A change of pace from the usual black metal grimnity we expect from the Northern Silence label (who have brought us the likes of Angmar, Alcest, Amesoeurs, Stielas Storhett, Necrofrost...) comes from Milwaukee metallers A Tortured Soul (not to be confused with another metal band called This Tortured Soul fyi). In truth, they're on a Northern Silence sub-label called Eyes Like Snow, and actually ARE pretty grim. But not in a black metal way, unless you count Mercyful Fate/King Diamond as black metal (which they were definitely considered, back in the day, due to KD's LaVeyan Satanic philosophies). This is '80s styled epic power metal, with soaring-with-the-eagles, then-tearing-them-to-shreds singing that reminds us at times of Judas Priest's Rob Halford -- or even ol' Ozzy Osbourne -- especially on this album's best track, "Not Tonight"...
Vocalist Black (that's his name) has a high falsetto attack that mixes it up with more growly-man discourse. Likewise, A Tortured Soul's music ranges from moody n' melodic to ball-crushingly heavy, from doomy plod to speedy chug, doing their damnedest to deliver on their negative, depressive moniker. For fans of KD's outfits, also Justice-era Metallica, Nevermore/Sanctuary, '90s Judas Priest, Iced Earth, maybe even Shadows Fall. All despite the looks of their very black metal seeming band logo/symbol!
*Acid Mothers Alert* *Acid Mothers Alert* *Accccidd...Moowaaaaa....whrwhrwhrwhrrrrrr...* Oops, better replace the batteries in that thing. Our Acid Mothers alert siren is getting worn out by the pace of this Japanese psych commune's ridiculously prolific output. But as always, we're not complaining.
Acid Motherly Love, boasting both naked ladies (2) and UFOs (1) in the front cover photo, has a LOT going on, it's a delirious mishmash of wild wah wah psych throb, absurd exotica chant, druggy tomfoolery, and paranoid drones. The influence of bassist and "cosmic joker" Atsushi Tsuyama seems strong on Acid Motherly Love, it's got more goofy eccentricies even than usual, reminding us a bit of old stuff by Tsuyama's other band, Omoide Hatoba. Especially puzzling is the inclusion of what sound like weird spoken word samples in a male American voice (Rod McKuen??) which, after perusing the liner notes, we figure is probably the contribution of guest "king of beer" Stoo Odom (of Graves Brothers Deluxe and Subarachnoid Space). We confirmed this with a quick internet search, which turned up an admission of guilt in the midst of Mr. Odom's Graves Brothers Japan Tour Diary, wherein it is also revealed that he was told this new AMT album has "something to do with the Plastic Ono Band and a sperm cell that fails". Hmm.
To wrap up, we must say, as much as we like the music, ol' AMT has really reached a nadir in the song-title dep't. This one's got typical head scratchers like "Astro Elvis E.S.P." and "Johnny Johnny Jerusalem", but also a 20 minute, 3-part suite entitled "Douchebag" (part b of which is called "Sometime In Your Pussy"). Well, we bet they were laffing it up around the bong when they came up with these... but it sounds like they're actually chanting "Douchebag" during that track, did they really have to do that?
Wow! This is on fire! While Tony Allen will always be best known for being the amazing drummer in Fela Kuti's band, he is responsible for some totally great and inspired body moving music of his own. This collection collects four of his best albums onto two discs for a nonstop offering of Afro-Beat perfection! These records, which all originally came out in the 1970's, share a very similar sound and spirit to the work that Fela Kuti was doing when Allen was in his band. So it makes a lot of sense that three of them were produced by Fela. Long, stretched out passages filled with the kind of grooves that work their way right into your body and soul. While there is certainly nothing wrong with being known as the drummer in Fela's legendary group as well as more recently a member of the Damon Albern led supergroup The Good, The Bad & The Queen, we think this release could help make it plain to those who don't know already, that Tony Allen is a legend in his own right! Every time we play this in the store immediately people start asking what we're listening to moving their bodies up and down and all around. Highly recommended!
Ariel Pink is back! He and his Haunted Graffiti gang continue to mess round with a barrel of nutty effects and other ramshackle fun! The results are sorta like when you've reached that half fucked-up point of the evening when you realize everything's more than slightly 'off'. Faces and voices start to slide into distorted grins and grimaces. Multiple layers of helium balloon vocals, bristly electric guitars, willy-nilly keyboards, and other noise making gizmos seem to all be following someone else's lead. In fact, Scared Famous sounds like the kid brother of Ween's Pure Guava album. Warped, weird and scratchy like an old woolen argyle sock in a mud puddle, Ariel Pink's broken melodies are at once endearing and maddening.
Not a geographic location, Balthrop, Alabama is a singer/songwriter! Joining in the band naming tradition of the likes of Boston, Chicago, Kansas et al, former Bay Area now Brooklyn based solo singer/songwriter Pascal Balthrop's latest musical moniker is a place, but a fictional one, mind you! You might know him under his previous musical alias which was simply Pascal. With a new name and new hometown come new sounds, a broader scope, instrument palette and group of musicians to accompany him. On his brand new sprawling concept double (!) cd about big city encroachment on a small town, Balthrop's acoustic songcraft is definitely still very very indebted to Jeff Mangum, John Darnielle and the Elephant 6 Collective, but the telltale signs -- such as a very distinctly emotive singing delivery combined with unabashedly blatty horns -- are a little bit more subsumed into his own realm. His lyrical storytelling is less cryptic or surreal, and the downhome-y album unfolds like an indie pop country fair stage play. Some folks have likened his new songs such as "Love To Love You" to the Hidden Cameras in its peppy exuberance. Fans of all of the abovementioned, hop aboard!
Not only is this a killer split of evil black thrash, Japan's Barbatos and Finland's Incriminated, each offering up songs dealing with war and history, but it's a whole new format you've never seen before (really!), and is pretty damn out there. More on that in a second.
The music first. Barbatos from Japan, are amazing evil black thrashers, with a definite punk vibe, the guitars howling, the drums crashing, the spirit of Venom, Motorhead, but supercharged and blackened. The perfect match for Incriminated from Finland, who walk in the same bloodied footsteps as Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, a black thrash, furious and raw, primitive and black.
The Incriminated song is called "Blue Swastikas" but before you freak out, as the band states in their liner notes: "If you think Incriminated are nazis for dealing with historical topics, then you are nazi yourself!" Okay, so they're not Nazis and the song is about some classic WWII battle, maybe they could have come up with a different title since that stuff is a pretty sensitive subject in the black metal world, but whatever�
Both tracks rock furiously, heavy and primitive, buzzing and brutal. But, these aren't cds, nor are they vinyl eps. Instead they are one sided plastic discs, like cds, but each disc has record grooves pressed into the plastic. Designed to be played on record players, but due to the cd sized hole in the middle, it's tough to get it centered, and as far as we know they don't yet make an adapter for that. But it looks amazing, and everyone we show it to has to hold it and touch it and look at it to try to figure out how the heck you play something like this. Fans of raw black metal, as well as weird music, and weird packaging especially will definitely want to check this out.
Glitchy blippy trippy flipped out bombast from Brooklyn's own Black Dice! This is futuristic noise-rave music! An entirely beat driven sound, drawing on everything from Razor X-esque dance hall to the minimal sounds of the Chain Reaction label, but all filtered through the hypercolored sound pallet of the most forward thinking noise artists around. The music, while remaining noisy and abstract, is surprisingly hooky. Melodies are buried beneath the clanging of drum machines and dubbed out white noise textures. Heavily processed vocals float, from time to time, over a multimetric cacophony of layered rhythmic patterns, which results in something that is as infectious and groovy as it is disorienting and woozy. This music is how we imagine the club music of some super advanced race of space aliens might sound. Extraterrestrial crate bangers! If you dug on 2005's Broken Ear Record, or if you're just looking for something entirely refreshing and original in the world of "noise" music, this is definitely worth checking out.
Whoa, Graveface Records, take it easy! Who do you think you are? Droppin' not one but two Black Moth Super Rainbow albums in our laps at once? We're not complaining, but don't *you* think Start A People and Falling Through A Field are just a lot of tunes to digest and enjoy at once? That's forty one total -- yes, we counted! Falling Through A Field is a reissue of their 2003 album and along with the seventeen original tracks comes a half dozen bonus tracks. The good thing about having this much BMSR is that you can put the cd on, then go ahead and drift off into daydream land without worrying that you're gonna have to change discs anytime soon. We fell so in love with their latest album Dandylion Gum, so when we found out there was earlier BMSR stuff we were both excited yet a little skeptical, maybe there was a reason we hadn't heard those early recordings, maybe the band was just coming into its own now. Luckily that was so not the case as these earlier recordings show that BMSR have been creating such irresistible and fuzzy sounding electronic pop from the get go. Falling Through A Field is so bittersweet in the most Technicolor soaked heartfelt way.
