20 Minute Loop have made absolute leaps and bounds since their sophomore release back in 2001... heck, that album, Decline of Day, was already pretty damn good! For one thing they've polished their boy / girl vocals to an utter golden honeyed glow and lushed up the whole 20ML picture. Just check out the second song "Cora May"! A terrific pop tune! Indeed, this album does much to define their own sound from those who've influenced the band which in the past were much more apparent -- namely Throwing Muses and Breeders. Really, Yawn + House = Explosion should garner the band total 'college radio darling' status! Yay!
The third in a trio of new releases of ultra clinical, vacuum sealed, glitched out minimalism from Alva Noto and Raster-Noton (the other two, Transrapid and Transvision we listed last time). What's Alva Noto up to with thise? These tracks are FUNKY. Well, sort of. Gorgeously packaged in oversized cardboard sleeves, printed with tripped out geometric patterns and pressed on those 3" cds embedded in 5" clear plastic, and assembled in such a perfect way, it's obvious that the Raster folk are designers first, musicians second. And that feeling comes across in the music as well. Painfully precise, perfectly constructed, and completely sterile. But in a good way. From the song titles ("Funkbugfx") to the head nodding rhythms contained within, this is obviously Alva Noto's funk record. But it's unlike any funk you've ever heard. Sine waves, and test tones and rumbling bass frequencies, white and pink noise, are all painstakingly constructed into a delicate lattice of alien funk, an extreme (and extremely rigid) dance floor music for some unimaginable outer (or inner) space dance party. Where the guests are all blocks of crystal, or swirling clouds of molecules, or pools of gelatinous ooze that sort of undulate sexily to the glith and click of this unfunky funk. These are the kind of grooves that you can picture scientists in sealed vacuum suits rocking out to in their lab on their ipods. Or maybe imagine Ryoji Ikeda and Sachiko M getting together to "jam" and running through some James Brown tunes, but in their inimitable, barely there style. Weird but pretty wonderful too.
Attention all Tori lovers! Aw heck, you probably already know this but... she's just released a brand new full length and this version comes with a dvd! Taking a slightly different approach this time around, the ever enigmatic Ms Amos' eighth album The Beekeeper is a conceptual work. The cd is comprised of nineteen songs which, as the liner notes tell, have bloomed from a half dozen "gardens" such as "the orchard", "rock garden", "the greenhouse", etc (although rather puzzlingly this is not at all reflected in the songs' running order on the album). Such a beautiful sentiment! This version even comes with a wildflower seed packet for your own garden. To boot, the dvd includes an interview and one exclusive song. This audio and visual release coincides with the publishing of her written autobiography, Piece By Piece which she co-wrote with music writer Ann Powers. This much Amos goodness is sure to delight her legions of fans!
Hey, check out this new Canadian band's elegant swagger and dandy bombast. If the number of recent in-store queries about them is any indication, many other folks seem to be doing likewise and diggin' what they hear! The lead-off track with its thumpin' dance beat and swooning male vocals (be forewarned, they occasionally cross the line into overwrought moan'n'wail) is totally reminiscent of Pulp's "Disco 3000". At once, it's both steeped in despair and drenched with fun. However, the next song jumps over to more aggressive, post-punk territory a la P.I.L. meets Interpol (particularly in the vocals, although A.F.'s singer has a peculiar warbly voice all his own which received a chilly reception from some folks around these parts). By the fourth song, a galloping very Modest Mouse-y tune, you sorta get the sense that this group has a multitude of personalities. That said, the one track that seems to encapsulate Arcade Fire's scope comes at the mid-point of the album. "Crown Of Love" is a soaring grande orchestral hand-wringer that suddenly bursts into discoland for its finish (again very Jarvis Cocker/Pulp-ish). But then again, the following song is totally in the swirling Flaming Lips vein (complete with very Coyne-esque singing), and the female-sung closing number comes across as very very Bjork-influenced. So what do all of these elder artists have in common which is also at the core of these young'uns' impressive sound? A complete unabashed flair for drama, untethered emotive vibrato-laced vocals and no fear of a thumpin' beat to get the blood pumpin'. This band can raise the roof and sink into a quagmyre of gloom as they see fit. Sure to tickle the fancy of many fans of those aforementioned bands.
Back in 2002 a fine instrumental cd appeared right around the time of year nearing the holiday season. 'Twas by the band Atomic 7, 'twas called Gowns By Edith Head, and 'twas a splendid, festive (yet not holiday specific) album packed with sparkling electric guitar magic courtesy of the sweet, bespectacled gent known as Brian Connelly (formerly of Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet and occasional guitarist for Neko Case -- you can hear him on her latest live album, The Tigers Have Spoken). Well, this Toronto based trio have returned with another lively goodie! En Hillbilly Caliente's almost as big as the 19-song-long 'Gowns, clocking in at seventeen wittily titled songs. Connelly truly works wonders with his ol' six string crafting frantic gallopin' rockabilly and surf numbers, swayin' tiki lounge swooners and creepin' villain-in-the-shadows mood pieces. All with equal ease and enthusiasm. Such a fun listen! Recommended.
For this one, I (Allan) have got to tell a little story... 'round Christmastime I was back home in Pennsylvania, where I spent one of my evenings hanging out with some old pals who I know from one of my hometown's record stores. You know, some folks in a basement, with some beers, something funny-smelling being smoked (no, not by me), and lots and lots of records being spun, mostly jazz and funk and R&B 'cause that's what these friends of mine dig the most. Well, one record comes on that immediately makes me say, hey, this sounds like something that shoulda been on that Chains And Black Exhaust compilation from a couple years ago. Real bad-ass, fuzzed-out psychedelic '70s funk. My friends hadn't seen that comp, but perhaps you have since you're reading this and we did pretty well with it here at AQ. Sadly it's long gone now. Well, another track (a nice bluesy number) goes by, and then boom, there's a song that WAS indeed on that comp! All chunky wah-wah groove and grunting badassitude, "Cynthy-Ruth" turns out it's called, and one of the highlights on Chains and Black Exhaust ('twas track three).
The record my host was spinning was a vinyl reissue of the first album circa 1970 by Detroit's "folk rock funkateers" (it said right on the cover), a band called Black Merda. We kept listening and it was clear that this was a pretty killer album from an obscure bunch of "black rock" pioneers, contemporaries of Funkadelic and similiarly influenced by Jimi Hendrix. Dang, I immediately figured that no doubt quite a few of you who dug Chains And Black Exhaust would want this!
So when I got back to work here at AQ, I had to track it down. My diligent investigations revealed that both this first album and its 1972 sequel Long Burn The Fire (released under the shortened sobriquet Mer-da) were soon to be reissued together on a single cd. And this is it, The Folks From Mother's Mixer (the name of one of the songs from the Mer-da LP).
Overall, there's a doomy, druggy vibe again akin to a lot of early Funkadelic, an atmosphere that can be mellow but menacing, dark and gloomy, with loosely-chanted choruses full of socially-conscious protest lyrics. And yes, there's a buncha funky heavy groovers in the style of "Cynthy-Ruth" alongside a goodly amount of laid back psychedelic blues-rock jamming in the Hendrix vein. Fans of early Funkadelic won't be disappointed at all. Their somewhat cleaner, brighter second album perhaps ain't as good as the first, but definitely also has its strong points and you'll be glad it's on here too.
