Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are Don't Try This At Home, William Bloke, Worker's Playtime and this, his most recent album proper, originally released in 2002.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Three cheers for Billy Bragg! Uh, make that four! One for each of these reissued albums -- Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP, and this one. This reissue comes with a bonus disc of rare and previously unreleased recordings. Hip hip hooray, indeed!
(Psst, for Bragg super fans, there's the Volume One 9-disc box set which boxes the four reissues along with a bonus dvd!)
Haven't heard from the ever-engaging socio-political troubadour Billy Bragg in some time. His last release was 2002's England, Half English and prior to that Mermaid Avenues Vol. 1 and 2, his Woody Guthrie-penned collaborations with Wilco. But almost as if to remind us of his immense body of work that spans two decades, and to spur us on to revisit it - here is a double cd collection of some of his most well-known songs. Included are "A New England", "Levi Stubbs' Tears", his cover of "Walk Away Renee", "You Woke Up My Neighbourhood", "She's Got A New Spell", "Help Save The Youth Of America"... the list goes on and on. There's also a handful of the Bragg/Wilco songs as well as a bonus disc of rare Bragg odds and ends. All the essentials, indeed!
Seventeen tracks, a collection of UK singles and rarities dating back to 1985.
Three cheers for Billy Bragg! Uh, make that four! One for each of these reissued albums -- Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP, and this one. This reissue comes with a bonus disc of rare and previously unreleased recordings. Hip hip hooray, indeed!
(Psst, for Bragg super fans, there's the Volume One 9-disc box set which boxes the four reissues along with a bonus dvd!)
Three cheers for Billy Bragg! Uh, make that four! One for each of these reissued albums -- Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, and this one. This reissue comes with five bonus tracks and a bonus dvd of two live performances (one from 1986 in Lithuania and the other from 1988 in East Berlin). Hip hip hooray, indeed!
(Psst, for Bragg super fans, there's the Volume One 9-disc box set which boxes the four reissues along with a bonus dvd!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, Don't Try This At Home, Worker's Playtime and this, perhaps one of his most stark and downcast works, from back in 1996.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, Don't Try This At Home, William Bloke and this one -- in our opinion quite possibly one of his best! -- from way back in 1988. It features such gems as "She's Got A New Spell" and "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward". So good.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
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Those Wilco boys join forces with Billy Bragg in a valiant and quite often successful attempt to put new music to some of the hundreds of song lyrics which Woody Guthrie wrote before his death. Although he is physically outnumbered, musicially Mermaid Avenue is heavier on the Bragg than the Wilco sound.
On their first foray together, recording songs from previously unreleased lyrics of Woody Guthrie, Wilco and Billy Bragg produced - in our minds - a fairly unremarkable effort. With their follow up album we find ourselves pleasantly surprised. Not only is the music here much more akin to Wilco than Bragg (in stark contrast to the first), but Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy also thankfully sings a lot more as well. There's even a shocker of a cameo by singer Natalie Merchant sounding decidedly unlike Natalie Merchant. This is one of those albums that, when we put it on in the store... Yeah, you know the rest. Recommended.
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Good grief, "Drain'd Boner" would be a stupid title, of course, if it wasn't so brilliant, in this case. That clever play on words heralds the return of the Julian "Druid dude" Cope's heavier-than-thou, super-Stoogey "stupor groop" Brain Donor, also featuring members of Spiritualized releasing their inner cock rock axe demons. The resultant splooge comes close to Mainliner, High Rise, Acid Mothers Temple territory, especially on track two, the ten minute "Nagasaki Mushroom" which is a suitably apocalyptic, head nodding heavy guitar grind... meanwhile other tracks like the more uptempo "Where Do We Take U?" (some sort of Hawkwind meets UK post punk ditty) demonstrate the English origins of these pagan rockers. Definitely lots to love here for fans of drunken, droning punk-metal psychedelic sludge! Kinda like Vincent Black Shadow playing the SUNNO))) songbook. Nicely packaged, as well, in a slipcased jewelcase.