Kind of like if Boards Of Canada made a pop record or DNTEL's best album Life Is Full Of Possibilities. Filled with a feeling of yearning and analog electronics used so warmly that customers always think we're playing some worn out vinyl gem when we play this in the store. A testament to how warm, fuzzy and comforting BMSR are. So nice!
Whoa, Graveface Records, take it easy! Who do you think you are? Droppin' not one but two Black Moth Super Rainbow albums in our laps at once? We're not complaining, but don't *you* think Start A People and Falling Through A Field are just a lot of tunes to digest and enjoy at once? That's forty one total -- yes, we counted!
Start A People is a reissue of their 2004 album and along with the sixteen original tracks comes a pair of bonus tracks. The good thing about having this much BMSR is that you can put the cd on, then go ahead and drift off into daydream land without worrying that you're gonna have to change discs anytime soon. We fell so in love with their latest album Dandylion Gum, so when we found out there was earlier BMSR stuff we were both excited yet a little skeptical, maybe there was a reason we hadn't heard those early recordings, maybe the band was just coming into it's own now. Luckily that was so not the case as these earlier recordings show that BMSR have been creating irresistible and fuzzy sounding electronic pop from the get go.
Like a much more playful and charming version of Air, listening to Start A People is like a psychedelic soundtrack to playing Candyland as a little kid. Filled with wonder, heavily processed vocals on some tracks and evoking all kinds of marvelous color. We keep falling deeper and deeper in love with Black Moth Super Rainbow!
The Black Swans third stop in the land of indie record labels is the appropriately named La Societe Expeditionnaire. Their music traverses the shadowed terrain between Tindersticks and Bob Dylan -- particularly in Noel Sayre's slow moody fiddle creep and Jerry DiCicca's vocal inflection. More rugged than the former, less travelled than the latter, and more raw and fierce than either. You might recall this Bay Area band's last two fine pit-of-despair releases the full length Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? and the Sex Brain cdep which came out on Delmore and Bwatue respectively, but are unfortunately now out of print.
But you shan't despair too much once you get yer paws on this new one because Change! packs its own deep, dark, earthen wallop. The electric guitars slash at the handwringing of the strings, then melt into snaking melodic streams. A gripping listen.
Yet another in Southern's Latitudes series, there are two this week in fact, one from Guapo satellite Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses, and this one, the latest from Blood & Time, aka Scott Kelly from the mighty Neurosis.
But don't be expecting any sort of metallic bombast, or grinding riffage, pounding percussion, nope, Blood & Time is a much darker, quieter proposition, moody and melancholy, mysterious and ultra personal.
Centered around Kelly's whispered baritone, a rumbling Michael Gira-like croon, which hovers above reverbed piano, simple acoustic guitars, drifting electronics, a spare, sparse, haunting soundworld. Fans of stuff like Swans, Angels Of Light, Sixteen Horsepower, Woven Hand, and other doom laden apocalyptic folk with be mesmerized by Blood & Time's grim countrified doom. The guitars unfurl like black clouds, the melodies like thorny brambles, in the background, the rich warm whir of an organ, and over the top, dripping like black tar, Kelly's woeful tales of sadness and loss, death and misery. It's hard not to think of Woven Hand, this stuff is so sonically similar, dark and apocalyptic, dramatic and menacing. Kelly's voice also reminds us a bit of Mark Lanegan, which is not a bad thing at all.
We loved the last Blood & Time, but this ep is even better, his voice sounds amazing, the songs sound better than ever, the production is lush and expansive, and the fleshed out lineup (featuring other folks from Neurosis) has made a world of difference.
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert. Each copy is hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, we got about 20 copies...
Since we first discovered local primitive black metal outfit Bone Awl, on a tip from Leviathan's Wrest, we've been pretty much totally obsessed. As have most AQ customers considering how fast we fly through their limited cassette only releases.
So finally, two of those long out of print demos (so long out of print in fact that we never actually had ANY) reissued on super deluxe 180 gram vinyl. Two demos, one on each side. Bog Bodies on side A, originally released as a cassette in 2003, limited to 300 copies, now LONG out of print, and on side B, Magnetism Of War, originally released as a cassette in 2002, limited to 150 copies and also long out of print.
So this vinyl reissue, is also of course limited. Only 400 copies. Each sleeve is cut and paste style, to sort of keep with the aesthetic of the Bone Awl cassettes and as you can well imagine, this stuff is SICK SICK SICK. Bone Awl play super lo-fi black thrash, simple throbbing, furious and fucked up. Murky and primitive, just guitar and drums, manned by the brilliantly named duo of He Who Gnashes Teeth and He Who Crushes Teeth! Simple riffs pounded into your skull, a crushing static black buzz, that is totally trancelike in its simplicity. Tape hiss wraps it's blackened tendrils around downtuned guitars, the drums a simple pounding framework, the vocals a guttural demonic howl. Actually, Bone Awl sound strangely like some sort of black metal Brainbombs, and we shouldn't have to tell you how goddamn good that sounds. As far as we know this is already out of print at the label. We have 30 copies, and once they are gone, they are GONE FOR GOOD.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!
It's really hard to keep up with the ever expanding legion of prolific cd-r outfits, with bands often averaging a release every month or two, but in the case of Irish drone collective Bonecloud, it's well worth it. This is the 6th or 7th release we've carried from these guys, and no doubt we missed tons of super limited microreleases, but as with all the previous ones we reviewed, Teenage Lycanthropy is another breathtaking slab of deep organic dronemusic.
For those new to the sonic world of Bonecloud, a quick glance at the song titles should definitely clue you in as to what sort of vibe to expect from these guys: "Ecstatic Stabs Of Light", "Infinite Rain Prism", "Clouds Of Butterflies"... And that's sort of what the music of Bonecloud sounds like. We tend to always mention legendary Japanese seventies psychdrone outfit Taj Mahal Travellers, and it's still appropriate here. This is drone music, but it's quite musical, multilayered, organic, an organized chaos, shimmering clouds of abstract percussion and disembodied voices, all above a constantly shifting backdrop of subtle whirs, pulsing rumbles, bowed metals, all smeared and blurred and washed out, the tracks long slow indistinct blurs of sound.
"Sea Cave" is the surprise here, too bad it's only 3 minutes long, a thick cinematic orchestral loop, bathed in record crackle and settled on a sea of dense drones, sounding like it could have come straight off a Pop Ambient compilation. Thankfully, this 3 minute chunk of blurred ambient pop, is surrounded on all sides by Bonecloud's deliriously dreamy sonic drifts, fluttering and flickering, glimmering and sparkling, but beneath a soft focus patina of lo-fi murk and muted shimmer. Another practically perfect disc of late night drifting off mood music...
Packaged in oversized full color sleeves, with color printed inserts.
Whether you have been loving Will Oldham's onslaught of recent releases or you find yourself clinging to his earlier works, this new eight song record should please fans of either stripe. Essentially a covers record, this is one of the most intimate Bonnie Prince Billy records to date. We love the ultra impromptu feel, like a gathering of friends around the hearth to record an ep on the fly. Those present can't help but sway gently to the familiar melodies. Whether covering Bjork, the Mekons, Danzig, or R. Kelly, Oldham makes the song unmistakably his own. Centered around his vocals and guitars for the most part with some subtle accompaniment by Meg Baird and Greg Weeks of Espers fame and some ghostly cello from Maggie Wienk. Really nice!
Amongst AQ customers, another Boris/Merzbow collaboration is most certainly a rock dream. But folks who don't enjoy 'noise' in their 'rock', or don't necessarily want to hear Boris classics transformed, might just find this to be a rock nightmare. That said, Rock Dream is really pretty cool. With a surprisingly subtle Merzbow adding his own world of sound FX to Boris' blown out dronegroove heaviness.
On their first matchup, the brilliant Megatone, these two outfits meshed perfectly, offering up a dense and thick drone record, not so much heavy as intense, Merzbow adding a gritty grind to Boris low end rumble circa Flood. A record that was pretty and mysterious as well as being massive and crushing.
The lp only live document 04092001 was a less successful pairing. A live show with Boris playing their Stooges-y rock jams behind an impenetrable wall of Japanoise, cool and weird, heavy and fucked up, but definitely on the harsh side, at times sounding amazing, but at times, more like a super lo-fi damaged noise band.
