Probably the best thing about Abominable Iron Sloth is they sound EXACTLY how a band called Abominable Iron Sloth should sound. Simple, plodding, groovy, down tuned, crushing and heavy heavy heavy. Stripped down blown out caveman riffs over pounding doom drum thud and super harsh shrieked vocals. Chugging and churning and completely crushingly mesmerizing. A mid tempo dirge metal owing much to folks like High On Fire, Karp, Melvins, Floor, Cavity, Crowbar and Eyehategod while giving it their own particular slothlike spin. Plus we're suckers for goofy song titles: "Hats Made Of Veal And That New Car Scent", "A Hot Pink Shell Of My Former Self", "Parasite Hilton And Other Flaws Inherent To Wealth" and of course "A Distant Pond From The Rivers Of Human Limelight."
Features ex-members of Dead And Gone metalcore legends Willhaven.
There is a pensive urgency to this new collaboration between Ellen Allien and Sascha Ring (aka Apparat) that is hard to pin down. While most tracks seem prime for the dancefloor, they aren't without apprehension. It seems to come from the mutual understanding that the best tracks on a Giorgio Moroder soundtrack are the chase themes. Moodily energetic yet indescribably threatening, like trying to concentrate on a math test when you know the school bully is going to beat you up after class. The collaborative process also prevents the music from getting either too electroclash/techno house on Allien's part or too idm/glitchcore on Apparat's part, striking a nice balance between both extremes. If Giorgio Moroder did a record on Kompakt, we suspect it would sound a lot like this!
A new slab of glacial metallic beauty from Paradigms, one of our new favorite labels. In the past, they've brought us the drone dirge of Hjarnidaudi (an aQ Record Of The Week), the chamber gloom of Amber Asylum, the cult black metal of Throne Of Katarsis, the druggy prog of Blueprint Human Being, and now two new releases, a grim slab of icy pagan Canadian black metal from Utlagr (reviewed elsewhere on this list) and this, the newest release from dirge doomists the Angelic Process.
Described as slow motion doom drone, The Angelic Process are so much more. This is not just some series of cromagnon metal riffs slowed down and turned into 'art', nor is it a monochromatic wash of rumble and whir, not that there's anything wrong with that, we love that stuff, but the Angelic Process are more of a proper band, with songs, vocals, drums, parts, choruses, verses, all that normal band stuff. They craft simple, swoonsome dream rock, like M83 or Spacemen 3 or Cyann & Ben, albeit a lot more dark and ominous, but it's what they do with that rock, with those songs, that makes this record so special. And so mind meltingly heavy. Each of these songs is buried under a sea of warm sonic swirl. Where a normal band would kick on a distortion pedal for the chorus, The Angelic Process kick on a thousand, and it sounds like they maybe also have 30 or 40 extra guitarists standing at attention just waiting to dump a monstrous mass of churning thick blown out guitar fuzz all over everything. Closer reference points might be Jesu or My Bloody Valentine. The songs are moody plods, droney dirges, but within these songs, and beneath all the murk and fuzz and buzz, there are buried epic swells, heart rending melodies, soaring beneath the gauze and haze, it's like Low or Godspeed being backed up by Earth, performing live with Glenn Branca's guitar orchestra and produced by the Teenage Filmstars. Or maybe Swans if they made a record for French blisspop label Gooom. One of those extremely rare records that manages to be as breathtakingly lovely as it is crushingly heavy. The best blown out blissed out space rock drone guitar record since Loveless! SO RECOMMENDED!
Limited to 750 copies, packaged in a mini lp style sleeve wrapped in a hand stamped brown paper outer sleeve.
Once again, we can just tell when a record is going to be a hit here. Something intangible that tells us that everyone is going to absolutely love (or absolutely hate but still need to own) this record. We felt it about the Conet Project. Hatebeak. Daddy's Curses. The Thai Elephant Orchestra. And now Arboga Teenage Riot.
The story goes like this. Our pal Nathan was on tour in Europe and while travelling through Sweden, two young ladies handed him a tape. The tape sat in the bottom of his bag, unlistened to for months. On his return to the states he remembered the tape, put it in the stereo, pushed play and had his mind promptly blown. And we'll have to admit we feel exactly the same way. Imagine ultra lo-fi, high energy techno / gabber, all four on the floor beats and cheesy synths, whistles and those kinds of melodies usually reserved for cheerleading competitions. "You All Ready For This?!?!" DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK DONK! You know of what we speak. So now imagine two teenage girls, sometimes making up Swedish lyrics and chanting them in cute sing-songy harmonies, but more often, just screaming and growling hysterically in their best aproximation of black metal vocals, sounding like they were just dubbed over the music on a boombox (which they probably were). This is the real digital hard core! Or more accurately ANALOG HARD CORE!!! If Alec Empire had any balls Arboga Teenage Riot would be the next DHR superstars. ATR take techno and black metal and riot grrl and DIY recording and turn it into a totally bizarre, fascinating, fun and funny masterpiece! The cover is pretty sharp too, a huge swamp beast thing emerging from the water, beneath a hot pink totally illegible Arboga Teenage Riot black metal style logo! Fuck yeah!
On Chulahoma, Black Keys play six songs by the late blues great Junior Kimbrough. It's not the first time they've covered his music. You might recall their right-on version of "Do The Rump" that was featured on their debut album back in 2002. Here they riff on both the garagey grit of their last album Rubber Factory as well as Kimbrough's traditional raw blues sound. An understated but kick ass tribute to an unsung blues giant!
More splattery screamo action from the Blood Brothers! This new 7-song EP spews forth a bunch of rare and previously unreleased stuff by these five Seattlites including two alternate versions, a remix of a Gang Of Four's "Anthrax", a live recording plus a video for "Hideous Car Wreck".
Blood Cult are as far as we know, the only purveyors of Redneck Black Metal around, or maybe more accurately the only ones who admit to it. And Blood Cult are damn proud of being BM rednecks, as their apparent theme song "Redneck Black Metal" proves (oh, and it's printed in huge letters along the spine of the cd!). This is the first proper release from this Illinois horde after a slew of cd-r, cassettes and demos. Definitely their best -sounding- record by a long shot, equal parts splatter rock, crossover, early black metal, NWOBHM, and thrash. Think Venom, D.R.I., the Accused -- primitive and thrashy, noisy and chaotic, with some killer riffs n' some splattery chaotic drumming. They're definitely a little tongue in cheek for sure with some of the lyrics and song titles ("The Moweaqua Coal Mine Disaster", "Cheap Guitars", "Illinoisan Thunder", etc.). This boasts some killer catoony artwork too, from the same label that brought us Enbilulugugal!!
The Work Which Transforms God, Blut Aus Nord's most recent release (originally released in 2001, but reissued in 2005), quickly became an all time AQ fave, with its strange mix of damaged off kilter black metal, caustic industrialism and droney dark ambience. Since then the first three BaN discs have gotten reissued and we're just now finally getting around to reviewing them.
The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion was Blut Aus Nord's third release from way back in 2001, immediately preceding The Work Which Transforms God and displayed more of a classic black metal vibe, very droney and mesmeric, a seasick buzz drenched blast, with warped epic melodies, all very minor key and melancholy, lending the proceedings a very moody doomlike vibe. Very reminiscent of classic Immortal or Satyricon. There is definitely some sonic foreshadowing of weirdness to come, slow slithery stretches of murk and mumble, abstract ambient breakdowns, long stretches of buzz slowed way down into truly harrowing lurching lopes, riffs that bend and seem to warble as if some invisible hand was altering the pitch control, dark and dreary miserablism twisted into very Nortt like mid tempo droney doom.
But The Mystical Beast Of Rebellion is more about the blast and buzz, the forst and fuzz, and if you're anything like us, that should suit you just fine!
Through their refined sensibility of unspecified nostalgia and willful obscurantism squeezed into a succinct form of ambient electronica, Boards Of Canada have been nothing if not consistent in what they've produced over the past decade. Even when there's been huge gaps between recordings when the currents of electronica may move this way or that, they still mine the same electric beatitudes cultivated on their still impressive album Music Has The Right To Children. So with the release of Trans Canada Highway EP, Boards Of Canada offer yet another facet of their signature sound -- you know, airy breakbeats swaddled in delicate warbles of hazy ambience and melodic interplay between synthetic patches and warm 'n' fuzzy acoustic guitars. The opening track, "Dayvan Cowboy," can also be found on the previous recording The Campfire Headphase and gets reprised at the conclusion of the EP by way of a pleasantly wandering Odd Nosdam remix.
The return of the Bay Area's very own lo-fi black thrash terrorists Bone Awl, and holy fuck is this stuff fierce. Brutal and chaotic and lo-fi as always, but for this cassette, they've teamed up with Canadian harsh noise outfit The Rita and the two bands sound perfect together. When we first put this on we assumed it would follow a traditional split release format, one band plays their songs, then the other band plays theirs, or at least each band gets their own side of the tape. But no, here, the bands switch back and forth, and The Rita's noisy dronescapes sound almost like they could be Bone Awl's ambient interludes. In fact, we assumed the first track WAS the intro to a Bone Awl song until we figured out what was going on. Bone Awl are a two piece killing machine, who spew a downtuned and murky, pounding midtempo thrash drenched in tape hiss and fuzzed out noise, turning their thrash into some weirdly dirge-y black Brainbombs thing. The Rita take the same sort of sonic grime and murk, but instead of harnassing it into some sort of metallic framework, they let it soar skyward, unchained and uncontrollable, all the meters pushed into the red, smearing the buzz and fuzz into crumbling Merzboic masses of snarling, slithering scuzz drenched power electronics. Together these two hordes whip up a gloriously noisy, punishingly harsh, druggy and buzzed out expanse of free noise thrash dirge brutality, and we LOVE IT!
