Some magazine recently voted Minsk "Biggest Isis ripoff" in it's year end poll. Hardly fair we think. Good thing there's no black metal poll with a "Biggest Darkthrone ripoff" category, you'd need a whole magazine to list the results. Anyway, no, no, no, Minsk is their own glorious head caving soul crushing entity. Sure there are sonic similarities, this is definitely of the sludgy metallic post rock persuasion, and lord knows we can't get enough of that stuff. But Minsk are definitely a whole different beast, falling much closer to Neurosis or Buried At Sea (which featured at one point a current member of Minsk). Where Isis is tight and controlled, Minsk sound a lot crustier and sludgier. When you close your eyes and think of Isis, you probably picture mysterious figures standing before a vast body of water, or a huge expanse of starry sky, musically deconstructing the workings of the universe, but for some reason if you close your eyes and picture the guys in Minsk, all that comes to mind are huge furry yeti's, carrying spiked clubs, eight foot tall mountain men with beards down to their waists and greasy old baseball caps and unwahsed hair, blurry old tattoos, and big black shitckicker boots. Amps held together with bent rusty nails and scavenged duct tape, guitars covered in stickers and paint and dirt and branches and whatever else got in their way as they trudged from the cave to the stage. This is huge heavy harrowing shit. Massive riffs, roiling and churning, thick and viscous, the vocals are similar, a raging below, not quite a shriek or a howl, just an anguished, ultra pissed bellow, the drums are big and loud and way up in the mix, not ultra complex, but busy enough to keep the sludge in check. The other thing that Minsk has that sets them apart is not one but two synths, which gives the whole record a thick dense creepy creepy vibe, no silence EVER, always some sort of ominous sonic swirl, sometimes way in the background, sometimes whipped into a frenzy, a dense dark squall of rumbles and drones. Each track stretching out and chugging over and over, building and building like some heavy metal Steve Reich, before drifting off into some haunting almost Middle Eastern sounding stretch of clean guitar, sludgy synths and warm harmony vocals. The whole record is peppered with those sorts of strange stretches: spacy ambience, Hawkwindy psychedelic swirl, loping post rocky mesmer, blissy blurry shimmer. Each its own mysterious slow burn before the fucking walls come down in a suffocating sludgeslide of massive doomy droney riffing.
FUCK YEAH!
When we first heard Mogwai's Young Team record almost a decade ago, we were knocked on our asses. That was exactly what we had been itching to hear but just didn't know it. Epic near metal post rock, dramatic and ultra dynamic, soft / loud moody indie rock epics. Taking bits and pieces from the Pixies and Slint and other bands that came before but making them into something wholly new and unique. And thus was spawned band after band, from Godspeed to the current crop of metallic post rock to the brooding instrumental indie rock of bands like Explosions In The Sky. All of them owe a massive debt to Mogwai, and Young Team in particular. After Young Team, Mogwai continued to do what they did arguably better than anyone else, each record a subtle variation on the last, one was more consistantly louder, one was softer and dreamier, the next was a "return to the ultra dynamism of Young Team" the next was something completely new and different. Ultimately though, they all sounded like Mogwai, and if there was such thing as a cd that held 12 hours of music, they all could have come from that single 12 hour album. But who was complaining? Not us. We loved the sound of Mogwai, and didn't want them to change, sure we would have dug another Young Team, but it was joy to get a new Mogwai record every time, that was instantly familiar, but had enough new stuff going on that it kept things interesting. And so it went for almost a decade, which brings us to Mr. Beast. And on the one hand, it perfectly keeps with the pattern, it's most definitely Mogwai, sonically there's no doubt about that, but on the other, this is a very weird record. For Mogwai at least. To begin with, the songs are all pretty short, none break the six minute mark, most hover at around four, but the devil is in the details, and you know how the devil always has the best music...
The sound on Mr. Beast is much more dense and polished, some songs are straight up guitar heavy shoegazing rockers, some are haunting lullabies with programmed drums and lap steel guitars. A couple tracks sound almost like Coldplay with balls (and bigger guitars), there's lots of piano, in fact the first song is almost entirely piano driven, as are a couple later on in the record, there are some very Flaming Lips moments, lush pop with BIG drums, some bits of Polvo-like angular indie jangle, even some full on metal riffing, but they all sound like Mogwai. And that's the key. It all sounds so effortless, so perfect. Not in a bad way, in that special way that few bands ever achieve. It's like if Mogwai suddenly decided to do a note for note cover of Brooks And Dunn or Pink or Slayer or anybody, it would STILL sound like Mogwai, or if they decided to only play skiffle or bluegrass or polka, you'd still hear it and immediately know it was Mogwai, and it would be really really good.
It's that effortlessness that makes this record so good. Like their records before Mr. Beast, familiar enough to fit comfortably in the canon, new and weird enough to make us love them all over again.
For a limited time, the cd comes in a deluxe hardcover book version with a bonus DVD, featuring a documentary about the making of Mr. Beast.
Ok, this has been a tough one to do. I mean, Italian soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone is such a world reknowned genius of the genre, what can you say? And if someone isn't all that familiar with his music, how to explain the wonder and weirdness of it all? Maybe it would be best to make them a really good Morricone compilation to listen to...hey that's just what this is! So, buy this double cd and acquaint yourself. Even if you're already a Morricone connoisseur, you probably don't have every single film score that's been plundered here, so you're gonna want this too. These are all gems from classic soundtracks mostly circa 1969-1973, pretty much all from thrillers and suspense films, hence the title Crime And Dissonance. At any rate, we don't think there's any of his spaghetti western stuff here. So this isn't meant as any sort of comprehensive, "essential" Morricone overview, but it does provide plenty of Morricone's best, most edgy, thrilling compositions in one handy package. It's a clastrophobic collage of slinky grooves, avant-garde electro-acoustic textures, exotic melodicism, and shocking funk and free jazz. Taken together, this collection could be the soundtrack to the most suspenseful, intense and freaky movie never made!! Highly, highly recommended.
One thing: this could have done with more in the way of liner notes. The necessary credits are provided but no track-by-track or movie-by-movie discussion (something we don't have the space or the expertise for here, either, by the way), only a brief one-paragraph commentary by noted Morricone appreciator John Zorn which is certainly well meant but for some reason is mainly about how much Zorn's pal and Ipecac label boss Mike Patton shares certain aspects of Morricone's brilliance. Let us quote: "Mike Patton has pulled together a rare collection of Morricone tracks that reflect his connection to the Maestro via a shared passion and commitment ot the extreme and experimental. Psychedelic sitars, heavy breathing, screams, screeches, electric guitar feedback... much of Morricone's language here keenly intersects with the abstract metal soundscapes of Patton's own music, giving us fresh insights into their deeply powerful and uncompromising aesthetics."
All well and good (and nicely descriptive of the wilder aspects of Morricone's music as highlighted on this collection), but we're a little surprised that Mike Patton would want Zorn drawing such flattering comparisons, if only for modesty's sake. Plus, it gives the impression that Patton himself selected these tracks from his own collection, at the very least. But a glance at the fine print tells otherwise: this was in fact compiled by none other than Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls!! Which is cool with us. But it makes one wonder why Mike Patton should play such a large part in Zorn's liner notes. Though Patton, as much as Zorn, certainly does make his Morricone influence apparent in his music, and this disc certainly points that out! Anyway, with Alan Bishop picking the tracks, you could regard this as sort of like a Sublime Frequencies volume devoted to the sounds found in the moviehouses of early '70s Rome. Radio Morricone, maybe? Many of the soundtracks excerpted here are out on cd, so this is a good sampler towards further purchases, and certainly a great mix by itself!
Abject, miserable, mournful, agonized, anguished, tortured and tormented ultra mega doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! That's right. We've officially reached an all time high in o's (40 in case you were counting), and an all time loooooow in DOOM. Every time we hear from these crushing creeps they've pushed it even further into the deep dark damnable depths, forcing us to add more and more o's. That's right, it's the return of Moss, the UK's heaviest, slowest, sludgiest slow motion downtuned doom metal behemoth. Moss take the paint peeling acidic abrasiveness of Khanate and combine it with the warm suffocating murk of bands like Skepticism or Thergothon, or even aQ faves Nadja (who did a split with Moss a while back). Ultra minimal and nearly static in its sludginess, with the simple caveman plod of the drums the only thing keeping this from turning into a full on drone, this is like one HUGE riff, pulled and stretched into two epic streaks of fuzz and pound, with vocals that might even give Alan Dubin from Khanate a bit of a fright, like a demon howling through a mouthful of broken glass and rusty bottlecaps, teeth black with the blood of a thousand vanquished souls, the sound that finally comes out is a noxious black cloud that causes everything it touches to wither and die, totally blown out and so harsh it makes our throats sore just listening to it.
