Here is one third of a triple dose of bizarre that's just arrived at AQ! What's so bizarre? Well, first off, the pairing of buoyant sixties pop tunes featuring a young lad's sweet voice with the incongruous sepiatone vintage porn pics on the record sleeves. If we were to stop our description there, these would be pretty darn odd enough, but let's continue shall we? The almighty catch is that the voice in question just happens to be the one that would go on to sing for Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio! Yes, these singles are early sixties recordings by none other than Ronnie James Dio himself! We all know he's an old guy, and had heard rumours for years that his recording career began way back in 1957...well now we pretty much have the proof in the form of these three singles, reissues of tracks circa 1962 done by Dio and his teenage cronies. This is not just pre-Heavy Metal Dio, this is pre-Beatles! Poppy, doo-wop, sock hop styled stuff in the vein of Dion, Richie Valens, that sort of thing. These singles with their risque covers come randomly assorted between plain black and nice thick swirly colored vinyl. Quite a curio. And as you might imagine, we have only a few in stock!
Here is one third of a triple dose of bizarre that's just arrived at AQ! What's so bizarre? Well, first off, the pairing of buoyant sixties pop tunes featuring a young lad's sweet voice with the incongruous sepiatone vintage porn pics on the record sleeves. If we were to stop our description there, these would be pretty darn odd enough, but let's continue shall we? The almighty catch is that the voice in question just happens to be the one that would go on to sing for Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio! Yes, these singles are early sixties recordings by none other than Ronnie James Dio himself! We all know he's an old guy, and had heard rumours for years that his recording career began way back in 1957...well now we pretty much have the proof in the form of these three singles, reissues of tracks circa 1962 done by Dio and his teenage cronies. This is not just pre-Heavy Metal Dio, this is pre-Beatles! Poppy, doo-wop, sock hop styled stuff in the vein of Dion, Richie Valens, that sort of thing. These singles with their risque covers come randomly assorted between plain black and nice thick swirly colored vinyl. Quite a curio. And as you might imagine, we have only a few in stock!
Here is one third of a triple dose of bizarre that's just arrived at AQ! What's so bizarre? Well, first off, the pairing of buoyant sixties pop tunes featuring a young lad's sweet voice with the incongruous sepiatone vintage porn pics on the record sleeves. If we were to stop our description there, these would be pretty darn odd enough, but let's continue shall we? The almighty catch is that the voice in question just happens to be the one that would go on to sing for Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio! Yes, these singles are early sixties recordings by none other than Ronnie James Dio himself! We all know he's an old guy, and had heard rumours for years that his recording career began way back in 1957...well now we pretty much have the proof in the form of these three singles, reissues of tracks circa 1962 done by Dio and his teenage cronies. This is not just pre-Heavy Metal Dio, this is pre-Beatles! Poppy, doo-wop, sock hop styled stuff in the vein of Dion, Richie Valens, that sort of thing. These singles with their risque covers come randomly assorted between plain black and nice thick swirly colored vinyl. Quite a curio. And as you might imagine, we have only a few in stock!
Featuring drummer Alexander Neilson (of w/ Richard Youngs fame).
The first in a four part lp reissue series compiling the early eighties singles from legendary (and surprisingly unknown and sadly underappreciated) NZ musician singer/songwriter Bill Direen, who in a perfect world would be held in the same regard as his countrymen Alistair Galbraith, Chris Knox, Peter Jeffries and the rest. The tracks here, originally released as a 7" limited to just 100 copies, are some primo eighties NZ underground post punk / garage pop, all 4-track Velvets jangle and Wire-y angular post punk, crunchy and droney and hypnotic, driven by minimal drum pound and economic arrangements, the songs here exude a brooding mesmer, even at their most kinetic, fusing classic seventies power pop to indie rock jangle and lo-fi psychedelia, pretty fantastic stuff, and well worthy of a wider audience. Sadly, these reissues, for as sonically pleasing and long overdue as they are, will very well price out a lot of folks, as it's 4 songs, 8 minutes, at 45 rpm, essentially a 7" cut deep and loud for maximum fidelity, which we totally dig, but realize that buying all four volumes will get you about 30 minutes of music for nearly $90. We'd say it's worth it, but here's hoping someone will take all these newly remastered singles and cram em all onto an affordable cd. Until then though, this is reservedly recommended!
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!
Ex-Gories/Blacktop guy and other guys (two bass players, two drummers!) hurl some punk-garage-psycho-noise your way.
Attention Dirtbombs completists! Here's a two-disc compilations of rare songs, singles, eight new songs and over 20 covers (Gun Club, Rolling Stones, Yoko Ono, Flipper, ESG, Ohio Players, Stevie Wonder, among others)! Many of the tracks found here were recorded and just never released by the labels that took 'em on. A nice 24-page booklet accompanies the discs with tons of photos and track notes. Love your Dirtbomb grungey gutter punk rock all day long.
Their best. Amazing covers of such songs as the Underdog theme and "Livin' For The City". Having a party? Get this.
