Not sure how many folks remember the late great Stretchheads, a Scottish quartet who kicked up a serious din back in the early nineties, fast heavy and so fucked up, culminating in the genus Pish In Your Sleazebag album, a record of total percussive grinding chopped up, dubbed out heavy heavy weirdness. Not sure what those guys have been doing for the last couple decades, but at least a few of them have resurfaced in De Salvo, whose first disc Mood Poisoner has just come out on Mogwai's Rock Action label. But don't let the Mogwai connection mislead you, this is not any sort of brooding post rock shoe gazey shit, this is super abrasive, ultra technical, harsh and brutal, grinding, chugging metallic post punk hardcore heaviness. Imagine Black Flag, Converge, Coalesce, Butthole Surfers and of course the aforementioned Stretchheads, all pulled apart and tangled up into a whole new whirling dervish of hardcore metallic fury.
But it's not just heavy for heavy's sake, there are melodies all over the place, the arrangements are tight, and super complex. Some tracks slip into slithery almost stoner rock, others into lurching doom, but for the most part the sound here is jagged and relentless, stuttery start stop riffage, freaked out drumming, the vocals a harsh high yelp slipping from Jesus Lizard howl to Cradle Of Filth shriek, more often some impossible mix of the two, and yeah, cool guitar harmonics lacing the churning chug, the drums and bass locked tight into super staccato bursts, flurries of double kick, brief stretches of woozy prettiness, but always quickly swallowed up by a wall of crumbling corrosive blown out rrroooaaar. There are hooks, everywhere, the more you listen the deeper they sink, and the more those wounds bleed and fester. The opener is like a super charged tech metal Halo Of Flies, or like Converge's Jane Doe and Brutal Truth's Need To Control melted down and covered by the Refused. Just listen to the sound samples. Heavy record of the year, easy. And another fearsome export from Scotland (see Black Sun on the last list!), that has us dying to hear more.
It's been a bit of a Elliott Smith revival time here at AQ for the last several weeks. With the vinyl reissues of XO and Figure 8, we've been spending lots of QT with one of our favorite singer songwriters of all time. This new book of Elliott Smith photographs by Autumn De Wilde is helping fuel our revival fire. The beautiful hardcover book is not only filled with De Wilde's great photos of Smith from over the years but some great interviews and conversations with many of Elliott's friends and colleagues (Beck, Chris Walla, Ben Gibbard, Jon Brion, etc.). The book also comes with a cd of five live tracks of Smith playing a solo show at Largo in LA, where he often would hang out and play unannounced shows while he was living down there. A really cool document for Elliott Smith enthusiasts.
Review courtesy of aQ pal Forrest:
Bromst wasn't what I expected next from Dan Deacon. Over the last couple years, broheim's spent a lot of time on the road, cajoling kefiya'd hipsters around North America into throwing their hands in the air and dancing like they just do not care. Dan Deacon shows are cheerfully riotous, thanks in no small part to Deacon's maniacal, good-naturedly foulmouthed chivvying of the crowd into helping create the show. (Dude is very big on crowd participation, which, given the apathy of the usual crowd at indie shows, is one of the many reasons we love him so much.) On first listen, however, Bromst is a much more contemplative, conventional record than his previous, Spider of the Rings, and seems to share little in common with Deacon's live show. Where Spider of the Rings was a jabberjawed, neon-encrusted box of whooping, circuit-bent deliriousness, Bromst seems much more sedate and nowhere near as immediate.
Having experienced a good portion of Bromst live, we can tell you that impression of subtlety lasts about 2.5 seconds under the hammering assault of Deacon's new 10-person live ensemble, after which it becomes abundantly clear that the new songs are tooled for the road and the dancefloor is going to be lucky to withstand the frenetic heaving of the crowd. This music is absolutely monstrous live and Deacon leaves audiences with no option but to respond. Given his background in academic electronic composition, Deacon's reference points are not exactly what you'd expect. There's some understandable early Kraftwerkian motorik prog in places (think Autobahn, not Man-Machine), and there are lovely (that's the only word that fits) ornaments decorating the edges of most of the songs that are obviously in the lineage of Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Philip Glass. There's also a pretty clear affinity with the yahoo freak folk of Akron/Family, with the vague exhortations to universal consciousness and tribal, rolling drums and triumphant chords shouting through the mix. Much less obvious is the clear debt to full-on 50s rock and roll in all its two-(major-)chord glory, with an ironic self-awareness situated somewhere between the New York Dolls and Roxy Music. This all leaves Bromst sounding like an alien refugee from the '70s, albeit one fully conversant with 21st century electronic trickery - never fear, Deacon's ridiculous chipmunked / phased / vocodered vocals are fully intact.
That said, it's a slow grower, taking many listens to fully reveal itself, but once it's burnt itself in, the high points are plentiful. The three highest points are the swooning, Meredith Monk-meets-Appalachia looped vocal drone of "Wet Wings", the chiming, woozy and gentle slow build of "Snookered", and the flatly uncategorizable closer "Get Older", with its fusion of marimba with some of Deacon's itchiest electronics, all over a lumbering rock'n'roll beat and overlaid with thick layers of Reich/Riley/Glass-esque cellular composition. Minimalism has rarely sounded so heavy. On record, it's not the hammer straight to the adrenal gland that it is live, but it's still pretty damn impressive. Like Spiderman of the Rings' "Wham City", it ties everything there is to love about Dan Deacon up in a tidy package: deceptively sophisticated songwriting, a deep awareness of and respect for musical history, earworm electronics, layers upon layers of sound, and a total commitment to wanton excess. It's a brilliant way to end a brilliant record, and is all the advertisement Dan Deacon needs. Get this record and get yourself to one of Deacon's loopy, amazing live shows. Both are good times.
By golly, we've received a bunch of tweaked pop releases this week -- Black Moth Super Rainbow, Shaky Hands, Welcome, Bonde Do Role -- but Baltimore's Dan Deacon and his merry melody makers (read: an assortment of well-worn effects pedals and electronic gizmos -- yup, he's a one-man band!) definitely take the daffy cake! That is, if the cake is a dizzying candy-jewelled sparkler inferno of vintage video game melodies and processed kiddie gang vocals. Having played a couple shows with Deacon, our own Matt Wildlife has attested to the live awesomeness of this fellow. However, despite the loosey-goosey frolicking nature of this album and his live show, he ain't no musical neophyte amateur. He's got some serious skills to pay the bills (i.e, classical training and a Masters degree in electro-acoustic composition!). Deacon's self-released seven albums to date, and this is his first for Carpark Records (home of quirkulicious releases by Ariel Pink, Ecstatic Sunshine, Animal Collective, Kit Clayton & Safety Scissors). Spiderman Of The Rings sounds like a sugar-coated battle royale between Arcade Fire and HR Pufnstuf. You want party? Here it is!
Longtime readers of the aQ list no doubt remember Aussie heavies, Fire Witch, who released a barrage of often way too limited released before calling it a day. Well since then FW drummer Jem has resurfaced with Dead, a two piece, just drums and bass, and a sound that while maybe still a bit beholden to his old group, definitely has honed a pretty unique sound, one that definitely transcends the limitations of the bass and drums duo. The opening few minutes delivers a strange bit of percussion driven ambience, all cymbal shimmer and tinkling chimes, subtly rhythmic, abstract and space-y, laced with little curlicues of FX, before the bass comes in, and comes in hard, super distorted, grinding, chugging, then the drums, totally off kilter, and seemingly at odds with the bass riff, dizzyingly mathy, then the vocals, a distorted monstrous bellow, the band channeling a little bit of that classic AmRep noise rock sound, but though something much more minimal. Eventually, the song explodes into something more melodic and metallic, the vocals cleaner, a sort of dramatic howl, the drums wild and chaotic, the bass spitting out thick distorted chords and dense textures, the song constantly shifting gears, erupting into full on frenzied metallic math rock, and then switching to some serious metallic pummel and back again. The first song along is intense and energetic, relentless and dense, and brutal and intricate, and it's the sort of song that makes you exhausted just listening to. Hard to imagine just two guys kicking up this sort of racket, but holy shit, Dead are a fierce sonic beast.
The rest of the record follows suit, straddling the line between minimal metal crush and punked out mathy freakout, "Couldn't Keep His Mouth Shut" finds dead sounding like a dead ringer for the Melvins, while "Up!" is all bass driven noise rock sludge, "Murder Hollow" is some darkly atmospheric doomic churn, which leads into the progged out "Bed Bugs" which had us thinking Nomeansno! Stick around for the 11 minute closer "Lego Men", which lets the band unwind a slowburn punk-sludge epic, that again, harkens back to classic Melvins, which is no bad thing at all.
Super swank packaging, an elaborate gatefold inner sleeve, full color printed, in a plain white jacket, so the gatefold is partially visible through the hole, full color sticker on the jacket, label stickers inside and a download code as well.
Longtime readers of the aQ list will definitely remember an Australian duo called Fire Witch, whose records we went nuts for a while back (as did lots of you if we remember correctly), their sound a sort of psychedelic sludge, thick grooves and pounding rhythms, dueling basses, mathy and melodic, but also crushing and HEAVY AS FUCK. So it should come as no surprise that the drummer from Fire Witch is the man behind the kit in Dead, whose sound is not all that far removed from FW, if anything, it's more stripped down, more metallic, more punky, but still the same sort of bass heavy (there's no guitar here either) churn, but where FW got sort of psychedelic, Dead channel that numbskull AmRep style thud rock sound, the bass so distorted it seems to constantly be crumbling into squalls of low end noise, the drums wildly chaotic, the vocals for the most part howled and yelped, but occasionally slipping into a weirdly melodic croon, the band's sound, falling somewhere between the bass and drum heaviness of godheadSilo, and the grinding metallic hypno-punk pound of the late great Karp, and lots of the super rhythmic bass and drum interplay reminds us of NoMeansNo, but all the songs are gloriously blown out and blasted, slipping easily from super progged out metallic grind to stretched out loping post rock mesmer, those might be our favorite bits, when the band locks into long stretches of looped bass-and-drum hypnorock, like on "Prick Rodeo", which might be our favorite track, it's the sort of droned out dirginess that totally pushes our buttons, and then when the bass slips into a higher register and starts playing soaring sort-of-leads, before slipping back into a sludgey bluesy creep, SO great! And the Melvins-y downtuned sludge creep of "Beasts", total slo-mo bliss! And throughout, there's plenty of other weirdness going on, one song that winds down to a part with just drums and whistling (!), another where the drummer yells out over the cacophony asking the bass player for a power chord, and then another, these guys are obviously having a blast, which is obvious on the punkier jams, but on the pounding churning slowburns, these guys conjure up the sort of sonic malevolence, most metal bands would kill for!
