The Guilty Party keep their music in the shadows of night, lacing it with a slight goth and cabaret edge. On this full length follow-up to their 2004 Five Songs debut ep, the Bay Area foursome's brooding drama is more defined and recalls that of early '90s Northeastern U.S. rock bands such as Come or Versus, or more recent likeminded Westcoasters such as Duchess or Whysall Lane. Woozy and intoxicated / intoxicating, their troubled torment ramps up sharply as the album progresses, not unlike a rapid unravelling of emotions and nerves. The spotlight is wisely centered on the powerful throaty vocals of Angelica Maze. The potency of her pipes totally hold its own next to the imposing swagger of the guitars and driving rhythm section. Together they pack quite a wallop. Check out the eighth track "Switch Away" in which the band injects a little Sonic Youth-y art/noise rock dissonance at the end. Very cool. Recorded and produced by SF rock maestro Doug Hilsinger (of the very like-minded but more rural Waycross and Enochestra, they of the 'Taking Tiger Mountain revisited' project) who's also been known to play a little drums and guitar with the band too.
Here's some Japanese avant-garde drone improv on the PSF label. This duo (Hirotomo Hasegawa and Shizu Uchida, the latter a former member of Nijimu with Keiji Haino) utilize bass and vocals alongside a couple traditional Japanese instruments, the single string koto and the double-reed wind instrument called the "hichiriki". They're also both credited with what the liner notes call "roop", which we're guessing might actually supposed to say "loop", a reference to electronic looping n' effects. It's a very abstract soundworld they create with these tools for sure, as the unedited live performance from Tokyo's U.F.O. Club in June 2005 documented on this disc demonstrates. The first two of the three tracks here are the shortest (9:43 and 5:33 in length respectively) and are full of eerie, squeaky spaciousness... quiet high end squeals and cries and lots of silence. Music for the more "onkyo" inclined. But when the lengthy (27:36) third track kicks in, a lot more dense textures are added to Hasegawa-Shizuo's sonic brew, and this is what fans of organic psychedelic drone-out stuff should tune in for.
We listed this a while back, but then discovered that it's now been officially re-released in a much more deluxe version by one of our new favorite labels, Japanese reissue label EM records (who also did the Moolah and the Symphony Of The Birds discs we reviewed recently). This is an absolute all time space-age bachelor pad music kitschy classic for sure. Count Down! -- originally released in 1959 -- is a rock and roll visit to outerspace. Take your standard 1950's boogie woogie, throw a ton of echo, reverb, theremin and other strange sounds at it and you have Jimmie Haskell. Pre-dating Joe Meek's I Hear A New World by just one year, it's hard to believe the two didn't have a late night brainstorming session together. The two share a similar production aesthetic -- double speed vocals, extreme EQ-ing & compression -- and an off-kilter melodic sensibility. Wacky and wonderful!
As with all EM releases, very nicely done with lots of liner notes (unfortunately almost all in Japanese, though) as well as photos, the original artwork, repros of both the front and back covers and loads more!
There are always gonna be special bands, the ones that hold a unique place in your heart. That band you heard when you were on a trip. The band you have loved since the first time you heard them. The band whose songs featured heavily on that mix tape. And then any variation of the 'first' band, the band whose show you were at the first time you got drunk, laid, high, the night you met 'the one', then there's the band whose songs are always stuck in your head, the first -any genre here- band you ever liked, the band that helped you make it through that breakup / rehab / depression / that tough time in your life. But then there's the sort of band you have that weird protective proprietary selfish love for. The band only you like. The band you don't want everyone else listening to. The band you discovered and only you truly love. You know what we mean. It's a rare band that can inspire that sort of love and dedication. Well, we're a little embarrassed to admit it, but we sort of felt that way about Hwyl Nofio. A friend in the UK turned us on to them years back, and from the moment we first laid ears on them, we were smitten, obsessed even. This mysterious outfit crafting these dark and ominous worlds of strange and beautiful sound. It was hard to not keep it all to ourselves, this dark cave of sound that we could explore and call our own. But we like to think we've outgrown that sort of stuff, since we get as much satisfaction from turning other folks on to new music as we do discovering it for ourselves. More so in most cases. But it definitely speaks to the power of Hwyl Nofio, and the effect of their murky and mysterious music has on our ears, and brains, and hearts and souls.
Hounded By Fury is record number four from this UK drone outfit. The band is mostly the work of one man, Steve Parry, who handles the bulk of the sound making, utilizing all manner of guitars: strummed, plucked, bowed, adapted and otherwise, ukulele, piano, organs: church and otherwise, viola, bass and electronics, while a series of guests add their two cents with saxophone, Chinese guzheng, acoustic guitar processing, imagined banjo (?) and midi fractal image converter (!). Recorded at various locations including an old church Hounded By Fury is a definitely a drone record at its heart, but it's what the band do with those drones that makes Hwyl Nofio so special.
The sound this time around is a bit more ominous than on past outings. There's more scraping and scrabbling steel strings, a sort of grinding industrial screech that surfaces in some form or another on many of the tracks, sometimes right up front, a keening high end wail, sometimes just another element in a multilayered droneworld, subtly blended into a slow sleepy swirl with thee rest of the sounds.
The opening track is the former, with steel strings singing as they are scraped and scratched, a shrill screech stretched taut over a warm reverberant low end, strange tinkling wooden chimes and twinkling music box melodies, while in the background a moaning mournful melody, strummed softly so that the strums blend together. From that point on, it's a slow journey through a nighttime world of slow burn jazz minimalism a la Bohren, buzzing raga like rumble, and abstract ambient flutter. Layers of bowed strings sit atop minimal pulsing rhythms, a minimal throb usually constructed from one or two notes, long sustaining tones are stretched out side by side, the overtones shimmering and shifting, the resulting soundfield like drifting along some alien river, staring at a sky full of different stars, a head full of strange and unrecognizable sounds. Bizarre disembodied jangle is stripped of melody, until it's just a warm ridged texture, atonal Jandekian guitar figures warped and twisted, slowed down and sped up, sprinkled with cymbal sizzle and muted reverb ricochets, all stretched and twisted into various forms of drone.
One of the most intense tracks is "Child Woman", a choral sounding minor key lament, deep dark strings and mournful melodies, almost traditional settled as it is amidst an album of abstract experimental drone music., but very emotional and cinematic. It seems like a turning point for the record too as the next few tracks sound downright sunny, bright colors replace the dark, guitars twang, a trippy tangled slow motion free folk, the melodies not so dour, but the sunshine soon dims as black clouds fill the sky and timestretched metallic reverberations fill our ears like a million alarm clocks going off at once and then slowed down into a wall of alien trills, the mood shift is further enforced by some super sharp atonal guitars, swooping dizzily about, sounding a bit like the guitars on the Butthole Surfers' Hairway To Steven record, sort of damaged and deranged. But then the record's coda brings us back to Hwyl's soft shimmer, the delicate drone, a haunting ghostlike swoon, fuzzy and gauzey, obscured by falling rain, a dreamy drift into the void, a slow sad slide into the bright white, the pitch black left far behind.
Awesome reissue of this late sixties beat gem. Didn't know too much about The Id, other than the guitar player was none other than Jerry Cole, one of the original Champs, who recorded "Tequila", as well as being a serious mover and shaker in the music industry having performed with and/or composed/arranged for Glenn Campbell, the Beach Boys, Merle Haggard, Steely Dan, James Taylor, Blood, Sweat And Tears, Aretha Franklin, Little Richard, Chicago, the Byrds, Greg Allman, the Righteous Brothers, Jerry Lee Lewis, Nelson Riddle, Henry Mancini, Kenny Rogers, Hank Williams Jr. and loads more. The rest of the band stack up pretty well too, with CV's heavy in music as well as movies and television.
None of which has anything to do with why this record is so weird and wonderful and totally kick ass. On first listen, the sound is what you might expect, a mix of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Monkees and especially the Monks. That sort of fuzzy psych pop, a shuffling beat, jangling guitars, harmony vocals and a lead singer with a sort of raspy croon, a bit like Alex Chilton in the Boxtops or Gary Burger of the Monks. But this is way more far out. Just check out the first track, "The Rake" a super tripped out psychedelic beat shuffle, with EXTREME stereo panning, heavily reverbed guitars, creepy whispered vocals, some strange falsetto harmonies, muted rhythmic breakdowns, very druggy and bizarre, but pretty seriously stomping as well. The record shifts gears back into more traditional psychfuzzpop, but only for a moment. What's that buzzing, it sounds like a... it is! Sitar. Fuck yeah, Cole also plays sitar, adding a gloriously buzzy Eastern drone element to lots of the tracks, pushing all of our Turkish Delights buttons. Guitar leads are replaced by slippery sitars and the whole thing sounds just that much more psychedelic. The highlight though is the ten minute "The Inner Sound Of The Id", an acid-soaked psychedelic freak out title track, drifting buzzing sitar, creeping spoken vocal incantations, simple martial drumming, everything wrapped in thick reverb, more extreme panning, so druggy and awesomely wigged out.
