Not for the faint of heart. But pretty bad ass. If you can say that about an academic, avant-garde, micro-detailed, solo VIOLIN recording. Two discs worth to boot! Norwegian composer Ole-Henrik Moe (henceforth known as OHM as per the liner notes), who studied with extreme 20th c. classical dude Iannis Xenakis, offers up 43+40 minutes of stark, scary musick, all brilliantly performed by his wife, violinist Kari Ronnekleiv. Disc one, "Ciaccona", is a tour-de-force of scratching and sawing and scraping, tortured strings sculpting some kind of strange and terrible beauty out of the vast (yet intimate) soundspace that the resonant silences present here delineate. In fact, these recordings took place an a (presumably empty) church, that Ronnekleiv alone fills with menacing drones. It's pretty frickin' amazing that this is all played straight through by one person. She's got incredible stamina and such subtle, awesome control, her fingers commanding overtones, with no overdubs.
More high end shriek and suspenseful shimmer is to be heard on disc two, "3 Persephone Perceptions". On both discs, at times it's like you're hearing the violin analog to a free jazz saxphonist's circular breathing freakout, or for that matter a demented little kid's frantic balloon-rubbing. But plenty of it is quiet and atmospheric as well, full of droning delicate waver, suggesting the weeping of a frightened child. Sudden bursts of sound are the whip hand coming down.
With all these dynamics of hush and hysterics, this is a palate cleanser that puts other stuff in perspective... put on some, say, Wolf Eyes or Yellow Swans on after this and they'll sound like campfire singalongs. Heck try this back to back with some black metal, we swear the corpsepainted ones will seem just a little less intense than they previously did. Hmm...Orthrelm/Octis might be a match for it though. Maybe it's the association we make between stabbing violins and stabbing knives due to Bernard Herrmann's infamous score to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but this is definitely "shower scene" music at times. And the whole thing could easily be running through the head of any self-respecting resident of your local Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Play it LOUD. And tremble.
Perhaps how we're describing this isn't what OHM intended... but c'mon it's what any normal person's gonna hear. And also what any abnormal person (i.e. typical AQ customer) who digs the weirder, out-there edges of "20th Century Classical" (a la Xenakis), is gonna like.
Comes in the usual nice Rune Grammofon packaging with a suitably evocative Kim Hiorthoy designed digipack sleeve.
Back in March we made the double cd Dead Men Tell No Tales, by France's Monarch, our Record of the Week. A crushingly heavy, breathtakingly beautiful slab of ultramegadooooooooom divinity. That record just so happened to combine two lp releases,
Speak Of The Sea, that we listed a long time ago, well before the cd came out, now sadly out of print, the 12" that is, and this one, Die Tonight, that in some strange rupture in the space time continuum arrived months after the cd version. But regardless, if you had been holding out, waiting for Speak Of The Sea's vinyl companion, wait no further. And heck, if you're new to the whole Monarch thing, by all means, this is as good a place as any to start.
Here's an altered version of the cd review, focusing just on the Die Tonight half:
Avid readers of the AQ list should need no introduction to French downtuned slow motion sludge doom trio Monarch. A band truly worthy of many multiples of 'o's (dooooooooooooooooooooom), whose plod and crawl is so slow it often veers near static drone territory, and who also manage to deftly mix in a bit of subtle loveliness into their harsh metallic trudge, AND whose peculiar sense of humor, and album art, and unlikely front woman, definitely make them stand out in an increasingly crowded field...
For those new to Monarch let's recap shall we?
Quite possibly the world's only female fronted deathdoomdronedirge outfit. An unholy mix of Khanate, Corrupted, Bunkur and Moss, but with a petite young French woman on lead vocals, usually clad in Converse hightops, a skirt and a sweater, hair in a pony tail, no tattoos or spikes or leather, but when she opens her mouth, out comes the foulest demonic shrieks and hellish gurgles you have EVER heard. Certainly from a woman, maybe from ANY one, man, woman or beast.
Then there are the record covers, always covered in grade school like doodles of cute big eyed skulls, puffy ghosts, burning churches, and hearts all over the place. They're like a Sanrio doom band. And not surprisingly are obsessed with Hello Kitty (their email address is sanriosabbath!!). But eyes closed, and these guys and gal can most definitely hold their own amongst the slow motion elite. With the added bonus of a singer who can actually sing and does occasionally, adding a definite creepy melodic moodiness to the music.
