Acid Mothers Temple are, of course, the communal hippie cosmic krautrock lovin' ensemble from Japan led by bearded guitar guru Kawabata Makoto, whose multitude of releases (and live shows) are pretty much always enjoyable trips... we don't have to tell you that. Afrirampo are a newer band, also from Japan, a vocally out-there, wild & wooly female costume-rock duo who sound a heckuva lot like early Boredoms (someone told us that Afrirampo are actually *making fun* of the Boredoms, but we don't believe it). Chances are you probably already know about 'em too, judging by sales here at AQ.
And it seems that most AMT fans have to have *everything* they put out. Likewise with Afrirampo's fans. And fans of AMT are likely to be into Afrirampo, and vice versa (Afrirampo, after all, have guested on several past AMT albums). So they've done EVERYONE a favor and recorded this collaborative release together, so you can cross it off both yr lists when you pick it up!! What a deal. Now, with the many many reviews we have to write impending upon us here we can't say we've sat down and listened to this entire thing all the way through, yet. I mean, c'mon, we don't have time to fully enter into the necessary spirit of this, sitting naked crosslegged in our room, blasting this on 10 while rocking back and forth and mumbling along to the Yoko-inspired babble... But what we've heard here in the store has been what we'd expect, and want. The aforementioned vocal babble backed by droning, swirling psychedelic build ups a la Amon Duul on this three long tracks... Moods vary, from the mystic to the maniacal. These jams drift in and out of focus -- some of it's a bit like being at an AMT or Boredoms show in Japan, listening to the band with one ear while in the other you're hearing a small child nearby begging their parents to take them home. AMT + Afrirampo, a match made in Japanese psych splurge heaven. It's limited too, we're pretty sure...
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Finally, Andee's tUMULt label releases some new shit! Yes, it's been *months* since tUMULt's last releases (Guapo, 7000 Dying Rats). But don't be fooled. All that time has been well spent preparing stuff by Japan's Solar Anus, the soon-to-be-huge OCS [the prolific John Dwyer of Dig That Body Up It's Alive (also coming soon on tUMULt), Coachwhips, and Pink And Brown], Finland's Worms, Norway's Brainbombs, SF black metal one man band Leviathan, a new Circle -and- a new Iran, for imminent release!
But for now, we can revel in this, the latest installment of psychedelic majesty from Japanese avant-hippy heroes Acid Mothers Temple. This is the debut entry in a series of 12" picture discs (future volumes to include Skullflower, Troum, Circle, Reynols, Loren Chasse and more) to be released over the course of the next 12 months and quite an auspicious start it is too. Recorded well over a year ago, this is AMT at their absolute prime, featuring special guest star Tatsuya Yoshida of the Ruins! Two extended tracks (35 + minutes) of transcendental psych-drone. Side one has to be the most beautiful track they've ever recorded. Uncharacteristically tranquil and captivatingly beautiful. Droning, shimmering chimes coalesce into some sort of cosmic Ur-drone, punctuated by simple caveman thuds and epic swooshes, resulting in a grand and gorgeous ambience! Side two is a single track separated into two apparent movements. The first sees AMT back on more familiar ground, with swooping synths and freak out guitar. A stumbling kosmic krautrock, with motorik rhythms and free guitar, amidst a swampy wash of rumbling low end and squealing synths. The track erupts into bubbling atonal out-rock exploration splattered with mad scientist synthesisers as the whole thing slowly mutates into 'cosmic slop' of the nth degree, becoming gradually free-er and free-er. The second 'movement' is all slithery free jazz with bubbling cauldrons of synth sputter, wild keyboards and Can-like rhythms until the whole thing gets all dreamy, eventually blissing out completely. When Andee asked AMT to do a 12", they weren't yet Wire cover stars with so many dozens of releases out -- but this is still one of their absolute best recordings!
As you might have guessed, this is EXTREMELY LIMITED. Hand stamped sleeves. A gorgeous picture disc, with a striking flowers/UFO image on one side, and a scintillatingly saucy photo on the other (you'll just have to buy it to see it!) Frustratingly (for Allan at least) only available as a picture disc lp, although there will be a cd version in the near future, but (even more frustratingly for Allan) the tracks on the cd will be completely different!
It took some of us a while to come around to the mad, maddening, drug addled defect pop world of Ariel Pink. We were convinced it was all an act, a put on, but it soon became apparent that Mr. Ariel Pink is indeed INSANE, and his music suddenly became less of a complicated art project and more a tantalizing glimpse inside the mind of a seriously fucked up musical madman. Pedestrian Pop Hits is 15 minutes of freaked out, psychedelic effects laden, dementedly catchy otherworldly pop. This is definitely not pop for the faint of heart, this is twisted and dark, like pop from an alternate dimension, where pop song hooks are chopped up and flung to the ground and stomped on in wild musical temper tantrums, rhythms careen wildly from in time to not even remotely toe tappable, sweet guitar melodies get dunked chorus first into deep vats of jabbering lyrical nonsense and blooping burping synthesizers, the whole thing run through forty delay pedals and broadcast through the speaker on a passing ice cream man's truck. Somehow, with all this damage and what-the-fuck going on, these songs (or this song) manages to sound pretty lush, and impossibly catchy. Imagine Brian Eno on Mescaline or listening to AM radio after a full frontal lobotomy. Wow! A testament to the mad genius of Ariel Pink for sure.
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert. Each copy hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, about 50 of which made it here. So you know what that means!
After the idiosyncratic pop of Ariel Pink had been uncritically applauded by everybody who had been slathering praise on the Animal Collective (after AC discovered the Los Angeles song-sorcerer), there's been a bit of a backlash in the "indie" press directed toward House Arrest. What the fuck? House Arrest is just as imbalanced and peculiar an album as The Doldrums and Worn Copy. So why pick on this record? It makes no sense. Throughout his brief career, Airel Pink has never been easily digestible thanks to production standards stuck in the mud and a trainwreck approach to multi-tracking rhythms; but out of the sonic dreck, Pink has always exhibited a knack for conjuring uncanny pop hooks that tap into the collective consciousness of anybody who grew up in the late '70s and early '80s listening to AM radio where the quintessence of heaviness would be Night Ranger or Journey. House Arrest liberates the pop hooks (some of which have been shamelessly lifted) from one-hit wonder jangle, disco-lite pop, white soul crooning, and schmatzy power ballads through his chemically deranged yet free-spirited aesthetic. It could be that nobody really likes Ariel Pink all that much to begin with; and we can't really blame anybody as Ariel Pink's nostalgic pastiche is far more challenging to listen to than the next garage-rock band or the next band cashing in on the Factory Records revival kick. But seriously, if you liked either of those aforementioned records, then House Arrest will totally hit the spot.
If you've been hanging out with me (Andee) much lately, you've undoubtedly heard me singing the praises of Bathtub Shitter. In fact before I had even heard them, I knew Bathtub Shitter had the potential to be my favorite band. C'mon, they're Japanese, they are called Bathtub Shitter, oh and did I mention they only sing about shit? For a while I was fantasizing about releasing a split with the two best bands in the world (as determined at the time solely by monicker as I had yet to hear either) Bathtub Shitter and Fuck I'm Dead. I'm still thinking about it, but while I ruminate, we're lucky to have this, the first full length Bathtub Shitter record and their only cd. We spent a good long while tracking down 7"s, but since the world leans heavily in the digital direction we had to wait until this beautiful shiny shit-obsessed marvel fell into our hands! What's it sound like you're probably wondering by now. Well, 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' but I don't want to give away too much. It's better if you just let the Bathtub Shitter unfold before you like a beautiful, shit-filled flower.
For this one, I (Allan) have got to tell a little story... 'round Christmastime I was back home in Pennsylvania, where I spent one of my evenings hanging out with some old pals who I know from one of my hometown's record stores. You know, some folks in a basement, with some beers, something funny-smelling being smoked (no, not by me), and lots and lots of records being spun, mostly jazz and funk and R&B 'cause that's what these friends of mine dig the most. Well, one record comes on that immediately makes me say, hey, this sounds like something that shoulda been on that Chains And Black Exhaust compilation from a couple years ago. Real bad-ass, fuzzed-out psychedelic '70s funk. My friends hadn't seen that comp, but perhaps you have since you're reading this and we did pretty well with it here at AQ. Sadly it's long gone now. Well, another track (a nice bluesy number) goes by, and then boom, there's a song that WAS indeed on that comp! All chunky wah-wah groove and grunting badassitude, "Cynthy-Ruth" turns out it's called, and one of the highlights on Chains and Black Exhaust ('twas track three).
