After a whole slew of recent releases, this is the first new record in a while from Mr. Kneale presented under his given name. Not sure what makes this a Campbell Kneale record and not a Birchville Cat Motel record, but who cares, fans of either will dig this heavily. Seems like Kneale's focus lately has been almost exclusively on his black sludge doom project Black Boned Angel, and we're not complaining, we definitely can't get enough of that stuff. But Kneale has quite a deft hand when it comes to free ambient drone as well, and oddly enough we can't seem to get enough of that stuff either. So here we have the new Kneale record, which could have just as easily been a Birchville record, based on the sounds within, and is shot through with plenty of Black Boned Angel-isms, delicate drones are thicker, heavier, more dense and volatile, sludge metal blissed out into expansive stretches of shimmer and swirl. Four lengthy tracks, each a barely moving slab of molten sonic grrrrwwwwrrrrrrrrvvvvvmmmmmm. Layers atop layers, delicate melodies buried beneath, rumbling churning slow shifting sound, keening high end skree all tangled up with subsonic reverberations, the whole thing a slow moving vibrational flow, a massive abstract multiphonic spaced out downtuned tranced our Ur-drone.
Larsen is an enigmatic post-rock ensemble who have been responsible for some interesting conceptual projects all of which have been immaculately executed. For their highly acclaimed album Rever, the ensemble hired Michael Gira (Swans, Angels of Light) as the producer, but never allowed him to actually see the band as they played behind a curtain. Larsen followed this album with a breathtaking record reconstructing the melodic phrasing of Autechre through their own repetitive patterns for guitar, bass, vibraphone, accordion, and drums. Seies doesn't enjoy any of the conceptual agendas of the previous record; or rather if there are any concepts to the record, Larsen has shrouded them from their audience. The hymnal post-rock hypnosis from the previous records is certainly present, conjuring a spaghetti western swagger heard in the more bad-ass Morricone soundtracks. In these looping dirges, Larsen also call to mind the desolate soundtracks composed by Calla and some of the late period work of Swans; this is especially true for the tracks in which former Swans singer Jarboe appears! There's guest appearances a plenty on Seies as Current 93's cellist Julia Kent appears on some early tracks, and the dark ambient overlord Lustmord conjures his own black clouds on some of the later cuts.
Finnophile alert!!! Yet another amazing post-Circle / Circle related project!! What the hell?!? Do those guys ever sleep? And if they do, have they figured out some way to record in their sleep? But who's complaining? Certainly not us. This time around, it's two Finns and one -American- doing the hypno-rock drone damage. Janne Peltomaki, former Circle drummer, current drummer for Paine and the recently reviewed Stalwart, Jyrki Laiho current guitar player for Circle and Stalwart, and Jordan Mamone, guitarist for NY artrockers Alger Hiss. While Circle continually flirt with metal, guitars always getting a little heavier, vocals that veer into serious Rob Halford territory, and of course the increasingly metallic imagery, it's this here Lee Miller outift that has finally pulled out the metal stops. Not that this is a "metal" record. It's just undeniably heavy, big jagged distorted guitars, pounding rhythms, and strange growling baritone vocals. In fact it has a bit of an industrial edge to it as well, with plenty of teutonic ponding a la Swans, Copshootcop, or fellow Finns Worms. Occasionally things do simmer down, and the result is a much more Circular sound, but a bit less krautrocky and more arty and angular, due in no small part we imagine to the presence of Mamone. But Lee Miller is all about that crush and pummel, and The Futility Of Language pounds that point home. Dark and distorted, heavy and hypnotic! This will definitely please Circle fans who have been digging their gradual shift into heavier territory, and just might tempt some metalheads into the vast and wondrous land of glorious hypnorock!!
The lovely voice that defines the sound of L.A.'s Rilo Kiley goes solo on (in?) this Rabbit Fur Coat. Well, sort of... she's got a pair o' angelic voiced twins in tow, and the results are a remarkably lady-like affair. Jenny Lewis unveils a much broader range of both style and expressiveness -- generously planting a number of bare-branched country and gospel inflected saplings here and there amid her more familiar sounding lush pop blossoms. Initially upon hearing the poignant, soulful opening track, we mused that fans of Neko Case might also take a shine to the equally red-tressed Lewis. Mind you though, Lewis and her music do come across as being considerably more milquetoast (meaning, you probably won't be finding The Grand Ol' Opry taking issue with her the way they did with the fiery Ms Case!). At any rate, it's clear that in both fashion and song, she's just as comfortable in womanly Lawrence Welk Show gown as she is in a winsome floral country frock or barefoot in a sassy pop gal mini-dress. To boot, she's stacked the indie luminary decks in her favor -- her pals Conor Oberst, Ben Gibbard (whom she sings with in Postal Service), and Matt Ward to name a few -- and the star-studded cast is put to good use on the very faithful rendition of the Travelling Wilburys' tune "Handle With Care". Quite a beauty that's just might not only appeal to her younger Rilo Kiley fans, but also their parents!
Psst, coincidentally Lewis' R.K. bandmate Blake Sennett's side project The Elected also just released a dandy album!
Lots of you probably remember the first Loose Fur record which came out a few years ago. Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame teaming up with man of so many hats Jim O'Rourke along with Wilco's drummer extrodinair Glen Kotche for a record that surpassed side-project trappings and had such a nice life of it's own. It came right at the peak of Tweedy's more adventurous and daring musical mind awakening coming in between Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born. Much like Radiohead, there tends to be two camps with Tweedy/Wilco those who love the early more straight ahead rock stuff and those who think the above mentioned albums are the real ones worth obsessing over. The second Loose Fur affair with its tongue in cheek title will make those who like the rocking and straight ahead side of Tweedy very happy. With O'Rourke adding his pop leanings which seem as sharp here as on records like "Insignificance" and "Eureka." While we miss some of the drugged vibe of the first Loose Fur record there is no denying that Tweedy & O'Rourke know their way around a hook and a catchy song.
Phew, this is one furious fuzzed out blast or RAWK! Local rockers The Mall offer up 4 short sharp tracks of trashy garagey new wave artrock fuzz and splatter. Taking an arsenal of sounds formerly employed by the rosters of GSL and Gravity records and giving them a 21st century makeover, The Mall, take jangly angular guitars fuzzy warbly casio keyboards, yelped distorted vocals and BIG bloopy Gang Of Four bass. In fact the thick throbbing bass is what hold this all together. And gives it a sort of dancepunk vibe. But this isn't shiny and well coiffed, no this is dirty and noisy, scummy and crusty, Like Interpol if they were taken into an alley, roughed up a bit, hair mussed, suits ripped, soiled and dirtied, and forced to play through broken old amps and hand me down guitars and keyboards held together with duct tape. Super chaotic, wild and aggro, but subtly funky. So if the current wave of artpunk, dancepunk, electro whatever is just a little too smart and smooth, crisp and clean for you... The Mall would be more than happy to take you out back and show you a thing or two.
Packaged in a cool hand silkscreened blue, white and maroon sleeve, with an equally cool matching insert.
Whoa, heavy!! This is a whole-body vibrating, brain-melting, serious amplifier worship ceremony! The first time I (Allan) saw these guys, last year sometime at the Hemlock here in San Francisco, I was blown away... I'd been told the were a heavy 'stoner rock' outfit from Santa Cruz and worth checking out, but I didn't realize they were gonna be quite so AMAZING. Hairy backwoods hippy dudes, the drummer wearing what looked to be a home-made Whysp t-shirt, guitars turning the air to cottage cheese a la Blue Cheer while creating a trance-zone worthy of Finland's Circle!! So good that I immediately bought the live cd-r they were selling... we were gonna try to get some for the store, in fact, but then we found out that local label Holy Mountain run by our pal JW was on the case already and would be issuing Mammatus's debut studio full-length cd Stateside (with Rocket Recordings, home to the most recent UFOmammut, putting it out in Europe).
So yeah, heavy stoner rock this is, but waaay psychedelic and Hawkwindy, kinda like what maybe you thought Circle side-project Pharaoh Overlord was gonna (and sometimes does) sound like. Loud, massive and mesmerizing, swirling sludge psych! Their songs, often of epic length, are ever chugging skyward, dripping molten goo, full of feedback and fx. Their energetic riffage and warm drones are adorned by drifting vox (not unlike Dead Meadow, with whom they share certain proclivities) and fantastic, metallic, progtastic imagery. Take note of titles like "Dragon Of The Deep" (parts one and two!) and the Roger Dean-esque cover art by Arik "Moonhawk" Roper.
