Spacey, synth-based prog/psych from the early '70s (or whenever!) doesn't get much better than this. The trio Sensations' Fix captured something pretty special on their tripped out, ultra-underground sounding debut, originally released by Italian Polydor in 1974 and now reissued on vinyl for the first time, by local archival label Superior Viaduct. While it sounds like it could have been made in a synth-stuffed bunker in Berlin, or somewhere in the pastoral English countryside (outside, under the stars, towards the break of dawn), this was actually recorded in an suburban basement in the USA, on a 4-track, by an Italian musician, Franco Falsini (the composer, credited with "guitars and synthesizers"), and two Americans he recruited, Richard Ursillo ("bass guitars and electronic pedals") and Keith Edwards ("drums and percussion"). Though for much of this, Mr. Edwards sits out, as the mysterious floating electronics and blissful strum of Fragments Of Light are ofttimes purely ethereal, only occasionally lashed to propulsive beats, and even those are may be machine-made, with what sounds like live drumming on really only one of the tracks (however, he's apparently the guy that turned Falsini on to LSD, so he should get some musical credit for that).
Song titles include "Nuclear War In Your Brain", "Music Without Gravity", "Music Is Painting In The Air" and "Telepathic Children"; all seem quite appropriate, even the cryptic ones we don't understand. The drifty, druggy, echoing synthed-out weirdness of this, however, is balanced (or, rather, enhanced) by Falsini's knack for wonderful melodies, that's the key to this varied and delightful basement-recorded, often melancholic Minimoog fantasia.
As you may recall, last year we were super excited to highlight a Sensations' Fix anthology, Music Is Painting In The Air, put out by the RVNG label. We mentioned then how we've been longtime fans of this band's hard-to-find debut record, which we hoped hoped hoped would someday be reissued in its entirety (the anthology included just a few tracks from Fragments Of Light, in alternate versions). So, big ups to Superior Viaduct for making this happen. Man, we're not engineers so we wouldn't know about the superiority of their viaducts, but we do know the label's choice of records to reissue certainly is superior! Third aQuarius Record Of The Week this year already - Craig Leon, Devo, now Sensations' Fix! And, there's *another* great SV reish reviewed this list too, Heldon's Interface - and we also just got in their lp of the Solaris soundtrack, too!
In our review of the RVNG collection we said some stuff we may as well more-or-less repeat 'cause it applies here completely. SF's electronic-based driftworks have a quite lovely "pop" side to 'em too, sometimes - while mostly instrumental, a few tracks do have gentle, breathy Robert Wyatt-ish singing to go with the hazy, meandering, meditative atmospheres. It's definitely not the usual sort of quasi-operatic, over-the-top, classically influenced Italian prog that we're used to (and love), from bands like Il Balletto Di Bronzo, Le Orme, or Osanna, no. Also fairly far from the sinister soundtrack funk of Goblin. Sensations' Fix are different, having more in common with the kosmiche krautrock electronics of the era - such as Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Cluster, Popul Vuh, Michael Rother, Ashra, A.R. & Machines, and You (among others who came before and after). They also may have indeed been influenced by the Canterbury sound of bands like the Soft Machine, so one Italian prog act we could compare them to would be Picchio Dal Pozzo. We could also compare 'em to a kinder, gentler version of Richard Pinhas & Heldon, from France, with a similar futuristic comingling of synthesizer and effected guitar, for sure (and thus is makes sense Superior Viaduct would release this simultaneously with the aforementioned Heldon lp too). Also the Heldon comparison brings up another big influence - Robert Fripp. Indeed, this record bears the inscription: "Dear Robert, you'll be glad to know that the heavenly music organisation is here too", a reference to the track "The Heavenly Music Corporation" on the A side of Fripp & Eno's No Pussyfooting album from '73. Oh, and on the surprisingly sunshiney vocal track "Do You Love Me?", we get a bit of an early Yes vibe.
So, if you want to something to enjoy that's just sooooooo very cosmic and dreamy and melodic, this is highly recommended!!
Hurrah! We've long been waiting for the opportunity to list something by Italy's Sensations' Fix. A long time ago, we encountered their debut album Fragments Of Light (1974) and were immediately smitten (it also was a great "secret weapon" to use whenever we were called upon to DJ a set of vintage psych/prog music or what have you). But reissues of anything by this spacey synth-based '70s trio have been seemingly impossible to find. We were excited, however, not too long ago when the Emeralds-approved Spectrum Spools label added a vinyl reissue of the 1975 solo album by Sensations' Fix leader Franco Falsini to their catalog of amazing unearthed cosmic electronic artifacts. That record, Cold Nose, or Naso Fredo, we described (well, raved about) as a gorgeously cinematic longform take on psychedelic new age music, a spiralling composition of EMS and Moog washes and floating guitar lines that reminds us of krautrock legends Michael Rother and Manuel Gottsching, with stratospheric guitar leads over organically pulsating synth treatments, constantly shifting and shimmering. Sounds good right?
