Previously the Die Schachtel label has brought us several very cool reissues of some very obscure '70s art/prog/avant music from Italy -- such as Luciano Cilio, Prima Materia and Insiememusicadiversa. Weird and wonderful stuff. Now, they've got a brand new band for us, not a reissue (though it totally seems to fit in with their "thing"). It's apparently the first in a new series called Zeit devoted to the current-day Italian underground, and comes from a trio calling themselves A (actually, an A with what looks a little circular diacritical mark above it, which we can't reproduce on our website easily. Maybe we should write Aa, that might be the correct way to do it. Furthermore, Wikipedia tells us that in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish it's a word meaning rivulet or stream.). They've got a lot in common with fellow Italians (and AQ faves) Larsen, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, and Sinistri/Starfuckers, playing a sort of mysterious, mostly instrumental, deconstructed, experimental post-rock music. No wonder in iTunes it comes up as genre = "unclassifiable". They're definitely carrying on the tradition established by those '70s artists Die Schachtel has documented.
The percussive beat-booming and crackling drone of the disc's longest track, the sixteen minute "Something A Long Time Ago. And There Are No Buttons Either, Because" brings to mind This Heat. There and elsewhere Aa also conjure suggestions of Village Of Savoonga, Richard Youngs, Dean Roberts, and even Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, among other good things. Additionally, we'll mention that this was mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, which isn't a bad reference point either if you've heard his music. We just can't resist this sort of semi-abstract, organic post-rock, with its rainy day piano, meandering guitar, tinkling clock-ticking textures, dreamy violin sawing, wordless (?) floaty vocals, glitchy electronics, and birdlike horn warble... all woven together gorgeously and with a sense of the dramatic. Very very nice. As is the packaging too!
By the way, the wordy song titles are all sentence fragments taken from a paragraph belonging to Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time.
MPEG Stream: "My Memory Is Like A Film. That Is Why" [/audio/aamemory.m3u]
MPEG Stream: "I Am Really Good At Remembering Things, Like The Conversation I Have Written Down In This Book, And What People Are Wearing, And What They Smelled Like, Because My Memory Has" [/audio/aaremembering.m3u]
Super limited (500 copies worldwide, we got about 20) double live album recorded in London in 2004 from the Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. packaged in a plain white sleeve with a photocopied insert like the classic old Stones and Zeppelin bootleg lps and pressed on gorgeous opaque white / red / black / brown swirled vinyl. This is supposedly the final release for the Melting Paraiso U.F.O. incarnation of AMT, and what a way to go, four sides of deliriously spacey and fully freaked out psychedelic Ur-rock, from kaleidoscopic bursts of druggy space rock, to long stretches of almost meditative otherworldy drone, haunting chants, bizarre soaring operatic trills, pulsing relentless dirges, and wild free epic OUT THERE musical explorations, all drenched in swirling distorted guitars and clouds of hazy psych rock splatter. Very lo-fi recording, it all sounds like maybe it was recorded with one mic, set right in the middle of the room, but it just makes the whole thing sound that much more immediate and chaotic and furious and alive. Again, VERY LIMITED, when these are gone they are gone for good.
Not sure what it is about the number 9 but it somehow figures heavily into the mythos of these mysterious grindlords from Australia. Their first release was a super limited 9". This latest disc, another blown out blast of pummeling technical grind, is 9 songs packed into 9 ultradense minutes. Hmmm. 9. 9. 9. Upside down is... 6. 6. 6. Ahem, anyway... As with all great grind, these guys pack more riffs and parts into 9 minutes than most bands can manage in an hour! 9 mini epics, each a dizzying squall of whirlwind riffs, shrieking vocals, chaotic drum splatter and a wall of low end that hits you like a block of concrete to the sternum. The guys in Whitehorse hipped us to these guys so you can get an idea of the sort of heaviness we're talking here. But where Whitehorse destroy with glacial malevolence, AoA annihilate with frenzied fury! Awesome.
Cool little 3" cd-r packaged in a deluxe oversized slim DVD case, with full color insert.
The Album Leaf has made a name for themselves as the American counterpart to (and comrade of) those grand glistening soundmakers Sigur Ros and Mum. Over the years his music has drawn more and more from the same wintry palette as those Icelanders. However on his fourth album Album Leaf central force Jimmy Lavalle's mellow post-rock roots from his days in the San Diego band Tristeza resurface more prominently than on previous albums. Gently grooving songs like "Writings On The Wall" also bring to mind an American Notwist. To boot, Lavalle is singing more than ever. Oddly enough we initially though he sounded a lot like a less morose Pall Jenkins of Black Heart Procession (bringing back to the fore another element from his past -- he played with them too), however we soon discovered that the voice actually was Jenkins'. Yup, the BHP singer contributed some backup harmonies to his buddy's album. The overall results are not such a vast departure from his past recordings, but they do cut some welcome fresh glistening facets into his lovely resonant tried and true. Recorded at Sigur Ros' Sundlaugin studios.
AQ has been all Gibbons Brothers all the time lately. First these Bardo bros hit us with maybe the best record yet from their main band Bardo Pond, Ticket Crystals, which has stayed in seriously heavy rotation all summer long. Then we got floored by Alaeshir, another of their many side projects, that one a sort of headbanging rock meets daydreaming bliss-out. And then Vapour Theories with its droning sax and psych guitar offerings, AND a super limited ultra kick ass live Bardo Pond release on Archive, and now... --pause to catch breath-- this two track, 40 minute disc of deep in the forest ethno-drones, drenched in buzz and shimmer. Sitar, guitar, cumbas and all sorts of percussion create exquisite layers psych drone Nirvana that will transport you to another dimension. Strangely peaceful, the music we hear in our heads when we lay in grass at night staring at the stars. So very nice!
Angel Eyes are another band ready to make their mark in the blossoming post rock / sludge metal scene, and manage to do just that with Something To Do With Death, making -that- sound completely their own. So much so that upon hearing this disc we freaked out and immediately got in touch with the label and got a bunch of copies for the store. The general vibe is one we've come to love, the slow building brooding moodiness, a creeping post rock slow burn, minor key guitar, distant droney shimmer, simple martial percussion, building in intensity, the opening track could be Mogwai or Godspeed, with its understated majesty and about-to-explode urgency. Track two, the awesomely titled "By The Time He Was My Age, Orson Welles Had Made Citizen Kane", starts off with more loping post rockiness, but quickly lurches into some seriously fierce Neurosisy sludge, but within the roiling churning downtuned brutality, lurks plenty of mournful melody and subtle sonic shadings. Making this more than just heavy, more a an emotionally loaded ferocity. In fact each song is a expansive and beautifully convoluted journey, from massive pummel, to dreamy shuffle, to tribal ambience, to blown out guitarnoise and back again. So fucking good. Obviously, anyone who digs Isis, Pelican, Godspeed, Tides, Conifer, Minsk, Mouth Of The Architect, Rosetta, Minsk or any of the current crop of postrockmetal outfits NEEDS THIS NOW!
The world-wide search for RARE PSYCHEDELIC GEMS bears fruit yet again, with this cd reissue of an impossible-to-find LP from Indonesia, originally released in 1973. Beautiful, groovy stuff, that blends Western psych and prog stylings with a definite homegrown Indonesian touch (there's only one song sung in English, the rest in their native tongue). Much more light than heavy this is, but there's no lack of wailing guitar. Imagine, maybe, if you will (if you can!), Santana meets The Steps... The music of Ariesta Birawa provides plenty of yearning vocals, gentle flute, ethnic percussion, melancholic fragility, and sunshiney melodies that we figure any fan of the further-flung installments in Shadoks' Love, Peace & Poetry psychedelia compilation series should enjoy. Likewise for those who dig the Cambodian Rocks and Thai Beat comps...
Bay Area sound artist Art Lessing is one prolific d.i.y. fellow. Each year without fail he releases at least one cd-r of his living room recorded aural creations, and we've got his latest one. His musical roamings know no boundaries freewheelin' from neo-folk rambles ("Plastic Couch") to buzzy space rock ("Badly") to hazy contemplative minimal guitar resonance ("Tinkle Star") to Ween-ish pitch-shifted fuckery ("Moe The Slow"). Likewise, his battery of instruments includes many unconventional homemade implements. Ooooeeee, this is a strange one and it draws customer queries each time it's played in the store.
New Yorkers Asobi Seksu brings the bright carefree pop of the late '80s (think: The Primitives, Lush, Velocity Girl) together with the moody UK shoegazers of the early '90s (a la My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Swervedriver or perhaps the more recent atmospheric modern rock of Magyar Posse). However, what sets their second album Citrus apart is its high gloss J-pop production style. Each song showering the listener with a Puffy Amiyumi level of shiny shiny, sugary pearliness. Singer Yuki Chikudate's high flittery delivery recalls that of Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser... and if you don't know Japanese then the lyrics may prove just as cryptic as Fraser's. Countering the sweetness of Yuki's vocals are her bandmate James Hanna's variety of electric guitars. He builds up billowing spirals of highly effected washes which he punctuates with sharper edged, punchy melodic segments. All the while Chikudate's voice ties giant bows of satiny sorbet ribbons around the proceedings. Yes, Citrus is filled with many seemingly incongruous elements, but the band whips them all together into a delectable effervescent confection. Yum!
