It's been a very, very long time that Philip Sanderson has released anything new. Up until Seal Pool Sounds, the last recordings for Sanderson date back to 1982! During the late '70s and early '80s, Sanderson had been very active in the Britian's DIY cassette culture, producing music as the Storm Bugs (with Steven Ball) and as Susan Thomas & Clare Vesay (whose fictional femininity caused a minor bout of controversy between Sanderson and Cherry Red records). He also collaborated frequently with David Jackman who at that time had yet to form his seminal drone-scrape project Organum. Many of these recordings emerged on Sanderson's own Snatch Tapes; and some of those original cassettes have slowly been reissued in recent years. In the mid-'80s, Sanderson made a stylistic jump to film and installation, offering an explanation as to his whereabouts during all those years.
Within the murk, hiss, and Frankensteinian electric constructions of his early work on Snatch, there was a peculiar and perverse sense of humor in Sanderson's work. On Seal Pool Sounds, he allows the playful aspects of that sense of humor to occasionally emerge with these much cleaner squiggles, jolts, and drones of electronic sounds. Alternately, a plaintive melancholia hangs upon other abstracted tones and broken rhythms, ending up sounding like more primitive constructions from Mika Vainio's solo work, those Microstoria albums, and even Manhatten Research era Raymond Scott.
Here's a slightly daunting but very worthwhile 2-disc set of pure wonderment featuring the singer-songwriting work of California native Judee Sill. These tracks spoon-out heaping vocal harmonies within crystalline piano-driven singer-songwriter folk ballads a la a fiery Carole King or Joan Baez. Her cult following is deserved, this is really nice stuff!
Disc one features eleven tracks, the first eight from her previously unreleased third album superbly remastered from the original tapes by the ubiquitous Jim O'Rourke and the last three being studio demos. Disc two features nine lost tracks (more demos) and a brief excerpt from a 1973 live performance. A healthy 72-page (!) booklet renders for us Judee's life -- growing up damaged in a destructive family environment and getting into drug-taking and song-writing, an incessant ingestion of classical music, folk ballads, gospel music, Christian mysticism and thee general 60's zeitgeist.
As a self-taught musician, Judee produced some powerfully earnest and haunting songs during the short span of her creative life. Her songs lived within the realm of classical clarity with a folk/gospel heart and a spiritual, personal penetration that could be hard to beat by other singer-songwriters of her time.
Though I could say this would certainly be great for fans of everyone from Joanna Newsom to Tori Amos to Carole King to Karen Carpenter and the like, it may appeal to anyone for a plethora of reasons!
Fuzz guitars, sitar-psych, blues licks, flamenco influences, anarchic comedy, melancholic pop brilliance: that's Smash! Nope, not something new at all, this is actually a 2001 release reissuing music much older than that. Y'know, not only do we try to review as many crucial new releases and newly reissued things as we can (which isn't nearly as many as there are, unfortunately!), there's also all kinds of not so new, but new to us (and quite possibly new to you, too) stuff that we come across and really really dig and want to let y'all know about too.
This would be one of those things, just discovered by Allan last year. Now we have finally got enough of 'em to write up on our list. Smash were a psychedelic rock band from Spain that flourished from 1969 to about 1972 or so, and this double cd compiles their complete recorded output as far as we can tell -- all their singles, both their albums Glorieta De Los Lotos and Esta Vez Venimos A Golpear (aka We Come To Smash This Time), and their half of a split LP. 32 tracks on two cds! And it's all pretty great. Since it's everything they ever did, the music here explores wide territory...from the blues to rustic folk to raga rock to psych pop to hard rock heaviness. Variously, Smash would seem to have been Spain's answer to the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Led Zeppelin, all. We're also reminded a bit of Os Mutantes at times. And we can make a couple of more modern comparisons: the slow n' sad beauty of Smash's "I Left You" totally could be a song off that Elope album we loved from last year, and their dark, drifting "Look At The Rainbow (Flying In The Sky)" is a dead ringer for something by Japanese psych shamans Ghost! They do it all, and really really well. Just imagine that Musica Dispersa reissue we recommended recently, if they also cranked things up occassionally to rock n' roll ya on a Mississippi mountain side... The last time a double cd of vintage psych stuff impressed us this much would have been when that amazing Public Nuisance collection came out.
