Ruff Draft is a deluxe 2-disc reissue of a 2002 self-released EP that captured a sea change in the late MC/producer's career. Having had two major works shelved by his embattled label MCA, and with his regular group, Slum Village, on extended hiatus, JayDee formed his own record label, changed his moniker to J Dilla and 10 years into a career as an MC and top producer for major labels went completely DIY. Attempting to get back to a direct, from-the-street feel, he made all the tracks "straight from the mother-fucking cassette" and brought back into play his favorite childhood pastime of making laborious looping tape edits from samples culled from his enviable record collection and multi-tracking the loops together and rapping over them. But it's in his choices of loops and edits that make him unique. Serpentine piano flourishes, backwards psych guitar, sci-fi keyboard crescendos, snippets of phrases, all glossed with reverb and stoner beats guaranteed to hook even the most casual of listeners. It's this alchemically charged attention to sound building that would lead to Donuts, his finest work to date. Since the original Ruff Draft was a limited vinyl only release that was little heard outside Detroit, it's nice to see it get the full deluxe treatment, even if the extent of the material is a bit slight (each disc is under 30 minutes). The first disc is the original 8-song EP with 2 bonus tracks, one of which is "Wild" featuring a kid hilariously singing Slade's "Cum On Feel The Noize". The second disc is the instrumental versions, which is a smart move to affordably package these together instead of releasing them separately. Those unfamiliar with Dilla's MC style, it's true he's a stronger producer, but to his credit, his style does not detract from any of the cuts (although we could've used less "Ruff Draft y'all's") and there are tracks here that work better on the vocal versions such as "Nothing Like This" featured recently on the Stones Throw's Chrome Children compilation, and "The $", whose loop is almost too brash and sketchy to enjoy on its own. As for the instrumental versions, it's nice to hear the closing loop of "Shouts" which makes us think of a hip-hop Steve Reich or Terry Riley's early tape loop repetitions. We could seriously listen to this track for hours uninterrupted and be totally happy. While posthumously credited as Dilla's lost masterpiece, it's more of an exciting document of a defining moment that might appeal more to folks already in love with his later production style than to new converts unfamiliar with his history. But definitely a worthwhile and satisfying listen!
Brand new full length from one of our favorite new outfits, the strangely named Jasper TX, the work of one man, a Mr. Dag Rosenqvist, who as you might have presumed, is not, in fact from Texas. And actually, based on the music of Jasper TX, it's a bit difficult to even begin to guess where Mr. Rosenqvist hails from. One minute we're tempted to suggest some tiny village in the Alps, surrounded on all sides by snowy peaks and lush verdant forests. Moments later, we'd guess he was from the desert, existing amidst miles and miles of wide open space, the sky threatening to swallow the world whole. Another theory would be that Jasper TX comes from nowhere, or at least, nowhere we would recognize, an alternate universe perhaps, and alien land, somewhere different, dark, mysterious, separated from our world by a thin gauzy veil, so as we glimpse into that world we see and hear a reflection of our world, but one that is slightly skewed, obfuscated, fuzzy and blurry and indistinct. Which is precisely why we seem to love it so much.
Like many of his sonic brethren, Rosenqvist takes simple bits of pop music, and pulls them apart, wrapping them in bits of crackle and hum, and setting them amidst soft warm melodies and dreamy shimmering soundscapes. A sort of abstract, spaced out ambient post rock might come close. But it's not really that simple to describe. It's effervescent, weightless, dreamlike, but at the same time, dark and heavy and intense. Each song a struggle between the two. A subtle tension that imbues the songs with emotion and urgency, even at their most blissed out and laid back.
A Darkness, as the title implies, might just be a tad bit darker than past outings, although the first track might not immediately let on. it's a doleful warm summer afternoon drift of soft focus post rock guitar, all minor key and meandering melody, floating along a slow flow of strange static and buzzing hum. But after that, it's a slow descent into a darker place, thick washes of warm drone and whirling winds of hiss and buzz, looped vocal snippets, strange beeping and distant industrial grind, before breaking through the black sky in a burst of effulgent bliss, still minor key and miserable, but briefly unhindered by the black buzz of the preceding 8 minutes. The next track is a desert-y drift, like Godspeed covering Calexico, harmonicas and little bits of twang hover amidst a dense reverbed soundscape, like a blown out and stripped down Galaxie 500. Beyond that, the sound continues to darken, huge billowing clouds of low end rumble and metallic shimmer, muted FX drenched snatches of distant piano, peppered with strange scrapes and scratches, footsteps? Someone digging? All very mysterious and haunting.
The record ends with the epic 20+ minute "Some Things Broken, Some Things Lost", a glistening slow motion drift, everything sparkling and glimmering, crystalline guitars smeared into long slow streaks of sound, melodies muted and blurred, gorgeous and ethereal, before transforming into a skipping crackly glitchscape, a whirring minimal drone hovers beneath a storm cloud of record crackle and a skipping record rhythm, before slowly blossoming into world of warm melody, a sonic expanse streaked with oranges and yellows, dark burnished reds, guitars flittering like little birds, just bits of melody against a stained glass sky. So lovely...
Not sure if the title of this super limited cd-r has anything to do with the OTHER Jasper TX release elsewhere on this list, although we think it sort of must, c'mon, this is D + A, the other disc is called A Darkness, hmmm... Or maybe it's a play on "DNA"...
Anyway, D + A follows a similar sonic path as A Darkness in that the sound of Jasper TX, for these releases at least, seems to be growing darker and more ominous, everything painted in deep blues and rich browns and of course lots and lots of black.
The two lengthy tracks on D + A are ultra minimal, and surprisingly smooth and hi-fi. Part of what we loved about the other Jasper TX releases was the crumbling lo-fi aspect, the hiss and crackle and sonic imperfections wrapped around the glimmering glistening melodies inside. But Jasper TX do wear it well, this new smoother sound, and these tracks benefit, glowing darkly from within, shimmering and spreading out like barely there ripples on the surface of some massive body of oceanic sound. This is definitely the most minimal we've heard Jasper TX, and we're loving it... there's a lot of subtle overtones happening (a la Niblock) and the results are truly divine. Subtle for sure, but so so lovely.
Ultra limited of course, already out of print as far as we know, we got about 30 copies but those will definitely be gone in a flash...
Packaged in cool mini hand painted jackets in a plastic sleeve with a printed sticker.
When we think of Nashville, maybe tweaked out art damaged techno is not the first thing that comes to mind. But lucky for us, some pretty fucked up and great damaged electronic pop IS in fact coming out of the country music capitol of the world, courtesy of Jensen Sportag. With cover art and guest vocals on a track by Ariel Pink you can begin to imagine what kind of wonderful weird world Jensen Sportag inhabits. And any link to the totally nuts Ariel Pink should give you an idea of what's in store. Citing influences from Sun City Girls to Autechre to R. Steevie Moore, this is most definitely outsider techno in all its warped glory. While electronic music is jam packed with way too many posers aiming to make the cleanest, the crispest, the dreamiest and the smoothest music around, it's so damn refreshing to hear someone remember that for the most part electronic music is best when it's cheap, sleazy and out of control!
If you were expecting something along the lines of Seu Jorge's wonderful covers of David Bowie tunes that graced the soundtrack to The Life Aquatic, we're afraid you might be sadly disappointed. We sure were. Our giddy excitement to hear some new Seu Jorge was immediately extinguished when we realized that this new live album of his 2005 concert in Montreaux falls completely within the realm of 'adult contemporary'. Sure Jorge's voice is as gorgeous as ever, but whereas his Bowie covers showcased his tastefully light, mood-setting touch, this live cd comes across melodramatic, slick and heavy handed. Yikes.
Although this came out just last year, we've been lacking this in our racks for some time now 'cause the label had sold through 'em all and needed to do a re-press. Well, now, thankfully for the legions of lovers of all this fabulous Finnish free-folk stuff, Fonal has put this gem back into circulation! So queue up if you missed it before. Here's the review we wrote on list #191 when it first came out:
The 18 tracks found here are a riotous festival of Finnish folk-psych. A pagan parade in a forest glade. Abstract, druggy, dark, delightful... We're always entranced by Kemialliset Ystavat's damaged improv folk mystery, and Alkuharka is yet another reason for us to keep saving our pennies in order to afford a trip to Finland (lucky Andee's been there once already). Anyone into anything along the lines of Tower Recordings, Thuja, Trad Gras Och Stenar, Six Organs Of Admittance, the whole Broken Face 'zine scene (to whom Kemialliset mainman Jan Anderzen used to contribute much art) will want/need this. Horns flutes guitars drones bells tapes voices feedback. Weezing buzzing bliss. With contributions from honorary Finns Dylan Nyoukis (Prick Decay) and Campbell Kneale (Birchville Cat Motel), Jan and company are the true underground krautrock heirs, making music so long haired that it's furrier than any Animal Collective. Music from the soundtrack to The Wickermoomin, perhaps?
