We were super stoked on the Life Coach album Alphawaves last year. Turns out Life Coach mainman Phil Manley is also in some band called Trans Am, who have a new album out now too - their TENTH full album, actually, hence the title Volume X (it also has exactly ten tracks on it). Life Coach fans should definitely check out Trans Am.
Joking aside, we've been with Trans Am since the beginning, giving their eponymous 1995 debut the "thumbs up" and lauding such releases as Futureworld as being "perfect"... though we admit that, for us, the band's career has had its ups and downs; however, right now, they're on the up, Volume X providing a varied showcase for a lot of what we love about Trans Am, in particular the trio's talent for making mostly instrumental, heavily synthesized music energized with live band ROCK chops. Their Kraftwerk meets Tortoise meets the faceless new wave / hard rock band from the soundtrack to some '80s VHS tape retro-futuristic aesthetic is in full force, sounding sorta like a post rock version of Neil Young's Trans at times. Or imagine an album of groovy 'library music' from the '60s - the 2060s that is!
Volume X is chock full of spacey synth-splorations, big blurpy electro beats, vocodered vocal mantras, and krauty motorik grooves - the album, as usual for 'em, very rhythmically oriented, but not without some effective doses of emotive melody in the mix (in particular the acoustic guitar laced finale, "Insufficiently Breathless", the song's title a clever Captain Beyond reference, perhaps).
Other highlights include the maniacally shredding "Backlash", which is basically thrash metal done Trans Am style (Manley used to play in The Fucking Champs, remember); the ominous, throbbing distortion shuffle of "Megastorm"; and the lovelorn robot balladry of "I'll Never" (the album's lead single?), to name a few.
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Live stuff, where they excell!!
...can't decide whether it wants to be guitar- or synthesizer-based rock but all things considered this debut album generates a decent wall of sound. The boys of Aquarius give it the thumbs up.
A collaboration between SF math metallists The Fucking Champs and Washington, DC's electronic rock boys Trans Am? The concept sure sounded promising to me. The actual outcome? Well, have to say, somewhat disappointing. Aquarius loves the Champs, and has been a big supporter of both bands, but in all fairness we have to express our true opinions of this particular release. The first song
*** COLLECTIBLE USED VINYL ***
Special Green Vinyl Edition with bonus lp.
Media: VG+ (close to NM)
Sleeve: VG
Sleeves and jackets are solid. Outer slipcover has some minor seamwear and corner wear.
The angular, carnivalesque madness that we love from The Need, applied to the rock opera formula! This is the story of "The Corporation" and their tyranny over the lowly plebs: the "Transfused." Rockin' guitars and synths follow the Transfused through three transformative days as they "encounter new ideas, experience devastating loss, and ultimately find that they possess a power far greater than the Corporation could ever hope to."
Sometimes a pedigree can tell you a lot about a band. For instance, take Transitional. Here's a list of bands the various members have been a part of: Novatron, Head Of David, Jesu, Grey Machine, God, Fear Falls Burning, and if you include the guy who mastered the record, add to the list: Jesu, Godflesh, Final, Ice, Techno Animal, Sidewinder and Napalm Death. Phew! You probably nailed that last one as Justin Broadrick, who does indeed master this second disc from Transitional, and the group does not stray too far from this sonic lineage, as Stomach Of The Sun is indeed intense, drone-y, grim, ominous, noisy, distorted, rhythmic, blackened, atmospheric, hypnotic and HEAVY. Fans of any or all of the above mentioned bands will most likely find this much to their liking.
The record begins with a 13+ minute slow burn guitardrone, that builds and builds, growing ever more intense and caustic, but somehow remaining warm and lush, before stumbling into a lurching industrial Godflesh-ed pound, dirgey and dense, but with a bit of a melodic element, a feedbacky melody draped over Transitional's tarpit plod, totally brings us back to the early Earache / Pathological days, but with a slightly more modern sheen. "In My Collapse" follows up with more rhythmic metallic crunch, this time a bit more dubbed out, a little space-y, like a Godflesh ballad if there could ever be such a thing, which leads directly into "Drowning", a gorgeously washed out doomic drift, spare drums, swirling effects, and lots of streaked longform tones, hypnotic and dreamy. The rest of the record pretty much shifts between those sounds, the more Jesu-y metalgaze drift, the post industrial metallic plod and the dreamlike ambient shimmer, the three sounds rarely remaining totally distinct, instead, constantly blending and mixing, creating gorgeous hybrids, sometimes dense and ominous, othertimes soft focus and otherworldly. "Hideaway" is the best song Jesu never recorded, the title track begins all spaced out and dubby, before introducing one of the most crushing (and weirdly processed) riffs ever, and the record closes with an epic swath of noise drenched free form ambient soft noise drift, that manages to be soothing and serene, as well as intense and haunting at the same time.
Seriously awesome stuff, not sure how we missed out on their debut, but this one is so good we're definitely gonna have to track that one down as well... On limited (naturally) vinyl and cd.
