While The Stills' debut album Logic Will Break Your Heart fell in mighty chummy with the Echo & The Joy Division post-punk-loving likes of Interpol, The Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs back in 2003, we all know that times and bands change swiftly these days. The band's new full length sounds much more like The Strokes but maybe more charming and... well, Canadian. Which you know we definitely dig! Brighter, poppier and far less brooding.
BONUS: With purchase of this cd you'll also receive a limited edition screenprinted poster!
If you picked up the Spanish Trip compilation we reviewed a few months back, you might recall a song by this band from Seville, that we described as an example of "off-the-rails Deep Purplish bludgeon". And by "off-the-rails" we meant that their track, "I Don't Know", was played with a sloppy, wild abandon that made sound almost punk. Pretty cool! Well that song was from this, their only full-length album, originally released in 1974, and finally now reissued on cd in a fairly deluxe package (slipcover, bonus video clip), which features another seven tracks of hard rockin' proto-metal psych with gobs of heavy organ and acid blues guitar soloing...there's even a drum solo on here too. More aggressive than progressive, The Storm did their best to live up to their name, kicking out the jams more energetically than any other band from Spain up to that point in Spanish rock history except maybe Tapiman (whose excellent album with the pink skull on the cover was also recently reviewed by us, you may recall). Yet despite all their "storminess", though, these guys seem to have a sunny side too. Not downer rock by any means. You can kinda hear their '60s Beatles-lovin' pop roots.
Now, we've gotta say, on our last list we reviewed the comparably hard rockin', equally vintage Pax album from Peru, and it didn't get quite the response we were hoping for... we thought there were more of you proto-metal fans out there reading this stuff! Hmm. But if you're there, this is one you might dig (and that Pax too, go back and read about it).
The turntable has to be the greatest instrument ever invented. At least the greatest instrument that was never actually intended to -be- an instrument, or to be -played- at all. What was a revolutionary breakthrough in the playback of popular music, eventually became the ultimate plunderphonic device, with a sonic palette only as limited as your record collection, and then not even limited by that. Broken records, shards of different records glued together, discs made out of wax, or sand paper, or stone, or plastic, or even no records at all, just the sounds of the turntable and the needle. We're not talking DJ's playing records either. Sure we dig that stuff too, but we're talking about people MAKING music out of bits and pieces, scraps and shards, creating whole new worlds of sound. Hard to say what it is exactly about the sound of a needle on vinyl that moves us so, it's warm, and fuzzy, and imperfect, maybe it's the sound of our childhoods, our early musical discoveries, but whatever it is, we love that sound, the whir and hiss, the pop and crackle, for all the striving for pristine perfect digital sound, we can't help but lean in the exact opposite direction, loving our music to be rough and murky, thick with warm warble and rain like static, a hiss that is all age and character and texture.
A small group of like minded artists have been exploring the possibilities of the turntable for years, the early experiments of Milan Knizak and his broken music, the grand and gorgeous soundscapes of Phillip Jeck, the vinyl sculptures of Christian Marclay and Martin Tetreault, the rhythmic playfulness of Pierre Bastien, Otomo Yoshihide's turntable explorations in Ground Zero, the minimal compositions of Institut Fuer Feinmotorik, utilizing the runoff grooves, and between song ambience to construct their pieces, and on and on.
For over a decade Swiss sound artist Christoph Hess had been experimenting with turntables, tape loops, skipping records, before deciding to jettison any and all music made by other musicians, and instead using just the turntable itself to create sound. Thus was born Strotter Inst. Five customized turntables, each rigged up with pieces of metal, strings and wires, elastic bands, allowed to spin at different RPMs, each turntable contributing a subtle element, creating dense tangled soundscapes of rhythm and texture. Loping and hypnotic, repetitive and mesmerizing. Low rumbling reverberations, slow stuttering twangs, these modified turntables sound remarkably like some sort of long stringed instrument with strings tightened just enough to stay on, but loose enough that they sort of buzz and rumble, pulse and throb. The framework for each track is a sort of lowend turntable riff, the wires and bands and cords are struck and plucked by the revolving turntable, creating slow slithery rhythms, within each a very subtle muted melody, everything slowly morphs and shifts as the various turntables sync up and then drift apart. Imagine the sound of five bass players, all playing simple slow melodies on primitive one string basses, and imagine them playing similar parts, but at slightly different tempos. A slow moving, motorik soundscape of thump and thrum. And around these loping rhythms are soft fuzzy clouds of crackle and hiss, the sound of the needles scraping the surface of the turntables, or skidding across pieces of metal, these contrasting sounds are dense and rich, sounding almost like super distorted vocals at one moment, thick washes of feedback the next. The sound may be simple and subtle, but it's also intense and overwhelming, like Jeck spinning Skullflower, or Marclay armed with only some Mingus bass solo dubplates, or a Tiermes / Bastien soundclash. So dark and mysterious and totally pure and primal sounding. This is SOUND as much as it is music. This is the turntable as musical instrument. This is rhythm and rhythms, this is machine music, but a machine freed from it's shackles, a new instrument, born, loosed, unleashed. Amazing.
Amazingly packaged in a die cut cardstock digipak, a large circular hole cut in the front, a smaller hole in the back, so you can see straight through. The front cover has imbedded in it an actual piece of plastic with record grooves etched into it, playable on your turntable! In fact when you listen to the cd you'll notice the first track is all silence, that's because the first track is actually on the sleeve, while the final track is only downloadable from the Strotter website, managing to subtly connect our history of recorded music, a release that is only complete as a record, a cd and an mp3.
