Still active in the San Francisco avant-drone-improv-rock ensemble Thuja in spite of his move down to Los Angeles, Steven R. Smith quietly presents another fantastic solo album of his distinctively cinematic psychedelia. In a better world, Smith's work would get the same universal acclaim as the syrupy melodramatic glop of Sigur Ros or the socially conscious marches of Godspeed! You Black Emperor. But as it stands, Smith's revelatory instrumentals of bittersweet leitmotifs and sublime crescendos remain one of the greatest secrets in the expansive realms of avant-rock. Where Thuja explores the theatre of atmosphere, Smith's solo work is firmly grounded within a simple, yet very expressive use of melody. Smith announces the beginning of each of the songs on "Lineaments" (as with his previous recordings) with a lilting melodic stanza for fuzzed organ or drone guitar which repeats itself throughout the entirety of the song. Around this basic structure, Smith builds incremental layers of sound through complementary overtones, golden applications of spring reverb, and scribbled flourishes from additional organs, guitars, violins, and other less typical instrumentation. While Smith's solo process involve a considerable amount of multi-track production, he -- like Thuja and the interconnective Jewelled Antler gaggle -- relies upon spontaneity in the construction of these scores to give his music a floating effortlessness. "Lineaments" is no exception to Smith's outstanding body of work, and definitely gets the thumbs up from Aquarius.
Any avid reader of the AQ list will be well aware that we've long been huge fans of Steven R. Smith, his solo records, his work in Mirza, Thuja, Hala Strana, all totally amazing. So we were super excited recently to find out that Mr. Smith had a stash of some long out of print titles. We took everything he had, which unfortunately wasn't a lot, so if you want to nab one of these, best be quick! Since these titles have been out of print for ages, once this last handful of these titles are gone, they are gone for good.
Fifth (almost) full-length release by ex-local drone rocker Steven R. Smith (of Thuja and Mirza.) Right before the recording of Tableland, Steven invested in a brand new 8-track recording deck and "Tableland" could well be considered a christening of the new machine. It's probably important to note that the move from 4 tracks to 8 tracks does not equate with a move to overproduction. No, the lush and saturated qualities that are so indicative of Steven R. Smith's recordings are still here to envelope you like a warm wool blanket on a cold day. Five new instrumentals make up "Tableland" and Steven fills out his lonesome arrangements with reverb drenched guitars, bowed metal stringed instruments (possibly zithers?), swelling organs, bells, drums, piano and various other instruments resulting in grainy film scores for non-existent films. So totally gorgeous.
WE ONLY HAVE ABOUT 10 COPIES IN STOCK! After that, this is gone forever!
If your copy of Smog's last full length A River Ain't Too Much To Love has gotten buried beneath the year's worth of cds that followed it, this cdep brings two of that album's songs back to the top of the stack in new even more achingly beautiful versions including one of the album's best, suitably the title track here. Ahh, such deep velvety melancholia! To sweeten the deal even further there's a couple of previously unreleased, non-LP tracks and a video for "Rock Bottom Riser".
Rather Ripped is a rather right-on title for this new SY album. Stripped down and back to basics, the core group of SY is back (Jim O'Rourke is out) and have made a totally great rock record. Poppy and catchy, but without losing their knack for soundscapery skree. Kim Gordon sounds more present and commanding then she has in a while (and a lot less whiney and singsongy), and Thurston is at his dreamiest and most laidback. This is the first SY record in ages to immediately seep into your soul after only a few listens. The great thing about SY is how they truly are A BAND. The sum of their parts comes together to create something WAY more fully realized then any of them could make on their own. Lee Ranaldo sings his song with so much intensity and his guitar sound remains totally, unmistakably his. Steve Shelley continues to keep the beat simple and solid, letting the rest of the band stray and wander. And of course Kim & Thurston are right up front effortlessly demonstrating that it's totally possible to age with dignity and passion while continuing to seriously rock. While it seems like some folks stopped listening to SY at some point in the past, "their last good record" (Daydream Nation, Dirty, etc.), the truth is, that unlike almost any other band around, Sonic Youth have been making really great records for the last quarter-century (totally check out recent under appreciated outings like Murray Street and Sonic Nurse). There is an ethos and undying spirit in their songs that continues to thrive and grow, change and mature, and it still gives us goose-bumps and has us throwing our fists into the air!
