A while back we reviewed a record called Embalmer Tapes, from mysterious sonic terrorists Aesthetic Meat Front. That cd was a collection of processed sounds culled from the sounds of an actual embalming session, those sounds, scraping and suction and whatever other sorts of things go on during the process were collected and tweaked into a strange and haunting dronescape, and of course we sold out of them immediately (we actually got a handful back in if you missed out, see elsewhere on the site).
But the man behind AMF read our review and got in touch to see if we were interested in getting copies of a super limited releases celebrating the 10th anniversary of Aesthetic Meat Front. So here we have it, Temple Of Flesh a massive gathering of sights and sounds, a cd, a cd-r and a dvd-r, containing sounds and songs and sights and visuals, performances and rituals, all set to the glorious haunting soundscapes of Aesthetic Meat Front. This was limited to 180 copies world wide, we got 25 and we will NOT be able to get more.
So let's go one disc at a time. The first disc features the text from AMF's Temple Of Flesh ritual, translated into 12 languages, and then processed into a world of mysterious invocations and chants, industrial drones and dark ambience. A truly creepy, harrowing sonic journey, deep dark resonant smears of low end drift beneath martial drumming, and haunting chants, swirling snippets of sound, warbling and whirring, growled animalistic voices, bizarre ambient FX, jagged shards of industrial detritus, bursts of fuzzed out hiss and grinding slabs of rhythmic chaos, creepy chorales stretched into seasick soundscapes, disembodied voices drift and hover, snippets of found sound and conversation, all of these disparate elements woven into an epic, monstrous sonic tale of death destruction and mayhem, of blood and death and rebirth. So intense and strangely beautiful.
This limited edition version also includes a cd-r, that features tons of remixes as well as rare unreleased material. Also included is a dvd-r chronicling one of AMF's live rituals, an extensive modern primitive ritual featuring beautiful women in corsets, piercing, bloodletting, animal carcasses, suspensions, shaving, lots of blood and bodily fluids, very intense and graphic, all set to the creepy otherworldly dronescapes of Aesthetic Meat Front. Not for the squeamish or easily offended. As if that weren't enough, all three discs are packaged in a DVD style case, with full color covers, the bonus cd-r is housed in a hand numbered paper sleeve (numbered and decorated in blood!) as well as a handful of full color inserts, with photos from the rituals, text and assorted AMF related information.
SUPER LIMITED!!! Once these are gone they are gone for good....
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It had to happen. That's right, someone naming a band Amon Dude. And it probably had to happen in Finland. Which it did. This one man band just so happens to be one of the guys from Avarus, so we were sort of expecting some damaged foresty krautrock what with the name and all, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is some super psychedelic, ultra freaked out, dense and damaged cartoonish splattery improvised noise rock weirdness. And that barely does this stuff justice.
A cacophony or heavily affected percussion, damaged electronics, primitive vocal experiments, a swirling sonic chaos, clattery and explosive, jagged and head spinning, a totally mind blowing brain melting WHAT-THE-FUCK freakout. Hard to even describe what's going on, as it changes pretty much every few seconds. Imagine Carl Stalling orchestrating the No Neck Blues Band after an all night crystal meth binge, or the soundtrack to a Bollywood movie played by Violent Onsen Geisha, or a Perrey And Kingsley recording session after having taken WAY too many drugs and having some sort of musical mental breakdown or maybe even Casiotone For the Painfully Demented and Damaged.
Whatever you call it, this is one weird and wacked and WAY OUT record. Fans of the weirdest of musics from the Finnish fringe will definitely want one of these, as will those of you looking for a party clearer, head spinner, lease breaker, or sonic palate cleanser.
SUPER LIMITED CD-R!!! We got a handful but they will probably be gone pretty fast, and once they are, that's it...
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We got a wee bit more from Animal Collective to close out 2006! Or, shall we say, to start 2007. This is their limited edition Australian import 'tour only' release People! There was a cdep version comprised of four songs: the title track, "Tikwid" and "My Favorite Colors" as well as a live version of the title track, but that's already gone (actually, we've got 2 left so we're not even listing it -- however it's gonna come out domestically sometime this winter supposedly). But we do still have maybe a dozen of this 7", which features just the first two tunes. It's a limited pressing of 1000, and we won't be able to get any more... so don't dilly dally!
More black metal cassette tape madness, this time from mysterious Japanese horde Arkha Sva, who offer up a series of super grim, ultra murky buzz drenched black rituals. Channelling the spirit of the black legions, Mutiilation, Belktre, Vlad Tepes, this is fierce and furious lo-fi blackness, the buzzing guitars a muddy swirl, the drums a throbbing murky pulse, all underpinning guttural strangled vocalisations, a swirling fuzzy black missive to the dark lord, there are some strange sonic surprises tucked away, like the WAY louder-than-everything-else high pitched scream and weird falsetto wailing in the first track. But for the most part this is just an awesome, droney blast of murky black buzz that is as hypnotic and space-y as it is blown out and brutal.
Some metal records truly stand the test of time. Sounding as good now as they did when you first heard them. And rare is the record that sounds as good at 36 as it did at 16. But if you ask the metalheads around here, we all agree that Armored Saint's March Of The Saint is one of those records. Part of the same L.A. scene that produced W.A.S.P., Quiet Riot, Dokken, Malice, Ratt, and Motley Crue (Tommy Lee was almost a member of Armored Saint), Armored Saint were somehow a whole lot heavier, blending the thrashy sound of Metallica with the melody and songwriting of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Plus you got John Bush, who has to have one of the best metal voices EVER, not one of those soaring high eighties metal voices, instead a super raspy, melodic croon, that managed to be both rough and melodic at the same time. It was hard not to love the Anthrax records that featured Bush on lead vocals (well, okay, not that hard) but in Armored Saint everything just clicked. A lot of it of course had to do with the songs. Every one packed with hooks, killer leads, amazing riffs, kick ass drumming, unforgettable choruses, one of the best metal records of the eighties for sure. Not sure what else to say. This is one of the few records that we've been listening to for basically the last 20 years. In fact, all of us have it on our iPods as well, and every time it comes on, it's sort of an unspoken truth, that it gets turned up so we can all revel in the metal majesty of March Of The Saint.
As with all the Rock Candy reissues (including the Billy Squier reviewed elsewhere on this list), there are tons of liner notes, interviews with the original band members (who strangely talk mostly about how disappointed they were with the album), rare photos, and three bonus tracks, 24 track demo versions of "March Of The Saint", "Mutiny On The World" and "Seducer" (one of Lars Ulrich from Metallica's favorite songs!).
Holy shit! Record collector nerds and weird music obsessives might as well prepare to give up their first born or take out another mortgage on the ol' homestead, cuz this series of ultra limited 8" SQUARE lathe cuts is gonna break the bank, but it's so so so worth it. This is the first in a series that looks like it will include a who's who of noise rock / free rock / avant noise / free folk luminaries, including SO many all time AQ faves it makes our heads spin. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The first batch of these babies just showed up, three titles, each a custom hand cut, Peter King lathe cut, 8", and SQUARE!!! Packaged in gorgeous square and triangular die cut sleeves, super fancy textured paper, with a paste on front cover and a printed insert, each insert hand numbered, each release limited to 150 copies. Phew.
For those new to the lathe cut, it's a hand cut record, on polycarbonate not vinyl, they are more fragile than normal vinyl, and after repeated plays the sound quality can degrade a bit, but in our experience, in most cases it just makes them sound cooler. Peter King is THE MAN when it comes to super limited small run lathe cut releases, and pretty much every cool band you can think of has gone to him for some super rare or limited release or another.
So anyway, these are clear, they are 8"s across, shaped like a square and are insanely limited, and thus, pretty dang expensive! This is the second in the series and features Astral Social Club, an offshoot of the mighty Vibracathedral Orchestra. And as you might expect, this is two sides of gloriously buzzing raga like ur-drone. Glistening, glimmering, shimmering, sparkling, guitars and sitars and strings and reeds all tangled up in a blissed out harmonious buzz, albeit very melodic, with weird subtle sonic colorations and constantly shifting overtones. So lovely!
Another giant issue of Jack Rabid's wonderful magazine that's been covering an incredibly wide range of music for years and years. This time out The Decemberists grace the cover and inside nestled amidst 228 pages there are interviews with and features on Sonic Youth, Fiery Furnaces, Jello Biafra, Hidden Cameras and lots more!