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A while back we had this band's self-titled debut (remember the nice pink cover?). Unfortunately we can't seem to get that one anymore, but we do now have this, Suishou No Fune's latest, Where The Spirits Are, released on the Holy Mountain label (home to Six Organs Of Admittance, Davis Redford Triad, Om, Mammatus, etc.). If you've heard that previous album of theirs you'll have an idea what this is about... Or also if you just peep the cover photo: three Japanese guys in shades and Keiji Haino haircuts. Yes you're guessed it, Tokyo Flashback style downer drone psych. Quietly drifting, distorted, dark sheets of guitar accompanied by abyssal cries, not altogether unmelodic however. They can rev it up cacophonously when they want, but for the most part they hold back the heaviness in order to generate a more gentle sort of atmospheric gloom, on such appropriately named tracks as "Apparition On A Moonless Night" and "Black Phantom". Again, murky majesty for fans of Up-Tight, LSD-march, Shizuka, and the like.
If the immediate recognition that many customers have voiced the first few times we've played this disc is any indication, this is a band that needs no introduction. This is Spencer Krug of Wolf Parade's other band. The music of Sunset Rubdown is a bit different from W.P. but the voice is apparently pretty unmistakable. Imagine if more characters from the circus tent were allowed into the W.P. recording sessions. Or envision a more tweaked and twee incarnation of Arcade Fire. Or what if Xiu Xiu or Frog Eyes decided to cover those bands' tunes... A musing listen. Fans of all of the above bands might want to lend an ear to Krug and co.
Not sure about the significance of this 7-song EP's title, but we are sure that Thee More Shallows can deliver the dreaminess. 'Tis all soft pop grandeur like a not so distant cousin of Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips. The third song "Phineas Bogg" is particularly gorgeous, whisking you off into the heavens. The EP includes a remix of their song "Freshman" by Odd Nosdam and Why? which takes them into the neighborhood of the Postal Service (the band not the, um... service). Ultra pretty!
We had been hearing rumors about an art installation at the Whitney Museum in New York that featured original music from cult Norwegian black metallers Thorns. So as you might imagine we were pretty excited and intrigued, and went on a little quest to find out if it was indeed true. So it was indeed true, the installation featured artwork is by a guy named Banks Violette, and the music was indeed by Thorns Ltd. (Snorre Ruch of the original Thorns plus two other folks). The exciting part was that there just so happened to be a recording of the Thorns material for sale!! So we ordered a bunch direct from the museum and they just finally showed up.
So this isn't actually a cd, but a dvd, and it's more of a dvd-audio disc, just with still images accompanying the music. Each image displays for about 5 or 10 minutes, which means just a handful to go along with the 80 plus minutes of music. It's a little hard to get a feeling for Violette's art, as it's presented here in a series of blurred stills, but it seems to be mysteriously abstract, blurry images of lights and wires, faces and latex clad bodies, cords and strange machine shapes, over exposed faces, fuzzy close ups, the back of the cd case is a decaying wooden framework that looks decidedly like the remnants of a burned church, not sure if that has anything to do with Violette's choice of musical accompaniment or not...
Thorns Ltd. seems to be a whole 'nother beast, no buzzing black riffs or pounding drums here, instead Snorre and his musical partners explore a series of abstract soundscapes, sometimes noisy and chaotic, but more often than not dark and droney.
Slow drifting minimalist smears of sound, extended tonal rumbles, thick washes of gauzy high end, layers upon layers, slowly shifting revealing different overtones and strange reverberations with creepy almost inaudible melodies buried within. Machinelike whir, smeared into a pulsating blur, a wash of descending drones, like a series of turbines slowly losing steam, before more start up, only to rumble to a halt moments later. Crackling electronic splutter, keening feedback, piercing sinewaves, ambient clatter, tape hiss and crackly staticky noise, all woven into haunting dronescapes of distorted melody and abstract sound. Metalheads might not dig this (although they should, it's plenty dark and creepy enough) but it will definitely please fans of the dirge and the drone and the drift and the clatter, as well as the whir and the rumble and the creak and the creep (ie: folks who dig Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Birchvile Cat Motel, Avarus, Axolotl, Skaters, Yellow Swans, Double Leopards, Hototogisu, Jazzfinger, Pelt Total, etc.)
ULTRA LIMITED!!!
The third album (though the first we've listed -- we've wanted to review their others but they went out of print too quickly for us, slowpokes that we are) from New York's Thralldom, a very advanced, intelligent, and cult black metal outfit who just happen to be the alter-ego of equally amazing blackened doommongers Unearthly Trance! If you thought Unearthly Trance was a trip straight to the bowels of hell, well, Thralldom is the guided tour once you get there. What we've always liked about Thralldom is their lack of adherance to any generic black metal template. They're -definitely- black metal, but do things their own way, for their own reasons. One who dares to listen to A Shaman Steering The Vessel Of Vastness must navigate through dense, claustrophobic soundscapes, and struggle to decipher transmissions from some sinister inner realm, before more recognizably metal guitar/bass/drums structures become evident, almost beacons of normality, albeit swamped in filthy distortion. It can be a disturbing, punishing experience, but also almost trance-like, and difficult to escape willingly. With each track a nest of blackened riffs, field recordings, unknown samples, and ambient murk, not to mention various cosmic, anti-life lyrical concepts, Thralldom have created their own original, experimental variant of the black metal aesthetic.
Released by Profound Lore, who previously brought us the likes of WOLD and Portal, not to mention several Leviathan vinyls... and yes, the esoteric noise and subliminal insanity of Thralldom as displayed here certainly proves them to be a USBM horde as weird and arty and intense as the likes of Leviathan, Draugar or Xasthur.
