This is quite possibly the most insane outsider-weirdo-grind-metal-what-the-fuck record we have ever heard. Imagine a super lo-fi grindcore, cobbled together from blasting lightning fast drum machines, shredding super tech lead guitars, super processed, almost mechanical riffs, and Melt Banana-like high pitched yelping vocals, all tossed in a blender and spat out at a million miles an hour. Only sometimes all you can hear are the vocals, or the drums disappear underneath an avalanche of guitars, or everything is so amped up it becomes a buzzy blur, topped with high pitched squeaks and yowls. Totally nuts. Imagine Arboga Teenage Riot jamming with Brutal Truth. Or two lps, one a Melt Banana, the other a Deerhoof, both being played simultaneously at 90 rpm, then chopped up and slowed back down to about 60 rpm. So completely dementedly amazing. 46 tracks, most between 30 seconds and 1 minute, no titles, just numbers, 33601 to 33640, except for the last few tracks numbered 1365Y-13659. Wonder if that means that before this lp, the band had already recorded 33,600 songs. We'd believe it! Fans of all the above mention bands and folks who just love the weirdest shit imaginable, this is definitely for you.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, we only got 8... Pressed on clear red vinyl. Includes a printed insert, with a DVD of live performances. It's PAL though, so for those of you without the ability to play PAL discs, there's also a free video download of all the same footage.
In our neverending quest to unearth the weirdest and wildest, most evil and grim, most damaged and baffling black metal there is, we not too long ago stumbled upon Urfaust. And we were immediately smitten, as were all of you judging from how difficult it was to keep those discs in stock. Well, all bow down and thank the dark lord, for now we have the latest offering from the strange hunting world of Urfaust! And if that wasn't enough, on this split they're teamed up with an outfit called Circle Of Ouroborous, who are even stranger than Urfaust, if that's even possible.
What is it about Urfaust that has us so in a tizzy. Well, imagine a loping buzzing midtempo black metal, raw, and thick and fuzzed out, but then add in a vocalist that croons and wails and sounds quite a bit like Ethel Merman, his vocals drenched in reverb, a huge thick cloud of croon, so weird but so goddamn amazing! These new tracks find Urfaust getting... you guessed it, even stranger. The first track is a whirl of huge blown out synths or guitars, big swells, distorted and warm and fuzzy, with a strange almost bouncy drum beat. By track two, the old Urfaust is back in effect, a huge wall of Burzumic guitar, a galloping midtempo drum beat, and those ridiculously remarkable vocals. We get so used to shrieking and howling vocals, that we were completely taken aback byt Urfaust's vocals, so much more emotional and passionate, strange indeed, but strange and mysterious and absolutely unlike anything you've heard in black metal. The third track is a creaking industrial soundscape, footsteps, breathing, clattering metal, atonal strings, very 20th century music concret. Really cool. The final ten minutes is a fuzzed out seasick waltz, huge guitars, super dramatic vocals, the guitars a thick whirring drone, the melody so melancholy and intense. Awesome. Definitely still one of our favorite metal bands for sure.
But wait. We've also got the mysterious Circle Of Ouroborus to contend with, and wooh boy, is this one cracked outfit. Half of CoO's six tracks are murky almost punky black metal blasts, super lo-fi, practice space production, the guitar a mumbly warble, the drums tinny and buried in the mix, and as you might expect for a band paired up with Urfaust, the vocalist is totally demented, a growling cracked croon, WAY up in the mix, shouting and howling, almost talking sometimes, making CoO sound a bit like a black metal Fall. The rest of the tracks are even more unlikely, all acoustic, with atonally strummed acoustic guitars and menacing sung / spoke vocals, even some harmonica! Some hellish campfire sing along, Bob Dylan channelled through some musical demon. It sounds a bit like a blackened Jandek, or the black metal folk of Dead Raven Choir, and actually quite a bit like AQ faves Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat (albeit much more low fidelity) or even a little like a more garage-y Current 93. But WOW! Not at all what we were expecting at all. This is something that could definitely pass for some freaky outsider folk record with passages of black buzz instead of the other way around. We never though any band could hold their own agains the mighty Urfaust, but Circle Of Ouroborus pull it off big time. Another damaged and demented black metal (sort of) band to keep an eye on for sure!
