!!!'s latest makes us want to dj (or at least attend) a sweaty summer dance party so bad it hurts. Emulating the underlying mood of such parties, Myth Takes delivers without moderation. Drummer Gerard Fuchs provides a rapid heartbeat for the record by employing the open/closed hi-hat repetition you remember most from old 70's funk classics. Manic vocals that wax abrasive and wane falsetto paired with slap bass, clattering and hypnotic guitars, synths, and a whole lotta effects easily make Myth Takes the dance party record of the year. Accepting that college kegger dance-offs may merely be a not-so-distant memory for some of us, the Brooklyn based band's groove pounding third (full length) release has also proven to come in handy for ass-shakin' apartment cleaning and Aquarius order packing! Established !!! fans will certainly not be disappointed with Myth takes, and the Brooklyn based eight-piece is sure to recruit some new sweatband-rockin' blood with sex drenched hits like "Must Be The Moon."
Let's Build A Fire is the kind of record you unfortunately don't hear much about these days. Not enough bells and whistle's perhaps. What makes the Brooklyn based trio so great is sort of subtle. Well played beautiful guitar riffs that blend perfectly with the gorgeously pitched soft vocals. Complicated, but not flashy drumming. Talented friends playing and harmonizing on a single track not for the novelty of a pedal steel or cello, but to complete the vision of a well rounded gentle pop song. Let's Build A Fire is reminiscent of a very definitive time in the history of indie music that had us glued to our headphones listening to the likes of Yo La Tengo, Superchunk, and Polvo (to name a few). It's the kind of album we definitely don't hear enough about these days.
Of course black metal and soft pop aren't the only cool sounds coming outta Norway these days, but who'd guess there'd be something with such a German bent to it. 120 Days are the Norwegians of whom we speak. Four hip young fellows wearing the sizable influences of kraut rock geniuses (CAN, Neu!, Kraftwerk) and raw angsty post-punk terrors (Suicide and The Stooges) proudly on their sleeves. They take those lessons they've learned studying their masters' classic recordings and project 'em through a modern rock sheen and the result is strangely mesmerizing. Flitting from motorik jam to angular new wave and back again, often in the same song. Long blown out synthscapes and distant robotic pulses butted up against crazed dancefloor throb and jagged guitars... You can almost imagine some exclusive seventies German nightclub, tucked in the basement of some abandoned building, where every week, a crowd of tight panted angular haircutted, garishly make-upped kids meet up with a bunch of long haired space rock burnouts, and stay up all night harmoniously dancing, getting high, making out and drifting off, all to the strains of 120 Days...
Here's another band who have released about a million limited cd-r's, but this is the very first one we've managed to get for the store. Australian outfit 6Majik9, sound to us like they could be from Finland. We hear lots of Avarus and Anaksimandros, Uton, but we also hear some Dead C, and more importantly a bunch of stuff we're not sure we've actually heard before.
Short tracks, each a stumbling abstract free jam, sometimes noisy and intense, other times blissy and blown out. Brief bursts of wheezing clattery folk drenched in angular detuned guitar jut up against wild free jazz space rock freakouts, complete with FX drenched guitar squalls, wild octopoidal drumming and mumbled caveman vocals. Wild tribal free for all's peppered with skronky horns and distant clatter morph into ultra minimal found soundscapes, laced with bits of barely there percussion, and distant simple strummed melodies. Elsewhere, these guys unfurl huge murky expanses of drone-y whir, draped over dark piano figures and simple jazzy horns, or create dizzying demented almost cartoon music from processed vocals, pounded piano and swirls of dense effects.
The sounds are all over the place on first listen, but there is some skewed thread of sonic logic that runs through this whole disc, and while it might not be obvious what it is, or how it actually makes these disparate sounds all work together, it does. And we like it. A lot.
Packaged in a red textured sleeve with a fancy printed insert, tied to the sleeve with twine, and containing a bit of tree bark and a very fragrant pod of some sort. An easy way to make your AQ package smell like potpourri...
LIMITED TO 93 COPIES!!
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While it's been over three years since Air's last record that doesn't mean they've been sitting around doing nothing. In fact just in the last year they made all the music for Charlotte Gainsbourg's great new record 5:55, curated one of the best Late Night Tales compilations, and one half of Air, J.B. Dunckel released his first solo record under the moniker Darkel. But yes like many of you, we've still been getting antsy for a proper new Air record. And here we have it and we have to say it does not disappoint. Pocket Symphony is Air at their moodiest, creating an impeccable atmosphere that flows perfectly from start to finish. There are some guest vocals appearances from Jarvis Cocker (Pulp fans rejoice!) and Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) but truly the strength of Pocket Symphony comes in the instrumentation and overall mood that only the guys in Air seem to be able to conjure up. In many ways this is their most somber recording since their score for The Virgin Suicides. A perfect come down record.
Ohhhh so dreamy! Here's the sophomore album from Anagram aka Mr. Eric Holland (formerly of AQ faves Milk Cult) and Ms Jessica Congdon (formerly of Vervein). Anagram splendidly marry the strengths of their old bands; the textured, atmospheric layers of the former and the pop prettiness of the latter. The follow-up to 2005's Songs From Far Away features a baker's dozen of the Bay Area duo's lushly composed pop songs. Swirling effected guitars and heavenly sweetheart vocals take centerstage amid an assortment of mood-deepening electronic and synthesizer embellishments. They strike an ear pleasing balance of shoe-gazin' and star-gazin' that alternately brings to mind The Cranberries, Lush, The Breeders and The Organ. Actually many tunes struck us as being remarkably feature film and tv soundtrack ready, and wouldn't you know it? Anagram's already had a bunch of songs featured in movies, tv and radio programs. There's guests a-plenty too: Faith No More's Bill Gould, Mike Morasky of Steel Pole Bathtub, The Enablers' Joe Goldring, and Nathan Petty of Rogue Wave among others. Keep your ears peeled!
Such a momentous occasion! Renegade American filmmaker and (oc)cult figure Kenneth Anger's early works have finally been released on dvd! Fans and disciples, you need squint through fuzzy faded VHS and 16mm copies no more. The five shorts were meticulously restored by the UCLA Film Archive, and the dvd features crisp, high definition transfers. Anger's films haven't looked this vivid in decades. Stunning! Works include Anger's debut Fireworks (a sailor fantasy / nightmare gay cinema classic from 1947); Puce Moment (a 1949 short which exudes the absolutely giddy glamour of early Hollywood); Rabbit Moon (a mesmerizing black and white dream from 1950) - the original 16-minute long version could easily be imagined as an alternate-universe mime scene from Marcel Carne's 1945 cinematic masterpiece Children Of Paradise; the mystical garden stroll of Eaux D'Artifice (1953); and last but not least Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome (dripping with garish colors and bizarre bacchanalia, this film from 1954 was Anger's filmic launch point into the rites and mysticism of Aleister Crowley).
The dvd extras include extensive, frank commentary by Anger and rare outtakes from Rabbit's Moon. Indeed, Anger has long been known to go in and tweak his films years after their 'completion' -- changing music, re-editing scenes, adding, subtracting. Ardent, eagle-eyed fans will probably notice a few such cases on this dvd. And if that's not enough for you, there's also a big 48-page book filled with rare photos, stills, storyboard sketches, and an introduction penned by Martin Scorsese.
Wow! There is no doubt that Antibalas have always been really good at what they do. One of the few bands carrying the torch of Afro-beat in honor of the late great Fela Kuti, and doing it better then pretty much anyone here in the states. But with this most recent release they have taken things a step further and expanded their sound from merely being capable clones to constructing one of the most lively and rich sounding soul/funk/afro-beat records we've heard in FOREVER. With John McEntire (Tortoise) manning the controls, this is the kind of fusion record all the post-rockers of the 90's wish they had the soul to create. Rich and dirty organs, wild horns, and killer breakbeats all coming together to ignite an undeniable groove. The opening track "Beaten Metal" is for sure one of our favorite songs of '07, but the entire album is pretty much just as mind blowing!
Art books can be pretty hit or miss. Especially indie underground art books, zines, etc... Which run the risk of being a little too insular, self indulgent, whatever the art version of friend rock is... Granted there are lots of exceptions, but we're sure we don't need to tell you that there is as much bad art as there is bad music. But by the same token, there's just as much good art, you just gotta know where to look. We don't often list books, especially art books, but once in a while, our ass is so kicked by one we feel compelled to share it with everybody. The latest ass kicker is the strangely titled Apenest. A 100+ page perfect bound tome, featuring 23 artists from the North East United States... Not a single artist we had heard of, but almost all of them amazing. The art is all over the map, from photos, to pencil drawings, collages, elaborate oil paintings, bizarre squiggles, abstract, lifelike, pretty, ugly, all fantastic.
The concept behind the book is pretty remarkable as well. It's incredibly difficult for artists to have a book of their work published, so for Apenest, each artist contributed an original piece of artwork, which were all assembled into a single portfolio and sold to a private collector. The money was then used to pay for the book. Simple. And now we all get to see some totally kick ass, and off the beaten path art.
Some of our favorites: James Quigley's grotesque cartoon monster drawings, Cody Hoyt's gorgeous and scary snake/rainbow/skull assemblages, Brandon Nastanski's mysterious numbered and patterned figures, Anabel Vasquez's super abstract color drenched photos, we could go on and on. Gorgeously laid out, and lovingly assembled, bits of text interspersed with the artwork, almost all of which is totally great. And so cheap! You spend so much time catering to the whims of your ears, it's high time your eyes got some serious love! Essential.
116 pages, perfect bound book, comes in a zip lock bag with stickers, an 11" x 17" offset poster and a hand silk-screened bandanna!
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
Regardless of which alter ego he's embodying at the time (Senor Coconut, Datacide, Midisport, Lisa Carbon, Disk Orchestra, etc.), virtually all of Uwe Schmidt's releases have some obvious, fully realized concept behind them. Knowing that, it makes his latest Atom TM album a somewhat befuddling listen. Son Of A Glitch squishes together a seemingly random assortment of distinctly Schmidt-y IDM glitch-squidge, sample-delic outbursts and dialogue snippets. Really, we could be missing something, but it seems like his most unfocused work to date -- sounding like a grab bag of recordings of him just messing around in the studio. Still, if this is Uwe Schmidt just fuckin' around, it's still miles more entertaining and well executed than a lot of releases by his contemporaries.
