NOW ON VINYL!! What we said about this great Melvins album when it came out on cd last year on Ipecac:
Folks have been chomping at the bit for months since it was first announced that the kings of sludgy goofy heaviness were to team up with the master of creepy, sinister ambience. And we do mean 'team up' as in write and record together, not a split record or anything like that, a good ol' collaboration! So here it is. The first track is a creepy slithering dark snippet of sound, super minimal and slowly shifting. So much as we thought, the only way these two behemoths of the underground could cooperate and have it work would be for it to be a drone record. Well the second track blows that theory out of the water. A wickedly fierce, super dynamic barn burner, with a KILLER riff, and some spooky drone-y breakdowns complete with a haunting little melody played on the strings above the neck, and then some serious shredding leads. Maybe the best Melvins song in forever!! But what excatly is Lustmord doing while the Melvins rock? Maybe he strapped on a guitar and joined in the riffing. Or more likely, he supplied the track with all of its weird little sounds and murky background noises. Either way, who cares? It's an incredible track. The next track is a weird tribal workout done Melvins style, with exotic tribal percussion over rumbly drones and distorted guitars providing the melodies. Sounding not unlike a way heavier Muslimgauze! The centerpiece of the record though has to be the 20+ minute title track which sounds like the perfect hybridization of the two bands. Massive slow rolling drones slip and slide through clouds of machine like whirs and muffled outer space sounds, distant clatter and swirling sonic splatter. Eventually the guitars roll in like a huge crushing wave of sound, very Earth-like before it slowly develops into another killer riff, repeated over and over and over, bombarded on all sides by strange effects, swooping chunks of sound and strange, clipped 'almost-vocals' before trailing off into a slowly decaying barely there minimal hum. The rest of the record sort of seesaws back and forth between pounding and churning classic Melvins style sort-of-metal riffing, and really haunting otherworldly minimal dronescapes. VERY reminiscent of Old Man Gloom's drone / dirge combo. But hey, you can't argue with more drone or more dirge or more sludge or more Melvins or more Lustmord. Not at all. When all is said and done, Pigs Of The Roman Empire sounds like someone took a really great Melvins record, and a really great Lustmord record, and sort of chopped them up, and mixed and matched and made the perfect hybrid of the two. Which when you think about it is pretty awesome. We've thought of doing that all the time. Earth and George Winston, Bjork and Thuja, Squarepusher and Jandek, Motorhead and PJ Harvey, A Minor Forest and Keiji Haino (well that one's mainly to piss Andee off), and the list goes on and on and on.
We sure do love MF Doom. That laconic, tongue twisting, marble mouthed drawl, and the dense cartoonish hip hop-scapes he flows over. So so good. Here's a live forty minute set (frustratingly tracked as a single song) to hold you over until the next full length. All the hits are here, lots of between song banter, some crooning. Sounds as good as the record, if a little sloppy and fucked up. In fact Doom sounds a bit out of it, a little wasted maybe? But somehow it only seems to make everything sound better, Doom's flow is even more slippery and confusional, tripping gleefully over all the unlikely samples and the chopped up loops. Doooooooom!!!!!!!!!!!
This debut from Moggs has caused some confusion around here lately. Sorta in a similar way that Fucking Champs' III album did a whiles back (on which they called themselves "C4AMP5"), on the spine of this cd the band's name looks like "TNO995". Not only that, but the high contrast cover photo and the album title brewed up anticipations of hip San Diego post-punkers (some of the most white belt wearin' kids around) coming together with electro-clashers (some of the most tinted sunglass wearin' kids around). However, these expectations were for the most part washed away once the cd was heard. So, now that we've set those obstacles aside, let's get on to the music. A four year long labor of love, the completely self-produced Moggs' album is actually quite a melting pot. That said, the dominant sound is a Rob Crow meets Sonic Youth amalgamation of pop smarts and flights of guitar distortion. Cool!
Strange sonic document from two mysterious Californian musicians / sonic technicians, Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff. Seven pieces utilizing hurdy gurdy, harmonica, melodica, organ and piano. Abstract wheezing soundscapes of thick chordal exhalations, stretched into swirly drones over creepy pointilist piano, dense with overtones and drenched in reverb. A tranquil, drowsy drift that builds into Argento style horror movie music freakouts, before drifting off again into clouds of mournful tinkling chimes over strangely tuned pianos and strangely reverberating whirs and thrums. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Another gorgeously abstract sonic outing from the duo of Ilya Monosov and Preston Swirnoff. Side one finds the two exploring similar sounds as on their first lp, utilizing bowed guitars, tape loops and air organ, weaving a lush and organic sounding harmonic soundworld, warm and rich, multi-layered and strangely melodic, soothing and dreamy and languidly stretched out into a smokey blur. Side two finds the duo in their psych rock group The Shining Path, employing guitar and electric organ, and unleashing a throbbing low end, over which is splattered freaked out chaos guitar, huge slabs of atonal psychrock skree and screeched and howled vocals way off in the distance. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Sound the trumpets (hey, there is one on this album!), the third album from Vancouver's New Pornographers has arrived and it's nothing short of glorious! If you're even remotely familiar with us here at AQ, you know that we've championed this pop wunderkind since the very beginning (and maybe it can be said, even before that if you count our affection for their predecessor Zumpano). We celebrate the fact that their debut album Mass Romantic was an instant unanimous hit around these parts long before practically anywhere else (even prior to much of their homeland catchin' on!). Of course these days everyone is more than familiar with these guys' pop songwriting mighty might. Heck, they can't help but know it themselves, however they haven't just rested on their laurels nor have they gotten too clever for their own good. They remain steadfastly earnest and humble in the ways only Canadians can truly be (just check out that dorkier-than-dorky guitar 'solo' on the album's opener and title track... it's a hoot!).
Whereas Mass Romantic was a millennium freak of nature in its wall-to-wall power pop fireworks -- c'mon, the kind of spontaneous, unabashed puppy-dog romp bursting from songs like "Letter From An Occupant" can't be planned nor easily replicated -- 2003's Electric Version proved to be more of a grow-on-you kind of album. Slightly clouded by self-awareness and the pressure of elevated expectations, its hooks and charms weren't as immediate, but eventually that album put some solid roots down in our hearts too. So needless to say we were eagerly anticipating album number 3. And after just a couple of listens (who are we kidding? we've been playing it non-stop!), we can say that Twin Cinema nestles itself right in between. Having hurdled past the sophomore jinx obstacles and having numerous individual projects under their belts in the interim, the seven band members have once again reconvened with a remarkable effortlessness and consistency. We'd dare proclaim that the album even betters on both of its predecessors in certain aspects.