A two-song single from this project featuring Julian Cope (the former The Teardrop Explodes guy and self-proclaimed Krautrock expert) and two guys from Spiritualized, playing propulsive, heavy Stooges-style punkrock (Iggyish vox, loads of distorted
Brain Donor is the latest musical offering from Krautrock aficionado Julian Cope, who qualifies this Stooges / thug rock outfit as his 'stuporgroup.' Along with longstanding collaborator Thighpaulsandra (who is also a member of Coil and Spiritualized), Cope has
Stooges. That's not what these guys are, but it's who they'd like to be! As in Iggy and the. They wanna be your dog and do a damn good job of it. A couple years ago we reviewed an import album and single from this band, the "stuporgroup" brainchild of psych rawk aficionado Julian Cope (of The Teardrop Explodes, now equally well known for his expertise in such subjects as krautrock and megalithic Europe), featuring Cope plus collaborators Thighpaulsandra (of Coil) and some pseudononymous guys from Spiritualized (Doggen and Kevlar). This domestically released cd compiles the key tracks from Brain Donor's 2001 Love Peace & Fuck album (the one we listed) and their Too Freud To Rock'n'roll, Too Jung To Die album from 2003.
As we said before, they play propulsive, heavy Stooges-style punk rock (Iggyish vox, loads of distorted psychedelic/metal guitar skree), packing a lot of rock action into these tracks. Pure Detroit worship, done by guys who know what they're doing! With amps set to 11, titles like "My Pagan Ass" and the band done up in full glam regalia, it's hard to say this is more than dumb, good fun, but really that's enuff isn't it? Hopefully they'll follow up this release with a new album soon (supposedly being recorded here in San Francisco with members of Monoshock!)...otherwise we'll be left waiting for the next Mudhoney, or a Thee Hypnotics reunion, to get our Stoogey rock fix.
Reissue of recordings by San Diego's Brain Police made between 1964 and 1969. Garage Psych, acid blues rock jams a la Iron Butterfly.
Four new tracks from everyone's favorite filthy Swedes. Dark, disgusting murky sludge rock with titles like "I Wish I Was Dead She Said" and "Cum In Blood" grace side one. Side two features the highly anticipated and lengthy remix of "It's A Burning Hell" by the one and only Destroyer himself, Alec Empire. Don't think this will make it onto cd anytime soon, so don't delay.
A NEW FUCKING BRAINBOMBS RECORD!! And it rules. Heavy and droney and hypnotic and dirgey and AMAZING. Too bad it was limited to 630 copies, of which we only got 8 copies the first time around, when we tried to order 50. Somehow, it's available again, not sure if they found a bunch or pressed up some more, but this time we managed to get a whole TWENTY copies, and again, if we had our way we would have gotten at least twice that many, so needless to say, Brainbombs freaks, and we know there are more than 20 of you out there, you're gonna have to be quick on the trigger, as these might be the last copies we can get, and most likely if they're not gone already, they will be by the time you finish this sentence.
(We can only hope there will be a cd version soon...)
What really needs to be said about the Brainbombs? Other than they totally fucking rule! Happy to report that rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated, this is the second 7" in the last year from these demented Swedes and it's another killer. Two tracks of gritty, grimy, sludgy Stoogesy garage stomp. Murky and lo-fi, thick and abrasive, bleating trumpet skronk and strangled whiney vocals are buried within a massive roiling blast of divine scuzz rock. Blown out, sloppy and sick, a single badass riff pounded into your skull over and over and over and over, while some lunatic rants about his need for speed and how you'll just end up dead. Completely godlike!
BRAINBOMBS! LIVE! Not sure about all of you, but that's pretty much all we needed to hear. A live document of a rare Brainbombs performance, captured way back in 1993, Burning Hell era, in all its sludgy, filthy, misanthropic lo-fi glory. And it is lo-fi, BIG TIME. The sound is reminiscent of the Les Rallizes Denudes records, super hissy and in the red, captured on a shitty tape player most likely, all the sounds in-the-red, and much like with Les Rallizes, that sort of sound most definitely suits the Brainbombs. The perfect compliment to their already murky and muddy sound.
