What the hell can you say about songs you've been listening to on and off for 16 years?! How about... they still sound as great as they did when we were 20 years old! Most of you probably remember Swervedriver, a UK combo who took the whole introspective shoegazer movement and added BALLS, huge guitars, blown out psych rock squalls, thrashing chaotic drums, and some of the best songs of the last two decades. Easily the heaviest shoegazer band of them all. Like a heavy metal Ride or something.
We really are at a loss for how to explain how great these songs sound. Most of Swevedriver's records were or still are out of print, so this massive double disc greatest hits is a godsend. It's also one of those greatest hits that is a little frustrating for fans, as pretty much every record was jam packed with greatest hits, no filler all killer as they say. There are plenty of tracks from Raise, their debut and arguably finest moment, including both "Son Of Mustang Ford" and "Rave Down", two of the greatest rock songs EVER. I challenge anyone to listen to either of those tracks and not agree. "Son Of Mustang Ford" is a thrillingly propulsive manic rocker, sort of sun baked and blissed out (almost like a shoegaze Kyuss) with squiggly guitar lines draped over a killer main riff, perfect indie sadboy vocals and a hook to die for. Then there's "Rave Down" more of a sort of sprawling midtempo groove, with distorted jangle guitar and a loping lazy rhythm, and verses a million times catchier than most hit songs' choruses. The kind of part that has you air guitaring or singing along or headbanging or both. Plus there's "The Birds", a jangley shoegazing slab of hooky dream pop, which must have ended up on a million different mixtapes back in the day.
And it just goes on from there, with the band swerving (couldn't resist) from Loop-ish drone rock dirges, to shuffling almost surf rock, to full on acid drenched neo-psychedelia, to Beatles-esque britpop. Everything they touched turned to blown out psych rock shoegaze gold. Fans of Dinosaur Jr., the Telescopes, Sun Dial, Loop, Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine, Galaxie 500, Mercury Rev, the Lilys, Catherine Wheel and all that sort of stuff who somehow missed out on Swervedriver should definitely pick this up and catch up.
Heavy enough to appeal to metalheads who might be in the market for something a little bit more dreamy or blissy, washed out and hypnotic, but groovy and spacey enough for indie rockers who need more ROCK. One of Andee's all time favorite bands EVER!
The second disc includes a handful of previously unreleased tracks, demos and rarites. Big booklet with liner notes, track notes and tons of photos.
Not to be confused with the sludgier Sword from Virginia or the '80s Sword from Canada, or indie rockers The Swords Project or Idyll Swords or any of the umpteen other bands metal and otherwise called Sword or something like Sword... THIS Sword hails from Austin TX, and is mightily hyped as the next big thing in the indie/metal crossover world, a la The Fucking Champs or Pelican. They're at the very least the next Early Man. And sound a bit like that Brooklyn retro-metal outfit (with the Ozzyish vox). They're also touring with 'em, playing here in San Francisco around the corner from Aquarius at 12 Galaxies next week, Tuesday the 21st of February. I (Allan) am for sure gonna go... 'cause this band (and Early Man too) have the potential to slay live, judging from the studio recorded evidence. Actually I've been curious about The Sword for a while, heard some good things about these guys first when our pals in Slough Feg (or was it Hammers Of Misfortune?) played with 'em in Texas. Then I guess they also got some good press at SXSW. So, here's their debut full length on the Kemado label (home also to Diamond Nights, Tarantula A.D. and Dungen among others). And, put briefly, it rocks.
Their pounding, uber-heavy, swords (duh) and sorcery stoner metal reminds us a bit of Zebulon Pike, and A LOT of High On Fire (and also, thus, Sleep). Those aforementioned vocals especially. Their lyrics and graphic imagery are all seemingly inspired by Norse mythology and the music, rather than being a black metal blur, is suitably heroic as well -- charging, triumphant, and almost wearying in its relentless bombast... which is why the mellow respite at the beginning of speedster "Iron Swan" is welcome, and the hills and valleys of the album's longest, proggiest, most epic tune "Lament For The Aurochs" give it staying power. The Sword sure sound serious, taking the weightiness of stoner/doom metal and putting it to old school, dual guitar, fantasy metal use. We imagine many fans of The Fucking Champs and Mastodon and some of the other bands mentioned above will indeed like this.
First things first: yes, this album IS every bit as cool as the cover looks, the cover being a photo of a pink skull! There's no relation to Glenn Donaldson's Pink Skulls cd-r label, of course, these guys thought of it first, way back in 1971!
So yeah, here's another vintage '71 gem for all of you into hard progressive bluesy psych rockin' action. Last list we had Japan's Strawberry Path, this time around, from the fertile underground of Franco's Spain, we've got the power trio Tapiman, which features the burning electric guitar heroics of one Max Sunyer, later of Spanish jazz rock outfit Iceberg. He'll definitely make hard rock guitar fans happy, though -- Tapiman is riffy, heavy rock, full of psychedelic poppiness.
The main riff of storming opener "Wrong World" is sorta "Sunshine Of Your Love" mixed with "Lord Of This World", and the track is full of energetic, impressive guitar soloing and wild vocals. Some subsequent songs are more gentle and moody, though you're never far from some wailin', cranked-up amplifier worship on this disc. It's a groover, and a grower, too, from a classy band who knew what the heck they were doing. For all of you who dig the obscure '70s sounds of stuff like Blues Creation, Buffalo, Eduardo Bort, and other things along those lines we've recommended before...
Newly remastered for this reissue, with four bonus tracks and detailed liner notes in both English and Spanish.
Decemberists alert! This was Colin Meloy's band before the Decemberists that not many people got to hear. Maybe if you were really on top of the Montana indie-rock scene of the late '90s you have one of their releases that were limited to a couple hundred copies. But if you are like us, maybe you missed the boat on them the first time around, but thanks to the popularity of his current band the all out of print recordings of Tarkio have been unearthed on this two-cd set. There is no mistaking Meloy's voice and lyrical stylings with Tarkio but with a more Midwestern/salt-of-the-earth, less Victorian and dramatic delivery. In fact this reminds us so much of early and mid-era R.E.M. which ain't a bad thing at all. And his Robyn Hitchcock-like delivery was in full effect as well. Had they been on a label like Merge, Alias, or Matador they would have been staples of college radio but their location and lack of distro kept them pretty much a Missoula secret. A must have for Decemberists enthusiasts!
