We're not sure how these guys (and gal) do it, but somehow, SF's own sludge/dirge/grind/noise mavens Burmese, make record after record, everyone a mind blowing slab of ultra heaviness and absolute head caving pummel, on all sorts of cool labels, tUMULt, Rock Is Hell, Enterruption, Planaria, Load, Not Not Fun, Heart & Crossbone, New Scream Industry, Crucial Blast and now UgExplode, yet they somehow remain for the most part totally under the radar. They've definitely had some bad luck, but this is crazy. If you've ever seen Burmese play, in any of their permutations, they utterly destroy. Their worst shows are better than most band's best shows. In fact, their worst shows might just be their best shows. Two basses, manned by two Mikes, each with a stack of amps piled to the ceiling, two drummers too, at least on this record, spewing out wild octopoidal tangles of beats and rhythms, no guitar, they sure as fuck don't need one of those, and then to top it off Tissue, their diminutive female lead vocalist, who dresses in skirts and sweaters, but then turns into a beast on the mic, with some impossibly throat shredding vokills, the band so impossibly tight, especially considering how insane their songs are slipping from ultra intricate mathy grindprog, to spaced out nearly abstract free noise whatthefuck.
We say this about every record, but this just might be their best yet. And c'mon, that's how it should be with all bands, every record should be better than the last, and considering how goddamn good their first record was about 10 records back, well then guess how good Lun Yurn is. Yep. Exactly.
They're pretty hard to describe actually. Heavy, for sure. Metal, sort of. Punk, absolutely. Noisy. Grindy. But also mathy, proggy, droney, noisy, chaotic. Their songs generally flail from blasting D-beat pound, to doomy lurching plod, to grinding noise drenched blast, to weird super dynamic stop/start breakdown, and back again, the two basses unleashing thick gouts of power violence style riffery, the multiple drummers (one of which is Weasel Walter on this record) anchoring the impossibly chaotic crush, somehow all of these disparate elements, and all of this intense caustic sound, is deftly assembled into the sort of grinding metallic noisepunk jams that actually stick in your head. It's true. Not sure, how, or why, but we never get tired of this band or these songs, or seeing them lay waste live. It'd be pointless to go song by song, listen to the sound samples, if you're not totally bowing before the altar of Burmese, well then there just might be something wrong with you.
Stick around to the very end cuz there's an extra track, a whopping 45 minute jam, that one track 50 percent longer than the whole rest of the record, and it's an impossibly relentless, insanely chaotic, non stop frantic, frenzied, frenetic, blown out grindpsych blowout. Fuck.
From their first release, a chaotic, club destoying blast of downtuned pummel, Burmese have slowly been gravitating, at least sonically, toward what can only be described as a state of Whitehouse. Shedding musical elements one at a time until they were on the verge of becoming pure violent energy. Each song an endless stretch of brutal sound, a barbed bed of uneasy ambience for the ultra distorted ranting and raving vocals. We all though it couldn't get any meaner, any creepier or any heavier. We were so wrong. Burmese's Men is the musical equivalent of the heart stopping pants shitting terror you experience when faced with a spittle spraying, wildly snarling pitbull, hackles raised and teeth bared lunging at you from behind a chainlink fence, you realize that the fence ends a few yards away and there is no gate. This band is fucking scary. On Men, the dual bass, dual drummer lineup manages to compartmentalize, and their Whitehouse obsession becomes just one element in what is a totally devastating doom sludge monstrosity. Shrieked black metal vocals over pounding super distorted downtuned riffs and crushing double drummer pummel. Myabe one of the best band the Bay Area has to offer these days. Certainly the scariest.
Originally released on tUMULt way back in 2000, this primal slab of dual bassed downtuned sonic mayhem, may still rank as one of the heaviest, most vitriolic chunks of sound this city ever produced. A prime slab of chaotic grind, laced with Whitehouse like noise, and bursts of metallic fury, not to mention a black hole entropy that found most songs falling apart into long stretches of broken amp feedback or crushed drum kit clatter.
So this record is finally available on vinyl, BUT, these are not the same recordings. The same songs yes, but recorded in their practice space just before the album proper was recorded, so while it's still heavy and furious and freaked out, it's also even more raw and blown out and most definitely damaged. Also included is a killer cover of Black Flag's "I've Heard It Before', even fiercer and more fucked up than the original (we sacrilegiously proclaim!) originally released on the band's now long out of print Treaties Of Greed And Filth 7".
As with all things Enterruption, the packaging is gorgeous and over the top. The sleeve is silkscreened, with all of the visual elements from the cd packaging represented (the dead elephant, the leafless etc.) The inside of the sleeve is printed with various live band shots, the vinyl is THICK and pressed on red wax, housed in a thick inner sleeve, printed with song titles and liner notes, also included are various show flyers from back in the day, reproduced on nice thick heavy cardstock. LIMITED TO ONLY 500 COPIES!!! Here's our (slightly altered) review of the cd when it first came out in 2000. And while these are different recordings, this description is still pretty apt, just add your own "harsher"s and "noisier"s and "more blown out"s here and there and it'll be perfect.
If you lived in San Francisco, circa 2000 you may have seen these local ne'er do wells playing live (this incarnation at least), with set times ranging from 30 seconds to 15 minutes, often covered in blood, writhing on the floor in a heap of destroyed instruments, charging wildly through the crowd, smashing tables and chairs (and playing with other club destroyers the Black Dice and Arab on Radar). So you'd be forgiven for expecting a messy sloppy record that is nothing without the live show. But boy, would you be wrong. Burmese's debut is a dense, ultra heavy, super low end (they have 2 basses and no guitar after all) crushing and pummeling onslaught.
The opening track is an intense free noise explosion of rumbles, feedback, and spastic drumming. The next 20 tracks take the grind of Drop Dead, drop it a few octaves, and add some seriously fucked arrangements. The last track is an epic drone ala EARTH: waves of subsonics weave in and out of malfunctioning electronics until the whole thing dissolves into a wash of turntables and instrument hum. Somewhere between DROP DEAD and EARTH circa Earth 2, this is some of the craziest, heaviest, noisiest low end grind/sludge we've heard in forever.
Again, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! So get it while you can...
It had to happen. Local sludge/grind combo Burmese, with a maximum-pummel line up of 2 bassists and 2 drummers, and two amazingly brutal records on our very own Andee's tUMULt label, and who spend most of their time channelling the spirit of '80s UK noise-shock pioneers Whitehouse anyway, decided to indulge their peculiar obsession, by recording an entire record of Whitehouse songs, run through the Burmese ringer. The result? An ear shredding, throat slitting, hateful, misanthropic skree, equal parts Merzbow, Drop Dead, Whitehouse and white noise, garbled ultra-distorted inhuman vocals, spewing hate and bile, over a musical bed of shrieking feedback, buzzing instruments, and very little actual 'playing', like a Twilight Zone episode where the musical instruments rebel against their masters by making the most un-musical sounds they can muster. Truly brutal, difficult, warped and wondrous.
We're more and more convinced that Burmese are San Francisco's greatest band. So fucking heavy, and so intensely aggressive, so totally unlike any other bands in the scene. Live they destroy, and somehow on record, their vitreous violence comes through loud and clear. For those new to Burmese, this is grinding low end ultra pummel, sludge and speed mixed into an impossible sonic stew, a little like Whitehouse crossed with Drop Dead, which makes no sense, but which is why Burmese are so fucking awesome. This set of songs was recorded live on WFMU and is so blown out. the recording so hot, that it's essentially just impenetrable walls of bass guitar growl, huge pounding sonic boom drums and inhuman shrieks. Scary stuff.