We just looked back on past Tool reviews, and it seems like we're always defending them, or defending ourselves for loving them so much, but the more we've thought about it, the more it's become obvious that there's no need. Not at all. Not only does Tool not need us to defend them, they have tons of fans, sell millions of records, but they hardly qualify as a guilty pleasure at this point, other than for the fact that a bunch of dicks with backwards baseball caps and jacked up trucks love them. But those same dicks love Slayer too, but you don't see people embarrassed to love Slayer. And what's not to love here, lengthy epics, sludgy crunchy guitars, impossibly complex drumming, lurching and grooving, moody and so intense, creepy crawly vocals, this is some seriously dark and heavy shit. Maybe more so than a lot of 'heavy underground' bands. Plus Tool just seem super cool. They refuse to sell their tracks on iTunes, they spend years crafting epic sort-of-concept records, totally elaborate and complex, right down to the packaging. And holy shit, the packaging this time around is mind blowing. And mind you Tool have long championed the ultra deluxe packaging for their records, but this one is definitely the most outrageous. In fact it just might be the most amazing packaging we've ever see. When we cracked open the box we all gathered around and ooh'ed and aah'ed like kids on Christmas. What it is, is a super thick black plastic folder type sleeve, with two lenses embedded in the flap. When you open the sleeve, and check out the full color booklet each photo is split in two, two images side by side, and then you realize that it's a stereoscope and as you look through the lenses at the photos, they become strange 3-D tableau's, band photos are rife with tiny little details, ghosts in the background, strange items on the desk in the foreground, fire and smoke, other images are strange surreal juxtapositions and creepy Eastern psychedelic images, even the song titles are in 3-D!Ô
It's funny, but Tool are one of the few bands that almost everyone we know loves, customers, band members, folks who run labels, over the last week or two, lots of our 'underground music' pals have emailed or called to opine on the new Tool, as if that made perfect sense, and it kind of does. it's a little bit like somehow one of our own managed to crack the code and miraculously made it to the big time, and in their own way are subverting from within. When Opiate came out years back, we never would have thought that a band that dark and that weird would one day be mentioned in the same breath as Coldplay or U2. But it's gotta happen once in a while. And it's pretty great that if anything, Tool have not softened or mainstreamed at all, but maybe gotten more strange and more obstinate with age. Just like us.Ô
What were the guys in Pelican doing before they started crafting epic metallic post-rock soundscapes, touring with Opeth and posing topless in metal mags? Well most of them were kicking up a furious din in the awesomely named Tusk.
It's a bit strange to hear Pelican, with their brooding, dark post rock grooves, their droney and pummeling, arty and intellectual "smart man's metal", and then hear Tusk, the gnarled roots of Pelican's mighty metal oak (as Tusk was home to 3 future members of Pelican). Tusk is much more 'punk', a way more immediate metallic grind gut punch, like being pelted with burning hot shrapnel or being deafened by having hot wax and roofing nails stuffed into your ears. Sounds painful, but it's the good sort of painful. You can definitely hear glimmers of Pelican, but this is much more for the kids! A super explosive blast of metallic grindcore, a little chaotic, a lot grindy, dense and complex and fast and furious. The riffs might be metal, but they're sped up and splattered wildly while the vocalist howls and screeches over the musical melee. This reissue also includes a cd-rom portion watchable on your computer, featuring a whole live on the radio set, and an interview. The live set sounds awesome, but is filmed really strangely. Makes it almost surreal, with nothing but EXTREME closeups of the Tusk guys' faces, heads, eyes, sideburns, stubble, pores even, sort of NYPD Blue style, with a bit of blurriness and then a quick zoom and then a little wobble. Sort of suits the chaotic nature of the music. The star of the live set has to be the Quasi poster in the background, featuring Sam and Janet covered in sharpie corpsepaint, front and center in almost every shot! Then there's the interview portion, which starts off with a serious dose of full on male nudity, but quickly turns into a semi-serious discussion of metal and prog (these guys are experts), E.L.P, the godlike Carl Palmer (who Tusk claim was playing blast beats WAY back in the E.L.P. days), Atomic Rooster, and all sort of other cool, funny, esoteric stuff. Super fun and funny, loud and heavy, and awesomely spastic! And we're not just talking about the music!
Amazing design and illustration from Hydra Head mainman Aaron Turner, who also did the super cool cd-rom DVD-style menu.
Having your head dipped in some sort of molten hallucinogenic liquid...or steamrollered by a flying saucer.... or headbanging with Lovecraftian gods somewhere far out in the ocean of space... that's our meagre attempt to colorfully describe the experience of enjoying this slab of psychedelic stoner doom rock, the 1999 debut disc from Italy's UFOmammut! Chances are, though, that you have some idea already about this might sound like, 'cause UFOmammut's other album, the mighty Snailking, was immediately crowned as an Aquarius Record of the Week when it came out last year, and is still a steady seller hereabouts. Hopefully you already got one of those. This too, we've had before, but it's been out of print for quite a long time and only just got reissued. We figured that since folks liked Snailking so much, and Godlike Snake was just as good, and could easily have been missed out upon the first time around, we shouldn't pass up the opportunity to relist this and make it a Record of the Week as well now that it's back in print. After all, the whole reason we were so instantly amped on Snailking when it came out was in part 'cause we'd been waiting for it for, literally, years, after being blown away by the band's first album, this one. Our review of Godlike Snake ran something like this: "...this stoner rock band is a good 'un, taking a way spacier route to the Dopethrone than most. Wonderfully heavy and mesmerizing, with loads of effects, Moog, and (pardon the expression) "fat" churning drone-grind-groove... A new fave for us in the stoner/doom realm... Especially recommended for those that miss the old Monster Magnet sound, or relish the idea of a heavier Hawkwind." Listening to it now (which a bunch of us have been doing *every day* in the store), we're if anything EVEN MORE into it. Something we hadn't noticed before was how some tracks come across like Godflesh or early Killing Joke melded to Hawkwind. Crushing and enveloping and sooooooo good. It's like Electric Wizard gone spacerock, or an industrialized Dead Meadow.
As with its original incarnation, this includes a trippy video track for the song "Where?" for those with computers. It's now packaged in a standard jewelbox, instead of a cardboard digipack, but the artwork remains pretty much the same. If you like heaviness like we do, don't miss it this time!! Definitely to be considered an AQ doom/sludge/psych ESSENTIAL.
