We made the first Maximo Park record of the week and here we are two years later and it still gets daily plays. An impossible hooky combination of new wave swagger and classic dour pop, Interpol meets XTC is how we described it, and that was pretty much spot on. Maybe a bit more modern and a lot more caffeinated. So we were counting the days until this here disc dropped, and it's everything we had hoped for. Not as immediately as catchy, and a little bit more introspective, but after repeated listens, Our Earthly Pleasures has blossomed into THE POP RECORD OF THE YEAR. We sort of gushed endlessly about the first record, so you might just want to head over to that review (A Certain Trigger) and see what we had to say, and heck, while you're there, if you don't already own it, you might was well add it to your cart. All the folks who flip over stuff like the Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand and the Killers will probably love this too. But the rest of you, who couldn't quite get into the whole new wave revival (like us) might just find yourself digging this anyway. It's more classic pop sounding than the current wannabe Gang Of Four sound... Smart pop, with killer hooks, crunchy guitars, playful piano, and some super clever / funny / wry lyrics. Epic sweeping melodies, killer chunks of fuzzy synths, some electronic squiggles here and there, but ultimately perfect pop through and through.
From the super anthemic "Girls Who Play Guitars", to the lilting minor key new wave miserablism of "Books From Boxes", to the sweeping dramatic epic-ness of "Karaoke Plays" to the surprise gem of the record "Nosebleed", tucked away in the second half of the record, featuring the unforgettable line "Did we go too far? Is that why your nose is bleeding?" that you'll find yourself humming to yourself all the time. Every track here is impossibly catchy, packed with hook after hook, amazing harmonies, clever turns of phrase, all wrapped up tight into some of the catchiest, most perfect kick ass pop we've ever heard. And if it even needed to be said again: POP RECORD OF THE YEAR!
Geeze! Can't believe it, this must be the most melodic, "normal" (ahem) album from Japan's Melt-Banana yet, but it's still ALSO totally spastic and unhinged and extreme. Actually the more melodic, non-hyperspeed elements here make the other stuff all the more insane sounding. There's (only!) 18 caffeinated tracks on this disc, chock-a-block with bug zapper guitars, thrashing drums, and yelping vox, of course. But also: catchy hooks, sing-a-long choruses? Yes. It's been four long years since their previous album, Cell-Scape, and we guess we'd forgotten just how listenable that one was, surprising us at the time too. Melt-Banana had taken their trademark manic Boredomsey hardcore sound and tamed it just a bit. Well they do that here too, turning in a speedy, spasmodic pop-punk masterpiece that sounds something like the Ramones or Green Day bouncing off the walls in a bizarre experiment somehow involving chipmunks, crack cocaine, and computers... ok, dunno what that means either. But the point is, this is making us crazy in a good way, it's as if the more "conventional" Melt-Banana becomes, the more paradoxically disturbing they really are. And if you really want pure old school M-B HC noisiness, well there's a batch of shorter, seizure-like songs on the second half of the disc (tracks 11-17) that should do the trick. Well worth the wait.
For some reason we never got around to reviewing the MGR full length on Neurot. Not sure why exactly. This may sound a little bit stupid, but I think it was because we thought MGR was the abbreviation for 'manager' and thus not a very cool name for a band. But when we finally did listen to that record a few weeks back we were totally knocked for a loop. And we felt bad, and dumb, and thus we are doing our very best to make things right by not only reviewing that very full length (elsewhere on this list) but also this super limited cd-r tour only collaboration.
What we did discover is that MGR stands for Mustard Gas And Roses, a much cooler name for sure, or maybe it stands for Mike Gallagher something-beginning-with-R, since MGR is in fact the work of Mike Gallagher from metallic post rockers Isis, either way, MGR is some gloriously beautiful and droney stuff.
We're not exactly sure who SirDSS (aka David Scott Stone) is, but with his arsenal of effects, synths and bowed metals, adds a definite metallic (as in metallic, not as in heavy metal) sheen to MGR's more organic dronescapes.
Long slowly unfurling whorls of abstract steel string tangle, huge slow burning electric guitar shimmers, drifting amidst glistening sonic cobwebs, silver streaks of minimal feedback, while in the distance some sort of industrial apparition grinds and clangs, creaks and keens, beneath an outerspace world of dreamlike ambient guitarscapes, radiant sine waves and thick luminous layers of crumbling melody.
So nice.
Good grief, this is the second album AQ's reviewed by Pittsburgh's Midnight Snake and I've only just NOW gotten the terrible pun implicit in their band name. Snake, snack, geddit? Ugh, wish I hadn't! Oh well, let's not hold that pun against 'em, 'cause this is a damn fine disc of raw, in-the-red, motorpsycho, amp-fried garagey geetar heaviness in the tradition of bands like High Rise and The Heads. The cool/curious thing about Midnight Snake is that it's obvious that they're totally IN control of the out-of-control, if your know what we mean. It's weird in a way, for something that's supposed to sound so SCUZZY they're actually not that sloppy.
So, what are this fright-masked trio up to this time 'round? They kick things off by kicking out the jams on the nine-minute "Cruise Control", effects swirling and burbling, bass throbbing, fuzzzzzzzzz baking yr ears to a crisp. Track two, "Sacred Mist" is an even longer jam, moodier at the beginning before building up to the requisite freakout. And then, with track three "Bigfoot '69" they REALLY go off but check out the drumming, tight! It's got all the "get down" energy of something by the late great Lubricated Goat. They follow that up with the mellow "In The Grass", it's all quiet and pretty for over four minutes... what happened??? Smoking grass instead of popping pills we guess, but it's nice. Soon enough, with track five "Shaving The Angel" they're back to the frazzed, fuzzed, frantic sort of stomp-splatter that Midnite Snake fans want to hear from Midnite Snake. Feedback squeal squalls and all. And then, holy crap, the final track number six "Supermodified" is a doozy. Nearly 26 minutes! Mantric noisy space rock mayhem.
File with yr White Hills, Residual Echoes, Comets On Fire... and Japanese stuff like Mainliner, Musica Transonic and Acid Mothers Temple (this actually even LOOKS a helluva lot like an AMT album).
It seems one can never have enough of Ennio Morricone's sublime cinematic orchestrations. Here's a new compilation of scores from a variety of films spanning the years 1965-1981, that's heavy on the ear candy and less concerned with the actual films that spawned them. As far as we can tell, none of the iconic spaghetti western themes are here, but there is a bit of overlap from other compilations, most notably the Alan Bishop compiled Crime and Dissonance comp from a couple of years ago. But while that compilation celebrated the darker and more trepidatious side of Morricone's oeuvre , this compilation is all about a sparkling joie de vive, taking the listener through a wide variety of styles, from wistful melancholy to goof-ball reverie and everywhere in between. And we mean everywhere! Some tracks are like a summer scooter ride through Rome, while others feel like tropical danger in Namibia. There's madcap Moog, poly-rhythmic madness, on-the-move organ psych, heart-wrenching vocalizing, and so much more. While that Crime and Dissonance comp did not make for pleasant road trip music, this new comp more than makes up for it. And it's a wonderful starting place for those who are new to Morricone's world of sound or for those who are looking to explore beyond his more well-known themes.
Yet another brief, but engaging stop in our ongoing journey through the mysterious seas of sound, an expansive world gradually being charted and recorded by the fine folks at Mystery Sea. Constantly in search of "night-ocean drones", hungry to discover another bit of unheard beauty, a new drifting soundworld of ambient dronemusic, that had been heretofore unexplored.
Moth Electret is the strange monicker of the artist responsible for this latest disc in Mystery Sea's long running (going on nearly 40 releases!) series of deep tranquility and beautiful drift. The man responsible is Stig Berg (who has recorded as R|A|A|N in the past) and who for his Moth Electret project has fashioned his own undersea soundworld almost entirely from field recordings, captured in Barcelona, the isle of Sandoy and of all places, Eureka, California!
Unlike the rest of the Mystery Sea series, Moth Electret might just be the least minimal, with lots of stuff going on, this isn't murky or droney exactly, instead it's thick clouds of sound, jagged and sparkling, grinding and looped, muted and smeared into long stretches of soft-noise, still sort of underwater sounding, but a bit more abrasive, more industrial almost, if you could imagine the softer, gentler side of Wolf Eyes maybe, expansive soundscapes of glimmer and shimmer, lots of metallic tinkles and high end buzz, all drifting above static sheets of slow shifting sound, very tidal, but on the skree side of things, like Birchville or Sunroof! more than Chalk or Coleclough. Every track is layered and dense, repeated listens find the listener sinking deeper and deeper, discovering hidden melodies, and surprising little sonic events, even though it's noisier than the rest of the series, it's no less compelling, or listenable, in someways even moreso. So much more going on, and so much sound to explore. Another perfect soundtrack for late night dreamy drift or early evening daylight fade...
Like all Mystery Sea releases, LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered, and gorgeously packaged in striking full color artwork, with a strange half sized booklet revealing the disc face within. So nice!
Klunk, the debut from the Sprocketsy electronic duo Motor, was the unexpected dancefloor hit last year here -- that is if AQ had a dancefloor and if you asked Allan what the hit was. Unexpected especially since Allan's not known for his love of club music. Now Motor are back with a new album, Unhuman, and it's got the same distorted techno beat buzz and bleep goin' on, from the jittering funk that is "Bleep #1" to the sinister, more song-y "Night Drive" to the power tool robotics of "Flashback" (other evocative titles include "Drug Punk", "20 Volts Of Steel", and "Sikk"). There's obvious Detroit and Kraftwerk influences, and certainly lots of folks have regurgitated sounds like these since the '80s, but Motor have a special knack for this all right. It's the rigid, relentless, crunching beats, and the synth sizzle... going and going and going... in fact it's hard to write this review as I'm trancing out as I type thisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisisis....
Fresh off tour (including a stint opening for industrial icons Nitzer Ebb), these guys are proud of their live, "punk" energy. It's stressed that Motor are a real band not purely the product of a computer or a DJ spinning stuff. As a result they've perhaps incorporated more melody (and vocals, sometimes scarily processed) into the mix this time 'round, but the more machine-like, brutal aspects of the debut haven't been disposed of either, so Allan says thumbs up on this one as well. Definitely get this if you liked their debut as much as he did.
