Newly available on vinyl again, the 1983 second album from Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson's experimental collective Psychic TV after the demise of Throbbing Gristle remains one of our very favorite aural documents from the entire post-TG catalog. It almost reads as a companion piece to TG's 20 Jazz Funk Greats in that it invites unusually accessible chamber folk and pop tropes into their sound only to subversively twist them into something much more underlyingly sinister. Recorded using Zuccarelli Holophonic technology to create an atmospheric spatiality of near and faraway sounds (this is a headphones record if there ever was one!), the group was then able to record in some very unusual places like The Hellfire Club Caves (a notorious British site of aristocratic Satanic liturgies and hedonistic ritual) and take advantage of the systems 3D effect. The album's mixture of sweetness and light with ritual creep and foreboding is at once beautiful and deeply unsettling and on first listen it's hard to decipher what you are hearing and its mystery still beguiles 21 years later. We're invited in by the melancholy pastoral chamber pop of "The Orchids" with its vibraphone, guitar and oboe and Genesis' dueling vocals welcoming the morning light in innocent VU "Sunday Morning" fashion. But then the totality of the album swings from reverential to eldritchly mystical and from remotely animalistic to eerily brutal and back again mimicking the cycle of a day or a season as it moves between songs and strange far-off occultish musique concrete. There are lots of guest appearances both real and invoked. Monte Cazazza is heard reciting lyrics over the phone, and one can hear Jhonn Balance of Coil getting a tattoo. There is an angelic choirboy singing a Charles Manson song, and most notably on the track "White Nights", a sweet Christmas-y pop number is sung by Genesis (with doo-wop backing vocals, no less!) with lyrics creepily taken from Jim Jones final sermon at Jonestown. Throughout, bells intone, chants are muttered, a lot of acoustic exotic instruments are played with atmospheric intentions more than melodic ones. But the full power of the collective's brutal aural abilities culminates in the penultimate track - "In The Nursery" - which invokes fairytale symbolism and ritual and industrial soundscapes in a nightmarish blend of hellish terror. Essential listening!
Mister Pollard keeps on keepin' on... and on and on! Is there a word beyond "prolific"? His musical output is ceaseless! It's a neverending string of lo-lo-fi pop meanderings and dishevelled bizarre noisy shambles that's been peppered with some absolute winners as well as some stinkers. We've got two new ones in this month, Superman Was A Rocker (under his own name) and We've Moved (under the moniker Psycho And The Birds). Right now, we're leaning in favor of this one 'cause it's got more distinctly Pollardesque fuzzed out, catchy pop numbers. If you're gonna get your feet wet with this or any other Pollard release, you've gotta be prepared to accept the wheat with the chaff, the dreamily tuneful with the discordantly tuneless. Of course if you're already a Robert Pollard fan, you probably already own this! Heck, we often wonder why he doesn't just set up an Uncle Bob's cd of the month subscription club.
A throwback of sorts to the ritual esoterica of late 80s industrial culture, Psychonaut sets down trance inducing percussive tracks of tribal drums, Tibetan horns, and Crowleyian incantations not unlike the earliest Current 93 or ritual Psychic TV recordings.
Good lord. Our friend Ian Christe, author of Sound Of The Beast: The Complete Headbanging History Of Heavy Metal, happened to mention this band in passing in an email to us recently...something along the lines of, you're selling a lot of Psyopus, aren't you? Well we didn't want to admit to Ian that we didn't know what he was talking about, so we just went ahead and ordered this album figuring it must be something good. Well...that's fer sure. If you like ass-kicking ultra technical metalcore a la Dillinger Escape Plan, the kind of band that's got jazz chops and your head on the chopping block. And they're not just a technical tour-de-force, they actually have, y'know, songs. Freakin' impressive and insane... The drumming can only be described as "inhuman" while what the guitarists are doing is equally cracked. The kind of thing you'll play for friends just to see the expressions on their faces. Particularily if they're musicians. Obviously not for everybody, but if you're one of our prog/avant/metal customers, check this out!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The latest issue of England's finest journal of psychedelic rock. This time with Windy and Carl, Nikki Sudden, Hawkwind, Eyeless in Gaza, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and more. Comes with a cd featuring Doldrums, Sandra Bell, Nikki Sudden, Barbara Manning, Abunai, Lucky Bishops and more! If any of our UK customers are planning to attend Terrastock London at the end of this month, look for a cigarette-smoking Chinese American girl and that'll be our very own Windy. Please say hello!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally, a new issue of the Terrascope. A cool irridescent silver cover and articles about the Kinks, the Pins, Capt. Beefheart, Six Organs of Admittance, and more. Plus a free cd with: Wellwater Conspiracy, Deviants, Pins, Donovan's Brain, Help Yourself, and more.
Newest issue of the esteemed Ptolemaic Terrascope. Destroy All Monsters, The Golden Dawn, The Magic Band, Cerberus Shoal, Piano Magic, Mountain Goats, etc. Enclosed cd has Green Pajamas, Sharron Kraus, Comets on Fire, Davis Redford Triad.
