Cult folk singer Kath Bloom's delicate voice and her fragile, often heartbroken lovesongs are, simply, just so sweet and so affecting. At age 50, Kath has perhaps built up a cult following, but is far from a household name. She's recorded sporadically since the early '80s, first in collaboration with avant-guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors and subsequently solo. Motherhood took precedence over her musical career, though... She's best known really for her contribution to the soundtrack to the 1995 Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise ("Come Here", included on this disc). A while back, we used to sell a lot of copies of a cd-r bearing that title we got directly from Ms. Bloom herself. Maybe we can still get 'em, we'd have to check with her, but better yet anyway we now have this actual cd (fittingly named Finally), an Australian import compilation of some of her nicest stuff from the early '90s 'til now! Yay!
It contains 14 beautiful songs, spanning the years 1993-2005, and also includes detailed liner notes telling Bloom's story, plus an strongly worded appreciation written by one of her biggest fans, filmmaker Caveh Zahedi.
Former AQ-owner Windy was (and still is, we're sure) also a HUGE fan of Kath Bloom (which is why we had those cd-rs). Even she, though, suggested that taking a listen to the soundclips before you buy might be a good idea, as Bloom can indeed be an acquired taste. She sounds a bit like Judee Sill, maybe, more wavery and trembly though, definitely singing from the heart, accompanied by her own gentle guitar playing, harmonica, recorder, and sometimes further instrumentation played by various friends.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We reviewed an awesome triple cd box set from this seventies Chilean psych rock band a while back, and now the first of their three albums found there has been reissued as a super swank remastered 180 gram vinyl lp...
You'd think that there weren't any lost psychedelic treasures left to unearth. Especially considering the amount of garbage that gets released, being touted as some amazing find, some legendary lost gem. The fact that a record was released in some super limited pressing, or went out of print soon after it was released, or was maybe never released, is not enough to make it 'legendary' or 'essential' or even 'worth reissuing at all'! In fact often that speaks to the fact that no one gave a shit in the first place, and there's no reason for anyone to care now, except for the public's seemingly insatiable appetite for lost psychedelic treasures. As we quickly learned with the Radioactive reissues, there is no shortage of lame folk / sorta-psychedelia that can be repackaged and pushed on unsuspecting folks just looking to get their sixties/seventies psych rock fix. The folks at Shadoks, who did the Blops 3cd box set, seem to be a bit more discerning, and while we don't necessarily love everything they put out, they tend to hit way more than they miss.
But to be honest we were still a little bit skeptical, when that box set came out, of a yet another reissue of some psychedelic band we had never heard of, but c'mon, all the signs pointed to yes - they're from Chile, they're from the early seventies, have a great name, and most important of all, FLUTE!!! So we gave it a shot, and guess what, it's awesome. Lilting psychedelic folk, dreamy and pastoral, fluttering flutes, over sweetly minor key acoustic guitar, simple hand drums, moody crooning vocals, simple shuffling rhythms, warm fuzzy organs, all with just the slightest psychedelic tinge. Fans of Embrujo, also from Chile, will for sure want to pick this up too.
Interesting aside: this first Blops record (along with the second) was originally released on a label affiliated with the Communist youth, and the original tapes were destroyed by the military! Radical.
You'd think that there weren't any lost psychedelic treasures left to unearth. Especially considering the amount of garbage that gets released, being touted as some amazing find, some legendary lost gem. The fact that a record was released in some super limited pressing, or went out of print soon after it was released, or was maybe never released, is not enough to make it 'legendary' or 'essential' or even 'worth reissuing at all'! In fact often that speaks to the fact that no one gave a shit in the first place, and there's no reason for anyone to care now, except for the public's seemingly insatiable appetite for lost psychedelic treasures. As we quickly learned with the Radioactive reissues, there is no shortage of lame folk / sorta-psychedelia that can be repackaged and pushed on unsuspecting folks just looking to get their sixties/seventies psych rock fix. The folks at Shadoks seem to be a bit more discerning, and while we don't necessarily love everything they put out, they tend to hit way more than they miss.
But to be honest we were a little bit skeptical of a triple cd boxed set of some psychedelic band we had never heard of, but c'mon, all the signs pointed to yes -- they're from Chile, three records from 1970, 1971, and 1973, and most important of all, FLUTE!!! So we gave it a shot, and guess what, it's awesome. Each disc is a little different, but all three are super cool. Lilting psychedelic folk, dreamy and pastoral, fluttering flutes, over sweetly minor key acoustic guitar, simple hand drums, moody crooning vocals, simple shuffling rhythms, warm fuzzy organs, all with just the slightest psychedelic tinge. Fans of Embrujo, also from Chile, and recently raved about on the AQ list, will for sure want to pick this up too.
The second disc has all the same sonic elements but adds a bit of mariachi flair, and is a bit more electric than the mostly acoustic first album. There is more varied instrumentation and the sounds is a bit more poppy as well, with some definite Beatles-y moments here and there and occasional frenzied bursts of psychedelic freakout guitar. Record number three is the most psychedelic of the three and is definitely a bit more prog, lengthier tracks, more parts per song, groovy jazzy jams, wild super rocking complex drumming as well as some brief drum solos, probably the best (and wildest) flute playing of the three discs. more fuzzed out organ, lots more electric guitar, sounding a bit like Santana at times, but always infused with dreamy psychedelic folkiness. So cool.
Interesting aside: both the first and second records were originally released on a label affiliated with the Communist youth, and the original tapes were destroyed by the military! Radical.
Three jewel cased packaged in a gorgeous oversized box. Includes two tracks that weren't even on the recent, now out of print, vinyl reissues. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
A while back we reviewed the reissue of this British band's wonderfully twee and surreal first album, "We Are Ever So Clean", from the paisley days of 1967. But on this, that album's 1969 follow-up, they left the Sgt. Pepperisms behind for an even freakier, and heavier, direction. It's kinda like how The Pretty Things went from "S.F. Sorrow" to "Parachute", but weirder. The Mothers Of Invention might have been an influence, certainly the lead-off track "Peace Loving Man" is crazy enough. Heavy too, with gruff vocals and loud guitar riffs. Yep, compared to the ornate, orchestrated psych-pop of "We Are Ever So Clean" this whole album is waaaay more (acid) Rock, but still full of melodic hooks and 60s zaniness. Pretty cool. Unfortunately this was to be their last album, but their guitarist did go on to join Family (we mention for those into the rock family tree thing).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
London, 1967: ground zero for the explosion of fab British pop psych rock bands, including many known today only to collectors -- among them, this bunch of mop tops, Blossom Toes. Here's a Japanese cd reissue of the first of their two albums. Their brand of psychedelic pop music was ornate, orchestrated, lush, and very British -- they songs called "Mrs. Murphy's Budgerigar" and "I'll Be Late For Tea" -- think Beatles, Zombies, Kinks, very early Bowie, with dashes of surreal Pythonesque zaniness ("The Remarkable Saga Of The Frozen Dog", "The Intrepid Balloonist's Handbook, Volume One", etc.). Indeed, they even played Captain Beefheart covers live! Produced by Swinging Sixties London scenester Giorgio Gomelski (their manager, who also managed the Yardbirds among other claims to fame). Note: "Packaged with the original artwork and lyrics (as opposed to the ugly-ass Heritage Entertainment version previously available)" sez Revolver.