All the usual New Pornographers are present and accounted for. Tossing his delightful eccentricities into the mix, the elusive Dan Bejar surfaces for his sporadic appearances singing tales about his mysterious "Jackie" character once again. Carl Newman and Bejar can both be downright cryptic and non-sequitur-ish in the lyric department, but that certainly doesn't prevent you from gleefully singing along to lines like "Listenin' too long to one song, sing me Spanish Techno!" (wha'? huh?). If anything these peculiarities offer a neat contrast to their comparatively straight-forward guitar and piano leads. That said, they have stretched their creative limbs a little further adding nice touches like the dizzying vocal loops in "Falling Through Your Clothes", the cascading line from the abovementioned trumpet in "Stacked Crooked" and the even more effecting multi-part vocals that grace every song. Speaking of which, everyone's vocal performances are top notch with more full-on falsetto all around. Hurrah!
There's lots of fan-pleasing moments such as on the fourth song "The Bleeding Heart Show" which winds up with a big ol' chorus of "hey-la! hey-la!"s that's pushed over the top by an outtro counter-melody sung by noneother than Ms Neko Case. Definitely an album highlight, that tune has an air of sentimentality that feels like it was written specifically for a 'driving out of town' scene in a movie. Actually it was this song that was playing when our now-former co-worker (and major NP fanatic) Byram said his final farewell to the shop. Awww. Of course, if he hadn't left, it would rightfully be him writing this review, but we'll do our best in his absence. Anyways, we should let you know that this time around not all of the female vocal parts were sung by Neko Case, but don't get yourself in a panic! She does sing a whole bunch, but two other young ladies' sweet voices chime in as well -- one of them is Ms Nora O'Connor and the other is Carl Newman's long-lost niece Kathryn Calder (of their Mint Records labelmates The Immaculate Machine). And y'know what? You might have a hard time figuring out who's singing what 'cause despite each singer having distinct, seemingly recognizable voices, they all melt together into a single New Pornographers voice.
But back on the subject of Twin Cinema as a whole, it effectively strikes a balance of exuberantly vibrant hues and darker bittersweet shades. Indeed, there's an undercurrent of wistfulness (not quite heavy nor somber enough to be called melancholic) that runs throughout the fourteen songs, however it certainly doesn't dampen any spirits. Whereas Electric Version didn't have many instantly ass-kickin' pop anthems, Twin Cinema sure as hell does. They expertly cover the full palette of tempo and mood, serving up their trademark hooks all along the way. Whereas other band would/could muster one hook per song, Newman and Co. generously pack each song with numerous pop treats. Taking into consideration just how high they set the bar with their last two albums, not to mention how high fan and critic expectations probably are at this point, Twin Cinema is arguably the band's most polished and fully realized work to date. These Canucks have scored a hat trick!
Who would have thought that the man behind the club destroying thud rock of now defunct Pink And Brown, the sweaty, hyper chaotic garage stomp of the also now defunt Coachwhips, the minimal metallic crush of the long buried Dig That Body Up It's Alive and the no longer with us hardcore faux-homo-house of Zeigenbock Kopf actually had a soft and sensitive side?? Well, he does, and has chosen to drop all the above mentione musical endeavors to focus all of his musical energy on the mysteriously monickered OCS.
The ubiquitous John Dwyer, for it is he, offers up two discs of home recorded madness, culled from random tapes/performances over the past couple of years, and damn if this isn't an unexpected surprise. Vascillating wildy between introspective, spaced out downer folk and gritty, hissing free noise crunch, OCS is a massive and unpredicatable ride through one man's damaged musical psyche.
Disc One, 34 Reasons Why Life Goes On Without You, or the "acoustic disc" as we like to call it, is made up mostly of solo guitar, recorded in random locations around San Francisco, so the gentle strumming and dexterous fingerpicking is often barely obscuring passing cars, slamming doors, hollered instructions to other players, and noisy housemates, adding another sonic layer to the already thick brew. Think: a seriously fucked up Fahey, armed with a four track, a casio, and an old beat up guitar. Think: an old Folkways 45 being played on a Fisher Price turntable and run through a bank of cheap effects. Gorgeous and shambolic, meandering and lovely, dark and unpredictable. The acoustic passages are constantly doing battle with an array of sonic intrusions, random snippets of found sound, bursts of angry buzz, tape drop out, random ambient happenings, malfunctioning casios, and distorted crooning. Mysteriously compelling.
Disc two, 18 Reasons To Love Your Hater To Death, or the "noise disc" as we like to call it, is a much more challenging affair, channelling the spirts of Borbetamagus, Skullflower, Albert Ayler, Throbbing Gristle and 100 years of NOISE into a shifting sonic noisescape of harsh squealing feedback, gorgeously gauzy and shimmery drones, ear piercing sine waves, distorted low end rumbles, huge washes of effected guitars, rhythmic pulses, darkly muted ambience, subtle barely-there melodies, inhuman vocalisations, massive Merzbow-ian walls of pummel, hyper minimal music concrete, alien lullabies and dreamy stretches of stygian gloom punctuated by bursts of hiss and hum. Intensely beautiful and challenging.
Ah, the many moods of John Dwyer, stepping outside the realm of costume rock and drunken swagger to lay bare a sensitive, if still sometimes quite noisy, soul.
