Although they look like an old Fat Wreckords or Epitaph dude punk band, The Aggrolites aren't what they appear to be. In fact, they're a band (yes from L.A.) whose heart pounds to a solid reggae beat. However, unlike the reggae influenced bands who've come before them (The Clash, Rancid, etc), The Aggrolites have immersed themselves completely in the genre, doing a remarkable job of recreating the classic early Jamaican reggae sounds. Along the way you can hear deep reverent bows to the likes of The Ethiopians, The Skatallites, Lee "Scratch" Perry, Alton Ellis, Toots & The Maytals among others. Adding more proof to the pudding, the quintet have performed as backing band for many greats such as Phyllis Dillon, Derrick Morgan, and Prince Buster as well as Tim Armstrong of Rancid and Madness. There's nothing aggro about this here album. Nope, all you get are breezy good times!
Brand new tape from one of our favorite purveyors of 'ambient slowcore doom'. Influenced heavily by bands like SUNNO))), as well as bands on the blacker and more metal end of the sonic spectrum, Amort, have their own unique angle, at once mysterious and cinematic, heavy and atmospheric. Like most of their songs, the proceedings start out with plodding abstract piano, throbbing low end notes, ringing out and reverberating, drifting in vast expanses of near silent hiss. With hushed whispered vocals, and the occasional distant wail of anguish and oddly, NO DRUMS (although it took us a while to even realize there were no drums, the sound is so thick and dense). Eventually, the guitars roll in like some thick black fog, and the band becomes some sort of black glacial beast, slithering and lurching in slow motion. The piano picks out mournful melodies beneath a thick wash of rumbling crumbling distortion. It's definitely closer to Thergothon or Skepticism that SUNNO))), not so much a static drift as a plodding trudge, the guitars beating against each other, pulsing and throbbing, the piano pounding away, buried way down in the mix. Sort of what you might imagine SUNNO))) covering Low might sound like, or even some Mazzy Star / Khanate mash up!�Essential listening for the ultra-doom obsessed, and slow core fans looking for something a little darker or heavier should definitely check this out....
Walls begins on familiar ground for German electronic artist / producer Apparat (aka Sascha Ring) -- chiming music box-y melancholics with strings that slide silkily across the glistening sonic icicles. From there Apparat skitters all over the musical map, only touching down briefly on his well-travelled techno and IDM hotspots. Although this is definitely far heavier and darker in mood than his wispy 2003 album Duplex, it's by no means lacking in emotion and warmth. The unexpected but very welcome soulful vocals of Raz Ohara certainly play a major role in this regard. Nice.
This album arrived quietly enough. The band's name, the album title and stark black slipcover offered little fanfare of what sounds might lurk within. For that matter, Madrid based label Acuarela has such an eclectic array of artists on its roster that we weren't allowed any tell-tale hints from peeking at their catalog. So, we tentatively slipped the jewelcase out of its slipcover. It revealed a dreary, fog blurred outdoor photo with leafless tree branches vanishing into the mist and damp mossy banks sinking into the chilly river's edge. That image totally captures the overriding mood of Spirit, leaning towards the dark, the mysterious, the slightly sinister. Apse's stormy post rock soundscapes churn up the gloom with a goth industrial edge. Hushed high male vocals lend a ghostly quality to the already haunted atmosphere. In fact, this may draw comparisons to Sigur Ros, but its heart is far more heavy and unsettling.
Another ultra brief blackened missive from the blacknoiserock duo Ash Pool (half of which just so happens to be noisemaker Prurient), after a totally mindblowing cassette on�Tour De Garde. Ash Pool spew forth some sort of primitive and raw thrashing blackness, a strange hybrid of black metal and noise rock. Blasting furiously one moment, loping along almost melodically the next. On the tape, the damaged demented sonic assault was peppered with brief bits of melody and jangle, all of which are even more evident on this brand new single.�
Side A is an ultra raw grimy black sludge stomp, murky and fuzzy, the vocals howled and blown out, so much so that they send the meters even more into the red, swallowing all the other sounds whole, a pounding relentless groove, almost like a blackened Brainbombs. But even at its most brutal, Ash Pool can't seem to help letting weirdly melodic riffs and stretches of jangle guitar slip into the otherwise harsh and hateful proceedings. So much so that here and there the sound is almost poppy, but it's easy to miss as everything is so slathered in grimy production and gritty distortion.
The B side begins with just jangly guitar and simple tribal drumming, surprisingly pretty, a loping shimmering smear of tranquil poppiness, that is of course eventually totally obliterated by a wash of black thrash and buzzing sludge....
Greg Ashley has a sound and knack for songwriting that's wise way beyond his years. His records with his excellent band The Gris Gris and his debut solo outing a few years back prove his ability to write songs that are both smart and trippy, rocking and subdued. He's been compared to Roky Erickson, who casts a mighty long shadow, yet one of Ashley's greatest strengths is how he always makes it sound so easy. There is an effortless and natural grace to the way Ashley's songs are delivered that never feels forced or calculated, but instead sounds like they've been locked in some deep vault for decades just waiting for someone to discover. Painted Garden reveals a more acoustic and seductive side to Ashley's songwriting, demonstrating that there are other ways to achieve psychedelic states without relying exclusively on freakouts and feedback. Painted Garden is filled with elegant songs that should definitely appeal to fans of Vetiver and Yo La Tengo. Ashley is by no means a one trick pony though, his willingness to explore different sides of his songwriting persona is something we can't help but love. "Sailing With Bobby" has such a wonderful and dizzying melody, it immediately made us think of Sonic Youth's "Little Trouble Girl". We think it's safe to say that no matter what the current trend in the indie music scene might be (freak folk, psych rock, indie pop, etc.) Ashley will continue to make music his own way, transcending all the hype and thriving for a long time to come!
With only a couple ep's under their belts, Battles have been taking their sweet time creating their first proper full length and wow, has all that time and patience paid off! Mirrored is one of those records that grabs you right off the bat and sucks you in, intense and immediate, but with a staying power that has had us listening to this record over and over, finding new things to love about it each and every time. Math rock may be an equation that's been solved and worked out to a point of no return, but Battles have taken the polyrhythms and driving elements from their individual math rock roots (Don Cabellero, Helmet, Lynx) and added so many exciting ingredients to the mix. Fantastical prog like arrangements, spacey excursions, dance floor flirtations, a dose of oddly alien vocals, and a mesmerizing infusion of elements from 20th century composition, all whipped up together to make a record that sends you soaring into another galaxy with a fury and energy that can't be denied. In lesser hands all these elements could sound clumsy or forced, but Battles have found a way to make it all sound so seamless and fun! Like Goblin hijacking a Steve Reich composition, and dumping bags of glitter and the spiciest spices all over the place, creating the most beautiful and supercharged kind of mess. Some of our favorite artists, many who are maybe too prolific for their own good, could learn a thing or two from these guys. Sometimes truly honing your craft and perfecting that vision is worth it when the results are this glorious!
This happens to be the fourth and most comprehensive edition of the best album from Beequeen, the ephemeral drone project spearheaded by Frans de Waard and Freek Kinkelaar. Der Holzweg was originally released by Anomalous Records back in 1993, housing the disc in a smartly designed wooden sleeve. At the same time, a tiny cassette edition made its way into the world. Many years, later a vinyl edition of the material was issued; and now the Russian imprint Tantric Harmonies has thankfully reissued this album once again, with all of bonus material found on the cassette and vinyl versions as well as three additional tracks from some contemporary seven inches. Whew! Beequeen's musical output is emblematic of the dreamy, soft focus ambience that emerged out of a post-industrial framework back in the early '90s. Zoviet France, Paul Schutze, O Yuki Conjugate, Christoph Heemann, and Cranioclast were some of the more obvious influences on Beequeen, whose backwards masked guitars and ambling tape loops flicker across grey, synthetic drones. It's very nice to see this back in print, one more time!
