Time to get high. Philly psych-jam outfit Bardo Pond seems to be best appreciated with some THC intake. Or maybe not, we wouldn't know, that's just what we've been told. But certainly, for those of us who don't smoke that stuff, they're one of those bands that could be used as an aural substitute for such illicit substances. Either way, this is definitely stoner rock, of the heavy-lidded, droney, downer variety. Compared to their recent Matador label albums (Set And Setting, Dilate), this new one for ATP seems somewhat heavier and sludgier -- it's one that could be appreciated by those into the likes of Dead Meadow, Sleep or even Electric Wizard. Yet it's still downy soft, too, with folky, acoustic songs living among (or within) the massive electric-psych-guitar wash ones. Delicate female vocals from flautist Isobel drift o'er the mellowed out, doped up distortion. It's as airy as it is hairy. Loping, slumbrous, gentle, melancholic, blissful, hazy... What Sleep was to Black Sabbath's "Lord Of This World", much of this is to Sabbath's "Solitude". Bardo fans of course will like, and even if you haven't been that into Bardo Pond before, we'd say this is defintely one to check out. Maybe their best in a while. Real nice. Play loud.
There's a trend in metalcore these days to mix in super melodic, catchy parts that don't fit at all in some sort of bid to appeal to folks who can't handle their metalcore being ALL metal, or to make it onto MTV, where there's now a glut of bands who, when not pounding away in a loose approximation of death metal, sound like boy bands or super wussy indie pop. While BTBAM do have their 'sensitive' moments, they're not just stuck on as an afterthought, they are as critical to the song as the crushing riffs and howled vocals. For the most part, BTBAM are HEAVY through and through, dense and downtuned, pummellingly intense, and rhythmically super complex with obtuse time signatures, hiccupping and stuttering, stop/starts, with even the most straight ahead rhythms complicated by little off time breeches. There's definitely some Swedish influence here (In Flames etc...) but BTBAM manage to take the sound of Swedish death metal, and infuse it with the mathematic complexity of Dillinger Escape Plan and their own strange idea of songwriting, all convoluted and serpentine, and come up with something pretty original in the process. No mean feat considering metalcore's sound-alike tendencies. Songs flit from buzzing black metal to muffled crunchy brass knuckle chug, ultra low gutteral death metal barks stumble through chaotic and lurching, stuttery breakdowns, blazing double kick underpins dual guitar harmonies that sound more demonic than melodic and everything is tempered by waltzy minor key melodic bridges with soaring harmony vocals. Thanks to AQ pal Metal Dave for turning us on to this!
Okay, admit it. You loved Destiny's Child. Everybody did. Not just MTV TRL kiddies. Punk rockers, indie rockers, everybody. And whether they admit it or not, their love of DC was pretty much irony-free. And why the hell not? Like Missy Elliott, and a handful of others, Destiny's Child was taking a tired old formula and reinvigorating it. Great Songs. Amazing production. What more could you want? So this, DC frontwoman Beyonce's solo record, could've gone one of two ways: schmaltzy R+B ballads and goopy soul, or weird and wild hip hop, with big beats, crazy samples and hooks galore. Well, thankfully all signs point to the latter. At least for the first half of the record. Towards the second half things veer horribly into slowjam territory and there's a really cringeworthy spoken word 'poem', but for the first 30 minutes or so, this record is wicked. This is THE record (or half a record) to blast at full volume, with the top down, wind in your hair, summer all around. And it's obviously the perfect soundtrack to writhe around to on the dancefloor. By now, if you spend any time out among the living, you've heard the monster jam "Crazy In Love", her track with Jay-Z. But the record is chock full of tracks just as good. A funky dancehall workout with Sean Paul, a grungy, metal guitar flecked dirge with Big Boi from Outkast, a blissed out almost-slowjam with Missy Elliott and a bunch more. Maybe the most bootylicious disc so far this year. Or at least half a disc. But that half is well worth the price of admission.
After a long absence, finally repressed!!! Here's what we said when this was first released: After a brilliant single and a fantastic contribution to the "Mask 100" compilation, Bola has released his debut album. Fitting right along side fellow Skam residents Gescom (aka Autechre) and Boards of Canada, Bola offers an unmistakable ambiance of freefloating synths and delicate breakbeats while retaining an alian sensibility to rhythm, form, and development. The end result has been qualified as "chill-out music for the non-emotionally handicapped."
This new mini-album's got 24 more minutes of mathematical musicality from the Minneapolis/Portland based Bozart. They're just a duo of guitar and drums, playing post rock instrumentals that sometimes totally remind us of AQ-faves The Fucking Champs, though this has got lotsa quiet parts, really chop-sy *and* beautiful, and is really not so metallic throughout as those Champs fucking are. Nor are Bozart as noisy and hectic and "extreme" as some other bands you might equate them with, formula-wise, like Lightning Bolt and Crom Tech/Orthrelm. No, if those bands are Slayer these guys are Opeth. The tracks on "The Steel Bridge" almost seem to alternate between the pretty proggy ones and the epic, heavier metal compositions. There's spacey psych shoegazer stuff, sometimes repetitive like Circle doing a guitar clinic. But then there's also total epic Champsiness as well. And let's not forget the all-guitar, no drums tour de force of track two. Metal that's not so evil, these men cry real tears. This third Bozart release is a fine one.
The local Broker Dealer outfit mines similar sonic territory to such minimalist techno purveyors as the Chain Reaction and Kompakt labels -- think Gas, Thomas Brinkmann, Markus Guentner, Vladislav Delay. Insistently throbbing yet melodic bass overlayed with vintage synth tinklings and an overall freeze-dried disco sheen. No vocals, just ultra cool and unemotional. The last track "To Hear the Fires", though, tugs at the heartstrings -- a surprising remix of local country twangers The Court & Spark. Achingly pretty.
Comes with a video our Macs were unable to play.
Viper returns with one last (?) collection of live recordings by Don Van Vliet a.k.a. Captain Beefheart and his various Magic Bands. Where the preceeding collection "Magnetic Hands" pulled together tracks recorded throughout the U.K., this time the label has put together recordings entirely from the U.S. The bulk of the tracks were recorded in the seventies, falling between 1972 and 1981, with one little gem recorded in 1966 at the Avalon Ballroom in our own fair city. Like the previous collection the fidelity is not the greatest -- all recordings seem to have been captured via cassette recorders from the audience.
