RAGE! This is the brand of blazing fast, berserker black metal that, if you were perhaps a less civilized and controlled person than we'll assume most readers of the AQ list to be, would perhaps result in you throwing yourself bodily about your room, thrashing, trashing, destroying things until your cd player suffers a critical blow and some semblance of reason returns to you with the sudden silence. Well let's hope that scenario never takes place (or if it does, nobody blames us for recommending this album). But listening to this frenzied blackness can certainly be cathartic even if there's no physical (only psychical) reaction. It's exuberant and extreme corpsepainted carnage up there with the best of 'em -- we're reminded particularily of the fiercest tracks by Immortal.
Yes indeed, the high expectations we had for upandcoming Norwegian black metal battle cruiser 1349's third outing, are met or exceeded in spades with the release of Hellfire, which features as always the inhuman drumming of Satyricon skinbeater Frost, who slows things down for some well-deserved headbangs only occasionally, but mostly drives the album forward faster than an Aquarius customer pouncing on a new limited edition vinyl Boris release! The blurring speed of Frost's drumming is well-matched by singer Ravn's angry, raspy throat abuse and the jagged riff shrapnel flying from the guitars. Swathed in an atmospheric cloak of evil, buzzing, distorted near-melody (especially the album's final, title track, which somehow clocks in at exactly 13 minutes and 49 seconds!), Hellfire is hyperspeed ultraviolence of the highest calibre. If you already like 1349 you know what to expect. Everyone else, watch out.
Funny that a band can get so over-rated they become supremely under-rated. It could be that one of the best rock bands of all time has maintained their overall showmanship, but without the illustrious and crazed Bon Scott on lead vocals, their pure fire got lost in the huge rock-band-production of the '80s and '90s. Lightshows and media blitzes (not to mention excessive usage of their music for major league sporting events) seemed to dilute their early naked raw energy. Though, these days they certainly still do have raucous energy to spare, just ask anyone who's seen them in recent years. However, the young ravenous intensity of the band in the mid-to-late '70s is, in comparison, incredibly impressive to witness. Thankfully, several choice moments from that time in the band's career is presented on this Family Jewels (ahem) double dvd.
Disc one (20 songs from 1975-1980) features priceless footage of early performances and some incredibly scrappy but amazing music videos. Of the live shows, one that stands out is the footage from their notoriously impressive performance at University of Essex on a UK television series called Rock Goes To College.
In the music video for "Jailbreak" (which has become a staple on VH1 Classic), you see the band (with Angus shockingly in only something that looks to be a paper thin pajama set), freezing their asses off, "playing" the song with instruments up on some windy hill somewhere, "escaping from jail" and dodging some home-made explosives. The look of the film, quick cuts matched by the song's memorable sound quality make for one of the best music videos of all time. I get chills everytime I watch it.
In clip after clip, the surprisingly unpredictable and witty showman Scott keeps you thoroughly entertained. Keep an eye out for bagpipe-playin' Bon and schoolgirl Bon alongside schoolboy Angus! Speaking of which, the playfully rambunctious chemistry between the two is great, adding a totally distinct personality to their on-stage energy that's sadly missed in the later Johnson-era performances. To boot, it's pretty cool too to watch the evolution of Angus' student uniform.
Disc two (20 more tracks, 1980-1993) draws from the Brian Johnson years (AC/DC's singer after Bon's untimely death), and so one of the unexpected things that this double cd set inadvertenty offers is the opportunity for the Scott versus Johnson debate teams to re-ignite their rallying charges (just as the Iron Maiden Early Years double-dvd did for the Dickinson and DiAnno supporters). Which side are you on? So far, we're siding with Bon...all except for Allan who votes for Brian. You can take it up with him.
San Fran stoner metal heroes (and heroine) Acid King roll their big ol' ball of fuzz in our direction with this latest (presumably third, but we didn't count 'em) album of heavy Sabbath-influenced spacey sludge rock. Singer/guitarist Lori S. and company kick out the jams (albeit slowly) on such tracks as "2 Wheel Nation", "Heavy Load" and "Into The Ground". With her wailing moan drifting over the sort of plodding, low-end riff repetition you'd expect from pals of Boris, this is one for those of you into the likes of Om, Sons Of Otis, Dead Meadow, that sort of thing. Of course, you might nod off before the cool guitar part or catchy bit of the song heaves into view...but that's the risk you take with a lot of the stonier stoner stuff like this!
Yes it's another Acid Mother Temple album! Apparently as necessary to life as food or oxygen, for some people...or so it would seem from the band's oft-remarked-upon release schedule, which is in fact matched by the demand for their prolific output. Seriously, though, while we joke about how many records these hairies release, we also always have to perk up and pay attention when there's a new AMT opus. 'Cause most of the time, they're well worth hearing -- this one in particular certainly is, we've gotta say.
Consisting of one 50 plus minute long track entitled "OM Riff from The Cosmic Inferno", this actually sounds quite a bit like AQ faves Circle! Andee thought it *was* Circle when he first heard it, actually. The "chant" you hear is all hyper and Magmoid, twinned with a Circle-like, chugging, insistent rhythm that plows through a universe of swooshing bleeping blooping electronic space soundz. It's repetitive and hypnotic and maybe even spiritually meaningful. An electric Buddhist drug thing you wouldn't understand...but it's fun trying. The chanting gives way to purely instrumental, sorta psychedelic soundtracky passages, but then at at about 23 minutes a heavy, groovy bassline kicks in, and Kawabata unleashes the motorpsycho darkness of his guitar, getting just a wee bit Keiji Haino on us. Later still the chant resurfaces, even more cranked and intense and things just get crazier and heavier. It's all very kosmic and freaky, reminding us like we said of Circle, and even darker stuff like Yeti and Tarantula Hawk, and of course '70s forefathers Hawkwind. And oh yeah Kawabata busts out the hurdy gurdy on here as well. Recommended, especially to AMT fans who also like Circle (which is, we'd imagine, a lot of you).
Oooh. So utterly blissful, beautiful, and contemplative. In The White Silence is a musical evocation of the endless white Arctic tundra. John Luther Adams lives in Alaska and this piece, like much of his work, is inspired by the remote Alaskan wilderness, in all its vastness and stillness, what he considers exploration in "sonic geography". We thought at first that sounded like it might be a bit too New Agey or something but as soon as we heard this we couldn't help but fall in love with it!
This was recommended to us by one of our customers who said that it was basically the closest any modern composer had come to making "Pop Ambient" music (as in, the Pop Ambient compilations released by the Kompakt label, stuff like Gas, Markus Guentner, and Klimek). But it's not electronic, it's chamber music, performed by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. That means lots of sweet strings -- violins, violas, cellos, bass, harp. Also some additional coloration (and this is colorful, in the way that white is all colors) from vibraphone, celesta and orchestra bells. Although of course this composition has a beginning and an end, it seems like something that could go on forever, though it really only lasts about 75 minutes -- slowly unfolding, built from layers of cloud-like tone clusters and barely-shifting rhythms. The musically learned liner notes (which will tell you a lot more about the musical theory behind the construction of this piece than I could ever hope to do) speak of "static textures of densely layered sound, sustained tones, short repetitive patterns, and long rising and falling lines." All true, but you have to hear it to understand how NICE that can be. If the Arctic really sounds like this, we're all set to fly up there and strap on the snowshoes... A gorgeous, extended, and immersive piece of minimalist, "pop ambient" chamber music indeed!!
Seems like Mr. Flights-of-fancy, Ryan Adams is stickin' with a good thing. The ridiculously prolific singer/songwriter hooked up with The Cardinals for his last album Cold Roses, and it turned out to be a winning combination! Perhaps his most 'old country' sounding album to date, and a dandy one at that.
