Lopez Island is one of the many islands that dapple the Puget Sound of Washington state, located about 150 miles NW of Seattle. It seems an isolated environment that probably attracts a good deal of outdoorsy types in the summertime; yet for the field recordist / composer Francisco Lopez, he explored the island's soundscape during the winter of 1999-2000 when sleet, snow, wind, and rain perpetually fell upon the island. Lopez has always been a consumate phonographer, with his typical strategies being acousmatic in nature, whereby he would extract and filter particular sounds from his recordings and build monolithic slabs of grey sounds elegantly shifting from near silences to tumultous crescendos. La Selva (and to a lesser extent Addy En Elpais De Las Frutas Y Los Chunches) remain the most highly regarded compositions through this strategy, with sounds becoming blurred into a miasma of turbulance, confusion, and intrigue. Here on Lopez Island, our man Lopez begins his composition with an extended passage of raw recordings, in particular there's the damp tactility of sleet sploshing amidst wet leaves and twigs. If anything, Lopez has set the stage for a very cold environment, followed by a brisk whistling of wind that Lopez slowly transforms into a thoroughly synthetic climax of sparkling drones and haunted siren songs that resemble the isolationism of BJ Nilsen, Stilluppsteypa, and the Hafler Trio much more than before. Since the release of his Live In San Francisco recording, we haven't been too keen on Francisco's output; but Lopez Island marks the inevitable return to excellence for Mr. Lopez.
Along with the Tarkus album highlighted on this week's list, we've got more vintage Peruvian psych rock for you here -- a disc featuring rare and unreleased singles tracks circa 1969-1970 from Los Nuevos Shain's, the band formed by Enrique "Pico" Ego Aguirre, who had been the guitarist from garage rock legends Los Shain's (natch). Getting into the heavier sounds comin' out contemporaneously from England and California, Los Nuevos Shain's put their own stamp on covers of songs by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Jefferson Airplane, Spirit, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and even Black Sabbath -- for us, it's their version of Sabbath's "Wicked World" that makes this a must have! Had to buy it just for that, to add to our collection of early daze Sabbath covers. (This puts 'em in the company of South Africa's Suck and Japan's Flower Travellin' Band to achieve the distinction of having recorded a Sabbath song way back when.)
Not to give you the idea that this is all that hard rockin' or heavy (for that, look to Pico's subsequent band Pax, reviewed elsewhere on our site). Sure, he does give the ol' fuzz and wah-wah pedals a bit of a stomp, though. Heck they do "Purple Haze". But this also has lots of dreamy poppiness on it too, and we're also quite taken by the boppy loopiness of the track "Guau Guau A Go Go", which features barking dogs in the mix! Basically, a trip to a paisley-painted Peruvian garage, some 37 years ago, to hear an enthusiastic band do a fun run-through of some familiar and not-so-familiar sixties tunes plus a few originals. And by the way, the music on this cd was taken from the master tapes (you know it, 'cause the booklet in this digipack features color photos of the original reels and tape boxes with handwritten labels!). Cool.
The Rise Above Relics label's first two releases -- Possessed and Luv Machine -- are bound to intrigue all fans of obscure, early '70s psych/prog heaviness...we know there's a few of you reading this! And both of these albums were recorded in the magical, mystical year of 1971 that we (well, Allan) is always going on about. The band at hand, Luv Machine, were originally from Barbados, but took their groovy psych-pop hard rock to the UK to try to make it big, revamping the lineup in the process with the addition of a few British musicians replacing members who got homesick for the West Indies. Definitely influenced by Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and sounding to us a bit like another obscure band of the era, The Next Morning (who also hailed from the Caribbean, by way of NYC instead of the UK), they're certainly a fun listen. Not terribly heavy at all, really, but still pretty cool -- cool enough that they became pals with The Sweet, who took 'em on tour to Italy! Yes indeed, a quite funky lil' band with plenty of fuzz guitar crunch and a sunny disposition. There's a few weak cuts, some stuff that just seems a bit "off", but then again that might be intentional weirdness (like the crazy sped-up tape manipulation that occurs at the end of "Maybe Tomorrow", for instance, and the more Jimi than Jimi styled vocals at times). Mostly though this is soulful and psychedelically quirky, a foot-tapping good time, dated but delightful. Imagine if you can a blend of Shocking Blue and the Band Of Gypsies...
This slipcased reissue includes all the tracks from their collector-coveted 1971 album (which boasted some "tasteless", "pornographic" cover art, not used by Rise Above Relics but fortunately at least reproduced inside the thick, heavily text and illustration laden cd booklet), plus six previously unreleased cuts.
NB. the track "Reminiscing" was written by Vernon Pereira of Possessed, and was recorded by that band on their album Exploration.
Gerard Manset is an underground French treasure, recording records since the late '60s but always avoiding the public spotlight, refusing to do interviews, appear on TV or play any of the other silly games often required to attain mainstream success. With a totally seductive voice, and lush arrangements that are as powerful as they are beautiful, this album recorded during the student riots in Paris in 1968 has become one of those discs we can't stop listening to! There is an urgency and passion in these songs rarely heard in modern music. Manset has the same kind of presence and elegance as folks like Serge Gainsbourg, Caetano Veloso, Michel Polnareff and Scott Walker. This is not ye-ye fluffy French pop. Don't get us wrong we love that stuff, but what makes Manset so damn great is how his songs are so melodic and catchy while also being so sensual and impassioned. Totally smart arrangements that will appeal to both psych and pop lovers. We recently learned that Manset has an extensive back-catalog and we can't wait to start getting our hands on as much of it as possible, but until then let's all get swept up in 1968!
And now for the third of our reviews of the three "Freakout Triplex" cds that were released in 2002 in honor of Maso Yamazaki's 15th anniversary (of noise/music making, presumably). There was a disc apiece dedicated to each of his main projects: Christine 23 Onna's Acid Eater (reviewed on list 255), Space Machine's 2 (reviewed on list 258), and Masonna's Shock Rock (being reviewed right NOW). These weren't readily available over here in the USA when they first came out, so we figured a bunch of you Japanese psychedelic/electronic/noise fans would be interested if we reviewed these, now that we can finally get 'em.
Masonna is Maso Yamazaki's best known project, his solo screaming noise guise. As harsh Japanese noise goes, Masonna's at the top of the heap, up there with the likes of Merzbow and Hijokaidan in a sort of unholy trinity. Quite prolific in the past, Masonna's discography is rather large to say the least. But you can be sure than ANY Masonna album you hear is gonna sound like just about the most insane noisy thing EVER. Shock Rock, his umpteenth cd release, is also as far as we're aware the last full-length Masonna album to come out... So it stands to reason that this could well be the noisiest. We're not talking trance-inducing drone like you might get from, say, Aube or even Merzbow, sometimes. We're talking short sharp shocks of feedback-attack noise, 31 tracks on this 46 minute disc. Ultra-distorted, deliriously painful, apoplectic EXTREME noise here! Which, paradoxically, can be a pleasurable, almost gleeful thing...though it's an acquired taste no doubt! Folks who already know and love the likes of Shinsen Na Clitoris (Vanilla, 1990) or Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Aureole (Alchemy, 1993) will want to add this to their collections. It's as spasmodically fierce as those classics. But for Japanese noise noobs, well, this might be like jumping in at the deep end! However, if you're not afraid, and/or simply want to get maximal noise for your 27 bucks, this surely would be the ticket!