And if you're not sold already, check out the original liner notes, and tell us you don't need to check this out:
"The primitive rhythms brought back to popular music. Before Civilization reared its crew-cut head and the world stifled a yawn that has lasted a thousand years, man danced at frantic festivals until he fell down foaming at the mouth. Not any more. Why? Because the beat became ironed out, flattened, regularized. Now, for the FIRST TIME in the Western world since pagan gods were worshipped, the primitive rhythms have been brought back to popular music. A group of four young and talented musicians came together to create this musical madness, a kind of "asymmetrical-contrapuntal chromaticism." Non-experienced listeners would call it instant Delirium! Freud discovered the Id, and on this album it was set to music, it is the unshape of things to come." Asymmetrical-contrapuntal chromaticism? Hell yeah!
Includes extensive liner notes about each band member (sadly not much about the band itself), lots of photos and TEN bonus tracks!
Latest lashings from erstwhile Emperor imperator Ihsahn. Being the guitarist/vocalist/main songwriter for one of the most important and innovative Norwegian black metal acts ever, anyone with any interest in that scene will be interested to hear what Ihsahn is up to on his own, with The Adversary being his very first solo album.
And as such, remember, it's not an Emperor album... and that's fine, really. In fact, although most frontmen gone solo *don't* do this, the idea behind a solo album should be, well, to do something different than what one does in their main band. But then again, it's more like an Emperor album than a lot of things! However, it's a lot closer to being a Peccatum album (Ihsahn's other prior project with his wife and brother in law). And that's maybe not such a good thing. Tends towards the overwrought. And that's what you've got here, Ihsahn indulging in some overly dramatic, keyboard-theatrical black metal melded with, well, all sorts of things. Maybe a few too many things. It's a trifle too diverse in scope. And while we can hang with the trad heavy metal elements (including, up to a point, Ihsahn's use of his King Diamondesqe falsetto) and the extremities of blackened, mathy prog mania, it's what sounds like cheesy, adult contemporary melodiousness crammed into much of these songs that makes us wince. Enough with the clean vocals, Ihsahn! Still, his undeniably impressive musicianship (he plays everything on here but the drums) and progressive ambitions do result in an album that definitely holds rewards for those into the likes of Opeth, Borknagar, and Hammers Of Misfortune -- even if what Emperor once accomplished without trying, it sometimes sounds like he's trying too hard to do.
UK DIY lo-fi avant-punk, with home-made synths and drum machine, utterly distorted guitar n' bass, and some rather clever, sardonic lyrics pertaining to both society at large and their friends in particular -- yup, it's another one from the Messthetics vaults, as it were (see our reviews of Messthetics Greatest Hits and Animals & Men on our last two lists). Lincolnshire's Instant Automatons got their start as a schoolboy band in 1974, with early influences like Hawkwind and Kraftwerk, and suitably futuristic "instruments" sourced from their school's physics lab! The punk rock revolution of '77 came along just as they left school and pretty soon they'd picked their "vaguely self-mocking" name (out of a hat) and started recording in earnest, becoming pioneers of the nascent cassette music scene -- they were one of the first to advertise that if you sent 'em a blank cassette, they'd dub their album onto it and send it back, free of charge... the pre-internet precursor to downloading it seems. They kept at it for a few years, and so here's a sort-of "best of", consisting of 26 tracks, some previously unreleased, others compiled from various rare cassette and vinyl releases circa 1978-1982, including such numbers as "Short Haired Man (In A Long Haired Town", "Violence", "New Muzak", and "Gillian Is Normal". Lots of wise-ass wisdom to be found in the words to these and other songs. The Instant Automatons surely liked to take the piss, which makes for an entertaining listen. For instance, the atonal, spaced-out track "Electronic Music", with lines like "electronic music is the curse of the working classes" and "electronic music makes you unfit" is still pretty amusing today.
Limited lp only collection of live performances and radio broadcasts, all woven together into one lengthy buzzy free psych jam. A sitar sounding guitar (or is that a sitar?) unwinds lazily into a lengthy sun baked raga, all buzzing and slowly shifting, lazy, washed out guitars, a meditative soundscape, slow and sleepy and syrupy. This bliss eventually drifts directly into a West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band cover, with sweet hushed female vocals over barely-there instrumentation, a gentle reverbed hush, while beneath a soft pulse and distant lilting whirs. The second side is a single sidelong track, a mumbled murky psych jam, starting off like a way more shambolic Can before quickly dissipating into long stretches of guitar shimmer, far away percussion, manipulated turntables, a mesmerizing druggy and dreamlike drift, all whisper and warble. So nice.
Packaged in a brown chipboard sleeve with a metallic silver sticker affixed to the front.
Second album (duh) from this Norwegian rock band led by a former Turbonegro roadie. We did like their first one, Sideman, quite a bit, but this one seems a bit too poppy and polished for us, this time out. It's just awkwardly balanced on the cusp of cool '80s retro (Hacienda-era Factory bands could be what they're going for) and maybe not so cool '80s retro (The Fixx?), with a definite nod to more modern radio-friendly fare of the Britpop persuasion. Spiritualized might be one comparison. So, the spacey, psychedelic elements we dug about the debut aren't totally gone, but it's hardly the Floyd/MBV/Spacemen Three styled trip we were hoping for based on the successes of Sideman. Check out the sound clips, though, if you liked the poppier parts of that album.
Some of you are probably familiar with Kapotte Muziek (which translates roughly to 'broken music') a recording project of Dutch sound artist Frans De Waard, who also runs the Korm Plastics and Bake Records record labels. Kapotte Muziek has recorded, released or contributed to hundreds and hundreds of records, so it makes sense that an odds and ends collection would end up sprawling over the length of FOUR cd-r's. De Waard has explored all facets of sound, from minimal electronics to somber drones but KM would have to be qualified as 'noise music' wethinks. Not noise like Merzbow, although their are moments, but more like simple forms of noise, sculpted into new shapes, and alien sounds. White noise, pink noise, static, distortion, electrical currents, all deftly maneuvered and recontextualized. Each disc is packed to the gills with lost recordings, alternate versions, sound experiments, ambience, harsh noise and everything in between. Slow soundscapes of staticky hiss that ebbs and flows like some strange electronic sea, drones constructed from what sounds like wind and crickets and a million marbles rolling down metal stairs, siren like sinewaves twisted and pitched into clicks and bumps and squealing swoops, shimmering lowercase worlds of rumbles and clicks, creepy and subterranean, lunar landscapes of space-y woosh and robotic bleeps and bloops, and that's just part on one disc. This is definitely not easy listening. This is difficult listening, but as we know, that can often be the most rewarding.
Includes extensive liner notes, with in depth text about the genesis and execution of each and every track.
Packaged in separate sleeves and held together by a Japanese style obi.
Something so nice about the tradition of soul singers covering songs by an impressively wide array of artists, and usually with such strong conviction and charisma. In the '70s Tina Turner had this amazing ability to transform Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin songs and make them her own. Aretha could always breath new life into old songs too. Now, enter the amazing voice of Bettye LaVette. A survivor of the Detroit soul scene of the 1960's, she never really had any huge hits but that never stopped her from carrying on and using her strong powerful voice to make a handful of soulful records over the last several decades. On this outing she tackles songs by the likes of Lucinda Williams, Johnny Cash, Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, etc. In using stripped down instrumentation or even entirely acapella (as on her stunning version of Sinead O'Connor's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got"), LaVette finds the grit and guts of every song she covers. We love the times when her voice sounds a lot like that other Betty we love so much (Betty Davis!), and just like Davis when words come out of LaVette's mouth they hit you hard, with passion and presence.