Long overdue collection of out of print material from SF based free noise sound sculptor Axolotl. Collecting tracks from the Jyrk cd-r Oranur, the Spirit Of Orr cd-r Object Phantom and the more recent Gypsy Sphinx 12" Chemical Theater.
As much as we pretty much love everything Axolotl has done, and as much as we're psyched to have some of the older stuff on a real cd, this disc is worth it alone for the two tracks from the Chemical Theater 12", the first record where we noticed a distinct stylistic shift in Axolotl's sound. Here's what we had to say about those tracks:
"We had to keep checking to see what we were listening to. Some of the elements are certainly similar, but it's way dreamier and laid back, muted and murky, subtly propulsive, it actually sounds quite a bit like Oval or Gas! Which is a VERY good thing. Slow shifting underwater drift, a looped hypnotic dream world, rich waves of warm sound, a totally gorgeous abstract minimal ambience."
Sounds pretty great huh? Well, it is. And the two tracks from Chemical Theater are nearly twenty minutes long! Basically half of the 12". Including the 11+ minute glorious dreamy drone "Illiaster".
But the funny thing is, revisiting the older tracks, they are just as good somehow, sounding way more fuzzy and blown out and beautiful than we remember. And we definitely remember digging them, a lot, but they sound SO great... Thick washes of murky gritty grime, drones that twist and rumble and give way to fragmented bits of melody. Soft focus stretches of pixelated ambience, guitar strums that come apart, the notes drifting in all different directions, each note enveloped in its own little swath of buzz or fuzz, simple percussion, damaged rhythms, all wrapped in a dense fog of glowing guitar growl and fuzzed out feedback...
So recommended.
We're guessin' that with his latest full length, Andrew Bird's already rapt followers will become even more so... and be joined by a whole bunch of new fans too. If you're already familiar with this unassuming, sensitive singer/songwriter, Armchair Apocrypha needs no introduction. It's a terrific progression from his last album Mysterious Production Of Eggs (2005). On songs like "Armchairs", Bird recalls the soft rock mellowness of '70s bands like Bread or America. On other tunes such as "Cataracts" he's more folksy leaning, bringing to mind contemporaries M. Ward, Will Oldham, or Ron Sexsmith. He closes the album with a haunting instrumental. Charming, pretty and never heavy-handed.
What might one expect from a Black Cobra, one part sludge metal crushers Cavity and one part doom sludge slayers 16? How about two parts massive fucking metallic destruction. A pummeling two man chain gang, pounding sonic boom drumming and rumbling low slung dowtuned guitar chug and churn and a whole lot of yelling, Black Cobra are like a WAY more metal Karp, and hell, Karp were pretty dang metal to begin with. A thick gooey paste of noise and sludge as heavy as, if not heavier than, these two guy's former groops combined, but there's ONLY TWO OF 'EM!!! How in the hell do two guys make such an unholy racket??! Who cares! This is some glorious heaviness. 16, Cavity, Dove, Torche, Floor, you get the drift. Heavy and drone-y and groovy and sludgy and so goddamn heavy. We often wonder why heavy two piece bands always choose to ditch the bass player when it's ALL about the low end, but fear not, there is no lack of bass here, hell, the guitar is tuned low enough that it might as well be a bass!!
This is the shit we love. Massive feedback and utter heaviness. Big fat riffs. Lots of "chunka chunka" "chug chug". Huge ride cymbal smashing caveman-behind-the-kit power drumming. DOOM! NOISE! DIRGE! SLUDGE! HELL YEAH!!
From the same label that brought us the amazing Vomit Orchestra discs comes this killer 3 way split, an exploration of black ambient, dark ritual, ambient drone music....
Up first is Black Seas Of Infinity from Salt Lake City. Having started life as a black metal band, they now find themselves, exploring a much more minimal dark ambient world of haunting melodies, mysterious vocals and muted industrial percussion. The first track is based around a mesmerizing melodic fragment, a bit of minor key melody that is looped hypnotically over a strange rhythm that sounds like someone trudging through snow or old brittle branches, while over the top, a slowed down, slightly distorted voice intones a strange litany, making the whole thing sound like some sort of liturgical rite. The next track is a dense martial soundscape of grinding industrial drones and distant distorted drumming, a simple militaristic march, like Wiseblood meets Death In June, before eventually transforming into a roiling wave of low end rumble and whir. BSOI's final track is a 12 minute epic, a series of haunting low end sonic occurrences, situated around a strange rhythm that sounds almost like the wheeze and clatter of an iron lung, the sounds around it constantly crumbling like the tape had decayed, very textural and creepy, like a more industrial Jeck or Tim Hecker almost...
Next up Is Kaniba, who offer up their own creeping crawling blackness. A rumbling soundworld of thumps and bumps, distorted and wrapped in dense sheets of black buzz, there are rhythms, but they don't drive the music, instead they are small creatures that scurry amidst it's black folds. The second of the two tracks is much more spacious and possibly much more harrowing. What begins almost serenely quickly becomes a monstrous moaning living black shadow of sound. Listening is almost like cowering amidst the ruins as some unseeable shape soars above, it's shadow cloaking you in darkness every time it passes. A symphony of low end, almost sounding like an orchestra slooooooowed waaaaaaay dooooown, its epic fanfare twisted into a shapeless squirming blackened thing.
Finally, the strangely named Ugegi Aoiveae A Ser wrap things up with a 16 minute drone coda. Much more minimal than the other contributors, but just as bleak and oppressive. A ringing harmonic shimmer slowly slips further and further into darkness, the high end peeling off like flayed skin, revealing a murky cloudy expanse of dark sound underneath. A slow moving swell, a static, barely shifting wall of sound, layers upon layer, like some hellish Phill Niblock composition. Ultra spare and quite intense.
Plenty here for the drone obsessed, lovers of weird music, and all the black souls in need of dark musical mystery...
It's no secret we are huge Glenn Branca fans here at AQ. No one has found ways to create such dissonant beauty and mesmerizing power with guitars quite like Mr. Branca. The title piece here, performed in 1981 with 10 guitars and drums and timpani is one of the most impressive Branca pieces we have ever heard. Its inescapable tension wraps itself around your ears and while you feel it's grasp taking a hold of you, you don't really ever want it to end. With young devotees like Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore in the ensemble it's no wonder the piece sounds so perfect and received the long standing ovation it so deserved. But one man in attendance of this performance was not impressed. In fact he had lots to say about it, and nothing positive. That wouldn't be that big of a deal of course if that person wasn't John Cage!! In a clever twist of their long running rivalry and Cage's very public dismissal of Branca's work, Branca decided to follow the title piece on this reissue with a conversation that John Cage had with Wim Mertons about Branca's piece. In the conversation Cage speaks very eloquently as he always did, about his dislike for Branca's piece and his work in general. He goes as far to call the piece fascist, which then led to a very public and bitter tiff between two legends of forward thinking 20th century music. We have to admit that sometimes we actually like hearing Cage talk even more then we like listening to his music. As the rhythm of his voice and the depth of his intelligence is so damn pleasing to take in. While we wish Wim Mertons would have done a better job of defending Branca, we can't blame him for being a bit tongue tied and slow in the face of Cage's eloquent understated fury. We can imagine that if we ever had the opportunity to have a serious exchange of views about music with Cage we probably would have been crazy nervous and marble mouthed. The record ends with a late 80's piece by Branca called Harmonic Series Chords which is a really nice somber piece performed by the New York Chamber Sinfonia. Like two heavyweight champions exchanging blows we feel lucky to get to sit on the sidelines as Cage disses Branca, and Branca's music speaks so loudly for itself. Highly recommended!
With this generous six-song ep, Conor Oberst dangles a little samplin' of what's to come on his next Bright Eyes album! The title track will reappear on the full length due out in April (with guest stars Gillian Welch and M. Ward among others), but the other five songs are dandy exclusive 'B-sides'! Not ones to scrimp on their label's crown jewel, Saddle Creek has pressed these records on primo 180 gram vinyl!
C.O.B. (Clive's Original Band) was the creation of Incredible String Band founding member and one of the grandfathers of today's fringe folk scene, Clive Palmer. We don't know if you got the chance to see Mr. Palmer alongside fellow ISB founder Mike Heron at last year's reunion show, but it definitely seemed like his banjo-picking was a little rusty and he looked kind of dazed (no wonder, what with 35 years out of the spotlight). When this record (C.O.B.'s second and best, or at least most exotic and weird) was made in 1972, though, he was in top form, and the result is such beautiful melancholy! Some of the instumentation here is similar to that of ISB (acoustic guitar, banjo, clarinet) but with lots of harmonium and the addition of a dulcimer with a widened bridge (invented by C.O.B. bandmember John Bidwell), an odd droning sound that darkens the mood a bit more than most stuff you'll hear from ISB. If you're a fan of British folk in the traditional and/or acid vein such as Shirley Collins, Trees, Forest Fairport Convention, or current underground folkies such as Espers, Vashti Bunyan, or Current 93, this cd promises to be a true wistful pleasure.
Those guys in the Starving Weirdos have been kicking our asses with one amazing release after another. And as if that weren't enough, now they've started signing other like minded noisemakers to their Atheists Are Gods label.
The first release comes from Cloaks, aka Spencer Doran, who for his first readily available domestic full length release, offers up two gorgeous lengthy pieces, one for piano, tapes, zither and bells, the other for electric guitar and piano with harmonium and electronics. The result is lush and spellbinding. The closest comparison that even begins to come close is Lubomyr Melnyk, with his dense flurries of notes, creating dizzyingly intricate swirls of melodic fragments that while ultra complex are so intricate they seem to melt into long dreamlike drifts.
