The legend on the back of this split seven inch reads "Ugly Providence Boogie Rock". Well it most definitely is ugly and from Providence, but boogie rock might be stretching it a bit...
We're still grooving to that last Landed 12" that found the ever shifting outfit unleashing some alien scuzz rock dancefloor technology, but this track here is a bit of the classic Landed sound, grungy and sludgey, blown out rhythms and buzzing guitars, super thick distorted bass, the whole thing a sort of plodding dirge, but peppered with wild squalls of angular mathiness and freaked out new wave damage. Pretty awesome stuff.
The flip side is by fellow Rhode Island noise makers Snake Apartment, who do their own sludgy dirgey kind of thing. Channeling the Brainbombs through thick sheets of East coast art rock, and dipped in the black tar of classic old school Amrep noiserock, lots of stretched out guitars, strangled vocals, throbbing bass, all tangled up into swaggery Stoogesy grooves, that is surprisingly catchy.
As Brocade begins you are immediately greeted with a repetitious krautrock line reminiscent of both Neu! and Can. From the immediacy of that sweeping hook, they take themselves into sounds that begin to start moving through the sky. Like an instrumental early 4AD record you always imagined in your head.ÔTheir ability to slow down and change time creates a space where you can wander with intensity. They let you look at that one thing for so long and with so much devotion you begin to start seeing the bigger picture just by the magnification of one sound, one idea, one deep focus.ÔLanding want to see how close they can get to the sky -- they feel wind shake them -- sun blast them -- air refresh them. Highly recommended!
Add this to the flurry of Landing releases we've gotten in recently. If you liked the swirl-icious sounds from their split with Windy & Carl or their first full length, this will surely please you as well. This EP floats along in their instrumental spacey
Spaced-out swirling post-rock mellowness with dream-girl vocals. Definitely for fans of Windy and Carl (with whom they have toured and shared a split cd also listed here) who've been looking for a bit more melody and less drone. Lovely.
Landing have issued forth what just might be their most lovely and fully realised work to date. No vast departures from their usual path of spacy, slowly drifting mellowness, but each track seems to more fully envelop the listener. Whisking him/her gracefully away into their wispy, languid dreamscapes. Sooooo calming with their veils of shimmering drones and barely there strummed guitars, it almost ventures into new age territory. Their unobtrusive, ethereal male / female vocals add but another layer of lightness to the soothing atmosphere. Actually the song "Against The Rain" really reminded me of Yo La Tengo's wonderful The Sounds Of The Sounds Of Science soundtrack. Beautiful! The only shortcoming is the length. Unfortunately at only 31 minutes long, this disc might require the repeat setting on your cd player if you need longer than a half hour's escape!
Recorded during the same sessions that yielded Landing's Sphere album from 2004, Gravitational IV is a much more tripped out and experimental beast. OK, maybe not -much- more, as Landing are generally pretty trippy and far out, but this disc still manages to take it to a whole 'nother level. And we love it!
Dubby grooves, reverb drenched ethereal female vocals, slippery underwater bass lines, blissed out deconstructed krautrocky jams, thick coruscating sheets of psychedelic guitar flare, full on space rock blow outs, gentle lilting otherworldly dreamfolk, the parts are all over the sonic map, but somehow they all sound so totally perfect together. It's almost like someone took all the leftover bits from the Sphere sessions, dumped them in a huge pot, added tons of reverb and delay, and then set it on the stove to shimmer, but forgot all about it until hours, maybe days later, only to realize the concoction had become something else entirely, a mind bending druggy swirl of abstract psychedelia and experimental free fuzz ambience. The kitchen filled with thick clouds of fuzzy gauzy guitars, the floor sticky with gooey puddles of acid drenched trippiness. Equal parts Mazzy Star, M83, My Bloody Valentine, but all stripped down and then built back up with layer after layer of guitars and effects and strange studio fuckery. A gloriously blissed out psych rock head trip! Quite possibly our favorite Landing record yet!
Super limited, LP only. LIMITED TO 450 COPIES. Packaged in an ultra thick gatefold sleeve with super striking psychedelic artwork. Pressed on massively thick 180 gram vinyl, each copy stickered and numbered.