But like the best sludge / doom, there is some sort of subtle melodic undercurrent going on, maybe it's deliberate and these guys are on some whole other musical level or maybe it's just some chance occurance, some strange alignment of overtones or some lucky bit of abstract composition, it hardly matters, the end result is somehow both hauntingly beautiful and horrifically harsh, there's definitely some dark beauty hidden beneath Moss' black sludge exterior, but the joy of music like this is the fact that the music's beauty is buried and bruised, battered and brutalized, the sonic search for the beauty within is like wading waist deep through boiling hot pitch, ears plugged with hot tar, all the while being showered from above by the tears of angels.
Man, do we love Mudhoney. So few bands have managed to go through so much and remain so fucking great. Caught up in the big grunge feeding franzy, suffering through the grunge backlash, signed to a major label, dropped from a major label, seeing other bands not nearly as good get huge, world tours, drugs, whatever, nothing could faze this band. C'mon how bad ass is that? Where are we at, a dozen records by now? Close to that surely, and EVERY single one of them is great. Sure some are better than others but not a bad one in the bunch. Their first two are stone cold classics, packed with some of the best songs EVER written ("Touch Me I'm Sick", "Sweet Young Thing...") and one of the best versions of a song written by someone else ("Hate The Police") but their last record Since We've Become Translucent was great too, being the record that introduced a dronier dirgier Mudhoney, and you gotta love that. Their sound changes subtly with each record, but is always instantly recognizable, swaggering, filthy, distorted, bluesy, hooky, droney, grungy, stumbling, ass-kicking rock and roll.
Under A Billion Suns is classic Mudhoney for sure, but with more of an emphasis on pop, with crazy hooks and HORNS everywhere. That's right, horns. Not like the jazzy / krautrocky horns they dabbled with on the last few records, no these are full on horn-section horns. So much so that some of the tracks even sort of reminded us of Rocket From The Crypt. But there's no mistaking that Mudhoney superfuzz bigmuff guitar sound, or Mark Arm's glass gargling yowl, equally rough and ragged, warm and croonsome, whiskey soaked and gorgeously raw. And the songs as always are fantastic, the sound once again a sweet, sloppy, glammy update of the Stooges swaggering punk rock sprawl. They even dabble in politics this time around with the appropriately titled "Hard On For War".
As much as we loved and still love Soundgarden, Tad, Nirvana, Skin Yard, Gruntruck, Alice In Chains, Mother Love Bone, Malfunkshun, Screaming Trees and all their grunge rock brethren, our hearts will always belong to Mudhoney (and maybe Green River, but that's basically the same thing)!
It seems sort of weird to love My Dad Is Dad and not love Husker Du. The sound is similar, the voice is uncanny, even the melodies bear a striking resemblance to the 'Du. But there's something about Mark Edwards and his long running project that resonates in a way Husker Du never did for me. And the magic ingredient is... misery. Absolute, abject hopelessness. From the band name, to Edwards' impetus for starting the band, to the lyrics, it's all just so bleak and sad. But it's the sound, the song structure, the way the minor key jangle and strangely tangled guitar lines intertwine with Edwards' plaintive whine. It's almost like a Husker Du 45 at 33. The tempos rarely exceed a sort of shuffling lope, and more often than not songs trudge along head bowed hands in pockets, with a world weariness that is absolutely compelling. But even when the tempo does crank up, it's not so much 'fast' or 'punky' as it is a kind of careening out of control toward the inevitable fall, be it disappointment or death. This is most definitely indie rock, guitars jangle, bass throbs, drums crash and bang, but here, that usually sunshiney jangle, is rife with mournful miserablism, and each song a dark and doomy indie rock road map of broken promises, unfulfilled fantasies and dashed dreams.
Also on vinyl, not cheap, but it is a cool soundtrack...
Here's a lost classic "psycho-symphonic film score" brought to you by the same rare psych vinyl obsessed treasure-hunters (Finders Keepers and Delay 68) that brought us such gems as the Yamasuki Singers and Jean-Claude Vannier reissues, and the Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word, Folk Is Not A Four Letter Word and Welsh Rare Beat comps! This previously unreleased soundtrack to a UK thriller from 1972 starring Oliver Reed, Edward Woodward and Jill St. John was written, composed, arranged and produced by the late Stanley Myers, already an accomplished film composer in '72 though his breakthrough success came in 1978 with his score for The Deer Hunter. For years people have been trying to get their hands on a copy of the music he recorded for Sitting Target but try as they might they found nothing because there was no copy ever in print...until now. Finders Keepers got ahold of the original quarter inch reels to make this forward-thinking, sometimes fuzzed out, eclectic orchestral soundtrack available in stores for the first time. With ominous strings, spacey guitar, and groovy chase-scene tension, this is simply great stuff, the kind of sounds you know lots of good hip-hop/electronic producers would love to get their hands all over to sample. DJ Shadow may or may not have ever heard this before, but it sure sounds like something he'd have happily woven into Endtroducing someplace” we also keep thinking of the similarities in sound and style to the great David Axelrod retrospective we listed recently. Sitting Target was apparently the first British movie to be rated "R" and Myers was just the right man to make the seductive and suspense-inducing sounds to accompany it. Andy Votel's typically well-written and researched liner notes speak of how, in the musical career of Stanley Myers, the "Swinging Sixites" gave way to the "Sinister Seventies"” definitely exemplified by this moody, broody, but action-packed soundtrack! At only a little over twenty minutes we just wish there was more!
What should have been a joyous celebration of pounding grinding metal madness and a massive tribute to one of the greatest grind bands ever, instead is a eulogy of sorts for Nasum frontman Mieszko Talarczyk who was killed in the South East Asian tsunami of two years ago while vacationing in Thailand. A dark day indeed for friends and family, but also for their legions of fans all over the world. And they were indeed legion, even our own Elliott (formerly of the aQ mailorder team) would be the first to proclaim Nasum one if, if not THE, best grind bands in the world. Tough to argue. They might not be the fastest or the sickest, but as a complete grind package they're tough to beat. Buzzing, snarling guitars, blasting beats, and Mieszko's glass gargling growl swooping madly from punk rock bark to black metal screech to death metal grunt. Most of the songs hover around one minute, but are jam packed with riff after riff, part after part, heavy and dizzyingly aggressive, and pretty dang catchy too. No self respecting grindfreak should ever be caught dead without every bit of Nasum thay can find stuffed into their collection.
This double disc set collects EVERYTHING the band ever recorded (besides their full lengths proper): split 7"s, compilation tracks, unreleased tracks, demos, rare out of print tracks, outtakes, cover songs, Japanese bonus tracks and more! 152 tracks! Two hours! All amazing. Packaged in a beautiful mini hardcover book, with loads of photos, song credits, heartfelt liner notes from the other two band members, extensive notes and reflections on each recording session/song as well as all the lyrics!
It's that time again. That mysterious time, which only occurs a few times each year. Like an equinox or a solstice. When strange shimmering sonic clouds drift lazily across the sea and land gently in our earholes. That's right, it's time for some new sounds from one of our favorite labels in the world, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. This instalmment comes from the mysterious Nether Dawn, which is the work of Mr. Antony Milton, who just so happens to run another one of our favorite labels, PseudoArcana. Milton has spent much of his time lately making big noises, and causing much sonic destruction performing his own brand of free-drone-metal as Mirag, but here returns to his drone-drfit roots. Outer Dark is a gorgeously pastoral spacescape, fuzzy and washed out, huge drifts of shimmer and wide expanses of sun baked ambience. Delicate and crystalline, melodies lurk innocently beneath thick swaths of sweet buzz or dash furtively and barely noticed through deep swells of rich rumbling sound. Notes soaked in reverb float lazily through twilit skies, like listening to the most beautiful music with your ears crossed, so everything is just a little bit fuzzy, a little bit smeared, notes become tinly little shooting stars, their tonal colors turned into little musical trails drifting into the ether, while guitars are stretched into soft gauzy sheets, everything warm and wonderfully dreamlike. Beautiful!