This limited pressing 3" cd from local sound alchemists Matmos continues in the same conceptual vein as their last major release, The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of The Beast, where each track was dedicated to a musical, philosophical or literary figure (Boyd McDonald, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Larry Levan, etc.). The material for this cd was originally commissioned by members of The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and Matmos took the opportunity to create three pieces for one of their scientific heroes, Alan Turing. Who is Alan Turing, you ask? Well, Alan Turing was an English mathematician, logician, and cryptographer who became a pioeering figure in modern computing, and who contributed much to the debate about artificial intelligence and whether machines could ever develop consciousness and independently think (ever hear of the Turing Test?). But what makes Alan Turing an even more interesting and ultimately tragic figure for Matmos is the charges that were brought against him in the early fifties of "acts of gross indecency" for admitting to a sexual relationship with another man. After being put on probation and ordered to undergo hormone therapy, Turing ate an apple laced with cyanide. His death was ruled a suicide. Taking cues from Turing's work with cryptographic devices (otherwise known as the Enigma Machine) and his personal effects including postcards he sent to his lover before his suicide entitled Messages From The Unseen World, Matmos gained access to an actual Enigma machine and were able to use its sound for this recording. Enlisting help from David Tibet of Current 93, and Clodagh Simonds of Fovea Hex, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Matthew Curry and Mark Lightcap, Matmos have created three beautiful and touching pieces paying tribute this important and tragic figure. Limited to 1000 copies, and highly recommended!!!
THE RETURN OF THE URNS!! THE THIRD URNS!!
We've been waiting patiently, almost a year now, for the next installment in Monument Of Urns' creeping crawling, and slowly coalescing masterpiece. A timeless epic, so massive, it can only be presented 20 minutes at a time. Each chapter a massive single track, each a piece of some unimaginable grand design. Each immaculately designed and presented. Each somehow impossibly heavier than the last. First there was The Ancient Method. Then there was The Destroyer Of All. And now, there is Cruelty.
Another all too brief missive from the mysterious dark lord who guards the Monument Of Urns.
Cruelty is another soul smiting slab of ultra sludge, a plodding doom metal behemoth, trudging endlessly forward, knee deep in murk and mire, wreathed in clouds of black buzz, a monstrously monolithic dirge, laying waste to any and all who kneel before it. In addition to the demonic growls, there seems to be some sort of strange monk like chanting, giving Cruelty a sort of demonically liturgical feel. The riff and pounding rhythmic pummel repeat like some sort of hellish mantra, over and over for nearly fifteen minutes, before the riffs devolve into a swirling black morass, over which harsh vocals struggle to be heard, the cries of a tortured soul, soon huge black hole pulses of downtuned crush drop from the sky, threatening to rent our puny planet asunder. The beast arises and continues its relentless rampage, until finally, all that is left is the chanting of those mysterious monks, praying that the beast will never return...
Essential doom for the Skepticism, Moss, Bunkur, Esoteric, Khanate, Corrupted, Earth and SUNNO))) sets... And like the other two installments, gorgeously packaged in a fold over sleeve, printed with woodcut images and strange calligraphic text, the 3" cd-r affixed to the inside.
All must worship before the Monument Of Urns.
Or perish.
Finally on cd, this is an AQ favorite from one of our most beloved musicians of the last half century. This new edition includes 3 bonus tracks of some current day folks like Stefan Lakatos adding their own flavor to preexisting Moondog tracks. But of course the real gold here is the original record which is Moondog in his full glory! We only wish this reissue had a little bit more in the way of elaborate packaging as this just comes in a cardboard sleeve. Here is what our pal Dave Katznelson of Birdman Records said about this record when he reviewed it for us back when we had the 10" version in stock:
Originally released on Epic in 1953, this long-playing EP is one of the greatest artifacts of the blind New York percussionist available. On par with the excellent Prestige years, with a similar vibe. However, there is something darker here, with an almost acid edge...and the sounds come ripping off the well-mastered vinyl ever so thickly. This classically packaged ten inch boasts an instrumental round that is the precursor to the great All Is Loneliness To Me, "Rim Shot" which is reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Ruminy Soup", and two suites that brilliantly use lush strings behind the signature Moondog hypnotizing percussion. "Be a hobo and go with me," Moondog sings...and why not join him?
Another mysterious Finnish troubadour, Ville Forss aka Moskiitto, explores a moaning creaking acoustic ambience, a clattery free folk wilderness, much like his countrymen Avarus, Anaksimandros and Vapaa.
Simple muted guitars strum and shimmer beneath a forest of sawed violins and bowed cellos, creating a dreamy, ramshackle stumbling acoustic folk. A haunting assemblage of scraped strings and mumbled buzz and wheezing reed instruments. Lengthy overlapping melodies unfurl into deep drones drone and ambient drifts, majestic and strangely stately, like some ceremonial ritual. Reverberating steel strings are the framework for the whole disc, their overtones spreading out like ripples in a pond, above which flutter mournful melodies and abstract sonic shimmers. At one point accordions drift in, their melodies floating above a tangle of stretched out guitar melody. Very blissfully rustic, like sitting around some crackling campfire deep in the forest, the music slowly shifting and changing shape as various travellers arrive and produce their own unique musical offerings. Nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
Although young enough to be their son, Nico Muhly seems to have a great grasp of the kind of elegance in chamber music that folks like Steve Reich and Philip Glass have developed over the last several decades. The first release on a new label from Iceland, Muhly's name is no upstart in Icelandic music circles as he helped Bjork on Medulla as well as for her score to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The company Muhly keeps gives pretty good insight into the majestic and moving music that he creates. As well as Bjork, Muhly has also collaborated with Philip Glass on lots of stage and film works, and Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, who appears on the last track here. Muhly has a sensitive songwriting hand which keeps the songs on Speaks Volumes subtle enough to remain riveting but with enough emotional weight to keep us coming back for more. So very nice!
We really like this album, but went through a few phases in appreciating it. First off, when we heard about it, we were like, cool! This first-time-on-cd reissue of an extremely obscure, self-released 1971 LP checks out pretty well, on paper: it was a one-off record of tragic love songs done in late '60s psych pop style written and recorded by a teenager from Cyprus recently relocated to New York City. Heck, Middle Eastern psych, we can't get enough! But when we actually heard it, at first it was a little hard to get past how odd it sounded -- it wasn't quite what we were expecting. Marc Mundy's voice and lyrics eventually charmed us, but it's easy to see why he never make it big on the pop charts in the USA, with his foreign accent and amateur (but decent) singing skills. Then there's his lyrics, written in English, which perhaps explains how awkward his turns of phrase can be -- though again, in the end we found ourselves marveling at his heartfelt, heartbreak poetry. Such lyrics as "baby I love your lips / when they're wet with wine and desire / I love your hair / when it is messed up in the wind / baby I love your arms / when your soft, warm flesh touches mine / I love your eyes / when the lovelight lies / not for me the cold, calm kiss of a virgin / not for me / the bless of a saint..." might at first seem like typical love song stuff, but not really... coupled with his so-sincere delivery, Marc's words will find their way closer to your soul than most pop music lyrics ever do. Maybe it's the atypical metaphors, situations and stories that crop up in his songs, some of which must be inspired by the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern folk songs he'd heard in his youth.
For example, "How Can I Marry This Language" is about a father refusing to allow his daughter to marry the song's narrator, in language that he (the frustrated narrator/suitor) can't even understand. It's actually (intentionally, we think) humorous, which isn't the case with most of the sad, melancholic material on this album! Another track, "The Tragic House", is about an empty, abandoned house where the narrator's love used to live, before she vanished to who knows where, or why. Yup, super sad and melancholic. There's definitely lots of stuff on here if you ever need material for a breakup mix tape!! "Our Love Can Never Be", "Give Up Your Pride", "I'm Crying Your Name", "Don't Love Me Anymore", and others...
Yet despite the sadness, these songs percolate along, Marc taking the melodic lead on vocals and guitar, accompanied by a now-anonymous band of musicians, sounding vaguely exotic while also of its time and place (the Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk-rock scene, also home to The Devil's Anvil you'll recall). Ethereal female backing vocals also add to the lovely moodiness...
