Gonna try to make this review a short one, not because this record isn't great, because it is, but just because it's only eleven minutes long. That's right, eleven minutes. Ten songs in eleven minutes. That should give you a clue as to what you're in for. Somehow though it doesn't seem like a rip off since the Daughters jam more parts and notes and insanity into a minute long song than most bands fit in a whole record. Ultra spastic, maniacal grinding prog metal punk is what we're talking here. A la the Locust, An Albatross, Horse The Band and all those bands that take twice as long setting up as they do playing their entire set! Just set your cd player on repeat and listen to Canada Songs over and over and over and over. You'll want to anyway this record is so good. From the same label that brought us the great Circle Takes The Square record from a few lists back!
We've heard tell of record for a long time, but this is the first occasion that a cd reissue has wound up in our bins. It's about time 'cause it is indeed a pretty cool little album! Multi-instrumentalist Wolfgang Dauner was an innovative German jazz musician who in the late '60s started to move into more experimental and "krautrock" territory. The Oimels, originally released in 1969, was supposedly his attempt at a "pop" album...
It starts off with the funky, quirky instrumental "Oh, Baby, I Don't Love You Anymore", wherein ivories are tickled, flutes are flaunted, and there's some silly serious stabs of fuzz guitar from Siggi Schwab (an MPS label vet that you've heard before if you're familiar with the Vampyros Lesbos soundtrack!). Reminds us a bit of that bizarre exploito-kraut "party album" by Staff Carpenborg & The Electric Corona we reviewed a couple years ago. Neat enough, should appeal to the same folks digging those "In-Kraut" and "Instro-Hipsters" compilations... but with an extra dose of something. Uh, LSD?
Sitar twang is added to the next track, the faux-Eastern hippy jam "Take Off Your Clothes To Feel The Setting Sun", the vocals blissfully, mantrically suggesting that one disrobe as per the song title. That's followed by another bright n' slinky lounge instrumental, "My Man's Gone Now", that would have Austin Powers sayin' "Groovy, baby" and whooping it up. So far, so good... a groovy jazzy album yeah, with some freaky pop leanings, but a psychedelic krautrock classic? Well then you hit the positively CRAZED track four, "Come On In On In" and you realize that The Oimels are seriously trippin'. It's a hard one to describe, totally unhinged, almost hyperactively punked-up like The Monks, with chaotic chanting vocals and infectious rhythmic glee. Wow, wild! Ok, now we're convinced. And as the album continues, the freakiness does too. It's such a weird blend of smooth jazz grooves and psychedelic spasms. Dauner and his Quintet were definitely on to something (or on something) with their sound. Some of the other surprises in store for listeners include a swingin' version of "Greensleeves", and, to end the record, a pretty amazing cover of "A Day In The Life" by the Beatles. The elegiac mood of the original is maintained, enhanced even, yet also subverted with insane atonal fuzz-jazz soloing.
We're now definitely interested in hearing Dauner's other progressive jazz and fusion albums of the era, if we can find 'em...
We've been loving Davenport for a good long while now, but they were one of those bands who hovered ghostlike in the world of ultra limited cd-r's and limited-to-50-copies lathe cuts and thus we were never able to get more than a few copies of any of their records until now. Free Country is the first proper cd release we've had from this gorgeously mysterious outfit and the title couldn't more perfectly reflect the music inside. Completely free country, loosed from the restraints of typical twang and instead posessing some haunting otherworldly magic, occupying an impossible space somewhere between Jackie-O-Motherfucker, Scott Tuma, the No Neck Blues Band, Souled American, Avarus, Smithsonian Folkways and all of the wraith like purveyors of whir and drone we dig so much. This is still, somehow, some bizarre strain of country music, but it's filtered through foresty folk and free noise and tribal clatter and all the other stuff that informs what is sometimes referred to now as new weird America. It's really hard to describe. Nashville via Finland via the American Southwest maybe? Harry Smith's Anthology of abstract free folk and minimal country? Drone country? They all hint at the sweet mystery of this record but fall just short of truly describing how fucking beautiful it really is. Free Country is a series of dark, droning, sweetly melancholic sonic abstracts, all cobbled together from warm washes of organ, swirls of tone generators and simple muted percussive thumps, skittery casios and simple twangy guitar melodies, keening fiddles, grizzled old-blues-guy vocal samples, smears of impossibly lovely ambience, stretches of whispery almost-krautrock like rhythms, delicate piano tinkle and blurry synthesizer squiggle, mumbled sad boy vocals all marble mouthed and introspective (sounding a bit like This Heat vocals), streaks of fuzz guitar and plenty of reverb and delay and a production that deftly manges to combine outdoorsy campfire whispiness with big cavernous throb, making every thing sound warm and dense but airy and free, like a thick cloud of steam when you first open the door of a hot shower, the melodies and fragments of song smeared and indistinct, quickly fading as if drawn on a fogged up mirror with your finger. Gorgeous.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A few lists back we reviewed the most recent Davenport cd, a gorgeous slab of droney dreamy outsider free folk twang. It was great to finally be able to spread the word about a band we'd been digging for ages via super limited cd-r's and lps, always unfortunately too limited to get enough for the list. And as if on cue, a few weeks later, after mentioning the bands penchant for limited runs, we get a new SUPER limited lp, so limited it's already out of print in fact. But we did manage to get a bunch, but a bunch means like 20. so don't snooze on this one!
