Whereas under his given name Nicolai Dunger makes gentle music that invariably adheres to a linear traditional pop song structure, under the moniker A Taste Of Ra he roams freely in a slightly odd, aberrant nature. This is the second installment in his A Taste Of Ra self-titled trilogy. As he meanders the pastoral landscape, he puts the squeeze on what sounds like an old accordion, slides a bow drowsily across a few strings, picks a smattering of guitar strings and sings non-verbal ribbons of la-di-da-di's and Jandek-ish moaning utterances. Neo-folk melodic passages materialize unexpectedly, and no sooner have they become apparent than they dissipate. A slowly unravelling cryptic calm. For fans of Jandek, Wooden Wand And The Vanishing Voice and Skygreen Leopards.
Many a time, late at night, while hanging out with friends or that some special someone, we've found ourselves turning to our Air records to provide the perfect post-party soundtrack. Deep coming down comfort for a perfect long ride home. So it makes perfect sense that Air would be the latest band creating their own perfect late night mix for the Late Night Tales series.
We have to admit, that previous releases in the series have left us a bit underwhelmed, with some of our favorite bands showing a real lack of creativity in their selections. But that all changes right now, with this Late Night Tales, as Air have indeed put together a PERFECT late night mix! It's that perfect combination of the totally obvious and the sort of obscure. Songs that demonstrate many of the band's other sonic sides not necessarily represented in their music. This is one of those mixes that forces you to continually see what the heck is playing, 'cuz whatever track is playing, it's kicking you ass. The pacing, the order, the mood, it's the perfect late bliss-out and drift-off. Melting melting melting in the best possible way. From the dreamy spaced out side of Black Sabbath to maybe the most stunning Lee Hazelwood song we've ever heard, a should-be classic from the Troggs, some impeccable mood music from Nino Rota, a bit of Japan that flows right into some Scott Walker, and lots more. Tan Dun and Cat Power, Robert Wyatt, The Cure, Minnie Riperton, The Band... So awesome. This collection definitely ranks up their with any of our favorite mixtapes. It's easy to get the feeling that the boys in Air made this mix just for you.
Angel is the work of Pan Sonic's Ilpo Vaisanen and Dirk Dresselhaus (aka Schneider TM); and Hildur Gudnadottir is an Icelandic cellist whose resume is dotted with numerous collaborative projects through the Reykjavik based arts collective Kitchen Motors. Back in 2004, the three musicians collaborated at the Club Transmediale in Berlin, sparking not only this album but also an ongoing collaboration between Pan Sonic and Gudnadottir. It's Gudnadottir's cello that takes the center stage on this guttural drone album of languorous acoustic scrapings and sustained monotone, with the two other gentlemen augmenting the cello drones with Kosmische electronic sweeps, nervous sinewave aggregates, and bellowing gasps of noise.
Loop-based one man band Animal Hospital (Kevin Micka) creates a mesmerizing and lush soundworld on this debut self-titled release. Chock full of post rock delights, warm swelling soundscapes, hypnotic arpeggiated guitar lines, pounding crunchy drum beats... And what's super cool is that he is able to replicate all of this live, all by himself! Armed with only a guitar, a drum kit and a shitload of loop pedals and effect processors, he builds these tracks from a single loop into a dense and triumphantly heavy postrock jam. Droney and dirgey and dreamily melancholy, Mr. Micka has produced an album that is at once angular and technical while maintaining a vibe of lonesome sadness, which ends up being pretty damn powerful and at moments, straight up beautiful. The actual recording is amazing as well (his engineering is on par with his soundcraft), producing a warm and glistening sound.
Great rainy day post rock!
Not sure what happened to Axolotl, but at some point his noises got way less noisy, and everything started to sound a lot fuzzier and beautifully disoriented, almost like a few records back, the band stepped into a thick puddle of sonic quicksand, and every record they've sunk a little bit deeper, everything getting more and more fuzzed out and murky, buzzy and indistinct, until now, heck they must be neck deep, cuz everything sounds about as blissed out as can be.
Like an indie rock underground version of Mink Ink's Gas, Axolotl are now firmly in the Pop Ambient camp as far as we're concerned. Thick swirling sheets of ambience, guitars are fuzzy and drift like fat soft clouds, melodies are buried all the way at the bottom of about a million layers of grit and hum and whir, allowing us only brief glimpses, and letting occasional fragments float to the surface. Within this warm dense swirl is a pulse, a beat, a rhythm, often impossible to pick out, occasionally just loud enough to be heard over the soft din, a little like hearing a heartbeat through someone's down overcoat, a distant blurry thump, that almost just sounds like a random dynamic disturbance in the dreamlike hiss of each song's tranquil drift.
There are always a lot of amazing records vying for the coveted late night listening position, you know the perfect disc to relax to, to read along with, or best of all, to free your mind and send you drifting off into some relaxed, not-quite-sleep but dreamily blissed out headspace, and this Axolotl disc (a reissue of a super limited, out of print cd-r) has has pretty much knocked out all other contenders!
Amazingly gorgeous packaging too, a white folded over sleeve with embossed reflective silver printing, a textured pattern on the front, bold type on the back. Really striking.
One of the most infamous pieces of music of the twentieth century and a long time AQ favorite, is the Ballet Mechanique, composed by George Antheil, a piece composed for 16 synchronized player pianos, seven electric bells, a siren, two human played pianos, an array of percussion and three airplane propellors. The strange thing is it was never played or recorded or performed the way Antheil envisioned it. Due mostly to the fact that at the time of its composition it was essentially unplayable, as many of the elements in the piece would not even exist until after Antheil had died (MIDI, computers, etc.).
This documentary is a fascinating portrait of the composer's life, his revolutionary compositions, his 'bad boy' reputation, his time in Paris hanging out with Stravinsky, his circle of friends which included Hemingway, Picasso, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, but it's mostly the story of the Ballet Mechanique, and how, for the very first time, forty years after it was created, it was properly performed, with every element present, and a sound as close to Antheil's original vision as had ever been realized.
The sound of the piece, even on the cd version we had a few years back, is INSANE, cacophonous, wild, intense, freaked out and so impossibly intense, and the story of Antheil, and his journey to the place in his life where he could come up with such a visionary sound, and the actual piece itself with all of the components in place and a sound even bigger and weirder and wilder and even more strangely beautiful, is an absolute wonder to behold.
Two discs, the first features the documentary, the second disc contains the entire premiere performance of the original orchestration of the Ballet Mechanique, extended interviews with Antheil's friends featured in the film, and the 1925 Ballet Mechanique film, complete with the newly realized version of Antheil's score. Amazing!
