The Tower Recordings' Matt Valentine teams up with some of his freedrone pals for a disc of lengthy, blissed out ur-drones and psychedelic ragas. Subtle, slow burning melodies, and buzzing steel string hum are woven into dense swirling drug psych ambience. Various bits of percussion are sprinkled like glitter throughout, sparkling like distant stars amidst the thick whir of bombinating guitars, and fuzzy stringed buzz. From fiery and fierce to drifting and barely there, this is indeed a divine disc of mesmer,
And holy crap is it super trippy to watch this picture disc spin, the colors and shapes, the perfect visual representation of the mind melting sounds within!
We still can't get enough of Tom Verlaine's latest instrumental outing Around (reviewed last list). Simultaneous to that release, he put out a new collection of sing songs (you know with vocals and all that) which we've been a bit more hesitant to warm up to initially but as we spend more time with it we've got to say it's not that bad at all. Of course don't expect Marquee Moon, as this is an older more laid-back Tom Verlaine doing a record which recalls some of Lou Reed's solo outings in the 70's. With all sorts of bands like The Strokes ripping off Verlaine's guitar and vocal stylings, it's nice to hear from the man himself. While this may not go be the best thing he's ever done, it's certainly quite nice to see one of the greats aging gracefully, and still making beautiful music.
Oh Man! We haven't been able to stop playing this record from local San Francisco folk heroes Vetiver since the day it arrived. We knew it would be good but we're really surprised at how amazing and fresh it sounds given the tidal wave resurgence of the neo-folk movement that Devendra Banhart and Vetiver front-man Andy Cabic have spawned in the last few years (check out the Devendra-curated Golden Apples of the Sun compilation reviewed elsewhere in this list, to see what we mean). To be honest, the neo-folk scene has become a bit over-saturated as of late. Not that we don't enjoy the music, but there are so many folk acts nowadays that it's become almost too overwhelming to keep up.
So the stakes have been raised quite a bit since Vetiver's quiet self-titled debut, as the past couple of year's have seen Cabic, out on the road touring not only with Vetiver but also as part of Devendra's touring band, starting record label Gnomonsong with Banhart (which released the debut Feathers cd), and garnering a huge amount of praise, attention and expectation. It seems the months on the road have been very good to Vetiver as recent homecoming shows at 12 Galaxies and the Great American have shown, delighting packed audiences and winning new converts who may have overlooked their fine debut. No more playing tiny intimate shows at Adobe Books, a little sad to say, but really, we are very happy for them. To Find Me Gone is more rock-oriented than its predecessor, as the band has evolved from an acoustic guitar, violin, cello trio to include a full time rhythm section (including Otto Hauser from Espers on drums, and Kevin Barker from Currituck Co. and Noah Georgeson on guitars) with spectacularly rich results. Unlike their debut, where the strong songwriting and performances were a bit overshadowed by the heavyweight guest appearances from Hope Sandoval, Colm O'Ciosoig and Joanna Newsom (It also came across in some press as a Devendra side project), Cabic comes fully into his own here, showcasing a sublime quality of world-weariness hewn from months on the road. It's exciting, after hearing their debut, which was years in the making, to not find the usual sophomore slump, but instead witness such naturally self-assured songwriting and arrangements. Opener, "Been So Long (Gb Fade)", a song first heard in a more acoustic arrangement on the Between EP, begins with a raga drone that spaciously opens up into fantastic sighing choral harmonies. In fact there is a subliminal pulsation to the whole album that really brings out Cabic's sweet vocals but also keeps them centrally present as the country tinged ambience of flutes and cellos (played with grace and restraint by Vetiver veteran, Alissa Anderson) swells and swirls around him. Country shuffler, "Won't Be Me" sounds like Yo La Tengo in a rare pop Americana moment while the sudden electric surge on "Red Lantern Girls" is pure shoegazer country-stomp acid folk. The closer "Down at El Rio" co-written with Devendra is so nostalgic and sad, a gorgeous gorgeous song. A long time record collector, and stellar DJ, Cabic mines his influences well. Less "freak-folk" than his friends and contemporaries, Cabic instead follows the compositional path of 70's singer-songwriters like J.J. Cale, Emitt Rhodes and John Phillips. It's a refreshing next step in the ever prevalent neo-folk scene. For a limited time, we have a special limited version of To Find Me Gone with two extra bonus tracks. Beautiful and so totally recommended!
