As we mentioned in our review of the last King Dude record, you really couldn't come up with a less appropriate name for a group like this, a group whose sound is some sort of brooding, moody, post industrial neofolk, all haunting and apocalyptic, deep crooned vox and lush layered strum, but like all weird band names, they eventually become so familiar and so inexorably linked to the sounds, it's hard to separate the two. This latest King Dude record finds T.J. Cowgill, the one man behind this one man band, adding some classic country to his sound, a sound which already touched on classic seventies psychedelic folk, as well as the martial industrial of groups like Death In June, Blood Axis, Sol Invictus and the rest, but this hint of classic country definitely transforms the sound into something else entirely.
Opener "Don't Want Me Still" sounds like a classic country ballad, mixed with a sixties girl group production, and some Mazzy Star like shoegaze, everything slathered in effects, thick whorls of delay and echo, all hazy and druggy and so divinely dreamy, weird too, when the vox pitch down and become a strange sort of gurgling rumble. Elsewhere KD touches on the swampy apocalyptic folk of groups Like Woven Hand and Sixteen Horsepower, but with creepy deep vocals that sound more like Pete Steele, and gives the sound a distinctly gloomy gothic vibe.
A couple of the tracks here are spare and skeletal and sound distinctly slowcore, reminding us a bit of Low, with woozy guitars, and sweetly angelic female back up vox, while others seem to touch on the sort of fractured lo-fi rockabilly of Dirty Beaches, that crumbling low fidelity crooned creep, with still others sounding like classic torch songs reimagined as dark strummed dronefolk. The sound drifting drowsily from urgent and strident, to hushed and ominously menacing, to dreamy and droney and darkly warped and woozy. So great.
Some of the SWEETEST packaging we've seen, stark black and white jackets, diecut with the shapes of sigils cut out, revealing the strange full color imagery beneath. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
When we first heard King Dude, aka TJ Cowgill, he came across as some sort of mysterious goth troubadour, his music super lo-fi, his voice impossibly, dramatically low, the whole vibe was like a bedroom Elvis crossed with drunken country heartbreak ballads and obscure downer death rock. And it was a concoction that worked for us big time. Those early records evoked long nights of sitting beside a fire, outside a rickety house, deep in the bayou, while this man in black crooned and strummed, spinning tales of death, and loss, love and betrayal.
Thus, the first track on Songs Of Flesh And Blood - In The Key Of Light threw us off a bit, sounding unlike anything we'd heard before from King Dude, instead reminding us of Iceage or the Holograms, being crunchy, fuzzy, hooky, with electric guitars and driving drums. Gloomy post punk of the highest order for sure, and catchy as all get out. While we were hoping for a whole record of this post punk bombast, the second track settles back into more familiar territory, although much less murky and muddy, the production pristine, guitars shimming over reverbed piano, hand claps, KD's deep vocals out Nick Caving Nick Cave himself, in fact, we're hearing some twisted mix of Nick Cave, along with Woven Hand, Majical Cloudz and even some Tom Waits, at his very swampiest. Snarly slither gives way to lilting popsmithery, and lovely, heartfelt ballads collapse into grinding black miserablism. And just to prove that first track wasn't a fluke, that more rocking sound pops up several more times, most notably on "Rosemary", which sounds like a garage blues Suicide, or Chrome covering the Velvets.
And so it goes, King Dude delivering an ever shifting collection of sonic darkness, heartfelt introspection, wistful folkiness, twang flecked gloom rock, and over the top, almost goth cabaret. Cowgill is the master of his craft for sure, and that craft continues to grow ever more varied and expansive, baffling and mysterious, and with every record, as the sound and sounds continue to fracture and mutate and push well beyond the boundaries of those early record, they somehow also manage coalesce ever more neatly into an already difficult to define sound, perhaps one who's magic is in its indefinable nature, one that is perhaps best left impressionistic, to be heard and felt and maybe, but only maybe, one day truly understood.
King Dude is a tough one to figure out. First there's the name which is evocative of pretty much everything KD is not, and the sound, a constant shifting mix of post industrial neo-folk, dark gothic torch songs, old time balladry, sinister apocalyptic country, and stripped down sixties girl group songsmithery, and on this latest single, a teaser for an upcoming full length, the sound shifts once again, this time, it's all acoustic guitar and vocals, wreathed in a bit of glimmery FX, the voice a deep ravaged croon, that slips occasionally into something more snarly, everything echo drenched, the 7" label bears the legend 'dungeon doo wop' which is not a bad description at all. The A side finishes off with a gorgeous lush harmony vocal-ed coda that leads directly into the even more stripped down non-album B side, a slithery, skeletal blues, nothing but voice and guitar, the voice this time an impossibly deep almost gurgly rumble, which gives the whole sound a darkly demonic vibe.
Comes lavishly packaged in a super thick jacket, and with a big fold out black and white poster. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Um, ok, either you're reading this review BECAUSE the band is named King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, or you were just about to stop reading it 'cause the band is named King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. If the latter is the case, please stick with it, they're actually a better band than their name might suggest (we're making this a Record Of The Week after all!!). Or, if you do think the name is cool, then they ARE as good of a band as you're hoping for. But maybe not the sort of band you'd think they'd be. It's actually kind of hard to pin down exactly what kind of band Australia's King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are, anyway. Kind of cosmic garage psych pop?
The first disc here, Float Along - Fill Your Lungs (originally released on its own last year in their home country) starts off stonery enough with a fifteen minute spaced out extravaganza called "Head On/Pill", truly a trippy psychedelic swirl, a mind-altering mix of lilting melodies, gentle vocals, and driving motorik rhythms, with loads and loads of FX, all sorts of fuzz and distortion. It's spacey and sunshiney and somehow like a much more garage-poppy Hawkwind or Acid Mothers Temple track. Had us sold right there. But this 7-piece ensemble aren't just about the extended space rock (pop). Most of rest of the songs on Float Along are much shorter, taking elements of that first track, or not, and going to other delightful garage-pop places, variously strummy and twangy and foot-tapping and head-nodding, fuzzy and shambolic, before winding the disc up with another long, tripped out (but mellower) jam in the form of the Eastern-tinged, drone-laced title track.
THEN, there's the 2nd disc, also released separately this year Down Under, the aptly titled Oddments, which is even more varied than the 1st disc. This one starts with a Bollywood-sampling instrumental that makes us think of ol' Money Mark and the Beastie Boys, super groovy and kinda chaotic, fuzzy "hairy funk", with lots of organ and synth sizzle. The psych-groove continues on the next, vocal track, bringing in visions of early Funkadelic and Shuggie Otis. But then, as the disc spins, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (love typing that name out!) get back into the ramshackle '60s teen garage pop inspired songwriting that also made up the bulk of the first disc, with a dash of distorted Ariel Pink-ish dementia. The wispy vocals of "Work This Time" make us think of Vincent Gallo's solo album When, "Hot Wax" is a weird, catchy jam incorporating some "Surfing Safari" quotes, "Homeless Man In Adidas" (!) is a hushed acoustic folk number... you see, all over the place. Oddments indeed.
Overall, soundwise, King Gizzard align themselves with the Ty Segall / Thee Oh Sees type of crowd, and so it's no surprise then that they're gonna be over here in the States in October touring with White Fence. Hope we get to see that. Seems like they'd be a blast live. But King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard's style of "garage rock" is waaaay more cosmic and psychedelic and randomly bizarre than a lot of their US contemporaries, that's for sure. We'll be indulging ourselves heavily in both these records for a while yet, trying to fully get our heads around 'em. Nice, nice, nice.
