The long awaited second installment in the who-knows-how-many-parts Patikel series, which features a collaboration between AQ fave Swedish dark ambient, militant folk, black metal noise technician Nordvargr (Toroidh, MZ412, Folkstorm, Goatvargr, HH9, etc...) and Japanese noise legend Masami Akita aka Merzbow.
Strange bedfellows maybe, but the results here, as on the first installment, are pretty mind-blowing. Akita generated the sounds, Nordvargr took those sounds and twisted them into completely new forms, the result some strange noise/drone/rhythm hybrid that is WAY more listenable than it has any right to be.
The opener sets the tone, a twenty minute crumbling distorted noisescape, like bits of old Merzbow records all chopped up and assembled again Frankenstein's monster fashion, that veers from full on near-metallic crunch, to strange skittery almost IDM, but even at it's calmest, the track is still rife with strange sounds and damaged FX, bursts of harsh noise surfacing here and there amidst an alien landscape of stutters and shuffles, of creaks and squeaks, almost like a black metal Mouse On Mars if one could even imagine such a thing.
The second track sounds heavier on the Nordvargr than the Merzbow, a rumbling shimmering low end, that creeps and drifts before splintering briefly into another rhythmic glitchscape, just as quickly transforming into a buzzing snarling fuzzed out drone, thick and corrosive, subtly rhythmic, but intense and crackling with energy. Deep cavernous tones swell in the background, while above the blurry buzz, strange crunchy electronic pulses mark out a simple static rhythm.
The third track is Part 2 to the opener's Part 1, and takes the openers skitter to a much meaner, much harsher place, a swirling high end cloud of hissing static and keening sine waves, over a relentlessly pulsing backdrop, that changes pitch, and tempo, stuttering and hiccuping, creating a gorgeously confusional rhythmscape, eventually breaking into a near-groove, a loping downtempo slither, but still wrapped in all manner of electronic detritus and squalls of fuzz and crackle and whir.
The closer winds things down with more of a whisper than a scream, the glitchy rhythms are still present, but they are ultra minimal, skeletal, almost like shortwave interference, beneath a tidal swirl of murk and blur, a dark ambient buzz that stretches lazily into long expanses of slow shifting sounds. Over the course of the track, little bits of melody surface here and there, the rhythms get more agitated before drifting back beneath the surface, and mysterious voices surface amidst sparkling sonic glimmers and moaning ambient rumble, a dreamy dark ambient coda to an intense slab of droning skittering buzz and crunch, shimmer and swirl.
Partikel II is IDM for the demon set, a blackened noise drenched skitter, an abstract metallic free-electronica, and a definite droney dancefloor filler, that is if you want your dancefloor filled with shuffling zombies, growling beasts and unspeakable denizens of the underworld...
And who doesn't?!
It feels like it's been awhile since we were graced with a proper new full length from Miss Nadler, and it's certainly welcome. Her haunting gothic folktales seem to get better and more fully realized with each release. Here, she is backed by a fuller sound courtesy of Philadelphia's Espers in full medieval chamber-folk mode making great use of reverberating Tibetan bells, harp and mandolin. But nothing overshadows her sophisticated fingerpicking and voice, which like an antiquated sparrow harkening from a time only experienced in past remembrances transports the listener through lovely gossamer shades of grey. The CD version includes a Leonard Cohen cover, a free sticker and a link to download 4 more unreleased tracks.
Oh man are people freaking out over this one. Admittedly, we hadn't heard this record, but people kept coming in the store and asking for it so we decided to give it a go. With a name like The National and having seen pictures of the five well-dressed boys from Brooklyn, we half expected another bland '80s rock redux sound that has continued to get more and more popular over the last few years. It started out innocently enough with some good records from The Rapture, Interpol, Bloc Party etc. but it's gotten a little tired by now. We're guessing many agree with this assessment considering all of the hype surrounding The National's Boxer which might be a much needed variation on the theme started by the aforementioned bands and continued on and on and on and on and on by many others. Boxer contains a coupla songs that push the post-new wave cart, but most are slowed down considerably. Some songs border on Americana folk, while others see the band painting a perfect alt-rock picture pairing chugging rock with arranged orchestral strings, piano, and horns to compliment the beautifully baritone voice of lead singer Matt Berninger. Berninger's voice may be the selling point for many (as it was for some of us) and could easily be compared to Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits at times, with moments where not only the tone but bittersweet stream of consciousness lyrical style of Stephen Merritt come to mind. Overall, we were pleasantly surprised and highly recommend this record for fans of Magnetic Fields, Midlake, Antony and The Johnsons, Arab Strap or Deerhunter.
New albums from old faves come and go, but when you say, there's a new Neurosis, we sit up and pay attention. Like contemporaries the Melvins, they've reached an iconic, utterly influential status at this point in their long career -- and yet still keep making rad, relevant albums that keep pushing their now archetypal sound further. Pioneers who keep on pioneering, getting better and better, even as hordes of other bands copy them and try to keep up. The word on the street was that Given To The Rising was a "return to the heavy" for Neurosis, not like they ever really left. But yes, this is HEAVY. We can't say (like we did about A Sun That Never Sets) that is is a "kinder, gentler" Neurosis. Not at all. The riffs will slay you, the vocals are fierce, yet the scope (musical, emotional) of this disc is impressively broad... The proggy, psychedelic, post-rock and (dare we say) gloom-pop elements that run like a dark thread through their discography are present on these ten tracks, mostly all of epic lengths (as usual). Harrowing power. Depressive beauty. Ritual rumble. Alienated lyrics. Soft-loud dynamics. Droning space-outs. All utterly "owned" by the Neurosis crew. This band just levels everything and everyone in their path!
This is one that will satisfy old school Neurosis fans and yet would be a perfect first-time Neurosis experience too. For instance -- although we can't imagine this is too likely! -- if there are any Jesu fans out there who haven't ever heard Neurosis, do yourself a favor and pick this up pronto!! Arguably their best album since 1999's classic Times Of Grace.
PS while supplies last, we've got a bonus dvd that comes with the cd... oh and also there WILL be a vinyl pressing, but it's not out yet.
What more can we really say about Nile at this point? These Egyptology obssessed occultists have established themselves at THE death metal band of the millennium, rightful heirs to the septic scepters once wielded by the likes of Cannibal Corpse and (especially, in light of their subject matter) Morbid Angel. If you haven't heard 'em, we'd recommend starting with Black Seeds of Vengeance or In Their Darkened Shrines, but if you're already on board with Nile then you'll want/need this. Especially considering the strange, ummm, phallic bent of this album (evident from the title, the various erect members on statues depicted in the cd booklet, and some of the lyrical content). In interviews the band have been expressing their excitement over freaking out metalheads not prepared for such a phallus-centric death metal disc... haha....
Really, as an addition to the Nile discography, Ithyphallic can only be criticized as offering more of the same, and fans won't complain about that. There's still song titles like "Papyrus Containing The Spell To Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is In The Water". There's still atmospheric, exotic 'ethnic' interludes, like the creepy "The Infinity Of Stone" ferinstance. And there's still (of course) state of the art death metal brutality in the form of grunting vox, blazing drums, guitar shred, and (one reason we really like Nile) plenty of truly heavy doom-paced riffage, slowing things down to the ancient tempos of slaves dragging huge stones from quarries to build the pyramids...
While they last, digipack version with two (instrumental) bonus tracks.
There are a handful of cd-r labels out there who are meticulous, not only with the music they choose to release, but with the packaging, the presentation, the ideas and inspiration behind the label, the theme that runs through all of the music, with everything related to their label and the music on it, which is always so inspiring, especially when everyone you know has a limited cd-r label. One of our favorites is Belgian label Mystery Sea, who specialize in what they call "night-ocean drones", and each disc is gorgeously packaged with full color artwork, that matches the artwork on the disc, and it all reflects the music contained within. We get as many copies as we can, but with almost every Mystery Sea releases we get, they tend to disappear quite quickly.
The latest comes from Ninth Desert, whose sound is anything but arid and dry, desolate and warm. Instead, the sounds on Zone are cold, cool, chilly, wintery, lots of glistening high end, the sounds you might imagine would emanate from vast ice fields, or deep snowy caves, not so much rumble and buzz as sparkle and glimmer and glisten. Even at it's most low-end dronelike, the whirs are wrapped in streaks of keening high end, everything is bright and blown out. It's like the sonic version of laying in a huge snow bank, staring at the sun, everything is white and bright, too much for your eyes to handle so everything sort of glazes into strange indistinct shapes, glowing and shifting, like clouds in the sky, or huge slow moving chunks of ice in the sea. These sounds are arctic, almost alien, like wandering on the surface of some strange planet, everything icy and barren, cold winds whir and whine, the sound of the slow moving glaciers a muted creaking, all smeared into dreamy swaths of high end shimmer. So lovely. And so refreshing to experience a soothing, slow moving drone record, that doesn't rely entirely on low end rumble, but at the same time manages to make upper register sounds as soothing and soft focus as their lower ended brethren.
Like all Mystery Sea releases, strictly LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each disc numbered on the tray card, and gorgeously packaged with striking full color artwork.
