Hard to believe, but it has been close to six years since Les Savy Fav's last studio album! For this grand occasion, they've pulled out the big guns in the guest department... Fiery Furnaces' Eleanor Friedberger, Metric's Emily Haines, Islands' Nicholas Thorburn, Modest Mouse's Joe Plummer, Fred Armisen, and the whole of Enon! Have to say, it starts out a little peculiarly jumping from Modest Mouse-y indie rock ("Pots & Pans") to Turbonegro or Hot Snakes-y fire power ("The Equestrian"). Actually it isn't until the fourth song that they make us feel we're truly back in the Les Savy Fav zone. It's the alien indie funk post punkiness of "Patty Lee" that does it. So it idiosyncratically goes, Let's Stay Together is a total mixed bag, but a super hyper fun one! Sounds like at the heart of it all their aim is to rock you, and they succeed!
Every new Liars album brings with it some fretful hesitation as to what direction they'll venture into next. Not afraid of alienating their fan base in favor of exploring some obsessive but ultimately impenetrable concept, Liars have a love 'em or hate 'em relationship with most folks. After the atmospheric and rhythm-heavy Drums Not Dead, Liars bring the guitar riff back into full focus, and deliver for the first time in a while a relatively straight ahead rock record, but not in a way they've done before. There's no underlying concept to negotiate and the song structures are concise and compact. Yet they're still pushing these self-imposed limitations into kaleidoscopic realms that are sort of dubby, proggy, damaged and yet melodic. Lurching from furious and dissonant assaults into charged and sublime pop hooks. It's quite possibly their best record yet.
This Time Tomorrow? As in, by this time tomorrow, all these songs will be stuck in your head! San Francisco power pop power trio The Makes Nice hit us with their second album, again crammed with catchiness, boasting a bunch more action-packed, altogether killer, no filler tracks. A pitch-perfect hybridization and revitalization of all of their varied retro influences, from '60s Nuggets style garage to Elvis Costello to the Raspberries to Cheap Trick to the pansiest of paisley psych to, even, Devo. All 14 numbers are poppy n' boppy, but there's definitely two general sorts of songs The Makes Nice like to knock out, to knock us out: one is the energetic, nay frenzied, punker fueled by whiplash Keith Moon-ish bashing, full of slashing guitar rippage. Or, we get foot-tapping, sunshine n' lollipops hooks and harmonies... but even then, the headspinning guitar licks are in full force, Josh Smith doin' proud such legends as Billy Gibbons, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. Even though it's only 33:48 long, this album is an embarrassment of riches. Heck we made their debut Record Of The Week. This one's just as good, maybe even better. No sophomore slump here! 'Nuff said?
If anything, The Makes Nice sound even more assured and dangerous this time 'round. If they've got any competition, they sure shut 'em down. Their not-so-secret weapon remains the wham-bam-thank-you-mam soloing of guitar whiz Josh (still formerly of The Fucking Champs, and Weakling too if it matters) but drummer Jack Matthew and bassist Aaron Burnham hold up their sides solidly for sure, and actually it's the whole band's involvement in complex arrangements, clever boy-meets-girl lyrics, and vocal harmony that really makes The Makes Nice something special. That's the thing, despite how prolific they are (by this time tomorrow, they probably will have written another cool song or two!), their craftmanship is prodigious, little details get a lot of thought. And as a result, they're not for everyone. The scuzzy sloppy garage crowd may find them too accomplished, complex. While pure pop fans might not get into their raw garageiness. And both camps could be scared off by Josh's advanced Stratocaster chops. On the other hand, in our book those are all real good things. So get with the program!
Who has Swedish prog-organ legend Bo Hansson guesting on their new solo album?? Why Eric Malmberg, formerly the organist of Sagor & Swing of course! Imagine how chuffed he was to jam with his hero. Hansson doesn't play the organ here, though, he's on synth (funny, 'cause apparently Malmberg owns the actual Hammond organ Hansson used on his famous Lord Of The Rings album).
As you might expect if you've heard Malmberg and/or S&S (or for that matter, Bo Hansson) before, this is all about the magic of the Hammond organ, its gentle, groovy bombast, Malmberg weaving an instrumental prog-jazz delight of both bright and mellow moods! Gorgeous stuff as usual. It's got a much bigger sound than what the Sagor & Swing duo could crank out, as this is a bigger band, Malmberg joined here by many other folks besides Hansson. It's a dense but fluffy bed of sound, with shuffling drums and folky melodies, jamming synths and glorious horns. Some songs, like track one "Finalen", are propelled by martial beats, still joyous though... Like his countryman Bjorn Olsson, Malmberg has a knack for cinematic-sounding melodies that'll put a smile on your face. Recommended.
Now on lp, and not just a regular old lp, a super cool picture disc!
On his first song based solo outing since 1995's Psychic Hearts, Thurston shows us that he's not afraid of the acoustic guitar or even super pretty melodies. With a great supporting cast at his side including J. Mascis, Samara Lubelski, Gown, Christina Carter, Leslie Keifer and his SY comrade Steve Shelley, Moore has made a superb rock record that shows off his great songwriting skills and his surprisingly dreamy touch. While Moore is usually thought of in regards to electricity and his fondness for noise, it's always been his sprawling guitar playing and ability to make rock songs that swoon with such dignity and grace that we think makes him so special. It should come as no surprise then that Trees Outside The Academy has a sound and feeling that is pretty reminiscent of recent Sonic Youth outings like Rather Ripped and Murray Street, but stripped down to their core with lush violin accompaniment on many of the tracks, and Moore's instantly recognizable guitar playing and vocals. Thurston continues shine, proving once again that he is never going to fade away, not with so many great songs still hidden up his sleeves!
If they gave out Nobel prizes for doom metal, whoever it was that managed to get UK doomsludge combo Moss together with French Sanrio doomsters Monarch, would be a shoe in. And it's not just the killer combo, or the alliterative band names, it's the song choice. As if Moss doing Discharge weren't enough for you, Monarch tackle Turbonegro's all time classic "I Got Erection"!
Moss transform Discharge's punky stomp into a barely moving morass of sludgy pound. Sounding very much like Eyehategod, with simple pummeling drums, howled vocals, and of course guitars tuned as low as they can go before the strings drop off like wet noodles. On top of all the murk, drift weird high end streaks of surprisingly melodic feedback, giving the whole track a haunting and ominous vibe.
Where Moss, turned their song inside out and basically made it their own, Monarch, after a misleading ultra slow count in, do "Erection" pretty straight (ahem), the riff immediately recognizable, same with the "woooooah ooooh" background vocals, so it's up to vocalist Emilie, to make "Erection" her own, and she does, delivering the goofiest, most brilliant lines ever, in a raspy feminine snarl "When I dig a hole... Erection!" It's definitely Monarch at their speediest, and certainly most melodic, and we have to say it sort of suits them. Maybe even better than when black metallers Satyricon covered the same track on a Turbonegro tribute disc some years back, and that was pretty killer too.
And of course, SUPER LIMITED!
Yo old school grunge fans! Seattle's finest, Mudhoney, have gone and recorded a special, vinyl-only, limited edition live treat. Classics like "Touch Me I'm Sick" and "Hate The Police" performed at a show in Mexico City, 2005. It's limited to just 500 copies -- and we managed to acquire only five of 'em. So act fast. Includes coupon for free digital download of all the tracks, so even the turntable impaired can still enjoy the tunes.
Brand new 7" from UK space rockers Mugstar, who pack some serious spaced out psychedelia into these two short sides.
The A side begins with a weird drone-y chant-like whir, along with some tribal drumming and distant guitar plinks, gradually building and building, the minimal vocals transforming into some serious howling, when suddenly everything drops out, leaving just the drums and some super processed guitar strum, very rhythmic and strangely spacy, eventually the rest of the band kicks back in and locks into a cyclical angular groove, looping and repetitive, a furious grinding riff over the relentless drumming. Epic and exhausting.
