*Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert* *Acid Mothers Temple alert*
Of sorts... for, despite the name, this is not exactly the same Acid Mothers Temple by whom you already have a dozen albums. AMT & The Pink Ladies Blues, unlike AMT & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. or AMT & The Cosmic Inferno, doesn't feature Kawabata Makoto! Yet this is one of the best AMT releases we've heard in a while (and it's not like we didn't like Starless & Bible Black or Iao Chant From The Cosmic Inferno, either). AMT & The Pink Ladies Blues is a trio consisting of guitarist Magic Aum Gigi (whose solo LP MMMM we also have in stock, though it's not been reviewed on our site yet), drummer Mai Mai, and guitarist Tsuchy, presumably all members of the extended Acid Mothers Temple communal family.
AMT always can be counted on to indulge in an orgy of FX-overloaded heavy guitar jamming when desired, and THIS Acid Mothers Temple, even without the presence of Kawabata, definitely live up to that reputation! A goodly part of this is primitive, fucked up, bluesy, choppy, podding clangor, heavy and damaged like they're trying to outdo krautrock obscurities Zippo Zetterlink in that dep't. Opening track, the 19 minute "Sandoza Death Blues" sets the tone: utterly raw geetar/drums/electronics (Magic Aum Gigi and Mai Mai being both credited with thermin) riff-stomp, with weird drop outs and/or edits (??). Bearing a dedication to the late great Link Wray, this album knows how to "Rumble"! But they have their blissful space-out side too...
Aside from two brief interludes of ambience and effects, the tracks on this 72 minute album are all lengthy jams. The longest at over 28 minutes is called "Freaks Your Mind & Your LSD Piss Will Follow". Geez, those psychedelic punsters! Ain't that a VERY Acid Mothers Temple title, though? They liked it so much they chant it a bunch, which while unfortunate fails to detract from the enjoyable Brainticket-style bad trip they conjured with this track.
We kinda wish that they hadn't included "Acid Mothers Temple" in the band name, which could cause this to be overlooked amidst past, present and future massive AMT output. This supreme lysergically inspired rock dementia deserves its own designation! Though it also fits in perfectly with the AMT aesthetic that's for sure.
What a thrill it is to discover one of our customers quietly making music as beautiful as, if not more so, than the music we love and listen to every day! Such is the case with aQ pal Ilyas Ahmed. We listed one of his cd-r's a few weeks back, which didn't last long since we only got a handful. We also got copies of his other limited cd-r which sold out so fast we didn't get enough to list at all. Well, we didn't want to blow it again so we made sure to reserve 30 copies of this, the newest cd-r release, and again it's a breathtaking bit of beauty. Solo acoustic guitar, gentle and lilting, soft focused and dreamlike. Definitely in the spirit of John Fahey, Richard Bishop, Jack Rose and the like, but much less Appalachia, and more introspective folk. Minor key and melancholy, fingerpicked steel string guitar, candlelit and moonlit, melodies flickering like shadows, deft and smooth, but effortless and carefree. So so so so lovely!
Packaged in a cardboard sleeve, with hand screened artwork affixed to the front and back. Hand numbered, LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!
Leave Out The Sad Parts is the new cdep from this Swedish foursome who briefly went by the less fitting moniker Wichita Linemen. This U.S.-only release includes one song ("Firefly") from their fine debut album, 2005's This is Where Our Hearts Collide and two tunes previously only available on a UK 7". Amandine's sound is perhaps most characterized by the vocals of Olof Gidlof. He has one of those voices of which it's difficult to discern the gender. We believed it to be a female singer until we checked the band lineup. It sounds as though the weight of the world is preventing him from raising his voice beyond a low, muted register. Some of us thought this was quite reminiscent of '70s heavy hearts such as Bread. It's a disarmingly warm, melancholic assembly of piano, guitar, bass and drums accompanied by accordion, theremin, banjo and trumpet. The final song "Between What He's Saying And What He Regrets" is graced with some suitably sleepy fiddle... a definite highlight!
A special treat for Animal Collective fans! The audio portion of this cd/dvd combo offers up the super buoyant tune "Grass" from their last album Feels, and accompanies it with a more abstract "Fickle Cycle" and a third number titled "Must Be Treeman" which is sorta like an Animal Collective microcosm encapsulating their catchy poppiness and more bizarre musical behavior in one track.
The dvd features videos for "Grass" (European tour footage from last year presented in washed out negative), "Who Could Win A Rabbit" (a 'bad trip' starring humans in fucked-up bunny and turtle costumes), "Fickle Cycle" (the most artsy fartsily layered of the bunch -- footage shot while they were recording, grainy segments of a guy shaking his head furiously, projections on a guy's head wrapped in a sheet, hazy close-ups of an eye and with a soda pop product placement) and another live one of "Lake Damage" from a 2004 tour.
These two long time aQ faves have now been re-issued on vinyl, as a deluxe gatefold triple lp. YOWZA! Here's the skinny on these two classics, originally released way back in 2002:
Though Lawrence, Kansas based Appleseed Cast has been around since 1998 they haven't been as widely heard as their contemporaries The Get Up Kids and The Anniversary, and we would have imagined that the release of Low Level Owl volumes one and two would change all that (although it seemingly hasn't helped too much as this record came out last year and Appleseed's public profile hasn't really improved all that dramatically). Though AC was basically your run of the mill emo band (Andee's old band even played with them a few years back at a hardcore festival!), we highly doubt their most recent efforts will be confused with their mid-west emo contemporaries. Within the emo/post-hardcore spectrum Low Level Owl has much the same hue as Sunny Day Real Estate's angst-ridden How It Feels To Be Something On. Anthemic, meandering, and contemplative are definitely some of the adjectives that might describe this new sonic one two punch. Taken together Low Level Owl I and II are a much more sophisticated work than How It Feels was (and we love that album very much thank you), combining a sense of pop hook writing akin to Death Cab For Cutie or even Built To Spill, but with the added epic glory of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Radiohead or Mogwai's arrangements and production, but none of that overbearing pretension (esp. G.S.Y.B.E.'s incessant use of homeless street poets) and more a wide-eyed excitement to just make music!. This is good clean all American pop music for the emo lover who's old enough to have been drinking for at least a good ten years. The songs are filled with gorgeous melodic guitar lines soaked in spacious reverb, huge drum sounds and earnest vocals. If part of emo emanates a sense of nostalgia (Get Up Kids with Rick Springfield, Sunny Day with Christopher Cross) then we almost want to put Appleseed Cast on the same page with U2 circa Under A Blood Red Sky with many of the guitar and drum parts, but we imagine that might bum out some AQ customers so we'll refrain. Oops, too late!
The thing that really kicks a hole in our pants with these albums is the obvious love and meticulous care that went into recording them. The band apparently spent three months recording all the tracks; laying down the initial tracks and then sculpting them with additional overdubs and extensive tweaking, even miking leaves blowing along the driveway outside the studio and including it as a segue between two songs. In fact, both albums are obviously meant to be listened to in their entirety, with nary a second of silence between songs, as tracks bleed and drift into one another. Volume two begins, quite ingeniously and literally, where volume one leaves off -- with a brief reprise of the ending track. It could be us, but volume two seems to contain more Mogwai style extended jams and instrumental musical forays and experiments. So hearing the two together is pretty much perfect, the more ebullient "pop" record set up right there alongside the more drifting and pensive one. Almost everytime we play this in the store, someone buys a copy or comes to the counter to see what the heck we're playing. Fans of Death Cab, Get Up Kids, Flaming Lips, and all things emo, pop, and power pop, who missed out on the Low Level Owl a few years back should definitely have another listen and see what they've been missing!
Some of you might be familiar with Raz Mesinai from his work with the illbient/ambient dub project Sub Dub. If so you know that he has this great ability to get to eerie places in the music he creates. Growing up in Jerusalem he spent many of his formative years around Bedouins and really really latching onto their musical stylings. Then studying with dervish sheik Murshid Hassan he became a master of Middle Eastern drumming excelling in the playing of everything from bendir to zarb to darbukka. Meanwhile, he also studied extensively with folk musician and Hasidic rabbi Harov Shlomo Carlebach. All this background info really sets the stage for this outing as Badawai. The underlying tension in his homeland is no doubt a constant fuel for his music. Taking from both Palestinian and Jewish traditions he creates songs that are loaded with suspense and sizzle under the surface. With an amazing ensemble including Eyvind Kang, Marc Ribot and Mark Feldman the result is darn near flawless. It might just be a matter of moments before Mesani is snagged by a big film studio because we can't think of anyone better suited to score films filled with drama, mystery, suspense and horror. Wow.
