THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Oh Canada! More and more wonderful music just keeps flowin' outta you, doesn't it? The Hidden Cameras have caused quite a stir just as much for their on-the-table queer politics as their pop eccentricities. This is the band's second full length and it's a pretty good place to get yourself acquainted. Mississauga Goddam is filled with some of the most uplifting songs around. We might even say that they rival the Polyphonic Spree for feel-good-ness! Super infectious, they make you wanna clap and sing along (that is, if you're not a total stick-in-the-mud!). Characterized by emotive, slightly quirky vocals (around these parts, the lead singer's delivery has been compared to a young Michael Stipe of R.E.M., Fleetwood Mac's Lindsay Buckingham and John Denver), strings flourishes, jangly guitars, glistening harp sweeps, bombastic percussion fills and of course some tambourine too, the band can do the unabashed bright and jubilant as well as the spartan slow and wistful with equal ease. Highlights of the former are the first, fifth, sixth and eighth songs (aka "Doot Doot Plot", "I Believe In The Good Of Life" "In The Union Of Wine" and "Bboy" respectively), whereas they totally shine in the latter department on the second, ninth and final songs ("Build The Bone", "We Oh We" and the title track). They're three pretty, lilting numbers that sound a lot like an indie pop "Rocky Mountain High". So, that makes for six songs from a total of eleven that we'd categorize as being immediately engaging. A pretty good starting point, don't ya think? And it seems that this charming album will only grow on ya more and more with each listen. Psst, Cup's listened to it at least once every day for the last week, and finds herself humming choruses during the day. As has already happened up in Canada, we suspect that these Hidden Cameras can't/won't stay hidden for long here in the States -- fortunately for grand indie folk pop fans everywhere, becoming a not-so-well-kept secret. Yay!
We've been so excited for this one, because when it comes to smart, infectious records that you listen to over and over and memorize every lyric and melody, it doesn't get much better or more rewarding then the Hidden Cameras. Origin: Orphans finds the band with a new level of confidence and definitely displays shows the range they've developed from their trademark peppy and catchy anthem like zingers to more subdued and brooding mopers that unfold with a richness that gives the record a weight and gravitas that we've really been appreciating, borne of song writing and arrangements that are the most fully realized of their career. We're always reminded of John Cale's brilliant album Paris 1919 when we listen to the Hidden Cameras as they tap into the same kind of swirling and infectious melody, which manage to be both sophisticated and so damn pleasing. We also hear nice hints of Arthur Russell, Paul Simon (in a good way!), Magnetic Fields, and Robert Wyatt when he was a young buck back in the day. With all the success Grizzly Bear has received this year, we hope Hidden Cameras get some of that same recognition because they've crafted another of the best pop albums of the year!
And if course, this IS on cd too, but unfortunately our supplier was out of 'em this week, argh. Hopefully we'll have more back on Tuesday, and will list the cd next time around...
While they haven't quite exploded like their neighbors Arcade Fire, there is still no doubt that Hidden Cameras are one of the more fresh sounding indie-pop bands of the last several years. Their debut The Smell of Fear was an ambitious and totally successful offering of grand pop songs, layered production and smart arrangements. Their follow up Mississauga Goddam showed them to have staying power as the catchiness along with their smart and queer/sex-positive lyrics found them in top form again giving hints to what a less repressed Michael Stipe might have sounding like in his early R.E.M. days. This new e.p. which was previously only available as a 10" shows the stripped down side of the Hidden Cameras, 4 track demos from the last album which for some weird reason is sadly already out of print. Because the Hidden Cameras do use so much oomph and pizzazz in their production it is quite a different listen to hear these songs in a much more raw bare bones style. But what shows most is that they write really good songs which can flourish in all sorts of arrangements and recording qualities. While we were already itching for a new album from these guys this will have to hold us over in the meantime.
Are you ready to bounce your head up and down and sway side to side and jump up and down and all around in your bedroom when you are all alone and the new Hidden Cameras is blasting from your stereo. Cause that's what we've been doing pretty much nonstop since Awoo has come out. The third full length from the glorious pop band from Toronto does not disappoint one bit. With an impeccable ability to write hooks that will stay in your head for days and weeks and months to come. This is pop music at its smartest and most delightful level of catchy bliss. While some recent reviews of this record have harped over the fact that the lyrics aren't as dirty or sexual as past releases we think those minds are missing the point. This was never a novelty band about a simple joke or dirty one-liner. Their queer politics are for sure still strong in their heart and more then almost anyone else they have an amazing ability to sing songs that both talk to the body and the heart. Taking some of the best parts of R.E.M and Belle & Sebastian, Hidden Cameras have carved a spot for themselves as one of the pop bands who most definitely matter!
Mother Teacher Destroyer is the second album of spiritually and politically radical heavy rock music to be revealed by The Hidden Hand, a trio lead by veteran guitarist/vocalist Scott "Wino" Weinrich (The Obsessed, Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan, Place Of Skulls, Probot). Wino's past tends to define him, but with The Hidden Hand there's been a bit of a fresh start. He's no longer treading water, in the moat of the doom castle. The Hidden Hand harks back to Wino's harDCore roots, the band's energetic, complex nature shaking off any residual doom/stoner stupor. Not that this isn't still psychedelic and doomy too (some of it sounds like early The Obsessed meets Pink Floyd), it's just got an aggro edge to it. Wino and crew are angry about the state of our nation, that's for sure -- "The Deprogramming Of Tom Delay" is an actual song title here! And while some of his ideas might be a little far out, his instincts are right-on.
Earlier this year when we reviewed School Of The Flower, the latest from modern day acid folk hero Ben Chasny's Six Organs Of Admittance, we mentioned that Ben had become obsessed with the music of one Gary Higgins, an obscure '70s hippie singer/songwriter whose lone LP from 1973, Red Hash, had developed something of a cult following over the decades, not that all that many people had even ever heard OF it, let alone actually heard it. But those who had all spoke highly of its mystic beauty, mysterious aura, and so forth. Ben covered a Higgins song on School Of The Flower, and asked that if anyone knew of his whereabouts to let Drag City know. Apparently that paid off, 'cause now Drag City *has* managed to track down Mr. Higgins and properly reissue Red Hash on cd to enlighten all of us to its wonders. And we bet Ben is excited to now be labelmates with one of his heroes! (They've even performed together in recent months!)
Kicking off with the song that Six Organs' covered, "Thicker Than A Smokey", Red Hash immediately lives up to its reputation as a hidden treasure of psychedelic folk music, oft slow and sad and melancholically melodic. There's a lost and lonely vibe to a lot of this, with Gary's gentle singing and acoustic guitar backed by friends playing piano, cello, mandolin, flute and more. Together they weave eleven tracks of entrancing dope smoking folk music, drifting, sometimes dreary, but always oh so lovely. The freakiness is mainly in the lyrics, which can be quite interestingly cryptic and weird, often regarding the worried wandering and woes of a young man, while the music remains alluringly melodic and inwardly calm. Though, with a deeper voice and more urgent tone, the Beefheartian "Down On The Farm" stands out as more menacing (and humorous) than the rest.