The flipside is way more synth heavy, some weird sort of post punk noise rock, almost kind of mathy, a bit like a supercharged, way more metallic Stereolab, which intensifies until it explodes into wild psychedelic squalls of acid fried synths and freaked out guitarnoise.
Packaged in a fold over full color sleeve, with a 45 sized hole and one of those old school yellow turntable adapters already in the hole!
Finally here, and well worth the wait! Icelandic princes and princesses Mum shake things up a little bit on Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy. Still very shimmery and splendidly sweet, but far from a typical Mum record. Album #4 is definitely more song oriented, bursting forth like an effervescent chiming pop parade. Horns, accordions and harpsichords (we think!) frolic as high vocal melodies tumble about in the sunny warmth like baby pandas. Really this cozies up close to the sound of Flaming Lips, Polyphonic Spree, and the most recent Caribou album. A beautiful surprise!
Those who've been paying any attention at all to the extremes of the Japanese prog/psych underground should already be familiar with the band Musica Transonic (responsible for five prior albums on hometown Tokyo label PSF, and one also on Fractal, their last one which came out five long years ago). At the very least, you know the three musical madmen who make up this power trio: drummer Tatsuya Yoshida of Ruins, guitarist Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple, and bassist Nanjo Asahito of High Rise. This heavy duty improv freakout summit of theirs is thus a veritable supergroup. All three of these guys have also played together in the band Mainliner. If all that means something to you, then we're pretty sure the news that there's this new 2007 album released on the cool Polish label Vivo ought to be just about enough to get you to want a copy! Or, read on...
This long-running act hasn't changed too much this time 'round. Imagine a hyper-active Blue Cheer abandoning the biker-blues riffs to play instrumental freeform jazz instead. Psychedelic skree spills forth as the band settles in to a variety of unsettled grooves. Passages of moody noodilyness collide with amped-up ADD frenzies. Essentially the album title XYOSFBIGKOU (and equally jumbled-looking track names like "Rtufujowvyt" and "Qoixvudgdoasv"), while cryptic, actually give some sense of what Musica Transonic is about. All caps (loud!!), can't understand it (crazy!), but must make some sense somehow to someone (chops?). You'll feel jumbled too after listening to this sonic spooge, sounding somewhere betwixt Lightning Bolt and the Wes Montgomery Trio or something.
This recording is not as blown into-the-red as their early stuff, though no less spastic, and also is not nearly as lumberingly "metallic" as their last one, the aptly-titled Hard Rock Transonic, but boy do they grind it out with lots o' feedback on the title track at the end of the album!
As much as we love Aidan Baker's solo recordings, and we most definitely do, from gorgeous expansive minimal dronescapes to haunting melodic abstracts to dreamy deconstructed pop, it's all pretty genius, we have to admit that our hearts will always belong to Nadja. Everything we love about Baker, but presented in the form of a massive buzzed out doom. Even at its heaviest and most plodding, it glistens and glimmers, the melodies shimmering and ethereal, the heaviness washed out into a metallic blur.
Radiance Of Shadows is the latest offering from Nadja, a duo featuring Baker and his partner Leah Buckareff, and is shaping up to be at once the prettiest Nadjar release so far, and the heaviest.
Three 20+ minute tracks, each perfectly balanced between suffocating crush and hazy dreamy bliss. Most folks obviously focus on the heavy crushing riffage, but the magic of Nadja happens just as much if not moreso during the quiet parts, the rhythmic parts leading up to the bombastic climaxes. The build up is just as satisfying sonically as the pay off, the musical version of the whole journey / destination thing. But that said, the pay off is a massive and gloriously impossibly heavy crush, like being beaten to death with rays of sunshine or being suffocated under layer after layer of soft fuzzy concrete slabs.
Each track while hewing close to the Nadja sound we know and live is distinctly different, exploring all the various facets of the duo's dreamy metallic dronepop.
The opening track is a glistening slowcore crawl, a lush swirl of granular textures, and lurching crumbling riffage, but suspended in wide open space, languorous and woozy, with a strange staccato riff, that gradually blossoms into a blown out slow motion dream doom supernova, continually seesawing back and forth between the soft and the heavy, a hypnotic blown out two part doom symphony, wrapped around a dreamy slow motion pop core.
The second track is even dreamier and poppier, with hushed breathless vocals, buried in a swirling soft focus My Bloody Valentine / Galaxie 500 sun dappled blur, punctuated by heaving industrial metal riffing, like a softer prettier Godflesh.
The third track is maybe the strangest of the bunch, the quiet parts near silent, the heavy parts seriously and intensely punishing. The quiet parts are all haunting high end distant drones, glitched out minimal guitar strum, soft barely audible drumming, martial and machinelike, haunting near spoken vocals. The heavy parts pummeling and downtuned, but laced with haunting pianos, and some seriously aggressive growled death metal style vocals, roiling and furious, still plodding and slow, but within that plod, the various elements careening and crashing and threatening to crumble into jagged bits. The dynamic between the loud and the soft is super dramatic, culminating in a washed out buzzscape eventually dissipating and leaving that quiet, insistent melancholy strum.
The sound is so much more epic and massive, but warm and 'live' sounding. For the first time, it actually sounds like A BAND, more than a record constructed in a room by a guy (and a girl). Not sure if it's the songs, or the arrangements, the recording or all three, but whatever it is, made a sound we already thought perfect, even more perfect.
Benny Nilsen is a man perfectly content living in the northern regions of Europe, having grown up in Sweden and living no further south than Berlin. For while the long nights of winter can gnaw at one's soul, the long days of summer are something to look forward to. If his collaborative albums with Stilluppsteypa were the existentially grim albums of drunken wintry behavior, then The Short Night is his portrait of the summer time dreaminess of sunflecked, arctic nights. Having been such champions of Nilsen's work back when he was recording as Hazard for Ash International, we find it a little strange that so many people have qualified The Short Night as 'dark.' True, if you were to compare this album to the lilting work of Colleen or even to fellow label mate Biosphere, The Short Night would appear quite dark; but in the context of Nilsen's entire discography, The Short Night is a dramatically colorful piece of work. Sure, Nilsen's sustained low frequencies and a few moments of growling noise do have their devilish undertones; but throughout the album, Nilsen punctures these impressionist clouds with elegant electronic chorales of ethereal melodies that are surprisingly beautiful for BJ Nilsen. There is a melancholy to Nilsen's work, but melancholy isn't always synonymous with dark, as is the case here. In many ways, Nilsen has found himself trekking into the territories previously ventured by Fennesz and Machinefabriek, creating a transcendent sound through the tension between shoegazing / drone-based driftwork and subtle discordant agitation. This record is highly, highly recommended!
Remember why you fell in love with punk rock? The fearless spirit, the ethos, the sweat, the youthful energy, the conviction, the elation. Remember why you eventually got bored with punk rock? The predictability, the empty slogans, the forced posturing, the generic delivery. Well lucky for many of us past punkers, No Age are doing an amazing job of reminding us of a time when it felt like punk rock could save lives.
No Age (not to be confused with the nineties musical movement) are a duo from Los Angeles who have gained a cult-following for their totally engaging and sweat filled live shows. Wild performances on their home turf, at the tiny LA club The Smell, are legendary. They've also put out a handful of kick ass, but now impossible to find 7"s. But lucky for those of us who missed the boat on those 45's, Fat Cat has put them all together on this here cd. Now we know why people have been freaking out over this band.
Imagine a youthful exuberance that feels so pure and sincere by guys who love Black Flag and Fugazi as much as they do My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. In fact there's a lot about No Age that makes us think of prime-era Husker Du, all kinds of great lo-fi feedback and shoegaze moments infused with some serious punk rock spirit. Unpredictable and so immediate, for once the hype is totally right!
