It's funny that this record came out under the Electric Prunes moniker as the '60s psych band best known for their great hit "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" aren't really anywhere to be found on this record. Instead this is the brainchild and work of legendary arranger & producer David Axelrod -- much like their better known Mass In F Minor, this being its Judiac follow-up. Clocking in at around 25 minutes, and utilizing some of the best Los Angeles players of the late '60s Release Of An Oath is a brilliant concoction of rich grooves, prog moments, acid rock and classical tropes. It's no surprise that to this day Axelrod's work is sampled left and right because his sense of melody and his kick ass breaks are so damn perfect!
At last!! AQ faves Elope from Sweden, the world's mellowest and most melodic "stoner rock" band, are back with their third album of timelost psych rock beauty, 9 Distilled Dreams. It's the relaxed companion to last year's more rockin' 3WD, bringing to the fore the dreamiest side of the Elope equation.
First off, gotta mention that we're super flattered that the band was so appreciative of our reviews of their previous two albums that they wanted to thank us by putting a dedication "to Aquarius Records San Francisco" on this new album. Awww. We blush. Of course, that puts some pressure on us to come up with a worthy review of this their excellent third effort. We might have been able just to say something along the lines of: NEW ALBUM FROM ELOPE! IT'S AWESOME! GET IT! But though that's all very true, we feel we ought to rise to the occasion with something more in depth and, if possible, poetic.
Ok... like the snow-dusted winter trees in front of bright blue sky depicted in the photo on the slipcase of this cd, 9 Distilled Dreams is a thing of sunblessed natural beauty. Ambling, amiable, a bit sad, sweet... tugging at the heart with yearning vocals and irresistible pop songcraft. Yep, this long haired trio -- Sebastian Aronsson, Tomas Eriksson, and Anders Person -- have done it again, just even slower and softer this time. A couple of the songs ("Elope & Fuge") make judicious use of keyboards for gentle prog caresses. Other tracks, like "Not Even Close (Closer)", work their magic with just voice and acoustic guitar.
There's the usual '60s/'70s references we could make -- Beatlesy McCartneyesqe Neil Youngish Allman Brothersy bits in here and there. But for some more up-to-date citations, we're feeling the Cyann and Ben style layered three-note melodies. And are reminded of those Supergrass ballads... with that satisfying really good pop resolve. And in a weird way, with their harmonies and all, we're put in mind of old faves the Scud Mountain Boys, without the country slant.�Also, need we say, if you're one of Dungen's many fans and haven't yet heard their fellow countrymen Elope, this would be a good place to start.
But hopefully, if you're a regular AQ customer, we've already turned you on to Elope and you like 'em as much as we do. If that's the case, then we probably can just say NEW ALBUM FROM ELOPE, etc.! Delicate, moody, gorgeous, and rather more like their debut The No Name Record than its intentionally uptempo-all-the-time predecessor. Happily recommended.
More limited vinyl madness, this time in the form of the hotly anticipated vinyl only split between Justin Broadrick's Jesu, and US ambient drifter Eluvium. So the skinny is this, a split release between Temporary Residence Limited and Hydra Head, the copies we got are the TRL version. The TRL version is already out of print, but the folks at TRL let us have a big bunch (only about 50) and even cooler, a handful of them are the mailorder only colored vinyl version. So first 30 or so folks will get colored vinyl, the rest will get black, and please don't ask for colored vinyl, and don't order unless you'll be happy with black, it's first come, first served...
Three new songs from Jesu, and as if we didn't already see Broadrick and Co. heading in this direction, they've almost entirely jettisoned the heaviness, in favor of a blissy new wave-t drift. Really! No massive sludge, no blissed out crunch, in fact, most of this sounds like Jesu doing the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie, all drift and croon and no crunch and pummel, but it's really nice, and pretty, and still suitably Jesu-like. Imagine Simple Minds or the Cure but raised on Slowdive and Chapterhouse and Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine, doing the theme song for Sixteen Candles 2007 (which if our calculations are correct would be more like Thirty Nine Candles). The first song would be a massive hit, sort of melancholy and romantic, dark and dreamy, but still sort of catchy and hopeful, like sunbeams barely making it through grey storm clouds. The final track sounds like it could be from that last scene in Sixteen Candles 2007, the one where the boy and the girl finally make it to the dance after all of the crazy mishaps and misunderstandings and are finally sharing that slow dance... lugubrious and fuzzy, and soft focus and so great actually. It's weird, and a bit unexpected, but as much as we love the glacial crush of past Jesu discs, this new-wave-y drift really suits them..
The flip side features a side long three part epic from Eluvium, aka Matthew Cooper, whose usual stately dreamlike ambience, is here rendered even fuzzier and blurrier. The first part could be some long lost Tim Hecker or Basinski jam, all dense washes of keyboards and crumbling shimmer. The second and third parts feature Coopers doleful minor key piano, more recognizable than on the opener, but still takes those notes and smears them into glacial stretches of glistening murmur. The perfect sonic match up for Jesu's new, less heavy, more drift-y sound.
The Brain reissue series on Revisited continues to bring us the crazy krautrock goodies! Of course, having already raved about the first solo album from the drummer for theatrical prog loonies Grobschnitt, Joachim Ehrig aka Eroc, we were exceedingly curious about this second one. Ja, Eroc 1 was a HUGE hit 'round here. After all, we called it a "krautrock masterpiece" and compared it to all sorts of favorite things, from Harmonia to Fridge! So, what's the deal with Eroc 2, originally released a year later in 1976? The cut-up confusionality that was a deliberate, delightful part of Eroc's debut is continued here, but taken to further extremes, which makes this more of a DIFFICULT spin at times. It's more bizarre, with the curiosity factor up and the overall listenability factor slightly down.
Like Eroc 1, this has its share of moody, melodic, synth-laden instrumental bliss-outs for the Cluster fans in the house. Eroc 2's electronics also venture into carefree, Bavarian dances for Liederhosen wearing' hippies. And then there's a bunch of paranoiac freakouts to give Faust a run for their money! In a word: Quirky. Heck, downright weird. But it's krautrock, that's what we came for. The mood of the music displays good and bad vibes both -- and a sense of humor, we're pretty sure (though our lack of German makes it tough know just what's a joke). There's a healthy amount of talking (auf Deutsch) all over this album. Singing too. Though there's lots of purely instrumental parts as well. But with 30 tracks (13 of 'em bonus cuts!), some of them dense epics, many others brief under-a-minute interludes of insanity, the puzzling and the pleasing are in rough proportion. Amidst Eroc's wonderful spacey, synthy, psychedelic music, you'll hear all sorts of stuff. Children's voices. Babbling outbursts. Electronic squiggles -- and the sound of maniacal sawing? Oh and orgasmic (male) moaning... Perhaps it's all some sort of concept album and all this makes sense, tied together in some strange narrative. Or, they're all nonsense non sequiturs, anyway? We don't know, but are amused/intrigued/entertained. Definitely, get Eroc 1 first, but check this out too. If you like your krautrock to be uber krauty, full of surreal surprises and jokes you won't get, you'll probably dig this. Like Eroc 1, this consists of stuff recorded in Eroc's home studio, growing out of tapes intended to augment Grobschnitt's live shows. Both records turned into personal LP-length visions well worthy to stand alone.
Can't wait to hear Eroc 3, which is supposedly also been reissued or will be soon...
Rarities discs from most bands usually seem superfluous or at the very least only for their most obsessed fans, but when it comes to ESG, we'll gladly take any kind of extra material we can get!
If you don't already own the first volume of A South Bronx Story we hereby demand that you stop reading this and get it right away! It's an all time AQ favorite that you can still hear blasting in the store all the time, and it's one of those records that just about everyone we've ever played it for has totally fallen head over heels for. Volume 2 features lots of alternative mixes, b-sides and unreleased tracks, from their early days all the way up until their more present incarnation. The day this arrived we of course immediately threw it on and every single person in the store at one point or another made their way up to the counter to find out what was playing. It was so cool because they were all folks who don't normally gravitate toward dance minded music, but their ears obviously knew that this was the real deal, and no matter what your regular sonic inclinations may be, it's pretty much impossible not to be swept up by the wholly unique sounds of ESG. Highly recommended!
It's amazing how quickly Expo '70 went from being a group we had never heard of, whose cd-r we got randomly sent to us in the mail, to a dronerock juggernaut, releasing disc after disc of amazing ambient kraut-flecked drift, what is beginning to seem remarkably like a monthly installment of outerspace sonic exploration. But heck, we'd much rather get a new 'issue' of far out Expo '70 dronebliss every month than say, Star Magazine (well, actually, okay, maybe Star was a bad example, but definitely more than say Spin or Rolling Stone or pretty much any other monthly installment sort of thing, anyway...).
Animism just so happens to be Expo '70's first actual cd as well, the first release that's not a limited edition cd-r, which is one of the reasons we decided to make it record of the week. 'Cuz to be totally honest, every single one of the Expo '70 releases could have been, and heck, maybe should have been Records of the Week. Certainly if we based it on how much they get played in the store, and the reaction of the folks hearing it, and the fact that the cds have been impossible to keep in stock. But that's only one of the reasons. The other, is that Animism, in it's own subtly space-y and psychedelic way, is quite possibly the 'heaviest' Expo '70 release yet.