The record my host was spinning was a vinyl reissue of the first album circa 1970 by Detroit's "folk rock funkateers" (it said right on the cover), a band called Black Merda. We kept listening and it was clear that this was a pretty killer album from an obscure bunch of "black rock" pioneers, contemporaries of Funkadelic and similiarly influenced by Jimi Hendrix. Dang, I immediately figured that no doubt quite a few of you who dug Chains And Black Exhaust would want this!
So when I got back to work here at AQ, I had to track it down. My diligent investigations revealed that both this first album and its 1972 sequel Long Burn The Fire (released under the shortened sobriquet Mer-da) were soon to be reissued together on a single cd. And this is it, The Folks From Mother's Mixer (the name of one of the songs from the Mer-da LP).
Overall, there's a doomy, druggy vibe again akin to a lot of early Funkadelic, an atmosphere that can be mellow but menacing, dark and gloomy, with loosely-chanted choruses full of socially-conscious protest lyrics. And yes, there's a buncha funky heavy groovers in the style of "Cynthy-Ruth" alongside a goodly amount of laid back psychedelic blues-rock jamming in the Hendrix vein. Fans of early Funkadelic won't be disappointed at all. Their somewhat cleaner, brighter second album perhaps ain't as good as the first, but definitely also has its strong points and you'll be glad it's on here too.
Comes packaged with Afro-filled photos and lengthy liner notes that tell the whole Black Merda story, from their days as Edwin Starr's backing band to to their embrace of '60s heavy electric guitar rock to their signing to Chess Records (the famous blues label was trying to get into the psychedelic, underground rock thing at the time) and brief shot at fame to the eventual derailment of their career due to forces beyond their control. Now, 30+ years later, Black Merda's music gets another chance to turn on, funk up, and weird out music fans.
Blanketship's second album starts off in a much more funky and trip-hop-y fashion than anything found on his previous cd Threeps, but it definitely doesn't stay put. This one-man band aka Jared Blum keeps things moving along, drawing from a plethora of inspirations and sound sources, but always keeping thoughts of pop in the back of his mind. Incorporating samples of psychedelia, jazz, earthen folk, field recordings, and world beat, he's pieced together each track on Summer Set, with some considerably more structured than others. Catchily groovy and playfully spirited.
Only the biggest stoners or hardiest AQ list readers will even make it to this review. Which is precisely the problem with Bongzilla. Unless you're a pot smoking college student, a stoned metal head, or just an all around dirtbag, Bongzilla is an unbelievably stupid band name. It's the sort of name that would have Beavis And Butthead giggling and saying things like "Um, huh huh, he said bongzilla, huh huh." But let's be honest, Bongzilla is the perfect name for these guys, stoned and druggy and enveloped in a swirl of pot smoke and day old bongwater, at the same time, a crushing, stomping, downtuned metal behemoth. Sludgy and monstrously dirgelike, but with plenty of stoner groove. We'd dare go so far as to say Bongzilla are one of the best stoner sludge bands around. In fact, they manage to take the sound of EYEHATEGOD and all that sort of nihilistic NOLA stoner doom, groovy hip shaking stoner pop, and all manner of drug metal, and mix it with a big old dose of acid drenched space doom a la Hawkwind or Monster Magnet. A crushing dirgelike stoner riff sort repeates over and over eventually sort of splintering apart into slow floating slabs of fuzz guitar, drifting all hazy and mesemerizng, a blown out outer space psych jam of monumental proportions. The 12+ minute "Stonesphere" is the ultimate Bongzilla trip, a groovy tarpit riff, that is eventually smeared into long loping streaks of drug addled space rock / krautrocky bliss out, complete with seventies style talk box vocals buried way down in the mix. So tough it out, make it past the dumb (but WAY appropriate) name, the cover art of a soldier smoking pot in front of an American flag with pot leaves instead of stars, and the goofy Amerijuanican album title, and prepare to sit back and drift off into a goloriously druggy oblivion. If Bongzilla were called Krakow or Ultrablackbuzzhole or Fuckcrush or Strangle Flanger or something appropriately brutal and perplexing, if they were Japanese, if they had songs about serial killers instead of smoking pot, if they had super spiffy retro graphic design, or released super limited picture discs and multiple versions of every record and managed to sell as many records on eBay as they did in stores, but sounded EXACTLY the same, you can bet the rest of the stoner / sludge / doom / drone elite (Corrupted, EYEHATEGOD, Green Machine, Boris, Church Of Misery, Yob, etc.) would be cowering in terror (or at least, watching their backs), and all those crazy stoner-doom-drone collector freaks would be slobbering up a storm!
It's hard to review a record by the mysterious Bonus without mentioning their dubious choice of band name. Did you get that Bonus disc? Um, what bonus disc? You know, the whole Who's On First thing. This has only been eclipsed by a band we heard about recently called Merch. Nuff said.
Anyway, such levity is totally out of place in a review of -this- Bonus disc, a massive roiling, churning miasma of thick malevolent, corrosive fuzzed out drones. Huge and dense and multilayered, pulsing and swelling like something alive. Like the endless lull of the surf, if the waves were made up of huge bass speakers, buzzy synths and undulating electronic osscilations. Like the clang and clatter of industrial machinery, the buzz of airplanes flying overhead, the rumbling of construction work down the block, all timestretched into a soothing, swaying, soporific drone. Think Troum covering Wolf Eyes, or Andrew Chalk plays the Throbbing Gristle songbook. Really great!
Packaged in a handmade, hand embossed, spray painted plastic sleeve. Each disc individually stamped and numbered.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES. WE ONLY HAVE 30!
Finally! The Brazilian version of the Boris soundtrack Mabuta No Ura. And why is another version of a record you may already own so essential? Well, for the precise reason we all find Boris so enticing and simultaneously frustrating. This new version is SIMILAR, but NOT identical to the Japanese version. Obviously the packaging is completely different. But the music is too, which means all you Boris obsessives will need this as well as the Japanese version if you want all the Mabuta No Ura music there is. Some of the tracks here are -not- on the Japanese version, however, there are a few tracks on the Japanese version that are not found here. ARGHHHH. But thankfully Boris are so good, and Mabuta is so completely amazing, that it makes all this multiple version craziness go down just a little bit easier. But as we said before:
Boris fans are definitely obsessive, most wanting to collect anything and everything the band puts out, whether it's the same record with different artwork, or a limited single, or the same record with 9 minutes of extra music or a different record with the same cover or whatever. The band don't really help matters much, wholeheartedly playing into this, releasing records in ridiculously limited versions and multiple versions, with different artwork or bonus tracks or both. But this new record Mabuta No Ura has definitely pushed all this multiple version collecting about as far as it can go. But hey, let's talk about the record. A soundtrack to a film entitled Mabuta No Ura, this is Boris at their most abstract, maybe even at their least heavy, but Boris has yet to disappoint, and they don't here. Although depending on your personal favorite style of Boris, whether it be the slow sludgy dirges, the minimal drones or the all out super distorted RAWK, you might have to readjust your thinking to get into Mabuta No Ura. There's only one actually 'heavy track', and some of you may already have it, or at least a version of it, as the track in question, "A Bao A Qu" was released as a super limited picture disc 7" not too long ago. "A Bao A Qu" finds Boris churning through a sludgy slab of crushing psych rock, the way only they seem to do it. The rest of Mabuta No Ura finds the band exploring much more contemplative moods, constructing simple, dreamy passages of finger picked guitar, and warm swells of moody ambience. Sometimes sounding a bit like Low, sometimes a little like Slint, the theme here overall does seem to be a brooding slow building post rock. There are variations of course, Eastern sounding melodies, hazy chanted vocals, shimmering washes of cymbal sizzle, tribal rhythms, hand claps, plaintive vocalising, stretches of Sunroof!-like free-noise ambience, blown out krautrock rhythms, but it all sort of hovers around that post rock sound we love so much, dark and moody and smoldering, occasionally bursting with dynamics, but more often than not chugging along all melancholy and contemplatively propulsive. Hard to imagine what sort of film Mabuta No Ura must be, but the songs and sounds here are quite evocative, and let our imaginations conjure up the appropriate images to go with these sumptuous sounds.
The Brazilian version comes in a nice thick oversized mini lp gateflod sleeve, housed in a deluxe die cut slip case. Inside are mini reproductions of the inserts that came with the original lp. So nice.
One of the most engaging pioneers of electronic music Wendy (formely Walter) Carlos has made some of the most haunting and chilling sounds over the last several decades. The collaboration with filmakers was a very natural progression for Carlos as her sounds so perfectly match the images of equally creative and twisted filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick for whom she scored both The Shining and A Clockwork Orange. This new compilation of her lost scores contains the stunning sounds she crafted for The Shining which never made it to album form before as well as tracks from A Clockwork Orange that were not included on that soundtrack. Dark electronic soundscapes years before labels like Scape or Schematic even existed. The last few tracks are devoted to her score work for several UNICEF films..those don't quite do it for us but wow how much the first 25 tracks from Kubrick's films sure do. Totally creepy and trailblazing.