We figured that since all the B&S records were getting the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment, we might as well re-list the cds as well as they have long been big sellers around these parts...
Oooooh yessss, Tigermilk is where the grand Belle And Sebastian adventure began. It was originally released back in 1996 by the band themselves on their label Electric Honey. What? You never saw / heard it back then? Well, it's no wonder 'cause only 1000 of 'em were ever pressed! It wasn't until its cd reissue in 1999 on Matador Records that B&S fans far and wide were able to gorge themselves on the deliciousness of Tigermilk. Extremely toothsome pop songs - almost too sweet for some folks - full of hooks and melodies and murmur-lisped vocals. This is it, the beginning of their delicate brand of folk-pop. Sigh, swoon and get all misty-eyed. What a treat!
We won't go into to much detail with this one, other than to say, boy are we lucky. This is a tour only cd-r release, available exclusively on BCM's 2006/7 European tour, and thankfully, since most of us couldn't make it to any of those shows, Mr. Campbell Kneale, aka Birchville Cat Motel, stashed us a whole half of the pressing! That's right, 25 of the 50 are here, and if those numbers don't make it obvious, these will be gone before you know it. And as if we even need to tell you, it's a killer. So act fast if you want one of these.
A single half hour track, created out of what sounds like manipulate samples of voices, is transformed into a massive glistening technicolor shower of sound. You know how when it's crazy hot, kids open up the hydrants and just run around in the street as tons of cool water rains down on them. Imagine a similar situation, except when the hydrant is cracked, out comes thick torrents of billowy fuzz and grinding whir, all sparkling and dense and warm and thick, and you just close your eyes and let the sounds wash over you and fill your ears. It sounds like a million guitars, and guys outside cutting down trees and tossing them in the wood chipper and some sort of futuristic synth battle and thousands of little bells and chimes and a roomful of amps turned on and buzzing with no instruments plugged into them, all smeared into one gorgeous glimmering sonic deluge. So good. And again, 25 copies and then they are gone. For good.
Packaged in the classic, CPsiP wall paper sleeve with brown and black liner note insert.
An ultra-uber-super-mega limited 7" from all time AQ noisemakers Birchville Cat Motel, released on Anthem Records, the same folks who brought us the killer Brainbombs 7" Stinking Memory a while back. The packaging this time around is no frills, a plain sleeve, hand stamped, the record numbered in gold ink (limited to 212 copies) and it's only one song, a one sided 7", but it's unlike any BCM recording we've heard yet. It kills us that it's only a 7"...
It begins with a strange collection of vocalizations, duck calls, metallic shimmers, distant moans, alien rhythms, and what sounds like monkeys or maybe crickets, a dense tangle of sounds that swirl and intertwine before giving way to a propulsive metallic groove, a chugging guitar, plodding drums, but all beneath a mighty chorus of croaking frogs (hence the title?)! It sounds a bit like the main riff from Judas Priest's "You Got Another Thing Coming" looped over and over. And throw in the frogs and suddenly you've got some crazy mix of Circle's Andexelt and Sounds Of North American Frogs, and that is a very good thing indeed.�
LIMITED TO 212 COPIES!!!
It's a bit hard to believe that Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel has been around for almost a decade, although when you take a look at just how many releases the man has produced over the last nine and a half years, it becomes a little bit easier. This here self titled cd (yeah, it's a cd, just packaged in a weird 7" style sleeve) is the very first Birchville recording from way back in 1997. So, what's it doing on the AQ list circa 2006 you ask? Well, it hasn't been re-pressed, nope this is still stone cold out of print, but Mr. Kneale just happened to be doing a little house cleaning when he discovered a long forgotten stash of these gems and offered them to us. We took all of 'em. which only amounted to 20 or 25 so there will be gone for good in no time, so act fast.
We're not really sure what Kneale did before BCM, but this caustic blast of NZ noise announced loud and clear that it didn't matter one bit. Kneale has taken BCM sonically from one end of the spectrum to the other, soft shimmery ambience, massive metallic drones, blissed out free rock weirdness, but when he was just starting out, Birchville was a seriously mean machine. Hard and harsh and not a little bit scary! There are hints of the deft crafter of droney sonic worlds that Kneale would become, but here, Kneale is a warrior of noise, head down, hunkered behind his laptop ready to do battle, bathed in a halo of white hot fury, exploring a world of caustic industrial grind, walls of shrieking feedback and thick swells of buzz and hiss, bells and clattery percussion, simple melodies and subtle sonic sparkles are all drenched in a viscous shower of coruscating crunch. There are bits of tranquility here and there, but they are fraught with peril, like there is always some noisy beast just out of earshot ready to pounce. A gorgeously chaotic caterwaul!
Packaged in an oversized 7" sleeve with a little cd pocket. And again, this is already OUT OF PRINT, has been for years. These last 20 or so copies are the last ever!
An "unplugged" Frank Black lets it all hang out on this limited edition cd and dvd set which compiles live acoustic and studio tracks that he recorded during his summer 2006 solo acoustic tour. The live footage featured on the dvd was shot at a performance in Sacramento, CA on that very same tour. Frankly (ha ha!), he hasn't sounded this good in years. His voice nails all of the far reaches of his broadly expressive range -- alternately intently focused, wildly reckless and lyrically piercing. The recordings are warm, reverb-y and sprinkled with audience hootin' and hollerin'. Some tunes do fare better than others however. Unfortunately like a bull in a china shop, he sorta tramples a few beloved old Pixies classics in the process. They might still please the diehards tho'.
Like John Fahey's "Transcendental Waterfall", The UK's James Blackshaw can always be counted on for rich cascading 12-string rushes of beauty and mystique. Here are five dense and layered pieces that truly display Blackshaw's virtuous gifts, ones that seem to unearth new mysteries with each new release, and further carve his own distinct niche apart from his Takoma/Windham Hill progenitors. Here on some tracks, it sounds like he has some subtle string accompaniments that keep the vibrating natural harmonic overtones of Blackshaw's guitar in good company, without seeming to play it safe. And the sparsely plucked but gaseous third track, "Clouds Collapse" and final refrain of the last track, "Stained Glass Windows" show Blackshaw hasn't let go of his sonically experimental leanings. Quite mesmerizing!
If you've been caught up in the zesty kinetic fizz of the Rio Baile Funk compilations and the Brazilian band CSS like we have, you won't wanna miss their friends Bonde Do Role. In fact, they've even done remixes for Edu K (Rio Baile Funk) and CSS. Yes, it's all connected! We were initially smitten a couple months ago by a maxi cd single containing three versions and a video for their song "Solta O Frango" and one other track called "Rap Do CB". It was so short'n'sweet to the point of being cruel, but it was enough to get us all rabid and tingly for the imminent release of their full length With Lazers which is the album we present before you now. Yaaay!!! Championed by tastemakin' dj/producer Diplo, Bonde Do Role are like a hyper-hued combination of the tweaked playfulness of Senor Coconut, the dizzying sun stroked energy of CSS, and a healthy dose of down'n'dirty electrified grittiness. Look no further, this is the perfect summer album. Let the sparks fly!