Bay Area indie pop trio Tartufi have reached across the ocean to release a four-song EP with the Spainish label Acuarela... and we're glad to hear the word is spreading on this terrific band. If you've dug their intelligent, well-crafted first two cds So We Are Alive and Westward Onward then this will surely be a welcome treat too. Pop tunes played primarily on the straight-forward instrumentation of guitar, bass and drums (okay, there's a little piano, synthesizer and xylophone too), but with lots of plot twists (melodic, rhythmic and tempo-wise) to keep things interestin' and movin' along at a spritely clip. Check 'em (all) out!
This record is impossible to figure out. When we first threw it on we thought 'oh great, another slow sludgy doom sort of band' but then almost as quickly as we thought that, we stopped, because suddenly it sounded nothing like that, it totally blossomed, opening up into this completey abstract chunk of big booming drum, downtuned fuzz guitar free jazz post rock psychedelic groove doom. Or something. One minute they'll be splattering random drum figures and the guitars will be scraping and squirming and freaking out, then suddenly the drums will just click, and a MASSIVE sixties psych groove will unfold as the guitar goes total Hendrix apeshit and spins wild-man-blues/notes-bending-all-over-the-place/druggy and deliriously buzzy and blown out LEADS into dizzying webs of searing white hot fuzz. Which of course results in glorious full on Hawkwind meets Comets On Fire meets LSD-march, postrock krautrock psychrock freerock Ur-jams. Endlessy throbbing and pulsing and completely mesmerizing. Some tracks twist and wriggle and writhe into sweat soaked, blood drenched full on rock blow outs, while others settle into impossibly static exercises in tension and drone, almost like a much free-er version of Dutch hypno-metal gods Gore.
Underneath it all the bass wanders and burbles sounding fretless or underwater, as if it was some sentient creature that just happened to be in the same room as the guitar and drums, and every once in a while just happens to fall in along side whatever crazed groove is being flung wildly about. The drums are as much the focus as the guitar, they sound huge, like the band is set up in an airplane hangar, sloppy and all over the place but tight and ferocious too. The whole while cascading sheets of distorted guitars swoon and sway and hug the chaotic drumming before once again exploding into some fuzzed out Hendrixian speaker blowing meltdown.
And for those of you who don't know who Tia Carrera is (ummm... Wayne's World?), do yourself a favor and next time you stay home sick from work, discover the oh so guilty pleasure that is the TV show Relic Hunter!
Bloom, Red & The Ordinary Girl is the second album by Tres Chicas, and we have to say, it sounds a lot like those gorgeous singalongs that take place when Neko Case, Kelly Hogan and Carolyn Mark get together. Of course, they by no means invented the old country female trio, but they've certainly brought it back into the spotlight in recent years. Anyways, no, that trio of chicas are not these Tres Chicas. These three chanteuses are themselves well-respected musical vets Caitlin Cary (formerly of Whiskeytown), Tonya Lamm (ex-Hazeldine) and Lynn Blakey (of Glory Fountain). This is a warm, earthy, passionate follow-up to their 2004 debut which was titled Sweetwater and it features a guest appearance by Nick Lowe! An absolute pleasure! Now, just imagine if these three ladies got together with the three abovementioned ladies... now that would be seis senoras fabulosas!
The first chapter of this cool new series of limited edition book/cd sets from Thrill Jockey starts things out in quite a dreamy, downy fashion. Much of the music sounds as though Aki Tsuyuko was composing a soundtrack to a children's fairytale. Hokane is a mostly instrumental album of hushed pastel interludes sprinkled with infant-like cooing vocals. Simple melodies teeter and totter and tiptoe about with a doe-eyed innocence. Imagine a dewy meadow filled with baby bunnies or if you prefer an interior scene, an antique doll slowly coming to life amid a landscape of wooden building blocks and tin toys.
The accompanying hardcover book is filled with comparatively more vibrant saturated colors and striking geometrics. Actually this is like a Japanese counterpart to the recent book'n'cd set by Michael Andrews. Both are musically warm'n'gentle (although Andrews' is more song-oriented) and visually fanciful'n'shapely.
Limited edition of 2000.
Now on double LP too, and with a few extra goodies -- two bonus songs and a code for a downloadable mp3!
Here's what we said about the cd version: San Francisco's Two Gallants second album has found a well-suited, comfy home on Nebraskan cool kids' label Saddle Creek! Funnily enough when we reviewed the band's last album The Throes, we compared their vocals to a more aged Conor Oberst (of of the label's breadwinnin' band Bright Eyes). Those similarities are still quite prominent, and fans of B.E. might also find themselves warmin' up all toasty to the sounds of What The Toll Tells. Mind you it's not all slow, hushed and brittle, weep in your pint, this is ragged, rugged country rock. Then again, actually Oberst has also been known to roughen and rile his music up on occasion hasn't he? Simply, we reckon they're all in good company. Perhaps this will open the door for some dandy collaborations?
We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.
We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.
We know with the flood of calls and questions we got that lots of you have been really excited for this proto-hip-hop collection to finally arrive. While the recent New York Noise comps did a great job of taking us back to the heyday of the NY post-punk/noise scene, Big Apple Rappin' takes us to that same era in NYC but this time its the early exciting years of hip-hop culture that gets the oh so nice elaborate, thoughtful and tasty Soul Jazz treatment. It had been so hard to get hands on tracks by pioneers like Cold Crush Brothers, Spoonie Gee, T Ski Valley. The Jamaica Girls, etc. These are the sounds that would soon influence the next generation of hip-hop like Run-DMC, The Beastie Boys, Kool Moe Dee, Eric B & Rakim. Something so wonderful about how these sounds really do evoke such good feelings. Every time we play this in the store we notice how customers start tapping feet, then we see their necks start to move back and forth and next thing you know they are pretty much full on dancing. We've even caught some booty's shaking in the metal and experimental sections. So much of the early NYC Hip-Hop scene had such a great sense of freedom, you can hear a much more feminine touch in lots of these songs that would later be a little more scarce to find in the hip-hop scene. You can feel the influence that gay disco and the entire melting pot of NYC had on this exciting era of hip-hop as well. Wax collectors check this out on vinyl as the contents of the double cd can be had on two slabs of double vinyl split into two volumes.