Another solid ear pleaser from Mr. Damon Gough. He's always been a fine folk popster (or pop folkster?), but Born In The U.K. might be his most country leaning album to date, and his most smooth and accessible. He's definitely scaled back a bit from the grand orchestrations of his last album, 2004's beauty One Plus One Is One. While he might be prone to rambling and mild distemper on stage, here on record he keeps things even keeled, the tone warm and the mood down low. Still very steeped in sentimentality. His songs always make you go "awwwww". Some have liken him this time to a more sullen Neil Diamond (mind you, not quite to the extreme of Crooked Fingers' Eric Bachmann). Maybe a bit damp, but never dreary. Such shufflin' shamblin' sweater wearin' earthiness makes a perfect accompaniment to an autumn cuddle up.
The female vocalist from Espers gives us a sweet taste of her solo work in anticipation of her upcoming debut. Covering "Waltze of The Tennis Players" by sixties folk obscurities, Fraser and Debolt on one side, and on the other, an acapella version of "Dear Companion", an ancient hymn like tune which will be featured on the full length record. Alas, such a little taste leaves us begging for more.
Beautiful.
Oh how we adore those Be Good Tanyas! Their first two albums Chinatown and Blue Horse hold solid places in our hearts (well, at least Andee and Cup's). Both albums came out ages ago, leaving us craving more for years! Primarily known stateside for far too long as Jolie Holland's former band, with the aptly titled Hello Love the Canadian country folk trio gracefully glide out of Holland's shadow and into their own rustic autumnal spotlight. That said, Holland does make a brief vocal appearance on the eighth track, their cover of Mississippi John Hurt's "Nobody Cares For Me". They also do wonderful versions of "A Thousand Tiny Pieces", a song by SF's dear Sean Hayes and "For The Turnstiles" by Neil Young. They're definite album highlights. Not so sure about their cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry" tho' which you'll find hidden at the end of the album. Oops, sorry to blow the surprise, but maybe they should've kept it hidden?!
An aside: Kinda burns our biscuits that an artist signed to Nettwerk Records (i.e, an international and pretty much 'major' label who could buy them the moon tenfold) is getting Canadian government funding grants while unsigned, empty pocketed independent candidates go empty handed. Geez, that just doesn't sit right.
But regardless, a super pretty twangy delight.
Wow! We haven't been this smitten with a debut release in quite a while. Didn't know much about this Baltimore duo but we do know, the second this record we laid ears on this the first time, we were immediately seduced by the glorious sounds within. Hazy, daydreaming pop with equal parts magic, mystery and dreamy darkness, all drenched in beautiful melodies and sincere sensuality. Kind of made us think of Broadcast taking a warm bubble bath with Coco Rosie. Lights out, candles burning, bubbles floating, reverb dripping. There is a timelessness in these songs that is so evocative, Warhol's factory, a summer twilight in Southern California in the '70s, an abandoned art studio in the UK. You can never quite put your finger on exactly where these songs are drawn from but in the end it's music truly unique and wonderful. A mysterious voice, a haunting presence and songs carry you off, eyes closed, to somewhere much more enchanting then wherever you really are. So nice!
Chris Bell was an original member of mighty pop legends Big Star, but quit the band after their debut, #1 Record failed to propel them to super stardom. For the next few years years, Bell struggled with depression while recording demo after demo. In 1977, Bell released the single "I Am The Cosmos", an amazing little slab of practically perfect pop, an absolutely beautiful gem, dense with wistful harmonies and glistening instrumentation, which ended up being a big enough hit that it drove Bell to form a band to begin work on a new album. But before that could happen, Bell died in a tragic car accident. I Am The Cosmos was a collection of all of his unreleased demos, but played like some lost classic album. As good as any of the Big Star records for sure. A dark and brooding, dreamy and glistening pop masterpiece, from beginning to end. Super varied, from crunchy melodic power pop to deep introspective ballads, but somehow all the parts fit perfectly. So goddamn good.
180 gram vinyl!
Still more grime and dubstep madness from the only label that seems to be really bringing us the grime-y goodness we want. THAT WE NEED!! And it's another killer. Benga is a big deal in the tiny world of dubstep, but this is the first we've heard from him outside a handful of comps.
Side A is some super stripped down dubstep with BIG BIG beats that had our speakers shaking off the shelves, fuzzy blown out basslines, droning warbles in the background and some weird haunting Hitchcockian synth melodies.
The B side has some of the most killer low end we've ever heard. HUGE foundation rattling low end rumble, wrapped in thick reverb and spaced out dubby FX, like King Tubby gone grime, with cinematic pizzicato strings, like the soundtrack to some dubstep thriller. Nice!
Big Search is one man from L.A. His name is Mr. Matt Popieluch. While he is also in two other bands (Foreign Born and Ceramic Isles), he finds time to make music all by his lonesome too... with a little bass and drum assistance from his pal from The Papercuts, Mr. Jason Quever. Mysticism Vs. Classicism bears the fruits of his solo endeavors. These are his no frills 'studio in a garage' recordings from 2003/03 which are now seeing the light of day courtesy of young indie label Grand Gallop Music. Eight strummy, breezy and laidback folk pop numbers with vocals that are soft'n'sensitive with a subtle cabaret-ish flair that brings to mind both Rufus Wainwright and Robyn Hitchcock. Limited pressing of 300 copies packaged in hand-screened brown cardstock sleeves.
Big Star's legendary third lp (duh) also called Sister Lovers, finally released on vinyl for the first time since 1978 with the original cover art, including complete liner notes as well as the original mixes and the original track listing. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl and mastered from the original tapes. But why should you care? Because 3rd is one of the greatest pop records of all time. In fact the first three Big Star records, #1 Record, Radio City and 3rd, are like the ultimate classic pop triumvirate. There's not a real power pop band in the last 30 years who would have or could have existed if it wasn't for Big Star. And lord knows there would never have been a Replacements! Unlike the first two Big Star records though, 3rd replaced their glistening perfect pop with ragged rock, tortured angst and a serious experimental streak, all exacerbated by frontman Alex Chilton's fragile mental state and the fact that 3rd is almost just a Chilton solo record, with the other two Big Stars just backing him up. But that's the kind of tension and just the sort of uncomfortable personal dynamics that make for intense, dramatic, and moving music. And 3rd is without a doubt all of those things. So chock full of killer tunes, dark and rocking and weirdly haunting, check out "Big Black Car", "Kangaroo", "Holocaust"...
Some of the most gorgeously catchy and emotionally harrowing pop you'll ever hear!
