For a lot of us, buying comps and reissues and stuff put out by Finders Keepers / B-Music is pretty much a no-brainer. These folks know their stuff. They can DJ for us anytime! So mentioning that The BYG Deal is the latest from 'em might be all we need to say, though dropping some names like Brigitte Fontaine, Jean-Claude Vannier, Daevid Allen & Gong, Giorgio Gomelsky, Robert Wyatt, Vangelis, Ame Son, and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago couldn't hurt. Or perhaps a name like Inter-Groupie Psychotherapeutic Elastic Band - never heard of 'em before, no, but they've gotta be good, right!!? (And they are, their track "Floating" anyway being a blissful bit of la-la-la space psych ceremony).
What we have here is a collection of tracks released by France's BYG, a post '68 radical rock/jazz label that flourished 'til about 1974. We'd heard of 'em before mainly in conjunction with the famed BYG/Actuel series of African-American jazz releases, stuff by the Art Ensemble, Don Cherry, Sunny Murray, etc. But this disc demonstrates that BYG (which according to one graphic here stands for Beautiful Young Generation, though elsewhere we're told it's the initials of the three label owners) was as much about psychedelic pop rock and groovy "hairy funk" as it was about avant-garde free jazz... an awesome blend in our opinion, and blend they do, some of these tracks really hard to classify. Maybe it's the "Total Space Music" of which they speak. In any case, whatever discotheque played this stuff must have been REALLY hip and happenin'.
The music here is almost all super groovy, but often quite quirky too (take Gong's circusy nursery rhyme freakout "Hip Hypnotise You" for instance!), these various tracks loaded with flute, orgasmic female vocals, heavy psych guitar, and equally heavy prog organ (running wild alongside frenetically shuffling drums on Vangelis' "Stuffed Tomato", for example, among many standout spots here). From chanteuse Valerie Lagrange's ye-ye grooves to the poppy psychedelic stomp of Coeur Magique to Banana Moon's Beefheartian crunt, this is pretty far out and awesome.
Here's the complete lineup of artists appearing here: Alice (2 tracks), Francois Wertheimer, Brigitte Fontaine and Areski, Gong (3 tracks), Alan Jack, Couer Magique (2 tracks), Valerie Lagrange, Jacques Barsamian, Alpha Beta, Ame Son (2 tracks), Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Freedom, Vangelis, Paul Semana, Inter-Groupie Psychotherapeutic Elastic Band, Banana Moon, Joachim and Rolf Kuhn. Yep, the disc is crammed, 22 tracks, almost 80 minutes, and the thick cd booklet is equally full up with full color graphics and extensive liner notes, it's amazing the compilers could dig up so much info on this stuff, considering how obscure a lot of this is, but that's their biz!
There's a few tracks you could have run across elsewhere on other reissues, but most of 'em you haven't, that's for damn sure. For instance, the awesomely named track "Astral Abuse" from the rare 7" by Alpha Beta, a one-off Vangelis project. And there's plenty more from other collector's-only, never before on cd sources.
If you liked other B-music compilations like Andy Votel's Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, this ought to be right up your alley. Likewise if you enjoyed the two Pop Made In France comps we've listed, this is a bit like those (some of the same artists appear, in fact) but way weirder. And of course any fan of Jean-Pierre Massiera's strange productions is gonna find this of interest as well... in fact there's personnel connections to his Visitors project, and connections also to the likes of Magma and Aphrodite's Child for that matter.
Another keeper from Finders Keepers that's for sure, thankfully available domestically, complete with slipcover!
For those unfamiliar with The Bay Bridged, it's a bountiful website dedicated to Bay Area independent music (podcast, blogs, videos, show reviews, concert calendar, you name it!). Now they've released a bountiful compilation featuring a mix of previously released and unreleased tracks by eleven of the fine bands they covered -- Tartufi, Social Studies, Love Is Chemicals, Finest Dearest, The Lonely Hearts, The Dont's, Peloton, Tempo No Tempo, Or The Whale, and The Dodo's.
Those frisky, fine folks at Bloodshot Records sure aren't the kind to leave anybody out in the cold. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is this CHILDREN'S album! They've even enlisted the help of non-Bloodshoters like Neko Case's pal and fellow Corn Sister Carolyn Mark to join in the tykes' merriment. Much in the way of storytelling and singalongs abound. I know firsthand that while hanging out with your favorite baby, toddler or child, the music that they usually have, and sadly are programmed to like, sucks. It could drive a well-meaning mom or caregiver nuts! Disney and 'We Sing Silly Songs' and such. This release is a pleasant change in that it is fun for kids and easy to listen to for adults (psst... another choice pick in the kids' category is They Might Be Giants' "No!" from earlier this year). Robbie Fulks' "Godfrey" ("the sickly unemployed amateur children's magician"!) is worth the price in chuckles alone. Plus I think it is our duty as musically tasteful people to introduce our children to music that doesn't suck from early on. Right?
Wow! Wow! Wow! This is for sure gonna be at the top of quite a few wish lists this holiday season!
The title is a bit of an overstatement. "Of The Last Millenium"?! Not quite, how 'bout "Of The Last Decade And A Half Of The Last Millenium"? Uh huh, that's more accurate. Anyways, nitpicking aside, this box set contains four cds packed with 78 songs total plus a big 80-page booklet! So many old favorite UK bands -- many of which had shamefully slipped through the cracks in our memory until now!
Disc One features The Smiths, Cocteau Twins, Felt, Shop Assistants, Mighty Lemon Drops, The Cure, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Jesus And Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, The Primitives, The Wonder Stuff, The Sone Roses, The Charlatans UK, Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, Inspiral Carpets, The Trash Can Sinatras, The La's, and The Sundays.
Disc Two has Ride, Pale Saints, My Bloody Valentine, Lush, The Telescopes, Chapterhouse, Catherine Wheel, Bleach, Curve, Five Thirty, Moose, The Family Cat, The Dylans, Thousand Yard Stare, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Birdland, Manic Street Preachers, and Teenage Fanclub.
Disc Three includes Suede, Swervedriver, Eugenius, Superstar, New Order, James, Nick Heyward, The Boo Radleys, Saint Etienne, Stereolab, Blur, Oasis, Pulp, These Animal Men, Mega City Four, Echobelly, Gene, Menswear, Supergrass, Cast, and Elastica.
Disc Four closes out the box with Dodgy, Ash, Sleeper, Marion, Kula Shaker, Ocean Colour Scene, Babybird, The Bluetones, Super Furry Animals, The Divine Comedy, Cornershop, Silver Sun (YAY!!!), Spiritualized, Mansun, Hurricane #1, The Verve, Rialto, Catatonia, Placebo, and Gay Dad!
Plus for those of you (and us!) who are geeks for special packaging gimmicks, the 6"x12" box comes tricked out with a little light that illuminates not only the telephone booth sign on the outside front of the box, but also a mini stadium stage inside. Yes, batteries are included!
Remix anthologies are almost always varied affairs. While one may like the re-mixer, one may not always like the artist being remixed or vice versa. Here the DFA Team offer up their takes on ten cuts from artists who exist outside of the DFA family, with predictably mixed results. The best cuts are from the artists whose sound already has an affinity to the DFA style of production (Metro Area, Radio 4), and the remixes of Chemical Brothers, Soulwax and Gorillaz offer some nice surprises. But even re-mixers sent from GOD can't ever make the Blues Explosion sound good, so why bother? All in all, this is a decent compilation that would have been better if there was more to sink our teeth into, but what is here is a nice appetizer that keeps us hungry for a more up-to-date main course. Hopefully we'll find that in Vol. II.
The second edition of DFA remixes improves upon the first by delving into less obvious rhythm and dance territories. Increasing the atmospheres rather than cowbell-driven propulsion, DFA's reworking of Goldfrapp, UNKLE, Tiga, N.E.R.D. and Nine Inch Nails, among others are often more expansive and symphonic, at times extending passages and compositions to almost 14 minutes in length. This is an excellent dose of dance tunes for the mind as well as the body. Awesome!
Those crazies at Past & Present are gonna have to add a whole new wing to their Electric Asylum, we're up to volume 3! More late '60s, early '70s "Rare British Acid Freakrock" from 20 obscure acts, these are they: Renegade, Primitive Man, Sensations, Puzzle, Barracuda, Grumbleweeds, Boneshaker, Barron Knights, Dynasty, M.A.S.K., Shakane, Wheels, Spode, 1984, Greg Robbins, Things Fall Apart, Roger Ruskin Spear, Don Crown, Zebedee, and Amazon Trust. Never heard of most of 'em before, probably won't hear of 'em again, but we're enjoying the one-off treats (some fun bubblegum, some grooving glam, some trippy prog pop) found here, now. And we'll be humming along with some of these for a while. One we did know was Primitive Man, whose outrageous "Animal Love" appeared on another cool comp, Neurotic Reactions, a few years back.
Another worth the price of admission highlight has to be "Little Girl" by a band called 1984, a remarkably jaunty number, upbeat and energetic and so very catchy, the bright and bouncy qualities of which contrast with the lyrics, the singer smugly telling off some girl who wronged him. And somehow also this song is replete with heavy psych guitar. They don't make 'em like that anymore. Likewise with the rest of the stuff on the disc, really! On the other hand, there's the super gruff voice used on the maniacal "Drop Out" by one Roger Ruskin Spear, that was probably a novelty back in the era it was recorded, though unwittingly a precursor to the likes of Killdozer!
The pseudo-occultic, proto-proto-metal percentage is down somewhat compared to the previous 2 volumes, but this still rocks, and the delightful kitsch quotient hasn't changed at all. Fuzzy, goofy, good times.
Like the other Electric Asylums, the cd booklet contains info on each track, as much as the compiler (who calls himself "Psychomania", so you know where his head's at) could dig up anyway, which actually often enough is more than you thought you'd ever want to know. Nicely done, with plenty of colorful original sleeve/label graphics illustrating the thick booklet.