First things first, the sticker on the front of this LP says "debut solo record from Crooked Fingers' Eric Bachmann". Uhhh, we thought Crooked Fingers *was* Eric Bachmann's solo persona. What's up with that?! Now we've gotta say that everyone's got their own hang-ups, and for us with regards to Mr. Bachmann, they've been two-fold. We can't shake the stunning vocal resemblance between Bachmann and Neil Diamond (when we hear Bachmann we hear Diamond... not a bad thing, mind you!), and we can't help but yearn for his Archers Of Loaf days. Yeah we know, gotta let it go. This fine album does much to dismantle one if not both of those distractions though (pssst... with regards to the latter, we're pleased to report that Archers Of Loaf's Icky Mettle album just got reissued! yay!). Whether his music goes under the moniker Crooked Fingers or Eric Bachmann, it consistently steeps your ears with an overriding sense of weathered weariness and resignation. And yet on To The Races, his voice has acquired a surprising lightness (almost boyishness) to it not present on his previous recordings. His songs no longer seem slumped on a bar stool, but have taken to the outdoors with a broader scope and scale. There are actual glimmers of hope in these songs. That certainly seems to be the central distinction between Bachmann as Crooked Fingers and Bachmann as the official solo Eric Bachmann. Note: the cd isn't here yet, just the vinyl version, but of course there will be a cd. Soon.
Lucio Battisti, a major star in the sixties and seventies in his native Italy, has never had a following here, which is surprising since his romantic psych-inflected ballads are not a far cry from anything Scott Walker or Caetano Veloso produced during the same period. Umanamente Uomo: Il Sogno marks the beginning of an experimental phase for Battisti, dwelling into lushly dramatic arrangements of electric piano, wah guitar, church organ, culminating in the outstanding instrumental "Il Fuoco". While not as far out as say, Franco Battiatio's synth-prog experiments around the same time, we think folks will find a lot to like about Lucio Battisti's unique arrangements of baroque psych-pop.
Wow! It's like Beyonce read our minds. We've always had a big soft spot for her dating back to her days in Destiny's Child and absolutely LOVED about half of her last solo record. But the other half go way too ballady and schmaltzy R+B slow jam for our liking. And BAM! B'Day is all killer no filler, with the fat cut, leaving pure, full on, blood pumping, adrenaline rushing, booty shaking, dance inducing modern R+B groove done to perfection! Beyonce has been often been described as a Diana Ross for her generation and we can't say we really disagree. Her ability to churn out hit after hit, jam packed with killer beats and hook after hook leaves the rest of the hip hop ladies in the dust. With B'day she seems to be moving toward some sort of imaginary kinship with Missy Elliott, what with her new found undeniable intensity, energy and confidence. Every one of these songs (minus the long closer) keeps the intensity full throttle, no letting up, no throwaway tracks, just fierce commanding bad ass funkiness that grabs you by the hair, sends you spinning onto the dancefloor and will NOT let you go. While 99 percent of what's on commercial radio and MTV is pretty tired, stale and disposable, Beyonce continues to make hits that we'll still want to hear 20 years from now.
On last year's Brutality - Majesty - Eternity album, Chicago's Bible Of The Devil really turned on the Heavy Metal afterburners, rocketing from being just a hard rockin', gritty garage/punk band who obviously loved their old AC/DC, Motley Crue and Motorhead cassettes, to the next level of metallic majesty, crafting truly epic, twin guitar riffed compositions worthy of eccentric AQ faves The Lord Weird Slough Feg -- who, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, are pals and frequent touring (and recent split 7") partners with BOTD. If, like us, you thought that was a righteous development, then you'll for sure be pleased with their new onslaught, The Diabolic Procession! The sheer metal triumph of Brutality - Majesty - Eternity is recapitulated here, and then some! If anything, these guys have gotten even more Slough Feg-gy, with some hints of Celtic folk seemingly sneaking into their riff-writing. And they're on the same label as Slough Feg, now, in fact. So, as with the Feg, Maidenesque dual guitar action is a big part of this album's appeal, for us -- you've gotta love lots of guitar (twin Flying V's, if you must know) to dig this, that's for sure. But there's more (which is also crucial): strong songwriting, tons of energy, memorable melodies, and cerebral concepts. Regarding that last item -- I guess it's circular logic to say this, but who but a metal band would consider making a whole album all about something like the tragic historical episode of the Children's Crusades of the Middle Ages?? Gotta love it.
And despite the history lessons, and folky riffs, and acoustic bits that have found their way into these epic numbers, Bible Of The Devil still has something of their punk roots about 'em, notably in the vocals, which are a lot rougher and tougher than the typical power metal croon. Gruff and gravely yet sorta screechy, we're reminded of Lemmy at times, Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. at others... works for us! Goes great with the crunchy chuggy, Maiden/Slough Feg mixed with Metallica tuneage. The Diabolic Possession is another definite triumph for these 'garage rockers gone metal'... very metal!!
We often lament the state of musical affairs that would render records that are as good as anything and everything we've heard by James Blackshaw to be so limited as to only be heard by a mere handful of people. But until now that has indeed been the case. Cd-r after gorgeous cd-r, limited to 200 copies, 100 copies, even less in some instances. But music this beautiful, this lush, this lovely definitely deserves a wider audience, even if its cd-r / underground / outsider / avant folk / new weird America cache suffers accordingly. Who cares? Who -can- care when faced with the sounds on O True Believers. Over the last few years, Blackshaw has found a home amongst free noise fellows and their fans (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Birchville Cat Motel, Rameses III, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof!, Avarus, etc.) even though his sound hewed much closer to Fahey and the like, a stark but sweet steel string Appalachia. Here, that sound is even more stark, more spare and oh so even sweeter. The opening two tracks will have you swooning, or drifting off, or swaying in some glorious mesmerized state or whatever it is you do when you find yourself submerged in some lush swirl of tonal dreaminess, 30 full minutes of guitar, mostly just guitar, spacious and grand, lilting and delicate, no whir or fuzz or rumble or any of the other sonic detritus that usually decorates most of the music like this we love -- no this is crystal clear and crystalline, shimmering and glistening, as if Blackshaw was some strange musical alchemist who discovered how to use a guitar to describe leaves covered in dew, green grass sparkling with morning frost, the sun reflecting on a placid pond, silvery streaks of sunlight filtered through the interwoven branches overhead. It's like wandering into a lost glade, laying in a thick soft patch of grass, and slowly sinking into the ground, until you BECOME the forest around you, sinking into a warm, wash of tranquil otherworldliness. Towards the end of track two, the guitars are joined by cymbalon, tamboura, and bells, and what was only moments earlier some sort of mysterious Appalachian folk, becomes a slow burning blissed out raga, steel strings buzz, each note smeared into warm drones, then sprinkled with delicate chimes and reverberating bells. Track three is equally as blissful, but is constructed quite differently, the guitar lines speed up and become intense and intricate tangles of notes, so snug that the melodies blur and stretch out melodic whirs, while lush major key swells, ebb and flow in the background, a swaying swooning sweetness. The final track is almost jubilant by comparison and 'rocks' as much as any foresty free folk Appalachia can be thought to rock, dense steel string strums, a simple percussive framework of cymbals and chimes, the whole thing wrapped in the wonderfully warm wheeze of a harmonium, adding a thick warm fuzzy patina to the sparkling steel shimmer beneath.
German power metal masters Blind Guardian take a long time between their albums. And there's a reason. No churning out of easy cookie cutter stuff here. Each BG opus is a magisterial production, epic in scale and breathtaking in execution. You can tell that they probably needed the three years since their previous album, just to record this. The Blind Guardian guys probably never see the sunshine, sequestered in a recording studio 24-7. But their pastiness is our gain! A Twist In The Myth is, of course, magnificent. All the bardic bombast and medieval pomp we could hope for! It's barreling full bore heavy metal (a new drummer, new energy?) with of course glorious, singalong choruses. In a uniquely spirited fashion, they've managed to mix Celtic folk motifs with much more modern metal moves on this album, successfully so.
And it bears repeating, Blind Guardian stand apart from their Euro-power peers with an extra dose of ballsiness in both the guitar and vocals departments.
FYI: true fans will want to stay tuned at the end of the disc for the bonus interview track, though we're not sure its inclusion rings as classy as this band otherwise is...