Imagine yourself awakening at a seaside villa. You've nothing to do except take a leisurely stroll down to the water's edge, the tide lapping gently at your feet. In such a sigh inducing setting, your mind's allowed to wander, to dream. Stress and clutter begone! Well geez, that sounds mighty good, doesn't it? But alas, most of us can't afford a week on the coast of Spain or Italy right now, so we'll have to settle for the shoegazerly electronic pop stylings of Violet conjure such blissful aquatic scenes. Softly sanded electronic washes, warm blanketing organ drones, smoother stringed instruments and the murmured vocals of this Boy (aka Alexander Chen) keep the tones hushed and the mood ultra mellow.
For fans of Broken Social Scene, The Notwist, and Caribou. So nice.
This mysterious Australian free folk, abstract noise rock combo, once a brother/sister duo and recently expanded to include an ever shifting lineup of like minded noise makers, finally returns with a brand new cd, this time on Root Strata, the label of Tarentel head honcho Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. And everything we loved about these ramshackle noiseniks is still in full effect, but if anything, they sound better than ever, more polished, a bit weirder, the sound a lot more lush, but without losing any of their stumbling charm. Much of the record sound like it would have been just as at home in the Finnish forest, with it's slow motion Dead C kitchen sink clatter percussion, crackle and hiss production and detuned guitar strum, but the record is rife with distinctly Brotherhood moments, like the�strangely tranquil wash of softly strummed angelic strings, slightly out of tune and warbling hypnotically in the first track, or the dueling alien FX and duck call drones of track two, the hushed falsetto vocals on track six, or the wild tribal free for all, with dense drumming and fluttering flute that finishes off the disc. Elsewhere it's lots of sonic elements we can't seem to get enough of, No Neck like jams stumbling drunkenly through shadowy glades, long shimmering stretches of whirring drones and muted melody, strange chimes and splattery abstract percussion, snippets of female vocals floating on swirling swells of gentle guitar thrum, dreamy twang flecked folk, moaning strings and swirls of low end rumble, and wide open expanses of slow burning dark ambience, shifting and drifting beneath delicate sonic glimmers and glistening layers of buzz and hiss.
We always complain about bands releasing a cd-r every few weeks, but to be totally honest, if we could afford it, we'd hire these guys to record a new disc for us every day, a fresh batch of beautiful abstract sounds, and one day, eventually, we'd have enough music so that we could play them all in a row, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, forever and ever and ever...
From our pals at Lal Lal Lal, the Finnish label that introduced us to the mighty Avarus, and has released records by AQ faves Kemialliset Ystvat and Anaksimandros, who are kind of like the Finnish No Neck Blues Band, comes a limited 12" from the Vibracathedral Orchestra's Neil Campbell. And it's definitely some of his nicest stuff. A gorgeous shimmering ambience of burbling and bubbling tones and melodies. Dreamy and hypnotic. A bit more soothing and 'ambient' than Vibracathedral but still with the same ur-drone aesthetic. There are couple tracks that stick out though, one is a rhythmic Krautrock workout complete with pulsing drum beat and looped guitar, and the other is an almost-techno track that sounds like with a little less resistance it could've become a house track! Another gorgeous drone record and another fine addition to the Lal Lal Lal catalog. Be warned, this is very limted and won't be around for long!
While there ARE lots of amazing reissues of all sorts of old records -- psychedelic, rock, folk, jazz, reggae, metal, etc. -- coming out all the time (and hopefully you've read about a bunch of 'em here, we do our best to keep up), it's also become evident to us that the vast majority of reissued obscurities were, well, obscure for a reason, and it's hard to understand WHY someone would choose to reissue 'em. But then there's reissues like this one, that make us wonder, why hadn't we ever heard of this band before? Why weren't they HUGE? Well maybe Miguelo Cantilo Y Grupo were famous in their native Argentina, they should have been, we certainly can't imagine that there were all that many bands of this quality releasing records in that country back then (this dates from 1975). At any rate, we're pretty excited to learn about 'em now thanks to this reissue. An eclectic psychedelic progressive rock album, with songs ranging from acoustic mellow melodicism to heavy hard rockin' bombast, this is something that we'd rank with a few other '70s reissues that have become big favorites 'round here -- if you loved the Eduardo Bort from Spain, or the more-recently reviewed Tarkus from Peru, you'll want this too for sure! It's got strong songs, a charming heavy-duty hippy vibe (check out the cover art), exotic appeal (all songs sung in Spanish, very emotively), and is definitely Classic Rock worthy (reminding us of Led Zep, Budgie, and even Aerosmith at their most mystical, magical a la "Kings and Queens"). Miguelo's vocals are a bit Bolan-esque as well. But what puts it over the top for us is the killer blend of exquisite prettiness and sudden, frantic rock n' roll action, a lot looser and rawer than some other progressives of the era. Very dynamic and surprising. It's weird in all the right places. It's always neat to discover cool stuff like this out of the blue, proving that there definitely are unknown reissues worth taking a chance on... Nicely packaged in a slim colorful cardboard digipacky thing, with the cd itself in a sleeve with the lyrics printed on it.
Billy Childish is a man of many hats -- writer, painter, rocker -- and his three decade spanning body of work while wearing each of those chapeaux has proven to be remarkably varied. Nothing would really surprise us, but Childish and EM Records have thrown us for a loop with this reissue of a rare album from 1988. Calico Jack alias Wild Billy hooked up with his backing band The Blackhands (aka Bill, Ludella, Kyra, Richard, Dave, and Seamus) to slip into, of all things, a calypso kind of mood! Fear not diehard fans, he's still got his trademark reckless snarl though as he rambles through loose and light hearted renditions of "Rum And Coca Cola", "I Love Paris" and "Anarchy In The U.K." Raw and gritty, and recorded with one microphone. Rad! EM does it again!
Oh, and EM fans, look out for this summer's "EM Under Water Series" of five surfing-related reissues from '60s/'70s Australia, all really cool stuff.
Most recent full length from these raw cult black metallers from Chicago. We never had the cd version, but the lp is such a gorgeous piece of work, we figured we oughta list it. Sonically, this is super intense, midtempo blackness, with touches of thrash here and there. A huge Darkthrone influence is obvious, and there ain't nothing wrong with that. Each song a buzzing thrashing blur, some super catchy, killer riffing, distorted processed vocals, and drums WAY up in the mix, but doing some cool stuff, and subtly making the songs a little bit weirder than they might be otherwise. In fact, the more we listen to this, the more it's kicking our ass.�
But as much as we love us a black and brutal slab of raw cvlt black metal, it's all about the packaging. Nuclear War Now! always pulls out all the stops, the recent Root box is a perfect example, but this record is just mind blowing. The cover is a gatefold, and is so thick, it's like opening some old unearthed leather bound book. It creaks and groans and you actually have to put some muscle into it. The inner sleeves are thick to, and printed, so even minus the records, the thing must way 3 pounds! Then the vinyl, ultra thick of course. 180 or 200 gram for sure. But the icing on the cake, is the killer original painting used for the cover art, the gatefold and the poster inside, painted by none other than WREST from LEVIATHAN! Immediately recognizable and so striking (even though the� label somehow put someone else's signature on the cover, ugh). Bits of the painting are also reproduced on the record labels, and the gatefold is just thick swirls of paint, the whole thing is just completely stunning.�
2nd album from these spaced-out, shoegazery Chicagoans. We recommended their debut, Cosmic Tone, last year and this one is equally stoned, maybe darker and yet more melodic too -- and has equally over the top, garish "psychedelic" cover art... though since they chose to call the album The Ultimate Cult of Psychedelic Psychosis we can't say that's a surprise, clearly they're not trying to be subtle about their avowed artistic program! Though we can compare 'em to the likes of Acid Mothers Temple, Boris, and Pharaoh Overlord in terms of freaked-out heaviness, we've also gotta come back to the indie-rock component as well, with gentle vocals drifting over or beneath slumbering lumbering swirling guitar/effects like Dead Meadow meets MBV, with a little Dinosaur Jr. in there too... quite a nice (sinister, murky) nod-scene indeed.