Hot on the heels of the split 7" Casiotone For The Painfully Alone did with Fox Pause comes another short'n'sweet C.F.T.P.A. release (this one's available on 2-song vinyl and 4-song cd)... And just in time for Valentine's Day, no less! This one man band (aka Owen Ashworth) seems to have a bottomless heart-shaped box of schoolboy lo-fi pop-tronic bonbons. On the first two tunes of this cd (the two that make up the 7" version), his trademark rudimentarily programmed drumbeats and perky Casiotone keyboard melodies once again make us muse as to whether or not Ashworth and Stephin Merritt might be long lost brothers. That said, in more ways that one, the standout track is definitely the somber finale on the cd version. An alternate version of his song "The Subway Home", its plucked cello strings bring to mind the final droplets of rain that fall from leaves after a stormy night. Moody loveliness.
Hot on the heels of the split 7" Casiotone For The Painfully Alone did with Fox Pause comes another short'n'sweet C.F.T.P.A. release (this one's available on 2-song vinyl and 4-song cd)... And just in time for Valentine's Day, no less! This one man band (aka Owen Ashworth) seems to have a bottomless heart-shaped box of schoolboy lo-fi pop-tronic bonbons. On the first two tunes of this cd (the two that make up the 7" version), his trademark rudimentarily programmed drumbeats and perky Casiotone keyboard melodies once again make us muse as to whether or not Ashworth and Stephin Merritt might be long lost brothers. That said, in more ways that one, the standout track is definitely the somber finale on the cd version. An alternate version of his song "The Subway Home", its plucked cello strings bring to mind the final droplets of rain that fall from leaves after a stormy night. Moody loveliness.
In a word: WEIRD. Man, listening to this we veered from thinking it was the best thing ever, to totally painful, and back again. The truth of course lies somewhere in between (and in each of us as individuals). But it's hard not to be intrigued by this, anyway... This Todd Tamaend Clark guy was (is) a psychedelic, avantgarde rock n' roller who toiled in obscurity for many many years though clearly he should at the very least have a cult following. Thankfully the diligent Anopheles label has put together this chronological collection of a large part of Mr. Clark's out-there output, and more folks will have a chance to appreciate what a few lucky collectors (and Mr. Clark's friends) must have been amazed and amused by for years! He's a bit of a Roky Erickson-like figure, though fortunately not so tragic.
Inspired by the comic books and sci-films of his childhood (he was born in 1952), Pennsylvanian part-American Indian Todd Tamanend Clark's musical career was perhaps destined for weirdness. Especially after seeing Monkee Mickey Dolenz playing a Moog on TV in 1968, the same year the United States Of America LP came out, both of which were life-changing musical experiences for Clark... his love of '60s garage psych (borne out by covers of the Electric Prunes and Paul Revere & The Raiders found here) warped into a realm of DIY electronics. Thus the list of synths and effects used on this 2cd set is a long one!! Yup, heavy doses of spacey synth and distorted garagey punk riffery (a '60s-ish Lightning Bolt meets Sun Ra??) are the norm here throughout Clark's varied output, which includes lengthy psychedelic epics, weird experiments in murky electronics, earnest songsmithery, and brash rockers. There's an atonal droning "outsider art" quality to a lot of this that will make and/or break it for most folks. The vocals are the toughest part... an over the top, slurred mix of Jim Morrison and Jandek, perhaps? All the weird poetry he's spouting sure goes with the freaky music even though you'll probably have no idea what's he on about. And with all the prog twists and haunted house synth noises going we're sure it makes perfect sense somehow. The earlier stuff at the beginning of the first disc is heavy on the primitive electronics (best example: the overwhelming 13 minute opening soundscape "March Of The Legion") and druggy vocal delivery, while later in the two-disc set, when we enter the '80s, the songs get more "pop"...in Clark's mind anyway. Things have tightened up a bit, though that doesn't preclude the appearance of a 14 minute track ("The Grim Rider") nor a fucked up, computerized version of the "Star Spangled Banner"! And the use of new wave '80s technology only makes things kitschier. If you dug the Happy Dragon-Band and Zolar X reissues, you might find this stuff to tickle the same fancies.
All the tracks are taken from Clark's various ultra-rare, self-released LPs and 7"s spanning the years 1975-1985, including all the material from such albums as New Gods: Aardvark Thru Zymurgy, We're Not Safe!, and Into The Vision, released under various names (The Eyes, Todd Clark Group, The Stars). He didn't do all of this alone, y'know. Over the course of these 33 tracks (150 minutes of music!!) you'll hear contributions from many of Clark's friends, and family too. In fact, a few famous names appear, with one track featuring the voice of William S. Burroughs and on others, instruments played by Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu's Allen Ravenstine!
With typical Anopheles throughness, this comes with a 20 page booklet stuffed with biographical information, photos, equipment lists, musician credits, and liner notes, including track-by-track comments from Clark himself.
Not everyone's gonna need/want all 150 minutes of this, to be honest. Could have been a short, more bearable "best of". But then again, WE want to hear it all. So maybe you do too. And you can always make your own best of after you've listened to the whole crazy shebang. We'll end this review the way it began, with a word it seems most AQ customers respond to well: WEIRD.
Nobody did spaced out krauty ambiance better than Berlin's Cluster. Maybe best known for their collaboration with Brian Eno, it was their work leading up to those monumental records that helped usher in a new wave of sound that's been latched onto and updated by many over the years. It's hard not to hear their influence on folks like Mouse On Mars, Aphex Twin and the atmospheric moments of Kid-A era Radiohead. It's always so great to remember and be reminded that they did it all without synthesizers (really, they say so in the liner notes!). Instead Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Plank were each armed with an organ, effect pedals, analog echo machines, alarm clocks, violin, etc. 3 songs and 40+ minutes long '71 is such a nice record to put the headphones on and begin to wander and fade away into their hypnotizing sounds. It was originally released by Philips, and of course never brought the commercial success a big label would hope for and since it went out of print there have been a few sparse reissues but luckily for us Water have flexed their wonderful reissue muscle and made it available once again with really nice informative packaging, finally giving due credit to one of the more influential groups of the last 35 years.
It's 1969 and Tony Conrad finds himself fascinated and obsessed with the sounds of sine wave oscillators. One of the godfathers of minimalism nearside LaMonte Young, Conrad was always on the more harsh side of things then other Minimalist disciples like Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Fantastic Glissando is a series of electronic compositions that Conrad created with sine wave oscillators that he then processed through a pump counter with head gap delay. The result is an aggressive textured drone that sounds like something traveling near the speed of light. This cd reissue includes a bonus 10-minute track that was not included in the LP version. The first time we heard this in the store, it was pouring outside and by the time it ended the sun was shining...San Francisco natural occurence? Or the work of Conrad's intense hand in the sky? We're still not sure.
Those of you who managed to catch Andee and Allan guest DJing on Brian Turner's show On WFMU a few months back got an earful of all the craziest metal they could muster (if you didn't hear it, go to WFMU.org and you can listen to the whole thing!) in a desperate attempt to stump Brian the musical genius. Of course we cheated and played a bunch of unreleased demos!! One of which was some amazingly damaged keyboard heavy black-drone metal from Circumscriber. No idea when that record will finally see the light of day, but we just discovered that Benighted Leams label mates Contra Ignem Fatuum is in fact a group comprised of members of Circumscriber. Which makes perfect sense as CIF traffic in the same ultra repetitive black drone metal that so blew us away. We weren't sure what to expect as the majority of Detritus is ambient. No drums, no guitars, just dreamy streaks of smeary sound, delicate ghostlike melodies, warm synthesizers, chanting monklike vocals, majestic melodic swells, distant martial percussion, a bit like In The Nursery or Dead Can Dance or a lot like the recently listed Dark Ages disc. The second of the three tracks is the little black secret here, bookended on both sides by ethereal ambience, the 14 minute long title track is a brutal and mega-catchy, completely hypntoic, endlessly repeating KILLER riff, a swarm-of-locusts kind riff, buzzing and twisting, pounding and pulsing repeating over and over, a bit like a black metal Circle or more heavy metal Pharoah Overlord or even a way heavier Gore. The track builds and builds until the drums burst into a blazing fast blast beat and utter chaos is unleashed, the whole track becoming a swirl of demonic vocals, shrieking, swarming guitars, warm washes of keyboard and spastic lighting fast drumming, as everything becomes less and less distinct and more a black flurry of sound. Wow. When the riff kicks in, you'd have to be totally ROCK-less to not leap out of your chait and start banging your head and whipping your hair around like a windmill. It's like that Khold riff, the sort of riff bands kill for. So fucking great. So enjoy this while you can and steel yourself for the eventual arrival of Circumscriber.
