Every once in a while, we find ourselves missing the sound of classic math rock. The sound of late nineties post rock. Oh hell, who are we kidding, we're ALWAYS missing that stuff. Slint, Rodan, Bastro, Bitch Magnet, Breadwinner, Dazzling Killmen, Hurl, Crain, heck, even Andee's old band A Minor Forest. Mathy, convoluted, serpentine, minor key, weirdly catchy, strangely structured, lots of starts and stops. As much as we're loving the new breed of metal bands gone post rock or math rock. They definitely tend to lean toward the post side of the equation, preferring to bliss out rather than math out. But for any one who finds themselves getting a little chill when reading the above list of bands, Tiny Hawks are the band to give you everything you've been missing. Tiny Hawks are a duo from Rhode Island, but don't be expecting tangled Lightning Bolt spazz, or stripped down guitar and drums duo rock, this is a huge sprawling explosion of gorgeously melodic and deftly complicated math rock. You'd never know this was a duo (the drummer plays bass on the record) as these guys create a huge sound, thick and textured, dense and dreamy. Some tracks are spastic freakouts, all chaotic drum splatter and manic riffing, others are shimmery expanses of muted strum and dreamlike shuffle. There's definitely an early nineties Dischord element to their sound as well. Intricate, erratic, experimental, bits of jazz and metal twisted into post rock shapes and then set in a dizzyingly mathy framework. Convoluted minor key workouts peppered by sudden bursts of jagged aggro crunch and pound, and plenty of loping blissed out mellowness, drifting harmonics, clanging guitars, all drifting in a jangly haze. This is ALL the shit we love about the genre, all tangled up in a hugely fresh sounding kick ass blast of super aggressive, sweetly melodic, math rock anvil to the head. So goddamn good. Like your favorite band from 1996, got in a time machine, got a practice space down the hall from yours, and invited you over to stand around a sweaty, stinky practice space, get drunk, bounce around and have your mind and ears fucking blown!
We're sure many of you are familiar with the eccentric ukulele playing, helium-voiced singer Tiny Tim from his surprising successes in the 1960s. Most view the man as nothing more than a novelty act, which may be easy to understand if you think "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" and Laugh-In is where the story begins and ends. But Tiny Tim (born Herbert Khaury) was more than just some flash in the pan weirdo, and one thing this compilation makes abundantly clear is that he WAS indeed a highly talented musician. Born in 1932, Tiny had been an avid listener and player of a wide variety of music since his youth. These recordings, many thought to have been lost, span his pre-fame years in the early '60s Greenwich Village scene to his post-fame comedown in the '70s. The range of material here will be surprising to many, and the songs are wisely sequenced without regard to their recording dates to demonstrate this more clearly.
The falsetto vocals are featured on many tracks, sure, but Tiny Tim also possessed an impressive and dramatic croon, while the instrumentation goes way beyond the sparse ukulele accompaniment, even going into some bombastic orchestral arrangements like in "I Ain't Got No Money". When "Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes" follows in the style most people associate with Tiny Tim, his unique genius and skill as a musical interpreter become more obvious. Elsewhere, like on his arrangement of "Maggie May", things are played impressively on piano and delivered in a mushmouthed old man voice. He also completely KILLS with a spooky, Halloween-y rendition of the oft-covered classic "In The Pines". Listened to together, it's all pretty hilarious, not as some joke, but because one man was capable of being not only incredibly strange but also so endearing and highly listenable. The sound quality here is murky, but in a good way, lending a strange out-of-time feel to many of these songs, which makes sense considering this comes to us via the same label that released Michael Yonkers' Goodby Sunball album. We expected to dig this for sure, but really had no idea just how much this stuff would rule. Highly recommended.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Includes extensive and super interesting liner notes from Tiny Tim historian/biographer Justin Martell.
Tiny Vipers is a lone lady, Ms Jesy Fortino, a drowsy dark folk songstress whose voice bears a striking resemblance to both Diane Gluck and Kim Deal. Very shadowy and very affecting. The fourth track "Forest On Fire" might be our favorite on this 7-song cd as the relatively conventional structure of the song is allowed to sprawl and dissipate out into a droning noisescape. Very cool.
A couple of years ago, we were drawn into the captivating shadows of a "Forest On Fire". 'Twas a fantastic lengthy track from Tiny Vipers' Hands Across The Void debut album. It brought together two of our favorite things - droning soundscapes and heart-baring folk melancholia. So good. On this Ms Jesy Fortino's second full length, the haunting shadowy tendrils of her dark dark folk wind themselves even deeper into the dark recesses of your heart. As Life On Earth progresses at its solemn pace, each word and pluck from her acoustic guitar strings tighten the grip further in wringing despair. She's drawn comparisons to elder acoustic folk foremothers Sybille Baier and Karen Dalton as well as contemporaries Joanna Newsom and Chan Marshall, but electrified embellishments set her apart. Oftentimes, her drowsy guitar and whispery tremulous vocals are so hushed and bare bones that they seem in danger of shattering or being drowned out by any external elements. You want to hold it close, and offer it safe harbor, but then a slow creeping haze of drone or feedback materializes and provide a haunting veil of refuge. In a sense her music is conjuring its own stormy forces. Crushingly beautiful.
Tired Tape Machine is a Swedish one man project, who, based on the moniker, we initially expected to sound LIKE a tired tape machine, all warped and warmly, garbed and faded, maybe a little Philip Jeck, a little Caretaker, in fact the record was recorded in a cabin in the Swedish forest! But instead, TTM sounds more like a mini orchestra, unfurling dreamy swaths of hazy, sixties drone-pop shimmer, all baroque and wistful, a sort of chamber folk, rife with slow smoldering builds, some classic psychedelia, plenty of swirling strings, folky acoustic guitars, space-y FX, the sound slipping from brooding downer pop to soaring almost Stereolab groop sounds in fact, on first listen, we found ourselves thinking 'Low meets Stereolab', but that shorthand doesn't do justice to the sound here.
