Wow! A new Aavikko full length! This just might be the year of the Aavikko. When we first slapped this aluminum disc on our system we must admit we were a little taken aback: Hi-Fi Aavikko? Could it be? For so long these Casio-crazy Finns have championed the most primitive of production aesthetics with a sound only once removed from a ring tone. But here they were in crystal clarity and using the entire spectrum of the audible sound range. Did they get a sponsorship with some big keyboard company? Sources close to Aavikko are keeping tight-lipped about the group's new cache of keyboard equipment. Okay, let's put this in perspective before we go any further: a "hi-fi" Aavikko is still "lo-fi" by most standards, so don't expect any enormous shifts in the Aavikko sound. Bigger than their production changes is perhaps their new-found love of exotica and classic space-age bachelor pad music as a launching pad for their new compositions. Andee pointed out that a lot of the tunes on Back From The Futur sound like a lo-fi Tipsy. Their retro-futurist vision also smacks mightily of Kraftwerk (vocoder makes its way into a couple songs as well), Gershon Kingsley with bubbling and arpeggiating synth lines, catchy melodies and upbeat tempos, and maybe even the soundtracks for Roger Corman sci-fi flicks. We love it!
At last, an Afrirampo release that's not so hard to obtain, as the duo makes their domestic US debut on John Zorn's Tzadik label. John Zorn being the guy that first clued a lot of us in to the Boredoms, coincidentally enough. Well, whether deliberately or not, it would seem that the two girls from Osaka, Japan known as Afrirampo are channelling the chaos and confusion of early early Boredoms (who also hail from Osaka). If you miss the noisiness of the Boredoms circa Soul Discharge, you might have a nice flashback from this. There's lots of screaming and singing (the wild, wide variety of their vocals is one of Afrirampo's trademarks, along with the arty costumes that feature in their live presentations) and distorted guitar and crazed percussion and boundless energy here. Lots and lots of all that. It's all very dramatic and weird and doubtless annoying to some in the same way the Boredoms once were (some of US here at AQ actually can't stand to hear this when it's being played in the store). The very first track will let you know if you're up to their test or not: almost 12 minutes that range from raging Bore-punk to vocal baby babble to mean metal guitar riffage. If you dig that, the rest of the record will be right up your alley. And anyone who is already a fan won't be disappointed with this Tzadik disc either.
Tyhjyys (whatever that means?) is this Finnish black metal band's third album. Getting no argument from Ajattara's fans at AQ, they haven't strayed from their successful formula of dark, midtempo, heaviness -- adorned with eerie keys and underpined by pounding drums. And they still 'sing' in Finnish. Although a crushing proposition overall, some melody emerges amid the guitar riffs and vocal rasps. It's bouncy death march music for industrial goblins.
This record is so great! We've been listening to this almost as much as the recent Devils' Rejects soundtrack. Which is sort of funny when you know the whole story. But more on that later in the review. This is a greatest hits of sorts from a mysterious honky tonk bluegrass band from the seventies called Banjo And Sullivan. Mysterious mostly because of their tragic story. According to the liner notes, Adam Banjo and Roy Sullivan were last seen at a dingy hotel called the Kahiki Palms, a brief stop over on their 1978 tour. The scene of a grisly murder, both Banjo and Sullivan's spouses and their roadie Jimmy Cracker were found brutally murdered there. Banjo And Sullivan were never heard from again and were assumed killed. The record itself however should not necessarily be sullied by those tragic events, as the music in this collection is totally fun and funny and kick ass. The lyrics are goofy for sure ("Dick Soup" is the honky tonk equivelent of a 'sausage party' apparently) but the music is so killer. Totally rambunctious, wild and wooly bluegrass, banjos and honky tonk piano, crazy lap steel, and there are hooks all over the place. This is like the perfect blend of classic old time bluegrass and more modern Bloodshoot stuff like The Old 97's -- tracks like "I'm At Home Getting Hammered, While She's Out Getting Nailed", "I'm Trying To Quit, But I Just Quit Trying", "Lord, Don't Let Me Die In A Cheap Motel" and even a killer cover of "Freebird".
The funny part is -- this band actually never even existed! Banjo And Sullivan, as well as their wives Wendy and Gloria and their roadie Jimmy are all characters in the recent Rob Zombie movie The Devil's Rejects! And all of them meet a seriously gruesome end. But how fucking cool is that? What ridiculous attention to detail! There's not even any Banjo And Sullivan music in the movie, but still, they went to all the trouble to record a record, a great record! And then they released it through normal channels. In fact there's no mention anywhere on the package of the movie or Rob Zombie or anything. The only hint is in the liner notes, where it explains that they were the victims of a murderous gang called The Devil's Rejects! So by itself, this is a pretty cool, fun bluegrass record, but having seen the movie and knowing that this is just more elaborate back story for the film, makes this pretty darn amazing!
If you go to the Devil's Rejects website you can link to the Banjo And Sullivan website, check out the tour dates for that final tour in 1978, see photos and even see an old TV commercial for the record!!
When it rains it definitely pours -- as long as we're talking about this new breed of metallic post rock we've been digging. We think to ourselves, "Man, we can't get enough of this stuff" (um, because we always refer to ourselves as 'man', when we're thinking) and then whaddaya know? A new ep from the mighty Baroness, whose first ep we raved about not too long ago (what is it with this band and eps?) describing it as Electric Wizard meets the Fucking Champs metal stoner sludge crush. Which is still pretty accurate, but now that we've gotten more familiar with this post rock / sludge metal stuff, I think maybe we'd describe it more as Isis / Pelican majestic sludge metal meets Rodan / June Of 44 style moody post rock. However Baroness lean way toward the metal side of things. Plus, their songs are really weird, strange meters, complex arrangements, lots of slippery guitar harmonies, weird psychedelic wah guitar, spacey electronic burbling, some stretched out slow motion sludge, some intricate riffing and some of the most insane drumming we've ever heard. Not sure if we could handle another ep from these guys (okay, we probably could) but this will tide us over until the FULL LENGTH we're all dying for! C'mon guys!
And like their debut ep, this boasts some killer cover art, kinda like Pushead doing '60s Fillmore poster art.
It's a mystery how we managed to miss the previous recordings from the British ultra-minimalist Keith Berry, because if there's any justice in the world, he should be mentioned alongside such blue-chip drone artists as William Basinski, Thomas Koner, Bernhard Gunter, and Akira Rabelais. Yeah, his work is that good! He's got the sublimely romantic melodicism of Basinski, the glacial pacing of Koner, the hushed restraint of Gunter, and, um well, he's got a copy of Rabelais' legendary Argeiphontes Lyre software in his repertoire. But Berry is no mere aggregate of previously mined aesthetics, there's plenty to his work that speaks of his own beliefs and agendas which all draw heavily from Zen philosophies. While Berry's previous work The Golden Boat (Trente Oiseaux, 2003) and The Ear That Was Sold To The Fish (Crouton, 2005) were both exceptional releases (with the Crouton album easily being the best smelling record of 2005!), each of Berry's albums makes small adjustments that add up to an improvement and refinement of his sound; thus A Strange Feather stands out a remarkable achievement. Like all of the previously cited composers, Berry's fundamental structure is the drone supreme into which he bends field recordings, subtle instrumental arrangements, and small tactile events. Like falling snow, his dreamy work drifts with a poetic chill and tranquil hypnosis through which peripheral elements tease the listener with subtle details. It's so damn beautiful; and oh yes, the double cd version is very limited to 100 copies of which we only have a handful!
If your favorite band is SF popsters Beulah and you're still nursing your heartbreak as a result of their breakup, here's a posthumous audio and video treat to brighten your day. This dvd features a documentary of the band on the road back in 2003 touring the U.S. and Canada in support of their final album Yoko, as well as a heap of bonus material (live footage of the band performing seventeen complete songs, deleted scenes, etc). One thing that this dvd reminded us about is that they (well, particularly lead singer Miles Kurosky) sure do swear a fuck of a fucking lot. You might wanna keep it away from the eyes and ears of grannies and children.
This is nice. For all you Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore fans (or at least 19 of you, as that's how many of these we were able to get), we've got a deluxe vinyl pressing, the first time ever on LP for this, the debut album from the AQ fave German instrumental dirge-jazz group. The import price is helped out by the fact that this comes in a black box with "BOHREN" stamped in silver on the lid, and within the box you not only will find two slabs of vinyl weighted down with their magnificent music, but also tucked in with those there's sundry printed ephemera of apparent Bohren-related interest (b&w art and text, mainly in German). The Gore Motel album was first released on cd back in 1994. When we discovered Borhen a few years after that and got their discs for the store, we wrote the following about this album: "...dark, stark, slow-moving, and lovely. For those who crave comparisons, this is like a super-dirgey version of Scenic. Music for a dark-night campfire out on the plains of Mordor. Slow and beautiful, relying heavily on the ultra-heavy subsonics of the bass and the eerie wavering tones of the organ...Very atmospheric and evocative, indeed chilling."