"Core members Mason Jones, Melynda Jackson and Chris Van Huffle of San Francisco's SubArachnoid Space gathered one evening in July 1998 with some compatriots for a night of musical freedom. Th�s event was recorded, but nothing came of it initially and the tapes were misplaced for over eight years. Finally given the attention it deserves, the session was transferred to a better system and improved as much as possible.
The seven songs respectively phases were finally presented under the moniker TRANSITIONAL PHASE in 2007, released on Last Visible Dog - an excellent collection of improvised space and krautrock jams in best SubArachnoid Space tradition."
Every now and then a reissue will come our way that totally exceeds all of our wildest expectations. Unbeknown to us, Swans drummer Jonathan Kane made an ep in 1981-82 with Daniel Galliduani under the name Transmission. This was before The Swans even existed and demonstrates an unparalleled world of east meets west blistering percussive mastery! Imagine LaMonte Young leading a no-wave band with The Boredoms as his players and you'll start to get the idea of how ahead of their time Kane and Galliduani's sonic explorations actually were. With Kane's drumming creating a feverish trance and Galliduani's sax processed toand transformed into some sort of snake charming wall of guitar sound, the two created a relentless 22 minute polyrhythmic excursion that just drips with sweat, life and blazing rhythm. Decades after this recording was made a new wave of no-wavers and sonic explorers like Black Dice, Excepter, Lightning Bolt, Gang Gang Dance and countless others began to explore this same intense sound manipulation, rife with percussive heavy psychedelia, but truth be told this record is pretty impossible to top! In our minds the best record Jonathan Kane has ever made. Totally scorching, wildly creative and rushing wildly through our veins!
Note to bands. Go all out on your cover art. It's really the only thing setting you apart from a record that gets listened to and about a million that don't. And as much as we try to listen to every single record we get, it's just not physically possible. So we almost passed right over this one. The artwork's not bad really, just sort of blah, black and white, a little abstract, but considering how weird and heavy and great this record is the cover just doesn't do these songs justice. Transmission 0 are another one of those bands that are really tough to pin down. They're pretty metal, with super stacatto, chugging riffs, howled vocals, sort of Helmet meets Converge. Thick and almost metalcore sounding. But then there's keyboards everywhere, all over the place. Not right up front, but just a sort of hazy melodic fuzz lingering behind the dissonant riffing or draped like some sort of gauzy curtain across the pounding rhythms. But that's not all, the band will often bliss out and simmer down into some weird reverb soaked moody post rock lope, all clean guitar and almost croony vocals, sort of swirly and krautrocky with heavily affected guitars that sound like they were lifted from a Smiths song, but before you know it, the song might burst into an ultra-aggro head pounding metal riff-down. There's even some stretched out spacious doom all slow motion riffs and plodding drums, that sometimes dirge down to a downright SUNNO))) / Earth-like crawl. There's also a couple downtempo electronic beatscapes, skittery and shuffling, with thick grinding synths and super distorted bass, some kickass Iron Maiden dual harmony riffing, some Godspeed-like dreamy slowbuild epics, and on and on and on. Sounds impossibly confusional on paper (on computer?) but coming through the speakers it sounds divine. Maybe a little bit dizzying in their sonic scope, but we think you can handle it.
Labels like Minimal Wave and Dark Entries had been chomping at the bit trying to reissue this long sought after slab of weird 'n' wonderful minimal synth pop circa 1981. But it's the German label, Anna Logue who get the prize, putting out Transparent Illusion's album at a time when its sounds are more relevant then ever.
A one man band, Roy Young used his synths and off kilter voice to create music that reminds us of a slightly drunk Gary Numan joining forces with R.L. Crutchfield during the early years of Dark Day. We also hear the blueprints of the sound that would make Mute one of the most successful labels of the '80s. But what makes Transparent Illusion so fucking cool is just how DIY it sounds and feels. This definitely also foreshadows the current wave of weirdo pop peddlers like John Maus, Genevieve Jacuzzi, and Gary War. Dark primitive synths injected with infectious melody and a sinister disposition that feels totally punk in spirit. Weird and fucking cool!
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This was another discovery after digging around through boxes in the back room of aQ, a little stash of tapes from this mysterious band called Trap Of The Trap. They were accompanied by a letter, saying that the band was done, and that the sender of the tapes was embarking on some sort of journey, and they just wanted to find homes for the remaining tapes. Well, somehow it took years for us to finally listen to these, but when we did, holy shit, we totally flipped. Andee played them on his radio show, and we set about trying to track down the band with the intention of getting more, or maybe even re-releasing these ourselves. As it is, we have about 6 copies of each tape, and regardless of future repressing/reissuing possibilities, these are the only copies left of the tape versions, which are all hand screened, and hand drawn, each one numbered, they're super DIY and look amazing, so if you're a tape nerd, you might want to grab one or both of these quick before they're gone, cuz this shit is AMAZING. And like all the coolest stuff, pretty hard to describe. They list a whole mess of instruments, pedals, guitars, monosynth, keyboards, turntables, drum machine, video camera (!), voices, accordion, harmonica, and more, all recorded onto a 3-track (the fourth track was busted), and all woven into a crazy collection of twisted sonic vignettes.