If we didn't know that this album was brand new we could say "they don't make 'em like this anymore!" We'd probably even put money down on a bet that this was a long-lost indie rock album from the late '80s / early '90s. Yup, the sounds on Buncha Beans comes straight out of the wee hours of that period's college radio dial which is when/where this band first surfaced. Although Ethan Buckler (very early Tweez era bassist for Slint) originally intended King Kong to be something of a dance band, we've gotta say, their music is quite possibly some of the most untypical, unconventional disjointed dance music around. Go on, you try to dance to it! Maybe hop around in stocking feet in the privacy of your living room. Buckler's peculiar, atonal, almost spoken vocals, a cross between Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson and Fred Schneider of the B-52s (whom Buckler apparently modeled his King Kong sound after), push the tunes even further off the dance floor. A quirkuliscious, occasionally facetious, out-in-left-field kind of listen.
Regardless of which verb in this album's title you choose to exercise when addressing Montreal, Quebec's Land Of Talk -- we opted to cheer! -- we're sure you'll agree that these three young pop upstarts are an absolute deadringer for fellow Canadians Metric. They certainly seem equally influenced by those punchy '90s gals Veruca Salt, Elastica and Garbage too. They pack each of these seven songs with edgy energy, crunchy guitars and vibrant female vocals. Good good good!
Yippeee! Ted Leo And The Pharmacists are back!
The opening track kicks things into gear with sharp crunchy guitars that penetrate right to the roots of your hair and teeth(!). Said guitars are feverishly strummed atop a runaway train drumbeat... oh, and don't forget the handclaps! NEVER! As always, Leo's sound is very mod inspired a la The Jam with a little eighties power pop vocal flavor (Elvis Costello and Rick Springfield) and hard rock (lots of Thin Lizzy) in there. That said, Living With The Living keeps us on our toes with a couple twists that caught us by surprise -- three of 'em being the bizarre jig in the sixth tune "A Bottle Of Buckie", the fiery rock blast of "Bomb.Repeat.Bomb" and the unpredictable reggae turn on "The Unwanted Things". A neat balance of boyish charm, winking pop hooks, and anthemic balls-out rawk power!
Bonus alert! The first pressing of the cd includes a five-song cdep, and the initial vinyl edition includes a coupon for a free MP3 download of the entire album plus some extra non-album MP3s! More Leo to love!
Black Metal. No, wait. Sludge-doom. Wait, no, it's post-rock. Huh? Seattle's Lesbian (who do themselves no favors with their dumb name, although they used to be called Lesbian Witch, not sure if that's better or worse) are, to us, pleasingly confusional and compelling when given a listen, their extended, epic songs -- 4 tracks in 1 hour here, folks -- veering from sheer metallic violence to moody melody to shoegazing stoner space-outs... it's like Wolves In The Throne Room one moment, Pelican or Isis the next. And it's great. Definitely another "heavy" winner from the eccentric Holy Mountain label, fresh from their successes with the likes of Om and Mammatus, two other question-mark-metal bands with heady, hypnotic abilities.
Their throat-torn vocals and the weighty riffage argue for Lesbian's status as metallers, while the many passages of quiet blissfulness reveal a surprisingly sensitive side, just as emotionally effective, each opposed aspect of their music enhancing the power and beauty of the other via Lesbian's devastating dynamics and psychedelic synergy. Recommended!
Hmmm, sure sounds like these fellers have been chewing on something a bit more potent than licorice roots! While we're not sure about Shades Of Streamers' anti-inflammatory and expectorant properties we can confirm that the sound is strangely melted and slightly druggy. Originally signed to the more than appropriate New York art rock label Shimmy Disc (home to Bongwater, King Missile, early Boredoms, Ruins and Ween), Edward Moyse, Arthur Marks and Dave Milsom have been making experimental folk rock music for many moons that wavers and roams in the zone between Ariel Pink and Ween. Disarmingly warped.
We first discovered the band Lifelover a year or two back and were kind of knocked for a loop. Their first record (which we have yet to list) was on the same label as Bone Awl, Urfaust, Planet Aids, Vrolok, Emit, Gauhaert, so we were sort of expecting some bizarre black metal, and while it was indeed sort of black metal, it was most definitely bizarre. Album art featuring multiple photos of a naked young Scandinavian woman, covered in blood and laying in the grass in the middle of a bright summer day, the music inside was just as unexpected. A sort of dark metallic pop. A buzzing blasting mournful melancholy sound that reminded us mostly of Katatonia, albeit a bit more damaged and demented.
The new record, Erotik, is even stranger, and sounds even MORE like some strange variation of Katatonia. Again the root of the sound is a dark loping minor key melancholia, buzzing guitars, not so much black as grey, monotone vocals way down in the mix, simple drumming, bits of extra percussion, but most notably, lots of piano, a sparse minor key plinking spread across most of the songs, or strange chordal clusters, WAY up in the mix surfacing within driving riffs or amidst droning spacious shimmer. It's definitely that more-metal Cure sound, also a bit like Beyond Dawn, that sort of gloomy eighties vibe, gothy and depressive, moody and dark and spacious, with super catchy and epic melodies. But, and this is a very big BUT, Lifelover are SOOOOOO much more fucked up.
Some songs begin as droning doleful midtempo rockers, but then the vocals begin to come unhinged, more manic, more on-the-verge, soon the singing has transformed into hysterical shrieks and maniacal howls. Sometimes the band will drop out and all there will be left are swoonsome strings, with some strange muttering over the top, sometimes the muttering is backwards. Once in a while there is straight up indie rock jangly guitar, often paired with double kick drums??! And piano too. And did we mention harmonica? Strange samples too, people talking, and children... weird synths, muted almost techno-like rhythms, reverb drenched pianos drifting in space. And then there are handclaps. Yep, handclaps, in songs that are so dour and dark, handclaps are the last thing you expect. But they work. In some really strange way, they sound perfect. Every song is sort of like that, 'normal' on the surface, but always slightly twisted. So yeah, simple moody midtempo blackened pop, but with piano, and demented vocals and handclaps... and lots of um... backwards stuff... especially...
In the 11 minute final track, the amazing "Nitlott", which begins with almost cheerful sounding piano, simple soaring strings, an almost straight up ballad, with hushed vocals, spoken in Swedish, that get more agitated but never quite flip out like elsewhere. This goes on for nearly 5 minutes before the metal kicks in, but it's not any old metal, it's backwards, the guitars being sucked backwards with that distinct sssshhhhhwwwooo before each note, the reversed decay now transformed into the note's attack. A chugging riff turned into a smeared metal blur, the drums a weird backwards sssffft sssffft sssffft, with occasional stretches where the riff is flipped forward briefly, before the band launches back into its strange backwards march. The whole thing ending with a delicate minor key guitar melody hovering and then dreamily drifting off. So awesome. And so weird. Maybe our new favorite black metal record. Then again, this is barely even a black metal record... maybe it would be a bit more accurate to call Erotik our new favorite black-depressive-backwards-piano-jangle-bliss-drone-techno-pop-experi-metal record... Absolutely!
Shimmy up, down and all around! The first few playful bars of Little Fuzzy's sophomore album made us think we'd stumbled onto Sesame Street... but Sesame Street for grown-ups, mind you! This SF gang keep on rollin' out their pop infused groovy goodness. Hey folks try this one on for size... new genre: 'twee funk'! Little Fuzzy, we thusly dub thee.
