A brand new slab of epic slow moving drone from the mysteriously monickered one man band Acre.�Folks went nuts for the two Acre cd-r's we carried a while back, both now sadly out of print, but we've got this brand new slab of glacial stasis, a cassette no less, to satisfy your craving for monolithic walls of chest rattling, speaker punishing dronemusic.
The best way to sum up the sound of Acre would probably be to try and imagine if Phill Niblock was raised on Wolf Eyes and punk rock, metal and noise, instead of classical and modern minimalism. The music of Acre IS modern minimalism for sure, but filtered though a more sort of postpunk/noise aesthetic. Simple tones, thick and slowly shifting, are layered and arranged, allowed to drift at practically zero rpm, the sounds swelling and shimmering almost imperceptibly, the overtones creating subtle rhythms, occasionally clashing and causing amazing super intense rhythmic pulses.
So�dark and dense and meditative. Acre is definitely making some of our favorite drone music...
And this is one of the most gorgeously packaged cassettes we've ever seen. Clear tape, with black streaks, in a folded over clear plastic j-card, also adorned with black streaks, held shut by a black streaked greenish gold obi on gorgeous thick textured paper.�
Recorded live, and limited to 80 copies...
You heard 'em on the recent Tokyo Flashback comp number six, now here's a full length document from this Japanese psych/punk combo. Do the math: out of print cd-r release x now on vinyl x on the ever-reliable Holy Mountain label = come 'n get it, Japanese psych fiends! Holy Mountain name drops Gaseneta and Velvet Underground as comparisons/influences. Somewhere in there for sure is the soul of the Ainotamenishis' rock abandon, like so many other heavy-duty Flashbackers we've been lucky to hear.
A fat new release from cult faves Akron/Family, a cd AND (while they last) bonus dvd chock full of their uniquely freaked mix of tribal chant, symphonically folky indie pop, catchy rock, improv abandon, and several extra kitchen sinks worth of sounds. It runs the gamut from quiet and pretty to joyously chaotic, via artfully arranged, dynamic songs. Perhaps their noisier, more out-there (yet composed) stuff is what we like the best, as when their collective voices rise together in sweet harmony in the midst of stomping jangle ramshackle drone jams. Whereas the more intimate singy songy stuff can get a bit sappy for our tastes. For us, it's things like the seasick distortion effect that takes over towards the end of the album that we want to hear more of, for them to take that path of fucked-upedness a lot further.
The weird thing about this band is that, despite all the craziness on the surface, somehow they just don't seem all that weird to us. Sure, they use a psychedelic array of bright colors all over the place ("There's So Many Colors" is the title of track 6) but still they're carefully coloring inside the lines. Nothin' dangerously experimental here, when all's said and done. We could compare 'em to another anarchic sonic collective, Volcano The Bear -- that is, if they sold Volcano The Bear cds at Starbucks. Quite nice, really, and no surprise they're popular. A safe choice though. And while they last, this first pressing comes with a bonus dvd with performance footage from their notoriously full-on live shows!
We had a handful of customers recommend these fucked up doomdamagemetalnoise weirdos, and around the same time, in some glorious moment of serendipity, the band dropped us a line so we grabbed as many copies as we could of their super limited (only 66 copies) cassette, released on the same label that fellow countrymen Silvester Anfang call home...
These Belgians create a serious ruckus, pounding super distorted grim necro ultra raw dirgey droney doom metal, we saw it described as filthyblacksludgedoomdrone which pretty much sums it up. Pounding sludge, with blown out practice space production, grinding guitars, blasting super distorted drums, filthy super sick vocals,�with bursts of blackness and stretches of loping minimal crunch, sort of mathy, very doomy, all very very heavy and noisy and awesome. One of our favorite new bands easy.�
Essential for fans of Bone Awl, Ancestors, Ash Pool, Beherit, Akitsa as well as other practitioners of grim buzz and noise drenched sludge...
LIMITED TO 66 COPIES!!! In super DIY packaging, printed sleeve, photocopied insert, each tape hand numbered...
It'll make no difference what we say about the new Animal Collective record, cuz most folks are gonna buy it anyway, so if you are so inclined, please just ignore us and buy it already! It won't matter to anyone that after a slew of amazing and ingenious releases including Panda Bear's recent sonically narcotic solo album Person Pitch, we found Strawberry Jam to be a bit disappointing and rather unsatisfying. Not that it's necessarily a bad record, but past AC records have always held a hazy balance between the wildly uproarious yelps and hollers of Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and the charged sunshine-pop reverence of Panda Bear (Noah Lennox); a kind of east coast/west coast yin-yang dynamic, which was on full display on AC's last full length, Feels, where the balance was sharply divided in half, with Avey Tare's song's on the first half and Panda Bear's on the second. On Strawberry Jam, that balance is tipped more heavily in Avey Tare's favor, which means it's more aggressively tight, but also relentlessly hyper, and spazzy. There are only a few hints at the looser dronier experimental vibe that Panda Bear usually brings to the table ("#1", "Derek", "Chores"), which is what always made their records great to listen to in the past. To use their title as a metaphor, Strawberry Jam is the main course being served here, rather than a sweet condiment that makes the rest of the meal memorable. Sure it's yummy and makes us deliriously giddy, but it also makes us queasy and bloated soon afterward.
It's been ages since we've heard from NZ combo Armpit (also occasionally known as Thee Armpit). Past releases�(on PseudoArcana, Celebrate Psi Pheomenon and Pink Skulls)�have been huge faves around here, and this latest seems to be no different. Armpit seem to thrive when given plenty of space to stretch out, when allowed to sprawl, their bizarre blend of dreamdrone and murkpop and thudrock is transformed into something otherworldly and divine, trancelike and intense, epic and gorgeously confusional.�
Their finest moment as far as we're concerned was their double cd The Praying Mantis, two plus hours of strange and wondrous sounds for sure, but now we have what might be the ultimate Armpit document (never thought we'd ever type that phrase), a massive FIVE cd-r set, 4+ hours documenting Armpit's strange musical universe. The set opens with a 12 minute Dead C like free rock jam, so very murky. The various instruments are hard to separate from one another. It's like a strange organic being, made up of percussive thud and rumbling feedback, mumbled voices and the smeared whir of distorted guitar, but with a glorious pop core, glowing in there, buried under layers of hiss and crunch. And while the record swerves and veers all over the place, the sound of this track is sort of a touchstone to which Reach Out always seems to return.
Over the course of the five discs, the sound drifts widely from the aforementioned murky blurry free rock, to blissed out folky jangle, to super abstract raga like skree, to billowy soft focus drone, often some strange tangled blend of all of those. Blissed out, meditative, dreamy, hypnotic, occasionally abrasive, always fascinating and just so goddamn good. Fans of stuff on either PseudooArcana or Celebrate Psi Phenomenon will find this to be essential for sure, and anyone looking to get gone in some mystical murky world of strange sound could hardly do better than this one right here.�
The packaging is as mysterious as the music within. All the cd-r's packaged in multicolored sleeves, with what seem to be bits of found art, includes an insert/poster, almost no liner notes at all, no song titles, all housed in a sewn fabric bag. And as if we even needed to tell you, limited as all get out...
This long sought after, long out of print cd-r, released originally on the Jyrk label way back in 2005, is available again for a limited time -- now as a super swank, ultra limited lp from Jefre Cantu Ledesma's (Tarentel) Root Strata label.
