In 2003, Locust released the mighty fine Wooden Guitar compilation, featuring a tracks by some of the most interesting of the current crop of Fahey-inspired practicioners of folk-improv acoustic guitar: Jack Rose, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Richard Bishop. They've since followed up that release with solo discs by Bishop and, now, Akiyama.
Akiyama, who hails from Tokyo, was responsible for the longest and perhaps most avant-garde track on the original compilation, as his guitar playing incorporates the silence and abstraction of the "onkyo" electronic improv scene happening in his hometown. Yet the dusty, folky old timeyness key to the "Wooden Guitar" concept is much in evidence as well. So, listen to Pre-Existence and let Akiyama slowly wrap his sprongy steel guitar strings 'round your head, as he plucks and strums what almost sounds like a blues for the guitar itself. There's a lot of knock knock percussive playing and lonesome sustained tones. It's maybe what John Fahey would sound like if totally slow-mo stoned on cough syrup. Of course that sounds good to us. Can't wait for more in this series!
This long form EP (7 songs, 30 minutes) is the follow up to last years eponymous debut and it displays even more of this cultish collective's enigmatic relationship to any sort of defined sound. Songs weave from cosmic mantra chants to space rock epics, improvised skronk jams to pastoral psych-folk reverie and country inflected Flaming Lips-style indie rock, creating a rich sonic tapestry that is engaging as it is perplexing. Delightfully head-spinning!
This is one of those essential reissues that remind us that everything cool was already done about thirty years ago. Yep, these Swedish hippies sure knew what they were doing. Timeless psychedelia from 1972. Certainly everybody who gets worked up over the
This reissue (which actually came out back in '95 and we've had before, but never in big enough quanities or at low enough prices to list until now) adds two amazing live bonus tracks that Byram will tell you are worthy of the price of the disc alone!
These live tracks, along with the whole of the album proper, reveal Algarnas Tradgard as creators of dark stoned driftdrone every bit as cinematic as the best GSYBE! and even more authentically psychedelic than AMT leader Kawabata's beard. It's lovely, blissful, transportational stuff indeed. Our quick AQ-guide to the crucial Swedish psych essentials definitely includes this disc, along with the Parson Sound double cd, Bo Hansson's "Lord Of The Rings" opus and the International Harvester album. (Those are the top of the list, but once you've gotten into those you'll need to investigate Harvester, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Kebnekajse, and others from the Silence catalog, including Algarnas' lost-until-now second album, "Delayed", reviewed nearby!)
While Christian Fennesz has been very active in working with a diverse group of musicians, few of his collaborators have exhibited the likemindedness found in Sydney's tinkering guitarist Oren Ambarchi. For both Ambarchi and Fennesz, the guitar is the
No, friends, this is not the new Animal Collective album, but keep reading... This reissue of live recordings and WFMU radio performances from 2001 made before their first U.S. tour with Black Dice has only ever been available as an ultra limited handmade lp that needless to say has had an expensive afterlife on eBay. So it's nice to see it finally available and affordable. The tracks on Hollindagain, ramshackle pastoral field songs punctuated by pan-rhythmic acoustic guitar strums, echoed hollers, distorted electronics and ecstatic sonic bursts, show AC at their most sublimely primitive. In the 10-minute opener, "I See You Pan", the seemingly random sound of the band shuffling around their gear and setting up slowly develops into a static-y electrical build-up before becoming the backdrop for a slow lyrical-invocation-with-synthesizer that recalls Popol Vuh's Affenstunde reworked by Om. Marked by periods of hushed restraint and pummeling chaotic reverie, Hollindagain documents a raw but fertile period in the development of Animal Collective's unique sound. Fans of AC's early releases, Here Comes The Indian and Dance Manatee, in particular will find lots to like here.
A one sided vinyl monster. Grinding splattery chaos. Super distorted rhythms beneath thick slabs of ultra distorted hiss and waves of crumbling crunch. That is the sound of Australia's Antipan, a fourpiece that traffics in spaced out aggressive free rock ambience. Or Neu! metal minimalism. Either way it's a gloriously unholy racket. Echoey guitars and streaks of feedback, all tangled up into a dense wall of krautrocky chaos, with buried vocals, and dense squalls of acid fried guitar malfunction and jagged melodic fragments. Those harsher moments are balanced by long stretches of distorted drone and glitchy throb, very reminiscent of their equally noisy countrymen Aufgehoben and Shit And Shine.
Pressed on SUPER thick bubblegum pink vinyl, one sided, the other side features an etching by Rizili from the Menstruation Sisters. Includes a dayglo pink insert, packaged in a hand screened, individually numbered pink on black sleeve.
LIMITED TO 275 COPIES. We only got eight, so you do the math...
As if Vibracathdral Orchestra wasn't prolific enough, VCO mainman Neil Campbell spends his spare time recording even -more- records under the monicker Astral Social Club. This actual cd (not a cd-r). VHF's 100th release, compiles Campbell's favorite tracks from all the various long out of print cd-r's and gives them the remix and remaster super megamix treatment. All tweaked and twisted into one continuous 67 minute spaced out psych collage (although it's tracked for easy listening). But anyone wouldn't want to just sit back and listen to this all the way through is beyond us. A gloriously tripped out psychedelic ambient space rock stretched into pulsing, throbbing buzzy droney bliss. Like the extended outro to every Monster Magnet song all tangled up and mixed together, a blurry, dizzying free rock trip. From hiccupping rhythmic flutter, to super minimal drift, to thick grinding fuzz, to hypnotic krautrock jam and every psychrock stop in between.
For fans of Monster Magnet, Bardo Pond, Spacemen 3, the Telescopes, VCO, Loop, Kinski, EAR and all those sonic spacemen ...
There aren't a whole lot of badass bands from New Hampshire. Hell, there aren't a whole lot of any kind of bands from New Hampshire. But if Backstabbers Incorporated are any indication of the kind of unrestrained metallic fury that lurks just below the surface of their seemingly placid New England home state, then we'll give New Hampshire a much wider berth in our future travels.
Furious downtuned metallic punk rock crossover, with grinding riffs, thrashing drums, throbbing low end, howled vocals, but all packed into incredibly chaotic and head spinning arrangements, with plenty of plodding doomy breakdowns, and full on near-noise blow outs. Super intense and emotional. Way too metal for most punk rockers, this is fucking brutal and heavy and utterly pummeling. Think old Neurosis, Converge, Drop Dead, SSD and the like. Awesome.
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.
And yes Bright Eyes fans, we do have this release on double LP too! This vinyl version includes five bonus tracks not on the CD!
Here's what we said about the CD version... 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!
We LOVE this band. You should love this band. How can you not, that is if you're lookin' for some proto-metal, psychedelic stoner '70s rawk action?? Buffalo is 100 percent the Real Deal. These Aussie rockers were basically what Monster Magnet (and all the other bands in the modern "stoner rock" scene) would have liked to be, doing it first and best back in the day. Once upon a time, we used to stock a 2-on-1 reissue of Buffalo's Volcanic Rock and Want You For Your Body albums (from '73 and '74, respectively) but that's been out of print for ages now. So we're super thrilled that the Aztec label from Down Under has brought Buffalo back into circulation, as part of a '70s reissue campaign featuring a bunch of other Aussie acts we're eager to check out, like Coloured Balls (reviews pending). Both of these Buffalo discs are authentically heavy '70s cock-rock from the band we've judged to be Australia's answer to, if not Black Sabbath, at least Grand Funk... no, better n' heavier than that. Sir Lord Baltimore, for sure. Did we say cock-rock? Hell, there's even a penis on the cover of Volcanic Rock! The lyrics are of the sort that amusingly confuse being sexist with being sexy (a la Spinal Tap), as in Want You's lead off track "I'm A Skirt Lifter, Not A Shirt Raiser", and they're delivered with much gusto and backed by some powerful guitar riffing that blows those stoner rock bands of today out of the (bong)water.