Vibracathedral Orchestra are the unsung heroes of drone rock. Free noise underdogs. They mine the same rich sounds as their more well known compatriots, Sunroof!, Hototogisu and the like, but they never receive the accolades, the adoration. Well, we're here to let them know that WE adore VCO, they are one of our favorite noisemaking outfits around! And as far as we're concerned, not only have they never released a bad record, they've released a few that might just be some of the best droning free rock we've ever heard.
That said, here we have the latest in VCO's quest for the ultimate drone. Well, this one will probably not help as this is both a decidedly more 'rock' and more abstract affair than their usual soaring skree. Starting off with a lush, soft cacophony, VCO take bells and percussion and woodwinds and chanting vocals, and twist them all into a gloriously droney din, sparkly and effervescent, like a sunnier Sunroof! in fact. But this soon gives way to a more tripped out krautrock, pulsing rhythms, looped guitar figures, drizzled with spacey filigree, very reminiscent of Can or Faust. The sidelong B side though, is not rock, nor is it drone, it's a dizzying day at some strange Eastern bazaar, percussion and vocals swirl like dust kicked up by passing carts, vocals chant and mutter, imagine strolling along back alleys, and down side streets, hearing all the strange sounds of some mysterious city, from a bustling marketplace to street musicians on the corner, all rendered with the same array of instrumentation, just wielded differently. From clangy tribalism to blissed out ur-drones, all heard as the living breathing sights and sounds of the city, shifting and changing as you pass by. Really cool.
Packaged in a hand screened black sleeve, with a little abstract painting attached to the front.
Weird jazz. That's what your grandmother or 12 year old cousin might say this sounds like, some kind of weird jazz. Not quite though. True, horns trill, squawk and skronk here. But turntables glitch out as well, and electronics moan, and there's lots more going on besides, as Dadaist/Surrealist inspired sonic mischief-makers Volcano The Bear from England (featuring Daniel Padden) return with a very impressive, sprawling double cd set. With their kitchen sink instrumental arsenal they engage in some dense improv picture-painting (the kind of pictures with melting clocks in 'em) but also can get under your skin with "real" composed songs with a folky feel...and lots of not-so-folky distortion and weirdness on top (like in disc two's wonderfully droning folk-pop piece "Last Song Of Norway"). Elsewhere with scraping drones and toys and electronic fx, their music becomes a slow squeak on such tracks as "Ong Pate". This moody combination makes this an album of chaotic yet calm, ceremonial-sounding avant-acid folk, something sorta NWW, I mean new, for Volcano The Bear. Very cool and recommended to the (a)typical adventurous AQ customer, especially those who already dig the likes of Vibracathedral Orchestra / Richard Youngs / Devendra Banhart / Sunburned Hand Of The Man and want to follow that sort of sound down the rabbit hole...
Whoa! Scott Walker has certainly never been about meeting audience expectations, but we never expected hime to go in a direction this extreme, a lyrical and musical excursion so far out it's a little disconcerting. The Drift, his first release in 11 years has got to be some of the darkest and intensely uneasy soul-baring music we have heard lately, which is saying a lot for us. Visceral and highly visual, Walker seems to be channeling the decadent symbolist literature of Rimbaud, Verlaine or J.K. Huysmans as well as the surrealist existentialism of T. S. Eliot or Georges Bataille, as he takes us on a poisoned delirious absinthe-induced journey through the seasons of hell. Walker's voice recalls a strange mutation of Antony's (from Antony and the Johnsons) operatic theatrics and Jandek's sorrowful moans as it plays against orchestral arrangements that sound like Arvo Part, Morricone and Penderecki caught in a purgatorial bar-room brawl. Punctuated by deep resonant strings, concrete blocks pounding on wood, sounds of donkeys braying, and snippets of shortwave radio, Walker's arrangements vary from oppressive ambience to brutal stabs of orchestrated noise, as they cover a wide gamut of themes, characters and moods, from the reproachful condemnation of power to the painful humanity of love. The saving moment comes at the end with A Lover Loves, a spare but melodic ballad of voice and acoustic guitar that is the albums only peek back to the Scott Walker of old (in particular, Scott 4), and it kills!
Good, great, amazing, none of those are really useful superlatives in the case of The Drift, although it is all of those things and then some, as it definitely will not appeal to everyone, especially fans of Walker's first four solo records from the late sixties. But viewed as a work of art, with all the genuine brilliance and pretension that that may entail, this is extraordinary and astonishing uneasy listening!