Going back to the beginnings of the "illbient" movement, the blissed out drus soaked dub sounds that this series has chronicled over the years, this double-cd reissue of the first two volumes traces the early years of the mostly Brooklyn folks who were influenced heavily by dub and who then started to create electronic music with much of the aesthetics and pathos of their dub mentors. Heavy on the bass, leaving some space and keeping things down and dirty was the common bond between artists like Sub Dub, Him, Spectre, and the only known name at that time Bill Laswell. Looking back at this era '91-'94 it's nice to see who still sounds fresh and interesting (the above mentioned for sure) and yeah there are a few tracks that didn't really age too well, but the good for sure outweighs the not so hot. Nice for those times when you wanna go to outer space as much as u wanna be in Jamaica. Oh and check out the diss in the liner notes to DJ Spooky for taking all the glory from a scene that actually had many others doing more innovative and interesting stuff then he was.
Without a doubt the Numero Group is becoming one of our favorite labels over the last few years. Releasing such tasty reissues with classy and informative packaging, a distinct aesthetic and most importantly amazing sounds that deserve to be heard! This time out they have excavated a lost treasure down in Florida. The short lived Deep City label put out a slew of totally rich 45's that unfortunately never made their way much past the confines of Florida. The core of the Deep City label were three high school teachers and former marching band members Willie Clarke, Johnny Pearsall, and Arnold Albury. They began recording in small studios with local artists like Clarence Reid (who some of you might know later would be known as Blowfly) and a then preteen Betty Wright. The sound that emerged was so gut hitting, soul wrenching, and totally right on. The warmth in these recordings makes you lament where soul music has gone in the last few decades, getting it so wrong with its slick glossy overproduction. Fans of the recent Searching For Soul comp on Luv N' Haight make sure you check this out as it's just as strong an offering as that amazing comp. If you are a big soul affieciando you might remember a few of the artists on this comp from the Soul Jazz comp Miami Sound a few years back but none of these tracks have been reissued until now and wow do these songs hit the spot. Highly Recommended!
Oh Bloodshot how we love thee. You singlehandedly (okay, well maybe not SINGLEhandedly) convinced a nation of hipsters that it's okay to love country music. And that there was more to country music than Kenny Chesny or Toby Keith. And that maybe a quick peek at your parents records might prove that they weren't so square after all, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, David Allan Coe, Patsy Cline, George Jones. So we had a generation of punk rockers discover their inner twang and thus was born the so-called No Depression movement. Named for the first Uncle Tupelo record, which in turn owed everything but it's country punk sound to the Carter Family, this upstart generation of REAL young country grew and changed and became a gorgeously varied patchwork quilt of all the various strains of strum and twang. And Bloodshot was there to document it all. From the swampy Bliblical blues of Sixteen Horsepower, to the stomping punk-as-fuck broken bottle bluegrass of Split Lip Rayfield, to the rambunctious country power-pop of the Old 97's, to the mysterious darktwang of Richard Buckner to the psychpop country of My Morning Jacket and on and on. This comp reads like a who's who of the last 10 years of independent music, and is a testament to the vision of Bloodshot. Lots of rare and exclusive tracks from: Paul Burch & Ralph Stanley, Bobby Bare Jr., Andre Williams & The Sadies, the Meat Purveyors, the Bottle Rockets, Carla Bozulich, Minus 5, Nine Pound Hammer, Sally Timms, Kelly Hogan, Crooked Fingers, Mary Lou Lord, Jon Rauhouse, John Doe, Jennie & The Pinetops, Hanl Wiliiams III, The Court And Spark, Rex Hobart, the Waco Brothers and tons more. Comes with a big 'ol booklet of liner notes and amazing photos.
Originally released as a series of SUPER limited split vinyl eps, a 7", a 10" and a 12", each teaming up bizarre mysterious French black metallers Malicious Secrets with some of their more well known countrymen: Antaeus, Mutiilation and Deathspell Omega. Holy shit! You might as well stop reading right now and order one of these as fast as you can. You shouldn't even need us to tell you how totally fucking mindblowing this comp is. Antaeus offer up a short buzzing blast of ultra grim blackness, a fuzzed out blur of droning black metal, downtuned guitars, blown out lightning fast blast beats, guttural growls, the whole thing a white hot lo-fi blast of utter brutality. Then of course there's Mutiilation, who not only offer up a reverb drenched burst of atmospheric blackened buzz, also super lo-fi, blasting and buzzing, and hauntingly creepy crawly like it was recorded in a cave or at the bottom of a well, but they also do a cover of Sinatra's "My Way"! But you wouldn't necessarily know it, the croonsome orginal becoms a harsh ptichfork to the head, dripping with thick droney guitars and shrieking black howls, although it does have a super cool, riffy sort of un-metal breakdown in the middle. Most of you will need this for the final track, a brand new, exclusive to this comp 20 minute epic from Deathspell Omega, rife with impossibly obtuse riffs, weird atonal guitar skree, super complex rhythms, haunting ambeint dronescapes, weird math-metal breakdowns, and of course some of the fiercest fucked up black metal ever. Woah.
As if that weren't enough, let's not forget the three tracks from Malicious Secrets, each of their three tracks from the splits are totally dizzying swirls of ultra fucked up, BIZARRE black metal, riffs are bent and twisted into impossible shapes, blasting drums are sprayed wildly all over the place, each song is a serpentine, non-linear sonic mindfuck, a huge spastic black churning whirlpool, with little bits of riff or little streaks of blast beat surfacing now and again, while over the whole thing the vocalist moans and groans, low and haunting, each syllable stretched into long drawn out bellows, sometimes breaking into hacking coughs or throat clearing before once again returning to an utterly agonizing wail. So totally fucked up and so totally amazing!
Aaaah, reunions are always a weird mish mash of emotions, the warm fuzzies and the uh-oh discomforts, aren't they? Lots of faces are fondly familiar while others don't register at all in your memory banks. Such is the totally case with High School Reunion -- A Tribute To Those Great 80's Films with both the selection of songs and the artists covering them. Some familiar notables are Matthew Sweet (American Girl"), Frank Black ("Repo Man"), Blake Babies' John Strohm ("Somebody's Baby"), Kristin Hersh ("Wave Of Mutilation"), and the odd fresh-faced presence of the Dresden Dolls ("Pretty In Pink"). Of course for whatever reason (a link to a warm memory, a personal turning point, a soft spot for the actual movie, or simply the fact that it was just a great song), so many of these songs are so near and dear to the teenage hearts in each of us... as are the '80s flicks from which they came. Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind Of Wonderful, Valley Girl, Repo Man, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pump Up The Volume, Say Anything, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Ah yes, we remember them all so well. It's a pleasure when the cover kicks as much butt as (or betters) the original, but extra painful when some band does a so-so (or worse) version. Fortunately few if any of the twenty tracks fall into the latter category, and most offer at least a respectful if unchallenging take on the oldie. A nostalgia'n'irony super-size extra cheese full meal deal!