The record begins much in the same way as most of the others. A huge drifting rumbling soundscape. Spare and wide open. Across this warm expanse drift disembodied guitar squiggles, reverbed scrapes, bits of fragmented melodies, post rock snippets, tinkling percussive shimmer,
all drifting over soft swells of undulating low end. There are tons of FX, but it's not Acid Mothers style freakout, instead, these sonic aktions are muted and smeared into dreamy streaks. Never has a music sounded so much like what it must feel like to drift weightless through space. Cloaked in inky blackness, but with the sparkle of a million stars illuminating the seemingly endless emptiness. And so it goes on, each track, a slow lugubrious crawl through the galaxies, strange shapes drift by, colored lights, every bit of melody like some barely visible shooting star, soft billow clouds of FX enveloping you before dissipating and leaving you to once again drift wide-eyed into infinity.
Track three, though, is where things start to get a little scary. In come the guitars, and this time it's not the little glimmers and twinkles, these are thick sheets of crumbling rumbling distorted buzz. Relentlessly trudging beast like across the same barren soundscapes, but leaving a trail of blown speakers in its wake. The effects here are much more blown out, melodies slip and slither amidst the coruscating heaviness, sounding almost like someone transported SUNNO))) back to the seventies, where they ended up jamming with Klaus Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel. Granted the Expo '70 cd-r Center Of The Earth, was also pretty heavy, but on Animism, the heaviness seems to be more deftly integrated with the lovelier psych-drone-drift parts, an organic space kraut doom, as dark and dense as it is dreamy and effervescent. The record effortlessly drifts back and forth, from black drone to space-y drift, as if one couldn't possibly exist in this universe without the other.
There are some subtle sonic surprises too, like the way-up-in-the-mix, tripped out harmonized guitars on "Entering The Night On A Highway Of Astral Projection", the folky acoustic strum on "Missing Sun", and the swirling SUNNO)))-y murk of "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover", sounding a bit like the Angelic Process with the treble turned all the way down and the bass all the way up! Blissy and muddy, an epic blown out glistening dirge, suffocated under layer after layer of FX drenched detritus.
If there was ever an ultimate soundtrack for blowing the hatch and floating free, doomed to a languorous eternity of drug fueled drift and buzzing rumbling psychedelic space rock torpor, this is most certainly it.
So recommended.
Slint may arguably be the most important, influential indie rock band of the last two decades, their album Spiderland, still one of the best selling records�on Touch And Go, is almost directly responsible for about a million math rock bands to come after. And rightfully so. Their sound was delicate and dark, intense and ultra personal, super dramatic and incredibly evocative. Dynamic and simply incredible. From the angular bombast of their debut Tweez, to the epic song cycle that is Spiderland, their swan song, the band had few peers, and those records, still, to this day, are pretty tough to beat.�
Weird then, that post Slint ensemble The For Carnation (which also happened to include several folks who would go on to form Tortoise) seemed to sort of slip under the radar, releasing two eps, then calling it a day. But for those who heard them, Fight Songs and Marshmallows, those records were nearly as important as the Slint records that came before. When we first discovered that half of Slint were in a new band, that did sort of sound like Slint, we were thrilled, and when we finally heard Fight Songs, we were blown away, it WAS like Slint, but even darker, and quieter, less dynamic, and more brooding, but just as persona and intense. Now both of those eps have been compiled on a single disc, and sound as good as ever.�
Opening with "Grace Beneath The Pines", the band drift, barely moving through a vast expanse of simple muted minor key chords, and hushed vocals, like the quietest part from some unreleased Slint track, stretched out into a whole song, with only one or two dynamic swells, with much more time spent just sort of hovering, and shimmering, lots of silence, and plenty of strange distant low end rumbles and whirs. The melody bittersweet, and so subtly catchy. The next track, "How I Beat The Devil" is about as rocking as they ever got, a brief minute and a half of minor key math rocking, instrumental, a sort of almost surfy riff, over a convoluted rhythm and some wild guitar squalls, before the band settles back down into the lazy loping shuffle that is "Get And Stay Get March", a super hypnotic riff, repeated over and over, simple sing song lyrics, incredibly mesmerizing, a sort of math rock drone, slowcore stretched out into a late night slow motion drone jam.�
The second ep, Marshmallows, continues on the same trajectory as Fight Songs, brooding, minimal, sort of sun dappled and sing songy, a dark slow motion post rock crawl, creepy yet pretty, haunting and dreamy. The stand out track on Marshmallows is "I Wear The Gold", a weird almost This Heat style rhythm jam, based around a looped bass riff, and some super intricate drumming, the whole thing smeared into a seemingly endless hypnotic groove. The rest of the record is a dark whispery shuffle, the vocals hushed and tip toeing across, delicate landscapes of thrum and skitter, until the final track "Preparing To Receive You", another sort of krautrockish hypnorock jam, with a super spare mathy drum line, a looped repetitive riff, with super subtle shifts and variations, the sort of song you could imagine stretching out to 15, 20, even 30 minutes, but for those nearly nine minutes, it's absolute minimal mathy slow motion drone rock bliss.�
We've long been obsessed with black metal weirdos Forgotten Woods. The three cd retrospective Baklengs Mot Stupet 1992-1996 has been a constant AQ bestseller, and for good reason. It's completely brilliant and baffling... read the review of that set and listen to the sound samples and if you don't already have it, think very seriously about remedying that situation.
Well, as much as we love those old FW records, we always assumed the band was dead and gone, but out of the blue, came this brand new record, and if anything, it's even more damaged, fucked up, and impossibly brilliant than ever. Straight out of the gate, opening with a grinding distorted intro with damaged heavily affected spoken word samples, the band then launches into a super freaky lo-fi blackened, almost new wave sounding jam, an old school grungy riff, simple practice space drumming, with the vocals WAY up in the mix, growling and rasping, surrounded by streaks of damaged off kilter guitar freakout, and a super creepy repeated minor key guitar motif over the top, a weird sort of warped angular horror movie lick, repeated over and over, so intense and so completely bizarre.
The next track finds the band in furious blackened blast mode, but even here, the mix renders the song a damaged blast of chaos, with the drums way too far up in the mix, stumbling and crashing all over the place, the fills like drums being hurled down a flight of stairs, the guitar, which began as a black buzz, begins to become more and more unhinged, gradually growing more angular and off kilter, warping into some sort of Greg Ginn black (metal) flag damage before slipping into the next song, a loping midtempo eighties metal style dirge, that halfway through not only suddenly changes tempo, but also changes recording quality, almost like someone just flipped a switch, or some other band just barged in and took over...
Elsewhere the band settles into weird dirgey drift, with demented and damaged crooning, like Circle Of Ouroborus or Dead Reptile Shrine, some Burzum like keyboards, and lots of thrashing buzzing blackness.
The strangest song by far (although it's all relative) is "The Principle And The Whip", a drifting minor key almost-ballad, with lilting folk guitars and dreamy wispy female vocals, that had the folkies around here perking up their ears asking what we were listening to? Complete with a Comus-y coda, all tribal hand drums, and urgent strumming.
Actually, that song we just said was the weirdest, well, maybe we were a bit premature, cuz the last track, "Third Eye (New Creature)", a 12 minute whatthefuck of epic proportions pretty much knocked that one well out of the running. The first few minutes are pounding blackness, peppered with mournful minor key guitars and more of those growled demonic vocals, a sort of Brainbombs meets Turbonegro meets Darkthrone, when all of a sudden, the music drifts off leaving just a recording of a disturbing excerpt from a radio show (taken from TalkBack with Bob Larson), some strange discourse between a Christian and a virulent anti-Christian, with the two touching on lots of random weirdness, throwing Christians to the lions, Hitler, the Holocaust, history written in blood, fascism, homelessness, crack cocaine, AIDS, teenage pregnancies, Heaven, Hell... when all of a sudden, after like 10 minutes of this interview, the band lurch back into action, finishing off with a groovy garage-y fuzzed out Stooges-y stomp, with the lyric "Sieg Heil" repeated several times (which got them in a lot of trouble, for obvious reasons), presumably in response to the preceding interview...
Woah.... like we said, baffling and brilliant... But not like we should be surprised that these guys are still capable of such far out-ness, after all they are responsible for some of favorite, fucked up and freaked out indie-rock-jangle-meets-stumbling-free-folk-meets-grim-black-buzz... well, actually come to think of it, calling it our 'favorite' is a little misleading since that would presume that there some other bands out there making this sort of glorious black chaos, and there sure as hell ain't...
Such a fantastic songwriting duo truly beloved by fans and critics alike! They simply do not make 'em like they used to. Together as The Go-Betweens, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were virtually peerless in their pop excellence. Separately, each gent was a formidable and altogether distinct artist in his own right. Sadly Grant McLennan passed away last year at the age of 48. So needless to say, listening to this posthumous release is nothing short of heartbreakingly bittersweet. He left such a profound pop music legacy. The special deluxe 2cd edition compiles the 'best' of their respective solo works as selected by the artists' themselves. Who better to choose the cream of the crop? The deeper, more robustly voiced Robert Forster's songs were the more rugged, lonesome cowboy numbers whereas the softer spoken Grant McLennan's came across as the more sensitive, sweet and bookish. Delivering his straight-to-the heart, wise lyrics, he would sing in his unmistakable comfortingly gentle voice which was often accompanied by comparatively gutsier guitars. So damn good! Fans will probably already have the original albums from which all of these songs came, but even if you do, this makes an awesome mixtape for any fan of well-crafted pop. Don't miss... seriously!
FYI: Beggars Banquet will be releasing the two cds separately at a later date.