So what has us so smitten with Monarch? Besides the above that is? Well just lend an ear to Die Tonight, a heavier and slower (if that were even possible) partner to Speak Of The Sea. It's somehow also more blurred out, buzzy and dronelike, with bits of the music so blissed out, the drum hits and chaotic crashes are so far apart, you can almost forget you're listening to a doom band, wallowing in the glorious shimmering drones of the drawn out chords, before a howled shriek and a massive crunch knocks you near out of your seat. There's also more singing, with gorgeous drifting vocals that hover alongside long stretches of buzzing guitar making for haunting harmonies, giving the proceedings brief moments of surprising tranquility. And the vocals continue to twist and turn, from hushed and whispery, to girlish and sing songy to inhuman demonic screech, all the while, the band trudging along dronelike, weaving impossibly pretty soundscapes from downtuned crunch and skull cracking thud.
This is absolutely essential doom. If you like Esoteric, Boris, Moss, Bunkur, SUNNO))), Earth, Esoteric, Skepticism, Eyehategod, Marzuraan, Atavist, Catacombs, Khanate, Pale Horse, Monument Of Urns and you NEED this! And the drifting drone element is in full effect, so those who have yet to dabble in the doom pool, might check this out, the long drawn out shimmers and Niblock like layers of guitar rumble might hit the spot and have you digging deeper for more and more dooooom.
Gorgeously packaged in a off white matte sleeve, a simple illustration in black, and little cartoon stars in metallic silver. Also includes a big fold out poster of the record cover. And as always. EXTREMELY LIMITED. Once these are gone we probably can't get more.
In lieu of the long rumored 3cd, 3 hour, single song Corrupted record (that may be a rumor but we WILL have the new single disc, single hour long track cd El Mundo Frio in the next week or two!) all you drone doom sludge freeks can hold yourself over with this black hole heavy slab of utter crush and total annihilation. Two discs, almost ninety minutes, THREE TRACKS, of impossibly downtuned, ridiculously slow, creeping crawling funereal sludge doooooooooooooooooooom (that's right TWENTY o's, this is some serious doom). This French three piece (four piece at the time this was recorded) trudges the same long, slow and blackened ultradoom path as Khanate, Burning Witch, Corrupted, Boris, Bunkur, Moss and the like. Sounding a bit like Eyehategod, trapped in some sort of dimensional time rift, so each riff is stretched out into an entire song of chugging tarpit riffs, squealing solid state feedback and pounding percussion, each beat so far apart, it's unclear whether the drummer actually plans on coming back with another. And of course insane vocal chord shredding shrieks. Howling banshees and hellish demons ain't got nothing on Monarch's vocalist, who, it might be interesting to point out, is in fact a woman. Not that you would necessarily guess from hearing her demonic screech. But there is definitely a feminine sensibility going on with Monarch. The sort of cutesy heart album cover. The cartoony artwork and website. The random bits of Sanrio silliness, and lots of taking the piss out of black metal and corpsepaint and the whole macho metal thing. Monarch are most definitely the slow motionist, crust sludgiest, satan worshippingest, Sanrio obsessed, Sabbath fixated, cute girl fronted band in the world!
This was super tough to get, each of the three runs of 500 copies selling out before we could get enough to list. So we got a huge chunk of this pressing, but we can't be sure what will happen when these run out, so as always, if we run out, we might not be able to get more.
The short, one sentence review: it's the debut solo album from keyboard player from AQ fave Goblinesque math rock duo Zombi, and if you like Zombi, you'll probably really like this! More details, if necessary... Well, a little tizzy of controversy got started here at Aquarius when we scoped the sticker that Relapse stuck on the front of these cds. To quote, "The Henge is a huge, psychedelic, symphonic affair with Moore's patented cinematic brand of keyboard driven horror score virtuosity. For fans of Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom, Black Ice, Brian Eno, Ash Ra Tempel, Robert Fripp's 'Frippertronics', Heldon". No denying that this sounds quite a bit like all of that, it describes this pretty well. But we must take exception to the use of the word "patented"! Did Heldon, Goblin, John Carpenter et.al. all forget to contact the government, and then wily Steve Moore slipped in and got the patent!? Huh. Poor choice of words, "patented". But we know what they meant. It's the sound that Zombi is known for (being infuenced by) and they do it really well, and that's what this sounds like, basically Zombi without the drummer, if anything more '70s and cinematic sounding, also really sci-fi cosmic.