Volcanic Rock is unstoppable, definitely an aptly titled album. Music for rolling Mad Max style on the highways across the Australian outback. Bonus tracks include the single versions of crucial cuts "Sunrise (Come My Way)" and "Shylock". Want You For You Body is equally awesome, and features the powerful "Dune Messiah". Killer vocals on that one and you can't get much more '70s than a song about Frank Herbert's popular sci-fi classic, short of writing songs about Tolkien! Bonus tracks include a live version of "United Nations". And the fact that you can't get both albums on one disc anymore is made up for by the presence of the aforementioned bonus tracks on each cd, digital remastering, thick booklets, and generally nice presentation in digipacks.
So if you're a patron of our "proto-metal" section, into Blue Cheer and Bang and Leaf Hound and the like, you've gotta get Buffalo!!! Same deal if you're a fan of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Heavy Rocks style Boris, etc... Highly recommended.
[Also available, is the Aztec reish of Buffalo's debut Dead Forever, which we'll list next time!]
We LOVE this band. You should love this band. How can you not, that is if you're lookin' for some proto-metal, psychedelic stoner '70s rawk action?? Buffalo is 100 percent the Real Deal. These Aussie rockers were basically what Monster Magnet (and all the other bands in the modern "stoner rock" scene) would have liked to be, doing it first and best back in the day. Once upon a time, we used to stock a 2-on-1 reissue of Buffalo's Volcanic Rock and Want You For Your Body albums (from '73 and '74, respectively) but that's been out of print for ages now. So we're super thrilled that the Aztec label from Down Under has brought Buffalo back into circulation, as part of a '70s reissue campaign featuring a bunch of other Aussie acts we're eager to check out, like Coloured Balls (reviews pending). Both of these Buffalo discs are authentically heavy '70s cock-rock from the band we've judged to be Australia's answer to, if not Black Sabbath, at least Grand Funk... no, better n' heavier than that. Sir Lord Baltimore, for sure. Did we say cock-rock? Hell, there's even a penis on the cover of Volcanic Rock! The lyrics are of the sort that amusingly confuse being sexist with being sexy (a la Spinal Tap), as in Want You's lead off track "I'm A Skirt Lifter, Not A Shirt Raiser", and they're delivered with much gusto and backed by some powerful guitar riffing that blows those stoner rock bands of today out of the (bong)water.
Volcanic Rock is unstoppable, definitely an aptly titled album. Music for rolling Mad Max style on the highways across the Australian outback. Bonus tracks include the single versions of crucial cuts "Sunrise (Come My Way)" and "Shylock". Want You For You Body is equally awesome, and features the powerful "Dune Messiah". Killer vocals on that one and you can't get much more '70s than a song about Frank Herbert's popular sci-fi classic, short of writing songs about Tolkien! Bonus tracks include a live version of "United Nations". And the fact that you can't get both albums on one disc anymore is made up for by the presence of the aforementioned bonus tracks on each cd, digital remastering, thick booklets, and generally nice presentation in digipacks.
So if you're a patron of our "proto-metal" section, into Blue Cheer and Bang and Leaf Hound and the like, you've gotta get Buffalo!!! Same deal if you're a fan of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Heavy Rocks style Boris, etc... Highly recommended.
[Also available, is the Aztec reish of Buffalo's debut Dead Forever, which we'll list next time!]
Even though Bobby Malone Moves Home is credited to CFTPA, the moniker Owen Ashworth, AKA Mr. Casiotone, has used for numerous releases of his perfectly doleful dreamy casiocore, Ashworth shakes things up a bit on this new 5-song cdep (note: there is also a 2-song 7" vinyl version). For one thing, he's opted for a full band with acoustic instruments this time around. There's piano, guitar, cello, drums and other vocalists too. In addition to the charming title track, there are four live tracks with the audience demonstrating their hushed yet warm appreciation. Particularly of note is the lively "It Wasn't The Same Somehow". Ashworth seriously rocks out! The rest is more characteristically soft and pretty and utterly sincere. So nice.
In many ways, the work of Richard Chartier is anathema to the aesthetic course embraced by Aquarius Records. It can't be tangentially connected to the expanding definitions of metal, and only liminally parallels the feral dronecore of Birchville Cat Motel and the Double Leopards. It doesn't lend itself to ridiculous ruminations on the artifice of memory and loss, or any hyperbolic rhetoric for that matter. It's hard even to call this type of work beautiful as the rigor embedded into the process is attuned to an cold sterility rather than an aspirations for aesthetic transcendence. Thus, Chartier's work simply is what it is: a pure manifestation of sound elegantly moving through time with a highly refined sensibility for the subtle transition. The simple perfection from the minimalist ethos is difficult to champion as the manifestations are hardly theatrical enough to warrant any of the marketing strategies listed above to make most people jump up and down; but here we are, announcing that Richard Chartier has crafted an exquisite album, one that may be his finest recordings to date.
Incidence is a vacuum of external references, beginning and ending with the same hissing static. Chartier plunges the album into a series of interlocking subsonic frequencies. While these frequencies were never intended to achieve the heaviosity of SUNNO))) or Earth, Chartier's understanding of psychoacoustic principles actualizes an impressively claustrophobic display of blackened tones. As Chartier introduces a simple half-step melody against these extended drone vibrations, his work opens a small referential window towards the grim isolationism of Thomas Koner or BJ Nilsen. Time manages to stand still on the best of Chartier's work, and at over an hour in length, Incidence is over before you know it. Very, very well done.
Not a new release anymore, but still well worth mentioning, at last... Chevreuil are not your average mathy post rock band, and we don't just mean musically. Starting with the cover image, of a skinny shirtless man sprawled on the asphalt, his head under a little patch of Astroturf, to the poster inside, of another man dressed all in white, head covered in blood, standing atop a little ladder, to the instrumentation: voice, samples, harmonica, magnetic drums and touch guitar, to the legend printed inside the cd case: "This record is connected to SCIENCE." And the music is just as off kilter and confusingly brilliant.
Falling somewhere between Feuhler, Turing Machine, Hella and the Champs, but managing to not sound anything like any of them, Chevreuil are more like Faust or Can reincarnated as some damaged experimental post rock band. Drums are everywhere, pounding and shuffling, complex dense and agitated, loud and super powerful, laying a solid framework for the hypnotically looped guitars. and buzzy bits of sampled synth. Sort of like a krautrock Hella, but way more fragmented, stuttering and convoluted, and somehow more aggressively tweaked.
Definitely one of the coolest weirdest bands doing the mathrock / postrock thing, turning a somewhat played out sound into a super fucked and freaked out blast of hyper rhythmic psychedelic weirdness.
Absolutely recommended!!