From the sounds of the vocals on The Walkmen's latest full length, Hamilton Leithauser must've taken a giant Bob Dylan / Tom Petty pill. Just kidding, sorta, but his heartclutchingly emotive delivery does bear more than a passing wheezin' resemblance. The band kicks off A Hundred Miles Off with "Louisiana" a breezy tropical number which reminds us of one of Michael Nesmith's post-Monkees offbeat oceanside styled numbers.
After that unexpected greeting, it's back to their more familiar rock sounds from the lovely descent of "Emma, Bring Me A Lemon" to the punchy insistence of "Don't Get Me Down (Come On Over Here)". There's lots of terrific swelling jangly guitars throughout the dozen songs which get progressively looser and almost brashly punky as the album progresses. Perhaps that's the subtle influence of producer engineer Don Zientara who's manned the recording board for the likes of Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, Lungfish and Fugazi? Anyhoo, this might seem like a bit of a departure from the tried and true of past Walkmen releases, but heck this is only the second day that we've had the cd here at AQ. In that brief period we've played it three times and with each spin it's hooks have sunken in a little deeper.
Wow! Progressive Rock from Bolivia? Who knew?
Wara's first album from 1972 (the liner notes say they have recorded 16 albums as of 2004, but this is the first we have heard of them) is a strange hybrid of South American psych with classical symphonic elements, Andean native musical structures, soaring harmonies and boogie rhythms.
Incorporating a classical string section with flute and oboe alongside the shredding fuzz guitar, simmering organ and drum breaks, this is unlike any South American psych we've heard in awhile. While Wara is more of a psych band than a prog outfit, they lean towards '70s proto metal vocal theatrics and Beethoven rather than the Beatles, using long songs with varied passages of loud and soft dynamics. Killer!
A few months ago, Andee received a cd-r in the mail. In a spray painted DVD case, with a photo of Patrick Swayze inside. Hmmm. The band was called Warhammer 48K (the name of a sci-fi miniatures wargame as Allan would later inform us) and the record was KILLER. So killer in fact that Andee had already begun trying to figure out a way to put it out, and Jason (having heard it from Andee) was even considering starting his own label to put it out. Well, before either of those things could happen, the band already had gotten a friend's label to press them up and suddenly showed up in our store with a box of cds. Well, for a record to have that much of an effect on Andee and Jason, you can just imagine what a serious slab of kick ass rock this must be. Falling somewhere between the indie mathy metallic crush of bands like Unwound, Lync, the Narrows, and Karp and the post rock sludge metal of bands like Conifer, Baroness, and Tides, but with their own unique sense of dynamics and some strange and strangely original riffs. From loping minor key slowcore, to super dense complex dual guitar riffing, to pounding full on metal, to lurching sludge rock, to noisy indie mathrock, to massive squalls of downtuned riffing and squealing feedback, this is heavy and epic, catchy and weird, noisy and freaked out, super dynamic and totally original.
In case you're a Wedding Present completist who missed 'em when they were originally released as imports over the last coupla years OR in case you're a bit of a neat freak who wants everything in one tidy package, here's a cd/dvd set of U.K. singles (released on the band's own label Scopitones) and videos from 2004 and 2005. Eleven of the fourteen songs were previously unreleased in the U.S., and three of the six videos were previously unavailable anywhere!
This week brought us a gathering of sumptuous dark pop albums from around the globe which all fit together incredibly well! Sure to keep you completely soothed and enchanted: Edison Woods' Nest Of Machines, this the fourth album by this Norwegian trio known as The White Birch as well as the as-yet-unreleased solo album Leaving Songs by Tindersticks' Stuart Staples (we got an advance listenin' copy, but rest assured it's comin' out June 6th).
Come Up For Air is filled with all things gently lulling and ethereal. In addition to drawing comparisons to Sigur Ros and Mum, The White Birch is also sort of like Tindersticks but with soft male and female vocals in place of Stuart Staples deep baritone. Lead vocalist Ola Flottum sounds like a more sullen or sleepy Stuart Murdoch of Belle And Sebastian, while guest vocalist Susanna Wallumrod provides the well-suited female vocal counterpart on two numbers. Dreamy dreaminess.