It's back to the Electric Asylum for more of their specialized shock (and schlock?) treatment! A follow up to the excellent first volume, compiling more "bubblegum Black Sabbath" (our term) songs, a lot of 'em one-off singles, examples of obscure psychedelic-pop-prog from England, circa 1969-1974. We knew this one would be good just from the tracklist. Not that we'd heard of most of the bands, they just had cool names, evocative of the sort of eccentric, druggy, creepy-kitsch we loved about volume one: Wolfrilla! Humbug! Iron Cross! Lost Dog! Cats Eyes! Buster Jangles Flying Mattress! (Ok, so maybe that last one's not cool, but it's funny.) The bands we HAD heard of include Steamhammer, whose recently reissued album Speech is an AQ fave. And there's not one, but another two cuts by the female-fronted (Janis-ish) J.C. Heavy who appeared on the first Electric Asylum. Choc's here again too. Furthermore this includes the excellent Wishbone Ash-alike "Falling" by Iron Maiden - not THE Iron Maiden, but an earlier band of the same name, who also appeared with this same track on the proto-metal comp Downer Rock Genocide we listed last year.
There's 20 tracks here, lots of fuzzed out "freakrock" to pick favorites from. Humbug's track "Ebeneezer" (natch) is a good heavy groover. J.C. Heavy's "Mr. Deal" is all about their "pusher man". Steamhammer's "Windmill" is super flute-y, with a bit of a Doors vibe too. Gentry's "Attempted Contact" is a fine one for freaky swirling organ and occult seance themes. We could go on... but you'll find your own wilted flower power faves amongst the many charming efforts of hippie-glam "heaviness" committed to this asylum, bands who thought themselves possible alternate universe versions of the likes of Cream, Iron Butterfly, The Who, Steppenwolf, and/or the aforementioned Black Sabbath...
The illustrated cd booklet includes, extensive notes on each band/track, except for the most mysterious ones, often explaining the whys and wherefores of how each group of hopefuls never quite "made it" in the end, though some individuals from among these promising and/or peculiar acts went on to success in other outfits.
So, all good things must come to an end. Volume 5 of The Electric Asylum series is reputed to be the last, turning the lunatics loose. Uh-oh. For your next dose of musical electro-shock therapy you'll have to look elsewhere (maybe P&P's new series, curated as many if not all of these were by "The Psychomaniac", Psych Bites?).
Perhaps this is the last 'cause there seems to be a bit of bottom of the barrel scraping going on. A cover of "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin"? Really? Though, really, everything here has its charms, especially if you're in the mood for some obscure '70s glam. And there are a few quite solid surprises. We'd described earlier outings in this series as specializing in "Bubblegum Black Sabbath" bands. Well, ok, nothing was ever all that Black Sabbathy, but there was a kitschy occult vibe to some of the selections early on, certainly some heavy fuzz as well. Freakrock indeed. But this one definitely leans towards the Bubblegum, goofy more than freaky, which is fun too of course, but maybe not what we were hoping for after the relatively hard rock action of the previous volume, number 4.
As with all Electric Asylum entries, again with more silly names: Colonel Bagshot, Biggles, Squeek, Whistle, Mustard, Baby, Boston Boppers, Dunno... among others. 20 tracks in all by 19 artists. That's on account of them including both sides of the sole '74 single by singer Tracey Dean, a studio project produced by Giorgio Moroder, so that's pretty cool. Definitely one of the standouts here due to the catchy combo of Dean's weird wavery voice (kinda like the guy from Family) and the odd electronics of the production. Another neat one is Iron Horse covering "The Obeah Man", a voodoo-psych number originally by the amazing Exuma. And getting fully glam, the Jets' "Yeah!" is aptly named. So, Vol. 5 not the best in the series, mind you, the most hit and miss, but still not without some glammy, grin inducing gems and jams.
Includes excruciatingly detailed notes on each track in the thick cd booklet, with full color sleeve and label graphics reproduced. Nice. Too bad the cover art is another crappy CG job, dunno why they don't realize that doesn't jibe with the '70s aesthetic of what's been dug up here.
If any compilation series deserves to go to six volumes, the Electric Asylum series devoted to cult '70s British "freakrock" does. At least, we can't get enough of the stuff, so we're stoked on this latest installment, which brings us another big batch of obscure old acid psych / garage prog / hard pop weirdness sourced from rare 45's. 20 tracks, all circa 1971-'76. We recognize a few tracks - like the biker fuzz funk of Frog's "Living Dead", which also appeared on the soundtrack to Psychomania - but most are new to us. You get bubblegum glam, you get Moog-laden psych, you get novelty sci-fi grooviness... regarding the latter, John Pertwee, one of the actors who played TV's Dr. Who, contributes a track called "Who Is The Doctor", based on the Dr. Who theme!
Great & sometimes goofy stuff all around. The other artists on here include: Pioneers, Danaa, Bambi, Smoke, Marsha Hunt's 22, Barron Knights, Colin Young, JSD Band, Jeff Smith, Rococo, Jigsaw, Buster, Dawn Chorus, C. Star, Winston, Chris Garrett and Sweet Poison, Memories, and Henry Turtle. 16-page cd booklet provides notes on each, plus vintage color photos/graphics.
We've been lucky lately with all the cool comps of reissued fuzzed out vintage rock that have been coming our way, particularly including quite a few from the Psychic Circle label, discs like A Visit To The Spaceship Factory, Cosmarama and White Lace And Strange. Folks (like us) into late '60s/early '70s intersection of psych-pop, prog, and proto-metal have been very very happy with those. This one's not on Psychic Circle, but might as well be. It immediately piqued our attention with its subtitle, "Rare British Acid Freakrock". We weren't disappointed. This is freakrock indeed, from the wild synth soloing on Asylum's "Suzy's Back" to the demented drama of Monsoon's awesomely overwrought "Night Of The Fly". And as for rare, well we'd only heard of two of these acts before, Atomic Rooster and Steel Mill (whose "Get On The Line" is heavy, hairy funk by way of the Beatles, in the vocal dep't). Meanwhile the obscure likes of J.C. Heavy, Legs, Iron Horse, Galahad, Choc, Grumbleweeds, Satisfaction, Mighty 'Em, Puzzle, Renegade, and all the other none-hit wonders here are welcome discoveries. And this is only volume one, bring on volume two!
At its heaviest, The Electric Asylum offers up we might term "Bubblegum Black Sabbath". Doomy and druggy, but also poppy and groovy. Lumbering fuzz riffs and soaring female backing vocals abound (you'll find both on Rainbow Family's "Travellin' Lady"). Elsewhere, there's some kitschy horns, badass drum breaks, and lots of wah wah guitar... More than a few of these tracks, like Iron Horse's "Magic Love" and Galahad's "Rocket Summer", would have fit in nicely on Psychic Circle's recent Blitzing The Ballroom collection of glam rock rave ups, being hard rockers with handclaps and "hey!"s. There's 20 tracks total, a colorful cornucopia of catchy craziness that we're definitely digging.
The folks at P&P know they've got a good thing going with this Electric Asylum series; appropriately monikered compiler The Psychomaniac keeps coming up with winners. In the grand tradition, here's Volume 4, and it's a relatively hard 'n heavy one, subtitled "Rock Hard British Freakrock", as if they knew that Vol. 3, fun as it was, didn't entirely deliver the dunt rock we crave. Well Vol. 4, as befits that unintentional Sabbath reference, is a lot more tough, less bubblegummy... and that even includes the band on here called Bubbles! (Whose badass glammy proto-punk strut "Zap n' Cat" reminds us of Ronno or maybe even Hard Stuff). Oh yeah, this Electric Asylum is again populated with some goofy names, most of whom we'd never heard of before. Here's the full line up: Hector, Slowload, Rog and Pip, Wolfrilla, Incredible Hog, Smoke, Spunky Spider, Ning, Quiet World, Henry Turtle, Bear Brothers, Hard Horse, Mustard, Tuesday, Godson, Bubbles, Sunshine Kid, Clutch, Jackal, and Sundance. 20 tracks in all, mostly taken from one-off, 45 rpm single only releases from flash in the pan bands we're lucky to get to hear at all, most never made an album and did just one or two 7"s... Actually, the only bands we really knew was Incredible Hog (whose entire album is great), and Wolfrilla (a fave from Vol. 2).
Coming from circa 1970-75, a lot of this can be summed up as a bit Sabbath, a bit Slade, platform boots in each camp. Though, each individual band often seems to emulate other, specific, better known acts. Like, Godson sound kinda the Rolling Stones, Hard Horse are a lot like Nazareth, and Incredible Hog come closest to Led Zep... while Ning's "Machine" is somehow part Steppenwolf, part Gary Glitter. And then there's Smoke's "That's What I Want", which is almost like The Kinks' "All Day And All Of The Night" re-written with a "Sweet Leaf" fixation.
While we're not all that surprised that nobody here really ever "made it", that doesn't mean their attempts to do so are without merit! Not if you like lotsa fuzz 'n distortion, acid guitar soloing, and grunting wailing vox! Get yer fix of obscure '70s proto-metal groovy rockin' pop here.
The booklet contains the usual detailed-as-they-can-be trainspotting liner notes on each and every track (from which we learn useful minutiae such as that Sundance featured original Judas Priest drummer Alan Moore, ferinstance) plus full color sleeve/label graphics and vintage b&w photos... too bad about the crap cover art though.
If they can keep digging up records like these, we'll keep digging these comps! After this, we halfway expect P&P to jump ahead a few years to the late '70s / early '80s and bring us the killer NWOBHM rarities comp we know ol' Psychomaniac has got in him too...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Found Tapes is the second compilation published by Minimal Wave, the NYC label dedicated to reclaiming the hidden treasures from '80s of synth punk, new wave electronic experiments, and well... minimal wave. The first compilation of European rarities is currently out of print; but, Minimal Wave's collection from North America is available for the time being. The Found Tapes opens with a punchy synth punk number from Futurisk who hailed from Florida, claiming to be the first electro-punk band from the South. Ohama (from Alberta, Canada) are next, taking plenty of cues from Severed Heads. Iron Curtain were from Southern California, specializing on dark hypnotic grooves, ghostly vocals, and tumbling drum machine patterns. Deo Toy was a bedroom electronics project between the husband and wife team of Bill and Diana Owens, with very little information beyond this concisely rendered synth pop number. Mark Lane's "Who's Really Listening" had achieved some critical success in the early '80s, and it's easy to see why given the prescient similarities to Model 500's "No Ufo" as well as Gary Newman at his best. Dark, sinister monophunk is what the Philly ensemble Crash Course In Science offer for their "Flying Turns" track. Supposedly, they had recorded a single for Rough Trade, but that can't be confirmed. Dark Day is one of the uncelebrated triumphs of the post No Wave scene, as this was the project from R.L. Crutchfield formerly of DNA. Simple yet terminally bleak synth melodies and his clinically detached vocals were the basis for Dark Day, and made a huge impact some 20 years later on the Chromatics who covered his early single "Hands In The Dark." Dark Day present "Danger / Dancer" for "The Found Tapes" compilation with equal aplomb. Craig Sibley's another mystery man from the '80s, but did offer a charmingly dark synth number that's not too far from Ministry's loved and hated album With Sympathy. Tara Cross's "Tempus Fugit" from the album of the same name is a brilliantly primitive electro-funk that parallels the darkened sounds of Pink Industry or early Chris & Cosey. And finally, we have Experimental Products who had enjoyed a reissue campaign thanks to Vinyl On Demand. They qualified themselves as a garage band who picked up analog synths instead of guitars, although their cover of Brian Eno's "Another Green World" is sublimely not a garage punk track. Rather, an elegant redux closing out an excellent compilation!
