Record number two from Megan Remy, the woman behind ramshackle psychedelic lo-fi noise-pop grey-wave outfit U.S. Girls. Right off the bat, anyone into the current crop of warped warbly floorcore noise makers and fractured gloom popppers will dig this big time. If your record shelves are sagging under the weight of discs from the Dum Dum Girls, Night Control, Washed Out, Neon Indian, Gary War, Blank Dogs, Zola Jesus, Girls At Dawn and the like, then you're most definitely gonna have to make some space for this girl(s).
A dizzying noise drenched chunk of 4-track spaced out home brewed protopunk, drums murky and chaotic and stumbling, super distorted, angular spidery guitars, shimmery and echoey, twangy and almost surfy at times, the vocals not doing that sixties girl group thing that so many NOW bands seem smitten with, instead channeling classic British sounds from the late eighties early nineties, alternatingly yelped and howled, cooed and crooned, but WAY down in the mix, the vocals a shadowy presence wrapped around the sinewy basslines, that sound like corroded fragments of lost Joy Division songs, elsewhere soft swells of warm muted guitars wash over strangely affected alien vox, and distant melancholy melodies. The record veers from hushed, soporific Grouper style dreamdrift, and pounding, ultra distorted experimental pop, to pounding distortion drenched gloom punk, always lo-fi, but not brittle as much as murky and indistinct, almost like listening to some lost eighties jam on a station that's just barely coming in. The poppier moments have a definite Joe Meek vibe, that sort of kitchen sink DIY whatthefuck weirdo production, with many of the tracks, splintering into strange rhythmic workouts or abstract swirls of shimmering effects and random muted noise. But throughout, even at its most far out and experimental, Remy infuses those sounds with a strange sort of familiar warmth, a smoldering blackened beauty, that's hard to disguise, no matter how hard she tries.
Definitely on the more experimental / abstract side of the current crop of noisy lo-fi gloom pop experimentalism, but that's precisely what makes Go Grey sound so good...
The pale, shocked face of Meg Remy (aka U.S. Girls) stares out at us from the cover of Half Free, her expression so unsettlingly normal against the grey-scaled backdrop of familiar patterned wallpaper. In a similar vein, this album tells the twisted tales of a spectrum of very average women. The opening track, "Sororal Feelings", fades in from the ether with the narrative of a woman who has settled down with a man who has previously slept with her sisters, while next up, the album explodes into the smooth, spacey beat of "Damn That Valley". And so it goies, this release sampling from a wide sonic palette, resulting in a groovy fusion of sparkly disco, badass fem-rock, and haunting alt-pop, sewn together by the silvery, soulful thread of Remy's vocals. Between the stories of scorned and revengeful heroines and the off-kilter melodies, this album could easily soundtrack the most badass of horror flicks. In two words: perfectly demented. Another great disc from U.S. Girls!!
The last time we heard from U.S. Girls, it was on a split single from the as-of-then-unknown project Dirty Beaches, a one-man band which pretty much exploded onto the scene with a drug'n'drone approach to rockabilly minimalism later perfected on his universally acclaimed album Badlands. On that single, Dirty Beaches was a perfect match for the equally deconstructed, if far more fucked-up anti-pop from U.S. Girls - the one-woman project of Meghan Remy. There and on her two lps for Siltbreeze, she purposefully imploded crooning electro-pop ditties, smearing the fragments with crusty noise and hallucinatory echo. It turns out that Remy's aggressively lo-fi aesthetic was built out of necessity; and she claimed in an interview once that she'd love to make an overly produced, glossy pop album. Those claims should be taken with a pretty hefty grain of salt, as her album U.S. Girls On Kraak is thoroughly damaged, even as it enjoys a much cleaner production. The cover of the disposable RnB hit "The Boy Is Mine" from Monica & Brandi takes a nasty, stalker-like turn towards the gritty minimal-wave of early Cold Cave even as Remy croons the lyrics with considerable aplomb. Elsewhere, her synths are decidedly sharp and jagged, and her voice is cat-scratched and wild-eyed, set above similarly imploded songs from her earlier albums with a few more flares like a Patsy Cline ballad soaked in equal parts cheap liquor and reverb or a Nina Hagen-esque demonic cabaret number. Yeah, it's pretty fucked-up; and that's the way we like it!
From the same label that brought us the killer 7"/cd from Spanish electro punk outfit Der Ventilator (reviewed elsewhere on this list), comes this killer split, featuring long time fave US Girls, and new super hyped combo (or one man band, we're not sure), Dirty Beaches.
US Girls, aka Megan Remy offers up another fantastic batch of lo-fi psychedelic greywave, all murky and muddy, haunting and ritualistic, a strange drum driven vocal chant starts things off, her voice witchy and warped, all wreathed in a cloud of whirring low end, before the sound blossoms into a weird electronic groove, all minimal programmed percussion, beneath a soft haze of distortion and tangled psychedelic guitars, before launching into the final and longest track, a sort of creepy underwater goth dub workout, that sounds a bit like a more minimal avant lo-fi Zola Jesus, a looped sonar rhythm, Remy's vocals chant like and mesmerizing, eventually the beat and vox are swallowed up by a cloud of electronic squiggles and warped spaced out FX. Dirty Beaches is similarly murky and echoey, but instead of witchy electronic minimalism, he/they offer up a moody croon over a super minimal bit of rhythmic crunch, and some barely audible melody, the sound a woozy, warped bit of washed out drift, the rhythm more like a distant chugging train, a hushed pulse, there seems to be some super minimal guitar too, an almost Johnny Cash bit of low slung strum, but it too is wreathed in murk and transformed into just another warped undulating throb, the whole thing dark and dreamily dubby.
Super sweet packaging, full color cover in a thick plastic sleeve sealed with a sticker, pressed on green vinyl with a download coupon too.
Hallelujah! US Maple return with "Acre Thrills". And such a wonderful return it is. Their last release "Talker" (produced by Michael Gira) was so sparse and subdued it was barely audible, but this one's turned up a few notches. Me, I love anticipating the stumbling -- but far from clumsy -- explosions of Al Johnson, Mark Shippy, and company. How these gents write, record and perform their music is a magnificent mind-boggler. A seeming haphazard mess of gimpy sonic bumps and bruises with the ghost of Captain Beefheart lurking about. Track 7 (with it's Link Wray-ish chicken scratch guitar line) will surely bring out the retarded epileptic chicken in all of us. With cover art that resembles a sharpie-marker-tagged baby blue bathroom tile, this really brightened Cup's day! ...And Allan's too, who'd like to add that if you've been following the amazing and (for lack of a better word) fucked career of the Maple, "Acre Thrills" will indeed be a thrill, as the band perhaps know that they'd reached the pinnacle of abstraction with their previous disc "Talker" -- so, while not returning to (avant)rocking-out like they did on their debut "Long Hair In Three Stages", they do endeavor to craft something more recognizably close to what ordinary folks would consider "songs" on here. Heck, lead whisperer/barker Al Johnson even comes close to some indie-rock standard *singing* at points! But it's still all very abstract and fucked, unmistakably US Maple, with all their unique quirks and counter-intuitive approaches to rock/pop. In short, a great new record from a very special band!
WTF? The debut album, circa 1995, from this totally WTF? band has just been reissued on vinyl, yay! Looking back, we see that though we're big fans of this, shall we say, unique, Chicago avant-indie rock ensemble, and we've reviewed every other U.S. Maple release, we never actually reviewed this first one. Even though we know we loved it. Well, maybe it just took a while for us to figure out how to put the U.S. Maple "thing" into words. In our reviews of their later albums, we've said things like: "A seeming haphazard mess of gimpy sonic bumps and bruises" or "mathrock made with melted slide-rules", always emphasizing how abstract and confusional their unusually hard to describe compositions are.
