What the hell can you say about songs you've been listening to on and off for 16 years?! How about... they still sound as great as they did when we were 20 years old! Most of you probably remember Swervedriver, a UK combo who took the whole introspective shoegazer movement and added BALLS, huge guitars, blown out psych rock squalls, thrashing chaotic drums, and some of the best songs of the last two decades. Easily the heaviest shoegazer band of them all. Like a heavy metal Ride or something.
We really are at a loss for how to explain how great these songs sound. Most of Swevedriver's records were or still are out of print, so this massive double disc greatest hits is a godsend. It's also one of those greatest hits that is a little frustrating for fans, as pretty much every record was jam packed with greatest hits, no filler all killer as they say. There are plenty of tracks from Raise, their debut and arguably finest moment, including both "Son Of Mustang Ford" and "Rave Down", two of the greatest rock songs EVER. I challenge anyone to listen to either of those tracks and not agree. "Son Of Mustang Ford" is a thrillingly propulsive manic rocker, sort of sun baked and blissed out (almost like a shoegaze Kyuss) with squiggly guitar lines draped over a killer main riff, perfect indie sadboy vocals and a hook to die for. Then there's "Rave Down" more of a sort of sprawling midtempo groove, with distorted jangle guitar and a loping lazy rhythm, and verses a million times catchier than most hit songs' choruses. The kind of part that has you air guitaring or singing along or headbanging or both. Plus there's "The Birds", a jangley shoegazing slab of hooky dream pop, which must have ended up on a million different mixtapes back in the day.
And it just goes on from there, with the band swerving (couldn't resist) from Loop-ish drone rock dirges, to shuffling almost surf rock, to full on acid drenched neo-psychedelia, to Beatles-esque britpop. Everything they touched turned to blown out psych rock shoegaze gold. Fans of Dinosaur Jr., the Telescopes, Sun Dial, Loop, Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine, Galaxie 500, Mercury Rev, the Lilys, Catherine Wheel and all that sort of stuff who somehow missed out on Swervedriver should definitely pick this up and catch up.
Heavy enough to appeal to metalheads who might be in the market for something a little bit more dreamy or blissy, washed out and hypnotic, but groovy and spacey enough for indie rockers who need more ROCK. One of Andee's all time favorite bands EVER!
The second disc includes a handful of previously unreleased tracks, demos and rarites. Big booklet with liner notes, track notes and tons of photos.
There definitely seems to be a pattern developing with recent Records Of The Week. The Loop reissues a few lists back, The Telescopes last time, and now Swervedriver. We hadn't really noticed at first, we were just so damn excited that so many of our favorite records were getting reissued. And while it might seem a bit strange to be looking back instead of forward, most of the music we love now wouldn't even exist if it weren't for these bands, or if they did they'd sound WAY different. And the thing is, the aQuarius list is in no way comprehensive and complete, as we only started doing it about 12 or 13 years ago, which means everything pre-1995 or '96 is not represented, which is a huge bummer since the late eighties and early nineties are the very times that defined most of us musically. Thus we've done our best to review reissues of lost classics, or even not lost classics, from those eras, eighties metal, shoegaze, grunge, nineties college rock, the list of records we discovered during that time, that STILL resonate and kick ass could fill up a hundred aQ lists. So instead of dwelling on the fact that these are not actually new, let's just consider then records we loved, and still love, and records we're convinced folks out there who are too young to remember, or may have just missed out the first time around, will probably also love, records that had they been released later, would have no doubt been showered with adoration on the aQ list. Which brings us to a unanimous aQ fave, UK heavy shoegazers Swervedriver.
Calling Swervedriver shoegaze is a bit misleading, they were tangentially part of that scene, and their sound definitely had a bit of drift and shimmer to it, but unlike the rest of the shoegazers, Swervedriver were HEAVY. Super rocking, their wall of guitars was not ethereal and ephemeral, it was crunchy and distorted and thick, and besides all that, they wrote some of the catchiest songs ever. EVER. The sort of songs that explode into frenzied psychedelic shoegaze freakouts, but just as quickly slip into a dark chugging grooves with hooks that stick in your head like crazy, and parts the still to this day illicit shivers, even after a hundred listens. Rare is the band who can define a sound, and a scene and then totally transcend it.
For those new to Swervedriver, they definitely share much in common with their shoegaze scene compatriots My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Catherine Wheel, Chapterhouse, and the like, but as mentioned above, that shoegazey haze was just one element in their arsenal, and not at all the main one, that would be the dueling guitars, heavy and crunchy, melodic and lush, soaring one second grinding and chugging the next, often tangled into gorgeous harmonies, or layered to create thick walls of sound, those formed the basis of their sonic blueprint, over which they crafted incredible hook filled songs, some washed out and swoonsome, others hard and jagged and HEAVY. The vocals melodic but still plenty rough and raw, perfectly complimenting the heavy guitars and pounding drums, an impossibly perfect balance between heavy and pretty, hooky and hard, which is precisely what makes Swervedriver, one of our favorite bands ever.
Mezcal Head was Swervedriver record number two, released in 1993, and featured a slightly altered lineup, that if anything made the band sound even heavier. Almost like Raise part two, with the hooks dialed back again, and the heavy guitars cranked, but again, like on Raise, it's hard to pick any losers, every track here is catchy and heavy, and sounds like Swervedriver and nobody else. And as if to balance the heaviness, there are a handful of tracks more dark and drifting and almost mellow, interspersed between the bursts of shoegazey heaviness.
"Duel" is definitely the one here, the band's biggest hit, and it's easy to see why, with an incredibly heavy main riff, and swirling effects all over the place, the vocals a lazy drawled afterthought, and the hook, totally destroys, and still gives us chills, the second half is much poppier, with the song growing gradually more mellow and washed out, a sort of low key space rock outro.
Then there's "Last Train To Satansville", with another killer main riff / hook, and some truly haunting vocals, lots of effects too, in fact this record found the band's obsession with pedals becoming even more evident, with various elements wreathed in delay and reverb and flange and phaser, and impossible combinations of all four, creating swirling clouds of psychedelic shoegaze space rock, a sound even more expansive than on Raise. The rest of the songs, while maybe not as immediately catchy, are still fantastic, the sort of songs that become later favorites, one at a time. Whatever song was least listened to, gets rediscovered and blossoms before your very ears, making you wonder why the heck you weren't obsessed with THAT one in the first place. That's the magic of this record, and of this band. Both Mezcal Head and Raise are essential, two parts of a larger ever evolving whole, so buy one at your peril, because no doubt you'll eventually find yourself needing the other.
Like Raise, totally essential, WAY recommended, and absolutely required listening.
For the reissue of Raise, they tacked on 4 extra tracks, B-sides, outtakes, which includes is one of the best Swervedriver songs ever, "Planes Over The Skyline", a Japanese bonus track on the original release, a B-side we think, but holy shit, if the band was kicking out B-sides of this caliber, it's no wonder their records proper were so mind blowing.
New packaging, a deluxe 6 panel digipak with a thick booklet packed with photos and new liner notes from the band.