Of course, this is a very limited, numbered pressing (300 copies!) and, to repeat, we only received a handful. First come, first served on this one.
Boris fans are definitely obsessive, most wanting to collect anything and everything the band puts out, whether it's the same record with different artwork, or a limited single, or the same record with 9 minutes of extra music or a different record with the same cover or whatever. The band don't really help matters much, wholeheartedly playing into this, releasing records in ridiculously limited versions and multiple versions, with different artwork or bonus tracks or both. But this new record Mabuta No Ura has definitely pushed all this multiple version collecting about as far as it can go. More on that at the end of the review -- and we definitely suggest you read that stuff before you buy! But hey, let's talk about the record. A soundtrack to a film entitled Mabuta No Ura, this is Boris at their most abstract, maybe even at their least heavy, but Boris has yet to disappoint, and they don't here. Although depending on your personal favorite style of Boris, whether it be the slow sludgy dirges, the minimal drones or the all out super distorted RAWK, you might have to readjust your thinking to get into Mabuta No Ura. There's only one actually 'heavy track', and some of you may already have it, or at least a version of it, as the track in question, "A Bao A Qu" was released as a super limited picture disc 7" not too long ago. "A Bao A Qu" finds Boris churning through a sludgy slab of crushing psych rock, the way only they seem to do it. The rest of Mabuta No Ura finds the band exploring much more contemplative moods, constructing simple, dreamy passages of finger picked guitar, and warm swells of moody ambience. Sometimes sounding a bit like Low, sometimes a little like Slint, the theme here overall does seem to be a brooding slow building post rock. There are variations of course, Eastern sounding melodies, hazy chanted vocals, shimmering washes of cymbal sizzle, tribal rhythms, hand claps, plaintive vocalising, stretches of Sunroof!-like free-noise ambience, blown out krautrock rhythms, but it all sort of hovers around that post rock sound we love so much, dark and moody and smoldering, occasionally bursting with dynamics, but more often than not chugging along all melancholy and contemplatively propulsive. Hard to imagine what sort of film Mabuta No Ura must be, but the songs and sounds here are quite evocative, and let our imaginations conjure up the appropriate images to go with these sumptuous sounds. Packaged in a gorgeous chipboard slipcover die cut sleeve, with a dozen cd sized photos, presumable from the film, with stories printed on the other sides, unfortunately all in Japanese.
So here's the complicated stuff. There are FOUR versions of this record. All of them slightly different. This is the Japanese cd version. comes in a chipboard diecut sleeve and is NOT limited. In the next week or so we will be getting the vinyl version, which comes with a dozen 12x12 photo prints and IS limited. Only 500 were made and we're getting about a fifth of those, but as with all things Boris they will not last long. So if you want one, best to preorder it now. There will be another cd version, released by the Brazilian label Essence, and there will be two versions of that. A super deluxe boxed version, and a regular digipak version. The deluxe version is super limited. Only 120 copies made. We're getting half. Those will all be spoken for by the time we get them, so if you want one of those, pre-order it now. The regular Brazilian version is the same as the deluxe version just with less packaging. And is not limited.
Confused yet? Well, stick with us just a little bit longer. The Brazilian version has more music than the Japanese version. BUT, the Japanese version has music NOT on the Brazilian version. Okay. So if you just want to make sure you have ALL the music, you need both the Japanese version AND the Brazilian version. And since the Japanese cd and the Brazilian regular cd are not limited, you can easily pick up both. The lp and the deluxe version are just for those of you who need the fancy versions or feel compelled to collect them all. Finally, the Brazilian cd version won't be out until end of August or thereabouts, so orders WILL NOT be held for those! If you want both, we'll send you the Japanese cd now (lp when we get them) and the Brazilian version when they show up in a month or so. Phew!
This is a vinyl reissue of a rare-ass 1975 private press LP from Baltimore that anyone who digs, say, Michael Yonkers should perk up their ears at. It's that sort of outsider psych obscurity. Guitarist/vocalist George Brigman, a teenager at the time we're pretty sure, was definitely into such underground (back then) influences as The Stooges and the Velvet Underground. This record consists of fierce, fuzz-fueled punk rockers, lo-fi blues, and VU-inspired melancholia -- a downer vibe typified by such songs as "It's Misery", "Worrying", and "I'm Married Too". There's more of the latter so don't get the idea that this is Raw Power part II or anything. But the Stooges moments, like the killer title track, ARE super Stoogey. So imagine an unholy, amateur, low-budget blend of Iggy, Lou Reed, and some Nick Drake too. Sounds good don't it? It is pretty great. Very soon a cd reissue on the Bona Fide label should also be arriving in our shop, but for the vinyl-enabled among you, Anopheles has the goods right now, on clear vinyl, mastered from the original tapes.
Definitely one of the best band names ever, this Australian group channels much of the same sonic spirituality as the No Neck Blues Band, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, cobbling together four lengthy tracks of transcendent free folk, avant rock clatter. Creepy and sun dappled, like a furtive glimpse past the drawn shades in the window of the old creepy house on the hill, offering up the briefest peeks into past lives, creaking doors, distant footsteps, a rusty music box, all set to mysterious otherworldly musicks, nonsensical vocals coupled with detuned guitars, tiny xylophone melodies arranged haphazardly between shuffled snare drums and woozy acoustic guitars. Druggy and drowsy and dreamy, a stumbling musical meander through free folk, modern minimalism, DIY noise, and drunken indie jangle. SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
The Residents made an astute point when they noted that pop songs are commercial jingles (something to that effect or perhaps it was vice versa). A lot of the folks who compose music for commercials are undeniably some serious hook writers... which is why it's not at all surprising that ad execs got savvy to buying up current and past proven hits for use in ads. Hence, you might already unknowingly be familiar with this band (or at least one song of theirs) 'cause as a big sticker proclaims on this cd's shrinkwrap, it "features 'Jerk It Out' as heard in the iPod Shuffle commercial". Hell, it's definitely a great song (the band and their label both know it, having dished out different versions of the tune already on two other releases to date), but it's sad that it's gonna forever be associated with a product and not, say, your summer fun day at the beach or sumthin'. Anyhoo, that said, this is a bright bouyant pop album with nods to both the '60s and '80s. Lead singer Cesar Vidal's slightly nasal, emotive vocals sound quite a bit like those of Oasis... that is, if those Gallagher brothers took an enormous happy pill and moved to Sweden. Good stuff!
Charm is a gore-tastic low-budget psychological horror film made in the year 2000 by San Francisco underground moviemakers, former AQ-er Sadie Shaw and Sarah Reed (both of The Husbands). Five years later, it's finally available on dvd and cd!
The soundtrack covers a wide range of song styles. All are appropriately haunting, though they travel from classic soundtrack stuff to pulsing techno beats to spaced-out melancholia.
Some highlights are Tim Green's very classic sounding title theme; Aislers Set's Joy Division-ish rhythm on "Attraction Action Reaction"; Deerhoof's rowdy noise-fest on "Appetite"; Replikants' spacey melancholia of "Memory" sounding a lot like that Ulrich Schnauss we listed a little while back; a weird one from The Need with lots of dog barking and Carol Channingesque vocal magic; Sara Lund and Aaron Beam's appropriately titled "A Lucid Moment" which is a melodically peaceful moment before the Thrones' "The Walk" creeps up at you; Concentrick's technocratic "Dansk Floor"; The Lies' angry rock song, "Wrong Kind Of Flirt"; and again with Tim Green and his classic-film-score "Epilogue".
This movie is for fans of lo-budge emotionally-charged gore flims, its soundtrack for fans of, well, awesome soundtracks!
Oakland hiphop crew The Coup -- longtime AQ faves whose 2001 Party Music album was one of the most fun and funky "political" rap records ever -- offer up a DVD of stuff from their archives. It contains seven of The Coup's music videos from over the years, along with an interview with crucial Coup members Boots Riley and Pam The Funkstress, and a fascinating documentary film co-directed by Boots, shot on tour in South Africa! Plus "hidden stuff".
This IS The Best Coup DVD Ever! It's the only Coup DVD too, of course...but though they're joking with the title it is a swell item for Coup fans or anyone who wants to learn more about their radical rap politics. (Note: the back cover seems to indicate that this material is spread over two dvds, but it's all on one.)
