Fans of Japan's Melt Banana know that they're always great at doing covers. On their side of this split 7" they do "Monkey Man" by Toots And The Maytals. Really. And of course they sound like they're on 45 even when they're on 33 like they always do, super hectic, the least-mellow reggae you've ever heard. Cup thought it was a cartoon theme or music from an ad for a kid's toy or something. There's also a Melt Banana original called "Operation: 3rd Attack" on here, with some turntable scratching, that's equally wild.
The flip side features US ska act Big D And The Kids Table, they do an original and a Ministry cover ("Thieves")...there's got to be some novelty value in that. Actually, we *think* they're a ska band. But even their original sounds more like a metal or hardcore band with a horn section than your typical ska stuff. So, kinda cool too.
Both Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heemann of the the drone-improv outfit Mirror had been commissioned to remix elements from Brandon Walls' "Cassia Fistula" album. In spite of the fact that the source album was a dud, this limited edition 7" is quite good, with delicate feedback modulations and thick drones culled from analogue synthesis, ending up a bit more electronic than any of the Mirror albums. The packaging -- just a generic 7" sleeve -- leaves much to be desired though.
Yes, Mystic Forest indeed -- this French, one-man black metal act even has songs entitled "Eternal Myst", "Mysterious Flowers", and (the best one) "Theme Of The Squirrel", an instrumental! The sound of water burbling in a brook and birds twittering in the trees first greet the listener, before the filthy distortion kicks in. Make no mistake, this is a black metal, not new age record, with a full-on-fuzz attack that's worthy of Burzum. And, despite the drone quotient inherent to this style of black metal, Mystic Forest really ROCKS, urgently so, something we don't usually expect in this genre. Baroque keyboards, frantic drum programming, ragged gasping vox, and as we said, FUZZ. This 1999 release is the first of two albums from Mystic Forest, whose mastermind S. Kozak has also released a very similar sounding opus under the band name Eikenskaden (with even more ridiculous song titles, and equally great songs). So far, this is the only one of 'em we've been able to get in stock at Aquarius, but we're trying our best to bring in the other S. Kozak discs as well, 'cause we've become rabid converts to his brand of black metal weirdness.
I'm going to make this a short review -- only because mere words cannot adequately express the godliness of this band. And because, chances are, you know that already. This new release (their sixth album) will sell itself. Formerly a totally underground cult act, Sweden's Opeth are now extreme metal superstars, and deservedly so. Taking modern brutal, technical death/black metal and melding it with the '70s progressive, psychedelic rock aesthetic that they love so much, Opeth have forged a new style of super heavy, epic & melodic metal of which they are, simply, the masters. Dynamics -- extreme shades of light and dark -- are an important element of their sound, and "Deliverance", um, delivers as you'd expect: you get both thrashing, heavy riffing with Voivod-like twists and gargled death metal vocals, AND pretty, Pink Floydian space-rock with tuneful, folkish singing and acoustic guitars, all in the same song. But, as you may know, "Deliverance" does intentionally lean towards the "heavy" side of the Opeth equation, as they've recorded another album called "Damnation" for release in March with which to explore their more gentle side. This one certainly sounds like an Opeth album (i.e. amazing), we'll see if that one does too.
Brand new recordings from Senegal's legendary Orchastra Baobab. The group, which got its start over 30 years ago, had a huge comeback with the reissue of their 1982 release "Pirate's Choice". It seems that the global attention the band received via this trip to the vaults inspired the band to reform, tour, and finally, to cut a new album of songs. Those fearing a watered down, world beat shadow of the band's legacy should sigh a heavy sigh of relief. "Specialist" could well have been recorded 20 years ago as much as it was several months ago. It's nice to know that the grubby little paws of Peter Gabriel and other homogenizers of music still can't destroy everything. Orchestra Baobab still stick to the same instrumental arrangements: airy & echoey electric guitars, deep & warm bass, saxophones, drums (along with congas, maracas & timbales) and vocals. The Latin influence in their rhythms and melodies is still ever present and, thankfully, they still opt for a live sound in their recordings, as they have since their earliest recordings. A fine return from a great band.
For the "Sphyx" sessions which evolved over a three year period from 1990 - 1993, David Jackman amassed an all-star line-up for his stellar drone ensemble Organum with a young Jim O'Rourke (freshly matriculated from Illusion of Safety), Christoph Heemann (HNAS, Mirror), Eddie Prevost (AMM), Dinah Jane Rowe, and post-production help from Robert Hampson (Main). The Organum templates for glittering cascades of scraped metal, bowed cymbals, and steel strung cellos with occasional flourishes from Jackman's shakuhachi (i.e. a Japanese flute) remain intact. While certainly attentive towards the shifts within the limited palette from coarse metals, Organum specializes in the density of those acoustic textures layering, swelling, and mutating upon themselves.
However, the extended track 'Aurora' prominently features Eddie Prevost skittering across the drum kit punctuating the glistening textural drone with a rhythmic patter often found on the mid-period AMM recordings. For the CD reissue of this long out of print LP, "Sphyx" features two bonus tracks recorded around the same time. Unfortunately, this too has a limited run, with only 700 copies of the digipack CD available. As with all of the Organum albums, this comes highly recommended!
Impressive full length debut from ex-Californian, now Brooklynite band Out Hud. This group plays the instrumental, angular dance music that the indie rockers currently adore. You know the type -- think ESG, Liquid Liquid, Cabaret Voltaire, the Disco Not Disco comps, etc. And of the many bands that now sport this sound, I think Out Hud do it best. Icily precise guitar gets the echo dub treatment and is used sparingly. Metronomic drumming. Spacy stereo separation tricks. Warm, not melodramatic, cello. Strange metallic crashes. Doesn't annoy or call too much attention to itself, and pleasantly low key and slow to mid tempo. Really restrained in a good way. All of that, plus actual melodies that show off the group's rock roots. Highly recommended!
