Here we have the latest, a remix record, from Stars. The band's statement in the liner notes to this aptly titled record asks: "Do You Trust Your Friends?/Would you let them redecorate your apartment?/Would you let them buy your clothes or groceries?/ And if you did, what would they change?/ If you made a pop record, and then gave it to them to make again, what would they do to it?" We suppose it depends who your friends are and where their skills lie. You might ask your interior designer friend to redecorate your apartment, and you might want your fashion forward friend to help you pick out an outfit for the big date, but you might not ask these same friends to remix your record - that's a whole 'nother deal! Luckily for Stars, their friends seem to include an all-star cast of music-minded folk, including: Junior Boys, The Stills, Montag, The Dears, and Apostle of Hustle.
DYTYF strays a bit from what we traditionally think of as a remix record. The friends you'd expect to do electro remixes did, but the rest are not electronic at all, instead, reimaginings of the original tracks. Hence the remix may be subtly felt (or possibly not at all) for those unfamiliar with Stars' music, which brings us to the supposed motivation of this record. If you were to ask someone to redecorate your apartment or provide wardrobe tips, it may be that you think they could do a better job than you could yourself...or, as is Stars motivation with this record, it may be exciting to see how things change. Stars are a great band who have put out several great pop records, and while their friends remixes are equally great, none are necessarily better than the originals (remix records rarely are). They do seem to stand apart from the original songs as simply great songs in their own right. Same pop song, different sensibilities. Thus, Stars conclude their declaration of motivations stating: "Friends are good for that. Inside of them is everything you would be if only you could be different."
Deep in the damp backwoods of Tasmania (yes, Tasmania!), one of our very favorite one-man black metal bands lurks. Sin-nanna is that man, Striborg is that band. The eagerly awaited Ghostwoodlands is the latest manifestation of Striborg's musical misanthropy, another extreme and extremely "outsider" statement of black metal idiosyncrasy and fucked up brilliance.
Starting with track one, "Bete Noirs", every other track on Ghostwoodlands is an ambient episode of beautifully droning, isolationist electronics, psychedelic blackness that's not overtly metal at all (and could give some additional weight to the ridiculous rumor we once heard that Sin-nanna is actually Australian dronologist Oren Ambarchi). The longer, even-numbered songs, though, are indeed recognizable as a species of black metal, wherein Sin-nanna's guitar (and voice, and keyboards, and much else) still sounds like some noxious gas escaping under pressure. This aerosol mist of grim musik is, as always, accompanied by his own primitive "timekeeping", percussive thump and clatter full of many confusional fills, blasts and beats. This drumming is seemingly (and sometimes startlingly) one of Sin-nanna's primary expressive outlets, having more active physicality than the spectral presences of his other instrumentation -- and its artistic effectiveness proves that desire trumps ability in his realm. With woozy alien synths wandering over from the "ambient" tracks, Striborg's steam clouds of croak-encrusted, broken-down black metal require hails all around. Indeed, the next time someone asks, "what's so great? -- and what's so fucked up?" about Striborg, track two here is one we'll immediately want to play 'em. The slowly paced, 19 and a half minute "Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery" is a monument to Sin-nanna's unique genius, as we're sure you'll agree after just a few minutes into it, when you're fully enveloped in his hissing, buzzing, chuddering world, and the ambient Aphex synth droplets start falling amidst his percussive extemporaneity. So good! Like a brain-damaged Burzum, and we mean that in the best possible way. And these abnormal atmospheres continue throughout the rest of the disc, furthering our love of Striborg. A great followup to the taster offered by the Striborg / Xasthur split single we listed just last week!
PS. God what we wouldn't give for a Striborg / Keiji Haino collaboration!!!