We're sort of surprised this match up hadn't already happened before. Pretty much a no brainer. Campbell Kneale, aka Birchville Cat Motel, and Anla Courtis, from the now defunct Reynols. While it most definitely seems like a match made in noise rock heaven, there was definitely the potential for a very chaotic mess, but the two most definitely brought out the best in each other, and the result might just be one of our favorite releases from either of these guys.
Three looooong tracks, each a gorgeous and languorous slow build, minimal, but dense and heavily layered, simple propulsive rhythms, and all sorts of warm rich sonic textures. The opener, is maybe one of the most beautiful 'noise rock' tracks EVER. Swirling, beautiful cello-like melodies, low and lumbering, moan and croon, a deep, resonant, cavernous, creeping minor key dirge, lurking mysteriously beneath a swirling cloud of metallic cicadas and oscillating whirs and flutters. One of those tracks that should go on forever. Building gradually in intensity, but never exploding into full on heaviness, instead just drifting dreamlike, until the various sounds peel back leaving just a gorgeous soundscape of simulated nature sounds and abstract ambience. The first time we threw this on we ended up listening to this track 3 or 4 times in a row. But as soon as we could tear ourselves away, we realized that the other two tracks were darn near just as beautiful.
The second track is a spacious and spare expanse of tinkling music box chimes, strange percussive thumps, guttural vocalizations, and a warm melodic whir, heavily panned, swooping dramatically from speaker to speaker. Those swoops eventually transforming into thick slabs of guitar whir, a gorgeously glacial epic, rife with muted melodies, and dense with sonic subtleties...
The closer pretty much seals the deal. Simple tribal drums, clattery junkyard percussion, over warbly warped FX drenched guitars and a loping dirge-like rhythm building in intensity until the guitars become a huge tangly squall above that static mesmerizing rhythm. It's almost like a noise rock Tom Waits.... like the Black Rider performed by Sunroof! Or a super blissed out take on old Swans. Guitars so thick and warm you just want to curl up and climb under, letting that clattery motorik rhythm just carry you away...
This Italian band's sole album from 1985 is a tough one to figure out. An oddity all right. They're definitely a metal band at heart -- the fast-paced, pre-album demo track "Midnight Madman" included here as one of four bonus cuts is proof of that -- but on their album itself, they somehow created a much more unexpectedly PSYCHEDELIC and spacey, synthy sound. Totally dark and gothic in a metal way, yeah, but lost in space at the back of a black hole (of course), a slowed-down, doomed-out, dosed-with-cough-syrup vibe, splicing bits of Voivod with the likes of Jacula... in fact, the lurching music on this crackly disc (mastered directly from a none-too-pristine vinyl copy, the original reels having been lost to time, and sounding to us all the better for it!) could be AQ-faves Jacula given an '80s metal makeover... the church organ strains that open "Demoniac City" surely set that tone. Meanwhile, the title track cops a riff from Sabbath's "Electric Funeral", as if to give the nod to their biggest influence we're pretty sure. But the doomy compositions of vocalist/bassist/organist Robert Measles (great name!!) also derive from phantasms far beyond our plane, we're pretty sure of that as well.
Those in the know about Italian '80s metal acts like Death SS, Paul Chain, Bulldozer and Dark Quarterer are aware that a bizarre, poverty-stricken sort of prog weirdness often infects the proceedings, and Black Hole are no exception. In their case, on this album, it makes for something really strange and special, creating a cultish legacy that led to this cd reissue. We're glad to get to hear it! Now it's time to burn the black candles and visit Black Hole's "Spectral World" ruled by "Blind Men And Occult Forces"...
Blacker than black metal from 20 Buck Spin, the label best known for bringing forth a great deal of quality DOOOOOOOM to mankind from bands like Graves At Sea and Black Boned Angel. So you can imagine that any black metal they'd put out would be some heavy duty stuff... indeed as is the Book Of Black Earth, who hail from the frozen tundra of, uh, Seattle. The band features ex-members of the late, lamented Teen Cthulhu. They've shed any of the jocularity wrongly suggested by their old band's moniker, however, and have gotten even MORE brutal. It's double bass blasting death metal style aggression mixed with the grandiose, epic majesty (and keyboards) of Nordic black metal. The vocals are on the guttural, DM side of things, though with a BM rasp. And (as you might expect) some sludge-trudging doom riffs are wielded as well. Yes, it's supremely heavy, though there is a welcome amount of melody to be found amidst the screams, distortion, and drum-pummel. Yet another elite horde of warriors have joined the North American black metal army!!
Following their recent successful collaboration with American doom-drone-druids SUNNO))), who could Japanese behemoths Boris turn to for another joint effort in channelling the ultimate in psychedelic heaviness? They'd already teamed up with Keiji Haino some years ago, but there's another underground Japanese psych-scene guitar hero who Boris NEEDED to get freaky with (as proven here), and it wasn't Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple (though that's bound to happen someday...). No, as you already know, it's Michio Kurihara, formerly of Tokyo retro psych legends White Heaven, currently in both Ghost and The Stars. He's also played a bunch with Damon and Naomi, and released his own solo album Sunset, also on Pedal. His West Coast '60s inspired guitar style is virtuosic and distinctive, and certain to spark something special with the Boris crew, as any Kurihara fan would expect.
On very the first track "Rafflesia", Boris and Kurihara are already in slo-mo drone bliss, with shafts of white light seemingly streaming from their foreheads, guitars, amplifiers... then the title track starts off, all quiet and gentle, Boris guitarist Wata singing sweetly, her breathy vocals over a lackadaisically krauty, Can-like rhythm -- before Kurihara's stinging lead guitar cuts in, sizzling and distorted, at about the song's half-way point. It's a soft-loud psych/pop lover's dream.
The third track "Starship Narrator" features Boris bassist Takeshi on vocals, a more rockin' tune, again overpowered before the end by the intense motorpsycho guitar of Kurihara. "My Rain" is a brief, delicate interlude, post-rock prettiness personified. That's followed by "Shine", which could be Ghost (or Can), or Boris themselves circa Feedbacker. Again Takeashi takes the vocals, going for a melancholic wail... at this point, you realize that the feelings generated/explored so far make Rainbow almost an emo album! "You Laughed Like A Watermark" is another laid-back number, again blessed with gorgeous, slow-burn Kurihara lead work. Next, "Fuzzy Reactor" is again a drifting, pulsing bliss-out, an instrumental that contrasts greatly with the next number, the balls-out, almost-funky-but-for-the-wild-tangle-of-guitar-distortion "Sweet No.1". Spent, Boris and Kurihara wind things up with the gentle, music-box coda "...And, I Want", a fitting end to a beautiful, emotive, and often more than usually psych guitar damaged album!! One that's not so much HEAVY in the usual Boris sense but a more of a varied, dreamy, almost poppy platform for their esteemed guest to crank out his Quicksilver leads...
Man oh man. After Pink and Altar and the too-limited Vein 12" and let's not forget the cd version of Dronevil, and touring over here as well, you'd think Boris would have been all done for 2006. But then they sneaked this one in too! Our copies showed up the day after Christmas. But we figure that since most folks ain't getting their hot little hands on this 'til the new year [now], it'll be an early contender for a lot of 2007 top-ten lists despite being technically a tail-end of 2006 release. And at this rate, we'd imagine the Boris juggernaut won't be slowing down AT ALL this year, but we can expect a lot of new, interesting avenues to be explored as their output intensifies.
We're not sure how limited this is or not, it is a Japanese import though so when/if (who are we kidding, when not if) we run out it might be a while before we can get more. In a jewel case, the cd cover featuring nice metallic ink printing on fancy paper, with vellum inserts.
We recently made Thomas Brinkman's Klick Revolution an AQ Record of the Week, and have been listening to it pretty much non stop. So much so that we almost forgot that we had previously reviewed his first "Klick" record from 2000, which while maybe not some strange tribute to pinball, still manages to be a glorious collection of clicks and pop and whir and hiss. Anyone who has been digging Klick Revolution will definitely want to pick its precursor up as well. Here's what we had to say about it when we first listed a while back:
On Klick, Thomas Brinkmann borrows Christian Marclay's technique of literally slicing the grooves of his records with a razorblade to add some new elements to his sterile techno minimalism. While this may be Brinkmann's most sonically unsettling record, it manages to retain his trademark techno structuralism, albeit sounding as if the needle is struggling through a thick layer of grime. The erratic glitches of surface noise and the lulling stutter of run out grooves stand much more in the forefront of Brinkmann's Klick than on previous works. His sterile dub techniques dissolve fragments of surface noise into ghostly decay and generate a delicate flutter much like distant helicopter blades or the choral chatter of locusts. All in all, this is a successful departure for Brinkmann, one that takes him outside of the cold rigidity of most techno minimalism and into the sloppiness of the natural world. Fans of Philip Jeck will definitely appreciate.