Super limited as always. We've got about 30 so act fast.
Wow, this new album from Ms Bozulich is her darkest yet. With members of Godspeed You Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, Gowns, Black Ox Orkestar and Mae-Shi in attendance, Evangelista find her exorcizing all of her demons. Her wails match those of the church organ with a fraction of Diamanda Galas' tormented severity -- which taking into consideration the extremities of Ms Galas is still quite potent. They perch atop a smoldering bed of strings and unsettling sounds that are reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's creaking ship on Salt Marie Celeste. Further on in the album things simmer down to a disintegrating lullaby pace as though all emotions and energies have been spent. A broken beauty pervades. Recommended.
Don't let the jaunty little Lawrence Welk ditty that opens Obey lull you into any sort of peaceful state, you'd best be prepared for the hateful murderous mayhem that Obey has in store for you. Then again, that's probably precisely what the Brainbombs had in mind. A gentle voice luring you into a dark alley, a shiny trinket distracting you while the burlap sack goes over your head and you're dragged kicking and screaming into the woods, a sweet piece of candy draws you just close enough so you can be knocked unconscious, tied up, and stuffed in the trunk. Those of you familiar with the brutal musical world of Brainbombs will know exactly what we're going on about. The rest of you, be very very careful. They traffic in a sludgey, jazzy garage rock scuzz stomp, repeated riffs, simple pounding drums, a lurching leering fuzzed out psychedelic dirge underpinning tales of murder and mayhem, murder and rape, death and dismemberment. This is probably their most overtly harsh record. Mostly because unlike the rest of their releases you can actually hear what these Swedes are singing about. All delivered in a sort of fey, heavily accented English. As if the song titles weren't enough,"Kill Them All", "Die You Fuck", "Anal Desire", "Lipstick On My Dick", "Fuckmeat", the lyrics are misogynistic, misanthropic and just plain messed up. The sound is like Melvins meets Whitehouse filtered through the fuzzy garage stomp of the Stooges but with a maniacally repetitive looped quality, that cranks up the tension, while the vocalist slowly unravels and gets meaner and meaner, more and more insane. And let's not forget the occasional warbly warped trumpet (!). What can we say? We love Brainbombs.
We've never listed this one before, as it has been seemingly out of print for ages. Thankfully a distributor managed to scrape up a bunch, but we can't be sure how long we'll have these.
We were thinking, there's got to be a bunch of aQ customers who got that last Pharaoh Overlord album, the 'NWOFHM' biker metal meets krautrock masterpiece Pharaoh Overlord #4, and not only really liked it (we know plenty of you did!) but also maybe weren't already into the METAL side of the Pharaoh Overlord #4 equation and then realized, "Hey, these metal riffs are pretty cool! I like this stuff!" And want to hear MORE. Now, we can't really come up with another album quite like PO#4 but what we can suggest is a honest-to-god metal record with riffage along those lines. Not all super-repetitive and hypnotically extended the way PO do it, but still simply, irresistably headbangin', and almost equally high-concept, obsessed with leather, spikes, sex, bikes, and metal itself. Check out a sampling of song titles: "Midnight Riders (Riding Free)", "Raise Hell", "Turn It Up Loud", and "Bang Your Head" (compare with the likes of "Ridin'" and "Demons In The Rising Sun" on PO#4).
We're thinkin' all this 'cause Heading For The Top, the debut album by Swedish metallers Bullet crossed our path right about the same time that PO#4 was in heavy rotation 'round here, and we were struck by certain similarities. Both bands are heavily influenced by '80s metal stalwarts AC/DC, Judas Priest, and Accept. In fact, the singer for Bullet's glass-gargling screech bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Accept's camo-clad frontman, Udo Dirkschneider. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you know who Udo is, we could just say, hey, Bullet have made a great, greasy living tribute to that brand of '80s earthdog party metal and leave it at that. Come get it, metallians! But that might not be the case with most of our customers, sad to say. So for this review, we're gonna continue working the Pharaoh Overlord angle. It's true, if you dug the riffs on PO#4 we probably don't need to tell you about the '80s metal bands you probably also should hear. But the band Bullet is doing this here (well, Sweden) and now, and unlike the classic metal bands mentioned above, could probably really use your cd-buying dollars for beer money -- and they deserve 'em just as much if not more than the Pharaoh Overlord dudes as far as delivering the goods metal-wise goes! As metal as PO#4 was, we wouldn't quite call it REAL metal. But Bullet sure is. Catchy, stripped down, ready to rumble rock n' roll METAL like it used to be. And if they sound 'too much' like AC/DC to you, well, so does AC/DC themselves every time out and that's still cool, so why not these guys too? Ok, enough. We just dug this album and are hoping a handful of you, PO fans or not, will dig it too. Just doing our heavy metal duty!
Goodness! Between this new Camera Obscura album and the latest ones by Essex Green and Mojave 3, we're floating up up 'n' away to the dreamy pop heavens. These days these Scots seem to have more of a skip in their step. They're sounding sorta like a frisky kid sister of Broadcast! If we take their album title literally we're going to do so on a magic carpet ride through swirling clouds of warm vintage keyboards and organs graced with the sweetest vanilla custard female vocals. Yum!!!
It's to be expected when a legendary recording artist passes away that any recording studio that had the minutest relationship with said artist will unearth from their vaults lost or unreleased recordings, alternate takes, demos, b-sides and what have you. But it is much rarer to see that the unearthed vaults containing the unreleased recordings belonged to the artist himself. And that's just what we have here: 49 tracks on 2 CDs from the personal file of Johnny Cash recorded at the House of Cash circa 1973. With just acoustic guitar and voice, these stripped down songs and stories are prescient of the American Recordings he made with Rick Rubin 20 years later. Though they lack the impending weight of death that hovered throughout the Rubin sessions, nevertheless these are some of the most intimate recordings of the post-Man In Black era. He even unwittingly adds his two cents to the Da Vinci Code debate on "If Jesus Loved A Woman". Walk the Line, indeed!
We often talk about the pun as title, or the pun as name of your store. And how it's important that it is actually clever, and makes sense. There's a laundromat down the street from AQ called the Wash Quarters. We get it, headquarters, but you do your wash there, but it doesn't work. There's another laundromat in the neighborhood called the Washing Well! Now, that works, washing sounds like wishing. Same thing with local eyeglass emporium the Frame And Eye. Also sort of clever, I spelled eye, the whole thing like the King And I, but it just doesn't work. Now if they sold jewelry and were called The RING and I, or if they sold random crap and were called the THING and I... maybe it has something to do with rhyming. Anyway, this brings us to the debut from Portugal's Cavalar, titled As A Metal Of Fact. Well, you see what we're talking about. Remember the band TT Quick from the '80s and their record METAL Of Honor? Right. Exactly. Anyway, let's forgive these guys since English is not their first language, and besides, apparently most English speakers seem to enjoy names like the Wash Quarters and The Frame And Eye anyway. But the intent is clear. This is METAL, and the sort of true metal that is played with honor and pride. Actually, Cavalar fall a little more (heck, a lot more) on the Sabbath worshipping stoner rock side of things, which is no bad thing at all. We love Sabbath, and we love bands who sound like Sabbath. But Cavalar sound so much like the Sabs it's downright uncanny. A lot of it has to do with the vocals. in the pantheon of Ozzy-a-like vocalists, this guy's right up there with Steve Hennessey from sHeavy, sounding more like Ozzy than Wino, Magus of Witchcraft and Bobby Liebling of Pentagram all. We often wonder if these vocalists purposefully try to sound like Ozzy, but if that's the case, why do they end up in bands that sound so much like Sabbath? Probably the more likely scenario is that those kind of vocals work best in a heavy stoner Sabbathy rock band, thus they are quickly snapped up by bands looking for the perfect vocalist. So as long as you're not put off by some blatant Sabbath worship, then hell this record is a killer. Huge riffs, amazing drumming, groovy and doomy and catchy, and the vocals, a soaring Ozzy-like whine that fits like a glove. The one negative, bands like this should NEVER actually cover a Sabbath song (Cavalar cover "Hole In the Sky") because then it becomes painfully obvious just how much you owe to Sabbath, that your singer really isn't Ozzy, and demonstrates a little too clearly how fucking untouchable Black Sabbath really are. Regardless, fans of sHeavy, Witchcraft, Burning Saviours and the rest of the Sabbath minions will most definitely want to add this to their stoner doom arsenal.
Always unpredictable and often a little bit frustrating, Table Of The Elements have decided to re-release 2 of the 3 discs from the now out of print Rhys Chatham An Angel Moves Too Fast To See box set (the third disc to follow later?), with no mention on either of these two new discs that they are indeed the same discs contained in the box. So if you already own the Chatham box, you already have this stuff, but if you somehow missed the box, you absolutely need this!
A gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled disc chronicling one of the most important works of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose career seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glenn Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway.
The interesting thing, to us at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, much of his music sounds a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetitive intros build and build, until the band often launches into propulsive krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars as well as sometimes horns and drums, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams. Occasionally the dense horn jams remind us of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB.
This disc, the 5 part title track, starts off with a dense brassy drone that sounds a bit like Niblock composing for an army of trumpets or a little bit like later records by Dutch metallers Gore. That jam quickly slips into a sleepy krautrock groove before drifting off. The second movement is a blissed out brass drone beneath a dynamic mathrock workout, stacatto bursts demarcating a wide open expense of reverberent whir. The third movement is straight up Stereolab / Neu!, a loping post rock rhythm, a dreamy sunshiney melody, all propulsive and hypnotic. Next up is a much more dissonant slab of twentieth century angularity, an amorphous cloud of swirling notes and thick washes of orchestra-tuning-up clatter and cacophony. The final movement sounds like Circle or Salvatore or Tortoise or Zombi, but with strange synthy swooshes, like bits of Chariots Of Fire or something. Driving and almost rocking, totally mesmerizing and head nodding.