Whoa, who has the hippest teachers in the universe? North Haven Community School! This sure wasn't a part of normal elementary school curriculum back when we were all whipper snappers, was it? Last year out in Maine, the kids at this small kindergarten to grade 12 school presented a ballet set to the music of Deerhoof's Milk Man album! Music and drama teacher Courtney Naliboff came up with the idea and transcribed the music and conducted the orchestra, while art and P.E. teacher Ken Jones took care of the choreography (which involves a rolling bowling ball among other things). Yes, it's adorable. Yes, the music is perfect for this age group. And yes, please allow a loose definition of the term 'ballet'. Think: more freely interpretive body movements than en pointe, plies and pirouettes. What an amazing way to take inspiration from the endlessly creative sounds of one of our favorite bands. Delightful for kids of all ages! This dvd is professionally shot and edited (or looks like it), looks great, sounds great, and is definitely fun to watch. The folks in Deerhoof must have been waaay stoked when they first saw this!!
Latest slab of outsider underground heaviness from Campbell Kneale's "experi-metal" label Battlecruiser, a sublabel of the always mindblowing Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, which in the past has offered up such hellish atrocities as Black Boned Angel, Mirag, Mrtyu, Wardagger, Wings Of Vengeance, Wolfskull, You Should Have Slain Me, Ghoul, Ming, Cicadashrine and The Cops, so a disc from some mysterious outfit called Devoid Of All Mercy is just what we might have expected. And a record called Your Children Left With The Stranger, scary, evil, creepy, and song titles that sound like they came straight from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, "Last Ride In A Rusting Truck", "Cannibals In The Hills", "There Are No Lights In This Cabin". But what we weren't expecting was for Devoid Of All Mercy to sound like, well, like this. No blasting black buzz, no wall of acid-fried guitars, no glacial pounding sludge, no shrieking or insectoid riffing, no blast beats, no drums at all as far as we can tell. Instead, a lone guitar, picks out a haunting near-acoustic dirge, a slowed down minor key melody, wrapped in billowing clouds of black shimmer, and over the top, a super distorted, guttural vocalist, his voice a wet snarl, gurgling, growling, a strange low end demonic whisper draped over the hypnotic guitar melodies, like some black shroud wet with blood. The thing is though, it's really sort of pretty, like a super abstract minimal post rock, lilting and hypnotic, dreamy and dark, big buzzing wide open chords, arpeggiated guitars weaving expansive melodic crawls, all seemingly suspended and drifting weightless amidst a shimmering soundscape of distant buzz and whir. Minus the vocals, this would be some strange Bohren / Low hybrid, gorgeously mournful slowcore minimalism, but with those rabid snarling vocals, pretty turns into creepy, and suddenly everything sounds just that much more bleak and foreboding. And excellent! Some seriously fucked up, and ultra subdued evil! So recommended.
When you think Bay Area and 'metal', you probably think Metallica, or Exodus, maybe even Testament. But had things gone a little differently, you might be thinking Dig That Body Up, It's Alive. Okay, well, maybe not, but if you were us, and you had been lucky enough to experience the freaked out metallic damage of this SF trio back in the day, this record would be having you losing your mind. And hell, even if you missed out on the DTBUIA years, which most folks probably did, one listen to this record, will immediately transport you to some dark sweaty hole in the wall, right into the middle of a heaving mass of sweaty kids, while right at the center, a guitarist and a drummer duel to the death, while the vocalist grunts and growls, climbing into the rafters, hanging� from pipes, leaping into the crowd, rolling around on the floor. You may not have been there, but it's easy to hear what it must have been like.�
Dig The Body Up, It's Alive featured SF luminary John Dwyer (Coachwhips, OCS, Ohsees, Pink And Brown, Landed) on guitar and Oren Canfield (Child Abuse) on drums and the mighty Nate Denver (Total Shutdown, Nate Denver's Neck) on vocals. Dwyer's guitar is most definitely the focal point, his guitar emitting short bursts of convoluted metallic fury, the riffs squiggly and angular as often as downtuned and chugging, the drums the perfect foil, blasts of double kick, strange mathy grooves, full on blast beats, everything lurching and stumbling, stop start stop and start again, chaotic and furious, like some alien strain of death metal filtered through these three guys' cracked musical filter.�Above it all, Denver growling and grunting, death metal gurgles, telling tales of dragons and monsters and other completely off the wall stuff.�
Side A is a serious of brief metallic bursts, riff after riff, squealing and grinding, thrashing and flailing. Dizzying and confusional, heavy and dense and completely damaged sounding. The flip side however is a whole 'nother thing entirely. A single side long jam. A single riff, repeating and looping, mesmerizing and hypnotic. Like a more aggro and angular Circle. Totally crushing, but strangely trancelike. Near the half way point, everything stops, Denver hisses out some creepy lyrics and the band launch right back into it. A couple more false endings, but each time the band head right back in, picking up right where they left off, pounding that riff into utter oblivion.�
Finally, when the song really does end, the last note rings out, a shimmering ominous metallic drone, over which Denver recites a lengthy and super tweaked chunk of spoken word, more princesses and monsters and the like... So awesome.�
Originally slated to come out on tUMULt before the band died a premature death, this is finally seeing the light of day thanks to the always killer Rock Is Hell label. Vinyl only, limited to 333 copies. The covers are hand screened, inside and out, and there's an insert with Denver's history of the band.
And as if we even needed to say it, WAY RECOMMENDED!
Like we mentioned in the review of volume two, it's easy to tell when it's time for another Doomed Nation dvd. Suddenly the store is filled to overflowing with band dudes, and everywhere you look there's nothing but denim and leather, spikes and studs, tattoos and piercings, and acres and acres of facial hair....
Which is precisely what happened today, and thus when the pot smoke cleared, we had a heaping handful of dvds, volume three of the always amazing Doomed Nation series, featuring tons of amazing videos and live clips from the best of the doom underground. Loads of AQ faves, and a handful of bands we had never heard, or at least heard very little from, as well as a short attention span barrage of movie clips and snippets of TV shows filling up the spaces between the doom, and in keeping with the theme of the artwork, an old woodcut of a mass hanging, most of the clips are indeed of hangings, some funny, some gruesome, from horror movies and period dramas, all sliced and diced and shot rapid fire and scattershot all around massive slabs of bulldozing doom.