Further musical comparisions aren't hard to come up with -- Mammatus belong in the company of such bastions of cosmic heaviness as Sleep, Boris, YOB, UFOmammut, Earthless, old Monster Magnet, Acid Mothers Temple (at AMT's heaviest, like on Starless & Bible Black Sabbath), Tarantula Hawk, and even Amon Duul (especially on the druggy, krautrocky jam "The Outer Rim"). And of course they're now labelmates with OM, which also makes perfect sense. If you love many, or even just any, of those bands and the sounds they make, this comes highly recommended.
Time sensitive note: Mammatus are playing tomorrow, Saturday April 1st again at the Hemlock with AQ faves the Grey Daturas!
We had never heard of Lubomyr Melnykor, nor his 'Continuous Music method' before. But the more we learn the more we fall in love with this iconoclastic modern innovator. In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. Someone described Wave-Lox as three Terry Riley playing at once, which is not that far off the mark. Or imagine a thousand George Winstons spinning weightless in space, notes everywhere careening wildly, but with some strangely indescribable pattern. The sound of Wave-Lox is at once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away. Wave-Lox is actually a piece for 2 pianos (giving you an idea of the density and number of notes we're talking about here) and 3 contra-bass, which offer the same sonic complexities as the piano, making a rich sonic stew even more deliriously dense.
It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!
These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing. We currently have about 10 different titles in stock, and while Wave-Lox is our favorite so far, one of the others features Melnyk on piano accompanied by multiple tubas! So drop us an email if you're interested in any of the other titles, but for now revel in the beautiful beautiful music of Wave-Lox!
This band should need no introduction, but like many of veteran Pacific Northwest pop maestro Scott McCaughey's innumerable musical wings, The Minus Five somehow still lingers in the criminally unsung box. Why, oh why??? Granted, it's not like he's one to trumpet his talents. He just goes about his business of making kickass music with (and for) other folks. An expert pop craftsman, he not only makes his own good music, but also plays a big part in making good music better (case in point, his participation in R.E.M.). But people, come on now, this is McCaughey's seventh Minus Five album! Time to get with the program!! His endearing, perpetually boyish vocals are in top form as are all of the participants' chops. While he'll occasionally delves into mildly gloomy or melancholic sentiments, it's never without a dab of his indelible wit which keep things on their trademark buoyant track. Stellar songwriting, stellar performances, and a stellar cast of beloved familiar faces including a bunch of Wilcos, a Posie, a Decemberist, an R.E.M., a Kelly Hogan, a John Wesley Harding, among many others. What more do you want or need?
It took us a while to give this a listen as we didn't want the beauty of its pastoral green cover to let us down. Luckily when we finally gave this a listen we realized the sounds contained inside were just as rich and pretty. There is something so delicate and perfectly paced about this record. It unfolds at its own confident pace and when it ends you just kind of want to do it all over again. A duo from the east coast, Mountains so successfully merge acoustic instrumentation, electronics and field recordings to create a layered sound that is not only just totally beautiful but also feels as if there is something under it all that keeps you really interested and attached to every unfolding moment. With a tenderness that rivals Colleen and an aesthetic that reminds us of the shimmering beautiful side of Fennesz, "Sewn" is a record that totally rises above the pack of pastoral electronic tinged records we've seen come out in recent years (which is important, as the trend recently has to been drizzle a little electronic squiggle over generic pop or folk, suddenly transforming it into something AVANT!). To make this album Mountains traveled away from city life into upstate New York and recorded in remote areas of Connecticut, and in their travels they totally captured that feeling of water running through creeks, rain dropping on grass, and what it feels like to be away from it all, soaking up your surrounding and maybe even getting a few moments of total clarity. So nice!
Ms John Soda make pretty pretty pop-tronica, the kind that very much defines the Morr Music label. With their droll yet airy female vocals, chiming electronic effervescence and occasional counterweight of electric guitar, this German duo are very very akin to their dreamy Morr labelmates LaliPuna, if perhaps a little bit more insistent. Heck, the striking resemblance is really not all that surprising since each group has an Acher brother in its lineup (fyi: Micha and Markus Acher are also prominent members of The Notwist, Village Of Savoonga, Tied & Tickled Trio, 13 & God, among others). Also very much for fans of Broadcast or Postal Service.
Here's a reissue of My Morning Jacket's Chocolate And Ice 6-song cdep! When it was originally released back in 2002, we had this to say...
Of the half dozen tracks, the standout is the unexpected 24-minute "Cobra". Although the rest of the songs do still retain My Morning Jacket's wonderful, shadowy, lonesome twang, this track is a refreshing change allowing the band to diverge from their usual path. With much less of a rootsy rock feel, it leans more heavily on a smoky blues guitar sound. From an almost funky groove, it dissolves into a lovely drone and returns to the more familiar somber country-folkish mood. Mainman Jim James subtly shifts his vocal delivery too, veering from his usual Neil Young-ish nasality to an almost Damo Suzuki (of Can) drowsy murmurred uttering. Quite effective. An added note, the items in the title made for a very cool textured cover image... although we'd bet someone was bummed that they spilled all that choco-syrup.
The return of Oaken Throne, one of the best, if not the only, magazines focusing on the true, the grim, the real underground black metal (as well as other heavy musicks). As much as we loved the crazy oversized format of the last few OT's, everyone is a little relieved that this new format is much more managable (and no longer requires an extra shipping charge!). Size change aside, Oaken Throne is still gorgeously black, printed in silver, and is still chock full of some of the best and weirdest metal around. This time: Ancestral Fog, Ofermod, Ondskapt, Xasthur, Otesanek, Bunkur, Eternal Majesty, Averse Sefira, Bolt Thrower, Malhkebre as well as tons of record reviews. They continue to explore the phenomenon of "religious" Black Metal perhaps less skeptically than we might, but we do find those discussions interesting, if a little bit disturbing. This 'zine is super well written, well researched, tons of photos, and a gorgeous layout. Sad that all the "real" music mags are so shitty and poorly written and ultimately pointless while the folks with a real passion for music, and a totally original grasp of the music they're writing about, as well as a keen eye for design and layout are doing zines. Not that there's anything wrong with zines. But let's say we take all the money wasted on Rolling Stone and Spin and Hit Parader and stuff like that, and give it to all the folks who could DESTROY given enough money and resources like Ben and John from Oaken Throne, Kevin from Salt, the guys who do F.T.Y.K.P., Jon from Astronauts, and all the other folks keeping the underground alive.
Rock and roll as a raw nerve art form, that's the intense Oxbow aethetic... a band that dares you to listen, much less attend one of their shows. Avant garde yet drawn to swampy roots, Oxbow's approach is both intellectual and primal at the same time, these men channeling psychic and physical distress into their music, so much tension and release it's disturbing to behold... This brilliant and unique Bay Area outfit has been going strong against all odds for almost two decades now (!) and with each passing year seem to gain a wider audience, despite never ever being a part of any scene or trend. Not one that would help them, anyway. Except maybe now, that they've seemingly been accepted into the Neurosis/Isis axis of arty post-metal noisecore, releasing their last full-length An Evil Heat 4 or 5 years ago on the Neurot label and now (finally!) reappearing on Hydra Head with this cd+dvd package. Love That's Last isn't exactly the new Oxbow opus we've being waiting for, since it's not an all-new album but rather a collection, complete with commentary and lyrics in the booklet, of unreleased live cuts, improv tracks, compilation rarities, and a few "greatest hits" from their hard to find early albums. You'll certainly get a representative serving of their cathartic ugly/pretty rock action here, with all of Oxbow's characteristic Bonham beats, slide guitar skronk, droning ambience, and of course the distinctive mewling/screaming baby monster vocalizations of scary front man/fighting man Eugene Robinson. Highlights (and that's what all this is, really) range from their infamous "Insylum" duet with Marianne Faithful from 1996's Serenade In Red to the 1998 live recording "Glimmer Bird" to the prototypical expression of Oxbow anguish that is "Yoke" from their 1989 Fuckfest debut. Ten tracks in all... you too might be crying like a baby when it's over. Oxbow would be happy about that.
The DVD portion includes 5.1 mixes of a handful of Oxbow classics, plus filmmaker Christian Anthony's Oxbow documentary Music For Adults (previously available here at AQ when it was a dvd-r release) with outtakes too, AND a bunch of additional live footage of the band in Belgium and San Francisco. Here's what we said about Music For Adults before: "Now you can vicariously join Oxbow for their summer 2002 European tour. Even better than actually being there, you can enjoy their shows and tour hijinx without running any risk of Oxbow singer Eugene getting you in a headlock (and pulling down your pants, as happens to at least one unhappy Scotsman in this film). The live footage captures the Oxbow rock machine in all their twisted, bawling glory, while the 'behind-the-scenes' stuff will show you that they're actually all really nice guys!"
