The Not Not Fun label's Bored Fortress subscription split 7" series has been going on for a few years now, and is always killer, featuring a who's who of hip underground weirdo rock combos, not to mention some seriously fantastic packaging, and for whatever reason, this year, a handful of the previously subscription only singles have been made available to non subscribers, but not for long, as these babies are crazy limited.
High Wolf do more of that tripped out psychedelic loopage we love so much, and that few seem to be able to pull off quite so fantastically, this one a little bit more rhythmic and spacey than usual, a simple motorik pulse, beneath billowy clouds of processed guitars and sweetly melodic blurred loops, which eventually build to a full on pounding, lo-fi, psychedelic squall freakout. Awesome.
Never heard of the weirdly named Savage Young Taterbug, but as their name might suggest, their sound is equally weird, a twisted drift of super lo-fi Casio style organ wheeze, abstract tinkling chimes, disembodied melodies, super distorted echo drenched vox, crumbling crunchy guitars and all manner of percussive plink and plonk, like a poppier, way slower Avarus, that same sort of abstract psychedelic campfire jam, which is surprisingly transformed for the last little bit into a super lethargic 16rpm blues crawl, still wrapped in buzz and fuzz and whir. Definitely psyched to hear more, uh, Savage Young Taterbug!
Also, we have another Bored Fortress title, besides the ones we're listing now, the Infinite Body / No Age split 7", VERY few copies of that one, not enough to list, just ask if you want one and IF we still have some left, it could be yours!
An obscure early '70s American power trio that we'd never heard of until a bootleg cd recently crossed our path. Intrigued by the cover photo of three long-haired stoner dudes, we checked it out (hoping for something akin to Sabbath or Budgie but perfectly aware that we were more likely to discover something more like unsuccessful ... wannabes). Lo! Highway Robbery turned out to be bonafide heavy-hitters, playing proto-metal in the Led Zep vein, with moments recalling Sabbath and the Who. Huzzah! Double huzzah, 'cause we then discovered that this, their only album (originally released by Capitol in 1973) had serendipitously just been reissued by Collectables, and we could share our discovery with the lucky patrons of Aquarius. It's almost all super heavy and rockin, despite the obligatory misguided pop efforts made by all not-metal-yet hard rockers of the era, it's got a singing drummer, they've got the look, what more do you want! Fans of current or vintage "stoner rock" should jump on this. Wow, it's always nice to find that there's stuff out there remaining to surprise us.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This is the second bit of gorgeous ambient folk drone we've heard from Higuma, the duo of Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and his musical partner Lisa McGee, after a criminally limited cd-r on Root Strata, sadly this lp is nearly as limited, only 250 copies total, already sold out and out of print, except maybe for the 25 copies we have right now, which as you know means, be quick or be dead (dead as in, no Higuma for you, you won't actually die, maybe).
The sounds is much like you might expect from the Barn Owl / Elm / Caminiti and now Higuma axis, looooong tracks of dark windswept shimmer, dense brooding drones and epic abstract folk flecked drift.
Clouds of processed guitar swirl ghostlike above buried rhythms, chant like vox, skeletal melodies, the sounds sprawl and smolder, occasionally building to drugged out Spacemen 3-like soft cacophonies, but just as often melting into something more delicate and space-y with spidery psychedelic guitars blurred into distant swells, gongs and chimes, adding mysterious textures and overtones to the already gloriously murky and moody proceedings.
The whole record is a delicate assemblage of whir and buzz and rumble, the sounds intertwined, smeared, layered into spectral space drone, but always remaining earthy and organic, not OF the stars, but earthbound and staring up INTO the stars, the sound of deep black night, dusted with starlight, all held at bay by the flicker and crackle of Higuma's slow burning dreamlike blurscapes.
So gorgeous. Cool handscreened sleeves, original art by Caminiti, and again, 250 copies, out of print, and unavailable once these final copies are gone...
Wholly enveloping, river soaked, fog piercing drone. Barn Owl's Evan Caminiti and a previously unknown-to-us artist named Lisa McGee collaborate to bring forth cathartic ruminations in the form of ghostly guitar, softly sparring vocals, various percussive devices and an unnamable, innumerable catalog of various other instruments. The collaboration was a live improvisational affair, which the liner notes claim was recorded "in the valley." The appropriately and cleverly named album, Haze Valley, name checks one of our own neighborhoods here in San Francisco, Hayes Valley. Anyone who checked out and enjoyed any of the releases by Cloaks, White Rainbow (particularly the more sedate side), Barn Owl (obviously), or La Monte Young will be pleased with what they'll find here. Make no mistake about it, this is definitive dronemusic. While it is beautiful and has some structured elements, this is for the true trippers. Those looking for hummable hooks and such may find more satisfaction looking elsewhere, but for an immersive, spiritual headphones experience, this is your destination. It is also worth noting that the cover art was made by Evan, and its burgeoning crystal pyramid couldn't be more lovely or more perfectly suited to the sounds found herein. Drone freaks beware, this could easily take over your stereo.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!! These are the only ones we'll ever have...
The Brit band ABC started the alphabet monikering back in the 80s. Now, Bay Area young'uns HIJK pick it up a few letters down the line. This ain't no schoolhouse rock nor retro new wave business though. HIJK make emo indie pop that intially lures you in with their gentle boyish Death Cab Gibbard-y vocals, but then gives the proceedings a jolt when the tunes shatter into noise bursts. Cool stuff.