Such is the case with Cloaks. And then some. The opening track begins with a strange jumble of chaotic percussion, weird boings, effects drenched squiggles, sounding like something that could be a bit goofy for our liking, but after a burst of record crackle and needle on vinyl static, the track settles into a gorgeously sun baked, glistening shimmer, a fine mist of notes enveloping the listener like a warm fog, multiple abstract melodies drifting into one another becoming gloriously intertwined, hovering ghostlike over soft drifts of smeared piano in the background. It almost sounds like Oval's Diskont, but with soft shimmery piano instead of skipping cds. Fluid and organic, softly swelling, so many notes... you know how you can sort of blur your eyes and make everything look all fuzzy, well imagine you could blur your EARS, it's like listening to Reich or Riley or Palestine with blurred ears. Soft focus and indistinct, every once in a while bits of melody coming into view but quickly fading into the sounds around it. So pretty. One of those rare tracks that we wish went on forever and ever...
The second track is a subtly different beast but with a similar vibe. Beginning with spare spidery electric guitar, suspended in a wide open expanse of near silence, a sort of skeletal post rock, which quickly slips under a gradually building wave of dense Wave-Lox like piano. Thick roiling low end squalls of reverberating rumble and rich overtones, very lush and intense. Near the final few minutes little bits of electronic glitch and grrr begin to surface, slowly wrapping themselves around the piano flurries, eventually surrounding it completely, becoming a dense buzzing electronic drone with almost no trace of the piano remaining...
Packaged in super striking silkscreened digipaks with pasted on textured paper, full color art, and with a hand screened insert.
Much like the entire back catalogue of John Duncan, British avant-drone artist Jonathan Coleclough has often buttressed his work through an ongoing set of collaborations, each of which push his work into interesting territories while maintaining that essence of Coleclough that makes all of his albums so enthralling. His 2006 collaboration with Murmer was easily one of the best drone albums of that year, twisting field recordings and quiet sessions with electric objects into a gauzy, crepuscular blur that even made those at Artforum perk up their ears and listen. Torch Songs came to fruition when both Coleclough and Liles performed in Preston (probably at the request of the ever-charming Colin Potter) in 2005. In fact, much of the source material for Torch Songs originated from Coleclough's performance to which Liles went on to "add, subtract, multiply, and divide" further. The fundamentals of Torch Songs are primarily Coleclough's signature moves: swelling, resonant drones manipulated from acoustic sources and distilled into tonally vibrant beams of pure sound. Yet, Liles (who in and of himself is a fine technician of sonic alchemy to the point where he has often graced the stage alongside Steve Stapleton, Colin Potter, and Matt Waldron in Nurse With Wound) interjects his own sidereal gestures with wooden creaks, digital time stretching, radiant eruptions of dissonant couplings with Coleclough's drones, and occasional jaunts of heavily filtered tin-can and rubber-band rhythms that parallel much of the output from Liles' recent 12 part Vortex series. Yet for all of Liles' baroque flares for the sonically surreal, it is Coleclough who authors the strongest material on Torch Songs through his sublime use of the drone. The first 300 copies of Torch Songs comes with a bonus CD that documents Coleclough's aforementioned Preston performance back in 2005.
Known as "The Land of Enchantment", the romantic appeal of New Mexico also harbors a thinly veiled sinister quality. Despite its prominence as an epic desert monument heralding incredible vistas and inspiring a nature-based spirituality from its large population of Native Americans, New-Agers and even Catholic Hispanics who flock to the sanctuary of Chimayo every year to take a bit of holy soil said to be blessed with healing powers, the western expansion of the US has also brought to the land massive genocide, toxic pollutants, and covert Government operations. On William Fowler Collins debut CD, the former Mills College graduate who recently relocated to New Mexico, explores the paradoxical perspective of his adopted home through his experimental guitar compositions that are equally beautiful and jarring. Collins' varied use of the guitar with the help of filters and computer programs evokes a wide range of electro-acoustic tropes, many reminiscent of field recordings. The bristling sheets of loud distorted drone that open "Dawn at McDonald Ranch" come across like an air-raid siren or a swarm of locusts before it diffuses into waves of pensive yet gossamer shimmer. The industrial crackle and whirring machine drones of "Untitled Dream 2" recall the metallic toxicity of Superfund sites, and the staticy build-up of broadcast transmissions retains a warm shifting undertone that eases the tension slightly by invoking the bucolic domiciles where such threats live in uneasy harmony. Images of magnetic storms, train engines, electrical lines, and the high-powered industry that Collins evokes through his guitar work are tempered by quietly restrained passages that harbor introspective reflection over the vast and contradictory landscape of mountains, arid deserts and broken mesas. Having previously played with Matmos, Aero-Mic'd, and in his former band Mire, it's nice to see Collins coming into his own on this amazing and accomplished debut. Fans of Tim Hecker, Steven R. Smith, and Flying Saucer Attack should check this out. Recommended!!
Parisian quartet Cyann & Ben continue their delicate steps through the shadows and glints of sunlight along dewy earthen paths. This music is transportive, shimmering with hushed guitar picking and whispery distant vocals; all embraced by blankets of drone. It's sort of the aural equivalent of being in a half-sleep state while gazing at the sky through draped layers of gauze. Visions shift and melt. It's at once intimate, grand and spacious. So dark yet so blissful. The album progresses at a slow creep, but as it does so, tensions mount with increasingly insistent electric guitar squalls. A stormy peak is reached at the seventh song "Let It Play" at which point all is stripped down to just voice and piano for the next song "Somewhere In The Light Of Time". If you dug Spring and Happy Like An Autumn Tree, this will delight you to no end. Fans of Low, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mogwai, what are you waiting for? Wonderful!
Oooooooh aren't you a saucy one?! Trashy garage rawk fans, we know you're happy to see this come 'round the bend. The always scantily clad Demolition Doll Rods will rev yer Detroit psychobilly engines with this live dvd of the trio letting themselves go in Madrid last year! Whoa nelly, the front cover tells it all! Check out that package. Ahem, the only thing missing from the photo is all the sweat the gang pumps out while they're stompin' shoutin' and workin' it on out!
Over the years Toronto's Do Make Say Think have become one of the few ensembles able to step out of the shadow of their connection to Godspeed You Black Emperor and make a strong name for themselves in the world of intricate and dynamic instrumental post-rock. Their last few records have shown the band refining their sound, becoming a bit more pop orientated yet not losing their ability to create goosebump inducing moments in their songs. Their latest doesn't veer much from their fine formula, but folks might be surprised to find vocals on a few tracks and we have to say those songs would have been just fine without them. But for the most part all the elements that have made Do Make Say Think one of our favorites from the Constellation family are all still here and shining bright.
More from the unblack camp!! E.E.E. Recordings, the Christian black metal label that brought us some of the best (un)black metal of the last few years, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, Agathothodion, strike again, but this time displaying a whole new side and sound.
This latest release is from a band called Drommer, who the label describe as "non-religious dark ambient", and their debut Channeling Natural Forces is a "soundtrack to nature", and indeed, there is plenty of rain, thunder and found sounds, all woven into thick, reverby soundscapes, slow burning, glimmering murky crawls, stretched out melodies, some huge grinding almost industrial drones, crumbling distortion, soaring keyboards, very dramatic and super epic, but fuzzy and buzzy and lo-fi at the same time. Makes it sound very intimate and organic.
The opening track sets the tone, a slowly growing ambience bathed in strange digital distortion and reverb, making what might otherwise be simply a dreamy drone, more a bizarre textured buzzy pulse, a haunting swell, that is constantly shifting and shimmering, the various overtones creating minimal murky rhythms amidst the static buzz. These effects surface throughout the record, giving those tracks a very alien vibe, but managing to remain true to their purpose, reflecting the sounds around us, and creating dramatic sounds to accompany natural events. Most of the tracks sound like the music we hear in our heads when the sun finally breaks through the clouds after weeks of rain and black skies. Not happy so much as glowing and subtly effulgent. Other tracks let nature do the talking offering a simple minimal counterpoint to the sound of the surf, or dripping water, deep dramatic rumbles, raga like buzz, way in the background, while nature performs her particular brand of music making over the top.
A few of the tracks get downright heavy, one when Drommers drones are all tangled up in the sounds of a torrential downpour, which ends up sounding like a natural Sunn 0))), the other, where the tones become sharp and intense, a buzzing high end skree wrapped in hiss and static that eventually crackles and flares wildly before blinking out.
Pretty amazing. Definitely a unique angle on ambient music and a cool way of incorporating field recordings, almost like a black metal Jewelled Antler!!!
As with everything E.E.E., way recommended.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!
A miasma is defined as a heavy, vaporous emanation or atmosphere, also used to describe a corrupting influence (thank you, dictionary dot com!). So obviously, Chicagoan Kevin Drumm has been hanging around miscreants Peter Rehberg and Masami Akita and has decided to drop a nasty, pungent aural fart on all of us. Normally, guitarist Drumm crafts near inaudible soundscapes which leave much to be imagined. But "Sheer Hellish Miasma", his first recording for the stalwart experimental electronic jetset label Mego, is just FUCKING LOUD!!!! As to be expected from Mego, there's an abundance of clicks and whirrs, digital chirps and skitters, but I repeat, it is FUCKING LOUD!!!! (!) This'll probably be up for Prix Ars Electronica against Whitehouse. Or not. Who knows what those Ars Electronica people are thinking? The closing "Cloudy", in contrast, builds a simplistic, yet wonderful shimmering drone that ends the disc quite gorgeously. Well done. A necessity for all you pure noise freaks out there. Epic and apocalyptic, much like the work of Zbigniew Karkowski, Boyd Rice as NON, the overdriven sonic capacities of Whitehouse or the more hellish punishments of Merzbow (it's a bit like "Hard Lovin' Man" in its trance-inducing aspects).
Holy crap, a new Earth album! Since the full-scale return (and reinvention) of Dylan Carlson's Earth project with last year's highly regarded studio album Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (a Record Of The Week here at Aquarius when it came out) and subsequent tour, fans of the slow and low have had plenty to be happy about. That album took the extreme drone-metal Earth invented in the early '90s (a sound appropriated by SUNNO))) some years later) and turned it into a bleak n' desolate hybrid of post-rock and country-western! Spacious desert drone dirge with lap steel, something like Low meets Calexico meets the old Earth. Most Earth fans, ourselves included, had to give Hex a spin or two just to be sure we were hearing things right. But then, we all knew we were hearing it right and right it was. Such a great album.