While this stuff is obviously of interest to folks into modern minimalism ala Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone, Chatham's more rock stuff, like An Angel Moves Too Fast To See, will definitely appeal to the more adventurous post/pop rockers into the above mentioned outfits (Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore) as well as folks into all things krautrock/free rock/space rock.
Always unpredictable and often a little bit frustrating, Table Of The Elements have decided to re-release 2 of the 3 discs from the now out of print Rhys Chatham An Angel Moves Too Fast To See box set (the third disc to follow later?), with no mention on either of these two new discs that they are indeed the same discs contained in the box. So if you already own the Chatham box, you already have this stuff, but if you somehow missed the box, you absolutely need this!
A gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled disc chronicling one of the most important works of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose career seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glenn Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway.
The interesting thing, to us at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, much of his music sounds a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetetive intros build and build, until the band often launches into propulsive krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars as well as sometimes horns and drums, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams.
This disc begins with the slow building epic title track, all keening guitars and droning sustain, peppered with splashes of jazzy percussion and extra layers of chordal warmth, but like most of Chatham's pieces, it eventually kicks into a groovy post rock / krautrock jam, driving drums, soaring melodies, all with a blissed out fuzzy sheen. Definite shades of Stereolab and Circle on this one. "Waterloo #2" is the track that reminds us of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB. Martial drumming and dense horn figures float above. Up next is the scuzzy garage stomp of "Drastic Classicism", nods to Faust and Can but with plenty of distorted guitar scuzz and atonal fuzz rock jangle. The minimalism here is in the relentless repeated main riff, building to a blissed out jam, similar to the way black metal riffs at their most buzzy fuzz out into epic dronescapes. But Chatham's take is more like some sort of Stooges/Brainbombs drone. Cool. "Guitar Trio" is another spacious post rock jam, guitars hover and float, chords and notes ring out and drift into and around each other, supported by a simple solid rhythm. Finally, things finish off with Chatham's infamous "Massacre On MacDougal Street", a nearly twenty minute long, horn / percussion freak out, with honking skronking horns moaning and screeching and warbling, weaving dense stretches of marching band repetition and long slow stretches of moaning and groaning drones, all above BIG percussion, booming toms, miltary snares, chaotic drum fills and spurts of complex tribalism. The perfect soundtrack for some insane sixties psychedelic horror film. Full of tension and minor key atonalism. Intense!
While this stuff is obviousl of interest to folks into modern minimalism ala Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone, Chatham's more rock stuff, like An Angel Moves Too Fast To See, will definitely appeal to the more adventurous post/pop rockers into the above mentioned outfits (Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore) as well as folks into all things krautrock/free rock/space rock.
It's been almost 3 years since we last heard from Cousin Silas and back then he was slouching around dark electronic graveyards and dodgy ambient parts of town with the rest of the Fflint Records stable. For this most recent release, Silas may have relocated to Earthrid records, another upstart electronic cd-r label, but his Fflinty roots still show, and that Silas sound we love so much is still in full effect. That sound is a delicate shimmer, a blissed out ambience, chillout music for folks who hate chillout music. A warm, languid and luxurious pop ambience, like a Boards Of Canada record stripped of any trace of rhythm, all the beats removed leaving just a soft billowy cloud of sound. Thick washes of slow shifting swirl, beneath all sorts of subtle swoonsome melodies float and hover, spin and shift, like watching oil and water mix, dreamy and drone-y and rife with all manner of muted color. When rhythms do surface, they are mumbled and subtle, more like a soft pulse or a minimal murky throb. But always way down in the mix, beneath an expansive sparkling and twinkling ocean of sound. The record's title Necropolis Line sounds ominous, and the skull locomotive and train wreck imagery on the cd seem to reinforce that vibe, however, this disc really isn't as dark or dreary or ominous or evil as you might expect, instead it's way at the other end of the spectrum, slightly out of focus, fuzzy and rich with subtle melody, sun dappled, lazy and hazy and oh so dreamlike. In the past we've described Cousin Silas as Boards Of Canada or The Orb for the underground set. But this new record is so soft and shimmery and accessible, it might be more accurate to classify this as Fflint for the mainstream set. Either way, one of the dreamiest slabs of latenight / early morning ambience we've heard in ages. So lovely!
Low-end drones, mysterious field recordings, sitar, haunting melody... and crushing electric guitar heaviness? If your tastes are at all similiar to ours regarding this sort of thing, then Darsombra's Ecdysis is already sounding pretty intriguing! This 34 minute, six-track debut cd from Baltimore's Brian Daniloski (a member of metal mongers Meatjack) is right up our alley, and yours too if you dig the more abstract, arty, ambient sides of, say, Thrones, Melvins, Harvey Milk, Earth, and Fantomas. Ecdysis is just a bit scary, and full of super-heavy moments, so it could be taken as some kind of nightmare soundtrack. But there's much beauty and gentleness here too. You'll hear some major-key melodies, surprising in such a context, and a plethora of sampled sounds, from sinister voices to religious testifyin'. Anytime we find a disc where, y'know, one track sounds like 20th century classical meets Melvins and another like the labored, ritualistic breathing of some sort of demonic creature, and it's metal but not really, and kinda pretty too, well, there's only one way to end the review: recommended.
Another amazing piece of mysterious musical sound art from local sound sculptor and field recordist John Davis via the splendid Root Strata label, run by Tarentel's Jefre Cantu Ledesma. This 3", near 20 minute cd-r captures more of Davis' gorgeous and glacial looped soundscapes of scrape and creak and groan, deftly smoothed out into rich harmonious drones. The sound is definitely metallic, but like metal wrapped in gauzy grey clouds and held under water. A soft somnambulent drift, hovering somewhere between the dark drone of Coleclough and the fuzzy processed soundworlds of Christian Fennesz. Streaks of glistening shimmer reverberate and gently vibrate, the resulting hum is rife with muted overtones and muffled feedback, even occasional crackle give the pieces the effect of some unearthed sonic artifact. As always, totally captivating.
The packaging is very reminiscent of an old naturalist's display case, a small brown cardboard box, with a leaf and butterfly motif screened in green and metallic gold ink on the top (by local artist Chris Thorson). Inside a hand sewn, mini booklet, detailing the study of nature and the steps in getting your own recordings, and most impressive of all, nestled on a soft bed of billowy white cotton, an actual piezo contact microphone, which is a beautiful object on its own, but as the included note suggests, the mic may be used to make your own field recordings. Send them to Davis to be included in an online sound archive. Wow!
SUPER LIMITED. ONLY 50 COPIES WERE MADE, OF WHICH WE GOT ABOUT 30! SO ACT FAST!
Apolgies to all who fell under the spell of the beautiful and bizarre Dead Reptile Shrine. As we mentioned in our review of their cd a few lists back, we were only able to get 30 copies, and judging from the universal freakout we probably should have had 100 or so. We're still trying to track more of those down, thanks to the folks who have been waiting patiently. But to tide you over, we got a whole bunch of this brand new release, a super limited (of course, only 500 copies) split lp with their Finnish black metal brethren in Torturium.
Hard to describe Dead Reptile Shrine. Weird. Wonderfully weird, check the review of the DRS cd elsewhere on the AQ site for the full skinny, needless to say, fans of the demented damaged side of black metal a la Benighted Leams, Striborg, Furze, Urfaust and the like will fall hard for Dead Reptile Shrine.
On this 12", DRS fill their side to overflowing with what might be described as Jandekian black metal, super lo-fi, tortured riffing, howling anguished wails over mumbled sing songy vocals, the whole thing produced in this really strange way that makes it sound almost like Darkthrone recording in a submarine fronted by dueling vocalists Mark E. Smith and Blixa Bargeld. Woah. There's a brief interlude of creepy ambience, like the muffled sound from some forties news reel filmstrip, all crackly and antiquated, sounding a bit like Jeck or Basinski, but surrounded on every side by deep ravines of ultra personal black metal stumble and rrrroooaaar.
Fellow Finns Torturium are a bit more traditional, with a blown out super distorted Viking tinged old school thrash sound, with creepy stretches of reverb drenched ambience and completely INSANE shrieking vocals, somewhere between, Urfaust, Weakling and Bathtub Shitter (!). Occasionally proceedings stumble and slow to a drowsy druggy sludge, there's even a bit that sounds quite Eastern with weird modal guitar figures over warped and warbling riffs. Killer stuff.
Packaged in a cool black and white sleeve, with a full size insert / lyric sheet.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. WE GOT 30, AND WON'T BE ABLE TO GET MORE.