I may have to go back and check out some of the older Cinematic Orchestra releases now, 'cause I really dig this new one. I had sort of written them off as yuppie cocktail makeout music (a la Kruder and Dorfmeister), and maybe it still is, but it sure sounds a whole lot better than I remember. Dark and moody and sexy and creepy, but also playful and fun. A newly recorded soundtrack for Tziga Vertov's famous 1920's silent film Man With A Movie Camera. The music is very reminiscent of Portishead with its lugubrious smoke-y and murky downtempo dirges but with some shuffling acid jazz and wild and wooly funk mixed in as well. Goes from super sinister, dangerous dark alley, late night cinematic soundscapes to almost-wacky twenties slapstick caper music to skittery Mission Impossible style spy music to fuzzed out Hammond organ funk to dreamy, melancholy instrumentals. Really cool. We also have the DVD that includes a restored version of the film with the new soundtrack, as well as live footage and interviews!
Right from the get-go, The Clientele's debut full length is a dizzyingly swirly trip. Hard to believe this is their first album proper! The Violet Hour is the follow-up to their excellent collection of singles, Suburban Light, which was released a couple of years ago. The highly affected drowsy vocals and woozy reverbed guitars both courtesy of Alasdair MacLean, Mark Keen's fluttering piano and James Hornsey's languid bass all keep things wonderfully reeling and quite reminiscent of '60s psychedelic pop. Often very Donovan-esque. The only thing to keep you grounded is Keen's steady tick-tock drumming. Simply put, The Violet Hour is a gorgeous listen -- a baker's dozen of softly glistening and understated songs to warm our chilly San Francisco summer eves. Oh and this cd includes bonus treats in the form of two videos! Recommended.
To commemorate the reissue of this Cocteau Twins classic, we bring you word from former AQ resident goth Marc Kate:
Cocteau Twins' music creates the same bittersweet comfort as a feather stalk poking out of your pillow, candied anise, a scratchy wool sweater or the smell of your mother's hair. From any era, their sound is quite unmistakable. Their guitars issue luminous wires of platinum that reflect the singular sound of Elizabeth Fraser's vocals. Her vocals are unique, not only because of their their crystal clarity, but her lyrical style that drifts between glossolallia, a baby's earliest utterances and some elfin prayer. Blue Bell Knoll is by no means a departure from previous albums. Their career never involved any sharp turns, but rather a refinement of a sound. What's unique about Blue Bell Knoll is that previous albums were usually fairly dark, lit by dusk or moonlight whereas Blue Bell Knoll exists in a strange sort of joyous, daylight melancholy. The kind of joy that is so overwhelming that it spills into other emotions and brings tears to your eyes. At least that was my reaction the first time I heard this record when I was seventeen.
Beginning back in 1989, French experimentalist Eric Cordier (who you may know from the stunning electro-improv ensemble Afflux) began building immersive audio installations that broadcast sound through hundreds of speaker cones mounted to the wall at the average height of the audience's collective ear. "Houlque" dates back to 1996 and is but one of many of the soundtracks that Cordier designed for such installations. While originally an 8 channel piece, Cordier has compressed the music down into a stereo recording for this release, making it a bit more compatible with most folks' home systems! Layering multiple tracks with sustained drones from hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer-vina, harpsichord, and church organ, Cordier has successfully crafted a dense piece of maximalism that harbors similarities to Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerks," Jim O'Rourke's "Happy Days," and even some of Organum's textural density. Coincidentally enough, Cordier is responsible for introducing both O'Rourke and Keiji Haino to the hurdy-gurdy, which has played a considerable role in both artists' work. Beautifully packaged with lots of photographs of Cordier's installations.
"A Little Menstrual Night Music" is a remix of Current 93's "In Menstrual Night," a record that has long been thought of as the most oblique of Current 93's pre-folk recordings, dominated by liturgical choral loops and clunking rhythmic couplings of piano and drums. The original album was produced back in 1986, as an exploration of the question of where dreams go when they die; yet this remix, produced by Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter for Current 93's recent San Francisco performances, emphasize the dreaminess of the recordings, having filtered out most of the percussive aspects and allowing only a few vocal snippets from Ruby Wallis and Rose McDowell to emerge from the thick cloud of reverb that swallowed the original. And, the usually omnipresent voice of C93's David Tibet is surprisingly absent in this fantastic piece of sonic hypnogogia.
God, I love the Deftones. I can't help it. And why should I even try? I've proudly proclaimed it in the past and I will continue to do so. Their records strike this perfect balance between thunderous, skull crushing heaviness and heartbreaking, soul shattering lovliness. Sweet, wispy melodies flit delicately between falling slabs of impossibly heavy sound, downtuned guitars spew molten rivers of roiling riffs and frothing feedback, Chino Moreno's gorgeous velvety croon, wraps itself lovingly around your head, filling your ears with warm melodic gauze before exploding into a banshee-like wail and splitting your skull into a thousand pieces. Crushing metallic dirges dissipate into drone-y, whirring soundscapes of hushed, almost whispered vocals and delicate, crystalline melodies. So perfect.
This record is pretty amazing, if just for the fact that it sounds so much like the one before it even though it's almost an entirely different band. Which does make sense I suppose, as remaining original member John Gallagher sings and plays guitars and basically writes all the songs. Still, it seems pretty impressive that you could assemble such a crack team of death metal technicians two times in a row! But here's the proof. Grinding, thrashing downtuned death metal, convoluted, churning serpentine rhythms, impossibly precise and perplexingly tight, this band just destroys all comers. The only complaint is the new drummer. Don't get me wrong, he is unbelievable, and definitely sends me back to the practice space head hung in shame, but he had the unenviable task of replacing original drummer Kevin Talley, who is without a doubt, one of, if not THE, best metal drummers I have ever seen, hard hitting, ultra complicated, but still swinging. But that's really a minor quibble, 'cause once you're immersed in this record, you won't have much time to think about anything but how hard your ass is being kicked.
