We last heard from Sabbathy stoner rockers Abdullah back in 2002, when the Ohio-based quintet released their second album, Graveyard Poetry. Now they've reappeared on this split release in the company of Argentinian weirdos Dragonauta, whose previous full-length Luciferatu was justly celebrated 'round these parts when it came out last year. Celebrated by those of us at AQ who like eccentric, proggy doom metal, that is! It's nice to hear something new from both bands, and although they take differing approaches to the stoner/doom style, they both have a love of Black Sabbath in common and also aren't afraid to be, well, a bit different (in very different ways, we should add).
Abdullah serve up six new tracks of moody, dynamic rock/metal with what we've described before as having somewhat of a "grunge" flavor. But Abdullah are much darker and heavier than the average Seattle band of the '90s... For fans of Down, CoC (circa Blind or Deliverance), Alice In Chains, and Acid Bath, we'd venture to say.
After the relatively mainstream and melodic Abdullah, Dragonauta seem even less "normal" than they already are (aren't?). They offer three new studio cuts and two live tracks, all of 'em being creaky, spreaky, riff-freaked workouts marked by fat psychedelic guitar noodle and raspy, strangulated Spanish-language vocals. From headbanging gallop to mellow jazz chords, Dragonauta take their compositions to various unexpected extremes, wild-eyed and drunkenly metallic at all times (except for when they're not). They're a bit like Los Natas but with even more of a 'we're crazy and we don't give a damn, let's play!' attitude. As far as we're concerned, they're the main reason to get this split, even though we like the Abdullah stuff ok too. But Dragonauta are just plumb loco and that really floats our boat in their moat.
Super limited (500 copies worldwide, we got about 20) double live album recorded in London in 2004 from the Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. packaged in a plain white sleeve with a photocopied insert like the classic old Stones and Zeppelin bootleg lps and pressed on gorgeous opaque white / red / black / brown swirled vinyl. This is supposedly the final release for the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. incarnation of AMT, and what a way to go, four sides of deliriously spacey and fully freaked out psychedelic Ur-rock, from kaleidoscopic bursts of druggy space rock, to long stretches of almost meditative otherworldy drone, haunting chants, bizarre soaring operatic trills, pulsing relentless dirges, and wild free epic OUT THERE musical explorations, all drenched in swirling distorted guitars and clouds of hazy psych rock splatter. Very lo-fi recording, it all sounds like maybe it was recorded with one mic, set right in the middle of the room, but it just makes the whole thing sound that much more immediate and chaotic and furious and alive. Again, VERY LIMITED, when these are gone they are gone for good.
Wistful, blissful and oh so dreamy. The occasionally self-abbreviated AmAnSet hone their post-rock shaded indie pop stylings just a little bit more on Set Free. With their murmurred sleepy-boy vocals, smooth chiming tones and warm guitar interplay, they once again nestle in nicely right amongst the gentle likes of Sea & Cake, Low, Pinback and the slow Ira-sung songs of Yo La Tengo. Includes a suitably drowsy cover of Codeine's "Jr". Ahhh, no sharp edges here, just such soothing sweetness!
'Tis definitely one of Howe Gelb's less strange musical outings, but a few of his trademark slightly disorienting eccentricities still pop up here and there. Arizona Amp & Alternator takes him and a bunch of his musical friends loping down a long dark country road. Mind you, despite the name their travels mostly wound their way through Modesto and Denmark with very brief stops in Gelb's hometown Tucson, AZ. His collaborators this time include M. Ward, Scout Niblett, Arcade Fire's Jeremy Gara and members of Grandaddy. The second song, a duet with Danish vocalist Marie Frank, ventures quite close to the fine recordings he did with the Calexico boys and Lisa Germano under the moniker OP8 a number of years ago. Further down the line on the album's fifth song, Frank's vocals bring to mind a haunting cross between Bjork and Jolie Holland. 18 songs total. As usual, top notch and heartily recommended!
The UK's Ashtray Navigations (aka Phil Todd) has been spitting out cd after cd after tape after tape after cd-r after cd-r for years now. Close to twenty would be our guess. If not more even. Which is pretty dang impressive. So here we are twenty years down the line and Todd is still kicking up the sort of glorious din that shames most of the other free noise outifts out there. Billowing clouds of thick chordal bliss, washes of high end feedback and layer after layer of sonic skree, all shifting and swirling and drifting with subtle acustic guitars in the background as well as whining reeds unfurling melancholy Eastern melodies. The closest comparison would have to be Sunroof! or Vibracathedral Orchestra, who just so happen to occupy the same sonic scene as Todd and his Ashtray Navigations. From pixilated clouds of abstract tinkle and glimmer to dense supernovas of roiling sonic fury, The Love That Whirrs is totally essential listening (like all things Sunroof!, VCO, Pelt, Skullflower, Jazzfinger, etc.) for all you freeambientdronedrifters out there!
If you're reading this on our New Arrivals list (as opposed to searching out this entry on our website), you should have already seen our review of the Abdullah/Dragnauta split cd just released by the South American stoner rock label Dias De Garage. Well I guess the label likes the split release idea pretty well, 'cause here's another one. This time, between Argentina's Buffalo and Sweden's Astroqueen. Both bands are kinda in that Kyuss/Queens Of The Stone Age vein we love so much.
First up, Astroqueen, with six tracks and a video clip. Sweden has a reputation for producing excellent Kyuss clones and Astroqueen does nothing to tarnish said rep. Utterly catchy, with thick distorted guitars, what's not to like?? They throw in some nice 'metal' details now and then (a Maideny riff, an unexpected blast beat), but this should be on the radio and HUGE. Maybe they are in Sweden, who knows? Anyone who wants a big, heavy rock fix won't be disappointed. Wish we could still get their Into Submission full-length but it seems to be out of print...
Next up, five tracks and one video from Buffalo (not to be confused with the '70s Australian band of the same name), who are, well, a lot like Astroqueen!! Though they have a bit more of a psychedelic, swampy swagger to them, and their vocalist (who sings in Spanish, whereas Astroqueen's vocalist sings in English, not Swedish) has a rougher, tougher delivery. For fans of Roachpowder (remember them?), Los Natas, early Black Label Society, Heavy Rocks style Boris, and Kyuss/QOTSA, too, of course! And also Metallica, 'cause Buffalo do a kick-ass cover "Four Horsemen" (in Spanish) to wind up their half of this split. All right!
Between Astroqueen and Buffalo, there's no clear-cut winner here -- except for you, the stoner rock fan, who buys this!
This whole slow motion doom dirge explosion continues to bring us band after band who think they can make a record by just leaning their guitars up against their amps and recording the mighty flow of glorious Earth-like sludge that will undoubtedly flow forth, like some sort of divine doom from the gods. Thankfully there are a few outfits who realize that maybe we need a little bit more than just another doom-drone planet to join the already slow motion orbits of Earth and SUNNO))). And as we have mentioned before (in our review of their excellent Futurist's Against the Ocean debut earlier this year), Asva is making a successful attempt to extend beyond the Earth/SUNN template, having added huge swaths of warm and warbly organs to the mix as well as soaring operatic female vocals, giving their sound a strangely melodic and gorgeously alien feel. This two song 12" proves that even that's not enough for these guys, as they push and twist their sound once again into new and strange shapes. The first track is a super slow building drone, a hushed assemblage of subterranean rumble and machine like whirr, that doesn't build so much as just sort of shift and take up more and more of the sound field. Eventually the drone begins to fragment and the constituent parts become more and more distinct, the most noticable being what sounds like a strangely haunting psych guitar riff, looped and smeared into a subtle Sunroof! like skree. Soon more and more bits float to the surface, some reverbed chanting, abstract streaks of distant guitar, and a far away riff, played super slowly and drenched in effects, creepy and clean and barely discernible through the murk and haze, sounding a bit like a snippet of Chris Issak guitar, as if played at 8 rpm and broadcast through a the tiny speaker of an old transistor radio. Special guest Eyvind Kang supplies the viola, while band member John Schuller contributes the locusts! Side two is much more straight ahead dooooom, a crushing slow motion metallic dirge a la Khanate or Skepticism, but even here Asva manage to make that sound their own. A slow sludgy plod, with plenty of space in between for swirls of dark drone and reverby rumble, and that same haunting abstract clean guitar melody from side one resurfaces here and there, but the focus is most definitely on the vocals, an unholy screech, that swoops and soars from demonic howl to bile spewing gutteral growl, courtesy of Asva's vocalist Jessika Kennney, falling somewhere between Lydia Lunch, Diamanda Galas and Edgy from Burning Witch. Super limited (only 500 copies) each copy is hand stamped and numbered!
