Ghana must be a really loud place. Even just based on the amount of honking that that goes on there. Vehicles honk often and repeatedly, to shoo pedestrians or cyclists out of the way, to signify annoyance with slow traffic or blocked roadways, to signify a desire to change lanes or pass, to get the attention of other drivers or just because they're so thrilled to be driving. Taxis honk rhythmically to attract fares, buses also honk rhythmically while their drivers sing out the various destinations. But there's more than just honking, sound systems blast music, stalls selling their wares broadcast songs and sounds, prayers are broadcast through large speakers affixed to the outsides of mosques...
Sonic chaos certainly. But at the same time, all of these sounds merge into a strange sort of music, the sounds of a city going through the motions of daily life. Chaotic certainly, but also vibrant. Unique. And so alive. A joyful celebration of everyday activities.
At the root of all of this sound is Por Por, the honk horn music of Ghana. Por Por, pronounced 'paaw paaw', an onomatopoeic description of the local drivers' honking squeeze-bulb horn music, was initially just that, the sounds of a city in motion, but eventually, the drivers who helped keep the city moving, took the sounds of their work day and turned it into music. Horns honking, found percussion, wrenches on tires, pipes on concrete, drums, pumping up tires, singing and shouting, those sounds became ritualized, and became their own music, with particular sounds and rhythms and arrangements, and a specific purpose. This music while a reflection of the city around it, was rarely performed in public, but instead, was almost exclusively performed at union drivers' funerals, those funerals very reminiscent of the New Orleans jazz funeral, replete with processions, music obviously, and coffins modeled on the various buses and trucks carrying the dead to the afterlife. The story of por por, of Ghana and its independence is a long one, far to intricate and complex to get into here, but La, the province from which these drivers and horn honkers hail, was critical to the resistance to colonial rule, refusing to pay taxes, fighting a proposed ban on por por horns, a strong sense of community, were all critical to the region's struggle for independence.
So in honor of this year's golden anniversary of Ghana's independence, for the first time, the La Drivers Union Por Por Group gathered to record the music that had been such a part of their culture and their life. Recorded outdoors, in backyards, the sound of the city, the traffic, all around, the music of por por spills forth, effusive and celebratory, joyous and spiritual, complex and strange and like nothing we have ever heard before.
A gorgeously ramshackle rhythmic workout, metallic percussion dense and spidery, a lush framework of intricate rhythms, beneath amazing vocal arrangements, but it's the por por that make this music so unique, honking rhythmically, strange melodies, sounding a bit like geese, an orchestra of squeeze-bulb horns, locking into looped rhythmic structures, hypnotic and mesmerizing. Like traditional African music being performed during rush hour in the middle of a busy intersection. Like Konono No1 but with horns instead of amplified thumb pianos. Most of the tracks seem to be more focused on the vocals, or the hypnotic rhythms, with the horns acting more as a melodic counterpoint. But some tracks, like the opening track "Por Por Akwaaba / Welcome" are entirely about the honking horns, sounding a bit like Philip Glass or Steve Reich composing for automobile horns, rhythmic and strangely catchy, and that is when Pop Por completely captivates, when the horns lock into strange cyclical melodies, all tangled up with the vocals, complete transporting us to the dusty streets of Ghana, horns in hand, honking joyously, letting the sound and the rhythms carry us away.
The final track is especially stirring, with the Por Por group heading into the city, and setting up outside the union office, enlisting all of the drivers present, as well as enlisting the help of various passing vehicles, for a call and response salute to their Independence, the por por horns honking rhythmically, regular car horns held down, underpinning the proceedings with long keening drones, folks singing long drawn out tones, almost wailing, a dense swirl of droning honking mesmer. So intense. And moving.
As with all Smithsonian Folkways releases, there is a huge booklet, with tons of amazing photos, extensive liner notes, as well as notes on each track.
Super limited, lovingly presented fan club edition of this legendary record. Long out of print (minus the briefly available reissue on DC / Intoxica, now also out of print) and heavily sought after soundtrack to Rene Laloux's 1973 Cannes Grand Prix winning animated feature "La Planete Sauvage." If the film itself is a hallucinatory masterpiece, the soundtrack -- composed by Alain Goraguer (long time arranger for Serge Gainsbourg) -- is as fitting as it is brilliant. Like an LSD dosed Isaac Hayes score, the music herein is at the same time both reminiscent of classic early seventies drama soundtracks and completely surreal and strange. Lots of recurring leit motifs recast in ever building and changing arrangements, including marimba, theremin and bird whistles as well as the standard orchestral elements, guitars and funky organs. So great!
Who would have thought that there was a world of black metallers out there bowing before the Lord, and no, not the Dark Lord, the, um LORD Lord. You know... Jesus Christ. God. It's true, there's a whole world of UN-black metal out there, white metal, with all the buzz and blast and then some, but none of the evil. Up until now, the spirit of these bands while not a secret, tended to be more subtle. With titles like "Goatcrush", "To The Unholy", "Unblackened", still sounded pretty evil, and band names like Agathothodion, Glaciial, Flaskavsae, if one weren't paying attention, one might be forgiven for thinking these bands were indeed true grim black metal.
But now we have the latest from Light Shall Prevail (get it?), whose new cd-r pulls no punches, especially with the title: "Defeat The Reign Of The Horned One Through The Light Of Christ." Okay. This is some seriously, spiritual, totally positive, but still extremely harsh and buzzing and ultra fucked up Un-black metal. Those of you who remember our review of Light Shall Prevail's last ep, might just remember us hailing the song "Goatcrush" as maybe the best black metal song EVER!!! And this disc has about ten contenders for the very same honor.
When you actually think about it, these bands are indeed true, and not even just in a religious sense, they are true to their vision, and their ideals. Although we're not exactly sure what it is exactly that makes white metal so completely and amazingly twisted and tweaked. But we like it! As grim as any black metal band you can name, in fact, if anything the sound of these bands, Light Shall Prevail especially, is more grim and true, unique and fucked up, way more individual and out there than the majority of the cookie cutter black metal bands we hear every day. Light Shall Prevail is the work of E.H. who also runs the mighty E.E.E. label and who has been releasing amazing and totally brilliant unblack metal for a decade now. We've reviewed records by Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, but there's tons of other amazing white metal bands, Bedeiah, Whispers From A Dead World, Drommer, Offerblod, Dark Procession, Wrathful Plague, Aristaeus, Nahum, Flaskavsae, With Fire, Elgibbor, Moiriah, we can't keep up. We've discovered this whole new trove of mind blowing (un)black metal and we can not get enough!
Light Shall Prevail might be the closest to sounding like a classic Norwegian style black metal band, however, there are plenty of elements that will have you alternating between scratching your head, banging it wildly and bowing it in reverence. The drums are a machine, and thus do some fucked up things no human drummer could (or would) do, whether its' stuttering impossible fast and machinelike, or sounding processed and overblown way down in the murky buzz, then there's the recording, super lo-fi, so much so that the blown out in the red distortion and tape hiss and all the various recording inconsistencies are as much a part of the sound as the riffs or the vocals, and holy shit, the vocals, from alien sleestak garble to weird anguished howl to demonic shriek. And the songs just rule. killer riffs, convoluted arrangements, trippy psychedelic breakdowns, fucked up dubbed out drum parts, guitars that go from weird processed stutter, to insectoid buzz to reverb drenched twang, usually within the same song.
A couple of our customers absolutely refused to pick up any of these unblack records, they were seemingly offended by the idea of unblack black metal, but ultimately it's their loss. We'd venture to guess that 99% of black metal fans (and probably bands for that matter), aren't actually Satanists anyway and very probably like the music FOR the music, not for the corpse paint or the spikes or the faux scary grimness, and as cool and fun as it is to get into the whole theater of it, the mysterious forest born black metal, the corpse-painted wraiths spewing hateful sounds direct from the depths of hell... ultimately, this is MUSIC, pure and simple, dark, mysterious, fucked up, passionate, buzzing, brutal, grim, blackened, brilliant music, and Light Shall Prevail are most definitely all of those things and more....
We talk about black metal all the time. Cuz, we love it. A lot. The blacker and more evil the better. Harsh and hateful, nihilistic and brutal, true evil rendered in sound!
But why exactly are the black metal hordes so angry? What exactly are they fighting against? God? The Christians? The powers of Good? Themselves? Well if we've learned anything, it's that good can not exist without evil. Dark can not exist without light, and black metal can not exist without white metal.
What?
That's right, it's time for the darkness to be pushed back a bit. It's time for that age old battle to be fought with buzzing riffs and thrashing blast beats, howled anguished vocals and rumbling low end. And at the front lines are Light Shall Prevail, masters of their own bizarre black metal buzz. That's right, it's still black metal, in fact, this white metal is more black and fucked up and awesomely weird than most of the more 'true' and 'grim' stuff we hear all the time.
Strange off kilter riffing, insanely fast blasts (either a drum machine, or an unbelievable drummer), super damaged start stop arrangements, weirdly catchy melodies, all prickly and tangled up in the fuzzy black ambience. A super heavy, but still lo-fi production. And the vocals. SO nuts, From monstrous growls, to Urfaust like croon, to shrieked howl. Such an awesome combination. Lots of midtempo chug mixed in with the buzzing blasts too. In fact just listen to the title track, probably the weirdest, catchiest black metal song EVER, with it's convoluted stop start gallop. So fucking cool.
Absolutely essential black metal listening. Even for the grim and evil amongst you. Once you hear this buzzing brilliance you won't be able to resist the power of the light. Just don't get too close, lest your black soul be cleansed and redeemed!
The surviving member of the Louvin Brothers, who brought us the AQ fave, Satan is Real, returns to his gospel tinged country roots on this first recording of new material in ten years. Aided by the production of Lambchop's Mark Nevers who invited a bevy of stars including George Jones, Marty Stuart, Elvis Costello and Jeff Tweedy to lend a hand. The full throttle performances of the guests thankfully don't overshadow the main attraction, the man whose world-weary voice can still uplift the dark shadows of a wicked world.
