...and they play 'em so well! These two ladies have definitely captured that ol' homey country sound on their debut album with a barebones acoustic assembly of banjo, fiddle, guitar and voice. They cover the likes of The Carter Family, Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie among others and a couple of traditional numbers as well. Lovingly packaged in a screenprinted cardboard sleeve too! For fans of Freakwater, Virginia Dare, Trailer Bride.
Hey, have the ever-evolving Animal Collective gone all rock'n'roll or what?! The first song on their new album damn near jumps into "Ballroom Blitz" territory. Okay, maybe not quite, but get a load of that feisty drumbeat! Hmmm, art-folk goes glam? Actually the first few songs also brought to mind the rollicking off-kilter pop sounds of Canadian combos Arcade Fire or Hidden Cameras and perhaps a bit of the psych-trippiness of Flaming Lips too. This indeed seems like their most accessible, rousingly pop excursion to date. Later in the album, things settle down briefly into more familiar ephemeral swirls on the song "Bees", but the band soon returns to downright rousing choruses a la Polyphonic Spree taking the good feelings straight through to the closing number "Turn Into Something". If you're already an Animal Collective fan, you won't wanna miss this! If you dig any/all of the bands mentioned above, you just might dig Feels too. We sure do!
What do you get when you take Tom Carter of Charalambides, Ben Chasney of Six Organs Of Admittance, Pete Swanson of the Yellow Swans and Rob Fisk of Seven Year Rabbit Cycle? The curiously monickered Badgerlore actually, who manage to take the disparate sounds of all the contributors and weave them into a rich thick sonic soup of fuzzed out psychedelic soundscapes, haunting disembodied falsetto vocals, urgently strummed acoustic guitars, keening minor key melodies, and darkly ominous rumbles and whirs, all beneath a thick haze of speaker hiss, staticky grit, warm thick reverb, fuzzy instrument buzz and atmospheric shimmer. So lovely.
Packaged in beautiful hand screened / metallic ink sleeves.
Like father like son! We've heard quite a bit from Mr. Bobby Bare Jr. over the last few years, but we haven't heard from his papa, Mr. Bobby Bare Sr., himself quite a venerable veteran country artist, in over two decades! He's resurfaced from his lengthy musical absence with this album which was co-produced by his son and fellow country artist Bobby Bare Jr. along with Lambchop's Mark Nevers. It's clear that the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Moon Was Blue features a batch of old country classics such as "Everybody's Talkin'" (previously recorded by Harry Nilsson and included on the Midnight Cowboy movie soundtrack), "Love Letters In The Sand" and "The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan". Not at all surprisingly they definitely retain the old country heart 'n' soul of the originals. Although these are current recordings, they almost seems like long-lost treasures from a bygone era.
Every kid dreads finding a lump of coal in their stocking come Christmas morning, so much so that many spend the weeks or months before the big day doing their very best to ensure their spot on Santa's 'Nice' list. No more teasing the siblings, no more grousing about yardwork, cheerfully doing all their chores, eating all their vegetables, doing all their homework. Whatever it takes. But this year kids have something else entirely to worry about. Sure finding a lump of coal is a drag, but how about finding your stocking full of shit!! Well around here, that's something to be excited about. Because this is the year that Brown Santa comes to town. And who better to fill our hearts with Christmas cheer and regale us with tales of Brown Santa than Japan's shit obsessed grind lords Bathtub Shitter? That's right, it's a Bathtub Shitter Christmas. Record! Forget your Nat King Cole, and Perry Como, and Bing Crosby, and Barbara Striesand, this is the only Christmas record you need! And it's conveniently stocking sized, a cute lil' 3" cd, jam packed with furious grind, howling pummeling brutality, and lots and lots of shit.
For those of you new to the wonderful world of Bathtub Shitter, let's refer to a past review that perfectly and succinctly describes the Bathtub Shitter Experience:
Imagine some strange mix of Drop Dead, the Boredoms, Brutal Truth, CSSO, death metal, grindcore, and well....um...shit! Crunchy riffs swing from almost-surf rock, to Zeppelin groove to metallic crunch, but spend most of their time in grind mode, splattered and speeding out of control. Crazy drumming, farting bass and some wicked guitar noodling add to the sick sonic stew. But the vocals are where things get really weird. The main vocals are of the burping, grunting, cookie monster death metal variety, belching out indecipherable tales of shit and shitting, but their foil is a squealing, squeaking little girl of a man voice, sounding either like a babblingly hysterical middle age housewife shrieking at the top of her lungs or a horror movie cheerleader being evicerated, screaming in that terrified way only dying cheerleaders in horror movies do. The two vocal styles swing and switch and battle and butt heads like some sort of bastard grindcore Beastie Boys. Or imagine Chuck D as Chris Barnes in his Cannibal Corpse days and Flavor Flav as the aforementioned shrieking dead cheerleader. With the everpresent S1Ws made up of members of S.O.D. and Angelcorpse. Other sorts of vocals are occasionally introduced like the 'dog barking underwater' and the 'asthmatic yodel'. The truly strange part is that all of the various vocals come from the very same guy!
Speaking of vocals, our Bathtub Shitter Xmas starts off with the a cappella "Brown Santa", a confusing and brilliantly bizarre series of shrieks and gurgles, grunts and wheezes. This guy could very well give Jaap Blonk a run for his money. Track two is the reverential hymn "Holy Shit", a grinding blast of Japanoise flecked surf-sludge-grind-rock, with insane squiggly guitars, chugging downtuned riffs, blasting octopoidal drumming and of course the 'Shitter hi / lo, shriek / growl vocal battle is in full effect. And finally, what better way to finish things off, than with a classic holiday chestnut, this time roasted over roaring hellfire!! WOOOAHHHAAAA. "Little Drummer Boy" turned into a sludgy slab of slow motion drone metal, huge churning guitars, the only glimpse of the original being the martial snare drum rat a tat tat-ing beneath all that sludge and of course the impossibly guttural growling cookie monster vocals spweing out a barely recognizable "parumpapumpum".
Wow! Now if that doesn't sound like something everyone would want to find in their stocking or under the tree Christmas morning then we don't know does!
"We're dreaming of a... Brown Christmas!"
Hey, nature lovers! We've recently gotten a ton of great field recording cds of frogs, bats and other earthly wonders (to be listed soon, we promise!!). So that means we must be extra dilligent to make sure we don't confuse the critter-monikered bands with the actual creatures of the same name. That said, these Bats are most certainly human, and their latest album (their first in about a decade!) At The National Grid is filled with the wistful, finely crafted and composed pop that made these folks along with fellow New Zealanders Tall Dwarfs such pop fan favorites back in the late '80s and early '90s. Indeed these new songs sound strikingly like The Bats of old. Their tunes are sure to give ya the warm fuzzies much like those of the Go-Betweens do. Imagine a less mature gent sounding incarnation of the latter band and you'll get a pretty good idea of the former. However, that description probably won't help you if you're somehow not yet familiar with either band. If that's the case, and you do have a soft spot for really good and intelligent gentle pop, all we can say is, what the heck are you waiting for?!
