We managed to miss this one when it was released a while back in 2005, but we figured we weren't the only ones to let this import cd slip through the cracks. The Bedsit Tapes is the officially released collection of the early demos, escapades, and excursions from the megawatt new wave pop stars Soft Cell. These DIY recordings date back to 1978 when David Ball was attending Leeds Polytechnic, where he made full use of a makeshift recording studio consisting of a couple of reel-to-reel tape decks and a mixing board. Upon wiring up a Korg synth and primitive drum machine, Ball started to make "weird little tunes," one of which caught the ear of fellow student Marc Almond who asked if he could use one of those songs for his performance art shows. The two began refining those electronic blorps and bleeps into arty synth-pop numbers, snarling with contemporary punk energy and technological primitivism. Almond already had developed a charismatic persona, which he jubilantly expressed upon the wide vistas of grandiose theatricality, from the crooning balladeering of "L.O.V.E. Feeling" to the switchblade slashes on the uber-ironic "Bleak Is My Favorite Cliche" to the ominous bark of "Occupational Hazard" and onto the fucked-up delirium of their frenzied cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid." Yeah, you heard us right: Soft Cell covered Sabbath!
Given the stripped down arrangements and trial-by-fire approach to the technology at hand, Soft Cell certainly benefited from Almond's larger than life persona. Such is what gave the 'pop' elements of Throbbing Gristle and Reproduction era Human League their iconic status, and it certainly set the stage for the anthemic '80s hits that Soft Cell would produce later on. While many ordinary Soft Cell fans might be put off by the roughness of these tracks, it's precisely that fucked atonality, that avant-punk electricity, that giddy nervousness, those warbled, sci-fi effects and those ominous drones which make us totally dig this collection. Anyone into the whole "Messthetics" scene, and/or the current revival of retro new wave electronica old and new, should also dig.
Soft Circle is the long-awaited solo debut of former Black Dice drummer and visual artist Hisham Bharoocha. Channeling the cosmic meditative vibe of bands like Popol Vuh and Quintessence and filtering them through similar avant-rock tropes of his contemporaries, Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance and Exceptor, Bharoocha has crafted a warm yet subdued inner space travelogue. Filled with sitars, tamboura, layered and delayed vocalizing, marimba repetitions and drum circles, Full Bloom sounds like the logical next step after Black Dice's 2002 release Beaches and Canyons. But Black Dice as a group would never have released something so transcendentally focused as Full Bloom, leaving no doubt that Bharoocha's departure from the band was all for the better. The music also complements Bharoocha's concerns as a visual artist nicely, sharing a multi-layered kaleidoscopic spiritualism loaded with tribal and ritualistic ruminations.
Recommended!
First appearance on the aQ list for Soft Kill, an offshoot of aQ gloom goth faves Blessure Grave, and as you might expect, SK's sound is not hugely removed from Blessure Grave, but it definitely displays a different direction, with a new, and more warped sound palette, check out "Seven Hundred", which opens with chiming Cure like goth guitar melodies, drifting dreamily over some thick, super distorted synth squelch, while way off in the distance, tribal drums pound and churn. Super hypnotic, and weirdly minimal, until the guitar grows more urgent, the drums following suit, the song finally breaking the tension, and blossoming into a proper song, and maybe surprisingly, a proper pop song. We were expecting it to get seriously heavy and dense (especially considering the fact that the group now features, for this release at least, the drummer from doom heavies Atriarch), but instead, it's warm and jangly, still dark, but more goth pop than death rock, the vocals a deep dramatic croon, eventually exploding into a passionate wail, all over the roiling gloominess below, reminding us of old school goth outfits like Kommunity FK or the Abecedarians.
The flipside "Circle Of Trees" wraps dark twang around skittery programmed beats and some chiming effected guitar melodies, which builds to a darkly propulsive doom-goth groove, and again harkens back to the heyday of early eighties LA goth rock, Soft Kill sounding like the sort of band you'd stumble across playing the Scream Club, it's a sound we've always loved, and one few bands can pull off convincingly, but both tracks here are kicking our asses, and most definitely has us hankering for the upcoming full length.
Pressed on SUPER thick clear red vinyl, housed in a heavy PVC plastic sleeve with a full color cardstock insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Yet another archival release of stuff by this still-relevant 'Canterbury' band, one that wedded jazz fusion to prog rock to pure avant-garde invention (file 'em between Miles Davis and King Crimson, unless you're a stickler for alphabetization like me). The majority of this disc (three tracks, about 40 minutes) is live material from 1970, circa their album "Third", recorded by the 'classic' Soft Machine line-up of Elton Dean (sax), Hugh Hopper (bass), Mike Ratledge (electric piano, organ) and Robert Wyatt (drums and vocals). That's followed by two more live tracks, from 1969, recorded by the barely-documented septet version of the group (more sax, and trombone). This disc wraps up with an epic 20-minute demo version of the Wyatt-penned "Moon In June" from '68/'69. This composition was later recorded for "Third" and also appears in an abridged live form as track two of this disc. The 1970 live stuff sounds great, the '69 tracks a little rougher (but very immediate). The "Moon In June" demo was rescued from an apparently quite fucked up acetate, but is miraculously listenable. Liner notes and photos enhance the experience. Ok, that's the basic info...if you're a Softs fan you probably want this. If you have yet to investigate this band's voyage from British psychedelic/prog rock to experimental jazz realms (a voyage also undertaken by many Krautrock bands, probably inspired in part by these guys), you probably want to get "Third" to start with (other suggestions welcome, but that's the one I'm most familiar with). But, as this stuff is from that era, it's also recommended. True, the Soft Machine's style of fusion has its dangers, but whenever the jazz element threatens to get too polite, or the prog too twee, some distorted bass or organ or sax wailing saves the day.
13 tracks of prime Soft Machine.
Elton Dean, Robert Wyatt, Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge, and Lyn Dobson live 1970. Another fine entry in the seemingly never-ending series of archival recordings being dug up of this classic Canterbury rock-jazz act.