The bad news is we could only get 15 copies, it's already sold out, and out of print, and these are the last copies we'll ever have, and by now you all know what that means...
Don't let the jaunty little Lawrence Welk ditty that opens Obey lull you into any sort of peaceful state, you'd best be prepared for the hateful murderous mayhem that Obey has in store for you. Then again, that's probably precisely what the Brainbombs had in mind. A gentle voice luring you into a dark alley, a shiny trinket distracting you while the burlap sack goes over your head and you're dragged kicking and screaming into the woods, a sweet piece of candy draws you just close enough so you can be knocked unconscious, tied up, and stuffed in the trunk. Those of you familiar with the brutal musical world of Brainbombs will know exactly what we're going on about. The rest of you, be very very careful. They traffic in a sludgey, jazzy garage rock scuzz stomp, repeated riffs, simple pounding drums, a lurching leering fuzzed out psychedelic dirge underpinning tales of murder and mayhem, murder and rape, death and dismemberment. This is probably their most overtly harsh record. Mostly because unlike the rest of their releases you can actually hear what these Swedes are singing about. All delivered in a sort of fey, heavily accented English. As if the song titles weren't enough,"Kill Them All", "Die You Fuck", "Anal Desire", "Lipstick On My Dick", "Fuckmeat", the lyrics are misogynistic, misanthropic and just plain messed up. The sound is like Melvins meets Whitehouse filtered through the fuzzy garage stomp of the Stooges but with a maniacally repetitive looped quality, that cranks up the tension, while the vocalist slowly unravels and gets meaner and meaner, more and more insane. And let's not forget the occasional warbly warped trumpet (!). What can we say? We love Brainbombs.
We've never listed this one before, as it has been seemingly out of print for ages. Thankfully a distributor managed to scrape up a bunch, but we can't be sure how long we'll have these.
Who would have thought that the joyous occasion of the first tUMULt 7" vinyl release would also bring such sadness and despair. But sadly it's true, the Brainbombs are no more. But thankfully, they've gone out with a bang. The bang being this grungy, scuzzy, pummelling 45 rpm, two song farewell kick in the face. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sweden's Brainbombs, think prime Stooges, recorded in a smelly sweaty basement, on a boom box, amidst scattered porno mags, corpses, weapons and human excrement. While a whining vocalist spits up mysogynistic and misanthropic tales of hyper violence. Then add in the occasional bleat of a demented-jazz trumpet and some fucked up fuzzy blown-tweeter bass. So good. And these two tracks are some of the best Brianbombs material ever. The A side starts with a stuttery, super distorted beat before the sky collapses and you're buried in a pile of violently squirming barbed wire guitars, while a ghostly, sort-of-Eastern melody weaves surreptitiously through the melee. Track two trawls similarly dark territory, a 'Fun House'-ish dirge with a warbley trumpet melody desperately trying to keep from being sucked under by the muck and grime. While the Brainbombs may be dead, they have not entirely ruled out the possibility of more mayhem in the future. But for now, this is a suitably brutal and brilliant epitaph. On thick white vinyl. And we mean THICK. Maybe the thickest vinyl we've ever seen!! Seriously, it's like a ceramic salad plate or something! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
We thought we had heard the last of these Swedish musical miscreants with their Stigma Of The Ripper 7" on tUMULt a while back, but according to the band, these two tracks here are actually their last will and testament, the band have finally officially called it quits, with various members continuing on in their own perverse musical pursuits.
And a fitting way to end it. Nothing new or spectacularly different, just more of that murk, filthy, jazzy garage sludge we have come to know and love. A simple riff, doused in distortion and played through some beat up old amp, repeated over and over and over, mantra like, hypnotic and disturbing, the drums propulsive and motorik, a horn bleating and skronking within the murk and mire, while the vocals, delivered in a totally detached deadpan drawl, recount tales of fucking and sucking, rape and incest, and all manner of sexual depravity and ultra violence.