The Dirtbombs are back and they're gunnin' their hotrod, straight out of the gutter, burning bluesy rawk for fuel, all spiced up with some unexpectedly contemporary modern rock elements. Far less garage-gritty and rebelliously raunchy than any of their earlier recordings, We Have You Surrounded is at times sleeker, dancier and more trippy! The results come across as something that calls to mind TV On The Radio and EMF (check out "Indivisible" which at times bears a bizarre resemblance to the latter's hit "Unbelievable")... yes, very different! Might take some getting used to for old fans!
The first we heard from Dirty Beaches, aka Alex Zhang, was a recent split 7" with US Girls, which found Zhang doing a sort of super grimy lo-fi RnB, we also mentioned Johnny Cash, and that the sound like a murkier and less well produced How To Dress Well, which most definitely still applies on Badlands, but where on that single, we were feeling a sort of RnB vibe, here, it's more a classic rock and roll, as in the fifties, as in more specifically Elvis. Sounds weird, especially when you consider the sort of hype Dirty Beaches has been getting but, these tracks essentially sound like super low fidelity bedroom recorded Elvis jams, doused in murk and grit and grime, or draped over a looped loping churning chunk of crumbling low end.
Like some bedroom noise rocker floor core purveyor was tagged to pack up some classic crooner. Zhang's vocals are total Elvis, maybe there's a bit of a Cramps vibe, but that's essentially a goth Elvis anyway. Some of the tracks take what sounds like a snippet of some fifties rock and roll, and then loops it into a weirdly hypnotic chunk of murky minimalism, over which Zhang snarls and croons, it doesn't seem like it should work, or even sound all that good, but it does, and these songs end up sounding like weirdly timeless classic rock and roll jams from some alternate dimension, or like the perfect soundtrack to the best movie David Lynch never made.
We recently reviewed the soundtrack to a movie about water parks, by Dirty Beaches, aka Alex Zhang, and were surprised to find none of Dirty Beaches' grimy super lo-fi RnB, instead discovering a gorgeous collection of kosmische new age, lush orchestral ambience, droned out dirges, and haunting sprawls of reverby shimmer. At the time, we remember wondering it that soundtrack was simply that, a soundtrack for which Zhang composed an appropriately dreamy cinematic score, or if it in fact signified a more substantial sonic shift. Thus we weren't entirely sure what to expect from this new Dirty Beaches record. And in a way, it ends up, it's a little of both. Split into two parts, the first half, titled Drifters, returns to the sound of Badlands, the sound low fidelity and skeletal, simple programmed rhythms, loads of echo and reverb, drowsy, driving basslines, and Zhang's old style rock and roll croon. The vibe not so much RnB this time around, the opener "Night Walk" has a sort of Suicide style minimal sci-fi swagger vibe, while "I Dream In Neon" sounds like classic Depeche Mode, albeit recorded on a broken boombox. After that, while the 'sound' remains the same, Zhang definitely pushes it in all sorts of different directions - "Belgrade" is like John Carpenter or Goblin, but cooked up in a bedroom on a four track, droney and tense and spacey and hypnotically psychedelic. "Elli" is all minimal cold wave cool, while "Mirage Hall" is pulsing sci-fi electro, which gives way to the groovy, almost Caretaker sounding jazziness of Drifters' closer "Landscapes In The Mist"
The record's second half, "Love Is The Devil" definitely falls somewhere closer to that water park movie soundtrack, all drifty and swirly and abstract, warm languid tones, jazzy horns, skittering percussion, wheezing organ drones over delicate pianos, strange stretches of alien electronics, sounding a bit like primitive early electronic experiments, but here draped over spare, mournful piano melodies, swirling soaring strings, which sound so lo-fi, it almost sounds sampled, like it was recorded on a tape player off the TV, but which gives the sound a cool, sort of washed out feel, soft swirls of psychedelia bleed into more classic sounding soundtracky orchestral shimmer, which in turn gives way to some creeping pointillist drift, all spare guitar twang, and for the first time in the second half, softly crooned vocals, and finally, a sprawling stretch of haunting, minor key melancholia, hazy and washed out and woozy and dreamily lovely.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Full length number six from Dirty Beaches, aka Alex Zhang, whose from Taiwan but now calls Canada home. And like other recent DB outings, the sound of Stateless is far removed from the avant RnB murk of some past records, and more closely aligned with his more moody cinematic soundscaping, especially his gorgeous Water Park soundtrack. Stateless is similarly somber and dreamlike, four long songs, all instrumental (or mostly instrumental), unfurling a soundworld of pulsing guitarscapes, buried vocals (if those are vocals) stretched out and blurred into hazy droniness, a woozy, psychedelic thrum, that's meditative and washed out, and throbs mesmerically, almost like a more abstract take on Riley or Reich, but also wreathed in clouds of hushed drones and muted buzz. The record blossoms into lush Pop Ambient like billows, waves of chordal thrum, sun dappled and dreamy, a sort of ethereal kosmische, rife with subtle overtones, slow shifting patterns in a field of near static shimmer, that by track three, have grown even more lush and oceanic, a soaring prismatic sonic sprawl, majestic and epic, before finally settling down into a smoldering, subdued, minimal drone-folk drift, all wavery strings, and mournful melodies, a lonesome campfire threnody, but maybe more in the style of Stars Of The Lid, a glimmering sky full of muted moody streaks, haunting and melancholic, a brooding, achingly poignant slowcore ballad, that gets a little darkly jazzy right at the end, with horns subtly adding more layers to the slowly fading soundscape, evoking lonely rainswept streets, flickering streetlights, a late night in a lost city, as that city slowly disappears into the shadows, darkly and delicately dreamy, wreathed in an ethereal haze, like a faded sonic memory.
