Sam Coomes of the fabulous Quasi takes a detour from his usual fuzzy pop stylings into totally raw, psychedelic blues-iness!! Somewhat startling and strange as it begins, but stick with it 'cause it proves to be an altogether engaging listen. Yelp'n'howl vocals. Trashy but totally tight drumming. Churning, bristly guitars. A little swamp / hillbilly, a little T-Rex-ish, a little bit of Quasi-ness (you can catch glimpses of their trademark organ sounds in fab songs like "Born To Die") and closing the album is a lengthy, reeling, jazzy free-for-all. Very very cool and super right-on recommended!
Germany, circa 1984. A gaggle of krautrock diehards were (we imagine) locked in a room with a plethora of instruments, toys and objects and not allowed to come out until they'd done some sort of justice to the communal freak-out legacy of such early '70s kosmische bands like Amon Duul I and Siloah. They might still be happily locked in that room, for all we know, but the disjointed, damaged, distorted recording they made was pressed up and privately released on vinyl in a limited edition of 100 copies in 1986. That LP, Karawane der Mystiks, has apparently become an extremely sought-after (or at least very hard to find) latter-day krautrock rarity, and has now been officially reissued on compact disc for the limited edition acid-folk cd-r lovin' / Arthur magazine readin' / "new weird America" who dig old weird Germany crowd to freak on.
This disc consists of sixteen tracks (including three "bonus-titel") of lo-fi, chaotic krautrock jamming that at its best achieves a sort of fucked-up raga-like trance state, like a retarded Franciscan Hobbies or a more raw and hippy Axolotl, perhaps. A few parts are a bit too peppy for us, or cacophonously annoying if you're not in the mood, but mostly this is a weird, wailing pow-wow that we're glad has been dug up from obscurity. Of course, it's still pretty darn obscure! And by the way, about the only thing in English on the packaging is the term "Camelshithippies" found in one of the song titles.
Morr Music continue their singular vision of keepin' you as relaxed and unriled as possible. Indeed, this German label have amassed quite a stable of like-minded dreamy indie pop-tronica artists, and here's the latest addition to their family. It's F.S. Blumm's Zweite Meer album. Psst, for those keeping score, it's actually his second release on Morr. His first was 2001's Mondekuchen, notably the first acoustic album released on that label. Anyways, his muted music immediately settles right in by the hearth with some ultra soft prettiness composed from a blend of acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, melodica, accordion, harmonium, french horn and more. Zweite Meer also snuggles in cozily next to the music by The Album Leaf. Just give this a back-to-back listen with A.L.'s recently reissued Seal Beach EP. So lovely!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
While it was obviously too much to hope for that the new Dean Blunt record could actually live up to its tantalizingly grim title, and contain ACTUAL Black Metal, it does end up being a sonic surprise anyway. Right from the get go, with the opening track a looped sunshine pop concoction of swirling strings, jangle pop guitars, and way-up-in-the-mix deadpan vocals, drawled and laid back, it's not ENTIRELY removed from DB's previous full length, the heartbreak comedown album The Redeemer, but things here get stripped down even further, and become further removed from Blunt's previous project Hype Williams. Black Metal is a collection of ultra personal downer pop, looped gloominess, a sort of fractured slowcore, the bulk of the record following the sonic template set by that first track, a series of looped pop jams, all swirling strings, jangle pop guitars, deadpan laid back vocals, Blunt's vocals almost comical in their awkward fit, which might rankle some listeners, but it's really what gives Black Metal its intimate, home brewed vibe, and if Blunt's vocals seems a bit woozy and warble, prepare yourself for the yowling, atonal female vox (a la Kim Gordon), courtesy of Joanne Robertson, which are even more strange and cold and more often than not charmingly off key. Robertson surfaces throughout Black Metal, occasionally lacing the proceedings with haunting guitar figures, but more often countering Blunt's wasted vocals with her own hazy narcoleptic call and response croon.
Highlights include "100", which sans vocals could be Galaxie 500, or some other similarly minded jangle pop outfit, but then Robertson and Blunt join the proceedings, and the song is transformed into something more off kilter, and home brewed sounding, still hauntingly intimate, but with a warped DIY vibe, Robertson's vocals in particular reminding us of early 4-track twee pop, but here set amidst a landscape much more lush and layered. There's the sprawling 13 minute epic "Forever", all stumbling, stuttery programed rhythms, over wheezing shimmers and delicate piano, Robertson crooning forlornly, before the sound starts to get a little bit dubby, with echoes and strange sound effects, only to eventually be joined by some (purposefully?) cheesy sax. Which is followed by the mesmerizingly creepy "X", all spidery guitars draped over softly billowing chordal thrum, a gauzy raga like drone, haunting and hypnotic, which unexpectedly blossoms into some woozy, warbly lo-fi electro, and again more of Robertson's endearingly off-key vocals, all driven by what sound like the hiss of a life support machine (!).
The rest of the record is populated by fantastic little electro-dream pop fragments, that again, sans vocals are alternatingly sweetly psychedelic or charmingly experimental, whether it's the cascading shoegaze shimmer of "Heavy", or the spare Doug Blunt styled (no relation? this song has us wondering!) skeletal funk groovery of the misleadingly titled "Punk", which is also laced with soft undulating swirls of faux strings, and some cool Appalachian guitars, the distorted electronic tangle of the also misleadingly titled "Country", which sounds like it could have come out on the Pan label, or the dizzyingly looped murk-pop ballad, again rife with "Careless Whisper" style sax, or even the synth heavy closer that sounds like Blunt and Robertson are channeling Angelo Badalamenti, the whole thing collapsing into some twisted synth dirge, driven by stumbling programmed beats, and Blunt sounding almost like SpaceApe (R.I.P.), a gorgeously bleak electro-jazz, gloom pop dirge that unwinds like the score to some lost Lynchian art film.
Fantastic stuff. And perhaps appropriately, minimally and confusionally (and handsomely) packaged in all black with practically no information, other than the track titles.
The latest Dean Blunt affliction, which is what he calls his music, is not what you might have been expecting. If in the past we've been prone to describe the afflictions of the artist formerly known as Hype Williams as drug music, then The Redeemer is the come down. At times it casts a harsh light on reality, but always in a beautiful, revelatory kind of way - like when the cold glow of day comes streaming through the drawn curtains. As with Black Is Beautiful (2012, Hyperdub), Blunt's eclectic-electric collaboration with cohort Inga Copeland, each track here flows into the next, so much so that pulling one from the line up would throw the whole thing out of wack (or at least come across like a major musical party foul). If nothing else, the dude knows the power of the segue and how to work you in and out of moods. Redeemer takes what Blunt's learned in the British underground club scene of dub and grime that informed his earlier work (or afflictions, if you prefer) but ditches the smoked-out hissy/buzzy beats in favor of vibrant strings, plucked harps, just a whisp of horn here and there, gentle wave undulations, and choir-like vocals. The weirdness of his beats have been forsaken for traditional rock kick drums. Does this mean that the provocateur known for playing live at lethal volumes, staging ruses, and comparing himself to Steve Jobs (before Kanye West!) has mellowed out and matured? Probably not. The opening track here, a synthesized string quartet, is colored with false rap bravado by calling it, "I Run New York." And one crucial inclusion suggests something more than mellowing is at play. Recurring answering machine messages (who still has an answering machine?) from a woman who is in the process of ending a relationship align with "Pedigree", in which Blunt sings in his croaky baritone, "Call me when your heart is empty. Happy we can still be friends." So perhaps the dude is just hella sad. After all, only two songs � "Demon" and "Imperial Gold", feature female vocals, and neither are attributed to Inga. Then again, there are no credits on The Redeemer, there isn't even a title on the cover � just two hands, held palm to palm as if praying or pleading. But is Inga gone forever? Is that her wispy voice on "Imperial Gold". Isn't Inga known for being a master of vocal imitation? Are they fucking with us again? That's reason enough alone to consider viewing this record on the same snarky anti-art (specifically anti-hip-hop) level as previous releases but now Blunt is taking on the act of making music itself. Or maybe he's just really sad. In any case, The Redeemer is gorgeously produced and wonderful to just give yourself over to.