Rock Dream sounds like the 04092001 refined, with Merzbow's Masami Akita taking a much more active role in these songs, instead of just spraying dense gouts of buzzing screeching sonic gore all over the place, or smearing drones and riffs with walls of crumbling sound, here his touch is deft, offering up delicate glimmering sparkles as often as skull crushing streaks of white hot noise. It's like a Boris greatest hits record, an epic live show, but with Merzbow's Masami Akita rounding out the trio to a quartet, and we have to say, they almost sound better than the originals. Beginning with the 35 minute "Feedbacker". A long slow build, with Akita adding texture, and strange little sonic events to the proceedings, waterfall like hiss, clouds of tinkling chiming high end, smears of fuzzed out whir, never interfering, always complimenting the song, and when the band explode into full on planet caving heaviness, Akita somehow manages to make it sound even heavier, taking Boris's extended space jams and adding a million more layers, the outro to every Hawkwind song and a roiling swirl of malfunctioning Acid Mothers Temple effects, the track culminating in a kick ass drum splatter, alien FX, amp destroying feedback freejam. In fact, most of the songs sound like some strange mix of Boris groove, and Acid Mothers Temple freakout. Which is most definitely good thing. "Rainbow" here sounds like a female fronted Wooden Shjips jamming with Wolf Eyes, "Evil Stack" (a previously unreleased track as far as we can tell!) is a blinding supernova of freaked out effects and damaged drum chaos, and "Black Out" is a dirgey doom trudge, through thick clouds of crumbling, grinding buzz and keening psychnoise guitars. And that's just disc one.
Disc two starts off with the furious garagepsychbuzz blast of "Pink", Akita just adding an extra layer of buzzy hiss. The hiss just gets louder on "Woman On The Screen", at points threatening to take over completely. Disc two is definitely the more ROCK of the two, at least the first half, furious and freaked out rollicking and totally rocking, just sounding slightly noisier. But once we get to "The Evilone Which Sobs", it's back to ultra heaviness, a loping grooving dirge, the guitars wailing, the drums pounding, this time the Merzbow component taking the driver's seat, a gorgeous chaotic swirl of corrosive noise, swirling and whirling, never quite obscuring the jam behind it, but making the background rock sound that much more mysterious. There's a bit more RAWK, with "Just Abandoned Myself", a super rocking, hyper distorted, garage psych blowout, again with Akita's wall of sound adding all sorts of new texture and extra heaviness. Finally, Rock Dreams finishes up with the almost arena rock sounding "Farewell", epic power chords, majestic vocals, triumphant melody, all wound up in a glimmering field of brilliant buzz and crumbling shimmer.
This version, released on Southern Lord is limited to 5000 copies, each disc numbered. Awesome miniature gatefold lp style packaging, with cool die cut front cover so you can see the printed full color inner sleeve inside, designed by none other than Stephen O'Malley...
There is a Japanese version, much more expensive, with super deluxe packaging, very much like the artwork for the Japanese version of Jesu's Conqueror record, the multi paneled digipak with the clear plastic printed slipcover. BUT, the music is exactly the same, so unless you need the fancy Japanese packaging (which some of us do), you won't miss out on any of the music if you pick up this domestic version. If you do want the Japanese version, just email us and we'll order you one...
We took pre-orders on this ultra limited Boris rarity, but we managed to get a handful of extra copies, so for those folks who forgot to preorder, or folks who are only hearing about this now, here's your chance (however brief) to nab one of these...
As with all Boris stuff, it's gorgeously packaged, a red and black pictured disc, printed to look like it's cracked into pieces, to go along with the title. It sits behind a piece of red vellum, with the band names printed lightly across the top so you can also see the picture disc through the vellum. Includes a DVD in a similarly 'damaged' packaging.
So the 10" matches up Boris with their more punk rock countrymen Stupid Babies Go Mad, both it seems paying homage to Black Flag's "Damaged" in their own way. Each apparently covering a song by the other...
SBGM are up first and kick out the super aggro old school So-Cal punk rock jams, but way supercharged, with ultra distorted vocals, squealing feedback everywhere, super heavy and intense and very much in the tradition of the track and the band this is a tribute too. But it seems as if SBGM have jammed three tracks into one, the second two are sort of two parts of the same song, slightly more groovy but still pretty punk, a chunky main riff and seriously pounding drumming, and a cool minor key guitar harmony refrain that makes the band sound almost like a more punk rock Iron Maiden.
The flipside finds Boris doing their punk rock thing. Starting off in full on dirge mode, droning and downtuned, maybe channeling later era SST, huge slooooow riffing, monstrous drumming, feedback wrapped around crumbling distortion, until the band kicks it into gear, more aggro punk rock, Boris style, complete with squiggly leads, shouted vocals and an old school sing along chorus.
Included with the 10" is a 70+ minute dvd, capturing a live show by both bands. It begins with about one minute of awesome Boris footage, blown out and tinted red, in some huge venue, an extended psych blowout, the drums a chaotic swirl, the guitar and bass soaring and shrieking�And then it stops, and suddenly we're watching Stupid Babies Go Mad, kicking out the jams big time in a furious 30 minute set, super high contrast, damaged film stock, a blazing live show, looks pretty amazing, wild and sweaty and boozy and brilliant...
Then it's back to Boris, on the same blown out red tinted film stock, doing some gorgeous tripped out slow psych, super in the red and heavy as fuck� until they launch into more rocking territory, a whole set packed with heavy, distorted garage psych freaked out jams, with lots and lots of gong action!!! And the band destroy, the sound is raw and ultra hot, distorted and really fierce, the band is definitely on fire, and the way it's filmed makes it seem even more wild and intense.
LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES. Once these are gone we won't be able to get more.
It's been a long, strange journey from obscure British pop footnote to Elder Stateswoman of the modern Freak Folk scene for Vashti Bunyan. Her early lone album, Just Another Diamond Day, has charmed and bewildered many new fans since its reissue a few years ago and brought Bunyan out of obscurity and back to recording with the likes of Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective and a full length of brand new songs called Lookaftering. The reissue of Just Another Diamond Day had some bonus tracks from early 45's that barely hinted at her pop-star beginnings. Discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham, Bunyan came out of the wave of waifish pop-singers popularized by Marianne Faithfull and Francoise Hardy. While her songs had charm, her presence was too insecure to maintain a steady following. She recorded a string of singles, including the Jagger / Richards tune "Some Things Just Stick In Your Head, all but two singles remained unreleased. Until now that is. This 2 disc collection revives all of her early singles and demos, offering an almost bipolar spectrum of over-production and under-production. The singles are pleasantly arranged pop-gems yet marked by Bunyan's slightly uncomfortable (for her, that is, not us) vocal delivery. While the demos on the second disc are culled from home recordings that show Bunyan at her most intimate, vulnerable and lo-fi. Her guitar accompaniments barely register under her whisper like singing. While we always have mixed feelings about completist collections, this one works better than most with the singles being the more essential component and the demos the added bonus. At least it's priced accordingly! Lovely!!
Record of the year, 2007. As far as some of us are concerned, there's no question. Burial's first album was an eponymous release on Kode 9's Hyperdub imprint and really came out of nowhere. Here was this amalgamation of British dance tropes (e.g. dubstep, 2-step garage, darkcore drum & bass, etc.) into a magnificent exercise in mood engineering. Even though an urban malaise echoes through the whollop bass-bin rattle of most dubstep, that first Burial record mined a melancholy whose dramatic power has never been heard in dubstep, and rarely matched even by such downbeat experts as Massive Attack, Boards of Canada, Slowdive, or even Joy Division.
So with his second album Untrue, the aesthetic framework for Burial remains intact; yet the anonymous figure behind Burial has admitted that he was seeking a "downcast euphoria." You know what, he fucking nailed it. All of the sounds retain the first album's urban dourness reverberating through each electron and washed drone. The hovering basslines which once stalked the darkest of jungle's rhythms are ghostly presences flickering around Burial's atypical drum programming, which by his own admission is done by hand without the aid of a sequencer. The clipped, 2-step breakbeats always appear as the cocking of a gun; but it doesn't seem like Burial is taking aim at his audience. Rather, it's metaphor for the cold, inhumane existence in the grimy parts of London, where violence is just another thing to shrug at and move beyond. All of these sounds are clearly present in Burial's debut album, but the "euphoric" part of Untrue's intention is found in Burial's use of voice. Taking a cappella tunes sung by his friends (sometimes, left as a voice mail on his cellphone), Burial has crafted an eerie cast of disembodied vocals, twisted into cybernetic R&B croons, all clipped and compressed in the same manner as his pistol-whipped snare cracks. It's as if the human voice alone can transcend the dire circumstances of our earthly confines, even when the songs reflected broken dreams and a dwindling hope. Burial seeks out the fleeting moments of beauty and raw emotion, codifying it through his impeccable craft on this very impressive and soon to be iconic recording. If you're not hearing it from us, you'll hear from somebody else: Burial's Untrue is the best record of 2007.