The latest blast of free-noise-out-rock from Campbell Kneale's always reliable Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label comes courtesy of The Fingers, a duo that takes free jazz and dips it in a boilng, churning vat of 100 proof Fushitsusha and then wraps it in some Harry Pussy. Wild and wooly guitar freakouts, drenched in reverb, careen wildly amidst some splattery, chaotic and very loose free drumming, that crashes and pounds relentlessly, only occasionally tighting things up into almost-straight-ahead-rhythms, before crumbling back into the thick and gorgeous mess of this drum/guitar battle. But the guitar is definitely in control, laying a thick, viscous layer of six string skronk and atonal no-wave clatter over EVERYTHING. Noisy and nice. Fans of Japanese psychedelic noise freakouts, and all things chaotic and free will dig this like crazy.
This is an amazing pop record. Really. In the way Weezer and OkGo! and a handful of other MTV bands make amazing and accessible (but still a teensy bit subversive) pop. Super well produced and lush and catchy and funny and clever. The only real problem with Fountains Of Wayne is the lyrics, which are pretty cringeworthy at moments. There are some clever bits and some really funny lines, but lots of it is simple and fluffy and very songwriting 101. But if you're in the mood for some summery, sweet, melancholy but rockin' pop, the kind that sounds so good blasting from your car stereo when the top is down and you're driving around aimlessly, with songs about how hot your friend's mom is, your favorite waitress, getting drunk and losing your wallet, and girls and love and all that stuff, then this may just hit the spot.
Lisa Gerrard's soundtrack to the movie The Whale Rider glides and cascades gorgeously. So wonderfully moving regardless of whether or not you've seen the film. It's a finely composed, predominantly instrumental album but one that's laced quite effectively with her ethereal voice. With it's lustrous harp sounds and delicate piano melodies, it very easily could be found filed in the New Age section of some record stores simply towering over the rest of the flock. A soothing delight for any Dead Can Dance fan.
Finally! The debut album from local garage rock trio The Husbands -- a band that just happens to feature AQ's beloved Sadie Shaw on guitar, maracas and backup vocals. In fact it's all girls on this record, though they've got a boy playing added percussion on stage with 'em now. In addition to Sadie's fabulousness there's the authentic, so-appropriate voice of Sarah Reed -- sexily raspy from whiskey and cigarettes, but she still hits the notes, the girl can sing; and then there's the rhythmic pound of drummer Nikki Sloate. This fierce, all-attitude band is really into rockin', with a deep love for and knowledge of their '60s inspirations / source material. Half the songs are well chosen covers that get the rough 'n raw Husbands treatment -- tunes by Half Pint and the Fifths, The Barbarians, Carole King, even a punk-energized version of Bo Diddley's "Cadillac". Definitely a super-fun live band (go see 'em if you get the chance, which you probably will 'cause they're so hard workin') who've managed to capture their energy and attitude on this lil' round disc.
Just a short three song dose of Lali Puna's German pop dreaminess. Valerie Trebekjahr's vocals once again seem weightless. Her words float like feathery wisps through the fragile transmissions of electronic tapestries. The languid title track and its subsequent dubbed out version are much less song-structured and ethereally catchy than their past efforts -- especially in contrast to the final track... Now, this might be a good thing or a bad thing -- you decide! -- the cd closes with a heavenly cover of the theme song from the '80s movie Electric Dreams (originally done by Human League).
Another excellent reissue from local label Water. This time from Byard Lancaster, who somehow I had never heard of, even though HE PLAYS THE FLUTE, and he would go on to play with Roland Kirk (my favorite!), as well as Sun Ra, McCoy Tyner, Sunny Murray and loads more. Originally released in 1968, and produced by long time Roland Kirk sidekick/confidante/producer Joel Dorn, It's Not Up To Us finds Lancaster hooking up with legendary guitarist Sonny Sharrock and original Weather Report drummer Eric Gravatt. And while this IS jazz, it's pretty wild and all over the place, mixing in psychedelic rock, dirge-y rhythmic drones, abstract free skronk and rollicking fuzzy funk. The sound is surprisingly contemporary though. In fact everytime we play this in the store people come up to ask what it is, and are surprised to find out it's over 30 years old. And of course, there's wailing flute ALL OVER! This may just be a contender to enter the pantheon of my all time favorite flute records, of which there are an elite few!! So check it out.
Maybe you had some great bands in your town years ago that were amazing but never really did anything beyond playing parties and maybe making some practice tapes, and no one from anywhere were else ever heard 'em and now they're but (drunken?) memories. I can think of a few from where I'm from, and AQ-pal Glenn Donaldson remembers some too -- one of his faves being Leaf Yard, an outfit from the underbelly of the early '90s Santa Cruz scene who made some bizarre heavy artistic fucked up rock music indeed. Glenn is one of the guys who runs the Jewelled Antler cd-r label (he's a member of Thuja, Blithe Sons, Franciscan Hobbies, The Birdtree, etc.) and Pink Skulls is his newly-formed side label for more "punk" oriented material. Part of the reason he decided to start this new imprint, though, was 'cause he became convinced that Leaf Yard's legacy needed to be rescued from oblivion, and while Pink Skulls is still a pretty obscure entity, and this is a limited run of cd-rs, we'll do our part to help him promote this document of lost Santa Cruz rock weirdness circa 1990-1995.