Not one, but TWO brand new records from the amazing Machinefabriek. This self released, single track, 22 minute mini-epic is a sweeping cinematic trawl through murky dreamy drones and blown out soft focus buzz. A slow building, constantly shifting, tidal like drift. Huge black swells wash over glimmering glistening shimmers, distant keening drones and a pulsing low end rumble. It's like some sort of Pop Ambient, slowed way down, the fuzzed out dreaminess becoming granular, each note, each layer, every element of the music becoming tiny visible microscopic musical molecules, madly vibrating in little clouds, wreathing the proceedings in an ever mutating swirl of ambient blur, like wisps of smoke, or little clouds of insects...
While beneath the surface lurks something dark, a melodic malevolence that permeates the whole disc, ominous, minor key, mournful, a washed out sorrow, a strange haunting creepiness, lending the track an air of sadness, of loss, but at the same time, the sound manages to be strangely warm and inviting, a little alluring, the soundtrack to some dark personal tragedy long forgotten, a sound that lulls you, pulls you under, and leads you off to some strange land, long after your eyes have closed and your spirit has been loosed. The whole track culminating in an ultra minimal coda of near silence, but close listening reveals all manner of barely audible filigree, lowercase buzz, muted crackle and gauzy melodic shadows...
Packaged in an oversized full color jacket, housed in a vinyl sleeve, and pressed on a cool black mini cd-r...
Another gorgeous burst of glowing guitar experimentation from AQ fave Machinefabriek, and while the instrumentation on Slaapzucht is listed as electric guitar, e-bow, tuning fork, file, an electric toothbrush, minidisc recorder, melodica, loop pedal, laptop, mixing desk, lots of effects pedals and a little iron rod, it's obvious that this disc is all about the guitar. Not always overtly so, but such is the magic of Machinefabriek.
Five of the six tracks here were previously released as ultra limited 3" cd-r's ('Slaap' and 'Zucht'), and are presented here for the very first time, along with a 22 minute bonus track which is basically like a whole 'nother record.
The tracks from 'Slaap' revisit much of what we loved about the MF record we made record of the week a while back. A burst of crumbling amp buzz and electronic glitch gives way to haunting swells of gritty tones and soft shimmering whirs, all within shimmering clouds of distant glitch and muted crackle, building in intensity, while remaining muted and minimal. Ultra soft, glimmering soundfields marked by distant melodic sparkles and barely audible percussive events erupt into thick chordal washes, reverb drenched and swirling majestically before quickly fading away. Bits here and there resemble some long lost Oval track assembled from bits of guitar instead of skipping cds, but woven so seamlessly, they just sound like sweet soft swells of shimmering buzz over gentle strums and muted hums, occasionally building into dense dirges, thick and roiling, strangely lush, and bathed in all manner of crackle and grit.
The two tracks from 'Zucht' are similarly haunting and beautiful. Bits of abstract hum are rendered almost choral, soft slightly melancholy chords drift and intertwine into long slow flowing drones, dense but warm and glowing. Crumbling, grinding whirs are transformed into gorgeously washed out pop ambience, thick soft sonic swirls, very aquatic, gently drifting and hovering, sounds overlapping and blurring into one another, so lovely.
The final track, is an epic, slow burning build, as heavy and intense as it is soft and dreamlike. A landscape of ominous low end drift, tones stretched out into long smears of sound and laid atop other tones, allowed to shift and shimmer, to slip in and out of phase, little fragmented melodies surfacing here and there, little sparkling streaks of tonal color, gleaming from within the wash of greys and blacks, eventually building into some seriously fierce buzz, a huge crumbling blissed out doom, grinding guitars churning and roiling, but amidst angelic swirls of fuzzy breathy shimmer, impossibly straddling two worlds, simultaneously beautiful and brutal. So nice.
Packaged in a gorgeous fold over card stock sleeve, screen printed off white on white.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
It's very rare that a band name cuts so succinctly to the heart of what a band is all about. So perfectly encapsulating the hate and misery and blackness of the music. Thus we have Make A Change Kill... Yourself, certainly doesn't trip off the tongue, but it's not supposed to, like the music, and the sentiments behind it, nothing here is supposed to be easy, or happy or joyful. It's meant to be hard, brutal, sad, dismal, hopeless, miserable. And it is, but on such a massively grand and epic scale it's sort of breathtaking. Huge mournful minor key swirls of buzzing guitars, ultra depressive and and strangely melancholy. Mostly midtempo, often trudging into downright doom, occasionally bursting into brief blasts of furious thrashing, but never for long, always settling back into a seething lurching blackened lament. Massive stretched out epics, the shortest track clocking in at 14 minutes, the longest pushing 30. Relentless double kicks beneath a black flow of downtuned Burzumic buzz, thick and rich and dense and dark, so emotional and intense, fuzz atop buzz atop blur atop whir, swaying and loping hypnotically. This takes the very best parts of Burzum and Xasthur and other blackened depressives to the next level, introducing a massive and majestic Godspeed element, as well as some incredibly catchy melodies, albeit still appropriately raw and black and grim, but they manage to float wraithlike, endlessly in your ears, in your brain, in your soul, like the ghost of a memory, a weird feeling of sadness and loss, that sticks in your head just as much as the bleak and somber melodies. Very rare for any music, let alone buzzy blurry black metal. Incredibly poignant, ambient interludes, ghostly female vocals, strange drone-y breakdowns, mysterious chimes and swells, brief glimpses of desolate soundscapes, all serving, along with the almighty BUZZ, to lead us even further down that dark path to nothingness.
BLACK METAL RECORD OF THE YEAR for sure!
Midlake have garnered some pretty notable classic rock comparisons ranging from the Alan Parsons Project to Neil Young. Some reviewers have been quick to compare the group's opening track "Roscoe" to Fleetwood Mac. We agree that Lindsey Buckingham would approve of the delicate acoustic guitar picking (reminiscent of "Silver Springs") on "Bandits" and the crunchy guitar solo (ala "Go Your Own Way") on "Head Home," and Christine McVie wouldn't sneeze at the subtle electric piano lines that blend nicely into the rhythm section, yet contribute heavily to each song. However, we think the band's opener "Roscoe" is more comparable to Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." After about ten seconds you begin to expect the cowbell to come in. Soon enough Tim Smith begins singing in a melancholy tone comparable to early Thom Yorke or Mark Kozelek and the cowbell seems miles away as you are swept up in the beauty of The Trials of Van Occupanther.
In the past couple months, we've gotten a pair of terrific dvds documenting two venerable bands' recent resurrections. They are 'Loud Quiet Loud: A Film About The Pixies' and this one 'Mission Of Burma: Not A Photograph'. It recounts the period leading up to and including the 2002 reunion of this immensely cerebral and creative seminal post-punk band from Boston. Includes early footage from the late '70s onwards. Powerful. Listen (and watch) and learn!
While he does still inject a little funkiness here and there, Money Mark has grown progressively more pop and less soul over the course of his last few albums. His Beastie Boys days are a distant memory. No complaints here. He does it all utterly effortlessly and with such an easy charm. His new album is his most completely soft rock/pop to date.
Brand New By Tomorrow is brimming with solid songwriting and performances in the tradition of Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson. No, they aren't gonna burst out and grab you by the knickers, but with each subsequent listen they'll snuggle up closer and closer until you just can't live without 'em.
You know that Ed Wood movie, where the guy is sitting on his throne, atop a pile of gold, waving his arms dramatically, shouting "More gold!!! Mooooooore gold!! Sometimes we feel like that, only instead of gold, it's doom we're after. "Moooore dooooooom!!! Mooooore doooooooom!!!" And the powers that be seem to have heeded our call. And indeed blessed us with more doom.
This time around it, it has come in the form of French outfit Mourning Dawn, who traffic in an epic and majestic blackened doom.
Huge mournful riffs, simple plodding drums, but unlike most doom, the vocals are a blackened shriek, closer to Xasthur or Weakling than any traditional doom band. Harsh and raw, the vocals drift atop a relentless flow of classic doom. This is not so much filthy and funereal as it is epic and timeless. Less Moss and more My Dying Bride, more Solitude Aeturnus and less Esoteric. But this is not nearly as polished as that might lead you to believe, Rough edges still abound, but the root of Mourning Dawn's sound definitely lies with Cathedral, and My Dying Bride, Katatonia, Paradise Lost, and the like. Doom certainly, but with plenty of death and black swirled into the mix.
The songs are intense and emotional, dark and sorrowful, soaring melodies wrapped around dense slabs of sonic misery, gorgeous stretches of plodding doom joining blasts of midtempo buzz, but everything, always, wrapped in a black fog of abject misery, a neverending melancholia that seeps into every note like spilt blood. Killer.
One of two new releases from Mr. Aidan Baker. One under his own name, a gorgeously druggy twangy slab of slowcore, and this the latest from his slow motion sludge metal doom duo Nadja.
And it's a killer. One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel.
The disc begins with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
Another killer (and super limited, argh) release from Sound & Fury, a killer record store / label in Australia, who recently decided to close down the shop, but will continue to book tours, have shows and release records, lucky for us! This disc is a live to minidisc recording from a massive New Zealand freenoise show featuring a who's who of AQ faves and kick ass NZ underground legends: Birchville Cat Motel, 6Majik9, James Kirk from Sandoz Lab Technicians, and of course the Nether Dawn and 1/3 Octave band.
The Nether Dawn are Antony Milton (PseudoArcana, Mrtyu, etc.) and AQ pal Jon Dale, who teamed up for this 15+ minute set of soaring ur-drone and dense thick hum and shimmer. Big low pulses of sound tangled up with sparkling high end, glistening melodies and mumbled heavily affected vocals. A blast of cosmic space out along the same lines as Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof! and the like but with a softer, more dreamlike focus. Nice.
1/3 Octave Band follow up with their own lengthy jam, a near 17 minute slab of chiming metal, clanging percussion, super reverbed pipefight, little swirls of high end feedback, reverberating chimes, and a soft shimmery skree, that about halfway sort of slow down and stretch out, into a languid, sunbaked guitar/electronics free jam drift. A shimmering cascading flow of warm reverberant chords, flickering feedback, and subtle but distinct minor key melancholia. So nice.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, WE GOT THE LAST 25 OR SO. Packaged in really nice brown paper, sealed with a black stamped wax seal, each copy hand numbered with a printed inner sleeve and a unique full color, actual photo.