Pressed on 180 gram vinyl, packaged in super slick, hand screened, heavy cardstock, 4 panel fold over jackets, each one hand numbered, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Includes a download coupon as well!
From right out of the starting blocks, Dead And Gone's comin' at ya full force - whether it be at a sinisterly creeping pace or a raging hardcore pummel-fest. Angry, festering vocals hoarsely growl over a thick, grumbling rhythm section and jaggedly angular
Best song title ever?: "The AMM Of Punk Rock". And what's funny is, if there was ever a band that could rightfully claim that title as their own, it NZ's Dead C. Much like how Nirvana spawned a million shitty wannabe's, the Dead C basically did the same for the noise rock underground. Anyone with a piece of shit guitar and a beat up four-track got to thinking they could be a band, not realizing that the match up of Bruce Russell, Michael Morley and Robbie Yeats was a magical once in a lifetime sort of lucky draw.�
It's been four years since the last Dead C record, The Damned, a killer slab of classic Dead C -ROCK- that we dug like crazy. From full on rock to moody ambience, it was a serious return to form. So what did this noise rock power decide to do as a follow up (besides wait four long years)? Well, as being contrary seems second nature to them, they decided to be difficult. To make a hard to listen to, abstract record filled with amazing sounds assembled in amazing and perplexing shapes and letting us figure out how to enjoy them. And enjoying them is exactly what we're doing. If drastic stylistic shifts and difficult listening are things that send you packing then odds are you gave up on these guys long ago.�
Starting off with the above mentioned�"The AMM Of Punk Rock", the Dead C reclaim the noise rock throne from Wolf Eyes�or whoever happens to be parked there this week. These guys are legends for a reason, they can take seemingly unmusical sounds, caustic, abrasive, minimal and harsh, and weave them into something beautiful. This is no exception. Wheezing chords, tape hiss, amp buzz, strange disjointed melodies, huge billowing rubbery low end ooze, plenty of electronic glitch and squiggle, bits of buzz and beep, until about halfway through when a riff enters the fray,�a gorgeously SUNNO)))-y wash of distorted guitar rumble over simple spare percussion, like classic Dead C slowed waaaaaaay down. Not sure if it's the sound of punk rock AMM, but it sure as hell could be.
Elsewhere, the band dip into dissonant mumbly noise rock, complete with crooned vocals, clattery junk yard percussion, VU style riffing, a shuffling beat and a hidden hook that once unearthed will stick in your head like crazy, long drawn out buzzscapes of sputtering distortion, weird processed drums, digital skitter, and thick rumbling whir, super spaced out reverbed kraut jams, not all that unlike some lost German Oak jam, simple plodding percussion, metallic crunch, squalls of angular guitar, sheets of feedback, some downright groovy riffing and some seriously propulsive drumming, and for the final 20 minute track, a creepy lo-fi junkyard noise rock Appalachia, with raga like steel string guitar and wavery chordal warble, some blown out synth weirdness, and strange alien melodies, all wrapped in tons of reverb and delay, like it was recorded in a huge underground cavern, giving the whole track an awesomely subterranean vibe, casting the 'C as some clan of bearded beasties, with blind eyes, pale skin, and hair down to the ground, who have spent the last thousand years holed up in their cave, with nothing but some old amps and janky synths, busted up drums and a single crappy microphone...
And that's kind of what the whole record sounds like really, that Dead C classic deconstructed primitivism, begrudgingly dragged into the future (hence the record title? Ironic? Not?), the murky stumbling sonic chaos we know and love augmented with strange modern flourishes and unexpected modern production fuckery, which actually quite becomes them...
NZ noise rockers the Dead C were just here, and they had a little stash of super limited tour 12"s, of which we managed to get a big handful, 25 or 30, but that's it. Once these are gone, they are gone gone gone.
The recordings are live, no info on when or where, but the sound is murky and lo-fi and muddy and washed out and with any other band that would be a bummer, but that's the sort of production that perfectly suits Dead C's particular sound, especially live.
The A side begins with a thick throbbing distorted guitar drone, for minutes, before the drums finally kick in, a propulsive krautrock beat that lasts all of 20 seconds before slowing down and dropping out. Hmm, false start? Sounds cool regardless, as the guitar drone continues on and the drums once again join the fray, and the band locks into a loose but groovy psychedelic New Zealand krautjam, the guitars so muddy and indistinct, they sound almost like a static drone, a constant buzz beneath the drums, before those drums drop off and the track finishes with a woozy shimmery drone.
The B side is a gorgeous haunting creep, a black sonic fury, all pulsating guitars, growling low end and muted abstract drumming, with stuttery feedback spread out over the heavy detuned sprawl. The whole side so minimal and hypnotic and ominous and beautiful.
SUPER LIMITED. Packaged in plain black 12" sleeves.
Newly reissued on vinyl, our very favorite record from New Zealand noise rock legends the Dead C. This is IT. One of THEE most perfect slabs of abstract free rock ever set to tape. Yes, noise rockers, this is where it all started. Originally released way back in 1992, about five years into their recorded career. Long out of print and finally available again (on vinyl, cd still sadly out of print). We're of the mind that the Dead C never made a bad record, but of their entire recorded output, Harsh 70s Reality continues to be our all time favorite. Most of the vestiges of pop that showed up in their past records, the legacy of their NZ pop heritage, were jettisoned or at least transformed into something much harder, and much weirder. The pop remained, but drastically altered, more often twisted and tangled, buried or burned, a soft glowing core barely visible through the Dead C's abstruse ambient noise. Truly hard to describe, there are guitars and drums, but Harsh 70s Reality never really rocks, it does however manage to be heavy and psychedelic and dense and droney all at once. Blissful, tranquil, harsh, jagged, dreamy, dark, atonal, an impossible collision of sounds and emotions. This may be noise rock, but it's not precisely noisy, nor rock. By this point, the Dead C were channeling Cale and Conrad and Maclise and the Taj Mahal Travellers as much as any rock or noise outfits.
This is immediately evident on the opening track, the 22 minute "Driver U.F.O.", a massive dirgescape of angular guitar, clanging and keening, a sound that hinted at the noise to come, their future trajectory, headed for sonic worlds even further out. A world first visited here, of strange little abstract chordal figures, not riffs per se, just strange smears of sound repeated over and over, totally mesmerizing, but completely alien, sheets of guitar noise, big slabs of metal percussive clang, creepy wheedly little melodies, lots of drone and drawn out streaks of feedback. Sounds almost like the first musicians ever, musical cavemen, suddenly stumbling upon a stage full of amps and drums, and curiously exploring, discovering all the strange ways the different instruments can be poked and prodded and struck to create an abstract and gorgeous primitive din. This is divine dronemusic. A clattery atonal dronescape. If you took this first track, stuck it on a crappy cd-r, made up some crazy name, Black Tomb Resurrect or something, added some xeroxed cover art, and sent out a handful to the Wire and Eclipse and Volcanic Tongue, made sure it was limited to 100 copies, you would have indie hipsters shitting themselves to get their hands on one, buying copies on eBay for $100. It's that prescient. Either that or the current breed of noisemakers are not hiding their Dead C obsession AT ALL.
The shorter tracks here do actually 'rock'. Sort of. As much as a jagged smear of super distorted crumble and crunch can 'rock'. "Sky" sounds like the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" covered by Reynols, a stumbling rock drum beat beneath a white noise riff, all crumbly distortion and blown out fuzz, and some strange sort of crooned vocals drifting in and out. "Suffer Bomb Damage" is a haunting keyboard drone, all off key lo-fi Casio wheeze and reverb spring percussion, very reminiscent of NZ legends Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos. "Love" sounds like the Velvet Underground fronted by Jandek, covering the MC5, lurching fuzzy garage stomp with damaged guitar and weary, drawled vocals. "Constellation" is some long lost Velvet Monkeys joint, an East Village folkfuzz jam, throbbing and saturated in dense distortion and wrapped in thick sheets of druggy droney guitar swirl, all wrapped haphazardly around a cracked pop hook. The record ends on a truly strange note, a sort of fuzzy folk drift, warm acoustic guitars are picked and strummed, a mournful lament, crowd sounds and occasional bursts of distorted fuzz, as well as a brief stretch of wailed anguished vocals and a few splatters of snare drum, but for the majority of the nearly ten minutes of "Hope", we drift lazily through a murky world of soft muted guitars and sad, mumbled vocals. So lovely. A most perfect noisefolk elegy. It's hard to understand how the hell this record ended up here, drifting dreamlike and swathed in murky folk, especially after the 20+ minutes of face melting freaked out abstraction of "Driver U.F.O." Or the blown-out deconstructed noiserock in between. But that's exactly what makes the Dead C so special. This is exactly where it had to end up. Where you were meant to emerge. It seems like an impossibly confusional journey, an improvised exploration. And it is. But taken as a whole, Harsh 70s Reality is exactly as it was meant to be. Perfect. Perfectly imperfect. A world of noise that slips from sound to sound, taking many forms, many guises, a world where letting fuzzy folk guitars and soft vocals wash over you is not all that different than letting a wall of crumbling guitar grind and feedback freakout collapse and bury you alive. Two different sides of the same glorious noise.