The first Doug Blunt release, Gentle Persuasion, we made record of the week almost a year ago and people went totally nuts for it. And it's really not hard to see why. Blunt's mellow brand of lo-fi outsider funk is both catchy and rather odd. Sounding like a smoother, Caribbean-inflected Wesley Willis, made with simple keyboard loops, congas and Blunt's own acidy guitar solos. It also had a off-kilter timelessness to it, where we couldn't tell if it was recently recorded or made decades ago.
Doug Blunt came in the store the other day with this new (?) release, Big Top, an ep composed of three songs and three instrumental versions. Complete with cheap color-copied covers of a screen shot from the one video performance we have seen on Vimeo of him performing,"Gentle Persuasion" with an all female backing band (it's totally worth seeking out if you can find it!). While these are new songs, the backing tracks sound almost exactly the same as the tracks on Gentle Persuasion, but with stranger lyrics mostly about being under the stoned spell of sexy freak show women. But the songs are still catchy and crazy as ever, and we may like these new ones even better!
As always it's hard to tell what the real story with Doug Blunt is. Though a super nice guy, sometimes we get the sneaking suspicion he's pulling one over on us. Every time he drops off more cds, he always leaves with a slightly mocking chuckle, as if to say, "those crazy fools". Indeed!
It's pretty phenomenal that this record went from getting the suspicious side-eye when we first took it in on consignment, to becoming one of our favorite "WTF?" records of the year! When it first appeared, no one seemed to know where it came from (it had been brought in by Blunt himself, one day). And we weren't too sold on the cover, a generic photograph that looked like it was shot in the eighties, of this fellow Blunt, standing with a woman (a close friend of his, in a head to toe orange outfit that looks like it could have been prison garb, and who as it turns out, may no longer be alive) in front of a Mercedes parked in front of the mural on the side of the O'Farrell Theater on Polk street in San Francisco. Also, whenever there's a bunch of "ASCAP" logos plastered all over the front and back cover, our internal "uh-oh" meter goes way off.
So it just sat on our new arrivals shelf for a few weeks. But then a couple of folks (one of whom runs the Gloriette label, who have supplied us with some Ariel Pink and Nite Jewel records) started asking about it, because they had heard about this record, so we gave it a listen and were pretty surprised and rather blown away by what we were hearing. A lo-fi but breezy outsider funk, made with repetitive cheap-sounding keyboards loops and tones (the kind being currently exploited by Dam-Funk, Ariel Pink, and James Pants), strange metallic tropical guitar tones that sound more like steel drums and flute sounds than actual guitar, and sly, laid-back vocals and catchy, infectiously naive grooves that work their way into our heads and never let go. Everybody here ended up really really digging it.
We sold one copy immediately to someone in the store when playing it, and then when we tried to contact Blunt to get more copies, we discovered that somehow we'd neglected to get his contact info, d'oh! The cd had no contact information, and searches online only revealed that the title track, a raunchy but coded come-on to a sexy stranger, was included on a James Pants mix. This only piqued our interest further, as Blunt's skewed Caribbean inflected songs would obviously be simpatico with James Pants' more recent tropical themed output. We could also see folks into Ariel Pink and Dam-Funk getting WAY into this. So we thought maybe this record was a rare private press record from the eighties. It does seem to have a strange hard-to-pin-down-time-wise quality.
Thankfully, Blunt eventually came back in and we got more copies and found out that he had pressed vinyl copies too. He also told us that this record was recorded ten years ago in 2000, but that didn't diminish our new found love for this record's questionable mystery, as it still predates all of the artists mentioned above that it reminds us of, though we're pretty sure Blunt probably has never heard of any of them. It also has the left of center oddness of other outsider funk artists like Tonetta, or Wicked Witch, albeit way more toned down than either of those two. Not that it's completely off the wall weird, but it's one of those records that we went into with such hesitation and were pleasantly surprised that we then became totally enamored with its home-brewed charm.
The lp is 5 tracks, with extra shorter versions of the songs "Fly Guy" and "Gentle Persuasion" and comes housed in an old school white cut-out 12" sleeve. The cd version has two extra songs and instrumental versions of four of the tracks. Oh, and the vinyl has a gold star sticker that boldly proclaims "HIT!" We couldn't agree more!
We can't believe it's been five years since Doug Hream Blunt himself walked into our store and consigned his self-released recordings of home-brewed, proto-chillwave dance funk, recorded with washy and chirpy synths and genuinely out there guitar solos, with songs about dancing, fly guys and ladies' butts. Kind of a smoother Wesley Willis (ok, much smoother!) with Jimi Hendrix dreams, Blunt's genuinely infectious musical enthusiasm shined through on each track. We made Gentle Persuasion record of the week back in 2010, without knowing much about its backstory. Doug was very vague on details too, saying the recording was from 2000, but we believe that was when it was pressed, but not recorded. Having suffered a stroke a few years before, he couldn't go into great length about the recording at the time (he's doing much better now, as evidenced by our recent record signing event!), but we had an inkling that the recordings were known in certain crate-digger / DJ circles, which were immediately confirmed once we had it on our website and orders from all over the world started pouring in.
Seriously, we have sold tons of his release, and now lo and behold, Doug is finally having his well-deserved, big moment of larger recognition and discovery via David Byrne's Luaka Bop label, with this reissue of his complete recordings which include the two previously self-released discs we previously listed: Gentle Persuasion and Big Top, remastered and put together for the first time - these tracks have never sounded better! A lo-fi but breezy outsider funk, made with repetitive cheap-sounding keyboards loops and tones (the kind being currently exploited by Dam-Funk, Ariel Pink, and James Pants, all Doug Hream Blunt fans by the way), strange metallic tropical guitar tones that sound more like steel drums and flute sounds than actual guitar, and sly, laidback vocals and catchy, infectiously naive grooves that work their way into our heads and never let go. So delightful!!
And we finally get more of the story behind these recordings: Back in 1985, when Doug was 35, he decided he wanted to learn guitar and found an extended learning class called 'How To Form A Band' run by Victor Flaviani out of his garage. Victor taught Doug the guitar, even though Victor barely knew the instrument himself, and Doug set about writing and recording the songs with his other class mates. We remember seeing the video of Gentle Persuasion we found on Vimeo from a cable access TV video with Doug and what seemed to be an all-girl band, which turns out were his fellow classmates, which included Victor and his wife Angela too on drums and guitar respectively.
It's pretty phenomenal that this record went from getting the suspicious side-eye when we first took it in on consignment, five years ago, to becoming one of our favorite "WTF?" records ever. Not that it's so impossibly strange, but it's a genuine home-grown San Francisco DIY funk artifact with minimal ambitions that is finally being turned on to a larger audience, and we couldn't be happier for Doug! For fans of that Personal Space compilation of private press electronic soul, Dam-Funk, Ariel Pink or Dean Blunt, who apparently took the Blunt name in tribute to Doug!
Download code included with the vinyl btw. Also btw, if you missed the remix 12" that Luaka Bop put out as a teaser for this earlier this year for Record Store Day, we still have three or four signed copies of that left in stock...
There's an air of uneasy change on this seventh Blur full length. Undoubtedly this is greatly due to the departure of prominent member Graham Coxon from the band, leaving frontman Damon Albarn - perhaps a little overconfident following the success of his other fun-filled project Gorillaz? - at the helm of this formerly fantastic pop ship. However, Albarn's gift is at hooking up with strong artists with which to collaborate - case in point, Coxon, Dan The Automator or longtime Blur producer Stephen Street. Although he may believe he can run the show on his own, he quite simply cannot. Think Tank is distressingly awkward, seemingly unfinished and lost. Even stalwart Blur fans might find this rather difficult to endure. Produced by William Orbit and Norman Cook (aka Fatboy Slim).