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Here's one of the latest two releases from Japan's super stoner Leaf Hound label (home to the likes of Church Of Misery and Sonic Flower). Orange Sunshine (also reviewed this list) are Dutch, and these guys, Ogre, are Americans (hailing from Portland, Maine to be precise). Leaf Hound apparently appreciated the promise of Ogre's self-released debut from a few years ago and made a good bet in putting out this even better sophomore effort. The guitars are thick and heavy, the rhythms rollicking. This is a heavy duty, '70s influenced steamroller stoner riff-rock righteousness. Damn. We can't imagine too many objections to this from those who love kick ass retro-proto-metal... except that the wildly expressive vocals might take some getting used to. They can be slightly pinched and definitely over-the-top, like a camp(ier) version of Ozzy Osbourne, sometimes breaking into a twang or dipping into a growl, but we think that works just great and personality-wise gives these guys just a bit more of lock on the "weird" which we're pretty sure is OK with them.
Clearly, their influences are doom metal classics like Sabbath and Saint Vitus, with hints of cult acts like Manilla Road and Blood Farmers (whose Eli Brown mastered this album). And a dash of Monster Magnet too. That means loads of psychedelic metal heaviness, played with a rabid sense of abandon but also plenty of sure-handed finesse. We're loving it. What else to say? Well we should also mention that they do a killer cover of Pentagram's "Review Your Choices". And that the track "Sperm Whale" includes a full-on drum solo. And oh yeah, Andee's especially thrilled that Ogre wrote a song here based on his favorite "adult" sci-fi novel, The Gas by Charles Platt, a notoriously violent and pornographic book first published in 1968. Sweet. Now that's rock and roll.
We love Old Wainds. So does Leviathan, Xasthur, Crebain, Draugar, Nachtmystium, and every other black metalhead we know. And as we mentioned before, there is really no better way to discover amazing bands than by discovering who your favorite bands' favorite bands are. Knowing that, Russia's Old Wainds are truly the black metal elite. Very few bands with such limited distribution, no official releases in the United States, and records that end up on eBay more than in shops have managed to make as huge an impression as these guys. And rightfully so. This is absolutely some of the most glorious buzzing blackness we have ever heard. And finally, we've managed to track down three of the four proper Old Wainds releases!! We got a whole bunch but we have a feeling they won't last long, and we're not sure how long it will take before we can get more (or even if we'll be able to at all). Before now we had been been on a never ending quest to track down every single recorded second of music these guys have spewed forth. So much so that one aQuarius employee who shall remain nameless (ahem...Andee) spent an embarassing sum on one of these discs on eBay!! But for now, you are spared that same fate. We have a bunch of copies of Old Wainds' second full length Where The Snows Are Never Gone, the split with fellow countrymen Nav, and this, their most recent release, Scalding Coldness! Which we also managed to get on vinyl!!!
So what is it about Old Wainds that has the grim hordes all in a tizzy? And why is Scalding Coldness one of the best black metal records of all time? Hard to explain exactly. If you were standing right here, we'd just play it for you. And it would only be a matter of seconds before you understood. And you can go ahead and listen to the sound samples, it should have the same effect, but we might as well try to put into words what it is that's so amazing about these guys and this disc.
With any metal, it's all about the riffs, black metal maybe moreso, because with black metal, it's pretty much entirely about the riff, no matter how buzzy the sound is, how evil and atmospheric the music is, without killer riffs you are NOTHING. Needless to say, Old Wainds whip up some of the catchiest buzziest riffs around. Swirling, snarling, dense and slightly off kilter, definitely in the great Norwegian tradition but with their own unique twist. Crunchy and insectoid, with strange little trills and unlikely chugs, haunting arpeggiated chords... The vocals too, guttural and growly, but not really shrieked or grunted, it's about as close to actual singing as black metal vocals can get. Still harsh and hateful, but more sort of gruff and raspy. And then the songs, epic and majestic, almost cinematic at points, but at the same time grim and frosty, buzzing dronescapes of bleak blackness, infused with a surprising amount of melody. And then there's the weird stuff, the chantlike vocals, the guitar leads that surface here and there, the strange pulsing ambient interludes, the weird breakdowns, ultra dramatic intros with bizarre drumming... but none of those things define the band, they are just part and parcel of Old Wainds' twisted black universe. The perfect blend of Xasthur, Immortal, Leviathan and Darkthrone. Sort of. Take your favorite bits from each of those bands and then smear in some desolate Russian winters, and twist it all up into some black shape that while sort of familiar is unlike anything you've ever heard before. And you'll be getting close.
Absolutely essential.
In the AQ black metal hall of the elite, atop a mountain wreathed in fire, beneath a sky as black as pitch sit the black metal elite, Satyricon, Emperor, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal and the rest, but it's looking like someone just might have to scoot over and make room for Old Wainds at the table...
Wow, What a nice and welcome surprise for early electronic music fans! This 2cd anthology is the first re-issued work from one of the most important and unsung heroes of electronic music, Daphne Oram, co-founder of the BBC Radiophonic workshop. Beginning her career in the forties with the BBC as a "music balancer" (an arduous task of syncing recorded taped music with a live performance feed so that broadcasts would remain uninterrupted in case of war-time blackouts), Oram spent most of her nights fascinated with synthetic sounds and experimenting with oscillators and tape machines, as well as composing unperformed orchestral works and sound pieces for film and play commissions. Promoted to music studio manager, she campaigned for the BBC to provide electronic music facilities for composing music and sound effects using electronic music and musique concrete techniques for use in its programming which led to the founding of the Radiophonic workshop in early 1958. However, her desires to compose music and further her studies and development of synthetic music theory, caused her to leave the BBC a year later. Working off two grants from the Gulbenkian foundation in the 1960's, and supplementing her income through advertising work, she developed her most unique contribution, the Oramics composition machine and the drawn sound technique, an elaborate mechanism that allowed her to create pure sound through the transcription of drawn lines. For being the first woman to direct an electronic music studio as well as the first woman to design and construct an electronic music instrument, her legacy remains largely unnoticed in this male-dominated field. She lectured extensively and wrote one of the most philosophical books on electronic music, called An Individual Note of Music, continuing her developments with early Apple computers until a series of two strokes forced her to retire. She died in 2003. Culled from an extensive archive of compositional pieces, film and play commissions, early sound experiments with the Oramics machine, and advertising jingles, this anthology covers material from the late fifties to the early seventies. Fans of Delia Derbyshire, Raymond Scott and early electronic music enthusiasts of all sorts will find lots to love here. Highly Recommended!!!!
Orange Sunshine are a freaky, fuzzed-out power trio from Holland who really really wish they existed in San Francisco circa 1969. Their sound, their graphics, even their name is inspired by heavy Frisco sixties legends Blue Cheer (Orange Sunshine being another "brand" of LSD). They just were in the USA on tour, and we saw 'em live a few weeks back at the Hemlock. Their singing drummer was definitely the star of the show. Long haired, bearded, totally hippified, he was a wild man, pulling crazy faces the whole time he was playing. It seemed quite likely that his number one drummer hero growing up was Animal from The Muppets. Coming to San Francisco to play their Blue Cheer-y music, they took it as far as they could -- even doin' their own version of "Summertime Blues"!!
This new album of theirs (don't believe where it says on the back cover that it was recorded in 1970, that's more fantasy on their part, though they do their best to make that claim almost seem likely) makes us think Acid Mothers Temple crossed with Blue Cheer. Not too hard to imagine, eh? This disc's opener, the 15 and a half minute "Ruler Of The Universe" leans towards the AMT side of that equation, being a spacey, faux Eastern sitar and tablas raga meets flying saucer lift-off sort of epic. Following that, the three minutes of "Speed" sizzle nicely. Then we get a fairly faithful cover of Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love". They just couldn't resist cranking out Jack Bruce's (not Eric Clapton's) most famous riff themselves we guess. Nothing wrong with that, but we liked how on their earlier Love=Acid, Space=Hell album they picked things to cover that actual '60s heavy rock bands would have done, like stuff by Bo Diddley. Still it's cool hearing it given the Blue Cheer, we mean Orange Sunshine treatment. Next up, "Demonize" (or is it "Demon's Eye"?) is a blown-out, wailin' stomper that wouldn't have been out of place on Vincebus Eruptum -- although it's actually a Deep Purple cover. And then the album comes to a fuzzy finale with another Blue Cheerish number entitled "Balls Knockin'". Turns out that's the only track here that's NOT a cover. Though we've never heard of the bands that did "Speed" and "Ruler Of The Universe" before: Ron Allen Light Show and Terry Brooke's Strange, respectively. Kinda makes up for the obviousness of the Cream choice. Seems like these guys really DO live in their own drugged-out, time-looped 1968-1971 universe and it's real nice of them to let us join 'em for the authentic acid rock experience now and then!
According to Metal Archives, one of our favorite go to sites for metal info, there are at least 150 metal bands from Bulgaria!! Which is pretty amazing considering that Orenda are, as far as we know, the first Bulgarian metal band we've ever heard.
Anyway, they may be from Bulgaria, but they sound Norwegian, or maybe Polish. On the surface this is furious buzzing black metal, not midtempo, but not really blasting either, just a super fast sort of harsh buzz. Relentlessly pounding drums, droning buzzy riffs, harsh vocals, but beneath the layers of buzz in each song, lurk all manner of strange melody and fucked up sonic weirdness.
It's hard to explain exactly what it is that makes these songs stand out, it's pretty subtle, whether it's some cool seasick guitar melodies weaving back and forth beneath the surface, or some sort of bell chiming in the distance, or a stretch of feedback that sounds like the warning beep of a backing up truck, or mewing cat-like vocals, but more often than not it's just the structure of the song, the interaction between the main riff and the second guitar part, that allow unlikely harmonies to surface, giving the songs a strange emotional resonance that isn't immediately noticeable.
Plus it helps that the riffs are killer, wrapped in a thick buzzy production, the relentless buzzing blackness peppered with blazing bursts of double kick drum, some super sludgy stretches of black doom, even some unlikely poppiness. Definitely recommended!