Right from the opening blast of "Funeral Moonlight", even before the droning loping dirge of this album's lead-off track really surges forth, you know you're in for some true church-burning darkness from this Norwegian black metal duo. You'll also know that already if you've got their Unholy Holocaust Winds demo, which was released as a limited edition cd on the Paradigms label last year and got a rave review from us. Two of the three tracks ("Funeral Moonlight" and "Symbols of Winter") from that demo appear again here in re-recorded form, plus a three newer compositions ("Under Guds Hud", "Nattaander", and the title track), for a nearly an hour of grim, eerie black metal majesty. The expected frosty blurr of drums and guitars, and accompanying necromantical screams, is enhanced by Throne Of Katarsis' effective and somewhat unusual use of acoustic guitars, like some unholy mix of Darkthrone and Dissection.
Tortoise's German counterpart are back with their fifth album. It's a dark, moody instrumental beauty, a languid blending of dub, post-rock and jazz with a prominence of exotica chimes. Perhaps leaning a bit heavier on the former than usual, which draws them more into the company of such contemporary electronic dub luminaries as Twilight Circus Dub Sound System and Massive Attack.
Stalwart AQ customers, especially the ever-burgeoning subset of AQ customers into the heavier, (low-) end of the musical spectrum, should already be very familiar with one half of the Supernaturals Vol. 1 equation. That'd be Italy's most spaced-out, doomadelic band of amps-to-11 psychonauts, the very very heavy UFOmammut, whose previous albums Godlike Snake, Snailking, and Lucifer Songs have all garnered massive praise both from us and pretty much anyone who thinks that if only we'd been able to put Hawkwind, Electric Wizard and Om albums into the "cultural cache" stowed on board the Voyager spacecraft, the planet Earth would surely long ago have been visited by big hairy aliens eager to smoke up and doom out. And the resultant interstellar jam would sound a heckuva lot like UFOmammut! So a new UFOmammut album, which this is more or less, is cause to celebrate.
Meanwhile, this disc introduces us to another underground psych band from Italy, by the name of Lent0, who are described as specializing in instrumental "ambient postcore". As near as we can tell from this collaborative effort, they must have a lot in common with their friends UFOmmaut. We can't really tell who's doing what on this, but certainly these six fairly long tracks of uber distorted rumble, throbbing repetitive riffage, and haunting deep space shimmer are hitting all the mesmeric, droned-out highs we associate with our previous UFOmammut experiences. Maybe it's the eerie sampled voices that occasionally drift through the quieter parts of this that are Lent0's doing? Or the stretches of calmer, more Isis-like, post-rock heaviness that stand like gleaming outerspace monoliths amidst the churning, explosive jams heard elsewhere on this disc? We don't know -- but we'll certainly be curious to check out Lent0's own upcoming album Earthen whenever it comes out. What we do know is that these two bands are right on together at making this brand of mindblowing "metal". To hear anything remotely similar, you'd have to team some Tibetan monks up with Circle AND those aforementioned hairy aliens!
Important info: yes this import cd isn't cheap, but it's a handprinted, numbered, LIMITED EDITION release, in special packaging (accordion folded vellum "booklet" between thick covers) designed and executed by the Malleus psychedelic art collective, of which UFOmammut is the primary musical arm. When these are gone (and they soon will be) we'll eventually be able to get a regular, not-so-deluxe digipack version. You should further be aware that this is but the first in a series of collabs between bands on the Supernatural Cat label. Not a bad start that's for sure!
When we first heard about this Box Of Dub comp on Soul Jazz, we were super so psyched. Regular readers of the AQ list by now have heard us grouse about the paucity of grime and dubstep releases in the US. And a quick look at the lineup here, had us convinced this would be a killer collection of modern dubstep. Which it is. Sort of.
In fact, more than 'dubstep' as we've come to know it, Box Of Dub is exactly what it purports to be. A box of dub. Modern dub, maybe. Future dub, also maybe, but not always dubstep per se. In fact, most of the tracks on Box Of Dub remind us more of stuff like On U Sound and The Bush Chemists and Adrian Sherwood and African Head Charge and the whole legion of modern electronic dub. Which is not a bad thing. Not at all, just wasn't what we were expecting. That said, there are lots of distinctly dubstep moments, sudden bursts of blown out bass lines, super fuzzy distorted synths and the like. "Dread Cowboy", credited to Tayo Meets Acid Rockers Uptown, would be a straight ahead dub jam, complete with melodica melodies, but draped over the whole track is that trademark dubstep oscillating superdistorted bass line. And "Respirator" by Scuba, is a thick, lurching bass heavy dubstepper for sure. Kode9 contributes "Magnetic City", a dark shuffling dubstep jam, but it too is heavy on the melodica and classic dub guitar lines.