Reverse Mermaid, which is the first one we listened to, starts out with a hazy bit of Philip Jeck like looped swirl, all dreamy and drifty and woozy, which leads directly into "All Cages Open", which is the track that sealed the deal, a strange sort of minimal krautpsych, crafted from primitive rhythms, layered loops, groovy and mesmerizing, everything in a haze of crackle and static, we've probably listened to that track about 20 times. The rest of the tape is just as cool, slipping from Machinefabriek like melodic minimalism, to spaced out dreamfolk shimmer, and from garbled collaged psychedelia to weird outsider kosmische electronic drift, and lots of other strange stops in between.
Poppin' Street Jams, plays out more like fragments, and sketches, there's churning metallic crumbling crunch, there's hazy swirling cinematic post rock minimalism, blissed out gauzy psychedelic drones, primitive outsider electro, blown out melodic crumble, and again, especially on this record, a ton of other twisted fragments and fractured sonic experiments.
Here's hoping this stuff will resurface in some other form down the line, but for now, your tape deck is essentially worthless without one of these crammed in it. Our favorite new (very old) chunk of musical mystery for sure...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
This was another discovery after digging around through boxes in the back room of aQ, a little stash of tapes from this mysterious band called Trap Of The Trap. They were accompanied by a letter, saying that the band was done, and that the sender of the tapes was embarking on some sort of journey, and they just wanted to find homes for the remaining tapes. Well, somehow it took years for us to finally listen to these, but when we did, holy shit, we totally flipped. Andee played them on his radio show, and we set about trying to track down the band with the intention of getting more, or maybe even re-releasing these ourselves. As it is, we have about 6 copies of each tape, and regardless of future repressing/reissuing possibilities, these are the only copies left of the tape versions, which are all hand screened, and hand drawn, each one numbered, they're super DIY and look amazing, so if you're a tape nerd, you might want to grab one or both of these quick before they're gone, cuz this shit is AMAZING. And like all the coolest stuff, pretty hard to describe. They list a whole mess of instruments, pedals, guitars, monosynth, keyboards, turntables, drum machine, video camera (!), voices, accordion, harmonica, and more, all recorded onto a 3-track (the fourth track was busted), and all woven into a crazy collection of twisted sonic vignettes.
Reverse Mermaid, which is the first one we listened to, starts out with a hazy bit of Philip Jeck like looped swirl, all dreamy and drifty and woozy, which leads directly into "All Cages Open", which is the track that sealed the deal, a strange sort of minimal krautpsych, crafted from primitive rhythms, layered loops, groovy and mesmerizing, everything in a haze of crackle and static, we've probably listened to that track about 20 times. The rest of the tape is just as cool, slipping from Machinefabriek like melodic minimalism, to spaced out dreamfolk shimmer, and from garbled collaged psychedelia to weird outsider kosmische electronic drift, and lots of other strange stops in between.
Poppin' Street Jams, plays out more like fragments, and sketches, there's churning metallic crumbling crunch, there's hazy swirling cinematic post rock minimalism, blissed out gauzy psychedelic drones, primitive outsider electro, blown out melodic crumble, and again, especially on this record, a ton of other twisted fragments and fractured sonic experiments.
Here's hoping this stuff will resurface in some other form down the line, but for now, your tape deck is essentially worthless without one of these crammed in it. Our favorite new (very old) chunk of musical mystery for sure...
Trap Them are another band that seems to have slipped through the cracks for whatever, maybe it's inevitable with SO many bands and SO many records, but these guys are seriously kick ass, and definitely deserve some aQ love.
These New Hampshire heavies are a glorious grimy mix of grindcore, crust punk, death metal and dirgey Swans like crush, all woven into a blown out, in-the-red, sledgehammer to the skull. Folks constantly compare these guys to Entombed, Cursed, Converge (whose Kurt Ballou recorded this, and it sounds MASSIVE, impossibly heavy, maybe the heaviest record since that Dragged Into Sunlight we reviewed a few lists back), all of which make perfect sense, the sound here is vicious, punishing, brutal, relentless, a definite D-beat vibe going on, the guitars dense and gnarled, the drums pounding, the vocals a glass gargling howl, the songs slipping easily from frantic punkish blast, to twisted proggy weirdness, to doomy plod and back again, makes us actually think of a supercharged Tragedy or His Hero Is Gone, that sort of metallic punk but cranked way up, with a sound SO heavy and distorted, all the sounds seem a hair's breadth away from clipping, which helps make this stuff sound so fucking fierce. One of our new favorite metal records for sure...
Features some of our favorite Justin Bartlett art yet, not to mention a big booklet filled with solid black pages (!), the jewel case housed in a fancy slipcover, also adorned with some serious Bartlett visual sickness...