Spiderwebs is Tom Carter (of Charalambides) and Sandy Ewen (of Weird Weeds) both on guitar, and kicking up a druggy psychedelic skree, maybe the heaviest freakout on either of these guitar slingers' resumes up to this point. Huge staticky squalls of grumbly guitar, wrapped in gauzy sheets of feedback. Like someone grated up a huge chunk of vintage Hawkwind and a weighty slab of classic Sunroof! and then sprinkled it liberally all over New Weird America. Equal parts noisy and lovely. A blissed out blown out psych guitar drone duel to the death.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES AND ALREADY OUT OF PRINT, SO THESE ARE THE LAST 15 OR SO COPIES EVER!!!
A gorgeous slab of blissfolk improv from these free folk underground dreamweavers. Three separate tracks from 3 likeminded ensembles. First up, Spiderwebs (Tom Carter (of Charalambides) and Sandy Ewen (of Weird Weeds)), offer up a glistening ambience, spacious and hushed with chiming harmonics and slowly unfurling melodies, soft and shimmery, spaced out slow drifting soundscapes of keening guitar swells and crystalline abstraction, haunting drones floating and fluttering, melodies whirling like tiny dustdevils, so lovely. Next up is Mike Tambouro And Matthew McDowell who spin a dense web of strange electronic sound and warm whirring guitar, swells and swirls of moaning bells soft slow drones, a deep pool of sonic shimmer beneath lonely back porch strum and twang. A drone drenched, mysterious Appalachia. Finally, Keenan Lawler lets lengthy buzzing guitar lines sprawl loosely across super spare soundfield, each note, each chord, sliding and bombinating, raga like buzz and loping abstract country twang, loose and skeletal, haunting and otherworldly. Another amazing installment in the Music Fellowship's Triptych series!
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The thing that usually makes a band stand out. REALLY stand out. Is the vocalist. It can make or break a band. A mediocre band can become great the minute a singer opens his mouth. But that same moment can just as easily send us diving for the eject button. In black metal vocals rarely make or break the band, as the sonic breadth is quite narrow, growling monster like grunts or shrill demonic shrieks. Or maybe somewhere in between. But a black metal vocalist CAN send a band spiralling into bizarre baffling outsider metal territory, and those are often the bands that we find ourselves digging the most. There's the Ethel Merman like croon of Urfaust, the atonal tuneless Jandekian warble of Circle Of Ouroborus, the anguished shriek of Weakling, the sorrowful over the top wailing of Silencer or early Bethlehem. ALl of these bands are great, but what makes them REALLY great is their abstract off kilter demented approach to the vocals. Thus we have Sterbend. The music is awesome, a blurry Burzumic buzz, midtempo, a moody black blur, relentless simple drumming, huge washes of melancholic keyboards, buzz and buzz and more buzz all over everything. But it's the vocalists that push this WAY into the world of damaged demented whatthefuck black metal. A howling anguished agonized scream, squeal, shriek, hard to know what to call it, take the high pitched wail of Weakling, mix it with the over the top caterwaul of early Bethlehem mix in some shrieking terrified teenager a la Bathtub Shitter, and then up the hysterical level a hundred fold, and now we're talking. Wild and insane and so creepy and fucked up sounding. It's so completely over the top it almost sounds truly terrifying. Track three is the ultimate demonstration of the vocals dedication, opening with a symphony of screams, the vocalist's multi-tracked shrieks of anguish colliding and mixing and swirling into an ear splitting head spinning frightful cacophony before the dirgey black metal buzz kicks in. Woah. Pam thinks it sounds like some fucked up county fair Haunted House, and it sort of does, but the sort of haunted house you never come out of alive!!!! Weird and wacked. And really amazing.
For a limited time we have the super limited, hand numbered (500 copies) silver silkscreened solid black jewel case version. Once those are gone it's back to the rregular jewel case version with you!
Who'd expect a big bunch of pasty Bay Area indie rockers to form a reggae group? You'd probably be a bit suspicious of their intent, wouldn't ya? But Still Flyin' are without an ounce of irony. There's simply no room for it when there's such a truckload of genuine enthusiasm for the music. Yes, it's quite a surprising turn of events, innit? They frolic on the bright sunny side of reggae with lots of buoyant melodies and exuberant vocals. This is fun, feel-good music with not a cloud in the sky. Their good time van seats over a dozen including frontman Sean Rawls, Brian Girgus (Trackstar, Lowercase), Yoshi Nakamoto (Aisler's Set) and it used to include Wyatt Cusick (Trackstar, Aisler's Set) too before he moved to the distant shores of Scandinavia.
