Here's the debut solo album by singer/songwriter Jake Mann formerly of Bay Area band The Zim-Zims (you might recall he stepped out on his own for the cdr release Solo Electric EP). If you dig indie rock'n'pop, this gent's your ears' new best buddy! The super fuzzed out guitar lines on songs like "Satellite In Bloomington" could easily be mistaken for something comin' from Sam Coombes and Quasi. Mann keeps his pop tunes' buoyancy weighted down by minor chords and charming hushed vocals. Later in the album, "Mudflat" perks things up a bit, offering sounds akin to the bright, slightly tweaked pop of Olivia Tremor Control. Nicely varied, low-key popcraft.
Lately I Keep Scissors... One Perfect Green Blanket... do these phrases conjure warm fuzzies in your pop luvvin' heart? They do? Then you know that they're the titles of two early albums by the lovely one-time Bay Area songstress Barbara Manning. The former was her debut album originally released in 1988 and the latter was a collection of compilation and flexidisc tracks which came out in 1991 (both on the Heyday indie record label). And you might also like to know that today's a happy day 'cause they've been remastered and reissued along with a third cd of previously unreleased material.
They simply don't make indie pop like this any more. Unassuming, sweet and smart poignant songs in league with those of singer/songwriters Grant McLennan, David Kilgour, Lois Maffeo, and Lida Husik.
The three discs are packaged together in a box with a booklet filled with snapshots, reviews and personal accounts from a bunch of her friends. Snuggle up.
Across his prolific catalog over the past 12 years or so, Daniel Menche's recordings have been almost synonymous with scalding noise and boldly masculine aggression, much in the same way that you know what to expect when you pick up a Merzbow record. Yet, there are a couple of exceptions to the Menche confrontational agenda. The most notable recordings in the lesser known, Menche drone sound would be October's Larynx, Crawling Toward The Sun, and now Wolf's Milk. All of these recordings hold a golden shimmer which steadily changes from a somnolent ambience into a smoldering drone of compacted static, rasping vibrations, and even a few distant hints of the mangled electronics of his noise persona. Each of the three lengthy tracks on Wolf's Milk ramps up to the immersive atmospheres and steadily deflates back down to a stately dronefield, which all together recalls BJ Nilson and even Phill Niblock. A really nice record, in the usual nice Utech packaging!
Kristin Miltner is one of many very talented electronic musicians from the Bay Area who has gone through Mills College with a deft understanding of Max/MSP language and how to apply that understanding to a post-techno framework of electronica. While she has collaborated in a couple of other recorded projects, Grains stands as her solo debut, and it's quite a gem of twinkling glitch-based electronica and crunchy rhythmic skitter. Fragmenting tiny snippets of her own voice and splicing it all back together with all of the digital threads exposed, Miltner builds looping melodies that hold the same languid sensibility found on those beloved Colleen records, but with the additional pixel smear patina from the likes of Tim Hecker and Fennesz. Using these melodies as the building blocks to her pop-song length pieces, Miltner stacks these sounds with increasing density and jagged drum machines, all the while maintaining the basic tune of the melody. Grains emerges as a short and sweet reprisal of the classic Autechre use of melody with plenty of technological tricks up its sleeve to keep it charming, fresh, and unique. Very nicely done.
Oh the yummy pop power of The Monolith! They continue to dish it out in heaping spoonfuls on this their second album. This terrific Bay Area foursome take the standard pop band instrumentation of vocals, guitar, bass and drums, and plush it up so nicely with horns, keyboards and strings. The Monolith sound is alternately reminiscent of Quasi, Apples In Stereo, Big Star, Beatles, Beach Boys, maybe even a bit of Bread too -- y'know, all the best popsters! Bright, bouncy, harmony filled sweetness. Meet you there? You bet!
Finally available again, one of our favorite slabs of doomy black buzz. Remastered, reissued and on a new label! Here's the review from when we first got this in:
Our doomiest customer, "Rick from Thrasher", came in the other day to ask about an album he saw on www.doom-metal.com, some band called Nortt who were supposed to be amazing; so good in fact that according to that website, Nortt's label was almost justified in charging about thirty euros for their cd (an astronomical amount, like US$40)! We didn't of course have that absurdly-expensive opus, but we actually did have this, Nortt's previous album released for a much more reasonable price on a different label. And it is pretty darn good, if you're in the mood for some "Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal" as it says on the back cover. Nortt are a one-man band from Denmark in the black metal tradition (complete with corpse paint and everything), but their fuzzing, buzzing music is sloooowww and full of despairing piano intonations and distorted minor-key laments. The vocals and the guitars both sound like last breaths, dying gasps, exhalant spirits... It's a drone-hiss of massive, gothic proportions. Nortt definitely inhabit the same gloomy petrified forest as AQ-faves Skepticism!! Perhaps if you get this and it succeeds in bringing your most suicidal thoughts to the fore, you can make it through life a little longer by trying to search out that other incredibly expensive Nortt album... (By the way, that www.doom-metal.com website is pretty cool one, for doom-fans only of course, with info on hundreds of doom acts!)
Now domestically available, another cool Krautrock reish from Revisited! Their recent cd-ifications of Eroc, Klaus Schulze, Embryo, and Amon Duul II, among others, have been in heavy rotation here at AQ, and this one joins the gang. Revisited appear to be reissuing titles from the legendary & collectable green-labelled 1000-series by the seminal krautrock label Brain, and this too is one of those "green Brain" records. Produced by AQ fave Achim Reichel, Novalis' 1975 self-titled release was the 2nd album from these keyboard-dominated, synthed-out "romantic" space rockers from Hamburg, and is a proggy, groovy, classical gas indeed. Imagine a krauty mixture of E.L.P., and Trans Am, perhaps.
Keyboard whiz Lutz Rahn doesn't stint on the symphonic synths, and Novalis seem to specialize in taking both folk and classical motifs from the past and using them in a "futuristic" rock context. There's also plenty of guitar here too (with two guitarists in the band). The very first track, the sprightly "Sonnengefecht", starts things off with something of a '70s TV cop-show vibe, but one that fans of Zombi should dig. Further cuts reveal Novalis to be flamboyant, yet moody. Energetic, epic, erudite. Some of their lyrics were derived from the 18th century poetry of Karl Friedrich von Hardenberg, better known as Novalis, the band's namesake. Others are their own, as on one of this album's highlights, "Impressionen", which makes good use of themes borrowed from the 5th Symphony of Anton Bruckner.
Like many of the other Revisited reissues, this includes bonus material not found on the original vinyl. Here you get a ten and a half minute, live in '75 version of "Impressionen". As usual as well, this is nicely presented in a digipack, with color photos in the cd booklet, and liner notes in both German and English. Keep 'em coming, Revisited -- there's quite a few other "Green Brain" albums we'd like to have on cd!!
