THE URNS RETURNS!! We all went mad for the first release from mysterious outerspace underworld doom outfit Monument Of Urns, a massive glacial slab of black as tar, slow motion doom. A brief quarter of an hour, a mere three inches of utter doom and devastation. Beautifully packaged in an oversized cardstock sleeve. So fucking good but at the same time so cruel. It's the kind of track, the sort of sound that you want to go on forever and ever, an endless smear of blackened buzz. Of which we were blessed (cursed is maybe more appropriate) with only a tiny glimpse of the mighty beast. So we were psyched to discover a new, but similarly brief blast of that dismally delightful Urns ultradoom. This time it's in the form of a single 17 minute track entitled "The Destroyer Of All". Upping the drone / drift / ambient ante, "TDOA" begins with a long stretch of slow swirling metal guitars, drifting and droning, before even more guitars are piled on top, and then the drums hit, like someone dropping anvils from a seventh story window. A plodding, trudging stretch of 16rpm riffage and vocals so raw and distorted and distant they just sound like another layer of demonic buzz. So slow and heavy, so impossibly crushing, it's doom metal verging on ambience, sludge metal stretched dangerously close to complete drone-age. And we fucking love it. Someone has got to get these guys to take all of their 15 and 17 minute tracks and string them together into the ultimate doom symphony. A double disc, a triple disc even, we can hardly imagine it.
ESSENTIAL for fans of all things Skepticism, Bunkur, Esoteric, Corrupted, Earth, SUNNO))), Boris and the like! Packaged in a cool oversized cardstock sleeve, with a mini 3" cd sleeve inside.
Our (and perhaps your) introduction to the Bay Area artist Nachiketa comes in the form of a 52 minute instrumental track titled Good Night Persimmon. Nachiketa takes us through gentle, hushed passages that ebb and flow with string plucks, lulling drones and an occasional mist of staticky flutters. Calming loveliness.
This recording, the musical life of Pandit Pran Nath, his influence on Western minimalism, his importance to music, both modern and traditional, is steeped in history, but just as important, if not harder to describe, is the sound. A warm drifting dreamscape, layers of buzz and hum and drone, Nath's perfectly intonated vocals, hovering weightless above a thick swirl of Sitar string buzz and slowly shifting drones. This is true drone music. Warm and rich, thick and effervescent. Densely layered but light and airy. Truly difficult to describe, but a record that has immmediately become one of the most played / listened to records around these parts. Nath spent most of his life studying and performing in India, and became well known for his strict adherence to the authentic rendering of traditional ragas and an unwillingness to change his style or sound to be more 'modern'. His focus on the slower 'alap' sections of ragas was an obvious influence on seventies minimalists like La Monte Young and Terry Riley (both students of his), and other students / followers included Don Cherry, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt and many others. He eventually became a US citizen and continued performing, composing and teaching right up until his death. There is a definite dearth of recordings, considering how long Nath had been performing, this 2 disc set was originally released in 2002, and has luckily been reissued. The price tag is steep, but once these sounds hit your ears, any thoughts of price or money as well as all of your other earthly worries will just drift away. Both of these performances, one from 1971 recorded in San Francisco, the other in NYC in 1976, feautre Nath accompanied by Western musicians, Terry Riley, Ann Riley, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, who seem perfectly in tune with Nath's sound and vision. Anyone who loves the music of Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Organum, any of that minimal drone music, would do well to dig deep and discover the roots of that music. This is most definitely some of the most beautiful, transcendental drone music we have ever heard.
Those New Amsterdams have returned with Story Like A Scar, an album packed to the gills with guitar driven energetic pop. Many of the songs reminded us of lots of other like-minded sensitive boy pop bands such as Sloan, Posies, Weezer, Matthew Sweet or their elders Cheap Trick, Big Star, Byrds, Beatles, but the one band that they perhaps most resemble is Chicago trio Material Issue. Remember them? They had that awesome album International Pop Overthrow back in 1991. Well, there's plenty of similarities between the super bright songwriting skills and vocal delivery of Matthew Pryor of New Amsterdams (also of Get Up Kids) and Material Issue's frontman Jim Ellison. Ten infectious, endearing and crushworthy tunes that'll surely find their way onto plenty of indie kids' mixtapes (or should we say iPods?) this summer.
More beautiful and spooky "mountain tenor" from the one and only John Jacob Niles. We highlighted another great disc of his music, The Tradition Years: I Wonder As I Wander, a few lists back. Originally released in 1941, My Precarious Life in the Public Domain culls songs from The Child Ballads, a nineteenth century compendium of over 300 ballads originating in England and Scotland, collected by Francis James Childs, a Harvard University math professor. Most of these ballads had made their way into American folk traditions virtually unchanged and unaware of their European origins. Despite the name, these songs are not for children: Murder, hanging, adultery, unrequited love and suicide are the prevailing themes delivered hauntingly and simply through dulcimer and Niles astonishing voice. Incredible!
This here little cd-r is so limited it almost seems silly to bother, but we have 15 copies, that's basically 50 percent of the pressing, so this will definitely be gone in a matter of minutes. The North Sea is Brad Rose who runs the Digitalis label, and sounds like you might imagine, post-Fahey steel string dreaminess, strummy and lilting, lots of reverb, warm and glistening and quite lovely. Not sure who the heck the Rome Chell is, but they are a perfect match for the North Sea, exploring a similar sound, although their take on the post Appalachian free folk is much more subdued and murky, steel strings are strummed, but the result is a muted pulsing melody, warm waves of sound that sort of drift and hover. Also quite lovely. Would love to hear more from both outfits. However, only about 15 of you are ever gonna hear this particular disc. So act fast. LIMITED TO 32 COPIES! We have about half. Guaranteed to be gone in minutes! Packaged in a plastic sleeve, with a black wallpaper insert, sealed with a twig and a piece of twine!
This band from Portland, Maine is the latest to lumber into the realm of the uber-heavy. Now, don't confuse 'em with the band called THE Ocean, from Germany, whose uber-heavy Fluxion album we listed not too long ago. Although you certainly could confuse them, as uber-heaviness has its hallmarks. Indeed, this line from our review of The Ocean's cd actually describes this Ocean quite well, as well: "The basic sound will be familiar for sure, massive guitars, pounding drums, propulsive, relentless riffing, blissed out, post rock parts that build and build and build into huge squalls of gargantuan guitarnoise, throbbing and pulsing, minor key and epic." Yep, another one of those bands, here we go again. Just how much single-riff repetition and down-tuned sludge trudge can we take? Quite a lot, really! Ocean's Here Where Nothing Grows debut consists of three long songs, each one an ultra-slow doomful dirge ridden with gutturally growled vocal angst. Yet, there's a sorta melodic post rock thread running through this, for a sound somewhere betwixt Corrupted and Isis. You could file this alongside the likes of Buried At Sea, Mare, Indian, Pelican, Tides, Yob and Conifer, too. If you're a fan of all that sort of stuff you'll like this. It's nothing you haven't heard before but it's exactly what you like. Extreme sludge, but droning and artful enough to catch the ears of a non-metal label like Important... and on the more soothing side of the sludge spectrum, not so nasty and harrowing as something like Khanate, Bunkur or Graves At Sea. We'll admit that this took a little while to seep in, but as the waves of this Ocean wash over you, you'll happily sink beneath its depths (sorry, it's hard to avoid such aquatic metaphors with these guys, as you'll see the cover sticker blurb writer also found).
