The Messthetics series marches on! Now we visit the grotty Midlands, where (we're told, we weren't there) the avant/pop/punk DIY scene of the late '70s and early '80s was meager in comparison to the rest of the UK on account of the NWOBHM explosion taking place there then. Yet, the industrious compliers at Hyped To Death have managed to dig up a whole disc's worth (and then some, as there are bonus mp3 tracks here as well) of interestin' rare tracks from kids making non-metallic (but still loud and often obnoxious) noise. The best-known of the slew of bands found here would be the Swell Maps, and also there's a band, the Versatile Newts, who was later on to become Felt. Also: Human Cabbages, The Shapes, Domestic Bliss, Cult Figures, School Meals, Hardware, Prefects, The Buzz, Famous Explorers, Digital Dinosaurs, 021, Lester and the Brew, Cravats, Cracked Actors, the Accused (not the Martha Splatterhead Accused, obviously), Dangerous Girls, Spizzoil, and Profile. 22 tracks in all plus 4 mp3s. And as always, there's copious liner notes and graphics in the booklet, chock full of information on all these weird bands. Once you get started on the Messthetics series, we're pretty sure you'll want 'em all, and #103 provides no objection to that notion.
There has not been a shortage of amazing soul reissues recently and we sure as heck aren't complaining. But we gotta say that the two new comps of golden era soul and funk we're listing this time out are two absolute must haves for vintage soul and funk lovers! You'll hear about the great "Florida Funk" comp elsewhere on this list but now we're talking about this collection from Luv N' Haight, an essential chapter in the history of California soul from 1966-1982. We've been playing this in the store pretty much every single day since its arrived (along with that Florida Funk), sometimes sneaking it on multiple times cause it just sounds so damn good! Starting off with the Gow Dow Experience's version of the Eugene McDaniel penned "Compared To What" which was first made famous by Roberta Flack on her essential recording First Take. The next fifteen tracks keep the fire alive with the kind of spirited soul that's pretty much impossible to resist. Whether it's the Bay Area's own Darondo turning on the sensual heat with his slow burner "Such A Night" or Spanky Wilson getting all sassy with her take of "Fancy" or Johnny Morisette getting super raw singing about being hungry. The perfect collection to be blasting at all summer bbq's and get togethers. Sounds that are so warm, so bold and still sound so alive today!
A totally mind blowing collection of artists, representing the state of 'noise' today. 55 bands, 3 cds, totally elaborate over the top packaging, a project so epic it took three labels to make it happen, but now that it's done, it was so worth the wait. So utterly gorgeous. And while we'd be the first to admit that we were a bit scared by the idea of a triple cd noise compilation, the actual state of 'noise' is actually that much of it is quite beautiful, almost all of it is surprisingly listenable, and a lot of it is downright lovely. It's not just hissing jets of white noise these days. Textural and moody, rhythmic and abstract, it might be more fair to describe this as an experimental comp rather than a noise one, but to be fair, many of these tracks are noisy in their own way. And like any comp, it's the bands you know and love that suck you in:�Burning Star Core, Guilty Connector, Dead Machines, Thurston Moore, Strotter Inst., Leslie Keffer, Earwicker, Destructo Swarmbots, Mike Shiflet, Hum Of The Druid, Sword Heaven, The Cherry Point, Herpes O Deluxe, Travis Ryan (from Cattle Decapitation), Panicsville, Gerritt & John Wiese, but what keeps you in, and earns repeat listens, is the chance to discover new weird music from bands you've never heard before: OP Rechts, Bet Hell, Josh Lay, Cotton Museum, Big China & Little Trouble, Forbes Graham, Small Life, Lovae, The Heirs Of Rockafeller, Perfect Teeth, Tonight Golden Curls, Black Meat, Door, Noveller, Jason Zeh, Teeth Collection, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Skullcaster, Steve Bradley, Wether, Mermaids, Wet Hearts, Magicicada, Oblong Box, Aughra, Donna Parker, Robert Inhuman, Yellow Tears, 1thousand Holy Shards, Back From Iraq, Sick III Cell, Scutopus, Ben S. Jacobs, Blango, Decimation Blvd., Ultra//Vires, Darsombra, Subterrane. Phew. We've yet to make it through all three discs, but what we've heard so far is awesome. So much so that every time we listen to this, someone comes up to see what we're listening to, after almost every song. In fact just while this review was being written, Allan asked what was playing 3 or 4 times. The tracks are that varied, and that good. It might be a bit daunting to do a track by track description, just know that we've listened to almost the whole thing, and loved pretty much all of it, even the noisiest tracks. And it's incredibly well sequenced too, the tracks are matched and segue into each other as if it were and album proper, not a compilation. So good. Our faith in noise may have been restored!