Fans of My Morning Jacket, Sparklehorse, Songs Ohia, and Iron And Wine, you just might have another band jockeying for your affection! Mat Brooke and Ben Bridwell, two ex-members of Seattle pop band Carissa's Weird, have regrouped in a new combo that doesn't stray too far from their former band's slow, lush sound, but takes it into more of a rural setting. Some of us (staffers and customers alike) thought they were a deadringer for My Morning Jacket -- from Bridwell's high mournful vocal delivery to the duo's balance of haunting Southern gothic ballads and rockier numbers. For a full box of tissues example of the former, check out the final song "St. Augustine". But whereas MMJ blanket their shadowy melancholic recordings in cavernous cathedral reverb, Band Of Horses apply a lighter coat -- their sun-drenched guitars countering the heavy-heartedness of the vocals. Really really really good!
Two of the three killer Battles eps (C and B) on a single import cd (note: both eps are still available separately) from this far out post Don Cab post Helmet post-prog-jazz-mathrock-whatthefuck-supergroup! Here's what we had to say about the two eps when we first reviewed them a while back:
EP C:
This is one pedigreed post-rock combo here! Battles consists of Ian Williams (Don Caballero, Storm And Stress), Tyondai Braxton (son of jazz genius Anthony and solo artist in his own right), John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk) and Dave Konopka (Lynx). These gents have joined forces to tangle their guitar strings, various drum implements, and electronic gadgetry into a big knot that might seem loose but is probably really tight if you were to try and unravel it. And while their compositions might be 'difficult', listening to this is not. Battles sounds like a post rock band (a la Don Cab or Lynx) playing the music of Conlon Nancarrow on Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research equipment. Or Gershon Kingsley making math rock. Weird, complex, delightful.
EP B:
Battles seems to have a thing for EPs. Well, why not? Might be the best format for their brand of attention-span sapping math rock. And you do get a full half-hour here, filled out with these five tracks of advanced instrumental action. This band -- featuring (ahem, selling points here) Ian Williams from Don Caballero/Storm And Stress, Tyondai "Son of Anthony" Braxton, John Stanier of Helmet/Tomahawk and Lynx's Dave Konopka -- are pros at making impressively complicated yet undeniably enjoyable post-rock music, as lively as it is listenable (which we mean in a good way). Often hectic but never harsh. It's as if these guys are taking King Crimson's early '80s comeback classic Discipline and giving it a fractured, abstract and electronic makeover. Venturing into totally deconstructed Starfuckers-ish territory, the twelve minute "BTTLS" might be the highlight, or at least the most abstract track on here by far... but the whole B EP is a fine dose of Battles for their quickly growing legion of fans.
DOOM HISTORY HERE FOLKS! And not just that, it's a fantastic album. Ok, you know something is up when almost EVERYONE here at AQ absolutely loves a doom metal album. Not just the regular metal heads (Andee, Allan, Jason, Lauren) but also Jim and Cup too. Indeed, Cup's two cents for this review is this: "fucking awesome!"
So what's all the fuss about Bedemon? Well some of you may be familiar with the band Pentagram from Maryland, who have about a 30+ year history, going on 40 in fact. Well Bedemon are essentially an obscure but very worthwhile footnote to Pentagram's history, being the "solo" recording project of original '70s Pentagram guitarist Randy Palmer, the majority of this recorded circa 1973-74 with a few tracks from a 1979 Bedemon session as well. They never played out, or even released any records. Bedemon were more of a practice room, basement-recording project that involved Palmer and friends, including the other members of Pentagram, most significantly the uniquely talented vocalist Bobby Liebling who sings on all of these cuts. It was just a way for Palmer to get his own songwriting down on tape, stuff that wasn't recorded by Pentagram. It's totally in the same vein as Pentagram though, if anything MORE dark and doomy than Pentagram's '70s output. Very heavy, and heavily Black Sabbath influenced, also with echoes of Blue Cheer, Randy Holden's Population II, and Iggy & The Stooges (the track "Time Bomb" is very Stoogey, in a way similiar to Pentagram's "Last Days Here"). And for '73, this is definitely about as heavy as it gets, Sabbath and Pentagram themselves excepted. There's so many great tracks on here, each one more sorrowful and wrought with doomful emotion than the next, all of 'em throbbing and (awesomely) distorted. Yes, the quality of these rehearsal tape recordings is downright grungey and murky, but in our opinion that isn't a distraction nor a detraction. In fact, it only makes this better, totally capturing that spirit and raw energy of jamming in the garage for your own enjoyment. And it also sounds doomier that way too. Hands down, Randy Palmer wrote some of the best Pentagram songs, and many of these are just as good. Some of his riffs absolutely lay to waste those of his contemporaries. Just imagine if Palmer had decided to promote his doom skills rather than keep them for the most part to himself. Holy shit. At least we have this, one of the best "lost" albums ever uncovered in the realm of heavy, underground music.
Sadly, Palmer died in a tragic car accident just a few years ago, so the official release of this material at long last is also something of a tribute to his memory. Some of this stuff has been bootlegged before, but this legit release has been done with the blessings of Randy's survivors and the input of the other Bedemon musicans. There's even a Wes Benscoter cover painting based on Palmer's own hand-sketched ideas, as well as lots of photos, a Bedemon history written by Palmer before he was killed, and some very fascinating, detailed, and heartfelt liner notes from fellow Bedemon/Pentagram bandmate Geof O'Keefe.
Essential to all true fans of Pentagram, and also to anyone into heavy '70s Sabbathy psychedelic garagey proto-metal!!
The thing with Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel, is everything he puts out is great. Really. There are very few bands we can say that about. And even fewer who have such a ridiculously extensive catalog of releases. So what is it that makes one record worthy of Record of the Week status? Well, to be quite honest, almost any of the BCM records -could- be a record of the week, but every once in a while, BCM offer up something -really- special. And as much as we totally love all things Birchville and love to immerse ourselves in their (actually, his) blissed out ambient drone ragas, we can't help but love the fact that lately, BCM mainman (only man?) Campbell Kneale has developed a thing for metal, even proudly wearing a Darkthrone T on his recent US tour. Better late than never we say. The first evidence of this new found metallic leaning, was the launching of a new label (Kneale owns and operates the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label) called Battlecruiser, a series of limited 3" cd-r's chronicling a weird sect of underground metal, mostly made by NZ noise / drone guys who had also caught the metal bug (two new Battlecruiser releases get reviewed elsewhere on this list). One of the first Battlecruiser releases was by an outfit called Black Boned Angel, which just so happened to BE Campbell Kneale, and was a massive pummelling sludgy black hole of SUNN-like dirge metal. Recently re-released on cd and reviewed again on the AQ list, everyone here could not get enough of Kneale's weird drifting almost ambient take on blackened metal. Fans of Earth and SUNN and all that sort of slow motion doom definitely found a new band to love. Little did we expect that Kneale's metal would leak on over into his main project, but it has, and we couldn't be happier. The first three tracks on Chi Vampires are classic BCM, gorgeous ambient prog, like a blissed-out take on Goblin's creepiest horror film interludes, with slowly drifting swaths of thick warm sonic swirl, sun dappled and dreamily indistinct, but also slightly ominous. Completely epic and the sort of music that either rocks you to sleep, or puts you in a trance, sending you on a trip through your inner senses, dizzying and mesmerizing. Those tracks alone could have had us pushing for a BCM record of the week, at last. But then the final track "Chi Vampires" hits, and it hits hard. Huge guitar riffs, not processed guitar drones, but ACTUAL RIFFS, bulldoze and crush all in their path, massive and intense, ultra low, and ultra heavy, with haunting heavily reverbed chanting offering the only counterpoint. This is like SUNNO))), but sped up to say 18 or 19 rpm, and with actual melodies, and the chanting, so creepy, like a drone metal ritual being performed at the bottom of a massive cavern, riffs filling the room with thick low end, making it hard to breathe, hard to see, the chanting distracting you only enough to maybe worry about escaping with your life, making it to the surface without being sucked into the blackness. The riffs eventually drift off, as the mysterious makers of these sounds trudge slowly back to the center of the earth, chanting as they go, the reverb of the cave turning the chants into indistinct vocal blurs, until they too fade into blackness, and you're left dazed, unable to move, staring into the void. So intense and haunting and heavy and utterly amazing!
The newest in the frustratingly limited Latitudes series. Former contributors have included the Grails, Shit & Shine, Will Whitmore, Ginnungagap and Ariel Pink (don't bother asking, they are all long gone). Here we have the Sun City Girls' Sir Alan Bishop, in his solo guitar Improvika mode. Very much in the spirit of the current American Primitive / neo Appalchia sound, exploring similar territory as Jack Rose, Stephen Basho-Jungans, Charlie Schmidt and of course John Fahey, but on these improvised tracks, Bishop injects a healthy dose of flamenco which is sort of surprising. Not that Bishop isn't well versed in various musics of the world, he most definitely is as any number of SCG records will attest to, but it still sounds a little surprising in this context, but the result is truly gorgeous. Moody and emotional, dark and dense, dreamy and lyrical. Just Bishop and a steel string guitar unfurling dense tangles of intricate fingerpicking, as well as slow contemplative melodies, all rich with Spanish flavor. Occasionally Bishop goes for an Eastern raga like vibe instead, and ends up sounding closer to UK guitarist James Blackshaw or Rose at his most drone-y. So so lovely indeed!