The latest from Dirty Beaches is not at all like past releases, which trafficked in a sort of grimy lo-fi RnB, since here there are no vocals, so that haunting Elvis-y croon is absent, and really, the whole dark twang slomo-soul thing has been replaced with a dreamy, ethereal, swirling liquid shimmer, which makes sense once you realize this is not in fact a new album, but is instead a soundtrack, for a film about an indoor waterpark in a mall in Canada, and Dirty Beaches does manage to conjure up the vibe of glimmering reflective sun dappled water, the music almost sounding as if it was recorded beneath the surface, a sort of blurred Oval like dreaminess, the instrumentation just oscillators, mellotrons, chamberlins, strings and processed electric guitar, all smeared into lovely swaths of hushed minimal drift.
The opener is almost New Agey, sounding a bit kosmische, but sunshiney and softly swirly, one can almost imagine floating on the open water, ears underwater, gazing at the blue sky above. The second track, titled appropriately "Floating Underwater Watching Waves", gets a little bit noisier, the sound gritty and low fidelity, with noisy swells swirling over murky melodies, and a sonar like high end pulse, haunting and hypnotic.
The rest of this brief soundtrack is separated into shorter sonic vignettes, lush orchestral drones, twang flecked, hazy slowcore dirges, swirling solo guitar thrum, echo drenched tangles of deep pools of reverb, chiming, cinematic melancholia, replete with faux woodwinds, and finally, a reprise of the opening track, that seems to let the listener, gradually disappear into the (not so) deep blue mystery of this tranquil pool in a strange Canadian waterpark. Lovely!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
We've long been big fans of our pals, local garage pop punks Dirty Ghosts. But goddamn this new single (cassingle to be exact), is leaps and bounds beyond anything we've heard up until now. Which is saying a lot. And while the whole EP is pretty rad, it'd be worth the price of admission even if it was just the track "Cataract", which is easily the single most addictive and catchy song we've heard in forever. And yeah, we know, we traffic in heavy hyperbole pretty much all the time, but while you might be inclined to take that last statement with a grain of salt, it's absolutely true. This reviewer has listened to this song no less than 50 times in the last couple weeks, and that's not counting how many times we've watched the eye popping video (check it out here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6n-DexoE14]).
Imagine if you will, a female fronted Devo, or some lost power pop new wave group from the seventies, and you'll get the gist of just how goddamn great "Cataract" is. The main hook will be lodged in your head for days, if not weeks. In fact, even when we finally got the tape for ourselves, it took forever before we could even make it past "Cataract" to listen to the rest of the songs. But we did, and goddamn this band has gotten so good. No idea why they're not HUGE. "Witch Hunt" sounds a bit like the Cars, but with way more grit and grime, and some crunchy guitars, while "Quicksand Castle" is dark and brooding and driving, and sound like's some lost post punk jam, mixed with some crazy catchy poppiness. The EP is capped off with two remixes, the first by none other than aQ beloved electro weirdo Tobacco, who turns "Cataract", into a synth soaked shimmy, all woozy, and warped, and deliriously druggy, the second by some cat called Mikey Young, that sounds like some vintage MTV jam, like Patty Smyth or the Motels, but with lots more buzz and swagger.
We can hardly wait for the full length, but in the meantime, until it finally drops, we're just gonna listen to the shit out of this! We recommend you do the same!
Shuttin' Out The World is your (and our) introduction to the fine sounds of these transplanted Dubliners, now based here in SF. It's an impressive debut album filled with somber, elegant rock pop songs. The duo Pierce Healy and Ciaran McFeeney (along with their musical comrades Desmond Shea, Dave Douglas and Jeff Lucas) craft a lush, shadowy tapestry from a variety of guitars, keyboards, strings, percussion and samples. Wonderfully earthy and resonant. Healy's deep vocals on occasion bring to mind a cross between the sensitive ache of Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo, the subtler moments of drama from Thom Yorke of Radiohead and the warm depths of Richard Buckner. Very nice.
A strange mixture of soaring vocal harmonies and odd rhythms, the Dirty Projectors genius lies in surprise. Surprising rhythms, surprising changes, surprising harmonies, some of which can take a few listens to really understand. What gets stuck in your head, though, is a vocal line here, an "oooohhhh-ahhhhh" there. The musical backdrop, at times, is almost Shaggs-like in its jerky stagger and serves as a counterpoint to the chorus of female vocal layerings. There's a lot of great guitar work in the quieter moments, sort of a what-if-Devendra-Banhart-played-in-Animal-Collective vibe. "Two Doves" takes the band on a Nick Drake guitar-and-strings trip, except with female vocals. Dirty Projectors have been compared to the Talking Heads and there is definitely some similarity in both band's artistry and skewed takes on traditional pop.