Yet another limited edition release from Mike Donovan's Folding cassette-only label. This one's considerably longer in running time than any of the recent batch, and it features early improvised recordings by John Dwyer (guitar) and Brian Gibson (drums) aka The Netmen. Noisy and rhythmic and weird and pretty wonderful. Just what you'd expect from the mad musical minds of Gibson and Dwyer.
Super limited!
This is another one of those record we've been trying to list for ages but only just now managed to get enough of. This latest offering from Swedish black metallers Ondskapt will fit perfectly right there on your shelf next to your Deathspell Omega, Funearl Mist, Watain and Nortt records (that is assuming you don't alphebatize). Super reminiscent of old Mayhem (circa De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas) this is black metal in the classic style, buzzing and furious, epic and majestic. Few modern bands can pull that stuff off and not sound like second rate clones, but Ondskapt sound straightr out of the early nineties EXCEPT for their strange penchant for doom! Amidst all the buzzing and blasting, there are all sorts and manner of doom, litling, loping, seasick bits of midtempo doominess with creepy arpeggiated minor key melodies over simple pounding drumming, droning, buzzed out slow motion dirges with Iron Maiden-ish leads over the top, stretches of doom-flecked Burzumic buzz, all wrapped in black and surrounded by brutal bursts of black metal and occasional stretches of droning near-ambient malevolence. Then there's the vocals as well, which are pretty bizarre, veering from sort of shouted, through a bullhorn, politcal rally sort of vocalizing to full on throat shredding howls, demonic shrieks bordering on total hysteria a la Weakling. That's sort of what makes Ondskapt so cool and weird, a definite homage to the classic sound of Scandanavian black metal, but mixed with a heaping helping of depressive doom, and then all that sort of weird stuff, strange vocals, obtuse riffing, convoluted song structures and creepy ambient interludes, all mixed into a bizarrely brilliant black whole!
Up until recently, David Jackman has appeared to be more interested in digging through his archives to release albums of his classic material from the '80s, rather than working on new material. However, he's been slowly increasing his activities thanks to a couple of recent collaborations with Z'ev. Sanctus stands as the first proper full length album from Organum in nearly a decade. So for those of you who have been holding out for Jackman to finally release a full 45 minute recording, here it is! Jackman declared that this album is a variation on a theme, having composed four discrete parts from a single graphic score for grand piano, Hammond organ, tower bell, and gong. Despite these very specific acoustic elements (and claims to the contrary), the four pieces of Sanctus sound much more synthetic and plastic in nature, perhaps due to the excess of processing. As always, the Organum sound is turbulant and static at the same time, emerging as a slow motion expanse of dynamic drones. Due to the synthetic appearance of his sounds, Jackman comes across as much more Eno and much less, well, Organum.
First things first. SKATERS. 100 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT. You know the drill. Anyway, James from the Skaters steps out on his own for this brief blast of free drone loveliness. Under the name Pan Dolphinic Dawn (thus the Dolphin on the cover, although not sure how the swastika on the other side figures into things), James wanders through murky tunnels of muted noise, thick, and dense, with mumbled rumbles and whirs piled up into near melodic waves of sound. Lots of reverb makes the whole thing sound pliable and soft like a pillow dipped in tar, like you could just dunk your head right into the middle of this 7", but the murk is thick and viscous enough that you would most likely be unable to pull yourself free and would end up suffocating, ears full of molten goo. But what a way to go.
Oh panda bears, they're so peculiarly roly-poly, black and white. Wait a sec, one of these things is not like the others! This entity calls himself Panda Bear, but there is little if anything in common with those creatures. Well, they do have opposable thumbs. Perhaps he survives on a strict diet of bamboo shoots? Seems unlikely. Anyways, this music maker, also known as Noah Lennox, also known as one of the founders of Animal Collective, has followed up his fine solo album Young Prayer which came out last year with this two-song 7" record. Oh and we should add that he somehow also finds time to record under the moniker Jane (whose recent Coconuts cd we've been throughly enjoying) to boot. "I'm Not" and "Comfy In Nautica" are both definitely in a similar hazy vein as his Jane material -- psych, avant-folk, drones among other things are once again drawn together into his whirlpool of sound -- but perhaps there's a bit more of a pop influence that makes its way into the mix to very good effect. Fits nicely right between Jane and the most recent Animal Collective album Feels. This is also apparently on the cdep format but we haven't gotten those yet...
There's something about William Parker that for some reason makes us end up not paying too much attention to what he's up to. Sure a lot of what he does is indeed mindblowing. But a lot isn't. And the problem is there is just so much William Parker, that we'd sort of just given up on caring too much. The pay off for keeping up was just not enough. It seems like maybe a record a week although it muse be less than that. But hell if this new record doesn't have us kicking ourselves. We were struck immediately by the instantly recognizable artwork and weird bubbly letters, the work of John Fell Ryan, a member of the mysterious Excepter. Strange match up that's for sure. It had us assuming that this was William Parker WITH Excepter, which would indeed be something else! But the actual reality is even stranger, Parker and a twenty something merengue band, weird but it works. Wonderfully. The first track is a blissful and tranquil meditation for solo bass, so spacy and lovely. Then a brief spin on the 8-string doson ngoni, which produces a lovely buzzing drone, and then Parker is joined by the Olmec Group, bass, sax, timbale, bongos, conga, percussion and accordion, and the sound is festive, joyous, jazzy but funky and mysterious. Horns wheeze and drone over bopping bass and clattery percussion, like some wild avant block party. These tracks are the heart of the record, a wild, breathless fluttering heart. Fiery and fun, lively and so alive. Those tracks are separated by solo Parker joints, one on which he makes the bass squeak and squeal like a feeding back guitar mixed with a glass harp, all shimmering harmonics and squealing string scrapes, another with Parker turning his 8-string doson ngoni into some gorgeously alien Appalachia. The record winds down with another solo bass exploration, warm and muted and almost folky sounding. The final track, a bonus track which was recorded in 1993 and originally appeared on a super limited cassette is Parker solo on electric bass, sawing away, coaxing all kinds of buzzing and droning from his bass, harsh and aggressive but also totally mesmerizing and beautiful.
Decades before Sufjan Stevens was singing about the landscape of the the states, or Jim O'rourke was deconstructing pop, Van Dyke Parks was giving us all a crash course on orchestral avant-pop. Best known as Brian Wilson's collaborator on Smile, and decades later the producer and arranger of Rufus Wainwright's debut, Parks has made several challenging pop records of his own. Along with Discover America, this is for sure his landmark recording. A warped and thrilling affair exploring the southern California landscape. One moment he takes us to palm desert then laurel canyon blvd. and one moment you feel like you're in a musical on acid and then a psychedelic pop opus and then a folk song spiked with flowery colors and warped sensibilities. When Brian Wilson began hanging out with Van Dyke Parks, it's rumored they spent their nights doing amphetamines and Parks would read Wilson literature that he felt would touch his heart. Of course the more square side of the Beach Boys camp considered Parks an enemy, Mike Love in particular was totally intimidated by the intellectual and avant-minded nature of Parks. And well, any enemy of Mike Love is probably a friend of ours! But back to this record, it's for sure one of the most adventurous, ambitious, deranged, delightful albums of pop created in the last quarter century. And wow, how dapper a young Van Dyke Parks looks on the cover of this record. Eat your heart out Sufjan! Just thought we should get this on our site, at last...
This one's for those of you who really dug The Indian Tower release by this Pennsylvanian power trio, reviewed here last list. That record was in fact their second album, after this self-titled debut from 2003, which was never widely distributed... it took the powerful indie rock hype machine called Drag City (just kidding) to clue us in to Pearls and Brass' existence. Digging the blend of '60s psychedelic blues rock worship and nimble mathiness that these guys dished out on their Drag City release (sometimes it's like a strange but unforced meeting of Cream or Cactus with Hella or The Fucking Champs, maybe) we went to see 'em play the other night, opening for The Champs as a matter of fact. Definitely impressive live, they ripped through a bunch of The Indian Tower and also did a song or two from this album, which they had with them for sale, so naturally we asked 'em to stop by the store on their way out of town the next day and sell us a few copies. The three guys pictured on the cover all have much longer hair now (and a bigger beard in the case of the drummer) and likewise The Indian Tower was definitely built on this album's foundation -- there's melodic acoustic moves, stoner blues, and plenty of kick ass hard rockin'. So if you enjoyed The Indian Tower you may well want one of these too! (Unless you're looking for the garagey Tim Green production job, as this one's a bit more conventionally polished, to match what's perhaps a slightly more typical "stoner rock" sound here, not quite as lost in time as The Indian Tower.)