Cult folk singer Kath Bloom's delicate voice and her fragile, often heartbroken lovesongs are, simply, just so sweet and so affecting. At age 50, Kath has perhaps built up a cult following, but is far from a household name. She's recorded sporadically since the early '80s, first in collaboration with avant-guitarist Loren Mazzacane Connors and subsequently solo. Motherhood took precedence over her musical career, though... She's best known really for her contribution to the soundtrack to the 1995 Richard Linklater film Before Sunrise ("Come Here", included on this disc). A while back, we used to sell a lot of copies of a cd-r bearing that title we got directly from Ms. Bloom herself. Maybe we can still get 'em, we'd have to check with her, but better yet anyway we now have this actual cd (fittingly named Finally), an Australian import compilation of some of her nicest stuff from the early '90s 'til now! Yay!
It contains 14 beautiful songs, spanning the years 1993-2005, and also includes detailed liner notes telling Bloom's story, plus an strongly worded appreciation written by one of her biggest fans, filmmaker Caveh Zahedi.
Former AQ-owner Windy was (and still is, we're sure) also a HUGE fan of Kath Bloom (which is why we had those cd-rs). Even she, though, suggested that taking a listen to the soundclips before you buy might be a good idea, as Bloom can indeed be an acquired taste. She sounds a bit like Judee Sill, maybe, more wavery and trembly though, definitely singing from the heart, accompanied by her own gentle guitar playing, harmonica, recorder, and sometimes further instrumentation played by various friends.
You'd think that there weren't any lost psychedelic treasures left to unearth. Especially considering the amount of garbage that gets released, being touted as some amazing find, some legendary lost gem. The fact that a record was released in some super limited pressing, or went out of print soon after it was released, or was maybe never released, is not enough to make it 'legendary' or 'essential' or even 'worth reissuing at all'! In fact often that speaks to the fact that no one gave a shit in the first place, and there's no reason for anyone to care now, except for the public's seemingly insatiable appetite for lost psychedelic treasures. As we quickly learned with the Radioactive reissues, there is no shortage of lame folk / sorta-psychedelia that can be repackaged and pushed on unsuspecting folks just looking to get their sixties/seventies psych rock fix. The folks at Shadoks seem to be a bit more discerning, and while we don't necessarily love everything they put out, they tend to hit way more than they miss.
But to be honest we were a little bit skeptical of a triple cd boxed set of some psychedelic band we had never heard of, but c'mon, all the signs pointed to yes -- they're from Chile, three records from 1970, 1971, and 1973, and most important of all, FLUTE!!! So we gave it a shot, and guess what, it's awesome. Each disc is a little different, but all three are super cool. Lilting psychedelic folk, dreamy and pastoral, fluttering flutes, over sweetly minor key acoustic guitar, simple hand drums, moody crooning vocals, simple shuffling rhythms, warm fuzzy organs, all with just the slightest psychedelic tinge. Fans of Embrujo, also from Chile, and recently raved about on the AQ list, will for sure want to pick this up too.
The second disc has all the same sonic elements but adds a bit of mariachi flair, and is a bit more electric than the mostly acoustic first album. There is more varied instrumentation and the sounds is a bit more poppy as well, with some definite Beatles-y moments here and there and occasional frenzied bursts of psychedelic freakout guitar. Record number three is the most psychedelic of the three and is definitely a bit more prog, lengthier tracks, more parts per song, groovy jazzy jams, wild super rocking complex drumming as well as some brief drum solos, probably the best (and wildest) flute playing of the three discs. more fuzzed out organ, lots more electric guitar, sounding a bit like Santana at times, but always infused with dreamy psychedelic folkiness. So cool.
Interesting aside: both the first and second records were originally released on a label affiliated with the Communist youth, and the original tapes were destroyed by the military! Radical.
Three jewel cased packaged in a gorgeous oversized box. Includes two tracks that weren't even on the recent, now out of print, vinyl reissues. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!!
One of three new 3" cd-r releases on the Grey Daturas' Diagnosis ... Don't! label, each super limited, and housed in cool hand made packaging.
Bone Sheriff is another sort of supergroup style match up (sort a like the Stumps, made up of members of Gate, Mrtyu, Sandoz Lab Technicians, Seht, Nether Dawn, With Throats As Fine As Needles) that should have AQ customers frothing at the mouth. One part Simon Taylor of Aussie dirge sludge combo Whitehorse and Rob Mayson of the Grey Daturas and Maggoted, teaming up to make some serious noise, armed with a seriously unlikely arsenal of soundmaking implements: cymbals, glass, contact mics, bass and keytar. The disc's centerpiece is a 13 minute + wall of densely layered guitardrone, crumbling and rumbling, bits of distorted melody spread out over an expansive stretch of rough raw chordal hum. Heavy as fuck, but kinda pretty at the same time. This glorious drone is surrounded on all sides by a handful of super short tracks, tiny jagged fragments of freaked out sound, from grinding Wolf Eyes like glitchy splatter, to Merzbow-ian splintering noise, to squealing sinewaves to barely audible extreme high/low Ikeda style minimalism.
AS ALWAYS, ULTRA SUPER LIMITED!! We only got about 30, and probably won't be able to get more...
Packaged in thick textured paper black mini 3" sleeves, with a printed (band name, label info, liner notes) Japanese style obi. Nice.
Finally, the first proper non-cd-r full length from these minimal dronesters and as you might expect it's more of the same, which is all we could possibly hope for. The same of course being thick coils of gloriously fuzzy drone, unfurling over the course of nine, twelve and fifteen minutes. Bonus are masters of the drone, but in their hands, the drone isn't something you just let drift, not some random sound object you create and then watch float weightlessly from your speakers. No, the drones of Bonus are living things, they have weight to them, they crackle with energy, squirming and twisting, thick frayed ropes of buzzing sound, like the sonic version of a downed electrical wire, or a hose with the water turned all the way up whipping wildly to and fro, spitting sparks, dangerous and unpredictable. The opening track is gorgeous, it's like Phill Niblock composing for heavy metal guitar, or like a SUNNO))) performance abandoned midway through, leaving just the guitars and amps to finish the show, letting gravity and temperature and air pressure determine the direction of the proceedings as much as the instruments or the volume or anything else. A strangely organic expression of distorted sound and sonic entropy. Awesome. The scond track is like a minimal stripped down version of the first, simple buzzing tones, muted and fuzzy, slowly shifting and beating against each other, a swirling static universe of colliding overtones. Like looking inside a drone, to see what makes it tick, millions of tiny Track 2's, shimmering and subtly reveberating, like microscopic little drone molecules. Track three goes even deeper, so all of those microscopic reverberations are viewed from the inside, a pulsing, throbbing, quivering forest of rapidly vibrating tendrils, trussed together into thick quivering bundles of drone, a swarming buzz, somewhere between the all out roaring buzz of the first track, and the minimal shimmer of the second. Absolutely fucking fabulous.
Totally gorgeous cover art too, Some super abstract Lichtenstein style carton art, printed in marron and black on a cool folding card stock sleeve.
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Kudos to Shadoks for searching this one out! We'd never have heard it otherwise, and we're glad we did. Dude from early '70s Japanese psychedelic proto-metallers Flied Egg (who sounded a bit like Blue Cheer, and recorded for Vertigo!), by the name of Masayoshi Takanaka, made his recording debut in 1971 (yup) with this rare rare rare album of underground hippy conceptual weirdness, called Brush!? (punctuation theirs, but deserved). Quite a few other Japanese psych scenesters of the day participated as well. Results? There's some truly freaked out shit here, and some really lovely, folky parts too. It's an eclectic mix of the following ingredients, and more: acid fuzz guitar rockin', atonal electronic experiments, gentle pop grandeur, organ drones, raga-like jamming, avantgarde piano improv, Velvets/Dylan balladry, and West Coast/Woodstock Nation psych. In other words, all over the place, and pretty darn tripped out!! Hearing reissues of interesting '70s Japanese psych acts like Brush!?, Flied Egg, Far Out, Foodbrain, Strawberry Path, Les Rallizes Denudes, etc. etc. it's clear that all the great psychedelic underground outfits active in Japan today, from Acid Mothers Temple to LSD-march to Green Milk From The Planet Orange to (of course) the Boredoms, are keeping alive a grand tradition begun some 30+ years ago!
Includes 20 page cd booklet full of all kinds of cool photos and drawings and lyrics (many of 'em in English). Seriously, we're pretty sure that if you could just take one look inside this cd booklet, you'd want to hear the album! On one of the tracks, in addition to musician credits for sitar and tabura [sic], we see this: "Lafing [sic]: Elf, Fairly [sic], Goblin." and "Effects: Crow, Raven, Fowl, Triton." WTF?? The song titles are good too: "All Most Cut Your Hair (including) I Did Cut My Hair", "Die A Dog's Death (In Vain)", and "Tomb Stone".