These Beautiful New Born Children make brash, trashy garage rawk with distorted squawky vocals very much in the tradition of The Sonics or Billy Childish and his many bands (Thee Headcoats, Thee Milkshakes, Thee Buff Medways, Thee Mighty Caesars, etc). Think of it as the musical equivalent of your unruly buddy who bangs on your door in the middle of the night, raises a rowdy ruckus, spills cheap beer everywhere, breaks things, and refuses to go home. Case in point, the fiery final track "Up And Down And Round And Round" tears on and on and on. You can try and fight it, or give in and smash a few beer bottles yourself.
Looking for more Black Dice action? Well, here's three remixes (DFA, Luomo, and ZZ Pot), an edit, and a video of the song "Smiling Off" from the band's most recent Broken Ear Record. It's mostly beat-beat-beat on this one. The ZZ Pot remix is the most interesting of the bunch, being the least club-ready (though it's still got some of us dancin') and throwing a little more noise candy into the pot.
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy / Palace / Palace Brothers / Palace Music / Will Oldham fans... Here's a live one for ya! Summer In The Southeast features a heap of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy live recordings ranging from his downright bar room butt-kickers to his spartan hushed numbers. The eleventh and twelveth tracks give you a one-two punch of the two extremes. If you're at all acquainted with his music, you'll probably have heard many of these songs before. If you've no idea who the heck Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Palace, Palace Brothers, Palace Music and/or Will Oldham is, but are curious... well, this probably wouldn't be the best place to start (psst, check out Master & Everyone or Ease Down The Road or his collaboration with Matt Sweeney titled Superwolf!).
It's indeed that time again. Where our customers act like crazy junkies who have FINALLY received their latest fix, which I guess they technically are. Although in this case the drug of choice is Japan's Boris, and the current fix is twofold, the just released full length Pink (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this here DVD, the misleadingly titled Heavy Metal Me. Boris fans of all stripes will find stuff on here that is essential -- videos, a short film, and two live sets for those of you not lucky enough to see Boris on their recent tour.
First up is a video for the track "A Bao A Qu" from the soundtrack Mabuta No Ura, the perfect visual accompaniment to that track's ambient post rock drift, a sort of languid stroll around town, various band members walking down streets, sitting in parks, shots of skies and trees and shops warehouses and woods. Gorgeously tranquil. The next video is for another track from Mabuta No Ura, can't tell you the title cuz it's in Japanese, but it is an absolutely breathtaking series of abstact landscapes, that are perhaps either pieces of frayed and slowly undulating fabric, or maybe even internal organs, so alien looking and so beautiful.
The short film Heavy Metal Me is up next, a ten minute, super arty silent film with subtitles (in either Japanese or English), super blown out overexposed black and white and scratchy color Super8, very French New Wave, with quite a bit of sitting, and thinking, and walking and standing, lots of static shots and very obtuse subtitles. No sound, just occasionally the sound of no sound, a hissing distant white noise static. Quite beautiful actually!
Returning to the main, music side of Boris, you then get a live performance of "Feedbacker", the full 30 minutes, slow building and totally epic. With the stage drenched in rich colored lights, Wata stands illuminated, completely expressionless and immobile, a statue like guitar God! All the while the drummer and bass player work their way into a rock frenzy as the song reaches its superdistorted fuzz drenched climax.
The bonus track is a live performance of "Flood" in a tiny Japanese club, packed to the gills, with a ceiling just high enough for the band to stand on stage. Twenty minutes of creeping, drifting shimmering guitars and cymbal swells, before the sludge sets in, a monstrous pounding metallic crawl, with stoic guitarist Wata actually, for once, rocking out! Pretty amazing. And will definitely hit the spot for everyone who missed seeing Boris live last month.
As with everything Boris releases, beautifully designed and packaged. Even the menu and the credits look amazing, the credits especially with their dreamy ambient abstract Boris guitarscape accompaniment.
Some of us are still reeling from the mighty ass kicking delivered by Boris on their recent US tour. And before our ears have even stopped ringing, it's time for yet another new blast of ultra hyper space psych sludge rock n' roll in the form of Pink. Continuing to hone their rock chops, having shed their doom sludge past for the most part now, Boris continue to sound like some MC5 / Hendrix hybrid, albeit supercharged and drenched in LSD and lit on fire and launched into space. Big old fuzzy riffs, churning basslines, and wild spastic drumming underneath Wata's wailing sixties styled leads. You can almost imagine these strange Japanese rockers wandering into the Fillmore in the sixties, like some bell bottomed aliens and proceeding to melt the minds and eard drums of everyone in attendance. Pink starts off with some fuzzed out ultra distorted post rock (reminiscent of some of the stuff on Mabuta No Ura) wrapped in a spacy psychedelic haze, but then it's immediately back to the full on, overblown distorto RAWK that has become THE SOUND of Boris. This is easily their most lo-fi, most blown out recording yet, almost like Boris is channelling Guitar Wolf or something. The drums and cymbals sizzle as the needle goes into the red on almost every track, and the guitars are so drenched in distortion they become huge squirming smears of fuzz. A couple tracks harken back to the slow motion sludge of Flood or Amplifier Worship, and there is the dreamy ambient drift of the second to last track "My Machine", but those are just brief respites, time to catch your breath before hurling yourself back into the fray, an endless maelstrom of head banging, fist pumping, guitar smashing, drumset destroying, hair swirling, sweating, bouncing, pounding pummeling ROCK AND ROLL.
The packaging is amazing too, with a tray card that's transparent, with clear pink printing, and a booklet that is actually a three panel fold out perforated sheet of Boris Pink acid tabs (with one already missing, presumably already ingested!) wrapped in a thick pink transparent sleeve. Wow!
Be forewarned that Pink will also be available as an ultra limited double lp (due out next month), with a slightly different track listing so you Boris obsessives are once again have to get both!
Lucky Hands is album number 13 for German techno producer Thomas Brinkmann, happily marching down his own path of idiosyncratic minimalist techno. He's at his best when the rhythms pick up the tempo quite a bit as on the first couple tracks on Lucky Hands, when his taut slightly dubbed basslines propel the percolating synths. "Drops" is one such number, venturing beyond post-disco revisions of tech-house thanks to Brinkmann's unmistakable style. He follows this up with "Work" which sounds a bit more like T. Raumschmiere recycling Deep Purple guitar licks as he drops a fantastically stupid anthemic melody on top of his motorik rhythm. Brinkmann slows things down a bit, veering toward Tarwater's sultry / icy monotone with a couple of tracks in the middle of the record including an unrecognizable cover of The Smiths' "The More You Ignore Me The Closer I Get" with vocals from Tusia Beridze.