We knew John Hill as producer of the stunning folk funk lps of Susan Christie and Margo Guryan, but this concept record is where his producing genius is on full display: an epic electronic space jazz composition featuring Susan Christie, Jimmy Valerio, Gerry Mulligan and Walter Sear. Based on a poem by Ian Michaels called "I Am The Storm of Dawn" that suggests life on Earth originated on one of the six moons of Jupiter, Europa (the only other place in the solar system with water and ice), the 6 Moons of Jupiter features Susan Christie reciting the poem with Moogy electronic drones, cellos,� delayed flutes, and percussion. While we're not always huge fans of spoken word, somehow it works here, adding some serious tripped out drugginess to the already pretty far out proceedings.�
According to the liner notes, this was the first part of a proposed 13 piece concept performance, with each piece written in a distinctly different style, somehow combining poetry, electronic technology, classical, jazz and of course 'space rock' (quotes required!) Not sure sure how that would have panned out had they stuck to the plan, especially since it seems that for this first volume they jammed all that stuff together, into one single awesomely mind melting sonic hodgepodge.�
The tracks range from shimmery free jazzscapes, all abstract percussion and buzzing raga like drones, haunting and mysterious, to full on groovy keyboard drenched space-y garage jams, complete with fluttering flute, wheezing organs, creepy chanted vocals, and wailing psych leads, to strange off kilter chamber music, heavy with reverb and long lonesome tones, to pounding sixties style stomp, but all twisted up around jazzy horns, and jaunty Springtime shuffles, to haunting solo strings, dour melancholic melodies over buried soft buzz, to total acid wah guitars, laced with creepy pizzicato strings and warbly rubbery funhouse melodies. Mix in Christie's deadpan spoken word and this becomes a serious jazzy groovy musical mindfuck. And you know what that means. BUY IT!
Hella drummer solo album.
Okay fans of Hella and their musical buddies, here's something a little different for y'all! Zach Hill (the drummer for that Sacramento math rock band as well as Nervous Cop and Team Sleep among others), has corralled the likes of Pinback's Rob Crow and the Flying Luttenbachers' Jonathon Hischke for his Zach Hill & The Holy Smokes album Masculine Drugs, on which much dissonant noise fuckery ensues. One of its highlights is certainly the fifth song "Getting In The Head Of Your Galaxy" which offers some trademark Crow vocals and melodicism amid the cacaphony. But Hill didn't stop there! He also wrote and illustrated a paperback book called Destroying Yourself Is Too Accessible: Old Children's Ramblings For The New And Improved Child And Hypocritically Desterous Hippy to accompany the cd. Each page (of which there are 138) features an abstract pen'n'ink drawing along with a brief (1-3 sentences) entry. The cd lives in a plastic pocket at the back of the book.
Zach Hill is one busy man. Besides constantly touring and releasing records with his duo Hella he also somehow found time to make records with Greg from Deerhoof (Nervous Cop), Rob Crow (The Ladies) and now he's teamed up with the relentless guitar outbursts of Mick Barr (Orthrelm, Octis, Quixotic) for an album that never lets up, brutal intensity from start to finish. Hill's frantic drumming is the perfect backdrop for Barr's impossibly over the top guitar freakouts. Barr has become one of our favorite guitar players in recent years. His ability to full on rip and never let up has held us in thrall with a iron gloved grip. This is the kind of record that makes you want to drink 8000 cups of coffee and finish your life's to-do list in one fell swoop, no rest, no sleep, no mercy!!!! This is the sound of relentless spirit at its most triumphant. Like Glen Branca on a dirty diet of speed, teamed up with a scrappy drummer making the sort of sounds that put most math rock to shame. This is advanced calculus metal for unrelenting students. One of our customers said it best while listening to this "Whoa the Voltron of shredders!" We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Who could possibly be a match for Mick Barr's (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilm) insane avant sci-fi guitar shredding? We would have thought no one... But it makes sense, that the only true match for Barr's fretboard wiggery would be Zach Hill, a sort of Yngwie Malmsteen of the drum kit. A spastic octopoidal drum freak, who can cram a million more beats into a song than the busiest drummer you can think of. Not sure why no one thought of getting these guys together sooner. Their first meeting took place on last year's Shred Earthship, and now we have ZH/MB Volume 2.
And the results, much like on Shred Earthship are just what you would have expected. A mind blowing, ear shredding, speaker melting squiggle and noodle shredfest. Dense squalls of wildly dueling drum splatter and guitar freakout. Often note for note. Is it free jazz? Is it avant metal? Is it outrageous instrumental wankery? Well yeah, it sort of is, ALL of those. Ultra complex, incredibly convoluted, might be a stretch to call these songs, instead they seem to be exercises in instrumental dexterity, each one an over the top psychedelic metal freakout that has the listener panting and about to pass out after only thirty seconds, lord knows how these guys can keep it up for a whole record. The opener is the jazziest, due in no small part to some surprisingly melodic sax, but after that, it's one on one, drums vs. guitar, each wrapped around the other in some sort of insane ultimate fighting chokehold, a non stop barrage of notes and beats... imagine that someone had been collecting every note ever played, and every drum beat, and just piling them up in a huge dumpster, they're tiny, they don't take up that much room, but a trillion, or a million billion trillion, have that dumpster just about full. Now imagine being strapped down to a huge slab of black concrete, with strange metallic implements holding your ears wide open, then imagine that entire dumpster being upended and all of those notes and beats showering down on you like some sort of musical avalanche or metallic hailstorm. Sound good? Well then, my friend, this is indeed the record for you...
Packaged in killer white cloud on bright yellow sleeves, most are on black vinyl, a few are on yellow, so you might just get lucky. But don't ask, we said: YOU. MIGHT. GET. LUCKY.
Limited to 303 copies!!! We got a handful, and will NOT be able to get more.
Like Robert Fripp and Manuel Gottsching, the UK's Steve Hillage is a stellar guitarist who came out of the prog era (Arzachel, Khan, Gong) to mine his own unique cosmic territory that could be the blueprint for latter day ambient techno. His amazing guitar work on Gong's Radio Invisible trilogy, especially the epically spacious "You", was just the first stepping stone toward this 1979 avant-new age masterpiece, Rainbow Dome Musick, originally recorded for an on-site installation at an actual Rainbow Dome in London.