A lot can happen in 6 years. That's how long it's been since the trio of Kieren Hebden, Adem Ihan and Sam Jeffers last released a record together. Since then 2/3 of the band have gone on to great success with their individual projects, Hebden with Four Tet and Ihan with Adem. As the '90s were coming to a close Fridge emerged as one of the shining examples of a band who totally knew how to bring all sorts of elements from various exciting musical movements (electronica, post-rock, hip-hop, etc.) into a totally cohesive, engaging and epic package. Six years later and they return sounding like no time has passed at all. The Sun sounds like Fridge stepped right out of the time machine, so for those who were hoping to hear that classic Fridge sound once again you will be very happy! While some of us hoped that maybe there would be lots of new twists and turns, there is no denying that they do what they do so damn well. This is like post-rock 101, so get your notebooks and pens out cause school is in session.
An all too short dose of medievalish ear-candy. Two songs, one a long form folk drone of the likes we are used to hearing from Tara Burke aka Fursaxa. The other is a moss covered but more traditional sounding folk song that sounds like a cover of an ancient but long forgotten tune. Lovely.
A glorious spaced out druggy FX drenched sonic trip to the outer reaches of the galaxy from the aRCHIVE label (Nadja, Goslings, Astral Traveling Unity, Alasehir, Jack Rose, Khanate, Keiji Haino, LSD-March, Growing, Bardo Pond). The perpetrator of said sonic space trip is Hiroshi Hasagawa, who spends most of his time doing similarly druggy business in C.C.C.C. and Astral Traveling Unity, on synth and ring modulator, and Keichi Miyashita (from Mandog) on guitar and tape echo. Needless to say, everyone who bought that ATU on aRCHIVE is definitely gonna want this....�
Three extended improvised freaked out ultra mega blown out drifting space jams. Swirling clouds of whoosh and bleep and bloop and shimmer and schhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwooooooooooooooooossssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh. Peppered with glistening sonic sparkles, a sky full of blinking twinkling melodic shards. Very laid back and meditative at times, a pulsing throbbing hypnotic krautrock like Tangerine Dream or Popol Vuh, but occasionally exploding into full on blistering acid fried psychedelic chaos. If you loved that Astral Traveling Unity, or Space Machine, or the above mentioned krautrockers or Acid Mothers Temple at their most unhinged and free (one�track even features AMT's Hiroshi Higashi on extra synth) then this will surely hit the spot.�
Like�all aRCHIVE releases, beautifully packaged, this time a glossy psychedelic 6 panel fold out sleeve with the cd affixed to the inside.�
LIMITED TO 600 COPIES and probably already almost out of print...
Not remotely new (the catalog number for this is PSF-17, it was released some years ago) but something that we thought we'd get a few of and list 'cause we were doing an order with the PSF label in Tokyo and hadn't ever reviewed this cult classic before. Anyone into the speedfreak psychedelic acid punk of flagship PSF band High Rise (or Mainliner, or Musica Transonic, etc.) ought to check out Gaseneta, a Japanese combo from the late '70s who helped pioneer that sound (and were later covered by High Rise). This disc contains archival recordings mostly from 1978, all of 'em ultra distorted, in-the-red recordings of a band simply destroying, sonically wrecking the place. We mean, if you thought Boris kicked out the noisy jams on Pink... well this is a whole 'nother kettle of raw fish of course, way punker than Pink, but of potential interest to Boris fans wanting to check out their antecedents. There's eleven energetic tracks on Sooner Or Later, bursting with skronky guitar solos (Black Flag style) and the spittle of guttural vox, backed by urgent bashing rhythms. Four of 'em are live recordings, which are especially lo-fi but since you should be playing this LOUD anyway that just adds to the effect. Way cool.
First it was the metallic noise rock crunch of Barbara, then it was the freaked out psych-noise of Lietterschpich, and now there's Grave In The Sky, who are proving difficult to describe. But holy shit, has Israel underground rock has been seriously kicking our asses!!! Hard to believe how bad ass and fucked up and utterly amazing this stuff is.�
Grave In The Sky are on the same label as Barbara and�Lietterschpich and sort of fall sonically right between the two. They are a bass/drums/vocals trio, the various members also occasionally responsible for stuff like Indian vocals, noises, effects, and Indian vocals again, hmmm.... The sound is dirgey industrial pound, doomic dirge and blown out noise rock stomp, all tangled up in as seriously chaotic and mangled musical car wreck.�
Let's start at the beginning though. The record is called�Cutlery Hits China: English For The Hearing Impaired. Okay. The songs are all named after movies: "Donnie Darko", "The Descent", "Straw Dogs", "The Devil's Rejects" and "Scum". All chiseled into a faux tomb stone on the back of the cd with the legend "Here Lie..." Weird already.�
Then the first track kicks in and we're in super distorted ultra violent crust sludge heaven where we will happily stay until the end of the record, at which point we will push play again and let this bloody brutality rain down on us all over again. Each track is a lurching sludgey doom trudge, like the Brainbombs at 16rpm, the vocals dripping with FX, hellish and harsh, distorted and twisted into bizarre shapes, sometimes so affected they turn into long drawn out helldub sonic echoes, the riffs are roiling black grooves, the drums, in the red caveman pounding and pummeling. This is some sort of primitive serial killer garage rock stomp but filtered through all sorts of Whitehouse NOISENOISENOISE, with every knob and every effect turned up to 11. The songs may begin as crusty doom dirges, but once the effects kick in every single note, every shouted lyric, every drum pound is echoed into jagged fragments and sent spinning� in every direction resulting in the songs turning into ultra damaged noise dub experimental chaos. And it sounds so amazing. Layer after layer of undulating sound, corrosive and harsh, speaker shredding buzz, vocals swirling and turned inside out, the drums distorted into blinding bursts, but buried within all of this blurry smeared musical mayhem, are strange creepy melodies, plodding industrial rhythms, huge low end swells and tons of textural grit and grime.�
Another one of those rare records where utterly abject, ear shredding noise, and an avalanche of effects and some of the harshest and hateful sounds we have ever heard, are all somehow transformed into a record we actually want to listen to. And not just once. Over and over and over and again and again. We were pretty sure it would be tough to beat Barbara and Lietterschpich, in terms of bizarre brutality, but then it never occurred to us to just mash them both together. Fucking awesome.�
We gotta go way back for this one. A serious slab of black metal history. The first time on cd for Graveland's infamous third demo, originally released on cassette in 1992, Drunemeton, and while it is way more grim and lo-fi that we've come to expect, it's also way weirder, and you know how we love that.
From the very Graveland like intro, tape hiss and church bells, whirling wind, huge buzzing swaths of primitive synth and harsh whispered vocals, you know this is gonna be good, but you definitely can't possibly be prepared for how weird and fucked it's going to be as well. This is so awesomely lo-fi, machine like drums (drum machine we presume) are the focus, WAY up in the mix, louder than everything else except maybe the vocals. The guitars are a churning throbbing pulse more than actual riffing, the vocals a harsh growl laid over everything. The only time you can actually hear the notes and riffs are when things slow down to a dirge and the blast beat becomes a mechanical plod. But the second the blast beat begins again, the guitars become a muted blur and suddenly it's some strange alien industrial jam.
In fact, in a lot of ways, it's hard not to hear Godflesh or Pitchshifter in these songs. The drums are so industrial and relentless, a pounding that defines the sound here. Imagine if Godflesh had been into black metal, this is almost what it would have had to sound like. The slow parts are equally strange, with huge sweeps of ultra cinematic keyboards nearly swallowing up everything else, making the guitar buzz seem tiny, and the drums sound like throwing rocks against an aluminum garage door, everything during those slow parts is about the epic synths, moody and melodramatic, before the drums kick back in and we're back in black metal Godflesh territory.
Some of the best moments are when those two sounds mix, the sweeping synths, and the industrial pound, and during those stretches the drum machine seems to stumble, struggling amidst a black sea of synth swells and crunchy guitar buzz. Elsewhere, there are weird backwards gongs (at least that's what it sounds like) strange circusy piano melodies, haunting chantlike vocals, the sounds of birds, mechanical clanging and clatter, all wrapped up in the record's machine-like black pound.
As if it wasn't obvious by now, this is most definitely the weirdest Graveland record, managing to push both our old school industrial buttons and our grim damaged black metal buttons, AT THE SAME TIME!! The more we listen to this, and we can't seem to stop, the more it seems inevitable that Drunemeton is quite possibly our new favorite Graveland record.
Anyone who has seen the Grey Daturas live knows that live is where the band really shine, whether it involves songs from their records, pulled apart and reconstructed into impossibly free soundscapes, swapping instruments and exploding into a brutal NZ noise pummel, or just channeling their perfect freerock chemistry into some of the most gorgeous, kick ass avant rock we've heard in ages, organic and of the moment, hard to capture in the studio but seemingly no big thing for these guys live. SO here we have a double 3" cd-r collecting two long out of print recordings originally released a few years back of a performance back in 2002, and as the preceding bit might lead you to believe it's utterly astounding. The first disc is a three part epic, one part random preshow clatter, cord buzz, shuffling feet and hunkering down, one part sprawling low end drone beneath shuffling abstract drumming and occasional synth squiggle, super minimal and brooding, like the Dead C covering the Necks, the final track a massive sheet of static sound, pusling and glacial, guitars keen and whine over a black pool of low end, while in the background chimes and bells twinkle like sonic stars, as the guitars get more and more pronounced, and the track gets gradually heavier and heavier before collapsing completely into a barely there thrum that finally blinks out completely. The second disc is one long track, also on the abstract side, strange guitar sounds growl and grate, throb and flutter, a dense drone constructed of heavily effected guitar glitch and bass rumble, looped static and ambient swirl, cascading feedback and streaks of spacey synth, eventually the guitars take on riff form, the drums coalesce into a laid back krautrocky rhythm, and the track is transformed into a loping, melancholy almost post rock groove, albeit buried beneath layer after layer of guitar fuzz and distorted amp grit and grime. Awesome.