Folks around these parts (including us) have been freaking out over the gorgeous post-Fahey, neo-Appalachian guitar playing of Jack Rose, whose last few records have been massive AQ faves and whose dark and droning, delicate fingerpicked guitar work had us completely mesmerized from the first time we heard it. Makes it easy to forget sometimes that Rose has been making music for years with his equally talented bandmates as Pelt, a group that conjures up extended instrumental ragas, expansive pusling suites of drone and shimmer, from all manner of bowed strings, bowed metal, hurdy gurdy, sundry Eastern instruments, and simple percussion as well as more traditional instruments like guitar and cello albeit utilized in highly unconventional ways. Makes sense in a way, as Rose's solo guitar is definitely informed by his years exploring the extended drone in Pelt. This new Pelt record, featuring a slightly expanded lineup, continues their quest to discover the heart of the drone, nirvana attained by never ending sound, sonic ripples that pulse and reverberate into infinity, a lovely and mind blowing musical head trip. The first track is a static shimmer, a swirling keening drone, that unlike much drone music, is not at all simple, instead it is a lush and multi layered wash of minor key melodies, stretched and smeared into a slightly ominous, almost cinematic extended dirge, intense and gorgeously imbued with all sorts of feeling and emotion, not often found in experimental minimalist musicks. The second track features Rose's immediately recognizable steel string guitar, which is soon disrupted by creaking streaks of sound and eventually overtaken by a thick fog of moaning cellos, morphing from an Eastern-tinged raga, to a throbbing fuzzed out drone, and eventually settling into a spare ramshackle soundscape of creaks and clatter. Track three is classic Ur-drone, not all that dissimilar to Sunroof! or Total or Vibracathedral orchestra, a cloud of keening high end skree cobbled together from percussive overtones, bowed metal, and ringing harmonics. The final track is a brief splatter of madly sawed cellos, creaking and squeaking strings and random splattery percussion, almost a musical version of 'shaking it off', sort of decompressing after nearly an hour of intense spiritual musicality. All you cd-r hounds / drone-heads that slobber all over everything Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Celebrate Psi and the like should definitely explore the magical mystical world of Pelt.
If the name Pernice Brothers brings a tear of joy to your eye, we're telling you everything's gonna be alright... once you get your hands on Nobody's Watching Nobody's Listening, that is! For those of you who've yet to bask in the glow of Joe Pernice and Co.'s fabulous pop glory in the live setting, we s'pose this might be the next best thing. Not only do you get a live album packed with twelve of their finest songs, but you also get a dvd featuring a tour diary and two of their music videos complete with storyboards. The live album begins all rambunctious with lots of speedy, loud, rockin' guitars and gets progressively more somber. Our only complaint would be that the vocals are a bit low in the mix. Who doesn't want to hear more of Pernice's sweet, engagingly heartsick singing? Having just read his fictional ode to The Smiths' Meat Is Murder album in the 33 1/3 book series, we were particularly aware of his appreciation for (obsession with?) that band and their lead singer, and it does make itself apparent on occasion here. Shades of Morrissey's melodramatic mope surface in Pernice's lyrics and in his vocal delivery. Not a bad thing by any means. Everybody watch! Everybody listen!
Self described as 'industrial doom', the French outfit known as P.H.O.B.O.S. take the industrial pummel and clattery chaos of classic Godflesh, the serpentine song structures of Voivod and the grim grating brutality of the most bizarre black metal, and wind it all into a dense, hateful, slow motion black hole beast, plodding and pounding mercilessly, like some sort of unstoppable behemoth, crushing everything in its path, sucking life, spitting fire, spewing jagged shards of metallic blackness. The sound of a million monstrous jackboots, marching endlessly toward some unspeakably bleak final destination. The stretched out feedback soaked abstract doom of Khanate, given an industrial makeover, throbbing Teutonic rhythms, never even coming close to midtempo, instead pounding out impossibly slow rhythms, the whole thing wrapped in white hot sheets of feedback, and churning tarpit riffage, with the occasional melody tossed in, surviving only briefly, like a cow thrown into a river full of pirahnna, the whole thing exploding in a churning, bloody froth before settling back into the relentless machine like crush. And despite all that brutality, it's also amazingly hypnotic and listenable, with some of the beauty of the post-Godflesh outfit Jesu wethinks.
Originally released on the Appease Me label, run by Phobos' French metal brethren Blut Aus Nord.
Joining the likes of AQ fave M-bands Mogwai, M83, and Magyar Posse (and they've also even been compared to a few S-artists Ulrich Schnauss, Stafraenn Hakon and Sigur Ros), This Italian group ever so gallantly and gracefully toss their finely crafted musical hat into the ever-expanding global atmospheric postrock arena. Port-Royal's sprawling 78-minute long Flares is a soft, hazy blissed-out dream of an album filled with shimmery ambient washes of glacial guitars peppered with occasional wisps of electronics and samples. Each and every time we've played this in the store, it draws many enthused queries. Really really calming and really really pretty. Positively sigh-inducing.
The Bass (Chuck D). The Treble (Flavor Flav). The Bomb Squad bringin' the Noise. The Big Clocks. And, of course, the ground-breaking, revolutionary social-political message. If you're not thinking Public Enemy, where were you in the late '80s/early '90s?? Where are you now? PE were definitely one of the most radical, innovative, and entertaining hip hop groups EVER. Musically *and* politically. But if we have to tell you that...well, you should probably get this album immediately. It's disc of greatest hits (not to be confused with an album the already did called Greatest Misses). There's 18 tracks here and you absolutely can't go wrong with almost all of 'em. You get two cuts from Yo! Bum Rush The Show (1987), five from It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back (1988), five from Fear Of A Black Planet (1990), and three from Apocalpyse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black (1991). Plus one from Greatest Misses (1992), one from Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age (1994), and one from the He Got Game soundtrack (1998). So it's mostly classic-era PE, with nothing to worry about from later albums like There's A Poison Going On or Revolverlution. Definitely a nice mix, and a good introduction to these rap masters, complete with Liner notes from Harry Allen and Adam Yauch. Though, honestly, you really should have all their first three or four albums in your collection in their entirety!!
You know something is fishy when limited cd-r's start getting reissued as... LIMITED CD-R'S!!! What the heck?! Once makes sense, nothing wrong with a limited cd-r, but reissuing an out of print cd-r on cd-r AGAIN just makes us wonder why the heck it wasn't a real cd in the first place. Especially if it's so good that it requires multiple reissues. That said, at least we can be thankful that this gorgeous gem is still available at all. Originally released in 2004 on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label Jozepha is a practically perfect suite of songs, glistening and delicate, sweet and melancholy, steel string acoustic guitars, simple slide, even some subtle harmonica, lovely melodies drifting and intertwining, meandering lazily, soft sunlight filtered through the leaves and branches overhead, a cool breeze. A little bit country, a little bit pop, but mostly a totally timeless, dreamy instrumental journey with no particular destination, just floating along like big soft clouds, warm chords swirling like autumn leaves, simple melodies, dropping one note at a time, like raindrops on a sunny day. Quite possibly the sweetest, dreamiest, driftiest, swooniest record we've heard in ages. And frustratingly, this is again EXTREMELY LIMITED. Comes packaged quite smartly in an exquisitely embroidered sleeve!