Don't know too much about the Born Ruffians other than HOLY SHIT! does the first track on this ep, "This Sentence Will Ruin / Save Your Life" sound like the greatest song the Pixies never wrote but sure as shit should have. The minute we threw this on we were just completely floored. So what if it sounds like the Pixies. It is such an unbelievably gorgeous and hook filled chunk of angular indie pop perfection. High end jangle, weird tribal drum fills, hand claps and a dangerously Frank Black like delivery. We can NOT stop listening to this. Over and over and over. Super kinetic and bouncy and so joyfully wild and fun. This would be worth eight bucks even if it was only one song long.
But thankfully the rest of the disc (all 16 minutes of it) is almost as catchy, although a little less riled up. Loping simple guitars, that gorgeous high croon, simple drumming, dense sheets of jangle, propulsive drum pound, a bit of classic new wave, a little of that new-wave-of-new-wave (we definitely hear a bit of Maximo Park in there) but ultimately it all boils down to how bad you've been jonesing for some of that classic era Pixies sound. If you're anything like us, this will hit the spot in a HUGE way. But don't write these guys off as a Pixies rip-off. Similar to how the Robbers On High Street take their uncanny resemblance to Spoon and deftly twist it into their own beautiful shapes, the Born Ruffians work the same kind of magic, taking big chunks of Pixies bliss and mixing them up with all kinds of other glorious pop into a truly catchy concoction.
Recommended.
Since her band's 2004 debut album School Of Etiquette (a particular Andee and Cup fave of that year), SF cool gal and headmistress of poppy post-post-punk grrrls Boyskout Leslie Satterfield has not only moved to NY and back, but she's also assembled an entirely new lineup! And we're happy to report that the music hasn't skipped a beat. Although Boyskout's sound is usually anchored by a mopey Smiths-ian moodiness driven by reeling guitar and keyboards and distinct breathy pout of Satterfield's vocals -- even more so on this album than on the last -- they do insert a warm sunbeam here and there. Take for example the softly snappy retro-pop of "Everybody Knew". It makes for a nice, unjarring shift on the band's modus operandi. The places where it seems this album loses its focus and falters just a bit are those when it seems the creative control and vocal duties were wrested from Satterfield's usually solid grip. A particularly noticeable slip in momentum comes at the cover of Kraftwerk's "The Model" -- ably executed but a bit flat in comparison to the rest of the songs' punch. A far more effective and downright spooky cover is their take on The Beatles' "Drive My Car" (oooh, spoiler: it's the album's closing track simply listed as "Track 12"). Nonetheless, Another Life is a terrific sophomore release. Recommended!
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, William Bloke, Worker's Playtime and this one from 1991. You may or may not recall, this is the album where Bragg pulled out the big guns for back-up -- Johnny Marr, R.E.M.s Michael Stipe and Peter Buck and Kirsty MacColl -- though he really didn't 'need' 'em!
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are Don't Try This At Home, William Bloke, Worker's Playtime and this, his most recent album proper, originally released in 2002.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, Don't Try This At Home, Worker's Playtime and this, perhaps one of his most stark and downcast works, from back in 1996.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
Holy smokes! It's nothing but reissue mania for Sir William of Braggville! You might recall those fine folks at Yep Roc Records' first batch of four reissues which came out early this year. Collectively known as Billy Bragg Volume 1, they included Life's A Riot With Spy Vs. Spy, Brewing Up With Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, The Internationale EP and the Live & Dubious EP. Super great!
Well, the autumn brings forth four more of ol' Billy's best, all splendidly remastered and rereleased. They are England, Half English, Don't Try This At Home, William Bloke and this one -- in our opinion quite possibly one of his best! -- from way back in 1988. It features such gems as "She's Got A New Spell" and "Waiting For The Great Leap Forward". So good.
As with the previous bunch, each one comes in a trayless digipak with new cover art and a bonus disc of rarities. Ahh, but isn't it such a bittersweet pleasure to hear them again after all these years with Bragg's early '80s socio-political commentary still ringing relevant and true today more than ever?
(Oh yeah, and if you wanna go completely Bragg wild, there's a Volume Two boxset that has all these releases and a dvd packed together with a big booklet. Let us know if you're game!)
You get a little bit of everything on this new Bright Eyes rarities collection -- singles, b-sides, unreleased stuff, a Spoon cover ("Spent On Rainy Days")-- but you especially get Conor Oberst's trademark most heartfelt of heartfelt indie boy poetics sung in those endearingly wimpery, near breathless vocals. Seriously folks, we've said it before but we'll say it again, he sounds like he's either being dangled by a thread over a cliff or he's got someone with a gun to his head or he got caught in a chilly downpour without an umbrella. Definitely an acquired taste! The second song "I Will Be Grateful For This Day" brings blasts of thick distortion that interrupt the delicate electronics laced indie folk pop melody. Other tunes are more straightforward folk singer/songwriter numbers, of which he become increasingly adept at writing. Total heart string tuggin', pit of your stomach sentiments. So Bright Eyes fans, consider this a little something to tide you over 'til Oberst hits the studio for his next album!
It had to happen. Local sludge/grind combo Burmese, with a maximum-pummel line up of 2 bassists and 2 drummers, and two amazingly brutal records on our very own Andee's tUMULt label, and who spend most of their time channelling the spirit of '80s UK noise-shock pioneers Whitehouse anyway, decided to indulge their peculiar obsession, by recording an entire record of Whitehouse songs, run through the Burmese ringer. The result? An ear shredding, throat slitting, hateful, misanthropic skree, equal parts Merzbow, Drop Dead, Whitehouse and white noise, garbled ultra-distorted inhuman vocals, spewing hate and bile, over a musical bed of shrieking feedback, buzzing instruments, and very little actual 'playing', like a Twilight Zone episode where the musical instruments rebel against their masters by making the most un-musical sounds they can muster. Truly brutal, difficult, warped and wondrous.
AVAILABLE AGAIN!!!
Finally one of our all time favorite Circle records back in print! We first listed this way back in 1999, and it was for many people their first exposure to this amazing and mysterious, dreamy and hypnotic, modern spaced out krautrock band from Finland. By now, Circle is practically a household name, at least for those of you living in a seriously cool music household, having released about 15 or 16 records since Andexelt. But way back in 1999, Circle were a a brand new discovery for most American weird rock fans, and Andexelt knocked everyone on their asses.