To his credit, Moore doesn't overtly pull out the ol' "imaginary soundtrack" concept, but he sure could have. In fact some of the more bombastic moments it seems like he's just waiting for Hollywood to come knockin', to score their next horror blockbuster. Elsewhere, at the very least this could be the most sinister soundtrack to a PBS documentary ever! Alternatively, we might describe this as New Age nightmare music. Moore's minimal-wave soundscapes, full of nervous rhythms, ominous drones, & electronic symphonics, are tense yet often deceptively pleasant. It's paranoid, menacing Muzak that hypnotizes like an unholy mix of A.R.& Machines and Dave Borden's Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co., plus all the other names dropped in the blurb quoted above. A fine follow up to Surface To Air, even thought it's not technically a Zombi album!
Abject, miserable, mournful, agonized, anguished, tortured and tormented ultra mega doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! That's right. We've officially reached an all time high in o's (40 in case you were counting), and an all time loooooow in DOOM. Every time we hear from these crushing creeps they've pushed it even further into the deep dark damnable depths, forcing us to add more and more o's. That's right, it's the return of Moss, the UK's heaviest, slowest, sludgiest slow motion downtuned doom metal behemoth. Moss take the paint peeling acidic abrasiveness of Khanate and combine it with the warm suffocating murk of bands like Skepticism or Thergothon, or even aQ faves Nadja (who did a split with Moss a while back). Ultra minimal and nearly static in its sludginess, with the simple caveman plod of the drums the only thing keeping this from turning into a full on drone, this is like one HUGE riff, pulled and stretched into two epic streaks of fuzz and pound, with vocals that might even give Alan Dubin from Khanate a bit of a fright, like a demon howling through a mouthful of broken glass and rusty bottlecaps, teeth black with the blood of a thousand vanquished souls, the sound that finally comes out is a noxious black cloud that causes everything it touches to wither and die, totally blown out and so harsh it makes our throats sore just listening to it.
But like the best sludge / doom, there is some sort of subtle melodic undercurrent going on, maybe it's deliberate and these guys are on some whole other musical level or maybe it's just some chance occurance, some strange alignment of overtones or some lucky bit of abstract composition, it hardly matters, the end result is somehow both hauntingly beautiful and horrifically harsh, there's definitely some dark beauty hidden beneath Moss' black sludge exterior, but the joy of music like this is the fact that the music's beauty is buried and bruised, battered and brutalized, the sonic search for the beauty within is like wading waist deep through boiling hot pitch, ears plugged with hot tar, all the while being showered from above by the tears of angels.
Phil Mouldycliff is a British artist who we discovered through his curatorial work on the Debris Field exhibition at the Bolton Art Museum, whereby Mouldycliff presented a series of environmental / field recordings from the likes of Loren Chasse, Colin Potter, Max Eastley, Keith Rowe, and others. In presenting Written On Water for Colin Potter's ICR label, Mouldycliff drew from his many sound installations and found-sound compositions which have never been presented on cd before. He is a very restrained artist, prefering the slow and methodical unveiling of sound and structure found in the likes of Morton Feldman or Andrew Chalk. On one track, distant squelched voices with the cadence of a news broadcast set well behind a quiet trickle of subaquatic plinks and a stately selection of piano clusters. Elsewhere, Mouldycliff turns to more of a painterly New Music sensibility with clusters of horns, flutes, and piano (which might all be synthesized) into occasionally playful bursts of energy. But, Written On Water is clearly at its best when the drone is the fundamental structure; and Mouldycliff's final offering, "The Spirit Of Place," is well worth the price of admission simply on the strength of the manipulated field recordings into a breathtaking gasp of guilded string vibration which recalls the best work that Ora had generated many years ago. Niblock and Eliane Radigue would also garner nods as well to that impressive conclusion.
Long gone are the days of the bratty and sassy Numbers, when the band first hit the scene a few years back. These days Numbers have refined their love of electronic tinged rock, taking cues from sonic pioneers like '70s Brian Eno and early Gary Numan as well as some hints of Krautrock.