This, my friends, is a not a book, but a tome. Over 700 pages, collecting together almost every important piece of writing that appeared in Archie Patterson's Eurock 'zine during its existence from 1973 to 1990, and more. Eurock magazine was all about prog / psych / krautrock / space rock / electronic stuff (in later years, entering into New Age territory to be sure), not just from Europe actually but from around the world. The earlier material is particularily cool 'cause Eurock's coverage of bands like Amon Duul and Can is like reading a current magazine's stuff about Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Acid Mothers Temple...it puts things then and now into perspective. There's tons of obscure lore in here to uncover -- paging through at random I found articles about Ash Ra Tempel and Area, a piece on '70s Yugoslavian rock, a recent interview with Magma's Christian Vander, a review of a 1980 Rock In Opposition festival, and even an interview with our favorite '70s Italian prog band Osanna! In addition, as a special bonus, this book includes a seven-page appreciation of Amon Duul written in 1971 (for Creem magazine) by famous rock crit Lester Bangs, that I for one have always wanted to read. Basically, this book, I mean, tome, is highly recommended to all weird kraut / psych / prog music fiends!
NB: All of this and more (excepting some new pieces and the Bangs article), I believe, is also to be found on the still-available Eurock cd-rom production "Golden Age" that we reviewed on AQ list #105 -- but we have to say that the book format is far superior for reading and browsing, though of course it lacks the multi-media content etc. I'd pick this up a lot more often than I'd pop the cd-rom into my Mac.
As much as I've whined and moaned about Pavement's last few albums being, in my opinion, less than wonderful, no one can dispute the fact that Slanted & Enchanted is one fucking great record. If you have never heard Pavement's full length debut, stop reading right now. Just buy it. It's like the zenith of indie rock. It could be the only indie rock record you own and you would still have the best of the genre. (And if you disagree, my friend Andee will beat you up.) The songs are so satisfyingly melodic yet delivered all fractured and suffused with a lackadaisical sort of ironic stance. Which was at one point cool, remember?
Anyway, what we have here is a deluxe double disc reissue for the price of a single disc. In addition to the entire Slanted & Enchanted album, you get: several tracks from the Slanted session, a John Peel octet of tunes, the Watery Domestic ep, tracks from the Watery session, and an entire live show! A total of 48 tracks, 23 of which are previously unreleased.
The accompanying booklet is full of juicy tidbits from Matador label guys Chris Lombard and Gerard Cosloy, Drag City founder Dan Koretzky (both labels wanted to release it), their booker, and the band itself. So essential.
The Piranhas hail from Detroit, Michigan and have amazing driving keyboard lines, crazy in your face vocals, and a killer guitar sound. Think art punk meets garage meets '60s punk. They were on the cover of Maximum Rock n Roll recently and already have a couple singles out but are still relatively unknown. The live shows are rumoured to be brutal and confrontational and FUN FUN FUN. All kinds of music fans will dig this, whether you like current no wave like the Numbers and Erase Errata or other members of the In The Red roster like the Horrors, Dirtbombs or the Cheater Slicks, or classic greatness such as Wire, Rocket from the Tombs, and Black Flag. This totally rocks!!
Australian outsider folk singer/guitarist Pip Proud has a kind of gentleness and seeming naivete that play with or against his exceedingly honest, emotional and sometimes darkly bizarre lyrics. Sloppily tuned guitars, breathily spoken stories over blues-tinged psychedelic washes and halting, personal interpretations of the notions of rythm and time-- I find his unique musical style to be incredibly charming, but also just disturbing and weird enough to prevent a descent into syrupy sweet childishness, making him somewhat more kin to Jandek than Jad Fair. "Catch a Cherub" is a collaboration with Charlambides guitarist Tom Carter.
Having also adopted the pseudonym Ilse Gold for excursions into Rotterdam 'ardcore techno, the anomymous Austrian (?) individual (or maybe group?) behind Pure offers a debut album of experimental electronics that recapitulates a number of the abrasive strategies previously employed in '60s electro-acoustics, '80s industrial culture, and the current strain of electronica. Using such strategies as ring modulation, DSP timeshifting, FM synthesis, and occasional digital fragmentation, Pure strives for a mannerist ornamentation of layered sounds. Within "Noonbugs," Pure builds multiple layers of malleable looped samples which are mostly electronic in origin, but occasionally strident orchestral sounds emerge. These layers often overlap each others rhythms and textures without too much concern for the greater compositional context. However, such disconnections within the stereo field lend themselves to sci-fi paranoiac metaphors, common within the history of computer music. "Noonbugs" ends up sounding more antiquated than fellow Mego artists, especially when compared to the arrogant sonic overload of Pita of the brazen digital-pop smearing of Fennesz. Rather its citations are found in Pimmon, Alan Splet (the "Eraserhead" sound designer), Bernard Parmegiani, and Premature Ejaculations (the underappreciated mechanized dada-drone project for the late Rozz Williams of Christian Death). A fine album.
- RealAudio clip: Lit
- RealAudio clip: Duck
Now, WITHOUT the limited bonus dvd disc! Here's what we said about this last time for those that somehow overlooked it... This one scarcely needs a review. By now you've been hearing this record on the radio and MTV and in malls. Odds are you already own this if you like the Queens Of The Stone Age previous albums, or you bought it for the single. Or you loved Kyuss and think the Queens suck. But setting all that aside, and taking this record just on its musical merits, 'Songs For The Deaf' is a kick ass hard rock/pop rock record. Great sound, great songs! What's not to like? This is easily their best record since their super heavy debut. 'Songs For The Deaf' has it's heavy moments, and the warm fuzzy Kyuss guitars are still in effect, but it's way more of a pop record. And while they do stretch out occasionally, with headbanging stoned desert jams, things always return to the hook. Which is not a bad thing. Just the opposite. And the addition of Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees and solo) have added a lot in terms of sonic breadth and songwriting complexity. Way more dynamic and WAY MORE CATCHY. Listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. The last "hidden" track is a piano driven, string laden psychedelic pop epic. It -sounds- great, but just wish it was a better song (although our friend Drew is convinced it is a 'masterpiece'). But so what? This record is full of great songs!! Plus lots of weird guests: Dean Ween, Twiggy Ramirez, Casey Chaos, Blag Dahlia! The only downside, which has been an annoying QOTSA quirk from the beginning, is their relentless in-joking. This record is rife with said in-jokes, a bunch of stupid fake radio DJ's, occasional joke songs and the like. Easy to skip by but they tend to kill the flow of an otherwise solid record.