There definitely seems to be a pattern developing with recent Records Of The Week. The Loop reissues a few lists back, The Telescopes last time, and now Swervedriver. We hadn't really noticed at first, we were just so damn excited that so many of our favorite records were getting reissued. And while it might seem a bit strange to be looking back instead of forward, most of the music we love now wouldn't even exist if it weren't for these bands, or if they did they'd sound WAY different. And the thing is, the aQuarius list is in no way comprehensive and complete, as we only started doing it about 12 or 13 years ago, which means everything pre-1995 or '96 is not represented, which is a huge bummer since the late eighties and early nineties are the very times that defined most of us musically. Thus we've done our best to review reissues of lost classics, or even not lost classics, from those eras, eighties metal, shoegaze, grunge, nineties college rock, the list of records we discovered during that time, that STILL resonate and kick ass could fill up a hundred aQ lists. So instead of dwelling on the fact that these are not actually new, let's just consider then records we loved, and still love, and records we're convinced folks out there who are too young to remember, or may have just missed out the first time around, will probably also love, records that had they been released later, would have no doubt been showered with adoration on the aQ list. Which brings us to a unanimous aQ fave, UK heavy shoegazers Swervedriver.
Calling Swervedriver shoegaze is a bit misleading, they were tangentially part of that scene, and their sound definitely had a bit of drift and shimmer to it, but unlike the rest of the shoegazers, Swervedriver were HEAVY. Super rocking, their wall of guitars was not ethereal and ephemeral, it was crunchy and distorted and thick, and besides all that, they wrote some of the catchiest songs ever. EVER. The sort of songs that explode into frenzied psychedelic shoegaze freakouts, but just as quickly slip into a dark chugging grooves with hooks that stick in your head like crazy, and parts the still to this day illicit shivers, even after a hundred listens. Rare is the band who can define a sound, and a scene and then totally transcend it.
For those new to Swervedriver, they definitely share much in common with their shoegaze scene compatriots My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Catherine Wheel, Chapterhouse, and the like, but as mentioned above, that shoegazey haze was just one element in their arsenal, and not at all the main one, that would be the dueling guitars, heavy and crunchy, melodic and lush, soaring one second grinding and chugging the next, often tangled into gorgeous harmonies, or layered to create thick walls of sound, those formed the basis of their sonic blueprint, over which they crafted incredible hook filled songs, some washed out and swoonsome, others hard and jagged and HEAVY. The vocals melodic but still plenty rough and raw, perfectly complimenting the heavy guitars and pounding drums, an impossibly perfect balance between heavy and pretty, hooky and hard, which is precisely what makes Swervedriver, one of our favorite bands ever.
And Raise one of our favorite -records- ever. Released in 1991, for anyone our age, or thereabouts, it was pretty difficult to not see Swervedriver everywhere, MTV, 120 Minutes, college radio, when Raise came out it was like nothing we had ever heard before, incredibly catchy and hooky but so rocking. And the songs, shit, most bands would give anything to have written "Son Of Mustang Ford" or "Rave Down", or heck, anything on Raise. But yeah, let's take "Son Of Mustang Ford". Plenty of folks will recognize it within seconds, that pounding rhythm, the thick layered guitars, and that main guitar hook, immediately exploding into an almost Treepeople (pre-Built To Spill) guitar tangle beneath killer vocals, before returning to that opening groove. Furious, and dark, and minor key, but so epic and kick ass, total head banging air guitar shoegaze nirvana. Then there's "Rave Down", their other big hit, that displays Swervedriver's other sonic side, guitars that a languorous and sunbaked, but still distorted and heavy, the song woozy and lilting without losing any of its power, and a change that still gives us goosebumps almost two decades later.
The thing with Swervedriver was that even though they had actual hits, the record was packed with could have been should have also been hits. Pretty much every song is hooky and heavy and catchy, not a weak track in the bunch. "Sandblasted", "Sci Flyer", both heavy blissed out rockers, "Feel So Real" sounds almost like a tougher heavier Lemonheads, with it's sweet little main melody and total pop main hook.
Totally and absolutely essential.
For the reissue of Raise, they tacked on 4 extra tracks, B-sides, outtakes, and damn if they don't sound just as kick ass as the album tracks proper. New packaging, deluxe 6 panel digipak with a thick booklet packed with photos and new liner notes from the band.
If you read our in-between list last Friday, the one where where highlighted some of our favorite things on the Holy Mountain label, you may remember us mentioning this new, soon-to-be-reviewed Holy Mountain release, the debut album from Swiftumz. As promised, here it is, and it's awesome. But, those of you you familiar with Holy Mountain's usual output might be expecting something deeply psychedelic, acid folky, or even experimentally abrasive... so Swiftumz might throw you for a loop, 'cause instead it's quite poppy. Hum-along, stick in your head, lalala-ishly poppy, wow! But it's lo-fi bedroom indie pop, of course, kinda on the Ariel Pink or Art Museums tip, delirious and distorted enough to find favor with the Holy Mountain mystics. REALLY distorted on opener "Don't Cha Want Me Back?" in fact.
It's the work of a local fella, super nice guy and man about town, Chris McVicker. Who until now, we hadn't realized was such a hidden pop talent. Perhaps we should have known, apparently he wrote a hit single for Hunx & His Punx, but we tend to think of him as the guy who hangs out with Oakland heavies Pigs and brings us their records (and one of the Pigs guys plays on this, as does Myles Cooper and some other folks). So, surprised were we that this was such a catchy affair, inspired by the '80s British stuff from the C86 scene, but also reminding us of all kinds of other good ol' underground indie faves like Dinosaur Jr and The Supreme Dicks. There's plenty of strummy guitar jangle, shimmering FX, tick tockin' drum machine beats, and gentle vox to lift these tracks to the top of the pops in your heart. Really good stuff, it was tough to pick which songs we liked best out of the bunch to make sound samples of, 'cause they're all so good. Some mellow and dreamy, others uptempo energetic, all hooky and hazy and full of heartache.
By the way, that cute name, Swiftumz, is that McVicker's secret nickname or something? Sounds kind of like a term of endearment - or perhaps the opposite. "Good one, Swiftumz!" one could say, sarcastically. But we will say it sincerely, this IS a good one, Swiftumz, we're impressed!! Enthusiastically recommended. And by the way, the phone number that's on the sticker on the front cover, below where it says "call me", that IS McVicker's phone number! And he really doesn't mind if you call him.
Though unfortunately vinyl-only, this does include a mp3 download code.
Woah! The boys at Melters continue to absolutely amaze by releasing the most catchy, heavy, trippy pop music being made in the Bay Area. In addition to the Tony Molina (of Ovens notoriety) solo lp, they've brought us the fucked up bedroom pop of Violent Change, whose full-length we made a Record Of The Week last year. So, when Mr. Eli Melter himself came in with a stack of the new Swiftumz album, we knew we were in for a treat. Well, we kind knew it also 'cause we're Swiftumz fans. We've gushed over Swiftumz releases before (the last one being a two-song 7" released back in 2013 that we still have a couple copies of), but on Everybody Loves Chris, the titular Chris McVicker has stepped up his game on every possible level, crafting a stoned mix of stuck-in-your-head pop hooks, saccharine love songs that you want to play over and over again, and Ariel Pinkish bedroom lo-fi weirdness. Did we mention wanting to play them over and over again? This record is seriously difficult to not start right up again after it ends.
By the time we finished track three on the first listen, this was pretty much automatically a Record Of The Week, bringing to mind Teenage Fanclub power pop, Guided By Voices, and maybe even the more sunshine-y Sparklehorse tracks out there. Then you get a track like "Come My Way", just blown out synth and harmonized vocals, but it totally works, adding to the spaced out stoner vibe of the record. "Taste the Gray", too, gets spaced out towards the end, heavy and repetitive, but still totally catchy. "Walter's Song" and "Ladybird" have a drugged-out, childish Ariel Pink vibe that still manage to be total hook-centric pop tunes.