Had Fractal not dusted off this gem of French electronic composition, there's a good chance this disc might have found its way back into circulation through elusive Icelandic cd-r label Creel Pone. Bernard Parmegiani was one of the many composers who cut their teeth at the highly influential INA-GRM studio / label / laboratory of sound, alongside the likes of Pierre Henry, Luc Ferrari, and Xenakis. Favoring an acousmatic strategy that reveals sound in a manner that sublimates its origins, Parmegiani is best known for his grandiose La Creation Du Monde whereby the composer attempts to address the sound that predates the Big Bang, as well as its polyphonous explosion through a constantly spiralling thrum of electronic vibration. Chants Magnetiques (which translates as Magnetic Fields, and Fractal is quick to point out that this album precedes the Jean Michel Jarre album of the same name by several years) is easily the darkest album in Parmegiani's body of work; and perhaps, the paranoiac qualities of Chants Magnetiques were the reason for its obscure status for so long. The opening round of erratic electric squiggles slides into a languid drone of sustained strings, whilst a robotic hammering strikes against what sounds like springloaded doors. Occasionally chipper but usually damaged electronic percolations and atonal blasts of prog organs intermingle with sheet metal cacophony and convulsive buzzings, only to sulk into subterranean layers of sound haunted by mad scientist chords on the organ and spooky atmospherics that never sound cheesy in spite of the references. The entire composition is executed with an incredible precision and complexity, easily positioning itself as a clear influence upon the later work of Autechre. One not to miss.
This Swedish pop group's third release is finally available domestically and thank God for that as it topped many of our "best of" lists of 2006, By now you must have heard PB & J's infectious single with Victoria Bergsman from the Concretes, "Young Folks" with its catchy off-handed whistling and cute animated video that has been an internet sensation for the past few months. Well, the rest of the album does not disappoint in the least. This is some of the best pop music we've heard in a long time that sounds as fresh as when bands like Blur and Pulp first started garnering attention a decade ago. And they do it so effortlessly by scaling back the guitars in favor of more subtle, economic and hook-laden arrangements, and well-written songs about love and heartbreak that never sound clich�d.
Taking turns on vocal and songwriting duties, the trio are at the top of their game, making Writer's Block a delightfully varied affair as it takes us on a twisted journey through the highs and lows of romance. At times the sound is effervescent as on "Let's Call It Off", at other times it's more brooding as heard on the downbeat synth-heavy "The Chills". This domestic release comes with a bonus second disc of some extra tracks, a couple of remixes and alternate versions of "Let's Call It Off" and "Young Folks", the latter played on sitar! Highly recommended!!!!!!!!!
SF's pickPocket Ensemble follow up their fine fourth album Fingerpainting In Red Wine with Soul Cafe, an ep of seven songs drawn from an intimate live performance at a venue called Strings. As always Rick Corrigan and co. conjure somber, slinky atmospheres from their ensemble of violin, double bass, guitar, accordion, and percussion. Although we file their cds in the jazz section of aQ, their sound is far-reaching, stretching across genre and regional borders to incorporate elements of Klezmer, swing jazz, Balkan gypsy folk, classical chamber, Asian and African rhythms. Terrific!
Prog rock and/or Magma fans, pay attention: what we've got here is a smokin' live album from a three-piece instrumental group featuring current Magma guitarist James MacGaw. He's on electric bass here, joined by drummer Daniel Jeand'heur and Thierry Bruneau on "vielle a roue". What's that? Some sort of traditional French hurdy-gurdy type of instrument, apparently. And that's what gives the Pienza Ethnorkestra their special flavor. MacGaw's burbling, burping basslines and Jeand'heur's propulsive, peppery battery are exciting enough, but add to that the wild fiddle-ish flights of melody and stretches of melancholic drone from Bruneau's ancient instrument and you've got an amazing hybrid of a Magmoid rhythm section and a Balkan gypsy wedding band. Indeed, several of the tracks here are traditional Bulgarian and Hungarian folk tunes, fitting in perfectly with the originals written by this "ethnorkestra".
To reference two AQ faves with Eastern European influences, we'd say that the frenzied energy with which Pienza Ethnorkestra approach this material (and the occasional electric-guitar like distortion applied to the vielle a roue) make this sound more like Tatsuya Yoshida's Koenjihyakkei (with strings) than it does like Steven R. Smith's Hala Strana. That this is a live recording only increases our amazement at how much these three kick ass. And the audience whoops it up appropriately. You might too, listening to his at home.
Procer Veneficus are another band we've dug for a while, but are only now getting around to reviewing. A one man band from Santa Cruz of all places, PV, over the course of a handful of releases, has wandered between buzz drenched psychedelic black metal fuzzscapes a la Velvet Cacoon and dark lugubrious murky ambient acoustic folk, a gorgeous and bleak black soundworld, equally mysterious and hypnotic, whether in the form of tranquil drift or buzzing blast.
Ghostvoices is the former, all acoustic, just guitars, vocals, everything wreathed in a murky, muted black atmosphere. The vocals are hushed, like harsh ghoulish whispers, the sibilance drawn out into another layer of shimmering ambience. The acoustic guitars sound like they're playing slowed down black metal riffs, pulled apart until they more resemble some sort of hellish Appalachia. Or an incredibly sinister Loren Connors. Notes drift, often coalescing into swirling tendrils of dark drone, the background ambience is full of creaks and rumbles, haunting whirs and distant barely audible melodies, everything lit by the light of some black moon, greys fading to black, heavily shadowed and indistinct. It's almost like some acoustic black metal pop ambient record...
A perfect slab of dark and lonely, blackened, blissful late night drift...
The last time we reviewed a Ben Reynolds disc was way back in 2005, and even then we were sort of lamenting our inability to keep up with the constant deluge of amazing cd-r's and the proliferation of cd-r microlabels. We're still trying, but it's fighting a losing battle.
And with Reynolds, we've fallen even further behind, this being only the second release we've managed to review out of the probably twenty or so we've missed, but what the hell, let's make the most of it. Thankfully this is a real cd-r not a cd-r, which is a god thing as this is way too good to only be heard by a handful of folks.
Reynolds weaves a magical lower case world of buzzing synths, strange percolating rhythms, disembodied psychedelic guitars, simple folky strum, and dense sheets of processed drone and whir. Occupying a sonic space somewhere between the freaky forest folkies and the spaced out drone-y drifters, Reynolds wanders freely back and forth often pausing with one foot in each, wrapping sweet little bundles of buzzing steel strings in tripped out sci-fi buzz and bleep, while conversely taking washed out smears of outerspace ambience and spreading them out beneath melancholy acoustic guitar melodies. Fans of all thing Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, PseudoArcana, Digitalis, Last Visible Dog and the like will absolutely want to get a hold of this....
As much as we dug the Robedoor disc Hidden Ascension, reviewed a couple of lists back, our first exposure to this doomy duo, we were still a bit taken aback by how freaked out the AQ massive got over that disc. They flew out of here and ever since we've been having trouble scraping up any more copies of that way too limited disc. So we got in touch with the band and managed to get a bunch of another disc (as well as a collaborative lp reviewed slewhere on this list), Christ's Vipers, released on UK label Chocolate Monk, and it should hit the spot for all you folks jonesing for more Robedoor.
Robedoor is the duo of Alex: slime, knives and distortion, and Notnotfun label head honcho Britt on fire, howls and cloaks...
Hmmm... but what does all that mean, sonically? Well, precisely what you might imagine. A blackened drone drenched world of slime and knives and fire, dense clouds of distorted howls, a thick cloak of fuzz and buzz wrapped around the proceedings like a thick, well, cloak!
Actually this is a lot prettier than you might imagine. That is if your idea of pretty includes tons of low end and a world of slom motion doomdrone. Four lengthy tracks, the first, a wash of huge rumbling bass riffs, ringing out and gradually spreading out into a shimmering black smear, above it all, some sort of melody is played out, hard to tell if it's a synth or a guitar, or even a voice, but it wails all muted and muddy above the roiling blackness, the whole track a dirgey throb that sounds a little bit like caveman doom outfit Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg. The second is a cavernous, malfunctioning trawl through some wasted Wolf Eyesian industrial soundscape, lots of amp buzz and cord crackle, all manner of glitch and hiss drifting above dense black billows of subterranean sound. Track three is another intensely dark drift, a little more caustic than the first two tracks, this time with vocals, ultra distorted and buried in the mix, it's like another instrument, wailing and caterwauling away, as it is slowly dragged along by a dense flow of furiously blown out low end psych bass swirl.
Finally, the disc finishes off with a near static wall of low end, that builds from a minimal throb to a seriously freaked out sonic squall. Imagine Birchville at its most noisy and damaged, then fuck it up a bit, slow it down some, crank the PA to 11, and stand back as the amps literally begin to liquefy, the stage slowly transformed into some rumbling pusling black lump, the musical version of watching a star implode, or a planet die, all rendered in lots and lots of low end and plenty of grinding glorious feedback.
We first heard from Robedoor a few lists back, their huge swaths of blackened guitar drone totally hit the spot. But on this ultra limited one-sided lp, they team up with another outfit, Haunted Castle, for something a whole lot more restrained. No wall of guitar here, in fact, if there are guitars at all, they are rendered weightless and nearly transparent. This side long single track is an epic slab of creepy, creaking ambience, all fuzzy low end and swirling black ambience. A few minutes in, the drums join the fray, but even then, it's mostly cymbals, their sizzle spreading out over the proceedings like a shimmery shadow. The drones slowly twist and contort, changing shapes and subtly changing tonal color. It's actually less like some avant noise rock and more like some sort of dark ambient free jazz drone thing.
Eventually low end melodies begin to surface, drifting dreamily beneath subtle percussive scraping and what sounds like some sort of ghostly vocals, but all rendered so indistinct as to be just more black blurs. Downtuned riffs (if that is indeed a guitar) way off in the distance add to the rumbling shimmer, the whole thing gradually drifting off and fading away.
Packaged in a cool silk screened sleeve, with printed color insert. Limited to 300 copies, each copy hand numbered.
There always seems to be labels vying for the coveted position of coolest record label in the world. EM in Japan of course, with their insane array of amazing, and amazingly packaged reissues. aRCHIVE is a contender, with outrageously deluxe packaging and some of the coolest weirdest music out there. There's PseudoArcana, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, and let's not forget Andee's tUMULt label. But France's Sittelle label constantly blow us away, and are inching ever closer to being the one.