DOOM. As per AQ tradition, we should throw some extra 'O's in there just to indicate just how doomy this is -- DOOOOOOooooooooOOOM! Not to get sidetracked, but Doom might be the only musical genre that you can deliberately misspell to indicate extra enthusiasm for whatever example of said genre you're describing. RRRRap doesn't work. Nor would you say Woooorld Music. And adding extra 'o's to Pop is a just bad idea, unless you're talking about pop you don't like. But doom, being all about being slow and low, just gets doomier when you exaggerate the spelling into doooooooooooom. The point of all this? That the debut disc from Spanish doom band Orthodox, needs, like, exponential 'o's to really get at its doominess.
Recently and rightly hailed as an Album Of The Month on Julian Cope's psychedelic drone/doom/druid rock lovin' website Head Heritage, Orthodox's Gran Poder ("Great Power") consists of three looong tracks of gloomy, glacial heaviness mixed with more chaotically rockin' parts, with one brief piano-laced interlude seperating tracks two and three. These crushing compositions are almost symphonically grand, an often exceedingly slow grind of eternally doomed drone like Earth or SUNNO))), sometimes speeding up to rock out psychedelically in the style of Argentina's Los Natas, graced with heavily tremelo-laden vocals or utterly spaced out ambience that make us think of Thrones and Yob.
Throughout this sludgey stoner soundscape, you'll hear feedback wailing like lamenting lost souls, the rumbling drum battery either nervously dodging the lugubrous riffs as they fall from the sky, or pounding in unison with the guitar and bass, sounding like the gates of an abandoned ancient cavernous cathedral slamming shut... over and over again.
We imported a whole bunch of these direct from the label in Spain because we're pretty sure that fans of the likes of Corrupted (who also sing in Spanish, after all) and Yob and Sleep and UFOmammut and all the other extra-o's deservin' dooooooOOOOoom bands that we love would want this! And if for some reason you need further convincing, please look up Julian Cope's review on his site, where he references Flower Travellin' Band's Satori and the Mediterranean paganistic roots of Catholic ritual and "Rumble" by Link Wray and much much more, his incredibly enthusiastic review almost a call to arms for doom fanatics... and he also includes cool pictures of the black-robed band members he took on a trip to their land!
Parker Street Cinema are a slightly unconventional post-rock three piece. How so? Well, while their sound for the most part keeps within the confines of Chicago style post-rock, they do give the conventions a refreshing nudge. On this their first five-song cdep, they've got bass guitar, they've got drums, but 'instead' of guitar they've got piano! Lots of moody dramatics and dynamics. An impressive debut!
More rare '70s folk from the folks at Sunbeam who brought us the great Roger Rodier (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and Fresh Maggots reissues. Mary-Anne Patterson's sole album is claimed to be one of the rarest records of its time, and after reading her story, it's no wonder. Patterson, daughter and granddaughter of famous Scottish painters, was a drama teacher (and hobbyist guitar player), who had a dream of opening an art centre for children. After a friend with music connections suggested that she cut a record to raise funds to build it, she quickly got a record deal and put together this album using local street musicians as her backing group. But reluctant to play the star and promote the record, the album sank without a trace, along with her dream. The songs here, mostly traditional, are very pretty, with a nice echo-y quality on the voice, guitar and flute accompaniments running through the entire production. The standout track is her version of "Black Girl", a Leadbelly standard, that devolves into a hippie tribal voice and flute freak out. This is a beautiful and overdue peek into the Scottish end of the '60s Folk Revival. For fans of Sandy Denny, Pentangle, and Josephine Foster.
We actually bought one of these when we were in a shop in NYC, based entirely on the cool cover art. What is surprising is that the art is courtesy of one Mr. Stephen O'Malley. It's not surprising because it's cool, just that is looks so unlike the rest of his immediately recognizable work. A sort of angular, geometric, psychedelic Pippi Longstocking. Fucked up for sure, but totally appropriate to be adroning this latest record from PeeEssEye, or PSI or whatever. We initially expected some sort of metal, maybe something sludgy or doomy, but it's really not metallic at all. it's more of an abstract, sound collage noise record. Lots of sineaves, and swoops of white noise and fuzzed out static. There is metal present, but in the form of clanking clattery percussion. Or in the shape of some weird live performance, where the band seems to be spewing metallic shrapnel through a blown speaker. Super distorted and totally fucking bizarre. The rest of the record is a series of abstract soundscapes, from twinkling shimmer, to full on harsh noise. Definitely falls sonically somewhere between the Yellow Swans, the Skaters, Wolf Eyes and the like. Fans of any of that sort of brass knuckle to the skull goodness will dig this as will strong stomached iron eared dronesters. Comes in a cool mini gatefold style sleeve with badass O'Malley artwork!
For the first song on this new Piano Magic cdep, the British group takes a turn into more of a Euro-pop direction. Imagine a more sullen Saint Etienne. Much to our delight, Angele David-Guillou's charmingly soft, wistful vocals are presented front and center for the first two numbers.
They're followed by one gorgeous instrumental and one sung by mainman Glen Johnson. That adds up to four sumptuous moody beauties! Aaaah, in terms of the Piano Magic of yesteryear (well, 1999 to be exact) that we hold so near and dear to our hearts (namely their very out-of-print Low Birth Weight album), it seems like they've found their way back to that enchanting/enchated place. More please!
We gotta admit, we sorta love Pink. Of all those MTV pop girls, she has to be our favorite. She's the sort of tomboy, badass, spitting, belching beauty, that if you met her anywhere -other- than MTV you'd fall head over heels. Either that or she'd be the best friend who you suddenly realize is actually REALLY HOT. Cue teen movie montage NOW! Can't say ALL of her music does it for us though. We all loved "Get The Party Started", why the fuck not? That was a killer song. The rest of that record was so-so, but there are plenty of records without a single track as good as that single. The new record follows a similar path, she's still the sort-of non-conformist trash talking bad girl, although this time that vitriol has taken the shape of the best song on the record "Stupid Girl", a wicked dis of all things Paris, Nicole, Ashley, Jessica, Britney, Lindsey and the whole stable of Star magazine IT girls. It's a killer track, sort of like "Get The Party Started" part two, but the lyrics are so snarky and the video seals the deal, with Pink, taking on various MTV slut personas, in short shorts washing a car, carrying around a tiny little dog, driving with a latte and a cellphone, engaged in a nightshot sex video, backup dancing for 50 Cent, but all of them done just tongue in cheek enough to be right on. The rest of the record is surprisingly -rock-, not rock enough to actually be a rock record, but there's way more band sounding songs that dance floor fillers. We're sure there's probably a couple other good songs on here, but we can't stop listening to "Stupid Girl" long enough to find out.
The dualdisc includes the "Stupid Girl" video, which is funny as shit, a bloopers/outtakes reel, and some sort of MTV style, making of the video.
You don't have to be a music theory nerd to enjoy the results of LA guitarist Rod Poole's explorations of "just intonation" or "pure tuning", a system of tuning quite different from the current Western standard of 12 pitches to the octave "equal temperment". It's been used in the music of La Monte Young and Terry Riley among others. Just intonation simply lends itself to tranquil, droning, meditative music, it would seem -- and Mind's Island, a disc of vaguely Eastern-sounding (non-Western anyway!) guitar/voice improv, or "spontaneous composition" as the artists put it, is a great example. The droning blend of Poole's acoustic guitar and the wordless singing of "avant-world" vocalist Sasha Bodganowitsch is both blissful and exotic-sounding. We've heard only a few recordings by Poole previously (there are only a few) and always want to hear more, so this is a quite welcome release.
