Sweet (and Super Limited!!) four song 7" from local popstar Kelley Stoltz on Artschool Dropout who have also brought us The Josephine Foster and Michael Yonkers 7"s (reviewed elsewhere on this list). Covering Emitt Rhode's classic "With My Face On The Floor", plus three originals. Stoltz brings a vintage pop quality to these songs, which if we didn't know any better, could easily be mistaken for long lost Kinks tracks from the Something Else sessions. Includes artwork by Simon Evans.
Movie soundtrack or not, this cd is probably well worth nabbing because it features a new Spoon song and a stirring instrumental score by Spoon's Britt Daniel and Brian Reitzell! Apart from them, this soundtrack features a typical mixed bag of current hipsters and cred-heavy veterans that you'll find on most of the recent big budget ensemble cast movies (particularly those starring Will Ferrell). Here you also get Maximo Park, Delta 5, Califone, The Jam, The Upsetters, Wreckless Eric, M83 and Vangelis. For their part, Maximo Park rollick and riff on "Going Missing" with a guitar line that could easily have been nicked from Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner". All in all, a pretty decent mix tape!
The Stumps are total NZ noise rock royalty. Antony Milton (AM, Mrtyu, Nether Dawn, etc.) James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, With Throats As Fine As Needles) and Stephen Clover (Seht). With some special guest action from Birchville Cat Motel's Campbell Kneale. phew, what else needs to be said? Much like the 3" cd released on the Grey Daturas' label recently (and of which we have a VERY few copies left), somehow, the combined sum of the Stumps' parts is less than the what you might imagine. More minimal at least. The record opens with a ghostly keening whir, way off in the distance, murky and fuzzy... eventually drums kick in giving the proceedings a definite Dead C vibe, a laid back blown out noise rock peppered with free jazz drum splatter, that sort of careens haphazardly over thick slabs of distant distorted riffage. This goes on for a whole side, and while there are different songs, they sort of drift together into one glorious whole.
Side two is similar, in that there are three songs that all seem to be movements of the same song. But this second suite starts off with wild disembodied prog keyboards, swirly and splattery, with little bits of drum damage here and there, some sort of 'noise rock prog' which is most definitely a good thing. Eventually the track morphs into a heavy, groovy, fuggy Pink Floyd seventies fuzz jam, albeit more warbly and damaged, sounding a bit like someone was fucking with the pitch control while it was being recorded. Eventually the fuzz dissipates and the track settles into a dreamy and mellow SUNNO)))-lite fade out of crumbling distant guitars and soft focus barely there melodies, a murky low end ambience that eventually fades into nothingness.
With black metal, a lot of times it's about the logo, or the band photo, or the weird woodcut that graces the front cover, sometimes all three, that gets you to listen to a band's record. There are thousands of black and white, grim and spooky looking records, so it takes a little something special to draw us in. And it seems like the bands most likely to come up with a bizarre logo, a fucked up cover and/or a weird band name, well, that aesthetic probably carries over to the music, which will in most cases also be bizarre, fucked up and WEIRD!
So thus we have Styggelse (which is Swedish for Abomination), a Swedish (duh) horde with a fucking amazing logo. Some sort of shadowy ghostly ghoul, hovering over the name of the band, the letters all scribbled and drippy, the 'S' and the 'E' at either end like mighty scythes, all in front of a similar ghostly apparition, looking like it was drawn with a marker, a sort of ghost meets the Wicker Man, with branch like hands, standing amidst tiny tufts of forest. OK, we're pretty much sold. Weird band name, killer logo, bizarre cover, great album title: Bland Andlosa Falt Av Snusk Och Hor (pretty much anything in Swedish or Norwegian does the trick, although the fact that this means "Among Endless Fields Of Filth And Adultery" doesn't hurt) so at this point there's nothing left to do but actually listen to the record...
And holy fuck, the first voice you hear is some movie snippet, but then the guitars kick in and some spoken word begins and it's all sped up like Chipmunks style, and we were (not so) secretly hoping ALL of the vocals would be like that, but oh well, the band still kick ass, huge fuzzy black riffs, a growling raspy demonic troll on lead vocals, pounding relentless drumming, no blast beats really, just crushing pulverizing pound, the weirdest thing Styggelse have got going on is the guitar sound, a thick harsh buzzing fuzz, that is surprisingly heavy and thick, no brittle buzzy riffs here, the sound is huge and super heavy, and there are all sorts of strange and unlikely cool weird atonal arpeggiated guitar bits that surface here and there, sort of Greg Ginn-ish almost, as well as some nearly groovy guitar parts that manage to give the sound a weird but subtle rock and roll vibe. That and the strange almost sing along doomy breakdowns or the occasional maniacal laughter definitely make Styggelse something special. Filthy, fuzzy old skool black metal done Swedish style. We like!!
Two more brief blasts of creepy crawly doom folk from former AQ record of the week-ers Svarte Greiner. Packaged in a plain white sleeve, with a weird cartoony ghost screen printed on the plain white label, these two tracks are just as dark and delightfully doomy as anything on the full length. Abstract low end moans, disembodied strings, a creaking abandoned sonic ship, a haunted house of sound, crumbling distortion and little bits of melody creep along through wide expanses of space. Lurching forward in slow motion doomy bursts, like Bohren with all the jazz sucked out, each song stretched out into barely discernible rhythms. It almost sounds like a recording of an orchestra tuning up, slowed waaaaaay down and stretched out into some sort of abstract acoustic classical doom. Awesome.