Slow and shimmery... you can always count on Landing to gently encircle you in a delicate sonic mist of translucent drones and sparkly chiming notes. Songs gradually take shape out of barely-there guitar tones that drift and accumulate until a tentative, cyclical melody materializes. Landing don't stop there though, adding ultra-mellow female and male vocals that introduce words into the nebulous, soothing atmosphere. Lovely.
The fourth record from this atmospheric space rock outfit from Connecticut and their debut on the NY-based Ba Da Bing! label. Dreamy reverb-heavy, tremolo guitars drift along and encounter occasional interplanetary submarine radar bleeps that at times seem rather intrusive next to the breathy male and female vocals. Check out the ultra-soothing track "First Snow". Blissed out and glistening. If you like Surface Of Eceon or Windy and Carl, you might find yourself sinking into Landing too.
Landing's third album, Sphere, spills out sky-gazing psychospheric pop songs with guitar harmonics, e-bows and layers of sustained effects. So pleasant and meditative, we accidently had it playing in the store here almost three times in a row before someone realized. Highly recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's been ages since we've heard from psychedelic space drifters Landing, and we DEFINITELY don't remember them sounding like this. The swirling spaciness is still present, as is the group's dreamlike electronic psychedelia, but here, it's delivered in a much different form, one that's more sort of new wave electro synth pop! Yup, sequencers, drum machines, ethereal female vox, The first track might have you thinking you're listening to some new record on Captured Tracks or Sacred Bones, which if you're a fan of either, snag this right now. Crystalline guitars wound around loping rhythmic skitter, and low slung bass thrum, chiming and dreamy, the song more than just retro leaning electro-pop, at one point the guitars and vocals drop out, revealing the tripped out psychedelic electronic experimentation that lurks below/within, which the band has deftly crafted into something incredibly poppy and blissed out, equal parts 4AD, M83, and the new wave of, er, new wave. In fact the whole A side is made up of this sort of swirling prismatic kraut-pop, looped and mesmeric, trance-y and super hypnotic, the sounds pulsing and shimmering, loads of echo and reverb, the last track on the A side is all cool loping downer electro pop, crooned male vox, over a driving, but still laid back, twinkling harmonics, reverby jangle, a total throwback, but with a modern, more experimental sheen.
It's on the B-side that we get a little taste of the Landing of old, a sprawling epic that sounds like it could/should have been on Kranky, all blurred drifts and murky melodies, bass thrum and synthy swirl, but some of the group's new elements are still present, a fractured, minimal glitchy rhythm, some of the sounds blown out, and glowing with a muted intensity, before being smeared into the softly undulating backdrop, over this slo-mo groove, drifts flurries of tangled synth, mysterious percussive fragments. About halfway through, the song seems to blossom into some swirling electronic dream pop, the female vocals rejoining, before as quickly as the sound changes, it changes once again, and spends the rest of the side's 8 minutes gradually unwinding and unfurling, a heady dreampop psych-drift headtrip that definitely proves that the whipper snappers these days, trafficking in similar sounds, have NOTHING on their sonic elders. Dreamy, droney, poppy, psychedelic, electronic perfection!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Includes a download coupon as well.
Sooner or later, it seems like EVERYTHING gets reissued - even an album entitled "From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars... To The Hell-Holes of Uranus"! Actually this reissue is perfectly timely, as this UK band's futuristic electronic new wave nerd pop from 1981 fits right in with the retro eighties styles popular again today. Though, as "computery" as it is (they sing about microchips!) Landscape aren't exactly cold wave, not with their bopping, popping horn section (which might be entirely synthesized, however - electronic trombone anyone?).
They're allegedly best known for the hit "Einstein A-Go-Go" (don't worry if you don't remember it, we didn't either, they may have been bigger in England), that's from this album, along with another hit they supposedly had, "Norman Bates", those are fun, look 'em up on YouTube if you want to see the videos, but there's other songs here we like just as much if not more, actually.