We had a handful of Crebain's ultra limited demo Night Of The Stormcrow a few years back, and they sold out in no time at all. You've now got yourself another chance to pick it up, on VINYL no less, with this here super limited picture disc version of these very first recordings from SF black metal horde Crebain. Nice thick picture disc vinyl with the logo on one side and an amazing photo of Crebain mastermind Ancalagon The Black on the other, weilding the most metal of weaponry, the sledge hammer! So fucking cool. Here's what we had to say about Night Of The Stormcrow first time around:
What is it about California that spawns such fury and hatred and musical malevolence? Must be the weather! Or its proximity to HELL! There's been a remarkable number of cold and frosty, cult black metal bands coming from the Golden state in the last few years, all of them worthy of inclusion in black metal's elite: SF's legendary Weakling, Ludicra, Leviathan, Xasthur, Draugar, and now CREBAIN. Another one man project, Crebain is Ancalagon The Black, who handles "Majestic Hellcommand Of Kataklysmik Deathstrings, Nightmarish Throatshredding and Percussive Programming." This is classic black metal, hateful and misanthropic, buzzy and hypnotic, ala Burzum, Darkthrone, Judas Iscariot, and the like. Named for Sauron's huge black birds in Lord Of The Rings (what would black metal bands do for names without Tolkien??), Crebain exudes a similar malevolence on Night Of The Stormcrow, replete with howling, guttural, hyper-distorted wails of anguish, hellish riffs, buzzing insect-swarm guitars and some masterful programming that thankfully turns the drum machine into a hellish instrument of evil. Less atmospheric than Xasthur, and less fucked up than Leviathan, but equally true and black, Crebain follows his own dark path straight to the pits of hell. And as Ancalagon states in the liner notes: "To all those who have dared to cross me, your time is coming. Eventually, I will kill you all."
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, WE GOT 60 AND WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO GET MORE, SO IF YOU WANT ONE ACT FAST. ONE PER CUSTOMER!!!
Another wonderful album from these veteran Bay Area craftsmen and women of old time, rootsy Americana finery! Tireless band leader Jeff Kazor once again heads the ever-changing cast of Crooked Jades, and he does so with remarkable consistency in sound and feel from one album to the next. Not only that, on the generous 15-song long World's On Fire, the band glides seamlessly between The Jades' originals and their cover versions of vintage country, Appalachian folk and bluegrass tunes, and effortlessly between rowdy bootstompers and aching heartbreakers. Recommended.
Finally! For years we've been hearing teasers from this Leeds, England group. A song here and there on a Rough Trade comp, Chicks On Speed covering their first single "Mind Your Own Business" and it kept our mouths watering waiting for someone with the right mind to finally make their stuff available again. Luckily Kill Rock Stars stepped to the plate and have reissued these totally influential sounds for all of us to hear and play over and over like we have here at AQ. Imagine Gang Of Four injected with a healthy dose of estrogen and you begin to get a sense of what Delta 5 were all about. These three gals and two guys were delivering infectious post-punk with a feminist stance and were at the vanguard of the Rock Against Racism movement. It's easy to see how along with The Slits and The Raincoats they helped influence bands that would later play a major role in the start of riot grrrl and queer positive post-punk. We immediately started thinking about Electrelane and Erase Errata (especially towards the end of the disc when the songs get a little more rough, jagged and aggressive, yet still keeping a beat that makes you want to dance throughout the whole album). To top it all off they look so sassy and cute on the cover. A band to love from inside to out. So totally recommended!
We managed to get the last 40 or so copies of the third and (supposedly) final pressing of only 175 copies of this massive slab of Japanese heaviness. So act fast.
BORIS! CORRUPTED! EYEHATEGOD! JAPANESE DOOM SLUDGE! If those words mean anything to you, drop everything you're doing RIGHT NOW and order yourself up one of these massive slabs of earth flattening, face melting downtuned dirge. Slow slow slow like their sludgy countrymen Boris and Corrupted, Dot [.] focus less on the drone, and more on the riff, sounding much more raw and aggressive, aligning themselves a bit more with Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Grief and the rest of the US slow motion doom contingent. Huge riffs, pounding relentless drumming, hellish shrieking vocals, amps until forever, everything (even the drums?) tuned as low as they will go, a soul sucking metallic black hole of sound. Four lengthy tracks, only one of which even comes close to almost breaking the midtempo mark.
AGAIN, SUPER LIMITED!!!!! To only 175 copies, and we got about 40, most likely never to get more again. You have been warned.
When John Duncan sent us this collaboration with the members of Pan Sonic, he warned us that the first two tracks would be a little hard to take on headphones. Oh yes, that warning should be heeded by all, headphones or not; especially if you're expecting the electric seduction of Duncan's Phantom Broadcast. But don't let the warning scare you off; as this is an incredible fusion of caustic electronics, shortwave radio signal manipulation, and the hammering arpeggiations which have become a trademark of the Finnish techno minimalists. So Nine Suggestions begins with some 15 minutes of white-knuckle noise tightly composed from siren squall electronics, volatile data streams from shortwave utility signals, and plenty of sawtoothed abrasiveness. In this introduction, Nine Suggestions harkens to the Pan Sonic masterpiece 4CD box set Kesto, which expressed plenty of noxious intensity in its rhythmic overload. Even as the album calms considerably in the expanse of the album, Kesto still stands the most accurate comparison as that album shifts from aggression and explosion to contemplation and eerieness. In the shadowy half-melodies, tectonic rumblings, nocturnal drones, dental drill vibrations, submariner sonar pings, and delicate modulation of electronic tones found within the latter two-thirds of Nine Suggestions, Duncan, Vainio, and Vaisanen have created something that really is as one would expect from these high-calliber artists. Highly recommended!
Dare we say that on her newest album, Liz Durrett out 'Cat Power's Chan Marshall? Now, we're by no means taking anything away from Ms Durrett nor are we suggesting that she's a copycat. No, it's just that this album inhabits a very similar territory as, say, the beloved Cat Power album Moon Pix. The reference is a total compliment. she's a great songwriter and a captivating performer in her own right. Oh yeah, and she doesn't sounds anything like her Uncle Vic (Chesnutt) neither! Whew, hope that clears things up and gets us out of any pickles. This is her second full length and it is so absolutely lovely -- a fantastic follow-up to her debut, Husk. Durrett shares her dreamy secrets in hushed pastel tones and delicately lilting folksy phrases. You'll have no choice but to linger a while (or at least for the 37 minute playing time) on this Mezzanine!
You can read more of our gushing about Earth elsewhere in the list, but needless to say, we LOVE Earth. And if you have no Earth records, we recommend you start with the godlike Earth 2, an epic three track monster of tarpit riffs and slow moving rumbles. But
A little while ago we gave a thumbs (and pointy spikes) up review to an album called "Green Hell" by a French black metal band known as Mystic Forest. As we mentioned then, Mystic Forest's main guy, one Stefan Kozak, has another band called Eikenskaden ("Oaken Shield") which is almost *exactly* the same. The line-up is different, but the songwriting, production, and even the graphic design bear marked similarity. Apparently Eikenskaden is the project in which Kozak blows off steam and indulges even further in ridiculous black metal concepts, and it's true that of the two bands, this one is perhaps the best, though it's a close call. "The Last Danse" is Kozak's second Eikenskaden album, and is as amazing as anything else he's done -- totally frenzied, quirky, and Burzumic, more distorted yet more melodic than you could imagine.
I was listening to this at home the other night, and my housemate thought it sounded like two things playing at the same time. The very pretty, baroque sounding keyboard lines coexist bizarrely with a hellish wash of fuzz and distortion. Raw yet extremely melodic. You can hear in Eikenskaden (and Mystic Forest) the gothic black/doom "pop" of Katatonia, as well as the neo-classical shred of Windham Hell. It's a weird combo, maybe, but it works really well. Imagine Burzum or Khold possessed by Mozart or something, with Immortal/Popeye vocal growls too. Really, it's so insanely full of reverb and distortion it's crazy -- HSShshshhHZZHZZCH!!!
Also new in stock and recommended: Mystic Forest's third album, "Waltz In the Midst of Trees" ($13.98, see review elsewhere on this list/site).
