Sometimes it's hard to know exactly what to say about a record. Especially a black metal record. Sure it buzzes and it's grim and frosty, there are fuzzy guitars, blasting drums. But it's in the way each of those elements are employed that make the music special. French one man black metal outfit Malcuidant takes those most obvious of black metal sounds and whip them into a truly mesmerizing swirl of Burzumic black metal. One of the coolest things about Malcuidant is the drummer, who can unleash a wicked blazing fast blast beat, as well as a dizzying double kick, but the double kick only comes in here and there, so a keening riff will buzz in the upper register for ages, almost like the band is being broadcast through a transistor radio, when all of a sudden a flurry of double kick will bring in a fucking wall of low end that is like a demonic black bulldozer grinding your bones to dust. And just as quick as they swooped in, they fade out, leaving more keening tinny black metal high end. But don't get the wrong idea, this is not a tinny lo-fi black metal, no not at all, L'Hymne de la Ghilde is a total blur of warm thick buzz, it just gets even heavier and thicker when the wall of double kicks drops in. But it's not just the drums, the guitars are insane and lightning fast as well, with the band occasionally dropping out to let a little riff or lick twist and squirm in space before the band drops back in with a pummelling wave of blasting blackness. And finally the vocals, a inhuman tortured shrieking VERY reminiscent of Weakling, sprawled above the spiked bed of prickly fuzz, the anguished wailing another thick sonic layer in the Malcuidant's bubbling black brew.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL. WE HAVE ABOUT 20 COPIES...
What's in a name? Well, when the name of your band is Marblebog, and the name of your record is Csendhajnal, pretty much everything is in the name. We were sold before we'd even laid ears on it. But we're happy to report, the dark sorrowful sounds within more than live up to the bizarre monicker.
Marblebog specialize in that super fuzzy mournful black metal, midtempos and blurry hypnotic guitars, every track a slowly swinging seasick waltz, so completely droning and mesmerizing. The metal buried within churning clouds of thick murky ambience. The guitars not always sharp and jagged and buzzing, but sometimes just distant grumbles and whirs, buried beneath dense swirls of swooshing Tangerine Dream synths, while the drums sort of plod along waaaaaaaay back in the murk. And the vocals, woah, some of the most anguished, tortured, howling, damned-soul sort of howls we've ever heard, think Weakling, Silencer, Bethlehem, Sterbend, a near hysterical shrieking. But in Marblebog the vocals sound almost out of place, making them that much more harrowing and depressive. Imagine a lonely overgrown graveyard, weeds, flowers, ivy tangled in the bars of the wrought iron gates, the sky a dim grey, overcast, pregnant with the possibility of storm, the sound is not wind or birds or passing cars, instead it's a depressive dirge, not harsh or super aggressive, not even really buzzing, more a thick blanket of grey fuzz smothering everything in gorgeously miserable murkiness, then right in the middle of the graveyard, a mysterious figure is pushing his way through the dirt, a rotting creature of the night, crawling up from the grave, emitting a fowl hellish shriek of utter and absolute terror, while thick tendrils of graveyard mist swirl up around him, the vocals a glaring and harrowing blight on the otherwise peaceful (yet still dark and depressing) world of the dead.
The vocal-less tracks on Csendhajnal are downright lovely, slow, meandering synthscapes, of low end melodic miserablism, and slow drifting dark shimmer, like a more ambient Skepticism or Burzum, some haunting, otherworldly new age dooooom. But even the more properly metal tracks here are imbued with the same sort of new age dreaminess and slow motion, end of the world doominess. So awesome.
This disc collects the debut cd (from back in 2003) from this Hungarian horde and tacks on a whole bunch of killer extra tracks including the Nostalgic Moods In Grimwoods demo from 2002, the Arhat promo from 2002, and the rehearsal track "Hatefullmoon" from 2003, most of which were released as super limited tapes and/or splits. Killer cover art too!!!
SUPER LIMITED! 555 copies, each disc hand numbered!
Latest issue of the punk rock bible. This time around, on the cover: Mika Miko (?), inside: The Fall, Cardiac Arrest, Digger & The Pussycats, Massmord, Insect Warfare, The Four Slicks, The Fallout, PAWNS, punk rock news, scene reports for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, a Swedish scene report, tons and tons of columns, including one by former mailorder master Elliott, lots of letters, news, politics, book reviews, record reviews and MORE!
The amazing Drone Records label, run by Stefan Knappe of Maeror Tri / Troum, has been quietly releasing super limited, hand made slabs of gorgeous drone music for years now. Mostly 7", always vinyl (although there will soon be a 2cd collection of early out of print singles on Andee's tUMULt label), each disc an ultra personal exploration of the drone, sometimes soft and dreamlike, sometimes harsh and noisy, but always beautiful. Recently, Drone has launched a new series, 10"s this time, with a very complicated premise: "A concept that embraces the prospect of infinite possibilities for artists to create music about the intangible such as: the unnameable, the unspeakable, the unthinkable, the unidentifiable, etc. Various aspects related to "The Unknown". Sound artists and artwork designers were invited to work on the theme of the "grey matter" / the "dark continent" surrounding us & within us. Transforming this paradoxical idea into acoustic and visual objectifications." Phew. Pretty heady stuff. But these first three installments are up to the task, creating dark and disturbing and truly though provoking dronemusic. We can hardly wait for the rest of the series.
Up first is sound artist Daniel Menche, whose contribution buzzes and crackles and is not as minimal as one might expect. Metallic insect like buzzing rings and reverberates beneath streaks of keening high end and upper register pulses. The disparate sounds slowly blend into one another and the disc approaches actual NOISE, a wall of lawnmower roar wrapped in short circuiting electronics and swirling sonic loops. The B side steps way back into the darkness, unveiling a gorgeous and creepy piano dirge, all low end, the notes piling up, overtones upon overtones, building into huge swells of thrum and throb, bathed in a prickly cloud of hiss and static and white noise.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Pressed on brown and black swirled vinyl.
We sure are going to miss Monarch. In a black and sludgy sonic world, they were a little ray of sunshine. Errr. Well, not really. But they did manage to infuse their tarpit doomdeathdronedirges with a goofy sense of humor, without turning Monarch into an ironic pisstake.
So here it is. The final missive from France's Monarch. Possibly the world's only female fronted deathdoomdronedirge outfit. Imagine Khanate or Corrupted or Bunkur or Moss, fronted by a slight young French woman, in a sensible skirt and blouse, hair pulled back in a pony tail, somehow emitting the sort of vulgar demonic yowls that usually come from some stooped hunchbacked axe wielding hairy beast. Thus is the magic of Monarch. their records are decorated with cute doodles, cartoons of burning churches, big eyed skulls, and hearts everywhere. They have an unhealthy obsession with Hello Kitty, their email name is sanriosabbath for chrissakes! How can you not help but be cuted-out by these cute little doomsters? Well, the massive pummeling wall of headsplitting ultra doom might be a start, the impossibly glacial plodding thud and the ear shredding sheets of corrosive feedback help too. However mislead you might be by the cuteness on the outside, be prepared to have your insides torn out and your ears filled with black tar by the caustic corrosive funereal doom on the inside. Easily one of the slowest heaviest dooooooooom bands in the world, this is quite a swansong. Two side long tracks. Each so slow it's almost ambient. It's a bit like listening to SUNNO))) or Earth 2 when some caveman drummer decides to crash the party and start drumming slowly along. Riffs stretched out into huge droning smears of black rumble, ringing and reverberating, pulsing and wavering unsteadily before the next ten ton riff drops. Both tracks are slow plodding ultradoomscapes, like the ultimate doom metal intro stretched into actual songs, smeared across both sides of the record. The vocals don't even come in until the song is almost over, a shrieking black coda, after twenty minutes of slow burning doom drone tension. The B-side features some distant Ozzy-like crooning way off in the distance before the scowling growl kicks in. So slow and heavy. On the AQ doooooomscale, Monarch rank more O's than we could possibly include in this review! So sad these doomlords (and doomlady!) are hanging it up. But what a way to go. Essential doom. If you like Esoteric, Boris, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Earth, Esoteric, Skepticism, Eyehategod, Marzuraan, Atavist, Catacombs, Khanate, Pale Horse, Monument Of Urns and you don't have any Monarch in your collection, get with the program! Or else we'll have Miss Monarch come over there and stomp you to death with her Hello Kitty Keds!
Beautifully packaged in thick black sleeves with red text, the cover is a doodle of a big eyed skull being stabbed by big knives, over a glowing heart. Includes a big poster, a Monarch calendar, marking the dates from 6/6/6 until 7/7/7, the year of the Monarch!! Each lp hand numbered in metallic marker.
LIMITED TO 666 COPIES. WE GOT 50!! It's already out of print so once these are gone they are gone for good.
Konrad Becker released only a couple of albums in the early '80s under his moniker Monoton. The modest editions of his recordings relegated him to inevitable obscurity, until in 1996 The Wire published a list charting the "100 Records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)," with Wire writer Biba Kopf citing the Monotonprodukt 07 20y++, second Monoton record, on that list. Released in 1980, Blau is the first album from Monoton, sparking curiosity as to what the other Monotonprodukt releases would have been with this album being Monotonprodukt 02 and the second album being Monotonprodukt 07. Where are the other 4? And when will we get to hear them?! Regardless, Becker's Monoton produced a hyper-bleak precursor of electronica, bridging the kosmische sounds of Cluster and Conrad Schnitzler with the more contemporary sounds of Pan Sonic and Coh. Slow motion rhythm boxes offer skeletal structures upon which Becker adds little more than minimalist synthetic percolations, metallic arppegiations, and Spartan bass tones, swirling in a black-hole dub production coldly anticipating what Pole would do some 20 years later. A very welcome reissue.
