Drone Records -- run by Stefan Knappe of Troum and Maeror Tri -- exclusively produces seven inches mostly by emerging artists who specialize in expressive drone work (hence the label name). While there is something to be said for Drone's dedication to unknown artists, the work that comes from the ongoing series tends to be some of the best work from each of the artists' respective
This is certainly one of the more curious 7"s from the Drone series, as No offers a series of vacant compositions for whispy synthetic trills, nervous vibrations offering the faintest shadow of a melody, and plinking piano reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's "A Missing Sense" or the Robert Ashley inspired tracks from "Automating Volume One." An interesting detour from this series that tends to center around the densely packed layers of dark guitar ambience from Knappe's Troum and Maeror Tri. Limited to 250 copies.
There are those of us at this fine institution who wish to declare open season on Jim O'Rourke, and start blasting shotgun shells at him, his bunny suit, his 'post-irony' (whatever the fuck that is), and his chameleon-like approach towards all forms of music.
Promoted as his electronic glitch album, "I'm Happy, And I'm Singing, And A 1, 2, 3, 4" has been conveniently released on the Austrian electronic glitch label Mego. Just like Mego's uber talented Christian Fennesz, O'Rourke fuses elements of antique melodic signatures within a Powerbook generated disfiguration into complex networks of sound that retain the timbre and colour of the original sounds in spite of the digital glitch manifestation. Initially, this album is nothing more than another pleasantly playful recombination of the current glitch aesthetic. He applies the Supercollider treatment to an accordion to dislocate the souce material with a fluctuating system of interlocking repetitive samples sounding like a digitized update of Frippertronics or even Terry Riley's time lag generator. Nice, but is completely overwhelmed by the same idea found on the Keith Fullerton Whitman album "21:30 For Acoustic Guitar" He follows this up with some fey dinner jazz piano lines and summertime guitar picking run through gossamer digitalized syncopations. Again, nice but nothing that Stephan Mathieu, Ekkhard Ehlers, or Fennesz haven't done better.
*However* if you were to stop listening to these two tracks, before getting to the 20-plus minute finale, you would have missed one of O'Rourke's finest moments alongside the criminally overlooked "Disengage" and slowly antagonistic "Happy Days." "And A 1, 2, 3, 4" (it appears that the song titles are just fragments of the album's title) is beautiful digital threnody with sombre violins passing through a Feldman like alternation through a harmonic series of notes. While it could be said that O'Rourke is *again* mimicking another artist, he does apply an ample amount of digtal signal processing (lots of warbled tremolo, granular dispersion, etc.) offering that which I've rarely heard from Jim O'Rourke: something "new."
During the past four or five years, the Raster Noton label has developed a very precise aesthetic or language of the electronic glitch within in a post-techno context. While artists like Goem and Taylor Deupree have taken the Raster Noton vocabulary of utopian purity and clinical sterility as an endgame of overly conceptualized minimalism, Raster Noton has recognized the folly of
One bizarre fact that we overlooked in our review of the reissue of Ozzy Osbourne's "Blizzard of Ozz": the bass and drum parts have been totally re-recorded!! Weird. Apparently due to some sort of monetary dispute with the original rhythm section of bassist
More soothing, minimal atmospheric washes with deeeep bass thuds from Mark Nelson (also of Labradford). We've had a number of people come in lately asking for "relaxing music", and well, if any of those folks are listening now, they can be assured that Pan
College rock lives on. And David Bazan, Pedro The Lion's mainman has been at it for many a year now. Mopey boy vocals and fuzzy electric guitars that bring memories burbling back of the late '80s / early '90s college radio darlings like Buffalo Tom, Dinosaur
Outside of the impressive techno-minimalism of their group Pan Sonic, Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen have been developing very distinctive styles that veer considerably from their partnered work. Where Vainio has taken to the laptop generation of fractured
If you're really interested in the Piiri sound, you might be better served by those hard to find Raster Noton 10"s...but they *are* hard to find.
Here's the record that was never released on account of the Manson murders! (More on that in a second.) This double cd contains all the recordings of Public Nuisance, an obscure (but pretty great) teenage garage/psych band that got together in Sacramento circa 1964. As befits their punky name, they looked like a bunch of hoods, decked out in all-black outfits, with two of 'em sporting proto-Ramones style long hair. That, plus the fact that we read they were like an American version of the wild and crazy English freakbeat bands, piqued our curiosity big time. Supposedly, also, they were as "heavy as the Stooges". The truth is, that's a bit of a stretch. Some of this *is* at least heavier than, if not the Stooges, the Stones, but they do a lot of lighter, Beatles-y stuff too. They perform a nice cover of the Beatles' "I'm Only Sleeping" in fact. So they were as much a pop-psych band as they were a down and dirty garage combo. On the other hand, their song "Love Is A Feeling" sounds EXACTLY like the White Stripes! The 28 tracks here actually cover quite a wide spectrum of sounds from sweet, harpsichord and theremin laced pop to raw, primal R&B stomp w/ plenty o' fuzz. This collection mainly consists of 1969 sessions recorded for an LP that never came out 'cause their label was owned by Terry Melcher, the guy who also owned the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate! After the murders, Melcher, afraid for his life, went into hiding and his label folded... But now, decades later, here are those unreleased sessions plus some rare singles tracks recorded under the band's earlier moniker Moss & The Rocks. Maybe a single-disc "best of" would have been more uniformly killer, and cheaper, but we can't really argue with getting to hear it all. The super thick, colorful, photo-filled cd booklet is full of essays written by Mike "Ugly Things" Stax, Clark Faville, and others -- including notes about each and every song!
