Here, we get this electro-goth split that originally came out as a tiny edition cassette on the SixSixSixties imprint run by Meddicine's Monika Krol, now repressed in a just slightly bigger pressing on vinyl through Weyrd Son. Mushy is one of a couple of pseudonyms for Valentina Fanigliulo who may be Rome's answer to Zola Jesus. She may not have the operatic pipes of Zola Jesus, but she's a much better technician when it comes to crafting her ethereal, emotionally drained, coldwave arrangements for snowstorm synth and washed-out drum machine. Her former recordings of understated, 4AD-inspired gloomy dream pop made for some of the better contemporary recordings issued by Mannequin Records; and they are just as good here as anywhere else. Meddicine's scabbed Sheffield-style industrial hypnosis full of turgid ostinato and brain-disjointing sequences seems taylor made for the shambolic electronica that's been oozing from Not Not Fun over recent years.
Sounds like someone's been eating their Lucky Charms cereal!! As a sticker on this cd proclaims, this is the "indietronic pop trio" comprised of Mogwai's Luke Sutherland, To Rococo Rot's Stefan Schneider and Tontraeger's Volker Bertleman. What these three fellows have assembled is more an unassuming series of dreamy interludes rather than full songs. Chiming musicbox-ish tones and guitar pluckery frolick and melt while bass lines drip like molasses. Vaporous clicking beats and suitably softly murmurred male vocals offer some drifting movement to each track. Very very gentle, unobtrusive and pretty.
The grimy and oozing, sludgey and slimy, sonic apple does not fall far from the musical tree, as Harvey Milk bassist Stephen Tanner turns an aborted attempt at writing a new Harvey Milk record into his own solo record, the evocatively titled, and ultra personal Music Blues, a droning, dirgey, downtuned rumination on Tanner's life, from birth all the way up until right goddamn now. With a heavy focus on a recent spate of blues-worthy bad times, heart break and homelessness, death of friends and depression, Tanner crafts a brooding sprawl of epic slo-mo heaviness, that really could have been a new Harvey Milk record, with long stretches of murky churn butted up against impossible metallic majesty, soaring and epic, dirgey and doomy. At time it's actually a little bit difficult to not imagine HM's Creston Spiers bellowing over the top, but even sans those distinctive vocals, Tanner's soundscapes of tarpit riffage, knuckle dragging drummige, churning, crumbling low end, and tripped out, droney, abstract, almost psychedelia, make for some sweet, and sweetly abject heaviness.
Peppered amidst all the low slung sludge are brief bits of weirdness (or maybe more accurately, weirder weirdness), woozy stretches of pitchshifted ultra lo-fi downer country strum, transformed into some twang flecked murk, or moments that sound like intros to some Fucking Champs-like shred, but which instead just lock into stretched out stasis, minimal and metallic and mesmerizing.
But the songs themselves, for being as minimal as they often are, are pretty riveting, and hypnotic, heavy for sure, but also textured and strangely nuanced, with varying levels of fidelity, the sound slips easily from massive crush, to home brewed heaviness and back again. Many of the sounds here are obviously beholden to the 'Milk mothership, and channel the sound of classic metal (Kiss, Priest), and like HM turn it into something that sounds like it's being played by someone with serious head trauma, and spinning way too slow on some old busted up turntable (check out "Trying And Giving Up). But there are also moments of monochromatic mesmeric metal trudge ("Great Depression"), murky, hazy, atmospheric soundscapery ("Failure") and surprising poppiness ("It's Not Going To Get Better"), which perhaps not surprisingly at all, does not stay poppy for long.
This will definitely tide over Harvey Milk fanatics until the next HM full length (assuming there ever is one), but really, anyone into droned out, melodic minimalism, and droney, doomy heaviness, will dig these here Music Blues.
When the first line of lyrics you hear on a record are something about "velveteen clouds" you know you're listening to something psychedelic -- in this case, a reissue of the rare 1969 album by LA psych-popsters the Music Emporium. Swirling organ, fuzz
Now considered something of a classic, here's an awesome acid-folk rarity recorded thirty-five years ago by a gaggle of hippies in Barcelona. This is something we've had sporadically in stock before ('cause people in the know were asking about it) but now at last we've got enough to list -- and they're cheaper than they were before, too! This, Musica Dispersa's only album, was originally released in 1970 and now appears on cd, digitally remastered, in a nice digipack complete with folded booklet/poster (the liner notes are all in Spanish but there are lots of sepia-toned photos for non Spanish readers to look at).
Their sound is both danity and drugged-out, occassionally playful but most often melancholic and mellow... with moaning vocals, sad flute, organ, mandolin, piano, bongos, and various other percussion instruments, Musica Dispersa made quite quiet and gentle, dismally beautiful music (that was apparently very political in the context of their times/place as well). They tend to draw comparison to both the archaic, acoustic approach of the Incredible String Band and other UK folk acts of the era, and the freaky freeform ramblings of early Amon Duul. And we're strongly reminded of another krautrock band, AQ faves Siloah. Definitely something for which the phrase "weird and wonderful" was always intended. Recommended.