Comes packaged with Afro-filled photos and lengthy liner notes that tell the whole Black Merda story, from their days as Edwin Starr's backing band to to their embrace of '60s heavy electric guitar rock to their signing to Chess Records (the famous blues label was trying to get into the psychedelic, underground rock thing at the time) and brief shot at fame to the eventual derailment of their career due to forces beyond their control. Now, 30+ years later, Black Merda's music gets another chance to turn on, funk up, and weird out music fans.
Fans of the band that began as Japan's answer to the Melvins, and then took a wayback machine ride into the '70s, Boris, can start rejoicing now. After a long while, we've finally got a whole bunch of Boris back in stock. AND, we've got a whole brand new recording as well! Whoo-hoo. Akuma No Uta is a 32 minute, six song mini-album that offers up a smorgasbord of styles from past Boris albums, drawing from the heavier-than-thou rumble of Absolutego, the exquisite beauty of Flood, and the sheer jams-out-kickin' of Heavy Rocks. Starting off with a two and half minute Earth-esque drone-metal intro (although for some reason unknown to us, the intro track on the vinyl version is seven minutes longer than that on the cd, so drone freaks may have to get the lp, or what the heck, get both!), the record then slams into the riffed-out, noisy stormer "Ibitsu". Distorted, manic, tear-shit-up stuff. After another song in the same Hendrix meets the Stooges style psych-punk rawk vein, Boris switch gears again, for the album's centerpiece, a twelve-minute opus entitled "Naki Kyoku" that begins all super languid, quiet and pretty before building into a soaring psychedelic jam. The jams continue on the next track, another stoner rockin' blow-out. Finally, title track "Akuma No Uta" winds things up with a return to the immense sludge grind of track one, melded into a headbanging groove, ending the disc on an adrenaline high. I'm sure there's mulleted, pot-smoking high-schoolers in Japan scribbling Boris logos on their binders...or so we'd like to think.
You'll note from the price that the yen isn't doing us Americans any favors right now. Ah well. Boris is worth a few extra bucks, as fans will no doubt agree. Worth their weight in yen for sure, and well, you know they're heavy. The vinyl version is even pricier, but it's perhaps got the cooler artwork (yes, they're different) with a cover that perfectly re-creates Nick Drake's Bryter Layter! Except with double neck electric guitar-bass instead of acoustic guitar... Real nice.
And be aware (beware?), for soon to come is another Boris, the bottom-heavy full-length known as Boris At Last aka Feedbacker. We should have that as soon as it's out, we'll keep you informed!
Here's a heavy AQ fave, finally repressed after more than a few months MIA, and back in stock! From our New Arrivals list #184 last year:
Buried At Sea are a bulldozer, shovelling clods of earth down your earcanal. Clods of toxic corrosive landfill, to be precise. And if you love heaviness and doom like we do, you'll understand that we mean that's a good thing, and you'll definitely want to pick up this, the first release from a quartet of Chicago doom-mongers who possibly named their band after the Saint Vitus song "Burial At Sea" (and are not to be confused with fellow doomsters Graves At Sea!). Slow, sludgy sickness for doom-heads. Crushing. Feedback. Disturbed vocals (or indeciperable samples?) buried in the mix. And once in a while, the Buried At Sea guys strip the mastodon they're riding down to a skeleton of bones and bask in the beauty of its terrible form (i.e. quiet parts, occasional interludes of even doomier loneliness and despair). Three untitled songs, 39 minutes! Thus it's closer to a full-length than an ep, although ep priced. The nastiness of Khanate meets the post-rockiness of Pelican, with the heaviness of both. The hole they're digging has also previously been excavated by the likes of Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Warhorse, the aforementioned Saint Vitus, and all the other bands who operate heavy machinery under the influence of drugs and alcohol in hopes of unearthing the long-buried lich-corpse whose Satanic shadow Black Sabbath was but the first to glimpse...sorry...getting a little carried away there! But with their relentless grinding riffage and use of space and dynamics Buried At Sea are worthy newcomers whose Migration is an excellent debut.
As on his past fine releases under the moniker Crooked Fingers, album number four brings us an Eric Bachmann who still sounds a lot like a ragged Neil Diamond (particularly on songs such as the fifth track "Destroyer"), however he now seems far less depressed and on the brink of collapsing off his barstool. In fact as Dignity & Shame starts off with the gently hand-drummed and trumpet-laced song "Islero", you'd almost think you were hearing a lost Calexico instrumental or similarly that you've stepped into a Morricone-scored old western. This lone track does hint at Bachmann's potential for much more expansive atmospheric work, but as the rest of the album sticks to more standard song structures, it seems to be an isolated excursion. Sure the heavy duty aches are still present, but they're tempered by pretty things like the female vocals backing him up on the "Twilight Creeps" and "Sleep All Summer" or the spartan wisps of slide guitar on "You Must Build A Fire". Perhaps this album marks the appearance of a distant light at the end of his lengthy tunnel of melancholia? Y'know, come to think of it, while this album may win Bachmann a few new fans with it's more stable, mellow presentation, it conversely just might bum out a few old Crooked Fingers fans who've loved to ride his serious bummer trips. That said, we think it's sorta nice to hear a few glimmers of hope in Bachmann's music.
How He Loved The Moon is Current 93's tribute to the late Jhonn Balance of Coil who died in December of 2004. Balance and Current 93's David Tibet had been longtime friends, dating back to their time in the revolving door membership of Psychic TV back in the early '80s. Despite the elegaic poem that Tibet inscribed as liner notes, Tibet has stepped back into the shadows of this album, giving the helm to longtime collaborator Steven Stapleton who was given the task of reworking the early Current 93 album In Menstrual Night in honor of Balance. Given that In Menstrual Night was an exploration into the question as to where dreams go when they die, it's a fitting source material; although it has to be asked why the need to remix the album twice, as Stapleton has already remixed In Menstrual Night back in 2003 for A Little Menstrual Night Music. Anyway, the densely reverberated vocalizations, cloudy drones, and blunt post-Faust percussion from the original remain, smeared across 2LPs.
It's been almost three years since we've had a full length release from Dalek, which is WAY too long. It's always refreshing to get some new hip hop in that doesn't follow the formulaic patterns that rigidly rule most hip hop releases. Absence is barely a hip hop album at all. Beginning with a 30 second a cappella from Dalek, we're quickly submerged into a wash of beautifully torrential guitar feedback drone and pounding almost metallic drums. From that point on Absence progresses as an album closer to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, or early Seefeel than to most hip hop albums. Not only in that Absence is lushly layered with droning feedback, keyboard sweeps and grinding blasts of noise, but Dalek's voice tends to get submerged -- way down in the churning murky mix, making his voice just another strange sound swirling and swooping amidst the chaos, and making this record a truly fucked up sort-of-hip-hop record!
Intimate. Beautiful. Inspired. Damon & Naomi! The Earth Is Blue features 10 tracks, recorded in their home studio with special guest guitarist, Michio Kurihara, of Japan's psych-folk great ones Ghost. Also contributing are Greg Kelley and Bhob Rainey. Eight original tracks feature harmonic delicacies and melodic intricacies. In the same vein, interpretations of George Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and Caetano Veloso's "Araca Azul" resound sweetly on this release. Highly recommended!
