These lanky Canadians have been known to assume the form of Neko Case's backing band The Boyfriends, and actually Dallas Good's tingly reverb-laden guitar stylings can also be heard on her new album Blacklisted. However, The Sadies are so much more than that! Kicking up the dust with this their third full length (the follow-up to 1999's excellent Pure Diamond Gold), they continue to unfurl their particular sonic blend: the sinewy twang of spaghetti western soundtracks, the more epic Morricone grandeur, the rawness of garage surf rock, the whisky-soaked, careening, hillbilly barn burners, and the smouldering, intense murder balladry (Dallas alone cuts a very striking, lean 'n' suave Nick Cave-esque silhouette). They do each of these styles so well that they could just stick with one and be quite impressive, but no, that's not what The Sadies have in mind. That said, they definitely don't shift gears as radically from one song to the next as much as they used to, this album is much more cohesive. And yet even still, their musical pendulum's swing shears a distinct and refreshing path through the predominantly 'alt-country' Bloodshot Records roster. Very cool!
Continuing his reconstructions of electro found on his previous releases from Raster and Karaoke Kalk, Jens Massel (aka Senking) digitally sanitizes what could easily be vinyl surface noise into elegant post-techno pulsations that are not unlike Pan Sonic's pioneering "Vakio" album. These rhythms with their clusters of pinprick glitchiness relentlessly clatter through out the short 26 minute program, whilst Massel builds feedback tones that shift in density, aggressiveness, and volume. As a whole, the shortened 26 minute program screeches up to a tense crescendo, plunges down to static minimalims, and rebounds through submariner ambience, all the while maintaining a continuous mix of variable rhythms. Quite nice.
Released as a part of the new "Raster-Post" series housed in nice silkscreened, fold-out cardstock folder and bound with an elastic band.
Here's one of those crucial, seminal recordings that somehow (probably 'cause we were much less thorough about these things at the time of its release) never made it into our on-line catalog. Yet we often make reference to it, and have recommended other, subsequent albums by the band, including the recently-released "The Process Of Farmakon" cdep reviewed on list #142.
Happily, Red Stream has just reissued this album, the debut from Finnish doom-lords Skepticism, after some time out of print, and we now have a chance to list it for the first time! Originally issued in 1995, this 2002 version has been (slightly) redesigned graphics-wise but contains the same immense sonic slabs of funereal doom-trudge metal that so awed us seven years back. We hail this album as the ultimate "black-metal-meets-Labradford" listening experience. Totally morose, depressive, atmospheric ambience in heavy dirge death metal mode, with melodies to crush your soul. Medieval organ-like keyboards give this a grim, churchly air, and of course it sounds like it was recorded with the microphones quite distant from the instruments/amps, possibly in a nearby forest.
If like other Skepticism albums and/or are a fan of the likes of Esoteric, Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Corrupted, Evoken, Burzum's "Filosofem", and other sad and gloomy things, you MUST OWN THIS. 'Nuff said.
Vinyl reissue of this classic from the Bay area's own sludge/doomer/stoner kings, S L E E P! No longer will you have to pay $100 for this puppy on EBAY. This is thick, colored vinyl, in the original lyric sleeve and an exact reproduction of the original cover. And this shit is HEAVY! Dirge-y, cannabis fueled excursions into the dark realm, Sabbathy riffs, pounding devil drum percussion, and a wailing howl over it all. If you don't already have this, what the hell is wrong with you?! Fans of Corrupted, Boris, stoner rock, sludge, doom, and all that sort of stuff, catch the hell up!! "Sleep's Holy Mountain" was this so-Sabbathy bands MOST Sabbath-like release, almost too close for comfort -- we're not convinced that Tony and Geezer didn't actually write this stuff!! Wow.
Arhoolie has finally got round to reissuing this fine bluegrass album (originally released in 1961), and with four additional tracks that weren't included on the original LP release. Though the group's name and the album's title imply a cajun infused bluegrass sound, in truth Jim Smoak's bluegrass is a lot closer to its Kentucky origins in sound than Louisiana (Smoak himself was born and raised in South Carolina.) What the tracks lack in the traditional gospel derived vocal harmonization is made up in spades with variations on traditional old-timey and good humored numbers like "Kissin' Cousins", "Old Dan Tucker" ("...was a fine old man, washed his face in a frying pan"), "Whoah, Mule, Woah" and more. I wouldn't typify this as solemn or high-lonesome, but rather high powered and light hearted bluegrass with a strong connection to the early string band and minstrelsy of J.E. Mainer's Mountaineers or Gid Tanner's Skillet Lickers. Jim Smoak was one hell of a banjo player who played not only in Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in the early fifties, but was hired by Earl Scruggs to play for Hylo Brown, who Earl was managing at the time. And there's not a better pair of personal recommendations for a bluegrass banjo player to have on his resume than that. And Smoak's playing, though certainly informed by Scrugg's innovative style was by no means a mere copy. The old-timey / bluegrass blend that was a big part of the Louisiana Honeydrippers' sound was a perfect place for Jim Smoak's playing style which utilized a faux-clawhammer picking for rhythm backup when not soloing, with some of the strongest Scruggs' style picking you're likely ever to hear and emphasized with heavy downstroke thumb strumming. Some of the melodies Smoak brings out to the fore from his arpeggios seem almost certain to break the strings right off the banjo, and yet his solos sound smooth as silk, not clunky and overdone. At times it's like listening to a bluegrass banjo player on crystal meth.