Full length number two from these new wave / chill wave retro revivalists, which surprisingly finds the duo ditching their synths and drum machines completely, and crafting a gorgeous blast of guitar driven, nineties style indie rock dream pop that we're digging like crazy. Just give a listen to the title track, all processed ethereal female vox, draped over acoustic guitar strum, and some shimmery swirls of shoegaze guitar buzz, simple drumming, all anchored by some murky Joy Division-y bass, a hazy swirl of killer hooks, warm psychedelic jangle, a little guitar rock crunch, all sculpted into some seriously catchy gloom poppy dreaminess, that positions Blouse Mk. II closer to groups like the Dum Dum Girls, or Beach House, their sound woozy and druggy, seemingly channeling the spirt of the Velvets and Mazzy Star, through something a bit fuzzier and janglier. Our favorite tracks tend to be the crunchier, fuzzier, noisier ones (check out "In A Glass"), but even with some sonic heft and distorto guitar buzz, the sound remains gloriously washed out, dreamy, druggy and drifty. LP includes download too...
At this point, there is most definitely a Captured Tracks sound, and thankfully it's one we love, and can't seem to get enough of, but CT keep digging up these bands who sound like they could have been conjured up in some sort of Captured Tracks laboratory if such a thing existed (it doesn't?).
Blouse might be one of our favorite CT bands so far, their sound a gorgeously dark and moody, brooding and minimal eighties style gloom pop, but very stripped down and skeletal, the rhythm section tight and muted, the female vocals ethereal and drifty, with the occasional cool reverbed guitars, the A side featuring a sultry, breathy almost 4AD sounding chorus, very brief before the group slip right back into those low slung minimal verses, while the B side is a bit janglier, still plenty dark and moody, with a very Cure like mottled bassline, the vocals even breezier than on the flipside, the arrangement similarly spare, the songs both surprisingly hooky. One of those singles we find ourselves flipping back and forth and listening to over and over, which is always a good sign...
Eighties retro poppers Blouse make the leap to Sub Pop, but thankfully, their sound remains changed. In our review of their Captured Tracks 7", we mentioned they might be one of our favorite CT bands yet, and part of that seems to have to do with how genuine their music sounds. While much of the eighties influenced pop happening these days seems kitschy and tongue in cheek, Blouse's sound doesn't sound at all manufactured, and is presented as something pure and organic, as if they set out to make music, and it just ended up sounding like it was 30 years old, or like Blouse were in fact some lost eighties band somehow transported to the present day. Low slung, slightly gloomy basslines under jangly guitars, breathy female vocals, chiming melodies, hazy dreamy, hooky, 4AD meets the Cure meets Simple Minds, total classic eighties pop, the sort of sound that has you envisioning some eighties teen comedy, it's the perfect soundtrack for that feel good montage, where the boy and girl do all the things young lovers do.
The flipside offers up more of the same, starting out slightly more gloomy, but only a bit, minor key chords draped over a loping electronic rhythm, wreathed in the whirring synths, the vocals softly reverbed, and sweetly melancholy, with a big fuzzy dramatic chorus, some seriously perfect retro dream pop for sure. Can't wait for the full length.
In our review of the most recent single from these modern eighties retro revivalists, we proclaimed Blouse as possibly our favorite purveyors of what we've come to call the 'Captured Tracks' sound, which is a sort of contemporary take on eighties electro pop and new wave, and while there seem to be about a million bands mining the same sonic territory, Blouse do manage to meld that sense of seemingly misplaced nostalgia (the eighties? really?) to a sound that is darkly cold wavey and jangly gloom poppy, and one that comes replete with actual proper songs, choruses, hooks, often sounding like, barring the strangely murky home brewed production, they could have come straight off that cool mixtape you made as a teenage goth.
Where as the band had a tendency in the past to strip things way down, many of the tracks rhythmic and skeletal, even then the sound had a distinctly 4AD vibe, and borrowed liberally from the Cure, and goths turned eighties poppers like Simple Minds, but on this, their debut full length, the sound is surprisingly lush, opener "Firestarter" is warm and shimmery, lots of high end streaks and stereo panned synth swirls, wrapped around a fuzzy low slung bassline and dreamy reverby angelic vocals, not to mention all sorts of very eighties exotic effects. The second track "Time Travel" might be our favorite, and does definitely make a serious case for Blouse hanging on to their Captured Tracks crown, darker and more propulsive, an ominous mix of Carpenter / Goblin psychedelic space synth, with a more ethereal pop, add in some killer fuzz, thick distorted bassline and a mesmerizing machinelike groove, and suddenly the idea of time travel, and Blouse traveling back in time and ruling eighties MTV doesn't seem far fetched at all. And heck that's just the first two track, the rest of the record unfurls like some eighties goth pop synth wave primer, chiming minor key melodies, crunchy echoey guitars, lush whirling jangles, lots of buzzing synths, propulsive basslines, dreamy ethereal vox, loads of spacey effects, minimal analog electronics, and some seriously killer songs. We've yet to hear a more perfect mix of modern retro-futurism, and total eighties MTV electro pop, goth wave worship, and we're thinking we might not ever. Absolutely recommended.
Second volume in Captured Tracks series of Wake tribute 7"s, released in honor of Record Store Day, and of course late great UK post punk outfit the Wake. This year, it's another two aQ faves tackling their favorite jams by the Wake, first up is Blouse, who already sounded a bit like The Wake to begin with, so if you're unfamiliar with the original, it sounds very much like it could be a proper Blouse track, gloomy and woozy, ethereal vox drifting over murky basslines and skeletal rhythms, spidery guitar melodies, lots of jangle and haze and shimmer, all floating on warm minor key synth swells. Craft Spells' cover is a bit more upbeat, a serious Style Council vibe, frenetic guitar jangle, shimmering synths, an almost disco drumbeat, wreathed in chiming melodies, crooned dramatic vocals, a fantastically washed out slab of fuzzy shoegazey new wave gloom pop.
A special Record Store Day 2012 release, already sold out and out of print, we have a bunch, but once these are gone, they are gone for good!