Ok, let's start adding 'em up. This band gets point for their name, first off. 'Cadaver In Drag' is both disturbing and humorous enough to be worth a nervous chuckle (it's even funnier if you imagine that they know something about the Swedish death metal band Cadaver that we don't know). And their knack for names extends to album and song titles too, especially that of track two, "Fuck This Place". Could be an anthem for folks sick of living in, say, Kentucky (from whence Cadaver In Drag hail). Plus, they get points for this being released on the Animal Disguise label, run by one of the guys from Mammal, whose recent album was an Aquarius Record Of The Week, last week. That certainly piques our interest. And also then there's more points for this being picked, before it was even released, as an Album Of The Month (October 2007) by pagan pope Julian Cope on his Head Heritage website, which puts 'em in league with such past heavy AQ faves as Harvey Milk, Orthodox, Om, Death Comes Along, Vincent Black Shadow, The Heads, SUNNO))), and others. As always, we recommend reading his reviews.
So, before we even heard this, Cadaver In Drag had already run up the score pretty high in their favor. And now that it's here, and blasting on our stereo, the verdict is: hella more points!! For being a totally fucked, mesmeric mash of doooomic sludge metal and shrill psychedelic noise rock... part Khanate, part Wolf Eyes (or Mammal), and, as Julian Cope sez, part Les Rallizes Denudes. Nasty, noisy, nauseous. Early on in both the first two of this disc's three tracks, some angsty, wretched screams carry on about something or other, but those are quickly forgotten as Cadaver In Drag concentrate on their plodding, powerful instrumental raison d'etre: monomaniacal repetitive riff-bashing, each track an extended, distorted, metallic, trebly throb, crashing and clanging, staying more or less the same for up to 19 minutes in the case of the first and longest cut, the aptly titled "Walking Through The Gates Of Hell". However, subtle, simple shifts in sound do occur, almost as if they're playing their own destroyed dub versions of these compositions. It's like Skullflower covering Super Roots 3 (or 5) by the Boredoms, if you can imagine that sort of sickeningly hypnotic hybrid. Or Eyehategod and Hair Police (a member of whom contributes synths here) locked in a minimal march to death, freaking out with as few chords as possible, but plenty of FX. Or Cavity vs. Harry Pussy... Yowza. And it must be said that Cadaver In Drag does mellow the fuck out for the almost melodic, calm-in-comparison album closer "Secession '61". Nice. Points for that too.
It's quite remarkable that only two records into their existence Citay have managed to carve out a sound that is so instantaneously recognizable and distinctive. With their soaring guitars, glorious melodies and harmonies that sound as if they're raining down from the sky, this ensemble led by Ezra Feinberg has quickly become one of the shining lights of the San Francisco music scene, but we think that folks from all over the globe should be hearing them, so they too can be swept away by Citay's carefully crafted songs.
Little Kingdom is the follow up to their debut which was a unanimous AQ favorite when it came out around two years back. With a similar sound and feel as that first outing they have widened their reach as the songs descend with a much more expansive quality. Brimming with a crisp sensation Little Kingdom is matching our autumnal mood so perfectly.
We love how Citay always sound so monumental without resorting to the typical quiet...quiet...loud...eruption formula that so many post-rock groups use when they want to sound grand. What makes Citay so great is that they don't TRY to sound grand or monumental, it's just that the songs they make require a presentation that the band understand so well and do so effortlessly. Little Kingdom makes us want to run into leaves and feel the wind rushing against our skin, whisking us away, the sounds of the strings on guitars summoning us to a greater place!
Now On Vinyl!
One of our favorite Krautrock, or heck, just plain ol' records ever, the first of two collaborations between art rock / "ambient" music pioneer n' generally acknowledged genius Brian Eno and Krautrock electronics legends Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius aka Cluster! You know that's got to be good, and it is, paving the way for the likes of Aphex Twin so many years later. This self-titled disc (the one with the microphone stand silhouetted against a blue sky on the cover) dates originally from 1977. On this one, they're joined by guests including Asmus Tietchens and Can's Holger Czukay, and construct warm, organic instrumentals utilizing both acoustic instruments and analog synths. This is soft and mellow and melodic but at the same time these songs are no push-overs, however gentle. To be honest, I (Allan) had never heard *anything* quite like Cluster before these got reissued on cd the last time that happened, on the Gyroscope label back in the mid '90s, but I very quickly fell in love with 'em. The discs with Eno are good starting places to get into the extensive Cluster and Cluster-related discography, and certainly they're Cluster's best-sellers... but anything with Moebius and/or Roedelius involved is worth hearing, we'd say.
We've got a couple more fine releases from Dynamophone Records, the SF indie label we were raving about last list (also see: Balustrade Ensemble, Halou, Po, Pornopop, A Lily, Disinterested, and R/R Coseboom)!
Sonically it fits perfectly amid the gauzy soundscapey bliss of its labelmates, but Curium's Nowever stands apart from the rest in its defined concept revolving around the poems of e. e. cummings. Various voices recite cummings' words -- some spoken, some sung, some processed, some not. They're sifted through the stuttery glitch-tronic sands of Curium's shifting dreamscape. For fans of Oval, Boards Of Canada, B. Fleishmann and Dntel.
Awesome six cd collection of over six and a half hours of sessions from 1972-1975 including 12 unreleased tracks. Includes the entire On The Corner album with related sessions, as well as tracks from Big Fun, and Get Up With It. Players from these sessions include Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Chick Corea, Mtume, Herbie Hancock,
Jack DeJohnette, Lonnie Liston Smith, the mysterious (and thought to be missing) guitarist Dave Creamer and many others. 120 page full color booklet with essays and rare photos, packaged in a metal box with a raised relief version of the classic cover. Mind-Blowing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yet another in an almost comically long line of Wolf Eyes related project (do these guys do anything but make noise all the time?!) this one is a duo made up of Nate Young of Wolf Eyes and his similarly synth obsessed pal Steve Kenney of Werewolves, who for Demons, didn't so much as play and compose and rehearse and perform, as just let their wonky damaged malfunctioning synthesizers play themselves and then capture the results. And to be honest, it's a bit hard for us to believe this record was mostly generated by chance, it's too composed sounding, too pretty, too good actually.
Two gorgeous extended lowendscapes, dark and ominous, muted and percussive, looped and cyclical sounding, lots of bassy thrum, pulsing and creeping, streaked with high end shimmer and strange alien effects. Very dramatic and cinematic, a whirring dark ambience with all sorts of subtle melody and tonal color. The B side is similar, but shifts into the upper register, birdlike trills, swooping sweeping feedback, chimes and bells all smeared into a dreamy high end drift, very alien and otherworldly but surprisingly dreamy and lovely.
Super striking naked lady / horned hairy beast / desolate mountainscape cover art too!
I (Jim) once had a mighty long list of records that I had been looking for. Or rather, it was a loosely organized jumble of folded papers where I noted what I should be digging for whenever I ventured into good record stores (i.e. Aquarius, before I started working here). One of the many things that I just could never find was the first Dial record, which I think I read about in Nick Cain's seminal Opprobrium magazine. I can't even remember what the review said, but in it Cain hit upon just the right key words to keep me looking for the record. Many moons later, an brand new album by Dial turned up here at Aquarius (although not the one I was looking for), and I can certainly see why I would have wanted to hear what this band sounded like. Dial is a collaborative effort between Jacqui Ham (formerly of Ut) and Rob Smith, with a few other NYC noise-rock types joining in. Ut came out of New York's No Wave scene, proposing an angular, post-punk jitter with guitars, squawked vocals, and drums all laboring into relatively cohesive rhythmic tunes. While Ut were never a really gritty or brutal band by No Wave standards, Dial are. Their claustrophobic drone-rock is a dense aggregate of snarling guitar scrape, electric pulsations, and a plethora of lo-fi distortion. In the No Wave spectrum, Dial come much closer to narcotic murk of Mars or a much grittier sounding Suicide. At their most cohesive, Dial make all of the Dead C references too as the drums hit propulsive slop-punk grooves only to trip down the stairs in free-noise fashion. All of these are very good things, and make 168K a very recommended album. If only I could track down the earlier ones... In due time.
