It takes a lot of...well guts maybe, to be a fucking ultra-tight, super brutal grind metal powerhouse and to purposefully alienate/annoy a huge legion of possible fans by not taking your metal seriosly enough: by telling jokes, talking about cocks,
This is record number two from the Rats (following 'Fanning the Flames of Fire', a joint release between Caroline and Chicago's Up Jumps the Devil) and it's a doozy. Imagine the spazz inflicted genre hopping of Mr. Bungle, only more black metal and Venom, more Thin Lizzy, more comedy and more like your older hesh brother that's been working at the 7-11 since he dropped out of high school. The jokes are funny (kind of) and the music is punishing and furiously brutal (when it's not silly and moronic). With song titles like "Gary Drug Abusey", "Uncle Tom's of Finland", "Paper Thin Lizzy", "Straight Up Comedy Grind" and an 80's metal cover of the theme song to Beverly Hills 90210 (with a 90210 sample poking fun at fellow midwestern grinder Weasel Walter -- he of the Flying Luttenbachers, Lake of Dracula and Hatewave, among others), you might be inclined to pass off 7KDR as a novelty item -- but take out the comedic element, and you'd have a hellish, brutal metal record, better than most of their more serious minded contemporaries. I mean, if they dropped their comedy schtick and just played straight up grind/metal, they would be huge. Probably on Relapse, and selling hundreds of thousands of records. But thanks to those guts, they're on tUMULt, and Toyo and they're liable to sell more than a thousand records!!! Fans of Anal Cunt, Pig Destroyer, Drop Dead, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Dying Fetus, Bathtub Shitter, Fuck...I'm Dead, Mr. Bungle, Faxed Head and Neil Hamburger will love this.
Out, demons, out! This cd (and its companion, "I Am Lucifer") purport to document the exorcisms performed by tent revivalist A.A. Allen (1911-1970). Taken from super-rare LPs, both volumes of Allen's recorded exorcisms are full of hapless, allegedly
A "lesson in demonology" from the mind of Satan himself, speaking through a possessed woman who had been brought to Pentacostal exorcist/evangelist A.A. Allen's Miracle Revival Ministries for some spiritual healing. As with the companion volume "Crying
The self-effacing title is an elaboration of a quote from the No Neck Blues Band's David Nuss, who stated that the first cd-r from the Abrasion Ensemble was "music for the same 50 people." Now the Abrasion Ensemble is thinking really big with that album's
More weirdness from our favorite Japanese avant-hippy musical commune. Starting off with some heavy, throbbing electric psych jamming ("Psycho Buddha"), and then calming down into the folky drone-chant of "Space Age Ballad", this disc promises to be as
This is the second collaboration between Masami Akita (you know, Merzbow) and Zbigniew Karkowski, yet should not to be confused with their first record, which held the same acronymic title. While the Merzbow sound has become a beast in and of itself -- lots of furious noise, tempestuous distortion, and a predilection to inspire hyperbolic rhetoric -- Zbigniew Karkowski's aesthetic
"Opto Files" is the surprising combination of the Pole-esque neo-dub work of Denmark's Opiate and the clinically clicked rhythms of Noto (here calling himself Alva Noto, although there hasn't been any discernable difference between the Noto and Alva Noto projects). While Noto has supplied his trademarked glitchs, it is Opiate who offers a wide spectrum of color to Noto's typically
I was waiting to review this soundtrack until I had seen the movie, which finally happened last week, and all I have to say is MAN IS THAT FILM AWESOME OR WHAT. I'm not going to review the movie here or give too much away, but suffice to say that in the same
When you first see the Atomsmasher lineup: James Plotkin (ex-OLD), Dave Witte (Discordance Axis, Human Remains) and Speedranch (of '& Jansky Noise' infamy as well as contributor of vocals to the first Venetian Snares record), you might be thinking this would be
Japanese noise / experimentalist Aube (aka Akifumi Nakajima) has made his career out of manipulating a single source material into swelling collages of textural sound and droning noise. Light bulbs, water, voice, voltage controlled oscillators, steel wires, his own somatic elements (brain waves, heart beats, and lungs), and here on "Seton", stone is the source material used. At first,
Don't be fooled by the first track on this ep, a heartfelt piano ballad, complete with sentimental lyrics and an "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" style emotive guitar solo (the disc even contains an ultra cheesy video for this track as well -- is this song a joke?