While it must have been -really- an experience inside the Dome, it's even now a fantastic listen at home on headphones. Two 20-minute, side-long tracks built from the sequenced filtering of guitars, piano, synths and bells, that organically glide from phased rhythmic passages to expansive cloud-like washes of sound.�It's definitely much more ambient than Hillage's other albums up to that point, but as blissed out and new agey as it is, with the sounds of gurgling water (starting side one) and shimmering drones, you won't forget he's a killer electric guitarist either. Obviously,�a heavy influence on The Orb, who later collaborated with Hillage, after they met in an club where to Hillage's surprise, Alex Patterson of the Orb was spinning Rainbow Dome Musick in the chill-out lounge, so the story goes! Another essential entry of cosmic proto-new age sounds for fans of Fripp and Eno, Cluster, Ariel Kalma, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Eberhard Schoener and Ashra. We recently got into this album, ordered it for the store on cd, and heartily recommend it - though it seems to sell itself anyway when people see the cover, something about that hypnotic vibrating rainbow dome image...
San Francisco's Anna Hillburg has has been making noise in the garage-pop community for a good portion of the past decade, guesting on albums by The Dodos, Greg Ashley, and The Fresh & Onlys; and we would be remiss not to mention her twee-pop ensemble Dreamdate. This eponymous record is her debut, and finds her again in very good company working with Greg Ashley and Greg Moore (of The Moore Brothers and Joanna Newsom's ensemble), in producing this elegantly simple album of folk-inflected pop numbers. Beach House would be the most obvious reference in the daydreaming pop hooks and hip-swaying / '60 girl-group arrangements, all with some subtle hints of Nashville twang, and an earnest seductiveness, although Hillburg's production is far more intimate, with added flourishes from Hillburg's trumpet. With summer right around the corner, here's a great slow-burner of an album for a lazy Saturday afternoon. Limited to 500 copies.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ah, Hills! We looooooove Hills. Rhymes with pills. Not to be confused with White Hills, whom we also love, most folks would be into both. This is plain ol' Hills from planet Sweden, doing timeless, kraut-channelling hypno-rock bliss, cyclic and psychedelic, totally in the ancestral tradition of their fellow countrymen / like minded souls from the '60s and '70s in the Parson Sound / International Harvester / Harvester / Trad Gras Och Stenar collective (also aQ faves, of course). What is it with Sweden, anyway? Good grief, both Hills and the mighty Goat aren't just on the same label Rocket Recordings, they're from the same town. Maybe they should have the water supply there analyzed. Anyway, yay, these particular master mantric jammers from Sweden now offer up their 3rd album (4th if you count the live lp on Cardinal Fuzz), and it's thankfully more of what we dig about them - deeply droned, trance-inducing excursions into higher mind states, filled with fuzz & wah, Scandinavian folk motifs, floatational flute flutter, ecstatic chant-like vocals, spacey fx, and endless krauty grooves. Tracks like "National Drone" or the ten-minute "Och Solen Sankte Sig Rod" just send you far into some fantastical ceremonial '70s zone, where you want to be. "Milarepa" is heavy-duty Parson Sound worship, "Anukthal Is Here" channels krautrock tribe Siloah, and then, like, on previous album Master Sleeps, the record ends with an especially ceremonial sounding track, the Lizard King meets Om chant, "Death Will Find A Way"... Altogether beautiful thing, heavy in a "heavy, maaaan" sort of way, once again for fans of their forefathers in TGOS et. al., also White Hills of course, Wooden Shjips definitely too, certainly their buddies Goat (throw on some Goat after this, it segues quite well), Circle at their hippiest, and the like... yeah!!
FYI, vinyl still upcoming.
Looks like we like this one so much that both Allan and Andee, unbeknownst to one another, each wrote reviews of it for this list, whoops! But they're almost the same review, which just goes to show that what they say about Hills Live must be true. For an exercise in comparative literature, here's both reviews, Allan's first:
This is one of the first records we've managed to get in on the new Cardinal Fuzz label out of England. Frustratingly, we missed out on some stuff they did earlier by the likes of The Heads and Hookworms, but at least we now have THIS, a live album from Swedish hypno-rock jammers Hills, whose previous two albums we're totally loved (we reviewed Master Sleeps on list #391). Their spacey, krautrock channelling grooves hit the spot like those of that other 'Hills' band, White Hills, and we recommend 'em to fans of Wooden Shjips too, big time, for another positive contemporary comparison.
This record finds Hills in their element, the title simply says it all: Live. Stretching out improvisationally over two sides of vinyl, this contains two roughly 15-minute long tracks, "Kristallen Den Fina" and "Frigorande Musik", the latter recorded exclusively for this release. Both are just want we want - massive, mantric, sometimes flutey rhythmic churn with underlying Eastern drone vibes...
What's especially obvious from the music here, and dunno why we didn't mention it before, is how much Hills are serious acolytes of their aQ-beloved countrymen Trad, Gras Och Stenar, sounding a heck of a lot like them in their various incarnations of decades past (TGOS, Harvester, International Harvester, Parson Sound). If you love those groups you'll totally dig this!!