What manner of follow up then is this new Hibernaculum? Well, some of it is gonna sound familiar...yet different. Since Earth's approach has morphed so much over the years, Dylan and co. have decided to revisit and re-record some old Earth compositions in the style of Hex, the way they've been playing 'em on tour, like when we saw them here in SF last year. Not a bad idea at all! You get to hear 'em do the classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" from their 1991 debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" from their final Sub Pop album, 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons, and the obscure "Miami Morning Coming Down" from a 1997 compilation on the Ash label called Scatter. These tunes all get the Hex treatment and wind up as windswept and lovely as you'd expect. There's also a fourth track, a new mix of the 16+ minute "A Plague Of Angels" which originally appeared last year on a very limited edition split vinyl release with SUNNO))). All of these pieces are simply gorgeous. Minimalist, Morricone-cinematic, twangfuzzdrone. Glacial twilight shimmer, velvet-hammer heavy. Droning deep and dark but uplifting as well. Weirdly we realize that Earth now sounds more like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore than Bohren & Der Club Of Gore ever sounded like Earth, if you know what we mean. And their instrumentation is a lot more like Bohren's now, including Hammond B-3, piano, upright bass, and trombone among other things (not the typical doom arsenal).
And, as they say, that's not all -- this comes with a dvd disc as well! A documentary film by graphic artist Seldon Hunt entitled "Within The Drone", shot on tour with Earth and SUNNO))) in Europe in 2006. Lots of live performance footage, intermixed with scenes from the road, and interviews with Dylan Carlson, who proves to be charmingly laid-back, plain spoken and (yes) down to earth. He talks about LaMonte Young and suchlike inspirations, but he's got no pretentious theories of "the drone" to espouse, though he does opine interestingly that for him, the more complex music becomes the closer it is to noise. So a simple sound, slowly repeated -- a drone -- is much more to his liking. Aha. Hmm. But it's clear from watching the scenes of Earth in action though that simple does not mean "easy". Supreme precision and feel is needed. To play music this slow, they've got to be good -- and they are.
Expansion Bay is the (more) spaced out ambient side project of Sandoz Lab Technician Nathan Thompson, who has also done time in Sleep, EYE and a handful of others like minded outfits.
Utilizing field recordings, laptop, an arsenal of heavily processed instruments as well as samples from his previous bands, Thompson has put together a gorgeously expansive ambient drone world that is rife with sonic action. None of that static drift, no pushing a button or pressing a pedal and letting things take their course, no, these three lengthy tracks are dense, and heavily layered, sounds atop sounds atop sounds, different sonic fragments bleeding into other bits and shards, melodies getting all tangled up with other melodies, droney and ambient certainly, but alive and constantly moving and expanding.
The opener is a nine minute stretch of glistening high end buzz and gleaming sonar shimmers, like a less soothing Oval, sort of underwater sounding, static on the surface, but just below, sounds are constantly shifting and vibrating and changing shape and texture. Bits of melody float by like strange microscopic creatures in a musical petri dish, beneath it all, various whirs and rumbles cause different parts and sounds to shift and birth other sounds.
The title track, is a 16+ minute drift through inner space, beginning with a high end whir, slowly shedding the upper registers, gradually slowing down to a dronelike crawl, the whole thing peppered with glistening glimmering sonic sparkles, like stars in some volatile solar system.
The final twenty minute is the most lush of the bunch, sounding at first like wheezing organs, but as the sounds separate and the fuzz clears away like clouds after a rainstorm, the sounds reveal themselves to be bells, or what certainly sounds like bells, a gorgeously dense cacophony of ringing and clanging, huge thick clouds of overtones, the timbre and tonal colors always changing, so gorgeous and nearly overwhelming, finally fading out in a muted minimal stretch of glitchy low end buzz...
We won't go into too much detail with these as we only got a tiny handful of each. Latest batch of ultra limited lathe cuts from New Zealand label CMR. Each one packaged in a super striking, simple cardstock jacket, most with printed inner sleeves, Limited to 60 copies, of which we got the remaining stock. Once these are gone, they are gone forever.
We had never heard Eye before, but they seem to be the new outfit of NZ underground luminary Peter Stapleton (Flies Inside The Sun, Sleep, A Handful Of Dust) and no surprise, fans of any of his past work will for sure dig this.
The 7" is a crumbling soundscape of shortwave interference, wavering tones, constantly shifting drones, all very sea sick and dizzy sounding, bits of whispery static, all swaddled in a thick buzz, with lots of strange effects, and what sounds like the hiss and whisper of an army of ghosts that builds and builds to a fever pitch.
The flipside is more of an old school NZ freerock jam, all tribal rhythms under a swirling sea of fuzz and distortion and bits of skree. Layer after layer of constantly shifting grit and grime, propulsive and blown out, but still sort of shimmery and almost ambient.
This lathe cut comes with a cd-r, which contains a single 38 minute track, more glorious abstract soundscaping, bits of rhythms here and there, lots of buzz and hiss, strange disembodied melodies, lo-fi and constantly shifting and drifting, eventually building into a seriously heavy fuzzed out jam, complete with strange horns and bursts of random musical snippets. Cool.
There's nothing we love quite as much as discovering a new weird band we had never heard of, and then discovering that the band in question is in fact a side project of yet -another- weird band we hadn't heard of either.
Such is the case with The First Cosmosis Artchestra On Vlubaland (quite a mouthful!) who happen to be an offshoot of the much more simply monickered Vluba.
Not sure what Vluba are all about but we are definitely digging the strange sounds of TFCAOV. The first track ("Cok") is a super abstract soundscape, a sort of free noise drift, lots of high end, feedback, cymbal sizzle, strange whistles and distant squeals, but underpinned by strange simple insistent rhythms, peppered with muted thumps and random blasts of crunch and shimmer. Like a more unhinged, less static Sunroof! or Hototogisu. Or like if someone took a super dense Dead C track and pulled it a part and stretched it out until it was almost transparent.
The second track ("Mok") is an ultra minimal soundscape of mostly percussion. Rattles and shakers, bits of clanging metal, little squalls of manic hand drumming, what sounds like various objects being rolled along other objects, very chaotic but subtle and with a certain elegance, a kitchen sink percussion jam transformed into a strangely meditative rhythmscape. Really cool.
Packaged in a very cryptic color sleeve, with a printed insert, a gorgeous transparent leaf and sealed with a bit of green string tied in a knot.
LIMITED TO 77 COPIES!!!
- MPEG stream: Cok
- MPEG stream: Mok
The last we heard from NZ sludgy noise rock outfit the Futurians was a long out of print cd-r released on Jewelled Antler offshoot label Pink Skulls waaaay back in 2003. We were pretty into it, a sort of monotone garage rock trudge, simple plodding drums, blown out fuzz guitar, vocals way way way down in the mix, bits of synth squiggle, a sort of Stooges, Chrome, Fall, Brainbombs chunk of lo-fi noise rock dirge.
Well, here we are almost 4 years later, and the Futurians' primitive stomp sounds as good as ever. In fact, it sounds way better than we remember it.
Simple and stripped down, Each track an endless looping riff, swathed in grungy guitar grrrr and tons of reverb, synths in there too it sounds like, but if anything, their sound got more blown out, more primitive, more skeletal, and somehow more filthy and fuzzy. And who can argue with that?
Like a caveman Dead C, these noiseniks, pound out a relentless slow motion krautrock groove, a simple riff ground forcibly into your skull, drums that don't so much swing as thud, over the top drift shards of damaged electronics, swooping alien synths, extra guitar noise. The vocals are usually lost in the skree and buzz, but occasionally, the vocals take center stage with frontwoman Beth Duckling howling and crooning, her voice drenched in effects, the vocals another layer in the Futurians dense barrage.
In addition to Beth, the Futurians also features a who's who of NZ underground rockers, Clayton Noone (Armpit, CJA), Stefan Neville (Pumice) and Antony Milton (PseudoArcana head honcho)
Limited to 300 copies, each hand numbered, packaged in a cool black and silver screened cardstock sleeve, with a color photo affixed to the inside...
Another gorgeous release from Mystery Sea, whose sonic focus is on "night-ocean drones", and more than anything we've heard on MS, Umbilicus Maris by New Zealand one man drone outfit Gydja perfectly embodies that focus.
Umbilicus Maris is very oceanic, aquatic, even sub-aquatic. The rhythm is tidal, a subtle pulse, a gradual swell, the sounds shift and shimmer like light through water, and of the handful of Mystery Sea releases we've heard, Umbilicus Maris is the loudest and most active. That's in no way to infer that this is anything but drifting blissy ambience. It most certainly is, but the sounds are not lowercase. Not barely audible. Abby Helasdottir, the sole soul behind Gydja, brings the sounds to the fore, they are dark and mysterious, droning and drifting, but they are loud, the listener can hear them, FEEL them, peer inside and around, can experience the sound physically, get lost inside the sound. A pair of headphones is all you need to get sucked under, floating weightless in a strange sun dappled undersea world of sound.
Field recordings (tides, oceans, streams?) are mixed with performances, all processed into some otherworldly soundscape, or seascape. Burbling, shimmering, glistening, glimmering, everything slightly blurry, warped and warbled, multiple layers, shifting and drifting, low end rumbles slowly drift to the surface, where strange sonic skitters and burbles float on the surface, everything drenched in echo and reverb, like some massive undersea cavern, lit only by a single shaft of sunlight, the sounds of dripping water magnified into swirls of sound, distant percussive pings, an ultra abstract undersea dub. So completely warm and dreamlike, headphones like a diving bell, eyes closed, no need to breathe, letting the sound wash over you, slowly sinking to the bottom of some warm sonic sea. Absolutely gorgeous.
And like all Mystery Sea releases, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered, and gorgeously packaged in striking full color artwork.