Triple threat SF free noise cd-r tag team match up between some names you should probably know by now, Axolotl, the Yellow Swans, and Gerritt. With three times the firepower you might think that would mean three times the noise, but be prepared to be surprised! And soothed. That's right, three lengthy tracks that lean more toward the dreamy minimal drone and the shimmering sheets of sonic skree than the all out noise attack. The first track is a slowly shifting gritty electronic soundscape of hazy melody and electronic buzz and hiss, eventually building into a louder, yet no less swath of drone and glitch hiss. Track two is a bit more in your face, with rich slabs of distorted chords and warm warbly drones, with swooping melodies and electronic mosquito buzz. The final track is twenty minutes of thick churning low end grind and grumble, pulsing with some buried beat, until the whole thing explodes into a huge wall of thick electrogrit and fuzzed out feedback screech. Wow. Really nice.
Limited to 500 copies we think.
So many good releases on the Swedish label Hapna, it's hard to keep up! But we didn't want to overlook this one, 'cause Italian experimentalist Andrea Belfi is one half of the duo known as Crista Pfangen, whose Watch Me Getting Back The End, an album of (in our words) "fragmented yet melodic, experimental avant-indie pop", appeared earlier this year on Die Schachtel, and got a big thumbs up from us.
As a solo artist, Belfi delves here into a weird (but successful) conceptual minimalist electro-acoustic experiment based around something about making music from ordinary household sounds. Hmm... it's an interesting house Belfi must live in! It's a dwelling of gentle drones, glitchy mystery, and shimmering, skitteringly propulsive percussion (sounding at times not unlike that recent excellent Tarentel double cd). And the neighbors doing strange things upstairs, moving furniture and stuff. Field recordings, electronics, vague voices, and regular ol' instruments mesh into a lovely bit of work here. Definitely worth investigating especially if you're into the Italian scene populated by Belfi's pals like 3/4hadbeeneliminated, Stefano Pilia, Giuseppe Ielasi, etc.
Some stoner doom rockin' from the usually reliable Invada label (run by one of the guys from Portishead, oddly enough). But sadly, this one brings Invada's batting average down, not living up to the likes of The Heads, Atavist, Brain Donor, etc.
Mainly, 'cause oooh crickey the vocals are rough. Lines like "It's time for you to taste my wrath...oh yeah!" look better on paper than they sound coming from the totally "chainwallet" style singer. Plus some stilted singsongy almost rappy rhymes, no thanks. This would be way better if dude didn't sing. Hope he's also the guitar player or something, otherwise there's no excuse. Sorry.
Never was a title better chosen. The juttering salvo of massed horns that opens this record is machinegunnery indeed. Legendary hardblowing German free jazz saxophonist Peter Brotzmann is still around today taking names and kicking ass, but he's perhaps best known for this album from 1968, a recording that embodies all the radical turmoil of that year, remaining a powerful statement of energy, anger, & freedom even today. For '68, this was among the ultimate in "extreme" music, regardless of genre. The amplified antics of most rock bands (with the possible exception of free jazz aficionados the MC5) couldn't touch it. Of course, we're ignoring the subtleties of this music in stressing that. But if the extremity hooks you in, that's fine. And it's certainly true that Machine Gun was the spiritual ancestor to such modern noisy-jazz-industrial acts as 16-17, Borbetomagus, and John Zorn's Painkiller. Apparently "Machine Gun" was Don Cherry's nickname for Brotzmann, and the album Machine Gun is basically Brotzmann times 8, he got a whole band who could play at his level of ferocious intensity, a screaming, skronking collective improv blowout, but one that's directed, organized into a killing machine of concentrated force when necessary, or subsides, chests heaving, into still-clattering lulls of relative calm and abstract beauty at other times.
The Peter Brotzmann Octet responsible for Machine Gun was really an all-star lineup, many musicians still well-known in the realm of European free jazz: Willem Breuker (tenor sax, bass clarinet), Evan Parker (tenor sax), Fred Van Hove (piano), Peter Kowald (bass), Buschi Niebergall (bass), Han Bennink (drums), and Sven-Ake Johansson (drums). That's some lineup. If you're familiar with those folks, chances are you've already heard this album, but if not, well it's one to get. And while it's been in print as an import cd on Free Music Productions (FMP) for some years, it hasn't always been easy to find. So it's great that it now takes a well deserved place in the Atavistic Unheard Music Series as a domestic cd release, and even better that they've added a bunch of bonus tracks to it! Extra alternate takes, and the only recorded LIVE version of "Machine Gun", from the '68 Frankfurt Jazz Fest. Plus there's new liner notes from Unheard guru John Corbett.
2006 ended on a sad note for music lovers everywhere as the Godfather of Soul passed away, but in true JB style he picked one of the highest profile days of the year (Xmas morning) to make his grand exit. It was a pretty fitting way to go out, as his whole life was about exclamation points, fierce grunts, dynamite dance moves, hard earned sweat and full throttle expression. Since his passing we have been digging in our record collections pulling out all his recordings and listening in awe to what the amazing legacy he left behind. There is no doubt that he was one of the greatest songwriters and performers of the last century!
With that in mind we wanted to highlight a record of his that maybe not everyone was familiar with but we think shows the range and undeniable power of his presence. Reissued a few years back, Soul On Top was recorded in Hollywood in 1969 with the Louie Bellson Orchestra conducted by Oliver Nelson. And wow, what a standout performance... Brown belts it out with a conviction that shows his long running love of jazz jammed right up next to the soul and funk spirit he helped cultivate. Soul On Top is so over the top in all the right ways! Huge drums and horns creating such a big sound that JB then slams right out of the field with his voice, sounding as strong as ever, radiating in its prime. Almost like some magical version of James Brown doing a Vegas show but not as a bloated lesser version of himself as most Vegas performances tend to be but at the very peak of his performing prowess. This has some of the best howls and screams ever to come out of that man's mouth for sure, and it also shows the great range and versatility he had as we works his way with some big band and pop standards, a totally smoking version of Hank Williams "Your Cheatin' Heart", as well as reworking some of his own classics. While it's unlike most everything else he did, we think Soul On Top is one of his most shining and captivating achievements!
The black-as-sabbath, epic metal majesty of Sweden's doom veterans Candlemass returns, with the follow-up to their well-received self-titled reunion album from 2005. That reunion was short-lived, as their signature '80s vocalist Messiah Marcolin has (again) left the band. In his place, though, is perfectly acceptable, equally talented substitute, with impeccable doom credentials: Robert Lowe of cult Texan epic doomsters Solitude Aeturnus, a band that's essentially the US answer to Candlemass anyway. (Lowe still sings for SA, who also have a new album out this year, which we have in stock as well.) True, Lowe doesn't boast a hefty 'fro or wear monk's robes like Messiah, but his classy, regal pipes are perfect for soaring gloomily over the lead-weight riffage meted out in classic fashion by Candlemass' distorted 'n downtuned guitars. And speaking of guitars, the unfettered soloing on here is choice, reminding us that metal (with long hair, loud guitars, fantasy imagery) is, in some ways, essentially the extreme evolution of '60s psychedelia, in the case of doom bands like Candlemass, tending towards the bad trip side of things!
While they last, we've got the nice import digipack version with two bonus tracks, both of 'em redoings of Candlemass classics ("At The Gallows End" and "Solitude") with Robert Lowe at the mic, just to further prove he'd be worthy to wear those robes if he wished.
Good things come to those who wait... and wait... and wait! Manu Chao fans, your patience has been rewarded with the release of Chao's first studio album in six years! Not surprisingly, La Radiolina is wonderful, a hyper kinetic album brimming with his trademark fiery spirited fusion of styles. So irresistible, even the biggest stick in the mud will find his or her body moving involuntarily to Chao's music. La Radiolina is a busy, crowded affair whose heart pounds to a variety of impassioned Latin American rhythms. Caught in this fevered embrace are layer upon layer of electric guitars, horns, flamenco guitars, keyboards and exuberant vocals sung mostly in Spanish with a little Portuguese, French, Italian and English too. 21 tracks ranging in length from a 68 second shot of adrenaline to just over four minutes.
