So what's a band to do when they're not playing their particular brand of crushing metal flecked noise rock brutality? Well, take on new identities of course. Offer up their masked visages and craft a whole new set of songs, under a different name, with an ostensibly different sound, but one that really is just a way poppier, stonier, spacier version of their band proper. Which is fine with us.
So the mysterious Snailface, who hail from right here in SF, are in fact, the alter ego of aQ faves Kowloon Walled City, and traffic in a sound that has more in common with Kyuss and Queens Of The Stoneage and Torche and other heavy pop combos than the AmRep-y sludge that KWC specializes in. And the funny thing, which happens with lots of side projects / one offs / joke bands, is that the band is super relaxed, having fun, no pressure, none of the big band worries that come with a 'real' band, so whether they mean to or not, they end up ruling, and writing killer songs, and coming up with songs that are not just fun and funny, but that totally rock and are catchy as fuck, and if that band was their actual main focus band, it might even end up being super popular.
Which is the case with Snailface. Sure, the songs have goofy titles, and silly lyrics, they're called Snailface, they wear costumes in the band photos, but you sort of forget all about it when you throw it on, big stonery riffs, super melodic vocals, catchy choruses, the sound epic and heavy and hooky, psychedelic and spacey, some killer leads, plenty of weirdness too, fucked up production, backwards vocals and guitars, field recordings, bizarre samples, but all that stuff just sort of decorates the songs proper, which RULE. The first record is way more blown out and desert rock, stonery and drug-poppy, while the second record, a concept record about Yetis. is way more classic rock / big production epic heaviness, with shades of Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult and Kiss added to the mix. But together, this doubleshot two-fer is fucking awesome. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as anyone into catchy groovy heaviness, this stuff will definitely hit the spot.
Comes packaged in a hand screen printed cardboard box, the tapes both with full color printed inserts, one of 8 different buttons, all nestled on a nice bed of Yeti fur (3 different kinds!). LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES!!!
Nobody makes real punk rock anymore it seems. Sure, there's pop punk, or screamo, or generic 3 chord bash and thrash, but we miss the gnarled grinding ugly punk of SST or Amrep, the sludgey slithery guitars, the sheets of feedback, the plodding drum damage, the clouds of amp buzz, and the howled reverbed vocals, the Stooges-y stomp, the damaged groove, the atonal angular riffage, the slippery squiggly leads...
Well thankfully Providence punk rockers Snake Apartment are doing their best to change all that. We've been eating up everything we could track down from these guys, which up until now was just a split 7" and a split lp, and as far as we know this is their first proper full length, at the very least, the first one we've managed to carry, and it's a killer.�
Every sone starts off with a squall of feedback, the scrape of pick on strings, thick swaths of ungrounded amp buzz, before the riff kicks in, usually some sort of Ginn-ish tangle that manages to be thick and heavy, but still atonal and damaged (as in Black Flag's Damaged), the drums lurch and swing, the guitar and drums dueling to the death, getting all wound up in each others bizness to glorious result. The bass is just a huge gooey low end throb, permeating every inch of the proceedings, the vocals a drawled laconic lazy shout, sometimes slipping into Nick Cave-ish croon, sometimes turning into a harsh howl, but draped over the jagged punk like a bloodied corpse tossed in a copse of black rose bushes.�
Imagine some unholy union between Black Flag, the Brainbombs, The Stooges, Tad and some old SST doom stuff, then have them take lots of drugs and record a record for Amphetamine Reptile... as if that didn't already say it all, this fucking rules.�
Killer garish, eye popping drug tripping cover art too!
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Super limited split between two new (to us) bands, Snake Apartment and Work / Death.
The Snake Apartment side is a side long track, a murky Brainbombs-y dirge, blown out and gunky, thick and corrosive. A plodding slab of sticky syrupy sludge rock, mixed with haunting disembodied lounge singer vocals, the whole thing a sort of moaning sea sick stumble.
Work / Death offer up their own druggy dirge, theirs is a noisy abstract drone, crowd sounds, room ambience, footsteps and muffled conversations are eventually sucked up into a vortex of thick rumble, peppered by blasts of fuzzy murk, the whole thing sounding like a damaged recording of a roomful of amps with guitars leaned up against them. Intense and abstract and pretty fucking cool.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Six different covers, by six different artists: Will Schaff, Ben Barnett, Mike Taylor, Merdith Stern, Scott Reber and Mat Brinkman!
What more can we say about Snake Flower 2's Mr. Matthew Melton, the man not only behind SF2 but the sonically similar Bare Wires, not to mention some killer solo records. The Oh Sees' John Dwyer is convinced Melton is the best songwriter in the underground garage rock scene, and perhaps beyond, and well, we're inclined to agreed. SF2's Renegade Daydream, still ranks as one of our all time faves, and the last Bare Wires is like the best chunk of classic sixties mod pop that the old Who never made. The sound here, like on other SF2 records, it total classic old school Yellow Pills style power pop. None of that lysergic weirdness, hypnogogic trippiness, lo-fi murk, or faux girl group reverby shimmer, instead, Melton and his crew just write some of the catchiest jangle pop songs around, and play them in a style, and with a sound, that manages to sound totally timeless.
Hooky, jangly, crunchy, short, sharp, urgent, some killer leads, simple drumming, jangly guitars, just total classic fuzzy garagey power pop. Lots of bands out there can make the SOUND, but few have the songs to back it up. SF2 most definitely does, and like all great singles, these 4 tracks just leave you wanting more more more...
Not sure why, but it's been SO impossible to get enough of these to list, which is a huge bummer, cuz it's definitely turned into one of our favorite records of the year (and yeah, we know it didn't come out this year, but so what!). Our distros never have it, emails to the label never get returned, so fuck it, we decided to just list it with the 10 or so copies we have. So at least a few of you can check this out.