We're sure that there are more than a few modern music nerds out there who hang on every word printed in The Wire, so the inevitable reissue of anything by Monoton will no doubt thrill those avid Wire readers. Of course, not everyone keeps one eye on the Wire; so allow us to reiterate what that fine British rag had penned about Monoton nearly a decade ago. The Wire had published a list, entitled "100 Records that set the world on fire (when no one was listening)," which included plenty of Wire favorites (Derek Bailey, Faust, Fushitsusha, Nurse With Wound, Bernhard Gunter, etc.) as well as a handful of brilliant records which apparently nobody else had ever heard. Monoton's Monotoprodukt 07 found its way onto that list of 100 seminal albums, despite the fact that barely anyone actually owned copies of this self-released album of Germanic proto-electronica. Wire scribe Biba Kopf was one of those lucky few and certainly said it better than we could have that this album "is so alive with the pulses that triggered many electronicas to come, from techno through trance to Mego's creeping static, you could make a case for Konrad Becker's guruhood. Yet for all its prescient washed out tones, threadbare textures and minimalist rigour, it has the edge on much that followed. Adopting an imperious art stance towards mainstreams and margins alike, Becker cast a cold analytic eye over electronica's urfathers, picking up on Suicide's jittertronic urgency, if not their melodrama, and DAF's throbbing sequencers, but with the sex threat removed, which he patched into his own crackling circuits, hissing vistas and tumbling beatstreams."
Lo and behold, the good people at Oral in Canada (who also happen to be the same folks who curate the Mutek electronic music festival) were kind enough to reissue Monotonprodukt 07, complete with a beefed-up re-mastered sound, making for a very cool and highly recommended listen!
In our minds, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century was a man with a long white beard and a Viking helmet on his head -- Louis Hardin (aka Moondog). Whether it was how he incorporated field recordings into his compositions, unleashed riveting vocal cannons or created confusional worlds of percussion that were light-years ahead of their time, he had such a singular touch and far reaching vision, it's no surprise he's an all time AQ favorite!
While we love so many avant composers of the 20th century, there tends to be an undeniable academic angle to their work which sometimes leaves us a bit cold. Moondog on the other hand employed such a playful approach to his work. Whether he was building his own instruments, creating new scales, experimenting with field recordings, inserting fun wordplay into otherwise austere pieces, you get this amazing sense of playfulness, childlike wonder and a totally unique strangely sophisticated kind of joy. The outsider that he was, Moondog answered to no one. No movement, no school, no tradition. He took his love, appreciation and deep-seated knowledge of classical music, his poetic mind, and his free spirit and created sounds that were like nothing of its time. Losing his eyesight at an early age he began writing scores in Braille. Like most truly special artists, he spent much of his life in relative obscurity, he spent much of the 50's and 60's on New York street corners where he would sell his poems, record the sounds of daily life, and soak in all aspects of his atmosphere. Most New Yorkers just thought they were walking by some crazy homeless guy in a Viking costume, they had no idea they were passing one of the most brilliant musical minds of the last century. Thanks to the help of some of his big fans like Janis Joplin, who covered "All Is Loneliness" on her first outing with Big Brother Holding Company, he got a record deal with Columbia and eventually recorded with the London Symphony, and then spent the last 20+ years of his life in Germany where a rich family supported him while he continued to make music, up until the time of his death. His influence runs so deep and continues to spread among the musical underground, but also slowly but surely permeates into mainstream music. There is talks of a tribute album coming soon, in the '90s many hip-hop and electronic producers sampled his works and many avant electronic folks were definitely influenced by his strange musicks, including Mr. Scruf, DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin. Antony and The Johnsons have been doing an amazing version of "All Is Loneliness" in their live show, and you can hear echoes of Moondog's sounds in everyone from Rhys Chatham, to Jon Brion, to Steve Reich, to Philip Glass and even The Residents. The cost on this collection finally dropped down from a prohibitively steep import price so now we finally can list this and urge you to let these 36 songs introduce you to what will no doubt be a life long love affair with one of our favorite musical minds of all time!
Want to hear a wonderful "glitch-banjo-drone" recording? This is it! New Englander Geoff Mullen's impressive debut album thrtysxtrllnmnfstns is a homemade electro-acoustic soundscape of steel strings and swarms of lovely abstract drones, made with guitar, banjo, electronics and amplification. Geoff plays broken-down, Takoma-esque American Primitive fingerpicking style, rambling over a bed of insectlike buzz and stuttering static. Melodic figures drift in and out, his old tyme instrumentation often receding fully into the misty fascination of the crackly drone-zone he's created... warm and fuzzy and alien and really pleasant! Back porch folk electronic textures, both soothing and mysterious. Recommended, 'specially to fans of Fennesz, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Loren Chasse, Tim Hecker -- and John Fahey at his most experimental. (Probably P. Jeck and Wm. Basinski too, though this isn't as looped-sounding.)
Cool packaging, including in lieu of regular cd booklet, a hand-sewn fabric pouch containing a few random photos.
Oh boy! A DVD filmed at San Francisco's famed Musee Mechanique, that fantastic collection of turn of the century penny arcade machines!! Cool. We figure that many of our customers who've bought the cds of music from the Musee that we sell (three volumes so far, you'll find 'em elsewhere on our site) haven't actually had the chance to visit the place themselves, so this is perfect. And if you HAVE been to the Musee -- especially the old Cliff House location -- you'll want this for the memories. And it'll make you want to head on down there soon enough again to visit in person, so it's double the nostagia trip (for the early 1900's, and for the last time you were there).
For those who haven't even heard of the place, basically the Musee Mechanique, now located on Pier 45 down at Fisherman's Wharf, is filled with coin-operated mechanical amusements ranging from music boxes and player-piano type contraptions (several with a orchestra's worth of sounds) to various games of skill and chance to quaint "peep shows" to fortune tellers to animated dioramas (what are called "working models") to Musee mascot Laughing Sal... all are to be found on this DVD, filmed in action, as collector/curator Edward Zelinsky takes viewers on a guided tour of the Musee's many attractions, even stopping to try his hand at the "Love Tester". Sometimes he talks about when/where/how he ended up acquiring the machine he's showing off, but just as often he just drops the quarter in and gives a "hey, wow, gee whiz" reaction just like a kid.
The documentary has its cheesy (but charming) moments -- someone gets carried away with video effects a few times, for instance -- but we're mighty pleased with it overall. It's very cool to get a glimpse at the inner workings of both the Musee and its machines. Maybe our favorite thing about this DVD is the way the camera really gets up close and personal with the "working models", taking the viewer into the scene (fire house, farm, graveyard, and our favorite, the opium den!!) in a way that you can't really experience even in person. Especially with that creepy opium den diorama, we were reminded of a Brothers Quay film or Tool video...
Ed Zelinsky passed away in 2004 (his tour was filmed when the Musee was still at the Cliff house) but his collection is in the capable hands of his son Daniel, who had been running the Musee and fixing the machines for many years already, and appears in several of the "extras" included. Total running time 68:45.
We were (and heck, still are) HUGE fans of avant abstract folk outfit The Tower Recordings. And we've tried desperately to keep up with Matt Valentine's post-TR output, but it's been tough as most of his recorded output has been relegated to ultra limited cd-r's and short run vinyl. So finally, we get a not so limited, and seriously hefty dose of Valentine's new psychedelic folk direction, with his long time musical partner Erika Elder and his new musical sidekicks the Bummer Road.
Two discs, jam packed with dreamy druggy OUT THERE free folk psychedelia. Hints of Tower Recordings past do surface here and there, but the sounds on Mother Of Thousands are way more dense and dizzy. Slippery spacey squiggles float like motes of dust over a warm whirling landscape of mumbled atonal guitar, stuttering alternate tuning strum, super-processed electric guitar whir, wheezing harmonica, lilting falsetto vocals, washed out distorted whirls of crumbling amp buzz, a gorgeously laid back, blissed out afternoon sunlight back porch drug drenched slow motion moonlight abstract folk jam.
The second disc takes all the same elements but weaves them into lengthy minimal buzz drenched ragas. Mysterious sounds swoop and swoon over slowly unfurling melodies, warm layers of harmonica and buzzing steel strings drift over a deconstructed free folk, with disembodied ghostlike voices, gurgling drones, reverb drenched female vocals, the final 20+ minute track is one slow burning meditation equal parts rumbling whir and gentle minor key strumming. Quite lovely.
Valentine and his fellow folkies, Mo' Jiggs, Sparrow Wildchild, Nemo Bidstrup, Tim Barnes and Samara Lubelski take a few moments out to reimagine some killer covers, Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton and Reverend Gary Davis, but soon return to their mesmerizingly freeform drift and drone and croon.
Packaged in a super deluxe, ultra thick gatefold, each cd in a woven Japanese style inner sleeve, the sleeve a mini lp style cd gatefold, with a metallic silver printed insert. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
Not only do the Grey Daturas kick up a serious noiserock ruckus, they also run their own cd-r label, the mysteriously titled Diagnosis... Don't! There are three new releases, and we managed to get a handful of each.
This is a super limited tour only cd-r from the sweet voiced folk chanteuse Marissa Nadler and features not only a handful of live tracks featuring Nadler accompanied by organ, but also features unreleased 4 track recordings, as well as outtakes from her two brilliant full lengths, Ballads Of Living And Dying and The Saga Of Mayflower May.
All the tracks here are gorgeous (of course), especially the live tracks, soft tangled steel string guitar and Nadler's dreamy vocals, all hovering above a thick soft wash of droning organ. The four track recordings are lovely too, extra lo-fi but thus super intimate, tape hiss and recording crackle making Nadler's already timeless music sound even more from some lost and mysterious past.
Super limited, already out of print, we got a bunch but they won't last. Packaged in cool handmade sleeves, a little hole in the textured paper cover through which another layer of colored paper is visible. Includes a photocopied insert as well.
We mentioned in the past that EM records just might be our favorite new record label. They also have pretty much clinched the title of MOST CONFUSINGLY ECLECTIC RECORD LABEL EVER. Their catalog is massive, but even just looking at only the discs we've reviewed so far, your head will spin and your ears will spew smoke just like those old cartoons. Let's see, so far we've got freaked out sixties free jazz, musical saws, space age exotica, cut up tape birdsong symphonies, bizarre seventies psychedelic krautrock (from the USA), lost Australian dub, experimental tape music and of course MORE AND MORE SAWS. What the heck is it with the musical saw? EM Records (and Japanese music fans in general) seem to have an inordinate love of the singing saw.