SF singer/songwriter Odessa Chen returns with her second album, a grander but no less intimate affair than her debut One Room Palace. This classically trained vocalist/cellist accompanies her lovely vocals with some self-taught delicately picked guitar and an impressive group of guest players -- Nels Cline (Wilco), Danny Grody (Tarentel, the Drift), and Devin Hoff (Xiu Xiu, Nels Cline, Good for Cows). The results are a sweet, serene sophomore album filled with a gentle elegance.
2nd full-length from this Providence outfit, featuring ex-Arabs on Radar and Six Finger Satellites, kickin' out the slightly spazzed dancerock. Cool kids layin' down the synth-laced late night beat, singing about "Drugs And Sunshine" (an anthemic lead-off track, that one), getting high and being in love/lust. If we squint while listening, the vocals somehow remind us of the Afghan Whigs' Greg Dulli, fronting Erase Errata, but not quite.
Cluster's Second album continues where Cluster '71 left off. Produced and engineered by Conny Plank, who, as on Cluster's debut, acts as a third member. More pulsating and serpentine than before with broader hints at melody, Cluster II still retains the concrete textures and industrial tenacity of their debut yet lacks the characteristically rhythmic propulsion that has marked their subsequent output. Feels right in line with the kraut-y sonic forays of early Ash Ra Tempel and Cosmic Jokers.
Whoo-hoo, Led Zeppelin rules! Coalesce too. Together (sort of), look out. Coalesce are one of the best metalcore bands, standard bearers for that scene, next to Converge. Oddly enough, though, it's an all-covers album they did a few years back that's probably our favorite of theirs. And now Hydra Head has reissued it with tons of bonus tracks! Here's what we said about this originally:
A pummeling, ultra heavy take on the lumbering dinosaur that is Led Zeppelin. These Kansas City, Missouri, post hardcore kids are playing some of the heaviest and most brutal metal around and doing their short haired, Gap wearing brethren proud. Some will be disappointed by how *un*fucked up these covers are, at least by Coalesce standards, but man oh man, these versions still destroy the originals (said with just a smidgen of cheekiness on our part of course).
This reissue adds a bunch more rare/unreleased tracks, not more Zep, but stuff like their Black Sabbath cover "Supernaut" (a sop to those like Allan who prefer the Sabs over Zeppelin?), covers of Boy Sets Fire, The Get Up Kids, and more. Sweet. And it's been repackage in a striking deluxe miniature-lp style gatefold sleeve with psychedelic lookin' artwork as well.
Damon & Naomi's seventh full length Within These Walls is deep, dark and languid. They're joined by guests Ghost's Michio Kurihara, Espers' cellist Helena Espvall, and avant garde soprano saxophone player nmperign's Bhob Rainey. With their own impressive pedigree and these luminaries on board, you'd think that this would be a boundary pushing, resonant album, but in fact this rings with an air of '70s adult contemporary (a la Burt Bacharach, Carly Simon, etc). Pleasing, but surprisingly mild. Where they fare best is on the album's closing track "Cruel Queen", the most traditional folk number of the ten. It's an austere beauty that you'll be glad you stuck around for, but we wished there was more of its ilk on the rest of the album.
Being one of only three black metal bands hailing from�Kyrgyzstan according to the online authority Encyclopaedia Metallum, and featuring a female vocalist, must make Darkestrah one of the most unique BM outfits going, but on first listen, neither of those attributes are all that readily apparent. Certainly, the harsh strangled demonic howling vocals did not immediately strike us as particularly feminine, and the glorious hypnotic buzz didn't seem all that region specific, but the more, and closer you listen, the more those elements do seem important, keeping Darkestrah from sounding like just another bunch of boring buzzing blackness...
One half hour plus epic, separated into movements, beginning with�the gentle sound of a burbling brook, the fuzzy white noise like ebb and flow of waves crashing on the sea shore, until those tranquil sounds are�joined by distant keening guitars, a long drawn out buzz, that eventually solidifies into a gorgeous melancholic riff, draped over simple midtempo drumming, intense and epic and blown out, eventually exploding into a black burst of raw grimness, but never losing that melancholic vibe. Repetitive and hypnotic, with killer drumming and furious guitar buzz, until all of a sudden in come cellos, and then the song is transformed into a sweeping Godspeed like expanse of beautiful blackness...
About halfway through, the sound of the surf returns, soon overtaken by tribal drumming, Viking like riffing, a bit of chanting, eventually bursting into some seriously Burzumic pound, with more soaring riffage and really intense unlikely mathy arrangements, eventually stretching out into a long form static buzz, while over the top strings soar and flutes flutter, again transforming the song into a swoonsome black lament, eventually fading out into just the sound of wind and sea....
One of our all time absolute favorite outsider weirdo black metal records, long out of print on cd, with no plans to re-press, is finally available again, on cassette, for a super limited time. If you missed out on the cd, don't blow it again (and new 2cd coming soon on Andee's tUMULt label)...
When it comes to black metal, our tastes most definitely run� toward the damaged, the demented, the fried and freaked out, the totally baffling, the weirder the better. And there's no shortage of black metal misanthropes, holed up in their caves, or their cabins, or their flats, or their grandfathers' basements, meticulously crafting, ultra personal, maddeningly idiosyncratic outsider black metal. And we are constantly digging for more. The bar has been set pretty high, Benighted Leams obviously, the reigning champions of damaged outsider black metal, then there's Furze and his�'cogent black metal necrosis', let's not forget Emit, Rehtaf Ruo, Necrofrost, Hidden, Vorak, Contra Ignem Fatuum and the elusive Striborg. Phew. That's a pretty heady constellation of bizarre black metal royalty, for sure. So you know, that it is not without some serious soul searching that we would dare declare a record quite possibly the weirdest black metal record ever. But we have searched, and it is thus. Dead Reptile Shrine, from Finland, the record is A Journey Through Darkened Forests and it does indeed sound just like that.
We had practically given up on getting these for the store, Andee had even contacted the band about re-issuing the disc in the states, but luckily we discovered a distributor in Australia who had 30 copies and we took all of them. Now the cd is gone, and while they last we have the tape version... Hmmm. Finland to Australia to the United States, a long journey but it was well worth it we think. Everything about this band is bizarre, the name obviously, the song titles: "A Cave Full Of Corpse Lanterns", "The Snakes Of The Earth Pt. II", "Exekutioner Of The Final Solution", "Above The Ziggurat They Dance", "Clouds Of Doom Gather..." and of course "A Beastcults Procession", the artwork, an appropriately illegible band logo and album title, both peppered with eagles and stars and scorpions as well as loads of squiggles, the band photo of DRC, in a an army jacket, head hung low, hair obscuring his face, in front of what appears to be a huge mound of mud and sticks, with a waving hand emerging from a tiny hole in the mound, and the music, oh the music, so warped and lo-fi, buzzy and doomy and just plain freaky and far fucking out. Wrest from Leviathan bought a copy, and even he could barely handle the Dead Reptile Shrine, which speaks volumes!�
A stumbling, staggering black metal buzz, struggling through walls of haze and fuzz, sounds a bit like a Burzum record with someone constantly fiddling with the pitch control, a warbly seasick black droning whir, with splattery drums, clanging super loud cymbals, and some of the weirdest vocals ever, going from the evil black metal rasp, to an atonal Jandekian croon, to a strange falsetto, to a warm whiskey soaked growl, often within the same song, sometimes within the same line! The entire record is murky and thick with oozing black atmosphere, some songs are loping doom dirges, others race along at breakneck (for DRS at least) speeds, threatening to fall apart completely, riffs sometimes stumble to a halt, before lurching back into action, rhythms stutter, pause, leap forward, the vocals a chaotic swirl around the rickety song structures, minor key melodies and woozy guitars tangle and untangle as the songs slither and slide, leap and careen wildly, there are warbly mumbly soundscapes of droning rumble and otherworldly creaks and groans, tracks of spoken word over chanting monks, an electronic beatscape with garbled growls and haunting clean vocals, even a couple�bizarre acoustic tracks, one with throaty crooned vocals and deliberately strummed steel string guitar, some sort of Jandekian forest folk, with a riff that almost sounds like Nirvana. In fact the forest folk tag is not that far off really. Must be something in the Finnish atmosphere, but without the vocals, huge swaths of Dead Reptile Shrine could be some lost Uton or Avarus recording, or a furtively captured Tivol live session, and yet even with the vocals it still retains some haunting wild woods feral feeling. A Journey Through The Darkest Of Forests is indeed a fearful traipse through a black forest, the overhanging trees blotting out the moonlight, the sounds of the forest a murky buzz, insects and demons, wild beasts and lost souls. A baffling and frightening sonic world that should appeal to metalhead and free folkie alike.�
This tape is super limited (300 copies we think) and will be gone in a flash.... We have a bunch, but we're not sure we'll ever be able to get more...