Another one to file under "NWOFHM"! New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. That's Pharaoh Overlord/Circle bassist Jussi's little joke. Only now it's gone waaaaay beyond joking. Or to another level of joke anyway. What we're saying, is that this fourth Pharaoh Overlord opus is a headbanger's delight, for real. Sure, Pharaoh Overlord were already supposed to be the "heavy" Circle side project, and they were, but not like this. This ain't mere 'stoner rock', this doesn't sound anything like Kyuss anymore. Instead, they've adopted chugging speed metal riffage that could be from an Accept album circa 1984, lashed it to their usual repetitive krautrocky rhythms, unleashed some very metal vocals, and gone entirely over to the dark side (which, by the way, is the title of one of our favorite tracks here, the album-ending 8+ minute instrumental epic that just drives a mean riff into your brain like the spiked fist thru the face of the skull in the cd booklet!!)). They even snuck a little umlaut in over the 2nd 'o' in 'Overlord' on the spine of this cd.
Circle (and Pharaoh Overlord at this point have pretty much the exact same lineup as Circle, it's basically the same band) have dropped big hints about their love of metal before -- making references in their graphics and in their music, with many tracks on such albums as Sunrise and Tulikoira being pretty darn metal, as we've noted before -- but here they go whole hog. They sound less like a spacerock band who want to give a nod to metal with a riff here and there, than like a really weird actual metal band! It's rifftastic, hypnotic biker metal with a strange psychedelic side to it. And best of all -- it works! It's a high concept success (and as we mentioned, they've been seemingly high on this concept before, but never have been this tight with it). The unpredictable predictability of any Circle or Circle-related album, their basic kraut-inspired, "circular" formula, stands up to and indeed seems to embrace this metallic obsession. The tick-tock percussion and cyclical riffs just wind up tension, even as they entrance the listener, making this so very heavy and ominous in a way that maybe no other metal band would or could explore but they'd have to appreciate. AMAZING!!
Can Jussi and Co. get any more metal than this? Well soon we'll see when we get the upcoming Circle cdep Earthworm which features Bruce Duff from '80s alt-metal band Jesters Of Destiny on vocals! Supposed to be pretty darn heavy. Stay tuned.
An extremely pretty, moody, mellow droney solo album from Italian electric guitarist Stefano Pilia... we neglected to list this when it came out some months ago but realized a) it's great and b) he's a member of recent AQ Record Of The Week scoring group 3/4hadbeeneliminated, so some of you just might want to know about this! Healing Memories was previously released a few years ago as a cd-r by Last Visible Dog, but now LVD have updated it with extra tracks and issued it as a real cd. As it should be, since it's quite nice indeed. Constructed mostly with tones and textures from an electric guitar, with some synth and electronics, tape loops and turntable. Slowly unfolding instrumental soundscapes that shiver with sensitive beauty. Restrained, relaxed, gorgeous. For fans of the likes of James Blackshaw, Steven R. Smith, and Giuseppe Ielasi.
Reading this -- and when we got these in Andee and Allan were doing nothing but -- makes us think that maybe we should replace everything in our metal section with only '80s metal reissues. Get rid of all the '90s and beyond black/death/grind metal, and only stock the big hair, big melodies stuff from the '80s, all the LA Sunset Strip and NWOBHM discs we can get. Whaddya think? Let's rock!!
Ok, maybe we're getting carried away but that's what this book is all about, getting carried away by fannish enthusiasm for the glory days of METAL.
It's the second volume in Canadian metal scribe Martin Popoff's rewrite/update of his original book of metal reviews that came out in one volume some years back. The first volume of the new edition, The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal Vol. 1: The Seventies (which is already, sadly, out of print!) we listed a year ago and we've been waiting anxiously for this volume ever since. Well it's here and even bigger and better than we imagined. 432 pages! Literally thousands of reviews!! You'd be hard pressed to think of an '80s metal band not covered. In the M chapter, for instance, you'll find the biggest of the big four Metallica as well as the more obscure likes of Manilla Road, Malice, and Max Havoc. And Popoff is quite catholic in this endeavor, not neglecting any subgenre of '80s metal from pop to thrash to grunge to crossover...even Husker Du makes the cut!
If you've read any of his previous books you'll know Popoff to have an idiosyncratic, conversational writing style as well as his own sometimes quirky take on things. We certainly don't agree with all his reviews. But we LOVE reading them. Moreso than the '70s volume, which served as resource to find out about a lot of records we'd never heard of before, this one has a bigger nostalgia factor due to our age. Those of us (that'd be Andee) who grew up as metalheads can spend hours and hours looking up old favorites (Icon! Helix! Black n' Blue! Tokyo Blade!) that you otherwise would never ever ever probably hear about ever again. For that in itself -- being a record guide devoted to the unhip, unheralded, but goshdarnit still totally amazing or at least hot rockin' -- we salute Popoff's effort. He deserves a medal. A metal medal. Authoritative, exhaustive, obsessive, encyclopedic, opinionated and most of all (if you're a metal fan) endlessly entertaining! His 1-10 scale ratings are sure to be the cause of some fun arguments too (and we see that Popoff has revised and expanded not only his actual writing but his ratings as well -- we're happy to note that his assessment of local SF legends Brocas Helm has gone up a few notches, their Into Battle LP now rating several points higher than it did in the older edition of this tome.)
Sure, we here at AQ write a lot of reviews too but we've got to bow before his achievement, this massive task to which he has seemingly devoted a good part of his life. Indeed, we can't even imagine how Popoff will top this with the next volume due, devoted to the '90s. He's got to be slaving away on that right now, and as soon as it's out we'll let you know... Apparently that's going to be it for him, he'll retire after that, and any volume four devoted to the current decade will have to be handled by a protege!
Includes a cd sampler of '80s Metal Blade artists including Cirith Ungol, Lizzy Borden, Bitch, Nasty Savage, and Slayer.
In the last couple years it seemed like Scott Herren was getting a little ahead of himself. It was beginning to feel like not a month went by without a new Prefuse 73 record or remix or release by one of his many other projects (Savath & Savalas, Piano Overlord, Delarosa & Asora, etc). While much of what he does is really good, the rate of his releases versus the overall quality was beginning to suffer a bit. The last Prefuse 73 with its multitude of guest appearances and vocal contributions seemed a little weak and stretched thin. Luckily he gets back to his bread & butter on this new Prefuse release. Chopped up beats, dissecting hip-hop anatomy and free jazz ferociousness. Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) makes one of the only two guest appearances that grace this record and with his current vision of electronics with a free jazz velocity, he and Herren make for perfect comrades. Herren even shows some humility and a sense of humor about himself by including a snippet of a radio interview where the host pretty much disses the last Prefuse record. But in true hip-hop spirit, Heron strikes back better and bolder then ever with a rewarding record that knows its aim and strikes its targets.
We're pretty sure that Drucifer (Aq pal, turntablist DIe Elektrischen, head of Dielectric records, etc.) named his new band, a laptop duo with Dielectric labelmate Carson Day, ahem... Pussyfinger, just so we'd have to keep saying it out loud, inevitably causing the speaker, and the speakee, to either wince or giggle or both. It's been a running joke around the shop. "Hey did we get more of that new Dielectric record, you know, the one with Drucifer and Carson...you know... um..." We've come to embrace the name now. Pussyfinger. See? PUSSYFINGER! So besides the provocative monicker, what's all the fuss about? Well, Pussyfinger is the scientific laptop duo of Drew Webster aka Drucifer (see above) and Carson Day, who have melded their individual approaches to music and the laptop in particular and come up with something skittery and electronic enough to keep Boards Of Canada fans in a tizzy, but fucked up enough to keep em seriously confused. Pussyfinger's sound is an organic clatter, it IS glitchy laptronica, but it's arranged and presented like songs, you know like real songs. The elements are distinctly organic, but chopped and sliced and diced in a totally inorganic way. Strings resonate and buzz, but are processed into weird ambient smears of sound. Vocals are all over the place, but they are so fucked with they end up sounding like just another random sound element. The core sound is still electronica, IDM even, there is an Autechre streak a mile wide running through Chew And Swallow, and that's definitely not a bad thing. Things do get noisy at times, thick washes of digital feedback and some full on harsh noise, but there are also some truly lovely moments of tranquil ambience that sort of balance the equation. Ultimately it's the skittery shuffle that is the framework for Pussyfinger's electronic world, think BoC, Autechre, a little Aphex, a bit of Chris Clark, Pussyfinger would not be at all out of place on Warp, but they would definitely bring a bit of black humor and some serious sonic dissent along with them.