We hear shades of Cardinal and Witch Hazel, and other practitioners of timeless baroque pop, but it all has a slightly sinister undertone, a mysterious cinematic ambience that seems to infuse even the poppiest moments. The more we listen, the more the moniker makes sense, it's a music out of time, and this strange dusty old tape machine is in fact more than what it seems, pulling in these transmissions from the ether, the moody poppiness, laced too with stretches of haunting, near choral drift, pocked with squalls of psychedelic freakout, all the various disparate sonic elements distilled into a dark, gauzy, softly psychedelic chamber folk, retro pop that we can't get enough of. Fans of aQ faves Death & Vanilla, hankering for some similarly ghostly, symphonic, dreamy-downer, sixties style pop, this will definitely hit the spot.
Probably extremely limited, grab one now just in case. You won't be sorry.
Two new reissues of badass obscure African '70s garage fuzz rock on this list, hot damn! One from Witch (whose album Lazy Bones!! we were already big fans of) and this record from Nigeria's Tirogo, one of the bands who appeared on that rad Lagos Disco Inferno comp. Tirogo were labelmates with the band Blo, and ought to appeal to folks into Blo, Ofege, Sjob, and others from the Nigerian scene, as well as "Zam Rockers" like Witch, Amanaz, and the Ngozi Family from down in Zambia. Originally released in 1977, Tirogo's Float, their debut, is a stoned masterpiece of psychedelic garage groove with authentic African vibes. Seriously, at this point, can't we just say, if you like those others, you'll like this? 'Cause you will. Stinging fuzz guitar leads swirl and sizzle over seriously funky, energetic rhythms, as the vocalists chant about girls and the devil... yeah! The sort of thing that when you're listening to it, you can't help but think, "this is the best shit ever!"... and it's kinda true!!
Dunno how many more records like this they can dig up, it's hard to imagine, but we're grateful for what's been reissued thus far, winners like Tirogo and Witch, wow. And they do it right, the cd booklet includes an extensive, interesting interview with original Tirogo lead vocalist and bassist Wilfred Ekanem, conducted by African music collector and Now-Again head honcho Egon, who coordinated these reissues.
Our favorite Brooklyn-based stoner space rockers are back, with their first proper studio album (the limited Paradigms cd, and the self-released cd-r we've had before were both live recordings, apparently). If you liked those, you'll like this -- though they get up to some new tricks here as well. In fact, we weren't sure we were even listening to Titan when we first put this on, as the first of the four tracks found here starts off all folky for a minute, with strumming and singing that could be Comus or Devendra... before blasting into loud, distorted, truly TITANIC heavy instrumental psych rock powered in part by some extremely proggy keyboard action. It's like ELP jamming with Comets On Fire, or Tarantula Hawk gone '70s, or a much heavier, blow-out n' drugged-up Crime In Choir! A wild torrent of amp-ed up, cosmic crunch, spiralling energetically.
The following tracks have their blissed out interludes, and droning FX, and mantric rhythmic pulses, and other bits of weirdness (field recordings of what might be crickets chirping, and a fan blowing, are mixed in at one point), but that heavy space prog riffola isn't lacking either. Definitely there's plenty here to appeal to fans of the abovementioned bands, as well as, oh, AMT, Circle, Zombi, Ufomammut, Boris, Mammatus, and MoRkObOt among others... in a word, recommended!!
Remember a couple lists back we reviewed a Paradigms disc by a mysterious, very cool instrumental space rock band called Titan? We told the story of how, some months previous, these guys had sent us some cd-rs to check out, but with no contact information. And then when they finally did follow up with an email, and we tried to order some, we got no response! So we never ever got those cd-rs, but the Paradigms cd was a nice surprise.
Well, of course what happened was this: the slightly-flakey-but-nice Titan folks (hey this IS some kinda stonery drug rock, so some flakiness is to be expected, eh?) read our review, and emailed to see if we still wanted the cd-rs.... only they didn't have the one they'd sent us originally any more. But they did now have a new cd-r release, recorded at the same sessions as the Paradigms cd release. Plizmarmelade is a single 40 minute long track, starting off skronkily aggressive, with the noisy bite of a Lightning Bolt, before getting building into a relentlessly energetic, almost... jaunty... crazy crunching howling throbbing bass groove, like Zombi or Circle or Pharaoh Overlord on happy pills, freaking out on the guitar solos and sci-fi effects!! Acid Mothers Temple would be proud of this. Eventually the pills wear off and things fade into a calmer, deeper, droned-out zone, still way out in space. Wow. Basically krautrock from Brooklyn, that's the deal here. If you dug their Paradigms release, this should turn you on too.
We do have a bunch of these, but since they're cd-r's in home-made looking (silkscreened) digipacks, chances are they're limited...plus who knows if Titan will email us back if we need more...so get 'em while you can.
Brand new blast of spaced out prog-tastic heaviness from this Brooklyn quartet, and holy shit, everything we loved about their last one, A Raining Sun Of Light & Love For You & You & You, is even MORE this time around, more heavy, more proggy, more keyboards, the songs way more epic, total cosmic super distorted loud as fuck space prog metal bliss out, like ELP crossed with the Fucking Champs, stir in some Comets On Fire, Tarantula Hawk, Crime In Choir, La Otracina (with whom they share members), and of course some Yes and Osanna and New Trolls and loads more of that sort of '70s stuff, cuz this time it's definitely the prog that has been cranked way up, synths all over the place, every song like a non stop synth / guitar / drum battle to the death, totally exhausting and exhilarating and over the top, epic and majestic and complex and intricate and melodic and somehow catchy as hell.
Barring the 3 minute synth interlude "Synthasaurs", which sounds more like some sort of Goblin / Tangerine Dream / John Carpenter hybrid, the other 4 tracks are total progged out super jams, almost entirely instrumental, the melodies constantly mutating and intertwining, the keyboards unleashing wild flurries of notes, the bass and drums holding it all together, dense and thick and powerful, the guitars wailing and flailing and howling, constantly parrying with the keyboards, there are organs too, thick and fuzzy and gloriously distorted, like a supercharged Deep Purple, Titan are like the prog version of all those Hawkwind worshipping space rock groups, who take the psychedelic tripped out outros and stretch them into whole songs, Titan seem to do the same thing with prog, taking short bursts of classic prog, adding all sorts of metallic chug and modern psych rock crunch and stretching them out into gloriously endless sprawling epics, this stuff is so fierce and frantic and the pace so relentless and dizzying.
