Gosh. We're just constantly amazed at the wealth of obscure psych/prog "buried treasure" from all over the world that's continually being unearthed by all the industrious reissue labels out there. Lion Productions in particular has a darn good track record, we'd say (they blew us away earlier this year with the Classical M disc, amongst other cool reissues). Here's a great example, as out of the blue they present us the lone album by a Greek band called The 4 Levels Of Existence, originally released as a (now very rare and expensive) private press LP in 1976. And while a few of our far-gone record collector geek friends knew about this already, we sure hadn't ever heard of it before, but we're glad to get introduced to it now! It's a real folk-flavored fuzz monster, full of wailing guitar leads, melancholic lyrics (sung in their native Greek), majestic melodies, acoustic interludes, and did we say FUZZ? With all the fuzz this is fairly hard and heavy, but in a '60s garage band sorta way (despite being from the mid-'70s, this sounds earlier). Pretty much exactly what you'd hope a bunch of young, basement dwelling longhairs from an Athens suburb would create if they spent all their time jamming, studying philosophy, and drinking ouzo, as we can pretty much assume was the case here. Prog-laced and imbued with traditional folk melody, in a lot of ways this has got a similar vibe to the many awesome '60s and '70s Turkish psych bands we dig, even though Turkey and Greece have been far from friendly neighbors historically.
This legendary record (as we now know it to be) certainly is one of the coolest things we've heard from Greece from back when, alongside Socrates Drank The Conium and Aphrodite's Child. And as we've come to expect from Lion, this reish is no shoddy package. It comes with a thick booklet of liner notes (scribed by 4 Levels' rhythm/acoustic guitarist Athanasios Alatas), lyrics (in both Greek and translated into English too), and photos. Recommended.
Hurrah! Norton Records has reissued two more awesome albums from the true holy terror of the rockabilly and garage world, the late Hasil Adkins. Both of them are compiled from the home recordings of the man himself circa 1958-1963. Needless to say... amazing documents of his early years! Each presents a very very different Adkins -- one a wildman hellbent on rawk fury, the other a considerably more sedate, damp-spirited country crooner. This one offers the latter, subtitled The Lonesome And Blue Sounds Of Hasil Adkins, was first released back in 1990 by Norton on LP only. This time around it's on LP and CD with an additional four bonus previously unreleased tunes sandwiched between the sixteen original warbly raw tunes.
Hurrah! Norton Records has reissued two more awesome albums from the true holy terror of the rockabilly and garage world, the late Hasil Adkins. Both of them are compiled from the home recordings of the man himself circa 1958-1963. Needless to say... amazing documents of his early years! Each presents a very different Adkins -- one a wildman hellbent on rawk fury, the other a considerably more sedate, damp-spirited country crooner. This one offers the former, and it's fuckin' great! Ultra dirty, murky and strange. Drums sound like wellworn cardboard boxes, pots and pans. Vocals distort as he howls the high notes, and his loosely tuned, feverishly strummed guitar keeps 'em company. It was first released back in 1990 by Norton on LP only. This time around it's on LP and CD with an additional four bonus tunes (two previously unreleased in the U.S. and two previously unreleased anywhere) sandwiched between the sixteen original raw'n'blistered tunes.
We loved the dreamy yet glitchy album Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep from earlier this year by Montreal electro-acoustic composer Mitchell Akiyama, as did quite a few of you...so here's something new from him that may be of interest. Akiyama's entry into Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series of cds documenting live-on-the-air performances for the Dutch radio station VPRO. For this 44 minute recording, Akiyama digitally processed his own live guitar playing (no pre-recorded samples were utilized). What you'll hear are placid, ambient guitar melodies given a scratchy, static-y scrubbing, making this sound a bit like one of the loops from Philip Jeck's turntable, or the result of shortwave radio interference. In fact, it's kinda funny that this was meant for a radio broadcast, since any listeners not up to speed with the standards of "experimental" music-making might just think that they had really bad reception! This is mostly quite gentle, but with a bleeding edge of sonic overload that now and then builds to near-painful levels of distortion before subsiding and again letting the melancholic guitar wash and clicking rhythms soothe your ears. Really beautiful.
Packaged in a thin, folded sheet of embossed copper! Watch you don't cut yrself on it...
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!
Oh man, these Bad Dudes will for sure push all your smart alecky, manic prog, fuzzy synth, indie pop, angular art metal buttons and then some. Imagine the Champs, Upsilon Acrux, XRBXR, Zebulon Pike, Pinback, and Behold The Arctopus, in a dark alley, ready to rumble, armed only with synths, drum machines, gameboys, dayglo metal guitars, lots of zippers and wristbands, and of course vocoders. The resulting bloodshed sounds a bit like Rob Crow fronting Mr. Bungle, while they hold a new wave dance competition in the room next door. Wild and weird and fun and funny and a little bit confusing but in a good way!
Almost exactly a year later, The Boats (featuring members of Hood and The Remote Viewer) pick right up from where they left off on their previous full length Songs By the Sea... soothing, fluid loveliness albeit minus that album's veil of female vocals. If you're seeking a totally relaxing listen, please take the album's title as the truth. This was made for you... even if your name isn't one of the many that make up the track titles. Delicate shimmery glitches and dreamy melodic piano phrases echo through the slowly undulating ripples of bass tones. A stay inside with a good book on a rainy day kind of album.
We bet the guys in bonus regret their choice of band names. You know: Is this that Bonus disc? Did you get the Bonus cd? What Bonus cd? The NEW Bonus cd. WHAT BONUS CD? Hee hee. You could get a serious noise rock Who's On First going. Anyway, this is actually pretty darn fantastic, and as with all Jyrk cd-r's it seems, SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, and we have the last 30. So again, act fast if you want one of these.
Slow buliding otherworldly shimmer, the sort of gorgeously delicate drone you want to go on forever and ever. Not rumbly or subsonic, or keening high end, this is warm and rich and dense and wraps your head in a big pillow of soft shimmering sound. So lovely. Comes in a sharp looking had painted sleeve. And again, when these are gone, they are gone for good!
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Unlike former Come and Codeine member Chris Brokaw's early solo recordings that were sans singing, on Incredible Love he's opened his mouth to sing his angstful heart right out, including only one instrumental amid his ten vocal songs. That's fine with us, as he's mighty well versed with voice and without. Also although this is far less postrock-y than his past work, and considerably more country rock oriented, he's stacked his decks with many of his old postrock comrades. Bedhead's Matt Kadane, Jeff Godard formerly of Karate, Rodan's Kevin Coultas to name just three. Extra treats includes a cover of Suicide's "I Remember" and a thick insert booklet containing lyrics and accompanying photos for each song which allows you to more thoroughly appreciate Brokaw's skillful way with words (check out the aching tale of "The Information Age").