Another twisted chunk of archival Rhode Island underground rock from John Dwyer's Castle Face label. A little while back, Dwyer resurrected the weird stripped down Six Finger Satellite offshoot La Machine, whose sound was all minimal stripped down rhythmic punk-dub and psychedelic bunkurfunk, and while the Traps are similarly minimal, their jams falls much closer to the Castle Face 'sound', a murky, churning, distortion drenched, sweat soaked, bloody knuckled, garage rock, that in a lot of ways reminds us of Dwyer's old band the Coachwhips, the sort of band you can imagine playing in some crumbling warehouse, and tearing the fucking roof off. Two guitars, no bass, those guitars jangly and noisy, the sound seriously lo-fi, heavy and gloriously blown out, gloriously Neanderthal drumming, locked into simple pounding grooves, and the vocals, wild and wooly, howled and shrieked, mush mouthed, and belted through what sounds like a damaged megaphone, we were actually reminded a little bit of another Rhode Island outfit, Thee Hydrogen Terrors, but the Traps were way more raw, their sound way more murky and minimal, it's easy to see why Dwyer wanted to reissue this, cuz it actually sounds like the kind of band he would have played in back in the day. So yeah, fans of the Coachwhips, Pink And Brown, the noisier, more blown out Oh Sees jams, and just wild, loose, noisy, blown out garage rock minimalism, this is your shit.
By the way, the album title is also a song lyric, but the vocals and everything else are so distorted that when one of us here heard it (not knowing what it was), he guessed it was some Japanese speed freak garage/noise band like High Rise!
Trash Talk are PUNK ROCK. And we mean punk rock like some howling feral mix of Fucked Up / Converge / Coalesce, that sort of churning almost metallic punk, the guitars MASSIVE and so heavy, the drums pummeling, and TT have killer dueling vox, one a frenzied almost shriek, the other a more melodic bellow, bit together they make the sound super distinctive. And did we mention CRAZY hooky, this is the sort of punk rock no one really makes anymore, the songs clocking in at around 90 seconds, the sort of stuff that would whip up a pit in seconds, but totally sing-along-able, the sound is epic, the production is kind of weird, but crazy LOUD, and the songs are all over the place, sort of proggy actually, some parts just popping up for a few seconds, others grinding away, the sound occasionally metal, sometimes total D-beat, but again, always impossibly hooky, relentless riffing, feedback everywhere, there's a reason folks are flipping out over these guys, we sort of are too, and odds are even though this single is on the short side, you'll find yourself spinning it over and over and over.
Packaged in super thick nice black and white sleeves, with a printed fold out poster / lyric sheet!
A bunch of new tapes this list from (now) local label Moon Glyph. Including this one from Texas psychedelic sonic collagist Treasure Hunt, aka Myles Byrne-Dunhill, who like on the last Treasure Hunt tape, Toys Unatic, continues to craft stunning, layered, soundscapes of found sound, mysterious jazz ambience, out psychedelia, it's almost dizzying how much is going on in these tracks, but somehow, the multiple sounds are assembled so deftly and meticulously, that it sounds like these could in fact be proper songs, albeit, dense and insanely layered songs, but it makes for perfect deep listening, with headphones, these tracks reveal a sonic depth that is constantly blossoming and revealing some new detail, melodies drift in and out, sound are locked and looped, layered into weird harmonies, pulled apart into fragments that drift and form new melodies entirely, rhythms are sliced and diced and reassembled beneath shimmering clouds of chimes and vibes. acoustic guitars are blurred into melodic streaks and lashed to strange metallic percussion, surrounded by mysterious electronic squelches and alien voices, honking horns, and wild drumming, the sounds collapsing into near chaos, before somehow falling perfectly into place, and once again settling into something more songlike.
Imagine an ADD DJ Shadow, obsessed with creating a psychedelic jazz masterpiece, and constantly adding parts, and pieces, and layers, until it becomes something even more than a psych jazz collage, it becomes a wildly abstract soundworld all its own, at times, tranquil and mysterious, lush and lovely, and at others, chaotic and twisted, confusing and bordering on total collapse. But even then, there's definitely a method, the sonic madness on display here not as mad as one might think, instead, it feels like a musical thinking well beyond the realms of mere music, a sort of kosmische kollag-ery that ends up sounding like some twisted, and until now as yet undiscovered, strain of avant psych-kraut, dream-drone, space-jazz!
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES!!!
Another batch of new tapes from now-local label Moon Glyph, brings us new sonic treasures, quite literally in this case, the latest from Treasure Hunt, a one man band from Texas, who offers up a blissed out serious of psychedelic collages, tinkling chimes, jazzy horns, all sorts of strange loops and field recordings, fractured melodies, a plunderphonic freakout, that almost sounds like a proper band, albeit one with maybe a hundred members. The vibe is most definitely free form and abstract, the opener delves into a sort of avant new age, while the follow up, unfurls a sort of heavily panned but of woozy droney murk, the panning downright dizzying, with the sounds swooping continuously from ear to ear and speaker to speaker. But that effect, along with the, looped melody, and the strange disembodied vocals, make for a heady bit of psychedelia.