But most of the rest of the record, is more killer modern electronic dub than dubstep, blissed out beats, plenty of reverb, that reggae rhythm, lots of melodica, reggae crooning, but with bits of dubstep mixed in here and there. The beats are slightly darker and distorted, the synths and basslines are thicker and more raw, pulsing and throbbing. In some ways, if you didn't know what dubstep was, this might be the ultimate dub compilation, all the best parts of dub, stripped down, skeletal, but with the bass pumped and all sorts of extra synthy buzz and rhythmic skitter.
It may all just be semantics. Whatever you call it, we can't stop listening to it. And it sounds sooooooo good turned way up with the bass on ten, makes the whole shop rattle. Fans of recent AQ faves like Burial, Kode9 (both on here!), Milanese, the Skull Disco comp, the Science Faction: Dubstep comp, will absolutely need this too...
Oh how we've adored the Germans' take on various musical styles over the years, and we're not just talking about their obvious kosmiche krautrock brilliance. No, it's German musicmakers' handling of the more unexpected genres that have deepened our love affair tenfold. The hip '60s kitten heeled go-go pop of the In-Kraut compilations? The spaghetti (er, sauerkraut?) westerns of the Wig Wam Weste(r)n Weisse Wolfe collections? Yes and yes! Those two genres are unquestionably more commonly associated with French chanteuses and American cowboys, so the unmistakable German inflections that surface always make for a delightful twist on the familiar.
Now Marina Records, who brought us those In-Kraut comps, takes it (or is it retakes it?) to the dancefloor with this compilation of German disco and funk music circa 1975 thru 1980. They're not messin' around. This is straight-up boogie wonderland business. Awesome.
Some highlights include the 8+ minute Supermax track, a lowdown I'm so sexy unstoppable groover... the Giorgio Moroder studio band Munich Machine's classic "Get On The Funk Train"... and a disco-era hit from In-Kraut alumnus Peter Thomas and his Sound Orchestra... among 15 other mainly killer, glitterball dazzlers. Now, if the weird thing is, this isn't really that weird. Heck disco's even back "in" now. Don't go expecting krautrocky craziness, instead just get yer dancing shoes on and yer ass in gear. Seriously, this has been getting spun in the store by AQ staffers just as much or more than anything else lately, and when it's on we've been getting our work done with just a little more groove.
Includes a 14-page booklet of informative liner notes, with such interestin' tidbits as that Berry Lipman's track "Sex World" was used as the theme song for an American porno film, but originated as an instrumental from the German sci-fi TV series Star Maidens...
We often feel like we're totally out of the loop when it comes to dance music. And as if to prove that point, every once in a while we'll randomly stumble across a disc that totally kicks our ass, only to realize, that the world at large had already been hyping said disc to death. Such is the case with this second comp of far out futuristic electro weirdness from Ed Banger Records. We sort of just picked it up on a whim (some AQ folks were already hip to it, we're not all dance music squares) and were immediately smitten. Wild and fun, funky and funny, heavy and fuzzy and if the person writing this review actually danced, this disc would have had him out of his seat like a shot.
No need to do a total track by track run down, as every single song here is a killer, a few names we knew, most we didn't, but the sound is crazy. And fucking awesome. It's like the music of LCD Soundsystem, Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, but supercharged, injected with youthful energy and punk rock snottiness, peppered with more distortion and buzz, fucked up beats, off kilter loops and samples, but remaining totally hooky and danceable.
Some of the best tracks:
The killer dis track "Dismissed" from Uffie, a killer slab of seriously foul mouthed electro nastiness using a bastardized version of what sounds like Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" as the main loop, but it's all about the vitriolic invective, what sounds like a nasty teenage white girl awkwardly rapping and spitting all sorts of goofy playground insults.