Two sides of home brewed minimalism. Of, aka Loren Chasse (Thuja, Coelacanth, etc) takes a slight detour into a dark mysterious world of disembodied free folk. Some sort of country music, deconstructed, just whisps and afterimages left to drift wraithlike. It's like the skeleton of a banjo, was left to wander aimlessly along some lonely seashore, the sound of the surf a shimmery hiss, the banjo's footsteps a spacious barely there twang. All under a murky grey sky, soft melodies like warm breezes.
Greg Davis counters with a swirl of zinging strings, a complex web melodies, the harps' shimmering strings intertwined and overlapping, all over the distant soft splashing of water. Almost like an orchestra made up entirely of harps, performing playfully in a giant bathtub. With the harps tangled sonics being subtly glitched up and processed, making the end result all the more dense and dreamy.
Don't know if this match-up is heaven-sent, but it sure is fun. Acid-hop Maestro Luke Vibert teams up with Moog Master Elder Stateman Jean-Jacques Perrey for a wild romp of Moog-filled delerium. While it's hard to say who is doing what, many of the tracks are encased in Vibert's bouncy rhythms and hip-hop beats while Perrey provides the spoken word passages and classic Moog "In Sound From Way Out" squelches. While Vibert's production can sometime slip into cliche (there needs to be a moratorium on James Brown grunts), the bulk of the record is exuberance par excellence!
The third full length from this Toronto band is a haunting, handwringing journey. They sound drugged out, but the listening experience is sobering. Pretty much every song reels with a chilling plod of despair, and the ones that don't (such as "Stair Keeper") still possess an unsettling whimsy, and seem to be inspired by the spare melancholic folk of Sybille Baier. As always, they're very akin to the dissonance laced soundscaping school of Godspeed You Black Emperor -- shifting through unstructured percussion, whinnying strings and distortion swells, settling into a melodic passage for brief soul-searching spells -- but this time a little more of an indie rock slouch infiltrates their sound. Whore Luck features guests Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett and Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart. The latter appears on their cover of The Fall's "An Older Lover, Etc". They also do a rendition of Roky Erickson's "If You Have Ghosts". For your most dour days.
Shhh, a lil' sleepyhead is singing in his dreams while an assembly of musicboxes unwind their cascading chimes and melting drops from icicles fall upon harp strings... or so the first few tracks sound on the debut album from Denmark's Po. Need we say? Lovely! This solo artist (aka eighteen year old Daniel Porcelli) crafts softly glitchy electronic soundscapes that solidify into more melodically inclined numbers ("Ten One"). Very calming, this will surely help smooth any ruffled feathers at the end of a hectic day.
Psst, this is another of the uncommonly sumptuous array of releases from the young music label Dynamophone. As we mentioned earlier in the review of labelmates Balustrade Ensemble, they've only been around since mid-2006, but already have a bountiful catalog with many more on the way. Particularly if you've been recently enjoying the aquatic drone releases on the Mystery Sea label, you might wish to check out the seemingly likeminded, but more melodically inclined Dynamophone artists. An absolute treasure trove of shimmering and dewy listening delights. Delve in immediately (also see: Balustrade Ensemble, Disinterested, Halou, Pornopop, A Lily, Curium, and R/R Coseboom)!
Here's a new album from Iceland's Pornopop. By now the Icelandic sound is unmistakable, isn't it? And this band definitely resonates in such fragile, frosty, fanciful fashion. A lullaby brethren of Mum and Sigur Ros for certain (the cover art even resembles that of the former), but their more explosive moments as on the track "Death Tape" also bring to mind the more unpredictable, unconventional Einar Bendiktsson of The Sugarcubes. Apart from such exceptional outbursts, this is poignant and wistful with a seeming wide-eyed innocence and timid yearning. Sweet, yes, but not to the point of syrupy. Definitely also for fans of the gentle and mild-mannered Jose Gonzalez, Sondre Lerche and Jens Lekman.
Psst, this is another of the uncommonly sumptuous array of releases from the young music label Dynamophone. As we mentioned earlier in the review of labelmates Balustrade Ensemble, they've only been around since mid-2006, but already have a bountiful catalog with many more on the way. Particularly if you've been recently enjoying the aquatic drone releases on the Mystery Sea label, you might wish to check out the seemingly likeminded, but more melodically inclined Dynamophone artists. An absolute treasure trove of shimmering and dewy listening delights. Delve in immediately (also see: Balustrade Ensemble, Disinterested, Po, Halou, A Lily, Curium, and R/R Coseboom)!
The first couple of minutes of this live recording seemed to have been designed to get the blood boiling and the heart pumping. Colin Potter (the technical foil to Steve Stapleton's macabre psychedelia in Nurse With Wound) opens with an agitated set of electro-bleep rhythms which double upon each other into a squiggling dervish. After these few minutes though, the sidereal ambience and barren dronescapes which Potter has brought to the recent NWW productions slip into focus. Ghostly fragments of echo and reverberation glide around chiming drones from harmonium, gongs, field recordings, and bowed strings, all displaying Potter's polychromatic, oil-slick production which has such a peculiar, funhouse warble modulating each and every sound, ever so slightly. Some 15 minutes into the piece, there are a series of metallic bangs and ominous metallic clicks, puncturing a bed of low-end frequencies. One of these repeating bangs is quite similar to the ones used on John Duncan's River In Flames. Along with the signposts of Duncan and the NWW Shipwrecked Radio series, Potter's live set from the 2007 Resonator Festival in Preston, England also resembles the late period Zoviet France albums InVersion and Digilogue. Limited to just 100 copies, and certainly will not last for very long!
A return to form for Prefuse 73 in more ways than one. Experimental Hip-hop producer Scott Herren's main project (of many projects and monikers) has been slipping into mediocrity ever since 2003's One Word Extinguisher and it's follow-up Extinguished: Outtakes. While we loved those records, his follow-up releases have gotten bogged down by too many collaborations and outtake releases that rehashed more than they refreshed. Herren's signature cut-up staccato method is in full effect here (Even the cover art and graphics hearken back to his classic releases) and while it's not as fresh as it used to be, the tracks are underscored by bits of composed and orchestrated pieces which are featured in their full form on a bonus cd (also included with the lp!), called Interregnums. Interregnums is not a collection of outtakes but 15 suites of lush orchestral impressionist compositions that make this double disc worth the price of admission. After the stifling confinements of his many monikered projects zap all the life from the well, hopefully Herren will shed the personas and fully take off in this new and wonderful direction.
By now, this debut from the duo of Tobin Prinz and Suzi Horn may have already gotten your attention... after all, they're on a hip label (DFA), they're English, and they play a, yes, danceable style of music that's both retro and very much "of the moment". Super stripped-down, DIY-sounding, arty post-punk that almost comes across as a parody of something from the '80s, more than just inspired by the era. It's slow, simple, sometimes maddeningly catchy music, effectively mixing minimal grooves and gloomy vibes -- for example, the track "Worker" with its doleful, repetitive bass line, and Tobin Prinz' total Mark E. Smith of The Fall derived vocals barking out all about how you're, unfortunately, "the worka". When Suzi Horn contributes vox, it's more of an X-ray Spex-ish yelp. Ultra-sparse production, angular guitars and various other nervous tics are also part of the Prinzhorn formula, including plenty of perplexing non-sequiturs in the lyrics dep't. We'll admit all this could possibly get a bit wearisome over the course of the 16 tracks on this album, but there are certainly some potential hits here (like "Worker" and "Crackerjack Docker") you may want to hear again and again... some of us at AQ were able to resist the Prinzhorn Dance School's calculated charms, but others ended up giving in and getting in to 'em. After all, if these tracks were from one of those Messthetics compilations (and you could be fooled into thinking so, maybe, if only they were more lo-fi) it's quite possible we'd be hailing them as lost classics.
Elysium Fields has reissued this fine collection of Terry Riley pieces that was the kick off release of a fantastic string of reissues put out by the Cortical Foundation years ago. Here's what we said, way back when...