Teamed up with Burmese are 16 Bitch Pile Up, who traffic in abstract free noise, noxious clouds of ambient murk, with distant feral vocals and percussion that sounds like someone moving filing cabinets. Harsh and creepy, but what would you expect when one of the band members is credited with playing a bag of glass.
Part of Not Not Fun's Bored Fortress series of limited 7"s, packaged in a cool red and metallic gold silkscreened cover complete with little stick on pink leaves!
We'd be hard pressed to think of ANY band that could hold their own on a split record with our very own local noiseniks Burmese. But if anyone can, it's Israeli noise combo Cadaver Eyes.
But first off, holy shit are we psyched to have new music from Burmese. These guys are seriously sloooooow workers. Other than a handful of shows, we've heard nary a peep from these guys, there was the reissue of the tUMULt release on vinyl, but it's literally been years we've been waiting for a new record. Multiple lineup changes, disastrous tours, scrapped recordings, the sort of luck that has plagued these guys forever. But finally, they've beat the curse, and gotten us 11 new blasts of brutal, speaker shredding ultraviolence. Some confusion mix of Whitehouse style abstract noise, pummeling grind, damaged metal, freaked out power violence. They may be down to one drummer, but they still have two bass players, and now THREE vocalists.
They sound as good as ever, still furious and freaked out, sometimes offering up sprawling electronic dronescapes, sometimes, frantic flurries of lightning fast grind, sometimes convoluted lurching metallic crunch, and often all of the above at the same time. Hypnotic and heavy and seriously fucked up. Just another reminder, since they're loath to do it themselves outside of their sporadic releases, that these guys are quite possibly the best band in SF.
But then there's Cadaver Eyes, recorded live on WFMU, using just drums, vocals and no-input mixing board. And listening to this, it seems impossible that there's not two guitarists and multiple drummers and synths and who knows what else. The sound is dense and freaked out. Spastic spurts of strangled grind, long stretches of speaker shredding electronic buzz and skree, long drawn out abstract dronescapes of howling vox and pounding drum plods spaced WAY out, culminating in the nearly eight minute closer, beginning with the strangely titled "Ba Yom Yom" and finishing off with an absolutely unrecognizable cover of "Sweet Home Alabama", a convoluted blow out of maniacally howling vocals, sputtering percussive crunch, LOTS of feedback, and thick walls of rumbling crumbling distortion.
Awesome. And about as UN-easy listening as we can imagine.
Never heard Fistula before, but they definitely prove themselves, at least on this here split, to be one of the few bands that can stand up to the ferocity and absolute fucking musical anvil to the skull that is Burmese. After two releases on our own Andee's tUMULt label, Burmese hook up with fellow noisemakers Fistula for an absolute sonic orgy of untold proportions of AQ pal Adam's Crucial Blast label. The ten Burmese tracks show them moving even further away from conventional grind / sludge into a world all their own, Whitehouse collides with Drop Dead, Throbbing Gristle with Masonna on lead vocals and Corrupted as back up band. This is pure fucking noise. Moments of grinding fury do peek through, as do little bursts of rhythmic mayhem and occasional electronic overload, but overall this is just two drummers and two bassists stuffing your head in a blender with a speaker at the bottom. Fistula respond with four slightly longer tracks of metallic crush. The first an abstract dirge with the lead vocals replaced by a hacking cough. Like an underground sludge "Sweet Leaf". But the other three tracks prove Fistula to be masters of the BIG RIFF. Supercharged drone / dirge metal, huge and galloping, pummelling and fucking MASSIVE.
It's been a little while since we've heard from Burmese, SF's favorite noise/grind sons. And this new split is actually a blast from the not so distant past, recorded back in 2006, when they were still a three piece, 2 basses and drums, and while as a group, their sound is tough to pin down, sometimes they're thick and dense, sometimes brittle and high end, sometimes they sound like the bastard sons of Drop Dead, other times like the mutant offspring of Whitehouse, but here, they sound like the glorious Burmese of old, a furious off kilter, bass heavy spazzed out grinding three headed speaker shredding club destroying behemoth.
This is chaotic bass heavy grind, with the basses so distorted they often sound like metal guitars, the vocals (all three 'sing') slip from monstrous low end growl to wild feral shriek to punk rock yowl. There's feedback squealing all over the place, and there's even some demented sounding, ultra blown out bass "leads" draped over the top. And holy shit, the drumming, as always, relentless and mathy and complex and fucked up and flailing wildly but still somehow so goddamn tight. There's even a long stretch in the middle of doomy rhythmic minimalism that sounds almost like they're channeling This Heat or Aluk Todolo or both.
We've definitely said it before, but it bears repeating, these guys just might well be the best band in SF.
The flipside features two looooong tracks from new-to-us outfit Potop, who as far as we can tell are Russian (all of their liner notes are in Russian), and counter the short sharp all bass attack of Burmese with their sludge-y slowcore doom, big loud chords ringing out and allowed to slowly decay, long stretches of feedback, throat shredding howls, super spare skeletal drum pound, minor key and creepy, but surprisingly lush and full. Where a lot of bands emulate Sunn 0))) and offer up sludgey amorphous murkscapes, Potop definitely let the chords sing, and let the sunshine in, even if it's quickly swallowed up by shadow. The band do launch into a double time dirge, which if course is still slooooow, piledriving drums beneath guitars all tangled up in sheets of high end squeals. The second track follow suit, another midtempo grinder, with strange strangled vox a la Khanate, and crumbling super distorted guitars and more kick ass and totally pummeling drum crush.
Killer stuff from both outfits. Nice packaging too, thick cardstock sleeves, printed on both sides and held shut with a Japanese style obi, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. And be warned, the lps had a rough trip overseas, so none of the sleeves are absolutely perfect, so if you're a crazy anal collector in it for the condition more than the sounds within, you are hereby warned.
Burning (previously known as Prostate) is Minnesota-based industrial band that stopped by aQuarius on their recent US tour with Echo Beds (whose tape we also carry!). This cassette is a special tour edition of their full-length lp of the same name. The immediate and obvious contemporary reference point here is Youth Code - current and ex-punks diving head first into filthy, militant industrial that owes its existence to the mid-'80s output of Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, and the like. Burning fit nicely in the current revival of those harsh industrial aggressors, but also bring their own flair to the sound. On "Lepsis," for example, you get a Strotter Inst.-esque experiment in repetitive clanking, a reprieve from the aggression but not from the intensity.
Burning is hardly forging any new ground here, but a knowing nod to the greats of early industrial make this worth a listen. Cassette only, but it contains a couple of reworked tracks from the lp that are exclusive to this tape!
4th album from these longtime, uh, 'neo-grunge' faves of ours. Though, we'll admit that this far along, we're wondering if it's diminishing returns time for the Burning Brides. Don't get us wrong, on the strength of Anhedonia, we still don't understand why this band isn't totally huge. Next to Dax Riggs (Acid Bath, Agents Of Oblivion, Deadboy and the Elephantmen), BB mainman, guitarist/vocalist Dimitri Coats is our favorite rockstar who isn't actually exactly a real, cover of the Rolling Stone rockstar... yet. In a perfect world, though, like maybe if he'd been born a few years earlier, and grown up in Seattle...