Another stunner from McVicker, and Melters, a totally unexpected masterpiece. Everybody Loves Chris, or at least, Everybody Should!! If there was any musical justice in the world, Swiftumz will blow up and McVicker will get famous for this, but, at least those of us "in the know" will be able to spin this record again and again.
Yay this is making us happy! Our pal Chris McVicker aka Swiftumz is back with a blissful blast of indie pop goodness on this new two song 7". Super catchy, sunshiney love song stuff here, with jangly guitar strum and sweet tender vocals, but don't worry there's something about it, some hint of heartache around the corner, that keeps it from getting too icky gooey lovey dovey, even when he's singing the letters (and number) "I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U-4-E-V-A" in the chorus on the flipside, the track "4EVA Redux", an update of a song from Swiftumz's debut lp on Holy Mountain from last year. We loved that record, and it's nice to hear more from him. He should keep it up, 'cause there's no reason why Swiftumz shouldn't have as many fans as, like, King Tuff or Best Coast.
LIMITED TO JUST 200 COPIES, FYI!
Yay! Two brand new songs from this no-longer-a-one-man-band, Swiftumz, the brainchild of local who-woulda-thunk-it indie pop genius Chris McVickers, whose debut full length on Holy Mountain, Don't Trip, we swooned over in 2011. We know he's got a 'real' band now, they're listed in the credits to this single (Brian Hamilton of aQ fave metalpunks Pigs plays guitar!) and also there was a record release show just last week at the Makeout Room around the corner from our shop. Earlier this year there was a 7" on Roadcone, entitled Love Ya 4 Eva, also a fantastic blissful blast of Swiftumz pop smarts, and now this.
The two songs on here, both the noisepoppy anthem "Willy" as well as the rollicking twanged-out romp on the flipside that asks the musical question "Can We Get Together?", are squarely in the Swiftumz tradition of super infectious, play-it-again-Swiftums, heart-tugging good times, fulla breathy sincere vox, distorted guitar, and hella catchy hooks.
Comes in a nice looking full color sleeve w/ spot varnish for the text.
Utterly gorgeous and meticulously crafted sounds infused with warmth and a glimmering, strangely tender vibe. Almost like a more melodic Jasper TX or Machinefabriek, Ben Swire intertwines traditional instruments with field recordings and electronics to create a totally seamless sound that has been the soundtrack to constant drifting, dazed daydreaming.
While Swire resides right here in San Francisco, it actually makes a lot of sense that this was released by the great Australian label Preservation, who have proven to have such immaculate taste in soft focus underground sounds (Eddie Marcon, Caethua, Aaron Martin, etc.). But we also think he would be a perfect fit for the roster of Root Strata, as his music really taps into a similarly perfect hazy, delicate, droney yet melodic sensibility. We hear hints of so many artists that we love like Philip Jeck, Es, The Fun Years, Part Timer, Mountains, as well as a more organic interpretation of early recordings by folks like Mum, Opiate and Markus Archer. While we are reminded of all those great artists, there is something so striking about Swire's soft touch, understated and assured with some pleasant surprises of a slightly darker nature, subtly tense and ominous, which unfold in the later half of the record. But for sure this the perfect soundtrack for staring out the window on long road trips as the scenery washes by and your mind floats away in a million different directions. So beautiful!
Self-titled records are strange. They are definitely a statement. It's sort of like 'our record doesn't NEED a title, it speaks for itself'. We can't help but think sometimes though that it's just pure laziness. The sort of band who would forgo an album title are only a hop skip and a jump away from ditching song titles too. And then what's next, no band name? That's part of the fun, part of the magic. Part of the unique world that a band creates. Sometimes the title of a song or album is exactly what makes us want to listen to it. Along the same lines, we're often frustrated by bands who have multiple self-titled records. Quite confusing, there's the OLD self-titled one, and the NEW self-titled one. But what about these Swedish metalheads. Not one, not two, not even three self-titled records, BUT ALL FOUR of their release so far are self-titled. Even their first seven inch! And they HAVE gotten rid of song titles, opting instead for numbers. So I guess it is all about the music after all. So yeah, the music, that's why we're here, right? All we can say, is what the hell happened to Switchblade?! Something seriously scary we'd have to guess. Last time we checked in, they were one of those metallic post rock metalcore hybrids, exploring drifting loping melancholy rhythms that would explode into chugging grinding sludgy metal freakouts. They also had a strange Albini-esque vibe, big booming drums, really spacious recording.
But now. Holy shit, these guys are a whole lot scarier. A lot slower. Even heavier. It's like they discovered their inner Khanate. This is downright doooooomy. It's almost like the last Switchblade record played at 16rpm. In fact, maybe it is... Hmmm? Anyway, this has much more in common with Moss and Bunkur and Earth and Nadja and Marzuraan and Khanate, than the bands that occupied a similar sonic space as their last record, the Pelican's and Isis's and the like. The new Switchblade is a slow lumbering beast, two lengthy tracks, one 16 minutes, one almost 30 minutes, each a plodding, slow motion, glacial, dirge. Riffs are drawn out and allowed to drift and dwindle before the next riff arrives to take over. The drummer sounds like he only has one drum. And one cymbal. But both of them are really BIG and really LOUD. But unlike some of the sludgelords this disc is obviously indebted to, Switchblade keep their sound warm, and spacious. This isn't murky or muddy. It's wide open and spacious, the guitars are clear and bright, distorted sure, but more thick and heavy than downtuned and sludgy. A bit like recent discs from the Angelic Process and Nadja, a sort of beautiful sludge. the first track is the more overtly evil of the two with super creepy harsh whispered vocals, like Gollum from Lord Of The Rings, a raspy demonic growl. The second shorter track, sounds a bit like a heavier version of slowcore legends Codeine, with whispery crooned vocals, drifting minor key chords, all strung along a skeletal doom plod. Haunting and malefic, but at the same times strangely delicate and introspective. A truly mysterious and utter metamorphosis. We can hardly wait to hear what their fifth self-titled release will bring...
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We've long been fans of this Swedish post-metal / dirge-sludge / metal-gaze duo, and their ever expanding discography continues to confound, as this is their sixth full length since 2000, and the sixth record without a title. So yeah, self titled, AGAIN, and as we mentioned in our review of their 2006 self titled record, they also chose to jettison song titles as well, which continues to be the case, this three song, 37 minute epic divided into 'movements', and each of those movements further divided into 'coda's and 'elegy's and 'finale's. Which may seem a bit pompous, they are after all a rock band, and a pretty stripped down one at that, being just a guitar player and a drummer (their set up pictured on the front cover), but as the saying goes, it's not what you got, but what you do with what you got, and these guys turn two instruments (and admittedly a LOT of amplifiers), into something mightily metallic and majestic, with long passages of dark dreamy droniness, and dense dynamic sprawls of droned out psychedelic math-kraut heaviness, as well as lumbering driving dirges, and yeah, of course, heaving walls of crumbling distortion doused sludge, all driven by some serious drum-damage bombast, and this time around, some super tripped out vocals, contributed by not one, not two, but THREE guest vocalists (one known simply as "The Cuckoo", who we like to think is the one contributing the weird heavily effected gurgle-vox). There's also some keyboards this time around, adding a little more swirl and spaceiness to the proceedings, but the sound is still in keeping with the previous five self titled records, heady and heavy, hypnotic and metallic. Maybe imagine a mostly instrumental Isis, stripped way down, and then slowed way down, and recording with Steve Albini, or Dutch instru-metallers Gore, with a slightly more expansive soundfield.