We recently reviewed a batch of badass Buffalo reissues courtesy of Aztec Music, an Australian label that's been mining the rich ore of that country's rock n' roll history back in the '60s and '70s. Of the other Aztec releases we've checked out so far, the two albums by a band called Coloured Balls stand out as being crucial to connoisseurs of loud guitar rock. This one's their debut from 1973, and it reveals a high energy band revelling in the oldies rock n' roll of years past (witness their cover of "Whole Lotta Shakin'") while revving up the raw, anti-hippie energy that would explode in the UK circa '77... Yeah, while Buffalo were a proto-metal outfit, sort of the Aussie uncles of Monster Magnet, the Coloured Balls, while heavy, we'd have to describe as being more punk, or proto-punk. And there's a definite dose of boogie bar band bluesiness a la George Thorogood, or better yet, UK blues rock greats the Groundhogs, circa their progressive masterpiece Split. But with much more of a hooligan, kick-yer-head in edge, that's for sure. Some other early '70s acts with similar tendencies with which Coloured Balls could be aligned include the Pink Fairies, the MC5, Crushed Butler, and, not long after, AC/DC.
Apparently they had a lot of trouble with their "anti-social" image (sorta skinheadish "sharpie" haircuts, violence at their shows) but this music's got a lot more going for it than that. The recording simply sounds fantastic, powerful. Real rock n' roll guts and gusto, played by guys who knew what the heck they were doin' -- Coloured Balls were the brainchild of an already-veteran guitar hero named Lobby Loyde, who is all over this album (as well as a bunch of other Aztec reissues as well...).
And we gotta hand it to Aztec, they do a great job in the reissue dep't. This digitally remastered cd comes in a beautiful digipack, with a thick booklet full of pictures and liner notes, including a pro-Balls blurb from Pavement's Stephen Malkmus of all people. There's even also an essay explaining the "sharpie" subculture phenomenon of the times. Plus, the cd features a slew of bonus tracks: six songs from singles, plus a sixteen minute, freeform freakout of a live track from '73 entitled "G.O.D." aka "Guitar Over Dose"!
For most of you, all you'll need to hear is "BRAND NEW DEAD C RECORD". And maybe also "VINYL ONLY." And let's not forget the ubiquitous "EXTREMELY LIMITED." At this point, about 33 words into what will undoubtedly be a 400 word review, most of you already have this in your cart and have moved on. But just in case...
Super limited lp only split, featuring noise rock deities the Dead C and Australian surreal space rockers Hi God People. The Dead C offer up two tracks, recorded live in 2002 at All Tomorrows Parties and on first listen is the Dead C at their most blissful and laid back. The first track opens with a sort of minimal Velvet Underground style groove, simple drums, muted melodies, but the whole thing is swathed in squealing, shrieking, creaking, stuttering shards of feedback. Eventually that feedback takes over, creating a new rhythm of its own, the drums spazz and sputter out, and suddenly we're in classic dark and dangerous Dead C territory again. Fuzzed out, blown out, overdriven, psychedelic NOISE rock, somehow free and abstract, but totally propulsive and groovy, with strangely super melodic vocals buried WAY down in the mix. The second track is another blissy drone out, that by the end of the side breaks down into some seriously noisy freakout action, sounding almost like some bootleg Stooges jam, pulled apart, jacked up and blown wide open! Fuzzy and murky but still strangely (noise) rocking!
The three tracks on the flipside from Australia's Hi God People, are still noise rock, but much less abrasive and more melodic. The opener is super abstract, with bits of sample conversation, warbly organs, shimmering feedback, a lazy glimmering drift. The second track kicks in with some almost Sonic Youth like grooves, simple drumming and tangled up atonal guitars, and some awesome, out of the blue snarling tigers (!). They finish things off with a super moody laid back blown out psych jam, with weird Patty Waters like vocals. Cool.
Packaged in a hand silkscreened sleeve, with a two sided printed insert, all adorned with some super cool, very Devendra Banhart looking geometric artwork. And need we say, EXTREMELY LIMITED!!!
We all went a little gaga for those BBC Radiophonic Workshop cds, amazing collections of freaky and far out music for movies and radio and television, crafted in mad scientist like labs packed to the gills with strange sound making devices, primitive analog synths, tape machines and all manner of random electronic bric a brac. Delia Derbyshire was one of the Workshop elite, having been responsible for the Dr. Who theme as well as the Tomorrow People theme and loads of other legendary BBC songs and sounds.
This super limited lp, is a repress of a rare and long out of print disc of library mood music released on KPM in 1972. Derbyshire and her sonic cohorts recorded the record as Electrosonic, using pseudonyms as well, to avoid any sort of complications due to their positions at the BBC. The results were of course fantastic. Moody and mysterious, wild and playful, spacey and haunting. From Goblin-esque creepy haunted house synthscapes, to freaky fuzzy funky seventies sci-fi grooves, to far out bloops and bleeps. Analog synths, jazzy upright bass, tons of primitive and not so primitive effects, all whipped into impossibly catchy and fantastical sounds and songs.
This was SUPER SUPER LIMITED. It's already out of print. We have about 10 copies and once those are gone this is gone FOR GOOD. Gorgeous super stylish sleeve with amazing artwork, extensive liner notes, and pressed on super thick milky green vinyl!
Meric Long, the man behind Dodo Bird, is now calling his band Dodo Bird, which just so happened to be the title of his debut cd-r release which we carried earlier this year (which was billed as a Meric Long album). Confused? Just get this, that Meric Long along with percussionist Logan Kroeber are now Dodo Bird, but as far as we can tell unlike their namesake they are neither feathered and flightless nor extinct. In fact, from the sounds of this, their first full length cd, this Dodo Bird is flourishing, blossoming, ready to take flight. With his contemplative lyrics, terrific songwriting and rich arrangements of vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, percussion and... trombone(!), Long more than makes good on the impressive promise he showed on his debut. Throughout the proceedings he exudes a warm charm and confidence and an occasional willingness to gently nudge the boundaries of the acoustic folk singer/songwriter terrain. Jeff Mangum and John Darnielle, set a place at the table for Dodo Bird!
Massive slow motion funereal doom metal matchup between two relative unknowns, Drear and Great American Desert. Both traffic in that sort of slow motion doom drenched sludge we can never seem to get enough of. Huge downtuned riffs, simple spaced out drum pound and thick swaths of black fuzz. Doomlords into the usual suspects, Moss, Esoteric, Corrupted, Noothgrush, Catacombs, Eyehategod, Monarch, Stumm, Dot [.], Winter, Disembowelment, Skepticism, Thergothon, will pretty much HAVE to own this.
Drear are up first, and just happen to feature one member from AQ faves Contra Ignem Fatuum (aka Circumscriber), their brand of UK black doom definitely falls somewhere right between Esoteric and Moss, three massive lengthy epics, dense and fuzzed out, but sort of dreamy and melancholic at the same time. The vocals are harsh and hellish, but they are draped over fuzzy soft focus buzzscapes, dreary, dreamlike and shimmery, the whole thing anchored by a simple Godflesh at 16rpm drum machine plod.
Drear are teamed up with Oklahoma based Great American Desert, who have a whole different take on funeral doom. The sound is less massive and more minimal. Distorted guitars spin a murky muddy web in the background, the drums a simple spare framework, but the vocals, holy shit the vocals, some sort of super processed, demonic alien mechanical growl, metallic and distorted, like dragging huge pieces of metal across sharp rocks, recording them onto a metal cylinder and playing them back through a wall of tweeters run through a pitchshifter and a battery of distortion pedals. Occasionally the background is a weird lo-fi clean guitar tangled up with some low end rumble for some minimal doom metal Low action. But always with those vocals!
Both bands are amazing and fucked in their own unique way, so needless to say this is some essential low end for the doom obsessed among you...