Lost Tapes, then Found Tapes, and now Hidden Tapes. As good as many of the reissues that Minimal Wave has released, it's their compilations that really shine. Here, those obscurant new wave / post punk obsessives offer a great collection of urgent synth blorp from all over the world and all dating from the early '80s. Very few of these tracks had much in the way of distribution or fanfare whatsoever, and that makes the discovery all the better. There's only a couple of the acts that we had any familiarity with, and we're probably not alone in that assessment. The opening number by SS-Say is one of the tracks we had heard, being featured on the cd reissue of the Pesteg Dreg album, as both bands were led by the Danish synth-mastermind Martin Hall. "Care" is a megawatt anthem of oversaturated synth lines and Euro-pop danceability that lusts after the New Order production of Blue Monday with more cocaine and dark theatricality tossed in for good measure. Every thing else on the compilation is considerably more understated in terms of production quality (and following the branding of 'minimal wave' all the more), with high caliber tracks offered on the Normal / Human League anxious bleep from the Yugoslavian project Oskarova Fobija and the insistent synth-chanting of Danton's Voice. The British duo Robert Lawrence and Mark Phillips take up a friendlier version of early SPK / Nocturnal Emissions monophunk sequencing with transistor radio vocals and speed-simulating circuitry. Things turn toward the ultra-minimal side with the bittersweet melodicism of The Fast Set and Reserve's proto-Italo disco number, sporting an icy vocal detachment that would make Johnny Jewel jealous. The cd features two bonus tracks not on the vinyl including Gary Allen's weird science sequencing and goofy lyricism that looks to Devo and Oingo Boingo. Another tip of the hat goes to Minimal Wave for this one!
Subtitled: "Hip shaking grooves from Germany 1966-1974". Hence the "kraut" in the title -- nothing to do with the "krautrock" of Can/Faust/Amon Duul/etc., though. Nope, this very entertaining collection of twenty obscure cuts culled from rare soundtracks, singles, and library music sources is all about swingin' stuff for lounge pad hipsters, with a Teutonic twist. It starts off with the Marlene Dietrichish "From Here On It Got Rough" by Hildergard Knef, which could be a campy cabaret classic, and then ventures on into red light district funk, stoned jungle soul, and big band psychedelia, a lot of it performed by middle aged German jazz and pop musicans cashing in on the younger generation's trends. The Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra even does a cool cover of "Jumpin' Jack Flash", believe it or not (never thought I'd really enjoy hearing that particular song again so much). And there's definitely a spirit of the age, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor on display, from Kuno & The Marihuana Brass's "Marihuana Mantra" to Vivi Bach and Dietmar Schonherr's "Molotow Coctail Party". And (applause, please) the compilers have provided a cd booklet full of detailed notes on each track, full color cover pictures of the original records, and bad puns like the title ("kraut-pleasers").
The In-Kraut, the delightful sassy compilation of German '60s jazzy lounge pop music that we got almost exactly one year ago today got played like crazy around here! What a treat! And while its follow-up The In-Kraut Vol. II seems a bit more subdued in mood, it looks likes it too is gonna keep our toes a-tapping for a long long while. As we mentioned in the review of the first volume, despite the "Kraut" in the title, you should definitely not expect anything remotely resembling "Krautrock". You will not find anything by Can, Kraftwerk nor Faust, but you will find ultra shimmy shakin' tracks by the likes of Hazy Osterwald Jet Set, Charly Antolini's Power Dozen, The Inner Space (wait, that band actually IS Can, before they called themselves Can!), Joy & The Hit Kids and many more! Oh yes, and the swingin'est, big-band version of Deep Purple's "Black Night" we've ever heard!! Hot stuff!
Oh wow. It's here, though not for long. You may have seen it announced on our blog or elsewhere, and really should have preordered one... we've already sold most of the copies we got (which was a lot, as many as we could afford, really). But at the moment we still have, like, a dozen. And possibly will be able to restock a few again next week, though we don't know that for sure. The label only pressed 1000 copies, and we know they're going fast. So perhaps listing it here is just for posterity's sake.
So, what's all the excitement about you ask? If you're a fan of San Francisco's acclaimed Jewelled Antler collective of psychedelic/drone/improv/nature folks you should know, some years back (2003), they decided to release a series of 3" cd-r eps, once a month or so, with entries from JA regulars like Thuja, likeminded folks such as Dead Raven Choir and Antony Milton, and also odd, one-off quirky projects like Loren Chasse's frog-sounds disc dubbed Green Laughter. The idea was to release stuff that stood alone in twenty-minute doses and didn't need to be padded out to full-cd length. These cute lil' 3"s proved quite popular here at AQ, and of course are now long, long out of print like all Jewelled Antler cd-rs. Apparently a set will put you back about $100-120 on eBay nowadays, or until recently anyway... Well there'd been talk for some years now of these wonderful eps getting reissued on cd, in a box set or something, and lo it has finally come to pass thanks to the enthusiasm (and deep pockets) of Porter Records.
The Jewelled Antler Library box contains 4 discs in cardboard sleeves, Books One to Four, comprising all 12 original entries in the approximately-monthly 3" cd-r ep series plus some extra bonus material! 59 tracks, four hours and forty minutes in all. It breaks down like this... Book One: Loren Chasse/Tomes/The Ivytree/Hala Strana, Book Two: Dead Raven Choir/The Famous Boating Party/Uton, Book Three: Claypipe/The Muons/Thuja, Book Four: Fursaxa/Kemialliset Ystavat/The Ways Of God To Man. And interspersed between each of the thirteen volumes are twelve "Footpath" tracks of brand new field recordings by Loren Chasse, up-close-and-personal documents of rain and wind and other evocative textural cracklings and rustlings from the natural environment. The box also contains individual, full-color cards with the cover art and credits from each ep.
We reviewed all of them when they originally came out (or almost all of 'em, not sure what happened to the last few). Waste not, want not, so what follows is a conglomeration of our reviews of each library installment, slightly edited for clarity and to eliminate redundancies. Note how several of the entries in the series may have been the very first time we'd heard from a particular artist, such as Finland's Uton for instance, now well known to us and AQ customers...
Volume 1: Frogs!!! Can AQ-customers resist frog recordings? We think not. Certainly we can't. Green Laughter is primarily frog field recordings made and edited by Loren Chasse (Thuja, Id Battery, Of, Blithe Sons, etc.). It's twenty minutes of the call of the wild (featuring frogs, cicadas, and perhaps birds), starting off as a fairly straight documentary and then blending into a computer-processed drone-wash constructed by Chasse from his original recordings. It's like wandering in a dense creature-inhabited forest back East somewhere in the summertime, your ears overwhelmed by the natural sounds, you getting dizzy and almost passing out, the ribbitting and chirping and buzzing and tweeting taking over your mind. But it eventually dissolves back into a blissful background ambience. Real nice. And many of the sounds on here that sound insect-like or electronic Loren assures us are in fact frogs. It's nature's electronic music, the sound of a laptop computer overwhelmed by heat and long grasses and the green laughter. Just the thing for when I (Allan) get homesick for Pennsylvania.
Volume 2 is the debut recording from a group called Tomes, who are, as it turns out, basically Jewelled Antler flagship group Thuja (Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, Glenn Donaldson, absent Steven R. Smith), letting themselves get a little bit louder and noisier than they usually do in Thuja, harking back a bit to precursor band Mirza in fact. Probably the main reason this wasn't put out as a Thuja release is because Tomes' title and artwork are in fact the Jewelled Antler collective's knowing nod to a black metal aesthetic (which has fascinated Glenn particularly of late). But while intended as a tribute of sorts to black metal, the psychedelic drone music found here only holds subtle echoes of dark Nordic woodlands and burning churches. The twenty minutes of abstract heavy improv of The Dreadful Gift is darn good stuff regardless of the tangential conceptual framework. With noisy phantoms clanking chains, groaning drones, tell-tale heartbeats and and distorted freeform guitar feedback, this does achieve a dark n' dirgey but beautiful atmosphere. Too beautiful perhaps to leave the black metal hordes quaking in their corpsepaint, it still could be a Jewelled Antler Halloween soundtrack of sorts - I wonder why didn't they wait 'til the October Library installment for this? Definitely recommended.
Volume 3 comes from The Ivytree, a solo project of one of the Jewelled Antler's chief protagonists, Glenn Donaldson (who can also be found in Thuja, The Blithe Sons, Knit Separates, The Birdtree, etc). Donaldson has publicly announced an affinity for creating different monikers to accompany the innumerable variations of his musical productions, so The Ivytree may be just one in a number of upcoming 'tree' projects from Donaldson. Certainly this 18 minute ep has a lot in common with his previous 'tree disc, The Birdtree album, which garnered high praise from us. Centered around a plaintive, elliptical finger-picking guitar technique which renders every note full of melancholia, The Sun Is The Lamp weaves in and out of harmonium drones, field recordings of birds, and Donaldson's evocative vocals. As strong as the best Richard Youngs projects that might be the closest comparison we can make, this is another fantastic recording from Jewelled Antler!
Volume 4 is by Thuja's Steven R. Smith, who has taken up the Hala Strana moniker for his Eastern European-folk music inspired meditations. Karst continues down the path of his previous Jewelled Antler production Kohl, with a more ramshackle production for his dense acoustic arrangements for guitar and scratchy violin, which often hints at Eastern European timbres but as played by Nikki Sudden. In fact two of Smith's tracks are versions of traditional Polish and Romanian folk songs. Often beginning with a clutter of loose sounds, Smith coaxes his orchestrations into melancholic melodies and has smothered everything with an unusual patina of crunchy vinyl static, giving these 18 minutes a distinctly antiquated feel. A great entry in a great series...