Perennial AQ-staff fave Spectre (otherwise known as WordSound label honcho Skiz Fernando) has wisely left his tried and true formula alone, and thus come up with a fourth full length of scary, incredibly dark and heavy dub. I can't think of anyone this good that is this, well, apocalyptic about it. Scary scary stuff. Where's my mommy? Mostly instrumental, although four awesome tracks include guest rapper Sensational. Pling plong random piano, noir film brass samples, grunts, alarms, arpeggiated strings. Must be heard to be believed.
It's a crying shame that these recordings were made in 1996 and never saw release until 2002, but what are you gonna do when you've signed to a major label, only to have the idiot higher ups pronounce your demos "unlistenable"? (Hence the name of this record, heh.) Then again, considering how fresh and good and utterly *now* this album sounds, it really shows how much ahead of their time SF's late great Steelpole Bathtub was. Hard to believe that it was made mostly in Mike Morasky's living room when you hear the thick gooey distorted guitar flangeing in and out, the effected, growling vocals, the squealing guitar solos, the trashcan percussion, the macabre surf-y tone alternating with Melvins-y sludge. There're even two ferocious Cars covers and one hidden track. If you have never heard Steelpole before, this is a great place to start -- in fact, bandmember Darren Mor-X claims these are Steelpole's best recordings. Also, if you've never heard Steelpole but are in love with their side project and major AQ-alltime fave Milk Cult, then get this record now! There's not the sampling and electronics found on the Milk Cult record, but the incredibly well done pacing and tone and weirdly accessible heaviness is all there. Recommended.
Despite the title, this is NOT a complete compilation of the two Johns' Dial-A-Song answering machine genius. Bummer! I mean, sure, they let us know in the liner notes that almost each of the songs here originated as a dial-a-song, but that's just not the same. Hold your horses though 'cause what this two cd set is is a gigantic, stellar collection of They Might Be Giants' best to commemorate their 20th year together! Bonanza! They kick it all off with a triple whammy of "Birdhouse In Your Soul," "Ana Ng," and "Don't Let's Stop", but the running order of the songs from there on is somewhat puzzling. Seems to be just a big jumble. Definitely not chronological nor alphabetical, but it does come with a hefty booklet filled with photos, discography, lyrics, and band-written essays - all laid out phonebook style. There's 52 songs in all including a handful of live versions as well as their contributions to the television and movie world (for Austin Powers and Malcolm In The Middle respectively). A genuine TMBG fan undoubtably already owns a copy (or two) of each of the albums from which 95% of these songs come, but then again, a genuine TMBG fan is also undoubtably a completist so.... TMBG fan or not, if you like finely crafted eclectic, eccentric pop, this is splendid!
A far cry from the elaborate packaging of their previous releases, such as the charming homebrewed "Thuja Museum" treasure-boxes produced by their own Jewelled Antler label, Thuja's third full-length album suffers from the dodgy packaging aesthetic of Last Visible Dog, who've rendered the cover art as a high contrast black-and-white photocopy. Fortunately, Thuja's music redeems the packaging, with another fantastic album of their signature organically evolving improvizations haunted with the ghosts of folk and psychedelia.
This quartet -- whose Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, and Glenn Donaldson reside in San Francisco while Steven R. Smith calls Los Angeles his home -- strives to evoke the emotional tenor of an environment. Cramming themselves and their instruments amidst exotic plants, ready made constructions of urban refuse, seascape dioramas, and Reger's collection of thrift store 'bad art,' Thuja often steps away from the traditional instrumentation of drums, guitar, etc. to tinker with a rusted bicycle wheel, to slash a pile of sticks with a violin bow, or to rummage through a trough of gravel (which Chasse later discovered was cat litter). Such textural details beautifully illuminate their sustained organ drones, spluttering duets for dulcimer and oud, tinkling of bells 'n' chimes, and impressionistic piano plinkings, opening the psychedelic window into an abstracted, imaginary space. As Thuja's cyclical fluidity of sounds and deep plunking reverberations offer possible readings of ancient seafaring tales, "Hills" isn't so much a description of the place, but a vantage point from which the ocean can be seen. All of Thuja's recordings come highly recommended, and "Hills" is no exception!