That brings us to this very welcome archival double cd (or triple lp) set released on the obscure electronics oriented RVNG label, featuring 30 tracks taken from Falsini's tape vaults, including several alternate mixes of material from Cold Nose, alongside alternate versions of songs that appeared on all five albums released by his band Sensations' Fix circa 1974-77. Plus a number of previously unreleased tracks from those recording sessions as well. Sensations' Fix and Falsini recorded everything in a home studio, on a TEAC 3340 4-track machine, so fortunately Falsini still has access to all these productions and was able to personally select and mix the tracks for this RVNG anthology release. Especially fortunate considering that apparent record label business BS has thus far prevented the individual, original Sensations' Fix albums themselves from coming out again under Falsini's guidance, though we can still hope for full reissues someday. Regardless, this is a wonderful and extensive sonic glimpse into the spacey output of Sensations' Fix, if occasionally therefore somewhat lo-fi.
The blissfulness of Cold Nose is too part of the Sensations' Fix sound, but also there's some krauty rock grooves (some sampled by DJ Shadow, we learned from the liner notes) alongside the electronic-based driftworks. And they have a quite lovely "pop" side to 'em too - while mostly instrumental, some tracks do have gentle, Robert Wyatt-ish singing to go with the hazy, meandering, meditative atmospheres. It's definitely not the usual sort of quasi-operatic, over-the-top, classically influenced Italian prog that we're used to (and love), from bands like Il Balletto Di Bronzo, Le Orme, or Osanna, no. Also fairly far from the sinister soundtrack funk of Goblin. Rather, Sensations' Fix have more in common with the kosmiche krautrock electronics of the era, and also may have indeed been influenced by the Canterbury sound of bands like the Soft Machine, so one Italian prog act we could compare them to would be Picchio Dal Pozzo. We could also compare 'em to a kinder, gentler version of Richard Pinhas & Heldon, from France, with a similar futuristic co-mingling of synth (MiniMoog) and effected guitar, for sure.
Music Is Painting In The Air is handsomely packaged, with a booklet full of those aforementioned liner notes presented in both English and Italian, written by RVNG's Joshua da Costa (who like us was also smitten by Fragments Of Light when he first heard it) and Franco Falsini himself. These notes, while not removing all the mystery of Sensations' Fix, reveal much interesting information... like that prior to SF, Falsini was in a "space-blues" band called Flying with Dave Anderson of Hawkwind & Amon Duul. Or that their debut Fragments Of Light actually consisted of basement demos recorded not in Florence Italy, but Alexandria, Virginia, where Falsini had temporarily moved with his wife, who was American. Which is where Falsini found SF's drummer, also an American, and also the guy who turned him on to LSD...
Collaboration spearheaded by Zbigniew Karkowski and compiled from performances in Tokyo, London and Berlin. It featuring performances by KK Null, Tetsuo Furudate and 17 other musicians edited into one intense track that builds with caustic fury into a wall of sumptuous noise.
After the unlikely commercial success of Folk Implosion from the Kids soundtrack and the lackluster last Sebadoh album, it's good to know that Lou Barlow still spends some of his time getting bummed out and documenting his thoughts on a four track with just a guitar and his voice. Sentridoh has always been the outlet for these kind of Barlow-in-the-bedroom recordings, capturing the charming pathos of a grown man still wallowing in teen angst. Musically, "Loobiecore" is the familiar Barlow array of songs: some are sweetly sensitive and romantic, some a bit ramshackle hillbilly folkish, some rambunctious and cacaphonous. "Loobiecore" may not have that odd magic which makes Sentridoh's "Winning Losers" so amazing, but this album is easily Barlow's best effort in years.
Okay, we finally figured out what these are. It's the entirety of the Shrimper cassettes Some Of The Best & Most Of The Worst and Losers, plus selected new, previously unreleased stuff. So the only Shrimper cassette not on cd at the time this is being written is Wasted Pieces.
The last of the Sentridoh cassettes to find its way onto compact disc is "Wasted Pieces" and accordingly has been reissued with a bunch of extra tracks, all culled from another cassette called "Most Of The Worst And Some Of The Best." Sentridoh has been the outlet for Lou Barlow of Sebadoh and Folk Implosion, taking those two projects' lo-fi, home-taping ethos even further into the bedroom, as Sentridoh was pretty much always just Lou, his guitar, his four-track, and his miserable life exposed for our entertainment, voyeurism, and / or sympathy. Occasionally, Barlow produces gratingly amateurish collages of radio static, tv chatter, children's records, oversaturated tape hiss, and sporadic vocalizations uttered in between bong hits. However, the majority of the Sentridoh "Wasted Pieces" is super gritty, acoustic tunes of varying quality, both in terms of sound quality and songwriting quality, making Sebadoh sound downright crisp and clean. That said, lots of these self-deprecating confessionals could have easily found their way onto an early Sebadoh record.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Now on cd, the archival reissue of stuff by this heavy psychedelic rock outfit. From Texas, circa 1970, and heavier than fellow Texans Josephus, man. And, it seems, one of the members is soon to be released from prison (!), so this is timed just right.