The Mystery Sea label specializes in "Night-Ocean Drones" which as you can imagine definitely appealed to the AQ sensibility. And their series of ultra limited, gorgeously hand assembled, elaborate cd-r's has included releases from Aidan Baker, Ultrasound, Moljebka Pvlse, Troum, mnortham, Paul Bradley, Coelacanth and others, you can understand why we're just as excited to check out Mystery Sea releases by bands we've never heard before. This is only the second Mystery Sea release we've been able to get enough of to review and list (the first being the amazing Emerge cd-r) and it's absolutely fantastic.
Two lengthy epics from this Russian duo, each a massive slow motion trawl through some dark and dimly lit undersea world. Drifting and floating, huge swaths of low end resonate and reverberate... It's the sound of glaciers drifting across black seas, old abandoned ships forever floating on huge slow shifting swells, a musical bathysphere drifting along the ocean floor, this IS night-ocean music. Dreamy and shimmery, dark and dense, mysterious and haunting, but the music of Exit In Grey is not simple, not just one dimensional drone, these tracks are thick and layered, deep and rich, with all manner of overtones getting all tangled up, strange sonic subtleties, various shades of sound, slowly changing hue, twisting and distorting to form other shapes. Nameless Droplet most definitely benefits from deep listening, although like most drone records, it's perfectly okay to just float on the surface, but dive deep and there are wonders to behold.
STRICTLY LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! We got 30. Once they are gone, they are gone FOREVER! Gorgeously packaged with full color artwork, each copy numbered. So nice!
Sounds as though Canadian indie rockers the Faunts got their instruments a wee bit intoxicated and the resulting music is itself quite intoxicating. Gauzy, highly processed guitars, shadowy drones and rounded pulses swirl and drift in and out of focus. A heady late night new wave, a lot more songy and a little less fuzzy and blissy than their full length, but it's still dark and delirious, wrapped in various degrees of instrumental haze and drone psych buzz, with bits of electronic skitter, and loping laid back down tempo groove mixed in here and there.
A great follow-up to their High Expectations / Low Results 2005 album!
Experimental electronica (particularly the glitch techno and collage work on the Mille Plateaux label) is getting dangerously close to self parody, with the definitions of very specific electronic music forming ever increasing legions of devoted followers
Fennesz' third album -- the aptly titled "Endless Summer" -- picks up where his ep of Rolling Stones / Beach Boys covers left off with a digital dispersion of "fun in the sun" rock mythologies. While there are no obviously discernable pop culture references, Fennesz builds a sound that really is quite summery from odd duets between disintegrating acoustic guitar strums and the coalescence of digital errata. Thus, this album has the feeling of the classic Beach Boys sound, but very little of that structure. These are NOT Beach Boys covers; but if he said they were, we'd have no basis to call him a liar. Regardless, Fennesz's "Endless Summer" is just fucking great.
Wonderful! Hop aboard Dave Fischoff's dreamy twilight pop ship and float up up up amid the shimmering stars. His soft, sensitive vocals melt into the lush, sweeping orchestral pop of The Crawl. A Chicago Public Library librarian by day, Fischoff namechecks Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach and Boards Of Canada as influences for this his third full length, and they definitely do make themselves apparent. That said, the results are a dreamy sweet confection which nuzzles in comfortably next to the likes of mellow pop-tronicans Canada's Caribou and pretty much everyone on Germany's Morr Music label. Absolutely sigh inducing!
Another 7" dose of limited musical confections from Artschool Dropout, this time from the siren of lo-fi folk, Josephine Foster. Six lovely songs, half of which were home recorded with ukulele, have the dusty feel of recently unearthed 78 recordings from the 20's. Comes in silkscreened paper sleeve with artwork by Plastic Crimewave.
SUPER LIMITED, once these are gone we won't be able to get more...
As a means of generating some income to help finance the studio time for Angels Of Light recordings, Michael Gira produced two cds that he sold exclusively through his Young God website and featured material that he recorded alone in his office with just a microphone and acoustic guitar. Many of these songs from those two discs (called Solo Recordings From Home and I Am Singing To You From My Room) had gone on to be incorporated into the Angels Of Light repertoire. By all accounts, those two self-released discs are long gone... and may never get reissued, in fact. However, Lumberton Trading convinced Gira to compile the choice moments from those two discs on the vinyl only Songs For A Dog. To insure that even the die-hard Swans / Angels Of Light fans will pick this up, Gira has tossed in a couple of unreleased tracks that didn't appear on those aforementioned discs. There's also a couple of nods to Gira's time wrangling Swans as the track "God Damn The Sun" (from Swans' Burning World album) and "God's Servant" (which was in rotation for late Swans live gigs, only to be reworked as an Angels Of Light tune). Expect jagged edges to Gira's downer folk which has been getting strangely cheery in recent years... and also expect this to disappear rather quickly, as it's a pretty limited pressing.
Volume Six in the "Hijokaidan Rarity Series" is another treat for all of you into UTTER DEVASTATING NOISE. As practiced in Japan, which makes it even better. Hijokaidan, despite fierce competition from Merzbow, Masonna, and quite a few others, are still the reigning Kings Of Noise in the Land Of The Rising Sun. With a cover and title paying homage to their krautrock heroes Faust, Hijokaidan's Tapes is a crucial entry in their discography, a record originally released in 1986 as sort of a career retrospective to date, comprising tracks from various eras and lineups, all only previously available on cassette. It starts off way back in 1979 with Hijokaidan's first ever recording, the studio-destroying (so they, rather believably, claim!) electric guitar and vocal skree of "Angel Dust" as performed by the founding duo of Jojo Hiroshige and Naoki Zushi. 1980's "Circles" adds more members and instrumentation (including drums and saxophone) and certainly doesn't let up from the noisy standard set by "Angel Dust". Then there's a 1985 track by the Incapacitants (members of Hijokaidan, equally noisy on their own), followed by two lengthy cuts from '85 and '86 inspired by horror film/fiction ("The Beyond" and "Salem's Lot", the latter an especially effective/destructive 18+ minute drones n' screams attack). And then Tapes finishes up with a cover tune, their beautifully blown-out take on the classic '70s space rocker "Silver Machine" by another band of Hijokaidan heroes, Hawkwind. Good stuff. Plus, the front cover features very personal notes on each track, and a history of the band '79-'86, neatly typed up in English. How can any Hijokaidan/noise fan do without this??
Ignatz II (or III if you count the recently reviewed I Will Soothe My Eye To Feast It With A Sight Of Beauty cd-r) heralds the return of our favorite alien Appalachian troubadour and another transmission of fuzzed out, obfuscated, FX laden, bedroom free folk outer space buzz and shimmer. Not too much has changed since I (a past AQ Record of the Week), but if anything, the sound of Ignatz has become even darker and more expansive, and somehow, impossibly more beautiful and mysterious. Another haunting and dreamily disorienting stopover in a musical journey to points unknown. While some of what you see or hear on II might sound familiar, it doesn't take too long before you realize that the sounds here are... well, different, off kilter, damaged, prettiness is present but summarily obfuscated. Bits of folks and blues surface here and there, but are slowly and methodically transformed into a whole new shapes and sounds. Every melody, at first warm and inviting, begins to twist and change, becoming some bastardized blues, sometimes broken down into jagged shards and stumbling cadences, other times splattered into glimmering glistening sonic sparkles.
The root of Ignatz's sound is still a wonderfully gnarled Appalachia, guitars and vocals mostly, drenched in filthy spacey FX most of the time, but even when delivered sans effects, they manage to sound alien and otherworldly. Ghostly abstract dirges, lengthy meanders through epic and ominous landscapes of blown out slow burn riffs and bits of delicate fingerpicking. Hovering above are wistful, abstract vocals, distorted and indistinct, wrapped around mournful melodies, the whole thing stumbling and slightly off kilter. Occasionally the guitars build into huge thick torrents of fuzzy riffing, dense and chaotic, before the riffs crumble and threaten to fall apart completely, until the vocals and guitars tangle up and become more and more indistinct, a slow shifting cloud of blues shimmer and folk swirl.
It almost sounds as if someone pulled apart some old blues 78's, piece by piece, note by note, and then, hundreds of years later, reassembled them without any instructions, utilizing some as yet undiscovered alien technology, only to discover that THIS is what music sounded like in 2007. What a strange world it must have been....