Following up their 1998 disc "Dancing Drums", here's a second album of "Indian electronica" that again sees DJ and producer Badmarsh teaming up with multi-instrumentalist Shri (bass, tabla, flute...). On the UK Outcaste label, for fans of that "Untouchable Outcaste Beats" sound.
The year 2000 saw this historic (what, you didn't see it in the paper?) first-ever duo meeting between maverick improv guitarist old man Derek Bailey and AMM's percussion master Eddie Prevost. Two of the UKs most legendary, then, doing the in-the-studio-improv thing, now available on cd for you to see how it went...
Three new tracks from these delicately fey, ever-popular Scottish types: "Johnathan David", "Take Your Carriage Clock And Shove It", and "The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner".
After a few very nice ambient techno albums for the R&S sublabel Apollo, Biosphere released the purely ambient album "Substrata" in 1997 on All Saints. Now a member of the Touch Records roster, Biosphere has reissued that album as a double cd with the
Backwoods Appalachian folk twang from this trio composed of fiddle, guitar, and clawhammer banjo courtesy one of the members of Virgina's drone-psych outfit Pelt. This is straightforward old-timey music with absolutely no modern affectations. Warbling vocals and the sounds of distant trains a'passin' by. Almost all the songs are traditional numbers such as "Fair and Tender Ladies",
Now, given that I'm admittedly a little tired of Will Oldham, this new mini-album of his came as a delightful surprise. Oldham's rickety backporch warblings are wonderful, sure, but somehow, 2 or 3 albums worth of it is enough for me, and he's got 4 or 5
Rare and unreleased tracks.
Third album of crazed hardcore metal-meets-fusion from these Brooklynites. Their singer is at home with both brutal death metal grunting and Wu Tang-esque rapping but never at the same time. Don't worry, it's not nu-metal Limp Bizkit stuff, it's way more intense and bizarre and jazz-damaged.
The liner notes for Cardew's "Four Principles on Ireland" state that Cardew enjoyed three stylistic phases of musical development. The first phase found Cardew breaking from the canons of the Royal Academy of Music in the 1950s and collaborating with
'70s/'80s funk icon Bootsy gets a double cd best of set courtesy Rhino, 25 cuts of psychoticbumpschoolin' from the Bootzilla. Includes personal fave "Mug Push". Would-be funkateers lacking these tracks need to rectify that lapse immediately.
"Got the munchies... for your chocolate star"???
Detention are an improv group of students in detention hall after school. No, that's not true. Would have been cool though. Detention is a duo featuring Montreal musicians Sam Shalabi (whom you may know from the lovely psychedelica of the Shalabi Effect, as well as his band Molasses, etc.) and Alex MacSween, playing guitar and drums, respectively. This is an improv session, and
Electronic beats and synths collide with majestic black metal for this dark, bombastic album from Finnish band Diablerie. Grandiose stuff, kinda like Samael, or Covenant, but weirder.
Chicago experimentalist Kevin Drumm and German trumpet player Axel Dorner team up for a series of slow, skittery electronic interludes ala Gunter Muller (with Jim O'Rourke at the controls for one session).
The second self-released cd-r from these two turntablists, both of whom have had releases on the reknowned Bomb Records label. This time just a 25 minute excursion, but still with lots of fun party beats and clever turntablist action. Very limited.