So, Oxbow fans NEED this. And it's obviously the first thing the prospective Oxbow fan needs to pick up as well. Hopefully that's just what's gonna happen. Recommended as always with all Oxbow product!
It's a time of joy, and a time of doom. That's because in the space of just the past month or two we've gotten not one but now two awesome, unearthed releases of previously lost early '70s underground heaviness from a bunch of longhaired DC-area Blue Cheer fans who, if they'd only managed to get a record deal back then, might have gotten huge and now be known as the American Black Sabbath. Well they really are the American Black Sabbath anyway, but not as many people know it. We're talking about the legendary original lineup of Pentagram, and their even more obscure evil twin Bedemon.
Two lists back, we were freaking out over the long awaited release of that Bedemon album, upon which sometime Pentagram guitarist Randy Palmer's home recorded hymns of doom finally saw the light of day. We're still freaking out about it (just got more in, it's relisted this list), but now our frenzy is doubled. Yes, that amazing release wasn't enough, now here's First Daze Here Too, the follow-up to First Daze Here (natch) the AQ fave 2002 release that compiled a bunch of rare '70s era Pentagram recordings that were otherwise unavailable except perhaps with sub-par sound to rabid tape-traders. First Daze Here astounded us, being one of the best '70s heavy rock albums that never was we'd ever heard. Great songs, restored to sound better than fans has ever heard 'em. Incredibly, Relapse has now put together a solid -second- collection of unreleased vintage Penta-tracks from '72-'76. So many classics in their original form: "When The Screams Come", "Wheel Of Fortune", "Virgin Death", "Target", "Nightmare Gown", "Much Too Young To Know", an alternate version of "Be Forwarned", and more -- even their heavy take on the Stones' "Under My Thumb"! Sound quality varies, from tracks recorded for professional demo purposes to lower-fi rehearsal tapes, but fans will dig it all... though at 22 tracks total we'll admit that it's not all entirely the equal of the 100 percent killer first First Daze Here. This is more like 90 percent, yet it's not like we'd have wanted them to leave anything off. And in fact, we know that there's still more in the Pentagram vaults, so maybe we can look foward to a third volume someday...
Relapse have pulled out all the stops with this one, which after all these years Pentagram definitely deserve. It's a double disc (though actually we think all of it could have fit on one stuffed to the gills 80 minute cd) handsomely packaged with a huge thick booklet full of prevously unseen, sepia-toned band photos and text by original Pentagram drummer and keeper of the flame Geof O'Keefe, including track-by-track commentary... there's also notes from other former members as well. Doom on!
Until we live in the perfect world where frantic Japanese 'kids' shows such as Kure Kure Takora, Booska and Domokun ran non-stop on the telly, we'll have to make do with the aural equivalent... which is this new Polysics cd. As suggested in the album's title, there's an air of insistent immediacy, but for what we're not quite sure. Curses, you language barriers! We'll just say, Now Is The Time is a manically hyper Japanese collision of no wave and new wave. Lots of tweaked synthesizers and chunky guitars, but with more singing, spazzy shrieks and hollerin' too. With the exception of the second to last song the sugar-shocked "Baby BIAS", this is a heavier, noisier and more darkly dissonant Polysics than the band we remember from their last album, 2001's Hey! Bob! My Friend! This domestic release includes two bonus tracks not on the import! Recommended.
We like! Ears find super fun! Polysics!
Noise is indeed truly a lost art form. Okay, well it's not really lost. Actually there are more noise bands and noise labels than ever. Maybe it's the sheer joy of hearing noise as music that seems lost. Not sure if it was the 345th Merzbow release (we're rounding down) or the millionth shitty show, with a bunch of guys sitting on the floor pounding contact mic'ed pieces of metal. But noise began to just sound like noise again. Annoying, irritating, well, ya know, NOISE. There are always exceptions, and Prurient just might be one of them. Maybe.
This is indeed noise. Serious noise. The first track is a 16 minute experiment in high end feedback, a squirming squeal that seems intended to test the endurance of your fragile inner ear. The rest of the record is no easier on the constitution. Muted percussion, some Whitehouse style synth sputter and some maniacal howled vocalizations. Sort of Z'ev meets Hanatarash. Squelching industrial grind over pounding drums. Pummeling abstract vocal / noise / percussion free for alls. It must be the drums that do it. That make Black Vase more, um, listenable. What would have been just a series of circuit frying, amp destroying walls of malfunctioning sound, take on some sort of songlike form, almost a groove at times, although the sort of groove produced by throwing a drum kit down the stairs and then pushing a battery of synths and plugged in toasters into a swimming pool. Imagine a sludge-noise Abruptum, or a lobotomized Boredoms, weird percussion frames anguished screams, the result of some unspeakable self torture, while a million amps feedback in the distance. In the foreground the ultimate pipe fight, clanging metal and clattery skree, evertyhing barraged by dog whistle sine waves and impossibly high end shrieks, all over simple pounding tribal drum figures or muted industrial clink and rattle. The sound of a thousand rusty iron gates, grinding open on squealing hinges, while a caveman pounds drums made from hollow skulls near by.
Harsh for sure, -noise- is meant to be harsh, but there's some internal, almost musical logic behind the utter brutality, that allows Prurient to restore our faith in NOISE!
AQ faves Sam Coombes and Janet Weiss are back with their sixth Quasi album... with the worst cover art... ever. Whoa, what an eyesore. Fortunately the same can't be said about the music. Whew, Quasi fans rejoice. Yaaaaay! Weiss is an aggressive dynamo on the kit, likewise Coombes on the piano and guitar. When The Going Gets Dark features some of his most valiant cascading piano flourishes. Their performances are looser and more impassioned than ever. We always wish she'd sing more, but we're somewhat disappointed to report that this album has the fewest appearances of Ms Janet on the mic. On the rare occasions when she does chime in with Sam on vocals, the sun shines a little brighter. On his side of things, Coombes has exhibited some bizarre behavior on his own solo releases (for instance the swampy bluesy psych of Blues Goblin), and some of it has definitely trickled into the Quasi pot. This is evident right from the get-go, as the first track "Alice The Goon" comes tumbling out of our speakers. As well, our musical antennae picked up a few oddly familiar melodic progressions that we more than suspect he nicked from some old classics -- the closing song "Invisible Star" shockingly trickles into Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade Of Pale" territory, and the second to last song "Death Culture Blues" has an ominous plodding section that strongly recalls Brian Wilson's "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow". But then again, Quasi always toss in a couple of eyebrow raisers to keep up on our toes. Apart from the cover art, the only other downside of this album is the somewhat murky sound quality. This is a little surprising since studio whiz David Fridmann was at the production helm, but despite his successes working with other pop wonders such as the Delgados, Flaming Lips, and Janet's other band Sleater-Kinney, his overdriven, blown-out style seems to overwhelm and disrupt the Quasi pop balance. That said, nothing can really tarnish the radiant force of Quasi. Their greatness always shines through, and so we proclaim, "Recommended!!!"
As frustrating as superlimited cd-r's can be, you really can complain when faced with music this dark and mysteriously lovely. You can wish that someone would have the foresight to know when a record was amazing, and thus might press more than 130 copies, but again, we're happy that 130 more people get a chance to hear this record. The UK three piece known as Rameses III have been quietly laboring away for 5 or 6 years now, having released cd-r's on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, 267 Lattajjaa and handful of others. Their sound is hushed, a whispery drone, disembodied guitars, the sounds of running water and bird calls, bowed strings, shimmering ambience, a slow melodic churn through dark mysteries and warm soft soundscapes. Parsimonia was originally released on Foxy Digitalis way back in 2004, this reissue adds some spiffy new artwork and like we said, gives 130 more people the chance to enjoy some gorgeous late night drone and shimmer. Which actually means 30 AQ customers as this is frustratingly already out of print and we took all the copies the label had left. The sound on Parsominia is just more of what we've come to love about Rameses III, soft subtle soundscapes cobbled together from natural sounds and delicately crafted drones, never better exemplified than on the title track, a nearly 12 minute track of warm melodic swells, broadcast across a spring meadow, birds chirp, families laugh and talk, the wind rustles the leaves, all the while a huge shimmery cloud of muted rumble and soft focused sonic swirl drifts dreamlike through the trees. The rest of Parsimonia is equally drifty and dreamy, incorporating chiming bells, gentle finger picked steel string guitar and mumbly murky feedback into sweet sweet swells of mystical and transcendental sound.