Here we have the second concept record from Dirty Projectors (a.k.a. Dave Longstreth). Many of us here at AQ had high hopes for Rise Above, a reinterpretation of the legendary punk rock album Damaged by Black Flag, having been quite impressed with DP's 2005 reinterpretation of Don Henley's The Getty Address. Plus, it's no secret that many here at AQ are Black Flag super-fans, which only added to the excitement. That said, I (Sally) feel it's important to note here that I may be the only AQ staffer largely unfamiliar with Black Flag's ouvre which is perhaps why in the end I'm writing the review. Since unfortunately, the Black Flag fans weren't all too impressed with Longstreth's re-imagining, and thought it might be interesting to get a clean perspective. So, here goes:
In many ways Dirty Projector's Rise Above sounds, not surprisingly, a lot like a musical - a reinterpretation of a rock album for theatrical presentation perhaps. It bears some similarity in style to the modern musical Rent. That said, we were initially surprised to hear that it's gained so much popularity amongst indie listeners. We don't often think of the people who come through here as having a soft side for musical theater... unless that person is me (*blush*). However, the more we listen, the more we understand. The album contains the briskness, timing, and lush arrangements of recent fave St. Vincent, the choiresque harmonizing of the Polyphonic Spree, vocal stylings that would make Prince weep and most impressively, it's all wrapped up in what could easily be described as a rock opera formula comparable to Queen. So we're not writing this one off just yet. And even some of the Black Flag folks here are beginning to soften their stance... Check out the sound samples to see where you stand... you must be curious by now.
Bjork has always thrived on collaboration, the list of folks she has worked with is pretty much a dream list of musicians and producers including Matmos, Konono No.1, Will Oldham, Zeena Parkins, Timbaland, Tricky, and tons more. But up until now she's never made an actual full album as a true collaboration, and while some of us had our doubts if the Dirty Projectors were worthy of this co-billing, it's actually a totally awesome match up.
Bjork's most resent album, Biophilia, is as dark as it is challenging yet so totally rewarding, but it's nice to get to enjoy a much more bright, colorful, and pop side of Bjork's magical presence. Dirty Projectors are all about bright colors, swirling melodies, and infectious pop, so they bring that element into these tracks, while Bjork guides them to create songs that feel like vocal miniatures from some awesome early Steve Reich or Philip Glass album. There is a feeling of bright eyed innocence and openness on this record that makes it one that we think could win over folks who have taken a little break from Bjork lately. Such a perfect record for a crisp winter day.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
From the same great tastemakers who put together the Dirty Space Disco collection that has become an all-time AQ favorite, comes this collection of sultry and sensual French psychedelia. These are the sounds and artists that have influenced folks like Sebastian Tellier, Air, Islaja, Blonde Redhead, Bjork, Broadcast, Komeda, etc.
And while we of course love the peppy sounds of classic French ye-ye pop, it's the more seductive, warped and tripped out sounds from France in the '70s that really gets us going! When we realized that one of our favorite songs of all time, "Il Pleut" by Brigitte Fontaine (complete with arrangements by Jean-Claude Vannier!) was included, we knew there was some mighty fine curatorial work going on here.
But it's not just that one track, not even close, this comp has turned us on to amazing sounds from new-to-us folks like Christophe, Nino Ferrer, Jeanne Marie Sens as well as long beloved AQ faves like Dashiell Hedayat, Ilous & Decuyper, and Francois de Roubaix. While many of their US and UK counterparts were injecting large amounts of blues and hard rock into their psychedelia, the French kept it sensual, steamy and tripped out, realizing an alternate yet completely enticing musical universe. Full on sexy psychedelic seduction! Weirdness too, like the awesome track whose grooves are backed with the sounds of revving race cars.
You'd think that with all of the band members' numerous other projects (solo efforts, Tren Brothers, playing with New Buffalo and Smog) they'd barely have time and energy left for their main band, but nay, 'tis quite the opposite, dear friends. If anything all the additional creative juices have ignited these Cinder(s). Sorry, couldn't resist the pun, but really, there are a number of new elements and ideas which have been seamlessly incorporated into the band's unmistakable sound on this, their seventh album. For one thing they've expanded their palette of instruments considerably including mandolin and... yes, bagpipes! While the trio's trademark string-laden shadows still haunt and envelop the listener as they always have, this time a few moments of light break through the darkness -- and this is where the most radical addition has been made -- in the form of two familiar female voices. Now, perhaps some dyed-in-the-wool fans may balk at this inclusion/intrusion in their beloved band's instrumental tapestry, but the unexpected vocal entrances of Ms Chan Marshall (Cat Power) on "Great Waves" and Ms Sally Timms on "Feral" are pleasant surprises. Both voices are well-suited to the band's languid melancholia, and as they only appear on two numbers, they make for nice interludes amid the seventeen other songs. A stand-out album from Dirty Three!
Lovely new album from our favorite Australian guitar/drums/violin instrumental trio...if you're a fan, you already know what this sounds like, more of their beautiful, melancholy, almost-psychedelic music. It will please you. For those unfamiliar with the D3, Ocean Songs is as fine an album as any of theirs to start with.