The weird thing is we were expecting something much more generic and garagey and run of the mill, but from the first song (a definite contender for jam of the year) we knew this was something WAY more. Fuzzy, and buzzy, and stoney and groovy and spaced out, crunchy guitars busy burbling basslines, some bad ass drumming, and some super wicked scowly vox, somewhere between the Lyres, Monster Magnet and the White Stripes.
"Flight Of The Navigator", the aforementioned jam, encapsulates pretty much everything we love about these guys and gal. A sharp jagged jangly main riff, with a killer stop start descending verse, a woozy soaring chorus, and then a total Monster Magnet bridge with weird processed vocals, and the guitars all space-y and stretched out. Some wild leads here and there, and HOOKS THAT KILL. We literally listened to this first track so many times, that it was weeks before we got any further into the record, but when we did, we discovered that the rest of the record was pretty much just as bad ass. The Lyres vibe can't be underestimated, but Monster Magnet is all over these tracks, as is Hawkwind, plenty of fuzzy poppiness too, classic garage infuses everything here, but it's way more poppy, and space-y and heavy and hooky. We could go on and on and on and on, but since the availability of this record is a bit up in the air, we'll just sum it up by saying this kicks ass big time, and if favorite records were indeed judged entirely and soley on how many times and how often it gets listened to, then we're pretty sure there's no other record this year that would even come close (if you ask Andee).
We've been getting so much cool weird Chinese music in recently. We made the tripped out Neu! meets Yellow Magic Orchestra of White+ our Record Of The Week, we reviewed the blissed out shoegaze pop of Boyz & Girl, our Chinese section is overflowing with stuff that we'll try to to get reviewed and posted on the site (even as we wait to get more of the aforementioned back in), but figured we'd start with this one, which we got on lp, and have a limited number of, and not super sure if we can get more and if we can, how long it'll take.
Didn't know much about these guys, other than the fact that they're apparently super popular in China, and have been honing a sound rooted in early industrial music, from the seventies and eighties, with nods to the Cure and Joy Division, a dark pulsing electronic minimalism, dark and psychedelic.
Check out the opener here, a softly pulsing synth, monotone vocals, swirling effects and slow shifting textures, dirgey and almost robotic, darkly hypnotic and dreamily tranced out, hearing this it's not hard to see why ex P.I.L. drummer Martin Atkins became obsessed with the group and insisted on producing their debut. The second track finds the sound splintering into something more jagged and new wavey, sounding a bit more like Joy Division by way of the Residents, or a much murkier, glooming goth pop Suicide, jagged melodies, blurts of noise, dense drones and throbbing programed pulses. Dramatic and noisy and woozily off kilter. The Residents vibe is huge throughout, a warped alien cabaret, kept in check by the low slung basslines, the programmed rhythms, murky and motorik, the layered loops, and the almost vaudevillian vocals.
Every track here is dark and woozy, rhythmic and minimal, some krautrocky and propulsive, others super abstract and avant, and still others gloomy and brooding, often the sound fusing the three, into some heady Chinese experimental electronic gloom pop weirdness, that we're digging more and more with every listen.
For fans of warped outsider pop, early electronic industrial, gloomy and gothy electro pop, and whatever surreal sonic stops might lurk in between.
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One of the Record Store Day releases we were most psyched on getting this year was this Flying Nun/Captured Tracks reissue of the first ep by NZ cult legends, Snapper. But they didn't show up in time for RSD like they were supposed to, thanks to a shipping snafu. Finally, however, our Snapper 12"s (along with The Bats' first ep, also reissued by Flying Nun via Captured Tracks for RSD) finally showed and we're so glad it's here now and we're able to share it with you, as we probably wouldn't have been able to write about it earlier, because we're sure they would have been all snatched up on RSD proper. So we only have about 7 of these left, and we're pretty sure they're gone for good, so act fast if you want one!
Released in 1989, Snapper was formed by Peter Gutterdige (The Clean, Chills and Great Unwashed) and featured Christina Voice on organ and vocals. The band would go through several lines-up but it is this ep that defined their sound for bands to come, a mixture of Suicide, Jesus and Mary Chain and a less campy B-52's with a farfisa driven hypno-psych vibe that predated Stereolab. Their drug-psych influence can be easily sensed in bands like Moon Duo and Psychic Ills today. Includes poster and original press release. So so good! Four songs. All killer!
Two new releases from this mysterious two man remote collaboration (actually not so mysterious, half the duo is in fact aQ pal Howard Ryan who also helps run the amazing local co-op bakery Arizmendi, the other being Minneapolis-based Sam Sharp), and while we thought about reviewing them separately, they really are the perfect pair, and odds are if you get one, you're gonna want the other. The music on both releases is super lo-fi, an avant, abstract, minimal murk pop, that to these ears sounds a bit like Mercury Rev crossed with The Caretaker, wistful psychedelia, all swoonsome melodies and earnest vox, but wreathed in TONS of FX, swaths of blurred reverb, a soft focus haze that renders the whole thing washed out and fantastically faded. Gorgeous indie pop hooks are stretched to their breaking point, and caked in crackle and crunch and hiss. It's a druggy, woozy, downer melancholia with nods to Sparklehorse, Sentridoh, the Supreme Dicks, and other home brewed pop oddities, a crystalline collection of warble and waver that we're digging a whole lot. Both are great, so while either are worth it on their own, if you're not beholden to a specific format, we highly recommend just grabbing both.
Two new releases from this mysterious two man remote collaboration (actually not so mysterious, half the duo is in fact aQ pal Howard Ryan who also helps run the amazing local co-op bakery Arizmendi, the other being Minneapolis-based Sam Sharp), and while we thought about reviewing them separately, they really are the perfect pair, and odds are if you get one, you're gonna want the other. The music on both releases is super lo-fi, an avant, abstract, minimal murk pop, that to these ears sounds a bit like Mercury Rev crossed with The Caretaker, wistful psychedelia, all swoonsome melodies and earnest vox, but wreathed in TONS of FX, swaths of blurred reverb, a soft focus haze that renders the whole thing washed out and fantastically faded. Gorgeous indie pop hooks are stretched to their breaking point, and caked in crackle and crunch and hiss. It's a druggy, woozy, downer melancholia with nods to Sparklehorse, Sentridoh, the Supreme Dicks, and other home brewed pop oddities, a crystalline collection of warble and waver that we're digging a whole lot. Both are great, so while either are worth it on their own, if you're not beholden to a specific format, we highly recommend just grabbing both.