LIMITED TO 130 COPIES, OF WHICH WE GOT 30. IT'S ALREADY OUT OF PRINT SO ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD (or until some other cd-r label decides to press up 100 more, arghh!)
Now available on vinyl!
We love dancehall. A lot! Makes perfect sense too, a grinding, pounding, throbbing mix of hip hop and dub, with that totally repetitive, hypnotic, instantly recognizable dancehall beat, you know: BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP.........BOMP..BOMP. With tongue twisting toasting over the top. Very similar to grime (which is probably why we love grime so much too). Hard really to improve on dancehall, you could maybe, rough it up a little, and, which gives us ragga of course, but then, you could also make the beats even thicker and crunchier and WAY more distorted, you could have the vocalists toast through a tin can and twine run through a fuzzbox and plugged into a battered old blown out loudspeaker, you could take all that stuff and supercharge it, send it coursing through your speakers as if your stereo was struck by lightning, the resulting sounds coming out of your speaker a hard and heavy, fierce and fucked up, super aggressive and distorted but still totally wild and danceable digital hardcore ragga. Whoowee!! Fuck yeah! Similar to the way Alec Empire and other folks took drum 'n' bass and jungle and turned it into superdistorted hardcore brutality, a few likeminded noiseniks have been doing the same with ragga, giving it a DHR makeover, turning already pretty aggressive ragga music into a brain melting blast of buzzing and blown out dancehall. One of those folks is the UK's Kevin Martin, who after years of lurking on the fringes of the noise underground, running the Pathological label and playing in God, Ice and a handfull of other fucked up dubbed out noise outfits (maybe hinting at what was to come), renamed himself the Bug, and started making dark and dense dubby dancehall, the new sound owing as much to classic dub and dancehall as it did to his time spent playing weird fucked up noisiness. A few years back the Bug hooked up with Rootsman and formed Razor X Production, a dynamic duo that began to whip up all sorts of brutal distorted ragga classics, all big beats, blown out production and toasting by some of the world's best reggae / dub / ragga vocalists: Cutty Ranks, He-Man, Daddy Freddy, Tony Tuff, Mexican, El Feco and more. This double disc collects some of the best singles, beats are jagged and sharp, distorted stabs, rumbling rib cage rattling low end, synths are massive thick smears of speaker shredding fuzz, each track a pulsing, throbbing dubbed out groove as hard and pummeling as it is groovy and funky. If all "dance music" was this fucked up and firece and fun even us wallflowers would be forced to spend all our evenings sweating and slithering all over the dance floor.
For some reason, this 'real' cd Reynols disc is cheaper than the cd-r albums of theirs we listed not long ago. Maybe 'cause it's domestic, not an Argentine import? No matter what, you're always getting a deal, 'cause we're convinced that this Reynols stuff is in fact priceless. Now, there's essentially two types of Reynols records: the 'rock' albums (like "------" and the Reynols/No Reynols double cd) and the conceptual ones (like "Blank Tapes" and the "10,000 Chickens" 7"). This new disc falls into the 'rock' camp, such as it is: damaged, monomaniacal drumming, psychedelic, noisy guitar jamming, and of course Reynols' frontman Miguel Tomasin's otherworldy, shamanistic vocals. Good stuff, in other words.
As the first track of this 50-minute journey begins, you're lost somewhere, in a tunnel or cavern. There's an ambient rumbling sound, and some haunting, echoed cries from Miguel. Then, with track two the distorted rock n' roll drone kicks in, all heavy-like, building in noisy intensity until track 3 interrupts the storm with a calmer, mantric mood, only to be interrupted itself with more fierce feedback guitar at the four and a half minute mark. Other songs feature Hare Krishna -worthy warbling chant, acoustic strum, and rattling hand percussion, as well as more of their primitive psych rock dementia. From simple, vocal-led tracks of trancey emptiness to guitar-based fuzzed-out chaos, the results are only enhanced by the raw, reverby production. Reynols is always strange, and strangely compelling, appealing to us in sort of the same way that much of the music of Keiji Haino does. Listening to Reynols isn't just about enjoying some weird songs, it's about taking a trip into their world and trying to see and hear things the way Miguel and his compatriots do. These are field recordings from inside their minds.
Damn, the new Root! Weird black metal from Czech just gets weirder. They're set apart from all others by their sense of drama, and by vocalist/mainman Big Boss and his deep voiced delivery. And the unbridled dementia they bring to their very metal, very odd songwriting and arrangments. Originals they most certainly are, combining killer blackened riffage with romantic keyboards and parts that sound a bit Jesus Lizardy though they might not be aware of it. One of the most striking tracks, "The Last Gate (The Story Of Demons)", uses tribal drumming and overlapping vocal chants to approximate the sounds of demonic possession or worship (or something), making Root sound like Sepultura's Roots (until insane chipmunk voices like those on the last Sigh album kick in!). Wow.
Once in a while we get all super annoyed BY DJ'S and DJ culture. We love DJ's as much as the next guy (okay, well, maybe not AS much) but once in a while, we start to wonder how playing somebody else's records makes you a musician, or a celebrity or a star. C'mon, what the fuck? Sure there are DJ's and turntablists who blow our minds, who take the turntables and do amazing shit, from avant soundscapists like Jeck or Marclay, to actual hip hop DJ's like the Skratch Piklz or folks who exist somewhere in between like DJ Shadow. But for the most part it's hard to not think "Fuck DJ's". So when there's a DJ, who isn't some crazy acrobatic scratcher, isn't some crafter of obtuse beatscapes, but who just plays records, has killer taste, and deftly mixes and matches and mashes up tunes and beats and said cool records, well for us to love every single thing they do is definitely saying something. And that's precisely how we feel about Rupture. Sure being a DJ is the equivalent of being a professional mix tape maker, so your record collection is 90% of the battle, and judging from Rupture's last few records, he has one of the world's best record collections (rivalled only by DJ Andy Votel we'd imagine). This time around it sounds like Rupture has caught grime fever just like the rest of us. Sure there's loads of classic hip hop, spastic drill and bass, classic jungle, huge bigbeat ragga, dancehall, but there's also plenty of greasy grungy griminess!! Every track on here rules, From a wildly catchy and bizarre MIA remix, to a Dead Prez meets snake charmer joint, to a perplexing but killer a capella Tracy Chapman track mashed up with some super stuttery slow motion drum and bass. Funky, fierce, furious, and FUN.
As if that weren't enough the disc also includes 4 live German radio mixes, over 90 minutes, 6 MP3's of crazy sonic terrorism, all over the map, from Sabbath, to eighties pop, to hardcore ragga but most importantly there's glorious GRIME all over the place...
Yes, at last! The new Salvatore is here! We've been trying to get this, their fifth album, for AGES. For whatever reason, these imports were tough to come by, but finally we've got 'em. And now that it's booming through our stereo here at the store, we know that it was worth the wait. First off, the love of Neu! still beats strongly in the hearts (and, um, beats) of these mostly instrumental Norwegian post-rockers. That motorik percussion propulsion that we love too. Instant hypnosis in other words. Which means that they're still very much of the "Circle-ular" persuasion, leaning towards the likes of Tortoise and Trans Am too. Tortoise's John McEntire did the mix, in fact (and contributes drum machine on one track, "Brugata"). That's alongside drums, guitar x 2, organ, bass, "bassdrones", xylophone, vocoder, "sitter" (sitar?) -- and each track has a slightly different, usually expansive line-up of musicians and instrumentation. The bass and percussive elements are always quite strong, of course, but Salvatore still manage to make their music quite delicate too -- and although Luxus remains on the lighter side of Salvatore's output (the "poppier" path they've followed since 2002's Fresh), there are certainly bolts of electric darkness and grit shivering through these tracks, especially on the scarily reverberating "Fluxus"...while the combination of female vocals, strings, and "fake balaban" (presumably the middle-eastern sounding horn we hear) on the ten-minute-plus title track is simply gorgeous, not scary or dark at all. Speaking of balabans, Luxus establishes that ethnic influences are definitely a part of Salvatore's sound, something that they have in common with krautrockers Can, doubtless another inspiration of theirs. So, for fans of Can, Circle, Neu!, Tortoise, etc. Salvatore has produced another winning album, that we're so glad to finally have, to share with you.