But, in actual reality, just how many albums are Coats & Co. gonna have to make before they get on the cover of Rolling Stone, y'know? They'd better pace themselves, and that's maybe what it sounds like they're doing here, putting out just another BB album. Which is pretty cool, mind you. Though they're more Foo Fightery these days, and less Bleach-era Nirvanalike.
The metallic leanings of their previous effort, Hang Love, have been dialed back a bit here, and likewise they're slick enough now we can't be calling this all that garagey. But BB are still kicking out the heavy hooky jams with soaring ready for radio melodies and fuzzy guitars, and it's the closest thing to good grunge you're gonna find this side of 1995. Fans should check it out, it's a dose of what you like. But, if you haven't heard BB before, we'd say start with Fall Of The Plastic Empire, their much rawer, more psychedelic debut.
Gritty and unkempt garage/sludge from Philadelphia. Noisey and sloppy and super great. Sounding quite a bit like the Stooges or the MC5 (and not the way the Hellacopters turn Stooges/MC5 worship into catchy cock rock) all drunken swagger and snotty attitude.
Our favorite modern-day GRUNGE band returns! On big label V2 no more, however... are they still touring arenas? Apparently the Audioslave crowd didn't pick up on 'em like they should have. But we still really dig the Burning Brides, who remain, soundwise, tough and catchy, more metal than ever in parts this time 'round (we hear some Sabbath, no surprise, but also a hint of Slayer??). But basically, most simply put, this is grunge like you used to love it (and c'mon, you still do): flannel wearing, garagey, heavy, hooky, and of course dwelling on dark thoughts from drizzly days. They're not from Seattle though, these guys & gal are from Philly and now based in Los Angeles. And they seem more partial to black leather than flannel. But the sound is grunge for sure.
The Burning Brides are back! Their last album was an Aquarius Record Of The Week, so we had high expectations for this one. And Leave No Ashes seemingly delivers, more of the same anyway (which, c'mon, is basically what we wanted). A little bigger, a little slicker -- they've been out touring arenas with Audioslave y'now -- but still the same heavy, poppy, psychedelic, underdog garage-mongers from Philly we love. But if they're on MTV now we're not surprised. Their sonic similarities to Nirvana -- grungy hooks and a Kurt-like vocal -- remain, but you'll certainly also hear some Monster Magnet, some blues, even some Alice Cooper. Big riffs, and sinister. As with their debut, metallisms shine through their pop, and that's when they're at their best in our estimation. Also, the more we listen, the more we like, and being a grower is a great asset for pop album. And please note: lead-off track and first single "Heart Full Of Black" is *not* the strongest cut on the album! Not that it's bad, it's just not our pick for a single... In competition with the likes of the Vines and the Strokes, we back the Brides!
Enjoying this so much right now, it's hard to actually write about it, I just want to sit and listen... but here's what I've managed to come up with so far:
Oh yeah! We've been looking forward to this second album from Sweden's Burning Saviours for months, it was supposed to come out earlier this year but got delayed until now. Basically, we can make this simple if a) you've heard the first Burning Saviours and liked it and/or b) you're a fan of that -other- Swedish band that channels Pentagram, Black Sabbath and all that good obscure early '70s proto-metal heavy prog psych stuff, namely Witchcraft. If those conditions apply, then get Hundus, 'cause this new Burning Saviours disc is just as good as their amazing debut, sounding (due to shared influences, and perhaps something in the water over there in Sweden) EXACTLY like Witchcraft's equally fine retro-proto-metal. But again, we don't see them as being blatantly unoriginal vis-a-vis Witchcraft or anything, it's just that both bands are so good at capturing the authentic vibe of their heroes, making music well worthy of the upper echelon of Vertigo swirl label heavies.
Those not already tuned in and turned on to Witchcraft / Burning Saviours / the current retro-heavy-psych scene, well, you're gonna think this sounds like Black Sabbath. And maybe a bit Led Zep too, especially some of the vocal phrasing on the epic "Lilly Marion". And some of the riffing and soloing reminds us of very early Judas Priest, in their pre-leather, psychedelic Rocka Rolla phase. So, obviously, lots of appeal here to classic rock lovers! One thing that really makes Burning Saviours sound so great is the "openness" of their sound, spacious and clean, every part hitting our ears just right... the more quiet n' pretty moments making us think of -another- current band of retro-obsessed Swedes who are favorites 'round here, Elope. Even the heavier riffing is still sorta laid back, loping.
Witchcraft definitely already have a cult following (and are gonna be touring the States soon, hitting SF in October with Danava, yeah!), and these guys deserve the same... but their name just isn't as good as "Witchcraft" is it? Burning Saviours are named after a Pentagram song, but maybe we'd have chosen a different one... coulda been called, uh, The 20 Buck Spins? No, that's no good either. Well anyway, another essential hippy-doom album that really seems like it must have been recorded in 1971 and recently unearthed!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The violin is probably the last instrument you think of when you think of underground cd-r noise drone music. Okay, maybe not the last, but it's pretty far down the list for sure. Yet Mr. C. Spencer Yeh has forged a career with his trusty violin, creating a sizable body of work, ranging from full on blown out noise assault, to breathless delicate beauty, to propulsive krautrock infused space rock, and various mixes of all three. We even Record Of The Week-ed his Operator Dead album a while back. But where that record was more of a group effort, this latest disc, Challenger, finds Yeh returning to his solo roots, getting a minimal amount of assistance on just a couple of tracks, but handling the bulk of the soundmaking himself. And while there is no list of instrumentation, we have to assume that violin is not the only instrument present. NOBODY is that good. But even so, Yeh is really really good, and with a violin and whatever else he has in his soundmaking arsenal, he has once again conceived something of great beauty and import, a collection of sounds, of SONGS, an album that is cohesive yet varied, personal and introspective, yet somehow epic and expansive. If anything, this new disc finds Yeh moving his BSC into the rarefied world of spaced out Krautrock. Neu!, Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, A.R. & The Machines, Brian Eno. Much in the same way aQ faves Expo '70, channel seventies space kraut, so does Yeh, but where Expo '70 create thick heavy spaced out dronescapes, the sounds on Challenger are much more melodic, and drifty, dreamy and mesmerizing. There is plenty of noise to be found, but it's doled out sparingly, melodies are sometimes halo-ed in buzz, or delicate rhythms wreathed in feedback, but it's always muted and minimal, allowing the melody and arrangement to shine, and shine they do, each track, a gorgeously repetitive stretch of space-y abstract groove, looped, but slowly shifting and changing shape, propulsive but subtly so.
The opening two track salvo is some of the most blissfully beautiful soft noise we've heard. In fact, even calling it noise might be doing it a disservice. The opener is a slow burning slab of minimal murmur, laced with soft tinkling chimes, an abstract ghostly melody over a softly pulsing drone, eventually augmented by some shimmery hiss and random sampled ambience, but instead of distracting, these sonic events, cars driving past, wind, tape hiss, they only add texture to the glimmering drift beneath.
The second track begins with a riff (played on a violin?) that is quickly wrapped up in corrosive swaths of warbly effected buzz, the two elements twisting around one another, creating a strange churning soundscape of stretched out space rock riffage and crumbling distorted drone, that manages to be absolutely riveting.