The man with the give 'em hell attitude towards life takes the same approach towards death on what is widely reported to be his farewell record. Suffering from renal cancer, and getting his affairs in order, Hazelwood, the gravelly-voiced singer and producer of some of the most exciting and weirdest country-tinged pop, refuses to wax poetic about his inevitable fate. Full of rollicking new numbers, some duets with non-famous friends, and a couple of visits back to his two best known hits with Nancy Sinatra, "Boots" (featuring Duane Eddy on guitar) and "Some Velvet Morning" (with counter vocals sung by Lee's granddaughter, Phaedra, who thought the song was about her), this is not the kind of record that Hazelwood's fans would have ultimately wanted which would have him harkening back to his late sixties heavy reverb sound, or the sad lonesome burn of songs like "My Autumn's Done Come" recently featured on Air's Late Night Tales compilation. Instead this is a cheerfully black-humored ode to a man who has defined everything on no one else's terms but his own, remaining every bit of a nutter all the way to the very end.
We won't go into too much detail with these as we only got a tiny handful of each. Latest batch of ultra limited lathe cuts from New Zealand label CMR. Each one packaged in a super striking, simple cardstock jacket, most with printed inner sleeves, Limited to 60 copies, of which we got the remaining stock. Once these are gone, they are gone forever.
Hometown Feilding (yep, that is the correct spelling) is yet another NZ ensemble we had never heard until now but are digging quite a bit, their sound a crumbling abstract world of fuzz and crackle, haunting alien melodies, strange bits of fragmented rhythms and chunks of melody, almost like some old wax cylinder recording, all the music buried under layers of grit and crackle, weirdly and nosily pretty. Definitely essential listening for the hiss and crackle turntable crowd...
We have been anxiously awaiting the return of the strangely named Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, the apocalyptic folk project of Stef Heeren, a Belgian instrument builder and musician, who managed to create one of the darkest, most compelling 'folk' records in recent memory. A dark world of strum and buzz, equal parts Comus, Current 93, Woven Hand, Swans and the like. His voice a strange strangled croon, venomous and dramatic, over intensely strummed acoustic guitars and all manner of ambient backdrops.
Things have changed quite a bit on An Interlude To The Outermost, much of the sound is the same, the aggressive acoustic guitars, the vocals, the apocalyptic foreboding, but now there are drums, drums that anchor and drive each song, giving the record a much different vibe, not at all unappealing, just a lot different. Where If The Sky Falls, We Shall Catch Larks seemed to drift, unhinged and unmoored, no distinct rhythms to pin it down, each song hovering like black smoke from a forest campfire, An Interlude To The Outermost is much more structured, songs, arrangements, the drums are an obvious shift, but the tempos too, and the overall sound, this is distinctly more rocking, a sort of near-rollicking campfire folk jam, bringing to mind 16 Horsepower and even the Pogues here and there, albeit much more nihilistic and dark. And the sound is a lot more lush as well, with a wider array of instrumentation, the drums, but also accordion, and electric guitar. In fact, more than ever KTAOABC sounds like some impossible mix of Current 93, 16 Horsepower and New Model Army. If that makes any sense. But it's awesome. Epic and intense, brooding and moody, but a bit rocking as well.
The melodies are still lilting and minor key, the mood is most definitely miserablist, a dour dreary black folk, but with epic blasts of full on, heavily instrument-ed folk ROCK. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, it does make perfect sense. There are still some moments reminiscent of the first record, the funereal crawl of "You Will Reap A Whirlwind", the wheezing dirge of "Beyond The Tanarian Hills"... And actually, even at its most rocking this disc is just as dark and sinister sounding. It's just slightly more lush and upbeat, but it suits the sound. And the more we listen to it, the less we can imagine it sounding any other way. Where the first record channeled dark forests, and leafless trees, crows on abandoned farmhouses, open expanses of barren fields, the new record is the thunder of horse hooves, the rumble of thunder, the shadow of storm clouds, a fierce and furious, subtly rocking, epic and intense divine doom folk. And like the first disc, essential for fans of all things C93, Nick Cave, Death In June, Comus, Swans, Der Blutharsch, Richard Youngs, Woven Hand and 16HP.
Beautifully packaged in a minimally screenprinted fold over cardboard sleeve, with a striking image on the cover, an old fashioned looking drawing of a bedraggled kitten and a big ball of yarn...
What is more amazing than discovering a whole movement in music that had never been documented, let alone even heard of. EVER! No mention in any books, magazines, not a single trace. What if that music was in fact the music of Funerary violins. A music created and composed to be performed at funerals. The only evidence of these musics, some scratchy old wax cylinder recordings, some faded photos, and brittle sheafs of old sheet music. A music that flourished in the 1800's and disappeared almost completely by the 1900's after the Catholic church's Great Funerary Purges. Only recently discovered in a locked trunk was the music of Herr Gratchenfleiss, recorded to wax cylinder by Wilhelm Kleinbach. The sound a mournful miserable, gorgeously minor key dirge. So completely moving and emotional, the recordings thick with static and crackle, only adding to the power and timelessness of the music. What could be more amazing?
How about making the whole thing up? Constructing an elaborate history of a genre that never existed. Populating this history with lifelike characters, creating photos, sheet music, historical documents, but most amazingly, recording all the music, and treating it to sound as if it was some old wax cylinder recording.
Hard to say which would be more amazing, a wholly undiscovered hidden dark corner of musical history, quashed by the church and relegated to be lost forever, or an insanely detailed project, the ultimate conceptual art piece. Either way, we are in love with this stuff.
Simply from a musical standpoint, this is everything we could hope for. The recordings are fuzzy and staticky, bathed in layers of crackle and grit, and years of neglect and decay, but beneath the recording inconsistencies we love so much, are some truly moving and emotionally rich performances, the melodies are so intense and sad, minor key and mournful. truly funereal. It's impossible not to imagine some old funeral procession, a row of black clad mourners, trudging down a dirt road, with their deceased atop an old wooden cart, the sky grey, the music of the Funerary violinist winding around the procession like wreaths of black smoke. So goddamn lovely. We have been listening to this non-stop since we got it.
And then there's the story. The "history". Is it real? Is it possible that a musical movement could disappear so completely. So much so that not a single person anywhere EVER had heard of the Guild Of Funerary Violinists? Or is it all a huge put-on? A massive made up world? The ultimate outsider art project. Either way, we are completely blown away. If this is indeed real, HOLY SHIT! How utterly mysterious and romantic!! We do sort of want to believe it's real. It's so perfectly evocative of some other time, of death and sadness throughout the ages. But if it is in fact made up, it has to be one of the most brilliantly conceived and executed hoaxes of all time. There's even a book (you can probably find at you local bookstore), filled with photos and sheet music, and histories of all the players, the birth and death of the genre, it's so detailed and elaborate, so much so it almost seems impossible that someone could have created all of this from thin air, if it was made up, it must have been the creator's life's work. Years and years of methodical planning and writing and recording for sure. But either way, it's magical and fascinating, and 'real' or not, the music is truly gorgeous, and the story completely captivating, both intertwined into some sort of time machine, perfectly transporting us to that rain splattered dirt road, the soaring sad sounds of the Funerary violin drifting into the black sky...
Latest release from the UK's Aurora Borealis label, responsible for the KTL double lp elsewhere on this list, as well as records from Moss, Ginnungagap, Wolfmangler, Guapo, the Grails, even Crebain!
Knives Ov Resistance are a European ensemble who weave dense soundscapes of blissed out ambience and abstract guitar shimmer, Channeling the spirit of Popol Vuh, Spacemen 3, Godspeed, Jackie O Motherfucker, and other like minded sonic explorationists.
A lush blend of field recordings, glistening guitars, rumbling drones, warbling turntables, all woven into drifting sun dappled sonic tapestries of sound. An ambient post rock drift, that flits and flutters amidst the sounds of children laughing, the lush din of the forest, chittering birds, the sound of leaves and water, a dense and thick backdrop, rife with turntabled fragments of sound, bits of opera, soaring strings, muted squiggles, slowed down ambience, warm whirs, mixed in with simple percussion, everything smeared into fuzzy blurs, all beneath an abstract summery folk, that glimmers and drifts, gradually changing shape and color, texture and timbre. Epic and expansive, yet subtle and simple. Some sort of abstract avant ambient folk perhaps... really really nice.
Fans of the above mentioned bands will definitely dig this, as well as fans of new weird America, modern free folk, and all things Jewelled Antler.
Packaged in a thick vinyl pouch, housed in a cool textured paper sleeve that folds out into a poster.
Finland's Ektro Records label (run by Jussi from Circle/Pharaoh Overlord as you may know) would have us believe that this four-song ep is one from the vaults, supposedly a reissue of singles tracks recorded back in '83 by the mysterious metal entity known as Krypt Axeripper. Obscure cult '80s metal, eh? Well it looks like it: it's got a suitable logo, fantastical n' scary artwork, and the cd booklet even reproduces the labels from the "original" vinyl release of the tracks "Battle Of The Axehammer" and "Possessed (By Trees)". Wait a sec, "Battle Of The Axehammer"? Isn't that also the title of the live Pharaoh Overlord album? Indeed it is, and we're about 99.666 percent sure that "Krypt Axeripper" is in fact the heavy metal alter ego of our friend Jussi! Playing guitars, bass, synths, and singing, Axeripper is joined by "Rattfinder" on drums, who from the sound of it is probably one of Jussi's colleagues in Circle...
And of course, as with *anything* Circle-related, no matter what the concept, it's got that hypnotic Circle-sound at its base. In fact, we'd say that there's stuff on Circle's Sunrise or Pharaoh Overlord 4 that's actually way more metal than the songs here. Yes, they're all got a bunch of very metal (and crudely catchy) guitar riffing going on, albeit ramshackle and lo-fi. But then there's the vocals, which despite lyrics about Lucifer, have a very woozy, weirdly crooned, eccentrically pop quality to them, pitched high in a much more gentle way than a real metal screecher would do. And the guitar solos -- those are all totally psychedelic, Floydian/Frippian washes, really nice as well. And the drums, we mentioned, not metal at all. Too wimpy and motorikally rhythmic. So it's a truly unique and amusing mix, and we LOVE it. Sure the vocals come across as a bit silly at first, but they're actually pretty cool when you really listen, and it's impressive how the vocal parts are arranged, with various lead and backing vocals interwoven, all sung by Mr. Axeripper hisownself.