"Stinking Memory" is perfect Brainbombs, a simple riff, ultra fucked up lyrics, some damaged jazz skronk, all wrapped in a thick production of murky muddiness, and pounded out relentlessly, a damaged demented scuzzy filthy garage rock stomp. "Insects" is even better, taking the stomp of side 1 and blowing out the guitar even more, sounding impossible catchy while getting even filthier, every spare bit of space filled up with tangled scrabbling angular guitar solos, so convoluted and dense, they seem to just add another layer of noisy buzz to the proceedings.
God, we're gonna miss these guys...
LIMITED TO 377 COPIES!
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Holy fuck! The return of the Brainbombs! We thought they were dead and gone, but thank the gods of misanthropic sludge, these Swedish masters of the vile, ultra-violent, vicious, grungy garage-sludge-jazz dirge have returned. Two short blasts of Stooges-ish fuzzed out and filthy garage rock, filtered through the misanthropic lyrical lens of Whitehouse and the sludgy sieve of the Melvins. Or something like that. Who cares? You know the Brainbombs rule and you know you need this record and you know we should be on our knees begging for mercy at the feet of one of the best bands ever!
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The neccessary singles collection from the Brainbombs, a band any decent moral individual should hate. But defying our own sense of decency, the Brainbombs are an unlikely AQ favorite. These foulmouthed Swedes crank out pummeling variations on the Stooges' "Funhouse" formula of proto punk heaviosity (circa 1970) with drunken jazz flares. For better or for worse, the ultra violent lyrics of misanthropy and misogyny are buried deep with sloppy production.
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If Eric Harris had a collection of Brainbombs albums, then the media would actually have a story. What the hell are they talking about with KMFDM and Marilyn Manson being the impetus for violence? The Brainbombs embody all things misanthropic and misogynistic. Musically, the Brainbombs crank out some of the best post-Stooges hypnotic sludge rock; lyrically, the Brainbombs are another thing... a whiny Swede recites sexually charged hyper-violence. For whatever reason, all of those classes from Pat Matthews on the feminist interpretations of Duchamp and Meret Oppenheimer did nothing to indoctrinate me to dislike a song like "Ass Fucking Murder". Life is full of paradoxes.
Oh lord, are we ever in filthy, crusty, demented, depraved, misanthropic, sludge rock heaven! That's right, FINALLY, it's the second collection of 7"s from Sweden's mightiest musical export (well, if you ask us, at least!) THE BRAINBOMBS! Everything we love about these musical miscreants is in full affect, the pummeling trash can percussion, the downtuned fuzz drenched ultra distorted guitars, the bizarre, sort of fey, sort of scary vocals, regaling tales of murder and mayhem, rape and torture, death and destruction, the warbly dented drunken trumpet, all wrapped up into a stumbling, hypnotic, and seriously fucking disturbed package.�
It's like they took their favorite Stooges riff, stole a bunch of instruments from the music store, and set up in the basement of the local highschool, where in between kidnapping and torturing students, they would record these slabs of abject musical horror, each one a single riff, pounded and pummeled into submission, sometimes flecked with bits of slide guitar, or that damaged trumpet, but always dripping and oozing with all manner of pestilence and putrefaction. And we can't get enough.�
Folks who love Bone Awl and Akitsa and other primitive droning black metal outfits, will probably hear lots of that foul blackness all tangled up in the Brainbombs primitive garage stomp, and folks who have bee digging stuff like the Violent Students and Clockcleaner and Shit And Shine and Rusted Shut and other similar noisy bastards absolutely need this!!
Includes the single that came out on Andee's tUMULt label, the most recent Stinking Memory 7" on Anthem, as well as the Wabana Gun Court single, the Ken Rock single as well as the Big Brothel single. Easily some of our favorite BB tracks ever, "Stigma Of The Ripper", "The Grinder", "I Need Speed"... fuck! If only more bands could do so much with so little. Stripped down and blown out, catchy as all get out but still grimy and brutal and very very very fucked up.��
Also included are some rare live tracks, all time BB classics, "Urge To Kill" among them, recorded live in Norway way back in 1993, the sound appropriately distorted and low fidelity, and don't miss the hidden last track, a minute long, post performance Brainbombs sign off, with some demented crowd action, chanting for more...