Danceable (due to proto-techno beats, and handclaps) as well as dramatic (in a way that's charmingly pretentious and/or put on), Landscape offer up synth laden goofy good times with very much of an "only in the '80s" vibe. We especially like the weirder bits, like "The Doll's House", and the tick-tock title suite. Including a few bonus tracks, there's 14 cuts here in all, including an innocuous instrumental, "Computer Person", that reminds us a bit of Cluster, and a song, "It's Not My Real Name", that sounds like a mixture of Depeche Mode and Rockwell. Elsewhere, we're thinking Howard Jones, Gary Numan, or Wang Chung... Not a bad (obscure) nostalgic New Romantic fix.
Fifth solo album from Ex-Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan and he just keeps geting better. Dark and smoky, evocative and atmospheric. Slow, whiskey soaked ballads with a country tinge. With a beautifully dreamy and washed out (but still crystal clear)
A fantastic career retrospective of long time aQ fave Mark Lanegan, two cds or three lps collecting tracks from most every one of Lanegan's solo records, going all the way back to our favorite, his debut The Winding Sheet, originally released on Sub Pop way back in 1990. But we've been fans of Lanegan since he fronted classic grunge combo Screaming Trees, where his deep, dramatic, smokey and soulful vocals helped define that sound, but solo, with a more stripped down minimal sound, those distinctive vocals are front and center, right where they belong. You'd have to be a pretty obsessive fan to want this, since most of this is culled from records you probably already have, but most of the Lanegan fans we know (ourselves included) are in fact pretty goddamn obsessive, so having what is essentially a killer greatest hits, or a practically perfect Lanegan mixtape makes it worth picking up for sure. PLUS, there's also TWELVE unreleased tracks, all of which are pretty goddamn great. And hell, if you're new to Mark Lanegan, this is a pretty stellar introduction, we have trouble imagining ANYone not being totally mesmerized. The music throughout, is pretty consistently stunning, dark, and brooding, haunting and moody, simple and stripped down, laced with subtle slide guitar, bits of twang here and there, it's a dark, smokey, late night, softly psychedelic back room blues, all heartbroken balladry and tragic slowcore miserablism, but really it's all about THAT VOICE, rough and ragged, a warm whiskey soaked rasp, that's so perfect. And that's not even mentioning the classic songsmithery at work here, and when Lanegan teams up with other vocalists, PJ Harvey, Isobell Campbell, etc., the results are pretty goddamn fantastic, like a darker more demonic alternate universe Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. And we should mention the cover of the Leaving Trains' "Creeping Coastline Of Lights", which was already one of the greatest songs EVER, here, made even slower and darker, with vibes and xylophone, and woozy guitar shimmer, total wasted, rainswept, Hollywood wasteland, nothing-to-lose grim heartbreak balladry that is untouchable.
As mentioned above, the bonus tracks are killer too, unclear how they ended up being left off the records proper, another set of brooding balladic blues and swampy twang flecked stomps, that are honestly as good as anything on any of the albums proper, and Lanegan obsessives will not want to be without ANY of them.
Both the cd and the lp version comes with a big booklet full of rare photos and hand written lyrics.
Absolutely breathtaking new record from the ex-Screaming Trees' vocalist performing an entire album of covers (by Fred Neil, Buck Owens, O.V. Wright, Tim Hardin, Leaving Trains, The Gun Club, ...). Dark and languid and completely captivating, from one of the best voices in rock (as per the gospel of Andee who actually is pining for a world devoid of vocalists). Fans of Calexico, Scenic, and perhaps Low should give this one a try.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Mr. Lanegan sure invited all his buddies to be in his Mark Lanegan Band. Just check this roster out: Joshua Homme and Nick Oliveri (Queen Of The Stone Age), PJ Harvey, Izzy Stradlin and Duff McKagan (Guns'n Roses/Velvet Revolver), Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers), Dean Ween and Chris Goss (Masters Of Reality)! Pretty hot shit! And whether rocked up (as on the album's first single "Sideways In Reverse") or slow'n'smouldering (check out "Wedding Dress"), the overall results are absolutely smokin'. The only wrinkles in the album are minor ones. First, Harvey's vocal performance on the second song "Hit The City" seems oddly detached, almost as if her backing vocals were an afterthought with her singing along over a finished recording. Their duet on "Come To Me" fares much much better. More troublesome are the occasional way-out-of-place soul diva background vocals that also marred earlier Twilight Singers records, and seem like some weird requisite big budget addition when an artist makes the shift from hyped indie veteran to hyped major label hopeful. That said, Bubblegum reveals Lanegan's broadest scope to date, encorporating elements from all the stages of his lengthy career (early trippy grunge-y rock to funereal dirge-twang). Throughout the fifteen songs, his unmistakable deep smoky rasp of a voice is in particular top form. Awesome!