This reissue is one of those wonderful finds you've got to thank some obsessed collector for, and comes complete with lyric sheet and new liner notes. And it's fully authorized by Marc, whom we're told gave up on music as a career soon after this album was originally released and now lives back on Cyprus, teaching school (and hopefully not still pining for lost loves!).
After releasing a legion of limited cd-rs and vinyl only releases of droney, and smoky, arcane mystical acoustic weirdo raga from the Vermont backwoods (which we loved!!), Matt Valentine and his partner Erika Elder have finally released an album that is neither limited nor expensive. Marking their debut on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace! Imprint, Green Blues is a more straight ahead roots-rock album than we've heard before from this camp, which ultimately makes this release pretty disappointing. There's no doubt to what the "green" in the title refers to, as Valentine and Elder have been for many years living off the grid in a wood cabin and making lots of heady music. But here they seem to have been listening to their Neil Young, Grateful Dead and Canned Heat records a little too long, making their honest hippie affirmations veer into near-comical shtick. On the plus side, it's thankfully short and it does gets better as it goes along with the songs getting longer and stranger with less singing towards the end. Maybe this is just a one-time kink in a long string of amazing releases. Let's hope next time, they'll take a step back from the bong.
An ultra brief blast of grim, depressive, doomy ambience, from this Swedish one man horde known as Nihilum. Also spreading his harsh hateful message of metallic doom and gloom in the groups Durthang and Hypothermia, Nachtzeit, the man behind Nihilim, here weaves lush, lonely synthscapes of minor key melody, rumbling drones, soaring faux strings, and mournful melancholia, all over drawn out pulses and epic sweeping expanses of slow shifting fuzz. A gloriously lo-fi dark ambience, cinematic and sad, weirdly dramatic and hauntingly pretty.
Not so much metal, or doom, or even heavy really, as lilting and lovely, dark, dreamy and depressive.
Anytime you can get metalheads to start dancing and smiling you know you got some special skills! The latest offering from Amsterdam based and Ukrainian born electronic prankster/mastermind German Popov (aka OMFO), has been making all sorts of folks tap their foot and start grinning goofy wide smiles as we've been blasting this from our stereo. We Are The Shepherds picks up where Trans Balkan Express left off, with old world eastern European sounds given a proper weirdo kick in the ass. It makes so much sense that this outing was co-produced by kindred spirit Atom Heart (aka Senor Coconut) as these two have such a grasp on making electronica that's as goofy as it is good, so spazzy and well crafted. Sort of like Aavikko doing world music! The last three times we've been playing this folks who are usually camped out in our metal section couldn't help themselves and had to take one of these home with them. So fun and undeniably charming!
We can't help but love Yoko Ono. I mean c'mon, who else at her age could rock those face-blocking shades and look so incomparably awesome? Plus, apart from some really schmaltzy songs (i.e. "Children Power") she has recorded, arguably more often then not, some pretty damn amazing music (Plastic Ono Band, Fly, Feeling the Space, Season of Glass). Here, she enlists the help of a wide array of indie-music collaborators including Peaches, Antony and the Johnsons, Flaming Lips, Le Tigre, Polyphonic Spree, and Cat Power, who each chose a song from her back catalog and were given access to the multi-track masters to rework them how they wished. Most of the songs come from Ono's more songwriter-ly albums (Double Fantasy, Season of Glass, It's Alright, and Approximately Infinite Universe), with most of the artists keeping Ono's vocal tracks intact. Only Flaming Lips ventured further back and used vocals from "Cambridge 1969" one of John and Yoko's first performative collaborations of screeching shrieks and distorted feedback. Personally, we wished there were more songs selected from that period, better yet being done by artists of our choosing (c'mon, Circle re-doing "Mind Train"? You know you want to hear that!!). At first scan, this seemed like the type of hip remix compilation we dread, the kind which inevitably takes both artist and re-mixer down a notch by needlessly updating old songs through dated trip-hop, trance, or house idioms (she's done it before, more than once, even -- hence our wariness). Thankfully that isn't the case here. Most of the artists breathe new life into the songs through restraint rather than bombast, coming to a halfway point that is neither entirely Ono's nor her collaborators. Cat Power creates a duet with piano on "Revelations". Porcupine Tree deemphasizes the slow burn of "Death of Samantha" with acoustic guitar and atmospheric washes. Jason Pierce from Spiritualized takes the disco out of "Walking On Thin Ice" and gives it something more majestic and much colder. Even the electro and dance-ier tracks submitted by Peaches, Le Tigre, Shitake Monkey and Blow-up don't disappoint as you would expect but contribute a nice flow to the more subdued moments. All in all a surprising listen, and according to the Astralwerks website, this is not the end of it. Another Ono remix album is on the way later this year! Now, if they'd only reissue Fly (hint, hint).
As artistically immersive in music as his father Anthony Perkins was in film, singer/songwriter Elvis Perkins sings beautiful folk pop songs that are blistered gently by electric guitar. Very reminiscent of The Kinks, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, Ron Sexsmith, and Elvis Costello. Absolutely dreamy and achingly heartfelt. Recommended.
The Phoenix Cube is the latest blast of glorious underground weirdness from the always reliable UK micro-label Barl Fire, and offers up our first taste of The Phoenix Cube, a varied collection of beautiful sounds. Some folky and dreamy, some spacey and psychedelic, which makes sense when you realize that the man behind the Phoenix Cube is a writer for psych rock bible Ptolemaic Terrascope...
The first track pretty much sets the tone, dark and dolorous, spaced out dreamlike and unpredictable, a lengthy abstract collage of the opening track, all distant drones, fluttering flutes, tribal drumming, spoken word snippets, tinkling piano, murky swirls of FX which eventually and quite unexpectedly breaks into some sort of skittering rhythmic workout. From there on out, the record drifts from morose balladic folk, to blissed out Hawkwindy space rock, to crumbling expanses of dark ambience, to shuffling hippy strum, to warm whirring organscapes, to the creepy final track, all rumbling didgeridoos and simple hand drums, a droning and divine pagan musical ritual.
Packaged in a full color sleeve with a printed full color cardstock insert.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!
Perhaps you're familiar with that kick ass Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word compilation on Delay 68? It's sure been a big seller hereabouts. One of the bands that compiler Andy Votel introduced us to via that collection was an Italian group by the name of Picchio Dal Pozzo. Their track "La Merta", in all its gently gorgeous glory of tinkling, buzzing, and wordless vocal "aaaah-aaaahhing", made us curious to hear more by them! Turns out "La Merta" was taken from this, their self-titled debut originally released in 1976 on the Grog label. And indeed it was indicative of the mellow and mysterious delights of this album, a work of cosmically spacey, jazz-inflected, psychedelic chamber-prog inspired by the Canterbury sounds of Robert Wyatt era Soft Machine (indeed, it bears a dedication to "Roberto Viatti" aka Robert Wyatt). They were probably into Terry Riley too. Yet nothing prepared us for track three, this record's ten-minute masterpiece, the suite entitled "Seppia" that freakin' blew our minds with its droning, throbbing, Magmoid, synth-sizzling heaviness. Wow! Have the Boredoms heard this?? So, a very nice record indeed, with at least one track that just takes things to another level entirely. Seriously, if you're like us you'll being playing that one over and over again. Instantly a new Italian prog fave here -- half the AQ staff bought copies for themselves!
The Places' new album is filled with drifty, dreamy folk pop that every so often detours into more cacophonous realms. It makes for a slightly off-kilter and woozy listen (maybe that's where the creeps in the title come in?). Simple strummed acoustic guitars provide a warm blanketing foundation while the electric six-strings splinter off noisy shards. Lead singer Amy Annelle's voice has acquired a few more quirky earthy edges since we last heard her on Autopilot Knows You Best back in 2000. Indeed, these days her voice draws more comparisons to Julie Doiron, Lisa Germano and the Be Good Tanyas, than Karen Carpenter or Lois.
Quite affecting and wonderfully world-weary.