Reissued on ultra limited vinyl! Here's what we had to say about the cd:
A few years back, Michael Gira dissolved the Swans, and effectively split his band's aesthetic in two, with the soiled ambient project Body Lovers / Body Haters on one side, and the orchestrated songs of Angels of Light on the other. "How I Loved You" is the second Angels of Light album and, as could be gathered from the title, is a collection of love songs. The album begins speaking of love with elation, as in "Evangeline," where Gira pleads to his object of desire with the wistful innocence of a school boy. The following "Untitled Love Song" is a strolling duet between Gira and ex-Pain Teen's singer Bliss Blood, both of whom seem uncharacteristically full of sweetness and light. With those being the most benevolent images of love that he has to offer, Gira then guides the album down a steep slope of sexual dependency, perverse lusts, and a gristled despair in which Gira's body continuously betrays his mind's wishes to never fuck again.
From there on, each track from "How I Loved You" begins with a simple languid melody that could easily be mistaken for anything from the recent Low record but steadily builds in complexity, driving into deeper, darker, and more intense realms. So nice!
There's definitely a couple pretty heavy, rockin' tracks with wailing guitars on this 1970 Brazilian garage psych record that should make this of interest to those of you into the whole '70s proto-metal thing (i.e. you could file this Bango next to Bang and it would make more than alphabetical sense at least insofar as those songs are concerned). That said, this is no Modulo 1000 -- another Brazilian band of similar vintage who rocked wild and heavy for the duration. No, aside from the handful of hard rockers (like the Zeppish "Rock Dream") you'll find a lot of stuff here that's not so heavy, songs that are more in the vein of '60s beat/bar/frat rock, with influences (it sounds like) from the Beatles, Steppenwolf, and Latin music -- all groovy, and a little bit goofy too. Fun, sunny, and very much of its time. Certainly, if you liked their track on the Brazilian Love Peace & Poetry comp and want to hear some more, this Bango reissue is worth checking out. Plus it can't be denied that this has some (literally) bloody great album cover art, which certainly counts for something!
Devendra tops off your tall glass of Cripple Crow with this 3-song ep. Wouldn't think of him as a singles kind of artist, but that's what this appears to be. Much like Sub Pop, XL Recordings have taken to releasing low-priced cd-singles shortly after the release of an artist's album. The title track also appears as the eighth song on the recently released full length. If you yourself are new to Mr. Banhart (or you want to turn a friend onto his music) this might do the trick, but keep in mind that this neo-folk troubadour's most recent more fully fleshed out and often downright rollicking music isn't really indicative of his musical output as a whole. Even with such a relatively short recording career (only 3-4 years?), his earlier (more barebones and obtuse) releases way back in 2002 are quite radically different from where he's at these days.
In a former life, Alec Bathgate was one half of the New Zealand indie rock band Tall Dwarfs (Chris Knox was the other half). He's now gone solo, shifting his focus slightly for The Indifferent Velvet Void. His overall sound is along the lines of the soft, wispy twee folksiness crafted by Elephant 6 Collective bands such as Olivia Tremor Control, Minders or Apples In Stereo, but we sensed some subtle Raspberries '70s softrock influences too. The first song immediately made Cup start singing "Yummy yummy yummy I've got love in my tummy!" but then again that might also be because she'd just eaten an enormous slice of chocolate cake. Nevertheless, this is some super sweet retro poppiness which just might tickle your fancy if you dig any/all of the artists mentioned above!
The team-up of former Dead Kennedys singer / pissed-off political humorist Jello Biafra and underground heavy rock gods the Melvins on last year's Never Breathe What You Can't See album was probably the best Jello record in years, definitely bringing back memories of the DK's heyday. And it sure brought out the punk side of the Melvins. Well, this new album from the Biafra/Melvins conglom should be of interest to anyone who really got off on that last one, consisting as it does of more anti-Yuppie, anti-corporate, anti-Reagan (whoops, I mean Bush) sonic rants recorded during the Never Breathe sessions. Also included: a live track and remixes from Dalek, Melvins's drummer Dale Crover, and Ministry's Al Jourgensen (who collaborated with Biafra some years back in Lard).
Holy smokes, a new Big Star album?! Yes, it's true, well, kinda. With surprisingly little fanfare, the band who inspired countless other AQ fave pop bands -- The Posies, The Shins, Teenage Fanclub, New Pornographers and many more -- has returned with their first studio full length in 27 years (not counting 1993's Columbia: Live At Missouri University). Mind you, it's a new-ish incarnation of the band, but needless to say theirs is a sound we adore, and hence we were pretty darn excited to see this show up the other day. Happy to report that they do not disappoint! The first few songs particularly bring out the sunshine and smiles. By the way, do you recognize some of the voices singing those wonderful soaring harmonies? Joining elder members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens in this incarnation are the immensely Big Star influenced gents from The Posies, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow. So this actually comes across as less a distinctly classic Big Star sounding album, and in a sense more like a Big Star influenced collaboration.
If the more esoteric and abstract moments of Bjork's last full length Medulla tickled your fancy, you'll surely discover much to love on her new cd of film music for Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9.
It's a series of eleven instrumental and vocal interludes that definitely bear the mark of Ms Gudmundsdottir. Alternately austere and elaborate, and steeped in the sounds and influences of Japan (particularly Noh theater). That is, with the exception of one rather insistent horn segment titled "Hunter Vessel" which surfaces midway through the proceedings. Performers include Zeena Parkins, Will Oldham, Akira Rabelais, Mayumi Miyata, Leila, Shiro Nomura, Tagaq, Mark Bell, among many others. Unfortunately not having seen the film, we can't comment on how they relate or interact with the visuals, but we can say that when taken solely an aural experience, it's mighty captivating.
The newest release on AQ pal Uirajara's stellar Essence label, home to the awesome dark ambience of Wolfskin, the splattery noise onslaught of Merzbow's Sha Mo 3000, and soon to release the Brazilian version of Boris's most recent Mabuta No Ura, with completely different artwork and extra music, comes the latest in a recent spate of releases from Scandanavian dark ambient technician Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk, who also records as Folkstorm, Toroidh and began his journey down the darkened path with his black ambient outfit MZ412. This newest release is as dark and bleak and sonically terrifying as they come, which is quite odd considering Vitagen is dedicated to his daughter Indra (the dedication reads: Dedicated to Indra, the light which guides me through the darkness), the cover features all antique photos of little girls, and the super limited deluxe version (now out of print, so don't ask) even came with a handmade porcelain doll. But there is nothing loving or childlike here, unless of course it's meant to be the musical probing of the darkest recess of a child's mind, all monsters and nightmares, things that go bump in the night, shadows outside the window, demons waiting in the closet, all brought to life by disembodied rumbles, slow building industrial swells of shivering blackness, ominous smears of demonic minimalism, and occasional cracks and crashes, like brief bursts of lightning illuminating the terrors hidden in the night, just for a moment, but that moment is enough to fill your soul with dread as you are plunged back into utter darkness. And while the sound of Vitagen is definitely brutal and barren and hauntingly grim, it's also quite beautiful, and even soothing at times, with small stretches of tranquil ambience scattered here and there, melodies slowed down and pulled apart into dark shapes that sort of drift and hover, a nice balance between the hellishly malevolent and the soothingly serene. Beautifully packaged in a six panel, embossed cardboard sleeve.
This mysterious release is the work of UK musician Mat Sweet, who sent a rough demo to the guys at Kranky, who in turn loved it so much they decided to release it without any tweaking or re-recording at all, for fear of sacrificing any of the intimacy or immediacy! A gorgeous chunk of neo folk, acoustic guitar, cymbals, percussion, violin bow, toy piano, manipulated field recordings and computer. At its heart though, this is just a simple and lovely folk record, reminiscent of Iron & Wine or Sentridoh, with its fingerpicked steel string guitar and hushed melancholy vocals, but unlike most of his folk brethren, Sweet adds all sorts of unlikely bits to his heartfelt songs, a swath of reverberating chimes, clanking cymbals, bells and woodblocks, occasional backwards melodies, dogs barking, shimmering drones, never so much that it detracts from the overall beauty, but more as a sort of filigree that adds depth and mystery to Sweet's gorgeously lilting folk. Fans of droney dreamy folk will dig this for sure, but Iron & Wine fans especially may find a new band to love!