For a while, every band wanted to sound like SUNNO))), and the bands that didn't usually had side projects that did, each offering up their own take on the slow motion barely moving glacial doom drone we all love so much. But pretty soon, those massive slabs of barely shifting buzz, the huge chunks of rumble that sounded like nothing but a guitar leaned against an amp, started to soften, get more melodic, almost dreamy, and thus a new genre was born. Not sure what it's really called. Some sort of blown out bliss pop. Still heavy, the tempos still lugubrious and plodding, everything drenched in distortion and blurry shimmery fuzz, but the songs now had a melancholy pop center, a glimmery glowing core. At the forefront of this new sound there were two, Jesu of course, Justin Broadrick's post-Godflesh project, and Nadja, the doomy side of a Canadian crafter of drones by the name of Aidan Baker. There are plenty of comers, the Angelic Process, Gog, and a handful of others, but it seems to be a race between Baker and his Nadja, and Broadrick and his Jesu. Broadrick probably has Baker beat in terms of songs, Jesu is a bonafide pop group at this point, verses, choruses, and HOOKS everywhere, but in most other ways, Baker has the upper hand. Certainly in terms of sheer number of releases, but also, Baker works more with texture and timbre, creating songs, but only in the most abstract sense, riffs repeat, each one a gorgeous cyclical trudge through dense clouds of swirling buzz, vocals drift, another layer of sound, everything bathed in effervescent reverb, and sun dappled delay. The distortion thick and soft, not harsh or jagged, the rhythms pulsing and throbbing as much as pounding.
On Corrasion, very little has changed. Which is a good thing. More of what we already love. The record is rife with sonic subtleties though, enough so that Nadja obsessives will have much to explore and discover, and thus Corrasion is far from redundant, instead functioning as another integral piece in Baker's seemingly never ending sonic puzzle, and beyond that, it just sounds so goddamn good. Hard to imagine ever getting sick of these endless gorgeous metallic dronescapes.
And while pretty much any of these records would be perfect for the Nadja newbie, Corrasion might just be the perfect place to start...
Ever wonder what sort of depraved and demented home movies might be the result of a prurient glimpse into the private life of Darkthrone's Nocturno Culto? Well, wonder no more. But be prepared to be disappointed, at least if all you're looking for is lots of metal and blood and mayhem. The opening scene pretty much sets the tone, a light hearted bit of ice fishing, with NC and Grutle from Enslaved, as they lay on the ice and dangle tiny little poles over a hole cut in the ice, not wearing spikes or leather, but instead the best Northface has to offer. Nocturno Culto even kisses the first fish he catches.
And so it goes, a meandering journey through the life of Nocturno Culto, sure there's plenty of metal, the score is all Darkthrone tracks (a few Aura Noir tunes here and there) and droning ambience composed by NC for the film, but it's interspersed with plenty of light hearted fun, slow sweeping images of the vast and untamed beauty of Norway, and all sorts of other random bits and pieces. Darkthrone fans will NEED this obviously, not just for the amazing rehearsal footage, with Fenriz complaining about the price of cymbals (hasn't bought a new one in 13 years) and the duo setting up in a little rec room style basement complete with flowered drapes and Iron Maiden poster, their primitive lo-fi buzz interspersed with amazing shots of them wandering through snowy forests, but for a private glimpse into a world and country that are wreathed in mystery and that most metal folks only experience filtered through black buzz or smeared corpsepaint. As fun as it is to get lost in the drama and showmanship, it's equally interesting to experience what life as a musician in Norway must be like, and how living amidst forests and fjords, snow and sky, informs the music we've come to love so much.
Besides the rehearsal footage, some of the highlights include: gorgeous footage of waterfalls and autumn forests, overlaid with ghostly images of the band, all to the strains of Darkthrone's buzzing grimness, complete with subtitles so you can finally understand the words, some hanging out with an old man who used to be a circus performer and his constantly barking dog, Aura Noir signing their recording contract, on a table in front of a wall full of nailed up antlers, followed by a very quiet repast of smoking and drinking... and playing Chinese checkers, a trip to Japan for Peter Beste's black metal photo show opening, featuring Nocturno Culto and Aaron from Iran playing a Kodo drummer video game, and crusty heartthrobs Gallhammer!!! We're even more crushed out if that were even possible. Some killer live footage as well as photo sessions, the Aura Noir record release party, backstage boredom, onstage mayhem, in a tiny club complete with those grade school acoustical tiles not more than a foot or two overhead, some footage of the downtime in the studio during the recording of Sardonic Wrath, a record label meeting, that takes place on a hillside around a campfire... and then a graveyard, and loads more. It's very abstract, a bit arty, but eminently watchable. Sometimes dark and bleak, other times sort of goofy and laid back, usually we tend to reach for the remote and skip around, but this The Misanthrope had us watching the whole thing end to end. And made us want to listen to nothing but Darkthrone!
Extras on the first disc include a gallery of stills (or not-so-stills, as the pictures tend to shift and shimmer with the aid of some strange video effect), set to some dizzying Darkthrone tuneage, some amazing old old old footage of Darkthrone, 2 killer tracks from way back, the band looking like they're all of 12 years old (which they probably are), as well as the 'video' for "Too Old Too Cold" which almost plays like a mini version of the movie, graveyards, forests, and plenty of headbanging...
Also included is a bonus second disc, a cd featuring all new music composed by NC specifically for the film, lots of rumbling crumbling dark ambience, all the haunting mood music from the movie. Spacey and abstract, creepy and shimmering, droney and dark, some of it pulsing and ethereal like some lost Tangerine Dream track, a few tracks super abstract guitarscapes, one track, a totally demented metal jam, with ultra processed guitars, tangled leads and goofy distorted vocals, but most of it is some seriously bleak and strangely lovely ambient minimalism....
Packaged in an oversized dvd style cd superjewel case with a big booklet of liner notes and photos, including one in which Darkthrone and Aura Noir are posed in the woods, snarling and brandishing what appear to be magazines and fireplace tools. Awesome.
All region, NTSC.
Every once in a while, someone out there is thinking just like us. It's a little scary, sure, but we gotta love it. Of course -WE- think that the buzzing blackwave of French outfit Nuit Noire is the perfect match for the confusional acoustic depressive black metal of Finnish duo Circle Of Ouroborus. But to see it finally happen. It's the metal music nerd version of fantasy baseball, when that team that you made up but could never happen in real life does...
And so it is with our league of fantasy black metal. These two bands have very little in common, except for the fact that they are about as unconventional as black metal can get, so much so that most "true" black metallers probably wouldn't consider either to actually be black metal, or metal at all for that matter, and the fact that both bands completely and utterly rule.
It's a pricey one, this 7", due to high manufacturing costs, and the ever worsening dollar, but this is most definitely a $12 single. We've shelled out $2 for singles in the past and felt ripped off, but once we got our ears on these tracks, money was no object!
Nuit Noire return with their bizarre blackened new wave buzz, a sort of Darkthrone meets Rudimentary Peni, or Immortal covering the Toy Dolls, a killer snarling hook filled blast of whiney vocals, queer guitar melodies, furious blast beats, all swaddled in loads and loads of buzz. Recorded during the same sessions that yielded the AQ fave Infantile Espieglery, these two tracks are blinding blasts of punk rock sped up and painted black, thrashy, and blasting, simple and hypnotic, with stretches of just guitar and drums and some outrageously melodic bits nestled right there amidst the furious fuzz, all peppered with strange squiggly licks and clouds of spacey FX and those perfect wailing about-to-crack vocals. So goddamn good.
And as if that weren't enough, Finland's Circle Of Ouroborus just keep getting better and better and more musical and melodic, which would normally spell doom for most of the bands we love (and we don't mean the good kind of doom), but these guys manage to retain all the fucked up-ness that made them so special, while continuing to forge ahead. A plodding depressive buzz, moody and melancholic, loping rhythms, and super weird Joy Division-esque vocals. Swooping majestic guitar leads and spidery guitar lines sprawling everywhere. They still sound a bit like a black metal Fall, but here they sort of sound like a more lo-fi, slightly less melodic Katatonia, which is of course a very good thing.
Has us chomping at the bit for new records from both bands. But for now, repeated plays of this seven inch will have to hold us over.
Nice thick full color jacket, thick cardstock inner sleeve, printed liner notes / lyric sheet. Not sure how limited, but with stuff like this, it's usually safe to assume VERY VERY!
Now this is the kind of DJ mix cd we like! Optimo (a pair of Glaswegian DJs, though only one of 'em is responsible for this release) have already proved, with mixes like last year's Psyche Out, that they can throw down some proto-industrial or psychedelic rock tracks into a seamless set of mainly modern electronic dance stuff and make it work just fine, perking our ears up for sure. On this disc, Optimo start off with some vintage Throbbing Gristle from TG's 1979 debut LP, then skipping years (but not changing gears, that much) follow it with a recent cut by Kompakt artist Grungerman (aka Wolfgang Voigt). And so it goes. An eclectic, eccentric mix indeed. Other artists on here include: Suicide, Herbert, Black Dice, Marc Houle, Like A Tim, Godsy, Databrain, Leny Dee & Nicolai Vorkapich, 6K, Shane Berry, and Eventell and Metaboman. And Finland is represented by both Pan Sonic and Philius. At about the halfway point, Optimo even manage to include something by Japanese psych-heavies Boris! "My Machine" off of Pink, which though fuzzed-out and beat-less, somehow segues smoothly betwixt the much more dance-friendly tracks found to either end of it. Maybe the only unintentional glitch in the program is the track by Thomas Brinkmann -- though y'know we love him, his "Momomexico" included here is a bit of a party-pooper, unless a voice intoning "Mexico... Mexico... Mexico..." is your idea of a dancefloor filler. But once past that repetitious voice bit, it's a good 'un. And really, the idea isn't really that you're gonna put this on to dance to, is it? That's the question with a lot of electronic "dance" music we sell I suppose. Maybe drive, work out, jog, something like that though.