Essential!
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Good grief, we've never listed this??? Every once in a while we realize when such an oversight has occurred. Thankfully, we've got this new vinyl reissue to review. This album, originally released in 1971 (that's right!), the debut from Swiss krautrockers (I think you can call 'em that) Brainticket, is simpy one of the freakiest, LSD-trip inspired slabs of groovy mu-sick ever. Up there with Funkadelic's Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow, even.
The first two tracks on side one, "Black Sand" and "Places Of Light", ease you into it, being laidback groovers laced with stabs of distortion... then the true "trip" begins, the utterly over the top, three-part "Brainticket", that starts on side one and spreads over all of side two, dense and propulsive and repetitive, with orgasmic female vocals and all kinds of intense psychedelic throb. It's the perfect soundtrack to goin' completely mad. In addition to wah-wah guitar, organ, flute, tabla, and sci-fi electronics, there's layers of musique concrete "samples", tapes of rainfall, clanging bells, clattering trains, cheering crowds, all sorts of chaotic noise panic...
Quite a overdose of LSD-enthusiasm, that even today still seems more likely to scare folks off from trying drugs than encourage 'em to do so. But then, who needs to actually drop acid when you can just listen to this? Fans of the likes of A.R. & Machines, Amon Duul II, Siloah, Tangerine Dream's Electronic Meditation, and other cosmic trips (as well as hippie kitsch) this is another one you need to get turned on to if you haven't already. Oh, and as a footnote, the drummer went on to play in proto-metallers Toad.
An old fave, maybe a bit more expensive than it needs to be, though to be fair this package does come with a cd version of the album as well, which is a nice touch. 180 gram vinyl, gatefold sleeve, which is nice too.
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Here's a nice pairing, featuring Expo 70, who needs no introduction to the aQ readership, and Brainworlds, an Atlanta based guitarist whose work at least here rivals that of Expo 70. Both of these long tracks are recordings from a night of cosmic meditation in 2010 at the seminal performance space Eyedrum in Atlanta. Brainworlds' deep guitar tones float weightlessly in a shimmering expanse from his hypnotic loops and evocative cosmic solo work outs that come across like some lost Ash Ra Tempel jam getting remixed by Troum at their most stratospheric. Really stunning work, and this would have been great to see live given the reverberant acoustics of Eyedrum. Justin Wright was in more of a cosmic mindset for that performance too. Wright's guitars take after some of Michael Rother's phrasing at the beginning of his set, locking into a darker heavier mantra as the performance moves forward with a pulsing rhythm and heavy chords reminiscent of Expo 70's masterful album Black Ohm. Classic drugged-out space drone bliss from both Brainworlds and Expo 70. We're pretty sure this is a 60 minute tape; it's damn long regardless... but it's limited too, just 100 copies released from the Hooker Vision imprint run in part by Rachel Evans of Motion Sickness of Time Travel.
In the age of the internet, it's rare for any record or band to exist without a comprehensive backstory, or a million blogs with everything you could possibly want to know abut said group or record, but this, the sole album from the awesomely named Bram Stoker, a record with an equally awesome title, Heavy Rock Spectacular, seems to be quite a mystery, released in 1972 on a tiny label, and mostly the work of a chap named T. Brondson, there seems to be very little else known about this guy/these guys and this record. Even though it's been reissued multiple times over the years (once with a whole new cover, and new title: Schizo-Poltergeist!), but really it hardly matters, cuz what does matter is this is a primo slice of heavy hard rocking psychedelic organ driven prog that KILLS. Think Emerson Lake & Palmer, Atomic Rooster, Black Widow, Buffalo, Lucifer's Friend, if that reads like your psych/prog dreamteam, then you'll probably gonna dig Bram Stoker.