From the label that brought us the mind blowing blackmetalnoise of Enbilulugugal and the noise flecked Midwestern redneck black metal of Blood Cult comes a label sampler featuring a whole hellish mess of demented and damaged, fucked up and retarded, baffling and utterly brilliant metal mayhem. Rusty Axe and its stable of musical miscreants is not for the metal dabbler, or the true grim warrior, this shit is messed up, in the best possible way. Metal sure, but all drenched in goats blood, satan's semen, huge splattery gobs of noise and loads of what-the-fuck! Some of these bands are so fucked up they seem like they must be joking, others are deadly serious and are as heavy and buzzingly brutal as any black metal you've heard. Probably the most exciting band on here is Baphomets Horns, super fast and heavy grim black metal, furious and recorded so hot, it sounds like the band is spitting blood and flame right into your lap. On the other end of the spectrum are bands like Defecated Corpse, who sound a bit like Venom fronted by a lounge singer, but with loads of shredding lead guitar. They also cover the Benny Hill theme song. Yup, "Yakkety Sax". And then there's Satan's Almighty Penis, who do have a hilarious name, but their music is far from a joking matter, fucked up and furiously fast, another band that could go up against the Scandinavian elite for sure. The whole comp is pretty jam packed with the grimmest weirdest heaviest most fucked up black metal you've never heard from groups like Kill All Resistance, Wollfsschanze, Dark Energy, Sacrificial Blood, Mephistophelian, Demonic Mortuary, the brilliantly named FINISHER!, Tjolgtjar, Bethledeign, War Plague, Melkor, and loads more. We're already dying to hear full lengths from all of these bands! Fans of Benighted Leams, Rehtaf Ruo, Rigor Sardonicous, Emit, Furze, Detsorgsekalf, and all that sort of OUT black metal may have just found their new favorite label!
We've been skipping around through this "New Rubble" series -- we reviewed Volume 2 a little while back (entitled Speaking My Mind, it was devoted to rare prog-psych singles). Now we've settled on this killer comp of obscure '60s British female vocalists to mention this time. These soulful girl singers are backed by some outright freakbeat bands, though (like the Fleur de Lys), so instead of ballads (the stuff that made for hits) these are harder-edged, dancefloor-ready groovers filled with fuzz guitar and Hammond organ action. These ladies have plenty of sassy, "my boots are gonna walk all over you" attitude to match. Nobody's fools, their "love" songs are telling it like it is. There's lots of "baby baby baby" stuff but they're letting "baby" know he'd better behave or he won't be their baby no more... Lines like "It's understood / if you hurt me / you're gone for good" (from Samantha Jones "Go Ahead") are the norm. As is the saucier, sexually aggressive stance of tracks like "Scratch My Back". Great stuff, even the dated kitsch silliness of Laugh-In gogo dancer Judy Carne's "Sock It To Me" (wherein she opines, in a very proper British accent, "you know if this is what they call funky, it's a bit of all right"). Excepting that one, perhaps, we think The Husbands should be mining this comp for new cover material...
If there were any doubt how deep and rich the vaults of Studio One were, Soul Jazz has shown that it's pretty much a bottomless well of amazingly rich sounds. This time it's the second in their Studio One Soul series, which shows the influence of American soul & funk on the roots of Reggae. The way that the sounds of folks like Curtis Mayfield, Al Green and early Roberta Flack influenced the music coming out of Jamaica, played itself out so nicely in the delivery from artists in Studio One. The mixture of classic soul melody and roots reggae instrumentation made for a sound that perfectly incorporated two so very important movements in black music in this century. Hearing Jerry Jones tackle the Eugene McDaniel's penned "Compared to What" or The Heptones taking on Curtis Mayfield's "Choice of Color" doesn't sound as much like an homage or cover as it does a solidarity of soul and spirit that makes so much sense and sounds so totally wonderful.
Not sure if this counts as a guilty pleasure, but it probably should. Anyone with a Playstation or an X-Box probably has all of these songs stuck permanently in their heads, unavoidable after hours and hours of grinding your way through Tony Hawk's American Wasteland we imagine. But fuck it, this comp is killer, some of our all time punk rock favorites covered by a bunch of the current crop of emo / metalcore heart throbs. And while the originals are pretty much perfect, it's kind of cool to hear some of these songs revamped and reworked, most of them more well produced and some of them a whole lot heavier. Emanuel does a killer version of the Stooges' "Search And Destroy", dangerously close to the original but with a thick layer of sludgy grit on top. Saves The Day tackle the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer", and for an ultra-wimpy emo band they manage some serious ass kickery. The Bled do a note perfect version of the Bad Brains' "House Of Suffering" and the Hot Snakes channel Government Issue with a sloppy noisy version of "Time To Escape." There's From Autumn To Ashes' killer metalized version of Fear's "Let's Have A War" and we can't forget Fall Out Boy and their AWESOME version of the Gorilla Biscuits' "Start Today". Other bands include Senses Fail, Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance, Alkaline Trio, Rise Against, Thursday, Thrice and the Dropkick Murphys covering tracks by Suicidal Tendencies, Descendents, Misfits, Adolescents, T.S.O.L., Buzzcocks, Fear and of course Black Flag.
Yeah! Back in print and we're thrilled about that. The new reissue has 3 bonus tracks on cd and 5 bonus tracks on the oh so nice double gatefold vinyl edition. Even if you haven't had the pleasure of seeing any of the over 150 Jess Franco's 'horrotica' films from which these songs come from that shouldn't stop you from jumping into this delicious offering of red light sleazy cheesy psych-light instrumental treats. Composed by Manfred Hubler and Siegfried Schwab in 1969 these songs ooze with a playful sexuality that you have to be pretty lifeless not to enjoy. The packaging is exquisite as well with amazing stills from the Franco films and really nice text that gives a background of where these sounds and his films were coming from. Next time you have some people over to your place, turn down the lights, light some candles, put this on the stereo and who knows where the night might take you!