Plenty of folks hated the move House Of 1000 Corpses. We weren't among 'em. Sure it was a bit of a mess, a little confused, and borrowed HEAVILY from the classics (Last House On The Left, The Hills Have Eyes, and especially The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But so what?!?! It was a GREAT looking movie. It was fun and gory and gross and pretty wild. One of the problems was putting it up against all the blockbusters, marketing it like a big movie, instead of letting it build momentum and exist as an art house flick, where it belonged. And part of that had to do with the celebrity status of first time director Rob Zombie, of the band White Zombie. The famous rock band, MTV, and all that, the studio probably smelled big bucks. But let's be honest, part of it had to do with the fact that it was not the greatest movie. But that said, imagine you were a total horror movie obsessive, seventies freak, wrestling fan and metal musician, and you were given $7 million dollars to make a horror movie. Doubt I could come up with anything nearly as cool and creepy and evocative as House Of 1000 Corpses. So yeah, we were predisposed to dig the sort-of-sequel The Devil's Rejects. But we had no idea just how much we'd love it. Fuck! This movie totally kicked our ass. Not only was it way more grim and violent and brutal than HO1000C, but the soundtrack was absolutely killer!! First a bit about the movie. Way darker and SO VIOLENT. So violent in fact it's a bit hard to believe they got away with just an R rating. A bit less over the top and outrageous than HO1000C, but definitely more confident, none of those debut feature mis-steps, and a much tighter story arc, and lots of cool cult movie legends (Pee Wee Herman's girlfriend Dottie as a hooker! The Hills Have Eyes' Michael Berryman and the pimp's sidekick / janitor! Sid Haig again as the creepy Captain Spaulding) as well as an amazing bit when the sheriff calls in a very fey Gene Shalit like movie expert to discuss the Marx Brothers films! So funny! The crazy part is how blurry the line is between good and evil. The titular Devil's Rejects are definitely evil and reprehensible, but they're also sort of cool. And bad ass. Albeit in a morally repugnant way. And when the tables are turned, you actually feel sort of bad for them, and hope they'll be able to turn the tables again. And the Sheriff who hunts them down, well he's maybe just as bad. Only difference is he has a badge. Anyway, the movie is bleak and brutal, dusty and sun baked, unlike most 'horror' movies, most of the action takes place under a hot summer sun, and the film stock, the look and feel is all very seventies. So evocative of our youth, which is part of why the soundtrack is so great. Unlike the first movie, where due to budgetary restraints, Zombie was forced to write and record much of the music himself, these tracks were obviously lovingly and carefully chosen, and in the context of the film they are so so perfect. You don't really expect to hear these songs as the musical accompaniment to such utter brutality. The opening credits, a series of stills set to the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider", hits so hard, the lyrical refrain of "Not gonna let 'em catch me, no" and the weird moody vibe of the song, as well as the almost jaunty guitar solo, is so weirdly perfect as we watch the Rejects make their getaway. The rest of the soundtrack is packed full of seventies classics, that while being perfect in the film, also play so well as some fucked up seventies eight-track mix tape. Three Dog Night, Elvin Bishop (whose track gets discussed in the movie!), The James Gang, Joe Walsh, David Essex as well as some classic oldies from Otis Rush, Kitty Wells, Buck Owens and the mysterious (and totally kick ass) Banjo And Sullivan, a lower tier 'fictional' honky Tonk band who meet their untimely demise in the movie. The biggest surprise had to be the tracks from Terry Reid. So haunting and achingly beautiful. We knew that he was once the first choice to sing for Led Zeppelin, but the more country tracks here are fucking fantastic. So gut wrenchingly beautiful. The Reid track "Seed Of Memory" plays over the final credits and had us totally choked up. Wow. And you might wince at the inclusion of "Freebird", and you might skip it when you're listening to this disc, but in the context of the movie, and the time the stuff in the movie suppossedly took place, it's perfect! Anyway, it must mean something that with the hundreds of records we have to listen to every day, we keep throwing this one back on. And we're pretty sure we're gonna to go see The Devil's Rejects AGAIN this weekend!! Various soundbites from the film are interspersed between the tracks as well as a couple Banjo And Sullivan radio spots, and this is one of those dual discs, with a cd on one side and a DVD on the other. The DVD features a 30 minute making of The Devil's Rejects short, a bunch of trailers, and you can listen to a Dolby DVD-audio version of the soundtrack accompanied by a slide show of stills from the movies as well as behind the scenes photos.
Just the sight of that immediately recognizable underlined, lower case 'd' logo sends shivers up our spine. Some of you already know exactly what we're talking about, and just reading this far has probably got you all in a tizzy as well. For those of you who are new to the lower case 'd', prepare yourself for diSEMBOWELMENT!! Even the name, replete with mandatory case change, conjures up all sorts of bleak lifeforce snuffing, soul crushing sensations, at least for fans of mysterious otherworldly doom and bizarre slow motion grind!!
diSEMBOWELMENT were but a brief flash in the underground doom metal scene, existing for a scant three years in the early nineties, but in that time, they recorded one of the all time classic HEAVY records ever, Transcendence Into The Peripheral. A mind blowing record that somehow melded extreme brutality with delicate beauty, a record that totally changed the way some of us listened to heavy music. Referring to the music of diSEMBOWELMENT as doom might give folks the wrong impression. This is not regular old doom like Black Sabbath or My Dying Bride, it's not even funereal doom like Skepticism or Esoteric, although it definitely spends most of its time a lot closer to the slow motion sludge end of the spectrum. diSEMBOWELMENT most definitely inhabit their own unique sonic space. It's slow, sure, but not always, bursts of pounding blast beats will erupt from a bleak tranquil soundscape, gutteral inhuman grunts, machine like percussion, buzzing riffs, all intertwined into a blazing near-death metal onslaught, but it's not long before big reverb drenched guitar melodies begin to fall like some sort of black rain, the metallic pummel sort of stumbling to a seasick lumber, turning the whole thing into a creepy crawl, lurching, plodding, downtuned guitars and spare, simple rhythms, a crushing slow motion dirge, with haunting atonal clean guitar parts and moaning melodies. And even during these vast expanses of atmospheric tranquility, you can never rule out sudden blast beat, or a throat shredding vocal part, or a sudden crushing riff. The magic of diSEMBOWELMENT though is that somehow the metallic crush and the melancholic ambience are perfectly balanced. The whole thing is a dark and depressive, minor key and mournful masterpiece. But it's all so fucking heavy! Even the not-so-heavy parts manage to sound completely massive and totally crushing! So intense and emotional and just absolutely beautiful. Yep, beautiful. Lovely even. Like few records we can remember, and certainly one of the only records this heavy and brutal that manages to be absolutely beautiful. Sonically it's a bit like Napalm Death's Scum, and Carcass's Reek of Putrifaction, that classic Earache sound, a bit lo-fi, lots of reverb, big drums, buzzing guitars, all boiled down into a viscous blackened sludge, sprinkled throughout with brief melodic flares and occasional glistening guitars, like rays of sunlight just barely penetrating the suffocating atmosphere of thick low hanging riffs and bleak, brutal ambience.
Disc one contains all of Transcendence Into the Peripheral, and hell, we would have been happy with just that, a long overdue reissue of one of our all time favorite discs. But disc two contains the quite rare Dusk ep, as well as a rare compilation track and the five track Mourning September demo, all of it suitably genius! And, for a very limited time, we have managed to get a hold of the "mailorder only" version of this diSEMBOWELMENT reissue (limited to 1000 copies worldwide) that comes with a whole extra, third, disc! Disc three contains an unreleased version of "The Spirit Of The Tall Hills" (from Transcendence Into the Peripheral), as well as rehearsal versions of The Spirit Of The Tall Hills and Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory (also from Transcendence Into the Peripheral). These versions are a lot weirder than the album versions, faster, with way more deranged and damaged vocals! Also includes a Necrovore (who we'd never heard of) cover, a murky, fuzzy, droned-out thrash workout! Wow.
Obviously totally and completely essential. Like we mentioned before, the three disc version is super limited so we're not sure how long we'll have those. Packaged in an oversized 3cd jewel case, with a booklet of photos and liner notes, including lyrics and a history of the band from drummer Paul Mazziotta. When the 3cd version is gone we will have the 2cd version, which is cheaper and comes packaged in an embossed double digipak.
Sheer rawk powah. Just tune into the first cut "Strange Trangressors" from this, the third and best album yet from Oakland-based hard rock throwbacks Drunk Horse, and get blown away by the power of riff and sweaty rhythm section action (and some tasty slide work courtesy of our pal Josh who used to play in Drunk Horse, after leaving The Champs). It's sophisticated riff rock, a bit more clever and complex than you might realize, when you're busy hoisting beers to their boogie as you should be.
