Free improv alto sax solos. For some folks, this is like having a brain-scrape without painkillers. But others will crawl within the sounds bleating from this guy's horn and bliss out. Here we have a cd reissue of one of thee rarest LPs in the discography of Japanese sax-blaster Kaoru Abe, a legendary, almost James Deanish icon of that nation's happening '70s free jazz scene, who made his recorded debut in 1970 but sadly died of a drug overdose before the decade was out, at age 29. Winter 1972 was originally a bootleg LP that came out in 1973 or '74 on Osaka's Sound Works label, and hasn't been offically reissued on cd until now, commemorating the 27th anniversary of Abe's premature passing.
In the past, we've reviewed some of Abe's reissued output in collaboration with free guitar great Masayuki Takayanagi, but he's got a lot of solo recordings too, and if you're interested in such things starting here would be a fine spot as any. Beautiful (to some) skree, so dark and emotional, sound and silence intensely entwined.
Fuck yeah garage rawk fans, if you like to play it 'old school', Norton Records is absolutely where it's at! They've released this live album compiling select songs from four of lone wolf Hasil Adkins' 1987 shows (in New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Toronto), some of which also feature the A-Bones! The title ain't no joke. When it's time to play, this madman totally lets loose some true vintage rabble-rousin' rockabilly. If you dug his Out To Hunch album that Norton reissued a coupla years ago, you'll definitely wanna give this expanded cd reissue of The Wild Man a spin. Of the nineteen tracks, the first fourteen were originally available from Norton on lp, song #15 is taken from a 1987 vinyl 7", and the final four are previously unreleased tracks.
AFrames jump up to Sub Pop for their third full length. As on their previous releases, this is very raw post-punk clawed out with dirty fingernails, but perhaps leaning a bit less on their past Gang Of Four / Wire / The Fall worship. The lead vocals are of the sing-right-along-with-the-main-melody ilk, and the lyrics are fashioned into elementary school level rhyming couplets. They're delivered by a flat spoken-sung male voice that's very reminiscent once again of Nick Forte (of Rorschach, Beautiful Skin, Christmas Decorations, Computer Cougar), and actually this could very easily be mistaken for a Forte project. In addition to the vocals, it's got all the Forte tell-tale elements -- thick chug'n'churn electric guitars that sound like their strings have been slackened, plodding primal drumbeats, abrasive synthesizer blasts and an ample dose of distortion and dissonance. One difference is the occasional appearance of female vocals that serve to soften the masculine angular blows. At times this band also seems to have been influenced by the more song-y side of Neubauten, however they don't come anywhere close to achieving the total visceral immediacy of that seminal band. One thing tho' whereas the recordings are definitely no-frills, apparently they sure spared no cost in the packaging department, this cd comes in a really rad die-cut printed cardboard slipcover.
The fourth album from Michael Gira's Angels Of Light is the most easily digestible album that Gira has produced to date with pleasant folk-rock orchestrations built from Gira's simple acoustic guitar structures and unmistakably bold baritone delivery. Having heard that his protege Devendra Banhart has left Gira's Young God Records for greener pastures, it's hard not to hear a sense of bitterness in Gira's delivery of "The Kid Is Already Breaking;" similarly, most of songs tend to be portraits of specific people in Gira's life. In comparison, most of the songs that Gira wrote for the Swans dealt with the weighty metaphors of God, power, money, and sex, where as the songs of Other People are much more personal and fragile. Guest appearances from Gira's newly discovered acid-folk collective, Akron/Family.
Whoahh man. San Francisco's own Appreciation is a writhing force in belted sheets, surrounded by mountainous abstractions and shrouded in fog! Now, usually with a band like this, their involved and award-winning art-school-typisch live show would totally rule over any recording. BUT NO. Healing The Father Wound is awesome!!! Partially self-recorded at a band member's house, partially at Louder Studio by engineer Tim Green (The Fucking Champs), this four song ep cd-r is their totally freaked-out psychedelic, metallic, noisy space-jam... and if you've never seen/heard 'em before, it's not what you think. It's more kid in under-roos with a sheet tied around his head, light saber in hand than anything more organized or fully constructed n' polished. But anyway, yeah -- it's all self-made and awesome sounding! That said, we must gush a tiny bit about this cd for one more reason: the packaging is all hand-made featuring artwork by the band's drummer, Bert Bergen, who silkscreened and sewed each cd sleeve by hand!! And if you have the chance to see them live, the experience is equally as rewarding as this recording. I mean, who wants to just go see a stilted band stand up on stage playing their "songs", anyway? A weird band that crosses the trying-to-be-weird barrier into genuine weirdness, where so many others have failed. Seriously, go see 'em live sometime, and tell us that hand painted volcano stage sets and the fact that no one in the band will ever rise above a crouch the whole time they're playing isn't amazing.
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html It's practically raining Jewlled Antler releases this time around. Who are we to complain? We can't get enough of this stuff! And now we've got this here quadruple cd-r set. Featuring four new JA bands, all weirdly featuring the exact same members, but with their names spelled slightly differently on each release. Archeological Pacemaker features Glen Donnellsen, Horticultural Compass features Glenn Donaldson. Geological Colander features Donovon Quinne, and Anthropological Bundt Cake features Donnovon Quin and so on. Strange stuff, but that's why we love those Jewlled Antler guys. All four of the bands featured on Scepter of Agricultural Indifference all tread that similar JA path, delicate, barely there ambience, nature sounds subtly intruding on the proceedings, and of course a pretty vast array of instrumentation including: mandolin, bongos, kazoo, penny whistle, player piano, bugle, jew's harp, spoons, washboard, rubberband guitar, musical saw, racoon trap, diaphragm, toilet seat (!) and much more. The sounds they get out of this disparate collection of instruments is amazing. Truly a testament to the creativity of the Jewelled Antler Collective. Packaged in a bundt cake pan filled with soil (completw with live worms), and containing (in keeping with the various bands' monickers) a pacemaker, a colander and a compass. Obviously super limited and a bitch to mail so be prepared to pay extra shipping.
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Space rock gone classical? Yes! It's a drugs and flutes thing you wouldn't understand. We got turned on to these guys by our friends in Circle. This band from Finland started as a standard-issue jamming stoner space rock outfit, doing the heavily effected, free form freakout thing. Not quite so damaged as countrymen Doktor Kettu or Avarus, but close. But, perhaps tiring of the more untrained approach, one long dark Arctic winter they spent woodshedding, studying up on their classical chops. And they also drafted in some drop-outs from the local conservatory of music to help out. Now they make their debut as Bachwind, doing, among other things, a monster magnetized adaptation (a very loose adaptation) of Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier 1: Prelude & Fugue No. 2 (BWV 847) of 1738, with an instrumental lineup that includes both fuzz bass and viola, analog synth and harpsichord. It's Avarus meets Apocalyptica, basically. Recommended, of course.
Hola dear Devendra-adoring vinyl lovers! You no longer have to feel left out in the cold while others around you enjoy Mr. Banhart's music on cd because Young God has released his two most recent albums together (as they were meant to be!) as a double record set in a gatefold sleeve. If you're memory need refreshing, here's what we said about Rejoicing In The Hands album a little under a year ago:
Since the release of his evocative debut album Oh Me Oh My..., Devendra Banhart has deservedly catapulted to the status of an indie-rock icon. The critical acclaim for Banhart's work is based on the merits of his spectacular songwriting and uncanny ability to channel an incredible spectrum of emotional resonance. However, much of that success is also due to the hard work and dedication of Young God's bossman Michael Gira. The former Swan and current Angel Of Light has taken Banhart under his wing as his apprentice and has boldly asserted (and nurtured) Banhart's brilliance, majesty, and genius. His hard work has certainly paid off as almost every media outlet has sung Banhart's praises; but even so it was quite bizarre to hear Banhart's wavering croon on NPR's Morning Edition many moons ago.