The band with the best/worst name that we've ever had a Record Of The Week by (next to, perhaps, that cd-r by King Kong Ding Dong) is back! When we made this cosmic garage psych rock band from Down Under's previous release (or should we say, releases, 'cause it was two albums in one package) our Record Of The Week just a few months ago, we compared 'em to Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall, said they fit in with that scene, and they do - this new album is on Castle Face, ta da! Right where they belong. But King Wizard And The Lizard Wizard (still love typing that name!) mostly defy easy categorization. Clearly they've listened to a lot of records (while smoking a lot of weed) from the '60s and '70s, blenderhybridizificating all sorts of classic psychedelic source material, so you get stuff here that's part Pink Floyd, part Captain Beefheart, part T-Rex (especially on "Empty"), part West Coast Pop Experimental Band, part Status Quo... There's blues harp and underwatery vocal FX; flashes of glam pop and krautrock rhythms; spacey boogie jams, with a dash of Eastern exoticism. Often all in the same song. One track, "Cellophane", comes across like Can meets Canned Heat! A little later on, the use of flute in "Hot Water" nods to early Kraftwerk. And always, trippy as they are, these tracks are hella catchy too, like we said, right in there with Ty Segall et.al., thinking King Tuff too when it gets more glammy. Meanwhile, the mellow groove and gentle vocals of "Slow Jam 1" remind us a bit of ol' Olivia Tremor Control. And finally we should mention the fantasy castle music of the awesomely titled "Satan Speeds Up" (well, it's a better title than "Slow Jam 1" anyway), the audio equivalent of the album's equally awesome cover art. Yeah! One more time, ladies and gentlemen: King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard!
We flipped for Aussie psychedelic garage poppers King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard when we first heard 'em, heck we were already a little smitten just based on the name, and they more than lived up to the promise, delivering tranced out, sitar laced jangle and crunch, with a dollop of space-psych drift. New album Paper Mache Dream Balloon, though, displays an entirely different side of the band, a much more laid back mellow acoustic soft pop side oddly enough. The first song even features some serious saxophone (and the second track, flute!), but somehow, these guys pull it off, channeling seventies soft rock through a slightly more psychedelic dream pop filter. The result sounds a bit like early Bee Gees crossed with the Elephant 6 Collective, or maybe like the coolest random lp you'd ever be likely to find at a garage sale or a thrift store, the one you buy just for the cheesy seventies cover, or the crazy song titles, or the ridiculous band photo, only to discover, that inside, is your new favorite psych-folk, soft pop, hippie rock record!!
(Note: there's cd, lime green cassette, orange colored vinyl... and also a collectible "bootleg" lp version too, on fluorescent green vinyl, in a plain, hand stamped jacket, numbered and limited - we have just a few of those, if you'd like one please ask and we'll grab it for you if they're still here.)
More sonic trippiness from these Aussie psych pop weirdos, hot on the heels of their recently released Paper Mache Dream Balloon full length. And like that record, Quarters continues the group's seeming shift away from the rambunctious psychedelia of their other records, toward something a bit more mellow and spaced out, a little more jammy, and even a wee bit jazzy. From the "Take Five"-ian opener "The River", to the woozy dream-jammage of "Infinite Rise", to the soft psych jangle of closer "Lonely Steel Sheet Flyer", these four tracks (each clocking in at exactly 10:10) are a woozily washed out, and fantastically blissful stoner pop daydream.
"Nonagon Infinity Opens The Door! Nonagon Infinity Opens The Door!" - so goes the repeated chant that surfaces throughout this album, the latest from the Aussie psych freeks with the best/worst name ever, who are also big AQ faves and past Record Of The Week honorees to boot. It's billed as the world's first infinitely looping record, in the sense that each of its nine songs seamlessly flow into the next, with the very last track ending (or does it?) right back where the very first track began, so put this on repeat and there will be nothing to indicate that it isn't supposed to keep on spinning forever. Yeah it's a gimmick but it's the sort of thing that we appreciate a band taking the trouble to conceive of and actually do, plus those chanted segues add to the sweaty cult ritual vibe of the album - this is trippy psych you can frantically dance to, with uptempo strobe light beats and wild, wailing guitars, harmonica, and FX. The album consists almost exclusively of high energy hyperdelic grooves laced with herky jerky vocal melodies, frenetic prog explosions, and the occasional spacey part - imagine Acid Mothers Temple jamming in the Castle Face garage, perhaps. It's got a "the end is coming!" urgency even though it NEVER ends...
FYI, we're too low on the regular vinyl of this to list it now but will be getting more to do so soon, and also a super limited edition picture disc NINE-sided vinyl version is due out in a month or so, we're only gonna be able to get a few of those, though...
When picking Records Of The Week for this milestone New Arrivals list number five hundred, what would be more appropriate, more Aquarius, really, than a band requiring one of the most ridiculously "hyphenated" descriptors we could come up with? Eccentric-Japanese-doom-punk-grind-funk-psych-prog-WTF?-weirdness (whew!) is only the shorthand description of what this Tokyo trio amplify into your earholes here. Nope, they haven't gotten any easier to pigeonhole than when we reviewed their debut album, 2007's Goblin King. It's been a while since that one, and in the interim their original guitarist Kelly Churko passed away due to a tragic illness, which delayed the completion of this second King Goblin opus - but the band regrouped, and now bring us at long last Cryptozoology, a disc dedicated to the memory of Churko, who appears posthumously here on the harsh-ambient-electronic intro track performing alongside guest Hiroshi Hasegawa of noise acts C.C.C.C. and Astro.
King Goblin definitely remain in the anything-goes, kitchen-sink, genre-mashing tradition of such fellow countryfolk like the Boredoms and Melt-Banana, but more metal, more ROCK. To be a bit obscure, not unlike a mix of YBO2 and C.S.S.O., if you know 'em. This cd is littered with strange spindly grooves, loose no-wave funk with chicken scratch guitar, cookie monster grind vokills, bluesy psych jamming, heavy lumbering riffage, it's all here... You'll be nodding/banging your head, scratching it too, thanks to the dizzying juxtapositions of angular funk and straight up freedom rock that King Goblin stick in their blender. For example, they do a cover of Mountain's "Mississippi Queen", but here it's called "Birmingham Queen" appears to be a somewhat unrecognizable reimagining of that classic rock staple as if performed, if not by Black Sabbath, then Cathedral, somehow mixing super stoned spaced out meandering with extremely loosely-strung low end bass hammering. King Goblin = good stuff for when you want to get your WTF? heaviness ya-yas out. Cryptozoology is a good name for this since these songs are indeed strange critters unknown to conventional science.
Even the packaging is not-normal, the cd coming mounted on a card inside what looks like a 7" record sleeve (with cool b&w artwork).
You'd think it would be easy to write reviews of records you love, but it's not, not always anyway. This band, though, makes the task easier, 'cause maybe we can just say a few key words: JAPAN. DOOM. PSYCH. CRAZY. Uh... is that doing the trick? Tokyo trio King Goblin, who describe themselves as a "progressive space psychedelic death rock band", definitely have that "anything goes", totally WTF?! Japanese thing going for 'em, mixing up prog and punk and funk and metal and noise whatever else they want, you know what we mean if you have albums by bands like Boredoms, Melt Banana, Children Coup D'Etat, Space Streakings, Omoide Hatoba, Green Milk From The Planet Orange, and others of that ilk in your collection. Specifically, though, the Japanese bands that King Goblin most especially make us think of are CSSO, Solar Anus, and Sigh (circa Imaginary Sonicscape). Somehow melding gonzo grind and druggy doom, plodding heaviness and catchy grooves, the nine strange songs here bouncing from spaced out acid rock to lumbering funk, with rubbery bass, squiggly guitar, gruff guttural vocals, and, as it says here, "hand craps" (sorry if it's not PC to chuckle over that particular credit in the cd booklet!).