False metal? More like freak metal. Krypt Axeripper may be fake (and funny) but we're still fans for real. It's interesting how in trying to make a pastiche of heavy metal music (if that's really what he was trying to do...), Jussi came up with something that, if we had to compare it to an actual metal record, reminds us of Voivod's most controversially "alternative" album, the college radio confusional Angel Rat from 1991. We also appreciate that this experiment was kept to just 11 minutes, four amazing, strange songs, not overdoing it, just enough to give his inner metalfan a chuckle -- and to get us to keep hitting play again and again and again on this wacked-out quartet of relaxed, quasi-metallic tracks. Krypt Axeripper seriously (or maybe not-so-seriously) rules!
SUNNO)))-worshippers alert! 1/2 of that drone metal behemoth, our pal Stephen O'Malley (who has also piloted or participated in such units as Khanate, Burning Witch, Ginnungagap, Teeth Of The Lions Rule The Divine, Thorr's Hammer, Fungal Hex, Lotus Eaters, etc.) has travelled to Europe to collaborate with Austrian experimental digital noise artist Peter "Pita" Rehberg! They're calling themselves KTL because the music they made is to be the soundtrack to some sort of stage piece called Kindertotenlieder by performance artist Gisele Vienne and novelist Dennis Cooper ("Closer") due to debut at a festival in France next year. Judging from the music, not to mention the people involved, we imagine it's gonna be beautiful, but also somehow disturbing and dark... This cd certainly is.
It starts off with the 24 minute drone "Estranged", blissful and spooky piece that builds towards its end to noisier heights, threatening the storms to come on this album. And yes, the four parts of "Forest Floor" that take up the main, middle part of the disc are a harrowing journey indeed, into a buzzing, claustrophobic realm of dangerous digital sonics and heavy drone, like SUNNO)))'s lugubrious riffage mixed with the glitchy crunch of Pita -- which is what it is, of course! Not for the faint of heart. Part four, in particular, sounds like a doomed prop engine airplane rumbling over a dark forest landscape from some black metal album cover, at night...
Finally O'Malley and Rehberg wind things up with the quieter (but still creepy) 13 minutes of "Snow", a softly pulsing, detailed improv exploration of lowercase sounds... Very nice!
Let's hope KTL isn't just a one-off collaboration, we'd like to hear more from these two! Their mastery of minimalist ambient music, electronic glitchology and Earthy guitar sludge make a fine sipping brew.
A note for all you object fetishizing consumerist completist types, be forewarned that there will eventually also be a vinyl version of this on the Aurora Borealis label, a double LP limited to 500 copies... we can take preorders now...
Those artists, musicians, misanthropes, and just plain weirdos who not only exist musically on the fringes but have planted their entire existence on the edge have long been the greatest inspirations of Aquarius Records. For proof, you could scroll through oddball recordings that have earned the honor of Aquarius Record Of The Week. There was the Finnish sound artist Terje Isungset who crafted not just one album, but two from untreated percussive instruments entirely made of ice. Hans Edler thrilled us with his 1970s transformation from teen idol into short-circuited electronic composer. The protracted ululations of the profoundly cracked Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant were as transcendent as anything that Lamonte Young had to offer, yet also had that creepy cult of personality vibe to boot. And who could forget Kathy McGinty? But one of the earliest recordings that truly made our collective jaw drop was the 3" cd from French-Canadian composer Jean-Francois Laporte called Mantra. Here was a mighty fine 20 minute composition of delicious vibrations, rattles, mechanical hum, and industrial drones that came with a particularly alluring back story: the source material to Mantra was a Zamboni -- the unusual machine only found at hockey rinks responsible for resurfacing its ice.
The one catch to Laporte's Zamboni sourced masterpiece was that we could never verify that a Zamboni was the actual source material. We heard from 'reliable sources' that Mantra is the sound of a Zamboni; and we wanted so desperately to believe that this was the case, just because the Zamboni is such an amazing and eccentric beast of industrial engineering. Before this turns into a dialectic on epistemology, we here at Aquarius discovered that we had been duped by a couple of mischievous DJs on KPFA without the knowledge or consent of Jean-Francois Laporte. It turns out that Laporte used nothing but a common air-compressor in composing Mantra. This factual unveiling should not in any way take away from the splendor of that piece. Here's what we had to say about Mantra many moons ago:
"Mantra opens with a trio of motors starting up and emitting a gentle purr. As these engines warm up and shift through various perfunctory cycles, a wide spectrum of metallic vibrations slowly spins through the stereo field. After a marvelous set of transitions between drones, there is the rattling sound as if a screw or bolt had been loosened by the vibrations, with two pieces of metal beginning a clamorous bell-ringing arrhythmia. When these motors finally are shut down, those pieces of metal still resonate for a beautifully sustained coda."
That 3" cd came out almost a decade ago, became a classic, and went out of print. Thankfully, 23five Incorporated has rescued Mantra from the dustbin by issuing the first major compendium of Laporte's work in the form of Soundmatters. While we've already sung the praises of Mantra, the remainder of Soundmatters is well worth investigating on its own. The opening track "Electro-Prana" is a pristine set of field recordings of a wind that ripped through Montreal, when the city was silenced by a winter time blackout. It's a pure, chilling sound of whistling wind overtaking the urban landscape. The next piece is the only digitally rendered composition on Soundmatters, yet Laporte brings his intuitive expressionism to a series of spiraling drones that easily rival those of your favorite minimalist (e.g. Niblock, Chalk, Hafler Trio, Xenakis, etc.). For those of you who have had the pleasure of experiencing Laporte's live concerts, the third piece will certainly be familiar. He's built an instrument with a series of car horns and elongated trumpet bells attached to an air compressor with each of the valves controlled by foot pedals. This instrument can generate infinitely sustainable, blaring drones from each of the horns; and Laporte craftily layers these sounds for incredible, dynamic results. Well, for this recording, Laporte lugged this instrument into the hull of a giant cargo ship and recorded this composition using the massive reverb of that space and the results are simply jaw-dropping. Imagine the most Nordic bellow from a Wagner symphony stretched out into its melancholic, raw sound and allowed to decay in space and time. Wow!
Following this is the aforementioned Mantra; and then Soundmatters' final piece which explores a quiet, yet thoroughly rich harmonic tapestry produced by a quartet of saxophones that could be Laporte's imagined summit between Evan Parker and Morton Feldman with rasping breaths of sound breaking across a silent event horizon with the ghostly energy of subatomic particles flickering and dissolving in a cloud chamber before amassing into a delirious swarm of Tony Conrad-esque acoustic dissonance. It's all utterly magnificent and one of finest collections of 'serious' composition that we've come across.
With an artist as prolific as Jason Lescalleet, we're a little ashamed that we've only ever managed to list two of his releases. And both of those were fantastic. One a super limited cd-r on Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, the other a collaboration with fellow sound artist and long time AQ fave John Hudak. We'll try to remedy that, beginning with this most recent release, an epic and incredibly lovingly assembled sonic tribute to Lescalleet's father who passed away in 2005.
A lot of drone music, minimal experimental music, while sounding cool, often amazingly cool, doesn't always resonate emotionally. A lot of it is dark and mysterious, moody or melancholy, but without lyrics, and with minimal melody, it's hard to convey much emotion. A select few, those with a deft hand at sculpting sound, are able to infuse even the most minimal of musics with feeling and emotion, but lots of music is simply an assemblage of interesting sounds, which truth be told is often enough.
For The Pilgrim, Lescalleet has created an incredibly emotional and moving tribute in sound, to his father, who found a strange and surprising appreciation for his son's music. A combination of field recordings, old tape recordings and live performance, this set is both musically ambitious, and sweetly personal. A combination that in less capable hands could have turned into something maudlin and schmaltzy, instead, The Pilgrim is simply beautiful.
The picture disc features two recordings, both moving in their own way. The first is a live performance recorded shortly after the discovery that his Father's cancer was terminal. Lescalleet begins the set by reading an email from his father, where he explains how much he liked his son's music, and how it reminded him of being young and laying on the floor of the car and feeling the vibrations rumble through his body. And the sounds of bells. Both rich memories for his father. So Lescalleet performs a piece incorporating those elements, the parts of his music that so moved his father. And it is indeed lovely. Deep rumbles, subtle whirs, slowly drifting from barely there shimmer to cavernous roar, but usually hovering dreamily somewhere in between. Toward the end, the sound grows more corrosive, with subtle rhythms surfacing amidst the crackle and buzz, before winding down to silence.
The second recording is a little difficult to listen to, and is extremely intense and personal. While Lescalleet's father was in the hospital, he gave him a hand held recorder, thinking it might lift his spirits to be able to record messages and his thoughts. But his father was incapable of having long conversations, so the whole side is a recording of a hospital room, with bits of mumbled speech, footsteps, snatches of conversations in the hall, very stark and lonely sounding, the room giving the recording a strange natural reverb. Incredibly moving...
The cd is a new 70 minute piece based on those same sounds Lescalleet's father found so appealing: bells, chimes, rumbling vibrations. And it's a gorgeous piece of minimal dronemusic. Murky and bleary eyed, a slow almost funereal drift, the low end sometimes throbbing like the engine of a car, but just as often glistening in abstract smears. Part way through, more and more melody surfaces amidst the dreamy drones, before the track devolves into some serious, and very cathartic noise, crumbling, ultra distorted howls of white noise and blown out buzz, eventually fading out, leaving just the voice of Jason's daughter singing to her grandfather while he was in the hospital, an old Irish folk song. As her song ends, the record drifts off with a dark and barely audible coda of softly struck bells. So intense and poignant and absolutely gorgeous to listen to.
The packaging is divine as well, a deluxe gatefold sleeve, a rich blue on the outside, inside a painting by Lescalleet's brother of their Dad, as well as the printed out email. The lp is a picture disc, one side an old fashioned tape reel, the other a photo of Lescaleeet's Dad eating cake. Inside is a deluxe booklet, with the cd in a pouch on the inside of the cover, lots of liner notes, photos, notes on each track and the whole story of this record.
