Mazes are Edward Anderson and Caroline Donovan (aka two prominent members of those dandy Chicagoans The 1900s, a band who caught our ear and wouldn't let go!) plus their pal Charles D'Autremont. Together they've crafted some sweet lilting pop that's not too distant from their main band's lush psych-tinged pop sounds, and that also recalls the glory days of the Elephant Six Collective. Recorded over the course of four years in various apartments and studios, the album definitely feels homespun with a warm off the cuff 'gathering of friends' kind of immediacy. Some terrific, uplifting vocal performances! Yet at the same time the dense, elaborate arrangements also suggest much revisiting, layering on and tweaking of details over the years. Fans of The Minders, Yo La Tengo and Belle & Sebastian, don't miss!
With close to 20 years of hindsight, so much of what came out of the 1990s sounds dated and rather predictable, an obvious and angsty cheese, even less palatable than much of the 1980s synthetic curd. Plain Records has chosen wisely to reissue the three Mazzy Star LPs, that, despite containing countless guitar solos, have absolutely no cheesy moments. These three brilliant records draw from the bluesy drones of Spacemen 3 and The Jesus and Mary Chain (amongst others), dropping most of the irony and jagged edges to create music that might be described as the soft(er) psychedelia to Spacemen 3's harder stuff. As readers of this list know, Hope Sandoval, the singer, sometime rhythm guitarist, and (many would argue) the force behind Mazzy Star, has gone on to create amazing records with her new band the Warm Inventions. She has a voice that penetrates with a whisper, that carries like a wind floating above the music, that is instantly recognizable, and that influenced scores of singers. David Roback wrote most of the basic melodies on all three Mazzy Star records and plays all of the guitar solos. He has an innate sense of space and sound, a slightly twangy simplicity that might fade into just a few notes, or that can explode into reverb drenched ecstasy. You won't find better guitar tones anywhere, especially on So Tonight That I Might See. A lot of the arrangements are sparse, almost minimalistic, but the quality of the recordings and the melodies make even a track with only vocals, a guitar and an organ seem full. Especially through headphones, the warmth of Sandoval's voice is a magical compliment to Robeck's guitar. Everyone from Beach House to Grouper to Cat Power to PJ Harvey owes Mazzy Star a huge debt, or at least a big shout-out. All three of these records are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
She Hangs Brightly came out in 1990 and is the most "rocking" record of the three. The drums are definitely the busiest and the songs less dreamy, less laid back. This record establishes their reverby, slightly twangy sound but hasn't quite found the right mood. This is the Mazzy Star record to listen to with friends because it won't depress the hell out of you.
It's not until 1993's So Tonight That I Might See that Mazzy Star perfects their sonic elegance. The band's most commercially successful record, it's probably got the songs you remember: "Fade Into You", "She's My Baby", the title track. The beats have slowed way down, the vocals have decided to ride parallel to the music instead of right up on it, and the arrangements have become simple and piercing. A shoegaze classic.
Among My Swan is, in our opinion, maybe the best of the three Mazzy Star releases. The overt psychedelia has been taken away and replaced with a confident playfulness, a distinct melancholia. The reverb is turned way down, allowing for the simple compliment of acoustic guitar and Hope Sandoval's vocals to contrast with the sparser layers of fuzzed leads and harmonica. "Rhymes of an Hour" goes all Velvet Underground, losing almost all percussion, floating forward on a drone of strings. A moodier offering for those who find catharsis in despair and loneliness.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
With close to 20 years of hindsight, so much of what came out of the 1990s sounds dated and rather predictable, an obvious and angsty cheese, even less palatable than much of the 1980s synthetic curd. Plain Records has chosen wisely to reissue the three Mazzy Star LPs, that, despite containing countless guitar solos, have absolutely no cheesy moments. These three brilliant records draw from the bluesy drones of Spacemen 3 and The Jesus and Mary Chain (amongst others), dropping most of the irony and jagged edges to create music that might be described as the soft(er) psychedelia to Spacemen 3's harder stuff. As readers of this list know, Hope Sandoval, the singer, sometime rhythm guitarist, and (many would argue) the force behind Mazzy Star, has gone on to create amazing records with her new band the Warm Inventions. She has a voice that penetrates with a whisper, that carries like a wind floating above the music, that is instantly recognizable, and that influenced scores of singers. David Roback wrote most of the basic melodies on all three Mazzy Star records and plays all of the guitar solos. He has an innate sense of space and sound, a slightly twangy simplicity that might fade into just a few notes, or that can explode into reverb drenched ecstasy. You won't find better guitar tones anywhere, especially on So Tonight That I Might See. A lot of the arrangements are sparse, almost minimalistic, but the quality of the recordings and the melodies make even a track with only vocals, a guitar and an organ seem full. Especially through headphones, the warmth of Sandoval's voice is a magical compliment to Robeck's guitar. Everyone from Beach House to Grouper to Cat Power to PJ Harvey owes Mazzy Star a huge debt, or at least a big shout-out. All three of these records are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
She Hangs Brightly came out in 1990 and is the most "rocking" record of the three. The drums are definitely the busiest and the songs less dreamy, less laid back. This record establishes their reverby, slightly twangy sound but hasn't quite found the right mood. This is the Mazzy Star record to listen to with friends because it won't depress the hell out of you.
It's not until 1993's So Tonight That I Might See that Mazzy Star perfects their sonic elegance. The band's most commercially successful record, it's probably got the songs you remember: "Fade Into You", "She's My Baby", the title track. The beats have slowed way down, the vocals have decided to ride parallel to the music instead of right up on it, and the arrangements have become simple and piercing. A shoegaze classic.
Among My Swan is, in our opinion, maybe the best of the three Mazzy Star releases. The overt psychedelia has been taken away and replaced with a confident playfulness, a distinct melancholia. The reverb is turned way down, allowing for the simple compliment of acoustic guitar and Hope Sandoval's vocals to contrast with the sparser layers of fuzzed leads and harmonica. "Rhymes of an Hour" goes all Velvet Underground, losing almost all percussion, floating forward on a drone of strings. A moodier offering for those who find catharsis in despair and loneliness.
With close to 20 years of hindsight, so much of what came out of the 1990s sounds dated and rather predictable, an obvious and angsty cheese, even less palatable than much of the 1980s synthetic curd. Plain Records has chosen wisely to reissue the three Mazzy Star LPs, that, despite containing countless guitar solos, have absolutely no cheesy moments. These three brilliant records draw from the bluesy drones of Spacemen 3 and The Jesus and Mary Chain (amongst others), dropping most of the irony and jagged edges to create music that might be described as the soft(er) psychedelia to Spacemen 3's harder stuff. As readers of this list know, Hope Sandoval, the singer, sometime rhythm guitarist, and (many would argue) the force behind Mazzy Star, has gone on to create amazing records with her new band the Warm Inventions. She has a voice that penetrates with a whisper, that carries like a wind floating above the music, that is instantly recognizable, and that influenced scores of singers. David Roback wrote most of the basic melodies on all three Mazzy Star records and plays all of the guitar solos. He has an innate sense of space and sound, a slightly twangy simplicity that might fade into just a few notes, or that can explode into reverb drenched ecstasy. You won't find better guitar tones anywhere, especially on So Tonight That I Might See. A lot of the arrangements are sparse, almost minimalistic, but the quality of the recordings and the melodies make even a track with only vocals, a guitar and an organ seem full. Especially through headphones, the warmth of Sandoval's voice is a magical compliment to Robeck's guitar. Everyone from Beach House to Grouper to Cat Power to PJ Harvey owes Mazzy Star a huge debt, or at least a big shout-out. All three of these records are HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
She Hangs Brightly came out in 1990 and is the most "rocking" record of the three. The drums are definitely the busiest and the songs less dreamy, less laid back. This record establishes their reverby, slightly twangy sound but hasn't quite found the right mood. This is the Mazzy Star record to listen to with friends because it won't depress the hell out of you.
It's not until 1993's So Tonight That I Might See that Mazzy Star perfects their sonic elegance. The band's most commercially successful record, it's probably got the songs you remember: "Fade Into You", "She's My Baby", the title track. The beats have slowed way down, the vocals have decided to ride parallel to the music instead of right up on it, and the arrangements have become simple and piercing. A shoegaze classic.
