Boy do we love Grime!! But we're getting a bit frustrated at the relative dearth of grime stateside. We can only listen to our Dizzee Rascal and Wiley records so many times. Plus to be honest, as much as we dig those, we're sort of hankering for something a little more, well, you know, grime-y! Overseas, you got Kano, Lethal Bizzle, Lady Sovereign, More Fire Crew and loads more but it's taken forever for any of their records to make it over here. But in the meantime, we've got the debut from the Virus Syndicate, courtesy of Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu label. And it's a corker. The thing with grime is, well, it's sort of like drum and bass, you just gotta love the sound. We can't get enough of the super distorted classic ragga drum and bass. So much so that we could listen to that shit forever. And we're beginning to feel the same way about grime. It's sort of like hip hop sure, but the rhythm is this super repetitive, slurry, stuttering beat, a very clumsy funk, over and over, every song has the same general head nodding shuffle, with grimy fuzz synth bass lines, and then maddening, tongue twisting flow over the whole thing. Virus Syndicate take that formula and give it their own twist. Big fat beats, throbbing and hiccuping, haunting stabs of operatic vocals, fuzzed out synths, burbling booming system bass, all rocking that instantly recognizable grime rhythm, while the Syndicate spit bizarre marble mouthed rhymes, talking trash, a wildly confusional flow, catchy and soulful, occasionally slipping into some almost Jamaican style toasting. So fucking awesome.
Also boasts some truly and brilliantly atrocious cover art (continued inside the cd booklet with a Virus Syndicate comic!).
Carl Michael von Hausswolff stands as one of the more intriguing conceptually based sound artists, often manipulating electro-magnetic ephemera within highly codified contexts, installations and performances. Hausswolff is most well known for his collaborative project with Leif Elggren called The Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland, a psycho-geographical territory that claims to have annexed all of the land between countries and the space where dreams exist, along with a number of deliberately absurdist proclamations to act as a critical counterpoint to the nation-state of the 21st Century. Beyond this, Hausswolff has steadily produced an eccentric body of recordings, culling static, noise, feedback, and tones from disturbances in electro-magnetic fields. For Leech, he has taken on the role as a parasite, extracting the sounds on this recording from the electro-magentic disturbances caused by four of his contemporary artists: Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Holler, Tommi Gronland / Petteri Nisunen, and Richard D. James. Hausswolff provides a scant amount of information about the installations / performances, and it hardly even matters that some of the sounds might have come from one of Eliasson's ephemeral installations bringing the fog into large-scale mirrored kaleidoscopes or the legendary sandpaper DJ set by the Aphex Twin back in 1994. Hausswolff's sounds are typical of the technology he has always employed: wire-tapping microphones, cheap algorithmic samplers, and noise-gating devices. The resulting sounds on Leech are raw recordings of glitches, crackle, and sinewave piercings that hold a cathode ray deadness to the collected recordings, except for the Aphex extractions which have been bathed in a cavernous warehouse reverb. The concept does seem to stand a bit above the execution of Leech; but the idea is such a strong one, and Hausswolff has such a strong grasp of his equipment that the album certainly holds up to his previous albums.
We always wondered when and how we could finally remove the musician from the equation entirely. Not like synthesizer and sequencer sampled electronic music or anything. And not like some Chuck E. Cheese robotic band. No, we mean just taking a drumkit or a guitar, plugging them in or setting them up and letting them go. Some bands have come close for sure, SUNNO))), Earth and the like. Music so slow moving that it seems to just sort of hover, a music that seems to be playing itself via huge swaths of amp hum and wild sheets of feedback. It's almost as if the music would still play even if the band members took five. All of the robes and smoke machines and demonic imagery in the world can't disguise the fact that you could get almost the same sound from just plugging in a guitar, turning the amp to 10, the distortion all the way up, and leaning the guitars up against the amps, and letting the guitars just feedback, moaning and squealing and rumbling and droning gloriously on and on and on....
Thus we have Vulture Club, a band, MAYBE, or perhaps just some guitars and amps who somehow figured out a way to capture their nocturnal rumblings on tape and press up a bunch of cd-r's. Either way, this record has been kicking our asses since we first got a copy a few weeks back. Imagine a more minimal Earth 2, or SUNNO))) without the riffs, or a more metal Troum! Slow shifting, churning, warm thick swells of guitar hum that swirl and eddy like some strange black tide. Alternately, at its most fierce, a seriously Total like skree, like a plane flying overhead, or someone mowing their lawn down the street, or all of your neighbors vacuuming at once heard through the apartment walls, or the sound of the mighty Ditch Witch that has been sucking sewer water out of ditches all along Valencia Street outside our store for the last two weeks. A thick and gloriously corrosive din! But the noisy edge is tempered by long stretches of tranquil drone and hum, a whirring and warbling rumble, that would sound not at all out of place hovering dreamily between your Maeror Tri records and all of those limited PseudoArcana and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon cd-r's!