Druggy droney space rock doesn't get any cooler than this. Yeah, there's Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo and Black Angels, Heads, White Hills, Eternal Tapestry and Sleepy Sun, but there's just something special about Serena Maneesh. Drawing from the same murky well of effects-drenched Hawkwind heart-of-the-sun space rock psychedelia, motorik tranced out krautrock, and woozy abstract stoner rock, SM infuse their particular brand of dronerock with plenty of My Bloody Valentine shoegaze shimmer, Sonic Youth noise rock and a serious heaping of POP. It's a weird combo, and it could be precisely what keeps SM from blowing up, but it's also what makes their records so awesomely twisted, weirdly catchy, and gloriously druggy and hypnotic.
The opening track here "Ayisha Abyss" might be the murky droned out space rock jam of the year, all hazy streaks of low end, skittery skeletal rhythms, whirling clouds of blurred effects and streaked chordal hum, little splatters of drum machine, mumbled weary vox, and a super far out ending, a little burst of new wave squelch, some manipulated tapemusic, some piano, then a final burst of super fuzzed out cold wave. WEIRD. And awesome. But then it's straight into "I Just Want To See Your Face" which sounds like a perfect Sonic Youth / Swirlies mashup, a hooky noise pop jam, wrapped in wah guitars and strange processed effects, hooky and jangly and noisy but way way poppy. The following track takes the same elements but twists them all up and dubs them out, all super blown out incendiary guitars and swirling backwards effects, pounding processed drums, and a thick cloud of psychguitar freakout.
"Melody For Jaana" is total washed out drone doom balladry, like a female fronted Nadja, slow and lugubrious and syrupy, like My Bloody Valentine at 16 rpm. The awesomely titled "Blow Yr Brains In The Mourning Rain" is a wild squall of jagged guitars, buried vox, chaotic drumming, a gorgeous chunk of super in-the-red noisepop, more nods to Sonic Youth for sure, but much more soft focus.
The final three tracks ditch the sort of spacey heaviness in exchange for some ethereal jangle pop, "D.I.W.S.W.T.T.D" is total lysergic psychpop, that grows more and more tripped out as it progresses, and finally, the record closes with the tropical tinged Beatles-esque jangle pop of "Magdalena (Symphony #8)" complete with flutes and hazy summertime melodies.
Okay so it's not strictly a 'space rock' record, or a 'drone rock' record, it's more like a strange space-y drone-y POP record, but it's got enough sonic weirdness, blown out heaviness, and hypnotic riffery, to balance the pop hooks and sunshiney jangle, and make this one of our new favorites for sure.
Everybody's been flipping out about the Black Angels and their take on druggy drone-y space rock. But if you ask us, Norwegian blissrockers Serena-Maneesh is the band people should be freaking out about. If the Black Angels areÔchanneling Spacemen 3 via the Velvet Underground, Serena-Maneesh take their Spacemen 3 obsession and drag it kicking and screaming through the detuned murk of classic Sonic Youth, the psychedelic freakout of Hawkwind and the slow build cinematic roar of Mogwai and Godspeed. This is spaced out psychedelic drug rock of the highest order for sure, but Serena-Maneesh add their own special slant to the proceedings, twisting these tracks intoÔall sorts of dronier and dreamier shapes, cool boy / girl harmonies, hushed whispery sadboy vocals backed up by delicate dreamy female coo's and ooh's, both woven together into still more layers of sweet warm gauze, BIG guitars, not wispy or delicate, okay maybe once in a while, but mostly thick, crunchy and HEAVY riffs that just churn and grind, and then there's the hypnotic drone aspect, when Serena-Maneesh eventually build to a frenzied climax, they keep it going, endlessly, the riffs loop and loop, mesmerizing and completely spellbinding, effects swirl, guitar FX explode and careen wildly, wah wah's everywhere, warm washes of distorted swoooosh, the ambient sounds grow more and more dense, but the riffs plow forward, like there's no end in sight, our heads crack open spilling blinding light into the sky, as we drift and shimmer and are lifted into some blissed out drone rock nirvana like we haven't experienced since the heyday of bands like the Telescopes, Sundial, Loop, and of course Hawkwind and Spacement 3. So awesome.Ô
A six-song debut EP from this SF trio. Gently swaying postrock that bring to mind the fine college rock bands from the '90s like Seam, Ida and Versus. Swells of quiet/loud/quiet electric guitars, hushed vocals and washy cymbals build atop the solid bass and drums. Very pretty and wistful.
The Servants were an eighties UK guitar pop band, whose sound was fantastically jangly and polished, super melodic and well produced, bucking the trend at the time to produce lo-fi ramshackle pop (although the group did appear on the C86 comp that pretty much defined that ramshackle pop movement), they even counted members of the Housemartins and the Auteurs among their ranks at one point, and their music was beloved by Belle And Sebastien frontman Stuart Murdoch, who before B&S had tried to form a band with Servants frontman David Westlake. This should all give you an idea of the sound, a little twee, a little precious, earnest and heartfelt, the sort of sound that would most definitely appeal to fans of B&S and the classic sound of groups like The Smiths and nineties NZ pop (The Clean, the Chills, etc.). Cherry Red Records released a compilation called Reserved, which went out of print, and now goes for CRAZY money on eBay, but thankfully, Captured Tracks cherry picked some of the past tracks to put together their own vinyl only collection called Youth Club Disco, and it's a perfect introduction to this band that really didn't get the love or attention they deserved. ALl the tracks here are lilting and melancholy, pure classic indie pop, jangly and dreamy and definitely not for anyone after buzz and crunch, but for folks who like smart, heartfelt pop music, this stuff is pure pop gold.
