While last year's brillant "A Single Book Of Songs" is surely this uniquely progressive Swedish stoner rock band's masterpiece to date, fans will definitely want to pick up this disc, which puts 17 tracks from Mammoth Volume's old demo(s) circa '97 on a proper cd for the first time. Unlike the majority of bands from Sweden and elsewhere who have embraced the "stoner rock" tag, Mammoth Volume aren't just another Kyuss clone (even if at times they do sound a bit like Queens of the Stone Age). No, their influences are REALLY from the '70s, and more diverse: Black Sabbath, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Yes, Deep Purple, King Crimson. They can be super heavy and riffin', then sensitive and acoustic, then jazzy and weird -- they don't limit themselves.
Double disc reissue of legendary producer Marley Marl's first two full length albums, released in '88 and '91 respectively. Queens-born Marley Marl *founded* the Cold Chillin' label whose Juice Crew in turn launched the careers of Roxanne Shante, Masta Ace, Biz Markie, Kool G Rap, etc. These two albums feature all of those mentioned above, also LL Cool J (Marl produced his million-selling Mama Said Knock You Out), Big Daddy Kane, Heavy D, and more. The cuts are bright and crisp with sampled 'n looped hooks galore. Cool.
Hailing from Birmingham, England, the five-piece sludgemetal annihilation squad called Mistress is miserable, drunken, and dirty, quite literally -- just take a look at this list of the band members names and what they're credited with --
Misery: notes
Drunken: noise
Dirty: bulldozerbassing
Dave Cunt: voice
Migg: total destruction of wooden coffins (and cymbals)
That tells you something right there, doesn't it? On their self-titled debut cd, this filthy fivesome crank out wretched distortion/fuzz laden doomgrind in the vein of Eyehategod and Iron Monkey, with some effective black metal touches here and there (keyboards used sparingly), as on the track "Rebecca". Which makes sense, since singer Dave is a member of awesome British black metal act Anaal Nathrakh that we love so much! Of course Mistress isn't nearly as intense as Anaal (what is?), and actually as doom sludge stuff goes they're also not on par with the likes of Khanate or Corrupted, quite. But they're still pretty good. They get all rock n' roll (kinda in the style of Floridian sludge-meisters Cavity) with midtempo Sabbath-dragged-through-the-mud cuts like "Goatboy" and "Necronaut". But Mistress are at their best when they take that brand of doominess to its utter extreme on the closing, twelve minute long psychedelic noise/feedback filled drone metal epic "Lord Worm". Good stuff, that.
Outside of his 'proper' cd productions (one on Anomalous, and one pending on Die Stadt), the congenial yet humble Darren Tate has released a handful of CD-Rs of his amazing drone / field recording constructions that follow in the traditions of the numerous Ora CD-Rs he published through his former Gnome imprint. In spite of the most paltry amount of information (just the name of the project, and not even the title!), it is quite clear that Tate is working again with long time collaborator Colin Potter, as his exceptional ear and studio crammed with gear help extract the vibrant sonorities from Tate's field recordings. Each of the three tracks on "Places" open with field recordings of crackled branches, bird calls, the burbling brooks, and the muffled activity of a heavy log getting pulled through. Out of these, Tate and Potter develop a thick droning mass, stretching samples into wheezing hiss, synthetic ebbings, and deep droning. In conjunction with the recordings of more natural activities , Monos' drone work doesn't lend for an easy listening experience. This is actually the second pressing of this album, and again as a miniscule edition of 50.
Murmer is the work of the lowercase / microsound newcomer Patrick McGinley, who has coaxed an impressive orchestration out of the transient, yet distinctly urban sounds of his native London. McGinley specifically cites the air vent on a 73 bus, the esclator at the Pimlico tube station, and the air vent of a Austin Mini, as well as datastreams, feedback, a malfunctioning gas heater, and other elements of any city's general din. Through a number of digital filterings, he polishes the rough source material into looped samples of lustrous tones. While not exactly a generative system of sound construction, Murmer strives to set up situations in which a number of slightly misaligned loops of complementary sounds, then step back to let those loops weave and phase amongst themselves.
While the tones that Murmer uses seem very much informed by the work of Richard Chartier, this album, with all of its complex interweavings, is much more conducive to metaphor, and to these ears has the feel of the 'classic' futurism of Jules Verne with guilded machines whiring in near synchronicity to achieve time travel. All in all, this makes for an excellent debut, if only a CD-R pressing. Fortunately, it's been very nicely packaged!
