Now on cd! Originally a vinyl-only live document from everybody's favorite Krautrock-obsessed and uber-prolific Japanese hippy freak ensemble, recorded September 10th, 2001 (hence the title). There's two long tracks, the first listed as "Space Age Ballad / La Novia (including In E)" and the second "La Novia-Speed Guru". So you can see they're incorporating several compositions beloved by AMT fans, though of course improvisation plays a large part, and these tracks both flow rather seamlessly -- swirling electric mists of psychedelic monkish folk drone near the start gives way to an endless chugging rock distortofest, super spacey and stoned and indulgent. The "classic" AMT line-up is on board, including Cotton Casino with her beer & cigarettes, "Cosmic Joker" Atsushi Tsuyama, "Dancin' King" Hiroshi Higashi, Ichiraku Yoshimitsu on drums and of course #1 speed guru Kawabata Makoto on guitar. Who also appears on the cover, in a drawing paying homage to the cover of Amon Duul II's Yeti, with Kawabata in the role of Shrat, wielding his scythe.
Oh yeah, we're not done yet...there's a second Acid Mothers Temple cd on this week's list, another live one. We don't call these Japanese hippies "uber-prolific" for nothing! There's two long tracks here (as is their wont, apparently), the first of 'em "Dark Stars In The Dazzling Sky" which is definitely darker and more intense than the stuff on the Day Before the Sky Fell In cd listed above. Kawabata's clawing guitar gets cranked, honed to a heavy metal edge, and the wild vocals babble and keen like Lucifer's Friend on a bad trip... it's a mean Hawkwindy jam, knives out, grinding away and throwing off sparks.
The second, longer track, "Pink Lady Lemonade" is heavy too, but in a much different, spaced out and blissful way... it drones prettily, Kawabata's guitar still soaring and scrabbling over the droning din, with the overall effect being an uplifting one.
Recorded in 2004 in the US and UK with a four-piece AMT line-up (no Cotton C., and new guy Koizume Hajime behind the drum kit), this release was meant for the merch tables of their 2006 US Tour, and comes packaged in the slim paper sleeves of all AMT-label product, easy to transport on tour, just as the music will easily transport you...
Dark green T shirt with light green logo.
Dark green T shirt with light green logo.
Dark green T shirt with light green logo.
Dark green T shirt with light green logo.
Dark green T shirt with light green logo.
Navy T shirt with aqua logo.
Navy T shirt with aqua logo.
Navy T shirt with aqua logo.
Navy T shirt with aqua logo.
Navy T shirt with aqua logo.
Red T shirt with white logo.
Red T shirt with white logo.
Red T shirt with white logo.
Red T shirt with white logo.
Red T shirt with white logo.
The very evil black T shirt with shiny black logo.
The very evil black T shirt with shiny black logo.
The very evil black T shirt with shiny black logo.
The very evil black T shirt with shiny black logo.
The very evil black T shirt with shiny black logo.
Autonervous are Jessie Evans of The Vanishing and Bettina Koster of Malaria -- bringing together two generations of post punk and new wave. Both Koster and Evans are hellions on the saxophone, so it's not surprising that that instrument is featured as prominently on the front cover as the ladies themselves. The two also share the synthesizer, bass and vocal duties on the album, but go it alone on guitar (Koster) and drums (Evans). It's clear they're having a blast together in producing their shiveringly cold marches, sharing an easy flair for dramatics with ample nods to their respective pasts.
What else can we really say about Finnish forest folk freaks Avarus that we haven't already said a million times? Maybe the most exciting free music ensemble out there. And by out there we mean really really out there. On the lp-only II, Avarus twist their usually shambolic free folk into a bizarre and druggy demented cartoon music from another dimension, a dizzying swirl of pitch shifted tape loops, manipulated sound samples, snippets of jazzy big band horns chopped and doused in outerspace FX, guitars scraping and scrabbling. feedback swooping and squealing, clattery percussion, strings being sawed and plucked, some sort of primitive DJ scratching, the whole thing King Tubbied into a dubbed out brain melting free-for-all. Over the course of these two sidelong tracks, Avarus take brief excursions into loping abstract post rock, tripped out psychedelic krautrock, dreamy droney ambient soundscape, and full on pummeling free rock, but it's like they got a new bandmate, THE STUDIO, as every bit of this disc is tweaked, or twisted, or affected or fucked with. Speeds slow down and speed up, parts are flipped backwards, different songs are spliced and butted up against each other creating short attention span collage like rhythms. But somehow, II still retains all the stuff about Avarus we already loved, just makes it a little bit more druggy and fucked up. And who can argue with that?