Ah, happy day. Time to kick back with the thirty FIFTH fine issue of the Ptolemaic Terrascope. As always, lots between these covers, many narrow columns of text pertaining to psychedelic, folky, spacey sorts both old and new: Movietone, SF boys Tarentel, Jack Rose, Steve MacKay, In Gowan Ring, Sharon Kraus, Nick Nicely and much more. Plus reviews galore, interestin' ads even, and let's not forget the bonus cd compilation, this time, with several of the aforementioned plus Bevis Frond (natch), Green Pajamas, The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden, and others!
Yay! Ptolemaic Terrascope is back! The newest incarnation of this venerable fanzine (or "illustrated occasional") devoted to the underground folk, psych, and otherwise acid-laced, pagan, pastoral musics of the past and present is published right here in the Bay Area, and thus there's a bit more of a San Fran bent to this issue, with a cover pic featuring quite a few faces we recognize both as musicians and as customers here at Aquarius.
Taking over the reigns from the UK crew (Phil McMullen et. al.) who originated the Ptolemaic Terrascope institution back in the '80s (more than a 'zine, PT has spawned a series of "Terrastock" festivals and helped nurture a whole scene of Terrastockian bands and fans, y'know), is new editor/publisher Pat Thomas, a longtime PT writer, reissue record label guy, and musician himself.
Yes, we'd say Pat's off to a good start with this issue, just look at it: it's got a glossy, full-color cover and perfect binding, a first for the PT. More importantly, what's inside lives up to the PT tradition: interviews with the likes of Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, Vashti Bunyan, Colleen, Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), and Ron Ashton (The Stooges), amongst much else. Also Devendra Banhart is subjected to a blindfold test on British Folk Rock, a la The Wire's "Invisible Jukebox" feature. And there's lots of reviews of course too. Former editor Phil McMullen also makes an appearance, with a column offering his blessings to Pat and talking about what he's up to now himself (including preparing for the upcoming Terrastock 7, to be held in Louisville, KY in 2008).
Oh, and that's not all, you also get a free 20 song cd compilation with rare and/or unreleased material from the likes of Six Organs, Barbara Manning, Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, Kendra Smith, Doug Yule, Fern Knight, Steve Wynn, Ruthann Friedmann, Sean Smith, Colossal Yes, Pat Thomas, and more!
This is a limited edition reissue of the epochal 2nd album by Public Image Limited, with the CD housed in a small metal film cannister, replicating the original 3LP set which earned the album's name.
Here's what we wrote about this earlier:
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of Nevermind The Bollocks at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled Metal Box garnered an equally self-evident title Second Edition. As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. Second Edition opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in Albatross which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around Second Edition is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force Nevermind The Bollocks was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of "Nevermind The Bollocks" at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of "Nevermind The Bollocks" from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled "Metal Box" garnered an equally self-evident title "Second Edition." As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. "Second Edition" opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in "Albatross" which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around "Second Edition" is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force "Nevermind The Bollocks" was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
As an aside, it was a huge curatorial mistake for Soul Jazz to leave Public Image Limited off of their "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm" compilation, as PiL fits into Soul Jazz's ideology for the project better than anybody else on the record. Thus, "Second Edition" is highly recommended (if not required) for anyone who was into that compilation.
NOW AVAILABLE AGAIN AS A REPRODUCTION OF THE ORIGINAL DELUXE 3LP METAL FILM CANISTER SET WHICH EARNED THE ALBUM'S NAME!!!
Here's what we wrote about this earlier:
It's a piece of history that none of the current staff were old enough to remember, yet nostalgic fragments about the initial arrival of Nevermind The Bollocks at Aquarius Records back in 1977 occasionally emerge from conversations with our old school customers. By now it's probably as factual as any urban mythology; but as it makes for such a great story, I'm much more inclined to believe it than what may have really happened. With record distribution back in 1977 even less streamlined than it is today, Aquarius resorted to using an importer to ship copies of Nevermind The Bollocks from England. The import company in question did not have a direct route into San Francisco from London, and thus had to drive the boxes up from Los Angeles. This shipping detour gave Aquarius the opportunity to throw a big party in anticipation of the album's arrival, with attendants rumored to include Crime and the Residents (in full Eyeball costumes squeezing within the confines of Aquarius' then Castro Street location). To heighten the suspense, Aquarius had arranged with the driver of the truck to call up the store every 30 minutes or so to let everybody know his progress up the I-5: "Just passed Bakersfield." "Made it through Coalinga." "Yup, I'm in Tracy."