Rejoicing In The Hands is Banhart's second proper album, following the short Black Babies UK EP which delved further into his piles of early 4-track recordings. For this new album, Gira took Banhart into a studio (which was located in an appropriately antique Southern home on the Georgia / Alabama border) and provided him with plenty of resources to flesh out his songs. In many ways, Rejoicing In The Hands follows the same strategy that Sub Pop employed for Iron & Wine's second album Our Endless Numbered Days: take one fantastic songwriter who made a great album of 4-track recordings, put him in the studio with some sympathetic musicians, and watch the magic happen. Thus, Rejoicing In The Hands has considerably more polish than its predecessor; and perhaps not surprisingly, the songs themselves are less dangerous, rabid, and self-consumed. Yet, the taming of Mr. Banhart is a relative process, as his work still invokes a mysticism of the unconscious through his complex metanyms and obtuse wordplay. His voice -- an eccentric hybrid of Marc Bolan, Karen Dalton, and Vashti Bunyan (who sings a duet alongside Banhart on this record!) -- continues to waver through stream of consciousness lyrics about his teeth, his beard, geographic love affairs, insects, Elvis, and other more likely subject matters like sex and death. Musically, these are delicate folk arrangements centered around his elliptical finger picking which is occasionally accompanied by some of Gira's fellow musicians from Angels of Light. All in all, Rejoicing In The Hands is a rousing success that will surely make Banhart the folk medium for his generation. Highly recommended.
And this is what we had to say about the cd version of Nino Rojo in September '04:
From the promise of a Banhartian Spring we find a Banhartian Autumn with a companion piece to Rejoicing In The Hands, Nino Rojo. This album, equally as stunning, features 16 songs assembled from 57 tracks recorded with Banhart mentor Michael Gira in Atlanta (see our review of Rejoicing for more info on the recording and production). Truly some of his most captivating and achingly beautiful songs to date with more elaborate finger-picked guitarwork and fleshed out backing vocals on songs such as the glistening "Owl Eyes" and the album closer "Electric Heart". One of our most favorite tracks, "At The Hop", is co-written by frequent Banhart collaborator Andy Cabic (Vetiver, Tussle). The enhancement of this enhanced-cd features a video for this song. Like its companion, Nino Rojo offers a Devendra Banhart with more polish, more freedom of movement and a little looser from the grip of self-awareness -- making for a more cohesive but no less eccentric and magical album.
These seem to be going fast, not sure how limited it is...
We never got around to reviewing this prolific Germanic avant-steel-string guitarist's previous release (the 7 Books double cd released on Strange Attractors last year) although it was perfectly fine -- perhaps we were just scared off by the suggestion of Native American themed spoken word poetry associated with it. No such dangers seem evident here, though, so let's check out this brand new new disc of his on the Italian label Sillyboy, shall we? As with all the stuff of his we've heard, it's one for fans of improvised 12-string guitar in a sorta out-there repetitive, minimalist mode... more Fahey than Bailey thankfully. Maybe that's the reason we didn't manage to review 7 Books, 'cause once you've reviewed a few of this man's releases, it's hard to conjure up more to say, even though the listening remains enjoyable... I mean you gotta cite Fahey, the Takoma label influence, all that. The fact that the man named himself after Robbie Basho ferchrissakes! He makes it so obvious. There's even a couple of tracks here subtitled "Kottke On Mars".
But that's not to dismiss Steffen Basho-Junghan's own talent, and such is quite evident here with this disc, recorded live to DAT in his Berlin living room, all solo, with no overdubs and only "gentle" edits. The concept here (Basho-Junghans is really into concepts) is that of an outer-space alien musician (one of those cantina dudes from Star Wars maybe?) coming to Earth and trying to do his/her/its best on an unfamiliar Earth-instrument, in this case the guitar. Hmm, is this a stretch for Basho-Junghans or not? After all, the guitar IS his instrument. However, his clusters of notes, slides and bends allow one to imagine the alien appendages perhaps used to play such music. And, especially, this does a fine job of conjuring a sense of the night-space-darkness travelled by such an alien visitor. Stark and weird but really quite lovely, with hints of Eastern exoticism...
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Fans of the late great beer guzzling, punk rock, riff slinging metalheads Karp must now rejoice, as Big Business are a dead ringer for those metal miscreants, which of course makes plenty of sense as the CEO of this particular Big Business is none other than Karp frontman Jared! So if you loved Karp, you're obviously gonna love this. And if you don't know Jared / Karp / Big Business, think relentless riffing, powerhouse drumming, shouted vocals, goofy but sort of brilliant lyrics, a supercharged AC/DC filtered through a beer soaked haze, a mild obsession with Judas Priest and a desire to kick much ass. Not hard to imagine legions of white belted, tight pants-ed irony-metal bands being rounded up by the true metal police and beaten into submission while protesting the true rock of Big Business which threatens to make their joke metal obsolete, all beneath the towering Marshall stack shapped monolith of Big Business, while Jared and his board of directors sit in their penthouse, twenty stories above hurling riff after riff after motherfucking riff at the cowering crowd below, laughing maniacally and rocking relentlessly!
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html It was only a matter of time. There's been rap metal, and there's been funk metal, but as far as we know, nobody has combined black metal and dub, at least in a way that was at all palatable (we're definitely not counting the Bill Laswell produced Cradle Of Filth remix record or that abominable Tolkien-dub Prince Far Isengard record from a few years back). But now we've got the brilliantly monickered Black Ark Oaken Saw, a grim troupe of ganja smoking, washboard stroking, corpse painted Dandys in tight trousers. Huge swaths of murky buzzsaw guitars, howled demonic David Lee Roth-like vocals, wrapped in loads of reverb and delay, but instead of blast beats, or precise triggered drums, the dark abyss is framed by spare super blissed out, dubbed out echoplexed dub rhythms, snares crack and then repeat endlessly into the blackened void, while shrieks are snipped mid phrase and then recycled into haunting otherworldy echoes of blackened dub. Weird weird weird, it seems like this sort of thing wouldn't work at all, but surprisingly it's an absolutely perfect fit. Imagine Emperor with Sly and Robbie occupying the rhythm section or Lee Perry fronting Lugubrum. And we can't forget the un-named frontman who indeed plays the amplified washboard, but it too is run through a bank of effects and emerges a totally dubbed out barely recognizable version of itself. Hopefully, Hydra Head's interest in the fringes of black metal will continue to unearth more unholy treasures like the mighty Black Ark Oaken Saw!
The answer to the title's question appears to be... The Black Swans! Although this band has been together since 1999, this is their debut album. Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? contains some of the darkest, slowest and most brooding music this side of Tindersticks and the Dirty 3. In fact, lead singer Jerry DeCicca's deeeeep vocals are practically a deadringer for Stuart Staples' of the aforementioned band. For those in the most somber of moods (or for those wishing to be made so)!
There's a bizillion bands right now (and surely many more to come) that sound *exactly* like this (Maximo Park, Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand and Futureheads to name a few of the ones some of us here prefer). Y'know, young bands whose members grew up hearing their older brothers' and sisters' records by The Fall, XTC, The Clash, Gang of Four and Duran Duran. Yelped, emotive vocals strained through their Danish accents atop an electric guitar blend of furious strumming and effected chime-y picked notes, a punchy drum beat and a seeming after-thought addition of a synth line to give it that very 'now' 80s sound. No deep listening allowed, just fun fun fun! So the task at hand is to sift through the cookie cutter redundancy to find the really stand-out stuff (or you might say, the packaging style you prefer -- sharkskin suit? well-worn denim?). Even so, each band's album only seems good for at least one or two totally awesome solid pop songs with the rest of it serving as filler comprised of inferior versions of the same idea. Such just might be the case with Bloc Party's debut full length -- although no single song has jumped out and made us exclaim, "Hot damn!!!" like Maximo Park's "Apply Some Pressure" did. That said, this record could just be a slow grower, as the more it gets played, the more we're digging it. Which is a good thing too, since you might as well get used to this Silent Alarm 'cause much like other 'buzz bands' whether you like it or not you're not going to be able to escape hearing more than your share of this band in the next few months. But strangely, no matter how much we're digging this record, it still just makes us want to pull out Pulp's Different Class album and blast it at full volume! Funny that.
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!
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Fuck yes. It had to happen. The mother of all grindcore bands has descended upon us and you have simply never in your life heard anything as monstrously bone-crushing as this. Featuring not one, not two, not three, but SEVEN separate vocalists, bellowing forth, respectively -- ultra gut-rumbling low, maniacally cat-butchering mostly low, illegally brutal low-mid, hardcore shout, slightly high yelp, catatonic maple screech, and tree-felling supersonic scream -- the almighty Blast Beast is augmented additionally by four distinct drummers, two of which do nothing but blast in tandem, virtually quadrupling standard drum speeds. One drummer is left doing fills and rolls incessantly while the last Batteronimus Maximus (supposedly his legal birth-name!) plays a 12-piece kit assembled entirely of bass drums, leaving the notion of double bass a thing of the past. In fact the liner notes of the record include certified testimony from the controversial Auditory Regulation Statutes and BPM Limitation Committee of Canada that an estimated 72 to 73 percent of the sound recorded on this release are physically too fast for the human ear to discern, registering only a piercing single note to people but deemed "highly unsuitable" for households including dogs or feathered pets. Still the few moments you can make out are fucking steam-rolling bulldozingly insane! Think Brutal Truth meets Discordance Axis meets Nile at Human Remains' practice space with the guys from Pig Destroyer, Cryptopsy, Morbid Angel and Mortician jamming along -- all at the same time! With a whopping 147 songs (eighteen minutes total) this release is simply too fucking brutal for words -- get this now!