Head spinning, herky jerky, bright and bold, yes indeedy one of our very favorite Load-label bands is back with a new album! Who else blends spazzcore prog with folk and hippy punk protest like these guys?? Nobody in the whole wide 'homeland' that every day makes this band's moniker more and more of a commonplace sentiment worldwide. It's no wonder that The Usaisamonster identify so closely with our nation's indigenous inhabitants, seeking some sort of (mythical, perhaps) spirituality, innocence and virtue somewhere in our shared American culture (the track "Okeepa Ceremony" is an example). Yet they don't choose to express their political passions (anger/disgust/horror, mainly) with unpleasant doomy grind or anything like that. No, their ranting takes the form of music that's much more creatively colorful and chaotic, up to and including epics like the 13 minute title cut, which spins from droning build ups to prog riff attack to simple folky strum. So even if you don't always get where they're coming from (or where they're going) the musical trip they take still is usually pretty interesting, or will be in just a matter of seconds. Imagine Lightning Bolt in Indian headdresses, jamming 'round a hippy campfire at an anti-G8 protest, something like that... musically, aesthetically and politically we can dig this album's general ideals, if not always the specifics, but regardless it's quite a spectacle!
Ut's final recording Griller from 1989 fully demonstrates the radical shift that the band made after they emerged from the NYC No Wave scene in the late '70s. With a much more conventional approach to songwriting, the straight forward tracks and vocals have much more in common with the Riot Grrl movement that was still a couple years away. Even the jagged melodies matched with unnerving vocal trills from Ut's three rotating vocalists (Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham, and Sally Young) were the obvious precursors to what Sleater Kinney would be producing shortly thereafter. Griller is also punctuated by a handful of far more obtuse songs which reflect the earlier, grittier sound with choppy twin guitars, rolling bass, and drum plod paralleling those of Live Skull or early Sonic Youth. Originally released back in the day on Blast First, now reissued through Mute.
While the all-women trio Ut had their beginnings in New York back in 1978 coming out of the No Wave scene that spawned Mars, DNA, Sonic Youth, Swans, and many others, New York did not treat the ladies all that well. Their debut release was to come out on the influential Lust/Unlust label; however, the label folded before the record hit the streets. Shortly thereafter, Ut's Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham, and Sally Young packed up and moved to London, where the trio flourished and received considerable acclaim. In Gut's House was originally released as a double LP back in 1988 through Blast First, balancing their acerbic No Wave edge with a skewed pop-sensibility that would have found them in the company of the Slits or Liliput had they entertained more of a propulsive, groove sound. Instead, the rhythmic backbeat of Ut's sound is more of a morose plod acting as counterweight to the agitated, spiky guitars. When shifted further from a pop structuralism, Ut's narcoleptic nervousness was a gripping doppleganger for some of the great tracks produced by Mars back in the late '70s; but when their sound slipped in the other direction toward a more conventional songwriting approach, Ut's tunes foreshadowed the energy of Sleater Kinney. In Gut's House has long been heralded as a remarkable album and certainly enjoys some noble company due to their No Wave credentials, but is also an album that sparked many others who improved upon their template. Look no further than Erase Errata for the case in point.
Super limited vinyl document of the Halleluwah Festival Of Enthused Arts that took place in September 1-2 of this year curated by the same folks who do the killer yeti magazine.
Two sides, one quiet, one loud, a bunch of instantly recognizable names, as well as a bunch of unknowns (at least to us) all of it pretty dang amazing, so much so that we were kicking ourselves for missing the festival.
The quiet side features folk legend Michael Hurley, folk legend Vashti Bunyan and Tara Jane O'Neil, as well as White Rainbow, Holysons and Alela Diane. The sound leans mostly toward subtle twang, simple strum, and dreamlike croon, but there are som moments of blissy foggy ambient murmur and some fuzzy murky psychedelic blues.
The loud side features Deerhoof, Sir Richard Bishop and Valet (whose cd-r we raved about a few lists back) as well as three weirdly named ensembles: Nudity, Romancing and Yacht. The loud side veers all over the place, from weird psychrock tribal freakouts to blown out angular indie rock buzz to damaged minimal punk rock bounce to fuzzy psychedelic heavy riffed rock jams.
The packaging is just as impressive, a thick, plain white sleeve through which are visible strange looking inserts, each printed on super thick semi transparent cloudy plastic, the loud side is red on white with an illustration by Kevin Arrow, the quiet side is white on black, and features an amazing illustration by Unica Zurn, the partner of Hans Bellmer! Wow!!
We're guessing pretty dang limited, so if you want one, act fast...
Wow, what an amazing compilation! Really, how could it be anything but awesome with a title like International Sad Hits?! We sure do love us some sad songs, the sadder the better. It's always fascinating to observe how different performers and composers around the world turn their sadness into sound. And in turn, how those sounds effect us as listeners.