This release compiles four early tape-works from Terry Riley that are linked by their common usage of jazz passages, even as they deteriorate over the course of the disc. Beginning with "Music For The Gift" (1963), Riley works with Chet Baker who provides his signature downer jazz warbly horn and a painterly stand-up bass, which Riley in turn tosses into his tape-loop mechanisms for some pretty tremendous, hallucinatory drones and phasing patterns. Think of the manipulations of "You're No Good" but with jazz instead of R&B. "Birds Of Paradise" (1965) is a tape-manipulation piece which loops seemingly random tape segments of jazz horns (probably from those Baker sessions) with a phasing delay predating the work of Zoviet France. "The Mescalin Mix" is a murky Robert Ashley-esque collection of neurotic whispers. The finale of the disc is "Concert for Two Pianos and Five Tape Recorders" which could easily be a No-Neck Blues Band pipe fight with an odd play-by-play narration of the concert. Certainly the current crop of drone artists can learn a thing or twelve from this collection of seminal recordings by the West Coast master of minimalism.
Oops, I do believe you've caught us napping! Sorry folks, not sure why it took us so long to come up with words to describe this SF band's latest full length. Of course we love it! Rogue Wave has been a trusted spring of utterly disarming pop tunes since their debut, 2003's Out Of The Shadows. They polish each one until it sparkles. Each of the dozen tracks on Asleep At Heaven's Gate is exceptionally well crafted and smart, the instrumentation warm and lush. Really, it's not an overstatement to say that the album starts strong with "Harmonium" and ends even stronger with "Cheaper Than Therapy". Zach Rogue's honey drop vocals are at their most lilting and earnest. We think fans of the high lonesome melancholia of My Morning Jacket might also find themselves caught in the comforting aural embrace of Rogue Wave. Soooo good!
More mysterious six string sonic explorations from New Zealand guitar alchemist Andrew Moon, but unlike the last release (the triple cd-r Other Machines) a grinding thick heavy smear of SUNNO))) like low end rumble and Fear Falls Burning-ish smoldering amplified intensity, the sounds on Axes is pretty much exactly the opposite of what you might expect a record called Axes to sound like. Dark, dreamy, tranquil and contemplative. Where other RST releases tended toward the minimal, the static Niblockian drone, the guitar against the amp rumble, Axes features fluttering melodies, chiming harmonics, bits of simple strum. All appropriately nestled amidst distant whirs and soft shimmers.
There are some heavier moments, the ultra brief "The Gate Of The Sun" is a minute plus of corrosive distorted crawl, and "Adrift" is an extended throbbing dirge of amp buzz and guitar distortion, melodies carved out of grinding buzz, beneath a sky filled with streaks of feedback, gorgeous for sure, but also heavy and dark. The rest of the record though, while peppered with bits of guitardrone and crumbling distortion, does definitely tend toward the dreamy, and while we love us some glacial heaviness, we're pretty into the softer side of RST: long drawn out swirls of druggy sound, sounding a bit like a more abstract Spacemen 3 at points, while at others, the sound is delicate and mysterious, a barely there hum, glistening cricket like high end, all wound into tense cinematic ambience. Some tracks explore insectoid ragas, muted buzzing woven into expansive slow shifting soundscapes, others fall in more with the modern free folk, abstract soundscape movement, like the opener, the appropriately titled "Crystalline", a slowed down lullaby of chiming guitars and distant blurred whirs.
All of Axes is gorgeous, even at it's heaviest, the sounds are still imbued with some mysterious beauty, some otherworldly magic...
This ultra-heavy, occultic doom/death outfit from Sweden have fashioned themselves into a cult of their own, steadily releasing limited album after limited album to a ensorcelled fanbase of Runemagick worshippers. With Dawn Of The End, the trio of Nicklas, Emma and Daniel have returned to their studio (cavern? lair? tower?) to perform and record another eight rites and rituals of sludge-riffed, dirge-tempoed Runemagick... hear and heed the call of their necromantical spells! Combining both grim atmosphere and raging brutality, portions of Dawn Of The End even sound to us like a death-metal version of Om.
Includes the track "Chthonic Temple Smoke" from their recent split with fellow Swedish doomsters Ocean Chief (which we never listed, as we unable to get enough... though we might still have a spare copy or two in stock if you ask).
Non-shrinkwrapped, digipack release, limited to 1000 copies.
We listed the first release from Sarin Smoke a while back. It now seems to be back ordered or our of print or for some reason unavailable, we're working on getting more back in, but in the meantime, they've returned with yet another lp only slab of dreamy, blessed out guitar explorations. The 'they' in this case being Pete Swanson from the Yellow Swans and Tom Carter from Charalambides.
This is absolute nirvana for guitardrone fanatics. Huge glowing arcs of grinding distorted guitars, massive swells of whirring low end incandescence, whispered minor key creep, creaking buzzing shimmering ambience, tinkling melodies, throbbing humid riffing, spare and spacious, contemplative and meditative, but with occasional stretches of almost straight rock riffing, and once in a while bursts of fiery psychdrone radiance.
Limited to 652 copies. Pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl. And while they last, the first 287 lps comes with a cd (not a cd-r, an actual cd) with the same music for listening and Ipod-ing ease!!! Packaged in super heavy letter pressed sleeves with original artwork from Liz Harris of Grouper.
We knew we were in for something special when we discovered the amazing Frequency Thirteen cd-r label (thanks to loyal AQ customer Andrew S. for turning us on to these guys). Bands with names like Ice Bound Majesty, Skultroll, Raperack, Black Vomit, Karaoke Vocal Eliminator. Each disc emblazoned with the label's mantra: TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA. Which is pretty much the perfect description of this stuff. We might have also offered, grinding corrosive blackened hypnorock, or perhaps blacknoizemetal, or something similar, perhaps blackkrautnoizerock. Whatever you call it, this stuff is dark, and distorted, blown out and heavy as fuck, hypnotic, rhythmic, and seriously genius.
This is, as far as we know, the first full length from the duo known as Skultroll, just bass and drums, but it sounds like both are being run through a blender and a dumptruck and a black hole and about a million malfunctioning distortion pedals. The sound is obviously stripped down, but the riffing is dense and intense, thick and throbbing, the drums are furious and frenzied. The band tend toward the superdistorted kraut-flecked hypno rock, settling into a groove and then just pounding it into the ground. It's easy to hear Laddio Bolocko, Lightning Bolt, Barbara, Circle and the like, albeit way heavier, way more distorted and much much blacker. At some points it even almost sounds a bit like a Black metal Terminal Cheesecake. Which, we shouldn't have to tell you, is a very very very good thing!
Even the slow jams, are super thick, and crumbling to pieces before our ears, the bass loping lazily under sheets of corrosive FX, the drums pounding out a stripped down rhythm, like an evilized Can, occasionally bursting into full on grinding blasts, but almost always returning to a lurching doomic plod.
The disc closes with a nearly twenty minute low end epic. The first half a murky muddy blown out slow build, the bass smeared into thick washes of black blur, the drums tribal and complex, the song gradually growing more and more propulsive, almost like some groovy stoner rock jam, pulled apart and reassembled all wrong, eventually the distortion overtaking the actual music, the drums becoming more and more abstract, the bass riffs turning into long drawn out drones.
Heavy and freaked out, frightening and fucking awesome.
Sleeping States is the ongoing work of one Londoner named Markland Starkie whom some of you might be familiar with from his other band Kaito. Sleeping States is definitely a bird of a different feather. There The Open Spaces recalls the sensitive loner bedroom indie pop recordings of the '80s and '90s, but obviously more hi-fi. Starkie layers his sweet voice and hushed guitar with a gentle ruffling of dissonant plumage. It's a softer application of noise than that heard in Kaito, but it does offer a similar effect of hazy, off-kilter dreaminess. His lilting warm vocals often drawing easy comparisons to Rufus Wainwright and Ron Sexsmith. Yes, very nice! We'd definitely recommend this to fans of El Perro Del Mar as well as those of Grizzly Bear's Horn Of Plenty album. In fact, Starkie's tune "Rivers" just happens to be a favorite of Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste.