More damaged demented Finnish madness from outsider black metal weirdos Dead Reptile Shrine. We only got EIGHT copies of this, so we won't bother going into too much detail as we tried to order three times that. Needless to say, this is fucking unhinged and completely brilliant. From the first track, a lurching soundfield of disembodied vocals, a strangled evil mewling, and chunks of downtuned guitar, spread out into a weird slow motion staccato rhythms, it just gets more and more amazingly confusional. After that, the band lurch wildly from slithering doom metal beneath wailing vocals that squeal, howl, wail and moan, the rhythms convoluted, the guitars a rumbling buzz, to thrashing raw grim buzz, still peppered with stumbling drums and bizarre over the top vocals. Might be ultra weird, but it also might be DRS at their heaviest as well...
Again, we only got 8 copies, so be prepared to leave Dead Reptile Shrine-less (or better yet, grab the other DRS cassette we're listing elsewhere on this week's list).
Deadwood the group, existed long before the HBO series of the same name, but it some ways, they have a lot in common, mostly in the bleak, hopeless, windblown vibe that permeates them both. Featuring a member of Swedish black metal horde and long time AQ faves Blodulv, Deadwood offer up extended tracks of ultra creepy low end explorations, that run the gamut from abrasive power electronics, to slithering drone drenched black ambience. Fans of stuff like MZ412 and other purveyors of bleak abstract sounds will definitely dig this.
From thick squalls of white noise hiss, like rain on a metal barn roof, to super blown out Merzbowian hiss, almost black metal in its buzz and intensity, to crumbling landscapes of tape hiss and low end rumble, slowed down vocals, and mumbled scrape and shimmer, to strange murky tribalism, to skipping soundscapes of demonic vocals and ultra distorted slowed down beats, to decayed orchestral snippets chopped and looped into impossibly mesmerizing rhythms, a dark and damaged world of sound, though while at its heaviest could be the harshest, hissiest BM you've ever heard, spends most of its time crawling and lurching through slow motion fields of rumbling sound. Awesome.
First proper lp full length from these SF noiserock vets, who pre-Panda (or Panda concurrent) did time in Crack: We Are Rock, Total Shutdown, T.I.T.S. and Murder Murder. This lp collects a brand new batch of songs with a long out of print tour only cd ep...
Spastic, chaotic, skronky, grinding, angular, manic no-wave new wave is pretty much what this trio serves up. A sort of off kilter unhinged Melt-Banana, or Deerhoof on crystal meth, horns bleat and honk, sharp and jagged, the drums pound and stumble, the vocals shouted, squeaked, howled and crooned, every track a grinding convoluted blast of punk rock new wave abstract whatthefuck. Gloriously damaged and cracked, fractured and fucked, warbly and warped weirdness...
Packaged in super deluxe chipboard sleeves, hand screened with beautiful abstract pandas in black, white and orange...
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
The lp re-issue (after a cd reish a couple years ago) of one of those albums collectors would trade their first born for. Gladly. This is head-damaged, heavy Oklahoma psych-punk circa 1975, predating the Butthole Surfers by a solid decade but with the same references to Captain Beefheart and the Red Crayola. Not too many bands in the '70s sounded much like this, with maybe Pere Ubu,
We weren't expecting a new album yet from the mighty Detroit Cobras, but they went and surprised us with the super satisfying Tied & True. On this their fourth full length they continue on with the more 'reigned in' but no less potent approach heard on their last album Baby -- exuding barrels of '60s girl group charm and sass coverin' old Stax and Motown gems in their own tight yet loose rock'n'roll fashion. All the raw grit, the sultry soul and the lusty blues you've come to love and count on from this band is here in spades. This time around Rachel Nagy's always awesome, lusty voice frequently reminded us of a young Chrissie Hynde. Go figure! Great stuff!
A few lists back we reviewed a disc of utterly freaked out, super heavy and weird as fuck black metal from a band called Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere (we actually just got more back in, in case you missed out last time, see elsewhere on this list). We got this, the debut from Dom Dracul from the same place, but it couldn't sound any more different. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. This is, after all, still a hatefully raw and furious slab of grim buzzing black metal. But where V.E.G.A. wrapped their black buzz in all sorts of sonic sickness and warped weirdness, Dom Dracul stick a little bit closer to the classic sound of old skool Norwegian black metal, some serious Darkthrone / Immortal / Ulver worship going on for sure, and some nods to Bathory as well, in fact they even do a Bathory cover!
We get so wrapped up sometimes in finding the weirdest most fucked up black metal EVER, that once in a while we forget how much we love the pure, raw, grim, cult sound of straight ahead, buzzing, black metal. After all, that's exactly the sound that lured us all over to the darkside in the first place. And still, whenever we throw on some Immortal or Satyricon or Emperor, it totally blows us away and reminds us why we love this stuff so much. Dom Dracul are proud bearers of that black flame, taking that instantly recognizable sound and giving it their own little twist. The result is certainly not groundbreaking, but fuck it, that's not what we're after here, eyes closed you'd be hard pressed to figure out this wasn't in fact a late nineties Scandinavian legend. Which is actually a good thing. Very good. Thick snarling blackened riffs thrash wildly over grim rhythmic blasts, a howled demonic voice, soaring and epic and so gloriously frosty, occasionally lurching into a loping midtempo Burzumic buzz, only to explode into a furious black blast moments later. Anyone itching for some classic grim blackness would do well to drink deep from the black blood of Dom Dracul.
Wow. Imagine Captain & Tennille, Shuggie Otis, and Broadcast making a record together. Or even Gary Wilson and United States of America making some skewed electronic but totally weird and catchy seventies yacht rock (ok, we realize that may sound terrible to some folks, but it really works awesomely here!). The Dragon brothers, Doug and Dennis (of Surf Punks fame!), sometimes joined by their other brother Darryl (aka "The Captain" of Captain and Tennille!) and sister Carmen on harp, recorded BFI (short for Blue Forces Intelligence?!) in Malibu during the early seventies inspired by surfing and the explosive late sixties west coast music scene of The Doors, Byrds, CSN, etc. Unfortunately, all the connections they had as a popular musical family in Los Angeles (their father was a well known conductor and symphony arranger in Hollywood) gave them great studio access but didn't yield the recording contract they were looking for. Most of the labels they shopped it to liked the record but didn't see any single potential. So the masters were shelved and the brothers went their separate ways. It wasn't until DJ Food from Ninja Tune contacted Dennis Dragon to ask permission to use a Dragons' track ("Food For My Soul") from an obscure surf movie soundtrack for a mix tape he was making, that it was discovered that a whole Dragons album was recorded. Thankfully Ninja Tune resurrected BFI from the musical graveyard because it's fast becoming one of our favorite "buried treasures". Full of Moog grooves, break beats, jazz inflected piano, and high and low male voices, BFI is one of the most surprising and eccentrically sunny LA records we've heard in these parts in awhile that sounds completely timeless. Highly recommended! Oh, and if you loved the reissue by hippy surf psych band The Farm on EM Records, these are some of the same guys responsible for that album!