Last time we listed a limited edition cd by Japan's LSD-march from the Archive label, we sold out of it in about, oh, two seconds. That was the Live cd that came our way (and went) last month. Well here we go again -- but this time we were able to score more copies than before. So we figure our stock of Empty Rubious Red will last, say, four to five seconds. Why are y'all so grabby with the LSD-march? Is it because of the cool packaging with which Archive always takes great pains? Is it because there's only 500 pressed? Maybe... but of course it's also 'cause if you love heavy duty distorto guitar psych in the vein of cult '70s Japanese heroes Les Rallizes Denudes. And you do get that here on the dronily intense, trippy title track, in spades. But for much of the rest of the album you also get the kinder, gentler side of LSD-march, with Shinsuke Michishita handling vocals and guitar and bass and percussion and whistling (yes, there's some whistling!) all by himself, joined by drummer Ikuro Takahashi on just two of the tracks. It's quite intimate, really, maybe even romantic -- these are love songs, aren't they? The lyrics are in Japanese but the titles "I Have Been Saving My Love For You" and "I Only Have Hands For Hold You" (sic) sure sound like love songs. Dunno about "Nude And Bizarre" though. A gorgeous late night listen, echoey and emotional. Spacious, slow, drowsy. Melancholic, melodic. Compared to the destructive, amped-up attack of that Live album, the beautiful balladry here is like night and day... a mistily overcast day with rays of sun glinting between the clouds.
Nice packaging and graphics as usual (a clear plastic insert overlays the cd, which rests on a nub affixed to a card printed with curls of dark hair similar to the Live cd, if you ever saw one). Mastered by Khanate's James Plotkin, also as per usual with Archive releases. Ok, 'nuff said. Recommended!
Two fine record reference works on the list this week, there's the Encyclopedia of Swedish Progressive Music (reviewed below), and this one, a tome devoted American private press musical weirdness from the psychedelic era; its subtitle is "Guide To Underground Sounds 1965-1982". And yes, it's an A-to-Z of bands, each release getting an opinionated write-up, sometimes from more than one reviewer, who don't always agree! Not just psych bands, but also folk-rock, hard rock, "incredibly strange music", sunshine pop, all sorts of stuff. As long as it's rare and obscure and has collectors salivating...
Here's a few of the bands included: Anonymous, BF Trike, Cromagnon, David Allen Coe, Euphoria, Francisco, Josephus, New Hobbits, Charles Mason, Peace Pipe, Ya Ho Wha 13... that's a very small fraction (hey I bet Fraction is in here... let's see, yep) of what you'll find. There's literally hundreds and of entries. Hours of browsing to be had.
In addition to this "Acid Archive" of reviews, which include discographical info on both the original releases -and- (where applicable) reissues, there's some other special features to this volume. You'll find top tens and "fave raves" from the book's various contributors, also a buying guide for collectors on a budget, and a forward by Mike Stax of Ugly Things magazine -- and if you're a dedicated Ugly Things reader, you definitely want this book!!
15 years in the making, this is as authoritative and indispensable as it gets, when it comes to weird music from way back. It's not quite as deluxe as that Swedish Encyclopedia (and not as expensive, either), but still really nicely put together. Paperback, 11 3/4" x 8 1/4", 298 pages, three columns per page of text, lots of cool b&w graphics (album covers, record labels, promo photos). Trippy!!
Despite their moniker, Mas Rapido! aren't necessarily a speedy bunch. Were we anticipating some feverish punk popsters? Maybe so, but no, this veteran Seattle pop duo Donna Esposito and Frank Bednash (formerly known as Toothpaste 2000 and prior to that incarnation they were Cowboy And Spin Girl) take their own sweet time crafting toothsome, psych-tinged pop songs with a definite retro '60s feel. Much of their latest album Pity Party seems modeled after the top notch song craft of Big Star and Elephant Six which is a good thing in our books!
Holy crap this band SLAYS. What (the death metal band) Nile are to Egypt, this black metal outfit is to Iraq... That is, Melechesh consider themselves to play "Mesopotamian metal", lyrically focused on the mythology and mysticism of ancient Sumer. Except that, moreso than Nile, the music of Melechesh more fully incorporates influences from the traditional folk musics of the Middle East. So they're kind of an extreme metal version of the '60s Turkish psych bands we love so much, the garagey fuzz guitars replaced with downtuned distorted METAL guitars, making bellydance music with blastbeats. And, unlike Nile who are Americans, the guys in Melechesh actually all originally hail from the region (they're Arabs, emigrated to Europe). Well, they used to have a Texan in the band, the illustrious occultic drumbeast known as Proscriptor (of Absu fame) but on this album he's been replaced with a new drummer, Xul. Proscriptor's a tough act to follow but this Xul guy manages to do so quite well! Wow.
We've raved about 'em before, so hopefully you've already got some Melechesh in your collection and are as excited as we are about this new release, which is from the get-go a raging maelstrom of vicious riffage and masterful metal composition. Crushing AND catchy, technical, and very very METAL, yet with that extra Middle Eastern X-factor that makes it even better in our book, and allows the band to slow down for extra-ethnic, atmospheric interludes like "The Scribes Of Kur". Really, there's nothing we can find fault with here at all. A seriously great Middle Eastern metal assault, which even includes a cover of a song by a (Middle Eastern influenced) Canadian pop band, The Tea Party, weirdly, and cooly, enough. It's a shame that it's impossible to think about the ancient cultures and traditions of Middle East, and Iraq in particular, that Melechesh drawns such inspiration from, without of course dwelling on the current fucked up situation there, which sadly hasn't gotten any better since the release of Melechesh's last album back in 2003...
Ultra underground noisemakers Graveyards have a bunch of stuff out, all of it so limited none of it has made it into AQ, BUT, we managed to get a little handful of these, the most recent release from Melee, who as far as we can tell is the rhythm section of Graveyards with some added man power on trumpet(!).
Won't get into it too much as we only have a few of these, but Melee, are pretty great, doing a sort of abstract ambient thing, weird little electronic squiggles, distant hums and rumbles, low end drones and streaks of static and tape hiss, disembodied melodies and melodic fragments, drifting amidst slow shimmering soundscapes of ultra minimal buzz and throb. It's actually pretty dreamy, and as the band sort of blisses out, it does sort of sound like some VERY minimal abstract Taj Mahal Travellers thing, abstract and organic, simple, but rife with layers of sound and constantly shifting overtones. Some serious, super abstract, minimal psych dronedrift for sure.
Packaged in hand painted soft plastic tape cases, with paste on hand screened artwork, with a photocopied insert, each tape also with screened label and hand painted.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. We have 5 or 6...
A few years back, Kiyoshi Mizutani ventured into the Tanzawa mountain range located to the southwest of Tokyo in order to document the sounds of that very isolated region. In the liner notes to this album, Mizutani explains that this region enjoys a complex history with centuries worth of military endeavors and legends including one tragedy which Mizutani alludes to about "the losing army's princess." Needless to say, the mountains may have been of strategic importance to any number of rival factions; but by now, their remoteness and desolation harbors only a small population. He focuses his attention upon three aspects of those mountains: the natural (which is the dominant voice of the Tanzawan environment), the ceremonial folklore of the people, and the residual noise of the man-made. Mizutani's love of bird sounds was evident on one of his early sound works simply entitled Bird Songs; and the spirited chatter of many a bird dots Mizutani's field recordings. Crickets, cicadas, and plenty of insect choruses also feature into Scenery Of The Border, as does a broad range of watery recordings from quiet drips from a misty rain to the immersive white noise of waterfalls. The few recordings that feature a human presence are of restrained Shinto and Buddhist ceremonies, which Mizutani mentions have rarely been heard outside of that region. It's these ritualistic stompings and hushed bits of chanting that stand amongst the highlights of this incredible field recording document.
As of spring 2007, the nomadic lifestyle of Michael Northam may land the American born sound artist in New Delhi where he might manage a media arts facility or he might take up the humble calling of a gardener in the south of France, where he could find plenty of inspiration for his ecologically tinged compositions. The excitement, fear, and instability of not really knowing where housing might come from has been the existence for Mr. Northam for many years now, and he's always managed to build an impressively cohesive body of work through composition, performance, and exhibition. The Automnal 2003 disc was originally a self-published CD-R which Northam gave to his friends and colleagues as a testament to the benefits, joys, trials, and failures to his chosen lifestyle. During the 24 months between August 2001 and the autumn of 2003, Northam picked up and moved his studio 13 times across Europe and North America; and the three extended tracks on Automnal represent three particular places along that journey. The first track opens with a glassy drone of sustained string vibration which sound remarkably like the more pastoral tones of Phill Niblock. Aquatic rumblings and fluttering patterns emerge as complementary elements to the Northam's droning infinitude that aptly fits Northam's geographical subject, a glacier on the Switzerland / France border. The second track is my (Jim's) favorite piece that Northam has created to date. With a gaping low-end drone beautifully stacked with what seem to be choral harmonics built from the environmental recordings of crickets near a stream, Northam offers a breaktaking, nocturnal piece of activated ambience much like Zoviet France's Shadow Thief Of The Sun or Gas' Konigsforst minus the motorik rhythm, of course. For the finale of Automnal 2003, Northam presents a sinewy vibrational hypnosis that's quite similar in frequency to the first track, yet he manages to dislocate the bleary ambience with a subcutaneous stream of crackle and static. A wonderful record!