Really, the thing to do would be to actually buy those amps, three or four 100 watt amplifiers, a handful of distortion pedals, and a couple guitars, and let them loose, set the amps up around your bed, cranked as loud as they'll go, plug the guitars into the distortion pedals, crank 'em up, lean the guitars against the amps, lay down and just get buried in guitars. But assuming you're not up for spending the $10,000, or are short on space, Vulture Club should most definitely do the trick for now!
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES (we took almost the WHOLE pressing!!) Hand numbered and stamped in cool oversized cardstock sleeves, with strange hairs/fibers affixed to the front, with a lovely vellum insert and track list.
Proprietor of London's 323 Sound shop and protagonist in the New London Silence movement that bridges the ethos of minimalism within the scope of Birtish improv and academic composition, Mark Wastell is a figure whose name has been popping up more and more in recent months. Vibra #2 is a limited edition CD-R release of his solo work upon a tam-tam. In fact, the gong he used for this recording was previously owned by the late Roger Sutherland, to whom this album is dedicated. In softly tapping this gong, Wastell offers an exceptional drone construction of soft resonant timbres, clouds of natural metallic reverberation, and harmonic shimmers that give the impression of electronic treatments, even when Wastell used no such devices. The slow pacing of Wastell's performance adds to the languid almost submariner haze of the recording, providing something of a mix between Thomas Koner and Stockhausen's tam-tam composition Mikrophonie. Beautiful stuff! It's limited to 200 copies, of which we only have a handful. You know what that means!
This is a downtuned stoner sludge face off between two German outfits, who tackle their Sabbath obsessions in slightly different ways. Weed In The Head start things off with delciate clean guitar figures, which are interrupted by ULTRA distorted blasts of metal riffing, the kind of distortion that is so fuzzed out the sounds are almost crumbling into pieces. Doesn't take long before the clean guitar disappears under an avalanche of groovy sludge, pounding Cromagnon drums and wailing sort of Ozzyish vocals. A weird blend of Sabbathy groove and Kyuss-y desert rock, heavy but most definitely stoney and groovy. Things occasionally slow down into almost Eyehategod terrirtory and eventually bliss out into a druggy trippy Monster Magnet style space jam. Cool!
Gorilla Monsoon (named for the wrestler we presume) counter with their own stoner psych sludge groove, starting out with a gorgeous bit of hazy ambience, all guitar distortion and feedback, before the main riff powers through, kicking up all that ambience into a swirling sonic dust storm. Dark and murky, but a bit more rocking than WITH, and much harsher vocals, that swoop wildly from a King Fowley type growl to a near Khanate like hellish shriek. There are some sludgy Eyehategod moments, lots of loping midtempo fuzz and groove, but like Weed In The Head, Gorilla Monsoon are ultimately channelling the spirit of the mighty Sabbath (heck, the singer's nom du rock is even Jack Sabbath) and there ain't nothing wrong with that.
Packaged in a nice fullcover foldover sleeve and pressed on nice thick vinyl
We'd been hearing good things about this band for ages. Someone we know was raving about 'em, and they also had the recommendation of Julian Cope... But we were having some difficulty tracking down the band, or a way to get their record for the store. Until an insane bit of coincidence / serendipity. In walked one Dave Weinberg, who a decade earlier had been Andee's boss at Holey Bagel in Noe Valley, across the street from the old aQuarius (back when Andee had time for two jobs). He had copies of a cd by his band, and what do you know? Dave's band just so happened to be White Hills! Wow. Thus we managed to get 30 or so copies of the second pressing of the No Game To Play cd-r (the first pressing is long out of print, as is the alternate version, which was drastically remixed, resequenced and retitled They've Got Blood Like We've Got Blood and released on Cope's Fuck Off And Di cd-r label) and it's just as good as we had hoped. In a word, SPACEROCK. Or if you prefer, two words. Either way, this is some seriously tripped out swirling cosmic proggy, krautrock flecked, keyboard drenched outer outer outer space rock. Think just the jams from all the best Hawkwind songs, or the dreamiest mellowest bits of your favorite Monster Magnet tracks. Mix in some Neu! and some Faust and even some Stereolab at times and you'll just be scratching the surface of White Hills' sound. The opening track is a grungy, lowslung garagey drug addled space rock stomp, think the Stooges dropping acid until they started drifting off and began to sound more like Hawkwind, a killer hypnotic riff, a simple shuffling drum beat, mumbled vocals buried in the mix, and a swirling squall of wigged out guitars and all manner of synthesizer squiggle and swoon. It sounds quite a bit like Circle too, that riff just repeating and repeating, mantra like, a super tranced out rock that you want to go on forever. The centerpiece of the record is definitely "They've Got Blood Like We've Got Blood", a near static synth swirl over a shuffling tribal rhythm, while guitars just sort of drift and float lazily amidst the whir and drone. Sounds a little bit like Brian Eno jamming with Crash Worship while somebody goes apeshit in the background on the synths. A gloriously mesmerizing hypnorock. Then a brief blast of straight up blown out, super distorted Neu! worship before the drifting ambient closer "Ulan", an abstract synthesizer soundscape that sounds like some lost Tangerine Dream jam. Blissy and totally dreamlike.