The Blow have primarily been the work of visual and performance artist Khaela Maricich, who has released a handful of heartfelt and slightly sassy minimal pop records with electronic undertones. A couple years ago she teamed up with Jona Bechtolt, a multi talented musician who does a wildly creative electronic project called Yacht and has been a member of Devenda Banhart's touring Hairy Fairy Band. Bechtolt has helped make Maricich's sound a more full and overtly catchy. Where past records were more about subtlety and whispered seduction, this record is all about making hips swing and heads bob. Taking their cue from folks like Tracy & The Plastics and Solex, The Blow make smart pop music that's not afraid to be f-u-n. Fans of Le Tigre, The Postal Service and Stereo Total should definitely tune in to the sound of Paper Television.
Besides having an awesome band name (that perfectly suits their sound), and killer song titles ("My Ice Cream Fell On The Ground And Someone Ate It!", "Rotten Demon Shit", "Boo Boo Halloween"), these NY knuckle draggers specialize in the sort of down tuned caveman creep we can't ever seem to get enough of. Thick, gristled guitars that ooze, loooong songs that rumble and lumber, the sound lo-fi but still heavy, shrieked almost black metal sounding vokills, landing somewhere between the Body, Noothgrush, Megaton Leviathan and Prizehog, or like a way more home brewed punk rock Corrupted, these guys deal in abject doom sludge misery, but one that's shot through with all sorts of sonic weirdness, be it long stretches of hushed drift, weird breakdowns of barely there drums and distant guitar twang, or wild almost psychedelic squalls of swirling feedback and black noise skree. Oh and did we mention the creepy monk like vocals, or the strings, the free jazz drum splatter? At times sounding like No Neck Blues Band, at others like some strange minimal experimental soundscape, and at others sounding like some slow core dirge gone haywire. Twisted, trippy, heavy and KILLER. Super limited of course, swank packaging too.
For a band called Bludded Head, we're a little surprised it took until record number three for them to christen an album Reign In Bludd. But Bludded Head definitely more than live up to the promise of that loaded title, their sprawling doom/sludge heaviness existing somewhere between the epic majesty of Harvey Milk, and the psychedelic sonic bar brawl of Rusted Shut. The 8 minute opener perfectly demonstrates this, with it's slow build creep, all shrieked vox atop rib cage rattling lumber and churn, only to explode into a squall of wah wah drenched psych-noise chaos. Over the course of the other three tracks, these Neanderthal noiseniks from Texas (not sure why we thought they were from NY before), pull apart the carcass of noise rock, and reimagine it as some sort of filthy plaything, the way some redneck mouthbreather might toy with a wounded animal, "Fuckitdry" lurches from math rock crush, to angular, dizzying falling-apart-ness, while "Pouring Rain" gets all Slinty, but with some extra sludgy slabbage on the side, and finally, a heartfelt, slo-mo, crumbly (and very Harvey Milky) cover of Codeine's "Pea".
Cool spot varnished covers, and includes a download as well.
Early '70s American power pop we'd never heard of before, but are glad got reissued! We love the Raspberries and Big Star, but the less successful Blue Ash, from Youngstown, Ohio, had slipped under our radar. As always, praise the Lord for cd reissues of obscure treats. Mercury signings Blue Ash originally unleashed this album back in 1973, and it was to be their only major label release... despite its obvious charms, critical plaudits, and the band's hard work touring it (opening for the likes of Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and Nazareth, among others) it didn't sell, and they were dropped about a year after it came out. Their A&R guy (who also had signed the New York Dolls) was fired too, for good measure. The band broke up in '79 after making a second and final album for a smaller label.
Don't know nothin' about that one, but this here, No More, No Less, is definitely worth a spin if you like ye olde power pop. At odds with the nascent heavy metal and progressive rock excesses of the age (not to mention soft rock wimp outs and disco sell outs), Blue Ash's music, with three-minute pop songs and three-part harmonies, harked back to the British Invasion years of the '60s, bands like the Who, the Hollies, the Kinks, the Monkees, and of course the Beatles (this album includes their fine, fervent cover of "Anytime At All", delivered with gusto). Speaking of covers, they also do a song called "Dusty Old Fairgrounds", that they learned from a Bob Dylan bootleg. But all the rest of the tracks here are originals, in the same tuneful and head-bobbin' tradition as their '60s forebears, updated with extra, edgy energy. Much of this is uptempo and energetic, full of cranked up jangly guitars, thumping drums, handclaps, and nostalgically yearning vox. There's some laidback, mellow moments, as well, making their West Coast country-psych a la The Byrds influences also evident. All in all, a class act, definitely deserving of reissue. There's no bonus tracks, but we do get liner notes from bassist Frank Secich, who may have preferred rock n' roll stardom but seems content with at least cult status for his old band. Oh, and we'd certainly recommend this to those of you who dug local power popsters The Makes Nice (R.I.P.), this is right up that alley.
Plus you gotta love an album with a song called "Smash My Guitar" which does indeed feature the sound of an actual guitar-smashing, as well as much wild guitar soloing -and- sweet, sweet singing.
Figured we should list this, the third album by '60s San Francisco proto-metal acid rockers Blue Cheer (you can't get much more "acid rock" than Blue Cheer -- they're named after a type of LSD after all!), since it was recently reissued in Akarma's midpriced "karma price" series. And also 'cause on the second side of this 1969 album (titled New! Improved! with about 50 percent accuracy) you'll hear the guitar playing of Randy Holden, whose rare, classic Population II record was recently reissued on LP and subsequently purchased by throngs of old time heaviness-lovin' AQ customers. If you've got that, you've gotta have this too. Holden, formerly of LA garage rockers The Other Half, was Blue Cheer's replacement for original axeman Leigh Stephens, but Holden lasted only a few months in the Cheer, recording just half of this record with 'em, three songs total: the fairly epic "Peace Of Mind" and "Fruit & Iceburgs" and brief coda "Honey Butter Lover". Then he split to make the Pop II album as a duo with drummer Chris Lockheed, which basically sounds a lot like the second side of this album... indeed you'll find versions "Fruit & Iceburgs" on both records. That's what you want this for, the Holden side, which sounds like a more wasted, doomedelic Cream. It's the last hurrah of Blue Cheer as a "heavy" guitar band, really. Whereas the first side of New! Improved!, recorded after Holden left and featuring ex-Kak guitarist Gary Yoder, has got a lot of honky tonk piano and comes across more like something the Rolling Stones would do, either rustic and rollicking or really melodic and mellow. Not heavy at all, though certainly very hippie and of its time with songs like "West Coast Child Of Sunshine". So we're mainly just recommending this for the approximately 15 minutes of wailin' Randy Holden stuff on here.