This band is much better than their horrible name would imply. My Cat Is An Alien is the delicate avant-rock project of the Italian brothers Maurizio and Roberto Opalio, who have garnered a considerable amount of respect from Sonic Youth. So much so that MCIAA has opened for SY on a number of recent Italian gigs, jammed with Kim Gordon during one of those tours, and got this album released through Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label. The brothers open their album very quietly with quiet Slint / Tarentel guitar chords and lots of silence between the repeated stanzas. Equally spartan blurts of synthetic 8-bit noise emerge in congress with the guitars, eventually doubling up with a time-stretched / down-pitched reflection of itself. All of this very slowly gets smeared into a spiralling pattern of cosmic delay and tape-loop mechanisms. This track (or movement as MCIAA calls it) takes up all of side one, and is worth the prices of admission alone. The rest of the album is a bit of a turn downhill. Side two tumbles through a passage of lo-fi noise, sounding like a hand-cranked cheese grater being amplified with an occasional John Fahey-esque splutter behind it all. This lp had originally been released as a CD-R / demo before it was sent to Thurston Moore. The other LP is a one-sided affair with the band spitting out spastic sort-of-no-wave.
Now known as *Los* Natas rather than just plain Natas (to avoid confusion with the hiphop group of the same name?), this excellent Argentinian stoner rock outfit are back at last with a follow-up to their highly regarded (around AQ anyway) 1999 album "Ciudad de Brahman" (which is sadly out of print now, as it was released by the now defunct Man's Ruin label -- at the time we proclaimed it one of said label's best releases ever). An atmospheric Kyuss flavor is still present, but they've really developed from their humble beginnings into a powerful and original band. Harking back to lost wonders of obscure 1970s Latin American heavy psych, the Los Natas trio's music is heavy, rumbling stuff with stretches of spacey, almost jazz improv, acoustic breaks, and of course Spanish language vocals... They rock out on tracks like "Lei Motive" (with some unexpected almost boogie-woogie piano dropping into the middle of the song) and get all abstract and avantgarde on gently droning, drugged out trips like "Planeta Solitario". Recorded in Argentina by SF's own master of heaviness Billy Anderson (producer for Neurosis, High On Fire, Cathedral, Melvins, etc.), this is definitely one of the best heavy, psychedelic rock releases of the year thus far! (PS look out for another upcoming Los Natas disc to be released on Jussi of Circle's Ektro label someday.)
We want to like this British stoner rock band, really we do, but despite their hard-rockin, heavy ways we really just can't get into 'em that much. But, they're ok. This, their third or fourth album (see, we just don't care) is produced by one guy from Kyuss and has another, their singer, doing guest vocals on two songs. But (to their credit, perhaps) they don't sound like those oft-cloned desert rockers. No, "Coup De Grace" is more of a shit-kickin' motorcycle-ridin' rawk affair with gruff vocals and cowboy boots. More nu-grunge for the '00s. We can't really say what if anything is wrong with this, but it's just not grabbing anyone here at the moment, sorry. Maybe we need to hear it at a party or something. Stoner rock types should check out the audio clip for yourselves and see what you think.
No, not the Whitesnake song, though surely a somewhat ironic reference. Craig and Andrew of Leeds outfit Hood bring us their second album (not including a handful of singles) of pretty downpop electronica. Much like the electronic efforts of their former group or a melancholic Aphex Twin, the combination of minimal breakbeats and soft atmospherics offer listeners a pleasant, though sometimes tedious exploration of the coalescence of organisms and digitalia. Nice, but nothing groundbreaking here. Featuring guest vocals by Nicola of Empress / Boyracer fame.
We finally got our hands on enough of these to list. The title is a nod to Marcel Duchamp's famous, scandalous painting Nude Descending A Staircase. This 7" by DJ Rupture will most definitely not raise anywhere near the frenzy that the great surrealist's work did. Two tracks that you may recognize from his incredible "Gold Teeth Thief" mix cd.
