This cd was still in its shrinkwrap and yet it'd already gotten our hackles (and chuckles) up. Now nine albums under the bridge, we don't really need to go in depth about our love/hate feelings for Mr. Adams, do we? If you need to know the nitty gritty, go ahead and peruse our past reviews of his albums. Simply stated, we've long admired his songsmithery, but have questioned the motivations behind some of his creative and marketing decisions. Fickle? In the case of Easy Tiger, well, we could go on about the sci-fi font and the strategic use of spot color on the album cover by Adams' design team, to focus on his wristwatch, sporting the time 4:20, umm, yep, the only color on the cover... 4:20 DUDE!!! But... see for yourself. Targeting a new market perhaps? Aww, let us not waste any more energy grousing. The music, the music! Is this Adams' most consistent, wholly alt-country rock album since his solo debut Heartbreaker? Yes, it just might be! Back in 2000, that album's blend of well crafted roots and pop won many of our hearts, and while this album can't possibly erase the interim sore spots, it does possess a number of songs that have unearthed the lil' Adams' lovin' spot in our chests long buried. Now, we won't go into how Cup has a violent aversion to people yelling "gee-taaar solo!" which Adams does on the fourth track "Halloweenhead" 'cause then he turns around and presents one of the sweetest sensitive songs on the album ("Oh My God, Whatever, Etc"). Pardon us if we're keeping a sidelong gaze on our sincerity meter. He still changes his country boy vocal delivery at the drop of a hat -- adopting some Neil Young-ish yearn/bleat inflections on the sing-along-with-the-guitar-melody number "Off Broadway" then switching to a deeper George Jones-esque intonation on "Pearls On A String". He does it all very well indeed, but it does leaving you wondering if he's multiple personality'd or is a well versed human mockingbird. Nonetheless, stick around for the closer, the sweetly introspective "I Taught Myself How To Grow Old".
More UNBLACK metal from the seemingly infallible E.E.E. label, home to some of the most amazing black metal we've heard in ages, which all just so happens to be not so black, as in white, as in Christian! And we're not talking Stryper here, this stuff is as fierce and furious and fucked up and black as any of your Striborgs or Lugubrums.�
As far as we can tell, although we're not entirely sure, Agathothodion seems to be the work of the same man behind massive AQ faves Light Shall Prevail, who is also a member of Glaciial, an unblack metal supergroup, as well as the man who runs the E.E.E. label and seems to be single handedly spreading the unblack gospel. When does this man do anything but spew thick torrents of glorious black buzz?! Who cares as long as we're continually treated to music this gorgeously bleak and intense, this buzz-drenched and brutal, and even if it's not the same guy, whoever this mysterious black mystic is, the music he conjures up is both majestic and epic as well as dark and buzzing.�
Kan Guds Gjort is split into two looooooong tracks, one twenty minutes and one more than a half an hour, both sprawling and expansive, the perfect form for drone-y buzzy black metal, allowed to stretch out to trance-like proportions. Mostly midtempo, a loping relentless rhythm, the guitars buzzing and swirling, the riffs circular and hypnotically repetitive, the drums going from simple pound to furious blast, but as is often the case with E.E.E. bands it's the utterly distinctive vocals that make it, here it's a guttural growl, that howls in a truly creepy raspy way, buried in the mix, so it's just sort of a fuzzed out wash of distorted ggggrrrrrrrowl on top of the layers of buzz and hiss. The other cool thing is the songs work up to a fever pitch, and suddenly it's a super dramatic Godspeed style crescendo, but rendered in soaring sheets of buzzing blackness and dense tangles of thrashing drums and anguished wails. Here and there, the tracks smooth out into extended almost math rock jams, with jangly guitars buried under a wash of layered guitar, the drums simple and solid, those are the parts that are truly mesmerizing, a doomy depressive drone drenched blackened post rock that oozes into the more traditional blackness around it.�
As�always super limited, we got a bunch but E.E.E. stuff flies out of here and we usually can't get any more...
It's tough not to joke about Baker's ridiculously prolific output. Same with Acid Mothers Temple. Every time a new record comes out, we don't really want to mention it at all, but we sort of feel remiss if we don't. It sort of comes with the territory, when you begin averaging a release a month, maybe more. But if you're anything like us, and it seems you pretty much are, then when you decide to love an artist, you want everything they put out. And like you, we've decided to love Aidan Baker, which means not only a million Nadja cds, but a million more released under his own name.
But like Acid Mothers Temple, we've yet to be disappointed, each Baker release is fantastic, similar sounding enough to be recognizable, but varied enough to keep it interesting.
This one is another full band record, the instrumentation is guitar, bass, drums, vocals, flute, violin, with someone credited with remix, but this one is a lot different than most anything we've heard so far from Baker. This is essentially a dreamy indie rock slowcore record, with bits of production fuckery here and there, but for the most part, this is slow, lovely, melancholy, lap steel, shuffling drums, sparse reverbed guitar, and vocals, mumbled indie sad boy vocals, drawled over the lilting dreamy depressive plod. Track three is where the slowcore gets sort of smeared and smudged into more typically Baker fare, a washed out low end shimmer, guitars blurry and indistinct, feedback pulsing and shimmering. The next two tracks are more of the same, that foggy, soft focus dreamlike blur Baker is so adept at. But by track six, we're back to a loping late night wander, circular guitar figure, simple and meditative, simple jazzy drums, barely noticeable bits of woozy ambience, distant smears of high end melody, dour and gorgeously mournful. That track is moments later muted and again spread into a thick blurry abstract, a single deep cavernous drone, rumbling and reverberant, but rife with mumbled melodies and fragmented instrumental shards, barely recognizable in the swirling blackened drift.
The big surprise is the final track, a Codeine worthy slowcore crawl, this time the guitars are heavier, electric, the vocals doused in reverb and drifting ghostlike over the dirge, always threatening to explode in a burst of Nadja like metallic bliss, but never quite getting there, instead opting for soaring sublimated drama, tangled high end psychedelic melodies over a constantly shifting swirl of fuzzy guitars and buzzing ambience, and that steady simple drumming, sounding like some long lost live fuzzy and blissy Galaxie 500 jam...
As we've no doubt mentioned before, metallic post rock seems to be its own little cottage industry, spawning more bands that it's possible to keep up with, and causing lots of bands to suddenly shift their sound, to be either more metal (for the post rock bands), or more post rock (for the metal bands). But as we've also mentioned before, it's tough to complain about a sound that combines two of our favorite musics. Metal, heavy and crushing, doomy and massive, and post rock, with its mathy rhythms, moody melodies, and soaring arrangements.
One of our favorite purveyors of this sound is Rosetta, from Philadelphia, who gave us one of our favorite postrockmetal records a few years back in the form of The Galilean Satellites. The approach for that release was unique, in that one disc was song based, with all the requisite crushing riffs and mathy metallic crush, while the second disc was all ambient, long tracks of swirl and shimmer, drone and rumble.
With the postrockmetal feeding frenzy, we were sure Rosetta were on the fast track to being big names in the scene, but they seem to still remain just below the spotlights, which seems to have done them no harm in terms of new music, their half of this split destroys. Albeit beautifully and dramatically. Two tracks, both topping 10 minutes. Both beginning with plenty of soaring jangle and Godspeed like cinematic build. Guitars chime and ring out, the drums are simple, perfectly supporting the rest of the instruments as they drift skyward. The first track builds and builds in intensity, only becoming truly metallic near the end, when the chiming high end guitars drift off leaving a churning downtuned riff, but even that riff is wrapped in effervescent streaks of glistening far away guitar harmonics, and strange vocal snippets, and rumbling whirring low end drones.
The second track follows a similar pattern, but the heavy parts STAY heavy, with howled guttural vocals, and a very Neurosis-y riff, but again, still surrounded by all sorts of incandescent guitars and dense swirls of ambient buzz.
Rosetta are teamed up with fellow Philly noisemakers Balboa, who also do their own version of the metal math rock, but theirs has a foot firmly planted in punk rock, hardcore to be exact. The first track starts off like a super charged nineties math rock jam, with angular guitars and BIG drums, vocals that are sort of sad boy, but build into full on howls, when all of a sudden, the band lurches into an almost blast beat, a furious punk rock blast, that shifts gears again, into a seriously hooky hardcore groove, sounds like a weird mix, but it sounds amazing. And a perfect foil to the languid expansiveness of Rosetta. The other two songs, don't get as punk rock as the opener, instead, mining more of that nineties math rock sound, Polvo, Dazzling Killmen, Hoover, the songs are loping stretched out grooves, the bass and guitar locked in tight, the drums almost tribal, everything crashing together in huge bursts of metallic emo fury. Pretty great.
And as if that weren't enough, the two bands combine forces for the closer, the title track, which to be honest sounds like it could be either band, as easy as both, BUT, it's amazing, a seriously gorgeously executed, heavy and hooky chunk of mathy metallic rock. From the beginning, a propulsive, almost krautrock jam, that slowly and steadily builds into a seriously thick bout of massive roiling guitars, and chaotic drumming, all downtuned and dripping with distortion, the only hint that this is actually two bands is about three quarters of the way through, when the drummers engage in a relentless double kick dual, over which ALL the guitarists spit out spidery glistening guitar lines, a huge glimmering tangle of melodies that sparkles and shimmers, and as you might expect is quickly sucked under another crushing wave of grinding growling guitar. Awesome stuff. Fans of the usual suspects (Isis, Baroness, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Pelican, Tides, Conifer, Minsk, etc..) most definitely NEED this.
Hydra Head, the home to lots of AQ faves, from Isis to Pelican to Khanate, has gradually been dipping their toes into much blacker waters, reissuing the Heresi record in the US, and signing USBM hero Xasthur, and now offering up the latest full length from Sweden's melodic black metal weirdos Bergraven.