Recently we've been getting caught up on a few releases that slipped under our radar! There's so much great music coming out all the time. try as we might, it's darn near impossible to keep and eye and ear on everything!
Brad Laner cruises down yet another musical avenue on this his self-titled solo debut. He got his
electronic itch scratched under the moniker Electric Company and prior to that he got his drone rock on in the awesome early '90s LA noise pop band Medicine. Now he's getting all cozy in a delirious psych pop dream. Very very retro '60s and Brian Wilsonesque, Neighbor Singing could easily be mistaken for a long lost Olivia Tremor Control album... an absolute treasure in our opinion!
Hymns Of The 49th Parallel marks the return of k.d. lang! Golly, it seems like a whole 'nother lifetime since steadfast Canadian Stompin' Tom Connors serenaded her with his song "Lady k.d. lang"! As we recall, one of the lyrics was something like "she jumps around like a 'rang-ee-tan, lady k.d. lang!" Well, it's probably safe to say that her monkeying around days have long been packed snuggly away with her funky cat eye glasses and thrift shop garb. And yet after all these years of living in L.A. her Canadian-ness still shines through.
With the utmost respect and love, she reinterprets the songs of her fellow Canadian music luminaries Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Ron Sexsmith, Jane Siberry, and Bruce Cockburn... but somewhat disappointingly no Stompin' Tom! Despite the unquestionable powerhouse quality of her voice, her renditions are remarkably low-key, intimate and suitably unflashy with warm, bare bones arrangements (often just piano, some with strings). Two particular stand-outs are "The Valley" originally by the equally amazing in her own right Ms Jane Siberry and "Fallen" originally by the equally amazing in his own right Mr. Ron Sexsmith. That said, as with her last few albums, this definitely falls into the adult contemporary territory. So, if you happen to have an aversion to such ultra smoothness, consider yourself forewarned.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Solo nuttiness from one of the members of USAISAMONSTER. Got the same noise rock and spazz and damaged folk stuff going on, but goofier, allowing for what amounts to rap music on at least one track. A good time was had by Colin putting this together that much is evident!
Fans of Beirut and Arcade Fire, imagine the uplifting spirited energies of both those bands taken out to the dusky country plains for a spell. If that sounds delightfully intriguing to you, then maybe you should lend this band your ear. Langhorne Slim & The War Eagles. Frontman Sean Scolnick's untethered, outpouring-of-emotion vocals are a close kin to the abovementioned bands', but they're also in turn quite reminiscent of Neil Young, John Fogerty and Van Morrison. If he looks and sounds a tad bit familiar to you, it may be because you've spotted him over the years touring with the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. It's by no means a stretch to suggest that if you dig them, you'll probably find much to love with Langhorne Slim, and vice versa!
Rural Canadian schoolkids ages 9-12, sixty of 'em, singing pop hits like "Space Oddity", "Good Vibrations", "I'm Into Something Good", and "Band On The Run", backed by shimmering, gamelan like percussion and sparse rock instrumentation??
Yes! And of course it's Irwin Chusid (of "In The Key of Z" fame, a specialist in "outsider" music) who's responsible for getting these 1976-77 recordings finally issued on cd for our enjoyment. Apparently these kids had a somewhat unorthodox music teacher, who, tapping into his student's musical enthusiasm, arranged and captured this amateur outpouring of charmingly naive genius...lovely yet fucked up. And funny. Yet so heartfelt and innocent. Over the course of these nineteen earnest tracks, you'll either lose your mind or fall in love with the Langley Schools Music Project. Genius or not, certainly Paul McCartney, the Beach Boys, Bowie, the Bay City Rollers, Fleetwood Mac, the Carpenters, the Eagles, Barry Manilow, etc. never sounded so...odd. "Lo-fi Spectorian majesty" indeed. It's like an all-Shaggs orchestra playing AM radio covers. We have to agree with John Zorn's cover sticker blurb: "Touches the heart in a way no other music ever has, or could." So terrible, yet so brilliant. Never intended for release (it was originally pressed as a limited double 12" for the kids and their families) but now the 2-track tape reels have been remastered, and this cd, with a detailed 16-page booklet featuring super cute photos of the kids, has been unleashed on the world! Great Christmas gift material, if we may be so bold.