Just the sight of that immediately recognizable underlined, lower case 'd' logo sends shivers up our spine. Some of you already know exactly what we're talking about, and just reading this far has probably got you all in a tizzy as well. For those of you who are new to the lower case 'd', prepare yourself for diSEMBOWELMENT!! Even the name, replete with mandatory case change, conjures up all sorts of bleak lifeforce snuffing, soul crushing sensations, at least for fans of mysterious otherworldly doom and bizarre slow motion grind!!
diSEMBOWELMENT were but a brief flash in the underground doom metal scene, existing for a scant three years in the early nineties, but in that time, they recorded one of the all time classic HEAVY records ever, Transcendence Into The Peripheral. A mind blowing record that somehow melded extreme brutality with delicate beauty, a record that totally changed the way some of us listened to heavy music. Referring to the music of diSEMBOWELMENT as doom might give folks the wrong impression. This is not regular old doom like Black Sabbath or My Dying Bride, it's not even funereal doom like Skepticism or Esoteric, although it definitely spends most of its time a lot closer to the slow motion sludge end of the spectrum. diSEMBOWELMENT most definitely inhabit their own unique sonic space. It's slow, sure, but not always, bursts of pounding blast beats will erupt from a bleak tranquil soundscape, gutteral inhuman grunts, machine like percussion, buzzing riffs, all intertwined into a blazing near-death metal onslaught, but it's not long before big reverb drenched guitar melodies begin to fall like some sort of black rain, the metallic pummel sort of stumbling to a seasick lumber, turning the whole thing into a creepy crawl, lurching, plodding, downtuned guitars and spare, simple rhythms, a crushing slow motion dirge, with haunting atonal clean guitar parts and moaning melodies. And even during these vast expanses of atmospheric tranquility, you can never rule out sudden blast beat, or a throat shredding vocal part, or a sudden crushing riff. The magic of diSEMBOWELMENT though is that somehow the metallic crush and the melancholic ambience are perfectly balanced. The whole thing is a dark and depressive, minor key and mournful masterpiece. But it's all so fucking heavy! Even the not-so-heavy parts manage to sound completely massive and totally crushing! So intense and emotional and just absolutely beautiful. Yep, beautiful. Lovely even. Like few records we can remember, and certainly one of the only records this heavy and brutal that manages to be absolutely beautiful. Sonically it's a bit like Napalm Death's Scum, and Carcass's Reek of Putrifaction, that classic Earache sound, a bit lo-fi, lots of reverb, big drums, buzzing guitars, all boiled down into a viscous blackened sludge, sprinkled throughout with brief melodic flares and occasional glistening guitars, like rays of sunlight just barely penetrating the suffocating atmosphere of thick low hanging riffs and bleak, brutal ambience.
Disc one contains all of Transcendence Into the Peripheral, and hell, we would have been happy with just that, a long overdue reissue of one of our all time favorite discs. But disc two contains the quite rare Dusk ep, as well as a rare compilation track and the five track Mourning September demo, all of it suitably genius! And, for a very limited time, we have managed to get a hold of the "mailorder only" version of this diSEMBOWELMENT reissue (limited to 1000 copies worldwide) that comes with a whole extra, third, disc! Disc three contains an unreleased version of "The Spirit Of The Tall Hills" (from Transcendence Into the Peripheral), as well as rehearsal versions of The Spirit Of The Tall Hills and Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory (also from Transcendence Into the Peripheral). These versions are a lot weirder than the album versions, faster, with way more deranged and damaged vocals! Also includes a Necrovore (who we'd never heard of) cover, a murky, fuzzy, droned-out thrash workout! Wow.
Obviously totally and completely essential. Like we mentioned before, the three disc version is super limited so we're not sure how long we'll have those. Packaged in an oversized 3cd jewel case, with a booklet of photos and liner notes, including lyrics and a history of the band from drummer Paul Mazziotta. When the 3cd version is gone we will have the 2cd version, which is cheaper and comes packaged in an embossed double digipak.
If you're a fan of virtuoso instrumental math-rock madness, look no further... there are two new releases on Relapse for you to nerd, we mean rock, out to! One is the long awaited fifth album from scene grandaddies Don Caballero (without whom...) and the other is from the more whippershapperish Dysrhythmia.
We're totally enjoying the new Don Cab, 'though the world has caught up with 'em -- wise ass instrumental math-rock is all the rage (these guys should get royalty checks from Hella, Chevreuil, Orthrelm, Behold The Arctopus, et al), and so this new album, their first in six years, can't have the same impact as their records did back in the mid-'90s. But lone remaining original member drummer Damon Che still has crazy chops and his all-new lineup does the Don Cab brand name justice, getting a bit more metal in the process perhaps ('cause they're on metal label Relapse now?).
And then for those whose heads want even more scrambling, Dysrhythmia's new one is also recommended. Their complex compositions are played energetically and octopoidally, and are maybe a bit more metallic than the Don Cab, though they do dabble in proggy, atmospheric passages here and there. Indeed, while both World Class Listening Problem and Barriers and Passages have plenty of the technical herky-jerk, they are also strangely relaxing. Not just the relaxation of sheer exhaustion when it's all over -- both records give the listener some welcome chances to chill while they're still playing as well.
If you're a fan of virtuoso instrumental math-rock madness, look no further... there are two new releases on Relapse for you to nerd, we mean rock, out to! One is the long awaited fifth album from scene grandaddies Don Caballero (without whom...) and the other is from the more whippershapperish Dysrhythmia.
We're totally enjoying the new Don Cab, 'though the world has caught up with 'em -- wise ass instrumental math-rock is all the rage (these guys should get royalty checks from Hella, Chevreuil, Orthrelm, Behold The Arctopus, et.al.), and so this new album, their first in six years, can't have the same impact as their records did back in the mid-'90s. But lone remaining original member drummer Damon Che still has crazy chops and his all-new lineup does the Don Cab brand name justice, getting a bit more metal in the process perhaps ('cause they're on metal label Relapse now?).
And then for those whose heads want even more scrambling, Dysrhythmia's new one is also recommended. Their complex compositions are played energetically and octopoidally, and are maybe a bit more metallic than the Don Cab, though they do dabble in proggy, atmospheric passages here and there. Indeed, while both World Class Listening Problem and Barriers and Passages have plenty of the technical herky-jerk, they are also strangely relaxing. Not just the relaxation of sheer exhaustion when it's all over -- both records give the listener some welcome chances to chill while they're still playing as well.
Used to be that Earth was best known for their appearance in the Kurt and Courtney documentary. But those days are long gone. Even your Mom probably knows who Earth is (okay, probably only if you have a super hip Mom, but still, you get the point). These are indeed the days of Earth. Reissues, reunions, remixes...and of course that great new album, Hex. Sub Pop has finally figured out that there's a demand for this stuff, so they've repressed all the Earth albums on vinyl and finally reissued the cd of Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions (the vinyl is actually delayed a bit on this one).
When Phase 3 first came out, we were already BIG Earth fans, totally obsessed with the godlike Earth 2, and were a trifle disappointed by Phase 3, shorter songs, cleaner guitar tone, riffs that were actual riffs and not just slow motion smears of distorted rumble. But more recently we were reminded that Phase 3 really was a pretty darn good record by that Legacy Of Dissolution remix album, when several of the best tracks on there turned out to be sourced from songs from this record!
This still has plenty in common with its predecessor, the lugubrious tempos, the sludgy riffage, the whole Melvins on Thorazine sound, but as mentioned above, the songs are shorter and there's a whole lot more variety in sound and texture and instrumentation. Which at the time, chomping at the bit for Earth 2.5, was a bit of a bummer, but returning to it now, it's really amazing. In fact we're beginning to think track two "Tibetan Quaaludes" is one of our all time favorite Earth songs.
It's easy to see how the band ended up with Pentastar, the record that followed Phase 3, a pretty straight ahead stoner rock record with drums and piano and songs, even a Hendrix cover. This is definitely the transition record, and as such, is a little awkward, but still weird and wonderful. With the riffs more fully formed, we sometimes find ourselves expecting the drums to kick in, we can almost picture the huge fill, BOOM, BAP, BUM BUM BUM BOOM BAP and then the killer metallicized krautrock rhythm that would perfectly fit some of these riffs, but without the drums, it adds all sorts of tension. It's still droney for sure, but it's more like a blissed out guitar experiment than full on sludge. The extra melody makes for some strange referents. The opening track "Harvey" sounds like someone took just the guitar track out of a Queen song, and then slowed it down a tiny bit. Strange but cool. Track three, "Lullaby" sounds like some alternative take on Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner". Song 6, appropriately entitled "Song 6" is acoustic guitar strum under electric guitar melody with twinkling chimes, a sort of folkdrone hoedown. It's the longer tracks that keep the drone dream of Earth 2 alive though, the aforementioned "Tibetan Quaaludes", the ambient windblown desolation of "Phase 3: Agni Detonating Over The Thar Desert..." the damaged psych drone guitar strangle of "Thrones And Dominions", it all makes for a killer slab of droning guitar weirdness and definitely qualifies as one of our favorite chunks of low end guitar grrr ever. While not as relentlessly monochromatic as 2, it's still pretty dang heavy and droney and sort of pretty too. So, to recap, Earth 2 and their debut, the amazing "Extra-Capsular Extraction are both way heavier. Pentastar is way groovier and more like a regular rock band, but Phase 3 is still kinda heavy but groovy as well which maybe makes it a good introduction for the Earth novice, depending on which way you lean, drone or groove, you can decide which Earth to get next. The rest of you weird rock obsessives just assume this is absolutely essential.
Too bad they didn't spring for the deluxe packaging of the original with its sheet of red transparent plastic and multiple inserts, on the reissue it's just replicated on the digipak, funny too as the original packaging must have been pretty pricey for a band who at the time probably wasn't selling a whole lot of records, but now with the world in a sludge drone frenzy, and Earth practically a household name (well, in our house hold at least) that sort of packaging would pay for itself in no time...