Basically, this is what we were hoping the Acid Mother Temple's "Electric Heavyland" would sound like! Musica Transonic is yet another project featuring the wild guitar playing of AMT's Kawabata Makoto, in a trio with two other notables from the Japanese underground: the Ruins' incredible Tatsuya Yoshida on drums, and High Rise/Mainliner/Ohkami No Jikan leather-and-shades master Nanjo Asahito on bass. They've been around for a while, this is their sixth album of instrumental psychedelic improv rock in fact. Previous efforts were a lot more jazzy and spazzy, and while this has total psych guitar freakouts, they're in the context of some speedy, steamroller, straight-ahead heavy rock n' roll, '70s-style. Hence the title "Hard Rock Transonic" I guess. Not unlike the blueprint for Nanjo's bands High Rise and Mainliner: distorted garagey fuzz-fests with searing psych solos (Kawabata rips on here). The driving, riff-repetitive parts are almost metal, kinda like Circle's "Sunrise" in that way. Nanjo's rumbling Blue Cheer bass and Yoshida's solid beats, along with the aforementioned Kawabata guitar freakouts, are total head banging material.
Add in the Greek song titles, the crazy cover drawing, and boob n' panty baring cheesecake shots of young Asian women in the booklet, and you've got one wild Japanese psych-metal album.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Third album. Nanjo, Kawabata and Yoshida return, with another blast of...yes, it's the same band as above (Mainliner), with a different name. More spastic, though, and maybe even more fuzz-blasted.
We get so many records submitted to us for consideration, and like we've said before we really do listen to everything that comes our way (though it does sometimes take us forever!) and it's always worth it because of gems like this. We haven't heard a pop record with this much ambition, depth and dynamic range of sound in a long, long time. Michael Musika has a really unique approach to crafting not only songs but an overall feeling that flows throughout the album. With interludes filled with beautiful bells and dreamy vibes which cast an interesting spell, and then proper songs which tap into a side of quirky, orchestral pop that you just don't hear done that often or this well, these days. Taking elements of Emmit Rhodes, Biff Rose, and Van Dyke Parks, San Francisco's Micheal Musika has created his own world of cinematic pop glory.
Woah, nice grotesque, stretched flat flesh-face cover art, doods!! Brought to us by the esoteric rock gurus at Holy Mountain, what does this Musk sound (or smell) like exactly? Well, it's not metal, even though the cover art could be, and some of the vocals veer into almost guttural death metal territory, too. It IS hella noisy, a real reverb-damaged noiserock overload of an album, with much drum kit bashing, guitar/amp smashing, vocal spit splashing, you know, sheer deranged rockin' madness, bathed in distortion - part pigfuck noise, part blues rawk thwump, part fuzzed out garage punk (this wuz recorded by a guy who has twisted knobs for Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, as Holy Mountain helpfully points out). So imagine the drunk, bad-trippin', evil twin to one of those acts, crawlling C.H.U.D.-style out of the sewers of downtown NYC or somewhere Down Under (though they're from right here in the Bay Area, and feature a former member of a band called Tractor Sex Fatality from up in Seattle or someplace.)
These eleven killer cuts are remarkably catchy considering the chaos in which they are couched. Cool!! Lives up to the awesome, unpleasant cover art. Includes download.
They may be called Soft Pack now, but at one point they were called the Muslims, and were touted to be the next big thing. And like the recent Soft Pack 12", this lp makes it abundantly clear just why, a killer mix of indie jangle, and snarly, snarky post punk, the most obvious comparison is the Strokes, the opener here "Right And Wrong" definitely sounds like it could be a Strokes B-side, heck, who are we kidding, an A-SIDE!!! Catchy, and super rocking, a little bit lo-fi, but totally hooky and a little bit irresistible.
If the Soft Pack record shows the band stretching out their sound, this reissue of the Muslims's self titled debut finds the band still searching for a direction all their own, still cribbing liberally from their heroes, and hell doing it as well if not better. Another super obscure reference, that definitely infuses the Muslims' sound whether they know it or not would be long lost lo-fi blues pop combo Railroad Jerk, the same sort of stripped down sound, drawled vox, simple, pounding and hooky. A little Stooges here and there for sure, but screw it, the Strokes thing is pretty much unavoidable, so if you dig that sort of thing, which hell, we most definitely do, then you'll dig this. And if you do end up digging this, check out Soft Pack, and see where these guys eventually took this totally satisfying if somewhat unoriginal sound.
The original record is augmented by some singles tracks tacked on (which were originally on a bonus cd that came with the original release), which are even better than the record proper. Cool gatefold sleeve, with printed insert, download code, and holes that were shot in the sleeve with a .22 caliber pistol!!
Uhhh, what?? Leave it to Mike Patton's Ipecac label to put out this head spinning disc of super spastic & grinding bizarro-world "pop". It's the debut of Mutation, a band whose lineup is equally mind boggling as its music, featuring Ginger from '90s UK rockers The Wildhearts (who, strangely enough, masterminded this), Jon Poole from aQ fave UK prog-punk act The Cardiacs, the ubiquitous Shane Embury from Napalm Death (and a million other projects), Mark E. Smith of The Fall, and even Japanese noisican Merzbow!! The most unlikely, unexpected "supergroup" ever? Yet this meeting of musical minds garners predictably demented results. Mutation is a crazy, catchy synthwave mathmetal noisepop collision, kinda like Sparks meets Meshuggah, or Devo + Dillinger Escape Plan, or Melt-Banana under the influence of Queen, trying really hard to have a hit (and somehow succeeding - but again, only in bizarro-world). Heavy and hectic, these tunes blenderize blasting onslaughts of industrialized chunkiness and majestic processed poppiness. The complex, chaotic song structures find electronic glitch freakery alternating with soaring melodic vocal choirs. It's some infectious ADD weirdness all right, and while anything this intentionally outre, combining all these diverse artists and aesthetics coulda been a trainwreck, it's actually pretty amazing, if perhaps a bit too Mr. Bunglized for some folks. If what we've already said so far, any of the names mentioned, makes you think you MIGHT like this, then we're pretty sure you WILL like this. A lot.