There's no better way to visually represent the music of Jewelled Antler's Loren Chasse than with the various bits and fragments of nature's detritus, stones, pebbles, sticks, leaves, branches, dust and dirt. This newest release from Chasse goes a step further, encapsulating the disc itself (a little 3" cd) along with a sponge and a piece of lichen gathered from the German countryside in an actual petri dish, all in a sealed medical baggy. Wow. And the music inside is just as meticulously assembled as the packaging. Delicate and crystalline, intricate structures, microscopic movements, gentle reverberations, subtle scrapings, abstract shimmer and barely discernable micromelodies. It's almost impossible to tell which parts are natural ambience, and which parts are Chasse reacting and responding to nature, but that's what makes his work so vital and fascinating and what makes Script Lichen such an engrossing listen. And like the rest of Chasse's work, this is not something you just throw on (although you could), this music requires deep listening, active listening, the act of listening akin to a slow, exploratory wander through a sonic forest, every step causing brambles to shimmer and rub against each other, breezes to send leaves drifting earthward, the crunch of each step, the forest, and the earth around it, shifting slightly, the sonic evidence of such minute movements deftly captured by Chasse and reworked into a subtly different soundworld. So nice.
Each 3" cd comes packaged as we said in a petri dish with a sponge and a piece of lichen, wrapped in a medical baggy, every one with a sticker, and hand numbered. LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!!! We only got 50 and once those are gone this will be out of print and gone for good!
Even though one band is from France, and the other is from Finland, you couldn't ask for a more perfect pairing. This split was originally released in 2001, and only recently was repressed so we could get enough to list, unfortunately it seems to already be out of print again so the 30 or so we got will most likely be the last for a while.
Finland's Clandestine Blaze specialize in ultra primitive black metal, paying homage to Bathory, Beherit, Darkthrone and the like, with buzzy sludgy riffs, thrashing and blasting mostly, but occasionally slowing down to a near doomy crawl. Their sound a buzzing murky blur, so much so that when they're not plodding along like Celtic Frost at 16rpm their black metal bombast smears into a gloriously hypnotic blur.
Clandestine Blaze are paired up here with Deathspell Omega in (appropriately) their earlier, more raw incarantion. DSO spew forth their buzzing blackened thrash, very much like the other DSO reissues, raw and grim on the surface, but with plenty of subtle compositional and sonic irregularites right below the surface, adding a definite depth not found in lots of similar musics and a hauntingingly unlikely catchiness very rarely (if at all) found in any black metal.
So good!!
A grinding, rumbling distorto sub-bass death march with jackhammering machine beats... sounds kinda Godfleshy at first... but then, what's this? Heavy-duty blasts of saxophone, flute and bassoon?? Yes indeed, Combat Astronomy combine industrial metal with freaked out free jazz and prog, making for maybe the heaviest "jazz" record since Switzerland's under-exposed and now defunct 16-17 assaulted our ears with Gyatso back in '94. Yet there's also interludes of calm -- doomy passages of ambient moodiess with droning, multitracked reeds. And then it's back to the grind. The rhythms are punishingly mechanical, but also interestingly off-kilter. The weird timing adds to the sense of unease that's also built up by the squonky, skronky sax bleating and ominious electronics... Who's responsible for this brutal, beautiful madness? Well, Combat Astronomy's all-instrumental album The Dematerialized Passenger is a trans-Atlantic collaboration, built upon the foundation of the distorted bass, guitar and programmed beats of one Jamie Hugget from Minnesota USA, in collusion/collision with the saxes, clarinet, violin and effects of Sheffield UK's Martin Archer. Remember that Masayo Asahara cd we reviewed a while back? Saint Agnes Fountain, the supposed long-lost '70s Japanese minimalist drone-prog album that was actually the work of a current-day British musician? He's *that* guy. Two of Archer's pals join in on flute and bassoon as well. The results are likely to alienate all but the most adventureous jazz, metal, and prog fans...which is why we figured a lot of AQ customers might like it! Could certainly be a good one for fans of Godflesh, God, 16-17, Aufgehoben, Last Exit, Zdrastvootie, and other far out outfits on the extremes of industrial, prog and/or improv.
Earlier this year, North Carolina tech/doom metal cult act Confessor emerged from "retirement" with an ep called Sour Times, the teaser to this here full-length -- the band's second ever album and first since 1991! We were pretty excited that Confessor was back, so we gave that ep a big write-up. Here's a bit of a recap of what we wrote for those that missed it:
"A fucked up mix of Trouble and Watchtower" is how Arch Enemy/Spiritual Beggars guitarist Michael Amott characterizes Confessor, who were Earache labelmates with Amott back in his days in Carcass in the early '90s. That is indeed a very accurate and -- if you know who Trouble and Watchtower both are -- useful description of cult metal act Confessor's sound. Definitely one of the more idiosyncratic pioneers of absurdly technical metal. Not death, not doom, not grind, not thrash... but all of the above, somehow. Confessor's main ingredients are uber-insane drumming (Stephen Shelton is a god), complex song structures being navigated by two guitars and bass, and high-pitched love 'em or hate 'em vocals that seem to follow their own wailing logic, as if the singer isn't even listening to the same music as the rest of the band. Yet it works. Though perhaps not to everyone's taste. Well, after making one amazing album, 1991's Condemned, and an ep that included a Trouble cover, Confessor disappeared into even deeper obscurity, seemingly gone but not forgotten by hardcore fans of tech-metal madness (I recall our pal Josh Smith, formerly of The Fucking Champs, telling me that the Champs used to have a rule of ONLY listening to Confessor when on their way to play a show). Recently, Shelton re-surfaced in the band Loincloth, but even cooler than that, now Confessor themselves are back! Yes!"
We went on to say that the new Confessor material as heard on the ep was definitely in their old style of proggy doom mastery, with the vocals now somewhat deeper and grungier. Unraveled pretty much follows suit, with two of the ep's tracks appearing again. The lugubrious tempos, downer riffs and sorrowful vocal wailings make this sound something like a mix of Solitude Aeturnus and Alice In Chains, but way more technical (with lots of "parts" and shifting rhythms). And the drumming is as godly as ever. The way this flows, we'd say maybe this will be a little bit easier on most folks' ears than some of their old stuff, and yet it's still unmistakably Confessor and definitely worthy of their cult status.
If you didn't guess from this SF gent's fabulous name, Etienne De Rocher is one smooth operator. Graced with such easygoing charm and flair, his years-in-the-making debut self-titled album only confirms this. Although this is indeed his first full length cd, he's certainly no rookie. He's been honing his songcraft from a very early age. De Rocher's well-crafted soft rock stylings are embellished with subtle strings that add that extra air of elegance. Imagine a less flamboyant Rufus Wainwright or a slightly more flamboyant Elliott Smith, Nick Drake or Buckley Jr. and Sr. (r.i.p.) and you might get a sense of Monsieur De Rocher. He saves one of his best songs for last, the sweetly romantic "Goodnight". Nice!
The two most recent Deathspell Omega records, Kenose and Si Monvmentvm Reqvires Circvmspice, immediately became all time AQ favorites, due in no small part to their strange hybrid of classic thrashy black metal, and strange serpentine post rock. Grim enough to satisfy all the true black metal warriors out there, but weird and avant enough to please fans of strange music, metalhead or not. But as with most groups with a strange progressive sonic bent, that sound didn't just happen overnight, they had to grow into it, feeling their way as they went and DSO is no exception. While now they are this ultra mysterious avant garde black metal outift, they started out as an ultra grim, thrashy black metal band, as is evidenced on Infernal Battles, a disc that collects two of DSO's demos (2000 / 2003). This was released a while ago but quickly went out of print and has only been repressed recently so we've finally gotten enough to list!