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1995's self titled debut, Electric Wizard's Come My Fanatics, originally released in 1997, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "Demon Lung" and "Return To The Son Of Nothingness"!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
Now available for a limited time on WHITE VINYL (limited to 1000 copies worldwide!), in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with the bonus track "Mind Transferral" which was not on the cd. Here's what we had to say about Dopethrone way back in 2000:
These British lads have the distinction of being, as far as we know, the first (and perhaps last!) *metal* band ever reviewed in the hallowed pages of that popular cutting-edge new music magazine The Wire. But if that makes you expect that the album in question, "Dopethrone" is some sort of pretentious electronica-leaning, intellectual-metallic curiosity worthy of much beard-stroking, you'd better think again! Take a look at the album title, dude! Electric Wizard play super-heavy sludge metal, taking the appellation "stoner rock" very seriously indeed. Satan's even seen smoking a bong on the album cover. Doomy sub-Sabbath riffs, toked-up vocals, spacey fx -- this is primal stuff. This band seems to just keep getting better and better (meaning, they don't change much!). The lyrics celebrate their interests in pulp fantasy fiction (HP Lovecraft and RE Howard both get referenced) and of course the Sweet Leaf: "Dopethrone in this land of sorcery/Dopethrone vision through T.H.C./Dopethrone feedback will free/Dopethrone three wizards crowned with weed." No, not brilliant literature, (and the music's not avant-garde composition for that matter, not intentionally anyway) but "Dopethrone" is still thoroughly enjoyable even by those of us (Andee and Allan for example) who aren't potsmokers (in fact, Andee and Allan are definitely the biggest fans of this record and other "stoner rock" at Aquarius anyways -- I wonder what that means?!). No, you just have to like the sheer heaviness and killer-hippie aura ("Legalize Drugs and Murder" is their slogan, and they're at least half serious)... But if we *were* ever to decide to take up pot-smoking as a casual hobby, we have promised several friends (& Electric Wizard fans) that this album will definitely be the soundtrack to our first "experience". We're tempted...
AQ-faves Electric Wizard return with the eagerly anticipated "Let Us Prey". After their totally wrecked, wretched performance here in San Francisco last year (which we still enjoyed, but as comedy), this excellent, totally competent new album can only beg the
Doom metal doesn't have to be stoner rock, and stoner rock isn't always (or even often) doom metal, but the combination is natural -- and for that nobody beats the Wiz. Electric Wizard's spacey, metallic drug-punk (a mixture of Sabbath, Hawkwind, and the Melvins) features lost, buried, hopeless vocals singing dirgey hymns to the God-Bong amidst bowel-rumbling, super-heavy, super-sludgey guitar and bass psychedelia. What's not to like?
This is the kind of album that lends itself to a track-by-track rundown (why? 'cause there's only six songs):
The disc starts with a classically slow n' massive Wizard song entitled "A Chosen Few", designed to bludgeon the listener into stuporific submission from riff one.
"We, The Undead" changes tactics, being fast and kinda punky (in an Eyehategod/Black Flag way), with a riff that's *very* Saint Vitus.
"Master Of Alchemy" is another slow crusher a la the first track, with a truly EVIL sounding main riff. This song is a relentless juggernaut that eventually morphs (it's a two-part suite nearly ten minutes long) into a mellower, but still quite EVIL, psychedelic drone jam.
"The Outsider" is, if possible, even lower, slower, and more drugged-out sounding, building into a wah wah propelled epic before its nine minutes are out.
Then, out of nowhere, the beautiful, melancholy "Night Of The Shape" (great title) kicks in -- noir-sh piano figures over busy, shuffling drumbeats that sound almost drum n' bass inspired. This could be on a Radiohead record, yet somehow it's totally doomy.
After that lovey interlude, the Wizard get back to their usual business on the epic album closer "Priestess Of Mars". More sludge, more wah, more pot smoke.
And then, three quarters of an hour after you put it on, "Let Us Prey" is over and you'll need another fix!
When we first heard Electric Wizard way back when, we were completely and totally blown away, but we were so filled with glorious doom and gloom, and druggy spaced out stoner rock, that it never occurred to us that anything might have come before. When in fact in one form or another, Electric Wizard had been developing their sound since 1989! This disc collects the two pre-Electric Wizard lps released a while back (and now out of print) as well as super rare recordings from the band that was the original seed for what would eventually become Electric Wizard.
Starting way back in 1989, there was a group of young metalheads fronted by future EW mainman Jus Oborn, who were totally obsessed with Carcass, Bolt Thrower and the like, and thus were appropriately named Lord Of Putrefaction. And their sound suited the name perfectly, a murky grind thrash doom, grunted death metal style vocals, psychedelic freakout guitar over pounding drums and sludgy riffing. Slow and heavy with bursts of not quite blasts and wild squalls of chaotic noise, but all rooted in dense, druggy, doomy sludge. They only ever released a split lp with Mortal Remains, and this here is it. Remastered and heavy as ever. Fans of Winter, diSEMBOWELMENT, Mordor and all that early Earache stuff will be so into this!
Not soon after the end of Lord Of Putrefaction, three of the four lords reconvened as Thy Grief Eternal, who recorded 2 lengthy tracks for a 12" in 1991 which was never actually released. By '91, Jus Oborn and his merry band of metalheads continued to get slower and heavier, hinting at what would come, but still sounding like they'd be right at home on Earache, alongside Carcass, Napalm Death, Godflesh and the like. Pounding industrial sludge doom, with grunted gutteral cookie monster vocals, pounding relentless drumming and BIG RIFFS, very sludgy and crusty, much more akin to the ultra slow, monochromatic dirge of funeral doom, as they had yet to discover the groove that would play such a crucial part in their later sound.
The same 3 members who started out together in Lords Of Putrefaction decided on another name change to represent their continued musical growth and thus was born the simpler Eternal. While Thy Grief Eternal were a crusty bunch of metalheads spitting out blurry blasts of Earache style industrial sludge, a couple years later, with a new name, a new love of mind altering chemicals, and the discovery of the all important GROOVE, Eternal was born, and the sound on their never released EP was only a hop skip and a drunken stumble from the sound of Electric Wizard. The doom and sludge is tempered on the Eternal tracks with a huge heaping pile of Hawkwindish swirling psychedelia and that oft purloined Sabbathy groove that pretty much defined Electric Wizard and the stoner rock movement that followed. Four tracks (one's a Sabbath cover!) including a 16 minute epic that would later become an Electric Wizard track.
Fucking awesome! Comes in a spiffy digipak, with a booklet packed with liner notes, photos, as well as old flyers and demo cover artwork.
Originally released as a double cd, teamed up with 1997's Come My Fanatics, Electric Wizard's debut, originally released in 1995, gets its own digipak release, re-issued with expanded artwork, new liner notes, tons of photos, and most importantly two bonus tracks, "IIIimitable Nebulie" and Mourning Prayer Part 1" from the unreleased Doom Chapter Demo!!! Here's what we had to say when this first came out (it's the same review for both self titled and Come My Fanatics, since they were paired together the first time we heard them and they still sound like parts one and two of the same record, which is a most definitely a good thing!) :
With a sickly sweet haze baked around half formed thoughts of science fictions and demonic mythologies, Electric Wizard's stoner metal has just enough intellect to roll out the gargantuan post-Sabbath riffs and burnt-out grooves. Dude. This shit is absolutely essential listening for the next time you decide to fire up that bong. (Or not, seeing as how Andee and Allan definitely seem to enjoy this quite a bit and neither have ever "fired up" a "bong" in their lives, "dude". Well, okay, Allan did smoke a joint once but he didn't "inhale"...very much at all.) Especially suitable for all fans of Sleep's immense Jerusalem opus and those AQ-record-of-the-week-winning Esoteric double cds!! Electric Wizard are in fact notorious rivals of Esoteric, as they compete for England's throne of ultimate heaviness. Anyone who's heard Electric Wizard's Supercoven ep (Andee's favorite EW joint for sure!) will know what they're in for: the ultimate bellbottoms doom trip, a Lovecraftian space sludge psych jam that'll do your head in right.
The Camera Behind The Camera Behind The Camera is by far this SF band's most composed and focussed release to date. Tight and punchy (with the exception of the eighth song "Hollyhock" whose first half is slow and pretty and the vocal'n'guitar album closer "Something About Fire"), Elephone have smoothed out the rough edges in the vocals, tightened up the rhythm section and applied more attention to detail on each song's arrangement. The dynamics in the big sinewy guitars, synths and solid drumming are more pronounced and effective. The album as a whole is propelled by a brooding verve. On a bunch of these songs with their solid thumpin' beat, Elephone will have the indie rock kids making their way to the dancefloor in no time! Fits really well alongside the recent self-titled debut from their local pals (and frequent show bill sharers) Madelia.
Psst, the official release date is July 11, but we've got some now!
This was an unexpected surprise. We ordered a bunch of these just on the strength of it being a new release on Supernal, the label that brought us the mighty Benighted Leams, as well as Meads Of Asphodel, Drudkh, Dark Ages, Hate Forest, we could go on. So we threw this on expecting some sort of demented damaged grim black metal, but instead discovered that this was in fact a colossal slab of hellishly heavy deathdoomdronedirge!
It takes a lot for us to get SUPER excited about another doom dirge record, it's a lot more than just tuning your guitar down and letting it go, and in fact this is not so much the sonic analogue of groups like Sunn 0))) or Noisegate or Earth, instead, FOTGWO takes the same elements and turns them into something much more fierce, much more aggressive, and somehow much heavier.