A little less overtly twangy than the Last Visible Dog cd, the lp is a more abstract, much dronier, more mysteriously abstract affair. Creepy and skeletal, ominous and darkly dreamy. Warm swells of rumble and deconstructed twang. Occasionally the mist parts revealing a strange pagan gypsy hoedown, a wondrous forest ritual, keening fiddles, softly strummed detuned guitars and strange sing songy vocals. But thos brief glimpses are soon obscured by more droney murk and rumbling fuzz. Really cool.
Packaged in swank hand screened sleeves. The first half of the orders for the 20 or so we have will get the colored vinyl version, the rest will get the black vinyl. If you will not be happy with the black vinyl DO NOT ORDER THIS, just feel lucky if you end up with a red copy, although as far as we're concerned black is WAY cooler than red, when you really think about it...
For whatever reason, we had never really listed anything by this local singer/songwriter before now, but this new 7" definitely has us kicking ourselves, although we're led to believe it's a bit of a departure. But holy crap, is this great, total old school seventies/eighties Yellow Pills style classic power pop. The A side is such a stunner, sounding like it was from some old power pop comp alongside Dwight Twilley Band, Cheap Trick, the Knack and heck even Rick Springfield. Crunchy guitars, reverby vox, hand claps (of course!), kinetic and energetic and a little bit new wave-y with hooks galore and a killer chorus. We've listened to this about 20 times in the last week.
And the flipside ain't so shabby either, more mellow, a dirgey slow jam, total eighties prom slowdance, with a heavy John Hughes vibe, new wave-y bassline, reverbed, dramatically crooned vocals, awesome melodies, and classic sounding hook, very much like M83's take on eighties teenage soundtracks, but way more genuine.
Great stuff for sure! Comes with a download code too!
Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland).
Volume 8 was recorded on April 17th, and features a hearty gathering of Paul Panamarenko Band, Bart Davenport, the Moore Brothers (their four sweet songs on their very own make this well worth gettin'... you might also wanna check out their wonderful studio album Now Is The Time For Love!), Laura Weinbach, Matthew Herz, Vernal Falls and Helen Chaya.
David & The Citizens have received bountiful accolades in their home country (including a nomination for 'best pop band' in Sweden's Grammy Awards!), and it's easy to hear why. The Swedish sextet make some dandy rustic indie rock with a twist. They've infused the songs on their latest album Until The Sadness Is Gone with Klezmer elements as well as some gorgeous string arrangements courtesy of the Ebrelius Quartet. A crafty yet unassuming bittersweet beauty. Recommended.
The outstanding Austin-based Holodeck label returns with a gorgeous nocturnal outing by Montreal-based electronic artist Marie Davidson. Un Autre Voyage is a sleek dimly-lit synth soundtrack-like affair that combines futuristic French progressive electronics and minimal wave rhythmic qualities into a stark night journey of the mind. Fluorescent synthetic pulses, robotic rhythms and a monotone narrative delivery offer up Ballardian tropes of natural and synthetic forces at odds. What begins as a mutated form of aggressive glamour-cool eighties synth-wave soon grows real skin with dark industrial reflections and becomes suggestive of film with ambient, abstract forms and textures and a performatively suggestive male and female dialogue in French. Imagine a combination of Igor Wakhevitch and Nini Raviolette and you're getting close.
Especially in summer time there is nothing better then pulling out some old Kinks records and letting the Davies brothers take you on all the right breezy twists and turns. All these years later Ray Davies is still alive and well and making music. OF course not quite as great as classic Kinks albums but we'll still take this over a new Paul McCartney album.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Painstakingly constructed, emotional, epic songs played out on piano and guitar, drums. Although this record gets raves from just about everybody, I didn't really get it until I saw Davies live at Terrastock I, where he slayed with his songwriting prowess. Davies used to be in Australia's Moles and more recently Cardinal, with now-similarly-solo Eric Matthews.