This one, though, is their most skronked but still identifiably ROCK effort, and definitely a good starting place for anyone new to the USM experience. Exploding with spiralling shards of guitar and breathy bursts of weirdass vocals, Long Hair In Three Stages is a delightfully counter-intuitive take on heavy mathy noise rockin', like if Captain Beefheart were on AmRep or something. Though as always that really doesn't describe it - and that's a testament to what a great band these guys were, they're their own dang thing for sure. Highly, highly recommended!!!
FYI, Skin Graft also reissued this in two different, deluxe METAL cover editions, but both were a wee bit too expensive for us to just stock, like seventy bux retail. Might still be able to get you one though if you want us to check, though, just ask.
This review of Purple On Time isn't so on time itself, as US Maple's latest has been out for over a month now...but, it has taken a while to absorb, as is so often the case with good albums, and this is not just good, it's great. Plus, US Maple's style of what I can only call 'counter intuitive' indie-rock is so deliberately strange and unique that it's always tough to capture in words, even by a person who is always looking in vain for the 'US Maple fan' box to tick when confronted with demographic questions on surveys and government forms. But I can tell you that, as always, the crucial elements of their sound are vocalist Al Johnson's odd bark (which has mellowed into more of a hoarse whisper), and the instrumental smear of sound made by the guitarist and rhythm section. It's a crazy, cosy quilt of guitars, drums, bass, and Johnson's curious croon, which maybe reminds us of Iggy Stooge at his breathiest. Mathy tangles of guitar strings and drums, dripping with notes, but restrained as if the whole the band is murmuring into your ear, seldom but sometimes unwinding into 'grooves' wracked with volume and ferocity. Confusing, comforting, complex, and quite lovely. And we're not just talking about this album's cover version of Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay"!
As I said, hard to describe. Hmm, how 'bout Codeine meets Beefheart? Naw, that's both obscure and inaccurate. Anyway, US Maple are underrated originals of rock who yet again prove their genius with this release. Recommended. And the packaging is deluxe as we expect from Maple releases, the cd booklet paper providing particular tactile satisfaction, while the vinyl version's got that 180 gram heft.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
One of the most abstract "post-rock" outfits around, these Chicagoans second album is a challenging, nay, puzzling but ultimately hypnotic listen...if you have the ears to hear. Again, produced by Jim O'Rourke, and again featuring a very cool dayglo cover with removable postcard.
U.S. Maple graduate from the Skin Graft label to Drag City and...high school, apparently the "theme" of this record. The third Maple record and their most abstract yet, as the band attempts to destroy all notions of proper rock n' roll methodology. Maybe not the place to start with this band, but a great place to end up. On tour now with Pavement! Produced by big fan Michael Gira of Swans. Look for their profile in The Wire #185.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A two-song single, at least one of them supposedly being a cover of Dion's "The Wanderer". Vocalist (in a very abstract way) Al Johnson and crew produce some typically skewed sounds, mathrock made with melted slide-rules. If you haven't heard them, get their Jim O'Rourke-produced full-length; if you have, and you've let it sink in, you'll want this.
We've been slowly working our way through the catalog of this unsung SF outsider slo-mo avant country outfit, having already reviewed their 1993 debut, My Company Is Misery, and the maybe even better follow up 1994's Tender Places Come From Nothing. Hell, Yes! was the group's swansong, released in 1997, and is another gorgeous sprawl of detuned guitars, and woozy warped vocal harmonies. If you thought Souled American were druggy and drowsy, they didn't have anything on these guys. In a way. U.S. Saucer were almost like a country Residents if that makes any sense. Their sound definitely beholden to classic country, but filtered through a serious skewed outsider/underground music filter, resulting in a sound that literally sounds like nothing and no one else. Imagine some old country record melting as it spins on the turntable, or some classic country tune playing on a tape machine with dying batteries. The guitars are reminiscent of Marc Ribot in Tom Waits' band, atonal and detuned, the songs marked by strange tangled harmonies, the arrangements super economical, the instruments just two guitars, bass and viola, ultra stripped down, slipping from hushed and dreamy, to dense and angular. But even the prettiest most traditional sounding songs here can't help but end up sounding warped and weird once mainman David Tholfsen begins to deliver his twisted lyrics in that distinctively warbly dramatic croon. And when Margaret Murray chimes in, the harmonies, while strange, are utterly divine. And the songs that she sings lead on are hushed haunting gems.
Like the other two records, Hell, Yes! is a gorgeous collection of haunting outsider minimal country loveliness, that is definitely some sort of strange beautiful musical mystery, and comes extremely and highly recommended.
These two long out of print early nineties gems back in stock, but who knows for how long. As far as we know, these in fact remain out of print, but one of the band members bequeathed us a tiny handful, so we figured some of you more adventurous folks out there, might appreciate an earful of these SF avant slo-mo country weirdos, who over these two records (and a few more after), created a warped, dark, idiosyncratic drummerless country music, that drifts and creeps, moodily and murkily, the music, hushed and spidery, mostly just guitar and viola (provided by Brian Hageman of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282), the vocals super melodramatic and definitely an acquired taste, backed by Margaret Murray's more hushed, almost whispered croon, the songs loose and ramshackle, drowsy and druggy, but ultimately strangely lovely.
The second record is even weirder, noiser, the guitars buzzing more wildly, Murray's vocals more present, sometimes a wild caterwaul, other times locked into dreamy harmonies with USS main man David Tholfsen, the music, slipping easily from hushed moody brood, to angular Jandekian blooze, both of these records, had they been instrumental, would sound that far removed from the stoner country sprawl of aQ faves Souled American, but the vocals definitely transform this into an even wilder strain of outsider lo-fi country, one that sounds just as good today as when we first heard theses records two decades ago.
Fans of Songs:Ohia, Palace Brothers, and other country outliers should easily fall under U.S. Saucer's dark hypnotic spell.
On the last list, we reviewed the lp version of this long out of print early nineties slowcore outsider country masterpiece, having gotten copies directly from the band. We also managed to get an handful of cd copies as well, which includes three bonus tracks NOT on the lp version!
Tender Place Come From Nothing was the 1994 sophomore release from these SF avant slo-mo country weirdos, who over the course of four years/records, conjured up a warped, dark, idiosyncratic drummerless country music, that drifts and creeps, moodily and murkily, the music, hushed and spidery, mostly just guitar and viola (provided by Brian Hageman of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282), the vocals super melodramatic and definitely an acquired taste, backed by Margaret Murray's more hushed, almost whispered croon, the songs loose and ramshackle, drowsy and druggy, but ultimately strangely lovely.
Unlike their comparatively more mellow debut, this record is even weirder and noisier, the guitars buzzing more wildly, Murray's vocals more present, sometimes a wild caterwaul, other times locked into dreamy harmonies with USS main man David Tholfsen, the music, slipping easily from hushed moody brood, to angular Jandekian blooze, and had it been instrumental, the sound here wouldn't be that far removed from the stoner country sprawl of aQ faves Souled American, but the vocals definitely transform this into an even wilder strain of outsider lo-fi country, one that sounds just as good today as when we first heard theses records two decades ago.
Fans of Songs:Ohia, Palace Brothers, and other country outliers should easily fall under U.S. Saucer's dark hypnotic spell.
