Record number two from Michael Gibbons, of druggy space rockers Bardo Pond, another vinyl only release, as he continues to explore the more blissed out acoustic side of the whole ambient free floating space rock dream folk sound his main band has been such a crucial part of.
Side one of Apocatastisis almost plays out like some sort of sampler, each track, a facet of Gibbons' psych folk psyche, every one an homage to someone who informed his sound.
The opener is dark and minimal, disembodied bits of backwoods folk set amidst huge expanses of spacious ambience, bits of random sounds drift in the huge spaces between notes, the next track is a buzzing Eastern style raga, all dreamy and drawn out, the next simple muted chunk of folky strum and twang, the final track a full on blast of Henry Flynt style drone fiddle minimalism, keening and sawing relentlessly, emitting gorgeous wavery drones.
So if side A is a sampler, then side B demonstrates just what Gibbons can do, taking those influences and those sounds he loves and turning them into something distinctly his own. Two lengthy jams, the first begins with a thick sheet of fuzzy ambience, a muted noisy drone before drifting off leaving a simple mournful slide guitar, to unfurl super emotional melodies and weave a gorgeously folky dreamdrift. The second track is even more laid back, a back porch, lazy afternoon, rocking chair, just my guitar and the land as far as the eye can see, old timey, but sort of modern leaning Appalachian blues, melodic and melancholy, but with a strange twist at the end, the introduction of bizarre bits of spoken word, a man's voice drifting in and out amidst the slowly unwinding guitar melodies and distant buzz. Nice.
Apocatastisis is limited to 677 copies, but we managed to get a bunch of the SUPER LIMITED version, only 191 copies made (each hand numbered) which includes a bonus cd with an extra 15 minute track, and it's a corker!! Beginning with spidery steel string buzz over a thick wash of swirling shimmer, the guitar begins its slow thoughtful march, lazily meandering through all sorts of landscapes and backgrounds, little flutters of backwards guitar melody, dense clouds of spacey effects, crunchy slabs of crumbling distortion, the background continually shifting and transforming while the guitar remains simple and solid, sometimes getting a little distorted, buzzing a bit, but always settling back into its dreamy drift, weaving its way through a spaced out and abstract, gorgeously psychedelic soundscape.
Ah Abruptum, how we've missed you. Nary a peep since 2004's killer black ambient masterpiece Casus Luciferi, which while an amazing gorgeously bleak slab of droning mystery, really barely scratched the surface, only hinting at the harsh, hateful, bizarre black metal beast Abruptum once was.
That's where Evil Genius comes in. And evil Genius is exactly what it is. A collection of old demos, it was originally released with an actual razor blade inside and a sticker instructing the listener to kill themselves. There were also loads of strange rumors surrounding the band, including the one about mainman It being a dwarf, who tortured himself in the studio, in order to capture true anguish. After all, Abruptum were, according to their own edict, "the pure audial essence of evil"... Who knows how much of that stuff was true (we like to think ALL of it), and ultimately it doesn't really matter, the proof is in the pudding, and in this case the pudding is a sludgy, filthy, crusty, primitive chunk of harsh, stumbling, lurching, distorted psychedelic black metal. Or maybe black doom would be more appropriate. There are no blast beats or blazing buzzing riffs, instead, Evil Genius is a confusional garbled outsider mess, but a glorious one, keyboards lurch in and out of the mix, usually atonal and off kilter, the drums plod and pound, tortured and strangled vocals howl and grunt, belching out strange black growls, tons of thick black ambience surround everything, seeping into every bit of music like some strange black mold, weird squeaks and groans, and all sorts of random sounds pepper the entire record, hard to say if they are footsteps or the cracks of a whip or creaking hinges, but they all sort of get sucked into Abruptum's dizzying blurry and buzzy soundworld. And guitars of course, lots of them, tuned way down, sometimes not tuned at all, occasionally spewing out some strange black shaped riff, but other times just buzzing or droning, roaring or squealing, often sounding less like a guitar than some sort of hellish demon speaking in tongues.
But as fucked up and bizarre as Evil Genius is, it's still eminently listenable, even catchy at times, almost pretty at others, but always, a totally baffling, fucked up and completely damaged way out black metal what-the-fuck blast of, well, EVIL GENIUS!!
All new artwork, with brand new liner notes from It, and while it's hard to tell for sure, we're led to believe that there is at least one extra track, as EG compiles the first two Abruptum demos ("s/t" and "The Satanist Tunes") as well as the "Evil" 7" and their track from the long out of print Tribute To Euronymous compilation cd (which we think is the bonus track).
So absolutely and utterly RECOMMENDED!!
Awww c'mon Adult., why the resigned tone in your new album title?! We know you're not the defeatist types, and your new album has a momentum all its own!
This duo's music has gone through a few shifts in direction since their inception in the late nineties -- from the sharp icicles of classic Detroit techno and electro to the incensed shove of grrrrl punk -- but regardless of which direction they turn, there persists an overriding sense of frazzled nervous instability or 'anxiety always' (the title of their 2003 album), if you will. Fists and teeth are still clenched on this their fourth album, but Miller and Kuperus turn their wheels away from the abrasive electro-punk of their last album. They haven't returned completely to their minimal electro roots though. While the aggressive energy remains from the comparatively untethered Anxiety Always and 2005's Gimmie Trouble, Adult. have sharpened their focus and control here while at the same time unleashing a far more consuming, dense atmosphere; sinking deeper into the depths of goth industrial territory. Miller's prickly programmed beats have been partially engulfed by a thick ominous fog. Looming clanks and churnings occupy the former robotic stark spaces, and yet, Kuperus' sharp vocal exclamations still pierce out of the cloudy dank air. Her confrontational vocal performance continues to channel early female fronted post-punk bands such as Malaria!, X-Ray Spex, Liliput, and The Slits, if somewhat more muted and even-tempered than on their last couple albums. Check out the fevered itch of "I Feel Worse When I'm With You". Some folks around here were also reminded of Romeo Void and Fuzzbox. Alternately brooding and manic, and definitely devoid of the lethargy and apathy implied by the album's title.
Cool cover photos once again by Kuperus featuring a fresh manicure, milky skin, wheat, a rusted axe and a woman with her head concealed in a piece of luggage.
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.
Tape number two from ambient slowcore doom outfit Amort, whose first tape we dug heavily. A dense drifty blend of SUNNO))) style ultra doom, and lilting Low like atmospherics. This time they're teamed up with the strangely named Comfort Wives, who based on the name were ready to be disappointed by, but just like Mom always told us about books and covers, The Comfort Wives actually kick up a pretty mean din. The strange thing is how different Amort sound here. Actually to be honest, the labeling is sort of confusing and we just assumed Side A was the Comfort Wives but in fact appears to be Amort unless the tape was mislabeled. Either way, both sides are awesome, we'll go by the label for now. So Amort sound much more like a band, than a man crafting bleak dronescapes on his own. A plodding midtempo, noisy blackness, huge guitars so low and blown out they threaten to overwhelm the whole recording, which is in no way a band thing, in fact, it's the sort of guitar sound most bands would kill for. An in the red throbbing downtuned buzz, wrapped around a sort of melodic noise rock. The sound here is not so much black metal as it is taking bits and pieces of black metal and incorporating them into their own sound. And the sound here is more of a mournful minor key midtempo dirge rock, with super catchy melodies, simple drumming, some cool harmonies, all wrapped in a blacker than normal production, with some harsh howled vocals. Like a poppier, noise rockier version of Bone Awl or Beherit maybe? Cool stuff regardless, but a strange direction for Amort, while The Comfort Wives end up sounding more like Amort did on the last tape, but somehow darker and doomier and sludgier and much more black metal. An epic and corrosive sonic sludge, that unfurls like some thick black fog. Slow minor key guitar figures drift amidst wide open space, vocals gurgle and growl, all swallowed up by a MASSIVE glacial downtuned dirge, before the low end abates and leaves a simple strummed, almost out of tune guitar to sort of meander, before the blackness falls again. This is not so much BM as ultra doom, or black ambience, the guitars rumble and reverberate, single chords stretched out over vast expanses, the vocals another layer of low end, the riffs so slow they seem to be single plodding thuds that ring out and bleed into the next crusty note, a bit like Abruptum, a ritualistic black minimal doom, epic and murky and hellish and muddy and massive and seriously scary...