And as techno-y and house-y as a lot of this is, there's a healthy amount of grinding droning experimental bzzzz everywhere on here too. We imagine that at an Optimo night in Glasgow, there's probably people dancing, but just as many sitting there nodding their heads, spacing out. If you're like us, you might pick this up 'cause of the names you know and as a result get introduced to some cool stuff you wouldn't otherwise have heard. Recommended.
We've got two fine releases from Our Lady Of The Highway -- this self-released cdr of their 2006 album Beauty Won't Save Us This Year and the new Fogsnob Records released full length Kill You With Numbers! Both were previously available directly from the band via a special subscription deal, but we've got a handful here for you in case you missed out.
For those of you unfamiliar with this SF band's sound... it's very reminiscent of nineties college rock of the country tinged variety. Y'know, early Built To Spill, Uncle Tupelo, The Weakerthans -- a sound for which we definitely have a soft spot! So much so, that when it's playing in the store staffers and customers alike all ask "Oooh, what's this? What's this?" OLOTH strike a balance of solid heft, sensitive guy emotiveness, yearningly heartfelt lyrics, and spacey guitar dissonance with some tasty nuanced drumming to boot. Always a good listen.
We've got two fine releases from Our Lady Of The Highway -- this new Fogsnob Records released full length and their self-released cdr of their 2006 album Beauty Won't Save Us This Year! Both were previously available directly from the band via a special subscription deal, but we've got a handful here for you in case you missed out.
For those of you unfamiliar with this SF band's sound... it's very reminiscent of nineties college rock of the country tinged variety. Y'know, early Built To Spill, Uncle Tupelo, The Weakerthans -- a sound for which we definitely have a soft spot! So much so, that when it's playing in the store staffers and customers alike all ask "Oooh, what's this? What's this?" OLOTH strike a balance of solid heft, sensitive guy emotiveness, yearningly heartfelt lyrics, and spacey guitar dissonance with some tasty nuanced drumming to boot. Always a good listen.
Another Of, or rather, Ov album from AQ fave/friend Loren Chasse, known to most of you as one of main movers in the Jewelled Antler cd-r psych folk scene. His solo project Of has turned into Ov now that he's been joined by his wife, who is also probably known to a lot of you as Christine, the person in charge of all the mailorder shenanigans here at Aquarius! Small world, eh? She also has long-time Jewelled Antler credentials, was formerly a member of Skygreen Leopards, and currently jams with Whysp. And like we said in our review of the debut Ov cd-r that came out on Jewelled Antler last year, if you're a mailorder customer it couldn't hurt to make her happy by ordering one of these... just kidding, really she's very professional. But, we DO recommend it anyway to all you folks into droning, drifting, field recording/psych/improv stuff in the Jewelled Antler vein, of course. Noctilucent Valleys carries on the slowly-moving kinetic sculpture sound of its predecessor The Moon Is Down, sleepy, darkly dreamy, glimmering (that's the radiated, glow-in-the-dark "noctilucent" part) and chiming and rumbling. Some moments achieve a disorienting dissonance that brings to mind some old Simon Wickham-Smith / Richard Youngs collaborations... which one of this couple gets to be RY and which is SW-S we wonder? Or maybe we shouldn't. And as well, Loren Chasse admits to indulging in some heavy Fripp/Eno worship here, and indeed we can hear the entrancement of Evening Star as filtered through the lo-fi, home-recorded, Jewelled Antler aesthetic on some of these nine tracks... so nice, if you're in the mood for these moody abstract glacial instrumental (what instruments??) lullabies. Kudos to Soft Abuse for putting this out (so it didn't have to be a cd-r like the debut) but we must make one minor complaint: the one page cd "booklet" (not a booklet), though adorned with nice artwork, is just a bit flimsy, y'know. Whereas this music is much more substantial in nature.
Some may exclaim, "Alas!" upon a first listen to Piano Magic's seventh album Part Monster... For the band seems to have shed their beloved persona as being the darkly whimsical aural equivalent of a Quay Brothers film. Where there once were feathery filigrees and antique gilt melodies are now rushes of sleek modern rockisms. Admittedly the heftier '80s/'90s Brit rock guitars and an overall aggressive edge initially rubbed a few of us the wrong way a bit. The album's third track "Incurable" actually sits comfortably next to the latest album by Blonde Redhead, while the fifth "The King Cannot Be Found" straddles the dissonant rock fence between Sonic Youth and The Cure. Yes, this is a bigger, bolder Piano Magic. Part Monster was produced by Guy Fixsen (member of Laika and producer/engineer for the likes of My Bloody Valentine, The Pixies, Stereolab, The Breeders, and Lush) no less, which might explain the degree to which the deeply effected guitars take centerstage. This new Piano Magic might takes some getting used to, but after the initial shock dissipates Part Monster retracts its claws briefly, revealing the still present sumptuous chamberly charms of the Piano Magic of old. You need only listen to the slower, velvety fourth number "Soldier Song" to be mesmerized once again by their, ahem, magic.
As if he wasn't busy enough, Mr. Robert Pollard now adds "record label exec" to his curriculum vitae. Silverfish Trivia is the first release on his new label Prom Is Coming. Seven songs = twenty two minutes... most of the tunes are captivatingly short'n'sweet under-three-minute nuggets in true Pollard fashion, but one "Cats Love A Parade" stretches out longer and psych-ier than the rest reaching almost the eight minute mark... which is also in true Pollard fashion.
We are often jealous of how much cool stuff there is in Japan, they even got a Radiohead record a few years ago that wasn't available here in the states...until now. Com Lag is a collection of b-sides, remixes (by Christian Vogel and Four Tet!) and live tracks recorded around the time of Hail To The Thief. While we all wait with giddy anticipation for the next Radiohead album (hurry up guys it's been 4 years!!!) this has been giving us a nice Radiohead fix. It's easy to forget that when it comes right down to it, these guys are just a totally great band who also just so happen to be quite popular and famous. A must have for all Radiohead fans!
First proper actual cd full length from this blissy UK free folk crew, after a clutch of (now out of print) cd-r's and a collaborative disc with the North Sea. Matanuska begins as a gloriously blissful late afternoon, sunshiney slab of fuzzy, buzzy, muted pop ambience, sparkling and glimmering, there are guitars, but they aren't plucked or strummed so much as spread like a thick glaze over the speakers. Within this gorgeous sun dappled soundfield, are tangled up bits of found sounds, distant ringing bells, rumbling thunder, as well as subtle layers of drone and shimmer adding mystery and depth to each track.
The rest of the record however is not so sunshiney, the mood is much more dark and shadowy, lit by moonlight, rumbles and whirs swirled into lush late night crawls, acoustic guitars draped over slow serene swells of sound, the buzz of steel strings muted and drawn out into simple shimmering ragas, the vibe is definitely sorrowful, melancholy, with minor key melodies drifting through intricate webs of abstract Appalachia, wheezing layered drones spread out like a late afternoon fog, amidst chirping birds and distant bits of conversation, a slowly shifting bit of minimal dreamdrone that brightens subtly as it works its way though the disc.
The record finishes up with the sun peeking out from behind the clouds, like that glorious first day of Spring, the birds once again singing, the shimmering sounds soaking up the sunlight, a drifting drone, warm and glowing, a hopeful dreamy sound that blossoms like a flower after a rainstorm, the hushed buzz growing fuzzier and fuzzier, almost like a fading memory. So nice.
We talk a lot about how weird Finland is, so before we go any further, let us apologize to the majority of Finland who to be fair are probably not weird at all. Now that we've got that out of the way, HOLY SHIT! Is there no end to the amazing and damaged and demented music coming out of Finland. We're beginning to think not.
The latest evidence comes in the form of the brand new full length from Ride For Revenge, who we first heard a while back on a split with fellow countrymen Torturium, their half of the split a downtuned black trudge, like Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT but with that impossible to describe Finnish something that transforms everything into some special sort of what-the-fuck. Creepy synths, plodding drums, grinding guitar and harsh vocals, not exactly black metal, not in the traditional sense at least, but most definitely metal.
On King Of Snakes however, the band have gotten even weirder, and distinctly less metal, but no less heavy. Supposedly there are guitars, but to our ears it just sounds like just drums and lots and lots of bass. Each song a plodding doomic lurch, the drums pounding out a simple rhythm, the riff repeating over and over, most songs with just a single part, very mesmerizing and hypnotic. Like a caveman Circle or a guitarless Gore, these guys just bash out endlessly cycling looped low end and killer crushing doom drum pound. The vocals are a super affected gurgling growl, not in the death metal sense, instead, super dramatic, intoning unspeakable evils, a rumbling demonic baritone, peppered with the occasional super delay drenched goat metal grunt.
Some tracks also have cool creepy keyboards as well, that add all sort of mood and texture, and it's not cheesy metal synth either, it's all strange analog buzz, a sort of krautrocky blur draped over the endlessly pounding groove.
Ride For Revenge are another one of those black metal bands, who seem to be black metal more out of pedigree than sound, but even though this doesn't sound like metal, it is most definitely black. It sounds a bit like Godheadsilo jamming with Finnish alchemical dronelords Tiermes, with the occasional injection of Hawkwinded FX and SUNN-drenched rumble, mysterious and murky swaths of throbbing low end thrum wrapped around the drums like some evil warlock's cloak.
Imagine if Amphetamine Reptile was a black metal label... then these guys would be Halo Of Flies... Most definitely one of our new favorite 'black metal' records...
From the UK, Rock-A-Rolla magazine is like if The Wire were all about, well, rock. Heavy weird fucked up rock that is. This issue's cover stars are Warp-label mathrockers Battles (whose great new album we wanted to review this week but all our distros were sold out, drat). Also in this ish: Neurosis, Faust, Oxbow, Jesu, Melt-Banana, Unsane, Hydra Head Records... wow it's like the editors called us up and asked us what a good portion of AQ customers might want to read about! In addition to those features, there's a hefty section of record reviews (26 pages), everything from Middian to Moljebka Pvlse, Wold to Axolotl, including a few interesting items we hadn't known about yet (they get stuff earlier over there in England, eh).