Packaged in a full color sleeve, with printed color insert. SUPER LIMITED as always. We got a whole bunch but they probably won't last.
Aidan Baker is a very busy man. Not only is he a writer, he also plays music under no less than three monickers. His drone metal outfit Nadja, his avant prog experimental group ARC, and of course his solo work under his own name. Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find two other releases from Nadja, big beautiful lumbering slabs of slow motion sound, but here, on his latest solo endeavor, it's an entirely different situation. Gone are the beats and the downtuned guitars, the sludge, the doom, the dirge, leaving nothing but the drone. And even that is practically washed out into nothingness. Periodic is very subtle and quiet, ultra minimal drifts of microscopic sound. A few spikes pop up here and there, but for the most part it's a near flatline, a barely there wash of creaks and shimmers, whirs and rumbles, totally abstract soundscapes that require active listening to full grasp. Headphones transport the listener to another world. Under the sea, in some lost cave, floating in space, hard to tell exactly where you are with a head full of these sounds, which is why Baker is so good. Eyes closed, ears full, we are drifting lost in some parallel universe, where everything is tiny, a world of slowly shifting little pixels, or a world where everything is massive, so all we see are huge expanses of color and shape. So mysteriously dreamy. And of course highly recommended.
Packaged in a gorgeous oversized blue and white sleeve adorned with billowing clouds and (of course) the periodic table.
One of our absolute favorite minimalist composers pulls another lovely work from his bag of tricks. That bag of tricks being his seemingly endless collection of moldering tape loops initially recorded a couple of decades ago. This time around it's from a deceptively simple piano loop titled "Variation #9: Pantelleria". Pantelleria is a tiny volcanic island southwest of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea whose long and ancient history is steeped in bloodshed, due to its once strategic proximity to warring Christian and Muslim nations. The patina of time on Basinski's key material, coupled with a happy accident of the tape loop slipping off of the tape head, creates a beautifully decaying and lyrically submerged counterpoint effect. What at first seems like five simple notes repeated ends up sounding like Nature cleansing herself of mankind's bloody history. Gorgeous!
At first we figured this massive triple cd was a collection of long out of print cassettes and cd-r's, which in a way it sort of is. In fact this three disc set is a collection of live performances, recorded all over the world, featuring different live versions of many classic BCM recordings, tracing the development of Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel, and the growth of BCM's sound from swirling found sound ambience to more aggressive free noise exploration (dipping his toes into the metal that would come to define his project Black Boned Angel).
The first disc features two tracks, both near 30 minutes, recorded in 1998 and 2000 in New Zealand. The first is a soft shifting shimmering soundscape of gentle whirs and distant percussive actions. Quite dreamy and tranquil. The second features a lot more buzz, a sort of extended raga, tones are stretched out into thick layers of sound, one atop the other, a hypnotic meditative dronescape of bombinating strings and glistening high end tones.
The second disc jumps ahead to 2001 and 2003, for two shows one recorded in a temple in Japan the other in Denmark. The Japanese show is a half hour of distant drones, behind ambient recordings of rain and wind, the music building and building until the drones sound almost like a rainstorm themselves. Very reminiscent of the sadly now out of print Kougezan Koukiji record, also performed live in a temple during a rainstorm. The Danish show clocks in at 40 minutes and is another abstract exploration, starting out very spare, with plenty of random clatter and found sound detritus, but eventually building into a thick heady drone before eventually breaking down into strange buzzes and reverbed whirs.