A delirious dose of droning, hypnotic neo-kraut rock that effortlessly managed to out-post most post rock bands and out-space most spacerock bands. Circle were (and are) the northernmost heirs to the Krautrock tradition. On Andexelt, the band were taking basic riffs, stretching and reshaping them, twisting them into brand new shapes, creating bleak, ever shifting underwater grooves and dizzyingly repetitive rhythms, sounding like an otherworldly This Heat or a more damaged Can. A mesmerising wall of sound delivered with the sheer force of Loop or Godflesh, but with dark precision and melodic restraint. Mellow, delicate jazzy passages intersected with crushing Bonham-esque beats. Fans of Circle's other great records, past and present, can already guess that this is completely amazing and absolutely essential!!! While fans of Salvatore and Tortoise and Mogwai and�TransAm and all other practitioners of epic bombastic hypno-rock, mesmeric math rock and even the current crop of sludgy metallic post rock, would do well to pick this up if they missed it the first time around. Andexelt is the perfect mix of their current more metallic drone rock pummel and their older more mesmerizing krautrock groove bliss. So absolutely brilliant and completely and utterly essential.
Exactly the same as the original tUMULt pressing, including the 10 minute bonus track and kick ass secret song not included on the import version, originally released on Finnish weird-prog label Metamorphos. SO AWESOME!!!!!
Delicate? Calm? Circle? Yes. Listen up. You'd think that for a band with, no less than, what, twenty albums to their name AND who always write songs with an invariable central musical concept (circularity, natch, the repetitive pulse that all their songs share no matter what else is different betwixt 'em) we'd by this point feel like we'd heard it all from them already -- even if their all is ALL really great. But no. This new album surprised even us. And it too is great. Really great. If you're expecting the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal) stylings of Tulikoria or Sunrise, or the motorik krautrockiness of Alotus or Guillotine, or the heavy prog of Prospekt, or the spacey jazzy dubbiness of Pori, or all of the above (as these descriptors actually apply to pretty much all their albums to varying degrees), well that's NOT exactly what you get with Miljard. There's really no comparisons this time to Neu!, Can, Tortoise, or Hawkwind, let alone Judas Priest! Instead we'll mention Thuja, The Necks, Morton Feldman, Bohren und Der Club Of Gore, Philip Jeck, 3/4hadbeeneliminated... But it's still definitely Circle. It's just that, as Ektro's website puts it, "rocking has been traded for some quiet reading on the couch at home". And boy is this hauntingly atmospheric, instrumental music PERFECT for such activity.
Miljard NEEDS two discs, because this music is so spacious and expansive, a slow-moving stream, or the ripples in a pond. The pond, perhaps, frozen in the Finnish winter, in a twilight landscape softened with snow... The first track on the first disc, "Parmalee", is a twenty minute piece that sets the relaxed and gorgeous tone of this record. Meandering, pretty piano, reminding us of Rob Reger's playing in Thuja, quietly joined by abstract electronics and guitar...and Circle's usual repetition and pulses are still there, at about 11 minutes the pulse becomes more noticable, by that time you're absolutely entranced... already we're convinced, this is a fantastic record, and there's still 1 and 2/3rds discs to go!! The next track, "B.F.F." is slightly more uptempo, but still has the classical vibe from the piano. And then another twenty-minute cut "Duunila" comes on, a whispery dark drone, hushed, with some sparse clatter, and gentle bass notes. Oooh, sheer beauty. And on it goes, all the way through to the gauzey, vaguely gamelan-like 20-minute "Viitane" which closes out disc two, nearly two hours of amazing music, the soundtrack to a limpid dream from which we'd never hope to wake.
Out of the whole Circle discography, the atypically riff-less stuff here comes closest to the material on side one of Mountain, a very brooding and unusually ambient live set which not everybody got to hear 'cause it was a limited, LP-only release. This at least is not so limited.
Geeze, what *can't* they do? With Miljard we're pretty sure Circle have cemented their status as just about the best band ever, as far as we're concerned. Ok, the AQ universe of best bands ever is pretty big, but Circle might just be the best of the best... Recommended, people!!!
Earlier in 2006, Joe Colley won an Award of Distinction at the 2006 Prix Ars Electronica in Digital Music for his album Psychic Stress Soundtracks. The jurors of Ars Electronica grafted a political sentiment onto Colley's work by drawing parallels between Psychic Stress Soundtracks and the use of extreme sound as a method of interrogation pushed to the brink of what can be defined as torture under the Geneva Convention. While Colley's previous work has intentionally blurred the boundaries between noise, sound research, and psychology, all of his investigations (including Psychic Stress Soundtracks) appear as exercises in self-negation and existential failure manifested through maltreated electronics (as opposed to what those at Ars Electronica saw in his work as a mimetic work of external horror). Waste Of Songs is a blunt follow up to Psychic Stress Soundtracks, and true to Colley's demeanor, he's not particularly inclined to resolve any questions about the intentions of his album or its relation to the outside world. Rather, it's another brilliantly executed album of his own "negative reactions to an environment" as realized through jittering electronic feedback, overdriven servo-motors smoldering with too much voltage pushed through their dynamos, volatile drones extracted from the ether, and field recordings rendered toxic with choice use of DSP treatments. The exact synthesis between Xenakis' precision and Wolf Eyes' malaise; yeah, that's close enough to describing this. Highly recommended.
The legendary Tony Conrad teams up with some noisy young bucks for an hour of full on, high heaven, upper stratosphere, black cloud, acid rain melting everything in sight into silvery puddles, full bore skree. Recorded live in Buffalo in April 2005, there is nothing subtle about this 60 minute blast. The core is Conrad's near static lazer cannon blast of white hot, high end, which gets gloriously torn to shreds and allowed to crumble into crackling pieces, dropping huge flaming shards of shrieking grind and throbbing crunch on a defenseless audience. There are moments of near ambience too, nothing but spaced out fuzz, and little bits of clatter and scrape, but before too long, another salvo is launched and everything peels away in thick strips of charred flesh, revealing a glowing super nova of sound inside. This is another one of those records, that given a casual listen, is pretty rough, a bit of serious ear torching noise. But strap yourself in, and make it through the first brutal blast, and you'll feel your ears blossoming like flowers in the Springtime, opening up and letting all sorts of sonic subtleties in. Then it's a near transcendental, blissed out ur-drone, albeit, one that is heavily spiked with fiery fragments of ultra distorted shimmer and shriek, and thick slabs of skull rattling rumble. The musical equivalent of listening to a star implode, or better yet an entire galaxy collapsing. Intense!