Wow! Rare live document from one of the most enigmatic and legendary figures in the solo guitar scene. Recorded over two shows in 1969 at San Francisco's Matrix on the same bill as John Fahey (The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick documents Fahey's performance on this night) and accompanied by free jazz percussionist, Billy Higgins. Using tape machines, oud, slide guitar and a new electric guitar and amp (apparently some of his equipment was stolen, so you can hear him fiddling with the new equipment, tweaking the settings), the pieces here are taken mostly from his 1968 album E Pluribus Unum, an electric departure from his earlier acoustic classical excursions, that was much derided by purists, but stands as one of Bull's most amazing recordings. Soaked in tremelo and reverb, the raga-ish blues he evokes here display a raw evocative power not captured on any of his studio recordings. The amazing pieces Bull performs on oud, an instrument he picked up after meeting Hamza el Din (whose Escalay: The Water Wheel is an AQ fave) show off Bull's singular gift for combining jazz, blues, middle eastern idioms and classical fantasias into new and unchartered territories.
Another batch of WAY too limited cassette releases from Twonicorn, whose releases seem to go out of print in the blink of an eye. This time we managed to get even more copies, in fact we took most of the copies from each pressing, but considering the fact that the pressing usually run between 40 and 100 copies, you know these won't last long either way.
Mr. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma should need no introduction by now. Not only does he play in AQ beloved blissed out drone rockers Tarentel, he also runs the kick ass Root Strata label (Starving Weirdos, Bonus, My Cat Is An Alien, John Davis, etc.). On Floating Weeds, JCL gives us super blissed out, ultra minimal drones, stretched out and darkly glistening, deep resonant tones intertwine into soft sonorous drifts of sound. Like staring at the sun with your eyes closed, a thick muted warmth that suffuses all your senses. So totally lovely.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES. We got almost half the pressing and we will not be able to get any more.
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It's been *how many* years that Celtic Frost fans have been waiting for this??? Well here it is! The first new album from Switzerland's extreme avant-garde metal pioneers since 1989's Vanity/Nemesis. We don't want to make you wait any longer, so we'll keep this review brief. What you want to know is, is this a disgrace to the hallowed CF brand name or did they manage to live up to their idiosyncratic and influential legacy?? Well, we think they have done the latter, and boldly too. (Besides, how can you disgrace the legacy when you've already made glam mistake Cold Lake like 20 years ago? though we hasten to add, Cold Lake is actually one of our FAVORITE Celtic Frost albums, perversely enough.)
Spinning Monotheist makes us think that CF mainman Thomas Gabriel Fischer has been listening to a lot of old Godflesh lately, not a bad thing! This has that uber-doomy industrial vibe to it, complete with feedback squeals and shuddering beats. Not dancey industrial, but factory/machine industrial. All that heaviness is accompanied by a large dose of melancholic melody. Add Tom's dramatic, almost Bowie-like spoken-sung vocals (and more than one instance of his famous death-grunt "uhh!"), and you've got a Teutonic, twisted, Type-O gothy, doom/industrial/prog/classical/black metal, non-rehashed return from Celtic Frost that's no disappointment at all. Uhh!!!
While supplies last, we've got the import slipcase digipack version with bonus track.
We've been super into that new strain of epic, super complex emo prog lately (well, Andee has at least), bands like Chiodos, Coheed And Cambria. Groups that combine killer metal riffing, super dense and complicated prog arrangements, with super emotive wailing vocals. Like a whole new breed of punk rockers re-discovered Yes and King Crimson and managed to create some impossible hybrid bridging the gap between classic progressive rock and modern emo metalcore. There are about a million bands doing their own version these days, and admittedly most of them suck, but we'll still stick by Chiodos, and the first two Coheed records, and now we have the latest by Circa Survive, a dreamy, epic, psychedelic, dramatic emo prog outfit, who actually eschew the more metal elements that define most of their sonic brethren, focusing instead on texture and melody and mood. There is definitely a Mars Volta vibe, a lot of that has to do with the vocalist's impossibly high voice, on first listen it's hard to believe it's not actually a woman singing, clear and crystalline, a soaring near falsetto, the vocals drifting above dense harmonies, gorgeous melodies, a thick sonic tapestry of shoegazer guitars, angular riffs, complicated rhythms, all woven into haunting and strangely catchy mini epics. None of the songs are outright 'pop song' catchy, but they all manage to suck you in and make it virtually impossible to avoid repeat listens. Heavy, but not in a metal way, just deep and emotional, darkly dramatic, with layers of sound that are continually shifting to reveal hidden parts and recombining into unexpected surprises. Probably won't be that much of a surprise, but this is one of Andee's favorite records of the last few years. And actually, this came out last year, but who cares, here it is 2006 and we're still spinning it like crazy...
Brilliant, shockingly brilliant! Herewith we present to you what we can only say is the headbangingest record yet from our Finnish friends Circle (containing also, paradoxically, a couple of their most gentle numbers). The Circle concept is one of repetition, and while ALL their records are in fact great, one can find some of them to be a lot like another. So it's nice that this new Circle really goes out on a limb, with so much success, while totally managing to remain Circle to the core. How do they do it?
The album opens with "Nopeuskuningas", seemingly Circle's answer to Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law"! Down and dirty hard rock riffing (cyclic and repetitive in the trademark Circle way, of course) with keyboardist/vocalist Mika Ratto -- a relatively recent, and significant, addition to Circle's lineup on their past three or four discs -- simultaneously channeling screechy metal gods Rob Halford (Judas Priest), Klaus Meine (Scorpions), and Brian Johnson (AC/DC), but in an indeciperable, or Finnish at least, babble. It stretches to nearly eight minutes after the space-rock effects and swirly keys kick in. But then, when you think this is going to be The Heavy Metal Circle album, track two gets all mellow and pretty and folked-out, even MORE unlike any previous Circle we've ever heard. Acoustic guitar, and lots of la la la's from Mika. Unbelievable -- and lovely. But then the next song triggers the dormant motorik Circle drum pulse, overlaid with heavy guitars and vocal histrionics akin to the opening track. Plus new wavey/Axel F keyboards. Hit material here! Following that, track four, "Vaanen Valtiatar", heads back to the forest glade where Circle do that hippy jamming again a la track two, but more plugged-in, turning into a spacey jam session. And then, as you might now expect, it's back to the mosh pit for the monstrous rifferama of the next song, "Kylan Suurin Miekka". Evil stuff. This is True Circular Metal indeed. From then on the album maintains the heaviness, getting spacier and spacier though, culminating in the droning fifteen-minute "Lokki".
Wow. An amazing album, making effective use of Mika's unusual/unique vocals -- he's developed some sort of exotic (Middle Eastern? American Indian?) meets metal style, delivered in a manner as over-the-top as the most insane Italian prog of the '70s. Throw in some violin and moog and of course all the heavy metal moves, and you've got a bizarre blend of, uh, Yoko Ono, Hawkwind, Judas Priest, and of course Circle's krautrock forerunners Neu! and Can.
While "Sunrise" is in many ways a departure for Circle, it can also be seen as an album harking back to their hard-rockin' roots (they've nodded that way on the guitar-heavy "Prospekt" and Jussi's Kyuss-ish Pharoah Overlord side project, but you've got to also remember that the very first Circle album, "Meronia", drew quite a few comparisons to Helmet at the time). Recommended.
INSANE FINNISH MUSIC ALERT!!! Yeah sure, Circle can get pretty darn weird, and Aavikko are completely nuts, and of course Keukhot definitely exists in some seriously damaged alternate universe, and that whole forest folk scene, Avarus, Uton, Anaksimandros, Tivol, and all the rest, very very strange indeed.
But then there's the Cleaning Women. A power trio of crossdressing Finns, makeup, housecoats, stockings, the whole bit, you know, CLEANING WOMEN, who play an arsenal of customized clotheshorses, drying racks, and household appliances. Woah. That would almost be enough right there, but thankfully these sort-of-ladies have the chops to back it up.
But how to describe what this sounds like is a whole 'nother problem. The core sound is the insane processed percussion produced from wildly beating on the mic'ed cleaning implements. Funky and chaotic. Like some sort of gamelan gone haywire. Complex rhythm and polyrhythms all over the place, the beats changing pitch sometimes mid beat. Totally wild. Definitely some nods to the manic energy of Aavikko. But then add in some super distorted fuzz bass, some squelchy analog synths, some crunchy garage rock guitar here and there, and then some truly strange very dramatic crooned vocals, in Finnish of course, sounding like some mix of Circle's Mika Ratto and the vocalist from Midnight Oil, weaving theatrically in and out of the dense tribal rhythmscapes. And while the record hews pretty close to a maniacal rhythms / fuzzy riffage combo, the songs and sounds are pretty dang varied, from groovey blown out percussive dirges, to fuzzy metallic sambas, weird tribal chants, to weird blurpy Beefheartian jams, to killer electro analog grooves. And the opening track "Ricewestern" might just be the catchiest transvestite tribal kitchensink psychedelic fuzz jam ever!!