A self-released cd-r from these two turntablists, both of whom have had releases on the reknowned Bomb Records label. Starts out with a lot of club friendly hip hop hooks and big booty rhythms, before turning more toward "Urban Revolution" style funky
Soundtrack to one of my favorite Bruce Lee movies reissued on vinyl! Starts off with moody strings and shuffling snares, that are soon joined by soaring baritone vocals, sounding a whole lot like an old Morricone western. The entire rest of the soundtrack is mostly dialogue and the sounds of fighting from the movie, with a tiny bit of incidental music. Almost as if they had just
After hearing the excellent "hillbilly drone improv" found on the recent double cd archival release "You Are My Ever Lovin'/Celestial Power" by this obscure but fascinating Fluxus artist, we were excited to see this additional archival release (of
Distributed and better known in the USA as "Deep Red", this is the wonderful soundtrack to the beautifully photographed Dario Argento classic. Twenty eight tracks total, this expanded edition features all of Goblin's contributions to the film as well as Giorgio Gaslini's chilling score.
British electro-acoustic artist Peter Green is best known for his collaborations with Mike Dred, Virtual Farmer and Laptop Dancing (both on Rephlex). This original score was commissioned by the United Spirits Theatre Company for the latest West End production of Macbeth. Not too impressive, sort of ambient electro-acoustic soundtracky stuff. Mediocre.
Who cares who Shinju Gumi is? Whoever they are, they've got mixes by Kid Loco (same as on the "Press Play" comp), Solex, Tarwater, etc. Dubby pop triphop electronica...
I went on at great length last list about the late great Hanoi Rocks. So you know how much I love this band. Trashy, punky glam pop from Finland via the UK. An unholy mix of the NY Dolls, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, and the Clash. They effortlessly
I never got to see Hanoi Rocks live, but playing live was their thing and on stage they were explosive and totally inspiring. This is their only proper live album (which is taken from the video of the same name) and features roughed up versions of all their hits as well as extended versions of 'Taxi Driver', 'Under My Wheels' (an Alice Cooper cover!) and 'Train Kept-A-Rollin'. Like all their other records, ESSENTIAL.
'Lean On Me' is a singles /rarities collection that was originally released in 1992 (shortly after the death of Razzle, and after an aborted attempt at Hanoi Rocks mk. 2 with the Clash's Terry Chimes failing to fill Razzle's shoes).
This one's mostly for the Hanoi completists, seeing as half the tracks are previously released. But it's awfully exciting to finally hear 7 unearthed, unreleased rarities, some of them outtakes from their last record and major label debut. 'Two Steps From The Move'. And as with all outtakes collections, some of the tracks should have maybe remained unreleased, but most of them are pretty great, and all of them are a welcome addition to the Hanoi Rocks canon, some of the most vibrant and under appreciated rock and roll of the last 25 years.
'Oriental Beat' is Hanoi Rocks' second record and the line up still featured their original drummer Gyp Casino (who would be replaced by Razzle a year later, and Razzle would of course be killed in an automobile accident with Vince Neil which would
It's really a testament to the songwriting of AC/DC that their songs sound great no matter who sings them, or how. Whether it's the moody mumbly Mark Kozelek versions or the twangy good ol' boy versions presented here. And boy do they sound just right here,
The only problem is the vocalist's country twang. It's SO pronounced and so purposeful sounding, we were convinced he was faking it. But once we got used to it we were digging this like crazy (well, not Allan). Nice version of 'Big Balls' too.
A band, not a person. Herman Dune is a Swedish trio (2 brothers and a non-brother drummer) living in France, and making a pleasant, lo-fi indie-pop sorta mellow racket with a certain melancholy charm. They claim the ever-popular Velvets and Can as influences, although that's not any more obvious than with anyone else."Woozy" does apply, however. The vocals sound a bit like
Featuring guests Common, Vinia Mojica, Talib Kweli and DCQ. Four versions of "The Sun God" and three of "Get Back Pt. 2".