Ultra hyped next big things Justice who do their best Daft Punk, and offer up a super damaged cop-show block rockin' beat workout with machine like rhythms and cool crumbling synthy bass lines and awesome glitched out buzz drenched synthesized riffage.
Krazy Baldhead who come closest to Jones Machine for sheer mindless electronic bliss, throbbing synths, bouncing bass, another track that sounds like some futuristic chase scene.
Sebastian, who offers up a blast of ultra distorted beats, weird blown out fuzzy loops, the whole thing chopped and hiccuping like some radio with bad reception or a turntable with fuzz all over the needle.
We could go on and on. Needless to say, every time we play this in the store folks go nuts for it, and even some of the dance music phobic we know have been rocking this like crazy! Some of the other folks on the comp: Mr. Oizo, DJ Mehdi, Mr. Flash, Feadz, Busy P, Klaxons, Fancy and Vicarious Bliss.
Way recommended.
A remastered reissue of this compilation of word and sound from 1980! The title might be From Brussels With Love -- the city where the original release's label Les Disques Crepuscule was based -- but the contributions are by artists from well beyond that city's limits drawing from comrades in Manchester and London (many from the Factory Records camp). It features many wellknowns, soon to be wellknowns and certainly more obscure artists from back in the day: John Foxx, Thomas Dolby, Repetition, Harold Budd, Durutti Column, Martin Hannett, Michael Nyman, Phill Niblock, Richard Jobson, Bill Nelson, Kevin Hewick, New Order, Radio Romance, Gavin Bryars, Der Plan, B.C. Gilbert and Graham Lewis. Along with the music are included two interview clips with Jeanne Moreau and Brian Eno. The latter is layered with Niblock's gently droning "Third Trombone". Although it does come with a 20 page booklet, unfortunately this new cd version doesn't come with any special packaging unlike the original cassette release which purportedly came in a PVC jacket with a badge and booklet. A very cool and incredibly varied historical document.
How many tribute albums can one man have? Ok, what we should be asking is how many good tribute albums can one man have? Ones that don't just have contemporary artists covering their favorite songs merely to add hip factor to an older artist, or ones that don't contain hip artists who are now dubiously rushing to be associated with someone who has had major cultural influence over a current scene. Thankfully, the folks at Table Of the Elements manage to avoid the tribute album pitfalls by selecting a range of artists from the current avant-garde not to perform covers but to create original compositions in the spirit of the Master's most peculiar, eccentric, far-flung and sometimes corn-ball humor. Of course from Table Of The Elements, who championed Fahey's later and most outre work, we are going to hear less of the Takoma-era acoustic guitar compositions (though Jack Rose and Sir Richard Bishop provide the stalwart gate-keeping role for that sound), and hear more of a dark yet celebratory experimentalism from the likes of New Zealand's Pumice, Lichens, R. Keenan Lawler, and No Neck Blues Band, who in the guise of country cousins, Coach Fingers manage to sample some of Fahey's voice (Don't be surprised if you think Jandek was invited to the party). Michael Hurley, Ben Vida, Badgerlore, Greg Malcolm and David Daniell also make some stellar appearances.
Walken raise their fists at the crossroads of hardcore punk and metal on this their debut -- a brief, but promising ep that the band self released on cd-r. With bass strings so loosely strung that you can hear 'em clatter and manly screamo vocals, the band's raw thrashing is heavily indebted to very early Bay Area metal bands such as Metallica, Exodus and Testament, but with unexpected bluesiness in the riff department. Furious, chunky and part of the latest virulent strains of Bay Area thrash.
The posthumous debut from (and, thus, swansong of) San Francisco's most cult black metal act, Weakling. Despite their local, non-forested, non-wintry origins, Weakling was a band capable of destroying the best Scandinavia has to offer (as we witnessed upon two occasions, when Weakling had the honor of opening the San Francisco shows by Norwegians Mayhem and Enslaved, and proceeded to make both bands look like punk rockers in comparison! Weakling were so much more epic and intense). All this without any of the ignorant posturing or hackneyed corpsepaint of their peers.