Lovers of damaged demented bizarre baffling freaked out and fucked up black metal rejoice!! We couldn't be more excited if there was a brand new Benighted Leams record. FINALLY, we're able to review and list a record from one of our all time favorite outsider one man black metal bands, Striborg. Most folks have probably never actually heard Striborg, even though this will mark release #15 or thereabouts. But it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. We have been completely obsessed with Striborg since we first heard him a few years back and have been trying to get enough copies of ANY of his releases to list. Everytime we found someone who carried Striborg records, we would order 30 or 40 or 50, and would get 1 or 2. Or more likely none. We even resorted to writing letters to the band (he apparently lives in a shack in the woods with no phone and no computer!) And while most folks have never -heard- Striborg, you've probably at least heard OF him. Whether it was in an aQuarius review, we've referenced Striborg as the ultimate outsider black metal band in reviews of records by black metal weirdos Dead Reptile Shrine, Lugubrum, Draugar, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden and more, or on the recent black metallized SUNNO))) record Black One, which even had a track named for the dark mastermind behind Striborg Sin-Nanna.
But what is it exactly about Striborg that has everyone freaking out?
Five words for you: Tasmanian rain forest black metal! And it's just as grim and weird and as amazing as that might lead you to believe. We have Southern Lord to thank for this, the first readily available Striborg release, which continues his tradition of combining multiple releases on single cds, this one includes the brand new 2006 recording. Embittered Darkness, as well as the super rare Isle De Morts release recorded almost a decade ago, way back in 1997.
So what exactly does Tasmanian rain forest black metal sound like? Definitely grim, and lo-fi, ultra personal, demented and damaged, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Dead Reptile Shrine, Necrofrost, Emit, Furze, Urfaust and all the rest of the baffling black metal hierarchy should give you a rough idea, but Striborg, is even further out, way more fucked up, more strangely psychedelic and freaked out, a doomy drone drenched black buzz, a growling fuzzy missive from the depths of some dark netherworld.
Haunting washes of gauzy synthesizer, mournful minor key acoustic guitars, dreary overcast swaths of depressive melancholia, and you think other black metal bands are buzzy?! Striborg take that black buzz and whip it into a furious freaked out frenzy, a guitar buzz like a million bumble bees, but sped WAY up, a prickly, fuzzy swirl, even at it's most doomy and plodding, Striborg drenches everything in that overblown buzz, a thick sandpapery ambience, that is the metal equivalent of walking through the pouring rain, under a full moon, through a graveyard at the edge of the world. Sin-Nanna growls and gurgles his obtuse black ravings in an impossibly creepy animalistic voice, somewhere between a rabid dog, a tiny demon, and a wicked old witch, often everything will drop out and all that will be left is a buzzing tangle of hissing harsh vocal and fuzzed out black riffing. Buried in the murk and mire are weird, rehearsal space drums, really flat and dry sounding, erupting in spastic and chaotic burts, not just blast beats, but instead bizarre blasts of percussive tangle amidst stretches of almost punk rock drumming, although most of Embittered Darkness is spent at a crawl, a buzzing midtempo dirge, as doomy as it is black, if not more so. Imagine an ultra lo-fi doom metal Xasthur, slow motion misery dotted with occasional barrages of black metal buzz and once in a while surges of slithering black ambience.
So totally creepy and beautiful, fucked up and gorgeous, a massive soul crushing slab of doom drenched black metal brilliance.
Isle De Morts, from 1997, is a lot more traditional, and a lot faster, almost every track a frenetic and frenzied burst of blackened and buzzing brutality, lo-fi but completely blown out and in the red, channeling Transylvanian Hunger era Darkthrone, but filtered through Striborg's cracked sonic kaleidoscope, rendering what might have been just some classic Norwegian BM worship, as a creepy and cracked world of ultrabuzz and overblown acidfried blackness, blast beats so fast they sound like radio static, guitars so buzzy and blurry they turn into thick washes of crumbling prickly sound, and croaking toadlike vocals so high in the mix it sounds like the band is in a different room. So gloriously fucked up and freaked out. One listen is all it takes to see why Striborg towers above all his bizarre black metal contemporaries, ruling the doomed and damaged kingdom of ultrapersonal black metal dementia with an iron fist, a busted 4-track and a growing legion of buzz hungry minions!