Best pull quote of the issue: "Were we inspired by The Stooges? Iggy has a 12 inch cock so the short answer is: no." -- Eugene Robinson of Oxbow.
As much as we'd prefer not to, we're sure some of you would appreciate if we started this review with one of those AQ alerts. Goes something like: BORIS ALERT!!!! BORIS ALERT!!!! NEW ON INOXIA!!!! BORIS RELATED NEW RELEASE!!!! Okay, so now all you Boris obsessive can skip right to the buy button and move on, you're probably gonna want this, cuz A. it's on Inoxia, and B. it's produced by Atsuo from Boris! Oh, and let's not forget C. IT'S LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!!
For the rest of you, who need more than a loose Boris connection, this is in fact a pretty awesome slab of drifting droning acid psych. No huge pounding sludge, or blown out fuzz rock, most of the tracks on Pinhole meander aimlessly, wandering from fluttery folks, to ambient drift, and back again, with the occasional squall of distorted buzz.
The record opens with a thick wash of blurred guitar, dense and swirling, groaning waves of distortion flecked with streaks of feedback, while beneath lurks a playful little melody, gently swaying peacefully beneath the sonic turbulence. Then suddenly, the record shifts gears, and we're floating weightless through some sun dappled glade, lilting detuned guitars unfurl gentle melodies all wistful and abstract, WAY off in the background some tape hiss and crumbling distortion. It's very spare and lo-fi, wreathed in sparkling solar flares and soft focus reverb, sort of like a druggy mix of Jandek, Loren Connors and the Durutti Column. Elsewhere reverbed guitars sway suspended in clouds subtle delay, nursery rhyme melodies and hummed / mumbled vocals draped over a shimmery crystalline latticework of delicate drifts of sound, super simple and unobtrusive percussion as well as barely audible field recordings. Now and again, the band launches into some super aggressive strumming, kicking up dense clouds of high end skree and blown out free noise fuzz, but even at their noisiest, Rollo are never far away from settling back down into another long stretch of soft psychfolk shimmer. Good stuff for sure. Not necessarily sonically something Boris fans will automatically love, although some of this did remind us of Boris at their dreamiest and most abstract, but fans of Japanese stuff like L, Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Masaki Batoh, Eddie Marcon and the like will be in heaven.
By now, Mr, Jack Rose should need no introduction. Numerous releases on Eclipse, VHF, Tequila Sunrise, tons of amazing shows (including a killer instore right here at AQ) every performance totally spellbinding, with a repertoire that runs the gamut from classic bluegrass to drone drenched ragas to neo-Appalachia and probably to some styles of playing he just made up. In fact Rose was seemingly the first to not just ape the music and style of John Fahey, instead choosing to create his own sound and style, due in no small part we'd guess, to his continuing membership in drone-raga ensemble Pelt, and that raga vibe most certainly informs all of his playing, which just might explain why we find Rose so much more interesting than many of his contemporaries.
This disc collects a handful of studio recordings recorded over the last year, featuring Rose exploring the slide guitar, and as always, it's positively divine. From twangy countrified bluegrass breakdowns, to dense tangles of elaborate finger picking, his slide so slipper and fluid, totally emotional and moving, every song so complex and technical, but at the same time so goddamn simple and beautiful. The highlight would have to be the 12+ minute "Spirits In The House", with its amazing harmonics over a warm backdrop of buzzing low end overtones. The main melody so completely captivating, shimmery and wavery, sounding very Eastern and very much like a sitar, the perfect blend of wistful bluegrass melancholia and buzzing Eastern style raga. So gorgeous. And as with pretty much every Rose record, absolutely essential.
Limited to 1000 copies. Packaged in a gorgeous diecut letter press sleeve with an old photo inserted into the cover. So nice!
Wow, we've gotten in three releases this week that starkly contrast with the sunny warm weather we've been having. Seemingly residing in the chilled shadows of dense forests and ancient stone chambers are the latest albums from Rothko, Tanakh and XXL (the collaboration between Xiu Xiu and Larsen). Dark, expansive beauties, all of them! Go on, defy the sun or tuck these away for a suitably overcast autumn or winter eve.
The first stage in Rothko's new full length is a slow descent into somber guitar depths. You're drawn up by gossamer strings for a fleeting breath before slipping back down into the languid folds of bass guitar. Such is the post-post-rock path Rothko takes over the course of these ten songs. Brief glimmering fire lights spark out through ominous storm clouds.
Recommended for fans of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Ros and Mogwai.
Back in print! And a "Special Edition" to boot, meaning Skin Graft have made some slight changes to the artwork and, more importantly, tacked on five previously unheard bonus tracks! That makes for 25 tracks in total of frantic riff-packed precision prog punk on this collection of unreleased studio (4 and 8 track recordings) and live material from one of Japan's most amazing bands, the heavy & hyper drum/bass duo led by Tatsuya Yoshida. Originally released in 1997, this disc featured four songs with former bassist Ryuichi Masuda, while the rest heralded the debut of then-new six-string bass man Sasaki Hisashi (since departed, from Ruins that is). The live tracks also have guests from Boredoms/Omoide Hatoba, Tipographica (a saxophonist, for maximum jazz-Ruins dementia) and other bands, jamming on some of the Ruins' "greatest hits", including such favorites as "Hyderomastgroningem", "Burning Stone", "Dhaskrive", "Del Fanci Kant," and "Infect" (that one particularly enhanced with some intense synth keyboard action). The studio material includes some songs originally written as far back as 1988 but never before recorded, all super killer stuff to say the least! We should mention the track "Still Life", a good portion of which almost sounds like something by Italy's Sinistri, it's so abrupt and sparse. Fittingly, the disc ends with their now notorious prog-rock medley, referencing dozens of obscure riffs -- from King Crimson, Yes, Gong, Goblin, Rush, ELP, Samla Mamas Manna, PFM, Caravan, Area, Magma (of course), and many more -- in a lightning-fast fury. Recommended for all Ruins fanatics of course, probably even if you already have the old version, thanks to the bonus tracks...
Aussie noise rockers the Grey Daturas had been telling us forever about some killer band called Fire Witch, who they played with all the time. It took forever, but we finally managed to get a bunch of copies of their Critter / Kritta 3" cd-r, which of course sold like crazy and was gone before we knew it. We stayed in touch with the band, but had been unable to get anything else until now. The strange thing is we had to go all the way to Japan to get this, a split with Japanese duo Ryokuchi...
It was well worth the wait though. Fire Witch are another band who traffic in the slooooooooow and heavy, but they definitely give it their own twist. Not sludgy like SUNNO))) or their legions of followers, and not really noisy like many of their countrymen. Instead they're some sort of strange downtuned slowcore mathrock. Massive guitars churn and throb, the drums a crushing pound, over the top, drawn out wailing leads, all the makings of a proper rock band, but instead they fuck it all up, gloriously, lurching forward only to pause briefly, allowing the silence and bits of room sound to seep in, before launching back into downtuned action. And they go on like that for ages, never attaining any momentum, instead engaging is some crowd baiting bit of stop start torture, and we love it. A slow motion wall of psych guitars and slow shuffling drums.
Here and there, the band reels it in, allowing the drummer to just wander, while the guitars squiggle and oscillate, a dizzying warbly soundscape of tangled melodies and sea sick shimmer. They finish off with the brilliantly titled "I Spilled A Lot Of Blood To Get This Meal", a lengthy chunk of abstract soundscaping, reverberating metal, soft swells of feedback, lazy basslines, drifting harmonics, shuffling rhythms, eventually bursting into a dense doomy plod, but laced with all sorts of killer melodies, making it sound like a doomed version of June Of 44 or Engine Kid.
Fire Witch are teamed up here with Ryokuchi, a Japanese duo (what is it with Japan and duos?), just bass and percussion, who offer up an ultra dense, and relentless onslaught of mathy grinding doom-drenched metallized noise rock. Beginning with strange percussion and fuzzy minimal drones, the band suddenly launches into a massive wall of sludgy pummel, like a more hyper kinetic Eyehategod, or a doom metal Ruins. Relentless and hypnotic, the drums pounding away, the bass a swirling wash of blackened buzz, amidst the chaos duel vocalists howl and shriek. Fuck! And that's just the first track, their second number is way more spread out and sprawling, offering up some stretches of relative tranquility with affected bass and tribal percussion, sounding a bit like a more metal Three Mile Pilot, but the majority of the nearly seventeen minutes is spent furious and chaotic, grinding and crushing, a Tasmanian Devil of sound, going from wild thrashing to slow motion plod and back again in a matter of second. Dense and complex and convoluted and so fucking great!
Like a modern Switched On Bach, DJ Scotch Egg, armed with modified game boys, and a serious arsenal of 8 bit noisemakers, takes all your favorite Bach tunes and turns them inside out, tangles them all up, slathers them in overloaded electronic buzz and glitch and all sorts of squiggly video game music, and creates some glorious bastard classical gabber electronic classical knee-to-the-nuts techno. And it's a blast. Wild and goofy, funny and sort of funky, but completely brilliantly baffling.
Lots of the pieces are ones you'd recognize, but they are quickly transformed into blown out lo-fi blasts of damaged dance music. Some tracks feature garbled super distorted vocals, and end up sounding like some toy version of Atari Teenage Riot. Allan thinks a lot of this sounds like the video game version of the theme from Bad News Bears or maybe an 8-bit Virgil Fox trapped in a haunted video arcade. However it strikes you, odds are you won't hear a record this weird and this much fun anytime soon. Imagine playing some insane futuristic version of Dance Dance Revolution on a crappy old Atari 2600, but with the sound patched through 1,000 Marshall stacks. Fucking awesome!
If you're anything like us (at least two of us have the sounds of Rastan on our iPods and we have a full size Tron machine in the back room of AQ!) this is so deliriously damaged and absolutely essential!!
It's pretty impossible to not be intrigued by a record that features the legend: "This music was created with the pure power of the guitar drone." Especially when those words prove to be absolutely true.