At this point Switchblade are truly masters of their craft, weaving lush landscapes of chug and churn, those landscapes often blossoming into impossibly majestic sonic sprawls, tranced out and mesmeric, peppered with the occasional dense sonic blast, or fluttery fields of ghostly psychedelic drift, the whole thing laced with all manner of warped sonic subtleties, but spending the majority of their time locked into endless stretches of head nodding hypno-rock drone-dirge-metal bliss out.
The cd comes in a six panel full color digipack, while the deluxe 2lp version is pressed on 180 gram vinyl and includes a download code.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Sword + Sandals are a two saxophone and drums improv jazz trio comprised of local artists Shaun O'Dell (Corn Silo of Skulls, Beak), Randylee Sutherland (head of cd-r label Freak Out) and the irascible John Dwyer (Coach Whips, The Oh Sees, etc.) on drums! The recordings on their Live #1+2 cdr are circa 2006. Get 'em while you can!
Sword + Sandals are a two saxophone and drums trio comprised of local artists Shaun O'Dell (Corn Silo of Skulls, Beak), Randylee Sutherland (head of new cd-r label Freak Out) and the irascible John Dwyer (Coach Whips, The OhSees, etc.) on drums and they have been creating quite a stir at recent art openings and cafe performance spaces. Like the angel/gladiator/Greek philosopher imagery their name implies, Sword + Sandals engage in tumultuous bouts of free interactivity, wrestling sonic foes in the name of some higher ideal. Here in this live set at 21 Grand in Oakland, the cavernous acoustics of the space allow each of the horn players room to roam without straying far from the core idea. But what is that core? Without relying on a foundation of melody, steady tempo or a calculated harmonic plan, each player manages to defy complete cacophony by intuitively overlapping across similar but microtonally separate aural paths, creating mesmerizing dynamic regimes of sound through tense build-ups with intermittent breaths of space. A refreshing new addition to this city's dearth of inspired free jazz-not-jazz performers.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's The Sword....in SPAAAAAAAAACE! Well, that is, the popular stoner doom quartet that so many "troo metallers" love to hate have released their third long-player, and this time trade their lyrical fixation on Norse mythology for more of a science fiction theme. Or cover art, anyway. And, really they don't sound too much different as a result. Still super heavy and riffy and kinda catchy despite the vocalist's limitations, and just as worthy of Guitar Hero inclusion as they ever were. What we are noticing, though, is maybe their Texas roots coming more to the fore, The Sword's typically Sleep-like sound now infused with some serious '70s boogie! The single "Tres Brujas", for instance, has a Southern Rock feel for sure, same with "Lawless Lands". Meanwhile, the cowbell-rockin' "Night City" and others like closer "(The Night The Sky Cried) Tears Of Fire" reveal The Sword's debt to another '70s influence: Thin Lizzy.
Delving into this disc, though, we do discover that the sci-fi (or rather, science fantasy) deal is for real: this is in fact a full-on concept album, with a cryptic nerdy narrative running though such heavy tracks as "Acheron/Unearthing The Orb", "The Chronomancer I: Hubris", and "The Chronomancer II: Nemesis". Hmm, we almost suspect that their brief two weeks of touring two years ago with San Francisco's Slough Feg somehow rubbed off on 'em. There's even Space Pirates in the story!
So, If you like The Sword (and we do, even if sometimes we get a bit bored if we hear too many of their songs in a row) and don't mind 'em doing something just a bit different, you'll likely like Warp Riders; to possibly damn with faint praise it's their least boring album yet!! No, seriously, we're digging it. Not as doomy as they once were, but more hard rockin' is what we're sayin'.
And if you don't like The Sword (or don't think you do), c'mon and give this one a chance anyway, as they're definitely trying out some new (old) stuff here and doing it well. And maybe the haters can give 'em a break now, as they're 3 albums in, and that counts as paying some dues, right?
We just had a big "Witchcraft weekend" 'round these parts... The incredible Swedish doom/prog rockers played two shows in the vicinity -- a packed one at Slim's in SF and also a much more intimate one at a place down in the woods near Santa Cruz (which was thus even more amazing). Several of the AQ staff made it to both shows, and are still recovering. Witchcraft are such cool guys, very down to earth and friendly despite all the ego-stroking rock star adulation that they've begun to receive... and totally deserve, 'cause they ROCK like nobody since about 1972. Their new album The Alchemist is still in heavy rotation here at the store, and MORE new Witchcraft is, geeze, icing on the cake.
The Sword from Texas are another young band of fairly retro doomsters we like who got pretty darn big pretty darn fast... makes sense the two bands would team up for something, in this case a limited edition 12" vinyl only split ep!
On Side Sword, you get a brand new composition from them called "Sea Of Spears" and also a cover version of Led Zep's "The Immigrant Song"! Witchcraft fill the flip with three tracks, the first of which, "You Bury Your Head", was originally released in 2002 as the b-side to their debut single (this is that recording, not the re-recording of it found on their first album). Then there's "Queen Of Bees" and "Sorrow Evoker", newly recorded versions of songs found on Witchcraft's Firewood album. FYI this record is already SOLD OUT at the label, so...
It's odd that Swords have made what is perhaps their most straightforward pop album to date on the Arena Rock label (home to Creeper Lagoon, Calla, Solex and more) -- very much along the lines of Death Cab For Cutie and Pinback, but maybe with Michael Stipe stepping in to sing a few tunes -- as opposed to their former label home, the very Pinback-smart-pop-minded Absolutely Kosher. Indeed it's remarkable how much of a stylistic transformation they've gone through, shedding nearly every proggish, boundary pushing element that used to punctuate and characterize their music. Nevertheless, they wear this new dreamy style with panache.
New full length recording from this Portland (Oregon) seven + piece, and yet another (successful thankfully) wedding of indie rock and electronica. The album begins gradually -- emerging from crackling granular noises, tones, beats -- before exploding into what sounds at first almost like Death Cab For Cutie. It's mostly Corey Ficken's vocals that strike an amazing resemblence to Ben Gibbard's. Aside from that, the closest the Swords Project gets to Death Cab For Cutie would be hearing the latter under a heavy dosage of laudanum. The vocals of the Swords Project play only a minute part, weaving intermittently in and out of their spacey, meandering song structures. If anything they're closer to the realms of the more recent efforts of the Appleseed Cast. While the Rhodes piano adds a nice touch to their sound it's the violin that really earns them a firm handshake. We're impressed by their ability to absorb violin into an "indie" rock ensemble without sounding like a dour and pretentious chamber rock outfit. Very nice!
The Swords Project is a seven piece ensemble from Portland, who play epic and complex post rock. Like a less orchestral Godspeed, or a more orchestral Slint. Dreamy and spacey and really quite good. Features most of former AQ favorites the Land of The Wee
A Temporary Residence tour de force. Four songs that I think originated as Sonna tracks, which were then lovingly messed with by the fine folks in Sybarite and Lilienthal. Not simply a remix ep, mind you but a real back and forth collaboration of sorts. Anyway, the results are lovely, as any fan of the three bands already knows. Sonna's interweaving dual guitars are subsumed under a light cloud of electronic effects, with all efforts turned towards making the results pretty with a capital P. Quiet burbly electronica with enough organic sounds (those guitars) to keep it grounded. If you're new to the Temporary Residence label's sound, this is a good a place as any to sample the talents of three of its strongest acts.
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
We're not really all that clued in to the modern Oi / mod / punk scene, and we really wouldn't know about these guys at all if it weren't for the fact, that an ex member of crust metal crushers and aQ faves Acephalix was one of the guitar players in this local hard-mod / Oi combo, named for the wave of immigrants in the 1800's, coming from Australia to SF, who were blamed for all sorts of trouble, including a fire in 1849 that destroyed much of the city, as well as much of the street crime in general.