Mute Socialite are a new aural maelstrom featuring Bay Area avant music vets Moe! Staiano, Ava Mendoza, Alec Karim and Shayna Dunkleman. Don't even attempt to define this new group's sound by the words in their moniker. They are anything but mute, and we wouldn't consider theirs to be the most social of musics. It's like a sonic blow to the solar plexus that then proceeds to march on odd time signatures upon your fallen form. The dozen pieces deliver plenty of mighty post-punk churn, no wave spasm and math rock count-that-shit! At once fiercely precise and wildly chaotic. Blistering.
Lordship And Bondage is filled with images of the most garish of theatrics, tattered velvet drapes and torn gowns stained with red wine and smeared rouge. Like an errant banshee, Mannequin Lamar'sïaffected, operatic vocals hold unstable court over the erratic gothmetal assembly. One dozen mean and dirty cabaret indulgences primarily driven by an industrial rock stomp. Imagine if Klaus Nomi were an overwrought goth fronting Marilyn Manson's band. You may find yourself asking "Are these guys from Florida or SF's Mission District?"ï
It seems that something is keeping me from enjoying the 'Mannequins intended pursuits, however. Hindered by an overt self-awareness? A forced eccentricity? Not unlike spotting an immaculately coiffed and perfumed dandy in a full tailored suit strolling proudly down the street, but as your eyes drink in this vision they fall to his feet and are disappointed to find the most scuffed, unkempt boots - promising, but the image is marred. Cover art features the same Man Ray photograph that John Zorn chose for his 1993 album, Radio.
Longtime readers of the aQ list know by now just how much we loved Cave In, from their crazy crushing ultra heavy early records all the way up to their more recent, way poppier 'Radiohead' period. And we've raved about pretty much everything Cave In frontman Stephen Brodsky has done since, his solo records practically perfect, and super poppy. So when we found out Brodsky was teaming up with drummer Ben Koller from Converge, we were thrilled, imagining all sorts of sonic scenarios, variations on heavy pop, or maybe poppier Converge style metallic mayhem, and truth be told, that's SORT of what Mutoid Man sounds like, but only sort of. Brodsky's songwriting is definitely on display, hooks galore, and his vocals, sound as good as ever, but the setting is definitely different, with Brodsky and Koller conjuring up some wildly technical, progged out metal weirdness, at times sounding like supercharged classic rock, and at others, like some furious metal-prog, with some super rad WTF sonic craziness in the mix, whether it's twisted churning mosh parts, or squiggly FX drenched psychedelia, or a ridiculously cool, and ULTRA heavy Animals cover (!), it all makes for some serious, and seriously kick ass heaviness.
We were sold one track in, opener "Gnarcissist" sounds like classic hard rock mutated and revved WAY the fuck up, killer riffing, fuzzed out bass, wild drumming, this track in particular sounds a LOT like Brodsky's poppier solo material but given a punk as fuck Converge style metallic makeover, THE rawk jam of the year, with its blown out wah guitar, frenzied riffing, progged out drumming, and soaring super hooky vocals, frantic and caffeinated, head bangable but hooky as hell, all of which basically applies to the rest of the record in equal measure. And while nothing is quite as overtly poppy as the opener, tracks like "Scavengers" wrap super tech guitar shreddery, around poppy hooks, and dizzying prog arrangements, the sort of sound that is exhausting to even listen to, but these guys make it sound effortless, transforming their hooky tech-metal punk-prog into something as crushing as it is catchy. Fans of Converge and early Cave In, who aren't averse to some serious goddamn poppiness, this ones for you. We've been jamming this NON-stop, and have no plans to stop anytime soon.
The first record we've reviewed from local label Father/Daughter (which also has another bass of operations in Miami) comes in the form of this split between Ohio/Boston based combo Mutual Benefit and Brooklyn combo Holy Spirits, who crossed paths on tour earlier this year and decided that sharing a record would be the logical next step.
Mutual Benefit offer up a sweetly melodic indie pop, and open up with a dreamy bit of thumb piano and handclap driven dreaminess, with lush vocals draped over a warm skeletal instrumental bed. The rest of MB's tracks are equally swoonsome, lush distorted guitar shimmer, wrapped around chiming melodies and softly reverbed vocals, simple acoustic guitar strum and squiggly sci-fi electronics, tinkling chimes, and music box like lullabies, whirring warbly organs and washed out sun dappled thrum a sort of hushed shimmery dream poppy indie folk, with some lilting sadboy vox and a warm layered production.
Holy Spirits are a good match, not nearly so twee, instead a bit darker and more contemplative, shuffling minimal percussion, lush steel string guitar, woozy weary vocals, a sort of Appalachian folk pop, with a lush orchestral vibe, and some cool strange percussion, not to mention some almost choral harmonies, and some thumb piano as well!
Our favorite HS track might have to be the lush and lovely "Handmade Sun", with its minimal melodic swells, spidery guitars, hushed almost whispered vox, and then a little bit of shoegazey bombast, only to slip right back into that whispery drift, laced with subtle electronics, slipping easily from delicate fluttery folk to a crashing almost chaotic climax, before a dreamy and delicate wind down. So nice.
LIMITED TO 250 COPIES, pressed on swirled cream vinyl, and includes a digital download.