For his latest full length, Banhart has taken a marked departure from the mystical woodland art-folk kingdom he conjured and inhabited on his first three albums. This is evident even before you hear a single note -- he opted for a Sgt. Pepper style collaged crowd photograph on the front cover rather than another of his illustrations. He's tempered his vocal delivery to a more approachable range -- this might disappoint some of his fans for whom his unmistakable 'old' voice was the thing they loved most about his music, on the other hand though it certainly has the potential to appeal to a much broader audience -- but he's ventured out stylistically in a number of directions and incorporated various different instrument combinations into the surprisingly lush arrangements with wonderful results. Take for example the second song "Santa Maria Da Feira" and the sixth "Quedateluna" which both brought to mind glimmers of a long lost Gilberto Gil album, the almost soft rock production of the third song "Heard Somebody Say", not to mention the fourth song "Long Haired Child" which possesses a primal electric guitar psychedelic bluesiness that recalls Arthur Brown's demonic '60s stomp "Fire" (albeit much less unhinged). Midway through the album, some songs crop up that are more akin to the Banhart of old such as the quirkily playful ninth tune "Some People Ride The Wave". 22 songs! Wow! So great!
Hard to believe Bardo Pond has been around for over 15 years, and even harder to believe that they continue to create slab after slab of gorgeous drug soaked psychedelia far better than their more well known and more prolific psychedelic brethren. The tracks on Selections were culled from a series of cd-r's recorded and released over the last 5 years or so, and sold only on tour, not proper records per se, but more snapshots of works in progress, songs in the early stages, random recordings from the practice space and all manner of sonic experiments. Which is maybe why this stuff sounds so visceral and intense. Druggy hippy blues guitar, lazy and languorous with shuffling simple percussion over slow flowing waves of buzzing distortion, thick layered drones and swirling psychedelic swoosh. Occasional melodies materialize as ethereal flute drifts by like smoke from a hookah. Bursts of chaotic and stumbling propulsive space-psych dissipate into haunting and slow building ambient post rock epics a la Mogwai or Godspeed, occasionally stretching out into simple and insistent reverb soaked Krautrock style jams. All these musical ideas and almost-songs nestle within thick washes of cascading feedback and sheets of dreamy wah guitar. We kind of wish they had decided to make this a quadruple cd instead of a double, as this collects only about half of the material on the original cd-rs, but even so, this is most definitely some of the most mind blowing, soul soothing psychedelic space rock you're likely to hear EVER.
Some of you may be tired of us going on and on about that Devil's Rejects movie (we listed the Banjo And Sullivan and the killer soundtrack recently). Well tough luck! We finally got the score in and it's amazing, even if you didn't see the movie. A dark and droney, rumbling creep fest, that if you weren't paying attention you might just mistake for a Lustmord record! We kid you not. Don't know too much about Tyler Bates, other than he has a deft hand at composing a scary score, albeit a hand dripping with viscera and blood! Slow building stretches of rumbling shimmering drones, creaking and crackling, splintering into shards of high end, slow heart beat like pulses, all ominous and oozing with dread, occasionally interrupted by blasts of pulsing teutonic crunch, chaotic rhythms stumbling wildly over tangles of atonal melody and and swirls of keening noise. There are moments of obvious soundtrack-ness, where the music was required to dictate some on screen action, a snippet of bump and grind funk, a brief passage of dizzy goofy circus music, but for the most part, each track is a dense black hole of musical misery and dark drones, that should totally hit the spot for all you dark ambient doom drone creatures of the night.
Nothin' like starting off your morning with a big ol' cup of coffee and a big ol' earful (well, 37 minutes or so) of Black Dice. The cover art is, um, great...a pretty rainbow as the background, some nice fluffy clouds, and a lady's upturned bottom covered discreetly with little black cheerio things all pasted a bit left of center. Mmm, sonic AND visual collage.
"Broken Ear Record" has an almost consistent beat as its backbone that makes me think of mustached cartoon men working underground in a futuristic metropolis where things like dancing and pressing certain colored buttons are verboten but everyone does it anyway because it feels so damn good. This record is workin' in the kind of coal mine Devo would dig if they did things like dig coal mines. Things get a little Add N to (X)-y at times, not that that's a bad thing. As our lovely new staffer Kerry stated, track seven sounds a lot like a battle between a couple of toy dogs. And then someone whips out a jackhammer and things go a little nuts...but mind you not TOO nuts.
Figured we should list this, the third album by '60s San Francisco proto-metal acid rockers Blue Cheer (you can't get much more "acid rock" than Blue Cheer -- they're named after a type of LSD after all!), since it was recently reissued in Akarma's midpriced "karma price" series. And also 'cause on the second side of this 1969 album (titled New! Improved! with about 50 percent accuracy) you'll hear the guitar playing of Randy Holden, whose rare, classic Population II record was recently reissued on LP and subsequently purchased by throngs of old time heaviness-lovin' AQ customers. If you've got that, you've gotta have this too. Holden, formerly of LA garage rockers The Other Half, was Blue Cheer's replacement for original axeman Leigh Stephens, but Holden lasted only a few months in the Cheer, recording just half of this record with 'em, three songs total: the fairly epic "Peace Of Mind" and "Fruit & Iceburgs" and brief coda "Honey Butter Lover". Then he split to make the Pop II album as a duo with drummer Chris Lockheed, which basically sounds a lot like the second side of this album... indeed you'll find versions "Fruit & Iceburgs" on both records. That's what you want this for, the Holden side, which sounds like a more wasted, doomedelic Cream. It's the last hurrah of Blue Cheer as a "heavy" guitar band, really. Whereas the first side of New! Improved!, recorded after Holden left and featuring ex-Kak guitarist Gary Yoder, has got a lot of honky tonk piano and comes across more like something the Rolling Stones would do, either rustic and rollicking or really melodic and mellow. Not heavy at all, though certainly very hippie and of its time with songs like "West Coast Child Of Sunshine". So we're mainly just recommending this for the approximately 15 minutes of wailin' Randy Holden stuff on here.
However -- if you don't already have Blue Cheer's first two albums, Vincebus Eruptum and Outside Inside, though, get those first! Especially Vincebus, if you want to hear the REAL birth of heavy.