Enter at your own risk.
A long overdue reissue of these two rare records from this long running Scottish pop band, C86 from 1989 and Star Wars from 1991, both loooong out of print. This is actually the first time we've reviewed anything by BMX Bandits, even though most of the pop fans around here love them, their sound very reminiscent of the naive pop of the Pastels and the Vaselines, especially the Vaselines, which makes sense as the Vaselines' Frances McKee was a member of the Bandits, as was Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub and the Faith Healers, Eugene Kelly of the Vaselines and Eugenius, Francis MacDonald of Eugenius and Teenage Fanclub, David Scott of the Pearlfishers, Sushil K. Dade of the Soup Dragons and Telstar Ponies, Sean Dickson of the Soup Dragons and loads more.
The BMX Bandits specialized in super heartfelt, dreamy, occasionally goofy, sweet and fey, jangly indie pop. Their first single was declared "the worst record ever made" by British magazine Sounds, while their next was a single of the week in pretty much every publication, and at the time was voted one of the top pop tracks of the year. Anyone who digs the sound of the Vaselines and Teenage Fanclub will definitely dig BMX Bandits, in some ways, they're like the perfect mix of the two.
C86 was the band's first record, and is a perfect slab of naive pop, the sound surprisingly lush, the vocals being the most polarizing aspect, an often off key croon, that is what definitely reminds us of the Pastels, the same sort of earnest sad boy croon, but here set amidst big guitar jangle, female background vox going 'la la la la', powerful drumming, not to mention some strange and silly bits, like the weird gypsy breakdown on the title track, all fiddle and flutes, or the programmed beats and Ween like vocals on "Disco Girl 2" (one of our favorite tracks here).
Star Wars, from a few years later, is a bit more polished, a little more rocking, and with a bigger production, sounding like Teenage Fanclub fused with Belle & Sebastian, again, big fuzzy, jangly guitars, lots of acoustic strum, and those distinctive vocals, the sound on Star Wars much more nineties college rock sounding, but with that fey Scottish pop vibe that kept these songs from sounding like anyone else besides the BMX Bandits. Star Wars also peppers its songs with strings here and there, mandolin once in a while, slipping from lush bombastic pop, to personal bedroom strum and croon, a record overflowing with some of our favorite pop songs ever.
Another winner from the Holodeck label, who have brought us stellar releases from Marie Davidson, Smokey Emory, Troller, Survive and Sungod and others mostly from the vital contemporary electronic scene in Austin, Texas. Boan is a collaboration between Ssleeperhold's Jose Cota and Mariana Saldana (ex - //TENSE//) who, outside of their lauded individual creative efforts, are widely known as two thirds of the now defunct electro-trio Medio Mutante. We dug Ssleeperhold's grave rave synth confections, and here with Saldana's detached goth-romance delivery, the duo have crafted a superb minimal wave acid dance classic. Brooding, sultry and hypnotic, utilizing an array of modern synths, sequencers and drum machines and recorded with the best studio production from Survive's Michael Stein, Boan offers a dark flip side to the retro Italo grooves of the Italians Do It Better label, even sounds like something unearthed by Dark Entries from Italy or Spain circa 1983. Fantastic!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
If you were to think of a seafaring vessel while listening to this atmospheric instrumental album, methinks it would be more 'submarine' than 'boat'. Indeed the very aquatic sounds emitted by this band (which features members of Hood and Remote Viewer) evoke the echo-y, shadowy ocean depths with glinting fishies and swaying seaweed. Murky swirls of sonic blues and greens, electronic pulses, fuzzy subterranean drones and occasional laidback jazzy percussion, with breathy ethereal female vocals floating lazily amidst the audio acquatic. Think Mazzy Star meets Oval, or maybe Bjork transmitting minimal glitchscapes from the bottom of your swimming pool. Considering the overall tranquil tone of the album, the song titles (such as "A Volume Of Typefaces", I Only Missed By One Word" and "All Thumbs And Thumbs") are somewhat puzzling -- not at all keeping with the theme of the band's name and album title.
The Boats come sailing back with their third full length, and their music is as lovely as ever. Tomorrow Time commences with an unfurling of soft droning veils embroidered with delicate glitch. Drowsy processed vocals slow drift along stepping gracefully around the raindrop chimes and piano keys. In stark contrast to all of this aural dreaminess are the surprisingly negative toned song titles. Geez, they're so downright harsh and jarring when taken in combination with the sweet sweet music that you might want to avert your eyes, and simply let your ears soak in the sounds.
Almost exactly a year later, The Boats (featuring members of Hood and The Remote Viewer) pick right up from where they left off on their previous full length Songs By the Sea... soothing, fluid loveliness albeit minus that album's veil of female vocals. If you're seeking a totally relaxing listen, please take the album's title as the truth. This was made for you... even if your name isn't one of the many that make up the track titles. Delicate shimmery glitches and dreamy melodic piano phrases echo through the slowly undulating ripples of bass tones. A stay inside with a good book on a rainy day kind of album.
Nothing new here. More lo-fi, blues explosion style, good ol' boys singing into a vacuum cleaner, shouting and whooping it up, foot stomping, 80-year-old-delta-bluesman-trapped-in-a-30-year-old-white-man's-body, swampy, dirty, barroom brawling, pig fucking, wild rhythm and blues form one half of the long gone Doo Rag, the band that started it all. The best part (and we're assuming he's poking a little fun at some other overly-self-referencing white blooz groop) is, after continuously shouting out his name, and the label's name, when he announces the fact that he's a one man band, and then announces the band members one at a time: "Mr right foot on the ol' bass drum......"
Lots of people have been talking about this fiesty British quintet for a while, and it's easy to see why. They have a unique take on the indie math rock thing, with some great melodies, weird arrangements, and with the youthful vigor of Repeater era Fugazi.
Okay, I've gotta let you know that when this cd first started I totally thought it was Blondie's "One Way Or Another". Then once the vocals came in... I was transported to Rydell Highschool in the movie Grease. The Bobbyteens are definitely a band Ms Rizzo and the rest of the Pink Ladies would approve of or even be in. Ample amounts of sass and attitude that also sorta reminded me of the Donnas. From the purveyors of fine garage rock, Estrus Records.
The third full-length from perpetual highschoolers the Bobbyteens. Another trashy rawk party with major emphasis on fun, (minor on proficiency and production). A word of historical note, if you liked the Mummies, the Phantom Surfers and the Count Backwards, you no doubt already know that Bobbyteen Russell Quan beat the tubs for those three extremely lo-fi garage outfits. Plus his BT
Burnt Up On Re-Entry is the latest from UK one man band Matthew Sweet (not THAT one), and the first we've heard from him in a while, and like the self titled record we reviewed on the list ages ago, Burnt Up is another sprawling, brooding epic, equal parts sinister folk, psychedelic ambience, and experimental electronics, the electronics playing a much bigger part than we remember. In fact the opener manages to lay out a whole new template for Boduf Songs (new to us at least), Sweet's husky, whispery vocals, over skeletal steel string buzz, simple programmed drum machines, little bits of glitch and hum, and some seriously dense distorted guitar chug, the sound exploding into what sounds like a full band, epic and lush, and downright heavy, with a wild psychedelic final stretch with tangled shards of wah guitar swirling around a weird almost calypso rhythm. The rest of the record unfolds similarly, pulsing synths, reverberating chimes, minimal rhythmic skitter, strummed minor key chords, a pulsating almost kosmische folk at times, again occasionally blossoming into driving post rock or krautrock style grooves, more chugging metallic guitars, the record laced with some fantastically psychedelic noise interludes, rumbling, corrosive thrum beneath streaks of high end skree midway through, and a closing coda, that's all haunting ambience, with strange disembodied voices, and underwater electronics. But in between, Sweet conjures up a strange sonic world, one that seems torn between minimal psychedelic folks, and lush expansive apocalyptic heaviness, the finest moments when he's able to merge the two, but there are some equally compelling tracks that fall on one side or the other, like the gorgeous haunting balladic creep of "Song To Keep Me Still", the whole track wreathed in a hazy halo of alien electronics, or the pulsing, outer space drift of "Vermin, Rend Thy Garments", or the slow burn psychedelia of "Everyone Will Let You Down In The End", replete with some weird metallic bell-like percussion, and some seriously heavy final movement riffage, and from there on out, it's a dizzying sprawl of ghostly electronics, woozy washed out psychedelic drift, swirling abstract electronic skitter, shuffling twang flecked desert drone space rock, hushed bedroom folk (again wreathed in a soft swirl of insectoid electronics), and finally, the aforementioned ambient outro.