You know 'em, and (a lot of) you love 'em! Aah, those Canadians! Yup, finally here's a new studio album from Broken Social Scene... almost doesn't need an introduction, does it? But for those who want one... If what you've loved about Broken Social Scene was their jumbled musical allsorts that comprised their 'breakthrough' album You Forgot It In People, hope it doesn't disappoint you to discover that this comes across as a more clearly defined album. It's certainly poppier and more energetic too, like one of the BSS offshoot band Metric. That said, as we've come to expect from the shape-shiftin' BSS, as you listen to this album you'll still be continuously reminded of numerous beloved ol' '90s college rock bands like Dinosaur Jr. Seems to be pretty intentional though, especially if you consider many of the song titles -- for instance, the second song titled "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement" sounds just like, uhh... Pavement, the third one "7/4 (Shoreline)" could easily be a Tsunami tune, etc. A nice way of describing this would be "pleasant in a warm, nostalgic sort of way... like an indie rock quilt". A somewhat harsher way of doing so would be "indie rock muzak". Ouch. Which will it be for you?
An absolutely timeless ageless folk music beauty!
If you fell in love with Ms Bunyan's Just Another Day album from 1970 (reissued recently on cd and lp!) as we did, you've probably been tingling with anticipation over the news that over three decades later she'd returned to the recording studio. Really, it's almost as though she never left. It's almost spooky! We caught a brief, but oh-so-pleasing glimpse of the present-day Vashti when she did an unexpected collaboration with Animal Collective earlier this year (the resulting recordings were released as a cdep titled "Prospect Hummer"). Now we get a full album's worth of her wonderfulness and she's joined by some youngsters named Joanna and Devendra. Recommended!
We listed an amazing record a while back from a band called Barabara, from Israel, who sounded to us a bit like a black metal Hella! So here we have the newest record from a band called Cadaver Eyes, which just happens to be the solo project of Barbara drummer David Opp, who in Cadaver Eyes also plays drums, but the twist here is the drums trigger samples, so it's a seriously self contained one man band, just one guy singing and whipping up a huge grinding metallic shitstorm with his drums. Pretty impressive. Sounds like some of the samples must be crusty Napalm death / Carcass style guitar riffs, while others are rumbling super distorted bass. The end result is a sludge-y grinding thrash attack that would be right at home on Earache or Peaceville circa late '80's. All sung in Hebrew, with some songs peppered with random bits of found snippets, traditional Israeli folk songs, media bites and other random sonic interference. This should also hit the spot for folks into the grind-sludge of Burmese, UK crusties Doom, Texas scuzz merchants Rusted Shut as well as anyone into crushing spastic chaotic musical mayhem!
Shhhh! The subdued hush of San Diego's Castanets' latest contemplative folk album can be ever so easily drowned out by the sounds of the city, but if you can find yourself a quiet time and place to listen to First Light's Freeze you'll be pleasantly rewarded. In songs such as "A Song Is Not The Song Of The World", the sensitive boy vocals at times bring to mind those of Modest Mouse's Isaac Brock, Built To Spill's Doug Martsch or Mountain Goats' John Darnielle. Now imagine those vocals atop some slightly off-kilter and psych-tinged which brings them into company with current abstract folk groups such as Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice. Nice!
Celebration features former members of Baltimore's anguished depressives Love Life who've brought an ample dose of volatile darkness to their new band. Although their more rollicking paced songs may bring them within spitting distance of current bands such as Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, methinks this heady band would like to lead you down a very different path than those predominantly 'up' sounding bands. Definitely more sinister and far less of a 'good time'. Slightly unhinged and perhaps intoxicated by some mysterious elixirs (Not boozily drunk, mind you! If that's what you're seeking, you should check out the latest Silver Jews album). If you like the formidable but sadly defunct band Pleasure Forever (or their predecessors Slaves and VSS), you're probably already familiar with these folks as they've shared plenty of stages... and if you're not, well, you should be! Jagged post-punk guitars and propulsive drumbeats slash through squalls from the organ and saxophone while lead singer Katrina Ford's howls, moans and slurs her blood-red vocals. Yeah, it's pretty darn great!
Yup, it appears that Andrew Chalk has retained the impressive workload he and Christoph Heemann had managed for their now defunct project Mirror. The River That Flows Into The Sand is the second album in as many months to emerge from Andrew Chalk's own Faraway Press. Like it's predecessor Shadows From The Album Skies, this album is a reissue of a cd-r originally released in a very small edition. However, Chalk has decided to truly develop Faraway Press into a viable cottage industry, encasing all of his work in elaborately hand-packaged constructions, that rival the original Zoviet France assemblages in terms of innovative design. How he managed to print these is a bit of a mystery, although Cup and Jim think it to be a form of decalcomania, in which an image is delicately transferred from one surface to another. Regardless, it doesn't hurt that Chalk again has produced an immaculate drone album housed within the beautiful packaging.
For many years now, the guitar has been the instrument of choice for Chalk's minimalist explorations; and here on The River, he's tightroping between the ghostly impressionism of Keiji Haino's Nijumu project from many moons ago, the narcoleptic atmospheres of Maeror Tri / Troum, the oceanic ambience of Boris' Flood, and the time-reversal qualities of Eliane Radigue. Undulations of extended sounds cascade from his guitar, occasionally rippling with beautiful half melodies. This is a a drop dead gorgeous album, and may even be better than the aforementioned Shadows From The Album Skies. We can't recommend this album enough!
Eccentric, folksy, retro-tinged pop is all around us these days. Following in the footsteps of fine bands such as Hidden Cameras, Frog Eyes, Architecture In Helsinki and Arcade Fire, here's one of the latest bands to be causing a minor ruckus (and for once, it's not a Canadian band! haha!). This release hasn't been easy to get a hold of. Folks have been feverishly requesting it for weeks, but we've only just recently been able to track down the self-released, very sparsely distributed and not so readily available cd. So what's the fuss all about? We shrug. While we can certainly see the appeal in their very 'now' sound, when we put the disc on for a spin, our reaction was nothing short of tepid (there were even some groans). In the first couple of tracks, there's some very Television styled, emotively yelped vocals, but overall, it's as if Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah randomly picked the Talking Heads and The Violent Femmes from the pool of '80s bands, and fused the voices of David Byrne and Gordon Gano into that ubiquitous clunked-art-dance-punk sound. We'd recommend first visiting the music of the far superior bands mentioned above before heading in the direction of CYHSY.