We generally consider ourselves pretty knowledgeable as far as weirdo obscure music goes, but every time there's a new batch of tapes from NYC cassette label Ormolycka, we get seriously schooled. Sure we generally recognize a couple of the groups, but we always discover something new and amazing. And in this most recent batch, we were introduced to the Japanoisecore dual drums and vocals trio World, super obscure Redwood City hip hop crew Shed Dwellaz, Japanese psych pop outfit Dotsuitarunen, and these guys, or this guy. We weren't able to find ANYthing about Mutwawa on the web, other than this was recorded in 2013, but fuck it, it hardly matters, what does matter, is this is a seriously sick slice of twisted electronic industrial madness. Churning programed drums, wild squalls of glitchy electronics, pounding and Teutonic, but also sort of psychedelic, a little bit house-y, a little bit EDM, some of the tracks sound like they could be remixes of some Depeche Mode song, but instead of vocals swooping in, the tracks explode and splinter into dizzying electro workouts, multiple beats, cascading distortion, crumbling melodies, some cheesy eighties drum pads, but also some caustic bursts of static, all wound up into dense, and tense and intense dancefloor destroyers. Like everything on Ormolycka, this pretty much rules, and is also pretty goddamn limited...
So here's another psychedelic offering of mountain time, roots raga for the true trippers. Only this time the duo have turned their amps up to 11 and leave the acoustic guitars in the closet. Some of you might even be pleased to know J. Mascis holds down the heavy driving rhythm section on drums!! The east coastin' folksters don't veer too far from their past few Ecstatic Peace records, although Barn Nova does seem louder, bigger and more on the electrified country tip. Perhaps with the addition of Mr. Mascis the duo have crafted a more driving and more post-rock sound. "Wandering Nomad" is a perfect example of this more driving, pastoral hugeness, giant chords rip through the country air, vocal harmonies peer through the enveloping reverb, wailing guitar solos beam overhead. We can even catch some glimpses of some dissonant, Sonic Youth type jam outs, wailing feedback and chaos blistering into the red, so unlike anything else we've heard from these cats. So if you're even wondering whether buying another MV and EE album is a good idea, take our word for it and just do it for the Mascis.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We were (and heck, still are) HUGE fans of avant abstract folk outfit The Tower Recordings. And we've tried desperately to keep up with Matt Valentine's post-TR output, but it's been tough as most of his recorded output has been relegated to ultra limited cd-r's and short run vinyl. So finally, we get a not so limited, and seriously hefty dose of Valentine's new psychedelic folk direction, with his long time musical partner Erika Elder and his new musical sidekicks the Bummer Road.
Two discs, jam packed with dreamy druggy OUT THERE free folk psychedelia. Hints of Tower Recordings past do surface here and there, but the sounds on Mother Of Thousands are way more dense and dizzy. Slippery spacey squiggles float like motes of dust over a warm whirling landscape of mumbled atonal guitar, stuttering alternate tuning strum, super-processed electric guitar whir, wheezing harmonica, lilting falsetto vocals, washed out distorted whirls of crumbling amp buzz, a gorgeously laid back, blissed out afternoon sunlight back porch drug drenched slow motion moonlight abstract folk jam.
The second disc takes all the same elements but weaves them into lengthy minimal buzz drenched ragas. Mysterious sounds swoop and swoon over slowly unfurling melodies, warm layers of harmonica and buzzing steel strings drift over a deconstructed free folk, with disembodied ghostlike voices, gurgling drones, reverb drenched female vocals, the final 20+ minute track is one slow burning meditation equal parts rumbling whir and gentle minor key strumming. Quite lovely.
Valentine and his fellow folkies, Mo' Jiggs, Sparrow Wildchild, Nemo Bidstrup, Tim Barnes and Samara Lubelski take a few moments out to reimagine some killer covers, Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton and Reverend Gary Davis, but soon return to their mesmerizingly freeform drift and drone and croon.
Packaged in a super deluxe, ultra thick gatefold, each cd in a woven Japanese style inner sleeve, the sleeve a mini lp style cd gatefold, with a metallic silver printed insert. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
After releasing a legion of limited cd-rs and vinyl only releases of droney, and smoky, arcane mystical acoustic weirdo raga from the Vermont backwoods (which we loved!!), Matt Valentine and his partner Erika Elder have finally released an album that is neither limited nor expensive. Marking their debut on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace! Imprint, Green Blues is a more straight ahead roots-rock album than we've heard before from this camp, which ultimately makes this release pretty disappointing. There's no doubt to what the "green" in the title refers to, as Valentine and Elder have been for many years living off the grid in a wood cabin and making lots of heady music. But here they seem to have been listening to their Neil Young, Grateful Dead and Canned Heat records a little too long, making their honest hippie affirmations veer into near-comical shtick. On the plus side, it's thankfully short and it does gets better as it goes along with the songs getting longer and stranger with less singing towards the end. Maybe this is just a one-time kink in a long string of amazing releases. Let's hope next time, they'll take a step back from the bong.