Among My Swan is, in our opinion, maybe the best of the three Mazzy Star releases. The overt psychedelia has been taken away and replaced with a confident playfulness, a distinct melancholia. The reverb is turned way down, allowing for the simple compliment of acoustic guitar and Hope Sandoval's vocals to contrast with the sparser layers of fuzzed leads and harmonica. "Rhymes of an Hour" goes all Velvet Underground, losing almost all percussion, floating forward on a drone of strings. A moodier offering for those who find catharsis in despair and loneliness.
One of three new tapes from (now) local label Moon Glyph, this one from Brooklyn based ambient soundscaper Meadowlands, who created these tracks while abroad in Berlin, and endeavored to capture a sort of weightless drift, a timeless sonic space representing his time spent wandering in a strange city, and these three extended tracks to conjure up that sort of mysterious tranquility. It's not hard to imagine wandering through Eastern Europe, with this drifting through your headphones, long layered tones, softly pulsing, subtle overtones drifting and blending into all new shapes and sounds, no jagged edges, everything smooth and rounded, washed out and softly psychedelic, a warm almost liquid thrum that seems to enter your ears and spread throughout your body, emanating like some inner glow. The tape begins to grow more ominous, with a subtle tension, a keening high end underpinning a slow shifting shimmer, a barely perceptible ebb and flow, soft swells of dark chordal whir, which eventually resolves in the final track, a long stretch of soft focus dream-noise, a sound that's smeared into long blurs of murky melody and wreathed in a Tim Hecker like haze, but this track too, infused with a dramatic energy that lurks just below the surface, adds a strange pathos to the proceedings, which keeps the sound from being nothing too soft, to wispy, and instead imbues Meadowlands' sonic travelogue with some indefinable emotional heft.
We all knew the Meads Of Asphodel were a weird bunch. Every record was a baffling slab of confusional black metal, often laced with all manner of VERY non-black metal sounds and ideas. Well, no matter how weird we though they were in the past, they've totally outdone themselves this time. So much so that we would hesitate to even classify this as black metal.
There's a lot to be confused by here, from a bizarre collage of military speeches and snippets of random dialogue, to huge swelling synths, super dramatic and over the top, to strange synthesized spaghetti western jams, to not-all-that-metal blasts of propulsive spaced out rock and roll, with groovy Stooges-y riffing, simple pounding drumming, some serious guitar leads, and over the top some Motorhead gone black metal vocals... but that's not all. There are lots of lots of pianos, and soaring female vocals, blissed out stretches of space rock whoosh, some full on old school punk rock. And then there's the completely fucked final track, called "Aborted Stygian Foetus", a sort of industrial electronic metal jam, drum machines, heavy riffing, weird vocals, like some weird mix of Ministry and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. But it's not over. After about 20 minutes of silence you'll find the secret track, an intense and seriously silly and fucked up stretch of testifying, over a swirl of church organs, a heavily (British) accented 'preacher' gives a fiery sermon on how we are all wankers and how we are all full of shit. Woah.
The new sound could have something to do with the addition of a whole mess of new Meads: Alan Davey of Hawkwind, Mirai from Japanes metal weirdos Sigh, Lesion from Worms Of Sabnock, as well as some synth, trumpet, and not one but TWO female vocalists.
The more likely reason for this new direction should be obvious from the cover, all sepia toned, with a crucifix, and piles of dead bodies and that instantly recognizable Crass style text. Like maybe they were going for some sort of Flux Of Pink Indians / Crass / Rudimentary Peni sort of crust vibe!! Although on the inside they're still clad in their armor and chainmail and helmets...
So fucking weird.
More distinctly not very black metal weirdness from some of our favorite black metal weirdos. If you might remember back to the most recent Meads release, In The Name Of God, Welcome To Planet Genocide, we were all sort of knocked for a loop by the band's new direction. Or directions. From the very Crass like cut and paste political cover art, to the punky crust and other weirdness inside, these freaks had gone and outweirded even their own weird selves. So now we have the latest single, and it seems, at least for these three songs, the band have abandoned the black metal entirely. All covers. All classics. Stiff Little Fingers, The Ruts and The Stranglers. All done pretty straight, not black metallized or anything, just raw crusty pounding melodic old school punk rock. The Stiff Little Fingers cover is a jam, an awesome song so done straight it's still an awesome song, the vocals appropriately raspy, the guitars buzzing and the drums pounding. The Ruts cover features original Ruts guitarist Paul Fox and sounds as kick ass as the original. The only place things get extra weird is on the final track, the Stranglers cover, where the vocals are strangely processed and sound about as close to black metal as anything here, but then we've got Mirai from the band Sigh with insane blasts of crazy prog synths, and some new wave female background vocals. Sounds like a bit of a mess, and it sort of is, but it's also awesome and totally rocks in this amazingly unhinged way.
Meads fans who were thrown off by the lack of buzzing blackness will be even more confused by this triple shot. But if you're into metal and punk rock, you could do way worse than hearing these killer tunes revamped and twisted up a bit by the always brilliantly baffling Meads.
Cool old school black and white skull cover. All the records are hand numbered and signed on the label by all the band members. Probably limited too...
The return of our favorite crust punk obsessed black metal horde, Meads Of Asphodel. Not sure if they've always been so into eighties punk, but over the last few records, the band have seen fit to mix it up, sprinkling classic covers amidst their epic pagan black metal jams, seems like a weird mix, but somehow, in the twisted sonic world these guys inhabit, it sort of works.
Two new tracks, a creepy, medieval intro, buzzy synths, rumbling drones, a growled distorted proclamation, some weirdly cheesy piano, tinkling chimes, sirens, a serious dose of whatthefuck, which gives way to 7 minutes of totally majestic, and classic sounding pagan blackness. NWOBHM inspired guitar harmonies, wrapped around pounding drums, chugging black riffs, the arrangements convoluted and complex, peppered with soaring synths, creepy processed vokills, some haunting interludes, with more of that creepy spoken word, and then right back into the tangled epic thrashing. And then it's on to the covers, some of which make perfect sense, some of which don't at all, which only makes them that much cooler. Doom, Hellbastard and Conflict, the Meads versions of which are appropriately raw and pounding and thrashing, the Hellbastard track has some strange piano melodies draped over chugging guitars and monklike chants, the Conflict cover is weirdly produced, turning the metallic crust punk into something almost cabaret sounding. We had never heard Skeptix before, but the Meads version is awesome, fierce and fast and melodic and heavy as fuck, definitely gonna have to track down the original. Then there's the last cover, going waaaaay back to the roots of heavy metal, The Kinks' "You Really Got me", which the Meads tweak, making the main riff minor key, so it definitely sounds black metal, the vocals over the top and WAY goofy, at first it seems so silly, but as the track plays on it makes some sort of twisted sense, and definitely suits the Meads' fucked up sound.
The Meads share this disc with countrymen Old Corpse Road, a sort of naturalistic folk flecked black metal band, but barring the intro of the first song, there's nary any folk to be found, the band spitting out epic, almost orchestral sounding blackness, not that far removed from Cradle Of Filth, with keyboards WAY up in the mix, wild shrieking vox, even some creepy plonking piano melodies, and that's when the folk comes in, the band breaks down into a sort of jig, launching into a jam that wouldn't be out of place on a Finntroll record, complete with group sing along, incredibly catchy, and the more we listen to this, the more we find ourselves digging these guys. Three looooong tracks, super dramatic, over the top, keyboards all over the place, wild vocals that slip from deep croon to hysterical shriek, a tangled almost circusy bit of blackened chaos that is totally kicking our asses. Which means WAY recommended, for both Meads AND Old Corpse Road, and we definitely need to hear more OCR...