Imagine if retro-disco-doomsters Cathedral got even weirder than they already are now, turned Japanese, and went no wave... that might approximate the dizzying extreme entertainment offered up by King Goblin. Also, how can songs with titles like "Boiled Again (Born To Ride)" and "Motordead" not be entertaining?
This disc, their debut, actually dates from 2007, but we only discovered 'em recently, and got some copies directly from Japan as quick as we could. They're working on a new album, to be entitled Cryptozoology, but unfortunately the guitarist of King Goblin is currently suffering from some unspecified, serious illness, so that's delaying things. Hopefully he gets better soon!! However, a couple of the King Goblin guys are also in wicked sick grindcore band called AKBK, who have a brand new album out that smokes, so look out for us to list that, soon!
If you're cravin' retro garage rawk stylings that're a little campy, cheeky, kitschy, trashy... all of the above?! Well, the In The Red label has long been a headquarters for top notch wildly good rockin' sounds, and they just keep 'em comin' with this new album from King Khan And BBQ! The oddly named Canadian band might be the ticket! In our opinion, the second half of the album is where the band really kicks the party up a boozy notch. Includes a cover of Circle Jerks' "Operation". Super fun!
While it might not always seem like it, sometimes the thing we're craving for the most is some blazing, direct in your face on fire rock n' roll. The problem is that most groups who play that kind of stuff these days either come off as total burn outs or are way uninspired. So when we heard this for the first time we all smiled wide and started rocking out with wreckless abandon! It was exactly what we've been wanting to hear. King Khan has made some really good garage fueled rawk in the past with the BBQ Show, but this collection of songs with his soul soaked band The Shrines has caught our attention and interest BIG TIME. With a nine piece band including Rahn Streeter on percussion who has played for everyone from Curtis Mayfield to Stevie Wonder, the songs are filled with undeniable chops and King Khan's vocals have been giving us great flashbacks to primetime era Rocket From The Crypt and the Make-Up as well as folks like The Dirtbombs. These are songs that owe as much to the history of garage rock and Nuggets compilations as it does to the Stax sound and all sorts of scorching r&b. Feels so damn good to have some high octane tunes to blast throughout the summertime!
If we didn't know that this album was brand new we could say "they don't make 'em like this anymore!" We'd probably even put money down on a bet that this was a long-lost indie rock album from the late '80s / early '90s. Yup, the sounds on Buncha Beans comes straight out of the wee hours of that period's college radio dial which is when/where this band first surfaced. Although Ethan Buckler (very early Tweez era bassist for Slint) originally intended King Kong to be something of a dance band, we've gotta say, their music is quite possibly some of the most untypical, unconventional disjointed dance music around. Go on, you try to dance to it! Maybe hop around in stocking feet in the privacy of your living room. Buckler's peculiar, atonal, almost spoken vocals, a cross between Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson and Fred Schneider of the B-52s (whom Buckler apparently modeled his King Kong sound after), push the tunes even further off the dance floor. A quirkuliscious, occasionally facetious, out-in-left-field kind of listen.
Many moons ago Ethan Buckler was in a soon-to-be-genre-defining band called Slint, but very swiftly he came to the realization that his musical calling was something quite different... something more poppy and dance-y. He assembled his own band and dubbed them King Kong. Together they made totally trashy, tweaked, funky pop tunes that sound as though they were influenced equally by cop show theme songs, the B-52s, Jonathan Richman and a hen house! Fast forward about sixteen years, and well, here we are... Just in time to coincide with his former band's reunion (and the remake of the classic movie to boot!), Buckler and the kind folks at Drag City Records have rejuvenated his own King Kong with this cdep reissue of three songs originally self-released back in 1989, then reissued on 7" by Drag City in 1995.
It's hard to believe that some of the coolest and soulful new music we've heard of late is coming from this lanky British mush-mouthed teenager, but it's true. We've been floored by nearly everything Archy Marshall aka King Krule has done since we first heard the self-titled ep a couple of years ago, and even before that he was releasing rap singles under the moniker of Zoo Kid. You might also remember him from his elevating guest appearances on the last Mount Kimbie record. So after a bunch of singles and an ep that we were unable to get, we're happy to be finally able to stock his full length debut. In some ways 6 Feet Beneath The Moon is a trip back to an eighties college sound that has seen a little revival of late. Sparse arrangements of Durutti Column-ish guitar and moody electronic atmospherics and rhythms create a Bill Evans / Chet Baker late-night loner jazz vibe while Marshall's distinct vocal delivery, a thick mopey brogue laced with a doleful drunken elegance, gives the songs their emotional weight... Marshall's voice comes across like a less stridently political and more introspective Billy Bragg, but his singing style is more informed by rap and jazz, blithely stepping around complex clusters of wordplay, imbuing his songs with a late-night urban melancholy like a hoodlum poet. Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Chris Heazlewood's noisy trio kicks ass as it summons the ghost of Dick Dale. Or something. From New Zealand so. You. Know. It's. Good.
There was a time when Shimmy Disc could do no wrong. Hard to believe but true. Bongwater, Velvet Monkeys, Fred Lane! Equally hard to believe, is that there was a record of spoken word set to music, that was amazing, funny and fucked and not at all as annoying as the sobriquet spoken word might lead you to believe. John S. Hall was a struggling poet in New York who hooked up with the enigmatic Dogbowl (check out Tit! An Opera, one of Andee's all time favorite records) and who together started King Missile (Dog Fly Religion) -- the dog fly religion part was dropped when Dogbowl left. This disc combines the first King Missle Record and the third (the second is the also amazing They), both of which are so goddamn funny and surprisingly clever and catchy. Most of you probably remember "Jesus Was Way Cool" which was a huge hit for a while. And that pretty much is the King Missle formula. Hall reciting absurd stories over all sorts of musical backdrops. Fluting On The Hump offers up two of the best King Missile songs, "Take Stuff From Work" and "Sensitive Artist". Both funny and scathing in their own way. By record number three, Dogbowl had left and was replaced with the King Missile lineup that would basically continue until today. But nothing was lost, in fact the music became less random and strange and more focused letting Hall get even weirder. The creepy sex tale of "Gary And Melissa", the stupidly cute "Cheesecake Truck", the brilliant "Jesus Was Way Cool" and on and on and on. We hadn't listened to this record in a while, but it's just as good as we remember it. Fun and funny, weird and wonderful.
Frontman King Tuff, along with bandmates Magic Jake and Old Gary, are back to cast a Black Moon Spell with this new full length Sub Pop release full of their usual uber-catchy, fuzzed-out power pop rock n' roll. Yep, it's always a good day when a new King Tuff hits our ears!! Once again, it's indeed enchanting, an energetic mix of distorted garage stomp, punk velocities, and bubblegum glamminess, complete with handclaps - shimmering shades of The Sweet and T-Rex, especially the latter when it comes to Tuff's very Marc Bolan-esque vocals, his fey, 'sexy' whine certainly affected but perfect in context. Everything's just a bit over the top, the melodies always soooo earwormy, the guitar soloing often super gnarly, the lyrics sometimes kinda goofy - among others, gotta love the lyrics to the lascivious "Headbanger", with lines like: "Me and you we got a true connection / I knew it when I saw your record collection / you had Sabbath and Priest and Number Of The Beast / It was heavy metal perfection / Then you went South of Heaven and my love went to eleven"! And by the way, King Tuff's the same guy who fronts doomsters Witch, so he does have plenty of metal cred, though his eponymous band's closest metal comparsion would probably be Kix - if they made a record with Ty Segall, that is (who, also by the way, guests on one song here on drums). Anyhoo, King Tuff offer no apologies for their exuberant rockin' and rollin', and why the heck should they? These are the sort of good times its well worth paying to own and experience again and again. Bow to the King!