Metalcore is sort of a dirty word these days it seems; conjuring up images of Warped Tours and Hot Topic's. All the short haired emo guys are now playing brutal-tech-death metal while the dirty long haired metalhead guys are slowing it down, making all kinds of epic post rock and convoluted math rock. What gives? Converge continue to blaze their own path and break down the boundaries between hardcore and metal, while incorporating bits of noise and other weird sounds, the REAL crossover.
Converge were sort of always the hardcore black sheep, too noisy, too metal, not punk enough. Going on 15 years now, Converge have been the kings of the underground, subtly or not so subtly influencing all the metalcore outfits that have gone on to be HUGE. It's time for the world to recognize that Converge have been making some of the most progressive, and beautifully fucked up metallic punk rock music of the last two decades.
No Heroes falls sonically somewhere between the all time metalcore milestone Jane Doe and their more recent, but equally as punishing and original You Fail me.�The pace is furious, hovering around warp speed most of the time, but these guys are masters, and amidst the cacophonous, chaotic din lurk all sorts of sonic surprises, tone of space and atmosphere, discordant, jagged, chunky, choppy riffs, incredibly complex rhythms, as well as hooks galore, all masterfully whipped into a glorious metalcore frenzy.
Highly recommended.
Damn, it's hard to believe this album is fourteen years old! Back in print after many years, Cul De Sac's ambitious debut sounds fresher than ever. One of the first bands to directly reference the rhythmic propulsions of Can, while at the same time expanding their musical arsenal to include surf music, psychedelic post-rock, Mediterranean trance music and folk, Cul De Sac have been faves here forever. Ecim reads like a drug-induced travelogue through non-linear time with each song setting up a unique feel distinct from each other yet oddly connected. Covers of Tim Buckley's "Song of the Siren" and "The Portland Cement Factory, at Monolith, California" by John Fahey (with whom they would subsequently collaborate) provide some familiar ground while at the same time offering something completely unexpected. Recommended! And oh yeah, this remastered reissue's got three previously unreleased bonus tracks from 1991, and brand new liner notes!
Asthmatic Kitty, the label that brought us a bunch of early Sufjan Stevens releases as well as two dream-folk albums by the Castanets, has released another likemindedly quirky lovely cd by The Curtains starring Mr. Chris Cohen formerly of Deerhoof. Not at all surprisingly, the mildly tweaked elements of his old band definitely make their way into the pastel pop weave of The Curtains, but the overall sound is more straightforward fluttery retro '60s psych-pop with very heavy Beach Boys and Beatles influences. It's all super sweet and wistful with female vocals courtesy of Nedelle Torrisi (also of SF duo Nedelle And Thom). Half-Handed Cloud's John Ringhofer also lends (more than half) a musical hand. Cohen has the kind of irresistible boyish wonder and charm that few possess. It's almost like he exists in a Michel Gondry film, so many wonderful colors, state of the bedroom invention and endless wonder. There's nothing but puffy clouds floating in a bright blue sky when this one's playin'!
We've been in love with the Decemberists since the very first time we laid ears on them. A super quirky, hyper literate, Dickensian jangle pop, equal parts Neutral Milk Hotel, Belle And Sebastian, Robyn Hitchcock, Destroyer, the Pogues and some lost Victorian musical featuring Lords and Ladies and LOTS of chimney sweeps. Like an Edward Gorey drawing come to life. In fact if anyone was ever to make a musical of Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies it sure as hell better feature original music by the Decemberists: "Be is for Basil assaulted by Bears... la la la..."
Anyway, the Crane Wife is the Decemberists' first major label release, and we were all a little surprised when we first found out they were making the leap. It makes perfect sense of course. They've gotten more and more popular over the last couple years, so it was sort of inevitable. But we were all wondering how the world would react to such a brainy, unlikely pop combo. Definitely not the sort of thing you hear on the radio or on MTV.
On first glance everything seems intact for some serious subverting from within. A super spare handdrawn, slightly morbid cover, a little bit of blood, the band drawn in full Victorian finery, bizarre song titles, and a couple LONG song suites! Lengthy multi-part epics, a little bit of prog mixed in with their usual dour jangle.
But while the band stood their ground on design, and song structure and the like, they did seem to sacrifice some of their overt musical weirdness. They always had the potential to slip into some mainstream strum and croon, but always stayed just on the weird side of that slippery slope. But on the Crane Wife, lots of the songs sound like the all the sharp edges were filed down, not just musically, but lyrically as well. Meloy got as much press for his hilariously poignant tales of murder and misery as for his clever indie folk pop. But except for the super stripped down lament "Shankill Butchers", probably the best track on the record, just guitar, accordion and a creepy wailing tale of butchery in Meloy's trademark about to crack faux-British brogue, the rest of the record could just as easily be the Crash Test Dummies or Bare Naked Ladies as the hippest indie rock band in the land.
That's not to say the record is bad, it's not. In fact it's pretty darn good, there are just a handful of cringeworthy moments that go down so wrong and make it tough to listen to the whole record straight through. The most egregious example being the cheesy, eighties funky Dire Straits groove of "The Perfect Crime #2" complete with highly inappropriate guitar leads and female background vocals. Ugh. A few other tracks also like either serious missteps or bids for commercial airplay or both. But at least half the record still pushes all the same buttons. A delightfully dour jangle, like a more depressed Pogues, or an 18th century Neutral Milk Hotel.
If you don't have ANY Decemberists records, but have wanted to check them out, for god's sake, get them in this order: Castaways and Cutouts first, then Her Majesty and then Picaresque. If you still need more (and you probably will if you end up being as taken with these guys as we are) there are a handful of ep's as well. At that point, if you're still jonesing, -then- it's time to pick up the Crane Wife, even if it's just to play "Shankill Butchers" over and over and over and over...
Reservedly recommended. Sort of.
Don't wanna sound corny, but... awww to hell with it, we've gotta say that this Vancouver band must've plucked their Rubies from the Wicked Witch Of The West's ruby red slippers cause there's some magic happening here. Wow! Bandleader Dan Bejar's eccentric blend of folk, glam, psych and pop reaches new heights and depths on this, their sixth album. Destroyer's Rubies positively overflows with confidence, ambition and grandeur. Over the years, Bejar's music has drawn comparisons (by us and other folks) to the elder likes of Robyn Hitchcock, Harry Nilsson, David Bowie and Cat Stevens. This kinship has primarily resided in the lilting warbly vocal department, but there's also a good deal of similar shading in each of the songwriters' often cryptic and deeply personal tales. Ever the nomadic troubadour traversing the wilds of Canada at whim, Bejar's lyrical storytelling takes a similar roaming, stream of consciousness path. And it's such a pleasure to be able to join him for this ten song spell. Check out the album's centerpiece, and definitely one of its highlights "Looter's Follies". Fantastic in every sense of the word!