The stuff on this 52-minute, 18-track cd-r is drawn from Leaf Yard's live recordings and demo tapes -- of course they never released a "real" album -- and the sound can be kinda rough, but that totally doesn't detract from Leaf Yard's music 'cause what they were about was ugly, raw, noisy skronk anyway. If they were around today, they'd probably get lumped in with the current scene of art-damaged punk like Black Dice and the Lowdown, or especially, AQ faves Comets On Fire. Some of this sounds a lot like Comets On Fire (hey aren't they Santa Cruz guys too?). There's a big chaotic psychedelic element, some of this even approaches the intensity/density of Japanese garage-psych feedback overlords Fushitsusha, almost. But then there's lotsa other things going on as well: you'll hear a definite SST influence (Minutemen, Gone, Saccarhine Trust), it's sorta unhinged post-punk hardcore psych. And then there also seems to be a strange, hidden inspiration taken from death metal, with some double kick drumming and evil atmosphere. The distorted-to-hell vocals are punk, ugly, the kind your mom won't like. (They sound kinda French, weirdly enough.) Not bad for some Santa Cruz college kids, eh? This is definitely just as worthy as lots of the "legendary" name-bands that get fancy reissues folks drool over. You can really hear what it was about Leaf Yard that made such an impression on Glenn, if you share certain sensibilities that is. So we're really happy that he, working with the surviving ex-members of the band (drummer Ryan Craiker unfortunately has passed away), compiled this material on disc and packaged it in a plastic sleeve with a stapled, xerox booklet full of photos, lyrics, flyers, and, best of all, pictures of Leaf Yard's cassette tape releases, making for a superb archival release of unknown twisted scuzz for twisted scuzz fans! Limited to 50 copies, fyi.
What to say? It's a reunion of Captain Beefheart's legendary Magic Band, sans the Captain, but with John "Drumbo" French doing his best impression of Don Van Vliet on the mic in his stead. Along with Drumbo, Mark "Rockette Morton" Boston, Gary "Mantis" Lucas, and Denny "Feelers Reebo" Walley are on board for this 17-song assortment of classic Beefheart tunes. As you might expect, these guys are still excellent musicians, and the songs are still as weird and angular as ever, it's just that age has seemingly tamed a bit of their wildness. That and the relatively comfortable recording environs they enjoy now, instead of the cruel taskmaster conditions under which they were directed by Vliet originally, probably takes off a bit of the edge. Mostly, we think maybe this would have been a bit more intriguing if there were no vocals -- or if Drumbo didn't emulate Beeheart's gravelly voice so closely. I mean, it's kinda weird -- why not see how these songs would sound with a different style of singing? Or at least take the Beefheart impression to an over the top extreme, maybe make it more of a black metal rasp or death metal grunt (Andee's suggestion) -- THAT would have been cool. We can definitely see the appeal of this reunion to Beefheart fans in the live context -- it's the closest you'll get in this day and age to actually seeing/hearing live Beefheart for sure. (The Beefheart vocal impression makes sense in that context.) But why exactly would you listen to this at home, instead of an old Beefheart album? Novelty I suppose, and curiosity, and some excitement that this music still "lives" in a sense. Excitement that is evident in the effusive liner notes penned by Matt Groening, a fan who is perhaps less put off by the seeming contrivance of this release than we were. Hey, it's not bad -- but it is what it is. If this was a new band, we'd probably be pretty into it, though we'd be wondering why the heck that guy is singing like that. So, all you Beefheart maniacs, we've got this if you want it!
On their second album, Minus The Bear bestow upon our ears some refreshing waves of emotive, occasionally mathy, indie rock. Prety darn cool. Unfortunately there's a little something that blemishes full enjoyment this album though, and it's the choice of song titles -- lengthy wackiness that has little or nothing to do with the music and more to do with already tired, ironic self- and pop-culture references. Some examples? "Damn Bugs Whacked Him, Johnny", one of a few nods to the movie Starship Troopers, and "Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo". Zzzzz. They really should leave the lengthy song title absurdity to the true masters, San Diego's The Locust (check out their latest album for a fresh batch!). That said, fortunately the music more than overshadows these distractions. It's both engaging and interesting. The album includes two (tidied up?) radio edit versions for those with delicate ears.
In less skilled hands the plethora of incredibly diverse styles, source material and directions that come into play on Bilious Paths might've resulted in a total jumbled mess, but fortunately this is not the case at all, for this is a Mu-Ziq album. Under the skilled hand of Mike Paradinas, sonic order and disorder coexist like the best of buddies. Chopped up and assembled meticulously, the flying chunks of farting digital blurts, hard gutteral bass lines, and drum'n'bass-jungle-ragga-gabber-techno beat fragments frolic, engage and disengage at whim. Nothing new or terribly groundbreaking, but we've got Knifehandchop and Hellfish and Venetian Snares to annoy and brutalise us now (in a good way of course). All we need from Mu-ziq is more of the same good stuff.
Big Jus of Company Flow and West Coast hip hop underground legend Orko the Sycotik Alien got together to record some of the most damaged, outer space, free form hip hop ever, but in the process, were so bombarded by news about Bush and the war that the record turned into a sort of protest letter, albeit, an abstract, psychotic, grinding, lurching one! This is maybe the ultimate in abstract hip hop, taking the unlikely sampling and unfunky beats of Anticon and the rapid-fire, tongue-twisting delivery of the modern crop of experimental hip hoppers to its logical extreme. Shimmery, finger picked guitars reverberate into a sitar-like mantra over spare, skittery beats while the flow is stumbling and drawled, stuttering and staccatto, dreamy jazzy pianos float beneath a super distorted slow motion breakbeat, protest chants are chopped and mixed into a thick mix of sweeping synths and crunchy galloping beats. Add in the wicked non-stop flow, dexterously weaving and bobbing, dodging bursts and beats, riding on waves of rumble and fuzz, and their RIGHT ON anti-Bush manifesto (there's even an ode to the pretzel that came so close, but ultimately failed to off the prez!) and you may just have the one of the most impotant underground hip hop records of the year. DEFINITELY for fans of Cloudead, Sage Francis, El-P, Cannibal Ox, Antipop Consortium and all that sort of stuff.
The central element of Ian Nagoski's stately minimalist epic Effortless Battle is the 'wild wave' -- an instrument built by Nagoski's sometime collaborator Daniel Conrad. A system of tone generators that activates the resonant frequencies of an array of metal plates, the 'wild wave' is not as cacophonous as one might think. Rather Nagoski coaxes a pretty amazing set of timbral drones that slowly progress over the two extended pieces on Effortless Battle, music that comprised the soundtrack to a video by Catherine Pancake. Initially, these vibrating metal plates rumble ominously, resembling a electrical motor ceaselessly puttering in the distance; but Nagoski pushes the subtle overtones to steadily make their presence known and eventually replace the lower frequencies with glistening patterns of ever-shifting vibrato. In a lot of ways, Nagoski's use of the 'wild wave' creates an controllable activity that mimics the resonances found in the field recordings of Toshiya Tsunoda, which are often of giant metal plates vibrating from environmental sources.