It seems romantic to think about living out in the country, sleeping in a trailer and spending all your time making music and hanging out with a dog named Zuma. That's sort of a reality for East Coast trippers MV and EE. And it's funny to us how many people love to label this band as "that hippy, Neil Young wanna-be" duo. Which is sorta true, I mean they DO live a very alternative lifestyle, and take a listen to any of their albums and tell us you can't hear the Neil Young similarities. Buuuuut, on the other hand, MV and EE have been on the lo-fi psych folk tip for over a decade! Yes it's true, some aQ customers might even remember Matt Valentine's super influential acid-folk band from the nineties Tower Recordings, killer stuff that was sadly overlooked. And while we don't completely disagree with the insensitive hype that hovers around MV & EE, we DO have to say that Drone Trailer, the latest release from these extraordinary acid folk experts, is AWESOME, some of their best material yet! A murky glimpse into some sprawling cosmic countryside, more of the usual sun-baked tripped-out Americana, but thanks to the heavy hitting Golden Road backing band, Drone trailer is more driving and rockin' then most other MV and EE releases. Barn burning space fuzz meets twangy foot-stomping psychedelic meltdown. Loosely arranged jammers that waver under the blaring sun, mind-warping drones laced with lazy day vocals and bluesy guitar, the clumsy rhythms of Crazy Horse meet the expansive sprawl of Flying Saucer Attack. Kinda like if Ignatz recorded his last record with a full band, or if Spacemen 3 did a folk record. Spaced-out rural twang, the perfect soundtrack for your next lazy Sunday afternoon, highly recommended!
If you've ever asked yourself just -exactly- when Matt Valentine will abandon any pretense that would suggest he isn't Neil Young's little brother, wonder no more. MV & EE's inebriated folk drones of yore have given way to a much more straight-forward style of writing, which means more riffs and less hippie freak-outs. As usual, Erika Elder's vocals have that feeling of hearing someone singing in the shower from the next room over; novice but strikingly pleasant. Valentine's voice is an acquired taste at best. In spite of his singing, catchy melodies abound as they churn out a good pop-folk-rock record that both complements their other work and serves as a good starting point for anyone who's curious. This is anthemic folk Americana for the uninitiated. Recommended!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We Offer You The Guru might be a folk record, in some other time, and some other world. Sure there are steel string guitars, harmonica, jews harp, even sruti box and electric dulcimer, and there is a melancholy strumminess, and dreamy twanginess to be sure, but Matt Valentine and Erika Elder (aka MV / EE) wrap their druggy spaced out folk in a dense cloud of thick reverb and smoky ambience, traditional folk melodies are stretched and twisted apart into creepy snippets and fuzzed out musical vignettes, the whole thing reminding us a little bit of the movie Gummo at times, very cinematic in a fucked up and back woods-y sort of way, damaged and not a little drug addled, but at the same time hauntingly beautiful. Elder's vocals are slurred and indistinct, intertwined with wheezing harmonicas and plinking plonking Jandek-ian guitars. Valentine's usual droney raga steel strings, aren't so droney here, instead they become lovingly lugubrious deconstructed strums and picked apart picking, textural and abstract, a rickety framework for the ghostly clouds of vocal / harmonica interplay drifting through these hazy shimmery soundscapes.
A few months ago, Pitchfork released their list of the most overlooked releases of the year (which happened to feature a few we highly raved about, including former ROTW William Tyler, along with Pharmakon and Prurient), and we were wowed by the sound clips of the British soul singer Laura Mvula and her kaleidoscopic orchestral debut, Sing To the Moon. Mvula blithely channels a psychedelically pastoral folk-soul sound that reminds us of Magic Garden-era Fifth Dimension and Minnie Ripperton from her Rotary Connection days in the late sixties. Sounding like a major Van Dyke Parks production, the orchestral arrangements swell and transport us into a dreamy tapestry of sun-dappled majesty. Cascading harps, bells, horns, flutes and strings tethered by modern rhythms and ethereal gospel choirs are given weight by Mvula's strong yet cool delivery that highlights her incredible control and range. One of the best and unusual modern soul records we've heard in quite awhile. We have been listening to this repeatedly for the past few months and it never fails to transfix. Recommended!
aQ pal Phil Franklin turned us on to this mysterious Danish crew MX (believed to have something to do with the two main members obsession with BMX bikes, but that's another story we won't get into), and we were quite surprised and taken by what an amazing and flat out bizarre record this is! This is an anthology of recordings from the past ten years, and we're wondering why we haven't heard of these guys before, but we're so glad we know about them now! Our Danish language skills are lacking, so we can't really tell exactly what is going on or how many players are involved, so of course it leaves the music open to speculation. It sounds like it could be a whole bunch of people, or the careful tape manipulation of just a couple. But the sounds are dirty and lo-fi, recorded on four track and feature mostly short rhythmic compositions of acoustic string instruments (banjo, guitar, and violin), with distorted wheezing accordions, fuzzy pulsating synths, clattering percussion and cultic chanting. Occasionally strange tape manipulated vocals that sound like old folkway recordings of pygmys or some far-off South Asian tribe will appear, along with brain-melting primitive electronics effects. It reminds us a lot of the "ethnological forgery" of groups like Harappian Night Recordings and Sun City Girls, the hippie shamanism of Daniel Higgs and Ur-Dog, as well as the collective free-folk ingenuity of Kemialliset Ystavat. But for all the strangeness and noise, the songs seem more composed than improvised, full of beautiful otherworldly melodies and a stunning sense of DIY psychedelic exotica.
LPs are hand silkscreened on repurposed thrift store record covers. We only have about 8 of these and while we're trying to get more, it might be awhile until we see a restock, so act fast!
Classic Bay Area band.
Once again, the holy grail(s) / canon of 'shoegaze' indie rock, gets yet ANOTHER series of reissues, although these are THE ONES. As in the ones we've all been waiting for, the ones Kevin Shields has been slaving over for years, the ones that by now we can assume are PERFECT. Or at least perfect as Shields sees them, which is really all that matters when it comes to his music.