Though titled In Tongues, this album certainly seems less overtly tongue-in-cheek than Drunk Horse has in the past... The jokey element is here pretty much limited to slightly humorous song titles like "Reformed Asshole" and "Nice Hooves". Drunk Horse have always taken themselves and their music seriously, but now they're letting us know it too. For sure Drunk Horse have grown, and gotten even better. One major area of improvement would be the vocals, Eli took a lot more care with his singing this time around and it shows. The band has always had a lot of chops in other areas, so now they're even closer to becoming the new millenium's answer to the classic likes of ZZ Top, Humble Pie and Thin Lizzy. In Tongues is bursting with clever arrangements, wicked leads, gorgeous twin guitar harmonies (there's the Thin Lizzy...), and pop hooks. And that aforementioned sheer rawk powah. Unbeatable.
Back in stock! There was quite a run on these recently after Pitchfork gave this a rave review...hey didn't anyone read *our* review of this some months before? Anyway, we've got a few more (at a slightly better price, the label repressed 'em and made 'em cheaper too) and here's what we said about it before: Like fellow Swede and AQ-fave Bjorn Olsson, Gustav Ejstes is a brillant timewarped melody-maker. Though, his "solo" project Dungen sounds more like a band than Olsson's albums do. Wunderkind Ejstes is certainly enamored of '60s/'70s psych-pop and his obsession has borne some fabulous fruit. This is his third album to date (the first being a vinyl-only affair we have yet to hear, the second being the now-hard-to-find Stadsvandringar cd that Allan raved about on our list two years ago). So we were pleased to hear about the release of Ta Det Lugnt. It rocks more than the last one, being brasher, with more in the way of electric guitar frenzies in a Hendrix kinda style. But otherwise it's pretty similar, with Ejstes singing his hook-filled songs in the same somewhat nasal, Swedish langage voice as before. There's jazz jamming, folk frolics, and plenty of fuzz. A retro trip indeed from searing electric rippage to spaced-out, sentimental melodicism.
Depressive doom death from New Jersey. Where else? Well they kinda sound like they're from Finland, actually, the land of funereal doom acts like Skepticism, Rapture, and Shape Of Despair. But these guys have been on the scene for a long time and are probably inspired by such older bands such as Long Island's Winter and of course the primitive godfathers of the extreme doom/death scene, Hellhammer. Though, the keyboard-laden dirges of Evoken demonstrate a more sophisticated form of grim brutality, one that generates its own notion of beauty, with gutteral vocals, eerie atmospheres, slow-motion riffs and minor-key melodies. Lamentations of misery drawn out to (hopefully) cathartic extremes. It's been four years since Evoken unleashed their masterful Quietus album, and in that time they haven't gotten any happier, that's for sure. Antithesis of Light stops the clock with 71 endless minutes comprising seven sorrowful songs of massive mournful metal. It's perhaps the doomiest, deathliest lower-depths trudge we've heard since the last Runemagick disc.
Field Music are primarily Peter Brewis and Andrew Moore, but for their self-titled debut they're joined by string players Emma Fisk, Rachael Davis and Peter Richardson as well as sax player John Steele. You might've seen/heard the two lads before though. They're in a couple bands you might be more familiar with... Franz Ferdinand and Maximo Park. Who? Never heard of 'em. Hahahaha. Ahem, this project is far less punchy and rambunctious than either of their day jobs. The tunes are still very poppy, but in a much more gentle breezy fashion. Sort of a well-crafted cross between Sea And Cake, Pinback and Brian Wilson. Nice.
A no-frills and super down to earth debut. As the title states this is a half dozen tunes from Bay Area folksy folks The Finches. The duo of Ms Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs and Aaron Morgan share the singin' and guitar playin' duties, and Morgan also handles the bass playin' too. Each of their songs is thoughtful, well-crafted and slightly rough around the edges much like Carolyn's lovely lino-cut cover art. Achingly intimate and pretty, and quite along the lines of folk-pop songstresses such as Cat Power or Julie Doiron. Nice!
As we all know since the last Foo Fighters' album Dave Grohl has kept himself knee-deep in high profile projects -- drumming for Queens Of The Stone Age, Tenacious D, and Killing Joke as well as his own 'metal' collaborative monstrosity Probot. He's certainly contributed much to the other bands he's played with and they in turn have left their influential marks on him. Unlike the likes of Keith Moon or Bill Ward, few drummers these days have honed their own distinct personal sound. Grohl is an exception. His drumming and songwriting both have an unmistakable Grohl-ness. This is apparent right from the lead-off track of In Your Honor. That song (which is also the title track) sure sounds like he nicked a few useful cues from the awesome force that is Killing Joke and encorporated them into the Foo Fighters realm. It introduces a much more unforgiving pummel to their already thoroughly punchy sound. In Your Honor has a loud/heavy disc and a quieter/gentler one -- embodying the two sides of Grohl. Where both sides of Grohl stumble a bit this time out however is in the lyric department. He's pulled out some serious cliche rhymes. But for fans who want some big catchy glossy rock (and maybe some more moody subdued mellow glossy rock to go along with it) this will probably hit the spot!
Well, it's about time! After a couple of cd-rs and vinyl-only editions, Tara Burke (aka Fursaxa) has finally released a proper cd for much greater distribuition of her immaculate, hallucinatory music. The Philadelphia based chanteuse has crafted a timeless sound that on one hand finds Burke easily situated alongside the best of the acid-folk revivalists (Devendra Banhart, Six Organs of Admittance, Islaja, etc.), yet on the other, she channels the visionary iconography of Hildegard von Bingen and the iconoclastic obliqueness of Nico in equal measure. On Lepidoptera, as with her previous recordings, Burke floats her primal voice over incredibly simple psychedelic songs of tranced-out organ drones and / or acoustic guitar monochord strum, peppered with echo-heavy flutes and bells. There really isn't that more to what Burke does as Fursaxa, but within her arcane lullabies and primieval psychedelia, she has the ability to emote a profound, dreamy sadness much in the same way that Marissa Nadler has done on her two albums, albeit under far more mystical and psychotropic influences. Truely amazing and utterly mesmerizing.
Plastic Crimewave's immense, amazing psychedelic music zine (almost also a comic book 'cause it's all hand lettered and drawn, and does indeed include some underground comix, as well as a feature on "psychedelic superheroes"), the one and only Galactic Zoo Dossier, returns with issue number six!! This time, you'll find interviews with quite an odd/interesting assortment of folks: Vanilla Fudge, Keith Rowe (ex-AMM), John Renbourn, and Pip Proud. Plus features and bits on psychsters old and new and heavy and obscure including Acid Mothers Temple, Debris, Stackwaddy, Rodriguez, Edgar Broughton, Uriah Heep, The Lemon Drops, Exuma, The Outsiders, etc.
And, beyond the 'zine, you get the second set of Crimewave illustrated "Damaged Guitar Gods" trading cards -- including John DuCann (Atomic Rooster), Michael Yonkers, Wally Gonzalez (Juan De La Cruz), Davy Graham, Dorothy & Helen Wiggins (The Shaggs), Erik Brann (Iron Butterfly), Erkin Koray, BoAnders Persson (Trad Gras Och Stenar) and dozens more. Pretty darn cool. Plus, that's not all: there's also a freakin' double cd compilation entitled Ascension Days When We Rise: Ultra-Rare Avant/Psych/Garage 1960's-1990. It features Acid Mothers Temple, The Heads, Six Organs Of Admittance, Miminokoto, The Hototogisu, Oneida, Michael Karoli, and a bunch more, some we've never heard of before but are eager to check out. This 'zine is just such a "turn on" regarding the underground sounds obsessed about within. Something about everything in the magazine being handwritten not only gives it more of an organic, '60s psych vibe but also utterly underscores how much of a labor of love this is, just how incredibly ENTHUSIASTIC Plastic Crimewave and Co. are about this stuff. Right on.
We're not sure if the band Get Him Eat Him are actually carnivorous, but if their music is any indication, we can tell you that they do have an appreciation for sweet treats of the pop variety. Geography Cones is loaded up with dreamy boyish pop very much along the lines of Death Cab For Cutie and Pinback. In fact, the vocals bring to mind a more gaspy Benjamin Gibbard. Their new label home Absolutely Kosher has certainly become quite the trusted hub of brainy pop studiousness -- Wrens, Sparrow, Rob Crow and the abovementioned Pinback to name a few artists whose releases grace that label. For those of us who always crushed over the shy bookworm sitting in the front row versus the loudmouth rowdy bruiser or eye-catchin' jock Adonis in the back... catch our drift?