Up first, an amazing live clip of AQ faves Baroness (lots of beards, mostly shirtless) in full on blown out post rock mode, these guys are so amazing. We can never get enough. And from there on out it's a relentless river of doom, and other assorted heaviness, some archival footage of a shirtless (and pantsless) GG Allin, Black Tusk, who we've never heard before but who are appropriately sludgy and heavy, Facedowninshit, live totally tearing shit up, a super pro Goatwhore video, very dangerous for the epileptic and light sensitive, Raise The Red Lantern who are super awesome, with killer lights and the most active and chaotic stage presence of the bunch, Saint Vitus live, reunited in 2003 with Wino (we also have a dvd of the whole show for sale! See elsewhere on the list), Swarm Of The Lotus with a super intense and gorgeously gorey and creepy video (at least the parts without the band) and a singer who keeps his glasses on, which we always love, some awesome live footage of Grief, killer lo-fi live footage of the mighty Buzz-Oven practice space jams from Black Cobra intercut with, you guessed it, tons of snake footage, as well as clips from Indian (a strangely brief, bordering on non-existent blip of a performance), Rwake, Hawg Jaw, Asschapel, Hope And Suicide, Stereochrist and Mala Suerte!
LIMITED TO 2007 COPIES, each one hand numbered, packaged with super striking blood splattered cover art...
Another blast of cassette encased demented blackness this time from a mysterious Brazilian black metal horde called Draugurz, who in the past have shared a split with AQ faves Marblebog.
Draugurz are of the ultra anguished midtempo doom drenched black metal persuasion, with a super buzzy and brittle guitar sound, stumbling drums way up in the mix, fuzzed out murky minor key keyboards and EXTREMELY tortured vocals, the kind that howl and scream and caterwaul...
A Yell From The Past (awesome title!) is a collection, a sort of greatest hits, drawn from two demos and the split with Marblebog, and the whole thing is a gorgeously lo-fi, dark and torturous journey through a black musical wasteland. Slow trudging doom gives way to lurching midtempo buzz gives way to a furious blast that is so blown out it threatens to transform into a smear of Merzbowian white noise. Heavy and weird and mysterious, haunting and heavy and so very dementedly black.
Killer cover too, some sort of cartoonish ghost drifting above the forest.
Warning: the tape has some drop outs and some serious sonic inconsistencies, but just consider that another element of Draugurz's weird world and they sound almost like they belong... ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*
We LOVE Expo '70. They're playing in SF this week, two shows that will be over by the time you read this. And we might not even get to go, 'cause we're too busy writing reviews, like this one... oh the bitter irony. But even if we miss them live (which would be a shame) we're still in Expo '70 heaven 'cause they've brought us two brand new cd-rs!! (And, there's also a new release on a real cd too, Animism, which we'll list next time!) Wow. That's a lot of Expo '70, but their krautrock inspired instrumental ambience is an expansive sound, that can easily sprawl across the full length of a cd or cd-r in just a track or two...and therefore can also spread beyond, occupying several near-simultaneous releases with no diminishment to our enjoyment. We're happy to hear it go on, and on, and on eternally. Expo overload, no, too much is never enough.
So, this one... Mystical Amplification. With song titles making reference to such things as "Mountainous Caverns Of Black Arts" and Konstantin Raudive's research into EVP (a la the Ghost Orchid) it's easy enough to say things like this music is haunting and mystical... mystical amplification, heck that's the title. The Expo '70 guys are doing all our work for us. The four long tracks (we like how the songs are split into a "side 1" and "side 2" when listed on the sleeve, even though it's of course all on one side of this cd-r) are all one-take improvs, with mainman Justin Wright on electric guitar ("with plenty of effects", all right) and his current Expo associate McKinley Jones playing a Moog synth. Spaced out and psychedelic trips much more on the "kosmische" tip than their Kansas City origin would suggest... this is all buzzing droning bliss, no drums or vocals to reign it in to human scale, just cosmic textures galore, often soothing, and a little bit ominous. There are moments that vaguely sound like Robert Fripp or Eddie Hazel jamming with Klaus Schulze, both of 'em dreamy and drowsy from drugs. Or imagine a mellower SUNNO))), teamed up with Space Machine, perhaps, getting all yogic on us with some abstract instrumental, electronic om-chants. Sleepy, slowly swirling, hissing and purring over quietly churning low-end depths...
By the way, this is slightly (a buck) more expensive than all the other Expo '70 cd-rs 'cause of the attractive vinyl-style gatefold packaging.
One of the strongest forces and brightest minds in the German electronic scene of the last few decades, Thomas Fehlman has always had two different and distinct musical sides. There is his love of Detroit born raw hard techno, and then there is his endless fascination with more spaced out and ambient sounds influenced by the likes of Fripp, Eno and Tangerine Dream. Honigpumpe is for sure a result of the latter. Dreamy and blissed out electronica with beats that aren't as much for the dancefloor as they are for the living room or the couch or the bed. We've been putting this on every time we have to do unglamorous tasks like laundry and the dishes and with this on time seems to move a little faster and so do we. As a full fledged member of The Orb and his constant producing and live dj sets, Fehlmann shows no signs of slowing down and that's a very good thing. We want more!
Sometimes we're amazed at just how popular this Finnish band has become. Raging, rollicking folk-metal played by people who pretend they're really trolls from the forests of Finland? Sure, that could be a cool curiosity, but a commercial success, spawning even a copycat band (Norway's Trollfest)? Yup. It's not just customers here at AQ -- where Finntroll's back catalog is a steady seller -- that love Finntroll. All sorts of totally random people we've met, who we didn't even think liked any metal, have turned out to be big Finntroll fans.
And all Finntroll fans will be happy that they're back with another album, their fifth. They've also got a new singer, but he's just as gutturally trollish as the previous guy, and their "black metal humppa" sound is the same as ever. Humppa being traditional Finnish dance music, sorta the polka of Finland. So there's banjo and mouth-harp on here, along with loud guitars, thumpin' drums, and swelling, symphonic soundtrack-style synths. You'll want to dance a headbanging jig to this, or swing your mug of ale to and fro. Their blend of dark atmospherics, Wagnerian bombast, and jaunty humppa rhythms is a blast... a bit silly perhaps but really no sillier than most other black metal bands when you think about it, wearing their panda-like corpse paint. Besides, while Ur Jordens Djup ("From The Depths Of The Earth", in English) boasts its expected share of drunken jollies, it also demonstrates that trolls can be scary creatures as well, with plenty of sinister ambience and ultra-heavy blackened brutality, moreso perhaps than past efforts.
We've yet to get a record from these guys that wasn't super limited, and this one is no different. We were meant to get 50 copies, but only got 15. But we'll keep trying, for now, at least a handful of you can get your mitts on this one...
Fire Witch are a guitarless, two bass and drums killing machine from down under, who weave delicate soundscapes of low end drift and simple pounding rhythms, peppered with blasts of skull crushing heaviness, free noise splatter, and gorgeous shimmering ambience. Their sort of aligned with bands like Whitehorse and the Grey Daturas, but somehow, what these guys do is way different.
I Spit Lies is split into two looooong tracks, "I Spit" and "Lies". The former is a slow burning gradual build, with bass feedback draped over a throbbing low end pulse and a simple shuffling rhythm, with occasional lapses into sludgy doom, before resuming the lugubrious groove. Right in the middle there's an extended stretch of delicate drifting low end swirl, that eventually gives way to some seriously hooky propulsive post rock crunch.
The latter is equally mathy, almost groovy, another simple rhythm underpinning soaring bass melodies all held together by the pulsing bass #2. Eventually, things gradually break apart, into epic expanses of space, with just the occasional chord or drum hit. It's doomy, but more in the way Low or other slowcore bands are doomy. A gorgeously abstract ultra minimal deconstructed slow motion math rock, that by the end of the song has turned into a grinding heavy, almost metal groove. Fucking awesome!
Usually we lament the fact that bands choose to jettison the guitar, there are so many bass and drums duos out there, many of which would sound so much better with a guitarist, but one of the bassists in Fire Witch swings his bass like an axe and it makes all the difference in the world!