Includes a download coupon as well.
Released to coincide with the recent double disc retrospective, this 7" features two tracks that should have Dead C fans drooling. One side features an unreleased version of "Power" rescued from the band's vast archives, a gorgeous slab of blown out noise rock, distortion drenched indie jangle, simple drumming, wild squalls of psychnoise guitar, sing songy vocals, dense and noisy but surprisingly catchy. The B side is one of their most popular songs (according to some), having been covered by loads of folks including Yo La Tengo, a driving almost new wave sounding punk rocker, with fuzzed out riffs, and some seriously Mark E. Smith vocals, shouting "Bad Politics... Baby". Maybe the poppiest thing they've ever done.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. ONE TIME PRESSING!!!
So, this is the quote-unquote rockin' Dead C album? So we were told, that was the supposed spin on this one, the twenty-somethingth album from these veteran NZ "free-rock" heroes. But maybe we got that wrong, 'cause aren't they all equally (free-) rockin'? Probably what was meant was that this was more "song-y", in comparison to their previous album, last year's Future Artists, 'cause there's more singing... but otherwise, not such a huge departure. And their album before that, 2003's The Damned, was WAY rock on tracks like "Truth". It's always kinda funny getting into discussions about just how rock or noise or whatever the Dead C are, anyway, since the thing about them is that they're playing Dead C music exclusively, forging into otherwise uncharted, unnamed sonic territory with each release even after 20 years in the "biz", leaving all other underground noise/drone/rock/experimental/floorcore acts to play catch-up. As we said in our review of Future Artists, the Dead C have an amazing ability to take "unmusical sounds, caustic, abrasive, minimal and harsh, and weave them into something beautiful." That they surely do here. If you've never heard 'em before, this could be a fairly accessible starting point.
Certainly, you can't argue that lead off track "Mansions" (the 1st of 4 songs on this 45 minute disc) does not, underneath its avant-garde, noisily shambolic exterior, have a rock n' roll heart that's a-beatin'. As well, there's melody amidst the murk, with mumbly, half-whispered vocals rising to the fore. But really it's more moanin' than it's rockin', the whole album moaning and droning, full of shrill feedback textures and an eventually hypnotic sheen of percussive clangor (on the lengthy track 2 "Stations", and track 3 "Plains" especially). They stir up quite a dense din on the latter, leaving more space on album closer "Waves" for Michael Morely's plaintive vocals to wend thro' the distortion, showing the kinder, gentler side of the Dead C... Such a fine blend of immediate emotional impact and unsettling, unfamiliar audio explorations. As "song-y" as we say this is, who else writes songs that at each and every moment seem maybe like they are finishing, and/or beginning anew? Standard song structures and instrumental roles are abandoned or deprioritized in favor of an alien Dead C agenda of experimental, improvised (yet to their own logic disciplined) expressiveness that really does justify the "free" in the free-rock tag. As essential as ever. (And if you can, don't miss 'em on their first US tour in ages - they played SF last night and it was great.)
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.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
For most of you, all you'll need to hear is "BRAND NEW DEAD C RECORD". And maybe also "VINYL ONLY." And let's not forget the ubiquitous "EXTREMELY LIMITED." At this point, about 33 words into what will undoubtedly be a 400 word review, most of you already have this in your cart and have moved on. But just in case...
Super limited lp only split, featuring noise rock deities the Dead C and Australian surreal space rockers Hi God People. The Dead C offer up two tracks, recorded live in 2002 at All Tomorrows Parties and on first listen is the Dead C at their most blissful and laid back. The first track opens with a sort of minimal Velvet Underground style groove, simple drums, muted melodies, but the whole thing is swathed in squealing, shrieking, creaking, stuttering shards of feedback. Eventually that feedback takes over, creating a new rhythm of its own, the drums spazz and sputter out, and suddenly we're in classic dark and dangerous Dead C territory again. Fuzzed out, blown out, overdriven, psychedelic NOISE rock, somehow free and abstract, but totally propulsive and groovy, with strangely super melodic vocals buried WAY down in the mix. The second track is another blissy drone out, that by the end of the side breaks down into some seriously noisy freakout action, sounding almost like some bootleg Stooges jam, pulled apart, jacked up and blown wide open! Fuzzy and murky but still strangely (noise) rocking!
The three tracks on the flipside from Australia's Hi God People, are still noise rock, but much less abrasive and more melodic. The opener is super abstract, with bits of sample conversation, warbly organs, shimmering feedback, a lazy glimmering drift. The second track kicks in with some almost Sonic Youth like grooves, simple drumming and tangled up atonal guitars, and some awesome, out of the blue snarling tigers (!). They finish things off with a super moody laid back blown out psych jam, with weird Patty Waters like vocals. Cool.
Packaged in a hand silkscreened sleeve, with a two sided printed insert, all adorned with some super cool, very Devendra Banhart looking geometric artwork. And need we say, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!
Has it really been more than 25 years? And close to 40 releases? These NZ noise rock legends have been making their particular brand of abstract, avant free-noise beauty for what seems like forEVER. And somehow, over all those years, and all those releases, they've both managed to keep making music that is distinctly and defiantly their own, while constantly re-inventing that sound in a way that has kept that sound impossibly interesting, extremely relevant and ridiculously influential on legions of other noisemakers, whether they realize it or not.
Listening to Armed Courage, we were initially forced to wonder, what exactly it is that makes a Dead C jam a proper record? Cuz barring their flirtations with pop songs (and there have been many), the sound of the Dead C, and of Armed Courage, does in fact sound like a band letting loose, jamming endlessly... Both the tracks here sound like the could have been plucked from even more epic jams, as if someone just pushed 'record' in the middle of a 24 hour jam, affording us a glorious glimpse into what could only be a never ending noise rock jam, our glimpse's brevity dictated by the limitations of recorded media. It tickles us to imagine Bruce Russell, Michael Morley and Robbie Yeats locked in a perpetual jam, the Hawkwind style heart-of-the-sun freakouts recontextualized into something WAY more loose and abstract and while not perhaps lo-fi in sound, certainly in spirit.
The two tracks here offer up the two sonic sides of the Dead C, alternately crafting an alien lo-fi avant indie rock minimalism, and at their most fierce and free, with Yeats delivering some of the wildest drumming we've heard from him on the opening track, a tangle of multiple free jazz freakouts, locked into weirdly unhinged krautrock style motorik grooves, that constantly splinter, fall apart and somehow come right back together again. All the while, Russell and Morley transforming their guitars into noisemakers, the drums wreathed in billowing clouds of rumble and whir, of crumblingly distorted drones, and fragmented riffs, tones pulsing and undulating, all blurred into constantly shifting sheets of smeared sound, the occasional bit of loose clattery percussion, the cool second half of the first track, where the band lock into a crazy Necks-like minimal groove, all skittery rhythm, pulsating distorto-buzz, and a cool, almost electronic sounding field of percussive guitar scrape that sounds a bit like a damaged synth, the whole thing barreling forward with a strange buried propulsion. It seems impossible that something this formless, and free, this shapeless and abstract could somehow be so sonically mesmerizing, but for all its shapelessness, the sound is teeming with strange sonic shapes, and for all its looseness, the group sound impossibly tight, flying into wild musical tangents, but always finding their way back, or not, sometimes just following each other on those tangents and changing the direction of the song and sound entirely. Nearly 30 years of playing together will do that to a group.
The second track shifts gears completely, the band slipping into their warbly low fidelity songcraft, the sound unfurling sedately, with a field of rhythmic static, some woozy guitars, some strange percussion, lots of tape hiss ambience, and weary, whispery, crooned vocals, the band seemingly locked into a somnambulant drift, before Yeats lets loose again, his octopoidal skitter mirrored by caustic guitar scrabble, and gristly electronic buzz, all still anchored by some detuned strum, the drums building, driving the song into a dense driving noise rock jam, laced with streaks of high end guitar freakout, before shedding all the noise and bash and howl, leaving just a shadowy sprawl of murky mesmer, which again, slowly builds from hushed creep, to a weirdly math bit of motorik churn, simple, but loud drumming, over FX wreathed wah wah, and streaks of droned out warble, a stumbling bunkurfunk dirge that gradually loses momentum, eventually disappearing into a soft fading cloud of Jandekian guitar-warble.
Fucking fantastic.
One of two new installments in Ba Da Bing and Jagjaguwar's ongoing vinyl reissue campaign of perhaps one of THE greatest noise rock bands ever, New Zealand's Dead C, who unlike many (most?) of their contemporaries, were perfectly capable of mixing stumbling downer pop with full on room clearing cacophony, muted minimal sonic abstractions and crunchy riff heavy drone rock, without sounding like anyone but themselves.
And as far as oft referenced bands around aQ, it's no surprise that Dead C gets name dropped in so many reviews, in many ways, they are the archetype for modern noise rock, for subversive outsider post rock, whatever you want to call it, Dead C were and are the masters, and these reissues should make that abundantly and utterly clear. And just might put into perspective how 'original' and 'groundbreaking' a lot of the current flavors of the noise rock month really are.