The third disc features two tracks from quite recently, one from last year, one from earlier this year. The first recorded in Scotland, is incredibly lush, a soft buzzing drone grows in intensity until it is a massive wall of vibrating strings, layers of thick whir and rumbling low end, near the end, in comes a killer drum and metal guitar riff, that sounds strangely like a loop pulled from "Number Of The Beast" but could, we suppose be the guys actually rocking out. Either way, it makes for an amazingly epic jam, this instantly recognizable metal snippet, repeated over and over beneath an ocean of glistening sonic shimmer. The final track, recorded in Japan, earlier this year, finds Kneale returning to his ambient roots, a soft shimmering soundworld, swirls of vibrating metal, loops of subtle sound smeared into silvery streaks, lots of metallic reverberation, somehow harnessed into a dark dolorous drift. So goddamn lovely.
Essential for ALL Birchville fans. Even if you have some of these tracks on a cd-r or cassette, these versions are distinctly different so you'll probably want them anyway. And for BCM newbies, this would make for a darn fine introduction (the price is right too for a triple cd!). Six breathtakingly gorgeous longform free drone epics, it doesn't get much better than this.
Once again, packaged in one of those now ubiquitous three-pocket plastic sleeves that's nice and slim but more or less ensures that all the discs will wind up with some minor cosmetic scratches on their playing surfaces.
Okay. We screwed up. It happens. What can we say? Sometimes we're easily confused. We get SO many records every week to listen to and review, hundreds in fact. But also, people don't always make it any easier. We recently got two discs in the mail, both with remarkably similar packaging, one WAS actually a reissue, of Matthew Bower's Mirag disc, a new version of a long out of print cd-r, the other, we now discover, is NOT in fact a reissue, but a brand new record, with -almost- the exact same title as the cd-r we wrongly assumed this was a reissue of. Arghhh. So anyway, enough of the scrambling to cover our screw-up-prone asses and on to this maginificent slab of murky malevolence.
BBA fans know what they're in for, a serious blackened pummeling, huge roiling washes of downtuned black tar riffing, swirled and smeared into epic waves of darkdarkdark ambience. Bookended on both sides by some Birchville style shimmery dronescaping, but those merely serve to ease you in, and ease you out, of this bottomless black pool of corrosive suffocating heaviness. Only twenty minutes long, but we're not entirely sure we could handle much more, even though we do pretty much wish this record would go on forever. Nothing but punishing blackness as far as the eye can sea. Nothing but rumbling crunch as far as the ear can hear. A never ending metallic drift into a swirling black hole of gloriously brutal doomdronedeathdirgesludge.
Packaged in swank silver ink on black sleeves!
Joining our beloved Mission District neighbors Ray's Vast Basement and The Modular Set on SF label (and arts collective!) Howell's Transmitter are two fine new groups, Black Fiction and Michael Zapruder's Rain Of Frogs.
Ghost Ride is Black Fiction's second full length (their self-titled debut came out last year). These curious popsters do their fair share of exploring and incorporating bits and bites of countless musical styles. When the dust settles and all the pieces settle, the outcome follows a similar patchwork-y path as Beck, Animal Collective and/or Elephant Six Collective (Olivia Tremor Control, Apples In Stereo, et al). Indeed, they might insert a tabla rhythm and a slice of soul here or a shufflin' hip hop beat there, but their sweet melodies and twee boy vocals reveal an indie pop core. Overall the album takes a laidback loping pace, however while that may be the case most of the time, occasionally it's as if a bright sunbeam comes along and stirs them into a minor frenzy of frolicking. Check out the ninth tune "Something Else" for an example of such an outburst. A delight.
Following his friendly get-together with the Tortoise gents, Mr. Will Oldham gathers 'round his musical pals Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy, brother Paul Oldham, Emmett Kelly, Jim White and Valgeir Sigurdsson for a trio of songs. One is an earthen duet, one a swampy hoedown and -- in our opinion perhaps the best of the bunch -- the last is Oldham's solitary voice resting gently atop a haunting drifty drone bed. Nice.
Nothing Painted Blue frontman and Extra Glenns member Franklin Bruno digs deep into the making of Elvis Costello's classic Armed Forces. You think Bruno's lyrics are dense and wordy, wait until you have a look at his prose!!!