This remastered Drag City reish is really nicely done, with a full-colour booklet of photos and lyrics. Two (lesser) bonus tracks are also included, "Last Great Sperm Whale" from 1975 and "Don't Ya Know" from sometime in the early '80s. But the album alone is a gem and shines just a bright now as it did briefly back in '73. By the way, one reason for its obscurity is that shortly after the LP's original release, Higgins was sent away to prison to do a two-year stretch on a pot bust... so it must be really nice for him to gain some belated recognition nowadays.
The return of Mr. Higgins after what, 40 years almost? He was cool when we saw him live at the Swedish American Hall a year or so ago, his voice definitely older, gruffer, but otherwise sounding like the Higgins of old.
Amazing, and ultra limited, made to order, hand carved lathe cut from our favorite modern day musical shaman Dan Higgs, he of Lungfish and assorted amazing solo recordings. Two tracks, each exclusive to this disc, an ultra thick black lathe cut, with printed / hand written labels, and housed in a thick, old school green paper sleeve stamped with the label info and the tracks hand written on the sleeve. So gorgeous.
And the music is appropriately gorgeous as well. The A side is a long droney chunk of twisted Eastern raga tinged neo-Appalachia as only Higgs can do it. Tangled melodies, gnarled arrangements, droney and buzzy, haunting and minor key, the track always shifting from dreamy finger picked bliss to pulsing blown out raga to spaced out psychedelia, all on an acoustic guitar. So good.
The flipside is a "Recitation" by Mr. Higgs, and is a total mind blower. Obviously recorded on a handheld microcassette recorder, complete with the 'thunk' of the stop and record buttons, as well as lots of sibilance and background hiss. But the voice is immediately recognizable, and the words... confusingly brilliant, surreal, so evocative and vivid, sometimes beautiful and tender, sometimes horrific, and other times completely baffling, somehow as dreamy and easy to listen to as the guitar on the other side. But to understand it all, that's another story. Too much for mere mortals we're afraid, but so goddamn fascinating.
These are custom made to order, and are thus SUPER EXPENSIVE and SUPER LIMITED. We got a handful, we probably can get more when we run out, but it might take a while, so if you miss this first batch, be prepared to be patient...
Back in stock, at long last. Lower price!
Daniel Higgs is the singer for the band Lungfish and is an absolute modern day shaman. (And solo artist, whose Ancestral Songs album was a recent AQ Record Of The Week.) His presence in person and on stage is absolutely mesmerizing. In another time he would have ruled the world, or been burned at the stake, or had his own cult. But instead, he has carved out a wholly unique musical niche. In Lungfish, his stream of consciousness vocals, add a distinctly spiritual quality to Lungfish's droning repetitive caveman krautrock jams. On this here solo record, Higgs weaves a buzzing melodic otherworld, all from the sounds of a single Jews Harp. Those of you not familiar with the instrument, it's a small loop of steel with a thin strip of metal in the middle. The player plucks the strip of steel making it vibrate, and uses the shape of their mouth and position of their lips to change the tone and timbre. Same sort of method for the the 'talk box'. The results here are divine, droning, alien buzzing rhythms, slowly shifting and stuttering, with strange overtones drifting and colliding, before slipping into vibrating harmony. Imagine a sitar run through a metal digeridoo, held up against your mouth so you could sort of 'vocalise' the notes. Weird and so wonderful.
Modern day shaman Daniel Higgs returns with a two disc collection of songs and poems recorded (mostly) in LA last year with production wizard David Andrew Sitek of TV On The Radio. Higgs has been blowing minds here in the Bay Area since his temporary relocation to Oakland, and we were even fortunate enough to have him grace us with a wonderful in store performance not too long ago. The material on Say God perfectly captures what a Daniel Higgs performance is, with minimal but highly effective musical accompaniment to go along with Higgs' unique brand of poetry delivered in his amazing, rich voice, an instrument unto itself. Some people may be confused by the direction Higgs has followed in recent years, after all, this might initially seem to be the farthest thing from Lungfish's dense psychedelic songcraft. But throughout his musical journey, Higgs has maintained a completely singular creative approach, and his solo work reflects this as much as anything he's ever done. The interesting thing is how his albums blur the lines between what Daniel Higgs is: musician, artist, poet, singer, soundmaker, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress, etc. The end results are pretty much unlike anything else, and it's not surprising how many people are moved by this stuff, especially after seeing the man perform.
Disc 1 opens with current best song title of all time, "Hoofprints On The Ceiling Of Your Mind," which actually was recorded at a live performance in Germany, with Higgs announcing, "Holy Bible time" to what we can imagine was a stunned crowd. His vocals are accompanied by simple drone and a slight shaker rhythm. His voice carries the melody to new heights as he assures listeners that he intends to appeal to their (and our) standards of songcraft. Not surprisingly, he succeeds. "Song For Azariah" features a mournful folky Appalachian melody played on a banjo that also hints at some eastern influences. The lucky few who were able to snap up Higgs' super limited Hymnprovisations banjo freakout lp can certainly attest his ability on the instrument, and this only reaffirms that. "Say God" features some awesome trademark melodies from Higgs Lungfish/Pupils cohort and underrated guitar hero Asa Osborne, who some of you might also know from his Zomes project. Listening to this, you will wonder when and where this stuff is coming from. It possesses a strange timeless appeal, even though it may not be for everyone. Either way, it's something totally unique, and Osborne's guitar sweeps majestically beneath Higgs' vocals with some amazing results before ending with "A Message From The Beautiful", another piece with just harmonium and voice.
The second disc begins with "Root & Bough", with Higgs sounding a bit like a manlier Devendra Banhart (or maybe it should be Banhart we are comparing to Higgs?) as he recites a lengthy poem with a simple shruti box accompaniment. One of the best things about Higgs as a performer is his spontaneity, and these recordings represent the actual moment, with Higgs even coughing here and there to clear his throat. The power of his voice defines the song, and while definitely droney at times, unlike super blown out electric guitar drones, things here are much more intimate as Higgs weaves out his own mythology which will certainly keep you wondering for a while. At around the 6 minute mark, things take a dramatic shift as a heavy synth drone sweeps in, sounding like what you might expect from Expo '70 or Emeralds. Little whispy melodies begin to flutter about for a few minutes before returning to the drone that characterized the song earlier. About 12 minutes in (uh, did we mention that these are some long songs?), Higgs begins repeating the word "Sing" in a rhythmic pace. Make no mistake, this takes some patience to listen to, but the results are well worth the wait. It's not like you would expect little 3 minute pop songs with this guy, and you have to pay attention to even begin to understand what's going on in his world. However, the next song, "Jewel Of The East" is actually quite brief, a nice folky number performed on what might be a pump organ, it sounds like something you might find on the Wicker Man soundtrack. The song is repetitive and performed with the same loop like attention of Lungfish and Pupils. "Tumble Down" features Higgs' voice with no instrumentation save the sounds of crickets chirping outside. His natural vibrato is in good form as he goes from singing to speaking, all the while keeping things nice and tuneful. "Christ Among Us" finds Higgs breaking out his banjo again, always a joy to listen to. He also tells us, "This song possesses portal power", and one can tell he means it, as this is some transcendental stuff for sure.