For whatever reason, some of us never really paid much attention to these Puerto Rican garage rocking punks, and then suddenly, they're the next big thing, or maybe not even 'next', they ARE the big thing, hyped to high heaven, the big ticket at SXSW, everyone clamoring and singing their praises, we have to admit that just made us more skeptical, but we're happy to admit when we're wrong, and boy were we wrong, these guys rule. And this record is so killer, a dizzying mix of stripped down garage rock pound, super hooky jangle pop, droned out druggy shoegaze, a little Stooges, a little Stones, a little Jesus & Mary Chain, some old school punk rock, some reverbed sixties wall of sound Spector-ish pop, some modern garage rock, all tangled up into super strange, but undeniably classic and catchy sounding fuzzy, groovy, garage rock jangle pop. The production is strangely lo-fi, but suits D666's sound, the tracks shift gears constantly, rambunctious and punky one second, washed out and hypnotic the next, there are streaks of feedback all over the place, the sound slips from stripped down and buzzy to lush and layered and back again often in the same song, there are loads of killer hooks, lots of subtle psychedelic shadings, pounding blasts of punkish power pop that blossoms into totally classic old school power pop, and then into some snotty snarly fuzzy noise pop, and then some bouncy old school garage rock, and finally some fuzzy sixties style dream pop, all simple chords, sweet vocals, tambourines and hand claps. These guys definitely sound like they'd be a blast live, and it comes across loud and clear on record, and it definitely makes sense they're on In The Red, and odds are if you dig Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall and the like, you'll probably love these guys too.
NB: Stick around for the hidden track, a short blast of cheesy, drum machine driven electro punk, with gang vocals, and eighties synths, and it sounds like a commercial. Pretty funny...
Imagine if the Dead Boys, the Stooges or Black Lips were from Puerto Rico and you'll begin to have an idea of the raucous fun and mighty punch that Davila 666 pack into their In The Red debut. It takes a lot to really move us when it comes to modern day garage rock as we find much of it a bit stale and burnt out, but god damn we can't stop listening to this record! There is such a pure excitement to these sounds, and enough of a range in Davila 666's music to truly make them stand above the crowd. It's not just the novelty of singing in Spanish, but you can tell these are guys who have an awesome appreciation for a wide range of garage sounds from the punk to the pop, and the few slower tracks on here are like some lost 4-track tapes of sessions produced by Phil Spector in a Puerto Rican garage in the late '70s. This is the band you would dream of seeing play at a house party, it could make even the most jaded and sullen of souls jump with joy. Luckily all you have to do is throw this on and the party comes right through the speakers. So damn good!
Geez, how did I miss this release from last year? If you like the euro-pop quirkiness of Stereo-Total and/or Charles Wilp as I do, press 'play' on this baby. A very eclectic array of musical styles (lounge, retro-synth pop, strummy acoustic, Bacharach, polka, etc), but the bottom line is kitchy playfulness. Camille's smooth, warm voice really brought to mind a hybrid of Karen Carpenter,
As heavy psych guitar power trios channelling the lost '70s krautrock vibe go, well, these guys are the current champs of the US of A (and rival the heavy hitters like Acid Mothers Temple from Japan as well). Of course, they're from the hippie coast up north here in California, though their guitarist/mastermind Steven Wray Lobdell has connections in Germany -- he plays in Faust too y'know! This latest DRT album takes their spacey, drugged out, droney psychedelia into some aggro areas, while remaining totally dreamy at other times. The single misstep occurs early in the album -- we'll be hitting the 'skip' button at track two in future after hearing it once, as it's based on a pseudo-beat poetry spoken word thing by The Baseball Astrologer. He's a cool old dude, sure, with some right-on sentiments about "America, my violent stupid friend" but we prefer the music to do the talking. Which it does on the rest of the disc, instrumentals stretched out to the horizons of your inner consciousness, man. The centerpiece to the album, "Mellowed For Over 80 Million Years", takes the listener on a 15+ minute blissed out trip, while other tracks are much heavier and freakier. It's mind-expanding, lava-lamp goodness. Recommended.