Is it us, or is UK noise rock outfit Aufgehoben continually getting noisier and noisier? Is that even possible? We're beginning to think it is, even after the recent Messidor full length seemed to have reached a noise ceiling.
But here we are, two splattery, speaker frying blasts of no wave, free jazz noise rock. Or something. Not sure what to call it, but we like it. A lot. It does require a strong stomach and some iron clad earholes, but if you think you've got the stuff, that hop right in.
Two drummers, electronics, and very little else, are all these guys need to DESTROY. Side A begins with some rhythmic free jazz splatter before being swallowed alive by white hot bursts of crumbling distortion and swells of Merzbowian fury. The sheets of noise stuttering and almost 'skipping' into strange speaker shredding almost-rhythms, some otherworldly white noise pulse that bathes the rest of the song in a blinding and painfully loud glow.
Side B is cut from the same cloth, beginning with some Derek Bailey-ish guitar scrabble before the band launch into a full-on free jazz noise rock assault, loads of buzzing feedback, charged sheets of skree, all blown out and super distorted and in the red, interrupted by brief bits of tranquility, peppered with moments of grinding guitar scrape and spastic drum sputter, always quickly obliterated by a massive super nova of pure noise. Fucking brutal and massively intense!
Packaged in a plain black sleeve with some simple paste on art. Pressed on super thick vinyl, a gorgeous picture disc adorned with strange branch like patterns, like a fossil or some blurred winterscape. Nice!!
LIMITED TO 524 COPIES!!!
This '60s Swedish psych trio is pretty obscure -- they only ever officially released one record, a 7" single that came out in Finland only -- but they haven't been forgotten 'cause the guys in this band eventually went on to play with such bigger, better-known acts as Mecki Mark Men and Kebnekajse. If you picked up that Psychedelic Phinland compilation we highlighted last list, you've heard "Being Is More Than Life" the B-side of their 7", it appears here too along with the A-side "Somebody Keeps Calling My Name" and several previously unreleased live recordings from the era (1967-'68), for a full hour of music in all.
The Baby Grandmothers really liked to jam, they had a thrice-weekly (Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays!) residency at the short-lived psychedelic Stockholm club FILIPS, where much of the live material found here was recorded -- there's a reproduction of a flier in the cd booklet advertising them appearing at FILIPS with AQ faves Parson Sound (oh for a time machine!). So if you dig mostly-instrumental electric guitar oriented psych improv, dosed with plenty of feedback and fuzz, there's plenty here to turn you on, from stoned moody meanderings to freaked out solo spasms. It's all rather raw and energetically alive.
The lengthy liner notes in the photo-illustrated 15-page cd booklet tell the whole Baby Grandmothers story, from their origins in a R&B combo called the T-Boones to gigs opening for Jimi Hendrix to their transformation into the Mark II line-up of the prog-psych act Mecki Mark Men and beyond.
FYI: the Encyclopedia Of Swedish Progressive Music also reviewed this list comes with a bonus cd containing another half-hour of unreleased live Baby Grandmothers recordings from FILIPS, different material than what's on this disc.
Listen on: Deezer
Some of you young'uns might not be familiar with this mighty blonde sexpot, but she sure set her fair share of hearts and loins aflame back in the sixties. Va va voom! She was perhaps less known for her singing than for her voluptuous physique, but she did indeed coo a few tunes back then, and did quite a fine job at it too. We just got this reissued Show album, and it showcases Bardot in all of her sweet and sexy glory. Kicky rocked up tunes, lusty slow orchestral ballads and saucy funky numbers, she did it all. This reissue includes the original fifteen album tracks plus four bonus cuts. Fab!
While you just blinked or checked your email or watched some clips on YouTube, Thurston Moore released another record! Just kidding, but really, Moore shows no signs of slowing down his prolific pace, but as long as he keeps coming up with records as pretty and stoned sounding as this, we're not even the slightest bit anxious for him to slow down. Teamed up with Andrew Macgregor of Gown, they use their guitars to create gorgeously languid, slow shifting sonic landscapes reminiscent of Loren Mazzacane Connors, Roy Montgomery or that great Tom Carter / Bardo Pond collaboration from a few years back. Two long tracks that slowly unfold, beautifully and delicately...
Fans of Sonic Youth's more wandering and sprawling guitar passages will find much to love here. Recommended!
Good grief. Nobody but nobody plays such INSANE guitar as our pal Mick Barr (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilm, etc.). Makes sense he's got a new album out on John Zorn's Tzadik label, we figure Zorn would have to appreciate Barr's idiosyncratic high-end, hyper-speed shred. Zorn's right, Barr belongs in Tzadik's "composer series", with his name on the cover alongside that of his "band" Octis (which is just him solo, sometimes accompanied by an exhausted drum machine). Barr's spasmodic seizures of precision six-string technicality end up constituting some sort of cryptically-constructed, convolutedly-complex avant-garde new music, with maddening minimalist repetition and maximal metallic tones, a swarming symphony of extreme earhole abuse that certain folks (like us) just LOVE subjecting themselves to, and maybe even trying to understand. Imagine Yngwie interpreting Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music album and you're at least part-way there.
Wow! We haven't been this smitten with a debut release in quite a while. Didn't know much about this Baltimore duo but we do know, the second this record we laid ears on this the first time, we were immediately seduced by the glorious sounds within. Hazy, daydreaming pop with equal parts magic, mystery and dreamy darkness, all drenched in beautiful melodies and sincere sensuality. Kind of made us think of Broadcast taking a warm bubble bath with Coco Rosie. Lights out, candles burning, bubbles floating, reverb dripping. There is a timelessness in these songs that is so evocative, Warhol's factory, a summer twilight in Southern California in the '70s, an abandoned art studio in the UK. You can never quite put your finger on exactly where these songs are drawn from but in the end it's music truly unique and wonderful. A mysterious voice, a haunting presence and songs carry you off, eyes closed, to somewhere much more enchanting then wherever you really are. So nice!
New Deluxe box version of Beck's latest outing with an extra disc of remixes from Ellen Allien, Ricardo Villalobos, and Jamie Lidell among others and a DVD with even more videos on it then before, plus a lyric book, a blank book (for your thoughts?) and complete set of stickers! Here's what we said before:
Beck might be trying a bunch of new things in terms of presentation and packaging (for one thing the cover is a blank grid on which you can arrange the provided very Vice Magazine looking stickers), but it sure feels like he's retreading a lot of old terrain musically. Some songs sound like total rehashings of his 'hits' from Odelay and Sea Change. Actually two lyrics keep taking turns popping into our collective aQ head when we listen to this album. They are Steve Miller's "time keeps on slippin'... slippin'... slippin' into the fyooochaaa" from back in the '70s and Beck's own "I got two turntables and a microphone" from "Where It's At" (on his Odelay album). That said, all in all though this *is* a solid Beck album. It just didn't register the "Holy shit, this is groundbreaking stuff!" reaction that all the pre-release press made it out to be. It's just good ol' Beck recrafted and redesigned with fresh cool sounds and stickers too!