This record totally knocked us for a loop. And the thing is, I'm not entirely sure we can explain why. This is one of those rare records that is darn near indescribable. The label suggest Cloudland Canyon would appeal to fans of Boards of Canada, Animal Collective, The Dead C., Ash Ra Tempel, This Heat, Gong, most of which we can definitely see (maybe not the Boards Of Canada), there is a definitely a far out krautrock vibe, some classic long lost, extra damaged super freaked out sixties or seventies psychedelia, but filtered through modern technology. It's almost like some super computer a million years in the future began picking up these strange transmissions from the old Earth, German Oak, Faust, Amon Duul, but after traveling billions of miles and being interpreted by some alien machinery, those songs and sounds came out sounding, well, completely fucking nuts!!!
It's like some sort of laptopped Dead C / Ash Ra mash up. Rich clouds of metallic shimmer surround looped guitars, creepy chanted vocals are submerged in demented spacey FX, dense deconstructed pop songs emerge from the chaos, rife with swirling vocals, and layer after layer of drone and processed harmonies, fuzzy shopping mall synth warbles beneath straining lo-fi vocals, the whole thing run through some intense stereo panning. Suddenly the band burst into some stomping propulsive psych rock jangle before the whole thing splinters into a gorgeous expanse of tranquil ambience, beneath delicately finger picked guitars, everything always within a cloud of mysterious sonic events. Dense cinematic soundscapes of keening high end and minor key pizzicato strings melt into super fuzzed out classic rock jams, with horns and pulsing basslines, but buried in a dense swirl of My Bloody Valentine haze, with relentlessly squiggly riffing, buried vocals, a dizzying array of chaotic sound, tinkling chimes and little bits of percussion. Strange collages of warped warbly sound drift into weird seventies circusy prog with calliope like organ, moody riffing, and awesome male / female vocals, like some totally drug drenched unhinged Fleetwood Mac. Nearing the end of the sonic journey, the record devolves into huge stretches of squiggly analog synth, tangled and intertwined into fuzzy warped low end drones, squirming and buzzing with the different layers constantly shifting and slipping in and out and around each other. Woah. Gorgeously and incredibly fucked. And thus completely recommended!!
God Bless the Coachwhips! The terminal primal garage rock psychotics of John Dwyer (Pink and Brown, OCS, and now Yikes!) receive a final epitaph in this double dose of unreleased songs and b-sides with a DVD of live house party insanity. The Coachwhips as a concept were a live fast die young kind of band (Dwyer's got many hands in many pots to keep Coachwhips going full time), but they were best experienced live. We still have fond memories of seeing Dwyer dance on the fire pit at the Eagle while nonchalantly ripping out some hellish Bo-Diddly style guitar licks and looking at us like "what, this? it ain't no thang". Alas that footage isn't on the DVD, but you do get to see an awesome bar brawl where a dude gets brained by Dwyer's guitar before he gets the Coachwhips beating of his life. If this was on YouTube, we'd watch it a million times. RIP Coachwhips!
Second full length from these primitive downtuned sludgey dirgey death metallers from Japan. And holy shit! Nothing fancy here, no crazy leads, or swirling keyboards or million mile an hour blast beats, this is just massive, pummeling crushing black hole heaviness, super old school doom drenched metal dirge. Each track buried beneath a thick wall of downtuned tarpit sludginess, with ultra low gurgling monster vocals (and the occasional black metal shriek) and some seriously killer riffing. As loyal AQ customers know, it's pretty dang hard to go wrong with Japanese sludge heaviness. Think Corrupted (the bass player is wearing a Corrupted shirt on the back cover), Church Of Misery, Dot [.], Boris, Solar Anus, Garadama, you get the idea. And while the band's sound tends to lean more toward the old school death metal of Autopsy, Grave, Carnage, Hellhammer and that sort of thing, their obvious Winter fixation, finds Coffins veering deep into SLUDGE country too, whipping up a suffocating world of glacial buzzing crawl that would make Boris or Corrupted proud.
Dead Moon are one of those bands that seems to be revered and loved by everyone who's ever heard them, but considering how long the band has been around, it's a little hard to believe just how few people that is. SO we're pretty psyched that Sub Pop decided it was time to rectify that. With a massive double disc collection, gathering up all kinds of rare and essential DM tracks.
Dead Moon seem like they've been around forever, and they sort of have. The band formed in 1987, so we're talking almost 20 years. And husband and wife band leaders Fred and Toody were BORN IN 1948!! AND GOT MARRIED IN 1967!! Twenty years before they even started the band that would continue rocking to this day. And they pretty much out-rock any garage rock outfit you can think of. Dead Moon are classic, lo-fi, fuzzed out, stripped down, blues drenched garage rock nirvana. The drums sound like garbage can lids recorded in a cave, the guitars go from scrabbly thick riffing to reverby surf rocky fuzz, to smokey blues moodiness. The songs tend to be super simple, sometimes skeletal, but the band have a serious knack for the hook and they just kick out the motherfucking jams. Fred's got a killer Bon Scott-like growl and Toody has a cool sixties girl group sort of shout, and along with drummer Andrew Loomis every track they whip up is a winner, going from sounding like kick ass classic rock, to fuzzy garage groove, to psychedelic lo-fi blues rock, to some rare lost AC/DC demo, all slathered in Stoogesy swagger and swinging Stones stomp.
The latest from the ever so prolific Smolken, AKA Dead Raven Choir, who we haven't heard from in a while, at least as DRC, most likely because he's been spending time recording as Wolfmangler. So makes sense that with his return to the Dead Raven Choir monicker, along with him came some sonic vestiges from his time exploring a depper darker blackness in Wolfmangler. Which is fine with us. The darker the better.
Selenoclast Wolves, much like past DRC efforts, is a bleak world of dark twangy dirges, abstract acoustic guitars, strummed, plucked, picked, notes hanging in the grey air, beneath strange spoken soliloquies, slippery upright bass, sweet female vocals, creaking strings, mournful piano, the whole record swathed in a suffocatingly sorrowful ambience. Like Jandek on Peyote, left to wander aimlessly through some alien soundscape, or to trudge wearily through the fiery underworld. A stumbling detuned free folk smotherd in blackness and left to wither and die. So totally creepy and really frikkin' weird.
On first listen, we weren't entirely sure what to think. After all, Deutrom once handled bass for the Melvins, did a solo album a while back that sounded more like Queens Of The Stone Age, and he also recently released a cd-r made entirely out of the sounds of a squeaking gate, a record even Deutrom admitted he couldn't listen to. Thus we have Iraq, that on first listen, does indeed have us thinking about that infamous squeaking gate record. But on closer listening, and knowing the sound source, it becomes much more interesting (and maybe even a slight bit more listenable). Iraq is a single hour long piece, consisting of a crackling skittering slightly percussive squelch, chopped and repeated, looped and stretched, sometimes it sounds like Autechre, albeit WAY stripped down, sometimes it sounds like a bug zapper, sometimes it sounds like someone shaking pop corn in one of those readymade popcorn pans you cook on the stove, sometimes it sounds like super high pitched crickets, sometimes... well, you get the idea. Sonically it could easily have been a piece by Ikeda or Hauswolff or one of those folks. But once you realize where the sounds came from, it's a whole different story. Every sound on this disc was generated from a single loop of 7 different recordings of George W. Bush saying the word Iraq. All taken from important speeches, two from this year's State Of The Union Address, two from a speech during which Bush announced the beginning of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in 2003 and three from Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech also in 2003. Hard to understand how 7 "Iraq"s became this crazy stuttery staticky piece, until you realize that there are 14,112,000 repetitions of the word "Iraq" per minute in the piece. Woah!
Hard to explain Deutrom's concept, repetition equals obsolescence, intrinsic veracity through absolute negation, etc.... yeah yeah yeah, okay, but basically, this is just one fucked up piece of sound art. And who can argue with some subtle sonic Bush bashing? Not us!!
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 500 COPIES MADE!! Each one hand numbered and signed! Packaged in cool hand screened cardstock sleeves with two printed inserts and liner notes.
Issue 1.5 of the infamous Doomed Nation dvd magazine, we only got 5 copies of this, already our of print according to the guy who makes these, so once these are gone they're gone for good.
Just like volume 2 (reviewed elsewhere on the AQ site) this is jam packed with tons of doom and sludge and all sorts of downtuned brutality. Just look at the bands: Sleep, Saint Vitus, Indian, 16, Buried At Sea, Sourvein, Hidden Hand, Jumbo's Killcrane, Meatjack, Rwake, Fistula, Terminal Lovers and more. Videos interspersed with clips from eighties teen movies, Godzilla movies, horror movies, super lo-tech, but totally killer!
Limited to 666 copies, each one hand numbered, pretty sure we can't get more, so act fast. Comes in a white dvd case, with killer blood splattered artwork, and all sorts of flyers and stickers inside!