Ooh punchy pop fans, here's a new one for y'all! Don't let the solitary piano introduction fool ya! From there on it's nuthin' but big big big emotive pop with hefty guitars and snappy drums very much in the tradition of beloved popsters Weezer, The Anniversary and Superchunk. Lots of boy/girl vocal harmonies, which you know a lot of us can't resist! We haveta say tho' that this album's sound is something of a surprise coming from this married couple (or is it brother sister duo? we've heard conflicting reports) 'cause the last time we heard from them they were totally 'White Stripes'. A bit perplexing, but shucks, we like 'em now and that's all that matters. Go ahead bounce around your bedroom to this one... we'll be right there with ya!
Slowly but surely Scott Morgan (aka Loscil) is building a really nice collection of subtly crafted daydream electronic recordings. Recalling the more ambient outings of Brian Eno, Loscil are so good at letting the listener linger, wander, and float in space, as they the music mixes pop ambience with minimalist electronic drones. Kind of like playing Keith Fullerton Whitman's Playthroughs record beneath the latest outing from Klimek. This will appeal to both the brain and the the body for sure. Nice stuff!
BACK IN PRINT, the double cd version of this awesome album...
Hallelujah! At last, a deluxe, expanded version of the out-of-print cd-r edition we used to carry of this fantastic, far-out album! It's the rare soundtrack to cult underground director and Crowley-ite Kenneth Anger's film Lucifer Rising (begun in the mid-'60s, completed in 1980). At one point, Jimmy Page was supposed to do the score, but he bowed out and the music was instead handled by another cult figure, the musical visionary and imprisoned killer Bobby Beausoliel, who composed and performed this spacey psychedelic opus with his Freedom Orchestra (who were all fellow prisoners with Bobby). Beausoliel and co. play electric guitars, Fender Rhodes electric pianos, some synths and bass...there's two drummers, and a trumpet player. The result is a sometimes sinister, sometimes blissful, always beautiful and "cosmic" drifting soundscape. Gurgling old-school electronics blend with propulsive rock drumming, while psychedelic guitar soloing tears across the sunset horizon created by the synths...The combination results in what you might imagine an early '70s Tangerine Dream/Ennio Morricone collaboration might have sounded like! It's indeed a lost classic. And the composer's life story is at least as weird and interesting as the music...
In the late Sixties, Bobby was a rising star in the LA rock-pop scene, hanging with Zappa, the Beach Boys, and Love. But then a drug deal went bad and he was sent to death row for murder, arrested 3 days before the Manson killing spree. Fortunately for him, his sentence was eventually commuted, but he's spent the last 30 years in jail. He's been a model prisoner, pursuing his talents in music and art despite his incarceration, and you'd think that the parole board would have let him out by now (he's been paying his debt to society longer than anybody else has for a similar crime, we're told) but sadly for Bobby, he's got to deal with his association with the notorious Charles Manson. While never a member of Manson's Family (a common misconception), he did play in a band with Manson, and the media hype surrounding anything to do with Manson hasn't helped Bobby's case, as you might imagine! Or at least...that's the way Bobby Beausoleil tells it. But the more one delves into the story of Lucifer Rising, the weirder things get -- for instance, apparently Bobby was supposed to PLAY the role of Lucifer in the original 1966 version of Anger's film, but the two had a falling out and Bobby allegedly stole the footage and buried it in Death Valley! How this jibes with him later writing this soundtrack, we don't know (though this new edition's liner notes shed some more light on these mysteries).
Yet, not being one to simply sit in his cell and rot, Bobby has, as we said, kept quite busy within the clutches of the California Penal system, with the help of his wife starting a label that originally released this (and some other, newer, more New Agey fare) on cd-r. Now in conjunction with Arcanum Entertainment, Beausoliel's Lucifer Rising soundtrack gets a proper, nay, deluxe, compact disc release. It's a two disc set, with the first disc being the remastered Lucifer Rising soundtrack, and the second disc containing some quite worthwhile never-before-released material, including a 28 minute Lucifer Rising sessions outtake by the Freedom Orchestra and, most amazingly, the long-lost, recently discovered *original*, abandoned Lucifer Rising soundtrack music recorded in 1967 by Bobby's then-band The Magickal Powerhouse Of Oz! The final version of the soundtrack is an ominous, ritualistic acid rock jam, and this 24 minute track is a murky, jazzy excursion into similiar territory with woozy horns...very cool, kinda Sun Ra like. The whole package, in contrast to the previous cd-r edition, is really beautifully presented, a double digipack colorfully illustrated with photos and art. Plus there's tons of text, the thick booklet including not only a forward by Kenneth Anger himself, and also some words from Bobby Beausoleil, but as well rather extensive liner notes by Michael "Lords Of Chaos" Moynihan! Although for obvious reasons Bobby wouldn't probably approve of the use of the word to describe himself and this soundtrack, in the Aquarius Records' musical context it's quite appropriate: Cult!
Ultra limited, single sided 12" from those lovable noisemakers the Magik Markers. Recorded live in Belgium in 2005, this is the Markers at their disheveled, chaotic, falling to pieces best. Or worst. Hard to tell sometimes. But this is one series splatter of guitar gore and drum damage. Total and utter grinding noiserock skree, dense and murky and druggy and ultra damaged. Guitars scream and squeal, the drums sound like they're tumbling down an elevator shaft. this is like Sunroof! or Vibracathedral Orchestra, but run through some sort of 'caveman' filter, removing melody and composition and any other distinctly musical elements, leaving just a huge swelling, sweating, wiggling, rumbling, roaring, shrieking, fucked up high volume scribble of sonic freakout.
Packaged in a thick chipboard sleeve, hand silkscreened inside and out. Really nice. Limited to 500 copies.
If you thought that recent recordings by Japanese shambolic psychedelic pop outfit Maher Shalal Hash Baz sound full of simple, child-like naivety, imagine the even less-trained, even more-Shaggsy charm of this band back, say, twenty years ago! Well you actually don't have to imagine 'cause now PSF has provided us with this disc of archival live recordings, from performances in 1984 and 1985. That's truly delving into Tori Kudo's troupe's earliest years (he started the band in '83). In fact, the 1984 performance documented here was in fact their FIRST EVER gig, opening for High Rise and Kousokoya! May have been High Rise's first show too... (hmm, does that mean PSF has tapes of their sets as well?). Their entropic sound was much like it is today, though. Not-quite-jazz horns bleat out distressed melodies over stumbling beats, gentle vocals hold your hand as guitars are strummed with more feeling than finesse. The recording quality is suitably lo-fi and tape-hissy and makes this even more of a warm blanket of softly sunny clangy jangle and blissful pop chaos, so wrong it's right. Ariel Pink's got nothing on this. With interesting liner notes about these early daze from Kudo, translated into English by Alan Cummings.
Jake Mann is a member of Bay Area indie rock band Zim-Zims, but occasionally he's been known to step out on his own to do a little solo action... just him and his trusty electric guitar. His mellow croon is pretty darn reminiscent of Pat Fish from the late 80s/early 90s awesome Brits The Jazz Butcher. This six-song cd-r gives the shut-ins and out-of-towners a chance to hear him all by his lonesome, and preps our ears for his forthcoming full length later this summer. To end your listening experience on an up-note, we might recommend you press 'stop' after the fifth song 'cause right after that Mann does what we wish no one would do... he covers "I Can't Wait" by Nu Shooz.
We have a customer in Japan who HATES Keiji Haino, and delights in sending us emails detailing just how much he loathes the man and his music. Andee of course delights in torturing Allan, an admitted Keiji mega-fan, with these very same missives. Having spied Haino shopping in a record store, our customer remarked "Even the way he looks at cds sucks", and once he emailed that he could make a Keiji Haino record simply by sticking an electric guitar and an amp in the trunk of his car and driving around on bumpy Japanese roads. Which brings us to Guitar Drag, the soundtrack to a video installation in which Christian Marclay, took an electric guitar, plugged it in, tied it to the back of a truck, and drove around dragging the guitar behind him and recording the results. Visually it's pretty amazing. And a clever statement on music and art, as are all of Marclay's pieces. But the sound yields something surprisingly listenable. Super lo-fi, a swirling, clanging crash and crunch of hum and twang and rumble and roar, a noisy mess, perhaps, but surprisingly dynamic, with random melodies and some remarkable sounds surfacing from the murky stringed chaos. Actually, one was to listen to this not knowing it was some art prank, one would most certainly be forgiven for thinking this was in fact some totally abstract free rock psychedelic freakout, the Dead C, or some mysterious Matthew Bower project, or even -that- above mentioned nonexistent Haino guitar-in-the-trunk record we wish would come out. Not sure what it says about those bands when dragging a guitar behind your car produces the same sound, but who cares?! Art nerds already need this, but now all you free noise psychedelic freaks can feel all 'arty' when you throw this on right between Fushitsusha's Live 2 and the Dead C's Trapdoor Fucking Exit!