Ok, first off, someone in Racebannon needs to be flogged for that title. That aside, this is a fine disc of crazed and metallic art-punk weirdness. More mayhem than a bunch of old Skin Graft bands fighting in an alley with the Load records roster. A real rumble. Refer to our review of their previous album "In The Grips Of The Light" for more descriptives -- this disc is pretty similar but if anything more metal and crushing and, well, Satanic. Actually there's some sort of weird narrative concept to this album that has to do with a character named Rhonda Delight, and the Devil, but figuring it all out to explain to you would require too much reading of what appears to be a libretto in the cd booklet, so you'll have to check it out for yourself.
Let's face it. Emo has become a commodity, as the music industry has recognized a vast market for selling earnestness through punk individualism and time-tested formulas of romance. The Wisconsin Emo trio Rainer Maria may have recognized the fate of their beloved aesthetic, and have made several swerving detours from the Emo template of boy / girl vocals screaming to the point of tears with melodic, minor chords of punk-pop. Their "A Better Version Of Me" album veered much closer to the Sleater Kinney camps; but "Ears Ring" takes an even bigger leap towards the sound of 80's female 'hard-rock' artists like Pat Benatar or even Patti Smyth of Scandal. Strangely prescient of the '80s obsessiveness within the 'electroclash' fetishism of New Wave.
The third album of ripping modern melodic thrash from these black-clad Swedish lads. Violent metal music with enough '80s derived cheesiness to be lots of fun. Wicked indeed. These kids probably still think about the Bay Area the way metalheads here think about Sweden now!
Gloomy, gothy melodic metal from Finland's Rapture (not to be confused with NYC's The Rapture!), who are kind of a Katatonia clone band. Nothing wrong with that, though, you can't have too much doomy yet catchy Nordic misery wethinks. This is quite good. Compared to recent Katatonia, Rapture perhaps remain MORE "metal" (though both bands are quite heavy): Rapture's vocalist still does the RAWRRRAAHH death-metal growling thing along with some more melodic, clean singing, and you can hear some Metallica and In Flames in there along with that hypnotic Katatonia downer-groove and Cure vibe. (If, after reading this, you're wondering who the heck Katatonia are, please find their reviews on our website and check 'em out...once you've become a fan, come back for the Rapture cds!)
Chet Scott's dark ambient project Ruhr Hunter takes its name from the case studies of a German serial killer from the 1950s named Joachim Kroll who had been dubbed the "Ruhr Hunter" by the local authorities due to a concentration of his crimes taking place along the Ruhr River. Such fascinations with transgressive themes and Scott's calls for human cleansing (even if it may be metaphoric) lend themselves for placing Ruhr Hunter in the true-crime pulp elements of industrial culture as well as a giving him the obvious crossover appeal with black metal mythology. Yet, this does little to embody the rich instrumentation that Scott puts into Ruhr Hunter, as those gaping Lustmordian drones so common within the dark ambient oeuvre are matched with smatterings of extended song fragments with acoustic guitars, ghostly harmonicas, tubular bells, delicate piano melodies, and a number of handcrafted stringed instruments. As good if not better than the atavistic, pseudo-pagan ambient works of Tribes of Neurot.
Wow. Probably the best album from this band in a long time. And they're always really good. Still, their last two studio albums (2000's "Pallaschtom" and 1998's "Vrresto"), although amazing musically, might have actually taken their insane technicality to an almost detrimental, one-dimensional extreme, when compared to more melodic and memorable earlier Ruins classics like "Burning Stone". But, with this new release, we're really excited about the Ruins again. It's got more ideas, more variety, more inventiveness, more surprises -- and of course, more of that insane technicality.
Let's pause for a quick update for those not familiar with the band: Japan's Ruins are a drums and bass prog-core duo who play crazy, complex, heavy compositions and improvisations. Both members sing operatically in a made-up language, with one of 'em riffing and soloing w/ bass and effects to put most metal guitarists to shame and the other bashing the drums in an impossibly octopus-like fashion. Totally over the top masters of riff and timing they are. They worship French prog gods Magma, and are worshipped themselves equally and deservedly by fans and bands all over -- such as Mike Patton, who's just released "Tzomborgha" on his Ipecac label. And if you've never heard them before, this disc is in fact a great place to start (which is saying a lot).
"Tzomborgha" features weird (for them, even!) vocal stylisms, psychedelic fusionscapes, truly melodic and pretty parts, improv spasticity, and even some spacey atmospheric jamming, as well as plenty of the shredding bass/drums workouts with rapidfire, mindboggling changes like you'd expect. Continuing a Ruins tradition, this disc concludes with not one but two of their infamous medleys, the subjects of which in some way sum up the Ruins' appeal: one is devoted to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the other to Black Sabbath! The later is particularily amusing when they attempt to approximate (or parody) Ozzy's vocals... Earlier in the disc you'll also find two cover songs, one supposedly an Olivier Messiaen theme even though it sounds like a Ruins original, and the other the Shankar piece "Chittam Irangaayo", which is especially great. Indian classical music meets jazz meets the Ruins!