Yet, I feel the story could end with the truck crashing somewhere near Pleasanton, as I've never felt that The Sex Pistols' music lived up to their massive cultural cache and spectacular publicity stunts. John Lydon's uncomfortable fixed stare, sneered cultural heresies, and theatrical madness (which, in fact, was lifted from Richard Burton's performances as King Lear) always appeared to be destined for greater things than the Pistol's musically thuggish simplicity. Within The Sex Pistols, John Lydon had control over the Pistol's syntax, spewing threats against royalty and decent society at large; but there was little room (and even less ability) to explore the far more challenging proposition of igniting the sound of Lee Perry and Can with the powderkeg of punk. Internal politics and Malcolm McLaren aside, Rotten needed to form Public Image Limited.
Flanked by Keith Levene on guitar and Jah Wobble on bass, Lydon began PiL with two perfectly complementary musicians to pursue his aesthetic goals, as Levene's spindly shards of metallic guitar splatter acted as the textural counterpoint to the rhythmic centrality of Wobble's low-slung dub basslines. While this line-up inevitably imploded (and with it the success of Public Image Limited), the Lydon / Levene / Wobble core for PiL reached its creative apex during their second album, originally released back in 1979 as a 3LP housed in a metal film container. PiL's second, more economical pressing of the self-evidently titled Metal Box garnered an equally self-evident title Second Edition. As a whole, this album hasn't easily been upstaged in its synthesis of dub production techniques, stealthy disco grooves, and punk antagonism bathed in Situationist critique. Second Edition opens with Wobble's huge rolling bass in Albatross which finds Lydon straining to sing with a swooping baritone to match the song's unwavering plod. Yet Lydon's viperous snarl returns for the rest of the album, which picks up the pace considerably in building their signature 'death disco' sound. All around Second Edition is an unnerving, complex album that was never the cultural force Nevermind The Bollocks was but is clearly the artistic masterpiece in Lydon's career and one of the quintessential post-punk albums.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
"Hello! Hello? HELLO!" Bellows one John Lydon as if tapping on a microphone to check if it's on. Here, the former Sex Pistol began his career as the frontman and only constant in Public Image Limited, whose first two (and arguably, three) albums remain some of the most adventurous post-punk records ever produced. The reasons for the Sex Pistols demise were numerous and often contradictory depending on who's misremembered history you might want to consider, but Lydon (no longer Johnny Rotten) cited Sid Vicious' musical ineptitude on the bass as one such reason. That said, he pinned his hope for Public Image Limited's success on recruiting his old friend John Wardle to learn how to play the bass as they went. This gambit actually proved quite successful, as Wardle was a quick study, easily adapting basslines from dub and krautrock and christening himself with the stage name Jah Wobble. His deep and dubby basslines overlaid with Lydon's caterwauling vocals and squalid rants laid the foundation for the quintessential PiL sound, fleshed out by the spidery guitar of Keith Levene, whom Lydon nicked from The Clash. The first of countless PiL drummers was Jim Walker, who only appeared on this first album. PiL slowly introduces the more adventurous sounds over the course of the album, launching first into the incendiary bass-driven punk single "Public Image" which was a song that Lydon penned back with the Pistols. But through the uber-Spartan tracks in "Fodderstompf" and "Religion," PiL's trajectory towards death-disco and dub-punk was set. The full scope of Public Image Limited wouldn't be evident until the second album Metal Box, but so many of those ideas of dub techniques, atonal vocals, studio tricknology, and cross-pollination of styles are found on First Issue, which makes this an essential purchase.
Light In The Attic states that this edition is actually the first American version of this album, with all of the other editions hailing from overseas. The first disc is the proper album in its entirety, with the second disc sporting the rare b-side "Cowboy Song" and an hour-long BBC interview.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Here's the record that was never released on account of the Manson murders! (More on that in a second.) This double cd contains all the recordings of Public Nuisance, an obscure (but pretty great) teenage garage/psych band that got together in Sacramento circa 1964. As befits their punky name, they looked like a bunch of hoods, decked out in all-black outfits, with two of 'em sporting proto-Ramones style long hair. That, plus the fact that we read they were like an American version of the wild and crazy English freakbeat bands, piqued our curiosity big time. Supposedly, also, they were as "heavy as the Stooges". The truth is, that's a bit of a stretch. Some of this *is* at least heavier than, if not the Stooges, the Stones, but they do a lot of lighter, Beatles-y stuff too. They perform a nice cover of the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" in fact. So they were as much a pop-psych band as they were a down and dirty garage combo. On the other hand, their song "Love Is A Feeling" sounds EXACTLY like the White Stripes! The 28 tracks here actually cover quite a wide spectrum of sounds from sweet, harpsichord and theremin laced pop to raw, primal R&B stomp w/ plenty o' fuzz. This collection mainly consists of 1969 sessions recorded for an LP that never came out 'cause their label was owned by Terry Melcher, the guy who also owned the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate! After the murders, Melcher, afraid for his life, went into hiding and his label folded... But now, decades later, here are those unreleased sessions plus some rare singles tracks recorded under the band's earlier moniker Moss & The Rocks. Maybe a single-disc "best of" would have been more uniformly killer, and cheaper, but we can't really argue with getting to hear it all. The super thick, colorful, photo-filled cd booklet is full of essays written by Mike "Ugly Things" Stax, Clark Faville, and others -- including notes about each and every song!