Sourced from recordings made aboard Lisbon ferries and at the quays of Cais do Sodre (one of the neighborhoods in the Portuguese capital), Marc Behrens and Paolo Raposo have constructed an allegorical set of compositions on Hades that intentionally mirror the mythological journey in crossing the River Styx. According to the ancient Greek beliefs, Styx was a border between the Underworld and Earth; and a ferry was the only means of transportation across the river. When put into a modern context of sound art and field-recording based collage, quotidian sounds sucha as the rumble of a diesel motor as it spews crusty exhaust and the creaking of the hull against the pier takes on a much more profound significance. Behrens and Raposo have done quite a good job in highlighting particular sounds, frequencies, and vibrations from the aquatic journey in traveling through Lisbon by way of boat, as a way of transforming that experience into a sombre event of mournful bellows and anguished sighs. Yet on occasion, Hades becomes agitated with rasping clatters of mechanical noise, alluding that the end of life is certainly not an easy journey. For an album about such a portentous subject as death, Behrens and Raposo do well to concentrate upon their sounds through the lens of a minimalist conceptual framework and allow the mythological and allegorical images to flow around their well-grafted sound.
Tortoise-tronica! That's the one word which sprung to our mind after listening to the first few tracks on this album by this peculiarly named duo. The Berg Sans Nipple are Lori Sean Berg and Shane Aspegren, a couple of scruffy fellows who hail from France and Nebraska respectively. They take the jazz infused post-rock influence of that venerable band and funnel it through a primarily electronic focused instrument palette. Then they add some Notwist-y murmured male vocals, a little smooth soul, and the results are something fresh and new that sits just as comfily alongside Broken Social Scene and Air as it does the above mentioned Windy City veterans. Nice!
After enjoying Andrew Bird's latest album we thought we'd do a little backtracking and revisit his last album, 2005's The Mysterious Production Of Eggs which was released on Ani DiFranco's label Righteous Babe. Although he's been makin' some fine music since 1996, it was this album that really charmed lush pop loving ears far and wide. If you looked up "a distant, less eccentric, yet equally exceptional singer/songwriter cousin of Howe Gelb and M. Ward" in the dictionary, you just might find this gent. Polished, dark, elegant and earthy pop goodness for fans of the abovementioned fellows as well as Ron Sexsmith, Rufus Wainwright and Jeff Buckley.
Once again, we got a whole batch of killer black metal cassettes, too many to review, but all of them weird and grim, buzzing and black. Some are super fucked blacknoise, others are damaged stumbling outsider black buzz, while others are old skool blackness, raw and hateful and brutal, while still others fall somewhere in between. But all of them cool. Andee again bought one of each if that makes you feel any better (his room is starting to look like it did in high school, minus the Motley Crue and W.A.S.P posters, who thought at 37 he'd be contemplating buying a "cassette rack" for all his tapes).
Okay, now we're talking. Ten tapes is some serious shit. The demons and dark underlords are starting to take notice. There is a bit of scuttlebut in the halls of hell, you are dark, bleak and black. Of soul, of heart, of spirit. Ten tapes will keep your Walkman bleeding black while you apply all that corpsepaint. While you sharpen that axe and practice making those scary faces for your series of ultra grim Myspace videos. That goth girl at the video store might finally notice you. C'mon! You are the elite. The black legion. The black tape legions.
Remember, only tapes that have NOT been reviewed are eligible for the grab bag and the bargain price.
That means we pick, it is random, and it will not include any tapes you have seen on the AQ list, or any tapes scheduled to be reviewed in the near future.
Also, this is a whole new batch of tapes, none of which we have had before, so even if you grab bagged a few lists back, you can go for it again and not worry about getting the same titles. All right!
Once again, we got a whole batch of killer black metal cassettes, too many to review, but all of them weird and grim, buzzing and black. Some are super fucked blacknoise, others are damaged stumbling outsider black buzz, while others are old skool blackness, raw and hateful and brutal, while still others fall somewhere in between. But all of them cool. Andee again bought one of each if that makes you feel any better (his room is starting to look like it did in high school, minus the Motley Crue and W.A.S.P posters, who thought at 37 he'd be contemplating buying a "cassette rack" for all his tapes).
The legions of hell shall now tremble before you, they will supplicate themselves before the newly appointed, Mr. Evil Lord of The TWENTY RANDOM BLACK METAL TAPES. You are the blackest. The most foul. You truly are the embodiment of unspeakable audial evil. You are a cassette tape warlord. Your tiny speakers spew blackness. Your ear buds are a direct link to the dark one...
There will indeed be a final battle. To the death, the future of mankind hangs in the balance. It will not be determined by the number of demons in your army, the number of horns on your head, the sharpness of your blade or the quickness of your tongue, NAY, the deciding factor will undoubtedly be cassette tapes. It has been written. IN THE BIBLE!! Or somewhere, but it has been written: "The more tapes you have, the more prepared you shall be for battle. You shall not be defeated easily, those twenty tapes are like a huge flaming pentagram, warding off all who would dare challenge you." But as we warned you before, be wary of he with more than twenty black metal tapes. He will be your ruination. His twenty five or even thirty tapes will spell your doom. The only way to defeat him is to ORDER ALL THE TAPES. If you dare. And, if you daren't, well, then, you shall just take your chance with twenty!!!! BE NOT AFRAID!!! Twenty is indeed a whole lot!!
Remember, only tapes that have NOT been reviewed are eligible for the grab bag and the bargain price.
That means we pick, it is random, and it will not include any tapes you have seen on the AQ list, or any tapes scheduled to be reviewed in the near future.
Also, this is a whole new batch of tapes, none of which we have had before, so even if you grab bagged a few lists back, you can go for it again and not worry about getting the same titles. All right! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
Once again, we got a whole batch of killer black metal cassettes, too many to review, but all of them weird and grim, buzzing and black. Some are super fucked blacknoise, others are damaged stumbling outsider black buzz, while others are old skool blackness, raw and hateful and brutal, while still others fall somewhere in between. But all of them cool. Andee again bought one of each if that makes you feel any better (his room is starting to look like it did in high school, minus the Motley Crue and W.A.S.P posters, who thought at 37 he'd be contemplating buying a "cassette rack" for all his tapes).
This three pack is perfect for the black metal newbie, you're bound to get something you'll like, but if not, you can shrug it off and try desperately to wipe the foul blackness from your soul. But odds are you'll be hooked and want more. Black metal. AND cassettes.
Remember, only tapes that have NOT been reviewed are eligible for the grab bag and the bargain price.
That means we pick, it is random, and it will not include any tapes you have seen on the AQ list, or any tapes scheduled to be reviewed in the near future.
Also, this is a whole new batch of tapes, none of which we have had before, so even if you grab bagged a few lists back, you can go for it again and not worry about getting the same titles. All right!
Once again, we got a whole batch of killer black metal cassettes, too many to review, but all of them weird and grim, buzzing and black. Some are super fucked blacknoise, others are damaged stumbling outsider black buzz, while others are old skool blackness, raw and hateful and brutal, while still others fall somewhere in between. But all of them cool. Andee again bought one of each if that makes you feel any better (his room is starting to look like it did in high school, minus the Motley Crue and W.A.S.P posters, who thought at 37 he'd be contemplating buying a "cassette rack" for all his tapes).
This six pack is for the slightly more serious black metalhead. Six tapes is a like dipping a toe into the darkside, having an itsy bitsy peek at the blackness that lurks beneath, 6 tapes says you just might be serious. You might one day pledge your allegiance to the dark lord. The again you may not. 6 tapes, you could go either way. But 6 plastic slabs of grim and brutal black buzz stuffed in your Walkman will definitely be plenty to while away long nights skulking around graveyards, and definitely enough to keep your car stereo buzzing on the way to see where Anton LaVey's house once was or to burn down a church or whatever. All hail YOU!