Dirty, filthy, scummy, sludgy, noisy, fractured, fucked up, damaged, demented, crusty, sloppy, shitty, sweaty, punk as fuck, fuzzy, freaked out, warped, doomy, downtuned, plodding repetitive, caveman gar(b)age scuzz-rock weirdness. Phew. In the grand tradition of the Butthole Surfers, Liquor Ball, Rusted Shut, Black Mayonnaise and every other drunk and drugged dirge rock band that tried deperately to channel the Germs, Black Flag, a million out of tune guitars, a trunk full of warped drums with broken heads, and a suitcase fulll of broken effect pedals into a snarling, seething glorious mess, equal parts spastic octopoidal drumming, blown out blunderbuss bass and howling moaning vocal anguish... we bring present to you the Violent Students. A gorgeously unsightly, fabulously revolting head on collision between trashy druggy broken-instrument junk rock, spaced out Siltbreeze free noise splatter and slow motion doom drenched sludge, the Violent Students sound like a swimming pool full of broken amps and feeding back guitars, while a dumptruck empties its entire payload of cracked cymbals in a ear splitting golden shimmering shower, and the punk kid next door practices bass in the backyard while that weird drunk who's always hanging out on the corner is screaming nonsensically through a broken bullhorn. Imagine some sort of super group made up of the Butthole Surfers and the Jesus Lizard, but while they were sleeping, someone snuck in and gave them all full frontal lobotomies. The next night on stage you'd get something that might be a loose aproximation of the Violent Students, that is if you also dosed them with Thorazine and PCP and filled the room with automobile exhaust until the whole thing became a swirling, snarling, stumbling mess of drooling, gibbering, dim-witted, backward, besotted, imbecilic retarded BRILLIANCE! Believe it or not, we're told these guys (from Philly) toured with AQ fave folk-drone guitarist Jack Rose not long ago!
For all of the militaristic death-folk that we've championed in the past, we've actually never listed any Sol Invictus records. Well with the dissolution of World Serpant Distribution a couple years ago, the bulk of the Sol Invictus and Tony Wakeford catalogue has disappeared from our grasp. Way darker than Current 93 and expressing a Nietzchian / Odinic theatricality that occassionally is laughably over the top, Sol Invictus (as well as the bulk of Tony Wakeford's solo material) always maintains a furrowed-brow seriousness that extends into the portentious waters of death, European history, and the problems with modern society. Regardless of what you may think of Wakeford's occasionally provocative politics, Wakeford excels in his craft of songwriting, especially through his elliptical acoustic guitar finger picking which darkens melodies adapted from British folk.
The Wardrobe is a collaborative project that Wakeford has begun with Andrew Liles, who has grown in notoriety thanks to his work alongside Colin Potter and Steven Stapleton during the occasional Salt Marie Celeste performances from 2005. Entirely instrumental, Cups In The Cupboard is a creepy Victorian soundtrack, filled with sideways glancing half-melodies fragmented into eerie repetitions and oscillating forms. Sampled elements of whimsical bassoons and baroque strings become peculiar to the point of hinting at a lurking horror, best expressed through Wakeford's insistant and ominous guitar chords. Thanks to Liles' deft ability to transform commonplace sounds into uncanny, curious, and strange sounds, it's easy to make the comparison between The Wardrobe and another great Wakeford collaboration The Revenge Of The Selfish Shellfish which found Tony working with Steven Stapleton.
Limited to 500 copies.
Another fine issue of this magazine for funk/jazz/hiphop/soul crate-diggers, both armchair and active... This ish features all sorts of stuff by/for/about musicians, producers, and djs: part 2 of WP's David Axelrod feature, interviews with DJ Cash Money, Skull Snaps, Bobbi Humhrey, and the Mizzell Brothers, and more. Including of course lots of photos and vintage album covers galore (which is the thing we love the most about this 'zine!!). Lots of lost gems are pictured and discussed, including a run down on a bunch of British avant jazz and Brazilian tropicalia treasures.
The posthumous debut from (and, thus, swansong of) San Francisco's most cult black metal act, Weakling. Despite their local, non-forested, non-wintry origins, Weakling was a band capable of destroying the best Scandinavia has to offer (as we witnessed upon two occasions, when Weakling had the honor of opening the San Francisco shows by Norwegians Mayhem and Enslaved, and proceeded to make both bands look like punk rockers in comparison! Weakling were so much more epic and intense). All this without any of the ignorant posturing or hackneyed corpsepaint of their peers.
Ghastly, anguished vocals and bloodchilling keyboards combine with dual trebly buzzsaw guitars and inhuman trance inducing drumming to create an atmosphere of utter grinding grimness. Weakling draws upon '90s black metal in the Norwegian tradition (especially the raw and primitive likes of Darkthrone, Burzum and Immortal) and then creates uniquely fucked song structures of epic length (20 minutes per, in some cases).
And, like the best music, Weakling also transcends genre. In some ways, "Dead as Dreams" possesses elements that can be considered akin to the avant garde, experimental creations of the Swans, Skullflower, Steve Reich, or even Yoko Ono. Imagine an extensive, utterly mesmerizing Hermann Nitsch piece, composed for black metal band.
It's a suffocating soundscape of riffing and drone. Subterranean satanic art rock that equals metal. Nihilistic, depressive and never ending.
Featuring Josh from The (Fucking) Champs as well as drummer Lil' Sunshine from local death metallers Sangre Amado. And of course, John Gossard of...well, John Gossard. (And The Gault / Asunder / Iron Vegan.) Local black metal maniac/death rocker extraordinaire. Weakling is largely the result of his devotion to black metal dementia.
We are not engaging in baseless hyperbole when we say: this should be crowned black metal album of the year. Seriously. Essential.