"A collection of musical debris from the original Who Can I Turn To Stereo session" is all that Beta-Lactam provides in terms of information about this album. Along with Rock 'N' Roll Station released a few years earlier, the 1996 album Who Can I Turn To Stereo could be seen as one of the few gateway albums into the hermetic sonic realm of Nurse With Wound. While NWW's Steven Stapleton has made no bones about the albums that have influenced his project (and in many ways, the Nurse With Wound LIST of influences which was included in the first album has become a collector's checklist of terminally out-there kosmiche rock and psychedelic electronics), the combination of those influences have defined one of the most singularly unique voices in all of music history. So when it comes to a NWW album with 'crossover appeal,' don't expect Stapleton to make it easy on the ears. Who Can I Turn To Stereo found Stapleton deeply mired in his infatuation with bizarre exotica records and the mambo sounds of Perez Prado; and the three lengthy cuts of "debris" from those sessions are thoroughly abstracted variations that occasionally ground themselves upon a bongo loop which had developed into a signature for NWW throughout the '90s. The tracks weave with eerie smoke and dopplereffected shadow. Jittery rhythms co-habitate alongside the bongo loops and march on one occasion with a jagged guitar whose spindly sounds harken all the way back to the NWW album A Chance Meeting Between An Umbrella And a Sewing Machine. Sadly, the original version of Who Can I Turn To Stereo is no longer in print; and it has to be said that the original mixes probably work better than what you'll find here, although Nurse With Wound outtakes still sound pretty damn great no matter how you slice it.
Ooooh. Here we have the first of two volumes (both of 'em double discs) of live material being released this summer by Japan's Doubtmusic from ONJO. That's the unusual "jazz orchestra" led by turntablist/guitarist Otomo Yoshihide (who could be considered the Japanese John Zorn, his old band Ground Zero being the analog to Zorn's Naked City, though that doesn't do either of them justice, really). In jazz speak, ONJO's music wanders both inside and outside, it's avantgarde yet lush and listenable, full of melody and melancholy. Electronic textures intrude upon jazz standards, whispy vocals drift amidst gentle drones, and aggressive bouts of noisy improv burst forth to keep them far out of cocktail lounge territory.
Recorded on several dates in Berlin, Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nagoya, the ten tracks here were performed by five varied ONJO lineups, featuring a large number of talented musicians, familiar among them vocalist Kahimi Karie and sinewavist (?) Sachiko M, and a host of Japanese jazz cats and "onkyo" experimenters. The Berlin dates see the ONJO joined by Europeans like reed player Alfred Harth and trumpeter Axel Dorner. It's mostly all Otomo's own compositions, with a couple by cult Japanese '60s/'70s TV soundtrack composer Yamashita Takeo, as well as required readings of Eric Dolphy's "Out To Lunch", "Straight Up And Down", and "Hat And Beard".
These discs are packaged in the typical deluxe Doubtmusic style, with thick cardboard gatefold sleeves, and include lengthy, very personal liner notes from Otomo himself, going in depth about the ideas behind this music, the evolution of his "jazz" composition post-Ground Zero, as his feelings about the legacy of his former teacher, the late Japanese jazz giant Masayuki Takayangi evolved. He discusses his simultaneous immersion in both the quiet electronic improv scene called "onkyo" and also the resurgence of his interest in traditional jazz sounds, seemingly contradictory musical directions that he meshes brilliantly -- as can be heard here. Essential for all Otomo fans (especially those who love his ONJO album Plays Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch!!).
Finally! What, five years in the making? It's been that long since San Francisco's unhinged avantgarde-hardcore-blues-metal artistes the one and only Oxbow last lashed an explosive new full-length recording to our heads and pulled the pin, way back in 2002 with An Evil Heat. Yeah, last year's "live and rare" cd+dvd collection Love That's Last was great for fans and newcomers alike, but also whetted our appetite to hear some actual new dementia from this unique outfit. But Oxbow have always done things at their own leisure, having been around for long enough to now be selling records to metalcore kids who were probably not even born when Oxbow's first album, Fuckfest, came out in 1989. This is only their sixth studio album since then, but when you make music this intense, this cathartic, this disturbed, deviant, raw, heavy, fucked up, etc. etc. (to use a bunch of the usual words to appropriately describe Oxbow) it's not like you could, or should, make that many albums. It wouldn't be healthy!
Over the years, Oxbow has inevitably changed, grown, matured. The mania of early albums like Fuckfest and King Of The Jews has been relaxed (though always ready to erupt), and there's been more in the way of beauty crammed into their complex compositions to contrast with the ugly stuff. Even as they find more and more of a "metal" audience with releases on Neurot and now Hydra Head, their music is sweetened with strings and piano... But The Narcotic Story still brutalizes with the Oxbow basics: sinewy slide guitar riffage, moody soft-loud dynamics, mathrock tightness, and of course the psychotic vocals & lyrics of singer-you-wouldn't-want-to-fuck-with Eugene Robinson. His delivery is sometimes like a mewling baby, sometimes like a crotchety grandpa, usually both at the same time, Robinson his own multi-tracked schizoid choir. Here, his homeless-man mumbling and primal screams are joined by more coherent singing. But you'll still have to listen hard to figure out what he's on about -- if you dare. Just like at an Oxbow show, it's dangerous to get too close.
Definitely, Robinson is an essential part of the Oxbow equation (one that will make or break the band for the uninitiated), but his naked displays of verbal and non-verbal (again, go see 'em live!) nihilism wouldn't carry the same weight without the sparse tension, technical precision, and dramatic, damaged melodicism provided by the instrument-equipped band members. The Narcotic Story finds them keeping up their end as well. "Frankly Frank" is a classic, swampy Oxbow creepy-crawl, "She's A Find" a lovely, lush dirge. These tracks and all the rest here are the Oxbow fix old addicts like us want and need, and ought to hook a few unsuspecting, previously clean-living youths as well, for whom Isis and Neurosis were the gateway drugs...
FYI, we hear that someday Hydra Head has plans to release a deluxe edition of this cd, in some sort of special packaging, a hardback book apparently... dunno when though.
1971 strikes again! Here's a new cd reish of this beautifully freaky album by a Japanese "Buddhist-psych" band called People, featuring guitarist Kimio Mizutani (who played with Love Live Life + 1, Hiro Yanagida, and others, and did a solo album called A Path Through Haze). There's monk-like chanting and resounding gongs, field recordings of birds and street sounds, and even, strangely enough, samples from soulful psych-funk producer David Axelrod's classic 1968 album Song Of Innocence. And of course heavy wah wah guitar action. The album is a real 'trip', much of it indeed very ceremonial-sounding, venturing from blissful grooves with tick-tock rhythms ("Shomyo Part 2") and placid, lovely droniness ("Prayer Part 1") to sheer pounding electric fuzz riffage laced with screams of orgasmic ecstasy ("Prayer Part 2"). The puzzling use of those lush, orchestral Axelrod samples on the first and last tracks just helps to make this somehow both very much of its time and also way ahead of it (since Axelrod is heavily sampled by folks today as well!). Quite recommended.