We may be going out on a limb here, but some of us feel this is Higgs' strongest solo endeavor as of yet and a great place to start for the uninitiated. Say God is weird, mystical, and beyond comprehension (in a good way of course), but Higgs is the kind of artist with rabidly devoted fans who will no doubt agree with this album's absolute majesty.
Super limited tape from modern musical shaman Daniel Higgs, he formerly of the late great Lungfish as well as Lungfish offshoot the Pupils. By now, most readers of the aQ list are familiar with Higgs, post Lungfish, having carved out a truly unique niche for himself, creating distinctly personal, spiritual music, in all manner of sonic forms, whether it's solo jaw harp, banjo drones, or tranced out vocal mesmer.
All of those come into play here, a dizzying, tripped out, psychedelic melding of Higgs's peculiar hypno-poetry and his visionary modern minimalism, the opening track here a dense swirl of programmed primitive rhythms, some sort of drones, harmonium maybe? What sounds like banjo and jaw harp, all blurred and tangled into a churning backdrop for Higgs' entrancing vocals, which sort of sets the template for the rest of the tape, even tracks like the second one here, which begins all warm and warbly, just a wheezing chordal drone, soon blossoms into a dizzying soft chaos of layered rhythms, looped voices, and mysterious chants. Here and there, Higgs does break it down, at one point, a reverb drenched banjo (?) is wreathed in reverb and unfurls a fluttery bit of folky psychedelic mesmer, and there's bits that sound like some sort of alien Appalachia, but it all fits perfectly into Higgs' wonderfully warped sonic worldview.
EXTREMELY LIMITED! These are likely the last copies we'll be able to get!!
The latest in the ongoing Latitudes series comes from none other than the mighty Daniel Higgs, former world renowned tattoo artist, former vocalist for the late great Lungfish, sometime member of Skull Defekts, and current wandering sonic shaman, whose performances range from strange spoken word, solo jaw harp, cosmic banjo, and even maniacal musical laughter. We never know what to expect from a new Higgs record, but are rarely disappointed, and more often then not, super surprised. For this Latitudes session, it's mostly Higgs with just a banjo, playing his own distinctive brand of cosmic bluegrass, dense and melodic, tranced out and cyclical, loping and mesmeric but often building to frenzied melodic tangles, his vocals in the beginning almost conversational, until in swoops some droning harmonium, and Higgs switches to a fantastic alien glossolalia, that harmonium, droning meditatively, but laced with wild melodic squiggles, Higgs, his vocals getting more and more dramatic and operatic, until finally the harmonium fades out, never to return, leaving Higgs to weave an expansive sprawl of haunting, almost liturgical sounding banjo music, equal parts apocalyptic and reverential, a long stretch of intricate instrumental mesmer, droned out and psychedelic, heady and near transcendental, culminating in one final vocal, Higgs delivering the titular line, before one final burst of tangled psychedelic alien bluegrass finishing things off.
Like all Latitudes releases, both the cd and the vinyl are housed in that immediately recognizable brown and white packaging, the lp with a fancy die cut, the cd an origami style fold over sleeve, both with original Higgs artwork rendered on the front in pink embossed metallic reflective ink, and both with a full color printed insert. The cd limited to 500 copies, the lp to 1000 copies.
The second tape in as many weeks from our favorite modern day punk rock shaman, the venerable Daniel Higgs, former frontman for post punk hypnorockers Lungfish, Higgs has forged a truly idiosyncratic sonic path, and this latest missive is another gorgeous collection of abstract minimal ragas and strange spoken word mystery.
All three tracks here were recorded in a redwood room perched above a waterfall in Big Sur, captured on a handheld cassette recorder, so the sound is lo-fi, but raw and intimate, the opener, the 10+ minute "The Elemental Conflux at Big Sur", an extended banjo improvisation, one that flits from cyclical and mesmeric, to dense and percussive, to spaced out and droney, the banjo augmented here and there by wordless vocals, a gorgeously hypnotic epic that blossoms directly into "Return", which sounds like some classic folk song, Higgs' powerful vocals soaring over a skeletal melodic framework, equal parts abstract raga, and strange old timey shanty, the vibe intense and darkly personal, and like the track before it, hypnotic, and subtly cyclical.
The whole B side is taken up by an extended version of Higgs' haunting sermon "Say God", stretched out to over 100 VERSES, a truly fascinating and perplexing spiritual poem, that even sans music, manages to be utterly mesmerizing, and listening to Higgs verbalize his visions, and lay out his cosmic ideology, his tribute to his version of a God almighty, one seemingly of nature, and humanity and the universe (and most likely not -that- God), it's easy to imagine him as some Yahowha style cult leader, or the head of his own mysterious church, which really, in a way, he sort of already is!
As always, absolutely recommended. And gorgeously packaged in an origami style fold out cardboard cassette case, printed in reflective gold, and hand numbered, with a textured paper obi, a full color insert, with another insert with the liner notes AND a download coupon.
Latest collection of mysterious musical missives from this modern day musical shaman, Daniel Higgs, he of the late great Lungfish, who transformed that band's penchant for looped cyclical noise rock, into his own brand of haunting hymn-like spiritual ragas. The main instrument here is banjo, but not played like any banjo you've ever heard, plucked and strummed, Higgs coaxing from the instrument a gorgeous array of sounds both melodic and textural, the buzzing notes layered and woven into a droned out buzz, a gorgeously hypnotic Eastern tinged mesmer, laced with mysterious spoken word segments, strange vocalizations. All super low fidelity, the sound constantly shifting, the ker-chunk of the button on the tape machine as much a part of the sound as the jagged primitive edits, and the dreamily lovely melodies, the sound is intimate and urgent, hypnotic and dreamy, there's even some primitive drum machines, which transform the sound, however briefly, into a strange sort of lo-fi krautrock, reminiscent of German Oak's bunker explorations, but way more abstract and psychedelic.
We could go on and on, but by now, most readers of the aQ list are well familiar with Higgs, and won't need much coaxing to grab one of these, especially considering it's LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, which means once these are gone, it's not entirely clear if we'll be able to get more...
We'd be happy if Daniel Higgs would put out a new album every month. Every week, even. His songs can be long (up to 14 minutes on this disc's "Love Abides") but eventually they do end and we always want more more more. Because they are totally entrancing, his raw "Appalachian raga" folk guitar picking style wending and winding while he chants his mystic lyrics repetitively, warbling with the outsider intensity of a Charles Manson... a dramatic delivery that eccentrically enhances the weird wisdom of his words, worth absorbing for their imagery even when their import is not immediately understandable. Well though he's not THAT prolific we're happy to have this new disc on Holy Mountain already, following Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot on Thrill Jockey earlier this year.
Metempsychotic Melodies (whatever that means, it seems like a good title for this!!) starts off with a stark and skillful instrumental, "Universal Salutation", which we're told was "recorded aboard the Starship Weep-For-Lucifer". Again, we believe it, that somehow makes sense. That leads into the aforementioned "Love Abides", an extended mantra for voice and guitar, wherein Higgs sings lines like "Love is the secret seam between waking and dream / love is a breath that bears a boundless scream" and offers up further thoughts from his personal gnosis of love, notions guaranteed to never be repeated in any other "love song" ever!! Such as: "Love, like a basilisk hatched in the nest of a dove / love's got a bible it hides in the folds of a cloud" and "Love is your name when your name has fallen away / love tends the last dawning of the last day"...