Out of the misty Pacific Northwest, underground psychedelic guitar god Stephen Wray Lobdell (heck he's been playing guitar for legendary krautrockers Faust, that's close to godhood, right?) and the other three guys in the strangely named Davis Redford Triad enter our waking dreamspace yet again with "Code Orange". The Triad is Lobdell's primary venue for his way-out instrumental drone guitar psych -- think Japan's Fushitsusha or SF's Comets On Fire. Chugging, chiming, wailing, haunting, heavy effin' cosmic beauty. This disc is a "live collage" from the band's tour in the spring of 2002, and features not only favorites like "Solar Aquarius" and "Apocalypse Greeting Card" from their two studio albums, but also adaptations of some Lobdell compositions originally found on his lovely "Automatic Writing" solo album -- suitably amped up for Triad performance -- AND three totally new songs as well!! Numbered, limited to 500, consider this a (must-have for fans) teaser of sorts for the Triad's upcoming studio full-length "Blue Cloud" on Holy Mountain this fall. Now, how'd Holy Mtn. honcho John Whitson manage to get our gov't to bump the official "panic rating" up to Code Orange for real the very same week this was due for release? I don't want to think about it, we'll leave that to the FBI. Maybe Tom Ridge is a mystical dude. Anyway, the, um, coincidence is an "Apocalypse Greeting Card" us, indeed.
This excellent droney guitar-psych band's second album, after their acclaimed vinyl-only Holy Mountain debut a year or two ago, "The Mystical Path of The Number 86". Making the move to cd hopefully will increase the chances that more folks will be lucky enough to check them out. The Triad (Davis Redford is not a real person) features, and I mean really features, the oceanic guitar playing of one Stephen Wray Lobdell, who has been responsible for that instrument on the last few Faust recordings and live tours (maybe that's where he got the German for the title). So, fans of Faust's fine "Ravvivando" as well as the likes of Doldrums, Ghost, Nurse With Wound, and similar, krautrocky things should bend an ear towards Lobdell's combo for sure. Lovely stuff, all dreamy and Eastern-tinged. It's epic, and it'll take you places.
Psychedelic rock music inspired by and/or the cause of various psychological anomalies and psychic phenomena! Seriously. The Davis Redford Triad is the fully levitational drone-rock unit centered on the outer-mind guitar explorations of Steven Wray Lobdell (just don't call him Stevie Wray!). He's the bearded hippy with the brow, holding the dog in his lap, both of whom stare out at you from the back cover of this release. You may also know him from his other projects (Baseball Astrologer, Sufi Mind Game, and the lovely acoustic solo set "Automatic Writing By The Moon", also on Holy Mountain). Oh, and of course he's also the guitarist in Faust! Yes, although Lobdell's from the Pacific Northwest, he somehow ended up playing guitar with those re-united krautrockers on their last few albums. Faust of course wouldn't hire just any old long-hair to play guitar, and our favorite 'new Faust' album "Ravvivando" wouldn't have been nearly as excellent without him.
We really liked the Triad's second album, 2000's German-titled but Eastern-tinged "Ewige Blumenkraft" but really, *really* liked their much heavier first LP, "The Mystical Path Of The Number Eighty Six". Originally released in 1997 as a limited edition vinyl artifact, the Triad's debut album has long been in need of compact disc reissue, and at last here it is. This classic has now re-emerged in remixed and re-sequenced form, and includes a theremin track mysteriously missing from the LP version...
It's a really good late night listen, as Lobdell & co. conjur a kosmic kraut vibe via deep, droney instrumental psych jams on guitar and organ, with drums on one track and some electronics thrown in. But mostly guitar, lots of guitar! It's essentially a solo album. Fans of Kejiji Haino (another Faust collaborator) and his band Fushitsusha should dig this...though Fushitsusha can be a lot more abrasive. Lobdell's clouds of distortion are rather more 'round' and pleasant than the extremes of Haino's skree. Yet amid the Triad's transportational anthems you'll find some abrasive distorto-grind to be sure (right in the very loud, very dark first track actually). Other comparisons could be made to guitarists like Caspar Brotzman (at his most Hendrix-feeling), or Blue Cheer's Randy Holden (at his most abstract)...
Truly essential for anyone into heavy drone-psych guitar from Bardo Pond to Population II to Fushistsusha. Even if you have the original vinyl, you should check this cd out, as it's quite a bit different. And look for a new Triad release in the fall.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Psychedelic rock music inspired by and/or the cause of various psychological anomalies and psychic phenomena! Seriously. The Davis Redford Triad is the fully levitational drone-rock unit centered on the outer-mind guitar explorations of Steven Wray Lobdell (just don't call him Stevie Wray!). He's the bearded hippy with the brow, holding the dog in his lap, both of whom stare out at you from the back cover of this release. You may also know him from his other projects (Baseball Astrologer, Sufi Mind Game, and the lovely acoustic solo set "Automatic Writing By The Moon", also on Holy Mountain). Oh, and of course he's also the guitarist in Faust! Yes, although Lobdell's from the Pacific Northwest, he somehow ended up playing guitar with those re-united krautrockers on their last few albums. Faust of course wouldn't hire just any old long-hair to play guitar, and our favorite 'new Faust' album "Ravvivando" wouldn't have been nearly as excellent without him.