Cool sleeve image, a video still of the dragged guitar, and pressed on super swank cloudy clear vinyl.
Latest blast of squeak and skronk and blast and grind from these ultra cute, but totally dangerous Japanese pop punk grind craziness. This is the perfect way to experience MB, two ultra short, but still impossibly complex blasts of chaotic grind pop. Like getting beaten to death with a big fuzzy sack full of bunnies, cute but still fierce and freaked out as fuck. Or imagine being eaten alive by a gaggle of glow in the dark, rainbow colored cartoon characters, painfully cute, anthropomorphous fuzz balls, all soft and cuddly, but with sharp fangs and a truly deranged look in their eyes. NO ONE sounds like Melt-Banana, well okay, sometimes Fantomas does, but when they do, we just wonder why they're copping MB's style. We love Melt-Banana.
Super limited 5" vinyl, released on HG Fact (the same label that releases all the Corrupted records!).
We haven't heard from MHFS for years now, not since their now long out of print cd-r on Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. That release found these NZ noise makers kicking up a serious freerock fuss, with wild spacey synthesizer, crashing chaotic freakout and a bunch of whirring and bleeping and screeching. That very same record though finished up with a stretch of strummy soft shimmer, and that's pretty much where this 3" finds them again. Taking up right where they left off. They incidentally is in fact a he, one Mark Sadgrove, who is quite a fixture in the NZ music underground. In MHFS, Sadgrove utilizes homemade electronics, found sounds, field recordings, his own software, as well as the more traditional voice and guitar to create, subtle soundscapes, from very very minimal happenings a la Francisco Lopez, where we found ourselves reaching for the volume knob just to get a fleeting glimpse of the fuzzy details and barely these smears of soft sound, to rough crackly drones, waves of crumbling guitar distortion and buried in the haze mumbly vocals, all very sleepily sun drenched and beautifully blown out.
Once post-punk legends Mission Of Burma got their engines all revved back up and running at full throttle (with 2004's potent studio album ONoffON) after about two decades of silence, there was nothing that was gonna shut 'em down. These guys are determined to keep churning out their unmistakable kick ass rock. The Obliterati definitely keeps up the fevered propulsive energy of its predecessor and perhaps ups the ante even further -- The album reconfirms these Bostonians' vitality and once again lays many of their younger counterparts to waste. This is music with heft and wisdom, both lyrically and musically. Seldom is raging so articulate. Listen, learn and love 'em.
NOTE: The first pressing of the cd includes a bonus dvd featuring previously unreleased live footage of the band at Tsongas Arena, Lowell, MA on December 2, 2004!
Subtitled: Musical Saw And Hawaiian Guitar Soli Recorded In Early 1920s. That's what it is, and it's SO GOOD! We're in love with this sepia-toned collection of old time tunes, some of them lively rags, others sad slowed-down ballads made even sadder by the unique sound of the saw.
If Japan's EM Records (the same label responsible for reissuing both the "Symphony of the Birds" and the Moolah records we raved about last list) has anything to do with it, pretty soon we'll have a whole little "musical saw" section here at Aquarius! It's one of their several weird, wonderful obsessions (along with thrift-store exotica LPs, obscure '70s New Age psych, pioneering electronic experiments, etc.) and so there's a slew of releases on EM featuring the gorgeous, if sometimes gimmicky (but not here!) sound of the musical saw.
We're gonna start you out with this, music by Sam Moore, an early 20th century master of the musical saw ... who also plays a mean guitar too, and who is accompanied on most of these tracks by another talent of the era, Horace Davis. (Roy Smeck and Frank Banta also make appearances.) You'll get to hear Moore's "Octo-chord" (an 8-string steel guitar) alongside the "harp-guitar" (a guitar outfitted with extra, resonating strings) of Davis on their hit, the "Laughing Rag". But it's the tracks with the musical saw that grab us the most. Listening to those, you'll understand why this instrument, steel bent and bowed, is also often called the "singing saw". It's got a definite vocal timbre, maybe also a bit like the electronic Theremin in that regard. Wavering, wordlessly moaning, haunting and eerie. MOOOHIEEE! (Man, we'd love to hear John Jacob Niles accompanied by a singing saw, if such a recording were to exist. That would be perfect.)
Some background: Sam Moore (1887-1959), was a child musical prodigy who, having quickly mastered the violin, guitar and banjo, soon developed an interest in playing more eccentric, unconventional "instruments" as well. He'd been doing so from a young age -- Moore's father once claimed that Sam, as a child, had been able to "get music out of a pitchfork" (!) although sadly, no recordings exist to prove it... But we do know that at one point Sam Moore was part of a vaudeville act called "Spooning And Ballooning" in which he played an inflated rubber balloon, dueting with another fellow who played the spoons (of course). Another of his unusual instrumental specialties was (as documented on much of this fantastic cd) the carpenter's steel hand saw, which is something of a Southern folk music-making tradition. 'Round about 1918 Moore had taken to playing the saw, and was able to capitalize on the fad for the instrument in the early '20s, bringing his sawing skills to New York City's famed Ziegfeld's Follies for a successful stint on stage circa 1920-21. Although that fad soon faded, Sam Moore never abandoned the saw, keeping it in his instrumental repertoire as his career stretched into the '40s and '50s.
All the recordings found here date from Sam's sawing heyday in the Twenties... 13 tracks all taken from rare old 78 rpm records treasured by collectors. That these vintage recordings, warm and crackly, are so burnished with the patina of the past only makes sound all the better to our ears. EM has fitted this out in handsome digipack, the only disappointment being that the extensive liner notes are pretty much all in Japanese...
We've had some cd-r evidence a while back pointing to the existence of some mighty black beast, trolling the midnight forests of the New Zealand wilds, the thing they call Mrtyu, some say it's a man, but what kind of man can spew forth such a noxious cacophony? Some say it is a demon from the depths of hell, unleashed after centuries of incarceration in some hellish underground lair, but how did a demon learn to play a guitar and use a 4 track? We've been led to believe however that Mrtyu is actually the musical Mr. Hyde to one Antony Milton's Dr. Jeckyll. What proof do we have? The cd-r label Pseudo Arcana, run by an entity known as Antony Milton, Nether Dawn, a group fronted by a shadowy figure possibly also Mr. Milton, and then there are of course a couple previous cd-r releases, which are now known to be the work of one Antony Milton. This double disc collection gathers up all existing evidence, including previous releases as well as a brand new previously unreleased sonic document. Why the hubbub? Well, friends, it could be that Mrtyu offer up some of the darkest, blackest, heaviest sounds south of Heaven? That to trudge through Mrtyu's sonic world is a journey to the brink of madness? Perhaps, but the best way to truly understand the fury and glory of the mighty Mrtyu is to listen. Each track a blast of primitive power, each with it's own unique sonic energy. Sheets of shimmering feedback drift over crumbly rumbling super distorted guitar background noise. Very static and raga-like, quite reminiscent of Total or Skullflower. A lo-fi doom dirge, with jagged brittle guitars, distorted vocals (not howls or shrieks, but like indie crooning, all 'distorted' up). A brief blast of Melvins-y sludge but with the high end pushed into the red. Almost like a indie pop song, but deconstructed and dipped in stoner sludge. A bit of Sunroof!, a bit of Angus Maclise, a lush shimmering drone, with peals of feedback and throbbing smears of downtuned guitar, all tangled into a gorgeously static thrum. Drones cloaked in black, damaged and druggy, ultra distorted guitars, so downtuned and blown out it sounds like some sort of tectonic event, the guitars form the framework for a truly oppressive atmosphere, a swirl of black clouds and Butthole Surfers-esque feedback, while atop it all, a demonic voice intones and howls and squeals like a rusted hinge. Think Khanate meets Abruptum, but filtered through than NZ noize aesthetic. A howling hellish musical journey through the fires of hell, trudging across pits of black pitch, being dragged bloody and screaming through dark demon infested forests. So harsh and beautifully bilious, drones become dirges, dirges become drones, everything cloaked in black and swathed in buzz.
Bow supplicant, pray for forgiveness, wish for survival, bathe in the blood from your ringing ears. All hail Mrtyu.