Beloved AQ customer Mike Langlie has put together this picture book and cd, which at first glance/listen would appear to be just a cute children's book. But as the cd progresses, the music, all playful and bouncy, becomes slightly sinister, and when coupled
Here's a solo record from the guy from Iron & Wine. Huh? No, NOT Sam Beam but another fellow, Patrick McKinney, who plays with Sam in I&W live. And also apparently opened the last I&W tour doing his solo stuff as "Langtry". As Upon The Road Thereto is just Patrick and his guitar, and falls into the ever-expanding category of "fake Fahey" records. You know, the John Fahey-influenced avant-folk instrumental acoustic guitar stuff that everybody from Jack Rose to Ben Chasny to Glenn Jones to Stephen Basho-Junghans is doing. Langtry is pretty good at it too. You might guess he's got more of a rock than roots background by his playing, although he could probably convince us he was a back-porch bluesman or Appalachian banjo-picker in another life.
Lots of folks have been requesting this super dreamy and soothing debut from N. Lannon, and whenever we play it in the store it's guaranteed that a handful of customers will ask what it is. On the surface Chemical Friends seems to be a fairly straightforward acoustic singer/songwriter affair however there's ever so subtle details that shift Lannon's music slightly off the beaten path. There's absolutely nothing heavy nor intrusive about the album. It's all the softest, prettiest wispy melodies and whispery singing. Very vaporous and atmospheric with hushed acoustic guitar, layered vocals and an occasional gentle programmed pulsing beat. Lannon's vocal delivery seems warmly familiar recalling the heartfelt ache of the late Elliott Smith. Some customers even mistook this to be Elliott Smith's forthcoming posthumous album (psst, it's actually set for release in November). It all makes for an overall picture that suggests a spacey folk pop distant cousin of Simon And Garfunkel (or their present-day kindred spirits Kings of Convenience for that matter), the abovementioned Smith and Pink Floyd. Very nice!
You might recognize Mr. Nyles Lannon from his time in Bay Area band Film School or as his laptoppin' folktronic alter ego n.lannon. When we'd play Chemical Friends (his 2004 debut album as a solo artist) in the store, it was frequently mistaken for a posthumous Elliott Smith release. Pressure is his second solo album. Far darker and heavier in mood, it will undoubtedly draw comparisons once again to the late singer/songwriter as well as bringing to mind the textured melodic qualities of Grizzly Bear and the sharp songwriting of fellow San Franciscan Kelly Stoltz. Pressure is a really strong album, without a dud in the batch. Subdued, withered and heartrending, but still very dreamy.
There are remix records, and then there are remix records! We got kind of burnt out on the whole remix thing. Sort of seemed like a big exercise in back patting friend rock name recognition. And 90 percent of the time the remix did NOTHING to improve on the original. And most of the time the remix record doesn't happen because two bands realize how totally perfect they are together and how amazing it would be if they collaborated, it's usually because that's just what you do, make a remix record.
With Lansing-Dreiden, it's a bit easier to understand the idea behind a remix record. They are a sort of collective after all. And they aren't just a band, they are artists and performers, as involved in painting, installations and design as they are in music. Plus for D.I. By D.D. they just handed over the whole record to a DJ pal of theirs and let him go nuts.
We're also usually wary of a rock band that gets the hip hop remix treatment. There are some serious Linkin Park "oof"-style ramifications. Especially when rapping is involved. The outcome is rarely rosy. However, the music of Lansing-Dreiden is pretty well suited to be chopped up and looped into laid back DJ Shadow style beatscapes. Their sort of new wave-y eighties art rock, is full of sweeping synths and funky rhythms, lots of weird textures and cool arrangements.