The Relapse Contamination fest just plowed through town, so for a couple days, our store was jam packed with bell bottoms, greasy long hair, bizarre facial hair, tattoos, piercings, beards beards beards and of course lots of bands hawking all kinds of crazy tour shit. On tour with the bans was the guy responsible for the legendary Doomed Nation video magazine. We managed to get about 20 copies of the almost out of print volume 2 (limited to 999 copies, and 999 upside down IS 666 after all...) and it is fucking awesome! Doom freaks will already be diving for the buy button. And you should too if you hope to get your grimey mitts on one of these. Here's the lineup: SUNNO))), Ufomammut, Buried At Sea, Indian, Ramesses, Church Of Misery, Weedeater, Lair Of The Minotaur, Venomous Concept, and more.
And these aren't just live clips. Well, some are, but most are real videos, filmed with weird effects, interspersed with all manner of fucked up imagery, and all the videos are sort of strung together with tons of super gory horror movie clips, the whole thing is pretty lo-fi and ghetto, but really well done. Definitely essential for all you doomlords and doomladies, just look at the band list fer chrissakes!!
LIMITED TO 999 COPIES, not sure we can get more, so act fast. Comes in a clear dvd case, with killer blood splattered artwork, and all sorts of flyers and stickers inside!
There once was a hip SF trio named Dynasty. They were Jibz Cameron (The Roofies), Diana Hayes (Mono Pause, The Roofies) and Indra Dunis (Numbers) -- three ladies who made the scene in matching party frocks and fevered lo-fi dance tunes. For a brief spell they raised the roof, raised some eyebrows and kicked out their party jams. The three eventually split to pursue other flights of fancy. One of them moved to New York and formed her own one-gal band, revising her former group's name by adding the word 'handbag' and taking her sound off the dancefloor into darker, dislocated and downright strange territory. Jibz Cameron is the last lady standing, raising a ruckus all her own, make-up a little smeared but orange visor and multi-colored maillot intact. Foo Foo Yik Yik is a bizarre, twisted journey in pretty much every aspect. The stark instrumentation runs rampant from jutting guitars to minimal electro-pulse. Her vocals leap from badass banshee caterwaul to tormented scribble scrawl internal child speak. Imagine a chemically imbalanced, disheveled combination of pre-teen playing dress-up, fading aerobicizer, tantrum-throwing aged socialite... close but not quite! Freaky-scary in a Sandra Bernhard sort of way. Includes a cover of The Stooges' "Open Up And Bleed".
Another batch of WAY too limited cassette releases from Twonicorn, whose releases seem to go out of print in the blink of an eye. This time we managed to get even more copies, in fact we took most of the copies from each pressing, but considering the fact that the pressing usually run between 40 and 100 copies, you know these won't last long either way.
Earthen Sea, what a killer name, however, the tape's title, Seeking Enlightenment 12 Oz. At A Time, had us expecting some sort of lo-fi, damaged and drunken sludgerock slugfest, but nothing could be further from the truth. Earthen Sea craft delicately developing drones, that begin life as a droney ultra minimal krautrock / postrock hybrid, with lots of swirling low end, pulsing melodies, propulsive barely there rhythms, a murky kraut jam like listening to Neu! practice six floors below you in an -almost- soundproof rehearsal room. Those various elements eventually begin to come apart, and blur together, becoming a thick tangled swirl of low end grind and throbbing, rumbling thrum, shot through with subtle sonic colors and glistening melodic sparkles. Nice.
LIMITED TO 90 COPIES. We got 25 and we will not be able to get any more.
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We won't go into too much detail on this one as it was limited to 72 copies of which we got about a third of the pressing. Egghatcher is the work of Bay Area free folk avant noisemaker Robert Horton, and features some of the most sublime drones we've heard created from some of the least likely sources. A helicopter flying overhead, crystal glasses, old 78's, all smeared and smoothed into soft slippery slivers of sound. So lovely. A few tracks are not as dronelike, one features vocals, chopped and reassembled into a skittery soundscapes, with occasional blasts of corrosive squeal, while another is constructed from and played on a homemade 4 string guitar constructed from wood found on the street. All quite gorgeous as we've come to expect from Horton.
Again, LIMITED TO 72 COPIES, we have the last 20 or so. Comes packaged in a plastic sleeve with an insert, held together by a twig, and with a VERY strong smelling leaf inside, so each disc smells like flowers or potpourri!
Apparently the trend of post rock and metal cross pollination is not exclusive to North America. Enter Japanese band Envy with their latest album titled Insomniac Doze just released on Temporary Residence. It's sort of a shift in direction for this veteran hardcore band not to mention something of an incongruous, abrasive presence among the label's soundscapers and more traditional post-rockers. As we've witnessed before Japanese bands have a tendency of one-bettering the Westerners' execution of any given musical style. Nay, they frequently blow the top off of a particular genre's conventions. Delivering solid muscular grit instead of flash and incorporating newfound depth and detail, Envy do the deed in a much more controlled yet no less concentrated fashion than many of their wildly untethered Japanese brethren.
For those of you, like us, who may only know the Swedish cellist Helena Espvall from her work with the recent crop of neo-psych folk artists like Espers, Fursaxa, and Samara Lubelski, as well as being a member of Vashti Bunyan's touring band, you may be surprised, like we were, at the avant-garde leanings on her solo debut Nimis & Arx. However, after learning that Espvall has played with numerous free improv, dance and theater groups as well as with 20th century avant luminaries Pauline Oliveros and Eugene Chadbourne, we shouldn't really be surprised at all. With production and electronics provided by George Korein of Infidel?/Castro!, Nimis & Arx is a free improv maelstrom of cello, recorder, guitar and voice that is equal parts beautiful, difficult, tense and transcendent. Even the late, great Arthur Russell had not dragged his cello this far out into uncharted waters and that's saying something!
We were sent a whole batch of cd-r's from this mysterious group Expo '70, and all the various cd-r covers were designed to look like old seventies krautrock or free jazz records. Which definitely grabbed our attention. Plus they're called Expo '70, so while we weren't exactly sure what to expect, we were definitely thinking it was bound to be good. And boy were we right. This is good. Great in fact. But that wasn't all, the faux vintage covers and the band name ended up being seriously indicative of the sounds within. Gorgeous drifting ethereal krautrocky ambience is what Expo '70 is all about, and eyes closed, you'd be hard pressed to not think this was some Ash Ra Tempel disc or some long lost A.R. and The Machines lp. Crafted entirely from guitars, sitar and Moog, each track here is some sort of lengthy, mesmerizingingly blissed out minimal drone jam. Guitar figures are looped into hypnotic cycles, over shimmery whirls of fuzzy sound and distant drones, the looped riffs slowly shifting and gently changing shape. It's almost like some sort of new age space rock Steve Reich. Swirling FX surround warm deep guitar tones floating weightless in a glistening expanse of muted color and twinkling sonic sparkles. So completely blissful and dreamlike and captivating. One of our favorite new discoveries.
Fans of far out krautrock, deep dark drone, and outerspace guitar exploration will be in absolute heaven, or at the very least in some darkened room, in a trance, drifting off to some druggy dreamy other dimension...
Reissue label Lion Productions is doing their job right, bringing us this collection of the obscure but oh so killer material from The Eyes. Tough '60s garage rockin' here, from these Ealing, England mods. The disc starts off with the one-two punch of their 1965 debut single, "When The Night Falls" b/w "Rowed Out". A really raw, proto-freakbeat smasher all right, A and B sides both. Stinging guitar, primal beats, and equally raw vox. Catchy too! And there's more, plenty more to like here. What made The Eyes sound so great? Well, maybe their songwriting talent, maybe their edginess. You can get an idea of these snotty young punks' attitude from the title of the b-side of their second single: "My Degeneration". Which helped get them banned by the BBC for their subversive lyrics! Not that anyone today would likely find 'em terribly offensive... 'Tis true, though, that the lyrics to "My Degeneration" were subtly suggestive, moreso when you learn that the the word "coffee", mentioned many times in the song, was a mod euphemism for having sex. And mods liked actual coffee too. The last straw, according to the extensive liner notes (thanks Lion!), was when BBC suits saw 'em perform a song entitled "I Can't Get No Resurrection" complete with a crucifix stage prop. So, though somehow they did get to play with the likes of The Kinks, The Move, and The Action, and got some pirate radio play too, they were a BBC no-no and thus failed to have a hit single. With record sales just not happening (making their releases today quite rare and collectable!) they were forced into doing a "tribute" record to the Rolling Stones, under the name The Pupils, just to make a lousy 180 pounds. Thus tracks 17-28 included here, all covers of Stones songs (or covers of songs the Stones themselves had covered!). In another world, maybe the Stones would have been covering The Eyes... well maybe not but there are definitely enough bad ass '60s beat rockers here to make this a recommended purchase for any fan of garagey goodness.