Recorded live for German radio in March of 1971.
Los Angeles' synth-pop duo Soft Metals owe a considerable amount of their sound to Chris & Cosey, and they've never been shy of wearing this influence on their sleeves. After all, they actually produced a rather impressive cover of the TG's alienating disco number "Hot On The Heels Of Love" not too long ago. Soft Metals' Patricia Hall has a ghostly vocal delivery that recalls the sensually cool detachment that Cosey has imparted since the late '70s, and Hall & her cohort Ian Hicks revel in the minimal wave ethos of electronic arrangements and step sequencing circa 1984, with absolutely no interest in tapping the digitally driven productions from the mid-'90s onward. The simplicity and reductionism of their technologies and their musical structures can work in their favor, but of course they do have the advantage of hindsight in gazing back at what was truly successful from the golden era of minimal wave. Where the previous recordings from Soft Metals would situate a slinky proto-techno track next to something deliberately disjointed, Lenses operates wholly in the sleek surfaces of glistening electronic percolations layered throughout the acid-trax squelchiness and clockwork ticking drum programming.
Yet another hat thrown into the eighties retro futuristic sci-fi Carpenter / Goblin new/cold/synth wave faux soundtrack ring, this one comes from a duo called Soft Metals, who definitely draw from the same sonic well as many of their contemporaries, but have a sound that's varied (and catchy) enough, to make them pretty interesting.
For folks more into the dark cold wave buzzy synth side of this new wave sound, the opener might throw you for a loop, with it's synth disco vibe and way up in the mix soulful vocals, an overtly eighties montage soundtrack styled jam, but for folks into Italians Do It better and all that sort of Italo disco dancefloor stuff, it will definitely hit the spot. A little bit cheesy, but seemingly purposefully so, primitive drum machines, fuzzy synths, echo drenched female vox, it's total old school electro pop, which surprisingly leads into something much darker, a robotic Kraftwerk like groove, sinister and sci-fi, motorik and hypnotic, with moments that definitely remind us of Herbie Hancock's "Rockit". From there on out the record veers into some total old school electro pop cold wave, very Teutonic, with detached aloof almost spoken vocals, everything wrapped in swirled effects. The next track might be the biggest surprise, like Reich or Riley rendered in analog cold wave synth form, looped and cyclical, sounding a little like 8 bit video game music, mesmerizing and repetitive and so wonderfully hypnotic. Finally the record finishes off the way it started, with another blast of full on swoonsome and dramatic eighties electro pop...
Soft Metals have really upped the ante with their sophomore effort, as they have created one of the most sensual and seductive albums of the year. Female vocals that melt with an icy detachment, and Euro-synth stylings that walk the line between the dancefloor and somewhere darker and weirder. Like a lo-fi Goldfrapp adding vocals to a lost Goblin score, or Fever Ray hosting an after hours party at an alternate universe Studio 54, the album flows and comes together so perfectly, the music is just as important as the vocals and together they swirl, sway, and achieve absolute late night bliss. We've been playing this nonstop, a record that pleases so immediately, but that you want to keep around you as on repeated listens it delves and burrows even deeper into our subconscious...
First we've heard from aQ beloved SF gloom pop outfit Soft Moon in a while, a single sided 7" featuring the group's collaboration with John Foxx, former vocalist for Ultravox (appearing here with his band, The Maths), and what a match up. Super spaced out spare percussion, dubby and wreathed in reverb, percolating melodies, thick metallic low end thrum, very gloomy and gothy for sure, and then those instantly recognizable vox, super dramatic and passionate, nestled in amongst Soft Moon's (and The Math's) gloriously bleary eighties style gloom pop, atmospheric and haunting, but super catchy. It's only one song, but it's gotten lots of repeat play, and definitely has us wanting to hear more, and also wondering if maybe Foxx should just join Soft Moon full time. Would not be a bad thing at all.
Damn, it's getting hard to keep up with Captured Tracks. Every time we blink it seems they have put out a new record of some sort. But keeping up pays off, because they have a pretty amazing record when it comes to fucking great releases. Before we even heard The Soft Moon, we heard so many of our customers in the store asking when we were getting it in. And we can see what all the anticipation and excitement was about as this is for sure one of the finest slabs of wax yet to be released on Captured Tracks. Minimal, driving and sensual post punk. Almost like a sexier Moon Duo, as it shares a similar repetitive and drugged out psychedelic post-Suicide/Spacemen 3 aesthetic, but much more sleek and song based. Makes it even cooler that its all the work of one guy from right here in San Francisco. For sure he fits well in the world of folks like Blank Dogs, Cosmetics, and Pearl Harbor. You can hear that he must have a love for everything from Tones On Tail to Suicide to Slowdive as these two songs melt as much as they slowly burn with such pleasing fire. Fucking great!
Album number three by one of our favorite contemporary post-punk projects,The Soft Moon, and we'll just start by saying this one is a fucking corker! Oakland native Luis Vasquez has been the central figure in The Soft Moon for five years now, occasionally fleshing out the band for touring purposes; but in the studio, he works entirely alone. There, he's carved out his suprisingly unique agenda with a trenchant menace, as well as some damn fine goth-pop songwriting chops. Deeper is much more of an electronic record, with many of the songs thrusting forward with gritty, monochromatic synth-noise chords that lift, soar, and collapse upon drum machined spines. The heaving, flanged basslines pilfered from Killing Joke and Siouxsie punctuate most every song with his eerily droned out guitar work used sparingly throughout the album; and then there's his voice, which retains an affected cross between an urgent whisper and a hyperventilated aspiration. The few instances where Vasquez slips into the more classic goth crooner mode, as on the arrestingly gloomy ballad "Wasting" where he bellows with all of emotional portent of Dave Gahan on Depeche Mode's Violator. The pogo-punk bounce from the spry rhythm section that drives tracks like "Far" and "Feel" are almost crushed under the incremental weight of all that nihilist energy Vasquez imbues in these tracks. Akin to that claustrophobic intensity found on The Cure's Pornography, if repurposed for a goth-pop project produced by Silent Servant or Andy Stott. So great is The Soft Moon!