Not sure what happened to Cobra Verde, but whatever it is we like it. We always remembered Cobra Verde as being the Scat Records house band, just a pretty good rock band, not as popular as Guided By Voices, not as depressingly mysterious as My Dad Is Dead, just a pretty cool band (we also figured that a Scat employee was probably in CV as well). But it seems like at some point, the guys in Cobra Verde got weird, and we mean weird in a good way. Started taking lots of crazy drugs, practicing with only the black light on, trading in their jeans and t-shirts for leather pants and feather boas, cowboy hats and sequined shirts. Their midwest rock and roll started mutating into a druggy spacey fucked up glam rock and suddenly they are a super cool weirdly messed up band who are suddenly way more exciting than their labelmates. This here newest Cobra Verde record is all covers, and a bizarre selection of covers at that. Some of the choices make perfect sense, in light of CV's new drug-space-glam sound, but some make absolutely no sense at all, which makes them all the more perfect. How about a hazy, drone-y drugged out version of Pink's "Get The Party Started"? Sounds way better than it sounds if you know what we mean. Lurching and hypnotic, a jangle guitar loop, mumbled vocals and all sorts of spaced out guitar FX. Or how about a murky, fuzzed out propulsive take on Donna Summer's "I Feel Love", all distorted drums, surf guitar and squiggly synths? It's a dizzying ride from there on out. Messed up and messed with versions of tracks by New Order, Hawkwind, the Troggs, the Rolling Stones, the Undertones, the Flamin' Groovies, The Fall, Leonard Cohen, Mott The Hoople and the Easter Monkeys.
The time has come. That very special time, that only comes once in a long, long while. Open the gates! Unfurl the red carpet! Prepare thyselves! It's time to induct yet another record, into the eliteand exclusive pantheon of Andee's favorite flute records. The Pantheon currently looks about like this: Phill Niblock's Four Full Flutes, Eberhard Blum's Berlin To Buffalo, Comus' First Utterance, Koukiji Kougezan's The Live [11th] Final Hyakusenmansyuuraku, Byard Lancaster's It's Not Up To Us, the first four Osanna records, Za Frumi, Alan Silva, Jethro Tull and pretty much all Roland Kirk and Eric Dolphy. Well, you can now add French flautist/double bassist Jean Cohen-Solal to that list. Flute Libres & Captain Tarthopom collects Cohen-Solal's first two ridiculously rare albums originally released in 1971 and 1973, on one cd. Long considered progressive rock masterpieces, these two records feature Cohen-Solal's ultra personal take on classical, jazz and avant garde, even mixing in some psychedelic rock and ambient minimalism to the mix. The disc starts off with a jazzy psych rock workout, sort of funky, with a boppy rhythm and wailing flutes, very catchy and cool. But from that point on, the record travels down a much darker path, as the jazz and funk and rock dissipate into spacy, shimmery soundscapes, reminiscent of Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd or even Taj Mahal Travellers, with warm melodic swells, shimmery washes of cymbals and gongs, and lonely notes, flute and double bass, swathed in reverb or wah, and sent to drift through the ether. Things rev up later on, adding shuffling jazz rhythms, dizzying flute melodies and faraway freakout guitars, channelling Magma and Focus, weaving meandering, propulsive and progressive, spacerock and jazzrock mantras. So good.
Andee and Allan just saw these guys play at CMJ in New York, on an amazing bill with Khanate, Psychic Paramount, Mouthus and Circle! It was an intense show and Coptic Light were an appropriate opener.
If you're into tricksy, mad-as-a-hatter yet quite arty instrumental post rock along the lines of Battles, Storm And Stress, Don Cab, and maybe Hella, you ought to hear this band. It's really no surprise that the Coptic Light trio in fact features the drummer formerly of Storm & Stress (admittedly not one of our favorite bands, we like Coptic Light a lot more), alongside ex- Bitch Magnet guitarist Jon Fine and bassist Jeff Winterberg (whose Rat A Tat Tat Birds indie rock photo book you might have seen). They specialize in complex, caffinated guitar/bass/drum entanglement, a very controlled chaos, all very precise and mathematical, with lots of tension being built up and rarely released. There's got to be a lot of internal counting going on in these musicians' heads, but the technical progness of it all is balanced by the textural zones the band makes room in their music to explore.
This debut cd consists of three songs, each respectively running to 14, 10 and 19 minutes or thereabouts. These songs (songs? should we call 'em that? maybe "tracks" or "pieces" would be better) are long enough that you kinda lose yourself in 'em, forgetting how they started and unconcerned about when or how they'll end, letting your ears be blissfully battered by the frenzies and Fripperies on offer, as the tracks veer from hectic bombast to quiet ambience, drifting off while threatening further percussive fury. It's a whole lotta clatter AND atmosphere. Definitely a good fit on No Quarter with the likes of Circle and Psychic Paramount.
Also we're pretty sure that "Eat It High School" is a great song title.
Boris may be the drone dirge darlings right now, but we've always had a soft spot for their more obscure countrymen Corrupted. Where Boris revel in cartoonish imagery, seventies kitsch, eighties heavy metal, bell bottoms, double neck guitars, and balls out rock and roll, Corrupted lurk in the shadows, sullen and distanced, weary and wary, crusty and curmudgeonly, wrapped in mystery, each record printed in stark black and white, a Japanese band singing exclusively in Spanish strangely enough, who are obliquely political, and much more grim and gloomy than Boris at their droniest. Every record a massive plodding slab of depressive doom, epic and monstrously heavy, but with stretches of delicate beauty. Rumors have been floating around of a triple cd, single three hour song, Corrupted release, but until that truly materializes, El Mundo Frio will probably remain the heaviest, creepiest, most beautiful, epic, expansive slab of slowcore doom drone you will ever hear. Ever. One hour and twelve minutes. A cloud of shimmering drone underpins hazy, haunting piano and warm chordal swells, plucked harps and simple finger picked guitars. For almost ten minutes, Corrupted creep along dreamily, stepping lightly, drifting lazily through a stark ambient soundfield, before the heavens collapse and the sky begins to fall in huge crushing chunks, and massive stabs of super distorted guitars swell and crumble into an abstract pounding rhythm. Completely heavy, but strangely lovely at the same time. A lilting melody is hidden somewhere beneath all that buzz and rumble. Eventually the stabs slowly mutate into a creeping, loping post rock rhythm, with minor key strums, simple shuffling drumming and growled semi-spoken vocals, before the whole thing fades to almost nothingness, revisiting the delicate shimmer of the beginning of the record. The last twenty five minutes are mostly ambient with snatches of that hypnotic post rock, and a brief but furious explosion of soul crushing heaviness with the same vocals delivered now in a glass gargling gurgle, and then the track drifts off into ten plus minutes of barely there dreaminess, mostly single notes on the harp drifting like snow flakes against a black night sky. So lovely. Easily the most fully realized 'doom' or 'dirge' track ever wethinks. So emotionally charged, so effortlessly complex and yet so utterly and beautifully simple. Somehow it's the perfect blend of Boris's Flood (our favorite Boris!), the doleful slowcore of Low, the abstract dirge of Harvey Milk, the epic expansiveness of Godspeed You Black Emperor, the metallic post rock of Pelican, the downtuned ultradoom of Skepticism, and the majestic dreaminess of Growing.