This warm and warbly, futuristic ancient folk is a masterfully mangled Delta blues transmitted from planet to planet, and with each million light year stretch, the sound becomes more tangled and less obviously blueslike. Alien musical transmissions intercepted using an old victrola and played back by some crazy old man, sitting on his porch, armed with just an acoustic guitar, a pile of busted old wax cylinders, and a huge bank of broken and rusty effects pedals...
So goddamn great!
We weren't too taken with the most recent Inca Ore + Lemon Bear team up, it's too bad that one was the one released on 5RC and THIS one is a super limited cd-r instead of the other way around. The 5RC record was a bit of a cacophonous mess, lots of clang and clatter. It ended up sounding sort of bratty and obnoxious. But we're huge fans of Inca Ore, her two records before that one blew us away, and still get listened to all the time. SO we were ready to blame the mysteriously monickered Lemon Bear, but here we are with another Inca Ore n' Lemon Bear team up and it's gorgeous. A drifting spacious dreamworld of disembodied vocals, shimmering melodies, minimal percussion, all wrapped in clouds of spacey FX, fluttering flutes, warped and mangled strings, buzzing and creaking, voices drifting in and out, detuned guitars plucking out warbly melodies, the whole thing a very blissed out spaced out drift through a glistening diamond eyed dimension. Inca Ore's dreamy half hour perfectly segues into three new songs from AQ faves Starving Weirdos, who weave a haunting sonic travelogue through some ancient wilderness, a soundscape of distant insectoid buzz, whirring tectonic rumbles, glistening shimmering atmospheres, definitely their most eevocative recording yet. You can almost see the mountains in the distance, feel the warm breeze, feel the rocks and grass between your toes, hear the sounds of various animals and insects, almost like the soundtrack to a journey through the forest primeval. So murky and mysterious!
Packaged in hand painted sleeves, with printed inserts, and obviously, SUPER LIMITED!! This was a tour only release, we got a bunch direct from the bands but we're not sure how many are left or if we can even get more once we run out...
Some of you may remember Kowalsky from his first solo record released on Kranky back toward the beginning of this year, a pleasant slab of smeared indistinct ambience, shimmery and soft focus, a delicate soundscape of abstract sound that was definitely perfect late night listen.
With his first release for Root Strata, Kowalsky continues in the same direction, this time utilizing a much more eclectic array of source material: tape cassettes, sine oscillators, contact mics, bells, bird callers and a computer. Recorded live on KFJC in May, this half hour epic is another gorgeous slab of abstract ambience, those disparate sounds smoothed into thick warm swells, billowy swirls of smeared melody, and huge stretches of blissy whir. This is another one of those records that perfectly captures that sound we can't ever get enough of, a testament to the power of the drone, completely mesmerizing and hypnotic, when the music finally stops, your ears and your head feel empty, and it's only a matter of moments before we can't help ourselves, press play again and fill them back up.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!! We will not be able to get more. Packaged in gorgeous cardstock half sleeve, a printed paper insert, and a folded over QSL ham radio card from overseas holding the cd in place. Cool!
Finally managed to get enough copies of this 2001 release from New Zealand space raga rockers Lamp Of The Universe to list it. And just in time too as folks have been freaking out over this group, mainly the work of New Zealander Craig Williamson. A gorgeously laid back blissed out sonic exploration of Eastern melody, buzzing ur-drone and psychedelic space rock. Dense tangles of steel strings, both acoustic guitar and sitar, whir and shimmer, spread out into sun baked expanses of transcendental mesmer. Each track a swoonsome raga, this disc more than any of the other Lamp releases, is heavy on the vocals, with Williamson's voice a monotone chant like invocation, adding another layer to the already dense sonic swirl. Drums shuffle and skitter, wah wah guitar swoops in and out, leads twist and turn and get all tangled up in thick clouds of druggy atmosphere, everything wrapped in billowy outer space FX. The final track, a sixteen minute slow burn called "Dream Sequence" sounds just like that. Eyes closed, drifting off on a lighter than air whorl of disembodied psych guitar, intricate little tangles of melodies, simple muted drumming, all smeared into a long streak of slow shifting colors, stretching from here into infinity....
Druggy and dreamlike and so nice...
With everyone around here going gaga for records from New Zealand space raga outfit Lamp Of The Universe, we have been trying to track down some of their older, more difficult to get titles. We managed to get a whole bunch of Echo In Light (reviewed elsewhere on this list) but could only get 5 copies of The Cosmic Union, direct from the band, which means when these 5 are gone this is REALLY gone for good.
All the elements are here, thick swaths of sitar buzz, steel string guitars, simple percussion, swirls of spacey FX, blissed out hypnotic repetition, chant like vocals, all wrapped up into slow burning, psychedelic space rock majesty. Druggy and divine!
Only 5 copies so prepare to be disappointed. Or just order Echo In Light when we run out of this one...
You might wonder why we're listing this, already the second album of 2006 from Harlem rapper Loon (who first broke through in '02 with a cameo on P. Diddy's "I Need A Girl", and went on to be one of Mase's Harlem World MCs, a project which apparently didn't work out too well, judging by the Mase dis track found on this disc...). Well, we happened to hear it, and it rules! Unlike a lot of hiphop albums, this isn't just one or two good tracks and then a bunch of skits and filler. Ok, there are a couple skits. But enough, um, "bomb tracks" to make it tough to chose when it came time to make sound samples. We feel like we're hearing some hits here, or should-be-hits. Like "You Told Me", with its Dr. Dre-like funk beats and Outkast-ish vocals, and (for some guys) easy-to-relate-to relationship lyrics. Or the adrenalized thrills of gangsta tale "Blap Blap". Plus you've gotta love a good dis track, and the condescendingly caustic, knife-twisting "Jimmy" here sure fits the bill. And that ain't even the one about Mase.
The lyrics aren't all the usual stale stuff, not just about bling n' things, and we totally dig Loon's low-key, laid-back flow (he sounds maybe a bit like Cam'ron) and the spare production. For some of our customers the likes of Loon might be old news, but for others, Loon is a lot MORE obscure than the latest limited to 50 copies Finnish heavy drone psych folk new weird cd-r in the highlights section... which means you might want to check it out!!
Super limited, self released ep from one of our favorite proponents of what we've decided to call fuzzy dreamdrone soft noise. Well, actually, we only decided to call it that just now, but it does describe the sound of Machinefabriek perfectly, as well as his Lampse labelmates Jasper TX and Gultskra Artikler, all of whom traffic in similar droney drift...
On Stottermuziek, Machinefabriek explores similar territory as on his AQ record of the week Marjin from back in May. A dark dreamlike journey through a swirling soundworld of minimal whir and hum, shimmer and sparkle. Super soft shuffling swells of barely there sound, bits of hiss and whirring white noise surfacing here and there, strings woven into soft smears of sound, crumbling slightly distorted melodies drifting to and fro like some alien sonic tide, buzzing steel strings over a muted distant percussive throb, all delicately arranged into a gorgeous soft focus sonic landscape.
Packaged a bit like the Celebrate Psi Phenomenon releases in sleeves made from old wall paper, in little 3" plastic pouches with a sticker affixed to the front. And as with most things like this... VERY LIMITED!!!
This is the first release we've had from dronelord Brendan Murray that wasn't either a cd-r or incredibly limited. And it's about time, cuz if you ask us, Murray is just as good as any of our other drone favorites, Coleclough, Chalk and the like. But Murray has his own thing going on. His is not so dark and minimal. Instead, his world of drones is an active one, alive with strange sounds that shimmer and shimmy, that buzz and blur, plenty of melody or at least a melodic sensibility that Murray seems to imbue all his work with. He often delves into near-noise, letting sounds grind and hiss, building industrial clatterscapes, jagged and harsh, and allowing them to settle into a not so obvious drone-like state. And his latest, Wonders Never Cease, manage to touch on all those various sounds and approaches and then some. From soft fluttering barely there drifts, to fuzzy stretches of muted minimal white noise, to dense and aggressive soundscapes of hiss and crunch, to the album's centerpiece, the 20 minute long "Seas", probably the most melodic track we've heard by Murray, strange disembodied melodies play out and then the various notes separate themselves from the melody and drift into the ether, floating weightless in a swirl of minimal low end pulses and distant keening high end shimmer. A twenty minute track that could last for 20 hours as long as we're concerned. The record finishes off with a 4 minute reprise of the opening track, turning its fuzzy bliss into a grinding crumbling slab of bob ambient splendor. Fucking awesome!