On his new Smog album (yep, he's shed the parentheses for the time being), Bill Callahan has opted to situate the somber instruments (primarily his own guitar, piano by Joanna Newsom and understated drums from Dirty Three's Jim White) and Connie Lovatt's backing vocals in a very distant backseat and his vocals right up front and center. No complaints here though 'cuz his pipes are in fine form, conveying a similar deep velvety heft and thoughtful phrasing to those of Giant Sand's Howe Gelb or Son Volt's Jay Farrar. Actually A River Ain't Too Much To Love fits quite well right in the enigmatic Americana alcove between those two artists. Callahan continues to pen his intimate songs with bare bones economy (but no longer 'lo-fi', this was beautifully recorded at Willie Nelson's studio in Texas), and a few of those included here are some of his most captivating. Look no further than the fourth song "Rock Bottom Riser". We've had something of a love/hate relationship with the mournful music of Smog, there's been some unbelievably powerful albums (the unfortunately titled Dongs Of Sevotion and Red Apple Falls) and some frustrating disappointments (Rain On Lens), but this album and the previous one (Supper) have kept us securely in the loveseat.
Timed almost perfectly with the release of the third Thrones cd Day Late, Dollar Short (one of our Records of the Week last week, for those with short memories), we also just got a few copies of Thrones' 1996 debut disc Alraune back in stock. Sheer luck, 'cause it's out of print -- but one of our distributors managed to find a box of 'em lurking in the depths of their warehouse, so we grabbed 'em all while the grabbing was good. As you too should do, if you don't have this already and are a fan of all that is heavy! A quick background briefing: Thrones is Joe Preston, who has done time in both seminal dirge-masters Earth and the Melvins (he's also played in The Whip and SUNNO))) and is current the bassist for High On Fire). You probably know all that already, and this too: back when Joe was in the Melvins, each member put out a solo album (inspired by the same stunt KISS pulled way back when). Joe's was perhaps the best. Carrying on from that, he "formed" Thrones and set out to prove to the world that a one-man-band could be as heavy as any "normal" band (not that the Melvins are all that normal, ahem). Not only did he offer that proof with this Thrones debut, but also took it to the stage. A drum machine, double necked guitar bass, vocal effects and samples were (and still are) put to shudderingly heavy use by Joe in kicking out his weirdly prog and sometimes oddly pop Thrones drone anthems. The tracks on Alarune range from aggro Melvinsy metal to underwater drone to drifting New Age synth melody...a sinister combustion of sound that bridges Earth with Goblin! So, we're happy to have these again (for however long they last), allowing us to review it for the very first time (back in '96 we just weren't as on the ball as we are now I guess)! So, if you've still got an empty space on your cd shelf next to Sperm Whale and Day Late, Dollar Short now's the time to fill it.
The Western obsession with India's prolific film industry, and even more so the musical numbers that drive the narratives forward, has nearly reached its saturation point. The amount of "best of Bollywood" anthologies released to date seems to almost equal India's annual theatrical output. Which all just makes it that much harder for us when we want to tell you that Indiavision is quite assuredly the best collection of Bollywood music we've come accross. See, so much has come before that such a claim will be immediately written off as so much of the usual record reviewer hyperbole. So just hear us out. First of all, what is it that makes Indian film music so great? Well, one of the things most often cited by fans is the over-the-top arrangements on some of the better numbers. The really great film music composers like Kalyanji & Anandji and Laxmikant & Pyarelal are some of the most worldly specialists in all genres of music, integrating the talents of Ennio Morricone's Western period, entire western orchestras, regional Indian classical music, the newest in electronic developments and whatever fad happened to be big in the year which they were composing (Hawaiian slide guitar, psychedelic music, soul, funk, you name it). The greatest film scores manage to somehow meld all that together in a way that just begs for some kind of clever culinary analogy (which we will spare you from in this review).