Beautifully packaged, with truly horrific, but somehow strangely striking cover art, the perfect complement to Pussyfinger's oh so problematic sobriquet!
Wow! This record totally knocked our socks off. It's not at all what we were expecting. We remembered the Rah Bras as some sort of Ruins worshipping sorta Lighting Boltish art punk freak out sorta thing. And while some of those elements linger on here, their sound is way different. This is full on blown out fuzzed out electro synth weirdness, but don't get all down on these guys for any perceived bandwagon jumping cuz this is nothing of the sort. Sure they would probably hit the spot for all those big haired, tight pantsed, white belted elctroclash kiddies, but this is WAY weirder. Some sort of unholy collision between, X Ray Spex, Essential Logic, Six Finger Satellite, Trans Am, Stereolab and Fischerspooner but with a fully Chipmunked male vocalist singing in an impossible falsetto wail, like Geddy Lee on 45. Huge buzzing synths battle with snarling guitars, wrapped up tight into BIG riffs, big BOOMing, pounding drums (REAL drums as far as we can tell) and those vocals. Yowza! Those of you who remember post Butthole Surfers group Drain, this is a bit like a synth pop version of that group's pulsing industrial weirdness, albeit with the fuzzy dance punk quotient turned WAY up. This is big and loud and wild and fun, a little goofy, but also a tiny bit menacing. The vocals have a certain snarl to them and the synths have as much BITE as the heaviest of guitars. But this is not merely an all out black light, coke fueled, all night, outerspace electro dance party, no the 'Bras sort of spin out into even stranger sounds, super thick, almost Krautrock rhythms that build into ferocious squalls of dark and sort of melancholy epicness, some full on foot stomping synth glam, like Sweet on helium, and even some haunting balladry a la Kate Bush, although even in ballad mode, the musical backdrop is still a dense swirl of fuzzy drones and bleeping blooping swoosh, spacey and shimmery and sort of creepy.
We love dancehall. A lot! Makes perfect sense too, a grinding, pounding, throbbing mix of hip hop and dub, with that totally repetitive, hypnotic, instantly recognizable dancehall beat, you know: BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP. With tongue twisting toasting over the top. Very similar to grime (which is probably why we love grime so much too). Hard really to improve on dancehall, you could maybe, rough it up a little, and, which gives us ragga of course, but then, you could also make the beats even thicker and crunchier and WAY more distorted, you could have the vocalists toast through a tin can and twine run through a fuzzbox and plugged into a battered old blown out loudspeaker, you could take all that stuff and supercharge it, send it coursing through your speakers as if your stereo was struck by lightning, the resulting sounds coming out of your speaker a hard and heavy, fierce and fucked up, super aggressive and distorted but still totally wild and danceable digital hardcore ragga. Whoowee!! Fuck yeah! Similar to the way Alec Empire and other folks took drum 'n' bass and jungle and turned it into superdistorted hardcore brutality, a few likeminded noiseniks have been doing the same with ragga, giving it a DHR makeover, turning already pretty aggressive ragga music into a brain melting blast of buzzing and blown out dancehall. One of those folks is the UK's Kevin Martin, who after years of lurking on the fringes of the noise underground, running the Pathological label and playing in God, Ice and a handfull of other fucked up dubbed out noise outfits (maybe hinting at what was to come), renamed himself the Bug, and started making dark and dense dubby dancehall, the new sound owing as much to classic dub and dancehall as it did to his time spent playing weird fucked up noisiness. A few years back the Bug hooked up with Rootsman and formed Razor X Production, a dynamic duo that began to whip up all sorts of brutal distorted ragga classics, all big beats, blown out production and toasting by some of the world's best reggae / dub / ragga vocalists: Cutty Ranks, He-Man, Daddy Freddy, Tony Tuff, Mexican, El Feco and more. This double disc collects some of the best singles, beats are jagged and sharp, distorted stabs, rumbling rib cage rattling low end, synths are massive thick smears of speaker shredding fuzz, each track a pulsing, throbbing dubbed out groove as hard and pummeling as it is groovy and funky. If all "dance music" was this fucked up and firece and fun even us wallflowers would be forced to spend all our evenings sweating and slithering all over the dance floor.
Also includes a bonus 'version' disc that's almost even cooler than the first disc, with each track from disc one stripped of its vocals and then tweaked and twisted into even more tripped out ragga weirdness. The beats are more confusional and more abstractly groovy, and even more to the forefront, big skull caving bowel loosening throbs, shuffling and skittering and pounding, the synths and basslines are even more distorted, twisting into all sorts of unlikely grooves, with the Bug and the Rootsman adding more and more sounds, beats, rhythms, fuzzed out synthesizers, grinding loops, bizarre samples and all manner of percussion, until each track is even more dense and damaged than the original.
In recent years there's been a plethora of attempts at merging free jazz with an updated often electronic sound. The results of this merging have often been quite lackluster and disappointing. There has always been something that seems so forced in those unions. So when we heard that legendary and way too underrated jazz percussionist Steve Reid had enlisted the electronic hands of Kieran Hebden of Fridge and Four Tet fame we were both interested yet cautious not to get our hopes to high because of how past collaborations like this have turned out. Luckily our fear was immediately squashed as we put this on. The sounds of vintage prime-time-soul-infused-forward-thinking-jazz a la Art Ensemble of Chicago were coming out our speakers and it was a sound that we know we could rejoice in. The electronics are very subtle and add a nice texture in the moments they appear. This is not some sloppy throw in some samples and clicks and cuts under sax kind of affair. Reid oozes with confidence and a presence that marches with groove and flare. This is for sure one of the best new jazz albums to grace AQ in quite a while. Highly recommended!
All you need to know is that the record is called Stormbringer, it's one single thirty minute track, and the instrumentation listed is: drone, sub-sonics, drone & invocation, and temporal distortion. Okay, maybe some of you need to know a little bit more, how about... DOOM. Or DRONE. Or SLUDGE. Or maybe... SUNNO))), Khanate, Whitehorse, Marzuraan, Monarch, Moss, Boris, Corrupted... uh huh, you see where we're headed. Portland's Roanoke are the latest outfit to dive headlong into that same black doom tarpit, And their glorious din, while having much in common with their slow motion brethren, definitely has a hellish charm all it's own. The guitars are huge, of course, riffs are so slow and low they sound less like riffs and more like molten flows of distorted rumble, the drums are a simple pummeling thud, the vocals are like death metal growls at 16rpm, an impossibly low gurgle, but Roanoke have a crazy dynamic thing going on too, wherein their endlessly droning downtuned sludge is occasionally punctuated by strange stop start stretches where the guitars tighten up and cling to the drums and lock into a sort of stuttering chug. Pretty cool. And definitely way more dynamic than most of the droning sludge doom outfits around. But never fear, this is first and foremost, slooooooooooow, drooooooooooooning dooooooooom, ultra mega sludgy and haevy as fuck. Listening to it right now and even at super low volume it makes the speakers on this computer sound like they are crumbling to bits!
LIMITED TO 100 cd-r copies.
We heart The Rogers Sisters! Their new album kicks so much serious butt we can hardly take it! Each of the ten songs packs the combined wallop of a fierce glare, a cigarette burn and a doubleshot of bourbon. The gritty crunch and smeared lipstick snarl of their guitars... The snotty sneer of their throaty (sort of a cross between Kim Deal and Kate Pierson) vocals... The bratty yet solid stomp of the drums... Sooo rad! This is bad boy/bad girl music that makes you wanna get up to no good too. Don't get us wrong, The Rogers Sisters ain't no possessed wild men of rawk a la Screamin' Jay Hawkins or The Monks, but they do have their own brand of prickly bluesy garagey electricity. Can't wait to see this trio live! We'd say more, but we're too busy rocking out. Recommended.
Here's a reissue of this Bay Area band's sophomore release from 1982. Romeo Void were perhaps most known for their underground hit "Never Say Never" (aka "I might like you better if we slept together" song). That propulsive number which was characterized by some jagged sax, some time signature twists and vocalist Debora Iyall's distinct edgy delivery is indeed on this album along with eight others, many of which bear a striking resemblance to that one song. Also included on this 2006 pressing are four bonus tracks (one of which is a 12" version of "Never Say Never"). Cool.