A mysterious new release from Goat Eater Recordings, who in the past have brought us exclusively recordings from ambient drone technicians Hoor-Paar-Kraat. But this one comes from one man band Drowning The Virgin Silence. Like all the Goat Eater stuff we've seen, this too is presented in a beautifully hand crafted artful sleeve, and the music inside is not all that far removed from the sounds of Hoor-Paar-Kraat, but where HPK is dark and desolate, heavy and often on the verge of being abrasive, the music of DTVS is much more soft and shimmery, the opening track almost sounds like it could have come straight off a Pop Ambient collection. Looped murky melodies, set adrift on a rippling sea of whir and rumble, drowsy and hypnotic.�
None of the rest of the record is nearly so poppy or melodic, but it is all super engaging and mysterious, each song, a strange and haunting assemblage of voices and unnamable instruments, snippets of sound, looped samples and all sorts of subtle effects. "Hummingbird" is a disembodied conversation all tangled up in dark swirls of echoey sound, the 10+ minute "Untitled" is a long stretch of mumbled ambience, dotted with cricket like skitter and haunting melodic shadows. "A Pair Of Scales Stripped Bare, Even" is a dense blur of industrial sound, high end scrape and skree blended into a churning low end undercurrent, static but somehow with a bit of forward momentum at the same time. The record finishes with the epic "Phaedra", a gorgeous smear of chordal whir and shimmery drone, all washed out and indistinct, melodies buried beneath the murky surface, all occasionally coalescing into soft swells and long stretches of blurred fuzz. So nice.�
Packaged in a beautiful hand screened cardstock sleeve, super minimal and striking.�
LIMITED TO ONLY 70 COPIES! Each one hand numbered of course...
New age gets a bad rap. And rightfully so in many cases, but it's not fair to paint it with such a broad brush, there have been plenty of artists who have dabbled in new age, explored meditative musics, and made some amazing sounds. When it's done right, it can be dark and lovely, deeply spiritual, soothing and hypnotic, complex and intense, without being cheesy. All of the modern DIY drone music should be evidence enough, what is all of that if not a contemporary extension of new age music... dreamy, contemplative, mesmerizing, minimal....
Here we have a lost legendary 'new age' synth classic from 1982, from J.D. Emmanuel, while unknown to us, according to some friends of AQ and some customers definitely had a certain hipster cache, tracks and whole records being outsider music holy grails...
With song titles like "Attaining Peace" and "Prayer" and "Focusing Within", Wizards - Music Of Other Memories, is a five part meditation realized in extended synthesizer soundscapes, gorgeous, languorous, all soft focus melodies, soaring and shimmery, stretched out into blurry streaks of sound, peppered with the muted bloop bloop melodies, nestled deep down in the shimmery softness.
Some of the tracks are more active, one almost proggy and spaced out, another sounding a bit like a more dreamy Kraftwerk, all propulsive synthesized krautrock.
Absolutely recommended for fans of Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, IASOS, Terry Riley, Steve Reich as well as the softer side of all the modern cd-r dronemusic we all love so much...
Hot on the heels of the great new Jenny Hoyston record that we're in love with comes a little 7" from her main act, Erase Errata. We're so happy that Tomlab is on a mission to save the seven inch, as it will always be one of our favorite music listenin' formats. Nothing better then a little slab o wax from one of your favorite bands. Erase Errata are in top form here as we know they love 45's as much as we do, so they wouldn't dare just put some throwaway tracks on one. These two exclusive tracks explode with the passion and late night urgency that have become trademarks of their sound. Tapping into the early spirit of P.I.L in a way that sounds so fresh and gripping. Songs that you will want to listen to over and over and no better way to do that then by laying down the needle to the wax again and again. Seven inch perfection!
One of the BEST RECORDS EVER. That's right. And I don't think we're really going out on a limb with that claim. Certainly one of the best krautrock records ever (as are pretty much all the Faust albums, actually). This, Faust's second album, originally released in 1972, has been reissued numerous times over the years, for a while as an expensive Japanese import only, then in the crucial Wumme Years box set, and most recently by Collector's Choice as a two-on-one with Faust's self-titled debut. We still stock that for the budget-minded amongst you, but since this is such a classic, we figure some folks will want this newer, nicely digipacked reish all by its own. Unlike the two-fer, the cd booklet here includes all the full-color images (one illustration per song) that came as art prints with the original vinyl. And as well, there's new liner notes and vintage photos in there as well. Nice.
But let's get back to this best records ever business, for those that weren't already nodding in agreement. It's the missing link between The Velvet Underground and The Boredoms, we're telling you. Just listen to the mantric opener "It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" and tell us they weren't influenced by the VU... yet taking things way further into the trance-zone, pioneering the minimal post-rock sounds of many popular indie bands today... Circle ferinstance! And for sure the Boredoms. Also, without Faust, chances are, no This Heat. No Nurse With Wound. Yep they were pioneers all right. And still sound plenty fresh 'n weird today. So Far reigns in the sound collage craziness of their selt-titled debut, tightening up into actual song-form-iness, even getting into some pleasantly lyrical poppiness... but always ready to do something violently eccentric. "Daddy, take the banana!"
Originally released in 1997, now finally available again, the debut full length from Viennese experimentalist guitarist Christian Fennesz. Long before the fuzzed out blurry sounds of folks like Tim Hecker and other DIY dronesters were everywhere, and the technology for processing sound was super readily available, Fennesz was a laptop alchemist, a guitar deconstructionist, transforming his axe into a strange sound making device, capable or producing the most gorgeous and alien of sounds.
Hotel Parallel is a lot different than later Fennesz releases. Where those were soft focus and sun baked, glistening and shimmering, Hotel Parallel is much darker, more abrasive, harder edged, the sounds much more intense and brutal, but without losing any of their beautiful mystery.�
Listening to this again now, it's kind of mind blowing to believe the sounds here are all guitar. From dense swirls of speaker clogging hiss, to glimmering Niblockian stretches of static high end blur, to tangled swirls of glitch and swoop, backwards fffffft and gnarled melody, to grinding low end chunks of sound, angular and abrasive, to barely there billows of whispery low end, streaked with muted melody, to epic My Bloody Valentine like cacophonies of distorted pop ambient almost house music to super minimal Chain Reaction throb and pulse. Some of these tracks sound like the recent Field record, or some of the more abstract Kompakt stuff, but this was 10 YEARS AGO! AND IS ALL GUITAR! How the fuck do all of these sounds come out of a guitar? Who the hell cares? An absolutely gorgeous breathtaking epochal work of guitar experimentation, that few have rivaled in the decade since...
This reissue is super swank, six panel digipak, printed in green on white with subtle spot varnish, it includes some extra stuff too, a bonus track from a long out of print 7" (limited to 100 copies) from 1996, a super beautiful droney blurry murkscape, and an absolutely breathtaking video, perfectly reflecting the sound of Fennesz visually, all glitchy and grainy and so gorgeous...