Volume 5 is by Dead Raven Choir, the Texas-by-way-of-Poland based folk/improv one man project that the Jewelled Antler powers-that-be seem to be totally in love with of late - this was their 3rd DRC release of 2003! As with his previous Jewelled Antler cd-rs, DRC here conjures up some eccentric vocal theatrics and sparse, haunted acoustic guitar playing, like some sort of Eastern European Jandek. And his black metal obsession with wolves continues in the title here as well. Scarily beautiful, with atmospheric piano and unknown other sounds providing a hissing soundscape for his vocal, all three tracks here featuring macabre poetry by Paul Verlaine.
Volume 6 is something a bit different, yet familiar too to Jewelled Antler aficionados. It features the Blithe Sons (Glenn Donaldson and Loren Chasse, both also of Thuja and much else besides) joined by Eleanor Harwood on vocals. This trio's music is totally inspired by '70s art rock ensemble Slapp Happy, it's actually an intentional tribute of sorts. Eleanor is the heart of this, and we must say that for an untrained vocalist in an improvised setting, she's very impressive! Singing lyrics taken from a book of Kenneth Patchen poetry that was near to hand, "The Famous Boating Party", she totally inhabits the Dagmar Krause role, her vocals all wonderfully warbly and birdlike and lovely. She reminds us of Bjork at times too, no bad thing! Backing her up/leading her on, Glenn strums melodically on his 6 & 12 string guitars and adds comforting keyboard coloration, while Loren's "percussion & noises" both provide a steady beat and contribute the usual detailed, natural Jewelled Antler ambiance. It's very hazy and folky and fairytale like, a summer's afternoon encapsulated in a magical music box. Maybe not to everyone's taste (Slapp Happy certainly isn't either) but for some this will be a highlight in the Library series.
Volume 7 is also from outside the immediate ranks of Thuja and company. Although they've had a couple of cd-r releases popping up from tiny labels around the globe, this was our introduction to Uton. This anonymous, acoustic-noise-drone band hails from Finland, although they seem far more at home within the New Zealand community of Birchville Cat Motel, Anthony Milton, and Handful of Dust. Zwuiji is a bit more grating than most entries in the Jewelled Antler Library series, which typically opiate themselves with hazy improvised psychedelia and obtuse folk renderings. Rather Uton revels in mistreating their electric gear in order to fill up the audio spectrum with buzzing drones that swarm out of their amplifiers like angry wasps. Scratchy violins and atonally shifting wind instruments hover behind these gritty walls of vibrating feedback which comes across more as a misaligned engine block rattling all of those tones inside your head than as a typical trick with a couple of effects boxes. Certainly the fans of cd-r labels Celebrate Psi Phenomenon or PseudoArcana will like this.
Volume 8 hails from New Zealand's Claypipe. It seems Jewelled Antler have found some kindred souls Down Under, no not Gandalf and Frodo but in this case Antony Milton (who runs a cd-r label himself, Pseudoarcana) and Clayton Noone (C.J.A., Armpit) who together are known as Claypipe. Repetition and drone and field recording grit coexist with lovely acoustic guitar - it's real nice. With wistful, earnest vocals, some distorted and layered, this is neither indie-pop nor environmental ambient, but a hybrid that totally fits with Jewelled Antler 'groups' like the Blithe Sons and Child Readers, while possessing that special New Zealand magic we all adore. Seven tracks, 20 minutes, and you're left wishing it were longer.
Volume 9 is a disc from SF's Muons, not a Jewelled Antler band per se, but in those guys' orbit. There's five songs here, just under twenty minutes of fragile, psychedelic folk recorded live, where they really shine. Inspired by traditional British folk music, but made soooo minimal and spacey that they've been called the "Bernhard Gunter of space-folk", the Muons make forlorn lullabys for adults. For this performance, the Muons were just the duo of Greg Bianchini and Rickey Reneau. Greg, who has played with Jewelled Antler acts Franciscan Hobbies, Thuja and Blithe Sons, is an gifted instrument maker, and on this recording plays a home-built 14-string electric lute as well as sings. Rickey plays an electric dulcimer, probably also built by Greg. Greg's languid strumming and melancholic vocals seem to drift out of the smoke and mist of another era, and could be from a lost UK psych-folk comp, although this is so slow and sad and desolate that no hippy could have made it - they'd be too bummed out. We're also reminded of some Galaxie 500, or old NZ stuff like the Chills. Certainly this is a bit different than much else in the Library series - it's got to be the most 'composed' set of songs found on any of these 3" discs. But we think JA fans will like it, a lot. It has a 'flowers in the rain' vibe that's just lovely. And the loveliness extends to the paintings Greg did for the 3" cover. Very nice.
Volume 10 is from Thuja. With the series getting close to the end, it's about time for these guys to finally make an appearance (unless you count the almost-Thuja entry by black metal inspired alter ego Tomes). 20 or so minutes, 2 tracks. Again, the Thujans (Loren Chasse, Rob Reger, Steven R. Smith, and Glenn Donaldson) make some of the most beautiful and mysterious abstract instrumental improv we've heard. All we're told is that Fable was "recorded at night in the Garden of Kains, August 30, 2003". There could have been weird old hippies sitting in, or magical woodland beasts (of the past), or academic dronologists gone a bit strange on natural pharmacueticals...but probably it was just Thuja, and their music is conjuring these imaginary visitors not the other way around.
All those above reviews from our archives get us up to book/disc four, volumes 11, 12, and the previously unheard by us quasi-volume 13 in the Library series. We'll briefly describe 'em here (as if you needed us to...):
Volume 11 is from Fursaxa, and consists of one haunting track, "Harbinger of Spring". Nearly 18 minutes of wordless vocal drone, tumbling tribal drums, and other mysterious atmospheres. Good music for the next time you're trapped inside a Wicker Man.
Volume 12 comes from Finnish freaky forest folks Kemialliset Ystavat, who always seemed like Jewelled Antler soulmates. Five tracks here of their moody, magical improvs. Primitive, krauty jams we love.
And then the "bonus" Volume 13 is by Jewelled Antler act Ways Of God To Man (Christine Boepple, Kerry McLaughlin, Loren Chasse and Glenn Donaldson). It was originally released in a very limited edition on a NZ cd-r label in 2004. Despite featuring 2 former AQ employees, we never even got any... Three tracks ("Nothing", "Everything", and "Anything") of dark psychedelic throb and abstract, distorted melodic murk, over 28 minutes total. It sounds to us like Jewelled Antler's tribute to Ya Ho Wa 13! Even if you already have the other 12 volumes of the library on the original 3"s cd-rs, and getting them again on the more durable medium of actual compact disc isn't a compelling enough reason to buy this box, we'd imagine that getting to hear the Ways Of God To Man could sweeten the deal considerably.
All right, considering we KNOW we're gonna run out of these right away, this review is quite long enough! Just one more paragraph to go...
Need we say, pretty darn recommended. But do we have any complaints? Well, musically, not really, of course some volumes will appeal more that others but that's the deal, and you can't get 'em individually anymore anyway. Also, just in terms of physical production, any ambitious, unique project like this is bound to have a few flaws. Will the metallic foil debossing of the Jewelled Antler logo on the box top IS quite handsome, the box itself is a bit of a disappointment. It just a bit flimsier than we were expecting ("heavy chip board stock" it's not), apparently due to the difficulty of debossing on heavier cardboard. Also it's bigger than it needs to be, leaving empty space inside for the cds and cards to rattle around. Had each one been stuffed (in true Jewelled Antler style) with twigs and moss and suchlike, that would have solved the problem, unfortunately that probably proved to be impractical, but you could do it yourself once you get this! There's also just a couple of proofing errors we noticed, nothing serious (Hala Strana got left off the back of the box, alas) but it's still too bad. However, the overall presentation is still pretty nice and of course it's the music that matters. So, that said, we can only reiterate: pretty darn recommended!
Wondering who is Joe South? Some of us here were too. Born Joe Souter, he was the songwriter behind a remarkable number of those AM radio favorites about which you might've found yourself thinkin' "who wrote that?" Now are ya wondering which songs? Oh you know 'em alright! "Hush" (as recorded by Deep Purple), "Rose Garden" (as sung by Lynn Anderson, y'know "I beg your pardon, I never promised you a..."), "Down In The Boondocks" (as sung by Billy Joe Royal), "Games People Play" (as sung by the man himself) and the list goes on. Kelly Hogan, Kelley Stoltz, Persephone's Bees, Chris Von Sneidern, Chuck Prophet, Ron Silva & The New Believers, Jesse DeNatale, Tom Heyman, Stephanie Finch, Ted Roddy, Paul Cebar and Otis Clay have all paid their respects to South and the broad, indelible mark he made on American popular music of the '60s and '70s by performing their renditions of twelve of his songs (many of them very faithful to the original). Since a bunch of the songs were conveniently recorded in the same studio here in SF, folks ended up playing on each others' songs quite a bit. This lends a consistency as well as a warm family gathering feel to the compilation. Also joining in to play a few bars are Mark Greenberg (ex-Coctails) and Marc Capelle (American Music Club).
A few months back we raved about the Primitive Calculators anthology which came out on Chapter Music. Thanks to that review, we were contacted by Denise Hilton who had been one of the electronic wizards in that seminal Australian synth punk and had some rare singles that she was willing to part with. I'm not sure why this is called "The Little Band" EP, as it doesn't say that anywhere on this super-rare 7," but supposedly that's the title. Anyway each of the four bands -- Too Fat To Fit Through The Door, Morpions, The Take, and Ronnie & The Rhythm Boys -- are side projects of the Primitive Calculators. whose synth-punk / no-wave axis of Suicide meets DNA is present in some, way, shape or form on all of the tracks. This is especially true on the Ronnie and The Rhythm Boys electrically shrill version of "Hey Joe," but The Take offers something a bit closer to Young Marble Giants with their delicately constructed number of perfect punk-pop. This is actually an original pressing from back in 1979 (with reconstructed covers since the originals succumbed to mold), and it's unlikely that we'll get any more copies.