First full length from this Bay Area guitarist, who we first heard on the Berkeley Guitar compilation back in 2006, which also featured Matt Baldwin (whose Psychic Arts label released this!) and Sean Smith. And like his tracks on the comp, Snider displays quite a knack for sweetly melodic, pastoral Appalachia, conjuring up warm chordal swells, wrapped in delicate fingerpicked melodies, the tracks peppered with some subtle slippery slide guitar. Snider's style is generally not super flashy, and isn't about cascades of rapid fire notes, or dizzying melodic flurries, instead he tends to gently coax a hushed melancholia from his guitar, obviously the shadows of Fahey and Kottke and the rest loom large, but Snider definitely sounds right at home amongst such esteemed company. Most of the tracks here are dreamy and wistful, but a few (like "Val Verde Nights"), do display a more shadowy side, giving those tracks a moody minor key vibe. Good stuff.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered, and packaged in an origiami style folded jacket, with pasted on cover art and a photocopied insert.
This one came out of nowhere and kicked our asses. And to be totally honest, as is often the case, we ordered it almost entirely because the band had an awesome name, heck, they're called the Snivelling Shits. Fingers crossed we threw it on, and what do you know? The sound was as snotty and snarly and snarky and catchy and punk as fuck as the name implied.
The 'Shits were a joke band, formed by music journalist Giovanni Dadamo in 1977, designed to take the piss, but they ended up whipping up a batch of songs as good as if not better than any other groups at the time. Some impossible blend of the Buzzcocks, the Undertones, the Modern Lovers, The Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Velvets. Propulsive drumming, looped hypnotic riffing, and Dadamo's high pitched invective over the top. Take "I Can't Come", a bawdy sex tale about bedroom misadventure, with an insanely long list of other luminaries who couldn't come, culminating in the classic "Jesus Of Nazareth, heeeeeee can't come!" delivered in a snotty nasal whine. The rest of the tracks are just as funny: "Only 13", "Terminal Stupid", "I Wanna Be Your Biro", the all in French "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" and the impossibly catchy "Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima". Every song here is a stone cold classic. Why these guys weren't huge it's hard to say. Might be because they didn't take it all that seriously, or the fact that they only ever recorded EIGHT tracks in their whole brief career, all collected here, along with some demos as well as the holiday chestnut "There Ain't No Sanity Claus" with the Damned (Dadamo also wrote a couple songs for those guys) and the previously released "isgodaman?" which was included on a comp under the pseudonym Arthur Comix because the record label didn't want the word Shits on their record cover.
Bottom line is this stuff is amazing. Hooky and haughty, frenetic and so bad ass. If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands or have been digging on the current crop of snotty punk rock: the Catheters, the Thermals, Times New Viking, and the like, this will DESTROY YOU!!
On their follow-up to 2004's Final Straw, these Scots do a remarkable job not only of distinguishing themselves from the rest of their Scottish brethren buddies (Belle & Sebastian, Arab Strap et al), but also of replicating the good ol' American college / alternative rock sound of the '90s a la Gin Blossoms, Goo Goo Dolls, etc. Seriously, it's uncanny. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it? Many of you are well aware that a few of us here at AQ harbor a soft spot for this musical style -- which is also inextricably bound to a crush-like attachment to John Hughes teen movies -- and that soft spot has gradually transferred itself to this band. There's even a duet with Martha Wainwright ("Set The Fire To The Third Bar") which sounds eerily like one of the duets that Kate Bush did back then with Midge Ure or Peter Gabriel! Aw geez.
As the first few guitar strains of Final Straw took shape, I thought I was listening to the Weakerthans' Left And Leaving album. It sounded just like them! But then the vocals came in and it immediately became clear that I was mistaken. This is Snow Patrol! You might be more familiar with them being close collaboratin' buddies with fellow UK folks Arab Strap, Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai et al in The Reindeer Section. Of this musical gang, Snow Patrol are the most American 'indie rock' sounding. Seriously, many of these songs could easily be mistaken for Sebadoh or Pernice Brothers except that they're much more sleek. So, if you have a soft spot for the aching melancholia that flows from the songwriting pens of Lou Barlow or Joe Pernice but also dig the sweeping grandeur of bands such as Coldplay or Starsailor, Snow Patrol is for you!