Remember, only tapes that have NOT been reviewed are eligible for the grab bag and the bargain price.
That means we pick, it is random, and it will not include any tapes you have seen on the AQ list, or any tapes scheduled to be reviewed in the near future.
Also, this is a whole new batch of tapes, none of which we have had before, so even if you grab bagged a few lists back, you can go for it again and not worry about getting the same titles. All right!
Following up 2006's delightful Summer Set, Bay Area artist Blanketship returns with Music With A Message! This time he's got The Dollson Family Singers in tow for another aural collage of off-kilter, genre-jumpin' frolics. The one dozen hymns on Music With A Message chug along like a feel good wagon with a slightly wonky wheel rolling over hills and through towns with heads in the clouds, toes tapping and hugs aplenty. Sorta like Danielson Family taking Polyphonic Spree to Sunday School but not without a secret intoxicating visit to Bruce Haack and Perrey & Kingsley's exotica tiki lounge beforehand!
Will Oldham fans have no shortage of offerings from their favorite prince as of late. This marks the third single released from his last full length The Letting Go. It includes one of the best songs from the album, "Strange Form Of Life", an early version of "The Seedling" as well as stripped down solo renditions of two of his older gems. The cd also includes a great video of "Strange Form Of Life" directed by Jennifer Parsons.
We're really not sure how we managed to miss this one. Especially with us always dying for more grime. More blissed out dark and doomy dubstep. Well, this is IT!!! This 'it' actually came out almost a year ago! But so what! We just discovered it, and maybe you missed it as well. Boxcutter is everything we've been hankering for. And digging elsewhere. Milanese (a past AQ record of the week), Kode9, Virus Syndicate, that Mary Anne Hobbs comp, the Science Faction: Grime comp, Boxcutter fits right in amongst those killers. And is totally kicking our ass. Maybe more dubstep than grime (although it sounds pretty grimey to us, and we're not even really sure of the difference), this is dense and skittery, blown out dub drenched grimey and and filthy dark-as-fuck electronica. The rhythms throb and shuffle, a hiccuping stutter, that is not so much funky as fucked up and hypnotic, occasional beats get all gnarled up, glitching and buzzing before falling back into line. All around the beats, thick clouds of strange synths and spaced out FX hover and swirl, peppered with melodic fragments, and thick rib cage rattling bass lines.
Some of the tracks are WAY laid back, dubbed out to the extreme, a sort of late night / early morning chill out sound. All dark and druggy, heavy lidded and sort of shuffling drowsily. But other tracks are HUGE and bumping. Bursts of blown out synth fuzz, massive rolling bass lines, streaks of sizzling sound that careen from speaker to speaker, bits of fluttering flute suspended over dense rhythmic tangles, huge smears of undulating low end, kick drums that punch right through your sternum, sounding almost like some killer dancefloor destroying jungle dubplate played at 16 rpm.
Heavy and thick and dark and fuzzed out and spacey and groovy and so fucking great!!
Finally this British Folk classic becomes both widely available and affordable! In a lot of ways Anne Briggs is the British equivalent of Karen Dalton, both were distinctive and influential interpreters of traditional folk songs, and both adamantly hated recording. While Briggs' fate is less tragic than Dalton's, her self-imposed retirement from singing at 27 and long willful reclusion has left fans with a similarly slim catalog of recordings to pore over. Yet Briggs is no obscure figure. Discovered by Ewan MacColl in the early sixties, Brigg's pure yet untutored vocal delivery had tremendous influence on many of the key figures of the British folk revival, namely, Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior, June Tabor and Linda Thompson. By the time of her retirement, she was legendary. The Time Has Come is her second (and in our opinion, best) album, originally released in 1971. Here for the first time she records some of her own songs, a few of them popularized by other artists, like the title track previously covered by her former boyfriend, Bert Jansch. But perhaps influenced by the emergence of rock elements in the folk scene, she also updates the arrangements of her guitar and bouzouki accompaniments so that even the traditional tracks are handled with a warm but modernly melancholic pastoral grace. An artist at what now has to stand as her peak. Perfect for Spring!
Mr. Tom Brosseau is the man behind Grand Forks, an album of really good country folk melancholia.
Grand Forks is a concept album with a narrative centered around the devastating flood of his hometown back in 1997. No frills and deeply poignant, this music finds comfort and solace on a lonely mud-encrusted barstool with a half empty bottle of Kentucky bourbon. With guests John Doe and violinist Hilary Hahn.
Barton Carroll might not be a household name, but he's certainly made his presence felt on numerous other artists' albums and live performances. He's not only the multi-instrumentalist for Crooked Fingers, but he's also shared the stage with the likes of Azure Ray, Micah P. Hinson and Dolorean (not the metal band, duh). Love & War is his second solo folk album. The simple white text on black background on the front cover reflects the music's dark starkness, while the splash of green foliage on the back cover photo hints at Carroll's well manicured earthiness. His evocative lyrics' subject matter focuses on war history and literary works. Hence, the album's dominant mood is decidedly somber, at times evoking an almost funereal tone. Includes a stirring cover of "The Dark End Of The Street".
Goldfall is Andrew Chalk's highly anticipated new vinyl-only album, released on his own Faraway Press imprint. After pretty much of all the Mirror records had been released as super limited vinyl-only editions (with a couple of those getting reissued later on cd), Chalk's recent solo endeavors have been extended droneworks that weren't suited to the LP format. He's clearly outdone himself with the packaging on this return to vinyl, as he's situated the thick slab of vinyl within a dense cardstock sleeve with a die cut opening exposing silkscreened print beneath; and he's sealed the sleeve in a delicate piece of tissue paper that also features an elegant print reminiscent of Shoji screen prints. In contrast to the floral artwork, Chalk's sound production within is a far darker and heavier experience. Sourced from the meandering piano interludes of Vikki Jackman, Goldfall is a dark, shadowy record of protracted reverberation and timbral rumblings. In comparison to Chalk's previous piano album Blue Eyes Of The March or to other exceptional piano abstractions (i.e. Jonathan Coleclough's Period or Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon), Goldfall is downright ominous. And you all should know that Andrew Chalk + ominous = highly recommended. But you should also know that Goldfall is limited to 300 copies.
Latest blast of post punk noise rock mayhem from this Violent Students offshoot. For those of you who may not remember, the Violent Students are a crazy, druggy damaged noise rock behemoth, a stumbling Butthole Surfers-esque freerock what the fuck glorious mess that we went totally nuts for.
We later discovered a few of those Students also did time in a band called Clockcleaner, who ended up totally cleaning our clocks (ahem) but for a whole different reason, their strange nineties indie noise rock, shoulda-been-on-AmRep stun and pummel completely hit the pot, and pushed all those dusty buttons bands like the Cows and the God Bullies and Lubricated Goat used to push.
So here we have a brand new 7" ep from these musical miscreants, and it's a bit of surprise. The A side is total post punk new wave pop, or something, propulsive jangly guitars, simple drumming, yelped vocals, we're hearing tons of the Misfits and the Damned... sort of new wave art pop, but filthier and a little more lo-fi, and it's awesome! Noisy and hooky and super duper catchy.
But before you start screaming sell out, flip the disc over and we're back into nineties aggro post punk snarl and swagger, echoey clangy guitars, thick chunks of angular noise rock, keening guitars, reverbed vocals, lots of scrape and wail, and we love it. These guys kick serious ass, wrapping you in a nineties style Halo Of Flies while simultaneously dipping you head in a good old fashioned bucket of new wave jangle!!