The next few tracks offer up some more experimental fare, brief chunks of ambient weirdness, one of plastic cup percussion, heavily reverbed, in a wide open stretch of distant whir and tangled electronics, another a symphony of processed vocals, looped and chopped into a hiccupping stuttering soundscape, eventually joined by soft shimmery chords and warm chordal buzz, yet another a collection of crinkles and crackles, like someone stepping on bubble wrap, balling up wrapping paper and a campfire, all draped over the sounds of children laughing and playing.
All before returning to the blissed out dronedrift of the opening few tracks. Reverbed jaw harp floats in a field of static hum and twinkling fragmented melody, deep tones are woven into gentle lilting melodies, symphonic snippets are looped and assembled into a slow building drone, underpinned by fuzzy droney melodies, totally stirring and epic, haunting and mysterious, a bit of Jeck mixed in with BSC's usual glorious buzz, maybe one of the most moving (and possibly one of the best) tracks we've ever heard from Yeh and his 'Core. The final track is an Avarus like coda, sheets of hiss like rainfall (might very well be), bits of percussive chime and clank, plenty of hiss and whir, over the top, a shimmering high end electric melody, that drifts and stutters dreamily, like some alien lullaby.
Absolutely stunning. And thus, entirely and unequivocally recommended.
Not sure what it is lately, but there seems to be a strange occurance of not-so-prolific bands releasing a bunch of records all at once. For BSC it's three releases in the last few months. Which is actually cool since they haven't really had all that many proper releases and have been recording since at least the mid-ninties. BSC is mostly the work of C. Spencer Yeh, and Mes Soldats Stupides '96 - '04, as the title implies, collects lots of random recordings from the last 8 years or so. Limited cd-r releases, cassettes, compilations, rehearsals and a few unreleased tracks. Disc one is really strange, sounding like it was mostly constructed using voices, distorted and affected, chopped up and reassembled, slowed down and sped up layered and multi tracked into random and abstract free-noise workouts, sometimes spastic and noisy, but more often sort of droney and hypnotic. Very organic and natural sounding but quite alien sounding in their new noise rock context. Disc two is a lot more free noise, abstract rock, with stumbling percussion, feeding back guitars, lots of tape hiss and amp buzz, more along the lines of the Dead C or Total. Buzzing droning chaotic free rock splatter that slips into smeary soundscapes as often as it explodes into freenoise fragments.
Double disc packaged in a spiffy double digipak with an extensive track listing / insert.
Normally the solo project of 'noise violinist' C. Spencer Yeh, on Operator Dead... Post Abandoned, Burning Star Core has been expanded to a four piece, with Yeh on violin, voice, electronics, junkbox and trumpet, Trevor Tremaine on drums, percussion and objects, AQ fave Mike Shiflet on computer, electronics and voice, and Robert Beatty on electronics, who is also credited with being "acoustic appraiser."
As much as we've dug past BSC records, this one is definitely shaping up to be our favorite. This Burning Star Core Quartet thing really suits them. The opening track alone, "When The Tripods Came" is a serious contender for best 'noise rock' track of the year. Maybe ever. Calling it noise rock is hardly fair though. It's a rambling sprawling slow moving driftscape of buzz and distortion. It's almost how you might imagine a modern, noisier Taj Mahal Travellers to sound. In fact the whole record sort of has that same sort of spiritual organic vibe. Taking bits and pieces from other purveyors of longform drone noise, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Total, Sunroof!, mixing in some ultra-free jazz, some raga like buzz, some old school improvised ambience, then running it all through a battery of modern effects and unleashing this thick viscous, incredibly heavy, yet impossibly beautiful (especially for a 'noise' record) sound.
A lot of it has to do with the drums, a relentless chaotic octopoidal rhythmic frenzy, skittering as often as pounding, giving the thick snarling ambience direction and propulsion. Turning a record of drifts and shimmers, into something aggressive, something fierce... but the drums are just the framework, supporting the massive sonic weight of the swirling, churning lush noisiness above, beneath and around them.
The first two tracks, nearly 40 minutes, are some of the finest drone-dirge-space-improv EVER. Some impossible dream jam, The Taj Mahal Travellers vs. Crystal Fist vs. Wolf Eyes, mix in some strange disembodied horns, some Tim Hecker like blurred melancholia, add copious amounts of extra buzz and distorted crumble, wrap everything in a bleary eyed crystalline shimmer, and let the whole thing just ooze out of the speakers.
The third and fourth tracks are much more brief and less dense, balancing the bristling buzz of the first two, in the third, a muted warble underpins shimmering high end harmonics, strange muted mechanical whirs and creaks underneath, as well as burbling underwater bass, random bits of percussion, metallic thrum and long streaks of feedback, eventually building into a sort of an abstract tribal space drift, like the members of No Neck and Sunburned Hand jettisoned from the airlock into deep space mid-jam. The fourth is a rhythmic free for all, the drums a constant splatter and shimmer, spreading out like percussive ripples, the cymbals sizzling out a thick layer of constant buzzing whir to compliment the groaning blown out shimmer and reverb drenched washes of sound, everything growing gradually more distorted until it reaches a fever pitch, a lumbering swirl of crumbling low end and pounding drum damage.
A new Burning Star Core record, but not exactly a NEW record, more like a NEW record made out of OLD records, as in 4 loooong tracks, assembled and edited from 66 live recordings from the years 1997-2008, a pretty cool idea for sure and it definitely suits BSC, their songs are long anyway, but here they're transformed into epic space drone collages, a plunderphonic chunk of psychedelia.
The first part is a dense chaotic sprawl of total space rock, the drums wild and blown out and frantic, all of the other instruments in a frenzy of swirling effects and in-the-red freakout, which gives way to some glistening upper register ur-drone, like Sunroof! or Pelt, or heck, even Burning Star Core. The second half of the first part is yet more abstract drift, dense layered sound, streaked and blurred and smeared into giant swells of fuzzed out rumbles, peppered with bits of percussion and electronic glitch, finally finishing up with some murky industrial thump.
Part two explodes with some super distorted psychrone freakout, the drums so in the red they distort and change shape, the violin and/or guitar grind and scrape and squeal and howl and shriek, the drums a chaotic cacophony, like a dozen free jazz bands battling it out in an empty swimming pool, before things get a bit more mellow, the band slipping into something a little more Dead C, a meandering dirgey noise rock stumble, that works its way through still more space rock, and several clouds of crunch and clatter and creak.
Part three begins with some garbled processed sort of beatbox vocals, which gradually get more and more effected before things get noisy again, bleats and skronks, quickly subsumed by a thick wall of crumbling buzz, a thick skull rattling thrum, that dissolves into still more abstract free noise damage and haunting ambient drift.
The final part opens up with some whirring drones beneath creaks and clatters, deep bass pulses, which slowly build into some sort-of-free-jazz, which in turn transforms into some blown out industrial rumble, only to finally finish up in a blurred buzzy tangle of spidery violins and groaning low end drones. Phew. Pretty intense stuff, and while you can't necessarily HEAR the 66 source tapes, these tracks do feel dense, as if you can FEEL the fact that 66 tracks were somehow cut up and crammed and layered into just 4.