We've been hearing about this band for ages, but until recently had never actually -heard- them. Word was they were a more metal Mogwai. Can't really argue with that. They're Scottish too, so they've obviously been slurping from the same slow build explosive climax fountain as their more moody, less heavy countrymen. But where Mogwai get bigger, and louder, and more expansive, Snowblood get HEAVIER, exploding into a doomy grind like Neurosis or Eyehategod or Corrupted. Which is most definitely a good thing. The sound of Snowblood is one we love, that epic post rock, moody and mathy, equal parts Godspeed, Mogwai, Mono, Isis and the like, but with the added bonus of constantly stumbling into massive downtuned slow motion sludge dirge mode, crusty and lumbering, huge tarpit riffs and howled almost black metal vocals. It's like some sort of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, where Mogwai or Mono let's say, get all wound up, more and more, louder and louder, until they turn away, and then lunge at you suddenly, fangs bared, claws out, eyes blood red, where they then proceed to tear you limb from limb, only later coming to, soaked in blood and entrails, in some sort of post blood letting daze, easily slipping back into dreamy indie swoon, as if nothing ever happened, only to do it all over again in the next song. Fuck! It's so awesome. Exactly what we always thought, when a band would get all loud and heavy, we would always think, "why not just go for it, go all the way and just be metal for fuck's sake!" and here Snowblood have done just that. Some tracks stay soft, drifting dreamlike, swathed in jangle and twang, but some songs get heavy right away and don't let up. Varied and dynamic and fucking killer! Stretches of blissy, soft focus post rock, delicate guitar figures, simple barely there rhythms, swirls of cymbal shimmer, the sound of wind and water, groovy almost jazzy shuffle, strange fuzzy almost funky Three Mile Pilot style basslines, crunchy angular riffing, a strange haunting croon (sounding strangely like Unrest's Marc Robinson), these elements shift and swirl, painting a dreamy post rock soundscape, but when the hammer falls, it falls hard, sometimes erupting into full on metalic grind, sometimes a lurching sludge rock behemoth that would give AQ faves like Whitehorse, Bunkur or Moss a run for their sludgerock money. An absolute perfect mix of the soft and moody, Godspeed. Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, and the hard and heavy, Boris, Monarch, Khanate, Eyehategod. Absolutely essential. We also have Snowblood's previous disc, The Human Tragedy, in stock, and that one is just as good!
We've been hearing about this band for ages, but until recently had never actually -heard- them. Word was they were a more metal Mogwai. Can't really argue with that. They're Scottish too, so they've obviously been slurping from the same slow build explosive climax fountain as their more moody, less heavy countrymen. But where Mogwai get bigger, and louder, and more expansive, Snowblood get HEAVIER, exploding into a doomy grind like Neurosis or Eyehategod or Corrupted. Which is most definitely a good thing. The sound of Snowblood is one we love, that epic post rock, moody and mathy, equal parts Godspeed, Mogwai, Mono, Isis and the like, but with the added bonus of constantly stumbling into massive downtuned slow motion sludge dirge mode, crusty and lumbering, huge tarpit riffs and howled almost black metal vocals. It's like some sort of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, where Mogwai or Mono let's say, get all wound up, more and more, louder and louder, until they turn away, and then lunge at you suddenly, fangs bared, claws out, eyes blood red, where they then proceed to tear you limb from limb, only later coming to, soaked in blood and entrails, in some sort of post blood letting daze, easily slipping back into dreamy indie swoon, as if nothing ever happened, only to do it all over again in the next song. Fuck! It's so awesome. Exactly what we always thought, when a band would get all loud and heavy, we would always think, "why not just go for it, go all the way and just be metal for fuck's sake!" and here Snowblood have done just that. Some tracks stay soft, drifting dreamlike, swathed in jangle and twang, but some songs get heavy right away and don't let up. Varied and dynamic and fucking killer! Stretches of blissy, soft focus post rock, delicate guitar figures, simple barely there rhythms, swirls of cymbal shimmer, the sound of wind and water, groovy almost jazzy shuffle, strange fuzzy almost funky Three Mile Pilot style basslines, crunchy angular riffing, a strange haunting croon (sounding strangely like Unrest's Marc Robinson), these elements shift and swirl, painting a dreamy post rock soundscape, but when the hammer falls, it falls hard, sometimes erupting into full on metalic grind, sometimes a lurching sludge rock behemoth that would give AQ faves like Whitehorse, Bunkur or Moss a run for their sludgerock money. An absolute perfect mix of the soft and moody, Godspeed. Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, and the hard and heavy, Boris, Monarch, Khanate, Eyehategod. Absolutely essential. We also have Snowblood's previous disc, The Human Tragedy, in stock, and that one is just as good!
We had heard about this group for ages, 'the metal Mogwai' people would tell us. And obviously we were intrigued. We finally got copies of their latest full length, "Being And Becoming" and listed it a few months back, and it was indeed a lot like a metal Mogwai. We dug it a lot. As did you judging from how difficult it's been to keep it in stock. So we figured we oughta track down their previous record, the equally pretty, and most definitely heavier "The Human Tragedy" and it's a killer.
The same dizzying mix of dreamy post rock, super dynamic epic cinematic soundscapes, and grinding pounding sludge.
The record begins with a thick whirring drone, mumbled melodies are strewn amidst thick swaths of low end, and simple fingerpicked guitar. That serenity doesn't last, as the second track kicks in, a weirdly grungy bass riff, simple tribal drumming, and a creepy snake charmer like melody that suddenly twists itself into a mathy metallic juggernaut, chugging riffs, venomous vocals, lurching and loping, with bursts of staccato metal fury. A bit like Today Is The Day crossed with Melvins. The next track is similar, a pounding angular crush, howled vocals and low end chug, peppered with stretches of swirling ambience. The rest of the record falls mainly somewhere between the heaviness of Neurosis, Eyehategod and Khanate and the meandering moodiness of Tortoise, Mogwai and the Timeout Drawer, but even with liberal and lengthy doses of moody math rock, drifting epic slowburn slowcore, and soft shimmery dreampop, Snowblood, always seem to return to the crush, every soft shimmer or melancholy melody is only a breath away from being laid flat by a wall of grinding guitars and pummelling drums. So great.
It's been almost 3 years since we last heard from Snowblood, who at the time were super hyped to us as being a "metal Mogwai", which makes sense as they are Scottish, they write epic slow burning metallic post rock jams, and they manages to fuse extreme heaviness with super melodic rock, but unlike Mogwai, these guys get very VERY metal, as in ULTRA heavy, sometimes sludgey and crushing, other times frenzied and thrashy, incorporating howling black metal vokills, even blast beats.
This long in the works new album, finds the band refining their sound, the prettier melodic parts are a bit crunchier, a little more krautrocky, loping and hypnotic, and the heavy parts, well, the band have really outdone themselves, kicking out the metallic jams big time, exploding into bursts of Coalesce / Converge chaotic fury before stumbling into lurching epic metallic doom sludge, the vocals even more harsh and hellish than before, the band sometime slowing it way down and dipping into full on Eyehategod territory.