Three songs, one hour, of crumbling super distorted dronescapes, a suffocating avalanche of slow motion sound, waves of impossibly distorted guitar spread out like a viscous black sea, while huge simple pounding beats drop through the murk occasionally, like empty steel containers being dropped from a crane onto concrete. A dark sort of industrial droneworld, ominous and foreboding. The centerpiece of the record though is the 40+ minute title track, in which the crumbling crush of the opening salvo is pushed to the background, a distant din of swirl and churn, a rough sea of vicious distorted guitar and roiling low end, while in the foreground, abstract melodies are played out by soft swells of clean guitar and what sounds like chimes or bells. So strangely dark and lovely, so beautiful yet pants shittingly frightening. The track wavers between delicate ambient drone and a twisting tangle of low end guitar that sounds like the revving of a million motorcycles slowed waaaaaay down. The final track is a ravaged wasteland of industrial pummel, ominous tolling bells and creepy haunting drifts of mournful melody beneath some of the meanest grinding buzz and reverberating crunch we've ever heard.
Fall Of The Grey Winged One have definitely pushed the whole doomic dirge sound to a completely new level, existing in a dark and dangerous, skull splittingly brutal sonic world, where no others dare to tread.
Strange purple and black, 3-D geometric artwork, that barely hints at the gorgeous malevolence inside.
We've had some Fear Falls Burning cd-r's in the past, but this is the first proper release we've been able to get enough of to list, and it is quite simply amazing. Utilizing several guitars as well as an ensemble of Crate, Bahringer, Peavey, Laney and of course Marshall amplifiers, FFB have captured their own take on the glacial dirge. And it's quite unlike the majority of practitioners, in that it is strangely melodic and dreamlike. Very reminiscent of past record of the week Hjarnidaudi, in its ability to drip sunlight and warmth on a sound both dark and dreary. But unlike the band arrangements of Hjarnidaudi, FFB is nothing but guitars, amps, and effects, all deftly woven into a washed out deep ambient whole. Imagine Earth 2 or Sunn 0))) but lighter, and dreamier, less caustic and more soft and billowy. A soft bed of crumbling distortion, a swirl of grit and grrrr, but over the top lie sweet swoons of glistening feedback and thick swells of melody. It sounds almost like one guitarist playing soft and sweet through the biggest loudest most distorted amp ever, while another guitarist plays harsh buzzing drone, but through the tiniest, lowest wattage amp ever. the two mixed together create the perfect dreamlike heaviness. From huge walls of sound to soft humming shimmery buzz, My Bloody Valentine-ish blown out bliss to raga like buzz, this is absolutely gorgeous. A truly unique and surprisingly melodic take on doom and drone.
Amazingly packaged on gorgeous thick sparkly blue sleeve, with an actual photo of one of the amps used to make the record affixed to the front. Pressed on 180 gram white vinyl.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. ONCE THESE ARE GONE THEY ARE GONE FOREVER!
We listed a different reissue of this great rare acid-folk album about a year ago... well guess what, now it's been retitled "Hatched" and reissued -again-, this time with seven bonus tracks instead of just two. And it looks better too. The bonus tracks include two non-album cuts from the band's lone single (which were on the previous edition) and five more live tracks from a newly-unearthed 1971 radio session! So, if you already have this on cd you can determine if you need this new version or not, but if you don't already have it, this is the one to get, obviously! Here's what we had to say about it before:
For those of you into acid folk from the early '70, we have another terrific find with FRESH MAGGOTS. This teenage British duo's only record, not surprisingly deemed a failure upon its release with such an unappealling name (though of course we think it's cool), came out in 1971. Which, as you may know, some here say could be one of the BEST years for this -or any- genre. Influenced by the likes of Deep Purple, Zeppelin, and Pentangle, Fresh Maggots really don't sound as rock as the above outfits (partly due to lacking drums) but bring more to mind Forest, Tractor, or Tyrannosaurus Rex. There's lots of acoustic guitar folkiness here blended with fuzzed out fits of electric guitar. And there's a little tin whistle playing and triangle chiming going on, too! Melodic, pastoral, hearty, and highly recommended. This reissue, which the Fresh Maggots themselves had a hand in, includes extensive liner notes, and two [no, make that seven, now!] bonus tracks.
This here dvd is pretty much a must for all fans of what might be the world's most intense, original free-rock band. The dark lord of Tokyo psych Keiji Haino and his power trio Fushitsusha were captured on film performing live in Tokyo at the La Mama Club way back on September 26th, 1991. Yes, the same year Fushitsusha released their first cd document, the untitled monumental masterpiece known to fans as Live II or Double Live (PSF 15/16), a true classic of avant-heaviness. They've made a great many great records since then, but it's hard to argue that they ever really topped the output of this era...
So of course it's great that this concert was preserved for posterity (they were opening for John Zorn's Painkiller, who were recording the live album Rituals, on which Haino guests) and is finally now being issued on dvd (it was previously available from PSF as a VHS video cassette, and is Fushitsusha's only official video release). Not much point in further description, really -- we figure this one's for Fushitsusha fans and if you're one, you want this. 53 minutes, all regions.
Newest issue of one of our favorite magazines around. Music and toys and food and shows and records and clothes all with a distinctly and uniquely Asian American bent. This time around: a guided tour of modern Manilla, how to start your own boy band, Ugly Dolls!, an interview with director Ronny Yu, an interview with LOUDNESS!!! and tons of reviews and fiction and comics and cool little bits of trivia, and sidebars about random edibles and buyables and oh my, just one of the most fun to read magazines EVER!
You can't go wrong with a 'goat' band name. Goat Horn, Lubricated Goat, Floating Goat, Lost Goat, Goatsnake, Goatsnake, Goatsblood, Goatlord, Goat Fire and of course Goat Thrower, so what if you just got rid of all that extraneous stuff, the throwing and the blood and the lubrication and got right down to it, the goat. Thus we have simply Goat, a one man American noise band who . So what if this Goat teamed up with one of our favorite masters of the apocalyptic dark ambient drone, Nordvargr? Well, then of course you'd end up with a creature known simply as Goatvargr, that sonically straddles the mysterious martial darkworld of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk and the harsh caustic brutality of Andy O' Sullivan (aka Goat).
Huge expanses of industrial creak and groan, blown out beats buried under piles of sonic debris, face melting bursts of acidic distortion and crumbling walls of guitar grind, distant martial beats stretched out over smears of black sound and buried desiccated vocals, squealing sheets of feedback and layer after layer of Merzbowian murk. This is most definitely a noise record, but Nordvargr injects enough of his subtle darkness and penchant for strange beatscapes to keep the proceedings appropriately damaged, dreary and darkly demented. Recommended for the iron eared with hearts of noise! Great stuff!
We were first turned on to The Goslings, a husband and wife duo from Florida, by a couple of our more Sunn 0))) / Earth obsessed customers, so imagine our surprise when we discovered The Goslings to be in fact, a gloriously unlikely, sun dappled, fog shrouded, druggy, murky space pop combo. Sure they had certain elements in common with those dronedirge lords, but The Goslings were a much gentler, much more introspective beast. Taking their thick fuzz and spreading it out over their minimal blisspop like dew on blades of grass, each drop a sparkling, shimmering, glistening swirl of abstract color.
This disc collects two long out of print cd-r's and is the portrait of the artist as a young band, their burgeoning expansiveness only just beginning to take form, but already blindingly beautiful to the ears. The opening track is an endless landscape of hiss and fuzz, rife with random room sounds, the glitch of instrument cables, the feeding back rumble of crappy old amps with unplayed guitars plugged into them, sounds a little like an audience recording of the random sounds between songs at a Dead C show, some drifting vocals surface every once in a while, as do creepy little chimes, and near the end the swirling fog begins to take shape and becomes a warbly organ melody. But such a harrowing, slow moving journey for such little reward. Such is the way of The Goslings. Once you realize that, you realize that every second of hiss, and every minute of near motionless hum are rewards in and of themselves. The rest is easy. The next track is more representative, a Harvey Milk-ish dirge, drifting blurry eyed dopelike dreampop, huge swaths of fuzz drenched melody, soft ethereal vocals buried beneath the fuzz, a strangely lo-fi doomier version of My Bloody Valentine. Elsewhere, guitars unfurl tendrils of simple indie jangle, floating weightless beneath crooning female vocals, all over a rumbling slow motion bass groove, later an almost country ballad, slurred vocals lounged lugubriously over a dusty ghost town of downtuned twang. Each track is its own subtle shade of dopesick and doom drenched, some sinister, some glowing, some crawling broken and buried, some floating heavenward, some cracked and crackly, some lush and dense with soft shimmer. But all of them gorgeous and mysterious.
Imagine the standard doom/dirge band to be a large rock, nestled solidly in the earth. Well, pry that rock up, tip it over, and see what slimy, wriggling, many-legged or legless creepy-crawlies squirm in the dark, damp dirt beneath -- that's the shuddering sludge sickness that Graves At Sea make sure you hear in their music.
We know a lot of AQ's sludge-doom lovin' customers are already into this band, judging from the number of copies of their split release with Asunder that we've sold. And if you live on the west coast, perhaps you've been a witness to one of their live shows, a bloody spectacle as we recall... LA's Graves At Sea (not to be confused with the equally doomy Buried At Sea from Chicago) take their doom way seriously. From the bulldozing, slowed down, headbanging riffage from the guitars/bass to the rasping, snarling, distorted, animal vokills of their singer Nathan (appropriately credited in this cd booklet with "hissing goblin tongue/evangelist of misery"), this is HEAVY nastiness for fans of Khanate, Corrupted, Eyehategod, Unearthly Trance, and all other heavy as hell, feedbacking freaks. Actually, let's look and see what else it says in the cd booklet about what some of the other Graves At Sea bandmembers are responsible for... we've got Nick on "sluggish wall of murky despair", Steve on "crushing storm of fire and brimstone" and Roger on "timbre of submarsh sludge". Heck they practically wrote their own review right there!
Four songs, half-an-hour. Originally a cd-r release from '03 (their debut recording), now at last on cd, adorned with much better cover art.