This stuff RULES. Heavy and spacey and proggy and mathy and fucking incredible, pretty much everything we could possibly want in a band. Comes in a swank diecut digipak too!
A few months ago, we got a package of cd-rs in the mail. Pretty cool looking discs, no information whatsoever on the cd-rs, or on the envelope they came in, just the name Titan on the front. We threw it on and were pretty impressed. Some seriously spacey blissed out modern day Hawkwind/krautrock stylings. So, we thought, let's order some of these to list, but then we realized we had no idea how to contact the band -- no phone number, no email, no website, no nothing. We weren't even sure how much to charge for the handful we already had.
So we waited. And waited. Finally one day, we got an email from the one of the guys in the band, who had just realized that they had sent us discs with no contact info. So we immediately emailed back, letting them know that we were definitely interested in selling their record. Asked them to send us 20 or 30 copies and NEVER. HEARD. FROM. THEM. AGAIN.
Then suddenly, we discover this new release on Paradigms by the name of Titan. Could it be? The song titles are all in German, but the Titan we heard was from Brooklyn. Sure enough, it was indeed them. Not sure if it's the exact same record we heard, but boy is it some divine spaced out drug drenched psychedelic krautrockiness. Three lengthy tracks, all ten minutes plus, the first opens with a lengthy stretch of meditative Tangerine Dream like organ drones, slowly shifting, melodies drifting and subtly intertwining, before the rest of the band joins in, locking into a groove and slowly building into a pretty serious psych rock jam. The band is rock solid, but still loose and free, loping relentlessly over a thick wash of organs and beneath wild squalls of freaked out psych guitars.
The second track launches right into an ominous spy thriller krautrock jam. Tense and propulsive, a totally mesmerizing groove surrounded by swirls of analog synth and swooping space FX. A bit like a way more rocking Zombi. About half way through, the jam dissipate and the track becomes a thick swirling free drone, with feeding back guitars ands and rumbling ambience. The final 15 minute track starts off much like the opener, a dreamy serene soundscape of sizzling cymbals, warm subtle drones and murky effects, before the band once again clicks into a slow sultry jazzy groove. The track builds into a near cinematic epic, like Godspeed or Mogwai, before slowly drifting back to Earth, and drowsily winding to a halt.
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a colorful mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
By now, Finland must seem like one big musical forest, will small tribes of elfin music makers, sitting around fires, with home made instruments and beat up old guitars and primitive tape recorders, spending their days kicking out clattery, meandering free folk pagan jams, tribal and hypnotic. Venture a little further into the forest and you'll find Circle, harnessing the power of the sun to power their amps and keyboards, kicking out endless psychedelic drone rock jams. Chop your way through some dense underbrush, delve deeper into the woods, where there is less life and less light and it's a little dark and scary and you'll find Pharaoh Overlord, big hairy Yeti's, clubs in hand, making a sludgy racket around a huge funeral pyre, horrible blackened shapes dancing on the canopy overhead. But go no further, because there's a cave, with a mouth as black as pitch, where no one dare enters, for fear of the unholy racket emanating from within. For it's here you'll find the mysterious members of Tivol. Look closer and the cave sort of resembles a beat up old garage. But stand back and prepare yourself for the wild and wooly psychedelic freakouts spewing from the mouth of this cave / garage. Pounding trashcan drums, druggy, super affected space rock guitars, and howled banshee vocals, screeching and wailing. This is the scuzzy, fuzzy, sloppy, noisy soft white underbelly of the Finnish rock scene, and we LOVE IT. Like the unwanted lovechild of Guitar Wolf, Hawkwind and Liquorball, let loose in the woods, only to be raised by pot smoking, psych rockin' wolves. The ultimate pounding psychedelic garage space-sludge. Ah, Finland. Where else could it come from?
This lp collects two long out of print cd-r releaese (one on 267 Lattajjaaa, one on Time-Lag) that were cleaned up a little (only a LITTLE) made louder and more in your face and then etched into a massive slab of wax with a sharp stick. Packaged in a gorgeous hand printed sleeve, courtesy of Rob Fisk and The Free Porcupine Society.
Tivol were always the unkempt, crusty, scuzzy garage rock, deformed cousin-locked-in-the-basement, dirty, filthy side of the Finnish musical underground. Where Circle were channeling classic Krautrock, Tivol were spewing a sort of Brainbombs / Liquorball hybrid. Where Islaja was whispering flowery lullabies, Tivol were stomping through the flower garden in big black boots. Sure they were sloppy and noisy and scattershot, but even at their most chaotic and blissfully blownout, there were definite traces of Hawkwindy spacerock, propuslive krautrock, and full on stoner rock. Albeit obscured by clouds of pot smoke and an awesomely lo-fi production. A lot has changed since last we heard from Tivol. They clean up real nice. They're still a sloppy noisy scuzzy bunch, but now they've got their hair all slicked back, shirts tucked in (at least in the front), shoes polished, and have begun to faintly resemble their countrymen in Circle. That's right, this is relentless and repetitive kraut flecked space rock, with a stoner rock streak a mile wide, pulsing and pounding, with swoops and swooshes of interstellar synth and most surprising of all, vocals, real vocals, a sort of throaty croon way up in the mix, super dramatic and bizarre. A bit Bauhaus maybe, a bit Dave Vanian.... But their garagescum roots definitely shine through, there's nothing clinical or super tight, or polished here, the drums are splattery and pounding and the guitars are warm and muted and fuzzy, the vocals drift bizarrely, crooning and wailing, everything drenched in cosmic rays and super space FX. A little like Circle if they smoked a lot of pot, recorded on a 4 track in their parents' garage, and listened to nothing but Hawkwind and Mainliner. Which of course means FUCKING AWESOME!