Definitely something for fans of the Seeds, Stones, Creation, and "Nuggets" stuff in general to check out. Even if they're not quite the "unknown Stooges" we'd hoped for, Public Nuisance are pretty cool.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest blast of blown out heavy psych guitar grime from this oddly named Ohio outfit, and like the records before it, this is some gloriously filthy in the red noise rock crush, equal parts Stooges-y sludge, droned out heart-of-the-sun Hawkwind heaviness, and slithery leather pants-ed, bong smoke-y swagger, a bass driven dirgery that erupts into wild squalls of wah guitar blowout and feedback fried freakout. For fans of the current crop of psych/space rock, these guys are like a dirtier, scarier, grimier, noisier version of all those other bands, which some might argue also makes them BETTER. And while they sound right at home on Hozac, it's easy to understand why they sometimes also call Siltbreeze home, that aesthetic is definitely all over 1982, a continuous barrage of crumbling in-the-red riffage, avalanches of chaotic drum damage, wild shredding leads, buried feral vox, a million tangled melodies woven into walls of blown out psych, and buried underneath all that there seems to be a whole mess of hooks, and heck, maybe even some 'choruses', but instead of hunting for them, it's way better to just crank this as loud as you can, and let PA's psychedelic skree wash over you, wallow in their wild wooly psychedelic noise rock, and eventually, all of that other stuff will seep into your pores, like some glorious sonic poison.
Another blast of Stooges-via-AmRep noise rock snarl and swagger from these Ohio heavies, and like their Siltbreeze full length, they kick up a seriously dense noisepop din, the vox slathered in distortion, the riffs blown the fuck out, the drums a buried barely there pound, tons of effects, lo-fi, but still in the red and LOUD, the A side has a killer dubbed out / tripped out chorus, that sends the vocals careening through clouds of buzz and crunch, and there are even some wildly skronk horns in the mix.
The flipside takes the same sound, and slows it down, turning it into a serious slab of noisy sludgey pummel, chugging and churning, a blurred, buzzy, druggy dirge that hides a pretty kick ass hook, which leads right into the brief instrumental closer, a short sharp chunk of fuzzy garage punk jangle, all wrapped up in squiggly psychedelic leads, atonal and angular, noisy and chaotic, but still jangly and poppy and weirdly catchy. Super rad!
What's in a name? Well, with Puffy Areolas, pretty much everything. Or nothing. All we know is a google search offers up many interesting results, very few of them related to the band. Regardless, it's definitely an attention grabber. We missed them at South By Southwest, but listening to this now, we are kicking ourselves big time. These noiseniks from Ohio sound right at home on Siltbreeze, a sort of fiery feral punk infused with just the right amount of in-the-red noise, and chaotic about to collapse heavy rock, maybe if the Stooges existed now, and were signed to Amphetamine Reptile, the PA's offer up a crowd baiting explosion of noise punk, wild riffing buried in a sea of reverb and distortion, the drums a barely there chaotic crash and crunch, the vocals a wild yowl, frantic and frenetic, pounding and propulsive, this is the sort of record that just oozes sweat and blood and stale beer and cigarette butts, and invokes the sort of next day bruised and battered hangover that there shows must produce in spades. Not sure what else to say, if you like it heavy and noisy and chaotic, you probably can't do much better than the Puffy Areolas.
Comes with a download code so the damage can be digital as well. Fuck yeah.
Originally a special Record Store Day release, now sold out and out of print, we managed to get an extra little handful of these (we're talking 5 or 6) so if you were kicking yourself for missing out, grab one of these quick before they are really gone for good.
Puffy Areolas unfurl a slow burning sprawl of flanged psychedelic guitar riffage, and growled distant vox, into a strange bit of droned out strum and jangle, buried drums, fractured electronics and warped effects, wild wah guitars, all wound into a spaced out drift that ruptures a few minutes in and becomes a frantic space drone drugrock pound, the guitars swirling and whirling, the drums pounding, all tangled into a glorious and explosive bit of psychedelic space rock freakout, that wouldn't sound all that out of place on a record by White Hills or The Heads, endless wild riffing and soloing, over loose chaotic drumming, and clouds of constantly shifting effects, seriously druggy and damaged and divine.
Purling Hiss counter with some swaggery Stooges-y garage rock stomp, snarly vox over some sludgey fuzzy riffing, and some awesomely tweaked leads, infusing that Stooges-y swagger with the classic rock/power pop vibe that made us dig these guys so much in the first place, the result something much more dirgey and noisy, the track laced with falsetto vox, and layer after layer of noodly guitars, until the track shifts gears, and the band slip into an almost Aerosmithy style groove, which swaggers and slithers and unwinds woozily through clouds of psych guitar swirl as the track gradually fades out...
And as we mentioned above, crazy limited, as in THESE ARE THE VERY LAST COPIES WE'LL EVER BE ABLE TO GET!!