Not one, but TWO new Nordvargr discs this time around, the other being the latest from Nordvargr and his former partner in black metal ambient alchemists MZ412, Drakh, the crushing and beautiful disc, The Betrayal Of Light on Andee's tUMULt label, and this, being his latest solo effort, released� on Brazilian label Essence, who in the past has brought us discs from Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, Merzbow, Rapoon and Wolfskin as well as Nordvargr's earlier Vitagen record.�
It seems that lately, Nordvargr has a renewed interest in the guitar, as well as a blossoming love of black metal (he has a BM disc coming out in the near future), and this is definitely reflected �in both of his new releases. Where as past efforts have tended to lurk and creep, hovering in a much more distinctly dark ambient realm, both of these new releases embrace the guitar, the riff, distortion and buzz. On The Betrayal Of Light, the riffing is merely a part� of that records larger sonic picture, but here, the guitar is everything. A sprawling black behemoth, a crushing black hole of sound, oozing out in all directions, subsuming everything in its path. This is the sound of massive, heavily distorted, downtuned riffage, crumbled into pieces, and melted down into some viscous black fluid, that pours from your speakers like tar, dripping onto the floor, filling up every available space until the listener is sucked under and buried alive. Slow motion grinding guitar grrrrowl that would give SUNNO))) a run for their money, but here, those roiling virulent riffs are dropped into a sea of swirling ambience, a chaotic whorl of low end shimmer and mysterious drones.
This glacial riffing is peppered with brief stretches of soft focus flutter, moments of shimmering tranquility, brief bursts of distorted hiss and jagged shards of buzzing whir, but these are just momentary respites, from In Oceans' relentless doom drone trudge, a pulverizing monstrous lurch, through a field of black sonic sludge and blown out low end grind.
By now we shouldn't have to go into too much detail regarding or massive love of all things Nordvargr, from the militaristic folk of Folkstorm, the martial industrial sounds of Toroidh, the bleak black ambience of BM legends MZ412, to the various recordings and sounds perpetrated under his own name, pretty much everything he's touched as turned to black gold.�
But no matter how much we love everything Nordvargr, our hearts will always belong to MZ412. When we first discovered that band we were totally thrown for a loop, we were loving the sounds of black metal by then, and here was a band with a cryptic monicker, amazing album design, burning churches on their record covers and the band members in full corpse paint. We were ready to be totally blown away, and we were, just not in the way we expected. Their sound was not metal, no buzzing guitars, no shrieking vocals, no blast beats, instead, theirs was a dark world of mysterious blackness, bleak and barren, frosty and and grim, and impossible JUST AS HEAVY as any of the other black metal we had been listening to. This was ambient music, but it was intense, and brutal, and scary.
The band ceased to exist and Nordvargr moved on to the above mentioned projects as well as numerous collaborations and projects under his own name. Then a few years back, a strange thing happened, a record surfaced credited to Nordvargr and Drakh, who just so happened to be Nordvargr's partner in MZ412, and as far as we were concerned, it was the rebirth of MZ412 in everything but name. Several more releases followed, all delicately balanced between dark ambience and buzzing blackness, culminating in this, the brand new record from the duo that once was MZ412.�
The two have some dark chemistry together, weaving elaborate worlds of black sound, not just ambience, not just drone music, but songs, with parts, and riffs and melodies, lots of guitars, occasionally trudging glacially like some slow motion doom behemoth, other times buzzing like some disembodied ghost� of black metal, and at others, glistening and drifting in vast expanses of shimmer and whir.�
The Betrayal Of Light was originally meant to be releases on several well known dark ambient labels, who all rejected the record for being too heavy, and that's all we needed to hear. Nordvargr, Drakh, too heavy, too much guitar....
Thus it ended up on tUMULt (run by our very own Andee), quite possibly where it belonged all along, fitting quite comfortably amidst a roster of black metal and drone music, embodying at least a handful of descriptors that seem to apply to most tUMULt releases, dark, droney, and fucked...
The Betrayal Of Light is one massive sonic event, a black cloud of sound, separated into movements, the first, begins as a slow beautiful crawl, a murky soundfield supporting a delicate web of softly plucked guitar strings, until a wall of downtuned buzz swallows it whole, a massive mournful dirge,�stately and majestic, classic old school funereal doom, but�super dramatic, and strangely melodic, sounding a bit like Earth or SUNNO))) playing the procession at a funeral or the royal march for some ancient court. Minor key and so gorgeous, a lonely lament rendered in amp buzz and smeared riffage, but completely nestled amidst a sea of churning low end, and that ever present minor key guitar line...
Not long after, the duo explode in a frenzy of buzzguitar, moving�as close to black metal as they've ever gotten, after a slow building� shimmer, the track coalesces into a furious buzzing riff, with what sounds like some buried demonic vocals,�no drums, so it's a sort of unmoored black metal drift, the riff cycling hypnotically while all around low end roils and whirls and in the distance the landscape is peppered with�reverberant subsonic booms, and low level rumbles...
The album's centerpiece is the nearly eleven minute long "Vessel", a lengthy, meditative guitarscape, delicate minor key melodies unfurled over a web of strange whirs and buzzes, the melodies occasionally being overwhelmed by waves of oscillating industrial detritus, before drifting back to the surface where they are joined by rumbling guttural throat singing, or heavily reverbed monklike chants, all the while, a constant ominous drone, grinds and crumbles just below the surface, culminating in a bizarre symphony of processed guitars and grinding insectoid vocals, simultaneously epic and intense, and weird and disturbing.
The rest of the record is a harrowing journey through the dark woods, through a warren of underground passages, through a vast wasteland of barren frost and black sun, thick coruscating guitars buzz and howl, sheets of thick riffs one after another, create an ever shifting wall of crumbling distorted sound, voices drift ghostlike beneath a murky swirl of distant feedback and warbling whir, tones and notes and bits of muted melody are stretched out and blurred into gorgeous hazy smears, pulses and barely audible throbs shift and shimmer just below the surface... everything creeping and slithering through a constant cloud of drifting damaged drones.�
Finally, the journey comes to an end, a gorgeous low end lurch, a thick serpentine shamble with gorgeous bits of backwards guitar, and shards of minor key melody. The low end is lopped and pulses like some mysterious machine, the low end growing in intensity, like some black star about to implode, dreamy backwards vocals drift in, like some reverse angelic chorus, until a deep voice, drenched in reverb and distortion, intones a mysterious apocalyptic warning, and then suddenly... it's done.�
An intense and overwhelming sonic journey, as heavy and brutal as it is delicate and beautiful. Doomy and blackened, drifty and drone-y, soft focus and hazy, dense and devastating... and of course, so so recommended.�
The latest from the increasingly awesome Discos Mariposa label, who have been providing release after satisfying release of Brazilian post-tropicalia rarities, is the 1972 second album from psych-progressives, O Terco. Featuring Luiz Simas from Modulo 1000 on mini-Moog, Terco starts off pretty heavy in a King Crimson fashion gradually settling into the dreamy pastoral psych that were used to from this label. Culminating in the 19 minute collage suite "Amanhecer Total" ("Complete Dawn"), where female vocals, acoustic guitar and percussion meld into heavier passages of electric guitar, and aggressive singing, then shift towards lo-fi keyboards, soft piano and a mantra-inflected finale. Two bonus tracks from an earlier EP round the disc out nicely.
Finally, full length number two (of three) from Russian black metal legends Old Wainds. We're still trying to restock their most recent, 2005's Scalding Coldness, but for now,�Where The Snows Are Never Gone is probably more grim frosty bleak blackness than you can handle. But that shouldn't deter you from trying.�
Originally recorded back in 1997 and released on cassette, reissued on cd in 2003, only finding its way to AQ in 2007,�Where The Snows Are Never Gone is another epic frostbitten slab of relentless black buzz. It's easy to hear why Old Wainds is the black metaller's black metal band. Wrest from Leviathan, Ancalagon from Crebain, Hildolf from Draugar, pretty much every BM misanthrope we know counts Old Wainds as one of, if not their absolute, favorite metal bands.�
Old Wainds are not damaged or demented, lo-fi or fucked, this is epic and majestic, the riffs are amazing, the drums a skull caving bombast, the production is massive, a swirling buzz that could swallow you whole. It's hard to know what else to say about these guys that we haven't already said over and over and over. To read more of our Old Wainds raving see any of the other OW reviews on the AQ site...
Needless to say, if you're already a fan and don't yet have this, BUY THIS NOW. If you've yet to discover the hellish joys of Old Wainds, this is as good a place to start as any, in fact it just may be our favorite of the bunch.�
More in line with the primitive thrashing buzz of bands like Darkthrone and Beherit, this is fast and blown out and black, relentless and furious, frosty and so so so grim. The vocals are a Popeye like croak (not all that far removed from Immortal's Abbath) and the tracks are peppered with strange explosions and sonic drop outs, the guitars go from lightning buzz to chugging crunch, the drums sounds like they're being fired out of a gun. Minus a couple intros, this record does not ever let up, even for one second. Until...