C'mon, there was the rutting red deer disc, a whole record of deers mating, that sounds as amazing as you might imagine. Then there was the insane Bats record, two whole discs, one of normal recordings, the other of slowed down bat sounds, coupled with a massive book! Cicadas and Crickets was another great one, transporting us to some filed in the middle of nowhere. Bizarre Birds? Indeed, an outrageous collection of, well, bizarre bird sounds. And finally, Pastoral Bells, one of our all time favorites, the sounds of cowbells, drifting over the hills as cows wander and graze, so gorgeous and tranquil.
And as if it couldn't get any better, they bring us MONKEYS!!! You may not know how obsessed we are with monkeys, but WE ARE!!! (Andee even got to hand feed monkeys when he was in Japan!!) WE LOVE MONKEYS!!! But this is no ordinary collection of monkey sounds, these sounds are amazing, and amazingly varied, some do in fact sound like monkeys, but some sound like sirens, some like strange electronics, some even like black metal.
And like most of the stuff on Sittelle, it's not just the sounds, but the surroundings, the sonic bed in which the sounds exist. Here, it's the sound of the jungle, a lush, living thing, crickets and insets, a nearly constant buzz, birds chirping, the sound of wind, leaves, branches, that would almost be enough even without the monkeys, and come to think of it pretty sure there's at least one or two discs on Sittelle specifically of jungle sounds...
But monkeys is why we're here and the monkeys represented here are remarkable. There's the hooting Siamangs, engaged in an intricate call and response, multiple monkey calls piling up into confusional squalls. Then there's the Lar Gibbons, who alternately whistle, trill like birds, or scream like a frightened hysterical woman. How about the Male Orangutans who sound nothing like Clyde from Every Which Way But Loose, and instead sound a little like strange electronic whooshes and bleeps. Almost like a human making video game sounds. There are the chimps, whose calls are the most recognizable of the bunch, but who also have a call that sounds like a screaming woman or a mewing kitten. Then there are mountain gorillas, who grunt and pant, and growl a little like wild dogs. Then it gets strange. The Black Colobus, who groans like a wizened old man, or croaks like some giant frog, and sometimes sounds like Popeye, the calls separated by what sound like a very human grunts and coughs. Then there are the howlers, whose tracks, complete with the haunting forest backdrop, sound almost like Abruptum, some haunting black metal ambience, distant groans and growls, a drawn out demonic rasp, whispering like the wind, a growling monstrous rumble, very intense and ominous sounding.
And there's more. WAY more. Far too much to describe here. But all of it fascinating and bizarre and funny and completely amazing. And the most remarkable thing about these discs, is they are somehow not just "nature recordings", they are recorded, and sequenced, and presented in a way that makes them eminently listenable. It is more than the sounds of nature, it is a strange form of natural music, the music of nature. It can transport us to some far away jungle, some lost world, or it can just fill our ears with strange and wonderful sounds. Either way, this is a fantastic listen. Surprisingly musical, totally mysterious and so great!
As with all Sittelle releases, included is a big booklet with extensive liner notes in both English and French, which includes detailed notes on each track and on each type of monkey!
Scores for sound installations often have a way of not really translating when heard outside of the installation. Steve Roden is one of the few sound artists who has perfected the balancing act of creating a sublime sonic experience through his installation work which also translates equally as well on disc. Transmissions (Voices Of Objects And Skies) was originally commissioned by the Fresno Art Museum, and found Roden creating a metonymic environment that bridged childhood wonder with the rough technologies of tin-can telephones and daydreams of space travel and NASA. The installation itself was an 8 channel sound piece spread over 64 speakers which were all mounted within tin cans and suspended from the ceiling alongside countless other tin cans that housed low wattage colored light bulbs, creating a fantastic chandelier of muted light that was perfect for the delicate compositions. Roden states in the liner notes that the source material for the album was recordings of satellites by amateur astronomers from the 1960s through the 1980s; and through Roden's impeccable reductivist filtering and manipulation, he arrives at a slow-motion collage of electronic bleeps which might have more in common with a distantly flickering flute than anything electric in origin. Nevertheless, Roden turns these sounds into looping lullabies and subtle declinations of sound. It's one of the best pieces we've heard from Roden and is certainly recommended!
Not long ago, we discovered that one of our loyal AQ customers just so happened to be the man behind one of our favorite groups, RST, and who released two mind blowing discs, R136a which came out on Ecstatic Peace! and this one, Warm Planes, released on Corpus Hermeticum. After discussing a mutual love of all things Skullflower and Terminal Cheesecake, Mr. RST informed us that he had some new actions planned for the near future and just so happened to have a stash of this WAY out of print disc, which he want to be available again, in anticipation of some upcoming new material. We obviously jumped at the chance and grabbed a whole mess of these, just in case some of you somehow missed out on this the first time around. Whereas the Ecstatic Peace! disc was a dense assemblage of claustrophobic humid distortion, Warm Planes is much more of a drone based disc, downright dreamy at times, an amazing collection of dynamic tectonic guitar-drone rumble, very prescient considering the current love of all things doomdronedirge. And holy shit does this stuff hold up. Dense and thick and viscous, these tracks move at a crawl, slowly and completely engulfing everything it their path, filling your ears with a murky black buzz. Some of the tracks dial back the grrrrr a bit, offering up soft ripples of muted feedback, and shimmering swells of amp buzz, while others are expansive sheets of crystalline shimmer, but the majority, are thick and snarling beasts, steel strings reverberating through big black speakers, and wrapping us up in thick tendrils of guitar growl.
A doomdirgedrone classic, before there even was such a thing. Fans of SUNNO))), Fear Falls Burning, Vulture Club, Earth, you got some catching up to do. Start here...
Ultra limited collection of tape works from the last ten years, composed and performed by Mr. Dead C himself, Bruce Russell!
Five lengthy tracks, all super dense and heavily layered, some noisier than others, but all reflecting the sonic sensibilities of one of the men responsible for some of the most moving noise rock of the last 20 years. But don't be expecting any sort of Dead C action, although some of the sounds and arrangements sure could have found their way into some wild Dead C mash up. Instead, these tracks are serious experiments with sound, but surprisingly listenable ones.
Strange cricket like trills over stuttering distorted grit, to shimmering high end glimmers draped over helicopter like chugs, bits of vocals slightly processed, some clattery room noise (which does in fact sound a bit like some Dead C outtake), murky expanses of moaning creaking ambience, reverb drenched samples scattered throughout, massive low end reverberations wrapped in glistening streaks of distant skree, squalls of shortwave interference, ear piercing electronic squiggles, scribbled guitar lines all tangled up into messy splatters, looped tones and strange hiccuping rhythms, angular guitar fragments, mechanical squeaks and fuzzed out tape hiss, crumbling bits of crackle and whir slowly modulating and emitting random chunks of muted rhythm and more more more...
A gorgeously expansive sonic exploration, equal parts tranquil drone, blown out free noise, and all stops in between.
SUPER LIMITED!! Packaged in hand assembled digipacks, with full color photos affixed to the front and the inside, with extensive liner notes and in depth notes on the genesis and realization of each track.
Sandoz Lab Technicians may be the most fucked-up and most freeform out of all of the mind-expanding, free noise New Zealanders that we have championed in the past (i.e. Birchville Cat Motel, Dead C, Omit, Anthony Milton, etc.). That said, Sandoz Lab Technicians haven't been terribly prolific (unlike pretty much everybody else we just mentioned), but they have been consistently way out there when they have managed to record their ramshackle improvisations. The Western Lands is as loose and freeform as you can get, with absolutely nothing resembling a song, a structure, or even the hint of a melody getting in the way of their sonic escapades. Random scrapes and scratches across both guitar and violin aimlessly drift behind a plinky-plonk keyboard smeared with the delay emitting semi-tonal clusters of notes that resemble jazz vibes at their most cosmic or most terminally stoned. Then, inexplicably one of the Technicians sloshes a glass of water around just below the microphone. Weird. SLT work better, however, when eschewing such Fluxus strategies and gravitating towards long-form, heavy amplifier drones dappled with gong crashes. Still, way more obtuse than anything you'll hear from any of those other NZ folks...
Whoa, how many reviews do you think have already been written about this release that make some dorky statement like "hey, this former Velocity Girl's all grown up!" Ahem, guess you can add this one to the bunch. The former lead singer for that above mentioned beloved '90s indie pop band, Ms Sarah Shannon has slipped into something a little less immediately comfortable... a little more adult contemporary to be exact. Drawing ample influences from '70s AM radio soft jazz pop a la Burt Bacharach, City Morning Song swoons with dulcet arrangements of Fender Rhodes electric piano, Hammond organ, flugelhorn, and strings, but along the way the affair loses its fizz just a bit. Shannon's voice is sweet and clear all right, but it doesn't possess the expressive body of the genre's foremothers Carly Simon and Carole King. Likewise as a performer she lacks the personality of those ladies, relying heavily on the very well performed instrumental backdrop to carry the proceedings. A faceless vanilla disappointment.
Continuing their eastward migration, former Victoria, BC natives Shapes And Sizes make a bigger leap from Vancouver to Montreal, and have a new split 7" with their Austin, TX buddies Weird Weeds to boot. The charming Canadian foursome offer up the peculiarly titled, mildly eccentric and invigorating "Junker / That Fat Hand", while WW presents a more low-key, stripped down and subtly uneasy art-folk number "Hold In The Light". Kewl!
The previous Rune Grammofon album from Norwegian electronica/jazz outfit Shining (2005's In The Kingdom Of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster) we liked quite a bit -- and sold quite a few copies of as well. But we don't remember it being quite as hard and heavy as this new disc! Some of this is almost industrial-metal, seriously. Herky-jerky rhythms one moment, sheer droning heaviness the next, with moody male and female vox amidst the instrumental/electronic onslaught. This has a sinister circusiness that makes you think that Mike Patton (Fantomas/Faith No More/etc.) must somehow be involved, though of course he's not. Doubtless he'd like how spunky, brassy, swirly, and dark this is, and that Shining haven't lost their any of their intense cinematic Morricone-ish sensibility.