We have been totally obsessed with French black metallers Amesoeurs, from the second we first heard their debut ep (and only proper release), Ruines Humaines, absolutely one of our favorite black metal records ever, a disc of glistening, My Bloody Valentine like buzz rife with strangely melodic indie rock jangle and occasional female vocals, all wrapped in sonic spikes and buzzing guitars and blasting beats, a bliss pop disc in black metal clothing if there ever was one. In reviewing that disc we mentioned that there were various other related bands we were feverishly trying to track down, one was the even less metal, and more blissed out Alcest (whose debut cd is out of print, but whose brand new full length should be out soon) and the super demented, slightly more typically black metal Peste Noire. Now, when we say "slightly more typically black metal", it's all relative, by any other standards, and compared to any other BM bands, Peste Noire is anything but typical, but compared to the relative poppiness of Alcest and Amesoeurs, this stuff is as black as it gets.
We had been trying to track down their debut for ages, but since it took so long, a brand new full length dropped in the meantime, this disc right here, so we figured we oughta start with this and work our way back. We do have the first record in stock, and it's just as amazing and fucked up and freaked out and absolutely recommended as essential, so if you want this one, odds are you're gonna need that one too (so just ask), but just so you know what you're getting into, let's investigate the bizarre soundworld of France's Peste Noire....
The problem is, it's really hard to describe just what the heck Peste Noire sounds like. They are definitely black metal, but the arrangements are so bizarre, and often not very black, everything is fuzzy and off kilter and distorted, dizzying and haunting and creepy, stumbling and whatthefuck as often as heavy or buzzing.
Take the opening track, some sort of crumbling distorted soundscape, lots of fuzz and hiss, plenty of reverb and druggy murk, industrial percussion and washed out ambience, some super beautiful clean guitar, that fragments into fractured weirdness over which harsh blackened vocals howl and shriek, the guitars eventually growing more and more distorted and FX drenched, while all around swirl strange sounds and demonic voices. But then the second track kicks in and things settle down for the most part. A relentless black buzz, but not typical in any way, a sort of old school thrash, but all twisted and tangled, the guitars are all over the place, the background is a constant wash of fuzzy roar, while up front, the main riff is sharp and angular. The vocals are a hateful hissy howl, the drums a stumbling blast, but amidst all this chaos are bits of perfect poppiness, killer melodies, amazing (and unlikely grooves), super hooky and catchy, but in a way that seems impossible. Within three minutes, Peste Noire go from buzzy blast, to dreamy melodic drift to midtempo groove to lumbering doom, but always imbued with a strange pop sensibility and always wrapped in all manner of fucked up sounds and damaged production.
Some bands are obviously 'fucked', the drums a crumbling mess, the recording quality ultra shitty, the mix all over the map with LOUD drums or super inaudible guitars, we love that stuff, but Peste Noire is fucked in a completely different way, listening to this, you can tell these guys are amazing musicians, and have an absolutely solid idea of what they're trying to do, It's just that what they're trying to do would never occur to anyone in their right mind, Which is exactly what makes their music so compelling and so totally mind blowingly bizarre.
As with all music, metal in particular, it's all about the riffs, and thus the guitars, and the guitars here are fucking amazing, sometimes spun into crystalline melodies, delicate and sparkling, other times super dense downtuned buzz, occasionally weird and angular and super mathy, the quality of the guitar sound too is ridiculously varied, from clean and clear, to muddy and murky, often at the same time, and always in the same song. At some points it almost sounds like these guys were mad musical alchemists who took two different records and crammed them together creating some unholy sonic beast, poppy and catchy, but bleak and brutal and demented, an unnatural blackened buzzing freakshow of sound, but always as beautiful as it is fucked up.
The whole record is peppered with non musical weirdness too. The extended intro of "Maleicon", an extended rant in French, growled and spat out over a backdrop of moans and drones, or the brief "Extrait Radiophonique", which sounds like a crackly record of maniacal screams, tolling bells, and all sorts of slamming and banging, but somehow even those parts all essential to the demented and damaged vision that is FolkFuck Folie.
Definitely another contender for black metal record of the year!!
Includes a bonus track from a long out of print split with Finnish black metallers Horna, which is way more black than the rest of the record, but is just as weird and amazing. Packaged with a huge booklet of lyrics, photos, liner notes, drawings and plenty of other strangeness.
Another Italian experimental composer (in league with the likes of Christa Pfangen, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, and Giuseppe Ielasi, who mastered this disc) presents an album on the always-intriguing Die Schachtel label. This belongs to their "Zeit" series documenting contemporary sonic artists and is packaged in a typically handsome digipack (thick matte cardboard, embossed cover design). The title Sintesi Da Un Diario means "abstract from a diary" and that does describe this somewhat: Petronella's music is certainly quite abstract (to use a different sense of the word), and his extensive use of everyday "field recordings" is suggestive of the "diary" angle. It's a detailed, mysterious sound bath indeed, featuring much in the way of rustlings and rumblings, electronic bleep and shimmer, tinkling percussion, obscured talking voices, children playing, clicks and crackle, and more... Petronella is credited with "acousmatics", a term that a little research tells us was coined long, long ago by Greek philosopher Pythagoras to mean "sound hidden from its visual source". Several 20th century composers in electroacoustics and musique concrete, like Pierre Schaeffer and Francois Bayle, have since talked of their work being "acousmatic", and the definition has developed in several directions, one of them having to do with the concept of "reduced listening", wherein the listener processes sound without making any mental/visual references as to the actual source, allowing that sound to exist in and of itself, heard only as timbre, texture, etc.... hmmm all very interesting. We'd have to say that while you certainly can't always tell what's making the sounds found on this particular disc, it's hard to keep your brain from trying to supply some ideas. We need more reduced listening practice! This would certainly be a pleasant way to go about that... or heck just go ahead and use your imagination to make pictures from these sounds, that's fun too.
When it comes to specific musical instruments it's definitely tough for us to be won over by the alto sax. It's an instrument that all too often employed by those who have no business using it (think Kenny G, bad '80s pop rock, etc.) It's questionable use has made it so that even in respected jazz we almost cringe at its use unless its by one of the very few sax masters. So we knew immediately that this record by Carnatic player Prasant Radhakrishnan was something very special when it began with the sounds of alto sax. Part of it was the fact that the sax was being played in a way we had never really heard the instrument used before. Radhakrishnan's ability to bring together the disciplines of Classical South Indian music with Jazz is something he does grace and style. Equally influenced by John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins as much as D.K. Jayaraman and his guru Kadri Gopalnath, Radhakrishnan essentially uses the Sax to play ragas while his group adds violin and traditional Carnatic percussion to round out the sound. Now living right here in San Francisco, Radhakrishnan has found a perfect place to share his transcendent sounds with lots of open minds and ears.
Another killer issue of this UK modern music mag, with a seriously heavy bent, and a focus that is right in line with AQ's! On the cover, AGAIN, are doomlords SUNNO))), inside, features on Mike Patton and his Tomahawk, KTL, Pelican, Neurot recordings, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and an ever expanding record review section, featuring tons of reviews by Kevin McCaighy, the man behind kick ass magazine Salt (where's the new issue?!?!), a whole bunch of live show reviews, news, and on the back page, the One Minute Interview with The Liars!
Oooooh, yes! Remastered and reissued on cd!