A few years ago, before Kyle Thomas delved into the neo-acid folk of Feathers or the stoner metal of Witch, he began working on his first musical project King Tuff, a buzzy and bright concoction of glam punk and '70s power pop, casually playing out with his friends at parties and recording songs in his basement. Finally having more time to devote to the project after a couple exhaustive years touring with Feathers, playing in Witch, and keeping up a side career as a visual artist, the uber-limited cd-r label, Spirit of Oar has released these early recordings to precede King Tuff's upcoming Fall tour, and what a treat!!. Imagine Sweet, Zolar X, and Televison playing at your Sweet Sixteen. Fucking Rad! Did we say limited?? Only 100 made and we got a handful, and not really sure if we can ever get more.
Long overdue reissue of the long out of print 2008 debut lp from Kyle Thomas aka King Tuff, he of psych folk outfit Feathers, heavy psych rockers Witch (along with J Mascis) and aQ beloved power pop combo Happy Birthday, and like the self titled King Tuff record on Sub Pop from last year, Was Dead is a glorious concoction of home brewed power pop, swaggery glam stomp and fuzzy garage pop jangle, Thomas's distinctive whiny boy vocals over crunchy riffs, low slung bass, wheezing organs, kinetic drumming, hooks galore, catchy as all get out, a little bit laid back and stoney, fuzzed out and summery, just total (sun) baked jangle and fuzz garage pop, that ends up sounding equal parts seventies style Yellow Pills pop (Warm Soda / Bare Wires fans will flip) and more modern garage rock a la Ty Segall, Mikal Cronin, Thee Oh Sees etc, but with a seriously classic pop bent. We're also reminded quite a bit of another band with a serious sixties/seventies fixation, Redd Kross, we're guessing Thomas is a big fan, if not, they must share some musical genes. Plenty of these jams could easily be mistaken for actual old school power pop tracks from back in the day, the arrangement, the hooks, right down to the recording itself, a little bit lo-fi, but still plenty loud and fuzzy, the perfect summer jams for sure, while it's still summer, and to keep the summer going long into winter as well!
The return of King Tuff! Kyle Thomas's glam pop acid psych outfit, who we hadn't really heard a peep from since a cd-r way back in 2006. But Thomas has definitely been busy, playing in acid folk combo Feathers, stoner metal heavies Witch (with J. Mascis), not to mention being responsible for one of our favorite weirdo pop records of the last few years, the self-titled debut from the oddly named Happy Birthday, a record of total lo-fi nineties style power pop bliss out, check the review eleswhere on the aQ site, you won't be sorry. And of all of those, this new King Tuff probably lands closest to Happy Birthday, which suits us just fine. Just check out the record opener, which sounds like seventies power pop via Marc Bolan glamrock, all big chords, handclaps, woozy tangled guitar melodies, hazy sunshiney boy vox, shuffling drums, all wreathed in a summery sort of gauzy production. This is definitely windows down, top down, speaker pumping summertime crusing glam pop radness, and it's no coincidence the title of that track is "Anthem".
"Alone & Stoned" is another one that's perfectly titled, a weirdly produced chunk of jangle pop, that sounds a bit like Ariel Pink via Jeff The Brotherhood, all Wezzer-y big pop crunch, wed to murky bass slither, whiny vox, plenty of jangle and chordal shimmer, another track that's pretty dang summery. Which leads right into "Keep On Movin'", another glam pop anthem, big acoustic guiat strum, hand clap rhythms, loping bass groove, more whiny vocals, and a big flanger heavy chorus.
And so it goes, the record sort of dreamy and druggy, summery and shimmery, glammy and groovy, from the softl focus synthy shimmer of "Unusual World", rife with tinkling melodies and a sort of sixties girl group vibe, to "Bad Thing", which weds classic rock stomp to seventies power pop swagger, heavy with hooks galore and some ruling kick ass guitar action, or from the dirgey blooz jangle of "Stranger", all raw and primitive and fuzz drenched, to the almost Redd Kross sounding bubblegum ballad "Stupid Superstar". And actually Redd Kross might not be such a bad comparison, these guys have the same sort of knack for pop songsmithery, as well as a thing for rock eras past, glam, power pop, post punk, but where Redd Kross have morphed into a proper rock band, King Tuff still sounds fantastically home brewed, more ramshackle and wild, the pop way off kilter, the hooks balanced by plenty of random sonic weirdness, but somehow all crafted into a sweet little slab of twisted glampop, that's fast becoming a new fave.
The Sleep Genius label who has brought us great releases by Chasms, Bad News, Tied To The Branches and Concrete Island is back and not only with a new cassette, but a cassingle!!!!!! Yes that's right, a cassette in a gorgeously blood red shrink-wrapped paper stock sleeve!
King Woman is the first solo project of Kristina Esfandiari, the front woman of San Francisco local band Whirr, who we're not familiar with, but wondering now if we should be after hearing this. Backed by members of Tied to the Branches and Chasms, Esfandiari's deep resonant voice hovers over the minimal hazy treatments in these two slow shoegaze murder ballads. She reminds us of Hope Sandoval or Marissa Nadler but with a richer timbre to her vocal that is quite stunning. The backing music all hovering slow motion creep, quietly lifting these songs up to the beckoning gallows. Pretty fucking great!
Kristinia Esfandiari formerly of SF shoegazers Whirr, delivers a dark brooding gem of introspective heaviness, a mini-songsuite that unfurls lugubriously, and blossoms into a haunting sprawl of crushing, slo-mo metallic, torchsong miserablism. Imagine some twisted fusion of PJ harvey and SUNNO))). Churning washes of crumbling distortion and tarpit riffage drift grimly through billowing clouds of dense layered thrum, roiling blackened backdrops for Esfandiari's throaty, bewitching vox. The sonic heft matched by the lyrical themes of family and religion, and the suffering borne of both.
A darkly delicate downer pop dirgery, flecked with keening, melancholic melodies crafted into smoldering sonic arcs, and all wound up into blurred hazy drifts, morose, moody, mournful and melancholy. With the sound very reminiscent of Whirr, but like that groups blissed out metalgaze slowed way down, stretched out into languorous, undulating fields of dreamy, dour, doom-drift shimmer. "Candescent Soul" begins a whispered drumless creep, before transforming into a heart wrenching slow motion sonic pummel, a heart crushing deathmarch dirge reminiscent of some lost Katatonia B-side via nineties slowcore.
"Burn" follows a similar sonic template, blurred riffs spread out into a hazy landscape of swoonsome buzz and throb, driven by a simple caveman pound, before exploding into some seriously dense introspective crush, spidery tendrils of strange distorted electronics tangled up beneath Esfandiari's increasingly passionate and dramatic vocals. A shoegaze doom that bleeds into closer "King Of Swords", a loping distorted ballad that builds into a brooding slow build bombastic, swirling and psychedelic, almost like a female fronted, shoegaze Afghan Whigs, tortured, heart-on-sleeve indie pop recast as something darkly metallic, that somehow remains woozy, washed out, wasted, and dreamily despondent.