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert. The cover has a breathtaking silver foil stamped embossed frontpiece and each copy is hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, about 50 of which made it here. So you know what that means!
Blight was a short lived and misunderstood band that came out of the vibrant early 80's Midwest (more specifically Michigan) hardcore scene along with better know groups like Negative Approach, Necros, Crucifucks, Meatmen, The Fix, etc. Blight was made up of former members of The Fix, along with Tesco Vee of The Meatmen doing vocals here as well as "playing" trumpet! Yeah, these guys all held Ph.D's in "Hardcore 101" but Blight was about branching out from what had become a confined attitude/scene and thus the racket these guys created together as a band was more akin to Flipper or the Germs or Throbbing Gristle. There's even a bit of NY No-Wave going on with all the repetition and discordance and skronk that that entails. During the time Blight was active they released one 7" EP and played out only a handful of times. 23 years later, Touch and Go finally does this band justice in releasing this long lost (and hard to find) EP along with five unreleased songs from that same session, a pair from an earlier demo and the disc closes with a short live set from 1982 in Detroit. Fucking killer! Anyone into Butthole Surfers, Stickmen With Rayguns, Scratch Acid, Flipper and all of those bands who trafficked in gloriously abrasive thud and chaos should hear this.
Great packaging and extensive liner notes help make this exactly how all posthumous releases SHOULD be, an amazing, well researched, perfectly assembled reissue designed to preserve the past and expose folks today to a band who should definitely not be forgotten.
A truly unique band that stood out in a sea of clones even back in the day...
The opening song of this SF band's first cd finds them crunching out a rough'n'tumble garage pop with lots of snare drum that sounds a lot like Violent Femmes... but if Gordon Gano were replaced by more of a boyish crooner. The next track "Pipe Down!" does just that (bring things down a bit, that is!) as does the third song. These lower-key tunes which make up the better part of the album (and which gives you opportunity to catch hold of the lyrics), call to mind quirky storytellers such as Jonathan Richman, Microphones' Phil Elverum or Morrissey even. A promising indie pop debut!
Fourth in this new series of super limited aural oddities, all of them amazing and sonically all over the map, from black metal (Throne Of Kataris, elsewhere on this list) to doom drone (past Record of the Week Hjarnidaudi) to gorgeously gloomy chamber music (Amber Asylum) to this, the first release, as far as we can tell, from epic Finnish post rock prog metal mavens Blueprint Human Being. That's right you heard us, FINNISH. As in from Finland! So all you Finnish music freaks best not dawdle, as you will definitely want to get your hands on this. Especially if you're partial to the sort of Krauty drone rock of Circle and the like, although that element is only one tiny aspect of BHB's sound. There's lots of post rocky drift, a sort of proggier Tarentel maybe, but then the horns kick in and we're in serious King Crimson territory. But there's also lots of fuzzy metal guitar wrapped around jagged loping Slintish rhythms, with strange sung / spoke vocals, all blending in some weird way that reminds us as much of Ved Buens Ende as Crimson. Some parts have the horns moving to the foreground, the music taking on a very jaunty garden party sort of feel, which makes us think of some damaged, sort-of-metal Penguin Cafe Orchestra or some bizarre Japanese what-the-fuck jazzdrone outfit or the stranger Circle side projects like Ratto Ja Lehtisalo. A bit schizophrenic for sure, but in a good way, a super dynamic sort of seasick meander through blasting metallic post rock, far out quirky prog, lilting almost RennFaire acoustic breaks, and blissed out repetitive krautrock. Be sure and stick around for the end of the final 11+ minute track, after a stretch of silence, comes a dizzying blast of freaked out psychedelic noise, all grinding loops, snippets of earlier songs, and all sorts of head spinning post production fuckery. Groovy laid back post-kraut-rock slathered in thick swirls of distortion and fuzzy effects, obscured by tape dropouts and strange damaged feedback, the whole thing warped and warbly as if broadcast through a thick cough syrup haze. So cool.
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
Yaaay, a new album from our dear pal Mr. Casiotone For The Painfully Alone (aka Owen Ashworth)! Seems like it was only yesterday that his last full length Twinkle Echo was released, but it was actually 2003. Wow, time sure flys! Anyhoo, Etiquette picks right up where that album left off, even in the cover art department with another lovely, enchantingly odd painting by his pal Heidi Anderson. Tho' Ashworth might portray a perpetually bashful, lovelorn teenager in his lyrics and stage presence, the musical manner in which he conveys his heartfelt confessions and sentiments has blossomed and flourished with each subsequent album. Yes, his beloved trademark bedroom-y lo-fi quality of bittersweet valentines being played out on thriftstore-scored toy electronic keyboards still surfaces here and there, but the compositions have gotten increasingly ambitious. Indeed this is his most grand (but still unmistakably CFTPA) to date. No longer a one man band (or at least not for the time being), he has a bunch of friends joining in the musicmaking fun which certainly contributes a good deal to the breadth of the recordings. Lots of different voices singing and playing a much more varied array of instruments.
One thing tho' that we must take issue with is that while there are times and places when the phrase "menstrual blood" should be mentioned, a Casiotone song ("Love Connection") seems like the last place you'd want to hear it... sung. It sure made us hit the brakes and go, "Whoa!" Don't get us wrong, we're not squirmish, but when we spend the better part of a CFTPA album getting up to 'holding hands' speed, it's a bit of a nasty jolt to be reminded of that time of month. Maybe they should've taken a cue from the same song's later lyrics "Some things are best left unsaid"? Perhaps somewhat unfortunately that's also the album's final song. Ah well, just press 'play' once more. You'll be right back to the beginning again, and all will be well.
There's two kinds of post rock, the sort of jazzy, drifty, Tortoise-y modern Krautrock bliss of bands like, well, Tortoise, and To Rococo Rot, Tarentel, all shuffling and dreamy and shimmery, and then there's this. A churning, chops heavy, rhythmic and textural workout. Big BIG drums, even when the surrounding music is muted and subtle, the drums are still pounding and deftly navigate dense tangled time signatures and stretches of full on pounding rock, The guitar parts are slippery and noodly, often supplying texture more than melody. A lovely abstract counterpoint to the booming big drum framework. French duo Chevreuil travel a similar sonic post rock path on Sport (a reissue of a 2000 release) as outfits like Dazzling Killmen, Shellac, Fuehler, Lynx and the like but an ultra stripped down version of any of those. All instrumental, thick and propulsive, each track is a dizzying swirl of proggy guitar filligee drifitng like clouds of multi colored dust around the whirling dirvish drums, an impossibly octopoidal, solid as a rock, pounding pummeling percussive crush. All that said, this will still most assuredly appeal to fans of Tortoise and other likeminded post rockers, but it's a lot weirder and heavier and more fucked up sounding. A bit like Tortoise's bad ass little post rock brother who carries a switchblade and runs with the wrong crowd and hangs out on the corner in the bad part of town and can't be bothered to write songs or listen to jazz, opting instead to put some spikes and studs on his Members Only jacket, and turning the drums WAY up and just sort of wandering aimlessly, seeing where the music might take him. Or better yet, imagine, Hella or Lightning Bolt played at 16rpm, the spastic splattery drumming becoming a solid chugging rhythm, the suquirrelly squiggly guitar freakouts, transformed into shimmering melodyscapes and near ambient guitar swirl.
Awesome surreal moldy ground beef cover art too!
Finalnd's mighty masters of metallic hypno drone rock return, with yes, another limited LP only release, and their obsession (one of many obsessions they have) with Southern Rock has finally reached critical mass. Not so much musically, although there are subtle hints here and there, as visually and conceptually. This set, recorded live on Brian Turner's radio show on WFMU when Circle were in the states last time is a monster. Two side long tracks, combining the metallic leanings of their later records, with the murky propulsiveness of their earlier records, as well as their droney improvised abstract side (most noticable on the LP only Mountain). It's kind of remarkable how all of Circle's disparate musical personalities fit so well together. But before we get to the music, let's talk about the sleeve. And the Southern Rock. The cover features a knotty pine background, riddled with bullet holes, two crossed pistols above the band name. Very Sergio Leone... The reverse side features a band photo seemingly branded into the wood, with Circle donning cowboy hats and sombreros, whooping it up like that last freeze frame in an episode of Bonanza (maybe it was CHiPs, but Bonanza makes more sense here). Then there's Brian Turner's eyewitness account of the musical showdown that occurred when Circle showed up at WFMU to record their set. Woe was the pasty British garage band that felt Circle's wrath. Broken glass and tobacco spit figure prominently. And let's not forget the Confederate flag on the LP label.
Thankfully (or maybe not, some might be thinking) this Southern Rock doesn't filter all the way down to the music. Instead we've got more of that Circular genius we just can't get enough of.