These guys are tough to describe. A deliriously unpredictable listen. Dodsvisioner is not thrashing blasting grimness, although it is grim in its own peculiar way. The tempos are mostly mid, the guitars soar and warble and rumble and emit damaged atonal melodies, more than they actually buzz. The vocals are appropriately raspy and demonic, but when they are draped across strange clean reverbed guitars, or weird circusy keyboards, or even -- stranger still for black metal -- pedal steel, they take on a whole different vibe.
The closest comparisons that come to mind are Lifelover and Katatonia, if you somehow mixed those two bands, Katatonia's moody melancholia, and Lifelover's strange off-kilter blackened pop sensibility, you'd be close, but the music of Bergraven is it's own dark weirdness entirely.
It's melodic for sure, but the melodies are strange, almost alien sounding. And the arrangements are full of space, whether it's stretches of ambience, or loping post rock, clean guitars and simple mathy drumming.
Everywhere there lurk strange haunting minor key chords, and when keyboards do join the fray, they're strange and almost new wave-y sounding. The main guitar parts are gnarled and detuned, often not distorted, but clean and reverbed, eventually giving way to some dense black chug but even then, a lot of the time they're drenched in whooshy chorus or shimmering delay. Often those bits sound a little like Joy Division, but on a malfunctioning turntable. Weird and woozy. Elsewhere the guitars get all 'blue' and moody and smoky and sound like they were purloined from some Chris Isaak tune. The vocals are hushed dramatic whispers as often as they are anguished howls. Bursts of double kick underpin loping darkwave jangle, beautiful post rock rhythms get all washed out and smeared with layers of indistinct blackness, there's so much going on, and so much of it is not at all metal, but manages to sound dark and black and intensely grim. A gloriously tangled blackened sonic web for sure.
This definitely pushes a lot of our 'fucked' metal buttons, as well as our demented black pop buttons (bet you didn't think we had those!) and the more we listen to it the further we get sucked into Bergraven's damaged metallic black pop universe...
For the latest installment in their ongoing, all-analog blackened onslaught,�local raw, primitive, black-thrash duo Bone Awl unleash another full length lp, the third by our count, not including a clutch of limited run cassette tapes and 7"s. And as always, it's another fantastically furious and filthy slab of relentlessly pounding buzz, hateful howl and sheer black force.�
For the uninitiated, Bone Awl are the duo of�He Who Gnashes Teeth and He Who Crushes Teeth, just guitar and drums, but the two are a whirling dervish of harsh negative energy, not so much blasting and buzzing black metal style, as pounding and pulsing, a blown out D-beat style garage thrash pummel. Every track takes a single black riff, and pounds it into the ground, the guitar a swirling cloud of dark energy, the drums some sort of harnessed chaos, hewing closer to the abject blown out pound of the Brainbombs than perhaps any of their more metal forebears. No real blast beats to be found, instead the sound is a blackened punk rock, crusty and crumbling, on the verge of total collapse, barreling hellward with unstoppable momentum.�
Pressed on super thick�180 gram vinyl, housed in a thick cardstock inner sleeve, printed with lyrics, and housed in a gorgeous black and white poster sleeve, that opens to be pretty massive. The whole thing tucked in a plastic jacket with a sticker affixed to the front. And as always, probably crazy limited...
Described as "One part Devendra Banhart and one part Daniel Johnston", David Thomas Broughton is like a nu-folk version of Ariel Pink. Earnest and heartfelt, but so so so damaged and strange. Incorporating detuned guitars, struggling malfunctioning drum machines, simple lo-fi organs, circusy keyboards, simple finger picked melodies, struggling Casio drum machines, all tangled up in expansive ultra personal folk songs, but folk bathed in lo-fi effects, backwards guitar loops, shimmering ambience, tape hiss, and pretty much whatever else Broughton could get his hands on or figure out how to get some interesting noise out of.
The opening track "The Circle Is Never Complete" is a gorgeous fractured folk fairy tale, a little cabaret, a little torch song, the vocals mumbled and dripping with reverb, the melody melancholy and lilting, the organ slowing down and speeding up, pitches constantly changing, the guitar unfurling delicate melodies, buzzing and scraping, the drums, a stumbling skitter, the vocals occasionally leap out as parts of the song suddenly attain high fidelity before slipping back into muted murk. So dreamy and sweetly sorrowful.
The whole record is an amazing, gorgeous, curious, damaged, child like, forward thinking slab of what-the-fuck folk, some tracks are drawn out and expansive, others are brief little fragments, all woven together into some twisted personal narrative, but the highlight has to be "Gracefully Silent" an 8+ minute drift of simple strum and gorgeous backwards guitar, so instantly warm and memorable, the sort of part in a song, that breaks your heart, especially when it ends and the song moves on to another part. Thankfully, that first backwards shimmer and strum continues throughout the whole track, with the addition of all sorts of mumbled vocals and random conversations, the track just drifts along as if it might continue on forever...
A cobbled together collection of old unearthed tracks, It's In There Somewhere plays as if it was composed to be this single suite of songs, every track perfectly flowing into the next, the record a gorgeous patchwork of dark and moody songsmithery, ramshackle but meticulously crafted, personal and private, a fascinating and lovely abstract bit of damaged folk dreaminess.
Normally the solo project of 'noise violinist' C. Spencer Yeh, on Operator Dead... Post Abandoned, Burning Star Core has been expanded to a four piece, with Yeh on violin, voice, electronics, junkbox and trumpet, Trevor Tremaine on drums, percussion and objects, AQ fave Mike Shiflet on computer, electronics and voice, and Robert Beatty on electronics, who is also credited with being "acoustic appraiser."
As much as we've dug past BSC records, this one is definitely shaping up to be our favorite. This Burning Star Core Quartet thing really suits them. The opening track alone, "When The Tripods Came" is a serious contender for best 'noise rock' track of the year. Maybe ever. Calling it noise rock is hardly fair though. It's a rambling sprawling slow moving driftscape of buzz and distortion. It's almost how you might imagine a modern, noisier Taj Mahal Travellers to sound. In fact the whole record sort of has that same sort of spiritual organic vibe. Taking bits and pieces from other purveyors of longform drone noise, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Total, Sunroof!, mixing in some ultra-free jazz, some raga like buzz, some old school improvised ambience, then running it all through a battery of modern effects and unleashing this thick viscous, incredibly heavy, yet impossibly beautiful (especially for a 'noise' record) sound.
A lot of it has to do with the drums, a relentless chaotic octopoidal rhythmic frenzy, skittering as often as pounding, giving the thick snarling ambience direction and propulsion. Turning a record of drifts and shimmers, into something aggressive, something fierce... but the drums are just the framework, supporting the massive sonic weight of the swirling, churning lush noisiness above, beneath and around them.
The first two tracks, nearly 40 minutes, are some of the finest drone-dirge-space-improv EVER. Some impossible dream jam, The Taj Mahal Travellers vs. Crystal Fist vs. Wolf Eyes, mix in some strange disembodied horns, some Tim Hecker like blurred melancholia, add copious amounts of extra buzz and distorted crumble, wrap everything in a bleary eyed crystalline shimmer, and let the whole thing just ooze out of the speakers.
The third and fourth tracks are much more brief and less dense, balancing the bristling buzz of the first two, in the third, a muted warble underpins shimmering high end harmonics, strange muted mechanical whirs and creaks underneath, as well as burbling underwater bass, random bits of percussion, metallic thrum and long streaks of feedback, eventually building into a sort of an abstract tribal space drift, like the members of No Neck and Sunburned Hand jettisoned from the airlock into deep space mid-jam. The fourth is a rhythmic free for all, the drums a constant splatter and shimmer, spreading out like percussive ripples, the cymbals sizzling out a thick layer of constant buzzing whir to compliment the groaning blown out shimmer and reverb drenched washes of sound, everything growing gradually more distorted until it reaches a fever pitch, a lumbering swirl of crumbling low end and pounding drum damage.
Watch her legion of admirers increase tenfold with every passing moment! Will you join them/us? On this, her third full length, Neko Case's voice pours forth in such an untethered and unaffected manner, yet with such power and control. It's truly something to behold. Through seemingly endless touring since Furnace Room Lullaby (on her own, as well as with the New Pornographers) she's honed her voice into an incredibly dynamic instrument. She delivers old classics like "Runnin' Out of Fools" or "Look For Me (I'll Be Around)" with such ease and conviction so seamlessly amid her own splendid songs like "Deep Red Bells" and "I Wish I Was The Moon" as well as "Pretty Girls" from The Gift soundtrack. On much of Blacklisted, her delivery is not unlike that of a lone, world-weary torch singer. Quite simply, her performance is arresting - deeply dramatic and haunting. Perhaps this may be attributed, in part or in whole, to the fact that these days she's holding all the reins. She co-released this album on her own label Lady Pilot with Bloodshot Records, and produced and mixed it with Darryl Neudorf and Craig Schumacher. Also noteworthy is the absence of "and the Boyfriends" from her name, but she's by no means flying solo - although she did play a greater number of the instruments this time around (various guitars, saw, piano). Speaking of which, the accompanying music is a perfect, richly hued match that warmly envelops and lingers around her every word. She's surrounded by an impressive group of musical friends including Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico, Giant Sand's Howe Gelb, Kelly Hogan, Brian Connelly of Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet, Dallas Good of the Sadies, John Rauhouse, Tom Ray, and Mary Margaret O'Hara. A stunning album that glistens and glows from start to finish. Highly recommended.
The amplifier hum rattles the drum head of a snare which in turns vibrates the gong and sets off a resonant frequency on the piece of metal resting on the guitar strings, which in turns rattles the snare again and the cycle repeats itself. This almost sounds like a game of Mouse Trap or any given Rube Goldberg contraption of ludicrous proportions; yet, Australian avant-guitarist Tim Catlin and Milwaukee's own Jon Mueller used such a methodology for the construction of their seemingly simple but incredibly rich album Plates And Wires. Catlin has just come off of the success of his impeccable Radio Ghosts album of rasping acoustic drones on his prepared guitar and joins Mueller, whose treatments of gongs, bells, the drum kit, and percussive elements of all shapes and sizes mirrors what Catlin does to the guitar. When Catlin and Mueller begin to generate their quiet fluctuations of sustained harmonics and constantly abraded textures, their sounds enjoy an organic intimacy. Each droning sound emerges out of an ambient co-habitation and cross-contamination of psychoacoustic manipulation, resulting from very little (if any) digital tricks. Everything flutters elegantly in sympathetic arrangements of interwoven ebbs and flows in serpentine patterns for an album that parallels the acoustic richness of such tactile minimalists as Glenn Branca, Organum, Rhys Chatham, and Jason Khan.