There's a certain kind of voice that we're just sucker for. That frail, fragaile, about to crack keening sad boy, dusty, dusky, twangy croon. You know it as well as we do. Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy, Palace), Jason Molina (Songs:Ohia), Joel Phelps, Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Chris Grigoroff (Souled American). Take any of those voices, back them up with just the barest of instrumentation and you've got a dark and devastating, soul baring smear of ultrapersonal songcraft that just breaks your heart. A few years back, we stumbled upon a group called Timesbold, who trafficked in the same sort of dark twang as the above mentioned artists and ended up becoming a huge favorite around here. One member of Timesbold was and still is moonlighting as the sole member of Whip, taking Timesbold's sound in an even more spare and ultra personal direction. Hushed acoustic guitar, banjo, jaw harp, clanking clattery Tom Waits-y junkyard percussion, delicate brushed drumming, haunting theremin, strange ambient loops, and that anguished, whiskey soaked, sweet and sorrowful drawl. If you didn't know better you could certainly be forgiven for thinking this was some lost Palace or Songs:Ohia record. Fans of those guys, as well as groups like Rex, Calexico, Sparklehorse, Red Red Meat and like minded mournful twang will have yet another perfect record for those long and lonesome nights.
We've had this here for ages, but somehow, with all of records we have to review every couple weeks we only got around to listening to this a few days ago, and now that we have, we're really not sure how it slipped by us, being as we, like a lot of you, certainly do enjoy our daily dose of NWOUSFD. For those of you who don't know what that is, which would most likely be ALL of you since I just made it up, NWOUSFD stands for New Wave Of U.S. Free Drone and counts among it's main practitioners the Double Leopards, Skaters, Davenport, GHQ, Yellow Swans, Mouthus and the like. White Rock just so happen to be 2 parts Double Leopards and 2 parts Mouthus, the result being what you might imagine would be the perfect mix of the two. And truth be told, it's one of the best drone records we've heard in ages. But this isn't that sort of clinical ultra minimal drone, or even that organic slow moving pristine drone, no this is a ramshackle late night druggy abstract sort of drone, the kind of drone that could only come from your favorite Skullflower tape or Vibracathedral Orchestra tape or that very special tenth generation Hototogisu cassette you've had forever, left on the dash of your car in the hot sun for weeks and weeks, then left in the back pocket of your pants or in your bag or in the pocket of your jacket for the entirety of a three week road trip, during which time it gets wet, wrinkled and covered in sand only to be discoverd on your return home, where as you immediately throw it into your beat up old hand me down boombox, the one with the dying batteries and the blown speakers, you push play, using a piece of duct tape to hold down the button, and the sound that comes out is a gloriously gurgling murky morass of fuzzy, rumbling sludgy, crumbling drone. Two twenty plus minute tracks of instrumental ambience, with guitar grime spread like a thick paste over a rickety background of swirls and squalls, a foggy grey haze draped over streaks of subterranean gloom, bits of percussion surface, but it's as if they have corroded or melted to the point of being dull and worn and rounded smooth, a series of thumps and mumbles, angular but with all the jagged edges rubbed away, each beat and shuffle held under water, the rhythm bubbling up as a barely audible muted thrum, clang and clatter as heard through ears full of wet cotton. So delicate and beautiful but so ominous and creepy. There's a harsh grinding industrial edge, but it's being brodcast from a mile away, heard as echoes and reflections, each sound beginning to fray and distort as it travels over hills and through trees, obscured by clouds and falling ever so gradually earthward, each more and more indistinct, the sound dissipating into a late night soporific throb and whir, a sweetly suffocating stretch of thick nebulous sound that lays atop you like a warm wet blanket. So so nice.
First things first, if you want one damn terrific song with one catchy soaring chorus with some really pretty backing vocals and some rockin' heaviness to boot, "Time Machine" by Whysall Lane is where it's at. Hey, sometimes all you need is one song! You'll be singing along and/or humming it during the day in no time. However this Bay Area based band deliver much more on their self-titled debut! This is the current incarnation of former Versus vocalist Richard Balayut's longtime personal project. Up until recently the entity named after a street in Detroit, MI was either a solo endeavor or had an ever-changing supporting cast, but now along with the solid presence of Adam Pfahler (Blackball Records bossman and ex-Jawbreaker, J-Church) on drums and Mikel Delgado (ex-Wussom*Pow) on bass and vocals, his formerly stripped-down songs have been fleshed out into rockin' full band extravaganzas -- dark and smolderingly brooding and peppered with occasional slightly proggy or postrock-ish excursions and sweetly heartfelt sentiments. As we touched on above when Delgado chimes in with her back-up vocals, they really complement Balayut's deep world-weary delivery (also check out their song "Half Life" for more dreaminess!). Recommended.
We've always wanted to list this, it's been one of our favorite records for years, always on the iPod, and never far from the stereos of those of us into the DOOOOM. This reissue first came out way back in 1999, but it hasn't been easy to get lately, so when we found a distro that had a bunch we jumped on 'em. And it's especially timely now considering the renewed interest in all things doomy and sludgy. We bet there's even some folks out there who don't realize there was any doom pre- Corrupted / Boris / Earth / SUNNO))). Well let's go all the way back to the very early nineties, head out to Long Island and re-discover the pummelling majesty of the mighty Winter. There's not a doom band worth its stripes who wouldn't cite Winter as an influence, and one listen proves why. Crusty, downtuned sludge metal, but unlike the current crop of ultra doomsters, Winter's roots were in much more traditional thrash and doom metal as well as crusty punk. Often described as a slowed down Celtic Frost, due in no small part to the vocal delivery, Winter managed to mix elements of Black Sabbath (obviously, what doom band doesn't), Hellhammer, diSEMBOWELMENT and UK political crust band Doom into a slithery, creeping, suffocatingly dense blast of chugging guitar, pounding drums and creepy growled vocals. On closser listening their are also strange bits of organ and found sounds and bizarre vocal snippets scattered throughout and buried here and there. There are even guitar solos!! But no normal solos, no these are all spikey and twisted and serpentine, chaotic squalls of prickly squealing freakout that fit perfectly into Winter's desolate doomscapes. And speaking of guitar, this reissue also contains Winter's Eternal Frost ep, which features the bizarre (and prescient, considering the current state of ambient drone doom metal) bonus track "Manifestations 1", an extended psychedelic soundscape constructed wholly from guitar and manipulated effects. So cool. The other thing worth mentioning is the lyrics, which at the time got them a lot of attention / flak, quite cryptic for sure, but they seem to focus on saving the environment, anti-pollution, anti-technology, ecological awareness (Exit-13 anyone?) displaying their crusty roots there for sure! Fans of the new crop of doom and ultra doom would do well to take a peek at a band who truly was ahead of their time, a band who helped lay the groundwork for the sonic pummelling provided to you on a daily basis by bands like Skepticism, Esoteric, Rigor Sardonicous, Moss, Bunkur, and even Electric Wizard and Sleep, who might not even exist were it not for Winter.