Film School will probably never win any awards for originality, but if you're looking for this very specific sound of Brit rock, this Bay Area band delivers it in spades. Exceptionally so! For almost a decade now, they've honed their authentic blended rendition of Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure and Slowdive from right here in the Bay Area. Their latest album Hideout keeps that sound alive while also recalling the early '90s American guitar wash kings Swervedriver. Buzzy blankets of effected electric guitars warm and tingle, while Krayg Burton's vocals waver in the zone between sleepy and druggy. Strangely comforting. Film School's line-up has always been somewhat nebulous and ever-changing, at times including members of Pavement, Fuck and Elephone. So it's not surprising that with the exception of Burton and keyboardist Jason Ruck, there's a whole new band for this album. Bassist Lorelei Plotczyk, drummer James Smith and guitarist Dave Dupuis step into the roles vacated by bassist Justin Labo, drummer Donny Newenhouse and guitarist Nyles Lannon (be sure to check out his terrific current solo album!).
For a band we had thought at one point to be dead and buried, Norway's legendary black metal weirdos Forgotten Woods have been pretty high profile lately, with an unexpected (and unexpectedly amazing) new album, a bunch of reissues, the ever popular 3cd box set�Baklengs Mot Stupet, and now this, the first time on cd for both FW's 1993 demos, the self titled Forgotten Woods and the follow up Through The Woods, both primo slabs of ultra grim and kvlt lo fidelity buzz.�
It's easy to see, even in the early stages of the band, that they were one seriously cracked bunch, the sound not just lo-fi, but damaged and bizarre, the riffing is simple and old school, but super low in the mix, with the crashing thrashing pounding drums way more prominent, but not nearly as much as the croaked blackened growls, the strange Gollum-like growls, some seriously harsh and alien vocals, perfectly suited to the crumbling blackness in the background. Going from stumbling chaotic buzz, to lurching doomy pound, Forgotten Woods conjure up some seriously fucked up and freaked out black atmospheres...
The self titled demo is the more brittle of the two, all high end hiss and soul shearing buzz, whereas Through The Woods ups the production values just a bit, and the sound is definitely heavier, but also murkier and muddier, which again suits their skewed vision. Also things seem to get way weirder (if that were even possible), hinting once again at the bizarre blackened beast they were soon to become, with angular atonal melodies, damaged off kilter leads and even weirder vocals, from shrieks to shouts, all tangled up into dense black squalls of sound.
We listed a different reissue of this great rare acid-folk album about a year ago... well guess what, now it's been retitled "Hatched" and reissued -again-, this time with seven bonus tracks instead of just two. And it looks better too. The bonus tracks include two non-album cuts from the band's lone single (which were on the previous edition) and five more live tracks from a newly-unearthed 1971 radio session! So, if you already have this on cd you can determine if you need this new version or not, but if you don't already have it, this is the one to get, obviously! Here's what we had to say about it before:
For those of you into acid folk from the early '70, we have another terrific find with FRESH MAGGOTS. This teenage British duo's only record, not surprisingly deemed a failure upon its release with such an unappealling name (though of course we think it's cool), came out in 1971. Which, as you may know, some here say could be one of the BEST years for this -or any- genre. Influenced by the likes of Deep Purple, Zeppelin, and Pentangle, Fresh Maggots really don't sound as rock as the above outfits (partly due to lacking drums) but bring more to mind Forest, Tractor, or Tyrannosaurus Rex. There's lots of acoustic guitar folkiness here blended with fuzzed out fits of electric guitar. And there's a little tin whistle playing and triangle chiming going on, too! Melodic, pastoral, hearty, and highly recommended. This reissue, which the Fresh Maggots themselves had a hand in, includes extensive liner notes, and two [no, make that seven, now!] bonus tracks.
By now, avid readers of the AQ list should be well aware of German black metal horde Ruins of Beverast, responsible for one of our favorite black metal records EVER. Then of course there's Nagelfar, the band that came before RoB, who were responsible for another of the greatest black metal records of all time, Virus West. If that weren't enough, these guys also run an amazing record label, responsible for the RoB record, the Nagelfar reissue, the deluxe double lp version of the only release from SF's very own doomlords the Gault, and two brand new releases, the very Ruins Of Beverast-like debut from fellow Germans Kermania, a gorgeously epic chunk of moody melancholy black metal, and this: a soul shearing blast of super blazing Nordic style blackness from another German horde, Funeral Procession.
A fairly long running black metal institution at this point, having formed almost 12 years ago, this is strangely Funeral Procession's first full length, after a clutch of eps and demos, but it was well worth the wait. Fuzzy and blown out, mostly blasting, but with plenty of moody midtempo doomy breakdowns, killer shards of angular guitar, and loud distorted drums all making for strange interludes -- but when whipped into furious blasts, it's tough to beat. Epic and majestic, fast and buzzy, grim and black. It's easy to hear some Mayhem, some Emperor, some Immortal... the elite. And FP are channelling the frosty might of the BM elite through their own uniquely skewed German black filter, bits of creepy militaristic ambience, haunting keyboards, distorted vocals and crumbling soundscapes, moaning chantlike voices, but none of that stuff defines the sound, it's all merely moody window dressing for FP's relentlessly buzzing blast, each track a frosty forlorn squall of black buzz and jagged riffery, blasting beats and howled hellish vocals. Broken up by some depressive doomic plod, but for the most part fast and furious, and fucking great!
Over the years Gang Gang Dance have proven to be one of the more adventurous and interesting bands to emerge from the NYC/Brooklyn scene. Since their last full length they've been busy cultivating their sound, DJing and being active members of the late-night-night-club scene. Rawwar is a three song ep which finds them continuing to grow and explore. The first song is a pretty perfect blast of fused sonics that somehow manages to sound like Siouxsie meeting M.I.A. at a super warped late night rave. The second track is a swirling instrumental that offers up a slightly more beautiful sound than what we got on God's Money and the 11+ minute closer is just how you wished trip hop sounded now, had it continued to evolve. Their journey continues to excite us and this will keep us pretty satisfied until they unleash their next full length offering.
Latest from this underground super group. Featuring folks from the Magik Markers, Hototogisu and Double Leopards among others. This is probably the most laid back and mellow thing we've heard from these folks. The whole first side is a spare and spacious stretch of raga like drone and disembodied Appalachia. Guitars buzz way off in the distance, drifting amidst clouds of folky flutter, wheezing harmonicas, an almost Morricone Western vibe, desert-y and desolate, but mysteriously lush and lovely. The sounds grow in intensity here and there, getting more raucous and abrasive, the guitars scraped and metallic, all bathed in thick swells of whirring shimmer, but always seeming to settle back down into another dreamy drift.
The flip side is split into two movements, the first is a longform slab of chaotic free folk skree, the instruments all blurred and smeared into a constantly evolving and shifting swirl of sound, dense and layered and lovely, the second half a rumbling wall of thick guitar ambience, a whirling buzz that manages to be epic and majestic, while remaining minimal and mysterious.
All recorded live apparently, but also comes with a bonus 3" cd-r, of the band live in Seattle, in its own little full color minisleeve.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!
Following in the wake of the sizzling comp After Dark, which has quickly become a unanimous AQ favorite, comes this 12" featuring one of the Glass Candy tracks from that vintage disco inspired compilation. In true disco spirit the 12" comes in a seductive diecut sleeve with the single on the 'A' side and the instrumental version on the flipside, along with another instrumental cut. Glass Candy have never sounded better, we love the shift in their sound. Glass Candy have always been perfect for late night dance floor listening but now their sensuality and sexuality seem to be shining through in such a sleek and irresistible fashion.