We recently discovered the mysterious S.V.E.S.T., a bafflingly enigmatic black metal horde from France, who have been lurking in the shadows of giants, Mutiilation, Deathspell Omega, Antaeus, etc. not so quietly biding their time, concocting impossibly buzzy and blurry black epics. Each track a mind bending psychedelic swirl of furious tumultuous buzz and howl, every riff a blur repeated ad infinitum until it's an indistinct metal drone, vocals are thick swaths of agitated growl and shriek, another layer in an impossibly dense blacksoundscape. This is ultra grim, classic black metal buzz, but agitated into such a state that it's some impossibly chaotic monstrosity. There are melodies, and some sort of guitar leads, but they are just little smeared tangles in a giant prickly swirl of sound. Don't let the brief but jaunty folky intro fool you, after that it's all a head spinning, mind blowing, lo-fi blackened blur. The first two lengthy tracks are from the ultra rare Scarification Of Soul demo, while the last three tracks are from the equally rare Death to Macrocosm demo. And we though the first few tracks were blurry and confusingly black and blown out, the last few tracks take that same recipe, and add to the mix, an impossibly lo-fi, overblown speakers, degrading cassette tape production, that adds a whole 'nother layer of sonic crumble and speaker shredding distortion, everything even more obscured by fuzz and hiss and whir, turning Coagula into some strange drone metal soundscape. Amazing.
Talk about cult, S.V.E.S.T. seem to be a total mystery. Almost no information to be found anywhere about these guys. other than they are another one of those French black metal bands (Mutiilation, Deathspell Omega, Malicious Secrets, etc.) who are routinely spoken of in hushed worshipful whispers. And much like their countrymen, they are a total revelation. It's hard to do something totally new and original within the rigid framework of black metal and still remain TRUE, but S.V.E.S.T. pull it off in a big way.
We talk about black metal being drone-y and buzzy, so much so that in extreme cases, the result is more drone than metal, and that's never been more true than with S.V.E.S.T. Three lengthy epics, each a swirling lo-fi entropic buzzy black free for all. Riffs drift and spin, a dizzying concoction of fuzzed out white noise, blinding streaks of incendiary blackness, drums so fast and fuzzed out they just sound like blasts of static, melodies so murky and indistinct they sound more like Hecker or Jeck than anything traditionally black metal. So fast and chaotic and blurry and blackly psychedelic that they sound like some sort of black metal EVP, lost metal transmissions being broadcast through the ether and barely breaking through some staticky short wave broadcast. Fucking awesome!
When we saw this new album from those beloved Brits Saint Etienne we were puzzled by the fact that it was released on the Savoy Jazz label. We thought maybe they were aiming for a more adult contemporary audience or something... and/or maybe the label was in turn aiming for a hipper audience. When we heard this new album from those beloved Brits, the first track, while bearing the unmistakable stamp of Saint Etienne, conjured thoughts of an imaginary collaboration between Astrid Gilberto and Brian Wilson -- lush, sparkling and super pretty -- but a lot of the other tracks might just as easily appeal to fans of Gilberto's daughter Bebel. There are stretches of smooth, sophisticated lounge-iness and just as many of curvy house beat dance-iness. Positively swoonsome!
The newest release from this mysterious two man No Necked side project. A darkly damaged and demented abstract drone folk freakout. Soundiing not surprisingly like NNCK through the looking glass. A tripped out warped sonic funhouse of squiggly synth noodling, warbly wah guitar, haunting creaks, sporadic rhythmic clatter, dreamy blissy acoustic guitar strum, cicada like clicking minimalism, all wrapped up in thick layers of rumbling fuzzy ambience. Occasionally melodic fragments drift by, or bleeping blooping electronics surface, but for the most part. Asmadai is a mystical musical mystery in the form of warm muted underwater warble. So great. Another No Necked offshoot that can seem to do no wrong.
Two thick slabs of 45 rpm wax, housed in a gorgeously designed thick black and white sleeve.
And as with most things like this, VERY LIMITED!
If you've been hooked into myspace.com, either the name She Wants Revenge will seem painfully passe to you by now or you might be riding the wave of anticipation to hold in your hands an actual cd of this band's up-until-now-only-digitally-available-online music. A brief synopsis for those of you to whom this all seems like Greek... She Wants Revenge is an LA duo who (along with another internet buzz-band, the UK's Arctic Monkeys) have been all the rage on the abovementioned phenomenal hipster/hype-machine community (but now Rupert Murdoch-owned) website for months. All that said, what does it sound like? Well, it's pretty much summed up with the phrase: She Wants Revenge totally 'out-Joy Divisions' Interpol. They've got a song titled "Tear You Apart"... ok. They've formulated their sound to drive into utter ecstacy the aural taste buds of everyone who likes that dour yet danceable sound, but with a few distinctions. Really, the aural resemblance is nothing short of shocking, but unlike Joy Division's tone of bleaker than bleak self-loathing and Interpol's romanticization of it, the two male djs-turned-band-members instead define and fetishize SWR's dour angular new wave dance punk with imagery of girls in panties with butcher knives. Your cup of tea?
Fifth album from these Sabbath worshipping Canucks. Their claim to fame is that their singer sounds EXACTLY like Ozzy. Ozzy at his most nasal perhaps, but definitely Ozzy. And they exploit that vocal similarity to the utmost, by writing the most Sabbathy songs they can (which they do quite well). And who's to blame 'em? And although the too-obvious Ozzyness of the vocalist might hold these guys back from being taken totally seriously on their own terms, this should be at least as popular as the equally awesome Early Man, who also have been known to sound a bit like Sabbath/Ozzy.
Not that this sounds quite like what you think it might. This is Sabbathy, but really uptempo Sabbath, rocking hard. Sheavy might be the only Sabbath-copyist band in existence to sound like they're specifically trying to emulate the Sabs circa Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die, the final two albums of the original Ozzy era in the late '70s. So no "War Pigs" or "Iron Man" re-writes here. The slowest and doomiest they get is the instrumental, "Moments Of Silence", whereas the rest of this is pretty darn rockin'. Actually, maybe it's more just Ozzy than Sabbath that they're going for here, as they also sound a lot like Blizzard of Ozz (Ozzy's band when he went solo in the early '80s) -- even if Sheavy's guitarist never quite tries to scale the heights of Randy Rhodes. Though he's no slouch, either, and contributes plenty of crunch along with some sweet soloing. So for those of you partial to the rock (and Ozzy's pinched whine), Sheavy's Republic? would be a good one to crank. Produced by Billy Anderson, by the way, for the sludge-obsessives amongst you keeping score.
Oh such pretty gentleness or is it gentle prettiness? Whichever, if there was a contest for 'ideal lullaby singer' a frontrunner and perhaps winner would be Mr. Tim Howard, lead vocalist and central member for this Boston (but maybe now Philadelphia?) based project. The first song on Soltero's latest album Hell Train definitely makes for solid proof of this. On the follow-up to 2004's The Tongues You Have Tied, Howard is joined by a full band with sumptuous results. Many of the songs bring to mind the warm, enveloping likes of Yo La Tengo and Grandaddy, as well as the intimate melancholia of Elliott Smith and Sparklehorse. Achingly heartfelt and lovely.
Dastgaah is an intense, gorgeous full-length "ethnic-electronica" effort from Iranian expat Akta Ebtekar, who has a Warp single and a Dielectric 12" on his resume already. Here he pulls out all the stops for an instrumental, electronic journey to the Persia of a sci-fi imagination. The computer processed, Middle Eastern sounding sounds here make this come across something like Muslimgauze meets a Doom (the video game) soundtrack... shimmering swirls of drone, burble and bells, glitchy high-pitched shards of sound, eerie disembodied voices, crunchy, creaking, warped, wonderous. Although we'd assume this is a laptop job, there is a suggestion of old-fashioned musique concrete to it. Dockstader in the desert kingdoms, maybe? Certainly subtle, mysterious stuff is going on in the background. We're glad Sote's finally graced us with a full cd, this needs the time to work its magic, to envelop the listener... Recommended.