From the dirty dirty dirty pun for a band name to the pornographic artwork on the vinyl (or the junkie grime on the CD), the Los Angeles instrumental glam-rock band Sinnerjizm is downright trashy; and that's the way they want it to be. A couple of the guys in Sinnerjizm also hail from the showboating '70s anthem rockers Jet Fuel, who've definitely got enough chops to venture into instrumental territory. Sinnerjizm sites Jesus Christ Super Star, Black Sabbath, Morricone, and the Butthole Surfers as their inspiration in making Inject Them With Rabies; and yeah, that's a pretty solid summation of their musical references. Obviously attuned to the folly of many an instrumental pop ensemble, Sinnerjizm is quick to make unexpected detours with some wah-wah porno funk here, a schmaltzy fun-in-the-sun groove there, and plenty of media samples which were rumored to be culled by Don Bolles of Germs / 45 Grave fame; but the band is best when transforming the 3 minute pop song into a kaleidoscopic marvel of sweet Hammond organ leads, immediately catchy Alice Cooper meets Link Wray riffs, and sweaty backbeats. Nicely done, boys.
It's been a while since we've heard anything from the Fflint camp, our favorite source for brilliant, damaged outsider avant electronic weirdness. But this week we've got not one, but two missives from the mysterious world of Fflint Central. And while Terminal Machine is not technically -ON- Fflint, Pendro does just happen to be half of the mighty Fflint duo soit most definitely count. Here he's teamed up with Japanese writer / musician / sound artist Kenji Siratori, who we heard from recently on the mind blowing Hypergenome666 4cd set with Nordvargr and Beyond Sensory Experience.
And like on Hypergenome666, Siratori is a man of words, literally. His texts are dense and bizarre, strange and so fascinating. For Terminal Machine, Siratori sent recordings of himself reading some of his works and gave Pendro the go ahead to transform those words into abstract sound.
The opening track features Siratori's voice gradually twisted into strange shapes as more and more effects are added, becoming more brittle and metallic, until the words almost sound like the plucking and scraping of steel strings. Later, the words are chopped and reshaped into some lurching post-Autechre IDM skitter, a smear of distorted melody and chittering rhythm, elsewhere the text becomes some droning sci-fi soundscape of processed vocals and FX drenched drones, another track finds the vocals obliterated, the only traces left a skittering, squelchy, splattery soundscape of Fflinty buzz and crumble. The final track is a dark, drifting dronescape, distant metallic buzz, bursts of microscopic grit, bits of high end glimmer and little upper register trills, all drenched in a thick patina of murk and mumble. The human voice twisted and tangled up into some seriously inhuman sounds. Pretty amazing stuff.
Packaged in a slimline case with some seriously disturbing 'meat-y' artwork...
The ever-reliable Sublime Frequencies label opens our ears to new frontiers of amazing sounds, AGAIN. "World music" isn't just what Putumayo puts out, y'know. Any adventurous music-fan should by now know to pick up each and every Sublime Frequencies release as they appear, you won't be disappointed. This latest cd presents some "Folk And Pop Sounds Of Syria" in the form of a "best-of" collection of tunes by one Omar Souleyman, selected (and explicated in the liner notes) by AQ pal Mark Gergis (of Porest, Neung Phak, Mono Pause). Mark was the compiler of previous Sublime Freq faves like Choubi Choubi, Molam: Thai Country Groove, and Cambodian Cassette Archives. Already we hope you're eager to hear this disc, which features a variety of traditional folk forms from Souleyman's homeland and nearby countries supercharged with synth, the rapid fire results sounding something like a Middle Eastern version of Aavikko, almost. It'll make you sweat just listening to it. This stuff simply shreds. And when it's more mellowed-out, Souleyman's music is gorgeous too.
Now, we don't usually like to quote label press-releases whole-hog, but Sublime Frequencies has provided a lot of factual info on Souleyman and his music that any potential purchaser will find of interest, and so rather than paraphrase, here's what they said about this, it should certainly pique your curiosity all the more (though we'll tell you right now without further ado, GET THIS):
"Omar Souleyman is a Syrian musical legend. Since 1994, he and his musicians have emerged as a staple of folk-pop throughout Syria, but until now they have remained little known outside of the country. To date, they have issued more than five-hundred studio and live-recorded cassette albums which are easily spotted in the shops of any Syrian city. Born in rural northeastern Syria, he began his musical career in 1994 with a small group of local collaborators that remain with him today. The myriad musical traditions of the region are evident in their music. Here, classical Arabic mawal-style vocalization gives way to high-octane Syrian dabke (the regional folkloric dance and party music), Iraqi choubi and a host of Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish styles, among others. This amalgamation is truly the sound of Syria. The music often has an overdriven sound consisting of phase-shifted Arabic keyboard solos and frantic rhythms. At breakneck speeds, these shrill Syrian electronics play out like forbidden Morse-code, but the moods swing from coarse and urgent to dirgy and contemplative in the rugged anthems that comprise Souleyman's repertoire. Oud, reeds, baglama saz, accompanying vocals and percussion fill out the sound from track to track. Mahmoud Harbi is a long-time collaborator and the man responsible for much of the poetry sung by Souleyman. Together, they commonly perform the "Ataba," a traditional form of folk poetry used in Dabke. On stage, Harbi chain smokes cigarettes while standing shoulder to shoulder with Souleyman, periodically leaning over to whisper the material into his ear. Acting as a conduit, Souleyman struts into the audience with urgency, vocalizing the prose in song before returning for the next verse. Souleyman's first hit in Syria was "Jani" (1996) which gained cassette-kiosk infamy and brought him recognition throughout the country. Sublime Frequencies is honored to present the Western debut of Omar Souleyman with this retrospective disc of studio and live recordings spanning 12 years of his career, culled from cassettes recorded between 1994 and 2006. This collection offers a rare glimpse into Syrian street-level folk-pop and Dabke -- a phenomena seldom heard in the West, not previously deemed serious enough for export by the Syrians and rarely, if ever, included on the import agenda of worldwide academic musical committees."
Got it? Get it. Recommended!
We've only got a couple of these; so we won't take too long in expounding upon the virtues of the Seattle heavy free-jazz ensemble The Spider Trio. Two of the members of the trio (Jeffrey Taylor and Dave Abramson) are current members of the ever entertaining / ever perplexing / ever compelling Climax Goldwn Twins, with the final member being saxophonist / painter Wally Shoup. Taylor quips that he may be the sole practitioner of a thing called "avant-garde free hillbilly guitar playing;" and yeah, his pseudo-Appalachian boogie deftly counterpoints Shoup's bleat and skronk while Abramson propels the ensemble with oblique fills and angular explosions of dynamic rhythm. Limited to 50 copies, each graced with a hand painted water color by Mr. Shoup.
With all the Starving Weirdos records around here over the last year or so, it's hard to believe this is only their 2nd proper actual cd release. A handful of cd-r's (not counting the 20 or so unreleased full lengths) and lp and a split, every one of em spectacular, these guys are one of the few bands we almost wish would be more prolific. Not that we don't love Acid Mothers Temple, but we'd sure as heck trade a few of the last 20 or so new AMT records for a couple extra slabs of Weirdos wonder. Nonetheless, Shrine Of The Post-Hypnotic find the Weirdos continuing in their sonic quest, this time around incorporating more guitar it seems, more feedback, the overall sound somewhat heavier, from the dirgey slow motion buzz of the opener "Crewell", to the buzzing clattery Dead C worship of "Droned And Poned", it's a sound that most definitely suits them. It's like the No Neck Blues Band teamed up with some serious amplified firepower. A buzz drenched rambling percussive meander. Murky keening soundscapes, huge distant arcs of grinding feedback, thick swells of crumbling fuzz, heavily reverbed percussive clatter, streaks of glistening guitar, simple angular strumming, hushed minimal shimmer, bells and chimes wreathed in black whirs, massive cavernous room sound wrapped around muted melodies, moaning groaning drones drifting in thick swirls of high end glimmer and rumbling crunch, haunting industrial rhythms sinking slowly in dense fields of dreamy doom, wispy clouds of FX wrapped around creaking ambience, processed vocals transformed into undulating layers of viscous sound. It's all of that and so much more. We can describe the various sounds and sonic events, but it's so difficult to explain just why they sound so fantastic, and what sort of musical magic makes them all fit together so well. But they just do and who knows and who really cares, you should just stop reading right now and dive right in. You won't be sorry.
Packaged in a gorgeous fold over card stock sleeve, screen printed with an amazingly trippy hand drawn landscape.
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!
It was inevitable really. The Japanese masters of Orange Amp-powered drone-sludge and the robed priests of low end doom. How could it not happen? In fact, if you remember the 2005 April Fool's AQ list, we actually jokingly predicted this epochal event! Although in our version it also included Earth, each band playing one note of the world's heaviest E chord.
The real question was never IF it would happen, it was when. And how. Especially how. C'mon, how on earth can you fit that many amps in a recording studio. They must have used an airplane hanger, either that or they filled a high school gymnasium with Sunn and Orange stacks and microphones, and actually played in an entirely different room.
Regardless, it happened, and it sounds as good as you might imagine. Both bands completely compliment each other. SUNNO))), whose slow motion riffing borders on pure ambience, is given a serious propulsive shove, with more structured riffing and the addition of DRUMS!!! Boris get dragged back into the gloriously glacial tarpit of their older records, discarding their current garage rock rrrooooaaar for that classic slow motion doom trudge. However you look at it, it's basically the best record either band has put out. It's like an EVEN heavier SUNNO))), with bigger riffs and pulverizing doom rock drums, and of course wailing psychedelic leads. For Boris, they've taken their blown out grooves and dipped them in tar, added a million more pounds of guitar firepower and made the best Boris record since Flood.
But it's not all pulverizing doom riffage. There's plenty of dark droning ambience too. Huge stretches of swirling guitar rumble, dreamy swaths of wispy steel string shimmer. murky and haunting, processed vocals and minor key melodies swimming in a black sea of echoey ambient guitars and sizzling cymbal shimmer. The strangest track is probably "The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)", sort of the Boris / SUNNO))) version of a torch song, with FX smeared piano, strange buried rhythms, and hushed vocals, like a doom metal Mazzy Star.
The closer "Bloodswamp" is 14 minutes of churning downtuned guitars and shimmering Sunroof! like ambience. No riffs really, or if they are there, they're stretched into thick streaks of black fuzz. A furiously epic coda to a fucking amazing record.
The first 5000 copies come with a bonus disc titled SatanOscillateMyMetallicSonatas (a nod to Soundgarden, there?) that features a single 28 minute track called "Her Lips Were Wet With Venom" guest starring Dylan Carlson from Earth! Before we go any further... are you thinking what we're thinking... April Fools? SUNNO))) and Boris And Earth!!! And I bet you at least some of the bonus track is in E!! Boy, did we call it. And actually Atsuo from Boris confided in a friend of AQ that indeed, part of the reason they got Dylan to guest was because of that April Fool's review! How cool is that?!?