If we can holler out an aQ Acid Mothers Temple alert (as we have numerous times over the last few years), then we sure can have an aQ Canada alert too, can't we?! So...
*Super duper Canada alert!*
*Super duper Canada alert!*
*Super duper Canada alert!*
If you dig the ornate poetic eccentricities of bands such as Destroyer and Frog Eyes, as well as the rambunctious playfulness of Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire, you'll get the best of both worlds on this new band's album. Go on, take a dip into this Swan Lake. We think you'll find it quite enjoyable. Our maple leaf sensin' antennae went up when we noticed just how much this band treads curiously along those other bands' peaks and meadows. And it's no wonder that the singing has such a strikingly similar soaring all-or-nothing emotiveness because... Swan Lake is Destroyer's Daniel Bejar, Frog Eyes' Casey Mercer and Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug! Yup, a new Canadian supergroup rears its Beast Moans. Inevitably it sounds as if Destroyer's Daniel Bejar took over vocal duties for Arcade Fire. We're by no means raising protest though 'cause the tuneful racket they raise is a genuine pleasure. Equal parts catchy and cryptic and really really good! Very very recommended!
One half of former Bay Area / current Portland noise drone outfit Yellow Swans, and Jyrk label head honcho Pete Swanson unleashes the innermost desires of his distortion pedals, who were switched on and then allowed to do whatever they liked. Swanson was just on hand to direct the sound back and forth through the mixing board. The result is Static Space, and you'll be amazed at the sorts of sounds distortion pedals can make when left to their own devices. From a thick grinding, metallic slither through dense thickets of fuzzy drone and machinelike buzz, to wide open expanses of slowly shifting melodic moan and glistening shimmer, to a strangely guitar like whir that builds into a massive wall of fuzz to the final 13 minute stretch that sounds like some sort of minimal soundscape of barely there white noise whir, occasionally colored by bits of melodic feedback. Darn pretty for a couple of little metal boxes and a mixing board. But Swanson has been working the same sort of alchemy for years in the Yellow Swans, so we probably shouldn't be all that surprised. Pretty darn cool, and of course...
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!!! We will not be able to get more. Packaged in gorgeous hand made sleeves with a thick textured gold oil painting affixed to the front.
- MPEG stream: One
- MPEG stream: Two
Another mid-'90s college rock classic gets its deserved reissuing thanks to the reissue label Wounded Bird Records (they've re-released an amazingly broad range of old faves such as Sparks, Wendy & Lisa, Chic, Jean-Luc Ponty, Blood Sweat & Tears and... EBN-OZN!). University was Throwing Muses fifth full length, their second following the departure of co-founding member Tanya Donnelly. While her absence was definitely felt on its predecessor Red Heaven, University found Hersh and co. at their most concise and crafty, ready to take on any doubters. Her unmistakable voice, wonderfully obtuse lyrics and angular guitar lines are all in top form. Irresistibly punfully stated, Hersh graduates with honors! All the pieces snap perfectly in place, making this one of the band's best albums. Listening to this reissue is like slipping into a well worn, yet crispy ironed favorite shirt. A fresh and comfy pleasure!
Psst... expect a new solo album from Ms Kirsten Hersh shortly!
By now, Finland must seem like one big musical forest, will small tribes of elfin music makers, sitting around fires, with home made instruments and beat up old guitars and primitive tape recorders, spending their days kicking out clattery, meandering free folk pagan jams, tribal and hypnotic. Venture a little further into the forest and you'll find Circle, harnessing the power of the sun to power their amps and keyboards, kicking out endless psychedelic drone rock jams. Chop your way through some dense underbrush, delve deeper into the woods, where there is less life and less light and it's a little dark and scary and you'll find Pharaoh Overlord, big hairy Yeti's, clubs in hand, making a sludgy racket around a huge funeral pyre, horrible blackened shapes dancing on the canopy overhead. But go no further, because there's a cave, with a mouth as black as pitch, where no one dare enters, for fear of the unholy racket emanating from within. For it's here you'll find the mysterious members of Tivol. Look closer and the cave sort of resembles a beat up old garage. But stand back and prepare yourself for the wild and wooly psychedelic freakouts spewing from the mouth of this cave / garage. Pounding trashcan drums, druggy, super affected space rock guitars, and howled banshee vocals, screeching and wailing. This is the scuzzy, fuzzy, sloppy, noisy soft white underbelly of the Finnish rock scene, and we LOVE IT. Like the unwanted lovechild of Guitar Wolf, Hawkwind and Liquorball, let loose in the woods, only to be raised by pot smoking, psych rockin' wolves. The ultimate pounding psychedelic garage space-sludge. Ah, Finland. Where else could it come from?