Do you like some acid sprinkled into your sun soaked psychedelic G-rated children's television shows, well, what if we added even MORE acid it and made it into a movie... well, then Sid & Marty Krofft were for sure your pushers. The big screen spinoff of HR Pufnstuf, these songs were a crucial part of creating the overall over-the-top fantastical and colorful world of the characters of Pufnstuf. A couple lists back we revelled in there finally being a domestic release of The Bugaloos cd and we gotta say we're rejoicing in just the same drink the crazy kool-aid way for these sounds from Sid & Marty Kroft's other druggy, deliriously metaphor filled, bizarre and bright colored daydream for kids with some winking nods to their parents watching along. With a great weird cast of characters including Mama Cass as Witch Hazel, we wish all family entertainment was this bizarre and jam packed with imagination and pleasure. We're still waiting for folks like The Polyphonic Spree or some Elephant 6 tinged groups like Olivia Tremor Control or Of Montreal to fully embrace our television childhoods and carry the torch of Pufnstuff, the Bugaloos and all of our druggy friends for a new generation of kids to trip out too. So fun and dazzling!
Did metalheads always like baseball? Or is that a more recent thing? Didn't jocks used to fight heshers in the parking lots of 7-11's? Pretty sure they did. But now it seems like metal and sportsball are finding some sort of sweet spot where the two can exist peaceful, and even more than that, engender the same sort of over the top fanaticism. And we're continually discovering that more and more metalheads we know are also baseball nerds. Hell there's even a baseball column in metal mag Decibel now.
But these guys REALLY like baseball. Not to be confused with Pig Destroyer, Puig Destroyer is named presumably for some baseball player (yeah, we know, Yasiel Puig of the Dodgers), and features at least one dude from aQ faves Kowloon Walled City, as well as a dude from Curl Up And Die, and one guy from Thrice (??), but don't be expecting that pedigree to add up like normal band math, and aQ-ers, don't be expecting something that sounds like any sort of KWC noise rock slug and swagger, instead, PD traffic in short, sharp bursts of super distorted, blown out fastcore/grindcore, sub-1 minute bursts of punk-metal crush, super lo-fi and raw, tons of parts crammed into each of these super short tracks, the songs lurching from wild galloping thrash, to weirdly progged out chug and churn. Fierce and furious, and flecked with baseball samples... you don't have to dig baseball to like these guys, but it can't hurt!
Pressed on sweet blue and white swirl vinyl and presumably pretty goddamn limited.
Bundy K. Brown (Directions in Music, ex-Tortoise), Curtis Harvey (Come), Chris Brokaw (Rex), and Doug McCombs (Tortoise) follow Jim O'Rourke's lead of mimicking John Fahey's avant twang but none of the playfulness of either O'Rourke or Fahey.
Pullman is an acoustic quartet into "rustic soundscapes" that features members of such great bands as Tortoise, Rex, Brokeback, Directions in Music, and Come. Ok, we said they were an acoustic quartet, but actually on this new disc (their 2nd) they've gone
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The irrepressible Jarvis Cocker and co. have returned, but you just might wanna think about holding your celebratory cheers. Yes, Pulp has certainly gone through its share of ups and downs, starts and stops, and stylistic shifts since its inception in 1978,
Originally scheduled to be released earlier this year on Record Store Day, this was easily one of the most anticipated RSD releases, which now, just a few months late, is finally here! Avid aQ list readers probably don't need to know much more. After all, it's four different aQ faves spread out over two lps: Pulse Emitter, Peaking Lights, Date Palms and Faceplant (Aaron Coyne of Peaking Lights), each offering up a whole side of unreleased material.
But in case you do need a little more to go on� Pulse Emitter, aka Darryl Groetsch delivers two length drifts of celestial synthscapery, all new age raga shimmer, soft swirling swells, dreamy melodic cascades, all woozy and washed out, ethereal and abstract, laced with playful melodies and lush ever shifting textures. Date Palms deliver a sidelong slab of smoldering psychedelic minimalism, one that starts out deep and droney, but soon blossoms into something much more rhythmic, a super skeletal sprawl of krautrock like mesmer, driving by a spare programmed rhythm and a thick buzzing bassline, wreathed in sitar like buzz, the vibe laid back and swoonsome, with just a hint of sinister malevolence, the perfect soundtrack for endless highways through darkened deserts, with the various elements gradually growing more and more dubbed out before slipping into a final stretch of hushed mesmer.
Expo 70 starts their side off with some Sabbath like riffage, low slung and swaggery, and then the drums kick in, and we're in full on metal territory, classic old school doom, who knew they had it in them? Sure they flirted with it in the past, but here they go for it. The heavy riffing and caveman drum pound is laced with some more psychedelic breakdowns with killer sorta shredding leads, the sort of spaced out stoner rock jam that could go on forever, but here eventually winds down into an oozing sprawl of muted black buzz. The second track is more what we're used to from Expo 70, at least at first, a sort of brooding cosmic shimmer, thick layers of synth and guitar whirring and swirling beneath a cloud of shimmering soft focus FX, but soon the drums come in, the track ominously and malevolently krautrocky, before blossoming into full on psychedelic space rock blowout, a sky full of tangled leads, the drums pounding and propulsive, the bassline woozy and fuzzy and darkly driving. Another mega jam that needs no terminus, but before it's cut off by running out of vinyl, the drums drift off, leaving just the guitar again to slowly fade out.