You gotta love Tom Recchion. What a totally unique and idiosyncratic music maker. One of the founding members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, Recchion takes his music quite seriously, but seems to have an incredibly goofy sense of humor, that most definitely informs his music, but without turing everything into a joke. Recchion's music is fun and playful, goofy and garrulous but at the same time just a little bit dark and creepy. I Love My Organ, even though it's only being officially released now, was actually recorded in the mid eighties (with some more recent remixing and a couple contributions from David Toop!), and is a dizzying hodge-podge of carnivalesque lounge music, bleeping blooping exotica, dreamy droning Krautrock style ambience and all sorts of abstract synthesized sounds, weird throbbing rumbles, ping pong like minimal percussion, goofy Wooly Bully meets Benny Hill horns and some sublimely gorgeous droney shimmer and chordal drift. A look in the booklet offers up more of Recchion's bizarre musical and non musical world view, songs dedicated to Terry Riley, Ferrante And Teicher, Brian Eno, William Basinski, even Jad Fair, a list of ten easy to make sound effects, complete with the items you'll need and directions to follow, and then quotes from Mr. Rogers and Herman Munster! Not many folks can balance the silly with the serious, at least not without one or the other being robbed of its effectiveness, but Recchion manages quite nicely. A truly weird and wonderful record.
A few lists back we raved wildly about a long lost Sub Pop artifact, a record called Broc's Cabin, from a relatively unknown Floridian rock combo called Rein Sanction. A record that got lost in the grunge rock shuffle of the early nineties, being overshadowed by groups like Soundgarden and Mudhoney and of course Nirvana. Broc's Cabin was a gorgeously depressive dirge rock gem, a minor key swirl of fuzzy serpentine riffs and drawled Neil Young like vocals, the whole thing doused in cough syrup and dirty swamp water. One of our all time favorite Sub Pop records EVER. But several different things can happen to a band after they put their heart and soul and sweat and blood into a record, only to find it forgotten and ignored and totally misunderstood. They can hang it up, give up the ghost, move on to other things. They can change dramatically, caving into the desire to be popular, turning their unique idiosyncratic music into something new and shiny, the sound that 'regular' people want to hear. Or they can seethe and scowl and marinate in anger and bitterness, loneliness and sadness, and they can make another record, taking their already dark and depressive sound and plunging even further into the bleak blackened recesses of their musical soul. And that's precisely what Mariposa is. A gorgeously bleak and bitter, minor key missive, a sludgy and weirdly melodic, ultra personal final will and testament. Present still are the strangely slippery riffs, Hendrixian waves of fuzzed out distortion, slithering and churning into dense knots of warm warbly melancholia, pounding tribal drumming, and pulsing subterranean basslines, weaving in and out of the tangled riffscapes. But the vocals are much more of a focal point this time around, imbued with misery and sadness, somewhere between a mournful croon and a lonely moan, not quite melodic, a bit atonal, but with just the right measure of hopelessness that they fit perfectly into Mariposa's swooning saddened soundscapes of grungy jangle and fuzzy thud. The sounds on Mariposa are also a bit more varied, incorporating lots of acoustic guitar, swooping backwards melodies, even some horns. But as a whole, this is one of those rare records, that literally makes you sad, gives you chills, makes you want to turn off all the lights, drink yourself into a stupor and turn the stereo up as loud as it'll go, figuring you might not wake up in the morning anyway. You can feel the darkness coming out of the speakers like a fog, it's almost palpable, almost like the band were playing for their lives, a desperate attempt to keep the devil at bay, a music rife with broken dreams and broken hearts, towns boarded up and long abandoned, souls aimless and adrift. But that sort of darkness and misery is the only thing that is capable of spawning music this beautiful, music that is lovely on the inside, it's not shiny or sparkly, sitting ignored on the side of the road for ages, cracked and covered in dust, but every song is suffused with a warm, barely there glow, barely visible through each song's twisting squirming crown of thorns, every cobwebbed tendril and rusty joint humming with hope, trembling with a hidden lust for life, dreams of what still might be, a light that never burns out, even when the music finally does.
We definitely don't always know everything there is to know about dub (especially now that Byram, our dub expert, has left us), you know, the studios, the players, the history, but heck, we do know what we like, and what we like most is that spaced out, blissed out, reverb drenched dub, just dripping in delay, every snare hit skittering into infinity, all over huge warm throbbing basslines, with simple guitar melodies surfacing here and there before dipping back under the swirl of burbling bass and echoing rhythms. Barely any vocals, but when vocals do appear, they are immediately chopped up and sent spinning into a celestial echo chamber, along with those reverberating snare hits. Occasional horns too, even flutes, all warm and wrapped in a gauzy studio haze, lurking dreamily beneath the dubbed out skeleton of each song. So good! The Revolutionaries (featuring Sly Dunbar on drums) were the Channel One house band, and had played on just about every great reggae and dub record you can think of. For Earthquake Dub, Ossie Hibbert, arranger and session boss for Channel One and Joe Gibbs, manned the board, smearing those perfect reggae rhythms into gloriously dubbed out bliss! This is the first release on relatively new reggae / dub reissue label Hot Pot, and features liner notes as well as plenty of info on each track.