Seawhores appears to be the work of a cast of thousands -- well there's like ten people credited as "writers and contributors" anyway. We're not sure who or what is at the core of this project, but we can tell you that Brian Chippendale (of Lightning Bolt) and Dale Crover (of the Melvins) both appear, amongst others, including ex-members of the Cows, on this album. And Seawhores definitely do display an affinity with the sort of noise-rock of those bands, particularily the mix of heaviosity and musical fuckery normally (abnormally?) practiced by the Melvins, and their former AmRep brethren as well. It's mostly instrumental with the notable exception of the (ironic we're pretty sure) hard rock radio friendly vocals that make/break the track "College Walls". They've gotta be ironic as we do sense a definite wiseassitude about this band, again in keeping with their Melvins meets Wolf Eyes noisedrone attack, a demented mix that incorporates rhythmic drum machine damage, gobs of distortion, soundtracky ambience, and more... For instance, the track "Sweaty Men, Attack" destroys the memory of its mock-country opening with pummelling industrial rock spazzcore. Elsewhere, you'll be treated to the extended eleven minute hissing howling horror soundscape of "Village Curse". All six tracks on this mysterious cd are intriguing. Very recommended to fans of Melvins, Mike Patton, Lightning Bolt, and suchlike gonzo avant-rock entertainment!!
Gooey crunchy sludge from the Great White North.
67 minutes of what sounds like the sonic equivalent of your head dunked in Robitussin�
Gorgeous packaging: a double LP on nice thick vinyl, an ULTRA LIMITED edition of 300, all hand-screened (inside and out) printed on brown heavy cardstock that folds like a big envelope.
Which is perfect, you need a cover this thick to contain the downtuned blobs of almost unbearable heaviness that these guys ooze.
And we mean that in a good way� Mob Wheel is a delightfully skull caving mix of Dopethrone-era Electric Wizard and some Floor or later Cavity. Maybe even some early Unsane. All that with a giant dose of Bullhead-era Melvins crush and just a smidge of early Eyehategod. Tuneful? A bit. Melodic? A bit. Heavy? Let's see, imagine a dumptruck full of gold bricks, dipped in tar and dropped from a plane. That's sort of heavy. Now imagine that dumptruck MADE out of solid gold and filled with black holes, and fired from a cannon, in space, directly at your earhole. Now you're getting closer.
Yeah, you definitely need this: the gooey, sticky, sludgy, icky stuff we can't get enough of! Like someone took the record, threw it in a pot to boil, then dumped it over your head.
Fans of the "new sludge" (Boris, Corrupted, SUNNO))), Earth) will be in heaven (or hell I guess depending on your preference)!
Featuring a former member of doom-dirge lords Sons of Otis and a current member or metalcore heros Cursed, Shallow N.D. has been a mainstay in the Ontario scene since 1992.
Unfortunately the band have recently hung up their touring boots and put the van up on blocks, so we'll just have to imagine what it would be like see these guys conjure up this dissonant crunch and thud on stage!
Much like William Parker whose latest release we loved and listed last time, Matthew Shipp is a jazz great whose plethora of releases makes it easy to kind of lose track and maybe pay as much attention as we should (like William Parker). While his willingness to coloborate and stretch and blur lines of genre is admirable we have to admit that we are sort of partial to him on his own. Something about when it's just him and his piano that is so compelling. Of course he is a ridicously talented piano player but it's also the way in which he can create so much tension and mood with the keys that makes him so special. Not often lately that a solo piano record carries its weight and keeps things interesting enough to attract our interest but we're not surprised that Matthew Shipp's the one to deliver such a record.
Wow!!! Most loyal AQ customers are pretty aware of our total love and adoration of almost all things Finnish, especially pretty much everything released on Finnish label Fonal. They just have not done us wrong yet. Islaja, Kemialliset Ystavat, Paavoharju, Es, the list goes on and on. And while for the most part their releases focus on the more murky free folk side of Finnish underground rock they have proven to be a label that isn't just about one 'sound' but instead are simply about beautiful music. Period. Whether it's random ethereal forest folk, dreamy drifty swooning ambience, or crunchy chaotic tribalistic clatter. Their latest release, from the Helsinki quartet Shogun Kunitoki, is further proof to that effect, and dare we say this might even be the greatest thing Fonal has released. Some of you may be shouting IMPOSSIBLE! And under different circumstances we'd be right there with you. But just listenening to Tasankokaiku has us thinking not only is it possible, it's damn near for certain. Color! So much vibrant color just bursting out of Shogun Kunitoki's instrumental onslaught. It starts out on fire and every song and sound just feeds the flame. It's almost as if Steve Reich and Terry Riley raised a child weaned on the BBC Radiophonic experiments, a young Rick Wakeman who grew up listening to the fuzzy guitarscapes of M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas... and the dreamy and propulsive instrumental jams of Stereolab, and thus cultivated a totally informed yet unique outlook and approach to music and music making. The sounds on Tasankokaiku are triumphant and assured, flickering then bursting, warm and so totally alive! Knowing how to perfectly use repetition to build momentum and then suddenly blast off to sparkling spaces that make you feel like you're being spirited away to a place that you've never been to but have always dreamed about. A sparkling glistening land of thick warm keyboards, hypnotic prog laced krautrockiness, Neu-infused soundscapes, basically a world populated by all the sounds that drive us wild. This is another one of those rare records that is an across the board unanimous AQ favorite. Everyone who works here loves it. We all hear different things too, besides the above mentioned bands, Andee hears bits of Goblin and Zombi and Heldon, Allan hears hints of Aavikko and Cluster and Circle, Irwin noticed a little Broadcast and even some Raymond Scott, but no matter what you hear, or what shades of sound reveal themsleves to you, the sum is SO much greater than its parts. A gloriously dense and warm world of fuzzy sound that we just can't stop listening to. No matter what music you've been obsessed with lately, this is one of those special records that somehow trumps whatever it is, straight to the top of your listening pile, elbowing it's way past all the other discs in your collection right into your cd player where it will effortlessly fend off any other records wanting to get in there. It's that good.
Could a band have a more perfect name? And an album a more perfect title? In this case, no. Slomo's The Creep is EXACTLY that. Creepy, creeping, slow motion music. One hour, one track, improvised and recorded live with minimal overdubs and "zero eye-contact" (it kinda sounds like it was recorded in total darkness, in fact). The ominous subterranean echoing seismic sounds of Slomo are the work of the UK's Chris McGrail and Howard Marsden. McGrail, as you might have guessed, is also the main guy behind heavy psych-dronesters Holy McGrail, whose Collecting Earthquakes was highlighted here last list. This heavy-lidded, cave-dwelling creature is a different, more somnolent beast, but if you liked that Holy McGrail disc we think you might like Slomo's The Creep too. It's something akin to a narcotized Earth or Black Boned Angel, but played with the spacious, quiet restraint of Bohren & Der Club Of Gore. The crunchy feedback on offer is both spooky and soothing. Appropriately, the cd booklet contains an old rhyme on the subject of this duo's namesake, a folkloric character known as Slomo for his generally slow and slothful ways. The final line says of Slomo: "Whose detractors do call static... but whose champions call Ecstasis?" Clearly McGrail and Marsden are of hold to the latter opinion, as do we.
This is a professional duplicated cd-r with quite lovely artwork, released in a limited edition of just 100 copies on Julian Cope's own cd-r label. We did get a bunch, but that's it, when they're gone we won't be able to get any more...so you'd better not be a Slomo yourself if you want one!
Wow! 30+ years after their beginings Sparks have made one of the best records of their carreer! Brothers Ron & Russell Mael are sometimes known best for their totally amazing mustaches and their Queen-like approach to symphonic pop with totally quirky leanings. Truth be told they formed a year before Queen in 1970 and actually had Queen as openers for many shows in their early years. In their 36 year existence they've been all over the map, being under appreciated and ahead of their time with their ubber smart art-pop, then going for disco gold with Georgio Moroder in the late 70's, hitting the charts with The Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin in the early 80's and then...well then it seems like the world stopped noticing them. But they never really stopped and thats part of the beauty of Sparks. It's undeniable that what they do is so a part of them and all their quirky eccentristies might make some annoyed but they're so smart and too cool to even care. Their last release Lil' Beethoven was arguably one of their strongest in a decade but with Hello Young Lovers they've totally reignited their flame of totally infectious (we're talking infectious, like it will be in your head when you go to sleep when you wake up when you are on the bus when you are at work -- and this is something to worry about), totally ridiculous, totally over the top brilliant dorky super smart pop from men who remind us that men are still boys when all is said and done. From Devo to Nomeansno to current spazzy punkers you can feel the influence of Sparks in both sound and sentiment. Like a possesed house band in Willie Wonka's Chocolate Factory making their own brilliantly crazed multiple Bohemian Rhapsodys over and over and over for eternity. Underneath all the flamboyance and fireworks though you always get the sense that Sparks mean every single breath of it and that's what makes them so totally special. YEAH!
NB. we have to say also, if you're a fan of Steven Schultz and his many projects, you will DEFINITELY love this...