Oh yeah, this CD comes housed in an oversized 10" sleeve with artwork by Thomas Kovacich and is limited to an edition of a mere 300 copies.
Perched on the same weeping willow branch as the lovely folksy likes of her pals Be Good Tanyas and Jolie Holland, Ora Cogan's Tatter (both in its original cd-r format and on the more recent cd release) album has been going about its kindly hushed way, charming the ears of all who've encounter it. Peep Creek is another little homespun release by this Canadian gal. It's a 2-song ep on cdr with packaging fashioned out of recycled lp jackets, sheets of fancy paper and gold star confetti. The two tunes are Spartan and lovely with simply plucked guitar, an occasional cello and lilting vocals that also bring to mind Karen Dalton and Jesse Sykes. Our only complaint is that this is far too short. More, please!
With each subsequent release, Colleen (aka Cecile Schott) finds a new idiosyncratic path in approaching the sounds of her desires. Having an immense love for the sounds of antique medieval and renaissance instrumentation but without the classical training or the presupposed musical discipline required to master them, she has taken artfully slow and gradual steps backwards into the learning process. She first began to sample her friend's classical record collections to create electronic looping compositions, then armed with effects pedals she began playing borrowed instruments and sampling herself. Last year's experiments with augmented antique music boxes has bolstered her confidence into further distilling the electronic "crutches" from her work and learn not only to play but to compose on some of the antique instruments herself. Les Ondes Silencieuses (The Still Waters) is the wondrous result of her latest efforts with studying the viola da gamba, (an ancestor to the cello but with seven strings made of gut instead of four strings made of steel), and the spinet (a baby harpsichord). Sometimes her pieces are accompanied by classical guitar, clarinet and crystal glass, but most of the time the pieces are spare letting the singular instruments sing out their sweet melodies all alone. Haunting and subdued, these post-classical and post-minimalist compositions are unique in the way that gazes backward and forward in musical time without fitting neatly into a specified place. We need a new genre to place her in. Loner Classical? Antique Folk? Whatever you want to call it, this is highly recommended!
What might you expect from a band featuring one part Mogwai, one part Electric Wizard, one part Pantheist, one part 3D House Of Beef (as well as maybe a few other random parts)? Most certainly not this. What we expected was some sort of super heavy, ultra dynamic loud-quiet-loud metal thing, but instead what we got was way more interesting. A moody, melancholic, moody, gothy, Victorian doom folk. Tragic Victorian ballads mixed with moody jangle rock dirges. More Decemberists, Black Heart Procession and Nick Cave than anything remotely metal.
From the opening track, a mysterious sort of sea shanty, we knew this was something completely unexpected. Whipping wind, creaking ship's rigging, chant like vocals, almost like Pirate style "yo ho ho"s, the music in the background wheezing and groaning. The perfect intro to a record of dark desolation and old time misery and sadness.
Recorded on a mix of modern gear and actual Victorian era equipment, these songs play out like miniature epics, the vocals world weary, the guitars shuffle and twang, the drums, mostly brushed, skitter along, the melodies minor key and mournful, while all around, strings moan and occasionally soar, and strange voices drift, harmonic shimmers reverberate in the dark, reverb, delay and echo give everything a washed out feel, occasionally the band does actually rock, but even then, it's some strange old fashioned cabaret, still wreathed in dark whir and murky mystery. On close listening, the songs are rife with all manner of strange microscopic sonic details, voices, creaks and groans, short wave radios, monk-like chants, swirling FX... all very haunting and mysterious, epic and dramatic.
Fans of the Decemberists, Black Heart Procession, Woven Hand, Godspeed and other likeminded cinematic miserablists will definitely dig, as will perhaps some of the more adventurous fans of CBP's members' more metallic pedigrees...
Ever since Pole decided to abandon the druggy Chain Reaction minimalism that we love so much, we've been continually searching for some new dub technician to fill that Pole shaped hole in our hearts, and with Reverberate Slowly from the mysterious El Fog, it seems like we've finally found it. Nothing here is brand new, instead it's variations on a sound we love, the abstract minimal space dub: click, pop, hiss, all harnessed into a skeletal skitter. Bathed in record crackle, these rhythms drift over ghostly moonlit expanses of near nothingness, the only color supplied by brief flourishes of vibraphone, or shimmery acoustic guitar, there is a definite Portishead vibe as well, with the washed out blur of the ambience, and the dusty old record quality of the sound. But even those little flourishes sometimes get chopped and clipped, rendering them just another rhythmic element. But rhythm is what it's all about, mood and rhythm, and the mood IS the rhythm. Shuffling, shimmering, pulsing like a heartbeat...
This is definite headphone music, so much is going on, on a microscopic level, various bits of hiss and fuzz, muted rhythms -beneath- the rhythms, melodies that are barely there shadows, guitars looped into melodies that smear into fuzzy soft focus textures, while the beat beneath is as unobtrusive as it is subtly relentless, beneath it all are huge bass swells, that lurk silently, before throbbing briefly and retreating once again, letting the rhythms trip trebly across the sound field, before they surface again to rattle your chest, like some distant passing train, or thunder rolling over the hills.
Reverberate Slowly is late night chill out bliss out drift off fade away sonic nirvana. It's about 1:00 am as this review is winding down, time to flip off the lights, shut down the computer, roll into bed, and drift off and let El Fog envelop us and carry us off...
You might not recognize these two names, but you probably recognize the bands they call home, all big time AQ faves. Bryan Eubanks is the man behind GOD, whose last disc on Jyrk we raved about a while back, and J.P. Jenkins is a member of Portland outfit Ghosting (as well as the Portland Bike Ensemble).
Two sidelong tracks, both lovely, and neither are all that far removed from these guys' actual bands. Eubanks side is a never ending (well, almost) wall of grinding low level hum, a relentless buzz, warm and layered and slowly shifting, sounding like a lo-fi Phill Niblock, blissful and meditative, the sort of track that when it stops, your ears almost pop, so suddenly deprived of the drone that was filling them moments earlier. Sometimes the simplest sounds are the most pleasing, and this sort of fuzzy hum is the sort of thing we could listen to forever (and we listened to it with the record reverser, which we also sell, and it sounded even cooler backwards! But then again, what doesn't?!)
Jenkins side sounds like it could have come straight off a Ghosting record, which is not at all a bad thing. A cloudy expanse of simple finger picked guitar nestled amidst soft focus billows of reverberating metallic hum. Eventually the hum dissipates, and what's left is some haunting alien Appalachia, with various notes hurled skyward and stretched into long peals of moaning high end drift. So nice.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Each one stamped on the lp label, housed in hand assembled and hand screened sleeves with a printed insert, two different color sleeves: gold on black cover or blue on white.
Ah, yes it's summertime! Warm sunshine and trips to the beach! And what's more summery than surf music? Lo and behold, our favorite label for obscure and amazing reissues, Japan's EM Records, has a special new series of five, count 'em, five reissues devoted to lost "surf" music treasures. The first two, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, are out now, with the others to follow in short order. We're pretty sure all of 'em are awesome.
And if you're familiar with the eccentricity of this label, you'll know that this "EM Under Water" series isn't going to be about, y'know, "regular" surf music of the Jan & Dean or Ventures variety, nope. These first two releases are both soundtracks to rad '70s surfing movies, and are fully psychedelic, with tripped out grooves, synth experiments, and heavy rock jamming all part of the mix.
This one's really fantastic. The music for the legendary 1970 Australian surf documentary The Innermost Limits Of Pure Fun was done by a hippy band called Farm from Santa Barbara who themselves were part of the SoCal surf scene. Their lead guitarist, Denny Aaberg, even wrote a novel about his surfing days called Big Wednesday that was eventually made into movie starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Gary Busey! Other members later on played with such bands as the Surf Punks in the '80s and the Beach Boys in the '90s... and weirder still, The Captain from Captain and Tennille is on here somewhere too. But this is like none of that, needless to say. Farm's sound was more of a special surf/soundtrack/psych hybrid...
There's plenty of glorious mellow jazzy groovers on here, with organ that reminds us a bit of Bo Hansson's stuff, as well tracks like the heavy electric blues of "Zan Ho Zay" and the gorgeous folky acoustic guitar intricacy of "Innerspace". Mostly instrumental, but for two charming vocal cuts, "Crumple Car" and "The Eater", this is surf-psych at its peak for sure. A lot of the record was constructed around live jams, including the soundtrack's finale, the 13 minute improv "Coming Of The Dawn", a track Farm recorded in real-time response to a projection of the film's most awe-inspiring "inside the pipe" sequence. The filmmaker had rigged up a waterproof camera contraption that he was able to strap to his back and use to shoot while riding his board, one of the innovative techniques that made it a groundbreaking surf movie. This soundtrack had to help too!
This reish, done in the usual thorough EM style, is packaged in a nice gatefold sleeve with a thick, fully illustrated booklet in English and Japanese and other bits of ephemera tipped in, and includes a QuickTime video clip on the cd of an interview with the band. As well, both this and also the soundtrack to Drouyn include liner notes by Aussie surf music expert Stephen J. McPharland (author of Waltzing The Plank: The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Australian Surf Music 1963-2003).