What's not to love about this debut from Disrupt (not to be confused with the metal Disrupt) aka Jan Gleichmar, a dizzying mix of early reggae dancehall, low slung dubstep, haunting cinematic moodiness and lots of 8bit Atari and Casio sounds? Nothing is the obvious answer.
On the surface, Foundation Bit is just another killer slab of electronic dub, with snares reverbed to infinity, the guitars wound tight, the rhythm loping and laid back, but closer listening reveals all sorts of strange stuff going on. The opening track, "Tubby Rom Module", is rife with ominous low end swells, mysterious minor key melodies, and subtle slivers of epic dramatic ambience. "Blast You To Bits" is peppered with Atari (or maybe Commodre 64) bleeps and bloops, snippets of computer nerd dialogue (from Tron!), "The Stars My Destination" is a dark laid back dubbed out joint, with the snares ricocheting all over the place and everything doused in alien effects. The closer, "Selassi / Continually" is a slithery groove, with fuzzy organs, and a thick guitar refrain wrapped in FX and stretched out over stuttering snares, and a classic loping reggae rhythm and some unexpected robot vocals.
The weirdness is subtle, but definitely omnipresent, same with all the lo-fi 8bit filigree, which only serves to make Foundation Bit just a cool, weird, enthralling dub record and keeping it from turning into something goofy and gimmicky. Subtle enough that dubheads will still dig, but just fucked enough to keep us listening... We dig A LOT!
This 6 track collection from Tarentel co-founder Danny Grodinski's side band, The Drift, culls together four tracks and two remixes (by Four Tet and Sybarite) from various vinyl only releases recorded between 2004-2007. While similar Chicago-style post-rock influences have been present in both bands, The Drift trades on tightness and jazz-inflected precision (due mainly to Rich Douthit's frenetic drumming) that is reminiscent of The Necks, Can, and This Heat. Like their previous full length, Noumena, six tracks cover a lot of time, nearly an hour in length, that never drags but soars swiftly through atmospheres of propulsive kineticism. Wonderful!
Ok, someone needs to give these guys a medal. First off, there's a song here called "Satanic Rites Of Drugula". Drugula?? That's brilliant. Dave Wyndorf is kicking himself for not having thought of that first!
England's Electric Wizard, the reigning kings (and queen, with Liz Buckingham of 13 and Sourvein on guitar) of utter spaced-out heaviosity (think Black Sabbath + Hawkwind + Eyehategod) also deserve a medal 'cause they are still caning harder and making great albums worthy of their legacy (2000's Dopethrone is an all-time AQ fave of psychedelic sludge stoner genius). It's like they themselves have morphed into the ancient ones from whence all these drugged-out, doooooom metal vibes come.
On their sixth album Witchcult Today, which opens with the sluggish title track, they keep doin' what they do best. Guitarist/vocalist Jus Oborn's wasted wail drifts up from beneath the band's monolithic, mesmeric riffage, as they enact such "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions" as, well, that one, and the other seven tracks here. As blown out and sludgey as it gets (which is VERY) they have an uncanny knack for keeping it catchy and poppy too when they desire. Songs like "Torquemada 71" and the one about Drugula will get stuck in your head, only to slowly drip out like the viscous black tar they are... while "Dunwich" has got to be the grooviest -and- heaviest H.P. Lovecraft-inspired song of the year. As usual, the whole album is getting heavy airplay here in Aquarius, where we're ALL fans even those of us who don't smoke pot, do drugs, or usually listen to stoner metal... we've just been bitten by Drugula is all.
Streams 01 -- a newish double disc release from Excepter -- proves once again that New York has a near monopoly on almost-danceable, not-danceable dance music. Think Gang Gang Dance and Black Dice, too. While Streams isn't a radical departure from previous work, it does a great job of showcasing Excepter's free-something Kraut ramblings, drenched in dub and distortion. The reason that it literally is not a departure is that the two discs constitute a fractional archive of the group's work over a four-year period. Some live performances, some jams, and some other stuff. The world need bands and releases like this, ones that make psychedelic drugs seem almost obsolete, as time and space collide into a beautiful trainwreck clusterfuck of beeps, bleeps, yelps, and crunches. We're reminded of the title of a book put together by AQ employee Scott, "Good Times, Bad Trips."
Far Black Furlong is a Welsh ensemble of mystical folk minstrels, whose work straddles the realms of apocalyptic British folk (i.e. Current 93, Comus, the Wicker Man soundtrack, etc.) and the nocturnal, loosely sewn psychedelia of Fursaxa and the Blithe Sons. Their sound would be expected as Far Black Furlong's Richard Moult has previously collaborated with David Tibet and with their preceding album of narcotic folk tunes landing on the exceptional Barl Fire cd-r imprint. With this album, they've received the nod from Colin Potter, who has released this through his exceptional ICR label alongside the likes of Nurse With Wound, Ora, Monos, Jonathan Coleclough, etc. Here, oboes, flutes, ducilmers, and drifting guitar picking spiral around field recordings of twittering finches and the ominous crash of the ocean. Much of the melodic ambience through instrumental arrangements are the product of Far Black Furlong performing in the Welsh forests and barley fields during the long summer nights. Beautiful, shimmering, atmospheric, and maudlin.
We only got TEN copies of this, and even that was a stroke of luck as these are already out of print. This is not brand new, but we missed it when it first came out, and Mr. Fear Falls Burning himself graciously let us have his remaining copies.
Another absolutely gorgeous collection of abstract guitar experimentation, but that makes it sound too clinical, these are experimental, but they are also warm and melodic, thick and textured, like all the FFB releases, the sounds hover somewhere between the corrosive slow motion sludge of bands like SUNNO))) and Boris, and the glistening abstract shimmer of folks like Jonathan Coleclough or Andrew Chalk, the difference being that this is ALL guitar.
The copies we got are the super limited tour edition, so not only do they have the lp, but also a bonus tour cd. The lp is three long track, the first a swirl of thick humid clouds of guitar whir, rich streaks of buzz and throb, that warp around each other, creating subtle melodies and delicate overtones. The second track sounds almost like a harpsichord, the guitars unfurling lustrous metallic reverberations, a strange symphony of sympathetic vibrations and singing metals. The final track is dark and meditative, drifting melancholy melodies over a slow shifting sea of low end rumbles and distant pulses, finishing off with a dreamy delicate soft guitar coda.
The bonus disc is much more chordal and riff based, not nearly as abstract, but just as lovely. The songs drift from Spacemen 3 like mesmer, to Galaxie 500 like soft focus drift, to epic orchestra-tuning swells, to dreamy minimal blurs, to shimmery subtle swells to Loren Connors like reverbed strum. All subtle and dark and so lovely.
Gorgeously packaged as always. Thick black cardboard innersleeve wrapped in a textured paper outer sleeve, with a red wax seal on the front, inside, the cd is affixed to a nub on the sleeve, and inside also is a vellum envelope, containing the liner notes, black ink on thick textured black paper. So nice.
We love the mix tape. Or maybe now it's the mix cd. Regardless, it's hard to beat a killer mix of obscure sonic weirdness, the best mixes being the ones where the various tracks and elements blend into a new musical experience entirely. With the occasional glimpse of a recognizable tune, melody or sonic snippet surfacing here and there, the sort of collection that rewards close listening, but sounds just as good in a background music capacity. Such is the case with the latest disc from local DJ / turntablist DJ Female Convict Scorpion (who also manages whistle, sampler and theremin!). Anyone who names themselves after Shunya Ito's classic series of Japanese woman in prison / revenge flicks is definitely on the right wavelength.
Constance Towers is more mix than turntable experiment, but there are plenty of subtle sonic mysteries lurking beneath the excellent song choice and deft mixing. Beginning all soulful and jazzy, groovy and laid back, a slowed down funk work out, sun baked and washed out, peppered with subtle effects and bits of dialogue, the disc soon morphs into blessed out dub, transforming quickly into some haunting soundtrack, all swooning strings and drawn out drones, before exploding into some super kick ass blown out 70's cop show funk, with buzzing synths and fuzzy guitar. And that's just the first few tracks, the rest of the disc veers wildly all over the map, somehow managing to sound perfectly cohesive. Freaked out percussion jams, creepy exotica, propulsive krautrock, wild afrojazz, super distorted post punk jams, honkey tonk country, but all tangled and woven into each other, shifting speeds and tempos, drifting voices and effects, multiple tracks piled on one another, a gorgeous, hypnotic, sonic trip. Funky and groovy enough to jam at your next dance party, but dark and varied and mysterious enough for headphone deep listening...