We really liked the Triad's second album, 2000's German-titled but Eastern-tinged "Ewige Blumenkraft" but really, *really* liked their much heavier first LP, "The Mystical Path Of The Number Eighty Six". Originally released in 1997 as a limited edition vinyl artifact, the Triad's debut album has long been in need of compact disc reissue, and at last here it is. This classic has now re-emerged in remixed and re-sequenced form, and includes a theremin track mysteriously missing from the LP version...
It's a really good late night listen, as Lobdell & co. conjur a kosmic kraut vibe via deep, droney instrumental psych jams on guitar and organ, with drums on one track and some electronics thrown in. But mostly guitar, lots of guitar! It's essentially a solo album. Fans of Keiji Haino (another Faust collaborator) and his band Fushitsusha should dig this...though Fushitsusha can be a lot more abrasive. Lobdell's clouds of distortion are rather more 'round' and pleasant than the extremes of Haino's skree. Yet amid the Triad's transportational anthems you'll find some abrasive distorto-grind to be sure (right in the very loud, very dark first track actually). Other comparisons could be made to guitarists like Caspar Brotzman (at his most Hendrix-feeling), or Blue Cheer's Randy Holden (at his most abstract)...
Truly essential for anyone into heavy drone-psych guitar from Bardo Pond to Population II to Fushistsusha. Even if you have the original vinyl, you should check this cd out, as it's quite a bit different. And look for a new Triad release in the fall.
Gorgeous collaboration between long time aQ fave Steve R. Smith (Thuja, Hala Strana, Ulaan Khol) and clarinetist Gareth Davis. The two got together last year and created this suite of impressionistic soundscapes, dark and dolorous, Smith creating heaving swells of reverb drenched soft sound, reminding us a bit of Scott Tuma, but adding layers of scrabble and scrape to the proceedings, all manner of texture to what might otherwise be soft minimal dronemusic. Instead, the sound is rough, and vibrant, alive and visceral. Davis doesn't play clarinet so much as coax some amazing sounds from it, sometimes it's a bit of hushed rumbling whir , other times it's thick feedback drenched layers of buzz, but it perfectly compliments Smith's atmospheric free folk shimmer and scrape.
Long expanses of minimal low end spread out serenely, a sun dappled drift, that seems surprisingly tranquil, but over that, Davis and Smith add more and more, never overwhelming, but creating the perfect balance of soft focus melody, and in-the-red droning smolder, the sounds shifts from deep and minimal, to dense and heavy and almost metallic, with the guitar and clarinet constantly woven together in woozy soft tangles of sound, that build and build but just as quickly seem to dissipate, drifting back into the warm whirling reverby drift underneath. So gorgeous.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Screen printed on insanely thick cardstock, ultra heavy and handmade.
It seems Kranky has taken a break from their steady output of psychedelic pop to make room some cosmic minimalists. Which we're excited about considering how much we dug Gregg Kowalsky's Tape Chants (which we reviewed a few lists ago). This time Kranky delivers Mr. Davis's second effort on the Chicago based label, titled Mutually Arising. The aptly named disc is as minimal as it gets, two long form tracks, one 28 minutes and the other 20 minutes, of mind liquefying, analog synth hypnosis. Mr. Davis, who has been known to work with a variety of instruments and experiment with folk stylings in the past, has restrained himself to a Korg Mono/Poly synth, a Crumar Stratus synth, various effects pedals and a computer. Though a fairly amorphous figure in the experimental music community, having collaborated with the likes of Keith Fullerton Whitman and Sebastien Roux, it seems Davis has locked into some cosmic wavelength. Mutually Arising begins with a faint distant ring and builds into a tidal wave of shimmering bliss, offering up soaring, slow shifting chords and long form tones to create two beaming compositions of fluttering overtones and radiant textures. Having studied music at Chicago's De Paul university, it's no wonder Mr. Davis has taken a rather academic approach to Mutually Rising, a slight reach from his more organic compositions usually involving gongs, guitars or exotic reed instruments. What makes Mutually Arising so killer is the slow creeping subtly of small details that slowly evolve in and out of the analog hum, it's a gradual process like clouds shifting shape, distant buzz and hum, radiating overtones, the movement is there but incremental and delicate. A true gem of modern minimalist composition, a must have for drone heads and long time Kranky fans alike, highly recommended!