We know you've been waiting for this: the sequel to the Early Fifth Column cd, which was a collection issued back in 2001 on the Alchemy label (run by former Fifth Columnist Jojo Hiroshige) documenting the career of this extremely underground Japanese avant-garde collective circa 1976 to 1980. Now, The Middle Fifth Column is here to deal with the years 1981-1990, and anyone familiar with the intriguing weirdness found on the previous disc will find this to be just as weird and interesting if not more so! Fifteen tracks of noisy experiments, freaked out jazz improv, synth boppiness, disturbing tape loops, bizarre vocals, drum machines and electronics... it's eclectic strange DIY madness that takes a definite inspiration from Faust (note the "It's A Rainy Day Sunshine Girl" quote in track two) and assuredly also other NWW-list worthy outfits. This comes with extensive, English-language (as well as Japanese) liner notes that give details on each track, from interviews with the band members (there was a core group that formed various "bands" who released tapes -- about 50 of them -- in the Fifth Column cassette series). About "It's A Rainy Day" they say: "There are times in life that, whatever you play, it turns into that song, and this was one such occasion."
Very cool. Whatever the weirdest stuff you have in your record collection is, this disc will no doubt make friends with it!!
[sorry, this disc didn't agree with our sound sample making software, so no clips to click...]
Band names come in strange zeitgeists, don't they? We've had waves of "The Something", "Wolf Something" and "Black Something" bands, now it seems it is "Year" time. So far we've noted Capitol Years, The Early Years, Year Future, and The New Year. Now The Fun Years come drifting into view. It does seem to be a bit of a misnomer though. Indeed, this group's name as well as their album and song titles all strike us as being very incongruous with the sounds they make. We sort of expecting some doleful pop music or something, but nothing would have prepared us for the murky muted beauty of Life-Sized Psychoses. Every track a washed out minimal landscape of record crackle, bits of hiss and pop, a dense washed out backdrop for the guitar to sort of drift and shimmer.
The record commences with "Powerball Annie", unobtrusive feathery shimmers of static that wash across lapping cycles of three-note sequences plucked out on baritone guitar. Strange reverby bits of percussion drift in and out. The whole thing very languorous and dreamlike. The second track weaves a similar spell, a crackle crusted loop, disembodied and haunting, repeats over and over, eventually joined by a laid back guitar line that gives the track's very Philip Jeck like turntablescape sound a distinctly post rock vibe.
At times the Fun Years almost sound like some avant turntablist spinning super scratched up old math rock and slowcore records, all loping rhythms and muted minor key melodies, but draped in thick swaths of buzz and fuzz and hum and hiss. Some tracks are mere whispers, others glow and sound sun dappled, smeary blurry burnished soundscapes, all wreathed in those analog recording inconsistencies we can never seem to get enough of. Every track here is a subtle sprawl, and shifts and shimmers ever so gradually. No quick moves or hard edges. Just blurry, bleary eyed drift. So very nice!
Definitely for fans of Jeck, Basinski, Tim Hecker, Machinefabriek, Jasper TX and the like...
Some of you may not be familiar with a short lived instrument called the Omnichord. But those of you that are, remember just how strange and magical it was. A kidney shaped Casio-keyboard style instrument, with lots of buttons representing chords (much like an accordion) and most thrilling of all, a strip of touch sensitive metal, that allowed the player to sort of strum, drawing out the chords like an electronic harp. For more details and a photo check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnichord
What's the point of this long lost instrument history lesson? Well, this here disc uses nothing but the good ol' Omnichord as it's sole sound source and the results are amazing. The warm electronic buzz, and strange chordal shimmer of the Omnichord is layered and run through all sorts of effects, making its already thick buzzing sound even more dense and crunchy. Huge swaths of distorted crumbling electronic whir, underpinning gorgeous glistening high end melodies, super distorted swirls of sound rife with all manner of glitch and gritty texture, bursts of high end skree smeared into fuzzy indistinct electronic soundscapes. all washing into each other, a constant sonic tide of hum and whir and deliriously blissed out electronic buzz. These textures wouldn't sound at all out of place on an M83 record or in a Tim Hecker track. That same sort of blown out, soft focus, dreamy ambient warmth... So nice.
LIMITED TO 74 COPIES. Each hand numbered, pressed on green cd-r's, and packaged in cool mini plastic cases with full color insert and a posted on photo of Green Mine rocking the Omnichord.
As we've mentioned before, Australia's Grey Daturas are an amazing live band. And no matter how great their records are (and they are great), they can't compare the the furious improvised heavy-as-fuck spectacle of the live Daturas experience. Bonnie is a seriously formidable axemaster, emitting the unholiest of heaviness from her guitar, pealing washes of coruscating distortion, dreamy swaths of washed out chordal blur, while the two Rob's do their own brand of damage, throbbing pulsing low end bass, and bombastic drum fury...
So any chance to see these guys live, or even hear them live is one to not be passed up. Here we have a document from their 2006 tour, recorded live in Austin at Emo's, 35 minutes or primo Daturas beautiful brutality.
Beginning with a blown out wall of guitar and freaked out feedback, crumbling and distorted, roiling and billowing, the drums kick in around minute 6 and the band launch into some serious sub-Stooges stomp, plowing through dense washes of downtuned buzz, the band plod and pound, the guitar not so much riffing as freaking out, huge clouds of psychedelic skree, the bass holding down the central riff, this is Dead C meets the Brainbombs, furious and heavy and brutal as fuck. But after about 10 minutes the drums peter out, and we're back in abstract free noise guitarscape territory and it's awesome. Glorious and epic. But before too long, the drums gradually return, the guitar slowly transforming into some sort of mid tempo riffage, and before you know it, the band are pounding out another garage-y noise rock psych drone barrage, and again the guitar seems dead set on getting away, squealing and flailing and freaking out over the relentless metallic trudge beneath it. As always, so fucking awesome. Can't wait to see these guys again...
Limited as all get out, just like always, packaged in plain brown sleeves, the artwork a torn scrap of paper with the liner notes, in the style of all the Diagnosis... Don't! releases.
From Finland, a three-way split of chaotic industrial metal, chock full of noisy distortion, dance beats, and scary samples. Two of these bands are actually the SAME band, they just changed their name (Havoc Unit was known for the past ten years as AndOceans, who did several previous albums of avant-garde black metal that we liked in the past). So you get the first ever Havoc Unit track, and the last from And Oceans, plus two (very different) remixes of each. And then there's the third band, The Sin:Decay, also in the same brutal industrial-metal vein, and it turns out it's a side project of one of the members of Havoc Unit/And Oceans... So despite being a "split", this could easily be heard as an album by just one band, Havoc Unit we'll say for simplicity's sake. And Havoc Unit, oddly enough, sound a bit like the '90s band Canadian Malhavoc, if you remember them. So well worth checking out if you're any of the following: a fan of AndOceans / a fan of Malhavoc / just into some blackened industrial metal weirdness. Brought to us by the rather off-the-wall metal label Vendlus (Wolves In The Throne Room, Grayceon, Audiopain, etc.).
A couple of years ago, Aquarius enjoyed a brief moonlight gig as an art space (which we hope to make happen again someday), proposing the same curious aesthetic on the visual front as we continue to do on the musical. One of the more intriguing exhibitions we hosted was from an ambitious, if under-recognized artist by the name of Matthew Waldron. His meticulously eccentric drawings, paintings, and assemblages depicted mutated beings conducting psychic surgery upon each other with all sorts of psychosexual overtones. These provocative and compelling images held their own with the classic Surrealist works of Hans Bellmer and early Salvador Dali. At the same time, Waldron introduced us to the equally ambitious catalogue of sound constructions that he had been quietly making in the Santa Cruz mountains under the moniker irr. app. (ext.). These albums followed in the deconstructed / abstracted sound collage traditions of Nurse With Wound, The Hafler Trio, and HNAS, often times surpassing the quality of those which came before. Sadly, very few people had heard of irr. app. (ext.) because of Waldron's unfortunate round of luck with record labels and general low profile.
Jump forward to the contemporary era, and things look entirely different. Today, you will find Waldron a mainstay in the Nurse With Wound performance entourage, being whisked away to play in all sorts of unlikely European festivals; and irr. app. (ext.) has consistently released albums that build upon the successes of those which we had heard before. So for us here at Aquarius, it's very satisfying to see an artist we once supported have their career take off...
And that leads us to Cosmic Superimposition, the second in a proposed trilogy from irr. app. (ext.) of releases based upon the writings of Wilhelm Reich. Cosmic Superimposition was a book that Reich had written in 1951; and in that book, he argued how the superimposition of multiple energies is the common functioning principle throughout the natural world. It was through these ideas that Reich arrived at the ideas of Orgone, cloudbursting, etc. On the single 45-minute track that comprises Cosmis Superimposition, irr. app. (ext.) presents a revolving set of organic fluctuations that wax and wane in accordance with a well-tuned internal logic. Glassine ambient passages of processed environmental noise slide into the sustained harmonics of bowed metals which in turn couples with the off-kilter phase pattern of an exhaust fan whose motor is not quite properly aligned. All the while gurgles from streams, clatter from subterranean actions, singing bowl reverberations, and dark elliptical cycles of blackened electronics pock the stately progressions of Cosmic Superimposition's dronemusik foundation. As is stated in the liner notes, Waldron repurposed the source material from the first stage of the trilogy Ozeanische Gefuhle; but Cosmis Superimposition is hardly a replicant remix of the first. Rather, the ghosts, shadows, and ripples of his earlier album emerge in the fluid ambience of the second as bridge that points to Waldron's ambitious and highly successful undertaking. One of the best records of 2007, for sure.
We're always on the lookout for new weird music magazines, and we're fairly sure this might be our new favorite. To begin with, it's put out by one of the guys in weirdo black metal outfit Circle Of Ouroborus. Plus just have a gander at the contents, loads of AQ faves and a few bands we have yet to hear, but definitely sound promising. Blissy black metallers Amesoeurs and Amesoeurs offshoot Alcest, Finland's Ride For Revenge, Japanese metallic black ritualists Arkha Sva, Swedish suicidal black doomsters Hypothermia, Irish black metal cult Primordial, German black metal warriors Secrets Of The Moon, pagan folk legends Current 93, Australian one man metal horde Grippiud and Italian blackdeath warkult Blasphemophagher. As if that weren't enough, a bunch of record reviews, tons of cool photos, and every page is decorated in the margins with that cool pencil art that adorns all the Circle Of Ouroborus discs. Awesome!