We love Necrofrost. The ultimate in damaged weirdo outsider black metal. Managing to be completely bafflingly bizarre but still grim and cult and black and heavy as fuck. This is one of two long overdue reissues, this one from 1999, and still sounding as amazing and as fucked as ever. It's called In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor after all, and features some of the best black metal song titles EVER: "Slaughtered With Misanthropic Intent", "Rapacious Forests In Ultimate Sleep", "The Return Of Animalian Bloodlust", "Bloodthrones And Legionwoods"...
And while the sound is appropriately black and buzzy, it's ultimately filtered through Necrofrost's cracked and distorted metal sensibility and ends up being some of the coolest weirdest black metal you will ever heard. At it's core, this is a loping midtempo, slightly doomy, buzz drenched black metal. But Necrofrost take that sound and drag it kicking and screaming, bloody and battered through some haunted forest, into a cave and down into the pits of hell. While not as completely wacked as their other record Bloodstorms Voktes Over Hytrunghas Dunkle Necrotroner, In A Misty Soar And On Its Swampy Floor is more subtly fucked, its dementedness demonstrated less by bursts of renaissance faire folly or country banjos and more by some inherent, intangible what the fuck vibe that seems ooze from every recorded second.
After a weird, horror movie piano intro, with minor key strings, sounding like some Morricone spy thriller, the band lurch into black action. Sheets of blasting buzz, howled demonic shrieks, over a stumbling chaotic blast beat, the tempos ever shifting, bizarre atonal Greg Ginn guitars playing tangled angular leads, strange doom breakdowns, almost jaunty polka style rhythms, twisted and tweaked circusy guitar melodies, albeit all doused in grim blackness, thick washes of medieval keyboards, haunting minor key arpeggiated guitars, these are all part of Necrofrost's sinister sonic world, but ultimately, their grim black blasts are fucked enough, the perfect black metal gateway, luring you with blast and buzz, grimly sucking you into their strange sonic underworld, and maybe once you have successfully traversed Necrofrost's Misty Soar and Swampy Floor, you'll be ready to brave their Bloodstorms...
Essential for all fans of Striborg, Dead Reptile Shrine, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden, Benighted Leams, Furze, Urfaust, The One and other practitioners of the dark and damaged black arts...
UK label Barl Fire has a darn near perfect record with kick ass releases from James Blackshaw, Rameses III, Robert Horton, Lamp Of The Universe, Floating World, United Bible Studies, The North Sea, Uton and more. Their focus seemingly on drone folk and free rock. Their last two releases however, this one, and the James Reid (reviewed elsewhere on this list) have begun to drift more toward straight ahead folk, or at least the sort of modern folk of New Weird America and similar minded hippies. Where as the James Reid channels the spirit of Nick Drake, the Nihil Project is more of a pagan ritual, a sort of Renaissance Wicker Man mystickal magickal folk. Sitars and zithers, tablas, harpischords, violins, along with more traditional acoustic guitars and flutes as well as some little more modern electronic flourishes. Crooning vocals, lilting melodies, occasionally dark and ominous, but just as often playful and festive. Definitely for fans of the Wicker Man, Pentangle, Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Forest, Comus, as well as the new breed of modern folk a la Devendra, Brightblack, Newsom and the like...
The Tomlab label keeps their recent spell of eclecticity going with this new addition to their roster. Meet German artist Niobe (aka Yvonne Cornelius)! She joins the varied likes of Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Tujiko Noriko, The Books, Rafael Toral and Final Fantasy. Heck, she's pretty darn varied all by her lonesome. On White Hats, she jumps around from one dark grooviness to another, be it RnB, bossanova, downtempo or soul. At times her warbly, woozy music almost sounds as though it's being played on a cranky antique, malfunctioning record player that randomly lurches in speed. Most of her vocals are heavily effected and processed, making for a somewhat disorienting, druggy feel, but when her voice comes through the haze relatively unadulterated, it gives off a richly smoldering tone much like Lhasa. Overall, the album possesses an intoxicating, strange sultriness in a David Lynch / Angelo Badalamenti sort of way -- alternating between dream and nightmare.
New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark should really have a word with one of her country's citizens about the paucity of material he's been producing over the years. When so many other New Zealand sound artists release dozens of albums every year (you know, Birchville Cat Motel, Peter Wright, Anthony Milton, etc.), how can almost three years go by between albums for Rosy Parlane? Fortunately, Parlane's delinquency in keeping up with his fellow New Zealanders is made up by the quality of Jessamine. While Parlane's work harbors a glassine drone sensibility found in the similarly minded aforementioned NZ artists, his work has a considerable density and an appreciation for digital processing rarely heard in the feral drone underground. Parlane's ephemeral atmospheres strive for an activated minimalism, occasionally harboring similarities to the sparkling electronica of the Kompakt Pop Ambient sensibility; but he often pushes the work into teethgrinding electro-acoustic studies paralleling the Hafler Trio and even Hitoshi Kojo's vastly under appreciated collaboration with Maurizio Bianchi. The closest thing that Parlane gets to the tempestuousness of a Campbell Kneale outing is on Jessamine's finale which culminates in a steadily building track of monochromatic psychedelic distortion.
Metatron is the brand new album from Richard Pinhas, well respected as both a solo artist and member of '70s French electronic rock trailblazers Heldon. He's joined by an equally revered group of players from around the globe -- his former Heldon bandmates Didier Batard (bass), Patrick Gauthier (synthesizer) and Alain Renaud (guitar), Magma's Antoine Paganotti (drums), Philipe Simon (violin), Djam Karet's Chuck Oken Jr. and his frequent collaborator Jerome Schmidt (laptop). The twelve lengthy tracks on Metatron effectively integrate the many facets of Pinhas' illustrious career from Heldon's early mid-'70s raw rock jams to their later jaw-droppingly tight propulsive synth prog rock to his slinky intricate Fripp inspired guitar pieces to his more recent solo shimmeringly hypnotic soundscape works. Yes, it's all here and yes, it's quite a feast for the ears. The only parts that we could do without might be the bits with spoken word, the music is just fine all by itself, Mr. Pinhas!! Ah well, that's just our knee-jerk reaction to that sort of thing...
First things first, this Possessed has nothing to do with the '80s Bay Area metal band of the same name. No, this Possessed hails from even further back in time, the early '70s to be precise. And that leads us to say this: oh man, if we only had a time machine! Sure we'd go back and kill Hitler's parents and buy Google stock and all that... but our time machine day dream today is dominated by a flyer reproduced in the cd booklet to this release, advertising a month's worth of "progressive concerts" upcoming at a venue, somewhere in England, featuring performances by T2, Judus [sic] Priest, Israel's Jericho Jones, Thin Lizzy and this very band, Possessed. Good grief. We'd have been very very broke blokes back then, spending our last dime, I mean, farthing, on going out to such shows! What a time for hairy, heavy proto-metal awesomeness!
Thinking along those lines, Cathedral vocalist Lee Dorrian *has* built a time machine of sorts, though -- his label Rise Above now has an archival/reissue imprint called Rise Above Relics, dedicated to unearthing the heavy sounds of the past for them to be heard again today. This Possessed album (along with Luv Machine, also reviewed) is one of the first releases and we've gotta say they've dug up a gem, hitherto unknown to us.
Possessed, who you'd think might be some sort of occultic, Comusy folk band from the name and the Art Nouveau, Aubrey Beardsley style cover art, actually play a kinda proggy, kinda glammy hard rock that definitely bears some resemblance to aspects of Led Zeppelin. Just coincidence that Possessed's singer and guitarist, the India-born Vernon Pereira, had been in the original lineup of an outfit called The Band Of Joy, which also included Zeps-to-be Robert Plant and John Bonham? In any case, Possessed's most notable attributes would have to be the sinuous, crunchy riffing of guitarist Pereira, and also his Plant-like lead vocals. Furthermore, the band's spiralingly complex and bombastic songwriting ventures into the variety of "funk" displayed by Led Zeppelin on such songs as "Trampled Underfoot". Then there's the acoustic break of "Exploration Pt. II", also very Zeppish to be sure, though besides Zep, we'd compare this to Thin Lizzy and also to obscurities like Hard Stuff and even AQ faves Zolar X!