Halfspeed! You Grey Bureaucrat. Something like 6 members of this 13 piece ensemble are part of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and Set Fire To Flames does little to hide their connection to that band, producing the same theatrical crescendos for glide guitars
Cut from the same collectivist French-Canadian cloth as Godspeed You Black Emperor, the thirteen members of Set Fire To Flames take a slightly more experimental approach to creaTING INSTRUMENTALS THAT MAY at times approach the epic scale of GYBE in track length, but occupy a much less theatrical and grandiose territory in scope. "Telegraphs in Negative..." was recorded almost entirely in a collapsing barn, with instrumentation including cello, bass clarinet, guitar, saw, french horn, marimba, glockenspiel, music box, gutted two-track motors, tapes, contact mics and faulty electronics. The barn itself heavily inflects these recordings, as bits of field recordings as well as in the way the recording process capture not just the sounds of the instruments but their interaction with space and architecture. It makes for a record that's very intimate not neccesarily in an emotional sense, but in the way it involves the listener with a very specific mood, location and group process. Opting for tangents into extended drones, collages and improvisation rather than reaching for epic melodic climaxes, the sound is sparse, crumbling and dark, but not entirely melancholy. Spread over two discs (edited and reconstructed from hours of recordings), it's also a little long to be constantly engaging. But still pretty cool.
MPEG Download: "And The Birds Are About To Bust Their " [/audio/setfireandthebirds.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "And The Birds Are About To Bust Their " [/audio/setfireandthebirds.m3u]
MPEG Download: "Holy Throat Hiss Tracks To The Sedative Hypnotic" [/audio/setfireholythroat.mp3]
Now On Vinyl!
Cut from the same collectivist French-Canadian cloth as Godspeed You Black Emperor, the thirteen members of Set Fire To Flames take a slightly more experimental approach to creaTING INSTRUMENTALS THAT MAY at times approach the epic scale of GYBE in track length, but occupy a much less theatrical and grandiose territory in scope. "Telegraphs in Negative..." was recorded almost entirely in a collapsing barn, with instrumentation including cello, bass clarinet, guitar, saw, french horn, marimba, glockenspiel, music box, gutted two-track motors, tapes, contact mics and faulty electronics. The barn itself heavily inflects these recordings, as bits of field recordings as well as in the way the recording process captures not just the sounds of the instruments but also their interaction with space and architecture. It makes for a record that's very intimate not neccesarily in an emotional sense, but in the way it involves the listener with a very specific mood, location and group process. Opting for tangents into extended drones, collages and improvisation rather than reaching for epic melodic climaxes, the sound is sparse, crumbling and dark, but not entirely melancholy. Spread over two discs (edited and reconstructed from hours of recordings), it's also a little long to be constantly engaging. But still pretty cool.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
More long lost '70s hard rock action, well '80s too, here for folks who dig comps like Brown Acid and Darkscorch Canticles. Boston-based power trio Seth got their start in 1974 as a cover band, but soon started writing their own proggy, heavy-riffed originals, at long last releasing their debut full-length in 1980, a self-titled album with 9 tracks that showcase both melodic pop chops and ripping instrumental shred frenzies, with helpings of thick synth at times too. Of course, they put that record out themselves - it wasn't until 2015 that an actual label got interested! Weird, 'cause the Seth self-titled album is awesome, with some great songs, making us think of Rush, early Styx (don't laugh, they were great), Ted Nugent, Winterhawk, and the James Gang. It's featured here on disc one of this lavishly-packaged gatefold double cd set along with EVERYTHING else they ever recorded - demos, live & rehearsal tapes, unreleased singles and album tracks from the '80s and after - even a 2014 reunion instrumental. That's a LOT of stuff, and maybe we don't need all of it, but the good stuff is purty darn good for a band nobody has ever heard of before. Consider disc two a bonus, but the reason to buy this is for the s/t album on disc one for sure.
Ambient post rock bands are a dime a dozen these days, and bands who sound more like Godspeed that Godspeed ever did at this point probably outweigh the legions of Neur-Isis clones. But every once in a while, bands manage to remind us just why we fell in love with that sound in the first place. Danish quartet Seven Mile Journey definitely take that sound to whole 'nother level, brooding, epic, cinematic, like post rock without the rock, a sort of abstract filmic chamber music constructed from rock instrumentation.
Slow building, slow burning, so tense and intense, moody and mysterious. The drums are kept to a minimum much of the time, more for propulsion and flourish than actual beat making, but when the drums do come in, they come in hard and then drive the song, while the other instruments weave lush tapestries of sound, minor key swells, lilting overcast melodies, buzzing strings, simple piano parts draped over keening moaning minimal soundscapes, jangly guitars drifting amidst warm whirring lowercase drones, in some cases the songs build to incredible climaxes, like staring into the sun, everything blinding and chaotic and exploding like some sonic supernova, others just smolder, glowing from within, never quite easing up on the built up tension.