The latest in Sacred Bones' on going series of unearthed gems, former installments included records by 13th Chime, Cultural Decay and Carl Simmons, all of which we dug big time. And this seven inch from UK outfit is another good one. Originally released in 1982, and produced by Cabaret Voltaire, the A side is fast becoming a new favorite jam, definitely of its time, but had you told us it was some new band channeling the past, we definitely would have believed it. Very groovy, a little bit funky, that sort of propulsive postpunk/funk bassline, a bit of an industrial vibe too, but the horns, layered droned out horns, laying down these totally mesmerizing muted atonal melodies, stretched out into long blasts of sound, that in their own way are seriously heavy, and then the vox come in, loud and distorted, the whole thing jagged but hypnotic, sort of dancey, but also a bit dark and sinister.
The flipside sounds a bit more beholden to Cabaret Voltaire, a little more electro pop, heavy on the eighties pop vibe, we're definitely hearing some Talk Talk actually, skittery rhythms, haunting synth swirls, lots of eighties style guitar jangle (a little Smiths, a little Big Country), wrapped in analog electronics and strapped to a pulsing minimal beat, definitely another track that predicts much of what would come decades later, the sort of sound the current crop must worship.
Both sides for how different they are, each play like a single part, with repeated subtle variations, which is what makes both tracks here so hypnotic and trancelike. Love it!
Long overdue reissue of this legendary post punk classic, originally released in 1981, with No Songs Tomorrow, this UK outfit perfectly captured the climate of the time, a sense of hopelessness and loss of faith in humanity, here represented by a songsuite of dark, brooding new wave pop, just give a listen to the title track, which almost sounds more like Laughing Stock era Talk Talk, skeletal programmed rhythms, swirling synths, plaintive emotional vocals, spidery minor key guitars, a fantastically bleak lament, a punkwave dirge that manages to be both dark and moody, haunting and atmospheric. And so goes the rest of the record, unlike the 7" we reviewed a while back, which found the band in a more punkfunk mode, the songs here tend toward the dour, a sort of post punk slowcore in a way, "Portrait (extended)" takes minor key guitars, adds some jangle, some chiming harmonics, a low slung bassline, the song rife with tension and emotion, the vocals gradually growing more intense and emotional as the music continues to ratchet up the miserablist vibe.
In a weird way, much of No Songs Tomorrow plays like some protest folk record, just with a slightly different sonic palette. Only slightly, as many of the tracks are rooted in acoustic guitars and vocals, the group adding squalls of electric guitar or haunting hollow beats, or swirls of softly effected guitar buzz. The second half of the record does get a bit more propulsive and punky, like on "Sleep Don't Talk", which definitely has a bit of a frantic electro synth pop vibe, with lots of weird buzz and processed vox, or on "Commitment", which transforms the sound into a weird jazz flecked post industrial soundscape, peppered with sax bleats and sampled voices, not to mention throbbing bass and crunchy guitar squalls, or the awesomely tripped out closer "Four Minute Warning", with its soaring synths, and weird crooned female vox and strange bits of industrial clatter.
A dark post punk gem that sounds as good today as it did 30 years ago! The reissue includes three bonus tracks as well.
Not sure why it took so long for us to get turned on to these guys. We definitely remember listening to them in the past, and not being too impressed. It could be a case of just being a bit garage rock-ed out. Too many bands in a scene that seemed to be spawning a new band ever 5 seconds, the last thing we needed was one more. But on Racism, UV Race quickly show us what we've been missing out on. Definitely way weirder and quirkier than most of the garage rock out there, the label describes them as "Australia's most genius avant-tards", which kinds sums it up. Catchy and jangly, fuzzy and crunchy, but also sort of druggy and fucked up, warped and demented (check out the chorus on "I'm A Pig": "OINK OINK OINK OINK"), the songs are super simple, one or two parts, sing along lyrics, guitars that get woozy and angular, lots of fuzz and distortion, the sounds weirdly psychedelic, plenty of handclaps, squiggly freak out leads, and loads of super blown out fuzz guitars, ridiculous lyrics, so ridiculous in fact that the whole booklet is a series of paragraph long descriptions of each song, the lyrics, who wrote it, what inspired it, pretty goddamn funny. There's a definitely Fall vibe too (just check out "Life Park", with its sung/spoken vocals), and a lot of this is of the drug addled, brain damaged, outsider pop variety, but scattered throughout are some seriously ruling jams, the record at its best when those two sides collide, which they do quite often, maybe nowhere moreso than on the ultra tripped out closer, "Memenonome", all primitive drum plod, echo drenched shards of space guitar, dense psychedelic swirls, a long stretches of near silence, all leading up to some surprisingly catchy poppiness which quickly devolves into a melting miasma of bleating horns and tinkling xylophones, all wrapped around the group's lilting, and weirdly catchy psych pop dirge.
U/V Light is the solo project of Kip Ulhorn from Cloudland Canyon, whose expansive psychedelic, electronic krautrock-influenced spaciness we've raved about here many times. Perhaps not surprisingly, Cenotaph, Ulhorn's first proper outing as U/V Light, shares many sonic similarities with Cloudland Canyon, but unlike the unabashed cosmic Krautrock worship of that project, U/V Light is more rhythmic and poppy, pulsing and shoegazey, a hazy, mesmeric Kraut inflected synth pop, equal parts sequenced Tangerine Dream style synth-swirl, and dreamy, prismatic electro pop.
Opener "Arriviste" sets the tone perfectly, unfurling a lush, pulsating landscape of undulating tones and textures, a sequenced swirl of retro-electro psychedelia, wound around deliriously effervescent drum machines, and vocalist Gabby Weiss' dreamy vox, ethereal and wreathed in reverb, giving the proceedings a sort of 4AD feel as well.
The rest of the record splits the difference between the sorts of old school synth wave and electronic pop that Medical generally specializes in, and Ulhorn's predilection for far out kosmische drift and heady kraut-psych mesmer, and it's somehow all held together by a dream pop shoegaze sensibility that makes tracks like "Celestial Cenotaph", which almost sounds like a seventies electro-synth version of slowcore legends Low (due in no small part to Ulhorn's weary vox), and the gritty, retro synth wave crunch of "Semaphone", perfect sonic bedfellows.
Moody minimalism meets epic, inner/outer space-drone-drift meets pulsing synth-gaze meets ethereal electro dream pop meets electronic psychedelia... Well, you get the picture. WAY recommended for fans of Cloudland Canyon (obviously) and most of Medical's releases as well!
And like all Medical records, pressed on nice 180 gram colored vinyl!
These modern masters of hyper-commercialism strike again with a whammee. U2 bring us a dvd and cd combination filled with a rockumentary, live performances and U2-brand iPod charmers. Features their commercial hit song, Vertigo, like, a million times (on cd and dvd). Man, if I hear a U2 song paired next to anything for sale, I'd buy it. A new car, an i-Pod, life insurance, even Depends.
Record number two from this Canadian garage rock / noise pop combo, whose sound might surprise you, considering it's the project of none other than Mikey Heppner, frontman for Canadian metalheads Priestess, and his lady Kathryn McCaughhey, who together whip up some seriously hooky, crazy catchy, sorta psychedelic bubblegum garage, that KILLS.