Tempering their complexicore excesses with a show of some diverse musical interests (along with getting a heavier bass sound that harkens back to older Ruins albums/bassists) results in this disc being the most vital in-the-studio display of their genius since, say, "Hydromastgroningem" back in '95 or 1993's "Graviyaunosch".
Yep, "Tzomborgha" is definitely impressive. Think about it. These guys have been around for, like, almost 20 years!! (I believe Ruins debuted in 1985.) They're at that point in their career where their last three releases before this consisted of two live albums and a best of! Isn't that like some Blue Oyster Cult shit? Most bands like that you could write off, yet here comes "Tzomborgha" to kick our asses. Awesome.
A self-explanatory collection that recounts the twenty year history of Steve Severin, Budgie and the ice queen herself, Siouxsie Sioux. All of the favorites are here, spanning from the incisive post-punk of tracks like "Arabian Knights" and "Happy House" to the glamorous Euro-club favorites like "Kiss Them For Me" (which I never realized was based on the breakbeat from Schooly D's "Saturday Night") and "Peek-A-Boo." Disc two will be of added interest to Siouxsie's collectors, as that disc featured a number of the hard-to-find extended mixes and remixes of their singles.
Liking Smog (umm, I mean (smog)...whatever) at this point is somewhat masochistic. In fact, it always has been. Bill Callahan invites you into the painful, personal side of his life through intense, heartrending lyrics, only to give you a distancing smack in the face via tales of unrepentant cruelty or worse, by making shitty wannabe rock n' roll albums. It's like having a crush on a beautiful boy whose moroseness, which you initially mistake for depth, actually stems from unhealthy self-obsession. You know better, you're only going to get hurt, but you do it anyway. So. "Accumulation: None" is a collection of singles and live radio sessions and b-sides and things. At least one song has never been released before in any fashion. These primarily come before Bill Callahan was, as mentioned, making misguided efforts to rock. Mainly what he does here is sulk, muse, and warn of his own lone-cowboy unloveable bad-boy nature. On "I Break Horses," horses serve as a thinly-veiled metaphor for women. Callahan sings, "I break horses, they seem to come to me asking to be broken... It doesn't take me long, just a few well placed words and their wandering hearts are gone." But although "at first her warmth felt good between my legs," that warmth "turned to an itch, turned to a scratch" that needs to be eliminated. He continues, "Tonight I'm swimming to my favorite island, and I don't want to see you swimming behind. I break horses; I won't tend them." Moreso than any indie group I can think of, including kings of sordid relationship tales Arab Strap, Smog's songs are just... yucky. Brutal, even. Bill Callahan, what a dick! And although it kinda makes me feel like a woman staying in an abusive relaionship, I have to say that I like it that way. I love Smog (except for when I love to hate Smog), ridiculous self-centeredness, obnoxious attitude and all. The songs on "Accumulation: None," ranging from his earliest experimentalism and sloppy, intimate four track recordings to the relatively more plush recent years, are all pretty good, occasionally brilliant, and in any case vastly better than his last album. Yes, it hurts, but you might like it.
Miho Hatori the former chanteuse for Cibo Matto here makes dreamy, Astrud Gilberto-style, very light and floaty bossa nova with fellow Brazillian music fetishist Smokey Hormel. On this their second EP, they've focused on the works of Baden Powell, respectfully covering five of his classic songs. Performed with an increased ease and confidence by all involved, these are finely executed, faithful renditions of this Brazillian music master's works. So lovely.
Hey, it's *yet another* glitch-alicious release from hyper-prolific label Tigerbeat 6, and it's better than most! Dwayne Sodahberk works in, around and through various dance, glitch and indie conventions, rocking lo-fi beats and bringing elements of electronic experimentalism to the party while not totally rejecting listenability, even occasionally flirting with four on the floor romps . Fun!
2002 will be remembered for many things, one of them being the long-awaited second coming of San Francisco Mission District rocker 'zine STROKER, last heard from, like, three years ago. All heavy, all metal, and kinda ironic but that's the way we do things here in the Mission. The first issue featured reviews of only Scorpions albums, this time all the reviews are of the Metallica back catalog, including an appreciation of "Master Of Puppets" by our own Andee Connors! Let's find a juicy quote: "...I learned to play drums by listening to MoP on headphones and desperately playing along. I drove around with feathered hair in my first car, a Mustang, blasting Master Of Puppets. I'm pretty sure my first metal girlfriend and I had sex to Master of Puppets. And if we didn't, we sure should have." Metal girlfriend? (I think Allan's just jealous cuz he never had a metal girlfriend - Andee) Anyway, you have to buy the 'zine if you want to read the rest. The other Metallica reviews are quite entertaining & informative too. Like any good music zine (and this is one) you'll also find a bunch of band interviews, generally with some of the scuzziest metal throwbacks to have tread the boards at Lucifer's Hammer shows these past few years: The Mighty Thor, Raging Slab, Bloodhag, Hammers of Misfortune, and Electric Wizard. Oh, and Stroker also gets up close and personal with genuine rock star Kirk Hammett of Metallica. There's some juicy tidbits in there too. Rad rockin' readin'.
The Foundry is a San Francisco ambient label, whose definition of ambient resides squarely in the mid-'90s. At that time, the utilitarian chill out rooms of warehouse parties and raves intended to calm the over-stimulated, ecstacy-addled brains of ravers; yet it also began to produce a very specific variation of synth-based ambient music that converged with world beat, post-industrial, psychedelia, and anything else that you could zone out to. Labels like Beyond, Emit, and Silent offered warm and fuzzy ambient cocktails with holistic claims of inter-dimensional travel, brain-tuning, and other new age drivel. Yet, with any aesthetic form, gems did emerge, with the mid-'90s ambient highlight being the Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works Vol 2." Ben Swire's debut EP aspires towards that Aphex pinnacle, and comes respectably close with an interesting use of IDM-informed / post-drum & bass rhythms spartanly skittering amidst the synthetic floes of ambience. Swire, who has previously worked with Neotropic on one of her NTone singles, displays a slippery use of nursery rhythm melodies that unveil themselves to be quite sublime, not unlike Boards of Canada's "Geogaddi" album.