Finally one of our favorite slabs of spaced out primitve psych folk is back in print, and now with a bonus track recorded live in Switzerland.
Urdog. With a name like that it's gotta be good. And it is. The sort of swirling hypnotic heavy rock-folk-tribal weirdness we love so much. This is definitely prog, as the whole record is framed and driven by a big fuzzy organ spewing mesmerising prog riffs. Imagine a less heavy Tarantula Hawk, channelling E.L.P. with a healthy dose of Acid Mothers Temple style swirly space-y freakout throughout. A throbbing, urgent, mesmerising otherworldy drone rock. The other side of Urdog's personality is much more hippy, dabbling in the sixties-style avant folk of Devandra, Incredible String Band, Espers, etc. with gently acoustic guitar warbly keyboard ambience, dreamy distant vocals and sweet but haunting harmonies. But these moments of tranquility only exist as small clearings in a dense forest of thick slithering keyboards, druggy fuzzy riffs and fiercely propulsive rhythms. URDOG!
In our neverending quest to unearth the weirdest and wildest, most evil and grim, most damaged and baffling black metal there is, we not too long ago stumbled upon Urfaust. And we were immediately smitten, as were all of you judging from how difficult it was to keep those discs in stock. Well, all bow down and thank the dark lord, for now we have the latest offering from the strange hunting world of Urfaust! And if that wasn't enough, on this split they're teamed up with an outfit called Circle Of Ouroborous, who are even stranger than Urfaust, if that's even possible.
What is it about Urfaust that has us so in a tizzy. Well, imagine a loping buzzing midtempo black metal, raw, and thick and fuzzed out, but then add in a vocalist that croons and wails and sounds quite a bit like Ethel Merman, his vocals drenched in reverb, a huge thick cloud of croon, so weird but so goddamn amazing! These new tracks find Urfaust getting... you guessed it, even stranger. The first track is a whirl of huge blown out synths or guitars, big swells, distorted and warm and fuzzy, with a strange almost bouncy drum beat. By track two, the old Urfaust is back in effect, a huge wall of Burzumic guitar, a galloping midtempo drum beat, and those ridiculously remarkable vocals. We get so used to shrieking and howling vocals, that we were completely taken aback byt Urfaust's vocals, so much more emotional and passionate, strange indeed, but strange and mysterious and absolutely unlike anything you've heard in black metal. The third track is a creaking industrial soundscape, footsteps, breathing, clattering metal, atonal strings, very 20th century music concret. Really cool. The final ten minutes is a fuzzed out seasick waltz, huge guitars, super dramatic vocals, the guitars a thick whirring drone, the melody so melancholy and intense. Awesome. Definitely still one of our favorite metal bands for sure.
But wait. We've also got the mysterious Circle Of Ouroborus to contend with, and wooh boy, is this one cracked outfit. Half of CoO's six tracks are murky almost punky black metal blasts, super lo-fi, practice space production, the guitar a mumbly warble, the drums tinny and buried in the mix, and as you might expect for a band paired up with Urfaust, the vocalist is totally demented, a growling cracked croon, WAY up in the mix, shouting and howling, almost talking sometimes, making CoO sound a bit like a black metal Fall. The rest of the tracks are even more unlikely, all acoustic, with atonally strummed acoustic guitars and menacing sung / spoke vocals, even some harmonica! Some hellish campfire sing along, Bob Dylan channelled through some musical demon. It sounds a bit like a blackened Jandek, or the black metal folk of Dead Raven Choir, and actually quite a bit like AQ faves Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat (albeit much more low fidelity) or even a little like a more garage-y Current 93. But WOW! Not at all what we were expecting at all. This is something that could definitely pass for some freaky outsider folk record with passages of black buzz instead of the other way around. We never though any band could hold their own agains the mighty Urfaust, but Circle Of Ouroborus pull it off big time. Another damaged and demented black metal (sort of) band to keep an eye on for sure!
Remember a long time ago, when only ROCKSTARS made videos? Aerosmith, U2, Yes, remember how you'd wait anxiously for so and so's new video to debut on MTV? A lot has changed since then. First and foremost, MTV doesn't actually show videos anymore. Second, almost all bands make a video at some point. And with the advent of digital video and cheaper production techniques, bands are finally able to make the kind of videos they could only dream about before. And now some of the most truly bizarre and amazing videos are being made by the same folks who are making truly bizarre and amazing music. If you have cable, you might have seen some of these videos on MTV2 or Fuse or Much Music, but for those of you without cable (like us) of those of you who just want to see these videos whenever you want, well, the fine folks at Sub Pop have offered up this super cheap, super deluxe video collection gathering up some of their best and brightest, and some of the coolest videos we've seen in ages. Just listing the bands should have indie rockers all in a tizzy: Shins, Ugly Cassanova, Iron And Wine, The Postal Service, Hot Hot Heat, Constantines, The Thermals, The Album Leaf, Low, Jennifer Gentle, The Helio Sequence, Kinski, Sleater Kinney, Rosie Thomas, Chad Vangaalen, Love As Laughter, Fruit Bats, Wolf Parade, The Elected, Rogue Wave and Mudhoney. Phew! Some of the highlights include the Ugly Cassanova video which has to be the most insane, most ridiculous, and somehow both the grossest and the cutest videos ever. Seriously. Every time we watch it, we're dying, it's so weird and funny and sick! Imagine a video very bright and primary colored, filled with infants, toddlers, insects and all sorts of anuses and intestines and shitting and farting. Woah! But even the gross stuff is kinda cute.