Opener "Follow The Waves To The Coastline" is practically perfect, equal parts Redd Kross and Best Coast, fuzzy, jangly, sunshiney, with a main hook to die for, super complex, almost a little proggy, but at it's core classic power pop in garage rock clothing. It's not even two minutes, but it's one of those songs you'll find yourself listening to over and over and over. Took a while before we could make it any further into the record than that track. But there's plenty more garage pop goodness to be found. The second track is weirdly almost funky, super groovy, cowbell and handclap driven fuzz pop, which starts off all skeletal and herky jerky, before blossoming into full on heavy pop crunch, before switching it up again and splintering into some FX drenched proggy trip out, and then it's right back to the cowbells and handclaps. "Bumby's Song" brings the sound right back to pure pop. Sure it's fuzzy and stompy and a little bit noisy, but it's so catchy, the vocals soaring into a falsetto for another killer chorus. Classic girl group sounds find their way into UBT's sound, so does glam rock, lots of this has a sort of Ty Segall / Mikal Cronin vibe, but really, for all the garage rock-isms, this IS essentially an awesome noise pop record, leaning HEAVILY on the pop.
Check out the samples, especially the first one, and odds are you'll be hooked. Easily our favorite new pop/garage record, and ANYone whose been digging the current crop of local garageniks (Thee Oh Sees, Segall, Cronin, Warm Soda, etc.) should snap this up pronto!
For fans of Janis Joplin and/or Flower Travellin' Band... a reissue of the 1968 album from this Japanese Sixties psychedelic act, who later morphed into Seventies hard rockers and massive AQ faves Flower Travellin Band. This early incarnation of the FTB had a mostly different lineup, including female vocalist Remi Aso who does her best Janis (and Grace Slick), singing in either a delicate waver or a screeching wail, wow. And The Flowers back her up like Big Brother, total pros. There's also a male singer, Chiba Hiroshi, who belts it out on such songs as "Hey Joe". Yup there's lots of then-contemporary covers on here, including stuff by Hendrix, Cream, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin. So you've gotta be into the classic rock - with a Japanese twist. Apparently Uchida had just returned from a trip to England, hanging out there with John Lennon, and this record was his first attempt to take the Japanese "Group Sounds" scene into a new, more psychedelic acid rock direction to emulate the hipness happenin' in London and San Francisco at the time. The band got attention for that - and for their naked album cover photo, the band loitering about in an idyllic meadow someplace, in the buff, though any band members (ahem) who happen to be facing toward the camera also happen to be reading newspapers or magazines for some reason... Of course, Uchida pulled this stunt again with the first FTB album that came out a few years later, with the naked band on the cover riding choppers down the highway.
Besides the cover, the first thing anyone would notice about this album is the charming intro skit, at the beginning of track one, wherein a guy tells a giggling girl about this great new band from Tokyo, "these six guys and this chick", who "do some really fantastic Big Brother And The Holding Company stuff". And he's not kidding, as the rest of the record proceeds to prove. And let's face it, these are great songs, you might not want to hear the versions played on your local classic rock radio station ever again but the Summer Of Love seems a lot cooler when we're tuning in via Tokyo.
Numbered, limited cd edition in the usual Phoenix manner.
The last AQ list was a good one for fans of Japanese prog maniacs the Ruins... there was the Vrresto reissue and their new split 7" with High On Fire. Keeping up the pace, this time 'round we've got another Ruins-related release...
This energetically, entertainingly exhausting double cd set sees sees Ruins mastermind Tatsuya Yoshida teamed up in an improv duo with Kazuhisa Uchihashi (of Altered States and Ground Zero fame). Hence the title, Improvisations. But these aren't improvs that only jazz-fanciers would like. Nope, this is ROCK improv. Prog rock to be precise, of course. Hectic and crazy and complicated. It's mind-scrabblin' stuff let me tell you. With so many musical ideas firing off in an ADD frenzy, for so long... 146 minutes, 25 tracks! And they're at a level of complexity and catchiness that makes it really hard for us to believe that these are improvs, and not carefully-thought-out compositions, actually!! But we're told thery're all improvised, all recorded live at several venues in Japan.
Chances are you're familiar with Ruins and already know Tatsuya Yoshida to be a monster drummer. Uchihashi is perhaps less-well known, but his guitar (and effects) prowess is prodigious, take it from us. Together these guys are a dream-team. If there was such a thing as gladitorial improv-rock combat, these guys would be unbeatable in the duo catagory. Very impressive, very insane. A veritable cornucopia of perplexing progged-out riffage and ridiculousness.
A word about the packaging -- it's aesthetically pleasing (with nice stone photos by Yoshida, who is skilled at graphics and layout) but, well, it's a two disc set with both cds stacked on top of one another, on the same little foam-rubber nub attached to a tri-fold cardstock sleeve. My discs haven't gotten scratched, yet, but still...probably not the best idea! The packaging police should issue these guys a ticket. Playing them this music though would be an adequate insanity defense...
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Acid Mothers Temple followers might already be aware of this obscure French five-piece instrumental psych-rock outfit, if only because of their inclusion on the Acid Mothers Temple Family Compliation "Do Whatever You Want" that we listed not so long ago. This double cd offering (a rare 'real' cd release on the Acid Mothers Temple label) takes off from the sound of the comp's Ueh track (which appears again here): slowly unfolding soundscapes featuring tear drops of melancholy, melodic guitar, deep, warm, almost Bohren-like bass tones, and a sparse, kinda-krautrock-ish rhythmic base laid down by their drummer, the single-named Frederic (who also had a solo track on that AMT Family Compilation, and his own disc on AMT, which we haven't heard). It's psychedelic, we suppose, but really more akin to post rock -- post rock that Temporary Residence Ltd. bands would envy, although Ueh pretty much stick to the quiet part of the usual post-rock loud-soft dynamics formula. Kinda like good old Tortoise. We could imagine this as a Kranky or Strange Audio Attractors House label release as well. Ueh's languid sunset drones and jazzy, vibesy details are really, really beautiful. In our reviews, we try not to quote press releases, but the description we were given of this uses many of the words we'd like to: dreamy, soft, mellow, film soundtracks... You get the picture. Great music for when you're not sure you want to listen to anything at all. Apparently, one disc (the first, louder, jazzier) features their composed songs, while the other disc (the second, quieter, without song titles) is all improvised, but you probably couldn't tell which was which if you had to guess! Limited to 500 copies by the way, of which we have only a few.
Last list we reviewed Guru Guru's UFO. This UFO has nothing to do with that, but at the same time more than you might think, considering the obvious connection between the genres of krautrock (Guru Guru) and space rock (UFO). If necessary, ignore the goofy bigfoot-emerging-from-crashed-flying-saucer artwork that they've put on this package (though, actually we kinda like the concept if not the execution of that image) and just please read the following, fans of heavy '70s stuff...
Although this is called Beginnings, it also represents an entire, complete oeuvre - the early '70s proto-metal/psych era of this band, whose more commercially successful, pop-charting output afterwards was quite a bit different (but awesome in its own right, in fact, most folks only know that stuff and haven't heard this material). Later in the '70s, on albums like Phenomenon, Force It, Light's Out, and Strangers In The Night, they became hard rock royalty, showcasing guitar whizz kid Michael Schenker (originally from Germany's Scorpions). But before arena rock success, before Schnenker, UFO's guitarist was a fellow named Mick Bolton. This earlier UFO incarnation much more psychedelic and spacey, that's where they got their Unidentified Flying Object name, playing self-described "space rock". Their second album, UFO 2, was subtitled "One Hour Space Rock" in fact. That sounds totally krautrocky, doesn't it?