While a plethora of bands have emerged from San Francisco's so-called Jewelled Antler Collective (e.g. Thuja, Blithe Sons, Knit Separates, The Birdtree, Skygreen Leopards, etc.), the number of individuals in this gaggle of Californian psychedelic improvisers is actually rather small, with the majority of 'em participating in Jewelled Antler's flagship project Thuja. Comprised of Rob Reger, Loren Chasse, and former Mirza members Glenn Donaldson and Steven R. Smith, Thuja base all of their recordings on extended improv sessions recorded in Reger's expansive warehouse space. They then edit these to extract specific atmospheres and musical quotations. Like all of their releases, "Suns" implies that these improvised actions are rituals that not only mimic the rustlings of arboreal environments but also attempt to magically invoke the forest to crack through the concrete walls of Reger's warehouse. Such metaphors of urban reclamation through natural means are far from fruity idealism, for Thuja's atmospheres speak with unspecified sadness and beauty, as anyone who has heard their previous Emperor Jones cd "Ghost Plants" knows (...or their tUMULt debut, or any of their limited edition cd-r releases on their own Jewelled Antler label, or the recent Last Visible Dog cd-r "Hills"...).
While their closest musical neighbors may be such farflung (in time and space) bands as the Taj Mahal Travellers, No Neck Blues Band, and Kemialliset Ystavat, Thuja has developed an aesthetic that is wholly unique, by adding tons of natural textural details (i.e. contact microphones scraping over rusted surfaces, shells banging against chunks of metal, twigs quietly snapping, etc.) on top of traditional instruments (guitars, harmonium, organ, and drums) in their non-traditional pursuit of the almighty drone. As yet another essential document of this pursuit, "Suns" shines brightly through the trees of Thuja's metaphorical forest. Quite amazing.
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
1970, England. Imagine a rock band that's equally into the sort of psychedelic electric guitar excursions you'd have heard back then wafting from London's hippy ballrooms, as well as ballads and jigs derived from British folk song tradition. With lovely, pure, delicately bird-like female vocals a la Anne Briggs and Sandy Denny... Yes, Trees were quite a bit like Fairport Convention, but rather more obscure. And now, at long last, we've managed to get a hold of these UK import-only cd reissues of their two albums. Gorgeous stuff indeed, utterly magical, definitely for fans of early Fairport, Shirley Collins, Pentangle, and the whole Brit-folk-rock thing.
Both of Trees' records ("The Garden of Jane Delawney" and "On The Shore") are from 1970 and come equally recommended (they may as well be two volumes of the same album). Both of 'em feature the vocals of Celia Humphris, along with both traditional acoustic instruments (dulcimer, mandolin) and electric guitars, and blend original songs and adaptations of traditional folk material.
"The Garden..." boasts a rather strange cover painting, and Windy's favorite Tree's track, "Nothing Special", whose sublimely pretty guitar strumming prefigured a whole movement of jangle pop bands (e.g. REM). Of their two albums perhaps *slightly* the more rock-based and produced, "On The Shore" features the song "Sally Free And Easy" which in recent years, you may recall, was covered by Flying Saucer Attack on a Drag City ep of that title, and also comes with lengthy liner notes telling the story of the band.
It would be very easy and all too dismissive to simply say: Tujiko Noriko is like a craftily fragmented Japanese Bjork. Granted that is what immediately springs to mind when hearing the first track of her fourth release (her third for Mego), but delve a little further and you'll be rewarded with a more defined idea of her own sparkling magical loveliness. If you're not familiar with Ms Tujiko, that initial description does give you a basic sense of her sound - an endless building up and stripping away of layer upon layer of swooping childlike vocals, swirling dreamy washes and delicate melody fragments. Her singing also brings to mind Kate Bush as well as the criminally undersung Canadian art pop singer Jane Siberry (check out the seventh song! apologies, I couldn't locate its title). Alternately soft'n'breathy, often almost birdlike, and considerably more robust. Furthermore, the title (in Japanese: Hard Ni Sasete) certainly doesn't evoke visions of her fantastic electronic dream pop world. Make Me Hard. Huh? Puzzling! The packaging consists of nine loose individual square panels of photography, collages, liner notes and lyrics, but be sure to bring your Japanese translator along for the ride 'cause it's all in Japanese.
Without the melodic center provided by Warren Ellis or the nuanced drumming of Jim White in Dirty Three, guitarist Mick Turner explores gentle textures, weaving in and out of structured song form. On his third solo album, accents from piano or harmonica pop up here and there, but the primary tool is the guitar, building a sense of place through layering and very subtle reverberation and manipulation. Icy spaciousness gives way to airy warmth as "Moth" soothes with its quietly gorgeous tones.
Ryan Moore, our favorite Dutch-by-way-of-Canada dub meister's "best of" collection. With 12 tracks dating back as far as 1995 and on up to the present, this might be a good place to start for those unfamiliar with Twilight Circus. Big and beefy drum sounds, bouncy spring reverb, tape delay super psychedelic and so stoney you'll get a friggin' contact high just listening to some of his shit. And all recorded using vintage analog equipment, the way dub oughta be recorded. Contains tracks from In Dub Volume 1, Horsie, Dub Voyage, Volcanic Dub, and Dub Plates Volumes 1, 2 & 3.