This Chicago threesome (led by Ian Adams formerly of The Ponys) are doin' their darndest to bring back the delightful, syrupy, squishy sounds of '80s twee popsters who did their best to bring back the delightful, syrupy, squishy sounds of '60s sugar pop. Lots of super jangly guitars, cute organ bits and bashful boy vocals. Psst, there's a cover of Neil Diamond's terrific pop tune "The Boat That I Row" near the end of the cd that's well worth stickin' around for. Ahoy there, perky goodness that's maybe more suited for pajama parties than submarine races! Smooch!
During the years 1990 through 1993 there was a burst of absolutely incredible pop music. A few in particular come to mind: The Posies' Frosting On The Beater, Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque, Velvet Crush's In The Presence Of Greatness, Redd Kross' Third Eye and this one by Matthew Sweet. Oh yes, our love for these albums is like an everlasting gobstopper.
The seeming direct descendent of Big Star, The Raspberries and America, Mr. Sweet's Girlfriend is filled with ache in your heart, heart on your sleeve, lump in your throat pop at its best. Power pop that is. Big guitars, huge choruses, amazing harmonies, and hooks galore. There is probably not a person alive who doesn't immediately recognize the intro to "I've Been Waiting" or the chorus to "Girlfriend". This was the sort of pop music that oozed emo before emo was cool! The other interesting thing about Sweet's Girlfriend was the backing band, featuring two very un-pop players, Robert Quine (Richard Hell & The Voidoids) and Richard Lloyd (Television) who gave the record some punky punch and added all sorts of unlikely guitar parts, which helped make Girlfriend so much more than just another commercial pop record. The band also featured some other equally unlikely contributions from folks who played with K.D. Lang, Velvet Crush, Scritti Politti, and Material as well as Mr. Lloyd Cole himself.
This swank reissue comes packaged in a deluxe double digipak with a slipcover and tons of photos and liner notes as well as a whole extra disc, featuring the companion to Girlfriend, Goodfriend, a disc of home demos, alternate versions, as well as killer covers of Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer" and John Lennon's "Isolation". Awesome!
The Tompkins Square label who puts out the Imaginational Anthem compilations (volume 2 of which is reviewed elsewhere on this list), has reissued the 1965 sole private press record of finger-picking guitarist Harry Taussig. A contemporary of John Fahey and Robbie Basho (Taussig's only other recording is on a 1967 Takoma label compilation featuring both Fahey and Basho), Taussig's repertoire explores blues, ragtime and Americana, covering songs from Reverend Gary Davis and Elizabeth Cotten as well as other traditional songs. Comparisons to Fahey will of course abound, but there are definite differences in their playing styles. Most notably Taussig's exploration of stark ragtime idioms and stricter adherence to songforms, leaving less room for the excursionary meditations that Fahey fostered.
While this reissue is remastered with original liner notes and photos, our only complaint about it is the lack of Taussig's back story. What happened to him? Is he still alive? Perhaps the mystery is what the title eludes to. Fate is Only Once.
When Erik Hoffman of Ground Fault hand-delivered this monumental 10LP box crammed full of the most guttural noise, splattered improv damage, cosmic drone headcrack, and low-brow Dada absurdism that California has to offer, he threatened that he could have made this thing even bigger. Fuck. Bigger than 10LPs with 20 different bands abusing your turntable? Yeah, fuck is right! In alphabetical order, the California box features Amps For Christ, The Cherry Point, Joe Colley, Control, Gerritt, GX Jupitter-Larsen, Moth Drakula, Open City, Oscillating Innards, Damion Romero, Rubber O Cement, Sixes, The Skaters, Solid Eye, Spastic Colon, Tralphaz, John Wiese, Xome, R.H.Y. Yau, and Yellow Swans. Sure you may say, Yellow Swans currently hold residency in Portland, so why the hell are they on this compilation? Details, details, details... FYI, they were Californians until a few months back... You already know if you need this.
The Cambodians have a long and troubled history, rife with oppression and persecution. Whether it's the Khmer Rouge, the French, the Siamese, the Vietnamese, and even the Americans, as a people, their survival was always in doubt. This strife resulted in a rich musical landscape, music being an escape, but also a means of storytelling and passing on history. A rich oral tradition imbues almost all Cambodian music. While past forays into Cambodian music have focused on Cambodian ROCK, the sort of reimagining of Western pop, resulting in off kilter, buzzing psychedelic Eastern pop versions of popular Western songs, this comp focuses more on the music of the ethnic minorities, simple instrumentation, mostly vocal, with gongs, simple stringed instruments and primitive bamboo flutes, but if anything the music is so much more passionate and unique. Tales of love and loss, war and death, bombings and of course the terrible aftermath of the Khmer Rouge.