There is a certain level of possessiveness that seems to go hand in hand with being an independent music enthusiast. Sometimes this possessiveness turns to snobbery in thought or can often be expressed in comments like: "they were never as good as their first 7 inch" or "I only like the OLD stuff", etc... It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but part of it is definitely the fact that discovering cool bands is a lot of work, and when you do discover a band, even though you're eager to share them with all your friends, you're NOT eager to share them with the rest of the world. The rest of the world discover their new bands by simply turning the radio to some random top 40 or even lower 100's college station, while the indie music obsessive is reading zines and going to shows and checking out opening bands and reading music blogs or whatever. Sometimes the indie music nerd (okay, snob) can feel ripped off when their special "find" becomes popular. It's safe to say that Modest Mouse is no longer a special find (if your aforementioned possessiveness is contained check out the American Idol contestant's cover of "Float On" for a Mustang commercial; if your possessiveness is not so easily contained, steer clear...it might make you blow your top!)
Most of us remember the first time our bodies came alive to the sound of Modest Mouse. For some of us no record will ever compare to This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About or Lonesome Crowded West (or maybe even actually, their first 7 inch!), while others will find themselves flailing uncontrollably to the angsty lispy yells of Isaac Brock for the first time with the band's latest, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. Brock's folky growl may be the only thing that has remained constant over the years as the band's instrumentation has turned from raw ruckus to structured madness. The highly anticipated recruitment of The Smith's guitarist Johnny Marr is subtly felt throughout the band's most recent project and The Shin's James Mercer contributes some nice airy backing vocals on "Florida" and "We've Got Everything," but it is clear that Brock still holds the reigns...and let's them go at exactly the right moment. Whether this is the first or fifth full length you've heard by Modest Mouse, we think you'll be pleased. And who would have EVER thought Modest Mouse would be #1 on the Billboard charts?!?! Wow.
This limited edition cd packaging includes a deluxe slipcase and 32-page color booklet!
There is a certain level of possessiveness that seems to go hand in hand with being an independent music enthusiast. Sometimes this possessiveness turns to snobbery in thought or can often be expressed in comments like: "they were never as good as their first 7 inch" or "I only like the OLD stuff", etc... It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but part of it is definitely the fact that discovering cool bands is a lot of work, and when you do discover a band, even though you're eager to share them with all your friends, you're NOT eager to share them with the rest of the world. The rest of the world discover their new bands by simply turning the radio to some random top 40 or even lower 100's college station, while the indie music obsessive is reading zines and going to shows and checking out opening bands and reading music blogs or whatever. Sometimes the indie music nerd (okay, snob) can feel ripped off when their special "find" becomes popular. It's safe to say that Modest Mouse is no longer a special find (if your aforementioned possessiveness is contained check out the American Idol contestant's cover of "Float On" for a Mustang commercial; if your possessiveness is not so easily contained, steer clear...it might make you blow your top!)
Most of us remember the first time our bodies came alive to the sound of Modest Mouse. For some of us no record will ever compare to This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About or Lonesome Crowded West (or maybe even actually, their first 7 inch!), while others will find themselves flailing uncontrollably to the angsty lispy yells of Isaac Brock for the first time with the band's latest, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. Brock's folky growl may be the only thing that has remained constant over the years as the band's instrumentation has turned from raw ruckus to structured madness. The highly anticipated recruitment of The Smith's guitarist Johnny Marr is subtly felt throughout the band's most recent project and The Shin's James Mercer contributes some nice airy backing vocals on "Florida" and "We've Got Everything," but it is clear that Brock still holds the reigns...and let's them go at exactly the right moment. Whether this is the first or fifth full length you've heard by Modest Mouse, we think you'll be pleased. And who would have EVER thought Modest Mouse would be #1 on the Billboard charts?!?! Wow.
This is the normal version but for all you super fans. We also have the deluxe version of this album which comes with a slipcover and 32 page booklet.
It's been a while since we heard from NOTHingness records, but they're back, after a year-long hiatus, with a killer slab of heathen funereal slow motion dooooooooooooom. By now we shouldn't really need to go into too much detail about all those extra 'o's but, needless to say, Danske Hymer Til Morket is massive, and glacial, sloooooooow, and ultra heavy, a tarpit trudge through an expansive landscape of warm washed out synths, slow plodding drums, and downtuned distorted guitars, spread out like the thick black wings of some beast, completely blotting out the sun and smothering the earth in thick pitch black shadow.
Unlike a lot of the funeral doom we've been digging lately, the sound of Morkheim is actually quite melodic, reminiscent of the classic UK doom bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride, but of course slowed waaaay down and dipped in filth, left to crawl bloody and broken across a soundscape of lurching, slithering rumble and buzz.
The keyboards that wash over everything here definitely remind us of ultradoom legends Skepticism, and it's easy to hear Moss and Esoteric and the like, but it's the melodies, and the synths, and the strange mix of the classic and the modern, that results in some strange hybrid, epic and majestic, dark and droning, brutal and black, that makes Danske Hymer Til Morket so interesting. Just check out the album closer, an all acoustic Viking lament, with just simple fingerpicked guitars and soaring majestic vocals, that manages to somehow sound just as heavy and intense as the trudging pummel of the rest of the record.
LIMITED TO 111 COPIES!!!
Straight up, Satan lovin' black metal here from previously obscure necro Norwegians Neetzach, who piqued our interest 'cause they've got drummer Dirge Rep in the band, he who previously pounded the skins for AQ fave Viking-prog kings Enslaved (and some other bands too, like Gehenna and Gorgoroth). That's a fair assurance of quality, and these True Servants Of Satan don't disappoint, if it's a grim and violent, raw thrashing black metal buzz (and buzzing) you're after. Blurring blasts and noxious rasps emanate from this disc like fumes from a toxic tomb, the old-school atmosphere enhanced by some slower, sea-sick riffage and the way Dirge's drums beat on your skull. Good Satanic stuff for fans of Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Darkthrone and the like.
No band will ever match the insane no-wave freaked out death metal what-the-fuck of Gorguts' Obscura album. An impossibly chaotic blast of tangled guitar lines, obtuse drumming, bizarre songwriting, atonal melodies, fractured rhythms, all whipped into quite possibly, one of the greatest, weirdest death metal records ever as far as we're concerned. But if any band was to come close, it sure as heck would be Negativa, for the obvious reason that it's the work of Gorguts mastermind Steeve Hurdle, along with some of his likeminded pals from other techmetal combos like Ion Dissonance and Augury. The opening track blows out of the gate a perfect post-Obscura grinding chugging masterpiece. Not quite as dense and freaked out as anything on Obscura, a little more linear, but all the stuff we love is there. The guitars are baffling, not just riffs and licks, they scrape and grind and keen and shriek and rrooooar, pick slides everywhere, the drums a chaotic blur beneath, it's absolutely dizzying. This is the stuff that makes us fall in love with death metal all over again. But it's the second track that really blows our minds. Imagine Obscura era Gorguts playing downtuned doom metal, a weird death sludge, guitars so slow, they slither and crumble, over the top, other guitars clang and wail, mournful melodies drift by, bits of percussive crunch, the drums stumble and plod, it's like some fucked up version of diSEMBOWELMENT. The band does kick it up a notch and blows into some midtempo death metal before splintering into a near ambient stretch of Tool-like bass, scraping steel strings, huge plodding doomdrums and lots and lots of space. Super abstract and doomy, before building into a loping atonal minor key groove. Hard to explain other than to say it's fucking AWESOME! The third and final track is more of what we go in track one, another brain melting burst of avant death metal, guitars and drums and bass so convoluted and fucked up, we can barely manage to headbang. But goddamn if we're not loving it.
Short stuff, three songs in twenty minutes, but as with Gorguts, there are more notes and parts than most bands can jam into a whole 60 minute full length. We're already dying to hear more, especially off that fucked up damaged death doom. Bring it on!
While not new, we only just discovered NID, and our discovery came about in a very random manner, considering various related works were right under our nose. We listed a killer 4 way split 12" a while back called One Man Drone, and our favorite track from the spit was a piece by a group called B(degree)Tong. We later discovered that the man behind B(degree)Tong was previously a member of German experimental sound-collective NID. But what we did not know was that NID was sometimes also known as Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, a group who had various releases on the Drone Records label, one of which is included on the recent tUMULt collection of out of print Drone singles.