Clyma Est Mort was recorded live in the band's practice space in 1992, was released as a purported 'bootleg' (even going so far as to dub in crowd sounds from a Renderers gig, creating the illusion of a live record, sort of) and is an incredible, and awe inspiring ultra expansive slab of outsider experimental post noise, noise pop, avant rock abstraction. Sounds hyperbolic, but these sounds, ESPECIALLY in 1992, but even today, sound so unique, so idiosyncratic, slipping nimbly from clouds of swirling skree, to stumbling krautrock, to glacial abstract pop, spoken vocals drifting in a sea of rumbling crumbling guitars, held together by sporadic and gloriously inconsistent rhythms, and that's just the very first song, the fractured and ebullient "Sunshine / Dirt For Harry". And it doesn't let up. From full on driving noise drenched punk rock, the guitars grinding and blown out, the recording in the red and oozing distortion and feedback, all unable to disguise the pure pop at its core, to woozy almost doomy dirges, laced with clouds of sizzling cymbals, sitar like guitar buzz, warped weary vox, bursts of shrieking crunch, like some sort of Velvet Underground gone haywire, to noisy, atonal, super heavy noise pop, that sounds a bit like a New Zealand Sebadoh, but doused in distortion and with the guitars detuned, and recorded in an underground bunker.
The record closes with a pretty devastating one two punch. "World" a gorgeously melancholy almost balladic noise dirge, with some sweetly heartfelt vocals over a dense tangle of jagged guitars, the drums chaotic and LOUD, everything hazy and murky, but somehow super tense and emotional and beautiful. And finally, "Das Fluten" a sprawling abstract creep, all deep rumbles, and random abstract room sounds, creaking, thumps, detuned acoustic guitars, bits of percussion, streaks of feedback, little slivers of melody, fluttery flutes, a stumbling bit of super minimal noise folk, all held together by a thick rumbling bass drone, which also makes the whole thing strangely haunting and ominous.
And as if that weren't enough, this reissue includes a whole extra record, "Tentative Power" a collection compiling the band's 1991 singles, originally released on Siltbreeze, Forced Exposure, Ba Da Bing and Hermeticum Corp. "Hell Is Now Love" might be one of the greatest pop songs EVER, done in the Dead C's inimitable UNpop style, "Bone" is a strange faux world music drone pop mini epic, with some super strange guitar action. The "Power" / "Peace" / "Mighty" trilogy from the Forced Exposure single, is still MORE poppy, giving us a hint of what could have been if these guys weren't so noise inclined, and finally, the 7" version of "Power", a track rescued from the band's vast archives, a gorgeous slab of blown out noise pop, distortion drenched indie jangle, simple drumming, wild squalls of psychnoise guitar, sing songy vocals, dense and noisy but surprisingly catchy. So goddamn good.
This should be required listening for every new band. It'll either inspire them to do great things, or convince them to hang it up.
Pressed on super thick vinyl, in a deluxe heavy gatefold sleeve, and includes a proper cd version of the record too seeing as none of this stuff has ever been on cd before!
It's a bit hard to believe that it's been just over 20 years since New Zealand's Dead C first unleashed their unique brand of 'noise rock' on our unsuspecting ears, but 'tis true, and while the band have gone through many sonic permutations over their two decades, their sound somehow has always remained distinctly their own. There have been long stretches of inactivity too, with the various members pursuing their own projects, Gate, A Handful Of Dust, etc. but they always seemed to find their way back. A new record, and a recent US tour, has upped the band's profile of late, but what better time to look back, at their first two proper full lengths, available on vinyl in the US for the first time, with all sorts of extras.
While the Dead C are generally considered to be a 'noise rock band', to many THEE 'noise rock' band, it's easy to forget that at their heart, they are a pop band. With songs, and verses and choruses and crooned vocals, and strummed acoustic guitars, and all of that stuff. Never was that more apparent than on their first two records, Eusa Kills and Dr 503, which found the band sort of straddling two worlds of sound, the prevailing 'New Zealand' sound, a sort of lo-fi bedroom pop, and their own peculiar trajectory, a loose ramshackle assemblage of guitarnoise, fractured FX, noisy ambience, and a general clang and clatter. A pretty heady mix for sure, which probably had more conservative listeners reeling, but had the rest of us clamoring for more.
Dr 503, was their first proper full length (3rd actual, depending on who's keeping track), and opens up with what many consider the penultimate Dead C track "Max Harris", and if a single song could indeed be a microcosm for the Dead C sound, it's probably "Max Harris". Woozy rhythms, stumbling off kilter rhythms, the middle part sounds like a lo-fi This Heat crossed with Geronimo, all abstract distorted crunch, and muted squalls of tribal drumming, streaks of clipped effects, murky processed vocals, slivers of feedback, even a mere seconds-long acoustic guitar outro. The record veers and careens all over the place, spoken word over splattery percussion and clipped minimal strum, thick doomy dirges of heavily reverbed guitar, gloomy Joy Division basslines, and hushed muttered vocals, skipping phonographs draped over stripped down slowcore, Sebadoh style lo-fi bedroom folk, primitive tape experiments, pounding almost garage-y jams that transform into spare Jandekian sprawls, but all held together by some nearly impossible to define Dead C aesthetic.
The record finishes off with a devastating one-two punch, the 9 minute Dead C classic sort-of-ballad "Polio", which begins all folky and strummy, gradually the guitars warp and warble, the drums stumble in, and the song just sort of drifts and skitters, the guitars weirdly effected, the vocals heartfelt and buried way down in the mix, the drums almost Can-like in their motorik simplicity, there are some moments of chaos, but for the most part "Polio" is dark and dreamy and murky and softly buzzy, a little jangly, and sort of pretty. And then it's on to the 13+ minute "Max Harris 2" which does seem to contain some sonic elements of the original, but the sound here is repetitive and clangorous, the guitars buzz and whir, the riffs angular and jagged, the sound washed out and lo-fi, the vocals another buried mumble, until the song shifts gear part way through, and it's just a single guitar, plucking out that same main riff, accompanied by super spare percussion, and wreathed in tape hiss, after a sudden burst of crash and crunch, the track jams on and on and on, becoming slowly unhinged, the sounds slowly detuning, everything getting more and more warped and warbly before stuttering to a halt.
This reissue tacks on the Sun Stabbed ep (originally released as a 7"), from right around the same time, which is pretty impossible to find at all, on vinyl or otherwise. Offering up more of the same, a handful of gorgeous and confusional tracks offering up still more of the Dead C's unique clash of classic New Zealand songsmithery and noise drenched, abstract, sonic deconstruction.
Absolutely and utterly essential listening. Gorgeously repackaged in a super heavy gatefold sleeve, reproducing much of the original art, and pressed on super thick vinyl. And as you might have guessed, VERY VERY LIMITED!
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The second reissue of "DR503C" is actually quite a bit different than the reissue on Feels Good All Over, with unreleased & rare tracks. Before, Bruce, Michael, & Robbie got obsessed with "free noise", their sound of lo-fi production on acoustic guitars, crappy amplifiers, and that "cardboard box" drum sound was channelled into bitter songs predating Sebadoh & Charalambides by a good 5 years. Highly recommended document of NZ rock!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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It's a bit hard to believe that it's been just over 20 years since New Zealand's Dead C first unleashed their unique brand of 'noise rock' on our unsuspecting ears, but 'tis true, and while the band have gone through many sonic permutations over their two decades, their sound somehow has always remained distinctly their own. There have been long stretches of inactivity too, with the various members pursuing their own projects, Gate, A Handful Of Dust, etc. but they always seemed to find their way back. A new record, and a recent US tour, has upped the band's profile of late, but what better time to look back, at their first two proper full lengths, available on vinyl in the US for the first time, with all sorts of extras.
While the Dead C are generally considered to be a 'noise rock band', to many THEE 'noise rock' band, it's easy to forget that at their heart, they are a pop band. With songs, and verses and choruses and crooned vocals, and strummed acoustic guitars, and all of that stuff. Never was that more apparent than on their first two records, Eusa Kills and Dr 503, which found the band sort of straddling two worlds of sound, the prevailing 'New Zealand' sound, a sort of lo-fi bedroom pop, and their own peculiar trajectory, a loose ramshackle assemblage of guitarnoise, fractured FX, noisy ambience, and a general clang and clatter. A pretty heady mix for sure, which probably had more conservative listeners reeling, but had the rest of us clamoring for more.
Eusa Kills originally came out in 1989, and makes it the Dead C's fourth proper full length (maybe 6th, hard to tell with the band's convoluted discography) and finds the band in full on song mode, with a somewhat improved production, which definitely suits them. Years later, the band would release a single called The Dead C. Vs. Sebadoh, the title a joke obviously, but even 5 years early, when Eusa Kills came out, the band did in fact sound quite a bit like Sebadoh at moments, dark and brooding, sort of rocking, melodic but a bit off kilter, especially on record opener "Scarey Nest", which is a dead ringer for some lost Sebadoh B-side, with a killer main hook, simple solid drumming, wistful sort of sad boy vocals, the guitars alternatingly jangly and corrosive. After a 43 second Butthole Surfers style abstract drum / guitar crunch jam with distorted vocals and a lumbering tempo, the band slip right back into more dark jangle, a minor key guitar unfurling, a shuffling military snare, more weary crooned vocals, it is easy to see why lots of folks refer to Eusa Kills as the Dead C's 'songs' record. Most of the tracks are 2 or 3 minutes, poppy and jangly, the whole record clocking in at a lean 36 minutes, the exceptions being the 6 minute "Phantom Power" which begins as an extended abstract jam, all simple solid drumming and jagged guitar, but then the vocals drift in all ghostlike and the sound is transformed into something much poppier, and the 7 minute "Maggot", which is probably the heaviest of the bunch, with its grinding guitars, it's lurching drum part, and the super distorted Buttholes style processed vox, but even then, there's a definite pop sensibility at work, although a bit obscured. The rest of the shorter tracks tend toward the pop-ish, whether it be pounding noise drenched indie rock, moaning slow motion Jandek style sprawl or the gorgeously languid hushed folky jangle that finishes off the disc.
Also included is the Helen Said This 12" originally released around the same time. Not quite as songy as Eusa Kills, but enough that the two fit together perfectly, an extension of Eusa's twisted jangle, muddled pop smithery, warm wooziness, and occasional cracked heaviness.