What we do know, is we're digging both of these new 7"s a bunch, total classic old school seventies/eighties style power pop / mod / punk rock, crunchy, jangly guitars, thick sinewy basslines (that sometimes get super distorted and crazy melodic), gruff belted vocals, and ultra catchy songs, that stick in your head like crazy, songs that beside being hooky, just ooze blood and sweat and energy and emotion, it's not hard to imagine folks going nuts and jumping around like crazy, their live shows must be insane, and while the stuff we've seen written about these guys make all sorts of super obscure punk rock references, we're thinking if you're like us, and dig stuff like Sham 69, Stiff Little Fingers, 999, the Adverts, even the Jam, this stuff will most definitely hit the spot! We weren't gonna go into too much detail about all the songs on both of these singles, cuz we were figuring that if you dug either (or both) of the sound samples, you'd probably want both, but we will say the B side of the Esprit De Corps single is pretty goddamn great, all sung in Spanish, with some seriously kickass bass that pretty much drives the whole song, and "Stray Dogs" sounds like a punk rock classic transported from the past, but then so does "Espirit Des Corps", and hell, the B side of the Stray Dogs single is pretty classic sounding too, with a main riff/hook that kills and some seriously anthemic vox... Screw it, just buy em both, you won't be sorry...
Jesse Sykes' been making music for some time now, but most recently she's garnered additional attention for her striking vocal turn on the track "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)" from Boris and SUNNO)))'s Altar album! 'Twas a wonderfully timed appearance to coincide with the release of Like, Love, Lust & The Open Halls Of The Soul, her third album. Sykes' voice is soft yet potent with a subtle rasp roughened by cigarette smoke. She's joined by guests Wayne Horvitz, Eyvind Kang and Nicolai Dunger. Painted in shades that suggest bruises and red wine, her rustic melancholia is so bleak and despairing that it begs to be enshrouded in the night. Best listened to after dusk.
Latest collection of gorgeous drugged out free folk rituals from these Belgian freaks, and as always, it's a fantastically weird and tranced out affair. Sonic ceremonies of shambling free percussion, layered guitar buzz, shimmery melody, and warped warbly drones, all woven into gorgeous occult psychedelia.
The record opens with a dark and mysterious bit of ambience, swirling blackness, muted effects, ghostly melodies, tinkling chimes, spidery guitars, but gives way to a full on seventies kraut psych jam that almost sounds like Comus, all hand drums, and strummed steel string guitars, fluttery flutes (?), it wouldn't be difficult to imagine stumbling onto some sonic coven in a dark forest, gathered around a fire, creating this dreamy din.
And that seventies psychedelic acid folk vibe continues right into the next track (and the rest of the record really), another hippy jam, all flanged guitar, motorik rhythms and swirly melodic buzz.
The second side begins with a druggy laid back meander, all wheezing organs, shuffling drums, detuned guitars, and mumbled chantlike vox, a shambolic minimal dronefolk that seems to be gradually melting right before our ears.
The next track is a full on chunk of seventies style psychedelic buzz, a squall of buzzing psych guitar, pounding tribal drummage, druggy and dirgey and divine. And finally, the record finishes off with part two of that krautrock jam from side one, this time way stripped down, a minimal kraut groove, laced with warped bits of melody, clattery spare percussion, crunchy riffs, drone-y buzz, all wrapped in a vintage lo-fi production haze, that makes this sound like it could be some lost kraut rarity a la German Oak. KILLER.
Pressed on CRAZY thick vinyl, with eye popping full color cover art. LIMITED TO 506 COPIES. Already out of print at the label, so these may be the last copies we see....
Yet another fantastic collection of tranced out shamanistic kraut-psych from these aQ faves, the first pressing sold out in a heartbeat, and disappeared before we managed to get even a single copy. This is the second pressing, limited to just 250 copies, and while we did get a bunch, odds are we're gonna sell out quick...
Like the Latitudes record that we listed recently, Perzische Tapijten again finds these Flemish psychedelic alchemists unfurling lush expanses of raga-like shimmer, and darkly propulsive krautrock infused droney druggy mesmer, this time with a bit more of an Eastern influence. The tracks smolder and drift, the opener sends snake charmer melodies slithering through clouds of swirling effects, the vibe sun dappled and dreamy, which darkens considerably in the following track, which churns ominously, the riffage dark and minor key, the drums more plodding and menacing, some serious German Oak dirgery going on, a grim chunk of wah wah-ed bunker psych that is WAY too brief at less than 4 minutes. The rest of the record unwinds drowsily slipping between the two, droning ominously, chugging and churning, then blossoming into warm swirling swells of heady psychedelic shimmer, and drifting back again. Some of the tracks veer into even stranger territory, like "Assassijn", which anchors its sound on what sounds like one of those cheesy Casio keyboard presets, the band burying the looped skitter beneath moaning horns, fluttering synths, swirling FX, and mesmerizingly minimal drumming, but then it's right back into it with "Etherik" a gorgeous slab of Eastern psychedelic raga, busy rhythms float atop low slung sinewy basslines, while a sitar-like guitar buzzes hypnotically above. Finally, the record finishes with a darkly drone bit of softly chaotic psychedelia, sounding like something you might hear on a Sublime Frequencies comp, the sound lo-fi and a bit murky, the guitars blurring into lush smears of chordal thrum, the drums shuffling beneath, totally tranced out, and utter drone-psych bliss. Obviously totally recommended. And also recommended, that you snap one of these up before they're gone for good...
Brand new album of electronic flecked tribal spaced out druggy free folk krautrocky weirdness from the Belgian "Funeral Folk"collective known as Sylvester Anfang (now spelled with a 'Y' instead of an 'I' for some mysterious reason) who have continued to evolve with every record.
The now out of print Satanische Vrede lp introduced us to these guys, with a garish lp sleeve featuring the band shirtless, wearing white hoods, holding goats on leashes, an image that somehow reflected the music inside disturbingly accurately. A primitive, ritualistic, orgy of abstract percussion, tripped out psychedelia, wandering free folk, some serious space rock, and a hint of something blacker and much more sinister.
This is only technically the second proper full length, but things have somehow gotten even more space-y, more druggy, more krautrocky, and thus more ROCKING. The record does start off with a strange sonic ritual, all mysterious spoken word, squiggly electronics, chaotic noise guitar backdrop, tons of effects, streaks of feedback, long swirling tendrils of whirring shimmer, but then BANG, the record launches right into "Na Regen Komt Sondvlred" mid-jam, as if someone just walked in on the band and pushed record without the band even noticing, locked as they were in full on transcendental space psych jam mode, relentless motorik skeletal beat, warm warbly low end pulse, and guitar, LOTS of guitar, distorted and wah wah'd the fuck out, flitting from moaning croonsome melodies to dense tangles of freaked out chaos, the whole sound and vibe so druggy and trippy and divine. The first band we thought of was German Oak, as this also sounds like it could have been recorded in some massive underground stone bunker, then Hawkwind, then some mix of the two, a seemingly endless mind expanding, speaker melting ur-jam, and we're only two songs in!
The two part "The Devil Always Shits In The Same Graves" is a massive twenty minute songsuite, that seriously smolders, the guitars twangy and Morricone-esque, the vocals a distorted scowly growl, the guitars spidery and sitar like, buzzing lazily, the melodies Eastern sounding, the drums laid waaaaay back, like listening to the Wooden Shjips at 16 rpm, but turned way down, for some late night bliss out. The second half is almost like a mirror of the first, but doused (dosed?) in noise and delay and distortion, a blurred lysergic Hawkwind outro rendered in effulgent streaks of buzz and fuzz, even more abstract and drone-y and space-y than the first part.