Plus "Frogrammer"? How rad a title is that for a song?!?!
Philip Cohran is a true unsung hero in the history of cosmic jazz. He played with Sun Ra in the late '50s and '60s and was a cofounder of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). In the late '60s he ran the Afro-Arts Theater in Chicago, which was the location of this mesmerizing concert that Cohran performed with the Artistic Heritage Ensemble as a tribute to the late Malcolm X. Originally released on LP on Cohran's Zulu label, the record has been out of print for ages and commanded big dollars from those lucky enough to track down a copy. Lucky for us this amazing performance is now available on cd for the first time. The first track starts a reeeal slow before the fire starts to burn hotter and hotter as the performance goes on. With an ensemble that included trumpet, trombone, tuba, conga, guitar, bass, percussion, sax, cornet and vocals from Sister Ella Pearl Jackson, this is some seriously forward thinking jazz, just dripping with soul and consciousness. Like the more melodic moments of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago and early Sun Ra, this is totally essential and one of the best jazz reissues we've heard in quite a while!
Current 93's David Tibet is an apocalyptic poet in the truest definition, as his work hinges upon his obsessive desire to transcribe and translate the revelations, visions, nightmares, and dreams that have come to him over the past two decades. The apocalyptic genres of art have come to define the possibilities of how the world as we know it might come to an end (e.g. astrophysical disasters, nuclear war, zombies, fire-ants, etc.); however, in the earliest manifestations of apocalyptic art, it was simply the chronicling of revelations given from the heavens to man below. Throughout his numerous recordings in Current 93, Tibet has embodied the whole apocalyptic tradition, all the while strengthening his admittedly heretical belief in a Patripassianist Christ, who suffers beyond the crucifixion of Jesus throughout the aeons until his second coming (NB. this is but a brief synopsis of Tibet's complicated, Gnostic, and poetic theology).
Black Ships Ate The Sky has been in the works for almost four years, with Tibet's great friend and long-time collaborator Steven Stapleton proclaiming this to be a fantastic recording. Lo and behold, Black Ships Ate The Sky *is* a magnificent album, returning to the somber acid folk stylings haunted by the shadows and smoke last heard on the earlier masterpieces Thunder Perfect Mind and Earth Covers Earth. As on all of the Current 93 albums, Tibet surrounds himself with an impressive battery of musicians that reads like a who's who of alt-folk-avant-rock greats: Will Oldham, Ben Chasny, Antony (as in .. And The Johnsons), Shirley Collins, Cosey Fanni Tutti, William Basinski, Al Cisneros (from Om), and the aforementioned Steven Stapleton. Black Ships Ate The Sky is thematically based upon Tibet's vision aptly described in the title as it relates to a Christian hymn by Charles Wesley called "Idumae" which repeats itself seven times (eight if you count "Black Ships Were Sinking Into Idumae" sung by Cosey Fanni Tutti), as sung by Tibet's numerous guest vocalists. As strong as many of the versions of "Idumae" are, Tibet and his peculiar voice are central to Black Ships. He's impassioned throughout, occasionally possessed with an infernal rage as on the second version of the title track, and elsewhere adopting a gentle delicacy. The music swirls around simple guitar arrangements, laced with Chasny's acidic guitar leads and Stapleton's sidereal productions... and it's stunningly good together. Time will tell if this will be the greatest Current 93 record Tibet has produced (as many have already claimed); but it's clearly in the running.
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!
Ultra limited release from the Davenport Family, the extended lineup of free folkers Davenport, released on the Meudiademorte label.
This is a single 35 minute jam, and it is a monster, sure there's the usual, clattery percussion, distant folky jangle, shimmery ambience, but shit here gets way more fierce and scary. Some massive slow motion stripped down folk doom. Epic sludgy rhythms, a plodding crashing thud, demarcating a harsh landscape of wild tribal drumming, strange echoe-y vocals, streaks of guitar feedback, like some krautrock free folk doom metal Taj Mahal Travellers or something. Everything blown out and abstract, hung loosely around a relentless rhythmic death march, trawling through dense clouds of damaged FX, dubbed out drums, clattery percussion and huge bassy throbs. Tribal and primitive, spacey and majestic, pounding and surprisingly brutal for a bunch of hippy free folk misfits. Awesome!!
LIMITED TO 230 COPIES!!! We got about 20, after these are gone they are gone for good.
On their lovely 2005 'debut' L'Avventura, Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham went by their full names, now that they're all 'established' (as if you weren't already, former Lord and Lady of Luna-ville!), they're on first name basis. Heck, it's the most natural thing to do because Back Numbers is so warm, welcoming and familiar. It's like meeting up again with an old friend. There's no awkward pauses in making this acquaintance, just pick right up where you last left off. An enveloping album of dulcet, downy pop as only Mr. Wareham can do, and we love it! The duo are joined once more by Sonic Boom for a little keyboard and guitar flourish, and producer Tony Visconti. Amid their original numbers they've included a smashing cover of Lee Hazlewood's "You Turned My Head Around" as well as Claudine Longet's "White Horses", Donovan's Teen Angel" and The Troggs' fantastic "Our Love Will Still Be There". Glorious.
We consulted our calendar and it told us that this month we'd see a new Decemberists dvd, and what do you know, it spoke the truth! Despite the dvd's title which made us think it would be some sort of how-to manual, A Practical Handbook is packed with lots of fan pleasing goodies such as a documentary, a complete twelve song long concert at Roseland Theater in Portland, OR from November 2005, and five music videos for their songs "The Tain", "The Bachelor And The Bride", "16 Military Wives", "The Soldiering Life", and "Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect".
Awesome slab of early turntablism, from a member of the legendary LAFMS, the Los Angeles Free Music Society, a loose group of artists, writers and musicians active in the seventies and eighties. Dennis Duck, aka Mehaffey originally released this disc as a cassette tape, limited to 20 copies, each one hand decorated and signed.
So here we are almost 30 years later, and heck if this doesn't still sound amazing. Raw and simple and ultra primitive turntable manipulation, none of the techniques here are mind blowing, in fact, odds are most of them are something we all tried with our own record players at one time or another. Lots of changing the pitch, placing the record on the spindle so it wobbles up and down, placing a seven inch atop a 12" and letting the needle be bumped back every time it touched the seven inch, adjusting the anti-skating setting to cause the record to skip or the needle to jump, it all comes down to two things, the choice of records, and the random behavior of the needle and the records. The records Duck employs are fantastic, weird and wonderful, strange children's records, bizarre jazz, spoken word as well as a handful of discs that end up so fragmented and transformed it's hard to say what they were pre-fuckery. And while some of these tracks don't do a whole lot other than play at the wrong speed, or skip haphazardly, others DO, their bits and fragments looped into strange rhythms and bizarre arrangements, something weird and new and totally mesmerizing.
Our favorite track might just be the nearly 8 minute "One O'Clock Jump", a dense swirling assemblage of strange percussion, jazzy horns, sped up and skipped into incredibly complex patterns, a few minutes in it's difficult to discern the various sounds, or even remember what it is you were listening to, it sounds like some primitive lo-fi lost piece by Reich or Riley, or Lubomyr Melnyk's Wave-Lox performed on turntable instead of piano, swirling and spinning and skipping and looping and hiccuping and blurring into impossible patterns and textures. Hard to believe that it could possibly be just a turntable and a couple records, it sounds like some modern processed piece done on a computer and -treated- to sound like an old piece of vinyl. A few other lengthy tracks near the end of the disc explore similar territory, weaving dense sprawling flurries of loops and skips, and those tend to be our favorites, although the shorter ones do have their own magic, leaning more toward the brief and playful, percussively skipping little sonic vignettes between the longer stretched out skipscapes. Awesome!