Lamentations! This is terrible! Gone is the delightful twin guitar attack, the chiming harmonies and the sunbaked electric fingerpicking that made Meat Puppets so wonderful. Perhaps this is due to the fact that gone from the band's line-up is the distressingly tormented Cris Kirkwood. Brother Curt has assembled a new band and continued on. Unfortunately this new record has moments that made us cringe and wonder if they, like, had kids and were writing songs for them or something -- specifically the one with all the scary monster sounds and the unfunny, unentertaining, simply bad Beck-like "rapping". A great disappointment. Avoid.
We first heard the oddly named Meatbodies when they were still called Chad & The Meatbodies, on a split 7" with Ty Segall, C&TM being Segall's choice for next big thing. Well, now Chad, mainman for the Meatbodies, which is essentially Chad, who wrote all the songs and performs most of them on his own, with the occasional guest, including Segall, delivers his first full length, and it definitely delivers on that single, the sound not that far removed from the Castle Face axis of Segall / Cronin / Dwyer, rambunctious popper pop fused guitar rock crunch, with loads of melody and harmony, the sound ricocheting wildly from the woozy swirling psychedelic intro of "The Archer", to the swagger garage pop pound of "Disorder", to dirge, groovy, noise-pop metallic math-fuzz of "Mountain" (from the aforementioned single), right down to the harmonized lead guitars.
And yet as good as this is, and as much as we dig it, which is a whole hell of a lot, it's not like the Meatbodies are reinventing the garage rock wheel, but then that wheel doesn't yet need reinventing, or if it does, that's still gonna be left to someone else. Instead, the Meatbodies are trafficking in a formula similar to most of their sonic brethren, at times sounding dangerously close to Ty Segall or Thee Oh Sees, even some of Chad's affectations, the reversed yelps, and some of the glammy stomps, sound like straight up steals, but fuck it, it doesn't matter all that much considering how goddamn great these songs are, and how catchy and well crafted this whole record is, and honestly, repeated listens definitely position Meatbodies as its own thing, even if it's a bit beholden to what came before, but then what isn't? And really, the more we listen to this, the more these guys move to the front of the pack for us. Fans of all the Castle Face bands, as well as the most recent batch of In The Red releases and all things heavy, noisy, loud, rocking, poppy, punky, garage-y and fuzzed out will obviously dig big time.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
3rd album from this Swedish psych act, recorded in Chicago in 1970. Lots of folks apparently LOVE this album but we thought it sounded like (bad) blues rock, too bad 'cause we liked the other MMM reissue that preceeded this one.
I've been wanting to hear an album by these swingin' sixties Swedes for a long time, and at last one's been finally reissued on cd...yeah, I've been curious about 'em ever since I heard the fab Mecki Mark Men track found on the Cherrystones Rocks compilation we reviewed a while back...and also on account of how drumming for the Mecki Mark Men was the original gig of Thomas Mera Gartz before he ended up in AQ faves Parson Sound/International Harvester/Trad Gras Och Stenar! And not only that, but I also knew that the Mecki Mark Men had toured with Jimi Hendrix, and boasted a Hammond organ player who was said to have emulated Hendrix' showmanship on his own instrument (and, as you'll hear on this cd, also seemingly modelled his vocals after those of Hendrix). That's Mecki Bodemark we're talking about, the leader of Mecki Mark Men in their various incarnations. The band debuted with their first album in 1967 (which was released, oddly enough, in the USA in '68, where apparently they had some success, including coming over here to tour in 1970). Their second album came out in '69, featuring a new lineup (no Thomas Mera Gartz -- in fact the musicians on this album consisted of Mecki Bodemark plus members of another band entirely, the Baby Grandmothers). That's this album, Running In The Summer Night. And it's pretty cool platter of dramatic, psychedelic rock and R&B, some very trippy stuff but rockin' for sure. Lots of organ, lots of Hendrixy vocals, plenty of fuzz and some flute...quite a bit like what Swedish band Dungen is doing today in fact. Doubtless the Dungen dude has this album amongst others of its ilk in his collection... If not, I'm sure he's gonna go buy this reissue! In a nice digipack with photos/graphics and liner notes galore. Hopefully the band's other two albums will be reissued as well...
The folks at the Mellotronen label (who brought us Solid Ground, Life, Charlie & Esdor and other Scandinavian 'progg' treats) told us we'd want to get a bunch of these and boy they were right! It's the long-awaited reissue of the eponymous 1967 debut album from Swedish swingin' sixties psych-pop combo the Mecki Mark Men... We've had Mellotronen's other couple of MMM reissues, especially liking Running In The Summer Night, but this is even better. It's got the original MMM lineup, featuring of course band leader Mecki Bodemark and also drummer Thomas Mera Gartz, later of International Harvester and Trad Gras Och Stenar. Definitely influenced by the heavy psychedelic excesses of Jimi Hendrix (with whom they toured, briefly), Mecki Mark Men also conjure a groovy hipster nightclub vibe, with Gartz's jazzy drumming, and Bodemark's woozy organ jamming. Woozy too are his wasted, druggy vox, which sound a bit like Hendrix too. There's also doses of buzzing sitar, shimmering vibraphone, flute, and some fat sax blat. It's a wild, wonderful blend of fuzzy freaky drone and finger snapping, toe tapping catchy pop songwriting, wrapped into one psychedelic, shambolic whole. There's just something indefinably genius about this. Recommended, definitely for fans of Baby Grandmothers and Hansson and Karlsson and today's retro Swedish psych-pop sensations Dungen as well. This reissue is remixed and remastered, presented in a digipack with four bonus tracks.
The super-popular jazz organ trio get remixed by The Automator, Bill Laswell (of course), Guru, Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto), and a couple others.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Of the seemingly hundreds and hundreds of Record Store Day releases, we figured that probably most folks were gonna be dying for that Flaming Lips collaborative double lp (reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), but we found ourselves being way more excited about the Medicine box, a massive 5 lp set collecting the first two albums (as well as an ep and TONS of extras) from this legendary L.A. shoegaze / dreampop outift. One of the few American bands to be on the Creation label, Medicine spent the early nineties crafting some of the most glorious and gloriously blissed out experimental psychedelic shoegaze pop EVER. Their sound simultaneously heavy and tripped out, experimental and impossibly catchy, the guitars thick and lush and layered, soaring and so gloriously melodic, like a soft focus My Bloody Valentine, the vocals ethereal and washed out, definitely of the same era as Smashing Pumpkins, but where the Pumpkins had their sights set on arenas and mainstream acceptance, Medicine seemed to spurn such things, taking perfectly perfect pop songs, and pulling them apart, stretching out two minute gems into six minute psychedelic blowouts, their music as much about texture and arrangements, experimentation and exploration as songcraft. But excelling at both in a way few have since. Hearing this stuff now, it sounds as fresh as ever, and groups like M83, A Place To Bury Strangers, Alcest, Health, Serena-Maneesh, Jesu, Phoenix, and all the rest, most definitely owe Medicine royalties big time. And heck if that list looks like your record collection, and for some reason you DON'T have these Medicine records, now's the time to right that wrong.
We could go through both 1992's Shot Forth Self Living and 1993's The Buried Life, and describe our favorite tracks, but we'd most likely end up describing every single track. Even now, we don't hear a weak track in the bunch, and what sounds cool and strange and experimental now, must have sounded revolutionary and downright insane in the early nineties, especially for a major label band, and it just may have been what kept Medicine from achieving Pumpkins like fame, although we like to think it was cuz they just didn't give a fuck, and refused to play the game, and instead concerned themselves with making some of the weirdest, coolest, most tripped out pop music they could conjure up. Which is exactly what they did.
This boxset contains super deluxe double lp versions of both Shot Forth Self Living and The Buried Life, each record expanded with tones of bonus tracks, B-sides and demos, also included is the Sounds Of Medicine EP from 1994, here with two live bonus tracks not included on the original, there's also a pin and a photo, as well as a live 90 minute cassette called Always Starting To Stop, a collection of live recordings captured between 1992-1994 at various shows in the US and the UK, all housed in a super swank printed black and red box. This was a Record Store Day release, and was thus EXTREMELY limited, and is in fact already out of print. We have just FOUR copies of this box remaining, and once those are gone, they are gone for good!