This new Jim Jarmusch film and its soundtrack will undoubtably do for Mulatu Astatke and the Ethiopiques compilation series (as well as Ethiopian music in general) what Ghost World did for Mohammed Rafi (and Bollywood film music soundtracks in general), that is, expose it to a broader audience. Although the music's inclusion in the film itself seems rather incongruously stuck on and hipster-point-seeking, it is pretty great to hear this music outside the confines of underground circles. Just the other day, while we were playing a volume of Ethiopiques, a customer said to his friend, "Oh this is the music from that Bill Murray movie." Of course, it's soooo much more than that, but if you've had your interest piqued by the film's soundtrack by all means you'll wanna nab this soundtrack. From there, we'd highly recommend heading directly for Ethiopiques Volume 4 (a particular AQ favorite!). Groovy, sultry, funky and soooo awesome!
The ultra eclectic soundtrack also features The Greenhornes with Holly Golightly, The Tennors, Marvin Gaye, Oxford Camerata, Brian Jonestown Massacre, plus other AQ faves Dengue Fever and Sleep!
This beloved 1970 folk album is back on its original format... VINYL LP! Plus this reissue comes with a bonus 7"! Hurrah!
Here's what we said about the cd version:
We're pretty damn excited that this album is now available again. Inspiration for this turn of events must certainly have something to do with Ms Bunyan turning up on Devendra Banhart's recordings recently. Without a doubt Vashti Bunyan has played a big influence on the young Banhart's song writing, and fans of Devendra should definitely take note. This record is so incredibly charming! Having been expelled from a London art school in 1964 for not narrowing her field of studies to either music or painting, Vashti Bunyan took to singing her songs on the streets of London. She eventually left the city, hitching up a cart and horse to journey across the countryside, heading for the remote Outer Hebrides islands. It wasn't long before fans tracked her down to record an album. The album was released in 1970 and disappeared in relative obscurity -- only later being sought out fanatically by record collectors. Featuring accompaniment by such notables as Robin Williamson (fiddle, mandolin, Irish Harp) of The Incredible String Band and Simon Nicol (banjo) of Fairport Convention, Robert Kirby (string and recorder arrangements) who played with Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan's music is an exquisitely delicate folk music with melodies reminiscent of hornpipes and shanties. Her clear voice is so full of innocence, and she sings so earnestly about her horse and the countryside full of hayfields and waiting for love and the simple rewards, like nice tea, that await after a long day's journey. It's so beautiful, it makes me want to dress in peasant garb (like Vashti on the cover) and forget all about the 21st century.
Not sure what it is lately, but there seems to be a strange occurance of not-so-prolific bands releasing a bunch of records all at once. For BSC it's three releases in the last few months. Which is actually cool since they haven't really had all that many proper releases and have been recording since at least the mid-ninties. BSC is mostly the work of C. Spencer Yeh, and Mes Soldats Stupides '96 - '04, as the title implies, collects lots of random recordings from the last 8 years or so. Limited cd-r releases, cassettes, compilations, rehearsals and a few unreleased tracks. Disc one is really strange, sounding like it was mostly constructed using voices, distorted and affected, chopped up and reassembled, slowed down and sped up layered and multi tracked into random and abstract free-noise workouts, sometimes spastic and noisy, but more often sort of droney and hypnotic. Very organic and natural sounding but quite alien sounding in their new noise rock context. Disc two is a lot more free noise, abstract rock, with stumbling percussion, feeding back guitars, lots of tape hiss and amp buzz, more along the lines of the Dead C or Total. Buzzing droning chaotic free rock splatter that slips into smeary soundscapes as often as it explodes into freenoise fragments.
Double disc packaged in a spiffy double digipak with an extensive track listing / insert.
Ooooh, does that sound like a splendid combination to you or what? Two of our absolute favorites together on one release, performing seven songs penned by Iron & Wine's Sam Beam?! Yes! Needless to say, we've been eagerly anticipating this cd's arrival since we first caught wind of it... and it sure doesn't disappoint. Simply stated, the results are fantastic. Burns 'n' Beam make for an intoxicating, burnished vocal cocktail. We have to say though, we were wondering who invited Mr. Opera Man to sing on the first track "He Lays In The Reins", but then we discovered that it was noneother than Tucson mariachi vocalist and Calexico comrade Salvador Duran. 'Twas a somewhat startling almost comical voice to hear melodramatically crooning over the familiar smoldering twang, but as the initial jolt wore off, it all somehow seemed to fit once again. Just watch the respective Iron & Wine and Calexico legions of fans increase two-fold (or more!).
It remains to be seen if the duo of Andrew Chalk and Christoph Heeman will ever collaborate again, after rumors surfaced describing an acrimonious falling out in the wake of an ill-conceived Mimir / Mirror performance. Sure, Mirror has certainly produced some amazing recordings; Eye Of The Storm, in particular, is an impeccable document of droned-out environmental eerieness. But in all honesty and fairness to Christoph Heemann, Andrew's solo albums are where he really shines. Yet after all of his collaborations with Organum, Ora, Jonathan Coleclough, Giancarlo Toniutti, The New Blockaders, et cetera, his solo output is woefully thin, and almost entirely out of print. Fortunately, Chalk salvaged two recent cd-rs (Shadows From The Album Skies part one and two) from terminal obscurity as they had originally been released on the Mirror imprint Three Poplars in editions of less than 100. Both of the chapters of Shadows find Chalk channelling extended guitar mantras into a beautifully rich minimalism that could easily be confused with the work of Phill Niblock or Eliane Radigue. Both tracks here are constructed from slowly revolving patterns of delicate harmonics floating around an omnipresent timbral drone, with one being considerably darker thanks to an emphasis on low-end frequencies. For all of the times that we've referenced Mr. Chalk's work in describing somebody else's dronings, it's very nice to actually hear something from the master himself. Oh yeah, all of the copies have handmade sleeves and have been signed by Chalk himself. Very highly recommended.
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It's incredible how AQ's Finnish faves n' friends Circle always manage to maintain their trademark sound -- repetitive, hypnotic post-prog grooves -- even as they produce new albums with such distinct, different identities. Their latest disc, Forest, is another great, unique Circle effort. This time around, they've gone semi-acoustic, kinda folky. Also spooky and sinisterly-synthed. In a way, Forest is perhaps Circle's most "hippie" album. We know Jussi's a big Dead fan after all. And the krautrock stuff they've obviously always been inspired by was hippie rock too. But there's a back-to-the-land, pot smokin' jam vibe here, although night-shrouded and mysterious, NOT rainbow-colored and dippy. This a Forest of nightmares, with whispering and groaning in the trees. Maybe Jussi and Co. have been listening to the likes of Kalacakra and Siloah and Amon Duul... and Goblin, and early Tangerine Dream... For sure it seems that the four lengthy tracks on here (shortest six+ minutes, one nine, the other two in the double digits) owe a lot to Can (maybe moreso than other Circle albums do) and also to...the blues! That's the biggest shock. Vocalist Mika Ratto's love 'em or hate 'em operatic vocals are shucked in favor of a mumbling, moaning, singin' the blues style. And, equally shocking, he's singing in English this time! Not that you can make sense of much of what's coming out of his mouth. And of course most of the time Forest is all-instrumental, spacious, suspenseful, grooved-out, darkness. The final, longest track dabbles in ambient, experimental witch-project drone before those Circle rhythms return and Mika moans his last. So good.
Musically they're still developing their eccentric persona as the bastard child of Billie Holiday and Devendra Banhart (who incidentally shows up on this album, not surprising as one half of Cocrosie is Banhart's better half!), whereas appearance-wise they've groomed themselves into the bastard child of Indigo Girls and Kajagoogoo! That said, there is one song that stands head and shoulders above the rest, and it comes early in the album. It is the second song "Beautiful Boyz" featuring Antony (of And The Johnsons). Soooo good!