Every time I sit down to review this record, I just can't seem to put into words what makes it so great. But as this is the last list of 2005, and this record is absolutely my favorite record of 2005, it seems like it can't be put off any longer. But it's true, I listen to this record every day, all the time. And even after months of non-stop listening I still can't get enough of it.
I'm a bit embarassed to say I first heard about Chiodos in some magazine touting them as a 'band to watch' or 'next big thing' or something. And rarely do I pay much attention to those sorts of things, but a few things definitely caught my eye. They were described as being really heavy, really ridiculously prog, a little emo, and with a vocalist who sounded quite a bit like a woman. And you know what, that's not really that far off the mark. Imagine the over the top prog of Coheed And Cambria and the proggy bombast of the Mars Volta, the angular art rock of a band like the Blood Brothers, some super intense Slayer style metal guitar, lots of piano and keyboards, ranging from delicate ballady bits to full on Cradle Of Filth style bombast, extremely emo lyrics, and a completely amazing vocalist who can go from a throat shredding howl to an impossibly high wail. Wrap all that stuff around super complex multi part epics chock full of killer riffs and unbelievable hooks, amazing drumming bizarre arrangements, and vocals that are just so completely are gloriously over the top. Some parts of this record are just SO massively punishingly crushing. Full on headbanging brutality. The opening riff to "The Words 'Best Friend' Become Redefined" would make any thrash metal band proud. Just check the sound sample.
This is also one of those records that has lots of THOSE parts, you know the kind, the parts that give you chills EVERY time you hear them, or make you use every ounce of self control to not wildly air guitar or drum madly on the steering wheel while you're driving. One of which just might be THE part, maybe the ULTIMATE part. Freaks me out every time I hear it. Makes me want to hear it over and over and over. Makes me wish I had written it, makes me wish I was in a band just so I could play it. Check out the sound sample for "Baby, You Wouldn't Last A Minute On The Creek" and see if you can tell which part I mean. Shouldn't be too difficult. The fact is, this whole record kicks my ass that hard. Rare that a record can pull off being this heavy, this complex, this emo, this over the top all at the same time. Without devolving into something impossible and confusing. And it is wildy all over the map, sonically schizophrenic, but somehow every part just sounds completely perfect. The more I listen to it the more perfect it sounds. Anyway, not sure what else to say. It all comes down to the music, so a quick listen to the sound samples should tell you all you need to know, is this indeed the best record of the year, or is Andee full of shit? Well, just so you know, this IS the record of the year, and if for some crazy reason you don't agree, you're probably just mistaken. Or wrong.
Like all Sunburned Hand Of The Man releases, this is another fleeting glimpse into the mad, sonic abstract sound world of these psych rock ne'er do wells. And like all SHOTM releases, we grabbed as many of these as we could from the band when they were drifting through, probably never to get more. And we got about 15 copies which is all they had left, so if you want one of these, act fast and be prepared to be disappointed.
Not a SHOTM record proper, this is some sort of Sunburned offshoot, featuring mainman John Moloney and a few other folks, using mostly voices and electronics, a bit or percussive clatter and some grinding guitar fuzz, to cobble together a bizarre growling, grumbling, squeaking, skronking, belching, squeaking, swirling soundscape of abstract vocalizations, mysterious buzz, kitchen sink clang, and instrument buzz and whir. Pretty far out even by already damaged SHOTM standards.
Packaged in that instantly recognizable brown cardstock sleeve with color artwork affixed to the front, and two inserts, one xeroxed and one a little transparency.
And again, we only got about 15 of these, probably never to get more so don't dawdle!!
A totally over the top, drug drenched, swirl of chaotic visuals known as The Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda, a 1968 psychedelic film created by Ira Cohen, with a completely gorgeous abstract soundtrack by Angus Maclise, Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt among others. Recently screened at the Whitney Museum, available here for the first time on DVD, color corrected (and OH! the colors...) and transferred from 16mm.
Creepy sepia toned footage of a barefoot little girl walking through the woods, jungle tribes digging in the mud, unearthing a mysterious bug eyed shaman, intercut with tripped out kaleidoscopic collages of blinking eyes and naked ladies dressed up like ancient forest dwellers or aliens, all engaging in strange rituals and some super strange spasmodic dancing. And that's just the intro!
The actual film is a dizzying blend of wild costumes, incredible makeup and super saturated colors, filmed through all sorts of distorted funhouse mirror lenses or filmed through rippling water, or sheets of mylar, everything twisting and shimmering, shapes shifting, bodies writhing, cartoonish animal costumes, a totally over the top acid fried TRIP. Take a step back and it's a bunch of wild drugged out hippies, spending a weekend drugging and drinking and dressing up, but look deep, and it's easy to get sucked in ad get lost in the spinning dizzying whirl of colors and characters. The soundtrack is incredible, a buzzing raga like expanse of slowly mutating, endlessly drifting vocal shimmer, sounding a lot like AQ faves Grouper or Valet. Worth it even if you just wanted to turn your TV off and listen to the druggy dreamy sounds, but then you'd miss out on the retina melting visuals, as close as some of us will ever get to a bonafide acid trip for sure.
Gorgeously packaged, with TONS of extra goodies. Two alternate soundtracks, one from Sunburned Hand Of The Man, the other from Acid Mothers Temple SWR, a new short film by Ira Cohen created from never before scene 16mm outtakes, with a new soundtrack, a slideshow of mylar photographs with a soundtrack by Angus Maclise and director's commentary by Ira Cohen.
Also includes a big booklet, packed with tons of tripped out imagery including stills from the film and mylar photos by Ira Cohen. Also poetry by Maclise and Cohen, as well as liner notes and critical texts. So awesome. And we've just recieved the last ten copies we're gonna ever be able to get, so buy now or never...
A long while back we had a super limited lp featuring a freaked out psychedelic team up between Bay Area psych rock heroes Comets On Fire, and Ohio drone noise outfit Burning Star Core. While that lp is loooong gone, the label just discovered a box containing the last 30 cd-r's of this disc, originally sold on tour only, which features completely differently music than the lp, although recorded during the same sessions. So if you missed out on the lp, this cd-r should do you right, and if you got the lp and loved it, then this here is like a perfect part two. Another massive slab of freaked out lo-fi psych-sludge. Most definitely NOISY, and quite certainly LO-FI. Blown out, ultra reverbed, psychedelic noise. There may indeed be actual songs, but they are struggling constantly to stay afloat, pummelled by wave after wave of mayhemic skree and crumbly distortion, bottomless pit reverb and fuzz Fuzz FUZZ! Wow. We're pretty sure the sessions that yielded these sound (captured on the out of print lp and this here cd-r) were purely a studio concoction, but the thought of actually experiencing this stuff live had us excitedly donning protective eyewear, thick soled boots, fire retardant clothing, industrial strength earplugs and strapping on our rock and roll hardhats!
ALREADY OUT OF PRINT! We have 30 copies, and once those are gone, it's gone for good...
Concept Bureau is the name of this Bay Area project who generate a plethora of sounds using a machine they call The Identity Encoder. According to the liner notes the mysterious mechanism "translates personal facts and preferences into sound". These particular recordings were done just down the street from us at Artists' Television Access (ATA for short, it's a cool center for d.i.y. underground media works). The fourteen tracks of the fourteen participants range from soothing womb-y pulses and blips to a cavalcade of wind-up and squeak toys run amok. If you didn't know the story behind this release you could easily believe that these are some home recordings made by an old BBC Radiophonic engineer.