However -- if you don't already have Blue Cheer's first two albums, Vincebus Eruptum and Outside Inside, though, get those first! Especially Vincebus, if you want to hear the REAL birth of heavy.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Also from '68, these San Francisco anti-hippies' second album, another classic of super-heavy (for its time) psychedelic proto-metal.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
When we listed this on our site before, we were pretty succinct, 17 words:
Their 1968 debut, the birth of metal? With "Summertime Blues". Dumb yet so brilliant. Essential heavy history.
And yeah, that's basically it. The first album from San Francisco ballroom badasses Blue Cheer, is a seminal heavy psych proto-metal power trio document indeed. Druggy biker blooze that taught so many later bands - from Pentagram to Comets On Fire, Fushitsusha to Dead Meadow - how to turn it up to 11. Have Dickie Peterson, Paul Whaley, and Leigh Stephens been inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame yet? Apparently not and it's a travesty.
While we like other, later Blue Cheer albums and lineups, THIS is the one that belongs in the early annals of metal history. In '68, what else was this heavy? Blue Cheer themselves never were again.
Produced by Abe "Voco" Kesh (yes, that's where that band got their name), this includes Blue Cheer's aforementioned monster cover of Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues", also their killer version of Mose Allison's "Parchman Farm" (which they call "Parchment Farm" for some reason), BB King's "Rock Me Baby", and bunch of equally lumbering, blown-out Peterson originals like "Doctor Please" and "Out Of Focus". While they sound closer to Hendrix and Cream than to the yet to be birthed Black Sabbath, this is ye olde acid rock at its rawest and heaviest.
Chances are, if you're into metal and/or psych, you already have this, but if you don't, now's the time to grab it!
The umlauted Oyster boys' fourth album, from '76, remastered n' reissued with bonus tracks etc. By this point, the Cult was getting pretty big. "Agents Of Fortune" features what must be their biggest hit, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper". Worth it for that, and
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
When we did our $5 sale list a few weeks back, we were pleased to include the first three early '70s albums from the often underrated & misunderstood Blue Oyster Cult. Those discs proved quite popular, probably the best sellers of that list! Now here's another one by them, also on sale for just $5. Fire Of Unknown Origin dates from 1981, and thus belongs to BOC at their prime, after they had attained stadium-sized classic rock status. And it features one of the band's biggest hits ever, "Burnin' For You" (a great song, for sure, with lyrics by rock critic Richard Meltzer). But there's also a lot of equally awesome 'deep cuts' here too, like the creepy/campy "Joan Crawford", based on Mommie Dearest, which features a full-on musique concrete freakout in the middle.
Listening to this album, no matter how far out and sci-fi some of the songs get, it's clear that Blue Oyster Cult were a POP band, big time. Their roots in '60s psychedelia are still manifest, but this is also a total state-of-the-art '80s pop rock album, with loads of shiny new keyboards on the title track (based on a poem by Patti Smith), and elsewhere. Their imagery and umlauts (and guitar riffs!) of course also found favor with the hard rock / heavy metal hordes, but despite their reputation, it's hard to really call BOC a metal band. Sure, there's a track here entitled "Heavy Metal: The Black And Silver", but that's 'cause apparently a lot of these songs were written for the animated film Heavy Metal - though only "Veterans Of The Psychic Wars" (with lyrics by author Michael Moorcock, and Andee's favorite B.O.C. track EVER) actually appeared on the soundtrack. Giving this a bit more metal cred, though, the producer was Martin Birch, who did Sabbath's Mob Rules and Iron Maiden's Killers the very same year. And we gotta mention how much stuff like "Vengeance (The Pact)" sounds like the template for current Swedish metallers Ghost!
Ultimately, this is a great, sci-fi-fried, slightly progged out, and even a bit experimental, pop rock record with a bit of metal to it; heavy on the synths, the hooks, and the weird lyrics.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Remastered and reissued: the third of BOC's debut trio of masterpieces, from '74. Features 5 bonus tracks -- 3 previously unreleased songs from the "Secret Treaties" sessions ("Boorman The Chauffer", "Mommy", and "Mes Dames Serat") as well as their
Along with full lyrics and photos (each band member posing with guitar in front of a triple stack of Marshall amps), this has liner notes by Lenny Kaye (as do the reissues of s/t and "Tyranny and Mutation" as well).
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
The Red & The Black! BOC's 2nd album, from 1973, now remastered and all that. Includes 4 bonus tracks: three live tracks from bootlegs, and a studio outtake version of live fave "Buck's Boogie". "The Black Side" (LP side one) rocks hard with aggro classics
BOC (that's Blue Oyster Cult, not Boards of Canada!) has always been mistakenly regarded as some sort of heavy metal band -- and while they originated and/or embraced much of the imagery associated with HM (umlauts, leather pants, long hair, occult symbols)
Contains the hard rockin' hits "Transmaniacon MC", "Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll" along with several other somewhat more obscure but equally brilliant tunes full of the surreal, psychedelic lyrics and guitar work of which these guys were geniuses.
And this reissue also includes four bonus tracks, taken from the band's rejected 1969 demos under the name Soft White Underbelly. These are released here for the first time (well, outside of the recent mail-order only Rhino Handmade release of the Stalk-Forrest Group's entire unreleased album demos, which contains 3 of these cuts). A few of the SWU/SFG tracks were later reworked into BOC tunes, like the bizarre "I'm On The Lamb But I Ain't No Sheep" found on this album. Recommended!
Before we'd even HEARD this obscure Italian instrumental library music reissue, it had a lot going for it� Groovy name and title, crude freaky album artwork (really - it's got dinosaurs, and a stonehenge, and a mushroom cloud, and what the heck is that eye in the sky doing exactly?), and also it's from the magic year of 1971! Could it live up to all that? YES. And how.
Recorded by anonymous studio musicians from Milan, intended for use as incidental music for use (presumably suitably hip) film, TV and/or radio productions, this rare collectable is vintage psychsploitation weirdness for all you proto-metal and prog rock heads, full of lumbering heavy psych riffage, often with an eerie overlay of synth. Opening cut "Diodo" immediately suggests the likes of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" and Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love", heavy maaaan! The Distortions title is accurate indeed when it comes to the guitars. But that's mixed with more sinister and/or romantic sounding grooviness elsewhere on the album, like the delicate (but still distorted) dance of "Compression" ferinstance.
The tracks on this disc are suspenseful, exciting, energetic, trippy, with titles like "Microchaos", 'Violence", and "Psycho-Nebulous". Listening to this, you can easily imagine kitschy retro-cool characters in black leather catsuits a la Danger Diabolik interacting with longhaired drugged out hippies in groovy psychedelic discotheques, with this music blaring and colored lights flashing. Spy cinema, spaghetti westerns, biker movies, could (and did?) all make use of these droning fuzz blasters and glammy grooves� we certainly would love to see any movie or TV show that had Blue Phantom on the soundtrack! Hmm, apparently quite a few of these cuts were used in a Jess Franco flick from '72 called Sinner: Diary of a Nymphomaniac...