By this point a history lesson on Can is probably not needed as their importance to the last 25 years of underground and not so underground music and their incredible musical legacy has been quite well documented. And we're pretty excited about the recent renewed interest in Can resulting in the remastering and re-releasing of much of their back catalog. The aptly titled Delay was recorded in the late '60s with Malcom Mooney on vocals. This is a way more stripped down, raw, proto-punk Can then maybe most folks are used to. Recorded around the same time as White Light/White Heat this shares the same blistering spirit that The Velvet Underground were exploring across the sea. We've no doubt mentioned Can as a huge influence on so many AQ favorites: Circle, No Neck Blues Band, Nurse With Wound, Throbbing Gristle, Radiohead, Tortoise, on and on and on.... but listening to Delay you begin to think that Can may just out-rock them all. A year or so before The Stooges would hit the scene, Can were already displaying such raw emotion and all out rock exuberance, that the world couldn't help but be awed (if they'd heard it). Delay once again demonstrates that no matter what kind of sounds Can were working with they always managed to find the emotional core, and let it seep into every bit of music they made.
As always, these Ultra Eczema lps are amazingly packaged, in gorgeously designed sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and limited to 400 copies, most of which are sold before we even realize they're out. So we only got a tiny handful of these (5-10 copies) so don't get your hopes up.
Soundartist / performer / designer Jessica Rylan gives us a super intimate disc of her peculiar brand of balladry. From vocal / piano duets, with extremely strained vocals and soft, lilting piano, to super abstract, ultradistorted solo vocal explorations, with her voice buried in muffled muted murk and stuttering squeaking electronics, with random bits of drum kit tossed in, to what sounds like some dark fuzzed out electronic dronegrind, a pulsing thick electronic industrial soundscape, to solo vocals, unadorned, swathed in natural reverb. Pretty weird, and alternatingly harsh and lovely.
Liner notes by Thurston Moore.
What can we say? We don't know a single person who wasn't devastated when Chappelle ditched his show and took off. And we also don't know a single person who has not been chomping at the bit for these lost episodes, the bits and pieces Chappelle filmed before freaking out. Meant to be parts of a third season, Chappelle's partner decided that it would be a damn shame if no one got to see these skits and he's right. So here you go. A handful of episodes, quite probably the last we'll ever see of Chappelle's Show. The only really good thing to come out of this, is that the new episodes are hosted by Charlie Murphy, who, if you've seen the first two seasons, pretty much gives Chappelle a run for his money EVERY time he's on screen. SO RECOMMENDED.
All of these 33 1/3 books are emminently readable, revealing looks into a band, and their creative processes, always centered around the making of a particular album, and we have a feeling this is the one everyone has been waiting for, judging from how many of these we STILL sell every week, and the fact that In The Aeroplane Over The Sea may be the most revered of all indie rock artifacts. We know folks who would kill to find out what transpired during the making of this album, and to more deeply understand a record whose tracks have found there way onto millions of mixtapes.
Gimme a C! Gimme an S! Gimme another S! What does that spell? FUN!!! The latest addition to the Sub Pop family comes from Sao Paulo, Brazil! Although the band photo looked like a teenage version of Katrina And The Waves, the only other thing in common with that band is perhaps their stratospheric energy level. CSS are totally gleeful, brightly hued and tingling with electricity. It's like they took all these incredibly familiar pop hooks from the last few decades and made all new songs around them. But here's the giant good thing about it -- they sounds completely earnest. There's not a smidge of hipster irony (well, maybe except for the songs like "Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above" and "Meeting Paris Hilton" which is one of the better tunes). Fans of The Go Team will surely take a shine to this group. Positively bustin' at the seams with enthusiasm, they maintain the energy level of a half dozen pep squads throughout the eleven tunes, bubbling over at a breezy tempo. An aside, we were particularly charmed by their pronunciation of "Owff tha hoook". Folks with delicate ears, please note that they do have a bit of a pottymouth... although from their lips it comes across as pretty innocuous. Three cheers for CSS! Psst, in case you were wonderin', the album's title translates from Portuguese to English as "Tired Of Being Sexy". Ooh, such a burden, innit?