It's easy to see why though. A high keening lonesome wail that imbues whatever music it's accompanying with a ghostly, old timey, dreamlike, melancholy vibe. This record from the bizarrely named Noahlewis' Mahlon Taits is not some recently discovered, unearthed 78 rpm record from the thirties or forties, some dusty old scratched up slab of wax, stashed in the bottom of an old trunk in the basement of some house in the country for the last 8 decades. Although it does definitely sound like it. Nope. Noahlewis' Mahlon Taits are a modern ensemble, channeling musical ghosts and sonic spirits through an eclectic array of old time instruments, weaving, dreamlike, otherworldly soundscapes of old time jazz and slow smoldering ballads, warm and warbly, just like listening to some scratchy old 78, but performed live.
Brings to mind the band on some doomed ocean liner, the bar band at that mysterious bar at the end of the world. People are sitting in corners, heads held low in dark booths, couples slow dancing, a row of regulars slouched over the bar. Very cinematic and atmospheric. Flutes and violas, guitar, accordion, piano, cello, shuffling jazz drums, banjo and ukulele, and of course musical saw. The fiddles creak and keen, pianos tinkle, the cellos and violas weave soft fluttering backgrounds, melodies are dimly lit and drift wraithlike through the smoky jazzscapes, there are even a few moments of blurping jug music, but above it all is the singing saw. Its haunting theremin-like siren song soaring one moment, whispering and shimmering the next. So totally lovely. Six Pieces For Dancing immediately transports you to another time, another world, it's like stepping into some old tattered photograph, straightening your ascot and top hat, handing the doorman your cane and overcoat, grabbing a drink and heading out to the dancefloor, just as the band in the corner starts up again. So cool!
The amazing Drone Records label, run by Stefan Knappe of Maeror Tri / Troum, has been quietly releasing super limited, hand made slabs of gorgeous drone music for years now. Mostly 7", always vinyl (although there will soon be a 2cd collection of early out of print singles on Andee's tUMULt label), each disc an ultra personal exploration of the drone, sometimes soft and dreamlike, sometimes harsh and noisy, but always beautiful. Recently, Drone has launched a new series, 10"s this time, with a very complicated premise: "A concept that embraces the prospect of infinite possibilities for artists to create music about the intangible such as: the unnameable, the unspeakable, the unthinkable, the unidentifiable, etc. Various aspects related to "The Unknown". Sound artists and artwork designers were invited to work on the theme of the "grey matter" / the "dark continent" surrounding us & within us. Transforming this paradoxical idea into acoustic and visual objectifications." Phew. Pretty heady stuff. But these first three installments are up to the task, creating dark and disturbing and truly though provoking dronemusic. We can hardly weight for the rest of the series.
Third in this first batch of releases (along with Asia Nova and Daniel Menche) is the mysterious Belgian troop Noise-Makers Fifes. using homebuilt instruments and utilizing choreographed performances, NMF unleash, soft billowing clouds of glistening high end, minimal percussion, bird songs and outdoor ambience. Incorporating live recordings, the first side sounds like some mad sonic alchemist, performing all manner of mysterious and minimal sound rituals at the heart of the dark forest. Like a slightly more industrial Jewelled Antler. The B side is based on a series of field recordings of insects in Kenya and the result is a wide swath of ultra ambience, the sort of quiet music that truly requires deep listening. Occasionally sounds collide, and some bizarre reaction takes place causing the tranquility to buckle, a jagged upheaval os stuttering lurching glitchery, before drifting off again into near nothingness.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Pressed on cloudy clear swirled vinyl.
In May 2005, Steven Stapleton arranged for three performances in Vienna for his grimly aquatic Nurse With Wound composition Salt Marie Celeste, but he was quick to announce that those performances were not to be billed as Nurse With Wound gigs, as a long-awaited NWW return to the stage would not occur til a year later here in San Francisco. One has to wonder if those shows should now be qualified as NWW performances as recordings of those very performances found here on Soundpooling are now credited to Nurse With Wound. Details, details, details.
At the time, Stapleton had been working on the Echo Poeme series, as an intimately creepy affair for disembodied voices, a soundworld of appearing and disappearing vocals, female wraiths of breath, half-melodies, and fragmented proclamations. Inevitably, some of those same sounds churn within the relentless, creaking swells, easily identified as coming from Salt Marie Celeste. Of course, Stapleton would never allow himself to simply offer a perfunctory recreation of any of his previous recordings for a live setting and employed a gaggle of audio misfits to inject their own seasick madness into the oceanic themes of Salt Marie Celeste. Colin Potter, as always, was present alongside Matt Waldron (aka irr. app. (ext.)), Andrew Liles, and Diana Rogerson (aka Chrystal Belle Scrodd). The quintet offered a panoply of lunar vibrations, mechanically squawking birds, tightly wound clatter, eerily plucked strings, and damp atmospheres to complement and augment the original recordings of Salt Marie Celeste for an equally haunted result. With numerous bootlegs of these performances floating around the internet, Stapleton and co. wisely offered the official version of Soundpooling with an unreleased studio track called "In Swollen Silence" which extracted bloodcurdling exhortations from Frieda Abtan's ominously growling voice as a surreal bout of violence to counterpoint the sublime unease of the live sessions. Very nice indeed.
Scott "Wino" Weinrich. Ok, he's maybe a -wee- bit overrated, but after all these years definitely deserving of his status as stoner metal's number one guitar hero and favorite frontman, a true "lifer", going strong today in not one but two bands, Place Of Skulls and The Hidden Hand. His career stretches back into the '80s, when he fronted SoCal doom legends Saint Vitus for a spell, a job he got on account of his reputation from his original, also now legendary band The Obsessed from Maryland. He then left Vitus to reform The Obsessed, recording this album, Lunar Womb, in 1991 for the German doom label Hellhound, which somehow led to Wino, incredibly enough, winding up on major label with The Obsessed's next album, The Church Within (Columbia, 1994). The post-grunge major label indie rock feeding frenzy of the early nineties somehow swept a lot of surprising signings, and I guess it helped that the harDCcore scene was always singing Wino's praises (in fact, a blurb from Ian MacKaye appears on this reissue), funnily enough considering his tattooed, drug-fiending, dirtbag heavy metal biker persona. Anyway, The Church Within is out of print, and with Hellhound long since defunct as well, so too has Lunar Womb been unavailable. Now Meteor City and 20 Buck Spin (who handle the vinyl) step in to rectify the situation in regards to that album, much like Southern Lord did with Saint Vitus's V (another lost Hellhound release featuring Wino).
Well served by Wino's distinctively gruff, authoritative vox and lead guitar prowess, Lunar Womb is a tuneful, mid-tempo slab of chunky head-nodding heaviness that should have all heshers (and closet-heshers) happily rockin' out. Almost as prescient of QOTSA as it is derivative of Sabbath, this is a post-punk, more-metallic variant on the grunge of its era, with plentiful and catchy riffola, some tricky parts, and a definite downer vibe overall -- though not quite so wasted and psychedelic as was Saint Vitus. Maybe it does make sense that Lunar Womb would lead some LA label suit to think The Obsessed could take it to the next level. CoC did after all.
'Nuff said, really -- if you like any of Wino's current outfits, or were a fan of the several albums he released with his post-Obsessed comeback band Spirit Caravan, and you don't already have this, you'll want it for sure!! (Likewise if you're into Kyuss and/or Goatsnake, which also have familial connections with The Obsessed...)
Oh, and this cd reissue boasts liner notes by Joe Carducci of "Rock And The Pop Narcotic" fame.
Ol' Crazy Fingers (not really what they call him) Mick Barr is baaack. He of Orthrelm, Octis, Crom Tech, etcetera fame, a true fretboard wizard for the punkish underground avant-core set. If Lightning Bolt were Metallica, Mick Barr'd be Yngwie. Or something like that... y'know, it's hard to make a lot of sense when your brain is being subjected to the bumblebee chamber metal sounds of Ocrilm, so cut us a break. This latest Mick Barr masterpiece is a solo project, all three of its overdubbed Gibson SG guitar tracks laid down by Mick hisself in a maddening density of notes and harmonies, droning sheets and shards of sound. This is massive, and maniacal. Anoint is a seven-part composition for excited strings, a one-man Glenn Branca-esque guitar symphony done shred style. A beautiful, beautiful thing... though you can imagine it being recorded, and listened to, in the confines of a padded cell!
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
Their debut last year, Variations On A Theme, was heralded by many as the second coming of Sabbathy stoner/doom legends Sleep. No surprise, considering that Om consists of two thirds of Sleep, and pretty much sounds like two thirds of Sleep too. Same low-end bass (Al Cisneros), thundering drums (Chris Hakius), and druggy, chant-like vocals (Al again, stepping up to the mic). All that's missing is the guitar (Sleep guitarist Matt Pike is busy with High On Fire right now). We gave that album the thumbs up, won over by the psychedelic trance-like heaviness of their jams and their mantrically soothing yet (to us) unintentionally amusing singing, which made us giggle 'cause it just never let up, delivering endless deadpan lyrics of cosmic hippy nonsense in a zoned-out monotone. We don't want to say it was so bad it was good, 'cause it really wasn't bad, but there was some of that kind of bad/good alchemy going on. And we ended up lovin' it.
And of course, the resemblance to old faves Sleep helped too.
Now Al and Chris are back with the second Om opus. It's simultaneously a heckuva lot like their debut but even better somehow. Productionwise, yes. And also perhaps 'cause while the two-piece line-up on Variations sounded like Sleep without the guitar, and maybe (heck, definitely) would have been even better with a guitarist, now they've made that lack of guitar seem more the ways things should be, by getting more and more hushed and spacious and mimimal here, thereby making it seem like just bass and drums is enough, not like something's missing. They've made a virtue out of a necessity, realizing that by really adopting a "less is more" aesthetic they'd be playing to their strength. And it works. Listen to it straight through (you'll want to... it's two tracks, about 33 minutes) and you'll find it quite floatational, even without chemical assistance. This riff-repetitive spaceout drone dirge drug is all you need. And Al's lyrics remain occultic, obtuse and slightly absurd, giving this the effect of a hypnosis tape meant to help build your vocabulary (along with heightening your conciousness). He uses such everyday words as "clesiast", "epison", "aurican", "tunnement", and "agurate". It's heavy rock that requires a heavy dictionary to decipher!