This lp collects two long out of print cd-r releaese (one on 267 Lattajjaaa, one on Time-Lag) that were cleaned up a little (only a LITTLE) made louder and more in your face and then etched into a massive slab of wax with a sharp stick. Packaged in a gorgeous hand printed sleeve, courtesy of Rob Fisk and The Free Porcupine Society.
We wrote extensively about this mysterious and bizarre caveman doom duo a few lists back, and plan on reviewing all 4 of their amazing releases eventually, this being the second (we reviewed Forest Of Doom on list #254). And elsewhere on this list you'll also find a review of the equally amazing Ungl'Unl'rrlh'Chchch, a Trollmann side project which is essentially the exact same band. But for those of you who are discovering Trollmann for the very first time, let's recap:
We have been obsessed with this band since the very first time we heard them years and years ago. We have spent the last 6 years or so trying to track down their records, as well as a place where we could order enough so we could review them and share them with the AQ faithful, who like us, truly appreciate the bizarre and the fucked.
And you don't get more bizarre and fucked than Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. Well, to begin with, they're called Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg!! They have record titles like Arcane Runes Adorn The Ice-Veiled Monoliths Of The Ancient Cavern Of The Stars and Dark Clouds Blacken The Sky On The Eve Of The Thousandth Sacrifice and Tolling Beyond The Tombs Of Ancient Grimnity and Forest Of Doom. They have a similar sounding side project called Ungl'Unl'rrlh'Chchch! The band members are pictured in drawings on the back of the cd, one as a strange little bearded gnome/elf sitting on a huge toadstool, the other a bearded furclad mountain man leaning on a mighty axe. The gnome is named Belegur and is credited with "Cosmic keys to gates unknown." The mountain man is Thundarr, and is credited with "Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come." For those of you well versed in that sort of thing, you'll realize that this duo is just bass and keyboards, which is remarkable in its own right. But the fact that Trollmann play a sort of medieval Skepticism style slow motion doom sludge with just bass and keyboards it seems even more amazing.
So there it is, if you're anything like us, it almost doesn't even matter what they sound like. But thankfully they are just as amazing and fucked as all that would lead you to imagine. While ostensibly Trollmann are a doom band, their peculiar brand of doom owes as much to William Basinski and Philip Jeck, at least sonically, as it does to Skepticism or Thergothon. Part of that is due to the incredibly lo-fi recording quality, tape hiss, and amp crumble, distortion that threatens to fall to pieces, a slow loping dronelike dirge that traverses strange landscapes of grit and glitch, of rumble and murky murmur. It's almost like Skepticism recorded by William Basinski, the tapes shoved in a box and stashed in an attic for 30 years, only to be rediscovered and released in all their slow motion crumbling drone doom glory.
Just bass and keyboards, Trollmann trudge through 4 songs in 51 minutes, huge sprawling expanses of murky muddy black ooooooooze, Black Mayonnaise cover Burzum? Maybe, if the results were then dubbed hundreds of times onto the crappiest tapes imaginable. But this is almost too delicate and dark, too lilting and lovely to be doom. But doom it is. A glorious soft focus dreamlike doom. Way less melodic than Forest Of Doom, Arcane Runes Adorn The Ice-Veiled Monoliths Of The Ancient Cavern Of The Stars just might be our favorite Trollmann yet, imagine the songs of SUNNO))) and Thergothon and Skepticism reimagined by Tim Hecker, William Basinski and Philip Jeck. A late night, moonlit, drift through the branches of a black forest, the crackle of dead leaves, the creaking of bare branches, the black cloak of night a thick fuzzy shroud. So completely and utterly mind blowing. One of our all time essential 'doom' discs for sure.
Last list we highlighted the doomier-than-thou deluxe cd+dvd reissue of the 1984 debut from Chicago's classic doom metal squad Trouble. And now, here's the reish of their equally heavy second album, The Skull, originally released on Metal Blade in 1985, which features such Trouble 'hits' as "Fear No Evil" and "Wickedness Of Man", along with its epic centerpiece, the nearly 12 minute "The Wish". As with the debut, you can expect plenty of Christian angst, ponderous Sabbathy riffage, and twin guitar duels!
And, the bonus dvd disc this is packaged with has gotta be pretty exciting for fans: a complete live Trouble concert, filmed at a club called Malo's in Aurora, Illinois, circa 1984. There's an on-screen note at the beginning saying: "The following program is historic in many ways. One of the historic elements of this rare program is the old recording technology." And yeah, sure it's a Nth generation video dub, ultra-grainy and wavey. But with so much heavy metal atmosphere!! Lights, smoke, hair, headbanging... So cool. And they play nearly every song from Psalm 9 and The Skull, plus a couple more, including what would eventually become the title track of their third album, Run To The Light.
Most of us got kind of bored by the whole laptop revolution years ago. Nerds checking their emails while some sound program runs basically on its own, a cascade of bleeps and bloops and glitches. Electronica, intelligent dance music, glitchcore, glitchtronica, what-the-fuck-ever. There have been exceptions of course, and some folks can most certainly turn a crappy old laptop into a wheezing world of wonder, or an alien symphony. One of our all time favorite 'glitch' records would have to be Oval's Diskont, a gorgeous murky underwater soundscape of burbling beauty and glistening shimmer, all woven together from digital glitch in the form of skipping compact discs. Few records since then have managed to bridge the massive gap between technical tomfoolery and emotional resonance. But damn if this latest (and first as far as we know) from Guillaume Graux, aka Tuk doesn't come damn close.