Packaged in a strange accordion style fold out sleeve, thick silk screened paper attached to little textured wooden (or wood-like) squares.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES! We got 15... You do the math.
Another reissue of heavy psychedelic weirdness from early '70s Japan, in the same series as the Flied Egg and Flower Travellin' Band discs we've listed lately. Food Brain features the Hammond organ excess of Hiro Yanagida and the acid fried guitar of Shinki Chen (names you might know from other outfits like Speed, Glue and Shinki, Love Live Life +1, April Fool, and solo too). As well, Hiro Tsunoda (the Jacks, Strawberry Path, Flied Egg) is on drums, and Luis Kabe (Golden Cups) on bass. Together on this, their only album (1970), they cook up a progressive, confusionally avant-garde feast of bluesy riffage, freeform improv, drug-addled humor, and hippie rawk heaviosity. There's plenty of raw jamming, the sort of stuff these guys would probably have loved to bring to the ballrooms of San Francisco... but amidst and among, there's lots of weirder moments too, more at home in the krautrock realm perhaps. For instance, the brief track five, "The Conflict Of The Hippo And The Pig", what sounds like a guy maniacally playing a straw. Or the entirety of the epic quarter-hour 8th track, "The Hole In A Sausage", which features a horn-grunting free jazz freakout in collision with a near-metallic distorted bass riff on a famous classical symphonic theme.
These days the appearance of skits on music albums has been pretty much constrained to the hip hop realm. True? But Robbie Fulks ain't one to follow trends, is he? Hence on his new live album we're hit with a studio recorded skit right at the get go! It all begins with what resembles an old tyme radio advertisement jingle. Y'know the ones that had a group of male singers in turn assuming different characters. The prim barbershop quartet stylings are quite a change from Fulks' slow burnin' smokehouse blues and rowdy barnburners, but the tune's lyrics uproot the well-mannered facade ("Spreading our hillbilly sound... just like a cancer! Ha!"). Fulks' music has always been a study in contrasts, bringing together the rowdy and the sober, loose ramblin' and razor sharp musicianship, the true blue rustic old country feel and his biting, black wit. This 2cd release continues on in that fashion, offering two sides of the Fulks coin -- Disc One is all electric, Disc Two is all acoustic. The actual live recordings took place one wild night in Champaign and one more subdued eve in Chicago. One yowch! moment pops up on the second disc when he unleashes a cover of Cher's "Believe". Yikes.
An absolutely killer slab of ultra raw, filthy and primitive lo-fi murky black metal. Lots of crusty riffing, blasting drums buried in reverb and tape hiss, bizarre grunted vocal spew, guitars that buzz and warble, and go from insectoid shrillness to tarpit filthiness often in the same song, and loads of low end bassy throb and other bits of random lo-fi 4 track production weirdness that make this freaky and fucked up.
While on the surface this sounds like classic old school minimal buzz and blast black metal, stripped down and blown out, Bone Awl, Beherit, Von, Abruptum... The weird thing is, and maybe this is supposed to be a secret, but we're pretty sure that the man behind Geistus is in fact a former member of doomlords Yob! Hard to believe, but true! You won't hear that much Sabbathy sludge here although once in a while the songs slow down into a gorgeously doomy tarpit trudge, but it's never long before the band lurch back into action, and resume their harsh minimal pummel. So fucking great, the perfect balance of true kvlt blackness and slightly off kilter weirdness.
For fans of all things simple and sludgy and brutal and black and crusty and filthy and EVIL!!!!
It's hard to know exactly what to say about Glass Organ, an offshoot of noise combo Devillock (who we have yet to review on the list, we're working on it). We've had a handful of releases, all of them amazing, and all offering up subtle variations on Glass Organ's peculiar sound. And it's that sound that's a bit hard to describe. Which is maybe why we like it so much.�
Imagine a tiny room stuffed full of malfunctioning synthesizers, the din from inside seeping through the cracks, a�white hot, overblown soundscapes of synth damage and melting keyboard murk. Grinding and furious, blinding flurries of overblown glitch and squelch and squiggle. Corroded bits of melodies, and jagged chunks of what might have been songs in some other reality, all careening wildly Against, into, and around each other. It almost sounds like that point when you're listening to the car radio and you drive past a radio tower or something, and suddenly the radio goes haywire, the music becomes jumbled and distorted and unrecognizable, all sorts of random electronic interference starts jumping and skittering and streaking through the speakers, the sound is dizzying and intense, one of the things that convinces folks they made contact with aliens. It sounds a bit like that, if you then ran it through a distortion pedal and broadcast it through a million damaged speakers. But Glass Organ also takes those freaked out synths and smears them into muted�stretches of ultra creepy dark ambience,�intense roiling low end whirs, crumbling and burbling, doused in static and glitch, but strangely pretty, almost like an ultra minimal Goblin. And the sound weaves back and forth between these two extremes, often straddling the two resulting in some seriously creepy, pretty, glitchy noise!
Packaged in gorgeous thick shimmery paper, metallic printing, trippy psychedelic design. Recorded live, and...
LIMITED TO 130 COPIES!!!
Grave Temple is another kick ass Southern Lord allstar matchup. Personnel-wise, it's basically a 3 parts of the of the ever expanding and sprawling SUNNO)))) whole, and it sounds like it. A power trio made up of Attila Csihar (Mayhem, Aborym, Tormentor, occasional SUNNO)))) contributor), Stephen O'Malley (SUNNO))), Khanate, Burning Witch, Ginnungagap, KTL, Lotus Eaters) and experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi, who also has been spending much of his free time lately in SUNNO)))).
The Holy Down is a single hour long track woven together by Ambarchi from various live performances recorded live in Israel in 2006, and spends its first 10 minutes wandering aimlessly through a haunted junkyard of clangs, and clatter, creaks and chimes, the occasional chest rattling sonic boom, but for the most part, super abstract and spacious. But c'mon, it doesn't take long before things get heavy and creepy, with the guitars billowing into black waves, and Csihar's strange chanted vocals drifting like smoke in a temple. About halfway through, they veer into serious SUNNO)))) territory, with the guitars becoming thick walls of crumbling distortion and squealing peals of feedback. The band drones on before the drums kick in (that's Ambarchi on the drums!) and suddenly the track is transformed into a chaotic metallic tribal space jam that gets more and more frenzied, some almost blast beats surface but splinter into free jazz freakouts, the vocals become a death rattle, everything still wrapped in thick clouds of black buzz, until the song fades out in a blackened swirl of ultra creepy processed ghostlike voices...
LIMITED TO 3000 COPIES! Each one numbered, the ones we got are getting close to 3000 so like most SUNNO))) and SUNNO))) related projects, these probably won't be around for long...
Wow! This is a blast from the past. And we do mean blast (just listen!). Ground Zero was the crazy sampling + free jazz + noise rock outfit led by Japanese turntablist/guitarist Otomo Yoshihide. Hopefully you know 'em, they were right in there with Boredoms and Ruins and Omoide Hatoba and Altered States etc. for noisy underground Japanese avant-rock insanity back in the early '90s. Their now out of print, self-titled debut album from 1992 sounded something like John Zorn's Naked City, all chaotic jump cuts and skronking sax, and in fact featured the inimitable screaming vocal stylings of Eye Yamataka of the Boredoms, who also guested with Naked City. Eventually they turned into a drone-jazz behemoth, and also did a fantastic album of "standards". Since the dissolution of Ground Zero, there's been plenty more cool Otomo projects, from the Eric Dolphy tribute of his New Jazz Orchestra to his minimalist "onkyo" experiments in Filament and ISO to a variety of other interesting soundtracks and solo recordings... but the Ground Zero discs will always be a crucial swath of his discography. And a favorite of ours!