What else makes a great Bollywood song? The vocalist(s). A good song can survive without a male vocalist; they're only needed in duets with the female lead. The female vocalists in Indian film music are the equivalent of lead guitarists in the golden age of American rock and roll, and their vocal chords have the same dynamics, presence and range as most amplified guitars. Singers like Asha Bhosle (India's shining star of singers), featured heavily on this collection (and all collections) have a way of disembodying their voices from their bodies. When Bhosle sings her voice cuts through the speakers like a scalpel. Half of this phenomenon is due to her amazing lungs, the other to the insane engineering skills of the producers who record these scores who choose to overload the microphone preamps and super-saturate the magnetic tape during the loudest passages resulting in an unholy natural compression of the signal. Second only to the likes of Lee Perry in his Black Ark period of the early seventies or dub master King Tubby, the production values of Indian film music is singularly twisted in their techniques. Like the aforementioned Jamaican demigods of the multi-track, the recordists here have an arsenal of reverb, echo and compression tools that -- while not as new as the gear used in Hollywood's recording studios -- are used to their absolute functional limit. All of those essential elements of Indian film music are represented on each and every song here. But unlike many earlier collections, which focus their range on a particular era, composer, or vocalist, Indiavision draws from a wide range of sources. The tracks included here date from as far back as 1966 on up to 1984, it includes such film score heavyweights as father S.D. and son R.D. Burman, Laxmikant & Pyarelal, Kalyanji & Anandji and Bappi Lahiri. The broad time spanned by the tracks makes this collection as a whole more varied and easy on the ears. There's also quite a good variety of both slow, sultry numbers and completely batty comical ones. Some, like the title music for "The Burning Train" (listed as an instrumental), which features gruff female vocals like those of Yma Sumac, or the "Cabaret Dance Music" from the film "Dharmatma" with its maniacal laughter are completely off the wall. Others, like "Yashomati Maiya Se Bole Nandala" -- a deadly serious romantic number with crooned vocals by Lata Mangeshkar -- and "Come Closer" -- a mellow and sincere funk/soul song sung by Salma Agha -- are beautiful respites from the cornball antics which are more often the songs of choice for Bollywood anthologies. Comes with a 30 page, full color booklet with plentiful liner notes in both French and English. Highly recommended!
Veteran SF DJ Tom Thump is one tireless on-the-go fellow, and here are the fruits of his latest club culture endeavours. A deeply groovy, sexy soul and house music compilation for latenight livin'. He's selected twenty two tracks for this double disc set -- a perfect evening's soundtrack for either stayin' out or stayin' in. He kicks things off with the well-known artist Roy Ayers, then moves into more unfamiliar territory (at least for us!), introducing us to the likes of Unforscene, Faze Action, Yam Who?, Kaskade, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Mark Rae, Platinum Pied Pipers, Lizz Fields, Boca 45, Only Child, Peter Malick, Roy Davis Jr, Alison Crockett, Fat Freddy's Drop, Renaissance, JT Donaldson, Alice Russell, Fertile Ground, Linn and Crazy Penis! Released on the appropriately named label Kinkysweet Recordings.