After last year's Silverlake album and slew of old Chesnutt reissues, we've sure had our fave Vic on the mind around here, and been wishing for more. Well folks, whadyaknow?! Here's a brand new album, and it does not disappoint!
Some folks we know were a little disappointed by Silverlake, not sure why, maybe they were missing the more playful ramshackle Chesnutt of old, and while those folks might not necessarily find what they want here, they should be prepared (and excited) for yet another new direction from the musically restless Chesnutt. Even darker (if that's possible) and a lot more lush, Ghetto Bells is a swoonsome, melancholy dream world of droning soundscapes, twangy melancholia, and wistful countrified folk. Lyrically, less wryly clever secretly silly, and more serious and somber. The seemingly incongruous pairing of his gravelly voice atop the surprisingly elegant string arrangements brought to mind a few recordings of Leonard Cohen.
We might venture to say though that the final song on the album is by far the strangest, most out-there song Chesnutt has ever recorded. A delicate, sparse, moody soundscape of upright bass, vibes, chiming harmonics, with Chesnutt singing in a wavery falsetto. Werid but really quite beautiful.
At last, here's the vinyl version of an album that's been selling pretty steadily here on cd since it came out practically a year ago. If you're one of the few folks who hasn't already picked up the digital version, now you've got an analog option! Here's what we said about this before:
Our first listen brought one easy description immediately to mind: "the female Devendra Banhart". Wait, no make that "Devendra Banhart meets Macy Gray"! Or maybe Beth Gibbons of Portishead. Seriously. And we think a lot of people are gonna go googoo for this, actually. The two girls (sisters, actually: Bianca and Sierra Cassady) who make up CocoRosie are definitely onto something. It's a bit precious and twee, sure, but also very very lovely. Their sometimes mumbled, sometimes soulfully soaring vocals adorn music that's nicely sparse and understated... Murky (sampled?) beats. Wind and rain. Acoustic guitar folk-blues. Sleepy, lilting melodies. Add several layers of their fragile whispering and achingly sweet crooning, delivering cryptic lyrics that you hope they're singing to or about you, and you've got La Maison De Mon Reve (The House Of My Dream), quite a nice debut from these two, we have to say. Recommended.
Deathprod is the solo experimental audio project from Supersilent and Motorpsycho member Helge Sten of Oslo, Norway. Previously the only work by Deathprod we stocked here at Aquarius was the split cd with Biosphere on Rune Grammofon in which the two artists reworked fellow Norwegian Arne Nordheim's electronic compositions. Having enjoyed that disc very much, we were pretty excited about the mysterious looking matte black four CD box by Deathprod that arrived at our laboratory recently. If the black box was evocative enough to pique our interest, the music the music contained within surely did not betray our hopes. Working with old magnetic tape recorders, hand made delay and sundry other electronic devices, Helge Sten manipulates fragments of sound -- such as a two note melodic interval or a final orchestral cadence -- into brooding dark soundscapes, rich with overtones from feedback and often overlaid with guest performances from fellow Supersilent members. Often it is the very limitations of the equipment that Sten uses that become the sources for the beautiful timbres he produces: an oversaturated tape input, a primitive sampler that never reproduces the same note the same way twice, or the uneven decay from primitive tape delays. The tracks on these four discs were recorded between 1991 and 2000, and while some of the material was released by Sten on cassette through his own label (also titled Deathprod), much of it is previously unreleased or was super limited in number. Two tracks in particular, a six minute narration from American born Oslo resident Matt Burt and a couple tracks of an organ, vibes and drum trio not unlike Sagor & Swing stick out in this four disc set. More typical are tracks which blossom out from a single cell of an idea: one chord, or one blast of noise. At times Deathprod sounds almost like an attempt at recreating Thomas Koner's soundscapes using the audio palette of Mauricio Bianchi. On Imaginary Songs From Tristan da Cunha, Sten went so far as to record tracks on a Nagra deck, transfer them to wax cylinders and then transfer them once more to digital media. The result are authenticly old and decaying tracks which are hauntingly beautiful as well. Other tracks feature deteriorating blasts of what sounds almost like a fog horn progressively decaying into grinding metal; throbbing drones and eerie female chorus -- a la Ligeti's "Lux Aeterna" from 2001 -- building with layers of feedbacky washes of sound. The four tracks that make up Sten's most recent album on the set -- Morals And Dogma -- are possibly his best works yet: icey, bleak soundscapes of drones. Any of the tracks here would make an excellent soundtrack. On "Dead People's Things", the most sorrowful of melodies is played on a theremin over a foundation of delicate, scratchy bowing of violin and a deep bass throbbing drone. "Orgone Donor" consists of a slowly shifting chordal drone of whispy violins, harmonium and saw, with each instrument leading and then resolving the chord in turn.
By now, avid readers of the AQ list should know that we love the Decemberists. How could we not? Catchy quirky pop, mournful and melancholy, depressingly jubilant, joyously dour, somewhere between Neutral Milk Hotel, the Smiths and the Pogues, with lyrics that meld Dickensian squalor with Edward Gorey pathos, all delivered in a quavering, affected, lispy faux British accent. C'mon! What's not to love? So then when it came time to review their new record, after only a few listens, we were faced with the prospect, of the usual "Another great album" or "More of that stuff we love, not all that different, but who cares, 'cuz we loved the last record!". And while those statements are most definitely true, having listened to this record over and over and over for the last few days, it's actually become perhaps our favorite record of theirs. Part of the problem seemed to be loading the beginning of the record with upbeat barnstorming footstompers, which are of course great and the Decemberists are definitely adebt at channelling their inner Pogue, but those sort of tracks work better peppered around the Decemberists' more downtempo miserablisms, which is precisely what happens around track 5. It IS after all a concept record, so perhaps the story arc requires that specific sequence, but track five, a brooding dirge of a tale about a spy mouring for his captured partner, and reflecting on the passing of microfilm to his sweetheart and cuddling atop buildings, is where the Decemberists magic really kicks in, and keeps up for the rest of the record. Dark and eloquent, silly and absurd, sweet and sorrowful. And that magic is sort of retroactive, as once the record finished and we returned to the beginning, those first few tracks made that much more sense and the whole record suddenly seemed absolutely perfect.
Wow. Never thought we'd be reviewing a Dinosaur Jr. record. I mean, they are one of those bands that were always around. We all loved them. Had all of their records (at the time). Had the cassettes on the floor in the frontseat of the car, just a quick lean from the driver's seat, ready to pop in for the next long drive. They definitely stopped being relevent (and -good- some might argue) after Bug, their third record. But for three or four years there, Dinosaur Jr. took everything we loved and stuffed it into one perfect little indie rock package. Punk rock snarl, metallic crunch, indie jangle, squiggly guitar solos (!), and a Neil Young like whine in the form of frontman J. Mascis' stoned drawling vocals. You can definitely hear the influence Dinosaur had on Nirvana, Polvo, Swervedriver, and about a million other late eighties rock bands! Lou Barlow, bass player for Dinosaur Jr., would go on to send indie rock from the studio back to the practice space and launch a million bedroom rockers with his home recorded 4-track project Sebadoh (whose first official release was actually a track on the second Dinosaur Jr. record You're Living All Over Me) while Mascis (formerly of punk sludge outfit Deep Wound and metal weirdos Upsidedown Cross) would go on to more commerical success before dropping off the face of the earth and giving up music altogether. But for those first three records, Dinosaur Jr. were the shit. And damn if these records don't sound just as good now almost a decade later! All three re-issues have liner notes by Byron Coley and bonus tracks!