Definitely something for fans of the Seeds, Stones, Creation, and "Nuggets" stuff in general to check out. Even if they're not quite the "unknown Stooges" we'd hoped for, Public Nuisance are pretty cool.
Have to admit that when I saw the name of this band I groaned and thought "oh no, not another 'The ____' retro rock band (a la The Go, The Strokes, The Gossip, The Pattern, etc etc etc). And hurrah! This isn't. What it is is very mid-'90s-ish female-fronted
OK, here's an Aquarius-approved 'high concept' album, all right: Estonian medieval music group Rondellus performing covers of Ozzy-era BLACK SABBATH songs translated into Latin!!! Now *this* sounds like a Black Mass! Backed by lute, harmonium, psaltery,
One of the best, and most original, 'tribute' records ever. Now they should go on tour with Apocalyptica (the Finnish cello quartet that does Metallica covers)!
Following their compilation release with Pink & Brown, The Lowdown and Lozenge (also on Toyo), SF's cardboard and tin foil superheroes Rubber O Cement are back with twenty-three more tracks of comical lo-fi power electronic action. Rumors (which are
Finally got more of these back in! Now in a jewel case with a few extra photos. Still super limited, so we're not sure how long we'll have these in stock. If you want one, don't dawdle. Amazing seminal punk group the Screamers hailed from Seattle/LA and,
Here is another dancey / tough / all over the place gem from the prolific duo of Akiko and Rop (from The Peechees and The Lefties and Rice, to name a few). On this record, like their previous releases, Semiautomatic fuse electronica, new wave, punk, and
Don't expect anything new from SND's third record despite Mille Plateaux's claims of "their influential progressions in electronic experimentations." As before, this Sheffied duo offer pleasant, but detatched bitstreams of muted house grooves, synthetic organ
Still crankin' out the ball-bustin' bad boy blues rock is the gent known as Mr. Jon Spencer. And along with his trusty Blues Explosion, he presents this his eighth album proper. Plenty of howlin' and an ample supply of "mama!"s and "ahkintaykitnomoah!"s,
The rare first album by Swedish stoner rockers Spiritual Beggars finally reissued on cd with four bonus tracks! Not to be confused with fellow stoner rockers Spirit Caravan, Spiritual Beggars is the band in which ex-Carcass, current Arch Enemy six stringer
This EP contains two different versions of "Art Class" a song from their most recent album Here's To Shutting Up - the album track and a live acoustic version. Sandwiched between the two are a couple of previously unreleased, suitably bittersweet Superchunk pop
A happenin' EP from the Mission's own Thug Emporium, this is underground hip hop done really well, like kitchen sink Cannibal Ox, with catchy yet sinister melodies forming a backdrop to the several guest MCs. No nonsense, no silly skits, no mistakes, nothing
Hot on the heels of their remix collection "Mixed Signals" comes this EP. It seems that recently this mellow instrumental quintet have been moving further from their gentle guitar-dominant post-rock tracks into more gentle electronic-accented post-rock sounds.
Steve Albini/Shellac is the chosen artist to curate the next All Tomorrow's Parties festival in the U.K., and so here's the requisite compilation cd. Their bands of choice are Shellac (doh!), Mission of Burma, Bonnie Prince Billy, Nina Nastasia, Threnody
Skiz Fernando, the mastermind behind WordSound, the underground illbient hiphop label outta Crooklyn, NY (now relocated to Baltimore, actually), has written, produced, and directed a straight-to-dvd movie called Crooked. It stars our favorite laid-back,
The double-disc digipack contains a dvd of "Crooked" and also a cd with the film's 21-track, 73 minute soundtrack, featuring Sensational, Anti-Pop Consortium, Spectre, Scotty Hard, Prince Paul, Unipod, Leon Lamont, Ish, Mad Luck & Robo, and Mentol Nomad. Dark, druggy, damaged, dubby hiphop in the freaky WordSound style is what you'll find here, and with the exception of Sensational's cuts, we're told all are exclusive to this soundtrack.