This collection was assembled by Damon and Naomi -- a duo who certainly know a thing or two about sad songs. It features four artists whom D&N had heard while touring 'round the world. The duo have most certainly stumbled on some seriously lovely sad sounds, and now the rest of us can wallow in them too. Hailing from Turkey, Korea and Japan these artists echo a somber '60s folk aesthetic (a la Tim Buckley or Bob Dylan), or in fact are obscurities from the '60s themselves. Actually the Japanese contingent here (avant-folk veterans Kazuki Tomokawa and Kan Mikami, who also performs in Vajra with Keiji Haino) we at aQ and many of our customers are plenty familiar with and fond of already... Though they and the others (Turkey's Fikret Kizilok and Korea's Kim Doo Soo) may not be household names in the USA, and might only be known to a handful of adventurous music lovers, hopefully this comp will expose their amazing music to at least a few more lovers of melancholy folk!
Totally fascinating liner notes too, by Damon and Naomi as well as Allan Cummings. A gorgeous melancholy collection put together with much thought and love. So great!
FM3's Buddha Machine should need no introduction to the avid customers of Aquarius Records; but for the sake of those who are not in the know, a Buddha Machine is a small handheld device which broadcasts a handful of chanting loops typically to be used for Buddhist meditation in various parts of China and South East Asia. When the Chinese electronica duo FM3 seized on the idea of fusing their own dreamy ambient loops within the framework of a Buddha Machine, it proved to be a huge success... well at least through a shop like Aquarius. FM3's Buddha Machine is a perfectly encapsulated device for these delicate and suitably plastic tones. So perfect is the FM3 Buddha Machine that the necessity for a remix album is highly suspect. Yet, Staubgold has decided to commission 15 tracks from across the gamut of adventurous music requesting that the Buddha Machine be used in someway shape or form. Even though such abrasive iconoclasts as Blixa Bargeld and SUNNO))) are present on the Jukebox Buddha, the listening experience is a mostly lighthearted affair of pixel-smeared tone float and daydream haziness. Es, Sun City Girls, Thomas Felhmann, Robert Henke, Mapstation, Gudrun Gut, Alog, Minit, Wang Fan, Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Adrian Sherwood / Doug Wimbish, and Aki Onda also contribute to the mix. Really cool.
While labels like the Numero Group and Soul Jazz have been doing a great job of digging up amazing old soul sounds from the past, this collection of soul and funk from Spain from 1966-1976 popped up out of nowhere and has ended up being maybe one of the best soul collections we've ever heard! It's everything you want soul and funk from that era to be. It's infectious, playful, gritty, groovy and totally addictive. While none of us had too much experience with the soul scene in Spain, this comp proves that it was pretty damn healthy and vibrant. These songs are damn near impossible not to be swept away by. Even Andee who is maybe the least funk-obsessed AQ-er was caught totally digging on these sounds. And then for those of you who are already attracted to great funk sounds of the era, this is like hitting the funkrock jackpot! After getting this the first day it arrived at AQ, I (Irwin) managed to play cuts from it during no less than three different DJ sets in the next 48 hours. And every single time I played a song from it I was immediately met with someone running to the DJ booth (and the phone lighting up when it was during my radio show) with the same excited question...What the heck is this and where can I buy one!!?? What makes this collection so outstanding are the strange splashes of eccentric spirit that keep it from sounding too same-y and keep the disc from ever losing steam, like lots of soul collections tend to do. This is one of those amazing records you can't help but fall in love with! If you have a pulse or a heartbeat or are at all alive, you won't be able to resist!
The In-Kraut, the delightful sassy compilation of German '60s jazzy lounge pop music that we got almost exactly one year ago today got played like crazy around here! What a treat! And while its follow-up The In-Kraut Vol. II seems a bit more subdued in mood, it looks likes it too is gonna keep our toes a-tapping for a long long while. As we mentioned in the review of the first volume, despite the "Kraut" in the title, you should definitely not expect anything remotely resembling "Krautrock". You will not find anything by Can, Kraftwerk nor Faust, but you will find ultra shimmy shakin' tracks by the likes of Hazy Osterwald Jet Set, Charly Antolini's Power Dozen, The Inner Space (wait, that band actually IS Can, before they called themselves Can!), Joy & The Hit Kids and many more! Oh yes, and the swingin'est, big-band version of Deep Purple's "Black Night" we've ever heard!! Hot stuff!