Bug was what you would call Dinosaur Jr's breakthrough. Or maybe sell out record. But who really give a shit what you call it. This was the ultimate kick ass indie rock record. Period. Heavy and catchy, melodic and weird, totally derivative and totally original! The song "Freak Scene" is what did it. A perfect pop song if there ever was one. AND the best use of expletives in an indie rock song ever. Even people who didn't know the song, would sing along to -those- parts: "So fucked, I can't believe it", and "Just don't let me fuck up will you, cuz when I need a friend it's still you", at the top of their lungs. And why not? Every inch of that song was a stone cold hook, the chorus, the verse, even the guitar solos. Track two, "No Bones" is maybe as Neil Young as Dino Jr. got, a totally unforgettable riff, and perfectly drawled vocals. Then there was "The Post", a doomy dirge that somehow morphs into into a perfect little pop ditty, wrapped around one of the most kick ass rock riffs ever and some wicked leads on top! This is maybe the first (and only?) truly perfect Dinosaur Jr. record. The sound is still buzzy and heavy, guitars are big and distorted, but the pop songs are just too strong to stay buried and against all odds, and often battling crushing guitars and freaked out noise, they rise to the surface and shine brightly through swirling shroud of distorted psychedelic haze. So so so great!!!
Bonus tracks: videos for "Freak Scene", a sill assemblage of wacky band hijinks and some poor kid getting his head shaved, and "No Bones", a gorgeously arty live video, that perfectly captures the mood of the song!
Wow. Never thought we'd be reviewing a Dinosaur Jr. record. I mean, they are one of those bands that were always around. We all loved them. Had all of their records (at the time). Had the cassettes on the floor in the frontseat of the car, just a quick lean from the driver's seat, ready to pop in for the next long drive. They definitely stopped being relevent (and -good- some might argue) after Bug, their third record. But for three or four years there, Dinosaur Jr. took everything we loved and stuffed it into one perfect little indie rock package. Punk rock snarl, metallic crunch, indie jangle, squiggly guitar solos (!), and a Neil Young like whine in the form of frontman J. Mascis' stoned drawling vocals. You can definitely hear the influence Dinosaur had on Nirvana, Polvo, Swervedriver, and about a million other late eighties rock bands! Lou Barlow, bass player for Dinosaur Jr., would go on to send indie rock from the studio back to the practice space and launch a million bedroom rockers with his home recorded 4-track project Sebadoh (whose first official release was actually a track on the second Dinosaur Jr. record You're Living All Over Me) while Mascis (formerly of punk sludge outfit Deep Wound and metal weirdos Upsidedown Cross) would go on to more commerical success before dropping off the face of the earth and giving up music altogether. But for those first three records, Dinosaur Jr. were the shit. And damn if these records don't sound just as good now almost a decade later! All three re-issues have liner notes by Byron Coley and bonus tracks!
Dinosaur was not only the name of their debut record, but was actually the name of the band before they added the Jr. (after the release of Bug and a threatened lawsuit from SF hippy leftovers Dinosaur). Sloppy and chaotic, noisy and snotty, Dinosaur is the record that introduced us to what would become a hugely important band, and who by melding melody, punk rock blast, and metallic crunch would end up being massive influences on a decade of indie / college rock. Mascis' lazy, whiney nasal drawl is definitely present, but hasn't become the focal point it would be on later records. Lots of reverb, big distorted guitars, a beautifully clumsy, strummy indie rock with plenty of wah guitar, bursts of angstful harcore grrrr and the occasional metal guitar freakout. Diamonds in the rough include the glimmer of Dinosaur to come in "Repulsion" and the indie jangle love song "Severed Lips" that definitely made it on every indie geek's mixtape in 1985. Bonus track: "Does It Float (live)".
Wow. Never thought we'd be reviewing a Dinosaur Jr. record. I mean, they are one of those bands that were always around. We all loved them. Had all of their records (at the time). Had the cassettes on the floor in the frontseat of the car, just a quick lean from the driver's seat, ready to pop in for the next long drive. They definitely stopped being relevent (and -good- some might argue) after Bug, their third record. But for three or four years there, Dinosaur Jr. took everything we loved and stuffed it into one perfect little indie rock package. Punk rock snarl, metallic crunch, indie jangle, squiggly guitar solos (!), and a Neil Young like whine in the form of frontman J. Mascis' stoned drawling vocals. You can definitely hear the influence Dinosaur had on Nirvana, Polvo, Swervedriver, and about a million other late eighties rock bands! Lou Barlow, bass player for Dinosaur Jr., would go on to send indie rock from the studio back to the practice space and launch a million bedroom rockers with his home recorded 4-track project Sebadoh (whose first official release was actually a track on the second Dinosaur Jr. record You're Living All Over Me) while Mascis (formerly of punk sludge outfit Deep Wound and metal weirdos Upsidedown Cross) would go on to more commerical success before dropping off the face of the earth and giving up music altogether. But for those first three records, Dinosaur Jr. were the shit. And damn if these records don't sound just as good now almost a decade later! All three re-issues have liner notes by Byron Coley and bonus tracks!
You're Living All Over Me was the transitional record, where Dinosaur Jr. started sounding, well. like Dinosaur Jr. With Mascis' Neil Young like drawl way up in the mix, swirling squalls of wah guitar, and most importantly, KILLER songs! Not even remotely punk rock anymore, this was the sound that would define late eighties indie rock. "Little Fury Things", the opening track is the perfect Dinosaur microcosm, starting off with a blast of noisy guitar feakout, a jangly strum takes over, and Mascis belts out a melody that remains stuck in our heads even to this day before the whole thing is subsumed by a suffocating swirl of guitar noise. The rest of the record is practically perfect, veering from loping heavy guitar grooves, to slow shimmering jangle, to full on Crazy Horse instrumental guitar jam. In fact YLAOM is the record that turned Mascis into the first indie rock guitar god. Live, every track would stretch out into endless psychedelic jams, while on record, those jams were compacted and stuck between perfect pop choruses and plaintive, sad boy verses, which again became the blueprint for every indie rock band that followed. YLAOM also included the track "Poledo" which while technically a Dinosaur Jr. track, was performed and recorded by bassist Lou Barlow at home, and was the first officially released Sebadoh song (or songs, as it actually sounds like several song fragments strung together), a mumbly lo-fi acoustic dirge, interspersed with tape hiss, noisy interference, found sounds and bursts of white noise. Weirdly, the first cd version of YLAOM included the Peter Frampton cover "Show Me The Way", replaced here by their infamous cover of the Cure's "Just Like Heaven" with its dirge-y blast of a chorus and wailing guitars, and which, in a testament to Dinosaur's songwriting brilliance, sounds like it could be a Dinosaur original. Bonus tracks: Videos for "Just Like Heaven", a totally ridiculous puppet and band members hamming it up goof fest, and "Little Fury Things" which is amazing, a series of found film footage, band footage, and scratched film negatives, looks a little like the Sonic Youth's Sister album cover come to life!
These guys and gal from Japan should need no introduction, eh? I mean, I think we've done our best to already familiarize AQ customers with the rock n' roll awesomeness of the Dynamite Masters Blues Quartet, right? We've certainly sold a ton of their Esoteric Black Hair ep, that's for sure! Plus, they've been on a stateside touring assault recently that is clearly pulling more and more fans into their orbit. In our review of EBH, we predicted that sooner rather than later some clever American label would pick this band up...and lo, Estrus has done the deed. They're a label perhaps known for a retro sound more garagey than these guys, but it's definitely a good fit with DMBQ's brand of wild rock n' roll abandon.
On The Essential Sounds From the Far East (terrible title, although no falsehood), DMBQ's Boredoms-playing-Blue Cheer attack continues unabated. Tons and tons of guitar with tons and tons of effects. Swooshing sizzling wah-wah mayhem. Howling, raucous vox. Groovy drumming. Exuberant energetic explosions of sound. Sonic starbursts and brightly coloured visuals absolutely must accompany rock that's kicking out the jams this hard. Imagine the most in-your-face elements of Hendrix and Led Zep I taken to absurd extremes by some extroverted Japanese freaks, right now, today, in your town if you're lucky. Anyone who likes Acid Mothers Temple when they pay a visit to "electric heavyland", or digs the psychedelic, '70s rawk side of Boris, will love cranking this up.
As mentioned, they've been touring more in the US. DO NOT MISS SEEING THEM. Their showmanship has to be seen to be believed. They're always upping the ante. They were just here last month, and the crowd at the Hemlock got to witness frontman Shinji pass the drum kit into the audience, piece by piece, assemble it there, then grab DMBQ's new drummer China (ex-Shonen Knife) and hand *her* into the crowd, from where she picked up the beat and finished the song, drumming in the midst of the sweaty multitude. Wow. But as good live as they are, they don't slack in the studio either.