Side one begins as an abstract soundscape of spacey affected riffs, sort of blurry and drifty, above strange mumbled mutterings and what sounds like alien scat singing. The vibe is strangely dubby and Middle Eastern sounding. Eventually a warm wash of woozy distorted guitars builds into a monstrous swell of sound, warm and thick and sort of heavy, while buried beneath is a burbling cauldron of electronic squiggles and gurgling vocal sputters. Out of nowhere, like a beam of sunlight with a small flock of faeiries flitting about, comes a strange dreamy drift of almost rennaisance faire sounding festive folk, which dissipates quickly into a swirl of speaking-in-tongues vocals and insect like electronics before drifting off.
Side two is a bit darker, with faux throat singing over ominous psych sludge riffing like classic Circle but slowed way down. Groovy and dark, peppered with subtle tribal percussion. Weirdly enough, that weird dreamy stretch of faerie flecked folk sunniness that surfaced briefly on side A, shows up again here in a slightly different form, and disappears just as quickly, returning to a VERY Circular propulsive groove. Drums skitter instead of pound, while a guitar drifts and stutters, sounding a bit like the guitar line from the Smiths' "How Soon Is Now" but way more druggy and psychedelic!
So we'll all have to keep waiting for the inevitable, that record they keep threatening us with, when Circle finally become a bizarre krautrock psychrock dronemetal version of the Marshall Tucker Band, but for now, just crack open that Jack Daniels, throw those boots up on the desk (careful with those spurs!), pull the brim of your ten gallon down over your eyes, put a little pinch between your teeth and gums, turn it up and drift off...
Brilliant, shockingly brilliant! Herewith we present to you what we can only say is the headbangingest record yet from our Finnish friends Circle (containing also, paradoxically, a couple of their most gentle numbers). The Circle concept is one of repetition, and while ALL their records are in fact great, one can find some of them to be a lot like another. So it's nice that this new Circle really goes out on a limb, with so much success, while totally managing to remain Circle to the core. How do they do it?
The album opens with "Nopeuskuningas", seemingly Circle's answer to Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law"! Down and dirty hard rock riffing (cyclic and repetitive in the trademark Circle way, of course) with keyboardist/vocalist Mika Ratto -- a relatively recent, and significant, addition to Circle's lineup on their past three or four discs -- simultaneously channeling screechy metal gods Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Klaus Meine (Scorpions), and Brian Johnson (AC/DC), but in an indeciperable, or Finnish at least, babble. It stretches to nearly eight minutes after the space-rock effects and swirly keys kick in. But then, when you think this is going to be The Heavy Metal Circle album, track two gets all mellow and pretty and folked-out, even MORE unlike any previous Circle we've ever heard. Acoustic guitar, and lots of la la la's from Mika. Unbelievable -- and lovely. But then the next song triggers the dormant motorik Circle drum pulse, overlaid with heavy guitars and vocal histrionics akin to the opening track. Plus new wavey/Axel F keyboards. Hit material here! Following that, track four, "Vaanen Valtiatar", heads back to the forest glade where Circle do that hippy jamming again a la track two, but more plugged-in, turning into a spacey jam session. And then, as you might now expect, it's back to the mosh pit for the monstrous rifferama of the next song, "Kylan Suurin Miekka". Evil stuff. This is True Circular Metal indeed. From then on the album maintains the heaviness, getting spacier and spacier though, culminating in the droning fifteen-minute "Lokki".
Wow. An amazing album, making effective use of Mika's unusual/unique vocals -- he's developed some sort of exotic (Middle Eastern? American Indian?) meets metal style, delivered in a manner as over-the-top as the most insane Italian prog of the '70s. Throw in some violin and moog and of course all the heavy metal moves, and you've got a bizarre blend of, uh, Yoko Ono, Hawkwind, Judas Priest, and of course Circle's krautrock forerunners Neu! and Can.
While "Sunrise" is in many ways a departure for Circle, it can also be seen as an album harking back to their hard-rockin' roots (they've nodded that way on the guitar-heavy "Prospekt" and Jussi's Kyuss-ish Pharoah Overlord side project, but you've got to also remember that the very first Circle album, "Meronia", drew quite a few comparisons to Helmet at the time). Recommended.
Russian sound artist Ivan Pavlov aka COH returns with a new album of ultra minimal, ultra pristine electronic ambience, a tribute to recently passed Coil mainman Jhonn Balance, who was a good friend and frequent collaborator of Pavlov's. COH, for us, is best when Pavlov is manipulating organic sounds into warm rich swells of sound, most notably on the LP-only Seasons (now out of print). But while Above Air is a much more clinical affair, Pavlov manages to somehow imbue each song with all manner of warmth and emotion. He may be a master of the glitch and the click, and the digital squelch, he proves once again that he can create art, feeling and emotion with the slightest of sounds. Above Air is a subtle, dark, contemplative mix of whispery sine waves, distant chimes, speaker static and white noise, tolling bells, gently ringing chimes, an ultra subtle glitch here and there, creating fetal rhythms, that never quite mature, remaining just another layer of sound, haunting electronic drones that waver and drift as if being broadcast from afar, pulsing chopped melodic fragments, all deftly woven into a dark but somehow surprisingly sanguine elegy for Balance. The whole record is minimal, but active and alive, subtle, but infused with disarmingly complex arrangements and dark emotion, a bit like the best Coil records, which we're sure is exactly the sort of memorial Pavlov intended.
A perfect ease-you-into-the-day kind of album. Put this one on Sunday morning when you've got nothing to do but lounge around, and don't quite feel like getting out of your pjs just yet. The SF trio of Cory Combs, John Hollenbeck and Dan Willis offer up breezy mellow jazz centered around a lilting drowsy saxophone. A generous 17 tracks. Very nice!
What has to be our favorite British pagan folk psychedelic prog rock album ever (in other words, quite possibly our favorite album ever, period!) is finally available again on cd, and in a gorgeous Japanese mini-lp gatefold sleeve to boot, with the disc itself all state-of-the-art remastered, sounding great.
THIS RECORD SCARES US. Hearing it is like stumbling upon some forbidden ancient ritual that scares you to death. You stand paralyzed, too afraid to look away. Comus's singular, frightening sound and violently poetic lyrics have kept them from taking their rightful place alongside Fairport Convention, Incredible String Band, and the rest of Britain's psychedelic folk royalty.
And we don't write the words psychedelic folk royalty without a certain amount of trepidation. At first glance Comus would seem to fit squarely in the Ren-Faire camp: bongos, flute, oboe, 12-string guitar, and no drummer. But never has the whole of a band so completely defied its parts; their sound is as mesmerizing as it is repulsive. Upon the record's initial release, one British music journalist wrote that she "didn't get past the first track, which sounded like a cross between a frenzied version of the witches chorus from Macbeth, and Marc Bolan being squeezed to death." Funny thing is, that's a fairly apt description. Tales of murder, rape, insanity, and witchcraft unfold amid a swirling abyss of seething acid folk. Squalls of shamanistic wailing jut uncomfortably from serene, tranquil melodies; guttural growls battle a delicate angelic chorus, echoing the violent struggle of the lyrics. Flutes, hand drums, acoustic guitars, and a violin clamber atop one another in a chaotic melee, creating a pagan folk not unlike that of The Wicker Man soundtrack gone totally bonkers.
Although the band has been resolutely ignored by mainstream music fans, the press, and the majority of the underground, a small rabid following has kept a reverential vigil beside the corpse of Comus.
Nurse with Wound cronies Current 93 modeled their '90s sound after '70s British folk, Comus especially. They even went so far as to cover "Diana," Comus's only single, on their album Horsey. Swedish progressive black metallers Opeth have always been outspoken about their love of Comus. Their acclaimed 1998 album was called My Arms, Your Hearse, after the lyrics of "Drip Drip" (on First Utterance). And it's not surprising. This record is so powerful and frightening and totally devastating even 30 years later.
And never would I have thought that a record as old as me, with flutes and bongos fer chrissakes, could be so absolutely malevolent, both sonically and lyrically! But like I said, this record scares us. And we know you like to be scared too!
We were hoping that this new cd edition would include the two bonus tracks from from an early single that the Italian vinyl reissue included as a bonus 12", but such is not the case. Oh well. Still ranks as one of our all time favorites.
Recorded live at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in '95 this was the reunion of one of minimalist's great torch holders Tony Conrad along with one of experimental rocks greatest bands Faust. When they originally teamed up at a German filmmakers request, they made Outside The Dream Syndicate over three days together in 1971. A landmark record that took Conrad's affinity for building drones mixed with a rhythm section that added intense pulsations and textures to the sounds. While apparently Faust didn't really remember the recording sessions (what were they on?) they met up only two more times since the original recording to perform the piece live. This show was the third and last time they performed together and at this show they were also joined by the helping hands of Jim O'Rourke (is there a band he hasn't played with?). And wow! What an amazing show to have been at. With his La Monte Young cap on tightly, Conrad masterfully created a piece that no matter when it was produced evokes such a strong physical reaction. This is raw, building, blistering, pounding, droning brilliance! The way momentum keeps building works its way into your body and about half way into the piece you can't stop from getting completely wrapped up in it. The droning violin, the dirty percussion, the gut wrenching passion underneath and above it all! It's amazing how in these sounds you can hear so much of a handful of contemporary AQ favorites: Godspeed You Black Emperor's explosive drama, The Dirty Three at their most wild and rocking, Swans/Angels Of Light's blistering poignancy, but it all ends up seeming sorta like little league in comparison to the blood and guts that oozes out of this performance. As always Table Of The Elements appropriately package the cd with the care it deserves including some nice short conversations with Conrad and two great stickers of Conrad's face. Absolutely recommended!