As always they have their Moogs and other rad instruments on full throttle (check out their awesome Octave Cat and the always handy shruti box, both of which help create lots of the drones that run through many of the songs on Now You Are This). With vocalist Indra singing lead on a majority of the tracks and irresistible momentum of that most of these songs, we could definitely see Numbers teaming up with kindred spirits Electrelane sometime in the future for a meeting of the musical minds that would make a lot of sense, and most likely sound fantastic.
The mighty return of the transcendental RIFF! The third Om record! By now the methods and purpose of their ultra heavy music of the spheres is clear. The music on this album, much like the first two, is stripped to its essence. Bass and drums churning out super hypnotic heaviness and repetitive chant-like vocals creating a cyclical whorl of trance-rock divinity.
With a lot of new releases from bands we love, change in sound and development of style is important, Om seem to operate with different principles than the average rock and roll outfit. The consistency of their sound lends itself to the eternal nature of the music, as if all three of their records are really just movements in some expansive, cosmic symphony. Within Om's canon, change is felt like the passing of time without the aid of a clock or calendar, existing in the infinite void. And what an ass kicking void it is! The riffs and rhythms on Pilgrimage are certainly just as good as those on either of their previous releases, which means amazingly heavy and heady slabs of stoned out ROCK!
The record starts off with the title track, which is an expansive slow burner. Mesmeric and spiritual, soft spoken vocals and a propulsive tom and tambourine beat. The riffs on this track, as well as the bulk of Om's material, have a certain eastern quality, like some strange Sabbath-raga meld, and they go on forever and ever, taking the listener on some sort of mystic celestial voyage. By track two, "Unitive Knowledge Of The Godhead", the fuzzed out bass distortion kicks in, and the sound gets HEAVY! This Sleep-like heavitude continues into the 11 plus minute "Bhima's Theme", by which point in the album the listener is more than likely completely transfixed, eyes a-glaze with the eternal riff burned into their brain. The last song on the album is "Pilgrimage (Reprise)", which makes for a very circular experience, like when listening to the album all the way through, time disintegrates and 32 minutes seems like a split second or a week or an eternity! Heavy, mannnn...
Possibly one of the most distinctive things about Pilgrimage is the recording itself. This album sounds fucking great! We mean, for a band that just consists of bass guitar and drums, you could not pick a better engineer than Mr. Steve Albini, whose forte has always been the rhythm section, and he completely nailed the sound! It's warm and cavernous, and completely swallows the listener whole.
So, if you are in tune with the amaranthine vibes of Om's two previous records, you will most certainly appreciate this one as a continuation on the path towards the essence of musical anima mundi!
RIFF TO ETERNITY!
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!
Qui. Who? A francophone band now featuring the vocal stylings of the inimitable David Yow? Well, no, they're not really French, but Qui sounds just as foreign and incongruous to the man who wreaked havoc with his former bands Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid! Many might not realize that this band existed prior to Yow's involvement (they have one pre-Yow album), and adding such a distinct and potent individual can undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows and issues. The main one: how to integrate the two entities without it becoming the Yow Show. Fortunately both Yow and Qui's original members Matt Cronk and Paul Christensen are up for the challenge. He's still unquestionably untethered and unhinged, but it manifests itself in different ways and sounds. They're trippy and strange and as defiant and fucked up as pretty much everything else on Mike Patton's Ipecac label.
Qui's sound cherry picks the ripest fruit of Jesus Lizard and Melvins and Frank Zappa and Pere Ubu.
For those who like their music loose slung, high strung, tightly wound and dampened with mysterious body fluid. Yow.
What's up with that cover though?
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, Curium, and Disinterested)! Beneath Trembling Lanterns begins with the distant peal and tinkle of bells and glassy chimes. An enchanted beckoning. Ms Coseboom's cooed vocals are quite akin to retro sugar of Julee Cruise or the womanly knowingness of Jane Siberry. However, the album's overall impression is more modern a la Lamb or Portishead -- a beautiful blend of old and new sounds, styles and instrumentation. Sweet, soft, slow and soothing.