While we are admittedly totally obsessed with damaged and demented, freaky and fucked up, bizarre and obtuse outsider black metal, every once in a while we'll discover a band who manage to incorporate bits of all of those things, but in a way that's much more subtle. A band can be really weird without being totally fucked up. Completely demented without stumbling and struggling and sounding totally damaged. A band can be furious and fast, heavy and complex, brutal and intense, but still be super far out and perplexingly bizarre. Think Spektr, Blut Aus Nord, and now the VEGA Corporation. Or V.E.G.A. Or more specifically, Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere. Thanks to AQ pal Drew for turning us on to these guys. We were definitely surprised when we finally heard them. Not at all what you might expect. With a name like Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere, and a record called Cocaine. Some trippy abstract very UN-metal artwork and a liner note proclamation that goes like this:
"(V.E.G.A.) supports freedom of thought, sometimes misunderstood as insanity by the most.
The band was born at the last breaths of black metal and dies soon after.
This album is a gift to its memory... a dead-born child... a trip went wrong... a nightmare in your brain...
Feed your insanity...
We now live in the future... as lights, always hiding in the dark, yet shining... as a new band, "VEGA-KORPORATION"
Totally devoted to the exploration of mind, soul and technology..."
We were totally prepared for some stumbling recorded-in-a-cave, howling, midtempo, warbly damaged black buzz. And we would have been totally happy with that for sure. But this band is absolutely nothing like that at all.
V.E.G.A. are impossibly grim and so Incredibly fierce and furious. We talk about black metal bands sounding buzzy all the time, but this is a whole 'nother thing. The first track is some sort of ultimate demonic buzz direct from the fiery pit. A buzz that is sharp and jagged, so blown out and strangely panned, that it almost makes you dizzy listening to it. Careening like a pissed off swarm of hornets from speaker to speaker, the buzz distorts and crumbles, fades out and then swoops back in super hot and completely oversaturated. It definitely sounds like there is something seriously wrong with your speakers, in a GOOD way! And within that buzz is a twisting squirming vortex of fuzzy riffs, insanely blasting beats, shrieked vocals, all in a dense super complex tangle of black fury. One song was all it took. Not only were we totally and completely sold. We were also totally brutalized. Exhausted. Our ears beaten to a bloody pulp. And we LOVED it. The record veers wildly back and forth between impossibly brutal buzzing and more Burzumic midtempos with just a bit of a groove like Khold. But either way, the songs are dense and dark, furious and brilliantly fucked up. And that's not even taking into account the non-metal elements which are legion. Songs are peppered with weird sonic bits, and separated by haunting interludes that range from creepy children singing to women screaming in terror, stretches of industrial pummel with skittery drum machines and super processed Laibachian Teutonic growls to dreamy blissed out minor key jangle with Mark E. Smith sort-of-spoken vocals, massive glacial dirgescapes of downtuned sludge, peppered with Godflesh style beats to weird folky foresty ambience. But unlike a lot of bands, those bits are just that, bits, little bits of unlikely shading, small demented complements to the bands furious metallic onslaught.
That is until you get to the epic fourteen minute closing track. A vast expanse of weird record crackle spread in a thick patina over soaring minor key strings and distant muted drums. Creepy and dreary, but sort of super emotional and sublime. It sounds a bit like an old scratched up Godspeed 45 being played on a Victrola while on another Victrola, someone is playing a super scuffed copy of some old Scorn 12" on the wrong speed, the machine like beats perfectly drifting into the majestic grandeur of the strings and swoonsome ambience. After a brief bit of silence, we're suddenly tossed into some sort of weird eighties sounding synth rock, a bizarre electronic drums drenched video game music sort of jam that is just totally twisted and not a little bit out of place. It eventually morphs into a more metal version of Goblin, creepy and slightly cheesy with big thick distorted guitars laid over top. Woah.
A definite contender twisted black metal record of the year for sure!
Oh those beloved Walkmen, they've been up to some fine goings-on. 'Twas just a few months ago when their latest album proper A Hundred Miles Off was released, and it is a dandy that's grown on us more and more with each listen. Now they've taken a break from their own tunesmithery to issue forth this complete remake of Harry Nilsson and John Lennon's legendary album Pussy Cats. It's clearly a work that the band knows and loves wholeheartedly. The offbeat original was recorded back in '74 during Lennon's infamous months-long "lost weekend" (Unfamiliar with the tale? Well, it's far to much to get into here, you'll just have to do your own research!), and The Walkmen's was recorded during the Hundred Miles Off sessions. Joining the band in this incredibly faithful re-creation of the album are the Make Up's Ian Svenonius (popping in to deliver some of his unmistakable vocals) and Quentin Stoltzfus from Azusa Plane (adding his two-bits worth on "Mucho Mongo / Mt. Elga"). It's unquestionably well executed, if somewhat restrained and downright safe at times. Might not win them new fans, but it'll prolly please their existing ones and maybe bring some new ears to the original album.