SUPER LIMITED. We got 30 copies and after that these are gone!
Hey! Just in time to tie-in with our recent review of the new album Rhythms From The Cosmic Sky by Earthless (a highlight on list #265), we've received several brand new cd reissues of old Groundhogs albums, among them this one from 1971, Split. What's the connection? Well... take a listen! And also recall that the bonus track on that Earthless disc was a cover of the Groundhogs' "Cherry Red", the original of which is to be found here. Knowing how much y'all love Earthless, we figured we'd order up on these and make it a highlight too. The other Groundhogs reissues we have to refamiliarize ourselves with a bit, but this one we know is an ultimate psychedelic blues rock classic. The title track is an extended epic four-part suite, taking the blues far into prog territory, while "Cherry Red" is simply a hard-driving, HEAVY bomb track for sure. And for this reish, the album's original eight tracks are augmented by four bonus BBC live in concert recordings, versions of "Cherry Red" and parts 1, 2 and 4 of "Split"!
Lead by guitar hero Tony McPhee, the Groundhogs were among the best of the late '60s British blues boom, heavy and freaky enough for today's backwards-looking proto-metal fanatics to cotton to. The occasional hippy goofiness and old tymey Beefheartian hijinx may or may not be to everyone's taste, but we (Earthless fans for sure) can all agree on awesomeness of the wailing fuzzed guitar parts, can't we? And those are NOT few nor far between. Split is all about the energetic riffage -- and the concept of (drug induced?) mental breakdown readily conjured by McPhee's wild soloing. File with other early, exploratory heaviness like High Tide, T2, Arzachel... and Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac as well.
Growing were definitely an interesting band, right from the start, but back then they were trawling a lot of the same musical ground as loads of other bands, a blissed out blend of post rock, epic dramatic soundscapery and glitchy electronics, all blended into a seamless and dreamy whole. And even then, Growing definitely stood out, but it would be hard to have imagined them getting this strange sounding. And equally difficult to imagine them cultivating a sound this bizarre, while managing to make it just as dreamy and droney and gorgeous as ever.�
From the opening track, a simple repeated riff, a super processed effects soaked guitar part, repeated over and over, a strange subtle progression, backed up by a super simple bass drum pulse, and streaked with bits of backwards guitars and whirling shimmer, it's obvious that Growing are no longer content to just rock out and drift off, they are looking for weird sounds and figuring out how to make those weird sounds sound beautiful.�
The second track, 15 minutes plus, is thick with grinding low end guitars, chopped into staccato pulses, laced with almost techno sounding Nintendo melodies, and loads of hiss and ambient flutter. That's only the first few minutes, there are long stretches of fuzzy reverbed guitar, but even those parts are dotted with bursts of glitched electronic bbzzzzzt. Near the end, thick swaths of buzzing guitar pile up into gently swaying Teenage Filmstars-esque walls of sound. The next track, another long one, eschews all the effects, at� least the obvious ones, and instead lets an ocean of guitars swirl and shimmer, tangle and untangle, flip backwards and then forwards, a million melodies pulling apart and coming back together in different shapes, pretty, but definitely a lot to take in sonically.�
The last two tracks are brief, "Emseepee" is a churning pulsing damaged krautrock drone, with lots of electronic buzz, gnarled bits of synth and lots of damaged glitch, all over a relentless, almost new wave sounding Goblin bassline. Finally, the record winds down with "Lightfoot" a Tim Hecker-ish soundscape, of gently pulsing fuzz, indistinct melodies, fragments of songs allowed to drift on a constantly shifting sonic sea, before suddenly pulling apart into a dizzying squall of sound shards, hiccuping and stuttering and throbbing and eventually crumbling into what sounds like a skipping broken cd player. Woah.�
Not nearly as soothing as past efforts, but that no longer seems to be what they're going for. The sounds are alien and difficult, the arrangements confusing and convoluted, but Growing manage to reign these problematic sounds into shapes that are both fascinating and strangely soothing.�
Will there be a time when Stilluppsteypa will once again march out of the Icelandic tundra with a record all their own? It has been three years since Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson produced anything other than their collaborations with BJ Nilsen; but if things progress as they have through those two impeccable albums of glacial drone damage (Vikinga Brennivin and Drykkjuvisur Ohljodanna) and a split LP only release, who the hell cares if they do anything by themselves? For the fourth time, the drunken cabal of Nilsen / Sigmarsson / Thorsson return to the mixing desk with their psychotropic drones laced with Haflerian absurdity; and here on Second Childhood, the three have recruited the upcoming avant-garde cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, who has previously worked with the likes of Mum, Pan Sonic, and Johann Johannsson.
With the opening growl of scratched cello hypnosis plunging into a deep void of low end vibrations, the notions of this collective Second Childhood being warm and fuzzy go out the window with plenty of references to the blackened sprawl generated by the likes of Corrupted, Black Boned Angel, or anything on Battlecruiser. As bleak as gaping minimalism is on most of Second Childhood, the atmospheres do lighten a bit with some narcotic ambient passages of heavily processed guitars and cello that come across like a meeting between Andrew Chalk and Colleen. Yet, as the album comes to a close, the mind-numbingly heavy drones return with the addition of pulsing post-Sahkho rhythms lurking in the background as if somebody next door was thumping out a minimal techno groove. Pretty much everything that BJ Nilsen and Stilluppsteypa produce is well worth investigating, and this continues to be true for their ongoing collaborations. Brilliant.
Pretty much every Hala Strana release has been a unanimous AQ favorite, most finding their way on to many of our year end top ten lists, and this new one looks to follow suit. Hala Strana is the work of Steven R. Smith, who many of you might recognize as a member of AQ faves Thuja as well as from a handful of solo records that have been heaped with praise on this here very list. Hala Strana is a vehicle for Smith to explore, cover, rework and reinterpret Eastern European folk music. Each record contains a handful of cover songs, some straight, some completely reinvented, and originals informed by Smith's love of that musical tradition.
The originals on Heave The Gambrel Roof are dark and drone-y, plenty of steel string buzz, all stretched out into moody psychedelic free folk drone drift divinity. Subtle melodies, simple strumming, over lush backdrops of shimmery ambience, woven together from all manner of traditional and homemade instruments. A dark moody Appalachia with an Eastern sensibility, folky for sure, but with a definite raga component. One in particular, "Marl", introduces drums and sounds almost like country rock, albeit with a decidedly lo-fi production and a distinctively un-poppy vibe, but it's propulsive with mandolin and acoustic guitars, simple shuffling drumming, moaning distant ambience, it's maybe the most out of place song on the record, but it's a testament to Smith's skill that somehow it fits just fine amidst all the drone and buzz and drift.
The covers here, of which there are a handful, Smith makes his own, gorgeous bits of traditional strummy folk become mesmerizing and hypnotic, figures and melodies looped and repeated, sympathetic notes allowed to buzz and wash into one another. A few of the covers sound pretty straight, with just a tiny bit more buzz or drone, but a few are completely transformed, becoming extended atmospheric dreamscapes, like on "Wedding Of The Blind" which sounds like seventies Japanese psych drone ensemble Taj Mahal Travellers jamming with Jack Rose. Absolutely gorgeous.
While they last, we have the super limited deluxe version that comes wrapped in black felt, packaged alongside a thick piece of LP sized wood, with the cover art and the liner notes silkscreened directly onto the wood (and it smells amazing too, fresh wood, all foresty and outdoorsy). LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!! Each one is hand numbered with the number hand carved / branded into the wood! Once these are gone, we will have the less expensive regular vinyl version, which is probably a good thing as we imagine these will go pretty damn quick.
No doubt one of the most underrated soul singers of all time! In a more just world Betty Harris' name would be as well known in every household as Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick and Sam Cooke. The first time we came across Betty Harris was on the amazing 45 "Cry To Me", one of the most beautiful, devastating yet somehow soothing songs we've ever heard! The kind of song that gives you goosebumps that don't ever go away. The kind of song that you play over and over and over until totally wearing out that 30 year old piece of vinyl. So of course we were always hungry to find more Betty Harris and luckily the Aim label put together this wonderful collection of her otherwise impossible to find songs (believe us we have been digging in all sorts of soul shops trying to find more 45's with no luck). No one hit wonder, every single one of these songs punches with an emotional weight and a fiery passion that rings oh so true! Harris grew up in the church as both her parents were ministers/missionaries and at the age of 10 she was leading a 125 voice choir! But it was not the church where Betty felt her heart belonged but instead it was the world of Rhythm & Blues and the road which seemed to be calling her. She studied and toured with Big Maybelle in the 1950's and then in the 60's she formed an amazing partnership with Alan Toussaint, one of the best songwriters and producers of the last half century (The Meters, Lee Dorsey, Etta James, The Band) and together they created some of the richest, deepest, hard hitting soul. With the recent uncovering of great lost soul by labels like the Numero Group and Soul Jazz there is an exciting wave of attention being paid to great soul of the past. We hope that this legendary soul queen finally gets the attention and respect she so deserves!