Home Everywhere marks the second album in the return to the limelight for Medicine, a band that still garners the pithy epithet as an American equivalent to My Bloody Valentine. When Medicine burst onto the scene as the first American band to get signed to Creation Records in the early '90s, Loveless had only begun to ooze into the musical landscape, with bands like Teenage Filmstars, the Swirlies, and Medicine to take the idea of My Bloody Valentine's resampling and art-pop deconstruction as a zeitgeist to blossom and not merely as an oceanic wash of dream-pop / drone-on psychedelia. Medicine's initial recordings were cut from the same cloth as any punk band circa 1977 being inspired by the Sex Pistols. There was a license to take the ideas first proposed by My Bloody Valentine and go for broke on them. Throughout the '90s, Medicine produced some amazing records that got largely overlooked; and not surprisingly, the band called it quits. When the itch to reform came, Medicine's return was a delightful surprise as it was exactly what we had hoped Medicine would sound like - harmonic noise-laden overdrive, swoonsome vocal harmonies from vocalist Beth Thompson, and some pretty fucking catchy hooks ripping throughout. Home Everywhere is far more decentered and purposefully destabilizing as the baroque paisley pop structures are smashed against the floor with the blindingly sharp shards of noise, rhythm, and melody are pieced back together through an entirely different logic. It's a logic that speaks more of Brian Wilson at his grandest and most lysergic. The songs of Home Everywhere dissolve, tumble, and fragment; and it's hard to tell how much of that is by design of these experiments intentionally shattering their contents. Don't really know how to peg it in just the right way, but we'll just say that Los Angeles has always had its share of weirdos flying their freak-flags a top the Hollywood sign; and Medicine's refusnik noise-pop demolitions seems to adhere to that ethos.
Shot Forth Self Living was the 1992 debut from this legendary LA shoegaze / dreampop outfit, and was recently included in a massive, super limited 5lp boxset collecting Medicine's first two albums (as well as an ep and TONS of extras) that came out for Record Store Day 2012, but has now also thankfully been released on its own, as a deluxe double cd, with a whole mess of bonus tracks and rarities.
One of the few American bands to be on the Creation label, Medicine spent the early nineties crafting some of the most glorious and gloriously blissed out experimental psychedelic shoegaze pop EVER. Their sound simultaneously heavy and tripped out, experimental and impossibly catchy, the guitars thick and lush and layered, soaring and so gloriously melodic, like a soft focus My Bloody Valentine, the vocals ethereal and washed out, definitely of the same era as Smashing Pumpkins, but where the Pumpkins had their sights set on arenas and mainstream acceptance, Medicine seemed to spurn such things, taking perfectly perfect pop songs, and pulling them apart, stretching out two minute gems into six minute psychedelic blowouts, their music as much about texture and arrangements, experimentation and exploration as songcraft. But excelling at both in a way few have since. Fans of experimental pop groups like Teenage Filmstars, Disco Inferno, Seefeel, Bark Psychosis and the like will definitely fall in love, if they weren't already. Hearing this stuff now, it sounds as fresh as ever, and groups like M83, A Place To Bury Strangers, Alcest, Health, Serena-Maneesh, Jesu, Phoenix, and all the rest, most definitely owe Medicine royalties big time. And heck if that list looks like your record collection, and for some reason you DON'T have these Medicine records, now's the time to right that wrong.
We could go through both 1992's Shot Forth Self Living and 1993's The Buried Life, and describe our favorite tracks, but we'd most likely end up describing every single track. Even now, we don't hear a weak track in the bunch, and what sounds cool and strange and experimental now, must have sounded revolutionary and downright insane in the early nineties, especially for a major label band, and it just may have been what kept Medicine from achieving Pumpkins like fame, although we like to think it was cuz they just didn't give a fuck, and refused to play the game, and instead concerned themselves with making some of the weirdest, coolest, most tripped out pop music they could conjure up. Which is exactly what they did.
Shot Forth Self Living was the 1992 debut from this legendary LA shoegaze / dreampop outfit, and was recently included in a massive, super limited 5lp boxset collecting Medicine's first two albums (as well as an ep and TONS of extras) that came out for Record Store Day 2012, but has now also thankfully been released on its own, as a deluxe double cd, with a whole mess of bonus tracks and rarities.
One of the few American bands to be on the Creation label, Medicine spent the early nineties crafting some of the most glorious and gloriously blissed out experimental psychedelic shoegaze pop EVER. Their sound simultaneously heavy and tripped out, experimental and impossibly catchy, the guitars thick and lush and layered, soaring and so gloriously melodic, like a soft focus My Bloody Valentine, the vocals ethereal and washed out, definitely of the same era as Smashing Pumpkins, but where the Pumpkins had their sights set on arenas and mainstream acceptance, Medicine seemed to spurn such things, taking perfectly perfect pop songs, and pulling them apart, stretching out two minute gems into six minute psychedelic blowouts, their music as much about texture and arrangements, experimentation and exploration as songcraft. But excelling at both in a way few have since. Fans of experimental pop groups like Teenage Filmstars, Disco Inferno, Seefeel, Bark Psychosis and the like will definitely fall in love, if they weren't already. Hearing this stuff now, it sounds as fresh as ever, and groups like M83, A Place To Bury Strangers, Alcest, Health, Serena-Maneesh, Jesu, Phoenix, and all the rest, most definitely owe Medicine royalties big time. And heck if that list looks like your record collection, and for some reason you DON'T have these Medicine records, now's the time to right that wrong.
We could go through both 1992's Shot Forth Self Living and 1993's The Buried Life, and describe our favorite tracks, but we'd most likely end up describing every single track. Even now, we don't hear a weak track in the bunch, and what sounds cool and strange and experimental now, must have sounded revolutionary and downright insane in the early nineties, especially for a major label band, and it just may have been what kept Medicine from achieving Pumpkins like fame, although we like to think it was cuz they just didn't give a fuck, and refused to play the game, and instead concerned themselves with making some of the weirdest, coolest, most tripped out pop music they could conjure up. Which is exactly what they did.
Few records in recent memory have had us so excited in anticipation for their release, but this outsider visionary gem is so unquantifiably unique that it has worked its magical charm on us in such an intense way that we knew we had to make it Record Of The Week. Even before we heard a lick of music, the album cover, title and artist had us asking so many questions. That simple but puzzling orange cover with a vintage stock photo of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, the mysterious and oddly misspelled title, Liter Thru Dorker Vibes, by an even more mysterious and misspelled artist name, Medico Doktor Vibes. Dorker Vibes??? What on earth could this be? Only a small text in the bottom right corner that said, 1979 Compton, CA and the record label Bi-Russell Records offered any clues to its origins. But the music inside, even stranger still is a primitive bedroom concoction of Caribbean-inflected outsider rock made with electric guitar, kalimba, synthesizer and drum machine that is an equally woozy, weird and introspective set of spell-casting witch-doctor psych groove.
Folks who bought Johan Kugelberg's excellent book on Private Press records, Enjoy The Experience, may recognize the cover as it was featured in that book as well as the opening song, "Diska Limba Man" which was included on the companion musical compilation, but its curious lack of back story in the book only give the record a more mysterious aura as if beamed into our world from another dimension. And it's almost like it was, as this record was just discovered at an Oakland Colosseum flea market only a few years back and made its way to the ever-curious vanity record enthusiasts at Companion Records. Companion, who has brought us some incredible private press reissues from Stan Hubbs, Michael Farneti, The New Creation (whose Troubled just got a vinyl release, reviewed elsewhere on this list), Marc Mundy and Luie Luie, did the legwork (with help from Rob Sevier of Numero Group) to track down the artist, who it turns out is a Guyanese man named Bill Russell, and worked with him to see this unique release resurrected. True to Companion's mission, they have reissued the record in the same form as the original with an old style tip-on sleeve, blank back cover and no liner notes, so as to experience the record as it is, unfettered from preconceptions. However, we did press the label for a little context and we'll get into some of the record's back-story a little later.