Perennial AQ favorite Dirty Three return with a proper follow-up to 2000's Whatever You Love You Are. While their singular sound has always been delicately gloomy, poignant instrumentals played out on guitar, simple drums, and achingly touching violin, each album applies the chiaroscuro in a slightly different way. On earlier albums such as Sad & Dangerous, for example, the violin delicately poured out passages so pretty they almost made up for the sadness of the compositions. On She Has No Strings Apollo, the interplay between the guitar/drums and the violin is more tension-filled and meditative -- less predictably heartwrenching, more meditative and stretched out. There's also autumnally bare piano adding an elegant stateliness to the whole affair. Very, very nice, if a touch more 'difficult' than their previous works. If you've never heard them before, we'd recommend you start with Whatever You Love but don't get me wrong, Apollo is a fine, dark record.
It's been seven years since we last heard from Down Under trio the Dirty Three, who back in the day, were definitely an huge aQ fave and consistent big seller. The first couple D3 records will definitely rank in the aQ pantheon of all time classics. But to be honest we had sort of forgotten about these guys - it's been seven years since their last album. In fact we didn't even realize they were still a band, but all it took was a few minutes of opening track "Furnace Skies" to remind us of what we'd been missing. The band laying down a gorgeous droned out, almost jazzy skitterscape, mournful violin, buzzing organ, spidery skeletal melodies, all over a bed of dense super busy drumming, we had always remembered the drumming in the Dirty Three being super simple and stripped down, but here it drives the track, positioning the song as something we'd expect to hear from fellow Aussies the Necks, heady and psychedelic, circular and cyclical, another one of those jams that we find ourselves listening to over and over before finally making it to the rest of the record. And while the rest of the record isn't nearly so dense and dark and rhythmic, it is quite haunting, and beautiful and cinematic, and the busy drumming which surfaces throughout really makes the sound something special. The rest of the record does in many places hew closer to the Dirty Three of old, which is no bad thing at all, but it's the darker, denser, heavier, busier jams that we're digging the most, the record offering the perfect balance between hushed and lovely, dark and dense, with some of the best tracks merging the two. Really great! (Vinyl version exists as well, unfortunately we ran out before the list, hopefully we'll have more for next time.)
Wow. Dirty Three's fifth album is a masterpiece of instrumental melancholia. Quiet percussion and layers of evocative guitar are overlayed by the most emotional violin parts ever. Much of this album's brilliance is due to what our ears discern as the first time the band has overdubbed distinctly different violin melodies over each other. Although they've obviously overdubbed tracks before, it was mostly similar melodies meant to fill out the sound (perhaps they were worried about being able to do it live). This time, the delicately plucked and bowed violin parts weave in and around each other to deliriously lovely effect. One of their best albums. Highly recommended.
Another batch of slow burn, churning doom drenched epic metal, steeped in convoluted math rock and blissed out post rock. You know what we're talking about. Disappearer fall WAY on the heavier end of that spectrum, with massive downtuned guitars, pummeling drums, soaring psychedelic leads and guitar harmonies, a gloriously lurching monstrous groove, loping and hypnotic, huge sweeping waves of melancholic post doom rock bliss, cymbals explode and sizzle all over the proceedings like acid rain, the bass grinds and throbs, pushing everything along like some ominous black tide, and the guitars, shit, this is all about the guitars, thick layered walls of drop-d sludge, long lazy drifts of glistening guitar minimalism, stuttery stretches of crumbling chug, swirling tangled tendrils of muted melody, all matched push for shove by the drums, sometimes a crushing caveman pound, sometimes a simple shuffling plod, other times an impossibly convoluted tribal freakout. If you still need some comparisons, Neurosis, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides, Conifer, Isis, that sort of thing, but Disappearer are all instrumental, and thus have a much more abstract and droney brooding vibe, like any one of those bands, jamming afterhours, not really playing songs, or a show, just slowly carving huge swaths of monumental heaviness under the cloak of darkness.
Record #2 from Chicago's murky psychlords Disappears. The sound here isn't so much a drastic departure from the band's previous Lux album as it is a logical extension (dig the similarly minimal artwork). While being tuneful and catchy, Disappears also come off as a bit tougher than many of their contemporaries, thanks in part to Brian Case's shouty monotone (in a good way) vocals and an overall... uh, "beefiness" that many bands of this ilk are seriously lacking. Guider wraps listeners in a warm blanket of analog fuzz with the pounding krauty rhythms and hella reverb that we can't get enough of. The band locks into a groove and takes you on a pleasantly rocking journey that you can also shake your ass and swagger to. Check it out!