And we haven't even discussed the packaging yet. A sturdy rectangular box with a removable lid, held together by a thick textured paper obi, gold metallic ink on red, inside, 4 thick cardstock inserts, each with unique red and gold art on one side, while on the other, one contains liner notes, the other three the track listings and band info, with the cds affixed to the center, and each cd is adorned with unique and different art. Wow. It truly is gorgeous looking, so much so that it's hard to believe it's only sixteen bucks. But we're not complaining. Not sure how limited this is, but something this nice and labor intensive, we're guessing they won't be around for long. Essential listening for lovers of modern music, noise and otherwise, and recommended especially for even the most noise-phobic among you...
There seems to be a whole 'nother world of black metal lurking below the underground. An under-underground. A world that seems to exist only on the seemingly antiquated medium of the cassette tape. There seems to be a serious resurgence lately in people's interest in tapes, as if cd-r's are now too mainstream... but we kinda dig it, not only does releasing a tape require a bit more effort (only a bit) but if it sucks, you can tape over it! And you can get a tape walkman on Mission Street for $10!!
Out latest discovery comes courtesy of SF black metal tape label the Funeral Agency, and is a mysterious band called Varghkoghargasmal. Printed in big letters on the tape sleeve are the words WOODEN METAL! Weird. But we were still unprepared for just how completely wacked and weird this record is.
It's basically black metal with no distortion. Maybe Wooden Metal means 'acoustic' metal. But the guitars here are electric, although recorded through what sounds like a practice amp with no distortion. And the drums, HOLY SHIT, don't even get us started. A stumbling struggling drum beat that wavers away from the actual beat more often than not. And it's recorded in some impossibly reverby way that gives it a really haunting otherworldly sound. The first track here is rapidly becoming one of our favorite 'black metal' tracks ever. A very simple spare, un-distorted riff, almost like a slowed down Dick Dale or Link Wray, with a strangely motorik drum beat, that is just off enough to sound like some weird Kompakt style techno beat. In fact, this could totally be some weird black metal surf rock techno track. Eventually, some strange minor key melody joins the fray, and a warbly fuzzed our keyboard, which only serve to make the sound more confusional.
The rest of the record is just as great. And bizarre. Stumbling reverbed clean guitar picking out blackened surf rock riffs, weird keyboard drones. The fast songs are the strangest, with the clean guitar blurring into swaths of damaged melody and the drums a chaotic blasting rumbling murky throb way down in the mix.
Hard to explain the damaged magic of Varghkoghargasmal other than to say you have NEVER heard anything like this. Fucking amazing!!!!
Wooden Metal!!!