While we're not sure we would really want to do it, had we been asked Continuum Press to write one of their 33 1/3 mini books about a favorite album, we just might have to choose Wire's third album 154. Partially, this choice would be something of a compromise as we doubt that a book on Nurse With Wound's Homotopie To Marie would make for a saleable product. 154 stands in our minds as the epitome of what post-punk should be: a bold fusion of post-situationist / punk antagonism and legitimately experimental methodologies with an undercurrent of smarty-pop to keep the kids bouncing up and down.
I (Jim) actually came to Wire somewhat late in my record nerd existance, and I actually grew to admire the band through a reverse history of sorts, as I didn't really start enjoying the first three Wire albums (Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, and 154) until other Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert projects entranced me with thier experiments in proto-electronica. This was especially true for the ghostly post-structuralism found on their Dome records. And those Lewis / Gilbert projects took their genetic code for shadow and gloom from elements of 154. An album that was made under personal duress, 154 drips of disintegration. In fact the band split apart for almost 7 years after the making of 154, pursuing a variety of projects -- traces of which are quite present in this album as Colin Newman's pop sarcasm continued through his solo records and the vast array of Lewis / Gilbert projects.
Recorded in 1979, 154 marks the band's third radical reinvention in three years. Wire's pacing has slowed to a lugubrious, Factory-esque crawl but lost none of their punk antagonism. The slower pacing better suited the baritone vocals of Graham Lewis, who had penned many of the lyrics that Colin Newman sang. In lesser hands, the patchwork of forboding atmospheric dirges and punchy power pop numbers would appear disjointed; but Wire's deft use of synthetic coloring, exquisite timing, and simply great songwriting smear the whole album into a wholly convincing masterpiece. "I Should Have Known Better" and "A Touching Display" represent a few of Graham Lewis' baritone marches through plodding drone and heavy basslines, which have more in common with the late '80s, proto-doom of Swans than of the snarl of the Buzzcocks. Newman's pop brilliance also shines on 154 through "The 15th," which sadly more people recognize from the tepid Fischerspooner cover than by this punk-pop gem. Of the first three Wire albums, 154 proudly stands as the most challenging and most rewarding. So good, we may have to buy it, yet again.
In 1978, being qualified as "the Pink Floyd of the New Wave" might have come across as something of an insult; and by today's artistic strategies of rampant revivalism such a pithy remark may ring true to many a listener. That statement was, in fact, the critique prescribed to Chairs Missing, Wire's second album, as the album decelerated the pogo punk minimalism found on their first album with an increasing use of experimental production. In hindsight, Chairs Missing is the perfect transition between the high-strung velocity of Pink Flag and the staggering gloominess of 154; yet most transition records have a clunkiness about them, like a lanky teenager not quite able to fit into his sunday best. But Chairs Missing is miles above the average transition album. To many a listener, Chairs Missing stands as the ultimate Wire album, with near perfect pop songs alternating between anthemic punk and eccentric production techniques (i.e. atonal synth drone, staccato guitar chops, overdubbed guitar distortion, etc.). Where Pink Flag kept many of the songs under a minute and half, Chairs Missing is downright baroque in its presentation of 3 minute tunes. The genius of Chairs Missing is how Colin Newman, Robert Gotobed, Bruce Gilbert, and Graham Lewis manage to steer through the diverse songwriting landscape, in how the album's opening track "Practice Makes Perfect" transitions from a delicate prance for jangled guitar into a precise expression of menace, in how "Outdoor Miner" creates the catchiest, Beatlesque chorus you'll never be able to sing back to yourself given the complexity of its rejoining, nonsensical syllables, in how jaggedly clean the guitars of Newman and Gilbert attack each other, in how Lewis' bass is fluid and effortless, in how this run-on sentence seems to have lost its way trying to fathom the complexity of Wire. If you believe that the length of Aquarius' reviews directly correlate to how good the record actually is, then we have failed as we would need to write a fucking a book about how stunning this album is. Yeah, Chairs Missing is incredible; and if you don't have it, you really should.
Okay, one thing to bitch about the reissue of Chairs Missing is that the cover is curiously bleached out of its color; the reissue also doesn't come with the (really great!) bonus tracks found on the EMI cd version of the album. Come on Wire, you released this album on your own label. At least you could give us all the bells and whistles found on other versions of this album! This is our only complaint, and a minor quibble for sure.