Anyway, the bonus track is a monstrous wall of churning guitars, with occasional howled almost death metal vocals buried way down in the mix, and languorous Earth Hex-like twang guitar draped lazily above a churning blackhole ambience. So good.
Besides Dylan Carlson of Earth, there are lots of other guest performers including Jesse Sykes, Joe Preston from Thrones (also ex-Melvins, ex-Earth), Kim Thayil from Soundgarden (aha) and Rex Ritter from Jessamine.
Packaged beautifully in a mini cd style gatefold, with AMAZING cover art, black on black with weird muted color and text printed in glossy varnish and metallic gold, both bands be-robed and standing in a cornfield, a full color booklet attached to the inside, a metallic sticker on the front, each copy individually numbered.
Yet another release in Tiliqua's Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of Japanese erotic music from the sixties and seventies (the fourth of five!). We reviewed Kokotsu No Sekai from Japanese sexy action heroine Ike Reiko a while back, Kuwabara Yukiko To Anata from Japanese "Play Girl" Kuwabara Yukiko not long after that, and most recently, Modae No Heya from seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani, music recorded and released in 1979 to commemorate her retirement from the world of porn. And now we have Tokyo Emmanuelle Fujin - Amai Yoru No Tameiki from legendary porn actress Taguchi Kumi.
For those just discovering the wonderful world of Iroke Kayoyoku for the first time, it's a sort of loungy exotica, equal parts Les Baxter and Ennio Morricone, a bastardized version of a more popular Asian music of the time, a funky, groovy, soulful soundtrack music, but sexed up with chanteuse like crooning, and most important of all, an amazing array of moaning and groaning and cooing and giggling, very playful and silly and sexy.
Originally released in 1976, Tokyo Emmanuelle Fujin is a compilation, culled from the various porn movies which catapulted her to immediate stardom. This is not your average porn movie music, while some of this is funkier and a little bit groovier than the other volumes in the series, it's still rife with subtle Eastern melodies, spaghetti western guitars, soaring super dramatic strings, wild wah wah guitar, some seriously blasts of disco dance floor funk, some trippy Lawrence Welk style easy listening, a bit of twangy country guitar, dreamy piano balladry, some mysterious Pink Panther / Mission Impossible Mancini-esque minor key shuffle (in fact the last track pretty much IS the theme from the Pink Panther!), but over it all is Taguchi's breathless vocals, whispering, coo-ing, moaning, groaning and giggling. Not as sexy as it is kind of cute actually...
Erotic and exotic, sexy and silly, funky and fun, and pretty dang strange really. Definitely essential listening for lovers of weird music, and all sounds strange and sexy.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, saucy nude photos of Kumi on the cover, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
ULTRA LIMITED!!! Only 1000 copies pressed. Already almost sold out, so you know what that means...
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When we first heard the title of this new Tarentel FOUR LP series, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, the first two of which we raved about a little while back (both of which we still have in stock, although there are only a handful of copies left!) we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, these lps ARE all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrock pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of most of these songs is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
On volume three, the group start out by moving even further out into space (rock) on the ten minute "Stellar Envelope", blown out crumbling sheets of distorted psych guitar and dizzying FX wrapped around propulsive tribal beats, feedback everywhere, it almost sounds like Hawkwind with all the structure sucked out, leaving a huge swirling mass of psychedelic tribal ambience, while managing to still rock somehow. The rest of volume three area gorgeously obfuscated drift through a sonic landscape at once rough and lo-fi and blissfully lush, strange industrial clatter and clang is muted and smeared into mumbly ambience, guitars are looped into hypnotic stretches of throbbing drone, bits of dreamlike melody, simple spacious piano, are wreathed in fuzz and warped into gorgeous slabs of pop ambient fuzz, the whole thing is surprisingly tranquil and shimmery, especially after that opening salvo, and the dense rhythmic intensity of the first two volumes, but within the context of Tarentel's epic 4 part Ghetto Beat symphony, it couldn't sound more perfect.
As much as we love pretty much everything Tarentel does, volume three of Ghetto Beats only further convinces us that this is by far the best stuff we've ever heard from these guys. So fantastic!
When we first heard the title of this new Tarentel FOUR LP series, Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, the first two of which we raved about a little while back (both of which we still have in stock, although there are only a handful of copies left!) we were pretty sure they were being ironic, or facetious, or something, and there would be no beats, ghetto or otherwise, to be found anywhere, just their usual gorgeously slow shifting epic postrock soundscapes. But actually, these lps ARE all about the beats, not sure if they're 'ghetto' or not, but they sure are dense and funky and weirdly rhythmic, from blissed out shuffling skitter to super propulsive krautrock pound, these discs are definitely a whole new side of Tarentel. A much more raw and ragged, caustic and groove based beast. It almost sounds like Tarentel covering This Heat, or a krautrock No Neck Blues Band, or maybe even Tussle via This Heat with a bit of 23 Skidoo thrown in for good measure.
While the framework of most of the tracks is some dense web of percussive clatter or some sort-of-funky drum jam, these gorgeously hypnotic skeletal rhythms are surrounded on all sides by thick swaths of crumbling ambience, disembodied guitar loops and rumbling bass, thick swells of warm whir and all sorts of other random dreamlike shimmer. Often building into seriously caustic squalls, big churning white hot sonic swirls, each wrapped around beats that seem on the edge of falling apart, or splintering into rhythmic fragments. Maybe that's the ghetto angle, the beats are super lo-fi, blown out, strangely recorded, so they sound sort of alien, with lots of strange FX and stuttering stumbling variations. So fucking awesome.
The final volume in the series, offers up Ghetto Beats' heaviest moment in the form of "Somebody Fucks With Everybody", a sidelong doom dirge blow out, referencing everyone from SUNNO))) to Growing to Nadja, a thick glacial swirl of downtuned guitars, wreathed in effulgent streaks of damaged outerspace FX and psychrock solar flares, all underpinned by Neurosis style tribal rhythms, constantly sounding as if any second the song will kick into the heaviest riff of all time, but instead, it stretches on and on, building and building, some sort of cosmic lo-fi krautrock ambience, massive and heavy, but strangely dreamy and blissful.
The second side pretty much eschews the titular beats entirely, instead offering up several brief ambient drifts, the far away foresty folk hovering above slow moving slabs of glacial low end of "Where Time Forgot", the ultra brief scrape and shuffle of "Isalais Delay", the murky disembodied post rock of "You Do This. I'll Do That", a strange landscape of fuzzy melodies and indistinct song fragments, all woven into some sort of soft focus fever dream, and finally, "Lake Light", a two minute outro, the glorious final flurry of sound in this epic sonic travelogue spread out over 4 lps, a gorgeously hopeful, sparkling glistening drift of shimmery harmonics, and misty minor key flutter. So lovely.
We've loved everything Tarentel has done in the past, but this is by far our favorite, and how could it not be after drifting dreamily through all 8 sides of Ghetto Beats, immersing ourselves in a gloriously murky world of drifting space drones and propulsive beats, of fuzzed out shimmer and barely there ambience... So amazing!
Live document of a TOL performance recorded at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January of 2005. This rotating collective of improvisers, which this time around include Alan Licht and Lee Ranaldo on guitars, DJ Olive on turntables, Tim Barnes on percussion and Ulrich Krieger on sax, continue their practice of performing to the films of Stan Brakhage and other members of the avant-garde cinema of the fifties and sixties. While only 20 minutes long, each musician is allowed their moment to shine before the piece culminates in an otherworldly full band racket. Although, it would be nice to see the film with the music meant to accompany it, the overall piece works well without the aid of visuals, and is a good introduction to anyone curious about this organic collective of experienced free-players.
There's been changes galore in the world of Tin Hat. Most notably Rob Burger, one of the group's founding members has left the fold. They've wisely recruited the wonderfully talented multi-instrumentalist Ara Anderson (Iron And The Albatross, Boostamonte, Tom Waits) and acclaimed clarinet player Ben Goldberg, and dropped the "Trio" from their name. And they've released The Sad Machinery Of Spring, their fifth luminous album. Tin Hat are frequently categorized as a chamber music group but the music they make reaches out far beyond that genre's borders. They effortlessly and seamlessly incorporate elements of classical, jazz, and a broad spectrum of Americana and international sounds. Excellent.
We've never really listed any releases by Midwestern lo-fi black metal combo Tjolgtjar, at least not knowingly. Let your mind wander back a list or two, to a band called Xexyz, a bizarre stumblingly blackened horde who employed a Nintendo game system in lieu of a keyboard, even going so far as to cover (or re-imagine) their favorite 8-bit video game theme songs, transforming them into a truly freaked out bleeping buzzing black metal. Well, we later discovered that this Xexyz band, was in fact essentially a permutation of mighty Midwestern black metal warriors Tjolgtjar. Which makes a lot of sense when you hear their latest, Halloween, a tribute of sorts to the classic eighties slasher flick of the same name. And it's another far out, what-the-fuck blast of damaged and demented black metal. Made even moreso by the fact that about half of the tracks are in fact blackened versions of music from the movie.
The opener will be immediately recognizable to anyone who was a horror movie obsessed nerd in the eighties, that ubiquitous theme song, here rendered in buzzing guitar and pounding drums, complete with relentless double kicks WAY down in the mix. Fucking genius. Track two is more incidental music from the movie, that creepy, stalking song that kept surfacing throughout the movie, here incorporated into the bands buzzing black verses, an ultra lo-fi riff beneath harsh gargled vocals, but always returning to that theme. Still sends shivers up our spines, and somehow it sounds even scarier all blackened up. It's hard to always tell which bits are actually from the movie, some parts are obvious, but it all sounds ultra creepy and like perfect horror movie music. We still wonder why someone hasn't had some grim black metal band score their film. Someday...
The rest of the record blasts through various motifs from the movie, usually set amidst stumbling black blasts of grim buzz, a couple tracks are just creeped out keyboard ambience, haunting and droney, with bits of dialogue from the movie popping up here and there, truly spooky. And so fucking brilliant. And demented. Dementedly brilliant! Anyone who bought that Xexyz disc NEEDS this, and should probably pick up any Tjolgtjar they can find. We'll definitely be listing more in the near future.