The ELP comparison might be the most apt, cuz the organ really is the main instrument, unleashing wild flurries of tangled melodies, locked tight with the drums, the tracks intricate and dizzyingly complex, and with plenty of classical influence, which of course harkens back to ELP tracks like "Toccata", but unlike the guitarless ELP, there's plenty of fuzz guitar going on, some of it extremely blown out and distorted, check out "Born To Be Free", that has to be some of the filthiest, crumbliest guitar EVER, total heavy psych proto metal radness for sure. Those moments of proto metallic heavy psych fuzz guitar though are most definitely outnumbered by all the fierce and furious psychedelic organ jams, but they do make for a pretty sweet combo, especially when the guitar and the organ get all tangled up into wild dueling psych-prog blowouts. Stick around for creepy closer "Poltergeist", which obviously inspired the alternate title, with dense drumming, thick guitar crunch, swirling organ, lush vocal harmonies, some weirdly haunting, hushed passages, and a wild frenzied organ/guitar finale! So good!
Class is now in session with the much anticipated vinyl reissue of Glenn Branca's seminal 1980 debut of post-modern no-wave composition, Lesson No.1. The first release on legendary New York label 99 Records (who also introduced Liquid Liquid and ESG to the world), Lesson No.1 combined the New York school of minimalist composition (Terry Riley and La Monte Young) with the burgeoning ferocity of dissonance and feedback prevalent in no-wave and punk of the time (Sonic Youth, Theoretical Girls, and The Static). While Branca was not the first to combine modern composition and rock tropes, or lead bands with multiple guitarists (Rhys Chatham was doing that first, though his Guitar Trio recording was released much later), Branca's compositions tended to wield much more sonic power and hefty brutal dynamics than Chatham, leaning more toward heavy ear-shattering club performances at CBGB's than respectful art-spaces like The Kitchen.
This reissue includes an extra one-sided 12" of the 16 minute bonus track, "Bad Smells", originally on a John Giorno compilation, Who Are you Staring At? which was commissioned for a Twyla Tharp dance piece. It also features the guitar work of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo who played in many of Branca's performing bands before forming Sonic Youth. You can hear the churning origins of Sonic Youth's trademark chiming dissonance in every one of Glenn Branca's early big bang epics. Essential!
Subtitled "Hallucination City", Glenn Branca's 13th Symphony debuted back in 2001, with the score intended for 100 guitars, which was a feat pulled off by Rhys Chatham well over a decade earlier. Both Chatham and Branca do share a drive for an overwhelming totality through the sheer volume and density of their layered orchestrations, but there are considerable differences which should be noted in the compositional styles. Where Chatham situates his orchestration as slabs of sculpted noise that are driven singular rhythm, Branca deliberately sets up two or more rhythms with different tempos through percussion and guitar that orbits within the swarm of dissonance and harmonic sonorities. Branca's 13th Symphony is an aggressively complex piece designed, as we said, for 100 guitars, though Branca is flexible enough to allow for smaller ensembles to perform the piece, probably making up the dynamics with volume. The four-part symphony is archetypal Branca piece, full of sound and fury, with unconventional tunings massed together in meteorologically swirling patterns and currents of controlled volatility all cast in industrial monochrome. Recorded in Rome, 2008.