Really, what more can we say about Wire's Pink Flag that hasn't already been said? The album is so good, so burned in the retina of our brains (even though we still cannot for the life of us unscramble Graham Lewis' lyrics), so nearly perfect that it's sort of hard to write about. In a perfect world, whatever nonsense we may have to say about the record would be moot, as you should already own this record (along with Chairs Missing and 154, Wire's second and third albums respectively). But for those of you who may be enraptured by the recent flurry of post-punk revivalists who continue to make quite a stir, let the reissue campaign of the first three records introduce you to the band that Interpol, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand, and Bloc Party only wish they could be.
Recorded in 1977, Pink Flag is an immaculately concise punk record, even as Wire recognized that punk was becoming a self-parody and willed themselves to develop through experimentation with structure, technology, and process. Pink Flag's 21 songs cover a mere 35 minutes, many of themclocking in around 90 seconds or "when they ran out of words" as bassist / vocalist Graham Lewis once quipped. Energetic and volatile, each of the songs on Pink Flag thrash through the repetoire of reductivist power-pop riffs as immediately catchy and aggressive as anything by the Damned, the Ramones, and the Sex Pistols. But even on their first album, Wire demonstrated an uncanny ability with chord changes and melodic shifts that by '70s standards were much artier than their punk bretheren. Of course, in the aftermath of math-rock's acrobatic twists and turns, Wire's Pink Flag hardly sounds unpredictable... but if it weren't for Wire would we really have Laddio Bollocko? Probably not. The album's opening track "Reuters" is an anxious introduction to Wire's provocation with lead vocalist Colin Newman over-annunciating a polemic against government's abuse of propaganda (sound familiar?) on top of an increasingly agitated metronomic blast of bass, twin guitar, and drums. Elsewhere near perfect pop songs develop out of the angular punk slashing, as heard on "Ex Liontamers" and "Mannequin." Wire ends the album with the monotone anthem "12 X U" which many have declared their "Anarchy In The UK." With a motorik rhythm punctured by concise punk riff, the track simultaneously decries homophobia and censorship with the song's entire lyrics "I saw you in the mag kissing the man / 1 2 X U!" So yeah, Wire are a seminal band for a reason, and it all started with this album. If you don't have it, please do yourself a favor and buy this album. You won't regret it!
Wirkus, Wirkus, Wirkus. We like that name. 'Specially since we now associate it with some great, rainy day glitchtronica music! Subdued, abstract yet melodic drones n' glitch here from Poland-born, Cologne-based electronica artist Paul Wirkus -- a former improv jazz drummer, who has also played in punk and post-rock bands. His calm, clip-clip-clippy electro-acoustical dronological methodology is very lo-fi "live" and melodic, Wirkus creating shimmering, pulsating soundscapes with microphones, minidiscs, samples, loops, effects, and crackly vinyl. Buried in these densely textured tracks you'll hear (what might be) jazz piano, classical strings, and raw electronic noises...it's all layered and distorted and so so lovely. Track five adds a mysterious French (?) male vocal that works quite well. And track eight sounds like Philip Jeck teamed up with Ryoji Ikeda! Highly recommended. We hadn't heard Wirkus' music until now, and we've totally fallen in love. Turns out that this album, while his first for Staubgold, is his fourth solo effort, and he's also done a lot of collaborating as well, so we'll have to look for more of those Wirkus works...
We've been selling Wolves In The Throne Room cd-r demos like crazy since we first discovered these guys last year. And how could we not? You gotta love a band that unfurls massive fuzzed out epics, 10+ minute bursts of swirling droning black metal, dirging, lurching and gorgeously blown out. The obvious comparison is SF black metal legends Weakling, and you know we wouldn't make that comparison lightly. The same sort of fierce brutality and chaotic ferocity mixed with impossibly anguished emotionalism all wrapped up in a blackness that is informed as much by suffocating dark ambience and mesmerizing drones as it is grim black metal.
If you thought the WITTR demos sounded great, HOLY SHIT does this new record blow those out of the water. Which is a good thing as two of the songs here are actually from the demos, but they have been massively reworked and completely re-recorded. It's got a huge wall of guitar sound, surprisingly heavy for a black metal band, in place of more typical reedy buzzy BM mosquito guitar. There's thick snarling monster riffs, dense and multilayered, spread thick over furious pounding drumming and howled strangulated vocals (very Weakling-esque). Now you might think the world needs another Nordic style black metal band like a hole in the head, no matter how amazing they are. BUT, Wolves In The Throne Room do it SO WELL, and write amazing songs, and manage to mix it up like crazy, incorporating all sorts of un-BM elements, gorgeous folky ambience, weirdly TRUE metal riffing, even some ethereal angelic female vocals. It all somehow fits, and makes the Wolves' black metal black enough to remain true, but fucked up enough to matter. Plus they probably do think the world needs need a hole in the head...