Ghastly, anguished vocals and bloodchilling keyboards combine with dual trebly buzzsaw guitars and inhuman trance inducing drumming to create an atmosphere of utter grinding grimness. Weakling draws upon '90s black metal in the Norwegian tradition (especially the raw and primitive likes of Darkthrone, Burzum and Immortal) and then creates uniquely fucked song structures of epic length (20 minutes per, in some cases).
And, like the best music, Weakling also transcends genre. In some ways, "Dead as Dreams" possesses elements that can be considered akin to the avant garde, experimental creations of the Swans, Skullflower, Steve Reich, or even Yoko Ono. Imagine an extensive, utterly mesmerizing Hermann Nitsch piece, composed for black metal band.
It's a suffocating soundscape of riffing and drone. Subterranean satanic art rock that equals metal. Nihilistic, depressive and never ending.
Featuring Josh from The (Fucking) Champs as well as drummer Lil' Sunshine from local death metallers Sangre Amado. And of course, John Gossard of...well, John Gossard. (And The Gault / Asunder / Iron Vegan.) Local black metal maniac/death rocker extraordinaire. Weakling is largely the result of his devotion to black metal dementia.
We are not engaging in baseless hyperbole when we say: this should be crowned black metal album of the year. Seriously. Essential.
Even though it wasn't all that long ago that we were served with the serious space rock wallop of White Hills' most recent full length Glitter Glamour Atrocity, it was only a matter of moments before we were already jonesing for more. And while this is not a proper WH record per se, it is at least another heaping helping of that spaced out sound we can't get enough of.
Here, White Hills team up with SF noise outfit White Pee for a nearly 30 minute single track of space-y, druggy, krautdrone ambient noise. And it's a killer. Never heard of White Pee before, and because this disc is so abstract and sort of shapeless, it's hard to put a finger on what exactly they bring to the table, but these two groups together sound like one. The noise is relegated to brief bursts here and there, for the most part, this is gloriously tranquil blissed out dronescapes. Long expanses of slow flowing Tangerine Dream and Popol Vuh synth sprawl, the FX are muted but wrap their shimmery tendrils around everything.
Here and there, the meditative shimmer is disrupted by dense gnarled squalls of gritty guitar growl, arranged into strange almost-rhythms, a stretched out lurching throb plodding along over long ominous streaks of sci fi synth. The synths got from ethereal and whispery, to throbbing and fuzzy, from dreamy and barely there, to pulsing and propulsive, almost like some disembodied Gary Numan rhythm track.
The second half of the disc is wide open and spare, shades of Tim Hecker and Machinefabriek and that sort of buzzy blurred soundscapes, guitars ebb and flow, keening high end melodies drift WAY off in the distance, dense washes of distorted guitar crumble bathe everything in grit and buzz, plaintive piano drifts in and out like some unearthly transmission, all hazy and indistinct, darkly dramatic and so lovely.
This is a SUPER limited edition, except for the copies the band kept, these are ONLY available from aQuarius. LIMITED TO 85 COPIES!! The first 50 in hand made wooden sleeves, the other 35 in jewel cases, but also hand made and each one unique. We got about 30 copies of the wooden sleeved version, and a handful of the jewel cased version. While supplies last, you'll get the wood ones, but once those are gone, you'll get the jewel case version. Needless to say these will be gone in a flash...
Where the last two Wilco records found Jeff Tweedy exploring a wider sonic palette, especially with the addition of secret weapon, guitarist Nels Cline, Sky Blue Sky is for sure a retreat to the more straightforward side of his song writing skills. Sounding very warm and laid back with a strong '70s rock disposition, Sky Blue Sky sort of walks the fine line of the undeniable warmth and glow of The Byrds and Wings while sometimes slipping to the other side landing in Eagles territory. That's a tricky line to straddle and at moments we can't help but love the earnest delivery and heartfelt sound but there are those times where it does veer a little too much to the side of innocuous '70s rock for our tastes (Vice called it 'Dad Rock'). Not a bad record but for sure not our favorite Wilco by a longshot.