Fans of the usual post rock culprits - Godspeed, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky - will have very likely just found their new favorite bands, although for us, the band are at their best when they mix it up, removing the drums, spreading out the sound into impossibly emotional and moving imaginary soundtracks, ratcheting up the tension, building and building and building. Epic, transcendent and beautifully cathartic.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Severed Heads never really fit comfortably with any particular convention of the post-punk aesthetics; and when the project quietly disappeared in 2008, their demise was announced without much in the way of fanfare. Essentially a solo project of Australian electronic musician Tom Ellard, Severed Heads began in Sydney back in 1979 with Ellard experimenting with tape loops, DIY electronic kits, and rudimentary noise making devices all finding something of a commonality through lurching rhythms within this primordial soup of sound-making. Eventually, samplers and drum machines made their way into the Severed Heads repertoire, the group's best years from 1983 to 1988 or thereabouts, thanks to their avant-garde smarts throwing a monkey-wrench into synth-punk conventions. City Slab Horror (1985) was the second album that Severed Heads produced for Ink Records (and later reissued through Nettwerk). A deliberately imperfect record, City Slab Horror seeks to work against the latticework of rhythmic structures and melodic fluidity, with samples firing at irregular intervals and atonal pitches running rampant throughout the record. Exposing the rigidity of the mechanized form was one of the common strategems for synth-punk practitioners, with Fad Gadget and The Flying Lizards doing similarly disjointed avant-pop projects. While Severed Heads would eventually streamline into a sensible synth-pop project, City Slab Horror showcased how engaging Ellard could be in his wanderings through mad scientist archetypes, comic book horrorscaping, hiccupping sequencing, and inelegantly playful tunes.
In 1985, Severed Heads were commissioned to collect a retrospective of their (then) six years in existence. Instead of the standard 'best of' anthology, Tom Ellard and Co. took the opportunity to create a sprawling collage of a whole slew of material never heard before, with cutting room edits, tape loop assemblages, live tracks, and numerous experiments that never found their way onto any of their albums. That approach is emblematic of the subversive manner in which Severed Heads produces and contextualizes their heavily mediated electronics, tracks that boisterously flaunt new wave pop structures butted against chunks of machined voltage-control noise and volatile industrial rhythm. On this release, more than pretty much anywhere else in Severed Heads catalog, do comparisons to Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle make the most sense.
Severed Heads were born from a what-the-fuck project called Mr. And Mrs. No Smoking Sign in the punk diaspora circa 1979, with both groups taking on those names as piss-take stratagems of invoking the horror industrial culture for the former, and downright awkwardness for the latter. Tape loops and mediated collages were the crux of MAMNSS and Severed Heads, which never really settled into the gravity-well of industrial culture, maintaining a sometimes overt sense of humor and a number of forays into legitimately brilliant minimal-wave / synth-pop tunes. By the early 80s though, the founding members Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright parted ways with Tom Ellard, who kept Severed Heads going through the '80s and beyond. It seemed Wright left because he wanted the project to move in a more musical direction; and Fielding thought just the opposite, leading to his anti-performance project called The Nobodies where he would set up automatons to perform in his absence.
Since The Accident (1983) was the first major album for Ellard / Severed Heads coming on the heels of a handful of tapes that warbled between primitive electro-pop and tape loop deconstructions. The most notable track on Since The Accident was essentially an afterthought -- the bouncy OMD-esque number "Dead Eyes Opened" which Ellard tacked on to fill up some space on the tape submitted to the label that originally released the album. It quickly became a hit on Australian radio and opened up a considerable amount of doors for Severed Heads (including an opening tour spot for Skinny Puppy). Throughout Since The Accident, there are numerous avant-pop excursions of layering tape loops in varying stages of synchronicity with drum machines and sequences, including the deftly produced tracks "Exploring The Secrets Of Treating Deaf Mutes" and "A Million Angels." But there were also the vertiginous tape loop / turntablist mantras reminiscent of early Christian Marclay / Gum tracks as heard on "Brassiere, In Rome" and "Gashing The Old Mae West" (the latter of which was released as an insane 21 minute "Marathon Mix" of hypno-psychosis on another 12", which obviously couldn't make it onto the reissue of the original lp). Weird and brilliant stuff.
Circles Of Silver opens Steven Severin's four-part limited edition Codex Astra cd series based on quotations by the infamous Aleister Crowley. On the inside of the digipak is inscribed, "I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning." Although a familiarity with the occult figure and his writings may offer the listener some insight into the former Banshee's inspirations for these recordings, it does not appear to be a prerequisite to be able to listen to (and enjoy) these instrumental compositions. A penchant for well-crafted drone music might be just as handy!
Creeping clouds of smotherous tones fill every crevice while vaporous hisses drift over top. A somber, beautiful 17-minute aural shroud that's sure to pique the interest of dronescape lovers far and wide.
FYI: The second volume of Codex Astra titled Hours Of Gold, the third Idols Of Glass, and the fourth Wand Of Flame will follow shortly. Each volume will be a limited cd pressing of 777. So be sure to get them while you can!