Two killer tracks self-released by the highly acclaimed minimal wave / gloom pop maestro The Soft Moon (aka Luis Vasquez). The A-side - "Feel" - is a chugging track, beginning with an industrial / muscular rhythm track straight out of a Killing Joke and / or Twitch-era Ministry number, gradually overlaid with an echo-bombard of vocalized whisper that's been rendered a roar and those spidery, cold-cold-cold guitars that Vasquez has laced throughout all of his previous albums. "Feel" is a quintessential Soft Moon jam, we gotta say. The B-side - "Hunger" - though, is way more abstract, more akin to the Bermuda Drain stuff that Prurient released a while back, with a thick, snarling synth drone dragging down Vasquez' spiky guitar melodies, all crusted over with crumbling noise. The slow doomplod of a drum machine creeps into the scalding feedback and synth morass about halfway through. As with any single worth their weight, both tracks are non-album songs. Nope, there's no download code available.
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While there is no shortage of rad new music coming out of San Francisco, there is something about the sounds of Soft Moon that excite and dazzle us so much that it's safe to say they very well may be our favorite new Bay Area band in quite a while. They came out of nowhere, releasing their incredible debut 7" before even playing a show, and then kicking off their live incarnation with unforgettable performances, including their first ever show where they played with Blank Dogs. Seeing them live after falling so hard for that first slab of wax was just further proof that this was a band we would be loving for a long time to come. This new 7" continues to show the intensity and spot on vision that makes their entrancing psychedelia so damn addicting and satisfying. Both these songs have something so menacing, driving and assured about them. You can't just name a single specific band or era that they are tapping into, and while they do have this really cool dirgey early '80s dark wave disposition there is also something so sensual and singular to their sound. Without a doubt a total contender for our favorite 7" of the year and we are so psyched for their full length to drop in the near future!
In the year since its release the Soft Moon's debut full length has become a rare unanimous favorite here at aQuarius, and many other places too we would imagine. The songs were immediately gripping, but over time we came to the realization that the album is, dare we say, pretty dang perfect, and within the sea of similarly styled bands who would describe themselves as "dark" that record is one that will stand out as a classic. We often find ourselves wondering how something could be so goddamn amazing, managing to sound both familiar and unique to itself. Soft Moon mainman Luis Vasquez has taken things to the next logical step by assembling a full band to bring these songs to the live stage, and with the arrival of this brand new ep, Vasquez and company effortlessly show the world that there is more where that came from. The only issue we have here is Total Decay's short running time - but then it's an ep, so who are we to complain. Clocking in at under 15 minutes, we are already salivating for the next Soft Moon platter, but like the two singles that preceded the debut album, where we were given some months to digest the tunes and think about what might come next, Total Decay works in setting a mood while you hunger for what's around the corner. And yet, the ep also works well as a brief but wholly contained slab of music, beginning with "Repetition", where a murky post-punk bassline sets the flow over steady driving rhythms and frantically atmospheric synths that are as chillingly sexy as they are ominous. "Alive" would be a good place to start for someone who has never heard this band, displaying all the Joy Division / Wire / whatever influences they have merged into a sound that really belongs only to them at this point, with Vasquez's strange shouted whispers (or whispered shouts?) occasionally soaring into the disembodied falsetto that has become one of the band's trademarks. No doubt the standout here is the title track, which lurches forward midtempo with an industrial buzz and provides the perfect score to wandering alone through all the creepy abandoned parts of town. The heavily effected vocals feel like the voice of some sexless robo-narrator guiding you along and offering no guarantees that you won't get your ass kicked by whoever or whatever happens to be lurking around in the shadows as beautiful buried synths bring all kinds of strange melodies into the mix. The final track, "Visions", is a claustrophobic percussion workout with more creepy ambience that, again, has most of us desperately freaking out in advance for the next full length. Guess we'll just have to be patient, but until then Total Decay will be on constant repeat.
From the very first time we heard post punk / minimal wave / gloom pop one man band The Soft Moon (aka Luis Vasquez), we were totally smitten. The sound dark and menacing, distorted drum machines, buzzing low slung basslines, tangled melodies, all woven into a sort of lo-fi downer wave propulsion, that took the Cure, removed much of the overt poppiness, and instead recast it as some sort of home brewed post industrial goth wave, replete with breathy whispered vox, woozy minor key refrains and alien atmospheres, everything wreathed in a washed out eighties murk, noisy and rough around the edges, we couldn't get enough.
The Total Decay ep seemed to be an extension of the self titled debut, a perfect slab of similarly shadowy post punk nihilism, but if anything it was the bridge between that record and this one, where Vasquez' sound has blossomed into something even more perfect, a twisted dystopian future-wave, all thick, corrosive buzzing synths, and dubbed out machine funk, keening sine wave melodies, and woozy, echo drenched ambience. It's all about the sound. Really it always was, which is ironic since we often complain about bands getting the sound right, but not having the songs to back it up, but with The Soft Moon, while there are still songs lurking in the shadows, it's really all about the sound, and the sound is so impossibly perfect. All it takes is a few second of the opener, "It Ends", with it's dense blown out buzzing low end synth buzz, dubbed out hand clap rhythms, and frantic percussive skitter, not to mention the weirdly mournful keening melody over the top, it's like all the best parts of witch house, reimagined as some mutant strain of cold wave, we would have been perfectly happy if that sub two minute chunk of pulsing, buzzing witch-wave was stretched out to fill up the whole record, even if it just stayed locked in that witch loop. Sure it's an intro, but we've listened to it about 20 times in a row!
Thankfully, that alien electronic witch-wave oozes into the rest of the record, wrapping its inky tendrils around the more recognizable Soft Moon style of jagged rhythms, Factory style basslines, echo drenched guitar jangle, and hypno wave groove, cold and clinical, like the soundtrack to some alternate future, and as one grows accustomed to the sound, suddenly, as if by some slight of hand, the songs reveal themselves, a melody here, a vocal there, a hook hidden beneath a cascade of corrosive metallic crunch, a catchy chorus obscured by sheets of synth buzz and dubbed out robotic rhythms, repeated listens are definitely rewarded, the record acting almost as some sort of sonic portal, requiring a deep listening key, ultimately allowing the listener access to the inner workings of The Soft Moon's sentient musical machine.