These musical missives come housed in a hand screened green and blue, three panel cardstock sleeve, adorned with all manner of pagan and tribal imagery, quite striking!
(Psst... the artwork on the discs got swapped at the plant, so the disc marked DISC 1 actually contains the music from disc 2 and vice versa. Just the demon Mrtyu messing with our heads wethink!)
Ultra limited lp from Italy's masters of spacey sonic drift, My Cat Is An Alien. Released on Root Strata, the label of Tarentel's J.C. Ledesma. The two brothers in MCIAA again set their controls for the heart of the sun, but spend most of their time drifting lazily through space. Simple folk guitar, spread over random percussive clatter, the two tangled and stretched into some sort of amorphous spacey blissy drone. Tones stretch and shimmer, the background a distant whir, with soft vocals, fragile and whispery, so delicate and dreamy. The second 'movement' on the first side sounds a bit like the incidental music from some long lost sixties sci-fi lost in space type program, a soundscape of bleeeps and swooshes, bloops and alien trills, but it MCIAA's universe they are buried beneath a thick unwavering high end guitar drone. This sci fi dronescape continues onto the flipside where it spreads out over the whole side, a feedback guitar drifting weightless through the alien soundscape that is My Cat Is An Aliens peculiar sonic world.
SUPER LIMITED TO 300 COPIES! Each copy hand numbered. Packaged in gorgeously silver inked hand screened sleeves.
You would think that the more you listen to a record, the easier it would be to write about, but for us sometimes the exact opposite seems to be true. The more a record seeps into your consciousness, the more it takes on all these ineffable qualities that are incredibly hard to describe in words. It's a rare record that can do that, but when it happens, it's all about feeling and emotion, the way the record affects you, makes you think, makes you feel, even if it just makes you want to jump around and sing along at the top of your lungs. Or drive with the stereo blasting, in a goosebumpy fume thinking sad thoughts. Or walk around in the fog and mist, just wandering aimlessly. Or just rock out and forget everything. And it's the record that can make you feel all of those things and then some that's even more rare. This is most definitely one of those records.
Being the sort of store we are, we get super obsessed with ultra weird records and bizarre niche genres, all of which we love to bits, be it drones or found sounds or sludge or power pop or black metal or whatever. But sometimes it takes a good ol' rock record to kick your ass and push all those buttons that without realizing it, have remained relatively un-pushed for years. 2003's Let Go, Nada Surf's first record since they were chewed up and spit out by the major label / MTV machine in the late nineties (after a huge hit in 1995) was a breath of fresh air at the time, a gorgeous indie rock record, full of impossibly catchy hooks, wry, bittersweet lyrics, perfect jangle guitar, just some of the best fucking songs we'd heard in ages. Songs that so far surpassed their former incarnation as a major label MTV rock band it was a little hard to believe it was the same band. A record so good in fact, that lots of metalheads and punk rockers we know even LOVED it. And around these parts it was one of the most listened to records of the last few years.
So we were super psyched when we heard there was a new Nada Surf on the horizon. On first listen though, it sounded just a bit too happy. But why wouldn't it, they had reinvented themselves, and were on a super hip indie label, and folks (the right folks this time) loved their band. Made sense that perhaps it would be a little less cynical and jaded, especially after the cathartic bile and vitriol of Let Go. But the more we listened, the more we realized, it was just as bitter and dark if not more so, just more self assured, better produced, songs that were even catchier, but in that way that classic songs are catchy, they take time to grow, and as they do, they become ultra personal, every song, and every favorite part having some direct correlation to your life, or some special meaning for everyone who listens. Each melody makes you want to sing along, or just close your eyes and think along in your head. We still thought the first record was better, until we went back and listened, and realized, that while the old record was still great, this new record took everything they were shooting for with the that one, and hit perfect bullseyes with every track on The Weight Is A Gift. Not a weak song anywhere, not a bit of filler. In fact some songs have so many killer parts, and so many hooks, any other band would more than likely turn every song here into two, or even three. All the parts are the stuff of classic indie rock, jangly guitars, sometimes roaring into a distorted big chorus fury, sometimes fading into a moody near ambient strum, simple basslines, drumming with fills as catchy as any of the songs' hooks (think Nirvana), gorgeous vocal harmonies, and really intense and clever and heartfelt lyrics, and most importantly, some of the catchiest songs ever. From dreamy, dreary slow building ballads, to full on rocking barnburners, to straight ahead sounding nineties style college rock, to more modern indie pop, Nada Surf while sounding totally unique, should definitely fit comfortably in your collections and in your ears, right alongside the Wrens, Yo La Tengo, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sparklehorse, Interpol, Olivia Tremor Control, New Pornographers, Flaming Lips, Pavement, Now It's Overhead, and all the other modern indie 'classics'. But for us, there's something about Nada Surf that makes them stand out, even among such an elite indie crowd. Again, it's that impossible to describe something, so personal and intimate, even at their most rocking, that just hits us right in the heart. And the soul. The true test for us though as always, is how often you find yourself listening to something. Sure we've been loving all sorts of doom and drone and black metal, but we always find ourselves throwing this back on, again and again, all the time, every day. And loving it more and more every time.
Packaged with a cool die-cut cityscape sleeve with lyrics, and while supplies last a bonus disc including two unreleased tracks, a demo version of the opening track, and a Francoise Hardy cover!
This is not new, wasn't just reissued, but was just discovered. And sometimes the process of discovery with music, or movies or whatever, can be just as interesting and strange as the music itself. And sometimes that process enables you to discover music you might not give a second listen to otherwise, and lets you be more objective, lets you disregard your normal musical biases. Thus... we've never been that big into Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young. And yeah, before you email all in a tizzy, we've already gotten plenty of suggestions for CSN+Y records we NEED to hear, but for the most part we were just never really big fans. Consequently, we tended to ignore the various members' solo records (not counting Mr, Young of course) as well.
We recently (re)discovered Terry Reid via the soundtrack to Rob Zombie's killer 'killer' flick The Devil's Rejects, which is already sort of a random way of getting turned on to an artist we had at least known about for ages. But there was something special about those specific tracks Zombie chose for the soundtrack. Further exploration of Terry Reid's various releases, revealed that those three tracks were all from the same album, Seed Of Memory, and while we love pretty much all the Terry Reid records, Seed Of Memory is by far our favorite. The dreamiest, the catchiest, the most country (and somewhat frustratingly, the most difficult to get). So what was it exactly that made that record so special. Well, and here's where it connects, it was produced by Graham Nash, who also played and contributed various parts and pieces. So, recently an aQ customer suggested we check out Songs For Beginners, which they told us was Nash's best solo record, and while we haven't heard enough of Nash's releases to say for sure, we can at least say we really really like it! A LOT!
To begin with Songs For Beginners was originally released in the mystical magical year of 1971, a year when pretty much every great record was released (at least according to Allan) from Black Sabbath to Flower Travellin Band to Van Der Graaf Generator to Comus and on and on. While Nash's record is obviously not as weird or heavy or psychedelic as any of those, it's still pretty fucking awesome. Sunny, sweet, singer songwriter soft rock dream pop. With a streak of dark melancholy moodiness. Think Billy Joel, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Bread, America, Donovan and even more esoteric folk folks like Bill Fay, Terry Reid, Fred Neil and the like.
Each track is a gorgeously simple folky pop gem, with harmony vocals, lilting melodies, gentle piano, lush strings, soaring lap steel, a little bit of twang, a little bit of swoonsome sweetness, all dreamily draped over minor key Beatlesque pop or soft shimmery folkpop ballads, While the sound is immediately recognizable, that ubiquitous seventies FM radio soft rock from our childhoods, it's just weird enough, and the songs are just so goddamn good, that it totally transcends the seventies schlock that surrounded it. And by now we've all been blessed with a healthy diet of modern psychedelic folk, bizarre Finnish forest folk, neo-Appalachia, folky droney pop weirdness, plenty of Six Organs and Current 93's and Vetivers and Banharts and Newsoms and Feathers and Wooden Wands that we can look back with wide eyes at the sort of folky pop that was the seed for the dense folky foliage we love rolling around in these days...
Featuring the singer from Limited Express (Has Gone?), Ni Hao! is an all-girl Japanese art-rock trio: two on bass, one on drums, all of 'em on vocals. Lots and lots of vocals, in complex arrangements. The whole shebang is quite energetic and precise, and should appeal to fans of Limited Express and Ex-Girl. Includes a spirited cover of the Ramones' "Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" and also three bonus computer-only video interview clips with each of the band members (in Japanese with English subtitles).