Geez, we knew these punks were popular but had no idea how popular. They get a whole DVD documentary? Well I guess they were on Ozzfest! This dvd is definitely for the fans, so little need here to explain who DC's Darkest Hour are to those who don't know (in a phrase: brutally rippin' Maidenesque metalcore). If you're a fan, you should enjoy all the tour stories, behind-the-music interviews, crazy live footage (from totally pro-shot concerts to archival home vids, including their first ever show in '95) found on this action-packed "thrashography". Aside from their trademark full-bore live action, you'll be entertained by the drunken, beefy Ozzfest fan who insists on having the entire band autograph his white t-shirt with black markers, which they do with a great deal of enthusiasm. Then there's the life-size cardboard cut-out of George Bush that haunts them throughout their 2001 tour... Yeah Darkest Hour seem like fun guys, so more power to 'em.
Dead Meadow time again, ah it's always so nice. It's like being told it's time to take an afternoon nap, a *heavy* nap that is, wrapped in the warm comfort of Dead Meadow's vibrations. DC's Dead Meadow are throwbacks to an earlier age, when bellbottoms and bongs were the order of the day and bands played 'head' music... Kitsch that might be now, but damn they're good and we can all use a good nap once in a while, 'specially one that'll let us do a Rip Van Winkle in reverse and wind up spending a blissed out afternoon in 1969, y'know? It's all very very stoned, Dead Meadow spacing-out more than ever before over the course of this 57 minute cd/double lp. More dreamy than heavy this time out, really, I mean it is "heavy, maaan" heavy, but not as Blue Cheery as before (or maybe they've gotten into the latter, less-well-known, mellower Blue Cheer LPs). Even with the addition of a second guitar player to the line-up, Dead Meadow are now more light and drifty than lugubrious and dirgey. Hypnotic as always, but the thudding riffs are taking a back seat to the melodies here, rustic hippy sundappled hazy smoke melodies. And it's a beautiful thing. I mean, don't worry, they've still got their Sleep's Holy Mountain moments but we think their Pink Floyd tendencies are getting the upper hand here. I guess they called it Feathers for a reason. But we're pretty sure that if you liked their last album Shivering King, you'll like this!
Andee seems to always find one thing on the list to rave about. This week is no different, here's
Andee raving about this Decemberists disc:
I can't figure out why I like this record so much. On first listen it really doesn't sound like my kind of thing at all. Yet it just sort of grabbed me and I can't stop listening to it. Which is pretty exciting considering how much music I hear everyday and how seldom something just completely takes my breath away. Especially when I'm not expecting to like it! The Decemberists play a sort of mutant hybrid of indie pop and folk. And it is a bit twee, which would usually put me off right away. But for some reason, this record manages to claw it's way out of the twee-pop ghetto. The singer has a very affected, sort of British air which reminds me a bit of Belle And Sebastian (who I'm not a huge fan of), but way less wispy and more gritty and world weary. A bit like Robyn Hitchcock or Dan Bejar of the Destroyer (and the New Pornographers) The music though sounds a lot like Neutral Milk Hotel, all strummed guitars and belted-out vocals, but mixed with the dreamy and pastoral popscapes of Belle and Sebastian and even a little bit of the Pogues sort of celtic campfire stomp/gypsy street music vibe. Lilting and dreamy, but also really sharp and emotional. The lyrics are very bookish and the subject matter is very Dickensian, evoking cobblestone streets and gaslamps and hungry street urchins and idealised Victorian romance. Heartbreakingly bittersweet and once in a while even sort of funny. Like Edward Gorey drawings set to music. A lot of that has to do with the instrumentation, wheezing almost Parisian sounding accordions, ominous rumbling cellos, ghostly theremins, and droning warbling organs that affortlessly create that sort of late night, empty streets, drunk and bitter, wistful and sort of hopeful, broken hearted aura that so much music strives for.
From loping waltzes to bouncing pop to crawling dirges, the Decemberists weave a totally magical spell that totally envelops you and transports you to wherever it is the Decemberists are plying their wares. It's all just so beautiful and catchy and melancholy and absolutely fucking great!
In delicious kool-aid orange vinyl! The title of Deerhoof's first track on this 7", "Se Piangi, Se Ridi" -- translation: "If You Cry, If You Laugh", is a sparse number, with delicate but damaged vocals and an intermittant drum hit recorded so it sounds like someone's getting hit with a hammer. Almost like this song is more about the process than the final piece, which is nice, but it made me want to cry. Apparently, it's a collage-ish interpretation of an old Italian pop-song by MINA. On the flip side, "Strawberry Bananas" is a like a Turkish pop tune, Deerhoof style! It's pretty amazing. Like, a beautiful scoop of joy that sadly melts away like strawberry-banana flavoured ice cream...
Geez Mr. Bejar, the paint is barely dry on your last album Your Blues and you're already revisiting and reworking some of those songs! Unlike other artists whose intentions (and their record label's) might be more suspect (i.e, marketing ploys, etc), Bejar's artistic sincerity is untarnished. You do believe that this ep's existence is not due to an unhappiness / dissatisfaction with his previous renderings. No, not at all. Instead, perhaps inspired by the volatile artistry of his recent tourmates (and AQ faves) Frog Eyes, Bejar has approached these songs with a slightly more unhinged vision. Whereas Your Blues was thoroughly composed and grand, this is much more stripped down and guitar-driven. The contrast is immediately noticeable from just one look at the two releases' cover art - the subject matter is the same, but the brush and pen strokes are drastically different, one is calmly shaded while the other is almost violently slashed out. What these six songs really unveil though is the fresh, potent chemistry that flows between Bejar and the Frog Eyes crew who perform with him on this release. Sparks fly with a tingly energy! Check out one of the cd's highlights, the title track "Notorious Lightning" on which F.E. mainman Carey Mercer joins Bejar at the mic. Pretty darn great! Should cause much cross-pollination between the two bands' fanclub memberships.
Hurrah! This is Doves' follow-up to their splendid 2002 sophomore album, The Last Broadcast. While there aren't any single songs here that pack as much of the heartstring-pullin, toe-tappin' wallop as that album's ninth tune "Pounding" (which I, Cup, was... oh who am I kidding?... *am* still totally addicted to!), Some Cities does not disappoint. In fact, come to think of it, has the trio of Jimi Goodwin, Jez and Andy Williams ever disappointed? I think not. Once again, this album will do little to stop them from being lumped together with their more famous Brit brethren Coldplay, but that's not a bad thing -- they're both pretty fabulous bands. And once again, their finely detailed, lush, earthy instrument arrangements provide the soaring grandeur while Goodwin's vocals provide the intimate closeness. That said, moody groovy songs such as the fifth "The Storm" are perfect for late night wind-downs which may also appeal to fans of such groups as Air or Massive Attack. Great!
The more one scratches the surface of Australian sound art, the more gems emerge from the search. We've uncovered a handful of artists whose work has slipped under the radar. Tim Catlin's drone guitar work is one example, Eamon Sprod's treated field recordings under the moniker Tarab would be another; we can now count Lawrence English amongst this bunch. Where those two aforementioned artists have connections to the RMIT program in Melbourne, English hails several hundred miles up the coast in Brisbane. There, he has produced a handful of processed soundfields on his Room40 imprint; and for his Transit album released on Cajid, English offers a concoction of electric minimalism pieced togethe from sources provided by a number of exceptional guest stars including DJ Olive, Robin Rimbaud, Philip Samartzis, and a handful of lesser known artists. Despite the diversity of voices on Transit, English is firmly in command of the album, digitally smearing each of his guests' source material into a spectral ambience dappled with field recordings and textural events. It's not too far off from Loren Chasse's Of recordings if it weren't for the noticable digital sheen; and at times, English hits on a similar bleak isolationism found in Thomas Koner's work. A mighty fine record.