It's really difficult to not start off every Acid Mothers Temple or Kawabata Makoto review with something about their ridiculous prolificacy. Which makes sense of course, especially when we're faced with a new release probably every two months, if not more frequently. But as we've stated before, the point is almost moot, as pretty much everything we lay our ears on is great! So it all boils down to how much you need, or how different each recording is, a sort of personal preference. Allan probably has 40 or 50 Keiji Haino albums, and probably thinks that is not nearly enough, whereas Andee has maybe one or two, and is positive that that's plenty.
So here we have the latest slab of divine psych from Acid Mothers Temple guru Kawabata Makoto, functioning here in his solo shaman incarnation (as opposed to his role in AMT's freaked out psych rock space rituals) and it's awesome. Really. A deliriously dreamy swirl of electric guitar, bouzouki and sitar, all woven into two sidelong tracks of glorious ur-drone! Glistening, sparkling expanses of slow shifting overtones and overlapping melodies, steel string buzz and deeeeeeeeeep resonant rumbles. Hard not to hear a bit of fellow countrymen Taj Mahal Travellers. The more static passages sound downright Niblock-like with their almost imperceptible sonic shifts.
LIMITED TO 550 COPIES, packaged in a super deluxe full color gatefold sleeve. And for a super limited time we have some of the version that comes with a bonus 7", pressed on red vinyl (ONLY 150 COPIES, WE HAVE ABOUT 15), two more brief bursts of buzz, with reverb drenched chant-like vocals added to the already buzzing, droning mix. So good.
We're beginning come to terms with the fact that Ms. Keffer is pretty much our new noise rock crush (although hard to remember who our old one was... Matthew Bower?), not only is she foxy, she kicks up a seriously corrosive din that puts most of the other noisemakers, men AND women, to shame. This three track 12" is some seriously old school corrosive and caustic noise, fitting perfectly alongside groups like Robedoor (who she shared a split with recently), the Yellow Swans, and similarly minded noisemakers, but only at their fiercest and most brutal, cuz this 12" is fierce AND brutal. Seriously lo-fi, dense clouds of processed guitars, damaged FX, misfiring synths, who knows what all is in there, a pulverizing wall of damaged FX drenched sound that eventually attains a sort of Total / Sunroof! droned out bliss, albeit much harsher. ANd as with only the deftest of noisemakers, Keffer manages to make this blast of brutality downright listenable, but probably only to those with ears of steel (or collections packed with Masonna, Merzbow, Hijokaidan and the like...)!
Ultra limited seven inch picture disc from these German black metallers. But Klabautamann aren't at all your typical black metal group, beginning with the fact that most of them also do time in metallic math rockers Woburn House, who we raved about on a past list. And that math rock pedigree definitely finds its way into the sound of Klabautamann. As always there's plenty of growling demon-vox, blasting beats, and buzzing riffage, but more than half the time is spent in various non-metal forms, from blissed out dreamy folk interludes, to simple slowcore crawls, to weird angular prog workouts. And even in full blasting metal mode, the sound is anything but typical, the buzzing and blasting is infused with haunting melancholy melodies, ultra catchy hooks, weird burbling underwater bass, but all deftly wrapped up in the curious freaked out, gloriously demented black-post-math-metal-whatever that is Klabautamann.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, each copy hand numbered, packaged with a cover/sheet of liner notes with the credits and lyrics, and the picture disc is an eye popping full color illustration of dancing gnomes and faeries on one side, a sleeping witch, curled up with here staff and bugle and mysterious book of spells on the other. The best part is the 7" also comes with a cd-r with the tracks from the single, so you can throw those right on your iPod and hang that single on your wall right where it belongs...
We're not sure which is more amazing, the brilliant hypnotic blackness that is the damaged unblack metal of Light Shall Prevail, or the impossibly varied sound quality each track displays. Granted these were all recorded at various times, and in various places, but most bands tend to use the same 4 track or 8 track, so the variances are slight, but these tracks are all over the map, from blasting ear splitting drums and barely audible guitars, to blown out in the red speaker frying fury, to muddy murky fuzzy blur, to damaged tape dropout buzz, but the thing is, it's like having another instrument. It's almost as if instead of using a different effect, or some strange instrument, the studio became the instrument, as if some songs required crazy ultra distorted production, while others needed to be super clean, same with the guitars, they go from brittle jangle to muddy buzz, all of it fucking gorgeous and demented.
Let's back up a few steps. Light Shall Prevail is spearheading an ever growing movement of un-black metal, white metal, Christian metal, and in doing so creating some of the most original, most damage, most fucked up, and most brilliant (un)black metal we've heard in forever. Not only that, but he also runs the E.E.E. label who seem to single handedly be spreading the word, unleashing cd-r after cd-r of amazing and perplexing unblackness on the world. By now avid readers of the AQ list should have already been exposed to some of our favorite unblack metal bands: the "non-religious dark ambient" of Drommer, the white metal super group Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail obviously, and the bizarre un-blackness of Agathothodion. There's so much good stuff we can barely keep up. A bunch of the best tracks will be compiled for a future double disc un-black compilation on Andee's tUMULt label, but for now we whole heartedly recommend tracking down every single E.E.E. release you can. They're all heavy and weird and fucked up and amazing. None maybe more than this one, another collection of unreleased tracks from unblack flagship outfit Light Shall Prevail.
Beginning with a 38 second track of nothing but tape buzz sort of sets the mood, with "The Dark Dark Fortress" following up right afterwards, a moody looping riff, simple blasting drums, and a demonic throat shredding shriek that pins the needles, sends everything in the red and swallows all the other instruments whole. There seems to be only one part, but it's a good one, with the vocals doing impossible and harsh things, soaring and shrieking and adding a whole layer of distorted damage to the buzzing droning blackness. "There Is Something In The Trees" is next, with a killer super poppy riff, very Nirvana-esque, with drums buried WAY down in the mix, almost like a super rapid heartbeat, all except for the high-hat, and the vocals are a slowed down gargle, dripping over everything like melting black tar, and again, it a single mesmerizing riff looped over and over and over until we're totally mesmerized and under its spell. "One Thousand Winters, is ultra lo-fi, the guitars a mere whisper, the drums a relentless machine, sounding not unlike a typewriter gone haywire.
"Stuck In The Black Ice" might bee one of our favorites, beginning with muted muddy jangle guitar, before the drums (and the distortion kick in) and suddenly everything is ultra distorted, totally saturated, crumbling and blown out, the vocals and the guitar both competing for midrange space, the drums a throbbing blast of muddy hiss, so completely fierce and furious and so goddamn great. "Lay Flowers On My Grave" is doomy and midtempo, the guitars barely audible, bathed in flanger, slowly whirring through its cycle, the drums relentless, a simple click-click-click, the vocals, sung-spoken, in a demented drawl, everything distant and washed out sounding, adding even more melancholia to the depressive despondent vibe, and the breakdown where the main guitar drops out, leaving a faraway clean guitar, the haunting vocals and that never ending single beat rhythm, is ultra creepy indeed.
The rest of the collection continues in the same gloriously haphazard trajectory. Every track simple and buzzing, the guitars a veritable spectrum of various shades of buzz and murk and mud and blur and blow out, the vocals too, from hysterical shriek to maniacal mumble to super distorted cookie monster to growled guttural grunt, the drums a constant mesmerizing pulse, at times it's almost like some experimental noise rock record, incorporating black metal elements, but at other times, it's still some of the most raw and intensely personal metal we've heard. EVER.
Third and last album from this now defunct, Swedish one-man band (hey how can a one man band "split up"?). It's one of those wonderfully weird black metal records where the usual tropes -- grim, dark, buzzing -- while applicable, don't fully describe it. A lot of this IS buzzy and fuzzy and dirgey and doomy, but also has a finger-snapping folkiness to it, almost jaunty. Deep voiced Viking vocals range over the midpaced, heavy, riff-centric compositions, in which we sense a strange stiffness of rhythm, unsteady at the busier margins of the beat, a seasick slowingdown and speedingup, that gives this some of its unusual feel / amateur charm. As this short-but-epic disc (four songs, 24 and a half minutes) progresses, Lik's atmospheric moodiness increases, the tempos slow, guitar licks (liks?) stretch out gorgeously to psych proportions. There's an almost pop undercurrent here, an emotional sweetness... it's not standard black metal nor is it a lesson in chops. But WE like it a lot. If you read some other online reviews we've found, though, apparently that makes us "retards". Want to join us in the special ed class at black metal high school? Then put Lik (and some Benighted Leams, and of course some Striborg!) in your shopping cart...
That Lindstrom singles album we reviewed a few list backs has been a consistent hit around here for those seeking some organic and engaging italo-disco inflected dance bliss. But what put Lindstrom on the dance radar was his earlier collaboration with fellow Beardo Disco Swede, Prins Thomas, who tempered Lindstrom's earthy Moroder-esque roboticisms with his love for seventies European cosmic space disco-rock a la Germany's Boney M. and France's Space Art and Cerrone. We never carried that early collaboration, but the two have recently gotten back together to remix a few of their early tracks into nine extended dancefloor burners, and extended is the key word as some tracks roll past the ten minute mark and one in particular is over 20 minutes. Good for parties where you want to keep a crowd nice and sweaty. But the nice thing about this is that the pair make a dance album that is great for casual listening too. It's not just all 4 to the floor beats. The reverbed piano, atmospheric guitars, ecstatic synths, and the subtle hints of vocals that comprise the bulk of the rhythm's melodic topping create an engaging and catchy listen as well.
There's not much reason to belabor the point on this one. Simply put, it's limited to 300 copies and we only have two of these boxsets kicking around. Needless to say, it's a fine example of Maurizio Bianchi's return to the glacial power electronics and sustained drone concussions that dominated his earliest experiments in the '70s and '80s. As for NIMH, that project is the work of Italian avant-guitarist Giuseppe Verticchio whose work in softened ambience has drawn comparisons to Steve Roach and Aidan Baker; and in working with Bianchi, he does offer some elegiac guitar and piano works to accompany Bianchi's hypnotic gray / black drones. If it's not out of print, it will be soon. We might be able to get a few more but it sems unlikely...