We've been geeking out on, I mean rockin' out to, a bunch of the '70s and '80s hard rock/heavy metal reissues coming out on the UK's Rock Candy label... Plasmatics, Armored Saint, Billy Squier, Ted Nugent, Riot, a whole bunch of old favorites, done up all deluxe with nice packaging and copious liner notes. We've reviewed a few already. Here's another we like a lot.
First-time-on-cd for this 1978 album, the second and last from one-hit wonders Ram Jam. That one hit was their high octane cover of Leadbelly's "Black Betty" from their first album (do yourself a favor and look up the video on Youtube!!). So what has Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Ram got to offer? Well, though it didn't produce any hits, it's the better of their two records by far. With a revamped line-up, Ram Jam's hybrid bubblegum / biker blues roots are a thing of the past, the band now a lean, mean, polished, hard n' heavy rock outfit that fans of other, more popular commercial late '70s American rockers like Aerosmith, KISS, Foreigner, and Starz should dig... though at the time they apparently didn't, this record sales-wise spelling the end of Ram Jam's career. Dunno why, people must just not have heard it, as it's quite the party platter, full of kick ass lead guitar, powerful vocals, and energetic, catchy tuneage that would sound great blasting from your souped-up Camaro or custom-painted van...
But now here's a chance to hear this again (for the first time, if you're like us!) and give Ram Jam's swansong its due! Recommended to all rockers.
A killer slab of ultra minimal, low end soundscapes, from this LA noisemaker. Tangled shadowy shapes twist and slither, stretch and contort, a constantly shifting lowercase world of speaker destroying rumble and strangely sibilant buzz. This is thick and crunch and heavy and will probably cause damage to your speakers, but it's all muter and muffled, dragged down into the dark, so instead of being an all out noise assault, it's a beautiful and serene crawl through some black sonic underworld, ambient, but subtly harsh, dreamlike, but ominous and mysteriously fucked up. The sound can be cavernous one second, machinelike the next. Imagine the still warm corpse of Wolf Eyes, laid out on the slab, sliced wide open, all manner of microscopes and imaging devices trained on the various, still pulsing inner workings of the beast, well, the sound being picked up by the most sensitive of microphones, placed delicately within the carcass, are picking up the very sounds captured here.
Packaged in gorgeous chipboard sleeves, one side with a pasted on image, the front adorned with a simple symbol in metallic silver ink. Each one different. Really striking. Pressed on super thick vinyl, with a full color printed insert. LIMITED TO 330 COPIES!
An absolutely stellar reissue of Terry Riley's debut album from 1966, Reed Streams.
Containing two long pieces, "Untitled Organ" and "Dorian Reeds", we see the initial foundations of Riley's spiritualized minimalism that would culminate in the wide releases of A Rainbow in Curved Air and In C a few years later. "Untitled Organ" is a series of four- and eight-note patterns exchanged and interchanged in idiosyncratic modulations inevitably creating a third complex pattern. The effect is rigorous, repetitious and astounding for its lack of delay effects. "Dorian Reeds" makes use of more undulating and circular pulsations but this time is aided with tape echo to create a more time-altering effect. But the real treat of this reissue is the bonus track from 1970 of "In C (mantra)" performed by L'Infonie, a ragtag group of French-Canadian free players directed by Walter Boudreau. What L'Infonie adds to this piece is the use of propulsive percussion jettisoning this classic piece of conceptual music into a grooving krautrock tribal spree. Highly Recommended!!!!!!
Stunning debut from New Mexican born singer and ukelele player, Danielle Stech-Homsy or as she's known musically, Rio En Media. Released on Devendra Banhart and Andy Cabic's label Gnomonsong, it's easy to tell why Devendra pegged her as one of his favorite acts of 2006. With a voice like Sibylle Baier, The Bride of Dynamite is full of nineteenth century poetic romanticism with lyrics inspired by Paul Eluard, William Blake, John Ashbery and Freya Stark, the first western woman to travel the Arabian desert. Such wanderlust is shaded by a unique instrumentation of glockenspiels, bulba tarang (an instrument from Afghanistan), damaged electronic passages and the aforementioned ukelele. Siera Casady from Coco Rosie provides the back-up vocals while Vetiver's Andy Cabic, and Thom Monahan, who is the behind scenes sound wizard for many of Andy and Devendra's projects lend a hand on guitar and production work respectively Nice!
Mysterious ep of ritualistic black metal from this German duo. Sorath, "visionaire and heralder" and Aer, "moulder of ritual ambience", whip up a strange black metal brew, some tracks are long slow stretches of roiling ambience, which give way to harsh slow motion doomic dirge, howled vocals, and lurching tarpit riffage, before suddenly exploding into blasts of Nordic style buzz, with stumbling double kick drumming, insectoid riffing, and strangled cries, all tangled into a murky black swirl. Others, are raw bursts of pounding midtempo riffage, simple metallic stomps, grim and frosty. A weird blend of classic Norwegian style black metal Mayhem and a more necro primitive black blast that totally slays in its own murky muddied lo-fi way...
Classical music doesn't get more "goth" than this. Elevating the Theremin from the realms of sci-fi and horror movie sound effects, Lithuanian-born child musical prodigy, Clara Rockmore is considered to be the most accomplished classical performer of this early electronic instrument and greatly assisted in its further development. With the stern temperament of a classical diva and the rigid eastern European beauty of a vampire, Clara Rockmore was an other-wordly virtuosa that completely hypnotized her audience with a ruthless dedication to her craft. Originally trained as a classical violinist, malnutrition made her unable to play past her teen years, eventually leading to her discovery of this newborn electronic device. Blessed with absolute pitch, and the ability to have extremely precise and rapid control of her movements enabled her to play the Theremin better than most other performers. Working with Leon Theremin in the early days of its commercial development in the United States, Rockmore made improvements on the original design to make it better suited as a performing instrument and also developed a sophisticated fingering system, which allowed her to accurately perform fast passages, and large note leaps. This is a previously unreleased album of classical pieces recorded in 1973 accompanied by her sister, Nadia Reisenberg on piano. While Rockmore elevated this unique instrument into the classical music world, the haunting pieces on this album never stray far from the gothic feel of those early romantic horror films. Spooky!
This here is a noise record. No way to sugar coat it. There are bits and parts that are less than noisy, some subtle sonics and strange ambience, but ultimately, to dig this, you need a taste for NOISE.
Roman Torment is a blast of face melting ear shredding rooooaaarr. A dense smear of sonic chaos, grinding shrieking howling, thick crumbling masses of sound, blinding streaks of feedback, bursts of speaker shredding grit. Intense and thick and L O U D.
Feed The Dragon, are all about the noise too, but they creep up on it slowly, starting out with some minimal glitch and stutter, a swirling, scraping ambience, lots of low end and distant sonic gristle, before gradually building into a thick undulating swell of electronic buzz and rumbling sonic grind, sheets of skree draped over throbbing pulses of crunch and grind, that gets so thick and heavy near the end, it almost begins to resemble something distinctly metallic, like Earth or SUNNO))), but of course way noisier...
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Pressed on super thick vinyl. with cool and creepy paste on art.
Well, here is yet another monumental two cd Klaus Schulze reissue from Revisited who have previously reissued Irrlicht from 1972 and Cyborg from 1973. This time around we'll spare you Schulze's back story as you can read more about it in the above mentioned reviews.
Klaus Schulze's fifth album Timewind, his 1975 debut for Virgin Records has long been considered, in some circles, his masterwork. Yet quantifying Schulze's immense output in such a way is a difficult and slippery task. Surely signing to Virgin introduced him to a wider audience, but Timewind is hardly any more "accessible" than his prior output nor is it the kind of precedent to New Age music that you would expect from the label who released Tubular Bells. Dedicated to Richard Wagner, Timewind's two sidelong pieces further explore Schulze's fascination with starkly sensual and droning soundscapes, where icy synth pulsations converge with long tonal organ flights until these overlapping rhythms simultaneously gain and decrease in momentum becoming slowly bubbling Moog passages with shimmering electric washes. Like a windy barren landscape on some depopulated planet, Schulze's compositions read like epics of a post-human technological future. Included is a second bonus disc of two long unreleased tracks recorded around the same time and one recently recorded track that harkens back to a sound more affiliated with the late seventies output of Schulze's former band-mates in Tangerine Dream and Ash Ra Tempel, which means it's awesome!