Of the three 'reissues' this is the only one that is truly an essential purchase, considering that it's not really a proper reissue, but is instead a compilation of all the groups singles, the first time in fact they've ever been gathered up together on one release and holy moly, do they make for what is essentially a head spinning My Bloody Valentine double album. And again, fanatics most likely already have all these singles, but besides collecting them all together, there are also a handful of PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS!!! So even you completists, will need this too.
And again, like the other ones, if you're new to MBV, probably Loveless is the one to get first, but an argument could definitely be made for this collection, which gathers up these ep's: You Made Me Realize, Feed Me With Your Kiss, Glider, Tremolo, and tacks on two tracks from the Isn't Anything bonus 7", a 1991 single B side, a track from a French pressing of the "Only Shallow" 7", and three previously unreleased songs!! Pretty exciting.
Fans are probably already sold, but again for folks who are new to MBV, these singles are some of the best tracks MBV ever recorded. "You Made Me Realize" might be one of our favorite songs EVERY, heavy and buzzy and super rocking, fans of Loop will flip their lids. And then "Slow", all woozy and slowcore dreamy, definitely predicting the sound of Medicine, and the Swirlies and loads of others. "Feed Me With Your Kiss" sounds like Sonic Youth via MBV, all dense guitar buzz and intertwined boy/girl vox, and wild chaotic drumming, total shoegaze noiserock. "Glider" is all shimmering swirling psychedelic freakout, barely even a song, more a tripped out sonic experiment, that somehow manages to be crazy catchy, and reminds us a LOT of Teenage Filmstars. "To Here Knows When" is a blurred big of hazy dreampop shimmer, and there's so many more. And then the previously unreleased tracks, are surprisingly good, on the heavier rocking side, hard to believe these are the songs the band chose NOT to release, when most bands would have killed for any of em!!
Needless to say, absolutely essential for fans, new AND old, and of all these reissues, the one that has been getting the most play. Housed in a gatefold mini lp style sleeve.
During the two years between their first recordings in 1985 and the series of singles for Lazy records, My Bloody Valentine had blossomed from a second rate swamp-rock group into a charming Brit-Pop ensemble, poised to unleash their crushingly beautiful
Unlike the disappointing debut recordings of "This Is Your Bloody Valentine" which exists only for completists, "Ecstacy and Wine" is an excellent album that should definitely have a home next to your other My Bloody Valentine records!
As we recently listed My Bloody Valentine's hard to find collection "Ecstacy and Wine" as well as their masterpiece "Loveless," it's about time that we got "Isn't Anything" into the Aquarius Records archives.
I seem to remember an odd anecdote about the recording process of this album, that it was recorded somewhere in the outskirts of their native Dublin near a sheep farm and the band ended up crashing at the studio throughout the entire recording session. Yet, their sleep patterns were constantly interrupted by the incessant bleating of those sheep, and the collective insomnia contributed to the lethargy and torpor found within "Isn't Anything." Of course, I've been unable to verify this story with anything factual, but this album sure does sound sleepy, mostly sliding towards the realm of deep slumber, but occasionally hopped-up on punchy sleep-deprived nerves.
In the name of revisionist history, "Isn't Anything" stands as the transition album between the gilded jangle of "Ecstacy and Wine" and the radioluminescence of "Loveless." My Bloody Valentine had begun to bury much of their emulation of '60s psychedelic pop in Sonic Youth mack-truck riffage and intertwining guitar haze that upstages the Velvet Underground strum-as-drone. Tracks like "Feed Me With Your Kiss" and "Sueisfine" thickly blur the sad lullaby vocals from Kevin Shields and Bilinda Butcher through overblown bass distortion and strangely uptempo rhythms. Yet, My Bloody Valentine will instantly glide out of these into the shoegazing drone-pop of something like "Lose My Breath" with its tone bending extended chords and lack of pronounced rhythms. Only a couple of the songs on "Isn't Anything" are as memorable as those found on "Loveless," but there are plenty of swirling dreamy-pop songs that make this album a treat for shoegazing fans!
We just realised that this record, one of AQ unanimous all time favorites, never got listed on the website OR the AQ list. And while most of you may already have this, a few of you are in for a big surprise and a musical awakening. "Loveless" stands at the
That track along with the equally groovy-yet-dreamy "Glider" ep had been the basis for Simon Reynolds curious thesis that My Bloody Valentine had produced some of the earliest jungle tracks. More plausible was that MBV were one of the first rock bands to actively incorporate sampling into their production techniques. My Bloody Valentine had resampled their guitar feedback digitally to created strangely warbling layers of sound and allow for additional tools to build their bittersweet, melancholic melodies. "Loveless" may remain the final testament to the musical prowess of My Bloody Valentine, as Kevin Shields continues to state the claim that another album is in the works... well it's been in the works for over a decade and has no signs of ever being realized. Nevertheless, this album *still* sounds totally fresh and wholly superior to all of the bands that have attempted to revive the My Bloody Valentine sound (Lilys, Swirlies, Flying Saucer Attack, Third Eye Foundation, Fennesz, Chessie, etc, etc, etc).
Perhaps our opinion best stated by former Aquarian Marc Kate: "If you don't own it, I won't be mad, but you will certainly earn my pity." An earthshattering record. Period.