The User's Symphony #1 For Dot Matrix Printers was released as a little 3" cd on the Staalplaat label back in 1999, and this longer follow up is (again) just what you'd expect: a bunch of standard, now rather obsolete, dot matrix computer printers running through a server (the "conductor"), set up to "make music" by printing synchonized ASCII files prepared by The User (Montreal duo Emmanuel Madan and Thomas Macintosh). It's kind of like a player piano music idea applied to ordinary office equipment. The resulting sounds make for some very satisfying, rhythmic, clicking and clacking "electronica" / "minimal techno" music (a la Raster Noton stuff like Noto). Or is this meant as a satiric commentary on such music? Regardless it's good listening. It's especially neat when you have it playing and you forget what you're listening to, your brain placing it in the catagory of "ambient background noise" (the usual fate of printer sounds) even though you probably don't have any dot matrix printers around...and then you gradually notice these mundane noises coalescing into music and you realize it's The User.
It's been a while since I've listened to The User's first Dot Matrix Symphony, but this one seems a bit more musically sophisticated, although the conceptual gimmick (a cool one) remains, obviously, the same. For their next project, though, we're told The User will be documenting sounds from their Silophone, a sound installation in an abandoned grain silo that can be accessed to the public through the internet.
Budget minded double disc dancehall collections from Greensleeves which feature the label's top picks for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. What with 40 tracks on each one, they're a bit of a mixed bag. But with contributions from the likes of Capleton, Ward 21, Elephant Man, Sizzla, Lexxus, Barrington Levy, Mr. Vegas, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Merciless and more, there's something for everyone here.
Budget minded double disc dancehall collections from Greensleeves which feature the label's top picks for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. What with 40 tracks on each one, they're a bit of a mixed bag. But with contributions from the likes of Capleton, Ward 21, Elephant Man, Sizzla, Lexxus, Barrington Levy, Mr. Vegas, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Merciless and more, there's something for everyone here.
Budget minded double disc dancehall collections from Greensleeves which feature the label's top picks for the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. What with 40 tracks on each one, they're a bit of a mixed bag. But with contributions from the likes of Capleton, Ward 21, Elephant Man, Sizzla, Lexxus, Barrington Levy, Mr. Vegas, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man, Buju Banton, Merciless and more, there's something for everyone here.
Fact 1. This album was recorded in two hours. Fact 2. This album does not feature any music from Terre Thaemlitz, Ekkehard Ehlers, Thomas Brinkmann, DJ Spooky, Scanner, or Noto. Fact 3. This album represents the 'idea' of those artists as reduced down to 'one-trick musicians.' Fact 4. This is crap. Fact 5. Assholes at ArtForum will probably try and tell you otherwise.
It would be one thing if the anonymous 'artist' behind this atrocity of post-modern posturing had decided to parody electronica or legitimately attempt to translate one form of music into another (i.e. Zeitkratzer's orchestral recapitulation of John Duncan's shortwave compositions). Instead, "Edition Kunst Plays" is a collection of hurried audio scribblings that may have begun as a sarcastic comment on the ubiquity of these artists; but these re-interpretations are so clumsy, so clunky, so unlistenable as to render any dialogue with the original artists irrelevant. For example, Noto's work has been reduced down to an unprocessed sinewave firing at regular intervals and aimless pitched up and down for a couple minutes. Any sense of Noto's sublime use of rhythm with a perfectly controlled post-techno context? Any sense of the beauty within crisp lines and sharp turns? No fucking way. Sure DJ Spooky, Terre Thaemlitz, et al. deserve to be mocked and humiliated for their own insipid post-modern posturing. But they can do that on their own.
One of the worst albums of the year.
From the label that brought us Dust Sucker and Mersey Trout (the Magic Band live in Liverpool) comes a collection of recordings -- from the 1920's to the 1960's -- which serve to illuminate the vast musical influences of the enigmatic and inimitable Don Van Vliet a.k.a Captain Beefheart. As one might imagine, such a musical map would surely cut a broad swath. While many of the tracks have a direct connection to the Captain's works like "New Minglewood Blues" by the Noah Lewis Jug Band, whose opening lines are exactly the same as "Sure 'Nuff 'n' Yes I Do". Other tracks, like those by Blind Willie Johnson and Rahsaan Roland Kirk point out obvious influences on Vliet's vocal style and proclivity for playing two wind instruments at once. While the majority of tracks here are early blues & string band recordings -- Blind Blake, Victoria Spivey & Lonnie Johnson, Uncle Bud Landress, Al Simmons, Blind Joe Taggert, among others -- there's also plenty of jazz cuts -- Charlie Parker, Cab Calloway -- and oddballs like Lord Buckley, The Fang and Hawaiian slack key players Kanui & Lula. On top of all this are interspersed rare tracks of the Magic Band, interview snippets and random remarks from Captain Beefheart. Whether you're a fan of Captain Beefheart or not, you just might like this collection anyhow as just an interesting mix cd.
You know those Obey/Giant (Andre the Giant has a Posse) stickers? Well for some reason here's a compilation of currently hip bands (indie, garage, pop punk, electronica) such as The Hives, Peaches, Gonzales, International Noise Conspiracy, Icarus Line, and Modest Mouse aligning themselves with that strange subcultural phenomenon. Maybe they're all skateboarders. The tracks on here don't seem to have any particular bearing on the "subject" nor are they all exclusive or anything. But obsessives into the Obey/Giant street art thing may want this.