First time on cd (outside of the God and Hair box set, that is) for this, the 2nd album from the Ya Ho Wha collective... we of course strongly urge the purchase of that whole set, but if you want to get this one separately, now you can. And it does include new liner notes from "family" members written for this reissue. Contraction dates from 1974 (like most of the Yod LPs, including their ultimate masterpieces Penetration and I'm Gonna Take You Home), and of course originals are hopelessly rare.
So...does groovy loungey hippy jams, doing the choo-choo train build up, but never really totally freaking out, with flutes and organ and guitar, and most significantly the wacked-out weird wisdom of Father Yod rappin' o'er top, sound good to you? Half-spoken, half sung, kinda drunken sounding. Here's a transcript of a portion of one of his raps here, to give you a bit of the flavor: "Let it all out and take it all back. But take it all back with consciousness. Desire, man. Desire's a trick. That's the trick. That'll bring old Saint Nick. Here he comes, see him there. All those goodies on his back. And he ain't got no prayer. He just wants to give to you, energy. The greatest gift of all, you'll soon see. That's it. Give it with a beat. Come on. Give it..." Hmm. The Father Yod-Santa Claus connection made explicit by the man himself!
One 24 minute, 41 second track. But you know what, that's quite a dose...
We knew that our friend Loren Chasse was/is a major Fripp-fanatic (total closet prog-rocker, that Loren) so we asked him if he wanted to do a review of this recently reissued R. Fripp solo classic, and he did (thanks Loren!), here 'tis:
As uptight as Robert Fripp may seem these past ten years (with his cleric's collar and extensive moralizing about business practices in the music industry) let's not forget his history of eccentric and befuddling endeavors outside of King Crimson. Begin with Fripp's New Wave pose on this album cover, sporting skinny tie and pinstriped shirt (even his hair stylist gets a credit in the liner notes)! Certainly, Fripp was dressed for the scene as he set out to make this record in the New York City of '78-'79. Exposure is perhaps the definitive record of everything Fripp is capable of, showcasing his talent at adapting his trademark guitar sound to diverse musical personalities. The most unexpected of these guest personalities on Exposure may be Daryl Hall, who takes the mic on the sumptuous and laid back "North Star" (with a lilt much like Discipline-era King Crimson's "Matte Kudasai"). Hall is actually the primary songwriting force on Exposure, even when he's not singing. Then another prog-rocker's wish is granted with Peter Hammill singing on "Disengage" and Fripp letting out a bit more bombast than he had as a guest with Van Der Graaf Generator. Who else? Well there's Peter Gabriel doing his saccharine hit "Here Comes the Flood" -- made so much more dark and beautiful than Gabriel's own album version by Fripp's contributions. Speaking of Hall and Gabriel, Exposure is the official third part of a trilogy (says Fripp) comprised of Hall's solo record Sacred Songs and Gabriel's second record (is it the one with the rain-streaked car window?). Then there's Brian Eno (surprise, surprise) and Phil Collins (not so bad as long as he's sticking to drums), Nancy Roche (of The Roches) howling like Diamanda Galas on "Exposure" and taking the record into its sweetest moments with "Mary". For fans of Red-era King Crimson, "Breathless" will be a pleaser with its unrelenting riffs and off-kilter Mahavishnu-style drumming (brought compliments of Narada Michael Walden). "NY3" and "Haaden Two" give the record some dark and surreal twists with more Crimsonish instrumental workouts mixed with a theater of strange voices (the former being a fight between mother/father and daughter in an NYC apartment). Fripp's spiritual mentor J.G. Bennet (student of Gurdjieff) inserts a ghostly presence over some of Fripp's most beautiful ambient sounds. The trademarked Frippertronics appear at their most quintessential on "Water Music I and II" -- perhaps the record's most abstract, beautiful and least dated sounding music. Oh yeah, dear old Edith Fripp (the mother) can be heard on this as well!
Also, FYI: this special double disc remastered edition of Exposure features a "Third Edition" of the album on the second cd, plus several bonus tracks. Wow, that's a lot... maybe they shoulda retitled this Overexposure?
If you're anything like us, you'd been hearing about Grizzly Bear long before you actually got to hear them. When we finally did hear "Horn Of Plenty", their record which came out a few years back, we immediately realized why people had been buzzing. And thus we were the ones buzzing about the impending release of Yellow House, a dark and delicious mix of rich pop and grand bedroom orchestration. Yellow House is the kind of record you keep by your side on cold and rainy days. It almost sounds like Sufjan Stevens on valium with Jim O'Rourke on the board and the Black Heart Procession helping out with extra moody layers of longing and a deep sweet musical ache. We love how their songs have a sense of movement and space, and how they actually write great goddamned songs. "On A Neck, On A Spit" is most definitely a contender for song of the year! And this entire record is turning out to be chock full of song of the year contenders. The perfect warm music to stave off the impending winter chill.
We made the debut full length from this Bay Area one woman dream drone outfit Record of the Week a while back, and ever since, have been waiting patiently for another slab of her beautifully dense ghostlike soundscapes. Since then, it seems like any one with a microphone and a delay pedal has decided to make some atmospheric vocal based drone record. And while some of those have indeed been quite good, few can come close to the utter abstract beauty of Liz Harris and her Grouper project.
When describing Grouper, the most mentioned comparisons seem to be Arvo Part and Morton Feldman, Part no doubt because of the vocal/choral aspect, and Feldman because this is definitely a sort of dreamlike minimalism, but Grouper is definitey something else entirely. A murky dreamworld of shimmering guitar and indistinct voices, swirling clouds of smeared melody, drifting whirls of warm thick delay, and dense layers of mumbly reverb. It's the sonic equivalent of wandering through some ghost town, almost everything obscured by thick fog, the streetlights, like distant lightning bugs, warm orange glows, staining the fog like a child's fingerpaints, even sound can barely travel so you exist sonically in a tiny muffled and muted cocoon, like listening to the world around you with ears full of wet cotton. Drifting disembodied vocals drenched in thick dubby FX are spread out paper thin into nearly transparent sheets of gauzy whir, like a chorale of ghosts, singing in some vast underground cavern. Within all of this murk and fog, lurk heartbreaking melodies, perfect little melancholy pop songs, but almost completely obscured from view, so instead of hearing songs, it's like barely remembering a little melody, or getting a tune stuck in your head only to have it fly away moments later, and struggling to remember just how that song went. A strangely emotional sonic trigger for lost memories, and indescribable landscapes, amorphous sounds, and a world both familar and completely alien.
Unlike her freenoise / dronerock / whatever contemporaries, who are happy to just make a big loud sound, or push a few buttons and start a low rumbling drone, with Grouper, it's more like the songs started out as proper songs, verses, choruses, sweet little melodies, gentle lilting vocals, but those songs were left in a corner, and allowed to get dusty, then set outside where they leaned for weeks, propped up against the side of the house, getting rained on, dappled with morning dew, they began to rust, and decay, weeds grew up around them, small animals made nests in them. Eventually, they were collected, and placed in a dusty old wagon, where they spent the majority of the journey, getting bumped and jostled, pieces breaking off, bits smearing into other bits, becoming less and less obviously songs, and more like the decayed husks of songs, still beautiful, and lovely in their own way, but lonely, and forgotten, until one day, they were all gathered up and placed in order, dusted off, polished up until they glow with some dim inner light, and thus they become Wide, and we close our eyes and listen...
It's interesting for us to note that the last few releases we've had from black-clad Japanese psychedelic shaman* Keiji Haino have been big sellers, doing better even than usual for Haino discs here at AQ, perhaps on account of how they were put out by limited edition specialists aRCHIVE in super swank packaging (also, they were definitely excellent albums). So we've got to figure that a lot of folks who'd never before bought a Haino cd got one or both of those aRCHIVE releases as their first. Which is great, more people should definitely be getting into Haino's music -- he's an intense, impassioned talent (if an acquired taste...). It's funny, though, 'cause what he's really best known for is his searing guitar playing (and equally intense vocals). But those aRCHIVE cds, and several other of his recent releases, have highlighted other areas of creative exploration: electronics and hurdy-gurdy drones, solo percussion, a collaboration with a twenty-piece sitar orchestra, and primitive acoustic guitar improv... Not the heavy-duty, feedback-filled, freeform electric guitar he plays in Fushitsusha. As if on cue, this new solo release from Japan's PSF label documents just that: an hour-plus long set of electric guitar and vocals. So, Haino fans new and old, here's a must-have. Utilizing overdubbing (an infrequent technique for Haino), Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku starts all sinister and ominous, notes vibrating alone in the darkness, joined by more guitar lines, sounding totally HAUNTED but marching quietly forward, joined eventually by Haino's unique, plaintively tormented vocals (here sometimes hushed, sometimes oddly pretty). It builds and builds, becoming more urgent, more tense, more disturbed. Repetitive, feverish yawing, quite hypnotic. At about the halfway point, the volume gets dialed up, and there's an attack of swirling guitar violence... then back to the haunted void, and on, and onward... Haino fans will hear echoes his old classic Affection, and also the multilayered textures of his Next, Let's Try Changing The Shape and Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka solo albums. Good company indeed.