The Coachmen are probably mostly known as the band that featured a pre-Sonic Youth Thurston Moore. We always just assumed that JD King was in fact a made up entity and was in fact Moore. But apparently the two met way back in 1976, bonding over their love of all things Velvet Underground, Flamin' Groovies and the like. So the two joined forces, started a band, and jammed around NY until they broke up in 1979. At which point Moore went on to Sonic Youth while King went on to become a illustrator / cartoonist. A few of those records came out in the mid eighties on Ecstatic Peace, which is probably why we all assumed that The Coachmen was just Moore in disguise. But King and the Coachmen resurfaced in the mid nineties with a new record before sort of fading away again, and then wham! 2006 and they're back again!
So what the heck do these Coachmen sound like? Well, it's been ages since we've heard the old records, but we do remember it maybe being some sort of disconnected convoluted garage rock buzz blues stomp although it's been so long it's all a bit fuzzy. But fuzzy actually does begin to describe JD King And The Coachmen circa 2006. Imagine abstract streaks of fuzzed out guitar and dreamy tendrils of minor key melodies, hovering over thick swells of distorted buzz and a dense web of noodily bass lines, peppered with muted percussive thuds, or deep cavernous tangles of dense guitar over angular riffs and thick swaths of fuzznoise and simple tambourine, or tripped out space rock drift all tangled up in thickly reverbed guitar, freaked out psychguitar drift and moody mumbling backdrops of shimmering acoustic guitar and muddy bass rumble, or a tripped out disembodied Stoogesy stomp wrapped in swirling layers of distorted psychedelia and warm whirls of frothy fuzz.
This is some sort of alien garage rock, some disembodied blues, broadcast from some other time (past? future? both?) from some other plane, a mysterious alternate universe that has more in common musically with bands like the No Neck Blues Band, Avarus, Excepter, Sunburned Hand and the rest of those druggy free rock troubadours than it does with the Velvets or the Groovies. But that's the magic, it's like King and his cohorts are a tribe of modern mediums, who mixed up a magical brew of guitar, bass and percussion, managing to conjure up a brood of garage rock ghosts of the past, letting them get all tangled up with the free noise spectres of the present.
Most people probably know Arthur Brown, if at all, as the leader of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, kind of a one-hit wonder in the UK and the US with their 1968 single "Fire". But I remember a few years ago somebody playing me a '70s vintage LP by Arthur Brown, and it was a pretty amazing, freaked out space rock artifact. I'm pretty sure it was one of these three Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come records that have just been reissued, remastered with bonus cuts -- although next to "amazing" I'd also have to use the word "ridiculous" 'cause these sure are some gonzo, over the top examples of early '70s rock excess. The story goes that after his "I am the God of Hellfire" 15 minutes of f(l)ame, Arthur's Crazy World broke up, and then he eventually regrouped with this band, who were dedicated to an altogether heavier, more guitar-oriented sort of showmanship, from dark psych-prog to simply silly music hall theatrics. Brown was capable of some incredible vocal stylings, from Tom Jones worthy croonery to sheer sheer manaical dramaturgy, and he demonstrates that full range on these discs, coming across a bit like early Alice Cooper (who may in turn have been influenced by Brown originally). Totally wigged out and acid fried, chaotic and confused. What they're trying to get across is hard to say, but if you delight in both failed genius and '70s hippy zaniness, then Arthur Brown is your new prog rock hero.
Galactic Zoo Dossier, from '71, was the first of the three Kingdom Come albums. You'll note that it was good enuff for a present-day psych fanzine to be named after it. A classic of sorts. Then came 1972's self-titled Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come record, whose contents, according to the liner notes, were affected by the band's communal living situation and increased LSD consumption. It's a little more disjointed than the first record but it does contain the "Traffic Light Song" which was both a pop psychology metaphor for personality types and an excuse for the band to wear traffic light costumes on stage as part of their increasingly bizarre live show. Last comes 1973's Journey, which may be the best of the three, or at least the weirdest, because rather than a human drummer, Journey features electronic drum machine rhythms programmed by Brown himself. Apparently the drummer on the previous two albums ran off with the bass player's wife! So they went with a drum machine, quite an unusal lark back in 1973 for sure! (And we thought that the Metal Urbain album was ahead of its time!). Crudely, it's kind of a collision of psychedelia and new wave and it's pretty cool. Though, all three discs have proto new wave elements alongside the space-rock and Zappa-ish tomfoolery. So, even now Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come isn't like anything else you've really ever heard (although whether the band was "good" or not is another, very subjective matter). Be brave and investigate!
9Most people probably know Arthur Brown, if at all, as the leader of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, kind of a one-hit wonder in the UK and the US with their 1968 single "Fire". But I remember a few years ago somebody playing me a '70s vintage LP by Arthur Brown, and it was a pretty amazing, freaked out space rock artifact. I'm pretty sure it was one of these three Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come records that have just been reissued, remastered with bonus cuts -- although next to "amazing" I'd also have to use the word "ridiculous" 'cause these sure are some gonzo, over the top examples of early '70s rock excess. The story goes that after his "I am the God of Hellfire" 15 minutes of f(l)ame, Arthur's Crazy World broke up, and then he eventually regrouped with this band, who were dedicated to an altogether heavier, more guitar-oriented sort of showmanship, from dark psych-prog to simply silly music hall theatrics. Brown was capable of some incredible vocal stylings, from Tom Jones worthy croonery to sheer sheer manaical dramaturgy, and he demonstrates that full range on these discs, coming across a bit like early Alice Cooper (who may in turn have been influenced by Brown originally). Totally wigged out and acid fried, chaotic and confused. What they're trying to get across is hard to say, but if you delight in both failed genius and '70s hippy zaniness, then Arthur Brown is your new prog rock hero.
Galactic Zoo Dossier, from '71, was the first of the three Kingdom Come albums. You'll note that it was good enuff for a present-day psych fanzine to be named after it. A classic of sorts. Then came 1972's self-titled Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come record, whose contents, according to the liner notes, were affected by the band's communal living situation and increased LSD consumption. It's a little more disjointed than the first record but it does contain the "Traffic Light Song" which was both a pop psychology metaphor for personality types and an excuse for the band to wear traffic light costumes on stage as part of their increasingly bizarre live show. Last comes 1973's Journey, which may be the best of the three, or at least the weirdest, because rather than a human drummer, Journey features electronic drum machine rhythms programmed by Brown himself. Apparently the drummer on the previous two albums ran off with the bass player's wife! So they went with a drum machine, quite an unusal lark back in 1973 for sure! (And we thought that the Metal Urbain album was ahead of its time!). Crudely, it's kind of a collision of psychedelia and new wave and it's pretty cool. Though, all three discs have proto new wave elements alongside the space-rock and Zappa-ish tomfoolery. So, even now Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come isn't like anything else you've really ever heard (although whether the band was "good" or not is another, very subjective matter). Be brave and investigate!
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Most people probably know Arthur Brown, if at all, as the leader of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, kind of a one-hit wonder in the UK and the US with their 1968 single "Fire". But I remember a few years ago somebody playing me a '70s vintage LP by Arthur Brown, and it was a pretty amazing, freaked out space rock artifact. I'm pretty sure it was one of these three Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come records that have just been reissued, remastered with bonus cuts -- although next to "amazing" I'd also have to use the word "ridiculous" 'cause these sure are some gonzo, over the top examples of early '70s rock excess. The story goes that after his "I am the God of Hellfire" 15 minutes of f(l)ame, Arthur's Crazy World broke up, and then he eventually regrouped with this band, who were dedicated to an altogether heavier, more guitar-oriented sort of showmanship, from dark psych-prog to simply silly music hall theatrics. Brown was capable of some incredible vocal stylings, from Tom Jones worthy croonery to sheer sheer manaical dramaturgy, and he demonstrates that full range on these discs, coming across a bit like early Alice Cooper (who may in turn have been influenced by Brown originally). Totally wigged out and acid fried, chaotic and confused. What they're trying to get across is hard to say, but if you delight in both failed genius and '70s hippy zaniness, then Arthur Brown is your new prog rock hero.