You like that so-called stoner rock? You like them Queens of the Stone Age? Then pay attention: Norway's Thulsa Doom boys are back with a follow-up to their fine "The Seats Are Soft But the Helmet Is Way Too Tight" full-length. The five songs on this not-quite twenty minute cdep are perhaps even better than those on their undeniably rockin' debut (though with less harmonica). We're talking quality stuff here: heavy, catchy, kick-ass songs with fat, fuzzy guitar sounds and odd, gotta-think-about-'em lyrics (try "Cities After Cheese" for a song title/concept). You can't throw a stone anywhere in Scandinavia without hitting a stoner rock band, but please don't throw it at these guys, 'cause they're freakin' good! We're reminded of Thin Lizzy (a bit 'cause of singer Papa Doom's vocal style), the kick-out-the-jams garage rock of the Hellacopters and their ilk, and, we'll stress again, the BIG GUITARS and pop smarts of the aforementioned Queens Of The Stone Age (and Kyuss too of course). Unlike that new Queens album, though (as good as it is) this is all killer, no filler, no messing around with in-jokes and so forth -- indeed, sometimes eps are better than full albums 'cause you can really get into each song, and they're all pretty great on this lil' disc. Destined for big things, if the world was fair (which it ain't, but we'll still keep rootin' for Thulsa Doom).
In what looks to be the beginning of an onslaught of Asmus Tietchens' archival recordings from Die Stadt (who will be releasing 18 of Tietchens early LPs on CD), comes "Leuchtidioten", featuring two tracks that were recorded during the 'Teilmengen' sessions which resulted in the "a-Menge," "b-Menge," and "g-Menge" albums on Mille Plateaux. Comparatively more rhythmic than those compositions of post-'60s computer-based abstraction, the two tracks on this 10" are filled with tense percolations, with one track sounding like a paranoid acid house number run horribly amok, generatively shifting frequencies, adding / subtracting chunks of sound, and devoid of bass drum kicks, mind you. The other track appears as a synthetic reworking of tribal percussion, with tightly controlled flanges and ring modulation. Limited to 500 copies.
Praise be! Steve Austin and co. are back, delivering another dose of their unique brand of Satanic math-metallic noise. Sprawling over two discs (labelled X and Y), these tracks are less like songs proper than sonic symptoms of Today Is The Day's aesthetic and philosophical ideas -- and, especially, their darkest emotions.
With wretched rasping vokills, crushing doom riffs, maniac outbursts, and scary, atmospheric sample-littered soundscapes (normally we frown on samples we can recognize, but it *was* neat to hear the bit from Coven, y'know, from American Movie), Today Is The Day convey some dark feelings indeed. The metal parts are quite devastating, but it's perhaps the moodier elements that make this album so striking and creepy. Bass rumble and glitchy electronic synth noise are paired with sad piano tinklings, acoustic guitars are strummed in a backwoods night-time ritual, and there's even some honest-to-god melodic singing (as on the deathly-piano-ballad "Death Requiem" or the great Alice Cooper/Devil Doll styled track "Invincible", reprised from TITD's split cd with 16).
Several of us here at AQ have been TITD fans for a long time, all the way back to their sadly out-of-print "Supernova" debut on the Amphetamine Reptile label. Their rebirth on Relapse (three albums ago) moved them in a decidedly heavier, brutal direction, but, as made plain on "Sadness Will Prevail", their experimental, artistic impulses remain strong.
In some ways, the closest thing we can compare this to is the mighty Oxbow, colliding with the likes of Coalesce and Old Man Gloom perhaps. Easily a contender for "metal" (but not at all entirely metal) record of the year. There's certainly a lot here to like. Some of the production is more lo-fi than we'd expect from Mr. Austin (a well-known producer outside of this TITD career) but still manages to dangle us dangerously at the gaping mouth of hell! And wait for the hidden track at the end of disc two, wherein Austin fucks with some brutal black metal, which just happens to be from the upcoming Leviathan album on Andee's tUMULt label!
This is the third entry from the exceptional, if self-explanatory archives of Japanese field recordist Toshiya Tsunoda, concentrating here on "solid vibrations" as the follow up to the second volume which dealt with the microphonic properties of air within hollow objects. In his liner notes, Tsunoda explains that most of the interesting properties of solid vibrations are too faint to be heard under normal listening circumstances; yet with the aid of a piezo-ceramic contact microphone (a simple device which translates immediate vibrations into electrical currents), these vibrations can be made audible. Tsunoda concentrates his recordings around distinctly urban environments -- construction sites, wharfs, highways, wire net fences, metal plate fences, and industrial detritus -- due to the presence of large motors and engines which can activate the vibrations he seeks out. These tend to be very-low frequency rumbles and drones dappled with fluctuations from any number of environmental changes and human interactions. As in all of his other recordings, Tsunoda studiously documents all of the details from each recording, providing interesting tidbits about the sources for these vibrations (i.e. that a swinging element from one his recordings is the sway of an anchor deep in the ocean). Tsunoda is careful to point out that his recordings are "for the purpose of being heard. It is for improving the occurrence which one encounters every day. Therefore, pure scientific detection is not being carried out here." This is a really wonderful document, and may be the best yet from Tsunoda!