An opaque record for sure, Disappears' Irreal stakes out an alternate path for the band's hypnorock agenda, which has had more than a few epic riffs that would have made for a classic blast-off groove on your favorite Sonic Youth or Spacemen 3 album. It's even hard to tell if former Sonic Youth timekeeper Steve Shelley is still sitting behind the kit as he was on the previous couple of albums. His input for rhythmic dynamics and start-stop-start avant-pop propulsion really brought out the best in Disappears songwriting; and his knack for also sitting back in a metronomic pulse might be at play here on Irreal. Whoever this drummer may be lays down skeletal rhythms that accompany neck-throttled jittery guitar scratches even more reductive than those offered by Andy Gill from Gang Of Four and monophunk basslines as lifted from the revamped Swans without the bloodlust and ritualized violence. Diamond fractured drones and ghostly echoes slip between all of the spaces that Disappears design in their songs, bumping into the equally fragmented vocal recitations and gliding elsewhere, leaving behind the hint of what may have been a melody. The stark mood of Irreal is distinctly dystopian in nature, evacuating those moments of noise-pop pleasure seeking found earlier in their catalog and replacing them with the drained exasperation of any number of JG Ballard's anti-heroes caught within the feedback loops of a society collapsing upon itself.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
After a few singles and an awesome live cassette on PlusTapes, Chicago psych dudes Disappears finally unleash their proper debut album, and it's something that should find itself at home in the record collections of people who enjoy groups like Wooden Shjips, Thee Oh Sees, and the Fresh & Onlys. In fact, your initial reaction may be that Disappears could be at home here in San Francisco with those bands, but closer inspection reveals a dark grit that is perfectly evocative of the Windy City.
The band features Brian Case, from cult faves 90 Day Men and more recently, the Ponys, and there is definitely a bit of a post-punk influence on display here, but Disappears inhabit a darkly psychedelic world with steady rhythms and lots of reverb that hits the spot pretty dang well. They never lose themselves to insane psych rambling, and these songs are nice and compact, averaging around the 3 minute mark. This allows the band to craft actual songs, and they are clearly a tight, well oiled machine of swaggering psych goodness with a nice bluesy touch. The overall sound here is very, ahem, organic, and it has a nice analog feel. There's just something about the sound of old guitars and tube amps (duh), and that sound can't be replicated by a quick stop at Guitar Center. What we're meaning to say is that this album just SOUNDS great in addition to be catchy as hell while still coming off as kind of dark and mysterious. Recommended big time.
We seem to dig Disappears more and more with each release. Pre Language finds them ripping it up so mean and lean from start to finish. With an in your face post-punk conviction that makes us think of A Frames covering Television's Marquee Moon. On the one hand their sound is bare bones and no frills dark tinted rocknroll, but on the other, there seems to be a complexity and impactfulness to all these songs. With a similar aesthetic to The Wipers, the straightforward full-on rocking of SST era Sonic Youth (SY's Steve Shelley is now the drummer for Disappears), or the most recent outings by Shellac. This is a reminder that sometimes the things that actually sound the most mean and menacing are the ones that don't try so hard to put on an act, but instead just kick out bombastic songs with full on conviction. Something really refreshing these days about a band who channel their intensity with full on punk spirit, for focused and furious sounding results. Awesome!
At the risk of slipping into hyperbole, which we do pretty much all the time anyway, so fuck it, the Posies were probably one of the best modern power pop bands EVER. Alongside Jellyfish and a few others, the Posies were one of the few bands who made record after record of nearly perfect pop, the Posies in particular crafting the sort of pop that we can never get enough of, heavy, crunchy, fuzzy, big guitars, killer harmonies, and hooks galore. If you're resistant to the idea, or for some crazy reason have never heard the Posies, take a second and go check out Frosting On The Beater, or Dear 23, or hell, almost any of their records. Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer were one of those Lennon/McCartney caliber partnerships, their voices perfectly matched, their songwriting styles so complimentary, their collaborations resulting on some of our all time favorite songs and records.
They may still be a band, but for all intents and purposes, the band is over, and while both Stringfellow and Auer have made a handful of solo records, as well as playing with other bands, it wasn't until Stringfellow hooked up with some European rockers and formed the Disciplines, that anything post-Posies has even come close. The first Disciplines record came out with so little fanfare we almost missed it, but when we did finally hear it, we were blown away, it was like the next Posies record that never was, but somehow even more rocking and heavy.
So when this new record came out, we knew there would be some pop fans out there, who might have missed out on these guys completely, so here you go, Posies obsessives, stop reading now, and just buy this, you won't be sorry, everyone else, heck, you should probably do the same, but especially if you love big, crunchy power pop, buzzy guitars, pounding drums, with a bit of a punky edge, the Disciplines, are super rocking, heavy, hooky, with Stringfellow's distinctive vocals and knack for melody and harmony transforming what could otherwise have been something much less vibrant and special into something seriously AWESOME. Every song here, super catchy, with a sound that slips from soaring jangly power pop, to crunchy urgent punkish fuzz pop, a bunch of the songs dead ringers for Posies jams, and Lydia Lunch even guests on one track, with a snarly spoken word, but seriously, pop fiends, this stuff rules, and is probably gonna be one of our pop records of the year!