Limited to 50, packaged in hand-numbered, hand-sewn cardboard sleeves.
We've never been shy in revealing our unabashed love of the drone. Not many lists go by that we aren't singing the praise of some new dark drone or any of many drone-masters like William Basinski, Philip Jeck, Andrew Chalk, etc. Andee's love of the drone even led him to release a cd compiling selections from the amazing Drone Records 7" series on cd for the first time. So of course we're in full on awe when we get to hear the pioneers of all of that dronemusic and observe the veritable birth of the drone in modern minimalism. While it's still pretty impossible to get a hold of any LaMonte Young recordings, thankfully Tony Conrad has allowed and facilitated recent unearthings of his early drone masterpieces. Joan of Arc is the score he created in 1968 for Piero Heliczer's film of the same name. While Conrad is usually associated with his intense epic drones sourced from his violin this recording found him engaged with the pump organ in a way we've never heard before. Creating a dense and murky sonic underworld that sucks you under, burying you in its rumbling waves and wrapping you tight in a thick dense cloud of drones. Avant film aficionado's may be confused by the cover art which is actually a still of Tony Conrad in Ira Cohen's legendary film of the same year, The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (reviewed elsewhere on this list).
Never before released, this is one of Conrad's favorite recordings and is fast becoming one of ours.
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.
Corsican Paintbrush is Brad Rose (North Sea and Digitalis label head honcho) and Eden Hemming Rose, who as Coriscan Paintbrush weave a delicate world of folky clatter and deconstructed Appalachia, simply strummed guitars, lilting finger picked melodies, hushed voices, little bursts of alien percussion, bits of droney rumble, all woven into the bands haunting free folk drift. If you didn't know better, you'd think this was yet another branch on the Finnish free folk tree, most likely featuring members of the usual suspects, Avarus, Anaksimandros, Uton, etc. Coriscan Paintbrush, while sharing many sonic similarities, CP manage to take that sort of tribal clatter and rhythmic experimentation and reel it in, allowing swaths of abstract noise to drift within a slightly more organized framework of strum and croon, a hushed folky drift, with a tangled bit of rhythmic abstraction within. Nice!
Packaged with a textured piece of wallpaper, with a fragile printed paper insert. Hand numbered in gold ink and sealed with a twig.
LIMITED TO 85 COPIES!! We got a handful. Once those are gone, we won't be able to get more...
Hey, here's a new and improved version of an obscure AQ '70s psych-prog favorite...
A few things to note about this album:
1) Good lord, the cover! Have you ever seen a psychedelic cartoon vision of a magic garden inhabited by a freaky gnome like that before?
2) If you ask Mikael Akerfeldt of Swedish death metal / progressive rock geniuses Opeth about what his all-time favorite rare prog rock records are, along with First Utterance by Comus he'll name this one, the 1971 debut from Denmark's Culpeper's Orchard. And, now having heard it thanks to Mikael's endorsement, Allan would too!
3) You'll probably dig this if you like the idea of blending rustic country-folk, twee hippy psych pop, and some heavy hard rock guitar riffery into one unique acid-prog experience that comes across like a mixture of Jethro Tull, Kaleidoscope UK, Yes, the Incredible String Band, and Zeppelin or Sabbath. A great freeking record.
4) Now it's got three bonus tracks, including a pretty killer 9+ minute live performance of a non-album song called "Classified Ads".
Back in 2004 D.W. Holiday released their third album Technical Difficulties, Under The Influence. At that time the core members Craig Clarke and Daniel Crowell made it known that they were going to become a two city musical entity with full bands performing under the same name in SF and Minneapolis. Now two years later they're ambitions carry on into the recorded realm with the gorgeous, shimmering, magical Fish And Flying Creatures. D.W. Holiday blossoms luminous like a deep sea jellyfish, bringing together sumptuous orchestral pop with slightly twee male vocals (a la Flaming Lips or Sparklehorse) and atmospheric shoegazerly guitar washes (like Spiritualized or Jesus And Mary Chain). So haunting and lovely! One thing though, while we're all for the insertion of incongruous elements, the odd IDM track that pops up halfway through the album seemed like a rather jarring interruption. Ah, but it is a minor bump in what is for the most part a languidly swirling shadowy affair.
Wow!! It wasn't just but three lists ago when we were lamenting that Karen Dalton's second album (and only other recording), In My Own Time had yet to be reissued, and now here we are reviewing it (thanks Light In the Attic!). And we have to say, it has never sounded better! Recorded in 1971 with a full band at Bearsville studio in Woodstock, In My Own Time has a much different feel then Dalton's spare and smoky first recording, It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You the Best. Since Dalton had so little recorded output, the differences between the two records has given In My Own Time, an unfairly maligned reputation over the years by folk purists and others due to its more contemporized feel and bluesy folk-rock arrangements. True, In My own Time, doesn't quite meet the folk majesty of It's So Hard To Tell, and there are a couple of song choices, such as the all too familiar "When A Man Loves A Woman", and the saccharine Motown stalwart, "How Sweet It Is", that we could probably do without (however, in Dalton's defense, if we had to hear either of those songs again, we would prefer her versions to anyone else's! Such is the strength of her musical interpretations.). But every other song is purest gold, from the heartbreaking opener by Dino Valenti, "Something's On Your Mind", to the traditional tunes "Katie Cruel" (covered recently both by Bert Jansch and White Magic) and "Same Old Man", where we get to hear her play her mighty 27 fret banjo. Produced by Harvey Brooks, who played bass on her first album, In My Own Time is right up there with the best folk and roots rock albums of the time put out by Dylan, The Band, The Byrds, and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Featuring a 30-page booklet with lots of pictures and extensive liner notes by Lenny Kaye, Nick Cave and Devendra Banhart. Reissue of the year and of course absolutely essential!!!!
Another batch of slow burn, churning doom drenched epic metal, steeped in convoluted math rock and blissed out post rock. You know what we're talking about. Disappearer fall WAY on the heavier end of that spectrum, with massive downtuned guitars, pummeling drums, soaring psychedelic leads and guitar harmonies, a gloriously lurching monstrous groove, loping and hypnotic, huge sweeping waves of melancholic post doom rock bliss, cymbals explode and sizzle all over the proceedings like acid rain, the bass grinds and throbs, pushing everything along like some ominous black tide, and the guitars, shit, this is all about the guitars, thick layered walls of drop-d sludge, long lazy drifts of glistening guitar minimalism, stuttery stretches of crumbling chug, swirling tangled tendrils of muted melody, all matched push for shove by the drums, sometimes a crushing caveman pound, sometimes a simple shuffling plod, other times an impossibly convoluted tribal freakout. If you still need some comparisons, Neurosis, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides, Conifer, Isis, that sort of thing, but Disappearer are all instrumental, and thus have a much more abstract and droney brooding vibe, like any one of those bands, jamming afterhours, not really playing songs, or a show, just slowly carving huge swaths of monumental heaviness under the cloak of darkness.