Unlike Diskont, Tuk's Shallow Water Blackout isn't all dreamy bliss and soft focus flutter, instead Graux weaves super dense tangles of sound, organic and otherwise. The most notable sonic elements are traditional instruments, acoustic guitars, piano, harps, organs, but it's what he does with them... chopping and stretching, twisting and tweaking, long stretches of skips and stutters somehow coalesce into strangely haunting minor key melodies, occasionally getting all backed up into huge crunchy, super dynamic rhythms, but not dance music rhythms, more sort of 'song' rhythms. The opener is the perfect example. What begins sounding like Hill Street Blues or Christopher Cross given a Jeckian muted mumbled abstract dream fuzz makeover, gets more and more dark and moodily melodic, bookended by these amazing math rock style stop/start arrangements, where huge blasts of fuzzy ambience give way to utter silence, only to burst back into motion again, the glitchy electronic equivalent to the hardcore breakdown maybe. With the same physically powerful affect.
And the whole record continues in that fashion, gorgeous chopped and reassembled minor key guitar tangles, bits of piano and random song fragments, peppered with digital crunch, of course plenty of glitch, loads of fuzz and hiss and crackle, all perfectly interacting and transforming the organic elements. Graux most definitely has a deft hand at composing and songwriting. These are not just huge messes of sound, these are actual songs, dark and beautiful, with an internal logic, a sonic story, a melodic journey through a weird world of dissected and strangely reassembled pop music. Much like labelmate Ignatz, who constantly reimagine and reinvent Appalachia and Delta blues, creating a whole new sound, Tuk do something similar with electronic music, coming up with a sound that is neither cold nor unemotional, not dance-y or really in any way groovy, but instead is some weird futuristic mood music, weirdly emotional mysteriously ominous and so so lovely.
Think Oval, Chris Clark, Jeck, Tim Hecker, Pierre Bastien, Dialing In, Part Timer, Machinefabriek, Jasper Texas, Grouper... So pretty...
We have been massively obsessed with the mysterious doom duo Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. Two musical cavemen, one wielding some sort of primitive keyboard, the other a bass tuned so low it sounds like the tectonic plates slipping. Together they weave a sprawling and expansive world of minimal sludge, an epic slow motion doom crawl, equal parts Skepticism, Thergothon, SUNNO))) and Earth. Glacial riffs that slither and lurch, moving so slow they seem to almost be standing still. The keyboards adding the occasional melodic flourish to the duo's black hole dirges.
So why would the two mysterious members of Trollmann, Belegur and Thundarr, masters of "Cosmic keys to gates unknown" and "Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come" respectively, start a new band, with the tongue twistingly Lovecraftian monicker Ungl'Unl'rrlh'Chchch, and with the exact same members?
Well how about if the glacial doomic trudge of Trollmann was just NOT slow enough, NOT low enough, what if the two members wanted to jettison melody completely, and perform strange magickal rituals with low end sound, conjuring up vibrations of doom, from deep within the center of the earth. A huge booming, cavernous, resonant rumble rife with overtones and subtle sonic shadings. A doom metal Phill Niblock if you will. Simple tones, distorted and murky, stretched into huge expanses of drone, allowed to slowly shift, various low end frequencies beating against each other. So glorious!
Well, that explains the epic opening track, but then what about track two? A dreamy expanse of pointillist piano, wrapped in reverb, a flurry of twentieth century piano abstraction dropped into a shimmering swirl of empty space. Track three makes a bit more sense combining the two, little bits of piano melody subsumed by a massive wash of low end rumble, a wave of monstrous drones, dense and multilayered, strange monk like chants buried in the roiling murk, before a haunting high end melody surfaces becoming more and more intense, building and building into a sort of Birchville style ur-drone.
The ten minute 4th track is another low end ritual, this time a simple rhythmic throb anchors a shimmering thrum, beneath which strange vocals hum and murmur, a deep dark and very ancient sounding sonic ritual for sure.
Finally, the record closes with the title track, a brief blast of doomdronedirge wrapped in white hot sheets of coruscating feedback, a snarling squall of hiss and fuzz, sizzling and buzzing, a blinding ball of sonic fire with a massive black hole center.
All bow before the mighty and mystical low end lords of Ungl'Unl'rrlh'Chchch!!
Kids. Elephants. One thing they have in common: they're both cute. (And don't even get me started about baby elephants...) So, maybe it's no surprise then that Dave Soldier, best known in the AQ universe as the guy who brought us those two wonderful Thai Elephant Orchestra recordings (and also well known for his own Soldier String Quartet), would also be part of a project to help inner-city grade school kids express themselves as hip hop artists!! Or maybe it is a surprise. But either way, it's pretty cool! As "outsider" artists go, these kids are a bit more "normal" than musical elephants, but still totally charming and amazing. As soon as we found out about this we knew we had to hear it. And as soon as we heard it, we were hooked. These kids, 5-10 year olds from the Amber Charter School in East Harlem, NYC, are so obviously having fun. We're lucky to get to listen in. And they're young enough not to be trying too hard to sound like anything other than kids, no tweenage gangsta posturing here! The influence of commercial, MTV style hiphop is hardly apparent. In fact, a lot of this only sounds remotely like "hip hop" at all -- sure there's beats, and raps, and keyboards, but it's all a lot more spacey and weird and atmospheric than you might expect. ESPECIALLY on one of our favorite tracks, "Ghosty", sung by a little girl named Isabella. She's invented something new there. Genius.