FINALLY!!! Hard to believe this thing is actually done considering how long and how seemingly cursed this project has been. Started almost 5 years ago to be released on AQ staffer Jim's now defunct Petrol label, then bequeathed 3 years ago to AQ staffer Andee to release on his tUMULt label where the lineup and concept went through many changes (possibly because what was begun as an homage to a song Jim really liked, had become a deconstruction of a song Andee really hates) and then an endless procession of waits, mastering, pressing, re-recording, battles with other labels over 'rights', as well as 4 different cover concepts that all had to be scrapped because they were seemingly too difficult for any printers to confidently take on. -sigh-
So here we are. Was it worth the wait? Obviously we think so. Look at the lineup, a veritable who's who of AQ favorites: Acid Mothers Temple, Circle, Hrvatski, James Plotkin, Kit Clayton, Loren Chasse, Troum, the Tape-beatles, Mieskuoro Huutajaat, Fennesz, and Stilluppsteypa. And that's just the cream. Lots of tracks were left off, according to Andee in order to avoid the spotty/uneven flow of most compilation/tribute/cover records. He even opted to leave off the Melt Banana track, which was a tough, but important choice, since the spazzy grind of their track disrupted the droning meditative, hypnotic flow of what is now less just a compilation of random tracks, more an epic and gorgeous hour of dreamy droney creepy blackness.
So what does it sound like? Well, while it does flow, and could perhaps pass itself off as a record by a single (quite eclectic) group, each track offers something unique, while still culling the sinister spirit and nihilistic 'rock' from the original (the inspiration for this comp). Finnish shouting choir Mieskuoro Huutajaat start things off with a brief, and shouted, acapaella version, in Finnish, and delivered with gusto! James Plotkin's Joy Of Disease turns it into a burbling, stuttering, electronic soundscape with hiccupping beats and backwards vocals. Somewhere between Boards Of Canada and Coil. Stilluppsteyppa took back their original track, a wash of glitchy yet melodic, musique concrete, and re-recorded/re-mixed it, removing most of the melody and adding even more space, resulting in a dark abyss of gorgeously perplexing minimalism. The Kit Clayton track is an ultra catchy, beat heavy SF glitch core workout, that obliterates the original melody but manages to keep the minor key tension and dark ambience. Ultra prolific Japanese space rockers Acid Mothers Temple turn the original into a wild pagan ritual, starting out with several minutes of Tsuyama's throaty chants, skipping nervously around that oh-so-familiar melody before the band stumbles in to join him for the remaining 10 minutes, with splattery percussion, freaked out reverb/retard guitar and squealing feedback. Hrvatski (aka Keith Whitman) claims that this Painted Black contribution is his favorite track that he's ever recorded and it's easy to see why: he actually sings, plays guitar, and weaves a thick wash of warm, langorous tones before it all crumbles beneath a speaker shredding cascade of sputtering drill and bass. Iowa's masters of plunderphonia, the Tape-Beatles use found sounds and actual lawsuit-baiting chunks of the original to create a tense and unnerving, noirish dreamscape, with disebodied screams, curious snippets of overheard conversations, and the sliced and diced original which all end up adding to the creepy vibe. German drone-sters Troum incorporate 'that' melody into a totally overpowering and molasses-thick drone, assembled from multiple tracks of guitar and accordion. The Fennesz track was previously released on an ep via Jim O'Rourke's Moikai label, and to us seems like Fennesz at his very best. Melodies and textures are spit out, stuttering and hiccupping from the cold, digital craw of the laptop, but somehow come out all warm and thick and coil around you like stuffed snakes and deliciously fragrant pipesmoke. Amazing. AQ faves Circle, do what they do best, taking the skeletal remains of the original, holding on to the barebones melody, and constructing a motorik, unwavering rhythm, that sounds like Tony Conrad and Faust's Outside The Dream Syndicate with just a little more melody and umph. And the record is finished off perfectly, spiralling slowly into 'black'ness, by AQ pal Loren Chasse (who as you probably already know is a pillar of the Jewelled Antler Collective, as well as a member of Thuja, the Blithe Suns, etc). He uses snippets of the original, slowed down hundreds of times until it is a lugubrious almost-melody, and contact mic-ed strobe lights to create a static-y, humming, nighttime dronescape, like a otherworldy forest, complete with clattery insect buzz and moaning winds in the ancient trees. An almost perfect compilation and an amazing gathering of some of our favorite artists doing some of their best work. Essential.
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The first 8 tracks on this disc comprise a best of Rather Interesting releases from 1999 to 2002. Essentially a slice straight down the middle of what Uwe Schmidt, a.k.a. Atom has been up to. Includes tracks from Los Samplers (Perez Prado drill n' bass), XXX (Atom with Chilean rapper Tea Time), Midisport (Brazilian samba gets the midi hatchet), Bund Deutscher Programmierer (refried laptops a la Mille Plateaux), The Roger Tubesound Ensemble ("digital jazz" in Atom's own words) and more. As a bonus, the last four tracks are all previously unreleased, so Atom fan amateurs and professionals alike have a reason to pick this up.
An SF goth compilation completely by, for and about those "of the night". Fifteen tracks in all spiral downward into the shadowy depths of darkwave and synth pop, super-saturated with synthesized string sounds, arpeggiated basslines, and programmed beats. Heavy on the dramatic and melodramatic, the various vocalists draw easy comparisons to the classic goth kings and queens; for instance, the very Siouxsie/Danielle Dax-esque swooping female vocals of Trance To The Sun, Information Society's deep, emotive male vocals a la Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode or Peter Murphy, and Ganymede's swooning croon over clubland beats like that of Soft Cell's Marc Almond.
Cup got positively giddy when she saw that The Goblins were on this record, but she soon found out that they're not Thee Goblins from Vancouver - the jawdropping spectacle lead by Nardwuar The Human Serviette (interviewer extraordinaire and leader of The Evaporators who actually do an appropriately blistering, bizarre cover of The Monks' "Higgle-ly Piggle-ly"). Despite the liner notes (written by The Monks' Eddie Shaw!) describing these versions as bringing "30 year old music into the 21st century", they're really much more controlled, faithful renditions courtesy of The Goblins, The Cuckoos, The Graves Brothers and Kelley Stoltz.
