tribute concert six weeks after Peel's death.
The highly anticipated sixth full length (not including her 1993 4-Track Demos) from Ms Polly Jean features the ever-enigmatic artist not only singing, but also playing all of the instruments except the drums (which spurred Andee to half-jokingly note, "that's because drums are the hardest instrument!"). While that in itself is impressive, it's less admirable when other areas suffer. In the case of Uh Huh Her, it's Harvey's vocal performance and her usually razor-sharp focus that seem oddly not quite 'there'. Yes, she mellowed out long ago, but even when she was in sultry ballad mode there was an undeniable spark to her delivery. While it seems like she was going for raw and back to basics in both production and performance, the results are uncharacteristically dull. She even strangely ventures into what could be described as trilly Ani Difranco-esque territory on the song "Shame" and atonal Kim Gordon-ness on "Who The Fuck?" The stronger moments of Uh Huh Her seem like mere echoes of old P.J., and they come off lackluster and somewhat redundant when held up to her other feverishly passionate albums.
The mighty chameleon PJ Harvey returns! In a characteristically bold and predictably unpredictable move, her eighth studio album reveals a new, very different persona. When we heard that White Chalk was going to be composed of primarily just her voice accompanied mostly by (her new instrument!) piano, we were anticipating (some admittedly with trepidation) a sort of Tori Amos transformation. Our fears were allayed as soon as we hit 'play', but y'know what? We might even predict that there'll be a few converts in the Amos fan club. These stark, delicate arrangements are achingly beautiful, immensely moving and unlike anything she's done before. Harvey's newfound voice flitters in a startling higher register, and the effect is precariously brittle and on the brink. Yet, longtime Harvey fans will still recognize the persisting raw nerves and distressed undercurrents of her music. As always, she's a bundle of seeming contradictions -- fragile and strong, pure and tarnished, simple and complex, vulnerable and bold. Awesome.
It almost doesn't seem right to review a PJ Harvey record so soon after it has been released. She makes such rich and emotionally layered albums, which often require repeated listening to truly fall in love with, but then you know you'll spend a lifetime with them.
Her last outing, White Chalk, found her ditching the guitar and using piano as her main instrument, singing in a higher register and creating her most challenging album yet, filled with a haunting sense of devastation and beauty. It's a record that brings tears and stops us in our tracks everytime we hear it.
Pairing up with longtime collaborator John Parish for their second full on co-written album together, A Woman A Man Walked By really works as an album displaying the full spectrum of PJ Harvey's abilities. There are the full on enraged rockers, the delicate eerie serenades, the darkly romantic and sinister ballads, all the sounds Harvey has explored manage to be present at different times during the album, while still working as a complete and linked songsuite, a truly coherent journey from start to finish. Parish's playing is immaculate, laying down an intricate insturmental backdrop that allows Harvey's voice to soar with emotion yet also giving enough nuance so that the songs are able to open up and breathe. While the record has only been out a couple weeks, some of us have managed to already get in practically a lifetime of listens, as it's not left our stereo since it came out. PJ Harvey's work demands that you as a listener invest some time and energy and emotion and goddamn you are paid back tenfold when you do. Totally stunning!
The latest Finders-Keepers release is no doubt a curiosity. While we loved all the previous releases, from the symphonic-psych of Jean-Claude Vannier to Stanley Myers' Sitting Target soundtrack, this reissue of vocalist Chris Harwood's sole album from 1970 (including 4 unreleased tracks) is not as easy to love. She -is- backed by an awesome band, which includes members of Yes, King Crimson, The Strawbs, Spencer Davis Group and Rainbow, but working through Prog-y jazz breaks, pomp rock and early fusion, it's clear the band is the selling point, as Harwood's vocal ability is not as strong a match. She sounds like Julie Driscoll when it works, and Christine McVie or Linda McCartney when it doesn't. Meet Miss Christine does have some strong songs, which we could definitely see included on some Andy Votel mix or something, but as a full record it doesn't entirely satisfy. On the other hand, we know that lots of folks, collectors and DJs and so forth, are sure to be thrilled that this got a nice Finders Keepers reissue, and maybe more of this album will start clicking with us eventually too.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It has been a well documented means of working... getting stoned to make music, that is. Hash Jar Tempo (the collaborative effort between Bardo Pond and Roy Montgomery) implemented the method on their first album to terrible improv/jam results. Under Glass, fortunately, DOES work as they mapped out simple structures before firing up the bong. Sad melodies glide repetitively under glassy walls of feedback. Dude.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Roy Montgomery and Bardo Pond!
We listed this a while back, but then discovered that it's now been officially re-released in a much more deluxe version by one of our new favorite labels, Japanese reissue label EM records (who also did the Moolah and the Symphony Of The Birds discs we reviewed recently). This is an absolute all time space-age bachelor pad music kitschy classic for sure. Count Down! -- originally released in 1959 -- is a rock and roll visit to outerspace. Take your standard 1950's boogie woogie, throw a ton of echo, reverb, theremin and other strange sounds at it and you have Jimmie Haskell. Pre-dating Joe Meek's I Hear A New World by just one year, it's hard to believe the two didn't have a late night brainstorming session together. The two share a similar production aesthetic -- double speed vocals, extreme EQ-ing & compression -- and an off-kilter melodic sensibility. Wacky and wonderful!