We knew nothing at all about this disc when it arrived. Not even sure how we ended up listening to it, but we're so so glad we did. The thing is, we get tons of stuff to listen to. Some all time AQ favorites began life as a random record that showed up in the mail, so we try to listen to everything, or as close to everything as we can. But there's so much, that just listening to random stuff that gets mailed in could be its own full time job (and before you all email wanting that job, trust us, it's not all it's cracked up to be). Inevitably stuff slips through the cracks, or we finally manage to listen to a cd months, sometimes years after it shows up.
But this one caught our eye straight away, with a super creepy cover depicting a dead woman, covered in blood, in a wide expanse of blackness, above her a head, with a hole in the forehead, and a rainbow shooting through the head onto the dead woman, all done sort of oil painting style. Immediately we thought, "Wow, that sort of looks like some Argento movie". Then we saw the title, 31 Invalid Movie Themes � Italian Music. Hmm. By a group called Orchestra Di Rockford Kabine. Okay, so maybe, we thought, a soundtrack to some giallo we'd never heard of. The first track seemed to confirm that, a snippet of dialogue from some Italian movie, dialogue, some buzzing creepy sci-fi synth, a panicked woman, screaming, some sort of struggle...
Then suddenly, we're in some sort of groovy sixties funk jam, all shuffling percussion, wah wah guitar, throbbing bass grooves, and then out of nowhere, a strangely convoluted interlude, very brief, but sort of stuttery, and then back to the groove. So now we're dying to know what movie this is from. Then the next track is some sort of stripped down electro groove, a jazzy piano vamp, lots and lots of record crackle, this couldn't be from the sixties...
And it isn't. It ends up it's a German duo called Rockford Kabine, not a person at all, not a composer, an electronic/sampling outfit who describe their sound as "acid smurf" (huh?) and whose modus operandi is crafting little cinematic pop nuggets. Like DJ Shadow doing Morricone. The various tracks are super brief, but super groovy and catchy, some are dark and ominous and ultra creepy, some are playful and exotic. Some sound like they belong in a spaghetti Western, others like they belong in a classic Italian horror film, one track even uses the sound of a pinball machine as the rhythm. Plus the whole disc is peppered with bits of dialogue from movies making it seem even more possible that these could all be little fragments from lost movie scores.
The sounds are all over the place, but manage to sound like they all belong, if not in the same film, at least in the same collection. From the aforementioned opening groover, to the smoky synth flecked mood music of "Al Signor Lorenzo N." complete with a creepy children's choir, to the exploitation cop show funk jam of "Di-Stanza", to the super distorted buzzy sixties psychedelia of "IX", to the Tom Waits via Amon Tobin stuttery junkyard percussion of "Insensato", to the muted meandering twangy western sizzle of "Italo Calvino", to the stripped down, but somehow still spooky rhythmic workout of "Zombi 3000", to the very DJ Shadow-ish creepy crawl of "Profondo Rosso" and it goes on and on. Every track is a strange little gem. Mysterious and cinematic. Each could easily be the theme from some lost film, or just a kick ass little segment from some DJ's set.
31 tracks, averaging a little more than a minute each, these tracks may not actually be from real movies, but repeated listening will have you wishing they were, or just creating the movies in your head as you listen. Fucking awesome.
Schizoid was responsible for our favorite tracks on the massive (and massively good) 'Don't Fuck With Us' 3 cd compilation of North American digital hardcore compiled by the 'expert' on such things, Mr. Alec Empire. We described Schizoid as "Burzum goes DHR" and that's still pretty right on. But now we have a whole disc, so there's much more variation and much more mayhem! Super distorted, heavily effected, totally evil vocals over dense electronic soundscapes, with chopped up metal guitars, pounding hardcore/gabber/drill'n'bass rhythms. Way more intense and aggressive than almost anything on DHR, and certainly more fucked up and pummelling than almost any electronic music we've heard lately, without falling into the boring, repetitive sameness of most gabber/digital hardcore. Super varied, with full on speed metal gabber, lots of spaced out ambient breaks, electronic drones, and some seriously damaged mid tempo primitive-black-metal-electronica. This is definitely some of the best (and most brutal) electronica to come our way since we first heard 'The Destroyer'. For fans of DHR, The Berserker, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destroyer, Venetian Snares, Atomsmasher, Burzum, Darkthrone and all that evil stuff.