Heavy, heady, trippy, noisy and psychedelic, a cool way to experience the last 11 years of Burning Star Core in just 66 minutes...
For a band that's been around for a while now, Burning Star Core has kept a pretty low profile. Plenty of vinyl only and limited cd-r releases and loads of shows, but still they've remained pretty well under the radar. That all seems about to change with the release of three, count 'em, THREE new compact discs!! The first of those three to reach our ears, The Very Heart Of The World, was recorded between 2002 and 2004 and is everything we've come to expect from these guys (or this guy, as BSC is mostly the work of one C. Spencer Yeh), a gorgeously expansive soundfield of ruptured drones, skittering scraped violin and gurgling electronics, very gritty and crunchy, but still completely dreamy and soothing. Employing the unlikely instrumentation of violin, guitar, electronics, clarinet, organ, percussion, drums, trumpet, piano and voice, BSC conjure up a weird washed out cinematic soundscape, equal parts the Dead C, Wolf Eyes, and Birchville Cat Motel, where drone is obviously the order of the day, but with brief excursions into weird dada-ist voice experiments, blissed out post rock rhythms, skronky free space-jazz, soaring and epic spectacle and even a little full on noise. Haunting and harrowing, brooding and beautiful, this sounds like a seriously Dead C'd Godspeed You Black Emperor, but a GSYBBE with less Canada and more midwest, less Fellini and more Romero, less Constellation and more RRR. Awesome!
Yes, it's the fellow from that Nickelodeon children's show Blue Clues, and yes, he is an admitted big fan of the Flaming Lips. So what does an admitted big FL fan and respectable songwriter who wants to shift career paths do? Answer: Hook up with his heroes (or a couple of his heroes namely the Lips' Steven Drozd and producer Dave Fridmann - if you were really cynical you might be saying "heh, bring in the ringers why doncha?" but I'm sure you're/we're not... really!), record his own debut album and capture the attention of the Play It Again Sam America record label to release it. Sometimes it's that... er... easy.
At any rate, this album suits us just fine, thank you very much. The first few songs lean very heavily on the Flaming Lips/Fridmann blow-out sonic grandeur. Big clouds of fluttering textures and snare drum shuffles linger just above Burns' boyish, sincere voice and the soothing melodies played out on piano, strummed acoustic guitar and thickly distorted electric guitar. However, further on into 'Dustmites you'll find tunes that seem much more personal to Burns both lyrically and stylistically. As the album progresses, things generally mellow out into gentle, down-to-earth, sweetly romantic singer/songwriter stuff, but Burns definitely has some twisted pop sensibilities of his own.
It seems you can hear each and every one of R.L. Burnside's 73 years whenever he opens his mouth. It's clear he's had his share of hard times. It's in his amazing, raw, weathered voice and in his brooding words. He can sing the true old Mississippi blues like no one else. And that's definitely the best way to hear him - on his own, but on this album, he's chosen to blend his blues with seemingly unlikely more modern styles and artists. Beats, scratching, synths, sampling, and definite ProTools editing pepper these recordings creating a respectfully unobtrusive yet lively backdrop for R.L.'s vocals.
Man, there sure are more and more amazing grind bands these days. It's like all kids do these days is practice blast beats instead of doing their homework. But who's complaining? This is a split from two of grinds brightest pupils. Both are fast and furious, the production is top notch, and the songs from both bands are completely fucking brutal.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Latest blast of skull caving psychedelia from this constantly shifting collective, on this 2 track lp shifting from 5 members to 9, from two guitarists to FOUR guitarists and two drummers, not to mention a xylophonist!!! But none of that is as important as the monstrous sounds these guys and gals conjure up, and it is MONSTROUS.
The A side is a riffy sprawl of blown out bong smoke psych sludge crush, chaotic, relentless rehearsal space drumming, churning, chugging riffage, wild tangled chaotic leads, totally burnt out (of course) and endlessly hypnotic, definitely sounds like this was a 20 minute chunk extracted from an all day, all night drug fueled orgy of psychedelic excess, which of course means FUCK YEAH, and WE WANT MORE.
All you have to do is flip it over, and voila, more. WAY more. The flipside is slower and dirgier, almost doomy, a swirly mass of garbled psych-drone freakout, crashing speaker punishing drum damage, total free for all pound and skree, like the A side, epic and endless, and no doubt part of a massive whole that had Burnt Hills' entire neighborhood, stuffing cotton in their ears and pushing furniture against the doors and windows.
This is about as heavy and druggy and noisy as improv space rock gets these days, and we LOVE it.
LIMITED TO ONLY 99 COPIES! Each one hand numbered, in cool paste on sleeves, got very few of these, so be warned.
Found a small stash of these in the back room, long gone and long out of print, we have 6 or 7 up for grabs...
We've sung the praises of Burnt Hills before. Their epic basement jams are the stuff of legend, sprawling lysergic blowouts that shift from droney and krauty to full on Japanese style psych freakouts, multiple guitarists, sometimes as many as 4 or 5, even a xylophonist (although we have a hard time picking the xylo out of the din), the recordings all start out suddenly, and end the same way, as if someone reached over midjam to push record, and then the tape just runs out, and it's not til the next day, when some hungover dude shuffles down to the basement to collect the tape. Fucking awesome. And this live set from 2007 is no different, a nearly hour long jam, the drums all lo-fi and practice space, the air filled with wailing howling guitars, scrabbling leads, gnarled riffs, long buzzing feedback drenched drones, all stretched waaaaaay waaaaaay out, the band unfurling a glorious sprawl of lysergic, blown out, in-the-red drunk and druggy psychedelic space rock bliss. RAD!
This was LIMITED TO 99 COPIES when we first got it in, each one hand numbered. Again, this is WAY out of print, so these are most definitely the last copies we'll ever get!
In pretty much every review of every Burnt Hills record, we mention that it simply sounds like someone decided to push record on the tape machine mid jam, and then the group just played and played until the tape ran out. Which is what it really sounds like. Set the needle to the groove, and suddenly the listener is thrust into an already-in-progress mega-psych-jam, multiple guitarists, multiple drummers, and one thing that few other space/psych rock outfits can boast, a xylophone player (!!). The sound is a wild, loose, unhinged, drug addled free for all, that against all odds, constantly coalesces into proper grooves, or thick chordal swells, the sound shifting from what sounds like premeditated composition, to full of mind melting freakout, which is pretty much what makes this psych rock collective so endlessly listenable. Their weekly jams, that often feature a traveling musician just passing through, the sound lo-fi, but loud and lively, it's all captured in a suburban basement after all. The thing is with this record, not only does it sound, like the others, as if this was just a random sampling of an even bigger jam, but suddenly, we get the impression, that the jam never stops, that there's some sort of endless jam, with rotating players, around the clock psychedelia, the collective shifting out members and rotating constantly, and every once in a while, someone remembers to press record, and someone else, maybe on a run for more weed, or beer, or LSD, makes a quick stop, presses up some lps, and sends em off, before returning to that smoke filled, sound filled basement.