Oh and stick around for the closer, a reverse bookend of that witch-wave opener, literally, as it's the opening track in reverse, which only makes it that much more psychedelic and fantastically fucked up.
Ok, bear with us here... Might anybody remember Steve Trecasse? We're guessing the answer is no. He has been a small-time music producer, who worked at a time for MTV way back in the mid-to-late '80s. He was responsible for all of the music on the shortlived MTV gameshow Remote Control, but he also composed the theme song for the first incarnation of 120 Minutes. The show grew into a rather banal rehash of major label sponsored "alternative" music, but the early years had some genuine underground acts showcasing their videos. Live Skull, Swans, Sonic Youth, and Loop were some of the more atypical groups to get their videos on the air, alongside more conventional college rock favorites like The Sugarcubes, Love & Rockets, and They Might Be Giants. But that theme song hedged toward the darker, grittier sound through a throbbing electronic underbelly girding an air-raid siren guitar swarm which was not too far from a Skullflower (circa Birthdeath & Form Destroyer) / Sigue Sigue Sputnik / Joy Division hybrid as bafflingly awesome as that may seem. Another weird piece of trivia about that theme song was that it was performed by Trecasse with Doug Di Franco (who might just be Double Dee, turntablist Steinski's partner in crime) and Josh Braun (who seems to be the same dude who played keyboards in Circus Mort, which was Michael Gira's band before Swans). Anyway, that theme song proved to be more haunting and menacing than anything else that 120 Minutes dared to broadcast. It is a bit strange that a song that good, that dark, and that bleak would make it as a theme song for anything, much less for MTV. While that track is clearly something for somebody to dig up beyond an odd YouTube clip here or there, the fact remains that The Soft Moon has unintentionally arrived at this exact same psychic, sonic environment, nearly 25 years later, in an act of convoluted convergent evolution.
The Soft Moon is the post-punk / minimal wave project fronted by Oakland's wunderkid Luis Vasquez, whose eagerly awaited debut album is the perfect extension of his two teasing singles which emerged on Captured Tracks earlier in 2010. Guitars, bass, keyboards, drum machines, and a whispered vocal delivery all come together in a series of monochromatic, mechanical, and gloomy propulsions that fit within the current resurgence of Factory inspired alienation through sound. Amongst his death disco vibes and downer post-punk dirges, Vasquez has a knack for an icy noise quotient that glides through the springy basslines and taut rhythms. Layers drift throughout each song, building never as anything so garish as a solo, but more as a scabrous doppleganger of the songs arching mood. These are tonebent squalls of atonal screeches exhumed from a lo-fi murk and rinsed in pools of reverb, very much like those really early Skullflower recordings when Gary Mundy and Stefan Jaworzyn provided the twin guitar attack. Where Skullflower had a drug-fuelled nihilism at their core, The Soft Moon is more of an alchemist of gloom, doubling rhythms with staccato electronics and downtuned Killing Joke-ish basslines to what would have been a standard Goth plod. In many ways, it makes perfect sense that The Soft Moon has landed on Captured Tracks, as he's mining the same aesthetic surfaces of Blank Dogs, but where Blank Dogs holds back with a subtle irony, The Soft Moon fully embraces the gloom of this music; thus making this one of the best records of 2010 that everybody will be hearing in 2011. Awesome.
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We've loved pretty much everything these guys have put out, their sound a super catchy jangly indie rock, that at times is a dead ringer for The Strokes, but for whatever reason, we like these guys a whole lot more. The songs are more rough and ragged, and while maybe not MORE catchy, definitely catchy in a different way. And this record, from the very first listen, has pretty much set itself up to be on heavy rotation for the foreseeable future. The opener "Saratoga" is a jittery propulsive blowout, all bubbly bass, frenetic drumming, with some killer catchy riffing, and languid laid back vocals, the second track finds the band in Strokes mode again, slowing things down a bit, even adding some horns, while "They Say" sounds like it could be the single, with a propulsive almost new wave-y beat, some big crunchy guitars, and a vocal line that will stick in your head for days!
And so it goes, "Tallboy" adds some whirring organ, the sound almost classic rock, while "Bobby Brown", is dangerously funky, the band flirting with eighties pop, sounding suddenly like they should be on Captured Tracks, but then in swoops "Chinatown" another barnburner, that we imagine will inspire jittery indie rock bounce and hair swirling headbanging in equal measure. And stick around for the sprawling "Captain Ace" which sounds very nineties, in a good way, mixing in lots of tripped out effects, lots of layers and texture, more horns, strange sci-fi effects, all stretched out into a glorious slab of psychedelic indie pop space out.
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For a while, there was a band called the Muslims, who were seriously hyped, before squeamishness about their obviously problematic moniker found the band changing their name to Soft Pack, only to have the kids cry 'sell out', but hell, one can only imagine trying to get on a plane with a bunch of flight cases filled with strange battery powered devices, all stenciled with the words 'The Muslims'. But hell, whatever they're called, it's easy to see what all the hubbub was about. These guys kick up a seriously excellent racket, somewhere between the lo-fi jangle of groups like Thee Oh Sees and the Fresh & Onlys, classic hooky Britpop and the more seriously post punk rock of the Hot Snakes, which is precisely how this 12" plays out. Opener "C'Mon" is equal parts frantic jangle and Strokes-y indie sunglasses jangle pop, while "Eat Gold" is a pounding and manic with on-the-verge-of-cracking vocals and a definite screamo vibe, and then there's "Answer To Yourself" which also has a Strokes vibe, a little like a way more rocking Hoodoo Gurus, surf guitars, and world weary vocals, garagey, with pounding muted verses and a soaring chorus, while the final track follows a similar sonic path, but adding a bit more grit and distortion. Really good stuff, it's easy to see why these guys were, and still are the talk of the town, it's not hard to imagine them on Matador, or opening for Interpol or on MTV. Which is not a bad thing at all. Especially considering we've been listening to this pretty much nonstop since we got it.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each one hand numbered, with a download code so you can cram these jams onto your computer.