The there's a Shins video where the band members reproduce various indie record covers: Slint, Squirel Bait, Minutemen, Cat Power, see if you can name them all. The other Shins video is great too, an awesome construction paper animated sequence with white paper cows so cute. And then the two Postal Service videos are awesome too: one is a gorgeous sleek futuristic machinescape, all sterile and very white and shiny, the other is a cheesy eighties karaoke scene intercut with a far out futuristic space subplot, featuring Jenny Lewis! The Iron And Wine videos are beautiful and heartbreaking, just like the songs, sun dappled summerscapes, glistening water, green lush grass, sumptuous foods, each video dense and colorful, somehow perfectly conveying the love and hope and sorrow in the songs. WOW.
Pretty much all the videos here are well worth watching, some over and over and over, lots of cool animation, lots of high concept, plenty of cool production and bizarre imagery, very few by the numbers performance videos, plenty of innovation and creativity, which is just what we expect from these bands anyway!
Basic Channel had a short existence, but was incredibly influential on the future of techno. Between 1993 and 1995, Basic Channel released 9 singles that infused the jack hammering acid tracks of Detroit Techno with the ghostly hiss that accumulated on Lee Perry's dub productions in the '70s. However, this was not the electronic dub of Pole or Kit Clayton, although both were obviously huge fans of Basic Channel. Rather, Basic Channel offered an hyper-abstract vision of techno that never sacrificed the integrity of the rhythm. Amidst the aersolized sounds, gray modulations, and purposefully murky timbres, the Basic Channel producers Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus (who would later go on to form Rhythm And Sound) always centered their work along the skeleton of a propulsive techno beat.
This Basic Channel compilation is now in its third pressing; the original came out in 1995 in a fittingly non-descript cardboard sleeve and later in the metal tin designs that were used for their later Chain Reaction series. This compiled the more ambient and abstract cuts on those singles. If you're looking for the heavier tracks from Chain Reaction on cd, the mix found on "Scion Arrange and Process Basic Channel Tracks" is unrelentingly good, but if you just want to bliss out and drift off and be narcoticized by throbbing pulses and fuzzy grit, you can't do much better than this.
We wouldn't really consider ourselves experts on the early 70's funk scene in New Orleans but after getting schooled by this comp we can say we like how it sounds a whole lot! With a collection of soul/funk pleasers from 1969-1973 this is the kind of comp that once you press play all of a sudden your body start swaying and your head starts boppin. With not a stinker in the bunch you get a great glimpse of what it might have been like to be hunkered down in a dark seedy New Orleans nightclub in 1971 while groups with names like Brotherhood, Trick Bag and The Brothers Two, offered up some nice down home, funky funky stuff.
We can not tell you how psyched we are to have this back in stock. We've been listening to this like crazy. We had almost forgotten how totally far out and mind blowing this collection was. Since we first carried this years ago, there have been tons of diverse and eclectic collections of musics from all over the world, psych rock compilations (Love, Peace & Poetry, Thai Beat A Go Go, etc.), the Sublime Frequencies series, and loads more, but as good as those are, they can't hold a candle to Ho!: Roady Music From Vietnam! So completely fascinating and fun, wild and so so weird! Everytime this gets played in the store, customers and employees alike have to check to see what the heck it is we're listening to!
Ho! is an amazing collection of pieces from Vietnamese street musicians. The folks that travelled to Vietnam and recorded these pieces gave themselves the tongue-in-cheek name Nuoc Mam Dirndl'n, evidence of their humor in the light of collecting the sort of music they suspect the Vietnamese government would perhaps NOT appreciate as a representation of Vietnam. Ho! ranges from raucous, percussion-heavy funeral songs played at midnight by 'young people provided with drugs' to traditional material played on the one-stringed dan bau to melodramatic love songs favored by the son of the owner of the hotel the folks stayed at. There's even a 'tasteful schmaltzy song' which is what the Vietnamese record-store saleswoman played for them when they asked for some traditional Vietnamese music! Check out the following excerpt from the fascinating liner notes, and, like us, marvel at the freshness inherent in the refusal to adopt the omniscient voice-of-authority tone taken by so many ethno-compilers: "We are stunned by the Vietnamese 'Lebensgefuhl' actually corresponding to our western idea of 'subculture': lively, anarchic, loud, dense, hearty; the people are living working, eating, sleeping, and holding their funeral ceremonies between house and street. We don't know yet if there is any subculture in Vietnam; if there is e.g. (organized) political counterforces to the one-party regime -- nobody talks about politics (with us) -- maybe there is no need for it, because everybody can do whatever he/she wants: though street trading is prohibited everybody does it -- under the hardly vigilant eyes of the law -- raids are very rare, then the stands are carried away quickly and when the mischief is gone it goes on... What matters is that people LOVE TO SING which, like in our part of the world, hide in gloomy basements and play till the ears/souls are ringing: every band in Vietnam needs a license for its existence, for every gig, every song. And because there is no basements in Vietnam, people like to use the karaoke machines in their homes, bars and special karaoke houses. Saigon's street musicians are rather despised by the yuppies of Vietnam: 'shit music.' The yuppies prefer Sting and western style in general." Highly highly highly recommended!
A while back we reviewed an amazing collection of politically charged sound art from Finnish artist/musician J.O. Mallander. An amazing selection of Phillip Jeck style, turntable manipulations and weird warbly sonic cut-ups. Two of the most effective and creepy pieces in that collection were "1962" and "1968" which featured the reading of the votes in the very controversial Finnish presidential election, won by Urho Kalevo Kekkonen, who would remain president for 25 years! The tracks themselves were a creepy montone reading of "Kekkonen.....Kekkonen....Kekkonen....Kekkonen.....Kekkonen...." on and on and on, until it becomes some strange word-drone. So this here comp features a bunch of Finnish underground musicians and artists doing their own versions / remixes of that infamous "Kekkonen" recording. We don't really recognize ANY of the bands (except Robert Horton, who is NOT Finnish), but we're led to believe it's a who's who of AQ faves under different names. What does it sound like? Somehow, each track retains the spirit, if not the sound of the original, some, take the repeated "Kekkonen" and chop it up rearranging it into drone-y smears, hiccupping rhtyhms or hissy fuzzy soundscapes. Or offer there own strange spoken versons of the name Kekkonen. Others whip out wild punk rock jams with shouted 'Kekkonen's over the top. Still others craft weird vocal based techno, haunting ambient soundscapes, with the Kekkonen stretched into wooshy whirring warbles, bizarre robot funk, far out vocal collages, murky abstract drones. Amazing what can be done with just a Kekkonen and some delay pedals. Really cool stuff. Not just sonically either. It's pretty cool to observe a whole other generation embracing and exploring their nation's history, and in their own way making just as stron a statement as Mallander did over 30 years ago.