Like "La Maison De Mon Reve", "Noah's Ark" features little kid noises like what sounds like canned ["the rooster says..."] barnyard animals; maybe some of Noah's snuck into the studio along with the album's many guest stars? Some of the noises seem stuck on like band-aids without any real scrapes underneath but it all plays out with a charm that is as cute as it is smoky-old-theater dark. The sisters warble and whisper and coo creating a unique sound that is playful and bewitching. All in all, some quite impressive progressions have developed from their debut last year, made only more so by the well-chosen, adventurous and skilled cast of guests.
An interesting idea for sure. One afternoon in October, 1969, Tony Conrad found himself in a fifth floor loft in Manhattan a couple blocks from Bryant Park, which was hosting a rally protesting the Vietnam War. The TV in his loft was blaring coverage of the protest, while the echoes from the speeches bounced through the city streets and into Conrad's apartment. Not surprisingly, he was recording the co-mingling between the mediated sounds of that protest through the TV and the diffused amplification of the live event, appearing with a subtle time-lag. Given the rather tumultuous political context of 2005 with an increasingly unpopular war abroad and an administration bungling almost every task at hand, the parallels to the context of 1969 protest should be self-evident by now.
Oh boy. Now here's a real "holy grail" psych album, at last reissued on cd and widely available!!! You've heard a taste of this if you've got the Brazilian edition of the Love, Peace & Poetry compilation series. Lula Cortes E Ze Ramalho's amazing acid-psych-folk-prog album Paebiru came out in Brazil in 1975, and at some point afterwards, many of the original copies were apparently destroyed in a fire (y'know, kinda as if they knew that collectors were gonna cry over that later). So, it possesses such desirable status in part 'cause the record is so rare and obscure. But in fact it's truly deserving of its holy grail rep 'cause the music on it is so terrific -- so lovely and so freaky. The Shadoks label has done us all a favor here.
The talented multinstrumentalist Lula Cortes was one half of the wonderful acoustic hippy folk duo Satwa, whose eponymous 1973 album was reissued and reviewed here earlier this year. If you picked that up, you've got an idea of how nice the folky parts on here are, inspired by both Portuguese/Spanish and South Amerindian musical tradition. But that's only a part of the sound here. On the elaborately produced Paebiru, Cortes and equally gifted collaborator Ze Ramalho, along with several supporting musicians, have expanded the scope of their music to include pulsating krautrock-ish throb, wild jazz improvisation, and distorted electric fuzz attack, utilizing both rock and ethnic instruments, piano, horns, and more -- all with a high degree of inspiration, emotion, and technical skill. The result is a sprawling but consistent masterpiece, originally a double LP. Four sides, four elements: Terra, Ar, Fogo, Agua. This elemental concept allows for many moods and revelations. As Shadoks says, it's "uninhibited tribal psychedelic rock" that they compare, rightly, to the brillance of Amon Duul II and Algarnas Tradgard. Recommended.
Hmmm, maybe the difference between houses and homes is that someone cares enough to do the housekeeping... which is what emo-punk band Cursive have done with six years worth of their recorded output. Out of print singles? Previously unreleased tracks? You bet! Cursive and their label Saddle Creek want you to have them all, right now on this Cursive collection! The cd starts and ends with their two unavailable-until-now songs "Dispenser" and "I Thought There'd Be More Than This". Sandwiched in between are ten tunes drawn from four of their 7"s -- The Disruption (1996), Sucker & Dry (1997), The Icebreaker (1998), and Makoto Split Series (2001).
All in all, the selections serve as a solid overview of the band's evolution from precarious abrasive angst boys to slightly more reined-in moody lads. Includes a 24 page booklet in which you'll find a story written by Tim Kasher and illustrated by Yuriko Yoshino (of Cursive pals Japanese punk rock band Eastern Youth).
Some of you might remember De Gennaro from the amazing drone record he made a few years back with Alastair Galbraith, Long Wires In Dark Museums (Vol. 1), an exploration of, well, long wires in dark museums! A shimmering drone of subtle reverberations, tonal colorations and slow shifting ovetones. This lastest solo guitar record is a lot more structured and sort of more in line with the whole free-folk 'new weird america' outsider whatever scene, you know, Jack Rose, James Blackshaw, Pelt, No Neck Blues Band, Matt Valentine, etc. but even so, much of the subtle shimmer and delicate drone of the long wires record is still found on Humbled Down, just wrapped around De Gennaro's gorgeous and understated acoustic guitar. Fans of Rose and Fahey and the like will no doubt love this stuff, but it's a lot more subtle and dreamy, each note gauzy and suspended in a fine hazy mist, sort of smeary and indistinct, melodic yet sort of out of focus like an old photograph, or how you might imagine Philip Jeck would sound if he were a guitar player. Drifting and otherworldly and very very lovely.
From the same label that brought us the bafflingly brilliant WOLD record from a few lists past comes Canadian black metal juggernaut Dead Of Winter, who feature an old AQ fave totally out of his element, digital hard core technician Schizoid. In the past, Schizoid has hinted at his barely under the surface metal obsession by inserting all sorts of buzzing blackened riffs into his hyper distorted techno as well as once covering Burzum. But don't expect any sort of techno black metal hybrid from Dawn Of Winter -- this is full on, grim and frosty, lightning fast, spikes and corpsepaint black metal. A buzzy blurry mix of Darkthrone and Mayhem, furiously fast blast beats under a near drone of insectoid BM riffs and thunderous basslines. You can totally imagine these guys set up on the edge of a massive glacier, knee deep in snow, overlooking a blackened forest, blasting out a sheet of hellish black metal, in front of the swirling shifting northen lights, while lighting bolts rain down from the pitch black sky!
Not sure how many folks remember the band Three Studies For A Crucifixion, they were a kick ass math-grind-metal band from a few years ago. Super dense and complex. Not sure what happened, they sort of just disappeared. Well, now we've got Deadsea (not to be confused with the Dead C) which features at least one member of 3SFAC, and takes that dense math metal even farther into blackened prog territory. Four lengthy tracks, a million parts per song, incredible time signature shifts, bizarre and convoluted song structures, crazy complex guitar riffs, leads and guitar harmonies. Imagine a much more fucked up Mastodon, with plenty of Iron Maidenisms, a whole bunch of Sabbathiness, lots of Carcass-y bits, a healthy dose of Voivody parts, some serious Champsy workouts and even some full-on buzzy black metal. Sounds like a mad metal hodge podge, but when it's all this deftly assembled it becomes some massive and massively mighty metal beast. Then there's some out of the blue clean vocals that take a little getting used to (a bit like Opeth's more melodic moments), but eventually seem to fit right into Deadsea's fractured musical vision. By all rights this is the band metalheads should be bowing before as much as the mega-hyped Mastodon, but for now, they'll just have to remain our little metallic secret, but not for much longer we'd wager!
Okay folks! Here it is, beloved indie pop band Death Cab For Cutie's major label debut! While we've already heard grumbles from a number of their ol' devoted fans about it, we implore you to give 'er a chance why don't ya? C'mon, the fact of the matter is that if you didn't know about their change of record label home, you probably wouldn't have your crosshairs zeroing in on this new album. It'd probably be welcomed with open arms and loving ears, just as every other Death Cab release before it has been. Having listened to it a few times already, we can say that, yes, it is a bit slicker than their past recordings, but heck, they've been heading in a more polished, restrained direction for some time now, haven't they? We're sure Atlantic has definitely afforded them more deluxe recording production accommodations and amenities, but the band has by no means abused nor flaunted them on Plans. Darker hues, more bittersweet than sweet. With Plans, Ben Gibbard and Co.'s charming heart-melting tendencies will surely be welcomed by an even broader audience, but will also continue to enchant their long-time devotees.