The final track, which is absolutely gorgeous, definitely the prettiest thing Old Wainds has ever recorded. An endlessly loping minor key midtempo groove, arpeggiated guitar, a sort of sea sick rhythm, motorik drumming, the guitar a warm glistening buzz, vocals a chanted moan, repetitive and so utterly dreamy (in a grim, cvlt, black way of course), until the very end where the song seems to buckle and the band stumble back into action obliterating any traces of loveliness in an explosion of brutal black fury.�
As with every single Old Wainds recording, totally essential.�
As much as we all dig Volcano The Bear, we've actually been loving VtB member Daniel Padden's One Ensemble project even more. While Volcano are more of a surreal dada-ist experimental sound outfit, for the One Ensemble, Padden takes those same Dadaist tendencies but tempers them a bit, wrapping them around pretty pop or lilting folk and creating some truly alien sounding prettiness.
But on this ultra limited lp, Padden takes his One Ensemble and wanders back into some serious Volcano The Bear territory. Demented music box melodies drift amidst soaring strings, clinking clanking percussion, deep moaning cellos, bursts of staticky field recordings and manipulated field recordings, while over the top float haunting mysterious melodies. Sounds a bit like a more druggy demented Tom Waits.
Elsewhere, thick washes of fuzzed out ambient whir wrap themselves around damaged pitch shifted guitar warble, junk yard percussion marches through thick clouds of ominous drones, detuned acoustic guitars shimmer beneath heavily reverbed scrapes and squeaks and wheezing harmonica melodies. A totally mesmerizing, dizzying and damaged trawl through some surreal junk yard filled with broken musical instruments and ghost musicians, jamming in the middle of the night to an audience of beat up stuffed animals and rusted out appliances. So cool!
Packaged in a super spiffy crayon colored owl, coloring book collage cover.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!! We got a bunch, but it's already sold out and out of print at the label so once these sell out we won't be able to get more.
In 2004, the Finnish tech-minimalist duo Pan Sonic unleashed Kesto, a massive 4cd boxset that encapsulated all of their ideas, one half focused on their style of augmenting minimalist techno with engine propelled noise, while the other half concerned itself more with stripping everything away resulting in sublimely still abstractions of electron orbits and cathode ray hum. Three years later, Pan Sonic have yet to match that body of work, even after they applied plenty of those strategies to their acclaimed collaboration with John Duncan; and in many ways, Katodivaiche is an impressive recapitulation of Kesto with the necessary fine-tunings and adjustments that continue to keep Pan Sonic at the forefront of contemporary electronica. The first track enjoys the company of Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, whose languid notes counterpoint the clinical breakbeats shifting Pan Sonic's homage to Throbbing Gristle closer to contemporaries like Murcof or Polmo Polpo. While the next couple of tracks are Pan Sonic's trademarked blasts of concussive bomb noise exploding over low slung technotic grooves, Pan Sonic drops a dubstep number next, which should be the template for where South London should go next with that sound. Like the best tracks from Kode 9 and Burial, Pan Sonic focus on the physicality of stalking basslines while shifting layers of rhythm glide above effortlessly. Elsewhere, the phase shifting bleep and bloop which dominated the early Pan Sonic recordings return, perhaps in response to a series of minimalist techno singles released by Berlin's Sleeparchive who shamelessly / brilliantly appropriated the Pan Sonic / Plastikman sound. Altogether, it's a brilliant, if somewhat familiar sounding album from the masters of Finnish electronica.
This is one of those rare records that totally captures and captivates you the very first time you hear, and somehow you can already tell that it's most definitely going to be a part of your life for a long time to come. With its expansive sound and spot on use of repetition and irresistible melodies this is an album with so much charm and character, so much power and passion, that it's impossible not to get swept up in its sunbaked glaze.
Person Pitch arrived right around the first day of Spring and we immediately found ourselves basking in the sun dappled glory of this, the latest outing from Noah Lennox, who not only records as Panda Bear on his own, but also is a member of like minded sonic explorers Animal Collective and Jane. Brian Wilson and Beach Boys inspired records are old hat these days and in fact we've sort of begun to dread the singular vision and by rote re-creation of bands aping the colorful pop melodies that Wilson created. Sugary Beach Boys worship has grown so prevalent in the last several years, we were definitely bit skeptical when we started hearing about the very Beach Boys-esque new Panda Bear record. But what's so refreshing about Person Pitch is hearing someone finally dig deeper, discovering the more magical and glorious elements of the Brian Wilson/Beach Boys sound. Taking ideas and inspiration from the experimental and instrumental golden gem "Diamond Head" on the Friends album as well as creating gloriously high in the sky vocal melodies Lennox has found a way to mix oddity with conventional beauty and the results are divine. Stretching sound and using repetition to create a trance like state that makes you wanna close your eyes and rock your body back and forth or just space out and stare into space until you start really seeing stars.
We already know this will be the soundtrack to so many warm summer nights, spontaneous afternoon getaways, and car rides on the coast heading for the beach and getting lost in sand, sky and sun. So totally recommended!
Liz Pappademas' debut album is imbued with a hushed parlour elegance quite akin to Brooklyn's Edison Woods, but with strong female vocals reminiscent of Carly Simon. Intimately centered around her piano and voice, 11 Songs is smooth, smoky lounge splendor from start to finish. Assisting her with these eleven songs is Brian Kehew ( of The Moog Cookbook and the astoundingly obsessively comprehensive 'Recording The Beatles' book). Lovely!
We've long been huge champions of the highly unpronounceable UK outfit Hwyl Nofio, aka Steve Parry. Every record some new world of sound, haunting and mysterious, delicate and lovely, creepy and dreamy. Judging by how quickly we sell through most of the Hwyl records, you all feel very much the same way.�
Off The Map is the long in the works collaboration between Hwyl's Steve Parry, and fellow guitarist Fredrik Soegaard, who had been a contributor on previous Hwyl recordings. Thus it's not really a huge stretch to imagine that some of Off The Map might sound a bit like Hywl Nofio, and it does, while at the same time taking off in its own distinct directions.�
Two guitar players, each with their own approach to the instrument, both seeming to fit together perfectly. Much more active than the often subdued Hwyl records, these two guitars tangle and wrangle and the results are quite lovely, from buzzing metallic drones, and complex webs of melody and overtones, to burbling cauldrons of electronic sputter and squiggle, to gorgeously melodic soundscapes of sparkle and glimmer, to chest rattling steel stringed lowbuzz, to damaged atonal acoustic folk, peppered with squeaky balloon streaks of high end guitar, to blissed out washes of soft shimmer and muted melody, to grinding Wolf Eyesian industrial scrapescapes, complete with haunting pterodactyl skree and throbbing metallic crunch, to dizzying arrays of all-over-the-place screech and splatter and flurries of upper register trills, to soft billowing waves of warm sun drenched sonic buzzstorms...
Every track is dramatically different, but they all seem to fit together, like chapters in a book, each track a tiny piece of the story, every one hinting at what is to come, each retaining ghostly memories of what came before, part of the joy is figuring out the story, following the record from end to end, it's a journey through sound, letting your ears lead the way, but the great thing about Off The Map, and music in general, if you don't care about the 'story' or the 'journey', the sounds offer just as much on their own, sans emotional and intellectual intent, just sweet simple sonics to set your ear drums abuzz.�
Finally, the third Paysage D'Hiver reissue, in the continuing comprehensive reissue campaign, of what is quickly becoming our favorite 'new' black metal outfit. A mysterious Swiss one man band (who also plays in the equally mysterious Darkspace) who released a series of cassette demos beginning in 1998, most of which we never heard (and we're guessing very few of you did either) all of which are getting re-released as super deluxe cds, in fancy A5 book style digipaks, sealed in black envelopes. And so far, each one absolutely essential.
We raved about the first two a few lists back, Schattengang, a three song, 40 minute frosty epic, equal parts blown out buzzy, blurry, hyper repetitive, trance-like black metal, and swirling rumbling black ambience, and Die Festung, which was all ambient, a krautrocky keyboard excursion more Tangerine Dream than Burzum. Paysage D'Hiver, the self titled demo originally released in 2000 (one of two that year) is another side of Wintherr's (great name!) Paysage D'Hiver, this time, it's all black metal, relentlessly buzzing, taking the mesmerizing looped repetitive nature of our favorite BM groups, and seriously pushing the envelope, taking riffs and pounding them out for close to twenty minutes. The ultimate blissed out buzz. Frosty and grim and creepy and seriously dark, but totally hypnotic and strangely beautiful.
The first track, "Der Weg", sets thee tone, launching immediately into a murky insectoid riff, buzzy and majestic, then locking into it, creating a duper tense droning blackened landscape of buzz and blast. Over which the vocals wail and croak, the guitars so blurry and relentless, the actual riffs seem to fade away leaving a never ending buzz, just a constant whir of distorted guitar. Like a black metal Niblock. But in, and amidst, and over, and around, things mutate and shift, and turn an already bizarre droney buzz into something even stranger.
The most surprising element is the violin. It moans and soars, unfurling haunting melodies, slightly off key, but just makes it that much more creepy, at first it sounds really out of place, but as the song drones on, the violin seems more and more an organic part of 'the sound'. Elsewhere there are strange melodic crooned vocals, female maybe, or a high male tenor, that soar ghostlike above the ever buzzing din, there are one or two momentary respites from the relentless onslaught, one a synthy sprawl, the other an acoustic interlude, but it's always back to that gloriously mesmerizing buzz.