With a lot of stuff on the AQ list, to us at least, the music often transcends its genre. And part of the fun of reviewing a record like that, is getting people who don't normally listen to that kind of music to check it out, and maybe even dig it. You know, some metal record that's so fucked up and damaged that it might appeal to folks into noise music or experimental music. Or some pop band that's so heavy and intense, that even metalheads might dig it.
Well, with this, the long long long overdue reissue of the first and only record from San Francisco's very own Sea Hags, we're not even gonna bother. This isn't fucked up or noisy or experimental. It's heavy, groovy, glammy hard rock that totally kicks ass. And if you don't dig stuff like Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Hanoi Rocks and the like, then odds are you aren't gonna dig this. But if you do (and if you don't what the hell's wrong with you?!), and somehow you missed out on the greatest hard rock band to ever come out of SF, then for fuck's sake, pick this up NOW.
Hailed back in the day as the next Guns N' Roses, and described by their manager thusly: "There's only so far you can go with three junkies and one alcoholic�", the Sea Hags were Bay Area rock heroes, who would hang out with Courtney Love, have Metallica's Kirk Hammett play lead on one of their tracks, almost get a song on the Sid And Nancy soundtrack after a tip from Love (who was fronting Faith No More at the time!), record with Mike Clink who produced Appetite For Destruction, kick their drummer out while recording, have the band nearly break up on tour after being busted for drugs, and (sadly) have one member die at age 26 of an heroin overdose a year after the band breaks up, but more importantly than all of that, record one of the best hard rock records of the nineties, and one of the greatest hard rock tracks EVER in the form of "Half The Way Valley".
Just listen to the sound samples and you'll be sold. Filthy and dangerous, groovy and bluesy, glammy and heavy, and so crazy catchy, a pinch of the Stones, a bit of the Yardbirds, lots of Aerosmith, plenty of GN'R , all mixed up with their own unique take on sixties pop and seventies hard rock. Kick ass riffing, pounding drumming, boozy world weary vocals, and hooks galore.
Not sure what else to say. Amongst the hard rockers around these parts, the reissue of the Sea Hags record was a HUGE deal. So much so, that had it not happened, Andee and Allan might have considered it for their fledgling eighties metal reissue label!
Needless to say, this is essential listening for hard rockers. One of our favorite discs from the nineties. Finally reissued, and damn if it don't sound as kick ass as ever!
As with all the Rock Candy reissues, the packaging and presentation are amazing. If only ALL reissues were this well done. Bonus tracks, tons of photos, extensive liner notes, interviews with bandleader Ron Yocom, as well as track by track notes and a band history.
Reissues of pretty good obscure '70s prog-psych albums, while not a dime a dozen, aren't exactly hard to find (at a shop like ours, anyway). But when the band's from Jakarta, Indonesia, and they're called SHARK MOVE we get extra excited. Just look at the colorful mythology of the cover art. How could this not be cool? And it is. Originally released in 1970, the sole album from Shark Move is a treat for anyone into the long-haired hippy prog excesses of the day, spiced with an extra special something due to being from a non-Western land, where these guys were REALLY freaks for making this music... UK prog stylings derived from the likes of Genesis and Deep Purple are mixed with some more traditional Indonesian musical motifs, and not all the lyrics are in English. Also the results are further warped away from normalcy by the third-world production quality, which we'd say is a good thing.
With serious songs, complex arrangements (keyboards, flute!), and melodramatic doses of both thee gently melodic and thee instrumentally bombastic, Shark Move were certainly musically ambitious. A trait perhaps best exemplified by the sweeping nine-minute opener "My Life". Meanwhile, the fuzz-heavy shambolic riff-tumble of "Evil War" with its exotic coloration via keyboard and guitar soling is another of Shark Move's selling points. The sweeter stuff (often on the tracks sung in their native tongue) is nice too, and definitely sets them apart from their European and American contemporaries.
Thanks to Shadoks we get to hear this, which has been remastered and has new liner notes for this reissue, all done with the participation of Shark Move's leader, founder, and only surviving member, Benny Soebardja (lead guitar/vocals). Shortly after recording this album, the band's keyboardist was tragically killed in a traffic accident, and Shark Move came to an end, although Benny has continued to rock on with some other groups, including one called Giant Step that may also get a Shadoks reissue we're told.