The record begins with nearly 15 minutes of abstract drift, a wash of delicate low end flutter, soft swells of oceanic drone, ultra minimal and gorgeously languid, the opening track a barely there whisper of sound. So gentle and soothing. Track two introduces that previously mentioned 'pure power' with a coruscating dronescape all keening crumbling distortion, moaning steel strings, a dense reverberation of coruscating grind and scrape, all smeared into a surprisingly melodic sea of blown out buzz.
The final track is over half the record, clocking in at nearly half an hour, and revisits the dark tranquility of the opening track, a stark landscape of drifting bell like tones, distant streaks of muted feedback, slow motion pulses of warm low end, and stretched out partial melodies. A gorgeous bit of night sky glimmer, that toward the very end introduces some abstract distorted guitars, a slow motion wash of rumbling buzz that shifts and shimmers, a huge swaying mass of grizzled guitar growl that gradually fades into nothing...
Essential listening for fans of the drone guitar, especially Fear Falls Burning, Troum, Taiga Remains and the like...
Monumental. Majestic. Mystical. No, we aren't just launching hyperbole with reckless abandon. Those words really are the norm when describing this elusive, amorphous group. Secret Chiefs 3 are an entity whose works may be 'read' on many levels. The music may be enjoyed by those who adhere to the traditional pop/rock band book of rules... well, to some degree at least. Some may find it downright bizarre and impervious. Daunting, overwhelming even, each album is simply more than can possibly be comprehended in a couple of listens. Such is the case with their latest album Path Of Most Resistance. They refer to it as "an overview of the clandestine movements of this enigmatic group from the USA." In layman's terms it's a compilation of recordings from their four studio releases (Eyes Of Flesh, Eyes Of Flame, Second Grand Constitution And Bylaws, Book M, and Book Of Horizons) which also includes bonus tracks and videos. The eclectic elements of haunting exotica, fiery metal, frantic spaghetti westerns and other far-reaching international inspirations may ring engagingly familiar to the average listener, but master of ceremonies Trey Spruance's musical alchemy is detailed with the most intricately encrypted inscriptions that resonate with deeper, more timeless invocations. if you are an individual so inclined to delve beyond the shimmering surface in pursuit of secret teachings and esoteric knowledge you'll discover SC3 unfolds to reveal many hidden passages and levels of understanding. Interpret it how you will, we're sure each individual will draw radically differing perspectives -- a genuine case of 'what you bring to it will determine what you draw from it'. As with each SC3 album that's come before, the scope of Path Of Most Resistance is vast -- at once both easy and uneasy listening. Spruance is unquestionably one of today's great composers. His compositions are stunningly elaborate and performed with absolute mastery and conviction by his many illustrious collaborators (William Winant, Eyvind Kang, Jesse Quattro, Ches Smith, Tim Smolens, former Mr. Bungle-ists Bar McKinnon, Trevor Dunn and Danny Heifitz among others).
The bonus tracks (covers of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes And Villains") are strange to say the least. They come across as cracked'n'wonky, less than tight renditions in comparison to the precision, densely packed, composed madness that precedes them. Leaves you wondering if they are simply a chuckle or yet another clue to the SC3 puzzle... or both. Epic.
Oh Selda! We are soooooooo in love with your voice! We first heard you on the amazing Love Peace and Poetry compilation of Turkish psychedelic music and ever since then, we just wanted more more more! Last year we got our Selda fix with a collection of vinyl transfers released by World Psychedelia, and now finally we get another full serving of Selda that we've so desperately been craving! No surprise that the fine folks with impeccable taste at B-Music/Finders Keepers are responsible for this amazing collection of Selda at her best! With a singular voice that demands and grabs your attention with such utter flare, seduction and style, Selda is truly a musical treasure who we're sure will win the ears and hearts of just about anyone who listens. Every song has a rich musical backdrop, perfectly cradling her lovely vocals, with a sound that has no easy genre lines to point to, but that so few have touched on with such perfection. It's psych-rock and glorious pop, it's folk and funk, it's fun and dramatic, its whatever it wants to be, and it's a collection of songs with absolutely no misses! There is a playfulness in the performances that totally imbue the songs with a rich full color fever that just can't be denied. While some reissues exist more for history's sake or for just a couple cool tracks, this is one of those records that requires repeated listening, and lord knows we have listened to this over and over and over. In some ways we even think of Selda like a Turkish version of Asha Bhosle, with that sort of amazing voice that turns everything it touches into musical magic.
Way beyond recommended!
The Shaky Hands' romping indie pop debut grazes on the fresh pastures of current darlings Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade and Hidden Cameras. The influence of earlier college rock peculiarities Violent Femmes, Adrian Belew, Talking Heads is audible at every turn, along with the loosely woven, folksy, open-hearted emotiveness of Jeff Mangum. Catchy, bright and quirky.
Awesome slab of instrumental outer space ur-drone raga folk from a sometime collaborator of The Sun City Girls, Dredd Foole and others. Slide guitar, tabla, sitar, violin, organ, frame drums, metal bowls and a whole mess of other instrument we've never heard of deftly smoothed into a some sort of sprawling tribal drone ritual, think Sunburned Hand meets Muslimgauze meets Angus Maclise meets Jack Rose, but with more Hawkwindy swirl, and druggy din. Simple hypnotic rhythms beneath abstract Eastern percussion, lots of buzz and drift and shimmer, wrapped in thick sheets of reverb and fuzzy FX. Gorgeous stuff. Fans of any of the above mentioned bands, as well as any of the new weird America or modern freak folk will flip for this.
Super limited vinyl reissue of a way out of print cd-r. Green and black hand screened sleeves and printed insert.
We've been huge fans of the Stars Of The Lid ever since their first record, Music For Nitrous Oxide, way back in 1995. And their last record, Tired Sounds Of... is a beloved favorite and all time AQ best seller. It's been fascinating to observe their sonic development, from murky guitar based 4-track bedroom guitar drones, all foggy and fuggy and murky and dreamlike, to their current sound, a more modern, almost classical sound, of rich reverberant swells, and lots and lots of space.
The Stars' sound has obviously become much more clear and well defined, polished even, but everything we loved about Nitrous Oxide is still present, albeit in slightly altered form. The Stars' were always about swells, ebb and flow, melodies and compositions played out over expansive stretches of oceanic shimmer, and that at least hasn't changed on And Their Refinement Of The Decline. Notes aren't just played, they begin as tiny sparkles, little distant glimmers, and gradually grow into thick rich whirs, or massive rumbles, before just as quickly fading away again. Oceanic is definitely an apt descriptor, as the music here, as on the more recent records, does have that feel, like some epic dimly lit sonic sea swirling and churning, sometime tranquil and barely moving, other times heaving and tumultuous. It's the sound of a new dawn, an impending storm, or the birth of a galaxy, it's so completely epic while at the same time managing somehow to be pastoral and contemplative and breathtakingly beautiful.
In the early days it was just 2 guitars and a four track, and the sound reflected that, much more gritty and fuzzy, the mood a lot darker, evoking the desert, the starry sky, a druggy dreamy innerspace of muted minimal shimmer. As the band grew, and added instruments, more players, recorded in real studios, the sound changed dramatically, and suddenly, instead of some indie bedroom project, the Stars were crafting pieces that could stand alongside any modern classical piece, while remaining dreamy and drone-y enough to tickle the ears of indie dronesters worldwide. Which is probably the most fascinating part of the Stars' sound. They were making music equally as expansive and epic and gorgeous 10 years ago, but those sounds were limited by the technology, by the band's meager recording set up. And only now it seems that the band is able to fully realize the sound they have been hearing, and essentially creating, all along.
There are guitars here and there, it is after all still the root of their sound, but they seem to be overshadowed by the other instruments (although it is often difficult to pinpoint the instrument creating many of the sounds), heavy on the strings, three violincelles and a harp, as well as a surprising arsenal of horns, two trumpets, flugelhorn and clarinet, AND a children's choir!! But it's not just the players or the instruments, but how they interact and the music they create, and here the results are divine. Many of the tracks do sound like bits of modern classical stretched out into languorous stretches of muted drone and subtle shimmer, like watching the planets from outer space, observing the epic drifts of solar systems and an infinity of cosmic interactions, but others definitely reference more earthly sonic treasures, "Apreludes (In C Sharp Major)" has some serious Morricone going on, and "Don't Bother They're Here" references Scott Tuma's washed out guitar work in Souled American. But whatever subtle flavor is introduced into each track, the sound is definitely and distinctly Stars Of The Lid. Their shift to double disc releases also seems to suit them, allowing their slow burning soft swell compositions plenty of time to sprawl and spread and evolve into epic and soul stirring soundscapes. But even two discs is not nearly enough as far as we're concerned, so everyone buy this one, so next time, these guys can release a four disc set, or a ten disc set or a twenty disc set...
Instead of leaving it for the end of the review like we usually do, we'll come right out and say it right at the beginning.
BLACK METAL RECORD OF THE YEAR.
Without a doubt, the debut release from Russian one man band Stielas Storhett, has stormed past all the other black hordes, and secured the number one spot on our best metal records of the year list. Even though technically it came out last year, we only just discovered it a few weeks ago, so as far as we're concerned this is IT. List rules be damned! And it seems very unlikely that any record will be able to top it.
What is it exactly, that makes Vandrer... so amazing then? At first, we thought it was one of those BM records AQ seems to love so much, you know, the sort of damaged and demented, stumbling and fucked up, weirdo outsider black metal. But the more we listened, the less 'weird' it sounded, and the more it seemed to transcend the usual descriptors. In many ways it is fucked up and demented, but instead of being blatantly weird or experimental, the weirdness was part and parcel of a super personal, carefully crafted sound. A blown out wintry buzz, furious and fuzzy, relentless and over the top, but infused with mournful melodies and strange sonic layers. Lots of killer guitar harmonies, but buried in seas of sizzling cymbals, in the red drums, and some of the most gloriously distorted guitars EVER.
The opener is a majestic epic, as sorrowful and melancholy as it is frosty and grim, with sweeping guitar melodies, and a loping, sort of stumbling rhythm, complete with long stretches of gorgeously bleak clean guitars over simple shuffling drumming. The second track counters with some of the most intense and furiously fuzzed out blackness ever set to tape. A killer riff that is immediately swallowed up by a swirling cloud of black buzz and chaotic drum damage. But even within this dense squall of mayhemic fury, lurk all sorts of haunting melodies and unlikely sounds, an army of ghostly shapes and sonic spectres, the musical version of wandering through bleak landscapes and fog enshrouded graveyards...