What are the odds of two different bands picking the same name? Pretty good we'd imagine, but what if that name was Nagelfar? A bit more unlikely we think. So you've got two metal bands, both calling themselves Nagelfar (each spelled slightly differently, one with an E, one without), we obviously just assumed that Nagelfar must be from Lord of The Rings, but as far as we can tell, it's not. In fact, a brief Google search tells us that Nagelfar is either german for enamel, or finger nail polish, or slang for having sex ("to fix with a nail", huh?) Anyway, we're getting off track. Of the two Nagelfar's, we were always partial to the one with the E (the 'good' Nagelfar, not to be confused with the Swedish E-less Naglfar), a German black metal horde responsible for one of the best BM records ever, Virus West. With the dissolution of Nagelfar came the formation of the even more mysterious Ruins Of Beverast and their self described "opressive black metal". Oppressive indeed, but most certainly depressive as well. And while this may indeed be black metal, it's as doomy as it is black, and as ambient as it is doomy. There's only a few tracks that are full on blazing buzzing black metal, and those most definitely sound quite a bit like Virus West, but the majority of Unlock The Shrine is slow and dirgey, droney and dark, midtempo Burzumic buzz, fuzzed out riffs over plodding sea sick rhythms, everything wrapped in swirling swaths of thick keyboard, all twisted into some strangely off kilter, relentlessly propulsive black metal dronerock. But that's just the basic framework, every song is rife with weird little elements, unlikely and very un- black metal sonic weirdness. A ridiculously catchy guitar melody dropped into a fierce black metal dirge, drifting abstract soundscapes punctuated by ominous almost cartoonish piano, industrial percussion and howling winds, even what sounds like gunshots and car alarms. All struggling in a churning sea of howling pounding guitar fuzz and suffocating blackened ambience. So gloriously bleak and beautifully miserable.
Y'know how there's been a lot of folks doin' the "American Primitive" solo acoustic guitar thing lately, all of them inspired to one degree or another by the late great John Fahey and the other denizens of Fahey's Takoma Records label? Folks like Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Ben "Six Organs Of Admittance" Chasny, Patrick "Langtry" McKinney, Sir Richard Bishop... the list goes on and on and we're happy to add another name: Charlie Schmidt. But Charlie Schmidt has greater claim than most to the "fake Fahey" tag: not only was he was a friend of Fahey's (or maybe even, we should say, a protege), but some of his own recorded compositions meant for a collaborative album with Fahey wound up being mistaken for actual Fahey performances and were included as previously unreleased tracks on the Best Of John Fahey Vol. 2 album released after Fahey's death! Whoops. When the producers of such an anthology can be unintentionally fooled like that, you've gotta belive that this Schmidt fella sounds a heckuva lot like genuine Fahey. And that's no bad thing, is it? Not at all. So for fans of Fahey and Fahey-like steel string guitar explorations, Schmidt's debut cd Xanthe Terra is quite recommended. Not surprisingly, this disc is dedicated to John Fahey, but it's also dedicated to the scientists and engineers of the Mars Exploration Rover Project, as Mars exploration is a big interest of, and influence on, Mr. Schmidt. Xanthe Terra is the name of an area on Mars, in fact. And this record is Schmidt's idea of a soundtrack to accompany a mind's-eye hike on the surface of Mars! Includes one Fahey cover tune ("Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Palace Of King Philip XIV Of Spain") and a dozen Faheyesque originals, technically graceful and sweetly melancholic. A relaxingly familiar sound with intricacies that ultimately belong to Charlie Schmidt, as watched over by the benevolent ghost of JF.
Believe it or not, one of our fave albums and all-time best sellers, Josh "DJ Shadow" Davis' seminal Endtroducing debut, currently only has a one-word review on our website. Certainly it deserves more than that. Although, at least the word we chose is "amazing". The album's original release on MoWax in 1996 (almost ten years ago!!) more or less predated our obsessive reviewing schedule, so like quite a few other classics it never got its multi-paragraph due on our new arrivals list. And chances are, we figured that listing it our our site with the simple "amazing" recommendation was enough, 'cause it's hard to imagine that everyone hadn't heard of/heard/bought a copy by now. But since, after all, we still sell it steadily, clearly there must be those as yet to discover it. Now, with the release of a double disc digipack "deluxe" edition in a plastic slipcase (a treatment afforded by the same label to the likes of John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, by the way, making this something of an honor for DJ Shadow!), we have the perfect excuse to basically take a few hundred words to say "amazing" again! Shadow's masterpiece (disc one, "The Album") is a brillant example of hip hop DJ-as-composer, sample-based songwriting, a mostly instrumental suite of songs built entirely from sounds, hooks and grooves sourced from the depths of Shadow's extensive record collection. He didn't invent the idea, of course, but he did do it better than almost anyone before (or after!) him, garnering for himself worldwide fame and heaps of deserved critical praise.
And even if you scratch (heh) your head when we talk about turntablists and sampling, rest assured that, process aside, this is a great album that transcends genre tags and easy categorization. It's dark, dramatic, bright, hip-hop, soul, and jazz. It is very accessible. Shadow picked cool samples (like the Pugh Rogefeldt bit that helped us sell a ton of reissued cds by that particular Swedish '60s psych-folkster so recently) AND also turned these samples utterly into his own, new music. Music that's groovy and moody and challenging, never all that easy to figure out, and not at all about turntablist hi-jinx or trickery, just about careful listening and the love of all kinds of old LPs!! Cut Chemist, in the liner notes, is quoted as calling DJ Shadow "The King Of Digging" and vinyl collecting/crate digging for sure is celebrated by Endtroducing, from the famous cover shot of the racks in the vast Sacramento shop simply called Records to the grooves reborn within. As Shadow himself put it: "this album reflects a lifetime of vinyl culture". He never topped it (opinions here were mixed about his many-years-later follow-up The Private Press in 2002) and probably never will. Not that anyone else has either! So if you don't have it already, what the heck are you waiting for? And to further underscore the point that this a great and important album, we're told that there's a book in the 33 1/3 Series coming out about it soon too!
Then there's disc two, what (aside from the packaging, which includes a booket of photos, essays, and track notes from Shadow himself) makes this a "deluxe" reissue. Disc two, entitled "Excessive Ephemera", features a slew of Endtroducing-era cuts -- alternate takes, demos, remixes, and a live radio performance. In addition to a few tracks that made it out on now-out-of-print MoWax singles, a bunch of these are unheard-before, work-in-progress versions of tracks from the album, so as bonus material this is more about providing insight into the creation of Endtroducing and less about any long-lost tracks that shoulda been on the album. It is kind of a way to listen to Endtroducing again with new ears. And it's nice to have the "extended overhaul" of the all-too-brief album track "Organ Donor", a mix that Shadow created expressly for James Lavelle's DJ use. So, a lot of added value for all Shadow fans who want to pick this up again and re-enter the world of Entroducing.