12" single by local chanteuse hand numbered to 100
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.
The latest from local label Time Released Sound comes from a Russian duo called Daydreamer, their record a sonic homage to French existentialist Albert Camus, the music a darkly languorous sprawl of slo-mo ambient drift, and abstract post rock shimmer, opening with a bit of Durutti Column like guitar mesmer, the record soon settles into a brooding, cinematic slowcore, horn flecked smolder, sounding like some lost David Lynch score, before transforming into a hazy Tim Hecker-ish stretch of minimal murk, which in turn unwinds as a haunting abstract chamber folk, all pointillist piano and slow burn shimmer, the sound over the course of Camus' nine tracks slipping easily from sun dappled dreaminess, to dark, ominous dronescapery, black ambience shot through with barely there rhythms, strange snippets of what sounds like subtle turntablism, a hazy sinister creep through sonic shadows, emerging on the other side, all warm, and lush, and lustrous, a softly glitchy swirl of prismatic sound, a woozy world of whirring chordal thrum woven into lush layered ambience, the final movement more straight up guitar, spidery melodies suspended in space, wreathed in barely there distant drones, surrounded by clouds of cymbal shimmer and strange abstract voices, finishing off with a brief bit of smeared psychedelic swirl, a gauzy, druggy, drowsy coda. Gorgeous!
Like all Tim Released Sound releases, there are two versions, the standard digipak edition, limited to 150 copies, and the deluxe handmade art edition, this time limited to just 90 copies, and as always, extravagantly packaged. Which means for Camus, a multi page booklet, hinged on one corner, which fans open into a sort of mandala. The super striking cover image is printed to Japanese tissue paper, hand pasted and shredded. The booklet itself is printed on heavyweight Moab paper, and are hand punched, sewn, collaged, stamped and doodled. The back of each page is spray stenciled as well. And to top it off, hanging from the corner of each booklet is an actual Gauloises cigarette, packaged in a little capped vial. Everything then housed in a 6" square spray painted, hand punched and stamped translucent envelope. Wow!
The latest from local label Time Released Sound comes from a Russian duo called Daydreamer, their record a sonic homage to French existentialist Albert Camus, the music a darkly languorous sprawl of slo-mo ambient drift, and abstract post rock shimmer, opening with a bit of Durutti Column like guitar mesmer, the record soon settles into a brooding, cinematic slowcore, horn flecked smolder, sounding like some lost David Lynch score, before transforming into a hazy Tim Hecker-ish stretch of minimal murk, which in turn unwinds as a haunting abstract chamber folk, all pointillist piano and slow burn shimmer, the sound over the course of Camus' nine tracks slipping easily from sun dappled dreaminess, to dark, ominous dronescapery, black ambience shot through with barely there rhythms, strange snippets of what sounds like subtle turntablism, a hazy sinister creep through sonic shadows, emerging on the other side, all warm, and lush, and lustrous, a softly glitchy swirl of prismatic sound, a woozy world of whirring chordal thrum woven into lush layered ambience, the final movement more straight up guitar, spidery melodies suspended in space, wreathed in barely there distant drones, surrounded by clouds of cymbal shimmer and strange abstract voices, finishing off with a brief bit of smeared psychedelic swirl, a gauzy, druggy, drowsy coda. Gorgeous!
Like all Tim Released Sound releases, there are two versions, the standard digipak edition, limited to 150 copies, and the deluxe handmade art edition, this time limited to just 90 copies, and as always, extravagantly packaged. Which means for Camus, a multi page booklet, hinged on one corner, which fans open into a sort of mandala. The super striking cover image is printed to Japanese tissue paper, hand pasted and shredded. The booklet itself is printed on heavyweight Moab paper, and are hand punched, sewn, collaged, stamped and doodled. The back of each page is spray stenciled as well. And to top it off, hanging from the corner of each booklet is an actual Gauloises cigarette, packaged in a little capped vial. Everything then housed in a 6" square spray painted, hand punched and stamped translucent envelope. Wow!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Ah, the poor man's R.E.M. Well, that's not really fair, how about the less hooky, more underground less successful R.E.M.? The DB's were born of the same fertile scene that spawned Stipe and Co., but cruised along just below commercial radar, enjoying a bit
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Volume two of these recently discovered long lost recordings of seventies synthesizer music from a mysterious Belgian musician named Edmond De Dyster. Like the first volume, these pieces were discovered on unmarked reel to reel tapes in a box marked simply with the year, 1975. Discovered by Ultra Eczema head honcho Dennis Tyfus, these recordings, along with those on the now out of print first volume, are only part of a trove of unreleased, and for the most part unheard recordings De Dyster made in private, who seemingly had no intention of releasing them, in fact, even his family didn't know he had been making recordings.