Blinded by the pearly white teeth, blown away by the skin-tight polyester disco boogie... that's what many of us were after seeing Saturday Night Fever way back in 1977. Seems like a whole 'nother lifetime. These days John Travolta's moving in a different kind of polyester crowd, and the seventies fashions we thought were gone for good have more than made a comeback. Oh, the more things change....
Such is also the case with the central musical force on this soundtrack. When you think of the Bee Gees, isn't this what springs to mind? Such a different musical beast from the band who just a few years earlier made the immensely Beatles influence drenched albums 1st, Idea and Horizontal (fyi: all three were recently reissued as deluxe 2cd editions, one of which was our Record Of The Week back in January!). Overflowing with delectable falsetto harmonies as only the Brothers Gibb could dish out, we love this album! Yes, there are ample top 40 moments and many dripping with cheese ("A Fifth Of Beethoven" anyone?), but don't be mistaken! This isn't just a "so bad it's good" trip. Nostalgia, yes. Irony, no.
And lest we forget film score dynamo David Shire's presence. His disco-fication of the classical composition "Night On Bald Mountain" (retitled "Night On Disco Mountain") is mighty wonder unto itself! Yeah, you know how to do it!
As much as we all love Sebadoh, most of their records predate the aQuarius list, so other than the recent reissue of III, and this one right here, we have never been able to truly sing the praises of one�of our favorite indie rock bands of all time. They were one of the few bands who took indie rock and did whatever the fuck they wanted to with it.�Bakesale, Bubble And Scrape, Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock, Sebadoh Vs. Helmet, all over the map, but all distinctly Sebadoh. Much of it had to do with the genius popsmithery of Lou Barlow, ground zero for lonely sadboy bedroom folk. A one man lo-fi revolution. But much of it had to do with his choice in collaborators. Specifically, Eric Gaffney, Lou's perfect foil, personally, musically, in every way. Where Lou was introverted and shy, Eric was outspoken and spastic. Where Lou penned soft whispery ballads, Gaffney's songs were disjointed angular folk, or blasts of off kilter acoustic weirdness, together, the two forged the perfect balance between romantic longing and snotty punk rock rebellion. Never was this more evident than on their very first record, The Freed Man.�
Back in the nineties, there was a disc called the Freed Weed (you might remember in our review of III, we pleaded for someone to re-release it) which was the cd version of a record called Weed Forestin', a record written and recorded entirely by Lou, jam packed with classic pop, including a handful of tracks that would be reworked later and turned into classic electric Sebadoh numbers. Well, to fill out the cd, they tacked on a handful of tracks from The Freed Man...
The Freed Weed was our introduction to what would become the whole bedroom folk movement. We didn't know what the hell it was, other than it was like nothing we had ever heard, sad and intense, funny and fucked up, super personal and�intimate, with bursts of total what the fuck weirdness scattered throughout and some of the prettiest songs we had ever heard. And we were not looking� for soft folky sadness, we wanted heaviness and noisiness, but these songs were just too good to not fall in love with...�We played the shit�out of the Weed Forestin' side, the prettier Lou songs.
but later, when we had played it to death, we dug deeper into the more difficult songs from the Freed Man, and discovered a whole new world of deliriously damaged fractured folk...
So here we have the Freed Man in its entirety. With tons of extra songs, alternate versions, all culled from the original recordings... and it's just as amazing, as far out, as sweetly sorrowful as we remember.�
The�Freed Man was the 'first' actual Sebadoh release, originally released in 1989, and in the early days, sold for 99 cents in local record stores. It was split pretty evenly between Lou's soft bedroom folk, and Eric's damaged whatthefuck lo-fi freakouts� and raggedy strum and croon, with tons of random shit mixed in, radio soundbites, old records, primitive tape recorder experiments, all sorts of weird found sounds scattered throughout.
The sound now is quite familiar, every kid with an old beat up guitar and a 4 track has taken a stab at the whole lone bedroom troubadour thing, but at the time, this was seriously mindblowing,�murky hiss drenched acoustic guitar, gorgeously melancholy, with Lou's sadboy vocals, and lilting melodies, heartfelt, yet slightly tweaked lyrics, bursts of staticky chaos, cool weird tape loops... and the thing is, even after a million imitators, this STILL sounds special and fresh, and yeah, mind blowing. So much so that it's hard to pick out particular songs, the whole thing is so perfectly realized, it's almost like some insane lo-fi, bedroom folk DJ mix, the songs all flow into each other, stumbling over one another, woven together with random sound effects or manipulated tapes... Single songs don't get stuck in your head as much as whole suites, chunks of distinctly different songs that are so inexorably linked, they almost sound like multi part mini epics.
Some of our favorite tracks though:�the all time classic emo indie boy anthem "Soulmate", with the legendary line "I'll probably have to have sex with a lot of girls before my soulmate reveals herself to me..." and a chorus to die for,�Gaffney doing his best Barlow�on "Level Anything", still sad and folky, but with way more buzz and off kilter melody, the�super distorted hiss drenched beauty that is Barlow's "Close Enough", Lou's�"True Hardcore"� with the spoken intro "this is a complete rip off of every other song i've ever done" which launches into a song that is anything but hardcore, instead a gorgeous slab of lush heavily strummed sadboy folk with a KILLER hook / chorus,�"Wrists" another gorgeous off kilter folk dirge from Eric, minor key and rife with lush guitars and killer melodies,�"Bolder" which hints at the pop genius that Barlow would blossom into, it's easy to imagine this track fully electrified and super rocking on some later Sebadoh record,�"Jealous Evil", yet another classic Barlow track, moody and miserable, with brooding guitars, and subtle but moving melodies, and some gorgeous vocal melodies,�same with "Pig" slow burning and melancholy,�"Punch In The Nose",�and an old track with Lou's sister accompanying him on trumpet, and the record finishes�off with a Doc Watson cover that ends up sounding like the Frogs which is a very good thing. It's a mess and a jumble, but it's just so goddamn immediate and personal, weird and wonderful.�Eric's songs sound like Lou's only doused in acid and pot and slightly -more- out of tune�but they are the perfect balance for Lou's earnestness...
The Freed Man is in no way perfect, there are plenty of tracks that are noisy or fucked up and here and there plain embarrassing, but those only add to the record's charm, and tend to never last more than a minute. There's the super noisy cover of "Yellow Submarine" and the�super embarrassing "Lou Rap" complete with goofy childhood recordings, both of which we used to skip, but now, are too much a part of the whole to not enjoy as part of the bigger Sebadoh picture.�
There are of course tons of extras, some awesome rarities, redone tracks from the Freed Weed, unreleased songs, tracks from the amazing and long out of print Magic Ribbons 7" boxset and a handful of splits and singles, includes liner notes by both Eric and Lou, each offering their own take on the early years of the band,�with lots of artwork from the original cassette and the Freed Weed cd.
Like the recent reissue of Sebadoh III, The Freed Man is gorgeously packaged, with a huge booklet, tons of art, all housed in a swank slipcase, with the original cover reproduced, but with all the text in metallic silver...