We reviewed the Dean Carter disc a few lists back, a killer collection of super twisted rockabilly and garage rock, ultra distorted, tons of weird effects, super rocking and far out, especially for the time. We sold a ton, and still can't seem to stop listening to it. In the liner notes, they kept mentioning a comp called The Midnite Sound Of The Milky Way, a collection of singles from the label that Dean Carter called home, and we figured if it was even half as weird as the Carter disc, we had to have it, and guess what, it totally is.
This one is not new either, a few years old in fact, but somehow we missed out both on the Carter, and the Milky Way, so we figured maybe some of you did too. More twisted garage rock, weirdo rockabilly, some proto-doom (really!) and some stuff that we're not exactly sure how to describe. One name keeps popping up all over this disc, with NINE tracks, and that's Kookie Cook, who just so happened to be a member of Dean Carter's band, and judging from these tracks, had much to do with that twisted sound. "Workin' Man" is a total classic, with a killer main riff, a bunch of whistling, some weirdly delivered sung spoken vocals, lots of "HEY!"s, some awesome drumming, and a screaming lead that lasts all of two seconds. Woah. "Don't Lie" is a slithery twisted swampy bit of blues, with frenzied howled vox, and some strange female back ups. "Revenge" is a total reverbed surf jam, with some more super strange vocals, frenzied and maniacal, all over some shimmery twang, and some seriously pounding drums. "Misery" and "I Feel Alright" are classic fifties sounding rockabilly blues jams, with bad ass guitar wrangling, all super distorted and tangled. "Ooby Dooby" is another fifties style groover, with lots of nonsense lyrics, and some really weird female back up vox, and finally, "Drums" begins with Cook shouting "Drums! Baby!" and then two minutes of wild drum freakout and occasional shouts. So good. We hope this guy has a lost album somewhere. Cook also contributes two tracks with his band the Satalites, one of which sounds a little like the Benny Hill theme mixed with surf rock, while the other is a weird slow jam, all wild manic laughing, and weird horns and 'whoop!'s in the background. And that's just Cook's tracks (which are more than enough reason to buy this), there's also the mysterious 12th Knight, whose "Death Row" is total fuzz drenched proto-doom, like Sabbath played on shitty little amps, so grim and weirdly heavy, and there's a bunch of other groups, The Cobras, Dave Marten, Four A While, George Jacks, Jack Johnson, The Grapes Of Wrath and Willie & The Travelaires, all of them cool, although not as weird or far out as Cook or as heavy and haunting as 12th Knight. Such a killer comp. Anyone who dug the Dean Carter, or just loves lost outsider gems from the sixties, this is definitely well worth checking out!
Yay, also at last we have a bunch (well, maybe not for long) of this recent Record Of The Week on vinyl!!
Ooooh, so awesome! If you're familiar with Minimal Wave already, or if you're not, this is the thing to get.
The Minimal Wave label and website have been tremendous resources for discovering the hidden gems of synth punk, cold wave, Neue Deutsche Welle, and any of the darker strains of new wave that all blossomed throughout the early to mid '80s. While the label has released full album reissues (vinyl-only) from a number of forgotten men and women of the trade, the two comps that Minimal Wave has issued over the years - the Lost Tapes (documenting European artists) and the Found Tapes (culling from North America) - were absolutely stunning, without a dud amongst the many collected tracks. Unfortunately, those two comps were quite expensive and quite hard to come by. So when Minimal Wave and Stones Throw came together to release this comp, our initial reaction (and that of a few others walking in the shop) was that this compilation fused those Lost & Found Tapes together. Well, we were wrong as this highlights not only some of the best tracks from those compilations, but also the best tracks from the Minimal Wave reissue library, plus a few rare gems not readily available anywhere else.
The Belgian outfit Linear Movement (which later morphed into A Split Second) opens the compilation with a very cold dance number of disaffectedly cold Italo-disco rhythms and female vocals that would fit in with any given Johnny Jewel production for Italians Do It Better (e.g. Chromatics, Glass Candy, Desire, etc.). Crash Course In Science's "Flying Turns" re-emerged first on the Found Tapes and then on the totally awesome Vinyl On Demand anthology; and is an immediately catchy if darkly unique number of dot-dot-dash electro and spiky rhythms closer in spirit to the Units or Nervous Gender. Oppenheimer Analysis reprises a very Gary Numanoid track from their eponymous record which Minimal Wave reissued a while back. The Mark Lane track "Who's Really Listening" is another insistent proto-techno number of synthetic micro-blips driving handclap drum rhythms and Lane's Ultravox-ish vocals. Tara Cross was one of the few women tinkering around with electronics, and produced some beguiling arrhythmic structures with staccato synth punches and her drawn out vocal ambience. Turquoise Days may have been the only New Wave export of the Channel Islands, pulling out some jangling dissonance from their guitars to match the Modern English synth melodies. Minimal Wave reprises the Lost Tapes with a great track from Bene Gesserit, a project of bleakly alienated progressive electronics from Alain Neff who ran the Insane Music label. The Esplendor Geometrico track is curiously playful for a project that centered so much on dangerously mechanoid industrial grinding. Das Ding's "Reassurance Ritual" was designed for the dancefloor with a constant revolution of drum machine programming around tightly wound synth melody repetitions. Cryptic theatrics from the Martin Dupont ensemble appear on "Just Because" sounding a lot like a Fad Gadget B-side. And if the Deux track "Game & Performance" sounds familiar, it's because you've heard it on the BIPPP compilation which Ed Banger re-released a while back. The compilation is fleshed out with the best death disco groove that Das Kabinette ever mustered on their single "The Cabinet" which did come out on a Minimal Wave lp a while back.
Fantastic!!!!!
By now, the term 'minimal wave' has become synonymous with a particular thread of somewhat dystopian and certainly DIY electronic pop whose origins land somewhere between 1978 and 1984. Back then, all of this music was probably lumped under the new wave or post-punk or maybe even industrial category; but thanks to Veronica Vasicka's label, a new taxonomy has stuck, and more than a handful of archivist labels following suit, including the exceptionally well curated Dark Entries alongside Vasicka's Minimal Wave.
Here, we have the second co-release between Minimal Wave and Peanut Butter Wolf's Stones Throw, collecting very rare tracks from very obscure 'minimal wave' acts mostly from that aforementioned time period. The only artist on this compilation with something of cultural cache would be Felix Kubin, whose contribution here is a cover of the jittery Germanic punk number "Japan Japan" by Abwarts, turning the frenzied pogo guitars and drums into Devo-esque electronic squeak and double-timed drum machination. Of course, Kubin adds his signature blankly-serious silliness to the reworking which dated back even to this track from 1985. Lesser known acts include Subject (with Belgian electronic maverick Alain Neffe providing the backing track to the impressively infectious guitar riff and motorik chug), Ruins (not to be confused with the Japanese group, this Italian act takes after the mid-'80s Factory Records dark discotheque productions a la Section 25) and Das Ding (a Dutch project of buzzing synth workouts who we only discovered through a full album reissued by Minimal Wave). Other total obscurities include the crooning melodrama of Class Info, the terse arpeggio of Hard Corps, and the contemporary production of Geneva Jacuzzi making a cheap electro-tango that harks back to the chimerical publications from 99 Records. It all makes for another fine piece of archival curation from Minimal Wave!
Cup got positively giddy when she saw that The Goblins were on this record, but she soon found out that they're not Thee Goblins from Vancouver - the jawdropping spectacle lead by Nardwuar The Human Serviette (interviewer extraordinaire and leader of The Evaporators who actually do an appropriately blistering, bizarre cover of The Monks' "Higgle-ly Piggle-ly"). Despite the liner notes (written by The Monks' Eddie Shaw!) describing these versions as bringing "30 year old music into the 21st century", they're really much more controlled, faithful renditions courtesy of The Goblins, The Cuckoos, The Graves Brothers and Kelley Stoltz.
Of course, the wonder of The Monks was their absolute raging fearlessness especially taking into consideration the time in which they existed... 1966! Five GIs stationed in Germany formed this strange strange band. They shaved the tops of their heads monk-style, worn long black robes, and thumped out the most amazing primal rock. Vocals were howled, yelped and ranted. Lyrics were filled with bile and dark wit. Everything was completely untethered, so truly punk, badass and one-of-a-kind! That said, it seems kinda odd to cover them - either attempting to recapture the songs' raw energy or to completely rework them - 'cause there was so much more to The Monks than the songs.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It might seem silly to list the second of two 10cd boxsets before we list the first, but we to be honest, both are equally awesome, and there's really no specific chronology. And odds are, most folks who buy this one, either already have the other one, or are gonna want that one too. If you're the latter, and do want both, go ahead and order this one, and we can order you the first one, we're hoping to have more in the next week or so.
Anyway, most record nerds and certainly most garage / beat freaks are no doubt well aware of the Rubble series of lps collecting all manner of garage, psych and pop rarities on killer comps, each filled with all time favorites and tons of should have been classics. Super grungy garage stomp, sunshiney pop, groovy psychedelic jangle, shimmery hippy grooves, fuzzy flower child folk, tripped out acid psych, druggy dream pop, fuzzy proto metal, Beach Boys-ish surf rock and every possible stop in between. Just a list of some of the hundred plus bands should have most music obsessives drooling: The Accent, Fairy Tale, The Californians, Ice, Cherry Smash, Felius Andromeda, The Attack, Turquoise, Bulldog Breed, Virgin Sleep, Human Instinct, The Timebox, Outer Limits, Tintern Abbey, East Of Eden, Ozworld, Buzz, Blue Bous, Southern Sounds, Force Five, The French Revolution, The Peep Show, Espirit De Corps, Our Plastic Dream, Nirvana, Ghost, Groove, Sub, Science Poption, Strawberry Children, Curiosity Shoppe, Noah's Ark, The Zipps, The Pretty Things, Tuesday's Children, Jackpots, Wonderland, Wallace Collection, Jason Crest, The Sound Barrier, House Of Lords, St. Valentines Day Massacre, Mint, Carriage Company, Dreams, Chasers, Remo Four, Sea-Ders, Fox, The Oscar Bicycle, Gentle Influence, The Lion Tamers, Wild Silk, Spice, The Afex, Philamore Lincoln, Andwella's Dream, Argosy, Time Machine, Oct'Opus, Dee & Quotum, The Still Life, Doomsday Machine, Infantes Junilate, Pregnant Insomnia, Fruit Machine, Lions Of Judah, Cymbaline, Together, Protobello Explosion, The Fourmyula, Icarus, The Moving Finger, Cinnamon Quill, Blossom Toes, Soft Machine, Bump Of Chicken, The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, Pandemonium, Adjeef The Poet, Apple and more more more!!!