Despite being so worthy, Possessed never released an album, though they did record one in 1971 that, due to label disinterest, was shelved (until now, this is it). Sadly, three key band members, including Pereira, died in a motorway accident in 1976 ("Driver of Pop Group Death Van Dozed Off" reads the headline to one of the vintage newspaper clippings reproduced in the cd booklet), bringing a tragic end to the hopes and history of Possessed. The '70s rock star glory experienced by their chums in Led Zeppelin was never to be for this ill-fated band, though things could have, should have, turned out much differently, as at the time of the accident, they were on the verge at last of a major record deal. And they were supposedly slated to play shows in the USA with the Sex Pistols, bizarrely enough. Of course, that never happened.
So we're left with Exploration, while not the best unreleased album of the era ever (Jacula? Bedemon? Sproton Layer?), definitely a pretty darn cool one. It's a bit raw sounding, maybe a still a work in progress with some of the riffing rather similar in a couple of the songs, but it's definitely something that fans of both Led Zep and all the early '70s hard rock rarities we love should investigate! Nicely packaged with a fat, 20 page booklet full of notes and photos, slipcased to boot.
Existing a few years in the late '70s and early '80s, The Primitive Calculators were a tireless synth-punk band from Melbourne, Australia paralleling what Suicide and The Screamers were doing in New York and the West Coast, respectively. A four piece, the band specialized in dissonant and suitably primitive synths, dangerously fast drum machines, knife-on-the-guitar-strings screechiness and amphetamine-riddled vocal barks, snarls, and agitation. Back in the day, they released only one album, which was a sweaty live album featuring a wreckless performance to only a handful of Aussie art-punks who must have left with blood streaming from their ears. This had been reissued with a bunch of other additional live tracks on Chapter Music in 2005; and the same label has released this anthology of the Primitive Calculators ventures into a recording studio which resulted in a couple of singles. This collection also documents the Melbourne phenomenon known as "The Little Bands," through which the members of the Primitive Calculators would reconvene with other musicians and non-musicians alike to explore various aesthetic trajectories of electro-shock no-wave, splattered metal bashing, post-punk theatrics, and even some Young Marble Giants-esque art-pop. The sound of The Primitive Calculators obviously bleeds into the sounds of "The Little Bands" all sporting names such as Too Fat To Fit Through The Door, The Take, Morphions, and Thrush & The Cunts. As rough as many of these recordings are, this anthology is yet another example of how fertile the post-punk scene was in Melbourne, no matter how much the world had neglected it.
We recently discovered a group from Ireland called Bonecloud, we raved about them on a past list and promptly sold out of their cd-r's, which are now unfortunately out of print. The same thing happened with Bonecloud offshoot Quetzolcoatl, so when we discovered a brand new full length cd-r we jumped on it and ordered a whole bunch, but of course this too is super limited, so don't expect these to be around for long.
Quetzolcoatl, much like mothership Bonecloud, traffic in thick druggy soundscapes, various stringed instruments sending buzzing shimmering missives into a black and cloudy sky, roiling stormclouds raining down thick sheets of murky sonic mist, expansive stretches of murky melody obfuscated almost entirely by layer after layer of primitive buzz and fuzzy indistinct warble, all distorted and doused in damaged FX. Quetzolcoatl drift unmoored through a barren psychedelic landscape lit by a total eclipse, a strangely greyed sound world populated by vibrating strings, haunting disembodied reverberations, and all manner of psych rock shimmer, all tangled up into deep dreamy washes of warm chordal whir. Like spinning some unreleased My Bloody Valentine 45 with your finger as slow as possible, recording it on a microcassette recorder, dubbing it to an old VHS tape, playing that in some old broken VCR, recording that through a contact mic affixed to the speaker cone, dubbing it to a thrift store tape, and then playing it back on your shitty car stereo, so loud it makes you see stars and cloaks the world in a thick grey sonic mist. Nice!
While people are wandering around with freak folk stars in their eyes, soaking up the hippie good vibes of Joanna Newsom, Brightblack Morning Light, Vetiver, Devendra, and other fringed folkies, they run the risk of overlooking some lesser knowns, that are making music equally as compelling and beautiful, if not more so. Enter one James Reid, whose first (as far as we know) record has found its home on the always reliable Barl Fire label, who in the past have focused more on drone music and sort of avant free rock, but for their first foray into folk this is most definitely a winner.
Reid will undoubtedly get compared to Nick Drake, which is obviously not a bad thing, and in Reid's case is pretty spot on. His dark melancholic steel string guitar and warm honey vocals deftly woven into lush tapestries of dreamy moonlit folk.
But there are bits of modern (and not so modern) production fuckery that make Like A Buzzard Chased By Crows more than just a straight up folk record. Reid employs a strange technique where he seemingly records vocals or flute and then plays them back live into the microphone during the recording. So on one track, the background is a lush garden of swirling steel string guitar, while the vocals are played back on a crappy old tape player, the vocals stopping and starting with the kachunk of the play/stop button. Another track has a flute that sounds all weird and warbly as it is played back at various tempos, so at the beginning and end of each phrase you can hear the tape speed up or slow down. Really weird but it somehow sounds perfect. Those moments though are utilized with restraint, surfacing here and there, but overall, this is just a really beautiful, dark and lovely, moody and slightly ominous folk record that all you Devendra / Newsom / New Weird America obsessives should not miss out on....
ATTENTION FINNISH MUSIC FREAKS!!! It isn't all forest folk and hypnotic space rock over there you know. Finland has some serious metal bands as amazing, as heavy and as fucked up as anyplace else, maybe even more so. Just off the top of our heads, Dead Reptile Shrine! Maybe the weirdest black metal band ever, Reverend Bizarre, amazing classic doom, and let's see... Horna, Thergothon, Circle Of Ouroborus, Spiritus Mortis, Stumm, Wyrd, Vultyr, Trollheim's Grott, Uncreation's Dawn, we could go on and on and on...
So here we have a split from two Finnish black metal one man bands, one name you might recognize, the other you might not, but both are equally amazing.
It takes a very special band to share a split with the mighty and mighty demented Dead Reptile Shrine, but Torturium were up to the job, as evidenced on their recent split with DRC reviewed right here a few months back. Here they continue on their damaged and convoluted journey through some off kilter black thrash buzzscape. Midtempo and completely blown out, guitars are thick snarling beasts, flaying the flesh fron your skin, while some of the most anguished vocals EVER soar and shriek, the drums a murky thud, everything chaotic and crazed. Blasting and buzzing relentlessly, the whole thing threatening to come hunhinged and fly into sharp jagged pieces. Fucked up and furious and so great.
Torturium shares the split with fellow counryman Ride For Revenge, who with a name like that you might expect some classic thrash, but this is anything but. Muddy downtuned guitars, harsh vocals and simple pounding drums, all woven into some sort of murky dirgey black doom. Midtempo rhythms, drums WAY up in the mix, everything sort of droney and hypnotic, tons of reverb, weird swaths of creepy clean guitar, everything cloudy and indistinct, a super old school production liek Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT, fuzzy and relentlessly, trudging through thick FX drenched drifts of black buzz and weird whorls of creepy haunted house synth. So cool and so weird. Definitely a new favorite, and another notch in Finland's holster, or bedpost, or whatver. SO RECOMMENDED!!!
AQ fave Seht (aka Stephen Clover, who is all over this week's list, also appearing as part of The Stumps) teams up with East Coast sound maker Howard Stelzer for an intercontinental drone drift long distance relationship, and the results are absolutely divine. Both are masters of crumbling decayed ambience and slow shifting organic drones, both of which are present and accounted for on Exactly What You Lost. Field recordings, old tape loops, old tape recorders, all contribute to the gorgeously frayed soundscapes. Thick warm swells shimmer and slowly expand, the louder they get, the more they seem to crumble and dissipate, until the tones becomes staticky blasts of garbled sonic interference. Haunting faded melodies drift through dense clouds of abstract whir, all wreathed in a druggy haze, bits of tape manipulated into strange rhythms and textures, all leading up to the nearly half hour long final track, the darkest and heaviest on the record, a slow drift through a blissed out fuzz drenched universe, drifting in a slow orbit around both the Earth and the SUNNO))), floating on thick swells of downtuned thrum, a crumbling mass of glacial guitar, ominous, foreboding, but also strangely pretty, eventually emerging into a more serene soundworld of murky shimmer, oscillating overtones and strange footstep-like percussion. Mysterious, and quite cool!