Super limited split between these two heavyweights. In this corner, Burst, with their Meshuggah-like stop start riffing, super precise and machinelike, downtuned guitar chugs like pipes to the side of the head, all getting more and more tangled until it's a dizzying metallic swirl. There's also some weird warped melodies, the guitars and vocals doing something bizarre together, making it sound like the record is warped or something. Cool. And in the other corner, Germany's Ocean, not to be confused with THE Ocean, a massive metallic collective, who tone back the metal just a bit this time around and explore some post rock weirdness. Serene stretches of sweet blissed out prettiness, finger picked guitars and angelic female vocals, before a monstrous sledgehammer groove kicks in, all HUGE riff and harsh demonic vocals. Killer!
Packaged in a gorgeous fold out sleeve designed by Seldon Hunt and pressed on blue vinyl. Super limited and we only got a few.
This instrumental space rock trio from Michigan has been smoking heaping bowlfuls of the same stuff Hawkwind used to burn up and is thus churning out some serious space rock with mighty results. Spacious and sweeping, chugging with propulsive groove, but without the quiet-loud dynamics of post-rock bands like Mogwai, nor the shoe-gazing drone burners of bands like Growing and Belong. More like a 120 mph road-trip through Death Valley at sunset and the acid just kicked in.
Penny-Ante is an amazing new literary / art journal with contributions from artists, writers and a ton of musicians, mostly from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland area. The contributors alone should get loyal AQ customers foaming at the mouth, with art and/or text from Devendra Banhart, My Morning Jacket, Josephine Foster, Xiu Xiu, Marissa Nadler, Tarantula AD, Ariel Pink), Don Bolles (from the Germs), 7 Year Rabbit Cycle, Leslie Q, Daedelus, the Double, Residual Echoes, Hawnay Troof, the Six Parts Seven, the American Analog Set, Aids Wolf, Idaho Falls, XBXRX and that's -just some of the musicians. Tons more writers and artists, a huge 300 page journal style soft cover book, with tons of amazing art, short stories, poetry, lyrics, postcards, drawings, photographs, lyrics, interviews, prose, illustrations, and probably some other stuff we didn't notice. But we just got it and it's huge and jam packed with all kinds of stuff. First in a series, we're not even halfway through the first issue and we're already chomping at the bit for the next one.
SF's Ral Partha Vogelbacher unleash their boyish indie rock charms right from the get go on this their third album. Mainman Chad Bidwell sings his deeply personal lyrics in the drollest fashion that reminded us of cross between AQ faves Casiotone For The Painfully Alone's Owen Ashworth and Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields. The musical backdrop (provided by local pals Thee More Shallows and a guest appearance from Odd Nosdam on the track "New Happy Fawn") though is unlike that of either of those artists. As far as we can tell despite the album's title Shrill Falcons, neither piercing sounds nor feathered friends can be found anywhere. What it is filled with is very slouchy yet perky distorted jangly guitars, hazy droning keyboards and infectious hummable melodies. Another reason to get that fuzzy well-worn cardigan out of storage!
Psst, the band enlisted the fine seamstress skills of AQ's very own Pam to stitch a flag version of the album's cover art.
Discos Mariposa is quickly becoming one of our new favorite reissue labels alongside Japan's EM Records. Last list we told you about the Alceu Valenca & Geraldo Azevedo record we had fallen in love with and this time out there are two more that we can't seem to keep our ears off of. Paulo E Bagunca A Tropa Maldita (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this record from Rubinho & Maura Assumpcao. Recorded in 1972 and until now a pretty impossible to find rarity, this Rio De Janeiro duo play totally seductive & dreamy bossa-samba-psychedelic pop. With a nod toward California dreamy west-coast introspection and that irresistible laid back sound that folks in Brazil always got so right. The cover picture of the two of them naked peeking out from within the branches of a tree in some enchanted forest gives you a pretty good indication of the sensual sounds contained within. You might remember their song from the Brazilian edition of the Love Peace & Poetry series, but unlike lots of rediscovered lost 'classics' with one or two good songs, this is an album that perfect from start to finish.
Yes, more delicate spectral music from Finland! Sala-Arhimo are a branch off of the Islaja tree... and if you're at all familiar with us here at AQ you know we're mighty fond of 'em. This self titled album is very hazy, Spartan and folk-tinged much like Islaja, but perhaps a bit darker, more somber and mournful. Lovely.
We don't carry a whole lot of books, so when we do, it has to be because there's something really special about it. Those of you who made it to the recent book signing here at aQ already know what's so special about this here book, but for those of you who didn't, we'll give you a little background.
Mr. Zak Sally spent a good portion of his life playing the bass guitar in slowcore outfit Low, he recently left the band to focus on his real love, art, drawing and self publishing. He began a series of graphic novels entitled Recidivist and started his own publishing house called La Mana and began to publish gorgeous and lovingly hand crafted books, graphic novels, posters and monographs.
One of which just so happens to be this, the latest and perhaps final installment in Sally's Recidivist series. The first of the series to be an actual book, amazingly bound with an off white textured cover and a black spine, featuring the striking image of an arrow piercing a very realistic heart on the front, a severed hand with a paint brush on the back, a beautiful old fashioned hard cover, the sort that creaks when you open it, the pages inside printed on nice thick paper. Almost worth buying just for that stuff. But lucky for us, the artwork and storytelling inside is just as compelling. Very reminiscent visually of Chester Brown (Ed The Happy Clown, Yummy Fur, I Never Liked You, Underwater, etc.), the artwork is precise but still loose and hand drawn looking switching often from white pages with black lines, to all black pages with white art, the effect is really fantastic. The story is obtuse, a little confusing, but in that way great graphic novels can be. Monkeys, a roadtrip, dark forests, humans with the heads of pigs, nudity, school girls, surgeries, cupid, wristwatches, canyons, gas stations, all woven together into a mysterious and fascinating narrative. Gorgeous to look at and riveting to read. SO highly recommended!
Japanophile AQ-customers may already be familiar with Seikazoku, or at least with work of the three individual musicians that make up this band: Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins, Korekyojin, Koenji-hyakkei, Akaten, etc.), Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mothers Temple this, Acid Mothers Temple that, etc.), and Tsuyama Atsushi (Omoide Hatoba, Akaten, Acid Mothers Temple, Zoffy, etc.)! So you'll expect what you get here, psych-drone-freakout weirdness improvised on a multitude of instruments, live in Japan like it says. Some of the 13 tracks on this disc are drifting, mellow krauty jams with hippie hand-percussion, electronics, and fake throat-singing (courtesy of goofy vocal specialist Tsuyama we think, though we know Yoshida is capable of some fairly over-the-top vocals as well). But then there's also the other side of the Seikazoku coin: spazzy jazzy manic meltdowns at greater volume and velocity. It's all got a bit of an indulgent ADD vibe, and might be an easier listen if they stuck to one mood (if not the other). We'd say the primitive bliss of the mellower tracks would be the way to go. But there is indeed a lot of crazed chaos here, so those of you who share their silly, hairy mania should dig the whole set.
Local noise pop murk merchants have pretty much inherited the grimey, grungey, blown out psych pop crown from the seemingly now defunct Iran. They have the same sort of Beatlesque pop sensibility and choose to bury it in all sorts of grit and hiss and crackle and feedback. Total blown out indie jangle, warped and warbled super affected vocals, lurching grooves, guitars drenched in crumbling distortion and swaddled in swirls of fuzzy shimmer, the drums a Neanderthal pound sounding like they were recorded in a cave, the vocals like Lennon heard through a cracked kaleidoscope. This is the NWOSFNP (New Wave of San Francisco Noise Pop), a wonderfully fractured, totally free and massively fucked up pop music. We love it!
Released and designed by the arts and music collective Mount Saint Mountain (who also released the Mall 12" reviewed a few lists back), packaged in a super cool three panel silkscreened chipboard sleeve, adorned with weird hand drawn bulls, and limited to 300 copies!
Although the centerpiece of this new Siouxsie & The Banshees dvd is the composite live concert footage from two nights at the Royal Albert Hall back in 1983, arguably the best parts are in the extras. The band's self-produced 'tv show' with performances by The Banshees, The Creatures and The Glove is a delight -- particularly the individual Banshee's distinct segments in which Siouxsie, Budgie, Steve Severin and Robert Smith each recite a spoken word piece in his/her chosen setting -- and the Old Grey Whistle Test tv footage which show the band in top form doing "Melt!" and "Painted Bird". Oh and the main concert footage is pretty great too. A definite fan pleaser!