Do you like some acid sprinkled into your sun soaked psychedelic G-rated children's television shows, well, what if we added even MORE acid it and made it into a movie... well, then Sid & Marty Krofft were for sure your pushers. The big screen spinoff of HR Pufnstuf, these songs were a crucial part of creating the overall over-the-top fantastical and colorful world of the characters of Pufnstuf. A couple lists back we revelled in there finally being a domestic release of The Bugaloos cd and we gotta say we're rejoicing in just the same drink the crazy kool-aid way for these sounds from Sid & Marty Kroft's other druggy, deliriously metaphor filled, bizarre and bright colored daydream for kids with some winking nods to their parents watching along. With a great weird cast of characters including Mama Cass as Witch Hazel, we wish all family entertainment was this bizarre and jam packed with imagination and pleasure. We're still waiting for folks like The Polyphonic Spree or some Elephant 6 tinged groups like Olivia Tremor Control or Of Montreal to fully embrace our television childhoods and carry the torch of Pufnstuff, the Bugaloos and all of our druggy friends for a new generation of kids to trip out too. So fun and dazzling!
A heavy, hard rocking Dungen? From actually back in the day? That's kind of what this newly reissued (first time on cd) Swedish hard rock rarity sounds like. Recorded in 1975 by a teenage band with big league chops, equipment, and ambition, the sole album from Rag I Ryggen (Strength And Courage, in English) is what collectors/dealers like to term a "fuzz monster". And it is full of that fuzz we love. The Rag I Ryggen boys were basically trying to be Sweden's answer to Deep Purple and Uriah Heep. And while they've got all the guitar heroics, heavy riffs, and Hammond organ action required, they're a heck of a lot more Swedish sounding, in part 'cause they sing in Swedish (and sometimes English too, on such tracks as "Queen Of Darkness") and also because they bring in a lot of folkiness on tracks like "Jan Banan" that remind us of bands like Kebnekajse. It's very rockin' mix of melody, folkiness, Moog-ed symphonic prog bombast and '70s heaviness. What's not to like? And this reish comes with three live bonus tracks, detailed liner notes, etc. Nice.
Wow! Yet another amazing re-issue from this exciting new reissue label Sunbeam. We haven't been this excited about a rediscovered psych-folk classic since Red Hash by Gary Higgins. Nobody knew what to expect from the cover photo of Rodier, (looking a lot like Geddy Lee) staring out at us from a hazy meadow with the strange enigmatic title: Upon Velveatur. But by the second song, we had immediately snatched up the only two copies. So we knew we had to get more and share this with the rest of you. Upon Velveatur is a dreamy French-Canadian psych-folk pop suite that varies from hushed mystical songs lushly orchestrated with strings and theremin to more rock-oriented numbers featuring stinging electric guitar. Lazy comparisons to Nick Drake are inevitable, and if we must go there, Upon Velveatur is closest to Bryter Later in terms of feel and production value. But Rodier can also sound like John Lennon with Cream as the band, Fleetwood Mac on backing vocals,and produced by Roger Nichols and his Small Circle of Friends all on one song! We get the feeling that maybe some folks like Neil Halstead were onto the sounds of Rodier as we were listening to some Mojave 3 and could totally hear Rodier's voice and stylings being transmitted by Mr. Halstead. Featuring bonus singles from an earlier psych folk project, Rodier-Gauthier, and liner notes from the man himself. Totally Recommended!
One of our favorite black metal records of the last few years finally reissued!!! On Nachtmystium's Battle Kommand label.
What are the odds of two different bands picking the same name? Pretty good we'd imagine, but what if that name was Nagelfar? Still pretty good as Naglfar in Norse mythology is a sailing ship made entirely from the fingernails and toenails of the dead! Ewwwww. But very metal! So you've got two metal bands, both calling themselves Nagelfar (each spelled slightly differently, one with an E, one without). It's funny, we at first just assumed that Nagelfar must be from Lord of The Rings, but Norse mythology is a pretty close second place in terms of the whole metal band name search.
Of the two Nagelfar's, we were always partial to the one with the E (the 'good' Nagelfar, we always said, not to be confused with the Swedish E-less Naglfar), a German black metal horde responsible for one of the best BM records ever, Virus West. With the dissolution of Nagelfar came the formation of the even more mysterious Ruins Of Beverast and their self described "oppressive black metal". Oppressive indeed, but most certainly depressive as well. And while this may indeed be black metal, it's as doomy as it is black, and as ambient as it is doomy. There's only a few tracks that are full on blazing buzzing black metal, and those most definitely sound quite a bit like Virus West, but the majority of Unlock The Shrine is slow and dirgey, droney and dark, midtempo Burzumic buzz, fuzzed out riffs over plodding sea sick rhythms, everything wrapped in swirling swaths of thick keyboard, all twisted into some strangely off kilter, relentlessly propulsive black metal dronerock. But that's just the basic framework, every song is rife with weird little elements, unlikely and very un- black metal sonic weirdness. A ridiculously catchy guitar melody dropped into a fierce black metal dirge, drifting abstract soundscapes punctuated by ominous almost cartoonish piano, industrial percussion and howling winds, even what sounds like gunshots and car alarms. All struggling in a churning sea of howling pounding guitar fuzz and suffocating blackened ambience. So gloriously bleak and beautifully miserable.
Another new, mysterious missive from Heavy Blosssom, the cd-r label run by Marcia Bassett of the Double Leopards and Hototogisu and Matthew Bower of Skullflower, Hototogisu, Sunroof!, Total, etc. Did lots of digging but couldn't figure out a damn thing about this Sarah's Charity outfit. There are guitars. LOTS of 'em. And we're talking the sort of guitars that sound like they are playing themselves, lit on fire, squealing and squirming, snapping at you every time you reach toward the amp and try to turn it down. Sharp and prickly, thick coruscating walls of white hot, buzzing snarling guitars. This is definitely a 'noise' record. But it's also somehow a psychedelic guitar record. By the sound of it, this could be either Bassett or Bower, just sort of going apeshit with a guitar, and about a million watts of amplification and the biggest distortion pedal in the universe. After a few minutes the distinct guitar-ness of the sound begins to blur and distort and all sorts of strange melodies and alien textures begin to emerge. For being very LOUD, and very heavy, and quite harsh, it's also strangely soothing and droney. An amazing, massive acid fried psychedelic free noise outerspace freakout. Released on Hototogisu's Heavy Blossom label. As always, SUPER LIMITED. We only got a handful. Packaged in a hand painted fold over cardstock sleeve. Be careful though when you put this in your player. The cool hand painted disc seems to dry and flake, so before you throw this in, give it a good blow or brush, and then hang on...
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We've been huge fans of the Italian avant free glitch prog abstract whatthefuck outfit the Starfuckers forever, so when the band quietly morphed into Sinistri (the title of one of their best records) we were most definitely intrigued. Their debut record on Hapna reviewed here about a year ago, found the ex-Starfuckers getting even more out there, even more damaged, and unfortunately for us being faced with reviewing the record, even harder to describe. This new cd-r features the band expanded to a sextet, jamming wild and free last summer. Wild might be a bit strong as Sinistri traffic more in musical whispers than shouts, but it couldn't get more free. The instrumentation goes a long way to explaining Sinistri's sound: guitar, amp, wah left channel, amp right channel, drumkit, real time basses, pulses, MaxMSPcode, mixer, synth cd-j, contact mic, effects and am/fm tuner. Lots of parts, but assembled quite economically. The final product is a completely abstract assemblage of guitar skronk, percussive skitter, instrumental scrape and slither, short bursts of white noise, drones and ambient fuzz, very textural and very spacious. Imagine a free jazz record as a huge complex pile of buliding blocks. Then knock it over, dump all the blocks in a big pile and remove about 50 percent of the pieces and then try to reassemble them into the exact same complex structure. You end up with a similarly expansive and ambitious structure, but one with huge gaps and spaces, turning what might have been a dense slab of free jazz, or free rock, or free funk, into a splattery scuttling minimal beast. Occasionally the guitar get almost heavy unfurling some convoluted psych riffage, and the bass does dabble in funkiness, but it's a bizarre alien funk that bears little or no relation to any earthbound funk.