We heard a lot about this before we got it in which fired up our curiousity just a little bit. Like it says in the title, this obscure post-mod trio with the cool name has been trumpted as the "first punks" to come outta Blighty, kicking out the jams with an antisocial sneer and snarl long before the Sex Pistols and the Damned and all the rest blew up in '77. And on the strength of the seven tracks here recorded circa 1969-1971, they were indeed pretty darn punk and ahead of their time (at least, in terms of bands who made it into the recording studio). Loud fast rules with these guys, most of the tracks being uptempo rockers, though the lumbering "Love Fighter" will be welcomed by all '70s proto-metal lovers, and supports the argument that these guys are just as much a proto-metal outfit as proto-punk, being something that fans of Buffalo, Toad, Budgie, Nazareth or Black Sabbath would enjoy. Indeed, some of the riffing on here might quite well remind you of Sabbath, and we weren't surprised to learn that they'd opened for the likes of UFO and Atomic Rooster. Metal? Punk? Same dif back then really. The distortion, fuzz, and 'raw power' attitude on display should qualify 'em as pioneers in either camp. Crushed Butler were heavier than the Pink Fairies, anyway, and that (awesome) band is already rightly heralded as punks before their time. So we'd say that the legend of Crushed Butler is hereby confirmed... alongside the Fairies and Third World War and a few others in England (and the Stooges in the States, of course, and some European freaks too) they trashed the happy hippy scene of the day for something uglier, grottier and more dangerous.
This digipack cd (a slightly expanded version of a 10" released a few years back) boasts in-depth liner notes and archival graphics. There's just two drawbacks: it's only 21 minutes long, and that's only because of the inclusion of an alternate version of what's probably our least favorite song as a bonus track. BUT it's 21 minutes that anyone into metal/punk/hard rock history should find quite a blast.
The third cd long-player to come from these local sharp-dressed rock and roll revivalists about town, The Cuts. Yay! Every time we've seen 'em play, they've been great -- but just a little bit different from the last time. At one gig they'll come across all Cars-y, keyboards to the fore. The next, it's guitar-heavy rawkin' with an early '70s Alice Cooper vibe. Ya never know quite what to expect, except that they're always impressive and a real authentic rock n' roll good time. Just like this album. We dug albums one and two, but number three might be the best yet. It's like some amazing power pop band from the early '70s that you somehow never heard of, whose album just got reissued and makes you go, wow, they just don't make 'em like they used to. But they do, and The Cuts are doin' it. From Here On Out sees them honing their craft (and they ARE careful craftsmen, with so much attention to songwritiing, arrangement, and performance), doing their influences proud, from '60s garage to west coast ballroom psych to new wave pop. There's out-and-out guitar rock action here as well as lovely, pretty pop moves too, with vocal harmonies and all. Recommended.
Fela Kuti lovers take note! This is one of the best post-Fela Kuti inspired Afro beat records of the last decade for sure. Originally released in '98 just a year after Fela passed away, this was sadly the one and only album released by The Daktaris. Melding Afro beat, soul and funk with total perfection these are songs that make you walk with better posture and with total purpose. They pay homage to their heroes with amazing renditions of James Brown's "Give It Up Turnit Loose" as well as the aforementioned Fela Kuti's "Upside Down." Like Antibalas this was a group carrying the flame that Fela lit with total devotion and a commitment to his spirit. Polyrhythms that will make your body shake, your heart race, and you'll be smiling all over. Good stuff!
Whoa...what a great find this is! Being a big fan of early seventies/heavy folk rock and of course the Incredible String band (who Dr. Strangely Strange most resembles upon first listen), we just can't get enough of this strangely strange record! There's the surrealistic multi-instrumentalism similar to that of ISB (and whimsy not unlike Bonzo Dog Band) but Dr. SS offers something moodier, too. With layered acoustic and electric guitar and lots of harmonized vocals, some songs sound almost like the Velvet Underground's Loaded record (which, incidentally, came out the same year). And with a young Gary Moore (who went onto Thin Lizzy fame) there's lots of solid guitar soloing going on. A nice bonus is the elaborate die-cut packaging made to look like the original LP artwork. Very recommended!
The black ice continues to spread, a grim black metal glacier slowly enveloping all with ears to hear. The West Coast black metal contingent's influence grows steadily, until one day hell walks the earth. Sorry, getting carried away. If the above scene had some sort of hierarchy, Leviathan would undoubtedly be the king. Xasthur would be a prince, or perhaps another king vying for supreme power. Crebain would be a knight, sent to slay all who shall dare oppose, and then Draugar, well Draugar would be the kings ex-vizier, locked in a dark dank dungeon, insane and murderous and demented, from years of no light, eating bugs, lack of sleep, and staring endlessly into blackness. Draugar is definitely the black sheep of this already black family, imbuing his home recorded evil, with the grim buzz of classic black metal, but with a healthy dollop of damged brilliance a la Benighted Leams, Lurker Of Chalice, or Striborg. Buzzy and black, droning and depressive, Draugar more than holds his own amidst the blackened elite, but somehow, everything he touches turns to what-the-fuck? Gentle clean arpeggiated clean guitar melodies are way up in the mix, layed atop a sluggish stream of indistinct guitar fuzz and Whitehouse-ish vocals. Sounding a little like somebody taped Darkthrone over a Slint record on an old C90 that had been in their back pocket for a month. Loping midtempo buzz over buried angelic choruses, like Morricone's The Mission performed by Graveland. Occasional ambient breaks, where guitar melodies wander aimlessly across barren soundscapes of distant rumble and creepy shimmer. Sometimes the riff seems to just splinter apart and what was moments earlier a galloping black metal juggernaut, has become a seasick drone. contructed from fuzzy almost melodies and vocals so distorted and so affected they sound like bursts of radio static. As always, heavy and grim and completely fucked!
The work of John Duncan should need no introduction, as he has long been one of Aquarius' favorite sound artists; however, Paolo Parisi is something of a mystery to us. An Italian sculptor, painter, and installation artist, Parisi commissioned Duncan to compose a sound component for one of Parisi's installation. The themes behind Parisi's installation for plastic tubes and eviscerated cardboard sentry houses are far too convoluted to recount within this review; but in a shocking display of Aquarian restraint, we'll merely mention that the Panopticon, Hitchcock, Deleuze, and Duchamp all get name checked throughout the book's text celebrating Parisi's installation. The CD is all Duncan; and it's well worth the price of admission. Duncan has long been known for his use of shortwave radio sounds as the springboard for his psychologically intense compositions; but slowly, he has been introducing the human voice into his pantheon of sound sources. For Conservatory, voice is the only source he is using, in particular he's amplifying and stretching the gasps, wheezes, and hisses that occur during the act of breathing. Through his manipulation of these sounds, Duncan cultivates a vast network of gaping blasts of air that collectively build into a ghastly, frigid drone emanating from a unscrupulous cryrogenics laboratory. Another epochal release from Mr. Duncan!
Bundled up in their ash grey wool overcoats, The Editors enter the overcast world that's already inhabited by the dour hearts of Interpol and She Wants Revenge, and their British forefathers Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen. How you feel about the Editors depends on how you feel about another band that sounds -dangerously- like their peers. Eyes closed you'd be hard pressed to convince yourself that this wasn't Interpol. The songs aren't nearly as immediately catchy, but definitely cut from the same cloth. The EXACT same cloth. The Back Room is definitely executed with skill and aplomb but we'd almost always take originality and spirit and creativity over musicanship or chops. But how about if you just want more of something that sounds like something that sounds like something you like? Then this might very well hit the spot.
We'd been hearing about this band for ages. But had no real idea what to expect. This was most definitely not it.
Everlovely Lightningheart are a 3 piece (or 14 piece if you count all the contributors) ensemble, whose debut has somehow found its way to Hydra Head imprint Double H Noise Industries. That distinction is most definitely important in this case, so all you Hydra Head geeks expecting more Isis / Pelican / Old Man Gloom can relax, sit back, throw on the headphones and prepare for a distinctly unheavy, but beautifully fucked up sonic experience.
It's one slow growing 40 minute track, that is all over the map sonically, never getting heavy, in fact there are no RIFFS here, this is abstract free noise, but most of the noise is of the subtle subdued variety. ELLH would most certainly be at home on Kranky, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, PseudoArcana, or any one of a hundred microlabels who have been unfurling gentle abstract soundscapes.