Definitely one of the best (and by far the heaviest) stand-on-its-own "library music" album we've ever encountered, as good as a lot of 'actual bands' of the era, we've been spinning it quite a bit here at the shop since we got it in� which lead to a funny moment, when aQ overlords Allan and Andee were puzzling over the phenomenon of how there's still such awesome obscure stuff like this out there getting reissued that we'd never heard of of before, when some random girl walked into the store and immediately was like, "Oh, you're playing Blue Phantom! I love that record!", unintentionally showing up us record store nerds, eh?
This reissue includes a non-album bonus track, the only other Blue Phantom recording apparently known.
Pre-Frog Eyes band! Their only album before they became Frog Eyes.
With a name like Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, we were sort of expecting some kind of ironic retro heavy RAWK action. Thankfully, nothing could be further from the truth. The band describes their music as "black acid bog death, blackened noise volume assault". Woah. They had us at 'bog'. They list their influences as Crash Worship, G.I.S.M., the New Blockaders and strangest of all, Black Legions' black ambient terrorists Moevet and Mougotre. We were definitely intrigued...
And if anything, the record ended up being as good as any of the above would have led us to believe. A side long trawl though some bleak black underworld of sound, a roiling pit of blackness and despair, thick layers of black drone, processed tapes, field recordings, disembodied voices processed into still more drones, distant streaks of feedback, gurgled grunted 'vocals', rumbling, grinding stretches of abstract sound, fragments of melody drifting in a churning black sonic sea, creepy and dark and desolate and downtuned and very very evil. Besides the above mentioned bands, we also hear bits of Lustmord, Stalaggh, Wolf Eyes, Za Frumi (mostly for the Orc like vocals), Abruptum, Anenzephalia, MZ412.... which obviously means this is seriously recommended.
Limited to 300 copies, one sided vinyl, with a killer silkscreened image on the flip, hand screened covers, printed inserts, really nice... and most likely gone in no time....
Finally, the very first cd release from Northwestern blacknoize terrorists Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, not a proper full length exactly, more a collection of odds and ends, a selection of out of print tracks, culled from various 7"s and 12"s and tapes, as well as a couple previously unreleased jams.
Those new to Blue Sabbath Black Cheer should definitely beware, the sound this dastardly duo conjure up is more noise than music, more drone than metal, yet it manages to be all of those things at once. They described their sound as "black acid bog death, blackened noise volume assault", and it most definitely is that, it's the sound of SUNNO))) and Wolf Eyes and Organum, mixed with black metal and dark ambience, power electronics and minimal dronemusic, and somehow molded into harsh and harrowing blackened buzzscapes, veering from full on caustic assault, to hushed mysterious creep, often in the same song.
One of the tracks here is from the Borre Fen lp, and of the various micro-releases represented here, that was the only one that we ever managed to get in the shop, which means for many folks, ourselves included, this is practically a new record.
From the opener "Untitled" (most of the tracks are titled "Untitled"!), a swirling buzzing cacophony of crumbling industrial whir, peppered with buried percussion, howled voices lost in the mix, keening sheets of feedback, and a fierce white noise blow out, to the follow up "Untitled", a much more minimal, bit of cinematic drift, still pretty ominous and spooky, but here it's about the drone, and the strange processed gurgling sounds underneath, the heartbeat like pulse, the fragmented melodies and the overall hellish vibe, to another "Untitled", another wash of minimal scrape and creak and groan and grind, shot through with minor key moodiness, and wreathed in warm layers of deeeeeeep whirring rumble.
The record's centerpiece is the 17+ minute track from Borre Fen, which oozes to the surface, a long death march trawl some bleak black underworld of sound, a roiling pit of blackness and despair, thick layers of black drone, processed tapes, field recordings, disembodied voices processed into still more drones, distant streaks of feedback, gurgled grunted 'vocals', rumbling, grinding stretches of abstract sound, fragments of melody drifting in a churning black sonic sea, creepy and dark and desolate and downtuned and very very evil. Besides the above mentioned bands, we also hear bits of Lustmord, Stalaggh, Wolf Eyes, Za Frumi (mostly for the Orc like vocals), Abruptum, Anenzephalia, MZ412...
The record finally finishes off with another "Untitled" track, which eschews all that low end for a 5 minute stretch of horror movie high end, stretched to its breaking point, some definite difficult listening, like some sort of boiling teapot / dog whistle dronejam, all over a grinding bit of crunchy rumble, finishing off the record, if not with a bang, then an ear piercing shriek.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in super cool black on black cardboard sleeves, and for those that care, mastered by Herr Hans Grusel, of das infamous Krankenkabinet!
Latest slab of aural sickness from these Northwestern miscreants, whose love-it-or-hate-it monicker is actually not a bad barometer of what is to be found within the grooves. Sure, if you took Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, and melted it down into some thick ooze, you'd be close to the murky dirgey buzz of BSBC, but you'd probably have to add a heap of Wolf Eyes, Whitehouse, a pinch of SUNNO))), and a dumptruck or two full of downtuned guitars and melted down Marshalls.
This is easily the harshest and heaviest thing we've heard from these guys, bordering on some sort of full on doom sludge, with huge roiling waves of crumbling blown out distortion, shrieking feedback, all over a massive industrial pummel, wrapped in dense swirling clouds of white noise and being pelted by jagged bolts of buzzing crunch. There's even some super abstract, but almost-metal riffing drifting around in the murk, the whole thing eventually collapsing into total needle destroying chaos. And that's just the first side.
The B side is less dense, and less overtly heavy, but just as intense and brutal. A black sonic something shot through with super distorted howled vocals, grinding metallic buzz, sheets of blown out guitar blurred into burnt out blackened drones. Wolf Eyes better up their game, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer are definitely angling for the underground black drone doom throne.
Don't let the title fool you, Bonkers In Yonkers might have you imagining some sort of party band playing a happy hour with Jell-O shooters, but nope, you all should know by now what to expect from both of these noise making beasties. We've give much love to both bands on the list over the years, so this is a pretty dream match-up for us. And instead of a split, this is the BWSKBWC Big Band, with everybody going at once, teaming up for two lovely ditties entitled "Born To Hate" and "Scum Licker", kicking up a roiling, shrieking, brutal avalanche of distorto-brutality. Vocal shrieks, gristly electronics, huge, churning, crumblingly distorted riffage, loads of feedback, and ear shredding skree, total electro-noise mega-doom-destruction. Punishing and kinda fucking awesome.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Bright green tapes with silkscreened J-cards.