Wow! Given the acrimonious break-up of Disco Inferno after their aesthetically fraught album Technicolour in 1996, we're a little shocked, yet totally stoked to see anything from Disco Inferno back in print, let along the rare EPs reissued here. This London trio formed in 1989, releasing three albums and seven eps that amounted to a brilliant mish-mash of sample-based technology, post-punk intensity, and a profoundly British mope that hangs throughout their catalogue. The first recorded forays by Disco Inferno found the group wearing their influences proudly on sonic sleeves - Joy Division, Wire, Durutti Column, and The Smiths - with the band twisting those influences into a narcotized torpour through an elliptical rhythm section that grounded the suitably delay-riddled, arppegiations and repititions from guitarist / vocalist Ian Crause. The band quickly took to MIDI technology, often sampling Crause's own guitar and alchemically rendering those into percolating satellites of effervsecent sound that orbit the song with peculiar trajectories and angles. Over time, the sampling became more and more of the focus in the band, appropriating sounds outside of their studio and fracturing all of those sounds into a more and more bizarrely splintered electronica that mutated into something grotesquely baroque, all the while hanging onto the core principles of the pop-art melody. This emphasis on sampling was an obsession for Crause after reading what David Stubbs and Simon Reynolds were championing in NME, as those two fixated on a technological thread that ran through My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, and The Young Gods. Crause was single-minded in his pursuit of figuring out how technology could be seemlessly integrated into the context of a British art-rock band, in frantic anticipation of what anybody might be doing elsewhere in the world. As such, Disco Inferno and Robert Hampson's post-Loop project Main were at the vangarde of ostensible pop bands disintegrating themselves before their audiences' eyes and ears. Where Hampson did achive escape velocity from rock's heavy gravitational pull with little to show for it after Motion Pool, Disco Inferno's internal disputes over where that technology needed to go caused so much strife as to destroy the band, with none of the members doing anything memorable since.
The 5 EPs featured here showcase that transition from an artful post-punk project conjuring the ghost of Martin Hannett into a complicated electronica ensemble that predicted how Christian Fennesz would deconstruct the spirit of The Beach Boys, but without the benefit of granulating laptop tricknology. We mentioned above that the band released seven EPs, the first two of which were compiled with their first album on the anthology entitled In Debt. The first EP in this anthology is "Summer's Last Sound" from 1992 and features two tracks that sparkle with harsichord-like patterns from the sampedelica, pulled back down to the ground by the thickly strummed bass from Paul Willmot, not to mention Crause's wistful, unpretentious vocal delivery of his deeply sad lyrics. "A Rock To Cling To" from 1993 finds the band in more of a traditional rock mode with guitars, bass, and drums, whose repetitive groove is offset by soaring bursts of sampled vocals that stretch like vapor trails glowing in moonlight. The B-side to that EP, "The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea", introduces a sample that would become common place in the ever-abstracting repetoire of Disco Inferno, that of shattering glass whose tinkling fragments of sound lock into an elegant Terry Riley patterning of minimalist rhythms. "The Last Dance" (also from 1993) features two versions of the title track, where Ian Crause has penned a damn good song that could have fit neatly in with the Johnny Marr songbook of The Smiths, but with jittery electronics and melancholy appropriations of schoolyard song puncturing Crause's crisp guitar lines. The B-side of "D.I. Go Pop" (the name of their second record, which didn't feature this track, oddly enough) is a manic affair of tape-revving guitar noise, threatening to unravel and unhinge as a spastic dervish. "Scattered Showers" is the other B-side, a beautifully poetic abstraction of British melancholy through sampled motorcycle engines forming the patterned tension beneath Crause's rain-drenched guitar strum. This EP and the next, "Second Language" from 1994, stand as the best material in Disco Inferno's short-circuited career. The title track of the latter single finds the band recycling Crause's sparkling Vini Reilly guitar into enchanting, hypnotic echoes out of which Crause concludes the track with a triumphant Brit-rock riff obviously alluding to the comtemporary bombast of Oasis. "At The End Of The Line" follows the aforementioned "Scattered Showers" as Disco Inferno's penchant for beautiful miserablism cast through refracted guitar lines into shoegaze bliss. The final single "It's A Kids World" finds the band at odds with itself, creating a jubilant kaleidoscope out of the drum crash from Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" with Umbrellas of Cherbourg-esque flute trills of baroque pop guiding this atypically uptempo number. The B-side "A Night On The Tiles" is a Felini-esque collage of vaudevillian records, screaming girls, and smashed glass coming across more like a diabolical Nurse With Wound track than anything else found in their catalogue. Whew!
If you've just so much as glanced in the direction of Stereolab, Notwist, Fennesz, My Bloody Valentine, Spiritualized, and/or Animal Collective, you really owe it to yourself to check out Disco Inferno. They really are that good! We can only hope that D.I. Go Pop and In Debt (both of which are long out of print) will see the light of day once again, given the inevitible interest that will come from this anthology from one of the pioneers of avant-rock.
Another reissue of crucial stuff by these grindcore heroes, Hydrahead making it possible now for your entire Discordance Axis cd collection to be all uniformly packaged in DVD-style cases. And they do look spiffy. Inside this one you'll find a big ol' booklet of lyrics and detailed commentary, along with a 31-track cd of killer grind: DA's second album Jouhou from 1997 plus their sides of splits with Melt Banana (for whom DA's drum god Dave Witte later played) and Plutocracy, and a live, improvised track from their final show in Tokyo in '98.