Faceplant's side opens with a cosmic disco version of Coynes' Peaking Lights, all dubbed out and psychedelic, but seriously groovy, and darkly funky, squelchy synths, spacey shimmer, plenty of reverb and echo, squiggly synth melodies everywhere, total retro-futuristic dubfunk grooviness. The second track is much more murky and laid back, sounding like a way more psychedelic and tripped out Muslimgauze, lurching rhythms, beneath a sky full of effects heavy swirl, more synth pulsations and an almost housey throb buried underneath, before finishing things off with a track that finds Coynes doing his best Carpenter / Goblin style synthscaping, a warped VHS soundtrack dipped in dub and sent spaceward, heady and hypnotic.
Killer stuff from all four groups. And as you might have imagined, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Includes a download coupon as well.
On the same label that brought us the beautiful, minimal postrock of Icebreaker comes this disc of free-floating ambience and fragments of melody. A amniotic/cosmic record that will appeal to fans of Eno, and would fit perfectly in the Kranky-label's stable of drone artists...
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations -- while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
We've been BIG fans of New Zealand's Stefan Neville and his his lo-fi project Pumice for a long, long time, always wowed by his knack for weaving together both the NZ indie pop and NZ noise rock traditions so darn well. 2008's Quo was a Record Of The Week, and this new one is only his 2nd proper full length since then, and we love it too!! You could read our rave about Quo (referencing everything from Pavement to Polvo, from GBV to Beefheart) to get an idea about this man's brilliance, or just listen to this new record, which features, for the first time on a Pumice album, collaborative contributions from a bunch of guests (including folk/drone guitarist Matthew De Gennaro among others). Puddles is more rainy day moodiness from Pumice, distortion drenched yet delicate, with gentle jangle, sincere singing, wheezing pump organ and varied other instrumentation making for melodic AND noisy meandering down dreamy garden lanes and teeter-totter junk shops in our imaginations. (LP version includes download.)
Another great album from NZ's Pumice! Sorry we didn't write a review, but if we had, it would be a good one.
For the last 14 years, New Zealander Stefan Neville has been issuing a steady stream of cassettes, lathe-cuts, cd-rs, 7"s and other assorted slabs of mysterious small-run skronk under the Pumice moniker. Somehow through it all Neville has managed to find a comfortable spot nestled in between two very distinct strains of NZ music-making. At their heart, the songs he writes are pop songs obviously indebted to the legacy of Flying Nun, The Tall Dwarves and The Clean; that said, his willful disregard for fidelity, his love of tape hiss, wow and flutter, garbled vocals and blasts of harsh drone are a tip o' the hat to kiwi noiseniks like Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, and Antony Milton. It's a compelling combination, as it allows his records to be both densely textural and supremely melodic - for every piece of blown out headphone candy, there's a memorable vocal or frighteningly catchy guitar riff. It's this incredible tug-of-war between (as we put it in our review) "doleful drone" and "sheer pop umph" that made us flip out over the last Pumice full-length, Pebbles, and we're happy to report that Neville's latest, Quo, finds him refining the Pumice formula in all the best possible ways to create a record full of impish charms, slack anthems, rambling bedrooms hiss, and speaker fried drone assaults!
Quo opens with "Pumice Quo," a song that hints at what is to come on the rest of the album: fuzzed-out, atonal guitars klang and skree like some sort of netherworldly faux-sitar over a ragged, swinging stomp that effortlessly mutates back and forth with a breezy, expansive, half-time swagger. Rhythmically and structurally it's all angular and math-y but it never sounds cold or analytical - it's like some incredible mix of Doc At The Radar Station and Celebrate The New Dark Age where you can't tell if it's Beefheart covering Polvo or vice versa, but everything sounds perfectly fucked up and damaged but so inexplicably catchy at the same time. Likewise, "World with Worms," a creeping, rumbling, blown-out, billowing sea shanty that mixes Neville's signature, mannered (almost goth, really) vocals with a teetering melody pounded out on some sort of half-broken chord organ or accordion.
The first half of the record continues to cast a few different lines - "Fort" sounds like some sort of classic mid-'90s B-side pop anthem you'd expect from GBV or Boyracer buried under 10 feet of shrieking keyboard noise; "Thermos in the Studio" is a winsome bedroom pop instrumental that would sound right at home buried amongst the ruins of Pavement's Westing (By Musket and Sextant) with lyrical slide guitar melodies that are simple, gorgeous and over in an instant; "Pebbles" is 2 minutes of rambling, shuffling, ramshackle pop. However, everything starts to come together with the second half of the record, as "Whole Hoof" looks back to the Polvo/Beefheart battle royale of the album opener but this time ads layers of distorted howling vocals. It starts out like Simply Saucer plowing through some freaked out rockabilly jam but mutates into something completely creepy and sinister at the end.