We first heard these New Zealand psychedelic loop-noise, beat wrangling weirdos on a split 7" with Whirling Hall Of Knives released on Trensmat, and one of the tracks from that single opens up the group's debut lp, with a glorious, dizzying blast of abstract psychedelia, looped and rhythmic, rife with woozy low end synth buzz, swirling tangled melodies, a robotic rhythmic pulse, sounds swirling and beats stuttering, like we mentioned in the review of the 7", we're reminded a bit of a more electronic, slightly less noisy Our Love Will Destroy The World, or a way noisier, beat driven High Wolf. The record flits from woozy groove to almost jungly skitter, from pulsing spaced out psychedelic electro, to crunchy, churning soft focus noisiness, churning industrial dub to tripped out cosmic alien dancefloor destroying, noise drenched, house music of a sort, only house music as it has that 4 on the floor pulse, but otherwise it's some sort of cracked and freaked out avant kitchen sink home brewed weirdo electronica. "Wild Rent" is one of our favorite jams, a slow building chaos of colliding beats, and looped melody, that eventually transforms into a super tripped out minimal dub, but that dub is buried beneath a cascade of sonic swirl, "Cassini Tubs" is a good one too, a spare bit of skitter, that is soon surrounded by thick buzzing synths, gradually transforming into a sort of alien M83 slowgroove shoegaze dubstep. The record finishes off with the 10+ minute "Tropfend Platz", which starts out as the prettiest, dreamiest track on the record, all glimmering looped high end, and whirling soft focus thrum, and then the drums kick in, a super spastic sort of fucked up and fractured drill and bass, with thick squelches of low end buzz, the whole thing gradually surrounded by a hazy cloud of shoegaze-y shimmer, becoming a dense chunk of beat heavy bliss, that's as psychedelically mesmerizing as it is infuriatingly groovy.
Pressed on splattery clear gold vinyl, housed in hand silkscreened red and white jackets, and includes a link to a digital download of the whole record, which includes two bonus tracks, 16+ minutes, not on the lp!
We haven't ever heard any of the other records by this strangely monickered duo, and in some ways it's probably that name that kept us from exploring their music in the past. We know, book, cover, band name, check. But with so much stuff to listen to, it's inevitable that something like album cover or band name or label, will influence what you listen to first, or maybe even at all. But heck, it's Kranky, and the album cover is pretty cool, so two out of three ain't bad. And we have to say we're glad we did finally decide to take the plunge, cuz the world of TKAPB is a gorgeously gloomy one, a haunting and otherworldly late night drift through a world dark and ominous, and occasionally downright frightening. Think Grouper, Mazzy Star, Kuupuu, Valet, that sort of gauzy dreaminess, murky and muddy, spacey and druggy, with ethereal female vocals, barely there drum skitter, warm languid bass, the instruments less recognizable as instruments, and more as sound generating devices, each emitting long tones, or soft rhythms, the result is a slow burning jazzy drone-y drift, but TKAPB seems a bit more sinister than the rest of those bands, imbuing their hazy midnight drift, with some deep drones, some jagged shards of distorted crunch. A creepy dreamy slowcore, with hints of something darker, heavier, and noisier. Just check out "The Needle", a loping slow groove, minor key and tense, the vocals sultry and smoky, creeping and crawling, until suddenly something hellish surfaces, a squall of demonic buzz and noise, only a second or two, but it adds such menace to the track, as does a swirling sea of cymbal sizzle and what sounds like a moaning string section. Almost like some sort of doom torch song.
The rest of the record is maybe not nearly so intense, but it is a very dark record, think Portishead, Grouper, Skepticism, and Bohren all wound up in a sprawling songsuite of drummachined black ballads, harrowing love songs, grim ambience and blackened downtempo electronica, with a sound so gauzy and washed out and murky and psychedelic, and yeah, occasionally menacing, that it's impossible for us not to give this our highest recommendation.
We've always thought there was something special about To Rococo Rot, we've heard moments on their records that really show they can reach next level brilliance in their ability to merge such a pronounced feeling and mood with their deep grooves and beats. Before dubstep and any of the other new electronic subcategories, To Roccoco Roc were already making super rich, moody and nuanced sounds that didn't conform to one single style. Speculation is their first album in many years and it finds the Berlin trio in top form. The album opens with Cluster-like pulsations and as it organically moves forward with a post-kraut-rock sensibility, the sounds shift and sway, going back and forth from a tense and haunting sensation to something more free and exploratory. There are moments where they tap into the kind of sound we imagine Tortoise and Mouse On Mars might create if they collaborated, yet there is something a bit more sinister and seething just under the surface of To Rococo Rot's sound. Their sonic versatility really sets them apart from so many of their peers. So nice to have them back!
Why does anyone bother with the current crop of "stoner rock" when there's so much better stuff made back in the original stoner age (the '70s) now being reissued?? If you're into the Man's Ruin roster, and prone to buying albums by the latest Swedish Kyuss
Tobacco would definitely be a strange name for a group. But it's an even stranger name for a -person-, except when you realize, that person is in fact the twisted mastermind behind the cracked electro pop of aQ faves Black Moth Super Rainbow. In our review of the most recent BMSR record, we compared their sound to Air covering Daft Punk, but with a bunch of junky old equipment, busted up amps and rickety swap meet synths. What's not to love?!?!
For Mr. Tobacco's first solo foray, he actually sticks pretty close to the Black Moth template he created, but does manage to give that sound a little twist. The instantly recognizable fuzzed out gritty synths, the stuttery crunchy crumbling beats, the chopped up vocodered vocals, the blissy eighties sheen, all in full effect, but up the hip hop vibe a bit, mix in some ethereal female vocals, some borderline cheesy (but still kick ass) cop show theme song groove, handclaps, fluttering flutes, soaring cinematic faux strings, even some rapping at one point (courtesy of Aesop Rock, who took BMSR on tour earlier this year), and we're slipping into Fucked Up Friends territory. A few of the tracks are instant classics, sounding sometimes like a more sunshine-y hip-hop flecked Goblin, other times like a more lo-fi synth heavy Boards Of Canada, and once in a while like an LSD dosed Daft Punk doing the soundtrack for a nature special on Yo MTV Raps all about jellyfish or mountain goats or those weird fish that glow in the dark. WTF?! But par for the course with Tobacco and his Black Moth Super Rainbow. And while there does seem to be a bit more hip hop happening here, it's essentially another gloriously fractured and fucked up BMSR record, which is just fine with us!