Mighty expensive but well worth it. Comes packaged in an extravagant hardcover book style digipak, with a gorgeous booklet, lots of abstract black and white landscapes, printed on vellum and overlaid other images. So nice!
What would you expect from a band called Dark Ages? With cover art from some Hieronymous Bosch style painting depciting hell and misery and war and famine? With song titles like "Breath Of The Black Plague" and "Birth Of The Antichrist" and "Formulas Written In Blood"? A disc released on Supernal, the label that brought us Benighted Leams, Drudkh, Meads Of Asphodel, Hate Forest and the rest? What would you expect? Well, definitely not this. Dark Ages are not metal, are not even heavy actually, instead they offer up a series of dark ambient medieval dronescapes, beautifully creepy, dark and haunting and endlessly mesmerizing. There are definite sonic similarities to our favorite drone artists: Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Maeror Tri and the like, but Twilight Of Europe has a sort of looped hypnotic quality lending the sound a much more Jeck, Basinski vibe. But always cloaked in the tattered black cloak of the dark ages, a lonely sonic stroll through the ruins of a long gone Rennaisance Faire, a stroll that slowly shifts to an actual wander through a ruined post plague, European village, of grey stone walls, lit blue by the moonlight, casting shadows that dart and dance in the glow of torchlight, the blackened remains of fires long since burnt out, colorful tents faded by the sun now lay in ruined heaps, the stench of death and decay in the air. The sound is rich with resonant church organs, bells and buzzing strings, haunting chant like vocals all wrapped in gauzy fuzzy drones and subterranean rumbles, each track a dreamy repetition of a haunting, ghostly medieval loop. Over and over and over as you drift off, as the city around you crumbles and the sky above you darkens.
The Deadly Snakes' Porcella rides the line between authenticity and irony like a mechanical bull. It's like the cover art...you've got some Van Gogh-like paint dabs in a lovely shade of sunrise pink, but flip to the back cover and hello, what's this? A severed pigs head! Scary! The pig/meat theme continues (hence, "Porcella") on the inside artwork as well.
Our first impression of this album was that these guys sound like they are playing their first gig in the coolest college bar in a 5-people-short-of-an-official-city town and ROCKIN' the place. We were all set to paint this band as as a slightly tipsy southern bar rock outfit (though they're from Toronto originally), but then on tracks four and five this late '60s jangle and pipes and a triumphant horn sneak in and things go sort-of Elephant 6-ish. The variety comes from the switch back and forth between a couple of different songwriters and vocalists, primarily Andre Ethier and Age of Danger (that's his name). The mix of
rambunctious, bluesy, modern cowboy boot rock and best-on-a-record-player pop is a little weird to get adjusted to, but these guys do bring something nice (meat, apparently) to the indie rock table.
We love the Deftones. They always seem to get lumped in with all that jockish Warp Tour nu-metal, but sort of like with Tool, there's no good reason and it's so completely off the mark. So try to approach this band, and specifically this record, without all that baggage, and you will be blown away. The Deftones take churning slow burning metal pummel and stir in a healthy dose of Depeche Mode and Cure obsessed brooding moody gloom, and it's such a perfect mix. Check out their record White Pony and you'll know exactly what we mean. This one might be more for already fans, but folks into moody heaviness might really dig this. Especially as the majority of the cd is covers, and they're the sort of covers that will have your high school / outcast goth / smoking section / mixtape self all in a froth. Covers include: Cocteau Twins' "Wax And Wane", the Smiths' "Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want", Duran Duran's "The Chauffeur", the Cure's "If Only Tonight We Could Sleep", Sade's "No Ordinary Love", Helmet's "Sinatra", Lynrd Skynrd's "Simple Man", Jawbox's "Savory" as well as a handful of re-recorded originals. So amazing! Also includes a DVD of all the videos as well as a bunch of live stuff and weird old rare footage. Packaged in a gorgeous hardcover book-style sleeve, with tons of liner notes and photos.
OK folks, here it is, the soundtrack to the indie flick all the kids are talkin' 'bout. The film score was written by Tim Delaughter and performed by The Polyphonic Spree (who are sounding more and more like a children's choir with each passing day) which is a treat unto itself, but scattered throughout are three songs by the late Elliott Smith which only make the proceedings that much more heartbreaking (two previously unreleased covers of Big Star's "Thirteen" and Cat Stevens' "Trouble" as well as the track "Let's Get Lost" from Smith's last album From A Basement On A Hill). Somehow none of us have seen the film yet, but we can confirm that the soundtrack on its own swings you from carefree'n'feelgood to to dreamily contemplative to heartaches'n'bummers and back again. It all culminates in a lengthy (30-minute long) pastoral instrumental and finally a joyous reprise of Polyphonic's "Move Away And Shine".
Vladislav Delay has long been regarded as one of the most astute electronic producers, having successfully investigated a Chain Reaction morass of heroin house percolating with dubbed out granular synthetic bleep and bloop, then making quite a splash with numerous bona fide club anthems under the Luomo moniker. The Four Quarters marks the first record in quite some time as Vladislav Delay; like his electrifying Chain Reaction recordings, The Four Quarters is a submersive experience albeit a far more downtempo excursion with plodding breakbeats and super slow-motion ambient wash and synth vibrations, all smothered in a frigid digital dub.
Hmm, it's 2005 and we've got the 2006 edition of a record that originally came out in 1973! And it's an album that we first encountered five years ago via a previous (and now out of print and obsolete) compact disc edition released in 2000. But much more important than all these dates and whatnot, is that this is such a great record that we at AQ have loved for a long time, and are super duper happy to have back in again in this improved, special edition!! As you may know, we're also long time fans of the band Olivia Tremor Control, and when we first heard the Dreamies we were struck by the similarities. Indeed, our original review of this made much of the seeming OTC/Dreamies connection. And we still promise that you could totally mistake this for an OTC record...a *great* OTC record! (And come to think of it, it also reminds us a bit of another AQ fave band, When). But it was recorded over three decades ago by a fellow from Delaware named Bill Holt, who, nearing 30 years of age in the early '70s, dropped out of his corporate job working for a Fortune 500 company to reinvent himself as a singer-songwriter, despite having little in the way of prior musical experience! Holt invested in an early Moog Sonic Six synthesizer and set up a recording studio in his basement, where he created this lost classic, an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of '60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful... and definitely dreamy. Never was a name so well-chosen!