After Low's 2005 album The Great Destroyer surprised the heck out of us with a startling yet splendid shift in direction into more pop song structuring, we were all curious as to where they'd go next. Well, everyone's favorite slowcore band has drifted halfway back to their former selves. We're a little disappointed to find that there aren't any of the comparatively upbeat yet dark pop numbers that populated their last album. Drums And Guns definitely maintains a consistent somber pace, but they've brought in other new elements in the form of drum machines and sampled loops. It makes their music equally lulling and hypnotic via different channels. That said, some of the gritty dissonance of The Great Destroyer does still linger. Subject matter dips heavily into a dark undercurrent of menace and violence -- glints and glimpses of guns, hatchets, poison, murderers. Need we say? Recommended.
For a limited time, while supplies last, when you buy a cd or an lp, you get a bonus 7"!!
Maybe it's the name, but something about "Lugubrum" makes us think of a steaming witch's cauldron. A sinister sonic stew as it were. Nominally a black metal band, these mega AQ faves definitely blend in a lot of other things into their sound. Of course there's big orange carrots floating around in there (kinda like when cannibals are trying to entice Bugs Bunny into a stew-pot) 'cause we know that these Belgian weirdos just love carrots. But in terms of musical ingredients, the Lugubrum recipe calls for everything from troo grim black metal to avantgarde jazz, from dronological doom to hillbilly heehawin'. They're utterly mad master chefs, though, so when mixed properly and brought to a boil, Lugubrum's bubbling brown stew tastes like nothing else and is thick and heavy enough to eat with a forklift. Ok, enough with the culinary/cauldron metaphor, let's give you some specifics about De Ware Hond, Lugubrum's latest (9th) album. Following up last year's Live In Amsterdam, they bring four (long) new tracks of their "musick" on this one, all of it recorded live in the studio (no overdubs). That in part explains its organic, tranced-out vibe, these songs structured, we're assuming, with plenty of room for improvisation -- particularly sounding like it on the second half of the record, when the usual guitars and drums and organ are joined by "Funhouse" style saxophone and mellow, mesmeric tablas, for even more improv-jazz, out-there-fucked-up-Eastern-psych appeal. Not at all your usual black metal! Apparently "brown metal" as Lugubrum puts it. Loping and lurching and and lurking and blurting and rasping and wretching and roiling, this could be Abruptum jamming with Oxbow, Today Is The Day teamed up with Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Neurosis playing Pharoah Sanders, or Pan-Thy-Monium vs. Dead Raven Choir... yeah it's that weird and hard to describe. But definitely dark and, dare we say it, druggily dreamy?
This is probably their least "metal" album yet, however just as Lugubrum as ever. And we're absolutely sure they were still the most metal band to appear at the recently concluded 2007 (K-RAA-K)3 Festival in Belgium, alongside such artists as Daniel Higgs, Giuseppe Ielasi, Raccoo-oo-oon, Jozef Van Wissem, Major Stars, Sun City Girls, Phil Minton, Warmer Milks, and others! OK, Witchcraft played too, they're also sorta metal. (And we just heard that the Sun City Girls were at the last minute unable to play the festival, they had to cancel for some reason. Too bad, they definitely would have liked Lugubrum we think...a band maybe even weirder than they are...)
EPOK 2 has arrived!! For all Magma fans, a glorious moment indeed. Actually this moment should have occurred a month or two ago, but unfortunately the label in France accidentally sent us PAL rather than NTSC dvds, and we only just finally got the correct NTSC ones. But no matter, it was worth the wait! This is part two in the planned four-disc live dvd series documenting Christian Vander's current, amazing Magma lineup (plus some special guests from Magma days of yore) in concert doing versions of their '70s classics, for their 35th anniversary in 2005. Not sure why the heck we didn't fly to France for it, but thank god these shows were filmed for dvd -- pro shot and edited, with multiple camera angles, very intimate and exciting. The disc starts with behind-the-scenes footage of the band arriving at the venue and warming up... they joke around as they greet one another backstage but then when it's time to play... damn this gets SERIOUS.
That's right, since the material performed in the Mythes Et Legendes series was organized chronologically, this second dvd features some of their heaviest masterpieces, several utterly crucial Magma compositions from 1973 to 1976, including a 49 minute "Wurdah Itah", a 42 minute "Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh", and a 21 minute "De Futura". That's what we said. WURDAH ITAH. MEKANIK DESTRUKTIW KOMMANDOH. DE FUTURA. Damn.
Not only that, but freakin' bass maestro Jannick Top (like Vander, an old dude now but looking weirdly burly and badass in his black leather vest and shades) joins the band for "M.D.K." and his own "De Futura"! Plus he shows off with a moody, virtuoso bass solo based on a Bach piece. As if he needed to prove anything.
Basically, if you like Magma, you want, no you NEED to watch them do "De Futura" on this thing. They tear it up. Vander's in a frenzy. Top's bass playing is off the hook. The choir does some crazy shit too. Oh yeah, another old friend is on here -- vocalist Klaus Blasquiz. And by the way, unlike Epok 1, there's no horn section.
What else to say? If you're a Magma fan, you'll be happy with this as soon as you hear the music looped on the menu page, we're telling you!
Tech specs: NTSC, all-region, 2 hours and 18 minutes.
The long awaited second installment in the who-knows-how-many-parts Patikel series, which features a collaboration between AQ fave Swedish dark ambient, militant folk, black metal noise technician Nordvargr (Toroidh, MZ412, Folkstorm, Goatvargr, HH9, etc...) and Japanese noise legend Masami Akita aka Merzbow.
Strange bedfellows maybe, but the results here, as on the first installment, are pretty mind-blowing. Akita generated the sounds, Nordvargr took those sounds and twisted them into completely new forms, the result some strange noise/drone/rhythm hybrid that is WAY more listenable than it has any right to be.
The opener sets the tone, a twenty minute crumbling distorted noisescape, like bits of old Merzbow records all chopped up and assembled again Frankenstein's monster fashion, that veers from full on near-metallic crunch, to strange skittery almost IDM, but even at it's calmest, the track is still rife with strange sounds and damaged FX, bursts of harsh noise surfacing here and there amidst an alien landscape of stutters and shuffles, of creaks and squeaks, almost like a black metal Mouse On Mars if one could even imagine such a thing.
The second track sounds heavier on the Nordvargr than the Merzbow, a rumbling shimmering low end, that creeps and drifts before splintering briefly into another rhythmic glitchscape, just as quickly transforming into a buzzing snarling fuzzed out drone, thick and corrosive, subtly rhythmic, but intense and crackling with energy. Deep cavernous tones swell in the background, while above the blurry buzz, strange crunchy electronic pulses mark out a simple static rhythm.
The third track is Part 2 to the opener's Part 1, and takes the openers skitter to a much meaner, much harsher place, a swirling high end cloud of hissing static and keening sine waves, over a relentlessly pulsing backdrop, that changes pitch, and tempo, stuttering and hiccuping, creating a gorgeously confusional rhythmscape, eventually breaking into a near-groove, a loping downtempo slither, but still wrapped in all manner of electronic detritus and squalls of fuzz and crackle and whir.
The closer winds things down with more of a whisper than a scream, the glitchy rhythms are still present, but they are ultra minimal, skeletal, almost like shortwave interference, beneath a tidal swirl of murk and blur, a dark ambient buzz that stretches lazily into long expanses of slow shifting sounds. Over the course of the track, little bits of melody surface here and there, the rhythms get more agitated before drifting back beneath the surface, and mysterious voices surface amidst sparkling sonic glimmers and moaning ambient rumble, a dreamy dark ambient coda to an intense slab of droning skittering buzz and crunch, shimmer and swirl.
Partikel II is IDM for the demon set, a blackened noise drenched skitter, an abstract metallic free-electronica, and a definite droney dancefloor filler, that is if you want your dancefloor filled with shuffling zombies, growling beasts and unspeakable denizens of the underworld...
And who doesn't?!
For a band who supposedly broke up, Monarch sure have managed to put out a whole bunch of music, post mortem. And while this is funeral doom and everything, we're not talking some Biggie Smalls / Tupac Shakur music from beyond the grave thing (although you never know!), it seems the announced breakup was premature, and lucky for all the doomongers among you, the Monarch is alive and (un)well.
Avid readers of the AQ list should need no introduction to French downtuned slow motion sludge doom trio Monarch. A band truly worthy of many multiples of 'o's (dooooooooooooooooooooom), whose plod and crawl is so slow it often veers near static drone territory, and who also manage to deftly mix in a bit of subtle loveliness into their harsh metallic trudge, AND whose peculiar sense of humor, and album art, and unlikely front woman, definitely make them stand out in an increasingly crowded field...
For those new to Monarch let's recap shall we?
Quite possibly the world's only female fronted deathdoomdronedirge outfit. An unholy mix of Khanate, Corrupted, Bunkur and Moss, but with a petite young French woman on lead vocals, usually clad in Converse hightops, a skirt and a sweater, hair in a pony tail, no tattoos or spikes or leather, but when she opens her mouth, out comes the foulest demonic shrieks and hellish gurgles you have EVER heard. Certainly from a woman, maybe from ANY one, man, woman or beast.
Then there are the record covers, always covered in grade school like doodles of cute big eyed skulls, puffy ghosts, burning churches, and hearts all over the place. They're like a Sanrio doom band. And not surprisingly are obsessed with Hello Kitty (their email address is sanriosabbath!!). But eyes closed, and these guys and gal can most definitely hold their own amongst the slow motion elite. With the added bonus of a singer who can actually sing and does occasionally, adding a definite creepy melodic moodiness to the music.
So this double disc collects two ultra limited lps (the band seem to lean toward lps, AND double cds, with songs clocking in at 10, 20, sometimes 30 minutes), one that we carried a while back and sold out in the blink of an eye, the massive and amazing Speak Of The Sea, and weirdly enough, another 2 song lp, that's not really out yet entitled appropriately enough Die Tonight.