Besides having some of the most awesome band names ever, these are some of the most amazing tracks you'll ever hear. It's like the greatest pop psych fuzz surf garage hippy folk proto-metal mixtape EVER!!!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. Each disc in it's own sleeve, a huge booklet with liner notes, housed in a super nice acid drenched full color box, each one machine numbered.
Way recommended! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item you're looking for, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! 1-2-6 "Graveyard Paradise: The Complete 1 2 6 & Taboo Recordings, 1966-68" (Ugly Things) cd 15.98 ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT "Absolute Magnitude" (Blossoming Noise) cd 14.98 AETHENOR "Betimes Black" (VHF) cd/lp 13.98/14.98 AIR "Moon Safari" (EMI) cd + dvd + book 26.00 ALLIEN, ELLEN "Sool" (BPitch Control) cd 15.98 ALTER EGO "What's Next?!" (Klang Electronic) cd 16.98 AMBARCHI, OREN & Z'EV "Spirit Transform Me" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 AMEBIX "No Sanctuary" (Alternative Tentacles) cd/lp+7" 14.98/13.98 AMON DUUL II "Hijack" (Revisited Records) cd 17.98 ANAKRID "Banishment Rituals of The Disenlightened" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 16.98 ANCESTORS "Neptune With Fire" (North Atlantic Sound) cd 19.98 ARC "Arkhangelsk" (Epidemie) cd 15.98 ASCEND "Ample Fire Within" (Southern Lord) cd 15.98 BAKER, AIDEN "Book of Nods" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 17.98 BALDWIN, MATT "Paths Of Ignition" (American Dust) cd 14.98 BATTLEMASTER "Warthirsting & Winterbound" (Forcefield) cd 13.98 BLACK ANGELS, THE "Directions To See A Ghost" (Light In The Attic) cd 13.98 BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW "Zodiac Girls" (Suicide Squeeze) 7" 4.98 BON IVER "For Emma, Forever Ago" (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98 BRUHIN, ANTON "Vom Goldabfischer" (Algamarghen) cd 21.00 BUN B "II Trill" (Rap-a-lot) cd 14.98 CAVE, NICK & THE BAD SEEDS "Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!" (Mute Records) cd 16.98 CHILD READERS "Music Heard Far Off" (Soft Abuse) cd 14.98 CIRCLE X "Prehistory" cd 14.98 COLDWORKER "Rotting Paradise" (Relapse) cd 14.98 COUGH "Sigillum Luciferi" (Forcefield Records) cd 10.98 COURTIS, ANLA / SEIICHI YAMAMOTO / YOSHIMI "Live At Kanadian" (Public Eyesore) cd 10.98 CROM "Hot Sumerian Nights" (Underdogma) cd 14.98 DANIEL, TED QUINTET "Tapestry" (Porter Records) cd 14.98 DISKJOKKE "Staying In" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98 DJ SCOTCH EGG "Drumized" (Load) cd 15.98 DRUMM, KEVIN "Imperial Distortion" (Hospital) cd 19.98 EAT SKULL "Sick To Death" (Siltbreeze) lp 14.98 EATER "The Album + Singles Plus" (Anagram) 2cd 17.98 EIKO, ISHIBASHI & TATSUYA YOSHIDA "Slip Beneath The Distant Tree" (Rhythm Tracks) cd 15.98 EREB ALTOR "By Honour" (I Hate Records) cd 16.98 FLAMES OF HELL "Fire and Steel" (Draconian Records) cd 18.98 FREE POP ELECTRONIC CONCEPT, THE "A New Exciting Experience" (Vampisoul) cd 23.00 FRICARA PACCHU "Midnight Pyre" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98 GIANT / TIDES "Split" (Level-Plane) lp 13.98 GOTO80 "Made On Internet" (Pinipung) cd 17.98 GREGOR SAMSA "Rest" (The Kora Records) cd 14.98 GUILTY SIMPSON "Ode To The Ghetto" (Stones Throw) cd 14.98 HAINO, KEIJI & MASAMI AKITA "Kikuri" (Victo) cd 15.98 HATCHET "Awaiting Evil" (Metal Blade) cd 13.98 HEAVEN AND "Sweeter as the Years Roll By" (Staubgold) cd 17.98 HEAVY, THE "Great Vengeance and Furious Fire" (Counter) cd/lp 14.98/22.00 HOWLIN' MAGIC "The Dreaming" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98 JAY, JEREMY "A Place Where We Could Go" (K Records) cd/lp 14.98/13.98 JAZKAMER "Art Breaker" (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 16.98 JEX THOTH "s/t" (I Hate Records) cd 16.98 JEX THOTH / PAGAN ALTAR "split" (I Hate Records) 7" 12.98 JOYNER, SIMON "The Cowardly Traveler Pays His Toll" (Team Love) cd 14.98 KALMA, ARIEL "Le Temps Des Moissons" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 17.98 KAWAGUCHI MASAMI'S NEW ROCK SYNDICATE "Cat Vs. Frog" (Palindrone) lp 17.98 KAYO DOT "Blue Lambency Downward" (Hydrahead) cd 14.98 KLUSTER "1970 - 1971" (Water) 3cd 27.00 KLUSTER "Admira" (Important) cd 14.98 KLUSTER "Vulcano: Live In Wuppertal 1971" (Important) cd 14.98 KOSS "Four Worlds Converge As One" (Mule Electronic) cd 16.98 KULTIVATOR "Barndomens Stigar" (Mellotronen) 2cd 28.00 LIL MAMA "VYP Voice Of the Young People" (Zomba) cd 17.98 MANIACS DREAM "Turku Hold 'Em" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98 MANITATSU "Reason For Travel" (Rhythm Tracks) cd 15.98 MAYER, NATHANIEL "Why Don't You Give It To Me?" (Alive) cd 15.98 MELOY, COLIN "Colin Meloy Sings Live" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98 MONOPOLY CHILD STAR SEARCHERS "Infant Spirtuality Rates Coconut Percent" (Pacific City) cd-r 9.98 MONOTONIX "Body Language" (Drag City) cd/lp 12.98/12.98 MUDHONEY "The Lucky Ones" (Sub Pop) cd/lp 13.98/14.98 NADJA "Desire In Uneasiness" (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98 NAKED ON THE VAGUE "Blood Pressure Sessions" (Dual Plover) cd/lp 16.98/13.98 NATURAL FOOD "s/t" (Porter Records) cd 16.98 OLD 97'S "Blame it on Gravity" (New West) cd 15.98 ORCHESTRA BAOBAB "Made In Dakar" (Nonesuch) cd 16.98 OSBORNE "s/t" (Spectral Sound) cd 17.98 OSMONDS, THE "Crazy Horses / The Plan" (7T's / Cherry Red) cd 17.98 PATTON, MIKE "A Perfect Place" (Ipecac) cd 16.98 PENTEMPLE "s/t" (Southern Lord) cd 15.98 POLLARD, ROBERT "Robert Pollard Is Off To Business" (GBV) cd/lp 14.98/14.98 QUIET VILLAGE "Silent Movie" (!K7) cd 14.98 ROOTS, THE "Rising Down" (Def Jam) cd 14.98 RUBIES FEATURING FEIST "I" (Italians Do It Better) 12" 9.98 RUSALNAIA (FEAT. SHARRON KRAUS) "s/t" (Camera Obscura) cd 15.98 RUSSIAN CIRCLES "Station" (Suicide Squeeze) cd 14.98 SANTOGOLD "s/t" (Downtown) cd 14.98 SARAH'S CHARITY "Code Of Red Twin" (Arbor) cd-r 9.98 SARMANTO, HEIKKI "Moonflower" (Porter Records) cd 16.98 SEMIMUUMIO "Vamos" (Lal Lal Lal) cd 15.98 SHIT AND SHINE "Kuss Miche, Meine Liebe" (Load) cd SHY CHILD "Noise Won't Stop" (Kill Rock Stars) cd 14.98 SIAN ALICE GROUP "59.59" (The Social Registry) cd 14.98 SIC ALPS "Fool's Mag" (Folding) cassette 5.98 SILVER MT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA-BAND "13 Blues For Thirteen Moons" (Constellation) cd/lp 15.98/22.00 SONIC YOUTH "J'accuse Ted Hughes" (SYR POB) 12" 10.98 SPRING HEEL JACK "Songs & Themes" (Thirsty Ear) cd 16.98 STAR STANGLED BANGER "s/t" (Aztec) cd 24.00 SUN RA "Some Blues But Not The Kind Thats Blue" (Atavistic) cd 15.98 TABATA, MITSURU "Lumrapideco" (Utech) cd 16.98 TAPE "Luminarium" (Hapna) cd 16.98 UNEARTHLY TRANCE "Electrocution" (Relapse) cd 15.98 V/A "Disco Italia" (Strut) cd 14.98 V/A "IVG Vol 1" (Born Bad) cd 15.98 V/A "Living is Hard: West African Music in Britain, 1927 - 1929" (Honest Jons) cd/2lp 17.98/22.00 V/A "Nashville Sputnik: The Deep South / Outer Space Productions Of Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan 1956-2004" (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98 V/A "Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump" (Strut) cd 14.98 V/A "Steppas' Delight Vol. 1" (Soul Jazz) 2lp 26.00 V/A "Steppas' Delight Vol. 2" (Soul Jazz) 2lp 26.00 V/A "Steppas' Delight" (Soul Jazz) 2cd 25.00 V/A "Thank You Friends: The Ardent Records Story" (Big Beat) 2cd 29.00 V/A "The In-Kraut Vol.3" (Marina) lp 19.98 VEGETABLE ORCHESTRA "Remixed" (Karmarouge) cd 17.98 VON TILL, STEVE "A Grave Is A Grim Horse" (Neurot) cd 14.98 WALKER, PETER "Echo Of My Soul" (Tompkins Square) cd 14.98 WE ARE SCIENTISTS "Brain Thrust Mastery" (Astralwerks) cd 10.98 WEED "s/t" (Revisited / Phillips) cd 17.98 WELLES, ORSON "Your Obedient Servant" (El Records) cd 17.98 YA HO WHA 13 "Feather Of Wisdom" (Phoenix) lp 23.00 YELLOW SWANS "Deterioration" (Modern Radio Record Label) cd 11.98 _______________________________________________________________________ ABOUT MAILORDER
This is the second Brazilian post-punk compilation we've gotten in the last couple of weeks. The first one that arrived was the electrifying Nao Wave - 1982-1988 released by Man Recordings. This one's from those fine folks at Soul Jazz who've built a solid reputation for releasing music of many sorts (reggae, funk, soul, and post-punk) from many distant locales -- all with one particular thing in common, an addictive, propulsive groove. They've certainly tapped into a wild geyser with this release, although it's not quite as out-there and off-the-hook as the tough-act-to-follow Nao Wave. Most of the eighteen songs are much more typical of the angular sounds you'd imagine when you think of British post-punk (Wire, Gang Of Four, etc). Some artists from Nao Wave reappear here, they are Akira S Et As Garotas Que Erraram, Chance, As Mercenarios, and Fellini, but fortunately only two song are redundant ("Sobre As Pernas" and "Samba De Morro" by the first two artists respectively).