As always with our reviews of aRCHIVE releases, there's two things we can say about this, right off the top: the packaging is swank (in this case, the cd is affixed inside a glossy trifold card, itself enclosed in a translucent vellum wrapper). And it's hella limited (600 copies). So act fast if you want to score one of these documents of late-night, slow-burn psych from the duo of Tokyo's Pirako and Kageo. Recorded live in Philadelphia, PA on the 19th of March, 2007, The Light Of Dark Night consists of one 42 minute long track, featuring renditions of three songs flowing together: "Till We Meet Again (You Returned Home To The Heavens)", "A Rose Bloomed", and "You Look At The Night Sea". It begins with their guitars gently droning out of an ambient gloom, bleak yet beckoning... as their music meanders moodily forth, there's stretches of quiet, crystalline beauty, graced with soothing melody and yearning vocals... at other moments the proceedings are also graced with heavy duty distorto crunch, guitars amped up into sheer sheets of flashback fuzz! With no drums this night, it's more about the drone and the drift... definitely a disc that folks into the aura of Boris' Feedbacker might melt for.
The sun is warm, the sun lights the way, the sun brings life... what's in a name? Well, it's certainly no misnomer for this group. It'll Be The Same is the second album from Sun, not to be confused with SUNNO))), although these guys are also a duo (Oren Ambarchi and Chris Townsend) and half of 'em (Mr. Ambarchi) have collaborated with SUNNO))) in the past. This Sun isn't from Southern Lord, but from the southern hemisphere (Australia), and play purely pop music, slow and soft and hushed but nothing doomy or blackened at all... some gentle droniness certainly does creep in, experimental glitch techniques n' textures that are of course what we might expect from Oren Ambarchi, who after all is known for solo albums along those lines (in fact, there's a great new one by him, actually on Southern Lord, reviewed on this list too). There are layers of static and field recordings (Townsend's children's voices, perhaps?) that along with Oren and Chris's own voices and guitar strums are formed into six moodily relaxed, truly sun-dappled, electro-acoustic folky-pop songs... a calm, cryptically detailed setting for lovely, wistful vocals that remind us of the Skygreen Leopards' Glenn Donaldson and Richard Youngs.
We loved Sun's first self-titled album (and extra disc of experimental remixes) back in 2003, and are happy to finally hear this excellent follow-up!
8 is not Supersilent's eighth album, actually, 'cause their first, a triple cd extravaganza, was entitled 1-3... and Supersilent 7 was actually a live dvd. So if you don't count that one, then Supersilent 8 is really the celebrated Norwegian outfit's fifth studio release. Still, it's far enough into Supersilent's career that you'd think we'd have a good notion of what to expect from these AQ faves. But if we really did, it wouldn't be Supersilent. And as usual they offer no clues: the digipack cd design is as usual stylish but generic, and song titles are an unnecessary luxury in which other more ordinary bands indulge. Here we have eight nameless tracks, 66 minutes of new and varied Supersilent output. In the past, they've created stunning soundscapes that are part Miles Davis, part Starfuckers, part Autechre, a hybrid of dronejazz improv and electronic processing, a live band screwing with itself via computer feedback. They call it "death-jazz" but what the heck does that really mean?
So maybe a track by track accounting is needed. The disc starts off quietly, cautiously, eerily ambient, not giving much up at first. It's a ways into the first 11 minute long track that, with increased volume, a rhythmic pulse makes itself throbbingly known, and eventually builds into a roiling low-end cacophony, with what sounds like a tolling bell amidst percussive splatter and insectoid buzz, slowed down and grinding. The second track is even more sparse and atmospheric, with occasional improv percussion clatter, echoing cymbals, and suspenseful electronic organ musings. So far, this is turning out to be a good album for this time of the year (Halloween being this week!). The third cut continues the sorta spooky and sci-fi theme, venturing further into a dense thicket of crackly, agitated sounds, with stabs of sizzling synth and clumsy, clomping rhythmic rattle, harking back to the counter-intuitive chaos of Supersilent 1-3. Track four is sleepier, gentler, with the breathy trumpet of Arve Henriksen weaving a fragile melody.
Then suddenly with the fifth track, it's like we've flipped the record to a (thus far hypothetical, as a vinyl version hasn't yet been released) side two, which begins on a quite different note than before, with a bizarre, distorted, almost robot-metallic voice or voices intoning some sort of garbled rant. But by the time this track's twelve minutes are up, we've heard more of the melodious trumpet, humming drone, percussive splatter, and glacial glitch that we realize we DO expect from ol' Supersilent. That's followed by the stuttering electronic clicks and plings of track six, this song's special surprise being high, wordless female vocals soaring up and over the ending. Number seven is a skronkier, noisier affair than anything yet on the album, it's an energetic compression of the cacophony heard on tracks 1 or 3, the drummer going nuts, the organist sucking up lots of electricity, and with the addition of what must be wild, howling, heavily effected vocals swirling cryptically over it all. Supersilent let it all hang out on this one, yeah! #7 would be the piece for them to play if they ever had to share a stage with Acid Mothers Temple. And then track 8 brings Supersilent 8 to a quiet close, perfectly spaced sounds and silence like a more regulated Starfuckers jam, clicks and clacks and crackle, that only lasts four minutes and four seconds but could go on and on forever as far as we're concerned.
Wow. Another excellent, original Supersilent effort, with the use/abuse of vocals opening up some new dimensions to their sound. Parts of Supersilent 8 give us the idea we're listening to some sort of really strange field recording, the documentation of the fracturing of an iceberg, the swarmings of bugs, or the language of birds or bats, when in fact this is a very human-activated, machine-mediated, far-from-natural audio document. Of course at other times on this album that fact is quite evident! Indeed, Supersilent 8 also is the closest these "death-jazzers" have come to making rock album, especially when the super distorted, hazy murk of psychedelic howling almost garage-rock-improv pummel of track 7 is taken into account.
Eamon Sprod (aka Tarab) is a name you don't come across everyday; and I (Jim) swear that I've heard something by this Australian sound artist somewhere along the way. While I could be remembering a track on some obscure Australian compilation, I am probably mistaken as Surfacedrift is his debut recording. Given the high quality of this record, I should have been listening to Sprod's work for many years along with all of those Hazard, Francisco Lopez, and Loren Chasse records that I constantly return to. This unfortunate lapse of memory could also be the result of wandering through Sprod's psychogeographic soundfields. Surfacedrift is a disorienting album, which implodes the perspectives of sound by amplifying the miniscule and softening the impact from environmental recordings. Sprod massages richly textured passages from crumpled leaves, spilled water, and tumbling rocks; he couples these haptic events with field recordings. As everything is so seemless, it's hard to tell if Sprod had actually recorded these rock garden symphonies out of doors (a la Blithe Sons), or if there's a fair amount of production work synthesizing the field recordings with the performative elements. An very impressive debut to say the least!
Must be a cold day in Hell. The long rumored, NEW Trouble album is finally here. Been a long time coming. In fact, it seemed like Judgement Day might get here first, that this would never happen, but it has. Chances are, those looking to pick up this expensive import are probably only gonna be fans already, so there's not much need for us to explain just how legendary these Chicago doom metallers are. Let's just say that along with Pentagram, Saint Vitus and Candlemass, in the eighties these guys were the bearers of the Black Sabbath torch...with hints of more psychedelic '60s stuff like Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles surfacing in their music as well. Rick Rubin tried to break 'em big back in 1990 but it wasn't to be, though their eponymous Def American debut remains a (sadly out of print) classic. Various breakups, lineups, fuckups, and troubles befell, the band last releasing a studio album in 1995, Plastic Green Head, which easily could have been their swansong, their final epitaph. But twelve long years later they have reconvened (more or less) with the most crucial factor being that original vocalist Eric Wagner is at the mic. When we last heard him, on Dave Grohl's Probot project, it seemed criminal that Trouble wasn't happening at the time and that their future was, as ever, in doubt. Now, at last, at least, they're back (even if this release was damn hard for us to get) and at this point is just nice to hear Wagner crooning in his sincere soaring gargle over some heavy riffs once again!! Like Dio and his rainbows and wishing wells, Eric Wagner has still got Heaven on his mind. Other familiar Trouble tropes, musical and lyrical, abound, from swinging Sabbathy riffage to mellow stoner psych balladry about reaching "the end of my daze". Better than Plastic Green Head? As good as Manic Frustration? Up there with Run To The Light? Er, well, each fan must judge. One thing that's most definitely rad about this record is that they chose to do a cover of "Ride The Sky" by krautrock proto-metallers Lucifer's Friend!