So now it's sort of come full circle and we have this, the only proper full length recording (as far as we know) from the group NID, aka Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim and it's pretty amazing. Pretty bizarre too, but then with a (sometime) name like Feine Trinkers Bei Pinkels Daheim, what else would you expect?
Three looooooooong tracks. Each an epic, incredibly varied soundworld, blending found sounds and field recordings with drones and intense blasts of layered sound. The opener begins with a muted cacophony of birds and crickets, before disappearing into a roiling black cloud of rumbling low end and distant droning guitar buzz. It almost sounds like sticking your head out of a speeding car, the wind whipping by and causing all sorts of distortions, but blurred into an impressively massive wall of sound. Within all this whipping sonic wind and rumbling whirs, are strange bits of percussion, the clang and bang of metal on metal, shakers and simple rhythms, they drift briefly in the eye of the storm, before the drone drops again, even more furious than before, until it fades out amidst the dreamy shimmer of female vocals and haunting minor key melodic buzz. Really intense and strangely beautiful.
The second track is another deep cavernous roar. A bit smoother than the previous number, but not for long, bit of metallic buzz surface amidst the undulating rumbles, with some serious dynamic spikes, some of which sound like brief bursts of SUNNO 0))), and others are even lower and more aggressive bits of low end exploration. There are bits of static and random buzz here and there, but mostly it's black and dark, a massive growling beast, slowly uncoiling into a monster that blocks out the sun. Near the end of the track, the darkness abates and in its place is a strange skipping stuttering snippet of music, wrapped in hazy distortion and looped into a mesmerizing rhythm, repeated over and over and over, gradually crumbling and becoming more and more distorted before erupting into a final burst of chest rattling low end, finally slowing down and sputtering to a halt.
The final track is over twenty minutes and is the most melodic of the bunch. Beginning with a looped cycle of xylophone melody, over a throbbing low end pulse and streaks of keening distant guitar and bits of operatic female vocals. Very ominous and mysterious sounding. When suddenly everything stops, and there's a guy with a British accent ranting over someone ransacking a kitchen, breaking glass, clanging cutlery, and suddenly it's gone, and we're back in some new dronescape, a mumbled voice looped into a haunting mantra, beneath distant thunder like rumbles, and little blurs of high end melody, indistinct, but gradually building in intensity. The drones drift away leaving birds and voices, and some strange bits of hiss and skree, before transforming into a plodding doomdrone beast. A simple stretched out rhythm over cavernous thrums and the sound of subway cars, everything pulsing and throbbing, a bizarre bit of dark collage, that manages to be strangely musical and completely hypnotic.
An amazingly weird record, and absolutely essential listening for the drone obsessed, which we would assume should be most of you...
We only got three or four of these so tape nerds and noise rock nerds will want to jump on this fast. Limited to 100 copies and packaged in a cool oversized full color two sided old school plastic tape case, like the kind that might have house some language tape or something. It's pretty bad ass looking.
Inside, it's two Michigan noisemakers, Odd Clouds and Wigwam. Odd Clouds offer up a dense cloud of tribal electronic psychnoise, thick and drifting, like some damaged collision between the Skaters and the Yellow Swans, while Wigwam present us with their own brand of noisiness, a murky Wolf Eyes-ian expanse of grinding muddy rumble and slithery black ambience, with bits of industrial clatter and electronic fuckery here and there.
Also includes a bonus 3" cd-r with a 15 minute jam from Odd Clouds, more of the same, massive roiling dreamy expanses of blown out sound and electronic weirdness. packaged in a hand painted mini sleeve, and stuck inside the plastic tape case with the cassette.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We have 4 or 5 and there will be no more once these are gone...
John Dwyer has been a busy bee as of late. His great new free jazz outfit Swords & Sandals has been playing fiery short sets all around town. He's started his own record label, Castle Face and his first release on the label is his latest Oh Sees (OCS) record which just might be the best one yet! Produced by Kelly Stoltz, Sucks Blood has a wonderful focus that gets stoney, blurry and all bleary and sunsoaked yet the songs still feel so well crafted and the record so perfectly paced. The opening track finds Dwyer reconstructing his garage rock roots with a smokin' lo-fi burner that would make Roky Erickson proud. As the record moves on there is an intoxicating hazy moodiness that emanates so effortlessly from every track start to finish. We love how timeless this record sounds and feels. It's doesn't at all feel like a part of any current trend or scene. Instead it sounds like someone locked up in their room with a window half open as sun, clouds and wind mingle in the sky and songs grow and blossom organically. With no one to please but himself, you get the feeling that Dwyer was able to totally relax and make exactly the record he's been wanting to make for ages. We've already been listening to this in our headphones as we walk through the city, on those afternoons made for wandering aimlessly just to see where you might end up, and this is the perfect soundtrack for sure. Whether laying in the grass, or sitting on the porch, or staying in bed till late in the afternoon, this is the perfect sounds for being busy doing nothing. So totally nice!
Hmmmm, it might seem a bit strange to have a so-called "definitive" version of such a relatively young release, (heck, we weren't so sure of the original full length - see below) but after hearing this in its entirety, it doesn't seem odd at all. Y'see, Okkervil River's 2005 album was only one piece of their ambitious Black Sheep Boy concept puzzle. This double disc brings it all together -- the original album, the companion cdep Appendix, and the song "The Next Four Months" (previously available on their "For Real" single). Also included are videos for that song and an alternate version of "No Key, No Plan".
Here's what we said about the original 2005 version:
Hmmm, don't recall Okkervil River sounding quite like they do on a number of these new songs. Imagine an older Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes) filling in as the frontman for slick alt-rock bands such as Counting Crows or Gin Blossoms. Maybe they're seeking a broader more mainstream audience? Dunno, just not sure it really works for them, at least not on Black Sheep Boy (fyi: the album is named after a Tim Hardin song which Okkervil River also chose to be the album's opening song, and a fine version it is!). Lead singer Will Sheff is known to be a impassioned, angstful vocalist, but the band's feverish performance on the more rockin' tunes still comes across a little forced. To boot, the mix seems off balance between the vocals and the too-loud bursts of electric guitar. You can get a sense of the dynamic that they were trying to capture, but again it's not quite 'there'. That said, the album's high point -- and also the point where things take a general shift for the better -- is the fifth song "Get Big" on which Sheff duets in beautiful world-weary fashion with Amy Annelle (of The Places). It's downright heartbreaking! After that the band mellows down and allows the melancholia to extinguish the rock flames in a flood of whiskey and tears. These slower, moodier numbers' arrangements are tastefully fleshed out with pump organ, mandolin, lap steel, Wurlitzer, vibraphone, synthesizers, horns, strings, samples and field recordings. This is where Sheff (also the band's main songwriter) truly shines. Composing and performing songs of lush somber beauty are his forte. Indeed, since they insist on mixing their two very different personalities on each album, if you prefer one better that the other (as we do), it can make for a somewhat exasperatingly jarring listening experience. That said, the album's highlights are well worth the frustration.
DOOM. As per AQ tradition, we should throw some extra 'O's in there just to indicate just how doomy this is -- DOOOOOOooooooooOOOM! Not to get sidetracked, but Doom might be the only musical genre that you can deliberately misspell to indicate extra enthusiasm for whatever example of said genre you're describing. RRRRap doesn't work. Nor would you say Woooorld Music. And adding extra 'o's to Pop is a just bad idea, unless you're talking about pop you don't like. But doom, being all about being slow and low, just gets doomier when you exaggerate the spelling into doooooooooooom. The point of all this? That the debut disc from Spanish doom band Orthodox, needs, like, exponential 'o's to really get at its doominess.
Recently and rightly hailed as an Album Of The Month on Julian Cope's psychedelic drone/doom/druid rock lovin' website Head Heritage, Orthodox's Gran Poder ("Great Power") consists of three looong tracks of gloomy, glacial heaviness mixed with more chaotically rockin' parts, with one brief piano-laced interlude seperating tracks two and three. These crushing compositions are almost symphonically grand, an often exceedingly slow grind of eternally doomed drone like Earth or SUNNO))), sometimes speeding up to rock out psychedelically in the style of Argentina's Los Natas, graced with heavily tremelo-laden vocals or utterly spaced out ambience that make us think of Thrones and Yob.
Throughout this sludgey stoner soundscape, you'll hear feedback wailing like lamenting lost souls, the rumbling drum battery either nervously dodging the lugubrous riffs as they fall from the sky, or pounding in unison with the guitar and bass, sounding like the gates of an abandoned ancient cavernous cathedral slamming shut... over and over again.