You can tell they mean to impress with this, their first-ever US album release (EBH being both an ep and a collection of previously released tunage). This does include a version of "Are You Satisfied?", a song that's also on EBH... but everything else is new. It's one loud pounding, swirling, throbbing psych-out after another, with only the spaced out six and a half minute "Dm" providing a bit of relaxation. Damn we love this band. Now if only all their other, also-excellent previous Japanese releases would get reissued over here...
Released back in 1994 around the same time as Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Vol 2, Dots is an album that Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, Senor Coconut) composed as a sort of futuristic elevator music. Its rounded, digitally pure tones playfully sparkle along a datastream of placid post-techno structures. In a lot of ways, Dots foreshadowed the much-ballyhooed Pop Ambient series from Kompakt, sharing a pixel-point synthesis pleasant daydreaming music. This marks the second in a reissue series of the earliest recordings from his Rather Interesting back catalogue. In addition to Dots, Schmidt also included a nearly forgotten set of recordings called BGD (shortened from Background Design), which shares more with the ambient works of his contemporaries on the Fax label at that time. Limited to 900 copies and actually signed by Atom Heart himself.
Sometimes it can take a while for word to get around (or for a record to become available here in the States)... Nicolai Dunger is a gentle Swedish singer-songwriter, and a personal fave of those fine Calexico fellows (in fact you might've seen him performing on tour with them). As you may or may not have noticed from the artists they've chosen to collaborate with and take on the road (Howe Gelb, Neko Case, Amor Belhom Duo, Lambchop, Richard Buckner, Lisa Germano, Francoize Breut and Nancy Sinatra) those Arizonan gents have mighty good taste! Anyways, this is a domestic reissue of Dunger's third album which originally came out on Dolores Recordings in 1999. He actually has seven full lengths which were released on almost as many labels (the first was back in 1996!). Sir Nicolai crafts wonderful, lilting folk pop songs perfect for drifting off to catnap-land in the shade of a big ol' weeping willow tree. You might think of him as the Swedish counterpart to Canadian troubadour Ron Sexsmith or perhaps a gutsier Kings Of Convenience. Each song beckons you to lean in close as he sings his thoughtful lyrics atop the wistful arrangements which on this album were played by fellow Swedes Soundtrack Of Our Lives and they lend a very subtle trippiness to the proceedings. So good!
On her debut album, Liz Durrett (aka Vic Chesnutt's niece) takes a few steps into the sedated folk pop terrain of her uncle, and a few steps back in time. These songs were written and recorded back in the mid-'90s when she was a teen (she's now well into her 20s), but they ache with a haunting despondence well beyond those years. She enlisted ample help and guidance from family members including ol' Uncle Vic (in the producer's chair) and her grandmother. In a sense, this album serves as a family gathering style clearing away of the old, but not simply to make way for the new. More so, Husk serves to unveil and contrast Durrett's 'then' with her 'now' (a new freshly written and recorded album is on the horizon). Her more folksy numbers are very soft, very wispy, and very Cat Power-ish while the other non-acoustic songs sound not unlike a baby Portishead! Check out the fourth and fifth songs ("Captive" and "BC") for a back to back example of this.
We listed this hip NYC metal band's three-song, self-released demo cd a few months ago, now here it is again as an "offical" release on Monitor Records, with the exact same three songs but better packaging (i.e. in a jewel case with cover art!). Seems like Early Man are doin' pretty good -- they also just got signed to Matador (!) with a full-length debut coming up soon! So, what's the fuss all about? Refresh yr memory with our prior review of these tracks:
It seems like everybody likes metal nowadays. Somehow it got to be hip and cool again. Who should we blame -- Stoner rock? The Fucking Champs? Black metal? 30-something dudes getting nostalgic? The Osbournes? The Metallica Drummer? Dave Grohl? Aquarius Records? (naw) Or maybe the fact that metal can be damn good music?!? So now that indie rockers aren't afraid of metal anymore, the world is ready for a band like NYC's Early Man, a trio which currently includes none other than David Pajo of Slint/Aerial M/Tortoise fame on bass (though we're not entirely sure if he's on this recording, as the solid core of the band is the guitarist and drummer, with bassists coming and going). Dave Pajo or no, though, Early Man should be of interest anyway for their metallic mastery. There's three songs here on this 17-minute ep release. First track, the shortest and punchiest (appropriately since it's called "Fight!"), rips along like vintage Metallica, with the singer doing semi-Hetfield vox with suitably dumb but cool lyrics. But on the next two tracks, he sounds a lot more like Ozzy which makes sense as these are Sabbath styled epics (circa Sabotage, "Symptom Of The Universe" -- actually on the third song dude is actually pretty much singing the vocal line from "Symptom..."). And there's healthy doses of the NWOBHM here too. Yup it's retro and derivative sometimes but that's OK, so too fer instance were Sleep (which some of this surely reminds us of), and besides a killer riff's a killer riff and you can't argue with sheer metal might can you? There's no extraneous soloing just riffs riffs riffs. Wait, no soloing? Maybe they are ironic poseurs. I just hope they're for real. Their website (nicely done) definitely has a bit of hipster 'tude...but in the live photos of them, they look metal even if the audience doesn't. For fans of High On Fire, The Fucking Champs, and of course all ye goode olden metal. We want to hear more!
The opportunity of a lifetime film score for Brian Eno: providing a soundtrack to the most, quite literally, other-worldy film footage ever shot. Eno was approached by ex-astronaut Al Reinert in the early eighties to put his ambient touch on a project that Reinert was working on documenting the apollo missions. Reinhert had sorted through 6,000,000 feet of NASA film footage shot by astronauts on those missions, picking out what he considered to be the best clips. To this he intended to add only the voices of the astronauts themselves -- both from interviews after the missions and from their transmissions to Houston during them -- and Eno's music. Though Eno's score was released in 1983, Reinert's film -- For All Mankind -- wasn't completed until 1989. Recorded just a year after his Ambient 4: On Land, the material here is quite similar. The compositions are far less conceptual than his earlier ambient works, yet the pieces here have an intuitive, textural and emotional feel without relying on -- for the most part -- melody. All but four tracks on this album use that same Eno M.O. of blurring the idea of "foreground and background", much like his previous release On Land. The guitar and bass, when the appear, are subverted from their original roles -- melodic lead, rhythm and harmony -- and instead are used for texture and atmosphere as much as the synths and electronics. The ambient tracks on Apollo have a foreboding and sublime quality -- appropriate enough for the vast eternity of space and the dessicated & bleak terrain of the moon. The four non-ambient tracks on this disc, all nestled together towards its end, are a bit of a departure from the rest of the album. "Always Returning" is probably the weakest link on the album, with its sentimental guitar part played by Daniel Lanois. Lanois however redeems himself with his pedal steel guitar playing on "Deep Blue Day", like a Sons Of The Pioneers tune, shot full of heroin and launched into the vacuum of space.
"This album is a compilation of fragments from my recorded work over the last two or three years. Some of it was made specifically for use as soundtrack material, some of it was made for other reasons but found its way into films; most of it is previously unissued in any form." So says Brian Eno in the liner notes. And people continue to milk this album for their films -- as anyone who's taken a film class in college can attest to. Well, at least fifteen or twenty years ago it was still being used to the point of excess. Extreme over use by film students and budding documentarians aside, Music For Films still holds together rather well... okay, maybe it dates itself a little here and there with the occasional synth patch, or bass line. You can hear a lot of the ideas for what went into Another Green World and Before And After Science on here, which makes one wonder how much of this may have been recorded during those sessions and culled from the album. In fact the track "M386" here is a dead ringer for a half-speed dub mix of Eno's "No One Receiving" off of the latter. While not immediately rock in nature -- the songs lack any verse/chorus/verse structure and seem to be devoid of any beginning, middle or end -- they aren't all as flattened out to be merely texture as his other ambient works. The cast of heavy hitter musicians here include many from Another Green World, such as Phil Collins, Fred Frith, Dave Mattacks, John Cale and Robert Fripp.