This double disc set is a pretty good deal, containing all the tracks from this era of UFO: their debut UFO 1, the aforementioned UFO 2, and their live album, uh, UFO Live. The 1970 debut is definitely one for the proto-metal freaks out there, having much in common with early Blue Cheer and contemporaneous Black Sabbath... it's a heavy boogie album all right. They do a song simply titled "Boogie" and boy does it, chooglin' along all awesomely distorted and heavy. In addition, they do for Eddie Cochran's '50s hit "C'mon Everybody" what Blue Cheer had done for his "Summertime Blues". And then there's their own "Evil", another brutal blues-based rawk number indeed. It's not all hard rockin', though, there's a few sluggish, spacey ballads like "(Come Away) Melinda" and "Treacle People" to up the moodiness quota and make full use of Phil Mogg's powerful voice.
It's 1971's UFO 2 where they really launched out into space, with such tracks as "Silver Bird" and "Star Storm". The latter is almost 19 minutes long, but title track "Flying" is even longer at 26:30. They don't neglect the proto-metal riffery here, with "Prince Kajuku" in particular seeing 'em kicking out that brand of jams, but "Flying" and the other extended pieces are psychedelic spaceouts akin to Hawkwind... you could also imagine Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple enthusiastically air-guitaring along to this at home!!
The 1973 live album offers more of the spacey stuff, along with the boogie, drawing from both UFO 1 and 2 for material, its tracks filling up the remainder of disc two here, along with the non-album "Galactic Love" single, making for an excellent value for your $16.98.
Interestingly, the three UFO albums represented here weren't hits in England, but did pretty well in Germany and Japan... When guitarist Bolton quit, they replaced him briefly with Larry Wallis from the Pink Fairies, then future Whitesnake axeman Bernie Marsden, before snatching the young Schnenker away from the Scorpions... and the rest is history. THIS is history too, just more the hidden kind!
NOW ON VINYL TOO!!!
Prepare for takeoff! As longtime fans, nay, FANATICS about heavy Italian space psych masters UFOmammut, we're super stoked that they have a new album out. It's been 3 years since the one-two punch of Oro: Opus Primum and Oro: Opus Alter, so we're ready for more.
With an intro that sounds like they're calling worshippers (like us) to prayer, then launches into sheer lumbering spacey synth-laden heavosity, yeah, Ecate's opener "Sominum" is the UFOmammut we know and love all right! For the somehow still uninitiated we'll fall back on the old "Electric Wizard meets Hawkwind, with a side helping of Neurosis" shorthand description, but really at this point (15 years, nine albums - including a couple we made Records Of The Week) UFOmammut should be name to check on its own, descriptive of their own special sound, one we might reference with regard to other bands (like, for instance, fellow Italians Nibiru).
Usually either throbbing away mightily, a massive wall of guitar laced with sci-fi synth, chanted screams, percussive pummel, and lysergic FX, or breaking down somewhat softly into a roiling miasma of buried, effected sound samples/vocals and more quietly ominous riff-riff-riffing, this new album provides a fresh new swirling set of single-minded, spaced out, head banging, trance inducing rituals for all acolytes to enjoy - and followers of such bands as Yob, Om, and the various others aforementioned should probably succumb to this as well. Nice tripped out art on the cover and in the booklet, as well, with an illustration for each song, courtesy of Malleus, the psychedelic art collective to which these guys belong.
Pretty sure we don't have to do much in the way of introducing this mammoth, UFO-nic Italian trio by now. They've only chalked up, what, at least two past AQ Records Of The Week honors? We've loved all of their records (and collaborations) and this latest opus was eagerly awaited, especially after seeing 'em play live for the first time here in SF this past winter, which was, wow, HEAVY. Of course. And Eve does not disappoint.
We've described this outfit as "druggy doom-from-space" and this slipcased new disc is yet another excellent (but different) example of their cosmic and compelling sounds. Rather than descending from outer space to jam out on Earth, this time it definitely seems like you're riding with UFOmammut INTO the deeps of space, being swept along on the cosmic rays, into some sort of swirling spinning black hole vortex, kinda like the psychedelic beginning to those old Dr. Who TV episodes. After a dramatic intro (huge monolithic thudding... swooshing space-FX sounds... Hawkwind blowing... feedback and distortion) it's a slow build, the first couple tracks starting off relatively quietly and calmly, up to a point, generating unsettling ambient atmospheres, with spacey keyboards, faintly chanted vocals, and restrained percussive rhythms building up... and up... to the massive heavy guitar riffage you know is about to be unleashed, and soon IS. Wham! Blast off! Track two hints at the band's '70s Italian prog ancestry, with drifting female (?) vocals, and piano, before the tribal drum pound kicks in full bore, and it's dooooom in SPAAAAAAACE time, kids! Like music for martial marching Martians, or armies of astronauts in jackbooted spacesuits. It's hypnotic and heavy, indeed. The next track dispenses with the buildup, jumping right into the fray...
The five (long) tracks on Eve tend to seamlessly segue from one to the next, it's almost like one piece, stretching to infinity... it's actually 45 minutes total but if it could go on and on we'd let it, happy to get lost in UFOmammut's deeps of space (and the deeps of their bass!). A beautiful thing to our ears (remember in a past review, when we told the story of how we accidentally played a UFOmammut dvd disc, thinking it was the cd, and were mesmerized by the dvd menu music, not realizing it was on an endless loop?).
Yeah, it's a trip listening to this band, and quite possibly the "trip" they're evoking isn't into outer space as we've been suggesting, but rather inner space. Of course it is, inside your mind, their music at work on your imagination. This aspect is highlighted when in when in the final track, the beat goes into a double-tlme, and a buried bedlam of chattering voices infiltrate the sound-field. It's like Electric Wizard, or Sleep, trapped in the asylum. That feeling is accentuated by the use of insistent repetitive piano chords and piercing electronic tones out of some psychological suspense thriller.
We mentioned that we saw 'em live, and that they are a trio, yet it's sorta hard to believe when you listen to this... sounds more like hundreds of people were involved, massed in ritual observance... or maybe no people at all, no human beings, just the spaceship's onboard computer gone haywire HAL style...
Having your head dipped in some sort of molten hallucinogenic liquid...or steamrollered by a flying saucer.... or headbanging with Lovecraftian gods somewhere far out in the ocean of space... that's our meagre attempt to colorfully describe the experience of enjoying this slab of psychedelic stoner doom rock, the 1999 debut disc from Italy's UFOmammut! Chances are, though, that you have some idea already about this might sound like, 'cause UFOmammut's other album, the mighty Snailking, was immediately crowned as an Aquarius Record of the Week when it came out last year, and is still a steady seller hereabouts. Hopefully you already got one of those. This too, we've had before, but it's been out of print for quite a long time and only just got reissued. We figured that since folks liked Snailking so much, and Godlike Snake was just as good, and could easily have been missed out upon the first time around, we shouldn't pass up the opportunity to relist this and make it a Record of the Week as well now that it's back in print. After all, the whole reason we were so instantly amped on Snailking when it came out was in part 'cause we'd been waiting for it for, literally, years, after being blown away by the band's first album, this one. Our review of Godlike Snake ran something like this: "...this stoner rock band is a good 'un, taking a way spacier route to the Dopethrone than most. Wonderfully heavy and mesmerizing, with loads of effects, Moog, and (pardon the expression) "fat" churning drone-grind-groove... A new fave for us in the stoner/doom realm... Especially recommended for those that miss the old Monster Magnet sound, or relish the idea of a heavier Hawkwind." Listening to it now (which a bunch of us have been doing *every day* in the store), we're if anything EVEN MORE into it. Something we hadn't noticed before was how some tracks come across like Godflesh or early Killing Joke melded to Hawkwind. Crushing and enveloping and sooooooo good. It's like Electric Wizard gone spacerock, or an industrialized Dead Meadow.