Nice looking picture disc from Wolf Eyes cohorts and Hanson Records superstars Nautical Almanac. Lots of warbly, ultra processed vocals, brain shredding feedback, clinking and clattering random percussion, half formed melodies smashed to bits and scattered haphazardly all over the place, retardedly strummed guitars, damaged electronics blooping and buzzing and screeching, clumsy abstract rhythms, strange ambient drones, all mixed into a huge whirling, convusing, throbbing, pulsing, ear-hurting, gut-punching beautiful mess.
Here's a half-live, half studio half dozen from Numbers. The lo-fi live three were recorded in Oakland at a big ol' warehouse 'demolition' party. A messy, raucous EP that's sure to please fans, we'd imagine.
"She And Me Fall Together In Free Death" is the first Nurse With Wound album in quite some time not to be released on the United Dairies label. Portland's Beta-lactam Ring had the good fortune of acquiring the record, which certainly fits in with their impressive catalog (Legendary Pink Dots, Troum, Coil, Reynols, and much other avant-garde madness). Yet the change of labels for Nurse With Wound doesn't alter their conceptual pursuits. There's plenty of Surrealist juxtaposition, arcane musical references, and just a general celebration of high weirdness. As on the past couple of NWW records, here the group is paired down to just Steven Stapleton and his trusted engineer Colin Potter; but what is certainly unique about "She And Me..." is that it opens with a cover of ESP jazz vocalist Patty Waters' "Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Hair," which finds Stapleton singing for the first time on any of his recordings. The darkly blurred, droned 'n' drugged folk rendition of that song recalls Stapleton's previous collaboration with Sol Invictus' Tony Wakeford on the "Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish" album. The rest of that side of the record devolves into a variety of musique concrete squiggles and free-floating particles of decontextualized sound. Side two revs up the motorik Krautrock propulsion with a considerable march that mirrors Faust's complex psycho-trances. This is vinyl only, and there are no plans at this moment for a cd release. It's unclear how long this will stay in print... so don't delay!
For a while now, we've been raving about the various groups/collectives attempting, in their own ways, to sort of reinvent hip hop. Mush and Anticon and all those folks, Dose One, Cloudead, Sage Francis, Sole, Why? etc. And part of the appeal was their apparent disregard for hip hop tradition, removing whatever they felt like, beats, hooks, structures, funkiness, rhymes and replacing all of that with the everything and the kitchen sink. Bizarre samples (jazz, metal, field recordings, whatever), damaged, stuttering massively unfunky beats, stream of conciousness lyrics, and that whiny, white-boy, tongue twisting flow. But it seems like all of that stuff is doomed to remain on the periphery of popular hip hop. Not sure if the world is ready, and by world I mean kids who watch MTV and want nothing more than a new Jay-Z record that sounds EXACTLY like the last one. So what happens when someone with the same idea, reinventing/re-invigorating hip hop, takes a different, more subtle approach? Doesn't bury their respect for traditional hip hop under a wash of effects and Satie loops and epileptic beats. And attacks from the inside. Subversive and insidious. You get something that sounds like it -could- be on MTV and the radio, definitely -should- be, but probably still won't. Onry Ozzborn and his Old Dominion crew have been crafting some of the most original and BEST hip hop for several years now. Staying pretty underground, but not sure how long that can last. This is an amazing sounding record, amazing production, banging beats, wicked flow. But there's this aura of creepiness that is what makes it so appealing. All minor key, and gritty and ominous. You can hear lots of influences, Xzibit, Ras Kass, even Onyx, but it's all filtered through Ozzborn's twisted vision. The weird thing is, this sounds like it really COULD be huge. On the surface it just sounds like really good hip hop. Dig a little deeper more and more strangeness is revealed. Not to say this stuff isn't weird. It is. It's just a little less obvious. Less "Look at me! Isn't this crazy!!" and more "Back off...you have no idea what you're getting into motherfucker..." The samples are strange and original, but they're so deftly woven into the tracks it feels like they couldn't sound any other way, haunting Gregorian chants, rumbling synths, creepy minor key pianos, heavily reverbed electric guitars, what sounds like a bubbling aquarium, and all kinds of stuff. The beats are loping and head bobbing, and Onry's flow is thick and gritty, dark and threatening and downright evil sounding. There are hooks galore, choruses that actually stick in your head. And if that wasn't enough to make this one of my favorite hip hop records of the year, this record has one thing, that automatically qualifies it for major respect...NO SKITS!
Nice collection of rare 7" and 12" mixes from melodica master Augustus Pablo, recorded between 1973 and 1979. It may concern some Pablo neophytes that most of the tracks here were issued as both 7" and 12" discomixes and even alternate versions of both, so that what you get is a great deal of rhythm repetition. Disregarding this redundancy in rhythm you still get 7 long tracks -- all rare and great -- and for what it's worth, if you can deal with that fact (such is life with Jamaican comps) the arrangements in each mix are completely different. Comes packaged with beautiful full color booklet which includes liner notes contextual to each rhythm family.
The last Poison The Well record was easily the best metalcore record, if not one of the best plain ol' METAL records, of last year. And this new one seems poised to repeat the feat! This is PtW's major label debut, taking the plunge, that years ago meant risking losing your core audience to cries of 'Sell out!' but now just means that we may be seeing Poison The Well on MTV and who can argue with that. It's getting tougher and tougher to describe metalcore, my thesaurus is worn away to the size of a matchbook. Yes, this is pummelling, crushing, brutal, punishing, the guitars are downtuned, thunderous riffs, and howled shrieks and furious double kick drumming and relentless rhythms and all that. So yeah, it's HEAVY. But Poison The Well write amazing songs. Every riff, every lyric, every melody, no matter how unlikely, is a part that you will find yourself humming to yourself days later. Incorporating the often problematic, clean vocals and melodic emo breakdowns more deftly than most into their overall sound, PtW drag you kicking and screaming on a rollar coaster of extreme dynamics, lush production and gorgeous catchy pop swathed in metallic brutality. The melodic parts, of which there seem to be a lot more this time around, owing more to their progress as songwriters methinks than their major label leap, are as soaring and captivating, as catchy and heart wrenching as anything the Get Up Kids or Reggie And The Full Effect could come up with on their best days. And so much less cloying, nestled the way they are, all snug and warm between a row of amps on 11 and a swirling, writhing moshpit. This definitely hits the metal spot, but pushes all our emo buttons and satisfies our pop sweet tooth at the same time. At first I didn't like this nearly as much as their last full length, but the more I listen, the more I am completely baffled and knocked out by how much more advanced this record is than its predecessor, so complex and varied, full of hooks, labyrinthine arrangements, beautiful melodies, sheer face-melting metal, gorgeous soulful vocals, lush, layered instrumentation, throat shredding demonic screeches and bizarre but subtle production. This definitely raises the bar impossibly high. It's about time!