With no full length of brand new sparkling songs on the horizon from our beloved indie-power-pop superstars, Enon, this will have to do for now for all us fans. This collection of rarities and singles (mixed by Eli Janney -- formally of Girls vs. Boys) shows off John (Brainiac) and Toko (Blonde Redhead)'s looser, more experimental side of songwriting. Our favorite track here would have to be their super catchy, oompah noise-pop track, "Marbles Explode", a track that was cut from a previous album for some unexplained reason. Glad they finally put that out! This cd/dvd also exhibits their penchant for uber talented friends in the video and motion graphics industry, as an enclosed region-free dvd is devoted to an impressive collection of music videos. Long live ENON.
Lord knows we love us a one man band. Whether it's some shrouded figure who crafts grim black metal in a dim corner of a blackened cave or a goofy old man with a bass drum on his back and cymbals between his knees. Well, local one man band Ezeetiger falls somewhere right in the middle. Sort of. Clad in a big ol' furry bear suit and clutching a bear in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Ezeetiger aka Anthony, spews out a bit ol' thorny squall of splattery prog synths, cheesy wedding organs, squiggly spaced out melodies and surprisingly hooky pop, all buried in a murky sweaty musical knee to the crotch, and buffeted from all sides by ultra distorted garage rock scuzz, wildly careening overblown drums, and occasional bursts of buzzy, howled death metal crunch. Once in a while, the weirdness gets reined in and the clouds part, revealing, gentle, lilting vocals over gently strummed guitars or stretches of head nodding, fuzzed out Krautrock, but it's never long before gnarled drone-psych claws reach up from the abyss and haul the squirming struggling song back under!
Felt are such a weird band. Totally mysterious album art, cryptic album titles, bizarre lyrics and song titles, everything shrouded in mystery, but the actual music of Felt is anything but mysterious or cryptic. Forever Breathes The Lonely Word released originally in 1986, is a lush eighties indie pop record swathed in warm warbly organs and jangly keeing guitars. A surprisingly upbeat outing for Felt, who are more often maudlin and dreary and dark. Forever is filled with subtly propulsive rhythms, minor key arrpegiated guitars, chiming melodies, thick washes of synth blur and lots of vocals, delivered in a Lou Reed / Mark Knopfler sort of singspeak drawl that adds a world weary quality to Felt's already melancholy indie jangle.
I always wanted to love this record just for the title. I mean, what a great album title, mysterious and creepy and a bit nonsensical. And surprisingly not at all representative of the sounds found within. Originally released in 1986, Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death perfectly coincided with my descent into metal, which explains how I managed to miss Felt entirely as well as sidestepping all things Creation and 4AD and jangly new wave in general. But it's probably just as well, since at the time, I probably wan't in a position to appreciate the ephemeral, ethereal beauty of Felt. Sonically very reminiscent of the Smiths, Durutti Column and the mellower side of Factory Records, Felt are a warm, shimmery musical blanket, woven from warbly synthesizers, shufflng rhythms, jangly guitars, chiming melodies, all moody and melancholy, muted and minor key. Sometimes jazzy and lounge-y, sometimes dark and lugubrious, Let the Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death is a perfect eighties late night instrumental bliss out record. So nice.
Purified By Fire is much like a sequel to the much loved Flynt album C-Tune. Like that album, Purified By Fire features Cathrine Christer Hennix on tamboura and Henry Flynt on amplified fiddle. Over the steady metallic drone of Hennix's tamboura Flynt weaves together Hindustani and Appalachian modes in a 40 minute improvisation. At the risk of over using a tired homily these really are two great tastes that taste great together. Bringing together the modal droniness of Appalachian folk music and classical Indian music in a completely unpretentious and, dare I say, punk rock way is totally welcome here at Aquarius.
Here's one of several Unidisc Music reissues that aren't necessarily new, but are new to us here at AQ, and we've found them to be quite intriguing and enjoyable listens.
Avec Enzymes was originally released back in 1970. Now, on the language side of things, unfortunately we're not multilingual to the point of being able to tell the difference between Quebecois-French and France-French (although we wish we were!), so please don't think we're simply generalizing when we say that stylistically there are many parallels between the francophone music of Louise Forestier and Brigitte Fontaine. Much like that of chanteuse Fontaine, French Canadian actress/singer Forestier's music might initially strikes you as being fairly standard French Pop performed by seemingly straight-laced studio musicians, however listen closer / further and you'll discover that's it's considerably more challenging and theatrical, at times drifting off into subtle eccentricities and some downright bizarre tangents. I mean, just check out the album's title! A little odd, doncha think? She didn't stick to any one genre either, dabbling in rock, folk, pop and even rock opera! So campy and cool!
Admittedly we're doing a little catching up here. After gettin' and diggin' Gravenhurst's most recent ep "Black Holes In The Sand" we went back and revisited his full length from last year. This time around it really struck a chord... and a good one at that! Sorta like Kings Of Convenience and/or Simon And Garfunkel on a serious country downer. Mainman Nick Talbot's willowy vocal harmonies are almost weep-inducing while the notes from a slide guitar descend like raindrop sliding off leaves as high pretty chimes pluck at your heart strings. Sigh! Do not miss "Bluebeard", the album's fourth and perhaps one of the Talbot's best songs. So good! And y'know what? He's got a new album right around the corner. Can't wait!
A Ec Ad, Halda Afram marks the fourth entry in yet another Hafler Trio series. At least for this body of work all published by Important Records, the Hafler Trio has kept his work reasonably priced in spite of its limited release. At the same time, each entry in the Important Records series clocks in at about 20 minutes, so the dollar per musical minute ratio is still about the same. Regardless, A Ec Ad, Halda Afram? is a bit of a departure for the Hafler Trio as Andrew McKenzie drops a slow crawling breakbeat into his sonic transmogrifier. Sounding an awful lot like the devastating beats of Techno Animal or The Bug, these breaks do possess a curious, disjointed warble that makes this uniquely the Hafler Trio. But of course, McKenzie takes almost 10 minutes of his alotted 20 very quietly shuffling around his soundfield before unleashing these breaks. Pretty great and as always, McKenzie leaves us scratching our heads; but one has to wonder if Important will go out of their way to irritate the Hafler Trio fans (and probably Andrew McKenzie for that matter!) by releasing the whole series in a single package much like the Acid Mothers Temple incidient a while back. Remember the Magical Power From Mars series?
No MP3 samples as requested by the Hafler Trio.
Holy moly. Yes this limited-edition, import double LP goes for $38 bucks. But we've only got a handful, quite possibly won't ever see any more and it IS one of the only vinyl releases ever (certainly the only one currently-if-not-for-long in print) from the shamanistic psychedelic maestro that the world (well, very small portions of the world) knows as Keiji Haino, either solo or in his Fushitsusha combo. So it's got that arcane relic quality to it, y'know?