And then Andee's very similar take on this lp:
We've been dying to carry records on UK label Cardinal Fuzz, but with no US distribution, we had no luck at all, UNTIL NOW! Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a double lp from Swedish heavy space psych combo the Janitors, and then there's this, a long out of print cassette from hippie psych space rockers Hills, reissued on vinyl with a whole second track/side exclusive to this release! Recorded live, the A side (and the new B side for that matter) find these guys channeling their Swedish forefathers (Parson Sound, Trad Gras Och Stenar, etc.), and we're ALWAYS skeptical when a band is compared to a group like Parson Sound, but these guys totally pull it off, and if we didn't now any better, we might have even bought that this was some unearthed live tape from back in the day. Tranced out psychedelic krautrock style instrumental minimalism woven from motorik drumming, buzzing distorted guitars, looped sounding psych guitar riffage, everything fuzzy and hazy and druggy, laced with cool wah guitar leads, and rife with subtle shifts and sonic variations, but ultimately, the band locked tight into a single groove, playing on endlessly, utterly mesmeric space-kraut that sounds like classic minimalism (Reich, Riley, Young) recast as heavy psychedelic hippie folk hypno-psych. The flipside is even cooler, slower, dirgier, murkier, just as tranced out and hypnotic, but all woozy and washed out, all churning low end, and killer drumming, loose and free, but forever bound up in this droney druggy psych-murk mega-jam, that sort of epic psychedelia that could and SHOULD go on forever...
Obviously WAY recommended! LIMITED TO JUST 200 COPIES for the USA, vinyl only, get 'em while you can. With this as a teaser, we're really looking forward to Hills upcoming album on Rocket, as well!
We imagine the master sleeps soundly, if THIS is the music loudly vibrating in his dreams! He may never wish to wake up. Here's the 2nd album from (to be sibilantly alliterative) this spacey Swedish psych band, the first we've listed - though if this proves as popular as we think it really should, we'll try to get more of their self-titled 2009 debut to review as well. Plain old Hills are not to be confused with WHITE Hills, though they almost could be - their brand of mantric, mesmeric, FX laden, krautrocking groove is definitely in the same druggy realm as White Hills, and that of other AQ faves like Circle, Salvatore, and especially Wooden Shjips. No doubt they all share many of the same influences, from Can and other krautrock to Hawkwind to Spacemen 3. So if that sort of stuff is your bag, Hills comes highly recommended!
While mainly instrumental, there's more singing here than on the debut, but the echo-effected vocals are just another part of the throbbing wash of sound, riding waves of heavily phased guitar, motorik drums, and insistent organ (that specifically reminds us a bit of Circle relatives Itavayla). While we KNOW we're always saying stuff is repetitively hypnotic, Hills really do it to perfection, locking into to inescapable, all-encompassing grooves you never want to end. They also delve into instrumental electric, folky passages with melodies that perhaps draw upon their native Nordic traditional tunes, a la Kebnekajse back in the '70s, though they can sound somewhat Eastern-inflected as well. And final track "Death Shall Come" is a spaced out droning ritual, getting into OM territory there...
We'd love to see these guys (and gal) play live, do a US tour soon please please please! In the meantime, this disc will be in heavy rotation 'round here, and should be required listening for anyone into SF's Wooden Shjips for sure...
We're really happy that this is back in print, originally released back in 2001 this was the score to the Icelandic film Englar Alheimisins (Angels Of The Universe). Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson is an amazing composer whose brooding, moody and elegant post-classical sounds evokes such a dark and heavenly cinematic quality. He has collaborated over the years with the likes of Current 93, The Hafler Trio and Psychic TV. It makes so much sense that he enlisted Sigur Ros to join him for this score. Don't be expecting a Sigur Ros record though, as this really is the brainchild of Hilmarsson, but you can still hear the band's sound very clearly on a few of the tracks, hints of Sigur Ros' distinctive dark and dreamy sounds. Elegant and lush, with a haunting quality that's made this a favorite of ours for those late rainy nights and somber afternoons.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Back in stock (and at an extra nice price!), but maybe not for much longer! Very few copies remain and it is actually now officially out of print, so nab one while you still can. We are the only store in the known universe where you can still get it!
Folks are certainly all a-buzz about the new Brian Eno documentary film, 1971 � 1977: The Man Who Fell To Earth, and at a recent screening here in SF, there was a special rare performance by the amazing Enochestra led by hardcore Eno enthusiast Doug Hilsinger. We sadly missed it, but were spurred to revisit his wonderful adaptation of Eno's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) album, and heartily encourage you to do the same (or check it out for the first time)! Here's what we said about its original release back in 2004:
What apparently began as a lark has absolutely snowballed... and with what is quite possibly the (unintentional) best timing ever! Indeed it seems the planets have aligned in the most fortuitous fashion for devoted Brian Eno fan Doug Hilsinger (presently in SF band Waycross, and formerly in Bomb and Gifthorse) and his bandmate Caroleen Beatty. Initially planning to record covers of just two of the songs from TTM(BS) for their own enjoyment, they got caught up in the inspired swing of things and progressed right on through the rest. Hilsinger has emphasized that this was not intended to be some grand transformation nor interpretation of Eno's original. This is simply their celebration of a great album, with the hopes of drawing attention back to the original. And it certainly does just that, but it also bears the mark of an immensely talented duo in their own right. If you dig this, be sure to check out Waycross too. Now, we're probably going to catch some flack for this, but we'll dare to say that he improves on a few of the originals. C'mon all of you Eno fanatics who're screaming "Impossible!", it's not all that hard to fathom. Consider the following: back when Eno recorded the album, these songs were fresh and new to him. They tingle with the electricity of experimentation and spontaneity, but there are moments that are perhaps not fully realized. On the other hand, Hilsinger has lived and loved these songs for thirty plus years! He knows them like the back of his hand. With the exception of the lead vocals which were the domain of Beatty, Hilsinger played and produced all that you hear. With a full command of each instrument and the aforementioned inside'n'out knowledge of the songs, his performance and the recordings are breathtaking. The interplay between the instruments captures the subtle dynamics of a kickass full band playing together live. You'd never know it was laid down track by track, piece by piece. Heck, the prerequisite organizational skills alone are daunting. Completing this loving, enthusiastic tribute in the best possible way, Beatty's languid voice winds its way around the slinking arrangements, delivering Eno's words in a most seductive, heavily lidded fashion. Highlights include a great carnivalesque rendition of "Back In Judy's Jungle" transitioning it into a pint-raising singalong, as well as their slowed-to-half-time, intoxicating version of the originally near-punk, Wire-ish, propulsive "Third Uncle". The winding chorused guitars and textural wheeze are rich and effective while the vocals add to the air of subtle unease. Splendid!