More fuckin' weird animal sounds? Fuck Yeah!!! You must have noticed by now that we here at Aquarius go a little nuts when we get a good recording of some animals kicking out the hella mad squeals, growls, hoots, clicks and snorts. And when their sounds are unlike anything we're likely to hear on a walk through the Marin headlands or in Tilden Park, we get pretty excited. What's more, many of the animals on this collection -- for those who haven't heard them before -- sound nothing like what one's intuition would suggest. For instance, who would think that the rhinoceros, weighing in at 2000 pounds and capable of goring any one of us like a twinkie with its horn, would have a larger vocabulary than a series of menacing snorts? But au contraire, the rhino -- as captured here -- has, in its mating call, one of the cutest inquisitive mewls you'll likely ever hear. It sounds almost like it's on the phone giving positive reinforcement to the hippopotamus on the other end complaining about the way the lion has been acting of late. Or how about the Hyrax, a small East African mammal about the size of a rabbit (and a distant relative of the elephant of all things), that makes a loud growling noise not unlike someone trying to start a chainsaw. But that's not all, you get the Vervet monkey with its complex vocabulary announcing to all its mates that a leopard is on the prowl. And not to seem biased towards the primates' side of the story, the producers also included the leopard's growling complaints about the monkeys' behavior. And that's just the beginning! You also get Zebras (they sound a lot more like coyotes or dogs than horses), Wildebeest (think frogs), Lion (say no more), Hyena (god, hyenas are freaks! no matter how many times you hear them, they never lose their charm), Wild-Dog (someone scrubbing a plate glass window clean with a gerbil), Silver-Backed Jackal (parrot?), Elephant (elephant), and last -- but certainly not least -- the hippopotamus (on the other end of the line with the rhino.) Originally released by Nonesuch as part of their Explorer series in 1973, it'd take the most tenacious DJ to find a copy of this on vinyl so pick it up on disc today. Absolutely essential!
Slowdive's "Pygmalion" was the album that broke the band up and got them dumped from Creation just weeks after its release back in 1995; yet, that album has become one of the templates for the current strain of electronic melancholia. That album was ostensibly a solo album for Neil Halstead, who indulged in a majestic piece of electro-acoustic minimalism disguised as mope rock. "Pygamalion" displayed very little of the sublime tapestries of shoegazing guitars, and often blurred the fragile song structures into beautiful mirages and haunted echoes. For the business minded Creation, it was a commercial disaster and never got any serious consideration for licensing or even distribution for that matter. Which is a real shame, as it was a fantastic album.
While they didn't reissue that album, Morr Records did produce this tribute album to the Slowdive and their contribution to electronic music. Disc one of "Blue Skied An' Clear" (the name of a song off of the aformentioned "Pygmalion" album) is a collection of Slowdive covers by Morr musicians and likeminded artists. This collection as a whole - like everything on Morr - is pleasant, moody, rainy-day electronica with wistful guitars and vocals prominent in the mix. Disc two features tracks 'inspired' by Slowdive. Artists include Future 3, Isan, Lali Puna, Ulrich Schnauss, B.Fleischmann & Ms. John Soda, Limp, Solvent, Styrofoam, Skanfrom, Komeit, Manual, Herrmann & Kleine, Mum, Guitar, Populous, Icebreaker/Manual.
Recording the musical practices of other cultures is often extolled as a way of preserving those practices, as they seem to always inevitably become wiped out due to some form of "modernization" within the culture. Most often it seems that it's the multinational media conglomerates, the loud mouth of the United States, that has a bigger and bigger effect on culture everywhere as more and more people have television and radio. But sometimes it's something more directly horrific that has this detrimental effect on a culture and that makes the music that has been archived almost un-nerving to listen to. Such is this recording from Burundi made in 1974. Even at the time of the recording ethnic fighting had already resulted in the death of 200,000 Burundians. The Hutu of the Northwestern part of Burundi, where these tracks were recorded, that had not fled their country, have most likely been killed in the ensuing nearly 30 years of bloodshed. So the seemingly happy music contained on this disc belies the more sinister reality of its existense. No fewer than five of the tracks are tributes to then Tutsi president Michel Micombero, which were to be performed during rural political gatherings. Having said that, I hope that doesn't depress anyone enough not to pick this up. There's a great variety of excellent tracks on this disc ranging from beautful songs accompanied in various forms by ikembe (thumb piano), flute, drums as well as other stringed instruments (like the inanga which sounds like a stringed bass) to heavy drum corps songs. In particular, the song "Take Me Back To Mabayi" in which and old man accompanies himself on inanga and incorporating vocal effects reminds me of the late great Camerounian songwriter, poet, playwrite Francis Bebey. I wonder if Mr. Bebey picked up any tricks from Burundian musicians during his travels?
Originally released in 1975 as "Africa: Ceremonial & Folk Music", this collection of recordings comes to us from Northern Uganda, Kenya & Tanzania and is extremely varied in the tracks contained within. From the insane Aluar Horns which feature a group of horn players each with a horn capable of playing merely on pitch (reminiscent of the "Orgues A Bouche" in that sense) accompanied by a chorus of singers and a troupe of drummers, they mete out a teeth gnashing fanfare unlike about anything we've heard this side of Test Dept.'s "A Good Night Out." This track is immediately followed by the soft seven stringed enanga which accompanies a vocal duet as pretty as you can imagine. The rest of the disc is just as good, with both haunting and beautiful ceremonial music caught on tape.