Wally Gonzalez, guitarist from the Phillippines' proto stoner rock combo the Juan De La Cruz band, stepped out in the late '70s with these two newly cd-ified solo records, 1977's Tunog Pinoy and 1978's On The Road. They're not that heavy but do feature lotsa wailing Wally guitar action -- and wild/cheesy keyboard synth sizzlin' too. Wally fronts 'em both on guitar and vocals and although each was recorded with a different backing band, the two discs are pretty similar. Slow-burning mellow psych pop ballads are mixed with strutting boogie numbers. What titles there are in English are along the lines of "Rock & Roll Mama", "Wally's Blues", "Rockin' Roller" and, uh, "Screw". Neither album is as raw and gritty as the best of Juan De La Cruz, but this is still good fun hard rock and folky balladry, Filipino style, with a polyester '70s sheen that will either kitschly add to your enjoyment or perhaps ruin it totally.
Wally Gonzalez, guitarist from the Phillippines' proto stoner rock combo the Juan De La Cruz band, stepped out in the late '70s with these two newly cd-ified solo records, 1977's Tunog Pinoy and 1978's On The Road. They're not that heavy but do feature lotsa wailing Wally guitar action -- and wild/cheesy keyboard synth sizzlin' too. Wally fronts 'em both on guitar and vocals and although each was recorded with a different backing band, the two discs are pretty similar. Slow-burning mellow psych pop ballads are mixed with strutting boogie numbers. What titles there are in English are along the lines of "Rock & Roll Mama", "Wally's Blues", "Rockin' Roller" and, uh, "Screw". Neither album is as raw and gritty as the best of Juan De La Cruz, but this is still good fun hard rock and folky balladry, Filipino style, with a polyester '70s sheen that will either kitschly add to your enjoyment or perhaps ruin it totally.
As always, let's get this out of the way first. This is EXTREMELY LIMITED. Only 200 copies were made, and we took about a quarter of 'em. By the time you read this it will already be out of print, so as always, act fast if you want one of these!
You may remember a few lists back, we made the new record from The Grey Daturas, Dead In The Woods, our record of the week. And how could we not? We described their sound as: "blown out fuzzy psych rock. A blurry druggy mix of Hawkwind, the Dead C, Comets On Fire, Residual Echoes, Dead Meadow and Bardo Pond. From churning, throbbing fuzzdrug churn, with squealing feedback and choppy uneven riffing, to drifting dreamy stripped down post rock, all careening wildly between thick swaths of super overdriven psych fuzz, and drenched in crumbly distortion and all manner of wah!" Heck, that sounds so good, it makes us want to pull out Dead In The Woods and throw it on right now!! Well, the Daturas spent a couple months touring the US recently, and while they were in the Bay Area, they crashed with the guys in local free noise ensemble the Yellow Swans. And what do two bands do when they have a week to kill together? Record a record! Or in the case of these guys, record a super limited double cd-r! So what do you get when you mix the drugg free noise psych rock of the Daturas and the noisy clattery skree of the Yellow Swans? Well obviously noise is gonna play a big part of it. No real song structures to speak of, although occasionally a brooding bass line or a simple strummed riff will surface, this is mostly freaked out and free, ambient and abstract. Expansive swaths of guitar noise, amp buzz and electronic glitch and grit. Melodies drift and disintegrate while guitar and bass slowly unfurl all manner of rumble and drone. Definitely reminiscent of Skullflower, Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, and all that sort of shimmery noisy goodness. Beautiful and droning and so so so good! Packaged in a super cool hand screened cardboard gatefold sleeve, with a creepy spike through the skull image screened on the front in metallic silver!
And in case you missed that bit at the beginning, SUPER SUPER LIMITED!!!!!
How To Reform Mankind marks yet another entry in the reissue campaign of The Hafler Trio's early research into sound and its effect upon the human psyche. It was the third in what now stands as the first of many untitled "triologies of three," standing as the final chapter to the series featuring Kill The King and Mastery of Money. Within the entire catalogue of the Hafler Trio, How To Reform Mankind (1994) represents one of the last records that Andrew McKenzie produced before drastically slowing down his activities in the middle and late '90s. In many ways, this album is also an exceptional culmination of the ideas that McKenzie propagated throughout the '80s, which reflect a considerably different perspective upon his work, his life, and the world in general. The early Hafler Trio albums revelled in the miscommunication, the recycling of information within new contexts, and a disorientation caused by the play between what is real and what might be real. In recent years, The Hafler Trio's idioms have suggested a revelation / obfuscation of truth in the grand traditions of ancient Gnosticism.
Psychoacoustics and the psychological impact of sound have both figured heavily into all of the Hafler Trio's work, and these areas of research are profoundly present on How To Reform Mankind. Subtle flutterings of shortwave data have been processed into rarified air; low volume, resonant frequencies colliding with the body for a chest-cavity massage; the clunky piano from McKenzie's Negentropy album returns as a post-serialist leitmotif; and desolate sonar plinks slam against metal walls to astounding effect. McKenzie's uncompromising drive for his art has made the Hafler Trio one of the greatest artistic endeavors of the last two decades; and How To Reform Mankind stands close to the top of his best recordings.
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we cannot offer sound samples of the Hafler Trio's work. Oh well.
Earlier this year when we reviewed School Of The Flower, the latest from modern day acid folk hero Ben Chasny's Six Organs Of Admittance, we mentioned that Ben had become obsessed with the music of one Gary Higgins, an obscure '70s hippie singer/songwriter whose lone LP from 1973, Red Hash, had developed something of a cult following over the decades, not that all that many people had even ever heard OF it, let alone actually heard it. But those who had all spoke highly of its mystic beauty, mysterious aura, and so forth. Ben covered a Higgins song on School Of The Flower, and asked that if anyone knew of his whereabouts to let Drag City know. Apparently that paid off, 'cause now Drag City *has* managed to track down Mr. Higgins and properly reissue Red Hash on cd to enlighten all of us to its wonders. And we bet Ben is excited to now be labelmates with one of his heroes! (They've even performed together in recent months!)
Kicking off with the song that Six Organs' covered, "Thicker Than A Smokey", Red Hash immediately lives up to its reputation as a hidden treasure of psychedelic folk music, oft slow and sad and melancholically melodic. There's a lost and lonely vibe to a lot of this, with Gary's gentle singing and acoustic guitar backed by friends playing piano, cello, mandolin, flute and more. Together they weave eleven tracks of entrancing dope smoking folk music, drifting, sometimes dreary, but always oh so lovely. The freakiness is mainly in the lyrics, which can be quite interestingly cryptic and weird, often regarding the worried wandering and woes of a young man, while the music remains alluringly melodic and inwardly calm. Though, with a deeper voice and more urgent tone, the Beefheartian "Down On The Farm" stands out as more menacing (and humorous) than the rest.
This remastered Drag City reish is really nicely done, with a full-colour booklet of photos and lyrics. Two (lesser) bonus tracks are also included, "Last Great Sperm Whale" from 1975 and "Don't Ya Know" from sometime in the early '80s. But the album alone is a gem and shines just a bright now as it did briefly back in '73. By the way, one reason for its obscurity is that shortly after the LP's original release, Higgins was sent away to prison to do a two-year stretch on a pot bust... so it must be really nice for him to gain some belated recognition nowadays.
Listen on: Deezer
Here's a new full length from this folk pop songstress following her lovely debut Honey For Breakfast album from 2002. Her slightly weary lilt of a voice hints that she might be the long lost kid sister of Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval. She picks right up where she left off with this lengthier gathering of unadorned acoustic guitar, banjo and vocals. Hushed, sweet and intimate. Please note: If you've seen her play recently and bought a copy of the cd-r that she had for sale, this might be the cd version of that same material (this is according to a Honeywell-lovin' AQ customer who did that very thing).
We read about this recently on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website -- he picked it as his Album of the Month for July 2005. We had to hear it. And having heard it, we liked it enough to order a few of 'em in! The punningly titled Jamnation isn't quite like anything we've come across before. It's, um, stoner rock spoken word. Huh?
We've never been all that big on the "spoken word" thing here at AQ, not really. Stand up comedy, maybe -- of course we like our David Cross records. And Bill Hicks. Even there, the good stuff is a rarity. But spoken word? You say spoken word, we start thinking poetry slam. Not good. Though we'll concede that there's been some worthwhile practitioners of the form. Steven Jesse Bernstein was interesting. And Rollins we have to say has had his moments. And we'll listen to This American Life all day -- we guess that stuff counts as spoken word, right?
But get this. Jamnation is a spoken word album, the voice and words of one Dan McGuire. But it's also a killer stoner/psych rock compilation of sorts. That's 'cause McGuire has gotten it into his head to speak his spoken words not over some tired Beat-style bongo jam or loungey jazz backing, but over searing electric guitar ramalamajama, epic-length tracks he's chosen out by some far-out and obscure heavy rock bands who happen to be faves of his, old and new (American '70s psych monsters the JPT Scare Band and Josefus, modern day stoner space rockers Gas Giant and ILD HU from Holland, and Japan's retro doom hippies Eternal Elysium). Which goes a long way to explaining just how McGuire's Jamnation wound up being so honored by Julian Cope. We certainly can't improve on what Cope wrote -- fella's got a way with words, y'know -- so we suggest you go read it yrself. 'Specially since you should be checking out his site anyway, a recommendation we've made before to all AQ-list readers who are into the psych/heavy side of things. Visit it at www.headheritage.co.uk.