Note to those who prefer records to cds: the four volumes will eventually be compiled and re-released on vinyl as Codex Astra: ABRAHADABRA (release date tba).
Sadly, rock has always been a bit of a boy's club. Sure most things are, but rock especially. And it only gets worse as you move toward the heavier and darker side of the sonic spectrum, metal, industrial, noise, women are few and far between. That's not to say there aren't woman making serious noise in those realms, there most definitely are, maybe none more fearsome than Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose who traffics in some of the darkest, heaviest, filthiest sludge, blackened doom and abstract industrial we've heard, and whose particular brand of abject blackened noise is on full display here, a collection of various live performances over the years 2009-2010, and finds Rose, backed up by a full band, and engaging in some seriously harrowing soundmaking.
The opening track begins all thick bass buzz and keening feedback, soon industrial percussion emerges, and Rose's echo drenched wail, the bass buzz coalescing into sludgey dirgey riffage, while all around it guitars and samplers and effects fill the blackened sky with all manner of blackly psychedelic noise, the sound lumbers and lurches, before shifting gears in a flurry of horror movie shrieks, becoming more of a blackdrone, all layered hiss and skree and rumble, chaotic but weirdly hypnotic. The second track, the relatively brief "We Ate Their Eyes", introduces more of a groove, albeit just barely, more like a monstrous dirge, rhythmic and grimly propulsive, buried beneath an avalanche of shrieked vox and caustic low end crumble, before giving way to "Mother Agony" that channels Laibach and Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten into a Swans like creep, all hazy and washed out, the sound laced with streaks of high end, of sonar like pings, of gristly crunch and super distorted buzz, there's a definite Wolf Eyes vibe too, and then the vocals swoop back in, hysterical and terrifying, curdled with effects, it manages to be the most mesmerizingly hypnotic track here, while still retaining an unhinged mania.
The epic "Chained To The Cage Of Existence / A Lifeless Dreaming" seems to be the centerpiece here clocking in at 16+ minutes, and again begins as a blackened rumble, all buzz and blur, peppered with strange industrial clanks and clunks, before erupting into another grinding dirge, Rose's haunting deathlike vox adding a serious creep factor, the song a droned out rift, that seems like it might go on like that forever, until it splinters suddenly into a full on drum driven chunk of blackened noise metal crush, lurching, lumbering, shrieks and atonal riffage nestled amidst swells of black buzz and pounding rhythms and lots of feedback, before slipping right back into a sonic death march that continues until the end of the track, loping and minimal, laced with some cool metallic melodies, again slathered in feedback, and Rose's vox, that here remind us of the hysterical shrieks of black metal horde Bethlehem. And then finally, "Slavepiece" finishes things off, the most metal of the bunch, but sounding like it was recorded on a wax cylinder, the sound brittle and blown out, the band locked into a super in-the-red, feedback drenched riff heavy dirge, that sounds like an even more unhinged take on Brainbombs / No Balls. Fucking awesome, but most definitely only for the iron eared.
Fans of other blackened filth like Gnaw Their Tongues, Aderlating, Demonologists, Gorgontongue, and Hallowed Butchery as well as classic industrial / noise / blacknoise weirdness will be in heaven...
Into extreme abject industrial blackened sludge??? We are, especially when it's this good. So, if you're like us you too will be smitten by the mighty Sewer Goddess. Metallic, filthy, noisy, droning nightmare dirge in the tradition of such sonic terrorists as Godflesh, Swans, Gnaw Their Tongues, Wolf Eyes, Zeni Geva, early Scorn, and Neubauten. Naturally, we've been fans since we first heard Sewer Goddess a few years back - you'll find a worshipful review or two on our site of some previous releases... Now here's the latest from Sewer Goddess, an album entitled Painlust. Not subtle, no. At times bleakly ambient, at others out-and-out grinding, Painlust, with such cheerful (not) songs as "Flog", "My Grave", and "Black Meat And Bones", merges the industrial metal with the more creepily cinematic soundscapery. It's a disc of powerful, feedback-filled sound design, replete with anvil-clank rhythms and distorted atmospheres, death-knell drumming and depth charge guitars, pummeling heaviness shrouded in murky electronic FX, and harsh anguished screams from the Sewer Goddess herself - the band's frontwoman Kristen Rose, who is also capable of an wide range of effective vocal approaches, from aching melodic wails to hissing shrieks to an ice-cold monotone declamation, often processed and treated and layered, becoming a one-woman chorus, these whispers and echoes sounding like sick 'voices in your head'. Let them in and grovel for the Sewer Goddess. Seriously good stuff for those into 'this sort of thing', as we said. Makes us imagine mechanical monks performing some sort of assembly line cult ceremony in a hellish factory/church.