Totally recommended, and essential for all fans of fucked up music. And heck, even fans of not-so-fucked up music. This just might be the Dead C record you can handle. Gorgeously repackaged in a super heavy gatefold sleeve, reproducing much of the original art, and pressed on super thick vinyl. And as you might have guessed, VERY VERY LIMITED!
This is IT. One of the most perfect slabs of abstract free rock ever set to tape. Yes, noise rockers, this is where it all started. Originally released way back in 1992, about five years into their recorded career. Long out of print and finally available again. We're of the mind that the Dead C never made a bad record, but of their entire recorded output, Harsh 70's Reality continues to be our all time favorite. Most of the vestiges of pop that showed up in their past records, the legacy of their NZ pop heritage, were jettisoned or at least transformed into something much harder, much weirder. The pop remained, but drastically altered, more often twisted and tangled, buried or burned, a soft glowing core barely visible through the Dead C's abstruse ambient noise. Truly hard to describe, there are guitars and drums, but Harsh 70s Reality never really rocks, it does however manage to be heavy and psychedelic and dense and droney all at once. Blissful, tranquil, harsh, jagged, dreamy, dark, atonal, an impossible collision of sounds and emotions. This may be noise rock, but it's not precisely noisy, nor rock. By this point, the Dead C were channeling Cale and Conrad and Maclise and the Taj Mahal Travellers as much as any rock or noise outfits.
This is immediately evident on the opening track here, the 22 minute "Driver U.F.O.", a massive dirgescapes of angular guitar, clanging and keening, a sound that hinted at the noise to come, their future trajectory, headed for sonic worlds even further out. A world first visited here, of strange little abstract chordal figures, not riffs per se, just strange smears of sound repeated over and over, totally mesmerizing, but completely alien, sheets of guitar noise, big slabs of metal percussive clang, creepy wheedly little melodies, lots of drone and drawn out streaks of feedback. Sounds almost like the first musicians ever, musical cavemen, suddenly stumbling upon a stage full of amps and drums, and curiously exploring, discovering all the strange ways the different instruments can be poked and prodded and struck to create an abstract and gorgeous primitive din. This is divine dronemusic. A clattery atonal dronescape. If you took this first track, stuck it on a crappy cd-r, made up some crazy name, Black Tomb Resurrect or something, added some xeroxed cover art, and sent out a handful to the Wire and Eclipse and Volcanic Tongue, made sure it was limited to 100 copies, you would have indie hipsters shitting themselves to get copies, buying copies on eBay for $100. It's that prescient. Either that or the current breed of noisemakers are not hiding their Dead C obsession AT ALL.
The shorter tracks here do actually 'rock'. Sort of. As much as a jagged smear of super distorted crumble and crunch can 'rock'. "Sky" sounds like the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" covered by Reynols, a stumbling rock drum beat beneath a white noise riff, all crumbly distortion and blown out fuzz, and some strange sort of crooned vocals drifting in and out. "Suffer Bomb Damage" is a haunting keyboard drone, all off key lo-fi casio wheeze and reverb spring percussion, very reminiscent of NZ legends Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos. "Love" sounds like the Velvet Underground fronted by Jandek, covering the MC5, lurching fuzzy garage stomp with damaged guitar and weary drawled vocals. "Constellation" is some long lost Velvet Monkeys joint, an East Village folkfuzz jam, throbbing and saturated in dense distortion and wrapped in thick sheets of druggy droney guitar swirl, all wrapped haphazardly around a cracked pop hook. The record ends on a truly strange note, a sort of fuzzy folk drift, warm acoustic guitars are picked and strummed, a mournful lament, crowd sounds and occasional bursts of distorted fuzz, as well as a brief stretch of wailed anguished vocals and a few splatters of snare drum, but for the majority of the nearly ten minutes of "Hope", we drift lazily through a murky world of soft muted guitars and sad, mumbled vocals. So lovely. A most perfect noisefolk elegy. It's hard to understand how the hell this record ended up here, drifting dreamlike and swathed in murky folk, especially after the 20+ minutes of face melting freaked out abstraction of "Driver U.F.O." Or the blown out deconstructed noiserock in between. But that's exactly what makes the Dead C so special. This is exactly where it had to end up. Where you were meant to emerge. It seems like an impossibly confusional journey, an improvised exploration. And it is. But taken as a whole, Harsh 70s Reality is exactly as it was meant to be. Perfect. Perfectly imperfect. A world of noise that slips from sound to sound, taking many forms, many guises, a world where letting fuzzy folk guitars and soft vocals wash over you is not all that different than letting a wall of crumbling guitar grind and feedback freakout collapse and bury you alive. Two different sides of the same glorious noise.
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Newest Dead C record released on their own Language Recordings label and expectations are HIGH since that last double Dead C cd was so amazing. We all went to see the Dead C live a few months ago, many of us for the first time, which is actually when we first discovered this new Dead C record, and to be honest we were WAAAAAY disappointed. Some didn't even stay for the whole set [although some did and actually dug the concert quite a bit!] Rambling, scattershot, clumsy percussion, noisy but not really all that inspired. Lots of aimless on stage wandering and interband discussions MID-SET!!! But you gotta cut them some slack, improvised music is really hit or miss, and relies as much on the audience's perception as it does the band's performance, and that's what makes it so exciting. So we weren't sure what to expect from the new record. A couple of folks had expressed their diappointment with 'New Electric Music', but we are happy to report, while it's a lot different than the self titled double cd, it's still a GREAT Dead C record. 'NEM' starts off with six minutes of burbling barely audible low end, pulsing and creeping, like a thick fog. Track two launches into a primitive rock and roll cave-stomp, simple propulsive drumming pins down whirls of white noise and chaotic rumble. The next two tracks veer more towards the traditional Dead C sound with track three a crumbling avalanche of guitar skronk and fluttery percussion, squalls of noise and waves of rumbling drone, and track 4 a sort of Jandek of the South Seas, with mumbled distant vocals over a loose free-twang framework. The final 30 minute track is gorgeous and if you ever had any doubts about the 'C being at the top of their game, this track should silence non believers. A rumbling, low end drone-scape with a metronomic burst of feedback that sets the whole thing into an hypnotic , almost-industrial rhythm. While in the background, electronics and unrecognizable guitar creaks and swells, rumble and soar and wrap the relentless one-beat rhythm in a coarse blanket of grit. As the track progresses, the background sounds intensify, threatening the rhythm but never quite overtaking it. So gorgeous. Probably one of the best things they've ever recorded. Dead C fans will not be disappointed and those unfamiliar could do worse than starting their education here!
We always have trouble knowing what to say about a new record from legendary New Zealand noise rockers the Dead C. They don't come very often, but when they do, it's kind of a big deal. We know it will be amazing. We just don't know how. Which is probably what's kept this band so exciting and vital for so many years.
Equally adept at crafting strange muted noise drenched pop songs, as they are sprawling expanses of chaotic abstract sonic experimentalism, we really can't think of a Dead C record that we don't love. And with most bands, nearly 25 years into their career, the later era records, no matter how good, almost always pale in comparison to the early ones, the ones made when the band were hungry, and young, and full of piss and vinegar, rebellious and angry, wanting to make us much noise as possible, and piss off as many people as possible. But somehow, with the Dead C, while their sound has definitely changed, in some ways dramatically, we have to say, we actually do like the new records just as much as the old ones. They're still noisy, occasionally poppy, rhythmic, dense and intense, they're just different, as they should be, 30 releases and 2 decades on, and Patience is no different, a sprawling fantastical songsuite of hypnotic rhythms, swirling ambient noise, murky melodic drift, album opener, the 16 minute Empire, is a gorgeous hazy psych jam, meandering mesmerizing, the drums pounding away through an ever shifting cloud of grinding super distorted heavily effected guitarnoise, the result is a sort of psychedelic krautrock, a weird mash up of German Oak and High Rise maybe, the sound appropriately lo-fi, but still somehow lush and loud, about midway through, the band pulls apart the various elements of the first half, the guitars unfurling in hazy streaks of burnished melody, the drums even more minimal, offering up strange scattershot bits of cymbal crash and snare shuffle, before stumbling back into forward motion, like a blissier more mellowed out version of what came before, the drums again motorik, but the noisy guitar squalls a bit softened, a little dreamier, as the song marches lazily to its conclusion.
There are two shorter tracks next, the brief interlude of "Federation", with its swirling cymbal sizzle, and murky churning guitar thrum, and then the more proper song lengthed "Shaft", which tempers some intense blown out guitar damage, with a beat that almost sounds electronic, thumping and jittery and surprisingly groovy, a perfect foil for the roiling crunch and rumble and screech all around, but for a band with a record called Patience, they've been known to not have much, and in that spirit, terminate the strangely groovy jam and transform it into something way more loose and free, a huge billowing wall of tangled guitar, of swirling feedback, and grinding scraping amp punishment, which somehow, doesn't sound harsh or noisy, just hypnotic and far out.
Finally, the band bliss out into the smoldering epic closer "South", loping mumbled low end melodies, wreathed in everpresent amp buzz, while over the top, guitars pulse, and streak, and shimmer, the guitars growing more restless and animated, offering up gorgeous chunks of fragmented melody, of truncated riffage, textures and overtones, whirs and crunches and howls, all the while the track pulses along hypnotically. Eventually the drums lurch into the fray, offering a chaotic, unpredictable rhythm, with which the rest of the band counters an incredible array of freaked out psychedelic guitar weirdness, finally, the drums lock in, and it's like a crumbling noiserock This Heat, strange high end squiggles, thick blasts of chordal rumble, plenty of static and hiss, the track pounding away, until finally the drums retire, leaving a sky full of squiggly super distorted high end, which then too dissipates, leaving, a churning minimal riffscape, pulsing, and heaving, and still surrounded by that ever present amp buzz, before just ending abruptly. Incredible as always.
Okay, so maybe we DO know what to say.
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Live!