As with its original incarnation, this includes a trippy video track for the song "Where?" for those with computers. It's now packaged in a standard jewelbox, instead of a cardboard digipack, but the artwork remains pretty much the same. If you like heaviness like we do, don't miss it this time!! Definitely to be considered an AQ doom/sludge/psych ESSENTIAL.
Been waiting for this for a while! While their collaboration with Lento on the Supernaturals Vol. 1 disc (last year) was excellent and sure sounded a heck of a lot like an "actual" UFOmammut record, technically these Italian lords of druggy doom-from-space haven't released an album of their own since 2005's Lucifer Songs. So it's about time we heard from them again.
Reeling from the impact of opening ritual "Stigma", we are immediately made aware that Idolum finds the band's heaviness intact (of course it's heavy, did bears stop shitting in the woods? is the Pope no longer a Catholic??). UFOmammut are still a psychedelic juggernaut, their trance-inducing riffing aswirl in a densely layered, lysergic morass of outer space FX that the Acid Mothers Temple would envy. It's certainly up there with their previous output, we can't praise it much more highly. Found amidst the seven tracks (66 minutes, 6 seconds total, how 'bout that?) of Idolum are a few new twists, including a guest female vocal performance on a few tracks, adding an extra haunting element to the proceedings. Overall, this album manages a hard-to-beat, skull-smashing cosmic balance of tripped-out melody, ambient hypnosis, and utter crushing sludge dirge destruction equal to our high expectations. Definitely worth waiting for!
The cd we have is packaged in jewel case, the kind with rounded corners (same as the Lento debut that Supernatural Cat also just released, reviewed this list too). We didn't get any of the incredibly expensive limited cd version, but we did get a couple (really, just 2) copies of the even more incredibly expensive super limited numbered 2lp vinyl box edition. It's hefty and handsome enough to be worth the money to huge UFOmammut fans, so act fast if you want one (please). Otherwise, the cd version is more than recommended.
Question: what's better than one new album by Italian space-doom masters UFOmammut? Answer: another one!! Oro: Opus Primum came out a few months back, and now here's the 2nd installment that we've been waiting for, Oro: Opus Alter. Another five HEAVY tracks (making for a ten-part sonic ritual over the two discs) from thee incredibly potent musical aspect of the Malleus psychedelic art collective, UFOmammut. Once again, it sounds kind of like a (more!) drugged out and synth-ed up Electric Wizard, riding a rocket with Hawkwind at the controls, far into outer space. There's some of the screaming, extreme elements of UFOmammut's heavy pals Neurosis in the mix, too. It's a punishing, yet trance-inducing sci-fi ceremony of pounding drums, thundering bass, gobs of distortion and sizzling synth. Gee, we have basically run out of science-fictional superlatives to describe two-time previous aQ Record Of The Weekers UFOmammut; you don't need to hear 'em from us anyway 'cause if you got the first part you already want this - and if you don't already have it, please go look up our review of that, and all other UFOmammut output for that matter, to read us rave about 'em further.
So, if like us, you've been in your basement ever since Opus Primum came out, awaiting the next visitation from these space dwellers, perhaps obsessively building a scale model replica of Devil's Tower a la Richard Dreyfus in CEOT3K, now you can take a well deserved break, and kick back with this blasting from your stereo!
Stalwart AQ customers, especially the ever-burgeoning subset of AQ customers into the heavier, (low-) end of the musical spectrum, should already be very familiar with one half of the Supernaturals Vol. 1 equation. That'd be Italy's most spaced-out, doomadelic band of amps-to-11 psychonauts, the very very heavy UFOmammut, whose previous albums Godlike Snake, Snailking, and Lucifer Songs have all garnered massive praise both from us and pretty much anyone who thinks that if only we'd been able to put Hawkwind, Electric Wizard and Om albums into the "cultural cache" stowed on board the Voyager spacecraft, the planet Earth would surely long ago have been visited by big hairy aliens eager to smoke up and doom out. And the resultant interstellar jam would sound a heckuva lot like UFOmammut! So a new UFOmammut album, which this is more or less, is cause to celebrate.
Meanwhile, this disc introduces us to another underground psych band from Italy, by the name of Lent0, who are described as specializing in instrumental "ambient postcore". As near as we can tell from this collaborative effort, they must have a lot in common with their friends UFOmammut. We can't really tell who's doing what on this, but certainly these six fairly long tracks of uber distorted rumble, throbbing repetitive riffage, and haunting deep space shimmer are hitting all the mesmeric, droned-out highs we associate with our previous UFOmammut experiences. Maybe it's the eerie sampled voices that occasionally drift through the quieter parts of this that are Lent0's doing? Or the stretches of calmer, more Isis-like, post-rock heaviness that stand like gleaming outerspace monoliths amidst the churning, explosive jams heard elsewhere on this disc? We don't know -- but we'll certainly be curious to check out Lent0's own upcoming album Earthen whenever it comes out. What we do know is that these two bands are right on together at making this brand of mindblowing "metal". To hear anything remotely similar, you'd have to team some Tibetan monks up with Circle AND those aforementioned hairy aliens!
Important info: yes this import cd isn't cheap, but it's a handprinted, numbered, LIMITED EDITION release, in special packaging (accordion folded vellum "booklet" between thick covers) designed and executed by the Malleus psychedelic art collective, of which UFOmammut is the primary musical arm. When these are gone (and they soon will be) we'll eventually be able to get a regular, not-so-deluxe digipack version. You should further be aware that this is but the first in a series of collabs between bands on the Supernatural Cat label. Not a bad start that's for sure!
Heads up for another indie rock super group! The impressive personnel? Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins, John Orth of Holopaw, and Califone / Red Red Meat fellows Brian Deck and Tim Rutili. Together, they are Ugly Casanova. Not sure how their collaborative process went (I've heard grumblings about some mysterious, elusive figure for whom this project is named), but this mostly sounds like Modest Mouse songs as sung by Isaac with the somewhat darker, eccentric influence of Black Heart Procession along for the ride. Moody, ramshackle and weaving with clunky, clatterous found object-esque percussion. Andee said the track called "Ice On the Sheets" reminded him of Red Hot Chili Peppers, but maybe you should be the judge of that one. Fans of their respective groups will surely not be disappointed by this configuration. Produced by Isaac and Brian.
1971 psych obscurity.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Yay, a new issue of Ugly Things! I don't think there's a single magazine that I (Allan) look forward to a new issue of more than this one. Seriously. And though I don't want to get into an argument about whether rock is dead or not, I can definitely tell you that it lives on in the pages of Ugly Things. Dedicated to "wild sounds from past dimensions", this 'zine is an over half-inch thick, 200-page tome densely packed with enthusiastic writing about garage, psych, beat, punk, n' rock n' roll from the sixties and seventies (mainly). You might find mention of prog and metal and folk and funk and even reggae too if you look hard enough. And there's lotsa lookin' to do -- I read fast, but even with spending every free moment the last few days paging through this thing, I still haven't gotten to the article on Spanish beat magazine Fonorama, or finished the massive cover story on the saga of The Misunderstood or checked out part 2 of the Metal Urbain piece continued from last ish or gotten through the various artists reviews. But I did read already was entertaining and informative. Ugly Things has a stable of lively, often hilarious writers who can make even the most record-collector-obsessive subjects pretty darn interesting. There's tons of reviews (the kind I take notes on to remember to order things for Aquarius), tons of interviews, tons of weirdness -- like a piece by Neuromancer author William Gibson about his one-time meeting with the legendary (and well-dressed) Skip Spence, or Jack Hemsley's article on Tucson teen killer Charles Schmid. There's so much in here it's hard to single stuff out, but maybe I should also mention Johan Kugelberg's article about rare punk rock records that suck, despite their high collectible value. Anyway, every issue is an inspiration and this one's no different. Once again, kudos to Editor/Publisher Mike Stax and co. for another essential installment of Ugly Things.