None of this mystery would be worth anything if it weren't for the music, which is weird and wonderful, raw and primitive, all analog synthesizers, almost like a lo-fi BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The sounds are tripped out and abstract, bleeps and bloops and beeps and sine wave tones, and crumbling distorted rhythms, plodding ominous low end melodies, spooky squalls of glitch and squelch, reverbed squiggles, ghostly tones, haunting and otherworldly like a Theremin, here and there some new age flutter, deep soft swells, fuzzy staticky streaks of buzz, muted rhythmic thumps, that low end creeping and slithering through clouds of swirling tones and shimmering textures, all set adrift in wide open expanses of distant rumble and soft fuzzy whir. Amazing stuff. Think Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler, Battiato, Schulze, Heldon. And you may as well add De Deyster to that list. Anyone into experimental electronic music, should absolutely check this out.
Who knows how many other lost boxes of tapes or mysterious music makers lurk in bedrooms and basements out there? Probably more than we might imagine...
Gorgeously packaged in a hand screened, extra thick jacket, with a full color printed insert. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES.
The second cd from De Facto (featuring Omar and Cedric formerly of At The Drive-In... not to be confused with Mars Volta which is their other current project) comes by way of ReStart Records in El Paso, TX. We should note that of the eight tracks included, two
Edgy, experimental dub directions from At The Drive-In's Omar and Cedric. I saw them perform early in January in L.A., and really dug them, but it didn't really prepare me for this their first album. Whereas that performance was much more straight-up old dub sounds, Megaton Shotblast -- which was recorded in March -- is something quite different and more expansive. Sinewy dub bass, '70s
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
Another strange cool release from the mighty MISSISSIPPI RECORDS!! Who besides being obsessed with old time country, blues and gospel, also seem to have a thing for European punk rock, a la The Ex, who have had a couple records reissued on Mississippi, and now the label has released on vinyl (of course) the very first record from De Kift, a Dutch ensemble with links to The Ex, and with whom they share some sonic similarities, although De Kift are definitely their own strange and mysterious beast.
The sound of Yverzucht (originally released in 1989) is a blast of classic Dutch crusty punk with a dash of cabaret, jagged and angular and tightly wound, fuzzed out bass, clattery percussion, dark and driving, but also frenzied and wild and over the top. Maybe imagine the Pogues, if they were crusty punks from Holland, jamming out in some crazy squat in the late eighties, and that's basically De Kift. Very cool, and pretty much unlike anything you've heard (except maybe the Ex, a little bit).
Killer packaging too, it is Mississippi after all. Thick vinyl, old looking black and white sleeves, and a printed lyric insert.
**MISSISSIPPI RECORDS ALERT**
A companion release to accompany the MISSISSIPPI RECORDS reissue of De Kift's debut full length Yverzucht, this 7" was recorded the year before, and could very well be the first actual De Kift release, as we mentioned in the review of the lp, De kift's sound was classic Dutch crusty punk with a dash of cabaret, jagged and angular and tightly wound, fuzzed out bass, clattery percussion, dark and driving, but also frenzied and wild and over the top. Maybe imagine the Pogues, if they were crusty punks from Holland, jamming out in some crazy squat in the late eighties, and that's basically De Kift. Very cool, and pretty much unlike anything you've heard (except maybe The Ex, a little bit).
The packaging on this is fantastic, a printed 6 panel matte finish sleeve, with drawings and lyrics, the record pressed on nice thick vinyl as well.
De Ma Vaere Belgiere was a black-clad Danish post-punk act, who kicked out a single in 1983 and played a couple of shows before calling it quits. That single has been reissued as a split lp with fellow Danes End Of Your Garden on Dark Entries, and yes, that single is featured on this disc followed by a pretty great live set also recorded in 1983. "Cirkler" is a deadringer for what Interpol had been producing at the beginning of their career with this impassioned, darkly tainted post-punk with death disco rhythms, galloping basslines, and spiky guitars. Siglo XX and Crispy Ambulance also pop up as a reference through the monotone vocals and the downcast mood set throughout the rest of the tracks, and a less obscure citation is made on "Synsforstyrrelse" which lifts Robert Smith's riff from "M" of Seventeen Seconds. Not a bad thing at all! On the live recordings, The Cure's influence is even more evident through the interplay between Jakob Leth's bass, which leads the songs much in the way that Simon Gallup drives so many of The Cure's greatest tracks girded by chiming rhythmic guitars. As is evident through so many of the live songs, De Ma Vaere Belgiere were gifted songwriters for urgent, moody songs that were on par if not better which any given post-punk ensemble circa 1982. The live recordings are pretty good as far as live recordings go, but had Martin Hannett gotten a hold of this band, things would have gone very differently.