Live At The Elevens though does bear some distinctive elements, it starts off much more stripped down and rhythmic, the drums driving the show, still tripped out and psychedelic, but way more rhythmic, pounding drums beneath clouds of processed guitars, mesmerizing and hypnotic, some heavy krautpsych for sure, laced with squiggles of melody, before the sound begins to grow more and more dense, and then more chaotic, the multiple guitarists unloading a blissed out cacophony of buzz and howl and crunch, the xylophone unfurling those distinctive chiming melodies, buried beneath the cascade of psychedelic swells. The flipside finds everyone stretching way out, the sound getting way more washed out and almost ambient, blissed out and dreamlike, the sounds all blurred and smeared into thick swaths of buzz and thrum, sheets of caustic distorted crush, softened into billowing chordal swirls, heavy and tranced out. Killer!
Packed like past Burnt Hills records, full color art pasted on to a plain black lp sleeve, LIMITED TO 99 COPIES, each one hand numbered on the lp label. We usually only get one shot at these, so we're guessing once the batch we got sells out, it's probably gone for good. You know what that means.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
In reviewing past records by this ever mutating psychedelic space rock collective, we've joked that they must be jamming 24 hours a day, never stopping, just rocking relentlessly tag team style, members playing til near exhaustion, before tagging out, grabbing some winks, a bite to eat, and then tagging right back in. Their core membership bolstered by all sorts of visiting psychedelic dignitaries, but masterminded by the tireless Jackson Wingate, who we can only imagine as some bearded wizardy type, who somehow hasn't slept ONCE in the past decade, for as long as these legendary basement jams have been going on. Hunched over a guitar, his beard nearly obscuring whatever alchemy he's working on the fretboard, while the surrounding musicians do everything they can to keep up. And here, on Non Compos Mentis, much like the handful of BH records we've reviewed before (out of TWENTY full lengths so far), the process seems similar, like someone just wandered down into the jam room, pushed record on the tape player, and just captured the jam already in progress, until the tape ran out. And like those other records, the sound of Burnt Hills continues to be loose and chaotic, noisy and blown out, heady and heavy and hypnotic, not sure if they still have a xylophone player still but we could never hear it anyway, just part of the group's glorious din, and glorious it is. Multiple guitarists, maybe multiple drummers, it almost doesn't matter, in a way, the sound is totally organic, a pulsing, pulsating, ever mutating cloud of psychedelic noise. There are definitely dynamics, and some interplay going on, but really it sounds like it's pretty much full bore, all the amps on 11, a sky full of tangled psych-shred soloing, all wound up in sheets of blurred riffage, and wild drum damage, it's almost ritualistic, an ecstatic communion of sound, the players attempting to reach some sort of musical nirvana, an ear drum shredding, knuckle busting, brain melting mindstate, attainable only through extreme psychedelia. And we're lucky enough to get a little glimpse once in a while.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! In fancy hand screened jackets. As always, these disappear super quick, and odds are, once we run out, we won't be able to get more.
Used to be that a single lp could contain the freaked out cloud of head tripping ear splitting sonic bliss unleashed by this sprawling basement psych rock collective, but it seems this time around, this latest batch of cosmic free rock drift, these new heart of the sun, lo-fi drug soaked jams, or more specifically, JAM singular, required more space, and thus spilled out onto 4 whole sides of vinyl. Which makes sense, this is the sort of stuff that benefits from time and space, especially SPACE, the band loose and ramshackle, obviously improvising, but equally obviously in tune with each other (each other being 9 members at this point we think, multiple guitarists, maybe multiple drummers, and a XYLOPHONIST last time we checked), and while maybe not as all out freaked out all the time as on past records, these guys have dialed into some serious spaced out krautrock heaviness/grooviness, sounding at some points like a noisier German Oak, or a way looser and wilder Amon Duul, the drums chaotic but propulsive, the guitars, ALL of them constantly unfurling thick peals and howls, spidery, chugging chords and warped harmonies, a massive psychedelic steel string, amp-melting tangle, all draped over a loose loping rhythmic framework. Long stretches of hypno rock dirge give way to loose free explorations of the outer reaches of psychedelia which in turn occasionally give way to dense gnarled bits of intense drum heavy psych, the guitars taking a backseat to some serious pound and crash, but it's not long before those guitars, ALL of them, swoop in and explode in another blast of blinding sonic effulgence. So good.
LIMITED TO JUST 99 COPIES, each one hand numbered, we have about TEN. Housed in beautiful silkscreened orange and green, eye popping ultra heavy gatefold sleeves, with paste on inner artwork!!
The return of Burnt Hills, a gloriously freaked out, damaged and deranged, psychedelic garage stomping space rock trailer park stage destroying, instrument thrashing drug drenched sonic dervish. We dug the last record tons, and if anything, this one is even better. One looooong hour long drugspacepsych jam that actually tends more towards the krautrock than the noiserock, with its motorik beats and looped sounding riffage, but fear not, it's still chaotic and noisy, the relentless groove filtered through some Dead C and Liquorball free noise filters. This time, there's lots of space, guitars are angular and detuned, in the backgrounds little squalls of distorted buzz drift in and out of range, vocals buried in the mix spouting some wild and wooly mumbo jumbo, getting all tangled up in the spidery guitar melodies and the shimmery sheets of feedback, while over the top, the drums stumble and sputter, a sort of freenoise freejazz mash up, with the various instruments clicking every once in a while into one of the aforementioned krautrock grooves, only to splinter into weird jagged pieces moments later. Burnt Hills are most definitely the Stoner's Pot Palace house band, and odds are they probably get paid in weed...
Packaged in handmade gatefold sleeves, with various artwork and photos affixed to the inside and outside, some hand drawn designs inside as well, LIMITED TO 99 COPIES, each disc hand numbered, the cd-r's cool faux vinyl discs complete with inner label.�
Latest batch of super heavy, blown out, in the red, psychedelic space rock from this ever shifting collective, recorded live, in the Burnt Hills / Flipped Out basement presumably, with FOUR guitar players, a bassist, a drummer, and someone playing XYLOPHONE (!), this is some serious freaked out heaviness, a constant barrage of tangled psychedelic riffage, wild swirling squalls of smoldering leads, the drumming dense and frenzied, the bass more a low end presence than an actual bass, adding to the thickness and the viscosity of the sound, a cacophonous sidelong basement jam, but played as if the house was a starship, and if these folks just rocked hard enough, the house might lift off and carry everyone in it into the heart of the sun, and play hard they do, constantly slipping from thick drumless guitar drones to full on flurries of free noise freakout, but always returning to the mesmerizing space rock groove that seems to run through the whole jam. Thick and explosive and freaked out, druggy and deliriously over the top, a sonic homage to Fushitsusha, White Heaven, Aural Fit, High Rise, Les Rallizes Denudes and all the gods of psychedelia. Fucking fierce!!
LIMITED TO JUST 99 COPIES, we have about TEN. Housed in beautiful green and silver, almost metallic looking, silkscreened sleeves, each one hand numbered.
This is the sound of burnt hills, the smell of burnt hair, the black musical smoke from a burning methlab in an abandoned trailer park, a glorious blown out, burnt out, drug addled freak rock free for all. Imagine the Dead C if they had grown up in Modesto, skipping school and doing lots of speed in the 7-11 parking lot, or if they had spent their formative years in Texas in the early eighties smoking pot and huffing glue. Or imagine a Hawkwind practice space jam session moments after each band member received a partial frontal lobotomy. How about a playground fight between Liquorball and Faxed Head, the 'Ball armed with flaming wadded up balls of black aluminum foil and the 'Head flinging guitar picks dipped in lighter fluid and an rusty guitar strings. Weird and wonderfully fucked up. Fans of freaked out psychedelic punch ups, dizzying clattery outsider free rock and getting super high and diving head first into a huge pile of drums and guitars will feel right at home.