Recorded in 1975 by David Fanshawe, Witchcraft & Ritual Music is a collection of recordings made throughout Tanzania and Kenya of medicinal music. Fanshawe explains that, in this recording he had "tried to capture the spirit of a musical heritage now nearly extinct. The music on this album comes from a part of East Africa whose musical traditions remain largely unknown to the rest of the world. Particularly fascinating is the manner in which music and medicine are combined in the indigenous practice of witchcraft; music becomes associated with the healing sound of drums, interwoven with beautiful threads of melody." Most of the music utilizes vocals, individual and chorus, in addition to percussion and several tracks include stringed instruments and some of the most odd and amazing horn playing you're likely to ever hear. Most notable is the buzzing melodies of the Kenyan bung'o horn weaving its melodies throughout a choral accompaniament.
Essentially, "Grain" is the companion disc to the "Variable Resistance" compilation published by local arts group 23five for an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art about Australian sound art. This album features four artists -- Philip Samartzis, Pimmon, Darrin Verhagen, and David Brown -- who had come to San Francisco to perform in conjunction with a lengthy 'listening room' event of many other artists. Samartzis, who had curated the "Variable Resistance" show, opens this album with a tense collage of post-industrial musique concrete that rummages through terse electrostatic cracklings, mutated calliope melodies, indeterminant creakings, and psychoacoustic drone work that is not unlike the Hafler Trio's best work. Ghostly fluctuations of sound mark Pimmon's contribution as these loops are coupled with miniscule digital vibrations, for one of the most sedate compositions we've heard from Pimmon. Darrin Verhagen (perhaps better known as Shinjuku Filth and Shinjuku Thief) also offers a particularly quiet track of meditative tribal rhythms run through a number of quietly glitchy DSP filters. David Brown (who may in fact be Australia's unsung answer to Keith Rowe) scratches a choral number out of vibrating guitar feedback, dischordant orchestral samples, and nervous electro-acoustic tonal fluctuations. Nice stuff.
A massive 4 cd collection packaged beautifully in an oversized hardcover book from Stephen O'Malley's (Sunn, Burning Witch, etc...) Anja label. Featuring a who's who of underground expreimental ambient noise-icians, each doing a song about a different flower. Features: Circle, Amber Asylum, Alio Die, Ultra, Jonathan Coleclough, Troum, Steve Roden, Kawabata Makoto, Inade, Mnortham, Aube, Chaos As Shelter, Lotus Eaters and tons more. Absolutely gorgeous, looking and sounding. And of course quite limited.
Last year, local educational sound-arts organization 23five and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art co-presented a ten hour listening event/installation documenting the past 50 years of Japanese experimental music entitled "Ju-Jikan" (which translates as '10 hours' in Japanese). Curators Atau Tanaka, Ryoji Ikeda, and Shunichiro Okada described it not as a comprehensive taxonomy of Japanese experimentation, but simply sought "to trace the complex web of sonic style that constitutes the current Japenese musical landscape." Tanaka, who wrote the liner notes for the program, further explained that the curatorial choices were also guided by how the West perceives Japan and how Japan considers its own representation towards the West.
This double cd compiles elements selected from that ten hour listening event at SFMOMA (the full ten hours would have required mp3 encoding and much in the way of complicated licensing arrangements!), focusing upon the more contemporary elements of experimental Japanese music. These sounds draw their connections through the recombinant power of electronic synthesis and the juxtaposition of disparate styles; which together have become a standard if elusively-defined musical vocabulary for Japanese music. "Ju-Jikan" features physically challenging noise from Merzbow, Masonna, Hanatarash (Eye from the Boredoms), Pain Jerk, and Tetsuo Furudate; 'anti-academic' reactionary modes of Yasunao Tone and Yuji Takahashi; purist minimalism of tonal austerity from Ryoji Ikeda, Otomo Yoshihide, and Nerve Net Noise; and delicate electrodrone work from Kazuo Uehara, Tamami Tono, and Kozo Inada. A really important collection indeed. We're told some tracks are previously released, some not, but it's hard to tell which -- chances are you'd have to be a really geeked-out collector to have many of these already, and even in that case you'd still want this for the rest. The cd booklet gives Tanaka's detailed notes on all styles covered, a graphic timeline of Japanese experimental sound genres, and a program for the full ten-hour event so you can see what you missed.
For those who recall the now out-of-print "The Ghost Orchid" cd collection of EVP -- "Electronic Voice Phenomenon", the mysterious manifestations of unknown voices breaking through radio transmissions, presumed to be voices of the dead -- Konstantin Raudive may be a familiar name. His contributions to that recording (originally paired as a 7" with his legendary book from the mid '70s entitled "Breakthrough") were some of the most hyperbolic and grandiose, claiming that in his research he had contacted numerous recently deceased friends, as well as historical figures like Winston Churchill! Since "The Ghost Orchid" and the follow-up collection drawn from from fellow researcher Friedrich JurgensonFriedrich Jurgenson's EVP recordings have been very difficult to track down in recent months, we thought that this new release of recordings from the archives of Raudive (and his collegue Gerhard Stempnik) would make for an acceptable substitute. Well, it might have been, if it weren't for all of the extraneous, some might say unneccesary, tracks found here: remixes of Raudive's recordings, tracks inspired by Raudive's recordings, and tracks that got onto this album just because they were by DJ Spooky. (DJ Spooky? Get it? These are ghosts. Haha.) At least the folks at Sub Rosa had enough sense to program all of the actual Raudive recordings as the odd numbered tracks with the remixes and so forth being the even numbered ones. So at least you can program your CD player if you wish to avoid the pieces by DJ Spooky, Brett Dean, Scanner, Calla, Lee Ranaldo, David Toop, CM von Hausswolff, Random Inc. and others. Not to say that these remixes are bad (some are pretty cool, total X-Files electronica), but how can you hope to compete with the raw ghost transmissions themselves? Truly voices of the dead or not, they're still creepy radio-noise recordings with German-language lectures to introduce 'em, full of mystery and terror and dense sonic textures. Imagine an occult Conet Project. We're purists, I guess, and would have liked the tracks by the modern-day artists to have appeared on a seperate release from the archival EVP material. But others we're sure won't be bothered at all, and enjoy (and be haunted by) the whole package.