Here's some exceptionally tense n' rhythmic post/prog/psych rock from France, loaded with spacey synths in the tradition of their '70s forefathers Heldon, these thirteen tracks seething with skittering pulsations, distorted drone crescendos, and whispery vocal incantations. The dramatic, nervous mantras of Turzi are like a noirish version of the Circle/Salvatore neo-krautrock thing, or like a suspense film soundtrack scored by Suicide. For some reason, this album's called A and every track starts with that letter: "Animal Signal", "Are You Thinking About Jesus?", "Afghanistan", "Amadeus", "Axis Of Good", etc. All right. But we kinda wish they'd done the lyrics in French, rather than English... or maybe remained totally instrumental. Not because there's anything terrible about their English singing/lyrics, but just 'cause the instrumental aspects of this band -- the percussive propulsiveness, the electronic textures -- are quite powerful, compared to the French-accented vocals...
Turzi actually would appear to be one individual, Romain Turzi, credited with "synthesized guitars, vocals, keys & drones". But he's got a band helping him out, called Reich IV. The four members of Reich IV all sport slightly goofy stage names: Sky Over, Judah Warsky, Arthur Rambo, and our favorite, Hard Rock Gunther. For more weird names, turn to the "virtual" bonus disc -- this comes with a coupon for the free download of an mp3 compilation of Turzi's faves from the current underground French psych scene, none of whom we'd ever heard of before: Aqua Nebula Oscillator, Kill For Total Peace, Mogadishow, Juan Trip, Butch McCoy, and nine more...cool stuff too!
This SF band craft sturdy country rock with dusty roads 'n' harmonica friendly withered male vocals, and they've packed their third full length with it! Clearly Two Gallants' music is deeply influenced by the blues, the sort whose roots run deeeep in the southern swamps. Here's nine well scuffed, weathered and leathered songs that fit well alongside the strainin' with emotion Americana stylings of labelmates Bright Eyes and Eric Bachmann as well as My Morning Jacket or Waco Brothers. Real good!
This new split 7" features a pair of well matched young bands from around these parts -- the Bay Area's Dame Satan and Two Sheds from Sacramento. They're druggy, dusky hued country folks who slink about in the shadows. Their all too brief two songs harken a woodsy winter chill. Can't wait for more! The record is pressed on the palest seafoam green vinyl and is packaged in a beautiful screen printed sleeve.
Foglands is the follow up to the gorgeous and very well received compilation The Threshold Of Silence reviewed a while back, which featured a bunch of AQ faves: Aidan Baker, Troum, Paul Bradley and a bunch of others. A gorgeous collection of minimal dronemusick running the gamut from ominous Lustmordian darkness to glistening dreamlike ambience. Foglands is sonically similar, but features a lineup of groups for the most part unknown to us. Thankfully, all the bands involved are mining the same mysterious sonic soundworlds as our favorite soundmakers and dronelords.
There's the slightly ominous, almost new wave blisss out of Seren Ffordd's "Haze", the rich lustrous whir and cavernous shimmer of Darkened Soul's "Visu", Mathias Grassow offers up a sprawling expanse of hazy glimmering soft focus hum in the form of "Deeper Purity", Netherworld's "Frostnetter" is an reverb drenched percussive soundscape, Eastern tinged and rife with bits of feedback, and strange clanks and clangs, dreamSTATE deliver "Fogbound", a lengthy dreamy drift of soaring cinematic strings and soft swirling swells, Oophoi's "Outremer" is a super abstract, stark soundscape of whirring winds and almost static stretches of slow shifting hushed blur, and finally Thomas Weiss closes the proceedings with "Isolation", an appropriately isolationist sprawl of whispered melodies, deep throbbing low end, and gently swaying bits of chordal glimmer.
Fans of all things drone and ambient and dark ambient and black ambient and drifting and dreamlike, will definitely fall under the soporific spell of Foglands.
Packaged in an oversized full plastic sleeve, with an oversized card, full color image on one side and liner notes on the other.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, each disc hand numbered.
Unless you are one lucky cool cat there is a pretty good chance you don't have any of the great Jamaican 45's from 1972-1978 on this amazing comp. All here on cd for the very first time. As the title suggests, this comp focuses on the awesome infusions of soul and funk into the Jamaican sound. This movement was of course heavily influenced by the trend in the US at the time, a glorious funk and soul explosion, but make no mistake, these tracks still retain the classic reggae/dub feel that Jamaica was beginning to export to the rest of the world on great labels like Capo, Jaywax and our long lost Jamaican twin Aquarius (who also had a rad looking record store in Jamaica at the time).
Covers of folks like Earth Wind & Fire, Betty Wright and The JB's as well as original soul cookers from folks like The Heptones, Lee Pery and Cedric Brooks. As always the impeccable packaging by Soul Jazz makes this comp a total treat, with photos of the original 7" covers and super informative liner notes. Really nice!
Two more installments in Sublime Frequencies' ever expanding catalogue of amazing music from around the world. And by now we shouldn't have to tell you that pretty much every single release is a mind blower. But we will if need be. Any obsessive music freak owes it to themselves to check out and most likely own every single one of these. Some are beautiful and mysterious, some are strange and haunting, others are festive and jubilant, and a handful are truly truly strange. Wild and wonderful, perplexing but fantastically fun. And this one definitely falls into that category. Even before we get to the music, it's easy to tell this is gonna be a weird one, the cover is a wild swinging sixties party, with hot girls and guitars, giant dice, bongos, vests, sunglasses, suspended cubes made out of record jackets, the back of the disc features another swinging mod party and inexplicably a huge black and white image of Batman superimposed over the top. Inside it's hula girls in front of the Easter Island statues, a crazy cartoon of a big mouthed lady juggling numbers and a little kid hanging onto her arm, big ol' electric guitars, and on the disc, canaries in a cage, plus, c'mon! It's called Latinamericarpet!?
The music inside perfectly reflects the chaos and craziness on the sleeve. A selection of various lost Latin American psych lps from the sixties, but 'psych' here is VERY loosely defined. This sounds like the best DJ set you'll never hear, spinning awesome garage, fuzzed out psychrock, weird novelty records and everything in between. This is definitely the strangest disc in the series since those Radio discs of randomly captured radio broadcasts. As much as fans of weird world music, and strange found sounds will want this, so will folks who have been digging on all the crazy psych comps of late. This just might trump them all.
Here's a quick rundown of some of the sounds and songs here: super groovy fuzzy sixties garage psych, with slippery reverbed guitars and a killer groove, weird synths and organs playing along with chirping and singing birds, strange spoken word tracks with dark orchestral backing, Joe Meek-ish garage jams, instrumental but with a killer Eastern flair, rapid fire melodies and lots of conga drums, Mozart transformed into a groovy fuzzy jam, lush orchestral pop with crooned vocals, sound effects, sped up voices and spoken word, a yoga instructional record, with a gorgeous extended drone for you to practice along to, some super goofy, jaunty children's music, all playful melodies, wah guitars, and Muppets like vocals, lilting easy listening, all Lawrence Welk strings and lo-fi organs, killer warbly reverbed surfrock, with wailing sax and fuzzy organs, classical piano accompanied by what sounds like a small choir, a full on Bollywood style ballad, total Wipeout worship instrumental garage rock jam, groovy exotica, all marimbas and playful percussion, wild mariachi with accordion upright bass, and amazing vocal harmonies, murky muddy surf rock jam complete with a super long extended bad ass drum solo and it goes on and on and on. Every song a surprise, everyone catchy and wonderful in its own way, all woven into a perfect sonic travelogue through the swinging sixties in Latin America, lots of the songs separated by little snippets from novelty records, voices, and sounds, language instructions, snippets of songs, giving the whole thing a similar vibe as past 'Radio' installments in the Sublime Frequencies series, or like we mentioned before, the greatest, wildest DJ set ever.