Sinistri are definitely a difficult listen, truly perplexing, baffling and confusional, but their peculiar sound manages to be as mysterious and beautiful as it is abstruse.
Packaged in gorgeous hand assembled card stock covers with pasted on black and grey obi. Limited to 200 copies, each one hand stamped. We only got about 30 or so, and we're pretty sure once these are gone we won't be able to get more.
Oh how nice! Want to feel the glow of summer's warmth no matter what it feels like outside. Som Imaginario have got the golden rays for all of us to bask in. Brazil, 1970 -- and yeah start thinking Os Mutantes and the Tropicalia revolution of sound. While they never got the wide attention that some of their peers would end up receiving, their music was just as dazzling, delightful and adventures as those whose names are now much more known (Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, etc). Som Imaginario were a six piece who initially came together to back up Milton Nascimento for his short lived Brazilian TV show. This their debut was never released outside of Brazil until now, and with Os Mutantes launching a reunion tour this spring, the time is ripe for other wonderful sounds from that scene to finally resurface. Equal parts sun soaked pop, fun-freak-out and an underlying irreverent spirit make this one of those reissues that doesn't just sound cool in theory but you actually want to listen to it over and over.
RJD2 and Blueprint are the duo that make up Soul Position. Equal parts old school hip hip and ANTI-glossy/gangster/mtv style rap. This is a really solid outing, voicing sentiments that are quite contrary in the larger world of mainstream hip-hop. At times it's almost like the equivalent of sXe hip-hop as they lament the down side of wasting your life in alcohol, speak out against sexual abuse and motivations based solely on crass consumer culture. Luckily it all sounds really good too which makes their message go down that much smoother. Fans of Blackalicious should definitely check this out. They start it off with what could be their mission statement on the song "No Gimmicks": "no major label power moves, no costumes no limits no gimmicks no shoot out in the streets no publicity stints no mtv cribs no out of shape fat boy telling you how to live..." Sign us up -- we're in.
The Yellow Swans return from tour, which means a massive coming home party in the form of a new release orgy from their Jyrk label. Five new releases, definitely making up for lost time. Spider Webs is the duo of Tom Carter (from Charalambides and Sandy Ewen (from Weird Weeds), both on guitar, annd both coaxing an impossible array of sounds from their axes. Partial melodies dissolve into feedback, sheets of twisted guitar squeal, morph into delicate sonic filligree, all manner of croaks and shimmer and shrieks and groans, twist and turn, drift and reverberate. Very psychedelic, very abstract, and suprisingly abrasive and even heavy at points. Imagine the Japanese psychrock of Haino / Fushitsuhsa / White Heaven / etc. but with the bones pulled out leaving just a twitching psychedelic free for all. And although there are brief blinding bursts of psychedelic freakout, the majority of Away Away is more a wandering wondering dual guitar exploration of inner and outer space.
Hand screened cardboard sleeve, photcopied insert. Limited to 200 copies!
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We've had records from some hateful, extreme, heavy and truly black bands in the past but Stallagh definitely out-hate and out-black them all. Named for WWII concentration camps (the extra 'g' and 'h' stand for 'global holocaust'), this Dutch blackdoom industrialnoise horde, are often compared to Abruptum, for their extreme and ultra personal approcach to music making, but they take it even a step farther. Not content with harsh hateful vocals, Stalaggh actively set out to recruit mental patients and convicted murders, by using connections working in mental hospitals and carefully planning their recording sessions to coincide with the two days a month patients are allowed to leave the hospital. Woah. The main vocalist featured on the first 30+ minute track (originally released as Projekt: Nihil) is a convicted murderer who stabbed his mother 30 times when he was 16 years old, and subsequently spent the next 11 years in prisons, juvenile detention facilities and mental hospitals. Apparently he suffered from an extreme aggresion disorder, anorexia nervosa and a host of other mental problems. During the recording sessions he indulged in very excessive self-mutilation while howling and wailing through all his hate and pain and fury. Sadly, he killed himself mere months after the recordings were made. The second half hour track (originally released as Project: Terrror) features vocals from three different mental patients, one female. Wow. That's some seriously intense and messed up shit for sure. A rare and maybe problematic instance of music that straddles that blurry line barely dividing art and exploitation, a stretching of the boundaries, an exploration of how far one can go to tap into primal emotions and create music that is emotionally pure, no matter how hard it is to listen to or understand. But the results do definitely convey that hate and despair and misery, which probably can only actually be attained by going to such great lengths. This stuff is so bizarre and so fucked up but somehow strangely beautiful as well. The sheets of noise smear and shift, occasionally attaining an almost drone like quality (albeit an extremely harsh one) .
Nihilistik Terrror is a massive, mind frying, soul shattering, freaked out, slab of droning, fuzzy, buzzy, whitenoise brutality, not black metal, not even metal really, more a sort of industrial noisescape, most definitely black, and bleak and harsh, but these are not songs, they are slow shifting sonic fields of squealing shrieking distortion, grinding ear shredding ambience, crunchy and gritty and NOISY! Definitely one for the extreme noise fanatics and lovers of the harsh and brutal, but black metallers who dug later Abruptum might check this out as well. There might be riffs here, maybe even songs, but if there are, they are buried under an impossibly dense ocean of sound, layer after layer of white hot noise and sonic sludge, all swirling maniacally around the terrified, vitriolic, angry, hateful, freaked out howls and screams of real human beings with truly damaged psyches. So intense!
Includes both original releases, remastered and sonically even more harsh and aggressive, with a previously unreleased bonus track.
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It's oh so easy to take Stereolab for granted at this point; but when it comes down to it, their mandate continues to be about excellence. For those of you vinyl impaired, this is a collection of the onslaught of 7"s and 10" releases that they've released over the last couple years since Margarine Eclipse came out. There is an energy and poignancy in these songs that proves that they are nowhere near being past their prime or irrelevant. Bright and bouncy elegant and breezy cool and confident all sides of Stereolab shine through on these recent singles. They continue to make really smart sounds without ever getting too smarty pants for their own good. There is a belief in their sound and aesthetic that is too often missing in modern music. They've done a really nice job too of bringing the singles together on the cd to make a cohesive record from start to finish.
One of the best singers from Indonesia, Elvy Sukasih has one of those timeless voices that just effortlessly sweeps you off your feet. It's a combination of seductive flare sure sounding confidence that only the greatest of the great divas possess. Coming of age at the time that Dangut music was starting to bloom, she became one of its pioneers. Mixing Arabic, Indian, and some electric instruments into a high fevered eclectic sound that would become all the rage in Indonesia. While many would follow in her footsteps she actually was doing what would be later called Dangut before there was even such a thing. Recording since her teenage years in the early 60's all the way to today, she belongs in that special class of singers like Ofra Haza and Asha Bosle (Dangut music shares a similar sound and feel to lots of Bollywood music) who have managed to make music that respects their culture while at the same time transcends geography and has the capacity to enter all kinds of hearts.