Galactic Zoo Dossier, from '71, was the first of the three Kingdom Come albums. You'll note that it was good enuff for a present-day psych fanzine to be named after it. A classic of sorts. Then came 1972's self-titled Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come record, whose contents, according to the liner notes, were affected by the band's communal living situation and increased LSD consumption. It's a little more disjointed than the first record but it does contain the "Traffic Light Song" which was both a pop psychology metaphor for personality types and an excuse for the band to wear traffic light costumes on stage as part of their increasingly bizarre live show. Last comes 1973's Journey, which may be the best of the three, or at least the weirdest, because rather than a human drummer, Journey features electronic drum machine rhythms programmed by Brown himself. Apparently the drummer on the previous two albums ran off with the bass player's wife! So they went with a drum machine, quite an unusal lark back in 1973 for sure! (And we thought that the Metal Urbain album was ahead of its time!). Crudely, it's kind of a collision of psychedelia and new wave and it's pretty cool. Though, all three discs have proto new wave elements alongside the space-rock and Zappaish tomfoolery. So, even now Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come isn't like anything else you've really ever heard (although whether the band was "good" or not is another, very subjective matter). Be brave and investigate!
Most people probably know Arthur Brown, if at all, as the leader of the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, kind of a one-hit wonder in the UK and the US with their 1968 single "Fire". But I remember a few years ago somebody playing me a '70s vintage LP by Arthur Brown, and it was a pretty amazing, freaked out space rock artifact. I'm pretty sure it was one of these three Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come records that have just been reissued, remastered with bonus cuts -- although next to "amazing" I'd also have to use the word "ridiculous" 'cause these sure are some gonzo, over the top examples of early '70s rock excess. The story goes that after his "I am the God of Hellfire" 15 minutes of f(l)ame, Arthur's Crazy World broke up, and then he eventually regrouped with this band, who were dedicated to an altogether heavier, more guitar-oriented sort of showmanship, from dark psych-prog to simply silly music hall theatrics. Brown was capable of some incredible vocal stylings, from Tom Jones worthy croonery to sheer sheer manaical dramaturgy, and he demonstrates that full range on these discs, coming across a bit like early Alice Cooper (who may in turn have been influenced by Brown originally). Totally wigged out and acid fried, chaotic and confused. What they're trying to get across is hard to say, but if you delight in both failed genius and '70s hippy zaniness, then Arthur Brown is your new prog rock hero.
Galactic Zoo Dossier, from '71, was the first of the three Kingdom Come albums. You'll note that it was good enuff for a present-day psych fanzine to be named after it. A classic of sorts. Then came 1972's self-titled Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come record, whose contents, according to the liner notes, were affected by the band's communal living situation and increased LSD consumption. It's a little more disjointed than the first record but it does contain the "Traffic Light Song" which was both a pop psychology metaphor for personality types and an excuse for the band to wear traffic light costumes on stage as part of their increasingly bizarre live show. Last comes 1973's Journey, which may be the best of the three, or at least the weirdest, because rather than a human drummer, Journey features electronic drum machine rhythms programmed by Brown himself. Apparently the drummer on the previous two albums ran off with the bass player's wife! So they went with a drum machine, quite an unusal lark back in 1973 for sure! (And we thought that the Metal Urbain album was ahead of its time!). Crudely, it's kind of a collision of psychedelia and new wave and it's pretty cool. Though, all three discs have proto new wave elements alongside the space-rock and Zappaish tomfoolery. So, even now Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come isn't like anything else you've really ever heard (although whether the band was "good" or not is another, very subjective matter). Be brave and investigate!
One of our favorite features in Mojo magazine is this small section where they ask musicians a series of questions about records they love for certain moments/days, and one of the questions they always ask is what's your perfect Sunday morning record, and when we think about that question Kings Of Convenience is always one of the first bands that comes to mind.
No one makes more fragile and delicate sounds that are so perfect for the slow and quiet start of a lazy sun dappled morning. It's easy to forget, but Kings Of Convenience were crafting their mellow, Nick Drake tinged style of folk/pop before that sound would make such a huge resurgence, spawning bands and folks like Iron & Wine, Jose Gonzalez, Taken By Trees, Jens Lekman, El Perro Del Mar, Vetiver, Camera Obscura, etc.
It's been five years since this great Norwegian duo gave us the fantastic Riot On An Empty Street, though they have been keeping busy with a multitude of side and solo projects, including Erlend Oye's band The Whitest Boy Alive, which is also pretty great btw!
Declaration Of Dependence finds the duo as perfectly bittersweet as ever, both of their voices melding together with such ease, and the sparse and pastoral instrumentation keeps the breeze flowing with just the right hints of memory, sadness and introspection. Unlike many who have come after, nothing here feels forced or heavy handed, to the contrary, their songs really do feel like the slight rush of air blowing on a crisp autumn day, and this is becoming our perfect fall sweater soundtrack. So good!
Pretty ridiculously accomplished indiepop duo from as unlikely a place as Bergen, Norway -- also known as the hometown of incarcerated black metal poster boy Burzum/Varg Vikernes. Somehow I don't think the Kings were friends with Varg, as their music is so wimpy, so lovely, so chillingly sweet that they bring to mind the very similar Belle and Sebastian, Sea and Cake, and Donovan. In other words, Varg would rather have stabbed his best friend in the back than have to listen to the quietly beautiful Kings of Convenience. Don't be befuddled by the fact that this album is on Source/Astralwerks -- their previous record was on the much more appropriate Kindercore label and fans of the indiepop genre that Kindercore documents so well will totally wet their pants over this. A nice record, and if AQ had a "song of the week" category, this record's instantly classic first song "Winning a Battle, Losing the War" would be it.
Norway's answer to Simon & Garfunkel have returned! KOC vocalist Erlend Oye's interim solo efforts have left us flat, but his band's second full length sure doesn't! These folks are experts at dreamy pop songwriting, crafting the gentlest acoustic loveliness. Be forewarned, this may be far too soft and sweet for some folks, but if you have a penchant for songs that glow like sunbeams through honey (sorry... too cheesy?), don't miss Riot On An Empty Street (nor for that matter its predecessor Quiet Is The New Loud). Simply gorgeous end-of-summer songs.
The warm, folky daydream music of Norway's Kings Of Convenience get remixed and remade in a variety of ways by the likes of Four Tet, Andy Votel, Alfie and Ladytron among others. Also included are a collaboration with Erot and some newly arranged tracks (one
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Quelle hype! A huge, full page story following their sex, drugs n' rocknroll filled tour through New York in the New York Times, shamelessly spells out how they do it, where they did it and why the Hell they would. But alas, they're young and new, new, new! An easy push by the industry, right? Well, yes. But their album is actually pretty great!
Okay, so is it just me or does this remind you of Alan Parsons' "Eye In The Sky"? Apologies to Kingsbury Manx, but once that vocal familiarity popped into my head it kinda got difficult to hear much else. Anyway, setting those initial comparisons aside, this is a pleasing, tranquil, folky pop sophomore release. Not a big departure from their self-titled debut, so if you enjoyed that one
'60s Moog-pop pioneer Gershon Kingsley, of Perrey and Kingsley fame, made some fab music without partner Jean-Jacques Perrey as well -- such as his hit single "Pop Corn" which you'll find on this at-long-last reissued edition of Kingsley's 1969 masterpiece, the incredibly FUN album Music To Moog By. Along with snazzy originals like "Pop Corn" and energetic album-opener "Hey, Hey", Kingsley also gives the Moog instrumental treatment to Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair" and both "Nowhere Man" and "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles. He also sneaks in some Beethoven too, and takes writing credit for a manic version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"! Sometimes his Moog sounds like a church organ, other times like the whip-whip-wap of a hip hop dj's turntable. It's a frothy, hip, pop-psychedelic space age 'electronica' album all right. Released the year man landed on the moon, you can imagine it spinning on the Apollo 11 hi-fi, had the astronauts been partying up there. Wonderful stuff.