When it comes to the methods of making dronemusik, the way you mix all of the component parts is probably more important that the original source material. A subtle shift between all of the layered drones can deeply impact any of the metaphors, allusions, and imagined landscapes that might emerge from the minimalist atmospheres. The Anoxia collaboration between Chicago's improv-dronescapist Adam Sonderberg and British tone-bender Paul Bradley (who has occasionally partnered with Colin Potter and Darren Tate on a number of exquisite post-Ora productions) finds Sonderberg culling all of the source material and Bradley producing the final mix. Within Bradley's engulfing, haunted mix of reverberant atmosphere, it's hard to tell what Sonderberg brought to the mix; but the resonance of what could be gongs, metallic pipes, and long strung instruments have been stretched and tugged into deep low frequency drones broadcast from the bottom of the ocean, collecting shimmering watery echoes, sonorous refractions, extended gasps of drowned air, and occasional tactile crunches of sand and grit. Beautifully immersive stuff that should appeal to those into Jonathan Coleclough, Thomas Koner, Keith Berry, and Loren Chasse's non-Jewelled Antler material.
The sonic solar system surrounding Sunroof!, Double Leopards, Hototogisu and those who sail with them has been expanding like some free rock supernova lately. Not just multiple releases from the core members but new groups, new configurations of old groups and multiple releases by both. Hard to figure out how Bassett (Double Leopards, Hototogisu, GHQ, etc...), Bower (Sunroof!, Hototogisu, etc.) and friends manage. And manage with such a consistent level of quality. Now we have this, what seems to be the first proper full length from Spectre Folk, aka Pete Nolan of the Magik Markers, GHQ, Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice and Shackamaxon among others. As Spectre Folk, Nolan divides his energies between a drifty glimmering drone not unlike his sweetly noisy brethren (and sistren) in Hototogisu and Sunroof! with muted guitars that sway and swell, muted melodies that drift and swoon like barely visible ghosts and woodwinds that whir and drone dreamily, and a more 'traditional' folk, fingerpicked steel string guitar, sweet crooning vocals,a lilting otherworldly melancholia, wrapped in layer after layer of tape hiss, and instrument buzz and warm windlike whir. It's almost like listening to some sixties folk 7" on a broken old turntable that barely plays, lovely and so mysterious sounding. Features Spencer Yeh from Burning Star Core on one track and Marcia Bassett, Nolan's bandmate in GHQ, drew the cover. Nice!
We've said it a million times, but it bears repeating, we love turntables, and scratchy records, and the sounds of both, we even (especially) love the sound of both with the music removed. Or at least most of the music removed. Fuzz and crackle and buzz and pop and warble and whir. All the sounds people try desperately to remove from their listening experience is exactly what we want piled on top of ours. In fact, all the crackle and surface noise that audio nerds discard, well, they should save it all up and bequeath it to us to sprinkle, dollop, pour, douse all of our music with. So it was really a no brainer that the debut cd from Strotter Inst. would be record of the week here at AQ (as it was just a few weeks ago). Strotter is the work of one man, Swiss turntablist / sound artist Christoph Hess, who takes old turntables, augments them with various wires and elastic bands, pieces of metal and all sorts of found objects, and then creates gorgeously Spartan symphonies of rhythm and texture using just the turntable and the stylus, no records at all. No music. The turntable becomes an instrument capable of more than just playing other peoples' music, it is a sound making device, an instrument as viable as any other. Although with a truly unique palette of sounds, reminiscent of some strange minimal electronica, albeit with a much more organic feel.
This disc captures a performance recorded live to minidisc at Oblo Cinema in Lausanne, Switzerland, in April of 2005. And is a gloriously hypnotic soundscape of glitchy beats, warm textural drones and strange low end strums, all locked into hypnotic loops, that slowly shift and drift in and out of sync as more turntables join the fray, or as the speeds of the turntables change, or as various implements shift. The set begins with a lush drone, difficult to imagine how it's produced, but it is warm and deep and quite organic sounding. Soon the sound of the reverberating bands are introduced, sounding a lot like some muted guitar, playing a simple low end figure, the notes coming faster and faster until the whole thing stumbles into a shambolic rhythm, a loping lurch, with occasional bursts of needle squelch, eventually settling into a dreamy motorik groove. The set seesaws back and forth between strange machinelike rhythms and stretches of drone and rumble. Right toward the end there is a burst of super distorted NOISE which slowly gives way to the final rhythmic groove, that slowly winds down, notes drifting off until all that is left is a single mechanical pulse. So nice.
Comes packaged in a cool cardstock sleeve with a little diecut circle perfectly above the hole in the center of the cd. More nods to the record and its design. The picture of Christoph Hess on the inside of the booklet looks like some old faded textbook photo of Einstein Or Edison, hunched over his machines, modified turntables in this case, a study of a quirky inventor, Strotter as the sound of antiquated machinery, of objects reassigned to new tasks, the tireless pursuit of technology recontextualization, only adding to the whole vibe of Hess' music being some recently unearthed or discovered scratchy, crackly sonic artifact.
This is a limited lp version of Jaybird, one of the handmade SHotM cd-r's, the one in fact that was singled out for much praise on Julian Cope's Head Heritage website (check it out here: http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/reviews/index.php?review_id=667)
And while maybe not my favorite Sunburned Hand record, it's definitely still great. This is SHotM at their most straight ahead and their most 'rock'. Stoned, psychedelic, spcaed out and downright groovy. Simple static beats, wah guitars and sprited yelps and hollers. This is still a slice of heavenly seventies krautrock, but HEAVY on the hippy vibe. Imagine a weird supergroup jam with a super-damaged Grateful Dead, the Dead C, Phish, Jandek, Santana, Reynols, John Spencer (on horse tranquilizers at 16rpm) and the No Neck Blues Band. Bluesy psychedelic rock, rambling and meandering and filtered through the aethetic of modern noiseniks. Toward the end of side two things start to stretch out, more echo, more delay, upping the freakout quotient considerably as the record blisses out and winds down. Nice.
Every time these folks shamble through town we dig through their stuff and get as much as we can for you all, often they're down to only a few copies, but for this we took everything they had, the last 20 copies of this super limited tour only double 7".
Two clear vinyl slabs of far out free-ness, very Middle Eastern sounding in that Sun City Girls world music filter way, clattery drums and rattles and shakers, distorted music box melodies, tribal hand drums, wood blocks, affected guitars, lots of reverb and weird loops, some very Beefheartian vocals on one track, and some lovely chanting on another that sounds like a super distorted call to prayer. This is SHOTM at their most exotic, sounding quite a bit like some super lo-fi long lost Muslimgauze recording. Really cool.
Thick clear vinyl, striking full color sleeve, and again we only got about 20 off these and most likely won't be able to get more once they're gone.
Severe Tire Damage is surely no stranger to diehard TMBG fans. This live album was originally released on Restless Records back in 1998, and has been reissued by the kind folks at Zoe Records. So if you somehow missed it the first time 'round or have worn out your first copy, here it is again! Yes, a bunch of the two Johns' classics are here: "Birdhouse In Your Soul", Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", "Spider", "Meet James Ensor", "Why Does The Sun Shine?", "Particle Man", "Ana Ng"... oh, you know'em and love'em all, doncha? Plus demonstrating what quick-wits these gents are, there's a bunch of highly entertaining impromptu stuff at the end.
Toshiya Tsunoda has always impressed us with his impeccable recordings that undermine whatever preconceptions you might have about what a field recording is, or what sound art is, or what constitutes minimalism. For well over a decade now, Toshiya has been trawling around the world (but mostly in his native Japan) with a couple of ceramic contact microphones collecting various vibrations from incredibly simple sources that yield unbelievably dynamic sounds. Ridge Of Undulation is no different, with Toshiya again providing the pithy descriptions as to the contexts of each of the recordings as the track titles. Hence, "Sine waves mixed with the sound of a vibrating surface" is really what it says it is; but Toshiya's prowess is in how he situates those two sounds in the stereo field that instantly makes the hair stand up on anybody's neck all the while rippling into a sublime dronework. Throughout Ridge Of Undulation, Toshiya alternates between studio situations such as the aforementioned track with pieces like the unedited field recordings of a distant cargo ship's motors idling in Tokyo Bay. Toshiya's work is so simple in its phenomenological purity that words really do fail to describe it. As always recommended.