FINALLY!!! Hard to believe this thing is actually done considering how long and how seemingly cursed this project has been. Started almost 5 years ago to be released on AQ staffer Jim's now defunct Petrol label, then bequeathed 3 years ago to AQ staffer Andee to release on his tUMULt label where the lineup and concept went through many changes (possibly because what was begun as an homage to a song Jim really liked, had become a deconstruction of a song Andee really hates) and then an endless procession of waits, mastering, pressing, re-recording, battles with other labels over 'rights', as well as 4 different cover concepts that all had to be scrapped because they were seemingly too difficult for any printers to confidently take on. -sigh-
So here we are. Was it worth the wait? Obviously we think so. Look at the lineup, a veritable who's who of AQ favorites: Acid Mothers Temple, Circle, Hrvatski, James Plotkin, Kit Clayton, Loren Chasse, Troum, the Tape-beatles, Mieskuoro Huutajaat, Fennesz, and Stilluppsteypa. And that's just the cream. Lots of tracks were left off, according to Andee in order to avoid the spotty/uneven flow of most compilation/tribute/cover records. He even opted to leave off the Melt Banana track, which was a tough, but important choice, since the spazzy grind of their track disrupted the droning meditative, hypnotic flow of what is now less just a compilation of random tracks, more an epic and gorgeous hour of dreamy droney creepy blackness.
So what does it sound like? Well, while it does flow, and could perhaps pass itself off as a record by a single (quite eclectic) group, each track offers something unique, while still culling the sinister spirit and nihilistic 'rock' from the original (the inspiration for this comp). Finnish shouting choir Mieskuoro Huutajaat start things off with a brief, and shouted, acapaella version, in Finnish, and delivered with gusto! James Plotkin's Joy Of Disease turns it into a burbling, stuttering, electronic soundscape with hiccupping beats and backwards vocals. Somewhere between Boards Of Canada and Coil. Stilluppsteyppa took back their original track, a wash of glitchy yet melodic, musique concrete, and re-recorded/re-mixed it, removing most of the melody and adding even more space, resulting in a dark abyss of gorgeously perplexing minimalism. The Kit Clayton track is an ultra catchy, beat heavy SF glitch core workout, that obliterates the original melody but manages to keep the minor key tension and dark ambience. Ultra prolific Japanese space rockers Acid Mothers Temple turn the original into a wild pagan ritual, starting out with several minutes of Tsuyama's throaty chants, skipping nervously around that oh-so-familiar melody before the band stumbles in to join him for the remaining 10 minutes, with splattery percussion, freaked out reverb/retard guitar and squealing feedback. Hrvatski (aka Keith Whitman) claims that this Painted Black contribution is his favorite track that he's ever recorded and it's easy to see why: he actually sings, plays guitar, and weaves a thick wash of warm, langorous tones before it all crumbles beneath a speaker shredding cascade of sputtering drill and bass. Iowa's masters of plunderphonia, the Tape-Beatles use found sounds and actual lawsuit-baiting chunks of the original to create a tense and unnerving, noirish dreamscape, with disebodied screams, curious snippets of overheard conversations, and the sliced and diced original which all end up adding to the creepy vibe. German drone-sters Troum incorporate 'that' melody into a totally overpowering and molasses-thick drone, assembled from multiple tracks of guitar and accordion. The Fennesz track was previously released on an ep via Jim O'Rourke's Moikai label, and to us seems like Fennesz at his very best. Melodies and textures are spit out, stuttering and hiccupping from the cold, digital craw of the laptop, but somehow come out all warm and thick and coil around you like stuffed snakes and deliciously fragrant pipesmoke. Amazing. AQ faves Circle, do what they do best, taking the skeletal remains of the original, holding on to the barebones melody, and constructing a motorik, unwavering rhythm, that sounds like Tony Conrad and Faust's Outside The Dream Syndicate with just a little more melody and umph. And the record is finished off perfectly, spiralling slowly into 'black'ness, by AQ pal Loren Chasse (who as you probably already know is a pillar of the Jewelled Antler Collective, as well as a member of Thuja, the Blithe Suns, etc). He uses snippets of the original, slowed down hundreds of times until it is a lugubrious almost-melody, and contact mic-ed strobe lights to create a static-y, humming, nighttime dronescape, like a otherworldy forest, complete with clattery insect buzz and moaning winds in the ancient trees. An almost perfect compilation and an amazing gathering of some of our favorite artists doing some of their best work. Essential.