The new Dead C record starts out with a bang, the likes of which we haven't heard from them in a while. A rock song. That's right, a rock song. Albeit a noisy, squealing, writhing squall of a rock song. Big simple drums lead the march, with a crunchy fuzzy riff, swathed in layers of feedback, and vocals, that's right, singing, WAY up in the mix too. Chaotic and propulsive, a bit like the Swell Maps maybe. But even more fucked sounding obviously. Fear not, soon we're back on more familiar footing, with an almost ambient track, spare and ghostly, a droning thrum with strange clicks and hums buried in cave-like reverb. Sounds like tape hiss, but as it might occur in nature. Things get awfully noisy shortly thereafter, with a wild and free blast of stumbling percussion and more feedback than two guys should be able to produce. But then it's time for another surprise, as things get really moody and melodic, with some dreamy, sort-of space-rock (or as close to space rock as the C get) with mumbled vocals, a hypnotic bass line, and ear piercing guitar klang. Like AQ faves Circle broadcast through a shitty car stereo with only one speaker. The final proper track is a twenty minute krautrockish jam, but done as only the Dead C can, more feedback and confusion than groove, more hiss and fuzz than riff, more noise than melody. The record finishes off with a recording of highway traffic that sounds like it could actually *be* the band's music, which is why they're so amazing, right?
Another new installment in Ba Da Bing and Jagjaguwar's ongoing vinyl reissue campaign of perhaps one of THE greatest noise rock bands ever, New Zealand's Dead C, who unlike many (most?) of their contemporaries, were perfectly capable of mixing stumbling downer pop with full on room clearing cacophony, muted minimal sonic abstractions and crunchy riff heavy drone rock, without sounding like anyone but themselves.
And as far as oft referenced bands around aQ, it's no surprise that Dead C gets name dropped in so many reviews, in many ways, they are the archetype for modern noise rock, for subversive outsider post rock, whatever you want to call it, Dead C were and are the masters, and these reissues should make that abundantly and utterly clear. And just might put into perspective how 'original' and 'groundbreaking' a lot of the current flavors of the noise rock month really are.
The Dead C Perform Max Harris are the first ever recordings from the Dead C, recorded during their very first month as a band, originally released as a cassette limited to a mere 21 copies, later, multiple versions and edits were tacked on to the group's Dr 503 record, but this is the first time these two tracks, these two different version of the 'same' track, have been available together, unedited, since that tape. First time on vinyl too.
The sticker references Swell Maps and Crazy Horse, and you can definitely here some of that in these tracks, as well as 13th Floor Elevators, and the Velvet Underground but whatever influences inspired this psychedelic noise rock blow out, well, they were summarily obliterated and reinterpreted and spit out in this damaged and cracked and gloriously fractured incarnation, resulting in a sound that is hard to reference beyond simply the Dead C themselves, already helping create a sound that would go on to define the sound of the NZ underground, several weeks into what would be a 20+ year career.
"With Help From Max Harris" is a sprawling drone rock epic, beginning with a chaotic outpouring of wild rhythmic tribalism, tangled billowy guitar buzz, reverbed vocals buried in the mix, a fucked up production, lo-fi, but still somehow powerful and intense, but after a few minutes, the songs slows it down, dials it back, and becomes this strange spaced out strange of minimal hypnorock, repetitive and mesmeric, very krautrock / space rock, but way more abstract and loose and free, a glorious wash of sound, that could have gone on for another 15 minutes, and hell it probably did, we'll never know cuz it just cuts off abruptly, and for all we know the band played on and on and on.
"Beyond Help From Max Harris" is definitely the same song, but it's different enough to keep it interesting, but similar enough to satisfy that urge we had for the first track to continue on forever. "Beyond..." is a bit more hi-fi, just a bit, but the guitars are sharper, more jagged, the bass more of a presence, the quite parts even more quiet but the guitar adding all sorts of strange percussive harmonics, lots of crumbly amp buzz, furious in-the-red bursts of crunch and glitch, the vocals way less present, it ends up sounding like a less song-y version of the first track, more abstracted and free, still totally hypnotic and mesmerizing, just way more raw and feral and fucked up. GENIUS!
As mentioned above, this is the first time on vinyl for these tracks, and it's the first time they've been available together and unedited since that original cassette. Pressed on nice thick vinyl, in a swank black and white sleeve, includes a download card so you can cram this noisy bliss onto your hard drive.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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We kind of wish distros and labels would do house cleaning more often. A few lists ago we got copies of a couple super rare long out of print Birchville Cat Motel releases, then a few weeks ago one of our distributors found a secret stash of the long out of print Skullflower cd IIIrd Gatekeeper (Allan and Andee's favorite btw) and this week Tom, the mighty overlord of the Siltbreeze empire, cleaned out his basement and found a dusty little pile of this legenday NZ freenoisepop gem from the godlike Dead C, Trapdoor Fucking Exit. We pounced on them immediately as this is most definitely one of our all time favorite records, and a record so subtly influential, that without it, you could pretty much wipe the entire modern noise rock slate squeaky clean. Sure, the Skaters and Wolf Eyes and The Grey Daturas and the Yellow Swans would all be around, but they'd probably sound more like jangly indie pop the grinding free noise weirdness. For if anyone deserves the credit/blame for launching a thousand bands that perform sitting on the floor twiddling knobs, it's the Dead C. But wait! The Dead C were no knob twiddlers, no they were a goddamn bonafide rock band. Bass, drums, guitar, but with the most basic of instrumentation, they were able to conjure up totally inhuman and unholy squalls of sound. And this was not just noise, the Dead C, at least in the beginning, crafted soft focus, ultra personal pop songs stripped to the bone, the musical flesh peeled off, leaving a rickety percussive framework, draped with mumbled crooned sad boy vocals, all totally wrapped in dense billowy clouds of guitar swirl and thick streaks of fluttering feedback. The ultimate corrosive, deconstructed, detuned, angular, abstract, noise / pop / rock hybrid.
A bit like other bedroom NZ bands of the time, but with that fey 4-track dreaminess completely drenched in lo-fi hiss and grit. Song structures totally subverted, almost like the Chills with a full frontal lobotomy and a airplane hanger full of amps or a clan of cavemen attempting to play the Clean's greatest hits. Elsewhere, the crooning vocals are replaced by distant Gregorian style chanting, serene and ghostlike, but still buried under luxuriously lo-fi washes of ultra murk. Trapdoor Fucking Exit is a confusional crawl of machine gun snares, grinding guitars, slow burn instrument rumble, careening, stumbling rhythms, chaotic ambience, claws-on-concrete guitar scrabble, drum splatter, feedback freakout, but all seemingly effortlessly harnassed into some strange, haunting, detuned and damaged indie noise pop. The Dead C would eventually ditch the pop element almost altogether, concentrating more on texture and sound, but for a brief moment, way back in 1990, the diametrically opposed sound worlds of lo-fi bedroom pop and corrosive free noise freakout collided and formed a brilliant and briefly blinding burst of glorious pop flecked free noise beauty. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
And remember this is waaaay out of print, we got a handful from the Siltbasement and we're not sure how many more there are lurking in corners or in old boxes, so we figure once these are gone they are probably gone for good.
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SORRY.
Highly anticipated album from New Zealand's Dead C (Bruce Russell, Robbie Yeats, and Michael Morley), masters of controlled chaos.
All right, while Andee is the biggest Dead C expert here at Aquarius, we're ALL fans of New Zealand's long-running noise rock geniuses. And since he took responsibility for writing the extensive and effusive reviews we've published in recent weeks for the repressings / warehouse finds of The Dead C's Harsh 70s Reality and Trapdoor Fucking Exit albums, I (Allan) thought I'd step up and take over reviewing this brand new release, which is in fact a sort of "best of" anthology selected and compiled by the band themselves, featuring 22 tracks spread over two compact discs, spanning their career to date. Not being as much of an expert as Andee, but still a fan (I've got a few of their albums, and would have more but missed out on some releases when I wasn't as 'hip' to this band as I am now), this 2cd is just what I needed: a primer of sorts on this sometimes confusional, confounding, and obscure-but-important band. And as far as reviewing goes, what's to review? THIS SHIT IS ESSENTIAL! End of story. It's an ideal introduction for newbies and even the most dedicated Dead C fanatic will want it as well. Even if you've collected every last rare tape or vinyl track from these guys it's still nice to have a few of 'em on cd.
You'll hear how The Dead C trio of Michael Morley, Robbie Yeats, and Bruce Russell blazed their own unique path through the down under underbelly of indie-rock experimentation, pushing the boundaries of (between?) noise and rock in their New Zealand laboratory. True originals, appreciated at first only by a hardy few (themselves, mainly, as well as the likes of Sonic Youth). Their deliberately lo-fi, song-subverting, willfully 'wrong' music-making was and is perhaps an acquired taste. We'd venture to guess though that at this point, few regular AQ customers would have less than positive reactions to The Dead C's seasick lurchings, to their sounds of droning flybys from UFOs made out of straw, and feedback stomp and damaged thrash. No complaints about caustic liquids somehow coursing through guitar strings, amps, and ears. Thumb up to their hazy hints of melodies, buried beneath solid static storms of guitar distortion, or their moments of quietly emotive indie-pop prettiness in the NZ tradition, left to rust and decay.
The tracks are arranged chronologically, from "Max Harris" off their 1988 Flying Nun album DR503 starting off the first disc, to the track "Truth" taken from The Damned released in 2003 that ends the second disc. Disc one might be considered a survey of their "songier" era, going up to about 1992's Harsh 70s Reality, while disc two deals with material from 1994 on that saw them becoming less of a particularly noisy indie-rock band and more of truly abstract, improvising noise band, still with some rock and pop elements weirdly woven in. The tracks selected comprise both some "greatest hits" (things we'd have picked too, for sure) and some total rarities from long-deleted cassettes and limited vinyl-only releases, like the Clyma Est Mort LP, The Operation Of The Sonne LP, the Xpressway Pile-Up cassette comp, and the Helen Said This mini-LP, among others. Actually most of these tracks are rarities, in the sense that a lot of their '90s cds on Siltbreeze like The White House and Repent, and even more recent albums like the incredible self-titled double disc on Language Recordings from 2000 are out of print now too. There's two tracks from Harsh 70s Reality, but strangely enough nothing from Trapdoor Fucking Exit, by the way.