The second track is more of the same, and if anything even more droning, lots of epic keyboards, offering up subtle ambience, lurking right below the ever buzzing riffage, the pounding blast beats so low in the mix, they just sound like another layer of buzz, and the tortured anguished howls. Near the end of track two, the song drifts into a barely there black ambience, only to immediately resume, but instead of a furious blast, a loping sea sick waltz, very Burzumic, swaying and strangely sorrowful.
The final track is another nearly 20 minute blast, the first half a wall of dense buzz, the second half, a keyboard drenched swirl of blackness, each based on the same riff, creating this slowly mutating buzzing black drone, with the keyboards gradually becoming more and more intense, eventually becoming the focal point as the black buzz drifts away, and for the last 5 minutes, a gorgeous Tim Hecker-ish, gauzy landscape of muted melody and slow shifting low end, all bathed in a swirling cloud of soft focus buzz. Dreamy and divine.
So goddamn good. It's amazing, that until now, music this epic and intense, this emotional and utterly amazing, could be relegated to barely distributed cassette tapes. If you missed the last two, you are absolutely gonna want all of them. We're loving this like crazy, listening to it non stop, but already we're counting the minutes until the next one...
Like the other two reissues, packaged in an oversized A5 book style digipak, this time with a gorgeous windswept forest hillside, and a mysterious dark figure hunched over, near the top adorning the front, inside a fold out booklet with another alternate image of the cover, but of course almost no information or liner notes. So completely recommended. Probably super limited as these things usually are...
A nice mini-primer of Jean Jacques Perrey and Gerschon Kingsley's best maniacal Moog melodies of the mid-sixties from the Vanguard label. All the best hits are here, including "Baroque Hoedown" better known as Disneyland's Main Street Electrical Parade theme, It's always great to hear these tracks that so many modern bands like Stereolab, Black Moth Super Rainbow, and The Beastie Boys are indebted too and for the uninitiated, this is a good place to start. Our only complaint is that it's much too short and offers nothing that hasn't been available before. Of course this hasn't stopped us playing it non-stop since it arrived.
Ever since we listed the Amesoeurs record a while back (and actually even before) we've been trying to track down records by two related bands, the equally blissed out black bliss combo Alcest, and the much more primitive and black Peste Noire. While we've been unable to track down either cd, we did manage to get a bunch of copies of this brand new Peste Noire lp, one side featuring 4 songs from a rehearsal, the actual versions of which will be on the upcoming full length, while the B-side is a sidelong black buzz epic recorded a couple years ago.
Nothing about Amesoeurs will prepare you for Peste Noire. There is a similar melodic sensibility, but beyond that, it's a whole different beast. The four new tracks are killers, and for rehearsal tracks sound amazing, so much so that most bands would be pretty happy with the versions here, loud and heavy and recorded super hot. The forthcoming full length on which these songs will appear is to be titled Folkfuck Folie just for a brief glimpse into the twisted minds behind the music. Things begin with a weirdly majestic and martial intro, with complex drums and strange arrangements, almost like some medieval carnival music, before bursting into full on furious blackness, buzzy and relentless, but even in the blasting things are slightly off kilter, damaged and demented sounding, and very very melodic, mathy and complex, super harsh vocals over the top but they can hardly disguise how utterly hooky these songs are. In fact, after hearing Amesoeurs and Peste Noire and Alcest, it seems to be these guys' M.O., write killer pop songs, amazing hooks, unforgettable melodies, then try to disguise them as best they can as buzzing black metal. It never works completely, which is why this stuff is so remarkable. Some of the songs have tons of syncopated chug, giving the songs an almost proggy vibe, almost like some weird mix of Emperor and Voivod. Blooping bass, cascading sheets of guitar and gorgeous minor key melodies. Can't wait for the new record. If these are only sketches, we can hardly fathom how freaked out and amazing the actual songs are gonna be.
The B-side is an older recording and is much more rough and lo-fi, raw and blown out. Lots of reverb and effects, but still rife with plenty of surprising melodic breakdowns, impossible catchy and lovely for something this black and raw. It gets even weirder near the end, with a long stretch of scratchy record crackle and monklike chants, and then a super pretty laid back acoustic outro. So amazing. Everything these guys touch turns to black gold!
Packaged in a super striking black and white sleeve, band photos and liner notes on the back, including the legend 'Hooligan Black Metal' that seems to make almost no sense when paired with the music inside...
Vinyl only, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
Over the course of only a few brief years and two albums, these fervent music makers drew an equally fervent following. So many hands were wrung and much despair was expressed when word got out that Pleasure Forever had disbanded a few years ago. Granted the individuals have continued on making stellar music separately as Andrew Douglas Rothbard, Rabbits and Red Sparowes, but... it's just not the same! Which brings us to this posthumous Pleasure Forever release. We welcome it with open arms and eager ears. Bodies Need Rest is comprised of equal parts originals (previously unreleased numbers, rarities and compilation tracks) and covers. Throughout these eight tracks which span the band's existence, the trio maintains their trademark piercing focus while perpetually on the verge of spinning wildly out of control. They fuel Black Flag's "The Bars" with their own rage, then just as ably enter irony-free into tender territory with their hazy dream rendition of ABBA's "Honey Honey". Drums, guitars, vocals and keyboards come together, a musical tempest as fierce as it is beautiful. Recommended.
First things first, this Possessed has nothing to do with the '80s Bay Area metal band of the same name. No, this Possessed hails from even further back in time, the early '70s to be precise. And that leads us to say this: oh man, if we only had a time machine! Sure we'd go back and kill Hitler's parents and buy Google stock and all that... but our time machine day dream today is dominated by a flyer reproduced in the cd booklet to this release, advertising a month's worth of "progressive concerts" upcoming at a venue, somewhere in England, featuring performances by T2, Judus [sic] Priest, Israel's Jericho Jones, Thin Lizzy and this very band, Possessed. Good grief. We'd have been very very broke blokes back then, spending our last dime, I mean, farthing, on going out to such shows! What a time for hairy, heavy proto-metal awesomeness!
Thinking along those lines, Cathedral vocalist Lee Dorrian *has* built a time machine of sorts, though -- his label Rise Above now has an archival/reissue imprint called Rise Above Relics, dedicated to unearthing the heavy sounds of the past for them to be heard again today. This Possessed album (along with Luv Machine, also reviewed) is one of the first releases and we've gotta say they've dug up a gem, hitherto unknown to us.
Possessed, who you'd think might be some sort of occultic, Comusy folk band from the name and the Art Nouveau, Aubrey Beardsley style cover art, actually play a kinda proggy, kinda glammy hard rock that definitely bears some resemblance to aspects of Led Zeppelin. Just coincidence that Possessed's singer and guitarist, the India-born Vernon Pereira, had been in the original lineup of an outfit called The Band Of Joy, which also included Zeps-to-be Robert Plant and John Bonham? In any case, Possessed's most notable attributes would have to be the sinuous, crunchy riffing of guitarist Pereira, and also his Plant-like lead vocals. Furthermore, the band's spiralingly complex and bombastic songwriting ventures into the variety of "funk" displayed by Led Zeppelin on such songs as "Trampled Underfoot". Then there's the acoustic break of "Exploration Pt. II", also very Zeppish to be sure, though besides Zep, we'd compare this to Thin Lizzy and also to obscurities like Hard Stuff and even AQ faves Zolar X!
Despite being so worthy, Possessed never released an album, though they did record one in 1971 that, due to label disinterest, was shelved (until now, this is it). Sadly, three key band members, including Pereira, died in a motorway accident in 1976 ("Driver of Pop Group Death Van Dozed Off" reads the headline to one of the vintage newspaper clippings reproduced in the cd booklet), bringing a tragic end to the hopes and history of Possessed. The '70s rock star glory experienced by their chums in Led Zeppelin was never to be for this ill-fated band, though things could have, should have, turned out much differently, as at the time of the accident, they were on the verge at last of a major record deal. And they were supposedly slated to play shows in the USA with the Sex Pistols, bizarrely enough. Of course, that never happened.
So we're left with Exploration, while not the best unreleased album of the era ever (Jacula? Bedemon? Sproton Layer?), definitely a pretty darn cool one. It's a bit raw sounding, maybe a still a work in progress with some of the riffing rather similar in a couple of the songs, but it's definitely something that fans of both Led Zep and all the early '70s hard rock rarities we love should investigate! Nicely packaged with a fat, 20 page booklet full of notes and photos, slipcased to boot.
Procer Veneficus is a one man master of deep drone and black buzz hailing from Santa Cruz of all places, and unlike other groups who weave their black ambience into and throughout their metal, Night, the man behind PV, chooses more often than not, to switch back and forth, creating alternating records of buzzing black metal, OR abstract ambience. Equally adept at both, each strain of PV's sound manages to hew close to the heart of the man, and the band and the sound.�
This long in the works double cd is the perfect encapsulation of that sound, capturing both sides, and laying them out side by side, two discs, in a homemade box, packaged with incense (he is from Santa Cruz after all) and a dried leaf, one a massive throbbing snarling smear of blurry blackened buzzing metal, the other, a slow crawl of ultra creepy and cavernous low end exploration. Both magnificent.