Among the contributors to the 16 tracks found here, you're sure to find a few of your favorite new bands. And band names. Some of 'em are fairly ordinary kid stuff: The School Rock Band, Hiphop Skyhigh, Los Nonameos, Looneytunes, Tuff Kidz, ABC Group... but others are simply inspired. What group of arty white-belted 20-something noiseniks wouldn't be happy if they'd thought up 911 Rock N Roll Coyotes for themselves, for instance?? There's also Franchize Children, Boys & Girls Club Of The Night, and Muffletoes, to name a few other favorites. Basically, the kids got together in groups of four to write and play their own music, naming their "bands" themselves and basically being let loose to do their own thing.
So, what role did Dave Soldier and the teachers at the Amber Charter School play in hooking up these tunes? Well, unlike kid-metal project Rock Jack (another AQ fave, sadly out of print), the kids played all the music here as well as providing the vocals. Those are DEFINITELY kids on the keyboards! The beats were programmed by the kids too, though of course the recording was supervised by grown-ups. So adults gave guidance, but it's pretty clear that it's the kids' creativity being given full reign, certainly the lyrical subject matter of these songs had to come from the kids: candy, monsters, school, fried chicken, playtime, Barney... But don't think that it's all fun and games. Some of these tracks have fairly serious themes, like the Tuff Kidz' "I Don't Want You No More"!
In sum, totally recommended! If you like the vibe of things like Rock Jack, the Langley Schools Music Project, and the Kids Of Widney High, we think you'll dig dese Hip Hop Raskalz -- all of whom could easily be described as being hip hop versions of the Shaggs! Or, comparing this to some 'real' hiphop, we'd say a lot of this reminds us of a childlike version of AQ fave Sensational!!
What the hell more can we say about grime?! Other than we love it. We're obsessed with it. Grime and dubstep are everything we wish hip hop still was (and some still is, the new Clipse absolutely destroys!). Fresh and funky, wild and weird. Fucked up beats and even more fucked up flows. Stuttering hiccupping what the fuck rhythms. It's maddeningly mind bending. And we just can't get enough. And the thing is, we're forced to subsist on a new grime/dubstep release every few weeks or every couple of months, when we could easily be eating up ten times that. This is the only music that stands any chance of getting our non-dancing asses out of our chairs and out onto the dancefloor. And even if dancing is even lower on your list of priorities that it is on ours, this shit is the perfect kicking back music, drifting off, mellowing out, late night dubbed out chill music, it also sounds absolutely amazing blasting in your car. Like we said, we just can't get enough. So here we have a collection of some of the best dubstep (and grime) jams of the last little while compiled by legendary DJ Mary Anne Hobbs. About half of these tracks were recorded or at least remixed specifically for this comp, the rest being all time grime/dubstep classics.
The disc starts off with a track from recent AQ Record of the Weeker Milanese, a furious muted blast of grime-y groove and some killer dancehall style toasting over the top. The grime element is sort of pushed aside in favor of the more blissed out dubstep sound for the rest of the disc, featuring a track from another AQ record of the week Burial, as well as a track from Kode9 & Space Ape whose full length we raved about not too long ago. And of course a track from Kevin Martin's Bug... This whole record is just so dark and deliriously groovy. Beats are all over the place, alternating between shuffling and pounding, slithering and stuttering, huge basslines fuzz and buzz, thick swaths of low end synth threaten your woofers, vocals are minimal, sometimes wild tongue twisting flows, other times growled dancehall toasting, bits of jungle surface here and there, thick swirls of ominous ambience EVERYWHERE. So goddamn good. We've been listening to this non stop!! And every time we play this in the store somebody comes up to find out what it is, and usually ends up buying it. So what else do you need to know. Buy this now!