Here's what Rilo Kiley's Blake Sennett is up to when he's not Rilo Kileying. Yup, The Elected is his other band, and this is his second album (the first was called Me First). Sun, Sun, Sun effortlessly keeps pace with the glorious tunes of R.K. You would think he could've come up with a more imaginative band name though, wouldn't ya? Ah well, there's a song on this album that's so darn "feelgood, last day of summer scene of a teen movie" that it just made us go, "Whoa!" If you wanna join us on our highschool nostalgia field trip give "Not Going Home" a spin for yourself. It even has one of those pauses in it that in the movie would signal the (re)appearance of the main character's dream girl. Y'know when the music kicks back in, eyes meet, a shy smile, maybe there's a sweet hug, etc. Aaaawwww! The rest of Sun, Sun, Sun is filled with soft, sensitive slightly retro-70s pop sounds that bring to mind the Pernice Brothers and Elliott Smith. Sennett's vocals at times also have that endearing quiver similar to that of Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne or Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donohue. There are a couple of eyebrow raising moments later on in the song "Biggest Star" where the combined vocal, sax and guitar performances get a little uncharacteristically overwrought and wanky noodly amid the album's generally mellow scheme of things, but those are relatively minimally irksome. Nice.
Psst, coincidentally Sennett's R.K. bandmate Jenny Lewis also just released a fine solo album!
Apparently recorded in one hour on a hot summer's day this new Excepter ep finds them with a slightly different lineup and in fine fucked up form. Sun soaked and dripping with melting casios, warped vocals and all sorts of effects they got hidden up their tricky sleeves. The last ep found them channeling the ghost of Third Eye Foundation while this time out it's a little less twisted dark dub and a little more twisted kaleidoscope of sounds. There's the inclusion of vocals on a few tracks that we're not sure how we feel about, but when the vocals fade away on tracks like "Dawn Patrol" it's fucked up and blissed out electronic tinged noise at its best. Excepter have this way of walking a fine line between half assed and totally off the cuff (they say they recorded this in one hour) and totally brilliant but when they hit their mark they hit is soooo hard that we keep coming back for more and more.
Awesome local black metal zine from the folks in Bone Awl. This is seriously grim, cult, underground shit. The name of the zine alone should give you your first clue, an acronym for Fall To Your Knees Pissing. Oof. Loads of amazing interviews, bleak and nihilistic and bizarre, including tons of bands you've never heard but probably need to! Bands featured include Pest (from Germany), Ashdautus, Goatlord, Nuit Noire, Vpaahsalbrox, Finnish black metallers Dead Reptile Shrine (the weirdest black metal band ever, whose records are out of print, but we are trying desperately to track down, even if it means re-releasing it ourselves!), Tudor from the Czech Republic, a bunch of record reviews and even a cool little Goatlord photocopied poster style insert!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Folks who witnessed Feathers opening for Vetiver and Espers a few weeks back, mentioned that they were one of the quietest bands that had heard. So much so, that a rock venue was hardly the best venue to witness their delicate beauty. While the band was here we managed to snag the last of this tour-only ep, a gorgeous self released, hand sewn and packged glimpse into their ethereal dark folk world. The first track is so quiet, it's like Feathers are whispering in your ear, the candlelight flickering, their warm breaths as loud as he barely strummed guitars. So lovely. The next two tracks are much more rambunctious, some seventies British style pagan folk, with Syd Barret like vocals and lots of druggy psychedelic filligree. The final track returns to the hushed beauty of the opening song, a dark dolorous minor key lament, with angelic vocals and haunting steel string guitars.
Packaged in a hand screened paper sleeve, sewn together with colored thread. Each and every one is unique.
THESE ARE THE LAST 30 COPIES. ONCE THEY ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!
For Film School's full length debut on Beggars Banquet, they've skillfully pieced together the well-worn pages of your beloved '80s British alternative rock scrapbook. We definitely hear echoes of The Cure, The Church and yes, Echo And The Bunnymen from lead singer Krayg Burton's unmistakable Robert Smithian, on-the-verge emotiveness to the distinct effected guitar sound.
Lushly swirling shoegazer dreaminess that occasionally lingers on an unexpectedly atmospheric passage. What Film School lack in originality they more than make up in execution on this self-titled album. They could almost revive the dour yet romantic boy rock style all by their lonesome... well, with the assistance of one of the most appropriate labels around. Includes "On & On", one of the band's best songs to date, and the title track of the teaser ep that came out late last year.
FLAMING LIPS FANS!!! THE SOFT BULLETIN IS BACK!!! BIGGER AND BETTER THAN EVER!!! Okay, sorry for all the yelling, but we figured that this newly renovate cd/dvd edition of an AQ all-time favorite deserved a gigantic monster truck rally kind of (re)introduction, don't you?
Now you can experience it in "Advanced Resolution Surround Sound". Oooooh, got yer bong loaded?
The audio section of the dvd contains the full album presented in the abovementioned Advanced Resolution 5.1 Surround Sound (24bit 96kHz) as well as Advanced Resolution 2.0 Stereo (24bit 96kHz). The video section of the dvd includes what is descriptively named "Bleep-Blop Visualizations" with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound (16bit 44.1kHz) and Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo (16bit 44.1kHz). Maybe more notably than that, there's also videos for "Waitin' For Superman" and "Race For The Prize", outtakes for "1000ft Hands", "The Captain" and "Satellite Of You", and finally, radio sessions of "Up Above The Daily Hum", The Switch That Turns Off The Universe", "We Can't Predict The Future" and "It Remains Unrealizable" (all Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo 16bit 44.1kHz).
If you grow weary of all the high tech whachamacallits, there's also a so-called conventional cd for when you wanna rough it. Heh heh.
In case your memory's a bit rusty or you've somehow yet to encounter Soft Bulletin, here's what we said about the album waaay back in 1999:
Following a wholly unique progression, from drug-addled psych rock jam band to off kilter pop geniuses, the Flaming Lips keep on stretching the boundaries of 'pop' music, never losing sight of the song. They seem to have a unique understanding of the absurdity of the music they produce. We're not talking about the garden variety, pedestrian pastiche efforts of so many of today's indie pop bands (i.e. avant garde = birdsounds or 'out there' segues). The Lips' weirdness isn't manufactured or forced, it seems rather to be the result of some sort of dropped-on-their-head childhood mishap or an unprecedented series of synaptic misfires. It comes as less of a surprise then that this band was dragged kicking and screaming into mainstream success by a catchy little pop song about masturbation.
The Flaming Lips seem to be taking great advantage of their lofty position on a major label, doing their best to piss off the business minded folk of Warner, while at the same time managing to make truly amazing and creative records, like their last release Zaireeka' a 4 cd set composed to be listened to simultaneously on four separate cd players. While certainly not as labor-intensive for the listener as Zaireeka, The Soft Bulletin is another set of perfectly imperfect popsongs, albeit now accessible to the traditional one cd player household.
It's hard to describe The Flaming Lips without providing a visual reference, take their live show at Slims a few years back. It began with a pathetic solitary spotlight illuminating the band huddled around their instruments and plucking fragile solitary notes. With the initial crack of the drums, a dizzying kaleidoscope of tens of thousands of Christmas lights burst to life and engulfed Slims, offereing a hallucinatory visual equal to the Lips' psychedelic pop dadaism.
The Lips' disparate and patently un-pop elements; huge and fuzzy John Bonham-esque percussive bombast, ultra low frequency Moog oscillations, Wayne Coyne's still-getting-out-of-puberty voice crack, bizarre song struture, and an insane mastery of recording studio-as-instrument, come together more seamlessly than ever on The Soft Bulletin, making it our record of the week, and for some of us, record of the year.
It's possible that many of you may not know of FM3, but have been in love with one of thier pieces of work as Beijing's FM3 was responsible for the heavily applauded Buddha Machine, a self-contained device that played nine-loops of jubilant and meditative drones. The Buddha Machine is not the only thing that FM3 has been up to, as its members Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian have also been producing a similarly sublime form of abstract electronica. In 2004, FM3 took their Buddha Box loops and a couple of computers filled with samples distilled from traditional Chinese instruments on a six month tour of Europe and North America. During that tour, they recorded this session for VPRO Radio in the Netherlands which in turn has just been released on Staaplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series. The crystalline loops from their Buddha Machines make themselves known almost immediately with FM3 working these sounds into Feldman like clusters of tones and drones fluttering against passages of calm inactivity. This is a lovely record, proving that FM3 are not only exceptional conceptual art-fabricators but pretty darn good composers too!