Like the Olivias, Bill Holt is obviously a huge fan of the Beatles. That's pretty clear. Sgt. Peppers definitely. And, he must really have liked the White Album's notorious "Revolution Number 9"!! With two side-long songs called (hmm) "Program Ten" and "Program Eleven", the Dreamies album is a similar venture into psych-pop meets musique concrete territory, an elaborate tapestry of samples -- and this is from long before anyone called them samples, and before there was such a thing as samplers and sequencers, which means Holt used the old fashioned, labor intensive tape n' razor blade splicing method, working at home on his beloved TEAC Model 3340 reel-to-reel four-track recorder. Densely woven into his otherwise highly laid back and melodic mix, you'll hear clocks ticking, chattering machine guns in Vietnam combat, JFK speeches, crickets, frogs, NASA transmissions, and ominous but unidentifiable minimalist pulses of electronic/industrial white noise. Or even samples of the Beatles themselves! (Bits of "All You Need Is Love" and others are buried in Holt's sonic collage.) It's both unsettling and soothing at the same time, like surfing through shortwave transmissions from the late '60s psyche. And along with all the sound bites/effects, he also weaves together what must have originally been several different, distinct, enchanting songs he'd written for his voice and acoustic guitar. It's one man and his melodies alone amidst the chaos of the times. Unfortunately, the Dreamies album didn't end up leading to a career in music for Bill Holt, so sadly he was forced to return to the straight moneymaking world of 9-to-5 work. But his venture into the realm of hippy psychedelic rock music concrete lives on. And happily he's proud of his creation, leading to this "special edition", remastered by Holt himself from the original LP, claiming "better stereo sound" and "enhanced audio detail". It certainly sounds good to us. It also boasts liner notes, lyrics and photos in the cd booklet, while the cd itself for the first time divides the two original 26-minute LP tracks into thirteen more convenient parts, although really you should still listen to 'em all the way through in one sitting.
By the way, we for some reason we always used to think that this record was titled Auralgraphic Entertainment: An Incredible Mental Experience, but it seems that that was just descriptive front-cover copy, not the actual title. It is, however, a fairly accurate statement! We're so happy that this has come out again, giving us the chance to get reacquainted with an old fave. And recommended it to anyone who missed it before (or who wants to upgrade their old edition).
This SF quartet gets things rolling on their first album Noumena, introducing themselves with some moody, brassy horn abstractions that settle into a more straight-forward Chicago-style post-rock affair. While as we mentioned this is the band's debut full length release, the bandmembers are certainly not newcomers and their experience definitely shows in these dynamic compositions. Drummer Rich Douthit plays in Halifax Pier and guitar and keyboard player Danny Grody is also a member of Tarentel. In fact this band started out as a side project for him and his Tarentel bandmate Trevor Montgomery who then pursued his solo endeavors as Lazarus. Rounding out the line-up are bassist Safa Shoukrai and trumpeteer Jeff Jacobs. Speaking of which, bask leisurely in the warming glow of his trumpet and flugelhorn which take centerstage on the first track "Gardening, Not Architecture". Next up, Shoukrai's cyclical stand-up bass sets the pace for the more groovin' "Invisible Cities". Guitars soon join in, while the horn blasts and some hazy electronic elements add texture and atmosphere. The Drift keep their jazz-inflected sounds varied and movin' right through to the final track. Oh and keep in mind that although there's 'only' six tracks, they sprawl out over the course of 55 minutes.
A new dark pop gem! Check out this great self-titled debut from L.A. duo Duchess (namely Christy Schnabel formerly of Ugly Beauty and Jerry DiRienzo formerly of Cell). This kind of brooding sounds like it should be coming from New York or Boston circa 1992 (think Come or Versus) rather than Los Angeles circa now. It immediately seems familiar and singalong-able. Smolderingly heady yet catchy at the same time. Many songs conjure images of a stormy night occupied by much distraught handwringing and perhaps even some murderous thoughts. Schnabel's vocals are the key here, reminiscent of the deeply potent voices of Nathalie Merchant and Versus' Fontaine Toups. This cd was released on Adam Pfahler's (ex-Jawbreaker) label and it definitely fits well alongside the moodily dynamic air of his own band Whysall Lane which also features Richard Balayut (formerly of the abovementioned Versus) and whose own debut album should be out any day now too!
Back in stock! There was quite a run on these recently after Pitchfork gave this a rave review...hey didn't anyone read *our* review of this some months before? Anyway, we've got a few more (at a slightly better price, the label repressed 'em and made 'em cheaper too) and here's what we said about it before: Like fellow Swede and AQ-fave Bjorn Olsson, Gustav Ejstes is a brillant timewarped melody-maker. Though, his "solo" project Dungen sounds more like a band than Olsson's albums do. Wunderkind Ejstes is certainly enamored of '60s/'70s psych-pop and his obsession has borne some fabulous fruit. This is his third album to date (the first being a vinyl-only affair we have yet to hear, the second being the now-hard-to-find Stadsvandringar cd that Allan raved about on our list two years ago). So we were pleased to hear about the release of Ta Det Lugnt. It rocks more than the last one, being brasher, with more in the way of electric guitar frenzies in a Hendrix kinda style. But otherwise it's pretty similar, with Ejstes singing his hook-filled songs in the same somewhat nasal, Swedish langage voice as before. There's jazz jamming, folk frolics, and plenty of fuzz. A retro trip indeed from searing electric rippage to spaced-out, sentimental melodicism.
The extra tracks from the extra disc that came with the domestic cd version of Dungen's Ta Det Lugnt now makes it to vinyl, in addition to the album itself (the double LP version of which is listed nearby). Five songs here, all of 'em awesome. Sorry it's a not-cheap import but if you're dedicated to your turntable then here you go.
These guys hit us last year with a three-song ace to the face taster of their very VERY heavy metal music, and we've been waiting to get hurt with more ever since. Now is the time. That utterly ass-kicking demo (released as a cdep on Monitor) led to this NYC based duo getting signed to Matador, who have just released their debut full-length album. It's already in our mental list of top ten metal discs of the year and we recommend these eleven songs (including one, "Death Is The Answer", reprised from that ep) to everybody and everybody with a headbanging bone in their body. But of course, the fact that these guys, despite totally looking the part of long-haired heshers (and, more importantly, sounding like it), are on an indie rock label and used to have indie scene notable Dave Pajo (Slint/Tortoise/Aerial M) holding down the bass position, might cause some metal purists to question their cred. Not to mention that this disc was produced by Matt Sweeney (of Chavez and more recently Superwolf with Will Oldham fame) and he threw some of his own six string action on there. But whatever. Suspect poserdom all you want, but the fact remains, this band rules. These songs are just so darn heavy and aggressive and catchy, with real vocals, sing-along refrains, and plenty of energetic, killer riffs. Can't argue with the riffs. Simply classic stuff.