So while this isn't as far out or weirdly progressive as the more recent releases, in no way does that mean this isn't essential stuff. And even that far back, there were hints as to what the future held for DSO sonically. Overall, this is simple and true and grim thrashy buzzing black metal, furious blast beats and droning riffs, howled vocals, but even in this more traditional classic BM framework, DSO manage to imbue each song with subtly strange melodies and unlikely riffing, surprisingly complex and catchy arrangements, all fitted snugly in that classic BM structure, subverting subtly from within. This one is definitely not for the dabblers who dug later DSO records but for whom the BM angle was more of a novelty -- this is harsh, heavy, grim, brutal stuff, fans of Darkthrone, old Immortal, Mayhem and the like will be in utter hell (which they like), and will gladly wallow in the bleak blackness of Infernal Battles for sure.
Inquisitors Of Satan was the second album from Deathspell Omega, originally released in 2002 and intended to be vinyl only until a slew of spotty bootleg cds convinced the band to release a cd version. Much like Infernal Battles, IoS finds Deathspell still firmly ensconced in a more traditional grim and true black metal sound, channelling the spirit of Darkthrone and Immortal and Mayhem, but twisting that classic BM sound into their own subtly strange shapes.
A cursory listen reveals all the sonic hallmarks you might expect from any classic black metal record: buzzing blurry riffs, furious blast beats, haunting minor key melodies, gutteral growled demonic vocals, but as on Infernal Battles, DSO seem to be growing tired of just blasting away, and inject all sorts of subtleties that slowly reveal themselves upon repeated listens, riffs are twisted and convoluted, melodies are totally unlikely but in being so, manage to also be completely and extraordinarily catchy. Granted this is still at it's core, pure and evil and furiously brutal black metal, but this definitely hinted even more at the mysterious blackened beast DSO would one day become.
Now available for a limited time on WHITE VINYL (limited to 1000 copies worldwide!), in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with the bonus track "Mind Transferral" which was not on the cd. Here's what we had to say about Dopethrone way back in 2000:
These British lads have the distinction of being, as far as we know, the first (and perhaps last!) *metal* band ever reviewed in the hallowed pages of that popular cutting-edge new music magazine The Wire. But if that makes you expect that the album in question, "Dopethrone" is some sort of pretentious electronica-leaning, intellectual-metallic curiosity worthy of much beard-stroking, you'd better think again! Take a look at the album title, dude! Electric Wizard play super-heavy sludge metal, taking the appellation "stoner rock" very seriously indeed. Satan's even seen smoking a bong on the album cover. Doomy sub-Sabbath riffs, toked-up vocals, spacey fx -- this is primal stuff. This band seems to just keep getting better and better (meaning, they don't change much!). The lyrics celebrate their interests in pulp fantasy fiction (HP Lovecraft and RE Howard both get referenced) and of course the Sweet Leaf: "Dopethrone in this land of sorcery/Dopethrone vision through T.H.C./Dopethrone feedback will free/Dopethrone three wizards crowned with weed." No, not brilliant literature, (and the music's not avant-garde composition for that matter, not intentionally anyway) but "Dopethrone" is still thoroughly enjoyable even by those of us (Andee and Allan for example) who aren't potsmokers (in fact, Andee and Allan are definitely the biggest fans of this record and other "stoner rock" at Aquarius anyways -- I wonder what that means?!). No, you just have to like the sheer heaviness and killer-hippie aura ("Legalize Drugs and Murder" is their slogan, and they're at least half serious)... But if we *were* ever to decide to take up pot-smoking as a casual hobby, we have promised several friends (& Electric Wizard fans) that this album will definitely be the soundtrack to our first "experience". We're tempted...
Our favorite proggy Viking black metallers, Enslaved, turn in a fierce performance on this live DVD release, documenting a show recorded May 2005 in their hometown of Bergen, Norway. It features mostly tracks from their most recent disc, Isa (a typically brilliant album which we have called a "progressive part of their now hallowed legacy, replete with menace and grandeur"). Like their previous DVD effort, Live Retaliation, this is a professional, polished production with multiple cameras and great sound -- though with the cutting and zooming and the video projection they have behind 'em on stage, the results are perhaps a lot more MTV-like than you'd expect from what to us has always seemed like an "underground" band. But if proggy Viking black metal can rise to MTV-levels anywhere, I guess Norway would be the place. More power to 'em. As bonus material you get about 25 minutes of documentary tour footage, a band interview, and the music video for the track "Isa" (previously seen as a cd-rom extra on the domestic version of the Isa cd).
Yet more transmisssions from the wonderful world of Finland, from a name most AQ list readers should be familiar with by now, Es, the group headed by Sami Sanpakkila, who happens to run the amazing Fonal label who has brought us releases from Kemialliset Ystavat, Islaja and Paavoharju, and featuring luminaries from other Finnish free rock outfits like Avarus, Kemialliset and Anaksimandros. This vinyl only (for now) release compiles an entire lp's worth of newwly recorded material, as well as a sidelong piece from a few years back and live on the radio recordings from the recent Es tour of the States.
The new tracks are as lovely as anything we've heard, Christmas carol like harmony vocals, lilting and folky, delicate tangles of steel string guitar and tinkling piano, that slowly untangle into wispy smears of droney dreamy psych folk. Long languid organ drones laid across a field of tape hiss and record crackle, while hovering just beneath are sqeaking reeds, quavering strings, plonked piano, all so gorgeously lovely.
The live on the radio tracks sound like some lost pagan artifact, deliberately strummed guitars, insistent rhythms, an angelic chorus of female vocals all with a distinctly krautrock style pulse beneath.
The final track is a side long drone, constructed from two guitar tracks, played by not touching the stings, only brushing the knobs and strumming way up on the neck of the guitar. Haunting and creepy, warm, dark and lugubrious.
Luxuriously packaged in a thick matte finish gatefold (with printed inner sleeves, photos and linernotes) with dreamlike watercolor paintings of the band members in different states of psychedelic repose, over branches in trees, wrapped in a scarf or rainbows or with rainbows coming from their fingers!
Eternal is the band that eventually became Electric Wizard. In 1991, they were a crusty bunch of metalheads spitting out a blurry blast of Earache style industrial sludge, but a couple years later, with a new name, a new love of mind altering chemicals, and the discovery of the all important GROOVE, Eternal was born, and the sound on this never before released EP is only a hop skip and a drunken stumble from the sound of Electric Wizard. The doom and sludge is tempered here with a huge heaping pile of Hawkwindish swirling psychedelia and that oft purloined Sabbathy groove that pretty much defined Electric Wizard and the stoner rock movement that followed. Four tracks (one's a Sabbath cover!) including a sidelong track that would later become an Electric Wizard track.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
This most definitely has to be the shortest cd we've ever reviewed. And also the smallest. A tiny little two inches by two inches, square shaped cd, clocking in at a whopping two minutes and forty three seconds. Pretty ideal actually for this particular two band, two song match up. Mike Patton and his Fantomas group give us a 44 second Melt-Banana-ish, burst of cartoonish, buzzy, chaotic, short attention span cinematic grind, a brief flurry of staccato downtuned guitar chug and blasts of bizarre vocalization. Melt-Banana go all out timewise with almost two whole minutes of that squeaky, grind pop madness that is so immediately and recognizably Melt Banana. A confusional swirl of MB's usual mind melting ultra complex brutality, with a more than usual bit of melody and harmony intertwined with MB's impossibly dense and serpentine song structures, all chirped indecipherable vocals and rapid fire punk splatter. Short but sweet! Comes in a cool little cardboard sleeve with a tiny full color card affixed to each side.