John Watermann's Calcutta Gas Chamber has long been hailed as one of the minor masterpieces of post-industrial sound art, yet it's one of those albums that has escaped my (Jim's) ears up until now, as it's been reissued both on CD through Cold Spring and on picture disc by Die Stadt. Back in 1990, this German born sound artist had traveled to Calcutta where he stumbled upon a gas chamber that had been closed down just a few years earlier. Watermann explains in the liner notes that the Indian government had numerous policies, both official and clandestine, aimed at population control; and the gas chamber was one method that had been employed for the expedient dispatch of those condemned to death. The Calcutta Gas Chamber was one that actually closed down for economic reasons (and not for human rights issues, I might add), and I'm not all that sure if the Indian government still uses such practices at this day and age. Needless to say, the experience of walking through this death factory had a huge impact upon Watermann. There had been some debate as to the validity of Watermann's claim that he had managed to get field recordings of the gas chamber itself (as he claims in the liner notes) or if he replicated what he heard from recordings he made from a power station in Australia. As Watermann died several years ago, the true nature of the recordings will remain something of a mystery. That said, Watermann's Calcutta Gas Chamber deserves its place as esoteric gem of the darkly avant-garde. His compositional style is a industrial take on musique concrete, as he roughly chops his field recordings of mechanical clatter, aerated hisses, and disembodied voices into a claustrophobic arena of turgid repetitions and blackened drones that reflect the automation of death haunting that space. Occasionally a thick drone of flanging ambience creeps forth from his mechanized collage; but even as these sounds reflect something like the nightmarish guitars of Maeror Tri, there is very little jubilation to found within these recordings. A powerful album that shudders at the potential for man to exact atrocities upon fellow man and the world at large.
Funklord Rick James sure looks badass on the cover to this, the latest issue of the best hiphop/funk/soul/jazz magazine know, Wax Poetics. The feature is about his 1981 album Street Songs. Also inside: DJ Shadow, Chico Hamilton, Arthur Russell, Bunny Lee, DJ Spinna, Black Milk, and much more... If you haven't checked out Wax Poetics yet, you should. If you have, you'll what know to expect: porn for diggers. Vintage photos and album cover graphics all over, in gorgeous full-color. And you can read it for the articles too.
Don't ask why, but we've decided to review this record like we're making a stay together/breakup laundry list of plusses and minuses (or deltas if you're optimistic).
Minuses:
1. At times annoying, particularly "We're Always Waiting" which combines a "sugar pie honey bunch" style organ line with the words "we want all that stuff, all that stuff that costs too much" sung in the style of "Lady Humps" by the Blackeyed Peas, ugh.
2. Not much lyrical depth (at all).
3. Singing often comes off more like talking with a constant inflection.
4.
Plusses:
1. Some songs could satisfy our electro laptop-pop craving.
2. At times playful.
3. A little bit ambitious.
4.
It's a dead heat! We left you some room to listen to the sound samples and fill in the blanks. *sidenote: after writing this review, we noticed pitchfork wrote an article describing Jona Bechtolt's decision to quit his former duo The Blow and do Yacht full time. Looks like we're not the only ones who've been making laundry lists lately! Thank you Pitchfork for keeping us up to date on all the latest z-list celebrity gossip!
Now available on lp! Ultra thick vinyl, super heavy weight gatefold sleeve, and most importantly, AN EXCLUSIVE BONUS TRACK!!!! Limited to 1000 copies, so these probably won't be around for long. Here's our review of the cd from when we first reviewed it a few years back:
If there was ever a band more "AQ" than Zombi I'd be hard pressed to think of it. Take two guys, both obsessed with horror movies, particularly those by director Dario Argento, and even more specifically the Argento soundtracks by Italian prog outfit Goblin. Give these two guys a drumkit and a massive arsenal of synthesizers, and sign them to Relapse. And what do you get? Basically, a record we just can't stop listening to. And songs that are just BEGGING to accompany some gruesome footage of disemboweled corpses, dark stormy nights, windows covered in flies, and screaming barefoot girls in nighties running through graveyards in the pouring rain. Not that the music of Zombi is THAT scary, it's just so evocative, and SO reminiscent of Goblin, it's hard not to try to envision what kitschy eighties European horror movie these tracks might have come from. Sonically, the simplest description and the one that should have most of you rushing out to pick this up straight away, would be Goblin meets Tortoise. Yep, post rock horror movie soundtrack music swathed in ominous synthesizer buzz and electronic drone. Maybe a more accurate description though might be: long lost Goblin tracks performed by AQ faves Heldon, with all the requisite swooshing spaciness, haunting minor key melodies, propulsive krautrock rhythms and thick fuzzy synths. The synth soundtrack music of John Carpenter is also an obvious influence, but again, put to use in a post rock context. Whichever way, you NEED this!