Each of the seven songs here vary in tone, but they are united by the instrumentation mentioned above in different combinations and Russell's accented softly mumbled delivery, as well as a seemingly urgent determination to get each song recorded as envisioned. As primitive as the recording and performances are, every song seems to have a deliberate focus, with moodier songs on side one and more rocking songs on side two. The record doesn't seem to have been made to promote himself as a professional or as a demo to make better produced recordings. In that, it is a perfect one-off record, its only obvious influential musical touchstones apart from some Caribbean musical rhythms, might be a bit of Santana and Hendrix perhaps (though this doesn't quite reach their heights, quite the opposite), but we're hearing a bit of Chrissy Zebby Tembo, Otis G. Johnson and even some Suicide in there too. It really just sounds like Russell plugged all his instruments directly into a 4-track, hit record and worked around the mistakes, never letting them curtail his vision.
The opener, "Diska Limba Man" sets the tone with an off-kilter synth sequencer and wonky slow-disco rhythm, the tempo slowing down and speeding up in an elliptical groove while an electric guitar and a tinny kalimba add melody and texture respectively. Russell's voice thickly accented but emerging from an introspective murmer sings of a small musical instrument and the man who plays it, embarking on a hypnotic repetition as the song progresses into a sort of subdued dark disco trance. The second track, "Kalimba Tune", is just that, the kalimba alone in a beautifully played magical weaving instrumental that borders on the minimalist composition of Philip Glass. The third track, "Take A Closer Look" ends the first side with a slow looping organ dirge with a loping martial rhythm, inflected with a simmering guitar melody that adds a mystical resonance. The song urging the listener to "take a closer look at the life you are living" points to the lighter ("liter") and darker ("dorker") vibes the album title implies.
Side two has more of a heavier rock feel. "Givers of Affection" opens with a motorcycle blues guitar riff and what sound like harmonica blasts and rudimentary drum machine in a Canned Heat style, Russell's voice double tracked in a driving falsetto. "Lonely No More" has a more laid back sunbaked Zam-rock vibe, with funky Caribbean rhythms and freaked out synth leads, filtered through homegrown distortion and double tracked vocals layered incongruously into a strange psychedelic brew. "Dig This Calypso" is a stoned sunny and breezy take on the origins of the calypso beat, and we're usually not that big on calypso, but as with all the songs on the second side, this one layered with warm distortion and gritty guitar squalls all filtered back in a lo-fi Caribbean funk groove, makes it one of the better calypso inspired songs we've heard. The final track, "Water Late" is an instrumental with a medium-fast shuffled martial rhythm, and some seriously wonky exploratory guitar leads as if Doug Blunt was fronting some primitive cave rock band like Cromagnon. It ends the record on a slightly open ended note as we're left to wonder what in the hell did we just listen to? But that is exactly the kind of naive quality in this record that makes us want to put it back on and listen to it again, figure out the words and try and put together what it all means, and why for all of its outsider artistry, these songs remain so hopelessly and wonderfully implanted in our brains. And most importantly, who or what is Medico Doktor Vibes?
The folks at Companion filled us in a bit. Bill Russell is an immigrant from Guyana who came to the United States and served in the U.S. military in the seventies. He came from a musical family and after serving, settled in the LA suburb of Compton and decided to make a record. He bought the recording equipment and instruments he used on the record all at once and set about making this one and only LP. He chose the cover image carefully by color because he thought it matched the mood of the record and thought it would appeal to people, even though he oddly didn't notice the Golden Gate Bridge, or at least it didn't register any additional symbolic meaning for him and he didn't have any Bay Area connection. The title though intentional is logically vague. The story goes that Russell saw the recording as a bridge between "light" and "dark" people, but felt that just calling it Lighter Through Darker Vibes was too politically charged and so he twisted the words to "Liter" and "Dorker" in avoidance (this must have been before the word "dork" came into a more common parlance). His hopes were that both Light and Dark people would come together and groove out to his music , though it was distributed modestly with only 100 original copies and went absolutely nowhere. Perhaps now with this reissue, Russell's original vision will finally come to pass. We certainly hope so.
Limited to 500 copies! Sorry no download code.
It seems like most of the music coming out of Brooklyn these days has been tending toward fey eighties beholden electro pop or gloomy Cure worshipping synthwave, but it's not all eyeliner and Siouxsie lunch boxes happening over there, at least based on the debut from Meek Is Murder, who might as well be called The Meek SHALL BE Murdered, cuz this is some seriously kick ass poser disposing heaviness, displaying a darker, seriously more fucked up and chaotic sonic side to everyone's favorite borough.
Recorded by Converge's Kurt Ballou, and definitely not that far removed from the Converge / Coalesce sonic axis, Meek Is Murder traffic in a dense, gnarled mathy metalpunk crush, that shifts deftly from dirgey downtuned sludge to crazed hyperdense metalcore fury, with plenty of twists and turns in-between. Nine short sharp blasts of tangled metallic mathpunk, most of the tracks clocking in at 2 minutes or less, 3 or 4 closer to 60 seconds, culminating in a final 6+ minute epic.
The record begins with an intro of sorts, a churning seasick dirge, with rad syncopated drums and rib cage rattling metallic chug, all wreathed in woozy spidery leads, before launching directly into "Return Void", the opening blast the sort of shit that makes pits explode, but then the double kick comes in, and the song blossoms into a weirdly melodic mini-epic, a sort of metalcore Godspeed almost. But it's the title track that might be our favorite, a galloping Speedwolf like classic thrash, laced with a tangled shreddery that at times sounds like a less demented Mick Barr, unfurling woozy harmonized classic metal harmonies over the roiling metalpunk below. From there on out, it's some of THEE best mathed out heaviness, we've heard in ages, we're reminded at time of Kiss It Goodbye or Deadguy, heavy as fuck, with almost proggy arrangements, but shot through with some serious melody, fractured by super dynamic stop/starts and wreathed in thick sheets of feedback. The bulk of the record clocks in at less than 15 minutes, but the songs are so jammed with tripped out parts and intricate arrangements, killer riffing, rad melodies, it feels like way longer, until the record finishes off with "Garbage Collector", which sounds like a more metal Dazzling Killmen, churning noise rock math metal radness, with some amazing, weirdly melodic, droned out breakdowns, as well as a seriously epic, brooding, slow build Godspeed-ish final movement, that pushes MiM's sound way beyond most other typical punk/metal outfits, and is fast making this, and these guys, a new aQ favorite.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! 100 of which are white, and while they last we've got the white ones. Hand numbered.
REPRESSED on vinyl again!!
Okay, so he was "the English Phil Spector". Whew, got that out of the way. In fact he's arguably one of THE most innovative, albeit the most obscure, producers *ever* (other candidates being Spector, Brian Wilson, Lee Perry, other votes welcome!). Though famous first and foremost for his hit with the Tornados' "Telstar" (the first English pop song to hit #1 on the charts in the US), this tone deaf wunderkind had a penchant for the very strange and esoteric as well. It's been said that the man turned down the opportunity to have a first stab at recording The Beatles and David Bowie while counseling an aspiring band to axe front man Rod Stewart if they wanted to work with him. Bad judgements or refined tastes? Given much of the work Meek chose to produce in their stead one might quickly point the finger in the direction of bad judgement, but Meek's visionary "I Hear A New World" suggests that the man had an altogether sublime inspiration that was far ahead of its time.
Fascination with what life could possibly exist on the moon was the seed which drove Joe Meek to compose what could be considered the first "rock" concept album. He wanted to "create a picture in music of what could be up there in outer space." Quite a task. A task that required Meek to use every producing trick in his bag (a very, very big bag.) Take the foundation of an instrumental band, in this case Meek's The Blue Men - a sort of Venturesy, Shadowsy, Les Paulsy kind of thing - then squash the hell out of the drums with compression, throw delay and reverb around like a death battle with King Tubby, and add a potpourri of unusual instruments including the Clavioline (a super primitive pre-synthesizer) a purposefully out of tune tack piano, the occasional double speed vocals and you can almost hear Joe's New World. Top this off with the fact that Joe was attempting to create a stereo recording working only with primitive two track machines (not a huge multi-track facility) in his two room apartment recording studio and you know the man had to be a mad genius. (Certifiably mad, if the murder of his landlady and his suicide are any indication.)