The Bottomley brothers (Andrew and Peter) along with graphic designer Justin Wright (aka Expo 70!) have been publishing this fine music magazine for almost a decade now. Consistently well written, insightful, creative, and chockful of interviews, reviews and articles on all the artists we love, a new Skyscraper is always a welcome sight. Issue No. 25 is no exception. It features the likes of Grails, The Locust, Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle, Wooden Wand, Art Brut, Low, Shellac, Burning Star Core, Tim Green, Dinosaur Jr, Dungen and many more. 112 pages.
The Smashing Pumpkins are back. Well at least Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin. You probably know where you stand on the Pumpkins by this point, and while some of us here have never been fans and a few who never made it past Gish (which still ruleez says Andee!) there are a few of us here who aren't ashamed one bit to let it be known that we have always had a big ol' soft spot in our hearts for the Smashing Pumpkins. If you came of age in the '90s it's pretty much impossible not to have some nostalgia for how perfect their angst sounded in our poster decked teenage bedrooms. And love him or hate him Billy Corgan is one great guitar player who's managed to write some of the most memorable songs of the last couple decades. That being said they do leave lots of room for criticism and this new outing probably won't be the one to convert you if you've never been a big fan. But for those of you with that aforementioned soft spot, we think you should check this out and play it for a few times before you make your mind up as we've found this one to be a serious grower with repeated listens.
ALSO ON VINYL, WHOOHOO!
Still boggles the mind that this underground New York art rock band somehow were permitted into the mainstream... y'know the big leagues, but it's that mammoth wealth of resources that allows the release of special reissue editions such as this one.
So, what's your fave Sonic Youth album? If you took a poll around here, chances are you'd hear the names of a select few of their early albums come up repeatedly -- Bad Moon Rising, Evol, Goo, Sister maybe -- but none may be quite as beloved as Daydream Nation. Simply put, in pretty much every aspect -- album art, title, song sequence and the songs themselves -- Sonic Youth nails it. It's a superbly realized art rock album that balances melodicism and dissonance, traditional song structures and soundscapes.
The extras that make this version deluxe include a home demo version of "Eric's Trip" and an entire disc of unreleased live tracks from the Daydream era as well as some great covers of Kraftwerk, Mudhoney, The Beatles and Captain Beefheart.
With the deluxe reissue and recent performance of Daydream Nation here in town just a week ago Sonic Youth has been on our minds quite a bit. So we figured we would list the deluxe version of their major-label debut Goo which came out a while back too.....
The year punk broke? Depends on who you ask and if you care. But the documentary sporting that title centers around Sonic Youth and their tour after their first major label record came out, Goo, in 1990. In many ways this was the record that would shape the course of the indie-rock revolution of the 1990's. As it was more often then not Sonic Youth using their new found major label clout to help other bands get more exposure or even deals of their own (i.e. Dinosaur Jr, Mudhoney, Nirvana, etc.). Following up Daydream Nation must have been quite a daunting task and signing with a major label at that time was often the kiss of death for any self respecting band who had roots in the punk rock community. Yet somehow Sonic Youth found a way to forge a new road and rewrite all the rules. While Goo might be one of their more accessible albums it was by no means at all a sellout. SY had always had a pop element in their music and this record let them explore it much more deeply. While not their most critically acclaimed record, we've always had a huge soft spot for Goo, in fact it's Andee's favorite SY record ever! It was the record where SY got to let down their hair and have some fun. There is a playfulness and charisma to Goo that still kicks our ass. And odds are you probably already know and love a bunch of these Goo-tunes. Of all the deluxe SY reissues so far this is the one whose bonus material is the most rewarding. The proper album is on one disc followed by 5 tracks of out-takes and b-sides (including a Neon-Boys cover) and the second disc has some totally great 8-track demos as well as a killer cover of the Beach Boys' "I Know There Is An Answer" a good decade before it became all the rage to love The Beach Boys again. Aw Goo, a record that would help Sonic Youth reach the masses as it gave them a wider audience than previous albums. Goo launched a decade that would see so many bands flourish taking much inspiration from Sonic Youth. Everyone from Pavement to Sleater-Kinney, Unwound to Blonde Redhead. Seventeen years later and Goo still sounds so rocking and charming. One of the few bands who have made great records over the course of three decades!
We were a bit thrown for a loop when we first heard this Lampse release by Splint! We've been digging everything Lampse has been putting out (Machinefabriek, Jasper TX, Gultskra Artikler) all of which are more on the noisy, murky, crackly and mysterious side of things. Splint! however has a sound way different then any of their labelmates, but we're always happy to when a label mixes things up and shows us they aren't just a one trick pony. Splint! are a quartet who merge electronics with trumpet, synthesizer, guitar and percussion to create a rich and moody sound that is influenced equally by exploratory jazz (think Bill Laswell's reconstruction of Miles Davis) as it is the sonic explorations of Delia Derbyshire and the archives of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. We weren't grabbed at first, but as the record progresses, it builds and expands, unveiling a more engaging and compelling sound that unfolds blossoming-flower-like after the first couple tracks. In fact there are even moments that make us think of what a group on Rune Grammofon covering later Coil might sound like. So while on the surface this is much different sounding then anything else on Lampse, it still shares those intangible qualities of mystery and suspense that has made Lampse one of our favorite new labels.
'80s retro sci-fi sexiness from these would-be Teutonic (actually Texan) clubgoin' droids known as Starchaser Network... two thirds of whom (Equitant and Proscriptor) are also key members of cult black metal thrash masters Absu!!! Actually that's not so strange, really, since we're already familiar with other Absu side projects that displayed far-from-black-metal tendencies. Absu drummer Proscriptor's solo recordings had their art-rock and new wave elements -- he even did covers of both Flock Of Seagulls and the Art Bears! There also has been two unusual offerings of Electro pastiche from Absu guitarist Equitant. Definitely if you dug those Equitant discs, you should check out Starchaser Network, whose influences are similar: Eno, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Pet Shop Boys, Egyptian Lover, Detroit Techno, etc.... yeah, apparently these guys were listening to more than just thrash back in the '80s. Thus all the darkly poppy, spacey-synthy, computer-grooved stuff here, with its decadent/deviant discotheque vibe.
We'd recommend skipping track one, "Sintro", though, as it is by far the weakest, mainly due to some unfortunately cringeworthy vocals. They should have left it off, rather than putting it first! The rest of the disc is better, and while much of this may quite well be a bit tongue-in-cheek, only on that first track does it seem like "the joke's on them". We wish that they would have included instead their rumored cover version of the theme from the the '80s TV show Knight Rider (which should give you some idea about where they're coming from conceptually!).
It says right there on the sleeve: "100% Sludge". They had us at 100% sludge. Ummm, anyway, two of Finland's sludge rock heavyweights team up, each taking a side of this here 12", and each, surprisingly, doing something new and unique with their bit of sludge. Not that we wouldn't have loved another slab of slow motion dirgery, but we're even more psyched to see what weird shapes, some of this sludgedoomdrone can get twisted into.