The longtime dj collaborator and aQ fave turntable wizard Cut Chemist, who over the years has jammed with the likes of Jurassic 5, Ozomatli, DJ Shadow, Shortkut and Madlib, finally goes it alone... well, sorta. He's got a little help from his friends and the backing of a major label. Markedly absent is an abundance of wildly kinetic displays of scratchin' dexterity. With the exception of The Audience Is Listening's final track (and theme song!), his ol' over the top acrobatics on the decks have been tempered into the for the most part even-keeled energetically groovin' tracks. Its potential appeal is far broader. Although he is most renowned as a jaw-dropping turntablist, Cut Chemist has effectively done his part to further define the turntable as an everyday instrument rather than gimmick/trickster accessory -- muting its presence rather than trumpeting it. His beloved wit and playfulness are fortunately still fully intact in his samplin' selection as is evident in tracks such as "Spat". Other standouts surface midway through the proceedings, the sixth track "What's The Altitude" which features Hymnal (who along with Edan and Mr. Lif on "Storm" contributes the scant MC presence on the album -- both tracks shine a little bit extra) and the seventh "Metrorail Thru Space". A solid, skillfully composed and assembled solo debut.
We first heard this Portland stoner-prog-metal combo on the Invaders comp of happenin' heavy psych metal that the Kemado label put out a few months ago. Their track was one of the several highlights there. Went to go see 'em when they played here with Parchman Farm not long ago, too, and the Danava boys SLAYED, shredded, and (incidentally) were all really skinny. Awesome band. Basically a rippin' power trio with extra (and to be honest, seemingly unnecessary) keyboard electronics action. So we're looking forward to their upcoming full length debut due later this year on Kemado, who made the wise decision to sign these guys. As a teaser to that, here's a single-sided limited-edition 12" vinyl release featuring an epic track entitled "Quiet Babies Astray In A Manger".
All right, while Andee is the biggest Dead C expert here at Aquarius, we're ALL fans of New Zealand's long-running noise rock geniuses. And since he took responsibility for writing the extensive and effusive reviews we've published in recent weeks for the repressings / warehouse finds of The Dead C's Harsh 70s Reality and Trapdoor Fucking Exit albums, I (Allan) thought I'd step up and take over reviewing this brand new release, which is in fact a sort of "best of" anthology selected and compiled by the band themselves, featuring 22 tracks spread over two compact discs, spanning their career to date. Not being as much of an expert as Andee, but still a fan (I've got a few of their albums, and would have more but missed out on some releases when I wasn't as 'hip' to this band as I am now), this 2cd is just what I needed: a primer of sorts on this sometimes confusional, confounding, and obscure-but-important band. And as far as reviewing goes, what's to review? THIS SHIT IS ESSENTIAL! End of story. It's an ideal introduction for newbies and even the most dedicated Dead C fanatic will want it as well. Even if you've collected every last rare tape or vinyl track from these guys it's still nice to have a few of 'em on cd.
You'll hear how The Dead C trio of Michael Morley, Robbie Yeats, and Bruce Russell blazed their own unique path through the down under underbelly of indie-rock experimentation, pushing the boundaries of (between?) noise and rock in their New Zealand laboratory. True originals, appreciated at first only by a hardy few (themselves, mainly, as well as the likes of Sonic Youth). Their deliberately lo-fi, song-subverting, willfully 'wrong' music-making was and is perhaps an acquired taste. We'd venture to guess though that at this point, few regular AQ customers would have less than positive reactions to The Dead C's seasick lurchings, to their sounds of droning flybys from UFOs made out of straw, and feedback stomp and damaged thrash. No complaints about caustic liquids somehow coursing through guitar strings, amps, and ears. Thumb up to their hazy hints of melodies, buried beneath solid static storms of guitar distortion, or their moments of quietly emotive indie-pop prettiness in the NZ tradition, left to rust and decay.