So we've worked are way backwards with the recent reissues of great British folkstress Bridget St John. A couple lists ago we reviewed her most pop and upbeat release Thank You For..., then last time it was the ever so lush and orchestrated '71 release Songs For The Gentle Man and this time we focus on her debut, 1969's Ask Me No Questions. An outing that's the most stripped down of her first three albums. Produced by her biggest supporter, John Peel, this was by and large a totally solo affair. Her totally beautiful voice and sparse guitar instrumentation help create an overall somber and peaceful mood that is usually so hard to get so right, but St. John demonstrates that she knew so well how to evoke those sentiments without hitting people over the head, instead slowly wandering and tiptoeing her way through leaves and trees and finding beauty, truth and sadness along the way. The reissue of this debut also contains two bonus tracks including a stunning cover of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne." These recent reissues have proven she is worthy of that spot in your record collections next to Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan and Marianne Faithfull, voices that are timeless and always ring so true and wise.
Hard to believe it was only a matter of months ago when two guys from Humboldt sent Andee a stack of 15 full length cd-r's. All mysteriously packaged, with bizarre collage art, strange song titles, and music that was stranger still. We went apeshit and insisted they make us a sort of best of disc, which they did and we sold about a million (we still have a bunch in stock too!). Word spread and now the Starving Weirdos are like a real band, with releases coming out all over the place, including a recent one on Root Strata, and this here gem on the Yellow Swans' Jyrk label. They were even in the latest issue of Vice Magazine!! Thankfully all of this hasn't gone to their heads and this blast of murky free psych weirdness is just as fucked up, demented and downright beautiful as anything else we've heard from them. Huge spacious recordings of Dead C like clatter, cavernous swells of haunting ambience, like exploring some lost sewer system that leads right to the center of the earth. Clatter and clang, percussive splatter drenched in natural reverb, like some sort of silverware war in an abandoned cistern. Free jazz played on scrap metal in a cave. Cool and creepy.
The second lengthy track introduces sax, but not in that annnoying sax-ruins-everything sort of way. No, this is more of a deep listening sort of sax, long foghorn like blasts, rumbling and reverberating, drifting into the reverby distance, a slow low meditative series of short rich drones, the whole thing a barely recognized melody stretched into it's constituent parts. A foghorn symphony played on duck calls and broken reeded bagpipes. The final 15 minute epic is a return to the metallic clang of track one. A pipe fight to the death, taking place at the bottom of a black pit, walled with stone and the crushed skulls of past pipefighters, between Z'ev and David Jackman, each hurling broken cymbals, warped gongs, bent cutlery and assorted car parts at each other, while in the background a mad scientist boils up an unspeakable brew of warm wheezing guitars and gurgling electronic drones, each and every sound wrapped in a thick smear of reverb, drizzled with delay, and sent drifting back to the surface where they were recorded onto a wax cylinder. Fucking awesome!
Hand screened cardboard sleeve, photcopied insert. Limited to 200 copies!
When we first encountered Stereo Total back in 1999 with this album (originally released by Bungalow Records), our initial reaction was a rather perfunctory "Stereo-Total are Stereolab meets Musical Youth with herky-jerky female vocals you will either love or hate." Over the years, the duo have certainly improved and endeared themselves to a few of us... or maybe back then our hearts were just colder. Now that the folks at Kill Rock Stars have reissued two of the duo's early albums, we've been spurred to revisit 'em. Y'know what? We've been having a grand ol' time kicking up our heels and tapping our toes to this album and its also-reissued follow-up My Melody (with which we were already smitten the first time around). While we can't say that we luv Francoise Cactus' pouty cooing vocals, we sure don't hate 'em either. They make a great companion to Brezel Goring's droll Gainsbourgian delivery. We're happily humming along even if we haven't a clue what they're singing about in French, German, Japanese and Italian! If you dig '60s French Ye Ye girls, bubbly electronic pop, and all things Euro-cute, Stereo-Total is sooooo for you!
Ooooh la la! This was the Stereo Total album that really caught our ears back in late '99 -- especially the irresistible ultra-kicky tune "Vilaines Filles, Mauvais Garcons". Clearly it caught the ears of the Kill Rock Stars folks too 'cause they've reissued it domestically (it was originally released by Bobsled Records) along with their previous album Juke Box Alarm.
Here's what we said the first time around: Quirky German, French and English vocals frolic over a mish mash of tinkly, woobly melodies. A dash of Pizzicato Five, a sprinkle of Francoise Hardy, a pinch of Thee Headcoatees. This is the soundtrack to your next pyjama party, wear your pinkest of lipsticks and fluffiest of pjs... Or perhaps, this is the soundtrack to your next Sanrio soiree, wear your battiest of lashes and froufrou-est of frocks. Go go go!
Another rootsy lo-fi cd-r from the SF folk whippersnapper Ryan Stively. This one's a bit more even-keeled than his self-titled debut cdr which took a few wigged-out distorted detours. From Sugar Thunder's packaging to the dozen loosely woven acoustic tunes to Stively's slightly frayed around the edges vocals, this release is entirely shaded in muted earth tones. Note: As we mentioned, these recordings are quite low in the fidelity department with volume levels that jump about haphazardly. So, keep in mind that you might need to govern the volume knob a bit.
What's this? A little bit more from Kelley Stoltz! Wow, we've barely been able to catch our breath after he double-whammy'd us with Below The Branches and Crockodials (aka his terrific new full length and his complete recreation of Echo & The Bunnymen's album Crocodiles respectively). In case you're still craving more from Mr. Stoltz, the kind gent himself has just brought in some copies of his latest 7" vinyl offering for your hungry lil' ears. Instead of the Beach Boys-Bowie-Beatles-y pop sounds of his album or the '80s somber angst of the cover album, he's opted for a more swaggering, grungey Motor City-ness. "Discount City" and its baseball-themed flip side "'84 Tigers" are edgy, trippy blues rock numbers, very well suited for release on this Detroit, MI indie label. Cool!
Limited to 500.
Despite our anticipation that this might be an ode to Laurie Anderson (or more specifically her track "From The Air" on Big Science). This Is Your Captain Speaking are not that at all. Their debut album presents this Australian combo as more in the tradition of grand atmospheric rock bands such as Godspeed You Black Emperor and Mogwai. The expansive Storyboard is comprised of seven lengthy instrumentals beginning with an eighteen minute epic "Gathering Pieces". Gliding strings move in like a creeping fog bank as picked guitar lines offer fleeting glimmers of light. Drumsticks on the rim of snaredrum snap sharply like dry twigs underfoot. An interesting sidenote: Save for a brief outburst of children's giggles at the end of the third track, there's no way that you'd guess it, but the album was recorded in a primary school library!
The third release in Paradigms' series of super limited cd obscurities, this time from mysterious Norwegian black metal horde Throne Of Katarsis. On first listen, this sounds like some lost slab of classic nineties Scandanavian darkness, ultra grim, super lo-fi black fuzz recorded on a 4-track, whirling drone drenched icy buzz, but the Throne manage to add their own little slant to the proceedings. The first hint that this is not just some typical BM group, is the warm church organ intro that manages to be totally misleading, unless you envision the ToK horder bursting in on a mass in progress and defiling everyone and thing in sight. Then there's the haunting acoustic guitar halfway through the eleven minute opening track, that quickly segues into some loping dirge-y doom, sounding sort of like a slowed down Xasthur. The acoustic guitar returns again closer to the end, and transforms that gloriously droning dirge into a strangely melodic, epic sweeping sway, sort of like Dissection or even Iron Maiden, albeit doused in muffled black grit and slathered with satanic skree. The second track is more straight ahead Norwegian black metal, bringing to mind Emperor, Mayhem mixed with newer black souls like Leviathan and Xasthur, especially with its weird sorrowful lilting Burzumish acoustic guitar melody buried beneath the fuzz. The final track is the real oddball (and maybe our favorite track here), partially recorded in the Liarlund forest, the sounds of footsteps crunching through the snow, the call of faraway birds, whirling whispering wind, all beneath a warm creepy blanket of muted synth and gargled demonic mutterings. Eerie and lovely, but still strangely black and grim...
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
We're big ol' Thrones fans here, and so the arrival of a third Thrones opus the other day was pretty darn exciting! It's been five years since the magnificent Sperm Whale, after all! And we're happy to report that Day Late, Dollar Short, despite its title, does not disappoint in any way (though, it's not exactly an entirely new album, more on that in a sec). Now, you know that the double necked guitart/bass wielding Joe Preston -- for he is Thrones and Thrones is he -- has quite the heaviness pedigree. He's played in the unholy heavy trinity of Earth, the Melvins, and SUNNO))), and he's currently the bassist for stoner metal lords High On Fire. Thus, from his one-man-band project Thrones you'd expect nothing less than H-E-A-V-Y, and you'd be right. But it's more than merely heavy. Thrones ain't just rubbery, head-caving bass, lotsa feedback nastiness, machine beats, and throat-rasped vox. Thrones is also really, really weird. As you'd expect from Joe, who used to be in the Melvins after all. There's certainly plenty of Melvins style fuckery going on here!