The legendary in-house-band of Studio One were responsible for laying down totally rich and funky tracks under vocalists like Horace Andy, Dennis Brown, Alton Ellis, The Heptones, etc. By merging elements of rock-steady, funk, roots, and jazz, they pretty much invented the foundation of the true reggae sound that would leave it's mark on the world for decades to come. Featuring a who's who of amazing musicians from the island, like Jackie Mittoo, Cedric Brooks, Leroy Sibbles, etc all under the legendary production of Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd. While their primary role was to be the house band at Studio One, they often would mess around in between sessions and work on instrumental tracks together. Jamaica Soul Shake collects those instrumentals, which showcase the essence of the raw and melodic birth of Reggae that they helped give life to. Every track on here hits the spot oh so nicely and once again reminds us of the magical warmth that was buzzing inside Studio One.
Simply put, this is a weird-as-hell, warped, late night, difficult-listening 'trip' for all you AQers looking for truly strange atmospheres... Okay, first things first; Spoonbender 1.1.1 is not a side-project of I Am Spoonbender. The duo of Dustin Donaldson and Cup (of AQ!) consider Spoonbender 1.1.1 to be a self-contained project that ventures outside the 'populist avant-tronics' of I Am Spoonbender into the realms of sidereal soundtrack music, the transmission of ideas through subliminal means, manifestations of 'third mind' techniques, and the non-logic of chance operations. Not so different on paper, but put another way: there are no drums, singing, or 'songs' in the 1.1.1 project. The material for Stereo Telepathy Adacemy was debuted during a live performance in which Spoonbender 1.1.1 performed with (appropriately enough) Psychic TV; however, for the second edition of Stereo Telepathy Academy, Spoonbender 1.1.1 recomposed all of the material in the studio. As in the first edition, Stereo Telepathy Academy features "text taken from one film, overlaid on images from another, and the audio score was written around a different, third film... the results appear to be intentional" for a sort of 'Wizard Of Oz/Dark Side Of The Moon' for telekinetics.
The J.G. Ballard-esque text was taken from David Cronenberg's 1969 student film 'Stereo', a faux-documentary detailing the work of a Dr. Luther Stringfellow, which concerns surgical procedures for the advancement of telepathic communication, while the visuals came from 'Crimes Of The Future' (another Cronenberg film, which transpires in an urban dystopia populated by pedophiles and oozing victims from a female-eliminating cosmetics related catastrophe). As creepy and sterile as the images were, we have to say that its Canadian-ness was positively charming, somehow. In their score, Spoonbender 1.1.1 lunges ominously forward with an otherworldly radiance of slow motion electronic pulses and melodies that retain an even darker hue than that of Klaus Schulze, Coil (e.g. Coilans / Time Machines), and Alan Splet, who are probably Spoonbender 1.1.1's closest sonic neighbors. Given the nature of their intense, masterfully detailed sea of electric sound, Spoonbender 1.1.1 hedged their bets that Cronenberg's pseudo-scientific spoken text would situate nicely against their audio. And indeed, this freakish document of prepared-chance context, atmosphere and appropriation works exceptionally well.
PLEASE NOTE: In keeping with the numerological-binding-of-3 theme, there will be 3 released versions of Stereo Telepathy Academy, all with different packaging. The first version arrived as a cd-r edition of 111 copies sporting a white glove as an allusion to 'Crimes Of The Future.' (still in stock) This is the second edition, a proper disc that comes with letterpressed artwork in an edition of 333. The final edition will be in an edition of only 3 copies!
We've been so happy that Cherry Red has made available some of the wonderful records of late '60s early '70s UK folkstress Bridget St. John. Last time we listed the wonderful Thank You For... and this time it's the lush sounds of Songs For The Gentle Man that we have been swept away by. This is for sure one of her most beautiful albums. Teamed up with producer Ron Geesin who she was introduced to by their mutual friend John Peel (his record label Dandelion originally released this in '71). Geesin's production was such a perfect match for the breezy and beautiful sound of St. John's voice. He actually co-wrote one side of Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother as well as making lots of interesting, challenging records of his own. The lush arrangements on this record will make you think of Vashti Bunyan more so then maybe any of St. John's albums. There is that same gentleness meets strength in her voice that listen after listen sinks deeper into our ears. We've got a feeling that Isobel Campbell might have been a big Bridget St. John fan as so many of these songs remind us of Campbell's contribution to early Belle & Sebastian records. Not a weak song in the whole bunch and her take on the Donovan penned "The Pebble and the Man" is pretty damn irresistible... as is this entire album. Highly recommended!
Perfect Place To Hideaway is the second full-length album from way-cool Japanese psych scene vets The Stars, a band featuring former members of Tokyo flashbackers White Heaven. Guitarist Michio Kurihara (also of Ghost) is perhaps the best known -- you may recall we recently reviewed his fine solo album Sunset Notes, another Pedal Records release. This ain't White Heaven mark II though, as their inspiration stems not so much anymore from west coast '60s psych like The Doors and Quicksilver Messenger Service but just as much from downtown NYC in the '70s -- Television, No Wave, and maybe even avant-disco dance music... But don't worry, The Stars first and foremost are a guitar band. And guitars can be dangerous things. Much of the time, The Stars are happy just demonstrating the truth of that statement. But there's shiny pop moments here that let singer You Ishihara act the crooning rock star, and some simple blissful ones too. These varied six tracks include the moody groove of the 11-minute "Subway (aka Night Walker)", the crashing, apocalyptic, distorto stomp of "Ice Blues" (THE track for those who want to hear Kurihara wail White Heaven style), the angular repetition of "Double Sider", the too-funky "Lemonade", the placid instrumental "Electron Spin Carnnival", and gentle coda "The World I Left Behind".
Lovers of both Stereolab and vinyl records, your fave band has offered up another trio of fine 7" singles! Two new tunes a piece, each is limited to 4000!
In many ways singles are the perfect way to experience just how good Stereolab still are. It's so easy to take this group for granted and yes they do have a sound that for the most part they stick to but when you get to hang out with just a couple songs at a time, you really get to appreciate the intricacy and continual level of excellence of their music.
The 'a' side goes along at mid pace until about three quarters into the song when they burst into one of their great krautrock inspired instrumental jams. The 'b' side fizzles with all sorts of great bubbles, time changes, and sequence segues. Two more very nice additions to the Stereolab legacy.
Note: Multi-format fans (and Stereolab completists) please be aware that all of the songs on these three records also appear on Stereolab's current singles compilation cd, Fab Four Suture, along with those that were on the previous three 7"s.
Lovers of both Stereolab and vinyl records, your fave band has offered up another trio of fine 7" singles! Two new tunes a piece, each is limited to 4000!
In many ways singles are the perfect way to experience just how good Stereolab still are. It's so easy to take this group for granted and yes they do have a sound that for the most part they stick to but when you get to hang out with just a couple songs at a time, you really get to appreciate the intricacy and continual level of excellence of their music.
"Eye of the Volcano" is full of their tasteful horns, playful moog and breezy vocals with the great last line "we treat our bodies like machines, fascism from within." The 'b' side almost sounds like Stereo Total in its opening seconds and carries out with a song that sounds like something off of Dots & Loops.
Note: Multi-format fans (and Stereolab completists) please be aware that all of the songs on these three records also appear on Stereolab's current singles compilation cd, Fab Four Suture, along with those that were on the previous three 7"s.
It's oh so easy to take Stereolab for granted at this point; but when it comes down to it, their mandate continues to be about excellence. For those of you vinyl impaired, this is a collection of the onslaught of 7"s and 10" releases that they've released over the last couple years since Margarine Eclipse came out. There is an energy and poignancy in these songs that proves that they are nowhere near being past their prime or irrelevant. Bright and bouncy elegant and breezy cool and confident all sides of Stereolab shine through on these recent singles. They continue to make really smart sounds without ever getting too smarty pants for their own good. There is a belief in their sound and aesthetic that is too often missing in modern music. They've done a really nice job too of bringing the singles together on the cd to make a cohesive record from start to finish.
Lovers of both Stereolab and vinyl records, your fave band has offered up another trio of fine 7" singles! Two new tunes a piece, each is limited to 4000!
In many ways singles are the perfect way to experience just how good Stereolab still are. It's so easy to take this group for granted and yes they do have a sound that for the most part they stick to but when you get to hang out with just a couple songs at a time, you really get to appreciate the intricacy and continual level of excellence of their music.
"Whisper Pitch" is one of the best kinds of Stereolab songs, with a slight somber undertone and a hook that gets so under skin in such nice ways.The 'b' side has one of those great song changes half way through that is so Stereolab and Stereolab alone.
Note: Multi-format fans (and Stereolab completists) please be aware that all of the songs on these three records also appear on Stereolab's current singles compilation cd, Fab Four Suture, along with those that were on the previous three 7"s.