The rest of the tape continues to explore a sort of avant free-jazz collage, plucked strings, what sounds like harp melodies, subtle shuffling rhythms, strange robotic clockwork creaks and groans, mournful strings, heavily effected acoustic guitars, birdsong, percussion, wheezing organs, buried voices, a sort of spectral chorale, strange bits of electronic glitchery, sampled voices, layers of hum and crackle, sliced and diced Christmas carols, wild squiggles of primitive electronics, the tracks occasionally bursting in top near chaos, but otherwise settling into something dark and dreamy. A super nice surprise, and one of our favorite Moon Glyph tapes yet!
Not to be confused with Doug Martsch's amazing nineties outfit, the Treepeople, -these- Tree People are equally amazing, but are a whole different proposition.
This disc was originally released as a super limited lp way back in 1979 and managed to quietly disappear. Now, here we are nearly three decades later, and whattaya know? There's a whole movement of modern free folk, 'freak' folk and the like, and if you didn't know better, pretty sure we could pass this off as some strange super limited cd-r by some modern folk revivalists. But keen ears would certainly be able to tell. This is so entirely original (especially for the time) and genuine sounding. Mostly acoustic guitars, flute and vocals, the Tree People had two distinct sounds, the first, a lilting melancholy moonlit folk, like Cat Stevens or Van Morrison, a gorgeous lazy drawl, rich and lustrous, over simple folk and fluttering flutes, dreamy and gorgeous, sounding like some lost folk classic one minute, a strange "Girl From Ipanema" style shuffle the next. But even at it's sweetest and softest, the record seems to always have a hint of melancholy, sometimes even a trace of ominous foreboding. Which definitely gives the songs a subtly dark undercurrent. The majority of the record however is spent in full on hippy jam mode. Very Comus-like at times (especially on track two, "Sliding"), wild steel string excursions, dense tangles of fingerpicked melodies and aggressive strummed riffs, with a definite raga like vibe, all over a smattering of hand drums and tablas, a glorious drifting buzzing steel string dronefolk, that just sounds so incredibly timeless. Elsewhere, the same jams evolve into more tranquil acoustic dreaminess, with the flutes floating over sweet lilting melodies, but even then, the songs will be peppered with sudden bursts of buzzing slide guitar, or brief squalls of atonal fingerpicking. SO cool. And considering the current love of all things freaky and folky, it's sort of amazing that stuff like this was already being made 27 years ago!
Obviously, fans of the current crop of modern folk troubadours will find this absolutely essential, Devandra, Vetiver, Espers, Newsom, whatever your particular poison, the Tree People will fit in frighteningly well. Hard to say whether it speaks to the prescience of the Tree People, or just to how much these modern bands have actually been 'borrowing'. Either way, this is absolutely essential.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
This is not a normal Record Of The Week. It's not new. It's not even a newly released reissue. But what it is, is one of our favorite records EVER. And it just so happened Andee was in Olympia this last weekend, and got to visit K Records, where they discovered a little box of these stashed away in the warehouse. And since most of the records by this band predate the current version of the list, we were psyched to suddenly be presented with the opportunity to gush like crazy over the debut album from the late great Treepeople. And really, as far as we're concerned, if any band deserved a comprehensive reissue campaign, it's the Treepeople, but until then, dig this...
For those unfamiliar with the Treepeople, it's essentially pre Built To Spill, with BTS mastermind Doug Martsch honing his chops in a much wilder, more punky, noisy, but no less catchy context. In fact, if you've heard the first Built To Spill record, Ultimate Alternative Wavers, that record essentially sounds like a slightly more polished Treepeople Record. Imagine the glorious hooks and super catchy melodies of BTS, but wrapped in spidery intertwined guitars, swirls of feedback, wild chaotic drumming, the whole vibe more noisy, and loose, definitely more punk, aggressive and heavy, but still impossibly poppy. With every track here, on the group's 1991 debut, a stone cold killer, the opener "No Doubt" lays out the template, multiple guitar lines in constant motion, as if there were multiple solos being played at once, a dizzying backdrop of distort melodies, wound around sinewy basslines, and frenetic drumming, all beneath Martsch's distinctive vocals, oh and feedback, EVERYwhere, but somehow these guys make it sound as much a part of the sound/song as any other instrument. When people talk about noise pop, this is the sort of thing we imagine, equal parts jangle pop and urgent post punk, with some hints of proginess and psychedelia. And since we're all friends here, we'll fess up to the fact, that one of us here (ahem, Andee) had no idea that track two, "Andy Warhol" was a Bowie cover. Which also helps to give you an idea of the sound happening here. The opener bleeds right into the Bowie cover, almost as if they were conceived and composed together, with the Treepeople's version extra fierce and fuzzy (they'd do something similar to the Smiths' "Big Mouth Strikes Again" a year later).