The tracks are arranged chronologically, from "Max Harris" off their 1988 Flying Nun album DR503 starting off the first disc, to the track "Truth" taken from The Damned released in 2003 that ends the second disc. Disc one might be considered a survey of their "songier" era, going up to about 1992's Harsh 70s Reality, while disc two deals with material from 1994 on that saw them becoming less of a particularly noisy indie-rock band and more of truly abstract, improvising noise band, still with some rock and pop elements weirdly woven in. The tracks selected comprise both some "greatest hits" (things we'd have picked too, for sure) and some total rarities from long-deleted cassettes and limited vinyl-only releases, like the Clyma Est Mort LP, The Operation Of The Sonne LP, the Xpressway Pile-Up cassette comp, and the Helen Said This mini-LP, among others. Actually most of these tracks are rarities, in the sense that a lot of their '90s cds on Siltbreeze like The White House and Repent, and even more recent albums like the incredible self-titled double disc on Language Recordings from 2000 are out of print now too. There's two tracks from Harsh 70s Reality, but strangely enough nothing from Trapdoor Fucking Exit, by the way.
The thick cd booklet contains essays, in ascending order of non-fictional detail, from Seymour Glass of Bananafish mag, Tom Lax of Siltbreeze, and Nick Cain of Opprobrium fanzine. And there's track-by-track commentary from Bruce Russell as well, adding to the "primer" value of this release. It may be true that this band's stuff takes a while to "get". Years maybe. But this crash course gives a great head start.
The blurb sticker on the front of this proclaims The Dead C as "the GREATEST noise/drone rock band of all time" and we really might not have any argument with that at all! It goes on to suggest that fans of Wolf Eyes, SUNNO))), Lightning Bolt and Growing would/should dig The Dead C quite heavily. Probably true as well. The implication being, though, that fans of those bands wouldn't have heard of The Dead C before. Perhaps -- and if that's the case, and that's you, you definitely should check this out!!! We'd probably go on to say that as much as we enjoy all those bands, The Dead C is much closer to our hearts for sure...
As always, these Ultra Eczema lps are amazingly packaged, in gorgeously designed sleeves, pressed on nice thick vinyl, and limited to 400 copies, most of which are sold before we even realize they're out. So we only got a tiny handful of these (5-10 copies) so don't get your hopes up.
A selection of rare and unreleased tracks from these infamous Swedes. Recorded in the mid to late eighties, these tracks mix electronic experimentation with industrial pummel, abstract noise, sound collage, processed vocals, all tangled up into drummachined blasts of grinding squealing, squeaking, pounding fuzz drenched, super distorted freak out. Think a more newwaved Throbbing Gristle. Dance music for the one legged. A musical metal helmet strapped on and set to stun, ears bleeding and toes tapping. Bogens Massage Institut is a gloriously dense assemblage of thick and corrosive, but sort of surprisingly playful, alien sounds and noises.
Includes an insert with extensive liner notes and discography.
Heads up! Better late than never, Every Move A Picture have arrived with their V2 debut album. Their pouty boy vocals, '80s synths, crunchy guitars and butt-shakin' beat are all primed and ready to out-Faint The Faint, out-Killers The Killers and... aw, you get the picture, doncha? They do a mighty fine job of it too. Nothing you haven't heard before, but well-written and slickly executed, and pretty much guaranteed to get the kids on the dancefloor.
For the last several years Excepter have been creating super fucked up, seriously pleasurable waves on outsider dancefloors everywhere, with an onslaught of ep's, 12"s, and split releases. Now it's finally time for their debut full length, and it does not disappoint! Herky-jerky rhythms, beat up electronics, drugged out rumblings, late night salvation. The album really does work like a full record should. The first half has some almost catchy pop moments (this is all relative of course) including quite possibly their most infectious song to date "Rock Stepper", while the second half of the album features longer tracks that melt and burst with the unique flavor we've come to love from these guys. They seem to be taking some of the more melodic moments of Throbbing Gristle's legacy (a friend even suggested one might throw one of these songs on a mix right next to TG's "Hot On The Heels Of Love!") Excepter makes sounds that are the perfect conglomeration of the now and hip with a eyes toward the future and a knowing nod to the past. And while their music sounds nothing like Ariel Pink, we can totally imagine the sort of craziness that might result if those wonderfully warped melody makers got together. Since they both approach music making from a damaged and drugged out, Technicolor drenched angle unlike almost any other bands we've heard. Until then, we'll just be content to soak up this super kick ass full length.