Geez, should we be calling this release Four Tet's 'black' album? Besides the predominant color of the cover art, the music contained within is some of the darkest to date from Mr. Kieran Hebden aka Four tet. This album follows up his Everything Ecstatic 'white' album which came out last summer, and which offered some hints as to the heavier, edgier direction in which he was apparently heading. This jam-packed Part 2 is comprised of a dvd filled with videos and animated bits plus a cd with five new tracks (including radically expanded and revised versions of a couple of numbers from Part 1). We'll cheekily propose that the second track places Hebden firmly in the running to uproot Philip Glass from his Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack throne. These thirty five minutes of music are at times meditative and hypnotic, at others highly kinetic and frenetic. In fact, there's an explosive segment around the ten minute mark of the lengthy lead-off "Turtle Turtle Up" during which it wouldn't be at all surprising for a big pink stuffed teddy bear to drop from the ceiling amid a cloud of streamers, confetti, bells and whistles. Yay, you win!
Fungal Hex is doom-lord Stephen O'Malley (of Khanate, Burning Witch, Lotus Eaters) doing music for an art installation by Brooklyn artists which showed in the Czech Republic last year. His graphic design and guitar playing talents are both evident on and in this cd release, an "installation document with audio supplement". Musically, it's a 40-minute session of eerie drone and scrape, rather quiet and unsettling stuff, similar in spirit if not sound to the much heavier and more metallic output of O'Malley's band projects. The gallery in Prague printed only 500 of these discs to accompany the exhibit, and they're all gone now -- we've got just *four* copies, so act fast if you think you're gonna want one. (In other words, use the phone.)
How many indie rock bands can you think of that have released THREE multiple disc box sets? We can only think of one. And that would be Guided By Voices. Doesn't seem so weird when you think about the total amount of material the band released before their break up a couple years back, the albums, the eps, the 7"s, just the sheer number of songs. So the mind boggles at how much unreleased stuff there must be sitting around on beat up old cassettes hidden beneath piles of beer cans and empty cigarette cartons and Chinese food takeout containers. Thus we have Suitcase 2, a continuation of the appropriately titled Suitcase 1, four discs jam packed with songs, and song sketches, and song fragments, some melodic, some harsh, some jangly, some ambient, all weird and wonderful. Much like the first suitcase collection, every track here is credited to a different artist, Billy Ray Human, Bleep Bleep Fuck, Yummy Ropes, Seraphim Barf, Devron Zones, Wig Stomper, Wim Dials, Milko Waif, The Bug-Eyed Mums, Ragged Enzymes, Terror Of Living and more. While lots of the songs are barely-there-pop-song-could-have-beens clocking in at less than a minute, there are also plenty of GBV should-have-been-classics that never were. Hooks everywhere, only the staunchest anti-popster could leave this collection without humming a little ditty that got itself firmly lodged in their head, but sometimes you have to work a bit, trying to navigate a crazy jumbled sonic world of deconstructed not-songs, blasts of what-the-fuck lo-fi weirdness and definite BAD ideas to get to the gems hidden within. Definitely for fans only, cuz only a true blue GBV fanatic could handle -another- four plus hours of dizzyingly fragmented pop jangle overload. So if you've yet to discover the joys of GBV, pick up Bee Thousand or Vampire On Titus and prepare to have your mind blown and your ass kicked, but if you're already a disciple of Bob and his 'Voices and need more more more and even still way more, well, then this is most definitely for you.
Includes a big booklet of photos, reviews, credits and record covers.
Not a new release, but perhaps new to you! This disc is undoubtably already a fixture in the cd collections of anyone calling him/herself a Bill Hicks fan, but for anyone needing an introduction... buy this now! This performance contains some of his most astute and hilarious material (and some of his best voices too!). This was the first of a slew of posthumously released cds documenting Hicks' fierce, scathing stand-up performances (some were reissued, some had never before been unleashed on the unsuspecting cd-buying public). Others include Rant In E Minor, Arizona Bay, and Relentless. Aw heck, get 'em all 'cause although there is repeated material amongst the releases, he injects each performance with its own distinct fire and plants unique nuggets of wisdom and wit throughout. That said, as we've mentioned somewhat profusely in the past, the Bill Hicks Live: Satirist, Social Critic, Stand Up Comedian dvd is definitely a fantastic place to begin your Hicks indoctrination, but we're sure you'll be seeking more in a jiffy.
Wow, initially we thought His Name Is Alive had taken another huge shift in stylistic direction, but actually it's more of a bringing together of their past and recent selves. Detrola vacillates between their last album's path of soft lounge funk and their earlier angelic pop romps, and ends up coming across as a somewhat fucked-up Magnetic Fields. We've adamantly placed our votes for the lattermentioned sweetness. To be frank, we've tried, but can't help but find the funky fusion-y jaunts utterly cringeworthy. Yes, Lovetta Pippen has a breathtaking voice, but on the music side of things Warn Defever occasionally sounds a bit out of his element or at least a bit confused as he mashes together thick synthesizer blats into delicate acoustic guitar pluckery. That said, this stylistic jumble does seem to be what many fans dig about Defever and co., so perhaps you might not find it as problematic as we did. In a sense Detrola is a hit or miss H.N.I.A. musical grab bag, a sort of overview of all the little nuts and bolts that have made up the band's ever-evolving sound over the years. Some of the dreamier pop songs have a woozy feel as though someone's playing with the speed controls or as though the record's gotten warped at opportune moments. Nice. Those are the songs we've already gone back to a few times for repeat listens, and made us wanna dust off our almost ten year old Stars On E.S.P. album. Sigh.
It's been a while since we've heard from SF black metal horde Crebain. And of course by horde we mean one guy, Ancalagon The Black. The super limited Night Of The Stormcrow demo was gone in a flash (though the brand new SUPER LIMITED picture disc version is reviewed elsewhere this list) as was the Leviathan / Crebain split on Andee's tUMULt label. But Crebain hasn't just been laying about, lurking in caves and forests, haunting chapels and burning churches, nosiree, while he's been working on the next Crebain full length, he's also been recording with a few likeminded black hearted folks as Horn Of Dagoth. An ultra primitive, super raw blast of old school black black black metal. Murky and muddy, ultra lo-fi rehearsal recordings that sound just as good as some of the amazing 'rare' classic black metal records we've carried. And even though the lo-fi recording is not an intentional part of HoD's sound, more a result of recording limitations (it is a rehearsal after all) it ends up giving the sound a hellish subterranean sheen, and makes it sound like it actually IS some lost black thrash classic. The drums are raw and blown out and buried miles down in the mix, as are the vocals, throat shredding shrieks struggling to be heard through the thick sludgy wall of buzzing riffs and rumbling bassdrone. But that's what makes this sound so good. Heavy and fuzzy and droning and blasting and black as fuck. Essential for the black legions that bow down before Darkthrone, Mutiilation, Belketre, Vlad Tepes, old Mayhem, old Gorgoroth, old Carpathian Forest, Beherit and all things raw and black!
SUPER LIMITED CD-R. WE GOT 30 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE, NOT SURE WE CAN GET MORE!
Here's some crazy keyboard punk rock metalcore blurt from Horse The Band on their second energetic full-length, released last fall (yeah, we're playing catch-up here, been meaning to list this for a while) on the newly revitalized Combat imprint. Looks like Combat's speed/death metal focus back in the '80s has given way to a new breed of blenderized indie-punk kinda-metal. Horse The Band, anyway, is the best thing on the new Combat. With loads of heavy guitars, pummelling drums, honkin' synth, screamo vox, emo melody, and mathy song constructs, all tightly wound and ready to explode, this will appeal to fans of of An Albatross, The Locust, that sort of thing. This also reminds us a bit of Reggie and the Full Effect's take on "Raining Blood" on that I Love Metal covers comp a few years ago...
We really wanted to think of some clever intro to this review referencing Ignatz the brick throwing mouse and Krazy Kat, but this record is hardly whimsical or cartoonish, instead it's a dark and mysterious exploration of the guitar, a disembodied ghostlike folk, simple melodic figures are fragmented and twisted and recontextualized. Ignatz is the ultimate modern outsider folk record. Blown out crumbling fuzzy distorted pulses of barely recognizable guitar, haunting fragments of dessicated melodies, burts of manic noodling that are quickly blown apart into their constituent sounds and re-absorbed into the ether, strange baroque sounding steel string guitars float below the murky throbbing surface. It's like some strange Alan Lomax style back porch hillbilly recording, an alien Smithsonian Folkways. Imagine Lomax wandering a dusty road on some other planet and discovering Ignatz sitting on the front stoop with a guitar plugged into some strange looking homemade contraption and recording this record right there on that alien porch. Simple blues numbers are twisted and swathed in layers of effects, the vocals pitched up or down into chirps and rumbles, the whole thing bathed in a reflective coat of glistening reverb and warm warbly distortion, stark, simple stretches of minor key guitar are disrupted by bursts of disembodied guitar grrzzzt, hovering above a framework of delicate barely there chimes. Huge slow shifting expanses of warm guitar shimmer, and crumbling slabs of distorted sound (not at all unlike Sunroof! or Birchville Cat Motel), strange footstomping campfire hoedowns buckle beneath the layers of sound and fury piled atop them, mysteriously broadcast from beyond through a tin can and twine. It's almost as if this were some long lost future edition of Harry Smith's Anthology of Alien Folk Music, with Ignatz simultaneously channelling Roscoe Holcomb and Fennesz. Alien Ambient Appalachia maybe. Future Folk? New Weird Belgium? Whatever this is, it's dark and dense and thick and warm and weird and lovely and one of the weirdest most wonderful things we've heard.