Here's the first two promised discs in the revised, regionally-based Messthetics series. (Which is a MUCH BETTER way to do it than the old, alphabetically-organized Messthetics cd-rs!) Messthetics, if you don't know, is the Hyped To Death label's term for all the arty D.I.Y. kinda punk lo-fi amateur rock/pop goodness n' weirdness spawned in the UK during the late '70s and early '80s. Obscure bands that only made cassettes, or appeared on rare 7" vinyl comps, that sort of thing. A few of the bands developed cult followings or went on to evolve into more well-known, professional acts. But most of 'em were but brief blips, if that, on the cultural radar. However, thanks to the loving efforts that have gone in to compiling these and forthcoming Messthetics volumes, now 25 years later these otherwise lost gems can still be enjoyed. Both #101 and #102 are focussed on the heart of the Empire, bands hailing from the Big Smoke, London. Messthetics #101 (full subtitle: D.I.Y. and (very) indie post-punk from London and the Home Counties '78-81, pt I) includes The Homosexuals, George Harassment, Take It, Scissor Fits, and Milkshake Melon, Exhibit A, Different I's, Acid Drops, Funboy Five, Blue Screaming, Karel Fialka, Tiny Town, Grinder, The Door And The Window, Collective Horizontal, Jimmy Nipper Five, Rejects, Rich & Famous, Existence, Twelve Cubic Feet, and Outrageous Flesh. There's 22 regular audio tracks on the cd, and an additional five bonus mp3 tracks as well! Of course, some of these bands are better n' others... and everybody will have their own favorites. Plenty to chose from for sure. Messthetics #102 is indeed part II, another 23 tracks (no mp3s on this one) from Steve Treatment, London PX, Dry Rib, Vacants, Auntie Pus, Astronauts, Lines, Frank Details, Dad, Lines, Tea Set, Walking Floors, MLR, Restricted Hours, The Syrups, Metrophase, Nigel Simpkins, and Innerpropriates. Yeah, we haven't heard of many of these either (well, maybe we have but only in context of the old Messthetics cd-rs), but that's just the point!! Where the heck else are you gonna hear such weird ditties as "Marmelade Freak" and "Drive Your Car To The Middle Of Your Brain" and "I Don't Wanna Work For British Airways"?
Sure, for a more consistent track-to-track collection of pop smarts of similar styles, vintage and geographic origin, we recommend getting that recently reviewed 7" Up comp before these... but for the type of creativity that can only come when artists have ABSOLUTELY no expectations, Messthetics is the place to go. We're eagerly awaiting further volumes!
Here's the first two promised discs in the revised, regionally-based Messthetics series. (Which is a MUCH BETTER way to do it than the old, alphabetically-organized Messthetics cd-rs!) Messthetics, if you don't know, is the Hyped To Death label's term for all the arty D.I.Y. kinda punk lo-fi amateur rock/pop goodness n' weirdness spawned in the UK during the late '70s and early '80s. Obscure bands that only made cassettes, or appeared on rare 7" vinyl comps, that sort of thing. A few of the bands developed cult followings or went on to evolve into more well-known, professional acts. But most of 'em were but brief blips, if that, on the cultural radar. However, thanks to the loving efforts that have gone in to compiling these and forthcoming Messthetics volumes, now 25 years later these otherwise lost gems can still be enjoyed. Both #101 and #102 are focussed on the heart of the Empire, bands hailing from the Big Smoke, London. Messthetics #101 (full subtitle: D.I.Y. and (very) indie post-punk from London and the Home Counties '78-81, pt I) includes The Homosexuals, George Harassment, Take It, Scissor Fits, and Milkshake Melon, Exhibit A, Different I's, Acid Drops, Funboy Five, Blue Screaming, Karel Fialka, Tiny Town, Grinder, The Door And The Window, Collective Horizontal, Jimmy Nipper Five, Rejects, Rich & Famous, Existence, Twelve Cubic Feet, and Outrageous Flesh. There's 22 regular audio tracks on the cd, and an additional five bonus mp3 tracks as well! Of course, some of these bands are better n' others... and everybody will have their own favorites. Plenty to chose from for sure. Messthetics #102 is indeed part II, another 23 tracks (no mp3s on this one) from Steve Treatment, London PX, Dry Rib, Vacants, Auntie Pus, Astronauts, Lines, Frank Details, Dad, Lines, Tea Set, Walking Floors, MLR, Restricted Hours, The Syrups, Metrophase, Nigel Simpkins, and Innerpropriates. Yeah, we haven't heard of many of these either (well, maybe we have but only in context of the old Messthetics cd-rs), but that's just the point!! Where the heck else are you gonna hear such weird ditties as "Marmelade Freak" and "Drive Your Car To The Middle Of Your Brain" and "I Don't Wanna Work For British Airways"?
Sure, for a more consistent track-to-track collection of pop smarts of similar styles, vintage and geographic origin, we recommend getting that recently reviewed 7" Up comp before these... but for the type of creativity that can only come when artists have ABSOLUTELY no expectations, Messthetics is the place to go. We're eagerly awaiting further volumes!
We're super picky when it comes to noise, and noise rock, okay so maybe we're just really picky, but like techno, it takes something special to really win us over. We were a little wary at first of this comp, which collects a bunch of music and bands "From Providence And Olneyville Rhode Island". Sure there are tons of those bands who totally rule, but there are also a whole bunch of one off costume rock joke bands. Thankfully this comp is pretty fucking solid all the way through, splitting the difference between aggro noise rock, and weird damaged metal, and pretty much every stop in between. All the usual suspects are here, Landed, Necronomitron, Mindflayer, Prurient, Drop Dead, Lightning Bolt, White Mice, Kites.... But there are also plenty of noisy newbies, Knights Of Timbre, Em Dath Rir, Football Rabbit, Suffering Bastard, Bloodthrone, Knifestorm, Smashed Femur Dance Party, Patootie Lobe and more...