Local DJ Cheb i Sabbah returns with the third installment in his trilogy of Indian classical music infused electronica. Divided in two parts: North & South, Krishna Lila takes as its inspiration the devotional musics of Northern and Southern India. Recorded in Madras, Bombay and New Delhi, India with a score of Indian musicians and then augmented with electronics and Bill Laswell via Pro Tools in New York & San Francisco. Those looking for pumping four on the floor dance music with token sitar, tabla and sundry other Indian samples thrown in for flavoring should look elsewhere as DJ Cheb i Sabbah's approach is nearly the antithesis of this. I guess this is what one could call, in the parlance of dance culture, "chill out" music. Using an already solid foundation of recordings DJ Cheb very tastefully adds a beat here and there, but never overwhelms what's been laid down by the musicians. Much of the time in fact, it is hard to tell that he's done anything at all to the original tracks. Fans of Talvin Singh should definitely take note of this one.
Schizoid was responsible for our favorite tracks on the massive (and massively good) 'Don't Fuck With Us' 3 cd compilation of North American digital hardcore compiled by the 'expert' on such things, Mr. Alec Empire. We described Schizoid as "Burzum goes DHR" and that's still pretty right on. But now we have a whole disc, so there's much more variation and much more mayhem! Super distorted, heavily effected, totally evil vocals over dense electronic soundscapes, with chopped up metal guitars, pounding hardcore/gabber/drill'n'bass rhythms. Way more intense and aggressive than almost anything on DHR, and certainly more fucked up and pummelling than almost any electronic music we've heard lately, without falling into the boring, repetitive sameness of most gabber/digital hardcore. Super varied, with full on speed metal gabber, lots of spaced out ambient breaks, electronic drones, and some seriously damaged mid tempo primitive-black-metal-electronica. This is definitely some of the best (and most brutal) electronica to come our way since we first heard 'The Destroyer'. For fans of DHR, The Berserker, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destroyer, Venetian Snares, Atomsmasher, Burzum, Darkthrone and all that evil stuff.
Yay! Here's a nice best-of disc dedicated to Roxanne Shante , the Queens teenager who recorded "Roxanne's Revenge", the legendary answer track to UTFO's "Roxanne, Roxanne", and which itself spawned so many answer tracks. Shante's voice is young and bratty as she crisply enunciates various slyly worded insults and boasts. As the one and only female member of Marley Marl's Juice Crew, she teamed up with producers Marl, Kool G Rap, Large Professor, Eric B, etc., all of whom kept the music spotlessly clean and spare, the better to showcase her voice right out front.
Hello! A three-song import single from the side project group of famous Scottish postrockers Aidan Moffat (Arab Strap) and Stuart Braithwaite (Mogwai). It's really nice, albeit a bit of a novelty as all three songs are covers. There's a gorgeous downer version of #1 hit "Whole Again" by girl group Atomic Kitten, a version of The Fall's "Bill is Dead" that's tighter and better than the original, and a short but sinister rendition of the Mills Bros' "You Always Hurt the One You Love". There's incandescent guitar dripping with emotion, Moffat's whisper-growl of a voice, and a lovely sheen of depression throughout. Well done.
Is Sick Anchors slang for anything?
First time available on cd ever!
Fucking incredible document of early seventies free jazz recorded live in Paris, in December 1970. We shouldn't have to do anything but tell you who plays on this to convince you that this is utterly essential. Fans of Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago (most of whom, play on this) and all things ESP, MUST own this. Seriously beautiful and epic outer-jazz-space exploration.
And here's the freakin' lineup:
Alan Silva - leader, bass, electric-violin, electric-sarangi, bow and spring (two French electroacoustic instruments) / Bernard Vitet - trumpet, french horn / Lester Bowie (AEC) - trumpet, flugelhorn / Alan Shorter - trumpet / Joseph Jarman (AEC) - saxes, flute, bassoon / Steve Lacy - soprano saxophone / Ronnie Beer - tenor and soprano saxophone, flute / Roscoe Mitchell (AEC)- saxes, flute, oboe / Robin Kenyatta - alto sax, flute / Michel Portal - alto sax, clarinet / Dieter Gewissler - electric violin / Jouk Minor - electric viola / Kent Carter - cello / Irene Aebi - cello, celeste / Dave Burrell - piano / Beb Guerin - bass / Don Moye (AEC) - drums, percussion / Jerome Cooper - drums, percussion, bronte / Oliver Johnson - tympani, percussion. Compact disc release limited to 1500 copies, so don't hold out on this one!