Up first is Loinen, whose lp we totally flipped over a while back. They of the crushing doom with Scott Walker style vocals. Yep! You remember now? Well, here they try another something, also completely different, their side begins with a super distorted bass riff, spread way out, allowing for lots and lots of space, and in those spaces, there are strange chanted choral vocals, female, repeating the same pattern over and over, inexorably tangled up with the plodding riff. It's all very mysterious and hypnotic and continues on for nearly three quarters of the side, at which point the vocals finally come in, a strangled alien croon, alternately growling and sort of moaning, and it's not until nearly the end of the side when the drums finally kick in, and for the first time it begins to resemble the aforementioned 100% sludge. A lurching doom trudge with now croaking vocals all wrapped around that relentless distorted bass line. Finally, right at the very end, the track explodes in a frenzy of freaked out chaos, drums everywhere, feedback squealing and shrieking, the track dissolving in a blast of blown out brutality. Weird and quite cool.
So how do fellow countrymen, and masters of their own particular brand of sludginess, Stumm, respond? With yet another strange take on sludge, there's, at least for this lp side, is downright pretty. Thick swaths of washed out guitar rumble and soaring streaks of feedback all tangled and up like some gorgeous alien melody, not harsh at all really, more just strange sounding, and really quite beautiful, the first time we've heard feedback so skillfully sculpted, underneath, drums are simple and spare, it's more about atmosphere and mood it seems, a thick heavy dreamy drift. Right in the middle there's a brief burst where the guitars get more jagged and angular, and some howling shrieking vocals swoop in, but before you know it, they've swooped right back out, and the track is again drifting darkly, a strangely soft sludge shimmer. So great.
LIMITED TO 265 COPIES!!! These are the only copies we can get. Once they are gone, they are gone for good. Packaged like the Loinen 12", in a similar eye melting black and white high-school-binder tweeker pen and ink cover, with crazy art by Loinen member G.G., a tripped out world of strange figures and weird text and upside down crosses, and squiggles and creatures and who knows what else...
Strange is right! And it's not just the strings. This 1966 recording by out-jazz pioneer Sun Ra and his adventurous Astro Infinity Arkestra is strange all over. This could SO totally be a current day improv psych cd-r from some of our Finnish friends, for instance... if it weren't recorded 40 years ago by one of the foremost geniuses of 20th century American jazz (and Afro-Outer-Space art). The idea here is that alongside the horns and flutes and bass all the usual instrumentation of the Arkestra, they're improvising on a collection of completely unfamiliar instruments -- the sundry "strange strings" of the title. Odd, exotic stringed instruments possibly including: Chinese lute, "moon-guitar" (?), mandolin, banjo, koto, bandura, ukelin (a zither type instrument), and others yet to be identified. Directed only by loose gestures from Sun Ra, the band expresses themselves freely on these strange strings... and the results must rank among the weirdest and most abstract sounds in Sun Ra's vast catalog, an unhinged tangle of sputtering pluckery and string-scrape. In addition, some sort of percussion adds thunderous rumbling metallic drones (this is presumably the "lightning drum" with which Ra is also credited, along with electronic piano). It could be a sheet of metal, or even a metal musical sculpture, as this reissue's extensive and investigative liner notes postulate. Another sonic element making the proceedings even stranger is the wordless, otherworldly "space vocal" of Art Jenkins aka Thlan Aldridge.
There's three tracks here from the rare original Saturn-label release, plus a fourth bonus cut. "Worlds Approaching" starts things off with a 10+ minutes of woozy Wurlitzer, clonky horn burble, and percussive clatter. Then the shambolic strange strings orgy begins with "Strings Strange" (12:47) and continues through to the epic "Strange Strange" (20:53). Log drums pulse beneath the reverbed apeshit freeform freakout of strings, space vocals, and metallic crashes.
And, after all that, there's the ten and a half minute bonus track. Which believe it or not, is probably the strangest (there's that word again) thing on here! It's called "Door Squeak" and YES that's right, it's actually Sun Ra "playing" a squeaky, creaky door. Which is exactly what it so spookily sounds like. Pretty cool we think, a nice simple coda to the preceding mayhem, celebrating a pure love of sound, whatever the source, and its mysterious power over our imaginations.
Good grief, it's astonishing that even with so many Sun Ra reissues already out, there's STILL amazing stuff like this to be unearthed.
We have always loved The Dirty Three, and Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner has another little outfit we love just as much, The Tren Brothers. Problem was it was always pretty hard to get a hold of Tren Brothers records as they were usually only released as limited edition 7"s, But it was well worth the effort as the Tren Brothers' songs are just as gorgeous and breathtaking. Luckily Turner and Jim White (the amazing drummer for both outfits) have decided to make a proper full length together and we're so glad they did! Take the melancholy of Dirty Three, subtract the violins, add some more pastoral elements and thus you have the gorgeous world of Mick Turner / Tren Brothers. Turner music has always been so intense and emotional. And the music here transports us everytime we hear it. Blue Trees is such the perfect weekend record, pretty enough to keep you reminiscing and filled with enough longing and sadness to remind you how much you don't want Monday to come. Beautiful!
A two hour plus anthology of rare digitally remastered studio clips and live footage by various groups from the archives of Factory Records, Factory Benelux, Les Disques du Crepuscle between 1979 and 1987. Featuring Antena, A Certain Ratio, Josef K, Caberet Voltaire, Section 25, Durutti Column, New Order, Crispy Ambulance, Tuxedomoon, Paul Haig, Quando Quango and many, many others.
Remember that rad White Lace And Strange compilation we highlighted not long ago? Some killer late sixties, early seventies psych rock from the USA, garage bands gettin' "heavy". Well this disc, on the same Nick Saloman-affiliated label Psychic Circle, is in some ways a sequel, featuring similar bands of the era from the UK (and one Israeli band that recorded in London, to be perfectly accurate). With the subtitle "20 Gems From The Early Years Of Prog", it's billed as a collection of obscure "progressive rock" tracks... but the stress is on the rock. After all, Black Sabbath was once considered a "prog" band too. Sure, there might be some keyboards, but there's lots of raw, raucous energy here, both singers and guitarists wailing away in full fuzzed-out psychedelic proto-metal glory, when they didn't know from headbanging but knew how to boogie! Being a comp, of course some of this is better 'n the rest, but quality control is pretty high. Some faves include the punkish Helter Skelter (ex-Crushed Butler), the powerful axe-action of Israel's Jericho, and the heavy blues thud of early UFO, among other treats here to be heard from these bands (some we already knew, some new to us): Treetops, Mousetrap, Deadwood, Fuzzy Duck, Incredible Hog, Mouse, Beggars Opera, Kingdom Come, Little Big Horn, Strange Fox, Onyx, Spontaneous Combustion, Sheephouse, Pussy, Axe, Sunchariot, and Kansas Hook. The liner notes provide interesting tidbits on each artist (ferinstance, if you're as much of a proto metal geek as Allan, you'll be excited to get the track by Pussy, a later incarnation of one-album wonders Jerusalem).