Everlovely cover a lot of ground in 40 minutes, most of the time is spent drifting lazily through slow shifting fields of ethereal sound, ever lovely indeed. A reverb drenched piano plays some sort of dirgey ballad before dissipating into chimes and tinkling bells, which are quickly smoothed out into an abstract lowercase drift. Soon buzzing steel strings and squealing sine waves join the fray, becoming some sort of otherworldly Appalachia. The rest of the record is like strolling through little sonic vignettes, from clattery percussive workouts, to lilting dreamlike melodies, to some fuzzy muted metallic guitar, to soundscapes of keening strings and delicate chimes, it's all quite beautiful, an incredibly compelling listen, but definitely the kind of soundwork that requires the listener to -really- listen to truly appreciate everything that is going on. Sometime it's foolish to list all the instruments used on a record, but with music like this, it's as much about the instruments as it is the players: accordion, various metals, a creosote bush, exhaust pipe, receivers, bass, acoustic guitar, microphone, metal bucket, blood, wood, piano, rivers, springs, sheet metal, distortion pedals, cymbals, hand made harp, drums, skin, jars full of liquid, broken glass, bells, a boot, tin cans, frying pan, record player, broken clarinet, harmonica, megaphone firecrackers, xylophone, as well as objects and IDEAS like a feather, ghosts, gasping for life, jars full of memories, breathing, dragon's blood, bat wing, icicles, monsoons, scars, bullets, thoughts, trains and more. Phew. Recorded in a monastery's barn, the dead end of a tunnel, a train station, various abandoned rooms, hallways and basements and the desert. Sounds like it too!
Packaged in a striking gatefold with a dense animal collage cover, each disc comes with a hand sewn booklet.
F/i have been somewhat of a buried treasure since the early eighties, spewing a rich brew of buzzy psychedelia, sludgy stoner doom, and extended space jams over the course of numerous lps and cassettes, but never really reaching out beyond the space rock underground. That's a shame as there has been a recent plenitude of reissues, making available again some of F/i's most seminal recordings, on cd for the first time, reminding us what a psych/space rock powerhouse these guys were. And still are! These guys never really stopped kicking out the jams. A Question For The Somnambulist finds the band back to its original lineup with the return of founding member Richard Franecki, and while one might hope this would mean a fiery, triumphant comeback of amp melting, spine crushing intensity, you also have to consider that it's been 20+ years since the launch of F/i, and these guys are getting older, and wiser, and mellower. So while there are moments where the whole thing threatens to combust and leave your stereo a charred husk, most of AQFTS is more on the dreamy, hypnotic, Krautrock side, reminding us quite a bit of Finnish drone rockers Circle or local psych rock tribe Subarachnoid Space, with warm fuzzy riffs, swirls of squiggly Moogs, propulsive infinitive rhythms, and the occasional squall of freakout guitar.
Not to be confused with the electronic pop band known as Figurine (singular). Figurines make punchy pop that's sort of like a cross between The Arcade Fire, The Pixies and Violent Femmes... or alternately as someone here described, "Daniel Johnston singing with Pavement". The first three songs' get the ball rolling at quite a feverish pace. After that, things ease up a little into more of a gentle lope which we think is kinda disappointing after that juiced-up introduction. It just made us keep hoping they'd get a second wind. That's not to say the slower numbers are at all inferior, it just takes a little time to adjust to this very different tempo. So maybe you could break your Figurines' Skeleton listening session in two, depending on your personal preference, mood and energy level?
Not sure what it is, but a lot of the new wave of post-hardcore improvised jazz leaves us really cold. Naysayers and squares have always described free jazz as just a bunch of noise, a bunch of honking skronking non-music. And as much as we fancy ourselves lovers of free jazz AND diggers of all manner of noise, we have occasionally lamentedly found ourselves playing that role, you know, the grumpy and bitter old music man, reflecting on the glory of the good ol' days, admonishing the younguns "That's nothing but noise, give that dangnabbit rackit a rest!" Or something appropriately crotchety like that.
But every once in a while, for whatever reason, one of those records sneaks through and kicks our ass. This is one of those records.
It helps that Corsano and Flaherty have been honing their improvisational mind melds for years now. Their interplay is fluid and fierce, a free jazz freakout as sublime as it is pummeling. Corsano (who also does time in free folk weirdos Sunburned Hand Of The Man) and Flaherty (a legend amongst free jazz fiends) spar and weave, Flaherty's sax spewing thick gushes of corrosive sound, a downright Borbetomagusian cascade of shreiks and groans, sputters and wheezes, but it's Corsano who holds it all together, an incredible gush of dense and delirious drumming, from impossibly subtle shuffle and skitter to an avalanche of percussion pummel unrivalled. Holy shit! So massive and emotionally charged, freaked out and wild and free. But Corsano and Flaherty manage to imbue each white hot burst with strangely soothing atonal melodies and rhythms that manage to be downright catchy, so much so that on repeated listens we find ourselves almost humming along to Corsano's solo stretches. Amazing stuff!
This is one of those albums that's neither new, nor even a recent reissue, but that we here at Aquarius decided, heck, let's list, it deserves it! (While this disc already appears on our website, it was never actually *listed* in any of our newsletters.) So while many might already know this album backwards and forwards, it has most certainly slipped through the cracks for too many others out there. Being a Japan-only import can't help. Allan wisely reordered some copies recently (when a customer special ordered it for themselves on-line) and Byram, unwittingly playing it in the store, found himself getting progressively more obsessed with the album (and the band)! It wasn't long before Jim and Marcy were also finding themselves hooked. Now almost any day you come into the store, you'll hear the Flower Travellin' Band blaring.
This is an album (and a band) that are not celebrated nearly enough -- possibly out of misguided notions of their being another bad psych knock-off among the many crowding the record racks in the early seventies. But Japan's Flower Travellin' Band were no mere cheesy imitators of occidental rock 'n roll, they were in actual fact a full-fledged, pioneering tour de force of psychedelic progressive hard rock, equalling the krautrock heavies of the era. FTB can be compared favorably to Amon Duul's better efforts with their experimental meandering (think Yeti), and the best trancey spaceouts from Can. Yet there's never a sense that FTB lose track of their compositions no matter how far out they take a track. Perhaps because even more than these experimental Krautrockers, FTB's heavy (fucking ominously heavy) sound points to a major Sabbath, Purple, and Crimson influence. Released in 1971, Satori is the band's second and arguably best album (all but the first album Anywhere have now been reissued by Warner Japan). From the first screech/howl at the beginning of track one -- "Satori Part I" (the tracks on the album are all "Satori", parts I-V) -- from vocalist Joe, who inhabits a zone somewhere between Can's Damo Suzuki and Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, the album gets straight down to business. Joe's scream is followed by a foreboding bass, guitar and drum dirge that's straight up collision between Cream and Black Sabbath in which no one survives. It's got so much more teeth than either, it's not even funny, predating punk by a good many years. "Satori Part II" however is quintessential FTB Over a pounding tribal drumbeat, alternating between a buzzing sitar-esque guitar drone and a melody line that curls ripples and lilts like a plume of burning incense smoke, guitarist Hideki Ishima lays out one of the creepiest, coolest guitar leads ever. If that ain't enough, vocalist Joe's singing is like that of Axl Rose being channelled by the Sun City Girls! Even if the rest of the album were total shit -- which it ain't -- the cost of this cd would still be well worth it for this song alone! "Part III" -- an instrumental -- picks up where II leaves off but slows the tempo down to a deathly pace, which makes it even heavier. This is the Sabbath influence on FTB writ large. Replete with an improv freakout before returning to the original riff and building into a frenzied crescendo. Needless to say, if you weren't bobbing your head at the beginning of the song, you will be by its end. "Part IV" could be considered FTB's "blues" number, with Joe picking up the harmonica instead of singing. But instead of churning out the expected twelve bar formula, FTB truncate the form and construct a minimalist jam around a short riff instead. "Part V" shows yet another facet of FTB's seemingly infinite potential with Hideki (?) playing some kick ass, spooky koto-like guitar overdubbed on top of some heavy psych. Damn! They could have done ten fucking albums around this schtick alone and probably never lost our interest... sigh... but this (and the other two that are also available, look for reviews in future) will have to suffice for now. Absolutely, fucking recommended!!!!
MPEG Download: "Satori Part II" [/audio/flowersatori2.mp3]
MPEG Stream: "Satori Part II" [/audio/flowersatori2.m3u]
The Giant Sand frontman has certainly traversed great expanses of musical terrain in his quarter century of music making -- getting to some pretty varied 'out-there' places often within a single album -- but 'Sno Angel Like You finds him at what just may be his most stable and consistent to date. That's not to say there aren't surprises. A strange swamp blues guitar interlude halfway through the album is a good indication of that! While some of this album definitely falls within the realm of his unmistakable dusky desert folk, he's also encorporated ample soul and gospel influences. The gospel according to Howe Gelb? Indeed, most of the songs follow in the tradition of such venerable artists such as Leonard Cohen whose near spoken word vocals are often backed by wonderful female backing chorus. On 'Sno Angel Like You, Gelb is backed up by the Canadian choir Voices Of Praise, and that's not the only connection this album has with our neighbors to the north. It was recorded in Ottawa, ON, and Gelb's current drummer is Jeremy Gara who also drums with a group of Canucks known as The Arcade Fire. Howe Gelb's never been one to seek 'cool points', but you gotta admit he scores plenty here intentionally or not. Seven new songs along with a few from his Giant Sand library and a few that were written by his Giant Sand bandmate the late Rainer Ptacek. Wonderful!