Even when recording entirely solo, master musician of the Tokyo psych underground Keiji Haino is capable of realizing a depth of sound that leaves all pretenders to his lordly shamanic throne gasping in his blackened cloud of cosmic dust. And fans know that he doesn't need many instruments (though he'll seemingly play anything) or the help of other musicians (though he leads several units of his own, most famously Fushitsusha, and has collaborated with an interesting array of artists including Boris, Derek Bailey, Kan Mikami, Shoji Hano, Peter Brotzmann, Coa, and members of both Masada and Ruins). So we're always interested in hearing from Haino whatever the circumstances. But this time we can't help but be slightly more intrigued than usual. That's because this new double cd is co-billed to something called Sitaar Tah! (their exclamation point, but you'll see why it's deserved). What is Sitaar Tah!? They just happened to be a twenty-piece sitar orchestra!! Damn. Just when you thought "Eastern psych" couldn't get any more Eastern psych, they come up with this. Keiji Haino + 20 sitars!! We couldn't wait to hear it. And this IS great, and beyond our imaginings of it.
Recorded live in 2004, the one-time only performance documented here definitely evokes the spirit of '70s Japanese psych drone legends the Taj Mahal Travellers. It's an organic mass of sound that finds a "oneness" despite the size of the ensemble. Keiji, not one to be out gunned, brings the drone as well with electric hurdy gurdy, electric sruthi box, electric tanbur, rhythm box, flute and voice. And, giving the proceedings an additional Tuvan touch, Fuyuki Kamakawa guests on the igil and throat singing. So there's a lot going on, but it all merges well, with sureness of purpose, a constant flow. Sitaar Tah! can't be said to dominate, their 20 sitars managing to have something of a phantom presence, their multiplicity weightless, like a mirror-within-a-mirror reflection. To the extent that this suggests a raga, it's the most abstract and eerie "raga" as you're ever going to hear, unfolding from quiet to loud, with buzzing and dynamic awe.
The 46 minute disc one's big surprise is the flute blown by Keiji. Lovely, lovely. Reminds us a bit of Akio Suzuki. A nice companion to the chorus of heavenward cries conjured by Sitaar Tah!'s string scrapings. Disc two (51 minutes) rachets up the throaty drone intensity, being more actively sitar-shrill and sounding perhaps like Haino went to India to record the soundtrack to an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. It develops a pleasantly suspensefully pulse-beat that (maybe because we were just listening to the reissue of that Basic Channel comp) weirdly enough seems to us to hint at the ambient throb of "heroin house" But it's to such things as the aforementioned Taj Mahal Travellers, and Thuja or Hala Strana, the Double Leopards, Acid Mothers Temple, and Haino's own drone group Nijimu that Animamima's eerie, immersive environment should more obviously draw comparison.
This is the second double cd set by Keiji Haino to be released by the aRCHIVE label. Last year's Reveal'd To None As Yet - An Expedience To Utterly Vanish Consciousness While Still Alive was the first. (Hmm, could it be that a whole series is in the works? we're hoping.) And you know what? Reveal'd has been probably the best-selling Haino thing we've ever had here at Aquarius. Perhaps because of the ultra-desirable, limited-edition nature of aRCHIVE releases and the always-superb packaging (in this case, a very special letterpressed, die-cut folder designed by Stephen O'Malley) with which they are so carefully presented. But also 'cause we have a lot of customers who love the psychedelic, dark drones! And Keiji Haino is the king of that realm. Sitaar Tah! now joins his court. Recommended just as much as its predecessor.
FYI: We got a limited number of these direct from the label, so if/when we run out and can still get more from a distributor, the price will unfortunately likely go up, as it did with that previous Haino 2cd
It would seem that the idea behind Howlin Rain, featuring members of Comets On Fire (guitarist/vocalist Ethan Miller) and Sunburned Hand Of The Man (drummer John Moloney), is to be a total California-style hippy throwback rural rock n' roll band, like from the late '60s or early '70s. Think Creedence, Quicksilver, Crazy Horse, and The Dead. They do a pretty good job of it -- these sprawling songs are all full of strummin' sunshine and scented smoke and even some swingin' saxophone. Ethan's raggedy whiskey voice (very Rod Stewart, actually) sounds just perfect for this, whilst the band choogles authentically. Or gets mellow, very mellow.
But don't worry, just when you think maybe they're just getting a little bit -too- laid back and melodic, Ethan will unleash some truly fucked, utterly obliterating noisy psych guitar to remind you that he's the dude from Comets On Fire after all. Those fuzzy guitar freakouts are really what makes this work for us, actually, and keeps this from being, uh, just an underground Black Crowes. We're reminded (to make a reference probably not too many folks will be familiar with, sorry) of Slap Happy Humphrey, the Japanese band that combined acoustic '70s folk with blasts of Japanoise guitar mayhem courtesty Jojo Hiroshige of Hijokaidan. This isn't -that- extreme but it's the same general idea, as also applied by Japanese psych acts like Nagisa Ni Te and Shizuka. Howlin indeed.
Wow, what a difference a few years make! Since their debut album in 2003, The Husbands have endured a seemingly non-stop revolving door on the drummer seat, finally lockin' in with Ms Casey Ward (of Weakling and The Lies) for this album. In that time the gals also spent a stretch expanding their vocal repertoire with awesome sassy results. The results are a much tighter, tuneful Husbands. Most notable is the occasionally very '60s girl group style singing which serves as a nice counterpart to their former predominantly snarky vocal cord shredding fury. That by no means is any indication that this SF garage rock trio has softened up. Sadie, Sarah and Casey will still kick your ass 'round the block with their music (and we'd bet they'd do so literally too if you wrong 'em!). All members share in multiple instrument duties and are joined by such guests as Dave Sartain, Russell Quan (of countless garage rawk combos), and Trans Am's Phil Manley. Seventeen short'n'sweet party-ready tunes (only one of which exceeds the three minute mark!).
There was a time not so long ago, where the idea of mixing metal with post rock was a unique one. The thought of taking massive slabs of downtuned heaviness and mixing 'em up a bit with some moody rhythmic bits or some angstful angular bits was just a flight of fancy. A whole slew of metal bands influenced as much by Slint as Neurosis? Hardly. Well, here we are, 2006, and you pretty much can't turn around without bumping into a post rock metal band, or a metallic post rock band. Which is okay, cuz it's a sound we can definitely get behind, in fact we've been championing that sort of stuff for ages, maybe even before it had a name or was an actual musical movement. Isis were definitely one of the first of this new breed of metallic post rockers, and as such continue to hone their sound, push the boundaries and give all those young whippersnappers something to shoot for. The last proper full length was epic and majestic. A deft Neurosis / Godspeed hybrid. Expansive and majestic, but controlled and precise. Some folks have labeled it intellectual metal or something similar, but for us, it's just heavy, and complex, cinematic and gorgeous kick ass rock. In addition to proper releases, Isis have released a series of live recordings, capturing the band live, where, not only do they sound slightly heavier, and a little bit more loose (a good thing), they also stretch out, and let the songs breathe, let riffs repeat, add parts, even improvise, from dark moody drones to blown out space jams. It's awesome to hear a band at the top of their game, a band who seem to be all about control, let loose and just rock (or drone or shuffle or whatever). Live Selections 2001-2005 is the 4th live cd so far, and collects material from 2001 through 2005, including on air radio performances, as well as live shows from the Troubadour, CBGB, the Middle East and more. Of all the live records, this is probably the loosest and weirdest. The songs sound great (of course) but the band takes way more chances, parts are twisted and stretched out, long parts turn into epic jams, there's even a lengthy improv / jam loosely inspired by Nirvana's "Endless Nameless". Cool.
Heavy and droney and epic and of course SUPER LIMITED!
Packaged in beautiful black on brown letterpressed sleeves with insert/linernotes and sealed with a little mosquito sticker.
It's been a while since this 'Jester entertained the courtyard with his brand of turntable merriment, but he's back! The good time equation this time around is: DJ Jester + non-stop '80s-heavy guilty pleasures = Secret Love! A little more fluffy that 2004's Table For One, his gleeful turntable jugglin' act keeps aloft a bodacious array of pop culture touchstones from the past coupla decades. Chunks of tunes from Wang Chung, Prince, Foreigner, Neneh Cherry, and Yes bounce right out and bop you on the nose. The one criticism we have with Secret Love is that he often lets a piece of already over-milked music go on a bit long without any audible manipulation nor any augmentation. We've come to expect a bit more from the man than a 'riding of coattails' of the original song's greatness and/or kitsch factor. C'mon Mr. Jester, we REALLY didn't need to hear THAT MUCH of Foreigner's "Waiting For A Girl Like You". Nooooooo. Nonetheless, this is quite a truckload of fun... particularly if you're harboring a fondness for some kick ass '80s pop music!
Reboot Stereophonic is a new label with a mission to rescue from flea-market obscurity rare recordings that take Jewish identity into some surprising musical directions. What better, then, than this for one of their first releases? God Is A Moog is a double disc compiling the religious-themed compositions of Moog maestro Gershon Kingsley, of Perrey-Kingsley and "Pop Corn" fame. File under: Exotica/New Age/Judaism. And Rock Opera.