This is the second Brazilian post-punk compilation we've gotten in the last couple of weeks. The first one that arrived was the electrifying Nao Wave - 1982-1988 released by Man Recordings. This one's from those fine folks at Soul Jazz who've built a solid reputation for releasing music of many sorts (reggae, funk, soul, and post-punk) from many distant locales -- all with one particular thing in common, an addictive, propulsive groove. They've certainly tapped into a wild geyser with this release, although it's not quite as out-there and off-the-hook as the tough-act-to-follow Nao Wave. Most of the eighteen songs are much more typical of the angular sounds you'd imagine when you think of British post-punk (Wire, Gang Of Four, etc). Some artists from Nao Wave reappear here, they are Akira S Et As Garotas Que Erraram, Chance, As Mercenarios, and Fellini, but fortunately only two song are redundant ("Sobre As Pernas" and "Samba De Morro" by the first two artists respectively).
So we've actually already had quite a few amazing compilations of '60s and '70s popular music from Thailand, including a whole bunch of discs from the infallible Sublime Frequencies label (Thai Pop Spectacular, Siamese Soul, Molam: Thai Country Groove, Shadow Music Of Thailand, etc., etc.), and also the Subliminal Sounds label's Thai Beat A-Go-Go series, but we were still super excited when we heard about the upcoming release of this new comp of vintage Thai tunes, 'cause it's been put together by Soundway, the UK-based label that also seemingly can do no wrong when it comes to international crate diggin'. Soundway is responsible for all those Nigeria Special comps, and the Ghana Soundz ones too, among other fine collections and reissues, most focused on music from Africa or Latin America. This is their first venture into Southeast Asia, as far as we know, and boy did they do the job well! A more lively, colorful comp could hardly be imagined. The compilers, who have spent hours and days on the ground in Thailand searching out vintage vinyl, know their stuff (their DJ night, "Bangkok Paradise", must be a blast).
Nineteen tracks, 66 minutes of music, ranging from yearning love songs to super groovy funk, all of it quite undeniably 'exotic' to our ears, so that even with Western psych and pop influences, incorporating surprise rock riffs, synths, and brass sections, it's most definitely music from Thailand, utilizing Thai folk traditions, sung in the Thai language, though some of it also reminds us of Bollywood stuff (which makes sense), or possibly the Ethiopiques series as well (a less likely connection there). We recognize a few of the artists' names from those other abovementioned comps, though they seem aware of what's been comped already and we're assured that most of the tracks here have never been released outside of Thailand before.
The subtitle doesn't say "leftfield" for nothing, this probably isn't the most typical mainstream Thai pop from the period, more like the hippest and freakiest, though often from quite popular artists, many revered to this day. Soundway treat us to some wonderfully eccentric picks, gems like Waipod Phetsuphan's "Ding Ding Dong", a song inspired by a dumb 1971 Italian sex comedy about prehistoric cavemen (and cavewomen) that was inexplicably a hit film in Thailand. And the spaced out lounge-jazz of The Viking Combo band's "Pleng Yuk Owakard" must be mentioned. Mindblowing. Walking bass, spooked out electric organ, maniacal vocals, loud shuddery chords, sudden percussion, woah it's a weird one, almost disturbing. Whichever DJ/collector first dug that one up must have been stoked. So much good stuff here, our point is, the treasures of vintage Thai pop are plentiful enough to require this comp, those that came before, and hopefully many more to come. You gotta be thankful when you think about it, without the efforts of labels like Sublime Frequencies, and Soundway, etc., we'd be missing out on so much incredible music that we now listen to on a daily basis, whether it be from Thailand or Nigeria or wherever.
This comes in a digipack with a thick 24 page booklet that boasts plenty of full-color graphics (lots of vintage record sleeves and labels, plus pics of some of the artists, and a couple shots of the interior of a vinyl shop in Bangkok) and extensive liner notes. There's a lengthy essay discussing the development of, and distinctions between, such popular musical forms as luk thung, luk krung, and molam, with the impact of Western sounds such as surf rock and Santana also being discussed. Then each track gets its own detailed explanatory note as well, often giving some insight into the sometimes peculiar lyrical content the songs. (Also one mentions that Ethiopian groove-master Mulatu Astatke once spent time in Thailand, and has been quoted as having found some of the sounds of Thai music quite similar to those of his own country, so it's not just us.) Super thorough and informative, much as we expect from Soundway. Yay!
While often known mostly for being one of the birthplaces of the riot grrrl movement and home to challenging smart post punk art-rock bands, Slim Moon's Kill Rock Star label has always had a soft spot for the delicacy of a good singer-songwriter. Releasing records by the likes of Elliott Smith and Mary Lou Lord in the early days of the label, Moon showed he wasn't afraid to show his fondness for the sensitive song done right. This compilation is an extension of that love as Moon got 21 songs by some very well known and some unknown singer songwriters. With well known folks like Sufjan Stevens, Laura Veirs, Nedelle, Wooden Wand, Colin Meloy (Decemberists) alongside up and comers like Simone White, Lauren Hoffman, Essie Jain, etc. Quite nice. ----* ----* New DVD's : ----*
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Whoo-hoo! Awesome to have this on dvd at long last, in a nice, complete "collector's edition" with various bonus features. One of the most exciting rock/R&B audio-visual documents ever, The Teenage Awards Music International Show live concert film was originally screened in theaters in 1964, and has never been on dvd before.
It features James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, Jan and Dean, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Supremes, Lesley Gore, and more... including, in footage cut from most previous versions of this film, the Beach Boys. Watch Mick Jagger trying to cop James Brown's moves, watch James Brown do stuff that Mick could never do in a million years, watch garage band The Barbarians bash out their mop topped pop backed by a drummer with a hook for a hand, it's all here... an all time classic, now you can take in the whole thing rather than just watching individual clips on YouTube!
Restored and remastered. Bonus features include director's commentary, the original trailer with commentary from John Landis, and radio spots.
Another yearbook of sorts from Mark Robinson's label. Reliably lo-priced compilation featuring many familiar TeenBeat faces: Air Miami, Flin Flon, Juliet Swango, The Pacific Ocean, True Love Always, Phil Krauth, Aden, Versus, Jonny Cohen, and the man himself.
Here's one of those Good News, Bad News reviews. The good news is this 4cd box set is really fantastic, the bad news is that it's out of print and we only have 3 copies to sell. It actually came out over a year ago, but somehow we utterly missed out on it then, whoops! Too bad 'cause we probably would have made it Record(s) Of The Week! Sticking to the good news side of things, once we did finally find out out about it, despite it being already out of print, we fortunately were able to acquire a small handful of copies from Drag City, who as luck would have it had just received a few back in a return from a European distro. So, THREE of you out there are in luck. But might not know why, yet. What's the deal with the Total Groovy? Well, a while back, we reviewed what was then a vinyl-only Drag City reissue of an album called Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners, which appears as one of the discs in this box set. That lp of previously unreleased material came from the archives of Pete Shelley's own Groovy label, the Buzzcocks' singer's DIY outlet for the krautrock inspired, avant-garde experimentation of himself and his friends, and the other three discs in this box are reissues of Groovy's first three original lp releases, all from 1980.
So, first off, here's more or less what we said about Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners back in 2011:
Best band name ever? Definitely a contender. Never really thought that Pete Shelley of famed UK punks The Buzzcocks had anything like this in him, but this album is pretty damn good - almost living up to the ridiculous moniker! Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners was Shelley's oddball synth-wave project that began even before the Buzzcocks broke up in 1981. Back then, he took up the habit of inviting any number of unidentified 'guests' over to his studio to jam with anything and everything in the place; and these Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners recordings came from the many tapes that he made by these means circa 1980-1984. Who those guests in Shelley's studio might have been is anybody's guess. Ours? Maybe Eric Random, maybe Francis Cookson (who co-founded Groovy with Shelley), maybe Sally Timms from The Mekons. Regardless, the resultant recordings are an electronic-heavy art-punk with plenty of weirdo synth meanderings, Keith Levene sounding guitar splinterings, dub-inflected basslines, and scatterbrained effects. None of the punk-pop hooks of the Buzzcocks are found here, even when guitars, bass, and drums enter the picture; it's pretty much all about the studio as instrument with lots of effects swarming about the drum machine rhythms and bare-bones post-punk grooves. One could think of The Storm Bugs, Crawling Chaos, The Psyclones, or Jeff & Jane Hudson.
Then there's the other three, equally confusional discs also found here: the oscillator insanity of Shelley's solo lp Sky Yen, 41+ minutes of delightful knob-twiddling distorted drone actually recorded in 1974; some shambling drone-rock and dadaistic vocals shenanigans from a soundtrack by Sally Smmit And Her Musicians (aka Sally Timms, Pete Shelley, and others); and a record with four untitled tracks of lo-fi industrial improvised (?) rock from a unit called Free Agents. All stuff for which the terms 'weird and wonderful' were doubtless invented! Each disc comes in its own cardboard sleeve reproducing the original album art, the Free Agents one complete with miniaturized insert advertising the Groovy catalog, and tip-on cover. Also inside this eye-catching, Op Art adorned box is a booklet containing an interview Drag City did with Shelley all about everything Groovy, talking about other related projects like The Tiller Boys, revealing various influences (Eno, Can, Ralph Records), etc.