So if you liked the first OM, you'll love this. And if you weren't sure before, definitely check this one out. As with their first album, file with Sleep's Jerusalem, Electric Wizard's Supercoven, and UFOmammut's Godlike Snake.
OM....OM... OM . . . O M . . . .
This is a monumental occasion, the return of Jewelled Antler, after a seriously lengthy hiatus. This is the first Jewelled Antler cd since the last Of record, The Quartz Pond, way back at the beginning of 2005. It also marks the debut of newly married duo Ov, which just so happens to be sound artist Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelacanth, Of, etc.) , and our very own Christine Boepple (Whysp, Skygreen Leopards Skyband, Kyrgyz, etc.). You know that whole 'beautiful music together' thing, but wow is that the case with The Moon Is Down. The first two tracks are lengthy abstract soundscapes of bells and chimes and gongs and percussion. The amazing thing is that the final result doesn't necessarily sound all that percussive, instead Chasse and Boepple manage to smooth the sounds into a dreamy billowy fog, with tinkling bells, reverberating chimes, it's like floating through a slowed down sculpture garden, huge pieces of metal slowly swinging, and gently rubbing up against each other, sending soft ringing tones to float softly across the gauzy landscape like dry leaves on a summer breeze, underpinned by slow low end pulses, smears of glistening shimmer and a constellation of glimmering tinkles. There are lilting guitars too, but plucked and strummed so sparely, they almost just sound like more chimes.
The record shifts gears after that, drifting from one dreamlike sound to another, a rich and exotic tribal landscape, huge swells of crystalline fuzz beneath fluttering flute melodies, primitive shakers and hand drums, and what sounds like forest sounds, drifting in and out of the mix, a world of alien lullabies, super distorted melodies over warm warbling woodwinds and textural percussion that sounds more like the crinkle of plastic, a gentle stream of fuzzy organ, buzzing harmonica, plink plonk guitar melody, pocket full of coins jangle, all bathed in a soft focus shimmer and some Eno-esque melodic ambience constructed from a dense assemblage of notes and tones, rich and oversaturated with tonal color, delicate minimal guitar strum and a mesmerizingly reedy hypnotic high end flute melody hovering in the background.
The final track is mostly made up of field recordings when the pair were on a trip to Germany, they were strolling through the quiet streets when suddenly the town's church bells began ringing, more and more, from every direction, a glorious cacophony, here there is a brief interlude part way through, a wheezing organ breathing out a fuzzy melancholy melody, but it quickly drifts away, leaving the record to fade out with just the distant pealing of bells. Wow!
Packaged in a beautiful hand printed sleeve, a strange angular crystalscape on the front, a mysterious symbol on the back, each sleeve with a different color ink and different colored paper. Includes an insert with liner notes and an image of some mysterious multi horned instrument on the other. As with most things like this, SUPER LIMITED!!!
Italian duo OvO is a band that we think a select crowd of AQ-customers will totally appreciate. But...don't look at that awful cover. Oooh, what were they thinking? Well the (sorta) little-girl voice of OvO's singer Stefania does perhaps explain the little-girl drawing on the cover (which she drew). As does the Load label's often willfully 'ugly' aesthetic. But where that illustration is sort of twee, cringe-inducing cutesiness, Stefania's voice is far from cutesy! It's a rabid, wretched little girl we're talking about. Her yelping shriek has been compared to both a squeaky toy and a wheezing dog dying by folks here at AQ. Basically, if you hate the extended high-pitched babble of Yoko Ono, stay away! Nerve-grating for sure. We don't know how she does it. Must need a lot of lozenges.
Meanwhile, OvO's music ranges from chaotic punk frenzy to plodding, art-rock dirge. In addition to the unusual, extreme vocals, OvO also uses/abuses cello, for extra droning ambience. They're hard to compare to anybody, but we'll throw out these names: the aforementioned Yoko Ono, Load labelmates Noxagt, Double Nelson, Oxbow, and Khanate. Or maybe a twisted, primitive, Japanoise version of Devil Doll ('cause they're Italian and sorta theatrical sounding). Definitely not always (ever?) easy listening, but strangely fascinating. For us, it's the endurance-testing 20 minute title track that makes this a keeper. A torturous trudge with throaty rasping and heavy doomy death-knell drums and guitar. Oppressive. Depressive. Feedback hell gargle. Very much in the vein of Corrupted and Khanate. But with witchy Yoko vox! Like we said, the select few will love it.
The enigma of Gram Parsons remains ever elusive. Considered the Father of Country Rock by pioneering the concept of a rock band playing country music through his contributions with The Incredible Submarine Band, The Flying Burrito Bros, and The Byrds later output, namely Sweetheart of the Rodeo (An interesting side note: the recent reissue of Sweetheart of the Rodeo restores Parsons vocal tracks which originally had to be removed due to contractual obligations with Lee Hazelwood's LHI label who released the sole Incredible Submarine Band album.). But it's Parson's two solo records on Reprise, G.P. from 1972 and Grievous Angel from 1973 that cemented his legend and legacy due to his untimely death from a morphine and tequila overdose near the Joshua Tree National Monument only weeks after the Grievous Angel sessions were completed. He was 27 years old. While there have been numerous 2 disc compilations and anthologies highlighting various periods of Parsons short but incredibly productive and influential career, including his years as a Greenwich village folkie, as well as live sets, there has never been a box set to completely round out his influence. So this new 3 disc box set showcasing his two solo records with a bonus disc of stripped down alternate takes and interviews will only offer minimal new insights. Previously only available as a two-fer, these absolutely essential solo albums have now been given room to breathe and stand up as two completely individual listening experiences, while the alternate takes only emphasize the loss of one of the finest country voices. So utterly heartbreaking. The only happiness that comes from these sessions is the magical presence of EmmyLou Harris who was introduced to the world with these records and was an equal partner in their making, and without her, the legacy of these recordings would not shine as brightly.
The Fflint Central factories have slowed down a bit lately, having churned out right around 20 releases in the last 5 or 6 years. But even kicking out 3 or 4 releases a year, that's practically nothing compared to the 50 releases a month we get from all the billions of other cd-r labels we deal with, which is maybe part of why we love these guys so much. Fflint more than any other cd-r label, have definitely focused on quality over quantity. Instead of releasing every single jam, every practice, every get-together-fuck-around, these guys actually spend weeks and months working on music, on SONGS. Every single Fflint disc is totally unique, but still immediately recognizably Fflinty, but more importantly, each disc is good. Really good. Fucking great actually. In fact, we can't think of a single Fflint release that didn't immediately and totally kick our asses. And Nocturne Convolute is no different.
Pendro is the work of Tim Jones, one half of the TimJonesBarryWilliams core that IS Fflint Central, and Nocturne Convolute is Pendro number 5 by our count and carries on in Pendro's quest to reach some strange electronic Nirvana. The beats were almost entirely jettisoned a few records back, but resurface now and then here, less as beats per se, as much as muted pulses, or stuttering throbs, but more often the beats are just rhythmic smears in a larger overall soundfield. Ambient is definitely one word that comes to mind, but not cheesy or new age, more a malevolent, very active sort of ambience, sounds churn and roil, multilayered soundscapes of organic electronic minimalism. Drone is another obvious descriptor, but drones are just a small part of the whole. Almost every track here drones in some way, but all in dramatically different ways. Nocturne Convolute is a dizzying journey through some otherworld of sound...
A huge chaotic din, like Sunroof! vs. the Dead C, immediately chopped into bits, so each blast of skree is separated by murky electronic pulses, and thick waves of freight train rumble, blissed out Muslimgauze like jams, all raga like buzz and throbbing Eastern percussion, peppered with all sorts of little glitches and electronic twinkles, cavernous industrial soundscapes, dark ambient whirs beneath chaotic bits of clatter and crunch, all morphed into a swirling smear of sound, wild blasts of outerspace sonic freakout, swooshes and bleeps and bloops, whipped into an absolute frenzy that eventually blurs into a high end drone, slow burning gongs ring and reverberate like ripples in some huge black sea, some damaged jazz squeaks and skronks in a vast expanse of haunting late night murk, buried within a sweetly melancholic melody, beats and loops chopped and sliced and diced and haphazardly reassembled into blasts of digital splatter, and some almost drill and bass, but as with most tracks the beats sort of implode and become bits and pieces of a swirling electronic glitchscape, gorgeous thick whirring drones are assembled from stuttering tones and blurry notes, creepy but so lovely, building in intensity until the drone becomes a crackling lightning storm of clicks and glitches and bzzt and grrt. Harsh and harrowing, but somehow still totally mesmerizing and beautiful.
By the time Nocturne Convolute comes to an end, you feel exhausted, like you've just BEEN somewhere, experienced SOMETHING. This is not easy listening at all, most Fflint stuff requires some work on the listener's part, some deep listening, every play reveals more sounds and more secrets, each listen builds on the one before, and prepares you for the one after. Which is precisely Pendro's (and Fflint Central in general) blessing AND curse. The sounds here are amazing, the music intense and hypnotic, sounds that make your ears hum, the inside of your head ring like a struck bell, but the sounds are are also abstract, difficult, challenging, and maybe too much for the casual listener. But you know what? Fuck the casual listener, this is not casual music, this is music to luxuriate in, to dunk your head in until you run out of breath and start seeing all sorts of strange colors, this is music that gets inside of you, and suffuses all your senses with it's strange glow. This is not background music, this is music that makes everything around it fade into the background. As with all things Fflint, totally and wholeheartedly recommended!
Now on vinyl!!
A punk record for people who haven't bought a punk record in a while. It's not a retro exercise, but still something about this young Pennsylvania band brings back memories of '80s hardcore, Black Flag or Flipper back in the day, nasty punk scuzz with lots of badass guitar distortion and feedback, shambolic rock n' roll with rabid bite. The lyrics are sadsack smartass dumb, yowled over the band's noisy, catchy trashcan stomp, the vocalist really letting it all (down-and-)out on such songs as "I'm Sick," "Boring Girls", "Ashamed Of My Cum", and "I Broke My Own Heart." Can you feel sorry for someone who's wallowing in it? Doesn't matter, just enjoy the careening chaotic entertainment that results. The packaging features cool cartoon graphics of surburan banality.