Not sure how we first heard about Gnaw Their Tongues, pretty sure a customer recommended them, but believe us when we say that the words Gnaw Their Tongues had barely left their lips (or maybe more accurately, the words had barely left the email and reached our cerebral cortex) and we were already smitten. How could they not rule with a name like that? The question was merely HOW they would rule, dark and creepy? Heavy and harsh? Doom? Blacknoise? Drone? Howabout all of those?! Oh yeah, it's almost like someone snuck into the AQ barracks in the middle of the night to scan our minds and see what kind of bands we dreamed about, the bands our subconscious really wished existed.�
They took all the data back to their lair, the one hidden beneath that big scary mountain, and spent years analyzing it, and creating equations, chemicals, compounds, months in an underground lab, until eventually the whole project was forgotten.�
Until years later, when a record store employee was hiking and discovered the ruins of some old, well, it looked like a fortress, maybe a lair, and decided, against all the wisdom gleaned from a million after school specials, to explore. Way down deep in the dusty recesses of this old forgotten lair, this record store feller discovered some sort of portal, rusted shut it seemed, and adorned with messages in some strange language, an alien tongue if you will, they looked like warnings, but what the heck, shit like that only happens in horror movies, so the feller went about trying to unlock the portal, and after what seemed like ages, the lock clicked, and the rusty metal swung open, and suddenly all was blackness, and dripping red, and agony and misery, and hell embodied on earth, in the form of this filthy black musick.�
That filthy black musick was this, the first recorded document by these mysterious black beasties known as Gnaw Their Tongues. Who spew forth a caustic noxious ultradoom. A black metallized lurch and stumble, harsh, hellish vocals buried beneath an avalanche of corrosive guitar, strange alien ambience, and mechanical monster drumming. Horrible and grotesque and dizzyingly brutal, but with tiny vestiges of beauty and melody, occasionally visible through the dense black sonic fog. Stretches of distorted doom verging on the beautiful, separating gut wrenching squalls of utter black chaos. And that's just the first track.�
The second is like the first, only fast. Really fast. Like sticking your head into the middle of a lightning storm. Like Velvet Caccoon and Wold and Amacoma all playing simultaneously, at full volume, broadcast through Konono's PA, untiil your ears bleed, but it's not all pain and suffering, this� whirling world of sound is again strangely melodic, twisted into some almost pop like shapes, but always quickly bathed in blackness and sent spinning� back into the fray.�
"29 Needles" is a step away from the end, and is some sort of industrial plod, a garish landscape of bleak brutality, sparse ultradistorted percussion, clouds of caustic whir, creepy ghostlike voices, the sort of sounds that make Wolf Eyes sound like the Carpenters. A musical death march through a world of fire and death and destruction, of keening musical misery and downtuned sonic punishment.�
Finally, the prophecy is complete with once the sounds of "Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen" reach the ears of mortal man. The plants wither and the sky grows dim, our hearts beat slower and our blood begins to boil, the earth begins to crack, and slowly we sink into the depths of the underworld, and this is the sound that the end of all things makes. A lonely slowed down low end caterwaul, a rumbling whir peppered with jagged streaks of harsh noise, thick swells of coruscating sonic malevolence, storm clouds of hiss and buzz, a pounding skull splitting din from the heavens, an electrical storm that singes every nerve in your body, leaving you paralyzed, supine, blind, and mute, with only your ears ringing painfully, just barely able to make out the dying gasps of life as we know it.
Whoa, what a change of direction! Rather than chewin' on pink bubblegum, The Go Team's new album might have you gnawin' on a shank of beef jerky... or some other more manly snack. The jubilant youthful glee of their 2004 debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike has been replaced by uncharacteristic ballsy thumpin' beats and macho vocals... and Chuck D. Yes, you heard us correctly. Chuck D makes a cameo appearance on this album -- sort of like what he did on Sonic Youth's "Kool Thing" (but nowhere near as kool). We're not sure what to think of this turn of events. To be honest, it kinda harshed our giddy anticipation. Harumph.
Folks who have been digging the crushing sludgedoom heaviness of Aussie doomlords Fire Witch would do well to check out the darkly dulcet tones of fellow Aussies Goat Witch. Two witches hmmm... Well, yeah, it seems that these two bands are related, sharing members, maybe even all the members, the sound is similar anyway, a glorious lurching slow motion doomic groove, spaced out and abstract.�
Downtuned riffs grind and throb, the drums are massive, recorded super hot, wild fills spattering the otherwise sprawling minimal crush. A bit of mathy chaos spilled out over an oozing black backdrop. Like the drummer for Hella playing in Khanate maybe.�
But this isn't pure doom, not at all, melodies lurk everywhere, and the busy drumming, and subtly clever riffing give the whole thing a serious post rock vibe, which is definitely a good thing here. Some of the build into extended, nearly cinematic crescendos, sounding like some noise rock doom drenched Godspeed, and others stretch way out and get all blissy and krautrocky, turning Goat Witch's doom into something more akin to Circle or Salvatore or Tortoise or even a heavy metal Necks, loping and repetitive and super hypnotic, epic and grandiose.�
Definitely one for the broad minded doomlords out there and would most certainly hit the spot for all the postrockmetalheads into Pelican and Isis and Conifer and Tides and other like minded combos...
Some of you may know the name Matt Rosin from past collaborations with AQ faves Dead Raven Choir, but here, as Godheadscope, he is now called�M. Kolophonium, and is single handedly attempting to craft a sort of classical black ambience, the label suggests Arvo Part conducting and arranging a performance by Corrupted, which sounds amazing, and while we see what they're getting at, we're not sure that's wholly accurate. The label also suggests that Godheadscope is for fans of Wolfmangler, Boris, Jesu, Dead Raven Choir among others, and that really just sort of sounds like it would be for most aQuarius customers then, eh?
But this is indeed an epic and gorgeous chunk of experimental ambience. And unlike most offerings falling under the same banner, this is not simple or really minimal, not guitars against the amps SUNNO))) style drone, not lo-fi single note drones, no this is dense and layered, composed and arranged. The songs are set up in gradually developing movements, strings and synths woven into delicate frameworks, allowed to breath, to expand and contract, to swell and pulse.
The record seems to be separated into two movements, the first two tracks, are like a sonic wave pool set in motion, then slowed down and stretched out, dark languorous waves of sound, that ebb and flow, gorgeous and glacial, with extended spaces between the notes, a truly majestic and cinematic sprawl, but within the swells, there seems to be a lot going on, synths and guitars, even voices, all smeared into strangely lush organic drones, twisted into strange lovely shapes.�
The second half of the record is much more tranquil, still adhering to that swell and shimmer pattern, but everything softer and more spare, an ambience to balance the first half's energy, culminating in the moody drift of the final number, lush pianos laid over a haunting field of electrical crackle and anguished distant wails, woven into a jazzy shuffle, sounding like a super abstract tribal Necks, some freaked out kosmiche free jazz that unwinds into a gorgeous piano / feedback coda, trailing off into nothingness...
Gog is definitely one of our favorite modern purveyors of droning doomic filth. From the massive downtuned multiple o'd doom of�Noriah Mills to the more abstract but no less heavy split with Apparatia (the one with the metal cover we just reviewed, only a few copies left), it's as if Gog the man is on some hell-bent mission to explore the foulest pits of hell and dredge up the crustiest, doomiest, ugliest, foulest sonic ooze in existence.�
And we're fully supportive of this endeavor, as we're the ones who benefit. We're the ones with an insatiable appetite for all things grimy and sludgy, slow and low and heavy heavy heavy....
We got this slab of black ambient brutality at the same time we got the split, but we only got a fraction of the copies we requested since this one is already out of print. We have about fifteen of these in stock, so be prepared to leave empty handed, but at least the most fleet fingered amongst you doom obsessed will leave here with a big sick grin and an earful pockets full of oozing black beauty.