'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape already came out on cd last year (also on Swordfish) but it's already out of print in that format, and this lp -- packaged in a 'hand-crafted', hand-numbered sleeve -- is thus also the only way to get this music, which (the important part) is pretty great. Let's revisit our review of the cd:
I know this is gonna sound dorky, but I (Allan) sometimes feel blessed to be in the presence, even via recorded media, of Keiji Haino. Yeah I'm a pretty devout fan of the 51 year old Japanese psychedelic shaman-in-black. It's a shame that outside of the realm of indie/underground/Japanophile music geeks, Haino is not better known. As far as I'm concerned, he's a 20th (now 21st) century artistic genius deserving of recognition and reverence from the wider world's institutions of high culture. Why? Well as my roommate likes to put it, his shit's just so tight. He can make harrowing, dark, cosmic, soul-bearing music out of anything: his trusty guitar and feedback, a tambourine, his own voice... But even fans like me might have found his last solo release on PSF, the all-acoustic guitar workout Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki, tough going. But THIS new disc is one I'd wholeheartedly recommend even to the uninitiated. According to the label it "sees him developing themes on from his last PSF release." I think by that they're not referring to Hikari Yami Uchitokeaishi Kono Hibiki but to his previous PSF disc, the 'grey album' Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka. That was an incredible, hypnotic document of Haino in a gentle, ghostly mood, recording at home presumably, accompanying himself via overdubs on a 4-track, quite unlike his more typical live, over-amped, no-overdubs method. Now on 'Next' Let's Try Changing The Shape, Haino again experiments with overdubbing. However his guitar sound on this tends towards the harsher electric tones of 'classic Haino' (solo and with his band Fushitsusha), much less 'jazzy' than on Mazu Wa... the grey is gone and he's back to the blackness. The six tracks found here all feature layers of electric guitar and vocal overdubs, a multitude of Keiji's playing together. To some this may sound chaotic and confused, but careful listening will reveal the ways in which Haino has carefully constructed these pieces. On the more guitar-heavy tracks his web of sound builds and builds in density, becoming a narcotic drone not unlike some Skullflower stuff, while other tracks are based more around Haino's vocal parts -- there's one I thought was gonna be all acapella until his guitar appeared a few minutes in -- raw and repetitious, almost Reynolisan. The album ends with a final descent into the abyss, a 26 minute trip that gets so seriously spooky that you suspect the overdubbing is Haino's way of not feeling so alone... Definitely Keiji Haino (and this album) is not for everybody, but it's worth finding out if he's for you because your life will be better for it, if you find his art speaks to you the way it does to me.
To those of us who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, Roy Harper might already be something of an implied legend, stuck in our adolescent memories as the name referenced in the Zeppelin III song, "Hats off to Roy Harper". Some of us may even have noticed in the liner notes to Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here that it was Roy Harper belting out the vocals on "Have a Cigar". Sadly, for most of us from this generation we have heard very little or none of this man's own music.
Harper's life story (as raw material for some of the best songs ever written -- seriously, just surrender your ears to "Goldfish" or "Tom Tiddler's Ground") is full of drama and obsession: joining the RAF in order to escape a Christian upbringing, Harper's "legendary" self-inflicted nervous breakdown in order to get out of his military service provided the prima materia for some of his first songs (e.g. "Committed" on his debut album Sophisticated Beggar). After escaping a mental institution in order to elope with a pregnant girlfriend, Roy headed off into London where his rebellious ways got him arrested. Serving a prison sentence, he spent most of his time in the library reading and evolving his creative spirit. Following his release in 1964 he busked around North Africa and then returned to London to join the folk club scene alongside the Incredible String Band, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Bert Jansch and Nick Drake. During the recording of his first record he hosted the vagabonds of London in his flat and sermonized, guerilla-style, to the church-goers across the street from his flat window. So Roy's records were full of such expressions of protest against religion, politics, and the countless social forces subverting individuality and the imagination of the day. With every Roy Harper record, the listener gets extensive stream-of-consciouness rants, often surreal and often quite funny, complementing the songs with a voice that is at once confounding and endearing. The spirit in Roy's songs, one complicated by fits of great joy, sadness and absurdity, where the most banal things in life are rendered the most beautiful (such as "How could you say such terrible things with a wonderful wife like yours?") still coheres as the voice of a truly singular spirit.
So...why can't we find Roy Harper sections in most record stores? After all he has dozens of albums and is still very much alive and making music. Well, a rare and wonderful thing in light of the typical artist versus the record industry scenario is that Harper has somehow managed to own all rights to his records and now distributes his material exclusively under the name Science Friction. But doesn't distribute very widely as his is but a small operation, based in Ireland. However, we've gotten in touch with Science Friction and are now happy to offer our customers, at long last, a selection of what we consider to be some of Roy's best. Starting with Stormcock!
Recorded in 1970 at Abbey Road, Stormcock is a four-song, 41 minute opus of folk-rock genius (what has been dubbed by one critic a masterpiece of its own genre, "epic progressive acoustic"). Basically, the sort of thing that, despite the current upswing in the underground of psych-tinged folky songsmithery, you just don't get to hear much these days. A rare talent, fully on display here, and without some of the confounding eclecticism and eccentrities that may make some other Harper albums take a bit more work to get into. No, this is a definite "wow" from the very first few bars of the first song, continuing solid and stellar all the way to the end of the album. Gorgeously melodic, slow and langorous, sparkling with Roy's brillant acoustic guitar playing, otherworldly arrangements, and of course his voice, phrasing and lyrics. Roy wrote all the songs and sings and plays most of the music -- there's a few additional musicans on hand at times to help flesh out Roy's sound-world, among them one S. Flavius Mercurius (aka Jimmy Page) contributing lead guitar on "The Same Old Rock", as well as the orchestral musicians employed for the magnificent album-closer "Me And My Woman".
Anyone who digs Six Organs Of Admittance or Devendra Banhart or the like owes it to themselves to experience some Roy Harper. Likewise anyone who loves the quieter, folker sides of the aforementioned Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. Packaged with lyrics, art, and Roy's cryptic latter-day liner notes.
Yay! So many good things combined here with this release, it's like a crazy cosmic convergence of cool. First off, it's a Skin Graft comic book single. That's right, this colored-vinyl 7" record comes with a full-color comic book by the guys at Skin Graft, getting back to their roots as a combo of weird-music label and underground comix publisher. They haven't released anything in this format for ages, but we have fond memories of similar releases from way back by UFO or Die, Zeni Geva, Dazzling Killmen, Space Streakings, Mount Shasta, Brise-Glace... The comic doesn't have much to do with the music, but it's pretty cool.
And yeah, then there's the music. Side A: High On Fire. You know 'em you love 'em (or you should). Motorhead on Sabbath on Slayer on 11. They contribute a song from their latest, probably greatest release Blessed Black Wings, called "Brother In The Wind". And on Side B: Ruins. You know 'em you love 'em (or you should). Magma meets Lightning Bolt. Their track is a previously unreleased number entitled "Gwodhunqa" that encompasses everything that's great about Ruins: nimble, bass-heavy grooves and crazed yet catchy complexity. Parts of this sound like it's on 45, even though it already is on 45, if you know what I mean.
Never thought High On Fire and Ruins would share a split, but why not? Whoever thunk this up, give 'em a raise.
Recently we reviewed -- and have been selling hella copies of -- the debut album by Om, the band formed by two-thirds of local revered stoner rockers Sleep. Om are just two guys, just bass and drums, dealing out the pot-fueled heaviness. Well coincidentally (?) we also just got these, the absurdly-long-awaited reissue of the truly legendary Population II album by guitarist Randy Holden, recorded in 1969 shortly after his brief but fruitful stint in San Francisco's Blue Cheer, playing only on the killer side two of that band's third album, New, Improved!