So many grind/metalcore/hardcore bands over the years owe more than a few pennies to Boston's hardcore/grind pioneers Siege. In fact, a lot of those bands owe them EVERYTHING!
Much like the length of their songs, their time as a band was brief, but in just two short years they laid waste to many with their intense sound and energy. Bands like Napalm Death and a whole slew of early Earache/Noiseville acts made pretty decent careers for themselves taking that Siege sound and running with it, some of them continuing to do it even now, in fucking 2007!
This cd collects all their compilation tracks as well as all the "official release" stuff, and while this ain't a very long player, Siege managed to get to the point REAL QUICK, without wasting much more than some picks, some guitar strings, a bunch of drumsticks and last but not least YOUR GODDAMN EARDRUMS! One of the greatest and heaviest punk (metal?) bands ever!
When over the course of many years a cutting edge band's signature edge has been shamelessly pillaged -- and in turn become a mainstay of the edge-of-mainstream -- what are they to do when they decide to reunite? March out the old standards? Hopefully not. Resurface with a potent new strain? Perhaps. Ideally not end up sounding like a shadow of their former selves and a sound alike of younger upstarts. Unlike other veteran bands who've reformed after lengthy absences, Skinny Puppy fortunately haven't done the former. However, unlike other groundbreaking phoenixes such as Killing Joke, they also haven't returned to their fiery pulpit to school the new generation.
SP has always been detailed, monumentally monstrous and rich in intriguing sounds, but for Mythmaker, the group's interplay of chance/cut-ups and spin-the-radio-dial distortion adventures seem to have vanished. The difference seems to mostly lie in the choice to stop using tapes of media sources -- documentary television, radio, European and Canadian underground psychological horror films, and underreported war-reality-radio-broadcasts as surrealistic textures. This is most noticeable in two vital areas: the group's trademark collaged soundscapes crafted by Cevin Key -- now so few and far between, but markedly more than on 2004's reunion album The Greater Wrong Of The Right -- sound much less 'hands on' sculpted and more reliant on software rubik's-grids. In general, there's an absence of friction, tension and of ill-tempered spectral presences. As well, Nivek Ogre's 'singing' (i.e, not his former textural guttural Artaud-isms) are almost completely audible, being processed through a vocoder, with a heavy dose of 'stutter-edit' and auto-tune set to 'death grip' (we actually wish that they were even further effected, preferably to the point of incoherence because some of the rhyming lyrics are shockingly simplistic. Hard to believe that they came from the same poison pen as "Testure", "Harsh Stone White" or "Who's Laughing Now?" from VIVIsectVI, 1988). Ultimately, Mythmaker's atmospheres feel something like Richard Devine's industrial IDM processed through a faux-metal 'zombie America' video game soundtrack. One thing that has returned to a more prominent and welcome role is Key's artfully crafted drumming and percussion sounds. No playing shows up like the mesmerizing kraut-funk of Tear Garden's Last Man To Fly era recordings, mind you, but it's nice to hear some wood and metal mixed in with the filter swept electro-raindrop snares. Some of Ken Marshall's best mixing work can usually be found on Cevin Key's projects, and as usual, it slams. Overall, Mythmaker is a better record than its predecessor (although it does have a couple of 'oops' songs unfortunately and weirdly one is the opener "Magnifishit"!), and shows the group to be at the stylistic apex / end of this particular version of the 'Puppy sound.
Yep, SP are doing things they haven't done before, and for better or for worse -- you decide -- they've moved on, and are leaving the Skinny Puppy of old on the mantle to continue its disembodied haunt.
Sloan continue their Canadian pop rock reign with Never Hear The End Of It. The whopping thirty songs long running time might seems a little excessive and overwhelming, but we're not complaining. They pace the album well and keep the energy and focus up-up-up from start to finish. They don't tire and neither will you! With each subsequent album, Chris, Patrick, Jay and Andrew somehow keep things both bright'n'fresh and comfortingly familiar. They get increasingly polished, but never to the point of slick. Their four distinct voices deliver the swoonworthy boyish harmonies and their dual guitar attack launches out the electrifying riffs, embedding irresistible hooks at every turn. Absolute power pop nirvana for sure! Soooo good!
From the frozen North, and no, not Scandinavia, we're talking Quebec, the other grim frosty North, comes French Canadian doom flecked black metal outfit Sombres Forets, who manage to spin a thick black web of depressive buzz that rivals the blackened buzzscapes of fellow dark souls Xasthur, Make A Change... Kill Yourself and of course Burzum.
Sad and sorrowful, melancholy and mournful, this is not so much harsh and hateful as it is desolate and despondent. The sound is black, but the mood is doom, with occasional stretches of rumbling dark ambience, distant washes of soft focus keyboard, finger picked clean guitar figures, and subterranean whir. But it's the dirgey riffs, and the dour, depressive melodies, so emotional and miserable, so strangely catchy and haunting, that make these songs resonate so deeply. They almost sound like sad pop songs wrapped in spikey black cloaks and wreathed in a thick black fog. Beneath the surface, huge swells of doomic miserablism lurk, a faint shadow beneath the roiling blackness, rhythms shift and shudder, but ultimately, this is a bleak and strangely introspective journey through a damaged and damned black soul, rendered in blur and buzz. So dark, and dolorous, funereal and forlorn, and yet so strangely dreamlike and lovely.
The return of our favorite one man Tasmanian rain forest black metal horde, the mighty Striborg, whose damaged outsider lo-fi black buzz has held us in its thrall since the very first time we heard it years ago. Even though this is only the second Striborg release we've managed to get enough of to review and list, there have actually probably been more like a dozen full lengths from Striborg so far...
And lord knows we've tried to track down enough copies of those old releases to list, but as they are all self released on Striborg mainman Sin Nanna's own label, they've been mighty tough to get a hold of. Thankfully, he's taken to tacking on old out of print records at the tail end of new records. So here we've got the brand new full length Nefaria, coupled with his '95 demo A Tragic Journey Towards The Light. And the amazing thing is that even after all that time, and all those releases, the sound is just as lo-fi, fucked up and damaged as ever. The atmosphere is creepy and gloomy, the vocals a strangled croak swathed in reverb, the drums a stumbling thrashing mess, a dank black buzz that writhes and squirms, filthy and mysterious and so fucking awesome. There are some haunting ambient tracks too, whirring warbly synths drifting wraith like, sometimes with a lurching subtle beat buried way down in the mix, but for the most part, it's all damaged buzzing blackness, wrapped around bizarre arrangements and loads of lo-fi hiss and whir. Amidst the weirdness there are some breathtaking moments, moody and emotional and strangely haunting, like the first half of closer "Black Apparitional Void" a slowcore midtemo Burzumy buzz replete with distant keyboard melody and gorgeous minor key melodies, as lovely and sorrowful as it is buzzy and black, with bizarre muddy swells that briefly swallow up the entire song before quickly receding back into the murk, before the song lurches into a dizzying squall of buzzing guitars, processed vocals, and bizarrely recorded drums, the rest of the track going from lo-fi to even more lo-fi and back again.