Taking an electronic work first realized in 1972 by Belgian avant-garde composer Henri Pousseur, Sub Rosa have arranged for new mixes to be done by three of today's most talented electronic experimentalists: Robert Hampson (of Main fame), AQ-fave turntable specialist Philip Jeck, and Markus Popp of glitchsters Oval. It's not technically a *re*mix project, it seems, as Pousseur's original piece allowed for multiple, equally valid mixes (or studies). He did eight of 'em himself back in the day (released as a four cd set, now unavailable, on Sub Rosa two years ago) and contributes a new one, done digitally this time, as the first track on disc one here. Hampson, Jeck, and Popp follow with their varying takes on the same material/composition, Popp's maybe being the prettiest, all of 'em very blippy and bloopy -- the original piece(s) having a kind of sci-fi spaceship/upset stomach sound. But of course, Jeck's mix is our favorite, as it brings in some of his trademark warm and crackly, antiqued vinyl-y sounds (adding such is apparently in accordance with Pousseur's open-ended concept for this piece).
Mirroring Keith Fullerton Whitman on his stellar "Playthroughs" album, digital wizard Akira Rabelais has plugged an electric guitar into what he calls Argeiphontes Lyre, an alchemical piece of software of his own design, to produce his third exceptional album "...benediction, draw." Yet Whitman and Rabelais look toward different historical precedents in the construction of their albums, inevitably shifting the resultant sound. Where Whitman found inspiration in Terry Riley's time lag accumulators and Christoph Heeman's ambient slippages, Rabelais earnestly professes Erik Satie as his mentor, proclaiming that this album "in the best sense of a musique d'ameublement (Satie's famous aphorism for 'furniture music') shows itself as an acoustic state rather than a sonic wallpaper." True enough, Rabelais presents these digital abstractions as a fluttering series of sublimated half-melodies and tonal fluctuations that embrace the spirit of Satie's compositions. There is a jewel-like preciousness to this construction, as his digital transmutations open into cascading washes of variable glints, shimmerings, and flickers -- guitar passages that very rarely resemble anything like a guitar. This is a magical album from one of the truely unique proponents of digital synthesis. Very very nice.
Latest blast of damaged hip-hop-ic mayhem from the Def Jux camp and it's maybe one of the best so far. And of all the Def Jux releases, for some reason it's gotten the least attention. Not sure why, but it's a shame. Def Jux has done nothing but impress from day one, Cannibal Ox, El-P, RJD2, Company Flow, Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif and on and on. A perfectly, off-kilter, damaged and demented take on hip hop. Super innovative production, funky and bouncing beats, wild, weird flows, and most importantly a sense of humor. S.A. Smash fit in perfectly, playing the goofy country cousins to the big city Def Jux nuclear family. The record starts off with a skit, I know, I hate 'em too, but this one's pretty fucking funny. And there are a few more scattered throughout the record, but they sort of fit in the whole scheme of things. Skits aside though, this record kills. Banging, booming beats, weird but totally catchy production. The sound is a wild mix of Nelly bounce, Clipse grind and Cannibal Ox outerspaceness, which perfectly compliments Camutao and Metro's free form flow, equal parts Onyx intensity, Redman goofiness and Method Man scratchy drawl. The El-P produced "Lilly" is quite possible the jam of the year, with an incredibly catchy, looped bassline, and a hook that just won't stop. Why this isn't all over the radio we will never understand. And the rest of the record is just as slamming. Fans of all things Definitive Jux, Mush, Anticon need this, and folks who get all their hip hop from MTV and Power 106 gotta get schooled.
Quirky, mostly instrumental tracks reminiscent of the Sun City Girls ethno-ambient forays, or the Residents' Eskimo. So it should come as no surprise that sometimes SCG collaborator Eyvind Kang appears here and that both the Girls and Alan Bishop are thanked within. The ten pensive, meandering compositions here include a wide variety of instrumentaion including piano, viola, recorder, bathtub, various percussion (including taos drum timpani), zither, harmonica, saz, mandolin, casio, guitar and more. Nice.
Not sure how much needs to be said about this. An awesome live film of Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow performing their legendary all-45 Brainfreeze set. Really fun and crazy and just a total blast. Also included are excerpts of the opening sets by Marvski, Dante, Nu-Mark and a really funny, amazingly dexterous set from Z-Trip. Extras include rehearsals, photo galleries and discographies. Not sure how long we're gonna have these so act fast! And for our international customers, it's all region!
Death metal is a heavily populated genre, with legions of faceless practitioners spewing gore lyrics and blast beats. Still, amid the masses, we all have our personal favorites that for some reason strike a (bloody) chord. For Allan one of those bands is Holland's Sinister, a long running death unit who've just released "Savage Or Grace", their second album with vocalist Rachel on board. (She's just as brutal a "singer" as any guy, in case you were wondering.) The production is kinda raw, but I don't think that takes away from the undeniable ripping power of the band. Rather, I like its warm, grinding embrace. And Sinister's usual brand of speedy, chugging devastation decorated with dizzying guitar breaks and quirky compositional details is in full effect. Includes, while supplies last, a seven-song bonus disc with no information given (is it live?).