How's this for a feather in yer bluegrass straw hat? This Bay Area band recently played with the legendary bluegrass combo The Dillards just down the street from us at the intimate lil' Amnesia bar. A rollicking good time! Their high spirited Live At The Delta Of Venus will surely knock the crusted mud off yer cowhide. It's a boot stompin' jamboree of homegrown true country and bluegrass music which was recorded live at the Delta Of Venus Cafe & Pub in Davis, CA. The sixteen tracks are nicely balanced between instrumentals and singalongs, fresh originals and solid renditions of old traditionals. They sure do give those stringed instruments a workout -- snappin', pluckin' and bowin' the fiddle, banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar, standup bass ever so vigorously!
Includes a temporary tattoo so that you can show your love... at least until you next bath.
The liner notes to this reissue from a 1990 cassette boldly state that, "all sonds you hear on this cd originated from natural ambient sources. No electronic sound-sources were used." For those who would think that such a disclaimer would result in Maeror Tri's excursion into field recording and acoustic documentation, you would be wrong. All of the effects and heavy treatments that plant Ambient Dreams firmly within Maeror Tri's well established aesthetic of dark atmospheric drones and post-industrial bleakness are still present and accounted for. If anything, Ambient Dreams demonstrates that Maeror Tri (and their contemporary incarnation Troum) are all about their arsenal of effects units and their backmasking tape techniques; but they sure as hell know how to use them as effectively on Ambient Dreams as on any of their other records. As on all of their other albums, blurred masses of sound ground everything for Maeror Tri's droning productions whose amorphous structure fluctuates with a frigid liquidity. The half melodies, breathy fragments of sound, and rippled textures that break through the aforementioned dark ambience have all of the trappings of Maeror Tri's typical guitar strategies, rebuffing their claim that all of the work is of "natural ambient sources," unless of course those highly treated sounds found their way into a sampler and sequencer. Regardless, Ambient Dreams conjures the recurring image for Maeror Tri of blackened clouds of ash, dust, and soot suspended in desolated abandoned warehouse whose interior is sporadically pierced with dim shafts of light.
27 new tracks (well, newer when this came out in January, we LOVE this band but can't always get to reviewing everything as quickly as we'd like) from Japanese songwriter/bandleader Tori Kudo and his long-running, deliberately amateur-sounding ensemble Maher Shalal Hash Baz. As always, it's a magical, melancholic mishmash of lilting indie-pop, innocently sweet vocals, lovelorn lyrics, little big band (dis-)arrangements, woozy horns, percussive pitter patter, gently jazzy guitars, bassoon bass lines, and dysplastic Farfisa, all performed with unique, shambolic charm. Fans will be happily aware of what they're getting into here. Those unfamiliar with the band, we suspect you'll also enjoy the unsteady but friendly hugs Kudo and crew are doling out to your ears (and wish you could squeeze 'em back). That is, unless you're particularly hard of heart and/or uptight about musicians not "coloring outside the lines" as it were.
Like their previous effort Faux Depart, this was recorded over here in the USA at Dub Narcotic Studios with the help of several guests from Olympia's music scene, including members of Old Time Relijun.
Ah, yes it's summertime! Warm sunshine and trips to the beach! And what's more summery than surf music? Lo and behold, our favorite label for obscure and amazing reissues, Japan's EM Records, has a special new series of five, count 'em, five reissues devoted to lost "surf" music treasures. The first two, by Farm and Peter Martin & Finch, are out now, with the others to follow in short order. We're pretty sure all of 'em are awesome.
And if you're familiar with the eccentricity of this label, you'll know that this "EM Under Water" series isn't going to be about, y'know, "regular" surf music of the Jan & Dean or Ventures variety, nope. These first two releases are both soundtracks to rad '70s surfing movies, and are fully psychedelic, with tripped out grooves, synth experiments, and heavy rock jamming all part of the mix.
This album is the soundtrack to a cult 1974 documentary film entitled Drouyn, that followed champion Australian surfer Peter Drouyn (hmm, depending on how it's pronounced, Drouyn could be a bad name for a surfer!) on a globetrotting quest for the perfect wave, a journey that took him and his surfing pals to a variety of exotic locales -- as far afield as Africa and Japan -- over the course of the two years spent shooting the film. Filmmaker Bob Evans commissioned composer and classical guitarist Peter Finch to do the music, and also Sydney-based hard rockers Finch were brought in on the project as well. These songs and incidental music passages fully capture the lure of sun, sand and sea, as well as the sheer excitement of the wave-riding sport. You get orchestrated pop instrumentals, Eastern ethnic interludes, and even a laidback Beach Boyish cut ("Morning Comes The Sun") with harmony vocals. The contributions from Finch add a dose of fuzzed-out rock and roll energy as well, with their song "Roses" being a kick ass bit of hippy hard rock kitsch with lyrics that go: "Anyone can grow roses / but it takes a green thumb to grow grass" and "Everywhere you go you get busted by the fuzz / get out of the system, have a natural buzz". Peter Martin makes good use of the Finch boys on here, and also offers up arrangements for soulful horns, wigged out ARP synth, and strings... it flows wonderfully, sunny and melodic and mostly mellow. A summertime treat, like the Farm album it's own special thing, lovingly reissued by EM with all the bells and whistles.
Hospital Recordings has just reissued the first proper M.B. album, which first came out on Sterile Records in 1981 and then again on CD on Alga Marghen in the mid '90s. They've redone the design, making it look more stripped down, lo-fi and punk rock with gritty scans of the Alga Marghen artwork and old school cut and paste liner notes (that unfortunately seem to be missing some of the original notes), but don't let the makeover fool you, this is still some of the most abject and brilliantly bleak dronemusic ever.
Symphony For A Genocide wasn't the first recording for the Italian Industrialist, as he did have some earlier recordings as Sacher-Pelz and the infamous Leibstandarte SS MB albums (on which Whitehouse's William Bennett dubbed various Nazi speeches on top of Bianchi's music without Bianchi's permission). Bianchi's work does come out of a transgressive mindset; but one that is uniformly misanthropic, nihilistic, and utterly black. On this album, MB construct brutal, hallucinatory blasts of electronic noise and grinding rhythms of hand-cut tape noise and overblown synthetic distortion. These, bleak chilling drones are reminiscent of Conrad Schnitzler at his most neurotic, Nurse With Wound at their most droning, and Whitehouse at their least annoying. MB's very prolific career in the early 80's with more than a dozen records was cut short in 1984 at which time he declared himself a Jehovah's Witness and ceased making music until recently when he finally returned to the blackened ambience of old.
It should also be noted that the recordings of Symphony For A Genocide are drastically different from another set of recordings called SFAG (Symphony For A Genocide), which has also gotten the reissue treatment twice, adding extra confusion into the mix.
Cleveland may be better known in underground rock circles for bands like Rocket From The Tombs, The Electric Eels, the Mirrors, the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu, but there was a pretty serious pop scene going on in the mid-eighties, the most notable, and probably most notably unsung group being The Mice, fronted by pop tunesmith extraordinaire Bill Fox.
Rescued from obscurity by the kind folks at Scat, For Almost Ever Scooter is a serious slab of short sharp power pop anthems, infused with snotty punk rock, British Invasion melodies, and tons of jangle. Not to mention kick ass drumming, some amazing riffage, Fox's snarling soaring vocals, and needless to say, HOOKS galore. If you like bands like the Flamin' Groovies, the Undertones, the Buzzcocks, the Nerves, the Diodes, well, the Mice are just as great...
Scat is the home of all the best Guided By Voices records, which ALL borrow heavily from classic British influenced pop, so it makes sense that the Mice record would end up here too. In fact, one might be forgiven for thinking the Mice record was actually the work of some young kids in a modern retro pop band, channelling all of the above mentioned bands into a sound that's classic but surprisingly modern and fresh. GBV fans should definitely give this a listen. The Mice are everything we love about pop music, heavy and crunchy, soaring, distorted and dramatic, big guitars, lush harmonies, wild drumming, just listen to "Downtown", one of the greatest pop songs EVER, and you'll be hooked. And rest of the record is just as great.
Second Rune Grammofon album from this extreme improv duo from Norway! It makes sense that they'd have an exclamation point as part of their name, as their music is indeed punctuated with glitchy outbursts, zaps of loud guitar/drums/electronics. Meanwhile, "MoHa" simply references their names: Morten J. Olsen and Anders Hana, both of whom are members of Ultralyd as well. We compared their first disc of hyperactive skree to some of Mick Barr's stuff, and to the most nutty bits from their labelmates Supersilent. Now we can add that shortly after our first listen to Norwegianism, we put on a classic avant-garde electro-acoustic album from 1970 by Luciano Berio, and after a few minutes got confused and thought we were still listening to MoHa!, when the Berio got into a particularly crinkly and chaotic passage of electronic bleepage. We like it best, though, when MoHa! pace themselves, give the music space to breathe, maybe even settle into some broken-down rhythm for a while (which are the parts that remind us of Supersilent), as on the track "Home Two".
We guess they may have titled this album Norwegianism 'cause they recorded it in Geneva and mixed it in Berlin, and felt that they were bringing some Norwegian noise to those locales. Also it could be in recognition of the fact that they get monetary support from the Arts Council Norway -- apparently Norwegian taxpayers are a lot more musically open-minded than the typical US citizen!
Last year we reviewed a disc by the evocatively named Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, who we described as "equal parts DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, seventies horror movie soundtracks, late night jazz and super sluggish blown out trip hop" which is exactly what it sounded like. Long languid musical excursions through some dark rainy late night film noir wasteland, ghostly moaning horns, skittering minimal percussion, haunting strings, all tangled into super cinematic musical drama. Another band, who if there was any justice, would be the ones scoring big Hollywood thrillers instead of Danny Elfman...