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A new issue of Ugly Things shows up and I know what I'm going to be doing in any and all upcoming free time that week!! Hours of music-obsessed readin' here, for those of us who share Ugly Things' fasination with the garage and psych sounds of past decades, that is. Packed with essays, interviews, and reviews (only of reissues and archival releases, no new things, even though current bands in the genre appear in the ads). This issue features the fourth part of editor Mike Stax' epic telling of the story of his favorite '60s psych rock act, The Misunderstood. Part four is about the '70s, tracing the lives of the bands ex-members into all sorts of weirdness and adventure, with intelligent crows, Sammy Hagar, and hidden ruby mines entering into the narrative. But of course there's lots more this ish besides: The Belfast Gypsies (aka Them) on the cover, Kim Fowley, eulogies for both Bomp's Greg Shaw and The Outsider's Wally Tax, an unpublished interview with the late Keith Relf of the Yardbirds, Michael Yonkers, and lots more stuff about a whole bunch of bands that we'd never heard of before but enjoyed reading about nonetheless, as always with this informative and entertaining music 'zine. Recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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Egads. As usual, our favorite magazine (a thick as a brick magazine, 224 packed pages, more like a tome!) shows up on a "list week" when we're too busy writing our reviews to do what we WANT to do, which is curl up with this new issue and enjoy all of their reviews, interviews, articles, and whatnot. That's what we'll be doing Saturday for sure, this rainy weather is perfect for that. Giving it a skim (and tearing ourselves away from it to get back to work), we can tell you that this ish is, as usual, full of good stuff pertaining to garage, psych, punk, freakbeat, acid folk, and other "wild sounds from past dimensions" as it says on the cover. Some of the contents include a 1988 interview with the late Rob Tyner, singer for the legendary MC5, a history of UK folksters Trees, an extensive, informative piece on the amazing '60s Norwegian scene, another about Napa Valley's, interviews and essays about the likes of The Sons Of Adam, The Pop Rivets, Jeff Simmons, Fire, Cedars, and as always a Pretty Things update. And, unbelievably, much more. Notably, Chris Stigliano shoves Julian Cope aside to present a "Beginner's Guide To Les Rallizes Denudes". And the 13 pages devoted to Johan Kugelberg's expert fan feature on "Punk Before Punk" is probably worth the price of admission alone, looking forward to delving into that one!
Plus of course there's dozens upon dozens of reviews of reissues...and ads and playlists and columns and rants and (sadly) obits and so much much much more, as we keep sayin'. Recommended if you have any interest in the cool, cult, collectable music of yesteryear. And copious free time to spend readin' about it!
The best thing about Ugly Things' rather irregular twice-yearly schedule is that it's always a pleasant surprise when the latest issue of this magazine of "wild sounds from past dimensions" suddenly shows up here! And, somehow, it's always a day or two before "list day" so we can't totally kick back and spend as much time reading it right away as we'd like, 'cause there's work to do. And we do mean we'd need to spend time, lots of time, it's a big ol' magazine (224 pages this ish) packed to the gills with text and vintage photos.
However, since our list-work IS to review New Arrivals, and since this Ugly Things is a New Arrival, we WILL take a moment now to leaf through it... ah, maybe sit back a bit, put the feet up, settle in... whoops, better be careful, hours and hours of "lost productivity" will go by as we read about cover stars The Masters Apprentices ('60s Australian psych-pop sensations we know better in their later proto-metal mode). That article is 27 pages and it's only part 1, another of editor Mike Stax's multipart epics, to be continued next issue! Then there's several eulogies to the late Sky Sunlight Saxon of The Seeds (who passed away the same day as Michael Jackson, who gets mentioned here in Ugly Things for probably one of the only times ever on account of that). And the usual slew of obscure groups are dug up and examined, in depth - this time 'round, The Fenmen ('60s UK harmonizers with Pretty Things connections), The Reactor ('70s Mexican-American Inland Empire punk), The Nomadds ('60s Midwestern garage rockers), The Bittersweet (all girl garage from Ohio in the '60s), The Wildflower (mystical ballroom era SF "lost band"), Dentist (late '70s French punkers), and PLENTY MORE. As usual, we most often find the stories told quite fascinating, even when we've never heard a note of a band's music, nonetheless entire long gone music scenes open themselves up to the imagination, the world as it once was, somewhere, elsewhere, underground, rockin' out.
Leafing through (ok, we'll stop in a second and get back to work) it's easy to come across any number of treats, from the reprinted super-harsh one line putdown album reviews from '70s fanzine Future (a sample: "Foghat - Night Shift - The title of this LP should not include the 'F' in shift"), to the piece about recently rediscovered proto-punks the Imperial Dogs (look 'em up on YouTube!!!), to fanzine editor Phil Milstein's tale of trying to release a Nico bootleg some 30 years ago, a difficult saga which somehow manages to involve both his mom and Penn of Penn & Teller fame, as well as Nico herself of course. If we keep reading we'd find more to mention, haven't even delved into the pages and pages and pages of reviews yet, but we have other reviews of our own to write, so we'll reluctantly set aside our copy of UT#29 to pick it up again after our remaining list-duties are completed. Ah, yes, recommended. A magazine by music obsessives, for music obsessives, of almost any nostalgical variety.
Without fail. The new issue of this awesome, and HUGE, magazine all about "wild sounds from past dimensions" (aka the '60s and '70s) always arrives, like, the day before we're doing a list. I think we've mentioned this before. So, there's no way we could read through the whole thing -and- write all our other reviews. Heck, probably couldn't read the whole thing in one night even if we played hooky from work and that's all we did, that's how much stuff is packed into its 176 pages. So, struggling to give it just a skim right now, we can tell you that it's got in-depth (and often, we mean REALLY in depth) features on, among others: our favorite Dutch beat rockers Q65, Australia's The Master's Apprentices (part II to the saga begun last ish), The Kinks/Ray Davies, ESP's Connecticut "tribe" Cromagnon (all right!!), Texan punks The Nervebreakers, SoCal garage rockers The Hysterics, Milwaukee teen psych sensations Finch, guitarist Oli Halsall's proggy Patto, and plenty more. Also Johan Kugelberg captures our attention with "A Loser's Guide To '60s Punk Compilations", and then there's the pages and pages (and pages) of reviews. Whew! As always, recommended reading. And congrats to the UT crew on their 30th issue, 27 years after they first started publishing! Keep 'em coming!!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Holy crap. 200 pages! And, as always, it lands here (with a weighty thud) just a day before our list. So we'll have to wait until the weekend to really delve in, but also as always we're damn excited to.
One of our favorite magazines ever, now up to its 31st fat issue, wow. If you're into almost any interesting bands of yesteryear, of the garage/punk/psych variety, you should read this magazine!! Girl groups, surf rock, freakbeat, even some esoteric prog, it's all here. (For metal bands, check out Snakepit, also reviewed this list.)
Tons of great stuff this ish, about bands both infamous (The Stooges) and obscure (The 40 Fingers). Let's see... Them, The Masters Apprentices (part 3 of a monster feature), oud master John Berberian, Wreckless Eric, Ollie Halsall, The Zachary Thaks, The Cobra Seas, The Mountain Men, The Pleasure Seekers, The Missing Lynx, Them, and others! Guaranteed each article or interview is both more in depth and more interesting than you could ever imagine.