Being in a metal band and calling yourself Sword, or anything plus Sword (Demonsword, Devilsword, etc.) you're just asking to be confused with the hundreds of other Sword bands out there. And c'mon, there have been several fairly well known Swords in not too distant metal history as well. The same goes for anything Witch, Super anything, Jesus whatever, the list goes on. Remember a math rock band from back in the nineties, called Table? At the time we all thought that was the stupidest name ever, but faced with ANOTHER Sword, Table seems downright brilliant. How many weird heavy bands would actually think to call themselves something as innocuous and uncool as Table? Probably none. But we digress. You've probably been reading a lot lately about a 'next big thing' band called THE Sword. That THE is very important. Cuz this isn't them. That (The) Sword, from Texas, has a sort of Fucking Champs, ironic metal thing going on, where as this Sword, just Sword, from Virginia, is a down and dirty, sludgy, scummy filthy downtuned skull cracking metallic headbutt. Huge crushing Eyehategod riffage, all slithery and sludgy and tuned WAY down, with howled hate fueled vocals and big pounding drums, simple and heavy as fuck. Think High On Fire, EHG, Minsk, Buzzoven, Sleep, Kyuss, Electric Wizard, this is black t-shirt, faded tattoos, torn jeans, shitkicker boots, long hair, big beard heavy fucking metal rock and roll. Let's imagine a Sword fight shall we? The Sword clashing mightily against Sword. The Sword is a fancy fantastical +2 magic sword, with a super ornate, betassled handle, some sort of jewel set in the hilt, with a real alligator skin grip, the blade is sort of curved and delicately etched with ancient runes, while Sword is a big six foot broadsword, rusted and dinged up, heavy as fuck, impossible to lift without both hands, but once raised skyward capable of splitting a man clean in half, the handle wrapped in deerskin and duct tape, the blade brown with the dried blood of vanquished foes. It's up to you how you'd rather be armed as you head into battle. (Well, it seems that this Sword did not in fact win the battle as we just learned that they have now changed their name to Lord By Fire to avoid all of that confusion we were just discussing!)
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK. THE ULTIMATE DRONE RECORD.
We love this record so much. The Taj Majal Travellers are so utterly mind blowing. This is a double cd reissue of this legendary Japanese psych ensemble's second lp which has been unavailable for several years now, but when we did have it in stock, if anyone asked about drones, this is the record we would always suggest. One of the most hallowed artifacts of the psych-rock collector scum scene (originals on vinyl could set you back more than $1000!), this album is an epic higher key improvised drone extravaganza, all performed live on beaches and deserted hills in Sweden, India, Iran and England. Slow, complex, irregular throbbing waves of sound, broadcast through distant loudspeakers and recaptured and reincorporated. Feedback, time-space lag, horns, echo machines, and primitive handmade electronic devices all contribute to the ever shifting clouds of sound. So unbearably awesome. And this is not electronic music, or studio based carefully constructed drone music, this is massive and organic, dreamy and natural, waves of sound drifting through sun and sky, rain and fog, trees and electrical wires, the shape of the earth, the temperature, the wind, all affecting the sound, changing the timbre ever so slightly, band members spaced out over hundreds of yards, improvising on an impossible grand scale, the earth as their stage, nature as their recording studio, a deliriously abstract sound world of subtle drones and drifting ambience. Imagine some long hairded seventies Japanese psych rock combo, but filtered through the Jewelled Antler Collective, jamming with Chris Watson, set up on sandy dunes, grassy knolls, forest glades, each not necessarily -playing- their instruments, but instead coaxing sounds from within the instruments, setting those sounds free and sending them skyward, watching it drift downwind, where a bandmate snatches the sounds and coaxes complimentary sounds from his instrument, sending a sonic respone, until these messages, these sounds weave into and around each other, the sky full of warm warbly mysterious sound. Psychedelic for sure, but more a sort of eyes closed, mind open dream drift drone psychedelia. ONE OF OUR ALL TIME FAVORITE RECORDS!!
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In the last month or so we've been bombarded with folks walking in the store with one question at the tip of their tounges: "Do you have Tapes 'N Tapes?" Unfortunately the buzz has meant it was kinda tough to get copies of this in stock. The excitement and buzz around this band rivals past years' anticipation for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Broken Social Scene. Due to some big exposure on Myspace and a performance at the 2006 SXSW that got everyone talking. We're not averse to turning frowns upside down so now we finally have this in stock and those of you who've been craving this can get your fix. What you'll be fixing on is some off kilter catchy guitar rock with vocals that got us thinking lots about Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. Think: the all out rocking moments of Bright Eyes, deep admiration for The Pixies and Modest Mouse and you can get a rough idea of what Tapes 'N Tapes is all about. Maybe not the most original new band to hit the scene but for sure they can get your head bouncing and your foot tapping. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
The always in depth, well researched and executed Smithsonian Folkways brings us the first in what will be a series of releases focusing on the music of Central Asia. Tengr-Too is a new ensemble that plays traditional music with remarkable skill and versatility. In fact, one might think this is a compilation of different artists with the extraordinary range Tengir-Too exhibit. From jew's harp jams to vocal fronted folk songs and beyond using unique instruments intregal to Central Asia (Chopo Choor, Komuz, Sybygz, Kyl Kiyak). Don't worry if you don't know what those are, as always Smithsonian Folkways goes the extra mile with extensive liner notes and even an instrument glossary with pictures so you can actually see what some of those amazing instruments look like.
The Tides made a miraculous journey last year from the reject pile of a very shortsighted local music magazine into the loving arms of aQuarius where it quickly became a unanimous favorite and a big seller. Taking all the things we love about this new post rock / dirge metal hybrid that has been kicking our asses, Pelican, Isis, Minsk, Conifer, Mare and the like, and subtly twisting it into something all their own. Where as the last Tides record alternated between rhythmic moodiness and metallic bombast, From Silence manages to be a little less overtly heavy, and a lot more moody and brooding, dark and dolorous, with slow subtle grooves and warm washes of hypnotic dreaminess, basically just good old post rock minus the metal. Although the metal is still indeed present, just in very subtle ways, more felt than heard, informing the songs and the riffs, giving the music a sort of ominous, sharp edge, lurking just below the surface. However, fear not, for the final 11 minute track is apparently where Tides had been keeping all the metal riffing missing from the first two tracks. What starts as a spacious swoonsome jam, all downtuned guitars, softly strummed, shuffling drums and wide open expanses of swooshing ambience, erupts about halfway through into a thoroughly chugging pummel, crunchy and lurching, pounding and swaying like a much groovier Neurosis before blissing out into a washed out psychedelic drift that threatens to float away completely before the hammer falls again and that gorgeously chugging riff returns to lay waste to any and all in its way.
A brief blast of murky scuzzy garage pop from our latest fave Siltbreeze combo. This 3 piece kicks up a serious racket, a sort of Guided By Voices via The Strapping Fieldhands stomp but with plenty of Dead C skree sprinkled on top. Boy / girl vocals, trashy distorted guitar, the whole sound a fuzzy lo-fi blur, but everything dominated by the ORGAN, big blown out buzzy blast of melody like some long lost Fuzztones organ riff played through a wall of Marshall stacks. So good.