DJ Disk brought this in the other day, a dvd (or dvd-r, we're pretty sure, it's blue on the playing side, whatever that means) version of this video document of the infamous Invisible Skratch Picklz, originally released on VHS ten years ago. Disk, Q-bert, Flare, Shortkut, and the devilish brown-bag masked Shiggar Fraggar himself skritch-skritch-scratch the hell out of a bunch of vinyl on an array of turntables, in a crazed DJ jam session. It's pretty amazing to see them do this live, even today. Indeed, it's what Time Magazine (TIME MAGAZINE!) called "the greatest turntable scratch show ever created". Frenzied fun showcasing mad skillz. For live visuals of classic "Turntablist Orchestrated Music" with a wacky sense of humor, look no further!
More limited edition noisy guitar dissonance from SF's Sic Alps. Four gnarled songs including the title track which also appears on their most recent full length Pleasures And Treasures.
Limited to 300 hand numbered copies.
A totally fantastic collection of Sonic Youth b-sides and rarities spanning the years 1994-2003 with the bulk of the material coming from the Jim O'Rourke years of 2001-3. This is Sonic Youth at their most expansive. Except for three tracks, this is an all-instrumental Sonic Youth. Sprawling guitars, layers of sound, building tension, dreamy passages, all the elements that have made Sonic Youth one of the best bands of the last quarter century. In many ways this recalls some of their more experimental works released on their SYR imprint, while managing to still be very listenable and rewarding. It ends with an even longer version of their epic beauty "The Diamond Sea" which for many of us is the perfect snapshot of everything great about Sonic Youth. Once again, showing that their music is as relevant and timeless as ever!
A super limited tour only cassette release from one of our favorite members of the continually growing metallic post rock contingent (you know, Isis, Conifer, Tides, Mouth Of The Architect) But unlike a lot of those groups, SYA is not even remotely metal. And we never thought we'd say it, but dang it if that isn't a bit refreshing. Sure they can whip up some metallic crunch. Some big heavy riffs, but at their core they are a post rock band, a math rock band, dark and tangled instrumental rock, moody and epic, massive and emotional. What is most surprising maybe about this 3 song tape is the presence of harmonica! HARMONICA!! And not just in the background. It's the one of the main melodic elements. And it sounds killer. Once you hear the opening track on September Songs, you'll wonder why the hell more bands don't have a harmonica player. But beyond the kick ass harmonica, this band just rules, huge convoluted riffing, strange mathy rhythms, thick swells of sound, killer complex emotional and heavy. Long stretches of dark brooding ambience, blissed out rhythmic shimmer, warm guitars over martial drums, slow building guitar jangle over mesmerizingly propulsive drumming, slippery slide and minor key melodic finger picking, there's really nothing not to love. The guys take a sound that's becoming more and more tired and turn it inside out and upside down, making their own sort of POST post rock, intense and alive and vibrant and super exciting.
And fucking harmonica!
When we were teenagers, we pretty much listened to nothing but Billy Squier's Don't Say No and Emotions In Motion. You know that scene in Wayne's World, when they're all singing along and head banging to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"? Well, we were like that with Billy Squier's "The Stroke" and "My Kinda Lover" (which we always though was "My Candelabra"!) Also, as young rockers, we were totally into Billy Squier cuz supposedly he had a rider in his contract that said if they misspelled his name as Squire on the marquee he was then entitled to 100 percent of the door receipts!! How bad ass is that?
All of that aside, those two records were practically perfect. Massive, super heavy power pop that managed to meld the heft of classic Led Zeppelin to perfect FM radio pop. Heavy and hooky as hell. It wasn't until way later though that we actually heard Squier's first record, the equally fantastic Tale Of The Tape, that just so happens to feature some of his best songs, as well as a couple classic drumlines (predating the ubiquitous drum part from "The Stroke") that have been heavily sampled over the years...
Anyway, this record is a blast. This is the sound of the top down, driving around, blasting fucking super guitar rock, singing at the top of your lungs, Super Big Gulps in the cup holders, full of sugar and youthful exuberance, later this was also probably the sound hanging in the 7-11 parking lot, scamming on chicks and all that, but for us, it was just the coolest rock we had ever heard.
"The Big Beat" is "The Stroke" a year earlier, big and dumb, super rocking, catchy as fuck, the perfect song to air guitar too, air drum to, whatever! Then there's the metallic stomp of "You Should Be High, Love" with its huge wall of backwards guitars. Total Zeppelin worship and it still sounds amazing. There's also the killer guitar pop of "Who's Your Boyfriend?", the minor key metallic pop angst of "Rich Kid", the organ heavy groove of "Calley Oh", the stadium sing along "The Music's All Right" and the album closer, the minor key dirge "Young Girls". Every song on here is packed with hooks, killer riffing, amazing drumming, Squier's soaring vocals. Should've been hits every one of 'em (and some of them were, rightfully so!)
A lot of eighties rock doesn't really stand up so well after 20 or 25 years, but this record sounds as fresh and catchy, as heavy and totally rocking as the first time we listened to the cassette when we were 13 or 14....
This super deluxe reissue (from the same folks who brought us the Plasmatics reissue a while back, and the Armored Saint reissue elsewhere on this list) contains tons of liner notes, loads of photos, as well as two bonus tracks, acoustic demos of two of the album tracks, which are super cool!
Andee sez ABSOLUTELY RECOMMENDED!!!
Holy shit! Record collector nerds and weird music obsessives might as well prepare to give up their first born or take out another mortgage on the ol' homestead, cuz this series of ultra limited 8" SQUARE lathe cuts is gonna break the bank, but it's so so so worth it. This is the first in a series that looks like it will include a who's who of noise rock / free rock / avant noise / free folk luminaries, including SO many all time AQ faves it makes our heads spin. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The first batch of these babies just showed up, three titles, each a custom hand cut, Peter King lathe cut, 8", and SQUARE!!! Packaged in gorgeous square and triangular die cut sleeves, super fancy textured paper, with a paste on front cover and a printed insert, each insert hand numbered, each release limited to 150 copies. Phew.
For those new to the lathe cut, it's a hand cut record, on polycarbonate not vinyl, they are more fragile than normal vinyl, and after repeated plays the sound quality can degrade a bit, but in our experience, in most cases it just makes them sound cooler. Peter King is THE MAN when it comes to super limited small run lathe cut releases, and pretty much every cool band you can think of has gone to him for some super rare or limited release or another.
So anyway, these are clear, they are 8"s across, shaped like a square and are insanely limited, and thus, pretty dang expensive! This is the third in the series and features Neil Campbell of AQ faves Vibracathedral Orchestra, along with his sonic partner in crime, the curiously monickered Sticky Foster, and the din these two stir up is not all that far removed from the VCO mothership. Side A is a glitchy soundscape, with garbled vocals, weird percussion, processed voices, thick whorls of murk and fuzz and hiss, bits of steel string buzz all above a dense tangle of chimes and tinkling percussion. The B side is a huge shimmering ur-drone, a fluttering wall of keening reeds and soaring feedback, all smeared into one glorious sky-reaching tumult, very reminiscent of VCO or Sunroof! So nice. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
High-adrenaline, deliriously complex, hard-hittingly heavy multidimensional power trio music that's part metal, part jazz, part punk, part prog. Gorgeous stuff played with supreme power and passion. Telepathic precision, improv awareness, and hella guitar heroics. They've been around forever and just get better and better. But they started off pretty good in the first place, as you'll hear here!!
That's right, one of our favorite bands, the ever-touring, ever-incredible Stinking Lizaveta (name taken from Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov), have themselves reissued their first album of f'n amazing drums/standup electric bass/electric guitar instrumental action. Post rock, metal, jazz, hardcore -- these terms don't matter, it's Stinking Lizaveta from Philadelphia and they rule. One of the best live bands we've EVER seen. They've done two AQ instore performances in the past, two of the best. And when they played in SF and Oakland last year, they destroyed. Don't fail to see them if you get the chance. If you like Gone, King Crimson, AC/DC, Mahavishnu, The Fucking Champs, Don Cab, Melvins, Gore, Breadwinner, Ruins, etc. get with the program and get anything and everything you can find by Stinking Liz. Especially including this, the new reish of their debut disc. It looks pretty much the same as the original release on Compulsiv, but it's got an unlisted, hidden bunch of previously unreleased tracks tacked on!! Five songs from the same Steve Albini overseen sessions as the album proper. They got left off the album's original release back in '96, but now the band can't figure out why (and we can't either, they're prime Stinking Liz awesomeness), so they've been added on for your extra listenin' pleasure.