And be sure to stick around for the bonus track, an unbelievably annoying metallized version of that song the kids sing in the movie "Eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...", gradually counting down the days until it's "No more days til Halloween...". Ssssssscary...
Some early '70s French psych-rock here, not so much on the proto-metal side of things but still totally groovy, and from the get-go not failing to rock the cowbell (well, the opening track on this 22 song collection, "Peut-etre Demain", is the number one cowbell culprit, gotta love it). We first heard of Triangle some years ago thanks to the amazing, AQ-fave six-cd Igor Wakhevitch box on Fractal (now, sadly, out of print). Wakhevitch was an avant-garde, electronic composer whose first few albums enlisted the fuzzed guitars of Triangle as part of their surreal soundscapes. So we'd been always curious to hear Triangle's own music. Of course it's not as far out as the Wakhevitch stuff, they're basically a pop band, tres commercial, yet with a freaky side to 'em. This disc, as the title reveals, collects some of their crucial cuts from '69 through '74... a lot of upbeat numbers with DJ-friendly beats, symphonic prog moves, catchy choruses, and swingin' horns. Really, judging from this disc, Triangle were all over the place, from synth-laced proto-disco to placid piano ballads to bubblegum hard rock. If you like stuff of the "B-music" persuasion (like the Prog Is Not A Four Letter Word comp), or that Total Freakout collection on Mucho Gusto, or rad '70s "library music" and things like that, we figure you'll dig these Triangle tunes.
This digipack includes pictures of all of Triangle's original 33 and 45 rpm record sleeves, which are nice to have -- the first album's got a piano engulfed in flames on it, the second has Triangle lined up for a firing squad, also comprised of the band members. But there's no liner notes to speak of, so we don't know a heck of a lot more about 'em, other than that they recorded three albums and a bunch of singles, had some hits, went on to back up pop singer Papillon on a solo LP of his (three tracks from that album, including their cover of Bowie's "Starman" en Francais, are to be found here).
If Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg were a cult, a shadowy forest horde of trolls and cavemen, like we had always imagined (hoped?), we would be right there beneath the heavy canopy, eyes wide in the arboreal darkness, bowing before Thundarr and Mordraaneth, trudging through the woods all glassy eyed, chanting in unison, letting Trollmann's subsonic vibrations lull us into a strange doomed trance, filthy and unkempt, clad in loin cloths, faces painted with black mud, spears in hands, first-borns sacrificed, we would gladly give up our daily lives, to serve their trollish dominion. But instead, Trollmann are just a human UK doom duo, keyboards and bass, and if our wild obsession alluded to in the above ramblings didn't clue you in, we LOVE these guys, and for now, will have to make do with raving maniacally about how awesome they are and getting our hands on every possible shred of recorded music they've produced. At least until they actually do become a cult.
To be honest, we were always sort of convinced that Trollmann was some bedroom recorded side project. Some metal guy just sort of experimenting and exploring sounds and soundscapes. The purported facts were just too good to be true, a caveman/troll duo, one member named Thundarr, responsible for "Rumblings of doom" and "Prophecies of times to come", the other member called Mordraaneth, he responsible for "Cosmic keys to gates unknown". The band members always pictured on the record sleeves in drawings, bearded, carrying clubs, seated on huge toadstools. Album 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. It all seems sort of absurd, until you actually hear the music, then it all suddenly makes some sort of impossible sense. It's like a doom metal Land Of The Lost. We all headed down to the club to see some doom band play, but got sucked into some other dimension, and ended up prostrate before Thundarr and Mordraaneth, as they proceeded to create a music, both beautiful and otherworldly, heavy and dreamlike, spreading over us like a black cloud.
So imagine our surprise when we discovered, there was a LIVE recording of Trollmann. Performing on this plane, in this time, to be witnessed by mere mortals. How could that be possible? And where could such a momentous performance take place? Well, here it is. Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg's very first live Aktion, a low end doom drone ritual performed where else but... IN A PUB!!! That's right, the Tut 'N Shive. The good ol' pub down on the corner.
Even just listening, you can practically hear the pub slowly transforming into some vine draped cave, dank and dark, lit from within, some unearthly glow, while two shadowy figures lurk on a small stage-like outcropping of rock. And proceed to fill the room, with viscous black beauty. The only real distraction from this sonic transformation is the between song reaction. 20 or 30 punters, pints in hand, cheering, clapping and hooting, laughing and talking before the next huge wave of black bile comes washing over them. It's not so much distracting as surreal. To imagine this music actually being performed, in a pub, in front of a crowd. It's actually pretty amazing, if not a little unreal.
Three looooooooooooong tracks. The first, begins with a strange throbbing bass, pulsing beneath a glimmering, shimmery keyboard drone, the bass slowly transforming into a huge lurching bass riff, repeated over and over, a totally mesmerizing slow motion doom groove, with huge monstrous guttural vocals all wrapped in thick sheets of amplifier buzz and cavernous reverb. Most definitely the heaviest Trollmann yet, but as it progresses, the sound becomes more fuzzy and the notes less distinct... eventually fading into black.
The second begins with a thick swirl of rumbling low end, glowing and growling, shifting glacially, the overtones beating against each other, a thick dense black cloud of sound, slowly modulating and subtly changing shape. While beneath the roiling blackness, the keyboard offers up a drifting melancholy shimmer, simple mournful melodies that hover and slowly fade, Trollmann at their most dreamlike and ambient. But before long, this droning black shimmer begins to build, slowly swelling into a super majestic, cinematic dirge, massive soaring low end melodies, howled anguished vocals, like Moss playing Godspeed, but then slowed down and somehow rendered impossibly fuzzy and blissy, while remaining intense and threatening.
The final ritual, sounds a bit like Total or Sunroof!, but only if their instrumental arsenal consisted of nothing but bass guitars and HUGE Stonehenge like speaker cabinets, a near static wall of throbbing low end sound wrapped like thick black drifts around a soft shimmery, distant melody, a melancholia drifting well beneath the rumble and whir, eventually becoming more and more tangled, the track becoming so blown out and blurry, so grainy and soft focus it almost sounds like some sort of Pop Ambient Doom.
As disappointed as we are, that Trollmann do in fact exist in the mortal plane, and do practice their strange sonic alchemy in local pubs, the music still compels us, mesmerizes us, possesses us, it blackens our ears and our souls, and thus we are at the ready, to gather up an army, to slip free of this world, to strip off our clothes, to paint our faces and march bravely into the black forest, to serve the mighty Trollmann...
The time has come. Hard to believe. Trollman in the flesh. Live. Their mortal forms revealed to all. Thundarr and Mordraaneth. Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come, Cosmic Keys To Gates Unknown. All before our very eyes.
Not sure what we were expecting, so much of Trollmann was mystery, those strange drawings on the cds, the bizarre monickers, the lengthy song titles. And hell, the sound. Huge expanses of slow motion doom. Hellish drones spread out like a black fog. We were sort of expecting some sort of SUNNO))) thing. Dry ice, hoods, robes, back lit shadows. But nah, that's a little too contrived. Maybe they would be hidden behind some stones, or huge curtains. Or maybe they would be monsters, creatures of the night, exposed for the very first time, a horrific but impossibly compelling sight.
No matter how you slice it, with a mysterious band, it's hard not to be disappointed, and to be totally honest we were a little at first, but then, the whole thing became more and more surreal, and it was hard not to love these guys even more.
It starts with skeletal, taciturn looking long hair man in a long sleeve Burzum t-shirt, seated at a keyboard in front of a huge black tapestry of a long haired, mustachioed skull wearing an Indian headress above crossed swords. Beside him, stands another long haired fellow, in jeans and a black t-shirt, holding a black bass. All to the strains of a skull rattling low end doomdrone. But then the camera pulls back to reveal the fact that they seem to be outside, DURING THE DAY! They also seem to be under a bridge. Beneath a brick arch, with a muddy hillside in the background, trees and bushes. On the wall behind the band in the background a strange brass plaque, and what appears to be a pig's head on a stick. The whole thing is filmed with a super jittery camcorder, sudden unexpected zooms, face, fingers on strings, the dirt hillside in the background, the skull on the tapestry, and while the band plays, you can hear people talking, obviously not that into the band, one guy even comes to the front of the stage, beer in hand, and begins to taunt the band, making hand gestures and mugging fro the crowd. Someone in the audience yells "You're fucking SHITE!!!". People laugh, but the band remain expressionless, intent on the harsh soundworld they're weaving beneath this bridge.
The second track begins the same way, the taciturn man seated at his keyboard, beneath the Indian skull, but at this point, either the cameraman is getting bored, or has gotten too drunk to really keep the camera still or keep his attention on the band. Lots of jittery shots of the floor, the wall beside the band, the band members' feet, the crowd, drunk dudes and cute metal girls, amps, the trees behind the stage, the houses on the other side of the bridge, and most bizarrely of all, a couple of little dogs, one of whom proceeds to run back and forth in front of the stage, seemingly unperturbed by the roaring doomic dirge emanating from the speakers. And the cameraman seems unduly interested in the dog, considering he is meant to be capturing the slow motion might of Trollmann. Much more crowd chatter this time around, but somehow it just adds to the sound. Laughing and inane drunken conversations are inadvertently woven into the black fabric of Trollmann's sound. A bespectacled man mouths "Awesome. Fucking awesome... " Someone holds a cigarette beneath the camera letting the smoke whip by the lens like the world's most inexpensive special effect. All the while, Trollmann remain impassive, statue like, emitting an impossibly gorgeous ambient dirge, chanted vocals, over a pulsing bass drone and shimmery keyboards. Almost like Moss crossed with SUNNO))) only with Gregorian chant-like vocals. The whole thing is incredibly surreal, the camera bobbing from the ground to the sky to the band to the crowd and back again, the sky darkening behind the band, the crowd growing less and less distinct, and more like featureless shadows, wraiths... it's somehow sort of perfect.
Outside of the camera panning back to reveal a troll atop a toadstool clutching his keyboard, and a huge furry caveman with a club in one hand and a bass guitar in the other, performing on the edge of a fiery abyss, wreathed in clouds of vampire bats and thick curls of black smoke, we really couldn't have wished for more...