But then we're only scratching the surface as far as lo-fi is concerned, cuz up next is Striborg's very first recording, A Tragic Journey Towards The Light, which is so lo-fi and so liberally sprinkled with effects, that at times it stops being black metal and becomes some weird swirling morass of black sound. The drum machine is doused in reverb, doubling and blurring, almost like some hyperspeed dub, during the super dynamic start and stop parts, the vocals and the drums are so caked in FX, that they sound like some sort of children's TV show special effects sounds, and the vocals, a garbled tongue twisting whatthefuck stream of growls and guttural yelps, the guitar a squiggly distorted streak over the churning blur beneath, so completely over the top and confusing to listen to, but so completely and impossibly catchy. This is the Striborg that ensorcelled us back in the day, and it sounds just as amazingly fucked as ever!
Hurrah! This marvelous Sun Kil Moon album has been reissued by Mark Kozelek's own label Caldo Verde. Along with the original album comes a whole extra disc of a half dozen bonus tracks including an acoustic rendition of "Salvador Sanchez", two versions of "Somewhere" and a radio recording of "Gentle Moon".
Here's what we said about the 2003 release:
Attention all Mark Kozelek and Red House Painters fans gather 'round! Here's something new for you from the gent himself! Not surprisingly his new band sounds very much in the same vein as his assorted past work. Heck, his stellar bandmates include Red House Painters' Anthony Koutsos, American Music Club's Tim Mooney and Geoff Stanfield (ex-Black Lab). Each song is steeped in Kozelek's usual yearning melancholia and lyrical eloquence, all warmed by ample reverb. The highlight is the expansive, haunting 14 minute long "Duk Koo Kim", although "Carry Me Ohio" and "Last Tide" aren't far behind. As well, they fire things up a bit on the comparatively rockin' "Lily And Parrots". Sure to please fans new and old.
Mike Tamburo is another in the burgeoning free folk cd-r underground who through no fault of his own has been overlooked on our weekly new arrivals list. We do our best, but it's pretty dang impossible to keep up with the hundreds of new releases every week, but now we've got the chance to introduce you to the amazing dark musical world of Mr. Tamburo.
Dance Enis Dance is a 32 minute piece for acoustic guitar, Tibetan bowls, chromatic harmonica, e-bowm slide, hammered dulcimer and effects. The result is a modern raga, an epic multi part piece, that could have just as easily been a series of songs, but they are all deftly woven together into the whole. The first part is a simple bit of Appalachian strum that is gradually smeared into a blurry, fuzzy ambience, an effulgent streak of slow shifting buzz. The second 'movement' is super subdued, a dark dark drift, with bells and chimes ringing out over a muted background of warm chords and steel string shimmer, eventually drifting off only to be replaced by a flurry of dulcimer notes, a dense cloud of tangled melody, which is eventually overtaken by thick slabs of crumbling guitar distortion, throbbing and pulsing. The last few minutes are a see-saw, veering back and forth between delicate steel string folk with dreamy slide guitar offering up haunting minor key melodies, to wild fervent strumming and back again, culminating in a strangely atonal bacchanalian psychedelic denouement. Really good stuff. We can't wait to hear more.
This cd-r is packaged in a full color sleeve with a huge insert, art on one side, liner notes (and a poignant tale) on the other.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
What's this? Maybe the cover, all-black but for the name Tarkus, caught your eye? Holy grail time here, people. We've been wanting to get this album on cd FOREVER. There was a hard-to-find LP reissue some years ago, but we'd never yet found a cd version -- until now, at last, and it's a totally legit one from the master tapes! Released (barely, in an edition of just, like, 50 copies) in Tarkus' native Peru back in 1972, this is an album to go down in the annals of heavy rock, proudly belonging to the pantheon of proggy proto-metal!!! We'd definitely rank this with favorites of ours in that truly cult realm, other early '70s stuff like Necronomicon and Night Sun and Eduardo Bort and Steamhammer's Speech!
It may be that they're named after the ELP's 1971 album Tarkus (you know, the one with that freaky armadillo/tank on the cover), but they don't sound much like ELP in any event. While progressive rock is part of their sound, this Tarkus come across more like a bizarro hybrid of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and some of the more out-there and baroque Italian prog outfits of the era, rather than ELP. It's music that's dark and doomy and powerful and psychedelically dosed, sometimes with really weird operatic vocals -- and always with about a zillion cool, heavy guitar riffs. It's meant to be played LOUD. Shouldn't be hard to comply!
With some very pretty melodies and acoustic moments, Tarkus somehow seem like a '60s garage psych act (which they previously were, Tarkus being formed by members of Peruvian psych-pop group Telegraph Ave.) in possession of a crystal ball that enabled them to gaze into the future to be anachronistically inspired by Black Sabbath's Sabotage album, which was released three years later in 1975 (we'll have to assume that crystal ball had a place to plug in earphones).
This comes packaged in a gatefold, miniature LP styled sleeve. There's a folded color insert, another black and white lyric sheet, and also separate liner notes in both Spanish and English, which make mention of the band dressing like monks when they made one of their rare live appearances.
And by the way, we'd somehow suspect that Portland's Danava have heard this record. If not, they should -- we think they'd like it! And we think you will too, if any of the above raving and referencing strikes a chord!
Damon Albarn has quietly emerged from the shadows of 90's MTV fame with Blur's hit (No. 2 Song) to become one of the more interesting musical figures in the more mainstream realms of modern rock. From his travels to Africa that resulted in the great Mali Music album, his collaborative efforts in The Gorillaz, and even the last Blur record, Think Tank which was pretty much a solo endeavor and contained some really smart and somewhat somber pop songs. He's also been running a great record label Honest Jons who have released some amazing records old and new from the likes of Moondog, Candi Staton, Tony Allen, Las Malas Amistades, etc. The Good The Bad & The Queen is his latest project and he's assembled quite the all-star cast including Clash bassist Paul Simonon and legendary drummer (of Fela Kuti fame), Tony Allen, with production duties handled by Danger Mouse. Together they've created a really nice album of subdued pop songs with layers of warmth and an expansive and moody disposition. At times it even made us think of a more polished version of Three Mile Pilot's Another Desert Another Sea, and this for sure should appeal to fans of Pinback and Radiohead. This keeps growing on us listen after listen, revealing something more each time. For sure one of our favorite major label records in quite a while.
For their first full length since 2003, German instrumental organic drone alchemists Troum have teamed up with Nina Kernicke aka All Sides to create one of the most amazing records we've heard in ages. A gorgeously expansive single track, epic and cinematic, dark and delicate...
Beginning life as the guitar based drone unit Maeror Tri, the band morphed into Troum and expanded their sonic palette to include all manner of instruments including guitar, bass, voice, accordion, balalaika, flute, mouth-organ, melodica, gong and even field recordings. Every record since has slowly expanded their sonic universe, but Shutun is a revelation.
The sound is dramatically different from past Troum outings, so one has to assume that Ms. Kernicke has something to do with the new direction. That said, it's impossible to tell who is doing what. This single 51 minute piece is like an organic entity, a living sound, shifting and stretching, subtly changing shape assuming new forms. From the strange processed voices that open up the piece, creating a strange pagan sort of ritual, the voices are quickly subsumed by soft metallic shimmers, that seem to materialize from out of nowhere. A hypnotically looped refrain that glistens and glimmers, the sound is not dense at all, but nearly weightless. Within these delicate shimmers are darkly melancholic melodies that repeat mantra like, creating super intense emotion, and occasional muted bursts of resonant sound, huge billows of metallic rumble like massive bells slowed way down. The result is impossibly lush and dreamlike. cinematic and dramatic. It's like an impossible blend of Oval's Diskont, the blissed out blur of Pop Ambient, and the sepia toned fuzzscapes of Tim Hecker. But Troum and All Sides, take those sounds and blend them into something new and unique, looping certain parts, stretching out others. Drone music can be dark and ominous, but to imbue it with such emotion and such intensity, is a rare thing indeed. About 11 minutes in, the whole piece becomes saturated with some intense minor key miserablism, it's impossible to not get chills, or to imagine the music as the backdrop for some incredible tragedy. The sound of terror, heartbreak, loneliness, it's amazingly powerful. And that's just the first half of the record.