Amazing.
Super limited live double cd, only available from the band, the label's website, and us!! Recorded live in 2004 at the Gothic Theater in Denver at a show celebrating the release of their latest record The Bloody Tenent Truth Peace, this is two full hours of wild and rambunctious, catchy and creepy country swamp rock revival, featuring tracks from all the Slim Cessna records as well as a couple of brand new tracks! For those of you new to Slim Cessna imagine some bastard mix of the Old 97's, Sixteen Horsepower, Uncle Tupelo and X, all whipped up into a hillbilly punk rock swamp folk country dirge din! Super clever, funny lyrics (think the Decemberists with a more backwoods bent) delivered with the fervor of a preacher testifying in a moth eaten tent sent up in a field in some God forsaken backwater, while the band whips up a furious bluegrass hoedown, moody and melancholy, replete with lap steel and banjo, all flecked with punk rock fury, and even the occasional country yodel! This is just the sort of rare and glorious show you can't even remember the next day, the only hints being your sweat soaked, mud caked clothes, your bruised and battered body, your black eye and split lip, the fact that you're laying on the floor in a pool of stale beer, vomit, moist sawdust and broken barstools, you smell of being bodily dipped into a vat of grain alcohol, there's lipstick all over you face and collar, and your ears are ringing so loudly you can barely think straight. So fucking awesome!
While Glasgow Scotland has certainly birthed a plethora of soft twee pop bands, the city also has a darker, more festering side as is exemplified in the musical clan known as Sons And Daughters (who happen to include David Gow and Adele Bethel of Arab Strap). Their fiery urgency brings to mind a less inebriated Pogues (yeah, we know they're Irish) or a more murderous Clinic (yeah, we know they're British). You can almost spot the glint of a rough-hewn shiv in the folds of their thread bare cloaks. You'd best be keeping an eye on these folks! At times, they seem downright unstable. The Repulsion Box lures the listener back down the gloomy dank alleyway that the band frequented on their previous EP Love The Cup. If you dig music that keeps the unsettling flow of bile and vitriol at a constant boiling point, Sons And Daughters is definitely for you. Great!
Not to be confused with the ultra-trippy late-60's Latin American psychedelic rock group of the same name! These San Franciscans are a completely different band, but that's not to say you might not like these folks too. Those who've delighted in anything and everything graced with the wonderful presence of Ms Jolie Holland, and/or The Iron & The Albatross' Ara Anderson will surely wanna sit up and take note of this new cd. All of you more literary types too might wish to close your books for a spell and lend an ear to Yeats Is Great. In addition to those two Bay Area folksy luminaries, this is quite an impressive assembly of like-minded earthy artists joining together to sing, speak, strum, and otherswise celebrate the writings of Yeats.
The Spooky Dance Band were an offshoot of Belligham's legendary funereal garage folk blues outift The Reeks And The Wrecks. The tragic death of Reeks guitarist Orion Satushek ended several brief but gloriously productive musical collaborations. The Reeks were gone, leaving a recently finished album, released earlier this year on Andee's tUMULt label, as well as a record by the Spooky Dance Band a group that featured Orion, his Reeks bandmate Jason Sands and his good friend Caroline Buchalter. The Spooky Dance Band shares a lot of sonic similarities with the Reeks, a stumbling, basement recorded, home made vibe, sort of dusty and grimy, a ramshackle jubilance, and a totally infectious love of music making that came through in every note they played. But where the Reeks took folk and blues and garage rock and twisted those all up into a beautifully skronky lurch, the SDB take bouncy circus keyboards, gypsy folk and angular new wave and turn it into a lush and bouncy warm and warbly haunted house new wave dance party. Farfissa organs wash over moaning deadpan vocals, wild wah guitars balance atop woozy sea sick rhythms, Buchalter's viola spinning melancholy gypsy melodies over infectious angular new wave punk rock. There's even a couple of covers, truly creepy haunting versions of Brian Eno's "Baby's On FIre" And T. Rex's "Cosmic Dancer", all droned out and slightly atonal, giving them a super otherworldly vibe.
Comes packaged in a gorgeous gatefold, with lots of photos and some truly heartfelt liner notes from bandmates and friends. R.I.P. Orion...
Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland).
Volume 4 is from the December 12th 2004 show starring Dave Gleason's Wasted Days and Sweetbriar. You get nine songs from the former (including a great version of Gram Parsons' "A Song For You") and seven from the latter (ending with a fine medley of "The Wild Side Of Life" and "Honky Tonk Angels" originally by Hank Thompson and Kitty Wells respectively).
Tar Pet is the solo project of Miss Taralie Dawn, who you might know as a member of the Spires That In The Sunset Rise, and Tar Pet does indeed sound quite a bit like her group proper. Old timey piano, recorded all scratchy in a wash of reverb like some dusty old 78, mournful flutes and damaged atonal guitar, creaking scraping steel strings, buzzing frets, and all sorts of hiss and static. A fuzzy blissful ambient dream world of fractured folk and bedroom recorded psychfolk nursery rhymes, with Dawn's creepy, almost spoken vocals, occasionally building to a Diamanda Galas like wail, but more often groaned and whispered, barely a croak. Truly haunting and intense. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
ULTRA LIMITED, HAND SILKSCREENED lp from local post-drone-rock outift Tarentel. We've had the sonic good fortune of listening to Tarentel develop over the years from a Tortoise like post-rock ensemble to a truly risk taking experimental group, who wield a deft hand with catchy melodies and clever, complex song writing, but never shy away from taking big chances, experimenting with sound and sounds, leaning lately much more toward the abstract soundscape end of the spectrum, which of course we can't get enough of. From the opening track, a downright dreamy expanse of gentle piano, warm whooshing woodwinds and delicate acoustic guitars to the much darker and abrasive second track, a super distorted rumbling dronescape, swirling and churning around a shuffling jazzy rhythm and some creaking machine like melodies. The remaining seven tracks are a mix of the two, stretched out, blissed out smears of twinkling synths, and fluttery minimal percussion, all occasionally disrupted by big fuzzy spurts of distorted rumble and sunspot like flashes of digital glitchery. So gorgeous. And again, VERY LIMITED. Beautiful hand screened sleeves, strictly limited to 500 copies, not sure how many we'll be able to get!