Berlin-based Brit Janine Rostron (aka Planningtorock) blew our minds a few months back with a live show that was so witchy and out of left field that it penetrated and then shattered to bits our overworked (capital A) Art-phobe radars. We appreciated the fact her aesthetic -- elaborate head dresses, Elizabethan collars and white jeans -- was unironic and baroque, but it was her confidence and complete belief in her own weird creation that won us over. Rostron definitely has something going on - musically and visually, she camps somewhere near Klaus Nomi, Dagmar Krause and Babooshka-era Kate Bush, but she's a little dirtier, with a taunting electro edge that keeps us intrigued...and a little scared (in a good way, of course). However -- as is usually the case with over-the-top performers -- this debut cd doesn't nearly capture Planningtorock's confounding live genius. We ain't saying it's bad. It's not, it's actually a great introduction and there's even lengthy flashes - in "Changes," "I Wanna Bite Ya" and "Bolton Wanderer" especially - that hint at full-power Planningtorock. Rostron's on her way to becoming a real live Art Star in Europe (she just played the Tate Modern), but we're thinking she's probably (sigh) too weird for America. You make the call.
These two bands are a match made in hell. Assuming hell is some backwoods primitive pagan free folk jazz flecked noiserock jam session taking place during a full moon in the heart of some dark forest. In this corner, we have the impossible to pronounce Raccoo-oo-oon, from Iowa of all places, who fill up their side of this lp with a length, shimmery almost-jazzscape rife with scrabbly electric guitars, haunting washes of some distant horn section, angular riffing, muted trumpets doused in wah wah, this is some sort of alien psychedelic free jazz. Sort of. Abstract and space, this is an epic space rock jazz freakout fantasy, spacey FX, big waves of skronk and skree collide with tranquil drifts of jangly guitar and simple caveman percussion, a few minutes in, the record skids to a halt as some beast made out of speaker shredding digital glitches and grinding spastic in-the-red guitar rips everything to shreds, but the record quickly picks back up and drones on in a hypnotic blissed out jazz flecked krautrock freefolk groove.
And you thought that was way out, the flipside is the work of Brooklyn's Woods, who are a pretty good match for Raccoo-oo-oon, donning a similar cloak, equal parts deconstructed free jazz and avant noise rock. Swooping atonal guitars slip wildly through a dense tangle of staggering stumblin freejazz Neanderthal percussion, surrounded by clouds of dizzy guitar squiggles and swirling psychedelic distortion. Woods are like the damaged offspring of the No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, the child they keep locked in the basement, the one who pounds on the door until they through raw meat down the stairs to calm him down. Mix in some weirdly rock riffs (at points it almost sounds like the band will lock in and rock out, although they never do) and some splattery jazz weirdness, and you've got the wonderfully weird world of Woods.
Elaborately packaged in a hand painted, silk screened, sleeve, garish green and black and brown, purple photocopied insert. Pressed on super thick swirled yellow opaque vinyl, and each disc comes with a different colored rabbit's foot attached to the sleeve!
Oh boy. A red-letter day at AQ when we got this in. You see, several years ago, we'd stocked an amazing "best of" collection called Echoes Aus Zeiten Der Grunen Reise by this krautrock artist, A.R. & Machines (turns out the A.R. stands for Achim Reichel) that in itself was a far out minimalist psychedelic electronic masterpiece years ahead of its time -- and it was just a "best of"! Everybody here loved it. It's been out of print for years, though, and we'd never come across any other reissues, until now! Hence our excitement about this, a double cd containing TWO of Reichel's albums in their entirety, Echo and A.R. IV.
If you're familiar with that "best of" cd, you'll recognize a few of the songs, but transformed, extended and built upon -- like you're finally experiencing the entire complex film, not just the titillating preview. If you're not familiar with that "best of," then expect a hypnotic, meandering cream dream that any lover of Eno, Cluster, Can, Neu, Bo Hansson, Kraftwerk, and even Wendy Carlos Williams shouldn't miss. Completely groovy.
1972's Echo, which takes up the largest portion of the two cds, is the highlight here. Long before the re-issue, Julian Cope made it a record of the month on his website and it's not hard to see why. It's a meandering four part -- well, we wouldn't even say "piece," it's more like a realized world -- made up of journeying guitars and plodding percussion with the occasional wailing vocals in English that take it well into the stratosphere. At times low-key, at other times frenzied, but always with an intensity that moves it along steadily. By the time you get to the freakout vocal jam of that acts as the come down of Echo, you've been led through so many emotions and states of mind, that you're spent.
Take a break between the two albums since A.R. IV (1973) is another, separate adventure -- still groovy and rhythmic, but a little funkier, a little louder and more focused -- like he's revisiting the territory he covered in Echo but he's more familiar with the place & can take you directly to all the cool places.
Actually, this re-issue would have been a shoo-in for Record Of The Week if only we thought we could get more. But according to our supplier, the forty or so copies we have now might be the last we'll get, as this is apparently an all-too-limited reissue. Ah well. Get it while you can!
From the same UK label that brought us that great Hey Colossus album listed recently, here's something also really cool but VERY very different.... where Hey Colossus was brutally heavy and rhythmic, this band, Reigns, is so pleasantly pretty and placid. Utterly gorgeous, really, and mysterious. We're reminded of such artists as Stafraenn Hakon, Eluvium, Sonna, and Sigur Ros. It's that sort of gauzy, mellow, melodic post-rock, with songs constructed from gentle guitar and piano figures, operating in a zone of beautiful ambience, infused with indistinct electronic detritus. Swells of live percussion or electronic beats sometimes appear, too, but the mood remains blissful, if almost somber. But not really somber since there's a strange, very subtle sense of humor afoot, part of the weird conceptual framework that Reigns have invented for this album. Yes, it's a concept album! And a mostly-instrumental one at that, with no real singing to speak of, though you will occasionally hear voices drifting in the mix, including a computer voice (a la Radiohead) on the fourth track, "Translating".
The concept? It's intentionally vague and sort of surreal, but first off we're told that this was supposedly "recorded on location by Reigns operatives A & B". The title We Lowered A Microphone Into The Ground, taken literally, provides an imaginary scheme for the album. Each track is assigned a depth, ranging from 23 meters to 1 mile. Thus, track 2: "Corners & The Straights (102 metres)". Or track 9: "The Fattest Goose Shall Be The Soonest To The Spit (1460 metres)". Inside the handsome digipack you'll find the "Original Site Transcript" giving notes on what was encountered at each depth by the two Reigns operatives. Some examples:
"(102 metres) First subterranean voice. Operative B suffers small breakout of hives on ungloved hand."
"(416 metres) Foul smelling miasma rises from hole. Surrounding grass visibly pales."
"(1001 metres) Sudden rise in static. Recording levels unchanged. Operative B demands that A stop pinching at nape of B's neck. A denies any such activity."
More events and phenomena, both mundane and peculiar, are documented. But this is all in the liner notes -- you'll hear the voices mentioned but otherwise this isn't at all meant to -sound- like any sort of static-y, subterranean field recording...it's just very lovely music. Pretty nifty, as most more ordinary post-rock efforts don't exhibit such imagination! We like.
Shambolic Santa Cruz psychsters Residual Echoes follow up last year's Phoenician Flu and Ancient Ocean with this new album, a UK import on cd and/or colored vinyl, as you please. The tracks are few (four) but the lengths are long (averaging upwards of nine minutes each). Things start off in krautrocky acoustic strum mode, building to adrenalized, electronics/effects enhanced ceremonial drone worship, but it's not really until the third track ("Headache Transverse") that the band busts out the loud electric guitar distortion that made Phoenician Flu almost a stoner metal album. Said heaviness kicks in, feedback action too, and then they're off! The relatively peaceable and mellow vibes of the first two trancey, folky tracks are displaced somewhat in favor of dealing out damage in the amped up style of fellow travellers Comets On Fire. The fourth and final cut does so likewise... so half-and-half rockin' here pretty much, and we like both halves, 'specially when they come together (they do) and the Amon Duul meets Pelt style trance-throb blends with the Crazy Horse/Comets/Dinosaur guitar freakouts... Yessir, Residual Echoes have certainly earned their place alongside bros Comets On Fire and Six Organs Of Admittance as NorCal psych heroes, with 'em around we hardly need Japanese imports like AMT, Up-Tight and LSD-march...not that we'd not want those, the more the merrier! Anyway Mfi-Gbsp (what's that again?) is a good one for anyone who digs druggy drone jams that let loose in the guitar dep't too... Fans of the aforementioned acts, or East Coasters like Bardo Pond and Dead Meadow fer instance, should get hip to Residual Echoes if you aren't already.
EM Records strikes again! This time, the always-interesting Japanese (mostly) reissue label brings us a disc of pioneering experimental electronic music (a la the Barton Smith set highlighted last list) that's both obscure and unusual. What do we mean by that in this case? Well the album's title isn't any sort of metaphor. Composer/performer David Rosenboom is credited with playing "piano and brainwaves" on several of these pieces. Actually they ALL feature brainwaves, not always piano. Real live brainwaves, captured and processed electronically. It's a '70s sorta hippy/new age/sci-fi musical concept brought to fruition: bio-feedback as a tool for making electronic music! A cool idea that Rosenboom has made work -- if you're a drone-head it's great listening!! Long wavering drones, spacey-synthy-sounding, shimmery beautifully, calm and just a bit spooky. Serene, blissed-out zwooshing electronic gurgle. The piano playing is in minimalist, pulsing style, and one of the track adds drifting vocal samples, almost like thoughts reconstituted from the brainwaves themselves.
Three of the tracks here, pieces from 1971, '72, and '74, were originally released on vinyl by the Canadian label A.R.C. back in 1976. This 2006 compact disc edition adds an extra 17 minutes newly recorded just for this release. The one from '72 was recorded live at the International Carnival of Experimental Sound (ICES) in London, England, an event that must have been awesome from what little documentation we've seen or heard of it!
From the cd booklet, here's the composer's statement about what he's up to with his Brainwave Music: "Metaphors about the concurrency and succession of events in undefined spaces and the spread of energetic phenomena throughout resonant fields operate heavily in this music. Perhaps, they may lead us forward in developing of untapped sensibilities still residing deep within us. Perhaps, we will be able to conceive of an idea of resonance unbounded by our limited views of time and space and expand our appreciation of the universality of music even more."