So back to the magical tale of good timing... The pair completed the work right around November 2003 which just happened to coincide with a special lecture that Brian Eno was giving here in SF. Of course Hilsinger was in attendance, and personally delivered a copy into Eno's hands. The very next day he received an enthusiastic phone call from Eno giving it his mighty stamp of approval. He even wrote the liner notes! To boot, that year marked the 30th anniversary of the album.
Highly recommended!
Percussionist / drummer Doug Scharin's talents are such that he's found equally comfortable homes with the sublime indie rock slow-core of Rex, and the twisted, weed-happy Brooklyn-based WordSound collective, hybrid home of forward-thinking hiphop, dub, 'n
Doug Scharin, percussionist for Brooklyn's Rex. Comes in the most unimpressive Thingmaker sleeve yet. But wait, it's good! Groovy "dub" played on a wide variety of traditional "ethnic" instruments, percussion from S. Asia etc.
Have you ever opened a can of sliced pineapples, or tuna, and it smelled really bad? And you immediately knew something was terrible wrong? Well, clearly, things do not bode well for Him if there's an unpleasant olfactory metaphor to describe the "Many In High Places Are Not Well" album. Doug Scharin, once responsible for the mightly percussive pummel behind downer-core legends Codeine, has been orchestrating the post-rock ensemble Him during the past decade and unfortunately devolving into a sub-rate Bill Laswell. Now with "Many In High Places Are Not Well," Him emerges with an indeterminant "world music" feel: a dash of Afro-beat, a pinch of Brazillian jazz, and a Hawaiian slide guitar thrown in for the sake of diversity. The result is terminally bland music that has all of the global specificity of the Gypsy Kings. "Many In High Places Are Not Well" should go down as one the utter low points to the once vibrant Chicago post-rock community that spawned Tortoise and their ilk.
Very well executed, but somewhat bland contemporary jazz grooves from the seemingly relentless percussionist Doug Scharin (former member of Codeine, Rex, June of 44). While Him's previous effort 5/6 In Dub was a very good, short and sweet take on a sort of millenial Afro-funk sound (albeit filtered through a white guy in Brooklyn), this record stretches out the grooves into
Doug Scharin.
Dark and lilting acoustic pop ala Red House Painters. No surprise as he is a friend of Mark Kozelek's, plays Kozelek's guitars, the record is produced by the same guy who produced the last Red House Painters record, and Hindle made his debut on Kozelek's
This is one of the most amazing new bands we have heard in a while, and they're from France! This is Hint's second album and it's a bit more varied than last year's ultra pummeling and quite brilliant Dys. On Wu Wei, the punishing brute rock is stretched and twisted, advancing from huge thunderous dirges to sampler/turntable-heavy 'musique concrete' (hey, that's a french word) to soaring cinematic soundscapes. This band destroys so many other bands with their amazing versatility, musicianship and sheer breadth of scope.
Twisted Siouxsie worship through the playful lens of Bjork, Xmal Deutchland and Deerhoof. Angular and dancey, but also gothy and dreamy. A stuffed animal tea party turned primal and deadly.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Solo album from Hijokaidan guitarist.
As the packaging notes, this is "the voice and co-writer behind the AIR classic "All I Need". Now, I'd agree that song is quite good, but how it got "classic" status is beyond me. Anyways, this album is much more in the territory of Kate Bush meets the mellower side of Alanis Morissette. If that piques your interest, check this out!
We raved about Ruthless Sperm, last year's full length from Italian gloom garage noise pop new wave outfit His Electro Blue Voice, who we originally discovered on a split 7" with another aQ fave 'faerical blasting punks' Nuit Noire. As much as we loved that single and whatever other tracks we could dig up from HEBV, Ruthless Sperm was a revelation, noisy and poppy, chaotic and catchy, anyone who's been digging Iceage or the Holograms or Beastmilk or the Grave Babies, His Electro Blue Voice were kind of a meaner, more feral version of all those bands, which is most definitely a good thing. So after listening to Ruthless Sperm pretty much constantly, we were thrilled to discover this 12" we had somehow missed, releases on Clay Ruby's (of Burial Hex) Brave Mysteries label, and needless to say, it's a good one. A three song blast of murky, gloomy noise pop, equal parts garage rock crunch, new wave slither, goth rock swagger, the guitars fuzzy and crunchy and angular, the basslines sinewy and Joy Divisiony, the vocals yelped and howled, and most importantly, the songs are catchy as hell, opener "Dead Mice" could have been plucked right off of Ruthless Sperm, with its fuzzed out bass, and furious punk rock energy, all droney and spacey, with a weird psychedelic breakdown midway through, the song collapsing into a weird free noise drift, all skipping records and looped voices, before transforming into a weird bit of psychedelic goth folk, right down to what sounds like a recorder solo(!), eventually working its way back up to something more rocking, but still blissed out and weirdly woozy. Definitely worth the price of admission for the first track alone, but follow up "Eat Sons" is cool too, a serious Interpol vibe, albeit WAY noisier, a crunch, murky main riff, pounding drums, total leather jacket, sunglasses, anthemic gloom punk radness. The song here we end up playing on repeat. The whole of the flipside is taken up by "Zum", a sprawling brooder, all laid back and washed out, fuzzy garage gloom murk, noisy and droned out, but muted and minimal, a sort of swaggery garage goth ballad, that like the opener, has a strange breakdown midway through, from which emerges a completely different song, wildly mathy for a minute, before locking into something much more rocking and swaggery, some fierce fuzz punk pound with some really weird falsetto vocal wails and wild squalls of spaced out psychedelic FX, all of which KILLS. This band is so great. Seems like only a matter of time before the rest of the world discovers these guys, and they end up getting the same love as all the above bands (Holograms, Iceage, etc.). Here's hoping...