Brand new remix ep (featuring a clutch of new jams as well) from Tobacco, the weirdo psychedelic synth electro hip hop side project of long time aQ faves Black Moth Super Rainbow, on which a handful of past Tobacco jams get reworked and revved up, and handed over to some of the world's weirdest and most warped MC's: Anti-Pop Consortium, Doseone, Rob Sonic, not to mention some rappers we've never heard of: Serengeti, Height, Icicle Frog, Zackey Force Funk.
The new tracks kill, the old tracks sound new, a dizzying, over the top, twisted avant hip hop blowout, synths buzz and twist and get all tangled up, the beats skitter and stutter, guitars crunch and shimmer, samples are chopped up and looped and layered, sounds buzz and crunch and whir, a swirling ever shifting backdrop for some seriously out there flows.
"TV All Greasy" buzzes and warbles while Anti-Pop go nuts over the top, the vocals riding on the undulating synths, "The Injury" sounds like an eighties educational film soundtrack wedded to crunchy fuzzguitar, the beats primitive, Doseone's whiny flow perfectly balancing Tobacco's shimmery vocodered croon, "Lick The Witch" is classic old school hip hop slathered in synth buzz and swirling effects, and Rob Sonic's bad ass versery, "2 Thick Scoops" is a dirgey almost metallic bit of shoegaze doompop hip hop freakiness, with some slithery flow and some woozy synth filigree, and so it goes, the rest of the record playing out in similarly blown out, synth heavy fuzz guitar drenched stumbly outsider hiphop radness.
Makes us think how cool it would be if all the boring radio rappers who shell out thousands of dollars for boring beats, got Tobacco to whip up some of his weirdness instead. We can't help but imagine Jay-Z or Eminem spitting rhymes over some of this stuff. If only!
Features some disturbing Tobacco style basketball headed milky cereal garish colored eye popping artwork on a 12" picture disc!
Yay! Put on your favorite monster mask and pour a big bowl of sugary breakfast cereal, Black Moth Super Rainbow's possibly groovier, more "hip-hop" alterego is back! Tobacco in the house!! And when we say possibly groovier, what we mean is that this is VERY groovy, about as groovy as it is distorted, and 'delic. Thick, fuzzy, flangey synths colorfully pulsate everywhere, amidst handclap-laced "Unholy Demon Rhythms" (as one song title here puts it)... and it seemingly never ends, hypnotic, head nodding, foot tapping, one track after the next, grooving out with laidback sunshiney good vibes and DayGlo exploding weird noize-energy, all at the same time. A lot of it's instrumental, and when vocals do appear, they're dreamily delivered, heavily treated with spacey electronic effects, the stoned flow far more like blissed out chant than regular "rap", although Tobacco's debut Fucked Up Friends did feature a cameo from rapper Aesop Rock, and this new one boasts guest rhyming on a couple cuts by none other than Beck, who is the godfather of druggy indie-tronic hiphop, right?
The lyrics, when there are lyrics, are usually brief (if not to-the-point), containing cryptic poetry and good advice (?), for instance from "Constellation Dirtbike Head", the lead-off track: "Feel the day, the hottest day / Don't eat the berries around you / Don't eat the berries around you / Burn all your things". Them's all the words. Tobacco returns to the themes of burning and eating later in the disc, but you'll grok just as much sense from the song titles (several of which sound like they'd fit nicely on a NWOFHM album by Steel Mammoth or somebody, e.g. "Lick The Witch", "Motorlicker", "Nuclear Waste Aerobics", etc.).
Basically, if you liked Fucked Up Friends (and why wouldn't you?), you'll like Tobacco's sophomore effort too, it's cut from the same cloth, another sixteen tracks of his friendly, freaky soundz. And same thing goes, if you like BMSR, Tobacco's for you too, but we explained that already when we reviewed the first one (which we made a Record Of The Week by the way, and maybe shoulda done the same this time too). Compared to BMSR, this is pretty similar, Tobacco just steps a little harder, funkier, totally rockin' the bells, with the ever-present, almost skweee-ish synths being even woozier and soooooo wonderfully distorted! Along w/ BMSR, this makes us think of what it might sound like if Fuck Buttons got Daft Punk'd...
One last thing to say, obvious, but we're on a deadline: Tobacco IS addictive! But that's ok, while this might get a Surgeon General's warning, it gets our recommendation!
And fyi, for the next two weeks, we've got this on a special $2 off sale deal, so it's $11.98 instead of the regular $13.98, until 7/4/10!
Smoke 'em if you got 'em. It's the return of Tobacco, the vaguely-hiphop-ish electro-weirdo alter ego/side project of the quite similar really Black Moth Super Rainbow. We're big fans of both, though Tobacco tends to take things to even more of a bizarre extreme even than BMSR, and Ultima II Massage pushes all the buttons, flips all the switches, turns all the knobs, etc., we were hoping for this time out. Totally trippy, effects-damaged synth shuffle, overdosed on DayGlo distortion, some tracks with processed pop vocal hooks, others all about the glitchy grooves, like we said before, its like Fuck Buttons got Daft Punk'd, or M83 going all skweee.
Tobacco brings the noise here, but also doesn't neglect the melodic side of things either, in kicking out these fuzzy, funky jams, perverse party pleasers for sure - at a party we'd imagine features strobe lights, LSD spiked punch, and a sweaty, shambolic dancefloor. Well, there's tracks here for the dancers, and others for the partygoers passed out on the carpet. Good stuff!