Keith Fullerton Whitman has been globetrotting over the past couple years, presenting his Max/MSP patch wizardry at pretty much every major electronic music festival, venue, and institution that the world has to offer. The self-evidently titled Recorded In Lisbon found Whitman returning to an old infatuation with '60s minimalist / process oriented strategies like the sort found in Alvin Lucier's strongest work, as Whitman situated a feedback system of speakers, fm receivers, and speakers at Galeria Ze Dos Bois. In turn he augmented this system with recordings of "static sine-tone harmonics, squared-off electric guitar haze, clangorous room-tone eruptions, and high-end synth freakouts," to quote Hrvatski himself. From the onset of this album, Whitman introduces pristine tones with all of the timbral clarity of bells and church organs, which he slowly circulated into a sonic architecture of revolving chirps and stately loops. There's plenty of similarities between these sounds and the weightless particles which comprised his acclaimed Playthroughs album from a few years back; but a heavier set of low end pulses stochastically as a bass counterpoint but not really as a rhythmic structure. Eventually, sweeping siren tones broach the celestial minimalism amidst a cloud of pixelated glitches. The single track gradually extends to an amazing crescendo of jagged saw-tooth pink noise slowly cycling through a plainsong melody for the 21st Century. As the melody falls apart in a ring-modulated freefall of tape deceleration, Whitman concludes the album with a skitter of percussive blows and granular synthesis. Immaculate.
Andre Williams has been making records for over 50 years now -- Wow! Often credited as being the godfather of Rap as his vocal delivery and raw stylings foreshadowed the MC and the birth of hip-hop and beat 'em to the punch by decades. He also of course has always been a serious presence in blues, soul and rock 'n' roll as well. This new release finds his voice still sounding as good as ever and it's an album of seriously solid rhythm and blues. His life's struggles years of hard times are felt in every one of his songs yet through it all you get the feeling that Williams is that rare kind of survivor that will keep playing music till the day he dies. A documentary is set to come out soon on his life & music so hopefully a whole new crowd will discover the man and his music and realize just how much he contributed to music as we know it.
This definitely has to be the first record ever inspired by a t-shirt. We shit you not. And just to get in the spirit, I'm actually wearing said shirt as I type. But it must be noted it is a really cool shirt! A friend of aQ who used to make t-shirts, whipped up this badass Winter Is Coming shirt a while back, a stark design of leafless branches against a grey sky. Only a handful made it off the press and onto people's back, one of which ended up on a fella by the name of Tom who then started Winter Is Coming, the group, not to be confused with the shirt. And you know what? It's just as cool as the shirt if not cooler. The cd sleeve is an homage to the shirt's design, winter branches against a grey sky, the words Winter Is Coming in olde English letters, but from that point on the shirt comes off and we're into some sort of mysteriously wintery drone sludge ambient shit that is fierce and frightening, and is exactly the sort of thing we can never seem to get enough of. It's like the musical version of a cold grim winter, the sound of icy winds and dying leaves, five massive tracks of slow moving whir and rumble. Sometimes delicate and crystalline, sometimes thick and viscous and almost black in its heaviness. The instrumentation is as unlikely as the band's inspiration, homemade washtub doodle bass with nylon weed whacker strings, dulcimer, dinner bell, creaking chair, jew's harp as well as guitar, synth and vocals. Winter Is Coming is not just a shirt, it's a metaphor for death, as the man behind WiC works in the emergency room and this recording is the musical expression of his experiences with death. The coming winter, the inevitable end. Life like seasons. Heavy stuff. As is the music. A huge glacial crawl, rife with strange sonic irregularities, like a mudslide picking up corpses and random detritus as it lays waste to everything in its path. The bringer of death, but strangely serene and beautiful. Definitely for fans of the sludge and the drone, Boris, Corrupted, Moss, Marzuraan, SUNNO))) as well as the heavier side of the drone, Nadja, Abruptum and the like. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Winter Is Coming indeed...
For more on the inspiration behind the coming winter check this out: http://conceptualart.dreamhosters.com/npr/archives/102
The song "Dimension" lurches forth, the opening number on Wolfmother's hotly anticipated full length debut, a wild rock blast of Ozzy wailing, Zeppelin stomp, and it goes on from there, with some series nods to the 'Stripes and even the Darkness thrown in. Seems like something we'd like! Hmm, so what DO we think about this much-hyped Australian hard rock band? Well believe it or not, Wolfmother has caused a great deal of internal debate here at AQ. And not just between the staff, but internally -within- individual members of the staff. Is it cool, rockin' heaviness to be appreciated on its own terms? Or bogus pastiche? Too polished, too obvious? Do we need such a blatant White Stripes rip-off? Even if they channel more Sabbath and Zeppelin than the White Stripes already do? Is our "oh, how cute, making Led Zeppelin new again" reaction what the band really wants? Gosh, is it even worth asking all these questions??? And that's the real question, perhaps: is anyone gonna be listening to Wolfmother three years from now, let alone 30? Well we can't answer that. But the fact that we can ask it tells us something.