Having picked these tracks out of his record collection (much easier than actually working with actual live musicans, claims McGuire, and we're sure he's right) he then finds the space in each song for his verbal embellishments. It's the same idea really the old Jamiacan DJ's had when they first started "toasting". This really works 'cause McGuire's verbiage is equally billed with the music. Actually it takes a back seat to the music a lot of the time, really. It's not all about him, its about the jams. Sometimes it seems whole minutes will pass while McGuire lets the guitars take center stage. Wow -- a spoken word dude that shuts up when necessary. Cool. And when he is talking, he weaves his words perfectly into the rhythms of the music. His voice is husky and laidback, a little bit like John Wayne / Henry Rollins hybrid, spinning visions of gritty reality and far out freak scenes. What he says is sometimes amusing, often cryptic, and never laughably embarrassing at any rate. It's sorta druggy rambling ranting stuff that fits perfectly with this tunage! Truly, we need to let what he's saying sink in more to give a good account of it...the thing is, McGuire's speech goes so well with the wailing guitars and chugging riffs that we're not always paying the closest attention to what he's on about, we're just digging the totality of the listening experience.
So, in sum Jamnation is a pretty excellent heavy jams comp with a guy talking over it at times, in a pretty cool, Lizard King way that fits in with the music anyway.
On their third cd release for Absolutely Kosher these five East Bay fellows take us in a new direction. On Picks Us Apart, they move further away from their earlier prominent Slint / Mogwai influences. They've replaced their past post-rock loud-quiet leanings with gentle pop song structures comprised of decidedly sweet sensitive boy vocals, strummy multi-layered guitars reminiscent of mid-to-late '80s The Cure. Although some might be a little disappointed that they've chosen a different path, others will surely find that the band are just as adept at crafting a solid pop tune as they are at weaving an atmospheric soundscape. In fact, it struck us that these days they've more aligned themselves with the charming indie pop likes of Pinback and Death Cab For Cutie.
Made in Germany it says here, and Fuenfundvierzig is a German label, if you hadn't guessed. And that's where it *sounds* like it was made, back in say 1973, by someone like Klaus Schulze. But the music on this disc -- spacey, trancey, "kosmiche" guitar bliss out stuff -- was actually made in 2004 in Japan by the next best thing to an authentic long haired and bearded '70s German krautrock guitar/electronics guru. That'd be Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple! These two long tracks of meditative, astral exploration ("mediation" and "astral" both being words that figure in the titles of the two pieces) also bring to mind the work of Terry Riley with all the wonderfully repetitive delay and reverb goin' on. Anyone into the gentler side of Kawabata/AMT (such as Kawabata's O Si Amos A Sighire A Essere Duas Umbras? and Inui 3 albums) ought to swoon over this glimmersome Jellyfish Rising. And the back cover of the cd booklet is a picture all AMT fans already have in their heads: an unclothed Kawabata in bed, smoking a cigarette, cradling his beloved electric guitar.
Hymns Of The 49th Parallel marks the return of k.d. lang! Golly, it seems like a whole 'nother lifetime since steadfast Canadian Stompin' Tom Connors serenaded her with his song "Lady k.d. lang"! As we recall, one of the lyrics was something like "she jumps around like a 'rang-ee-tan, lady k.d. lang!" Well, it's probably safe to say that her monkeying around days have long been packed snuggly away with her funky cat eye glasses and thrift shop garb. And yet after all these years of living in L.A. her Canadian-ness still shines through.
With the utmost respect and love, she reinterprets the songs of her fellow Canadian music luminaries Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Ron Sexsmith, Jane Siberry, and Bruce Cockburn... but somewhat disappointingly no Stompin' Tom! Despite the unquestionable powerhouse quality of her voice, her renditions are remarkably low-key, intimate and suitably unflashy with warm, bare bones arrangements (often just piano, some with strings). Two particular stand-outs are "The Valley" originally by the equally amazing in her own right Ms Jane Siberry and "Fallen" originally by the equally amazing in his own right Mr. Ron Sexsmith. That said, as with her last few albums, this definitely falls into the adult contemporary territory. So, if you happen to have an aversion to such ultra smoothness, consider yourself forewarned.
Maeror Tri was a legendary German post-industrial band that forged a mighty sound of corrosive, post-Industrial dronescaping throughout the '90s before moving onto the equally impressive drone-based project Troum. Myein was one of the first CDs for Maeror Tri, originally released by ND Records and housed in an unusual, oversized triangular sleeve. Now that this has been reissued through Waystyx, Myein enjoys a slightly less cumbersome, but no less appealing matte black, die-cut sleeve with a gold envelope housing the disc. Myein opens with a black cauldron of swarming guitar drones that steadily increases the atmospheric pressures over the course of the opening track before cracking in a burst of seething noise. Maeror Tri follows this with one of their more melodic interluded, extending a melancholic descending chord progression into a haunted mantra. The final entry on Myein finds Maeror Tri at their most sprawling, amorphous, and shadowy with an undulating ocean of dark dark drones littered with flanging sounds. We can only hope that Myein is the first of many reissues from Maeror Tri's hard to find back catalogue. Excellent!
Orbiting With Screwdrivers is comprised of seven austere soundscapes from this veteran aural experimentalist from Montreal, Quebec. Continuing on in the collaborative community spirit that has made that city's cativatingly diverse art and music so captivating, Mecha Fixes Clocks aka Michel F. Cote (we resisted the urge to concoct some clever punny statement about his moniker and time spent listing to this cd) crafted this 49 minute long album from hours upon hours of recorded material he received from over a dozen of his fellow French Canadian contributors some of which are already quite familiar to AQ such as Christof Migone and Martin Tetrault. Some tracks are so minimal, they're barely there save for a single strikes of a piano key or ghostly plucks of a stringed instrument left to linger in the air. Others offer more atmospheric 'presence' in the form of vaporous drones or high pitched prickly squeals. All of them evoke open, abandoned, unlit spaces. When played in the store, this received numerous enthusiastically curious queries. Check it out.
It may seem like a curious title for Mirror, who are best known for simple if anthropomorphic allusions in their titles rather than something more fitting for the Icelandic absurdists Stilluppsteypa; yet one cannot forget that Mirror's Christoph Heemann began his musical career in the Nurse With Wound obsessed ensemble Hirsche Nicht Aufs Sofa, which translates as Moose Without A Sofa. That is not to say that Viking Burial for a French Car recalls the surrealistic meandering of HNAS, rather it sounds much like all of the other Mirror recordings -- tranquil, somber, and hypnotic dronescapes that hover like a wintery fog. With the inclusion of a few Scotsmen (David Keenan, Alex Neilson, and Gavin Laird) alongside Andrew Chalk and Heemann, the Mirror sound is altered a little bit. At first, Mirror unveils a sonorous tone of what could be a thousand car horns bleating into a canyon. This undulating mass of sound gradually gives way a post-AMM / Organum clamour of drum kit improv tumbling and textural growling, before dissolving back to the introductory funereal timbers that drift onward to oblivion.
For many years now, Colin Potter and Darren Tate have produced some fine droneworks with Potter becoming a regular contributer to Nurse With Wound, and with both Potter and Tate working together first as Ora and more recently as Monos. Over the past few Monos releases, Potter and Tate have been steadily reducing their electronic tones, gestural events, and field recordings toward a bleak, monolithic minimalism. Generators, a sprawling double cd set, continues in this trend with four extended pieces, suitably titled "Sleep," "The Black Sea," "Slowly Fading," and "Generators." These stately electronic meditations parallel the narcoleptic time-shifting of Coil's Time Machines album from many moons ago in their gradual ascension and descension of compelling hums into subtle diversions from a uniform stillness. There's honestly not much to the frozen space of Generator, but it has to be said that few artists have the skills to pull something like this off with this much success.