How's this grab you? Drew Daniel (one half of famed SF electronica duo Matmos and a good friend of ours) doing a record of mostly punk/hardcore covers: Die Kruezen, Crass, The Swell Maps, Minor Threat, The Angry Samoans, Rudimentary Peni...and Carol Channing? Well it wouldn't be The Soft Pink Truth if gay camp wasn't an ingredient. Hence the show tune. Actually, hence the whole album. Drew's previous solo effort under the Soft Pink Truth moniker was a celebration of gay house/disco culture, and here Drew indulges again in the disco thing, perverting these carefully-chosen punk nuggets into electroclash dance-floor fodder with lots of beats, synth, and samples. He's certainly having fun, and chances are you will too if this concept appeals to you at all. We wonder what's in store for future SPT albums...is he going to move on to his death metal favorites next?
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The Softies are Rose Melberg (from Tiger Trap, Go Sailor, and a heaping cake box full of other pop confections) and her good friend Jen Sbragia. Two jangling guitars, two sweet voices. Fans of Amelia Fletcher (Marine Research, Heavenly, Talulah Gosh) surely must be rabid fans of Rose, and vice versa. Very very lovely.
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The Softies are back! Two women who seemingly effortlessly write music that can only be described as the sweetest of the sweet. Prettiest of the pretty. Lovey-dovey-est of the lovey-dovey. What else would you expect from a record from Rose Melberg (ex-Tiger Trap, Gaze, Go Sailor) and Jen Sbragia? Angelic voices lilt around reverb-rich duo guitar melodies. This time around the songs are embellished with xylophone, keyboards and bass (all performed by Jen and Rose). Positively dreamy.
Not sure what it is exactly about this band, but there's something special that has sort of captured our hearts. It might have been seeing their amazing video on YouTube for the track "Heart Made Of Sound", where every word in the song is written out visually, in yarn, or food, or piss on concrete or whatever. Even the parts of the song without singing are represented visually with strange colored shapes moving and rearranging themselves in time to the music. And somehow, that video does sort of explain what it is about this band. It's fun and colorful, catchy and playful, but sort of strange, and a little bit unexpected.
This is pure, wide eyes indie pop for sure, simple jangly guitars, shuffling drumming, keyboards wheezing and bouncing melodically atop the rest of the song, and of course a winsome sad boy singer, lots of acoustic strum, and swooshy ambience. The closest comparison would have to be Death Cab For Cutie or maybe the Postal Service, Modest Mouse too, and fans of those bands will absolutely LOVE Softlightes. But those of us who wouldn't normally give this the time of day, have been playing it like crazy. The sound is just so glistening and gossamer, lush and weirdly spacey, lots of reverb and ambient swirl, some strange bits of electronic buzz, some drum machine, some power pop guitar crunch, some vocoder, it's all mixed in there, but none of that stuff would mean anything if this record weren't chock full of perfect little pop songs, which it is. Later on, the record gets lighter and lighter, almost to the point of seventies soft rock, but even then it's strangely lilting and lovely, almost precious, but never so much that it bugs, just enough to sort of wrap your head and fill you ears with soft poppy goodness.
"Heart Made Of Sound" is definitely the star here though, the one that gets the most repeats, and is definitely a possible contender for pop song of the year, and well worth the price of admission, but the rest of the record is right there behind it, blissy and jangly and dreamy and sucking us right in and wrapping us up tight in a perfect crystalline dream pop cocoon.
Full disclosure: the members of this new, Jewelled Antler-related outfit making their debut release on the Digitalis label are not only all friends of ours, but one of 'em, namely Christine Boepple, works here at AQ (she's the charming lass dealing with all your mailorder requests). And until recently, another of the Softwar bunch, Kerry McLaughlin, was also working here side-by-side with Christine. So, OF COURSE this is great! And if all you regular mailorder customers don't order one, well, don't say we didn't warn you about what happens when you get on Christine's bad side... But seriously, this IS good, a relaxing fantasy camping trip into the wilds of Northern California (and into the basement musical lairs where these folks dwell when they're at home).
It is, as you might expect, improvised, abstract psych-folk. Drifting and densely detailed. Jewelled Antler's Franciscan Hobbies (among other JA acts) would be a close parallel, as would Finnish contemporaries Kemialliset Ystavat. Softwar's mysterious droning moods are sweetened by distorted melodies and haunting, gentle female singing. The sounds and structures are inherently unstable, with queasy keyboards and overloaded electronics sending the listener softly to the floor (or up to the clouds), where one can safely bask in the queer beauty of Softwar's fragmented songforms, which range from whispery lullabies adorned with clinking and tinkling atop their shimmering drones, to much more beard-stiffening, rhythmic jamming, with suggestions of a primitive communal hippy vibe recalling krautrockers Siloah ferinstance.
Like the artwork that accompanies it -- vintage photos of happy, groovy people playing "non-competitive group games" in the Whole Earth Catalogue era of the 1970s -- the music is playful and nicely captures the spirit of icebreaking games that were designed sincerely with the ideal of changing society.
We mentioned Kerry and Christine, who have played in a zillion bands from this scene, Kerry in Franciscan Hobbies, Buried Civilizations, and Skygreen Leopards among others, Christine in Skygreen Leopards, Ov, Kyrgyz, Franciscan Hobbies, Whysp, etc. But Softwar's also got two guys to go with those two girls: Geoff Koops (Franciscan Hobbies, The Shitty Listener) and long-time AQ fave Loren Chasse, whom we're sure you already know quite well from all of his myriad projects. Let's list a few together shall we? Thuja, id battery, Of, Ov, Coelacanth, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, Child Readers, L/R, Kyrgyz, etc. etc. etc.