Always keeping things fresh, mysterious and yet unmistakably his own, AQ fave Amon Tobin has one-up'd himself again. Following his Chaos Theory excursion into the videogame soundtrack realm (for Splinter Cell 3), Tobin returns to our welcoming ears and eyes with the cd/dvd extravaganza Foley Room. With a samplin' palette drawn from found sounds and field recordings, the huge aural assaults he unleashes are at once imposingly dense and oh so intricately beautiful. Despite the different source material, sonically and stylistically this initially recalls the foreboding drum'n'bass electronic architecture of his early releases Bricolage and Permutations. However, at track 10 'Always" he shifts gears momentarily, kicking into a more hip hop inflected grooviness like that of his later works Supermodified and Out From Out Where. Fucking wizardly.
Steve Austin and his revolving door cast of psychologically damaged noise-mongers returns for album number 10 (!) and it's another twisted slab of warped dirges, tortured wails, off kilter guitar stabs and nauseating whispered menace. Animal Mother once again features an all new line up (save for founder and head torture artist Steve Austin of course), this time enlisting members of Enabler, Trap Them and Sidra into his straight jacket entourage, and they're more than able to manifest Austin's slanted noise-rock meets doom meets hardcore vision into this quivering unprepared shambling mass we refer to as "reality". From its most somber acoustic passages through to its most frenzied blastbeats, it's an unnerving and heavy affair (and also the perfect compliment to new Wizard Rifle record we've reviewed elsewhere on this list!).
I bet somebody could write a pretty solid dissertation on the self-proclamation of the pop ego as being trapped within a metaphoric insanitarium. While the wimp/non-threatening boy pop of the Backstreet Boys have appropriated this imagery, the majority of this discourse would be within metal. Iron Maiden's Eddie, Quiet Riot, Alice Cooper, and Scorpions being the first to come to mind within the visual use of straightjackets and padded cells. Similarly, Steve Austin's deranged lyricism (which shares time with his heavily distorted bark) seems to harken from the creepy mental hospitals which lurk in the backwoods around Nashville (a place Today Is The Day used to call home). These off-kilter banshee wails add a 'pretty' if sublime quality to the otherwise incendiary pummel of Today Is The Day's muscular heavy riffs and complex blast beats. This, their second album for Relapse (fifth overall, they did three for AmRep dontcha know), hones their weird noise-aggression into its most effective and metallic form yet, due in part to a new and perhaps better lineup.
Been meaning to get to this one for a while, it's something we absolutely *had* to highlight eventually, the long-overdue reissue of the crucial first album by this now veteran, always visionary noise rock/metal outfit. Mainman Steve Austin (vocals/guitars) has led a vast variety of TITD lineups over the years, having made eight studio albums to date, and Supernova is where it all started. When this first came out back in 1993 on the now-defunct Amphetamine Reptile label, we were immediately entranced and in fact almost frightened by this band's (at the time) fairly unique blend of atmospheric/ambient weirdness (via surreal sampling), melody, and heavy/hard rock action. Surely the most Satanic thing AmRep ever released, next to the God Bullies. Also, at the time, we'd have compared it to the likes of Steel Pole Bathtub, Oxbow, Engine Kid, Neurosis, Pain Teens... more recently, Old Man Gloom maybe.
Supernova's dozen tracks are full of both sheer beauty and terror; cruel, cryptic, compelling. It's a genius avant-metal mutation, ultimately more metallic than we knew back then (perhaps pioneering the "noisecore" genre), the band's violent hardcore/postrock riffage and distorted, angry vokills being moodily morphed with all manner of psychedelic sound FX fuckery and chaotic layers of vocal mumble and chatter, buried in the mix like crossed wires or intercepted transmissions... there's also stretches of proggily Frippish guitar, synth bleep, unidentifiable field recordings, including even some barnyard animal noises heard on one track. Today Is The Day keeps all this under control though, these are truly *songs*, mysterious and mayhemic but never too messy. The line between dreaminess, and nightmarishness, is often erased... they were definitely on to something here, as later output proved, Today Is The Day getting more overtly metal in later incarnations, maybe even more experimentally extreme, but never any more uniquely "Today Is The Day" than on Supernova.
This digitally remastered reissue now comes in a digipack, and the artwork is slightly altered from the original, and there's two bonus tracks too (from the '93 AmRep 7" single, "I Bent Scared"), but otherwise it's the same Supernova we know and love. In a word: Recommended!
Ok, now that that's finally out of the way (hey, it's always hardest to review the albums that you like the most, anxiously wanting to do 'em justice) we'll hopefully get to the *new* TITD album, Axis of Eden, soon. And also the same label's reissue of another TDID AmRep classic, Willpower, the ultra-intense follow-up to Supernova...
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AmRep refugees resurface on Relapse with a new rhythm section but the same pulverizing, distorted, sample-and-keyboard laden, throat-ripping, math-grind, ugly-beauty sound.
You would most definitely be forgiven for not expecting big things from a band called Todd. And you sure as shit would probably wouldn't expect something this fierce and heavy and fucked up. But once you realize these guys are on Riot Season, and that they count as members (or did at one time) guys from long time aQ faves Shit And Shine, then it all begins to make a bit more sense. Right down to the taking-the-piss monicker.
And Todd most definitely have plenty in common with their way more tweaked and druggy countrymen S+S, but where S+S do their multiple drummered post Buttholes freak out thing, Todd are a bit more riffy and raw, still rhythmic and heavy and blown out and in the red, but more pounding and relentless, maybe more akin to Brainbombs and Rusted Shut and Twin Stumps and White Mice and the Mayyors, you get the drift, howled marble mouthed vox, riffs crumbling with distortion, so much so that half the time they just sound like a wall of fuzz, the bass a wash of bowel rattling rumble, the drums pounding and frantic, the band swing from unhinged Scratch Acid / Jesus Lizard noise rock, to seasick post rock groove, to lurching sludge-y doom, to full on filthy space rock trip outs, to repetitive, looped sounding dirge-y drug rock, there's even some warped twang flecked almost slowcore sounding drift, but even then, the vocals are unhinged, and the amps sound like they're gradually turning to some sort of black goo, and the band eventually stumble back into a filthy field of sonic broken glass and ear shredding pound and howl.