The connection? Well, as you might guess from the album's title, Population II is also a two-piece effort, just Randy on guitar (bass also on the album) and Chris Lockheed on drums (and bass pedals live). Beyond some sort of spiritual bond of two-piece heaviness, though, there's of course one major, obvious difference: Om's got NO guitar, whereas Holden's album is ALL ABOUT guitar. Heck the first track is simply called "Guitar Song". And he's a self-proclaimed 'guitar god' for a reason. On "Guitar Song" the lyrics are basically all about how he's in love with electric guitar playing, and loud. And as much as we enjoyed the Om album, Population II definitely reminds us that WE love guitar too!
Randy, with his trusty guitar and an ominous array of amp-stacks, conjures up some of the heaviest rock n' roll sounds heard on Earth up to that point in time for sure. Blue Cheer of course are a close comparison ("Fruit & Iceburgs" from side two of New, Improved! is reprised here) as well as Hendrix and Iron Butterfly...and soon enough Black Sabbath would up the ante further. But in the history of heavy, this album deserves some major recognition.
It's super trippy, doomily plodding, Randy's reedy vibrato voice calling out over the wail of his guitar. This rocks in the sludgiest sorta way for the day. And speaking of loud, you want Sunn amps? Randy's got Sunn amps! Check out the live shot on the back cover, these two assuredly blowing the roof off some San Francisco ballroom.
Not just a reissue, but actually the record's first OFFICAL, Randy Holden-approved release. And they're hand numbered and autographed by the man himself in gold marker just to make it really, really offical. Limited to 2000, pressed on 180 gram wax, this is a holy grail (or facsimile edition of a holy grail anyway) for all of you for whom "heavy" is akin to religion.
Geez Hood, don't rush me! I'm barely done checkin' out (and thoroughly diggin') your newest EP when you drop a brand new album in my lap. Alright, I'll quit my whinging 'cause more Hood music is nothing to complain about. This album is really dreamy and delicious. That recent teaser EP hinted at more shoegazer leanings, but with regards to Outside Closer we say, "Nevermind shoegazer, this is a stargazer." On songs such as the third "Any Hopeful Thoughts Arrive" and seventh "Still Rain Fell", you can't help but be swept up, up, up and away. Everything -- from the wispy breathy vocals to the plucked acoustic guitar to the shuffling processed beats to the understated horns to the droning organ tones -- is interwoven into swirling total bliss. Gorgeous.
Yeah! Howling Hex is the new gig for Mr. Neil Michael Hagerty (formerly of ye old greats Pussy Galore and Royal Trux). A great band name most befitting his usual bad boy yowl, don't ya think? Heck, he thought was a perfect album title back in 2003, why not reuse it?! As per the Hagerty norm, this is a murky garage-y rawk affair, but the man's presence aside, it's the ladies (or maybe it's just a single lady... we really can't tell 'cause unfortunately the backing vocals are uncredited) who take center stage in Howling Hex... and they are awesome! The mysterious female vocals have that old sassy yet womanly quality you might associate with the likes of Nancy Sinatra or Shirley Bassey, and they're the perfect foil for Hagerty's vocals which here are boyish and wheezy. All-Night Fox? Alright!!!
In recent years, Keith Fullerton-Whitman has been focusing on the beautiful strains of minimalism speckled with an exceptional craftsmanship and radical rewriting of historical precedents. Fortunately, he's not forgotten about his Hrvatski moniker where he applies his Amen break (the classic drum and bass loop!) obsession to short attention span theatre. Irrevocably Overdriven Bleak Freakout Megamix is a live set from his summer 2004 jaunt to San Francisco, where he performed at the Rx Gallery through the Jiffy Scuttler series for avant-electronica performances. And yes, the set does live up to its name, mangling many of the same mathematically acrobatic drum 'n' bass rhythms found on his previous albums (Oiseaux 96-98 and Swarm & Dither) in a toxic soup of knob-twiddling noise that's as good as non-jazz Squarepusher records or the more antagonistic Aphex Twin tracks. The seamless audio program of the show is splattered with 91 tracks, the longest of which clocks in at a mere 48 seconds. We like!
For slowcore fans bemoaning the change in musical direction that their beloved Low has recently taken, you may seek some comfort in this new album from New York's Ida. They've not veered from their hushed, melancholic path at all. In fact they've refined it! Their male/female vocal combo is particularly in top form -- sooo dreamy. Even when they insert some guitar distortion, it's warm and unabrasive. Very nice!
Ivy return with their fourth album -- perhaps their darkest and most composed work to date. It definitely stands in stark contrast to their jingle-jangle beginnings. Over the years, they've both refined and expanded their scope, but their pop heart still maintains a solid beat. With its sleek melding of the softer side of disco and the washy guitars and wispy female vocals of shoegazer, the gently rolling third track "Keep Moving" is very reminiscent of Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" (not a bad thing!), while other songs bring to mind Velocity Girl and Lush. Stick around for the final song "Feel So Free", a super pretty lulling duet with an uncharacteristically mellow-voiced Scott McCloud (ex-Girls Against Boys).
Finally, after waiting for ages, Philip Jeck's totally genius Surf album gets reissued. Oddly enough, perfectly coinciding with what might be his best release since Surf, the simply titled 7, which sonically sounds remarkably like Surf (see the review elsewhere on this list). For those who aren't familiar with his work, Jeck is a UK experimental turntablist who extracts sounds from old battered turntables like an archaeologist excavating some ancient vinyl burial site, using surface noise, skips and crackles, to weave dreamy sepiatone soundscapes of underwater waltzes and pastoral murk. Surf is quite possibly the perfect realization of Jeck's sonic vision. Sinister loops and minor key melodies slither through blurred landscapes of sound, rickety and decaying, shimmery and indistinct. Like blurry postcards of someplace you've never been, or a fleeting memory of someone you've never met, translated into sound. A sound so warm and thick, familiar and inviting, that it transports you to a sonic universe where a skipping record becomes your footsteps, and a repeated crackly phrase becomes the wind through the trees.
Easily one of the most transcendentally perfect records ever.
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week a couple lists ago, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
If there is a black metal label these days that truly defines elite and kult and grim it's for sure gotta be Norma Evangelium Diaboli. So far they've released the utterly amazing Funeral Mist, the most recent Deathspell Omega, the Katharsis Kruzifixion album, and now this, a reissue of Katharsis' first album the appropriately titled 666. We loved Kruzifixion but were informed by Wrest from Leviathan that 666 was way better. And while it's maybe not WAY better, it is pretty fucking great and a lot weirder. Just the first song alone lets you know what sort of hellish ride you're in for, obviously there's the requisite buzzing riffs, chaotic blastbeats, demonic vocals, but there's something about it that sounds truly posessed and just a bit fucked. The vocals occasionally slip into freaky falsetto screams, the whole thing is drenched in reverb so it sounds like you're witnessing some sort of black metal ritual in a cave you stumbled upon at the base of a huge dark mountain. By the end of the track the vocals and the riffs get all tangled up and become a slowly devolving swirl of black metal chaos, splattered drums and howls of "666, 666, 666, 666" drift up from the abyss as the whole track slowly slips into some subterranean netherworld. And it goes on and on like that, brittle buzzsaw riffs are repeated mantra like over pounding thrashing drums and squiggly alien sounding leads and creepy black ambience all swaddled in massive amounts of delay. But unlike a lot of black metal, 666 is full of actual songs, catchy songs too, not just a series of BM riffs strung together. No, like Satyricon or Immortal or more appropriately in this case, Darkthrone, these are the sort of black metal invocations that actually get stuck in your head. Nothing quite like humming some little melody while you're walking down the street only to realize it's "Raped By Demons" by German "Kommando Metal" outfit Katharsis. Fuck yeah. And if somehow you forget that you are listening to transmissions from the darkest pits of BM hell, the liner notes not only advise that you "Listen in darkness and at maximum volume" but also to "burn your local church!"...