Of course, the wonder of The Monks was their absolute raging fearlessness especially taking into consideration the time in which they existed... 1966! Five GIs stationed in Germany formed this strange strange band. They shaved the tops of their heads monk-style, worn long black robes, and thumped out the most amazing primal rock. Vocals were howled, yelped and ranted. Lyrics were filled with bile and dark wit. Everything was completely untethered, so truly punk, badass and one-of-a-kind! That said, it seems kinda odd to cover them - either attempting to recapture the songs' raw energy or to completely rework them - 'cause there was so much more to The Monks than the songs.
This may seem to be a very confusing compilation if you haven't been privy to its theme/intent. For those unfamiliar, Trash is an infamous London nightclub and this cd documents the hip, eclectic acts who've performed there. The first six tracks, tagged "Part One - Live At Trash", are indeed live cuts by Gold Chains, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Peaches, Moldy Peaches, Peaches and Stereo Total. The second six are titled "Part Two - Club Classics" - and they certainly are. This diverse gathering includes Duran Duran (an early one! "My Own Way"), Kylie Minogue, Nancy Sinatra, Felix Da Housecat, The Slits (doing "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"!) and Huggy Bear. If the club Trash holds little significance for you, this may just seem like a glorified, home mix tape. For hipsters in the know, you probably already own all of these records.
First in a proposed series of limited edition "abstract folk compilations" from Missouri's Mental Telemetry label. This "Trighplane" (i.e. three-way) split between Magic Carpathians, the Six Organs of Admittance, and Vibracathedral Orchestra isn't a bad start! From Poland, California, and the UK respectively, these are all AQ-fave outfits, with perfect "Terra" credentials, Ptolemaic-style. The opening two tracks from the Magic Carpathians are kinda scary, with off-kilter strings and Anna Nacher's haunting voice. They do a song from their last album, "Ethnocore 3" but perhaps it's a different version. Then Six Organs takes over with a long, gently droning piece with an old-timey folk vibe. Last up is Neil Campbell & Co's Vibracathedral Orchestra, bowing away at their oven racks, electric guitars and whatnot for five tracks of satisfying improv drone clatter, perhaps the most abstract (if not most folky) stuff on here. Though it IS folk in the sense of homebrewed, primitive music-making, just how we like it. All of this in a nice letter-pressed package (designed by AQ pal Nemo who runs Time-Lag Records), limited to 1000 -- what are you waiting for?
This is actually a mixed cd from Richard Riley Reinhold, aka Triple R and the co-owner of German tech-house labels Traum and Trapez. His selection of cuts is a posh display of the smoothest shuffle techno, minimal house grooves, and vocoder-driven data pop, with cuts from Metaboman, Dialogue, Ada, Broker / Dealer (who have become San Francisco's best known export to the Cologne scene), Process, Luciano, Jeff Samual, Sami Koivikko, PWOG, Schaeben Und Voss, Dntel, and Oxtongue. As a DJ, Reinhold doesn't really have any exciting tricks, but manages to flow between these slick beats with an equally unhurried swagger.
Though this collection probably won't appeal to everyone, aww, what the heck does anyway? Seriously though... Trojan delves a little deeper still into the archives of Jamaican music history with this newest collection of sides. This is basically where it all starts, the Jamaican music industry as we know it anyhow. Before there was any record industry of course, there were primarily sound men: Duke Reid, Coxsone Dodd, and to a lesser degree Prince Buster and many other highly competitive small operations. The fierce competition amongst them was well known, and success at importing the hottest American R&B singles was a sure way to give one's sound system an edge over the rest. It wasn't long before the most successful of these (Duke Reid firstly) started cutting their own imitations of American R&B using local musicians (the various members of the Skatalites got their start here under various names, depending on who was producing the track.) The tracks here were all recorded between 1960 & 1963 and vary between downright, straight up copies of American R&B and what would eventually become ska: basically a sped up R&B with a heavy accent on the off beat. Among those featured on this collection of classic Jamaican R&B (as well as some rare and even previously unreleased tracks) are some household names: Laurel Aitken, Derrick Herriott, and a 14 year old Jimmy Cliff (his first recording "Dearest Beverly" is included here.)
Who doesn't love alt-country songstress Gillian Welch and her musical partner David Rawlings? I kinda feel sorry for you if you don't. Anyway, chances are you're a fan, it seems most AQ-customers are. And fans should be pretty happy with this release, a DVD featuring the three videos shot for Welch's last release "Time (The Revelator)", plus nine songs filmed live in concert last year, five of which don't appear on any of Welch's albums! It's about an hour's worth of music total, and best of all -- it's in black and white! That's just perfect. Welch and Rawlings are wonderful live performers, so charming and funny that they make what they do seem easy, when of course it's not. Rawlings' impressive guitar solos, the duo's lovely vocal harmonies, Welch's brilliant lyrics...so good. See 'em live if you can -- checking out this DVD should definitely inspire you to do so. If it's not too early to start thinking about Christmas gifts, this seems like an idea...
Ummm, can't say much about this band other than they're getting tons of press and are selling out venues like the Fillmore. People love 'em and Jack White's certainly got a great voice, and he's a lot less annoying and attitudinal than his contemporary-in-sound
Within the sweeping orbits of the Michigan space rock community, Windy & Carl (whose Windy is not the same as AQ's Windy, thank you!) have continued to count as one of the best and most consistent projects to emerge from that fertile scene. With an incredibly simple template that finds Carl on effects laden guitar and Windy on bass and occasionally singing, the duo crafts gentle washes of blissed-out, shoegazing haziness which is lazily structured by the sparest of songwriting elements -- a vocal melody whispered on one song, an acoustic guitar strumming on another, or a bass steadily progressing through a simple chord progression on another. It seems a little hard to believe that so much of their dreamy output was through tiny edition 7" singles and EPs; yet as this triple cd compendium is filled with tracks from those early singles, as well as compilation tracks, and live / unreleased tracks. Fantastic sleepytime music.