The four tracks in between cover a lot of ground, although never straying too far from that psychedelic buzz drenched krautrock that forms their core, from warm languid muted dronescapes, a thick smear of undulating effects laden warble over what sounds like a buried pop song, to still more white hot (outer) space rock dirge-ery, thick ropy basslines supporting swirling garage fuzz organs and tangles of psychguitar as well as dense clouds of malfunctioning electronics and haywire effects, to dense swells of super intense spacekrautdronegroove that could/should go on forever, to long stretches of glistening high end guitar shimmer and moaned sorrowful vocals, all wrapped in soft billows of dreamlike delay, to woozy garage kraut dirges, all detuned riffage, and pounding machinelike pulse, blurred buzz and otherworldly effects.
The whole record seems to melt together into one oozing organic meta-sound, a glorious extended space jam with a trajectory set somewhere in the distant future, a dizzying journey through innerspace, a slow burning series of sounds, fragments of the whole, sent spinning into the ether, streaked with starlight and glimmering reflectively in the muted glow of distant suns, a glorious bit of space rock, beamed to earth, into a clearing, in the middle of a forest, lit by firelight, channeled through the figures gathered there, surrounded by a stone circle that on closer inspection is revealed to be a haphazard assemblage of amplifiers, the cords running along the dirt of the clearing like black vines, the various figures hunched over, each wielding some sort of implement, their movements downright demonic in the firelight, and the sounds that come drifting out of the clearing even moreso....
Try as we might (and see above, we are obviously trying!), words hardly do these sounds justice. One of the best records of the year so far for sure...
On his latest solo album, the distinguished gent David Sylvian is joined by guests guitarist Derek Bailey and Christian Fennesz for an elegant and understated, hazy and mesmeric, minimal masterpiece. Never that much of a Japan fan, and to be quite honest, not all that excited by any of Sylvian's previous solo albums, I (Andee) have to say this record blows me away! It's so slow and dark, and gorgeously ephemeral. The songs are barely there, just these luciously hazy expanses of dark and shimmery sound, quivering echoes of reverbed guitars, and smeary wisps of warm harmony, with the vocals lazily draped atop the rich sonic tapestry, melodies unfurling at their own, slow motion pace. The overall sound and structure are very reminiscent of Mark Hollis' brilliant and barely-there solo record from a few years back, but the vocals remind me quite a bit of Mark Eitzel, in timbre and in delivery, but much more slurry and world weary (if that were possible), and fronting Stars Of The Lid or Oval instead of American Music Club. And while Fennesz is only on one track here, you wouldn't be faulted for thinking he was all over this record, as there's plenty of glitchy lushness and processed warble that bears quite a resemblance to his laptoped guitarscapes. My only complaint, and I'm sure I'll get a ton of grief for this, is Bailey's guitar playing. It still sounds to me like a third grader picking up a guitar for the first time. And it comes dangerously close to disrupting the late night lovliness and effortless fluidity of the record. Luckily, Bailey's 'purposely' retarded plucking gets absorbed into the swampy, swoony lushness that surrounds it. For a record I hadn't even planned on listening to, this is turning out to be one of my new favorite late night listens! Highly recommended.
Released on Sylvian's own label Samadhi Sound.
Long awaited. Dark, beautiful and moody pop songs in line with his earlier records. A really unique voice and style sitting somewhere between Nick Drake and late Talk Talk. Epic guest performances by Talvin Singh, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Marc Ribot, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bill Frisell, Ingrid Chavez and a host of others.
Such a fantastic complement (and compliment) to David Sylvian's last album Blemish (which you may or may not know was a particular fave of Andee's)! You almost wouldn't think it possible, but on many of the remixes on The Only Daughter, Sylvian's chosen remixers have stripped down the tracks to an even more stark and austere state than that of the originals -- at times giving the impression that Sylvian has gone beat poet or is having intimate tete-a-tetes with a petulant piano or lonely horn. One of the best moments on this remix collection is Readymade FC's work on "A Fire In The Forest" with its gentle crunch-crackle-chime of an old neglected musicbox. Beautiful. The impressive list of participants also includes Ryoji Ikeda, Burnt Friedman, Yoshihiro Hanno, Tatsuhiko Asano, Jan Bang, Erik Honore, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, and Akira Rabelais -- all of whom have treated Sylvian's material with the utmost respect and furthered the haunting moods and atmospheres of Blemish in a most fitting manner.
Every once in a while a local band pops up, and we think, how the heck had we not heard of these guys already? Which is what we're thinking with Synthetic ID, cuz holy shit these guys rule. We're guessing it must be somebody we know, or someone from some other band, but really it hardly matters, cuz from the first few seconds, we were knocked the fuck out. A killer mix of angular post punk and loose limbed noise rock,
wiry guitars wound around tense yelped vocals, driven by urgent, frenetic drumming, definitely sounding like like some post punk artifact from the eighties, or some weird outlier released on Homestead back in the day, or some lost Dischord release, think the Wipers, Wire, the Minutemen - in fact, when some of us first heard this we assumed it must have been some new archival reissue on Superior Viaduct, it definitely has that vibe, a little new wave, a little funk-punk, a little woozy math rock, all wound up into something pretty goddamn great!! Castle Face delivers the goods again.
Another obscure reissue from Dark Entries! How obscure might you ask? Well, System Liliputt was a one-man band of the Norwegian Geir Vassang, who released only one cassette in 1984 in an edition of 150 copies. There were some blogs which got a hold of crappy rips of the cassette in recent years; but for the most part, this is a project that nobody has really heard. The Norwegian new wave tunes that Vassang produced oscillated between motorik, disco arrangements and standard verse-chorus pop arrangements on his polyphonic synths, drum machines, guitar, and an occasional bass. Some of the sequencing that Vassang gets has a hollowed plasticity heard in some of the tracks by Cabaret Voltaire or Casssandra Complex with a brittle jangliness to his guitar playing cribbed from The Cure's Seventeen Seconds. The pop-song side of Vassang's production can be quite fragile in its construction, which lend itself to the subjects of loneliness and death through these bittersweet tunes alternately sung in English and Norwegian.
We mentioned The Cure earlier, and we got to say this really does hit the magic mark of our favorite era of The Cure. So many of the songs on here are leaving a lasting impression with us, especially "Gatelangs" which should be put on every mix tape this winter. One of those records so perfect for the onslaught of rain we've had the last few days. You just want to sit locked in your bedroom while flipping this over and over and sulking in such great sounding misery!
Well we've had quite a few solo contributions from the Rob Crow half of Pinback to grace our shelves for some time, but nary a peep from Armistead Burwell Smith IV (a.k.a Zac) until now. And while it's been fun to trace the Pinback sound backwards to Three Mile Pilot and Heavy Vegetable et al., we've been curious to hear what Zac's side of the story -- so to speak -- has been since the first Pinback release. Can't say that we were surprized, which is by way of saying "yes, this is as great as any Pinback release". Seems these two have practically been doing a Vulcan mind meld since they hooked up years ago. The main difference between Zac's solo work and Rob's is that Zac tends to keep a little more on the straight and narrow. You know how on Rob's last solo album, he takes those little faux-Prince and quasi-metal side streets? Zac doesn't do that, but keeps to the Pinback program. Most noticable, besides his voice, is his bass playing: that wonderful melodic, fingerpicked bass sound. It's also got all that beautiful songwriting like his work with Pinback. You think you love a song from the first few bars, and then half way through there's this genius of a bridge that sends your heart into your throat -- and it's all done with the utmost in simplicity. Our only regret with this release is its short (5 songs) length.