You'd never guess from listening to this record that the WITTR are a bunch of short haired, furry vested, tight panted, scruffy indie dudes from Olympia. But don't let that put you off, impossibly true metal nerds, just close your eyes, listen close, and all you'll see are grim, 10 foot tall, spike encrusted leather clad warriors of the misty, ancient northwestern forests... Yep, we're surely excited to have their "real cd" debut, at long last!!
Another gloriously sun baked, drug drenched slab of psychedelic free folk splendor, this time from the mysterious Wovoka. Occupying a sonic space smack dab between Matt Valentine and his Tower Recordings, and the more abstract forest folk of Avarus and Davenport, but with bits of Jewelled Antler clatter and No Neck / Sunburned Hand abstract drone rock mixed in, it sounds like this could end up being a mess. And it sort of is, but it's a fantastic, stumbling, perfectly ramshackle, hippy jam sort of mess. Simple tribal drumming, chanted vocals, spidery psychrock guitars, long stretches of blissful Appalachia and buzzing drone-like raga. A totally tripped out late afternoon drift through a skeletal world of folky twang and abstract rhythmic shuffle, super laid back and totally hypnotic.
ULTRA LIMITED. ONLY 100 COPIES! We got 20 and we won't be able to get more as it's already out of print.
Pressed on cool faux-vinyl cd-r's (with grooves and everything, housed in a simple cardboard sleeve with paste on artwork, and color acid tab insert.
Wow!! One year after his death at age 76, Link Wray lives on!!! It's good to know his legendary sound will never die. And it better well never die either, since he pretty much wrote the book on raw garage/surf rock guitar rock. These lost sessions from 1958 once again demonstrate his supreme mastery, and show that no matter how great any of the surf rock he inspired was, from the sixties to the seventies to now, on labels like Estrus, Empty and Dionysus, Wray's could blow them out of the water. This is the real deal. It would almost be kind of depressing to try to play instrumental garage-rock/rockabilly knowing that there is just no way you could ever come close to the pure fire brilliance of Link Wray and his golden guitar.
Wray dealt with extreme health problems most of his life but in a weird way they actually helped shape his distinct style. He was partially deaf so of course he had to play extra extra loud. He had TB and lost a lung making it very hard for him to sing, so he did it all mostly instrumental. Which worked perfectly because there is nothing words could say that his playing style, charisma and fiery passion couldn't. It's so cool to hear him as a young man really coming into his own on these long lost recordings. Classic, timeless and so totally great!
We've said it before, over and over and over, but we don't mind saying it again, in fact we'll shout it from the rooftops, and print up t-shirts or even write it in review after review until everyone listens and understands. Peter Wright is one of the most compelling soundmakers we have ever heard. And his lustrous soundscapes and dark dreamlike drones are every bit as lovely and mysterious, and as carefully crafted and breathtaking as any of the work from bigger names like Chalk, Colelcough, Mirror, Maeror Tri, Organum, Basinski or any of the flavor of the month limited cd-r drone rockers.
Record after record of completely mesmerizing sound. Gorgeous gauzy smears of fuzzy guitar, lilting ghostlike melodies, soft focus ethereal drifts and dense swirls of abstract melancholia.
This cd, originally released as a super limited cd-r on Foxglove, is no different. The title Desolation Beauty Violence describes the music more succinctly than we ever could.
A gauzy glimpse into a microscopic alternate universe, where everything is broken into their base elements, the sky is a woven tapestry of smoky languid guitar lines, tiny glistening sonic molecules drift like snowflakes against a fuzzy slate grey sky, while in the distance, shimmering molecules reverberate, sending deep cavernous whirs drifting skyward. Melodies are tiny bits of sound, stretched out into minute long smears. Bits of percussion offer up some muted underwater click and clack like stones in a mountain stream, everything spread out into dreamy slabs of trembling sonic gauze.
So goddamn lovely. If asked, we'd probably insist that you buy EVERY SINGLE PETER WRIGHT RECORD you can get your hands on, but for now, start with Desolation Beauty Violence, and be prepared to fall hopelessly under his dreamdrone spell...