As wonderful as so many of those other projects have been, we're truly convinced that these four teaming up to wage Softwar is a very special thing.
Now we can perhaps prove that old adage that one YouTube clip is worth a thousand words! Go watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49KyJQl-Og
Ok, you're back? Now just try to tell us you don't want to buy that band's record! After seeing that clip of Soggy kicking out the jams live on French TV in 1980 (thanks to our pal Brian Turner at WFMU for turning us on to it) we knew that if they had an album, we had to have it! A bit of research and we learned that indeed they did, newly reissued as a vinyl-only, limited edition. And now here it is, while they last. It's an expensive import, but it's also a deluxe gatefold package, with the super-thick LP in one pocket of the sleeve and a freakin' HUGE Soggy poster in the other (now when other records claim they come with a 'poster' they'd better step up!). And who cares how much it costs, didn't you just watch that video??!
For those for whom YouTube is somehow forbidden, we'll just say that Soggy (what a name!) were a French band circa 1980-82 who sound a lot like a more metallized version of The Stooges, obviously their biggest influence (end of side one here is cover "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). The skinny, shirtless singer is about as Iggy as you can get, with the added shake appeal of sporting a giant Rob Tyner (MC5) style Afro! Though they're about ten years after the Francais Metal de Proto scene we've obsessed over lately, they're more like Francais Metal de not-so-Proto, they'd fit right in, all heavy and punk and psychedelic. And they're even more obscure than those other French Stooge worshipers Angel Face, but just as badass. In fact, before they broke up the were supposedly slated to open a Judas Priest tour. What else do you need to know? Oh yeah, before they were Soggy, in the '70s some of these guys were in a band called the Hardfuckers!
All right, why are we still writing this? We don't need to, just watch that YouTube clip!! And yes, that song ("Waiting For The War") is included here. Act fast though 'cause this is limited to 500 copies and while we got a bunch we're sure they'll go quick.
Sokai Stilhed is the stage name for the soft-spoken Heather Cullen, whose vocal and sound-sculpting abilities should be taken quite seriously given the strength of her work on this hand-spun release. There's plenty of things that Cullen employs that immediately give us pause. First of all, there's the perpetual crackle of old vinyl achieving a golden patina which accentuates her otherworldly reverberations; but most importantly is her voice which drawls haunting reconstructions of Appalachian psalms which crosshatch a world-weariness with a hallowed adoration for the divine. Even as she pushes her own voice deep in the recesses of the faux-tape compression and dreamily droning ambience, there is a potency and strength to her voice. Given the opportunity, she could belt out a bluesy, a capella number at a Baptist church that would give many people the shivers; but instead of that well-trod path, she fragments her own voice to complement the delicate artifacts from guitar, autoharp, field recordings, and her trusted Loop Station. These tracks emerge as if stitched from spider webs, catching hold of whatever may fall into the web, but they are ephemeral if nothing else. If Philip Jeck were given unrestricted production over a Cat Power record, it would sound pretty close to this. These editions are handmade by Cullen featuring a candle-burnt and wax sealed piece of paper mounted to the cover and also featuring the album's track titles. It remains to be seen just how limited these are... A fantastic release, no matter how you look at it!
Beyonce's little sister has some magic of her own! Not all of this is great but it for sure has its moments and we'll be curious what shape her future outings take.
It's hard to believe, but it's true. SOLAR ANUS IS HERE! It took almost 5 years, but it was well worth it! But what exactly is Solar Anus? An essay by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille... a burst of plodding pummel from UK freedrone outfit Skullflower... but also, and as far as we're concerned more importantly, a band whose music conjures up a mysterious land of legendary monsters, ancient customs, cult beliefs and ritualized incest, all hidden just below the surface of our everyday world, a place only accessible through Matsuri, a group trance during which music and sound, lights and pictures help transport participants back to those mysterious other worlds and ancient times.
Such is the strange world of Japan's mighty tranced-out psychedelic doomlords Solar Anus, whose sound most definitely exists as Matsuri, a music designed to lull us into a trance and carry us off...Ô mesmeric, hypnotic and HEAVY.
Here, for the first time ever readily available outside of Japan, is the entire recorded output of the legendary Solar Anus, all collected into one massive head crushing, mind melting double cd.
Skull Alcoholic chronicles the band's dizzying trajectory, from stumbling, buzzing, bloody-stumped, sludge doom behemoths to druggy, tranced out psychedelic outer space visionaries, swinging wildly toward both extremes the whole time. An impossible blend of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and the Boredoms, Flower Travellin' band, Pink Floyd, Boris and the Melvins.
Beginning life as a dizzy and druggy, slow motion stoner doom outfit, with their 1997 album On, Solar Anus channeled both the garagey spacestomp of old Monster Magnet, the epic miserablist doomscapes of Candlemass, and the purposefully obtuse sludge riffery of the Melvins, taking all of these disparate but distinctly heavy sounds and incorporating all manner of primitive percussive rituals, drifting dronescapes, 16 rpm Krautrock groove, dreamy angelic female vocals, massive fuzzed out guitars, huge in-the-red monster drums and swirls of creepy crawly dirge into a truly epic dronedriftdoomgroove sound.
The band's blend of propulsive tripped out krautrock, dizzying drum jams and glacial stoner sludge is at once ominous and swoonsome, crushing and psychedelic, lurching wildly from tripped out tribal Can worship to massive bulldozing metal grooves to super abstract druggy dreamscapes, often within the same song.
Album number two, 1999's Trance!! found the band trudging even more resolutely into a bleak and blown out world of dark doom, sounding more and more like classic doomsters, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Cathedral, but completely tweaked of course, and confusingly blended with epic stretches of lurching lo-fi psychedelic Krautrock blow outs a la Amon Duul II.