Okay, so he was "the English Phil Spector". Whew, got that out of the way. In fact he's arguably one of THE most innovative, albeit the most obscure, producers *ever* (other candidates being Spector, Brian Wilson, Lee Perry, other votes welcome!). Though famous first and foremost for his hit with the Tornados' "Telstar" (the first English pop song to hit #1 on the charts in the U.S.), this tone deaf wunderkind had a penchant for the very strange and esoteric as well. It's been said that the man turned down the opportunity to have a first stab at recording The Beatles and David Bowie while counseling an aspiring band to axe front man Rod Stewart if they wanted to work with him. Bad judgements or refined tastes? Given much of the work Meek chose to produce in their stead one might quickly point the finger in the direction of bad judgement, but Meek's visionary "I Hear A New World" suggests that the man had an altogether sublime inspiration that was far ahead of its time.
Fascination with what life could possibly exist on the moon was the seed which drove Joe Meek to compose what could be considered the first "rock" concept album. He wanted to "create a picture in music of what could be up there in outer space." Quite a task. A task that required Meek to use every producing trick in his bag (a very, very big bag.) Take the foundation of an instrumental band, in this case Meek's The Blue Men -- a sort of Venturesy, Shadowsy, Les Paulsy kind of thing -- then squash the hell out of the drums with compression, throw delay and reverb around like a death battle with King Tubby, and add a potpourri of unusual instruments including the Clavioline (a super primitive pre-synthesizer) a purposefully out of tune tack piano, the occasional double speed vocals and you can almost hear Joe's New World. Top this off with the fact that Joe was attempting to create a stereo recording working only with primitive two track machines (not a huge multi-track facility) in his two room apartment recording studio and you know the man had to be a mad genius. (Certifiably mad, if the murder of his landlady and his suicide are any indication.)
This fine new edition of this *absolute*must*hear* album includes, along with all the original tracks, a 35 minute monologue by Joe Meek recorded in 1962 in which Meek gives a brief autobiography leading up to his residing at 538 Holloway Road, describes his studio and its contents: microphones, recording decks, etc and talks about his work. Quite a unique document. Also included on the disc is a film clip of Joe Meek in his studio talking about the music industry (and though the makers of this CD claim that you can only play the film on a PC, it seems to work fine on both Mac and PC.) Plus you get a nice fold out poster with Meek's original notes for each song on I.H.A.N.W. and a thorough telling of the story behind the album.
Particularly famous for the hit "Telstar," Joe Meek was Britain's homicidal/suicidal counterpart to Phil Spector... This disc features rare and previously unissued tracks (i.e. demos credited to the likes of The Fabulous Flee-Rakkers) produced by Meek circa 1960. Crazy.
During the summer of 1990, while enjoying a three month holiday in Oslo, Norway, I (Elliott) came across a magazine that would be of untold influence to my thirteen-year old ears -- the 1990 Metal Hammer "Thrash Spectacular". This would serve to be my introduction to an obsession with extreme bands that would consume an unhealthy amount of my time and interest throughout middle and high school -- bands such as Exodus, Sepultura, Pungent Stench, Testament, Sacred Reich, and on and on. But the centerpiece of the issue was four articles on what Metal Hammer referred to as the "Big Four" of thrash, namely: Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth.
And now we have a re-mastered re-issue of Megadeth's Rust in Peace, originally released coincidentally enough, within weeks of my return from the land of fjords. Why is this significant? Well, because with the very notable exception of Slayer's Seasons in the Abyss, Rust in the Peace was arguably the last great album of the great '80s thrash bands. Sure most, if not all, of these bands continued to release albums up to the present, but really -- which of them would you seriously consider to be on par with their '80s predecessors? Exodus, Testament, Slayer, Anthraxit's like 1990 was an impenetrable divide that dictated, "No decent thrash may pass". And let's not even discuss the Black album. Anyway, the release of Rust in Peace heralded the end of an era, and did so with august aplomb, the group topping even their own previously great achievements. It was as if all bands of the ilk recognized that nothing more could be done within the confines of what was considered thrash. Thrash had, as they say, "jumped the shark".
But most importantly, Rust in Peace is simply a magnificent album, harkening back to a time when metal records were still collections of great songs. Every song on here is unique and there's not a bit of filler to be found. Take a look at the tracks: you get the MTV-friendly alien conspiracy hit single "Hangar 18"; the sheer aggression of "Take No Prisoners," one of their heaviest songs ever; the eerie occultism of "Five Magics"; the upbeat, almost poppy quality of "Poison Was The Cure"; the coke-sweating solipsism of "Lucretia"; the forlorn desolation of "Tornado Of Souls"; the austere drum and bass death march creepiness of "Dawn Patrol," (where you get to hear Dave's hilarious affected British accent) all book-ended by two of the finest thrash epics ever recorded -- the relentless juggernaut of an opener, "Holy WarsThe Punishment Due," and the apocalyptic groove of the closing title track. Rust in Peace also showcases the finest musicianship of their career, featuring the relentless guitar dueling between Mustaine and newly recruited Shrapnel recording artist Marty Friedman. Very rarely has such guitar-shop wankery been harnessed into such tastefully well-crafted songs -- the intro to "Holy Wars" alone is a must-hear. As for the vocals -- some have been at worst annoyed and at best amused by Dave's whining snarl but when you hear him scream "Paid by the alliance, to slay all the giants" I think you'll agree his delivery is perfectly fitting.
Like Black Sabbath's Volume 4 or Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales or Iron Maiden's Killers, Rust in Peace is a milestone of metallic perfection and one which you are doing your metal collection a grave disservice to be without. If you have any genuine interest in metal, any whatsoever -- a single Century Media sampler in your collection, even -- you MUST own this record. Do yourself a favor, hear one of the absolute pinnacles of thrash. It was the last of its era, setting a standard that the genre as a whole would be unable to match again. And don't just take my word for it...Allan's backing me up on this one too: Rust In Peace is a metal essential. This reissue is remixed and remastered, with four bonus tracks (3 demos of album tracks featuring original 'Deth guitarist Chris Poland and the unfinished, unreleased "My Creation").
Whenever we listen to this, we're somehow reminded of a line from The Simpsons where Marge Simpson's sister Selma in reference to a cheap slutty dress says: "This started out as a Halloween costume but soon worked its way into my regular rotation". Seems what began as a jokey one-off side-project between Devendra Banhart and Greg Rogove from Priestbird (formerly Tarantula A.D.) has taken up more time and attention than is probably warranted. From the weird "bro" energy of the cover to the childish references to penises, anal sex, and group masturbation peppered throughout, this is probably a project that perhaps should have stayed a joke. It sounds like their having a lot of fun and all, and it's not that there aren't good songs on here (Devendra's distinct pop sensibilities remain intact), but it seems like as a separate project, it doesn't know what it wants to be. It doesn't take enough risks musically for all of its crazy "fuck-all" posturing, and some of its attempts at humorous irreverence fall embarassingly flat (especially the song "A Gun On His Hip And A Rose On His Chest", where they cop the music from The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy", but replace the lyrics with "Fuck the Police, in the asshole. Fuck the Pope, in the asshole." ad nauseum). If you wanted a full album of all the sillier songs from Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, this might be for you. For the rest of us, we'll wait for Devendra's next record.
Finally! New music from these aQ faves, Megaton Leviathan Northwestern masters of psychedelic doom, or doomgaze, or, well not sure what we should call it now. When we made their Water Wealth Hell On Earth album an aQuarius Record Of The Week, their sound was definitely doom, like doom with MANY oooooo's, but even then it was blurry and washed out and super psychedelic, and at times, barely even metal. Which is where this new one lands for sure. It's definitely heavy, but it's more spacey, and droney and dreamy, two epic songs per side, the first more of a slowcore shoegaze blissout, slow, but not a doomy crawl, just sort of mesmerizingly hypnotically midtempo, the guitars warm and billowy, the vocals whispery and washed out, almost like another layer of drone, the whole thing a dreamy dirge that really could go on forever. Gorgeously tranced out psych-doom bliss of the highest order. There are strings too, courtesy of Amber Asylum's Kris Force, which just adds to the epicness and spaciousness, fans of Godspeed and all who sail with her, if you've yet to discover Megaton Leviathan, now is the time, and this is the record, er, tape. Soaring, slow building musical majesty. Henry Barnes from Amps For Christ contributes sitar and 'oscillations', again, adding to the trancey raga-like mesmer of the songs.