The ambient disc, titled Lunar Transit, with song titles like "Icelight Glitter" and "Dust From Frozen Seafloors" sounds just like the titles would lead you to believe. A dark slow motion trawl along the moonlit ocean floor, or the starlit barren surface of some alien planet, completely gorgeous expanses of�deep shimmering low end, simultaneously warm and enveloping, and slightly alien and frosty. Epic and massive and cavernous, but still intimate and darkly beautiful, tones that ebb and flow like some lunar tide, totally hypnotic and dreamlike, and just a little bit ominous. They even do a Dead Can Dance cover (!) but manage to transform it into something a bit blacker. Definitely some of the most amazing black ambience we've heard in ages. Think Lustmord,�Thomas Koner and the like, but with a bit more melody, and a bit more dramatic melancholia. So good.�
The metal disc, titled Duskworlds, and with titles like "Gloamlight" and "Beneath Horizonfire" and Frostwreath Moon", begins with a brief bit of ambient drift (that does surface briefly again here and there), but soon, it's a hailstorm of soft focus buzz. The amazing thing about the metal side of Procer Veneficus is just how warm it sounds, not brittle or harsh or chaotic, instead it's just warm and thick and dense, a continuous drone woven from thick sheets of blackened guitar, the vocals a distorted whisper, just another layer of shimmery black haze. There are drums and other things going on, but they become totally lost in the murk, in the gloriously fuzzy haze, it's like staring at the stars through swirling clouds of smoke, everything shifting and changing shape and color, the stars winking in and out, sparkling and glistening, or like some thick black tide washing over you, filling up your eyes and ears, drawing you further down, sucking you under, replacing your sense with a glorious never ending buzz...
The cds are packaged in full color sleeves adorned with striking moonlit landscapes, also included is a full color postcard, image on one side, text on the other, a dried leaf, a pouch of incense (labeled: Unending Voluptuous Summer Eves), all on a downy bed of white cotton, packaged in a brown cardstock box, with a sticker affixed to the front.
From jaunty opener "Eye Bath" onward, this album is one that surprises and delights and offers so much interesting DIY recorded avant-drone *texture* along with its actually quite catchy indie-pop song-iness! We always knew we liked the music of New Zealander Stephan Neville, aka one-man-band Pumice (also a member of The Futurians), he's definitely been in there amongst all the cool, home-taped dronological sounds appearing on obscure cds, cd-rs, cassettes, lathe-cut vinyl and so forth from his entrancing island home that we've been geeking out about over the years. But all the releases tend to overwhelm. Not just Pumice's, but Birchville Cat Motel and Omit and Peter Wright and Antony Milton all the rest. We can't always devote our full attention. And actually, Pumice's previous album, Yeahnahvienna, released a year or so ago on Soft Abuse was a bit ho-hum we thought, we didn't even ever get around to reviewing it. A lot of it was too stripped down and acoustic, revealing too much of the vocals which aren't really Mr. Neville's strong suit. But we're glad we didn't miss this new album! It's different, dense, infectiously fuzzed, and really really good (one of those albums that gets all the AQers coming up to the counter to see what's playing when it's on). Actually our interest in Pumice was rekindled by the recent underground NZ comp on Xeric, Need For A Crossing. Neville, along with Pseudoarcana's Antony Milton, curated it, and it featured several cuts by Pumice and other projects of his, which were quite striking. So suddenly were were like, hmm, Pumice, hey let's be sure to check out this new disc Pebbles. And lo and behold, it's a winner.
Like we said, Pumice makes lo-fi indie rock, the Dead C and the Velvet U are both likely influences, also all the rich history of NZ indie awesomeness from labels like Xpressway and Flying Nun, artists like The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, and Alastair Galbraith. The music here is damaged, reverbed, distorted, as much about sound as song. Regarding Pebbles, Pumice claims Moondog and Simply Saucer as inspirations -- while we might not have thought of those disparate outsider references, they're not so outlandish when we think about it. And although Neville has a reputation for gloominess, the sheer pop umph buried beneath the lo-fi grit and noise of these tracks can't be denied, and tends to balance the depressive effects of the doleful droniness also much in evidence. Yeah, there's moments of rollickin' destroyed rock as well as an experimental folkiness that Richard Youngs fans will dig... and again if you like ye olde Xpressway style NZ indie stuff this is gonna be a blast. Another reminder for us here at AQ that we need to make a New Zealand section in the store again, like we used to back in the day!
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
A gentle dreamy little sonic addendum to one of this week's records of the week, the latest from the strangely named Raccoo-oo-oon. But is it really that dreamy and gentle? Well, sort of. Beginning with softly plucked atonal strings and simple pots and pans percussion, all of a sudden lurches into a strangely new wave-y synth jam, propulsive drums, fuzzy slithering synth melodies, sounds sort of like Avarus jamming with Mates Of State. Weird, but pretty dang cool. The flip side begins in a similarly laid back fashion, a super abstract percussion jam, lots of cymbals and bells, clangs and sizzles and clatter, with hollering and hooting way back in the distance, before the band once again explode in a frenzy of fuzzed out rock, this time though, it, a buzzy, slightly jazzy space rock freak out, all thick bass, pounding drums, throbbing synths and moaning and honking alien horns buried beneath the sonic swirl. Killer stuff, and just like the full length, it's impossible to figure out where in the world these guys are coming from, and equally impossible to predict what's gonna happen next, which is precisely why we're digging it so much.�
Have the usually completely d.i.y. folks Ray's Vast Basement thrown open their secret subterranean workshop to welcome other like-minded burgeoning music makin' folks? Sure seems so, and the results are nothing short of wonderful. The RBV sound is so burnished, earthy and rustic that if they do indeed have a basement, then we'd imagine it's nestled amid the roots of a great redwood instead of beneath a building somewhere here in the city. Their new album comes to us by way of young Bay Area indie label Howell's Transmitter which is home to the likes of Michael Zapruder's Rain Of Frogs, Modular Set and Black Fiction. It's a perfect fit. The music on Starvation Under Orange Trees grew forth from a soundtrack composed by band leader Jon Bernson for the Actors Theatre Of San Francisco. Each song is inspired by one of the literary works of John Steinbeck -- Of Mice And Men, Grapes Of Wrath, Cannery Row, East Of Eden, and Tortilla Flats. All are infused with an overcast gravity befitting Steinbeck's pervading themes of common man hardships. Bernson is joined by guests Tim Cohen (Black Fiction), Sean Coleman (Kelley Stoltz), Larry Crane (Tape Op Magazine), Enzo Garcia (Jolie Holland), Matt Greenberg (Charles Atlas), Nate Query (The Decemberists), and Michael Zapruder (Michael Zapruder's Rain Of Frogs). Together they strike a balance between their old intimate, crafty charms and some newer, more ambitious compositions. Recommended!
The folks who run the Heavy Tapes label also do time as Religious Knives, and this is their most recent release, a two song 12", each side sprawling and laid back and psychedelic. The A side is all drifting ambience, wheezing chords, warm whirring guitar swirl, tinkling chimes, super spare drumming, all over a muted rumbling like an idling car in the distance. Dazed and druggy and drone-y, a plodding spaced out dirge. We were sort of expecting to be instrumental, but then about half way through the vocals came in, a laconic Velvet Underground sort of drawl, perfectly suited to the cough syrup shuffle of the music beneath it.
The flipside is a bit like an amped up version of the A side. Thick peals of corrosive guitar, howled vocals buried way down in the mix, tons of reverb and delay, repetitive tribal drums, the whole thing a dense and thick, sprawling psychedelia.
WTF? Guitarist Adam Payne of Santa Cruz destroyed psych heavies Residual Echoes just made the move (back) down to the LA area... and this 20 minute, 5 song ep is the first recording we've heard from his new SoCal based RE lineup. And... suddenly they've got (more of) an SST punk thing going on? Raucous first track "Dosed Clothes" might make you think so, and track two too, but then you get to "Wipe It Up", their Blake Babies cover (!) and it seems RE has gone the extra step into jangly '80s /early '90s college radio indie rock. The sunshiney "Fresh Eyes", track 4, being their own take on that sorta thing.
Well, uh, if you thought they were weird before, well in a way this punky, poppy RE is even weirder. Even though it's much more tuneful and tightly rockin'. Yet their usual '70s psych and krautrock influences haven't been discarded... Payne wrangles plenty of feedback n' distortion from his Stratocaster throughout. In fact the final cut here, the nearly ten-minute "Strawberrytea" is (in part) a heavy duty, raw psych guitar blow out in the typical 'Echoes tradition.
Not entirely what we were expecting, but pretty cool nonetheless.
ATTENTION FINNISH MUSIC FREAKS!!! It isn't all forest folk and hypnotic space rock over there you know. Finland has some serious metal bands as amazing, as heavy and as fucked up as anyplace else, maybe even more so. Just off the top of our heads, Dead Reptile Shrine! Maybe the weirdest black metal band ever, Reverend Bizarre, amazing classic doom, and let's see... Horna, Thergothon, Circle Of Ouroborus, Spiritus Mortis, Stumm, Wyrd, Vultyr, Trollheim's Grott, Uncreation's Dawn, we could go on and on and on...