Four long tracks, none shorter than 10 minutes, the longest a sprawling 18:31, each one a meandering journey from drift and strum and jangle to pummel and crush and crumble. The second track is all washed out and shoegazey with what sounds like accordions or strings, adding a layer of woozy buzz, until the band explodes into another bout of brutality, at which point those accordions or strings get all super distorted and sound almost like a metal kazoo, the effect is not as goofy as it sounds, especially considering the band lock into a seriously intense minor key mournful doom metal dirge. The third trajectory is the mathiest of the bunch, and never quite gets full metallized, although the vocals get pretty harsh, but the music gets more loud / epic Mogwai style, a Godspeed like flourish before settling back into a drifty post rocky fade out.
The final track mixes it up and starts out all metal, a huge churning chug, with a soaring main melody, those killer vox, before breaking down into a cool abstract drift, with jagged shards of droneguitar, fractured fragmented riffs, a downtuned crumbling chug way off in the distance, all woven around a woozy minor key melody, before exploding into another stretch of churning riffage and intense drum pound, finally finishing off with a thick wall of guitar hum and hiss. Awesome stuff. Seems like these guys should be massive, touring with Isis and Neurosis and Baroness and all those sorts of heavy hitters, maybe they do on the other side of the ocean, but it seems like over here they're way more under the radar, metalheads and post rockers over here need to get hip to these guys, lots of folks just might find themselves with a new favorite band.
Killer packaging, housed in a gorgeous silkscreened cardstock sleeve, with a fancy fold out printed insert.
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Featuring longtime local favorite Cole Marquis, beloved AQ-customer Mike Erhardt, producer extraordinaire Greg Freeman. Miss Murgatroid says this is the best album she has heard all year.
Snowpony plays atmospheric electronic-pop. This British supergroup is made up of vocalist/ keyboardist Katharine Gifford -- a former member of Stereolab and Moonshake -- as well as onetime My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe and
If you enjoyed the recent Mirah album Advisory Committee, you might wanna give this new SF artist a listen too. Snowy is primarily the work of Ms Bonni Evensen, although she's got some glowingly good company in tow, namely Tim Mooney (ex-American Music Club), Steve Roback (ex-Rain Parade) and Leigh Gregory (of Mellow Drunk). Her songs struck me as sort of a cross between Mirah and Aimee Mann. That means well-crafted and lush, intelligent and intimate. Not to mention the fact that her voice is quite often a deadringer for the latter. Darkly lilting and so enchanting. Each time I listen to this, another shadowy, lulling track jumps out and captures my heart. Very very nice!
Woah! We've got the return of a way, way, way, WAY OUT electric guitar and drums duo document here, an improv maelstrom of uber DISTORTION freakout action that proves there's nothing new under the sun, 'cause this was cranked out by two long haired American hippies back in the early Seventies. In the annals of underground noise, they deserve a special place. This is proto everything! Mick Barr, No Wave, Ascension, Rhys Chatham, Glen Branca, Sonic Youth, High Rise, The Blue Humans, Dead C, Harry Pussy, Lightning Bolt, D!O!D!O!D!, even the Rangda we listed a couple weeks ago... heck, we're hearing all of that here. Wow. A total feedback and bashing attack, but not negative in attitude or anti-musical at all. In fact, it's presented with a lot of positive hippy-dippy charm ("listen for the time when the drums play themselves - when the spirits in the drums themselves are dancing" - that's a quote from drummer Bob Thompson found on the '98 release, and the title Daily Dance comes from the writings of Ken Kesey of Merry Prankster/Acid Test fame). Yet, it makes one of their own influences - The Stooges - seem square in comparison. These two go further in channeling spiritual free jazz a la Coltrane and Sanders into a stripped down, amped up primal "psych rock" context, it's hard to think of many earlier examples of such out-rock exploration. And it was also totally DIY punk too - of course, no label back then, or now for that matter, would have seen much commercial potential in this volume-dealing duo's pioneering skronk fest!
Daily Dance was recorded in 1972, and subsequently released as a private press lp in '73 via Carla Bley's New Music Distribution Service. It was reviewed favorably by Creem magazine in '77 (you can see, this didn't get all that much attention when it first came out, but has grown in cult status over the years), with Doug Snyder's guitar squall indeed compared to James Williamson of The Stooges. Snyder also cited the Velvet Underground and Sonny Sharrock as his guitar influences... Japan's Masayuki Takayangi was probably unknown to Snyder at the time but we bet he'd have been into him too, though the Daily Dance duo definitely are more ROCK than they are jazz. Or at least, they manage to combine rock and jazz without coming close to "fusion", not that there's anything wrong with fusion, good fusion anyway, but there's lots of bad fusion and this ain't either.
Now it's been reissued on cd for the second time (the previous edition, from '98, is long out of print) and on vinyl as well, making it available to a new generation of improv noise rock freaks. [Vinyl? Yes, unfortunately we're out of stock on the vinyl right at the moment, but will get it back in soon, so please let us know if you want a copy in that format.] Pretty neat to hear music "like this" being made for what might have been the very first time, certainly Snyder and Thompson were "pushing the envelope" as they knew it then, advancing into territory not entirely mapped out by things they'd already heard. And even if it wasn't from '72, anyone who likes loud, full-on freakout, rhythmic skree, and droney noisy textures will be variously entertained, whether it be by the moody, mystic feedback and percussive shimmer that closes out the epic title track, or the dense rumble of "Teenage Emergency" at the end of the disc that makes us think of Sharrock playing some sort of static surf music...
Lion Productions, in association with Cantor Records (responsible for the vinyl reissue mentioned above), has done this up nicely, in a fancy Japanese-looking miniature lp style paste-on sleeve, complete with obi. Remastered from the original tapes, and packaged with a 20 page booklet with liner notes and photos. Nice! FYI, this compact disc edition also includes a previously unreleased two-minute bonus track, "Unseen, Unheard", that was left off the both the original and reissued vinyl for reasons of space (and it's not on the previous cd version either).