Totally great for anyone into the oddest of Messthetics tracks, NWW list stuff, or even the Boredoms' Super Roots series. Again, kicking ourselves for idiotically overlooking this when we could have gotten more, argh. So now it's first come, first served (and since we have so few, if you're mailordering this, it's always a good idea to pick an alternate as well). Good luck though - sorry to provide such a big review of something we probably won't be able to sell you!
Hold yer horses folks, be forewarned this is NOT a new Snow Patrol album. It's actually two cds filled with an assortment of songs that Mr. Gary Lightbody wants you to hear. Of course most folks would go, "Who the hell is Gary Lightbody?! And why should we care?!", and rightly so. Hence this disc has been credited to Snow Patrol. Yup, he's that Scottish band's mainman who also fancies himself a dj. Now do you care?! And are you as skeptical as we are about the actual song choices? Some are way too obvious (yeah, TV On The Radio's "Staring At The Sun" is a great song, but...), while others seem to just be trying to score hip points (Deerhoof's "Milking"?!). Also included are some other familiar faces: Four Tet, Mum, The Shins, Nina Nastasia, Fiery Furnaces, CocoRosie, Low & Spring Heel Jack, Secret Machines, Joy Zipper, Rilo Kiley and Bill Withers. Other less familiar ones (at least to us) are Sir Drew, Husky Rescue, Feist, The Duke Spirit, Harco Pront, Smith N Hack and Hot Chip. In case you hadn't deduced yet, The Trip is essentially a series of mix comps as selected by different artists. Past editions have been compiled by Saint Etienne, Dirty Vegas, Tom Middleton and Tim Love Lee. Hpmh, wouldn't you rather get a mix cd made with loving care from someone you know and whose taste you trust? (uh, if you do know Mr. Lightbody and/or do trust his taste, then never you mind! But then again if that is the case you're probably not gonna be paying $28.00 for it, right?) Mind you, something your friend's mix cd might be missing is the almost omnipresent thumpin' dancebeat on the first disc (it's conspicuously absent on the second disc), but there're also a few awkward crossfades too. Oops, maybe we should've mentioned that sooner! Check out the audio clips and judge for yourself. 32 tracks in total.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
It's a nice idea -- gather a couple dozen of yer favorite recording artists and ask them to submit a capella pieces. Too bad so many of them put so little thought into it. The best tracks include those by Danielson Family (who do a sweet indie rock song in doo wop multi-part style), Low (whose music is so stripped down that going a capella isn't at all a stretch for them), Swans collaborator Jarboe (creepy layered voices), and Jandek (simply for the ridiculousness of his entry -- which just goes "Om"). Other artists making appearances: Grifters, David Grubbs, Elliot Sharp, Songs:Ohia, Modest Mouse, Damien Jurado, Sharon Tuopper of God is My Copilot, Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters, Pedro the Lion, etc.
This is an awesome collection of early and way out of print 7"s from San Diego's The Way Out Sound label. A glance at the artists is all it will take to convince you how essential this really is. All exclusive tracks from: Merzbow, Muslimgauze, Skullflower, Truman's Water, Pure, The Silver Wizard, and Holland Skin Tunnel. Essential.
This one's pretty much an "add to cart" no-brainer; the subtitle says it all, "Afro Rock & Psychedelia In 1970s Nigeria". And it's on the wonderful Soundway label, who've brought us such prior treats as Nigeria Rock Special, Nigeria Disco Funk Special, and Ghana Soundz. Really, do you need to know more? There's 32 killer cuts spread across the two cds here, from almost as many bands, exuberant electric guitar wielding garage acts most of 'em, and funky too, super funky. Anyone eager for a sequel to that Nigeria Rock Special in particular, start freaking out now! Some of the names here are familiar from that comp or other reissues, but we don't think there's any overlap songwise. Others are way more obscure to our ears. So you get Ofege, Ofo The Black Company, The Mebusas, The Hygrades, Colomach, and The Action 13, alongside, among others, P.R.O. (People Rock Outfit), Chuck Barrister & The Voices Of Darkness, The Thermometers, The Comrades, The Ceejebs, The Funkees, The Hykkers, Bongos Ikwue, The Lawrence Amavi Group, The Ify Jerry Krusade, Sonny Okosuns & Paperback Limited, Cicada, The Identicals, and even a band called The Semi Colon! The Semi Colon's song is pretty badass, by the way, with Moog-y "Blow Your Head" style synth and wicka-wicka chicken scratch guitar, shades of The JB's for sure, James Brown's backup band probably a big influence on a LOT of these groups, along with psych rock from the West as well, especially various Frisco ballroom jammers. While there's variety, there's definitely a Nigerian scene "sound" of the era on display here, and that scene must have been a pretty competitive one, these bands are HOT. While there's some lovely, mellowed-out moments (like PRO's laidback ballad of "Blacky Joe"), mostly this collection consists of uptempo, dancefloor filling groovers, full of percolating percussion, wild wah-wah, and soulful vocal exhortations. A few have horns, there's a lot of funky electric organ, and in all cases, the rhythms are, not surprisingly, first and foremost the focus, driving these songs into your heart, mind, and soul via the involuntary head nodding, foot tapping, get up and get down reaction your body will have to 'em...
The compilation takes its name from The Black Mirror's "The World Ends", found on disc two. Meanwhile, "Soundway" by Wrinkars Experience, from disc one, could be the theme song for the label! Kinda akin to a Nigerian "Nuggets", this is indeed yet another awesome Soundway comp, one of our faves from them so far and that's saying a lot. Can't argue with two discs this funky and fuzzed, though! Comes nicely packaged with a 44 page booklet featuring a plenitude of liner notes and vintage photos. Totally recommended.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Bargain price import double cd sampler of some pretty cool, cosmic 70's German rock. You get two hours worth of the likes of Popol Vuh, Guru Guru, Birth Control, Witthuser & Westrupp, Holderlin and many more (obscure) bands. It's got a way cheesy cover, but it's also great deal.
Self-described as "spacedoutpostindiefutureoutrock". Yes quite, as it features Ui, Fuxa, Transient Waves, Flying Saucer Attack, Flowchart, Kreidler and others. The K-Tel of Space/Post-Rock.
Record Store Day alert! Here's a 2013 RSD release that we thankfully managed to get enough copies of to list...
Please don't ask us to pronounce Theppabutr, but do ask us why this is so awesome - though the best answer is: just listen to it!
International vinyl diggers, seeking out vintage grooves in far flung parts of the world, have made Molam music from Thailand into something that's now definitely a 'thing' in our world music section - we've had some other great Molam collections on the Sublime Freqencies label, for instance, so of course it's exciting to hear from 'The Man Behind The Molam Sound', Theppabutr Satirodchompu, responsible for the production work on the 17 tracks collected here from a variety of Molam artists. It's Molam of the modern variety (modern circa 1972-1975 that is, in this case), a form of electrified vocal music from Northeast Thailand that combines traditional folk melodies and ethnic instrumentation with electric guitars and electronic keyboards. Great stuff, all of it, lively and rhythmic, emotive and ear-wormy. Even though we don't understand a word, it's still immediately captivating. We love the keening singers and warbly organs, groovy beats and exotic vibes. If you haven't yet given Molam and closely related genre Luk Thung a try, this would be a great place to start. Seventies Molam like this is mighty fine stuff, up there with those 'Ethiopiques' recordings and certain Jamaican reggae of the same vintage, though we'd imagine the vocal stylings here might work for some folks and not so much for others.
This limited vinyl version is a Record Store Day 2013 release - there is also a (presumably less-limited) non-RSD compact disc edition too, that we'll be stocking and will list next time, but we wanted to get this RSD vinyl listed now before they were gone! Especially since the double vinyl includes two bonus tracks not found on the cd version - as well as a 12"x14" poster, and download card for mp3s of all the tracks. Gatefold sleeve in faux woodgrain wrapper, liner notes, foldout poster inside.
Another lovingly compiled (by Scott Hull of Agoraphobic Nosebleed and Pig Destroyer no less!) sonically hateful selection of extreme heaviness, grind metal, powerviolence, hardcore, punk rock, and pretty much everything in between, buzzing and blasting and brutal as fuck. A handful of bands we already loved, and a whole bunch we'd never heard of before, it's kinda like the metal mix tape you wish your mean metal older brother would make you.
So let's start with the we know and love. California crew Lack Of Interest spit out 7 tracks in about 4 minutes, blazing blasting punk rock, Noisear spit out insane bursts of frenzied grind, impossibly fast, super dense and twisted and complex, Drugs Of Faith do their dirgey punkish death metal, sludgey and sloppy and chaotic, the mighty Crom offer up "Hags" the longest track on the comp, a grinding, thrashing slab of whatthefuck heaviness, slipping from punkish blast to churning doomy chug, the vocals shrieking and grunting and howling, it even gets sort of pretty for a moment, but only a moment, fuck we love these guys, Ohio pigfuckers Apartment 213 spit out some serious powerviolence, a Neanderthal sonic pummeling, grunted vox, even slipping in a little groove at one point, but mostly just beating your ears bloody with their closed fist crush, Despise you kick down 50 seconds of churning, blasting grind, 2 songs blow by in a blink, but they cram some serious sonic punishment into less than a minute, Voetsek are the only female fronted outfit in this boys club, and they lay it down with some super technical grind metal, and some seriously ball melting vox....
Then there's the bands we're hearing for the first time here: Hummingbird Of Death, Marion Barry, Owen Hart, Septic Surge, Population Reduction, Superbad, Three Faces Of Eve, Idiots Parade, Triac and more, our faves being Hummingbird Of Death, not just for having the best band name ever, but for their chaotic, frenzied on the verge of collapse powerviolence freakouts, Owen Hart's metallic grinding thrash, infused with plenty of classic old school metal riffage, Septic Surge who get their drummachinegun on, a dizzying hybrid of twisted electronic glitchery and caveman heaviness... We could go on and on, a head spinning selection of audial brutality, crushing heaviness, blasting brutality, an overwhelming 74 tracks, all jammed into 78 minutes, by 19 bands, for anyone who likes it fast and heavy. Comes with a massive booklet, all old school punk rock style with each band getting a page for lyrics and photos and contact info. Awesome.
This Ministry Of Sound compilation strikes me as the equivalent of one of those K-Tel ultra-super-mega-smash-hit-only-on-tv-extravaganza compilations, but minus the K-Tel bargain pricetag. Take the very first track