I only ever knew Glenn Branca as "the guitar orchestra guy" responsible for assembling huge groups of guitarists (often well known rock guitarists), to perform huge, throbbing, hypnotic and repetitive compositions -- some for ten guitarists, fifty guitarists, even one hundred guitarists. The recent Rhys Chatham box, reviewed a few lists back, suggested that perhaps Branca's guitar orchestra concept was 'borrowed' from Chatham, as Branca had performed in many of Chatham's multiple guitar ensembles. But in much the same way that we were surprised by the rock-ness of the early Chatham material, this early recording from Branca and his four guitar/bass/drums outfit has much more in common with noisy post punk/post rock: Bastro, Bitch Magnet, Slint and the like, than Ligeti, Penderecki, Messiaen or any of the other names dropped in Lee Ranaldo's liner notes. Extended drony, atonal rhythmic explorations stretch on and on, building horror-movie-minor-key tension, building and building and building, before bursting into unrelenting rock rhythm/riffs. Lots of the more rock parts sound like an instrumental version of North Western punk rockers The Wipers, but with lots of odd dynamics ala Bastro or Slint and with the extended riff repetition of modern minimalism stretching the songs into droning, hypnotic master works. Throbbing and relentless, pounding and intricate, weaving back and forth between ferocious, unrelenting rock-action, and epic, complex geometric stop/start, hypno-minimalism.
The cover of this Branko record, featuring a stylish long haired bell bottomed hippy posing in the middle of a street, with sunglasses and a cigarette, had us imagining that it must be some archival psych rock record from the sixties, and that the guy on the cover must be Branko. But in fact, Branko is a band from Sweden, and not from the sixties, but from NOW, although they sound very much like they're from the sixties, their sound a heavily reverbed surf rock, groovy garage pop, a la Link Wray or the Troggs, or the Ventures, but their sound is definitely modern, the guitars are impossibly fuzzy and blown out, all the instruments in fact are crazy distorted, it sounds like the whole record is crumbling as it comes cascading from the speakers, and the deeper you get into the 7" the more sort of punk it sounds, some serious surf punk for sure, laced with wild bouts of chaotic percussion, weird sci-fi samples, random voices speaking in strange languages, draped over the bands hypnotic grooves, with lots of the tracks sounding like revved up theme songs from lost sixties spy programs, or the ultimate soundtrack for the most bad assed chase scenes EVER. So great. Includes a download card too which includes an extra NINE track not on the 7"!!
Polish "lounge-psych" on Last Visible Dog.
Yes, 'tis Brassy starring Jon "Blues Explosion" Spencer's kid sister Muffin back for a second full length - basically picking up the party right where Luscious Jackson left off back in 2000. Distinctly girl-powered, Gettin' Wise is filled with funky beats and samples, groovin' bass, punchy guitars with sassy, slightly snarky spoken-sung vocals that show glimpses of the raw bluesiness of her older brother and also bring to mind those of throaty Peaches or Solex -- much less foulmouthed and less quirky respectively though! Definitely not forging ahead into any unchartered territory, but granted, Brassy doesn't lay any claims to doing so. This is just plain feisty fun very well done. My only gripe would be that the fifth song "Feeling Sorry" veers a little too close to Smashmouth's "Walkin' On The Sun" for my taste. Fourteen tracks plus a bonus disc that contains three remixes and one additional song. Now get movin' and party down!
Graced by the presence of Jon Spencer's sister Muffin, Brassy pump out the tunes like an amped up 'n' funkier Luscious Jackson with lots of bum-bumpin' beats and squitchy-squitchy scratchin'. Certainly a welcome release for those who wept at the demise of the aforementioned LJ.
Just as we expected, and certainly hoped, the fact that the Phoenix label reissued the freaky '70s Japanese psych artifact by Karuna Khyal (their album Alomoni 1985, highlighted here a few lists ago) meant that Brast Burn and their lone album Debon from 1975 was sure to follow. And now here it its, another rare record originally released on the extremely underground Voice label, the work of a mysterious avant-psych entity that may or may not have shared more of less the same membership as Karuna Khyal. Very similar to that band's record, this one also consists of two sprawling side-long tracks, that seem designed to demonstrate that Japanese hippies can could play primal "krautrock" too. Both tracks situate fairly mellow grooves amidst droning, heavily effected weirdness, with vocal chanting, ceremonial hand percussion, acid rock guitar spew, raw flute soloing, tape manipulated field recordings, rumbling drums, buzzing electronics, Twilight Zone melodies, and other good stuff making significant appearances in the freeform stew... it's very "Eastern", quite insane, and totally enjoyable.