A while back we reviewed an amazing record by a band called Tides. What was equally amazing was the circuitous route it took to get to Aquarius. In a nutshell, it was sent to a certain publication who deemed it too punk to review, a friend at said publication grabbed it from the reject box thinking we'd like it. We did. And well you can read that review on the AQ site. And that record ended up being a huge hit around here. The thing is, that record wasn't alone on its perilous journey. No, another record was right there along side the Tides cd making its way to AQ. That record, was this record. The Body. But The Body had a bit farther to go, before making it to the list you have right here in your hands. First, many emails with the label, then much waiting. Then finally a box of cds arrived, but somehow they had all become unglued and ruined in the mail. More emails followed, and still more waiting. FInally we had pretty much just given up. Then just a few days ago, a couple of big bearded guys with tattoos were sort of lurking around the store. You guessed it, they were The Body. Phew. So was it worth it? Hell yeah it was. That is if you like massive, pummeling, downtuned slow motion sludge metal with little bits of ultra doom and lots of post rock in there. And you know we do.
So yeah, The Body. This will definitely hit the spot for all you folks into Conifer, Pelican, Isis, The Ocean, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides and all that metallic post rock doom stuff. The first track is a crusher, a plodding doom riff spread out over eight minutes, with freaky garbled vocal samples and the whole thing building in intensity and slowly becoming more and more blown out until it's a fuzzy slab of white noise doom drone. Woah. The rest of the record trudges alternately between slow motion chugging and poundiing, moody mathy rhythmic workouts, and some truly dense tangles of chaotic riff rhythm mashup. All strung together with some seriously harrowing shrieked black metal style vocals buried WAY down in the mix. The final track is a fifteen minute long, relentless midtempo pipe to the skull, with a main riff that is repeated over and over, almost looped sounding, completely mesmerizing, before it all breaks down into a spacious plodding doom coda. So awesome.
Packaged in hand glued cardstock digipaks. This came out a while ago and was limited to 1000 copies so we can't be entirely sure how long we'll have these.
Boris fans are definitely obsessive, most wanting to collect anything and everything the band puts out, whether it's the same record with different artwork, or a limited single, or the same record with 9 minutes of extra music or a different record with the same cover or whatever. The band don't really help matters much, wholeheartedly playing into this, releasing records in ridiculously limited versions and multiple versions, with different artwork or bonus tracks or both. But this new record Mabuta No Ura has definitely pushed all this multiple version collecting about as far as it can go. More on that at the end of the review -- and we definitely suggest you read that stuff before you buy! But hey, let's talk about the record. A soundtrack to a film entitled Mabuta No Ura, this is Boris at their most abstract, maybe even at their least heavy, but Boris has yet to disappoint, and they don't here. Although depending on your personal favorite style of Boris, whether it be the slow sludgy dirges, the minimal drones or the all out super distorted RAWK, you might have to readjust your thinking to get into Mabuta No Ura. There's only one actually 'heavy track', and some of you may already have it, or at least a version of it, as the track in question, "A Bao A Qu" was released as a super limited picture disc 7" not too long ago. "A Bao A Qu" finds Boris churning through a sludgy slab of crushing psych rock, the way only they seem to do it. The rest of Mabuta No Ura finds the band exploring much more contemplative moods, constructing simple, dreamy passages of finger picked guitar, and warm swells of moody ambience. Sometimes sounding a bit like Low, sometimes a little like Slint, the theme here overall does seem to be a brooding slow building post rock. There are variations of course, Eastern sounding melodies, hazy chanted vocals, shimmering washes of cymbal sizzle, tribal rhythms, hand claps, plaintive vocalising, stretches of Sunroof!-like free-noise ambience, blown out krautrock rhythms, but it all sort of hovers around that post rock sound we love so much, dark and moody and smoldering, occasionally bursting with dynamics, but more often than not chugging along all melancholy and contemplatively propulsive. Hard to imagine what sort of film Mabuta No Ura must be, but the songs and sounds here are quite evocative, and let our imaginations conjure up the appropriate images to go with these sumptuous sounds. Packaged in a gorgeous chipboard slipcover die cut sleeve, with a dozen cd sized photos, presumable from the film, with stories printed on the other sides, unfortunately all in Japanese.
So here's the complicated stuff. There are FOUR versions of this record. All of them slightly different. This is the Japanese cd version. comes in a chipboard diecut sleeve and is NOT limited. In the next week or so we will be getting the vinyl version, which comes with a dozen 12x12 photo prints and IS limited. Only 500 were made and we're getting about a fifth of those, but as with all things Boris they will not last long. So if you want one, best to preorder it now. There will be another cd version, released by the Brazilian label Essence, and there will be two versions of that. A super deluxe boxed version, and a regular digipak version. The deluxe version is super limited. Only 120 copies made. We're getting half. Those will all be spoken for by the time we get them, so if you want one of those, pre-order it now. The regular Brazilian version is the same as the deluxe version just with less packaging. And is not limited.
Confused yet? Well, stick with us just a little bit longer. The Brazilian version has more music than the Japanese version. BUT, the Japanese version has music NOT on the Brazilian version. Okay. So if you just want to make sure you have ALL the music, you need both the Japanese version AND the Brazilian version. And since the Japanese cd and the Brazilian regular cd are not limited, you can easily pick up both. The lp and the deluxe version are just for those of you who need the fancy versions or feel compelled to collect them all. Finally, the Brazilian cd version won't be out until end of August or thereabouts, so orders WILL NOT be held for those! If you want both, we'll send you the Japanese cd now (lp when we get them) and the Brazilian version when they show up in a month or so. Phew!
Ooooh soooo gooood! As seems to be the case with each new Broadcast album, a couple of listens is all it takes to get Tender Buttons hooks into ya! The effects of Broadcast's pop intoxicants aren't as immediate nor as obvious here as those of 2003's The HaHa Sound, but they're no less potent. Broadcast continue to melt their sound into the ultra-pretty sounds of '60s girl groups. In doing so, they perfectly showcase lead vocalist Trish Keenan's unbelievably lovely vocals which occasionally take on a more somber tone here than they did on the airier HaHa Sound. Despite the undeniable sweetness of Keenan's voice, the band always gracefully sidestep excessive syrupiness with the counterbalance of heavier guitars, a propulsive groovy rhythm section and a broad spectrum of hefty analog synth melodies and textures. A luminous dreamboat with a tiger in its tank. Swoon!
The euro-pop sounds of composer / solo crooner Monsieur Bertand Burgalat pleases many ears around the globe. Swirling strings, funky guitar and basslines, playful keyboards, horns, woodwinds, swooning male and female choruses -- it's charming in oh so many ways, elaborate and suave but not without levity and wit. If we have any complaints about Portrait-Robot, it would be that when on occasion Burgalat opts for programmed drum beats (versus live acoustic ones) such as on the song "Ripples" they're a bit... well, clunkily robotic and too upfront in the mix. When you take into consideration the album's title, you wonder if maybe be that was his intention, but it's oddly jarring when you take in the rest of the carefully crafted and composed smooth operatin' affair. The album features 19 lounge-ready songs, plus 2 bonus tracks and a video for "Spring Isn't Fair".