Gorgeous stuff for sure, but also mysterious, and at times a little sonically confounding, at least for the unadventurous, but for the rest of you, repeated listens offer much in the way of sonic revelation, and will eventually let you lose yourself in Boduf Songs' increasingly mysterious soundworld.
The latest from psychedelic folk troubadour Matthew Sweet, aka Boduf Songs, is a gorgeously intimate, stripped down and haunting songsuite, a collection of hushed, blackened torchsong and achingly melancholic minimalism, on the surface, a sound much more polished and mainstream than previous releases, but this more assured songsmithery, built from an impossibly lush sonic palette of muted organ thrum, electronic pulsations, layered chordal swells, and most importantly, Sweet's delicate, about to crack, whispery vocals, drifting atop a constantly shifting sprawl of starlit moodiness and crystalline shimmer.
And while much of Stench of Exist is still spent in the shadows, a drowsy, druggy, dreamy psych folk that unfolds languorously, laced with mysterious electronic filigree, and wreathed in occasional symphonic billows, some of the record truly surprises, shifting dramatically toward a sound that touches on other groups as disparate as Iron & Wine, the Editors or the National, just check out "Thwart By Thwart" which transforms the minimal into maximal, tribal drumming, wreathed in warm, lush guitar strum, reverbed piano, even handclaps, and warm, softly crooned vocals, a lush, brooding murk, that does in fact sound a bit like a darker, more propulsive Iron & Wine, but unlike I&W, the sound if flecked with mysterious samples, and field recordings, all building to a pretty epic, and almost Godspeed like coda, gloomy and gothic, and darkly dramatic.
Other mysterious moments in a record rife with them, is the strange glitched out electronica of "Head Of Hollow-Fill And Mountain Top Removal", a warped sprawl of industrial murk, peppered with swells of staticky electronic noise, buried melodies and dubbed out FX, a softly roiling noisescape wound around a robotic processed voice, sounding almost like a blackened industrial Radiohead. Or the ambient drone of "Grows In The Small World Of Nerve", a lowercase drift of distant, barely there dreaminess, beneath a skyful of rain, and snippets of conversation, all smeared into an indistinct blur of soft psych shimmer. Or even the swampy cosmic dirge of "Modern Orbita", that again, positions Boduf Songs for some long overdue commercial appreciation, but as if fully conscious of that potential, the otherwise beautifully brooding ballad, a darkly motorik downer psych gem, dusky and deserty, sounding a bit like Earth and Scenic and Sixteen Horsepower, is pocked with strange spaced out swirls, and more druggy dubbiness, which only serves to shine a woozy black light on the twisted loveliness of the rest of the track.
It's that balance that makes Stench Of Exist so stunning, the sound constantly shifting between hushed, harrowing, super personal, bedroom-folk psychedelia, and experimental electronic soundscapery, muted downer pop and drifting dronemusic, the record's finest moments occur when those various sounds bleed and blur into each other. Simple folk tunes are transformed by skeletal programmed rhythms, or swirls of spacey effects, and alternately, pure mad-scientist sonic experimentation is grounded by dour, delicate melodies, and hushed, introspective poppiness. Many of the tracks here begin life as dark, folk flecked, psych pop, but eventually are reimagined as something much more ominous and even malevolent, a whispery, cinematic soundworld of heaving strings and prismatic melody, stately and morose. While fields of effected guitars, unfurling into spiraling sprawls of alien ambience and rainswept atmospheres, all as a crystalline frame for Sweet's heartfelt croon and delicate star dusted balladry.
Fans of King Dude, Iron & Wine, Woven Hand, Townes Van Zandt (if he were raised on industrial music and psychedelia), Sixteen Horsepower, and even Magnetic Fields (check out "The Rotted Names"), will find much to love here for sure. As will anyone into dark, lysergic, gloom-folk melancholia, twisted drum-machine-driven threnodies, and gorgeously grim psychedelia.
Sometimes we find ourselves reviewing music that we don't necessarily have the vocabulary to describe in a way that properly references all the sonic touchstones, but in a lot of ways, those sorts of the reviews are the ones we dig the most, where the comparisons are not the ones from right off the label's onesheet, or borrowed from some other reviewer who is an expert in whatever genre is being discussed. Which is appropriate since we know very little about EBM, or electronic body music, a strain of electronic music popular in the late eighties, which is how Body 11 would most likely be classified, alongside more well known bands like Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and labels like Wax Trax and Nettwerk. The label does mention Skinny Puppy, which definitely gets more to the heart of why we dig this so much, and we DO.
If those above bands mean nothing to you, don't despair, cuz to these ears, the sound of Body 11 is more proto-grebo, 'grebo' being shorthand for greasy bastard, a phrase coined to mean a group of bands that included Pop Will Eat Itself, Gaye Bykers On Acid and the like. And that's actually more what we hear in the music of Body 11. Super dramatic vocals, crooned, howled, drenched in reverb and delay, the vibe swaggery and almost glammy, the pulsing electronic backdrop, peppered with super distorted percussive blurts, and the occasional slash of crunchy fuzzed out guitar, which is why we'd do the musical math for Body 11 like Sigue Sigue Sputnik meets Suicide? Or Pop Will Eat Itself fronted by Gary Glitter, via the aforementioned Skinny Puppy?
Of all the Medical reissues, this is the grittiest, and grimiest of the bunch we think, and we're digging it like crazy, the first four tracks, culled from Body 11's original 1988 single are untouchable, swarthy and swaggery, creepy and crunchy, slithery and groovy, snarly and pulsing, like early Depeche Mode demos roughed up and transformed into something altogether more misanthropic. Way worth it just for those 4 tracks for sure. The bonus tracks are cool too, but are missing some of that attitude, and are a bit more polished, and thus less grimey and grungey, definitely a fun listen, but we find ourselves listening to those first four over and over and over...
LIMITED TO 650 COPIES!! Pressed on heavy 180 gram milky clear vinyl. Includes a printed insert with extensive liner notes!
Way back in 2009, we reviewed a record by a band called Body Hammer, a brilliantly dizzying hybrid of damaged hyper grind, blackened dronescapery and frenzied math metal, all housed in a dvd case, wrapped in a sumo cloth. Now here we are five years later, and the man behind Body Hammer, just walks into aQ, having moved to the Bay Area to attend Mills, and in hand, a new Body Hammer record! And while we'd like to say it's way weirder, or way more fucked up, we just can't cuz the first one was pretty demented and damaged, but what we can say, is the new one is just as tweaked and twisted, which all we could have hoped for, hell, even the first track is pretty difficult to describe, a sort of psychedelic industrial blowout, all metallic percussion, and wild electronic squiggles that could be guitar shred, but is likely something else entirely, a dizzying rhythmic workout that leads directly into a 33 second blast of furious metallic grind, only to then explode into a nearly as brief burst of power electronics, which again in turn, transforms into a blurry bit of collaged field recordings and short wave broadcasts, and then�
Well, before we go track by track, it should be noted there are lots of brief tracks here, some ambient, some blacknoise, some grinding metal, some all three combined, the metal parts are totally frenzied drummachinegun style blowouts, while the more abstract tracks are all over the map, eventually as the track lengthen, the sound becomes more harrowing, the terrifying sample laced atmosphere of "A Presence", the churning black buzz ambience of "A Disappearance", laced with buried vokills and tangled guitar shred, or the slo-mo doomdrone of "The Church", but peppered throughout are dense bouts of Godflesh-like industrial metal churn, all robotic deathmarch and machine like lumber, barely there soundscapery, cinematic and haunting, tripped out psych-noise, blasts of guitar clang, and billows of hazy FX, symphonies of feedback, and finally, a hazy long form sprawl of field recording flecked, murky industrial drift, a strangely disturbing coda, for a fantastically fucked up record.