As if allowing an interlude to let all that sink in, the third track "Leontocephaline Rhapsody" is a loping, psychedelic instrumental, a gentle jam densely droning and alive with electricity. Then comes the fourth and final song, "All Cherished Things", another display of Higgs' druggy, fascinating poetry. "There's a pearl in your head / the head between your double-head / it's flashing blue and red - hear it sing". He goes on to touch upon some favored themes, Christ, Krishna, coitus, his own dead body, love... Lyrics like "The skull at the foot of the cross is my own" could be creepy, or pretentious, as could be Higgs' unique vocal stylings, but no, not as far as we're concerned. Ok, maybe it is a bit creepy. He's on a wavelength that works (for him -- maybe no one else could pull this off). If Higgs had a cult, we'd seriously consider joining it...truly a treasure of the US indie rock scene, and one of the realest deals in the "acid folk" underground. We'll be spinning this highly recommended album with ceremonial regularity as it takes its honored place in our collection of his music, and of course our anticipation of his next set of shamanic sermons remains high.
Daniel Higgs is a very strange man. Or maybe we should say, Daniel (Arcus Incus Ululat) Higgs, Interdimensional Song-Seamstress, is a very strange man. His artwork is amazing and bizarre, Spock ears and eye-balled Christmas trees, emaciated figures riding strange hellish beasts, an amazing personal mythology represented as a menagerie of impossible and impossibly beautiful figures and beasts. His music seems to somehow embody the same mystery, a world that Higgs inhabits simultaneously to his presence in our own. That must be the only thing that can truly explain the man and his music. That he walks around, one foot in our world, of people places and things, the other in some kaleidoscopic world where sounds are tasted and sights are smelled, a synesthetic wonderland, that when translated and brought over to our plain of existence, appears distorted, twisted, haunting and hard to fathom. But at the same time imbued with some otherworldly warmth and a beauty that while alien, represents a higher state, maybe unreachable here. That is Higgs' gift. He is a traveler and a troubadour. He allows us to see visions, to hear musical mysteries. Through paintings, drawings, tattoos and especially music. From the moment we first heard his 'rock' band Lungfish we were smitten. Actually, the very first time we heard Lungfish was in a record store in another town, years ago. Our first thought was "What the hell is this?" But after several more songs, we were compelled to sheepishly approach the counter and ask the clerk what was playing. We bought it, and loved it. And maybe that's the magic of Higgs' music. It's esoteric and not always approachable. It takes some trust, a leap of faith, some sonic daring. But that faith is always repaid many times over. Outside of Lungfish, Higgs also plays in the Pupils along with his Lungfish bandmate Asa, a more intimate stripped down version of his rock band. The same cyclical riffs and chant like vocals, but all acoustic, and sparsely arranged. There is also his amazing sort-of Appalachian solo guitar work, and his very very strange solo Jew's harp recordings.
This disc is Higgs' first proper solo release and manages to tie up all his disparate sonic threads into one big gorgeous Gordian knot.
Several tracks sound like they could have come straight off the Pupils record. Simple, haunting acoustic guitar riffs, repeated and repeated until they becomes totally hypnotic, mantra like, with Higgs' gorgeous vocals over the top, a mix of old timey sea shanty and folk standard. The rest drift dreamily from sound to sound, like a sonic journey through the soul of the man. Gorgeous tangles of banjo or some banjo-like instrument drift amidst field recordings of birds (knowing Higgs it may have been actually recorded right there in the woods, although he has been known to travel with a portable recorder to capture whatever strikes his fancy) a steel string buzz, that wanders from near traditional sounding Appalachian twang to some sort of jaunty Celtic melody to brief melodic flurries, impossibly buzzy and blurry. Thick swaths of buzzing guitar swirl and squirm, doomy, melancholy melodies spread out over a machine like whir, sounding like a guitar being played like a bagpipe. While over the top drifts tiny tangles of steel string picking all drenched in strange FX and allowed to twist and distort, sounding almost the way a Jew's harp does when you change the shape of your mouth. And as if pre-ordained (which it most likely was), out comes the Jew's harp, but it sounds like no Jew's harp you've ever heard. Super brittle and distorted, like some sort of metallic marimba, or a Konono outtake broadcast via shortwave and played through a crappy transistor radio. A gorgeous buzzy abstract hoedown. Finally, the record winds up (most definitely not down) with a thick swirl of super lo-fi psych guitar freakout, the chords and notes bent and twisted, pitches slipping back and forth, overtones subtly shifting, notes colliding and exploding into little bursts of jagged buzz before settling back into a droning hypnotic thrum. Like some alien jig, if aliens had a practice space full of strangely tuned guitars and really loud amps with blown speakers. And again, it sounds like somehow Higgs figured out a way to hold the guitar up to his mouth and play it like a Jew's harp, the sounds changing shape as much as tone, a warm and fuzzed out smear of distorted buzz that washes over you, as does this whole sonic scripture, like a shower of rich wet soil and sparkling uncut diamonds.
The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel�Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length�Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor.�
Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy.�
His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself.�
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient� drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike.
It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit...
As if that weren't enough, the cd version comes with a full color hardcover book of Higgs' paintings and 'poetry', a series of cryptic acrostics to be more accurate. The�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot series of paintings are all, like most of Higgs' work, strange and wondrous, here the focus is on enigmatic amorphous shapes, vividly colored, with all manner of textures and designs, stripes, polka dots, some of the shapes look like whales or fish, others like mushrooms, eyeballs, amoebas, shapeless heads, each filled with symbols, colors and patterns. The accompanying acrostics are cryptic and it's difficult to determine if they are related to the paintings they are beside, MUSIC, BIRDS, MIND, EDEN, PEACE, EMBRYO, BELOVED, COITUS... all offering up mysterious pearls of wisdom like "Always braid your silver serpents" or "Existence manifests between ravenous yellow orbs".�
The perfect visual accompaniment to Higgs' raw and primitive musical rituals...
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This new record from High Aura'd is our first exposure to this one man band's gorgeous understated minimal dronescapes, which we discovered via the man himself, who is in fact a long time aQ customer, and who we're proud to say, makes some seriously breathtaking music. Two epic side long sprawls, both born from near silence, a slow building A side that emerges as a deep rumbling and lush layered shimmer, a blurred ambience that drifts in soft focus billows, buried abstract melodies hover over slow shifting textures, all flecked with buzz and whir and distant streaks of sound, a serious slab of deep listening or which active listening is well rewarded, with a sound that is super active below the surface, the keen eared will hear strange voices, and mysterious melodies, and all manner of evidence regarding some secret sound world within High Aura'd's already gorgeously obfuscated music. The A side blossoms into a hiss drenched slo-mo creep, gradually fading out in a cloud of chiming bells and buried rhythms, the sound melancholy and sweetly sorrowful.
The flipside opens with some seriously Koner like low end minimalism, a cavernous drift much like that which opened the record, again building gradually to swath of black buzz crunch, a grinding landscape of hum and thrum and muted howl which quickly collapses into a soft cacophony of what sounds like orchestral samples, burred and smeared into an epic blissed out dreamlike coda before slipping back into the shadows, and a more wistful, hushed final passage.