About halfway through the record, the lush sonic backdrop recedes, leaving a slow shimmery landscape of bleak minimal rumble and slow droning swells. The creaking and groaning in the background are definitely reminiscent of the ghost ship minimalism of Nurse With Wound's Salt Marie Celeste. And this portion of Shutun plays out as a similar sonic journey. A creeping musical terror, an endless walk into a grey nothingness. But before everything fades to black, a strange pulsing machinelike throb surfaces, a crumbling, heroin house pulse buried beneath roiling swirls of hiss and creaking ambience. Eventually, the clouds clear, the strange relentless murky rhythm becomes more sporadic and scattershot, and the gloom dissipates, leaving warm muted streaks of color in the sky, with the haunting looped melody from the beginning resurfacing, but just briefly and barely as a not-really-there ghost-like coda. So completely spellbinding.
Packaged in a printed metal canister with a textured paper and silver ink insert.
Oh yeah! With so many great collections of golden-era soul/funk coming out in the last couple years chronicling the wonderful sounds that came out of scenes in different parts of the country and abroad it makes perfect sense that there should be some collections detailing the amazing soul & funk that came out of our very own backyard, right here in San Francisco and throughout the bay-area during the '60s and '70s. Like their great collection of soul & funk from Michigan on the Searching For Soul comp, Luv N' Haight have once again hit solid gold with a totally stellar collection of should have been big time hits that mostly slipped under the radar on a more national scale. From the heartbroken soul of Mary Love, the always reliable Sugar Pie DeSanto, the tripped out funk of San Francisco T.K.O.'s, the charismatic hip shaking sounds of Little Denise Stevenson and the gut wrenchingly gritty funk of Primevil, this collection is pretty much super solid from start to finish. We can't get enough of the raw good stuff, from a time when Soul & Funk was done so totally right. Fans of the Eccentric Soul series and of all vintage soul & funk, this is a definite must have!
By the looks of the first two compilations that Chapter Music has released documenting the Australian post-punk scene, we (and probably a lot of other folks) could use a series history lessons into the finer points of Antipodean punk. Having unearthed two incendiary Primitive Calculators collections from that same time period, Chapter again strikes gold with a stunning collection of terminally obscure bands who were much more talented and intriguing than their lack of recognition might reflect. The only two bands that have even come across our radar are Severed Heads (but here with an incredibly primitive electronic sound and a female singer) and Microfilm (the amazing, Wire-esque dour post punk band fronted by Lisa Gerrand who later went on to form Dead Can Dance); but for everybody else, it's anybody's guess as to whatever became of them. Nonetheless, this comp confirms that the Australian take on post-punk agitation, no-wave convolutions and contortions, and new wave bleakness was as vibrant as what more well know scenes (i.e. New York, Berlin, London) had managed. As on the first comp (which featured a band called the Slugfuckers), volume 2 also sports a band with an incredible name: The Goat That Went "Om." Highly recommended
More funky fucked up soundtracks from lost porno films, a la the Deep Note compilations, but unlike those classic seventies jams, these all seem to be from the eighties and most of them seem to be borrowing themes from popular music and television shows, which sounds weird, and it is, but it also makes these pretty fun and freaky. Plus try to imagine folks doing the nasty to most of these songs and it's downright impossible. It more likely that you'll be imagining car chases, and poolside brunch on the Love Boat or some strange montage on Fantasy Island.
From "Move On" which is a total rip of that song that goes "Whatchoo gonna do when she says good bye..." with some very Steely Dan sounding instrumentation, to "I P Walk" which borrows heavily from that Rick Astley song "Never gonna give you up...". The best title of the bunch is definitely "Hawkwind And Fire", but instead of sounding like Hawkwind, it absolutely is the theme to some totally famous eighties TV cop drama. But the pinnacle of whatthefuck on this comp has to be "The Heist" which is actually the theme from People's Court!!! Who the hell is fucking to the theme from People's Court?!? Unless it's from some People's Court spoof porn movie, People's Pork or something....
The coolest track by far though is "The Bends" a groovy laid back heavy psych rock jam, with super out of place space age synths, all fuzzed out, the whole track peppered with weird damaged FX. Another track that makes it difficult to imagine folks fucking to it.
A pretty fun and fantastic listen all around, but it's definitely gotten us dying to see what sort of weird and wild sex could have possibly transpired to the demented strains of these far out tunes. Maybe the next porn music reissue, instead of just issuing a cd, should just go for it and reissue the actual porno? Just a thought...
Managed to get another handful of these super limited lps, so act fast:
Super limited vinyl document of the Halleluwah Festival Of Enthused Arts that took place in September 1-2 of this year curated by the same folks who do the killer yeti magazine.
Two sides, one quiet, one loud, a bunch of instantly recognizable names, as well as a bunch of unknowns (at least to us) all of it pretty dang amazing, so much so that we were kicking ourselves for missing the festival.
The quiet side features folk legend Michael Hurley, folk legend Vashti Bunyan and Tara Jane O'Neil, as well as White Rainbow, Holysons and Alela Diane. The sound leans mostly toward subtle twang, simple strum, and dreamlike croon, but there are some moments of blissy foggy ambient murmur and some fuzzy murky psychedelic blues.
The loud side features Deerhoof, Sir Richard Bishop and Valet (whose cd-r we raved about a few lists back) as well as three weirdly named ensembles: Nudity, Romancing and Yacht. The loud side veers all over the place, from weird psychrock tribal freakouts to blown out angular indie rock buzz to damaged minimal punk rock bounce to fuzzy psychedelic heavy riffed rock jams.
The packaging is just as impressive, a thick, plain white sleeve through which are visible strange looking inserts, each printed on super thick semi transparent cloudy plastic, the loud side is red on white with an illustration by Kevin Arrow, the quiet side is white on black, and features an amazing illustration by Unica Zurn, the partner of Hans Bellmer! Wow!!
Before you go get goin' too excited about this new issue of IMFJ, we gotta tell you a couple things. First the good news, yes this does come with not one but two full cds crammed with cutting edge music for you to check out. Lots of cool avant-garde experimentation. But, none of it's by Japanese artists. This is the "Special Issue: Berlin" and so it focusses on that European scene, including folks like Axel Dorner, Christof Kurzmann, Annette Krebs, Phillip Sollmann, F.S. Blumm, Tony Buck, Jason Forrest, Joe Williamson, Andrea Neumann, and many others (Germans, Italians, Americans, etc... just no Japanese!). Japanophiles thereby be warned. People who like minimal electronics and out-there improvised music in general though should still be quite interested! But (another but), also a bit frustrated, unless fluent in Japanese. Because unlike previous issues of IMFJ, this one has no English text -- the interviews, articles and reviews are all in Japanese. Kind of a bummer for us, eh? But, you still get the two discs of music, and some pictures and stuff to look at, so it might still be worth it if you're interested in hearing what these cats are up to in Berlin.
Lawrence English has been one of the champions of Australian sound art, in both bringing international artists to Australia and in exposing the world to the finer recordings from his countrymen and women. In 2006, English had co-curated a conference / exhibition at the University of Tasmania on the subject of isolation in any number of political, aesthetic, and philosophical guises. In addition to the theoretical investigations of the event, English assembled an all-star cast of international sound artists to offer their own take on the subject of isolation. According to English, this CD "was provided to delegates attending a conference in Hobart in 2006 at the University of Tasmania to help awaken a deep imagination and engagement with these matters." The highlights from the compilation include the Borhen & Der Club Of Gore -like doomy vibes and atmospheres from Dale Lloyd, Stephen Vitiello's emphatic crack of electric noise that gently fades into driftwork / dronescape, the very special nothing music of Richard Chartier with the smallest of sonic ruptures located upon a vast plane of undulating bass rumbles, Jeph Jerman's quiet ritual with found objects set against the constant din of a nearby ocean, and Richard Francis & Nest's bleak soundfield of shortwave radio static and mournful guitar distortion. Lovely stuff.