"Lucky Cat" is yet another album from Isan, whose "Salle d'Isan" came out a couple of weeks ago. Not really ostensibly different from the preceding album, "Lucky Cat" continues down the path paved by Boards Of Canada, with pleasant if somewhat bittersweet IDM / electronica.
On the same label (part of the Hundertmark Art Gallery in Germany) that released the last Hermann Nitsch document, comes 'Solar Music' from composer Joe Jones. A gauzy and cloudy shimmering wash of keening high pitched whines, hums and whirrs, and simple and
1980 Priest album remastered and tricked out with two bonus cuts (the patriotic and very lame "Red, White & Blue" and a live "Grinder"). But the original LP tracks are where the action is: bonafide metal classics like "Living After Midnight", the seemingly autobiographical "Metal Gods" (actually, no, it's about evil robots!), and everyone's favorite sing-along, "Breaking The
"Rising from darkness where hell hath no mercy and the screams of vengeance echo on forever, only those who keep the faith shall escape the wrath of the Metallian...master of all metal." Don't provoke the Metallian, pick up this 1984 Judas Priest album in all its remastered glory and thrill to video-age classics like "Freewheel Burning" and "Love Bites". Includes, as all these remasters
1981 album remastered ("for speaker-splitting sound" it says on the cover sticker), w/ unreleased 2 bonus tracks ("Thunder Road" is the studio one, it's pretty good actually, by "Point of Entry" standards). C'mon, go hot rockin'!
Of the four newly reissued/remastered JP discs, this 1982 uber-classic and "British Steel" are the definite essentials. (Of course, there's eight others coming up in this welcome reissue program, just in time to light a fire under today's Priest to make their new disc "Demolition" live up to these old records). Fuck, this one's got "The Hellion/Electric Eye", the title track,
If you remember the Pan-Thy-Monium disc we raved about years ago, then you'll have some clue about what Karaboudjan sounds like, and how weird and amazing it is, as it's basically Pan-Thy-Monium mastermind (and celebrated Swedish metal
On Kid 606's website, he's peddling a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: "I did a remix for Kid 606 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." At least the Kid is recognizing his ubiquity within the electronica scene with a good sense of humor. "PS You Love Me" is the requisite remix album of his Mille Plateaux "PS I Love You," featuring the production techniques and electronic twiddle of
Slowly but surely, Kool Keith is losing his charm. After three progressively bad post-Dr. Octagon records (plus the inexplicably horrible Analog Brothers), we're beginning to realize just how stale Keith really is without Dan the Automator. Sure, Dr. Dooom had its moments, and Black Elvis was a somewhat humorous dis record, and yes, Keith definitely has an awesome, unmatchable vocal
Newest issue of John Darnielle's impossibly well-written music zine. It's quite fitting that all the essays are actually in the form of correspondence ("Letter to the Publicist at Touch and Go", "73 postcards to Prominent Surrealists, Most of Them Dead", etc), since Darnielle's writing style is so fucking personable, personal and appealing. Musical topics covered -- everything from
AQ is the only North American retail outlet for Last Plane to Jakarta. There's a website now, too, at http://www.lastplanetojakarta.com. All writing on the website is exclusive to it (the zine and website do not overlap) and new stuff appears every week. For those who can't get enough of Darnielle's writing, some reviews penned by Allan can also be found at the brand new website NeuMu (http://neumu.net), a smart new music website started by Michael Goldberg of Addicted to Noise fame. The reviews section is called 44.1mhz and some of his topics are Low/Dirty 3, Destroyer, Roto, The Band, Steven R. Smith, and Susperia. Enjoy! ----* ----* tUMULt New Release : ----*
Originally released in an edition of 88 on Japan's cassette-only G.R.O.S.S. label in 1994. Loop Circuit is a collaboration between Akifumi Nakajima (better known as sound artist Aube) and Dub Murashita (?). Limited to 222 copies, on vinyl only...