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!
We first heard this Italian outfit on a split 7" with aQ faves Nuit Noire, whose weirdo 'faerical blasting punk' sounded pretty much perfect alongside the goth-stomp noise rock of His Electro Blue Voice. So much so that we found ourselves trying to track down everything we could. We were then thrilled to discover a His Electro Blue Voice track on this year's Sub Pop 1000 Record Store Day sampler, a track we described as "a gloriously twisted chunk of noisy, synthy, distorted garagey new wave weirdness that might be worth the price of admission alone" and which sadly is not included here, but that sound is in full effect, gnarly, gritty, crusty, swaggery, it's actually a LOT more aggressive and blackened than we remember, at least on opener "Death Climb", which adds some grim black buzz to their brooding, nightmarish punk wave gloom garage pound, but soon enough the band settle into something a bit more tranced out, check out the new wave krautrock of "Spit Dirt", a sprawling 8 minute motorik groove, that wraps spidery chiming guitars and thick low slung bass chug around a seriously hypnotic ultra propulsive rhythm, before exploding into the aggro noise rock new wave murk and howl of "Sea Bug", that reminds us of Iceage or the Holograms, but even more rough and ragged and supercharged, and infused with the sort of hookiness most proper pop bands would kill for.
After that, the band dip into some churning, thud rock pigfuck noisiness on "Tumor" (shades of Aussie thugs Lubricated Goat, as well as late great SF knuckle draggers Steel Pole Bathtub), with some super cool tripped out psychedelic weirdness part way through, then some super pop punkiness via P.I.L. on "The Path", with yet another psychedelic breakdown, this one all synthy and shimmery, but still driving and hypnorocky. "Born/Tired" might be the prettiest of the bunch, the chiming intro is a dead ringer for some classic indie rock song we can't quite put our finger on, but then the howled vox and gristly guitars swoop in, managing to rough things up without taking way any of the poppiness, and then ditching the buzz and crunch and slipping into some laid back space rockiness, totally mellow and mesmerizing. Finally, things finish off with "Red Earth", which begins as a softly glimmering drift, all washed out thrum and psychedelic spaciness, which is soon joined by some simple tribal drumming, hushed vox, eventually swirls of chiming guitars add a woozy minor key feel, as do processed synths, the song drifting into more of a dark jangle pop, before eventually fading out, leaving just a dark shadowy swirl of ominous synth thrum and some seriously sinister vokills, which also fade out before you can even figure out what's going on. So cool!
Killer 'ruthless sperm' cover art too!
Wow, initially we thought His Name Is Alive had taken another huge shift in stylistic direction, but actually it's more of a bringing together of their past and recent selves. Detrola vacillates between their last album's path of soft lounge funk and their earlier angelic pop romps, and ends up coming across as a somewhat fucked-up Magnetic Fields. We've adamantly placed our votes for the lattermentioned sweetness. To be frank, we've tried, but can't help but find the funky fusion-y jaunts utterly cringeworthy. Yes, Lovetta Pippen has a breathtaking voice, but on the music side of things Warn Defever occasionally sounds a bit out of his element or at least a bit confused as he mashes together thick synthesizer blats into delicate acoustic guitar pluckery. That said, this stylistic jumble does seem to be what many fans dig about Defever and co., so perhaps you might not find it as problematic as we did. In a sense Detrola is a hit or miss H.N.I.A. musical grab bag, a sort of overview of all the little nuts and bolts that have made up the band's ever-evolving sound over the years. Some of the dreamier pop songs have a woozy feel as though someone's playing with the speed controls or as though the record's gotten warped at opportune moments. Nice. Those are the songs we've already gone back to a few times for repeat listens, and made us wanna dust off our almost ten year old Stars On E.S.P. album. Sigh.
Reissue of early His Name Is Alive tape releases from 1985 to 1989. Tracks are taken from the first four tapes, earlier versions of tracks that would appear on "Livonia", plus lots of previously unreleased tracks. Totalling in at over 70 minutes, you really get your money's worth here of His Name Is Alive. This is totally great, a lot like the "Livonia" era cuts with more of a raw 4-track, tape experiment feel to them.
One of two new Handmade Birds titles this week, the other, an amazing triple 10" boxset from Finnish folky weirdos Key reviewed elsewhere on this week's list, and this one, a long overdue reissue of this long out of print rarity from long time aQ faves His Name Is Alive. There was a time when HNIA were THEE aQ band, their Stars On E.S.P. record still ranks as one of our all time favorites (but gets short shrift on the aQ site, as it came out in the early days of the list), a sort of mad scientist, Beach Boys influenced outsider 4AD flecked dream pop, laced with strange noises, and fantastic atmospheres, gorgeous vocals, and some of the most amazing hooks EVER. The band eventually transformed into something else entirely, not as much to our liking, but back then, they were unbeatable.
This record right here, is from back then, 1993 to be exact, and was originally released on Perdition Plastics as a 'fake' bootleg, a compilation of tracks from various cassettes, consisting of demos, outtakes, and alternate versions, as well as unreleased tracks and a handful of sonic experiments, all woven into a twisted chunk of weirdo pop. Out of print for years, recently remastered and now available again as a limited edition double lp on Handmade Birds, and wow, does this have us drifting back, these sounds so reminiscent of that other time, but sounding so fresh and relevant to NOW.