Tivol were always the unkempt, crusty, scuzzy garage rock, deformed cousin-locked-in-the-basement, dirty, filthy side of the Finnish musical underground. Where Circle were channeling classic Krautrock, Tivol were spewing a sort of Brainbombs / Liquorball hybrid. Where Islaja was whispering flowery lullabies, Tivol were stomping through the flower garden in big black boots. Sure they were sloppy and noisy and scattershot, but even at their most chaotic and blissfully blownout, there were definite traces of Hawkwindy spacerock, propuslive krautrock, and full on stoner rock. Albeit obscured by clouds of pot smoke and an awesomely lo-fi production. A lot has changed since last we heard from Tivol. They clean up real nice. They're still a sloppy noisy scuzzy bunch, but now they've got their hair all slicked back, shirts tucked in (at least in the front), shoes polished, and have begun to faintly resemble their countrymen in Circle. That's right, this is relentless and repetitive kraut flecked space rock, with a stoner rock streak a mile wide, pulsing and pounding, with swoops and swooshes of interstellar synth and most surprising of all, vocals, real vocals, a sort of throaty croon way up in the mix, super dramatic and bizarre. A bit Bauhaus maybe, a bit Dave Vanian.... But their garagescum roots definitely shine through, there's nothing clinical or super tight, or polished here, the drums are splattery and pounding and the guitars are warm and muted and fuzzy, the vocals drift bizarrely, crooning and wailing, everything drenched in cosmic rays and super space FX. A little like Circle if they smoked a lot of pot, recorded on a 4 track in their parents' garage, and listened to nothing but Hawkwind and Mainliner. Which of course means FUCKING AWESOME!
Man, they just keep starting 'em younger and younger, don't they? Pretty soon we'll be hearing covers of old punk classics emanating from the womb (which reminds us of that Mr. Show sketch about pre-natal beauty pageants, but we digress...). This Bay Area trio join the likes of Rock Jack, Eyeball Skeleton, The Stinky Puffs, Evil Wicked Warrior, Mark Shit and of course Old Skull in their prepubescent mission to rock you. Total Annihilation are ten year old Eddy Demon on vocals and guitar, thirteen year old Pietro D'Amato on drums and a young at heart 35 year old Dorkmeister Harmoniak on bass. Noggin is their garage/bedroom lo-fi punky rawk debut cd-r which includes four originals and a cover of "I Wanna Be Yr Dog"!
The shiny happy side of Finland's Fonal roster. If we didn't know better we would probably believe it if someone said that they were from Japan or France because they kick out that totally bubbly, playful and addictive flavor of pop that totally brings to mind the best moments of Cibo Matto, Pizzicato Five, Stereo Total (yeah we know they are from Germany but you get what we're saying), Buffalo Daughter, etc. This time out we also hear some nice fuzzy USA influence with some Beach Boys moments and an overall feel that reminds us a lot of Mates Of State. What's so great about TV-Resistori is how they keep their sound so warm, punchy and catchy without resorting to all out quirkiness or kitsch. Too many bands trying to pull of this style suffer at the hand of over the top and glossy production that in the end kind of erases all the charm that might be within the songs. TV-Resistori do it right and keep their sound rich and dense with an analog warmth and a tender touch on the control boards which so nicely compliments their songs, and makes for one of the better pop albums of the year.
Herewith the third visitation from New York doom-dirge demons Unearthly Trance. Like their previous two blackened death marches, The Trident drags listeners down into the depths of a dark, hellish place and leaves them there to dwell! In comparision to their past efforts, though, this one is somehow, amidst the mire of punishing doom distortion, more tuneful -- at least in the vocals, which venture into real, "clean" singing at times. We can still describe Unearthly Trance as a militarized, motorheaded version of Khanate or Eyehategod, but we're now also reminded of the relative melodicism of such bands as Today Is The Day and Acid Bath. So don't worry, Unearthly Trance are still safely ensconced within the inner circles of Hell on The Trident. Imagine, maybe, a really depressive and negative, black metal Pelican?
The Trident wielded by UT digs deep, leaving scars in the psyche the way the passing of an ancient glacier does to the landscape...though they aren't always, just sometimes, paced that slow. A definite dooOOOOooom recommendation.
A gorgeous reissue of this long out of print cd-r, the debut release from myesterious folk ensemble United Bible Studies, reissued again on cd-r, this time limited to only 100 copies (we got 30) and packaged in a gorgeous, hand screened textured paper sleeve. UBS explore a gorgeous mix of modern post-Fahey Appalachia (a la Jack Rose, James Blackshaw) and pagan seventies Brit folk (Incredible String Band, Shirley Collins, etc.) as well as incorporating a dash of the apocalyptic folk of groups like Current 93 and Sol Invictus. A dizzying expanse of pastoral serenity, blissy folk dirges, dreamy drone and dark lilting ballads, simple reverby piano, lots of string buzz, wheezing harmonium, warm whirls of gorgeous strum and shuffle. You can almost imagine some shadowy troupe, huddled in the corner of an old tavern, fire crackling in the hearth, rain pouring down outside, serenading a room full of weary travellers, heads hung low, letting their minds drift and their souls be warmed by the dark beauty of the music. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL, ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD.
We just got this in earlier this week, and well, what do you want already? A review?? It's SIX count 'em SIX CDS!!! We can't listen to all of this and review it, nor do we need to. C'mon, just buy it. You know you want one. How can you not?? There's SEVEN HOURS AND 36 MINUTES of music on here from pretty much EVERYBODY that you love from the international drone / psych / folk scene, from the US and NZ and Finland and Japan and lots of other places. Here's just a partial list: Birchville Cat Motel, Avarus, Bardo Pond, Black Forest/Black Sea, Doktor Kettu, Steven R. Smith, Fursaxa, Peter Wright, Urdog, Seht, Uton, Loren Chasse/Of, Renato Rinaldi, Miminokoto, Matt De Gennaro, Geoff Mullen, Flies Inside The Sun, Up-Tight, Es, Wolfmangler, My Cat Is An Alien, One Inch Of Shadow, Keijo, Ashtray Navigations, Ben Reynolds, and a half-a-dozen more. GEEZUS. All kinds of haunting textures, space rock excursions, and free improv splurge. Of course, we'd love to provide you a detailed, multi-paragraph review where we discuss each track in depth and mention all the highlights, describe the variety, etc. etc. But that's crazy. We wouldn't get this listed until next year if we did that. And you want this NOW don't you? So, suffice to say that this is an amazing follow-up to the excellent, out-of-print "Invisible Pyramid" 2cd comp released a few years back by LVD. This time compiler Chris Moon, inspired by the classic triple LP comp Harmony of the Spheres released by Drunken Fish in 1996, encouraged the contributors to give him more material or longer tracks, in the 12-18 minute range. Perhaps later he saw this as a foolhardy decision when he realized the comp was going to take up six whole cds. But he did it anyway, and we can thank Chris for doing this, 'cause of course, most of these artists are all about the extended track length experience. These aren't bands that write three minute pop songs (although, some artists do provide suites of shorter tracks rather than one long one). They want to let loose and DRONE. And what's the use of a drone that gets cut short after a couple minutes? Exactly. So this comp avoids that problem, and is really a bargain at the price for so much music! Includes an appropriately thick booklet with liner notes, track info, and dedications to various extinct species.
In case the title and saucy cover art of a big red-lipped mouth didn't hammer it home, there is a note on the front of this import cd that says "contains sexually oriented adult material"... meaning plenty of orgasmic moaning and gasping. In French of course! That somehow always makes things seem all the more naughty! Andee sez this album was supposedly heartily endorsed by Playboy Magazine, and whether or not that's true, it makes total sense. All of the tracks on this compilation were selected by French DJ Mr. Flash (including three of his own). Amid the heavy breathing and sporadic dialogue, there are musical interludes that bring together grooovadelic downtown funk voluptuousness, Italo-symphonics, and kooky synthesizer melodies. Un peu d'erotique pour vous!