We really shoulda listed this comp a few weeks ago, since it's a sampler of all the cool new stuff out or about to be out on Norway's happenin' Smalltown Supersound label, some of which wasn't yet released when we first got this in. But hey some of it still isn't, though this does feature a track from that rad Sunburned Hand / Four Tet collab Fire Escape we highlighted last list, and a cut from the blissed-out Arp debut that showed up last week (and is highlighted elsewhere this list). Yep, Smalltown Supersound has been kicking ass lately, and if you want to cheaply and conveniently check out the who, what, and why of that bold statement, this is a great means of doing so. Suffice to say, if post-punk krautrocky space disco tracks (each one here being some and/or all of the above) float yr boat, then The Portable Supersound is a smart purchase -- unless you're planning to buy *every* Smalltown Supersound release anyway, which isn't such a bad idea either. From Scandinavia to San Francisco and beyond, there's a dozen cutting edge yet kinda clubby artists on here to get excited about... besides the already abovementioned, this also includes tracks from Kim Hiorthoy, Bjorn Torske, 120 Days, Tussle, Lindstrom, Mental Overdrive, diskJokke, Toy, Lars Horntveth, and last but not least, Japan's The Lift Boys, aka EYE from the Boredoms, whose full-Bore TECHNO! track taken from a 12" vinyl-only release is a good reason to get this all by itself.
The second of two new releases in Sublime Frequencies' ever expanding catalogue of 'world music'. The first, reviewed elsewhere on this list, is the wild Latin American psych rock vinyl sampler Latinamericarpet, one of the weirdest and wildest in the series so far. But this one is pretty weird and wild as well, but in a completely different way, though it's also Latin American.
Remember those Rio Baile Funk comps we reviewed a while back, killer mashups of Miami Bass, new wave, techno, top 40, all wrapped up into super dense and wild sexy dancefloor freakouts? Well this is similar in that this too is the music of the favelas, and features some of the same elements, but unlike the jubilant party vibe of the Rio Baile Funk stuff, this is much more stripped down, much more intense, and aggressive, and is closely linked to criminals, drugs, gangs, murder and mayhem.
Proibidao is the name given to an electronic funk which grew in popularity alongside the blossoming drug gangs in the nineties. The music is basically a stripped down Miami bass style rhythm, mesmerizing and tribal, there are not really any parts, just the drums looped over and over, while MC's and vocalists improvise over the top, toasting, howling, crooning, shouting, singing. Gang leaders set up big parties, hire DJ's and MC's do their thing, the tracks are often recorded and distributed as cd-r's or MP3's...
On first listen, we actually weren't all that into this, it just sounds like super simple stripped down electronic music with way too intense vocals over the top, but the closer you listen, the more you can hear traditional Brazilian musics incorporated into the jams, the sound becomes more and more musical, more powerful, on some tracks you can hear massive crowds responding with call and response vocals, there are lots of sirens, machine gun sounds, the rhythms are WAY down in the mix, offering up the simplest of frameworks for the sweatsoaked distorted vocals. And it IS all about the vocals, strident and urgent, intense and passionate, so much so that a lot of the time it ends up sounding almost like a Rio Baile Funk Fugazi!
Repetitive, hypnotic, stripped down and funky, but at the same time, dark and dangerous, mysterious and really intense and aggressive. Not necessarily recommended for your next dance party (unless there's something we don't know about your dance parties), but recommended nonetheless.
Road To Nowhere? No way, this road leads to stoner rock heaven. Hot shit badasses Fu Manchu, Nick Oliveri, Brant Bjork, Burning Brides, and The Dwarves share the joint (heh heh, pun intended!) with lesser known indie upstarts Big Truck, Winnebago Deal, Truck Fighters, Dig, The Sammies, In The Detail, Baby Woodrose, Leech, and locals Turn Me On Dead Man (unfortunately misspelled as "Dean Man" on the packaging -- guess spelling took a back seat to rawkin'). Oh yeah, and there's also a lil' band here called The Freeks whose lineup includes members of Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Nebula, Skin Yard and Earthless!
As we've mentioned in the past, we're a little wary of the noise. We love us some Merzbow now and again, some Hijokaidan of course, maybe some Masonna, New Blockaders sure� but pure noise, harsh noise, is an acquired taste we just haven't acquired yet.
But while Technicolor Hell is by definition a 'noise comp', it's a lot more than that. The sounds are varied and rife with fucked up rhythms, bizarre textures and a world of grinding grating roaring whirring sounds that are somehow both hard AND easy on the ears.
It makes sense that this wouldn't be your run of the mill noise record, as it comes by way of a Mr. Dave Smolen, whose last record we reviewed and dug heavily a while back (still got a few in stock), and who was also responsible for the mind blowing genius that was Flittermice Of Eld, a single track, abstract not-quite-black-metal-not-quite-noise tribute / homage to the Darkthrone song ""As Flittermice as Satan's Spys", drawn from just a handful of notes from said song. What the fuck?!? But so awesome.
So Mr. Smolen's on here, and it's his label, and it's one of those comps where we pretty much don't recognize a single artist, but the names have us convinced before we even hear them that we'd have to love 'em: Cars Will Burn, Drums Like Machine Guns, Tweeter, Mincemeat Or Tenspeed, Sharks With Wings�
Yeah okay already, but what the hell does it sound like, you're thinking, well, obviously the simplest description would be, well, NOISY. But like we mentioned before, that's just the tip of the ruptured eardrum.
Mincemeat Or Tenspeed offer up their own sort of metal, but it's pulled apart and shattered into a million jagged pieces, the resulting skree sounds more like a crumbling wall of blown out distortion, wrapped in sheets of brittle feedback, but part way through, the track morphs into some creepy buzzing Goblin-esque synthscape. Smolen's track has Flittermice in the title, but if there's any Darkthrone in there we sure can't hear it. Instead it's a black sonic sky filled with streaks of ear piercing feedback and fireworks of grinding high end. Sharks With Wings is more traditional noise, channeling Masonna, a garbled vocal transmission caked in filthy FX and blown to bloody bits. Cars Will Burn weave a gorgeous little soundscape of downtuned grind, sine wave glitch, skittery static, all assembled into a strangely rhythmic jam. We had high hopes for Drums Like Machine Guns, c'mon, with a name like that? They don't disappoint, but they do surprise with a kind of lo-fi Atari Teenage Riot thing, pounding techno beats in a field of distortion and buzz, vocals hyper distorted and buried in the mix, almost like a synth squealing and shrieking above the din. Pretty dang cool. In fact this whole comp is pretty bad ass. Surprisingly (or not) we seem to be getting more and more noise in our diet lately, and quite frankly we're digging it big time. I guess it's about time we reconsidered our general position on noise music�
Packaged in an oversized, eye popping color booklet, packed with liner notes, track info, color photos, diagrams and designs, a printed insert with the cd affixed to the last page. And probably pretty dang limited�
Holy shit! The first of two box sets, paying tribute to one of the most adventurous noise projects, The New Blockaders. Despite having collaborated with Andrew Chalk during his '80s noise days, David Jackman, and more recently with Thurston Moore, The New Blockaders have steered clear of something resembling a public profile; yet at the same time, their incendiary abrasions of junkyard noise and sonic obliteration have had a huge impact on the global community of noise musicians. In listening to all of these tributes to The New Blockaders, it's easy for us to convince ourselves that we're actually hearing the Rupenus brothers (the principle authors for TNB). You'll find Z'ev's splattered / slashed metals and aggressive frequency modulation, Oren Ambarchi's twisted steel collage, Emil Beaulieau's typical onslaught of hellish noise, Prurient's blackened power electronics, the white hot psychoacoustic squallor of Jason Kahn, a return to brutish devastation from Controlled Bleeding, V/VM in kick-ass drummachinegun attack mode, Thurston Moore embraces his noise bag for sick tone excretions, as well as tracks from Scanner, KK Null, The Haters, Daniel Menche, Nocturnal Emissions, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Asmus Tietchens, Zbigniew Karkowski, Ashtray Navigations, John Wiese, MSBR, Vortex Campaign, and many many more.