Double disc collection compiling the entire surviving body of the Kinks recordings for the BBC between 1964 and 1977. Includes an 18 page booklet with information on each of the sessions and a bio of the band.
This total Kinks classic from 1968 receives the deluxe remastered reissue treatment... and deservingly so! Such an utterly expansive, deeply influential work that has more than stood the test of time. It's a whopping three discs -- the first is the album in stereo with four bonus tracks, the second is the album in mono with six bonus tracks, and the third is filled with 22 rarities (alternate versions, BBC sessions, etc). As an added treat, the liner note booklet includes interviews with the Davies brothers. 'Nuf said!
One of the so-called Terrastock Nation's heaviest ass-kickers, Pacific NW "space-rock" troupe Kinski continue their levitational ascent with this new full-length. We've especially been looking forward to it ever since Sub Pop released the teaser "Semaphore" ep late last year, which garnered high marks from us. The so-heavy-and-wintry-majestic-that-it's-almost-black metal title track from that ep reappears here, alongside seven new cuts that both drone-on and rock-out. Lengthy epics abound, structured to begin with moody, melodic mellowness before bursting into denser action at the half-way point, and are primarily instrumentals, with the fuzz of the overdriven guitars and the wallop of the drums taking full flight. From repetitive shoegazer post-rock to experimental pop to ambient Floydian psych, Kinski never falter, always full of energy, with sheer "set the controls for the nearest black hole" gravity-multiplying heaviness never far from kicking in. With "Airs", Kinski should be taking their place in the space/drone rock fandom realm next to the likes of Circle, Sonic Youth, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Subarachnoid Space, and a host of your cosmic krautrock greats of the past. Ol' Klaus would be proud.
God! How we love instrumental rock records! And while we'll be the first to admit that there have been some great vocalists, almost always, when we throw on a new record, we wait all tensed up, cowering, just waiting for the vocals to come in, and make or break the record. Well, thankfully we've never had that problem with Kinski (even on the rare occasions they do add vocals), a four piece mostly instrumental space rock band from Seattle, who we've loved from day one. Not just 'cuz of their killer monicker (we LOVE Klaus Kinski!) but for their blissed out shoegazey Hawkwind meets My Bloody Valentine meets Pink Floyd instrumental spaced out bliss rock. So the first thing we noticed when we threw on Alpine Static was how much, well, more rocking it was! I mean, they definitely rocked before, no doubt about it, but in much more of a laid back, stoned and moody and a little bit mellowed out way. But on Alpine Static, Kinski most definitely kick out the jams. There were moments on past records that hinted at the heavy and/or poppy rocking the band was capable of, but this is the record where uptempo RAWK is the first order of business. So take Kinski's knack for droning repetitive hypnorock, and then wrap that around some hyperdistorted Heavy Rocks (a la Boris), a bit of technical shredding (a la the Fucking Champs), some pulsing propulsive krautrock (a la Neu!), some ultra caustic squalls of guitar noise (a la Comets On Fire), some crunchy, stacatto dirgerock pound (a la Circle at their fiercest), a bit of moody post rock (a la June Of 44), some epic and blown out guitar freakouts (a la Dinosaur Jr., Swervedriver, Pixies) and then the occasional return to that blissed out cosmic dronerock Kinski are also so adept at and you've got a seriously solid slab of head banging, hip shaking space rocking kosmik heavy rock jams!
We initially wrote this band off after a really uninspiring and boring S.F. performance, but this record is something else entirely. Dense and hypnotic, warm and droney guitar rock. Everytime we play this in the store, everyone in the store wants to
Like the sticker on the cover of this says, it's "the next Kinski record but not the NEXT Kinski record". That is, it's not a studio album follow-up to Airs Above Your Station, last year's brilliant opus from this growing-ever-more-popular Seattle space rock outfit. What it is, is an album of live improvs played by Kinski minus their drummer -- just guitars and guitars and synth and effects, lots and lots of 'em. Apparently they enjoy doing shows of improvised material like this under the pseudonym Herzog, and this disc collects recordings of what they feel are some of the best of those sessions. For sure Kinski fans will be pleased, as these three guitar-wielding seekers of truth sure know how to craft some dense and beautiful sonic excursions, spacey and magnificent, especially the album's 29 minute tour-de-force "The Misprint In The Gutenberg Print Shop". Crackling with potential energy and eerie with tripped-out drone, Don't Climb On... is a document all 'heads' will surely appreciate, only upping our anticipation of their next (NEXT) venture.
Such a good blend of glorious spaced-out shoegazing FUZZ and sheer toe-tapping POP. The Kinski guys and gals have mastered it. Maybe some folks aren't up for that combo but we can't get enough, and Kinski have plenty of fans so... Their latest is another slab of blown out, heavy yet gentle guitar explorations, this time adding more in the way of vocals to the mix (but they're still more-or-less an instrumental act, with singing only on three of the nine cuts here). Some moments seem really rock n' roll, others totally placid and lovely. It's space rock, it's indie pop, it's post rock (with that loud/soft dynamic, the loud parts adorned with hecka psychedelic fuzz though), it's uh, Kinski. As always, should get the nod from those into Dead Meadow, Monster Magnet, Bardo Pond stoner jams... and who are fans of the likes of Boris and Circle and Acid Mothers Temple... and who dig Kinski's Northwestern grunge ancestors on Sub Pop... and oh yeah, who love SONIC YOUTH.
Besides the added presence of vocals, also new to the Kinski scene this time 'round is Hammond B3 electric organ, heard on a few cuts, notably the driving "Child Had To Catch A Train". Shades of Deep Purple!
FYI for some unknown reason, the cover of the digipak comes in red, green, and blue tinted versions, other than that they're the same and if you're a mailorder customer you'll get a random color. And guess what? The cover of the vinyl version is purple!
Here's a little 23-minute ep from Pacific Northwest outfit Kinski, following up their excellent "Be Gentle With The Warm Turtle" debut on the Pacifico label. Now they're on Sub Pop, with a new album to follow in the new year. Kinski are a band who obviously love their krautrock and their Floyd, playing that space rock / post rock / psychedelic rock stuff we love too, a la Circle, Mogwai, Codeine, MBV...
"Semaphore" starts things off in the now expected Kinski manner, erupting into a warm fuzz bath for yr ears, heavy and doleful enough to almost be mistaken from some instrumental Norwegian black metal concoction at moments! The next song, "Point That Thing Somewhere Else" pops things up a bit, with a lively drum beat and some indie-rock vocals (the only singing on the disc). Following that, "The Bunnies Are Tough" gets all droney and experimental and scary. Fourth and final track "I Wouldn't Hurt A Fly" returns to the loud guitar zone for a dynamic and heavy eight-minute epic that recalls Godspeed You Black Emperor! mixed with Mogwai. We look forward to Kinski's upcoming full-length!
Hot on the heels of their fine new full-length Alpine Static comes these long-awaited reissues of this Seattle space-rock band's first two albums: their debut, SpaceLaunch For Frenchie, originally self-released by the band, the second, Be Gentle With The Warm Turtle, originally issued on the now-defunct Pacifico label. Both have been tragically out of print for the past few years. Now that Kinksi is popular and all, it's about time these became available again! Both come with bonus tracks making the wait all the more rewarding.