Subtitled "The Electronic Prayers Of Gershon Kingsley", this mostly features music recorded circa 1968-1974, much of it never before released. Disc one starts with a five-song suite called "Maven On The Moog", featuring cantor Harold Orbach singing Yiddish traditional folk songs accompanied by Kingsley's space-age synth. Then it gets more far-out sound-wise with "The Jewish Experience" parts 1-5. As this collection progresses, you'll also hear wise words from the Torah gravely intoned over bleepy-bloopy Moog backing, a track with a Bruce Haack-style computerized voice ("I Have A Little Brain", made on Kingley's Macintosh in 1999) as well as much in the way of over-the-top rock opera a la Hair or Godspell, which is simultaneously the best and worst stuff here, perhaps. Kingsley's Moog-laden rock opera efforts ("Shabbat For Today" and "The Fifth Cup") are to be found on the second disc, which has got the most groove and weirdness and inadvertent laffs of the two. Some of these songs are just SOOOO kitschy and, well, let's just be honest: bad. Not the music so much, but some of the lyrics and singing are really terrible (though of course very well-meant). But it's in that so bad it's good, or well not good but darn funny category. Wait 'til you hear the song about the extinct dinosaurs, or the one about the ten plagues. Maybe the word we should use isn't terrible, it's awesome. Awesomely absurd. And sincere, you've gotta give it that. Moog for Moog's sake fans might prefer disc one (and/or yearn for an instrumental version of all of this), but anyone into unfettered goofball expressions of spiritual feeling, and Vietnam-era pop-prog silliness should be quite entertained by these tracks.
Complete with its interesting and informative liner notes, this whole thing is definitely a cool and unusual addition to the discography of Moog-related recordings!
Another leafy, spacey, dew laden, sun dappled folk flecked free rock missive from this Finnish female who has done time in both Avarus and Anaksimadndros, which should give you an idea of the sort of spaced out freeform spacefolk loveliness to expect here. Gently looped guitar distortion, swooping spacey FX, clattery percussion, bird calls, warbly machinelike whirs, drifting shimmery organs and sing songy vocals, haunting detuned guitars, creepy atonal melodies, all buried under dreamy swaths of fuzzy gauzy swirl. So nice. Fans of all things Finnish will want to act fast as we only have 20 or so.
Third and last edition, limited to 100, packaged in hand made, watercolored sleeves.
It's hard to get a grime fix these days, at least on this side of the Atlantic. We got a grimy little tease last year with an ep we made aQ Record Of The Week last November. A dizzying, head spinning post hip hop whatthefuck. For those who have yet to sample the grime, imagine a super stripped down hip hop, sort of junglized, a very ragga like beat, lots of fuzzy synths, and then rapping that is totally tonguetwisting, lightning fast, marble mouthed. Lady Sovereign is the toast of the grime scene these days, having blown up BIG managing to pretty much totally eclipse M.I.A who was one of the first grime shooting stars. But deservedly so we have to say. Lady Sov's tracks are fierce and funky, funny and spunky, the beats are killer, the music is always weird and wild, and her flow is second to none, fast and furious flurries of disses, self deprecation, insane free association, all woven into impossibly tangled smears of mind melting wordplay. And "Blah Blah" might be here best track yet. The riff (yep, there are real insturments) is some weird Morricone guitar twang, almost like a grime Cramps or something, peppered with plenty of little Missy Elliott bleeps and rhythmic hiccups. And Lady Sov going fucking wild over the top. Never thought she could get faster, never thought the rhymes could get more bizarre and funny as hell. But they have, in a big way. It's a bit frustrating to get hit with another single, since we're all chomping at the bit for the upcoming Jay-Z full length, but when they're this good, it's hard to complain too much. Plus these singles are packed to the gills with extra goodies. The cd features the new track, a remix (by Adrock from the Beastie Boys) which also showed up on the Vertically Challenged ep, plus you get two live tracks, one an almost rocker, the other a simple stripped down beat, with Sov freestyling. Pretty cool. Plus you get a DVD with the video for "Blah Blah" as well as a making of short and a bunch of interviews with fans.
Just barely enough to hold us over, in fact we were definitely jonesing for more Lady Sov so this arrived just in time, but now we're even more anxious for the full length to drop, since we're pretty dang sure that Lady Sov / Jay-Z joint is gonna destroy.
SUPER LIMITED. Each disc is numbered. We got about 30 copies. Pretty sure they're gone for good after that.
The musical saw has long been used in popular music as a mysterious embellishment much like the similarly haunting theremin, but on Jim Leonard's Super Saw the instrument's ghostly howl takes center stage. Leonard is nothing short of virtuoso (he also wrote a book about the instrument!) and was a bit of a saw renegade. Here he incorporates some of his own distinct playing innovations, namely the speedy "saw shredder" bowing style which stand in stark contrast to other saw players' extended tones. On the first few numbers his performance is accompanied by delightful sounds that resemble actual construction (like sanding, gentle hammering and yes, sawing). Mind you, it's in a most melodic and playful fashion. The rest of the album is a strange coming together of lonesome cowboy twang, rousing ragtime, mystic waltzes and cocktail exotica. At times it's so otherworldly, you'd almost expect a vocal appearance by exotica great Yma Sumac. Additional instrumentation fleshing out the selection of nineteen originals and familiar standards includes banjo, Hawaiian style guitar, harmonica, and organs.
Apparently this Japanese import is the only release of Leonard's music currently available. And as always beautifully and painstakingly packaged by those folks at EM record in Japan!
We love noise. Not the face melting super nova amp destroying ear shredding noise of Merzbow and Wolf Eyes, although we do dig that too. No, we're in love with -noises-, the sounds of sound, from the warm whisper of nature, the whoosh of the wind, the roar of the surf, the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs, to the clattery clang of industry, the roar of cars, the grind of machinery, the whir of air conditioning and and the thrum of vacuum cleaners, to the subtle sonic byproducts of sound reproduction and music making, the hiss of old cassette tapes, the warm warble of old 78's, the pops and crackle of lps, the digital glitch and fuzz of more modern musical malfunctions. On their own sure, we could listen to a symphony of frogs or the gentle hum of an air conditioner for hours, but preferably wrapped around some haunting otherworldly music, creating a glorious hybrid of subtle murky mystery.
We've sung the praises of Philip Jeck and his creaking antique turntablescapes, the murky looped loveliness of William Basinski, the strange warm fuzzy pixelated guitarscapes of Fennesz, the dreamy electronic droneworlds of Tim Hecker, and most recently, the gorgeous post-rock dreampop haze of Swedish bedroom soundscaper Jasper TX. It's no coincidence that this record, the latest from Dutch sonic explorer (and former doom metal guitarist) Machinefabriek is on the same label as the Jasper TX. Both share a similar approach, burying gorgeous melancholy sounds beneath all manner of sonic disturbances and musical interference. After discovering the Jasper TX record, we looked a little deeper at the Lampse label and decided that we just may have found ourselves a new favorite label. Murky and pretty and fuzzy and so so so pretty. Everything we've heard so far. Instead of looking at Lampse as just the label, one can almost picture Lampse as the actual artist, and each release an epic track from some massive hours long murky muted masterpiece Each of those tracks dense with subtly varied parts and movements, each its own entity for sure, but at the same time one piece of a larger and indescribable puzzle.
Where Jasper TX was deeply rooted in soft indie rock jangle and sleepy bedroom pop (albeit swathed in a thick cloak of blur and grit), Machinefabriek approaches the same sound from a slightly different direction, each piece a lengthy slowburn epic, brooding gradually building ambience, grandiose washes of sound, the cinematic dynamicism of Mogwai or Earth, filtered through the looped hypnosis of Basinski, pianos and guitars rendered as abstract sounds, smeared and swirled into buried minor key melodies and and slow shifting chunks of sonic mood music. Marijn is Machinefabriek's sonic travelogue of a journey through the abyss, a soundworld cloaked in fog and draped in constant darkness.
Our first glimpse of the other side is a gorgeous echoey world of record crackle and pop, of thick reverb and crunching creaking ambience.
Like a beat up old record player stuck in the run out groove of an old 78, recorded at the bottom of an enormous cavern, eventually soft warm swells surface beneath the rainlike crackle, a mournful melody of delicate piano and whirring drone, the notes of the piano blown out so they distort and waver a bit like bad radio reception or some strange atmospheric interference. Some antique piano recital recorded on a wax cylinder and then broadcast from tiny blown out speakers in a huge empty warehouse, then broadcast over shortwave radio and finally heard through a battered pair of old headphones.
The rest of the record, while not as obviously damaged (in terms of crackle and distortion and fuzz) is rife with sounds equally obscured and obfuscated, lilting lonely pianos and haunting music box melodies drift beneath some strange sonic murk, occasionally interrupted by strange crumbled digital interference and all manner of stuttery hiccuping glitch and skitter, as if some other piece of music is trying desperately to claw its way through. Eventually, the distortion and audio damage recedes just enough to allow a simple piano motif to drift softly and subtly across a soundscape of barely there drone and hushed melody. From far off in the distance, warm warbles and shimmering sheets of sparkling muted sound appear, glimmering softly, like the reflection of light in some undersea cavern, lit only by the glow of indirect sunlight, waves and ripples and strange patterns shiver and shimmy subtly. Then, a piano begins unfurling a funereal crawl, mournful and melancholy, before being slowly enveloped by a digital swarm, a swirling dizzying drone, until it's almost like a blinding white wave of fuzz and hiss, but beneath it all, a sad melody still lurks, just an echo, a shadow, a warm rich whisper behind a blinding roar. The final passage is a near 20 minute piano meditation, soft and smooth, notes drift and shimmer, simple but stately and sweetly sorrowful, nestled in a tangled bed of digital hiss, slowly swelling chordal hum and whispery keening drones, all beneath a distant whir like some alien orchestra tuning up, the soft cacophony building slowly into the thick wash of static and distortion slowly swallows the melody whole, until all that remains is a ghostly afterimage, a shimmery outline, a fuzzy faded memory...