Subtitled: "The Sounds Of Blaxploitation". A compilation of thirteen funky tracks from (or, perhaps just "inspired by") classic '70s Blaxploitation flicks, a sure-fire seller if we've ever seen one. Actually, this disc is apparently a soundtrack itself, 'cause 'BaadAssssss Cinema' is in fact a new documentary about the genre -- we'll be interested to see it.
Here's the line-up: James Brown "People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul", Lonnie Liston Smith & The Cosmic Echoes "Expansions", Roy Ayers "Coffy Is The Color", Curtis Mayfield "Pusherman", Graham Central Station "We Be's Gettin' Down", Isaac Hayes "Main Title 'Truck Turner'", Edwin Starr "Big Papa", WAR "Nappy Head (Theme From 'Ghetto Man')", William De Vaughn "Be Thankful For What You Got", B.T. Express "Express", The Blackbyrds "Cornbread", Gil Scott-Heron "The Bottle", and of course Earth Wind & Fire "Sweetback's Theme" ('cause they get documentary's title, and spelling, from Melvin Van Peeble's pioneering Blaxploitation film 'Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song' -- one that's not really an exploitation film at all, but rather something much more radical than what the genre it spawned later became). Not a weak cut in the bunch. "Pusherman" (from Superfly) and some others will doubtless already be familiar, but others are a tad more obscure, making for a decent car-driving or party comp indeed.
Great! In 1998, local hip hop music maker, record collector, and impresario Peanut Butter Wolf started a series of vinyl 7"s meant for one-off releases that didn't fit with his straight up hip hop label Stones Throw. (Hey, if you didn't know already, PB Wolf is da guy dat came up with the idea of the all-45s sets that brought Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow together for their now famous shows.) Featuring folks like Madlib, Breakestra, A-Trak (his sublime "Enter Ralph Wiggum" track), Lootpack, etc, and then later expanding to reissue funk/soul classics from the late '60s/early '70s, the 7"s were meant to be collectible, with exclusive tracks. (In fact, even though this disc compiles the 7"s, it takes only one track from each single so the 7"s are *still* collectible.) I didn't pay them enough attention when they were still singles, so this comp is welcome, and as a collected entity it only serves to show how rad PB Wolf's taste is. Man, some of the old funk tracks appearing here are *unbelievably weird*, and the contemporary tracks are sufficiently soul and funk-influenced that sometimes it's hard to tell if they're old or new. That's awesome! Hands down one of the very best soul / funk / hip hop comps we've heard in forever, and the fact that it covers old and modern stuff just puts it over the top. A great, exciting listen thru and thru. Highly recommended.
Possibly a bit of a misnomer in the title, as the "roots" of gamelan predate any recording equipment by nearly a thousand years. 1928 however, when these earliest recordings of Balinese gamelan were recorded, could well be considered the roots of Balinese gamelan as it exists today, as the now ubiquitous Gong Kebyar of Bali was born, by most accounts, a mere fourteen years prior to these recordings (see "Music of the Gamelan Gong Kebyar Volume 1" from list 128.) In a sense, these seminal recordings exist thanks to all the wrong reasons. Apparently two record labels, Odeon and Beka, had the idea that they could record and market Balinese music to Bali on records. They put together 98 sides on 78 rpm discs, but the Balinese were completely uninterested in shelling out the dough for those recordings for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which was that by the time the recordings hit the shelves they were pretty much old news. The discs sold in small amounts on the international market, but for the most part the concept was a flop. Today, however, we are left with a wonderful time capsule of Balinese gamelan as it stood at the beginning of the century. Along with the early kebyar examples here, there are also several tracks of gamelan pelegongan, gender wayang (the quartet that accompanies puppet theater in Bali), jangger (a comical form featuring a chorus of young boys and girls, with the boys singing in a vocal style which we today are more familiar with as kecak) and anklung. Due to the limitations the 78 rpm disc and its 3 minute capacity, much of the works contained here are broken up semi-artificially into movements. Also included at the end of this disc are six tracks of gamelan transcriptions performed by Canadian composer and Balinese music scholar Colin McPhee (of whom the records which make up this collection belonged) and Benjamin Britten on piano and Georges Barrere on flute. These performances are quite interesting in and of themselves, especially for anyone who's familiar with McPhee's later classical compositions (or even fans of Lou Harrison) which were based entirely around Balinese music. Includes a healthy 27 pages of well scribed liner notes on the recordings and Balinese music in general.