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Since 1991 In The Red Records has taken it upon themselves to kindly provide the world with the best "low-brow rock'n'roll" (their words) in all their sweaty, dirty, malodorous raunch-glory (our words), and we love 'em for it! This is a perfect trash rock compilation for those who aren't afraid to mess their 'do, break a fingernail, raise a stink or spill a drink... er, as long as it's someone else's! Check out their roster of rad rabblerousers: Andre Williams, Reigning Sound, Lost Sounds, Clone Defects, Dolt, Cheater Slicks, Blacktop, Speedball Baby, Country Teasers, Dan Melchior's Broke Revue, Knoxville Girls, The Dirtbombs, The Ponys, The Deadly Snakes, The Piranhas, The Horrors, The Intelligence, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Screws, The Lamps, The Hospitals, The Mystery Girls, The Hunches, The Necessary Evils, The Bassholes, The FUSE! and Japan's King Brothers (who rule!). If you find yourself shoutin' "Fuck yeah!!!", well then, what the hell are you waitin' for?!
This is the second Brazilian post-punk compilation we've gotten in the last couple of weeks. The first one that arrived was the electrifying Nao Wave - 1982-1988 released by Man Recordings. This one's from those fine folks at Soul Jazz who've built a solid reputation for releasing music of many sorts (reggae, funk, soul, and post-punk) from many distant locales -- all with one particular thing in common, an addictive, propulsive groove. They've certainly tapped into a wild geyser with this release, although it's not quite as out-there and off-the-hook as the tough-act-to-follow Nao Wave. Most of the eighteen songs are much more typical of the angular sounds you'd imagine when you think of British post-punk (Wire, Gang Of Four, etc). Some artists from Nao Wave reappear here, they are Akira S Et As Garotas Que Erraram, Chance, As Mercenarios, and Fellini, but fortunately only two song are redundant ("Sobre As Pernas" and "Samba De Morro" by the first two artists respectively).
This is the second Brazilian post-punk compilation we've gotten in the last couple of weeks. The first one that arrived was the electrifying Nao Wave - 1982-1988 released by Man Recordings. This one's from those fine folks at Soul Jazz who've built a solid reputation for releasing music of many sorts (reggae, funk, soul, and post-punk) from many distant locales -- all with one particular thing in common, an addictive, propulsive groove. They've certainly tapped into a wild geyser with this release, although it's not quite as out-there and off-the-hook as the tough-act-to-follow Nao Wave. Most of the eighteen songs are much more typical of the angular sounds you'd imagine when you think of British post-punk (Wire, Gang Of Four, etc). Some artists from Nao Wave reappear here, they are Akira S Et As Garotas Que Erraram, Chance, As Mercenarios, and Fellini, but fortunately only two song are redundant ("Sobre As Pernas" and "Samba De Morro" by the first two artists respectively).
Some reissues of long-lost gems arrive here with little fanfare and turn out to be great nonetheless. This one though, came our way emblazed with blurbs proclaiming its immense awesomeness quoting the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Tim Gane, Jarvis Cocker and David Holmes. And guess what? Those guys do indeed know what they're talking about! This IS pretty fantastic. Here we have an action-packed instrumental concept album whose title translates into English as The Child Killer Of The Flies, which musically narrates a simple but creepy story by Serge Gainsbourg (written *after* he heard the album, not before, and included the liner notes, explaining each track title) about the horrific revenge of flies on a child who had tortured them. This musical story-telling is by way of schizoid arrangements of tracks that range in sound from groovy pop to jazz to avant-garde tape music to fuzz guitar rock! Sounds good, eh? Good n' weird for sure.