Although this came out just last year, we've been lacking this in our racks for some time now 'cause the label had sold through 'em all and needed to do a re-press. Well, now, thankfully for the legions of lovers of all this fabulous Finnish free-folk stuff, Fonal has put this gem back into circulation! So queue up if you missed it before. Here's the review we wrote on list #191 when it first came out:
The 18 tracks found here are a riotous festival of Finnish folk-psych. A pagan parade in a forest glade. Abstract, druggy, dark, delightful... We're always entranced by Kemialliset Ystavat's damaged improv folk mystery, and Alkuharka is yet another reason for us to keep saving our pennies in order to afford a trip to Finland (lucky Andee's been there once already). Anyone into anything along the lines of Tower Recordings, Thuja, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Six Organs Of Admittance, the whole Broken Face 'zine scene (to whom Kemialliset mainman Jan Anderzen used to contribute much art) will want/need this. Horns flutes guitars drones bells tapes voices feedback. Weezing buzzing bliss. With contributions from honorary Finns Dylan Nyoukis (Prick Decay) and Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel), Jan and company are the true underground krautrock heirs, making music so long haired that it's furrier than any Animal Collective. Music from the soundtrack to The Wickermoomin, perhaps?
Many moons ago Ethan Buckler was in a soon-to-be-genre-defining band called Slint, but very swiftly he came to the realization that his musical calling was something quite different... something more poppy and dance-y. He assembled his own band and dubbed them King Kong. Together they made totally trashy, tweaked, funky pop tunes that sound as though they were influenced equally by cop show theme songs, the B-52s, Jonathan Richman and a hen house! Fast forward about sixteen years, and well, here we are... Just in time to coincide with his former band's reunion (and the remake of the classic movie to boot!), Buckler and the kind folks at Drag City Records have rejuvenated his own King Kong with this cdep reissue of three songs originally self-released back in 1989, then reissued on 7" by Drag City in 1995.
Hey, got your copy yet?! LCDS raise the roof a few more storeys on their self-titled debut double disc, but it's not all cowbells and arpeggiated basslines. For example, on the insistent fourth track "Movement", James Murphy does his best Mark E. Smith impersonation, then immediately shifts gears into a slower, prettier swoon mood for "Never As Tired As When I Wake Up". Throughout the album, the group revisits these two detours from their usual rump-bumpin' and visit a few others too. The seventh track is totally "Warm Leatherette". Hmmm, maybe the question is: Is it a rip-off or an homage? And ditto for the closing song of the first disc "Great Release" which takes on a *very* Brian Eno wistful pop feel. Sorta makes you think that LCDS might be the clubland incarnation of a cabaret singer who can ape any other singer's delivery or maybe a bar band who can recreate any other band's sound... really a skill unto itself, innit? Aaah shit, why are we gettin' all serious with such criticism 'n' skepticism and shit when there's a paaarty goin' on?! Just look at that glistening disco ball on the cover, man.
This release includes all of their previously released singles to boot. Yup, that means you get both versions of their track "Yeah" with its lyrics that go something like "Yeah yeah yeah yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah yeah yeahyeah yeahyeahyeah".
All right. Now this is what I'm talkin' about. 1971, yeah! Andee's always kidding me that I (Allan) think 1971 is the best year for rock music ever. That's not true of course ('69 and '70 and '72 were no slouches either!), but I do rate it pretty highly. There were SO MANY great records that year, among them Tago Mago, First Utterance, Nursery Cryme, Music To Eat, Satori, Master Of Reality, Funkadelic, Neu! 1, Culpeper's Orchard, Demon And Eleven Children, Love It To Death, In Search Of Space, Stormcock...ohmigod...there's so many. I don't know how I would have survived if I was of a music-buying age in 1971. But I was only two years old. It's sure would have been tough to make a top ten list if I was working at Aquarius back then!! But I'm pretty sure that this Life album (if I even woulda known about it, I wonder if Aquarius ever stocked the original import LP?) would have made that list. Seriously.
Of course, even if folks back then probably didn't appreciate it (foolishly thinking that rock was in some sorta prog-clogged doldrums) they were living in some special times. Especially special if you like the hard/heavy/acid rock like I do.
Ok, more about Life then: they were a skilled Swedish psych-prog trio that spun songs that incorporate (sometimes in the same composition) two quite different but equally excellent extremes -- they do some light n' lush, very pretty pop with piano and full orchestration. But then there's also a lotta rib-rattling dirge-rock with glacial, gargantuan guitars! The combination is epic and elegant, and puts 'em (in my book) almost in the same league as Queen and Deep Purple and Uriah Heep! A quick n' dirty description might be Cream-meets-Queen. And this was before Queen ever released an album. For '71, the heaviness is right up there. Killer songs, stellar vocals, a definite stoner spirit. I can't imagine any of AQ's customers who are real '70s proto-metal freaks not digging this album, even if you don't normally get into the poppier stuff...just 'cause its SO GOOD. And the lighter fare is integral even to the slabs of heaviosity for which you're really gonna worship this album. Yeah, it's heavy, and even when not, it's damn bombastic. In a way that makes even the tracks that are the most doomy and downer definitely also have a lively, uplifting vibe. I'm telling you, if Life were British and had made more than one album (instead of breaking up 'cause of joining the cast of the Swedish touring production of Hair!), you'd know about 'em already. I mean, they'd be '70s classic rock royalty for sure, at least as famous as, I dunno, Nazareth.
Getting back to the whole 1971 thing: in actuality, this album was originally released in 1970 with Swedish lyrics, then released with English language vocals in '71, and that version is the only one to be reissued on cd. Normally I prefer bands to sing in their native tongue, but this guy is a such a good singer, and avoids any embarrasing accent-issues, and the lyrics are pretty cool ("Once I saw a castle / made by rocks and sand / I used to touch that castle / with my magic hand"). A couple of the bonus tracks are in Swedish, too (where they suddenly sound like Dungen gone arena!).
Now I don't want to freak out and make like this is the best record EVER or anything, but it's really really good and is something that should be much better known that's for sure. So we've ordered a few to try and spread the word...