1999's SpaceLaunch For Frenchie (what's up with that title, exactly?) is loaded down with the bonus tracks, actually. In addition to the original six songs on the album, there's four songs from an earlier 4-track demo tape, as well as a stormy, unreleased SpaceLaunch outtake. In total, 73 minutes of hummable, jamming, shoegazing, effects-pedal-reliant rawk! Whoo-hoo! Fans, feel free to freak out. Kinksi's Chris Martin notes on the back cover, "There are a few goofy moments, perhaps, but what the hell." I mean, you can't complain, it's the first album that a lot of us have never even heard before, plus more stuff. (Except we can complain that there's just just one flimsy square of paper for a cd "booklet" which is always lame.)
The album is definitely a youthful version of the Kinski you know and love: warm, fuzzy, floating melodic space rock instrumentals. And non-instrumentals too, with indie-rock vocals emerging on such tracks as "Floundering & Fluctuating" and their energetic cover of Spacemen 3's "Losing Touch With My Mind". Mostly this is mopey, mellow post-rock prettiness with plenty of hints towards the more massive sound that Kinski now reliably delivers. Some of the 4-track demos are maybe a bit poppier, but are still indicative of both their influences and future direction -- take the overtly Sonic Youthish "E-Jam (Daydream Intonation)" for instance. That's a track later re-recorded for their second album, demonstrating that Kinski fans going back to this older, unheard material won't be thrown for too many loops.
Then there's Be Gentle With The Warm Turtle, the 2001 album that first said to us, hi I'm Kinski! We quickly made friends with the music and wrote something like this about it: "Dense and hypnotic, warm and droney guitar rock. Everytime we play this in the store, everyone in the store wants to know what it is. Like some weird mix of old Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Big extended jams, simple and dumb, noisy and epic. Pretty great." It's still totally recommended, a fuzzy favorite for sure. Get it now if you missed it before! And this reissue also boasts a bonus track, only one of 'em but it's quite nice, a quiet coda to the album called "Montgomery".
This lovely (and bargain-priced) record is the result of a beautiful band-meets-band story. You know, two bands with beards meet and make friends for life. Actually, does Kinski have beards? We're just guessin'. (Note: there's ladies in both bands, we're not accusing them of having beards or anything.) Seattle cosmonauts Kinski and guitarist/guru Kawabata Makoto of the popular Japanese underground musical commune Acid Mothers Temple go way back, to when Kinski opened for Mainliner's 1999 US tour. Sooner or later they had to collaborate, and we're not complaining. Even if you find AMT a mite too prolific, at least this release is 50% Kinski, who haven't yet reached the product overload stage that AMT share with Merzbow and precious few others. Thus no need to feel guilty about adding this to your shelf of AMT releases.
So, we get four tracks to absorb here. First up, is Kinski's "Fell Asleep On Your Lawn". Its ten minutes start off all quiet n' pretty before going into spacelaunch mode. They fire their rockets, come back to earth, and then blast off again. Maybe they don't fly as high as the best of their recent Airs Above Your Station album, but it's still a good track. Then, track two sees Kinski visiting Japan, playing a pre-dinner jam at AMT "dancin' king" Higashi Hiroshi's flat, with Higashi and Kawabata sitting in on guitar. It's really beautiful, almost ambient, hushed space drone stuff that's so sleepy that I woulda thought it was an after-dinner jam instead. Lovely. The third track comes from the same 'session' but has extra added AMT overdubs, so you hear from the whole AMT crew plus the Kinski quartet. It has a similar mood to track two but is denser. Lastly, track four is just AMT, offering their companion to Kinski's opening cut, though it's twice as long, called "Virginal Plane 5:23". It's a swirling stoned jam not unlike their Electric Heavyland album. All in all, real nice disc from these international cosmic comrades, packaged in some cool Boredoms-meet-Man Or Astroman? lookin' cover art. Vinyl limited, cd not.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Where to even start... HAWKWIND. The mighty lords of drugged out space rock, without whom, most of the bands we love might not even exist. These four Hawkwind records: Doremi Fasol Latido, Hall Of The Mountain Grill, In Search Of Space, and Space Ritual, are pretty much all anyone needs to know about space rock. Or whatever it is that Hawkwind do, long sprawling jams, extended psychedelic workouts, heavy and trippy, totally drugged out and divine, while at the same time, surprisingly catchy. But yeah, aQ folks probably already know how much we love Hawkwind.
So if we were to pick six bands to cover classic Hawkwind tunes, we might not have picked these six, but then again, we very well might have: Mudhoney, Mugstar, Acid Mothers Tempo And The Cosmic Inferno, White Hills, Kinski, Bardo Pond. Holy hell! If this were just a comp with those bands, we'd be all over it, but the fact that they're covering Hawkwind seems like it was made just for the aQ faithful, and who knows, maybe it was. Spread out over three 7"s, we almost didn't list these separately, but as a set, 'cause to our minds, who the heck would only want one or two of these? But you never know, so for those of you who didn't already freak out and toss all three into your cart, here's a brief bit about each specific 7":
On volume three, "Lords Of Light", Kinski definitely get their Hawkwind on, covering "Master Of The Universe", and like Mugstar on the first volume, not so much making it their own, as transforming themselves into a vessel through which the spirit of Hawkwind can flow, and flow it does. That main riff is such a killer, all the band have to do is ride it out, adding plenty of freaked out effects and psychedelic leads, the vocals buried in the mix, not getting in the way of the endless spacepsych jamming.
And finally, the series is closed out by another group of modern psychedelic masters, Bardo Pond, who add female vocals to their take on "Lord Of Light", the vocals drifting ethereally, over a roiling black cloud of FX drenched guitars and some seriously pounding drums, even a bit of flute (we think), and maybe more than any of the others managing to meld the sound of the original with their own, plenty of wah wah guitar, loads of effects, most of the track spent drifting through space, cloaked in blown out super distorted psych guitar and shimmering outer space ambience. Surprisingly heavy and totally blissed out.
The packaging is brilliant, perfectly tripped out psychedelic acid flashback, naked lady, geometric design, cribbed from the original Hawkwind artwork (or at the very least, an incredible simulation), the sleeves are printed complete with shelf wear and corner creases (so don't complain, they're meant to look like they've been on your shelf for decades), each one SUPER LIMITED, and already sold out at the label, we have a bunch, but these will be the only copies we'll ever have!!
There's over 70 minutes of high-flying, low-droning instrumental space rock on this here split cd! AQ-faves Kinski start things off with "Keep Clear Of Me, I Am Maneuvering With Difficulty", a twenty-minute long improv which gives them plenty of time to build from quiet, outer-space atmospherics to the sort of loud, fuzzed-out mantric heaviness that we love 'em for. Their driving rock mayhem attains levels of distortion that the Acid Mothers Temple would envy, before Kinski bring things down into a nice cosmic drone zone to end the piece. Easily as good as anything on their excellent new Sub Pop album "Airs Above Your Station" reviewed here last list. Next comes a band with whom we were not familiar, Paik (named after artist Nam June?). Their two tracks clock in at about twenty minutes total too. Ponderous yet shimmery, you probably won't realize you're not still listening to Kinski -- no complaints there. Real nice & pretty. And then Surface of Eceon (another AQ-fave, related to Landing) take a half-hour to soothingly drone their way through this disc's finale. Blissful. These three were definitely a good choice of bands to share a split, style AND quality-wise. Kinski definitely get up to the most rock action, but the other two bands space out beautifully. Recommended to all you psychedelic post-rock drone-heads.