Formerly known as Worship (they released a small cd-r pressing under that moniker), the elusive group who now answer to the name Headdress continue their dusk lit creep through the enchanted wilderness. On Turquoise they craft a beautiful loosely woven tapestry of ivy-like guitar tendrils, lichen-encrusted percussion, solemn mossy male vocals that reside somewhere between Jandek and M. Ward. The album's fifth song "Babylon" sounds strangely like a deconstructed folk rendition of America's "Horse With No Name". Whether intentional or not, the glinting familiarity of the latter's central melody adds to the existing subtle hallucinatory atmosphere of the proceedings. The crowning jewel of rough hewn Turquoise though is the sixth track titled "Moon Of Shedding Ponies". It's a frayed, meditative instrumental populated with generous turns of a rainstick and what sounds like howling wolves or banshees.
If you dig the rustic, abstracted psych-folk sounds of Wooden Wand & The Vanishing Voice and the many bewitching branches of the Jewelled Antler Collective, don't miss this!
Another pestilential black cloud of ultra raw, primitive thrash and buzz from Horn Of Dagoth. It's been 2 years since the last rehearsal disc, and while the sound is similar, the songs have gotten even better, more complex, more dense, their buzzing old school black metal sprawling and expanding to incorporate long swaths of trudging doom, blown out blasts of furious black drone, stacatto bursts of machine gun like rhythm, dizzying insectoid riffing, loping midtempo lurch... Not to say that HoD aren't still ultra raw, ultra grim, and ultra KVLT black black metal, cuz they are, and their black flame still obviously burns for bands like Mutiilation, Darkthrone, Vlad Tepes, Beherit and other practitioners of the raw black arts. But like any band worth their salt, as time goes on, the more interesting their music becomes, and even with a core sound of black buzz and chaotic thrash sure to please the die hards, and a production (it is a rehearsal after all) that renders every thing in blown out smears and blurs - a swirl of cymbals sizzling atop a roiling murky black abyss, the songs and sound are interesting enough to keep weirdo black metallers equally entranced, at least when they're in need of a good old fashioned black thrashing.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!!! Each disc numbered in the band's blood, and each booklet also numbered, as well as decorated with an upside down cross and the triple sixes, ALL IN HUMAN BLOOD!
The soundtrack for Ethan Hawkes' latest movie (based on his first novel) sure reads like a who's who of the hip and the cool: Cat Power, Feist, Bright Eyes, The Black Keys, M.Ward, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Norah Jones, Brad Mehldau, Rocha, Tony Scherr, and Jesse Harris... Uhh, wait a sec, that last name on the list might not ring any bells as clearly as the rest of the bunch... yet! But he's the fella who wrote all of the songs on this soundtrack. Close pal Mr. Hawke thought Harris' songwriting skills would be a perfect match for The Hottest State. Not having seen the movie, we can't say for certain whether it fits or not, but as a stand alone compilation it's pretty darn solid. Heck, this should come as no surprise really because we've all probably unwittingly heard his superlative songwriting abilities before. He wrote Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why" single for gosh sake. And how's this for timing? Harris' own album Feel was just released last month so if you find your ears itching for more....
Another gloriously grim and frostbitten slab of ultra depressive black metal dirge from these Swedes. Their last two discs were serious AQ faves, their monochromatic blackened plod totally mesmerizing and entrancing. And this one is no different. Rakbladsvalsen begins with an epic 34 minute blast of suicidal black stomp, but like the last few discs, there is a seriously melodic element lurking beneath the buzzing and pounding. In fact, at moments, the melody is almost dreamy, like some jangly indie rock band was possessed by the dark lord, transforming their bright jangle into dark buzz, but never fully letting go of that innate melodic purity.
Mournful and melancholy, the main riff repeated over and over and over and over, the drums shifting occasionally from simple plod to stumbling blast and back again, the vocals harsh and haggard, so pained and anguished, but again, like the music, strangely pretty (in a strangled to death sort of way). The song is relentless, the only real shifts over the 30+ minutes are when the drums drop out, leaving the riff to buzz and hover briefly, until the drums once again kick in and the band lurches back into it's crushing black dirge. Theoretically, even though the disc is separated into 4 tracks, they are parts one through four of the same track, and minus the gaps, they do sort of sound like it, the same (or very similar) key, the same lurching loping tempo, harsh and brittle and buzzing and black, but always subtly jangly.
The final track is the surprise, expanding on what the band had only hinted at before on past releases, a gorgeous post rock jam, simple and minor key, the guitar sound clean, the riff moody and melancholy, the drums a simple math rock groove, the guitar switches lazily between muted minor key melodies, like some June Of 44 or Slint rehearsal recording, two simple parts, both quite lovely, no blown out buzzing blackness, just a dreamy extended instrumental workout, that demonstrates quite well, that slow and moody can be just as powerful and dark as grim and buzzy.
You'd think Neurosis and Isis would be getting royalties at this point for the sheer number of bands that have 'borrowed' their sound. Then again, if that's how it worked, everybody in Slint and the Pixies would be millionaires. But as we've stated repeatedly in the past, maybe there's nothing new under the sun, and yeah all bands steal/borrow/are influenced by other bands, but it's what you do with those borrowed sounds afterwards that makes a difference. Sure, without Neurosis there would be no Isis, but Isis took their Neurosis obsession and went in a whole new direction and created their own super distinctive sonic world. Hence most of the Isis and Neurosis influenced bands we love, have done just that, taken certain parts, and incorporated their own angle, added their own unlikely influences, and created a sound that if not ALL their own, was at least a unique take on a familiar sound.
Irepress definitely fit right in that whole post rock metal crowd. So all you fans of Isis, Pelican, Rosetta, Mouth Of The Architect, Tides, Grails, Angel Eyes, Conifer and the like, can probably just stop right here and press that BUY button and be done with it. But for those of you who are maybe a little saturated in terns of the whole postrockmetal thing, and wonder why exactly you should free up precious space on your cd shelf for Irepress, well, we'll tell you.
First off, these songs are just awesome. angular and complex, convoluted and tense. Emotional and super catchy. Not as metal as a lot of their brethren, but still pretty dang heavy, crunchy riffs, that go from jagged and harsh, to smooth and spacey often in the same song. But what makes Irepress really stand out is their unabashed, over the top progginess. Sure the genre itself has a built in prog aspect, with long songs and lots of parts, but Irepress take it even further, with LOTS of super proggy spacey breakdowns, swoony and blissed out, but mathy and a bit noodly as well, guitars are muted and understated, weaving complex soundscapes of subtle shuffle incorporating hand drums, trumpet, spaced out FX, drifting minor key melody, lots of delay and reverb, and a whole bunch of super unexpected little flourishes before lurching back into some loping monstrous metallic groove. Some of those parts sound like Santana, others like Genesis, but the thing is, they aren't just little breaks, they are as much a part of the sound and the songs as the crushing riffage or the mathy post rock. It's a strange combination, it takes a little while to get used to, imagine some jammed out fusion breaking into some almost Maidenesque guitar over a chugging metalcore breakdown, or some blissed out percussive ambience slowly building into a massive sludgy epic. Beyond the bands unique progginess, a lot of the riffs themselves are really strange, cobbled together from or broken up into convoluted chugs and soaring high end leads, bits of indie jangle and some seriously downtuned crunch.
A super strange band for sure, pushing lots of our favorite buttons, moody math rock, crushing metallic groove, spacey proggy noodle, dreamy ambience, all pretty dizzying actually, which is exactly why we can't seem to stop listening to this!
We weren't really sure what to think when we were first exposed to the strangely named Iron Bitchface (thanks AQ pal Guy from Guelph), ostensibly a black metal band, IBF ended up being so much more than a mere metal band. In fact, barely a metal band at all, more some sort of metallic techno digital hardcore sort of thing. Needless to say, we LOVE it. And odds are you will too. That is if the idea of grim black metal crossed with spastic DHR style techno pushes your buttons. And c'mon, it really should, cuz this stuff is amazing. Completely baffling, wild and heavy and totally fucking bizarre.
Iron Bitchface is K-Rot and We Are Trolls collects four out of print releases, Return To Gran Mountain, Flirtinis All Round!, I Hate The Internet and Caffeine:Caffiend. Each one a confusional blend of relentlessly inhuman drum machine blasts, bizarre synths, buzzing blackened guitars and growled demonic vocals. The synths pluck out playful melodies over washes of guitar buzz, the drums spastic and hyperspeed. Some songs are almost straight black metal, others are weird abstract synthscapes, others are weird block rockin' techno, like some sort of lo-fi Basement Jaxx, while still others are some weird sort of alien house music. But as you might imagine, the best bits, and thankfully, that means most of the tracks here combine all of the above into totally damaged danceable black thrash techno hardcore whattheefuck. Awesome.
And even more awesome is the fact that this is a split, with the equally questionably named Grave Rave, who as much as we hate to admit it, might be even cooler and weirder than IBF. Where Iron Bitchface is sort of buzzy and lo-fi and home brewed, the sound of Grave Rave is HUGE, a dizzying chopshop, mixing big dance beats, bizarre samples, and massive crunchy metal guitars, like a metal obsessed Chemical Brothers with ADD, but with surprising moments of melodic lucidity and killer rhythmic complexity scattered amidst the brain melting bursts of collaged metal dance weirdness.