It's Sonic Youth's 21st year; this is their 16th album, the 2nd of a "proposed trilogy about the cultural history of lower Manhattan," and the 1st album to feature Jim O'Rourke on bass and the three guitar approach from Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Kim Gordon. All of those things tend to be much more interesting than what is hangin' out on "Murray Street." There's nothing wrong with this album, but it's really a very safe album with pleasant K Records guitar jangle, careful use of harmonics, unassuming rhythmic shuffles. Thurston tends to most of the singing, probably due to the fact that Kim's voice has aged horribly and sounds more gravelly / off key than ever (as her two songs attest). Even the presence of the monstrous sax duo of Borbetomagus on one track doesn't really lift this album out of mediocrity. I'd have to defer to Vice Magazine in a rare moment of clarity for them: "If confusion was next and this is the truth, tell me lies and let me live in the past."
Spear is a Polish post-industrial / dark ambient ensemble who appears to have picked up where the nearly forgotten Cranioclast left off with their cryptographic adventures for linguistic puzzles and deep dronescapes. Amidst glowing ripples of prepared contrabass, tape reversed bells, time-stretched ambience, and fluidly sustaining reverberations, Sapphire Flower maps out a metaphoric narrative that delves into the weighty topic of the twilight between life and death, through the sporadic intervention of computer manipulated voices. The pace of the album is suitably slow and funereal, but never gets too heavy-handed or ghastly partly due to Spear's dedicated emphasis upon the construction of crystalline electro-acoustic droneworks. Thus, the music tells the majority of Sapphire Flower's story rather than the text itself.
Certainly fans of Biosphere and the more subtle atmospheric work of Current 93 / Nurse With Wound would do well to check this out.
We have been so excited for the release of this record. We were kind of late discovering the Stereo, but it took no time at all for their last two records to instantly become way too played, in the store, at home, in the car. Perfect kick ass power pop. Just the right balance of cheesy seventies FM radio catchiness and thick guitars, amazing harmonies, and hooks galore! So I have to admit to being a little bummed when I first heard this. It seemed much less catchy, and a LOT more Journey/REO Speedwagon. And while a few other Aquarians still feel that way, I wasn't about to give up that easily. And boy, was I ever rewarded for my tenacity. This has to be THE pop record of the year. You know how some records immediately hook you and you play the shit out of them until you almost can't stand to hear them anymore? And then there's some records (like the most recent Anniversary for instance) where on first listen, there's not the obvious hooks to hang onto so you sort of dismiss it as 'not as good' as their other records. But often when you return, you realise that albums like that often slowly reveal themselves to be the sort of records that become totally essential, and end up getting listened to way more than those immediately catchy ones. So what I'm getting at here, is that this is definitely the best Stereo record yet, and quite possibly the best pop record this year. The songs are more complex and more subtle, but they still rock, and still have amazing hooks! And this time around there's all sorts of extra unexpected additions: weird production, strange synthesizers and crazy drum programming. But those new elements only add to the pop brilliance these pop punkers can conjure up at the drop of a hat. I swear I have not gone a day without blasting this record since it came out. Think the Posies, Jellyfish, the Anniversary, the Get Up Kids, Superchunk, Weezer, Redd Kross, Silver Sun, Sloan. Totally good time, big guitar, clap along, driving with the top down, mix tape for that girl you like PEFECT POP. Buy this or you'll make Andee very sad.
We're excited to finally be able to get hold of this second release by this Tokyo drums and electronics duo! Former Melt-Banana drummer Toshiaki Sudoh and Gaji guitarist Yui Kimijima, together known as Thermo, have been fixtures on Tokyo's avant improvisational underground for quite some time now. Having both been featured in separate improvisational settings on the excellent document "The Improvisation Meeting At Bar Aoyama", as well as numerous performances within their native country, these guys have been unstoppable. In Thermo, Kimijima sets aside his guitar in favor of an assortment of electronic devices and effects, through which he filters the unrelenting fiery force of Sudoh's unstoppable percussive attack. The result isn't as repetitive as one would think -- certainly most appealing to drummers and those into breakbeat culture and instrumental rhythmic jams, the duo's mechanical distorto beats, crunching funktronix and ballistic breakbeats also cough up rhythms and sonics reminiscent of ESG and This Heat. Very cool -- although, be warned, the casual listener (like your housemates, say) may be driven insane by this.