Ultra limited Japanese tour 10" released by the Presspop gallery / label (the same folks that brought us the cool Bob Moog doll reviewed elsewhere on this list) with awesome cover art courtesy of Mr. Archer Prewitt. Eight tracks of that perfect Coctails pop, quirky and slightly off kilter, always with a slightly melancholy undercurrent. Lots of banjo, harmonica, warm warbly organs, occasional squelchy synths, simple shuffling rhythms and sweet vocal harmonies. The sound here is a bit more experimental, sort of Beach Boys meets Martin Denny, but it never strays far from that bouncy Summery pop we love so much. We only managed to get a handful of these so they will most likely be gone pretty quick.
Oh yeah, the original country bad boy. For all the tough guys who acted the part, snarled and swaggered, none could hold a candle to David Allan Coe, who spent a good amount of his younger years in prison before he headed to Nashville to make it big in country music. He was bad ass and prison tough before it was cool. But once the big boys decided it was cool, they all came crawling back, dying to hear Coe's tales of life behind bars. This is true life, bad ass, foot stomping, boogie woogie country blues. Tales of drugs and fighting and lonliness and death. As well as one of our favorite Coe tracks "Death Row", where Coe unveils his impossibly exotic and ridiculous requests for his last meal. After all, a man can't die until he's had his last meal, so if you have to track down a double yoked egg from an albino pigeon, with fried bat wings over easy, well you'll be sitting pretty for a long long time. Each song is a stone cold classic, wild guitars, honky tonk piano, wailing harmonicas, shuffling rhythms and Coe's lazy countrified drawl. All packaged in a gorgeous digipak reissue that faithfully recreates the original lp's die cut bars and has extensive liner notes that tell Coe's unbelievable life story. But nothing says it better than Coe's dedication on the sleeve:
"Pennitentiary Blooos - O.K.! So my spelling is bad! I'm not a colledge graduate. I didn't even finish high school. I was in prison. Most of my life. Reform Schools, reformatorys, and prisons. But I'm a songwriter and a singer. Over the years I've made millions of dollars, Writing songs for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennnings, George Jones, John Cash, Johnny Paycheck, Tanya Tucker, Elvis, the Dead Kennedys, Unkle Kracker, Kid Rock. And many others. All kinds of music.Rock + roll, rap, country, pop, hip hop, do wop, ragga and blues.
THIS WAS MY FIRST ALBUM. I'm 65 years old now. And as I listen back to these songs I realize I've always been part of the blues and the blues have always been a part of me. The blues isn't a black thing or a white thing. It's a black and blue thing. you have to experience it. Sincerely, David Allan Coe,ïEx-convict"
Fuck yeah! Includes a bonus booklet along with the liner notes, an excerpt from Coe's book "Ex-Convict", called How To Pull Time And Parole. Complete with reproduced original typewritten pages and one of Coe's early mugshots.
Continental are keepin' the post-rock alive with their new 7-song cd. A few customers even asked if this was an old Tortoise release, and it's easy to draw that comparison to Chicago's granddaddies of the genre. A solid follow-up to 2003's Four-Letter Words.
Featuring members of Crack: We Are Rock, Total Shutdown, Murder Murder, XBXRX and Zeek Sheck, Death Sentence: Panda! present this 10" on looovely black & white halfsie vinyl, limited to 400 copies. Drums, flute, clarinet and noisy bursty cute girl vocals define Puppy, Kitty or Both, recorded by George Patterson of KNODEL!! For fans of Afrirampo, Big Techno Werewolves, Numbers, Noel Harmonson, and So So Many White White Tigers.
Metal heads around these parts have been completely obsessed with Deathspell Omega. And rightfully so. The first black metal band in a long while to totally reinvent black metal and make it their own. In a way that managed to turn lots of non-metal folks to the dark side while somehow remaining true and grim enough to keep the hardcore black metal elite satisfied. We mentioned in our review of the last DSO, that the best way to find out about the best bands, is to check out what the other best bands are listening to, and at the time, everyone from Leviathan to Nachtmystium to Crebain to Draugar were singing their praises. So when the word of a new DSO surfaced, we had the SF black metal horde showing up at the store all the time like kids at Christmastime, chomping at the bit for the new DSO. "Is it here yet?! Is It Here Yet?! IS IT HERE YET?" Well, it is finally here, and damn if it isn't even weirder and more intense and fucking amazing than we could have hoped for. Three tracks clocking in at about 36 minutes, of some of the most unique, idiosyncratic outsider black metal you'll ever hear. The first track starts off with four minutes of meandering and spacious post rock, a lilting melancholic soundscape, of finger picked guitars, big simple drumming, creepy whispered vocals, and snippets of ghostly disembodied voices, before the whole thing builds into a super angular minor key black metal burst of buzzing distorted riffing, arpeggiated melodies and blast beats that all sort of morphs into a very Ved Buens Ende sounding loping midtempo metallic groove, seasick and hypnotic sounding. The entire record is peppered with alien sounding melodies, stretches of ambient flutter, some otherworldly slow motion doom, strange industrial clatter and woozy head nodding arrangements, all aligned around and amidst more traditional blasts of black metal. So cool and so weird. This is indeed black metal through and through, but at the same time it's almost more of a weird avant rock record, incorporating lots of BM elements, making it that much more original and that much more timeless. Packaged in a gorgeous digipak with a huge booklet of BEAUTIFUL creepy artwork very reminiscent of Hans Bellmer, along with all sorts of texts, Biblical, apocryphal and otherwise.
Diamatregon are a French black metal band who specialise in violently thrashing, ultra chaotic, on-the-verge-of-losing-control, over-saturated, super distorted and noisy, TRUE black metal. Fast and furious with the occasional midtempo breakdown and a once-in-a-while doomy dirge. But they also happen to have an amazing way with melodies, as 1000 mile an hour blasts can get pretty tedious, pretty quickly. So even though the songs sometimes sound like a black metal band being hurled down a stairway (a good thing, mind you) the songs stick in your head more than you would think possible. And the occasional midtempos, full of fuzzed out guitars and simple relentless drumming, definitely bring to mind the mighty Burzum. A thick, hyperspeed and hellish brew of harsh, inhuman howls, amp melting, overdriven guitars, thrashing drums with a lo-fi, but remarkably heavy production. They even cover the Misfits' Death Comes Ripping, turning it into a 90 second blast of sinister, speaker shredding, head banging, church burning high end brutality.
Blasphemy For Satan is eight metal thrashing mad tracks clocking in at 45 minutes.
Twenty of those minutes just happen to make up the crushing final track, an extended doom epic, equal parts, moody post rock, Sabbathy dirge, and all out noise assault, complete with bizarre samples, found sounds, and super complex arrangements, and as reminiscent of old AMREP bands as it is Norwegian black metal.
Diamatregon actually sent their cd to Andee/tUMULt because they were huge fans of the label as well as Circle and Acid Mothers Temple and lots of decidedly non metal music, and were really wanting to release their record on a not-specifically-metal label, which seems to work well with tUMUlt's good-music-is-good-music mantra and their mission to expose non-metalheads to metal, and metalheads to non-metal!
But whether you're a metalhead or not, Diamatregon spew forth some amazingly heavy, undeniably catchy, and totally intense blackened sounds.
Yet another blast of thick and furry drones from the awfully prolific of late Double Leopards. Two half hour tracks, recorded live. The first, in L.A. is a massive and dense buzz, like a flurry of tiny lawn mowers and leaf blowers, all tuned to the same chord, emitting a reverberating thrum, like a million bombinating insects or the sound of crashing planes, slowed down and stretched out into a dreamy blur. Or imagine your head covered in bees, then dunk your head in a tar pit and let it dry and crack in the sun. Nice. The second track, recorded live on KDVS in Davis, is a bit more spacious, at least in the beginning, but it soon erupts into another huge multi layered drone, an insectoid hum, magnified a thousandfold and broadcast through a thicket of dense trees, leaves rustling as the sound waves shake everything in their path, until the sound fades and drifts and smooths into a tranquil hum, and eventually what sounds like rain, and then what sounds like bees, and then finally a slowly fading buzz like a distant airplane. Powerful and lovely.