If Martin Schmidt has anything to say in the matter, "Do You Party" will be the one and only Soft Pink Truth album. For the Soft Pink Truth is the work of Drew Daniel, Schmidt's partner in the acclaimed San Francisco electronica duo Matmos. Where Matmos flirted with notions of dance music, incorporating all sorts of electro-acoustic experiments and eccentric sampling techniques, the Soft Pink Truth offers a cheese ball pastiche of queer pop culture references -- disco fantasy, robot funk, big booty bounces, and house cliches all rolled up in a ridiculous explosion of libidinal pleasure. It's clear that the clipped house grooves that emerged in Matmos' third album "A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure," were just teasings of the bright-pink, spandex electro-pants that Daniel was itching to put on. Thus, "Do You Party" is the full realization of those house leanings that Daniel wanted to explore, but had been kept in check by the "experimental" aesthetic which Matmos had so carefully constructed. In fact the Soft Pink Truth is the by-product of a dare to Daniel from Matthew Herbert to make this record; and Daniel dutifully produced a cheesy, nasty, and funky house album but with plenty of twists and turns to make it much more than your garden variety Castro club fodder. Along with the Sylvester acid squelches, there's a goofy Vanity 6 cover of "Make-Up" with disembodied vocals presented by Bevin Blechtum and there's also plenty of smarty-pants gender bending allusions that pop up throughout the album. But when the day is done, the (soft pink) truth about "Do You Party" is that it's all about booty.
MPEG Download: "Make Up" [/audio/softpinktruthmakeup.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Make Up" [/audio/softpinktruthmakeup.m3u]
Originally a tour only cd, we managed to snag a handful of these full length cds from Anticon all-star Sole. Recorded, according to the liner notes, "in midnight rampages" and assisted by Odd Nosdam, Jel, Why? and Dose One, this stacks up pretty well against his other two full lengths considering this was done on the fly. A little more lo-fi than his proper albums, Mansbestfriend still manages to capture all the stuff that makes Sole, and Anticon for that matter, so exciting: Dark and creepy ambience, weird and unlikely samples, off-kilter and stuttering beats, and of course Sole's spastic, whiny flow, extrapolating on everything from politics to dreams to sex to outer space to sucka mc's to the enviornment and anything else that strikes his fancy. The lo-fi production actually works in his favor, adding lots of distortion and crunch and grit to the already expansive sonic palette.
Thought we'd better get around to listing this, since it was finally reissued domestically at a much cheaper price! "Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To" is one of the best album titles ever, and at least for the heavy pharmaceutical users in Spacemen 3, it's certainly a fitting one. Recorded in the winter of 1985 / 86, the album is actually the most rock of all of the Spacemen 3 albums as their 13th Floor Elevators buzz meets the intensity of early Stooges. Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce felt that the versions of the songs found on "Taking Drugs" were better than those on the subsequent albums. And that may just be true! Easily one of the best and most important documents of eighties space-psych!
Recently, the Spring Heel Jack duo of John Coxon and Ashley Wales took their amazing "Masses" / "Amassed" jazz-meets-electronics project on the road, and we've now got this aptly-titled disc to prove it. Yep, live performances recorded at two shows in England this past January featuring several of the veteran jazz players who appeared on "Masses" and "Amassed" -- Matthew Shipp, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, William Parker -- alongside electric guitarist Jason Pierce of Spiritualized (who contributed to "Amassed") and the Spring Heel Jack guys themselves adding their two cents with electronics and live sampling and so forth. If you're not familiar with the two albums by this project already, basically SHJ recorded a bunch of awesome jazz musicians improvising (not necessarily together), fed that into their computer, edited and manipulated and juxtaposed, and came up with a pretty great jazz/electronics hybrid, that's neither wholly improv nor pre-composed. And it's definitely NOT drum and bass overlaid with jazz samples, fear not. Imagine a jazz version of Radian, if you know that band (another parallel would be to Pluramon). How would it work live, though? A bit differently, but with players of the calibre they've gathered here, it's still gotta be good. SHJ's opportunity for structuring and editing done in post-production is obviously lessened or eliminated, but the duo remain in their role as facilitators, and there's definitely a lot of electricity present, in all senses. The two long tracks here (75 minutes total on the disc) can get really wild and messy with the guitar distortion of "J Spaceman" vying with E. Parker's tenor for supremacy amid a bed of hectic Bennick drumming and SHJ electronic effects. Yet at other times W. Parker's bass and Shipp's Fender Rhodes groove right along with Bennink laying back. The music ebbs and flows, different groupings of players and soloists taking their turns. As a group, everyone seems to be revelling in freedom yet stays responsible to the music the group is making. This would seem a good bet for fans of Sun Ra, Supersilent, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, and Evan Parker's previous experiments with live electronic accompaniment.
Besides having one of the best band names ever (inspired by A Confederacy Of Dunces, strangely enough), back in the '80s Sweden's Stomachmouths were their nation's undisputed masters of snotty sixties-style surf-psych garage, leading a revival that would last for most of that decade and predated the current Swedish garage mania (Hives et. al.) by almost twenty years! This compilation encompasses the Stomachmouths' short sharp burst of creative, manic rock and roll that lasted a brief three and a half years. Raw and noisy, catchy and rocking, the Stomachmouths sound like the perfect mix of twangy, reverby Dick Dale riffs, the fuzzy and crunchy garage-y buzz of the Sonics, and the cranky, spazzy brattiness of the Electric Eeels or the Styrenes. Sounds like a pretty amazing collection and it is! This has been playing in the store non-stop since we got it in last week. Awesome, super detailed liner notes too!
As with their two previous full lengths, Athens' Summer Hymns have made a nice album that's certainly pleasant enough but not particularly memorable. Head songsmith Zach Gresham and drummer Philip Brown have taken their pretty psych pop sound, complete with Flaming Lips-y / Grandaddy-ish plaintive vocals, and with the addition of two new members named Matt (Dawson and Stoessel) have fleshed out their sound with a whole lot of mournful, twangin' pedal steel, as well as some banjo, mandolin and dobro. Been listening to a lot of Gram Parsons, I'll bet. The result is mellow and pretty but, well, nothing special. I'd recommend any Court and Spark record over this one.