Packaged in an oversized slimline DVD case with full color artwork and a full color insert.
Of Beauty Reminiscing is the debut album for Vikki Jackman who had previously contributed the evocative if very minimal clusters of piano notes on Andrew Chalk's Goldfall LP from a few months back. So taken was he by the results of that source material, Chalk offered Ms. Jackman an album of her own, which he would produce and release through his Faraway Press imprint. The piano that Jackman uses could never be confused for a concert piano as the antiquated instrument offers forth slightly askew if thoroughly elegant notes; and Jackman certainly emphasizes the idiosyncrasies of that piano through her fragile, open-ended and sparsely laid out melodies, which hold some similarities to Erik Satie's or maybe even Morton Feldman's piano compositions smeared with a decaying Victorian gracefulness. One side of this LP features Jackman by her lonesome, and the other appears to exhibit the hand of Andrew Chalk blurring the edges of many of her tones into a wistful fog of drifting dronescaping. Super limited to a tiny pressing of which we will probably get no more than the pittance that we have received. Which at this point is FIVE copies. Gone in no time of course. Prepare to be disappointed. Sorry. Highly recommended nonetheless.
An awesome 2 disc reissue of what is easily one of the best hip hop records ever! A completely amazing and now legendary collaboration between Madlib (Lootpack, Quasimoto) and Jay Dee (J Dilla) Jay Dee and Madlib switch things up, splitting the beats/rhymes evenly between the two every other track, flipping back and forth between big and boisterous booming-beat barn burners to more contemplative slow groove hip hop jams a la EPMD. Features the Bollywood infused hit Champion Sound. With special guests Quasimoto, Talib Kweli, Guilty Simpson and more. Bonus disc features previously unreleased instrumentals. If you missed this the first time around, what are you waiting for? Hip Hop is unlikely to get any better, so don't sleep on this, fool!
Yay! The return of the all too underrated Italian outfit known as Jennifer Gentle. Their 2005 release Valende was in constant rotation when it came out and we've been looking forward to the follow up ever since. Now down to a solo project of Marco Fasalo, yet just as dynamic and pleasing as the prior outings as a full band. Think Syd Barrett era-Pink Floyd filled with off-kilter melodies, eerie and demented instrumentation and some downright catchy harmonies! Making the most out of some strange and lovely sounds, piano, guitar and even kazoos, some of us fell instantly in love with this and it just keeps sounding better and better every time we hear it. While they come at pop songs from a distinctly different direction, thsy seem to be kindred spirits of Deerhoof, as they both use a sonic pallete of crazy colors and wild flights of musical fancy. So good!
Sitar raga music from Sweden? Sure! On the Swedish label Kning Disk, who last brought us cds by Wolf Eyes and James Blackshaw -- so we'd expect just about anything (interesting) from them. Composer/arranger Jerry Johansson is a sitar player (who studied with sitar master Roop Verma, who was taught by Ravi Shankar). Here he presents his piece "Next Door Conversation", in two parts, 53 minutes total. His sitar is the lead instrument, and in traditional style he's accompanied by santour and tambura -- but also by a violin/violin/viola/cello string quartet from the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra! Shades of Kronos, eh?
It's a dreamy, slowly unfolding, sitar n' strings soundscape, the Eastern twang of Johansson's sitar calmly contrasting with the more cinematic sweep of the string quartet, each recontextualizing the other. With sounds from the subcontinent and Swedish folk motifs both incorporated, this is a gorgeous East-West hybrid indeed, and crosses over other borders to somehow remind us of everything from Spaghetti Western soundtracks to Chinese orchestral music. Gosh, there's not much more to say other than, enjoy!
Lately we've fallen deeply under the spell of one of Grace Jones' best outings. While she might be best known for her amazing fashion, body, charisma, overall presence, and her appearances in the Conan and James Bond films, it's her early music that we've been totally obsessed with lately. So while this isn't a new reissue or anything we thought we'd share our love of this classic with you all.
Recorded in 1981 in the Bahamas, Night clubbing is the ultimate snapshot of the greatness of Grace Jones. Musically it's for sure her strongest moment, with Sly & Robbie as her rhythm section the mood is so totally seductive and irresistible. There are so many hits or should-have-been hits on this album. While there have been a few different collections and best ofs, we really think that this proper album blows all of them away. From start to finish Night clubbing just sizzles so hot! It's the perfect late-night, up-to-no-good soundtrack! The title track is of course the Iggy Pop song written by Bowie that somehow Grace takes to new drugged out heights. In fact the whole album feels like the kind of drugged out, raw space disco that you can't help but give into. Sassy, sultry and so damn sexy!
Blimey, here's a "best of" from an early '70s UK prog band we'd never even heard of before, but we are now firm fans of (these nine tracks, at least). Ah, thank the gods for cd reissues and anthologies like this one, catching us up with worthy obscurities from way back when. Nothin' dusty here, as Jonesy kicks out some vigorous, vibrant, jazzy tunage all across this disc, offering up selections from their three albums (No Alternative '72, Keeping Up '73, and Growing, also '73) featuring searing horns, hard-charging guitars, melodic vocals -- and full-on mellotron abuse. The opening cut, "1958" sets the tone, and comes off sort of like Lalo "Mission Impossible" Schifrin meets Caravan. Meanwhile, at the far end of the disc, the wah-wah trumpet stylings of the 11+ minute "Jonesy" remind us the heck of '70s Miles, cool. And in-between, there's lots to like as well. It's propulsive stuff, energetic and superbly played, less about show-offy compositional complexifications (though there's enough of that to keep it prog!) or pretentious concepts (no Lord Of The Rings fantasies from these guys) than wild soloing combined with solid groove.
The liner notes cite such influences and/or comparisons as King Crimson and Nucleus, and they'd be right about those two for sure... we might suggest a little early Chicago as well (hey Chicago's first album is pretty killer, trust us!). Amon Duul II and Neu! are also mentioned, but we can't quite see exactly how those krautrockers can be heard here. But we'd agree that the grooviness and experimentation of Jonesy give them something of a Continental character.
As "prog" becomes more and more the "in" thing (hadn't you noticed?), the time is certainly right for a band like Jonesy to get some posthumous props. We'd suggest, ferinstance, that fans of Crime In Choir should investigate forthwith.
We've been hearing lots about the great benga music coming out of Kenya but haven't been able to get our hands on too much of it. Luckily, the group Kenge Kenge, because of their higher profile and the wider availability of the recordings, are serving as a pretty great introduction to this sound. It's a magical combination of instruments that creates this exhilarating, totally compelling and joyous sound. Unlike a lot of other African bands who have been gaining wide notoriety of late, there are no guitars here. Instead, kenge Kenge utilize a combination of flutes, horns, fiddles, percussion, sound box, gong and vocals. Totally upbeat with steady rhythms and a lush, organic delivery and such a wildly joyful and positive disposition. It's refreshing too, that while it's cleanly recorded it doesn't sound slick or overproduced at all. In fact in lots of ways it kind of reminds us of a more rootsy, less blown out and amplified version of AQ faves Konono No.1. Really good stuff!
Wow! An amazingly weird Swedish new wave punk band that burned bright for one short year way back in 1980. Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons were herky jerky, full of demented pep and enough deranged energy to make themselves a seriously freaked out and super unique proposition. Sort of how we always wished new wave sounded, not overly polished but instead kind of demented and mad in all the right ways. Like The Pop Group and the Dead Kennedys all mixed up with Siouxsie and Johnny Lydon taking turns on vocals. As much as this makes us think of some of the more well known (relatively) bands of the era like The Slits, Raincoats, Au Pairs, Liliput and Maximum Joy, there is something so singular and unique about Kitchen And The Plastic Spoons that makes it kind of surprising that this i the first time these tracks have been dug up in almost 30 years. It's amazing how vibrant and timely this still sounds. It's hard not to imagine that bands like Erase Errata had somehoww gotten their hands on one of the few hundred original lp's and used it as a sort of template or inspiration. With all the hype in recent years over lost punk reissues from the likes of The Homosexuals, Crime and The Metal Boys this might just take the cake for a long overdue rediscovery of a truly weird punk classic!