So the end result, D.I. By D.D. is actually fantastic. It's the sort of thing that should be blasting in dark hipster clubs in NYC and L.A. and San Francisco. Groovy and mysterious, sort of old skool, but with some modern flavor. A little bit of rapping, but mostly instrumental, minus the snippets of original L-D vocals. But here's the rub, listening to D.I. By D.D. you wouldn't necessarily even realize that the source material was all some cool NY new wave art rock band. It just sounds really good. It's a lot more exciting if you already dig Lansing-Dreiden and are able to pick out the bits and pieces and see how they fit into someone else's groovy vision. That said, even if you could care less about L-D, but were just looking for some super cool, dark, new wavy, Entroducing-style laid back hip hop flecked dance music, then by all means this will totally hit the spot.
So basically you can't really go wrong, open minded fans of the band will definitely dig this. Folks into stuff like DJ Shadow, Prefuse 73, UNKLE will also probably like this a lot. SO unless you hate the band, and hate any sort of dance music, check it out!!
At first we weren't sure what to make of this band, with their awkward name, their super spare black and white artwork, their well crafted mystery, a seemingly complete lack of any sort of pertinent information, no photos, no real liner notes, no mention of individual band members. All very alluring most certainly. We had heard them described as "dreamy space rock... with a psychedelic metal twist" which definitely sounds good. And as some sort of heavy metal / new wave hybrid, which as good as -that- sounds, it most definitely seems like something that would work better in theory than in practice. In actuality, Lansing-Dreiden are neither of those, and end up being way more interesting than any of that would have led us to believe.
Lansing-Dreiden are not just a band either, no, they're a sort of arts collective: musicians, sculptors, artists, writers, film makers, replete with the requisite gallery showings, Artforum writeups, film premiers and rock shows. The lines between each of these disciplines are so blurry they might as well not exist. Their vibe, both visually and sonically is warm and washed out, a gauzy soft focus shapshot of pop culture past, the sound on The Dividing Island is both dizzyingly bizarre and dreamily overwhelming, a pastiche of all sorts of disparate pop elements, loads of instantly recognizable hooks, sweet harmony vocals, squiggly synths, horns, soft whispery crooning, bi arena rock drums, jangling guitars, huge sheets of fuzzy reverb, hand claps, cheesy electronic drums, It's almost like it's 1985 and we're watching MTV in some alternate universe. This is definitely some sort of (old) new wave, no trace of metal to be found (well mostly, more on that in a minute), no space rock really either, although there is plenty of spaced out trippiness. But even with bits of spaciness, and some space rock swirl here and there, that stuff is just window dressing for L-D's passion, which seems to be cracked eighties pop. Lansing-Dreiden is some sort of weird musical time machine, skipping lazily from 1982 to 1985 to 1989 and back again. Where Ariel Pink took seventies AM radio, and turned it into his own disheveled, cracked demented pop vision, Lansing-Dreiden instead take eighties FM radio and classic eighties MTV and gives them their own warm and warped, precious and polished spin. Imagine a hip NY art rock band channeling everything you loved and loathed about ABC, Style Council, Talk Talk, Spandau Ballet, the Fixx, Kajagoogoo, Thompson Twins, Culture Club, Fun Boy Three, Naked Eyes, Psychedelic Furs, The Call, Modern English, etc. There are some moments where the band dips its toes into the more rollicking contemporary NY new wave redux sound of bands like Interpol and the Strokes, and there are stretches of moody near ambient post rock, but for the most part this is a dead ringer for some lost eighties 'classic'. Mix tapes, John Cusack, Say Anything, Breakfast Club, it's like our teenage years revisited, albeit with a slightly more twisted and sinister bent.
There may seemingly be nary a trace of any metal on The Dividing Island, but best stick around for the final track, metallically titled "Dethroning The Optimyth", quite possibly the greatest (only) song ever to mix eighties MTV pop and crushing death metal! As much as we dig the rest of the record, we almost wish the whole record sounded like "Dethroning The Optimyth", although to be totally honest, the thought of a whole album of eighties pop death metal is almost too much to bear! Pounding double bass drumming, and chugging downtuned riffs collide with soft sweetly swoony pop, soaring synthesizers, airy breathless vocals, like laying on your bed, beneath your Kiss and Slayer posters, listening to your favorite metal record while your sister is in the next room BLASTING the soundtrack to the Breakfast Club through your thin walls. SO weird but SO COOL!