"Gre" comes next, and might be one of our favorite Treepeople songs ever, frantic and fuzzy, noisy and punky, but again, super catchy, with drums and guitars in a seemingly constant squall, and yet molded into something most proper pop bands would kill for, if they could even figure out what to do with it. And from there on out, it just keeps getting better, some songs jangly and woozy, others straight up punk pound, more often than not a little of both, and almost as often, with even more sonic weirdness swirled into the equation. The Treepeople are one of those rare groups whose sound is actually totally and truly unique, there are definitely moments and parts and sounds and hooks that touch on other strains of indie rock, but much like Polvo, they seem to have taken the parts of a proper sound, pulled them apart and then reassembled them with no regard for the instruction manual, the resulting musical monstrosity emerging far more twistedly beautiful than it was ever meant to be, and the sort of sound that has stood the test of time like little else, this record (along with the group's entire catalog) on constant heavy rotation pretty much nonstop for that past 20+ years. And as much as we love Built To Spill, we find ourselves, almost without thinking, replying to almost every BTS related query with something like "yeah, but have you heard Treepeople?!?", cuz really, they're like a much crazier, noisier, heavier, more experimental version, which obviously for us, means even BETTER. A gloriously noisy concoction that should be essential listening for all indie rockers, young and old, and which should eventually, hopefully one day, get these guys, and all their records, the sort of love and accolades they so totally deserve. For now, we'll just do our part. And you should do yours, you won't be sorry, you might just have a new (old) favorite band!
Non musical note: this was the record that first introduced us to the stunning and horrifyingly beautiful pencil art of Mike Scheer!
Every single time we play this, someone either asks us if we're listening to Monarch. Or Khanate. Every time. That should give you enough to go on right off the bat. And indeed, Trees are a dead ringer for both. Maybe a perfect mix of the two. They don't write songs so much, as put together slow moving arrangements of buzz and howl, throb and skree, crush and chunk, much of the two loooooong tracks here are spent in long drawn out slowly decaying drones, huge chords almost melting before our very ears, feedback and downtuned buzz crumbling to pieces, tones beating against each other, slipping into shrieking streaks of feedback. The long stretches are of course peppered with huge jagged shards of drum pound and demonic vocals, these spaced out blasts somehow arranged to form some sort of skeletal song structure, but it's much more of an exercise in tension and atmosphere, dynamics and drone, and ultra slow motion heaviness.
They do introduce some of their own flavor into the mix, little flurries of double kick, skittering snare drums, some strange strangled mewlings, haunting complex chords, some monklike chants, and some intense abstract soundscapery, so almost-pretty it threatens to slip into some serious black ambience, and at some points, they even -almost- rock, slipping into Eyehategod territory, but it's in the swirling black morass these guys feel most at home, and thankfully, for the dronedirgedoom obsessed, that's precisely where they spend most of Lights Bane. Needless to say, you dig Monarch, Khanate, Moss, Bunkur, etc., you will dig Trees.
Fancy mini-lp style gatefold sleeve with super striking, dense tangled red ink cover art.
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
It's no secret that we have a soft spot for uncommon Christian music especially when it dwells on the fringe such as the "white metal" of the E.E.E. recordings label or the earnest out-pop of groups like The Shaggs and New Creation. Another fringe arena is in liturgical hippie folk with bands like Simaril, Parchment, and this beautiful reissue of the Trees Community first album, The Christ Tree. We had this previously only as a box set, which grouped their first album with 3 other cds of later live material. Not the most ideal way to ease yourself into their uniquely arcane and highly reverential sound. So it's nice to have this single disc reissue that adds several bonus tracks to the original album. If you are fans of wyrd minstrely acid-folk groups like Comus, Ougenwiede, Springuns, and Extradition, you will definitely dig this, a collective of male and female musical performers from New York who played traditional acoustic and eastern instruments such as sitar, folk harp, pump organ, flute, koto, tamboura and Chinese gong in long raga-like hymns with pretty male and female vocal harmonies and strangely mystical and spacious passages. Christ Tree was the their first album and it's a live recording of a performance at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1975. Oddly beautiful!
Simply lovely! Warm and strummy. Positively dreamy. Trembling Blue Stars make splendid Brit-space-pop. At times, reminded me of Ride or mid-to-late period Cure. Very laid-back boy lead vocals, sparklingly sweet female backing vocals, swirling chorus-y
Aaah, could it be... the return of the shoegazer? Definite shades of early Stone Roses. A little twee and precious, but pretty, mellow, and easy-going with some lovely lush cello and a little bit of simultaneous English-French male-female vocalising to subtly spice things up. The first track absolutely destroys me, which may be due to me missing all this sort of stuff as a high school hessian.
Trembling Blue Stars take on the shoegazer aesthetics of the early 90s Creation sound (Ride, Blind Mr. Jones, The Telescopes) and the reverb soaked revivalism of 60s UK beat jangle. The title track of this EP was on their "Broken By Whispers" album on Sub Pop.
Wow, does this one push all our shoegaze buttons, a sound we've been craving like crazy lately. There was a time when shoegaze was everywhere, but as of late there's been a serious paucity of classic sounding music in that inimitable style. Luckily there's a brand new one from AQ faves Trembling Blue Stars, who while not always necessarily shoegaze-y, manage to fill that void so perfectly with The Last Holy Writer. Less jangly then their last outing, The Last Holy Writer has everything we've loved about this band on display and in full affect. With a guitar sound that echoes the sound of Curve, introspective lyrics and wry delivery of vocalist Bob Wratten and the bittersweet voice of other vocalist Beth Arzy. It's the perfect combination of breezy and moody, reflective and heartbreaking. So nice to see a group so far into a long career make such a challenging and envelope pushing record. In fact this might even be our favorite Trembling Blue Stars outing yet. The perfect laying around on your bed, holed up in your room, window open, cool breeze soundtrack for heartfelt longing and bittersweet ache. So lovely!