In a lecture given by Brian Eno for the Long Now Foundation last year he explained the genesis of his ideas on ambient music, which was in itself inspired by the music of Terry Riley, Fela Kuti and the Velvet Underground -- music that he felt "flattened" the "hierarchical structure" of its components. He went on to say that "In my own work this manifested in an emphasis on making what would have been called the background more interesting, and what would have been called the foreground, less and less central, thus sinking foreground elements into the background." The results of these musings culminated in, amongst others, the now highly regarded Discreet Music and Music For Airports. Discreet Music was composed of individual elements, each of differing lengths, such that the sonic soundscape would sound similar from moment to moment, but never exactly the same either. Thursday Afternoon takes a similar road map to Discreet Music, but is executed on a much larger scale. Originally recorded for a VHS tape released by Sony Japan of 7 "video-paintings" of Christine Alicino. The advent of the compact disc allowed Eno to greatly increase the length of time under which his compositions could unfold, which is exactly what Eno was able to accomplish with the audio only release of Thursday Afternoon. Thursday Afternoon is like a macro focused version of Discreet Music with every element further stretched, every minutia of hierarchy further flattened and every element of the medium -- compact disc -- exploited. Not only is the scale of the work greater, but utilizing the dynamic range of the CD Eno is able to make greater use of quieter passages with sound that previously would have been lost below the area of surface noise -- towards the end of the pieces as the individual elements drift away, you can hear the faint sounds of birds outside of Eno's studio. The increased time available on a CD, as opposed to the LP, makes for a better execution of his idea of ambient music. No more flipping the vinyl every twenty minutes, just program your CD player to repeat. Like Music For Airports, Thursday Afternoon's most distinctive element is that of a Rhodes -- or similar electric piano -- keyboard playing languid broken arpeggios, underneath which is a glistening mirage of ever shifting drones. The combination of these ever fluxuating elements creates the auditory illusion of movement and stasis.
For those of you wonderin' what Ian MacKaye's been up to lately... here's your answer! Hearing this self-titled debut from The Evens is like hopping into a time machine heading back a decade or so, but oddly it's a sound from the past that's very different from what we know was MacKaye's musical past (Fugazi, Minor Threat). No, although The Evens are clearly a no-frills duo, this is soft-around-the-edges indie pop much like what was coming out of Olympia, Washington / Washington, DC circa '95 (for example Tsunami, Spinanes, and Lois) but with a little of the darker, brooding boy/girl rock a la Versus from around the same time. Check out MacKaye's surprisingly boyish vocals! They're a great match with Amy Farina's sweet voice.
Take the brass of Eastern European group Fanfare Ciocarila, throw in a healthy dose of Test Dept. circa A Good Night Out, turn the punk rock knob up to ten and what do you get? Why San Francisco's very own inimitable Extra Action Marching Band. While we've been lucky enough to enjoy them here live for a few years now, a recording to share with our geographically challenged customers has been a long time coming. The twelve tracks on this disc were recorded live on the Motorship Stubnitz in July of 2004 while the band was on a European tour. A German ship built in 1964 and purchased by Swiss idealist Urs Blaser, the Stubnitz now serves as a floating cultural center and includes in its berth art studios, labs, workshops, two performance venues and a recording studio. Like any self respectin marching band, the Extra Action's core repertoire are arrangements of "popular" tunes for brass and drums, only the tunes they choose to cover are perhaps a little more esoteric than your average marching band. The theme to "Enter The Dragon", and "Lucky Seven" from Cheech & Chong's Up In Smoke and (maybe not that obscure, but a fucking great arrangement none the less) Black Sabbath's "The Wizard". A definite must have for fans of those popular Poly High and Schoolhouse Funk comps!
Black cover, gothic font, song titles like "Long Live Evil", "Filth" and "Demon Crusade". Some scary metal, what? Yep, brought to us by the DIW Phalanx label, home to Boris, Green Machine and Church of Misery. And indeed it's members of Japanese doom merchants Church of Misery in The G.A.T.E.S, allowing their love of '80s thrash and, especially, Motorhead full reign on this slayin' side project. 'Tis ass-kicking thrash n' roll, full of pounding, prowling intensity. And weirdly/awesomely enough, the heavy stoner-rock guitar of CoM still somehow bursts out in this assault. Y'know how Boris has morphed the Venom logo into their own for T-shirts and picture discs? Well this sounds like what the imaginary Boris version of Venom might sound like... Heavy as heck, classically-riffed, and rockin' at speed -- complete with a Lemmylike gargle for vocals. Gives Japan's other '80s metal worshipping throwbacks Metalucifer/Sabbat a run for their money.
This import cd combines all the tracks from two rare The G.A.T.E.S releases (the High Society Satanic Rock 12", that we're told was limited to 300 copies and the Demonliction 1 demo cassette, limited to 77) plus a bonus track -- the disc's raging closing cover of Motorhead's "Overkill", appropriately enough. If High On Fire's latest Blessed Black Wings gets (rightly) tagged as doom metal meets thrash meets Motorhead, this slots right in there too, and is a purer, more basic, in yr face distillation of said influences. Play loud, headbangers!
You know how much we like instrumental underground UK prog masters Guapo here, right? Andee even put out one of their albums (2001's Great Sage, Equal Of Heaven) on his label tUMULt. Subsequently they released the massive Five Suns opus on Cuneiform. And now, their new release Black Oni is unleashed by Mike Patton's Ipecac label. And they've been going from strength to strength.
Like Japan's Ruins, the Guapo trio take a lot of inspiration from '70s prog, in particular the "zeuhl" stylings of the amazing French band Magma. But where the Ruins generally concentrate the Magma sound into a hectic hyper-blast, Guapo tend to stretch things out, spreading their prog-frenzy across (in this case) a forty-three minute, five part epic composition, not unlike the five part, forty-six minute title suite of Five Suns... that's their specialty it seems. Crazed drumming and complex bass lines coexist with spaced-out keyboards (including '70s prog stalwart the Mellotron), making Black Oni a combination of energetic prog mayhem and droning electronic darkness. For fans of Yeti, Tarantula Hawk, Circle and even The Necks... and of course anyone already into Guapo will love this new one. Recommended!
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Ok, we're really rolling out the Roy Harper here at AQ, as promised last time 'round in our review of his Stormcock album (which got a *great* response, thanks everyone, we hope you liked it!). And if you did, as we not only hope but pretty much expect, then we've got another one for you: Flat Baroque And Berserk from 1970, the album that immediately preceeds Stormcock in Harper's discography. Compared to Stormcock, well, it's similar in feel, but there's more songs and they're shorter (though some venture into the seven and eight minute range) and thus more variety. The strings and orchestration of Stormcock don't make an appearance, this is a pure singer-songwriter setting, Roy Harper showing what he can do with just his acoustic guitar and his impassioned voice. Just try the intense, confrontational "I Hate The White Man" on for size. Or the opening salvo of "Don't You Grieve". The outpouring of emotion, the depth of feeling, his verge-of-insanity intelligence regarding themes both personal and societal... sheer brilliance in both his poetry and his playing. As a unique talent, Harper was surely a worthy contemporary to Bob Dylan and Donovan and Syd Barrett.
Adding to the intimacy of the album, some of the tracks are interspersed with Harper talking (and laughing) about his songs, interacting with what sounds like a small audience, or just hamming it up with the recording engineer. Fascinating and sometimes quite amusing. His hippie humor lightens up music that's often delicate yet dark. So again, we urge anyone who still doesn't know why Led Zeppelin wrote a song entitled "Hats Off To Roy Harper" to check out this, and his other albums as we get them in. And, again, if you're at all enthralled by today's lauded folk troubadours -- the likes of Devendra Banhart, Ben Chasny, and Iron & Wine -- you need to hear Roy Harper.
A new Heads record is definitely cause for celebration around these parts. This UK power trio fuses stoner rock, psych rock and krautrock into a drone-y spacey heavy whole that couldn't be more AQ perfect. Technically, however, this is not a -new- release, it's a vinyl reissue of the Heads' 33 cd, which was of course limited to 33 copies, and which means, unless you are in fact one of those 33 people, then this is essentially a new record as far as most of us are concerned. And it's not exactly a proper Heads record either, instead it's twenty tracks of unreleased songs, studio snippets, outtakes and experiments all seamlessly woven together into one entire record (think Faust's Tapes). Quite a bit more abstract than other Heads records, 33 is definitely on the jammy, rhythmic experimentation side of things, definitely falling way more on the krautrock side of the line than the psych rock. Which is indeed a good thing. This is a perfect slab of hypnotic, tripped out, droning, tribal psych rock, and fans of Circle, Salvatore, Faust, Can, Spacemen 3, and all that sort of stuff should not miss it. And as with most things like this, QUITE LIMITED!