So what has us so smitten with Monarch? Besides the above that is? Let's start with Speak Of The Sea, a massive pummeling wall of headsplitting ultra doom, an impossibly glacial plodding thud wrapped in ear shredding sheets of corrosive feedback that will tear your insides out and fill your ears with black tar. A gorgeously dense. ultra caustic and corrosive funereal doom that manages to be dreamy and darn near pretty while it's pummeling you to death. Easily one of the slowest heaviest dooooooooom records ever, three looooong tracks. Each so slow it's almost ambient. It's a bit like listening to SUNNO))) or Earth 2 when some caveman drummer decides to crash the party and start drumming slowly along. Riffs stretched out into huge droning smears of black rumble, ringing and reverberating, pulsing and wavering unsteadily before the next ten ton riff drops. Each track is a slow plodding ultradoomscape, like the ultimate doom metal intro stretched into actual songs, smeared across nearly an hour. The vocals don't even come in until the first song is almost over, a shrieking black coda, after twenty minutes of slow burning doom drone tension. The second track features some distant Ozzy-like crooning way off in the distance before the scowling growl kicks in. So slow and heavy. On the AQ doooooomscale, this ranks more O's than we could possibly include in this review!
And for the cd release, they've tacked on a whole 'nother song to the first disc (album), a creepy, pretty near ambient crawl, nothing but the sound of the surf crashing on the shore, a thick hissy staticky sound, slowly swelling and drifting, very meditative, with hushed urgently whispered vocals hovering above the crashing sea, very strange, but quite nice.
Then we get to Die Tonight, a record most of us (if not all of us) have not heard until now. And if anything it's everything Speak Of The Sea was and MORE. Heavier (as if that were even possible), slower (ditto) and more blurred out, buzzy and dronelike, with bits of the song so blissed out, the drum hits and chaotic crashes are so far apart, you can almost forget you're listening to a doom band, wallowing in the glorious shimmering drones of the drawn out chords, before a howled shriek and a massive crunch knocks you near out of your seat. There's also more singing, with gorgeous drifting vocals that hover alongside long stretches of buzzing guitar making for haunting harmonies, giving the proceedings brief moments of surprising tranquility. And the vocals continue to twist and turn, from hushed and whispery, to girlish and sing songy to inhuman demonic screech, all the while, the band trudging along dronelike, weaving impossibly pretty soundscapes from downtuned crunch and skull cracking thud.
This is absolutely essential doom. If you like Esoteric, Boris, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Earth, Esoteric, Skepticism, Eyehategod, Marzuraan, Atavist, Catacombs, Khanate, Pale Horse, Monument Of Urns and you NEED this! And the drifting drone element is in full effect, so those who have yet to dabble in the doom pool, might check this out, the long drawn out shimmers and Niblock like layers of guitar rumble might hit the spot and have you digging deeper for more and more dooooom.
Gorgeously packaged in a black gatefold, printed in silver ink, decorated with big eyed ghosts, a sailing ship with upside down crosses and a heart on the sail, lots of stars, some cute birdies, and an anchor with a heart on it. Inside are two silver on black printed inserts, with all the lyrics, the liner notes and a thanks list that says it all: Moss, Noothgrush, Otesanek, Corrupted, Bastard Noise, Rainbow Of Death, Nuit Noire and of course "our lucky stars"!
Ultra grim and frosty, gloriously plodding midtempo black metal from Finland, dirgey and completely hypnotic. featuring at least one member of the mighty Horna. This is ultra simple, dense and buzzing, with riffs that are more like static streaks of black buzz, the drums a caveman thud. Most of the tracks here break or come close to breaking the 15 minute mark, and most have no more than two parts, sometimes just one, usually a simple buzz, sometimes a haunting minor key melody, but always drenched in distortion, and always completely mesmerizing and dronelike. These sound like songs that have been playing forever, and will continue to play forever, and we've just stumbled across them, observing them briefly before moving on, leaving Mortualia to buzz and drone into the ether. But it's not just the riffing and the hypnotic plod, the vocals are utterly insane. Not Bethlehem insane, or even Silencer insane, they are much more feral and mewling, the closest we've come to capturing the sound of Mortualia is Burzum meets Oxbow!! An anguished, tortured shriek, equal parts demon, wild animal, and possessed child, draped over an endlessly blown out blackened droning riffscape. So good.
Abject, miserable, mournful, agonized, anguished, tortured and tormented ultra mega doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! That's right. We've officially reached an all time high in o's (40 in case you were counting), and an all time loooooow in DOOM. Every time we hear from these crushing creeps they've pushed it even further into the deep dark damnable depths, forcing us to add more and more o's. That's right, it's the return of Moss, the UK's heaviest, slowest, sludgiest slow motion downtuned doom metal behemoth. Moss take the paint peeling acidic abrasiveness of Khanate and combine it with the warm suffocating murk of bands like Skepticism or Thergothon, or even aQ faves Nadja (who did a split with Moss a while back). Ultra minimal and nearly static in its sludginess, with the simple caveman plod of the drums the only thing keeping this from turning into a full on drone, this is like one HUGE riff, pulled and stretched into two epic streaks of fuzz and pound, with vocals that might even give Alan Dubin from Khanate a bit of a fright, like a demon howling through a mouthful of broken glass and rusty bottlecaps, teeth black with the blood of a thousand vanquished souls, the sound that finally comes out is a noxious black cloud that causes everything it touches to wither and die, totally blown out and so harsh it makes our throats sore just listening to it.
But like the best sludge / doom, there is some sort of subtle melodic undercurrent going on, maybe it's deliberate and these guys are on some whole other musical level or maybe it's just some chance occurance, some strange alignment of overtones or some lucky bit of abstract composition, it hardly matters, the end result is somehow both hauntingly beautiful and horrifically harsh, there's definitely some dark beauty hidden beneath Moss' black sludge exterior, but the joy of music like this is the fact that the music's beauty is buried and bruised, battered and brutalized, the sonic search for the beauty within is like wading waist deep through boiling hot pitch, ears plugged with hot tar, all the while being showered from above by the tears of angels.
Brand new 7" from UK space rockers Mugstar, who pack some serious spaced out psychedelia into these two short sides.
The A side begins with a weird drone-y chant-like whir, along with some tribal drumming and distant guitar plinks, gradually building and building, the minimal vocals transforming into some serious howling, when suddenly everything drops out, leaving just the drums and some super processed guitar strum, very rhythmic and strangely spacy, eventually the rest of the band kicks back in and locks into a cyclical angular groove, looping and repetitive, a furious grinding riff over the relentless drumming. Epic and exhausting.
The flipside is way more synth heavy, some weird sort of post punk noise rock, almost kind of mathy, a bit like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, which intensifies until it explodes into wild psychedelic squalls of acid fried synths and freaked out guitarnoise.
Packaged in a fold over full color sleeve, with a 45 sized hole and one of those old school yellow turntable adapters already in the hole!
Slowly. Very slowly, the entire Nurse With Wound back catalogue is getting the reissue treatment; and in the absurdist spirit of Nurse With Wound, there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the order in which these titles are making an appearance. Originally, Rock 'N' Roll Station appeared back in 1994, as an homage to one of Steven Stapleton's heroes Jac Berrocal, the French avant-jazz musician with a occasional taste for obtuse pop. The title track on this Nurse With Wound album is in fact a cover of Berrocal's most well known song, although by now, more people probably know of the song through Stapleton's remake rather than the other way around. Similar to the way that Stapleton / Thirlwell reconstructed Brainticket's lysergic funk and how Stapleton remade Robert Ashely's Automatic Writing, the NWW version of Rock 'N' Roll station is pretty faithful to the original, even if the original was pretty weird to begin with. There's a steady metronomic pulse (which Beta-Lactam have qualified as 'proto-hip-hop,' c'mon... it's a drum machine replicating the same drum pattern that Berrocal scripted back in the '70s) grounding warbled tones and Stapleton's repeating monologue about the infinite possibilities to be found within a Rock 'N' Roll Station, even if he is still "waiting for Michael." All of the other tracks on Rock 'N' Roll Station are essentially variations on the theme of the title track with a similarly laid-back rhythm acting as a foundation upon which Stapleton splatters the stereo field with distorted squigglings, gurgling vocalizations, looping snippets from Perez Prado's mambos, fingernails on the chalk board scrapes, and ghastly drones extracted from the ether. The pronounced use of rhythm on Rock 'N' Roll Station has rubbed some of the die-hard NWW fans the wrong way, but when has Nurse With Wound ever been easy to digest, even when it just might be one of the grooviest and most ecstatic albums he's ever produced? Oh yeah, there's a 'bonus' track (the "1.35 pm Remix") on this version of Rock 'N' Roll Station which was originally released as part of the Second Pirate Sessions of reworkings of the material from Rock 'N' Roll Station. Recommended!
We're not sure who NVH are, but what have they done with Ben Chasney?! A while back we had a super limited cassette release from Six Organs Of Admittance's Ben Chasny and the mysterious NVH, with the same title oddly enough. Needless to say, we sold out of those tapes and left loads of people wanting, and while this lp only release has the same title, it is NOT the same music. One song from the tape is duplicated here, but other than that this is all new music.
So what's this whole Chasny / NVH thing about anyway, well, you won't find any dreamy folky prettiness here. This lp is all about the noise. The noise a guitar and god knows what else can conjure up. This is some serious noiserock. Heck, there's no rock to speak of, this is just good ol' noise. But not really -just- noise, there's a whole lot going on. It's just all wrapped in some of the most corrosive seriously damaged skree we've heard in ages. Guitars careen everywhere, huge walls of crumbling distortion tumble onto blown out riffs, FX drenched squiggles are everywhere, angular melodies are twisted and tangled into psychedelic squalls, riffs are pulled apart into squealing keening roaring parts and hurled separately into the mix bouncing wildly off each other. Here and there the blown out rumbles coalesce into thick buzzing drones, and pretty melodies drift in and out, but are quickly overpowered. Imagine locking Keiji Haino and Kawabata Makoto in a a tiny room, armed with nothing but guitars, distortion pedals and a wall of amps each, dueling to the death, the results recorded and played back through a bank of busted effects. Wild and weird. And pretty fucking awesome. But definitely another one for the iron eared...
Packaged in a super elaborate fold out sleeve, all black, with black printing, black inner sleeve, and the outer jacket unfolds into a massive (upside down?) crucifix!!
Super limited too, so don't snooze on this one....