This is the fifth wistfully wonderful album from Trembling Blue Stars. If you're a fan you'll perhaps find it comforting to know that there's no vast departures from that which has come before. Their songs continue to be the musical equivalent of a big down-filled duvet. Each one is ever so soft and warm and very much in the swirlingly dreamy, melancholic shoegazer tradition. The rounded bass guitar lines provides the slowly weaving bed on which mainman Bobby Wratton and Beth Arzy's hushed vocals as well as the gently effected guitars, delicate percussion and occasional strings rest their drowsy heads. This cd includes four bonus tracks bringing the song count to a generous total of sixteen.
Psst, if you dig these poignant, pretty Brit sounds you might also wanna check out the recent reissues of three Field Mice albums, Wratten's pre-Trembling Blue Stars band, not quite as mellowly blissed out, a tad harder, weirder and more rocking, but TBS fans will still most likely dig 'em quite a bit!
Tren Brothers are Mick and James are the guitar/drums team from Australian instrumental trio Dirty Three. STOP! If your first impression is that you'd miss Warren's violin, you'd be wrong. This is a lovely, quiet but intense record; the violin isn't missed at all. Pretty, not light, but lovely. Mick in particular adds delicate guitar flourishes that on a D3 record would have been subsumed and absorbed by the violin's overwhelming painful emotiveness. A worthwhile listen.
Perhaps you've been boggled by the appearance of the name Jim White all over the place lately (as we have). Who is this guy? He's everywhere! But it makes a little more sense when you discover that there's two particular, prolific musical fellows with that name who currently have fine releases. The Jim White of the south (Florida to be exact) is the man responsible for the stellar soundtrack to Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus film. The Jim White of further south (way down in Australia) is the man playing some of the drums on the New Buffalo album as well as the last couple of Smog albums, and yes lest we forget his card carrying membership in Dirty Three. Here he teams up with his Dirty Three bandmate (and no musical slouch himself) Mick Turner as the non-blood related instrumental duo the Tren Brothers.
Their latest release The Swimmer (as far as we know, no relation to our favorite Burt Lancaster movie) features a scant four songs, but their evocative wash of pastoral sounds suggest that this is just a mere glimpse of a moody expansiveness that extends far beyond the ep's fifteen minutes. This is their contribution to the Western Vinyl label's portrait series.
Those "Brothers" Tren whom you may be more familiar with as two parts of the moody, melancholic Dirty Three (yup, Mick Turner and James White on guitar, harmonica and drums) are joined on this record by their "sister" violinist Jessica Billey. These two
The ORIGINAL rock n' roll band.
Math rock meets almost Blue Oyster Cult inspired metallic weirdness in this instrumental Baltimore outfit. Long, complex, heavy jams with lots of time changes, dashed with the occasional vocal sample. For fans of Mr. Bungle and Stinking Lizaveta.
Slayer meets Don Caballero? King Crimson meets the Melvins? Twisted prog-metal math-rock with wild metal percussion, shredding jazz infused crush with some warped Pussy Galore style crash and clank woven in, pulverizingly heavy and jaggedly intricate. Fucked up avant metal radness.
Maybe you've heard of this '70s Swedish prog rock band, maybe not. We did review a reissue of their 1974 self-titled album a while back. They were kind of a math-rock, jazzed-out version of Uriah Heep or something, kinda heavy and certainly complex. Pretty cool if you're a prog fiend like some of us here. This disc is a newly unearthed collection of early recordings by the band, dating from their high school days circa '70-'71, meant for LP release at the time but never picked up by a label. Probably 'cause it's a little on the free-form, far-out side, definitely not commercial at all. Seemingly influenced by everything from Swedish folk to classical music to Hendrix and 'Purple, these youthful but talented prog-rock experiments range from romantic sounding piano-based compositions to pastoral, jazzy psych-pop, with interludes of abrasive guitar improv. Not bad for some 17 year old kids just getting started in the prog biz. At the time they had two drummers, and some melancholic, longwinded songwriting habits. It's different from their later stuff, but good too. In a gorgeous digipack -- that cover pic of the band members posing in a sun drenched autumnal forest scene is enough to make someone like me buy a copy!
'70s prog of the harder, mathier variety here. Mellow grooves too. We've already turned some of you on to this Swedish band's first, eponymous album (also now back in stock in a new, upgraded edition) but this is the first time we've reviewed Tettioariga Kriget's second album (well, third if you count Glorious War as their first, actually) from 1975.
How to describe 'em? Uriah Heep meets Goblin??? No that's not it... but they are a band that mixes the bombast of Heep with the darkness and '70s synth kitschiness of Goblin, creating their own unique atmosphere.