Originally conceived as a hyper intricate math rock duo a few years back, the Double decided to simplify and focus on songs and sounds, then a drummer injury forced the band to yet again rethink their sound and approach, which resulted in the modern sound of the Double, a weird glitched out, quirky pop, thick with super distorted keyboards, winsome melodies, bursts of manic rocking demarcating long stretches of dreampop and new wave warble. Now they've incorporated some of that NY hipster swagger, a la Interpol or the Strokes, but filtered it through the Double's warped musical lens, a bouncy, brooding pop, with angular spaced out guitars and deadpan vocals that sound uncannily like Stephen Malkmus from Pavement, although here they swoop wildly into a falsetto as often as they drawl laconically. Each song is a dizzying blast of kaleidoscopic post-pop, crashing and chaotic, lilting and lovely, stumbling and ramshackle assemblages of bizarre song structures and strange melodies that don't sound catchy until at least the third or fourth time you hear them, but the first two or three times they definitely sound interesting, and intriguing, and make you want to keep listening, to find that unlikely hook, buried in there somewhere. And those are always the kind of songs that stick the most in the long run.
It's all been leading up to this. In the early nineties, when most of us heard Earth for the first time, our minds were totally blown. What was that massive slab of fuzzy sludge doing on Sub Pop? Why didn't it sound like Soundgarden or Mudhoney or Tad? It didn't take long before we stopped asking questions like that and began wondering where the hell were all the other bands that sounded like Earth. Well, it took 10 years, but now that whole downtuned slow motion sludge thing is an actual genre. With more and more new bands popping up every day. All honoring the mighty sludge that was Earth. But those of you who were into Earth the first time around, might remember the band changing directions pretty dramatically, adding a drummer, and playing actual songs, even doing a Hendrix cover at one point, the Earth of old having mutated into a groovy sort of stoner post rock, propulsive swinging riffs, relentless chugging guitars, all wrapped in a druggy spacy swirl. Back then we were all a bit bummed out, as Earth became, well, more normal, at least to our ears. It was as close to selling out as Earth were liable to get.
Back to the present day. Recordings started popping up here and there, along with rumors of actual Earth shows, limited 7"s and tour only 12"s, all filling us with an impossible anticipation. Earth was back. But if they were back, why were all the recordings from live shows and all several years old? It made sense, the sound of the new Earth practically picked up right where they left off, stretched out, spaced out, druggy post rock with simple drumming and wavering distorted riffs, not heavy per se, but dark and dreamy and mesmerizing. But none of that could have prepared us for the desolate, sun baked, slow crawl, shuffle and twang beauty of long-awaited new studio album Hex. Definitely hewing closer to Earth's more recent post rockisms, Hex is warm and expansive, slow building and contemplative, with simple drums, heavily reverbed, not distorted, guitars, occasional lapsteel, the whole thing unfurling into a haunting twang, a ghost town desert lullaby, a Cormac McCarthy novel in song, tumbleweeds, miles of scrub and windblown landscapes, old dead trees, plenty of space for the cymbals to sizzle and each riff to drift into black clouded skies. Drone / doom / dirge / sludge purists (if there can be such a thing) may well be a bit disappointed, or at the very least confused. And Earth's history / reputation for black hole heaviness might be an albatross at this point as this new sound falls squarely within the territory of groups like Low, Codeine, Friends Of Dean Martinez, Calexico, Scenic, Torrez, Sixteen Horsepower, even Mazzy Star or Godspeed You Black Emperor. But ultimately none of that has anything to do with the fact that Hex is just simply beautiful. A dark and mysterious and truly haunting record. Huge swells of instrumental tension dissipate into warm washes of drift and shimmer, melodies are slowly uncoiling snakes, waking drowsily and slithering off sun baked rocks, every note and every drum beat, every slippery lapsteel swoop, every stretch of near silence, are all draped lazily over broken fences, fallen power lines, rusted out tractors, fallow fields. Dark clouds drift above, across a steel grey sky, sending small shadowy shapes scurrying across the landscape like mysterious creatures, the breeze is warm and smells of death and desolation. Every one is lost and alone, out of money, out of time, just waiting around to die. The mood is bleak, but the sound of Hex is so so beautiful. Somehow hopeful and full of joy, but the sort of joy that comes from being powerless and close to despair, and simply choosing joy over misery, finding happiness the way animals in the desert seek out moisture. The heart of Hex is heavy, the sound appropriately heavy as well, but in a way few conventionally heavy records can manage. A brooding, storm about to break, dam about to burst, soul about to loose itself from its earthly moorings and escape to a better place kind of heavy. The sound of the desert, and the human spirit, of death, of sadness and horror, of loneliness, of abandonment, of hearts breaking, lovers lost and drifting apart, of life. The sound of laying in the dry dirt, the breeze stretched across you like a moth eaten old blanket, eyes closed, the sun sending all sorts of shapes spinning behind your closed eyelids, memories becoming fuzzy and drifting away, your whole body and soul wrapped in a warm darkness, the world fading into nowhere, you fading into nothing.
We always seem to go on and on about loads of rare prog. We love that stuff. Lost Italian prog, rare South American prog psych. But let's not give short shrift to American and British progressive groups, especially the more popular mainstream acts. No prog lover worth his salt would dare deny the brilliance of Yes, or Jethro Tull or E.L.P. Especially E.L.P. In fact if you asked Andee who his favorite band was, not just prog band, but band period, he just might answer E.L.P. Why? Because they are the ultimate prog band. Excessive in everything they did, instruments, outfits, song choices, song lengths, solos, EVERYTHING. Plus all three members of E.L.P. were unbelievable players. When rock kids were worshipping at the altar of Neil Peart, some of us were bowing before the godlike drumming of Carl Palmer. This double DVD is jam packed with so much classic E.L.P. footage it's unbelievable. There's a bit of pre-E.L.P. stuff: the video for "Fire" by the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown, which features a masked Carl Palmer on drums, King Crimson live in Hyde Park in 1969, the Nice on German TV show Beat Club in 1968, all amazing. Even just the DVD menu footage features lots of classic E.L.P. images, the band in their silk kimonos getting on stage in Japan, the infamous semi trailers, each printed with one band member's name on top, billboards, fireworks and pyrotechnics. Then there's just loads and loads of amazing live footage from Europe, the UK, Japan, including their debut performance at the Isle Of Wright festival with Carl Palmer disrobing during his drum solo and Keith Emerson playing his keyboard from the wrong side, pounding it, jumping over it, then launching cannons from either side of the stage. Holy fuck! They definitely don't make bands like that any more. There's lots of videos too, from European TV, including an amazing Carl Palmer drum solo filmed live on a TV show called Aquarius, where he plays chimes, timpanis, four bass drums and even rings a bell with his mouth! Disc two features E.L.P.'s whole California Jam set as well. Bonus footage includes an unseen rehearsal film from 1973, interviews with Bob Moog about his relationship with E.L.P., analysis of the album covers, videos and more. But even without the extras, heck, even without disc two, there is just so many amazing sights and sounds and performances here. This stuff is so absurd and so brilliant, and the songs are so classic, and the playing is so goddamn good, it just makes me feel like an old man for lamenting the state of modern music. Anyone out there who wants to start an E.L.P. for the new millennium get in touch with Andee via the store!
According to the band, "this is a house record". If it is, then raves must be way more scary and fucked up than I ever imagined. We've been digging Excepter's freeform avant space dub weirdness for a while now, and as much as the band would like to claim that this is a dance record, it's just as damaged and out there sounding as their last two full lengths. Throbbing synths, haunting reverbed vocals, warm warbly bass lines, creepy ghostly ambience, squiggly synths and all manner of bleeps and bloops. Muted mumbling vocalisations drift through pusling dronescapes until toward the end of the record, skittery drum machines spew spastic rhythms, pushing Self Destruction about as far dance-ward as it's gonna get, and even then, it's way to druggy and psychedelic to be dance music for anything but a wasted and stumbling, blood soaked, moonlit, satanic sacrifice, pagan ritual dance party. Which when you put it that way...