As with all EM releases, very nicely done with lots of liner notes (unfortunately almost all in Japanese, though) as well as photos, the original artwork, repros of both the front and back covers and loads more!
'60s pop-psych reissue of the two albums by these Long Island teenagers best known for having budding songwriting genius Billy Joel in their ranks! Not as over the top as Billy's subsequent proto-metal project Atilla, this still has some of his wild keyboard playing and plenty of charming, trippy tunes.
Japanese laptop jockey Chihei Hatakeyama has flattened the source material of guitar and vibraphone into the tasteful ambient construction found on Minima Moralia, dreamy drones dotted with fizzing digital pixelations. There's none of the attack and rhythm that might pinpoint Hatakeyama's source material; instead he produces warm, dreamy drifts of ringing tones and velvety buzzings that locate the album in the realm of Eno's ambience (in terms of composition) and Kompakt's beloved Pop Ambient series (in terms of warmth via use of analogue / digital dialoguing). Very pleasant listening.
Record number two from this hateful harsh suicidal black metal band turned dark gothy gloom wave outfit, and the band continue to shed the black vestiges of their past incarnation, moving ever toward a more purely darkwave pop sound, and like on their debut, Famine (Or Into The Bellies Of Worms), the sound here is all warm muted buzz, propulsive drum pound, low slung slithery basslines, all woven into a droned out darkly psychedelic chunk of sweet sonic miserablism, the vocals this time a bit more strident in places, and powerful, making this sound more like Killing Joke than anything. Although the deep dramatic croon from the first record remains, and seems to be again channeling Andrew Eldridge from Sisters Of Mercy. There are also long droned out tones, that sound like horns, but could be guitars or synths, the effect is the same, adding a sort of mournful funeral quality, which is balanced by the chiming melodies, and the almost Cure-like songcraft, although it's more like Cure filtered through Circle, as the tracks have a looped krautrock like mesmer to them, hypnotic and trancelike.
Some of the tracks are peppered with weird squelchy synths and electronics, adding a weird spaciness to the proceedings, but for the most part, the sound here is a dark, driving minimal gloom pop, with the guitars occasionally slipping into an almost metallic chug, but tending more toward the angular crunch of echo drenched jangle, there are samples too, but really with music like this, it's all abut the bass and drums, that sort of Joy Division foundation that's in full effect here, and is dark and driving and dreamily depressive, mournful and melancholic, Hateful Abandon like the darker grittier version of Nuit Noire gloom pop offshoot Soror Dolorosa, and really anyone who dug that (did anyone not?) will love this too!
Released on the always kick ass UK label Todestrieb.
The latest in killing technology from our very own Andee's tUMULt label! This is the first (and last) release from Chicago's metal mercenaries Hatewave. Completely crushing math/speed/avant/noise/metal/grind.
Hatewave's musical bloodbath is equal parts death metal, free jazz, grindcore, no-wave and pure noise. Furiously brutal, two guitar and drums (no bass!) attack, whirling riffs, bursts of white noise, calculus-style time changes, frantic blast beats, and a barely-under-the-surface free-jazz obsession all coalesce into some of the most insane, lightning speed, technical black metal/grind bombast ever. Featuring ex-Chicago / current SF scene fixture and metal/jazz obsessive, drummer Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers, Lake of Dracula, To Live and Shave in L.A.). Originally this was a limited LP-only release -- this cd version adds 3 bonus tracks from their 1997 demo! The LP (and at the time, soon to be released cd) was banned by some squeamish distributors for its somewhat gory cover art and controversial lyrics, all of which are still present in their throat hacked, head smashed, blood soaked glory!
Both in her band the Blake Babies and as a solo artist, Juliana Hatfield's always had a bit of raunch in her girlishness, but on her latest full length she takes on a considerably harder, grittier rock sound with a few bluesy moments. Made In China offers up heavy chunks of electric guitars, noodly solos, distorted vocal effects. Nonetheless she still sounds like a perennial petulant teen.
What a great way to end the year, two new songs from one of our favorite and most enigmatic songwriters of the present day, Ariel Pink. Now backed with a full band including members of Lilys and Beachwood Sparks.
While Ariel Pink is most often thought of for his lo-fi recordings and his on-the-verge-of-total-disaster live performances, the truth is that besides all his eccentricities and beyond all the hiss and mystique, Ariel Pink crafts some of the most endearing, catchy and brilliantly crafted songs EVER. Some folks try so hard to seem weird and unique, but with AP, his originality and singular musical vision is totally for real and ALL his own. He definitely fits perfectly in the great legacy of outsider pop luminaries having truly carved out his own place in the landscape of the underground music scene.
The last few times we've seen him live we've been blown away, by the music of course, but also by all the crazy ideas and weird sonic invention he manages to somehow cram into his songs and now finally we get to hear a couple of new tracks he's been performing live, recorded and damn do they sound great! The A side is one of the most smooth sounding AP jams yet, the band really works wonders creating some gorgeous alternate universe FM radio soft rock, complete with a totally tasteful sax solo (!) which would usually have us cringing but somehow it manages to totally work. And the B side is much more raw, dirgey and haunting. We keep listening to both songs over and over, and probably will until the new full length arrives, oh, and this 7" is way limited, only 500 copies, so it'll be gone all too soon and you know what that means....