Krissang ("War Song" in English) may remind some customers of a progged-out version of Dungen, due to the Swedish language vocals and intellectual Genesis-like aspects. The tracks here go from extremes of gentle melodicism and jazzy grooves to bombastic, jagged progginess, across the album -and- often within a single track. Odd time signatures are abundant. And though initally we were attracted to this band due to their displays of frantic, hard rockin' proginess -- screaming guitars, barking fat bass, hard-hitting drums -- we now appreciate 'em as much or more for their gentle side. There's simply some gorgeous songs on here.
This new edition comes packaged in a handsome digipack, with liner notes by lyricist Ollie Thornvall along with photos and lyrics and three bonus tracks in the same mold as Krigssang, including one ("Moln") that almost out-progs anything on the album proper!!
When Byram heard this, his first reaction was: Allan, dude, this has you written all over it! And it's true, *both* of AQ's resident prog-heads (proudly, Allan and Andee) are way into this band and this album -- that's why we ordered a few from overseas to share with our likeminded customers. On this, their 1974 debut album, Trettioariga Kriget (aka Thirty Years War) dish out jazzed-up but also kinda heavy '70s prog rock from Sweden, boasting some over-the-top falsetto vocals worthy of Amon Duul II's Renate Knaup or the guy from Flower Travellin' Band. Mathy, King Crimson-esque hard rock, that's also (in context of this sort of thing) quite catchy, actually. Vocal hooks coexist with the math jazz rock instrumental display and noisy skronk. Recommended, especially if you're among the many (?) AQ customers happy with our prior obscure prog suggestions (Il Balletto di Bronzo, Osanna, etc.)
Originally released way back in 2007, and available only to attendees of the two Thrill Jockey 15th Anniversary shows in Chicago and London, we're listing this now 'cause one of our distributors got a handful of these killer mixes, a collaborative DJ mix from Girl Talk and Trey Told 'Em, constructed exclusively of tracks culled from the Thrill Jockey archives, and including a couple of mega mixes which make the whole thing kind of essential.
The proper mix includes tracks from Bobby Conn, Gaunt, Pit Er Pat, Eleventh Dream Day, Giant Sand, Dolomite, Trapist, John Parish, Nobuzaku Tekemura, The Fiery Furnaces, Califone, Chicago Underground Duo, Mouse On Mars, Freakwater, Frequency, Sam Prekop, The National Trust, Extra Golden, Arbouretum, Radian, The Sea And Cake, Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake, Lithops, Directions In Music, Aki Tsuyuko, Howe Gelb, Tunng, Isotope 217, Archer Prewitt, The Zincs, Sue Garner & Rick Brown, Adult., Exploding Star Orchestra, Brokeback, Town And Country and Microstoria (what, no A Minor Forest?!). And it's not just the song selection, the way they're mixed, results in an awesome, ever shifting soundscape, that is so good, we found ourselves even digging the tracks that we didn't think we liked. Out of context, some of the songs here have us all fired up to revisit some of the groups we may have ignored or just missed.
But if that wasn't enough, there are three megamixes, the record opens with a killer Trans Am mix that reminds us why we love those guys so much, and then finishes with a Tortoise megamix, and then an Oval megamix, that purports to contain EVERY single Oval song ever recorded. Pretty cool. And crazy limited. Only 4000 copies made way back in 2007, and we only got a tiny handful, so act fast if you want one.
Some early '70s French psych-rock here, not so much on the proto-metal side of things but still totally groovy, and from the get-go not failing to rock the cowbell (well, the opening track on this 22 song collection, "Peut-etre Demain", is the number one cowbell culprit, gotta love it). We first heard of Triangle some years ago thanks to the amazing, AQ-fave six-cd Igor Wakhevitch box on Fractal (now, sadly, out of print). Wakhevitch was an avant-garde, electronic composer whose first few albums enlisted the fuzzed guitars of Triangle as part of their surreal soundscapes. So we'd been always curious to hear Triangle's own music. Of course it's not as far out as the Wakhevitch stuff, they're basically a pop band, tres commercial, yet with a freaky side to 'em. This disc, as the title reveals, collects some of their crucial cuts from '69 through '74... a lot of upbeat numbers with DJ-friendly beats, symphonic prog moves, catchy choruses, and swingin' horns. Really, judging from this disc, Triangle were all over the place, from synth-laced proto-disco to placid piano ballads to bubblegum hard rock. If you like stuff of the "B-music" persuasion (like the Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word comp), or that Total Freakout collection on Mucho Gusto, or rad '70s "library music" and things like that, we figure you'll dig these Triangle tunes.
This digipack includes pictures of all of Triangle's original 33 and 45 rpm record sleeves, which are nice to have -- the first album's got a piano engulfed in flames on it, the second has Triangle lined up for a firing squad, also comprised of the band members. But there's no liner notes to speak of, so we don't know a heck of a lot more about 'em, other than that they recorded three albums and a bunch of singles, had some hits, went on to back up pop singer Papillon on a solo LP of his (three tracks from that album, including their cover of Bowie's "Starman" en Francais, are to be found here).
7"=2 songs, cd single=4 songs.