According to the band, "this is a house record". If it is, then raves must be way more scary and fucked up than I ever imagined. We've been digging Excepter's freeform avant space dub weirdness for a while now, and as much as the band would like to claim that this is a dance record, it's just as damaged and out there sounding as their last two full lengths. Throbbing synths, haunting reverbed vocals, warm warbly bass lines, creepy ghostly ambience, squiggly synths and all manner of bleeps and bloops. Muted mumbling vocalisations drift through pusling dronescapes until toward the end of the record, skittery drum machines spew spastic rhythms, pushing Self Destruction about as far dance-ward as it's gonna get, and even then, it's way to druggy and psychedelic to be dance music for anything but a wasted and stumbling, blood soaked, moonlit, satanic sacrifice, pagan ritual dance party. Which when you put it that way...
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.
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!
It's been a while since we've heard any material from San Francisco sound researcher Michael Gendreau, althought he has certainly kept himself busy since his impeccable last release 55 Pas De La Ligne Au No. 3 which explored the innerworkings of old turntables. His day job as an acoustics technician takes him all over the world in order to analyse the low frequency impact of industrial machinery upon architectural structures and highly sensitive optical devices; the obvious benefit of this trade is that Gendreau's perception of the particular frequencies is incredibly refined. Gendreau put this skill into practice during the 2003 Activating The Medium Festival at SFMOMA where he found the resonant frequency of the McBean Theater and effectively rattled the entire building, much to the consternation of the head curators worried that their prized Philip Guston paintings might leap off the walls.
Vitoj is Gendreau's first album since that aforementioned 2002 release and features three distinctly different situations that Gendreau handles in very specific manners. The first piece is a real-time exploration of the micro-dynamics of air compressors. Amplified through the technical sensors he uses when studying infrasound vibrations, Gendreau's air compressor emits toxic hisses, metallic clanks, and electrical static that could easily be confused for the processed drones of the Hafler Trio or John Duncan. However, Gendreau does add a gleefully destructive side to his work, as he fully opens the valves of his air compressors on several occasions, unleashing a torrent of noise as dense and tumultous as Merzbow and Masonna. The second piece exhibits a much greater restraint to the point of rendering the buzzing whirls of a old Victrola to nearly inaudible levels. The final entry is a Lopezian field recording mutation of the din of an industrial landscape morphed into a nightmarish ambience. A mighty return for Mr. Gendreau!
So peppery and full of vigor! Dare we say, such a whippersnapper! Jimmie Dale Gilmore's puttin' lads a third of his age to shame. They sure could learn a thing or two from this revered country music veteran. With his unmistakable voice in top form, he sounds absolutely terrific on Come On Back. Dedicated to his father, it's a collection of his renditions of thirteen country, honky tonk, and folk classics. The pace doesn't let up until the closing track, the solemn, deeply moving "Peace In The Valley". Inspiring and wonderful!
For fans of NECROPHAGIST!!! Big time. Same label too. Hyper technical deathmetal with INSANE squiggly guitar parts and absurdly brutal vocal gruntings. It's mathy like Girth, dizzingly technical like Capharnaum, catchy like Carcass, and even a wee bit fusiony like Psyopus... and deathly death metal. Grrrr. Lots of stop start jerkiness to mess you up, with riffs swarming like vermin all over the bloody corpses that they call songs. Yet amidst the intense brutality, the guitarwork could even be called beautiful. Certainly impressive. Anyone at all metal-minded will be slayed. It's basically the Fucking Champs/Gorguts fantasy date. And that's probably all you need to know! But can we also say that it's really hard to figure out what they're going on about in their songs? I mean, of course you can't understand what the vocalist is violently belching about. But there's a lyric sheet and we're still confused. We can attribute such song titles as "Hunt To The Weaks" to the fact that they're French and maybe English isn't their strong suit. And yeah, "Smoked Skulls" and "Gutting Job" sound like regular nasty death metal titles. But look more closely into the lyrics and it's not so obvious. For instance, what IS "Gorod"? It's not just the band name, they sing about it. And "Neurotripsicks"? That's all over the lyrics too. Crazy. Just like the music. So, again, Necrophagist fans must check this out. It's the mathy technical death metal guitar-wank record of the week/month/maybe year for sure!!
Growing may be a rock band, but they're the sort of rock band that seems to just set the music in motion, letting in blossom and build, only intervening when necessary, allowing bass and guitar and vocals to interact organically, creating dense soundscapes, equal parts shimmery space rock, reverb drenched slow core, and dark rumbling drone. Three lengthy tracks, almost thirty minutes of space-y drone-y bliss. The first track is made up of warm snarls of distorted guitar, woven into huge expanses of thick ambient swirl, beneath majestic swaths of keening melody and subtle shuffling rattlesnake percussion. A strangely otherworldly tribal space drone, almost folky at times, with the melodies sounding like some alien bagpipe, but always lush and dense and druggy. Track two, "Freedom Towards Death" is the shortest and most song-like, with dreamy deadpan vocals buried beneath a chaotic smear of multi-tracked guitars and layer after layer of throbbing sludge and space-y swoosh. Sounds a bit like a good old fashioned pop song dipped in some Hawkwind and sprinkled with some Sunroof! The final track is a massive fifteen minute epic of slow growing, pulsing guitars, so incredibly thick and dense it sort of resonates right through your ears, through your whole body and into your soul. The kind of song we wish would go on forever. Like floating in the clouds, or drifting underwater, or sinking slowly through a million mile thick slab of billowy guitars. The track ends (sadly) amazingly with the sound becoming more and more blown out and distorted, until the guitar starts to fall apart, becoming cracked and crumbly until it sort of sputters out in a brief flicker of static and crackle. WOW.
Drums. Just drums. That's what's up with this new release from Tokyo underground psych maestro Keiji Haino. He's apparently always wanted to do a solo album for drum kit alone and now PSF has gone and let him do it, even though most of his fans know him primarily as a guitarist. Though, we've already heard him do a solo drum MACHINE album (the rather extreme 'C'est Parfait' Endoctrine Tu Tombes La Tete La Premiere) and play the drum kit for a guitar-less Fushitsusha session (the dramatic and controversial Origin's Hesitation). Then there was his fascinating video release simply titled Percussion. And now here's Global Ancient Atmosphere which is nothing but drums as we said. Drums and when not drums, silence. Some folks will hear this and say it sounds like a "drum check". Ok, you've got a point. Certainly I don't think I can come up with something brilliant to say about this, like "an austere yet thrilling investigation of attack and decay on nothing less than the molecular level" as Alan Cummings (I believe) wrote for the press release. But I do know that I'm gonna buy one, 'cause I'm a huge Keiji Haino fan and love everything he does!
Seriously, though, Haino can make you believe that every drum-hit has meaning, as does every space between. While some of his other percussion-oriented releases seem to have more going on that this one (the above mentioned are, to me, really amazing triumphs of emotion/expression over mere technique -- something that could be said about his guitar playing as well), this one is probably a little harder to appreciate. But maybe it's worth the effort. He thought it was.
'Bout time for some more Roy Harper on our list! This time, we've imported copies of the cult British singer-songwriter's third album, 1969's somewhat goofily titled Folkjokeopus. It's an opus all right, and folky (with lots of exquisite acoustic guitar playing from Harper) but jokey only in that, as a "folk" musician, Harper is irreverent and idiosyncratic for sure, and witty -- but no joke. The mood here is actually pretty dark and serious a lot of the time. The track "One For All" is dedicated to Albert Ayler, whom Harper knew from his days of busking in the streets of Copenhagen. According to his typically cryptic liner notes, Ayler liked to call Harper "tough guy". And as delicate and beautiful as so much of this music is, there's a definite toughness to Roy Harper, as he rails against the wrongs of society, spitting out clever couplets or crooning high and emotively over his own impassioned strum.