As for the dvd itself, well, you know how your parents taught you, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all? Well, we're gonna try to apply that rule here, but we will just say it's a sometimes amusing, mainly tedius bonus to a pretty great WordSound compilation cd! The liner notes compare it to Space Is The Place, Wild Style, Rockers, and Ghost Dog! Definitely not. Although it's funny to see Sensational acting (and he's not bad), this would have been so much better if they would have just made a real documentary about the whole WordSound scene, rather than trying to make a fictional "movie". It's also possible that Skiz and Co. were so stoned when they edited it that they left stuff in they were supposed to take out, or vice versa...
But, it has its moments -- some of the best parts feature the horrified reactions of a snotty record store clerk and a sleazy label exec to Sensational's lo-fi rap stylings. And, WordSound headz will want to check it out anyway, along with the soundtrack.
Wordsound sold us this direct, apparently it's not available through their regular distribution channels, so it may prove to be a rather "limited" release.
Now here's a collection that's guaranteed to titilate: 40 hot and sticky tracks from 70's porn flicks. And it's all over the musical map, from tracks that sound like they could be from a lost recording of Raymond Scott's 'Soothing Sounds For Sex' to some
Second compilation release from the influential and highly regarded Rough Trade shops in the UK. This collection focuses on the stores' favorite electronic artists (or in some cases influential to the genre) and songs throughout the years. Though all tracks
The Rustler is this legendary British record collector who's compiled this look at super rare funk 45s. The sort of no-name, lost-gem stuff that DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist spin on their all-45s tours, including a single that someone offered the Rustler a
Trojan records continues its English subculture series of box sets with a collection devoted to the phenomenon known as Mod. The fifty tracks collected here represent the most popularly played tracks in Mod clubs both during the style's heyday in the early
Holy crap, another compilation from everybody's favorite electronic superstar Kid 606 and friends. Compiled by Andrew Nosnitsky, the concept behind "Wrong Application" was to create audio tracks resulting from non-audio, pure data information origination.
Yet another electronic improvisation featuring Christian Fennesz, which are becoming as banal and commonplace as "electronica compilations featuring Kid 606". "Dawn" was recorded in Berlin in November, 2000 with Fennesz performing with Peter Van Bergen on
Is it a screeching petrodactyl attacking a piano? Wagner gone mad with a drum machine?? Actually this is a Nietzsche-obsessed multi-instrumentalist manaic from Austrialia. Vorak is his one-man "black metal" band, and he's either got to be joking or he is
So totally demented, so totally retarded, Vorak's 1996 debut "Triumph Of The Will" might even edge out Benighted Leams' "Astral Tenebrion" as the most retarded black metal album ever -- which means it's so amazing you'll die. Among other things, Vorak plays fretless bass and vibraphone, but it all comes out as utterly nonsensical noise. Perhaps the only "metal" thing we've heard that's more fucked than Vorak are the mp3's by Exhumed Narcissist Paleontologist (http://www.reckankomplex.com/enp) but that's definitely a joke (being Keith "Hrvatski" Whitman's death metal band).
Why did a label even release this?? We don't know, but we're glad they did. We've been dying to share this with y'all ever since we discovered it a while ago, but only just recently managed to get a few copies of this disc, cheap. (Unbelievably, there's a second Vorak album from 1998 that's equally insane, but perhaps not surprisingly it doesn't seem that anyone we deal with stocks it!).
In the last years of the seventies, X-Ray Spex, fronted by singer / songwriter Poly Styrene, were one of the most visible and artistically successful punk originals. Led by Poly Styrene who had charisma with a capital C, the British band's songs were super
Simply put, this is one of the best albums Punk ever produced (and one of Windy's all-time favorites). If you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to hear this record. YOU WILL LOVE IT.
That said, this here reissue just might turn out to be the definitive anthology of X-Ray Spex's career. There's the entirety of their Germ Free Adolescents album, and the "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!" single. And even if you have Germ Free Adolescents already, here are some plum reasons to get this double disc set: an additional ten tracks of rough mixes, instrumental versions, a song never before released, a fantastically energetic recording of their second live gig ever (1977 at the Roxy) where Poly's voice is so shot by the end of the concert that it's totally cracking (in a good way) all over "Oh Bondage! Up Yours!", and last but not least, three (quite good) songs from their 1995 reunion. Also lyrics, photos and some hard-to-read liner notes. I'm taking this home right now and seriously so should you.
Japanese duo Xinlisupreme have been touted by their label Fat Cat as a mix of My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain, and Merzbow! Fat Cat has done well to preload our expectations with three advanced references to avant-rock history, but it has to be
Another fine collection from Blood & Fire. 'Dub It To the Top' contains not only the entire 1977 Yabby You LP 'Yabby You Meets Michael Prophet: Vocal & Dub' plus 7 b-side dubs from singles he released between 1976 and 1979. All but one track (recorded at
There isn't really a review for this because, much to our disappointment, we couldn't get past the first minute of the first song. See if you can.