There will be some of you who will not heed this review and pick this up simply because this may in fact be the earliest documentation of My Bloody Valentine. At this time in 1984, Kevin Shields' project consisted of an entirely different line-up than
So, it only took twenty-two years? It's a little hard to believe that this album is actually finally here, and not at the bottom of some Irish loch as was rumored to be the fate of some tracks recorded in the mid '90s. But here it is, the follow-up album to My Bloody Valentine's iconic, legendary Loveless. No doubt, you've already read a review or two of mbv, which was initially being sold directly from the band's website and is only now being made available in the shops; and we probably won't sway too far from the prevailing opinions that most seem to have about MBV '13. Yeah, this is definitely My Bloody Valentine, and it's really fucking great to hear another album from the band; but no, it doesn't compare to Loveless. The latter statement isn't fair, as very few records are on par with Loveless; but so many people (we definitely count ourselves amongst those) have been waiting with various degrees of patience for Kevin Shields and company to finally finish something. And here it is.
The album opens with a heavily fuzzed-out, dream-pop number in "She Found Now" with Bilinda Butcher taking up the cooing vocalizations that drift along with Shields bending the whammy bar on his languid, magenta guitar notes. "Only Tomorrow" and "If I Am" are tracks that really do date themselves (favorably, of course!) back to the early '90s again with Bilinda singing to a hip-swaying backbeat and shoegazed guitar melodies that could have graced albums by the more astute MBV acolytes (e.g. The Lilies, Medicine, Lush, etc.). "Who Sees You" is probably about as close to a track from Loveless as you'll get on mbv, but it's more of a the narcotic swarm of sound as opposed to those huge noise-pop singles in "Soon" and "Only Shallow." At the album's conclusion, My Bloody Valentine takes a huge swing into some serious damaged sonic weirdness with "Wonder 2" - which had aQ-ers divided (Jim thought it was a big 'miss', Andee thought it might be his favorite track here, reminding him of MBV style weirdos Teenage Filmstars) - it's clearly a response to Simon Reynolds' long standing argument linking My Bloody Valentine to the birth of jungle / drum 'n' bass. The skittering breakbeat is there; but the song itself with its atonal chunks of sampled guitar noise, that had us thinking it was the sound of a truck driving by outside, seems wholly unrelated to the rhythm and while some here found it forced others found it fractured and blissfully fucked up. That said, mbv is totally worth getting, and diving into, but the big question remains, why the hell did it take so long?
The vinyl edition of mbv includes a cd of the record as well! Oh and sorry it's not cheaper, but we imagine Kevin Shields wants to make the most of / from this release! Plus it's of course an import.
Two new lps from UK label Trensmat this week. The latest from Astral Social Club can be found elsewhere on this week's list, and then there's this one right here, the latest from Italo-outsider-alien-folk-psych siblings My Cat Is An Alien, aka Roberto and Maurizo Opalio. Sadly, MCIAA is one of those bands who for a while churned out so many releases it got difficult to keep up, and at some point it seemed like lots of folks reached a definite saturation point. Thankfully now it's been just long enough, that a new My Cat Is An Alien record is actually kind of exciting, and listening to Alien, All Too Alien, it's easy to see, why, for a while there, so many folks were sort of obsessed. Two sidelong sprawls of freeform outrock dronefolk splatter, tons of space, the percussion skittery and skeletal, disembodied tangles of atonal guitar twang, wheezing harmonica, it's almost like a psych folk Dead C, which is not a bad thing at all. The harmonica oozes and blurs into sheets of keening high end thrum, which is soon joined by some low end buzz, what sounds like some sampled birdsong, mysterious falsetto vocals, building to a woozy, detuned Jandekian dirge, before everything splinters into a dizzying squall of tangled loops and swirling FX. The flipside seems to take up right where the A side leaves off, two halves of a single near 40 minute epic, lilting guitars over a bed of gnarled buzz and undulating textures, some seriously mesmerizing drone-folk, which seems to splinter into something way more abstract, ultimately landing closer to a sound that reminds us of a campfire No Neck Blues Band, the harmonica returns, as do weird distant drums, a slow motion tribal creep, that is soon subsumed by thick swaths of industrial buzz, and wreathed in squiggly effects and spaced out sonic streaks, while the drums lock into something darkly propulsive, a minimal softly noisy hypnorock coda, that we sort of wished would have spilled over onto a third side, or heck, even a fourth.
Like all Trensmat releases, this is SUPER LIMITED, already out of print at the label. We will most likely be able to get more, but probably best to grab one before they're gone for good. Includes a link to a download of the lp tracks.
This newest release from the curiously monickered Italian duo My Cat Is An Alien comes courtesy of local label Starlight Furniture and continues their skewed trajectory of deconstructed outer space blues and scraping drone-y minimalism utilising a wild array of poper and toy instruments. Il Segno is a two part epic, with the first part the more subdued, with the buzzing of long wires, like a slowed down sitar, under mumbled Italian spoken word, creating a dreamy, drawly, syrupy soundscape. Near the end of part one, things pick up a little with the introduction of crackling, scraping, feedback and what sounds like distant peeling sirens. Part Two is like outerspace Jandek, a minimal, deconstructed blues jam (if something this lugubrious and hazy can be called a 'jam'), just heavily reverbed, plucked guitars notes, hanging effortlessly in the ether, while scattered percussion drift by like shooting stars, with the occasional supernova of cascading cymbal wash, all partially obscured by distant Skullflowery skree, tinkling chimes and warm moaning drones.