Standout tracks include the technical metal mayhem of Necronomitron, the Lightning Bolt-ish psychdamaged drum/synth freakout of Mindflayer, the cartoon cutup buzz and glitch of Knights Of Timbre, the 20 second hyperspeed blast of female voiced brutality from Bloodthrone, The electro sludge of Football Rabbit, the damaged turntable manipulation of Mahi Mahi and so much more.
Never thought we'd say it, but pretty much every single track on this noise comp kicked our ass, and at least a few had us wanting to hear LOTS more!
Psychedelic Swedish obscurity n' awesomeness from the late '60s and early-to-mid '70s, yeah!! 18 rare tracks from 18 long-forgotten (but oh-so-good) bands are compiled on this, the third volume in a series that has yet to peak. Basically if you like fuzz groovers and wild freakbeat rockers, you've come to the right place. Likewise, from bluesy stomp to folky harmonies, vol. III has it covered. Melancholic psych-pop too -- check out the underground 1969 sounds of "Love Love Love" by a band appropriately named Drugs! Some of the '70s tracks verge on proto-metal, especially Bjorn Famne's "Vampire" (1975) which the liner notes rightly suggest sound like "the missing link between Led Zeppelin and the Jesus And Mary Chain", and Zane's garage-punk Sabbathy "Step Aside" (1976). Others tend towards manic progginess (the Ga Runt Show's big production "Bara Skrot" from '67 for instance). And all are pretty great! Here's the full list of bands, besides the ones mentioned above, for what it's worth: Scorpion, Uppat Vaggarna, Match, Red White & Blues, Fruit, Candle, Harambee, East-West, New Creation, Atlantic Ocean, The Junk's And the Angels, After Life, and Contact.
With interesting liner notes on each track, and cool, old-school collage-style psychedelic graphics incorporating original 45 sleeve artwork, we can only applaud the packaging job that the Dolores label has done on this comp (and previous volumes). Likewise we applaud the selection of music, it's like having an insane Swedish '60s record collector DJ'ing his most valued, mind-blowing, impossible-to-find psych treasures for you for a full hour...which is basically what this is, actually!
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, in super spiffy hand assembled sleeves, and are insanely limited, and thus, pretty dang expensive! This is the first in the series and features UK dadaist pop group Volcano The Bear who offer up two brief bursts of their off kilter absurdist pop. The first side is a nursery rhyme melody, all fuzzy and buzzy over pizzicato strings, with high clear Charles Hayward style vocals, the whole track sounding not unlike Camberwell Now doing children's music. The second side is also warbly and fuzzy, but the fuzz is in the backdrop, a warm whirring soundscape over which weird whistle melodies drift and dance. Simple percussion surfaces here and there, making this sound like some strange funeral march composed for kazoo and tin whistle. Weird and wonderful.
Ahhh, Vomit Orchestra. Brings to mind the most unpleasant of images. Thoughts of tuxedo clad men hurling through tubas and trumpets, women in their best evening wear, puking onto timpani's. But fear not, this is nothing of the sort. Although it is a collection of sounds virulent and vile, violent and vicious. Vomit Orchestra are a mysterious outfit who traffic in a sort of black ambience, but their sound is far from ambient. Lengthy stretches of rumbling drones and disembodied voices, growled super distorted growls, blown out percussion, sort of tribal, sort of industrial, dark and creepy and seriously fucking scary.
Macabre Paradigm collects rare and unreleased tracks from the first few years of VO's existence, the first disc is the long out of print cassettes, the second disc is unreleased rarities from the Vomit vaults. The more we listen to this the more black it sounds, like some strange disembodied black metal, with the blasts and the buzz sucked out leaving weird bloated corpses of grim hellish beats, wallowing in pools of black blood, emitting a lonesome cry that sounds a bit like free jazz black metal, or, here's an obscure reference, Aussie what-the-fuck black metallers Vorak, guitars squiggle and screech, drums stumble and splatter, underneath drones rumble and whir, vocals are whirring rasps. Similar to how Abruptum explored black ambience, VO seem to be stalking the same skull encrusted catacombs. A hellish brew of audio experimentation, damaged and desiccated black metal, and deep dark drones. The sound may be drone based, but this is in no way soothing, this is still heavy, and fierce, and way blacker than most black metal, ominous and menacing, grim and cult and true, and pure audio evil, like being trapped underground in the pitch black, surrounded by demons, by death, and by despair.
Completely amazing. Essential listening for black souled, iron eared, strange sound obsessed audio warriors...
We have to admit that when we saw Winter Flowers' ruffled gown and dandy fop garbed band photo, well, our skeptic and irony meters went through the roof. But after giving the album a trepidatious first listen, we happily discovered that much like similar current songbirds LA's Lavender Diamond, their hearts seem to be genuinely earnest and in the right place. Winter Flowers weave a beautiful, dewy tapestry of stunningly authentic old tyme folk. Actually our immediate aural reaction was that the fictional but truly great folk duo Mitch & Mickey from the movie A Mighty Wind had stepped off the screen and into our welcoming ears. Their heartwarming, honey-gold vocal harmonies also brings to mind 'real world' counterparts such as Peter, Paul & Mary, The Kingston Trio and Simon & Garfunkel. Sweetening up the proceedings even further are guest vocalists Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark, Mia Doi Todd and Miranda Lee Richards! So lovely!