SUPER LIMITED!! We got a handful of these, not entirely sure we can get more, so once these are gone there's a god chance we'll never be able to get more.
Here's a novel concept... Why not let Fischerspooner be your tourguide to gettin' around New York City? Those obsessive who-what-where-when mavens at Time Out (makers of those hip city guides that are usually found in magazine and book form) thought it a dandy idea, and have issued a series of three travel guide dualdisc (cd one side, dvd on the other) sets compiled by select taste-makin' startlets from London (Damian Lazarus), Paris (Black Strobe) and New York (Fischerspooner).
The eclectic musical selections are a funfilled romp although they're oddly not limited to New York based artists -- Bloc Party, Fiery Furnaces, Au Pairs, Princess Superstar, Broadcast, David Carretta, Plastique De Reve, Big Boys, Lassigue Bendthaus, Electronicat, Thomas Schumacher, Model 500, Richard Bartz, Martin Rev, Pixeltan and Laurie Anderson. Of course, shrewd businessmen that they are, they also include one of their own in the mix -- a remix of "Emerge".
The dvd side of The Other Side is hosted by Casey Spooner and offers a glimpse of his choice picks around the Big Apple.
Listenin' to Edith Frost's latest full length It's A Game sorta makes you wish she was your older sister, and a totally right-on one at that! Y'know, one you'd truly look up to with lots of stories to tell and frocks to share. Kind, patient, wise and warm... she and Olympia, WA's indie pop gal Lois seem like kindred spirits. Frost's voice is a comfort to hear, and her slightly folksy pop songs so uncomplicated and soothing. She just keeps getting better and better!
Now available on vinyl for a limited time! Along with almost all the other albums in the Immortal discography -- we're missing only Battles In The North ('cause the shipment to our supplier arrived damaged) and Sons Of Northern Darkness ('cause it wasn't released by Osmose). Like the rest, this At The Heart Of Winter vinyl edition comes packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve, with new photos and design. Here's what we had to say about the cd back when it came out:
You might be disappointed by the lack of blurred blast beats and blazing Arctic riffs but you certainly won't be disappointed with the results of these corpsepainted Norwegians' last photo shoot! A newfound obsession with pro wrestling and a new, very large and perpetually shirtless drummer (sporting a black metal belly girdle!) make this cd great to look at, but it's actually a great listen as well. As mentioned, gone is the speed of their last effort Blizzard Beasts --in it's place is a stripped-down, more midtempo, straight-ahead heavy metal sound. Better, more professional production than in the past, plus catchier riffs combined with stumbling, propulsive drumming make this a record that Andee and Allan both love (while big Immortal fan Josh from The Champs and Weakling votes this as the *worst* metal album of the year--go figure).
Note: in the years since this album came out (1999) ol' Josh has had a change of heart and now admits that it's a pretty good record! And Allan rates it his favorite Immortal opus ever.
Now available on vinyl for a limited time! Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve, with new photos and design. Here's what we had to say about the cd (not a lot, but believe us, it's quite possibly our very favorite Immortal record): Highly-regarded Black Metal band (weirdly enough, Steve Albini's favorite) unleash their latest frigid barrage, an amazingly trance-inducing, complex blur of drums, rasping howls and icicle guitars, stopping and starting but at never less than 100mph. Their best album yet (as of 1997) and certainly their most Morbid Angel.
Now available on vinyl for a limited time! Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve, with new photos and design. Here's what we had to say about the cd:
The new Immortal has arrived. True members of the Norwegian black metal elite, Abbath (not as in "please take..."!) on guitars and Popeye vox, big ol' drummer Horgh, and new guy Iscariah on bass, (with the sidelined Demonaz still writing lyrics) come back atcha a year after their groundbreaking At The Heart of Winter, the disc that slowed down (a bit) the previously way FAAASSSTTT tempos characteristic of their speedy-demon classics Battles In The North and Blizzard Beasts and added more melody, more trad metal riffing, and mo' better production courtesy of Peter Tagtgren & his Abyss studio. Damned In Black follows the Winter blueprint, being kind of like a At The Heart of Winter Part II but without the amusing wanna-be WWF wrestler band photos that garnered so much attention/ridicule last time around. And while the title might suggest some sort of Satanic theme, the Immortal boys stick with their personal mythology of a frosty Northern dimension full of ice, wind, and cold. Immortal fans everywhere (even the ones here in San Francisco who got dissed by the band when they didn't show up to play and went to Mexico instead) should put on some mittens and enjoy this evil icecapade.
Now available on vinyl for a limited time! Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve, with new photos and design. We never listed the cd before (it came out before we did reviews, let alone black metal reviews) but fans should know it, and that's who'll be interested in Immortal vinyl anyway. This was their very first album from '92, so probably their rawest, but still all about the winter wonderland that Immortal devoted their career to mythologizing.
Now available on vinyl for a limited time! Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve, with new photos and design. We never listed the cd before (it came out before we did reviews, let alone black metal reviews) but fans should know it, and that's who'll be interested in Immortal vinyl anyway. This was their second album (from 1993) and is classic old school Norwegian black metal all the way. Grim and frosty!
After a small break comes yet another record in the massive avalanche of tUMULt releases headed our way in the next few weeks (Iran, Painted Black, Leviathan, OCS, Diamatregon, Worms). This is the second missive from San Francisco's premier NOISEPOP band, not 'noise pop' in the jangly-pop-punk-San-Francisco-festival-Creeper-Lagoon-Overwhelming-Colorfast-Fastbacks sense but the gorgeous-pop-songs-buried-under-a-thick-splattery-wall-of-buzz-hum-whir-skree-guitars-set-on-self-destruct-Beatles-flitered-through-Skullflower sense. Like Sebadoh or Pavement being backed up by Throbbing Gristle or Whitehouse. Or Nurse With Wound fronted by Elliott Smith. If you get our drift. For record number two, Iran has scaled back the noise just a bit and let the pop shine through. And shine it does. Gorgeous, heart-breaking, voice-cracking lo-fi love (and un-love) songs, delivered in a wavery falsetto, over gentle guitars, naive drumming and strange but wonderful backgrounds woven from vocals, amp hum, guitar buzz, as well as rumbling low end and squealing feedback. When the noise does kick in, it's not noise for noise sake, Iran handle the squirming serpent with a deft hand, molding gorgeous sonic squalls and speaker shredding skree from overdriven amps and detuned guitars, with buried melodies and strange and mysterious rhythms laying beneath the storm, like looking through a murky pond at the secret life below. Adventurous indie rockers could very well be looking at their new favorite band, and experimetal/avant garde-niks may just find themselves developing a sweet tooth, cause everyone know the sugar goes down easier with a mouthful of medicine.