"Variable Resistance" was the second 'listening room' event co-sponsored by SF sound art organization 23five, Incorporated and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Where the first collaboration between 23five and the Museum centered on Japanese experimental music, this one takes a southern route to Australia, which has enjoyed a healthy explosion of adventurous musicians exporting their wares across the globe. Assembled by noted sound artist Philip Samartzis, "Variable Resistance" is a title that encapsulates the tone and extent of the work on hand, referencing not only the electronic gizmo (the variable resistor) as key to many of the featured homespun constructions, but also as an applicable non-definition of those artists who "offer variable resistance in how they are defined and the positions they occupy in a broader cultural context, fragmented, and dispersed among remote cities and divided by enormous physical and psychological space." That said, Samartzis attempts to breakdown the Australian aesthetic into a number of sub-genres: Microphonics, Metallic Plates & Resonating Strings, Residue, Flutter & Flux, Malfunction & Resistance, Improvised Composition, Suspended Time & Expanding Space, Electrical Impulses & Variable Flow, Soundhackers, and Microwaves, Collisions, & Noise.
While each of these subgenres do offer some help in interpreting the work of these artists, those featuring on this cd (a condensed version of the SFMOMA event) are pretty good at resisting any imposed characterization. Much of the work on "Variable Resistance" is based upon live improvisation filtered through a number of DSP techniques (with obvious exceptions and detours) with tracks from Oren Ambarchi, Robbie Avenaim, Philip Samartzis, David Brown, Xonk, Thembi Soddell, Darrin Verhagen, Pimmon, and Delire.
Originally released in 1976 as "Africa: Drum, Chant & Instrumental Music", this is a collection of recordings made in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali. Like the other CD in this series "East Africa: Ceremonial & Folk Music" there's a wide variety of instrumentation, given the wide geographical span from which the recordings were captured. Unlike that disc however, much of the tracks on here consist of solo improvisations on various instruments, drums and voice. Much of the tracks are subtly altered cyclical tunes which were recorded either during a musician's daily endless practicing or during an actual ceremony, such as the Tuareg Medicinal Chant which is intended to excite "the sick person to dance in an increasingly vigorous manner until either cured or exhausted." The warbling tones of the lead vocalist are accompanied by a droning chorus and percussion. The buzzing of the chorus and the warbling singer is made even more creepy by random screams which are said to represent the devil being chased away.
Another excellent reissue from the Nonesuch Explorer series, this one originally released in 1971. The mbira, in common vernacular often called a "thumb piano", is any number of instruments consisting of a board in which metal prongs of different lengths have been attached, the plucking of which produces a beautiful muted bell-like tone. The core of the songs here are repeated melodic patterns plucked on the mbira. The mbira player is accompanied by a percussive rattle (hosho), while the two players together form vocal melodies derived from the pattern meted out by the mbira. The songs are wonderfully cyclical, with ever subtle inflections added to the melody by gradual turns. Lulling, elliptical and simply wonderful.
Why drop the "enetian" from the perfectly good name Venetian Snares? I dunno; but there isn't much of a big departure for Aaron Funk (aka VSnares / Venetian Snares) from his last couple of albums of chemically acerbic, drill 'n' bass workouts. "2370894" is a spastic album that shreds the common drum 'n' bass signatures into a shock / horror splatter: sometimes stretching the speed limits into Panacea's darkcore tactics for stalking rhythms and hoovering basslines into atonal stabs of breakbeat mania, then overloading the rhythmic density of free-jazz clatter into a headache inducing digital mess, then wallowing in the downer sentiments of Morrissey samples on top of conditionally minimal electronic arrangements. Vsnares concentrates all of the truely abrasive numbers at the beginning of the album and gradually lightens up the album to end up closer to where his label boss Mu-Ziq has been residing.
Aquarius favorite Wobbly's first release for Kid 606's Tigerbeat6 label and it's possibly his best yet! Taking source material solely from S.F. Bay Area radio broadcasts, Wild Why is the end result of over two years worth of work which began originally as a live set before being slowly and painstakenly honed and sharpened into a carefully rendered studio project. Those who were fortunate enough to catch Wobbly's instore here early this year got a sneak peak at some of the insane plunderphuckery already. Given the nature of the source material (Destiny's Child, Eminem, y'know the type), and the artist's intention that they remain completely recognizable it's logical to expect that this would be a party pleasing mix a la the Kid's "Action Packed Mentallist...", but such a conclusion would be wrong. Wild Why is like a condensed and expanded homage to John Oswald's seminal "Black" or "Brown". Wobbly twists and turns the cliched utterances of contemporary hip hop in upon themselves rendering even the most macho posturing utterly slapstick. And if that's not enough to show Wobbly's dedication to the art of plunderphonics, then one needs only to open up the accompanying booklet to reveal a transcript of the entire vocal contents of the CD. Take and excerpt of track #18 for instance: "come buy, yo play radishes part (bola bo) judgement day (uh huh) I, I, I, I, quit. hey yo, me. Now now, now, now, lust two two three, back, you know what I'm sayin', we about to give you need y'all, jack d with the key, bounce, die peeps..." etc. So you can even read along with the disc. We asked Jon how long it took him to transcribe all this, but he merely chuckled, sighed and changed the subject. Highly recommended!