Tarwater, the German postrock/electronica duo featuring a member of To Rococo Rot, has had their ups and downs with their fans here at AQ. If you look back at our reviews of their several previous albums you'll find some we rave about and some we pan. Their last full-length, Dwellers On The Threshold, got a rave. So does that mean that this new one, their first for new label Morr Music, is bound for the downswing? Or are they at last on a steady upward trajectory with us? Well if you're a fan by now you've probably made up your own mind 'cause this has been out for a little while now. But for what it's worth, we like this one. The unique Tarwater charm -- the combination of bloodless vocals and mellow beats and instrumental textures -- does it for us again. Relaxed, pretty, downtempo stuff for the most part. With the aid of various guests, Tarwater's Robert Lippok and Bernd Jestram have come up with 14 songs that (as always) blend "live" instruments and singing and electronics into a variety of melodic, moody soundscapes and low-key synthpop tunes. There are some more upbeat numbers with percolating rhythms but the vocals are never upbeat! Indeed, the singing remains the thing that is either going to make or break this for most listeners. Depends if you like their style of gently spoken-sung, kinda soft and dreary, English-language vocals. Their unexcitable, deadpan delivery would be easy to parody. But Tarwater's intimate, rainy-day electro-acoustic symphonics give this album human warmth. The Needle Was Travelling is mysteriously groovy, whilst being laid-back and droney too. It's modern-day krautrock after all. Some might like it better in an instrumental version, but Lippok's vocal limitations are for better or worse a key part of the Tarwater sound that we enjoy.
A couple of years ago some of us here at Aquarius befriended a visiting Belgian guy, a big fellow with a waxed handlebar mustache named Steve. That is, the guy was named Steve, actually, not his mustache. But if his mustache had a name we wouldn't have been surprised -- it was quite a striking 'stache. ANYWAY, we knew that in addition to being a record collecting fiend, Steve was a musician and that he played in a band, but somehow we didn't discover until much later that his band was called Thee Plague Of Gentlemen (is that some sort of punning reference to the BBC comedy?) and they were proponents of something that we love so much: sheer HEAVINESS! We learned this when they did a now out-of-print 7" single for Southern Lord, that we decided sounded like an unholy union of SUNNO))) and Killdozer! While we haven't really kept in very close touch with our Belgian friend (if you're reading this, hi Steve, how've you been?!), we have definitely been on the look-out for more from his band. Well, here it is! A full-length cd of downtuned sludge and gargling vocal wail. Total doom. Something along the lines of Cathedral (circa Endtyme), Electric Wizard, Unholy Trance, Celtic Frost, and Winter. Slow and grinding and a little bit psychedelic, with occasional bursts of speedier brutality. Riff-heavy, feedbacking doom extremity that means business. This disc is enhanced with two Quicktime videos of the band performing live. That's the aforementioned Steve singing and playing guitar, the bald guy with more beard now than moustache. And he's wearing a Magma t-shirt!
Ace Of Spades is a cd-r series of live recordings showcasing the intimate acoustic music of a variety of local indie artists. The series so far boasts consistently strong performances from all participants (well played and well recorded at Mama Buzz Cafe in Oakland).
The Volume 6 edition was recorded on February 20th, 2005 and features a few songs each from Mike Therieau, Brian Glaze, Paul Panamarenko, James Moore and Monique Lacour.
This looks and sounds like it's gotta be a reissue, a lost '70s punk vinyl classic dug up by a devoted record collector and at long last put out on cd. But actually The Time Flys are a band from the here (Oakland, specifically) and now, so if you live 'round these parts you can not only spin this disc but also go see 'em play, which is a good show I'm telling you. The Flys are three guys and one girl, the girl playing drums, all of 'em rock-star skinny, one of the guys being Andy from The Cuts. And I'm sure none of 'em are teenagers but they're all about the teenage angst and energy. Just check the song titles here: "Smokin' Dope", "Jailbait", "In My Skool", "Teenage Is The Stone-age" (which comes right after another song called "Teenage Tears"). There's 12 songs in 27 minutes 32 seconds, total '70s wasteoid punk stylings in the vein of thee MC5, New York Dolls, Heartbreakers, and (to mention another current band similarly retro-fitted) Chicago's Vee Dee. With snotty vocals, distorted guitar jangle and primal drum clatter that altogether does the shimmy, not to mention the packaging -- b&w pics and typewritten lyrics -- in a blindfold test this would probably fool even some not-so-casual old skool punk rawk collector types. Produced by Greg Ashley of the Gris Gris, another great Oakland garage band with a way-back machine (though theirs is dialed more to the '60s). Very kool.
A new issue of Ugly Things shows up and I know what I'm going to be doing in any and all upcoming free time that week!! Hours of music-obsessed readin' here, for those of us who share Ugly Things' fasination with the garage and psych sounds of past decades, that is. Packed with essays, interviews, and reviews (only of reissues and archival releases, no new things, even though current bands in the genre appear in the ads). This issue features the fourth part of editor Mike Stax' epic telling of the story of his favorite '60s psych rock act, The Misunderstood. Part four is about the '70s, tracing the lives of the bands ex-members into all sorts of weirdness and adventure, with intelligent crows, Sammy Hagar, and hidden ruby mines entering into the narrative. But of course there's lots more this ish besides: The Belfast Gypsies (aka Them) on the cover, Kim Fowley, eulogies for both Bomp's Greg Shaw and The Outsider's Wally Tax, an unpublished interview with the late Keith Relf of the Yardbirds, Michael Yonkers, and lots more stuff about a whole bunch of bands that we'd never heard of before but enjoyed reading about nonetheless, as always with this informative and entertaining music 'zine. Recommended.