Surprised this one didn't happen sooner. Hell, if it hadn't, we probably would have suggested it. Providence, Rhode Island's two piece doom sludge wrecking crew The Body, and Aussie slow and low heavies Whitehorse. A seemingly perfect match, but the weird thing is, they both offer up something out of the ordinary here.
The Body start things off with what could be their most metal jam yet, sounding like some grim black metal slowed way down, there are even some almost-blasts, the vocals shrieked and maniacal, the song collapsing part way through into a super thick doomed out sprawl, laced with bursts of blown out buzz, the vocals hovering over a thick undulating almost ambient layer of downtuned guitar buzz and dense tribal drum pound, that every once in a while sounds like Lightning Bolt slowed to a crawl.
Whitehorse counter with a booming, echoe-y chunk of churning doom-ed noise rock, about as groovy as these guys get, and we're talking Eyehategod style groove, which is to say, barely a groove at all, occasional blasts of thick low end creep up from below, shrieking feedback and squalls of glitched out noise pepper some surprisingly black metal riffing, the vocals here veering fro, shrieked to cookie monster grunted, a massive, lumbering, lurching sonic slab of doom sludge crush.
SUPER LIMITED. In fact, already mostly out of print. We got some of the last copies direct from Whitehorse before they headed back to Australia. Packaged in super swank screen printed jackets.
With the breakup of Sonic Youth, we have Kim Gordon's vision and voice coming through her new project Body/Head, a duo with Bill Nace - a New England improviser whose run of collaborators also includes Michael Morley, Thurston Moore, Chris Corsano, etc. Nace's freeform strategery of low-impact, buzzsaw guitar blur met with stompbox feedback-dinosaur roar dynamics is equaled by Kim Gordon's intergenerational channeling of Patty Waters and Jandek, in separate but equal parts. The songs are decidedly atonal, zombified, anti-blues numbers, following what Gordon brought to the experimental portion of the Sonic Youth equation, especially, her songs from those obtuse SYR albums. Anybody hoping for "Kool Thing" should know better, as she's long passed out of her pop-tune phase. Small two note phrases waft in and out of the minor-chord slumping strum, occasionally punctuated by squalid scratchiness, purposefully wonked cable hum, and "I just shit my pants" bursts of guitar excitement.
You might not expect a band featuring former members of Whitehouse and Sutcliffe Jugend to sound a bit like some twisted noiserock hybrid of old Today is The Day, the crushing bombast of the Swans, and the ominous brooding doom and gloom of Joy Division, but that's precisely what Bodychoke conjure up on this, their long out of print final album, circa 1998, now reissued by Relapse.
We always assumed we didn't like Bodychoke all that much, the other records we heard we really not that good, and their version of "Painted Black" was even left off the tUMULt comp featuring multiple version of that iconic song, but holy shit has this record knocked our fucking blocks off. There's plenty of noise for sure, jagged and processed and crumbling and crunchy and blown out, but noise is just one element here, the band in full on noise rock / post rock. Unfurling low slung bass lines, jagged riffing, some cool complex drumming, the arrangements super dynamic, the vocals slipping from ominous deep Michael Gira like croon, to strangled punkish wail.
Opener "Control" pretty much has it all, beginning with a weird cacophony of fractured fragmented noise, the band soon slip into a minimal bass groove, before the guitars kick in and lock in with the snares, the song transformed into a brooding almost Angels Of Light sounding jam, until the chorus, which EXPLODES, and the noise from the beginning returns, wrapping the churning loping crush in a swirling field of feedback and crumbling grit and grime. It's just so intense and heavy and weirdly catchy, and so much better than we ever remember Bodychoke being.
And so it goes, the rest of the record continues to display a sound that's almost more slow building post rock than noise, but most of the tracks are laced with heaping doses of caustic crunch. There's also a cello player in the band, who offers up some gorgeously moaning ambience, and subtle strings here and there. Many of the tracks spread way out, sprawling lugubriously, expansive minimal post punk soundcapes, skitter and whisper, burning slowly until the song is engulfed in tangled riffage and wild tribal pounding, and even the noise, it's so deftly crafted and well placed, it's hard to imagine anyone into heavy music being put off at all, it's just like another layer of heaviness, another level of dynamicism, it's weird, we all had the exact same response when this record came on. "Oh I don't like Bodychoke", but gradually, it seemed everyone was listening to this, ALL the time, even now, as this is being written, not only is it playing on the stereo in the back room, but also in the store, this record just slays. So dark and heavy and brutal and melodic and epic and AMAZING. Based on nothing but how often this gets played in the store and how often we've listened to this since it came in, we're beginning to think maybe we should have made this Record Of The Week, so consider this an EXTREME highlight, and thus overwhelmingly recommended!
Several years ago, we made the first archival release from housewife turned experimental electronic musician Ursula Bogner our Record Of The Week, even knowing full well, that there probably is no Ursula Bogner. On the surface it definitely seemed like the find of a lifetime. The story involved someone's casual interaction with a man on a plane, discovering that this man was the son of a virtually unheard experimental electronic musician, a mom and pharmacist, who had built a recording studio in their home, and who had recorded for twenty years, those recordings proving to be impossibly prescient, the sort of sounds that would stand up to similar recordings at the time by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. That initial release was filled with all manner of documentation, photos, notes, like we said, it seemed like the real deal. But it also seemed like an ingeniously perpetrated hoax. The man in question who supposedly ran into Bogner's son on a plane, was none other than Jan Jelinek, whose music is not all that dissimilar to Bogner's. Perhaps we're just the suspicious types, but there seems to be little or no information about Bogner, other than that provided by the label, which could just speak to her absolute obscurity, but could also speak to the fact that it's all a put on. To be honest, we want to believe it. How cool is that story? But that said, as we mentioned in the review of that first release, if it IS a hoax, we like it even more. So meticulously planned, photos, hand written notes, then the music� Similar to those funereal violin cds we carried a while back (that guy not only recorded all the cds, he also wrote a whole book about the history of funereal violin!), it would require a whole other level of creativity, but enough about all that, it is ultimately about the music, as much as we love the story, true or not, and like the first record, this is another fantastic collection of 'early' primitive recordings, these newly unearthed tapes featuring a focus on the voice, which was not present before, and our first actual exposure to the voice of Bogner, who supposedly passed away in 1994. Opening with piano and vox, the sound fluctuates as the tape speed falters, the sound is murky and definitely sounds old, plenty of spaced out effects, female voices processed into mysterious melodies, percolating rhythms, primitive and very low fidelity. Some of the tracks feature kitschy sounding organs and snippets of looped pop music, but they are transformed into cool sixties style tape music, occasionally lush and lovely, other timeshaunting and austere, there's one track in particular which finds Bogner reciting numbers over a backdrop of hiss and static and blurred melody, that most definitely is a nod, intentional or not, to the perennial aQ fave The Conet Project.
As with the other record, there are expertly penned liner notes, translations of original texts that Bogner wrote to accompany the pieces (especially the boxed cd version which features a massive 100+ page book of liner notes and artwork), all very cryptic and Eno-esque, tons of photos, of installations, of the reel of tape these tracks were discovered on as well as Bogner herself (again, especially in the book that accompanies the cd!). Very recommended of course, for fans of vintage sixties experimental music, of Jan Jelinek, and of impeccably crafted musical hoaxes.