The opening track is an old man, laying in a hammock, singing tales of local legends and his voices is totally amazing, a growling creaking, rumbling, super resonant hum, equal parts chanting and throat singing, while in the back ground, you can hear conversations, creaking porches, children laughing, birds chirping, in fact almost every track here is performed right on the spot, whether it's outside the house, in the front room, in a hammock, on the side of the road, always surrounded by the sound of life and other lives. The second track is performed by 5 old men, playing 5 large gongs, set up outside their house, a low keening vibration, soft muted melodies, dreamy and shimmering, a swirling soft soundpool while in the background children again laugh and play, adding a strange joyous effortlessness to the glistening drone, later a female vocalist sings over the top, a lilting, mournful lament. Elsewhere, a female midwife sings an acapella song, a delicate wavering croon, warbling and wavering, but so rich and beautiful, while voices swirl around her. Like she just decided to start singing, right there amidst a crowd of random passersby, which she probably did. Later, a love song, simple fingerpicked guitar and sweetly sad improvised female vocals, while on another track, a 10 stringed instrument made from bamboo and a hollowed out gourd is strummed and picked, creating a sparkling web of buzzing high end melodies and delicate high end tangles, while later five gong players unfurl a warm wash of simple steel drum like melody, accompanied by a male vocalist, a flute player and 8 female virgins who clap along and offer up a chant responding to the male vocals.
This is literally a stroll through another culture, observing and learning via music, and it feels like music is everywhere, in houses, on the street, in shops and on the shores of the river, people talk and laugh, play and work, always surrounded by music, clapping and singing, melody and harmony, completely mesmerizing. And obviously very very recommended.
Includes a big booklet with lots of photos and extensive liner notes.
Second Volume of American Primitive guitar explorations from both the old and new schools, showcasing the diverse styles of its strongest players. While the patron saint of this movement is still John Fahey, the resonant strains between generations exemplify how far the movement has grown while allowing each artist to retain their own voice. Representing the old school this time around are Billy Faier, Michael Chapman, Peter Lang (re-doing a piece from the early '70s), Fred Gerlach and a rare live recording of Robbie Basho from the Venus in Capricorn era. The New school is represented by James Blackshaw, Jose Gonzalez. local Berkeley muscian Sean Smith, Christina Carter from Charalambides, Jack Rose (also featured on Vol. 1), Jesse Spearhawk, and British Banjo player Sharron Kraus. From traditional Americana, to eastern inflected ragas, shimmering 12 string washes to minimalist banjo odes, this is a fine set of excursionary guitar.
Of all the Sublime Frequencies collections, the various 'Radio' compilations are definitely our favorites. But at the same time they are also maybe the most problematic, It seems somehow disingenuous to travel to another country, turn on the radio, record several hours worth of music and sound, come home, put those recordings on a cd and then sell them. Not just disingenuous but quite possibly dishonest. It also seems a little weird to be thrilled by all the 'crazy' sounds we hear on the radio in these various countries. A guilty pleasure, very much that aspect of cultural tourism. "The music there is SO WILD!! And SO WEIRD!!" And it seems inconceivable that someone from some other country would come to the US, and do the same thing, returning to their countries to release discs packed with shock jocks, and crappy pop music, and morning zoo's and dry NPR discussions and modern rock and Loveline. But you never know. Although part of the reason that something like that would probably NOT happen, is that American culture, from the music to the clothes to the television shows, is already so invasive, there's probably not a corner of the world where people aren't discussing Lost or Paris Hilton or Brad and Angelina's baby or rocking out to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the music and culture of these other countries does not have the same sort of universal reach. So it is actually quite a thrill to hear all of this amazing music, all of these voices, ads and commercials and songs. It's absolutely fantastic. It's just worth thinking about all that other stuff once in a while and realizing that in a sense, even just listening to these discs, we are guests, and we are digging the work and art, the livelihood and passion of hundreds of musicians and vocalists and deejays and artists. And we are digging it. A whole lot.