L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches is a "Fellini-esque psychedelic symphony" originally released (but poorly distributed and relegated to general obscurity) in 1972, credited to a unknown group called Isolitudes. The man behind Insolitudes, though, was one Jean-Claude Vannier, a musician and producer from the happening '60s French pop ("Ye Ye music") scene who had scored film soundtracks and collaborated with Serge Gainsbourg, most famously providing the arrangements for Gainsbourg's highly-rated L'Histoire De Melody Nelson album (the reissue of which we wish we had in stock also, but haven't been able to get a hold of lately). This record is thereby cited as the follow-up to that one-of-a-kind conceptual classic. Itself it's pretty much one-of-a-kind too. Funky and groovy, as well as deliriously, disorientingly hallucinogenic, this will hit you with lush string arrangements one moment, sound effects of sheer terror the next... it's psych, it's prog, it's funk, it's musique concrete. There's even a chorus of car horns put to good use here! It's the freakiest 'sploitation soundtrack that never was. This reissue includes two bonus tracks from a rare 7" single entitled Point D'Interrogation, and also boasts extensive and informative (and quite laudatory) liner notes by DJ Andy Votel. Very recommended!
Yay! The new album from Meg and Jack. Well of course this bad boy's gonna sell gadzillions of copies without any help from us, so this review is more of a cursory first impression kinda thing, more of a formality than anything else. But in case you care, the consensus here is that this is indeed pretty dang great! Get Behind Me Satan sure enough sounds like the White Stripes we all know and love. Not sure if it beats out their last one Elephant in any way, but it doesn't disappoint either. Andee thinks that it sounds like the 'Stripes are really channelling Led Zep 3 here... it's kinda acousticky, and Jack's doin' some Robert Plant for sure. Standout tracks (at first listen or three) include "Take Take Take" (which we all keep singing) and riffy opener/single "Blue Orchid".
A few years back, Keith Fullerton Whitman wowed the students of the Harvard University Studio for Electro-Acoustic Composition with a few workshops that demonstrated his wizardry with the Max/MSP computing language. In exchange, he got access to the University's collection of antique synthesizers including the Buchla Music Box and Serge Modular Prototype with their massive banks of patch bays, knobs, and toggle switches. The images of these devices which grace the album artwork in taxonomic presentation immediate provide a cold, tonal air of paranoiac, bunker aesthetic that out of the early history of institutionally funded electronic music (i.e. Xenakis, Ussachevsky, Eliane Radigue, Arne Nordheim, etc.). Multiples far exceeds whatever expectations one might have when gazing upon the covers, as Whitman once again argues his case as one of the most gifted electronic musicians of the contemporary era. Each of the tracks honestly profess their source material as 'stereo music for acoustic, electric, and electronic instruments' including those aforementioned electronic devices from Harvard as well far more commonplace instruments such as a hi-hat cymbal, a drum kit, and acoustic and electric guitars. The album opens with glacial timbres that emerge from that hi-hat which Whitman transforms into a Mirror-like dronescape of murk, fog, and mystery. Next, the Serge Modular Synth buzzes with complex saw-blade waveforms of agitated electricity, phase pattern sweepings, and post-Dockstader pointilist spectroscopy. Harkening back to his early work with tape delay and guitar repetition, Whitman's work with a Yamaha Disklavier Prototype is sublime in its hypnotic prowess echoed with a lingering sense of melancholia. Whitman then shifts to a wonderful recreation of the vintage organ 'n' drum sound from Swedish icons Hansson and Karlsson, with baroque shifts in melody upon a simple drum propulsion. Altogether, Multiples showcases the many personalities of Mr. Whitman for a marvellous album!
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Though a formally composed soundtrack to suit each step of its filmic events, Filmworks XV is fluid, engaging and emotionally moving. Zorn plays a moody and meandering electric Wurlitzer organ with master percussionist Cyro Baptista and bassist and oud player Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz. The result is a soundtrack that absolutely holds its own as an incredible composition.
Its framework is built upon melodic improvisation that is activated by a momentous balance of space and rhythm. Traces of folk music (from Hasidic to Yiddish) combined with the soul-jazz sound of the Wurlizter create an appropriately emotional mood for Protocols of Zion, a documentary about the rise of anti-Semitism following 9/11 by director Marc Levin. Truly amazing and moving. Each listen is more rewarding than the previous. Excellent!