We were told this was supposed to sound like circus music, and it sorta does--like really, really demented circus music. Another quite strange release on the quite strange Jester label (see also Esperanza and When, below). Jester is run by Garm of Norwegian black metal avantgardists Ulver and Arcturus, and it could be said that this band is a bit reminiscent of the more cabaret-styled material on Arcturus' last uberweird opus. Bogus Blimp seem to be an ensemble of evil clowns who have combined carnivalesque themes with the theatrical fury of Cradle of Filth, all within an hallucinatory electronic realm close to that of The Young Gods. Fans of Nina Rota, Mr. Bungle, Arcturus, etc. should check this out.
From what weird Norwegian experimental electronica label do we always expect the unexpected? Well there's the excellent Rune Grammofon...and Smalltown Supersound...but it's Kristoffer "Garm of Ulver" Rygg's label Jester that really knows how to throw us for a loop, time and again. And having heard from Bogus Blimp before, the anticipation here is high... On their two previous Jester releases, Bogus Blimp were what we had to call "circus music"... quirky not-quite-metal, partly electronic bombastic carnivalesque stuff that lived up to their puzzling but oddly pleasing name. Now on Rdtr we get something just a little different. Here Bogus Blimp operate in a realm of glitchy soundtrack noir (actually Rdtr IS a soundtrack, maybe, or at least pretends to be) meant to evoke a futuristic dystopia with a sinister sci-fi feel. So not so circusy as before, more serious...it's electronic post-rock that reminds us a bit of Goblin soundtracks, always a good thing.
We were blown away by this, the most recent issue of this totally DIY travel / music / metal magazine. It's their 8th issue, and it's overflowing with amazing stories and killer interviews and reviews, with plenty of aQ faves. Metalheads will probably want to check this out for the interview with Erik from Watain, or John Gossard from Dispirit / Weakling / The Gault / Asunder, and there's also a bunch of killer in depth reviews of records by Necrite, Dispirit, Barn Owl, Walknut, Horna and others. Which on it's own would probably be enough. But the bulk of the magazine is about travel, specifically of the DIY type, even more specifically, with a focus on train hopping. From Traveling on freight trains in Mexico, to various expeditions throughout China, Mongolia, Finland, Norway and Nepal, there's a history of railroads and railroad operations in Maine, where the author is from, and there's tons of crazy stories, encounters with other travellers, loads of photos, it's pretty incredible, and besides getting a vicarious thrill from reading about all of these amazing places, and the amazing journeys to and through and back, it definitely gives us the bug, to tour, travel, explore, get lost, the sort of thing that the best travel writing does. We've been reading this like crazy, but it's HUGE, so are only partway through, but you'll find yourself riveted, and probably will have trouble putting it down. Also has us hankering to check out past issues as well! Total photocopied, cut and paste old school zine radness, and obviously WAY WAY recommended
Our favorite Teutonic twilight doomjazz combo, the awesome Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, is back with a new, 35+ minute ep, once again released via mega fan Mike Patton's Ipecac label (as have been their past few domestic outings). It's classic Bohren we know and love, more of their usual slow, sad, sparse jazz, that's "heavy" and noirish and minimalistic. But this ep also introduces a WTF? factor we weren't expecting. Of the three (long) songs here, one's a cover. And it goes a long way to establishing their metal cred, more than the Immortal and Emperor t-shirts they sometime wear (with suits) on stage. No, rather than cover a black metal song, as you might expect, they instead proved that they're real old school metal fans by doing "Catch My Heart" by '80s German heavy metal band Warlock, you know, the outfit fronted by blonde metal siren Doro Pesch before she went solo.
It's a nice, melodic song, and Bohren successfully adapt it to their own style, extending it to over 13 slowly trickling minutes, and making it all the more emotive and moody. And... they got Mike Patton to sing it. Which is where your mileage may start to vary, depending on how much of a Mike Patton fan you are. Patton doesn't get too over the top or anything, he sticks to a deep voiced, torch-song croon that's only a little bit weird, reminding us a bit of the singer for Urfaust in fact. But, we kinda think they should have done it as an instrumental (which is of course Bohren's usual mode), and also that way the weirdness of doing a Warlock cover woulda been a bit more subtle. Or, if they had to have somebody sing it, maybe they should have just gotten Doro herself!!
Aside from the presence of Patton's vocals, though, "Catch My Heart" sounds very much like a typical Bohren piece. As do the other two songs here, quietly droning, glacially paced, utterly gorgeous, no vocals. "Zombies Never Die (Blues)" is all drifting near-ambient synth, adorned with some smokey sax which tends to give this the vibe of the soundtrack to an '80s Jonathan Demme film, wistfully perfect for a late night street corner scene between two young lovers. The final, title track, is the longest, over 14 minutes, wonderfully atmospheric, shimmering textures from the trap kit, limpid notes arising from the keys, no sax. Nice.
But, the Warlock song isn't the only thing that's really weird about this ep. Another truly WTF? element to this release is the cover art, as discerning music fans will recognize it as some sort of tribute to the album Fun At The Funeral by the band Jesters Of Destiny (you know, the late '80s LA alt-metal act beloved by our Finnish friends Circle, they reissued that album on their Ektro label!). Same logo/typeface, almost identical (but different) artwork. No explanation. We're really curious what the deal is with that, 'cause it's such an obscure thing to reference and has nothing to do with anything else about this release, if they'd have done a Jesters cover on the ep rather than a Warlock one, it would make more sense. Instead, it's a total non-sequitur that almost nobody will even "get".
And thus, Bohren are somehow even cooler now than we already thought they were!!!
"Black Earth" is the dark as night new album from an old AQ fave. Is it the heaviest album on this list? It is if you understand Bohren's concept of "quiet heaviness", using their self-described "horror jazz" instrumentation of subtly-brushed drums, down-tuned double bass, sparse piano, Fender Rhodes, mellotron, and melancholic saxophone to create an atmosphere of heaviness "which is otherwise only achieved using distorted guitars and lots of noise."
Our appetite was whetted for his release by an email from Bjoern Eichstaedt (of Caacrinolas), our German friend who originally introduced us to Bohren. He described a recent Bohren concert in which the band played in a cubic room, the walls painted completely black, on a black stage, without light -- all wearing black suits. Live, they used two basses for maximum bottom end. He spoke to them afterwards and learned that black metal is their main influence, noticing also that they were all wearing t-shirts from such bands as Immortal. Yet Bohren's music is far from loud and fast. Metallic or not, it's certainly DOOM. Creeping, plodding, yet gorgeously, sleepily melodic. Each note played on the piano, each hit of the snare, carries great weight, and beauty. Their music falls like thick drops of liquid into a still, dark, black pool, rippling the surface with unknown echoes. Foreboding, and entrancing. Certainly more than deserving of this disc's black on black, skull embossed packaging.
The sultry, smoky saxophone introduced on their previous album "Sunset Mission" is still in evidence, though not so much as before. When it's present, it only adds to the noir-ish vibe, great for wandering the rainy streets of night-time San Francisco with this playing in your Walkman, let me tell you. And compared to "Sunset Mission", this new album definitely extends Bohren's methods to further extremes: slower, moodier, dronier, lovelier: "heavier". Quite quietly heavy, indeed.
Imagine a blackened, funereal dooooooom band like Skepticism or Nortt morphed into the jazz idiom (after having kissed a frog, or some fairytale scenario like that), playing their slow, sad music in a smoky Berlin jazz club. The sound is jazz (electric piano, organ, vibes, sax, double bass, trap kit...) but the feeling is doom. That's our usual shorthand for describing the unique music made by longtime AQ fave, Germany's Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. Here at last is their eagerly anticipated 5th album, Dolores (not named after the San Francisco street near us, presumably). If you're fans like we are, you know what to expect, it's just as ponderously "heavy" as a "jazz" band can be. No, not loud, not harsh, not noisy. The opposite of all that. Rather, whisper-quiet, glacially slow, and spacious, with sparse snare hits keeping time like a wound-down clock ticking off the eternity between 2 minutes to midnight and the witching hour itself. Doomsday so slowly arrives on a velvety bed of somnolent deep bass notes, and the cool slinky tones of vintage Fender Rhodes. Cymbals shiver in a dark haze of ambient drones near to silence. Several of the songs are infused with the warmth of tenor or baritone sax breathes gorgeous expiring breaths. It's all so sad and woeful and achingly beautiful, Bohren nodding off, their fragile melodies trickling like tears, and by the end you may find you have shed a few too.