Final consensus: there are quite a few kick ass songs here for sure! Definitely could be a good "starter set" for 16 year olds to open the gateway to real '70s classic rock. Better kids get into stuff like this rather than bubblegum punk or nu-metal rap. And it's a definite guilty pleasure for the rest of us. Nothing wrong with that. Especially if you still pull out, say, Electric by The Cult now and then. For a band who's got promotional posters plastered on the wall in front of the construction site down the street, we've gotta say we've definitely heard worse!! And somehow it keeps getting played... so who knows?
We've been dying for this new release forever, the latest from Austrian one man black metal horde Woodtemple for ages, from the moment we first heard whispers of a new full length. Faithful AQ-ers will no doubt be well aware of our infatuation with Woodtemple. A stumbling buzzing midtempo black metal unlike any other. Well, except maybe Graveland, who Woodtemple sound A LOT like. But they manage to be way more damaged sounding and thus somehow just that much more mysterious. They sound a little bit like Graveland's fucked up younger brother, spewing a similar buzzy droney blackness, but with more melody, more jangle, and way more weirdness.
As everyone knows by now, we're huge fans of damaged and demented, super fucked up black metal, from Benighted Leams to Dead Reptile Shrine to Furze, the weirder and the more unexplainable the better. But there's something special, and maybe even more fucked up about a band that is not so obviously and blatantly weird. A band that on first listen sound like good, somewhat traditional black metal, but closer listening reveals all sorts of subtle details and freaky fucked up sonic irregularities that lurk right there under the surface. Such is the case with Woodtemple. Whose weirdness originally stemmed mostly from a certain amount of ineptness. His insistence on playing drums, even though you could here him struggling through every track. But that uneven tempo worked to Woodtemple's favor, giving those old records a woozy, stumbling almost seasick feel. Those old records were obviously the work of someone with grand aspirations of maybe -being- a Graveland, but who fell a bit short, but in doing so, created something so much more original and appealing. Well, a strange thing happened in the years since the last Woodtemple, Aramath, the man who IS Woodtemple, has gotten a whole lot better, and a lot more creative, and more importantly has gotten himself a session drummer. Our first thought was "oh crap" thinking that this new tighter, more competent outfit wouldn't be nearly as appealing, but the exact opposite is true. Now the weirdness is part and parcel of Aramath's vision, and this new Woodtemple is fast becoming our favorite new black metal record.
The basic blueprint is the same, a loping midtempo Burzumic buzz, lurching, seasick, sort of waltzy at times, some blastbeats, but even those stretches are not all that fast, it's mostly about mood and atmosphere and texture, a grim, melancholic world of doom, death and depression, rendered in droned out black metal dirges and buzzing riffage. In addition to the new more competent drumming, the songs have gotten more complex, with plenty of keyboards, strange rhythmic breakdowns and a surprising amount of 'jangle', some of the tracks almost sound like blackened post rock, moping and moody without being ultra harsh and hateful. And there are several super dreamy (for black metal at least) loooooong stretches of repeated riffing, building into a trance like mesmer, all looped sounding and minor key, almost a little like Slint, but all under a whooshy wash of high end keyboards. Beyond that, it's just a function of WT's killer songs, and these songs are killer, catchy riffs, weird obfuscated hooks, and a thick dense ultra heavy sound. The perfect blend of head banging blackness, trippy whatthefuckness, and blissed out dronebuzz. In fact, the new Woodtemple is so fierce and so moody and so epic and so heavy and so fucking good we actually find ourselves not missing the Woodtemple of old one bit!
While they last, we have the super limited (500 copies) hand numbered digipak version, once these are gone, you'll get the normal jewelcase version.
Oh Neil, how we love you down deep and for your past and for the songs we'll never forget. And yes your recent outings have been less then stellar. There have been a few glimmers of hope in recent years, and seeing you play live is still such a treat. And we're happy that you have felt the urgency to release a new work speaking out against this war we continue to be in and this administration that continues to do just about everything wrong. And like most of your recent outings there are a couple moments that ring with some past glory while most of it is well, a bit less then stellar. But we do still love you. And that's what's important isn't it?