This is very limited, very beautifully packaged, and very recommended for any one interested in noise culture!
Well if you're going to get the first volume paying tribute to one of the most adventurous noise projects ever, The New Blockaders, there's no excuse not to get the second! This one has Merzbow offering a fitting bit of incendiary psycho-noise, Sudden Infant gargling into shitty condenser mics and pounding heavily on slabs of wood along turgid grinding noise, sunken feedback miasma from Withdrawal Method, a mindblowing session of industrial ritualism for scraping metal and cavernous reverb from Giancarlo Toniutti, retardo squeak & squiggle from RLW, chopped digital splatter from Achim Wollscheid reminiscent of his SBOTHI days, a very Organum-like acoustic drone piece from Brandon Walls, Violent Onsen Geisha being Violent Onsen Geisha (i.e. REALLY FUCKING LOUD AND PIERCING!), Damion Romero offering a snarling blast of junked speaker abuse, Spiracle transforming a seering noise into something almost hallowed in its shimmer, and Wolf Eyes just shit something out on an old cassette. Plus nasty bits of noise Jim O' Rourke, Dave Phillips, Aube, Cheapmachines, Courtis, Christian Renou, AMK, Aaron Dilloway, the Incapacitants, and many many more!
As much as we love pretty much everything Venetian Snares has done, from wild drill and bass to damaged techno to furious breakcore and even (especially) his recent foray into dubstep with the kick ass Sabbath Dubs, like most people we were totally smitten by Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, Aaron Funk's musical love letter to Hungary, a gorgeous string soaked symphonic epic, dense with orchestral strings and moody melancholy arrangements, then tangled up with Funk's insane and hyperkinetic drum programming. He even learned to play the trumpet and the violin so instead of just sampling parts he could play them himself. The perfect blend of baroque majesty, and insane manic skitter, the drum programming not distracting, but somehow enhancing the emotion and intensity.
Follow up records found Funk returning to a more straight ahead (if anything Funk does could be considered straight ahead) drum and bass template, offering up more twisted and tangled post Aphex jungle, which off course we totally dug, but we couldn't heel hoping for more of that string soaked drill and bass drama like on Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett.
So here it is, the musical sequel if you will to Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett. Another gorgeous expansive, super dramatic world of darkness and hopelessness. Each track minor key and mournfully majestic. Not sure if this is really a soundtrack or not, but it sure plays like one, and the trademark Snares drum programming is kept to a minimum, with only 4 tracks (of 14) featuring any rhythms at all. The rest are moody instrumentals, that drift and shimmer, each a haunting mini epic, rife with pizzicato melodies, soaring emotional strings, moaning cellos, choral voices, simple orchestral percussion, harps, choirs, dark liquid pianos, completely breathtaking in scope, falling somewhere between Morricone's The Mission and Arvo Part.
And when Funk introduces his tangled rhythms, it only gets better, those tracks definitely stand out, all the more since they are brief and far between, the rhythms contributing their own tension, sometimes skittering subtly, other times pounding along sides sweeping strings. We used to think that Aphex Twin's "Girl / Boy" was the ultimate chunk of melodic drum and bass, but these tracks, and the ones on Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett, take it to a whole 'nother level, in terms of complexity, emotional resonance, and sheer musical power.
Up until now, London super-club Fabric has exclusively been releasing mix CDs from various electronic artists. Chilean-born, Berlin-based minimal techno darling Ricardo Villalobos is changing that by using Fabric 36 as a venue for an entire LP worth of new material. Anyone who has followed his work from somewhere around the acclaimed Alcachofa full-length through last year's brilliant Fizheuer Zieheuer has no doubt recognized an ever-increasing level of abstraction. Well, this release is no different. In fact, the album almost completely abandons traditional song structure in favor of an approach that takes slivers of audial minutiae and effects and processes them into a crescendo of balearic beats and breakdowns. The pieces develop slowly and organically with tightly wound percussive elements layered masterfully upon one another. And, if nothing else, this disc shows the further evolution of an artist destined to be remembered as one of the more cerebral -- yet engaging -- artists in his genre. Definitely recommended for fans of minimal techno or to a lesser extent Latin rhythm!
Last year's The Drift was a menacing fever dream, delving into dark sonic realms that wasn't for the weak of heart. Who knew that the same sort of staccato violin stabs, claustrophobic restraint and pounding rhythms would translate into a moving score for dance. Scott Walker, commissioned by the CandoCo Dance Company and Choreographer Rafael Bonachela, has composed 4 instrumental pieces for the dance piece "And Who Shall Go To The Ball, And What Shall Go To The Ball". In his own words, "the music is full of edgy and staccato shapes and cuts, reflecting how we cut up the world around us as a consequence of the shape of our bodies". While it may be a bit hard to fully appreciate the music removed from the realm of the resulting dance performance, a new Scott Walker release is pretty much always welcome in our books.
Brand new two track 7" from sound recordist extraordinaire Chris Watson. Having done time in both the Hafler Trio and Cabaret Voltaire, Watson deals now almost exclusively in unadulterated field recordings, mostly of nature and wildlife. Past full lengths have been huge hits around here, and this single is just as compelling. Demonstrating that, it takes much more than a tape recorder and a microphone to capture magical field recordings. It takes an amazing ear, and a bit of technical savvy, one listen to these two tracks, recorded underwater around the Galapagos Islands, make that abundantly clear.
Two tracks, each recorded at a different depth, both dense and deep, rife with all manner of unexpected sonic subtleties. The first at 3 meters, is gorgeous and clear, it sounds nearly the same underwater as above, the sounds of the boat, and the water lapping against it, sea gulls, what sound like stones knocking against one another, all of these sounds wrapped in that haunting undersea shimmer, and captured perfectly, crystal clear and so vibrant.
The flipside finds us dipping down to 10 meters and the sound changes dramatically, deeper and more resonant, all the sounds more warbly and indistinct, burbling and languid, muted and softly glimmering, all naturally smeared into a warm soft focus soundscape of underwater drones, and muted sonic events. So lovely. And both sides end with gorgeously hypnotic locked grooves, which were so nice, we ended up letting both play for a long time before realizing they were looping...
Thick vinyl and a super striking Jon Wozencroft sleeve.
We love when music is released to perfectly coincide with the season it's being released in. With new records by Richard Youngs, Citay and this new White Magic ep we feel like we are armed with the perfect sound with which to usher in the fall.
We had to wait so long for White Magic's full length after their debut ep, so we're very happy that they'vee quickly followed up that great first album with another e.p. of their dark and hypnotic psychedelic folk. Conjuring the spirit of Karen Dalton and Grace Slick at her most mystifying, Mira Billotte has proven to be one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in the underground music scene over the last decade. Her amazing voice and mesmerizing piano playing are perfectly complimented by the strong presence of her partner in magical musical spells, Douglas Shaw, who wrote and sings on the ep's closer, which is absolutely beautiful.
With songs that sound like they should be performed at some ceremonial ritual, White Magic have carved out a special place for themselves and have proven that long after the whole 'freak folk' hype is dead and gone they will remain, as a band who truly conjure up meaningful songs and remarkable music. While it's just four songs and only about 20 minutes long, Dark Stars might still find its way on some of our top records of '07 lists. So good!