So here we have a split from two Finnish black metal one man bands, one name you might recognize, the other you might not, but both are equally amazing.
It takes a very special band to share a split with the mighty and mighty demented Dead Reptile Shrine, but Torturium were up to the job, as evidenced on their recent split with DRC reviewed right here a few months back. Here they continue on their damaged and convoluted journey through some off kilter black thrash buzzscape. Midtempo and completely blown out, guitars are thick snarling beasts, flaying the flesh fron your skin, while some of the most anguished vocals EVER soar and shriek, the drums a murky thud, everything chaotic and crazed. Blasting and buzzing relentlessly, the whole thing threatening to come hunhinged and fly into sharp jagged pieces. Fucked up and furious and so great.
Torturium shares the split with fellow counryman Ride For Revenge, who with a name like that you might expect some classic thrash, but this is anything but. Muddy downtuned guitars, harsh vocals and simple pounding drums, all woven into some sort of murky dirgey black doom. Midtempo rhythms, drums WAY up in the mix, everything sort of droney and hypnotic, tons of reverb, weird swaths of creepy clean guitar, everything cloudy and indistinct, a super old school production liek Winter or diSEMBOWELMENT, fuzzy and relentlessly, trudging through thick FX drenched drifts of black buzz and weird whorls of creepy haunted house synth. So cool and so weird. Definitely a new favorite, and another notch in Finland's holster, or bedpost, or whatver. SO RECOMMENDED!!!
The Third Hand saw RJD2 (Ramble John Krohn) stray a bit from the samples and scratching that gained him notoriety as a DJ. Third Hand was the first record Krohn produced all on his lonesome and the first to feature his own vocals. The result was an album that slipped smoothly from electro pop to electro funk/hop and impressed many critics as a display of his versatility and songwriting abilities rather than his DJ skills.
Therefore, we were surprised to see an instrumental version. It makes sense that one might want instrumentals of songs from Deadringer or Since We Last Spoke to weed out the sampled vocals and rapping that lay atop some pretty impressive scratching and mixing, but none of that is present on The Third Hand and the result without vocals is alarmingly a lot like telephone hold music. Frankly, it's a bit boring. That said, we wondered why he didn't spice it up a bit and remix his own instrumental tracks? But after all, he's already produced and arranged the music over his own vocals to create a distinct sound, and maybe it's hard to go back when you've gone so far. Perhaps Krohn's intentions are to see what others can do with the record, because while the music is less than exciting on it's own, it might be a good sample for someone else to work into their own music...
We've long been fans of sound artist Steve Roden, and his 'lowercase' sound explorations. His music is minimal and often flickering on the very edge of audibility. Beautiful and occasionally dangerously delicate. On a recent visit, he passed us a cd from Jeffrey Roden, who just so happens to be Steve's uncle, and who is also a musician, a bass player by trade, but just like his nephew, Roden is not content to work within the traditional confines of an instrument's sound, or a particular genre. Roden composes for and records solo bass, but unlike many solo instrumental records, Seeds Of Happiness is all about melody and texture, this is not noisy, or skronky, or 'difficult', the strings are not scraped, or bowed, the sound is not processed, the bass is played like a bass, the notes rich and reverberant, the melodies fluid and lovely, the arrangements languid and lush. Some tracks are super simple, almost like a bass line just plucked from some lost pop song, allowed to hover and drift out in the open, loosed from its traditional rock moorings. Other songs are dense and subtly complex, little flurries of notes, tangled melodies, all woven into a shimmering static backdrop, for a simple swooping melody to drape over the top. The mood is minor key and melancholy, but most of the songs here are infused with a rich warmth, the melodies not so much sad as they are wistful.�
A simply gorgeous, gorgeous lazy afternoon, rainy day assortment of dreamy drifting loveliness. So recommended.
Scott Herren's (better known as Prefuse 73) latest incarnation as Savath & Savalas has manifested one of his finest works to date which for some reason we weren't expecting at all. His last couple of records on Warp featured Eva Puyuelo Muns on vocals which made them highly compelling to listen to on the one hand but also made them safe enough to feature in car commercials and as background music in trendy restaurants. On Golden Pollen, well after a highly publicized falling out between Herren and Muns, Herren takes up all the vocal duties himself, making for a subdued but never unpredictable recording. After listening to O Terco and Caetano Veloso all week, Golden Pollen almost sounds like a lost Brazilian pastoral psych record from the early seventies, if it wasn't for the experimental electronic passages in tracks like "Te Amo...Por Que Me Odias". Although it's his best record, that doesn't mean it's without certain flaws. Its concentration on subtlety creates a lack of dynamics making the record seem overly long and a bit same-y at times. But that is sometimes what happens when a record is based more on atmosphere than composition and is probably best enjoyed in a peripheral setting rather than a deeply concentrated listening environment. Produced by John McEntire, with Jose Gonzales and Mia Doi Todd making guest appearances.
Swooooon!! He made us wait years, but finally Mr. Schnauss's follow-up to 2003's A Strangely Isolated Place has arrived! Are you ready for some epic shoegazer splendor? Well, sink your ears into this swirling blown-out shimmering dreaminess. The heavily processed and effected vocals, guitars and synthesizers are all melded together into one envelopingly dense yet somehow airy procession. Absolutely gorgeous and absolutely recommended!
You never know quite what you're going to get with a Klaus Schulze record. Well, you know you 're gonna get long and alienlike synthscapes, but you never know where or how Schulze's particular eccentricies are going to manifest themselves. Not sure if Blackdance was reissued out of chronological order or we are just reviewing it late but after having reviewed Irrlicht, Cyborg and Timewind, we jump back a year before Timewind to 1974. Maybe this makes sense because out of the four, Blackdance is the most different, it's slightly warmer, more playful and there is much more weird stuff happening. Of course the tracks are still epically long, but beneath the synth-drones we find a lot more rhythms, bongos and drums, acoustic guitars, a lot more propulsive phasing, electronic squiggles and just in general much more movement than the previously reviewed records. By the third track, we hear some Gregorian chanting before some pulsing and clicking rhythms appear to duel with the church-y organ cycles. But it's the two bonus tracks that set this release apart from the rest. "Foreplay" has a sci-fi epic-ness to it as it sounds like the arrival of a giant spaceship preparing to battle backed by choir like synth-voices and explosive rumblings. And the strangely titled "Synthies Have (No) Balls?" is full throttle heavy organ drone with pitch-shifted synth phases and spectacular drumming that is Schulze's most rocking outing we've heard yet. Pretty awesome!
Take a healthy dose of the Brit rock swagger of Pulp, some Canadian earnest buoyancy a la Hot Hot Heat and a bit of the New York rawk slouch of The Strokes, mix well. Then give'r all a blast of Bay Area sun-kissed breeziness and you might find yourself cuttin' a rug with Scissors For Lefty. Unlike many of their contemporaries whose dance rock tunes are simply one dimensional repetitions of a so-so melodic line that rely heavily on the button-pushing 4/4 thump to do all the work for 'em, Scissors For Lefty's equally dancefloor worthy tracks are full-fledged songs that actually go somewhere, following charmingly witty story arcs. If they ever remake the movie Valley Girl, the album's ninth song "Got Your Moments" should be first in line to appear on the soundtrack! Fun!
A sort of companion piece to Alva Noto's Xerrox, reviewed a few lists back, both in design and presentation, as well as sound and scope. In a past review of an older Senking record, we commented that Senking mainman�Jens Massel was restoring our faith in electronic music, and if we had lost faith since then, List would surely do the trick to bring us back into the fold.�
Malevolent and dark, from the first few seconds, it's like diving headlong into some black pool, floating through some Argento style horrific tableau, all grinding buzzing synths, and ominous low end swells, the various elements crackling and bathed in hiss, before being joined by a super minimal beat, mostly click and thump, and some haunting disembodied vocals. If we didn't know better we would think this was actually from some film, as it is, it sure as heck should be. Ultra creepy and gorgeously abject. The second track is more of the same, suffocating sonic darkness, this time with a bit more shimmer, and the briefest flares of melody amidst the corrosive rumbling.�
A few of the other tracks border on the danceable, some strange skeletal offshoot of IDM, bits of shuffle and skitter, but all stretched way out until the beats sound like pebbles tossed into a still black lake. Even then, the beats are occasionally swallowed up by huge swells of low end, or buzzing swaths of slithering synths.
Cinematic and dark, throbbing and mysterious, creepy as all get out, dance-y too, but only if you have a dancefloor in your secret lab, painted black, watched over by an army of cyborgs whose various creaks and ticks are what is creating this strange alien haunted house minimal techno. So good.�
The cd comes packaged in another striking and strange oversized Raster-Noton package, a multiple panel fold out sleeve, with die cuts holding the disc in place.