Really well done kitchen table electronica from local guy. What's with the odd name, though? Manages to combine exciting, fast paced breakbeats with a lush layer of slowly drawn-out melody. If you like the soundclip below, you'll enjoy the whole album.
Dub machine Ryan Moore returns with yet another collection of rarities, remixes and dub plates -- basically things that have never been available for mass consumption. Once again Moore does not disappoint, proving that he's still the reigning king of dub in the 21st century. Moore uses only the freshest ingredients: hand picked bass lines and live drums heavily cooked in overdriven tube gear and mixed together onto analog tape. It's a sound you just can't get microwaving dubs in a home computer based recording studio, no matter how many software plug-ins you've got.
We discovered the D-Trash label (and consequently Unitus) via the amazing DHR 'Don't Fuck With Us' compilation from a few lists ago. Unitus is definitely very beat heavy ala DHR, but lays the beats down in a thick, dark miasma of digital crunch and ambient drones and rumbles. Making for an almost dreamy, definitely droney, hypnotic drum and bass workout with stretches of ambient whir, reminding us quite a bit of the seminal Third Eye Foundation 12" 'Semtex' from a few years back. Nice thick analog sounding dirgescapes, with simple, skittery beats woven throughout . Really fucking great! Myabe electronic music isn't dead after all. You just have to know where to look.
Produced in conjunction with a sizeable festival held earlier this year in Belgium, this compilation features a number of exclusive / rare tracks from the artists in attendance, including Main, Oren Ambarchi, Ekkehard Ehlers, David Grubbs, Alog, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Benjamin Franklin, It & My Computer, Twine, Alog, Wio, Toss, and John David, V (who may be the same John from the AQ-favorite 26 project, and now spends his time in the new wave project Glass Candy). K-Raa-K - with their solid spectrum of avant-rock, hazy-improv, and electro-glitch etherealism - continues to be a really interesting label.
This disc is so great! It's an uninterrupted one hour mix, and it's one of the best I have ever heard. Stephen and David Dewaele, the two Belgian brothers who play in the band Soulwax plumbed their record collections for everything from totally obscure forgotten tracks to universally popular ones. One of the best pieces overlays Salt 'n Pepa singing "Push It" over The Stooges' "No Fun", which you may also have heard on the (now out-of-print) Best Bootlegs in the World comp. I find 2 Many DJs better than the best Bootlegs comp, actually, because [1] it's a perfectly sequenced smooth mix, all the tracks flow into the next, lots of overlap, and [2] it's not just popular hits being mashed up, it's gems from 2 very smart music fanatics' collections. I mean, who knew that Destiny's Child's theme to Charlie's Angels would work so well over Dolly Parton's "9 to 5", or that a Peaches chord progression's secret twin is a Velvet Underground song?
The endearingly simple 2 Many DJs website lists all the tracks used, along with juicy gossip about how hard or easy it was to get clearance for each one and tracks whose owners *refused* clearance. (If you're crafty you'll be able to find these tracks on the net as mp3s anyway -- I'm downloading the Skee-Lo/"Eye of the Tiger" mix right now.)
This is SO MUCH FUN. Look for it to go out of print sooner rather than later -- don't hesitate. Highly recommended.
A compilation of remixes of a compilation (American Breakbeat, duh) that was kind of a throwaway to begin with. Steer clear unless you absolutely must own everything by Kid 606, Lesser, Matmos, Hrvatski, Sutekh, Electric Birds, Cex and the like as remixed by Panacea, Pimmon, Rosy Parlane, Com.A, Sonic Dragoglo, Andreas Tilliander, Noize Creator, Slepcy, et al. Kinda uneventful overall, though the Hrvatski track on the original release was very pretty, and the remix here by New Zealander Rosy Parlane is quite nice as well.
Sub Rosa, in claiming to present this compilation within the context that "history needs constant re-evaluation because, like music, history cannot be read as a fixed entity" has unfortunately released an anthology that offers no new insights or previously unknown factors in the inception of noise and electronic musics. Rather, the artists featured are the often-name dropped art stars used within institutional texts for the Whitney Biennial or Documenta to legitimize sound art or some connection between institutional forces and underground activity. A good number of the artists - like Luigi Russolo, Pierre Schaefer, Sonic Youth, Xenakis, Pauline Oliveros, Edgard Varese, John Cage, Ryoji Ikeda, and Einsturzende Neubauten - are undoubtedly important; but is it really necessary to sing their praises yet again? While there's certainly something to be said for introducing new audiences to a lot of the amazing music on this compilation, Sub Rosa should call a spade a spade and fess up to curating a K-Tel compilation for the avant-garde.