Been a while since we've heard from Burnt Hills. Our fault entirely. They may have been absent on the list, but they have most definitely not stopped releasing records, or partaking in a weekly jam at the Burnt Hills HQ, which is where we assume this massive psych jam blow out was captured on tape.
For those new to Burnt Hills, the group seems to be an ever changing collective, sometimes a duo or trio, other times, like here, expanded to a seven piece, heck they even got someone on XYLOPHONE this time around. No that you'd really be able to tell. The sound of Burnt Hills is a sonic mushroom cloud of grinding psych guitar squall, practice space drums, throbbing earthquake bass, all woven into a sprawling space-psych-kraut jam that could have gone on forever. Heck it could have started weeks ago, as the track opens jarringly mid-jam, just explodes right into it, expanding into a hazy, woozy, effects drenched expanse of druggy psych bliss. Folks who eat up every last thing by Acid Mothers Temple, Heavy Winged, Titan, all that modern psych shit, have no excuse for not being crazy obsessed with these guys too. Equal parts all those bands as well as plenty of Hawkwind, Monster Magnet, German Oak, Boris, White Heaven, just imagine a dingy black lit basement, packed to the rafters with amps, and a bunch of folks hunched over their instruments, probably high as a kite, channeling some mysterious otherworld spirits through the speakers into physical sound, into THIS, whatever this is.
You can almost imagine the whole neighborhood gathered around this unassuming house in the suburbs, clad in slippers and robes, bleary eyed and a bit terrified, staring at BH HQ, a dilapidated little house that seems to be coming alive, the whole thing shaking on its foundations, emanating kaleidoscopic lights, emitting a deafening roar unlike anything these normal folks have ever heard. They call the authorities, the police, the F.B.I., but by the time they arrive, the house is dark, and quiet, and empty.
Absolute ear candy for psych-kraut maniacs into blown out heavy psychedelic space rock freakouts, which as far as we're concerned should really be just about everyone reading this.
Another massive sprawling live psychedelic experience from this space / psych / kraut rock collective, who get together with whoever may be in town ever week, and blow the roof off their humble Midwestern abode. And while the abode may be humble, the basement is most definitely not, as it seems to be where some of the sickest psyche rock is produced these days, most of it going unheard, some of it captured on tape, and released as crazy limited documents of these ecstatic sonic experiences.
This most recent release is scant on info, but by now, we know how it went down, multiple guitar players, sometimes as many as 5 or 6, multiple drummers, and a xylophone player, playing for what we imagine must be hours and hours, as there's no way to tell from the record, it fades right in mid song, fades out at the end of the side, and right back in again on the other side, and then fades out at the end. It certainly feels like this chunk was grabbed mid-jam, and these wild sounds continued on and on in both directions. And like their BH lps, this heavy, heady, tripped out, hypnotic stuff. The drums and bass hold everything together, and the guitars go wild, swooping and soaring, melodic one second, caustic and crunchy the next, fuzzed out riffage, the sound shifting from droned out and hypnotic to chaotic and free, the performance surprisingly dynamic in places, considering its extended improvised origin. One notable thing about this recording, is the xylophone, which on most of the recordings is totally inaudible, but here is finally way more present in the mix, which gives the sound a whole different vibe. Yet another fantastic slab of druggy, dreamy, krautrocky blissed out psychedelic space rock from these basement psychedelic warlords...
LIMITED TO 139 COPIES. Housed in a beautiful jacket!
Finally! A new full length from these psychedelic sixties style garage murk masters, the first in fact we've actually managed to get (it's their third apparently), and it's a doozy, washed out and warped, drowsy and druggy, but super catchy, and impossibly lush and psychedelic. The opener "Pulse" sounds like the Kinks, albeit a way more wasted version, the sound fabulously muddy and murky, melodic and catchy as all get out.
We first discovered these guys on the second Group Flex flexi-book on Castle Face, then on the Castle Face Velvet Underground tribute, and most recently, on the I Need You Bad comp on Polyvinyl. In each case, we inevitably found ourselves going straight to the Burnt Ones' tracks, and then playing them over and over. So, Gift is totally hitting the spot, a gloriously prismatic and cracked collection of paisley pop doused in LSD and sent sprawling through fields of slow motion motorik marches, hazy organ wheeze whirls, and blurred guitar shimmer, the sound super amorphous and abstract, and then without warning, the sound will suddenly come together into a blast of practically perfect baroque pop, albeit still swaddled in fuzz and buzz and hiss, in fact "Money Man" does just that, spending its first two minutes in a sort of bleary suspended animation, before erupting into a riffy, psychedelic stomp, equal parts Kinks, Beatles and Bee Gees, but then roughed up and sent careening wildly into the fray, replete with a final burst of falsetto crooning. And so it goes, the whole record lurching druggily from woozy psychedelic gem to warped dirge pop ditty, every song blossoming like some prismatic sonic flower, revealing more and more as the sounds unfurl and unwind, melodies swoop in from nowhere, hooks hover, fade out, and then suddenly pop up minutes later, lilting, chiming loveliness wrapped in grunge and gristle, there's some crazy primitive drum machine weirdness, some glammy swagger, some 8-bit bleep bloop, plenty of fuzzy synth swirl, FX all over the place, but none of the noisiness or damaged sonic weirdness can disguise the perfect poppiness lurking within pretty much every single of of these twisted psych-garage gems.
Killer blast of Bay Area garage rock / fuzz pop from two of our favorite groops, on this new split from local label Mt. St. Mtn., the A side a brand new jam from sixties styled, organ driven garage psych troubadours Burnt Ones, who deliver a delirious chunk of baroque-pop styled fuzz, all hazy vocals and jangly guitars, swirling and hypnotic and dreamily psychedelic, while the flipside is a new (old) track from sadly now defunct aQ faves The Mallard, whose track here is all lo-fi lope and reverby jangle, with washed out vocals, swirling soaring psych guitar melodies, crunchy riffs, and loose limbed drumming, with a cool stuttery bridge that pops up throughout, giving it a weirdly mathy vibe in places, and ultimately once again reminding us again how much we miss The Mallard!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Housed in a super swank, 4 color debossed sleeve, and pressed on crazy colored swirled vinyl!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
At this point in her career, any new release by Kate Bush is an event. When the release in question is a record of the caliber of 50 Words For Snow, one can only marvel at the artistry and career of one of the world's greatest living pop artists. After all, she's never toured (aside from a short one in 1979 for The Kick Inside), and, Director's Cut notwithstanding, has only released 2 albums of new material in the last 18 years. In the '80s, Bush's penchant for making awesomely strange videos and MTV actually playing those videos helped sell records. Since the (televised) music video's demise, however, someone who does not play live has to rely on the strength of the LP itself. This is where Kate Bush has always shined, not only in the quality of the songs, but in the quality of the recordings themselves.