The first few 'Radio' compilations were a little too schizophrenic, only allowing us to hear a few seconds of a song before the dial was spun and we were bombarded by some new burst of musical randomness. It was pretty amazing in a totally overwhelming ADD short attention span sort of way, but they rectified that, realizing it was just as dizzying but way more satisfying if we got to hear whole songs. So here we are.
Radio Algeria. A sampling of wonderful sounds from the Mediterranean coast, all the way to the Saharan desert. According to the liner notes, the music represented here includes sacred Islamic traditional music, Berber folk, Andalusian Orchestral music, Tuareg, modern Arabic pop as well as Guesba, classic early Rai, Khabyle and Saharaui, ummm, sorry to say none of us actually know what any of those in the last batch sound like, but needless to say, like the rest of the 'Radio' series, this is a wild, eye opening ride through the airwaves of Algeria. Compiled from recordings made in 2005 of AM, FM and shortwave broadcasts, this is a heady mix of musics new and old, the sound is definitely Middle Eastern, with plenty of tracks sounding almost Bollywood, and a definite French music influence all over the place, the sounds range from modern sounding hip hop double dutch but with the melody played by a snake charmers flute, cheesy eighties schmaltz, groovy twangy buzzing dreamy psych pop, old timey fuzzed out Eastern jazz (like a Middle Eastern Django Reinhardt), killer sixties sounding fuzz rock, that almost sounds like the Butthole Surfers at points, groovy sing songy folk, MTV style romantic ballads, flamenco guitars, and crooned vocals, keening fiddles, tribal drums, some Middle Eastern sounding blues, with sweeping strings and weeping melodies, wild solo female vocals drenched in reverb and soaring, warm operatic male vocals, glossy melancholic pop, shuffling rhythms, strummed acoustic guitars, murky modern pop rock and militaristic big band marches, all interspersed with different variants of local and regional musics. All totally fascinating and completely overwhelming and one of the most amazing sonic travelogues ever! If only the stereos in our cars could pick up Algerian radio, we'd most likely never listen to anything else ever again!
SO RECOMMENDED!
Of all the Sublime Frequencies collections, the various 'Radio' compilations are definitely our favorites. But at the same time they are also maybe the most problematic, It seems somehow disingenuous to travel to another country, turn on the radio, record several hours worth of music and sound, come home, put those recordings on a cd and then sell them. Not just disingenuous but quite possibly dishonest. It also seems a little weird to be thrilled by all the 'crazy' sounds we hear on the radio in these various countries. A guilty pleasure, very much that aspect of cultural tourism. "The music there is SO WILD!! And SO WEIRD!!" And it seems inconceivable that someone from some other country would come to the US, and do the same thing, returning to their countries to release discs packed with shock jocks, and crappy pop music, and morning zoo's and dry NPR discussions and modern rock and Loveline. But you never know. Although part of the reason that something like that would probably NOT happen, is that American culture, from the music to the clothes to the television shows, is already so invasive, there's probably not a corner of the world where people aren't discussing Lost or Paris Hilton or Brad and Angelina's baby or rocking out to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers. But the music and culture of these other countries does not have the same sort of universal reach. So it is actually quite a thrill to hear all of this amazing music, all of these voices, ads and commercials and songs. It's absolutely fantastic. It's just worth thinking about all that other stuff once in a while and realizing that in a sense, even just listening to these discs, we are guests, and we are digging the work and art, the livelihood and passion of hundreds of musicians and vocalists and deejays and artists. And we are digging it. A whole lot.
The first few 'Radio' compilations were a little too schizophrenic, only allowing us to hear a few seconds of a song before the dial was spun and we were bombarded by some new burst of musical randomness. It was pretty amazing in a totally overwhelming ADD short attention span sort of way, but they rectified that, realizing it was just as dizzying but way more satisfying if we got to hear whole songs. So here we are.
Radio Thailand, two whole discs culled from 15 years of recordings, captured between 1989 and 2004. A wonderfully confusional blur of Thai radio craziness, and crazy it is. A glorious hodge podge of everything under the sun, including cheesy eighties Indian disco, bizarre Thai arena rock, with wailing guitar leads, and murky Casio style rhythms, English language radio announcements, funky hip hop rock with guttural Muppets like vocals and a braying donkey chorus, complete with Knight Rider synths, Thai style Miami bass, with bumping beats and rapid fire rapping, goofy funky ska, groovy late night lounge funk, old soundtrack music, fuzzy, old school soul with big boomy drums and sweet horns, weird American style rapid fire commercials, distorted shortwave transmissions, haunting otherworldly piano, what sounds like Thailand's answer to Humpty Hump, but with wild swaths of LOUD synthesizer, full on sitar jams, Japanese style pop, sixties girl group harmonies, groovy exotica, radio dramas, solo blues vocals, and all sorts of traditional Thai musics mixed in with this dizzying barrage of music and voice and sound.