The B side is a bit more doomy, but only a bit, the heavy downtuned churn is blurred into extended chordal streaks, and hazy black ambience, the sound on the B side hews closer to the minimal dub-doom of OM, fans of that band will flip for these guys too, the same sort of lumbering, minimal, metallic crush, but here, wreathed in swirls of effects, constantly shifting atmospheres and textures, laced with minor key melancholic melodies, pulsing, undulating until the momentum begins to ebb, leaving just a field of abstract chug, clouds of cymbal shimmer, only then to blossom into something even heavier, a murky death march plod, the bass and guitar impossibly distorted, the drums a rib cage rattling crush, locked into Gore-like minimal-metal mesmer, before exploding again, into some serious psych-doom drift, replete with FX heavy guitars and angelic female vocals.
The tape finishes off with maybe the oddest of the bunch, a sort of slowcore psych folk ballad, all clean guitars and crooned vocals, still plenty murky and druggy, and HEAVY, even sans metallic heft. Only on tape for now, but rumors of more formats in the future. For now, this is extremely limited, nice full color printed J-cards and green cases, sadly, no download.
It's hard to know what to expect from a band with a name like Megaton Leviathan. You might guess heavy. Probably loud. And you'd be right on both counts, but you probably wouldn't guess that these guys play some sort of super melodic, poppy, and very pretty doom. Or sort of doom. Soft doom? We sure as heck didn't.
But that's pretty much what ML are all about. Even categorizing them as doom doesn't do them justice. The tempos are slow, the mood is doomy, but unlike the typical downtuned sludgery and lumbering slo-mo pummel of most doom combos, these guys infuse their dirges with soaring shimmering clean guitars, the vocals are clean, not howled or grunted, but crooned, bathed in reverb, and draped over the almost ethereal sounding heaviness.
The drums are strange, big and boomy, but they perfectly suit the Nadja-like doom-gaze, the washed out blissy reverbed doom pop, the hazy, gauze-y, space-y doom flecked psychedelia these guys so effortlessly conjure up.
The 19 minute opener is split into two parts, the first half, is a gorgeous dirgey creep, with a melancholy main melody, swirling synth textures, and those moody crooned vox, all stretched out into a glorious bit of space doom dream pop haze, the effects swallowing the instruments up and sending them spinning into the cosmos, woozy, and dreamy and mesmerizing and strangely emotional with some of the best most beautiful hooks you'll ever hear in a 'doom' band.
The second half almost sounds like a dub version of the first, the riffs are stripped away, leaving a glistening filed of layered vocal mantras and electronic effects, the drums spare and abstract, the sound thick and lush and distorted, but blurred and free and swirly and psychedelic, some sort of alien spacedoom ur-drone, the perfect balance for the more riffy bliss of the first half.
After another short track (and by short we mean almost 6 minutes), which is another dirgey crawl, through fields of cloudy effects and smeared electronics, sounding like a modern space doom Codeine, all pretty and melancholy but still dark and heavy, comes the 33+ minute closer, "A Slow Death In D Minor", the whole first half of which sounds like SUNNO))) covering Tangerine Dream, thick downtuned glacial thrum, underpinning, swirling kosmische synths and jangly shimmering clean guitar chords. This could go on forever, and practically does, until about 18 minutes later, the drums come in, and pound out a strange skeletal beat, atop the still drifting buzz and shimmer, buried vocals and muted melodies churn just below the surface, until finally, the sound grows more and more melodic, and what sound like strings surface, and the track is transformed into some sort of chamber doom, until eventually, just the strings are left, to soar dramatically over a barely there layer of crackle and hum, before slipping into silence.
This could definitely be our new favorite doom record, if it didn't feel so wrong to and reductive to call Megaton Leviathan doom. But it's definitely a new favorite, for fans of all things dark and heavy and dreamy and melodic, droney and drifty and pretty and poppy and trance inducing.
With well over two dozen albums, singles, eps, and compilations to their name, Yorkshire's Mekons have been around so long you can divide their career into distinct stages. In my opinion, prime Mekons territory begins well into their timeline, with the release
The latest from critica faves/ underground heroes, the Mekons. More drunken and bedraggled indie rock twang, a kind of 'British Americana' with touches of '80s southern alt-rock (like "Green"-era R.E.M.). Nice.
The Mekons have been around for 25 years now. In that time, they morphed from punk rockers to country twangers, putting out one of the first "alt.country" albums ("Fear & Whiskey") in 1985, and continuing through today to release this very nice collection of songs. While sweet country lamentation is the primary component of "Oooh! Out Of Our Heads," their collectivist songwriting also makes room for the influence of down home gospel, eastern tinged violins, Irish reels, relevant although not didactic political commentary, and a bit of anarchic punk approach. A more than apt silver anniversary celebration.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Originally released as a companion piece to the Mekons' art book "United," this album features several reinterpretations of previously issued Mekons songs which had been sampled, mangled, and mashed into something new.
We joked in some past reviews that Dutch experimental world music label Terp must be paying our salaries considering how much love we give their releases, but c'mon, you've heard them! You've bought them! LOTS of them! And like us you've played them all to death. Every single one is amazing, so exciting musically, so emotionally resonant, some of the most unique and moving music we've EVER heard. And as if to drive the point home, we have not one, but TWO new releases from Terp on this week's list, one, a gorgeous final live recording from blind Ethiopian vocalist Mohammed 'Jimmy' Mohammed who passed away recently, and this, a wild live blowout from legendary Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekuria, jamming with Dutch avant rockers The Ex and other like minded friends...
We've been trying to list this forever, but we kept selling out of them in the store before we could get it reviewed and up on the site. Finally though, we have enough, so it's time to once again get your Ethiopian groove on...
But with a twist. The twist being The Ex, everyone's favorite Dutch avant rockers who have always had a thing for world music, so much so that members of the Ex are directly involved in the running of Terp. So it makes sense that given the opportunity, they would jump at the chance to jam with the legendary�Getatchew Mekuria. So here we have it, what sounds like one of the wildest musical parties ever! Oh how we would have killed to be there. Must have been a stone cold blast, but at least we have this here recording to ease our pain...
The record seems to be split right down the middle, half the songs are Ethiopian classics, given a bit of an angular post punk vibe, due in no small part to the fact that the band playing them is in fact the Ex, and the other half, the ones with vocals, sound like Ethiopian flavored Ex songs... We lean more toward the former, but both are pretty great.�
Imagine your favorite Ethiopiques record, but�way more bass heavy, a fuzzy distorted throb, along with jangly angular guitars, all underneath that oh so recognizable sax, wailing and soaring, practically singing, emotional and gorgeous. A few tracks are�groovy and smokey and sultry, sounding like they could have come straight off of Ethiopiques 4, and�even the all time Ethiopian groove classic "Musicawi Silt" here gets a sort of funkgroove makeover, with percussive guitar clang, blooping bass, the song was already funky, but in a different way, the new version is a little more tightly wound, but in a good way, you could maybe call it Ethiopian postpunkgroove or something. And there's also an�amazing solo jam "Tezeta", with Mekuria just making the sax sing, an extension of his being, going from full on skronk, to melancholy drift, oozing emotion and passion. The crowd reaction afterwards says it all. The rest of the record is packed with the above mentioned Ethiopian Ex style jams, which are awesome and wild and are definitely kinetic and ebullient, but the vocals are definitely an acquired taste...�
As with all Terp stuff, tons of photos and extensive liner notes...