This record is the immediate predecessor to 1970's Flat Baroque And Berserk and 1971's Stormcock, both of which we've already listed, and if you like those two you should certainly get this one as well! The powerful, eighteen minute "McGoohan's Blues" (which grapples with some of the same themes as Patrick McGoohan's TV series The Prisoner, it seems) definitely foreshadows the epics of Stormcock, and is a crucial early composition in Harper's career. So we very much recommend this to all you '70s folk-rock fans, and/or those into the current scene inspired by such sounds (Devendra Banhart, Six Organs, Skygreen Leopards, Richard Youngs...). You need to hear Roy Harper and this is one of the classics of his discography.
Here's great disc that we got clued into thanks to heavy druid dude Julian Cope's Head Heritage website (and label, that put this out). The UK's Holy McGrail (perhaps a silly name, but the guy behind this project is named Chris McGrail) is definitely one for any AQ customer who digs heaviness, droneiness, and krautrockiness. That's a lot of you, eh? Well then, how 'bout three looong tracks ("Lady Holle" running to 23:45, "'Quake Appeal" at 28:51, and "Ur-cow" just 19:59) of pagan drone rock, one with buried-by-bass Amon Duul meets th' Stooges drumming and the rest totally beat-less cosmic guitar and synth-scapes, guest-starring the likes of Doggen (Brain Donor), Julian Cope himself and SUNNO)))'s Stephen O'Malley?? From the freaking lovely purple cracked earth mountain cover art to the dense drones within, this is utterly right-on. Turn it up and let it rumble. Damn beautiful. If you like SUNNO))), Growing, Earth, etc. you should check this out. Now we're looking forward to Holy McGrail's upcoming plunderphonic tribute to Iggy & the Stooges, something called the Raw Power Suite! And soon (next list) we'll be reviewing a cd-r entitled "The Creep" by Slowmo, an aptly named Earth-like duo also featuring McGrail.
Two thirds of Tarentel (Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Jim Redd) take their already abstract bliss even farther into outer (or inner) space, with 70 plus minutes of alien transmissions beamed from the heart of the sun to a dark cave 1000 miles below the surface. From slow shifting slabs of high end drones, all caked in crackle and grit, to muted murmured minimal thrum, to simple spare streaks of nothing but percussion, to pulsing robotic rhythms over a backdrop of humming machinery and industrial clatter. Dark and dense and divine!
Hand painted wooden covers, each totally unique and each with a hand painted, typewritten insert.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. THERE'S A VERY GOOD CHANCE THAT ONCE THESE ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOREVER.
Another new record from Robert Horton, whose Just Before Setting The Sky On Fire cd-r we raved about recently. And even though we had never heard of him until that cd-r, he hails from right here in San Francisco. Which makes a lot of sense actuallly, as his sound is the perfect mix of New Zealand style free noise (hence his releases on CPsiP and other microlabels) and Jewelled Antler folk ambience (there's even a song on this disc titled "Jewelled Antler Basement", dedicated to the JA folks whom he recently performed with). Horton's music is truly lovely to listen to, and the strange sounds he uses to create those songs are at once totally familiar, but also completely perplexing. A quick look at the list of instruments used makes it obvious why: mbira, turntable, casio, wah wah pedal, bike pump trumpet, washing machine full of superballs, trash can lid, grass, leaf, bark, boot, vibrator, calliope, teasle, field recordings of hummingbirds, turntable-hurdy-gurdy-sexmachine, turntable-hurdy-gurdy-guitar and more. We could fill up a whole page with the stuff Horton used to make this record. In most hands all that crap would make a big ol' mess, but here's it's all carefully and delicately composed and laid out for maximum dreaminess and droniness. Every track is a smear of droned out bliss, with abstract folkisms and stretched out melodies, dense and challenging, but also simple and tripped out in that perfect close your eyes and drift off sort of way. One of the coolest and weirdest tracks is definitely the washing machine superball track, with the boinging rubber balls creating a furious tangle of free jazz rhythms, that are complimented by some REAL drums, skittering around and about the chaotic rubber balls, like a super distorted, sped up drum battle between Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. So cool.
SUPER LIMITED AS ALWAYS!! NOT SURE WE'LL BE ABLE TO GET MORE WHEN THESE ARE GONE!
Like the perenially amazing PseudoArcana and Celebrate Psi Phenonemon, the Auckland based art-noise-drone label CMR has taken to releasing super limited cd-r editions from relatively unknown New Zealand musicians. This eponymous album from Infinitesimal is the second cd-r release for CMR, following the exceptional feedback dronescraping of Nigel Wright. Of course, the Infinitesimal duo of Mark Sadgrove (from MHFS) and Paul Winstanley (from Sci Hi) has a couple of even smaller cd-r editions on even harder to find labels. Using no-input mixing board techniques and a self-triggering computer algorithms, Infinitesimal crafts a metal machine music where the machine does all the work and the technicians make sure things don't run too amok. Hence, this album bristles with fizzing blasts of white-hot electric noise sputter against leaden feedback drones. Super limited to 100 copies, of which we only have a handful!
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And if a repress of the beloved Kellari Juniversumi wasn't enough (no it's not, and might we suggest their Suurempi Pieni Palatsi album get reissued sometime too?) there's also this "new" cd from Finland's foresty freak folksters Kemialliset Ystavat. Actually, this has been released twice before in other formats: first as a cassette on Finland's Huutomerkki label (hmm, missed that) and then again as a lathe cut double vinyl 8" on New Zealand's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label (dang, didn't get one of those either!). So thankfully Fonal has now put it out on cd for those of us who somehow inexplicably failed to get either of those previous versions when they were "available". Yay! And what of the music?
Well, imagine sitting somewhere deep in the forest... not alone with nature though. No, you're hanging out with a bunch of elves and trolls, drinking or smoking pot or something delinquent like that. Actually this isn't even that foresty really... maybe you've invited your little friends back to the city and you're hanging out in your apartment listening to weird '80s industrial experimental music and electronic krautrock records. And maybe you've got a few of these records going on several turntables at once, at 16 rpm, the volume turned down low, and some of the trolls are joining in (faintly) on vocals, and one of them's got a flute, and another one's got a broken music box, and some bells, and a shortwave radio. But the music you're hearing/making is still amazingly nice and mellow and organic 'cause you're with a bunch of elves after all. The sun's going down and the light is fading and you feel all warm and toasty and kinda sleepy-drunk.
Ok, stop imagining. You'll have your own (better) mental images to go along with this music when you hear it. But we'll say that right from the get-go this is immediately some of the rawest, most primitively-electronic Kemialliset Ystavat stuff we've heard. There's what what sounds like layers of loops, tape machine fuckery, all kinds of pleasingly distorted textures folded into a mysterious and still somewhat (abstractly) melodic sound-world, with haunting eerie vocals and tribal clink-clank. And yet, among the 15 tracks here you'll find some of the simplest and prettiest of the Kemialliset canon too. Loose, lovely and loveable stuff.