We imported a whole bunch of these direct from the label in Spain because we're pretty sure that fans of the likes of Corrupted (who also sing in Spanish, after all) and Yob and Sleep and UFOmammut and all the other extra-o's deservin' dooooooOOOOoom bands that we love would want this! And if for some reason you need further convincing, please look up Julian Cope's review on his site, where he references Flower Travellin' Band's Satori and the Mediterranean paganistic roots of Catholic ritual and "Rumble" by Link Wray and much much more, his incredibly enthusiastic review almost a call to arms for doom fanatics... and he also includes cool pictures of the black-robed band members he took on a trip to their land!
Long before Rob Crow became an indie rock household name via the dreamy song of Pinback, he had already long been an AQ favorite dating back to one of his first bands Heavy Vegetable. With quirky melodies, short songs, super complex arrangements, incredible vocal harmonies and eccentric spirit, Heavy Vegetable were one of the most interesting and endearing bands to come out of the nineties San Diego scene. Of course Crow has continued to write great songs after he pulled the plug on Heavy Vegetable with Thingy, Optiganally Yours, Pinback, his solo outings and the multitude of side-projects he's been cranking out recently (The Ladies, Goblin Cock). But we've always had such a deep infinity for Heavy Vegetable so we were super duper excited when we found out that Rob had reunited almost the whole original Heavy Vegetable lineup for this new project called Other Men. While not as quirky or idiosyncratic as Heavy Vegetable, this is still prime-era old school HV Rob Crow song writing. Impassioned and moody, dense and tangled, swinging wildly from part to part and cycling through a handful of convoluted tempos, usually in the same song. Weird and wonderful and pretty damn catchy to boot!
The first release on Rob's own label, simply called Robcore, and another fine addition to the always expanding catalog of the hardest working man in indie rock.
Medieval minstrelry!! Andee has been making fun of Allan for liking this so much, so if you want to get into the middle of that argument, give this a listen. This cd reissues the first two albums by Germany's Ougenweide, an early '70s folk-rock act who were sort of a Germanic version of contemporaneous UK folk-rockers Fairport Convention or Pentangle, perhaps. Gryphon, definitely. Or maybe you remember the Norwegian band Kong Lavring, reviewed here some time ago? Ougenweide are sorta like that, but German. (Another parallel would be France's Malicorne.)
Sweet female vocals, bombastic male ones, flutes n' lutes, lots of ye olde melodiousness and harmoniousness, alongside some fairly rippin', energetic "hoedown" parts that will kick your ass for thinking this is even a wee bit too twee, though twee it often is. Those plugged-in interludes allow us to consider this troupe a krautrock as well as a krautfolk (?) band. And speaking of krautrock, their first record was produced by none other than Achim Reichel (of A.R. & Machines fame!).
So we'll sum up Ougenwiede as dexterous and delightful music made by prancing hippies obsessed with the Middle Ages but willing to throw some fuzz bass in where it will do the most good. Pretty cool if you don't mind your acid folk to have strong RenFaire leanings! (It helps that it's all in German, we think.)
The 22 tracks here come from their self-titled debut from 1973 and its 1974 follow-up All Die Weil Ich Mag, and it's the first time on cd for both of 'em. And since this is a Bear Family reissue, it's about as nicely done as a reissue can be, packaged with a 38 page booklet stuffed with liner notes (in English and German), lyrics, and vintage photos. Appropriately, the booklet is styled after an illuminated manuscript and decorated with medieval woodcuts.
We don't know too much about this strange Italian black metal band other than we fucking LOVE them. One of our new favorite BM outfits for sure. This is no ordinary buzzing black metal, although it does buzz and is most definitely BM, Ovskum, do some sort of midtempo, near ambient blackened plod. The guitars are huge and thick and seem to be crumbling into pieces, the drums are a midtempo trudge or a relentless martial march, the riffing is sometimes sludgy and thick, other times, angular and jangly, often both, a swirling slithering low end beneath keening upper register guitar skree and howled vocals. It's almost weird to call these guys black metal, they sound more like some super chaotic ambient noise rock, or spacey black sludge, or dreamy noise rock doom, all definitely fit... melodies are angular and obtuse, the drumming is sort of stumbly and simple, but the sound is HUGE, thick and swirling, raw and atmospheric, guitars are gnarled and convoluted, bits of melody and keening droneguitar are whispy streaks above the roiling fury below, some tracks forego the drums completely, and become these haunting abstract riffscapes, drifting and throbbing and crawling along malevolently... it's all so intense and dark and so so so good. No cds yet as far as we know, so needless to say both this and the s/t cassette are absolutely essential.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
We don't know too much about this strange Italian black metal band other than we fucking LOVE them. One of our new favorite BM outfits for sure. This is no ordinary buzzing black metal, although it does buzz and is most definitely BM, Ovskum, do some sort of midtempo, near ambient blackened plod. The guitars are huge and thick and seem to be crumbling into pieces, the drums are a midtempo trudge or a relentless martial march, the riffing is sometimes sludgy and thick, other times, angular and jangly, often both, a swirling slithering low end beneath keening upper register guitar skree and howled vocals. It's almost weird to call these guys black metal, they sound more like some super chaotic ambient noise rock, or spacey black sludge, or dreamy noise rock doom, all definitely fit... melodies are angular and obtuse, the drumming is sort of stumbly and simple, but the sound is HUGE, thick and swirling, raw and atmospheric, guitars are gnarled and convoluted, bits of melody and keening droneguitar are whispy streaks above the roiling fury below, some tracks forego the drums completely, and become these haunting abstract riffscapes, drifting and throbbing and crawling along malevolently... it's all so intense and dark and so so so good. No cds yet as far as we know, so needless to say both this and the Atto I - Atto II cassette are absolutely essential.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
This is one of those rare records that totally captures and captivates you the very first time you hear, and somehow you can already tell that it's most definitely going to be a part of your life for a long time to come. With its expansive sound and spot on use of repetition and irresistible melodies this is an album with so much charm and character, so much power and passion, that it's impossible not to get swept up in its sunbaked glaze.
Person Pitch arrived right around the first day of Spring and we immediately found ourselves basking in the sun dappled glory of this, the latest outing from Noah Lennox, who not only records as Panda Bear on his own, but also is a member of like minded sonic explorers Animal Collective and Jane. Brian Wilson and Beach Boys inspired records are old hat these days and in fact we've sort of begun to dread the singular vision and by rote re-creation of bands aping the colorful pop melodies that Wilson created. Sugary Beach Boys worship has grown so prevalent in the last several years, we were definitely bit skeptical when we started hearing about the very Beach Boys-esque new Panda Bear record. But what's so refreshing about Person Pitch is hearing someone finally dig deeper, discovering the more magical and glorious elements of the Brian Wilson/Beach Boys sound. Taking ideas and inspiration from the experimental and instrumental golden gem "Diamond Head" on the Friends album as well as creating gloriously high in the sky vocal melodies Lennox has found a way to mix oddity with conventional beauty and the results are divine. Stretching sound and using repetition to create a trance like state that makes you wanna close your eyes and rock your body back and forth or just space out and stare into space until you start really seeing stars.
We already know this will be the soundtrack to so many warm summer nights, spontaneous afternoon getaways, and car rides on the coast heading for the beach and getting lost in sand, sky and sun. So totally recommended!
Pantaleimon is the work of Andria Degens, who may be best known as the wife of David Tibet from Current 93; and she, like many of Tibet's friends and partners, has contributed on occasion to the Current 93 cause. It goes without saying that the Pantaleimon project shares plenty of Current 93's inspirations from British folk music; but where Tibet uses those musical archetypes as a medium for mystical revelation, Degens' approach is far more impressionistic and delicate. Given song titles such as "Crystalline Rain," "Ascension of the Sun," and the title track of this 20 minute EP, the splendor of nature springs from her elliptical guitar instrumentals that draw favorable comparisons to the likes of Marissa Nadler and Steven R. Smith.
Now available on vinyl!