Marco Haas (aka Kompakt recording artist T. Raumschmiere), Sascha Ring (Apparat) and their Shitkatapult label strike back with the fifth installment in his Cozmick Suckers series of compilations of minimal electronic sounds from around the globe. Much like their contemporaries in Cologne, these Berlin producers similarly specialize in all that microscopic pulsing dancefloor filth with an addictive "schaffel" touch to superfluous ambient abstractions and clinical sine tone palpitations. Artists from the Shitkatapult roster (Rechenzentrum, Sami Koivikko, Fenin, Magnum38, as well as the aforementioned T. Raumschmiere and Apparat) are paired with newcomers Munit, Napoli Is Not Nepal and Zoy Winterstein and special guests like Kyborg, Chicago's Slicker and the wonderous sine drones of Steinbruechel. Fans of the Kompakt persuasion will love this.
50 songs of Australian garage rock 1976-1987, almost all of it fucking great! Most of us are familiar with the The Saints and Radio Birdman, but included on this compilation are a bunch of amazing lesser knowns running the gamut from dirty rock to jangly pop to crusty garage to Detroit influenced punk. Bands like The Hoodoo Gurus (one of Andee's favorite bands ever), Died Pretty, The Lipstick Killers, The Sunnyboys, The Scientists, The Lime Spiders, The Screaming Tribesmen, The Hard-Ons, The Celibate Rifles, The New Christs, The Eastern Dark, The Exploding White Mice, The Stems and more. 2 1/2 hours!! It's like Christmas or something, I (Sadie) already loved The Saints and Radio Birdman but hadn't heard any of these other bands and I'm freaked out at how much awesome garage rock I've been missing out on. Andee told me that the Celibate Rifles are rad, and they are! Other kick ass bands are the Scientists (who also have a collection on Sub Pop), the Lime Spiders, the Victims, oh I could go on and on! Just buy this. One of the best compilations we've heard in a long time! (Particularily great if you got that excellent recent Sub Pop Radio Birdman collection reviewed on list #118, and want to hear more from their scene, or the scene that they inspired.)
Arrrrggggggghhhhhh!!! When will it end?! Okay, so at least there's no mention of O' Brother Where Art Thou in this collection, but there can be no doubt as to what goose Yazoo is pulling their eggs from this time round. To their credit, Yazoo has an excellent catalog of early rural American music in their possession. Unfortunately, that catalog is not getting any bigger as time goes by. So those of you who have picked up previous concept anthologies on Yazoo such as: 'Times Ain't What They Used To Be', 'Before The Blues', 'Rose Grew Around The Briar', 'Music of Kentucky', and 'My Rough & Rowdy Ways' have probably noticed a lot of overlap in the songs included on them. The end result is that the average person interested in the wares offered by Yazoo picks up a few titles until the redundancy gets to be too great and they stop. Of the 20 tracks on 'Man of Constant Sorrow' half of them have been included on one of these other collections, so you can play your chips on this one if you've got a few of the others or pass. However, if your eye was caught by this title because of its connection to the platinum selling soundtrack to that particular Coen Brothers film and you have not previously delved into the anthology world of Yazoo, this collection may be the thing for you. And I think that's what the intent is anyhoo. 'Man of Constant Sorrow: And other Timeless Mountain Ballads' is the compiler's attempt to demonstrate the rich heritage of brutally straightforward ballads in rural American music from the 30's and 40's. From well known classics such as the album's namesake "John Henry", "John Hardy", "Darling Cora" and a heap of lesser known tiles as well.
Ich habe ein Problem. Ich spreche nur sehr wenig Deutsch! Or more accurately, I can't speak a lick of it and Winni (AQ pal and native speaker of German) ain't around to help me out with this. Funny how when I need the guy to help me with 80+ pages of German liner notes to translate, the guy is like totally scarce. Actually, between these two collections and three separate booklets there does exist three pages of English translation (each one on the back of each booklet.) The 72 tracks on these two sets collect recordings from the Jewish communities that existed in Vienna (Wien), Berlin, Hamburg and Munich prior to the holocaust. The tracks date back as early as 1903 on up to 1936. The music on the disc is a mix of either piano or orchestra accompanied songs (some male, some female, some choral) with a handful of spoken tracks thrown in for good measure.