A few lists back we reviewed a disc of utterly freaked out, super heavy and weird as fuck black metal from a band called Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere (we actually just got more back in, in case you missed out last time, see elsewhere on this list). We got this, the debut from Dom Dracul from the same place, but it couldn't sound any more different. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. This is, after all, still a hatefully raw and furious slab of grim buzzing black metal. But where V.E.G.A. wrapped their black buzz in all sorts of sonic sickness and warped weirdness, Dom Dracul stick a little bit closer to the classic sound of old skool Norwegian black metal, some serious Darkthrone / Immortal / Ulver worship going on for sure, and some nods to Bathory as well, in fact they even do a Bathory cover!
We get so wrapped up sometimes in finding the weirdest most fucked up black metal EVER, that once in a while we forget how much we love the pure, raw, grim, cult sound of straight ahead, buzzing, black metal. After all, that's exactly the sound that lured us all over to the darkside in the first place. And still, whenever we throw on some Immortal or Satyricon or Emperor, it totally blows us away and reminds us why we love this stuff so much. Dom Dracul are proud bearers of that black flame, taking that instantly recognizable sound and giving it their own little twist. The result is certainly not groundbreaking, but fuck it, that's not what we're after here, eyes closed you'd be hard pressed to figure out this wasn't in fact a late nineties Scandinavian legend. Which is actually a good thing. Very good. Thick snarling blackened riffs thrash wildly over grim rhythmic blasts, a howled demonic voice, soaring and epic and so gloriously frosty, occasionally lurching into a loping midtempo Burzumic buzz, only to explode into a furious black blast moments later. Anyone itching for some classic grim blackness would do well to drink deep from the black blood of Dom Dracul.
This is indeed some kind of dream unit! Thurston from Sonic Youth, free jazz legend Paul Flaherty, free drum wunderkind Chris Corsano, Heather who runs Volcanic Tongue and some mysterious bassist called Count Hejnowski.
Together these monsters of abstract free jazz avant noise whip up a slow burning frenzy of roiling instrumental fury.
But let's take a step back first and talk about the cover. Wow, is the artwork cool. The cover is a painting of some strange vampiric sideburned man with a bloody beaked raven on his shoulder clutching a bloody eyeball. On the back, a headless man, all bloody necked, clutching a skull. Inside, wolves with bloody mouths and owls with bloody talons. On the disc, bloody eyed nun attacked by birds. The theme is definitely blood, and that theme runs through the music as well.
A dark roiling maelstrom of burbling, minimal groove, that builds into a furious tangle of angular guitars and bloody drum splatter, horns bleat and squeak, lap steel slips and slides and gives everything a haunting unhinged vibe. Really quite beautiful in an overthetop, head shearing free music blowout kind of way.
Most of the tracks fall into that template, a sort of skittish circling, each player warily eyeing the other, feeling the situation out, offering up little salvos of sound, before eventually all launching into the fray and wildly tearing the throats out of the instruments in glorious musical bloodbath after glorious musical bloodbath. The brooding, murky, slow swirly passages are the most moving, but it's impossible to not stand transfixed, watching as they slowly twist and contort into something fearsome and fanged. The listener like one of the cover paintings, frozen like a deer in the headlights, or a helpless teenager before a mysterious monster, just waiting to be devoured.
Whew. Two guys, two guitars, all instrumental, kinda fast and spazzy, also trying hard to be light and pretty. It's sorta mathy and, yes, sunshiney. A cutesily maddening half-hour or so of electric guitars, just guitars, frantic and sprightly. By/for indie rockers who dig such bands as Deerhoof, Heavy Vegetable and Hella, and who like to drink lots of coffee with lots of sugar.
Indie pop and post-rock converge in the dreamiest fashion where the two E's meet. EE is the band led by Tobin Mori (formerly of Korea Girl) and also bears the unmistakable mark of Sooyoung Park (former mainman of Seam and Bitch Magnet). Capital Plans is primarily a guitar driven album, but with a few choice chamber pop elements prettying up the proceedings, a bit of edgier distortion making itself apparent later on, and a delicate electronic number bringing things soothingly to a close. There are definitely similarities in both the vocal delivery and the songwriting to bands such as Seam, Versus and more recently Whysall Lane. In fact, we'd almost swear that Mori was a long lost sibling of the Balayut brothers (Whysall Lane's Richard, +/-'s James, Versus' Ed). Yes, the resemblance is that striking. Very recommended for fans of the abovementioned bands as well as Sea And Cake and Portastatic too.
Winnipeg, Manitoba has certainly spawned some notable music artists -- Bachman Turner Overdrive, the Weakerthans, Neil Young, and uh, Burton Cummings. Now firing up their own prairie block heater are Canadian metallers Electro Quarterstaff. Yes, let's repeat that... all hail, sheer instrumental heavy metal wizardry from Winnipeg, Canada: Electro Quarterstaff! That band name alone would pique our interest here at AQ. But actually we've been waiting for this release for AGES, as one of the EQ boys is an AQ fan and was cool enough to send us down some of their cd-r demos a while back, thinking we just might like his band's brand of mega-mathy, tech-metal madness. And he was right!! So, now suitably signed to the Willowtip label, here's the thus (to us) long-awaited Electro Quarterstaff debut! And it's a doozy. These blasting, bombastic songs practically turn themselves inside out with all the insane drumming, dual guitar shredding, and chunky chops crammed into 'em. Hectic heaviness overload!! We're happily dizzy after just a couple tracks. And the Zakk Wylde fans here appreciate all the pinch harmonics one of the guitarists flings like picks...
No surprise their thanks list includes members of Gorguts, Voivod, and Breadwinner! Basically, if you'd like The Fucking Champs to sound even more like Carcass, on crack, this is for you. Or, it's like a haywire super computer programmed to defeat Zebulon Pike at their own game. Damn. Some cuts, like, "Charmony" slow down a bit for some classic, majestic rifferama, giving more reason to make Champs comparisons... Oh yeah and like the Champs they've got that half-ironic, smart-ass post rock song titling thing down, getting the biggest groan from us with "Something's Awry In The Hetfield Of Dreams" (an eleven-minute epic by the way). Thank God they're an instrumental band! They're a bit more straight-forward with other titles like "Neckwrecker" (so true!) and "Twisted Squid" (sounds like it, if anything does). They've also got some really sweet artwork adorning this disc, not your usual metal stuff (though there's skulls) but way cool. Not sure what more to say to recommend this to the right folks, we just don't want any fans of the Champs, ZP, Girth, Loincloth, Hematovore, Suzukitron, etc. to miss this!
Maybe the most anxiously awaited release in Lexicon Devil's comprehensive series of F/i reissues. Paradise Out Here, originally released in 1989, might just be the heaviest, most freaked out, most spaced out of all the F/i records. All it takes is about one minute of opener "From Poppy With Love", an acid fried, ultra freaked out, swirling psychrock blowout to understand why. A chugging scuzzy garage rock riff scratches out a relentless spacey stomp beneath a massive roiling cloud of FX that make Acid Mothers Temple's arsenal look like a broken down collection of Casio distortion boxes and Fisher-Price keyboards. So heavy and so spacey. Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, AMT, Colour Haze, UFOmammut, White Hills, Comets On Fire, the Heads, the Telescopes, Atomic Bitchwax, Loop. If those are the kind of bands that get your blood boiling and your bong bubbling then this record is definitely for you. Extended excursions into the outer reaches of deep deep deep space, where the stars blink and twinkle in dizzyingly psychedelic colors, everywhere you look guitars are all twisted and distorted, thick slabs of rumbling bass plow through reverbed swirls of shimmer, melodies explode and splinter into jagged bits in gloriously incendiary bursts, everything is blurry and swathed in a thick drug rock haze, and everywhere you look huge slabs of blown out wah guitar drift past, like fluffy prismatic clouds, underneath it all, drums pound a never ending rhythm, while being endlessly pelted with synth squiggles and a veritable hail storm of bleeps and bloops and beeps. Woah. This record is so relentless and about as tripped out and psychedelic as a record can get without completely collapsing in on itself.