So totally amazing!
Most of us have come to know the DJ as a behind the scenes mover and shaker, not so much the star attraction, but more of a journeyman, playing the records, not playing ON the records, but the DJ in the heyday of reggae and dub culture was very much right in front of the action. The main attraction in most cases. Often adding their own voice loud and proud over the top of whatever sounds happened to be spinning. Screaming, singing, rapping, goofing, adding much of the DJ's individual personality to the dubbed out grooves. Soul Jazz has once again used its master key to the Studio One vaults for this, the second collection of Studio One DJ's. Digging deeper into the dancehalls of Jamaica in the 70's and coming out with a bunch of gems. If you're a fan of all things Soul Jazz, Trojan, Dancehall and the like, this is absolutely essential.
The Secret Eye Label who hosted the latest Terrastock music festival in Providence RI this past April have put together this compilation of 11 exclusive tracks from some of the festivals highlighted acts such as Bardo Pond, Kinski, and the Magic Carpathians including many Secret Eye bands (surprise, surprise). While this compilation showcases some of the best acts of the neo-psych scene, from the overdriven space rock of Paik and Major Stars, and the abstracted shambolic noise of Avarus and The Spacious Mind, to the far flung folk of P.G Six and Fursaxa, it fails to completely convey the musical and generational diversity that is part of the festival's huge appeal. Revival acts such as Bridget St. John and Pearls before Swine are not included, while the psych-pop of Green Pajamas, the punk noise of Lightning Bolt and the acoustic traditions of Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, and Marissa Nadler are unrepresented. But that might be a lot to ask for from a single disc. So it's best not to look at this compilation as a cohesive festival document, but rather as a good solid dose of spacey psych majesty. Limited to 500 copies.
Ok, here's another one for ya from the nice new reissue series of albums by these '70s prog faves of ours, Van Der Graaf Generator. We're trying to list 'em all (eventually) just 'cause we think if you like prog or really any sort of unusual, emotional rock music you should at least give VDGG a try. If you make it to the end of the 12+ minute "Childlike Faith In Childhood's End" on this album, for instance, chances are you will be a convert! We'll admit they might be a bit of an acquired taste, 'cause VDGG are darker and weirder than the general run of classic British prog a la Yes and Genesis and even (closest comparison) King Crimson. And even if you're down with the "usual" blend of epic length songs, pastoral pop, symphonic keyboards, virtuosic playing, and complex compositions, with VDGG you've also gotta handle a good deal of saxophone and the exceedingly dramatic vocal stylings of singer Peter Hammill. So you've been warned. But if you shop at AQ you probably like a challenge!
The prog rock juggernaut known as Still Life was VDGG's sixth album, dating from 1976 (during the band's second-wind peak era in the mid-'70s) and is full of all the poetry and pain you should expect from a classic VDGG album, all the grand melody and raw fist-clenched vocal monologues, the extremes of gentleness and angsty intensity... yes indeed a fine place to plunge into the VDGG oeuvre if you haven't already.
It's hard to explain, but as much as we love the flash and fantasy of other prog bands, like ELP for instance, VDGG are just the more psychological, serious artists.
This reissue comes remastered, with copious liner notes and printed lyrics and a previously released bonus track -- "Gog" (10:26) recorded live in Wales in '75.
The launch of yet another cd-r label, this one, cleverly titled Seedy R!, is a sub label of the already kick ass PseudoArcana label run by Antony Milton. This disc is supposedly the result of a van trip up the Eastern coast of Australia, in one tiny van, packed to the rafters with Milton as well as the dronepsychrock band 6Majik9, and of course musical instruments, fast food containers, dirty clothes, sleeping bags, lots of pot, and most importantly, a tape recorder!