This early '70s hard rock band's claim to fame may have been that they were proteges of manager / producer Bill Wyman (whom you might know as the bass player from a band called the Rolling Stones). But that's not the reason we were interested in hearing this double-cd Tucky Buzzard set -- it was 'cause of that name of theirs, Tucky Buzzard. Tucky Buzzard! We just like saying it.
Turns out that with a name like Tucky Buzzard you can't go wrong. That is, if you like a mixture of '70s proto-metal a la Led Zeppelin, '60s pop-psych, symphonic prog, and Southern style barroom boogie! Which of course we do, when it's all done with the panache of a Tucky Buzzard.
Time Will Be Your Doctor's two discs contain Tucky Buzzard's first three (of five) albums in their entirety. There's ten tracks from 1971's eponymous debut, nine cuts from their 2nd album Warm Slash (also 1971), and the five tracks (including the lengthy, proggy suite of the title track, performed with the Madrid Philharmonic Orchestra) from 1972's Coming On Again, the rarest of Tucky Buzzard LPs as it was recorded and released only in Spain, where these Brits had been popular since their days in a '60s psych outfit called The End.
They also drew some notice in the USA, where they toured opening for Uriah Heep and Deep Purple. Doubtless their burly boogie grooves and most metallic Led Zeppish material -- full-tilt riffy rockers with high wailing Plant-like vox -- went over best in front of those crowds (such as many of the tracks from Warm Slash, like "Heartbreaker", "Fill You In", "Mistreatin' Woman" and "Burnin'"). But all three albums also have their share of moody melodiousness and sunny '60s pop-psych stylings too. The song that gives this set its name, "Time Will Be Your Doctor", the lead-off track on their first album, is a wonderful slice of poppy, polished, pastoral vocal-harmony-rich grooviness. Another standout track, from Coming On Again, is "You're All Alone", a trembling beauty that could be from a Colin Blunstone (Zombies) solo album.
They went on through the mid-seventies to record another two albums that we haven't yet heard. But, despite the patronage of Rolling Stone Wyman, Tucky Buzzard never became much of a "buzz" band apparently. Nor did they achieve the cult stoner-status of the equally Zep-influenced, legendary Leaf Hound, for instance. But if you like Leaf Hound, or other early '70s "heavy" acts that also have a lighter side, you should check out this nicely done collection! Tucky Buzzard!
As you may know, Italy's UFOmammut are one of our absolute favorite psychedelic/doom/drone/dirge bands, up there with Electric Wizard and Yob and Boris. Both of their previous albums, Godlike Snake and Snailking, were Aquarius Records Of The Week in their day. This new album, Lucifer Songs, could quite possibly be a Record Of The Week too when we get the cd version -- well actually, we *did* get a cd version, but it was super fancy, screen printed and limited and we only were able to get a handful and they're all gone, sold out now, sorry. BUT don't worry, a regular cd edition is supposed to be pressed in February, and we'll definitely get a lot of those! And in the meantime, we DID get enough of this vinyl version to list... but act fast! Like the limited cd, it comes with a bonus DVD that won't be a part of the regular cd package.
Lucifer Songs (no beating about the bush with that title) is another multi-ton brick in the cosmic-heights reaching pyramidical temple these guys are building with each album, each heavy riff shifting the load like tens of thousands of the pharoah's slaves sweating and heaving in unison to get the job done. And sometimes they really push those slaves hard, the stoned riffery shifting into a higher gear. Though it often sounds more like the slaves couldn't handle the weight and the bricks are crashing down, massive and crushing... with some stretches of relatively calm drone ("Hypnotized", "Astdronaut") to let the dust settle. These five tracks of space-sludge nirvana are perhaps marred only by the over-use of sound samples, something in metal of which we've always been critics... remember our review of the first Mastodon album? If you're not Necroticism by Carcass, leave the samples alone...
And like we said, this handsome vinyl release comes with a DVD, featuring low-budget videos for three of the album's tracks as well as what they term "soundscape" abstract psychedelic visuals for all of 'em (including "Lucifer Song", which takes up all of side two of the LP but doesn't appear on the cd version, though of course it's here on the DVD and you can download it too) which is cool to have, though considering that UFOmammut is the sonic arm of the Malleus art collective (known for many a trippy album cover and rock show poster) we weren't quite as blown away by all of it as we thought we would be.
However, the DVD is well worth it not only for the many visuals that ARE cool but also for the music that plays when you're just looking at the menu (a snippet of "Lucifer Song"). If you have a DVD player that's hooked up to your stereo, put it in and just listen to it! We did... accidentally. You see, our store cd player is also a DVD player (though we have no TV monitor hooked up to it) and so when we got the cd in, we put in what we thought was the audio disc and spent about a half an hour listening to what we later realized was the DVD menu music! We were really in to how this creepy synth drone with plodding percussion just looped and faded out and back in again, like the UFOmammut guys were all stoned and just turning the volume knob up and down in the studio. Allan even came out from the back of the store to see what was playing. We kept waiting for it to fade out and then surprise us by launching into a brutal riff a la Corrupted or Boris but then Irwin figured out that we were just listening to the DVD menu music! Pretty cool though, we'll do it again...
Would you rather fight than swish? If so, we think you may be protesting too much, as this compilation of gay themed tunes contests. This hilarious and thankfully varied comp from the fine folks at Trikont showcases the prevalence of "the love that dare not speak its name" in songs from the early sixties to the late seventies. Starting with Jose Saria (aka. The Widow Norton) who held court at the Black Cat in San Francisco in the 50's and ending with Sylvester's uplifting Disco classic "You Make Me Feel", the 24 songs here range from novelty tunes ("Florence of Arabia"), spoken word (Rod McKuen!) queer subtext in songs by "straight" bands (The Kinks, The Ramones) and just rare and amazing songs by Curt Boettcher, The Twinkeyz, and Black Randy & The Metro Squad that are well worth the price of admission no matter where your proclivities lie. Check it out, we won't tell.
Extensive liner notes in both English and German.
Much like the Sub Pop 200 comp which came out in 1988 and was filled with then not so well known bands who would soon become household names across the globe (Mudhoney, Nirvana, Soundgarden, etc.) this Arthur Magazine sponsored, Devendra Banhart curated compilation probably did the same for music of this decade. When it first came out names like Antony, Joanna Newsom, Espers, Iron & Wine, Vetiver, Josephine Foster and Coco Rosie weren't at the tip of indie music lovers tongues like they are now. Free-folk, freak-folk, whatever you wanna call it, this is a great collection of artists which also include such AQ faves as Jack Rose, Vashti Bunyan, White Magic, Troll (featuring our own Scott!), Six Organs of Admittance, etc. While none of these bands/people will probably ever get as big as some of those folks on that Sub Pop comp did, this is great document of one of a recent explosion of a sound and style that has pretty much defined much of the great new music coming out recently. Now repressed (it was previously only available via Arthur magazine), so if you weren't lucky enough to have Devendra throw you one at his Amoeba in store a few years back you can still revel in his mighty fine musical taste!
No, this is not a Van Halen tribute record, this is actually a great collection of the rhythms & sounds coming out of Panama from 1965-75. Upbeat jams that take on calypso, funk and jazz. This is the good raw stuff before things like "latin-jazz" got in the hands of cheesy producers and got watered down and coffee-houseified. We love the funk flavored tracks on here as they manage to perfectly merge the influence of US soul & funk with a calypso undertone that makes for such a tasty treat. For those of you who have been won over by some of Senor Coconut's tip of the hat to the sounds of South American charisma and flare, this is the real deal. One of those comps that you put on from start to finish and anyone in your company will be shaking their bodies and bouncing their heads. Comes with really thoughtful and insightful packaging, great photos and liner notes about the music scene in Panama.
While often known mostly for being one of the birthplaces of the riot grrrl movement and home to challenging smart post punk art-rock bands, Slim Moon's Kill Rock Star label has always had a soft spot for the delicacy of a good singer-songwriter. Releasing records by the likes of Elliott Smith and Mary Lou Lord in the early days of the label, Moon showed he wasn't afraid to show his fondness for the sensitive song done right. This compilation is an extension of that love as Moon got 21 songs by some very well known and some unknown singer songwriters. With well known folks like Sufjan Stevens, Laura Veirs, Nedelle, Wooden Wand, Colin Meloy (Decemberists) alongside up and comers like Simone White, Lauren Hoffman, Essie Jain, etc. Quite nice. ----* ----* New DVD's : ----*