On his third full length, the spotlight is fully on Maximillian Hecker's voice. It brings to mind a drowsy Joe Pernice or David Gates from Bread. Y'know, it's that sort of voice that just starts the hearts a-melting as soon as he opens his mouth. Hecker's backed by the full elegant pop assemblage of piano, strings... soooo lovely! Lady Sleep captures the deep ache of lovelorn yearning and loss. It's a box o' tissues listen. He'll probably also draw many comparisons to the grand swooping likes of Radiohead or Coldplay, and fans of those bands (particularly the latter) would do well to check Hecker out. The only song that steps outside of the hushed beauty comes late in Lady Sleep. "Yeah, Eventually She Goes" is the tenth of the album's eleven songs, and it jars with it's sudden barrage of guitars which push it into that tired ol' quiet/loud camp. Really, it's somewhat disappointing, coming across more as a Radiohead knock-off that this album could've done without. That said, setting that brief exception aside, we can say this album is absolutely haunting and heartbreaking.
Personally, this is our first concentrated encounter with this Italian guitarist and electronic experimentalist, though a friend of ours speaks highly of his prior output. And it's on the Hapna label, generally a pretty good bet for goodness (they last brought us discs by Sinistri, Pita, and Stephan Mathieu among others). Though, in some rare instances Hapna stuff goes too far into the skronking, scrabbling, indulgent improv thing for our tastes. However, Ielasi's Gesine turns out to indeed be quite excellent and enjoyable. It's abstract and seemingly improv-involved, yes, but tastefully, gorgeously so, all sounds well-placed and possessed of strange beauty. The twang of strings, amidst droney static, mellow and mesmeric. It's like Hans Reichel gone onkyo, or John Fahey-on-Mego, to make two weird and probably unhelpful comparisons. Definitely something for fans of David Grubbs, Taku Sugimoto, and Dean Roberts, we'd venture. In fact, it turns out we have heard Ielasi before, as he played prepared guitar on Roberts' wonderful Be Mine Tonight album released on Kranky a few years back.
Unlike some guitarists, Ielasi doesn't feel obligated to play his instrument very much -- some tracks are purely electronic ambience, no notes being played. He says a lot with a little, over these six tracks/31 minutes 13 seconds. I first listened to this on a rainy day and was absolutely entranced. So very good, we'll definitely have to start paying closer attention to this guy and his electro-acoustic artistry.
During recent months, the very first irr. app. (ext.) record had been popping up on eBay, going for incredibly high prices. It was assumed that this album was long out print given its original release back in 1997; those assumptions were quickly dispelled by simply getting in touch with the genius behind irr. app. (ext.) Matt Waldron, who replied, "Oh yes, I have a bunch of those! Do you think you can sell them?" There is certainly a charm to Mr. Waldron's mild-mannered self-deprication; OF COURSE we can sell these records. After all, Aquarius did host an exquisite show of Mr. Waldron's visual work, and we have sung the praises of his recent albums as well as his collaborations with Nurse With Wound. To top it all off, this is simply a fantastic album.
irr. app. (ext.) operates in a realm where many have attempted to venture but only a few have succeeded in grafting the ideals of psychic automatism, Surrealist metonymy, and Dadaist absurdity onto the context of the contemporary sound sculpture. Nurse With Wound has long been the pinnacle of such an arena; and irr. app. (ext.) has slowly built a catalogue of recordings that demonstrate his own expertise in such matters. For his debut solo recording (which we believe came after the irr. app. (ext.) / Stilluppsteypa collaboration), Waldron constructs oblique shifting sounds from the internal workings of small mechanical devices, metallic scraping, shortwave radio static, and other unknown droning sources. These slowly build as disquieting ambience that abruptly halt and detour with cacophonous crashes, wild tape machinations, and unintelligible snatches of conversation. It's a brilliant beginning to what has developed into an exceptional career.
You may not recognize the name J.C. Ledesma. But how about the name Jefre Cantu Ledesma? Ring any bells now? Okay, well how about the name the-guy-from-Tarentel? Okay, now we're getting somewhere. J.C. Ledesma is indeed on half of the core duo that drives ambient space rock experimentalists Tarentel, and on this, his first record under this name (not his first solo record however), as well as the first record on his very own label Root Strata, Ledesma takes the ambience of his main outfit and stretches it out even further, creating "Voice Sutra" a half hour long, slowly building drone piece constructed from vocals, shruti box, percussion and electronics. A dreamy and tranquil, but still think and fuzzy, slowly shifting soundscape that spends the first fifteen minutes writhing and squirming like a downed electrical wire, buzzing with electronic fuzz and spitting sonic sparks, emitting a thick wash of sonic skree not unlike Total, eventually calming down into a more tranquil ambience, shimmering and simmering and slowly fading to black. Quite nice. Droneheads obviously need this. Packaged in hand screened cardboard sleeves, and VERY LIMITED (we have the last 20 or so copies)!
Have those blisters on your eardrums finally healed from listening to The Locust's 2003 full length Plague Soundscapes? Good... 'cuz the boys have returned to do some more damage. Their Safety Second, Body Last EP threatens to tear right through your eardrums and get to gnawing on those cochleas. Mmmm. Each of the two tracks is remarkably lengthy (well, at least for this band whose songs usually clock in at under a minute long!). The first is just over six minutes long, while the second is just under four. Mind you, there are quiet moments in each track that sorta breaks things up into more familiar Locust-y shorter spurts. Plus to make things even more puzzling, printed on the back of the cd are not two but four (!) song titles complete with subtitles (happy to see that their song titles are still in top form, if a little uncharacteristically short-winded). Overall, this is a bit slower, more sludge-y and more grinding than usual, but it still offers up their trademark acid-spit screamo vocals, blurble-fart synths and rapidfire drumming. That said, this is by no means�simply a no-brain, messy pile of noise. No! In case, you're not familiar with�this band,�there's definitely a degree of precision and order to The Locust's music. There's rhythmic switch-ups and twisted synth melodies that�make their presence more than felt�throughout the ten minutes.
FYI: This time they come via Mike Patton's label Ipecac Recordings, home to many likeminded auditory system abusing artists.
2005 may turn out to be the year of Campbell Kneale. Earlier this year, the New Zealand drone engineer brought his Birchville Cat Motel to the Bay Area where he played about a gazillion shows of jawdropping, mindscraping minimalism; then he released the monstrous album of post-Earth / Sunn O))) heaviosity under the moniker, and you can't forget that he also released the album Chi Vampires which may be the best Birchville Cat Motel album to date. Now, there's one more album that bolsters our already high esteem of Mr. Kneale: the first proper CD from Lugosi. This dense psych-drone ensemble was fronted by Kneale and operated throughout the '90s in Wellington, New Zealand. Kneale flushed out the line-up of fellow New Zealand guitarists and multi-instrumentalists including Andrew Savage from Sunship, Leon Schutz, and Clayton Noone from CJA and Armpit. Lugosi conjured hypnotic, radioluminscent, billowing washes that reflect the damaged, rural psychedelic urges of early Flying Saucer Attack and the late-period, ecstatic minimalism of Spacemen 3. They actually recorded the bulk of their doped-up dream music in the Lower Hutt Baptist Church, furthering the transcendent metaphors their work already embraced. Drone on. Bliss out.
Holy crap. This album rules. Ragga, hip-hop, dancehall, infused trashy electro party pop jams! Quelle mix.
A few months ago, some folks came in the store while on holiday from Germany asking if we had anything like "M.I.A.? You know this? It is all over tha place in Germany." I had to say no, not in this neck of the folktastic dronedom of San Francisco. But now it is here, XL at last bringing us the domestic release of M.I.A.'s debut album, Arular, which follows up a mix-tape on which she collaborated with Diplo and raised a lot of eyebrows -- apparently German eyebrows in particular!
Seriously though, you know you want to party!! No says you? You're too bummed out on Karl Rove taking over the whole damn place to party? Well, her lyrics are very politically leaning so you don't have to feel all guilty about having a good time. We've been spinning this non-stop ourselves, and selling it non-stop too. Lives up to the hype.