This mysterious three piece ensemble from Portland couldn't have chosen a more appropriate monicker for their deep listening inner space explorations. Everything about this single 40 minute track is ghostlike, from the drifting shimmer of the opening few minutes, where guitars hover and haunting keening faraway sounds drift past like stormclouds, to the stretch about halfway through, of warm white noise over muted melodies and hauntingly harmonious drones, to the final few minutes of muted murky creeping broken music box like lilt, all twisted and warped, slowed down and slithery. A dark fog blurring all the edges and laying down a fuzzy drift. So darkly lovely.
Limited to 100 copies, each copy hand numbered and all the covers are hand painted, each slightly different!
What do two guys from Genghis Tron do when they're not spewing metallic electronic grind pop whatthefuck? Well, they sort of do the same thing they always do. Sort of. But they do mix things up a bit by upping the pop ante, toning down the grind, and thus these Pals have come up with a NINE MINUTE burst of bubbly glistening, sludgy dirge pop that hits the spot in a similar way to the recent sludge pop of Torche. But this isn't sludgy or poppy as much as it's freaked out a furious, a poppier take on that sort of Locust / Horse The Band synthgrind. The thing that sets Glitter Pals apart for us, is a really demented use of clean harmony vocals, a moaning chanting weirdness, that Allan thought sounded like the sample from LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out". Weird and heavy and catchy and totally fucked. And you know from us that means HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Somehow missed this when it came out last year. But with Delia & Gavin being recent Arthur Magazine cover stars we figured we should get on the ball. Some of us remember hearing a 12" of theirs on DFA that stood out as it was really like nothing else on the label. These weren't sounds interested in making you dance and shaking your ass, instead they were about creating a trance, a hypnotizing, tranquil and space-bound dreamlike state. The album takes the same approach and even widens and propels its effect. With 5 long songs that will no doubt make you think of the best of Tangerine Dream. So entrancing and mesmerizing. The Days of Mars sort of sounds like trying to travel to outer space in an old helicopter that rises ever so slowly with its rotors going around and around, an analog starship travelling through some druggy digital universe. Taking cues from lots of the best of 70's electronic minded ambient recordings, like the collaborations between Eno & Cluster, as well as the most spaced out moments of pre-Wall Pink Floyd, this is a record that totally nails its sound so well. Something so mesmerizing, empty, and creepy about its presence. There have been times near closing hour where there will be just one person in the store and this will be on and there's just the weirdest tension that begins to permeate the store. Like a film loop of a acid drenched washed out kodachrome shot image that you can't stop staring at. This is the sound of hours after the rave, days of being awake, nights of being in a complete daze. A late night early morning eyes wide shut dreamstate blissout for sure! We are hooked!
The more we listen to the Grey Daturas, the more we see them play live, the more times we hear and their records and the more they perform and interact with other musicians and performers, the more we realize the Daturas aren't really a band. Or more specifically aren't -just- a band. They are music makers certainly, but they seem to approach music from a distinctly non rock band perspective. There are drums and synths and bass and guitars, oh! are there guitars, but the sounds they make and the 'songs' they craft have as much in common with the Dead C or SUNNO))) as they do with the drone of Sunroof! or Jonathan Coleclough or the abstract minimalism of Morton Feldman or Steve Reich. This two song live ep demonstrates that yet again. The first track is a swirling snarling tangle of slowly shifting guitar feedback, distorted waves of sonic rumble and squeal unfurl and just sort of drift and sway, slipping under and over and around each other, dense and active, but subtly so, almost tranquil, a dreamy drift of electric guitar thrum. The drums begin as just some sort of sonic garnish, a little splash here or there, before kicking into a fully rocking, totally propulsive pounding spacerock groove, the guitar and bass following suit, the track now a distorted prickly static throb, wrapped in squalls of Hendrixian guitar freakout and huge slabs of bass, lumbering skyward like a more minimal and more metal Hawkwind. The second track follows a similar path, but this time the drums are more of a chaotic presence, spitting fills in every direction, cymbal sizzle drenching everything within earshot, the guitars whipped into an impossible frenzy, so loud and recorded so hot, that the sound itself begins to crumble, a blown out blast of space rock psych fuzz sludge.
Two 14 minute tracks. Hand numbered and limited to 150 copies (of which we took almost 1/3 of the pressing!). Packaged in a cool hand painted faux blood splattered digipak.
And as much as we hate to belabor the point, this is SUPER LIMITED! Once these are gone they are gone gone gone.
We were totally gaga for Grouper's Way Their Crept cd from last year. So much so we made it Record of the Week. A more aQ record we couldn't have imagined, a gloriously thick and fuzzy swirl, equal parts Arvo Part, Morton Feldman, Skullfower and all manner of drift and drone. Dense smears of processed vocals and mubled guitars, all so heavily affected they became indistinct blurs, drifting fuzzy drones. We've been anxiously awaiting more, and were thrilled to discover this new 3" cd-r on the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label. The good news is that it takes everything we loved about Way Their Crept and made it more, daker, denser, thicker, prettier. The bad news is it was limited to 130 copies of which we only managed to get 20. And the rest are sold out, so after these are gone we won't be getting any more.
He Knows is very short, three songs, ten minutes. But what it lacks in lenght, it makes up for in depth. The first track could of come straight off of Way Their Crept. Disembodied vocals hover and drift, guitars (are they guitars?) rumble and murmur and shimmer and hover, not so much an instrument as some sort of musical spirit. The vocals, the guitars, the sounds Grouper produce are like wraiths, floating like whisps of smoke, drifting in and around and through each other, a thick cloudy soundscape, warm and enveloping, pusling and reverberating, an indistnict blur, lovely but ineffable.
The second track is like chamber music recorded at the bottom of the sea, listening to it after it has bubblrd up to the surface, warm and warbly and murky and so lovely. Melodies are nothing but streaks of barely there sound, like sunbeams filtered through the prism of swirling seawater. The final track sounds like a hymn, but muffled and indistinct. Imagine laying in a field outside a smalll stone chapel, blankets wrapped tight around your head to stave off the cold, the warm sounds of the church drift across the icy ground, the sounds barely making it through your wool shroud and into your ears, but what does make it, sounds warm and safe and beautiful. So good.
Limited to 130 copies and already OUT OF PRINT! We have the last 20, once these are gone they are GONE!
Ahhh Grouper. The work of one woman named Liz, Grouper manage to push all of our musical buttons. Hazy and crackly, staticky and droney, blurry and smeary, drifty and so dreamy. All of our favorite parts of records by Phillip Jeck, Tim Hecker, William Basinski and other dreamdrone minded folks, all boiled down into their essence, abstract obfuscated sonic drift, sounds smeared into wide open stretches of shimmer and drone. This s/t cd-r preceeds the Way Their Crept cd we made Record of the Week last year, and while sonically similar, differs in a couple ways. One, the recording is much more lo-fi, which in other cases might be unfortunate, but in the case of Grouper, just adds a whole 'nother layer of grit and grime and murk. In addition to being more lo-fi, some of the tracks here are way heavier than anything else we've heard from her. Some tracks are REALLY heavy, channeling all of Grouper's fuzzy drones and murky soundscapes into huge rumbling wall of dronedirge guitar, the sort of din that would fit sungly right there alongside your SUNNO))), Earth and Corrupted. But those brutal squalls are in the minority, and even then, the heaviness quickly gives way to a beautifully tranquil aftermath, a hazy fuzzed out barely there drift.
SUPER LIMITED. We have about 20 copies, and we're pretty sure once these are gone we won't be able to get more.
No, there's no rapping on here (or, if there is, it is indeed an extremely NEW style of "rap", consisting of intense screaming in what may or may not be Japanese -- yeah how's that for a "new rap dialect"?). So no, it's not Keiji gone MC. It's the Fushitsusha guitarist (and all around Tokyo psych shaman) Keiji teamed up again with Ruins drummer (and fellow Tokyo underground music titan) Tatsuya Yoshida for a disc of presumably improvised duets featuring Yoshida's amazing octopoidal drumming and Haino's shards of guitar and agonized throat-rasps.
Each track is named after a different New York City neighborhood, and based on Haino's vocals you might think that he'd had some traumatic experiences in these places, if a track like "Lower East Side" is somehow descriptive of its namesake. A violent mugging perhaps? Maybe the NYC theme suggests that New Rap is influenced by, or an homage to, Downtown New York jazz skronk a la John Zorn, who released this on his Tzadik label. But it's also unmistakably the sort of thing you'd expect to hear from Haino and Yoshida, and in fact have heard before from 'em on their previous duo disc from a few years back Until Water Grasps Flame, and to some extent their collaborations in Knead and Sanhedolin. This strikes a good balance between the controlled spazzcore of the Ruins and the primal emotions of Haino's many projects. Harsh energy indeed!!