Slowly but surely, the mighty work of irr. app. (ext.) has been oozing out from the Santa Cruz mountains through various outlets such as Crouton, Helen Scarsdale, and Beta-Lactam. Perekluchenie was originally commissioned as part of a Beta-Lactam Ring subscription series (which if you were lucky enough to sign up would earn you a bonus picture disc with the LP) but the growing interest in irr. app. (ext.) warranted a regular pressing, thanks to such high-profile releases as the irr. app. (ext.) contribution to Nurse With Wound's Angry Eelectric Finger trilogy as well as the Salt Marie Celeste performances with Steven Stapleton himself! The relationship between irr. app. (ext.) and Nurse With Wound has gotten even more convoluted as Stapleton has joined irr. app. (ext.) in their last couple of performances. We should be quick to point out the irr. app. (ext.) and the genius behind the tongue-twisting project is far from a Nurse With Wound copyist. Hardly! While both projects draw inspiration from Surrealism and avant-garde composition, they both express strong divergent aesthetics that show how rich and open the field of Surrealist-tinged sound art can be.
Qualified as "a pointless theatrical exercise in one act or less," Perekluchenie actually spans four lengthy pieces of audio madness. Waldron wanders through desolate strums across a prepared piano (or some other instrument that's equally heavy and reverberant) which gives way to ill-tempered birds, ominous windswept drones, and funereal bells. Waldron shatters the grim atmosphere with an unnerving passage for tactile squeakings and poltergeist driven furniture. Elsewhere, discordant horn bleats rupture the heavenly glow of elegaic tones and genuinely baffled exclamations erupt from a very young Django Stapleton. Waldron includes other vocal contributions from Lori Anne Anne Lori Chambers, Aquarius' former owner Windy Chien, and Diana Rogerson (aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd.)
All in all, Perekluchenie is a truly wonderful album! We've been fans of Mr. Waldron for many years now, and he's yet to let us down.
For those of you who were left craving more of Seu Jorge's dulcet tones after you exhausted your soundtrack cd to Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic (on which he covers a bunch of David Bowie songs in Portuguese)... here's the complete collection of his acoustic interpretations that he recorded for the movie (note: some of them did already appear on the soundtrack release). Geez, this would've made a great summer album, wouldn't it have?! Ah well, we might just have to bring a little of that season's warmth into the winter months... either that or resort to tucking a copy away 'til next June!
Whenever anyone asks us what Khold sounds like, we often tell them, well, a bit like a black metal Nirvana. Which is not entirely accurate and maybe not totally fair, but it definitely is the most succinct description we can come up with, and it does at least give you a rough idea of where this Norwegian outfit's sound lies. Or at least how it sounds to us. A surprising amount of 'groove' and catchy riffery for such a grim black metal band. Lurching swaying midtempos, impossibly catchy melodies, plenty of frosty buzz, but the occasional hook that just kicks your head in and makes you want to throw on a flannel and some corpse paint and bang your head like mad. A couple tracks sound like they could have been your favorite Sub Pop singles of the month. Had they existed they would have surely occupied THE prized position in your record collection (the most likely contender on Krek is track three: "Innestengt I Eikekiste"). The whole record sounds like the meanest, heaviest songs on Bleach, painted black, set afire, and set hurtling through the forest and straight to hell. Khold do for black metal what Nirvana did for pop, turning it inside out and taking all the most unlikely elements, and making them sound perfect, like they could never have been any other way. Which is even more impressive in the case of Khold, as BM tends to be a lot more stodgy and resistant to such un-grim concepts as catchiness and hooks and groove. And of course, let's not forget Khold frontman Gard, who as we have mentioned before, puts pretty much all other corspepainted metal dudes to shame with his bulky fuzzy black cloaked visage, his half black face, glowing white pate, and the blackened tendrils creeping up the side of his head as if some black beast from hell is slowly enveloping his body. So awesome.
As we mentioned in the last list, we just can't get enough Grime. We absolutely dug Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Virus Syndicate, and even M.I.A. who had a bit of grime going on. But over in the UK, grime is the shit, happening on loads of 12"s, in clubs, and on underground radio stations, but very little of it has made it over here, unfortunately, outside of a few comps. It makes perfect sense that Lady Soveriegn would be the one to follow Dizzee and M.I.A. from undergound hype to next big thing. EVERY time we play this in the store at least one person buys it, and usually half the people in the store come up to see what we're listening to. It's that catchy and funky and fucked up, and totally unlike anything else you've heard -- okay, other than M.I.A. maybe, but Lady Sovereign sounds so much more raw and gritty and weird, maybe like M.I.A.'s snotty, sexy little sister. The grooves are grime for sure, super stuttery and repetitive, with thick swaths of fuzzy synth and huge rolling basslines, but the arrangements are really damaged and complex, with plenty of start and stops, twisty and tangled, the tonguetwisting vocals careening at breakneck speed all over the place, riding a huge synth line, skipping nimbly over a spastic drum break, like a musical version of a Jackie Chan action sequence. Lady Sovereign is ducking and dodging and spitting madly over funky beats and all manner of samples. But no matter how crazy the tunes are, it's all about Lady Sov's flow. The sticker on the front of the disc describes her as "Eminem if he was an 18 year old female from South London" which makes for good copy but isn't entirely accurate. She's got a really unique voice, sometimes squeaky and feminine, but more often a bit scruffy and growly, and it's amazing how many syllables she can spit per minute, dizzying! And she can easily slip into some strange melodic vocalization for a song's chorus before slipping back into her Cockney growly snotty delivery. And her lyrics are really funny, plenty of shit talking of course, but lots of self deprecating references to her slight stature (5'1", hence the title) and her baggy clothes, and lots of other really silly randomness. Although sometimes the delivery is so rapid fire it's hard to catch anything but a word here and there. Hardly matters though, you'lll be too busy bouncing or dancing or whatever you do with these tunes blasting in the background.
Vertically Challenged may be an ep, but it's pretty long, eight tracks, 35 minutes, features a handful of remixes, one from the Beastie Boys' Adrock and one from Ghislain Poiror, and features guest vocal spots from UK grimies Shystie, Frost P., Zuz Rock.
Also includes a DVD with an interview, live footage, all the videos and other goodies.
So though an ep it's definitely all killer and no filler, unlike most hip hop records, and it definitely lays the groundwork for Lady Sovereign to blow up M.I.A. big in the not too distant future. And we're definitely psyched for that. The more GRIME the better, and we'd sure as hell rather hear Lady Sovereign on the radio and on MTV than J-Lo or Madonna or Ashlee Simpson!