The Numero Group's "Eccentric Soul" series lives up to its name with this new entry, lucky number seven in the series, which also lives up to the high expectations all its bumpin' predecessors have created for it -- Capsoul, Bandit, Deep City, all the rest, some better liked here than others but all pretty great when you get down to it... and get down to it is what you will, what this shit's all about. Long lost soul/funk/r&b gems from back in the day, regional obscurities that never had the breakout hit they deserved. Dunno why such soul men as Eddie Ray and Marion Black, heard here, didn't become stars. Wasn't for lack of talent.
Ranging from Stax style soul, to chicken scratch geetar funk in a right-on JB's vein, and even to some funked psychedelic instrumental wailing, this disc features 19 killer tracks, eight of them previously unreleased (demos and even finished masters recently discovered at an estate sale!), recorded circa 1969-1973 for the obscure Columbus, Ohio based label Prix. Yes, more amazing stuff from the same town that supported the Capsoul label documented on the very first Numero Eccentric Soul comp. If you like soul and funk from the era, you owe it to yourself to take a listen, and then you'll owe thanks to Numero for digging these tracks up. A great comp in a great series.
We all know that very often sequels pale in comparison to the originals. But leave it to the irresistible Sitar Beat series to throw that convention out the window. The first volume of Sitar Beat brought together their previously vinyl only releases on one cd and it became one of our most played and favorite cds of last year! Volume two keeps the fire going with 16 more totally perfect, sitar fueled, groovy 'n heavy Indian funk delights. Pulled mostly from obscure soundtracks, most of these tracks we had never heard before but we've already lost count of how many times we've listened to this since it arrived in the store a week ago and now most of them have become all time AQ faves just like that! All the obvious names are represented: R.D. Burman, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Kalyanji Anandji, etc. While the tracks with vocals are all great (how could they not be with folks like Bhosle and Mangeshkar singing) but Sitar Beat is truly about the smokin' funk jam instrumentals. It just doesn't get more funky and fun than this! But it's not just kitschy fun, these are some seriously rocking jams, totally mind blowing music that reminds us once again that music can be strange and inventive yet immediate and exciting at the same time. AQ pal John Dwyer said it best when he came in while this was playing "Damn, this is hot!"
The venerable compilation series devoted to sampling the dark and demented delights of the Tokyo psychedelic underground returns! While the previous Tokyo Flashback number five (from 2005) included both quite a few veteran artists (Keiji Haino, Marble Sheep, Overhang Party, Kyoaku No Intention, White Out) as well as several hitherto unknown to us up-and-comers (Aural Fit, Hisato Higuchi, Suishou No Fune, etc.), this installment has only one or two acts among the dozen featured that we'd heard of before, so it's arguably all the more underground. Certainly the discerning folks at PSF must have done the rounds of the more obscure practice spaces and performance venues of Tokyo to find all these bands (or endured a lot of cd-r demo submissions).
First up is the quartet Ahousen, who, with dramatic vocals and agitated saxophone, sound something like a like a freaked out Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Next, things get a bit calmer and prettier with the accordion and trombone laced "The World Of Mirror" by Hanaoyouni, a outfit who like Ahousen have female vocals but use them in a more melodious fashion. Then, someone named Onna does the melancholic guitar/voice folk troubadour thing in the vein of Kan Mikami. That's followed by the spooky-but-lovely droning instrumental soundscape of the mysterious Yamashirube, entitled "Under Young Moon.Lost.". The next piece comes from a duo called S.A.R.O.D. (Safeness Audio Resource Of Dominant), featuring one of the guys from Aural Fit doing some heavy-duty "tone bending" alongside a drummer, and if you've heard Aural Fit, that we're telling you that is noisy, loud and grinding will be no surprise. Following that, there's a group called Retolt Mandala, who play a loose, skittering, abstract sort of psych-improv, and are a lot quieter than the S.A.R.O.D. guys. Next, the raggedly distorted guitar/guitar/drums trio Ainotamenishis lets loose with "Bad Dreams" and we can immediately hear the reason why they have an LP due out later this year on the Holy Mountain label, as they give us a Tokyo Flashback flashback. That brings us to something completely different: the plucking, squeaking, neo no wave of The Kinky Pigeon, who ask us to "EAT SHIT!!" as politely and artily as they can. Back into the more expected Flashback zone, the mellow (but for some serious bursts of distortion) sixties-ish psych-rock of the trio Yakouchu is quite nice, taking us on an extended 8 and a half minute trip... Ogikubo Connection are next, a "free style folk duo" with the Fukuoka Rinji of Overhang Party strumming and singing in anguished fashion accompanied by alto sax of Mochizuki Harutaka, doing a cover version of a song called "Staring At Blood" by the late Kaneko Jutok of Kousokuya. Then we get this disc's perhaps most properly Rallizes-y rockin' moment, with a blast from motorpsycho guitarist Kawaguchi Masami (ex-Miminokoto) and his power trio the New Rock Syndicate, called "Oblivion". And then finally this Flashback winds up with the gorgeous, plaintive acoustic folk track "A Moonlight Night" by singer/guitarist Genshi. Wow. Something here for everyone (well, everyone who would consider buying a Tokyo Flashback disc that is)! We imagine we'll be hearing more from many of these artists, and looking forward to it too.
As with all Tokyo Flashbacks, we're pretty sure all the tracks are exclusive to this disc. Info/photos/web addresses and suchlike stuff is included in the cd booklet for each artist.
Curated and published by Ninah Pixie of the Bay Area neo-Dada ensemble Big City Orchestra, Women Take Back The Noise is a triple cd compilation that's long overdue, standing as an almanac for the ladies out there wandering through the nether regions of experimental music. It should be noted that the 'noise' which the title refers to is more of a convenient placeholder for glitchey-droned-electroacoustic-field-recordings-and-a-smattering-of-volcanic-noise, as the compilation has a pretty wide assortment of aesthetics and strategies. The big names include Cosey Fanni Tutti, Fe-Mail, Blevin Blectum, Jessica Rylan, and Maggi Payne; and there are some lesser known women who we here at Aquarius have long been fans of such as Kadet and Cheryl E. Leonard. The three discs revolve around distinct themes, whose orbits often cross and mingle. The first disc leans toward the drone based electronics, highlights including Aedria Hughes' spectral guitar drones and long-stringed scrapes, Kadet's fizzing granular synthesis dappled with viola squiggle, and Maggi Payne's recontextualized household appliances transformed into oblique soundsmears with haunted aspirations. The second disc sports a bit more of a post-industrial agenda, with bouts of looping syncopation, malcontent electronics, and shadowy atmospheres. The highlights on this disc include Analog Tara's droned chorus for vibrating organs, the grey phase pattern shifts of Choronzon, and Cosey's mechanical rhythms and divebomb guitar riffs that harken back more to Throbbing Gristle circa 1978. If any of the three discs on Women Take Back The Noise embody the noise of the title than it's the third disc, with Jessica Rylan's 8-bit tirade of squiggle and bleep, further circuit-bending assaults from CJ Reaven Borosque, and the unholy cacophony of Fe-Mail that obliterates most everything in its path.