If there was ever a record that made us want to get super high, turn off all the lights, rock the fuck out and drift WAY WAY WAY OUT.... it's this one.
Now available on vinyl. Packaged in a super deluxe woodcut looking chip board sleeve!
This record is so Aquarius it almost feels like they made it just for us. And you of course! Taking all sorts of crazy stuff that we love and stuffing it all into a single band. Ostensibly, Forensics are a metal band, a really heavy, metal band. But their peculiar brand of metal includes, extended hypnotic bass-heavy post rock work outs, dreamy dark ambience, full on fuzzed out stoner rawk (think Boris' Heavy Rocks), crushing minimal sludge and mathy spazz rock. But somehow it all fits together perfectly. Like Neurosis, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Codeine, Bastro, Dazzling Killmen and Old Man Gloom all got together to jam, and this is what came out. Super dramatic and epic, lengthy super repetitive jams that give way to squalls of metallic fury that then give away to creeping minor key slowcore. Chaotic bursts of grinding spastic metal bookended by Slint-ish hypnorock. Huge blackened slabs of glacial riffage that decay into pulsing minimal krautrock. A massive, crushingly heavy, emotionally compelling cinematic soundscape. I swear if I was a film maker I would be getting bands like this to score my films for sure. Features members of Burning Airlines, Corn On Macabre, Pg.99, Trial By Fire, and Waiffle.
We haven't had these in ages, but since Furze is some of our favorite far out black metal EVER, we figured we oughta relist it since we just now managed to get some more copies (and we might not be able to get any more after this as the label is pretty much sold out!). Here's how much we love this stuff (from when we listed it the first time a few years back):
Everybody went so nuts for the newest Furze record we listed recently we figured we oughta track down the first one as well. And it's just as freaked out and damaged and totally brilliant. Unlike the weird droning doom of Necromanzee Cogent, Trident Autocrat is all black metal. But that doesn't mean it's not as bizarre, because it most definitely is. The song titles again are totally perplexing: "Zaredoo Knives Endows Thy Sight", "Devacamo Possessed Black", "Witchboundator", "Scolopendraarise" and the lyrics and imagery are quite ridiculous as well. The logo, which features three witches brooms and the slogan: "Trident Black Metal Feast", the back of the record that features a long exposure swirl of light in a spooky hallway, and lines like "The overall vibration of the preacher, The way of sneaking teeth and hypocrisy, It's the destruction ritual of the holy trinity" all combine to form the perfect framework for one of the coolest weirdest black metal records ever. All the BM hallmarks are present, buzzing riffs, growled vocals, chaotic lightning speed bast beats, but the black metal of Furze turns these seemingly typical elements into completely insane musical madness. The growling vocals squirm and morph from demonic growl, to howled distant anguish, heavily reverbed as if they were being recorded at the bottom of a well, to maniacal gremlin like chatter, and creepy cartoony chanting. The riffs, are super affected and sometimes sound totally heavy, sometimes completely brittle, lo-fi and tinny one minute, buzzing and snarling the next. The most surprising thing is how damn catchy some of these riffs are. The first song has been stuck in my head like crazy, and unlike most black metal, you'll no doubt find yourself humming along. Only a half hour long, but so much wonderful weirdness is crammed into those 30 minutes you definitely won't be left wanting.
Totally mind blowing collaboration between three masters of drone / raga / free / folk / noise. New Zealander Alastair Galbraith is a long time AQ fave as is the UK's Richard Youngs. Alex Neilson while not an instantly recognizable name in his own right, has played on oodles of amazing records (including some by Matt Valentine, Taurpis Tula) and you may recognize his name due to the fact that he and Mr. Youngs were the back up band for Jandek at his first ever live performance! None of that has very much to do with this, two sides of incredibly dreamy modern folk raga. Lighter than air swirls of falsetto vocals drift and shimmer, harmonies slowly shifting, all over a long slow drawn out ur-drone, constructed from buzzing steel strings, bits of percussion, warbling synthesizers, spaced out effects, electronic buzz and glitch, strummed guitars get stretched into fuzzy blurs, melodies float by in the distance, chimes tinkle and sparkle, almost the whole disc is made up of languorous, lazy stretches of dreamlike sound, EXCEPT for the opening and closing tracks on side 2, when some wild drumming is introduced, and the FX levels get pushed all the way into the red, and what was once tranquil bliss, is transformed into a snarling, chaotic super tripped out space rock.
Packaged in beautiful simple full color offset printed and debossed sleeves, with deluxe debossed inserts, LIMITED TO 900 COPIES, each insert has the record's number debossed along with of the liner notes, pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl!
We're certainly fans of this long running New York collective Gamelan Son Of Lion, a modern gamelan ensemble who, so inspired by traditional Indonesian music, built their own gamelans from juice cans and oil barrels, creating a sound at once distinctly gamelan like, but at the same time strangely alien.
This cd reissue, which we should have reviewed a while back, unearths a 20 year old cassette and is a prime example of this group's ingenious way with primitive sound. Simple and childlike, ultra minimal and totally hypnotic, GSOL weave expansive soundscapes of metallic clatter and lush shimmering drone, sometimes the gamelan sounds like tiny music boxes, other times it sounds like Konono No.1 style amplified thumb pianos, and occasionally it also sounds like some East Village hippy drum jam (which it sort of was), but it's never less than totally captivating. Percussive and rhythmic, but simultaneously fluttery and ambient, the various struck metals offering up incredibly textured overtones that smear and blur into glistening pools of sound, while all manner of bell like chimes and dense tangles of metallic melodies dance amidst the droney drift.
Often mentioned in the same breath as folks like Morton Feldman, La Monte Young and Tony Conrad, this is most definitely modern minimalism, but at the same time it sounds surprisingly modern, predating the current crop of freenoise /ambient-drone underground outfits by 20 some years. It also reminds us a bit of abstract sonic pioneers like the Taj Mahal Travellers and AMM, who share a similar penchant for epic spaciousness and drifting rhythmic ambience.
A resurrected slab of blown out heaviness from this druggy sludgerock combo, featuring a current member of metallic post rock heavyweights Isis and the Red Sparowes. You won't hear much epic moodiness or brooding metal lope here though. Most folks compare the Gersch to bands like Sabbath, Sleep and Kyuss which is definitely fair, but if you ask us, we're hearing a whole lot more Amphetamine Reptile, like a total timewarp back to the good ol' Amrep days, you know, Halo Of Flies, the Cow Bullies, Lubricated Goat, Unsane, Surgery, Tar, Killdozer, the Cows, Boss Hog, Helmet, Vertigo, King Snake Roost and the rest...