By the release of their final album, 2000's Next World News, the band had stretched out yet again, dragging their druggy doom into a head spinning world of cracked skull outerspace trance, spinning even further into the void, not so much heavy as blissed out and psychedelic. Lots of abstract rhythmic workouts, like a more demented, damaged version of Finnish dronerockers Circle, a swirl of confusionally dense and relentless FX drenched Krautrock spacejams rife with belching foghorn brass, squawking birds, dizzyingly dense tangles of hippy drum freakouts, chanted vocals, as well as all sorts of studio fuckery, chopped up tape loops, warbly pitch shifts and layer after layer of fuzz and buzz and psychdrone blur.
Each languorous stretch of fuzzed out metallic groove is swathed in blown out clouds of Hawkwind bongsmoke, but broken up by bleary expanses of chilled out 4am trancemusic, but instead of a post-rave laid back Ecstasy come down, it's like crashing and burning in some dirty back alley from an all night PCP binge, silvery streaks of electronic glitch laid over a pulsing techno throb, surrounded by thick washes of processed tribal drums, the whole thing a very Boredoms like primitive percussive ritual, hypnotic and heavy, sprinkled with all kinds of sparkling sonic twinkles and drifting chimes, and underpinned by a wasted moody muted sixties psychedelia.
A quick look at the band's convoluted thanks/inspiration list gives another glimpse into their twisted musical world: German Oak, Crash Worship, Twink, The Electric Prunes, Stooges, Nebula, Pungent Stench, Timothy Leary, Monster Magnet, Ash Ra Tempel, Sodom, Sleep, Amon Duul II, Exit-13, Cathedral, Joel Peter Witkin, Saint Vitus, Church Of Misery, Corrosion Of Conformity, Romain Slocombe, Jimi Hendrix, Gong, Funkadelic, Budgie, Guru Guru, Electric Wizard, Brutal Truth, the Beatles and more. Phew.
And for all you Asian psychrock obsessives: The Solar Anus track "Dear Mother Coral" is actually a cover of a classic tune by Japanese psych legends JA Ceasar!
One of the weirdest, wildest, heaviest collections of druggy, dreamy, dirge-drone-doom-kraut-space-noise-sludge rock EVER!
Mind blowing psychedelic collage cover art, housed in a super deluxe die-cut 'solar anus' slip cover. Includes a massive 12 page booklet, with the original album art and liner notes. These two discs contain every single bit of Solar Anus ever, including their final recording, the previously unreleased nine minute title track, "Skull Alcoholic"!
2006 truly is the year of the anus! SOLAR ANUS!!!!
ONE TIME PRESSING OF 2000 COPIES!!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A perfectly titled album in which 4 longhaired stoners jam on low-IQ thud rock loaded with huge riffs and solos. Pretty soon, you're liking it. Members of Monster Magnet, dude.
If you're a loyal aQ follower, you already know how much we love to discover new and awesome music from all over this dusty planet. And you probably already know that what makes us even more excited is being able to share it with all of our fellow music nerds! With that in mind, we absolutely could not wait to share with you our newest obsession and latest discovery, Vancouver's best-kept dream drone secret, Solars!
This brand new tape from the heavy hitting drone-gaze duo completely hits the spot, super unique and magical stuff here. Imagine the slow creep of distant bells growing louder and louder until you're bundled in a blanket of rich, metallic swell, then massive layers of thick guitar wash expand over you into monolithic chords that shimmer and morph in the blinding sunlight. Like taking the crushingly heavy, melodic smear of MBV's loveless, and combining it with the melodic richness and orchestral detail of Stars of the Lid, and there you have Solars' Shadow/ Cave, their debut cassette on Pop Drones Records. Somber melodies wrapped in cocoons of fuzz and buzzing heaviness, echoing electric guitar lulling you deeper and deeper into the night's hazy mist, completely blissed out and amazing!! Though the duo have also released a 7" in the past, this is their most recent release and a fine representation of what these sonic magi can conjure up. With a tape debut as killer as this, we seriously cannot wait to hear what else these Canadian conjurers cook up in the future. Super duper limited to an edition of 30, we only have a few, so you better be quick if you want one, they will be gone in no time!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Instantly engaging, Ms Elisabeth Esselink returns with another lively frolic-filled Solex full length. It's another funky cut'n'paste style collection of songs pieced together from fragmented samples of saucy horns, piano tinkles, and sound effects over which she applies her own effected girlish vocals, electric guitars, assorted percussion and the wonderfully bizarre deeep voice of guest vocalist Stuart Brown. After all the dizzying, off kilter numbers, she brings the listener gently back down to the ground with the comparatively somber final track "You've Got Me". If you haven't already discovered the smart, fun, action-packed rollercoaster ride that is Solex, you should definitely check this gal out. Although she does have some earlier releases that are fine introductions, this new one is a pretty great place to start too. Dunno about that title though! If, we assume, she's being self-deprecating, it's totally off base 'cause she's creatively and skillfully head and shoulders above most slouchy 'indie rock' folks.
Dutch solo gal Elisabeth Esselink creates some real trippy, dippy music incorporating and manipulating found sounds into her mix. Check out the sly "Peter Gunn"-esque bassline on "Comely Row" or the funky rhumba shake of "Not A Hoot!". Although her voice can
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Now you can see Solex live (well, sorta!) for less than the price of admission! This new low-priced dvd features that delightful Dutch gal Elizabeth Esselink performing her funky, groovy collaged pop at Chicago's Empty Bottle club earlier this year!
This took a while to grow on us but everytime we listen to it someone goes "Wow." Elizabeth Solex is from the Netherlands where she owns a record/thrift store or something and thus has a formidable array of sources from which to sample. She also adds keyboards to the mix and has got a great ear for creating intensity and buildup, not just trip hop groove, and her lilting voice holds it all together. A pleasant surprise. For fans of PJ Harvey, Beth Orton. Also -- Solex is the first Matador artist in over five years to be signed from an unsolicited demo tape.
Kick ass '70s proto-metal awesomeness alert! This Swedish band, who only managed one self-released LP back in 1976, combined hard rock panache with rough-edged rawness. This cd reissue is one we've been waiting for! Seriously, every time we do an order with the Mellotronen label over in Sweden (they're the folks responsible for that Charlie & Esdor reissue we love so much, among other things), we've been asking 'em, when are you gonna repress the Solid Ground? A cd reissue of Solid Ground's extremely rare Made In Rock album was actually the first thing their label ever did, but it had been out of print for years. Well, finally they got some bonus tracks rounded up and now present us with a new, deluxe version, in a digipack with liner notes from the band and all!