Aussie guitar experimentalist Oren Ambarchi has been a prolific gent of late, mainly doing droney improv glitch stuff we've been diggin'. But we know there's other musical sides to his personality as well -- after all, we first encountered him playing in the loud n' noisy scatological Boredoms/Buttholes influenced band Phlegm back in the early '90s. So now here's another, new and different Ambarchi project, a duo by the name of Sun (not to be confused with the doomster duo Sunn) that pairs Ambarchi with one Chris Townend (described as an "Australian music figurehead" whatever that means). And it's not noise, or drone, or improv, or electronics -- it's full on indie-pop! Really nice too, with laid back drum beats, gentle vocals, and pretty guitar strum. They're called Sun (and there's some la la las sung) but they'll have you thinking of rainy days too with their lazy, wistful songs. It's got that 60s Beatles/Floyd filtered through 90s indie-pop thing, like a Elephant 6 band or the Aislers Set or something.
Originally released in 2001 in Australia only, Sun's debut has now been licensed by Staubgold for the rest of the planet. What's great is that they've also tacked on a 2nd bonus disc of remixes, featuring all the tracks from the album redone (or done in) by the likes of Pluramon, Hrvatski, Christoph Heeman, Rafael Toral, Pimmon, Mapstation, Tom Recchion and Norbert Moslang of Voice Crack! Quite an international lineup of experimental artists there, reinterpreting the music of Sun in ways closer to what you're used to hearing from Ambarchi. Droney and fucked up, these mixes add a lot to the package, making it not just real nice but really interesting as well. And what other pretty pop duo would get Voice Crack to do a remix?? I guess Ambarchi might just be angling to become the next Jim O'Rourke...
An excellent retrospective compiling ten long out-of-print singles and eps from this beloved SF veteran band. Bastards & Rarities resonates warmly with their distinct gritty and slightly trippy down-to-earthness. Early '90s college indie rock heaven: raw fuzzy guitars, steady shuffling drumming and drowsy boyish vocals. You can certainly hear connections between these songs and those of Swell's Bay Area contemporaries such as American Music Club or Pavement as well as their younger brethren like Grandaddy. Pretty darn great!
Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple. Ok, this isn't precisely the Acid Mothers Temple, but it is almost: Tsurubami is a trio featuring two Acid Mothers Temple members -- shaggy guitar guru Makoto Kawabata and equally hairy bassist Higashi Hiroshi, plus drummer Emi Nobuko (not so shaggy, but real cute if we may say so). And this disc was recorded *at* the Acid Mothers Temple, it says. So, to resume: Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple. Acid Mothers Temple...You are, once again, falling into a trance. Don't focus, just let go. The wash of Tsurubami's overpowering psychedelic guitar intensity contributes to your state of utter noise-lovin' bliss. The corresponding quiet passages of pretty, melancholic shimmer and shiver pull you deeper and deeper into what brain scientists call the AMT-zone. At 66 minutes in length (four tracks -- they're stretching out and so can you) this band's krautrock-inspired, avant-hippie psychedelic improv ought to be a sufficent AMT-fix for the week, we'd think. And "Tsukuyomi Ni" arrives with appetites for their particular brand of guitar-freakout mayhem and droned-out improv pre-whetted by the recent proper cd release of their second (?) album "Kaina", reviewed here just about a month ago (and previously, last year when it was but a cd-r). This brand new document of their live, no-overdubs sound is equally transcendent. It's released by Riot Season, the same label that just brought us that Mainliner reissue, so you know they know what's good.
After three albums for Mego on which her vocal delivery drew progressively (and eerily) closer and closer to that of Bjork, Tujiko Noriko gracefully hops over to the Tomlab label and subtly shifted her overall sound. For one thing, the vocal resemblance to Ms Gudmundsdottir is much less pronounced. Singing in both Japanese and English, her lilting murmurs and sighs are backed by glistening shards of minimal pulses and veils of softly muted drones. Check out the dreamy almost-ceremonial procession of "Mugen Kyuukou". Sheer prettiness.
Super low priced video document of the current "San Francisco Scene", heavy on the Extreme Elvis (you've been warned). Let me explain. AQ pal Virgil Porter had a cable access show called Burn My Eye, and this here DVD collects the greatest most memorable bits, including: A sweaty swaggering house show from garage rock trio The Coachwhips with random testimonials from some CW fans. An awesome high energy performance from Deerhoof -- watching the drummer, seated on a milk crate and pounding on his ramshackle 2 piece kit is totally mesmerising and pretty impressive. An interview with SF's very own Extreme Elvis, who is kind of like GG Allin trapped in the body of (fat) Elvis, as well as a sort-of Extrem Elvis greatest hits reel -- the candy cane in the ass, the pissing on the flag, the head shaving break up, the cum drinking. Wow. Some raw live footage of The Locust, as well as a backstage interview with them by Extreme Elvis that gets a little out of control. Noiseniks the Lowdown destroy it live at a house party and in a backyard. The Numbers get an interview and some live action. And Total Shutdown are naked in a park, and bursting eardrums at legendary local watering hole Bottom Of The Hill. Secret extras include a Numbers video as well as some live mayhem from local faux-gay-leather-techno boys Zeigenbok Kopf.
You know that guy with the Grizzly Adams beard you're always seeing skating down Valencia 'n dumpster diving outside Ti Couz? That would be the world famous artist that AQ knows as nice Mr Chris Johansson, who has single handedly released this double disc set featuring almost 50 of his favorite Bay Area rockscene bands (many of the tracks live). Everyone from Coachwhips to Caesura, Touched By a Janitor, Vetiver, Mr and Mrs Evil, Tarentel, Veronica Lipgloss, Trackstar, Total Shutdown, Quails, Troll, Erase Errata, A Tension, Tussle, Virginia Dare, Zmrzlina, Aislers Set, Tommy Guerrero, Crack W.A.R., Sonny Smith, Zeigenbock Kopf, Deep Throats, and so many more.
As with most comps meant to survey a local scene, this is a mixed bag, but there's tons more good stuff here than bad, and it's a real good way to taste what the local scene has to offer if you're not one of those folks that goes out to hear live music all the time. An exciting listen.
Double disc foldout digipack features artwork by local artists Jo Jackson, Chris Corales, Tony Cox, Dave Schubert, many more, but not, as far as I can tell, any of Johansson's stuff.