Limited to 120 copies, we only got a handful (pretty sure they are already out of print) so as always act fast. Each one in an individually painted sleeve!
From the label that brought us the amazing Unicorn cd-r we reviewed a while back and the WAY too limited Lhasa Shore Leave (don't ask, long gone!) comes this compilation of 'ambient music' or 'drone music', various artists exploring ambience in their own unique way, giving that glorious drift and drone we love so much subtly different spins. And the results are pretty darn amazing.
First up is Unicorn, who unleash a totally creepy and gorgeous funereal trudge through warms swells of sound and huge reverberating low end pulses, like standing on the side of a black river beneath a sky of ash, as a barge piled high with bodies drifts by. Tendrils of backward guitar drift by like smoke from funeral pyres, everything speckled with little glitchy sparkles like sun refelecting off the water.
Then comes Japanese sound technician Aube, whose modus operandi is the use of a single item or element for all the sounds on a track. This one is called "Shackle" but it's hard to imagine any sort of shackle or chain being used to produce these sounds, but Aube routinely baffles us with is deft sonic manipulation. "Shackle" is a long drawn out chorus of electronic cricket chirps floating above a dense tapestry of glistening dog whistle high end, all warped and warbly like listening through a cracked kaleidoscope.
Bastard Noise show their softer side, a surprisingly restrained (for these guys at least) rumbling swirl of hissing black metal voices, creaking, keening feedback, thick warm drones, and soft shimmering whir, definitely intense and threatening, but simultaneously gorgeous and dreamy.
Next up, Luasa Raelon, who we've never heard of, but we definitely need to hear more. A thick slab of slow swelling ambience, grand and ominous, soft distant distorted guitar shimmer drifts beside jagged slabs of muted white noise and smeared percussion. Lovely!
The next track features one man noise outift Guilty Connector teamed up with Zeni Geva guitarist Tabata for an intense and cinematic dronescape, guitars and synths and electronics, all tangled and twisted, into a long slow, low expanse of moody sonic exploration.
Finally, finishing things up is Oblong Box, who unfurl a soft subtle cavernous rumble, like feeling your way through the pitch black, whirls and whorls of dark sound and low end vibrations shimmer and spread out like ripples in a tarpit.
An essential batch of ambient drone for sure!
It's hard to complain about another killer collection of super rare, crackly old blues, country and bluegrass 78's. Especially when the theme of the collection is the ridiculous obsessive behavior of record collectors. We're not saying that we can relate, but heck, we can -totally- relate, as we bet most of you can too. There's a huge booklet, tons of liner notes as well as photos and assorted newspaper stories about, you guessed it, crazy collectors, but before we get to that...
First the collection, an amazing array of SUPER rare tracks from an amazing array of musical legends as well as tons of folks we'd never heard of, from wild and jaunty campfire hoedowns, all sawing fiddles and knee slapping and hand clapping, to dark and soulful blues: check out one of the greatest blues tracks EVER, Son House's "Mississippi County Farm Blues", a dark minor key vamp, amazing guitar playing, and those vocals, so intense and haunting, the whole thing thick with crackle and fuzz, definitely up there with Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" And then there's Dock Boggs' "Old Rub Alcohol Blues", another crackly gem, with Boggs' weird whiny vocals, sad and strained, and some beautiful banjo. There's Jaybird Coleman, just singing and playing harmonica, so lonely and bittersweet, he's got the most amazing croon, slipping almost to a falsetto, with that perfect crack that great singers master without even trying, and an incredible vibrato. We could go on and on, needless to say, out of 64 tracks spread out over two discs, there ain't nary a clunker!
But back to the record nerd angle, these discs come packaged in an oversized book style double digipak, with really funny, perfect R. Crumb cover art, as well as a comic strip inside the booklet, appropriately titled "Why I'm Neurotic About My Record Collection." The liner notes are by Richard Nevins, who over the course of a few thousand words, definitely demonstrates his collector mettle, with tales of his own cringeworthy exploits and obsessions as well as tons of amazing anecdotes about other collectors. There are a bunch of old newspaper clippings detailing the lives of folks who collect stuff like wishbones, hairs from the tails of elephants, 4 leaf clovers and even water from all over the world! There's also the sad tale of perhaps the most (in)famous collectors of all time, the Collyer Brothers. The two never left their building for over 40 years (except late at night to collect junk), filling it with tons and tons of random stuff, rusted bicycles, doors, kerosene stoves, old Christmas trees, 12 grand pianos and 30 years of EVERY daily newspaper! One brother was blind, and the other brother was attempting to cure him by feeding him 100 oranges a week, and figured that once he could see he would need to catch up on all that had happened. Woah! In 1942 the brothers were almost evicted for not paying rent for 11 years (one brother claimed it had slipped their minds). 5 years later the police were called after it was reported that there was a dead man in the house. Unfortunately the police could not get into the house there was so much junk, so they went up ladders and chopped a hole in the side of the building. They did find one brother who had apparently died of starvation. It took another whole week before they found the other brother who had been crushed by collapsing piles of junk. It turns out the other brother was paralyzed as well as blind, and died of starvation not long after his brother was killed and was unable to bring him food. Lordy! Let that be a word of warning for all you obsessive record collectors out there! Such great reading for liner notes, and such great listening too. A completely essential compilation for sure!