Musing about the name of this dandy SF one man band, we can't help but feel that he must be referring to the pretty delicate scissor craft and not the annoyingly painful stationery-inflicted wound. The Papercuts' retro-tinged pop is a honey sweet, wistful confection. Released on Devendra Banhart's Gnomonsong label, this new album moves upwards and onwards from 2004's Mockingbird. It's decidedly more mid-fi and more psych folk leaning than those previous lower-fi chamber pop styled recordings. Perhaps a little earthiness has rubbed off on him from the folks with whom he's recently collaborated such as Skygreen Leopards and Vetiver? Or perhaps he's been spending more time out in the wondrous wilderness? Whatever it may be, the results are splendid. Can't Go Back caught us daydreaming about paddling a lil' rowboat down a gentle stream, and peering dreamily over the edge into the sundappled depths. As we gaze at a fallen leaf drifting by, the sparkly glint from an orange-gold carp catches our eye. Aaaah. This album will surely appeal equally to fans of Yo La Tengo, Low, Olivia Tremor Control and the abovementioned Skygreen Leopards. Recommended!
Ok, this item has a fairly self-explanatory title, eh? Also, here's the subtitle: "From Psychedelic Experiments To Political Propaganda". Interested? If so, then all that really remains for us to say is, yeah, you should seriously consider picking this up, it's really well done and a good value for the money. Physically, this is a gorgeous tome, and all signs point to it being quite accurate and thorough information-wise.
If you're at all like us you're aware that in recent years the spate of reissues from the Swedish psych / prog scene -- like for instance the whole amazing Parson Sound / International Harvester / Harvester / Trad Gras Och Stenar axis -- has been pretty thrilling. Having a guide to both the bands we've heard of and the many, many more that we haven't is pretty great. Also if you're like us you LOVE books full of pictures of record sleeves, wherever they're from and whatever they are. And this book's got tons of album covers, many of them psychedelically sensational, reproduced in full color!
Plus there's loads of factual info for those curious about the bands, or for record collector types trying to figure out what the original vinyl is worth. Each entry consists of info on the band's line-up, a descriptive paragraph discussing their music and history, as well as a detailed discography. Algarnas Tradgard, Arbete & Fritid, Aunt Sally, Charlie & Esdor, Bo Hansson, Kebnekajse, Life, November, Mikael Ramel, Pugh Rogefeldt, Samla Mammas Manna, Trettioariga Kriget, Turid... they're all here and of course plenty more we'd never heard of before.
In addition to this A-Z of bands, there's a band member index and label discographies as well, with that of the Silence label being the most impressive. And, there's also an introductory essay dealing with the political dimension shared by a lot of the music from the Swedish scene. Apparently, in Sweden there was a difference between "prog" with one g and "progg" with two g's, with the former referring as usual to progressive rock bands like ELP and Yes, latter being a distinctly Swedish concept of (not-necessarily virtuosic or complex) music that reflected the ideals of the left-wing Movement of the times.
All in all, very intriguing and tantalizing, leaving us to look at the those album covers and begin dreaming record collector dreams!
235 pages, hardback, 8 1/2" x 12". Full color EVERYWHERE, and lots of cool b&w photos too. A deluxe production indeed. And there's a bonus cd included as well, featuring the obscure jamming psych band Baby Grandmothers, with three previously unreleased live tracks from 1967 (different from the stuff on their archival Subliminal Sounds cd release also reviewed this list).
If only there was a book like this for EVERY cool musical scene past and present...
NB. mailorder customers, be aware that due to the size and weight of this book, it counts as more than one item for freight purposes -- so any order that includes this book will ship UPS at the 3+ items rate of $6.50 for shipping & handling.
Essential, indeed! But not only for tango aficionados! And you don't even need to dance, but really who isn't moved by this music? This is simply stunning. This Argentina-born tango music master's impassioned compositions can make time seem like its standing still. Even by today's standards, Astor Piazzolla's works tear down the genre's boundaries venturing far into unchartered territory. Challenging, complex and downright experimental at times, and yet never alienating nor impermeable. His rebellious streak is evident in the spritely dissonant whips and slashes in "Muerte Del Angel" which make for a marked contrast next to the slow, sobering languidity of "Resurreccion Del Angel". His fingers step nimbly across his bandaleon keys creating intricate melodies that dance about the gloriously grand sweeping flourishes. This generous 24-track double disc set compiles many of his most renowned works along with some live and rare recordings. Absolutely captivating.
We recently got a bunch of '60s French pop compilation cds in stock, and they've been delighting us to no end. One of the chanteuses who appears on Sixties Girls Vol. 1 is Pussy Cat... yes, you heard us correctly! Her name is Pussy Cat and this is a whole cd full of her sweetheart pop tunes. Dare us to say it? Well, do ya? They're darn near purrrr-fect. Oooch! SORRY!
Now here's a tape label that knows how to do it right. Each tape, even though they're limited to only 100 copies, comes with super deluxe full color artwork, printed labels on the tape, each hand numbered, AND each tape is a different color to match the artwork. Nice!
The first release from Abandon Ship is the latest from one of our new dronedrift faves, Ireland's Quetzolcoatl, an offshoot of the equally cool Bonecloud, Quetzolcoatl are channeling the spirit of the legendary improvisers, especially Taj Mahal Travellers, with their slowly evolving sonic landscapes, abstract and epic, pure and organic, sounds drift and shimmer, layers upon layers of whir and warble, always moving and glistening. Dense but somehow super spacious and abstract. The sounds seem to float, weightless, like fog and smoke, although occasionally storm clouds gather and the sounds become more jagged and harsh, more dense and thick and corrosive, but always strangely soothing, with a minimal melodic undercurrent.
Not sure what it is about these guys, but they seem to be able to just sit down, close their eyes, plug in, and suddenly we're transported to some mountain top, some ancient temple, some deserted beach, some dense forest, some mysterious other-place, where the world is music, and the sounds are pictures and we can see the music with our ears and hear it with our eyes. So good.
Limited to 100 copies! Each tape hand numbered, we got about a quarter of the pressing but those will go fast so be quick...
Disturbing, verrrrry disturbing.
You might expect that something from Circle and Pharoah Overlord members going under the names Krypt (Jussi) and Rudimentor (Janne) might be sorta metallic (especially after that Krypt Axeripper ep reviewed last list). This silver-on-black screenprinted package certainly looks dark and evil: the illegible logo, the band photo (long hair, spiked armbands), the song titles -- there's just two of them, "Transylvanian Error" (17:45) and "Ultimate Sword" (16.34). And the album title is a nod to Jussi's favorite '80s "metal" act, Jesters Of Destiny.
But we also know to expect the unexpected from our Finnish friends. So while this IS dark and evil, there's not a metal riff in sight. Rather, this duo utilize percussion, voice and effects to create a psychologically sick, rhythmically fucked drone-zone. The two long tracks are black, bottomless abysses both, caverns echoing with monstrous processed vokills and clattering pipe-fights, awash in a dense, drifting electronic miasma.
The label press info references Z'ev (the percussion), Faust (the weirdness), Wolf Eyes (the noise), Darkthrone (the evil) and we hear all that for sure. We'd further compare Rakhim's improvised blackness to black metal experimentalists (and AQ ROTWer's) Abruptum, with some of the screaming sounding like the insane-asylum inmates from a Staalagh record! Maybe like Staalagh on a broken boombox, being played the the corner of a room where spaced-out Circle side project Dr. Kettu are jamming with the Black Boned Angel.
Actually, last year we reviewed an expensive Qbico import LP by Rakhim (weirdly enough, we still have a few copies, if you act fast...) and ever since experiencing the mesmerizing psychedelic murkiness of that debut we've been wanting to hear more.
Disturbing, yes. But we like being disturbed like this!!
Few can match Mr. Jon Rauhouse's musicianship, range and artistry. On this his third solo album, he's truly outdone himself! A pure genius at capturing moods that evoke a time long passed, he moves effortlessly from romantic old time balladry to Hawaiian tiki-lit happy hour, twilight swing jazz to chilling spookiness, lonesome range mournings to kicky covers of the Mannix and The Andy Griffiths Show theme songs. There's a little something for everyone here! He's joined by his dear friends Tommy Connell (guitars), Calexico's John Convertino (drums), Joey Burns (bass) and Jacob Valenzuela (trumpet), Paul Rigby (guitar and mandolin player extraordinaire aka Rauhouse's six-string cohort in Neko Case's touring band) and many others who know what's good for 'em. While Rauhouse's main focus is on the magic of the instrumental, he ices the cake with some sweet lady vocals by his pals Neko Case, Sally Timms, Kelly Hogan and Rachel Flotard. Excellent!
On his second release, Bay Area artist The Rhombus (aka Cody Hennesy) offers utterly soothing, warm, down to earth folk pop. The softest spoken acoustic guitars and male vocals are joined by some equally mellow shufflin' electronic textural and rhythmic elements. Everything is ultra hazy and blissed out. For fans of Arab Strap, Badly Drawn Boy, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone and The Delgados seeking something a little lighter and more playful. Really really comfy good!