Conceived as a soundtrack for a 1980 Amnesty International short film against the Death Penalty, French electronic music maverick, Bernard Szajner (pronounced Shy-nerr) came up with one of the most geniusly bizarre concept records ever made. Imagine if Suicide, David Bowie, Conrad Schnitzler, Bruce Haack, Giorgio Moroder, and Magma made a record together about the de-humanizing extremes of an existentialist Death Row, it might sound something as cold and freaky as this! A minimal wave Magma is definitely not that far off the mark, as Szajner was the lighting and visual effects designer for Magma's live shows in the seventies, and Klaus Blasquiz and Bernard Paganotti of Magma guest here.
The opening track, "Welcome To Death Row" was featured on the awesome compilation of French coldwave, "So Young But So Cold" and Detroit techno producer, Carl Craig has claimed this to be his favorite album of all time! It's definitely got the slow disco vibe down, even though it's hardly a dance record. Add some crooning David Bowie in his Low period moments, but it's way weirder with creepy synth elements, robotic vocals, radio collages, electronic pop and tight, proggy guitar solos added in to highlight a more distasteful side to what Szajner felt to be the all too pleasant quality of synthesized sounds coming out of Germany at the time. That might mean for some, on a first superficial listen, parts of the songs may go to questionable places you may not wish them to go (it was made in 1980, after all!), but it's a much more satisfying listen to follow the songs down all the rabbit holes they go with an open mind. It's definitely one of those eccentric missing link records that crosses through many genres but doesn't sit easily in any one of them.
Bernard Szajner made five records of avant-garde electronic music in the late seventies and early eighties before sadly abandoning music for good, but none of them are quite like this! (His 1981 follow-up Superficial Music has also been reissued and we'll hopefully review it in a future list.) But for all those into such sundry bands as Daft Punk, Droids, Cold Cave, Air, Kraftwerk, Heldon, Arthur Russell, Lindstrom, Gina X, Jonas Reinhardt, the weirder sides of Serge Gainsbourg or any of the bands or artists mentioned above, you need to check this out now!! Oh, and this also includes three bonus tracks, previously unreleased!
Bernard Szajner is one of the more eccentric pioneers of French post-prog electronic music. Released in 1981, Superficial Music, was the follow-up to his bizarre avant-electro-rock concept record against the evils of capital punishment, Some Deaths Take Forever. Superficial Music is less high concept (or more depending upon how you look at it) than Some Deaths, as it uses Marcel Duchamp's ideas of the readymade coupled with Eno's Oblique Strategies to make a compelling work of tape manipulation synthesis. It's definitely not as rock-oriented as Some Deaths. Reworking tapes from his first release, Visions of Dune, and processing them backwards and at half speed, Superficial Music is both strangely atonal and oddly enticing, full of dark pulsations and brooding oceanic turbulence, following in the footsteps of other cosmic tape music such as Fripp and Eno's No Pussyfooting, and Eliane Radigue's Vice Versa while sounding akin to the heavier cavernous analog explorations of Klaus Schulze and Kluster. The second half of the record is Szajner's three part suite, Oswiecim (Polish for Auschwitz) and obviously it doesn't get much lighter in tone. Ghostly and hushed, with unnerving spectral drones, this suite addresses Szajner's family roots with the Holocaust and though it's not as brutally heavy-handed as it could be, it's more often disquieting in its cold and near silent detachment. This reissue also includes two previously unreleased bonus tracks from the period that complement the work nicely. Fans of that Musique Electronique En France compilation we raved about a while back, as well as modern day doomdrone, should definitely check this out!
Many of the records we love best are the ones that are the most difficult to figure out where we would file them in the store. Such is the case with the engaging and genre transcending aural delights of Polish sound artist Dawid Szczesny. His sounds are filled with suspense and restraint. You can tell he is someone whose love of music and sound spans a wide distance yet he has the skill and foresight to keep his creations fluid and filled with a brimming mood that never resorts to melodrama and never goes over the top, crafting soundscapes that remind us of everything from Moondog to Pierre Bastien to Philip Jeck to J.P. Shilo to a more elegant and restrained take on what many in the Chicago jazz/post-rock scene aimed to create (Tortoise, Chicago Underground Duo, Isotope 217 etc.).
We've been loving so much of what Porter has been putting out but this release is really getting tons of play and might be our favorite of their non-reissue releases yet!
One of many new wave offshoots of the defunct Long Beach punk comedy troupe Le Shok. Hot Rod Todd and Darryl Licht get lo-fi nastee with cheap synths and a rhythm box. Four songs, including a warped cover of The Troggs' "Strange Movies". Limited to 1000, and on wacky mustard yellow vinyl (only).
Upon receiving the debut release from T H E M A Y S (yes, the group specifies that there be a space between each letter)!, we were struck by the aroma of tempera paint emanating from the hand-made fold-out packaging. It immediately stirred memories of fingerpainting in elementary school, and in turn, the untethered nature of childhood creativity. Interestingly, T H E M A Y S is a project based out of a school of another sort, but with a seemingly similar sense of free-flowing exploratory openness. Nestled in the Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center, the San Francisco Urban Music Program is "dedicated to teaching progressive and adventurous music-making of all kinds" to youths and adults. Yes, that description sounds right up our alley, doesn't it? And while it's actually not geographically so (i.e, "up our alley", heh heh!), it is still pretty close and in town (the SNBC is a wonderful community hub located a few blocks from Ocean Beach in the Outer Sunset district here in SF). Anyhoo, KNOWFI was composed in this supportive environment by eight students and instructors. The latter includes the fine Jon Bernson with whom we're all well familiar from his other musical pursuits (namely Ray's Vast Basement which morphed into Exray's a couple of years ago, and his duo with Tim Cohen called Window Twins). He is in fact the captain of this UMP ship, having founded it in back in '97.
Although the cd-r is indexed into twelve tracks, and each one is titled individually, it plays as one continuous 40-minute soundscape of lulling swells of dreamy haze. So, we'd recommend that you sit right down, settle in for a spell, and allow the heavily processed and densely layered drones, fleeting melodies, found sounds and other noise generators melt together into every crack and crevice of your ear drums. Awash with ever-evolving warbly, woobly wonderfulness!
The second release from local electronic collective T H E M A Y S (that's how it's written according to the group), and like the last one, a limited cd-r on Gigante Sound, this tape is the work of a special group of music makers, as T H E M A Y S is actually a school project, or rather a project based out of a school, in which kids are taught to make music, record, compose, play instruments, and the results are then released, this tape the product of various recording and editing sessions between students and instructors, and it's a doozy, loping electronic soundscapes, super atmospheric, like the last record, but this one way more beat heavy, sounding like something that should have come out on Anticon, the same sort of lush collaged avant hip hop soundscapery, the tones lush and warm, the beats loping and groovy, the tracks here are pretty fantastic, layered and intricate, gristly statick woven into dreamy billows of chordal shimmer, and swirling FX, all anchored to hypnotic electro-hop grooves. Super cool!
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Get to second base with these ladies if you dare, you might find yourself an appendage short!