Definitely for fans of Marclay, Jeck, Strotter Inst, Yoshihide, Bastien, Brinkmann, Tetriault , Gum, Saule, Cordier, Loop Orchestra, the recently listed Prehistoric Fuckin' Moron(s) and other like minded turntable tinkerers...
You know how much we love Finnish music, forest folk, drifty drones, motorik hypnorock, but there's something in particular about Finnish black metal... something so utterly distinct, something so, well Finnish. It's hard to describe, but Finnish metal bands seem to have a certain vibe that permeates their sound, whether they be super buzzing and black, or primitive and stumbling, or somewhere in between.
Beherit, Ajattara, Sargeist, Satanic Warmaster, Finntroll, Horna, Behexen, Barathrum, Clandestine Blaze, Baptism, if you're familiar at all with most of those bands you probably see what we mean. It's something sonic but not obvious. A nod to the old school, but without sounding totally dated or retro. Finnish BM is grim and buzzing and brutal and black and totally Finnish.
One of the longest running Finnish BM hordes would probably have to be Diaboli, and The Antichrist, their 6th album since 1996, has everything we've come to love about them, and Finnish black metal in general. Lots of buzz, and simple riffing, the tempo is not midtempo, but also not a furious blast, it's fast for sure, but the tempo is tempered by the melodies, the arpeggiated chords spread out over each track like some melancholy shroud. The vocals are appropriately growled, the whole sound drenched in blackness and buzz, but it's that 'Finnish thing', whatever it is, that makes them stand out.
The first track is a classic blast of old school black metal, relentless blast beats, cyclical hypnotic riffing, epic majestic melody, the whole thing wrapped in delay and reverb, a dense black cloud, the track a galloping monster, but with some hidden bits of emotion and melody lurking underneath. Mysteriously pretty but disturbingly black. And maybe that's the thing we can't put our finger on. The strange melancholy melodiousness of track 5 "Emptiness" also hints at some strange heart of gold. albeit wrapped in a tattered black musical cloak. The guitars are muted and sound almost post rock, while the drums blast along solidly beneath. Each new guitar line introduces another unlikely and surprisingly melodic element. But let's not overstate the melodic aspect, and the 'prettiness' here, even though it is present, and is a vital part of the sound, ultimately, you gotta love the buzz, the brutal blasting blackness of old school black metal. Fans of Finns like Horna, Beherit, Clandestine Blaze will definitely dig this...
Final release from beloved local label Dielectric, so sad, but what a way to go! After a clutch of killer releases, some simple and lovely, some high concept, all beautifully executed and assembled, each sonically breathtaking: the Dielectric Drone All-Stars, the Dielectric Minimalist All-Stars, a handful of super limited cd-r's as well as a four pack of killer 12"s, Dielectric bows out with their most expansive and sonically overwhelming release, the Dielectric Field Recording All-Stars, and like each of the Dielectric All-Stars releases, the title says it all, minimal, drone, and now field recordings. Although all three of those distinctions tend to blur together, especially here.
The All-Stars this time around are ten strong: label head honcho Drew Webster, Jen Boyd, Leticia Casteneda, Cria Cuervos, Mark Griswold, WIll Mitchell, Maggi Payne, Toby Paddock, Rudy Trubitt and Aaron Ximm. As with any record like this, there are three critical elements, the players, the sounds, and how those sounds are woven into something listenable. Sometimes a straight field recording can be as compelling as the most intricately composed piece of music, but sometimes, it's exciting to hear a piece of music only to learn later that it was actually a recording of insects or cars or sneezes or whatever. The Field Recording All-Stars got you covered either way.
The above ten recordists, compiled an incredible palette of sounds, from all over the world, there's even a chart inside the cd booklet, to see who contributed what sound to each track. The sources are overwhelming to just read, let alone hear: a floating restaurant in Barcelona, Spain, evening in Oakland, California, song on Chinese radio station, eating an apple, pigs in a pen, squeaky shoe, tomato, red ball, phasing radio, Voice of Vietnam, space shuttle, shortwave, Barcelona subway, SF 6am, freezer, blue angels, record player, various radio broadcasts, buskers in Paris Metro, under a dock Berkeley, CA, incident on subway, Chile, dog versus rattlesnake, finger-picked acoustic guitar, weird buzz, air traffic controller, storm drain, weird radio, underwater, answering machine, TV show, shortwave sweep, protest march, failing speaker, Rise up!, protest drums, Riley running, police siren, crosswalk signal, police dispersing demonstrators, turntable, creek pebbles, buoy, leaky organ oscillator tube, Wuhan taxi dispatcher, Chinese busker, wasp nest, streetlight, skipping cd, church mass on radio, unknown feedback, violin, psalter & ball bearing and a slide guitar! Phew!
Now, not all of those sounds are present on each track. Some tracks play out like straight field recordings, voices, vehicles, birds, animals, strange clatter and thumps, footsteps, dogs barking different texture and timbres presented raw and unprocessed, but on other tracks, the various sounds were woven together by Webster, aka Die Elektrischen into fantastical soundscapes, running the gamut from deep cavernous drones, grinding metallic melodies, strangely rhythmic bits of skitter and shuffle, dreamy backwards warble, slow shifting underwater shimmer, a few tracks even almost rock, the core being some sort of buzzing guitar or vibrating steel string, with the various found sounds simply adding to the texture or lurking in the background as another layer of sound, while other tracks are epic and expansive, mysterious new worlds of sonic wonder, like wandering beneath strange colored skies, or slow shifting landscapes, swimming in strange seas, every track is like a sonic road map of some unexplored territory, some soft and shimmery, some harsh and brutal, others just really really strange, but every one totally listenable and truly fascinating. This is one of those discs that is definitely amazing on first listen, but benefits from closer scrutiny, repeated listens, deeper listenings reveal so much more going on, layer after layer, each unfolding and blossoming and blurring into each other like some dizzying kaleidoscope of sound. So good.
Here's the super cool new issue of the young dvdzine Fingered! It features rad Bay Area indie bands Erase Errata (live clip and tour diary), Tussle, Clip'd Beaks, Fuckwolf, Lemonade, and Black Fiction; plus work from visual artists Olivia Park and Krak! May be best consumed in a somewhat altered state. To boot, the dvd-r comes in a cool screenprinted sewn canvas sleeve, perfect for toting your assorted amenities.
Damn, this lady can sing! Now It's Time is her fourth full length, the follow-up to 2005's Leave The Sad Things Behind. From the sounds of it, she hasn't heeded that album's title. This SF country gal's music continues to resonate with a haunting heartbreak. That said, she's brought back some of the good things too, such as resurrecting her beloved old band Tarnation for the occasion. Despite her plaintive lyrical subject matter, she doesn't wallow, occasionally stepping up the overall languid tempo with a mildly jaunty clip. Front and center, her impassioned voice rings strong and clear. Wistful, but with a steadfast resolve.
Another unassuming, slightly off-kilter singer/songwriter joins the strong stable of artists at the Absolutely Kosher camp. Chris Garneau is his name and Music For Tourists is his debut album -- a baker's dozen folk pop tunes played out mostly on piano and guitar augmented by strings. Sweet and hushed, Garneau's boyish vocals seem to pursue the sensitive intimacy of the late Elliott Smith. The album as a whole has an underlying bedroom recorded feel, but with a fully fleshed out lush production afforded these days via the now easily accessible, user friendly recording technology. Pleasant lo-fi pop recorded with hi-fi capabilities.