We sure do love Finland. And boy do we love slow motion sludgy doom. So it makes perfect sense that this here disc would find its way into our grubby gloomy doom loving mitts. Stumm are a glacial power trio that traffic in that sort of harsh ugly crusty death doom dirge sludge we've come to dig so heavily. We just can't seem to get enough. It's metal sure, heavy and downtuned, but a lot of the appeal, very much like the blurry buzz of black metal, is it's proximity to pure drone! As the guitars get lower, and the songs get slower (or conversely faster and blurrier) riffs become stretches of slow shifting sound, hypnotic and dare we say soothing. Not entierely like a doom metal Steve Reich or a sludge Terry Riley. Most of us would just as likely fall asleep listening to the most recent Moss record as we would a Coleclough or Chalk record. And Stumm are carrying on that fine tradition. A harsh raw nihilistic doom metal that drones and buzzes and pulses, slithers and lurches more than it rocks.
There's got to be a way to designate sheer impossible dooominess. In the past we've just added more 'o's to the word doom, 20 'o's, 40 'o's, but where does it end. Eventually there will be a band so slow and sludgy, the whole review will be a single word, doom, but with 11,342 'o's. We're tempted to give Stumm a rating based on the multiple 'o' doom scale, but this this disc is not just a single sludgy smear of sound, it's definitely doooooooooom (let's stick with 10 'o's for now), with most of the record, stumbling and staggering, all druggy and dizzy, a 16rpm creep through a thick forest of buzzing E strings and drumming that sounds like it's being dumped out of the back of a cement mixer. But here and there, the clouds part, revealing a bit of sky through the dense canopy of oppressive heaviness, be it a bit of clean guitar or some warm warbly bass... hell, who are we kidding, those moments are so brief and fleeting they're only there to lure you in and set you up for a massive pumelling, frozen like a deer in the headlights, looking skyward, eyes reflecting that tiny glimmer of sunlight, before moments later Stumm take your head clean off with a spiked and sludgy iron bar, as a million 'o's begin to rain down from the sky, like metallic black hail, burying you beneath a crushing, suffocating mound of doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.............
4 songs. 35 minutes. Mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, Phantomsmasher / Atomsmasher, Flux, OLD, etc.)
Check out the two releases we recently got from the local electronic duo known as Submodern. The first is their full length debut titled Object Oriented Mood Management and the follow-up is this six-song ep called Inner Mission. Submodern craftily construct their tracks from nice bloopy bleepy sequenced synth sounds atop dancefloor-primed programmed beats and basslines. The former are perfect for getting all tripped out to, and the latter keep things groovin' along at an easy-goin' pace.
This EP definitely shows some developments from the duo's debut. Its highlight track is definitely the third one, the moodily atmosphered "Stuck". Despite its title, it's anything but stuck! There's more layers, more textures and generally much more IDM-y action goin' on. The next track "Lurp" continues on that shadowy path. Can't wait to hear where they go from here.
Check out the two releases we recently got from the local electronic duo known as Submodern. One is an ep called Inner Mission and the other is this, their full length debut titled Object Oriented Mood Management. Submodern craftily construct their tracks from nice bloopy bleepy sequenced synth sounds atop dancefloor-primed programmed beats and basslines. The former are perfect for getting all tripped out to, and the latter keep things groovin' along at an easy-goin' pace. The most kinetic of the ten tracks is the eighth "Minimal Angst". A nice little kick amid the mostly chill atmospheres.
Ah the Sun City Girls. Ever perplexing and unpredictable... yet reliably weird. It's nice to know there's always the Sun City Girls. It's kinda that "there'll always be an England" feeling. But different. Very different. Anyway, and now we're up to number fourteen in the SCG's "Carnival Folklore Resurrection" series. Static From The Outside Set recorded (or should we say compiled?) for a BBC radio program, On The Wire Lancashire, in the summer of 2005. There's 29 diverse tracks here, many of them collaged tracks-within-tracks edited to simulate the spinning of the radio dial. Highlights? Well there's a lot of almost Jewelled Antlerish tinkering and droning, we liked those cuts quite a bit. The SCGs can do the psychedelic drone folk thing quite well (and they also play on our heartstrings by doing a very faithful cover of "Gently Johnny" from The Wicker Man soundtrack!).
But there's more: fake-jazz ("Tea Boy Attitude", "Django-ized"), Beeheartian skronk ("Iced-Off Broccoli"), interminable talk radio parody ("Sacrifice in the USA"), blues, a limerick, a Brian Wilson song, all sorts of jibber jabber and non sequitur interludes, like the track "Elvis and Machinery" wherein the Colonel tells Elvis, "stay away from that wheelbarrow, you don't know nothin about machinery". You'll go "huh?" but then the Girls will spin that dial and you'll be dealing with something else already. So it's something of a grab bag, but one we sure didn't mind groping around in.
A visit from Sunburned Hand Of The Man always means a bunch of new releases, this time it's two lps, and a handful of cd-r's they've been lugging around on tour. We'll get to as many as we can, but let's start with Complexion. Like all of their releases, this lp, recorded live in 2004, is a gorgeous and stumbling tribal and primal mess, psychedelic and tripped out, space-y and rhythmic. There are multiple tracks listed but this plays like one massive track, two sides of loping campfire dirges, detuned guitars, simple shuffling rhythms, warbly organ melodies, super freaked out vocals all wrapped in reverb and delay, distant distorted wah guitar, and even some tape drop out that sounds as intentional as any of the other sounds present. Occasionally everything coalesces into super dense, perfectly concise passage of abstract rhythm and propulsive skitter that definitely reminds us of the legendary This Heat. This is druggy and dreamy bliss! All woozy and seasick and completely mesmerizing. At its most psychedelic it sounds a bit like Santana's little brother, high on tequila and peyote, sneaking into his big brother's practice space with his drug buddies and proceeding to get even higher and jam out all night long. Side two is a little more mellow and abstract, super minimal and trippy, a simple shuffling rhythm and all sorts of vocal and instrumental weirdness drenched in effects and splattered with little bits of random percussion, ghostlike vocals, and hazy drifting melodies.
ATTENTION: the limited edition 2cd version of this is totally gone, this is the single disc version!
As you may have noticed, the aQ speakers have been quite clogged of late with the black sonic tar of glacial doom and slow motion sludge, molten flows of downtuned guitars, rumbling bowel churning drones, impossibly slow and primordially plodding drumming, all tangled up in huge squirming, blackened riffs, like mammoths struggling to loose themselves from pits of black tar. We've also been quite obsessed with the more virulent strains of buzzing, bizarre black metal. Leviathan, Xasthur, Benighted Leams, Blackdeath, Deathspell Omega, Furze, Lurker Of Chalice and the like. But just imagine for a moment, if that river of sludge we love so much ran right through the darkened Nordic forest, or if you took all that buzz and fuzz and held it under a thick layer of black pitch, while it struggled desperately for breath, or if you took the bombinating blur of Burzum and slowed it waaaaay doooooooown, or better yet, what if Dylan Carlson of Earth grew up listening to Darkthrone and Mayhem instead of Hendrix and the Mentors. Well you'd probably get something like Black One. To be honest, what forms the basis of Black One is really not all that different than other SUNNO))) records. It's still a series of 16 rpm metal riffs, morphed beautifully into plodding hypnotic smears of metallic ambience. The blackness here comes from several sources: the art and the imagery for one, a very metal looking cover drawing, olde English fonts, O'Malley and Anderson have adopted properly metal monickers for the instruments used: axe subs, icy inverted crosswinds upon four string zamboni, grail, glacial winds, calls from beyond the grave! Then there is the presence of two current BM legends, Malefic from Xasthur and Wrest from Leviathan. That said, there are moments, where SUNNO)))'s immediately recognizable sludge does twist itself into more black metal shapes, and it's those moments that Black One truly taps into a direct line to the fiery abyss. Imagine listening to Immortal through some sort of time warp, where Blizzard Beasts is stretched into a single icy contrail spread out over 666 years, a hazy black cloud swallowing everything in its path. Add some truly frosty and fucked up vocals and ghostly guitars from Wrest and Malefic, all manner of gorgeous sonic filigree from Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi and noise guru John Weise, some text by Seldon Hunt, and that oh so familiar Sunn-y O'Malleyïartwork, lyrics via Dead (from Mayhem), Malefic, Wrest and Abbath (of Immortal) and you might just be looking at a truly and utterly black one indeed.