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.
Good things most definitely come to those who wait! Those with good memories may recall that I (Jim) had trumpeted about a Sophie Durand & Manu Holterbach album as being one of finest sound art pieces of 2005 alongside the ephemerally beautiful Keith Berry disc The Ear That Was Sold To A Fish. Unfortunately, the label that had released the Durand / Holterbach collaboration had disappeared before any copies could make their way from the label's base of operations in Switzerland. Fortunately, the virtues of vigilance and patience held true, and Aquarius Records can now offer this magnificent recording to our discerning listeners.
The instrument behind what is hopefully the first installment to the Verres Enharmoniques series is a device that modifies the parlor trick of rubbing a wet finger across the rim of a wineglass to produce a continuous harmonic frequency. While the glass harmonica applied this same principle to a series of tuned glass bowls to produce several octaves of those harmonics, Manu Holterbach's invention hooks up four modified wine glasses to four foot pedals which control the water level within the glasses. Thus as water is pumped into the glass or drains out, the harmonic notes ascend and descent correspondingly. Holterbach and his partner Sophie Durand have performed with this instrument for several years now, with renowned sound artist mnortham making the bold claim that their performance was the loudest that he's ever experienced. Considering that their performances are unamplified, mnortham's claim is all the more astounding, but not impossible given that the purity of the frequencies from vibrating glass can rattle inside the human head. In rattling around the human head, these frequencies give the impression of high volumes without the sound pressure of a mountain of Marshall stacks. Durand and Holterbach apply these sounds as deep drones in subtle minimalist compositions with undulating movements and periodic phase patterns that have all of the majesty of LaMonte Young or Phill Niblock.
Sure the record is brilliant, but here's the other selling point: it's out of print and we only got a handful.
We've wanted to list so many releases by mysterious super limited cd-r label Mystery Sea. In the past, they've released cd-r's from all sorts of AQ faves, like Aidan Baker, Ultrasound, Moljebka Pvlse, Troum, mnortham, Paul Bradley and even Coelacanth (our own Jim and his partner Loren Chasse). But as each disc is strictly limited to 100 copies, and each one meticulously designed and hand assembled, we were never able to get enough, and often we were unable to get any at all.
Until now. We've finally managed to get enough to list of the latest Mystery Sea release, a gorgeous slab of minimal crawl by the group Emerge, who we first heard on a Drone Records 7" a while back. Which comes as no surprise, as Mystery Sea obviously takes its inspiration from the Drone label, but instead of vinyl, it's cd-r's. The label describes its music as "night-ocean drones" and Emerge's Immersion fits perfectly alongside previous subaquatic slabs of moody meandering abstraction. Every track is a dark dolorous deep listening experience, wide open stretches of murky moonlit shimmer, warm rippling rumbles, muted melodic mumbles, all swirling and whirling in soporific swells, barely visible somnambulant patterns, peppered with abstract rhythms, textural crackle and subtle sonic grit, distant pulses, smeary sonar ping and miles-below-the-surface throb. Some of the most gorgeous drone music we've heard. A dreamlike drift along the ocean floor, an abstract ambience floating weightlessly from your speakers.
Normally we would balk at $17.98 for a cd-r, but wait until you see how gorgeous these are, the artwork is all the image of an oceanic panorama, with the colors tweaked and twisted into some sort of abstract water colored seascape, the booklet, only half as wide as a normal cd booklet, allows half of the disc face to be visible as well. So striking.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each is numbered on the tray card. Once these are gone, they are gone for good.
Third missive from our new favorite modern ambient space rock / krautrocky outfit. As if there were even any other contenders. These guys (or this guy rather) came out of nowhere and just blew our fucking minds. Expo '70, aka Justin Wright, has, over the last few months. given us two full lengths of gloriously dreamy kraut infused dronemusic, looped cyclical guitars, thick waves of smeared riffs and muted murky FX. A heavier, dronier take on Eno, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel. This latest transmission from the deepest reaches of the Expo '70's universe, is by far the heaviest and most aggressive sounding yet, as if they decided to give the boys in SUNNO))) and Earth a run for their money. But this is not just some massive slab of caveman sludge, instead this is an ominous soundworld of thick coruscating waves of grinding low end guitar fuzz, roiling and churning, but with a propulsive inner pulse, like some lost Ash Ra jam dipped in tar, and launched into the ether. Or if the other two Expo '70 records were the sounds of drifting weightlessly through space, the stars a distant shimmer, everything muted and slowly shifting, like some huge black expanse of water, Center Of The Earth is the sound of the sky buckling, the galaxy fracturing, of being sucked into some mysterious other universe, a subterranean world beneath our visible existence, murky and turbulent, a darkness impenetrable except for a few swirling swaths of grey light, quickly tangled up in the dark, the endless drift into a black hole, the sound a reverberating whir, a massive resonant hum that thickens and intensifies, until you can feel the drone in your bones, every cell in your body vibrating sympathetically, until you slip into glorious blackness. The final track is like the aftermath, your ship a ruined wreckage, floating through the sky, just another piece of debris in a sky full of memories and regrets and ruin, a drifting blissed out space rock riff beneath abstract streaks of psychedelia, wrapped in a gauzy film, the rays of some alien sun lighting up the sky and wrapping you in warm shadows. So gorgeous.
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Fear Falls Burning is the work of one Dirk Serries, who is probably better know for his work as VidnaObmana. FFB was started a little over a year ago to allow Serries to explore the world of post rock and lo-fi drone music. This dvd-audio disc contains over 4 1/2 hours of recordings from a series of live shows in Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium and are all lengthy slow burn improvisations for thick, slithering distorted drone guitar.
If you can imagine a way less metal SUNNO))) or maybe a super distorted big amped version of Loren Mazzacane Connors you might get an idea of FFB's sound. It's spare and spacious, but thick and textured, the guitar more like some droning noisemaker than an actual guitar, letting wispy tendrils of warm shimmery fuzz unfurl, and twist and drift, often becoming more and more tangled into thick dirge like walls of slow motion riffing. Ghostly abstract melodies rendered in downtuned chiaroscuro, grinding string scrape smeared into layered swirls of buzz, twinkling harmonics drift like little clouds of glitter, the throb and pulse create abstract rumbling rhythms while in the distance all sorts of soft focus colors fade and blur.
Perfect late night, spaced out, free drift, dreampsych guitar drone bliss. Fans of Growing, Main, Spacemen 3, SUNNO))), Chalk, Coleclough and all practitioners of the droney drift will be in absolute heaven.