Get your nose back in those math books 'cause Upsilon Acrux are back. Slowly simmering tension builders of abstract, prog-y, post rock-ification. Proggy and chaotic, stop/start mayhem and ultra complicated instrumental workouts. Dark, repetitive rhythms ripped
From the same with-it collector-folks who brought us those Gentle Sounds For Gentle People '60s soft-rock comps not so long ago, comes this new compilation unearthing the tunes of 23 "tripped-out troubadours from 1965-1970". These so-called "Mystic Males" are long-haired, bearded (or at least mustachioed) mellow crooners, hailing from places like LA's Sunset Strip and New York's Greenwich Village. Professional and otherwise singer/songwriters getting into (for real or for, they might be hoping, the bucks) the Hippy vibe. Mostly, they sing about Girls. And Nature. And Love. And Girls. (At least five of the song titles here are simply girls' names.) Suiting such subject matter, these tracks tend towards gentle vocals, gentle vocals, heartfelt lyrics, and drifting folky melodies -- often times backed by lush orchestration and groovy beats. Some are twee, some are swingin'. Hadn't heard of any of these dudes before, except Dino Valente, but maybe you have -- here's a few, with song titles too: Chip Taylor "You Should Be From Monterey", Tommy Roe "Paisley Dreams", Teddy Neeley "Autumn Afternoon", Kenny O'Dell "Flower Girl", Thomas Hill "Glider Pilot", Bill & Howdy "Misty Morning Confrontation"... no, don't know 'em? Well those song titles ought to give you some idea of what they sound like, and also the liner notes give plenty of obscure details about each obscure track. And some of 'em are gems. We like these Mystic Males.
The new Bay Area label Tell-All Records have hit the ground running with a bunch of new releases from a bunch of new artists. Nicely varied but mostly keeping within the gentle, hazy realm -- evoking pastoral scenes or drifting about in outerspace or an abandoned old concert hall with a forgotten cobwebbed piano -- the label strikes a balance between ambient soundscapes and song-based music. This label sampler compilation, their first official release, clearly shows, it all fits together wonderfully. Twelve songs by Liam Singer (who is one of the young gents running the label), Peter Surla, 28 Degrees Taurus, St. Rosa, One Umbrella, Dave Zohrob, Kallikak Family, Keith Negley, and Carrier (whose dreamy Home Movies cd-r we carried a couple of years ago) for under five bucks!
Other releases from this label include a solo full length from Singer, Kallikak Family's May 23rd 2007 album and One Umbrella's 8-song cd Solve.
Latest in a long line of deliriously damaged and drugged out psychedelic space rock from the psych rock heart of the midwest, Milwaukee to be exact. Spawned from legendary psych outfit F/i, Vocokesh continue that group's trajectory, straight for the heart of the sun. A heady mix of classic sixties psychedelic freakouts, pulsing and relentlessly propulsive Krautrock, tripped out ambient weirdness, and lots of full on fuzzed out space rock. Like some perfect Neu! / Hawkwind / Pink Floyd hybrid, swooping wildly from dreamy droney ambient incandescence to pounding drug addled fury to throbbing, churning brood rock to kaleidoscopic guitar blow out bliss!
Wow! This is one heckuva fan pleasin' dvd. It really is packed oh so generously with all you really do want! Over three hours worth of Rufus! Where do we start? Well, there's a frank and intimate documentary about Wainwright's life story thus far, there's a baker's dozen wonderful live performances, four music videos, some Wainwrights' home video footage, a bunch of interviews with Rufus, his family (sister Martha and mom Kate McGarrigle) as well as with a number of his celebrity fans such as Elton John and Sting. And the cherry on top? A spiffy new song titled "The Maker Makes". Whew! Need we say more?
Wolf here, wolf there, wolf wolf everywhere! Here's yet another lupine combo to join the rest of the pack which already includes Wolf Eyes, Wolf Colonel, Guitar Wolf, Wolves In The Throne Room, We Are Wolves, Wolfie and Wolf. Monikers aside, young bands have always worn their music idols on their sleeves, but it seems even more glaringly so these days that they're just as swayed by the hip sounds of 'that band from last Tuesday' as the ones from the last decade or two ago. ANYWAYS, that's a long-winded way to simply say that this Canadian band sound a lot like Arcade Fire. Nay, they often near deadringer status. In fact according to their bio, the band exists *because* of Arcade Fire. Back in 2003 founding member Spencer Krug was asked to play an A.F. show, and agree to do it even though he didn't have a band yet! As well, you can certainly hear some Interpol, British Sea Power and Modest Mouse (whom they've toured with, Isaac Brock actually recommended them to SubPop) in their songs too. Or should we say, David Bowie, Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen? That is, don't expect to discover anything remotely resembling originality on Wolf Parade's debut. The path they're on has been trodden particularly heavily in the past couple years, but nonetheless they do execute it all very well with solid songwriting and ample composure. Some may still find this problematic (and if so, you should probably steer clear), while others may welcome it with open eager arms. If you've yet to reach your fill of dour retro Brit rock that's occasionally driven by a thumpin' 4/4 dance beat, Wolf Parade are here for you.
The onslaught of Wooden Wand (And The Vanishing Hand) releases continues with this solo release from the group's ringleader Wooden Wand Jehovah. Generally more conventional sounding than the full band's recently reissued Xiao album, Harem Of The Sundrum & The Witness Figg does gets a bit more trippy as it progresses. He sings these nine hushed rustic folk songs in a gentle gruff voice. If you've dug the recently reissued Gary Higgins Red Hash cd, you might wanna check out Wooden Wand 'cause we played them back to back and we found that they segued beautifully. Recommended.
Sure, there's doom/sludge albums we *don't* like. But this ain't one of 'em! We've loved Portland's Yob from day one, and with this fourth album The Unreal Never Lived, they only exceed our expectations yet again. Four new tracks that don't just bring the doom but also demonstrate Yob's weirdly progressive songwriting craft, with dynamics and surprises throughout -- along with, of course, a bludgeoningly blissful overdose of utter heaviness. This disc is another amazing Yob outing, with all the lopingly massive riffage, lengthy song structures, psychedelic space-outs, and uniquely effected/distorted soaring and sometimes growling vocals that have become their trademarks. Compared to their previous (excellent) album The Illusion Of Motion this isn't that different, just at least as good or better in all respects. Heck it's again got got four songs, the longest being the last, going past the 20 minute mark, just like Illusion. Disembowelment, UFOmammut, Electric Wizard, Corrupted, Boris, Pelican...along with the likes of those heavies we've got to herald Yob!