Sometimes you know a record is gonna blow your mind before you even throw it on. Such is most definitely the case with Isophonic Boogie Woogie by Roland P. Young. Heck, it's called Isophonic Boogie Woogie after all! And it's on the seemingly infallible (and impossible to pin down) EM records from Japan who have quickly become our new favorite label, having released Jim Fassett's Symphony Of The Birds, Moolah's Woe Ye Demons Possessed and Sam Moore's MOOOHIEEE! and those are just the ones we've reviewed so far. Plus it's got super tripped out black and white hand drawn cover art, three heads, presumably all Mr. Young, one with a well groomed afro, one with headphones, one with crazy hair that drifts skyward like tentacles, and a third eye right in the center of his forehead, while surrounding the heads are leaves and electronic equipment, and ankhs, and black suns, scorpions, saxophones, sailing ships and cars and pyramids, and a bunch of little Roland P. Young's walking up hillsides, jamming on guitars, getting into cars... you get the idea. This is some seriously far out stuff, and we haven't even heard a note of music, and that's a heck of a lot of trippiness to live up to.
Thankfully, Isophonic Boogie Woogie is as weird and as wacked as all the above business would lead you to believe. Originally released in 1980, Isophonic Boogie Woogie was the first realization of Young's unique version of free jazz music, which he referred to as "Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music" which on closer listening is WAY more spot on. Young employs an unlikely arsenal: Kalimba, saxophone, voice, clarinet, electronic bass clarinet, bells, chimes, electronic drones, electronic pulse and electronic accoutrements (!), to craft his spaced out free jazz minimalism. The first track is a warm melodic fugue, woven from the reverberating steel of the kalimba (sounding like a muted mellow version of Konono No.1 actually) with soaring falsetto vocals, before eventually a saxophone joins in, playing soft moody melodies over the rich bed of the kalimba. So nice. Wouldn't mind a whole record of this. But Young has different ideas. The second track is a brief but aggressive blast of solo clarinet, emitting gritty rumbles, a series of droney duck calls, very textural and oblique, and really mysterious sounding. As is the next track, an ominous low end groove, warm distorted and muted melodies, the electronic bass clarinet strangely alien sounding, a groovy jazzy thrum, pulsing and throbbing each note with a strange texture and a bizarre electronic after image that makes the whole thing sound that much more dark and droney. The record's centerpiece (and longest track) is "Loveliness", a 15 minute drift of dense ambient whirs, subtle drones, tinkling chimes, softly struck bells, sizzling cymbals and all sorts of percussive clatter, all beneath a wild free jazz workout, skronks and squeaks and trills, impossible melodies, a tangled free form melodic freakout. Afro spiritual minimal electronic space music indeed! The last track is another long one, with more of that alien sounding electronic bass clarinet, the notes and tones low and rough, with lots of reverbed echoes, the track starts as a thick corrosive drone of rumbling warbling horns, mumbled vocals and all sorts of spacey effects, swooping and swooning, before the clarinet begins to explore its freedom and offers up a litany of strange sounds, from free jazz skronk to percussive patter to playful melodic figures, before drifting back into a droning murky swirl.
Some of the coolest, weirdest, most far out free jazz we've heard for sure, and another check in the 'right fucking on!' column for EM!
This reissue includes two bonus tracks, one a shuffling funky rhythm, with primitive drum machine over a warm distant sonic glow. swooning sax, like mood music from some long forgotten eighties soundtrack, the other a soft stretch of dreamy mediation music, subtle electronic pulses beneath a swirling wash of moaning horns and shifting subtle tones. Both more melodic and less tripped out than the original tracks but cool nonetheless.
Like all the EM reissues, this includes extensive liner notes (all in Japanese, sorry), tons of photos, original album artwork and more.
Because of their prolific nature it has become easy to take a new record from both Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-Smith for granted, but the truth is they both have been putting out some mind blowing albums over the last several years and put to shame in quality & excellence many of their equally ambitious peers. Over the last 5 years Youngs and Wickham-Smith set out to meet once a year and record a ten minute track together. This recording is the culmination of those 5 years with each track named for the year it was created in. And wow how we love the results! This is the kind of record you want to make all aspiring experimental, knob twiddling, improv jamming, tape manipulating, concept having musicians to sit down, listen closely and take notes. Youngs & Wickham-Smith know so well how to reward patience by giving you these transcendent moments of total beauty. They get a trance going that becomes all encompassing and the next thing you know, you are totally wrapped up it its weird beautiful glory.
Since these two are known so well for their prolific nature it's nice to get to hear a project where patience and the passing of time come into play in such a nice way. Both Youngs and Wickham-Smith continue to flex their creative muscles, demonstrating an amazing ability to take experimental, manipulated sounds imbue them with a truly organic feel. Highly recommended!