This is supposedly the final pressing, limited to 222 copies.
It's that time of the month again. No not -that- time of the month. The new Wire features ex-Television frontman Tom Verlaine on the cover. This month's Invisible Jukebox is with Burnt Friedman. The Wire Primer schools us all on the British institution that is the Fall. This month's Global Ear focuses on Kyzyl, the capital city of Tuva. Elsewhere, articles on and interviews with: Mouthus, The Knife, Ned Sublette, legendary UK artist / musician Linder, Spring Heel Jack, and as always tons and tons of reviews of records, shows, performances, installations, books et al. And finally a back page epiphany from Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
The Wolfgang Press' 1983 debut Burden Of Mules is one of the most curious albums from the annals of '80s post-punk. Dark, clunky, and quixotic on occasion, Burden of Mules has very little in common with the stylized retro-chic propulsion which has been favored by the likes of Interpol, Ladytron, Adult and other contemporary darlings from the '80s revivalist camp; thus, it's a little weird that 4AD would choose to reissue this album. I (Jim) am not going to complain, as I've cherished this album for years. The band had originally formed many years before the release of Burden Of Mules, but other projects such as Mass (yes, another band called Mass!), In Camera, and Rema Rema required the attention of the Wolfgang Press trio (Michael Allen, Andrew Grey, and Mark Cox). Something of an aggregate of The Birthday Party, Public Image Limited, and Tom Waits, The Wolfgang Press crafted weird noir-funk tunes through the alienated, aggressiveness of post-punk. Unlike the spastic energy of James Chance across the pond, London's Wolfgang Press mired their lust for atavistic funk in surrealistically tinged, cacophonous gloom, typified on Burden of Mules. Later on The Wolfgang Press' grooves become more and more pronounced, culminating in the vastly underrated album Bird Wood Cage before they devolved into a cheeseball parody of themselves. Regardless, Burden Of Mules remains a diamond in the rough for The Wolfgang Press with a case in point being the opening track "Lisa The Passion" with its tribal percusssive hammering coddled with an angelic swath of droning melodies. Elsewhere on the "Prostitutes 1 & 2," Michael Allen slinks along his bass and utters a disaffected croon about his subject matter being "the spice of life," whilst a Swordfishtrombone percussive clatter is extracted from drum machines and metallic junk. The album hardly fits in with what had been codified as the 4AD sound espoused by The Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil; but it's a sarcastic, challenging, morose, and very well done record nonetheless.
If there were any justice in the world we'd be speaking of Peter Wright in the same hushed, reverential tones reserved for the more well known minimalists and dronologists. Chalk, Coleclough, Berry, Kneale, Milton, all fantastic, but they have nothing on Milton. In fact, if anything, Milton takes the subtle drones and the amorphous soundscaping of his brethren and uses those concepts and sounds to make actual songs. Like on the opening track "The Chain Bridge", Milton lays out a thick wash of warm cathedral guitar, slow moving and stately, so thick with reverb and delay that the melody sounds submerged in some warm viscous sound, the overtones so rich and thick they seem to overwhelm the notes that produced them. But that doesn't keep Milton from unfurling the mightiest of drones. Take the 13+ minute "Offa's Dyke" a chiming reverberating slow moving mass, glistening black, shot through with all the colors of the rainbow, but so subtle as to only be barely glimpsed through the whir and rumble of the mighty drone. But even in full drone mode, there are layers of melody, subtle shadings, even little song fragments and sonic swirl. Then there's tracks like "Bannockburn", one of the most gorgeous, and emminently listenable pieces of modern minimalism we've heard in ages, a circular series of repeated motifs, slowly shifting and gently overlapping, the best Steve Reich piece that never was. A 21st century new-weird-underground cd-r Terry Riley even. Wow.
Yellow Horizon is that rich in sound, heavy in emotion, just beautiful to listen to, all the way through, alternately droning and lilting, slow and smoldering, shimmery and effervescent.
Easily one of the most gorgeous records of the year so far!