Some 'supergroups' seem more likely than others, often made up of guys who already played together, or who had shared histories, maybe toured together, but then there's this one, called The High Confessions, which barring some secret connections (which probably do exist), seems pretty dang mysterious and unlikely, but then the unlikely ones are always the best ones.
One part Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, one part Chris Connelly of Ministry and Revolting Cocks, one part Sanford Parker (Minsk, Nachtmystium and Twilight) and one final part, Jeremy Lemos of White/Light, who has also recorded Smog and Stereolab among others. Wow. A pretty motley crew for sure, but it definitely works. And like all good collaborations, it never obviously points to a single member. There's definitely an industrial vibe, especially on the opener "Mistaken For Cops", with its Teutonic pound, and sung/spoken vox, but then there's spidery swirls of psychedelic guitar, thick washed out production, deep low end pulses, there's even a little bit of a proggy vibe as well. The 17 minute "Along Came The Dogs" begins with a rumbling stretch of black drones, and martial drums, sampled voices and collaged vocals, thick warbly low end synth buzz, a skeletal motorik pulse, which gradually transforms into a sort of industrial / krautrock hybrid, all swooping muddied electronics, a little bit Can or Faust, more sung/spoken vocals, this time tangled and overlapping, a strange sort of round almost, the jam wreathed in swirling clouds of buzz, and peppered with thick stabs of reverbed bass synth crunch, growing more and more stripped down and skeletal before finally grinding to a halt. Only to have "The Listener" creep in, a brooding moody drift, all minimal percussive pulse, driven by lush piano chords, and woozy dramatic vocals, shot through with bits of feedback, the vibe still pretty krauty, and proggy, spaced out and psychedelic.
"Dead Tenements" begins with a thick corrosive churn of synthdrone, which is soon joined by some smoldering guitar growl, some muted feedback, and an I-am-Iron-Man kick drum throb, before the vocals come in, a snarled croon, a gorgeously bleak sonic death march, that about halfway through explodes into something much more fierce, dense tribal drumming, the various strands of drones growing more incendiary, the vocals more intense, before dropping out completely and leaving the drums to drive an awesomely hypnotic heavy krautdrone coda, trancelike and divine. Finally, "Chlorine And Crystal" finishes things off, another brooding dirge, the bassline thick and distorted, wreathed in fuzz, the guitars crystalline and lysergic, a pop song slowed way down and transformed into a sort of depressive Wipers style ballad, albeit with a bit more crunch, a lumbering chunk of hypnorock dirgery, that seems to crumble as the track progresses, eventually leaving a strangely distorted rhythm, pounding it's way through a cloud of glistening harmonics, held aloft by some low slung bass fuzz, and a slowly fading industrial kraut groove.
As much as we've been flipping out over the recent spate of retrospective compilations coming from the newly re-activated Flying Nun label, it's not all just 'the good ol' days', as the label continues to push newer bands, although to be fair, High Dependency Unit are hardly a new band, having been kicking up a glorious noise rock racket for close to two decades now, and having recently reformed to perform as part of Flying Nun's 30th anniversary (!!), but this record is in fact, fairly new, or at least new-ish, released back in 2003, and now getting re-released on FN where it belongs, as it carries on the tradition of big gloomy psychedelic noise rock, as practiced most notably by the mighty Bailter Space, who might be the closest reference for HDU. Just give a listen to the first track, a barreling juggernaut of blown out, crunchy, heavy guitars, Sonic Youth-like soft noise, pummeling drums, buried vox, churning indie rock that explodes in dense surges of psych noise bliss. It's all we could do to make it past the first track. But these guys definitely have a soft side too. Check out the woozy bliss-pop of "Grace", that again looks to SY with its warped outsider avant pop, boy/girl vox, soaring synths and twisted guitar figures, it's sort of a slow jam, or a ballad maybe, but still it manages to be dense and layered and noisy, and actually now that we think of it reminds us a bit of the Swirlies too!
From there on out, it's a dizzying drift through pounding shoegaze noisepop blissouts, gorgeous sprawls of feedback drenched dreamdrone dirgery, stripped down gloom pop crush, dense guitar heavy churn, and finally, the record closes with a delicately atonal stretch of piano and acoustic guitar driven slowcore, still wreathed in swaths of soft noise and blurred effects, the result darkly lovely and subtly psychedelic.
Whoa! We always knew the High Llamas could craft soothing, dulcet sounds in fine fashion, but on Beet, Maize & Corn their pleasantly mellow stylings have mutated into Lawrence Welk-esque choral arrangements. Really! You can almost see the gents and ladies swaying in time to these candlelit orchestral numbers. The glorious horns and strings seem genuinely from another era. Quite remarkable and very very different from all that has come before in the High Llamas body of work. Not sure yet if it's our cup of Earl Grey... perhaps you might wish to take a sip for yourself.
The newest High Llamas album brings a bushel of musical pleasantries. Delving into a little different, more electronic territory from where they've ventured in the past, but sounding very very familiar at the same time. Perhaps, very much along the lines of Laetitia Sadier's (of Stereolab) lulling lalala's, or slow tinges of tiki cocktail-drenched exotica? Chiming vibes, reverb-y vibrato-y guitar and a scattering of blippy bleeps. Turn that bubble machine on, and float away.
Ladies and gentlemen, may we decant a new High Llamas album for your listening enjoyment? Ah yes, you can almost hear the tinkling of silverware on fine bone china as the dinner plates are cleared away at the supper club, and the elegant guests settle in for their after dinner mints, waltzing and musical performance. The follow-up to 2003's Beet, Maize & Corn, Can Cladders features more immaculately groomed, glorious orchestral pop from the golden quill of Sean O'Hagan that tiptoes delicately along the outskirts of Lawrence Welk's well manicured topiaried hedges (well, we don't know for sure that Mr. Welk had hedges let alone topiaried ones, but we can dream can't we?). We've always thought the High Llamas' presence on the Drag City label to be somewhat incongruous alongside the likes of Neil Michael Hagerty, Weird War, Brother JT, Neil Hamburger, U.S. Maple, and the Fucking Champs. But hey, don't we all need something a little soft'n'pretty every so often?! This is downright easy listening that's possibly just as palatable to the grannies as it is to the kids. Don't forget your doilies!
The band's new album Cold and Bouncy is even more full of blips and bleeps than the recent Hawaii. It's their most fully realized record and coincidentally the most Stereolabesque (but still delicate where Stereolab never are), bringing them closer to the final step in their eventual progression towards actually becoming Stereolab.
We were taken by surprise when we saw there was a new High Llamas record coming out. While it's only been four years since their last release, we have to be honest that we hadn't really thought much about them in quite a while longer than that. But looking back, we started to realize how at their beginning in the '90s, they were tapping into a smart sound of orchestral pop, demonstating a deep love of Van Dyke Parks that predated by a decade the widespread appreciation of Parks and his collaborations with The Beach Boys that that exists now.
The High Llamas album we always return to is 1994's Gideon Gaye, and we're so stoked that this new offering is indeed in that same league of meticulously crafted pop - so refined, yet seemingly effortless and breezy, reminding us also of the baroque pop aspect of Belle & Sebastian as well as the soft & silky side of records by Jim O'Rourke and The Sea & Cake.