Ich habe ein Problem. Ich spreche nur sehr wenig Deutsch! Or more accurately, I can't speak a lick of it and Winni (AQ pal and native speaker of German) ain't around to help me out with this. Funny how when I need the guy to help me with 80+ pages of German liner notes to translate, the guy is like totally scarce. Actually, between these two collections and three separate booklets there does exist three pages of English translation (each one on the back of each booklet.) The 72 tracks on these two sets collect recordings from the Jewish communities that existed in Vienna (Wien), Berlin, Hamburg and Munich prior to the holocaust. The tracks date back as early as 1903 on up to 1936. The music on the disc is a mix of either piano or orchestra accompanied songs (some male, some female, some choral) with a handful of spoken tracks thrown in for good measure.
Pretty damn solid compilation from the Rawkus label, intended to whet your appetite for forthcoming albums from most of the participants included here. Runs the gamut from straight up lyrical hip hop to 'slow jams' to... Zap Mama?! Yep. The entire thing is sequenced smoothly, with a coupla non-annoying skits scattered throughout. We all know how bad those clumsily put together comps can sound -- that's not the case here: Rawkus did a really great job making this thing flow. The impressive roster also includes Mos Def, Kool G Rap, Q-Tip, Talib Kweli, Jonell feat. Method Man, The Roots, Styles P. & Pharaohe Monch, many more. Highly recommended.
...can't live without it: The Wire! Another monthly installment of adventurous music coverage from our friends in England. This, the July issue, has been eagerly anticipated 'round these parts due to its cover feature on Keiji Haino. Yay! We just got it in today, so we haven't read the article yet, but we expect writer Alan Cummings, already a Tokyo psych expert and Haino authority, to delve deep and insightfully into his world. Another big AQ fave, Philip Jeck, is interviewed this month, along with features on DJ/Rupture, the WordSound label, and John Coltrane, etc. Plus a Nurse With Wound Primer, and of course tons of reviews. A good ish indeed! (We see from Haino's cover pic that he -- now 50 years old -- is showing some more gray in his hair. What if he also slowly adjusted his all-black wardrobe into shades of gray and then to all-white as his hair fades? Wouldn't that be cool?)
We mentioned this exciting collaborative release in last list's review of the Knead cd, and now we do indeed have a bunch of 'em in stock. Tatsuya Yoshida you know as the drummer for Japan's amazing Ruins, while Keiji Haino has for many years been the dark musical shaman of Tokyo with his out-rock group Fushitsusha. (He's also the cover star of this month's issue of The Wire, by chance.)
Unlike the Ruins + Haino summit known as Knead, "Until Water Grasps Flame" sees our heroes investigating a wider variety of sonic constructions, from spazzy jazz skronk to folkish improv.
Knead, by contrast, was pretty much a full-on noise rock blast a la Fushitsusha. There's some of that here ("At The Instant That One Thinks To Oneself 'No Way', What Percent Is Nostalgia?"), but lots more besides. Like Knead, this is rather more Haino's thing than Yoshida's (you can tell Haino named the songs, not Yoshida!), though fans of the Ruins man won't fail to recognize his stamp on the proceedings as well. But actually the few, more Yoshida-esqe tracks with lotsa drum clatter and jagged guitar found here aren't our faves anyway. What we're really digging about this disc are the songs that get into a weird zone of shimmering drone, sparse and ambient, using an array of intriguing ethnic instrumentation. It's dark improvised folk psychedelia that almost sounds like it belongs on the Kemialliest Ystavat disc reviewed elsewhere this list, until out of Yoshida's rolling percussion ambience emerges Haino's unmistakable anguished vocals.
Several of us here at AQ have been on what you might term a "Keiji Haino kick" of late, digging out our old PSF and Tokuma cds and re-acquainting our ears with his unique, deeply felt sounds. Sometimes harsh, sometimes gentle, always dark, emotive, and beautiful. The appearance of this cd has been but one of the many things to trigger our personal Haino renaissance. Perhaps hearing it will instill in you the same excitement. And Yoshida is of course another long-time AQ favorite, so it's cool that he and Haino have finally gotten together for these two full-length collaborations (this one, and Knead).