Such harrowing atmosphere. Such dark beauty. Such power -and- restraint. So emotional, so expressive, and all from one person -- well if there was more than one Haino could the world bear the weight? Hear this, feel it, and maybe you'll understand what we mean.
*shaman, dark lord, some title like that always seems appropriate in describing him!
We love doom sludge dirgelords Harvey Milk. That should be painfully self evident by now. So you can imagine how thrilled we've been with the recent spate of HM action. A brand new record!! (reviewed elsewhere on this list) A mind blowing DVD documentary (last week's record of the week) and this, a deluxe reissue of perhaps Harvey Milk's finest moment, an all time doom dirge slowcore sludge classic, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men. Until recently, Courtesy was available on our very own Andee's tUMULt label, in a super swank, hand assembled, die cut, letter pressed sleeve, designed to replicate the original vinyl release. But as the supply of those dwindled, and interest in the Milk began to soar, Relapse leapt into the fray and offered to re-issue it with a bonus disc! So here we have it. The packaging, while maybe not as cool as the handmade version, is still quite striking, but the real attraction here is the addition of a bonus disc, Live At TT The Bears, a previously cd-r only release, long out of print, that features HM at their Courtesy prime, completely laying waste, proving they could create the same malevolent beauty live, in front of a crowd that sounds like it couldn't number more than 20 people. But oh how we envy those lucky souls. So basically, if you're new to Harvey Milk, but are a fan of any sort of slow, heaviness, that for the love of all that is unholy, pick this up, it is your new favorite record. And if you already have a copy, well, if you're as obsessed with HM as we are, you'll just have to buy it again. The bonus disc is SO worth it. Here's us gushing about Courtesy way back when the tUMULt version first came out:
Crushing and pummeling majestic beauty, interspersed with delicate moments of hushed whispery strum. Lumbering downtuned hyper-rhythmic skull crack dropped delicately into suffocating expanses of near silence. Delicate pointillist piano mutates into a dirgey exercise in tension that sounds like a lost Dario Argento soundtrack performed by the Melvins. Lilting and melancholy near-ballads are disrupted by incessant and brutally heavy riffs. Amidst the pummel and beneath the negative space swirls a barely audible maelstrom of whispered vocals, warbling turntables and whirring vacuum cleaners, all adding to the confusional brilliance that is Harvey Milk. And their heart wrenching cover of Leonard Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" features what has to be the most tortured and anguished vocal performance ever recorded.
Too heavy to be post rock. Too weird to be metal. Too everything to be anything, Harvey Milk are unconventional and wholly unique, both structurally and sonically, touching on territory mined by the likes of Gastr Del Sol, Codeine, Queen, Husker Du, Man Is The Bastard, the Melvins, and ZZ Top, but slowing it down, making it HEAVY, and fucking it up. Making it more beautiful, while making it difficult to listen to at all.
Hypnotic, repetitive and jarring. Unpredictable, exhausting and perplexing.
And although we do get carried away now and again, and declare certain records best ever, and weirdest ever, without any trace of hyperbole or irony, we can unequivocally proclaim that Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men is quite possibly, the greatest, heaviest, weirdest, saddest, most beautiful record ever made. Seriously.
Super limited single from the brand new Harvey Milk album. HOLY SHIT!! Did you hear that? BRAND NEW HARVEY MILK ALBUM!!! See elsewhere on this list for a review of HM's Special Wishes. This single features the killer first track from Special Wishes, "I've Got A Love", but the real reason to pick this up is the exclusive B side, a crushingly downtuned, utterly and breathtakingly beautiful dreamsludge version of Leonard Cohen's "The Old Revolution". HM fans already remember and cherish the heartbreaking version of Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong" on Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men and thus know what HM can do with a Leonard Cohen song. Don't blow it. This is limited to 1000 copies and will be gone before you know it.
It's funny, for years, you couldn't find a Harvey Milk record to save your life. Reissues, cd-r's, rumors about the band all trickled out and were lapped up by all of us ravenous doomdrone hounds desperate for more music from this mysterious Southern dirge rock behemoth. Then suddenly, a few years back, things began to change, Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men got reissued on Andee's tUMULt label, a cd compilation of singles came out, and then the Kelly Sessions. We were loving it. But then it all stopped. Nothing. Until we started hearing rumors again about reissues and more excitingly, a reformed HM and a new record!! And you know what? The rumors were true, the band is back together, and just released this here brand new album. Hot on the heels of the amazing DVD we raved about last list, and alongside a double disc reissue of Courtesy (with a bonus live disc!) reviewed elsewhere on this list, Special Wishes makes us want to just lay down and weep. That's how much we love this band. And how long we have been dreaming about this day. Very few bands can inspire such ridiculous loyalty and utter fanboy obsession. But Harvey Milk are pretty much unlike any band ever. When ranking the weirdest heaviest, GREATEST bands of all time in our heads, Harvey Milk are ALWAYS there, and almost always in the top 5, and depending on our mood, often in the number one spot.
With most bands, we tend to recommend older albums, you know, the new one is for fans only, but if you don't already own any records start with this other one. But even if you've never heard Harvey Milk, Special Wishes will undoubtedly convert you to the way of the Milk. And you WILL have a new favorite band.
The record starts with "I've Got A Love" a crushing pounding slow motion jam, with howled anguished vocals (that Allan thought sounded like Eugene from Oxbow) and thick walls of downtuned guitar, and some weird grinding background drone. SO heavy and glacial it makes the Melvins sound like Blink 182. OK, maybe that's not entirely true, but you know what we're getting at. The next two tracks are equally dirgey, and brutal and impossibly, infuriatingly slow and heavy. But then comes "Once In A While" a groovy classic rock / Southern rock jam, that sounds like Paw on 16 rpm, pretty and melodic, but somehow still way too heavy and creepily ominous. Up next is the appropriately titled "Instrumental" which combines HM's pummeling sludge, with some seriously acrobatic prog rock arrangements, like a super heavy Don Cab. Two more tracks of crushing glacial beauty, plodding brutality, pop hooks buried beneath two tons of guitar sludge, completely and mesmerizingly pulverizing. Then it's The One. Our favorite song of the year. A song so completely unlike anything Harvey Milk has ever recorded, but somehow a song that couldn't have come from anyone else. "Old Glory", the tale of a flag, or THE flag, a strangely beautiful pop song, finger picked acoustic guitar, gorgeous melodic crooning, and a sudden burst of lush psychedelic guitar harmonies, eventually the band kicks in, with massive guitars and probably the most kick ass classic rock guitar lead to ever grace an underground rock record. Full on "Freebird" shit. Wow. One of those songs that we listen to over and over and over. A song that sounded so totally out of place on first listen (although we loved it immediately) but became sort of the heart of the record for us. The final track is almost even weirder. "Mother's Day" is a massive and majestic epic, warm warbly organs, dreamy violin playing a mournful melody, with "God Bless America" melodies all over the place, when the band finally kicks in, it's like the underground doomdirgesludge version of that last song all cock rock and classic rock bands play live, huge soaring chords, everyone swaying back and forth, lighters held high, it sounds like a pisstake, but at the same time it sounds so fucking good. Which is pretty much an apt description of Harvey Milk in general. Confusing and confounding, crushing and majestic. But totally fucked up and emotional and brilliant, and still as far as we're concerned quite possibly the greatest band EVER.
You wouldn't think that a band revisiting their past would make us fall in love with them all over again but that is precisely the case with this new ep from Hella. Acoustics finds Hella reworking some of their early songs but this time done all acoustic! Hella + acoustic? "Huh? What? How?", you might be asking yourself, but the answer is a huge big colorful YES!!!
We have to admit we were getting a little cold on the whole Hella thing, but with Acoustics they have totally regained our attention and recaptured our hearts, with their intricate spazzy convoluted prog laid totally bare (err... well acoustic at least). Hard to imagine Hella acoustic, but it's pretty darn cool, maybe like Gastr Del Sol on a steady diet of crystal meth and cocaine, or a more manic Cheval De Frise. While it's easy to sound crazed and weird and spastic with amps turned to eleven and feedback busting out of every speaker, it's a whole lot harder to maintain that same sort of intensity with no electricity at all. That's what separates Hella from so much of the spazzy pack. Sure anyone can freak out hidden behind huge amps and silly costumes, but only the truly talented and demented can knock your block off with an all acoustic record. We think someone should slip a copy of this to Tom Waits as Hella in this incarnation would make the perfect backing band for his next record. OK, Lightning Bolt, Wolf Eyes, Black Dice -- the gauntlet has been thrown down... can you get it up up when the power is out? Hella sure as hell can! So totally recommended!