For those expectin' a new studio album from this fine Canadian songstress, sorry folks, you'll have to wait a little longer! In the meantime treat your ears to an assortment of Feist-y remixes and collaborations by the likes of Postal Service, Jane Birkin, k-os, Gonzales and her Broken Social Scene brethren Apostle Of Hustle. Open Season is primarily focused around a handful of tunes from Let It Die -- a couple mixes each of "One Evening" and "Gatekeeper" as well as four treatments of "Mushaboom". While we've found some of her music to tread disturbingly close to adult contemporary / easy listening, the majority of these fifteen tracks nudge her into new pleasing downtempo-y territory. Also included is her 'live at the BBC' version of the BeeGees' "Inside + Out" as well as her cover of her ol' pal Peaches' "Lovertits".
We made the most recent record by Grouper record of the week a while back. A dizzying mix of Paart, Feldman, Skullflower, all rendered in washed out fuzz and indistinct shades of shimmer and whir.
Here we have a new group called Flash Lights, which features Liz Harris aka Grouper along with sound sculptor Jorge Behringer. Harris offers up her angelic ghostlike vocals, ethereal and gauzy, sometimes so barely there, they just sound like instrument hum, while Behringer contributes the music, a heady swirl of found sounds, field recordings, dreamlike guitar, processed viola and all manner of electronics. The sound is dark and moody and glacial. Harris' vocals definitely act more as another layer in the overall soundfield, often just a steady reverberating hum, or a slowly modulating warble, drenched in reverb so the whole sound is like being lost in a dense musical fog. The final half hour track is a massive dronescape of fuzz and hiss and whir and rumble, like drifting on some alien sea, about halfway through a series of clattery creaking sonic happenings are introduced, almost like the rigging of the ship stretching and settling, very reminiscent of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste. So haunting and creepy and captivatingingly lovely. Anyone who dug that grouper ABSOLUTELY needs this.
Limited to 200 copies. Featuring cover art by Liz Harris.
Just when you thought that the mine of Appalachian, finger pickin', Fahey influenced guitar records had gone dry out comes one of the best unknown records we've heard in ages, and whaddayaknow? It's on Fahey's own Takoma imprint. Mark Fosson's playing recalls the amazing sound of the first two Leo Kotke albums (yes Leo made a couple great records before getting, umm... sort of not so hot) in fact a few times that we've been playing this in the store different customers have freaked out thinking it was some early unreleased Kotke gem. Actually when Fahey first heard a tape of Fosson's demos he wrote on a piece of paper "The best thing since Kotke." Recorded in Chillicothe, Ohio in 1976 these songs by Fosson not only resonate with as much beauty as anything that's come out on Takoma, but has also quite nicely stood the test of time. Besides the Kotke guesses many folks in the store also thought they were hearing a new recording by one of our favorite present days guitar masters, James Blackshaw. We're really happy Drag City have unearthed these long lost sessions as these are sounds that deserve to be heard!
The Bay Area gent known as Levi Fuller crafts somber elegant folk in league with Low, Black Heart Procession, Sixteen Horsepower, Red House Painters and Mountain Goats. Fans of any/all of those artists very well could find themselves taking quite a shine to the slow smoldering beauty of This Murder Is A Peaceful Gathering. An earth-toned tapestry of strummy acoustic guitar, sinewy electric guitar textured with unexpected percussive and atmospheric elements.
