You know how you can go on at length about this and that, but when you prepare to talk about that one thing you totally love, you find yourself completely tongue tied. I, Andee, kind of feel like that about this record. The minute we put this on, I knew this
Scott Tuma is probably not a household name to most of you, except those of you, who like me, were obsessed with Souled American, since that's where he spent most of the eighties, helping create those molasses slow, rickety bluegrass song-skeletons that we here at AQ love so much. And his time spent in Souled American shows here, on his first 'solo' record. But unlike the stoned and unsteady lurch of SA, 'Hard Again' is all crystalline shimmer, with Tuma's guitar, guiding us unsteadily through soundscapes of tape hiss and skittering snares, moaning chords and weeping melodies.
Take a little John Fahey, Jim O'Rourke's Bad Timing, Souled American, maybe some spacy Brian Eno, play it back on a ancient tape machine, and listen to these understated and completely gorgeous guitarscapes, warbling notes, shimmering harmonics and tape hiss and ambient noise all over. Some of the tracks take the Souled American sound and stretch it to its breaking point. Notes versus space, and the space always wins. But the space is never complete, each note rings out, reverberating into the next, creating a delicate latticework of notes and overtones. On one of the tracks a drummer chimes in, but takes a completely new direction with his kit, sounding as if pebbles and sand were being scattered on the snare, with rattles and sizzles scattered between the notes of the lush guitar. Probably the closest 'Hard Again' gets to an actual song is song 5. Wintery and glistening, with carnival melodies played unsteadily and gently, evoking late afternoon strolls through abandoned carnival midways, light blanket of snow on the ground, while the entire scene is hazy seen through the veil of snowflakes filling the sky. This record is just one long lush walk through a cloudy landscape of foggy daydreams and wistful memories. Similar to the way Philip Jeck takes turntables and crafts old fashioned film strip flashbacks of days gone by, Tuma, takes the guitar, and paints vivid images, faded by the passing of time, the snow on the ground, the water in the basement and the rays of the sun, and evidence by clicks and whirrs and hum, which only add another layer to this already rich document. SO so beautiful.
Bristol-based Up Bustle & Out exhibit a genuine fondness for world music (heck I thought this whole time they were from South America), a fetish which can be incredibly annoying when appropriated by talentless DJs, but in the hands of this duo, the results
The "Audiolounge" was held in the foyer of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts as a deliberate attempt to avoid a concert hall or club experience. Instead, this night-long event was a combination of a hands-on workshop and audio / visual installation. This double CD audio document features musical selections from Robert Lippok (from To Rococo Rot), Console & Andreas Ammer (regular
While the first Bombay the Hard Way disc featured funky themes from '70s Bollywood films doctored and augmented by the talents of the Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, this here volume 2 takes on the next generation of films -- stuff from the '80s. A lot of it is
The UK's Outcaste label strikes again with this fab compilation of "Indo-Jazz", 14 tracks of Indian-music infused jazz, uh, fusion from the '70s. We're told most tracks are taken from super rare and collectable records and we don't doubt it. Funky, fun stuff with tabla, sitar, and so forth mixing it up with various Western electric instruments. Way more than those lame DJ-mixed "Bombay
Limited to 600 copies (website says 700, they've probably got 3000), tracks featured here can also be found on the Tigerbeat6 Inc. 2cd compilation (save for a sneaky bonus Kid 606 track). This miniature, fuck-withable vinyl edition features D84 (aka Bevin Blechdom), Dwayne Sodahberk, com.a, Nut'n'Honey, Kevin Blechdom, Fossil and the aforementioned Kid (two tracks here).
Much as we cringe at the ridiculous plethora of divisive genre tags flying about these days, we have to say that many many songs on this compilation define the "indie-tronica" label. Twee kiddie Casio lo-lo-fi pop. As difficult as it is to imagine, this is sweeter than anything from the candy-coated Kindercore family. Of the 24 artists on this cd, some familiar you might recognize:
In an attempt to come up with the perfect compilation (in the spirit of collections like No New York, Flex Your Head, Not So Quiet on the Western Front and the like), Mike Troubleman took four years to compile this appropriately titled "Mix Tape" of bands he's
More totally out-there, free form experimental hip hop from the always awesome Anticon collective. Everything we've come to expect and love about the Anticon folks: whiny white boy flow, songs that are snippets and vice versa, erratic and completely unpredictable samples, and hiccupping stop/start rhythms. Ridiculous, but not silly. Funky, but impossible to dance to. Serious
A very limited edition "tour only" four song split EP: one track by space rock vets Windy and Carl and three by no-slouch upstarts Landing. Enveloping mists of blissful drones, gentle twinkling guitar and an occasional sleepy boy murmur. With sleeve art hand-painted by Windy.
P.S. Windy of AQ is not Windy of Windy & Carl!
Don't be fooled by the pretty purple cake on the cover. This is some whisky-swillin', psych-y, space-y slow-to-mid-tempo blues with ragged vocals. Sort of Husker Du-esque.
"Death Penalty" is one of the lost metal albums from the early '80s, falling victim to its own indecisiveness, not that such is a bad thing. Never really staying "true" either to the glam metal of Hanoi Rocks, Fastway, and Motley Crue or to the shocking horror
Witchfinder General's second album picks up right where "Death Penalty" left off, with an album split evenly between the party rock elements from the New Wave of British Metal back in 1983 and their undeniable influence from Sabbath. Just as bipolar
Swiss experimental, improvising "jazz" guitarist Stephan Wittwer presents his first solo disc in eleven years. It's guitar, both live and digitally processed, that's been layered into a dense and abstract sound-shimmer. Droning, noisy, rhythmic, skronky, ambient: he does it all! Another great Grob label release, for those into difficult, avantgarde styles of guitar manipulation.
These hard-working San Francisco (by way of Delaware and Philadelphia -- no they're not from Detroit but they sort of sound like they should be) boys offer up another album. Stoner rock, garage punk, 60's R&B: they combine all that and more, and kick ass in the process. "Shadows On The Sun" drops the vocal effects that were previously their trademark...we kinda miss that but they still
Throughout the '90s, the legendary post-industrial ensemble Zoviet France had experienced a handful of changes within its anonymous citizenship, with newcomers bringing forth digital technologies and propensities for that 'new' electronica sound. While Zoviet France itself maintained its aesthetic trajectory of building miasmic looping drones and radical dub deconstructions that