Remember the French label Gooom? The label that introduced us to the gauzy blissed out dreampop of M83. As well as similarly beautiful pop buzz from bands like Cyann & Ben, KG, Abstract Keal Agram, Montag, Mils., Purple Confusion and others. Well, while Gooom seem to have dropped off the map, Type has stepped up in their bid to be our new favorite label of blissy abstract wonder. While the two labels do share an aesthetic, a sort of blurry buzzy dreamy drift, each approaches the sound from dramatically different angles. Gooom bands are, at their core, simply pop bands, or slow core bands, or post rock bands, but bands nonetheless. Guitar, bass and drums. Choruses, verses, bridges, lyrics, but these seemingly normal elements are then twisted and distorted, blurred and fuzzed out, into the glorious sounds and shapes we fell in love with. Like hearing sweetly psychedelic pop music, filtered through a cracked funhouse mirror made out of amp buzz and fuzzy sheets of reverb. Type are obviously fans of the same sort of cracked sonic shimmer, all of their releases shimmery and ethereal, rife with lots of buzz and hiss, glitch and fuzz.
Such is the case with Xela, the debut release from Type label head honcho John Twells. His cracked pop vision fits perfectly alongside the other outfits on Type, Ryan Teague, Mountaineer, Machinefabriek, Goldmund, North Sea & Rameses III. Twells wanders through a strange world of abstract sound making, fuzzy dreamlike blurs, and manner of mechanical musics. Melodies are rendered indistinct, actual songs are turned into blurry fragments, everything is pulled apart into abstract skeletal soundscapes, like seeing buzzy dream pop from the inside, watching all the gears and bits and parts and machinations that make that sort of music so dang pretty on the outside. But the view from the inside is so gorgeously alien, grinds and clicks, disembodied melodies stretched over rhythmic skitter, it's almost like being shrunken down and exploring some huge music box. Or better yet, imagine the Dead C making a record for children, playfully noisy, subtly melodic, a disembodied dream folk bathed in dreamy static, murky record crackle, and tangled up with little bits of video game music, all stretched into a gauzy later afternoon soundscape. So great. When we first heard about this album, we read a description the label wrote that pretty much seemed intended to make us at AQ curious, as it cited both Italian horror soundtracks by Goblin, AND Jewelled Antler improv soundscapes as references for Xela's sound!! Amazingly enough, The Dead Sea lives up to the expectations thus generated, and we're hooked.
Amazingly creepy cover art. Black and white line drawings of people drowning and being attacked by some sort of underwater zombies. Cool!
This live Xiu Xiu recording opens quite strangely, with vocalist Jamie Stewart talking to the crowd about a comic that the band had been sent which commented on how chattery the audience was at their last show at that very same venue. A chorus of silly loud shhhh's ensue, then the band begins their first song. As the song's final notes fade out a dull cloud of audience chatter takes over. Yeesh. C'mon people, keep it down! What's it gonna take? Another comic book scolding? Nevertheless this is a terrific live document of the Bay Area group's unflinching craft of beauty in torment, dissonance and abrasion. Comparatively delicate melodic elements blossom up sporadically amid the metallic scrapes and homemade instrument clatter. Deeply moving and drenched in personal angst, much like Bright Eyes, but far spookier and unhinged.
Another batch of ambient free noise guitar explorations from Ms. Marcia Bassett, who when not playing in the Double Leopards, GHQ and of course Hototogisu, somehow manages to find time to also record as Zaimph. Sexual Infinity starts off super dreamy, a brief drift through some spacious, cavernous underworld, thick strands of echoey guitars, tons of reverb, a surprisingly tranquil subterranean drift. But it doesn't stay tranquil for long. Well, that's not entirely true, it's just a different sort of tranquil from there on out. The rumbling shimmering low end is traded in for some grinding, pulsing, shrieking, crumbling feedback. At first it does sound harsh, but closer listening reveals feedback as melody, with the tones and timbre and overtones, shifting and twisting, sometimes a clear streak of shiny brightness, other times a harsh scrabbly charged crackle. But before we can get used to the wild Haino-style amp experiments, Bassett shifts gears back again into a murky, looped shimmer, fuzzy and staticky, a whirring whirling swirl of guitar fuzz, smeared into a prickly buzz, a strangely peaceful, but still thick and roiling ambience. The record sort of shifts back and forth, between shadow and light, low end rumble and buzz, and upper register screech and skree, but each definitely compliments the other, and demonstrating Bassett's deft hand and sculpting unruly sound, even at its most harsh, is still strangely beautiful. The final track is the perfect blend of both elements, a strangely metallic, Earth / SUNNO))) style dirge, thick fuzzy waves of grinding crunchy guitar growl wrapped in thick swirls of buzz and hiss and fuzz. Cool.