Not a new release -- nor even a new reissue -- but we just manage to get some and wanted to list it 'cause it's something that several of us here have been listening to a lot lately! This Kaleidoscope were a sixties British pop psych band (not to be confused with the various other Kaleidoscopes of the era from the US and Mexico) and we believe these guys might in fact have been THE ULTIMATE psychedelic pop band ever. This album (also not to be confused with the famous Krautrock/soundtrack outfit with the same name as the album's title) is just incredible. Gorgeous vocals, killer melodies, lush orchestrations, and, especially, beautifully baroque psych-speak lyrics that put "Strawberry Fields Forever" to shame -- with lines like "Battalions in baby blue are bursting beige balloons / the water pistols are all filled with lemonade / the jester and the goldfish have joined minds above the moon / oh please kiss the flowers and you too will be safe / oh swing and sway..."
It's very British, twee and dreamy, being that perfect blend of sunshine and melancholy so many psych pop bands of the era were striving for. The Kaleidoscope did it best right here. I mean, if you like the Zombies and the Hollies and heck the Olivia Tremor Control you should know about these gents too. Indee, the original 1967 album's final track (followed here by six bonus tracks), "The Sky Children", might be THE ULTIMATE pop-psych track on this ultimate pop-psych record. (Hey a little hyperbole never hurt anybody.) It's an eight-minute epic, with a thrilling vocal hook on endless repeat, and amazing lyrics continually pouring forth the whole time. Truly awe-some, if you're attuned to the vibe.
Hot on the heels of the excellent "solo" album from Kayo Dot frontman Toby Driver we reviewed last list, comes this new opus from Kayo Dot proper. They've moved from Tzadik to metalcore label Robotic Empire, but Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue is no less avant-garde than previous KD output, that's for sure (you ought to be able to tell that just by the title, eh?). A confusing, crushing blend of Godspeed, Neurosis, John Zorn, Amber Asylum, Oxbow... Kayo Dot's apparent points of reference make for a mysterious listen. It's chamber-prog rock, it's metal, it's melodic and mysterious, with cryptic lyrics softly intoned amidst the creepy, ambient beauty, marred (not really) by violent outbursts of claustophobic heaviness, when and if the track builds to such a climax... Or marred by jazzy saxophone solos, there's that too. You can tell why John Zorn likes 'em! Actually, sax only surfaces significantly on "Aura On An Asylum Wall" which also has some of the album's most brutal blasting passages to make up for all that jazziness. There's also rumbling percussion and droning strings and sensitive singing and long stretches of ominous, dark, weighty quietude -- track lengths reach up to 18 minutes and are often more soundscapey than anything "song-structured". It's about as experimental as you can get and still appear on a nominally "metal" label.
Can't judge this by its cover, nosiree. All you get is fairly bland head shot of this Krystof Klenczon guy, with a pensive look to him, wearing a yellow shirt, his hair tousled, with sideburns. Nothing in the background, no guitar in hand. No clues about what this would sound like. Mellow, pop solo singer songwriter stuff maybe? NOPE.
Maybe that's why the folks that reissued this 1971 (there it is again!) album on cd felt the need to include a hyperbolic blurb -- sez here, right on the back cover: "Possibly the best Polish 70's rock album!! Psychedelic rock plenty of dirty fuzz guitar!!"
Well, we're not up enough on our Polish rock to be 100 percent sure about their first claim (nor can we say otherwise), but we do agree that this is chock full of dirty fuzz guitar, that's for sure. Pretty darn kick ass. The songs are all catchy and energetic, real rave ups with enough searing fuzz to impress freakin' Sir Lord Baltimore. You can hear influences from the Beatles, and maybe folk music (but no polkas!) and though it's not Middle Eastern psych rock, but rather Eastern Bloc psych rock, this should appeal to a lot of you into that brand of wild, groovy, exotic psych. And you gotta love the fuzz. So good. If you agree that "prog is not a four letter word" you'd probably like this. In fact, Klenczon was a member of the '60s beat band Czerwone Gitary, who appeared on the comp of that title that we reviewed a couple lists back. We described their track as fierce and fuzzy, so it's no surprise Klenczon solo amps it up even more at the dawn of the '70s.
In the late 18th Century, Benjamin Franklin invented the Glass Harmonica as a musical instrument with the idea of improving upon the parlour trick of rubbing the rim of a wine glass with a wet finger to produce a constant drone. Franklin heard a pristine beauty resulting from from this action but immediately recognized the limitations if one wanted to play more than one or two wine glasses at once. For his Glass Harmonica, Franklin cut off the stems of several dozen wine glasses and drilled holes directly in the center of the glasses. He then mounted these augmented glasses along a horizontal rotating spindle, so that the player of the Glass Harmonica could effectively be rubbing the rims of several glasses at once and create harmonies and chords out of those pure tones. The Glass Harmonica was quite a novelty instrument for plenty of composers of the day; but it fell out of favor with the discerning public (possibly because some of the players had actually fainted from the frequencies they were creating with the Glass Harmonica).
In recent years, there's been a resurgance of interest in the glass harmonica amongst avant-garde composers, including Simon Wickham-Smith, Manu Holterbach, and Christina. As one of Germany's most reknowned sound artists, Kubisch typically operates in the realm of installation with almost all of her previous recordings being documents of those installations; thus, Armonica is a rare documentation of Kubisch's compositional sensibility. In using the glass harmonica as the source material for this album, she constructs a beautiful polyphony of never-ending timbres, resulting in an exquisite piece of haunted minimalism on par with the likes of Phill Niblock, Andrew Chalk, and Eliane Radigue. Highly recommended!
Finally re-pressed and back in stock!!
We have been championing this band since the very first time we heard their mighty 'Strange Warmings' debut years ago but continually faced the problem of all three of their releases being practically impossible to get. And my (Andee's) only possible complaint about this comprehensive career retrospective collection is that I WANTED TO PUT IT OUT ON tUMULt!!!! Arrrrgghhh. But kudos to AQ pal Mike who runs the mighty No Quarter label, for his amazing taste (Earth, Pharoah Overlord and now LB!) and ability to unearth/rerelease these out of print gems.
Laddio Bolocko were absolutely one of the most amazing bands we have ever heard, taking the bloated corpse of 'post rock' and filling it with squirming, ultra complex, super dynamic kraut rock and out rock and...uhhhh trout (mask replica) rock? Or whatever. Imagine a modern day This Heat, but with bigger amps, more lo-fi production, free-jazz scud missle saxophone, unlikely melodies, relentless rhythms, ear-ringing dynamics and a sound unlike anything you've ever heard. Sounds good huh? Well, it is. In fact. as far as I'm concerned LB were probably one of the most important and most original rock bands of the last 20 years. High praise indeed, but once you hear this stuff you'll be hard pressed to argue.
The Life & Times Of collects all three Laddio Bollocko releases, their devastating debut Strange Warmings Of and the two follow up eps, In Real Time and As If By Remote. Also included is a video playable on your computer (which, along with the nice digipak packaging, may even tempt those lucky enough to already have Laddio's hard to find releases).
Disc one is Strange Warmings Of, a pummelling and heavy drone rock masterpiece, in which an ex-Dazzling Killmen (Blake Fleming) takes his penchant for angular discordance a step further, forgoing the ferocious heaviosity of his former outfit, and instead, explores lengthy semi-improvisational psychedelic freakouts and repetetive hypno-krautrock instrumentals a la AQ faves Circle. Post rock jamscapes littered with shrieking and droning Albert Ayler-ish sax, jabs of no wave guitar, an overwhelming over-saturated super-distorted production and absolutely crushing drumming. Anyone into Circle or This Heat or Acid Mothers Temple or Faust or any or any of that, will be completely blown away.