We love the Decemberists, and their most recent full length, Picaresque, quickly became a beloved AQ favorite. Now, that glorious record has gotten reissued on double vinyl with a WHOLE EXTRA SIDE (5 tracks or "Picaresqueties" as the Decemberists call them) of music not on the cd, as well as a 24 page booklet with all new photos. Here's what we said about the cd:
By now, avid readers of the AQ list should know that we love the Decemberists. How could we not? Catchy quirky pop, mournful and melancholy, depressingly jubilant, joyously dour, somewhere between Neutral Milk Hotel, the Smiths and the Pogues, with lyrics that meld Dickensian squalor with Edward Gorey pathos, all delivered in a quavering, affected, lispy faux British accent. C'mon! What's not to love? So then when it came time to review their new record, after only a few listens, we were faced with the prospect, of the usual "Another great album" or "More of that stuff we love, not all that different, but who cares, 'cuz we loved the last record!". And while those statements are most definitely true, having listened to this record over and over and over for the last few days, it's actually become perhaps our favorite record of theirs. Part of the problem seemed to be loading the beginning of the record with upbeat barnstorming footstompers, which are of course great and the Decemberists are definitely adebt at channelling their inner Pogue, but those sort of tracks work better peppered around the Decemberists' more downtempo miserablisms, which is precisely what happens around track 5. It IS after all a concept record, so perhaps the story arc requires that specific sequence, but track five, a brooding dirge of a tale about a spy mouring for his captured partner, and reflecting on the passing of microfilm to his sweetheart and cuddling atop buildings, is where the Decemberists magic really kicks in, and keeps up for the rest of the record. Dark and eloquent, silly and absurd, sweet and sorrowful. And that magic is sort of retroactive, as once the record finished and we returned to the beginning, those first few tracks made that much more sense and the whole record suddenly seemed absolutely perfect.
At last! Dengue Fever have deemed it time to grace us with the follow-up to their highly lauded and loved 2003 self-titled full length American (played) / Cambodian (sung) treasure. If you enjoy Southeast Asian pop and you've somehow missed this group live or on record, please don't let another day go by without treating yourself royally to the sounds of Dengue Fever! This (along with the Bay Area's own Neung Phak alias Mono Pause who offer a broader spectrum of Southeast Asia's pop music) is probably as close as you can get to the 'real' thing without flying to the other side of the globe. If you want a little rundown on the group's story, please see our glowing review of their first album which was written by our then-co-worker Byram who seriously knows his stuff.
Happy to hear and report that the group have picked right up from where they left off in delightful ear-tingling fashion. Here, they've once again created a faithful and respectful recreation of the genre, but this time they've allowed more of their individual influences into the mix -- fleshing things out more, beefing up the rock elements a bit more (heftier saxophones and guitars), but they wisely leave plenty of the spotlight to Chhom Nimol's jaw-dropping vocals. If you need more convincing (yeah, like we really need to twist your arm on this one!), check out a couple of the album's highlights "One Thousand Tears Of A Tarantula" and "Sleepwalking Through The Mekong"! Intoxicating, irresistible and immensely recommended.
A side note: Has anyone else noticed that the cover art bears a remarkable resemblance to those of the Sublime Frequencies Southeast Asian compilation series? Makes sense!
Spuds rejoice: it's live Devo, 1980! One of the best bands ever at the height of their powers, playing their "hit" songs to a stand-offish audience at the Phoenix theatre in Petaluma, California. However, spuds also bewarned: with an insanely abrasive edit of scrappy video footage, it's hard to watch this baby all the way through in one sitting -- even for us die-hard fans! Despite this, and the fact that you can tell the band takes awhile to warm up on stage, when they do, holy spudboy, watch them go! A high note is their cover of "[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction". This particular performance reaffirms that it may possibly be the most amazing cover of all time. Also great performances of "Pink Pussycat", "Girl U Want" and "Freedom of Choice"... Instrument note-worthy are Bob Mothersbaugh's cloud-shaped guitar and Gerald Casale's custom bass.
This is in the dualdisc format, meaning you get the video on the dvd side of the disc, as well as an audio-only version on the cd flipside. And, as a bonus, there's footage of Dove, The Band of Love (Devo's easy listening alter-ego that a lot of Devo fans didn't seem to "get", somehow) performing three songs live, also from 1980!
Over the past couple of years, the Double Leopards have emerged as one of the premier psychedelic drone ensembles alongside such pre-cognitive / cosmic communicators as the Vibracathedral Orchestra and Skullflower (whose Matthew Bower records with Double Leopards' Marcia Bassett as the Hototogisu); yet they've only released a couple of records that never seem to stay around long enough for us to write all that much about them. Out Of One, Through One, And To One is their latest opus of murky atmospheres channelled through the aftermath of a potent drug coctail prescribed for a blood chilling, delusional numbness. The Double Leopards excel in their eternal-music mantras spiralling out of densely layered buzzsaw dronings, continuously bowed strings, corroded amplifier distortion, the perpetual odor of spilt bongs, and an ocean of fluttering delay patterns. These medicated abstractions in deep heavy monotone equal those found on their universally acclaimed debut album Halve Maen. Considering this is limited to a 1000 copies, Out Of One is not expected to be around for terribly wrong. As former AQ owner Windy was wont to say, buy now or cry later.
Amigos Em Portugal was originally released in 1983 as an attempt to further extend the Factory Records empire (which spawned the likes of Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, and later The Happy Mondays). It's curious that the Durutti Column was the band of choice for the Portuguese expansion, as the Durutti Column has always been a beautiful if less than conventional project. For the most part, Amigos Em Portugal is an instrumental album of spindly duets for wintery piano coupled with solo guitar; and the CD reissue also features Dedications for Jacqueline (which may or may not have been a part of the original Amigos album) that does find Durutti Column's Vini Reilly singing his sleepy lullabies sounding an awful lot like Genesis P-Orridge on the PTV album Dreams Less Sweet. Just as the original album has been a difficult to find item for years, the reissue on Kooky is only limited to 1000 copies, surely to be gobbled up quite quickly.
With a career that has spanned three decades, The Ex have been stalwart antagonists from the far left, in fusing an uncompromising political agenda to a steady stylistic development of their own interpretation of punk. While their hometown of Amsterdam has long been associated with the left thanks to their liberal (and legal) attitudes towards drug use and prostitution, The Ex emerged as pissed off and utterly hostile towards mainstream Dutch culture as any band from far more puritanical lands. But like any punk band worth anything, The Ex began with little or no musical training, merely the desire to express their political dissent and make a hell of lot of noise doing it. This compilation of the singles they made through the '80s surveys their growth from an enegetic pogo punk band into a far more musically mature post-punk band with brittle-as-glass guitars, throbbing PiL / Killing Joke inspired basslines, and a willingness to take plenty of risks, as heard in the industrial rhythmic slab on "Rara Rap" and the clunky militant-folk number "Lied der Steinklopfer." The Ex have always been an amazing band, and sadly the politics are as prescient as they were two decades ago.
Just can't get enough, can you? Us neither. For those of you in need of even more from the New Pornographers' stable of popsters. Keyboard and guitar player Todd Fancey once again steps out on his own. Well kinda, he's enlisted some of his Vancouver pals to join in the singin' and playin' (his NP bandmate drummer Kurt Dahle, The Organ's Debora Cohen and The Gay's Sara Lapsley to name just three). Following up on his juicy self-titled debut from last summer, he's offered up another summertime treat. Four glorious, sunshiney tunes bursting with '70s AM radio style smooth pop sensibilities -- sorta like a cross between the Raspberries and Free Design. You almost expect him to launch into Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy" or Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street".