It's a powerful mix of all things cool about rock in the '70s, from the swinging stoner boogie of Sabbath and Budgie and UFO to the glammy uber-catchiness of KISS and The Sweet to the melodic guitar heroics of Thin Lizzy... all done with almost punkish, sassy attitude and energy.
And they've got some excellent, evocative of the era lyrics too, like these: "In the evening they go to discoteques / and drink champagne and listen to T-Rex / boys and girls look at each other / nothing happens no action no reactions" from the song "This Bloody Town". Meanwhile the production is in-your-face, plenty of distortion and reverb. HEAVY. Only 200 copies of the vinyl album were ever made, and the band eventually broke up in the wake of disco fever, a shame.
The 8 added bonus tracks include the two songs from Solid Ground's sole single, two more from the 1974 single by pre-Solid Ground band 4-EVER, plus four -new- tracks recorded in 2006 that aren't half-bad... harking back to their old sound with one foot in more modern grunginess (due to having new, younger singer perhaps). It's neat that they're playing again anyway -- we sure wish we could have made it over to Mellotronen's big 20th anniversary bash last January which featured not just these guys but also the reunited likes of Mecki Mark Men, November, Life, Flasket Brinner and others!! Wow.
NB. this Solid Ground are not to be confused with krautrockers My Solid Ground, another band from the '70s we love.
We love when weird stuff just shows up in the mail, especially when that weird stuff turns out to be some grim, rhythmic, experimental blackened industrial avant-noise, like this, the first we've heard from Solitary Torture, whose sound is tough to describe beyond the above. Somehow super varied, but woven into a strange black sonic ritual, beginning with whipping winds, and some glitched out primitive rhythms, which is soon swallowed up by a blast of howling heaviness, before transforming into a swirling psychedelic blacknoise freakout, moaning vocals, and gristly electronics. At that point, we were sort of expecting this to be a straight up noise record, but instead, the second track unveils a melancholy, buzz drenched black metal riff, but instead of exploding into your standard blasting metal, in stretches way out, for the length of the track, spaced out and truancy and minimal and super hypnotic, the final minute or two erupting into some speaker shredding crush.
The rest of the record splits its time between, grinding black electronica, post industrial thrum, woozy abstract black ambience, blurred grim riffage, strange minimal noise collages and dense, blasting blacknoise blowouts. Killer stuff for sure. Surprised this isn't on Crucial Blast.
Needless to say, we only got a tiny handful of these, so not sure if/when we'll be able to get more. Comes housed in a DVD style case, with two xeroxed black and white inserts.
Another slab of crushing doomy filthiness from the Choking Hazard label, who we first heard about via that kick ass Ghast / Yoga split, and who also just released the Moloch cd reviewed elsewhere on this list.
Choking Hazard definitely have their niche, barring the anomaly of the Ghast / Yoga, it seems to be sludgey stonery crusty downtuned distorted drenched doom, whether it's groovy Eyehategod churn and crush, or pounding relentless ultrasludge, they got it covered.
Hard to tell where Midwestern quartet Sollubi fall, they veer chaotically from super slow sludge, to pounding almost AmRep style noiserock, even a bit of drugged out space rock, often careening back and forth between the three in a single song.
There's only there songs, but two of them clock in at over twenty minutes, the songs lock into pounding head banging grooves, seemingly looped, so hypnotic and heavy, "The White Witch" even adds some squiggly space-y effects, making it like the HEAVIEST space rock outro ever, and the outro lasts nearly 10 minutes. The title track is nearly a half hour of slow burning lope, the first half almost pretty, like a sludgey Low, until the song slips into some filthy slithery Killdozery chug, totally channeling old school Midwest thudrock, before spacing out and getting more and more abstract, slower and doomier, until the track finally, and begrudgingly, lurches to a halt. Awesome.
Imagine a massive, dusty, vintage organ being played on the streets amidst urban decay... Now add extra psychedelic dirge and murk and you begin to have a good idea of the captivating and trance-inducing sounds that Douglas Katelus creates with his aptly named project Solo Organ.
A longtime fixture of the Bay Area underground film community, he started Solo Organ around 5 years ago, after scoring his ideal organ on Craigslist from a former preacher in San Jose. He started playing his version of the early Pink Floyd classic Atom Heart Mother around town, and anyone at those shows immediately took notice. As he's progressed with this project he has really ecome one with his instrument, travelling deep into droniness in the way he plays, making full use of the analog warmth and depth of the organ.
This transparent blue slab of vinyl is the perfect introduction to Solo Organ, but if you're in the Bay and get the chance to see him live don't miss out, as it's a totally transformational experience.
This is limited to 300 copies so act fast!
Oh such pretty gentleness or is it gentle prettiness? Whichever, if there was a contest for 'ideal lullaby singer' a frontrunner and perhaps winner would be Mr. Tim Howard, lead vocalist and central member for this Boston (but maybe now Philadelphia?) based project. The first song on Soltero's latest album Hell Train definitely makes for solid proof of this. On the follow-up to 2004's The Tongues You Have Tied, Howard is joined by a full band with sumptuous results. Many of the songs bring to mind the warm, enveloping likes of Yo La Tengo and Grandaddy, as well as the intimate melancholia of Elliott Smith and Sparklehorse. Achingly heartfelt and lovely.
Soltero's mainman Tim Howard has a voice that bears a striking resemblance to that of Dean Wareham. However, instead of a backdrop of Galaxie 500/Luna-esque glistening indie pop/rock-ness, his vocals are placed predominantly within a really pretty, countrified-pop-occasionally encountering-lounge-jazz kind of setting. A very nice sunset-y kind of album for watching the gradual stretch and creep of shadows. Soltero's songs slips effortlessly from day into night. Nice!