The album's second half is incredibly strong and manages to focus the scattershot elements of the first half without sacrificing any of those songs' chimpy playfulness. There's a darker element that emerges, but it never overwhelms the whole proceedings. "Sick Bay Duvet" starts out like a lost Fahey side being played back on a broken down gramophone, all rumbling, twanging, echoing, and slightly out of tune. When drums, melodica and a low, throbbing drone finally kick in at the end, it changes into something completely different - a kind of dour, anti-anthem that leads perfectly next track, "Dogwater," whose warbling, garbled take on Blackheart Procession's western goth vibe manages to come as both tongue-in-cheek and gracefully mannered. Things get stronger still with the last three songs: "Heavy Punter" is a solemn funeral shuffle built around a fractured Beefheart/Polvo riff filled out by ghostly keyboards that woosh and drone in and out of the background and fantastic, layered, pseudo-goth vocal stylings; "Battersby" is almost like Pumice's stab at punk rock with Casio tweeters battling against four on the floor drums and stumbling, disaffected vocals that wouldn't sound out of place on a Fall record (the whole thing comes across like some weird mashup of a NZ cd-r salvo and something off of a Messthetics comp - bizarrely catchy and certainly one of our favorites!); and album ender "Beak Remedy" is 7 minutes of blissed out, see-saw chord organ drone, ghostly tape loops, fluttering, stuttering ambient flickers of feedback, hum and hiss with percussive clomps that sneak in toward the end until the whole thing trickles out with choppy puffs of feedback and static.
All this adds up to a brilliant mix of pop songwriting and freaked out fuzzmongering that has been perking the ears of both customers and staff since it first arrived. We're confident that Quo is going to show up on many of our year end best-of lists, and we think you'll feel the same way about this blissed-out, smashed to pieces, melodic, thoughtful, mannered, playful and thoroughly recommended record!
Underground NZ drone pop from Stephan Neville, veteran of many a cassette and cd-r release. Some really nice moments, particularily in its second half. But we'd wouldn't put it in the front rank of Pumice releases 'cause it suffers a bit from being too acoustic-y in parts (we like the thick, distorted stuff instead) which tends to put too much stress on his singing, which isn't perhaps his strong suit. Fans certainly should check it out though.
Not sure how we managed to miss these guys up until now. They're from right here in SF, and this is their third full length (we've heard exactly ONE of their 7"s), they totally kill, and they have maybe the fiercest female vocalist we've ever heard. All this talk about Perfect Pussy, fuck that, Meghan from Punch might have the greatest punk rock voice we've heard in forever, a serious paint peeling caterwaul, and the band back her up with a potent mix of classic hardcore, old school punk rock, furious grind and some seriously metallic heft. A relentless chaotic frenzy that occasionally slips into straight forward punk rock pound, but just as often explodes into grinding metallic fury that is seriously some of the fiercest and most furious shit EVER. The production by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Joyce Manor, Whirr, etc.) only makes it that much meaner and HUGE sounding. It's 15 songs in about 18 minutes, the longest is 2:33, the shortest (the title track) a mere :05, but every track, even that brief sonic blip totally destroys, and the crazy thing, is it's catchy as fuck, with super melodic basslines, some seriously killer riffs, and some goddamn great songs. And when they slow it down, it's SO heavy, which is only further magnified when they explode into a part as fast and furious as the previous part was slow. Holy shit. We're gonna make it a point to track down all the other Punch records, and not miss a single show, cuz as good as these songs sound on record, we can only imagine how brutal and badass this stuff sounds live.
The Chicago issue. Mekons, underground hip hop crew Molemen, Homocore Chicago, Venus magazine, deathrow inmate Aaron Patterson, Tortoise, punk rock hot dog merchant Doug Sohn, low-income neighborhood organizer James Mumm, Bloodshot Records, The Dishes, DIY book your own big show.
We haven't really been consistent about listing this magazine on our website (it's more of an in-store purchase thing anyways) but thought we'd mention this one just to remind y'all that we carry it. And this ish might be of special interest 'cause it's Punk Planet's third ever special Art & Design issue, so in addition to the usual band interviews and music reviews and columns and ads and political stuff, you'll find features on a bunch of underground artists in the fields of fine arts, graphic design, fashion, tattoos, and even cartography. If you've ever wondered about, for instance, who did the cool art for Converge's Jane Doe album (that'd be band member Jacob Bannon), he's in here...along with others whose names you also might not recognize but whose art and design work chances are you've seen gracing some of your favorite punk/indie releases. Some names, nonetheless: Cat Chow, Andy Mueller, Tara McPherson, Crista Donner, Paul Booth, Joe Rush, and others. 160 artsy, attractive pages.