Word of warning: be very careful removing the discs, they are incredibly difficult to get off the spindles, it requires some very careful, but very firm pulling, to get it out without damaging the discs!
Latest in the recent spate of killer international funk / soul / psych reissue collections. The trick here being that these tracks are SO obscure (and so densely mixed together), that the folks at Dis-Joint are counting on most folks not knowing ANY of these. SO much so that there is no track listing on the disc at all, and they are having a contest on their website, the first one who can name all the tracks will get a nice cash prize!!! We've got to admit it, we're stumped for the most part (although we did recognize part of one track, it's San Ul Lim from Korea!). But that doesn't mean we aren't loving all this fun and funky and bizarre music. A chaotic blend of sixties and seventies psych rock, funky soul, soulful psych, and funky rock from all over the world, Turkey, Korea, Italy, Israel, China, Spain and loads more. Any one who has been loving the Love Peace & Poetry comps, the Steam Kodok collection, the In-Kraut compilation or, especially, any of the Andy Votel mixes definitely NEED this. From groovy laid back porno movie / action adventure funk, with lots of bolero guitars, and sound effects, like a Morricone Western mixed with some Euro sleaze flick soundtrack, to fluttering folk with super distorted psych rock guitar and everything in between, with plenty of borrowed hooks from popular songs, fuzzy organs, lots of James Brown style yelping and whooping, squiggly little guitar licks, funky drumming, carnivalesque analog synthesizers, tons of breaks hip hop headz would kill for, a bunch of bizarre movie snippets pertaining to hippies, wiggly wavy spaced out ambient warble, jazzy horns, skronky and otherwise, wheezing harmonicas, tablas and sitars, wild Santana-like leads, cocktail pianos and tons and tons of very strange sound effects. A wickedly wild, mind blowing, head spinning party record if there ever was one!
The latest cd release from this stalwart Bay Area indie label and webzine features much more blistering and caustic music than their last compilation did back in 1998. The focus in the first half is squarely on noisy dissonance. Lots of experimental blasts and occasional propulsive no wave-iness from the likes of Channel 3 And 4, Beak Full Of Rubies, Coughs, Child Abuse, John Weise, Silver Daggers and Lakes. Then at the eighth track the sonic storm suddenly eases to a considerably more subdued drizzle with TG's gently plucked "La Nuit Version" and Hut's droney pulse and percussion track "Camp Along Young Oxen". Antifamily brings the energy level back up with their angular "Rome Is Not A City", and from there the comp is mixed (albeit like-minded) bag that includes more familiar faces Deerhoof, KIT, Stefan Udell, Yellow Swans and Axolotl. 23 track total.
One of the best reissues we've stumbled across recently, of a record we haad never heard of. Alceu Valenca & Geraldo Azevedo were Brazilian musicians and composers from the Pernambuco region of Brazil who created a distinct style that mixed elements of psychedelic folk/rock with native northeast rhythms of freco, maracatu, xote, etc. There is something so totally sensual and sexy about this record. It's in their voices and playing and the glimmering recording. With mixing and arrangements in the talented hands of Rogerio Duprat (Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes) this has some trademark elements of some of the best and most creative elements of Tropicalia but for sure with their own unique and varied stylings. Totally not a one trick pony at all. What we love so much about this record is that it takes lots of twists and turns but everywhere it goes we more than willingly go right along with it. When it's sweet and sultry it succeeds by not being too polished and by subtly seducing you into its sounds. Almost like what Serge Gainsbourg would sound like at his prime if he was living in Brazil. We also can't stop thinking about how the folks in Blonde Redhead may borrowed a bit from this record as their sensual and compelling melodies seem to have their roots in this recording. Maybe. Just in time for summer, this has proven to be the perfect soundtrack for days filled with sun, romance and adventure. Highly recommended!
You know it's gotta be an amazing record when we start a review by stating "we don't know where to begin with this record" and then we blather on and on for another 500 words pretty much demonstrating that while we may not where to begin, we certainly have a lot to say. And that totally applies to The Sleeping Moustache, the latest release from the enigmatic Helen Scarsdale Agency. The most well known of these five audio contortionists is Steven Stapleton who is the brains behind Nurse With Wound, who convolutedly reconstitute Surrealism, avant-garde aesthetics, and krautrock expressivity, resulting in some of the most profoundly brilliant and disturbing records we've ever heard. Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson is one of the drunken pilots of Stilluppsteypa, an Icelandic project of electro-absurdity capable of magnificent minimalism. M.S. Waldron is responsible for irr. app. (ext.), (an unwieldy moniker for sure) which has produced an amazing body of post-Surrealist expressivity in recent years. When he's not manning the fron counter here at Aquarius, Jim Haynes has developed a peculiar knack for rust-inflected dronescaping. and finally R.K. Faulhaber, who is the mystery man amongst the bunch, although we've been told his unpublished works offer a byzantine array of mutilated sonic collages. The album that these five produced is a weighty proposition to say the least, with detours a plenty within this mangled concoction of delirious dronescaping punctuated with glossalaic vocalizations. Delicate plinks and plonks sprinkled across sublime, gaping tones which transition to a convulsive beauty with mechanical spasms and nightmarish creakings. Throughout The Sleeping Moustache, ghostly reminders of each of the contributors' refined aesthetics emerge as a Gordon knot of convoluted logic, unsettling shifts between horror and comedy, psychological instability, and disquieting soundscapes. If you're even remotely a fan of Nurse With Wound or irr. app. (ext.) or Stilluppsteypa, this album is not just recommended... it's absolutely required.