Colin Potter and Darren Tate have been working together for well over a decade, as Tate and fellow minimalist Andrew Chalk (under the moniker Ora) began bringing field recordings, bells, gongs, and long stringed instruments down to Colin's IC Studios back in the mid '80s. Along with his uncannily sympathetic ear in engineering their ephemeral dronescapes, Potter also began to supply his own sodden ambient passages and obtuse sounds to Ora's sustained timbres. About six years ago, Chalk fully engulfed himself in the exceptional Mirror collaboration with Christoph Heemann; and Tate renamed his and Potter's collaboration Monos. Where Ora focused on the reconstitution of natural sounds, Monos hedges itself toward the electronic end of the dronology spectrum occasionally harboring a sci-fi paranoiac aesthetic (e.g. Nightfall Sunshine). Landscapes finds Tate and Potter working with Paul Bradley who has developed into an exceptional composer under Potter's tutelege, and it's easily the darkest, most all-consuming record that Monos has released to date. While the source material is thoroughly obscured through Potter's production work, it has a very similar feel to the continuous tidal currents of Troum's twin guitar hypnosis. The trio manifests a constant magnetic pulse from their devices (to be safe if they are not using guitars) whose billowing intensity fortunately does not completely cover all of the subtle, quite textures which exist just below the surface. Desolate, magnificent, and recommended.
Long-time followers of the Japanese naive-psych-pop duo known as Nagisa Ni Te may find the contents of this disc oh so slightly familiar, as these four (long) tracks are all re-recordings of Nagisa Ni Te classics taken from previous albums, redone for this collection: "True World", "Anxiety", "Me, On The Beach", and "True Sun". Dream Sounds is of course an apt title, as Nagisa Ni Te's music is certainly dreamlike. A perfect introduction if you haven't yet made their acquaintance (this is their sixth album, some of which have never been released over here, so it'll help catch you up), and a definite treat for fans as well. It's not just a "best of" (that would have to be waaay more than just four songs long!) and these tracks definitely differ from the originals, some of them extended quite a bit. Mellow psych-pop beauty, slow and languid, with delicate vocals and warmly fuzzed guitar solos, so good.
Holy crap! That's pretty much the first thing we thought when we saw this gorgeously designed box set. And it seems pretty appropriate considering 'holy crap' is what we inevitably think everytime we hear these guys play. For those of you who are new to Naked City, imagine five middle aged guys, short hair, some bald or balding, wearing dockers, and button down shirts, sitting in chairs, reading sheet music, and playing some of the most extreme, fucked up and chaotic genre splicing jazz / noise / twentieth century / metal / cabaret / whatever you've ever heard. Mix in the Zorn factor, band leader John Zorn, perpetually clad in some metal t-shirt and yellow and black camoflauge pants, and the Eye factor, occasional guest vocalist Yamatsuka Eye of the Boredoms, then also figure in a ridiculous obsession with metal, Japanese bondage, and crime scene photography and you've got Naked City. One of the only bands who can skip from country to grindcore to bebop to twentieth century classical to western swing and back and make it seem like they aren't even trying. And more importantly, make it sound like those disparate sounds belong together. Supposedly, Naked City played two weeks straight, every night, for two hours, and never played the same song twice. These guys are insane. So now we come to this here new box, which collects all of the Naked City records, remastered of course, as well as a new track recorded specifically for this box, a 'vocal' version of the Naked City classic "Grand Guignol" featuring Mike Patton. The box includes the all time classic self titled record, Absinthe, Radio, Heretic, and Grand Guignol as well as a massive book. The box and the book are gorgeously designed, like the Tzadik label aesthetic, only taken to the extreme. A thick white box, housing 5 digipaks and a hardcover book, very twenties looking, with flowing decorative script, all in metallic foil of course, the cds are redesigned in a way that incorporates the new look, but still includes ALL of the images and liner notes from the original releases, while the book is full color, black and white, some pages printed on gauzy vellum, all the album artwork, band photos, sketches, musical notation, drawings, testemonials, the whole thing so -designed- it's almost impossible to read sometimes (remember Raygun magazine?), but that sort of just fits with Naked City and their aesthetic obfuscation and confusional musical misdirection. What an amazing fucking band! And with all the records collected in one place, it's hard to imagine any other band collecting such a flawless and timeless body of work. And even though most Naked City fans already have all these records, Allan and Andee (massive fans) can tell you that you're probably gonna want this anyway! And if you've never heard Naked City, well, why not go all out and right that very tragic wrong. You won't be sorry!
The cold winter nights stuck above the Arctic Circle have become the perfect climate for extended bouts of intoxication for many a Scandinavian. As a result, the capacity for the Icelandic duo Stilluppsteypa to consume alcohol is the stuff of legend. Alcohol has soaked into every fiber of their being; but its manifestation in their music (and their personalities for that matter) is closer to the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde allegory, as a raging alcoholic squirms just beneath the surface of a stoic Scandinavian temperment. Of course, where these two personalities come into conflict is where the art of Stilluppsteypa is realized. A schizoid tension runs throughout Stilluppsteypa's impressive catalogue of terminal drones, sputtered rhythms, and atomic fractures; and often this tension is dished out with a smug dollop of black humour and Dadaist absurdity. So, it's hardly unusual to come across Stilluppsteypa celebrating Vikinga Brennivin, the stringent Icelandic alcohol that has undoubtably killed some of their collective brain cells. Yet it was the stoic BJ Nilsen -- the Swedish electron wrangler whose best known for his work as Hazard -- who invited Stilluppsteypa to collaborate on Vikinga Brennivin. Their resultant collaboration is an existentialist allegory in which the three drunkenly stumble out in a Scandinavian winter night and spiral toward the inevitable point in which they blackout. Lest this be construed as a derelict piece of method acting, the craft that Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa brought to Vikinga Brennivin is impeccable, as the extended dronescapes breath with the majesty of distant fog horns and sparkle with the delicate light of countless stars cast down from the black heavens onto the frozen tundra below. Frightening and barren, yet hauntingly compelling, Vikinga Brennivin is an isolationist masterpiece.
We've got a handful of the first edition of Vikinga Brennivin which come housed in a jewel case with beautiful aged-copper inserts (as in actual metal, not copper ink) with white silk-screened printing. There's only 300 of the first edition, and the label has sold out of it! We'll let you know when the second edition will be released sometime in April 2005.
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Handsomely packaged in a hand linocut printed jockstrap cover, OCS vs Caroliner is probably not what you would imagine. This isn't a remix collaboration between John Dwyer and Grux, but a fight (recorded surreptitiously by another Aquarius customer on their minidisc recorder) between the two battling over flyer space on the event board.
add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Glenn Donaldson (of Thuja, Blithe Sons, Skygreen Leopards, The Birdtree, The Ivytree, etc.) brings us yet another cd-r of his wondrous folk-improv-field-recording, this time, the instruments were dragged to Stonestown Galleria, where the band set up in the bar of popular Italian eatery. So along with gently plucked guitars, and plaintive warbling vocals, and simple childlike percussion, you can also hear the sounds of tinkling glasses, families dining, cell phones ringing and all sorts of other sonic urban detritus. The highlight is probably the 30 minute final track "All You Can Eat Breadsticks", a slowly shifting soundscape of mastication, clinking silverware and piping hot loaves!
Whoo-hoo! Hypnotic as ever, here's the third studio album (and fourth disc overall counting the live Battle Of The Axehammer) from Circle's so-called (by us) "stoner rock" side-project. Well now we'd have to say that stoner rock tag is a bit inaccurate, an oversimplication. I mean, we were kinda hoping they'd always stay "heavy" but I think that they're not so much "the stoner rock version of Circle" now, than they are simply a stripped down, instrumental Circle with more psych guitar action. Very very krauty. This actually actually sounds a lot like Salvatore, as much as Circle, for that matter. Which is most definitely a good thing!
Stacked up alongside the rest of Pharaoh Overlord's albums, it's not so dark as II, not so fried and blown-out as Battle, and probably comes closest to #1. And it's definitely something stoners are still gonna dig, but while they do heavy it up riff-wise sometimes, the psych aspect is laid-back and mellow just as much. Can you imagine the vibe of that last Dead Meadow mixed with a Circle style rhythmic pulse? This is all about tracks like opener "Test Flight", a druggy ten minute psych-jam, or track three, an epic, but almost funkily tight number called "Laivius 17", that builds up over 13 minutes and 13 seconds, getting more and more psych-guitar-skronked until it snaps -- into track four, "Autobahn", nothing but a droning, distorted guitar-burn solo. It's ten minutes but I wouldn't mind it for a whole album! That then swivels into the tick-tock, low-key groove of "Octagon". Very Can, that one. And on it goes... If only Pharaoh Overlord/Circle could come up with a way to make their cds automatically repeat when they reach the end, that would utterly satisfy the Circle aesthetic. Of course, you, the listener, will probably want to hit play again, but that's assuming you're not too zoned out to move your arm.