Originally created and performed for a stage production, this still works perfectly as stand alone album. As the sun shines and spring seems to have come early here in San Francisco, Here Come The Rattling Trees is hitting the spot for us!
Excellent collection of remixes by Mouse on Mars, Cornelius, Kid Loco, Jim O'Rourke, Stock, Hausen and Walkman, Schneider TM (of Kreidler) and one they remixed themselves. This is really really good, simple, pleasant electronica that will please beginners and advanced folk alike.
The title is pretty self-explanatory... this is a super comprehensive double whammy of High Llamas splendor - ranging from the absolutely blissful Beach Boys-y harmonious tunes to that which teeters precariously on the border to your parents' finely executed, yet docile dinner music. The first disc compiles select tracks from their glistening pop albums Santa Barbara ('92), Gideon Gaye ('95), Hawaii ('96), Cold & Bouncy ('98), and Snowbug ('99). The second disc which contains the rare tracks is a particular delight for fans. Really, who doesn't like to discover some unheard gems of their favorite band? Many of the sweepingly beautiful instrumentals seem plucked straight out of the score of some '60s jetsetter flick. Heck, you might wanna make this your perfect soundtrack to a long evening spent sipping Shirley Temples and gently swaying with your sweetie.
Santa Barbara, billed as the High Llama's "lost" 1992 album, is closest to their debut Gideon Gaye in its overt Steely Dan worship. It's great.
FINAL VINYL, BACK IN STOCK.
The fire yet burns. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike's three-piece pissed-off stoner metal juggernaut presents their fourth album, and while we can't say we were disappointed or anything (you get what you've come to expect from HoF), neither were we super blown away either, really. Though we never would have predicted it a few years ago, to our minds it would seem that Pike's former bandmates from seminal stoned-on-Sabbath dopesmokers Sleep are up to something a little more interesting at this juncture, in their outfit Om. Or, we're just more in the mood for Om's brand of mystical, minimal weirdness rather than the more bloodyminded bludgeon being beaten into our skulls by High On Fire. But if that's what you want, look no further. Death Is The Communion delivers the goods: Wardrums pound. Lemmylike vocals gargle forth and froth. Clenched fist riffage rakes your flesh. Yeah!
And, as the album bulldozers along, some diversity is to be had, from majestic keyboard melancholia and somber guitar soloing to surprisingly introspective, un-metally acoustic guitar interludes. So, another fine HoF outing. And by the way, bassist Joe Preston is gone, High On Fire just another notch on his bedpost of one-night-stands-in-bands (as per his stints with Earth and the Melvins). His replacement, Jeff Matz of Zeke.
The fire yet burns. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike's three-piece pissed-off stoner metal juggernaut presents their fourth album, and while we can't say we were disappointed or anything (you get what you've come to expect from HoF), neither were we super blown away either, really. Though we never would have predicted it a few years ago, to our minds it would seem that Pike's former bandmates from seminal stoned-on-Sabbath dopesmokers Sleep are up to something a little more interesting at this juncture, in their outfit Om. Or, we're just more in the mood for Om's brand of mystical, minimal weirdness rather than the more bloodyminded bludgeon being beaten into our skulls by High On Fire. But if that's what you want, look no further. Death Is The Communion delivers the goods: Wardrums pound. Lemmylike vocals gargle forth and froth. Clenched fist riffage rakes your flesh. Yeah!
And, as the album bulldozers along, the mood gets more somber, and some diversity is to be had, from majestic, morose keyboard melancholia to surprisingly introspective, un-metally acoustic guitar interludes. So, another fine HoF outing. And by the way, bassist Joe Preston is gone, High On Fire just another notch on his bedpost of one-night-stands-in-bands (as per his stints with Earth and the Melvins). His replacement, Jeff Matz of Zeke.
And by the way, this edition comes with a bonus DVD disc featuring 40 minutes of in-the-studio footage n' stuff.
It's pretty much a given at this point: High On Fire can do no wrong. For over a decade now, they have been one of the most reliable and awesome metal bands on the planet... so reliable in fact, that it's easy to almost take them for granted. But every time a new album hits the streets, we have the same reaction, which includes foaming at the mouth, an increased heart rate, and the urge to destroy everything in sight. They're that good.
Snakes For The Divine is the band's first post-Relapse album, brought to us by E1 Entertainment, formerly Koch. Not sure what the deal is with this label, but the change has done the band some good for sure. The biggest surprise here is the slightly more polished production courtesy of hot shit producer Greg Fidelman, who you might remember from Slayer's recent World Painted Blood and, cough, Metallica's Death Magnetic. But fear not, because words like "polished" are really only used relative to the band's back catalog and do not in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER take away from the sonic beatdown Oakland's favorite sons have delivered since day one. They've just moved on, but there will be no mistaking who this is. Matt Pike's throatshredding vocals and guitar mastery (seriously, who else in metal today can rival this guy?) will tear you apart in the best way imaginable, and then you got the rhythm section, without question one of the best and most punishing in the biz. Des Kensel's intense whirlwind drumming and Jeff Matz's low end rumble are the perfect accompaniment for Pike's onslaught, making High On Fire sound like an uncontrollable force of nature, or maybe some ancient army storming across the mountains toward their ultimate victory. At the same time, this is the kind of metal that people who aren't really into heavier music can still dig, just because everything is done so perfectly. There's really nothing not to like here, and goddamn, this is some catchy stuff. Considering how brutal it is, that's definitely saying something. For a band that hasn't strayed too far from the sound they established early on, it's amazing that High On Fire can remain so vital and awesome. But they've once again delivered, in fact we'd go as far as to say that this is their best effort since 2002's Surrounded By Thieves, and we have no doubt Snakes For The Divine will have you raging into the next morning. Fuck yeah.
Nice tripped out split from these two New York outfits who both venture into psychedelic sonic realms in their own compelling ways. High Places is a duo that we've heard in passing before but we didn't remember them sounding like this. Their side is one long, really spaced out and percussive slow burner with early Throbbing Gristle like textures, infused with an underlying dubbed out and hypnotic groove. We realized that the first few times we played this we had it on the wrong speed but we have to say whether you slow it down (and the vocals start sounding like some cool mixture of Arthur Russell and Panda Bear) or you play it at the correct speed, it sounds pretty awesome either way, so you kind of get two rad long High Places tracks instead of just one.
Soft Circle is the project of Hisham A. Bharoocha, well respected visual artist and a former member of Black Dice (who in our opinion have never been quite as good since he left their fold). His debut as Soft Circle from a couple years ago was a great exercise in warm exploratory percussive bliss. This outing finds him gravitating more towards a drugged out pulsating dancefloor sound, in fact one of the songs "Don't Just Stand There" was remixed on the latest Milky Disco compilation. It's really cool to see folks finding refreshing new avenues to reach such soaring psychedelic heights.
Japanese psych-noiserock power trio.
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The unexpected domestic reissue of this classic PSF album of psychguitar overload from this Japanese combo. This one follows "II" and is also quite good. NB. "Dispersion retains its 8 page booklet, but much of the Japanese text has been replaced with an extensive interview with bassist Asahito Nanjo, which originally appeared in Opprobrium magazine."