If you liked the Karuna Khyal, you'll like this too. Also any fan of Acid Mothers Temple, Ghost, or other modern day Japanese psych would be remiss not check this out, we'd be surprised if it wasn't to be found in Kawabata Makoto and Masaki Batoh's record collections. Furthermore, without even checking, we're pretty sure this is the sort of thing that must be on the famous Nurse With Wound "list"... ok, we looked, it's there! Of course. And speaking of lists, it's #26 on Julian Cope's Japrocksampler Top 50, by the way (the Karuna Khyal was #19).
In the usual "wallet" style Phoenix cd packaging, limited to 1000 numbered copies.
The first thing I noticed about this new Bratmobile album was the addition of keyboards to this punky trio's tried and true guitar, bass and drums lineup. This effectively changes their stripped down, riot grrrl sound quite a bit... for the better or for the worse? I've yet to decide. It sorta makes it all seem a bit more '60s garage girl band. But what I used to find so novel about them was their bare bones approach, which seems to have been lost here. It sounds like they are growing up before my very ears. About time! Even Allison's voice doesn't sound quite as shrill and annoying as it has in the past. Though she isn't doing anything new, she does sound a bit more composed, but unfortunately often that ends up translating as monotone and a little bit bored sounding. Good but not a particularly energized follow-up to 2000's "Ladies, Women and Girls", their feisty return to the punk rock scene.
Head's up! The riot grrrrrrandmas are back! More spunky punky female-empowering punk rock.
There's a whole new generation of indie rockers who missed out on a crucial era in indie rock history in the early nineties, K Records, the International Pop Underground, etc., and thus probably don't remember Tiger Trap, a short lived group that released a single record and a handful of singles before calling it quits after about a year. But TT had a lasting impact, and found a cult following, and made TT frontwoman Rose Melberg a bit of an indie rock icon. Along with Black Tambourine (whose complete discography was recently reissued and is reviewed elsewhere on the aQ site), Beat Happening, Heavenly, Tsunami, Mecca Normal and others, Tiger Trap were a group who represented the DIY indie rock spirit and helped empower women to start bands and labels. Melberg would go on to play in Go Sailor and the Softies, and has returned once again in Brave Irene, whose sound is not that far removed from her other bands, which is just fine with us, stripped down, soft focus jangly indie pop, Melberg's voice is in fine form, lots of dreamy harmonies, warm whirring organs, fuzzy guitars, propulsive rhythms, eight songs in 17 minutes, brief bursts of perfect pop, dreamy and hypnotic, a sound of which we never tire.
Absolutely for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, and the current crop of girl pop: Grass Widow, Dum Dum Girls, White Fence, Vivian Girls, Splinters, Girls At Dawn, Veronica Falls, Yellow Fever...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hard to figure this one out. Ok, let's start with the line-up: Paul Lemos and Joe Papa of Controlled Bleeding infamy, plus the maniac drum stylings of Tatsuya Yoshida from the Ruins (!) on half the tracks!! Actually, Yoshida's presence here isn't *that* surprising, as he's an '80s guy no doubt into Industrial Culture scene at the time, and has guested on another recent Controlled Bleeding album. Plus the music on here in in keeping with the sillier, improv messing-around side of Yoshida's output. Lemos, Papa, and Yoshida are backed by a large band of horn players and others -- everything from clarinets to contact mics. Trombone, sax, trumpet, harmonica, violin, sitar, lots of absurd vocals, etc. All that gets thrown into the mix, mostly with a falling-down-the-stairs kind of sound. Babbling squawking chaos skronk jazz rock is what's going on here, yet while on the noisy side this is still kinda song-oriented. There's even recognizable if malformed covers of tunes by The Doors and Bo Diddley! All this is Residents or Sun City Girls-ish weirdness for weirdness' sake, no doubt. Probably *not* essential for Ruins and/or Controlled Bleeding fans, but some of you will like it. Watch out for the photo of Joe Papa as "Birdman Baby" inside the cd booklet, it's at least as disturbing as the music...