A nice reminder of why we love DJ Shadow comes in the form of this best of Mo' Wax Singles compilation that culls together all of his groundbreaking early sides and remixes that put the London-based label on the map. Spanning the years 1993-2000, some of the tracks are alternative versions of material from Endtroducing, and Pre-emptive Strike but also included are the Dark Days Soundtrack single and a handful of remixes, among them Depeche Mode, Folk Implosion, Massive Attack, and Blackalicious. It's cool to have all these tracks compiled together, sort of like a beloved old friend we haven't seen in ages.
It has been many years since Metamkine has released anything through their highly esteemed Cinema Pour L'Oreille series of electro-acoustic / musique concrete masterpieces; but if they did, one sound artist who should stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Eliane Radigue, Luc Ferrari, Jean-Francois Laporte, and Jim O'Rourke would be Matt Shoemaker. If anything, Shoemaker's work has such an intensely cinematic quality as the edits of his sound design snap to and fro in dramatic fashion with static periods for magnetic drone, uneasy field recording, and agitated objects; and this cinematic undercurrent to his work alone would make him a strong candidate. But concepts are only really as good as their execution; and few have the panache of Matt Shoemaker. We recently posted a review of his third album Spots In The Sun, and we had been so taken by the quality of that record that we uncovered some copies of his second record Warung Elusion, which had been released back in 2001 on Bernhard Gunter's Trente Oiseux label. This is an album of sheer sonic abstraction whose sun-bleached, disquieting dreaminess parallels many of those 'lost-memory' albums that we have lauded so many time in the past (e.g. Phillip Jeck, Jasper TX, Tim Hecker, etc.). Yet, Shoemaker is not one to sentimentalize such sounds, rather he presents these flickering sound, erratic crackles, and deconstructed ambience as a reminder of human failings in the memory process. Here, meditation might drift into a lulling stupor in need of hard smack against the ear. It's a blow that Shoemaker is more than willing to impart upon his audience. Highly recommended!
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Belgian funeral folk avant ambient doom troop Silvester Anfang sure have a way with images. Their first full length featured the band in white hoods, shirtless, with sticks and clubs and axes and goats on chains, now this one, the band's first proper cd release, sports a foxy raven haired lass licking a skull, and elsewhere in the booklet and on the sleeve, posing with said licked skull, as well as plenty of goats still, upside down ladies in bikinis in the shape of an upside down crucifix, as well as a full color fold out poster of the babe-licking-skull album cover....
And while that all may seem a bit over the top, somehow, it suits Silvester Anfang's dark and demented music. They're like a grim, blackened, metallic version of all those freaky forest neo folkies. Imagine Avarus or Feathers or Kemialliset, just hanging out beneath the trees, weaving their stumbling free folk magic, when all of a sudden, they're pulled into some pit in the middle of the forest, only to emerge days later, with a blank dead eyed stare, emotionless, eyes black as obsidian, their hair tangled and matted, their skin covered in mysterious tattoos, and the sounds they make, like some some primitive musical ritual...
That's sort of what Silvester Anfang sound like. The parts are all familiar, the shuffling rhythms, the junkyard percussion, the haunting vocals, the detuned guitars, but somehow twisted, dark, and so black, and like they also somehow dragged some big ass amps as well as at least one full drum kit out into the woods, and the results are seriously scary (and amazing).
The first track unfurls a web of jagged distorted guitar melodies over a simple motorik pound, surrounded by all sorts of chants and distant drones, above a constantly shifting landscape of grinding whirs and swirling clouds of tinkling melodies, occasionally overtaken by thick washes of super distorted guitar buzz, everything culminating in an orgiastic musical free for all, with wild feral female vocals, dense tribal drumming, epic cinematic swells... an immense sonic squall the lights the black forest with some burnished red glow...
The second track, the nearly half hour long "Konfituur Voor De Satanjeugd" is much more subtle and stretched out, some sort of German Oak krautrock style slow burner, all shuffling drums and whirling ambience, spidery guitars and glistening barely there melodies, until about the 20 minute mark, when a riff finally coalesces, a killer riff, a sort of Viking dirge, a bit metallic, grinding away over thick sheets of blown out guitar drone, a dense wash of amp buzz and guitar growl, the riff looped and cyclical, while in the background lurk streaks of high end guitar and warm whirring synths, gorgeous and not a little bit frightening.
Magickal and mystickal, dark and diabolical, just the sort of musick that might very well have you too licking skulls after repeated listens, and there's certainly not a better recommendation than that...
Yet another gorgeous chunk of musical murk from these Berlin based noisemakers. Not sure what they do or how they do it, but they manage to make tape hiss sound divine, and warbly defective recording equipment sound like it was meant to be busted.
This latest 12" is more of what we've come to love about these guys. A grimy, gritty dream world of dripping low end and thick sludgy ambience.
One side is completely vocal based it sounds like, with lots of moaning and coo-ing and mumbling and chanting and wailing and groaning and howling, all drenched in tape hiss and amp buzz and reverb and delay and whatever other effects seemed to be within reach, all of these disparate vocals get all tangled up into a weird swirl of sound that almost sounds like a bunch of dusty old 78s being played at once.
The flip side is more standard Skaters fare, weird muted rhythms, mumbled vocals, guitar hum, synth buzz, snake charmer melodies, all sorts of rumble and warble and shimmer smeared into goopy soundscapes that crawl and ooooooooze.
Packaged in a super glossy full color collage sleeve with hand screened liner notes on the inside.
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum are in a league all their own, and have been since their beginnings back in 1999 when they rose out of the ashes of the equally indefinable, incomparable Bay Area ensemble Idiot Flesh. Truly inventive, imaginative and way the hell 'out there', who else has successfully integrated rock, pop, black metal, prog, Dada, Futurism, Butoh, puppetry, high falutin' art school-isms, utter madness (you name it!) into their monumental being? And yet the disparate elements all come together to form a cohesive elaborate body of work. It'd be easy to conclude that the members of this quintet live sleep and breathe SGM, but they all somehow have energy and time to do numerous other highly regarded creative activities too. Wow.
Their fourth album is even more guerrilla than gorilla. It's an aural assault from the get go. The opening song "Helpless Corpses Enactment" blasts your tender ears in true black metal fashion. Then they move swiftly into wildly skewed territories that other artists would dare not tread, least of all as deftly and fearlessly as this group.
Perhaps too monumentally strange and strangely monumental for some, In Glorious Times is not for everyone. It is not an album that you just slap on while your washing dishes or yakking on the phone. No, you must enter into it with focus and fortitude. Even still, be prepared for your ears to be dumbfounded and downright confused.
Still boggles the mind that this underground New York art rock band somehow were permitted into the mainstream... y'know the big leagues, but it's that mammoth wealth of resources that allows the release of special reissue editions such as this one.
So, what's your fave Sonic Youth album? If you took a poll around here, chances are you'd hear the names of a select few of their early albums come up repeatedly -- Bad Moon Rising, Evol, Goo, Sister maybe -- but none may be quite as beloved as Daydream Nation. Simply put, in pretty much every aspect -- album art, title, song sequence and the songs themselves -- Sonic Youth nails it. It's a superbly realized art rock album that balances melodicism and dissonance, traditional song structures and soundscapes.
The extras that make this version deluxe include a home demo version of "Eric's Trip" and an entire disc of unreleased live tracks from the Daydream era as well as some great covers of Kraftwerk, Mudhoney, The Beatles and Captain Beefheart. Just in time to get us all psyched up for their upcoming live performance of this legendary album in its entirety!
Here we have the debut from St. Vincent (aka: Anni Clark), who for years has lived in the shadows as one of many members of The Polyphonic Spree and a member of Sufjan Steven's band. It seems Clark hasn't just stepped out of the background, she's plunged head first (playing more than a dozen instruments on the record) into the creation of a lush wall of sound.
Clark's voice may be most readily compared to that of Beth Gibbons (Portishead), and on her more upbeat tracks one can imagine that St. Vincent may be what Portishead would sound like a bit less digitized and intense. There is definitely a nod to Sufjan's musical style present here (she did help create it after all!). That is to say that dashing horns, lush strings, a sweet chorus, and many musical accessories that often fall to the wayside (vibraphone, clavieta, dulcimer, triangle, etc.) add a brisk, rich quirkiness to some songs. She seems to have incorporated a little breathing room by interspersing "Human Racing," a more stripped down frolicking soft pop track and, "We Put A Pearl In The Ground," a short piano interlude. In short, Marry Me is a wonderfully orchestrated and beautifully executed record that we highly recommend, particularly for fans of Portishead, Sufjan Stevens, Broadcast, PJ Harvey, Amy Winehouse, and Rufus Wainwright.
Moe! Staiano (former member of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) is one heck of a dynamic avant percussionist and soundscaper who exercises restraint in both composition and performance, but he's an uncorkable fountain of recordings (as not only a solo artist, but also a collaborator and in his improv ensemble Moe!kestra). He's so prolific that it's hard to keep up with all of his activities. We're trying our best tho'!
Inspired by the Dada and Surrealist movements, Staiano's music incorporates found object percussion instruments be they pots, pans, pipes, cooking utensils, industrial machinery or children's toys. Recorded in two separate sessions, this is his first album of purely solo improvisations. Over the course of this sixty two minute long album, Staiano moves deftly through cacophonous, sonically crowded spaces into stark, serene minimalism and back again.