Those cool kids at Three.One.G (aka the label run by Justin from The Locust!) have delivered another tribute album (you might recall their rad Dynamite With A Laserbeam compilation cd dedicated to Queen). This one celebrates "one of the best bands that has ever existed" (their words, not ours, but some of us here might tend to agree)... The Birthday Party! Nick Cave, Rowland S. Howard and co. were (and continue to be) one of the most influential bands on the angst-ridden SoCal music scene that was spearheaded by this label and their comrades Gold Standard Laboratories. But unlike that of many of the youngsters who've followed in their tracks, there was no question that their pit of torment and despair and blind rage was genuine. That said, the churn and rumble and tortured scowls and yowls emanating from this disc definitely do conjure visions of the bands' members and their instruments being forced through the meat grinder mentioned in the title. Some of the renditions definitely pay much reverence to the fierce originals while others tear 'em to bits, leaving little in the way of resemblance. Such is the spirit of Three.One.G. though, so if you're already a fan of the label you already know exactly what to expect. If you're a stranger to these folks, this might be a bit of a jolt. Some Birthday Party devotee might even find some of it sacrilegious. Here's the list of bristly and black-clad 'Party goers in order of appearance: The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower, Das Oath, T Cells, Cattle Decapitation, Year Future, Ssion, Ex Models, Les Georges Leningrad, Rah Bras, Melt-Banana, Chinese Stars, Celebration, Kill Me Tomorrow, Get Hustle, Numbers, Error, Daughters, and Some Girls.
The 5 Rue Christine label (aka 5RC) from Olympia, WA presents a sampler of their roster. Many of 'em AQ faves! All of 'em musical beings of the eccentric, peculiar, and mildly cracked kind (we presume some faux and some genuine). Expect much staggering, drizzle, mumbling, percussive clatter, broken time signatures, occasional outbursts of angst and distress, and some downright delicate prettiness. The who's who: The Robot Ate Me, Xiu Xiu, Slim Moon And What Army, No-Neck Blues Band, Amps For Christ, Deerhoof (two songs from them!), Hella, The Planet The, Mae Shi, The Advantage, Need New Body, Wooden Wand And The Vanishing Voice, The Punks, Metalux, Excepter, and Barr! Seventeen tracks total, ten of them previously unreleased. Coool!
Remix anthologies are almost always varied affairs. While one may like the re-mixer, one may not always like the artist being remixed or vice versa. Here the DFA Team offer up their takes on ten cuts from artists who exist outside of the DFA family, with predictably mixed results. The best cuts are from the artists whose sound already has an affinity to the DFA style of production (Metro Area, Radio 4), and the remixes of Chemical Brothers, Soulwax and Gorillaz offer some nice surprises. But even re-mixers sent from GOD can't ever make the Blues Explosion sound good, so why bother? All in all, this is a decent compilation that would have been better if there was more to sink our teeth into, but what is here is a nice appetizer that keeps us hungry for a more up-to-date main course. Hopefully we'll find that in Vol. II.
Could it really be time to take a look at the influence of Joni Mitchell? We never would of thought it before, but then again reissue label Numero Group oftens make strange and surprising choices in their releases. After releasing 3 compilations in a series of eccentric soul from the DeepCity, Capsoul and Bandit labels they do a complete 180 and begin a new series called Wayfaring Strangers. This first one is dedicated to the immediate influence of Joni Mitchell's Ladies of the Canyon and the wave of femme folk it inspired throughout the early seventies. Here, they focus on 12 gems from obscure or little known female recording artists. A lot of customers who gave no second thought to immediately buying up all of the Eccentric Soul series, seem to be in a quagmire about this one, and not many people are taking the bait”yet.
While Joni haters will probably steer clear of this comp, for those of you on the fence let us assure you that the twelve rare cuts on this disc, culled from mostly private press releases, are not all Joni imitations. While Mitchell's influence is obvious, each artist brings their own unique and varied take to their songs (all originals with the exception of Ellen Shaw's cover of Marianne Faithful's "Sister Morphine"). The Numero Group does an outstanding job with the packaging as always, devoting a full 2 page spread to each artist with full color original album artwork and profiles on each artist. These records are crate digger's dreams, and the visuals and bios only serve to enhance the fragile homemade sincerity and beauty of some of these songs. Highlights include Shira Smalls "Eternal Life", a rumination on math and spirituality recorded at a Quaker boarding school, and Collie Ryan's "Cricket". Like the mighty Ladies of the Canyon itself, this CD may take repeated listening to work its charms. But there is no doubt in our minds that if you saw any one of these original records in a thrift store, bargain bin, or garage sale, you would whisk them away immediately, heart pounding as you brought them home and put them on, thanking your lucky stars that there is still magic in such simple things. Nice!
A massive triple lp set of damaged, improvised, outsider free folk from member of various Kentucky rock/noise outfits (Magick Markers, Virgin Eye Blood Brothers, etc..). The stuff we'd read compared Valley Of Ashes to Siloah, Amon Duul 2, Trad Gras Och Stenar and Stone Angel, which seems pretty much impossible, but to be honest, those comparisons are not all that far off the mark. Imagine some impossible blend of all four of those bands, but seriously up the druggy stumble quotient and the damaged lo-fi fuzz and murk levels and you'll be pretty close to getting a feel for VoA's dirgey backwoods krautfolk. Like a folkier NNCK, Valley Of Ashes, weave and stumble through a dark droney landscape of slightly off kilter folk, cracked basement blues, hypnotic alsmot raga-like hum and whir, all with a distinctly Eastern vibe. Delicate chimes drift behind buzzing detuned steel string guitars, clangy pots and pans percussion is wrapped in distant sheets of feedback and laid to rest on a thick blanket of warm fuzz. For being super muddy and lo-fi, at times, everything just clciks and the sound becomes impossibly lush. There are moments when the drifting free folk locks into a seriously stoned groove, getting heavier and much more aggressive, guitars snarling, BIG riffs staggering and lurching, a stone wall of fuzz and clatter, dizzyingly exotic and darkly ominous, a bit like some stoner krautrock band coming completely unmoored, trying desparately to rock, but drifting further and further from the riff, sounding a bit like the No Neck Blues Band on ESP. Some impossible mix of Sabbath, Cromagnon and the Godz. But the fury never lasts long, usually settling back into another perfect doomy dreamy free folk drift...
Packaged in a gorgeous thick full color psychedelic sleeve. Be warned though that all of the sleeves are slightly scuffed around the edges. Most won't notice, but bound to get record collector nerds' knickers in a twist!
Real nice, these new Van Der Graaf Generator reissues are. We're glad they they've now got US distribution, though we'd have happily paid $30 for the import versions (Andee and Allan both did for some of 'em, actually, oops). All the prog fans here are stoked, 'specially since VDGG are one of our top prog faves. We've already listed the reissues of Pawn Hearts and H To He Who Am The Only One, and we'll try to get to them all, one by one... so here's VDGG's second album, from 1969 (following their debut Aerosol Grey Machine, not a part of this reissue series though there is a cd we do stock), maybe the first that really displayed their signature sound in a fully formed fashion. That sound: bombastic, epic, emotional, complex, slightly jazzy, eccentric. And probably an acquired taste. Partly because VDGG's instrumentation isn't the standard guitar/bass/drums -- they've got saxophone and keyboards, mainly, alongside the drums. Plus their most distinctive sonic feature, Peter Hammill's exceedingly dramatic, dominating vocals! Love 'em or hate 'em vocals, we'd venture to guess. His voice is perfect, though, for the sweeping grandeur of VDGG's music, which can be quite gentle (as on this album's most pop hit, speaking loosely, "Refugees"), and at other times so much darker, heavier, and more hectic (as on "White Hammer" wherein Hammill sings about the Inquisition). All this power and passion is reflected in Hammill's intelligent, questioning, quasi-mystical lyrics, and is furthermore augmented by the suggestion of church and worship brought in by the use of the electric organ.