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The domestic Squealer reissue of this classic PSF album of psychguitar overload from this Japanese combo is out of print, so here's the PSF one, again - at a better price than we used to have it for, yay! One of the essential High Rise documents.
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Another one of the essential High Rise documents.
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Japanese mondo guitar fuzz legends High Rise offer up some stuff from the vaults, about a half hour of LOUD and DISTORTED rock at a bargain price.
Some time ago we reviewed a double cd featuring (supposedly) everything ever recorded by this obscure, outsider-y late '70s / early '80s UK psychedelic "hippy punk" outfit called, variously, Afflicted, The Afflicted Man, and High Speed and The Afflicted Man. It's been out of print for a while - but now, both of the albums that constituted that set's second and best disc, the one where, as we said, the fuzz really hits the fan, have been reissued again, almost simultaneously, with Permanent putting out 1981's I'm Off Me 'Ead on vinyl (only), and Spanish reissue specialists Guerssen doing 1982's Get Stoned Ezy on cd (with vinyl forthcoming as well). Both are issued under license from The Afflicted Man himself, guitarist/vocalist Steve Hall, unlike that previous collection, apparently.
Get Stoned Ezy in particular has been raved about, quite deservedly, as a Holy Grail of wah-fuzz-feedback psych insanity, kind of an unknown precursor to the blown-out speed freak sounds of Japanese heavies like High Rise and Mainliner. Bearing the not entirely hyperbolic warning on the sleeve "This Record Is Very Powerful And Could Give You Earhole Damage", Get Stoned Ezy consists of three lengthy throbbing songs of rollicking fuzzed out guitar splooge with unhinged vocal drawling and pounding repetitive rhythms from this loosey-goosey power trio, total swarming distortion jams to the max.
Meanwhile, the slightly earlier I'm Off Me 'Ead is really almost as good, just a bit different, being marginally more song-oriented (well, there's more of 'em here) than Get Stoned Ezy, more shambolic and "Messthetics-y", if you're familiar with that series of UK DIY comps. It's definitely also about the monomaniacal, messed-up distortodelic guitar wrangling, you're in for plenty of that on either album.
Charming stuff for fans of Hendrix, Hawkwind, The Stooges, Wicked Lady, Groundhogs... and with the vocals factored in, these albums also oughtta appeal to fans of aQ fave Michael Yonkers, big time!
I'm Off Me 'Ead, limited to 500 copies, features remastered sound, and a full color inner sleeve with rare pics, a previously unpublished Steve Hall interview, and more.
Get Stoned Ezy is also remastered from an original vinyl copy (cuz the master tapes are long gone), and the cd booklet contains vintage photos of the band in action plus extensive & enthusiastic liner notes newly penned by the editor of Black To Comm 'zine, Chris Stigliano.
If you need any more convincing, heed the cover sticker blurb on that release from Ripley of Wooden Shjips, who sez: "Fucking essential". Speaking of Wooden Shjips, yeah if you like them and other current practitioners of "heavy psych", like White Hills and The Heads and Carlton Melton and Mainliner and Gnod and Earthless, then really you need to expose your toughened-up earholes to both Get Stoned Ezy and I'm Off Me 'Ead, pronto.
Yay, You Are Here is here! Man, we love this band - or man, since the band is just one fella, Chris "Professor" Black, one of metal's most prolific and prodigious talents at the moment. He's guy behind Dawnbringer, for one thing. Just a little while ago, we listed High Spirits' latest demo disc, as well as another brainchild of Chris', the MetalUSAfer 7" (a brilliantly conceptual tribute of sorts to cult Japanese true metal stalwarts, Metalucifer). Not long before those, we had that unique Aktor single, featuring Chris in cahoots with Jussi from Circle.
So we, and hopefully you too, are pretty well primed for this brand new full-length album from Chris' purest (purist?) metal project, High Spirits, full of more of the NWOBHM-inspired, 'motivational montage metal' (our phrase) we love about them, er, him. (High Spirits do have a live formation, by the way, with Chris joined by guys from Zuul, but in the studio, it's all Chris.)
The prime paradox of High Spirits' songs are that they're seemingly deliberately calculated to be the soundtrack for rainslick city streets at night, illuminated in neon light (kinda cheesy and cinematic, on the poppier side of '80s heavy metal stylings, right?), but they're also, in part due to Chris' earnest voice, very sincere and heartfelt sounding too, not ironic or anything. On this album, High Spirits pulls it off again. Great stuff, super catchy as always, from the uptempo opener "When The Lights Go Down" (the only track here to also appear on that demo disc), to anthemic rocker "I Need Your Love", to moody but also rockin' breakup track "Reminding You Of Me", to their fantastic theme-song closer "High Spirits" (reprised from their debut demo of 2009), heck all nine cuts are great. There's tons of fuzz on the guitar, tasty solos abound, and lyrically it's all about loves won and lost, mostly the latter. Simple, fun stuff in a way, but who does this anymore? And does it so well? And with such gravitas and aplomb? Gotta love it. Also gotta love the cover art, High Spirits' ditching the usual metal graphic conventions for a celebration of public mass transit.
Ok, we could go on and on, but we already told ya how much we love High Spirits, just listen to the sound samples if you're still undecided; if the songs don't tug on your heartstrings and/or get your head to banging, then you're no friend of ours (not really, but it always sounds cool to say that).
We have cds, and colored vinyl while they last.
New, nice reissues -- in slip covers, with bonus tracks and all the fixin's -- of these two (the only two) original classic High Tide albums. Previous cd reissues were hard to come by so it's even nicer to have these readily available. High Tide were a band at the intersection of psych-pop, prog, and acid rock. A great mix of the proggy, folky -- and HEAVY. For 1969, when their debut Sea Shanties was released, they were one of the heaviest bands around. Heavy due to the monster FUZZ guitar slashings of ax hero Tony Hill (formerly a member of Ugly Things magazine's favorite band, The Misunderstood), who also contributed vocals, sounding a bit like a British Jim Morrison. And High Tide had something else to keep them from being just another English blues rock power trio (a la Cream) -- their music was given an extra edge by the impassioned violin playing of fourth member Simon Hill, who went on to play with the Third Ear Band, Hawkwind and David Bowie.
Both Sea Shanties and the band's self-titled 1970 follow-up feature sinuous side-length songs, shades of light and dark, melodies both regal and rustic, and awesome instrumental interplay betwixt guitar and violin. These two albums are about equally great, and come recommended to anyone into the heavier side of '60s/'70s psych who hasn't yet had the pleasure of hearing 'em! File with The Dark, T2, Groundhogs, Socrates Drank The Conium, Clear Blue Sky, Fraction, and other early-daze proto-metal of the more psych-prog persuasion.
These reissues have copious liner notes, vintage photos, and vast expanses of unreleased bonus tracks -- Sea Shanties featuring five of 'em (two demo cuts and three songs that didn't make the album, including the eleven and a half minute long "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), High Tide with four, again two alternate takes and two unreleased efforts (among them an even longer, nearly 16 minute take on "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), all well worth hearing.