Elsewhere on this week's list (in fact, probably right above this review) you'll find the Disciples Of Shit cd, a collection of live recordings from blackened industrial noisescaper Sewer Goddess, aka Kristen Rose, a seriously brutal, but blackly beautiful collection of caustic live performances. Now that you know what Rose is capable of on stage, here's a glimpse of what she can do in the studio, and as you might expect, it's not to far removed, if anything, it's darker, heavier and LOUDER. But otherwise the same sort of droned out industrial crush, a bleak cinematic blackness that definitely reminds us of Gnaw Their Tongues, lots of industrial clank and clatter, a keening distant high end tone that seems to drift atop monstrous hissed vokills and streaks of blackened sound, the long stretches of buzz and crush infused with mysterious melodies.
The flipside is more riffy and dirgey, with some seriously creepy (and weirdly sexy) whispered vox, the buzz thick and corrosive, all tethered to a lurching mechanical rhythm, all within thick clouds of hiss and hum and whir, the vibe moody and murky and very soundtracky, but still bleak and menacing and seriously harrowing, shades of Wolf Eyes too, but the more we here from Sewer Goddess, the more we're beginning to think she really sounds like nobody else.
SUPER LIMITED, comes in a cool silkscreened jacket with a printed fold out insert.
When we first heard about a band called Sex Church on Load Records, we were pretty much expecting a wild costumed troupe spitting out gouts of speaker shredding cacophony and grinding metallic noise, and while there is a certain amount of noise and cacophony going on here, these guys traffic in something wholly different, a gloomy post punky sort of downer pop (much like Daily Life, who also had a record on Load), all clanging minor key chords, pounding dirgey rhythms and buzzing swirling synths, the opening track sounds like a slightly noisier take on some lost Joy Division live jam, or some classic goth group revved up and supercharged. And then when the vocals finally kick in, all deep and dramatic, wreathed in echo and delay, the mood grows dark and doomy, the drums pounding out a tribal rhythm, the bass lurching and lumbering in throbs and thrums, the sound building to explosive psychedelic crescendos before slipping back into slithery deathrock grooves or loping postpunk crunch. Fans of outfits like Naked On The Vague, Crystal Stilts, Total Control, Soft Moon and the like should go apeshit for these guys, and while they definitely borrow heavily from the gloom/goth classics, think Kommunity FK, the Mission UK, Birthday Party, Sisters Of Mercy, Wipers, Scientists, Bauhaus, Fields Of The Nephilim, once those sounds are filtered through a more noise rock / post punk aesthetic, it ends up pretty heavy, hooky, noisy, darkly poppy and sorta irresistible.
"We Don't Care" The Sex Pistols in San Francisco Jan 14, 1978 a one hour special with highlights from the winterland concert (their final date) plus the KSAN Radio interview.
The best way we can think of to describe Sex Worker, the solo project of Daniel from Mi Ami, is like a lo-fi, lysergic pop Prince, the music is minimal and electronic, slipping from James Ferraro like warped tropical loopscapes, to super minimal dubbed out house, to eighties disco by way of Ariel Pink, to lo-fi 4-track electro, the perfect back up tracks for Daniel's sexy crooned falsetto vox, but there's more to Sex Worker than faux soul, shit gets pretty fucked up throughout.
Sure, much of the record is spent slithery sexily through dimly lit neon soaked eighties nightclubs, crooning in dark basement underground discos, and speeding along empty roads with tinted windows and the top down, but the sound definitely gets weirder than all that, brooding and ominous and almost sci-fi here and there, super distorted and blown out elsewhere, the vocals an anguished howl over buried beats and warped looped melodies, loopy squelchy playful electronic skitter butted up against, skittery, stuttering almost skipping sounding soundscapes of warped FX drenched buzz and warbly glitched out crunch, before finally settling back down for the final 10 minute workout, "Honeymoon Babylon", haunting and electronic and minimal, the beats crumbling and distorted, laced with ghost like melodies, and all sorts of creepy effects and twisted production, and after a brief bit of falsetto crooning, the song devolves into an awesomely fractured futuristic electro jam, all droney and woozy and seriously druggy and psychedelic.
If you have a particular penchant for balladry that has the power to move you to tears, please do yourself a favor and check out the wonderful Canadian singer/songwriter Ron Sexsmith! Highly lauded by critics and notable fellow songwriters - Elvis Costello,
Canadian loner Ron Sexsmith is a master of the melancholic. Beautiful, subdued songs that'll leave you with a lingering cloud of woe. You may already know his voice from the songs he co-wrote and sang with Neko Case on her 'Furnace Room Lullaby' album. Definitely for extra-downer fans of Rufus Wainwright, Nick Drake or Jeff Buckley.
Here's a super obscure blast of long lost Southern garage punk caveman drug rock blooz stomp from a short lived band, who existed for a brief stretch way back in the late nineties, featuring members that would go on to play in aQ beloved weirdo avant black metal outfit the Mausoleums. But don't be expecting any tripped out black buzz or pop flecked post BM trippiness, this sound of Sexual Confusion was something else entirely, primal, and raw, primitive and fucking fierce, this dense squall of swampy, swaggery punk rock energy was written and recorded when the band members were just 17, and was originally released as a cd-r, limited to just 30 copies and sold at one of the few shows the band actually played, including several at Christian coffee houses, where they would wait 'til right before they played to announce the name of their band, and according to the scant info about these guys we could dig up, one of those shows was the Tampa Bay Oi! fest, where the skinheads were most definitely not amused.