This newest Bohren differs mainly from their previous Ipecac outing Geisterfaust by being composed of somewhat shorter, sweeter tracks, ten in all, in about an hour. But it is, again, an-ever-more-perfected example of why Bohren is one of our all time favorite bands, especially at twilight and late at night...
Not metal -- not remotely. So why did they get written up in Terrorizer magazine? Well this German four-piece isn't exactly a jazz band either, even though they utilize such instruments as Fender Rhodes electric piano, vibraphone, double bass, and saxophone. No, they're actually really really heavy though it's always hard to explain how something this quiet and this pretty can be "heavy". But you'll feel it when you hear it. Their special brand of Teutonic, minimalist, noir-jazz influenced "heaviness" is not to be denied. And so it makes sense that they like grim black metal and that people who like grim black metal like them. A very special band, certainly unknowable to some, but very well liked 'round here. So we were pretty excited to hear that the release of this new album Geisterfaust ("Ghostfist") was impending. And it does not disappoint. Five tracks for the five fingers of the Ghostfist (skeletally represented in the cd digipak). Almost one full hour.
Thusly, a Bohren album cannot be properly absorbed in little snippets. The time frame within which their compositions work is not conducive to quick scans or distracting environments -- even the shortest of the five tracks here isn't much less than eight minutes in length, and the opening track "Zeigefinger" is a 20+ minute experience. So, when I got my copy of this (oooh) I took it home and drew the curtains, lit the candles (well, ok I didn't really light any candles, but could have), and assumed a relaxed pose in order to let the music of Geisterfaust infiltrate my conciousness. Which it did. At Bohren's usual glacial pace, which utterly starts to alter one's perception of time. The long songs are endless...then over. Eternity telescoped. So spare and melodious. Like magnified drops of rainwater, falling on the petals of a shivering flower. The vast space of Bohren's music makes the listener concentrate, and gives each and every note (a vibraphone chime, perhaps, surrounded by a nimbus of a gentle cymbal-strike's shimmer) extra weight and meaning. The Bohren aesthetic certainly holds that less is more. Even though there's guests -- a tuba player and a choir, even -- augmenting the basic Bohren quartet on several of these tracks, you're never overwhelmed with sound, but with silence. And the sheer *subsonics* that a band with two bassists can generate. Geisterfaust flows exquisitely, the listener's pulse rate slowing. Calm. Cool. Bliss. Stupor. So gorgeous, soo heavy. There we go again. This IS heavy. You'll see.
Basically it's like some utterly slow crushing doom band (the Melvins at their most monolithic -- Khanate -- Caspar Brotzmann Massaker -- Corrupted -- Gore) with their instrumentation transposed into the "jazz" realm. The snare only brushed. The distorted electric guitar replaced with the tinkle of a Rhodes piano. Notes not riffs. Played like a dirge, with hints of drone, sombre and sad, but beautiful. There's only a smidgen of saxophone (dreaded by some) that is brought in only at the very end of the last very track, one that is almost speedy by Bohren standards, to act as the light at end of the tunnel, the sun's rays just over the horizon...
Our friend Bjoern in Germany (of Caacrinolas), who first turned Allan and thus AQ on to Bohren five or six years ago, emailed excitedly about the release this new album (that's often when we hear from Bjoern, actually!). Here's a quote from his email: "...fucking amazing!!! Better probably than anything they have done before! You need this for AQ!!! It will sell zillions of copies!" Well of course. As a follow up to the Ipecac-released Black Earth, this is an even greater triumph. Brilliant.
This is nice. For all you Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore fans (or at least 19 of you, as that's how many of these we were able to get), we've got a deluxe vinyl pressing, the first time ever on LP for this, the debut album from the AQ fave German instrumental dirge-jazz group. The import price is helped out by the fact that this comes in a black box with "BOHREN" stamped in silver on the lid, and within the box you not only will find two slabs of vinyl weighted down with their magnificent music, but also tucked in with those there's sundry printed ephemera of apparent Bohren-related interest (b&w art and text, mainly in German). The Gore Motel album was first released on cd back in 1994. When we discovered Borhen a few years after that and got their discs for the store, we wrote the following about this album: "...dark, stark, slow-moving, and lovely. For those who crave comparisons, this is like a super-dirgey version of Scenic. Music for a dark-night campfire out on the plains of Mordor. Slow and beautiful, relying heavily on the ultra-heavy subsonics of the bass and the eerie wavering tones of the organ...Very atmospheric and evocative, indeed chilling."
Of course, this is a very limited, numbered pressing (300 copies!) and, to repeat, we only received a handful. First come, first served on this one.
Here's an old favorite -- a former AQ Record Of The Week in fact -- that we've been unable to get for a long time now, until just this week that is. So we thought we'd better relist it, especially since when we relisted the Ipecac reissue of Bohren's most recent album Black Earth we sold a whole bunch of copies to folks who'd missed it the first time, and this one is perhaps even more essential not to miss! So here's a portion of our review from the first time we had this:
At last, we've managed to import some copies of this fantastic 1995 album by this mysterious German instrumental band! I (Allan) discovered them via a friend in Germany (an AQ-customer who, like many others, has been so kind as to turn *us* on to stuff: it's a two-way street). I was visiting for the 1999 total solar eclipse (well, among other things; I was also in the land of schnitzel for a metal festival...) and heard a tape of this sprawling double cd set in the context of a late night, post-eclipse, wine-drinking get-together. But when I finally got a hold of the actual album some weeks later (we couldn't even find one in the local record stores, my friend had to special order it and send a copy to me in the States), I was happy to discover that it wasn't merely my memories of the wondrous eclipse that had imbued Midnight Radio with such a gorgeous sense of darkness and dread, but that it really was an amazing album!
After Midnight Radio, Bohren released Sunset Mission (later followed by Black Earth). If the now out of print Sunset Mission album was the ultimate noir-jazz soundtrack to a hypothetical first person shooter video game set in afterdark Berlin, then this aptly-titled previous double cd set, (sans saxophone, an addition to the Sunset lineup) is the perfect accompaniment to a late night autobahn death ride, cruise control on, cigarettes burning. There's even a moment, two hours or so into it, when sun starts to come up over the horizon (you'll hear what we mean when you get to the end of the second disc).
Now, we're always talking about "hypnotic" music here at AQ, but this is music for when you're *already* hypnotized, slumped near bed at home or cruising down that infinite highway at 3am, aware of only your own thoughts and the darkness all around made even more black by your headlights. (Maybe this is what some of those unexplicable people who I saw driving around during the eclipse were listening to...for two very long minutes anyway.) Heavy, heavy bass notes, glacially deployed, crushingly beautiful slow-motion guitar and dark, liquid pools of piano, with a narcotized drummer who must be passing in and out of consciousness to occasionally brush his snare and hi-hat. Midnight Radio enters into the tiny pantheon of somehow similarly intended doomy double cd sets beloved of AQ (Esoteric's Pernicious Enigma and Epistomological Despondency, Corrupted's Llenandose de Gusanos). Of course, Bohren is not at all metallic like those two outfits, but is knowing of the same gloombliss. Slow and low, and highly recommended!