If you were like us and exclaimed, "Wow, a new Wingtip Sloat album?!" And then after listening to it thought that the Wingtip Sloat of new sounded remarkably like the Wingtip Sloat of old... well, silly gooses all of us! This is not a new album, but a generous collection of thirty rarities and compilation tracks from their heyday. Wingtip Sloat's music fits the textbook definition of the truly alternative indie rock dislocations that ruled the college radio waves for a spell back in the early '90s. Mildly eccentric and destined for obscurity if not for the fine folks at VHF (who are the folks who released this), the cd includes a bunch of great covers of tunes by fellow obtuse indie rockers Tall Dwarfs, Sun City Girls, The Clean, Swell Maps and World Of Pooh.
On the cover: Throbbing Gristle (tagline: "the second coming"), Genesis P. looking, um, pretty in pink. Also in this issue of this indispensable monthly music magazine from Britain: Peter "Pita" Rehberg (doing the "Invisible Jukebox"), Daniel Higgs, Robin Williamson, Skull Disco, Finland's Keijo, and more, including the usual gobs of reviews of cds, lps, dvds, and printed matter. Also, CM Von Hausswolff tells us about one of his favorite album cover images: the human body hanging amidst the slabs of bloody beef starkly depicted on the sleeve to the Edgar Broughton Band's self-titled third album, from 1971.
The return of psychedelic drugfolk alchemists Wovoka. We heavily dug their last disc, and this one is more of the same. A super tripped out, blissy drone-y raga like buzz, drifting through some Autumnal wonderland, the sky full of falling orange leaves, the ground muddy and moist, the sky a burnt copper, the wind warm and smelling of smoke and burning wood. And on the wind drifts a lazily unfurling web of skeletal acoustic guitar strum, little bits of muted guitar leads, silvery strands of banjo, lots of warm warble and tape hiss. It's not until a few tracks in that the band begins to rock, hand drums, electric guitar, some wailing psych leads, but even at their rockiest, these guys are still laid back and stoned, drifting and swaying, letting night fall on their campfire jams. Looped and cyclical, dreamlike and mesmerizing, the strummed steel strings and the sporadic bongo drums turning everything into some warped alien drum circle. You can almost envision this wandering tribe of buzz-and-strum minstrels wandering through some dark Finnish forest, where they stumble upon Avarus or Anaksimandros, who of course welcome them with open arms, for once having heard the sounds coming from the woods, they knew it must be like minded spirits. Who else but musical brethren could be making such hazy, fuzzy, dreamy, druggy forestfolk...
No Neck, Sunburned, Tower Recordings, Avarus, you know you the names, add Wovoka to the list if you haven't already....
LIMITED TO 199 COPIES. Already sold out, we seem to have the very last copies. Packaged in a super thick old fashioned mini-lp stylee gatefold sleeve, with the pasted on inside image, and pressed on faux-vinyl cd-r's (complete with inside label and fake grooves!).
There can really be no doubt any more. Zu are the heaviest, fiercest jazz combo ever. And to be honest, they are barely even jazz. They are more some sort of furious metallic math rock outfit that just happens to have a saxophone, and who just so happen to bee able to kick out some bad ass jazziness amidst all the pummeling and rocking they seem to always be doing.
This super limited picture disc, features two brand new tracks, both serious barnstormers. The first side begins with churning detuned bass which gives way to a super freaked out burst of psych spazz drumming and wild skronking horns eventually locking into a weird jazzy sci-fi krautrock groove complete with creepy Goblin-esque synth swells.
The flip side offers up more jazzy math rock weirdness, swinging wildly from spastic skitter to near-metallic groove sounding more like the Ruins than ever, although things are going on like crazy underneath the surface, pizzicato strings, backwards loops, weird ambient sounds, and brutal bursts of blast beat skronk.
Outrageously thick vinyl, a gorgeous picture disc with some killer creepy skull art on one side, and swirling psychedelic eye candy on the other! ----* ----* tUMULt: Back In Print And Back In Stock : ----*