Those Canadian cool kids Wolf Parade delivered their own lil' cdep last year just prior to their well received Sub Pop released album Apologies To The Queen Mary... and we just got a few in stock! We've searched high'n'low and found precious little information about this release, but we can tell you that it features four songs that would go on to appear on the album (the title track, "We Built Another World", "Grounds For Divorce" and "It's A Curse"), and two others ("The National People's Scare" and "Killing Armies"). Now, it might just be our imagination, but these recordings do seem a bit less polished and a bit rougher around the edges than the album versions, but it sure suits this band's rambunctious nature. Singers Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug's vocals are at their most hand-wringingly insistent. Meanwhile Hadji Bakara chimes in on keyboards and drummer Arlen Thompson thumps out a rump-bumpin' beat. Not sure if we'll be getting more of these, so just in case we'd gently recommend that you "don't snooze and lose".
Realistically, if you all are anything like us, a one line review is all it will take for you to know in your heart of hearts, that not only do you HAVE to own this, but that it will rapidly and immediately become your favorite record. OF ALL TIME!!
So here we go: Xexyz are a black metal band who use a Nintendo Entertainment System as their "keyboard" and who essentially have composed black metal songs around the 8-bit themes to Nintendo classics like Metroid and Rygar's Quest. Yes!! We were right, weren't we?
Anyway, Xexyz are a grim buzzing lo-fi horde of black warriors who just so happen to be video game nerds and who have decided that there is nothing more grim or more cult than the instantly recognizable buzz and beep of their favorite Nintendo themes. And you know what, it's sort of true. And it definitely works. Some folks here thought this sounded like the Muppets and Stereolab playing black metal, but it's so much more grim than that. A haunting 8-bit refrain bleeps maniacally under moaning black guitar buzz, while hateful hellish vocals rasp and growl over the top. The theme from Metroid rings out, one of the coolest, and weirdest video game themes ever (second only to Rastan maybe), the weird electronic pulse underpins a thick slab of distorted guitar, when the song finally kicks in, it almost sounds like a lo-fi version of THAT Burzum track, the black fuzz with the haunting keyboard figure in the background. But you know... with Metroid instead. And "Nightmare On Elm Street", is so awesome, the Nintendo theme is super fuzzy and haunting, and perfectly lends itself to some Burzumic buzz, creepy crawly and pretty damn black.
So totally amazing and weird and thus of course absolutely fucking recommended...
Super limited 7" from legendary acid fried, psychedelic garage rock legend Michael Yonkers, whose Microminiature Love record is an all time AQ fave (read about it elsewhere on the AQ site and if you don't already own it, for god's sake BUY IT!!!). This two track 7" features a long lost classic from 1968 as well as a track recorded in 2004.
The A side is "The Big Balloon", featuring the Michael Yonkers Band recorded in 1968 and is a kick ass blast of rock-around-the-clock style classic rock and roll, but slightly skewed and tweaked and off kilter, with weird sounding guitars, Yonkers' distinctive vocals, as well as a super weird vocal / guitar breakdown that turns that classic rock and roll sound into some subtly damaged psychedelic rhythm and blues.
Normally, when faced with a classic song from an artist's peak, and a recently recorded tune, the newer track is typically a concession to the artist so he doesn't feel like no one cares any more, even though they don't, but this 7" is anything but. The B side, if anything is WAY weirder and heavier, featuring Yonkers on all the instruments, it's a slab of fucked up, damaged new wave metallic rock, with super blown out raw and distorted guitars, delivered in dense riffy squalls, over a sputtering drum machine, crazy vocals, this shit is amazing. Some impossible cross between the Residents, Devo and Flipper, but with a seriously new wave bent!! It's a whole lot weirder and more raw than his It's Only Yonkers record released a while back, so we know he's still got it. Here's to hoping there's a whole record of stuff like this just waiting to be unleashed!
Packaged in a super gorgeous silkscreened sleeve and of course, EXTREMELY LIMITED!
We were ready for another blast of blissed out free noise from Zaimph, the one woman outfit of one Marcia Bassett who spends most of her noisemaking days crouched over a mess of guitars and broken FX pedals in Hototogisu with Matthew Bower or in the Double Leopard. But instead we were treated to a strangely tranquil drone record, no sudden bursts of acidic feedback, no sheets of corrosive guitar crumble, instead, this is two long sides of deep dark low end soundscapes, both ominous and lovely.
Moaning far away guitars shimmer and whir, abstract melodies drift in and out of the murky rumble. A dreamy muddy sonic swirl. Thick layers of looped riffs smeared into warm blurs, crumble and slowly decay, while the overtones throb and pulse, creating minimal almost rhythms, while melodic fragments hover and whirl, drifting just below the surface.
Side 2 is a side long black fog, billows of soft shimmering low end, slowly spread out wrapping their warm tendrils around everything within reach, filling your ears with soft black fuzz, creepy and haunting and dark, but sort of luminous and dreamlike, and almost pretty!
Super thick full color paste on sleeves, full color card stock inserts and super nice thick vinyl! ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