Brand new issue from one of our new favorite far out music mags. A bastard offspring of the Wire and Terrorizer, lots of metal and heaviness, but plenty of weirdness too, covering pretty much everything experi/metal under the sun...
On the cover this time, ultra dark hip hop outsiders Dalek. Inside, Q & A with Coady Willis from Big Business, avant grinders The Locust, Wino and The Hidden Hand, brutal noise technician Prurient, Swedish black ambient guru Nordvargr, art doom outfit Black Sun, the Residents, classic label highlight on Earache, a whole mess of news, album reviews, DVD reviews, live reviews, and the back page is a one minute interview with Spencer Seim from Hella. Awesome!
Plus there's now another reason to love Rock-a-Rolla, even more, as Kevin McCaighy, the man behind killer, kick ass, AQ beloved zine Salt, is now an RaR contributor as well, so in addition to all the other usual good stuff, there are tons of Salt-y reviews to hold us over until the next proper issue!!
YES! The follow up to the RTX's totally sick first record, Transmaniacon!!!! This record is the next step in RTX's path to hair metal scuzzy party excellence. The opening track, "Western Exterminator" which is a sort of dusty old Mexican cantina acoustic number, with sweet backwards guitar shreds and flute solos... might be a little unexpected, but by the second track we know what's up. The good time Shreddy Van Halen "Balls To Pass" harkens back to the debut. Filled to the brim with hot lixxxx and killer song writing. Jennifer Herrema's voice is sounding as fucked up as ever, adding a really cool noisy element to all the songs. The lyrics are also perfect. In the third track, "Black Bananas" she sings something about being the Garbage Collector...!!! Fuck yeah. Basically, if you like the first one, and also if you like the Accelerator side of Royal Trux, you're gonna love this record. Its a little bit more metal, especially on the track "Wo-Wo Din"...weird heavy. Uhhh, don't know what else to say...the whole record is killer and we're probably gonna be partying and BBQing to it all summer...poppy, heavy, party, noisy, kinda weird, and PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This one is a mind bender. The strangely named Seance Orchestra's Cosmic Mind Zoo offer up two cassettes of ultra abstract, minimal soundscapery, one tape is all buzzing electronic hum, flittering fields of tinkling glass percussion, massive speaker shaking low end swells, grinding throbbing stuttering bass buzz that is so thick and dense it almost swallows the rest of the sounds completely up, angular crumbling guitar distortion, bits of voice and vocals, while the other tape is heavier and much more brutal, a definite Dead C style skree, but muted and spread out into a strange hissy staticky pulse, that throbs and emits a strange subtle melodiousness, murky and prickly and weirdly warm and washed out.
Two tapes, a color insert and some stickers all housed in one of those massive plastic multiple tape cases, that usually house language tapes or self help tapes, the artwork some complex bit of electronic diagramming.
As with all things like this, ultra limited, so if you want one don't be hemming and hawing...
We love Shitmat. A lot! As any regular reader of the AQ list must realize by now. But this new one sort of threw us for a loop. Shitmat was our go to guy for that blasting old school nineties heavy ragga jungle, bass bin rattling drum and bass, with super blown out synths, buzzing bass, and those hyper charged drum breaks. As we've said before, it's one of those sounds that we could listen to FOREVER.
Well, Hang The DJ starts off from a whole different angle. With a more mash-up vibe going on. In fact, the first few tracks could pass for Girl Talk tracks, with their million bits and pieces all cobbled together into a head spinning pop culture dance floor concoction. Well, once we got over our initial shock, we started to really dig it, sure it wasn't what we were expecting, but damn if it wasn't kicking our asses. Furious and freaky, skittering skipping and completely brilliantly baffling. Classic pop songs, old diva standards, heavy metal guitars, snippets of hip hop, and pretty much everything else under the sun. It began to almost sound like Girl Talk crossed with Venetian Snares. But the more we listened, the more we could hear the Shitmat sound. A bit obscured and all tangled up in there, but still that same cheeky sense of humor and flair for killer stuttery beats.
But about halfway through the disc something happened. The jungle returned, subtly at first, but soon, we were in full on dance floor destroying ragga jungle heaven, killer toasting, gnarled Amen breaks sliced and diced, huge drops, massive slabs of synth bass, some full on bursts of hardcore gabber...
And then before we knew it, it was gone, and we were back to stuttering skittering mash-ups, but suddenly it all made more sense. The next time through, those opening mash-ups sounded perfect butted up against those wild jungle tracks, and the jungle bits perfectly segued into the million-sample-a-minute freakouts, and all of a sudden, it seemed like we just might have ourselves a new fucked up electronic sort-of-jungle mash-up dance record....
The return of The Shitty Listener! Maybe one of our all time favorite band names EVER. And it's about time. We all completely dug the Girls All Say EP we listed a while back, but it just wasn't enough. It was only 9 minutes long after all. Well, Fruitless Accomplishment clocks in at a whopping 26 minutes, and thus manages to take all the elements we liked on the EP, and spreads them out, expands and explores, which just means there's so much more to like.
Actually released as a book, that just so happens to also contain a cd, for our purposes, we'll just go ahead and consider Fruitless Accomplishment a cd, that just so happens to come with a book! For those new to the Shitty Listener, it's not really a band, instead it is one man, Jason Honea, from from the Jewelled Antler outfits The Child Readers and the Franciscan Hobbies, as well as the Chord Fort, the Knit Separates and Teenage Panzercorps. The Shitty Listener is his Honea's mostly solo, lo-fi, bedroom folk project. And is deeply connected to his poetry/lyrics and artwork. As is evidence by this deluxe book/cd combo.
The sound is incredibly intimate and low fidelity. Mostly recorded on micro cassettes or handheld tape recorders, Honea incorporates tape hiss and whatever ambient sound happens to occur in the background, whether it's a plane flying by, a dog barking, the sound of crickets, it all just becomes part of the sound. And just like old Sebadoh tapes, the ch-chunk sound of the record or stop buttons being pushed, as well as weird warbles in the tape, become as much a part of the song as the song itself. Lilting melancholy piano, gentle acoustic guitar strum, and not much else support Honea's warbly falsetto, plaintive and emotive, always way down in the mix, a sort of drifty fuzzy dreamy melody within each song. But that's more than enough. Each song ends up sounding surprisingly lush. Our favorites though have to be the ones that sound like they were recorded from a distance, or through the wall or window. Those tracks almost sound like Honea was singing and strumming indoors, while the mic was outside, capturing most of the music, but more than anything all of the ambient action happening around it. Other highlights include the a capella "Bad Wonder", "I Call You Up" which sounds a bit like Morrisey fronting Sentridoh, the minute long "Across My Dreams", a sort of processed dreamy guitarscape, and the 7 minute medley "Sweet To My Mind w/ Someone Flame-Like & Up Too Much", the first half of which sounds a bit like a Basinski composition, but made manually, by playing a figure on the piano, pushing stop on the tape player, pressing record and playing the figure again, over and over and over. So weird and wonderful.
Fruitless Accomplishment is a strangely compelling collision between abstract experimentation and lo-fi pop loveliness, and the results are truly divine!
The packaging is pretty dang divine as well. And just to frustrate and confuse, there are TWO different versions. Both are exactly the same on the inside, just different on the outside. Packaged in either a newsprint covered hard cardboard box, or in a sewn green felt sleeve, inside is the cd-r, an insert with the liner notes, four full color and two black and white inserts featuring various drawings and collages by Honea, and Real Flowers, a small book of poetry, gorgeously printed on nice paper and with a full color paste on cover!
Soft Circle is the long-awaited solo debut of former Black Dice drummer and visual artist Hisham Bharoocha. Channeling the cosmic meditative vibe of bands like Popol Vuh and Quintessence and filtering them through similar avant-rock tropes of his contemporaries, Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance and Exceptor, Bharoocha has crafted a warm yet subdued inner space travelogue. Filled with sitars, tamboura, layered and delayed vocalizing, marimba repetitions and drum circles, Full Bloom sounds like the logical next step after Black Dice's 2002 release Beaches and Canyons. But Black Dice as a group would never have released something so transcendentally focused as Full Bloom, leaving no doubt that Bharoocha's departure from the band was all for the better. The music also complements Bharoocha's concerns as a visual artist nicely, sharing a multi-layered kaleidoscopic spiritualism loaded with tribal and ritualistic ruminations.
Recommended!