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Long rumored, long awaited, Bohren and Der Club Of Gore's installment in Southern UK's limited edition Latitudes series is, finally, here!! While the Latitudes series has included a disparate selection of interesting artists, including AQ faves like Circle, Shit & Shine, Grails, and now Bohren. You'd think they were asking US who they should put out! Certainly if they HAD asked us, we'd have said Bohren, we're (as you probably know) huge fans, we're still in awe of the live show they played in San Francisco a few months back, also something that we didn't ever think we'd see. The stage was in total darkness except for small lights shining from directly above each musician, one bassist, one keyboardist, and another who played keys, bass, and sax as necessary. And while it was unfortunate that there was no drummer (for some reason he couldn't travel with the band) their usual slow tempo meant that the keyboardist could "play" sampled drums fairly effectively, though doubtless it would probably have been even better had the actual drummer been there (however, one of our friends who was at the show didn't even realize there was no live drummer present, due to the darkness, and the fact that the glowing Bohren skull-head logo in the center of the stage looked like it was on a bass drum head!). Their music was so beautiful, and sooooo heavy. Literally one of the HEAVIEST performances we've ever witnessed, SO MUCH BASS it was insane. And remember, they're essentially a jazz group.
So, we like Bohren. You like Bohren (or if you haven't heard 'em, may we suggest their most recent album, Dolores?). And so we're both excited that this is here. Heck, we've been waiting for it for a while. Apparently the Latitudes folks like to get people all in a tizzy by announcing things YEARS in advance of the actual release. As a result, Bohren fans have been asking about this one, since, well back when Barack Obama was still an unknown community organizer, it seems. We had sorta given up hope of ever actually seeing it come out, assuming it was a figment of someone at Southern's overactive imagination. But then what do you know, out of the blue, with no warning, here they are. We got ALL the copies we're gonna be able to get, and good luck finding it elsewhere. So act fast if you want one.
Here's the lowdown: Like the previous Latitudes volume, from White Magic, this is an ep, just one song in fact, and while Bohren have been known to make some looooong songs, this one is "only" 10 and a half minutes in length. But of course what with Bohren's typical mesmeric glacial pace and soporific atmospheres, when "Mitleid Lady" is playing it's as if time has stopped, anyway... the bass frequencies throbbing gently, the sparse snick...snick...snick of the drummer's high hat, the dulcet liquid tones of electric piano melodically meandering... eventually the merest suggestion of a sweet whisper of smoky saxophone... ahhh the unique slo-mo "jazz" of Bohren is utterly entrancing as usual. This track was recorded back 2006 (we said it was long awaited), after their Geisterfaust record and before the more recent Dolores, and sounds like it could easily have found a place on either album. But having it here on its own disc is actually rather nice, as a "concentrated" (not really) dose of Bohren's special sound to savor.
It's also an attractive collectible artifact, in the usual die-cut, cardboard Latitudes packaging, including an insert with text in German on one side, and a curiously unexpected picture of the mostly all-bald Bohren guys on the other side - all four of them dressed in black, of course, but standing in a grassy park on a sunny day somewhere, three of them wearing shorts, two of 'em in sandals and flipflops!
LIMITED EDITION! 1000 COPIES ONLY! We got less than 100, and that's IT. And don't ask us when the also-announced 12" vinyl version is coming out, we don't know...
Like Circle, Earth, Boris, and The Necks, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore is one of those long time fave bands that you can always count on us getting all excited about here at aQuarius, even when it's essentially 'more of the same' - we WANT more of the same, since theirs is a unique, wonderful sound. So, yay, the German "death jazz" greats are now back with their 8th full-length album. Piano Nights features piano, yes, lovely placid piano, and also all the other usual Bohren ingredients: restrained minimal timekeeping on the traps, lots of low end from the double bass and baritone guitars, additional atmosphere and melody from mellotron, organ, and vibraphone, and some smokey noirish saxophone too.
There's nine more gorgeous, soft focus, slow moving tracks here in the Bohren tradition of all-instrumental slowcore jazz noir, gently doom laden twilight moodiness that's practically hauntological, to use a term often used to describe stuff like Demdike Stare and The Caretaker - especially the portions of these tracks wherein an underlying ghostly ambient hum is made evident. Although this is not so much scary-haunting, as it is wistful-haunting. Also almost romantic, as if maybe Rodelius had joined Bohren, especially with the piano playing.
Bohren's previous outing on Ipecac, Beileid, had a bit of a weirdness factor (mainly due to an unexpected cover of an '80s German metal song, with guest vocals from Mike Patton) that Piano Nights perhaps wisely retreats from, instead simply providing the sort of aching, intimate yet cinematic sounds we have enjoyed from them since back when we first discovered the music of Bohren on a trip to Germany so many years ago.
This just came out this week, so it's just sinking in, but what a feeling, this music is all about sinking in. We'll be spinning it a lot, it's the perfect late night relaxing in an armchair with a glass of whiskey sort of record, lights low, eyes half closed... The libation, furniture, time of day, etc. can be purely imagined, but this music sure conjures that vibe. Another classic Borhen opus in other words.
After being out of print for almost FIVE years, Bohren's third album Sunset Mission finally gets re-released this time in a spiffy digipak!
Back when we first listed this (the first Bohren we'd managed to get a hold of for the store), this is what we said: Allan discovered Bohren on a trip to Germany in 1999, with their '95 double-cd Midnight Radio, an amazing extended late-night autobahn driving soundscape, slow, low, instrumental "lounge" music, utterly perfect for a mesmerizing midnight listen. Sunset Mission, their third album, was originally released in 2000 and is similar to Midnight Radio, more overtly "jazzy" perhaps, with the addition of smokey tenor saxophone to their piano/drums/bass lineup. Their original US distributor (electronica/techno label Studio K-7) labeled this ambient, but that's far from the mark. From the song titles ("Prowler", "On Demon Wings", "Black City Skyline", "Darkstalker") to the packaging (photos of nighttime Berlin and dangerous weaponry) to the music (a downtempo film noir soundtrack like the slowest, dirgiest Melvins played by Morphine, darker than Photek, moody and gorgeous) this is the nightmare "ambience" of a nowhere jazz-lounge you'll never leave alive.
By now, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore are a firm AQ favorite, with their recent album Geisterfaust sure to show up in a lot our our customers' year 2005 top-ten lists. Meanwhile Bohren's Black Earth, Gore Motel and Midnight Radio have always been steady sellers, so it's nice to have Sunset Mission back in the racks as well! Of the Bohren discography, Sunset Mission seems to be the jazziest (if indeed it's appropriate to use that term), definitely with the most sax of any of 'em, perhaps coming closest to its follow-up Black Earth in sound.
We just got a few copies of this kinda-hard-to-find cd reissue of a much harder to find (only 200 copies pressed!) 1972 lp by a hard rock band from Florida who are kinda legendary for their song "Dead Meat", a over-15-minute opus of proto-doom metal, which appears here as the album closer. Combining sub-Cooper schlock horror stage theatrics and sub-Sabbath riffage, "Dead Meat" was
The eagerly awaited follow-up ep (four brand new songs) to last year's highly acclaimed debut, from a band who has gone from self-released wunderkind to critics' darlings in little over a year. We finally got around to reviewing their debut last list, not because we didn't like it, but we didn't really love it quite as much as the rest of the world seemed to. It's not at all bad, we just weren't sure why all the singular heaps of praise for a sound that has been pretty present throughout the past year. Heck, Sub Pop's current roster is ALL about this sound. Rootsy and sensitive songwriting with high quality musicianship and production value. Yeah, that's cool and all, but wouldn't the real challenge be to NOT make a sad record during the thick of winter in Wisconsin? OK, all snarkiness aside, if you loved the debut, you'll want this, especially for the last song where he throws his falsetto choir into computer auto-tune to interesting effect.
Although we've been listening to and loving the Bon Iver debut For Emma, Forever Ago, somehow we neglected to review it this past year! Shame on us! In case you somehow missed it too, here's a chance for all of us to get caught up with and snuggle up to this terrific album by the fireplace during these chilly winter months. And, it's just now also available on vinyl. Very much at home on the Jagjaguwar label, main man Justin Vernon is sorta the male equivalent to the label's head mistress, sweet chanteuse Julie Doiron. Utterly bittersweet folksy introspection expressed in some mighty fine songwriting. Definitely also for fans of the gentle bristled, warm intimate voices of Will Oldham and Iron & Wine. So nice!