What's weird is that the recording quality sounds genuinely old, almost as if it could have been recorded in the seventies, although the band sounds just a wee bit too metal to actually be from way back then. But the combination of Amrep style heaviness and that seventies production, makes for a deadly combo, and had us imagining the miraculous discovery of some lost tape from this weird band from 1971 called the Gersch, who were somehow channeling the spirit of Sabbath though a super chaotic metallic freaked out buzz. By now you should be able to tell whether this is your cup of tea or not. It most certainly is ours. A steaming hot cup of dense jagged guitars, convoluted mathy rhythms, chugging downtuned grooves, shouted and grunted vocals buried in the mix, massive slabs of rumbling low end, all stretched and twisted into churning, thrashing, pounding seventies-via-nineties metallic RAWK. Awesome!
It can be quite daunting to figure out how to navigate the releases of most 20th Century Composers. What is essential and what is not. That may be especially true for Philip Glass who has often walked the line between totally daring, trance inducing, mind expanding compositions and somewhat schmaltzy, overly sentimental syrupy pap. But there is no doubt, that when he's really ON, he still stands as one of the greatest minimalist composers of all time. Analog is -that- side of Glass, the side we never get tired of hearing. Recalling the intensity and brilliance of Music In 12 Parts, these recordings have been relentlessly seeping into our ears and brains and souls. Culled from never before released recordings made in the late 70's, it showcases Glass playing the electric organ, and it is absolutely hypnotic. Earlier this year you might remember us freaking out over a Finnish release from the band Shogun Kunitoki. It's uncanny how you can hear the roots of that record throughout these recordings. Warm analog notes played at a furiously feverish pitch that it's nearly impossible not to get lost in it's repetitive trance. The sound is so pleasingly physical and intense. And there are vocals, but fear not, they manage to become just another mesmerizing instrument working its way into your subconscious just like the flute, the (tasteful) sax and all the different keyboards. Originally conceived for his first scores for film as well as incidental music for a theater company, this is quickly becoming one of our favorite Glass recordings ever!
We've been trying to track this down for ages after reading about Glorior Belli in Terrorizer. Assorted comparisons to Dissection and Watain and Deathspell Omega and the like had us practically foaming at the mouth. Finally after months of searching we finally managed to get a bunch of these in. The first thing we noticed was how much it looks like the Watain records, or any of the releases on N.E.D. (home to DSO, Ondskapt, Funeral Mist, etc), with a cool woodcut on the cover, arcane black and grey graphics, vaguely religious imagery, everything sort of distressed looking, as if it was taken from some long buried parchment. But what the hell, this band probably -should- be on N.E.D., it would be a perfect fit. Buzzing super technical, ultra raw blackened thrash, with darkly melodic breakdowns verging on post rock, lots of majestic riffing, and stretches of super blasting buzz! The whole thing though has a strangely melodic bent that helps it stand out from other black metal records, an almost indie-rock quality to the melodies, somehow super catchy while at the same time being suffocatingly black and grim. Quite a feat indeed. Anyone who has been digging Watain, Deathspell Omega (especially the newest one), Funeral Mist, or any of that stuff NEEDS this for sure!
We're really getting tired of this new trend of reissuing a record after it's only been out for a few months. Drives us nuts. What's worse is that they seem to always have cool stuff that we totally want. Argh. If they could just include that stuff the first time around... Anyway, THE smash hit of the year, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo's Gnarls Barkley gets the deluxe reissue treatment and it's a doozy, so much so that we all find ourselves wanting to buy it all over again. New super swanky packaging, with a badass 3-D lenticular cover and a HUGE booklet, but more importantly, two live tracks, one from Top Of The Pops, the other from Later With Jools Holland, and 4 videos, two of which we've seen and are completely amazing. If you're a fan, it's probably sort of essential, and if you somehow managed to not buy this yet, now's the time to get it, with all the bells and whistles! In case, you've been living in a cave or under a rock, here's what we had to say about the ubiquitous St. Elsewhere:
When we first heard of the strangely monikered Gnarls Barkley, they already had a number one hit in the UK and had the biggest downloaded single ever with the track "Crazy". Normally, we don't always pay much attention to popular hit singles, but something about the name made us curious. So we checked it out and need we say it, our minds were blown!! A stab of cool, infectious, minor key, soul-pop groove that conks you over the head with an anvil or a piano until you're seeing stars and little birdies, just like in the cartoons! Of course, when we found out Gnarls Barkley was in fact Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo (ex-Goodie Mob), it all made a bit more sense. But even with such talent, we assumed the single would be a one-off and heck, we'd be fine with that, cuz that track was just so perfect. Then, lo and behold, a full length CD shows up on our counter. Would it be just as exciting and mind blowing as the single? Hells Yes!!! St. Elsewhere is a strange and often silly pastiche of soul, pop, funk, hip hop, and gospel with nods to Wilson Pickett, Undisputed Truth, Marvin Gaye, and crazily enough Violent Femmes (they cover "Gone Daddy Gone"). But even with their influences showing bright and clear, they put it all together in their own unique crazy fun and groovy way. Less sleazy than Andre 3000's Love Below, but sipping from the same funky bottle. Expect to hear this one all summer long (actually, you should probably expect to hear this one fooooooorrreeeeeeeevvvvvvveeeeeeer!).
Rusty Axe is one of the few cult underground black metal labels that can seemingly do no wrong. "Raw Fucking Metal" is what they do, and they do it better than almost anyone else. Always with a demented twist, all of their bands damaged and demented in their own way, some seriously fucked up, others just with a unique vision, but a seriously outsider aesthetic, which obviously appeals to the AQ sensibility.
In the past, we've had Rusty Axe releases from damaged modern doom masters The Wizar'd, the putrid metallic black noise of Enbilulugugal, and the Midwestern redneck black metal of Blood Cult. And the recently released Rusty Axe sampler has had us chomping at the bit to hear more from Baphomets Horns, Defecated Corpse, Demonic Mortuary and of course Finisher (best band name ever?).
To hold us over, we've got the latest release from Puerto Rican church burners Godless, an actual cd (not a cd-r) of ultra primitive blackblackblack lo-fi buzz. Definitely steeped in the Norwegian tradition, Godless have been around since 1990 and were the first black metal band from Puerto Rico, and they definitely sound like it. Church Arsonist is like a black metal time capsule from the nineties, Mayhem, Emperor, Darkthrone, Immortal, extreme Ant-Christian buzzing epic black metal majesty. Black guitars soar and squirm over relentlessly thrashing blast beats, incredible riffing, that goes from jagged razorsharp brutality to blown out dirgey doom, harsh howled vocals way down in the mix, insane dizzyingly manic leads, the whole disc peppered with bits of ambient sound and strange samples, chanting monks, machine gun fire, nighttime forest sounds, World War 2 news clips, dive bombing planes, there seems to be a distinctly warlike element to Godless as well, which actually suits their sound (just as much as the church burning, anti-Christian themes), which spends much of its time loping along at a buzzing Burzumic midtempo, super anguished and bleak, downtuned guitars evoking sorrow and misery, but with every miserable dirge countered with a blazing blast of blackness.
Incredibly cool booklet and art, lyrics and photos, and check out one of the band members, in full medieval cloak/tunic, chainmail and tights, gauntlets on both hands, clutching a mighty broadsword, leaning into the fire (although in the live shot he's wearing jeans and a venom t-shirt, but who can blame him, playing live in chainmail and tunic is rough...)
An awesome, classic modern slab of blackened primitivism. Grim. Check. Cult. Check. Black. CHECK.
Managed to get a few more of these dreamy gems back in stock...