FINNISH WEIRD MUSIC OBSESSIVES will not want to pass this up. The strangely named Puistokiitajainen compilation collects haunting and lovely, mostly acoustic tracks from another circle of the Finnish music underground that we have seemingly barely scratched the surface of. Not a single band name we recognize: Adolf Hiller, Amigo Result, Krax Orchestra, Parta & Viikset, Esko Mrk, Tomi, Pulkkinen, Monuments In The Horizon, Jump P.A. And The Guitar That Wasn't Mine, Kanttoripoika, Stories, Jan-Erik & His Band Of Banjos, Neljakakkonen, but we're willing to wager at least a few name we know might be involved. But it hardly matters, every track here is a gem. Dark and folky, detuned and deconstructed, dreamy and drifting. acoustic guitars crumble and drift, wrapped in dense swaths of tape hiss, harmoniums and accordions wheeze out old timey ambience, metallic percussion and random clinks and clatters shimmer way down in the mix, whirring stretches of tinkling ambience butt up against birdlike FX and looped angular guitar, field recordings, and tiny tangles of warm dreamlike strum, each track totally unique, but somehow sonically linked to each other, like a strange sampling of the long lost works of some recently unearthed alien Appalachia, all muted twang and abstract ambience. So nice. ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
An amazing and elaborately packaged vinyl compilation of tracks originally released on the infamous Snatch Tape Compilations, volumes one through three, which were first released way back in the late seventies / early eighties. Some familiar names: David Jackman of Organum, Storm Bugs, Philip Sanderson (who also put together this comp) as well as some names we've never heard or seen before: Alien Brains, The N4's, Orior and more. The interesting thing, is sonically, almost all of these tracks could be some strange cd-r micro release from two weeks ago. It's hard to believe these tracks are from more than 25 years ago. Not sure whether it speaks to the prescience of these artists, or the mighty debt today's crop of noisemakers owe to those that came before. Probably a little of both.
Needless to say, this will appeal to fans of the modern field of limited cd-r label free noise ambient sound makers, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, PseudoArcana, Digitalis, if you've been loving all that stuff, this will absolutely hit the spot.
Jackman offers up "Blues", which is indeed some sort of blues, but dense with buzzing steel strings and distant clatter, The Storm Bugs unfurl huge slabs of cavernous rumble and whir, a little Dead C, a little Organum, some wailing crooned vocals drift in and out, everything doused in reverb, Sanderson unleashes some strange alien new wave, muted drum machine rhythms, bloopy synths buried under fog horn bass rumble, primitive FX swirl and swoop, everything wrapped in a crumbling lo-fi ambience. Other tracks explore damaged synths, garbled vocals, primitive Plunderphonic soundscapes, malfunctioning electronics, and all manner of abstract lo-fi buzz.
Pressed on outrageously thick vinyl, and packaged in a gorgeous sleeve, matte finished with subtle embossing. So nice. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each sleeve hand numbered.
Every time we get a new Soul Jazz collection from the Studio One vaults we keep thinking ok this one is finally gonna be a dud, but that never seems to happen! This time out it's classic '70s era Studio-One with a grip of rare tracks from the likes of Willie Williams, Cornell Campbell, The Ethiopian, Horace Andy, Jennifer Lara, and a whole lot more. Liner notes by music historian Chris Salewicz do a really nice job giving the music a context in the political and musical climate of Jamaica during the '70s. Yet more rock solid proof documenting just how rich and deep those Studio One vaults really are.
Initially a very post-rock focused indie label, Temporary Residence has branched out over the years to become quite a mighty eclectic entity. This compilation literally picks right up from where the label's 2004's Thank You compilation left off. It features brand spankin' new, previously unreleased tracks by almost every artist that Temporary Residence has signed since Thank You was released. Present and accounted for: Eluvium, Caroline, Lazarus, Cex & Nice Nice, The Ladies, Sleeping People, By The End Of Tonight, The Drift, Mono and Anomoanon.
M. Ward picked the dandy Daniel Johnston cover out of his last album Post War's song selection to be the title track of this new ep. The song features Neko Case on backing vocals and she reappears on the fourth tune here too -- the splendid cover of Jimmie Dale Gilmore's "Headed For A Fall" which also features the star-studded support of Jim James, Mike Mogis, and Nels Cline. It's one of those songs that you'd hope would never end, but it does and you can't help but press 'play' once more. Two other non-album tracks round out the ep with Howe Gelb also dropping in for "Cosmopolitan Pap". Wonderful!!
Latest issue of this eminently readable and gorgeously laid out New Zealand music and arts magazine. Always chock full of amazing obscurities and usually at least one or two artists or musicians you actually have heard of just so you don't feel completely out of touch. This issue features, a piece on the Pink And White Terraces, at one time, New Zealand;s "Eighth Wonder Of The World", installation artist Hany Armanious, artist and photographer Yvonne Todd, the mighty Merzbow (oh, we know him!), LA writer and filmmaker Chris Kraus, a bunch of drawings by artist Peter Robinson, Kiwi female fronted rap duo Coco Solid, a brief piece on the Dead C's Bruce Russell (we know him too!), a report on Christchurch's 4th Biennial of Public Art, an excerpt from the Biennial's blog, Korean 'junk' artist Choi Jeong Hwa, plus still more art, tons of photos, illustrations, drawings, some fiction, and more more more. All wrapped up in a striking full color cover. Awesome.
We reviewed the first Wormwood record ages and ages ago. At the time we described them as sounding like " Eyehategod with keyboards, a black metal Neurosis, a nastier, less spaced-out Tarantula Hawk..." Reading that just now only reminded us just how much we dug these guys. So where the heck have they been? Well, if this new record is any indication, they've been holed up in some black cave somewhere (one equipped with a jam pad and a recording studio) getting weirder, more fucked up and even better that they were before.
Eyehategod and Neurosis are definitely huge influences, but the band has gotten even slower and dirgier, and it definitely suits them. Take EHG and Neurosis, but toss some Corrupted, some Asunder, even some Isis into the mix, and you'll be getting close. But then there's keyboards, ALL OVER THE PLACE. And they're not subtle or minimal, they're just not used for ambience, they are psychedelic and proggy and give the proceedings a definite psychprog black metal vibe. Weird. But so cool. Take some super heavy, murky crusty epic metal, howled vocals, wild drumming, bombastic and ultra pummeling, then add in the keyboards, break it down every once in a while into some super tripped out psychedelic passages, where the keyboards hit prog overload and the drums get all tribal. Sort of Neurosis meets Cradle Of Filth? Whatever it is it's cool.
But the second lp is where stuff gets really good. Side three is almost entirely taken up by "No True Altruism", an epic dirge of haunted house cinematic doom, or something, it sounds like Corrupted channelled through Goblin, slow and lumbering with bursts of sludgy pummel, blasts of double kick drumming, grinding overblown bass, absolute horror movie prog sludge nirvana.
Side 4 is all a single track, a mind blowing coda to a record that was already pretty brain melting, "Gluttony" is a massive chaotic dubbed out whirl of what-the-fuck sonics and processed sludge weirdness. It sounds like a remix, sort of, with huge walls of backwards guitars, garbled backwards vocals, weird processed rhythms, bits of Terminal Cheesecake, Butthole Surfers all whipped into a maelstrom of Corrupted meets Teenage Filmstars sonic fuckery, but still murky and muddy and impossibly doomy. Wow.
There will be a cd release of this eventually, but it definitely sounds like it was made to be a double lp, with disc one being the more black psych sludge rock, the second disc the sludgey tripped out doom. Either way, awesome!
Packaged in a killer, super thick gatefold sleeve, with creepy cool artwork and lyrics and liner notes inside. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each copy hand numbered!