Out of all the various iterations of Henry Flynt's huge and wildly varied recorded output, we weren't sure what to expect with this release, the previously unreleased 1975 recording of Flynt's avant-punk hillbilly boogie outfit Nova'Billy. Wildly ecstatic and rhythmic, full of left-field honky-tonk idioms but never wonky, Nova'Billy is probably one of Flynt's most joyously rocking outings that we've heard. Different than the Velvet's-by-way-of-the-Fugs recordings of his early band incarnation, The Insurrections, Nova' Billy is tighter and much better produced. Flynt's singing is minimal but well-used and less grating than we've heard on other recordings. His vocal delivery on "I Was A Creep" is more like the Rev. Fred Lane than the Jandek-style realms it can sometimes enter on releases like Raga Electric. A fine reissue and one that should live towards the top of Flynt's surprisingly massive discography!
Originally released way back in 1994, and reissued again a few years back, Gate's The Dew Line always seemed to disappear before we could get enough copies to list. Which was a shame as it still ranks as one of our favorite discs. A mesmerizing noise-pop-drone jem from the Dead C's Michael Morley, an improbable mix of NZ noise whir and skree, minimal drifting drone and lilting indie pop. Think the Dead C at their very poppiest, crossed with Sentridoh at its most minimal and raw�
Gate's Golden record was one of our favorite 'noise' records ever, and we do hear a lot of that Golden noise in this chunk of damaged deconstructed pop. Long drawn out expanses of crumbling guitars, buried-in-the-mix sad boy vocals, all very raw and lo-fi, but strangely lush and heavy in that way only blownout bedroom recordings seem to sound. It's a little like Lou Barlow if he was raised on Throbbing Gristle and Suicide instead of indie rock. Guitar jangles transformed into thick sprawling atonal riffage, verse chorus verse transformed into verse verse verse, and the vocals adding a strange sweet sadness.
Dense clouds of electronic glitch and amp buzz, the riffs more textural than melodic, long stretches of shirring lo-fi organ, mournful and almost funereal, strange haunting minimal percussion, drifting alien FX, disembodied guitars unfurling crunchy textures and barely there melodies. Much of the tracks are vocal-less haunting guitarscapes, riffs and layers, looped and repetitive, extended into grinding washed out mantras. Cyclical and gorgeously hypnotic. Which makes the tracks with vocals sound all the more poppy. Especially "Have Not", which is essentially a single, super catchy, languid distorted guitar riff, looped and cyclical, minor key, sounding a bit like a slowed down drum-less Rein Sanction, with drawled Neil Young / Dinosaur Jr. style double tracked vocals, laid back, emotive, and hauntingly monotone. Nearly 13 minutes long, a single riff, a subtly changing vocal line, but it's just so mysterious, sad and perfect, the whole record could easily have been a 70 minute version of this track only and we would have been just as happy...
But then we would have missed out on the melancholy minimalism of "Needed All Words", a lonely vocal line, drifting above a glacial sea of organ drone and fractured effects, or the looped stuttering industrial buzzscape of the title track, or the divine washed out crumbling grind of "Triphammer", the final song, which manages to turn 3 minutes of abstract distorted riffage, into a chunk of dark moodiness.
Way recommended. This disc is old enough that for many of you, we're probably already preaching to the converted, but if you missed out on this, here's one more chance to sink deep into Morley's mysterious musical miserablism.
And be warned, while we finally managed to get a bunch of these, it took forever, so if or when we do run out, please be prepared to be patient, since it could take a while to get more.
Something new on the label that brought us Bright Eyes, The Faint and Cursive! Georgie James is not a loner, it is the name of girl/boy duo John Davis and Laura Burhenn. The nearest comparison that we immediately thought of was: if Halifax boy band Sloan collaborated with Halifax girl band Jale this is what they'd sound like! Check out "Look Me Up" and the handclappy "Need Your Needs". Bright, buoyant, polished pop possibly inspired by The Kinks, Bread, The Raspberries and maybe the TV theme song from "WKRP". Sweet!
Here's one that perhaps need no introduction nor description... 'Tis quite impossible to sum up this grand dame's expansive career as one half of Dead Can Dance and film score composer (Whale Rider, Gladiator, etc) on one compact disc, but The Best Of Lisa Gerrard is an admirable attempt on 4AD's part. It offers the merest glimpse of the sweeping grandeur of her classical and world music steeped compositions, but such an enveloping one. Diehard fans (and there are legions of them!) probably own every one of these tracks already, but it serves as a great introduction for newcomers. Evocative and sumptuous.
From the Leaf Trail Label, run by the Bonecloud / Changeling folks, comes this brand new disc from the very strangely named French duo Ghost Brames Of The Cerf. Clues to the sound of Ghost Brames can be found in the fact that A. it's on Leaf Trail and that B. one half of the duo also does time in like minded sonic countrymen The Reggaee.
So yeah, we're talking, looooong tracks of super abstract drones, and disembodied free folk weirdness, and Ghost Brames give it their own spin, haunting similar sonic landscapes as Avarus and other Finnish folkies, as well as the abstract drift of their Leaf Trail label bosses.
Four tracks, all 10 minutes plus, the first, super minimal, distant melodies drifting in and out of earshot, in the foreground a hushed looped machine-like rhythm and a wheezing organ, but all of the various parts are whispered, the tape hiss nearly loud enough to overtake the music. Lovely but so so subtle and so abstract it could almost fade into nothingness at any moment. The second track is also minimal, but much more present, a tangle of keening high end, not sure if they're horns or strings or synths, but they glimmer and shimmer, like streaks of feedback, while below, detuned guitars strum and a non-rhythm is plonked out on wood blocks and cardboard boxes. That track segues directly into the third, where the drifting upper register smears are quickly overtaken by a wash of staticky thrum, smeared and blurred but fuzzy and dense, beneath it a strange sing song vocal surfaces, the track eventually building to an almost operatic climax.
The final track, takes the operatic frenzy of track three, and slathers it with buzzing guitar and fuzzed out loops, the vocals transformed into jagged melodic fragments beneath the almost doom like stasis of distorted guitar whir. Quite cool.
Packaged in oversized full color sleeves, with color printed inserts.
EP's in the indie world in recent years usually equal some slightly different versions of songs you already heard on the full length and a throwaway live track or two. Luckily this trend has taken a little break in the last month or so as there have been some pretty great ep's lately from folks like White Magic, Bonnie Prince Billy (who has been guilty of the throwaway ep in the past) and now this great offering from Grizzly Bear. Anyone who has seen Grizzly Bear live in the last year knows they have really come into their own as a full band and this record really brings that into clear focus. With totally new versions of songs from Yellow House, a haunting cover of The Crystals "He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)" as well as covers of some of their tracks done by a few of their famous friends like CSS, The Knife and members of Deerhunter. Another exciting chapter in a band who are proving once again, that they're in it for the long run.
FINAL VINYL, BACK IN STOCK.
The fire yet burns. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Pike's three-piece pissed-off stoner metal juggernaut presents their fourth album, and while we can't say we were disappointed or anything (you get what you've come to expect from HoF), neither were we super blown away either, really. Though we never would have predicted it a few years ago, to our minds it would seem that Pike's former bandmates from seminal stoned-on-Sabbath dopesmokers Sleep are up to something a little more interesting at this juncture, in their outfit Om. Or, we're just more in the mood for Om's brand of mystical, minimal weirdness rather than the more bloodyminded bludgeon being beaten into our skulls by High On Fire. But if that's what you want, look no further. Death Is The Communion delivers the goods: Wardrums pound. Lemmylike vocals gargle forth and froth. Clenched fist riffage rakes your flesh. Yeah!
And, as the album bulldozers along, some diversity is to be had, from majestic keyboard melancholia and somber guitar soloing to surprisingly introspective, un-metally acoustic guitar interludes. So, another fine HoF outing. And by the way, bassist Joe Preston is gone, High On Fire just another notch on his bedpost of one-night-stands-in-bands (as per his stints with Earth and the Melvins). His replacement, Jeff Matz of Zeke.
How 'bout some blown out loops of space kraut-iness pushed into overdrive? Yes please, and could you make it with some wonderfully thick stewed synthesizer flatulence pouring across the driving drums? Okay, why not? Better hope nothing gets in their way 'cause when their full throttle music juices up your speakers it'll vaporize anything in its path. Imagine Stereolab meets Man Or Astro-man? but produced by David Fridmann. Hell, yeah! It might even make us exclaim the band's name! The fifth track "They're Going To Take My Thumbs" unexpectedly slams on the breaks, but for good reason. It reveals a different facet of HF in its super brooding dubby tones that brings to mind Massive Attack and Twilight Circus. Oh and did we mention that there's a sloth on the cd artwork? That always wins bonus marks. Very cool! And very very recommended.