We had been hearing the name So Percussion being thrown around a lot lately, but we actually hadn't actually heard their music until now. Based on their name and the fact that they are made up of young percussionists we were worried that maybe it was going to be like the audio equivalent of seeing Stomp. And while we do actually love going to see Stomp with our Mom's (ahem), we are happy to report that the music that So Percussion makes is not merely a "look at us we're making drum sounds out of everything." In fact, Amid The Noise actually pushes the percussion to a much more subtle and ambient level, having more in common with Eno and Reich as it does street musicians drumming on garbage cans or Blue Man Group. Meditative playing that recalls Tortoise at their zenith, and the most delicate and intricate moments of Aphex Twin's Druqk's. Disciplined and perfectly played yet not sterile. The second disc is a DVD of beautiful films by Jenise Treuting of Japanese street scenes set to the music of So Percussion. We're definitely happy to finally know what So Percussion are all about.
Like the best of improv musicians, Matmos have proven to be such mindful and masterful collaborators over the years. Teaming up with everyone from The Kronos Quarter to J Lesser, David Pajo to Marshal Allen of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Wobbly to Rachel's, Terry Riley to Bjork, the list goes on and on! What's always exciting about these collaborations is that Matmos really do shed their skin and mutate into something totally different as they play off the blueprints of the folks they are collaborating with, and help bring that sound to entirely new places, stretching the bounds of outer sound possibilities. This time they're working with So Percussion, the percussive based collective whose sound exists somewhere between Steve Reich and Tortoise, but with Matmos thrown into the mix the sound becomes much more stretched out with unexpected twists, turns and nuanced vibrations. From a Penguin Cafe Orchestra vibe to postmodern gamelan rhythms, this is a record that really encapsulates what it means to be sound artists feeding off of each other. These are all musicians who you can tell are stretching way out, using their imaginations and having fun while they create something together that they wouldn't have come up with on their own. Highly recommended!
Besides having one of the best band names ever (Google it!), this Seattle trio kick up a serious din, equal parts classic grunge, angular new wave, and aggro post punk. Neo is a chaotic sonic free-for-all, with most of the songs seemingly on the verge of total collapse, delicately balancing melody and mayhem, drawing everything in FX and feedback, the guitar sounding like they're continually going in and out of tune, the vocals a wild, dramatic yarl, some songs frantic and frenetic, sounding like some lost eighties whatever-wave, while others trudge all hairy-knuckled through Flipper like muck, and still others creep and slither despondently (and at least one of those has some kind of weird robot vocals!). There's some gothiness, some gloominess, at least one track (if not more), sounds like an even more pissed off, and maybe slightly more wasted Nirvana, while most of the rest sound like some virulent strain of noisy, murky gloom pop, albeit one with stadium rock aspirations, resulting in some crazy catchiness, doused in all manner of sonic grit and grime.
This is one of those records where we loove looove love the cover and picture disc artwork... a lot more than the recording. SSMWWT are damaged sounding. So So so distorted guitar, drums and vocals -- vocals that conjure a Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O on speedballs, or dying cats screaming for their lives as they're put through a meat grinder. (No animals were harmed in this review.)
In its wall of fuzzed-out screaming distortion, the album's 11 quick tracks are either uppers or downers -- slow hungover sludge or hyper speedy meth timing. You might not be able to deal with this. If you can deal with it, you are/were probably into Wolf Eyes, Lightning Bolt, Six Finger Satellite and the like. But just look at that pretty kitty picture disc. Mmmmm...
Don't know too much about these guys (this guy?) other than the fact that they create the sort of hazy mechanical looped soundscape we can't seem to get enough of. Imagine the music of Philip Jeck, Wolf Eyes, Tim Hecker, Starving Weirdos and This Heat but all stripped down and reassembled into some abstract collage of post industrial loops, gritty lo-fi dronemusic and abstract motorik krautrock abstraction.
Hard to say what exactly these guys are using as sound sources, there is some sort of metallic percussion, super processed vocals, tons of FX, layer upon layer of fuzzy grit, grimy blurs and deeprumbles, there's a drumkit in there too, lurking below the woozy fug above, but occasionally exploding in a little burst of sizzling cymbals. There's a definite grim gothic vibe too, when the noise occasionally peels back, it reveals a moody meandering sort of doom drift, cold wave, gloom pop, all tribal and haunting and hypnotic. With warm warbly organ, weird swirling production, before the record explodes again in a sprawl of clank and clatter and crunch.
The record shifts and transforms constantly, but often finds a gorgeous washed out hypnotic sound and settles in, sticking with it for long stretches, lulling the listener into an altered state, and then yanking them out and hurling them into an avalanche of crumbling distortion and fractured truncated beats, streaks of feedback and heaving swells of muted distortion.
Even at its noisiest, Born Into It manages to be weirdly pretty and super mesmerizing, but more often than not, the noise is tamped down by thick swaths of thick whirring dreamdronedrift, and wrapped around abstract skeletal rhythms.
Super cool stuff.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
For their second full-length album this San Francisco-based quintet have developed into a more sophisticated indie-pop outfit than what we heard on their earlier releases. A dreamy introspection replaces the youthful wide-eyed innocence and up beat tempos of 2010's Wind Up Wooden Hearts. As she reaches for her lower range, singer Natalia Rogovin exudes a greater maturity, and her distinctive way of drawing out each syllable only heightens the pensive mood. Part of what separates Social Studies from being some kind of Feist rip-off is they don't insult the listener's intelligence by beating them over the head with the same crescendo build-up that peaks and then just keeps pounding through to the end. Songs like "Still Life" do build in intensity, but you have to follow along through a lot of pretty melodic twists and turns before you get there. Much of this is due to the way the vocals operate as one instrument instead of a star vocalist put out in front of the other players. Rogovin's interplay with bassist Jesse Hudson and guitarist Tom Smith create an interesting call and response. The sum of the parts here definitely make a greater whole, which is why we always look forward to spending some time on Social Studies.