Our pal Josh holds that music is never really "about" anything, other than music itself, referencing and commenting upon prior musical forms and examples (he should know, having been the guitarist for The Fucking Champs, who've always been very upfront about admitting and celebrating the influences they synthesized into their own distinctive sound). This notion certainly seems to apply to the music of Early Man, big time. And perhaps it could act as a defense against those who will accuse Early Man of sounding too much like certain other bands. Which it can't be denied that they do -- Early Man makes it easy to spot their influences, as was already made plain by that ep release last year. You'd have to be deaf, or I guess really old, not to hear the Metallica and the Black Sabbath in there. But hey, what's wrong with that? Metallica's NWOBHM influences (a la "Am I Evil") have also trickled down to Early Man for sure. So, if you dig the Sabs and the 'tallicatz and the NWOBHM (don't you??), you should definitely give Early Man a listen. Likewise if you're into such current bands as Wolf, High On Fire, The Champs, and Sheavy who keep the '70s and '80s metal spirit alive. Packaged in a digipak, with a nice stencil included so you can more easily spraypaint Early Man graffitti all over your neighborhood.
Mark Eitzel presents two of his very distinct musical personalities on his latest solo outing (which goes by the odd, somewhat ill-fitting title Candy Ass) -- his trademark somber Americana sound of his full band American Music Club and his less familiar, but just as moody, Radiohead-ish atmospheric electronic tracks. Really, it's a bit boggling that he chose to combine the two when he could easily have released two separate totally cohesive solid albums. When played in the store, it had folks asking, "Is this still the Mark Eitzel?!" Each song unto itself is pretty darn gorgeous, but mixing 'em up like this only makes it difficult for the listener to immerse him/herself in either. Of course, maybe that's what Eitzel intended (i.e, to journey through various different 'places'), but his chosen running order just leads you in one direction only to leave you hangin'. Perhaps, you won't find this detail as distracting as we did.
Originally released on queer-punk label Mr. Lady Records, Electrelane's debut album Rock It To The Moon gets a reissuing courtesy of their current label Too Pure, and at a slightly nicer price too! Here's what we said about it the first time around, and it seems we were presciently right about it:
A smouldering, spaced-out, farfisa organ-fueled sonic journey which suitably befits its title Rock It To The Moon. Quite a bit like a more garage-y version of the heady, repetitive jams often found within the Too Pure roster (especially Th' Faith Healers, Moonshake, and bits of Stereolab).
Here's a hint of what's to come in Film School land! These New Yorkers found a new label home at Beggars Banquet and have a new full length slated for January of next year. From the very '80s British influenced sounds of these new songs, it's gonna be a perfect fit. We've gotta say that it's probably unlikely that Robert Smith is gonna be retiring as lead vocalist of The Cure any time soon, but if he did (or even if he called in sick or wanted to play hooky one day), Film School's lead singer Krayg Burton could step right in at the wink of an eye. Oddly enough the last time we heard from these guys was their Harmed 7" earlier this year, and back then his vocals were more along the lines of Pinback's Rob Crow. Anyhoo, On & On blends a romantic vocal angst (a la mid-period Cure) with fuzzy, swirling shoegazer guitars like those of Slowdive, Ride or The Church. Note: the cd version features one additional tune "February".
These new SF band proudly let it be known that they in fact are spring chickens (their bio says that they "were born in the '80s, raised by the '90s"), and their youth definitely shows in Pacemaker's punchy energy level and wide-eyed vocal sweetness, but the band also shows some pop smarts beyond their years. Influences that they cite include Pavement, Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead and Cursive, and the impact of those bands is clearly evident. However, they fortunately haven't fallen into the easy trap of simply mocking their idols. They're not just a soundalike. Theirs is solid guitar driven indie pop defined by some interesting postrock-ish twists and graced by the swoonsome female vocals of Ms Carly Schneider (whose soft voice you might've also heard on the equally well-received debut release from another Bay Area band Empty Rooms). This EP fits well alongside fellow Bay Area smart pop upstarts Tartufi, and also recalls acclaimed 90's indie bands such as PEE and Velocity Girl. A very promising debut!
We've been doing this long enough to know that there's certain types of AQ customers we can rely upon. One catagory being those into the weird, obscure '70s prog-psych stuff. Folks who know what the Nurse With Wound list is (heck maybe even have it memorized), and can't help but be more excited about lost treasures from 30 years ago being reissued on cd than they are about the latest indie-rock or electronica gem (though chances are you might dig those too). Well if you're one of those folks, or maybe just feel especially sonically adventurous today, we've got another reissue for ya: Flamen Dialis. Which is, we're told, the ancient Roman name for the high priest of Jupiter, and is a suitably archaic name for an quite arcane sounding band. Like Magma (and some of our favorite previous MIO reissues, Jean-Cohen Solal and Birge-Gorge-Shirac) this group hailed from France, and indeed this has a bit of that cosmic Magma vibe to it. They released this now very rare record, their sole album, in 1979, and there's also a 7" Flamen Dialis single from 1978 included on this cd reissue too. The music they made was progressive and psychedelic, but not exactly rock. It's weird and atmospheric, soundtracky stuff, very ritualistic and repetitive in nature. With chants and whispers, martial drums and zinging synths, vibraphone and Mellotron, flutes and even some brief blues guitar licks and what sounds like a rhythm machine, this is quite otherwordly and dreamlike -- not exactly dreamy (or nightmarish either) just strange. Both eerie and a little goofy too... Like a soundtrack (or a dream), themes are revisted, and the album drifts smoothly from Medieval European to Eastern sounding exoticism. We're reminded a bit of that Musique de la Grece Antique album of pseudo-ancient Greek music by the Atrium Musicae de Madrid (an AQ perennial) and Igor Wakhevitch and Franco Battiato and Magical Power Mako and, well, if you're with us this far you *are* one of the AQ customers mentioned above and maybe should just trust us when we say you ought to check this out!
NOTE: This is temporarily out of stock, but DEFINITELY DO GO AHEAD AND ORDER IT if you want one, as we will for sure be getting more around the third week of November, but we're only getting a limited amount!
Oooooh, we got all in a tizzy when we saw this. As it seems did every one else. We're told The Sun City Girls' Alan Bishop bought 24, and Brian Eno bought 8! The first 'pressing' sold out in no time, and when we heard there was a second pressing, we got as many as we could so we could actually list it and give all of our like minded customers a chance to snatch up one of these amazing little machines before they were gone. Basically, the Buddha Machine is a little handheld soundbox, with a tiny speaker, a volume control and a line out so you can plug it into your stereo. Inside is a chip, which stores nine dreamy, drone-y, drifty, meditative loops, which can be switched using a little toggle on the side. The ultimate record nerd, collector geek, outsider music fetish object. SO COOL. We all bought one (except Allan, but he won't be able to resist much longer!) and it seems like these will not last long at all. FM3 is Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, and they are just the first group in what is meant to be a new series of different artists composing music specifically for these tiny handheld soundboxes. Each Buddha Machine comes with two batteries, and comes sealed in a very generic looking box that doesn't even begin to hint at the joyous drones contained inside! Each Buddha Machine comes in a different color, purple, white, black, blue, red, yellow. Since the boxes are sealed, the color you get will be completely random.