Anyway, we recently learned that the�Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble had an alter ego, a more metallic dark side, called, appropriately enough The�Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, we were pretty much sold after just hearing the name, so evocative of some mysterious 'star chamber', holed up in a secret underground bunker, tucked in some cave in the mountains, where mysterious hooded figures work alchemical magic creating mysterious and monstrous 'doomjazz'...
Supposedly, this Kilimanjaro offshoot was meant to sound a bit like SUNNO))) or Earth, albeit run through with bits of jazziness and smoke-y ambience. Well, it's not quite that heavy, but it is a bit, definitely heavier and darker and more ominous than the KDJE mothership, a sort of drone-y dark ambient drift, long stretches of low tones and distant horns, of rumbling guitars and thick washes of swirling low end. Actually it sounds more like�Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble with all the jazz sucked out, leaving nothing but a blackened husk, a skeletal landscape of bleak blissed out shimmer, and slow creeping nightmare melodies. In some ways it sounds like a jazzier, more ambient, less primitive and ritualistic version of the Taj Mahal Travellers... A couple tracks do rev up to a full on SUNNO)))-y dirge, with the guitars threatening to engulf the dark ambience beneath it, but they never truly explode into actual sludge drenched doom, instead, they sort of drift darkly, roiling like a sky full of thick black clouds... It is most definitely doomy though, just not in the traditional sense, the sounds here are more Lustmord, Nordvargr, Bohren und Der Club Of Gore, Cold Meat Industries, with some more melancholy melody mixed in, disembodied reverbed guitar, the occasional almost-jazzy creep, it's more a sort of ambient slow core, wait a minute, "slowcore ambient doom" might be exactly the descriptor we were searching for.�
Definitely recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, or anyone into�slowcore ambient doom!
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We really like this album, but went through a few phases in appreciating it. First off, when we heard about it, we were like, cool! This first-time-on-cd reissue of an extremely obscure, self-released 1971 LP checks out pretty well, on paper: it was a one-off record of tragic love songs done in late '60s psych pop style written and recorded by a teenager from Cyprus recently relocated to New York City. Heck, Middle Eastern psych, we can't get enough! But when we actually heard it, at first it was a little hard to get past how odd it sounded -- it wasn't quite what we were expecting. Marc Mundy's voice and lyrics eventually charmed us, but it's easy to see why he never make it big on the pop charts in the USA, with his foreign accent and amateur (but decent) singing skills. Then there's his lyrics, written in English, which perhaps explains how awkward his turns of phrase can be -- though again, in the end we found ourselves marveling at his heartfelt, heartbreak poetry. Such lyrics as "baby I love your lips / when they're wet with wine and desire / I love your hair / when it is messed up in the wind / baby I love your arms / when your soft, warm flesh touches mine / I love your eyes / when the lovelight lies / not for me the cold, calm kiss of a virgin / not for me / the bless of a saint..." might at first seem like typical love song stuff, but not really... coupled with his so-sincere delivery, Marc's words will find their way closer to your soul than most pop music lyrics ever do. Maybe it's the atypical metaphors, situations and stories that crop up in his songs, some of which must be inspired by the Mediterranean/Middle Eastern folk songs he'd heard in his youth.
For example, "How Can I Marry This Language" is about a father refusing to allow his daughter to marry the song's narrator, in language that he (the frustrated narrator/suitor) can't even understand. It's actually (intentionally, we think) humorous, which isn't the case with most of the sad, melancholic material on this album! Another track, "The Tragic House", is about an empty, abandoned house where the narrator's love used to live, before she vanished to who knows where, or why. Yup, super sad and melancholic. There's definitely lots of stuff on here if you ever need material for a breakup mix tape!! "Our Love Can Never Be", "Give Up Your Pride", "I'm Crying Your Name", "Don't Love Me Anymore", and others...
Yet despite the sadness, these songs percolate along, Marc taking the melodic lead on vocals and guitar, accompanied by a now-anonymous band of musicians, sounding vaguely exotic while also of its time and place (the Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk-rock scene, also home to The Devil's Anvil you'll recall). Ethereal female backing vocals also add to the lovely moodiness...
This reissue is one of those wonderful finds you've got to thank some obsessed collector for, and comes complete with lyric sheet and new liner notes. And it's fully authorized by Marc, whom we're told gave up on music as a career soon after this album was originally released and now lives back on Cyprus, teaching school (and hopefully not still pining for lost loves!).
What's this? Another collection of remixes from Yoko Ono already?! You're darn tootin' right! But whereas Yes I Am A Witch (released February 2007) enlisted the very varied and very 'now' cool cats (i.e, Peaches, Antony and the Johnsons, Flaming Lips, Le Tigre, Polyphonic Spree, and Cat Power) to do new remixes and reworkings of Ono's music, Open Your Box (released April 2007) compiles her previously released dancefloor smash remix 12"s. In case you're unacquainted, these remixes are far more NYC house, techno and disco scene oriented (a scene that has celebrated and embraced Ono and her music over the years), and feature the likes of Orange Factory, Basement Jaxx, Danny Tenaglia, Felix Da Housecat, DJ Dan and Pet Shop Boys. Sure some of them are pretty dated, but it's terrific to have and hear all of these tracks together. Throughout the two releases, much love and reverence and fun flow freely, and in the case of Open Your Box also much giddy clubland nostalgia. Yes.
Weird rock alert! Young and a little wet behind the ears, on their debut album this Portland, OR band Panther seem to be channelling the cryptic, kaleidoscopic eccentricities of Mr. Bungle. High on creative and imaginative spirit, albeit somewhat less proficient and seamless than that sadly defunct SF juggernaut. Freaky and a bit cracked is their execution of proggy, loopy organ and electronic noodlings and mainman Charlie Salas-Humana's rollercoaster vocalizing that alternately brings to mind Mike Patton and TV On The Radio.
This Portland psych-folk duo really take their band name seriously. Not only is the record called Photosynthesis. But check out the song titles: "Seedling", "Seedling Two", "Tumbleweed", "Roots", "Seedling Three", "Birdflowers"...
The last we heard from Plants was on their Double Infinity record, released on UK label Paradigms a while back, a gorgeous glistening slab of blissed out ambience, droney krautrock and abstract Appalachia, sometimes all at once. This latest disc begins a tranquil ambient drift, with fluttering flutes, warbly synths, shimmering strings, and a washed out backdrop of pitch shifted drones, constantly changing speed giving the track a wavery seasick vibe. The "Seedling" series, three tracks, parts 1,2 and 3, are subtle variations of the same theme. The first, an Incredible String Band style chunk of lilting dreamfolk, steel string strum, chiming harmonics, and intertwined male / female harmony vocals. The second, takes the first and smears it into a rumbling bit of ominous low end, the vocals (or are they flutes?) transformed into the subtlest of wisps, an organ wheezing out a rumbling backdrop of subtly shifting sonics. The third and final part returns to the dream folk, this time adding some hand drums, and retaining some of the ominous vibes from part 2, a bit like Comus, but not nearly as maniacal.
In between the "Seedling"s, the band visits some buzzing Appalachian twang, complete with what sounds like banjo and some swoonsome slippery slide, as well as some subtle distant organ melodies, a dense blur of high end shimmer, a wash of chimes and bells and whistles, a symphony of skree that peters out into the sounds of nature, wolves, running water, wind... and finally, the 7+ minute closer, an almost Christmas carol like soundscape of wintery bells, all glistening and sparkling, faraway upper register whir, little bits and bleeps of reverbed FX, drifting acoustic guitars, disembodied voices, culminating in a muted cacophony of backwards treated sound and soft focus clatter and clang, all smoothed into a bit of abstract drifting bliss. Gorgeous.
If you're swayed by enthusiastic, nickname-droppin' soundbytes on shrinkwrap from the likes of David Bowie, then you've probably already snuggling up to this new Polyphonic Spree cd. He says it is "probably The Poly's best and deepest album yet!" We say "the first track sounds like they're ripping off Blondie's "Dreaming"." Well, doesn't it?! Don't worry, we're not getting all down on this band, we love 'em! Anyways, as per the album's title, Polyphonic Spree sure has grown into an army, a deliriously glorious pop orchestral choral one. Their lineup isn't so fragile though, numbering twenty, and they're a mighty force of uplifting and sugary jubilation. If you dig Langley School Music Project, you're gonna luv this... and vice versa!
In Steve Roden's own words regarding this album which accompanied a Mark Rothko exhibition at the LA MOCA in 2006, "My intentions in placing a quiet 4 channel audio work in an alcove adjacent to Rothko's paintings, was not to create a soundtrack for his work; but to allow a viewer, or listener, to sense that the sound was connected to the paintings. Dark Over Light Earth exists as a separate artwork; but a connection to Rothko's 8 paintings remains, for it never could have been born without them. I initially made a list of every color in each of the 8 paintings, to generate a score. I recorded myself playing the score on harmonium and glockenspiel - the notes and their order pre-determined by my color notations; and the tempo, durations, and overall feel, improvised. Some of these recordings were then processed electronically with filters. I asked Jacob Danziger to listen to a recording of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel on headphones and attempt to play along on violin. He then sent me the recordings of his performance. The composition was created by cutting up, layering, and re-organizing the recordings."
Jacob Danziger's languid violin feature prominently in Roden's composition, coming across very much like a scratchier variation of Feldman with some antiquated twinges of those fictional funerary violin pieces. Roden's additional chromatic swells and hypnotic patterns work very well against the violin; and all of this gets spun within Roden's wonderful revolving loops by the end of the record. A fitting and well-execute homage not only to Rothko but also to Feldman.
We'd had a couple cd-r releases from Australian math doom trio Fire Witch, so we were super psyched to discover they had an actual cd that came out on a label in Japan, when we finally got the cd, we discovered it was a split with a band we had never heard called Ryokuchi. All it took was one listen to convince us that we loved 'em and needed to hear more!!! So while this is not a full length proper, it is a brand new record from this Japanese bass and drums duo, one thirty minute track, dense with all manner of low end riffing, blown out distortion and convoluted arrangements, mathy breakdowns, melodic drift and dark ambient shimmer. Ryokuchi call what they do�"Experimental doom tribal hard core" and that's pretty much what it sounds like.