The three discs come packaged in an oversized plastic pouch and sports a circuit-bending flower through which anybody -- woman, man, girl, boy, dog, cat -- can make their own damn noise record! There's only a handful of these in stock, and it's hard to say if we'll be able to keep this around for long. So act fast!
Our Reggae section is by no means gigantic but we like to think that what we lack in quantity we make up in quality. But one thing that is apparent about our reggae section is that it's all about the classics and it's very rare that we hear newly recorded reggae that sounds as good to our ears as the old stuff. Sadly most new reggae (even by those who once delivered the good stuff) is riddled with cheesy keyboards and ultra-slick production while most newer dub is plagued by a generic paint-by-numbers ambience that lacks the grit and guts of what makes roots reggae and classic dub so special. So we were super psyched to find out that this Wareika Hill Sounds record we've been falling in love with was not some classic reissue as we first thought because of its totally warm and authentic sound, but is in fact a brand new recording by Calvin Cameron, who has played with the likes of Count Ossie's Mystic Revelation and Light of Saba. Smoking dubwise roots reggae that can not be denied! With an element of afrobeat in the fold (Tony Allen even makes an appearance!), there is a warmth and strength in these songs that has kept us coming back to this record over and over again. By far our favorite new reggae recording in a long time!
Even if you think you've heard enough of the new weird acid folk underground to last you for a spell, you should check out this full-length debut from Brooklyn's Mike Wexler, a singer-songwriter who (with a little help from his friends, members of Psychic Ills and The Occasion) has recorded a remarkable song-cycle in the form of Sun Wheel. It's set apart from others in this burgeoning genre by the immediately noticeable, uniquely affected nature of Wexler's voice. Ok, maybe that makes him a male Joanna Newsom... and of course Devendra Banhardt too has a distinctive manner of singing. But Wexler sounds like neither, and once you get used to his nasal exhalations, his intentionally elongated enunciations, you may find his singing to be curiously compelling, complementing the crystalline guitar picking and gentle piano motifs of his melodic, majestic prog-folk music quite well. And Wexler's vocal style is also indicative of a very personal, seemingly spiritual lyrical vision, fixated on sun, shadow, paradise, lots of lines like "Sun shadow dilating in the eye" and "Falling through the sunshine's ray in a dream of water". It's gorgeous, moody yet strangely uplifting stuff, glowing with lightbeams amidst its shadows. Something that fans of P.G. Six, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Robert Wyatt could find of eerie interest for sure.
Another fascinating issue of this British music magazine... this ish: techno minimalist Ricardo Villalobos on the cover, also Whitehouse, Laurie Anderson, Matthew Dear, Axolotl, an Invisible Jukebox with composer Jonathan Harvey, a Primer on British psych-folk (Sandy Denny, Pentangle, Trees, Comus...), tons o' reviews, and in the last-page Epiphanies section, thoughts The Velvet Underground And Nico from Bruce Russell of the Dead C.
Not sure exactly what this is, tough to keep track of all the cd-r's and limited lps and everything, but it does appear to be a brand new full length, although it's vinyl only for now. Apparently one single track, spread out over two sides, Black Wing Over The Sand continues to display Wolf Eyes' developing musicality, while managing to not lose a single bit of brutality, which is quite a feat. This is another dark slab of beautiful malevolence, equal parts corrosive rumble and shimmery drone, creepy dark ambience and intense industrial clatter. Side one, the first movement, begins with grinding guitars, blown out streaks of spacy effects, huge synth swells and jagged bits of percussion, occasionally overwhelmed by massive waves of low end buzz that somehow manage to swallow everything else up. Near the end of side one, the record winds down into what could only be described as some sort of Wolf Eyes dub, lots and lots of space, a lurching non-rhythm spread waaaaay out, crashing crumbling bursts scattered throughout. Really cool. Wouldn't mind hearing a whole record of that...
The second side returns to more familiar Wolf Eyes territory, upping the buzz and the industrial clatter. still creeping along, everything wrapped in a black cloak of fuzz and rumble, but much more aggressive, intense, thicker, with layer after layer of constantly shifting sound. Intense, but still managing to be surprisingly musical and listenable.
LIMITED TO 900 COPIES. Vinyl only, packaged in a cool black and white sleeve with some strange animal torture woodcut on one side and a mysterious mountain on the other. Full color printed inner sleeve too. Really nice...
Is Is is the follow-up to Yeah Yeah Yeahs' startlingly different Show Your Bones album. If you happen to think that it in turn sounds starkly different from that album, and more like the hot'n'bothered YYYs of old, well... good ears, my friend! These songs were actually written back in 2004 while the band was on tour in support of their Fever To Tell album. Four of the five were previously available on the Tell Me What Rockers To Swallow dvd (the exception is the track "Isis"). That explains things a bit, doesn't it? On this ep the trio sounds downright wild, loose and furious... a lot of what we thought was sorely missing from SYB. Karen O rocks and rages at the top of her lungs. You almost expect a fist to burst through your speakers. On those few moments when she calms down a little (on the song "Down Boy"), her voice glints with her more familiar, and very Siouxsie-esque throaty inflections. Guitarist Nick Zinner and drummer Brian Chase are right there with her throwing a bunch of their own rawk punches left, right and center. Raw art-punky good.
What initially sounds like a super distorted overblown recording of Hendrix playing his wild "Star Spangled Banner", or a super grinding fuzz drenched synth noise psych rock blow out, or some insane ultra processed Japanese psychedelic solo guitar freakout, is in fact, a 40 something man, covered in blood, holding a huge piece of contact mic'ed broken glass in his mouth. Huh?
Such is the musical world of Mr. Justice Yeldham. We weren't sure what to expect actually, conceptually we were definitely intrigued. A guy who records himself smashing his face against panes of glass, moaning and humming into the glass resulting in all sorts of bizarre alien sounds, and often ending up with the glass shattering and much blood being shed. He had us at glass and blood. The cd sleeve is even a patchwork of bloodied band-aids (euwww).
But when we finally got the disc, the sounds were just as amazing, maybe even more so than the process, which is definitely a rare occurrence. How many records have we gotten, where the story of the recording was way more fascinating that the resulting music? Way too many. The thing with this Yeldham disc, is it's actually quite listenable as well. Ostensibly a noise record, the sounds here are anything but run of the mill noise, they range from strange fuzzy drones, wailing streaks of coruscating feedback, crumbling synth like blasts (parts of this almost sound like samples from the Justice record!), grinding gnarled squalls of super distorted buzz and every strange fuzzy buzzy stop in between. And every once in a while you have to remind yourself that THIS IS A GUY WITH HIS FACE PRESSED UP AGAINST A PIECE OF GLASS! A piece of glass that just may shatter at any second. And the more feverish and frenzied the sounds become, the more strain is placed on the glass, and the more imminent shatter and bloodshed becomes. So weird, and so goddamn awesome.�
Comes in a cool velour lined cd sleeve, adorned with images of band-aids and blood, inside a full color booklet with tons of photos of Yeldham performing live, amazing and intense, some weird, some strangely beautiful, some super disturbing, most of them really bloody!!
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