A year or so back, a strange and mysterious cd was left for us to listen to. An oversized black package adorned with a cryptic white woodcut, all sorts of strange text, in other languages. It took us forever to get around to it, but once we did we were kicking ourselves BIG time. One of the most amazing slabs of buzzing black grimness EVER. With lots of weird ambient and acoustic stuff mixed in. So we got in touch with the band to order a whole bunch, but unfortunately, it was limited to 100 copies and was gone gone gone.�
So�here we are a while later and in swoops Aurora Borealis to save the day, reissuing that very same cd-r, as an actual cd, in a a super swank dvd style case, with a printed slipcover, as well as a bunch of inserts and even a poster. But all that stuff is just extra, it's the creepy fucked up black damage inside that we're most concerned with.�
A French band name, a German album title, but the band is in fact from Portland, which is a bit unexpected once the filthy black fog of Mord Un Totschlag comes creeping out of your speakers. The guitars are harsh and buzzing, super high end, whirling and furious, with strange little epic melodies and harmonies surfacing here and there, but for the most part, each track is an extreme blast of buzzing blackness, the drums barely there, a constant pound way down in the mix, and the vocals, even more brittle and acidic than the guitars, threatening to overwhelm everything, a harsh hateful hissy howl. Repetitive and hypnotic, epic and majestic, and ultra grim and raw. Lo-fi but still heavy and relentless.�
These black blasts are separated by haunting stretches of apocalyptic folk, which makes a bit of sense when you realize the band features at least one member of Blood Axis and Waldteufel. Dark, dolorous, downtuned guitars strewn over vast expanses of murk and grime, haunting vocals, crumbling industrial ambience, tolling bells, the final track, "Euntes Ibant Et Flebant" is a black ambient epic, a spare sonic wasteland, with angelic vocals buried in the mix, what sound like bombs exploding in the distance and random low end disturbances way way off, rain, thunder, disembodied voices, simple muted percussion, angular guitars drenched in reverb, a gorgeous sprawl of wartime shimmer, of dismal desolate ambience.�
The record seems to center around the 21 minute�"Against A Weeping Sea Of Sleep" which begins as a white hot burst of hellish hateful buzz, the vocals AND guitar blown out almost to the point of becoming pure white noise, until the buzz dissipates, giving way to a simple funeral strum, over a shifting shimmering soundscape of ghostly vocals, and industrial whirs, until the buzz returns, but it's been transformed into a wispy sheet of sound which is draped over a swirling sea of mournful melodies and strummed flamenco sounding guitar, as well as that original steel string dirge, strangely lovely and haunting. The perfect combination of L'Acephale's two seemingly disparate sonic sides.�
Packaged in a dvd style case, housed in a cardstock slipcover, with a huge booklet featuring tons of intense woodcuts, random text, notes on each song, photos, diagrams and drawings, as well as a fold out black and white mini poster.�
There's a lot of bands doing the '70s inspired instrumental jammy psych thing today... but this Brooklyn outfit, armed with guitars, bass, drums, synth, vibes, and upright bass, for sure does it RIGHT. Maybe no surprise, since La Otracina shares members with one of our instrumental psych/prog faves, space rockers Titan! If you like them, chances are you'll dig this... we'd also recommend La Otracina to fans of Earthless, Expo '70, Dead Meadow, Acid Mothers Temple, labelmates Om and Mammatus, etc.
Think post rock + pot and you'll have some suitably hazy idea of what this is all about. There's winding, wandering stuff here, exploratory, relaxed... as well as tracks that are rather more energetic and prog-tight. For instance, the 11-minute "Beyond The Dusty Hills (Cowboy In The Desert Part Two)" is one of the super stoned, drifting cuts, while the comparatively brief 6-minute "Nine Times The Color Red Explodes Like Heated Blood" is more propulsively muscular and Titan-esque, progressively riffed more rigidly than some of the other offerings here. Roiling and heavy, shimmering and lovely...the five tracks on Tonal Ellipse Of The One allow all those descriptors to apply, eventually.
Seems like we're always saying nice things about stuff on the Holy Mountain label, well, it's true -- Lesbian, Mammatus, Blues Control, those are just a few of the recent releases from up high on the Holy Mountain that we've been diggin' lately. Add La Otracina to that list! Let's hope HM can keep their excellent batting average up, we look forward to what's next...
Around these parts, Rhode Island artpunk noise rock combo Landed are probably most infamous for featuring soon to be ubiquitous SF rock luminary John Dwyer (Coachwhips, OCS, Ohsees, Dig That Body Up It's Alive) among their ranks. But for those in the know, Landed is the musical repository for most of the dudes who once called Six Finger Satellite home!!! And it sounds like it.
This is almost like a noise rock dance record, with a relentless groove, thick ropy synths, squawked almost black metal vocals, the eventually transform into weird sung/spoken singing, all over a relentless bass throb and buried in tons of space-y effects. There's a definite Six Finger vibe, but a lot darker and damaged than that, but still almost sort of funky. There's even an almost-jungle breakdown at the end of side A!
The flip side begins as a spaced out ambient drift, all warbly synths and sweeping expanses of whir and buzz, eventually though those funky drums kick back in, and the record locks into a krautrocky noise groove, again bordering on totally danceable. They almost sound like a way scarier, way druggier Excepter. Once again, everything is drenched in FX and peppered with fucked up and freaked out sounds. Definitely the heaviest scariest dance record of the year. And features some killer garish cover art that would almost be more at home on a Buzz-Oven record!
The legend on the back of this split seven inch reads "Ugly Providence Boogie Rock". Well it most definitely is ugly and from Providence, but boogie rock might be stretching it a bit...
We're still grooving to that last Landed 12" that found the ever shifting outfit unleashing some alien scuzz rock dancefloor technology, but this track here is a bit of the classic Landed sound, grungy and sludgey, blown out rhythms and buzzing guitars, super thick distorted bass, the whole thing a sort of plodding dirge, but peppered with wild squalls of angular mathiness and freaked out new wave damage. Pretty awesome stuff.
The flip side is by fellow Rhode Island noise makers Snake Apartment, who do their own sludgy dirgey kind of thing. Channeling the Brainbombs through thick sheets of East coast art rock, and dipped in the black tar of classic old school Amrep noiserock, lots of stretched out guitars, strangled vocals, throbbing bass, all tangled up into swaggery Stoogesy grooves, that is surprisingly catchy.
The Italian darkly-bent post-rock ensemble Larsen gathered a handful of equally darkly clad eccentrics to join them in a live tribute to the work of the Czech vanguard artist Karel Teige, who had been noted for introducing the works of the major Surrealists to Prague in the early 1920s. One of Teige's projects was Abeceda (which translates as alphabet from the Czech), the multi-media collaboration with the poet Vitezslav Nezval that sought a poetic abstraction between cabaret and typography. It was this project in particular that had piqued the interest of Larsen. Being not all that familiar with the original work, it's hard to say how well Larsen's homage reflects the original, or if this follows in the footsteps of their Autechre covers album, which alchemized the IDM melodies of Autechre into their own interlocked port-rock hypnosis. But in many ways, Abeceda is often dominated by the presence of their most well-known guest, David Tibet of Current 93. When his inimitable voice joins the languid melodies and swelling crescendos of instrumental arpeggiations, it's hard not to consider this a Current 93 album especially given the unique phrasing and metaphors about sin, relational collapse, and death that are so common to Tibet's themes in Current 93. In addition to Tibet, Larsen have also invited Johann Johannsson, Julia Kent, and Baby Dee onto the stage to add their instrumental panache to the beautifully rendered mix.
For those of you who enjoyed Bay Area band The Speakers' cd tribute to W.B. Yeats (Yeats Is Greats: The Speakers Sing The Poems of W.B. Yeats), here's something new from one half of that duo.
This cd is an audio family album or scrapbook of sorts, drifting through scenes and memories with recordings of family members speaking interwoven with collaged soundscapes. The liner notes focus on the recent birth of the artist's first child, and the impact of this new presence is palpable throughout the album. While we're sure this'll particularly be appealing to his friends and relatives, it makes for an offkilter warm fuzzy listen for absolute strangers too.
As if these guys weren't busy enough with their 'day jobs',�Stephen O'Malley (Khanate, SUNNO))), Burning Witch, KTL, Thorr's Hammer),�James Plotkin (Atomsmasher, Phantomsmasher, Khanate, OLD, Flux, Romance) and�Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom, House of Low Culture) still somehow managed to find time to get together and do something a little less... heavy, or sludgy, or crushing, or even drone-y for that matter.�
Wurmwulv is the latest chunk of ambient drift, minimal clatter, and abstract soundscaping from the trio known as Lotus Eaters. Three looooong songs, 50 minutes of strange drifting sound.�
The opening track is a slowed down pipe fight. A warped wander through a sea of chimes and bells, of resonant metal and shimmering metallic drones. Avarus, Anaksimandros, have got nothing on these guys. Ominous and dark, but strangely melodic. From delicate tinkling to dense metal on metal pound, single notes fluttering in space, to flurries of clang and clatter, all the while, way in the background, a deep swirling tidal low end shifts and shimmers.�
The second track is brief, 5 minutes of high end drift, strange electronic interference, gristly rumbles and hissy whirs, while beneath it all, machines creak and groan, mysterious objects scrape and rattle until near the end, the track is suddenly overtaken by a lush wall of warm guitar whorl.
The final track, another lengthy exploration, is an effects laden trawl through a world of constantly shifting low end. Nearly static, layers of rumble and whir, gently and almost imperceptibly shuffling, while over the top, drift tiny alien sonic events and muted squiggles of FX, helicopter like whup-whup-whup's, and faux animal calls, clicks and thumps, all manner of mysterious sound. Eventually, a flurry of high end streaks takes the form of some sort of effervescent symphony, glistening in their own all high end universe, before the low end returns, bringing with it a muted folky drift, a lazy sun dappled slow burning outro...
Gorgeously�packaged in an oversized 6 panel A5 sized digibook, with paintings by Stephen Kasner, layout and design by Aaron Turner. So nice.