We've all been loving the soft lilting new weird free hippy folk of the Feathers, who for us were a recent discovery. And we've always been big fans of J Mascis, the distorted psychedelic indie fuzz of Dinosaur Jr, but even in his stints with sludgy punk rock outift Deep Wound and behind the kit for weirdo metallers Upside Down Cross. But never in our wildest dreams did we imagine the twain would meet. But what do you know? It's either a seriously small world, or there is some not so secret bond joining the disparate music arcs of these long haired fellows. Witch is not necessarily what you might imagine a meeting of Dinosaur Jr. and the Feathers would sound like, although the frilly jackets and bell bottoms and long hair should give you a clue. This is total seventies proto metal meets sludgy groovy stoner rock. Big BIG riffs, groovy and sun baked, blown out and HEAVY. Seriously. We hear Sabbath, Saint Vitus, Pentagram, Trouble, even some Kyuss and more modern stoner/doom outfits, like Witchcraft and Dead Meadow. The vocals are drenched in reverb and are sort of soaring and whining, some definite Ozzy influence there, also at times verging on a reedy Marc Bolan/Comus folky warble. And the guitar sound, OOF! You'd be forgiven for thinking that was Mascis on lead guitar, but he's manning the drum kit here, no the guitars are fuzzy seventies metallic groove, with a guitar sound definitely reminiscent of Sub Pop drone guitar gods Rein Sanction, like Hendrix filtered through Iommi, laced with LSD, dipped in goat's blood, set in the sun to bake and of course slathered in warm distorted fuzz. But with a band like this it's all about the riffs. Everyone knows Sabbath took all the best riffs, that's why so many heavy bands have based entire careers on stealing 'em, but Witch prove that there are still some killer riffs left out there. Heavy and fuzzy enough to bear a passing resemblance to the Sabs, but weird and wooly and unique enough that they can unabashedly claim them as their own. This is definitely another one of those bands like Elope or the Want, that if you didn't know better, and were forced to guess, you could be forgive for thinking Witch were straight out of the seventies (though with maybe 'cause of J, a whif of '80s SST hardcore punk somewhere in there too). Sonically, production wise, the whole package. And while the whole record is heavy and sludgy and groovy, it's worth the price of admission alone for track 5, "Rip Van Winkle" with a riff that is one of THOSE riffs. The whole track is a stone cold classic, from THAT riff, to the crazy blown out psychedelic leads, to the bombastic drumming, the weird arrangement, the wailing vocals, it's hugely heavy, head noddingly hypnotic, head bangingly massive, but groovy and catchy, minor key melodies beneath thick waves of warm guitar fuzz, totally emotional and amazing, it's like the best Sabbath song that never was. Then there's the track right before it, "Changing", that ALSO has one of THOSE riffs, and sounds like some sort of incredible, exotic Saint Vitus/Flower Travellin' Band hybrid. Wow. And all the other songs are pretty amazing too.
We just wish that they could have come up with a name a little more original than Witch. If they were indeed dead set on some sort of Witch name, you can't go wrong adding some appropriately evil or mysterious second word to your band name, I mean, c'mon, we would have gladly taken Featherwitch or even better DINOSAUR WITCH!
This one is for fans only. You know you're a fan if you saw the words Witchfinder General above and your heart sort of skipped a beat at the thought of a Witchfinder General record you didn't know about. Witchfinder General were pretty much the only NWOBHM band to base their entire sound on Black Sabbath, thus making them pioneers prior to pretty much all doom to follow: Candlemass, Cathedral, through to Witchcraft today. This disc, recorded live in 1983, is an awesome testament to just how kick ass the 'General were. The recording quality however is not. Thus, the for-fans-only disclaimer. The band sounded great, and the songs of course are totally killer, but as with most live records recorded from the sound board, the vocals dominate, the guitars are not as loud as they should be, and the drums sometimes get lost, but like the recent Bedemon release reviewed elsewhere this list it sort of just adds to the underground vibe (though Bedemon is recorded better than this, for sure). And who gives a shit about sound quality, this is mother fucking Witchfinder General!! Live!!! In 1983!!! It sounds a little bit like actually being at the show, but maybe hearing them from the dirty bathroom beside the stage. The way all real metal was meant to be heard! Regardless, this is an amazing (re)discovery, and along with the Bedemon disc we have been in blown out lo-fi stoner fuzz doom heaven!
ULTRA LIMITED! We only have about 20 copies and this is supposedly already out of print, so act fast!
Ah ha ha ha ha! Triumphant battle-metal will never die!! Hahahaha! Gird your loins and steel your sinews and be ready to wet your sword or axe in bloody red gore, for it is Wotan who approacheth at whatever maximum volume decibel level you can conjure from your stereo, and Wotan are majestic and mighty and take no prisoners. Unlike most European "power metal", and certainly unlike most Italian power metal, Wotan's heavy metal is raw and heavy and underground, and boasts a biting guitar tone that will kill poseurs (and wimpy power metal popsters) dead. Plus, the vocals that aren't bad for an Italian (if you listen to much Italian power metal you know what we mean). They are super dramatic, though, so you have to be partial to such theatrics. Wotan's unashamed worship of Manowar pays off because this isn't jokey, they're really feeling it... and maybe can make you feel it too (it worked on us, as the beginning of this review proves). Though doubtless laughable to many, the few and proud will loft Wotan to the pantheon already occupied by such acts as Doomsword, Solstice, Brocas Helm, Sacred Steel, Thunderstorm, and Slough Feg...
We won't spend too much time on this one since we only got 20, and it's very likely there's probably WAY more than 20 of you who want one of these long out of print lil' gems.
This release is from a while back, it's a single 11 minute track, a collaboration between the Yellow Swans and Spencer Yeh of Burning Star Core. We were lucky to get -any- of these, a bit of random postal confusion is what did it. A box of 20 got lost in the mail, the band made 20 more to replace them, but then the lost box resurfaced and we managed to lay claim to all 20 of the extras! And a good thing too. This is some of the most gorgeous stuff we've heard from either / both of these outfits. Warm atonal guitar strum, angular and purposeful, mournful and minor key, drifts above a bed of skittery glitch and rumbling drones. Eventually the guitars disappear beneath a wild wooly sheet of shrieking sonic turbulence, a whirl of moaning melodies behind a thick curtain of freaked out feedback and squealing skree. Nice and noisy!