Disc two contains the two later eps find Laddio Bolocko in a new space with a new sound. Showing an amazing amount of growth, LB have all but completely abandoned the bludgeoning, pounding shrieking bombast, and instead stretch out, and explore rhythms and textures, creating lengthy krautrock jams, and hypnotic drones. And their noisey, in your face, live recording has been replaced by what sounds like a serious exploration of the studio as instrument, with at least half the record full of innovative production and gorgeous textures. Also, the sax, which on Strange Warmings, was more textural and not immediately identifiable as a saxophone, is more of a presence here, giving it more of a sort-of-jazz feel on several tracks. This later, less ROOOOOOOAAAAARRRR sort of sound puts them even more comfortably in the sonic realm occupied by Faust, This Heat and Circle.
Those of you who live in San Francisco may have seen or even bought some of the many self released casettes by the mysterious one man black metal band called Leviathan. Or some of you may have seen Andee or Allan sporting their Leviathan shirts, or you may have even seen Wrest, the man behind Leviathan lurking around AQ...regardless, Leviathan is the latest and certainly one of the greatest of the Bay Area black metal bands (Ludicra, Sangre Amado, the godlike Weakling [also on tUMULt], etc...) who seem to exist in some sort of vacuum here while elsewhere, band after unoriginal band keep getting signed to huge labels and hyped to death even though most of them suck.
For this release Andee and Wrest went through the 13 full length Leviathan cassettes/cd-r's (as of today that number has leapt to 15!) Leviathan had recorded since 1998 to compile a good overview. But they couldn't whittle it down enough so one disc became two, with the first disc being the newer stuff, and disc two being the older, raw-er material.
Verrater is pure, primitive, cult, home recorded evil. Two discs, twenty two tracks, one hundred and forty three minutes of buzzing, howling, pummelling, black metal. Think Burzum, Darkthrone, Immortal, that sort of thing, but with all sorts of weird twists and sonic surprises. Yes, Leviathan is grimmer than grim metal that the frost & forest lords of Norway should bow down to, but it's also pure expression unfettered by genre restraints, although informed and inspired by them. Like Weakling, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Caacrinolas, Ludicra, Potentiam, Enslaved, and some other AQ-championed black metal acts, this is not just one for fans of black metal only! It's dark, weird, noisy, disturbing art embodying one man's vision that should be heard by anyone into avantgarde, experimental, psycically and physically powerful rock music. From blasting howling fury to moody ambient blackness to off kilter weirdness to droning riffery to soul crushing heaviness. What's truly remarkable is that one man, playing all the instruments himself, and recording at home, can evoke such strong emotions and invoke such musical demons. Original, evil, hateful, misanthropic, bizarre and truly black metal.
The mighty Wrest and his black metal behemoth Leviathan resurfaces once again, this time teamed up with fellow USBM outift Sapthuran. It's a good matchup in so much as Sapthuran sounds quite a bit like the current crop of West Coast black metal (Xasthur, Crebain, Draugar, etc.) which is definitely a good thing. Midtempo buzz and blur, with haunting clean guitar melodies in the background, that come to the forefront briefly on the second folky ambient track, only to be summarily obliterated by Sapthuran's closer, a dizzying blurry buzz of droning riffs buried vocal howl and splattery blast beats. Definitly need to hear more from these guys (we actually have Sapthuran's full length in stock, just ask).
But as always, Leviathan is the main event, the reason we all showed up, and once again Wrest does not disappoint. In fact if anything (and if it's even possible at this point) the Leviathan material on this split is even more fucked up and out there than ever. That Leviathan sound is present and in full effect, a blurry swirling buzz of crazy riffs, impossible drumming, those insane vocals, and completely bizarre song structures, almost proggy at points, never hesitating to stop and start, stutter through some improbably complex series of time signatures or bliss out into some strange ambient soundscape. And as if Wrest's compositional style and playing weren't unique enough, every track is rife with all manner of weird parts, bizarre sounds and fucked up sonic detritus. From strange tripped out drone-ambience, angular almost Greg Ginnish guitar freakouts, impossibly tortured and affected vocals that go from gutteral rumble to hellish howl, to creepy otherworldly keyboard like backgrounds, to sludgy almost doomlike breakdowns to full on krautrock / mathrock workouts, albeit slathered in plenty of buzz and fuzz. The final track finishes things off in a completely unexpected way, with a warm and fuzzy slow motion smear of gauzy muted My Bloody Valentine / M83 guitars and simple blown out drumming. As always, amazing!
The lovely voice that defines the sound of L.A.'s Rilo Kiley goes solo on (in?) this Rabbit Fur Coat. Well, sort of... she's got a pair o' angelic voiced twins in tow, and the results are a remarkably lady-like affair. Jenny Lewis unveils a much broader range of both style and expressiveness -- generously planting a number of bare-branched country and gospel inflected saplings here and there amid her more familiar sounding lush pop blossoms. Initially upon hearing the poignant, soulful opening track, we mused that fans of Neko Case might also take a shine to the equally red-tressed Lewis. Mind you though, Lewis and her music do come across as being considerably more milquetoast (meaning, you probably won't be finding The Grand Ol' Opry taking issue with her the way they did with the fiery Ms Case!). At any rate, it's clear that in both fashion and song, she's just as comfortable in womanly Lawrence Welk Show gown as she is in a winsome floral country frock or barefoot in a sassy pop gal mini-dress. To boot, she's stacked the indie luminary decks in her favor -- her pals Conor Oberst, Ben Gibbard (whom she sings with in Postal Service), and Matt Ward to name a few -- and the star-studded cast is put to good use on the very faithful rendition of the Travelling Wilburys' tune "Handle With Care". Quite a beauty that's just might not only appeal to her younger Rilo Kiley fans, but also their parents!
Psst, coincidentally Lewis' R.K. bandmate Blake Sennett's side project The Elected also just released a dandy album!
For those of you who just skim the list or only read the first few sentences of reviews, let us get your attention real quick. Lurker Of Chalice, in case you didn't realize, is the work of one WREST, aka SF black metal overlord LEVIATHAN. Paying attention now? Good. let's proceed. Lurker Of Chalice has existed in one form or another for several years now, but outside a cassette or two this is the only recorded evidence and man will it blow your mind. Originally conceived as a less black metal, more experimental musical outlet (and possibly inspired by Leviathan / AQ faves Benighted Leams) Lurker Of Chalice is constructed from lots of black metal parts as might be expected, but lot of very un-black metal bits as well: arpeggiated post rock guitars, martial percussion, simple propulsive krautrock rhythms, swirling droning ambience, strange haunting vocals, obscure found sounds and samples, doomy slow motion dirges, reverb drenched, almost sun dappled melodies over creepy warbly soundscapes, warm thick keyboards, heavily strummed steel string guitars, rich throaty crooning, super overblown distorted guitars, all smeared into a warm fuzzed out, dreamy and melancholy, mostly midtempo blackened doomscape. Occasionally, Lurker blasts into full on black metal, like on the second track "Piercing Where They Might", but even in a BM context, things are beautifully way off kilter, rumbling bizarrely affected vocals, dizzying riffs that swirl and slither and make it impossible to focus, huge jangly guitars over miltaristic snare drums and warbly Michael Gira like vocals. So weird. But so perfect. Imagine Leviathan and Benighted Leams and the Swans and Ved Buens Ende, all somehow mixed into some darkly evolving, gothic tinged expanse of moody metallic melancholia. This is maybe the best sounding record Wrest has made which is saying a lot. And it's definitely the weirdest, and most certainly the saddest. The whole record is dripping with intense emotion, minor key and slowly stretching toward some bleak future of broken promise and crushed spirit. From slowly evolving, almost cinematic instrumentals to massive and majestic dirges to woozy effect drenched post rockisms to ultra bleak ballads to damaged black metal crush, Lurker Of Chalice evokes total and utter misery, a musical invocation to the lost and alone, wandering in search of hope, under the suffocating black cloak of night, crushed beneath a starless sky and adrift in a soulless universe, exposing every raw nerve and dark corner of Wrest's twisted musical soul. So fucking good!
Hey, what's that?! Bongos, tambourine, acoustic guitar... why, it sounds like a Dinosaur Jr campfire singalong out in the woods! Wait, they even brought a generator (or very long extension cord) to power the electric guitar amplifier. All joking aside, while we recognize and respect that Mascis wrote and recorded these songs with deep reverence for Amma (the living Indian saint Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi aka the hugging saint), it doesn't mean we have to like it. Many of us didn't. Let's just say, a little goes a long way. Imagine Cat Stevens possessing the body of a more nasally congested than usual Mascis. Whoa. All proceeds from this self-released album will go towards Amma's humanitarian relief projects. Yes, Mascis' heart is in the right place, but we're afraid his music sure isn't. And if there's any question, please allow us to clarify that we're being critical of
the craft, not the message nor the cause.