The rest of the record veers between those two sonic sides, the blown out buzz, and the lilting depressive moodiness, from the weird depressive Katatonia like dirge of the instrumental "Nymane" (instrumental that is, except for some strange buried-in-the-mix, moaning and heavy breathing) that reminds us of a super tense emotional scene from some Dario Argento film, to the closing number "Dieses Eis Wird Niemals Schmelzen", which begins like some SUNNO))) style downtuned guitar buzzscape, before the drums kick in and the guitar splinters into strange syncopated chugging, while over the top drifts a gorgeous creepy guitar melody, eventually coalescing into a midtempo Burzumic trawl through some miserable sonic world of lost souls and damned spirits, to the epic seasick lurch of "Stille Weisse Wildnis", with its swords being unsheathed sound (a la Satyricon), its strange Fripp-like guitar interlude, and its stumbling stop start arrangement, and all blackened points in between.
There are even a couple of covers, Darkthrone's "Unholy Black Metal", which is pretty true to the original but supercharged and doused with even more grim buzz than the original, and Burzum's "Erblicket Die Tochter Des Firmaments" which is an all time classic, but given Stielas Storhett's sonic makeover, insanely distorted and heavily affected vocals, and a million more layers of buzz, and a production that noises it up so much that minus the drums, it could be some killer Merzbow black metal track.
Still Flyin' are a bunch of cool kids from the Bay Area's indie rock'n'pop community and beyond (the ever changing and expanding line-up has included members of Track Star, Lowercase, Aislers Set, and Ladybug Transistor). Yup, they're a supergroup of sorts with a twist, they take a break from their respective general rocking and rolling, in favor of a whole different style of music -- some of the most feel-good reggae infused pop around. The outcome is absolutely unironic, positively jubilant and very well done. If you missed their debut album Time Wrinkles On last year, you've been missing out on the good times. This ep keeps the Still Flyin' party in full flight. Sure to buoy up your spirits and brighten up your day.
Paul Dickow, one of Portland's brightest musical minds, has been a part of some of the most breezy, intricate and hypnotic recordings over the last decade in bands and projects like Fontanelle, Nudge, and Emergency. His third full length as Strategy finds him sounding better then ever. Combining multitrack live instrumentation, old-school synthesizers, digital sound design, and pieces of improv sessions and practice recordings, Dickow creates a seamless sound with an organic warmth that shimmers throughout. Subtle dubby beats with washed out ambiance, dreamy drifty shoegazing, a strong sense of rhythmic melody and surprisingly subtle pop delivery. Kind of like a Kompakt record with way more tricks up its sleeves. We started thinking that this is what playing Seefeel and Pole at the same time might sound like. We've been listening to this nonstop, it's one of those rare records that's just as satisfying to have on while doing other stuff, as it is to listen to with undivided attention. So nice!
It makes perfect sense that the man behind Sutcliffe Jugend has spent a considerable amount of time partnered with William Bennett in Whitehouse. There's many an attribute that Kevin Tompkins deftly recapitulates from Whitehouse into the equally breathtaking / stupefying / problematic ensemble Sutcliffe Jugend. While both Sutcliffe Jugend and Whitehouse unashamedly endorse the aesthetics of ultraviolence through painfully harsh electronics and belted vocals, Tompkins seems to be more interested in the social ramifications of power and control (by telling everybody to fuck off), rather than Bennett's sexual sadism (who wants everybody to suck his cock). Tomkins is also far more comfortable behind the guitar than he is behind a Wasp synthesizer, thus the piercing frequencies of Sutcliffe Jugend are more of the product of amplifier abuse and neck-wrangling freakouts that sustained corrosion from electronics, although synthesized tones are certainly present. On a couple of tracks, the density of guitar and electric noise transcends Whitehouse's borders and into Birchville Cat Motel territory. Tomkins tops all of these abusive sounds with a vocal delivery that obviously parallels Bennett's as his devilish sermons jump from commanding rhetoric into hysterical screams and sustained ululations. This is seriously fucked music, if you dare call it music at all.
Wow, we've gotten in three releases this week that starkly contrast with the sunny warm weather we've been having. Seemingly residing in the chilled shadows of dense forests and ancient stone chambers are the latest albums from Tanakh, Rothko and XXL (the collaboration between Xiu Xiu and Larsen). Dark, expansive beauties, all of them!
Go on, defy the sun or tuck these away for a suitably overcast autumn or winter eve.
Now based in Florence, Italy, former Virginians Tanakh are a musical collective whose somber folk rock in many ways draws easy comparisons to Montreal's Godspeed You Black Emperor family, Angels Of Light and Larsen. This is their sister album to last year's Ardent Fevers. Actually Saunders Hollow was recorded prior to that release, and is distinguished by the introspective yearning vocals of Michele Poulos. Those vocals make this album even more of a counterpart to Ardent Fevers as that disc featured mainman Jesse Poe's deep, weary tones. The final instrumental number "Illusions Of Separation" is well worth the price of admission alone.
Fans of all of the abovementioned will surely find a kindred spirit in Tanakh.
It would be a stretch, even for us habitual hyperbolists, to proclaim Tasmania as the next eccentric origin for unusual music to join the ranks of Finland, New Zealand, and Iceland. But there have been two cultural exports from Tasmania which have blown our collective minds: those being the black metal misanthrope Striborg and the elemental sound ecologist Tarab (aka Eamon Sprod). No, there is nothing really connecting the two other than the fact that they originated from the tiny Australian island; and even now, Sprod has migrated across the channel to Melbourne, but the case could be made that the compacted Tasmanian environments of bleached deserts, scraped coastlines, and tempestuous rain forests still tug at Sprod's heart. These landscapes which Sprod documents, agitates, and amplifies, sound as if they herald the end of the world, which may speak to a communal Tasmanian bleakness shared with Mr. Striborg. This allusion might be validated through the few interviews conducted with Sprod that highlight his nihilist traits; and maybe in that, there is some black metal oozing in Sprod's veins.
Anyway, Wind Keeps Even Dust Away is only the second full album as Tarab, yet in his small discography of manipulated field recordings and agitated objects, he's proven himself a masterful sound artist, on par with all time Aquarius favorites Chris Watson, Toshiya Tsunoda, Matt Shoemaker, and Loren Chasse. But even in comparison to those esteemed artists, Tarab's work is considerably darker, as you might imagine with that end of the world reference posited earlier. Field recordings are central to the Tarab sound, augmented by the complementary sounds of Sprod tossing leaves, rust, dirt, and shattered glass, all of which get mulched into seamless compositions swollen with expansive low end drones and electrocuted vibrations. As on his first album Surfacedrift, Wind Keeps Even Dust Away navigates barren landscapes between the industrial wasteland and the wilderness of the outback, with jolts of shattered glass and heavy rains breaking up the tactile sounds and sympathetic frequencies that make this album so incredible. Very highly recommended!
Is this a soundtrack for a porno film? Jimi Tenor and his funk lounge rhythm section Kabu Kabu are certainly laying it on hot and heavy on this new outing on nu-soul label Ubiquity. We've been entertained in the past by Tenor's eccentricies whether they be working with a drunk Polish orchestra or channeling Prince via his own Finnish techno-cabaret style musings. Not sure what people will think with this one. While the rhythm section is tight, with some full on seventies blaxsploitation "schwing", Tenor's creepy lothario persona can either make folks swoon or cringe. You decide.
If Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg were a cult, a shadowy forest horde of trolls and cavemen, like we had always imagined (hoped?), we would be right there beneath the heavy canopy, eyes wide in the arboreal darkness, bowing before Thundarr and Mordraaneth, trudging through the woods all glassy eyed, chanting in unison, letting Trollmann's subsonic vibrations lull us into a strange doomed trance, filthy and unkempt, clad in loin cloths, faces painted with black mud, spears in hands, first-borns sacrificed, we would gladly give up our daily lives, to serve their trollish dominion. But instead, Trollmann are just a human UK doom duo, keyboards and bass, and if our wild obsession alluded to in the above ramblings didn't clue you in, we LOVE these guys, and for now, will have to make do with raving maniacally about how awesome they are and getting our hands on every possible shred of recorded music they've produced. At least until they actually do become a cult.
To be honest, we were always sort of convinced that Trollmann was some bedroom recorded side project. Some metal guy just sort of experimenting and exploring sounds and soundscapes. The purported facts were just too good to be true, a caveman/troll duo, one member named Thundarr, responsible for "Rumblings of doom" and "Prophecies of times to come", the other member called Mordraaneth, he responsible for "Cosmic keys to gates unknown". The band members always pictured on the record sleeves in drawings, bearded, carrying clubs, seated on huge toadstools. Album titles like Arcane Runes Adorn The Ice-Veiled Monoliths Of The Ancient Cavern Of The Stars and Dark Clouds Blacken The Sky On The Eve Of The Thousandth Sacrifice. It all seems sort of absurd, until you actually hear the music, then it all suddenly makes some sort of impossible sense. It's like a doom metal Land Of The Lost. We all headed down to the club to see some doom band play, but got sucked into some other dimension, and ended up prostrate before Thundarr and Mordraaneth, as they proceeded to create a music, both beautiful and otherworldly, heavy and dreamlike, spreading over us like a black cloud.
So imagine our surprise when we discovered, there was a LIVE recording of Trollmann. Performing on this plane, in this time, to be witnessed by mere mortals. How could that be possible? And where could such a momentous performance take place? Well, here it is. Trollmann Av Ildtoppberg's very first live Aktion, a low end doom drone ritual performed where else but... IN A PUB!!! That's right, the Tut 'N Shive. The good ol' pub down on the corner.