SUPER LIMITED. THESE ARE THE LAST 20 COPIES THERE ARE! SO ACT FAST!
All you need to know about Youth Group is they sound a lot like Death Cab For Cutie circa their utterly perfect debut Something About Airplanes. In fact they almost sound too much like Death Cab. But under the current circumstances, we are forced to totally embrace that, and this record, like we never want to let it go. For most of us Death Cab have been on a slow spiral downward, songs got less catchy and their sound less unique as they progressed from record to record. Transatlanticism was a brief return to form, but now they sound like just every other emo sad boy MTV band. And that's where Youth Group come in. Lilting, melancholy indie rock like we haven't heard for years. Every song is hooky and jangly and sad, and practically perfect. Shuffling simple drumming underpins strummed acoustic guitars, and reverby arpeggiated electric guitar melodies, and soaring, sorrowful vocals, sort of sad boy, a bit of indie whine, but clear and resonant and most importantly totally heartfelt and earnest. We can't imagine the sort of world where EVERY song on this record wouldn't at some point find it's way onto a mixtape. In fact this record sent us straight back to 1990 and had us wanting desperately to make mixtapes for every cute girl (or boy) we ever had a crush on or who ever broke our heart. It's exactly that sort of sound. We hear that long lost New Zealand pop sound that seems to have vanished completely (could that have anything to do with the fact that Youth Group are from Australia, just a hop skip and a jump from NZ?), early nineties college rock, that sort of Death Cab / Postal Service indie emo, a bit of Decemberists like quirkpop, some huge swelling emo pop anthems, some Pavementy angular jangle, but all wrapped up into perfect little nuggets of sweet and swoonsome indie pop. We wanted to hate this record, we truly did, we wanted to write Youth Group off as Death Cab wannabees, as some long past its shelf life indie college rock, but something made us keep listening, and now we just can stop. Some of the songs here have most definitely slipped right into our pantheon of best indie pop songs ever! Wow. Okay, then. We're gonna go make us a mix tape...
Ever thought of what it would be like to be in the middle east on a hot sweltering day with the dust, scorching sun, and history all around you while the intensity of the surroundings blasted in your ears? Well here it is! Recorded in Jerusalem in 1980 and only released as an independent cassette until now, the sounds of the zorna are rocked so furiously by Zadik Zecharia on this cd filled to overflowing with the relentless sounds of the zorna. Born in a small village in Kurdistan before moving to Israel in 1950, Zecharia has dedicated his life to playing the zorna (a traditional Kurdish instrument somewhat similar to a longer more narrow trumpet or Scottish bagpipe). This record doesn't let up for a single second. The moment it starts Zecharia is taken over by the power of the zorna and the demands that it puts on the player. You get the feeling that there is no time to pause, no time to think, no time to even take a breath. When I (Irwin) had the amazing opportunity to be in the Middle East at the turn of the millennium I remember walking through street markets, standing on the border of Syria and Israel, feeling my feet walk on so much high charged history, pain, and passion. Taking off my headphones to get overtaken by the myriad of sounds baking in the desert heat. Those moments where it all would come together and for just a moment you could be in that place and forget about hate, war, religion and politics. This record takes me back to the place more then anything I've ever heard. Like the best of snake charmer records that have grabbed you by the ankles and swept you off your feet this has that same hard hitting intensity with an undying energy that sounds as if it will never ever let up. If you have been to the store recently you have noticed that right outside there has been some nonstop construction going on in the streets and on the sidewalks. So for hours at a time we are hearing drilling and pounding and the sounds of asphalt being torn apart. When this has been playing in the store the combination of all that commotion has made for one of the most amazing high voltage drone pounding creations we have ever heard. And even on its own, this record has the ability to take you body hostage, as there is no way to listen without various parts of your body breaking out in uncontrollable movement. The dola drum which accompanies the zorna helps give a backbeat which keeps the frenzy of a fire that you never want to be extinguished. Recommended with thousands of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!etc.
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Just like the subtitle says -- it's a limited edition tour ep from everyone's favorite horror-movie obsessed synths n' drums instrumental post-rock duo from George Romero's hometown of Pittsburgh, Zombi! There's three tracks on this disc, the title track taken from their upcoming album Surface To Air (out May 2nd) plus two non-album tracks exclusive to this ep, performed soley by the non-drumming half of Zombi, Steve Moore, and his array of synths, drum machines, etc. "Digitalis" makes us look forward to the full-length, while we found the two other tracks to be quite worthwhile reasons to pick this up on their own, being the big Zombi fans we are. There's the droning and ominous but sort of angelic "Sibera" which sets churchy synthvox against a slow, steady, martial drum beat. It's like Zombi's beloved John Carpenter teamed up with funereal doom band Skepticism. The mood then changes to something much more bright and dare we say dancey with the 9+ minute "Sapphire", an electro-tinged epic that brings back memories of Miami Vice and yet gets Gobliny enough to fit in with Zombi's other material.
A few weeks ago we listed the new album Way Of The Animal Powers by Italian "extreme" jazz trio Zu, which we really dug for its lowslung skronkiness. So we should definitely also give mention to the *other* recent Zu release, How To Raise An Ox, which sees 'em teaming up with Swedish sax terror and sometime Sonic Youth collaborator Mats Gustafsson, somebody with whom any avant-jazz hipster should be familiar -- most recently Mats graced our New Arrivals list with a couple of albums from his band The Thing, famed for "covering" the likes of The White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs free jazz style! So you can imagine that he's totally on the same wavelength as the maniacs in Zu, and this team-up certainly results in some definitely heavy-duty and freaked-out "jazz". Dark and intense, this is satisfying both when the band is squawking away full bore, and also when they back off from the near Borbetomagian noise assaults and venture into moodier territory. Zu's shuddering bass and splattering drums knock out fractured, seasick grooves whilst Mats' horn doubles the ensemble's saxophone firepower. It all fits together into more than the sum of its skronk. For fans of Combat Astronomy, Flying Luttenbachers, 16-17, and the more hardcore Zorn outings.