Perhaps it took Scott Arford winning honorable mention at the 2005 Ars Electronica to get this split release with Francisco Lopez to come out. These two pieces were originally recorded back in 2002 and had been slated for release by a couple of different labels, until Low Impedence had the sense to finally just do it. Curiously enough, this is one of several releases to come pouring out of Arford's 7hz studios after a couple of years of silence. Electricity appears to the source material and subject matter for the two composers on Solid State Flesh & Solid State Sex. The latter is the work of Mr. Arford who has always had a penchant for hard, blistered noises and cacophonic feedback squallor; and those sounds are heavily featured here punctuating the deadened buzz of smoldering electricity. It's hard to think of this as being sexy music or even sexual music given the electrocutionist throb of Arford's sounds, thus lending to plenty of transgressive readings if you're so inclined. On the slightly more voluptuous Solid State Flesh, Lopez expands the monotone of 60 cycle hums and the hissing buzz of electrical static through his signature compositional strategy of slow-burning tumult which abruptly halt and annouce a prolonged passage of inactivity. Unlike some of his Belle Confusion pieces, Solid State Flesh adds a considerable menace to his self-professed absolute concrete, but nevertheless is very well done and an excellent companion to Arford's work.
Bay Area's The Lymbic System bring us instrumental indie post-rock pop with a jazzy lean, a la Tortoise. That said, their ep Carved By Glaciers maintains a looser and slightly edgier sound, thus keeping a safe distance from truly formal post-rock constructions. Low frequency distortion, hints of a Moog-y synth, a Wurlitzer, layers of electronic melody and many incredibly delicate moments form these songs within a generous spatial structure. Very nice guys! May we have another?
A warm drift of buzzing steel strings, chiming overtones, plenty of space, darkly delicate melodies. New Zealander Greg Malcolm throws his hat into the fast growing Fahey worship / neo-psych-folk ring, but manages to completely mesmerize with his unique take on that droning abstract psychedelic folk we love so much. A rich, meandering, minor key exploration of the guitar and the space that surrounds it. Chords are picked apart, releasing a note at a time and allowing each note to drift lazily toward your ears, occasionally brushing by another note creating a brief harmonic flourish, but just as often continuing on its solitary path like a single ripple in a pond. Gentle strums, and rumbling drones, drift and intertwine like sperate plumes of smoke, the barriers between the two becoming indistinct and leaving us with a dark and drifty lovliness. Recorded completely live with no overdubs, Swimming In It will obviously please fans of Jack Rose, Matt Valentine, James Blackshaw, Charlie Schmidt and all that abstract free folk psych and avant Appalachia, but there's plenty of dreamy droniness to please the rest of you as well!
We recently reviewed a record by the Deadsea, a chaotic mix of black metal, and post rock and prog and sludge metal which we all dug like crazy, and as we mentioned in the review, one of the Deadsea guys used to be in the band Three Studies For A Crucifixion. So we managed to get a just a handful of these long out of print 8" eps for those of you who wanted more -- oh, and for you Melt Banana fans as well!! Here's what we had to say about it when we first had it way back when:
Tokyo's Melt-Banana have made a much welcome return to their hardcore roots with six new songs, fast and furious as ever. Three Studies for a Crucifixion, from Athens, OH, contribute two tracks of technical spazz and grind. VERY limited, so act fast.
On their latest, already very warmly received full length Z, My Morning Jacket have fallen even closer in line with the David Fridmann produced grand pop theatrics of groups such as Flaming Lips, Sparklehorse and Mercury Rev. Their sound has become more sumptuous and far less distinctly 'rock' or 'country' than on their past releases, almost as though they'd set a soft focus lens on the proceedings. Still very shadowy and deeply melancholic though. Although John Leckie and MMJ's mainman Jim James have done a fine job mixing and producing these ten songs, it's hard not to try imagining what they'd sound like with Fridmann in the producer's seat. Beautiful!
No sooner do the No Doctors show up in our fair city, that they begin to pelt us with sludgy slabs of glorious noise rock. What better way to make yourself at home in your new city and let the natives know you come in peace. T-Bone is two sides of classic rock meets noise rock meets jazz? Side A is a buzzing sludge-y groove beneath wild seventies RAWK guitar, and strange skronking horns, sounds a bit like an art rock / sludge rock Boston! Which is in fact a good thing!
Side B is some sort of post-rock-free-bop continuation of side one, sounding a bit like Jesus Lizard with a sax player and a classic rock fetish. Throbbing low end, simple propulsive drumming, and a relentlessly squawking sax. But then in comes the TALK BOX (!) which of course immediately brings back to mind good ol' seventies rock. Frampton's Comes Alive played by the Dazzling Killmen with James Chance? Weird, sure, but pretty fucking cool.
Very appetizing (or UN-appetizing, depending on your orientation) raw meat cover art!
Before I get into any critique of this, I have to say that Salt Marie Celeste is easily the best Nurse With Wound record in years!
Throughout the 25 years of Nurse With Wound recordings, Steven Stapleton has actively pursued audio manifestations of Surrealism, often hypothesizing on what Surrealists like Andre Breton or Tristan Tzara might do if they had access to contemporary recording technology but still maintaining their bastardizations of Victorian aesthetics. Recently on recordings like Man with the Woman Face or Alice the Goon, NWW embraced obtuse free associations to build dense sound puzzles of dead-end jokes, absurd parataxis, and general confusion. However, Salt Marie Celeste is far simpler an application of Surrealism, as Stapleton renders NWW a vehicle for psychological horror. For this album, Stapleton and studio wizard Colin Potter (who has been the only other collaborator with NWW for the past couple of releases) have drawn from Gavin Bryars' "Sinking of the Titanic" for inspiration; however, NWW never dwells in the lulling pathos which characterizes Bryars' composition. Instead, Salt Marie Celeste is a relentless album which imagines the tidal currents around the Titanic's demise as an inhumanly cold force steadily bringing the doomed ship to the bottom of the ocean. Through a series of looping mechanisms, Stapleton and Potter build a massive orchestration of fluctuations which swell and dissipate with an unnerving regularity. The central element to the compostition is an ominous wave of electronic sound which constantly tumbles forward. Fans of NWW will recognize this from the super limited edition Music from the Horse Hospital 2cd, yet done much more effectively here. Wooden creaks and moans emerge from this gravity well of sound, before breaking up and disappearing amidst the tidal wave of intensity. For the references to the Titanic (or at least in Bryars' composition), Salt Marie Celeste conjures suffocating and bleak images of ghost ships mysteriously appearing on the horizon.
Regardless, this is clearly one of Nurse With Wound's best and should not be missed!
These Collaborations aren't new, no, they were compiled from the numerous guest appearances that the irrepressible Ms Sinead O'Connor has made on other folks' releases over the years. They sure do demonstrate the incredible breadth of her musical forays -- rock, folk, dub, worldbeat, you name it. Some feature O'Connor front and center on lead vocals, while on others her voice is a peripheral subtle embellishment. For all of you diehard fans, it's certainly nice to have them all of these great tracks in one place, instead of cluttering up your music library with a bunch of other artists' albums that you care nothing about aside from the single songs that she appears on -- many which you probably haven't heard since way back in the day. For instance, while Cup's not such a huge O'Connor fan, she admits to having a soft spot for the song "Heroine" which O'Connor did with U2's The Edge back in 1986 for the film Captive. She certainly wore out her vinyl copy of the soundtrack listening to just that one song! Also featured are collabs with Asian Dub Foundation, Bomb The Bass, Ghostland, Jah Wobble, Afro Celt Sound System, The Blockheads, The The, U2, Conjure One, Peter Gabriel, Moby, Aslan, Damien Dempsey, The Colourfield, Terry Hall, and it all begins with Massive Attack's slinking "Special Cases".