While SF was once a hotbed for melodic, infectious indie-pop it's been a little while since a new SF band knocked our socks off with that style. Thankfully Social Studies have come to the rescue filling our sweet tooth with a terrific debut of keyboard driven, totally peppy and addictive sassy tunes. Bringing to mind the best moments of groups like Mates of State, Call & Response, Smoosh, Aislers Set and Finland's TV-Resistori. We love how the songs are fun yet not fluffy, familiar yet fresh, sincere and not whiny. Makes some of us wish we had cars, as this would be so fun to listen to blasting in the car stereo while driving really fast with no particular place to go. Such a great pop record!
Second album from this great energetic San Francisco pop band, who pack lots of nice twists and turns into their sophomore outing. With infectious keyboards fueling the songs alongside driving guitars and beautiful vocals, Social Studies have developed a sound that's punchy, catchy and intimate. Listening to Wind Up Wooden Hearts makes us think of so many of our favorite interesting indie pop peddlers. Like if Hanne Hanne Hukkelberg was backed by Casiotone For The Painfully Alone; or The Finches doing Broadcast covers; or Wye Oak, Mates Of State, Feist, The Postmarks, Dirty Projectors, and Victoria Bergsman all jamming out at a fun filled pajama party. There is such a brightness to the sounds that Social Studies create, full of color and wide eyed possibility. It's refreshing when so many bands seem to be going for detached cool, and layers of fuzz to hide their songs, to hear a really good pop band very upfront and comfortable with creating songs that make your head bop and heart pound, the perfect soundtrack for a long stroll with that special crush, soft serve ice cream cones in your hands, and these sweet sounds in your head and a carefree breeze defining that moment. So nice.
Here's Society Of Rockets sophomore album, and on it they've taken a turn into quite a different musical terrain. The ol' psych-pop 'shimmer' that used to be the core of these Bay Area musicians' sound has all but vanished. The only thing remotely still in that realm is the cool curvy lettering on the cd's packaging. Whereas their debut album Sunset Homes was steeped in earthy moodiness with lots of dusky atmosphere that still possessed some trippiness, this time they've opted for more straightforward rock'n'roll. Yep, these former members of Shimmer Kids Underpop Association deliver a rockin' kick in the pants on Where The Grass Grows Black.
A Bay Area band The Society Of Rockets are back with their third album! Although their roots were definitely planted in psychedelic pop, over the last few years their sound has gotten progressively darker and more aggressive. The smoky shades of Our Paths Related intermingles a broad spectrum of other genres and influences -- trippy space rock, gritty blues, rootsy country, mellow '70s rock and maybe even hints of U2 circa "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". However, unlike the current trend of stew-like "experimental psych", these folks' equally trippy music doesn't hide behind murk and meanderings, but shines with terrific songcraft and top-notch musicianship!
Society Of Rockets fire up their engines and launch forth from the ashes of beloved SF psych-pop combo the Shimmer Kids Underpop Association, and here's their debut release! While some of their spacy 'shimmer' still lingers, overall Society Of Rockets have their navigational dials set to considerably more rural territory, as though the inquisitive band members have spent many an hour exploring grassy meadows and weathered taverns. The results are hauntingly atmospheric and very lovely.
Not a new (re)release, but newly in stock here at AQ. Another one for all you fans of '70s proto-metal hard rock, one of Allan's faves (hence, we got some in when we got the chance). Socrates Drank The Conium were a Greek band, and "On The Wings" was their third album, originally issued in 1973. Psychedelic hard blues rock with ragged, rough-edged English vocals, and -- this is key -- UTTERLY RIPPING twin electric guitar. Definitely an early milestone in heavy acid rock guitar shred. Vangelis later joined this band, but you'd never guess there was any New Age connection from this kick ass album. The songs twist and snake around, with rockin' and doomy riffs, dual guitar harmonies, and crazy leads -- both guitarists playing entirely different, complex licks that somehow meld perfectly. Brilliant stuff. Kinda progressive and utterly powerful. None other than Julian Cope has described this as sounding "a lot like SABBATH VOLUME 4 with Family's Roger Chapman singing". So, if past AQ-reviews of bands like Night Sun, Toad, Wishbone Ash, Flower Travellin' Band, I Teoremi, Tractor, etc. have resulted in successful music purchase/listening experiences for you, then you certainly might want to give this Socrates Drank The Conium album a try. Of course, we only have a few in stock, so please be ready to be patient if/when we run out...
Got a couple of these in, the first album from the '70s Greek hard rock/psych outfit Socrates Drank The Conium. If you dug their On The Wings album that we listed a little while back, you may also want to check out this reissue. Originally released in 1972, their debut isn't quite as ripping as the totally off-the-hook On The Wings, but it's got plenty of wailing kick ass guitar work nonetheless. Unlike On The Wings there's only one guitar in the mix, but when he gets cooking with the bands' driving rhythm section backing him up he really takes off. There's also some more laid-back, rural psych moments on here, but mostly hard boogie-blues-acid-rock numbers harking back to Cream and Hendrix, assuredly big heroes of Socrates Drank The Conium. They've got something to say through their music as well, as titles like "It's A Disgusting World" and "Underground" indicate, although the band's lasting message might not really be one of radical politics but something more basic: rock on!
Contains six tracks of the 30 from the 2cd anthology The Lizard Years. Gatefold, limited to 500 copies for the world.
Contains eleven tracks of the 30 from the 2cd anthology The Lizard Years. Gatefold, limited to 500 copies for the world.