A brand new label focusing on grime and dubstep, from the same folks who do Anthem Records, responsible for the recent Birchville Frog Prince 7" as well as the amazing Brainbombs Stinking Memory 7" (both now out of print so don't ask).
The first release on LoDubs is a one sided 12" from Starkey, who has been popping up on dubstep comps all over the place lately, and this one sided 12" single is a killer. Dense and dark, with ultra damaged bass lines, all sorts of strange synth melodies, stuttering almost jungly rhythms, all tangled up and convoluted, and funky as fuck. Maybe one of the best dubstep tracks we've heard. Totally reminds us of recent AQ record of the week Milanese, which is most definitely a good thing.
Packaged in recycled brown paper sleeves, hand stamped with the label logo.
The Storm Bugs were the construction of Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball, who were two very active participants in the post-punk explosion of DIY productions in the late '70s and early '80s. Their gritty electronic aesthetic tended toward the industrial reappropriation of found materials and abused consumer electronics that harken back to Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle. Sanderson and Ball had also formed the Snatch Tapes label, which had released a handful of David Jackman cassettes back in the day as well as some compilations of likeminded eccentric malcontents. So far, a handful of collections of Strom Bugs material has surfaced in recent years with Supplementary Benefit being the most recent. This anthologizes two singles released in 1980 and 1981, as well as an overview of their experiments with the VCS3, a unique British synthesizer whose patch bay could be configured into a series of complex feedback loops, which the Storm Bugs used to great effect. Expect abrasive arpeggiations, primitive technotic marches, and unhinged arrangements of broken turntablist damage, oblique dirges, and obliterated textures. Pretty tremendous stuff, and kudos again to Vinyl On Demand for reclaiming another set of recordings that surely would have quietly disappeared into the ether of history.
Now we've got a nice Japanese cd reissue of this (previously, but no longer, available on the somewhat shady Radioactive label). It's more expensive but better. Our review of it before ran something like this:
Some fairly heavy (maaaan) stoner psych blues rawk action here from 1971. Yep, seventy-one. We won't try to tell you that the lone album from Japan's Strawberry Path was one of the best rock releases of '71, 'cause of course there were so many great albums out that year. But if you're a fan of heavy rock of the era, especially the weirder stuff from overseas, you should check 'em out. There's plenty of wailing guitar and jammin' organ on here, but also some mellow moves too so it's maybe more '60s than '70s sounding, and VERY Jimi Hendrix influenced. And we'd guess they were also into such Western acts as Steppenwolf, early Deep Purple, Grand Funk and possibly Black Sabbath. In the realm of early '70s Japanese hard psych they're on par with Speed, Glue & Shinki and Foodbrain, but not quite as as solid as the best Flower Travellin' Band or Blues Creation. These guys (a duo of Shigeru "Jimmy" Narumo on guitars and keys, and Hiro Tsunoda on drums and vocals, helped out by various guests) went on to form the even heavier Flied Egg, who released an LP on Vertigo, a track from which is heard on Andy Votel's Vertigo Mixed disc in fact. This is totally in that Vertigo vein, with classical flourishes of flute and strings, hard-rockin' boogie blues riffage, wild vocals, kickin' drum breaks, acoustic interludes... it's an acid-prog mix that isn't always in the proto-metal direction we might want but we'll take what we can get. Plus you've gotta love the song titles, which are either really cool and weird like "Maximum Speed Of Muji Bird (45 Seconds Of Schizophrenic Sabbath)" or totally indicative of what you'd expect like "I Gotta See My Gypsy Woman" and "Mary Jane On My Mind". Woah, yeah.
Recently we've reviewed the two excellent Flied Egg albums, reissued on cd by Universal Japan, as is this -- if you dug those, Strawberry Path is also up your alley (Path?).
Another one of those records that barely needs a review. What self respecting black metaller would see the words Xasthur and Striborg on the same record and not instinctively reach for their wallet? We can only speak for the black metal nerds here, but we have been jonesing for this disc since we first hear rumor of it's impending release ages ago. And if just the mere fact that these two mighty black metal entities are doing musical battle on separate sides of the same 7" isn't enough, the fact that both tracks are fucked and amazing should be.�
Striborg is in fine form as always, lo-fi, damaged, demented, noisy, stumbling, confusing, but oh so glorious. A plodding black dirge, vacuum cleaner guitar, practice space drums, blast beats that sound like they're being played on a cardboard box drum kit, hissy bursts of muted blackness, a bizarre black journey through the damaged musical psyche of Sin Nanna, ending in a killer, almost groovy, lurching dirgey outro.�
Xasthur seems to be rising to Striborg's 'how lo-fi-can-you-go' challenge, pushing his sound so far down in the murk, it ends up sounding like a transistor radio playing at the bottom of a mud puddle. Probably the murkiest most lo-fi recording yet from Malefic, but if anything, it only serves to make the sound more evocative, more mysterious, and more strangely pretty. Those weeping guitars, mournful melodies, drums that sound like they were recorded from a million miles away, the whole thing is very dark and dim and forlorn, the perfect sonic foil to Striborg's weirdo black damage. And if we even need to tall you how essential this is, you need to march right down here and turn in your black metal credentials.�
We're one of the only places selling this thing besides the label, and they are flying out of here, sure to be gone in no time, so grab one while you can.
Pressed on clear vinyl, LIMITED TO 800 COPIES!!!
An absolutely essential, vinyl-only Sun City Girls release, one of our all time favorite SCG records since Torch Of The Mystics. The bad news is, A. it's really expensive, and B. we only got 15 copies and it's totally out of print. So SCG fanatics best act fast if they want one of these, cuz holy shit is this one mindblowing and ear tickling release...
The packaging alone makes this worth the price tag. An ultra thick, eye popping sleeve, housed in a die cut lp slipcase, with metallic embossing on the front. Inside, it's a one sided white vinyl lp, with the flip side gorgeously silkscreened. And there's so much stuff crammed inside the sleeve, it weighs a ton. There's multiple 12"x12" full color flats that seem to be alternate cover art, lots of random sized artwork, all on thick cardstock, two sheets of stickers, a band photo, a childhood photo of SCG Charlie Gocher (who passed away recently) and a page of confusing SCG linernotes from some zine from way back in 1999. Hard to say if that means this was previously released, but none of us have ever heard it.
So when you go to play the record, don't be confused by the needle hovering endlessly on the edge of the disc, it plays from the inside out, backwards, so set the needle down next to the label and let 'er rip. And as if the direction of play was any indicator, the music is almost entirely backwards! And it's amazing. Dark and droney, creepy and haunting, a little bit circusy, but mostly dizzying and hypnotic. Imagine listening to the darkest scariest SCG album backwards.... (and in fact, this is apparently the backwards version of "The Venerable Song (The Meaning Which Is No Longer Known)" from the LP Bright Surroundings Dark Beginnings released on Majora way back in 1993!)...
Haunted vocals and mysterious chants and howls, fluttering flickering flutes all drift and hover over a gorgeous landscape of backwards drones and strange pulsing rhythms, created from that swooping backwards 'ffffzzzzt' sound that music makes in reverse... We weren't sure what to expect, but we've been listening to this nonstop, over and over and over, so goddamn good.
Not sure how limited this was (other than REALLY), and apparently there were a million different variations of color and inserts and whatnot in this already tiny micropressing, but we only have 15, and once these are gone, they are gone forever.
It's easy to hear bits of No Neck Blues Band and Sun Burned Hand Of The Man And Avarus, and various other practitioners of that sort of rambling free folk stumble when first listening to this mysterious disc by some group called Sun Supreme. But listen closer for a minute and think about it. SUN Supreme, and where would any of those bands be without... Well, yeah, without the Sun City Girls, and while we can't really confirm it, this disc -was- recorded in Seattle, in 2004 and does pretty much sound like a late night, druggy ramble through some serious SCG territory.
The give away, is that it's not nearly as abstract as those other groups, it's way more melodic and musical, with a heavy emphasis on the guitar, and a distinctly Eastern bent, lots of strummed chords and kitchen sink percussion, bits of piano and other noisemakers, going from that sort of stumbling campfire improv to decidedly propulsive krautrocky groove, occasionally devolving into ramshackle chaos, but just as likely to coalesce into huge epic swells, before settling back down into more dreamy late night rambling. Really cool.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!! Packaged in beautiful hand screened chipboard sleeves and pressed on ultra thick vinyl.
It speaks much to a bands power that a drummer and three guys with saxophones can out assault a line-up of ear-splitting knob twiddling feedback makers and a band of obnoxious Portland kids on acid playing "noise-folk" and screeching "Won't you be our friends?" at the audience. Such was the case of this Sword + Sandals live set at the ARC Cafe, one of San Francisco's many strange and short-lived venues. Adding a third saxophone to their ranks for this set, S+S take full advantage of the Arc's cavernous space to spread out and create dynamic battlements of overlapping sax trills across machine-gun drumming. Seemingly cacophonous and composed at the same time, these free players have quite an intuitive knack for creating swells of tension with only occasionally some release. Bracing but always both visually and sonically compelling.