Needless to say, if you dig Shit And Shine, Brainbombs, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Oxbow, Hey Colossus, the Anals, Billy Bao, any of that sort of crusty, metallic, noise drenched filth, then these guys will definitely hit the spot.
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"The hardcore sludge of Todd's Purity Pledge combines forceful vocals and volcanic instrumentation in a whirlwind attempt to re-create the band's murky, gutteral live sound on disc. The power chords merge with lyrics about what society would rather slide under the rug. "Little Dipper to Squirrel" is reminiscent of Mot�rhead, while the crunchy "Sedan" features feedback and nearly six minutes of layers and layers of gritty chaos. Drummer Francis Axe Handel, keyboardist Fifi, singer Emmylou Sunshine, guitarist John Webb, and vocalist/guitarist Craig Clouse join forces to create the subversive quintet on Purity Pledge. The title track is saved until track seven, and its power and unfiltered anger serve as the peak of the band's rage-filled collection. Overall, the disc is an assortment of basement metal jams sure to confuse some, but arouse many."
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Dillingham is the long in the works solo debut from Blaine Todd, guitarist from local psychedelic pagan drone folk outfit Common Eider, King Eider. It's named for a small town in Alaska, where Todd shares a cabin with his Common Eider bandmate. It's an especially isolated part of the world, extremely remote, and not at all easily accessible. That isolation is evident throughout Dillingham, the songs strangely distant, not always geographically, as much as emotionally, or even simply out of time, but at the same time, often painfully intimate, equal parts ultra-personal sonic narratives, and oblique transmissions from another era. Todd's modern reinterpretation of classic folk and blues is reminiscent of another aQ fave, Eric Chenaux, whose aching solo records, and mysterious outings in Reveries, revel in a similarly worn and faded sonic aesthetic.
Beds of creaking warble, introduce the record, almost like the sound of some primitive playback device, it's not difficult to imagine a dusty old gramophone, or even a wax cylinder, spinning lazily in a rickety old cabin, the sun glinting off dust motes, drifting lazily in still afternoon air, Todd's delicate guitar playing is the perfect mix of aching, old folk strum, and measured minimalist experimentation, but that experimentation becomes less and less overt as Dillingham unwinds, with the vibe getting properly old timey, the first we hear of Todd's vocals, they're a nasally, almost hillbilly whine, drifting atop a lazy tangle of droney buzz and campfire twang. But from that point on, the record begins to resemble a proper blues record, the vocals get more wasted and worn, draped over a slippery slide guitar here, or a rumbling, layered whir there. The modern moments fade into the background, more little moments here and there, the only thing that belies the records modern provenance.
The vocals shift again into an wistful falsetto, the guitar seemingly following suit, only to transform again, becoming a reverb drenched croon, wound around rugged back porch blues.
The production is as much a part of the sound as the music itself, another subtle element that keeps Dillingham from sounding like some lost Folkways 78, lending some tracks a worn patina of faded haze, and others with a brittle immediacy, in both cases, the music glows warmly, a weary yet hauntingly hopeful modern blues balladry grounded in the storied history of the folk and folks that came before.
LIMITED TO FIFTY COPIES!!! Likely the only ones we'll be able to get.
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With her latest full length, the earthy, elegant Manzanita, Mia Doi Todd may easily be seated alongside the formidable chanteuse likes of Anne Briggs, the Cowboy Junkies' Margo Timmins and more recently Lhasa (particularly the eighth and ninth songs on this album). Each woman's voice is a richly nuanced force unto itself -- quite possibly supplying enough electricity (in the form of atmosphere, mood and emotion) to power a small village. Ever so moving, Todd's soaring vocals and piano needs very little other adornment. Manzanita is her fifth album, and her first on the Plug Research label. Her previous four were released on four different labels which has made her music a bit difficult to track down in its entirety, but even still each one has marked a sizable growth in her devoted cult following. Hopefully Manzanita will bring her admirers overflowing to above ground heights. Beautiful!
With both Doug McCombs of Tortoise and guitarist Jeff Parker of Isotope 217 in this Chicago band, you can guess as to what Toe 2000 (terrible name!) sound like--from jazzy, Tortoise-y instrumentals to subtle almost new age-y grooves...
Long lost legendary slab of classic British industrial music, originally released in 1986 on the amazing Broken Flag label. The most noteworthy thing about Toll, besides it being a killer record, is the fact that it just so happens to feature a pre-Stereolab Tim Gane (!) as well as Paul Lemos from Controlled Bleeding. But Stereolab fans won't necessarily dig this, Toll is grim stuff. Cold and harsh, lots of metallic percussion, looped rhythms, skipping records, bits of shortwave radio, disembodied voices, plenty of metal on metal clang, thick distorted drones, all held together by huge lurching basslines, that give the whole thing a definite depressive miserablist vibe, like a seriously industrial Joy Division.
At their most musical, like on the loping mantra like "Broken Frame", they do sound quite a bit like the darkest of Factory bands, with simple plodding percussion, and hypnotic low end throbs, all beneath a dramatically crooned vocal line. Imagine any of the current crop of new wave revivalists, Interpol for example, slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaay down and wrapped in plenty of rumble and clang, and you'll get an idea of the sound of Toll.
But that's only one element of their sound, the other being much more abstract, epic, wide open expanses of industrial crunch and shimmering drone, mournful melodies drifting in and out of machinelike rhythms, and crumbling landscapes of sound, wheezing hisses and keening feedback, jagged shards of buzzing electronics, all sorts of strange vocals, dripping with reverb and delay, grinding whirs and thick moaning low end, very dark and dreary and very prescient of the whole modern Wolf Eyes and friends noise scene.