Some of the other features that jumped out at us include a discussion of the merits of the many posthumous Jimi Hendrix records, also a piece all about the Norton Records label. And of course there's pages and pages and pages of reviews. Awesome - as always!
Oh boy. Editor / expert in chief Mike Stax and crew have done it again. Here's a fat new issue (176 pages) of our favorite magazine of ye olde rock n' roll (garage, punk, psych, power pop, and maybe a side of prog). This time 'round, there's typically in-depth, heavy duty features on a whole lot of interesting artists, some more obscure than others... Them, The Vibrators, Finchley Boys, The Sloths, Creation Of Sunlight, The Contrasts, freakbeat faves Wimple Winch, and plenty of others - including one REALLY obscure group with the amazing name of $27 Snap On Face, some Sonoma county weirdos circa '77. Along with a look at the psychedelic side of Paul Revere & The Raiders, the usual vast array of reissue reviews, the regular columns, et cetra. Oh, and a page devoted to "The 20 Worst Hard Rock Obscurities" to be avoided. And really that's just scratching the surface, as always an issue of Ugly Things requires a few solid hours of devoted study. For anyone who loves "wild sounds from past dimensions" this is sheer manna in magazine form.
Two releases, originally UK imports on Hemiola and Soul Static Sound, finally available on cd at a domestic price. American instrumental trio fans of Tortoise will dig. And hey, Stereolab likes them, see next review.
Nearly a decade ago, Sasha Frere-Jones began what has amounted to a prolific career as a music critic for The Village Voice and The Wire, often providing insight into the slippery logic of the groove whether that be about his childhood love of Liquid Liquid and ESG or recent musings on the newest Missy Elliott record. During this time, Frere-Jones has been actualizing his own boogie machine with the sporadically active Ui, which centers on Frere-Jones playing bass alongside percussionist Clem Waldmann and a supporting cast of multi-instrumentalists. "Answers" is just Ui's third album, and is a far cry from the current strain of mutant disco from bands like The Rapture or Tussle which boast a similiar lineage dating back to the golden era of Arthur Baker productions and Gang of Four punked out grooviness. No, Ui would never be caught wearing hotpants or delving into the facile behavior of Fischerspooner; rather, Ui's take on the groove is based upon complexity and willfull angularity, paralleling much of the organic composition found on Tortoise's "Millions Now Living Will Never Die," any of the Minutemen's albums, and the perpetually obscure prog-punk band the Embarrassment. "Answers" is a series of intellectual explorations of the interplay between two basses, drums, and a number of quirky flourishes which counterpoint the mathematically challenging times and herky-jerky chord progressions. This is a solid recapitulation of where post-rock might have gone, if it didn't devolve into banal jazz-fusion pretense.
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SORRY.
Some will claim that instrumental trio UI is doing the funky tortoise, but we know this is their best album to date, the heavy bass and melodic lines finally coming together for a fleshed out, confident record. Fans of the UILAB ep will like this a lot.
New York trio's long-anticipated full-length is finally out; too bad they chose to package the cd in one of those paper sleeves that doesn't even qualify as cardboard and will thus assuredly fall apart next week. Often described as "prog-Tortoise."
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
6 tracks chronicling a year-long collaboration between Ui and Stereolab, featuring 4 (yes four) version of Brian Eno's "St. Elmo's Fire" and one track ("Impulse Rah!") whose writing credit goes to the 2 bands plus Sun Ra. This is very pleasant record -- the music is closer to Ui's sound, yet the presence of Stereolab seems to have been a good anchor for the group, and Laetitia and Mary's vocals mix wonderfully with Sasha Frere-Jones' voice. The 10" vinyl for this is on its way, should appear next week, and is extremely limited (you know Duophonic) so please reserve your copy. The cds should be around for a while.
By now, we should be able to safely assume that most AQ list-readers know who Steven R. Smith is. Not only that, but we know a lot of you are in fact big S.R.S. fans, of his solo projects under his own name and as Hala Strana, as well as for his participation in such outfits as Mirza and Jewelled Antler flagship Thuja. Certainly this should be the case after the last few S.R.S. releases. First there was his Owl album that came out a month or two ago, with his first ever vocal performance to go along with his lovely psych-drone guitar. Then two lists ago we had the cd reissue of his Anchorite album, which we made Record Of The Week in fact. And now there's Ulaan Khol. On it you can almost imagine that Steven has donned the black shades and leather jacket of the Tokyo psych underground scene, as this sounds like something that LSD-march, Up-Tight or even Keiji Haino himself might conjure. Acid Mothers Temple's Kawabata Makoto too. But even then, it probably wouldn't be this cosmic and bleakly beautiful.
Suitably majestic sounding, as part of a proposed three album trilogy, Ulaan Khol I consists of nine untitled, instrumental tracks made with guitar and organ. It's a spacious drift of big fuzzy distortion and fragile drone bliss... utterly entrancing. The sort of thing that you just want to keep going, and going... well thank god there's another two volumes of Ulaan Khol yet to come! Recommended.
It may be odd to single out one component of a series for Record Of The Week, especially when it's the second of a proposed three record trilogy. It's not that we didn't love the first installment, we did very much! And it's not like the Academy Awards where we're belatedly acknowledging the first installment by rewarding the second. It might be just that we didn't realize at the time the magnificent depth and far reaching direction in which Steven R. Smith would take his latest project. And as we have heaped tons of praise on his past work, we wanted to single out this project and particularly this installment as something utterly amazing and wholly breathtaking.
Despite the tons of killer music that goes in and out of the aQ doors, it's not everyday we get an album that really lifts us out of our seats and straight into an alternate dimension. The latest release under the Ulaan Khol moniker is a celestial trip into desolate plains where the water rises and the skies are ripped open.
A prominent member of the Jeweled Antler family, Steven R. Smith has been seriously influential in defining the California psych/drone sound for over a decade. We've mentioned it in plenty of reviews, so folks gotta be by now pretty aware of Smith's extensive discography, ranging from countless solo records to his releases as the Eastern European-tinged Hala Strana or with the famed JA flagship act Thuja.
The first Ulaan Khol record, though made up of nine untitled tracks, felt like one spacious drifting piece of big fuzzy distortion and fragile drone bliss. Something like the gorgeous feedback-laden free music of Les Rallizes Denudes or others from the Japanese Underground scene. We loved it a lot, but didn't go into extensive detail about it, probably because we had also just reviewed his Owl record (released under his own name) around the same time.
On II, we hear a lot more range. There are still the big swaths of massively distorted psych heaviness, but the eight untitled tracks feel more distinct and structured. Some tracks have faster Spacemen 3-like tempos and fuller driving progressions with pummeling drums mired way deep in the mix, while others feature more calm, drifty drones made up of intimate guitar, electric violin and organ passages that conjure up gorgeous swells of luminous sound. The pieces are more varied and layered, dense yet melodic and at times more rock-ish. The majestic guitar radiance Smith manages to create is not unlike the solo work of Kawabata Makoto or Tom Carter, but here we also hear shades of Roy Montgomery, Flying Saucer Attack and even Asa Osbourne from Zomes and Lungfish (Zomes being a recent Record Of The Week too).
As with the first disc, there are no liner notes, just an abstract painted cover, this time in bleak blue-grey winter tones. And inside the sleeve is an awesome painting of a lamp-holding monk (perhaps the same skull contemplating monk from the first disc) at the mouth of a giant cave! Yes!