There's an important rule of thumb to apply to Francisco Lopez records: if it's silent, then avoid it; if there's sound, it'll be well worth your time. Since there aren't any urban legends of Lopez doing his silent material in a live context, it's a pretty safe bet that any live recording is something to consider. That said, Live In San Francisco is a fantastic document of his pursuit of an 'absolute concrete music.' In previous recordings, Lopez has recontextualized the insects from rainforests, ambient din of the urban environment, human voices, the run-out grooves of vinyl, and even death metal blast beats in constructing his textural slabs of gray sound; and his live concerts rework similar themes and source material with compositional strategies that best fit the performance context. While he's performed in San Francisco numerous times, the two performances that found their way onto Live In San Francisco were the Hexaphonic show at the Lab in August 2000 and an intimate performance at 3feetofftheground in July 2001. The documentation from The Lab show opens with a noxious hiss that builds up to loud crash like a heavy steel plated door slamming shut in a cavernous warehouse. Slowly another hiss ramps out of the reverberation of his initial crescendo and becomes more and more volatile until the kill switch is cut some 25 minutes later. The second recording from 3feeofftheground resembles some of the leviathan plods from Daniel Menche as a monstrous mechanical rhythm increases in strength and ominously marches forward. As with the previous Live in 'S-Hertogenbosch document, Live in San Francisco comes with a blindfold so you too can replicate the experience of being blindfolded at a Francisco Lopez show.
We had been eyeing this record for a while. They are called Lumsk after all. And their logo is the letters in Lumsk rendered as gnarled trees and roots, and the cover features a sketchy drawing of a long haired nordic warrior, hair blowing in the wind. The name of the album and the song titles are all in Norwegian too which is never a bad thing. At best it would be some amazingly weird black metal record, at worst some beer hoisting Viking sing along metal, either way, we'd probably be pretty into it. Well, when we finally cracked one open, it was neither of those things, and so much better than we could have hoped for. The simplest way to describe Lumsk is some strange mix of Hammers Of Misfortune, Enslaved, Scandinavian folk, and the Fucking Champs. Sounds weird. Sounds impossible actually, but that's definitely what it sounds like. Lots of complex instrumental riffing, lots of loping seasick Viking rhythms, along with simple drumming and loads of organs and keyboards, occasional violin and even a choir, but then there's the vocals, male and female, both proud and majestic, soaring and weaving, definitely reminiscent of Hammers Of Misfortune. My thumbnail review was originally "a more epic, Viking metal Hammers Of Misfortune", but on further listens there's just so much dense Carcass-y instrumental stuff going on under the surface, that it makes the soaring (almost renn-faire sounding at times) vocals sound almost alien in that context. It's a little bit power metal, a little bit folk metal, a little bit doom, a little bit prog, and yeah, a little medieval / rennaisance, but put it all together and not only does it not make sense, but it makes so little sense that it makes absolutely perfect sense. To us at least. Definitely NOT death metal or black metal, way more melodic than heavy, and downright pretty at times, but still plenty heavy enough to please all the discerning metalheads around here.
Uh oh. Here we are again, with the band that creates lovers or haters more than any other I know. Although, I have to say, personally I'm kind of on the fence about them! Jon Theodore is one of the most amazing drummers I've ever seen or heard. Their live show is absolutely entertaining, especially when joined by John Frusciante, who's contribution of a second incessant guitar solo seems to make their music make sense. As well, Omar and Cedric's pants are just so tight, it is unbelievable. Their Tremulant EP was shocking. It was this full-on indie-power-prog, like nothing I'd heard before. Their music went somewhere... and kept on going... though, I don't think I understood exactly "where". Their debut full-length, Deloused In The Comatorium (with its odd name and pretty terrible artwork) was still totally beyond me. Not truly prog, not truly indie-pop... someplace in between, with technical insanity, near-constant meter-changes and polyrhythm incessantry. A lot of people seemed to take MV as though they were a total mess of music: ornate, pompous, not at all worthy of any ounce of praise, let alone the millions of "extreme" fans all over the world.
Now, Frances The Mute, their second full-length, is monolithic at 77 minutes long. Despite that length, it seems to be a bit more digestible. I would certainly have something that felt like jet-lag if I had to listen to the whole thing in one sitting, but to dedicated fans, of which there are many, this will hardly be enough power-progtastic-indie-pop. And of course, MV still features Lars Ulrich's and my favorite drummer, Jon Theodore.
Interpol meets XTC. What could be better? Not much if you ask us. Yet another band in the moody eighties new wave revival dance party (Futureheads, Killers, Bloc Party, Interpol, etc...) a genre we tried desperately to steer clear of, but what can we do? Band after band keep managing to take that totally played out sound and infuse it with new found energy, punk rock snarl and killer killer songs. The first track here "Apply Some Pressure" is easily the single of the year. Angular shards of guitar, insistent tribal drumming, and a hook that just won't quit. All topped off by a halftime, arpeggiated chorus that is absolutely PERFECT. One of the few songs of late that we just listen to over and over and over and over. But then track two is almost just as good, and it's then that Maximo Park's XTC worship becomes totally (and perfectly) obvious. Herky jerky rhythms over swoonsome guitar melodies, warm warbly synths and brainy lyrics (they even rhyme 'lost' with 'riposte'!). Tack on two more amazing tracks and you've got the most brutal tease of an ep in recent memory. Four songs in eleven minutes leaving you desperate for more More MORE. If this was a full length it may very well have been record of the week. As it is, fans of Interpol, the Strokes, the Futureheads, the Killers and all that sort of stuff should get all over this.
You might say that all that you (and we) love about Mogwai is perfectly encapsulated on this disc! The crushing squalls of distortion, the shimmery washes of dreamy ambience, the slow building epics, the tranquil shimmery barely-there pop often complely obliterated by a feroicous onslaught of thick distorted guitars and pounding drums, shoegaze meets metallic crunch meets slowcore meets minimal pop meets ferocious noise rock. The loudest louds, the quietest quiets. Mogwai do their 'thing' (the thing that EVERY post-Slint post-rock band has tried to do for the last decade) better than anybody. For a while there, Mogwai were the next big thing, and then they -were- the big thing, but then, for some reason, interest seemed to wane, and Mogwai were just another band making pretty good records. But that has more to do with fickle indie rockers than the way things were. Mogwai kept putting out amazing records, playing devastating live shows, and perfecting their gorgeously schizophrenic sound. So here's a kick in the pants, a reminder, a trip back to the first time you heard Young Team and thought to yourself, "What the fuck" and then probably moments later thought "This is the greatest thing I have ever heard!". And you know what? It probably was. And listening to these BBC sessions we're tempted to think it just might still be.
This is the debut release for Bay Area troubadour Goh Nakamura. He draws from the no frills, sensitive singer/songwriter inkwell... ultra heartfelt and barebones, much like that of Elliott Smith's early albums. The ache is palpable in each of the eleven songs on Daylight Savings. Impressive.
Soundtrack to Cornel Wilde's 1966 film. Shot on location in Africa (Rhodesia, South Africa, Bechuanaland & Mozambique) -- often hundreds of miles from the nearest village -- with a cast composed almost entirely of non-professional actors (most had never acted before in their lives), a minimal budget and a whole lot of blood, sweat & tears (literally), The Naked Prey brought method acting to new levels. The music chosen to be the score for the film is every bit as authentic as the shooting locations, for it is all composed and played by the N'guni clans amongst whom the crew worked and filmed. While Wilde of course selected the tracks from what the N'guni played for him during the filming, the music is just as they performed it. The entire score is merely recordings of drums, chants, strange animal imitations, and the natural ambience of the bush, ie: field recordings. Thank god this preceeded the medling interference of the world beat puveyors Peter Gabriel et. al. And actually, the score in and of itself was a bit of cutting edge concept. As is pointed out in the liner notes, this was released the same year as Nonesuch began their Explorer series and long before any kind of major world music industry. Another fine release from Latitude.