They are the best noise band. 'Cuz they're the noisiest. Simple as that. At least that's what Allan thinks, and he's got almost all their umpteen cds. Though we haven't really done a scientific test of noisiness, Merzbow vs. Hijokaidan vs. Masonna vs. Incapacitants, we all agree they sure would hold their own in any imaginable noise contest. Japanese extreme noise duo (and bankers by profession) Toshiji Mikawa and Fumio Kosakai aka Incapacitants have been blowing minds and eardrums for years now. This new disc on Alchemy consists of four brutal wall-of-sound tracks, exploding electronics almost psychedelically dense. One of these tracks was recorded live in Canada at the No Music Festival in 2003, another one captured at club called Lush in Tokyo last year, while the other two are studio recordings (not that it matters much).
Their banking experience is perhaps reflected in the song titles "What A Stupid Bureaucrat!!!" and "Fund Trap", while the title of the 22 minute track "Please Don't Try This At Home" almost goes without saying!
We managed to get a super limited number of these, a killer live album, vinyl only, from Northwestern psych / drone / improv / whatever collective Jackie-O-Motherfucker. Three tracks, recorded in Italy, San Francisco and Buffalo over the last few years, housed in a super striking hand made sleeve. Full color, psychedelic gatefold, hand screened, the inside is cut out so you can see the vinyl inside, the lp is housed in a trippy printed plastic sleeve, also included is a strange mini insert, each one is hand numbered, limited to 1000 copies.
The whole of side one is the NY show, and is an extended shimmery cinematic soundscape, distant swells, abstract percussion, and haunting female vocals that go from crooning to wordless mumbling to wildly speaking in tongues. Guitars warble and waver, everything is drifty and woozy and gorgeously dreamlike.
The SF show is all creaking moans and deconstructed blues, detuned guitars and bleating horns, muted and rumbling with lots and lots of low end. It sort of sounds like some busted old jazz record being spun manually with your finger on the turntable as slow as you can.
And finally, the Italian show is more of a sort of hypnotic ur-drone, like Sunroof! crossed with No Neck Blues Band, with a bit of that Finnish Forest Folk thrown in. A dronelike hum, a muted buzzing skree, horns moaning in the distance, cymbals sizzling and drums an abstract clatter.
All three sets are on the soft and tranquil side. Even at their most animated, they still seem dark and dreamy and subtly tripped out. Quite lovely and haunting.
Again, AMAZING packaging, and crazy limited. We got maybe 15 copies left, and once they're gone, we most likely will not be able to get more.
As has been very well documented, we LOVED Japancakes' 2004 Waking Hours (it made many folks' year-end lists), then last month their new full length Giving Machines was released and we thought it was good, but nowhere near the previous album's splendor. Now only a month later, they drop this one on us, and... it's causing us undue pain, anguish and anger! In case you didn't already guess from the title, this is Japancakes' complete cover of My Bloody Valentine's beloved, inimitable album. If their intention was to transform it into absolutely bland schlock... we'll they've succeeded. Think: easy listening suitable for ice rinks and beauty pageants, not even good for kitsch value. Some may ask "why are you making such a big deal about it?" But it IS a big deal. We're not saying MBV's original is sacred or anything and we're sure Japancakes had their heart in the right spot, and these tracks are probably a blast for 'em to play, but to us this is just one big bummer. Completely shameful and unnecessary... and the boring cover art only adds insult to injury.
Seems like Jesu's Justin Broadrick is making up for lost time. Following the sporadic releases in the later years of Godflesh, and a long period of near silence immediately afterwards, since the launch of Jesu Broadrick has been offering up one disc after another, as if there was some untapped wellspring of blessed out metallic pop that had been building pressure since well before he folded Godflesh. And this record seems to cement the fact that he's gradually moving away from the metallic pummel of his former outfit, toward a soundworld of glistening light and fuzzy shimmer. After the very Godflesh sounding self titled debut and Heartache ep, the sound of Jesu began to morph into something much softer, much dreamier, and very evocative of the late nineties shoegaze scene. Lifeline pushes it even further. The sound still wrapped in distorted guitars, but the sound and melody sounding even more like eighties mainstream pop. Like if John Hughes was making movies today, the big climactic scene at the end where the guy finally catches the girl at the airport to declare his love for here, well we can guarantee the title track of Lifeline would be blasting on the soundtrack. And it's not hard to imagine John Cusack, standing in the rain, holding up a boom box blasting "You Wear Their Masks." None of this is a bad thing, just a little surprising. Well, maybe not so surprising anymore. But looking back on the first Jesu, and of course Godflesh, who would have thought Broadrick would be weaving dreamy blisspop jams that sounded more like Ride or Slowdive or even Simple Minds than Pitchshifter.
That said, the guitars here are still crunchy, they definitely chug now and again, but the vocals are breathy and wistful, the melodies are sweet and melancholy, the drums don't really pound any more, they sort of shuffle.
But hold on. "End Of The Road" is all metallic guitars and simple pounding drums, and a hook to die for, not hard to see this track on MTV right next to Blink-182 or whoever. Which we're all for, but halfway through the track changes direction again, becoming all clean and super poppy and downright dreamy.
The only real 'oof' to be found here, are the guest vocals on "Storm Coming On", a crooned sort of R&B female vocal line, maybe they were going for something Portishead-y, and for the first part of the song it sort of works, but when she starts to wail soulfully, OOF. Not so good. You might just want to skip this track...
Barring the aforementioned number, which we'll choose just to ignore, Jesu is all about texture, and Broadrick does some amazing thing with his guitar and laptop, whipping up orchestral chordal swells, lush soundscapes, wrapping billowy spaced out FX and warm sun dappled reverb around everything, making every note sound like big glorious snow flakes of sound.
We can get the domestic version on Hydra Head, but as is usual, the Japanese import has extra stuff, in this case, two bonus tracks, in this case alternate versions of two of the tracks on the record. The version of "Lifeline" is slower, a bit more lo-fi and lazy, actually a nice and subtle variation. But it's SO worth it for the alternate version of "Storm Coming On", which ditches the soulful vocals, replacing them with Broadrick's buried in the mix whisper, and adds TONS of crunchy metallic guitar, making this version maybe the heaviest track on Lifeline.
And as with all Daymare releases, the packaging is super striking, an ultra glossy digipak, Japanese obi, a glossy 2 panel color insert and a foldout insert with loads of liner notes, all in Japanese.
The one frustrating thing about the list, and the AQ website in general, that sometimes drives us crazy, is that it only really began in earnest in the mid nineties, thus there are SO many records that we love, and that we reference all the time, that we just always assume MUST be on the list, but aren't, so we try to review those records anyway once in a while, if they're still available, but even better is when one of those discs gets reissued, giving us the opportunity to shower it with the praise we would have back in the day. Which brings us to the gorgeous debut from Labradford (which was also the very first release on Kranky!).
Originally released in 1993, the sound of Prazision LP was so prescient, the current crop of cd-r noisemakers have nothing on these guys, in fact, almost anything you hear now on some super limited cd-r, you could hear on Prazision LP more than a decade earlier. A gorgeous blend of shimmering ambience, fractured folk, minimal pop, sculpted noise and experimental soundscapes that seems to be constantly in flux, a fluid, organic collection of sounds and songs, a murky melancholy mood music rendered in soft strummed shimmer and haunting abstract ambience.
The opening track is the perfect send off, as we depart on our journey, dark billowy drones, keening distant high end streaks, a strange almost mechanical non-rhythm hovering in the foreground, beneath it all deep dark sonic swells, a muted mysterious melody, everything seemingly drifting weightless in a hazy expanse of underwater sunlight. But before we can settle in and float weightlessly into the ether, the second track introduces an actual song, simple strummed steel string guitar, melancholy Jandekian sadboy vocals, over a haunting multilayered drone. The next track is more pop, but even more druggy and unhinged, vocals buried in a murky muddy swirl of effected guitars and sprawling minor key melodies, reminding us of an even less propulsive Spacemen 3 or a way druggier Galaxie 500, no beats, just the voice and the various smeared sounds floating heavenward. In fact the whole record has that vibe, sort of wasted, bleary eyed, druggy, dreamy, drifting, on the verge of simply fading away, or floating into the sun to be consumed and turned to ash.
The rest of the record is balanced pretty evenly between Velvets style lo-fi downer pop, lazy and languorous and laid waaaay back, guitars glistening and glimmering, and thick mesmerizing slabs of slow shifting glacial whir, often a breathtaking combination of the two. Absolutely gorgeous and so forward thinking. One of our favorite records ever, a dark and doleful experimental abstract ambient pop masterpiece.