The result is an abstract lo-fi tribal jam, a stripped down Wicker Man on wheels, a Sunburned No Neck road trip, the air thick with smoke, as well as dense swirls of keening snakecharmer like melody, detuned guitar scrabble, tin can percussion, fuzzy kazooscapes, long dreamy drones, but instead of any sort of effects, the entire recording session is swathed in that immediately recognizable 'driving-down-the-road-with-the-windows-wide-open' sound, a natural delaychorusreverbdistortion, that adds a fuzzy hiss and a whipping whir to these skeletal psych jams. Pretty dang cool.
Packaged in a brown paper sleeve, with a hand stamped 'R' on one side, and a map of said van journey on the other.
Final pressing of this super limited tour cd-r from Spencer of the Skaters. We only managed to get a handful of these, so act fast, they'll be gone if you blink.
Those of you familiar with the Skaters, already know they are masters of the free floating murk, clattery chaos harnessed into dense smears of sound.
Spencer by himself doesn't stray that far from the Skaters' sound. Maybe adding more texture and melody to his murky muddy soundscapes. Bells are chopped into stuttery whistles, melodies are picked apart and flung into dizzying swirls, voices and electronics float in a thick miasma of whirring distortion and glistening shimmer. Then it sounds like the whole thing was dunked in mud and rolled in dirt and leaves and then left in the sun to sort of ferment, giving off all sorts of druggy, vision inducing fumes. The tracks are clipped and chopped and strangely edited only adding to the druggy bliss.
SUPER LIMITED!!!!
It's hard not to love the Wizar'd. C'mon, "Wizar'd"??? Exactly. What the fuck? Is it a verb, like "you'll get Wizar'd?" Or is it just some ancient spelling of Wizard, taken from some old dusty book of spells. Is Wizar'd darker and more evil and mysterious than the tired old traditional Wizard? Either way, the Wizar'd traffic in classic epic old school doom. Or according to the cd booklet "Crushing Gothic Slime". Massive plodding true doom from down under. The Aussies explore their inner Sabbath, each track rife with plodding tempos, mournful minor key melodies, slow motion downtuned riffs, soaring clean vocals, folky acoustic breakdowns, stonery grooves, psychdoom guitar leads, even some soaring King Diamond-ish wails, tons of reverb and loads of haunting dark ambience, think Witchfinder General, Candlemass, Reverend Bizarre, Trouble and of course Black Sabbath. The first time we listened to this, it sounded a bit too doom derivative, and the vocals were really strange, almost TOO strange, but the more we listen to this, the more we find ourselves returning again and again and again, and now those weird vocals, sort of Ozzy meets the chantlike drone of Om are quite possibly our favorite part. Recommended for the demented and doomed!
If you've been paying attention to the Aquarius New Arrivals list (c'mon folks, it's summer now but the school of AQ is still in session, and you're gonna get quizzed on this list later) you'll have come across our recent review of a cd by a heavy, rhythmic British avant-rock outfit with the odd name of Hey Colossus. A great album for those into sludgy, repetitive riffing, maybe like the Melvins meet Circle but more aggro than that.
Hey Colossus already employ no less than three guitars to make their noise but on this vinyl-only EP they've teamed up with another UK band called Woe (a skronky, heavy duty improv jazz beast) to get really really loud and ugly/pretty on two tracks, one of 'em a cover of Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way" believe it or not!! With nine musicians -- including two drummers, two trumpeters, two bassists, keyboards and all those guitars -- this has got some serious avant-heft. "In A Silent Way" has never sounded so ominous and heavy, and the flip is full of militaristic rumble as well. Great stuff! Limited to just 200 copies, on nice thick vinyl, and we have but a handful.
We have always preferred Yokota's ambient works to his more danceable efforts. It's hard to beat the sublime and playful shimmer of Symbol or the delicate kosmiche vibe of Sakura. On Wonder Waltz, Yokota tries to bridge these two worlds that orbit each other but it never quite touches down. The results are mixed. With too many ideas, and too many female guest vocalists (Kahimi Karie among others), the music tries too hard for likeability. While there is some really pretty stuff here, a lot of it ends up sounding like music for upscale car commercials.
Joining many of their contemporaries who've hooked into that smooth '70s soft rock revival, Zero 7's third full length takes the UK duo of Sam Hardaker and Henry Binns further away from their early downtempo groovi-tronica leanings. The Garden is a lush, silken (but not overly slick) production with much more focus on traditional song structures, not to mention more engaging personality courtesy of guest vocalists Jose Gonzalez and Sia Furler. For folks who dig the distinct breezy Euro-mellowness of artists such as Air, Kings Of Convenience and Nicolai Dunger.