Amazing oversized 6 panel textured and stained thick woodgrain paper sleeve manufactured exclusively for this release by Shantilal & Sons of Bombay, India, a built in pocket, three oversized postcards printed with cool blurry live shots, and an elaborate folded set of liner notes printed in metallic gold ink on beautiful paper embedded with bits of glitter and tiny little colored cloth fragments. Around the outside is wrapped an obi printed in the same ink on the same lovely paper. One of the nicest packages we've seen!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
This whole reissuing records months or years after they come out, even when the original is still available and working out for everybody just fine, is getting way out of hand. You buy a record, and a few months later, you gotta buy it again if you want the bonus tracks and the making of DVD. But what can you do? When it's a band you love, you kind of just have to suck it up. Thankfully, the Flaming Lips have gone to great lengths to make this reissue well worth buying all over again. It's a little pricey, but it is so jam packed with extra goodies it's pretty dang hard to resist.
The normal record is included of course as a remastered 2.0 stereo version (we're not even sure what that means but it sounds good!). The bonus DVD is where all the action is. First, a 5.1 surround sound version of the record, 5 outtakes, in 2.0 stereo, as well as their version of "Bohemian Rhapsody", in 5.1 surround sound of course! 8 tracks from different radio sessions, also presented in hi res 2.0 stereo. Phew. But wait, that's just the DVD-AUDIO portion. There are also three videos, all of the extra tracks presented in Dolby digital 2.0 stereo and Wayne Coyne giving the commencement speech at Classen High. Holy crap. That's a lot of extras. But just in case you forgot what the record even sounds like, here's what we had to say about it the first time around:
How do you make a record after releasing two of the best records of the last decade? Back to back amazing albums that will stand the test of time. How do you follow up that feat?? Well instead of making something quite as monumental and epic as those records the Lips just decided to make another damn good album. At war with the powers that be and those on the other side who get it all so wrong in their fanatical ways. Somehow The Flaming Lips have managed to become a voice of reason in these all too weird times. With some nods to their Clouds Taste Metallic past and for sure many of the same reach for the sky dream-on elements of The Soft Bulletin and Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots. Some of the all out fun moments on this record prove once again that no one knows joy better then Wayne Coyne does. "Haven't Got A Clue" will be right up there with one of our favorite songs of the year. The Flaming Lips still got their endearing spirit and creative minds in full swing. We're pretty damn happy that they keep on keeping on.
Kieren Hebden keeps himself busy, and it's a good thing 'cause most of what he keeps himself busy doing results in some really incredible, inventive music. Besides making great Four Tet records, he's also slowly piecing together a new album with his old band Fridge, collaborating with free jazz legend Steve Reid and of course lending his imaginative remixing skills to the work of other artists. This 2-cd collection features one disc of remixes Hebden did, while the other disc is remixes Hebden had done TO his band. Both discs are awesome! Disc one features Hebden working his magic on tracks from Radiohead, Madvillain, His Name Is Alive, Aphex Twin, Rothko, Bloc Party, Pole, Beth Orton and more. While the bands chose to remix Hebden include Jay Dee, Manitoba, Battles, and Boom Bip among others.
Bay Area label Three Ring Records expand their roster by a third with four impressive new releases by Rykarda Parasol, Scattered Pages, Tom Thumb & The Latter Day Saints and this lone gent Frankel. Three Ring has already got fine releases by the indie rock/pop likes of Elephone, Soltero, Ebb & Flow and D.W. Holiday and Scrabbel, but with this recent outpouring they bolster their country and folk branches. Frankel is a folksy pop singer/songwriter whose music can easily draw comparisons to Nick Drake and Elliott Smith, but his songs tread through a place far less dark and tormented. A most gentle, comforting listen.
Throughout the '80s and '90s, Michael Gendreau worked extensively in the East Bay avant-noise project Crawling With Tarts, often constructing surreal experiments with idiosyncratic pop-babble and tape collages of art-damaged noise. For Gendreau, the turntable became an ideal instrument for his explorations; and soon, he began working with the archaic technology of lathe cut, handcrafted vinyl. Often the results were bizarre, if sporadically successful recontextualizations of homemade instrumentation, radio noise, and anti-pop. Recently, it seems as though Gendreau has put Crawling With Tarts on an extended hiatus, due to his increasing attention into the field of vibrations diagnostics and consultation. This incredibly technical arena has lead him to researching the problems of acoustic noise vibrations upon highly sensitive pieces of optical equipment, which could present faulty analysis due to the tiny, but measurable effects of environmental noise (air condititioning ducts and heating vents in particular).
"55 Pas De La Ligne Au No. 3" finds Gendreau bridging his current activities of acoustic diagnostics with his once prolific avant-turntable collages. It appears that Gendreau has hooked up a number of accelerometers - technical devices used to detect, measure, and catalogue any number of vibrational frequencies - to a series of battered record players spinning his handmade vinyl. Gendreau's accelerometers are so sensitive, that they pick up, not only the interaction between the needle and the record in question, but also the muffled whir of the thick rubber band stretching between the motor and the turntable plate. The results found on "55 Pas De La Ligne Au No. 3" are astounding, with eerie mechanical drones, minute needle crackle, and the occasional, but always unnerving upsurge of quiet voices floating though the din like the EVP sounds from "The Ghost Orchid" of purported recordings from beyond the grave. This will probably become one of my (Jim's) favorite records of the year.
Shhhhh. As quiet and unassuming as it is, this new Goldmund 7" triggered an aQ realization that we hadn't written about his last cd Corduroy Road that came out last year. Uh oh, shirking our duties! Ah well, a review for that fine release was promptly written (it's listed on our website). Anyways, Heart Of High Places features six more of his resonant, uncluttered piano compositions. Slow, delicate and dewy. This record is part of the great 7" series from Type Records that also includes aQ faves Paavoharju and Machinefabriek.
Some brilliantly abstract percussive improv from legendary sixties outfit Gruppo Improvisazione Nuova Consonanza, who among its members counted a young Ennio Morricone. But don't expect any of that cinematic desert twang, this is way more far out, a series of lengthy improvisations that range from clattery percussive soundscapes assembled from all manner of rattles and shakers and struck and bowed metal, chaotic and densely tangled, to haunting whirls of electronic glitch, skronky horns, pounded piano and weird tape experiments, to droney spaced out free jazz, but always retaining a wide eyed innocence and a penchant for kicking up a seriously noisy racket, even the softest moments often interrupted by a loud clang or some shimmering high end scrape. Recorded between 1967 and 1969, most of this sounds like it could easily have been recorded this year, some mysterious outfit from Finland or Japan, recording in the forest, releasing limited cd-r's. But it's also very much of it's time, a little bit academic, very later sixites / early seventies. Noisy as all get out, but incredibly captivating and strangely lovely at times. Two whole discs jam packed with some mesmerizingly freaked out free music exploration.