Citing Black Flag, the Godz, the Germs, the Fugs, Teengenerate, the Stooges, 13th Floor Elevators and the like as influences, we also hear shades of Green River, the Lyres, Wipers, Aussie outfits like the Scientists, Feedtime, King Snake Roost, pretty heady stuff for a bunch of deep South teens, but these guys pulled it off big time, laying down a pretty convincing sprawl of filthy, furious, sweat soaked, bloody lipped, thud rock, all swaggery, heavily flanged guitars, murky caveman drum pound, whiny snarled vox, slipping easily from organ driven old school garage rock creep to stripped down, lo-fi dirge pop to full on punk rock, fist in the face, fuck you up and get high, skull caving pound. The tracks laced with wild psychedelic synth squiggles, churning swampy bass buzz harsh howled vocals, their debt to classic sixties garage rock jangle on display big time, but all fused to some serious furious punk rock energy, and further warped by the occasional stretch of druggy acoustic blues, tweaked and twisted tangles of angular, atonal psychedelia, brutal bursts of near hardcore pummel, super rad backwards guitar, spaced out sitar raga style buzz, and long droned out layers of undulating high end shimmer, but ultimately all of that weirdness is only window dressing for a pretty serious set of songs, that still sound pretty fucking bad ass more than a decade later.
In addition to the original 'album', this limited reissue tacks on a handful of demos, which in most cases we would expect to just be shittier versions of the proper songs, but here, the tracks sound possibly even better in demo form, super raw, even more lo-fi and blown out, wasted and murky, the sort of filthy drugged, out, busted up sonic filth these guys were made to wallow in.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
New songs from Miss Barbara Manning and band. Features a Pretty Things and a Faust cover, plus Aquarius' own Cathy blowing bubbles on "Ladies of the Sea."
Bruce Russell says: "What ought to bother you is that on the evidence of the microscopic pits in this piece of metal foil you all damn near missed out on a Free jiz/pus extravaganza of earth beating proportions. The Sferics didn't rock, they were rock... Theirs was a tenuous balance of incompatible elements and unworkable ingredients that for a brief time in the year of our lord 1989 teetered its way into a few ears and onto some dodgy old cassettes in some battered shoeboxes." Kiwi chaos lovingly reisuued by fellow chainsmoker Darren at Drunken Fish.
Okay 'new weird America' obsessives, drone nerds and limited vinyl fetishists... on your mark, get set, go! Vinyl only. Limited to 400 copies. Already sold out. We have the last 30 copies we could get. Features members of the Double Leopards and the Magic Markers. And to top it all off, it's actually also pretty darn great. Slowly drifting, warm murky ambience, the drone-y haze barely obscuring the moaning of distant feeding back guitars, simple atonal strumming, machine like creaks and simple muted percussion. All smeared into one fuzzy indistinct whole. Blurry guitars stretch into vast expanses of ambience and found sounds, eventually getting more active, scraping and squeaking, never enough to disrupt the droning dreaminess, while the original guitar seems to thicken and distort into a pulsing and throbbing slab of super thick drone. Nice!
A scatological display of detuned guitar, broken piano, and arrhythmic percussion. To call this an acoustic Nurse With Wound may not do it justice, but sheds some light on the psychosis of these Brits. Recommended for the abject!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
As with each Shadow Ring record, the sound (it's questionable to call them songs) presents itself with a smug difficulty. Piercing feedback, detuned guitars, and sputtering percussive elements strive to meet their free noise counterparts of the Dead C or Skullflower, but are drawn b
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
New Zealand import of this strange, delicate, noisy English band's debut cd.
The Shadow Ring were a deliberately odd British trio, beginning in 1993, releasing a handful of improbably compelling records for Corpus Hermeticum, Siltbreeze, Swill Radio and their own Dry Leaf Discs, and then terminating the project a decade later for reasons unknown. So much of what The Shadow Ring offer just should not work: comedically sloppy lullabies played on toy instruments, atonal squeals from cheap electronics, and rhythms banged on tin cans and xylophones. Yet, their persistence at methodically fucking up the simplest of melodies not only became an instant signature sound, it also became a metaphor for a dour, anti-social discomfort which also featured heavily in the lyrics from alternating vocalists Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris. Lambkin's voice is somewhat musical in nature, wrapping around the tinny stringed melodies as a counterpoint; but Harris, on the other hand, employs a commanding bellow which he wields with the urgent rhetorical flourish of a BBC announcer reading off obituaries, but with a snide delivery as if he loathed each person who had died. While Lambkin may have been more of the musical anti-genius of the two, Harris has the voice that reaches out to grab you by the ears. Lyrically, the Shadow Ring coupled the abject and the mundane, with rats, bottom-feeding shrimp, lice, and wasps all playing heavily into the convoluted poetics of their very English dourness. Life Review is a retrospective culled from their eight albums, handful of singles, and archive of unreleased material, including one mighty odd re-interpretation of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive." Revisting The Shadow Ring has been a very worthwhile experience for all of us here at Aquarius, conjuring thoughts of Jandek and The Shaggs working together through the Current 93 back catalogue. Brilliantly fucked up.