The track begins as an atmospheric post rock jam, with blooping reverbed bass, and mathy percussion, sounding not unlike a more drum heavy Three Mile Pilot,� but a few minutes in, the distortion pedals kick in and the band lurches into a crazed doomic plod, heavy and chugging, loping and swaying, gradually slowing down to an almost full stop, before bursting back into action, with a bit of complex mathy Ruins-y prog. For the next 10+ minutes these guys wildly careen from dense proggy rhythmic tangles, to huge slabs of slow shifting doom, to blissy stretches of moody slowcore, occasionally peppered with super distorted vocals buried in the mix, everything recorded super hot and in the red, before finally, with about ten minutes to go, the band pulls back, revealing an ominous dronescape behind the curtain, cymbals sizzle and shimmer, low end rumbles sway back and forth, muted melodies drift intermittently amidst the strange bass heavy landscape, when suddenly and dramatically, the band crash back in, and we're off, a pummeling slow motion downtuned doom drenched sludge, plowing along endlessly, interrupted by brief spurts of splattery spastic prog, before terminating in a huge squall of wild drumming and explosive bass feedback.�
Phew. So intense and so amazing. Think the Ruins covering Corrupted, or a doom metal Three Mile Pilot. Or just drums and bass and distortion and doom raining from the sky like some lesser known plague...
Packaged in a cool cd-sized DVD-style plastic case, with a full color, two sided cover, and a little mini full color booklet inside that folds out into a mini-poster and hides a sticker inside.
Probably most well known around these parts for sharing a split with SF black metal overlord Leviathan a while back, Sapthuran pretty much held their own, which in that sort of company is saying something for sure. Their most recent full length was pretty great as well, a gloriously buzzed out slab of Burzumic brutality, as blissed out and hypnotic as grim and fuzzy. And a logical choice to be a part of God Is Myth's ongoing series of 3" cd-r's paying tribute to the writer H.P. Lovecraft, who has probably had more of an affect on metal music than almost any other writer (minus J.R.R. Tolkein obviously).
This is volume four in the series. The first came courtesy of UK experimental black metal outfit Caina, the second from Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist, the third from the strangely monickered LVTHN, pronounced Leviathan, but not to be confused with our own Leviathan and number four comes from this Kentuckian black horde.�
Three songs, a little under twenty minutes, thematically Lovecraftian, but sonically, much like the last Sapthuran full length. The guitars are a drone-y buzz, loping and looping, fuzzed out and hypnotic, very Burzumy for sure, the vocals a strangled demony growl, the drums a chaotic black blast, the whole thing swirled into a relentlessly mesmerizing, pounding black buzz that wraps it's spiky tendrils around you and pulls you into the bleak and black emptiness below.��
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We only got 20 and it's already out of print from the label so once these are gone we will not be able to get more.
Before the days of email blasts and newsletters, mail order was almost always done by way of xeroxed lists from various outlets. One of the more incredible lists cam courtesy of Anomalous Records, who had itemized hundreds of records, cassettes, and various shapes of vinyl on one or two pieces of paper by printing everything an incredibly small font, often hovering around 3 pt in Helvetica or something like that. Not only was the list a task to read in terms of the sheer volume of material crammed into a very condensed amount of space, but the list also held an extraordinary amount of incredibly cool experimental, post-industrial, and avant-garde music that could not be found anywhere else. Sadly, Anomalous Records decided to close up shop about five years ago; but their importance as an outlet for obscure music is still felt today.
Matt Shoemaker's Groundless was one album that had been stocked from time to time on the Anomalous list with a curious description that said something to the effect that Groundless resembled the work of Andrew Chalk. Then in 2001 when Shoemaker's debut was released on Trente Oiseaux, references to Andrew Chalk were not all that common, as his seminal project Mirror had only just begun and his solo records had yet to catch the imagination of every producer of dronemusik. Needless to say, such a parallel was one that caught our attention; and the album was quickly ordered only to discover a strident realm of quiet crackling that was quite foreign to Chalk's all-consuming dronescaping. While Groundless sounds nothing like any of Chalk's recordings, it is still a brilliant piece of tactile sound abstraction. It may seem a stretch but perhaps Anomalous was only making comparisons on the impeccable quality of both Shoemaker and Chalk as composers, even if they don't share much in the way of aesthetics. Instead of the expansive drone, Shoemaker posits a dizzyingly cinematic sound design of streaming crackles, agitated piles of sand, and sympathetic field recordings that burst in dynamic fashion out of extended passages of queasy stasis into sharp snaps of electromagnetic propulsion. These techniques have more of an avant-garde film drama to them as blurry, soft focus objects give way to something which snaps to the foreground announcing all of its ugly bruises and scars with a sharpened clarity. Groundless emerges as yet another amazing recording from Matt Shoemaker.
It's a panic attack of over the top black metal theatrics from this notoriously 'round the bend band from Japan! The frantic tempo barely ever lets up as Sigh cram as much in the way of grandiose keyboards, blazing fretwork, thundering drums, and pompous choirs as they can into every nutty nook and crazy cranny of this album. The rapid, rasping delivery of the liberetto is dizzying too... we say "liberetto" because this album is divided into three acts, and has a definite operatic feel to it. Black metal opera. At 200 mph. It's like they've been listening to a lot of Devil Doll and Cradle Of Filth back to back, on crack.
Starting off years and years ago as Japan's truest "Nordic" black metal act (with their first album set for release on Euronymous of Mayhem's record label, before his murder by Count Grishnack of Burzum), Sigh went on to establish a career of horror soundtrack-inspired genre-fuckery that had critics comparing 'em to John Zorn and the Boredoms as much as Burzum. After their brilliant mashup of stoner rock psych and black metal mayhem on 2001's Imaginary Sonicscape, this cult took things maybe a bit too far for some of their fans with the unexpected (even for them) chipmunk-voiced poppy power metal moves of that album's long-awaited follow-up in 2005, Gallows Gallery. WE were happily confused and amused, though. And now Sigh has sharpened their blades to shred even harder on this album, dispensing with the chipmunks and also with the occasional saxophone lounge jazz and techno detours that popped up on Gallows Gallery. Absurdly bombastic, mixing heavy metal heroics with Morricone melodies, the fierce, frenzied, fixated Hangman's Hymn is as ridiculous as anything they've done but also undeniably, insanely impressive and entertaining.
A super limited tour only cassette release from one of our favorite members of the continually growing metallic post rock contingent (you know, Isis, Conifer, Tides, Mouth Of The Architect) But unlike a lot of those groups, SYA is not even remotely metal. And we never thought we'd say it, but dang it if that isn't a bit refreshing. Sure they can whip up some metallic crunch. Some big heavy riffs, but at their core they are a post rock band, a math rock band, dark and tangled instrumental rock, moody and epic, massive and emotional. What is most surprising maybe about this 3 song tape is the presence of harmonica! HARMONICA!! And not just in the background. It's the one of the main melodic elements. And it sounds killer. Once you hear the opening track on September Songs, you'll wonder why the hell more bands don't have a harmonica player. But beyond the kick ass harmonica, this band just rules, huge convoluted riffing, strange mathy rhythms, thick swells of sound, killer complex emotional and heavy. Long stretches of dark brooding ambience, blissed out rhythmic shimmer, warm guitars over martial drums, slow building guitar jangle over mesmerizingly propulsive drumming, slippery slide and minor key melodic finger picking, there's really nothing not to love. The guys take a sound that's becoming more and more tired and turn it inside out and upside down, making their own sort of POST post rock, intense and alive and vibrant and super exciting.
And fucking harmonica!
We'd long been a fan of Aaron Spectre, a DJ who specialized in heavy ragga jungle, and in particular, mixing in all sorts of metal and grind into his jungle DJ sets. A bunch of his 12"s featured killer mashups, like a wicked junglized Bad Brains tune among others. The 12"s all disappeared before we managed to get our hands on any of them, but a while back we did manage to get the cd by his 'band' Drumcorps, a mind blowing, speaker shredding blow out of metal guitars, grindcore blasts, and insane hyper kinetic drill and bass. Pretty much the ultimate AQ record...
We have been listening to that disc NON-STOP since we first got it in, so we were super psyched to get a bunch of these, a collection of less, 'abrasive' work from the man responsible for one of the most gloriously abrasive dance-metal releases in forever. And from the first track, it's not hard to tell this is a whole 'nother beast entirely. "Dulcimer" seems to in fact be the sounds of a dulcimer, spread out amidst wide open expanses of space and reverb, allowed to drift and shimmer, while in the background, soft swells swirl delicately, it would be easy to think this was some modern nu-folk combo blissing out in a druggy haze...
The whole record is not quite so tranquil, the follow up "Half Silver" is a loping midtempo skitter, with the tonal color provided by bits of crackle and hum and whispery bursts of static, and beneath it all, a gentle lilting minor key melody. Somewhere right between Autechre and Pole, a dubbed out slow moving glitchy groove...
The rest of the record is pretty much all over the map sonically, but still hovering within the genre confines that might perhaps be classified as IDM, held together by the thread that is Spectre's deft programming, clever arranging, and knack for slipping in dreamy catchy hooks amidst all the stuttering beats and chopped loops. From soft-grinding ambient trip hop, to a super stripped down, 8bit sounding jungle workout, to a gorgeously languid acoustic guitar and glitched beat drift that would be right at home on Morr music, too warm thick washes of rumbling ambience and crunchy muted beats, to sun dappled dreamy soft focus glitchpop (with sweet sweet soft boy vocals)...
Not necessarily for you Drumcorps fanatics, although man can't live on grindcorejunglemetal alone, but definitely for folks who love them some Boards Of Canada, Autechre, Chris Clark, Aphex Twin, Funkstorung and the like...