This band is much better than their horrible name would imply. My Cat Is An Alien is the delicate avant-rock project of the Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who have garnered a considerable amount of respect from Sonic Youth. So much so that MCIAA has opened for SY on a number of recent Italian gigs, jammed with Kim Gordon during one of those tours, and got this album released through Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. The brothers open their album very quietly with quiet Slint / Tarentel guitar chords and lots of silence between the repeated stanzas. Equally spartan blurts of synthetic 8-bit noise emerge in congress with the guitars, eventually doubling up with a time-stretched / down-pitched reflection of itself. All of this very slowly gets smeared into a spiralling pattern of cosmic delay and tape-loop mechanisms. This track (or movement as MCIAA calls it) takes up all of side one, and is worth the prices of admission alone. The rest of the album is a bit of a turn downhill. Side two tumbles through a passage of lo-fi noise, sounding like a hand-cranked cheese grater being amplified with an occasional John Fahey-esque splutter behind it all. This lp had originally been released as a CD-R / demo before it was sent to Thurston Moore. The other LP is a one-sided affair with the band spitting out spastic sort-of-no-wave.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It seems sort of weird to love My Dad Is Dad and not love Husker Du. The sound is similar, the voice is uncanny, even the melodies bear a striking resemblance to the 'Du. But there's something about Mark Edwards and his long running project that resonates in a way Husker Du never did for me. And the magic ingredient is... misery. Absolute, abject hopelessness. From the band name, to Edwards' impetus for starting the band, to the lyrics, it's all just so bleak and sad. But it's the sound, the song structure, the way the minor key jangle and strangely tangled guitar lines intertwine with Edwards' plaintive whine. It's almost like a Husker Du 45 at 33. The tempos rarely exceed a sort of shuffling lope, and more often than not songs trudge along head bowed hands in pockets, with a world weariness that is absolutely compelling. But even when the tempo does crank up, it's not so much 'fast' or 'punky' as it is a kind of careening out of control toward the inevitable fall, be it disappointment or death. This is most definitely indie rock, guitars jangle, bass throbs, drums crash and bang, but here, that usually sunshiney jangle, is rife with mournful miserablism, and each song a dark and doomy indie rock road map of broken promises, unfulfilled fantasies and dashed dreams.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
After a long wait comes one of Mark Edwards' best records in years!
Now in stock on compact disc, too! The first we'd heard from Australia's My Disco was on their split 7" with Young Widows, their track a killer slab of dour post punk noise rock, all lope and chug and minor key guitars, which is how Little Joy starts out, all clanging riffage, low slung bass, simple propulsive drumming, mantra like vocals, a bit like a dronier spacier Interpol maybe, their sound repetitive and cyclical, peppered with jagged shards of caustic guitar crunch. But it's on the second track, "Young", where the band's unique sound really gets to blossom, after another opening blast of minor key post rock, with cascading This Heat like guitars, and pounding motorik drumming, the band eventually slip into something way more rhythmic and sinewy and mesmerizing, sounding almost like a punk rock Necks, the band unfurling an epic sprawl of minimal hypnorock, the instrumentation super restrained, more about the rhythm, and the timbre, then the melody, the sound at once heavy, rhythmic and hypnotic, reminding us of a way more abstract Circle, locked tight, peppering the looped groove with little flurries of extra drumming, super subtle bits of melodic filligree, but for the most part holding the listener in thrall with their trancelike mastery of tension and NO release. Which is how the whole record plays out, a push and pull between more traditional sounding post punk jangle and clang, and totally mesmeringly minimal droned out repetition, either on their own would certainly be pleasing enough, but the two combined, create something much more that the sum of it's parts, the rare sort of record that should appeal as much to math rockers as post punkers, or to krautrockers as much as pop kids. So good.
The first we'd heard from Australia's My Disco was on their split 7" with Young Widows, their track a killer slab of dour post punk noise rock, all lope and chug and minor key guitars, which is how Little Joy starts out, all clanging riffage, low slung bass, simple propulsive drumming, mantra like vocals, a bit like a dronier spacier Interpol maybe, their sound repetitive and cyclical, peppered with jagged shards of caustic guitar crunch. But it's on the second track, "Young", where the band's unique sound really gets to blossom, after another opening blast of minor key post rock, with cascading This Heat like guitars, and pounding motorik drumming, the band eventually slip into something way more rhythmic and sinewy and mesmerizing, sounding almost like a punk rock Necks, the band unfurling an epic sprawl of minimal hypnorock, the instrumentation super restrained, more about the rhythm, and the timbre, then the melody, the sound at once heavy, rhythmic and hypnotic, reminding us of a way more abstract Circle, locked tight, peppering the looped groove with little flurries of extra drumming, super subtle bits of melodic filigree, but for the most part holding the listener in thrall with their trancelike mastery of tension and NO release. Which is how the whole record plays out, a push and pull between more traditional sounding post punk jangle and clang, and totally mesmeringly minimal droned out repetition, either on their own would certainly be pleasing enough, but the two combined, create something much more that the sum of it's parts, the rare sort of record that should appeal as much to math rockers as post punkers, or to krautrockers as much as pop kids. So good.
(Not just on vinyl, cds coming back in soon...)
I, Sadie, am reviewing this record as a devout fan of goth music and soundtracks, who is not that knowledgeable or interested in metal. The name My Dying Bride intrigued me, and I find that their music does too -- the songs are long and gloomy, with beautiful
Two discs worth of scruffy, rootsy, bluesy country-rock from a Louisville, KY band led by the young-Neil-Young vocal stylings of Jim James. Often slow and meandering, these recordings reverberate with an echo-y, cavernous, old hall feel. Very atmospheric,