Even just listening, you can practically hear the pub slowly transforming into some vine draped cave, dank and dark, lit from within, some unearthly glow, while two shadowy figures lurk on a small stage-like outcropping of rock. And proceed to fill the room, with viscous black beauty. The only real distraction from this sonic transformation is the between song reaction. 20 or 30 punters, pints in hand, cheering, clapping and hooting, laughing and talking before the next huge wave of black bile comes washing over them. It's not so much distracting as surreal. To imagine this music actually being performed, in a pub, in front of a crowd. It's actually pretty amazing, if not a little unreal.
Three looooooooooooong tracks. The first, begins with a strange throbbing bass, pulsing beneath a glimmering, shimmery keyboard drone, the bass slowly transforming into a huge lurching bass riff, repeated over and over, a totally mesmerizing slow motion doom groove, with huge monstrous guttural vocals all wrapped in thick sheets of amplifier buzz and cavernous reverb. Most definitely the heaviest Trollmann yet, but as it progresses, the sound becomes more fuzzy and the notes less distinct... eventually fading into black.
The second begins with a thick swirl of rumbling low end, glowing and growling, shifting glacially, the overtones beating against each other, a thick dense black cloud of sound, slowly modulating and subtly changing shape. While beneath the roiling blackness, the keyboard offers up a drifting melancholy shimmer, simple mournful melodies that hover and slowly fade, Trollmann at their most dreamlike and ambient. But before long, this droning black shimmer begins to build, slowly swelling into a super majestic, cinematic dirge, massive soaring low end melodies, howled anguished vocals, like Moss playing Godspeed, but then slowed down and somehow rendered impossibly fuzzy and blissy, while remaining intense and threatening.
The final ritual, sounds a bit like Total or Sunroof!, but only if their instrumental arsenal consisted of nothing but bass guitars and HUGE Stonehenge like speaker cabinets, a near static wall of throbbing low end sound wrapped like thick black drifts around a soft shimmery, distant melody, a melancholia drifting well beneath the rumble and whir, eventually becoming more and more tangled, the track becoming so blown out and blurry, so grainy and soft focus it almost sounds like some sort of Pop Ambient Doom.
As disappointed as we are, that Trollmann do in fact exist in the mortal plane, and do practice their strange sonic alchemy in local pubs, the music still compels us, mesmerizes us, possesses us, it blackens our ears and our souls, and thus we are at the ready, to gather up an army, to slip free of this world, to strip off our clothes, to paint our faces and march bravely into the black forest, to serve the mighty Trollmann...
The time has come. Hard to believe. Trollman in the flesh. Live. Their mortal forms revealed to all. Thundarr and Mordraaneth. Rumblings Of Doom, Prophecies Of Times To Come, Cosmic Keys To Gates Unknown. All before our very eyes.
Not sure what we were expecting, so much of Trollmann was mystery, those strange drawings on the cds, the bizarre monickers, the lengthy song titles. And hell, the sound. Huge expanses of slow motion doom. Hellish drones spread out like a black fog. We were sort of expecting some sort of SUNNO))) thing. Dry ice, hoods, robes, back lit shadows. But nah, that's a little too contrived. Maybe they would be hidden behind some stones, or huge curtains. Or maybe they would be monsters, creatures of the night, exposed for the very first time, a horrific but impossibly compelling sight.
No matter how you slice it, with a mysterious band, it's hard not to be disappointed, and to be totally honest we were a little at first, but then, the whole thing became more and more surreal, and it was hard not to love these guys even more.
It starts with skeletal, taciturn looking long hair man in a long sleeve Burzum t-shirt, seated at a keyboard in front of a huge black tapestry of a long haired, mustachioed skull wearing an Indian headress above crossed swords. Beside him, stands another long haired fellow, in jeans and a black t-shirt, holding a black bass. All to the strains of a skull rattling low end doomdrone. But then the camera pulls back to reveal the fact that they seem to be outside, DURING THE DAY! They also seem to be under a bridge. Beneath a brick arch, with a muddy hillside in the background, trees and bushes. On the wall behind the band in the background a strange brass plaque, and what appears to be a pig's head on a stick. The whole thing is filmed with a super jittery camcorder, sudden unexpected zooms, face, fingers on strings, the dirt hillside in the background, the skull on the tapestry, and while the band plays, you can hear people talking, obviously not that into the band, one guy even comes to the front of the stage, beer in hand, and begins to taunt the band, making hand gestures and mugging fro the crowd. Someone in the audience yells "You're fucking SHITE!!!". People laugh, but the band remain expressionless, intent on the harsh soundworld they're weaving beneath this bridge.
The second track begins the same way, the taciturn man seated at his keyboard, beneath the Indian skull, but at this point, either the cameraman is getting bored, or has gotten too drunk to really keep the camera still or keep his attention on the band. Lots of jittery shots of the floor, the wall beside the band, the band members' feet, the crowd, drunk dudes and cute metal girls, amps, the trees behind the stage, the houses on the other side of the bridge, and most bizarrely of all, a couple of little dogs, one of whom proceeds to run back and forth in front of the stage, seemingly unperturbed by the roaring doomic dirge emanating from the speakers. And the cameraman seems unduly interested in the dog, considering he is meant to be capturing the slow motion might of Trollmann. Much more crowd chatter this time around, but somehow it just adds to the sound. Laughing and inane drunken conversations are inadvertently woven into the black fabric of Trollmann's sound. A bespectacled man mouths "Awesome. Fucking awesome... " Someone holds a cigarette beneath the camera letting the smoke whip by the lens like the world's most inexpensive special effect. All the while, Trollmann remain impassive, statue like, emitting an impossibly gorgeous ambient dirge, chanted vocals, over a pulsing bass drone and shimmery keyboards. Almost like Moss crossed with SUNNO))) only with Gregorian chant-like vocals. The whole thing is incredibly surreal, the camera bobbing from the ground to the sky to the band to the crowd and back again, the sky darkening behind the band, the crowd growing less and less distinct, and more like featureless shadows, wraiths... it's somehow sort of perfect.
Outside of the camera panning back to reveal a troll atop a toadstool clutching his keyboard, and a huge furry caveman with a club in one hand and a bass guitar in the other, performing on the edge of a fiery abyss, wreathed in clouds of vampire bats and thick curls of black smoke, we really couldn't have wished for more...
Who doesn't become a giddy, drool-y kid again when they hear the chiming melodies of an approaching ice cream truck? You should've seen Cup last summer when she was out in Michigan. The jingle jangle came drifting in through an open window, and she was out the door in a flash! Well, Twink's Mike Langlie is ensuring that you have those delightful sounds sans the calories all year round. Oooh, does that make him cruel or cool? Cue sound of mad scientist laughter. Heh heh. On its candy coated surface, Langlie's music is downright cavity inducing child's view twinkliness, but much like Willie Wonka And The Chocolate Factory if you look a little closer you'll discover a darker, black humor encrusted side... and we love it! For this particular project, Langlie recorded a bunch of toy piano tunes and gave 'em out to his music makin' friends -- Ergo Phizmiz, Mochipet, Don Limpio, Mister Softee, Rainbow Maze, MNK, Moon Holiday, Jason Dragon among others -- to do with them how ever they pleased (i.e, remix, rearrange and/or rework 'em). Despite the varied participants, the nineteen tracks flow together well, and are all named after delectable frozen treats and flavors such as "Scooter Pie", "Rocky Road", "Slush Bunny", "Softee" and "Nutty Buddy". The one exception both title-wise and sound-wise is "Ice Cream Headache", the comparatively aggro number that closes the album. Seemingly armed with popsicle sticks and plastic spoons, its buzzing blasts of electric guitars tackle the toy pianos leaving a trail of hot fudge, cone crumbs and sprinkles behind. Recommended.
New Zealand's not a big country, but it sure produces its share of amazing experimental drone and indie rock musics, don't it?! The underground scene there, as documented of late by such prolific cd-r labels as Celebrate Psi Phenomenon and PseudoArcana, has been booming for years. If you've been having trouble keeping up, or never tried but would like to delve a bit now into the murky sounds of NZ, then this compilation is pretty much essential. Not a comprehensive primer (impossible on just one disc, anyway) but one that will definitely interest the uninitiated -- as well as be needed by even those who've already got stacks of NZ cd-rs at home, as all ten tracks here, from the likes of Birchville Cat Motel and Peter Wright and other crucial names in the NZ underground, are exclusives to this disc as far as we can tell! If you're new to the "new New Zealand" then this would be an excellent starting point for exploration of the varieties of home-recorded yearning, droning, gritty and beautiful musics coming from that far off, Middle Earth a-like land... On here, you'll find everything from the heavy, almost-doom grind of Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel to the 3-guitars-at-once avant-folk of Greg Malcolm (who has two tracks here, one a stately ceremonial drone raga, the other a cover of John Coltrane's "Naima"). Presented with artist info in a nicely appointed, thick cd booklet, illustrated with old photos of empty New Zealand roads, printed in silvery and black ink on glossy white paper, this cd was put together by the Xeric sub-label of Table Of The Elements with the assistance of New Zealand natives Stefan Neville and Antony Milton, both of whom appear here of course. Really well done and recommended. We're looking forward to further volumes!
Oh yeah! I'm sure you all remember in your youth, just going nuts on the dance floor, shaking and frugging and getting down to the latest smash from the likes of The Shock Absorbers ("It's Your Thing"), The Keith Mansfield Orchestra ("Soul Thing"), or Ken Woodman's Picadilly Brass ("Mexican Flier"), right? Whew, those were the days! What, you weren't making the scene in swinging sixties London? Well this comp should give you some idea what it maybe might have coulda been like, it's called On The Brink. Subtitled: Return Of The Instro-Hipsters. And the cover blurb goes on to state: "A happening and eclectic mix of vintage instrumental grooviness from the UK, with sitars, flutes, organs, horns and fuzz guitars." And that's no lie. This cd, compiled by none other than noted psych record collector Nick Saloman of the Bevis Frond, is a veritable cornucopia of late '60s/early '70s instrumental toe-tappers from studio-bound big bands and nightclub combos letting their hair down and getting their funk on, swank stuff that could be the soundtrack to the coolest cocktail party ever. Delightfully goofy, some of this, dated of course, and verging on the psychedelic for sure... especially Stanley Myers' "Organ Fantasia In D Major", now that's an awesomely groovy freakout. Myers is one of the few names we already know here, session sitar guy Big Jim Sullivan being another, but it's nice to also become acquainted with the often ephemeral likes of The Chris Barber Soul Band, Trax Four, The Mike Cotton Sound, The Les Reed Orchestra, The Fidd, The Vic Flick Sound, and all the rest. 20 bands, 20 tracks, jazzy and snazzy, lush and bombastic, racy and romantic... not a clunker in the bunch, though we might have to frown about how much The John Schroder Orchestra's "Nightrider" sounds sooo much like the famous theme to Batman. Definitely if you love library music, or those In-Kraut compilations, this is kinda like the UK version of the same sort of thing, almost... and being British and from the swinging sixties, it's also no wonder that a lot of this could fit nicely in a spy movie, some of it very James Bond/Austin Powers sounding. The cd booklet includes notes on each track, photos, and lots of bright color. Right on.