I mean, after the sheer noxious pummel (we like!) of track one, "The Suckling", you'll wonder what's going on with track two, "Young Savage". Punky and uptempo, with a gang-vocal chorus, it threw us for a bit of a loop until we figured out it was an Ultravox cover. That's then followed by the disarmingly gentle (but disturbingly child-voiced) "Algol". What's going on? Whatever the heck Joe wants, basically. And that's okay 'cause what he wants is to unleash a torrent of creativity that encompasses such things as utter sludge drone dirge, Buttholes Surfers-ish mania, indie rock pop (with some non-effected, clean singing even), drum machines kickin' old school hip hop beats, crazy prog structures, all-out rawk, thrashy riffs, electronic filtering, etc... almost all of which you'll hear in, say, track fifteen, "Obolus", which starts off doing the Melvinsy doom thing but with Bruce Haack/Electric Lucifer robot singing before segueing into a soundscape of bird twitters, bells and chimes, and waves of white noise (this from the "soundtrack" to La Foresta Della Norte). Then there's all the crazy covers that Joe tries his hand at: along with the Ultravox, this includes a Residents cover, a Blue Oyster Cult cover, and yes, unreleased track "A Quick One" is indeed a cover of a portion of the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away". Wow. Not afraid of a challenge, this guy.
And we do mean "unleash a torrent" -- there's 19 tracks here, almost 80 minutes of Thrones insanity, much of it compiled from rare, out-of-print singles, cassettes and comps, with some previously unreleased tracks as well, spanning the years 1994-2001. The lovely, bunny-adorned packaging (Mr. Stephen O'Malley, take a bow) also features personal notes on each track by Joe hizzelf. Here's hoping that he'll find time away from his regular gig in High On Fire to do a real *brand new* Thrones album... but in the meantime we're happy to have this "incomplete collection of smaller projects" all on one handy cd.
Yeah! Yellow Sea Years is a great collection of tracks from this legendary '60s psych outfit from Peru. We've actually had this in stock since last year and always meant to list it but only got around to it now. Traffic Sound's early influences should be readily apparent from the cover versions that populated their first album, 1968's A Bailar GoGo: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burdon, Iron Butterfly (nope, not "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" -- they did "You Can't Win"!), and Skip James's "I'm So Glad" (as featured on the Latin American installment of the Love, Peace & Poetry compilation series). Of those debut album tracks, only Eric Burdon's "Sky Pilot" is included here. By the time of their second album Virgin in '69, they'd definitely established their own, wonderfully spacey, groovy and melodic, sound. That brilliant LP is only represented on this disc by "Meshkalina" though this comp takes its name from the epic "Yellow Sea Days" (not included). Following on from Virgin, Traffic Sound continued to explore more mellow, Pink Floydy pop as well as getting into funkier Latin-tinged soul-psychedelia... the latter perhaps being the reason that Vampi Soul has opted to focus mainly on material from the band's third and fourth LPs, Traffic Sound (1970) and Lux ('71), cramming as much of those albums onto this 80 minute cd anthology as possible. And there's definitely some great stuff here! For example, the utter jazz-horns boosted psychedelic grooviness of "Tibette's Suzettes" (with a slightly Ozzy-ish vocal). Badass track that one. Yep, if you're into upbeat, '60s psych-pop rock that draws on prog, folk, and funk, you need to check out the Traffic Sound. Now if they'd only also reissue all of Virgin!
Note to bands. Go all out on your cover art. It's really the only thing setting you apart from a record that gets listened to and about a million that don't. And as much as we try to listen to every single record we get, it's just not physically possible. So we almost passed right over this one. The artwork's not bad really, just sort of blah, black and white, a little abstract, but considering how weird and heavy and great this record is the cover just doesn't do these songs justice. Transmission 0 are another one of those bands that are really tough to pin down. They're pretty metal, with super stacatto, chugging riffs, howled vocals, sort of Helmet meets Converge. Thick and almost metalcore sounding. But then there's keyboards everywhere, all over the place. Not right up front, but just a sort of hazy melodic fuzz lingering behind the dissonant riffing or draped like some sort of gauzy curtain across the pounding rhythms. But that's not all, the band will often bliss out and simmer down into some weird reverb soaked moody post rock lope, all clean guitar and almost croony vocals, sort of swirly and krautrocky with heavily affected guitars that sound like they were lifted from a Smiths song, but before you know it, the song might burst into an ultra-aggro head pounding metal riff-down. There's even some stretched out spacious doom all slow motion riffs and plodding drums, that sometimes dirge down to a downright SUNNO))) / Earth-like crawl. There's also a couple downtempo electronic beatscapes, skittery and shuffling, with thick grinding synths and super distorted bass, some kickass Iron Maiden dual harmony riffing, some Godspeed-like dreamy slowbuild epics, and on and on and on. Sounds impossibly confusional on paper (on computer?) but coming through the speakers it sounds divine. Maybe a little bit dizzying in their sonic scope, but we think you can handle it.
What do you get when you mix Wrest from Leviathan, Malefic from Xasthur, Hildolf from Draugar, Imperial from Krieg and Azentrius from Nachtmystium? Odds are by the end of that sentence, most of you black metal fans don't even care, you just want it whatever it is! Well, what IT is, is a long in the works collaboration dubbed Twilight, featuring the above mentioned black metal masters, all conspiring to produce the sickest, grimmest black metal ever. And Twilight certainly is both grim and sick, but the sound manages to be much more, veering dramatically from the various contributors' usual sound and sounds. The first track is a massive and thick, buzzy and blurry tarpit of swirling BM, that is so unbelievably dense at times that the vocals and guitars and drums almost merge into a single massive blackened drone, before random parts shift ever so slightly and are allowed to drift to the forefront before slipping back into the murky blackness. Layer after layer of downtuned riffing, insane blast beats and hellishly surreal super processed howling vocals (sounding almost like all five of them are singing simultaneously). Quite possibly one of the most frightening black metal tracks EVER. We were totally thrown for a loop though with track two, which starts off with a bizarre jaunty black metal jig, accompanied by grunted troll-like vocals, before splintering into more familiar buzz and drone territory. After that it's exactly what you would expect from a BM dream team like this, lots of midtempo Burzumic throb and buzzy BM drone, plenty of growled, howled, gurgled and shrieked vocals, completely amazing riffs, veering from echoing spacious doom to razor sharp blackthrash to weirdly melodic almost jangle, catchy melodies that reveal themselves slowly with each listen, and of course there's Wrest's amazing and super creative drumming holding it all together. The sticker on the front pretty much says it all: "As an entity, they have delivered a mammoth, blackened metallic statement. Bleak, cold, darkness within and beyond the void."
OK, what would you think if we told you that this record is basically some white guy, sounds like he's in his forties, doing caffine fueled, stream-of-conciousness, foul-mouthed beat poetry backed by jazzy, exotic music? His intellectual macho rants are full of '60s references ("I know who killed Kennedy. It was Ladybird Johnson. She was the only one with the guts to do it.") and surreal stories (there's a whole story about yeti hunters) and other conspiritorial strangeness. He makes very little sense, talking his own brand of hep jive, spewing bile all the while.
So the question is, is this a parody? Or really meant to be taken seriously? Well perhaps not the latter, since Uncle Jim is apparently Alan Bishop of the notoriously confusional Sun City Girls, who are on hand to provide that background music, along with others including Porest. Of course even if you convince yourself that it's some sort of joke, that doesn't mean it's that funny or that you'd want to listen to it. So maybe it's better to decide that this IS actual serious poetry and if you work hard enough to "get it" it'll be brilliant. Or it's just something for hardcore collectors of everything by Alvarius B, Sir Richard Bishop and Charles Gocher, though presumably you all already got the previously issued limited edition vinly version of this...