The thick cd booklet contains essays, in ascending order of non-fictional detail, from Seymour Glass of Bananafish mag, Tom Lax of Siltbreeze, and Nick Cain of Opprobrium fanzine. And there's track-by-track commentary from Bruce Russell as well, adding to the "primer" value of this release. It may be true that this band's stuff takes a while to "get". Years maybe. But this crash course gives a great head start.
The blurb sticker on the front of this proclaims The Dead C as "the GREATEST noise/drone rock band of all time" and we really might not have any argument with that at all! It goes on to suggest that fans of Wolf Eyes, SUNNO))), Lightning Bolt and Growing would/should dig The Dead C quite heavily. Probably true as well. The implication being, though, that fans of those bands wouldn't have heard of The Dead C before. Perhaps -- and if that's the case, and that's you, you definitely should check this out!!! We'd probably go on to say that as much as we enjoy all those bands, The Dead C is much closer to our hearts for sure...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
The Dead C is the stalwart collective of free noise / avant rockers from New Zealand comprised of Bruce Russell (member of A Handful of Dust and boss of the Corpus Hermeticum label), Michael Morley (aka Gate), and Robbie Yeats, beloved of Bananafish readers and Siltbreeze junkies everywhere. We thought that perhaps their day had passed but, think again, they've gone and created a superb new album! This new, long awaited release is a sprawling double cd that finds them in the least-rock space they have ever occupied. Recorded over the past 5 years, this album is saturated in a langurous humidity produced by guitar feedback scrapes, ring modulation, and the buzzing din of improperly balanced amplifiers.
Disc One is the noisier of the two, dominated by the epic 33 minute "SpeederBot" which passes from militant percussive stabs into twin tremolo guitar feedback, similar to the controlled chaos found on their masterful "Harsh '70s Reality" album. But Disc Two is where this eponymous Dead C release really shines. Sort of like an analogue version of Main, or like a Raster record coming in badly on a shortwave radio, full of erratic hissing and eerie static. The trio striates the slow motion hypnodrone of sampled guitar feedback (yup, the lo-fi mirror version of My Bloody Valentine) with creaky little events. It's apparent that all of the recent drones from New Zealanders like Lovely Midget, RST, and Surface of the Earth have definitely made huge impact on the Dead C. They've picked up the gauntlet and, after a few years in their lonely NZ laboratory, have again come up with something that can be only called Dead C music (more so than it can be called rock or anything else). Adventurous, idiosyncratic, fantastic.
This is as recommended as it limited (to 500 copies and may not see a repress, sorry). Buy now or cry later!! (as we like to say.)
Hole cow, fans of legendary NZ noise rockers the Dead C, here's some serious holy grail shit! Four lost tracks, from the Eusa Kills lp sessions, just recently discovered, according to the sticker on the record, "in a dusty corner of their archives". And while we'd like to take that literally, imagining some old box of tapes, hidden in a crawlspace beneath one of the band members' old abandoned houses, we imagine it's not nearly as romantic, but it hardly matters, cuz the first track here is worth the price of admission alone, a fantastically murky dirge, a sort of blurred psych pop crawl, that not only recalls the Dead C at their poppies, but also some of our favorite moments from Gate, Michael Morley from the Dead C's long running solo project. Dense swirls of crumbling distortion, weird almost programmed sounding hand-clap beats, drawled vocals, super poppy, but a sort of melting, decaying bastard pop, at times it almost sounds like Neil Young & Crazy Horse at 16rpm, or classic Dinosaur Jr doused in cough syrup and thorazine. So great. How this track remained unreleased, and presumably unheard, until now boggles the mind. The rest of the Dead C jams hold up nearly as well, the sound slipping from free form / free rock freakout, noisy and chaotic, to a wild squall of heavy tape-damaged distortion, wreathed in sheets of feedback, to a final almost krautrock sounding jam, weirdly groovy and motorik, clouds of garbled FX swirling around a murky main riff and a simple spaced out beat, and pelted by shards of psychedelic guitar damage throughout.
The archival tracks here are paired up with a couple new tracks from Rangda, no particular connection, other than the fact that both are guitar / guitar / drums trios, and Rangda no doubt exists in a continuum the Dead C helped create. Rangda is Ben Chasny of Six Organs Of Admittance, Sir Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls, and underground/avant drummer for hire Chris Corsano, and while there are some similarities to the Dead C tracks on the A side, here Rangda traffic in something much more melodic, and hauntingly brooding, channeling a sort of dusky, twang flecked cinematic deserty drift, a nearly side long track unfurls a heady field of psychedelic smolder, spidery melodies, loose skittery percussion, slow shifting chordal swells, slowly building to full on freakout mode, culminating in some serious free jazz drum splatter and wildly tangled dueling guitars. The Rangda side finishes off with a brief coda, again sorta soundtracky and twangy, super muscly and busy drumming, beneath clouds of lustrous guitar shimmer. Awesome stuff from both bands for sure, but that first Dead C jam is tough to beat...
Perhaps more so than the revolving door project This Mortal Coil, there was no other band in the '80s that embodied the 4AD sound more so than Dead Can Dance. Their labored, heavily orchestrated songs hinged upon a dark, neo-romantic reading of medieval leitmotifs and Renaissance melody with plenty of Celtic flourishes tossed in for good measure. Firmly linked to the Dead Can Dance sound were the voices of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry - the former epitomizing an ethereal swoon counterpointed by the latter's exacting baritone. Their first album found the two Australian transplants living in London and showcasing much more of their Australian post-punk roots than on later albums. Gerrard had recorded a couple of singles with her unfortunately forgotten band Microfilm, and Perry had a stint in a band called The Scavengers.
Joy Division and 154-era Wire were the springboard for much of Dead Can Dance's ideas on this album through the bass-driven post-punk songs dappled with spectral guitar work and primitive electronic underpinnings. If it weren't for the instantly recognizable twin vocals from Gerrard and Perry (the latter of whom carries the bulk of this album), Dead Can Dance's debut could be mistaken for anything that would have come out on Factory at that time. Hints of their more well-known orchestrated sound appear on this album in the form of some hammered dulcimers and tribal percussion spiralling around their songs. Altogether, it holds up surprisingly well.
On this reissue, 4AD has repackaged the album in a cardboard gatefold with a nicely cleaned up / remastered version of the album, which had always suffered from a murky sound. However, they left off the Garden Of Earthly Delights EP, which had been included on previous cd versions of this album. Whoops!
Record number three from this Italian noise rock / stoner doom power trio, and weirdly enough the first one of their records to get reviewed on the aQ list. Weird because these guys are amazing and are right up our (and presumably your) alley, a killer twisted hybrid of classic Sabbathy metal and more modern noise rock, downtuned Neurosis-y sludge and spaced out psychedelic dronemetal, a la countrymen Ufomammut. Opener "Bardo Thodol" starts out with a riff that's a dead ringer for Sleep, of course these guys add some chanted monk-like vocals, the vibe droned out and psychedelic, and when the rest of the band finally kick in, the sound is EPIC, massive, and heavy as fuck, a crushing mathy doom sludge dirge, the vocals alternating between a monstrous bellow and a wild feral shriek, the churning riffage and damaged drum pound laced with a surprising amount of melody, and all sorts of strange sounds in the background, that sound like bells and singing and other mysterious field recordings, which are apparently actual recordings of Italian funeral marches, super dramatic, especially when the band cuts out completely, leaving just the mournful wail of distant horns, draped over a strange hushed soundscape of backwards drones and muted muddied effects, the band slowly building back up again, and launching anew into another onslaught of pound and pummel, of soaring metallic heaviness.
The rest of the record unwinds in a similar fashion, the lumbering doomic heaviness tempered with long stretches of vocal drones, of spidery psychedelia, bursts of spazzed out math metal, of grinding noise rock frenzies, finishing off with the epic 16 minute two part closer, the first part of which is a gorgeous stretch of ambient minimalism, all tinkling melodies, barely there rhythms, distant swells, soft squalls of psychedelic guitar, swirling drones, and a deep rumbling buzz, that slowly builds into the second part, a feedback drenched, stop start noise rock blow out, soaring synths over crushing crashing chords, delirious drum pound and wild howled vox, a weirdly tripped out abstract psychedelic finale.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
A while back we listed/reviewed a split 7" featuring local heavies Kowloon Walled City and Southern sludgelords Thou, part of a super limited, subscription only series, which we were only able to get cuz we got some direct from the bands. We had sort of give up tracking down any of the other installments in the series (twelve singles all told, featuring Coffinworm, Fistula, Fight Amp, Pyramido, Fungal Abyss, Great Falls, Ultraphallus, The Fucking Wrath, and a bunch more we had never heard of), but then in walk aQ pals Rabbits, who just so happened to have a stash of their single in the series, and we grabbed as many as they could spare.
They share the split with Dead Elephant, an Italian noise rock outfit whose sound is massive, a churning, downtuned mathy freakout, wild drumming, dizzying riffage, progged out heaviness, laced with feral vokills and some super rad guitar harmonies, the sound lush and layered, heavily textured, dense and brutal, but with a super stripped down minimal stretch in the middle, that sounds like Shellac at 16rpm, all distant guitar melodies, dirgey bass chug, and skeletal drumming, a slow build into a roiling, hypno-rock psychedelic noise rock coda. Phew.