If you really know your '70s Indonesian psych rock, or (like us) at least picked up the great Those Shocking Shaking Days compilation we raved about a while back, then the name Benny Soebardja may be familiar to you... he was lead guitarist and vocalist for fuzzy progsters Shark Move, and also appeared on that comp with his later band, Lizard. The Lizard track, "Candle Light", we said was so classic '70s sounding, that it coulda been the Indonesian answer to the Steve Miller Band! Well, delving deeper into the dusty grooves unearthed by Those Shocking Shaking Days, the Strawberry Rain label (who did the same with another Shocking Shaking Days alumnus, AKA) now presents this deluxe double cd, compiling all three private press lps that Benny & Lizard released circa 1976-78. (All 3 are also 'available' as individual vinyl reissues too, in rather limited quantities though, in fact, the first one so limited we never even saw it.... we do have the vinyl of Gimme A Piece Of Gut Rock and double lp Night Train though.)
On this cd collection, there's 30 tracks, including the aforementioned "Candle Light", all of it great psychedelic stuff, definitely groovy, with English lyrics, progressive chops, fancy frenzied fretwork, lovely harmonies, sizzling synths, spacey mellow moments, and a special vibe indeed.
You might get into this initially for all the fuzzed out, "heavy, maaaan" moments, but you'll find yourself coming back for prettier, melodic pop parts too. For sure, this collection reveals Benny S. to be quite the talent in that area, melody being crucial to all these songs, whether he and Lizard are doing heavy rock or jazzy discofunk or Beatles inflected popsike (or some crazy hybrid of all that at once). He certainly didn't limit himself, and it doesn't take titles like "A Signal From Outer Space" to recognize this as truly progressive music (and by the way, that one, which ends disc 2, lives way up to its title!). Lotsa gems here, and it even seems to get better as it goes along, with some of the strongest stuff coming from Lizard's last album, Night Train, though we love it all.
Comes with an informative, illustrated 36 page book, the works.
Robyn Hitchcock started the Soft Boys in the late 1970s and such is the band's brilliance that it cannot all be contained in one album. They wrote amazing song after amazing song, and the classic Underwater Moonlight album (first released in June 1980) boasts
Their sound? Well, Hitchcock said he wanted to cross Abbey Road with Captain beefheart's Troutmask Replica. Ambitious guy, and he quite succeeds -- the songs are filled with incredible junp-up-and-down energy, manic hooks 'n melodies, and slashing clangy guitar that has deeply influenced everyone from REM to Yo La Tengo to Tall Dwarfs to ... like... EVERYONE.
This Matador reissue contains the entirety of the Underwater Moonlight album along with 9 outtakes and another disc of a previously-unreleased live performances. Lots of new photos and drawings. The triple 150 gram gatefold vinyl version is even more comprehensive, with a bonus 7" that has even more unreleased tracks.
If you deliriously dug into the recent Soft Boys Underwater Moonlight vinyl reissue, and are seeking more... Well, look no further than that album's older brother, the band's 1979 debut full length which has also been reissued on lp by the fine folks at Yep Roc. Robyn Hitchcock's obtusely peculiar lyrics rally with Kimberley Rew's guitars - at once, somehow both jangly and angular. Granted A Can Of Bees is not quite as bountiful with immediately charming hooks as Underwater Moonlight, but there's still plenty of top notch infectious goodness on it from Hitchcock, Rew and co. Unquestionably though, the band dishes out far more delicious piss'n'vinegar than normally expected from bands inhabiting the neo-psych folk pop arena. Still great thirty two years later!
I have truly mixed feelings about the reunions of bands whose decades-past acheivements I hold in high esteem. On one hand, it's the only way I can share in the experience of seeing them live- and bands like Wire and Mission of Burma prove that that can be a rewarding experience. On the other hand, as soon as those bands channel their tour reunion energy into a studio album, my skepticism increases tenfold.
The Soft Boys had a very succesful and by all accounts excellent reunion tour, and here's the inevitable reunion album. Well. Let's keep in mind the fact that these fellows are responsible for truly brilliant albums like "Underwater Moonlight" and "A Can of Bees," that Robyn Hitchcock has released some very fine solo work, and be thankful. Diehard Hitchcock fans will undoubtably find something to appreciate in "Nextdoorland," which definitely isn't a terrible record, just a relatively non-essential one that most of us can safely pass over. This assesment may be a tad unfair-- the jangly pop found here might just need some "growing time"-- but I'm sticking to it for now.
Finally available on vinyl (again)!
Robyn Hitchcock formed The Soft Boys back in 1976. Pretty much from the get go, they were cranking out amazing song after amazing song, and the songwriting got even more awesome when guitarist Kimberley Rew joined the fold a year later. Their sophomore full length, the classic Underwater Moonlight (first released in June of 1980), boasts so many of them. The band fires up the punk engines with the anthemic "I Wanna Destroy You" and then gets your bubblegum snappin' with "Positive Vibrations" and then melts your heart with "Queen Of Eyes". All the while embedding their pop hooks permanently in your cranium... which is just fine with us! The band was sadly short-lived, burning brightly for just four years, and then going their separate ways shortly after this album (although they did reform briefly in 1994 and 2001). So, that perhaps makes this record even more cherished. The Soft Boys' sound? Well, Hitchcock himself said he wanted to cross The Beatles' Abbey Road with Captain Beefheart's Troutmask Replica. Ambitious guy, and he quite succeeded - these songs are filled with wryly clever absurdist lyrics, manic jump-up-and-down energy, lovely melodies, delicious vocal harmonies, art folk psychedelia, and slashing clangy post-punk guitars. Yes, all that and then some! The band has deeply influenced everyone from Yo La Tengo to Flaming Lips to Destroyer to Tall Dwarfs to REM to... well... EVERYONE. Those who've yet to encounter the brilliance of The Soft Boys should start with this, inarguably their definitive album, and then seek out their other smart and wonderful releases: 1979's Can of Bees, 1977's Give it to the Soft Boys ep, etc. Not to mention Hitchcock's subsequent solo outings as well as Rew's post-Soft Boys solo activities as well as in the deliriously catchy Katrina And The Waves.