Geeeeez, somebody please take the studio gizmos away from Bob Mould right now! While we certainly can't frown upon anyone gettin' all excited about trying something new, we sure can't cheer on Mr. Mould's decision to actually include those wonky effected Cher-vocals on his records. To be totally blunt, they sound downright dumb... and they sounded dumb on his last album. Even if he's using them tongue-in-cheek (which we sorta suspected with the album's second song and its title "(Shine Your) Light Love Hope" that seemed to be a silly take on those 'as seen on tv' dance compilation tracks with their parenthetical titles), they stick out like the worst sore thumb. Body Of Song arrived without much fanfare, and so when it appeared the other day it was a genuine pleasant surprise. It seems we'd somehow wiped 2002's disappointment Modulate from our memory banks. After a couple of songs though our smiles turned to winces. Those painful memories came rushing back and were joined by new ones. Ugh. Fortunately Mould has toned down his previous penchant for bland rave-y techno. The songs without the 'special effects' come across as fond familiar ol' Bob, and they definitely kept this one from joining Modulate in the dumper. Approach with caution.`
We have recently been obsessing over the old Nickelodian show The Adventures Of Pete And Pete, with its recent reissue on DVD. Not only is it a totally amazing, completely bizarre show, cute enough for kids, but clever enough for adults, it also has a killer theme song, performed by a band called Polara, who just happen to feature a Mr. Mark Mulcahy on vocals. I knew I recognized that voice. Mulcahy also fornted the most amazing Miracle Legion, who were a bit of a college radio mainstay back in the day. Anyway, the upshot of all this is, we had sort of forgotten how great Mulcahy was, and what a totally amazing voice he possessed and then we remembered he had just released a new record so we figured we ought to check it out and we're happy to report it's absolutely fantastic. From the warm warbly organ of the title track, with Mulcahy's gorgeous vocals (along with some strange but lovely harmonies) to the simple sunny indie strum and unforgettable vocal melody of "Cookie Jar" to the Yo La Tengo-like jangle and stomp of "I Have Patience" complete with weird ELO style vocal effects and handclaps. This record never lets up. It's like a heavenly slice of nineties college rock all gussied up and given a good twentieth century going over. And with most pop records, it's all about the vocals, and Mulcahy has such a distinct and mesmerizing voice, smooth and sweet, but just a little scratchy and totaly unique, able to slip smoothy from a sweet falsetto to a warm rich croon. So good! Another record that we always seem to find ourselves returning to over and over.
Subtitled "An Urban Ceremonial", this super limited new release from AQ faves the No Neck Blues Band documents a live performance at the Greene Naftali Gallery in November of 2004. It's been a little while since we've heard from these guys, but thankfully they sound as good as ever, maybe a little more subdued and subtle, although that could just be the venue or even this particular performance. As always, the NNBB offer up a langorous, dreamily exotic tribal soundscape of crystalline shimmers, drifting ambient slivers of high end, muted tribal drumming, subtle velvet shadings of reverbed guitar, simple shuffling rhythms, chimes and bells, ghostly woodwinds, drifting psych guitar drone, occasional clang and clatter, music box-like melodies all swirled into a rambling soundscape of tribal ambience, krautrock creep and pagan folk ritual.
Packaged in an oversized carboard sleeve with a poster. And again EXTREMELY LIMITED!
Our Ms Cup has long been a Klaus Nomi devotee, but -- save for his one song appearance in the Urgh! A Music War film and the now out-of-print Eclipsed: Best Of Klaus Nomi compilation -- there's never been enough documentation from back in the day to satiate any craving for this ultra stylized, provocative and enigmatic figure. So she was thrilled and a bit trepidatious to hear that a documentary was being made. After many failed attempts to go see the film in the theater, she was then delighted to hear that it was coming out on dvd. Her verdict? Superlatives galore. This fantastic documentary was made with absolute loving care and imaginative attention to detail. One of the most obvious (and unique) examples of this comes in the segments featuring the voice of Nomi's aunt. "Why just her voice?" you might ask. Well, apparently she's really camera shy, and the filmmakers came up with a novel way to present her likeness in the film. They crafted accurately detailed miniature dioramas of various locations (such as her living room with a mini slide projector and backyard with shrubbery and garden hose) in which they sat a paper doll with a picture of her face. The interview clips (each filmed in front of a very thought out, appropriate backdrop), audio and video footage sheds much light on his life and music career (including more background info about the abovementioned Urgh! appearance), totally capturing the vitality, tragedy and defiance of Nomi the individual as well as of the underground New York New Wave scene as a whole during those years. He cut such a striking, unmistakable, indelible silhouette. Unforgettable.
The dvd includes a bunch of exclusive remixes by Scissor Sisters' Ana Matronic, Richard Barone, The Moog Cookbook and Man Parrish (formerly of The Fast, Man2Man and more!)
With everyone freaking out about Isis, Pelican, Neurosis, Cult Of Luna, and all things massively and epically metal, all churning riffs and pounding majesty, it's hard to believe that most people have never heard, or even heard of German outfit The Ocean. Because in some ways, hard as it may seem to believe, they've almost managed to sonically outdo their obvious influences. The basic sound will be familiar for sure, massive guitars, pounding drums, propulsive, relentless riffing, blissed out, post rock parts that build and build and build into huge squalls of gargantuan guitarnoise, throbbing and pulsing, minor key and epic. But, in the case of The Ocean, they manage to add all sort of extra weirdness and not-so-subtle nuance than really makes Fluxion stand out. The presence of a full on string section (as well as some clarinets and other decidedly non rock instruments) is the first thing, which obviously lends the whole thing a much more stately, mournful feel, making them sound at times like a heavy metal Godspeed You Black Emperor. There's also a whole bunch of melodic flourishes scattered throughout, just here and there, that make what could be standard metal riffs become something a little bit out of the ordinary. The order of the day though is definitely metallic pummel, growled gutteral vocals over ultra thick Teutonic riffs, their German-ness shines through a bit in those instances, reminding us a bit of Rammstein, and when the keyboards kick in, there's definitely some Dimmu Borgir going on. And there is definitely a black metal vibe throughout, although it's bent and twisted to fit into The Ocean's moody metal framework. But the sound is so much more expansive and epic than most black metal, or most metal in general, especially when the guitars bliss out a bit, and strings are soaring, guitars picking out arpeggiated minor key melodies, everything eventually erupting into full on metallic bombast. And even in the midst of TOTAL METAL, the melodies are still moody and intense, the riffing is weird and the overal vibe is super dramatic and ultra intense. Fans of the 'new mood metal', a la Pelican, Isis, Cult Of Luna, as well as fans of the new metallic post rock (Conifer, Tides, Mouth Of The Architect, etc.) will be totally blown away!
Some of the most amazing packaging we've seen, a multi panel digipak, depicting a huge shcool of fish, with the band name and random spatters printed in a glossy varnish. The gatefold is a huge two panel spread of dead gutted fish, and inside all the liner notes and lyrics are printed glossy black on matte black. Wow!
Have you been missing Sleep? No, not your forty winks, we mean the mighty stoner metal behemoth that was San Francisco's Sabbath n' sweet leaf worshippers Sleep. The endlessly repetitive riffs, the swinging molasses sludge jams, the massive, mantric starscapes of drugged-out space rock drone and dirge? Yeah, we've been missing Sleep too. They broke up after their magnum opus, the one-hour/one-song album Jerusalem (aka Dopesmoker), members eventally resurfacing in The Sabians and High On Fire. And now Om, the closest thing to the Jerusalem of olde! So if High On Fire's loud and speedy Motorheaded heaviness hasn't quite been giving you that same Sleepy feeling, then here's -another- post-Sleep outfit that might just do the trick.
First get rid of the guitars ('cause this is just Sleep's rhythm section, bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius). All they really need is a drum kit, a bass guitar and about 10,000 watts of amplification. Then set the controls for the heart of the sun, and ride all the way there seemingly on a single churning, hypnotic mesmerizing riff, stretched over three long tracks. A super distorted, fuzzed out magic carpet ride into oblivion. The main difference between Sleep and Om (besides the lack of guitar) are the vocals by Al Cisneros. Lots of vocals. And not screaming or growly, we're talking clean, chanting, trance-like vocals, WAY up in the mix. Well, they do sound a bit like the singing in Sleep, just way more prominent. It may be the single thing that keeps folks from getting into Om. But the vocals definitely grow on you, and the laconic sort of slurry sing song-y delivery just further enhances Om's druggy mesmerism. Al's stiffly delivered, endless nasal incantations are in fact now being imitated by the staffers here at Aquarius in our everyday conversations. They definitely give the whole thing a definite Hawkwind / Pink Floyd vibe, which is a VERY good thing. This is most definitely not 'metal', although metalheads will probably dig it. Electric Wizard fans especially! This is relentlessly riff heavy, ultra repetitive, simple, spaced out, hippy drug rock of the highest order. Musically it almost sounds like a Lightning Bolt record played at 16rpm, that effortless bass / drum interplay slowed down to a loping lumber, a slow motion slither, a creepy crawl. Head nodding music for head bangers. A swirling, fuzzy, spacy, mesmerizing, drone rock trip! No wonder ol' Julian Cope wrote it up as a record of the month on his great Head Heritage website...