Dub is all about the bass. The darker and more cavernous the better. The more you feel it, the more your fillings rattle, the better. So it makes sense that the same would hold true for dubstep, but maybe to an even greater degree, as the sound of dubstep is even more spare and skeletal than dub, leaving nearly nothing except for the rhythm and the bass.
Soundboy Punishments collects the first 5 vinyl releases from UK label Skull Disco on cd for the first time, and while ostensibly this stuff is dubstep, it almost sounds more like Muslimgauze or old On-U sound stuff or even Spectre at times, but way more stripped down, way heavier, and with the sort of massive undulating bass that washes over everything like a thick black wave.
The first 5 12"s on Skull Disco, split pretty evenly between the artists Shackleton and Appleblim (with one track from Gatekeeper) are all epic slabs of blown out bass heavy skitter, with blurry distant synth and little Eastern flourishes, as well as the occasional dubbed out vocal, smeared into blurred ripples of reverb. Super abstract and minimal, hypnotic and groovy, the beats and shuffling and subtle, not the huge pounding of 'traditional' dubstep, or the manic grind of jungle, instead, the sound is laid waaaaaaay back. A sort of more modern digi-dub, varied percussion, tablas, hand drums, all woven into simple rhythmic frameworks, always with a rumbling low end pulse lurking right beneath the surface, until part way in, the bass DROPS, and suddenly everything has changed, what was a lazy lope is transformed into a throbbing lurch, a wall of gut churning low end, fuzzy and distorted and blown out, sounding almost like the hardest jungle track ever, slooooooooowed way down. The first disc is pretty blissed out, hard to imagine these tracks filling dancefloors, although they have been, it sounds more like music to get wasted, and sort of just lounge about, head nodding, the vibrations washing over you. With all the hype about this disc and these tracks, initially we were a bit let down, but gradually, this has grown on us like crazy to the point where we pretty much don't ever want to listen to anything else.
The second disc is where it gets weirder, and a bit harder, featuring unreleased cuts as well as non-Skull Disco tracks, including the long anticipated nearly twenty minute mix of Shackleton's "Blood On My Hands" by Ricardo Villalobos. Anyone who dug that last Villalobos disc, Fizheuer Zieheuer will definitely dig this. Simple shuffling and ultra minimal pulses, stretched out endlessly, so dark and hypnotic, with slow shifting synths in the background. Our only complaint are the vocals, a slowed down mysterious voice intoning apocryphal lyrics over almost the whole song, a la Spectre or the last Plastikman record, it's a little distracting, and we have to say we probably would have liked it without, but even so, it's beginning to growing on us too. The rest of the second disc is like a supercharged version of disc one, more synths, thicker bass, stranger arrangements and creepier melodies, a lot more like slowed down jungle, with heavy beats and reverb and delay everywhere, the more laid back abstract cuts definitely remind us of the Bush Chemists, a totally druggy and dreamy outerspace dub. So good. And based solely on how much this gets played in the shop, this just might be a brand new unanimous AQ fave.
Packaged in a cool, creepy black and white cardboard sleeve that looks way more metal that electronica...
WAY recommended.
Folks have been asking for Voxtrot lately, and we're happy to oblige. They've had a handful of eps released over the last few years which have amply whetted appetites across the nation for a full length debut... and here it is! Our initial impression of this Austin, TX band is that they're sorta like a hybrid of The Arcade Fire and a more stable Fiery Furnaces, but with perhaps an even broader appeal that at times is quite reminiscent of The Kinks circa "Lola". Super exuberant and catchy! We predict this'll surely be blasting outta the hip kids' boomboxes at the beach all summer long.
Here we have another beautiful record from Mr. Rufus Wainwright. The album's opening track asks "Do I Disappoint You?" The answer in regards to his latest effort is (not surprisingly) absolutely not. Release The Stars might be Wainwright's most personal and frank work to date, and in that spirit, let us be frank with you, we're not sure Rufus Wainwright's music could disappoint. Ever. He may be the only artist who could write an entire song dedicated to Tulsa, OK including the line "you taste of potato chips in the morning" and later cram the words "antique shop that I want to go back to and visit when it's open" into a chunk of music far too short for that much verbiage, AND get away with it, because well, his voice melts your heart and delights your soul no matter how silly the lyrics may be. Fortunately, silly moments are few and far between and obvious pop hits are replaced here by his richest orchestral arrangements to date, lush and layered over gorgeous piano. His signature velvet croon comes through as rich and expressive as ever as he navigates through themes like stardom, love, and leaving and sometimes the intersection of all three. In "Leaving For Paris No.2" he describes these crossroads with unapologetic frankness stating: "I'm leaving for Paris/No I don't think that I'll see you/I pray you won't follow like so many who have known me/And when I get there, I will lose the ring you gave me/take care of yourself/goodbye." It's been a joy watching Wainwright boldly catapult his unique baroque pop into the spotlight. He's taken full advantage of this new found attention, by collaborating with a slew of interesting guests including Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant (who is also the album's executive producer) and AQ fave Sharon Jones. This one's not to be missed!
Well, "Columbodia, Missouri's" own Warhammer posse showed up not too long ago here at aQ enroute to all corners of the country and they stopped in long enough to rock the asses of the San Francisco scene in a wickedly intimate "bus show" (AQ pal and former A Minor Forest-er has a huge mobile venue, IN A BUS, with a stage, a solar powered generator and an engine that runs on vegetable oil!) and to hand us off a a big pile of their new self-released second cd entitled An Ethereal Oracle.
By the looks and sounds of it, the title holds true to the old adage "what you see is what you get". That is if you can figure out what an ethereal oracle is -musically- speaking.
While the mind-melting debut Uber Om was more of a big loud thud upside your melon, An Ethereal Oracle is more like some forbidden fruit. That something or someone, you've been warned about, you know it's dangerous, potentially deadly, but you just can't resist. It's the temptation of the darkside, the dangerous, you know you're in for it, you know you're done for, you just can't ever be sure when. Or how!
The record starts off with a long scary radio broadcast track, you know, like one of those Emergency Broadcast System things warning you about "the big storm approaching", and just when you start feeling REALLY nervous, you start to get dizzy, everything becomes blurry, your head is spinning, your ears are ringing, you feel flush, you start to sweat, goosebumps, the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end, you try to resist, fight it off, but it's too much, you are completely under its spell.
You let the jagged guitar lines, birds chirping in the distance, strange what-the-fuck acoustic folk fuckery, drugged out laid-back droned-out blissful warmness and full on red-line space jam experimental shredding pummelry drag you into the darkness. Before you know it, you're bruised and bloody, naked and tied up with broken guitar strings, ears ringing and bleeding, you have strange WH48K images burned into your flesh, laying atop a pile of bloodstained broken drumsticks, surrounded by a Stonehenge like circle of towering totem like amps, in front of which stand the mysterious members of Warhammer, smiling wickedly as they prepare to do it all over again.
And that's only the first half of the cd!
Limited to 500 intricately illustrated/hand printed/hand assembled copies, and we only have about 30 left of the ones we got.
So act fast...
Hard to beat this disc if you like Beatlesy psych pop from back in the day! Very recommended to all Lennon/McCartney fans. A few years ago we used to stock cd reissues of the two albums released by this early '70s Peruvian outfit, a band who evolved from '60s psych act Laghonia and who obviously worshipped the Fab Four (and their solo efforts, especially, seeing as how they cover both "Band On The Run" and "Bluebird" by McCartney's Wings). It's a bummer that those two discs have been out of print for a while, but we're happy that the Repsychled label (Tarkus, Traffic Sound, etc.) has teamed up with another fave reissue label of ours, Lion, and put out this singles collection, basically a "best of" We All Together! Of the 13 cuts here, eight seem to be included on the band's two albums, leaving five we hadn't heard before. So even if you DO already have those cds you might want this, and if you don't, it's currently the best way to get acquainted with the magic of We All Together's sweet and sad pop psych music. Pepperisms abound, with studio experimentation and backwards guitar ("Soy Timido"), and as well there's some rousing rockers ("Sally"). The use of piercing ARP synth brings to mind that equally Beatlesy Malaysian band Truck whose reissue we reviewed recently... if you liked Surprise, Surprise you'll dig this for sure! Likewise if you like the Aerovons or Badfinger (also covered here). Not that the Beatles are their only influence...both Roy Orbison and Tchaikovsky are cited in the liner notes as songwriting inspirations! The liner notes by the way, are extensive, in English and Spanish, and the cd booklet also includes lots of vintage photos.
Where the last two Wilco records found Jeff Tweedy exploring a wider sonic palette, especially with the addition of secret weapon, guitarist Nels Cline, Sky Blue Sky is for sure a retreat to the more straightforward side of his song writing skills. Sounding very warm and laid back with a strong '70s rock disposition, Sky Blue Sky sort of walks the fine line of the undeniable warmth and glow of The Byrds and Wings while sometimes slipping to the other side landing in Eagles territory. That's a tricky line to straddle and at moments we can't help but love the earnest delivery and heartfelt sound but there are those times where it does veer a little too much to the side of innocuous '70s rock for our tastes (Vice called it 'Dad Rock'). Not a bad record but for sure not our favorite Wilco by a longshot.