Between the Yellow Swans and the Skaters, you could fill up a whole shelf at home with limited cd-r's. If you figured Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Birchville Cat Motel, Gray Daturas, Hototogisu, Axolotl and all the rest into the equation you might just need a whole room. So here's one more to try and squeeze in if you can. Recorded live in 2005 at Sound & Fury, a record store in Australia and limited to 150 copies (we got the LAST 24!), we have to say it'll be well worth the trouble to make room for this in the cd-r wing of your musical collection as it's another kick ass installment in what is now a MASSIVE, but surprisingly consistent body of work. This live set is all droney which you know we love (and we know YOU love). The first near twenty minute track is one long shimmer, a warm low end thrum supporting a pulsing dog whistle skree and in between all manner of creaking industrialism and drifting guitar warble, thick whirring vacuum cleaner fuzz and moaning distant feedback. Track two takes the sounds of track one and roughs them up, adding more volume, more power and ultimately more noise, a big thick layer of feedback and rumble and rrrooooaaarrr. The final fifteen minute track continues in a similarly droney direction with another layered soundscape of ultralowend power and ultrahighend sinewave squeal. This time the low end is thicker and more distorted, like a guitar pressed up against the speaker, while the high end is just a distant sheet of white hot shimmer, while in the foreground, guitars oscillate and pulse, not full on noise, but not melodic necessarily either. There are most certainly melodies (or fragments of melodies present, but they are suffocated by the Swans' bulldozing sonic swells. Another winner. Hototogisu heads and fans of other such sonic mayhem will love it!
Packaged in a simple brown cardstock sleeve with a black 'Y' wax seal. Hand numbered and limited to 150 copies, includes an actual photo insert. Each one is different.
We have 24 copies and then these are gone for good!
With their last record, "War Prayers" Young People showed that they were really coming into their own and moving beyond their obvious influences. With this new release they take an even greater leap forward. Stripping down their sound considerably and making a totally raw and engulfing album that injects a minimalist aesthetic into their pop songs with amazing results. By taking away some of the layers and some of their overly sprawling emotions of past outings, they have really found their sound, narrowing their target and hitting it dead on. Like Young Marble Giants or the hard to track down in the States No Sound Is Heard album by the UK group Klang, Young People have made a set of songs that might sound sparse on first listen but have so much richness hidden away inside. Any hints of their somewhat twangy past have been sublimated into their new more subtle sound and we are so loving where they've moved to. Sometimes less is so much more.
This modern Japanese psychedelic pop band has been around forever (like, 15 years now at least), having recorded for underground labels like Captain Trip and PSF before making the jump to (in Japan) major-label status, we think. Over here of course they're still fairly unknown, but NYC label Mesh-Key is doing their best to change that, by issuing this 2003 live recording in the States (actually, the cd itself appears to be the actual Japanese release, but with an extra paper obi sleeve printed up by Mesh-Key added on to provide some English-language context). Over an hour long, the show documented here should definitely give prospective Yura Yura Teikoku fans a decent sampling of the band's charms, from the ghostly to the garagey, from chaotic crashing rockers to Velvets inspired, gentle poppiness. There's definitely enough in the way of intense Rallize-like distorto guitar on here to please those into YYT's colleagues LSD-March and Up-Tight (as on the track "Penetration" that starts off all "Twist And Shout" before they burn up their amps in a firestorm of guitar noise).
For those who follow the Tokyo psych scene, we should mention that Yura Yura Teikoku features one of the members of The Stars, and that Michio Kurihara (Ghost/White Heaven/The Stars) often guests on their records, though we don't know if he's on here or not...but he IS quoted in a blurb on the obi calling Yura Yura Teikoku "the greatest band in the world"!!
Limited to 700 copies, presumably because that's how many left-over cds from the Japanese cd pressing Mesh-Key was able to buy up? Limited vinyl also due soon from Mesh-Key.
Awww. Best friends. And they're into Star Wars too!
There's a pair of Stormtroopers in the cover photo as well as in the considerably more saucy pics inside (we can assume they're supposed to be Z-Trip and DJ Emile) and the disc art is of the Death Star, but that seems to be the extent of this release's Star Wars-iness. However, just as Star Wars fans are a somewhat obsessive breed, so too are fans of DJ acrobatics. If you count yourself among those legions (either specifically a fan of Z-Trip or of turntablism in general) then you know that the resurfacing of this long-lost mix is definitely a reason to celebrate. AWOL for eight years, these recordings have finally been rediscovered, remastered and released on cd. A very welcome, truly Z-Trippy release following his last, remarkably un-Z-Trippy (i.e, non-DJ, non-sampled) major label album Shifting Gears. Spine-tinglin' and ultra funky! Yes, this is why we dig him (and DJ Emile's sure no slouch either, going toe to toe with best bud Z-Trip in the Bombshelter)! As with all Z-Trip mixes, we expect these to fly out of here so get yr order in early...