We love the Flaming Lips. We always have. From their ramshackle psychedelic drugfuck daze, to their modern orchestral bliss pop incarnation, they just totally and completely kick our ass. Musically AND visually. The thing that really set them apart, especially way back in the early days, was their visual presentation. Sure they were a sloppy chaotic stumbling drunken psych rock mess, but their visuals matched up perfectly, smoke machines, Xmas lights, bubble machines, strobe lights, crazy day glo thrift store clothes, dyed hair, and stages and record covers full of all sorts of crap. It was totally overwhelming, but it a good way. As they got more and more popular and their budget grew with them, their unique aesthetic remained the same, but was just a whole lot fancier. So here we have 13 years worth of videos, all of them in fact, and all of them amazing, visually stunning to different degrees, from big budget high concept to camcorder in the garage, it didn't really matter with the Lips, they just always knew how to make the most of what they had to work with. So every video here is a druggy psychedelic feast for the eyes, and they all fit strangely well together too from the oldest to the newest, a bit like the coolest weirdest video mix tape you've ever seen.
Completely remixed in 5.1 surround sound with band optional band commentary, liner notes and a nifty sticker! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just cut and paste the info into the comments area on the order form, or just email mailorder@aquariusrecords.org. AKIYAMA, MITCHELL "Mort Aux Vaches" (Staalplaat) cd 21.00 ALIAS "All Things Fixable" (Goodwithmoney) cd 14.98 BAD DUDES "s/t" (Brain Burger) cd 12.98 BANGO "s/t" (Normal Records) cd 15.98 BATTLETORN "Evil Chains" (Mega Blade) cd 13.98 BLOC PARTY "Silent Alarm Remixed" (Vice) 2cd 14.98 CAGE "Hell's Winter" (Definitive Jux) cd 16.98 CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (ORTOLANI, RIZ) "OST" (Red Stream) cd 11.98 CAVE-IN "Perfect Pitch Black" (Hydra Head) cd 12.98 CIRCULUS "The Lick On The Tip Of An Envelope Yet To Be Sent" (Candlelight) cd 14.98 COE, DAVID ALLAN "Penitentiary Blues" (Hack Tone) cd 16.98 COIL "...And The Ambulance Died In His Arms" (Threshold) cd 19.98 CURL UP AND DIE "The One Above All, The End Of All That Is" (Revelation) cd 13.98 DOUBLE, THE "Loose In The Air" (Matador) cd/lp 13.98/11.98 EDISON ELECTRIC BAND "Bless You Dr. Woodward" (Water) cd 15.98 EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER "Beyond The Beginning" (Sanctuary Records) dvd 27.00 GILMORE, JIMMIE DALE "Come On Back" (Rounder) cd 16.98 HAACK, BRUCE "The Electric Lucifer" (Columbia) lp 12.98 HAINO, KEIJI "Global Ancient Atmosphere" (PSF) cd 21.00 HELL, RICHARD "Spurts: The Richard Hell Story" (Rhino / Warner) cd 16.98 HOLY MCGRAIL "Collecting Earthquakes" (Head Heritage) cd 14.98 KUUPUU "Illusia" (Time-Lag) 7" 8.98 M83 "s/t" (Gooom) cd 15.98 MAGIC AUM GIGI "MMMM" (Sparkling Spare Wheel) lp 21.00 MT. EERIE "Singers" (P.W. Elverum & Sun) lp + cd 16.98 NADA SURF "The Weight Is A Gift" (Barsuk) 2cd 14.98 NANJO, ASAHITO "Greed" (Sparkling Spare Wheel) lp 21.00 NECKS, THE "Photosynthetic" (Long Arms) cd 15.98 NERVE NET NOISE "Radio Life" (Staalplaat) cd 19.98 NUMAN, GARY "Living Ornaments '79" (Beggars Banquet) 2cd 10.98 NUMAN, GARY "Living Ornaments '80" (Beggars Banquet) 2cd 10.98 NUMAN, GARY "Living Ornaments '81" (Beggars Banquet) 2cd 10.98 ONEIDA / PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND "split" (JagJaguwar) 12" 11.98 POSIES "Every Kind Of Light" (Ryko) cd 15.98 REID, TERRY "Superlungs" (Astralwerks) cd 15.98 RODEN, STEVE "Airforms" (Line) cd 14.98 SANHEDOLIN "Manjoicchi Wa Muko" (PSF) cd 21.00 SHE MOB "Not In My World" (She Mob) cd 9.98 SHEAVY "Republic?" (Candlelight) cd 14.98 STELLASTARR "Harmonies For The Haunted" (RCA) cd 12.98 STOLTZ, KELLEY "Crockodials" (Beautiful Happiness) cd 9.98 STOOGES, THE "Fun House Deluxe" (Elektra) 2cd 21.00 STOOGES, THE "Heavy Liquid" (Easy Action) 6cd 82.00 STOOGES, THE "Stooges" (Rhino) 2cd 21.00 TAAKE "Helnorsk Sbartmetall" (Karisma) cd 14.98 TIA CARRERA "The November Session" (Australian Cattle God) cd 12.98 TIMES NEW VIKING "Dig Yourself" (Siltbreeze) cd 13.98 TIVOL "Early Teeth" (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98 TOY DOLLS "Cheerio And Toodlepop! The Complete Singles" (Castle) 2cd 21.00 TRAFFIC SOUND "Yellow Sea Years" (Vampisoul) cd 21.00 V/A "Cambodian Rocks Vol. 4" (Khmer Rocks) cd 14.98 V/A "Speaking My Mind: New Rubble Volume 2" (Past & Present) cd 17.98 V/A "Welsh Rare Beat" (Finders Keepers) cd 21.00 WEST, KANYE "Late Registration" (Roc-A-Fella) cd 15.98 YA HO WHA 13 "Re-Visiting Father and the Source Family" (Swordfish) dvd 28.00
Oh man. This is a good one. A really good one. This is one of those records we've been waiting for, that takes the sound of SUNN0))) and Earth, that soon to be done to death slow motion guitar dirge doom, to a whole new level. It's still heavy and glacial, and dense and totally overwhelming, but there's just something about it, that sounds, maybe clean, spacious, open? The guitar tone and the compostion and the recording all mesh in some magical way to make the guitars float and drift. It's almost dreamy, while somehow still being dark and ominous. It's hard to explain, but this record just really hit the spot in a way few of the many doom-dirge-drone clones have managed lately. Packaged in a cool silscreened vellum sleeve!
So now the bad news: THIS IS SUPER LIMITED. IN FACT, WE HAVE THE LAST 10 COPIES! WHEN THOSE ARE GONE, WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET MORE. But there is some good news: There will be a cd version, coming soon! So if you are not one of the lucky ten, fear not! And we'll definitely review the cd in much more detail as soon as they show up!
The beloved old tymey alt-country duo of Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean reunite for their seventh full length. One thing we noticed right away, was that apparently when the ladies are "Thinking Of You" they're got a bee in their bonnet or a burr in their behind 'cause they're singing their hearts out with much more fervent gusto than ever before, delivering their hard luck and hard livin' lyrical tales with ample grit and poignancy. Backing the ladies up this time around are members of Califone who, while remaining wholly respectful of the pair's sound, bring enough of their own band's character into the mix to make for a refreshing combination. Fans of both bands should give 'er a gander!