A couple years ago, all the Boris / Corrupted / Eyehategod / Zeni Geva fans here at AQ were pleased to discover the debut cd from this band Garadama, released on the Osaka based, eclectic noise/psych label Alchemy. Super heavy riffage, distorted fuzzed out walls of DOOOOM guitar, crashing into your brain with the force of a frantic fiend (as per their song "A Fiend Is Living In My Brain"). Great stuff for everyone into the HEAVY (and no surprise, seeing as how the band featured the former singer/guitarist from the very Sabbatherian outfit Subvert Blaze). So, we've been waiting, and had begun to wonder what had happened to them. Well, suddenly and thankfully, we've got import copies of their brand new second album, as you can tell by the title. Again it's an onslaught of monster dirge crunch distorto sludge, swinging from Sabbathy groove to spooky, droning ambience... plus a dose of that special Japanese weirdness we love. Tracks like "Dogma" parts 1 and 2 are ultra-spooky and almost black metal, while the band display their rockin' side on the likes of the riffy "Who Does Try To Kill A Man?".
The album is not over-long, but their doom is deep, and we're sure Garadama would hold their own in any contest with countryfolk Green Machine and Boris... We should mention also that the nasally strangled doom vocals and the twistedness of their heaviness here reminds Andee of old faves Alice Donut! Recommended, doom fanatics.
Another gorgeous and mysterious sonic document from these until recently WAY under the radar sound sculptors from Portland. And yes, this is another way too limited cd-r, but rest assured it's another absolute abstract freedrone gem.
One 33 minute track, a ghostly dreamlike shuffle through a fuzzy indistinct world of softly surging swells, smeared guitar ambience, shimmering high end short wave interference, distant almost-melodies, sonar like blips and bleeps, and thick washes of rumbling chordal swirl, all deftly woven into a fuzzed out, slow shifting dreamdrone. So good.
Includes a full color poster/insert
Limited to 100 copies.
This super duper group stars Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum, Run Westy Run singer Kraig Johnson, and The Jayhawks' Gary Louris and Marc Perlman. It's taken the gents eight long years to get another album together. You might recall their last one the casually patchy Weird Tales came out back in 1998. Another Fine Day is their third full length, a generous fifteen song serving of Golden Smog. It starts out as pretty much by the books country rock. That's all fine and dandy enough, but on the fifth song the band throws the listener a great curve ball. "Corvette" is an unexpectedly lightning bolt of power pop (uh, we just found out that it was originally written for an actual Corvette commercial... sigh.). The vocals for this one tune sound charmingly like Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard. We hit repeat on that one a bunch of times. It's a perfect mixtape tune. The follow-up ain't no slouch either. It's a gentle psych rock number reminiscent of Bowie and Bolan that starts out with a willowy instrumental intro. Nice! From there the album continues it's pleasingly varied path from the sweet pretty pop of "Cure For This" to the considerably grittier electric guitar riffin' of "Hurricane". Despite Golden Smog being a side project for many of its members, they've assembled a very dedicated, fleshed out, un-side project-y album. Recommended.
The return of the mighty Gorgoroth!!! With all the non musical drama surrounding these guys it's sometimes hard to remember that Gorgoroth remain one of the only TRUE Norwegian black metal bands still totally capable of utter blackened musical destruction. Vocalist Gaahl has had it tough, arrested, headed for prison, but as we've learned from Lords Of Chaos, if you're gonna commit a heinous crime, do it in Norway. 14 years for first degree murder. Gaahl only got a year or so for taking a man hostage and torturing him. But what this might tell you is that Gorgoroth are indeed still very very EVIL. And they sound like it.
There are seemingly two schools of thought on Gorgoroth. There are those who love OLD Gorgoroth, Under The Sign Of Hell being THE ONE, and there are those, like us who lean toward Destroyer, the band's most noisy and fucked up record. We actually love both, but as we're sure you know, we tend to lean toward the damaged and demented. Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam falls mostly on the side of the former, a TRUE buzzing and blasting blackness, that does sound fucking fantastic but is not really weird or noisy or fucked up. We still love it, cuz these guys can still basically do no wrong, ands if you are hankering for some blasting frosty fury, some true grim classic sounding black metal, this will definitely hit the spot. The production is better, the band is tighter, the songs are maybe catchier, but it basically sounds like a modernized version of Under The Sign Of Hell, which is a VERY good thing. Secretly we were hoping for the band to totally drop us in our tracks with the weirdest black metal record ever, cuz if anyone is capable of coming up with such a thing, it's Gorgoroth, but hell, we've been to busy banging our heads to really notice.