Four tracks, about a half hour, the opener is a stone cold black ambient doom classic, thick glacial slabs that shift and growl, pulse and throb, blown out and distorted, crumbling and overdriven, heavy and thick, but seeming to decay before our very ears. A gorgeous melancholy melody rendered in black tar and allowed to melt in the hot sun, clogging your ears and speakers.
The rest of the disc is not so distorted, a bit more tranquil, but with hints of the doom metal that lurks just below the surface, thick swirling washes of rumbling crumbling whir, chunks of fragmented riffs, doused in reverb and sent spinning into the ether, dense foghorn like swells, crazy hyper delayed and dubbed out squalls of hiss and static, snippets of distant percussion, whirring soft shimmer, all slowed down and smeared into glacial black blurs, settling at the bottom of your speakers like some sort of hellish doomdrone silt. Awesome.
And again, already out of print, only 15 copies or so in stock, once these are gone that's it.
Another winner from Sublime Frequencies! We're beginning to think with all this hidden music to be discovered and lost classics to be recovered, there's definitely no point in having so many new bands, we oughta just have some of them swap their gear in and just join the hunt for all this amazing music we miss out on...
But until then we've got the Sublime Frequencies fellas on the case, and this latest discovery has definitely got to bee one of the best yet. Group Inerane are spearheading the Tureg Guitar movement, inspired by the musicians who used this music as a political weapon in the Libyan refugee camps in the late eighties, early nineties. This is how the blues should sound. Groovy, intense, funky, emotional, dark, gorgeous, the guitars grinding and crunching and wailing, slithering and soaring, accompanied by chanted and sung vocals, that are perfectly woven into the lush fabric of the various guitar parts. The riffing is fluid, but also bit jagged and rough. The opening track is a killer. One of the most amazing and intense songs we've ever heard, worth the price of admission alone. Just guitar and vocals, chunky and propulsive, but also weirdly slippery and sinewy, the melody swaying back and forth from major key to minor key, an incredible hook and the riff, well, one of THE best riffs ever.
Most of the rest of the record is more a sort of African surf rock, fuzzy and twangy, with surfy guitar, soaring vocals, the whole thing wild and festive, jubilant and celebratory, but hold up, the final track on side one, "Nadan Al Kazawnin", is something else entirely, with its super distorted grimy guitars, a totally blown out in the red production, the riff looped and hypnotic, the vocals intense and heartfelt, the whole song howling and buzzing, sounding as gorgeously fucked up and raw as some experimental indie avant noise group, the guitar is indescribable, incendiary and white hot, all tangled up with the vocals, and bathed in distortion, wouldn't be out of place on some super limited cd-r... Totally amazing.
Pressed on super thick vinyl. Packaged in a heavy duty, full color gatefold sleeve, with tons of photos and liner notes...
LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 1000 LPS!
It's frustrating how long it takes us sometimes to get around to reviewing stuff, especially when it's something we've had for a while and have been digging a lot. Such is the case with the strangely named Horseflesh, a one man band from right here in SF, who weaves some alchemical musical magic that sounds a little like a cross between�Wolf Eyes and Expo 70, which is not a bad thing at all. Long tracks that are equal parts seventies space kraut, spare industrial ambience, and guitar based free noise dronemusic...
Opening with some�murky minimal folk, with simple looped acoustic guitar figures, strange rattling percussion, all wreathed in a fuzzy smokey ambience�eventually growing more and more droney and subtly blurred as the track progresses. The disc slowly mutates, each track setting up the next,�warm smears of soft edged distortion draped over barely there guitar curlicues, shimmering resonant thrum, and streaks of muted feedback. A super reverbed soundscape of delayed scrape and grind, all washed out, looped metallic shimmer, that gives way to a lugubrious low end drift, all fluttering harmonics, distant melodies, muffled percussive chimes, and gradually become more and more distorted and becomes a dense Fenneszian buzz,�a crunchy slow motion abstract doom, a plodding downtuned riff, pulled into long low strips strewn�over the top of drunkenly keening jagged melodies that swoon and warble. A grinding hissy harsh landscape of stumbling percussion and processed guitar whir, swirling chaotic space FX and rumbling reverberant drones, like some noise band set up and performing in the crashing surf of some alien sea... The closer is a gorgeous lilting folky prog jam, with fluttering flutes, steel string guitars, summery melodies, that becomes less and less cohesive as the track progresses, the instruments dropping off one by one, until all that is left is a dreamy drifting super high end melody, a soft shimmer of feedback sculpted into something ethereal and lovely...
Packaged in cool hand screened chip board sleeves, with a photocopies insert.�
While Hot Hot Heat's second album and major label debut Elevator in 2005 was a bit of a disappointment to the HHH supporters around here, their infectious 2002 Sub Pop debut Make Up The Breakdown continues to be a particular fave. So we still maintain a lil' soft spot for this still-youthful Canadian band. On their latest full length Happiness Ltd., Hot Hot Heat tricked us with an unexpectedly low-key, muted beginning. But before we were able to settle into the seeming mellowness, they burst into a wave of big bombastic rock pop. Zowee! In our opinion, it's a vast improvement on Elevator which seemed somewhat overly arching and slick, but still falls a bit short of their early feisty, untethered, angular recordings. This album actually has a good touchstone to show how much they've evolved. They've recycled and retooled their song "5 Times Out Of 100" which appeared on an early indie release of theirs. Singer Steve Bays is still a little heavy handed with the lyric repetition -- y'know, singing the same one line over and over and over again -- but the songs are more focused and more fully realized. The band seems more at ease with themselves and the studio production resources at their beck and call. For one thing, the hooks are definitely sharper and more solidly in place which is absolutely key to this kind of music. If comparisons are to be made, these days the band actually sounds a lot like The Killers and Franz Ferdinand circa 2004. Catchy, boyish and very radio friendly.
Ominous, heavy and despairing, Hrsta's third album really reminded us of the most recent Carla Bozulich album Evangelista on which she collaborated with many of the Godspeed You Black Emperor kindred spirits. It definitely solidifies their position as a mighty stand-out amongst the many Godspeed branches. Ghosts Will Come And Kiss Our Eyes opens with a deep wheeze of an accordion that almost imperceptibly melds with main man Mike Moya's distinct guitar work that glides like a theremin in and around heavy-lidded drones from harmonium and organ. Loosely structured despairing vocal passages vanish into absolutely beautiful glistening drone scapes out of which acoustic guitar and voice re-emerge. Wonderful.
A sweet little ep of three demo tracks from Jana Hunter's last full length, There Is No Home and three brand new tracks. It's nice to hear the older tracks in more stripped down and lo-fi form showcasing her agile songwriting abilities, while at the same time giving us a fix of new songs to pass the time before her next sure-to-be-wonderful full length.
A brief two song tape from AQ faves Ignatz, a gorgeous collection of dreamy sonics, created to celebrate the birth of his first child. The A side is classic Ignatz, at once gorgeous and shimmery, but aggressive and distorted, the focal point being the mysterious and�haunting wordless vocals, raw and overdriven, that eventually become more and more blurry and distorted until they simply become another layer in the textural smear of sound, tangled up�with the sing song guitar melodies, as the whole track�grows more and more intense and blown out until it's like a more metal Fennesz. The track finishes off with a surprising little coda,�a playful little jaunty fragment, a playful melody, over a super distorted Konono-like percussive backdrop.
The flipside, is a gorgeous laid back, soft focus blissed out ballad, the guitars drifting and whispery, the vocals an about to crack falsetto croon, all bathed in tape hiss and amp buzz, super spacious and intimate and so so pretty.�
Hand silkscreened sleeves and of course crazy limited...