Her powerhouse of a voice still in top form, Sinead O'Connor bursts back into the public eye and ear with two releases -- one a compilation of her collaborations aptly titled Collaborations, and the other being this all reggae covers album, Throw Down Your Arms. We've already heard many folks guffaw at even the thought of this concept (admittedly even though we know that she's no stranger to dub music, our own eyebrows were certainly raised), but let's quash those grumbling right now 'cause y'know what? It totally works. Always one to walk to the beat of her own ever-changing drum, the perennially outspoken O'Connor shows a deep reverence, humility and connection to each of the songs which include straightforward renditions of Burning Spear's "Door Peep", Lee Perry's "Vampire" and "Curly Locks", and Peter Tosh's "Downpressor Man". The musicians backing her are themselves top notch veteran Jamaican artists including Mikey Chung on guitar and Dean Fraser on saxophone not to mention Sly & Robbie who also produced the whole proceedings in Kingston, Jamaica. It all just adds up to pretty darn great!
The Occasion set their cauldron of somber psychedelia on the fire to simmer, and the slowly spiralling vapors wafting up into our ears are quite a pleasure. Much of Cannery Hours' beautiful smoldering embers may easily be aligned with the shadowy, expansive likes of Black Heart Procession, Destroyer as well as Godspeed You Black Emperor, and seem to draw ample inspiration from Pink Floyd and perhaps even This Heat. Subdued yet emotive male vocals and contemplative picked guitar lines give way to the fevered piano, crashing cymbals, and swelling waves of guitar distortion.
JZ's 50th was/is a never-ending party it seems. The cds just keep on coming. We haven't managed to keep up at all with 'em all. But we did have to take a moment to check out this, a new Painkiller document! Painkiller being one of our favorite John Zorn ensembles, wherein he teamed up with grindcore drummer Mick Harris (Napalm Death/Scorn) and ubiquitous bassist Bill Laswell for several extreme explorations of heavy-duty, jazz metal improvcore back in the early '90s. The "Collected Works" four-cd box set on Tzadik remains quite recommended (especially for the band's best work, the dubby death ambient double disc set called Execution Ground), and includes guest appearances from the likes of Eye Yamantaka and Keiji Haino.
So what's the deal with this live, September 2003 birthday Painkiller reunion, then? Well, first off, although Laswell is (of course) on board, Mick Harris isn't. Does he even still play drums? His replacement is Chicago jazz percussionist Hamid Drake. And, the special guest at this show was Mike Patton, always a suitable stand-in for Eye. So this isn't quite the same Painkiller, being rather, um, "funkier" than we remember 'em being. It's also certainly exuberantly noisy. Well, maybe the darkest Painkiller stuff wouldn't really be right for a birthday party, after all! The three tracks here, two of 'em quite lengthy, were all composed and/or improvised by the Zorn/Drake/Laswell/Patton unit. Patton contributes plenty of distorted screams and jib-jabbery glitched out electonics n' vocals, while the Laswell/Drake rhythm section generally grooves along, and Zorn switches back and forth between both camps, blowing like crazy to keep Patton company or playing "jazzier" stuff to swing with Laswell and Drake. Zorn, Patton and yes indeed old Painkiller fans will all find this of interest. It's not quite the Painkiller of the Mick Harris days, but there's still plenty of dubby, mayhemic skronk here that's at least really "Painkillerish".
Yay, Swamp Tech is on vinyl toooo! So you can spin yer Quintron 'round 'n' 'round! Here's what we had to say about the cd version...
Whether or not they actually plan it that way, Quintron albums seem to have a habit of materializing just in time for Halloween. You might recall The Frog Tape CD reissue around this time last year. Those very vocal froggie made for some unexpectedly great spooky party sounds! This album's maybe less creepy and strange than that, but it sure ain't short on the party side of things. Heck, that's something you can always count on from Quintron & Miss Pussycat! Totally frantic lo-fi madness! Eagle-eared Andee thought that the eighth song sounded like a Kiss song, and indeed it is! Quintron covers "God Of Thunder", and what signals party more than a Kiss song? Quintron lets loose a medusa head of cheez-organ noodles while the organ's internal drum machine keeps tickety-tock time and the duo sings songs like "Swamp Buggy Baddass", "Love Is Like A Blob", Fly Like A Rat" and oh yes, "Tea Time".
Note: the cd version comes with a dvd, alas, this vinyl version does not!
Now on double gatefold vinyl with extra treats!
Here's what we said about the cd...
Firstly, we should let you know that despite the peculiar album title's take on the Slade song there's absolutely nothing that we'd call 'noise' in any of these twenty-two songs (!), Illinoise or otherwise. This is Sufjan Stevens' second full length welcoming ode to a Midwestern state. Heck why not? His Greetings from Michigan album went over like gangbusters, and we've got a feeling this one will too. His folk-pop numbers of which this album is primarily comprised (fyi: he also crafts more abstract quirky electronic work) are so wistful and dreamy whether he's singing alone or has a sweet chorus joining in for a few bars. Actually when it's time for the group-sing, it's sorta like a more low-key Polyphonic Spree. Totally feel-good! Stevens' lilting compositions are highlighted by frolicking horns and swirling strings. This album balances his upbeat songs which can be downright jubilant with his more melancholic ones that might make you a bit misty-eyed... and that's even before you notice the songs' lyrical storylines and historical references about all thing Illinois. In fact, Illinoise will surely also appeal to fans of the lush pop sounds of more recent Belle & Sebastian or Kings Of Convenience. A super delight! Recommended.
Now what about the bonus stuff that we were referring to earlier? Well, please read on... You may or may not have heard that the likeness of a certain caped celebrity originally appeared on the cover to this release, and it turns out he (or his corporate sponsors) didn't want him to be there, so the 'problem' was removed from the subsequent cd pressings. Apparently the LP sleeves got printed up too with the offending figure, so on the first 5000 LP copies he has been concealed with a (cheekily removeable) sticker of some cheerful balloons. Oh yeah, and there's a tune "The Avalanche" which does not appear on the cd version!
The Dawn Is Crowded is an international split LP between West Coasters Whysp and The Story who hail from the U.K. and count as members Martin Welham of '60s psych-folk band Forest and his son Tom! Not unlike waking at the daybreak and stumbling across an earthy psych-folk gathering deep within some distant enchanted forest. On The Story's side, everything is leafy green, glistening with dew and pixie dust with slightly twee male vocals. On the flip side, Whysp invite a few more players into the fold for a more varied and up-tempo group performance. Nice!