An absolutely killer slab of ultra raw, filthy and primitive lo-fi murky black metal. Lots of crusty riffing, blasting drums buried in reverb and tape hiss, bizarre grunted vocal spew, guitars that buzz and warble, and go from insectoid shrillness to tarpit filthiness often in the same song, and loads of low end bassy throb and other bits of random lo-fi 4 track production weirdness that make this freaky and fucked up.
While on the surface this sounds like classic old school minimal buzz and blast black metal, stripped down and blown out, Bone Awl, Beherit, Von, Abruptum... The weird thing is, and maybe this is supposed to be a secret, but we're pretty sure that the man behind Geist is in fact a former member of doomlords Yob! Hard to believe, but true! You won't hear that much Sabbathy sludge here although once in a while the songs slow down into a gorgeously doomy tarpit trudge, but it's never long before the band lurch back into action, and resume their harsh minimal pummel. So fucking great, the perfect balance of true kvlt blackness and slightly off kilter weirdness.
For fans of all things simple and sludgy and brutal and black and crusty and filthy and EVIL!!!!
Oh Holly, you get us every time! With her timeless voice and snarly attitude, Golightly is one of the fiercest singers and songwriters of our time! With her new band The Brokeoffs we get to hear her take a break from her usual garage juke joint gems and explore the moonshine drenched world of Appalachia. From sparse country ballads to haunting blues, this record shows that no matter what musical direction Golightly takes on, the results are always fantastic. Musically, it's almost like a stripped down version of those haunting Tom Waits soundscapes, with an ever so wonderfully warped country twang and then of course the icing on the cake is Golightly's spot on vocals and delivery which make the songs so immediate and engaging. So nice!
Sounding just a bit like a weird cross between slo-mo doom bringers Asunder and tunics-and-tights folk metallers Falconer, San Francisco's Grayceon are an uncategorizable combo who rock the majestic medieval metal riffs in a sort of chamber-prog / post-rock context, with a big part of their sound deriving from the droning classical cello stylings of Jackie Perez Gratz (who indeed also saws the cello strings for Asunder, and also plays in Amber Asylum). Pummelling drums and sometimes thrashy guitar round out the trio's lineup, with both clean male and female vocals in the mix, though Grayceon's approach could work just as well instrumentally. The caress of their loud-soft, soft-loud dynamics should find this appealing to both indie/post rockers and, say, fans of Hammers Of Misfortune and the Fucking Champs. Imagine Rachel's on a date with Apocalyptica, perhaps. This self-titled debut consists of four songs in 45 minutes -- the last and longest track clocks in at an epic, elegant 20 minutes, and, like the rest of the album, provides stately and somber moodiness alongside headbangingly metallic moments... it's mournful, technical, and we think pretty cool!
As far as black metal album titles, it's pretty impossible to beat Happiness - It's When You Are Dead. Sure Blizzard Beasts is awesome, so is A Blaze In The Northern Sky, even Rebel Extravaganza has its perverse charm. But no album titles we can think of are so simple and succinct. Happiness - It's When You Are Dead. Perfectly capturing the miserablism and death obsessed nihilism of black metal without the usual overwrought hand wringing wordiness. Simple. We like it. And we like Gromm too.
Much like how the Russian BM bands share a sonic sensibility, so too do the Ukrainian bands, Nokturnal Mortum, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra, Drudkh, Hate Forest, and of course Gromm. If you like that stuff, odds are you'll like these guys too. And considering how insular and inbred those scenes are, we wouldn't be all that surprised if Gromm shared members with one, some or all of those bands.
For those new to Gromm, on the surface it's everything we love about black metal, furious and frosty, blasting and black and brutal, with guitars that are super distorted, so much so that sometimes they seem to crumble and overload the speakers, recorded so hot they shoot into the red adding another layer of (unintentional?) distortion, the vocals are raw and garbled, not growling or grunted so much as twisted and strangled, the drums are kick ass, furious and blasting, but there is tons of melody in the music of Gromm, and not just in the slowed down melancholy parts, but in the buzzing frosty blasts, melodies and strange catchy bits lurk everywhere. There's some super weird production too, like when an ultra loud effects-heavy acoustic guitar is laid over the black buzz, so loud and thick that it spreads out and almost completely obscures the music beneath it, making it sound really damaged and creepy.
And that kind of stuff is all over Happiness, but even without all the subtle weirdness, the record kills, the songs are amazing, the sound is epic and catchy, fast and fuzzed out, brutal and black.
Extremely recommended.
It doesn't really seem possible that the music of Grouper could get any more beautiful, any more majestic and epic, or any more mysterious and dreamlike. No, but what it can do is change, and grow, expand, and subtly alter its shape and timbre, it's coloring and shading, which is what it has been doing, on every single outing, but never so much as on Cover The Windows And Walls. The core of Grouper's sound remains unchanged, dense bleary eyed fields of druggy reverb, thick swirls of blurred vocals, smeared into indistinct melodies, all abstract and shimmery, soft focus and billowy, the musical version of those soft fuzzy grey clouds that fill the sky at twilight. It's still an impossible blend of Arvo Part, Morton Feldman and Skullfower, but the new record sounds a little bit more, well, folky maybe, or perhaps slightly less tripped out. A lot of it has to do with the vocals, which have attained an until now unheard of clarity. Which in no way means you can actually hear the vocals, they are still another gauzy layer in Grouper's blown out soundscape, but, sometimes, they -are- a bit clearer, you can actually pick out words here and there, sometimes even whole lines. Before, if we hadn't been told, we wouldn't necessarily have even known that the main element of Grouper's sound was in fact vocals. They were that indistinct and that drenched in FX. But here, it actually sounds like a singer, singing songs, but just barely, it's almost like listening to some super lonesome stripped down folk, recorded onto a wax cylinder, and then broadcast through a huge speaker mounted at the very bottom of an elaborate cave system, the songs careening back and forth and picking up more and more reverb and echo with every bounce, until they become this blissed out beautiful blur. Thick buzzing single guitar notes spread out into wavery fields of murky muted twang, which wrap themselves serpent like around the equally disembodied vocals. Imagine a field recording of ghosts performing ancient folk songs, a whispery thrum, so barely audible, that it's nearly impossible to capture, but once it is, and the sound is turned up enough to be audible to the human ear, it becomes this gorgeously distorted smear of sound.
What else can we say about Liz Harris and her Grouper project? We've hardly heard anything this beautiful and mysterious ever. EVER!
Absolutely and emphatically recommended.
Limited to 300 copies! We got 30 copies, and once these are gone, it will be gone forever.
What a Blast from the Past! Probably the weirdest record produced by Giorgio Moroder, Nina Hagen's 1984 release Fearless has some of the craziest new-wave-disco tracks EVER made. Charting with "New York, New York", Hagen's tribute to that city's underground club culture, the rest of the record is a no-holds-barred romp of excess glamour and zany electro-funk, topped with her trademark bi-polar vocal range. There's even a cameo by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (man, they've been around for a while!). If you've been rocking lately to Maurice Fulton and/or his crazy "Paris Hilton" singing wife, Mu, or any of the Tiger Sushi G.D.M. series of past and present club jams, you might want to take an indulgent gander here. Guaranteed that the unique vocal stylings and punk-funk freakiness will have you saying WTF?! pretty darn quick. Glad to have this reissued! Also be sure to check out her Nunsexmonkrock album as well if you're new to Nina.
Now available domestically (this album was actually released last year in the U.K. of Rough Trade, and
a single was released on iTunes in September)! Includes two bonus tracks (covers of Guided By Voices' Postal Blowfish" and Buddy Holly's "Well... All Right").