Guitars buzz, drums shuffle, harmonics chime and drift, female vox all lush and dreamy drift over the top, while way off in the background other vocals swirl and shimmer, choruses crash, acoustic guitars strum, strange bits of percussion shuffle and clatter, harmonies hover and fade, tape speed shifts, speeds up and slows down, it's definitely not the absolute weirdest HNIA, but these wistful indie pop drifters are definitely laced with strange production, mysterious sounds, are sometimes chopped up and rearranged into strange arrangements, the vibe is definitely hazy and shoegazey, washed out and dream poppy, the guitars occasionally getting a little buzzy and crunchy, and the sound sometimes crumbles into strange collages, or bursts of crumbling distorted noise, but at its core, this is a fantastic pop record, just twisted and fractured enough to make it something more.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES! Already sold out at the label, these are the LAST copies we'll ever be able to get! Housed in super deluxe full color gatefold jackets.
We've always loved His Name Is Alive, Warn DeFever and his rotating cast of likeminded musicmakers. For a while he's been moving ina direction away from the pristine pop confections of the Stars on ESP album and more towards a sort of "white soul" sound (you know Warn must be a r 'n b fan), and that transformation is completed here on Last Night. Like the cocktail torch singer "jazz" of Everything But the Girl and the simplistic pop of The Beautiful South, the tone is clean and unpretentious. The female lead singer's pleasant voice is double tracked for more lushness, and is accompanied simply by guitar, piano, bass, drums. I can't say it's the greatest thing I've ever heard, but it's inoffensive and you might like it. A couple songs feature some worrying funky whah guitar and a dreadful afro-groove, but their pale (ahem) experiments aren't as cringe-inducing as Yo La Tengo's ill advised recent foray (Nuclear War).
More mature pop from the talented Warren Defever and co., as opposed to the crystal sweetness of their earlier stuff. Detroit soul influenced...
This is a cdr (not an LP!) jam-packed (19 tracks!) with recordings of HNIA live radio performances from 1992 to 1998. Leading into their radical shift into torchy soul jazz territory of the late '90s, the songs here are mostly of the raw, folky pop kind.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Their new effort is gorgeous as usual, with those precious female vocals. You oughtn't be surprised there's a song called "Beech Boys" on here... As anticipated, Stars is 4AD-flavored sweet pop, yet more disonant at times and thus interesting than the last HNIA album. Warren Defever slices on some of the noisy layered stuff (his other band) Princess Dragon Mom likes to cook up.
Without knowing why or how, the idea of the recently more soulful, perpetually Beach Boys obsessed pop group His Name Is Alive tackling a record of tracks by legendary jazz saxophonist Marion Brown, seems not just unlikely but maybe even ill advised.
So we were pretty surprised and thrilled when we finally wrapped our ears around this disc. A dark smoldering expansive ambient jazz sprawl, His Name Is Alive, seriously channeling the spirit of Marion Brown, in such a way that is at once totally faithful but also, quite modern and radical.
Most of the tracks are languorous and laid back, and sometimes sound like a jazzier No Neck Blues Band, a sort of fluttering free folk, the sounds drifting like smoke, the percussion sizzling and shuffling, the horns moaning softly, lots of tinkling chimes and little flurries of piano, gorgeously soft focus and hypnotic.
There are a few live tracks, which is where the band really cut loose, and embrace the noisier side of Brown's oeuvre, "Capricorn Moon" the first live track, is much boppier, the drums and bass locked into a sort of muted exotica, while the horns bleat wildly over the top, the sound very African, and dipping into some serious Ethiopiques territory here and there. The next few songs return to the blissy jazzy tranquility of the first few, until "Bismillahi 'Rrahmani 'Rrahim", which starts off all dreamlike, but by the end, is a squall of thick distorted guitars and skronky saxes, a serious free jazz duel.
The two part "Geechee Recollections" is another slow burning jam, all exotic percussion and thick rubbery basslines, wailing sax, shuffling skittery drum lines, moody meandering piano, the second half a super minimal late night jazzy sprawl, like a less repetitive Necks, but the same sort of mysterious murky swirl.
The record finishes off with a live version of the opening track, sticking close to that same smoky late night shimmer, but with the horns more active and up in the mix, the drums a bit more propulsive, some wah guitar, managing to sound just a bit more fierce, but without losing that blurry blissy sultriness...
This is so good. We used to love love love His Name Is Alive. They even played an instore here, which was a blast. They sort of lost us though lately with their ever intensifying soul leanings, but this record is absolutely gorgeous, and has definitely restored our faith in Warn Defever and company, plus anyone so into Marion Brown is aces in our book.
A portion of the proceeds of the sale of this cd goes to the Nepalese Youth Opportunity Foundation, which is also quite cool...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
People have been waiting for what seems like forever for a new His Name Is Alive. Released as a cd-r on AQ favorite label Time Stereo (who released the absolutely brilliant Steps), this is to tide everyone over until their next 4AD full length. HNIA continue on their questionable path toward full on SOUL, due in no small part to vocalist Lovetta Pippen, who also sang on the last record. We all loved 'Stars on ESP' from a few years back, which was a completely inspired and magical pop record. Unfortunately HNIA haven't really been able to pull that off since. All the trademark weirdness is gone, super creative production, samples, all gone, and in it's place, a sort of watered down wannabe soul. If you liked the last record, you might dig this one, if you were waiting for another 'Stars On ESP', then I think you may be quite disappointed. Features an absolutely painful version of 'Moon Dance'.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Got just a tiny handful of this special Record Store Day release left, a teaser of sorts for a brand new full length (already in stock, and hopefully being reviewed on the next list), from this post Court And Spark combo, who have taken the druggy dusky twang of their previous outfit and wedded it to swirly seventies Laurel Canyon style songsmithery and stretched out Grateful Dead like jams, M.C. Taylor's voice warm and welcoming as always, the band laying down a lush landscape of twang flecked folk pop on the A side, which on the flipside is stretched out into some woozy, drowsy twang flecked dub, dark and dreamily tripped out!
Housed in a plain white sleeve, and extremely limited. These are the last remaining copies.