For the reissue, both tracks from Labradford's first 7" are included, and both tracks are just more of that haunting mysterious beauty. Totally recommended.
Last year, DFA producer and LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy released 45:33 as part of an iTunes exclusive "workout" series for Nike, which is probably the best thing he's ever done -- and probably one of the most lucrative. However, this release is the post-Nike, post-licensing version, and is lacking the original artwork. Which was? A total rip-off/homage to Manuel Gottsching's E2-E4 cover, which was so obvious that he decided to sue. But we digress. This review is about a Nike workout song, and how as completely shitty as a 45 minute disco-punk take on Jazzercise sounds like it might be, this record rules. Why? Well, rather than catering to the dancefloor -- as has been the case with less-than-exciting tracks like "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House," "Movement," or "North American Scum" - Murphy was given a medium through which he could indulge himself in any and every fantasy that could possibly fit within the LCD oeuvre. The result is a record that ranges from cheesy (but awesome) Chicago House piano escapades to New Wave synth hooks to full-on Arthur Russell freakouts to Brian Eno bliss. Murphy has always worn his influences on his sleeves, but 45:33 shows him blending them all in such a seamless fashion that the differences between those influences begin to dissolve. If you've heard "Someone Great" -- off the group's newer album Sound of Silver -- then you've heard one of the four or so movements that comprise this record. If you haven't heard it, just skip it and start here. This is a great producer at his best, and will undoubtedly be remembered as such. Edge of Sanity gave death metal its 40+ minute epic song, Ricardo Villalobos did a 37 minute techo single, La Monte Young has recordings that last for a day, doom metal has about 5 million hour long records under its belt. Isn't it time that disco had a go? The CD version features three extra tracks. Each one features a more psyched-out, freakier James Murphy than is typical, and makes a great release even better. Honestly, it's a shame that these aren't on the vinyl version because they rock! Fans of No Wave, Dub, Minimal Techno and Acid beware, this could dominate your disc changer. Totally recommended.
Fans of the "Tokyo flashback" scene, time to turn out the lights (or put on your shades), and curl up in the fetal position to slowly rock back and forth as you enjoy the latest from downer psych outfit LSD-march. This lovely new studio album is slow and sad, its depressive drowsiness expressed via gentle guitar strum, a background flutter of electronic theremin waves, whistling in the dark, fragile harmonica wheeze, somnolent harmonium drone, and Shinsuke Michishita's weary vocals...
Definitely inspired by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, as well as the likes of The Jacks and Les Rallies Denudes out of the Japanese dark-psych past, LSD-march conjure a "constellation of tragedy" indeed, quite effective emotionally even though English speakers won't understand the lyrics.
Those of you who primarily listen to this stuff for the primal heavy duty psychedelic guitar slow-burn gunk, don't worry, your needs haven't been neglected either. You get a dose of that void-crawling, amped-up drone-a-delic action when the plodding track four, "Moeru Pyramid" hits the scene! One of their overall best, and best-recorded for sure (no live-in-a-trash-can bootleg sounds, though we like those too).
Finally, the return of an all time AQ favorite black horde, the Danish master of depressive suicidal black metal, and certainly the most aptly named, Make A Change... Kill Yourself. It's been 2 years, but feels like an eternity since we've heard from the fellow named Ynleborgaz, and his not so merry one man band. The self titled debut was an across the board record of the year around these parts. So dark and miserable, but so gorgeously buzzing and epic, one of the greatest slabs of Burzumic mayhem we had heard, well, since Burzum hung up his axe and extinguished the torches and traded it all in for a cell, white power and some synthesizers.
The vinyl only (so far at least, cd supposedly to follow eventually) II is the perfect follow up, two more lengthy stretches of bleak black miserablism, wrapped in dense swaths of thick buzz, and rife with the most gorgeous, anguished melancholy melodies ever. Two tracks, each taking up a whole side of the lp, and each an epic journey, sonically and emotionally.
Side one begins with forlorn guitar melodies drifting beneath a black cloud of crumbling sound, minor key pianos, an aching funereal lament, that drifts gently along while a distant black buzz slowly encroaches, eventually becoming a blackened wash of blown out depressive misery, blasting double kick drums and teeth gnashing wails over a relentless, midtempo buzzing blurry lope, Burzumic and EPIC, trancelike and crushingly depressing. Gloriously sad and heartbroken but simultaneously brutal and furious and grim. Part way through, the black curtains are drawn back, revealing a slow swirl of acoustic guitar, crooned clean vocals and monk-like chants, a calm drift through the eye of the storm, only to be sucked back down into a black pit of endless torment shortly thereafter, launching back into a looped trancelike buzzscape, the riffs cyclical and repetitive, so completely mesmerizing and utterly and brutally epic.
The flipside bursts immediately and full on into a blast of black buzz, relentless riffing, blown out blast beats, so grim and frosty, before slipping into some near ambient dronescapes of drawn out buzzing drone guitar, and super processed, ominously intoned vocals, a weird almost Wolf Eyes-ian soundscape, brooding and mysterious. Eventually, the music builds back into a monstrous, beautiful, seemingly endless stretch of hypnotic riffs and simple pounding drums, a sort of black buzz drone, that just goes on and on and on, lulling the listener, into some cold dark place, a dark deathlike drift, floating along on a dense swell of buzzing guitars, and some of the most gorgeously melancholic melodies EVER.
So goddamn good. Depressive suicidal black metal record of the year? Without a doubt. Black metal record of the year? Quite possibly...
Pressed on super heavy vinyl, housed in thick jacket, the lp in a printed inner sleeve.
Eduardo Mateo is one of the most enigmatic figures in Latin American music. Often regarded as the John Lennon of Uruguay, the mystique and confusion that surrounds him is as compelling and stunning as the beautiful music he left behind. With a tender voice that cuts right to the core, his music was like a beautiful cross between Joao Gilberto and Caetano Veloso. A romantic, as well as being heavily into mysticism, Mateo was often written off as being crazy. And sadly he did spend much of the 1970's either on the streets, in jail or in mental institutions. His poetic style, mixing of influences and creation of a world of his own were often misunderstood. His music though was filled with such beautiful longing. Folks like Milton Nascimento and Jorge Drexler have gushed about how important Mateo was to them, knowing the genius of his songs, arrangements and voice. And you can here his influence on a new generation of unique singer songwriters like Juana Molina and Lhasa. While we're not sure if they've heard him or not we're pretty sure folks like Vetiver, Eddie Marcon, Savath & Savalas and Jose Gonzalez would fall in love with his songs as well. Along with the informative liner notes comes an even more extensive and fascinating 44 page booklet which tells the complex and confusing story of one of the best kept secrets of South American music of the last quarter century. So good!
We haven't heard from these guys in a while, not since their Perils disc on Mimicry from a few years back. And now they're back, as part of the ever expanding Latitudes series. Featuring members of long time AQ faves Guapo, Miasma are equally as progtastic as Guapo, but where Guapo channel the hard and heavy side of classic prog, Miasma, are more dramatic, with a gipsy folk flair, an Eastern European vibe, jaunty, and playful, cinematic and a bit over the top. Like the soundtrack to some Edward Gorey cartoon come to life. Dark and dangerous, but wild and weirdly wonderful at the same time.
The opening track here begins with a moody gipsy folk hoedown, stings and horns, woven in an intricate dance, before the drums kick in and the song is transformed into epic and intense krautrocky prog. Warm wheezing keyboards, angular riffing, wild octopoidal drumming, intricate arrangements, super dramatic keyboards and strings
A bit of a Goblin vibe, the song builds and builds and builds, a frenzied musical pagan ritual, it's hard not to imagine the band in all black, flowing robes and witches hats, performing in front of some huge stone circle on the top of a massive hill. The second track is a creeping dark ambient sprawl, lurching "Boris The Spider" bassline over whispering winds, clouds of cymbal sizzle, deep cavernous rumbles, haunting organs, mysterious effects that drift from speaker to speaker�
The final track begins like a simple piano and violin chamber music piece, with a definite Eastern European flair, before about halfway through, when the drums and bass kick in, and we're back in the prog, the drums complex and intricate, the bass, lumbering and minor key, the piano more and more frenzied as if trying to keep up with the drums, finally all the parts coalescing into a massive moody riff, bordering on classic doom territory, before everything drops out once again leaving just the piano and strings, until the drums come back in, then finally the bass and the guitar, the climax, intense and dramatic, epic and majestic!
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert. The cover has a sticker affixed to the front and each copy is hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, we got about 25 copies...