RennFaire gone Rock In Opposition? Italian prog meets medieval madrigals?? We're still puzzling about how to describe this wonderful, wonderful disc, a remastered cd reissue of a rare LP (long awaited by some, totally new to us but very welcome -- thanks Robot!) which was recorded by composer Kay Hoffman in Florence, Italy in 1977, though not released until 1985, on vinyl in Japan only! On Floret Silva, Hoffman and her collaborators, including members of the very excellent and arty Italian prog band Pierrot Lunaire, took a trove of medieval Latin poetry known as the Carmina Burana -- poems written by anonymous authors around 1200AD that are both religious in nature as well as very earthy and real, about such subjects as love and money -- and set them to music. The settings are diverse (as befits the variety of these texts), and the results are often eerie and pretty and even a little bit groovy, with quirky chamber ensemble/prog rock backing and even the use of field recordings. Utterly magical for the most part, most especially due to the delicate vocals of Jacquline Darby. One song reminds us strongly of Stereolab, others call to mind (rather more obscurely) that Flamen Dialis album we've raved about before. This should appeal to experimental psych-folk fans for sure, even if this unique treasure is really something outside almost any genre designation you'd care to come up with!
Two new songs by two of favorite Finnish artists. They couldn't be more different, but this reminds us of why we love and have such a soft spot for split 7"s. Groups that sound nothing alike but share geography or friendship with each other. And with the increasing price of making vinyl, split 7"s are truly a labor of love and such a sweet token, as really its quite impossible to make money from them. First be forewarned as it will become obvious that the single was labeled wrong and the side that says Islaja is TV-Resistori and vice versa. TV-Resistori give us more of their upbeat totally fun synth pop that if we didn't know better we'd think they were another great Japanese pop band. And a new song by Islaja is of course something to rejoice about. Tiding us over until whenever her next album comes out, her track is so lovely and will for sure get you standing up every few minutes to reach for the needle to hear it over again and again.
Northwestern psychedelic space/free/avant rockers Jackie O Motherfucker return from a massive European tour and all we got was this lousy live double cd. Just kidding. It's hardly lousy. In fact, this may be one of our favorite JOMF recordings to date. Which makes sense, since live is where a large improvisatory ensemble can let loose and do what they do best. Improvise. Wander. Meander. Get lost. And explore. Mantra like barely-there-vocals, guitars buzzing like sitars, subtle shuffling percussion, warm drones, occasional sputters and half melodies from the turntables, guitars and basses melt into the background, blending into the sonic foliage, while everything rustles and shimmers, breathes and stretches. Like free jazz filtered through a thick haze of painkillers and potsmoke. Lethargic, lugubrious, cinematic and at times almost nightmarish. Really nice!
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One of the problems with bands, and labels, who put out record after record, and we're talking a new record every week or month, even if they're all great, is it's tough to keep caring. That sort of happened to us with Anticon. When we first heard that twisted Anticon indie hip hop, we were blown away, we're still blown away actually, the bizarre loops, the totally skewed approach to hip hop and sampling, it was new and fresh, weird and wonderful. But, we needed to take a break. We'd get done reviewing a new Anticon record and there would be two or three more out. So we're back on track, just in time to review the newest from Jel. And as always it's a good 'un! Loping loopy samples, all sorts of strange sounds, and unfunky funkiness, some of the vocals are a little stilted and sound straight out of the eighties (Fresh Prince anyone?) but some are right on and perfectly compliment Jel's fuzzy blissed out beatscapes. Definitely dark and laid back, some of the more ambitious tracks sound like they could be Endtroducing outtakes which is high praise for sure.
Guests include Stefanie Bohm of Ms. John Soda, Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers, Why?, Fog, Dosh, Pedestrian. And it's produced by Anticon stablemate Odd Nosdam.
The first few customers who order the new Jel will get a free Jel turntable slipmat with the album art on one side and the cool giant ant Anticon logo on the other!
From the same label we got those cool petri dish Warhammer 48K cd-r, Jerusalem And The Starbaskets are a gloriously ramshackle mess. Produced by Warhammer 48K's Cooper Crain, Jerusalem is a stumbling, distorted whomp of detuned hillbilly indie twang. Or something. Kind of hard to describe. Crunchy guitars splattered with little bits of twang, over tripped out shuffling drums. Very noisy and chaotic, sort of like some lost Velvet Underground live tape, run through a Liquorball filter and dipped in some sparkly moon dust shuffle and twang. They even do a Roky Erickson cover, which even though the bands is so wild and chaotic, should give you an idea of where their roots lie.
Packaged in handmade, silkscreened, recycled, pasted and painted sleeves. Cool.
LIMITED, we only got about a dozen!
So what kind of a name is JonnyX And The Groadies anyway? Well, quite possibly the only appropriate monicker for the world's only "Party Black Metal" band. Huh? What? C'mon, you heard us. PARTY BLACK METAL. That's right. Might not sound good, at least to all you grimmer than grim blackmetalheads, but it is, in fact it's a heck of a lot more interesting than most black metal we hear these days. And actually the 'party' aspect isn't as obvious on record. Live they seem to be a serious blast, wild and goofy and explosively spastic, with pointy metal axes (as in guitars, although we imagine their might be actual axes as well) and goofy outfits and plenty of mayhem and destruction. But on record, it's all skull encrusted synths and upside down crosses, um... tight pants and foot long spikes, and, well, wild windmilling hair and white belts? The most unholy union of buzzing black metal and insanely aggro spastic screamo EVER. Grinding buzzing guitars, demonic shrieks, programmed blast beats and a thick wall of majestic keyboards. Think maybe Drop Dead, Arcturus, Teen Chtulu, The Locust, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Behead The Prophet No Lord Shall Live, and Cradle Of Filth all packed into a sweaty filthy Portland Basement, playing before some strange mix of metalheads, emo kids and the walking dead! Huge thick blasts of grim black metal segue into fuzzy squelchy ambient synth break downs and then slip into some moody midtempo near-doom, before exploding again in a blast of barbed buzz. Awesome! Nine tracks, the first eight, brief blasts of blackness, all clocking in at under two minutes, the final track, "Unmortal", a massive 14 minute blackened synth doom juggernaut.
Somewhere in the company of Bob Dylan, John Darnielle and Daniel Johnston sits the quirky folk of Nebraskan Simon Joyner. This cd gathers together a heap of his long-gone tunes (offered in non-chronological order). Some are genuine lo-fi folk treasures, while others... well, let's just say, some things are best left in the vaults. Such is the case with the fourth song "Jeff Engel Rules" which is horribly disfigured by a gawdawfully out of tune violin. Yikes. That song does serve a purpose though. It makes you appreciate the next somber song "Don't Begrudge A Man His Funeral" all the more. Twenty one intimate bare-boned weepers, most of them acoustic, so very fitting for these drizzly days.
A new Khanate! 'Nuff said perhaps, as all you AQ doom customers surely know what that means! Ultra-depressive dirge metal from some of the best in the biz. Capture & Release, a two-song, 43 minute "ep" (maxi-ep? mini-lp? heck, it's a full-length, really!) is the third cd release from this NYC-based band, featuring Stephen O'Malley from SUNNO))) on guitar and graphics, bassist James Plotkin of OLD, singer Alan Dubin (also from OLD), and drummer Tim Wyskida. By now, Khanate have really established a distinct style of extreme, slow, scary, art-metal. To the point that we're always citing them as a comparison when describing other bands. They're the standard by which anyone indulging in feedback-filled heaviness, anguished/evil vocalizations, creepy atmosphere, double digit song-lengths, and rumbling sub-sonics is judged -- like when we say Bunkur or Graves At Sea (reviewed on this list) are bands in the style of Khanate. So if would be easy to review Capture & Release if it were by *another* band -- we'd say it was a lot like Khanate and that'd be enough to recommend it to many of you! Of course, Khanate themselves can be compared to predecessors Corrupted and especially Eyehategod, godfathers of feedback sludge brutality. But Khanate's compositions are way more extended, dramatically ambitious, and clinically produced than EHG, and utilize "experimental" sonic textures and loud/soft dynamics in the manner of a post-rock band as well. This new disc really exemplified this approach, with the second, 25-minute track "Release" featuring lots of really quiet parts that make us think a hypothetical Khanate / Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore tour would be PERFECT. (We can dream, can't we?) Vocalist Alan Dubin makes the most of these "vulnerabilities" in the band's otherwise crushing sound barrage, with dark, cryptic, and psychologically suggestive rather than explicit lyrics wherein he seems to be inhabiting the role of the deviant antagonist from a Thomas Harris novel...but poetically enough that perhaps we can all relate, and indeed find release in their music.