We've always been a huge fan of the band Lungfish. Practitioners of an uncompromising, and unrelenting sort of melodic and rhythmic minimalism. Each song a single groove, a riff, loping and repetitive, winding and swerving under vocalist Dan Higgs' distinctive wail. So it comes as no surprise that the Pupils are completely amazing as well, once you realise that the two Pupils are actually Higgs and Lungfish guitarist Asa Osborne. And the sound of this duo is appropriately intimate, like a stripped down, skeletal version of Lungfish, with Osborne's bulldozing riffs turned into delicate spidery, latticeworks of chiming notes and melodies, while simple drum machine rhythms plot out a steady course. Occasionally squalls of guitar feedback and squealing theremin whip things into a frenzy, but order is quickly restored as the relentless riffing and persistent rhythms march on resolutely. Higgs' vocals are keening and rich, sometimes dry as a bone, sometimes wrapped in layers of reverb or distortion, sometimes soaring, sometimes whispery and urgent, but always intense and super emotional, perfectly complemeting the insistent, unrelenting musical backdrop. Not a new release, but something we've been meaning to list for a while!
Sorry if you missed the recent instore with Austin's Silver Pines and Pure Ecstasy, because both bands were really amazing! We were especially impressed with Pure Ecstacy, of whom we only heard their first 7" (recently repressed!), which was really a grower for us. Cool and curious at first, but the more we listened to it, the more hooked in we got to it's lo-fi and dreamy vibe. Live, they really brought it, their songs a bit more uptempo than the recordings, but still spacious and reverbed out, like a mix of Beach Boys retro harmonies with the more pop jangle meets Crazy Horse side of those Tokyo Flashbackish bands like Doodles, Miminokoto or even LSD-March. And what a full sound they get from such an economic set-up, just three guys: a singer/guitar player, and a rhythm section pulled from two members of Silver Pines. Their new 7" contains two brand new tracks: "Easy", a slow and heavy-lidded ballad and "Baby", a more uptempo garage-pop number, and like the first 7" contains almost a third track, a breezy and dreamy refrain that we could listen to for much longer than it lasts.
Woodsist, Captured Tracks, Sacred Bones and/or Mexican Summer, get on this band quick!
Pure Ecstacy comes from the same home-grown Austin scene as Yellow Fever, Silent Land Time Machine and Smokey Emery, and includes members of Silver Pines. This is their first self-released 7" of lackadaisical lo-fi stoner rock, taking its time to unfurl through hypnotic washes of wah'd and delayed guitar and low-key vocals that slowly build, reminding us a bit of Ducktails on a breezy roadtrip through the American heartland. Only 50 copies of this 7" were made with hand assembled spraypainted covers. We only have a handful, may not get more, so you know the drill!
Along with the Sleep Over split, we managed to pick up a few copies of Pure Ecstasy's latest tape which shows off the bands more experimental side, a side we haven't seen as much on their pop singles. The bands slow motion grooves are in tact, but the overall effect is more collage-like, chopped in a blender style. Sometimes veering into hazy dub experimentations a la Sun Araw, or lo-fi distortion squalls, murmured voices, and pretty ambiance. Two ten minute sides. Super limited!
Just as the last two Pure Ecstasy 7"s (Easy and Future Nostalgia) went sadly out of print, we are fortunately blessed with this brand new single on the new-to-us Acephale label. "Voices" is the perfect lo-fi chillwave jam of the summer. Equally laidback and exuberant, a catchy love song that has a sort of eighties /sixties walking-with-my-girl-on-the-beach vibe to it, but covered in a fine layer of distorted wah'd guitar. The B-side, "Alexandria", is not so much of a song but an extended slow-jam, with loping bass, and strummed guitar accents with falsetto background vocals before the proper song meanders in, in typical dream pop fashion. We like how with so many bands trying to fit in fast pop and tight hooks to their garage-y sound, these guys just take their time and let the dreaminess and noise coalesce gradually like hazy smoke rings drifting across a shaft of light in a darkened room. Limited!
Welcome to dream pop heaven! The boys of Austin, TX trio Pure Ecstasy come together with their all-female equivalent Sleep Over (featuring Stephanie from Silver Pines) on this exquisite split single. We managed to get some of the last copies while they were both here on tour, so don't miss out on this one as once they're gone, they're gone!
The Pure Ecstasy track "Dream Over" is like Galaxie 500 on cough syrup, a super slow and hazy lament, waking up to the painful realization that your love is gone for good. The rhythm plods along with melancholic Beach Boys harmonies and distorted guitar swells panging with heartbreak and regret. These guys nail that sound so perfectly.
This is the first time we've heard all female trio, Sleep Over and hopefully it won't be the last. Two girl harmonies with organ, guitar, bass and drum machine, their track "Your World Is Night" is a blurry wash of woozy organ pop, hazy and pretty like Kate Bush on downers. So gooood!
We don't want to talk it up too much, because we only have a few of these. Amazing!