For those of you into acid folk from the early 70's, we have another terrific find with FRESH MAGGOTS. This teenage British duo's only record, not surprisingly deemed a failure upon its release with such an unappealling name (though of course we think it's cool), came out in 1971. Which, as you may know, some here say could be one of the BEST years for this -or any- genre. Influenced by the likes of Deep Purple, Zeppelin, and Pentangle, Fresh Maggots really don't sound as rock as the above outfits (partly due to lacking drums) but bring more to mind Forest, Tractor, or Tyrannosaurus Rex. There's lots of acoustic guitar folkiness here blended with fuzzed out fits of electric guitar. And there's a little tin whistle playing and triangle chiming going on, too! Melodic, pastoral, hearty, and highly recommended. This reissue, which the Fresh Maggots themselves had a hand in, includes extensive liner notes, and two bonus tracks.
The folks at Aero Recordings have kindly reissued domestically this live disc which was originally released in Europe on Glitterhouse back in 2001. Three of these songs also appeared on the band's On The Shore doubledisc album in early 2003. In the live setting (or at least on this particular performance), Friends Of Dean Martinez are much more fiery and immediate than on their studio recordings (which are considerably more sprawling, drifting and contemplative). To be frank, there are occasions on Live At Club 2 where the trio simply rock! If you dig the dynamic twang of bands such as The Sadies or Calexico (Joey Burns and John Convertino were in an early incarnation of FODM and they wrote and co-wrote a few of the songs included here), do yourself a favor and check out Friends Of Dean Martinez (and vice versa for that matter). This is a great live document of a 2001 performance in Munich, Germany and features a terrific selection of songs that span the band's career up to that point.
Yes, this is indeed the same black metal Frost that's the side project of Irrumator (aka Mick) from UK noisemongers Anaal Nathrakh and Mistress. Southern Lord, assuredly fans of Frost's excellent albums Cursed Again and Talking To God, have slapped four new Frost songs onto a lil' 3" cd (which comes packaged in an all-black, regular 5" cd jewel case). Oh happy, necro day!
This wee disc contains the filthy, savage sounds of buzzing guitars, a drum kit being beaten to death, and plenty of fully amped and atmospheric fingers-slammed-in-thee-piano-lid-keyboards (with resultant blood-curdling vocal screams!). Irrumator and Co. do not hold back -- they've only got 17 minutes but they make 'em about as black metal a 17 minutes as ever have been!
While the last two Fruit Bats records were fairly pleasant slabs of folk flecked indie rock jangle, Spelled In Bones shows the band taking HUGE strides towards a bigger sound and better songs and a much more expansive sonic world. Described in almost every review as "the Shins meet Califone", The Fruit Bats have now managed to become more than that, definitely their own band, although the sonic referents to those two outfits certainly can't be ignored. Vocalist Eric Johnson's voice is eerily similar to the Shins' James Mercer, but where Mercer's vocals tend toward the ebullient and poptastically bombastic, the music following suit, Johnson tends toward the more melancholy occasionally slipping into a perfectly lovely falsetto, all over delicate piano and strummed minor key guitar, the jangle muted and subtle, with lap steel filigree giving the proceedings a lush, countrified feel. Spelled In Bones is modern yet completely classic sounding Pop with a capital P, draped with bits of country here and there, little bits of bedroom folk too, but all contributing to the record's perfect popiness. Songs so lilting and hooky you won't be able to get them out of your head. The sound of the Beatles is everywhere on this record for sure, but so is the sound of the Posies, the Wings, Iron And Wine, Broken Social Scene, Red Red Meat, Death Cab For Cutie, and yeah, even the Shins and Modest Mouse. So so good.
By now everyone should be familiar with SF black metal legends Weakling. A brief existence, a handful of shows, and a single amazing record (released on Andee's tUMULt label, we should mention). Members of Weakling played in and/or went on to play in Amber Asylum, the Champs, Drunk Horse, Asunder, Sangre Amado, Saros and the short lived but now totally cult blackened gothic doom outfit The Gault. Recorded way back in 1999 by Tim Green, The Gault's Even As All Before Us languished for years before the band finally agreed on a mix and a label, and now five years later this mighty slab of depressive doom finally sees the light of day. Some of you may be wondering why we're only getting around to reviewing this now, since it was released a few months ago... and, the entire first pressing is already sold out. So what's the deal? Well, bad news for any of you who already picked up a copy somewhere else. The ENTIRE first pressing was, in fact, defective. But not defective enough apparently for the label to care, as they refused to repress it and continued to sell the defective copies anyway. To our ears though, the harsh digital glitches inadvertently inserted between every track totally detracted from the gorgeously bleak and harrowing ambience. So the band took it upon themselves to have corrected copies pressed themselves, and thus we finally have the Gault record the way it was meant to be heard. Imagine those Weakling riffs, slowed down and wrapped in dense '80s-ish reverb, smeared and stretched into serpentine minor key melodies, throbbing and pulsing and slithering through midtempo dronescapes of shimmering guitar buzz, creeping basslines, ghostlike female vocals, crashing steady drumming all cloaked in a rich blackened haze, suffocating and claustrophobic, but somehow completely epic at the same time. Think a black metal Joy Division and you might be close, due in no small part to vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn's distinctive wail. Equal parts Ian Curtis, Interpol's Paul Banks and weirdly enough, Dutch weirdo black metallers Urfaust, a soaring mournful croon, rich and velvety and quite haunting. Each track is a twisting complex doomscape of fuzzed out drones, pounding downtuned riffage, swirling psychedelic ambience, slow motion crawl and creep, building and building into massive black swells. A gorgeously creepy collection of heaving, lurching, dark and delicate, doomy and dense epics. So emotional and so totally and completely intense!
More gorgeous worldly film score work from Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard! Following up her fine compositions for Whale Rider, Ms Gerrard joins Jeff Rona in scoring the soundtrack for A Thousand Roads. Needless to say, she's definitely found her (second?) calling. On its own without the film's visual accompaniment, the soundtrack's numerous diverse voices, woodwind and string arrangements and haunting drones make for a deeply moving 'of the earth' listening experience. Sure to please fans of her solo work as well as those of Dead Can Dance. Guests include John Trudell, R. Carlos Nakai, Ulali, Douglas Spotted Eagle, Primeaux & Mike.
Is there much more to say about The Hafler Trio that hasn't been said already by us or anyone else for that matter? Perhaps. Yet another month and another Hafler Trio album arrives, stretching our feeble efforts to describe the audio / visual / contexual productions of Mr. Andrew M. McKenzie, the sole member of the Hafler Trio with assistance from other like-minded techgnostics on occasion. For the month of Septembe 2005, the Hafler Trio album in question is If Take, Then Take which marks the first full length LP that McKenzie has engineered in over a decade -- this, of course in the wake of numerous multi-cd sets and 10"s galore. In describing this record, the C.I.P. label offered an exceptional introduction for If Take, Then Take: "Unanswered questions, unasked-for responses, stimulus and response exercises conducted and presented for the benefit of a select few. Hafler Trio has always asked more of the listener than many sound artists do, with questions and ideas that provoke and, like an open invitation, await response from those who are willing to tackle, often at length, the ideas presented. The audio cleanses the aural palette and refurbishes it nicely. The ideas in the booklet are available to those who wish additional illuminations, provocations, questions, and -- when the light is right -- answers, may add greater tricks to their own personal repertoire of knowledge. Please note: in this instance, knowledge may be considered fact, fiction, or entirely up for debate."
As to the musical program found within, McKenzie offers another breathtaking variation on the theme of hidden ambience, disrupted silences, and rich timbral minimalism. And as always, he prefers for us to not offer any sound samples. Also, as you might have imagined, this is ULTRA LIMITED!!! So it might take us a while to get more when we run out, and there's always a chance we won't be able to get more at all, so act fast!