Comes in a gorgeously designed black and white cardboard sleeve that opens like a gatefold, the inside a series of alternating black and white triangles, and then the gatefold opens again with two more triangular panels, one black and and one white, all very austere and mysterious looking.
One of two new releases from UK psych/space rock label Cardinal Fuzz, this one might throw you for a loop, especially if you've been faithfully nabbing whatever CF releases you could get your hands on, the Cosmic Dead, Dead Sea Apes, the Janitors, Hills, etc., all of 'em spaced out and heavy, falling somewhere in the spectrum between the Heads and White Hills, and channeling the classic sounds of Hawkwind into something new. But this record from Philly rockers Lantern, while still psychedelic, is definitely something else all together. Right from the first few minutes, you'll know what we mean, considering the song opens with just drums and horns, or guitars made to sound like horns, it's groovy and swaggery, more Stooges than anything, the beat with a sort of Go-Go groove to it, and then the female vocals deliver another curve ball, the guitars whipped up into wild squall of wah wah drenched psychedelic freakout. The label references Dead Moon, the Gibson Brothers, Billy Childish, Hasil Adkins and the Flaming Groovies, none of which are that far off. But it's definitely still spacey and psychedelic, just not so far out and tripped out. A lot of the tracks have that sort of Gary Glitter drum beat, and there are horns, all over the place. C'mon, it's got rock 'n' roll in the title, and really, if anything, this IS scuzzy, fuzzy, FX drenched rock and roll, alternately kinetic and rocking, dour and dirgey, just check out the heavy fuzz creep of "King Of The Jungle". In fact, Cardinal Fuzz nerds might want to check out all the samples before pulling the trigger, cuz it's definitely a lot different than other stuff on the label, but even so, it's still a serious slab of heavy rocking psychedelic rock, that should push all those same buttons!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Includes a cd version of the whole record, along with FOUR bonus tracks!!
Hmmm, Desert Ocean... yes, exactly. The title of Lanterna's fifth full length hits the nail on the head for what this instrumental music evokes. If this were a film there'd be plenty of gradually panning shots of drifting dunes and undulating waves - in black and white of course and probably some in slow motion too. Sand and water as far as the eye can see. The glint of sunlight in the ripples. The haze of heat rising off in the distance. The mystery of what lurks beneath the surface of the ever-changing landscapes. Translation: Spartan guitarwork effected with long reverb, gently swaying tempos, a soft tap on a woodblock. Haunting and beautiful.
Sands is mellow driving music or faux soundtrack, instrumental, spacious, with reverby guitar. Starts off a bit like what one could expect if the Edge (of U2) were to release a solo album of "infinite guitar" and then heads straight downhill from there. I swear more and more indie-post rockers out there are cutting tracks with the hopes of having some advertising agency pick it up for commercial use. Just put on "Fields" and listen. You can almost hear the announcer touting that with the freedom of America's lowest APR financing, there's no reason for anyone to pass up on the new 2003 Dodge Durango.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Three projects fronted by Chris Leo on one limited cd. His solo work features sonic guitars, bizarre samples, and loops. As The Lapse, Chris joins former Blonde Redhead member Toko, and closes this four track cd by hooking up with hip hop beatmeister Dalek as Octalapse.
Angular yet catchy arrangements attempt to capture the loose, schizophrenic nature of this rock duo, composed of Chris from the Van Pelt and Toko, ex-Blonde Redhead. Kind of like Sonic Youth at practice when all of a sudden the electricity goes out. Simple, urgent, and intense but without the wall of feedback. It's good.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
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This is the first we've heard from this Midwestern outfit, whose sound is a dark, psychedelic shoegaze stoner pop, rife with heavy guitars, clean crooned vocals, and warm whirring organs, the songs simple and heartfelt, but disarmingly so, the A side offering up some washed out woozy jangle and warm muted crunch, and some seriously anthemic choruses, before suddenly exploding into a furious frenzied squall of wild psychguitar heaviness, and blissed out shoegaze heaviness. The flipside is more of a dark brooder, reminding us of a poppier, less slowcore True Widow, the instrumental passages are heavy and heady, tranced out and hypnotic, and the B side spends plenty of time chugging and churning hypnotically, the drum heavy, guitar swirled outro is a gorgeous chunk of spacey heaviness that we would have liked to see stretch out another ten or 15 minutes. We also have LT's split lp with another Midwestern outfit called Men Of Fortune, which we'll review next time, or check the 'in stock not yet reviewed' if you can't wait...