We went crazy when we first heard The History Of Apple Pie, a UK combo who sounded like they had time traveled here direct from the mid-nineties, a clutch of kids seemingly channeling the sort of music made right around the time they were born (!), but like some of our other favorite retro-pop combos (Yuck, Best Coast, Real Estate, etc.), they have that sound dialed in. In the case of The History Of Apple Pie, that sound is a sugary sweet concoction equal parts shimmery dreampop jangle and crunchy shoegaze fuzz, every track rife with huge hooks, soaring harmonies, swirling synths, crazy catchy melodies, the vibe definitely a bit twee, but with the occasional bout of rocking swagger, usually in the form of some muscly guitar crunch or epic My Bloody Valentine style wall-of-guitarnoise cascades. Obvious references would be the Swirlies, Veruca Salt, The Pixies, Curve, My Bloody Valentine, Heavenly and the like, and you'd be totally forgiven for hearing this new record and thinking it was actually some obscure lost shoegaze gem from back in the day, but what can we say, we're a sucker for that stuff. For people of a certain age, this immediately takes you back, this is exactly the sort of thing that found its way on many a mixtape, and was the soundtrack for all sorts of roadtrips and adventures, romances and breakups. And even though the record oozes nostalgia (at least for those of us who were there the first time around), it still sounds pretty fantastic, fresh and alive, and if not wholly original, THOAP do take that nineties jangle fuzz formula and make it all their own, crafting some truly transcendent cotton candy billows of distorted dreaminess, gorgeous soft noise psychedelia and lilting jangly fuzz drenched pop bliss.
Let's get straight to the heart of the matter, and it is exactly that! Robyn Hitchcock knows the inner workings of matters of the heart, but he never panders to valentine cliches to get the sentiments across. Nope, time and time again, he comes up with some crazily inventive turn of prose to express an observation of something commonplace. Then he backs his wizened delivery of wry wisdom with an equally quirksome crunchy guitar melodic twist -- a holdover from his Soft Boys days? Often so wonderfully obtuse and cryptic, but also somehow so clear and true! Genius songwriting.
Anyways, this is our longwinded way to let y'all know that we are super pleased as punch that the fine folks at Yep Roc Records have recently reissued three of this venerable troubadour's albums Black Snake Diamond Role, I Often Dream Of Trains and Eye, each complete with hella unreleased bonus tracks. The latter is perhaps our personal fave. If you have one Hitchcock album in your library, make it this one. Plus at the same time, they've released the three albums together in a retrospective box set titled I Wanna Go Backwards which also includes an exclusive pair of additional cdeps of odds'n'ends from 1981-88! Awesome and super recommended.
Let's get straight to the heart of the matter, and it is exactly that! Robyn Hitchcock knows the inner workings of matters of the heart, but he never panders to valentine cliches to get the sentiments across. Nope, time and time again, he comes up with some crazily inventive turn of prose to express an observation of something commonplace. Then he backs his wizened delivery of wry wisdom with an equally quirksome crunchy guitar melodic twist -- a holdover from his Soft Boys days? Often so wonderfully obtuse and cryptic, but also somehow so clear and true! Genius songwriting.
Anyways, this is our longwinded way to let y'all know that we are super pleased as punch that the fine folks at Yep Roc Records have recently reissued three of this venerable troubadour's albums Black Snake Diamond Role, I Often Dream Of Trains and Eye, each complete with hella unreleased bonus tracks. The latter is perhaps our personal fave. If you have one Hitchcock album in your library, make it this one. Plus at the same time, they've released the three albums together in a retrospective box set titled I Wanna Go Backwards which also includes an exclusive pair of additional cdeps of odds'n'ends from 1981-88! Awesome and super recommended.
Let's get straight to the heart of the matter, and it is exactly that! Robyn Hitchcock knows the inner workings of matters of the heart, but he never panders to valentine cliches to get the sentiments across. Nope, time and time again, he comes up with some crazily inventive turn of prose to express an observation of something commonplace. Then he backs his wizened delivery of wry wisdom with an equally quirksome crunchy guitar melodic twist -- a holdover from his Soft Boys days? Often so wonderfully obtuse and cryptic, but also somehow so clear and true! Genius songwriting.
Anyways, this is our longwinded way to let y'all know that we are super pleased as punch that the fine folks at Yep Roc Records have recently reissued three of this venerable troubadour's albums Black Snake Diamond Role, I Often Dream Of Trains and Eye, each complete with hella unreleased bonus tracks. The latter is perhaps our personal fave. If you have one Hitchcock album in your library, make it this one. Plus at the same time, they've released the three albums together in a retrospective box set titled I Wanna Go Backwards which also includes an exclusive pair of additional cdeps of odds'n'ends from 1981-88! Awesome and super recommended.
Let's get straight to the heart of the matter, and it is exactly that! Robyn Hitchcock knows the inner workings of matters of the heart, but he never panders to valentine cliches to get the sentiments across. Nope, time and time again, he comes up with some crazily inventive turn of prose to express an observation of something commonplace. Then he backs his wizened delivery of wry wisdom with an equally quirksome crunchy guitar melodic twist -- a holdover from his Soft Boys days? Often so wonderfully obtuse and cryptic, but also somehow so clear and true! Genius songwriting.
Anyways, this is our longwinded way to let y'all know that we are super pleased as punch that the fine folks at Yep Roc Records have recently reissued three of this venerable troubadour's albums Black Snake Diamond Role, I Often Dream Of Trains and Eye, each complete with hella unreleased bonus tracks. The latter is perhaps our personal fave. If you have one Hitchcock album in your library, make it this one. Plus at the same time, they've released the three albums together in a retrospective box set titled I Wanna Go Backwards which also includes an exclusive pair of additional cdeps of odds'n'ends from 1981-88! Awesome and super recommended.