Hey, pop fans! Cup proclaims that this cd is worth getting just for the second song "Play The Hits".
If you dig Posies, Raspberries, Silver Sun, Redd Kross as well as maybe Squeeze and XTC too, you might wanna set a place at your pop supper table for Hal... especially if you have a soft spot for unbridled, toothsome falsetto vocals. For the most part, these Irish lads' sound is super vibrant, sunshine rock, but the further you go into the album the more folksy they get. This is the album you want to be playing when they show that delirious montage of you at the summer fair, riding the Ferris Wheel, throwing darts at balloons, winning the giant stuffed animal, and getting wonderfully nauseous over too many mini doughnuts, sno-cones and cotton candy. Sweet, squeaky clean fun.
The latest in killing technology from our very own Andee's tUMULt label! This is the first (and last) release from Chicago's metal mercenaries Hatewave. Completely crushing math/speed/avant/noise/metal/grind.
Hatewave's musical bloodbath is equal parts death metal, free jazz, grindcore, no-wave and pure noise. Furiously brutal, two guitar and drums (no bass!) attack, whirling riffs, bursts of white noise, calculus-style time changes, frantic blast beats, and a barely-under-the-surface free-jazz obsession all coalesce into some of the most insane, lightning speed, technical black metal/grind bombast ever. Featuring ex-Chicago / current SF scene fixture and metal/jazz obsessive, drummer Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers, Lake of Dracula, To Live and Shave in L.A.). Originally this was a limited LP-only release -- this cd version adds 3 bonus tracks from their 1997 demo! The LP (and at the time, soon to be released cd) was banned by some squeamish distributors for its somewhat gory cover art and controversial lyrics, all of which are still present in their throat hacked, head smashed, blood soaked glory!
Both in her band the Blake Babies and as a solo artist, Juliana Hatfield's always had a bit of raunch in her girlishness, but on her latest full length she takes on a considerably harder, grittier rock sound with a few bluesy moments. Made In China offers up heavy chunks of electric guitars, noodly solos, distorted vocal effects. Nonetheless she still sounds like a perennial petulant teen.
Hip party kids around town have been droolin' for this one for months! Yup, sliding in beside their old Stacy Q and Kylie records, it's the debut release from local candy electro partymeisters Will Schwartz (formerly of Imperial Teen) and Tomo Yasuda (formerly of The Boy Explodes). In response to those naysayers who've been expecting to find irony amid the cheese (we mean that nicely!), Schwartz has proclaimed emphatically that their '80s dance pop love is true... and yes, unlike many music-makin' kids these days whom you know weren't even born when that music was first made, Schwartz is indeed old enough to have experienced it first hand. These cats genuinely adore the most fluffiest and shiniest sounds -- ones that many folks perhaps would've preferred be kept in the past. They along with their pair of dancers have dusted them off and brought them back to their basement discotheque hideaway, along with their shiny rainbow patches and gold sequined skirt 'n' pumps set (except for Schwartz who's opted for the shirtless beefcake pose!). They've offered up just four songs to get the good times rolling, but they've loaded 'em up with fun fun fun! Actually that might be all you can take in one dose before succumbing to sugar-shock. HW partner in crime Yasuda has programmed up a remarkable replication of that decade's lip-glossy backing tracks, while Schwartz has come up with an avalanche of coy, naughty lyrical cliches such as those that pepper the giddy second track "Magic Window". "I play you like a baby grand, I feel you melting in my hands" and "I can make you scream, I'm better than a Krispy Kreme" and "Come to the party in my pants!" Oh my!
It's not always necessary to list all the instruments used in the construction of a record, but sometimes it's the only way to help wrap your head around the strange sounds found on a certain wonderful and mysterious recording. Just Before Setting The Sky On Fire was created using the following instruments and items: "guitar, boot, cassette recorder, sex machine, el barometer, casio mt-68, computer, theremin, vibrators, el toothbrush, dulcimer organ, dulcimer, prepared boot, sheep's toes, percussion, cd's, turntable, minidisk manipulations, sine waves, feedback circuit, soundedit loops, bells, practice bagpipe chanter, filters, and noise-canceling-head-phones-microphone." But as the saying goes, it's not only what you use, it's how! From the same label that brought us recent reissues from James Blackshaw and Rameses III comes this newest release from Robert Horton. To be honest we don't know a whole lot about Horton, other than he has a previous release on Finnish cd-r label 267 Lattajjaa and is apparently from right here in SF, but judging from this here record, that won't be the case for long. A curiously appealing mix of modern free folk, abstract drone, and twentieth century computer music, Just Before Setting The Sky On FIre is a warm dense tangle of steel string guitars, humming and wheezing drones, majestic Sunroof!-like skree, lilting neo-Appalachia fingerpicking, extended shimmering ragas, random tribal clatter, and delicately swoonsome ambience. So gorgeous. Will fit perfectly right there next to all your Jewelled Antler, Avarus, Pelt, No Neck Blues Band, Tower Recordings, Excepter, Jackie O Motherfucker and Sunburned Hand Of The Man! LIMITED TO 120 COPIES!!!
After two stunning records of orchestral filmscores released by the stellar Touch Records, Iceland's Johann Johannsson presents his score for the film Dis through The Worker's Institute (who also recently released the lovely debut disc from Amina, Sigur Ros' string section). There is a significant sonic difference between the work Johannsson did for Touch (e.g. a grandiose impressionism for large chamber ensembles augmented with electronics) and this album, which features an almost saccharine pop, '80s feel with repeating motifs and melodies, seemingly designed for particular scenes / emotional ambience within the movie. Johannsson's score for Dis is a fantastic simulation of a dreamy bubble-gum sentimentality, the sort evoked through many of John Hughes soundtracks; to top it off, the repeating motif throughout the Dis is deadringer for the Mickey & Sylvia track "Love Is Strange" which appeared on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Seriously. As Johannsson envisioned this soundtrack to capture the zeitgeist of 21st Century Reykjavik, one has to wonder if Johannson is comparing Reykjavik to the Breakfast Club / Fast Times teenage American drama of twenty years ago?
How can you resist a band name like Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat? And with a name like that, what can one possibly expect musically? Well, surprisingly the music here manages to conjure up the same sort of dark confusional forboding that the name hints at. Forbidden? Taboo? Some sort of alchemical majick? Some sort of witchy incantation? Why else would one...um, well you know. On If The Sky Falls, We Shall Catch Larks, KTAOABC, the project of a young Belgian musician and instrument builder named Stef Heeren, unfurls a gorgeously dark, mesmerizing chunk of minimal, melodic, brooding, lilting and lovely doom folk. Harrowing and brooding, falling somewhere between the apocalyptic ur-folk of Current 93, the rickety, swampy biblical dirge of Woven Hand, the brooding acoustic bombast of later Swans, seventies pagan psych-folk (Comus, Incredible String Band, etc.) and even some of the strident prostletyzing of New Model Army. Very spare in its instrumentation and structure, aggressively strummed acoustic guitars underpinning ultra dramatic and slightly venomous vocals, occasional bells and strings and piano, subtle cooing background vocals, all very repetitive and hypnotic, churning in a thick fog of emotional turmoil and spiritual unease. Dark and droning, intense and intensely fervent, slipping from loose slithery balladeering to fiery and impassioned swells of soul-laid-bare sermonizing. Really quite amazing. Fans of C93, Nick Cave, Death In June, Comus, Swans, Der Blutharsch, Richard Youngs, Woven Hand and 16HP will certainly swoon, but this should definitely appeal to fans of all things emotional and dark, folky and forboding. Beautifully packaged in a minimally screenprinted fold over cardboard sleeve.