The curators of the fourth volume of the seven part series of Anthologies of Noise & Electronic Music are correct when they point to the fact that the history of the avant-garde is a messy one with tangled connections between competing factions, ideologies, methods, and personalities. The Sub Rosa compilations are dotted with a who's who of the electro-acoustic avant-garde from the past century, tossed in with a smorgasborg of previously unknown (and often very interesting) artists as well as contemporary musicians who are well on their way to establishing themselves within the canons of the institutional avant-garde. Sub Rosa has gone out of its way to compile a collection to scramble one's notions of the taxonomic rhetoric that may influence the perception of any of the artists present; hence you'll find Les Rallizes Denudes (already you can tell this series is not very reverential of the academic definition of experimental electronics music, with the inclusion of this incendiary Japanese psych band) next to Vibracathedral Orchestra followed by one-time Blind Idiot God guitarist Andy Hawkins then Alvin Lucier. Sub Rosa boasts that more than 75 percent of the album is unreleased material, which is all the more impressive considering that the compilation features the likes of Gyorgy Ligetti, Oliver Messiaen, William S. Burroughs, Milan Knizak, Steve Reich, Halim el-Dabh, Jean-Claude Risset, Stephen Vitiello, Laurie Spiegel, and many others. To top it all off, it's surprisingly pleasing to listen to. What that says about the state of 'noise' music may be another question.
Even if it is last year's fashion (meaning: this was released back in October '05), we've fallen head over heels for this stylish boxset! The tunes, the big booklet, the chic black'n'white hatbox packaging... all of it! The folks at Rhino Records have always made it their mission to dish out the oldies-but-goodies, but they have truly outdone themselves with this '60s girl group extravaganza. Each of the four cds contains thirty songs for a whopping total of one hundred and twenty songs! They cover a lot of ground from pert pop to smoooth soul, from peppery R&B to sashaying country. Many of the featured artists will undoubtably be more than familiar to you, but we'd wager that just as many will be new to you. That said, even if you do recognize the faces, you very well might not recognize the songs. This boxset is dedicated to shining a rosy glowing spotlight on the more obscure tunes. Aaah, some things -- such as good music -- never go out of style.
Talk of this compilation has been making the rounds for months, and now that it's here we can see why. We can also see why it took so dang long. But it was well worth it. The final product, the lineup, the songs, the packaging, the cause, WOW. The bands are a who's who of indie / avant / alternative rock / folk / electronica / experimental, all over the map. It's dangerously close to being SO eclectic that it's just a mess, but if you approach it as the worlds longest mixtape, made by your coolest friend with the best record collection it all starts to make some sort of skewed sense. But who cares? Look at this lineup:
Angles Of Light, Michael Yonkers, Antony And The Johnsons, Thighpaulsandra, Devendra Banhart, William Basinski, Bevis Frond, Teenage Fanclub, Sundial, Six Organs Of Admittance, Suishou No Fune, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Richard Buckner, Vashti Bunyan, Damon And Naomi, Shock Headed Peters, Isobel Campbell, Dolly Collins, Shirley Collins, Bill Fay, Marissa Nadler, Tom Recchion, Colin Potter, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Linda Perhacs, Max Richter, Current 93, Jad Fair, Simon Finn, Edward Ka-Spel, Pearls Before Swine, Nurse With Wound, Jarboe, Charlemagne Palestine, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Mirror, Matmos, Alex Nielson & Richard Youngs, Larsen, Faun Fables, James William Hindle, The Hafler Trio, Keiji Haino, Allen Ginsberg, Howie B, Ghost, irr.app.(ext)., Cyclobe, Fursaxa and more more more!
The liner notes make it impossible to tell just which tracks are exclusive or unreleased and which are album tracks, but again it hardly matters in this context. Like borrowing some cool kids Ipod and setting it on shuffle. And of course the most important part of all this, and the whole reason this compilation exists is that all proceeds go to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) to support their work in fighting HIV / AIDS in Africa.
Packaged in a cool slipcover box, with individually printed cd sleeves, a HUGE book with liner notes from Mark Logan who runs Jnana records as well as information about Medecins Sans Frontieres, as well as track by track notes from each band.
What more can we say about grime? Other than it's kicking our ass on a daily basis. This shit is so hard and heavy, so funky and catchy and freaked out. Why are people still listening to shit like 50 Cent, The Game, and all that bullshit gangster cookie cutter hip hop? Grime has all the aggression, all the ferocity, but mixes in loads of humor in a super subtle way, and the sound of grime is so much more funky and fun, so much more alive, more vibrant. A headspinning collision of hip hop, dancehall, jungle, ragga, huge slabs of distorted synth, throbbing basslines, bizarre sped up loops, that stuttering grimy beat, and the flows, oh the flows. Holy shit! These MC's could rap circles around our MTV elite, although no one would be able to understand a word they were saying. Super nimble, tongue twisting, mush mouthed, marble mouthed, cockney drawls, shooting off rapid fire lyrics, sputtering, stuttering tangled up rhymes splattered all over the hiccupping beats. FUCK! This is so good!!!! As much as we dug the recent Heavy Meckle comp, this second volume of Vice's Run The Road series is even better, definitely HARDER, as they have cherry picked the hottest tracks from the hottest names in grime (most of which remain criminally unknown in the US): Low Deep, Big Seac, Kano, Crazy Titch, Klashnekoff, Bear Man, Mizz Beats Sway and loads more.
SO ENTIRELY AND UTTERLY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY RECOMMENDED!!!
Last year, one of our favorite releases was the always great label Sub Rosa's beautiful assemblage of 1971 recordings from the kingdom of Bhutan entitled Tibetan Buddhist Rites From The Monasteries of Bhutan; and wow, what an intense and powerful collection of recordings it was. Sounds by monks and nuns that pretty much surpassed in sheer intensity and core spirit so much of what we usually drool over in our experimental and metal sections. Now we have the follow up to that which comes from the same recordings by John Levy made in Bhutan from 1971-72. A much different affair, these recordings as made obvious by the title, focus on the actual songs and folk tradition of Bhutan. Featuring skillful and moving instrumentals as well as many songs with vocals that leave us in total awe of their haunting qualities and totally beautiful delivery. You can almost imagine people like Islaja and Will Oldham listening to this with their notebook by their side and their ears wide open hoping to have it all enter their psyche. Parts of the instrumentation no doubt would get members of the No Neck Blues Band standing at attention. So funny how so much of what we know as 'free folk' or "free whatever" can be found in its original incarnation on these recordings. The Bhutanese dramnyen is probably the core and most used instrument on these recordings and wow how much we are in love with its glorious sound: seven strings that are struck with a plectrum and vibrate warmly, instantly washing over you with a darkly gentle vibe of total warmth and surrender. We're so grateful to Sub Rosa for releasing these previously impossible to find recordings. So moving and totally recommended!
Listing this, at last. We know a lot of you have been enjoying DJ Andy Votel's Vertigo label mix cd that we made Record Of the Week last summer. Advertised in the booklet for that cd was this triple disc box set, compiling 41 full (unmixed) tracks from the Vertigo vaults. So here it is. If you liked that Vertigo Mixed disc but you're not ready yet to hunt down the collectable original LPs (or cd reissues, which aren't always available either) by all those bands, this 3cd set is just the ticket to get to hear more. Some of these tracks were included in Votel's mix (but here you get the entire song!), and some not.
Of course, with a vast, three and a half hour collection like this, a review is superflous for the curious. First off, though, if you don't know: Britain's Vertigo label, in its early '70s heyday (characterized by the "swirl" logo), specialized in both heavy psych and jazz-rock, often finding bands that blended the two into progged-out grooves that Votel likes to call "hairy funk". Not every Vertigo "swirl" album was incredible, but there's enough gems amidst the many, many tracks released by the label circa 1969-1973 to make putting together a fairly bountiful compilation like this pretty easy on the compliers.
Vertigo's most famous signing was Black Sabbath. Perhaps unnecessarily, there's two Sabbath tracks included here. Being the best band ever (sez Allan anyway) you should already have 'em. But chances are you don't already have tracks by a lot of the other bands found here, ranging from the fairly well-known to the totally obscure: Gentle Giant, Gracious!, Affinity, May Blitz, Juicy Lucy, Jade Warrior, Dr. Z, Tudor Lodge, Warhorse, Freedom, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Beggars Opera, Nucleus, Atlantis, Ramases, Colosseum, Aphrodite's Child, Ben, Cressida, Patto, Clear Blue Sky, Gravy Train, Uriah Heep, Mick Ronson's Ronno, and more. A diverse array ranging from folky flutes to hard rock riffage to jazzy romps (sometimes all in the same song). All these cuts are contained on three cds in cardboard sleeves, housed inside the box alongside a 48 page booklet with a page or paragraph on each band, and an introductory essay about Vertigo's history. The whole package is a Vertigo primer, if you will. Definitely a good sampler to help direct your further exploration of the Vertigo (and early '70s psych/prog/jazzrock) legacy, or maybe just enough for your needs in that direction...
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!