Uhh, is the name of the record label telling us sumthin'? Dunno, but one thing's for sure, the hyperactive, prolific gal Allison Wolfe just can't sit still. She's got so many musical projects past and present, it's hard to keep track of 'em all -- Bratmobile, Cold Cold Hearts, Deep Lust, Da Hawney Troof, and the list goes on! Not to mention that they're usually three-piecers. Her bands have all been dead set on raisin' the indie grrrrl roof. So it comes as no surprise that her latest outing Partyline continues to stir up a raucous garage rawk racket. Musicianship and finesse be damned! Such is the case with their debut EP Girls With Glasses and its half dozen super lo-fi, rudimentary bashed out on guitar, bass and drums tunes.
This album prompted a discussion here about how there's the post rock bands that throw in some heavy, riffy metal bits to make things weirder and more interesting (and maybe so they don't seem quite so wimpy). And there's also the metal bands that write some pretty, quiet post rock parts also to be weird and interesting (and so as not to seem like total Neanderthals). In both cases, when things work out well, the results are a band that sounds not like, uh, wimpy Neanderthals but rather like intelligent and sensitive types who also possess crushing might. Pretty much every boy's ideal, eh? And Chicago instrumental heavies (and big AQ faves) Pelican are a great example of this, even though -- especially with this new album -- we can't quite decide if they're a metal band first post rock band second or the other way around. The very first track on The Fire In Our Throats Will Beckon The Thaw, "Last Day Of Winter", is seemingly more on the post rock side, all simmering moodiness and storm-yet-to-be-unleashed power. It IS big and loud but not really metal. Eventually the album offers up some truly uber metal moments, though, yes. Pelican's vaunted heaviness remains. But things are overall at least equally dreamy...dreamy and layered and melodically mathy, with post rock dynamics that dip into quiet, relaxed territory as much as they charge into heavy rock battle. Track four, for instance, is ALL gentle acoustic string-strum, with hints also of glitchy electronic crackle. We were prepared for this by their warm-up ep March Into The Sea (the title track of which is reprised here in edited form) wherein those acoustic guitars were added to Pelican's sonic palette. Pelican's vast, riff-ravaged landscape now has little lovely flowers growing, and expands to even further horizons. Funnily enough, "March Into The Sea" itself also offers some of the most metal (fast, furious) passages on here. Whatever you call it, the music of Pelican is (and always has been) totally mesmerizing and epic. Even if this album makes us think that it's almost like Pelican are turning into Kinski. Who aren't metal even though they are sometimes quite heavy. And who we also like a lot after all.
Ok, enough about all this post rock vs. metal stuff (though we will say that the presence of an extensive "thanks" list argues for Pelican indeed being a metal band at heart). What's important is that anyone into massive sonics of riff-shifting symphonic complexity OR blissful simplicity, should bow down to the juggernaut genius of Pelican's lastest opus...now that sounds fairly metal, don't it? Mention should also be made of the really quite lovely cd packaging here -- the cd booklet's got a translucent vellum cover and some cool interior artwork. Recommended!
Joe Pernice teeters frightfully close to easy listening territory on his band's latest studio album. The recent trend of finely crafted '70s soft rock revivalism (y'know, stuff influenced by the likes of Bread and Raspberries) seems to have bitten Mr. Pernice's songwriting pen. There's even some weirdly affected eighties new wave-isms ala Tears For Fears or Echo And The Bunnymen (hinted at by some past cover song choices maybe?). When you compare this to older 'classic' Pernice Brothers, the hooks just aren't as immediate and plentiful, their former boyish heartsick sentiments replaced by a more 'grown-up' air. These new songs slip easily alongside the likes of likeminded veteran breezy pop artists such as Archer Prewitt and Sam Prekop. We've yet to determine if it really makes for a lovelier Pernice Brothers though... after absolutely love-love-lovin' them album after album, this one might take some getting used to. In the meantime if you're craving some more familiar Pernice-y sights and sounds, you might wanna check out their brand new Nobody's Listening Nobody's Watching live cd/dvd combo!
Over the years, there have been plenty of records that have become AQ hallmarks, the Conet Project, a quadruple disc of short wave spy transmissions, The Ghost Orchid, EVP recordings of the voices of long lost loved ones as intercepted via radio waves, the Thai Elephant Orchstra, a real live elephant gamelan, and of course Laddio Bolocko, a rock group that made the most beautiful white hot, black hole noise we had ever heard, a seriously jaw dropping blast of superdistorted, ultra complex, psychedelic prog rock freak out. When LB disbanded, half the band went on to form Electric Turn To Me, a curious neo-cabaret act complete with icy campy female vocals and a sort of new wave Krautrock sound. Definitely interesting but not at all what we were hoping for from a post LB outfit. So along comes The Psychic Paramount, featuring the -other- half of Laddio Bolocko, guitarist and bassist Drew St. Ivany and Ben Armstrong, joined by the drummer from Sabers, and it is EVERYTHING we could have hoped for and more. It's like they took Laddio Bolocko and just smashed it to bits, reassembling all the parts into a gorgeously Frankesteinian blown out, fuzzed out psych rock, bizarre and beautiful, chaotic and always on the verge of falling apart. The record starts off with almost three minutes of dreamy, noisy, backwards psychedelic bliss out, equal parts My Bloody Valentine and Teenage Filmstars, keening hyperdistorted guitars, dreamy sunsoaked melodies, that awesome percussive fthhhhp sound of backwards drumming, all in supercharged splattery Technicolor swirl. The rest of the record is some sort of outerspace Krautrock, where the order of the day is still hypnotic and motorik, but this is not Neu! or Faust, not unless you took those guys, lit them on fire and launched them into space! Guitars careen and wail and keen and shriek, slipping fluidly from gorgeous melodic runs to full on fiery freakouts, all over a thick snarled bed of throbbing serpentine bass and ultra distorted drums (recorded so hot that every hit sends the needle even MORE into the red). This is like an indie rock Last Exit, or a more freaked out metallic This Heat. It's not just noise and pummel though, these are killer songs, the guitar parts especially, not only are they so complex and confusional they make you think this band must have at least three guitarists to whip up this sort of squall, but they are totally hook laden, which they sort of have to be as The Psychic Paramount are all instrumental. You'll totally find yourself anticipating certain riffs and licks, like you would your favorite line in a normal song. This record effortlessly steps all over pretty much every record in its path, it's not metal but manages to be way heavier than half the metal we hear, it's not really prog, but it's so much more complex and, well, progressive than nearly ANYTHING we've heard, and on top of everything, it's totally catchy, and noisy, and weird. It's really weird. Lots of that is just the sound of the record. In fact the recording is as important as the drums or the guitar or the bass. Ultra blown out, drenched in organic fuzz and room noise, super hot and in your face, with occasional tape drop outs and natural reverb and recording level abuse that adds a whole 'nother layer to the already dense sounds herein. The record finishes off with a completely confounding, but totally killer one two punch. "X-Visitations" is a ten minute free noise dirge, equal parts, SUNNO)))-like rumble and Sunroof!-like shimmer, that just sort of slithers and vibrates. The final track, "Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural", starts off as a jazzy shuffle, building slowly in intensity and distortion, until it's a roiling relentlessly propulsive pummel, before it just cuts out suddenly, only to burst back into motion after an entire minute of silence! So awesome.
The first thing we thought when we heard this was, how the hell do these guys do this without cracking up?? Here's the setup: Tom Scharpling is a DJ on WFMU and takes calls from listeners. Ocassionally one of those callers will be Jon Wurster (Superchunk drummer!), portraying any one of a number of annoying characters and the comedy genius that ensues is, well, GENIUS!
The first track is Hippy Johnny, where Wurster calls up as Hippy Johnny and proceeds to discuss his commune where the men make art and the women make dinner, dressed in fur bikinis, and the children manufacture drain cleaner and other not-so-natural products. It's kind of a twisted Tom's of Maine idea. The funny part is how disgusted Scharpling becomes over the course of the 20 minute call, eventually giving up, exasperated and disgusted. The second call is a Wuster again as a guy who apparently used to be in the little kid punk rock band Old Skull, concerning their REUNION tour. An idea that's ridiculous enough to begin with. As the call progresses, we learn that he was only in the band briefly, none of the main members are involved, and a quick sample of their new music displays a drastic new shift in musical direction. Which of course has Scharpling hysterical. Hard to explain how funny this stuff if, you should definitely listen to the sound samples and know that when we play this in the store, everyone freezes, stops what they're doing and listens intently until everyone in the store seems to be laughing uproariously. The rest of the calls involve a cowoker and his nefarious plans for Tom, a phone call from a two inch tall racist, Gene Simmons' rock and roll car dealership and an epic, brutally funny and painful to listen to call from a guy known simply as Kid eBay. From the same guys who brought us the brilliant Rock, Rot And Rule, Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin, and New Hope For The Ape-Eared. So highly recommended!!!!!