Hmm. Something to think about. And as you're doing that, just imagine what sounds David Rosenboom could conjure if he had your brain hooked up to his bio-feedback machinery right now!
This comes in a special, extra-thick Japanese jewel case to fit the 42 page booklet we suppose. Unfortunately for us Americans, only a couple of pages of the booklet are in English, but there are plenty of cool photos, graphics, schematics, and musical scores to look at.
As with all the EM stuff we've stocked, totally recommended!
While he hasn't really had any projects quite as popular as his original group Cabaret Voltaire, Richard H. Kirk has been quite busy and surprisingly prolific, most often indulging his electronic side. Sandoz is his dub project inspired by the heavy dub grooves of King Tubby but with a very '90s/modern electronic feel to it. And while modern dub as the potential to be cheesy, this is actually quite good. Deep and dark and dubby, almost sounds like it could be some lost Wordsound joint. Cool.
That title sounds like an advertising line. New, improved... now, diabolical! The weird thing is, Norwegian black metal originators Satyricon (thee big shots, along with Darkthrone, Emperor, Mayhem, Immortal and a handful of others) have ALWAYS been plenty diabolical. If they'd called the album Now, Rockin' that would maybe make more sense, as this disc takes the midtempo blackened rock sound of tracks like "Fuel For Hatred" from their previous effort Volcano even further into "I just burned down a church, but I want my MTV" territory. Maybe the title IS an advertising line, trying to reassure old school fans that they haven't lost their way on the left-hand path.
Well, it's true that the relatively melodic, headbanging catchiness of many of these tracks isn't perhaps what people expect from grim Nordic black metal warriors like Satyricon -- but we're not complaining. Further curveballs include a horn section on one track, clean (guest) vocals on another. But rest assured, the Grover growl and Slayerizing guitar riffs of Satyr, as well as Frost's muscular drum battery, are also all in full effect, and Snorre Ruch of Thorns appears besides, so it's no drastic break from their past, though it's certainly Volcano to which this sounds the most akin. You can go listen to Frost's other (excellent) band 1349 if true, pure blazing blackened grimnity is all you desire, but we're enjoying Now, Diabolical's dire, gloomy rock n' roll apocalypse just fine at the moment!!
Includes bonus track and (unfortunately, cheesy MTV style) video clip.
We've long been complaining about the dearth of "grime" in the States, so we were psyched to discover that the folks at Planet Mu decided to do something about it. They've been reissuing UK grime releases for the states, but this latest batch of 12"s offers up some grime / jungle hybrids as well as their own twisted take on dubstep and grime. And it kills!
AQ fave Shitmat whips up this nutty two step banger, with all sorts of pop culture detritus mixed in to a swirl of throbbing distorted grime, FAT fuzzy bass lines, pounding low end and all sorts of vocal fragments and electronic chaos.
Chevron takes the same track and stretches it out a bit, removing all the random sonic extras, turning it into a stripped down minimal skittery jam, sort of lo-fi with affected vocals, burping bass and skeletal grimy beats.
Finally Mu-Ziq turns the track inside out, chopped up and super spastic, stuttery and shuffly, a minimal grimescape, sounding creepy and intense and about to blow, like it might shift into some manic Squarepusher drill and bass at any moment but it never does leaving you tense and exhausted. Awesome.
Recently featured on the Imaginational Anthem Vol. 2 compilation and the upcoming Tompkins Square release, Berkeley Guitar, local acoustic guitarist Sean Smith has crafted two warm and understated records of instrumental 6 string balladry culled from a live recording at the Pacific Grove Art Center in 2004. Like listening to a dusty record on a foggy morning in a coastal Northern California Library, these deceptively simple and melancholic pieces remind us a bit of early Takoma -era John Fahey but more plainspoken with less of the esoterica that informed Fahey's output or the ornamental qualities that recent stars of the genre, James Blackshaw and Jack Rose have cultivated. Lovely.
The processes of the mysterious composer / sound sculptor Soriah are almost as interesting as the strange and otherworldly music he creates. The live performance, the setting, is often a spiritual complement to the composition itself, taking place in haunted tunnels, in treetops, in the deserts, in churches, all adding to the mysterious ceremonial aspect of each piece, as do the extensive costumes, head-dresses, totems, tribal garments, all combined with Soriah's background in Butoh, Yoga and other ritualistic practices, lend his music a timeless and mysterious air. A dark pagan dance of drones and dark ambience.
After numerous, super limited, self published and hand made art editions, this is Soriah's first proper release, and it's totally breathtaking. Two lengthy pieces, for vocals, pipe organ and effects, Soriah conjures up a haunting sonic otherworld, drifting, dreamy, menacing and malefic, a rumbling, whirring
dark ambient dronescape, thick with the natural timbre of the wheezing pipe organ, and dense with subtle overtones from the various vocals. A deft mash up of ancient classical musicks and modern experimental drone based minimalism, a heady blend of Messiaen, Mirror, Coleclough, Dead Can Dance, Jacula, Niblock, and Eastern ragas. A dusty old pipe organ, built in 1881, lays the groundwork, a rich, thick, multilayered bed, subtle overtones, rich swirling drones, notes and melodies shimmer and beat against each other, creating strange movements, a thick wash of chordal whir that pulses and breathes like it was alive.
The organ is intertwined with various vocals, sometimes crooning, alien and operatic, but more often an impossibly low-end rumble, a dense and deep Tuvan style throat singing, buzzing and multilayered, more like some strange long stringed instrument than a human voice. Crumbling and corrosive, but at the same time soothing and ethereal. The vocals drifting through various effects, become smears and stretches that blend and blur into the overall droneworld.
Definitely one of the darkest and dreamiest drone records in recent memory, and all the more compelling in that this is not just a simple tone or set of tones, slowly shifting, know this is a rich and vibrant live ritual, you can feel the organ vibrate, the vocals curl around you like some ripe exotic smoke, this music is alive, soft and inviting, but dangerous and dreamlike. A bit like SUNNO))) armed only with church organs, and accompanied by Huun-Huur-Tu, a massive physical drone, a huge deliriously suffocating wall of rumble, like laying at the bottom of a pit, eyes closed, and being buried alive by soft sound. So good.
There's fast and buzzy and blurry. And then there's FAST AND BUZZY AND BLURRY. This Danish black metal outfit manage to pretty much outbuzz and outblur all their blackened brethren. Not sure if it's the riffs, or the songs, or the production, most likely all of those things, but Sortsind whip up an impossibly dense black metal blast that is so fast and fuzzed out all the riffs and blast beats drift together into a glorious fuzzed out droning blur. But close listening reveals all sorts of fucked up weirdness going on within. Cool arpeggiated guitars, occasional big boomy room reverbed drums, weird atonal circusy keyboards, and some of the weirdest harshest vocals ever, somewhere between some one shrieking in utter agony as they are being torn apart by some wild beast, or some super processed feeding back guitar. A weird high end wailing squealing animal like growl. SO weird. And perfectly matched to the harsh buzz of the music. Once in a while some crazy catchy Iron Maiden-ish harmony guitar part will surface out of the murk, but will quickly be sucked back down into the darkness. There are brief breaks in the mayhem, long stretches of haunted mansion creepy ambience, dreary swirls of mournful keyboards, howled anguished tortured soul vocals drenched in reverb, dreamlike passages of slow slithery minor key clean guitar, the resurfaces throughout the record, drifting beneath the thick fuzz like some wraithlike shimmer.
But this record is all about the buzz and the fuzz and the blur, and for those of dying to buried alive in an ocean of bombinating black buzz, you probably won't do any better than this.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL. WE HAVE ABOUT 20 COPIES...
We've long been complaining about the dearth of "grime" in the States, so we were psyched to discover that the folks at Planet Mu decided to do something about it. They've been re-issuing UK grime releases for the states, but this latest batch of 12"s offers up some grime / jungle hybrids as well as their own twisted take on dubstep and grime. And it kills!
We absolutely loved the Soundmurderer comp from a ways back, a killer mix of classic drum and bass and ragga jungle, that sound we can never get enough of, so it's kind of cool to hear these guys take on some of this new fangled dubstep business sort of blending it into their already killer techstep sound. Super fucked up and weirdly funky, jump up jungle (with a hint of grime) a bit of toasting over the top, and then halfway through the A-side, the jungle drops and completely destroys. The B-side is super repetitive with ultra distorted bass and blown out synth melodies.
Space Needle were a strange bunch. Part of the mid-nineties indie rock scene, but only barely, something about them was just a little too weird, a complicated mix of pretty and creepy, a sonic world not immediately recognizable to the average Pavement fan or Yo La Tengo booster. Their sound was based not on guitar jangle but on strange rhythms and thick swaths of synthesizer. Probably had a lot to do with the fact that SN mainman Jud Ehrbar was a drummer. Vocals were appropriately indie sad boy style, from monotone Pavementy croon to reedy straining-to-hit-the-high-notes near falsetto, but they were dropped into totally alien landscapes. Those distinct vocals moped and dragged their feet amidst strange militaristic drum jams, thick washes of layered organs, serpentine low end synthbasslines, slithering and twisting chaotically beneath thick wheezing organ whir, strangely detuned guitars, strummed into hypnotic jangly jams over ultra simple motorik drumming, all the while, the vocals pushed WAY up in the mix, sort of languorous and deadpan, not so much drifting as sort of lazily shuffling. The melody almost entirely carried by the vocals (with occasional assistance from the synthesizer). The sound was definitely skeletal, often just vocals and drums, sometimes a simple throbbing bass line, but most of the tracks build to a massive climax, with guitars building into huge fuzzy drones, the synth lines getting more and more distorted, both swirling into thick squalls of blown out psychedelia.
At their heaviest, Space Needle almost sound like Loop or Spacemen 3, simple riffs repeated over and over, building a super hypnotic groove, while over the top, guitars and synths wrestle in a thick cloud of buzz and fuzz. But the rest of the time, they really sounded like no one else. Some tracks are just random sonic experiments, super washed out guitars or ultra distorted synths, locked into super hot, crumbling in-the-red, looped dirges. But the heart of Space Needle's sound was a hauntingly alien, lilting loping abstract indie rock, melancholy and super laid back, but also dark and slightly ominous. Phrases repeated over and over mantra like, the vocals almost sounding choral at moments, each track unfurling and taking its own sweet time as it ambles toward its inevitable end. A sonic allegory for the sadness and loss suffusing SN's whole sound.