This young band from Olympia craft some fine chamber pop and they suit it up in suitably lovely'n'artful homespun packaging. The disc comes enclosed in a fabric bound fold-out case encased in a fabric pouch. Their music is very floral with the arrangements driven by piano leads and ultra pretty female vocals. Imagine the doe-eyed sweetness of The Sundays and Madder Rose crossed with the more womanly worldliness of Tori Amos. Emotions and drama build gradually over the course of the album's ten songs from the near-lullaby nature of "Never" to the climactic "Annabelleigh". Quite gorgeous.
Back in stock!!! Last list's RotW...
We normally don't make "now available on cd" releases Record Of The Week. But there are plenty of reasons to do just that with this one! First off, C'MON! It's LEVIATHAN and XASTHUR! On the same disc! Two of the most important, and musically creative black metal one-man-hordes in the new wave of west coast black metal (NWOWCBM?) teamed up for the ultimate NWOWCBM one two punch. Singlehandedly (doublehandedly?) putting USBM back on the black metal map, and completely redefining the genre, grim and brutal and black for sure, but also totally bizarre and avant and experimental. Plus even you folks who picked up the vinyl versions will need this, as there are 4 bonus tracks, three of them are from Xasthur, a brand new unreleased track, a rehearsal track from 2004, and a Katatonia cover! The other bonus track is Leviathan's amazing version of Judas Iscariot's "Where The Winter Beals Incessant"! But even without the bonus tracks, this clash of the black titans is totally essential, some of the most beautifully blackened and furiously fucked up black metal you are ever likely to hear. Xasthur from Southern California and Leviathan from right here in SF are blackened brothers, both exploring similar themes of hate and misery, darkness and death, but coming at 'em from completely different sonic angles. Xasthur is more about mood and atmosphere, with thick swaths of fuzzy riffery, galloping drums, rumbling bass and agonised howls of despair, all dense and dark and claustrophobic. Leviathan is much more technical and a lot weirder, but no less moody, with ultra complex and bizarrely arranged parts, insane drumming, buzzing riffery, and hints of doom and progrock mixed into his bleak and blackened metalscapes. ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL!!
Ever thought of what it would be like to be in the middle east on a hot sweltering day with the dust, scorching sun, and history all around you while the intensity of the surroundings blasted in your ears? Well here it is! Recorded in Jerusalem in 1980 and only released as an independent cassette until now, the sounds of the zorna are rocked so furiously by Zadik Zecharia on this cd filled to overflowing with the relentless sounds of the zorna. Born in a small village in Kurdistan before moving to Israel in 1950, Zecharia has dedicated his life to playing the zorna (a traditional Kurdish instrument somewhat similar to a longer more narrow trumpet or Scottish bagpipe). This record doesn't let up for a single second. The moment it starts Zecharia is taken over by the power of the zorna and the demands that it puts on the player. You get the feeling that there is no time to pause, no time to think, no time to even take a breath. When I (Irwin) had the amazing opportunity to be in the Middle East at the turn of the millennium I remember walking through street markets, standing on the border of Syria and Israel, feeling my feet walk on so much high charged history, pain, and passion. Taking off my headphones to get overtaken by the myriad of sounds baking in the desert heat. Those moments where it all would come together and for just a moment you could be in that place and forget about hate, war, religion and politics. This record takes me back to the place more then anything I've ever heard. Like the best of snake charmer records that have grabbed you by the ankles and swept you off your feet this has that same hard hitting intensity with an undying energy that sounds as if it will never ever let up. If you have been to the store recently you have noticed that right outside there has been some nonstop construction going on in the streets and on the sidewalks. So for hours at a time we are hearing drilling and pounding and the sounds of asphalt being torn apart. When this has been playing in the store the combination of all that commotion has made for one of the most amazing high voltage drone pounding creations we have ever heard. And even on its own, this record has the ability to take you body hostage, as there is no way to listen without various parts of your body breaking out in uncontrollable movement. The dola drum which accompanies the zorna helps give a backbeat which keeps the frenzy of a fire that you never want to be extinguished. Recommended with thousands of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!etc.
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For those of you who already know and like Zombi, the appearance of this, their second proper full-length album, is pretty much a no-brainer purchase-wise, we can assure you. You've already had a pleasant taster for it in the form of the Digitalis cdep released earlier this year. But if you've never checked out Zombi before, an introduction is in order (and this album will do nicely...but we'll also write something here). You might assume from their name, and presence on mostly metal label Relapse, that they're some sort of metal band, into zombie movies. Well the later part is true. They love their horror flicks -- they're from Pittsburgh, home of George Romero after all. But they're not really a metal band. More of a post-rock or math-rock outfit, Zombi is an all-instrumental duo on drums and synth (and bass), heavily influenced by Goblin, the legendary Italian prog band responsible for scoring all those Dario Argento films back in the '70s and '80s -- including the Italian cut of Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, aka Zombi. Other film soundtrackers from that era are also inspirations for Zombi the band as well, in particular John Carpenter. Then there's all the cosmic electronic space music of the '70s too, like that of Klaus Schulze. And Magma, the bass player has got to be into Magma. All that gets stirred into Zombi's witch's cauldron (oops, is that a mixed metaphor?) and the resulting potent concoction could serve as the soundtrack to the most schlocky, suspenseful, arty horror film of your imagination... It's an elixir that exudes subtle menace without, for the most part, being overtly "scary music", much like those Goblin soundtracks. Really it's kind of New Agey... New Agey with tension!! MASSIVE tension on Surface To Air's spookiest track, the album-closing 18 and a half minute "Night Rhythms", filled with ominous drones that eventually give way to powerful bass-heavy grooves... it's an epic tour-de-force of tension and release and very very cinematic. But all the tracks here pulsate mesmerizingly and moodily, with bright n' airy synth tones, dominating bass, and repetitive Circle-like hypno-rock rhythms. If that sounds good, check it out. And if you're already a fan, like we said, you'll be well pleased with Surface To Air!!