Yes indeed, VDGG is very weird and very much it's own thing... there's definite connections to the likes of King Crimson and Genesis, and '60s psychedelia, but ultimately nothing else sounds quite like these guys. The Least We Can Do, which features a surreal depiction of an actual Van Der Graaf generator on its cover, is a fine starting point and/or an essential part of their discography for fans building a VDGG collection. This reissue, in addition to being digitally remastered and boasting extensive liner notes in the cd booklet, also features two bonus tracks, the single version of "Refugees" and its non-album B-side, "Boat Of Millions Of Years". Recently we came across an old print advertisement for this single, the tag line of which was: "Some of today's violence is innocence defending itself... some of today's music is Van Der Graaf Generator."
The world of Jim Woodring's Frank is so fantastic and bizarre, so fully yet still mysteriously rendered, it would seem impossible to explore that world any further. And the thought of letting various filmmakers animate Frank and his world seems practically sacreligious. We had the same feeling before we watched the Henry Darger documentary as we'd heard that the fimmaker chose to animate Darger's Vivian GIrls and the mysterious Realm Of The Unreal. The result however was absolutely stunning, taking Darger's dreamlike vision even further, rendering the characters even more magical and mysterious, and his personal fantasy world so beautiful and haunting. Thankfully, the same is true of this collection of animated Frank films. Frank's world is so perfect as it is, that the mere thought of other people changing it or ruining it, compromising Woodring's vision, definitely seemed like too big a risk, but this handful of Japanese animators are obviously as in love with Frank as Woodring is and manage to take us further into Frank's world, allowing us to see things not visible on the printed page. Utilizing all sorts of techniques, haunting, sepia toned, water colored, parchment animation and cool angular black and white construction paper 3-D animation cut out's and fuzzy scratchy old fashioned film reels, like early Disney shorts and amazing children's book style geometric shapes with bright colored cutouts and stop motion claymation and bizarre 3-D computer animation, all done with such obvious love and reverence for the original comics, that this series of short films almost manages to be more wonderfully fantastical that the comics themselves. Even the introductory short in simple black and white, pen and ink (with music performed live by Bill Frisell) is a total trip. Always fun and wild and whimsical, with a bit of ominous mystery and usually some terrifying monsters, that somehow always seem to either be outsmarted by Frank and his pals or turn from foes into friends. Amazing music throughout as well as some extra music from Yo La Tengo's James McNew.
Comes packaged in an amazing diecut oversized DVD sleeve, with a big booklet packed with Frank comics as well as notes about the animators and the musicians. So totally amazing and essential! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just do a seacrh on the item and then click on the BUY button!
We've been a bit burnt out on electronic music lately. Sorry, but it's true. We've just sort of been IDM'd to death over the last few years. We still love us some Aphex Twin and some Boards Of Canada and some Kompakt stuff sure, but that's just a drop in the bucket of the thousands of records of 'dudes with laptops crafting complex beatscapes'... And before we get a million emails, yeah we know there's probably some killer electronic record that we haven't heard, and if there is, please free to shoot us an email and let us know...
But every once in a while, especially lately during this laptronica burnout period we've been experiencing, an 'electronica' record will surface that just hits the spot. Maybe incorporating similar elements, but in a new and unique way. Chris Clark was one, his post Aphex skitter and swoon became a bigtime aQ fave. And Vorpal seems poised to be the latest. Taking the head-spinning splice, dice and chop approach of folks like Venetian Snares and Jason Forrest, but infusing it with all sorts of warm sweet melody, and classic dance music groove, Vorpal manages some magical just-right balance that perfectly hits the spot. There's lots of drill and splutter, skip and hiccup, shuffle and slitter, plus a bunch of weirdly staggery full on dead stop glitches that get us every time, but it's all over warm smears of moody melody and shimmery twinkle that gives the whole record a sort of dreamy blissed out vibe no matter how splattery the programming is or dense the chopped soundscapes are. It's really not sonically miles apart from any of its predecessors, but like with lots of records we love, there's just some special something, some ineffable element, that makes it so goddamn good. Plus some seriously killer cover art...
"The hottest Psych - Prog - Garage - Punk reissues are on Radioactive", or so say the stickers that adorn the cover of each and every release on the Radioactive label out of England. Well, it's true they have uncovered some good ones, like The Nova Local and Francisco, but really out of what seems like the hundreds of "rare collector's items" they dig up out of the vintage vinyl graveyard every month, only a small handful seem all that worth bothering to reissue at all... some things are rare and obscure for a reason!
Vulcan's Hammer, though, we feel is should get a mention, as this British band's 1973 private press LP is actually nice to have on cd, if you're into acoustic hippy trad UK folk of the era a la Pentacle, Steeleye Span and Mellow Candle... Very rustic stuff, with both male and female vocalists singing in harmony, doing traditional tunes as well as their own material in a similar vein, as for instance on track 11, which has lyrics about hobbits and Gandalf! We love that sort of thing. Sadly, Radioactive didn't bother to include the track listing anywhere on this package (we don't know, but we'd assume the original LP must have had a track listing) so we don't know what that song is called. Or any of others here either. But they're all pretty nice, putting us in the mood of some of the material on the Wicker Man soundtrack, without the sinister undertones...
A few months ago, Andee received a cd-r in the mail. In a spray painted DVD case, with a photo of Patrick Swayze inside. Hmmm. The band was called Warhammer 48K (the name of a sci-fi miniatures wargame as Allan would later inform us) and the record was KILLER. So killer in fact that Andee had already begun trying to figure out a way to put it out, and Jason (having heard it from Andee) was even considering starting his own label to put it out. Well, before either of those things could happen, the band already had gotten a friend's label to press them up and suddenly showed up in our store with a box of cds. Well, for a record to have that much of an effect on Andee and Jason, you can just imagine what a serious slab of kick ass rock this must be. Falling somewhere between the indie mathy metallic crush of bands like Unwound, Lync, the Narrows, and Karp and the post rock sludge metal of bands like Conifer, Baroness, and Tides, but with their own unique sense of dynamics and some strange and strangely original riffs. From loping minor key slowcore, to super dense complex dual guitar riffing, to pounding full on metal, to lurching sludge rock, to noisy indie mathrock, to massive squalls of downtuned riffing and squealing feedback, this is heavy and epic, catchy and weird, noisy and freaked out, super dynamic and totally original.
Bill Withers ("Ain't No Sunshine") is the cover star on this latest installment of Wax Poetics, the magazine of hip-hop, jazz, funk, & soul for those of us who appreciate all that good old music (and how it factors in to all the cool new stuff we're hearing). The art and design of how that music was packaged back in the day is also celebrated by Wax Poetics, with tons of vintage photos and album graphics reproduced. Besides the cover story on Bill Withers, stuff in this issue ranges from a colorfully-illustrated article about Blaxploitation cinema lobby cards to an interview with Cut Chemist to a look back at Herbie Mann's career to a really cool feature on "mom's record collection" -- a bunch of well known producers like Peanut Butter Wolf, Hank Shocklee, and Prince Paul, talking about the records they heard their mothers playing when they were kids! Always a good read, and visually appealing as well.