The return of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer. This time teaming up with fellow low end noisemakers Anakrid. For this tag team effort, each band gets a side, and uses mostly the other band's sound as source material. We weren't able to tell which side was which, but they were both awesome, and because of the cross pollination, either side could have come from either band.
The A side is a dark stuttery dronescape, bits of hiss and static, fluttering lowend synth, some sort of moody minimal new wave, a cinematic drone with a subtle underlying beat, murky and propulsive, creepy and throbbing, sounding not unlike Wolf Eyes recording for Kompakt. A buzzing lo-fi doomdrone black ambient sort-of techno maybe? Whatever it is, it's killer.
The flip side is more post industrial drone, a bleak barren soundscape, peppered with crumbling rhythmic crunch, all manner of grinding metallic whirs, deep ribcage rattling rumbles, almost like some slowed down caveman krautrock, blinding streaks of feedback melted into soft smears and strewn over boiler room hiss and no-radio-reception static, the track morphs into something much more lovely, a beautifully subdued percussive outro, but peppered with sharp bursts of demonic growls or thunder cracks or slowed down bullwhip cracks, or all three woven into super creepy blasts of harsh weirdness, made even more so by the beautiful drift lurking beneath.
Gorgeously packaged. Thick plastic sleeves, printed vellum inserts, the record pressed on thick coke bottle clear vinyl, the ink black and metallic silver. So nice.
LIMITED TO 324 COPIES!!
Blue Sandlewood Soap was unique in 1967/1968 around Minneapolis / St. Paul in that they had no lead guitarist and their use of crazy tempos and strange time signatures rendered their songs completely undanceable. They were also the first band in their scene
There's nothing on the gatefold cd sleeve to tell you much about who/what this is, besides the name Blue Water White Death (which for some reason makes us think of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, though as it turns out they're not at all similar). There's just illustrations of a few frightening looking fishies, and some quirky song titles like "This Is The Scrunchyface Of My Dreams", "Nerd Future" and "Rendering The Juggalos". Hmm. Well it's enough to have made us curious about this, anyway, and that curiosity was worth it! This proved to be a weird and lovely, very dark avant pop record, quite compelling, indeed the first time we played this one morning, the only customer in the store at the time ended up buying it. Later we found out that BWWD is a collaboration between two singer/songwriter types from bands we certainly had heard of, none other than Jamie Stewart of SF's Xiu Xiu (and Former Ghosts) and friend Jonathan Meiburg from Texan band Shearwater. Should have guessed.
Together as Blue Water White Death (named after a '70s nature doc about the undersea dangers off the coast of Australia, apparently) these two have created an album that's gorgeous, shivery, and just a bit eerie. The delicate, breathy vocals carry fragile melodies over sparse sedate arrangements with ghostly background echoes, drones, and choirs. Acoustic guitars glitter in the darkness. Sudden bass notes twang reverberantly, expectantly, out of the near-silence. It's intimate, moody, emotive, hushed, and ultimately dramatic, with much "somber beauty" as we've previously noted about Shearwater's folky rock. For fans of them, and Xiu Xiu too, of course. Also we're reminded of Richard Youngs, for sure. (So if your name happens to be Loren Chasse, you definitely want this.) But it's recommended to everyone, actually!
Fourth in this new series of super limited aural oddities, all of them amazing and sonically all over the map, from black metal (Throne Of Kataris, elsewhere on this list) to doom drone (past Record of the Week Hjarnidaudi) to gorgeously gloomy chamber music (Amber Asylum) to this, the first release, as far as we can tell, from epic Finnish post rock prog metal mavens Blueprint Human Being. That's right you heard us, FINNISH. As in from Finland! So all you Finnish music freaks best not dawdle, as you will definitely want to get your hands on this. Especially if you're partial to the sort of Krauty drone rock of Circle and the like, although that element is only one tiny aspect of BHB's sound. There's lots of post rocky drift, a sort of proggier Tarentel maybe, but then the horns kick in and we're in serious King Crimson territory. But there's also lots of fuzzy metal guitar wrapped around jagged loping Slintish rhythms, with strange sung / spoke vocals, all blending in some weird way that reminds us as much of Ved Buens Ende as Crimson. Some parts have the horns moving to the foreground, the music taking on a very jaunty garden party sort of feel, which makes us think of some damaged, sort-of-metal Penguin Cafe Orchestra or some bizarre Japanese what-the-fuck jazzdrone outfit or the stranger Circle side projects like Ratto Ja Lehtisalo. A bit schizophrenic for sure, but in a good way, a super dynamic sort of seasick meander through blasting metallic post rock, far out quirky prog, lilting almost RennFaire acoustic breaks, and blissed out repetitive krautrock. Be sure and stick around for the end of the final 11+ minute track, after a stretch of silence, comes a dizzying blast of freaked out psychedelic noise, all grinding loops, snippets of earlier songs, and all sorts of head spinning post production fuckery. Groovy laid back post-kraut-rock slathered in thick swirls of distortion and fuzzy effects, obscured by tape dropouts and strange damaged feedback, the whole thing warped and warbly as if broadcast through a thick cough syrup haze. So cool.
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
All right! Unlike Blues Control, who might mislead just a bit with their name, this band Blues Addicts ARE indeed just what you think they might be from the moniker. Yep, reissue label Shadoks brings us the real deal heavy hippy blues rock here. And that is the sort of blues we like! Acid-rock blues circa 1970 from a Danish outfit definitely influenced by Cream and Hendrix. It's badass stuff, full of crunching chords and wailin' solos, approaching Blue Cheer levels of distortion n' heaviness, though with a jazzy side too, and some mellow moments. Blues Addicts' big thing was improvisation, as on the ten minutes plus of "Hailow". There's a singer, but really these songs are about instrumental musical expression, as you can tell from track titles referencing modes and methods like "Jazzer", "Bottleneck", "Electric", and perhaps even "(4/4+6/4)/�4"...
We mentioned these guys in our review of Shadoks' earlier reissue of another acid-blues item from Denmark, the Terje, Jesper & Joachim album. They were originally on the same label, Spectator, along with another, even fuzzier, band called Moses, which we hope will show up on Shadoks' reissue schedule someday soon too! Anyway, this is in that vein, and also fits in with other obscure bluesy proto-metal acts of the era like The Human Beast, Human Instinct, Speed Glue & Shinki, Skid Row, N.S.U., and many other fave raves of the same ilk.
Speaking of proto-metal, there's a high-contrast black and white picture in the cd booklet of hot shot guitarist Ivan Horn, whose evil facial grimace, long hair and shadowy brow makes him appear very black metal indeed. A man ahead of his time. Though, for looking so tough, he's also credited with playing the kazoo. The cd booklet also includes other photos and two pages of liner notes talking about the history of the band. Unlike the previous cd reissue we've seen of this (a few years back on the Karma label) there's no bonus tracks of alternate takes and the like, oh well.