The Khrysanthoney label returns after a bit of a break, with a barrage of new releases. Including this, the debut full length from Russian depressive black metal one man band Melankoli, whose sound is a perfect fit for Khrysanthoney, melding the downtuned dirge and melancholic creep of depressive black metal, with something much more lush and cinematic. The nearly 20 minute opener begins with lush synth swirls, strange field recordings, tinkling chimes, dramatic pianos, swirling FX, it almost sounds like M83, or some strange sci-fi soundtrack, the drums come in gradually, a spare, echo drenched pound, a deep dramatic spoken vocal, over a shimmery swirl of piano, total haunting shoegaze slo-mo blissout, swirling harmony vocals, wreathed in the sound of wintery winds, until finally, the guitars come cascading in, and the harsh vokills, but even then, they're paired with the more dreamy, dramatic sounds of the first few minutes, lilting and lovely, anguished and aching, epic and majestic, at times, the sound does grow dense and blackened, seriously heavy, but just as quickly, those moments dissipate, leaving soft synth swirls, or weirdly processed sprawls of electronic flecked drift, the programmed drums transformed into something much more trippy, before once again returning to the brooding, moody, cinematic churn, sprawling like the score for some end of the world epic. And while nothing else on the record is nearly as grandiose, the other four, shorter tracks here conjure up similarly stunning sonic moments, from the whispery electronic intro to "Embrace Of Winter", which runs throughout the whole song, giving it a weird electronic gloom pop, goth wave vibe, to the moody minimal blackened slowcore of "Coma", which should have Alcest / Amesouers fans in heaven, to the synth soaked sprawl of "Through The Shining Stars", which true to its title, sounds like the score to some super psychedelic sci-fi epic, images of huge expanses of space, of endless starfields, super melodic and darkly emotional, peppered with minimal percussion, and lilting electronic melodies, again, hard not to hear a little M83 (maybe M83's recent score for the movie Oblivion?).
Melankoli finishes things off with a Death Aura cover, a weirdly epic, murky, moody death march dirge, the sounds blurred and washed out, the vocals a buried-in-the-mix demonic rasp, the melodies minor key and melancholic, a beautifully brooding bit of black buzz loveliness.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!!
Our only real exposure to Dan Melchior, frontman of the Broke Revue and sometime collaborator with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, was on a recent split with local garage poppers the Fresh & Onlys, and we were blown away, describing his side of the split as "awesomely super distorted garage pop, like Elvis Costello, all jammed up and slathered in crumbling hiss and grit, the vocals delivered in a thick English accent, the drums blown out, effects all over the place, everything buried beneath a patina of blurred buzz..." which pretty much describes Melchior's Siltbreeze record as well, but if anything, all the blown out weirdness and heavily effected and damaged aspects we dug so much on that 7", have been cranked WAY up here. Noisier, more lo-fi, way more chaotic and confusional, the proper songs that do surface are slathered in distortion and FX, and transformed into some sort of outsider lo-fi avant garage psych weirdness.
"Atomizer" is some sort of no-fi distorto new wave, the whole song driven by a churning muddied electronic pulse, the vocals distorted and WAY up in the mix, robotic and clinical, but crumbling around the edges, pelted by jagged shards of blown out guitar, and squalls of cascading psychnoise, and the lyrics, twisted and appropriately baffling. "Bewildered And Wild" begins all folky and strummy, until the vocals come in, all processed and effected, making it sound like some alien blues, everything smeared with grit and grime and hiss, total interplanetary back porch moon blues weirdness, rife with the occasional super distorted swell of low end buzz. "Bread Bin Wailing (Moonlight Crow)" is all muted backwards warble, and ultra thick metallic bass buzz, echoey vocals, smears of psychedelic leads, and so it goes, the whole record some sort of drug addled bedroom blues, filtered through NZ noise rock, eighties cold wave, outsider loner zoner psych, and spit out in all its filthy fractured fucked up glory! Think Suicide crossed with Chrome crossed with the Shadow Ring crossed with Robyn Hitchcock crossed with Alastair Galbraith crossed Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos. Indeed.
Comes with a download coupon too...
This might be one of the weirdest (and coolest) records we've heard from Dan Melchior, which is saying a lot, considering how twisted and cool most of his records are, but this one just might take the cake, seeing as what is essentially a full lp, is really only three or four 'proper' songs, filled out by some seriously twisted sonic weirdness, which in some cases we dig even more than the songs themselves.
The record opens with buzzing synths and garbled processed vox, a lurching distorto creep, all murky and warbly, which soon adds some acoustic guitar strum, and some weird samples, the sound constantly on the verge of blossoming into a 'real' song, but it's not until track three, that a 'proper' song coalesces from sonic murk, and even then, it's still pretty fucked up, skeletal programmed drums, jagged guitars, distorted bass chug, echo drenched vocals, a seriously lo-fi dirge, the vocals getting deep and dramatic, the song culminating in some wild, tripped out murk guitar shred. After that there's some minimal hushed shimmer, a sort of ambient interlude that leads directly into another weird dirgey jam, this one a bit more propulsive, but still plenty muddy and tranced out, psychedelic and trippy, laced with some awesomely twisted backwards vocals.
The B side opens with some abstract, psychedelic drift, distant chordal shimmer peppered with weird synth blurts, which bleeds into some creepy minimal drone/thrum, sounding like whipping wind over distant barely there riffage, which erupts into another song, this one cool fuzzed out drum machine driven gloom pop, heavy guitar buzz, droney, noisy and super hypnotic. There's a brief crumbly lo-fi ballad, all Faxed Head production, dreaminess beneath squelch and glitch and hiss and hum, before the final jam, a detuned Beefheartian creep, angular and atonal, super noisy, ultra murky, the whole thing eventually devolving into some super cool, and seriously demented free form sample laced drift. Wow. So fucked up, and twisted and dementedly amazing!
It may have taken us a while to catch on to the twisted garage rock genius that is Dan Melchior, but over the last little while, we've been digging everything we've heard, and while this record is not a proper album, so much as a cobbled together collection of experiments and sketches, it somehow holds together as some kind of strange Guided By Voices style chunk of micro-jams, albeit here, many of them consist of nothing but looped and layered voices or field recorded acoustic guitar. But all the tracks here, no matter how abstract or seemingly tossed off are pretty damn cool, whether it's the aforementioned vocal experiments, or sweet lo-fi piano ballads with strange foot-step percussion and a backdrop of running water, or stripped down bedroom folk with strange hummed harmonies, or dirgey distorted almost-Appalachia, warm swirls of acoustic guitars, minimal strums over mysterious field recordings or garbled into wild noisy tape experiments. And amidst all these fragments, do lurk a handful of gorgeous gems, both sides end in said fashion, the A side with a dense brooding, slow build dirge, the B side with a haunting bit of pretty reverbed piano over a swirl of strange stuttering electronics. Cool stuff.
LIMITED TO 450 COPIES!!!
Yet another Record Store Day release, that we managed to get some extra copies of, so all our beloved, non-local customers could have a shot at snagging themselves a copy. This one from garage rock weirdo/legend Dan Melchior, a 5 song 45rpm 12" pressed up on white vinyl, that displays Melchior's poppier side, one we've got glimpses of before on other recordings, but barring one track, most of Ghost In The Supermarket is more sort of dark acoustic pop, with warm strum and simple arrangements, the opening title track sets the stage, with some fantastically twisted lo-fi pop, weirdly produced drums, lush acoustic guitars, and super bizarre lyrics, concerning the titular ghost and some Cheez Whiz, but Melchior manages to make the goofiness work, transforming what it lesser hands might have been too jokey, into a gorgeous chunk of low slung, stripped down acoustic pop, complete with a really nice, simple acoustic guitar solo. The second track is the oddball here, and gives us a glimpse of another side of Melchior's sound, one that's more post punky and garagey, angular and slithery, with jagged slashes of guitar, weird processed vox, very eighties sounding, catchy as hell, but also more rough and ragged than the rest of the record.
The B side starts off with some woozy acoustic dirgery, spaced out and droney, darkly hypnotic before drifting into some abstract Appalachian alien folk territory, all plucked melodies, and keening high end shimmer, before slipping into the gorgeous closer, a sweetly sorrowful bit of classic sounding acid folk, all warm strum and shuffling tempo, twisted lyrics again (this time about Star Trek), laced with some rad psychedelic backwards guitars. Awesome stuff! And some super bad ass cover art. And again, this was a Record Store Day release, so odds are, once we sell out, we probably won't be able to get more.