Wow! This is one for all of you always seeking out the ultimate mathy heaviness. Girth are a guitar and drums duo from up Seattle way, and they dish out some seriously deranged, detailed, devastating instrumental mayhem here. There's a dozen songs on this 42 minute debut and they're all hella herky and jerky and heavy. Did we just say Hella? Well that'd be one comparison, along with Bozart and Breadwinner, though Girth are way more of a metal-riffed monster that those bands, something of which we totally approve. Girth's spazzy string-strangulation and amazing octopoidal drumming is balanced by their crushing low-end chunk and high-tension rocka rolla, and there's even some nice, calming interludes of post-rockish near melody. It's sorta like Crom-Tech or Orthrelm, but just a bit less maddening, more musical. At times this could be the Melvins, playing Black Flag's Process Of Weeding Out while on a caffine binge, throwing in some Entombed or Eyehategod riffs while they're at it. Or the Fucking Champs and Slayer as possessor demons doing battle for control of the same host body. The most important point is, that as hectic and heavy as this can be, it manages to be super listenable as well, something that we don't always get from the math core crowd. We like it. A lot. An impressive debut for sure, packaged with some suitably beautifully chaotic yet precise Stephen O'Malley designed graphics.
By now you must realize we're total suckers for a ridiculous band name. Bathtub Shitter, Fuck, I'm Dead, Lurker Of Chalice, Goat Thrower, we could go one and on. But when faced with a band name like Goblin Cock. Well as far as we're concerned we're pretty much sold already. Then incorporate some classic fantasy art depicting a goblin, seated upon a throne, surrounded by fire, with his lengthy member protruding from his voluminous robes, like a sleeping serpent (and while we're at it, why not put a huge gold hoop through the tip?!), and then add some band photos, cloaked in mist, the band members be-robed skeletons, all crowded around and cradling a glowing metal skull. Okay, enough already! We love it. Well the surprising thing here, is that this is not in fact some crazy metal band, or some troop of weird metal ironists, no Goblin Cock is actually the latest group masterminded by Mr. Rob Crow, who you may know better as a member of Pinback, or Thingy, or Heavy Vegetable. And while this was purported to be Rob Crow's metal record (Heavy Metal Vegetable?), it's not all that far removed from the complex and off kilter pop we've come to expect. The guitars are definitely heavier, lots of distorted chug, and there's all sorts of metallic pounding drummage and plenty of very 'metal' moments, but the songs are still catchy, ridiculously so sometimes, and Rob's voice is killer as always, every song a twisted snarl of buzzing guitars, rich harmonies, strange arrangements and hooks galore, albeit wrapped snugly in leather and denim and spikes and blackened hoods! Probably not metal enough to get Goblin Cock a slot on Ozzfest, but just heavy enough to supply your indie rock collection with a much needed dose of heavy metal thunder. Sort of. And if you're not sold already, check this out:
http://www.wormwoodfilms.com/movies/goblin_cock_2.mpg
The first offical cd (not cd-r) release from the Yellow Swan's label Jyrk and it's a doozy. A 45 minute spin through a dizzying collage of electronic fuckery, white noise, chopped static, all sorts of percussive amp buzz and cable jiggle, swooping sheets of feedback and chaotically controlled drones. High end sine wave lazer beams, all sorts of crickety glitchery and warm warbly woosh. Definitely for fans of Yellow Swans, Wolf Eyes, Hair Police, Double Leopards, Burning Star Core and all that lovely noisy goodness. Packaged in a super sweet hand screened, multi-colored wallpaper style sleeve. Nice.
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.
We caught a fleeting introductory glimpse of Ms Jana Hunter recently when she appeared on a split LP with Mr. Devendra Banhart. We were immediately struck by just how much her voice bore a striking resemblance to his. In fact, we had to double-check to make sure it was indeed her singing. Now on her own on this full length collection of her music from the past ten years (but still in the company of Banhart in other ways, this was released on the new label he runs with Andy Cabic of Vetiver), does that still hold true or was it simply a proximity issue? Well, we can say that although Ms Jana Hunter does occasionally affect a peculiarly familiar, charming lilt when she sings, she does sound quite a bit different (from both Banhart and herself on that split release), but not incongruously so. The first song "All The Best Wishes" has an aged recording sound that brings her closer to Jolie Holland in old tymey feel (this haunted, echo-y feel resurfaces later on in the tenth song "The Angle"), but her actual performance also recalls Cat Power's Chan Marshall in its achingly personal intimacy. Quite a first impression. Not at all unexpectedly, Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom nestles in well alongside the neo-folk works of Banhart, Holland, Vetiver, Cocorosie and Joanna Newsom... and Cat Power too. Be sure to stick around for the closing track "K". It's a casiotone-y sweetie!
This young Canadian band has been tagged with the selling point that lead vocalist Kathryn Calder is the long-lost niece of New Pornographers' Carl Newman, and that she sings and tours with that band -- a wise move on her uncle's part 'cause she's mighty talented. A great way to get a lot of attention from Canadian pop-loving folks, that's for sure! That said, Immaculate Machine's music sounds nothing like those dear NPs and stands on its own merits. Indeed, the Victoria, BC trio have set the bar high on their first outting and they've done so with such solid songwriting and an ease and composure that so many bands' many times their age haven't been able to grasp. Their fully fleshed out arrangements bring together the hard'n'crunchy and soft'n'pretty. Although the core of their sound is indisputably pop, it's a pop of a different flavour. More feverish and punchy. The first song has a retro feel that brings to mind their labelmates The Organ. In fact in keeping with the family theme here, imagine them as a peppier cousin of said band. On the other hand the male lead vocals on the fourth song "Phone No." are a deadringer for Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields. Overall, their sound recalls the early edgy energy of '70s/'80s British bands such as XTC and Gang Of Four, but not the trademark sounds of either of those bands which have been plundered and regurgitated to death recently by many other young bands. A remarkably robust debut!