The puzzlingly (and pleasantly) abstract New York duo known as Blues Control is back, making the jump to Siltbreeze with this new record, a spacey hybrid of Suicide/Velvet Underground droned out rock with more dreamy moments along the lines of Windy & Carl. They weave a lush tapestry of meditative sound collages warped with wavering piano flutters and beaming drones, all rising steadily toward the hazy sky. It's four songs, but almost 35 minutes, so dunno if this is a long ep or a short album. In any case, we'll take what we can get from Blues Control, and what we get here is quite nice indeed, a fine addition to their brief discography that includes the AQ recommended releases Puff on Fusetron and the eponymous one on Holy Mountain.
"Good Morning" (as in, little school girl?) opens up the disc with what must be the most actually blues-like thing that these guys have ever controlled. Kicking off with a single piano note (a la "I Wanna Be Your Dog"), they really shake it here, the track turning into a driving instrumental onslaught of gorgeously distorted guitar/bass fuzz, with honky tonk piano skittering o'er pounding drum beats... and then, horns! And electronic effects echoing the 13th Floor Elevators' famous jug. Badass. In part 'cause apparently garage-rock fiend Kurt Vile helps out.
The piano takes the fore on the next cut, the ambient jazz flecked loveliness of "Rest On Water". More a hazy soundscape than an actual song, it's like a lost transmission of a loose piano melody, with slow strings fading in alongside some acoustic strumming. More rhythmic is "Tangier", and more and more distorted and dubbed-out it also gets, as its eight mesmeric minutes proceed. It opens with a cool, lo-fi Casio kalimba sound, soon building upon itself before a huge wave of cloudy ambience comes in, along with a simple, steady rhythm with a dreamy keyboard melody floating on top. A thing of throbbing beauty. And then "On Through The Night" (which we don't think is meant to be a Def Leppard reference, though that would have been cool) takes up pretty much the entire second half of the disc, a 16:50 trip deep into Blues Control land, a realm of rumbling echo-effected dubbiness, woozy hints of string orchestration, creepy carnival organ, droned out drama, and pulsating mystery, their music looping like the multiple hoop earrings piercing the ear of the "primitive" person depicted on the cover, caressing YOUR ears though, rather than piercing them. The melody is murky, yet easy to detect, BC taking a thankfully melodic approach that many experimental bands ignore entirely.
Even at their most aggressive ("Good Morning") there's something gentle about Blues Control. That first track we'd especially recommend to the Wooden Shjips fans, and then elsewhere on here there's stuff to offer folks into the likes of everyone/thing from Eno to Sun Araw to Alice Coltrane Moolah to Expo '70. Elements of all of which combine uniquely within Blues Control's cracked and krautrockish DIY avant-blues experiments. A nice blend of pop catchiness and free-psych trippyness, the perfect record for a summer walk around town or a sunny BBQ burn out, this one is recommended!
The lp version of this came out earlier but we waited for the cd to come in before reviewing it. Maybe just 'cause Blues Control takes some time to digest, since they're so... different. And, we think, pretty darn cool.
You kind of have to listen to instrumental duo Blues Control as much for what's not going on, than what is. What's missing from the equation that suddenly makes 2+2 not equal 4 in Blues Controls' unusual math. Not by that to suggest that they're a "math rock" band. Nope, the name don't lie (nor does it tell the truth), they are a blues band. Of sorts, sort of. But playing the blues in an alternate, warped universe, where fragmentary fuzz guitars are friendly with tick-tocking clocks.
Sometimes they're subtracting stuff, leaving out the vocals and other usual blues signifiers and song structures and so forth. Or sometimes they work their magic by addition and multiplication (the layered looping of "Behind The Skies" ferinstance). It's all about abstraction, repetition, distortion. Suddenly 2+2 is an interesting problem to work out. And often, a pretty one.
The title track that opens the album features echoey percussive loops over which electronic notes gently cascade, reminding us of both Moolah and Cluster. Next, "Always On Time" proceeds similarly, with a recurring piano riff as centerpiece for soloing amidst a warm and gauzy bed of sound. That's followed by "Behind The Skies", which takes the disc to its darkest, grindingest depths. And then, "End Zone" is the sort of thing that Jimi Hendrix (if appropriately dosed with dowers) wouldn't mind jamming along to. Sleepy whale call electric blooze guitar from the other side. So much spaced out ambience, which gets even mellower, or mellowest, on the lovely album-ender "Call Collect".
Another WTF? release from this very much non-blues weirdo duo. As usual, but more so than ever, we're not quite sure what to make of it. Opener "Love's A Rondo" really threw us for a loop. A meandering rock groove jam lead by jaunty jazzy piano, ivories being tickled here in the vein of Vince Guaraldi of Peanuts fame, or even Bill Evans. The sprightly piano then mixes it up with distorted but mellow psych guitar wail. It's like Schroeder from Peanuts jamming with Wooden Shjips or something. Kinda confusional but we like it, an assessment that applies to the whole album. There's a soundtracky vibe to the heavier throb of track two, "Iron Pigs", which features happy but slightly dissonant sounding synth-horns and a steady drum machine thwack-thwack amongst other noises. As the album progresses, all these elements - piano, drum machine, guitar, electronics - woozily weave in and out, kind of mellow, kind of strange, kind of pretty, kind of queasy... It's tough to tell if it's "good" or not, but, well, we guess it IS, in that we like to listen to it, in fact it gets played in the shop quite a bit, and we're talking about it, even... Valley Tangents makes an impression as being not quite like anything else. They've successfully captured a true 'outsider' vibe here. It's like Blues Control decided to make a record today that, had it come out in the '70s, would for sure have wound up on the infamous Nurse With Wound 'list'. Or imagine Vince Vince Guaraldi making a krautrock record, with Brian Eno's help perhaps, one that's both pleasant -and- weird.
If you liked Blues Controls' recent collab with Laraaji, or their previous Local Flavor lp, well, you just might like this too. Or maybe not. We doubt BC are bothered much, they're just gonna keep doing their 'thing', whatever it is!