Like the B-side of Hounds of Love (also called The Ninth Wave), 50 Words For Snow is thematic and purposeful, a "concept" record if you will. Slow, sparse and deliberately paced, the seven songs carry the listener for over 65 minutes with strings, drifts of piano, and sparse, jazzy drums. Whereas The Ninth Wave, told the story of one person's journey through death into ghostly haunting and, finally, redemption and forgiveness, 50 Words For Snow is more a series of icy vignettes. They paint pictures of a woman first creating, then making love with a snowman, a wraith watching her dog watch her corpse, a hunt for a yeti. Although sometimes thematically humorous, it's tragic comedy that interests Bush: a kind of sad, beautiful quirkiness that is somehow universally human and uniquely Kate Bush.
From her work with Peter Gabriel in the '80s to Prince's guitar playing on The Red Shoes, collaborations have been an important part of Kate Bush's work. 50 Words finds her working with longtime compatriot Del Palmer as engineer and occasional bass player, Sir Elton John in the duet "Snowed In At Wheeler Street," and the British actor Stephen Fry.
When Director's Cut was released in early 2011, some noise was made over Kate's "huskier" voice, the slight change in its timbre. Really? There's not a moment on 50 Words that could have been done better, vocally. If Kate knows anything, she knows how to change, and how to create characters. If people expect artists with careers spanning 30+ years to remain static, well, that's why records are made, right? To capture a moment that can always be revisited. Very few artists have the longevity and integrity of Kate Bush, and that's something that should not go unrecognized or unappreciated.
The cd version comes in a hardback-book style package with the booklet glued to the inside cover. The gatefold double lp comes with a large, full-color lyric booklet and a cd version of the entire record.
We all know that Kate Bush's fans are some of the most devoted and patient ones around. We're sure all of you out there who count yourselves in those ranks have been tingling with anticipation for this, her first studio album in eons (her last one being 1993's The Red Shoes). It's a double album, even! And we're pleased to report that it doesn't disappoint the diehards nor the newcomers. Although the overall production has an adult contemporary sheen to it, she sounds positively refreshed and bursting with creative inspiration. While Aerial is certainly filled with her trademark unconventional elegance and enigmatic grace, our interest in this album was extra piqued when AQ pal Wobbly mentioned a few notable and peculiar elements that Bush has encorporated into a few of the numbers such as bird song and laughter (the album's title track and closer "Aerial"), her son's voice and a recital of Pi (on the second song)!
When we first heard the details behind Kate Bush's new record, Director's Cut, some of us (those not prone to be insanely excited about ANYTHING Kate Bush) asked, "Why a record of songs that have already been recorded? Why not something new?" The original impetus behind the idea for Director's Cut was that 20 years ago, Kate had asked the James Joyce estate for permission to use sections from the "Penelope" section of Ulysses for her song "The Sensual World", and was denied; this time around, they said "Mmmmmmmmm, yes" (Kate Bush fans will get that joke). So she retitled the song "The Flower of the Mountain" and re-recorded the vocals, then re-recorded the drums, then at some point decided that maybe some of her other songs from that time period needed another looking at. The fact is that Kate Bush is a perfectionist, a major reason why she has toured only once in her career, and she says she was never happy with the overtly digital sound of The Red Shoes. All of the songs on Director's Cut are taken from The Sensual World or The Red Shoes, the vocals and drums re-recorded, with most of the rest of the instrumentation left intact. The effect is a very warm record, one with a lot of space within the tracks that serves to bring the listener closer, especially in the iconic "This Woman's Work". "Deeper Understanding" is the only track where the original is immediately superior, the Director's Cut version pushing the Bulgarian choir to the background and adding an auto-tuned vocal track (done by Kate's son Bertie). The song's theme of digital alienation is still prescient and apt, however, to our ever more computer reliant society. Fans who have absorbed The Red Shoes and The Sensual World's songs into their psyches might have an immediate reaction against hearing songs they love messed with in any way, even by K8 herself. But, truly, seriously, sit with this record and listen to it twice though. Once you're not expecting the original versions, Director's Cut is an outstanding record by an incomparable artist.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Norway's always-on-it Rune Grammofon label seem to have a special penchant for finding "jazz" bands with electric guitars who really can rock, like the recently reviewed Hedvig Mollestad Trio, and the band currently under consideration, the oddly-named Bushman's Revenge, an instrumental bass/drums/guitar (and some vibraphone) trio. This is Rune G's third release by 'em, the follow up to 2010's Jitterbug, which we really liked a lot. And we like this one too!
First off, first off... the opening track is a slightly rambunctious, bass-burbling cover version of the gorgeous "As We Used To Sing" by the late great jazz guitarist Sonny Sharrock, from his criminally-out-of-print for years now 1990 masterwork, Ask The Ages! Excellent choice, making for an auspicious beginning to this album. So nice to hear that lovely melody again, as any Sharrock fan will surely agree. Bushman's Revenge bring to it a very lively feel, that's in keeping with the rest of the disc, recorded live in the studio, with few overdubs, and lots of energy. This band is quite electric, let's say, with dense squalls of guitar to the fore (of course, that's why they'd cover Sharrock, and heck last time out they covered Motorhead!), but they also take some serene detours too (even at volume). Among those mellower moments, "John Lennon Was The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived" has a title that might sound facetious, but the particularly calm and beautiful music so named seems quite sincere.
Once again, a great "jazz" album for folks who love amped-up, tangled-up rock.
Gatefold lp (with download), or digipaked cd, both with Rune G's usual distinctive Kim Hiorthoy graphics.
Hadn't heard this jitterbuggin' Norwegian bunch before, though they have a previous album on Rune Grammofon and one before that as well. Definitely gonna have to track down those too, 'cause this one is pretty great, if you're into avant rock/jazz instrumental rippage. At peak power, they're QUITE energetic and frenzied, but unfailingly musical too, and the disc has much in the way of moodier, mellower moments as well.
Bushman's Revenge are a trio of electric guitar, bass, and drums, with a cameo appearance on two tracks here by organist Stale Storlokken of Supersilent. The guitarist is also a member of the proggy and metallic "blackjazz" group Shining. Which maybe explains why this is often so much heavier and rockier than most quote unquote fusion, and also why they do a Motorhead cover ("Damage Case" from Overkill done as an instrumental, or what they call a "Happy Go Lucky Karaoke Version", which stomps along exuberantly with a full-on freakout in the mid-section). Elsewhere, they veer from tangled and distorted guitar onslaughts to stately melodic reveries... and even play some deviant blues ("While My Guitar Gently Breaks"). Bushman's Revenge are for fans of other Rune G "fusion" like Scorch Trio for sure, and also we'd recommend 'em folks partial to Nels Cline.
Last list, we highlighted A Little Bit Of Big Bonanza, the newest full-length from this Norwegian improvising unit on Rune Grammofon. The takeaway: "...a great 'jazz' album for people who love amped-up, tangled-up rock."
Fans will be interested in this vinyl-only 12", intended as a companion to that new album, recorded at the same sessions. It consists of cover versions of some of their faves. Bushman's Revenge has previously covered Motorhead and Sonny Sharrock, among others, and the covers presented here are equally diverse. Jazz, alt-rock, metal, they know no boundaries. They cover The Pixies ("Monkey Gone To Heaven"), The Police ("No Time This Time"), Black Sabbath ("War Pigs"), Sun Ra ("We Travel The Spaceways"), and even themselves ("Bushman Rock", a song left off their earlier Jitterbug album). As you might expect, these compositions are all respectfully rearranged, and deranged, when given the Bushman's Revenge treatment.
Comes with mp3 download.