So here it is! Hard to believe it's finally here -- some of us have been waiting forever for this record, or at least ever since we discovered a tiny, super compressed, thirty second long sound clip on the internet over a year ago. In all of half a minute, we became OBSESSED. Completely captivated by this band's totally alien, lush, organic 'world music' weirdness. We eventually tracked down a (great) live record by Konono No.1, which we listed here a few weeks back, and then after tons of internet sleuthing and a bunch of emails we finally managed to get in touch with someone at the Crammed label in Belgium who was willing to sell us this brand new studio album directly, since they are without US distribution. Phew! So was it worth it? Hell yeah! Anyone who heard that infamous sound sample (which was from this album), or who got to hear the live record, knows that this band is totally amazing, and indeed this record is beautiful, wild and wonderful, chaotic and festive, totally perplexing but completely mesmerizing. For those who missed out on the live record (which we've also just restocked!) or are new to the wonders of Konono No.1, here's the story: twenty five years ago, Konono formed in Kinshasa, an area between Congo and Angola, performing their own version of traditional Bazombo trance music, incorporating the then-unwanted distortions of their haphazard homemade sound system. They left the bush and settled in the capital where they were forced to compete with the harsh sounds of the city: cars, trains, buses, shouting, etc. So with very little to work with they fashioned pick-ups, microphones, loudspeakers and amplifiers from stuff they could find on the street -- old car batteries, pots and pans, magnets, even branches. Their main instrument is the likembe, a kind of thumb piano. Konono features three of 'em (bass, medium and treble) and the sound of the electrified and amplified likembe is what defines their sound. Accompanied by dancers and percussionists, the likembes wail and drone, buzz and moan, totally overblown and distorted, sounding a little like sixties fuzz guitars, turning a glorious high life jam into something much more strange and wonderful. Super rhythmic, and thick with the buzzing melodies of the likemebe's, Konono weave a massive sound. It's the wildest weirdest street party you've ever been to. Throbbing with energy and emotion, rambuctiously rollicking and totally infectious. Seven lengthy tracks that all sort of bleed and fuse into one epic world-psych jam. The African high life Hawkwind? So so great!
Check out this video clip:
KONONO [http://www.crammed.be/craworld/movies/konono_promo.mov]
Kuupuu, aka Jonna Karanka, is a name that might not be immediately familiar, but when you realize she has played in Avarus, The Anaksimandros, Kukkiva Poliisi, and in Hertta Lussu �ss” (with Lau Nau and Islaja), then those Finnish music obsessive ears of yours perk right up! This new 7" comes hot on the heels of two super limited cd-r's, and is amazing! Warm and warbly and fuzzed out, like a blurry old photograph, wheezing chords and lush multitracked vocals are spread into a thick staticky haze. Clattery percussion is smeared into the already murky whole, everything wrapped in a warm wispy fog of tape hiss and old record crackle and broken four track bristle. Completely mesmerizing, the first side a dense tangled smear, like a lo-fi loop of foresty fuzz, sonically quite reminiscent of Philip Jeck or William Basinski. Side two is much more spare, with what sounds like super distorted thumb piano, plucking out sparse ghostly melodies, that hang there suspended like dust motes trapped in a beam of late afternoon sunlight, a haunting music box melody from some lost place in time. So lovely.
Released on Time Lag so you know the packaging will be beautiful. And it is, a gorgeous full color print on thick textured paper, limited to 600 copies and hand numbered!
Managed to get just a few more of these in stock! Direct from Wrest of Leviathan. And we are told these will be the last copies ever so don't miss out AGAIN. Here's what we had to say about this split when we first got it in:
Finally a little more Leviathan to hold us over until his next forthcoming full length, Tentacles of Whorror! This time a round it's a split with European old schoolers Iuvenes who traffic in buzzy blurry black metal, Bathory style. Really simple blast beats over superdistrorted riffs and growled gutteral vocals with squiggly leads buried waaaay doooown in the mix. Droning and repetetive and very hypontic. But let's not kid ourselves, Leviathan is why we're here and Wrest does not diappoint. Grinding suffocating swarms of buzzing guitars, ultra creepy, deeply depressing ambience, completely and brilliantly fucked drumming, haunting Burzum-y keyboards, and that inhuman bowels-of-hell rasp that occasionally erupts into an utterly terrifying demonic shriek. But it's the songs, the songs are just so fucking good. So many black metal bands make all the right sounds, but can't actually write real songs. Wrest continues to explore and push the boundaries of black metal with Leviathan, exploring distinctly non-black metal sounds and ideas, but manages to stay grim and true the whole time. The songs here are punishing and crushingly dense, disturbing and evil as fuck, but days later, you'll find these riffs stuck in your head like a crown of thorns! Essential!
Robert Lowe, of the now defunct 90 Day Men, as well as part time member of TV On The Radio, delivers his first solo record, using the name Lichens, and creates a ghostly otherworld, using primarily his voice. That's right. An acapella record. Well, mostly. Lowe's haunting impressionistic vocals are drenched in reverb and sent drifitng into the ether, a soft fluttering falsetto most of the time, a low monk like chant at others, swooping through ominous minor key melodies, over simple sparkling guitar lines, wrapped in a warm and shimmery haze, over a bed of rumbling drones and occasional chiming percussion. Delicate crystalline soundscapes equal parts Pelt, Sigur Ros, Scott Tuma and Jewelled Antler. All three tracks recorded live with no overdubs, all completely otherworldly and breathtakingly lovely.
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During the past couple of weeks, there has been a deluge of reissued material from the German ensemble Maeror Tri, whose exceptional, post-Industrial dronemusik straddles the current obsession with the doom-laden atmospherics of Corrupted, SUNN O))), Earth, etc. and the sublime impressionism of Jonathan Coleclough and Mirror. The Beauty Of Sadness was one of the last cassettes that Maeror Tri released before calling it quits in 1996; and as one might be able to discern from the title, this record finds Maeror Tri shifting their drones away from their heavy, menacing bleakness and toward a transcendent etherealism. Out of the churning wash of sound from their dynamic use of reverb, delay, and flange effects boxes, Maeror Tri push through honest to goodness songs of hypnotically repetitive guitar chords, melodies, and harmonies, making The Beauty Of Sadness come across like a rough-hewn but equally effective version of My Bloody Valentine's bleary eyed monotone found on Loveless. For those familiar with the recent work of Troum (whose members were two-thirds of Maeror Tri), The Beauty Of Sadness is an obvious precursor to thier marvellous first chapter in the Tjukurrpa trilogy.
Limited to 200 copies each wrapped in a slipcover that fits (almost too) snugly over the jewel case. There's a good chance we won't be able to get more and if you happen to concern yourself with the collectability / condition of your cd's, we would urge to take care when removing the jewel case from the slip cover.
We hate to do this to you, but there's not much we can do about it. THIS IS INCREDIBLY LIMITED!! WE ONLY GOT A HANDFUL OF COPIES, MOST LIKELY NEVER TO GET MORE! SO ACT FAST. This 10" is limited to a couple thousand worldwide, only 700 or so made it to the US and only 20 made it to AQ. So definitely don't dawdle. Yet another split from masters of the split record, Japanese ultra spaz rockers Melt-Banana, this time teamed up with another unlikely, but still quite cool band we've never heard of. The strangely monickered Chung offer up short sharp bursts of angular post punk on their side, kinetic new wave rhythms, fuzzy organs and yelped vocals. Like a punkier mix of the Fall, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and all those sorts of bands. Melt-Banana counter with some of their most unlikely music to date, confounding and confusing with their three tracks (be sure to play their side on 45 -- we were WAY more confused when we mistakenly played it at 33 the first time). Strangely sparse, with a bouncy minimal rhythm, poundiing piano (!) and even some horns all sort of new wave-y and abstractly angular with lots of blooping space sound effects, rockabilly guitar and a trippy tweaked out production. Definitely MB's most melodic and least spastic record to date. But just to remind us who we're dealing with, they finish things off with a mega distorted blast of classic Melt-Banana style spaz-grind-pop weirdness. Comes packaged in an amazing sleeve, thick screened cardstock, and affixed to the front is one of those lenticular stereo 3D cards that moves when you shift the image, the image just in this case is a cartoon city and a giant fly and a madman with a flyswatter and an explosion.WOW. And once again, VERY LIMITED!