After a killer split with UK based Leopard Leg, Second Base marks the full length debut of these local San Francisco spitfires. Huge mean walls of cavey no-wave pummel and monolithic molten guitar swells steep these doom-laden garage rock stompers in layers of simmering and pulsating sonics. While the vocals sung in group chant style highlight the buried melodies deep within. It's a bit easy to describe the vocals and overall sound of an all-girl experimental band, especially one that dwells toward the extreme side of the sonic spectrum, as "witchy", but there's no real other way to describe the vocals here. Although they're not shrieked or sung in a detuned arty sort of way, the flat but clear group-intoned vocal delivery heightens the spell-binding doomy power of the songs, reminding us of the modern-day women in George Romero's Season of the Witch, rather than the nature-worshiping fairytale kind.
We're still not sure what T.I.T.S. stands for. Their MySpace page suggests Technicolor Inner Troll Syndrome(?!). We've got a better one: This Is The Shit!!!!
Over the last few years T.I.T.S. have proven to be one of the most exciting groups in the San Francisco music scene. Four woman who bring an immediacy and intensity to their off kilter post-punk jams. Theirs are songs that make you want to dance in such a fucked up way, as you smash and destroy, sweat and bleed and exorcise all the demons from your soul...
For sure taking their cues from the early No Wave scene, their sound so perfect alongside impassioned blasts from the past by folks like The Au Pairs, Liliput, DNA, Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, Bush Tetras, The Raincoats and The Slits. We also love how they songs feel like such kindred spirits to what Erase Errata were exploring on their final (?) album, Nightlife. We're also reminded of a similar sensation we feel when we listen to The Ex.
While they may be getting much inspiration from the past, nothing feels nostalgic about the sounds on The Girls. In fact every song jumps out with such a present, vibrant energy that they make the listener feel totally connected to that visceral moment in time. What makes T.I.T.S. so fucking great is that they don't just borrow from post punk's past, but instead they actually infuse so much true punk spirit into their songs. Smoking hot!
Intercontinental all girl noise rock tag team match up. From right here in SF come T.I.T.S. (no idea what it stands for) an all-female troupe spewing their own skewed and venomous version of damaged psychedelic fuzzy garage rock stomp. Lo-fi brittle metallic riffing butts up against simple pounding caveman drums, haunting chant-like vocals, all with a seriously pagan primal, tribal vibe. Two whole sides of furiously fuzzed out chant and buzz, psych rock garage grrrrrrrrr....
The other disc features the UK's mysterious Leopard Leg, who are a bit like a witchier, soundtrackier No Neck Blues Band. Abstract soundscapes of bells and chimes nestled amidst prickly seas of record / campfire crackle, buzzing snarls of malfunctioning electronics, clattery tribal percussion, haunting abstract vocals, a slow drift through a dark forest, folk picked apart by hungry scavengers, leaving weird skeletal shapes and fuzzy fragments of sound, until about halfway through the second side when the band drop everything, and go all out with their haunted forest drum line, spitting out a huge cacophonous wall of Crash Worship drum damage. Woah.
Incredible packaging, super thick, glossy gatefold sleeve, colored vinyl, one white, one green, so nice...
We found ourselves immediately intrigued by this group of Philly black metal / blacknoise / industrial merchants, whose M.O. consisted of site specific rituals, and what essentially amounted to field recorded black metal. A space would be chosen, as much for its acoustic properties as it's historical/emotional significance, an old abandoned mental hospital, supposedly haunted buildings, various ruins and locations of past tragedies. Seemingly in a bid to channel that energy through sound, and we have to say, to our ears it worked. Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy aka T.O.M.B. have created a sound that is black only in mood and vibe, that sonically has more in common with outfits like Gnaw Their Tongues, Demonologists and even NRIII, whose new record is reviewed elsewhere on this list. Whether it was intentional, or just the result of the locations and the recording process, the sound of T.O.M.B. tends toward the cavernous, lots of echo and reverb, sounds careen from speaker to speaker, some sort of infernal black dub in places, the vibe way more industrial noise than black metal, but somehow, ultimately it feels more like an unholy union of the two. Lots of rhythmic percussion, processed sounds that rumble ominously one second, explode in shards of white noise the next, there seem to be voices, but those too are transformed into just more blurred psychedelic noise.
The most 'serene' moments might be the most sonically malevolent, churning looped pulses, some sort of deep hellish thrum, gradually drawing ever nearer, the percussion like some sort of demonic death march, the sound locked into long stretches of rhythmic mesmer, the sound at it's MOST rhythmic, reminding us of Aluk Todolo or German Oak, albeit much more blown out and blackened, at its blackest, like the sickest, grimmest, most raw and primitive low fidelity black metal, and at its noisiest, rivaling the most corrosive Japanoise, yet all somehow strung together into some sort of black hymnal, an abject collection of abstract, mysterious, soul stirring sonic malice.
Sweet! This is the sort of thing that makes for a good Record Of The Week both 'cause of how it sounds (always the biggest consideration of course!!) and also 'cause the back story is pretty cool, too. We'll start with that. T.R.A.S.E. stands for Tape Recorder And Synthesizer Ensemble, a name that, if used by a band nowadays might seem just a bit unimaginatively straightforward & blandly self-explanatory, or perhaps meant ironically academic-sounding somehow. But when you learn that T.R.A.S.E. were a DIY "ensemble" masterminded by a precocious British schoolboy back in 1981, making experimental electronic home recordings that sound not too far from stuff such modern-day outfits as Emeralds and Umberto and Soft Moon would be doing years later, then the name becomes fairly endearing, eh? Just take a look at the cover photo, two skinny teenagers, one looking kinda cool in T-shirt and shades, standing with electric guitar in hand, the other kid in sweater and jeans, looking a bit dorkier as he sits amidst a cluttered array of electronic keyboards, amplifiers, reel-to-reel tape machines and other assorted audio gear. The latter teen is T.R.A.S.E. founder Andy Popplewell, most definitely an A/V geek at his school, who put together his own six-channel audio mixer at age 16 following plans in a issue of Practical Electronics magazine. Being into both sci-fi soundtracks and new wave music like The Human League, Ultravox and Gary Numan (one of the tracks here is a Tubeway Army cover) it wasn't long before that mixer, and other gear he built, like an "Elektor Chorosynth", was put to use to record his own music. Kraftwerk, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Giorgio Moroder where among his other inspirations. T.R.A.S.E. recorded one unreleased cassette lp called Electronic Rock, and the deep diggers at B-Music/Finders Keepers have compiled tracks from that tape here along with other home studio / real studio / demo tracks by Popplewell and T.R.A.S.E., 14 total cuts of adolescent outsider synthsplorations, all tick-tocking drum machines and swells of droning synth, adorned with phaser and fuzz FX, replete with gentle melodies and warped "cosmic" soundz. These tracks are mostly instrumental, though a few have vocals, like the Messethetics-ish downer electro pop of "Talk To Me" and the sad, fuzzy "Unrequited Love". So much primitive shimmering synth beauty, the more abstract of the tracks glistening rhythmically, the more song-like coming across like lo-fi coldwave cuts.
Perhaps the best recommendation we can give this, is that playing it in the store, generally results in customers asking about it and buying a copy. Probably the best "long lost tapes" release of vintage unknown electronica since that Rodion G.A. record!! One of those serendipitous discoveries, occasioned by a fortuitous meeting between Andy Popplewell and Andy Votel of Finders Keepers.
The cd booklet includes color photos and vintage synth kit adverts, alongside detailed and very revealing liner notes penned by Popplewell himself, who in the wake of T.R.A.S.E. later became a BBC radio engineer, now works in audio media restoration, and who currently studies conspiracy theories and other esoteric knowledge in his spare time.
Fyi, we momentarily had an import vinyl version of this a while back, but it took 'til now for the cd to materialize, glad it finally did, though it's too bad we don't have the vinyl anymore (maybe again, someday?).