So, it's pretty exciting to get to hear this long-lost live show, from a old tape that Otomo recently rummaged out of his closet. The liner notes include this from him: "All I remember for sure was that it was a really good gig... The recording quality is terrible, but the recording, including that quality, really captures the atmosphere of the time." He's right, the sound is raw, but it suits the music perfectly. This is INTENSE. The lineup consists of Otomo (guitar, turntables), Hirose Junji (sax), Kato Hideki (bass, voice), Uemura Masahiro (drums), and Eye Yamataka (vocals). All five of 'em make a LOT of noise. Imagine the Eye-fronted Naked City falling down the stairs, in the throes of a violent seizure. This performance dates from just prior to their first album's release and shares its punked-out energy, as well as a few of the same "songs". Two additional tracks at the end of the disc are studio recordings, previously unreleased material from the sessions for that debut album. As the Doubtmusic website says, "this is remembrance of fresh / poisonous earlier Ground Zero after 15 years."
This comes in typically fine Doubtmusic packaging, a handsome digipack design, and is basically essential for all hardcore Ground Zero and/or Eye Yamataka fans! And its value as an archival release is enhanced in light of the fact that you can't get their first album anymore anyway.
Yet another new combo joins the rambunctious parade of young'uns wearin' their influences prominently on their sleeve. Think: Bright Eyes circa Digital Ash In A Digital Urn meets U2 circa "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". Or The Alarm meets 16 Horsepower meets The Arcade Fire. That comparison actually hits much closer to home as one of the Handsome Furs happens to be Dan Boeckner who also happens to be a member of The Arcade Fire's buddies / soundalikes Wolf Parade who happen to also be on Sub Pop which might explain this album's appearance on that label. Oh connections, that's a no brainer easy sell! Anyways, Plague Park is all very 'now' sounding, world weary pop with an exhaustive emotiveness. Not poorly executed, but also not original in any big way. If you're simply looking for 'more' of the above... check it out!
No sense in messing with a sure thing! A Hawk And A Hacksaw's latest release delivers more of their wonderful authentic Balkan folk sounds, but this time we also get the added delight of visual accompaniments. The group's enthusiasm and deep reverence for the music's history and artistry remains true, lively, and vibrant. Sure to please their growing legions of fans and win them a few more in the process.
Please welcome the new Sean Hayes full length! You know we sure do! Such a terrific storytelling songsmith with a liltingly sensitive and soulful voice, Mr. Hayes and his music are always an absolute pleasure to encounter. He's followed up 2006's Big Black Hole And The Little Baby Star with a whole 'nother wonderful album that expands on what has come before, stretching its limbs stylistically, expressively and production wise too. In fact, this is his first studio-recorded album, but don't expect anything drastically different, distractingly slick or heavy-handed. No, it was for the most part recorded live, and it retains his trademark intimate, down to earthy charm. Who's joining him this time around? Well, quite an awesome seven member backing band which includes Ara Anderson (Iron & The Albatross) and Ches Smith (Secret Chiefs 3, Trevor Dunn's Trio-Convulsant). This baker's dozen does feature a broader instrument palette than his past releases which offers tasteful horn and accordion flourishes here and there to the rootsy proceedings. Yes, indeedie, Flowering Spade is another feather in his cap. Recommended!
UK garage psych space rockers The Heads have a little cottage industry going, a series of ultra limited cd-r's, usually limited to 100 copies or less, in super elaborate packaging, often, the music inside are studio experiments, outakes and the like, and thus are sometimes the freakiest, wildest psychedelic blowouts these guys have ever committed to tape. We're doing our best to get the scoop on the next disc in the series, but in the meantime, the friendly folks at Invada have decided to reissue one of the best discs as a massive double lp set.
With killer Jaws ripoff artwork on one side, this gatefold lp is massive, thick, and gorgeous, the vinyl too is ultra thick, red, white and black splatter wax! In fact the whole package is so striking it almost doesn't matter what's inside. Lucky for us, it just so happens to be some of the most ferocious, druggy, freaked out space psych we've heard in ages.�
From the second the needle touches the vinyl, it's a speaker punishing super blown out ultra aggro wall of druggy psychedelic space garage stomp. Guitars soar and wail, emitting impossible dense clouds of notes and chords, it sounds like the best parts of every Monster Magnet song, the sort of post-song-proper section where the band just freaks out and heads skyward, so think ALL of those parts woven together into seriously EPIC JAMS, everything wreathed in swirling space FX, the drums pounding and guitars EVERYWHERE. Or imagine the relentless psych jams of Earthless, only seriously supercharged and acid fried. So great.��
Here's another set of moody abstract electro-acoustic soundscapes from Supersilent trumpeter Arve Henriksen, his third solo outing on the Rune Grammophon label, as lovely as the other two. In addition to his calm, melodic, breathy "glacial Miles Davis" horn playing, he also utilizes electronics and keyboards and wordless singing. Plus Supersilent bandmates Stale Storlokeen Helge "Deathprod" Sten (on production duties as well) contribute on keys and guitars respectively, adding to the overall mysterious drone-factor of this music, some of it very Supersilent-sounding (as you might expect with this lineup), some parts particularly reminiscent of the austere Arctic tranquility of Henriksen's solo debut on Rune G, Sakuteiki. Overall, there's an air of olden mystic ceremony, with tracks like "Glacier Descent" building to white-light shining bliss. Ominous relaxation... definitely for fans of Supersilent and Deathprod.
The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel�Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length�Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor.�
Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy.�
His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself.�
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient� drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike.
It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit...
As if that weren't enough, the cd version comes with a full color hardcover book of Higgs' paintings and 'poetry', a series of cryptic acrostics to be more accurate. The�Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot series of paintings are all, like most of Higgs' work, strange and wondrous, here the focus is on enigmatic amorphous shapes, vividly colored, with all manner of textures and designs, stripes, polka dots, some of the shapes look like whales or fish, others like mushrooms, eyeballs, amoebas, shapeless heads, each filled with symbols, colors and patterns. The accompanying acrostics are cryptic and it's difficult to determine if they are related to the paintings they are beside, MUSIC, BIRDS, MIND, EDEN, PEACE, EMBRYO, BELOVED, COITUS... all offering up mysterious pearls of wisdom like "Always braid your silver serpents" or "Existence manifests between ravenous yellow orbs".�
The perfect visual accompaniment to Higgs' raw and primitive musical rituals...
In the tradition of such AQ classic recordings as Peter Cusack's Baikal Ice, recordings of melting glaciers, Alan Lamb's recordings of singing telephone wires, Colin Olan's recording of melting ice, Jonty Semper's recordings of BBC radio silence, Bob Sturm's Music From The Ocean and especially Tsunoda's amazing field recordings of everyday vibrations, comes this latest release from French sound artist Manu Holterbach, who by using a microphone hermetically sealed inside a bottle and allowing it to float in a choppy river, captured an amazing array of alien sounds, the strange hiss of the rushing water, muted and warped through the glass, the percussive plinks of pebbles striking the bottle, dense clouds of hissing whir created from the constantly shifting pebbles on the bottom of the river, the distant sounds of voices, all warbled as they are filtered through both the water and the glass. An amazing experience, an exploration of a rushing river, heard from within, a hissing, soft focus drone being the constant, quite mesmerizing and strangely melodic. Listening at high volumes in headphones reveals still more strange sonic mysteries, giving one the sense, with eyes closed, of actually floating down the river, encased in glass, a fantastical sonic journey for sure.