The Green Blossoms are the duo of Anthony Guerra and Aiko Koga, and the two create gorgeously sun dappled little universes of droning ambient twang pop perfection. With just ukulele, guitar, harmonica, pitch pipes and vocals, these two stroll through some fantastical world of constant summery bliss, sometimes it's night, but even then, their world is brilliantly lit by sparkling stars, a full moon, and warm crackling campfires. Guitars and ukes play delicate little melodies, each melody then looped into an hypnotic swirl of blissed out mesmer, then each one is wreathed in some sort of diffused fuzz, a deep glowing halo of sound, be it tinkling chimes, warm processed vocal harmonies, or dense dreamy drones.
This is some absolutely gorgeous, late afternoon, early early morning, hammock swaying in the breeze, back porch sunset, late night crackling fire, staring at the stars, floating in the middle of the sea looking up at the clear blue sky, cool mountain stream, sleeping in the tree shade, closing your eyes and drifting off, sweet, soft, warm and wonderful blissful dreaminess!
All right! One of our favorite album covers and probably the best kosmiche supergroup ever finally see the light of day once again. Called the "world's most important rock group" by Brian Eno, Harmonia consisted of Neu founder, Michael Rother and Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster. Michel Rother, after contributing to Cluster's breakthrough record, Zuckerzeit, which heralded a new direction in sound from their earlier dark and cavernous analog synthscapes to a more pastorally melodic and motorik driven percussive vibe, decided to take a breather from Neu. He moved into Cluster's newly built studio in the German countryside where they began collaborating on a more combined sound. While each member still continued to focus on their own main projects Harmonia was never considered a sideline affair, recording two stellar albums plus a series of recordings with Brian Eno that didn't see the light of day until twenty years later.
Connecting the aesthetics of Pop and Minimalism, the first Harmonia album is a product of their source bands but with a fresh twist on the motorik ideal. Less clinical than Kraftwerk, less funky than Can, each member's multi-instrumentalist abilities are employed in a variety of approaches at once playful and murky, steady and mechanical, using electronic beats, distorted rhythms, warm keyboard shimmers, drifting piano, and gliding electric guitars. Its no wonder Brian Eno was a fan. Fans of Boards of Canada, Susumu Yokota and electronica-heads of all types should check this out too. They even coined the term "hausmusik"! Totally Recommended!!
The musical equivalent of a young leaf drifting along on a slow flowing brook. Shuta Hasunuma's music is as minimal yet richly expressive as a haiku -- stirring a collective "ahhhh" from all within earshot. Each track is composed from tiny fragments of field recordings that he captured in both rural and urban Japanese environments. Meditative. Contemplative. Beautiful.
Imagine the most beautiful music in the world. Then with an old thrift store camera, take a super grainy snapshot of that music. Fold up the photo and place it in an envelope and mail it to an address that no longer exists. 20 years later, happen upon an old abandoned post office, and discover that letter unopened, but browned with age, remove the photo and place it in your pocket. Lose those pants on a camping trip, only to discover them the next summer, all wadded up in a corner, sprinkled with a years worth of dust and cobwebs. Wash the pants, and only afterwards discover the photo. Prop in up in the window of the cabin to dry, where it sits soaking up the sun for the whole summer. Right before you leave, grab the photo of the most beautiful music in the world and place it in your book to mark your place. Place the book back on your shelf and forget all about it. Move several times over the course of the next several years, finally unpacking a dusty old trunk filled with books. Leaf through several of them, when suddenly the most beautiful music in the world flutters to the floor, dusty and tattered, worn and nearly transparent. Finally, tear it up into tiny pieces and drop them one by one into the speaker of an antique victrola, wind it up and what comes out will be Tim Hecker's Harmony In Ultraviolet.
We often reference Hecker when reviewing records by other practitioners of a similar soundmaking process, but there's something so pure and organic about the way Hecker composes and creates, how he deftly assembles and degrades his sounds and songs and melodies. Managing to sound modern but antiquated at the same time, viewing the world through sleep filled eyes, everything soft and fuzzy, sometimes intense and ominous, sometimes even dark and downright scary, but always suffused with a shimmering radiant warmth, making all of his sounds glow from within. Each song a weather worn snapshot, frayed and dusty, comfortable and lived in sounding. It's a music that requires close listening, a subtly immersive sound, but once inside it, once the sound is all around you, only then can you pick out all of the details, hear the hidden melodies, only then can you let go, and get completely lost in Hecker's gorgeous world of mysterious sound. Some of the most beautiful music in the world indeed.
Hermano, for those of you who don't know, is the post Kyuss band of vocalist John Garcia. While Josh Homme took his sunbaked fuzz guitar to MTV with Queens Of The Stoneage, Garcia stuck to the underground with his VERY Kyuss sounding new band. This is a super limited lp recording of Hemano live in the Netherlands back in 2004. We only got a couple of these, not sure if we can get more, but if we can it will probably take a while. But if you're dying for some sort of Kyuss fix, and QOTSA's new mainstream pop trajectory isn't doing it for you anymore, then hearing Garcia's instantly recognizable wail over a groovy slab of deserty stoner rock will for sure hit the spot.
First domestic release from this puppeteer turned slow motion sound sculptor. This is some of the most breathtaking, delicately lovely music we've ever heard. Barely strummed guitars, like flickering candlelight, each note sent fluttering by the tiniest breeze, above these crystalline melodies drifts a barely-there vocal, a hushed, near whisper, like a shadow, there one second, fading to nothing the next. Imagine the most spare and skeletal blues, then somehow imagine the ghostly after image after a quick glimpse, nothing left but the spare outline, a fading melodic memory. Definitely reminiscent of Loren Connors. But even more shadowy and mysterious. Imagine being lost in some old black and white movie, and stumbling upon a dimly lit bar on the edge of nowhere. Once you step inside it's suddenly no longer black and white, instead everything is an oversaturated deep red, almost black, you settle into a corner table, and a deep dark billow of sound drifts off of the darkened stage. Like tiny tendrils of sonic smoke. A lone figure sits, cloaked in shadows, hunched over a guitar, barely moving, but each tiny movement releases another smattering of notes, that drift in the deep red light like dust motes, the entire room captivated and motionless. This is the sound of that. Gorgeous and lonely, wonderfully wistful and so so lovely.
As if she's not already plenty busy with Erase Errata and Paradise Island, Ms Jenny Hoyston has joined forces with William Elliot Whitmore. Not sure if this is a one-off, but we sure hope not 'cause they make such a great duo, and this six song ep ends all too soon! Their voices compliment each other wonderfully as they weave their earthy tales in true country folk tradition. Yes, we could go on and on lavishing praise, but how 'bout we just cut to the chase and give this a hearty "Recommended!"
The late sixties Swedish musical aggregation that was Parson Sound / International Harvester / Harvester / Trad, Gras Och Stenar (really all one evolving band) was basically an example of the genre we've decided to call "international krautrock". Like a
Silence has added an incredible, lengthy (24 minute!) bonus track called "Skordetider" ("Harvest Times") that the band originally intended for an album B-side but never used. It's hypnotic, powerful jam that could have fit well on that Parson Sound release. In other words: wow! Additionally, this cd features extensive liner notes documenting the group's history (the same essay is also found in Silence's reissue of the Harvester album, but with different photos). Along with the Parson Sound double cd, this is definitely one of the reissues of the year for us.