Takin' a break from your very recognizable, very popular band to do a solo album comes with its own list of baggage requirements. Sure it's pretty much a given that the album is going to be met with an automatic built-in adoring audience. Most of said band's fans are simply gonna scoop it up without any hesitation. However, if you wanna: 1.) keep the favor of said fans; 2.) win legions of your own admirers; and 3.) not be totally chastised by critics, you've kinda got to do something completely different without sounding completely alienating. Don't know if all that concerns Strokes' guitarist Albert Hammond Jr., but On Yours To Keep he is pretty much playin' safely by those rules. He's made a solid sweet'n'easy pop record filled with lots of his unmistakable jangleful guitars and an occasional horn. It sits in comfortably alongside recent albums by Money Mark and Sean Lennon. Most immediately evident are the pervading pop influences of Brian Wilson and the Beatles with a little Sound & Vision era Bowie and Uncle Tupelo-esque scruffy country rock rounding off Hammond's overall sound. For those looking for one, the sixth song "101" sounds the closest to Strokes territory, albeit gentler and prettier with better posture. Hammond's earnest, unshaven vocals are sort of a cross between Jeff Tweedy and Spoon's Britt Daniel. He's brought in a few ringers to ice the cake: the abovementioned Lennon as well as Ben Kweller, Fountains Of Wayne's Jody Porter, The Mooney Suzuki's Sammy Davis Jr., and his bandmates Julian Casablancas, Josh Lattanzi and Matt Romano.
What do you get when you take members of Gong, William Burroughs, Robert Wyatt's 5 year old son Sam and probably some pretty amazing drugs and mix 'em all up? The answer is THIS, Obsolete, a lost psych/prog masterpiece from 1971. Dashiell Hedayat's second record found him recruiting Daevid Allen and Gillie Smith from Gong to round out the lineup of his band, and began work on what would turn out to be a crazy twisty and turny cosmic psych/prog epic, from start to finish. There are moments of structure and actual fleshed out songs and melodies but there are also of course a non stop litany of amazing outbursts, squeaks, rantings, yells, and cutups. But what makes the record so great is how it can go from manic acid soaked freakout to stunning beauty in the blink of an eye. There are guest appearances from William S. Burroughs, the the cooing of Sam Wyatt (Robert's son who was 5 years old at the time), but ultimately this record is fueled by the great pairing of Gong and Hedayat, whose vocals run the spectrum from beautifully sung, to subtly spoken to wild and deranged.
The LP was originally released on the legendary avant-garde label Shandar, an amazing label out of France in the '70s who put out records by folks like Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Stockhausen, Steve Reich, Sunny Murray, Pandit Pran Nath, Cecil Taylor, and more. Obsolete is such a perfect snapshot of early 70's free rock exploration. There are moments that are confusing, moments that are absurd, moments that are HEAVY and moments that are utterly profound. Hedayat sums it up perfectly in the original liner notes: "This record must be played as loud as possible, must be heard as stoned as impossible..." And whether or not you are actually taking his words to heart, when you listen to Obsolete, it's pretty impossible not to feel like you're on some kind of wonderful and deranged trip. Recommended!
It's the return of British sludge bludgeoners Hey Colossus, whose prior releases, including a split LP with Japanese doomsters Dot [.], we've recommended. Rhythmic and rumbling, this band plays a heavy hybrid of noisy punk and post rock, clearly conversant with both the unlikely extremes of krautrock and death metal. On Project: Death, the influence of the latter results in parts of such tracks as "On The Pleasure Of Hating" for short stretches approaching the pummelling tranciness of the Boredoms' Super Roots 3 (to reference a reissue recently reviewed). Shouting vox and down-tuned guitars also put these guys in league with such not-metal-but-even-scarier acts as Burmese and Unsane, their grinding grooves awash with an almost psychedelic level of FX (someone in the band plays nothing but Korg Kaoss Pad, apparently!). Menacing, murky, massive, murderous.
Who could possibly be a match for Mick Barr's (Crom-Tech, Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilm) insane avant sci-fi guitar shredding? We would have thought no one... But it makes sense, that the only true match for Barr's fretboard wiggery would be Zach Hill, a sort of Yngwie Malmsteen of the drum kit. A spastic octopoidal drum freak, who can cram a million more beats into a song than the busiest drummer you can think of. Not sure why no one thought of getting these guys together sooner. Their first meeting took place on last year's Shred Earthship, and now we have ZH/MB Volume 2.
And the results, much like on Shred Earthship are just what you would have expected. A mind blowing, ear shredding, speaker melting squiggle and noodle shredfest. Dense squalls of wildly dueling drum splatter and guitar freakout. Often note for note. Is it free jazz? Is it avant metal? Is it outrageous instrumental wankery? Well yeah, it sort of is, ALL of those. Ultra complex, incredibly convoluted, might be a stretch to call these songs, instead they seem to be exercises in instrumental dexterity, each one an over the top psychedelic metal freakout that has the listener panting and about to pass out after only thirty seconds, lord knows how these guys can keep it up for a whole record. The opener is the jazziest, due in no small part to some surprisingly melodic sax, but after that, it's one on one, drums vs. guitar, each wrapped around the other in some sort of insane ultimate fighting chokehold, a non stop barrage of notes and beats... imagine that someone had been collecting every note ever played, and every drum beat, and just piling them up in a huge dumpster, they're tiny, they don't take up that much room, but a trillion, or a million billion trillion, have that dumpster just about full. Now imagine being strapped down to a huge slab of black concrete, with strange metallic implements holding your ears wide open, then imagine that entire dumpster being upended and all of those notes and beats showering down on you like some sort of musical avalanche or metallic hailstorm. Sound good? Well then, my friend, this is indeed the record for you...
Packaged in killer white cloud on bright yellow sleeves, most are on black vinyl, a few are on yellow, so you might just get lucky. But don't ask, we said: YOU. MIGHT. GET. LUCKY.
Limited to 303 copies!!! We got a handful, and will NOT be able to get more.
There couldn't be a more appropriate name for this Swedish duo, as it's unlikely you'll ever hear anything colder or frostier. This is harsh and frostbitten, depressive and miserable black metal. Full length number two, after last year's Veins, Kold takes their monochromatic miserablism a step further, two tracks, two riffs, okay, maybe four at the most, one track twenty seven minutes long, the other nineteen, each one a loping midtempo buzz, the drums a relentless plod, the guitar a buzz so blurry and indistinct it almost sounds like a drone, and the vocals, well, you thought they were weird on Veins, they're even more strangled and bizarre here, somewhere between an Orcish death rattle and some sort of beast vomiting up its last meal, sometimes mumbling in a strange mewling grunt, other times a leather lunged glass throated growl, you can almost feel the blood and spittle. But it's the perfect compliment to the music. Hateful, sorrowful, suicidal, depressive, the sound of Kold is just that, so cold and lonely, emotional and intense. About three quarters of the way through the first track, the distorted guitar drops out leaving just a jangly clean guitar, drums and vocals, which is unexpected for sure, but ends up sounding strangely emotionally charged. Soon the vocals drop out too and it's just drums and clean guitar and it almost sounds like some outsider bedroom indie rock, before the buzz kicks back in and the track unwinds in a Burzumic blaze of frosty buzz.
The second track may be even weirder, a blown out buzzy riff, and even doomier rhythmic plod, and the vocals are completely unhinged, falsetto screams, what sounds like that weird breathing-in-backwards singing, growling and grunting and shrieking and wailing hysterically, all over a surprisingly lilting minor key dirge, buzzing and droning, epic yet surprisingly melodic, with another surprise right at the end, a three minute clean-guitar and drum coda, simple garage-y drumming, sort of shuffling and crashing beneath some truly moody jangly strum.