We reviewed the first 7" from Midwestern slowcore rockers Lark's Tongue last list, and at the time mentioned we also got a copy of their split with another Midwestern outfit, which is this right here, and like that 7" LT display a sort of laidback dark jangle minimalism that had us comparing them to another aQ fave, True Widow, but as we mentioned in that review, they're not nearly so dour and dark and a good bit more rocking, with a distinctly nineties vibe, the three tracks here letting the band stretch out, which definitely suits their sound, which is lush, and expansive, a little bit brooding, hauntingly psychedelic, this time with cool swoonsome background vocals, some seriously crunchy guitars, and world weary vocals, the songs laced with long stretches of droned out psych jam smolder, reminding us of Dead Meadow, sort of burnt out, sun dappled, hazy heaviness, which is even more evident on "Black Sue", which sounds like stoner rock slowed down to a moody crawl, again the song wreathed in smoldering guitars, and dreamy reverby effects. The final track slows things down even further, and the band builds up to an explosive, but still slo-mo finale, all dirgey drumming, and swirling clouds of guitarnoise, and dreamy laconic vocals that give the sound a Red Red Meat vibe too, which is most definitely not a bad thing.
We had never heard of Men Of Fortune before, but immediately out of the gate their sound is heavier, and dirgier, still psychedelic, a Midwestern noise rock, stop and start guitar churn, super dynamic, but soon, the sound blisses out, and in come super dramatic vocals, changing the tenor of the song big time, the vibe suddenly sort of gloomy and gothic, but when fused to the noise rock heft, makes for something pretty excellent. The other three songs also fuse noisy, stoner rock heaviness, and big riff crunch, even some weird electronics, to crooned dramatic gloominess, and sprawling gothic psychedelia.
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HMKE is a brief 4 track EP from the Italian post-rock collective Larsen, who earned a considerable amount of notoriety for their stunt in flying Michael Gira over to Italy to produce their record, all the while remaining hidden behind a curtain...supposedly. Last year, Larsen continued to be enigmatic with Play, an album of audio alchemy transforming Autechre's electronic melodies into hypnotic, drone-rock epics to amazing effect. Thanks to a poorly worded press-release from the label, it's sort of hard to tell if this is a precursor to an upcoming Lustmord / Larsen collaborative project; or if that collaboration is merely a one-off to appear sometime in the future. We'll shrug our shoulders and simply enjoy this fractured gem of dark, dark, dark drone-rock hypnosis, augmented by some choice remixes. The first track is a remix from the Norwegian audio-virologist Deathprod, who drags the already turgid sounds of Larsen into grim hum of blackened ice. Next up is a new track, which may or may not have something to do with that aforementioned Lustmord collaboration; it's a buzzing dirge of circling bass, guitar, and electronics caught in a downward spiral, much like their material on their earlier recordings. For the last two tracks, Larsen enlisted the remixing talents of dark ambient noodler Oragami Galaktika.
Gone are the days when Larsen would hire Michael Gira to produce one of their claustrophobic albums under suspiciously odd circumstances. After 13 years in existence, the Italian post-rock collective has emerged as a champion of cinematic pop on La Fever Lit, sharing a sound that has more in common now a days with Sigur Ros than with the Swans. Sure, the band's sound on La Fever Lit persists in their hypnotizing arrangements for cyclical rhythms buttressing slow-burning crescendos of guitars and electronics, but the moodiness and abject urgency which marked their earlier recordings have been supplanted with an opulence, majesty, and a celebratory nature with occasional detours back into the bittersweet. On a handful of the tracks, Larsen's usually instrumental pieces have been augmented with vocals by Annie Anxiety, the one time member of Crass and contributor to Current 93, who presents herself as a detached diva singing torch songs of urban decay, which is well suited for Larsen's sweeping overtures.