Rabbits counter with something much more concise, sounding like a more metal Black Flag, throat shredding vox over slithery super distorted riffage, and wild chaotic drumming, a little bit sludgey, angular and atonal guitars draped over super distorted guitar buzz, devolving into a blown out almost industrial sounding outro.
Killer tracks from both bands. And like the KWC / Thou single, the cover art is super gorgeous, the packaging ultra deluxe, letter pressed and fantastically designed, and like that other one, SUPER LIMITED, very likely these are the only copies we'll see!
Every batch of tapes we get from our pal Jason's Ormolycka label, is like weirdo music nerd Christmas. But instead of getting socks or a sweater we get some obscure Japanese grind, or some damaged electro, some goofy white boy hip hop, or some lost psychedelic rarity. There's some seriously demented curatorial music genius going on, and this latest bunch of tapes is no exception. Instead of overwhelming you with all of them at once though, we'll pick a couple of our favorites, and review them all over the course of the next few lists. But if you do want them all, and why wouldn't you, just ask, and they can be yours!
Dead Gakkahs are from Korea, and deliver a bruising, furious fastcore, short sharp burst of punk rock fury, with shrieked dual female vox, imagine a much more raw and primitive Melt-Banana maybe, simple punk metal riffs, loose pounding drumming, and paint peeling vocals, all wound up into jagged blasts of hardcore intensity, but with a weird pop sensibility that lurks just below the surface. A couple of the tracks are covers, but you'd never know it, and the band they're covering, Sugar Pie Koko, we'd never heard of (although now we're intrigued for sure). It's short, 7 songs in less that 7 minutes, but it's cheap too, and Dead Gakkahs is that rare sort of sheer punked out energy and sonic intensity that that'll likely have you flipping this tape over and over and over again.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
God Takes L.S.D. is the provocatively titled follow up to 2011's Meanwhile... In The Midwest lp from Midwestern zoner folk / psych drone one man band Dead Luke, who is backed up by a whole mess of guests here, mostly a selection of drummers, which is odd, cuz the drumming on these jams seems to mostly exist to provide a steady pulse, a sort of primal throb, buried beneath the squalls of burnt out guitar fuzz, and languorous layers of fuzz and thrum. Like that lp, this tape is a dark, washed out collection of minimal psych throb, primitive druggy blues, beholden no doubt to Spacemen 3, the same sort of lysergic creep, woozy, weary, wide eyed grooves, that start out slow, and build momentum, multiple guitars, pulsing organs, swirling vox, heady and in their own bad-trip style, pretty goddang heavy. There are moments of pure poppiness, female vox here and there, bouncy basslines and the occasional bit of jangle, even some hooks, but the bulk of God Takes L.S.D. is a glorious sprawl of laid back bummer psych, bongsmoke wreathed mesmer, and driving motorik space-kraut garage punk minimalism, fans of the usual space/drone/drug/zoner/space suspects will flip for this.
We first caught Dead Luke's name on an older Zola Jesus album, back when it was all about the murk, grit and lo-fi griminess of her sound. Wisconsin was home to both artists at the time; but she soon left for Hollywood on a meteoric rise for goth-diva fame, and Dead Luke stayed behind inoculating himself from Midwestern boredom with his spring-reverb saturated, outsider psychedelia. With a name like Dead Luke, you might half expect a suitably depressive lo-fi goth thing (especially with a couple of singles on Sacred Bones along with that former connection to Zola Jesus); but Dead Luke's downer vibe is the result of being a stoner rather than an occultist, with his awesomely lazy psychedelic numbers that channel 13 Floor Elevators through the heavily sedated period of Spacemen 3. Contemporarily speaking, this album plants itself right between the rockabilly minimalism of Dirty Beaches and the shambolic retro-blast of Thee Oh Sees. Dead Luke tangles those archetypal blues chords and strutting basslines with overblown fuzz, lo-fi crunch, and swampy spring-reverb excess, with his songs always devolving out of the verse / chorus structure of the song and into a hypnotic groove rippling with melodic yet droned-out organs, as a nod to the Perfect Prescription era bleariness from Spacemen 3. He even does an old Bo Diddley number in "I'm A Man," albeit all mumbled and narcotized. "Paranoia Is A Flower Of The Mind" must be an ode to the side effects of altered states, even as the song is a sprawling, ramshackle number of drugged out American psychedelia. Yeah, it's that good. No download code, though.
We kinda think that when we're reviewing a band's eagerly awaited new album, for instance their follow up to a debut we really liked, that it's not entirely unreasonable for us just to say, hey, please go read our review of that first record (or provide a brief summary, like in this case: awesome Swedish time trippin', '70s sounding stoner psych prog a la Dungen, Elope, Witchcraft) and then for us to go on to say, this one is ALSO awesome, so if you liked that one get this, and if you haven't heard either, get both! If you like this retro-'70s sort of thing, that is. Reasonable, right?
Dead Man's Euphoria is maybe a bit mellower than their self-titled debut, certainly much closer to the sun-dappled poppiness of Elope than to the Sabbathy proto-metal heaviness of Witchcraft. But it could definitely appeal to those into the moody folkiness -and- progginess of the latter.
They're still big time '70s throwbacks, they look and sound like bunch of long haired ol' hippies. Back to the land types, doing their thing out on some farm / commune someplace. Definitely a lazy, hazy, rustic vibe here, quite a bit Grateful Dead-y in point of fact. Some tracks are long (8, 9 proggy minutes for "The Wheel" and "Rest In Piece") while others breeze by in under two or three minutes. There's acoustic guitars and backporch bluesy bits (the singer asking someone for some lemon-squeezin' in "A Pinch Of Salt" ferinstance), and an overall placid, summery feel. Real pleasant, but ofttimes melancholic too. The vocals, particularly when handled by the guy with the wavery, breathy, close-to-tears voice, are quite emotive. (Those could be tears of joy though, the album's called Euphoria after all.)
And that's not to say that Dead Man don't heavy it up with the guitars now and then, they do, some swinging hard rock riffage certainly is heard, but this is mostly much lighter and gentler than you might be used to from the more doomy likes of Witchcraft, Burning Saviours, Graveyard... out of that Swedish '70s lovin' scene, Dead Man do the least to live up to the more evil implications of their name! But for melodiousness and progginess and flutey folkiness they're holding their own. We like!!
FYI, this will supposedly be getting a domestic cd release in June, we've just learned. Also they should be coming over to the US for a tour this fall, cool!
Ok, we don't know what sort of time warp technology they've developed over there in Sweden, but it does the job. I mean, if the US Navy ever wants to find out just what happened with that aircraft carrier or whatever from the 1940s (y'know, they made a movie about it, The Final Countdown or The Philadelphia Experiment wasn't it?), we'd say don't bother asking Michael J. Fox, get somebody over in Sweden to explain. They obviously have the time travel thing figured out. And best of all, they use it to make more rock and roll bands like in the good ol' days of acid rock and psychedelia!! Bands like Witchcraft and Elope and Dungen, who sound more 1970 than 2006. We've mentioned them all before, and if you know 'em and love 'em, well here's *another* group of Swedes that we think fans of those bands should check out. Dead Man! Long hair, bright harmonies, folky melodies, acoustic strum, heavy riffs, trippy vibes... even a 14-minute long experimental prog finale. Yep, definite time warp. Like Witchcraft and those others, they never betray their modernity. No anachronistic hints of '90s stoner rock or alternative rock or metal or anything. Really, though it -says- this debut full-length was recorded in 2005, it's like no rock music past, say, 1974 seems to have ever entered their ears.
Despite being called Dead Man this isn't particularly a dark album... just heavy psych in the old style. Some tracks are hard rockers, others spaced out and Floydian, even a little bit on the rustic Grateful Dead side of things... A couple of the guys in the band sing (in English), one of 'em with a wavering trill in his voice that reminds us a bit of Roger Chapman from Family, whereas the other singer has a stronger Swedish accent giving more of that Dungen flavor. The Norwegian '70s heavy psych act November could be one definite influence on these guys.
Again, although we do suspect the use of time-travel technology, we're also aware that Dead Man's guitarist used to play drums in Norrsken, Magnus Pellander's band before he formed Witchcraft. I guess he stole a page from Magnus' spellbook, temporal magic chapter. Meanwhile, two of the other members were in Swedish bands called The Strollers and The Roadrunners -- never heard them but boy those names are EXACTLY what the sort of '60s garage/beat bands that would have evolved into a band like Dead Man would have been called -- had this all really transpired 35 years ago like it sounds. Sure, not a lot of points for originality, but plenty for verisimilitude. We say, right on, Dead Man!
Dead Meadow time again, ah it's always so nice. It's like being told it's time to take an afternoon nap, a *heavy* nap that is, wrapped in the warm comfort of Dead Meadow's vibrations. DC's Dead Meadow are throwbacks to an earlier age, when bellbottoms and bongs were the order of the day and bands played 'head' music... Kitsch that might be now, but damn they're good and we can all use a good nap once in a while, 'specially one that'll let us do a Rip Van Winkle in reverse and wind up spending a blissed out afternoon in 1969, y'know? It's all very very stoned, Dead Meadow spacing-out more than ever before over the course of this 57 minute cd/double lp. More dreamy than heavy this time out, really, I mean it is "heavy, maaan" heavy, but not as Blue Cheery as before (or maybe they've gotten into the latter, less-well-known, mellower Blue Cheer LPs). Even with the addition of a second guitar player to the line-up, Dead Meadow are now more light and drifty than lugubrious and dirgey. Hypnotic as always, but the thudding riffs are taking a back seat to the melodies here, rustic hippy sundappled hazy smoke melodies. And it's a beautiful thing. I mean, don't worry, they've still got their Sleep's Holy Mountain moments but we think their Pink Floyd tendencies are getting the upper hand here. I guess they called it Feathers for a reason. But we're pretty sure that if you liked their last album Shivering King, you'll like this!