Packaged in a mini 3" gatefold sleeve.
Even to this day, people are constantly singing the praises of Godflesh. Talking about how influential they were. And rightfully so. Cuz they were, certainly. But there was another band back then, who were just as amazing. And who sounded quite a bit like the 'Flesh. But had their own take on the whole metallic industrial plod thing. Pitchshifter were often painted in the press as Godflesh ripoffs, but as far as we're concerned, there was plenty of room for more than one pounding industrial metal outfit! And in many ways, Pitchshifter were a bit more interesting. Heavier a lot of the time, definitely more 'metallic', and with some seriously killer riffs, but they also let the drum machine take center stage sometimes, embracing their machine like rhythms, filling breaks with weird stuttering skitters and rapid fire machine gun rhythms. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE Godflesh, but we love Pitchshifter too. A lot!!!
So we were super psyched to discover that there was a new band, self described "industrial driven doom", featuring some Pitchshifter guys doing, well, industrial doom, as if they weren't already sort of doing that back in the day anyway. So here it is. Hordes Of Satan (bit of a naff name), four songs of crushing machinelike doom, and weirdly enough, it doesn't sound all that different than Pitchshifter. Slower, heavier maybe, but still immediately recognizable as the 'Shifter. Machinelike rhythms, massive downtuned guitars, growled death metal vocals (again not all that different than Pitchshifter). Crushingly heavy and intense, it sounds like Godflesh or Pitchshifter at 10 rpm, sludgy and doomy but churning and relentless. And pretty fucking scary. One of the tracks features a cool bridge with some scary sample looped and repeated over a churning drum machine and a throbbing bass line and the vibe is seriously Skinny Puppy! And as if to drive the whole Pitchshifter thing home, they even do a Pitchshifter cover, "Landfill", and guess what? It sounds like Pitchshifter, only slower and heavier. Which as far as we're concerned is fucking awesome!
All this Jesu stuff lately had us hankering for Godflesh, and thus missing Pitchshifter, so this Hordes Of Satan is quick becoming out new favorite slab of heaviness!!
Finally after years of demos and splits and cassette tape releases, the first proper full length from Swedish suicidal black metallers Hypothermia. You might remember Hypothermia from their split with Dimhymn, in the review of which we described their sound as "Epic fuzzed out glacial dirge, with thick riffs spread out in a black smear, the drums a caveman plod, and some of the most fucked vocals ever: weird, something-caught-in-the-throat sort of strangulated grunts and mewls, guttural growls and strange falsetto-y squeaks." And not too much has changed. In fact, Hypothermia's final track on that split was an "epic 16 minute midtempo buzzscape, [with] looped riffs, totally repetitive and hypnotic..." and dang if Veins isn't three of those, each a massive buzzing midtempo black dirge, slowly pounding drums, simple raw hypnotic riffing, repeated and repeated, into a mesmerizing musical mantra, the relentless buzz blurring into near drones, and anguished, cries of utter agony, over swirls of dismal black buzz.
Definitely for fans of Burzum, Nortt, Make A Change... Kill Yourself, Silencer, Xasthur and other purveyors of doomic black hate.
And if the music weren't depressed and dismal enough, the sleeve sports some seriously horrific and blood drenched images, bloody slit wrists, the word failure carved into an arm, a bathtub splattered with blood, and all the lyrics written in blood on blood soaked paper towels...
You might remember Hypothermia from their amazing split with Dimhymn a few months back, and we review the killer Durthang tape elsewhere on this list. But these two Swedish purveyors of bleak lifeless doomic black metal are the perfect match up.
Hypothermia's side is an ultra lo fi blast of midtempo buzz, super murky, almost like a practice space recording, with strangled vocals, and some killer riffing. Definitely some serious cult black brutality.
The flipside is two loooong tracks from Durthang, and further convinces us that this could very well be one of our new favorite black metal hordes. A strangely clean sound, but nice fuzzy riffing and way up in the mix drumming. Mournful melodies over relentless double kick drumming. Cool arpeggiated guitar lines over swirling buzzing blackness and blown out distorted vocal shrieks. A darkly depressive Burzumic buzz wrapped around melancholy minor key misery. So good. And so far the only Durthang recording available are on ultra cult cassette tape only!!
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
What to say about Jandek that hasn't already been said. This is release number 49, the last of 2006, if�you're already a fan, you might have to buy this one too (some of us here are so inclined), if none of the last 48 records have managed to turn you into a fan, odds are this one won't either. That's not to say it isn't good, it is, really good actually, but good in that way only Jandek records can be good. An alternate universe of sound, where a 'good' Jandek record is one that seems to be mostly solo bass and vocals. Plodding lugubrious low end, simple fumbling basslines, and that atonal croon, spewing tales of sadness and misery and loneliness and despair. The ultimate outsider solo doom folk death trip. Recommended, if that's your sorta thing. It is ours...
For many years now, John Grzinich and Michael Northam have long been two of our favorite sound artists. While we had thought that we had uncovered the bulk of their respective back catalogues, we somehow managed to have missed this early collaboration between the two. Both Grzinich and Northam emerged into realm of audio research and sound experimentation from Austin, Texas which had been quite a nexus of activity thanks in part to ND, which was a magazine, label, and what might be considered a think tank for sound art. The Absurd Evidence appears to have been an album that they had completed while they were both still residing in Texas before the two ventured beyond American waters (Grzinich currently resides in Estonia and Northam has been last spotted in France). This was also released at the same time as another collaboration entitled The Stomach of the Sky which Staalplaat released about a decade ago, but it is a little odd that we would have let The Absurd Evidence slip under our radar since this was released by the Texan label Bobby J, who had also released the brilliant, outsider mope rock / dronescape albums by Twenty-Six and Thirty-Seven.
The Absurd Evidence is a magnificent construction of agitated objects, manipulated field recordings, and electrically charged minimalism, where the tactile crunch of rock, brick, and sand snap into focus against the unsettled ambience generated from magnetic field disturbances. Slowly motors being to be whir and grind in a symphony of urban detritus being coaxed to utterance. The entire proceedings allude to some arcane scientific discourse being unveiled in process only, without any hint as to the purpose or conclusion to the ongoing tactile rumble and drone. These strategies may be similar to what The Hafler Trio produced on Kill The King, but the results of The Absurd Evidence parallel what Loren Chasse was creating at the same time with his seminal project Id Battery. Other references could be found in Giancarlo Toniutti, Eric La Casa, Small Cruel Party, and Tarab.
It's quite possible that we ended up with the very last copies of The Absurd Evidence, so if you were at all like us in missing this tremendous record, do yourself the favor of picking this up. It's fucking amazing. If you do already have, well then you already know how good it is!
Jimbo Trout is an active player in the Bay Area's healthy blue grass scene. Playing guitar, banjo, kazoo and singing tales with an old-time flare. Jimbo shows his fine taste by covering the likes of Leadbelly, The Carter Family, The Mississippi Sheiks, etc. His band adds fiddle, washboard, and mandolin and it's the record's instrumental tracks that we find ourselves most captivated by. Makes us wanna get out onto the docks, staring at the sea with a cold one in one hand, a reel and rod in the other...