If you already have the Jouhou cd released a few years ago in the regular jewel case, you've got all the same tracks. But the booklet here is expanded and redesigned and of course now it matches the packaging of your The Inalienable Dreamless and Original Sound Version 1992-1995 disc. What? You like grind and you don't have those? Well any or all would be good places to start.
You wanna know what we mean when we talk about "grind"? This band could be the dictionary definition of grindcore. Not 'cause they're the most typical or generic, but rather because they're an exemplary grindcore band in so many respects. They'll certainly give you a good idea of grind: short, sharp, stop start songs with screamy grrrrrrr vocals, angular metallic riffs, and insane drumming (on most of the material here, by the godlike Dave Witte, ex-Human Remains, also of Burnt By The Sun and Melt-Banana). A political lyrical stance is also part of the equation, although these guys are also obsessed with information theory and Japan-fandom (the culture, not the band).
This disc is a "perfect edit" reissued collection of stuff from this NJ "ninja grindcore" unit. Their first album Ulterior, live stuff, unreleased recordings (their first rehearsal!), tracks from split releases and comps and singles...approximately one gazillion tracks total, including sometimes multiple versions of the same song, like any good grindcore discographical release. All packaged in a DVD case, like their masterpiece Inalienable Dreamless, which allows for a big thick booklet of lyrics, art, and commentary. The self-deprecating liner notes are revealing and funny, great reading for fans, for example:
"Our policy has always been if anyone likes any of our slow parts, we make them shorter or cut them entirely" and "The title track and yowza is it lame". The booklet is great, but it's the disc that (at proper volume) will really get your attention. It's a grind cornucopia, lurching from blasting beatdowns to quirky noise to almost-post-rock, even including a cover of Black Flag's "Gimme Gimme Gimme". Essential for anyone who is or wants to be grind-savvy.
Arguably the greatest grind band ever! Meaning you could argue they weren't, but you would be dead wrong and would summarily lose any argument to the contrary. DA combined impossibly complex composition, with furiously blurred execution, all held together by some of the most creative, innovative and cryptic design we've seen in ages, -especially- from a grind or metal band! They added a hyper intellectual slant to an already politically charged scene, forgoing all the gore and guts and stuff in lieu of, well, ART. The breakup of Discordance Axis was a blow to metal and grindcore freaks worldwide and as always with things like that, rumors started circulating about a lost, unreleased DA record. Well, the rumors were partially true. Two songs, recorded but unreleased did in fact exist, and are finally getting released with loads of extra stuff, in that immediately recognizable Hydra Head / Discordance Axis oversized DVD style packaging. So the good news: the two new songs are AMAZING, fucked up and brutal, dizzyingly and impossibly dense and intricate. The bad news: the two new tracks clock in at a total time of 1:42. But thankfully DA manage to pack in about a jillion changes and parts into that minute and a half.
So then there's the extra bonus material on this here DA 'single'. First you've got ten tracks credited to 'Cide Project' which could be a real band but is probably more likely one of the DA guys fucking around on his computer. That said, these tracks are SO AWESOME, fully rendered MIDI versions of all your favorite DA tracks. Fuzzy computer synths and chaotic drum programming turn these grind classics into buzzing, fuzzed out midi blurs. Like a grindcore Anton Maiden! Then there's a bunch of bands covering their favorite DA tracks, Gate, Mortalized, Noiseear, none of whom we've heard of but who all offer up appropriately thrashing grinding tribute. Then there's Melt Banana's cover, which turns the DA original into a minute of bizarre skronky, bleeping blooping grindpop. Also included is the full version of Merzbow's interpretation of DA's The Inalienable Dreamless, an insanely chaotic mix of Japanoise, spacerock skree, and about a million skipping Discordance Axis cds. And finally, to finish things off, the first song from DA vocalist Jon Chang's new outfit Gridlink, a dense shrieking exercise in turbulent, super spastic grind! Now we can all anxiously await the forthcoming War Chalking record, featuring members of Discordance Axis, Human Remains and Burnt By The Sun (counting some folks twice or thrice!). Yowza!
Yeah, I know we listed this last time, but it sort of got short shrift, especially seeing as this record, and this band are the absolute masters of technical grind, and have taken their chosen form and stretched it farther then anyone could have imagined, creating something furious and brutal and violent and frightening, but absolutley stunning at the same time. And stunning in ways other than musical, which is remarkable for a genre that often shuns the avant garde, or doesn't understand it. The cd comes housed in a DVD box, allowing for more artwork, and the gorgeous minimal cover art certainly benefits. The cover and the booklet, continue the DA tradition of hyper minimalism, obfuscated text, and a wicked eye for design. Sleek and smooth, warm, and slightly sinister. And that subtlety bleeds into the sound as well. You would think that a 17 song, 24 minute cd would be short on subtlety and long on bombast, and maybe you'd be half right. DA temper their lightning speed metalcore bombast with, complex song structures, a breathtaking technical prowess, and fleeting moments of dark ambience, classic metal riffing, and face melting noise. This is about as close to perfection, both visually and sonically, as any grindcore/metalcore I have ever heard or seen. Seriously.