In addition to the entire Christ Knows LP, the cd includes 3 bonus tracks, two that sound like they could be lost Wire jams, all blown out and relentlessly throbbing, with wild squalls of feedback and buzzing guitars over bouncy bass lines and simple propulsive rhythms, while the other is an epic drone-y crawl, thick with layered voices, pulsing bass lines, muted percussive thumps and shuffles and tangled guitar scribbles, all swirled into a dense cloud of slow shifting sound. So awesome.
Fans of old school industrial (Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, Nurse With Wound), classic post punk / new wave (Wire, Joy Division, the recently reviewed Arkansaw Man, etc) as well as mode modern outfits like Skullflower, Wolf Eyes, Dead C and the like, will seriously dig!
Presumably, lawyers representing the actual Tom Cruise and / or Katie Holmes have not yet rapped their collective knuckles on the door of this Shanghai outfit. If they did, they would probably be quite baffled to discover a shambolic, thoroughly impassioned shoegazing indie-rock quartet, propelling through their ebullient songs of explosive register with jangle-blur guitars and a brilliantly reckless approach to the Manchester sound of the early '90s. Think Chapterhouse. Think Sleater Kinney. Think Alpine Decline (perhaps their closest neighbor we've heard in the vigorous Chinese indie-rock scene). Think you should check it out.
Bay Area label Three Ring Records expand their roster by a third with four impressive new releases by Rykarda Parasol, Frankel, Scattered Pages and these New Englanders who call themselves Tom Thumb & The Latter Day Saints. Three Ring has already got fine releases by the indie rock/pop likes of Elephone, Soltero, Ebb & Flow and D.W. Holiday and Scrabbel, but with this recent outpouring they bolster their country'n'folk branches.
What a great introduction Kindermusik is! Their withery vocals are much like those of The Weakerthans with some Thom Yorke-ian inflections. They're set atop music that brings together the rustic twang of Calexico and the pop rocks of Sloan.
Very warm and engaging. Also ripe for the picking if you like M. Ward and My Morning Jacket!
Mike Patton has so many darn concept supergroup projects (Fantomas, Maldoror, Lovage, Peeping Tom...) but Tomahawk seems to be the one which is the most steadfastly rock and yet also quite unpredictable and open to thematic whims. On this their third album, Patton along with Tomahawk band mates Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard) and John Stanier (Battles, Helmet) set about exploring and reinterpreting the early music of the North American indigenous peoples. Needless to say, the trio combines awesome musicianship and craft which is both reverential and yes, quite rocking. Fierce, passionate and darkly captivating.
"Mit Gas" is the second album from these heavy friends, not so different from their first self-titled one. Fans won't be disappointed, it's good. Thus, perhaps it will suffice to print here our review of their debut disc, translated via Babblefish into German and back again...
Do a type of "supergroup" not have to tell itself release on the Ipecac label of microphone Patton, Patton even (marking we that you not are it the voice of gentleman of bad work, belief no longer and Fantomas, true?) as well as the always astonishing guitar of the Jesus lizard Duane Denison, formerly cows/presently Melvins bass Kevin Rutmanis, and percussion John Stainer of the helmet. The results are no surprise, but perhaps type of a disappointment: this lizard sounds actually like a cross between belief no longer and the Jesus! That is not bad, but enthuses not either. Patton/lizard follower it should obviously inspection from, although.
MPEG Download: "Birdsong" [/audio/tomahawkbird.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Birdsong" [/audio/tomahawkbird.m3u]
A kind of "supergroup" release on Mike Patton's Ipecac label, featuring Patton himself (we don't have to tell you he's the voice of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More and Fantomas, do we?) as well as the always amazing guitar of the Jesus Lizard's Duane Denison,
Total '60s style groovy, moody, fuzzy psychedelic garage rock action is conjured here by this time-lost trio from down in Monterey, California, making their debut with a limited edition single on Burger records. No frills (like the cover art), but two great, authentically '60s sounding songs for those into the likes of The Jefferson Airplane, Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Lollipop Shoppe, Sproton Layer, Cold Sun...
The guitarwork is sinuous and searing, the vocals sensitive and sincere, the songwriting full of some tight twists and turns as each of these two 3-minute-or-so numbers unfold. When we saw 'em play here in town a few months ago, they had a psychedelic liquid light show projection going on behind them, and the music fits that perfectly. Great stuff, we can't wait to hear more.
Oh, wanna know a little secret? Well this band's guitarist and vocalist, one Tom B. Weaver, also happens to go by the name Angelo Tringali, under which guise he plays guitar in local heavy metal cult faves The Lord Weird Slough Feg. So you know his leads here smoke, even though the style is a bit different! While Slough Feg's weird metal harks back to the '70s and '80s, here Angelo takes things all the way back to the '60s, and we're impressed.
Volume two in the planned monthly twelve volume Jewelled Antler "Library" series of 3" cd-rs (a format for which we are suckers -- they're just so cute, darn it) is the debut recording from a group called Tomes, who are, as it turns out, basically Jewelled Antler flagship group Thuja (Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, absent Steven R. Smith), letting themselves get a little bit louder and noiser than they usually do in Thuja, harking back a bit to precursor band Mirza in fact. Probably the main reason this wasn't put out as a Thuja release is because Tomes' title and artwork are in fact the Jewelled Antler collective's knowing nod to a black metal aesthetic (which has fascinated Glenn particularily of late). But while intended as a tribute of sorts to black metal, the psychedelic drone music found here only holds subtle echoes of dark Nordic woodlands and burning churches. The twenty minutes of abstract heavy improv of "The Dreadful Gift (parts 1 and 2)" is darn good stuff regardless of the tangential conceptual framework. With noisy phantoms clanking chains, groaning drones, tell-tale heartbeats and and distorted freeform guitar feedback, this does achieve a dark n' dirgey but beautiful atmosphere. Too beautiful perhaps to leave the black metal hordes quaking in their corpsepaint, it still could be a Jewelled Antler Halloween soundtrack of sorts -- I wonder why didn't they wait 'til the October Library installment for this? Definitely recommended.
MPEG Download: "Dreadful Gift 1" [/audio/tomesdreadful1.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Dreadful Gift 1" [/audio/tomesdreadful1.m3u]