I hate to gush, but gush I must. This is my (Andee's) RECORD OF THE YEAR. Done deal. It doesn't matter what happens for the rest of the year. Kurt Kobain could come back from the grave and record a new Nirvana record. Laddio Bollocko could get back together. Earth reunion. It doesn't matter. This is it. THE ONE. It's magical, dark, mysterious, sinister, gorgeous and moves me like very few records do. But I digress.
Woven Hand is David Eugene Edwards from Sixteen Horsepower's solo project. If you're anything like me, you're always wondering why people have solo projects that sound just like their 'actual' band, and often not nearly as good. But fear not. While Edwards' Woven Hand is similar in many ways to 16HP, it takes things in a direction even darker, dreamier, creepier, and more religious (more on that later) ending up sounding EVEN BETTER than 16HP. Hard to believe, especially if you loved 16HP's 'Folklore' that we made record of the week a few weeks back as much as we did! Woven Hand is like a Cormac McCarthy novel put to music. "Blood Meridian" arranged for rock band. "All The Pretty Horses" sung by wandering minstrels. Desolate and dreary, violent and cathartic, but not obviously so, more like a creeping seeping sickness, death and destruction and human sin as it swallows souls and destroys lives. The instrumentation is similar to 16HP, a dark and dreamy gypsy swamp-folk, but more lush, with thicker, richer atmospheres, and murky, almost impenetrable instrumental backdrops, underpinning Edwards' tales of redemption and forgiveness, sorrow and apocalypse. The lyrics are way more blatantly religious, biblically themed, and aimed at touching our souls. Which for some reason doesn't bother me as much as you think it would. The words are poetic and symbolic, simple and timeless, just beautiful stories and poems, like much of the Bible. Removed from the Christian tradition (thousands of years of hypocrisy and murder and keeping people from thinking for themselves), Edwards' biblical testifying almost has me bowing prostrate hoping to appease a stern but ultimately forgiving God. It helps that Edwards delivers these parables in a rich, throaty rasp, a gorgeous gruff tenor, like a mix of Mark Lanegan, Chris Grigoroff (Souled American) and Nick Cave, that sounds like it has the power to make men sob and women swoon. It all comes together, sound and fury, voice and instrument, in a rich tapestry of fear and hope and death and the cycle of life and desperate dreams of an afterlife. It's rare to really hear music so powerful and so evocative that it manages to become more than just 'rock music' or 'that pretty cool band.' This record brings me to the verge of tears, makes me shiver...I feel it in my brain and in my heart and in my soul. Seriously. This is what music should be to me. Intense and emotional and heartfelt and brutally powerful. There's a creepy crawly version of Bill Withers' 'Ain't No Sunshine' that manages to be even better than the original, due in no small part to the dark, funereal treatment it gets from Woven Hand, that under the right circumstances (or wrong circumstances) could crush me into a weeping, sobbing heap, with my heart broken into a thousand pieces. I wish all music could do that...
Finally, the record that nearly ruined Neil Young gets a proper cd release! And what better time than in the current electro-resurgence, retro-eighties new wave craze!!! Every band and their mother are now singing through a vocoder, but Neil was doing that shit 20 years ago!!! And people HATED it. 'Trans' was his worse selling record and had everyone predicting the end of Neil Young. But as always, people just don't get it. This record is awesome (though that opinion is not universal among AQ-staffers, we must admit). The first track starts out like any old Neil Young record, good old rock and roll, lulling you into believing nothing has changed. But track two kicks into future-gear, transporting us to 'the future' of music as it could only be imagined by folks in the eighties. A world of robots and robot cars and 'futuristic rock and roll' where everyone sings through vocoders and all melodies are played by wheedling little computers (or guitars rigged to sound like it). And weirdly enough, it's sort of a dark depressing, melancholy world. The melodies are mostly minor key, the emotions evoked are mostly -not- happy, and maybe the future is not so bright after all. That's part of the charm of 'Trans'. All kitsch value aside, this is a really cool record. With some of these songs, you'd think you were listening to that new Flaming Lips album, maybe. Great songs, catchy melodies, all sort of wistful and morose and sorrowfully dreamy -- in a futuristic sort of way!
For the John Zorn fan who has to have everything. Yes, that means that we're now on to Filmworks #13 and it looks like there's no end in sight. So with a big thanks to Tzadik for supplying a glowing review in advance, we bring you the obi: "2002 proves to be a watershed year for Zorn, with this being his fifth film score in three months. Here, a taste of Ennio Morricone, Astor Piazzola, French musette and Nino Rota make up what is perhaps his greatest film score to date. At times bizarre, haunting, exhilerating and powerful, the lush sonorities of this dynamic group will surprise you as much as it did Zorn himself. A romantic new lyricism. A remarkable new direction. Unexpected, inevitable and absolutely..." okay, enough. We made some sound samples, so check 'em out.