This collection, gathers the best bits from Space Needle's two albums, and tacks on two live tracks, the best being a 15 minute long psych jam entitled "Where The Fucks My Wallet?", a live set staple that starts off all gentle guitar and builds into a wild sprawl of angular guitars and chaotic instrumental freakout, even a sort-of drum solo.
We sort of forgot how much we dug this band, but hearing these tracks again, man, they sound so fresh, and so fucking amazing, they've really held up well, unlike LOTS of their indie contemporaries. These tracks could just as easily be from some current experimental fucked up abstract noisepop cd-r band as a forgotten nineties indie rock outfit. Definitely enough jangle and sweet and sour melody to hit the spot for all you Blonde Redhead / Modest Mouse / Black Heart Procession / Yo La Tengo / Silver Jews indie rockers of today, but certainly fucked up enough to appeal to all you lovers of free noise and art rock weirdness as well, plus this is just the sort of record to give all those indierockphobes out there something to think about.
Includes liner notes, new artwork, and blurbs from the band about the recording of each track.
After listening to this disc, all we can say is Marissa Nadler and Joanna Newsom better watch their backs. If there is any justice in the world, the throngs of bearded and bead encrusted modern free folk freaks and forest maidens that make up the new weird underground will bow down before Jane Herships, the woman who is Spider. A softly strummed dreamy acoustic world of drifting shimmering loveliness. If Devendra Banhart is homecoming king at this year's forestfolk ball, well then Spider would absolutely have to be everyone's choice for queen. The Way To Bitter Lake is a blissful blend of Iron & Wine, Vashti Bunyan, Will Oldham, Cat Power, Edith Frost. Hushed vocals over lilting old timey folk, gorgeous and timeless melodies, spare arrangements, but so deftly arranged as to be more powerful than almost any of her contemporaries. There is definitely a serious Iron & Wine vibe going on, Herships sounds like Sam Beam's long lost twin sister. Even her turns of phrase and choice of melodies. The mind boggles at the possibility of those two making a record together. If either of them are reading this, for god's sake let's make it happen!!
Regardless, this is an absolute gem. Pastoral, and haunting, soft and shimmery, suffused with warm summer sunlight, a rambling record if there ever was one. Cool afternoon, bare feet, tall grass, clouds drifting lazily by, soft breezes, the smell of earth and leaves, wandering through a fuzzy folk dream. Absolutely gorgeous.
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!
Self-titled records are strange. They are definitely a statement. It's sort of like 'our record doesn't NEED a title, it speaks for itself'. We can't help but think sometimes though that it's just pure laziness. The sort of band who would forgo an album title are only a hop skip and a jump away from ditching song titles too. And then what's next, no band name? That's part of the fun, part of the magic. Part of the unique world that a band creates. Sometimes the title of a song or album is exactly what makes us want to listen to it. Along the same lines, we're often frustrated by bands who have multiple self-titled records. Quite confusing, there's the OLD self-titled one, and the NEW self-titled one. But what about these Swedish metalheads. Not one, not two, not even three self-titled records, BUT ALL FOUR of their release so far are self-titled. Even their first seven inch! And they HAVE gotten rid of song titles, opting instead for numbers. So I guess it is all about the music after all. So yeah, the music, that's why we're here, right? All we can say, is what the hell happened to Switchblade?! Something seriously scary we'd have to guess. Last time we checked in, they were one of those metallic post rock metalcore hybrids, exploring drifting loping melancholy rhythms that would explode into chugging grinding sludgy metal freakouts. They also had a strange Albini-esque vibe, big booming drums, really spacious recording.
But now. Holy shit, these guys are a whole lot scarier. A lot slower. Even heavier. It's like they discovered their inner Khanate. This is downright doooooomy. It's almost like the last Switchblade record played at 16rpm. In fact, maybe it is... Hmmm? Anyway, this has much more in common with Moss and Bunkur and Earth and Nadja and Marzuraan and Khanate, than the bands that occupied a similar sonic space as their last record, the Pelican's and Isis's and the like. The new Switchblade is a slow lumbering beast, two lengthy tracks, one 16 minutes, one almost 30 minutes, each a plodding, slow motion, glacial, dirge. Riffs are drawn out and allowed to drift and dwindle before the next riff arrives to take over. The drummer sounds like he only has one drum. And one cymbal. But both of them are really BIG and really LOUD. But unlike some of the sludgelords this disc is obviously indebted to, Switchblade keep their sound warm, and spacious. This isn't murky or muddy. It's wide open and spacious, the guitars are clear and bright, distorted sure, but more thick and heavy than downtuned and sludgy. A bit like recent discs from the Angelic Process and Nadja, a sort of beautiful sludge. the first track is the more overtly evil of the two with super creepy harsh whispered vocals, like Gollum from Lord Of The Rings, a raspy demonic growl. The second shorter track, sounds a bit like a heavier version of slowcore legends Codeine, with whispery crooned vocals, drifting minor key chords, all strung along a skeletal doom plod. Haunting and malefic, but at the same times strangely delicate and introspective. A truly mysterious and utter metamorphosis. We can hardly wait to hear what their fifth self-titled release will bring...
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Awesome band name for sure! We were dying to hear these guys before we had any idea what they might sound like. And they do sort of sound like the name, explanation point and all. A whirling dervish of a three piece, Matthew Mottel on synth, Kevin Shea (Coptic Light, Storm And Stress) on drums and Ed Bear on baritone saxophone and
electronics. The presence of Kevin Shea should give you a hint as to what you're in for. His spastic, impossibly octopoidal drum splatter is all over this disc, a stuttering spastic free jazz soundscape dense and impenetrable. Above this tangled percussive squall, the synth and the sax do battle. And this is a serious fucking knock down drag out battle to the death. The synth seems to come out on top turning what could have been more of a free jazz record into a seriously fucked up freenoise record. Mottel is like Keith Emerson on a serious PCP bender, spitting out thick snarling sheets of synth buzz, spraying it like machine gun fire, melodies are tangled and complicated little knots hurled into the fray like cannonballs made out of steel string and roof nails. The sax is all over the place, adding tonal color, mad squawking, chittering chirps and deep fuzzy moans, this is a massive chaotic free for all. Sometimes the band members lock into a cohesive sort of drone, but even then Shea is still hurling his kit all over a huge concrete bunker, like every free jazz solo drum record played simultaneously, it's never long before the synth splinters and the sax shrieks and suddenly it a big black musical cloud, you know like in cartoons when people are fighting and there's a big black swirling cloud with arms and legs sticking out. Only now there's broken drumsticks, shattered keys from an abused synthesizer, bent saxophones as well as bruised and bloody body parts.
This an exhausting listen, but it's worst it. Heavy and thick, weirdly groovy, totally spastic and really really great.
Comes packaged in spray painted sleeves made out of old chopped up lps, each disc includes a jagged shard of some old vinyl lp as well.
The first thing you'll probably notice about this record is that it's called Unholy And UNLIMITED, yet it is strangely indeed limited (to 1000, each copy numbered), says so right there on the back of the disc. But okay, so what? So maybe it's not actually unlimited, but it sure as hell is unholy!
Tangorodrim are from Israel and are self professed purveyors of "Antipriest Unholy Black Metal." So not only are they unholy, but they also have a thing against priests, although we just figured that unholy probably covered not being into priests as well. And if the huge Antipriest text on the back cover didn't send all you men of the cloth scurrying for cover, well have a gander at the song titles: "The Six In The Coffin (Not Including The Priest)", "Priestkiller", etc. So yeah, Tangorodrim do not like priests, and are not shy about it.
Unholy And Unlimited is record number three as far as we can tell from these hellhounds and is one seriously blasting buzzing pounding, furious as fuck unholy black racket! Wrest from Leviathan calls this sort of BM goat metal, lots of midtempos, really murky and simple and thrashy, with grunted howled vocals, not so much shrieks or demonic growls, more sort of freaked out wailing and howling. But most importantly, lots of grunts, and "uunnghh"s when the riffs kick in. That's the key to goat metal. Buzzy and thrashy and gloriously evil. We love it! If you're still not sure what it sounds like, just check out the dedication on the inside of the booklet: "In the beginning there was Hellhammer... Without form, and void... and Bathory and Darkthrone were there. And it was black metal - Unholy And Unlimited... And god saw that it was BAD..."
The Swedish jazz trio (Mats Gustafsson on sax, Paal Nilssen-Love on drums and Ingebrigt Haker Flaten on bass) that -loves- their indie/garage/hipster rock has returned with another energetic and enjoyable disc. Remember they did those cool improv jazz "covers" of songs by The White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on their debut disc Garage? Well this time out they've set their sights on Lightning Bolt! "Ride The Sky" baby!
By the way, we're not being facetious in the least, we do dig The Thing and the things they do. Including their moody, intense original improvs/compositions as well, not just the stuff that's bound to get 'em a mention in Pitchfork. FYI Besides Lightning Bolt, such indie noise rock faves as Ornette Coleman and Yosuke Yamashita get the cover treatment here as well.
The third album (though the first we've listed -- we've wanted to review their others but they went out of print too quickly for us, slowpokes that we are) from New York's Thralldom, a very advanced, intelligent, and cult black metal outfit who just happen to be the alter-ego of equally amazing blackened doommongers Unearthly Trance! If you thought Unearthly Trance was a trip straight to the bowels of hell, well, Thralldom is the guided tour once you get there. What we've always liked about Thralldom is their lack of adherance to any generic black metal template. They're -definitely- black metal, but do things their own way, for their own reasons. One who dares to listen to A Shaman Steering The Vessel Of Vastness must navigate through dense, claustrophobic soundscapes, and struggle to decipher transmissions from some sinister inner realm, before more recognizably metal guitar/bass/drums structures become evident, almost beacons of normality, albeit swamped in filthy distortion. It can be a disturbing, punishing experience, but also almost trance-like, and difficult to escape willingly. With each track a nest of blackened riffs, field recordings, unknown samples, and ambient murk, not to mention various cosmic, anti-life lyrical concepts, Thralldom have created their own original, experimental variant of the black metal aesthetic.