Don't let the punny name fool ya, this surely isn't "blues rock". Nor blues. Nor rock. Not really. Nor is it of Yugoslav origin, despite the biographical misinformation posted on the Holy Mountain website that claims Blues Control to be an obscure '70s psych band from Yugoslavia. Nope, Blues Control are an instrumental Brooklyn duo on guitar and synths and drums, making a wonderfully fucked up yet pleasantly listenable psych-squabble of a sound that's not super easy to describe, actually... let's just say that if it were blues rock, it'd be druggily confused, utterly EXPERIMENTAL blues rock. The eight tracks found on this eponymous debut wander through mellow, spacey passages, interludes of seasick synth symphonics, and blown-out epic episodes full of fuzzed-up motorpsycho guitar leads, drunken and damaged sounding. Blues Control's two-man trash team are up to something strange here, counter-intuitive creativity that can make a cool track out of some pretty piano dropped into a droney wash, followed up by a broken-amp bass solo and some off-kilter beats, ferinstance. This totally fits in on the out-there Holy Mountain label alongside the likes of Residual Echoes and Aufgehoben, especially considering how fractured and distorted they can get, almost like a fuzzed-out Starfuckers on the very first track. We're digging this a lot.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
When this latest Frkwys collaboration was first announced between New York psych rockers Blues Control and experimental new age composer, Laraaji (Edward Larry Gordon), we were curious as to what this would sound like. But ever since we got it in the store, it's fast becoming our favorite pairing in the series, which is no small feat, since we absolutely adored the Arp & Anthony Moore collaboration as well as the Juliana Barwick & Ikue Mori release. Blues Control has toned down their usual rollicking psych kraut chug, and instead create four long-form interconnecting pieces with tempered down cosmic guitar and electronic atmospheric manipulations, while Laraaji plays treated zither and African string instruments over them. Building from quiet oceanic ambiance to slowly evolving cosmically focused and tripped out deep spiritual meditations which feature choral and resonant vocal accompaniment provided by Laraaji. On the third song, "City of Love", a percussive momentum with a heavier guitar drone foundation briefly intensifies, while clouds of kora, kalimba and mouth harp vibrational tones bounce back and forth across the aural field to gently lilting psychedelic effect. For late night devotional listening for any fan of modern day psych and new age, this is simply stunning!!
When we listed a previous edition of this some years ago, it was back when our reviews were, um, a lot shorter. So all's we said then was that it was a proto-metal essential, from Japan's answer to Black Sabbath. And maybe that's enough, but since we dig this album so much, and it has at long last been reissued again, let's go for something a bit more expansive...
First off, Blues Creation's Demon & Eleven Children, their second and most classic album, dates from 1971. That's right, 1971!!! Of course it does. They'd started off in '69 with a record of all blues covers, but by '71 they'd heavied-up, and were ready with an album of originals, obviously influenced by the likes of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple's In Rock. And dig that cover art. If you're one of our many proto-metal lovin' customers, you NEED this.
Among early '70s Japanese heavy psych hard rock bands, THESE guys (next to, arguably, Flower Travellin' Band) were indeed the heaviest we've heard. And definitely the most Sabbathy (though FTB did cover Sabbath... and Flied Egg came close too, even putting albums out on Vertigo). But really, just listen to the opening track here, "Atomic Bombs Away". No question. Sounds like a song Sabbath wrote for their first album, but let Blues Creation have instead. Heck if you didn't know better, it really sounds like Iommi's playing the guitar riffs and solos, and Geezer's on the swinging, lumbering bass! Obviously, it's heavy, gotta be when it's called "Atomic Bombs Away" (we wonder if it was was weird for a Japanese band to title a song that, only about 25 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The song ain't actually about atomic bombs, actually, like most of the tracks on Demon & Eleven Children, it's about lovin' and leavin' (or being left). Which can be heavy stuff too. Sample lyrics from "Atomic Bombs Away": "First time I lay you in the rusty shack / Black night keep fallin' in your gypsy eyes / Keep on movin' till the end of time / Lord have mercy for my sin / Set me free from my destiny".
The next track is called "Mississippi Mountain Blues", complete with harmonica... but it's urgent and rollicking, and in any case about as conventionally blues rock as they ever get here. We call this proto-METAL for a reason. Just check out the rockin' riff-fest of an instrumental, entitled "Brane Baster" (aka "Brain Buster"), to see what we mean. It's not all about Sabbath emulation, either. They're proto-Priest in parts, too, or at least, they've got tight twin guitar action on here that'll impress the Wishbone Ash and Thin Lizzy fans. Definitely pretty badass for when and where they were from. Tracks like "Sorrow" do the slow and sad thing pretty well too. It's not all heavy - there's the gentle "One Summer Day", as lovely as its title suggests. But if you want heavy, '71 style, this album won't disappoint you at all, indeed, you'll be be freaking out. It concludes with the epic, and ripping, 9+ minute title track, and if you're not bowing down to Blues Creation by then, your name had better be, like, Ritchie Blackmore.
Julian Cope ranked this as #17 in his Japrocksampler top 50, not bad. From a proto-metal point of view, though, it's top ten material, and we're not just talking Japan. Up there with Bang and Dust and Buffalo and Leaf Hound and all the rest.
Reissued in one of those wallet-digi packages, numbered.
Japan's Blues Creation started off as standard late 60's traditional blues-rock band but quickly got all heavy and freaky and proto-metallic and sort of became their country's riffy acid-blues answer to Black Sabbath (well, along with a few others like Flied Egg and of course AQ faves the Flower Travellin' Band who covered Sabbath on their first album). We really wish we could still get a hold of the Japanese import cd version of Blues Creation's classic 1971 album Demon & Eleven Children. But at least, at last, we have a few recently obtained copies of this, a reissue of a live album that originally came out 'round the same time. It's got the title track from Demon & Eleven Children, along with a couple of Blue Creation originals not found on Demon, one called "Nightmare" being as good and metal as anything on that album. Plus there's a few covers -- "Understand" with guest vocalist Carmen Maki, who was kind of a Japanese Janis Joplin/Robert Plant hybrid, and extended-length versions of ol' nuggets like "Rolling Stone" and "Tobacco Road" (a mean version of that song for sure!). This is definitely not for those who hate the blues -- a lot of this is real bluesy -- but it's also pretty much always heavy and/or frantic. And the guitar work is KILLER, Iommi-worthy leads ripping out of yr speakers all the time. A live recording is just perfect for these guys. They have a super electric sound and that early '70s jamming aesthetic like the Sabs themselves.
Ok, a lot of bands are celebrating a 10 year anniversary this year. Some are more warranted than others. Let's just say that for now. Damage offers up the one-trick pony style of attitude encased blues licks in the EXPLODING way fans of Jon Spencer and his BLUES EXPLOSION (*bold and italized with !!!*) have loved and expected for a decade. Oh, so loyal to their sound and their fans! If you're still rockin' on the JSBE (now simply, Blues Explosion) you've got some brand new BLUES-type EXPLOSIONS!!! If not, well, then nothing to see here.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The 12" has 3 songs, the cd has 6. I don't like Jon Spencer very much in general, but this record is really really good. Remixes by Beck, the Dub Narcotic boys, Mike D. of the Beastie Boys, etc. Lots of theremin and anaolgue synth sounds.