Another super limited cd-r from the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label, this time, a solo record from frequent YS collaborator Eva, who on her own can weave delicate drones with the best of em! Two lengthy tracks, thirty minutes of slow shifting, lazily drifting otherworldy shimmer, all constructed from Eva's voice run through effects and wrapped in gossamer layers of reverb and delay. Very reminiscent of the recent Lichens record on Kranky, where 90 Day Men's Rob Lowe created a whole record using mostly vocals, but Inca Ore is much more ghostly and feminine and ethereal. Comes in a nice hand painted sleeve. As with all Jyrk cd-r's it seems, SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, and we have the last 30. So again, act fast if you want one of these. Once they are gone they are gone for good.
When someone just walks in off the street and hands you a 7" and tells you to "check it out, you'll probably dig it," odds are that's not always necessarily true. But a ways back, someone did just that, and handed over an Indian 7", and we were completely blown away. Super heavy and sludge-y stonery doom from a band who we had never heard of and by all rights should have been up there rocking along side bands like Pelican and Isis and Mastodon. So we played our 7"s to bits, just biding our time for a full length, cuz let's face it, super droney stretched out druggy stoner doom doesn't really have the space on a 7" to unwind and trudge through epic 10 minute plus songs the way that music was meant to. It's almost cruel keeping that sort of band confined to a 7". Like keeping a wooly mammoth in a tiny enclosure at the zoo. Before long those steel bars will be gone and there will be plenty of blood and gore and folks trampled under foot. And we can't imagine a more apt description of the finally unveiled Indian full length. The first track is a glacial Earth / SUNNO))) like drone, thick guitars squirming and slithering in a big tangly cloud of feedback, but that's only to ease you into the mighty ass kicking you're about to receive. Massive, lumbering, feedback soaked, groove flecked stoned and drugged out space sludge of the highest order. A bit like Eyehategod mixed with Kyuss, this is bile spewing evil stuff, maybe even a bit like Khanate if they decided to 'rock' and get some girls to like their band. Then there's the vocals, instead of a Kyuss-y raspy growl or an EHG sort of bellow / howl, the vocals here are a grim icy demonic screech, each track an unholy union, equal parts stoner sludge and frosty black metal invocation. Fucking awesome. Fans of the new breed of post rock / metal hybrid (Pelican, Isis, Tides, Conifer), and the sludge-y doom of bands like EHG, Khanate, Sleep, Electric Wizard, SUNNO))) as well as ALL things drone sludge shriek buzz and blur, might as well just get the rusty razor out right now and carve INDIAN right there on your scarred and tattooed forearm along side the rest of 'em! Killer crown-of-thorned-monkey cover art too!!
Another new release from tUMULt laboratories, finds our coworker Andee's label dipping its toes into pop, and recoiling in horror, as it pulls its feet back covered in muck and crud. Iran take 'Indie rock' and bury it in fuzz and hiss, taking ultra catchy pop, and dragging it through the detritus of lo-fi noise rock, picking up an ungodly assortment of buzz and blur and scuzz. Imagine a Pavement record on Siltbreeze. Or Sebadoh, if Lou Barlow was a jaded fuck instead of a sappy romantic. Or old Smog covering Skullflower. Or Harry Pussy playing Built To Spill. A beautifully cacophonous mess. Iran play damaged folk music, bombarded on all sides by a wild assortment of squeals and shrieks, static and hiss, and speaker clogging grit. Huge and slowly shifting, dronescapes that evolve into perfect little pop songs and then explode into jagged shards of high end skree. Iran are psychedelic and textural and noisey and totally catchy, hardcore, hook-filled low fidelity un-pop noise. Pop. Plus fucking wicked 'tiger' cover art.
This debut ep from Justin Broadrick's (of Godflesh) new outift Jesu has been a bit tough to keep in stock, and since when we originally had it we loved it so much we made it Record Of The Week, and since we finally managed to get more, we figured we'd relist it so those of you who missed out the first time can get another crack. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week recently, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
Genre cross-pollination has been happening a lot lately, hasn't it? And here it goes again! This four-song cdep brings together Lambchop's country twang and Hands Off Cuba's electronica. The results? Well, the first song "Prepared" is softer than a goosedown pillow, cozier than a giant hearth, and lazydays-ier than a giant hammock. The most familiarly Lambchop sounding track of the four, it's a gently glistening combo of guitars, piano and deep male vocals. Then, the second track "Blur" introduces CoLAB's programmed stuttery rhythms, strings and twinkling melodies which carry on through the final two tracks. Nice!
We've made no bones about out love of the POP. We love the fuzzed out black metal too, and the sludge-y dirge sure, and of course the beautiful blissed out drones, but sometimes nothing does it for us like pop. Pop. POP! Be it delicate lo-fi 4-track bedroom pop, jangly indie pop, or big guitar hook drenched POWER pop. Sometime you just need to fill your head with hooks, bounce around, air guitar, sing along, you know. And no recent band did it for us quite as much as The Stereo, who wrote unbelievably catchy songs, wrapped in HUGE chugging guitars, amazing drumming and gorgeous harmony vocals. The Stereo broke up last year which really bummed us out (The Stereo being one of the few bands EVER than Andee has ever written a fan letter to!) but we soon discovered 2/3 of The Stereo had regrouped as Let Go. In fact when Andee and Allan went to CMJ, one of the only shows they really wanted to see was Let Go at CBGB's (which they didn't, goldarnit, since the show was WAY sold out) but upon their return to SF, the Let Go record was out and as if it were even possible, it might be even better than the Stereo. It basically sounds like the next Stereo record would have, bigger hooks, catchier songs, even more clever arrangements, more elaborate harmonies, and like the last Stereo record, it's definitely a grower, as all great records are. On first listen, we were mildly disappointed, but now we can't stop listening to it over and over again. Even has a sticker on the front of the cd featuring testemonials from other current pop bands (including Fallout Boy) going on and on about how good the Let Go are and how their bands wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Let Go and the Stereo and maybe the most accurate: "Let Go is your new favorite band." Indeed.
Wichita's wizards of true, epic, eccentric heavy metal are back with their umpteenth album! You know a band is CULT when the last thing we reviewed by them, earlier this year, was a reissue of their debut album from way back in 1980, and months later here we are with a review of a brand new disc, heavier than ever! Most metal fans outside of Greece, Germany and maybe Kansas have never heard of 'em, yet they've been at it for over two and half decades now. Of course, Mark "The Shark" Shelton is the only remaining original member, but since his (shall we say) unusual vocal stylings, undeniably great guitar playing, and storytelling songwriting are Manilla Road's main attractions, that's no matter. And indeed Gates Of Fire has got all you'd want from a Manilla Road opus. Literary themes both pulp and classical, prog-length song suites, and plenty of raw metal mastery in the guitar dep't. It's all here. Unique and anachronistic, Manilla Road exist for the true few who aren't too cool for the old school -- and indeed want to take advanced classes, under the tutelage of a teacher (Shelton) who has designed his own weird lesson plans.