If you didn't guess from this SF gent's fabulous name, Etienne De Rocher is one smooth operator. Graced with such easygoing charm and flair, his years-in-the-making debut self-titled album only confirms this. Although this is indeed his first full length cd, he's certainly no rookie. He's been honing his songcraft from a very early age. De Rocher's well-crafted soft rock stylings are embellished with subtle strings that add that extra air of elegance. Imagine a less flamboyant Rufus Wainwright or a slightly more flamboyant Elliott Smith, Nick Drake or Buckley Jr. and Sr. (r.i.p.) and you might get a sense of Monsieur De Rocher. He saves one of his best songs for last, the sweetly romantic "Goodnight". Nice!
AN AQUARIUS EXCLUSIVE!!!
Yeah, Bernard Sumner may have claimed the computer as the ultimate punk instrument; but not everybody in 1982 could afford a computer to program samples while sipping cocktails at the Hacienda. Tape - now THAT is a punk as fuck tool. It was everywhere; it was cheap (not so much anymore, mind you); and the tools to edit tape could be as simple as a razor blade and a tape recorder. Andre De Saint-Obin was of this DIY mindset, a musician making the most out of the least, utilizing that aforementioned punkest form of technology. This Dutch fellow was home-taping for only a few short years in the early '80s, releasing a couple of singles and a cassette... and then he just disappeared. An impressionable Frans De Waard (the man behind Korm Plastics, Plinkity Plonk, Vital Weekly, and too many bands to mention) was smitten by that De Saint-Obin cassette back in the day, and years later, he embarked on a quest to seek out De Saint-Obin in hopes of reissuing the album. We'll skip forward through the bits about interminable internet searches and dropped conversations due to artist idiosyncrasy and flighty weirdo behavior; for here we have the glorious fruits of De Waard's labor of love - a minor masterpiece of Dutch post-punk / minimal-wave eccentricity: Sound On Sound by Andre De Saint-Obin.
The title refers to means-of-production, De Saint-Obin didn't have a multitrack recorder, but rather he could overdub tracks onto a single piece of tape in the tradition of Les Paul and the earliest of sound engineers. Yup, in mono! Built up from the bottom up, starting with drum machine, then bass, the guitar, and finally voice, each of Andre De Saint-Obin's songs required considerable foresight and architectural planning. The process was a destructive one, so if he fucked up on one of the last layers, he would have to start all over again. The fact that these songs are so fractured, so lysergic, so dystopian speaks to the cracked vision of De Saint-Obin. The opening number (eponymously titled "Introduction") is an instrumental cut with swollen basslines plucked with the swaggering panache of a Peter Hook or a Simon Gallup, punched with spark-plug guitar jitteriness and mechanoid electronic rhythms. It's pretty damn close to being a perfect piece of gloom pop, but fixed to a woozy DIY axis instead of a baroque goth polish. The spasmodic anti-funk number "Dance Till I Die" sports jagged guitar fuzz and exasperated vocals above a backbeat of machined click and churlish basslines, lending to visions of Pere Ubu or James Chance in a fit of epileptic delirium. The manic-depressive bounciness of "Hey You" sways toward sexual frustration, and "I Got Plopmusic" veers towards the truly bizarre in the vein of Fad Gadget or any of those synth-punk ditties that Colin Potter put to tape around the same time.
The accompanying cd, in addition to the record proper, features 5 bonus tracks, including the predatorily creepy yet captivatingly catchy "Stay Tonight" and the much sought after "Everytime We Say Goodbye" originally released on one of Alain Neffe's Insane Music compilations. Sound On Sound finds company with a few contemporaries in the head-scratching Factory Records ensemble Crawling Chaos and Pete Shelley's aptly named Strange Men In Sheds With Spanners; but was very much a precursor to what the Blank Dogs and Ariel Pink attempted several decades later.
We should note that aQuarius is the ONLY shop in North America that you can get one of these, and get one you should!!! Fuck yeah!!!