Released by Profound Lore, who previously brought us the likes of WOLD and Portal, not to mention several Leviathan vinyls... and yes, the esoteric noise and subliminal insanity of Thralldom as displayed here certainly proves them to be a USBM horde as weird and arty and intense as the likes of Leviathan, Draugar or Xasthur.
For the last eight years this German group, featuring members of The Notwist and Village of Savoonga, have been putting out solid records of dub/jazz/electronica-post rock which has made them come to be regarded as sort of the German little brothers of Tortoise. This release features a new 19 minute track plus a dvd filled with videos and live performances. The new song is one of their blissed out high in the sky traveling through clouds and sun while exploring the outer limits of free-jazz minus the skronk for a very pretty and well played addition to their catalog.
Here are the few facts we've gathered about this band Truck and their (apparently only) album entitled Surprise, Surprise: they were from faraway Malaysia, released this rare record back in 1974, and were obviously pretty big Beatles fans by the sound of it! And (less of a fact, more of an opinion) they're pretty rad. Sung in English, the ten tracks here are wonderful pop psych that could have come out of London in '68, by a band like Kaleidoscope... well, except for one element: the unexpected strains of spacey analog Moog synth heard in many of these songs. That helps make this Truck album extra-special. But it would be pretty special anyway, with its blend of dreamy, sunny melodies, lush studio orchestration, and a bit of fuzz guitar riffing. And while seemingly inspired by the Fab Four, Truck aren't just about them. We hear hints of The Who, The Creation, and even Joe Walsh in there just as much as ELO or Badfinger. But of course we'd recommend it to people who like obscure, Beatlesy bands like The Aerovons or Peru's We All Together. Released on cd (supposedly limited edition) by the Spanish label Guerssen, this is one of those cool out-of-the-blue reissues we're always stoked to hear! Nice!!
What would you expect from a label called Aryan Asshole run by one of the guys from Wolf Eyes and a pal? Big loud ugly noise right? Well, that's exactly what you get on this compilation, Aryan Asshole Compilation Vol. 1. A collection of out of print tracks (previously released as super limited lathe cuts) from Wolf Eyes, Aaron Dilloway of Wolf Eyes, Dead Machines, Burning Star Core, Hive Mind, Religious Knives (half of Double Leopards), Damion Romero as well as Bloodyminded, Graveyards, The Moonlanding, Failing Lights, Charlie Draheim and Raven Strain.
The sound runs the noise rock gamut: primitive Whitehouse shriek with ear piercing sinewaves and squealing feedback with shouted megaphone vocals, clouds of high end skree, kitchen sink clatter and blown out electronic glitch and gzzzt, full on detuned distorted metal guitar riffage, tweaked and twisted, skipping and pitchshifted into some hiccupping plunderphonic metalstorm, super spare ambience, Jandek-ish guitar, random room clatter, footsteps, chairs sliding against the floor, plink plonk percussion all space-y and abstract, rumbling SUNNO)))-like dirges but way more malevolent and lo-fi, crumbling electronic buzz and splatter and... well, you get the idea.
A pretty killer comp of modern noise (rock) of the meaner and weirder and more fucked up persuasion. The cover art features reproductions of all the long out of print square shaped lathe cut picture discs gathered within! Cool. ----* ----* New DVD's : ----*
The string soaked brooding post Aphex cinematic skitter of 2005's Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett showed us the dark and haunting side of Venetian Snares' usual head spinning electronic fuckery, which definitely threw us all for a loop. The record right after though, Meathole, was a return to the spastic breakcore slice and dice sound that pretty much defined the Venetian Snares. So where to next for this one man beat terrorist? How about to the brilliantly titled Cavalcade Of Glee And Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms. A record with all the splatter and splutter, skitter and scuffle as Meathole, a wild world of dizzying drill and bass, a dense spazzscape of machine gun beats and hiccupping loops, but as the title might lead you to believe, lots more fun and funny, playful and goofy weirdness.
This Cavalcade Of Glee is a confusional world of circus melodies shattered into a million pieces, packed into a cannon and fired right into your ear, beats shuffle and skitter, sometimes into snarling swarms of near digital hardcore, but just as often a lumbering lope through a world of big soft shapes and crazy dayglo colors. The melodies twist and turn, a kaleidoscopic swirl of synths and sonic snippets, lo-fi blasts of deconstructed 8 bit crunch, voices drift in and out, swathed in reverb or drenched in distortion, a totally exhausting but completely exhilarating ride. Like Aphex Twin, Chris Clark, Lesser, Autechre, and Squarepusher all tossed into a blender, the resulting sonic goo, drizzled over cotton candy, sprinkled with tabs of acid, placed in the mouth of a really scary clown, who proceeds to do spit-take after spit-take, splattering you with gobs of gloriously grinding, bizarre breakcore!
Killer cover art too, lots of cow parts, pipes and gears. Euwww.
Oh Man! We haven't been able to stop playing this record from local San Francisco folk heroes Vetiver since the day it arrived. We knew it would be good but we're really surprised at how amazing and fresh it sounds given the tidal wave resurgence of the neo-folk movement that Devendra Banhart and Vetiver front-man Andy Cabic have spawned in the last few years (check out the Devendra-curated Golden Apples of the Sun compilation reviewed elsewhere in this list, to see what we mean). To be honest, the neo-folk scene has become a bit over-saturated as of late. Not that we don't enjoy the music, but there are so many folk acts nowadays that it's become almost too overwhelming to keep up.
So the stakes have been raised quite a bit since Vetiver's quiet self-titled debut, as the past couple of year's have seen Cabic, out on the road touring not only with Vetiver but also as part of Devendra's touring band, starting record label Gnomonsong with Banhart (which released the debut Feathers cd), and garnering a huge amount of praise, attention and expectation. It seems the months on the road have been very good to Vetiver as recent homecoming shows at 12 Galaxies and the Great American have shown, delighting packed audiences and winning new converts who may have overlooked their fine debut. No more playing tiny intimate shows at Adobe Books, a little sad to say, but really, we are very happy for them. To Find Me Gone is more rock-oriented than its predecessor, as the band has evolved from an acoustic guitar, violin, cello trio to include a full time rhythm section (including Otto Hauser from Espers on drums, and Kevin Barker from Currituck Co. and Noah Georgeson on guitars) with spectacularly rich results. Unlike their debut, where the strong songwriting and performances were a bit overshadowed by the heavyweight guest appearances from Hope Sandoval, Colm O'Ciosoig and Joanna Newsom (It also came across in some press as a Devendra side project), Cabic comes fully into his own here, showcasing a sublime quality of world-weariness hewn from months on the road. It's exciting, after hearing their debut, which was years in the making, to not find the usual sophomore slump, but instead witness such naturally self-assured songwriting and arrangements. Opener, "Been So Long (Gb Fade)", a song first heard in a more acoustic arrangement on the Between EP, begins with a raga drone that spaciously opens up into fantastic sighing choral harmonies. In fact there is a subliminal pulsation to the whole album that really brings out Cabic's sweet vocals but also keeps them centrally present as the country tinged ambience of flutes and cellos (played with grace and restraint by Vetiver veteran, Alissa Anderson) swells and swirls around him. Country shuffler, "Won't Be Me" sounds like Yo La Tengo in a rare pop Americana moment while the sudden electric surge on "Red Lantern Girls" is pure shoegazer country-stomp acid folk. The closer "Down at El Rio" co-written with Devendra is so nostalgic and sad, a gorgeous gorgeous song. A long time record collector, and stellar DJ, Cabic mines his influences well. Less "freak-folk" than his friends and contemporaries, Cabic instead follows the compositional path of 70's singer-songwriters like J.J. Cale, Emitt Rhodes and John Phillips. It's a refreshing next step in the ever prevalent neo-folk scene. For a limited time, we have a special limited version of To Find Me Gone with two extra bonus tracks. Beautiful and so totally recommended!
We always wondered when and how we could finally remove the musician from the equation entirely. Not like synthesizer and sequencer sampled electronic music or anything. And not like some Chuck E. Cheese robotic band. No, we mean just taking a drumkit or a guitar, plugging them in or setting them up and letting them go. Some bands have come close for sure, SUNNO))), Earth and the like. Music so slow moving that it seems to just sort of hover, a music that seems to be playing itself via huge swaths of amp hum and wild sheets of feedback. It's almost as if the music would still play even if the band members took five. All of the robes and smoke machines and demonic imagery in the world can't disguise the fact that you could get almost the same sound from just plugging in a guitar, turning the amp to 10, the distortion all the way up, and leaning the guitars up against the amps, and letting the guitars just feedback, moaning and squealing and rumbling and droning gloriously on and on and on....
Thus we have Vulture Club, a band, MAYBE, or perhaps just some guitars and amps who somehow figured out a way to capture their nocturnal rumblings on tape and press up a bunch of cd-r's. Either way, this record has been kicking our asses since we first got a copy a few weeks back. Imagine a more minimal Earth 2, or SUNNO))) without the riffs, or a more metal Troum! Slow shifting, churning, warm thick swells of guitar hum that swirl and eddy like some strange black tide. Alternately, at its most fierce, a seriously Total like skree, like a plane flying overhead, or someone mowing their lawn down the street, or all of your neighbors vacuuming at once heard through the apartment walls, or the sound of the mighty Ditch Witch that has been sucking sewer water out of ditches all along Valencia Street outside our store for the last two weeks. A thick and gloriously corrosive din! But the noisy edge is tempered by long stretches of tranquil drone and hum, a whirring and warbling rumble, that would sound not at all out of place hovering dreamily between your Maeror Tri records and all of those limited PseudoArcana and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon cd-r's!
Really, the thing to do would be to actually buy those amps, three or four 100 watt amplifiers, a handful of distortion pedals, and a couple guitars, and let them loose, set the amps up around your bed, cranked as loud as they'll go, plug the guitars into the distortion pedals, crank 'em up, lean the guitars against the amps, lay down and just get buried in guitars. But assuming you're not up for spending the $10,000, or are short on space, Vulture Club should most definitely do the trick for now!
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES (we took almost the WHOLE pressing!!) Hand numbered and stamped in cool oversized cardstock sleeves, with strange hairs/fibers affixed to the front, with a lovely vellum insert and track list.