Once again, like clockwork, it's time for another short sweet blast of fuzzy sounds from our favorite sonic overachiever Machinefabriek. We recently made Weleer, a collection of long out of print self released Machinefabriek cd-r's record of the week, and it seems as if already, Mr. Machinefabriek�Rutger Zuydervelt is already hard at work preparing for a second volume.�
For those of you not content to wait, this here latest gem is another 3" cd-r, but instead of one looooooong piece, this is 10 tracks crammed into less than 20 minutes -- but they all sort of play out as a single piece with different movements. One of the prettier, more delicate discs we've heard from�Zuydervelt, Huis is heavy on the piano, always drenched in reverb, and often allowed to drift aimlessly over fuzzy backdrops. The best part of Huis, and maybe the most subtle, is the presence of extreme amounts of bass, huge rib cage rattling swells, throbbing barely audible tectonic shifts, adding a strange weight to the delicate soft focus drift. Steel string guitars fade in and out, sweet music box melodies, melodic fragments, glitchy and washed out. Compositionally, the most dramatic development is a strange stop start rhythmic remixing, each little snippet of warm fuzzy ambience, is chopped into strange rhythms, a slow motion pulse, almost like someone is pressing pause and play on your cd player creating weird throbbing abstract arrangements. Bizarre for sure, and at first it sounds like your cd player is on the fritz, but soon you get sucked into the subtle rhythm and the whole thing reveals itself as�weirdly hypnotic and so lovely.�
Another sparkling sonic gem from the seemingly infallible Machinefabriek. And as always, crazy limited, we got a bunch but will probably sell out fast. So you know what that means...
This massive remix disc from AQ dronedrift fave Machinefabriek, is composed entirely of remixes of the out of print Stofstuk cd, the shortest Machinefabriek release but quite possibly our favorite. Originally released as a�little rectangular business card shaped 3" cd and clocking in at an impressive 5:31,�Stofstuk was recorded with only a singing bowl, a contact mic, a vinyl record and a laptop, and originally created as a private pressing, and is easily one of the most gorgeous slabs of shimmery minimalism we've ever heard. It was also crazy limited and went out of print in no time. Thankfully, since all of these remixes are based on that same track, it's included here for those of you who missed out. So before we get to the remixes, best to probably quickly describe the source. For�five glorious minutes, deeeeeeeep notes are loosed, lush and resonant, allowed to billow out like sonic ripples, every once in a while, some massive bass kicks in and washes over the listener like a huge slow motion wave, it's strangely transcendent, rich with intense emotion and sonic impact. Around these cavernous swells, various drawn out notes drift and shift, soft focus layers laid upon one another, gauzy and ephemeral, all hovering blissfully over a gorgeously muted field of barely there record crackle. Wow. Like a warm and dreamy Jeckian take on Raster-Noton, or some cosmic minimal meditation music. So totally beautiful. It almost seems a shame to remix something so nearly perfect to begin with, but thankfully, the majority of these mixes manage to subtly tweak the original, retaining much of the magic, while managing to imbue the revamped version with a bit of their own subtle style.�
If you loved the original version as much as us, this double disc is pretty much a no brainer. We complained in the first one about the 5 minute playing time, and how we just set the cd player on repeat and listened to it over and over and over, and that's almost what this is, but with each repeated play subtly and slightly altered (and a few dramatically different), but it's pretty tough to argue with 2+ hours of variations on Stofstuk. Plus check out the list of remixers: Alva Noto, Mitchell Akiyama, Xela, Svarte Greiner, Lesser, Freiband, Kim Cascone, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Luigi Archetti, Julien Neto, Pita, Adam Paccione, Henrik Rylander, Gert-jan Prins and loads more. As we mentioned, most of the versions are subtle variations, you might not even be able to tell the difference if you weren't paying close attention, but a few folks mix it up, Freiband adds a thick layer of caustic buzz and grind to the then barely audible original, Aaron Martin adds some glitch and microphone noise, Xela brings out the original's muted melodies and adds voices, Lesser adds a bit of grind and crunch, Henrik Rylander buries the original beneath layers of warm whirring fuzz, Julien Neto gives his version a soft focus, easy listening sheen and�Gert-Jan Prins transforms the tones of the original into gritty buzzing grinding low end and piercing sine wave tones, but these are the exceptions, and even though the above descriptions make it seem like those tracks must stick out like crazy, in the context of a massive double disc set, they sound just perfect, nestled as they are amongst song after song of whispery droney drift. So gorgeous.�
Packaged in a soft cottony pouches, housed in a folded cardstock jacket and a thick vinyl outer sleeve.�
Oh this is so lovely! A new Baltimore, MD quartet has joined the blossoming fray of young bands heavily influenced and inspired by traditional Balkan folk which includes A Hawk And A Hacksaw and Beirut. Madagascar takes a bit of an airier, more sprawling post rock approach than those two groups which in turn may also draw comparisons to Rothko, Pan American or Growing. A wistful gathering embraced by accordion, acoustic guitar, musical saw, non-verbal vocals, and glockenspiel.
Yet another Sunn 0))) related project, once again it's Stephen O'Malley, who here is teamed up with legendary percussionist Z'ev as Magistral. But this is way more high concept that just some old fashioned drum / guitar jam, instead, O'Malley recorded a guitar solo, 8 minutes and 42 seconds long to bee precise, and Z'ev then took those recordings and worked them over, according to the liner notes he was responsible for "renderings, recodings, percussion and submixes". Not sure what he did, or how he did it, but maybe there are some clues in the confusing ultra technical song titles: "6m 59s From Last 42s Left Channel Only - 26 Track Submix", "13m 48s From 34s From 5m - 5m 34s - 20 Track Submix"... okay maybe not. Regardless, this is an amazing disc of abstract soundscaping and stretched out blackened ambience. It's difficult to pick out any remaining bits of guitar actually, as Z'ev has rendered them completely indistinct, a wash of crumbling distortion, long expanses of grind and scrape, strange high end shimmer over haunting metallic oscillations, creepy burblings and black sonic ooze, what sounds like workmen hammering on air conditioning ducts across the street, and thick glacial flows of molten low end rumble. The sound reminds us quite a bit of the most tranquil Wolf Eyes moments, a sort of austere, slightly industrial landscape of barren sound, especially the final track, where Z'ev finally joins in with the tribal percussion, transforming a buzzing drone into some sort of haunting pagan ritual.�
Packaged in a swank mini gatefold sleeve with the usual spiffy design by Mr. O'Malley himself.�
Geez, Jason Molina, what are you tryin' to do to us!? How the heck can we possibly sufficiently listen, watch, digest and report in on your new release that includes four cds and one dvd? If we did, well, it would probably take weeks and the release wouldn't be new anymore! We have heard some of it, and not surprisingly, the few songs we did hear were prime Molina fare -- well-worn, roaming loner melancholia -- but in the interest of timeliness, we'll let the sticker on the shrinkwrap of this special wooden boxed set say it all... "Secretly Canadian is proud to present The Sojourner Boxset. It is the accumulated work of thirteen musicians, five locations, four recording engineers, three filmmakers, two designers and one songwriter, including enough material for three full lengths, one EP and one DVD. Explore the celestial map of Jason Molina and the various constellations of his... Magnolia Electric Co."
If you shudder at the thought of braving the wilds of Hot Topic at the mall, then you should know that yes, you can get the latest Marilyn Manson cd from us. Although he's returned to his more vampiric, finely attired guise, musically he still hasn't hit the spot like he did on Antichrist Superstar. Blame it on what you will -- the absence of Pogo, Twiggy, what-not -- but this is ultra self absorbed and slicked back with ample snake oil and fake blood. Then again, isn't that what's desired and expected of mainstream-wading glitz rock from Hollywood? He's still one of the most savvy and clever modern rockers around, but in today's sensory-numb climate, even his over-the-top attempts to shock fall on the deaf ears of his blase teenaged audience. Antichrist Superstar, we beckon thee.
Batten down the hatches! From the Japanophile Polish label Vivo, here's a pair of new cds from everyone's favorite Japanese noisemonger, the mighty Merzbow. On Bloody Sea, Masami Akita (for he be Merzbow) displays his softer side. Not sonically, no not at all, but in his concerned efforts to save the whales via his "protest-noise". Yes, this is an anti-whaling album, hence the title, and we'd imagine that if Greenpeace were to find some way to blare it loudly at the Japanese whaling fleet whenever they tried to leave port, they might be forced to call off the whale hunt for the season. There's three cacophonous parts to this 50-minute disc, composed of battling blown-out chattering rumble and sizzling synths. Very abstract and assaultive, as if Merzbow is trying to channel the pain and suffering of all the whales into a song they never could sing.
Meanwhile, the more recently released Coma Berenices contains five lengthy, throbbing machine-screams of dense distortion, zapped with high-end skree... it'll wax yer ears but good. Fried and frenzied, but also carefully looped and layered with sonic detail. It is (relatively speaking) quite listenable as harsh psychedelia, the dark-drone-doom thing taken to the extremes of Merzbowian methodology!
Batten down the hatches! From the Japanophile Polish label Vivo, here's a pair of new cds from everyone's favorite Japanese noisemonger, the mighty Merzbow. On Bloody Sea, Masami Akita (for he be Merzbow) displays his softer side. Not sonically, no not at all, but in his concerned efforts to save the whales via his "protest-noise". Yes, this is an anti-whaling album, hence the title, and we'd imagine that if Greenpeace were to find some way to blare it loudly at the Japanese whaling fleet whenever they tried to leave port, they might be forced to call off the whale hunt for the season. There's three cacophonous parts to this 50-minute disc, composed of battling blown-out chattering rumble and sizzling synths. Very abstract and assaultive, as if Merzbow is trying to channel the pain and suffering of all the whales into a song they never could sing.
Meanwhile, the more recently released Coma Berenices contains five lengthy, throbbing machine-screams of dense distortion, zapped with high-end skree... it'll wax yer ears but good. Fried and frenzied, but also carefully looped and layered with sonic detail. It is (relatively speaking) quite listenable as harsh psychedelia, the dark-drone-doom thing taken to the extremes of Merzbowian methodology!