New, nice reissues -- in slip covers, with bonus tracks and all the fixin's -- of these two (the only two) original classic High Tide albums. Previous cd reissues were hard to come by so it's even nicer to have these readily available. High Tide were a band at the intersection of psych-pop, prog, and acid rock. A great mix of the proggy, folky -- and HEAVY. For 1969, when their debut Sea Shanties was released, they were one of the heaviest bands around. Heavy due to the monster FUZZ guitar slashings of ax hero Tony Hill (formerly a member of Ugly Things magazine's favorite band, The Misunderstood), who also contributed vocals, sounding a bit like a British Jim Morrison. And High Tide had something else to keep them from being just another English blues rock power trio (a la Cream) -- their music was given an extra edge by the impassioned violin playing of fourth member Simon Hill, who went on to play with the Third Ear Band, Hawkwind and David Bowie.
Both Sea Shanties and the band's self-titled 1970 follow-up feature sinuous side-length songs, shades of light and dark, melodies both regal and rustic, and awesome instrumental interplay betwixt guitar and violin. These two albums are about equally great, and come recommended to anyone into the heavier side of '60s/'70s psych who hasn't yet had the pleasure of hearing 'em! File with The Dark, T2, Groundhogs, Socrates Drank The Conium, Clear Blue Sky, Fraction, and other early-daze proto-metal of the more psych-prog persuasion.
These reissues have copious liner notes, vintage photos, and vast expanses of unreleased bonus tracks -- Sea Shanties featuring five of 'em (two demo cuts and three songs that didn't make the album, including the eleven and a half minute long "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), High Tide with four, again two alternate takes and two unreleased efforts (among them an even longer, nearly 16 minute take on "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), all well worth hearing.
Brand new record of looped lysergic psychedelia from this mysterious French one man band, his second for Not Not Fun, and maybe his 10th or something overall, but the first we've reviewed here, and it definitely seems like it's got aQ written all over it. Long loopscapes of rhythmic repetition, of swirling spaced out raga like ur-drones, of heart-of-the-sun blissed out soft noise, of swirling abstract free form drift, we hear plenty of likeminded noisemakers in High Wolf's sound, Birchville Cat Motel / Our Love Will Destroy The World, Avarus, Yellow Swans, Black Dice, Natural Snow Buildings, Raccoo-oo-oon, Starving Weirdos, Skaters, Sun Araw, even some Muslimgauze, and odds are anyone who digs most of those are gonna love High Wolf too.
"Meeting Of The Three Seas" offers up a softly warped, dreamily looped main rhythm, a motorik pulse amidst swirling clouds of chordal whir, of clipped voices, of deep drones, of tangled melodic fragments, gradually building in density and intensity, soon there are what sound like horns, blurred into swooping swirls of sound, a softly cacophonous climax, which quickly settles back into a warm woozy cloud of echo and delay. "Diego" follows the same pattern, a looped rhythm, that as it moves forward, gathers all manner of sonic detritus, bits of echo, strange voices, coos and aaahhh's, fragments of guitar, bleats of horns, soon squiggly synth melodies creep in, giving the track a sort of retro sci-fi vibe, before once again blossoming into a head spinning cloud of soft noise psychedelia. "Cloudhead" takes the same formula, but adds a whole bunch of haze, creating a super blissed out shoegazey dirgedronescape. "Solar System Is My God" might be our favorite track, it's the one that evokes Muslimgauze comparisons, with its tabla like rhythms, handclaps, warm swaths of muted buzz, chordal swirl and Eastern melody, this tracks climax, less intense, and more glimmering and glistening, sun dappled and celebratory.
The record finishes off with the nearly 13 minute "Fire In My Bones", which changes up the pattern, beginning with a thick blast of hazy soft focus sound, buried vocals, and pulsing shimmer, it's not until nearly 3 minutes in, that the rhythm kicks in, and this time the background sound echoes the rhythm, a mesmerizing trancelike ripple, underpinning keening buzz drenched high end melodies, a distinctly tripped out raga vibe for sure, then a brief stretch of hushed minimal echo, laced with disembodied wah wah guitar, before slipping right back into the eyes-to-the-sky ritualistic sonic blissout that started the track. Awesome stuff. Total sonic manna for the drone-loop-psych-bliss crowd...
French one man psychedelic loopscaper High Wolf finds his way onto our pal JW's Holy Mountain label, and offers up another mesmerizing collection of collaged soundscapes and rhythmic mesmer, but unlike on past records where the High Wolf sound was dense, and noisy, a little chaotic, a Birchville Cat Motel like slow build to a dense layered soft cacophony, the sounds here are much more blissed out and dubby, very rhythmic with a bit of an Eastern vibe, the opening track especially sounds like a more lysergic Muslimgauze, with some sitar like buzz and tribal hand drums woven into the song's blurred soft swells and spidery melodies, it's easily the dreamiest thing we've heard from HW, and we definitely wish it had gone one way longer. The second track offers up more of the same, with a bit more effects, muted percussion, some warm fuzzed out shimmer, all in a haze of washed out effects, until the low end swoops in, thick and dense, synthy and warbly, a strange fuzzy pulse laid over that initial rhythm, a dark raga like kosmische sound that drifts and shimmers hypnotically until the song finally winds down.
Track three, "Raagini" begins all raga buzz, layered high end tones, but quickly blossoms into a sound more like the High Wolf of old, a gauzy expanse of mesmerizing buzz, but here the drones are laid over a strange sonar like pulse, which gives the otherwise nearly static buzz an otherworldly propulsion. "Kenya Sunset" is another one that starts off all Muslimgauze-y, looped and darkly rhythmic, ominous and cinematic, the surrounding sounds in constant motion, totally tranced out, the sort of thing we could listen to forever, but instead of going on forever, the song erupts into a wild psychedelic squall, that wraps itself around that pulsing rhythm, and rides it for the length of the track. And then finally, the nearly 14 minute "Haiti" smooths the looped rhythms into something much more abstract and droney, some spaced out psychedelic drift, that builds slowly into a warm washed out celestial swirl, all bleary and blurry and dreamy, but still shot through with some smoldering psychedelic guitar, the perfect closer to one of our favorite High Wolf records yet.
Includes a download coupon as well!
Latest from this French psychedelic loopscaper, hot on the heels of his Ascension lp, which we loved (and still have a few copies of, just ask!). Like Ascension, Incapulco finds Mr. Wolf, assembling sprawling landscapes of layered loops, of swirling psychedelic atmospheres, mesmerizing, hypnotic, repetitive, cyclical, total tranced out zoner bliss. Wah guitars are wreathed in effects and wrapped around stuttering percussions and whorls of tinkling melody, wild tangles of African rhythms wound tight over soft moody swells and shoegazey shimmer, hushed hazy atmospheric drift shot through with tendrils of glitched out electronics, a sort of industrial flecked new age dronescape, fracture eighties pop, lopped and looped into a Ferraro-esque bit of lysergic Tropicalia, soft swirls of prismatic analog synth give way to woozy Casiocore lounge drift, pulsing motorik churn underpinning flecks of psychedelic wah and heaving crumbling thrum.
Another fantastic collection of consciousness altering sonic shimmer and bongsmoke fueled ur-drone dream loop mesmer, for anyone into Skaters, James Ferraro, Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Avarus, Natural Snow Buildings, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Starving Weirdos, etc...