Also included is an amazing DVD, a gorgeous black and white concert film, documenting a live performance in Rome from 1967. Subtitled in both English and Italian. And it's all region. All of the discs are in similarly designed digipaks, and along with a poster, and a thick book packed with liner notes and photos, are housed in a super striking cloth covered box, with embossed white swirls and embossed text! Amazing.
Following this album's dainty piano intro we were hit with a big "Whoa!!" Heavier, groovier, funkier... that's Mr. Tommy Guerrero on From The Soil To The Soul. Sounds like he's taking a looser yet more aggressive approach. Y'know, just letting it flow. Diggin' in with some falsetto vocals and hotshit bass and Hammond lines. Whereas his previous albums have been lighter, more playful fare, this is harder hitting, very hard funk influenced a la Isaac Hayes or theme songs for gritty cop shows on tv back in the '70s like S.W.A.T. As usual he covers all the bases though, softening things up a bit for "Just Ain't Me", but then he hits us with the surprisingly hard rockin' almost rap metal of "Let Me In Let Me Out". Mr. Guerrero's getting down to some serious business.
Why hello there! This is something a little different for the usually very dreamy pop-tronica focused German label Morr Music. The Berlin duo of Julia Guther and Berend Intelmann make glistening golden honey pop with nary a pulse, glitch nor click within earshot. Instead the two play it all on guitars, keyboards and drums. What charms the listener most however is Julia Guther's vocals. Her breathy singing reminded us of their labelmates Lalipuna. Fresh, sweet, softly floral, and oh so nice.
Not to be confused with Hank III, aka Hank Williams the third, although there are bits of twang here and there, especially the first 10 second. But after that it's just blast after blast of scuzzy, sing along, snot-nosed garage rock stomp. Which makes sense when you consider that Hank IV is made up of equal parts Icky Boyfriends, Duh, Leather Uppers, Bum Kon and The Roofies.
Recorded right here in SF by Tim Green of the Champs, Hank IV kick out some serious sub-Stooges jams. Simple, bouncy, propulsive, grungy basement RAWK, with looping melodies over stripped down scuzzy stomps, peppered with chunks of angular riffing and gruff howled vocals. These guys must kill live!
These guys are killing us. It almost seems like a contest to see who can release the most material in the shortest amount of time. The main problem being that it's all so goddamn good. Especially when we're talking about Matthew Bower (Sunroof!, Skullflower) and his partner in sonic subversion Marcia Bassett (GHQ, Double Leopards, Zaimph).
This is the thirteenth release (that we know about) between these two since February, which is a lot to take in for sure, but if you're a fan of their particular brand of slow shifting wall of guitar dirge, then another massive blast is more than welcome.
The weird thing is, outside of Skullflower and Sunroof!, most of the music these two make is very sonically similar, which begs the question, why Hototogisu and Zaimph and GHQ, if the sound is fairly consistent. Sure each has it's own subtle nuances, and involves different folks, but it almost seems like everyone from all of the Bower/Bassett offshoots should just get together and form the world's most formidable free-noise ensemble. Then again, that might be a bit too much for anybody to handle. especially considering the sort of ruckus just the duo of Bassett and Bower can whip up.
On Some Blood Will Stick, the two are at their most caustic and metallic, huge washes of coruscating guitar, shrieking feedback, droning buzz, a massive roiling black sea of sound, peppered with all manner of industrial grind and corrosive crunch, and for the first time the vocals are actually audible, just barely, still buried way down in the mix like just another layer of furious freaked out sound, but occasionally the howling, shrieking super distorted black-metal-meets-Whitehouse yowl manages to rear it's ugly head before being sucked back under. Intense!
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Originally released in 1996, this slab of suicidal blackness finally gets unearthed and resurrected by the doomed souls at Moribund. I shalt Become inhabit a completely bleak and barren world of abject misery. A doomy minor key slow motion black metal miserabilism. There's Burzum worship, and then there's taking your Burzum worship to an even more anguished and desolate, wretched and forlorn extreme. Think Xasthur, Burzum, Krohm, Make A Change... Kill Yourself, but then imagine those bands even more despondent, more hopeless, recording with razor blade inches from exposed wrist. A gorgeously bleak and buzzy expanse of minor key arpeggiated guitars, draped like black cloth over thick swirls of monochrome buzz. Riffs are looped and repeated, melodies become murky mantras and the vocals are so distorted and buried in the mix they just sound like whispery squalls of static. So mournful and melancholy. Wanderings is often so slow and fuzzy, so dreamlike that it almost ceases being metal, and becomes some abstract experimental drone music, an ambient soundscape of reverb drenched guitars, a loping black doom waltz, so goddamn sad sounding and so so beautiful.
This reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, not quite as murky and lo-fi but just as tortured and tormented: Two Judas Iscariot covers and of course, an even more morose (is that were even possible?) version of Burzum's "En Ring Til AA Herske".
While known most for being the bass player in Stereolab, Simon Johns carries some other plates as well. Including his band Imitation Electric Piano, who follow up their debut full length from a few years back with an album that's quite different then that instrumental affair. This time out he recruited the breezy English folk vocal stylings of Mary Hampton. With her sweet summertime-flowers in her hair delivery it ends up sounding like how you would imagine Stereolab doing Pentangle covers might sound like. Bright and peppy as it rolls in green grass on a shimmering sunny afternoon.
Now this is how J Dilla's final project was meant to be heard! Ok, maybe that's not true, but around here some of us are just not big fans of guest rappers clogging some kick ass production with a bunch of rhymes. That may seem strange, but as they (we?) say, the proof is in the beat. Every time we play these instrumentals, customers are always coming up to us to see what's playing, which wasn't necessarily true of the rap version. Maybe we just got so hooked on Donuts that we never wanted to hear ANYTHING other than over Dilla's perfect productions ever again. Is that so wrong?
Ms Sara Jaffe (former guitarist for SF's Erase Errata) heeded the call of the classroom, moved out east a short while ago and now calls Boston home. Academia might take up much of her time out there but clearly music continues to flow in her veins. Her hushed heart-on-her-sleeve songs as a solo artist definitely stand in stark contrast to the angular, somewhat cerebral punch of her old band's. Salt And Water's five acoustic folksy numbers are ultra intimate and Spartan. Wistfully pretty.