Sigur Ros resurrect a few of their old beloved songs on their new double cd Hvarf / Heim. It could easily have been titled Sigur Ros Plugged and Unplugged, but then again that's trademarked isn't it? Anyhoo, they've electrified some early acoustic numbers and acousticified (uhh, is that a real word? "Unplugged" is so much more catchy!) some previously electric ones. Proof of that old adage that the sign of a good song is if it survives translation in various instrumentations and genres. At once possessed with an ephemeral lightness and a heart-aching gravity, Sigur Ros make it seem so effortless. Hearing these songs again reminds us of the first time Sigur Ros touched our ears. 'Twas (and still is) absolutely enchanting. Now before we get all tear'd up and descend into more maddeningly cliched 'relive the magic!' ad taglines, need we say? As always, glisteningly beautiful.
Latest hellish musical missive from these Belgian funeral folk freeks, but where past releases have found the band wandering through twangy campfire lit forests, and offering up strummed pagan prayers to the gods, Levend Op De Brandstapel is Silvester Anfang at their most rocking, their most freaked out and psychedelic, blown out and tripped out heavy. But even then, the band still sound unhinged and abstract, stumbling and damaged. The guitars this time around are thick and distorted, the riffs are sharp edged and buzz drenched, but the band never actually ROCK, at least not in the traditional sense. The first half of this single 26 minute track, is an expanse of drone and clatter, big black riffs slowly unfurling and allowed to drift amidst a sea of whirs and shimmers, clangs and clatters, it's like the skeleton of some classic rock song, ensorcelled and brought back to life, lurching and lumbering through a landscape of distant drones and random percussion. The second half of the track, the noise quotient gets ratcheted up big time, and while the band still doesn't quite rock, it does get wilder and heavier, the sound transforming into a Sunroof! style high end ur-drone, but here, the drone is littered with howled voices, grinding shards of guitar, feedback everywhere, all tangled up into a corrosive noiserock loop that plays out right until the end. Woah.
Packaged in miniature dvd style case, with a tripped out, and very evil looking black and white cover insert. EXTREMELY LIMITED, we got about 25 copies and probably won't be able to get more�
The first two tracks on Shelter From The Ash pretty much illustrate the two complementary sides to Mr. Six Organs Ben Chasny's usual modus operandi. The first cut, "Alone With The Alone", is droning and dense, building into tripped out, fairly fierce electric guitar solo, while the second, "Strangled Road", is a much mellower, subdued folk-ish number, with hushed vocals and lonely guitar strum... Together, you've got a recipe for the morose, bleak beauty that this album cooks up, with songs sung about war, loss and survival amidst yearning instrumentals, including one dedicated to the Sun City Girls.
Shelter From The Ash is record number ten (at least!) from Six Organs of Admittance and it's another winner, much like its predecessors in having a basis in Chasny's facility with Faheyesque steel-string fingerpicking while heading off into the wilder reaches of heavy psych, and almost country-rockish moodiness. He's helped out here by members of Comets On Fire and Magick Markers, though it's the rough hewn, intimate hum and buzz of just Ben and his guitar that works the most magic for us.
Making a seamless transition from charming indie-rock boy in the bay area's great Call & Response to now dishing out some of the most infectious and delicious electronic jams we've heard in a long time, it won't be long until Daniel Judd (aka Sorcerer) is a name on the tips of the tongues of everyone who has been loving the recent resurgence of great dancey and disco inspired electronica. If folks like Lindstrom, Gui Borrato and Strategy have pleased your ears as much as they have ours we think this is a record you should check out for sure. We love how he's able to bring a smooth and suave feeling to what's often a clinical and robotic sound. It's almost how we imagine it would sound if Sam Prekop of The Sea & Cake made a daydream electronic dance record, as it has that same kind of endless breeze and carefree melody that he's perfected over the years. It's like sliding down milky mountain waterfalls into the freshest ocean filled with frothy waves and trays of the tastiest cocktails floating alongside always at arms reach for a delicious sip. Sorcerer have tapped into some delightfully fresh sounding electronic gold. So nice!
Latest from AQ faves The Starving Weirdos, the first we've heard since the beginning of the year (which is practically unheard of in the current way too prolific cd-r scene), and it's not just a new batch of killer blissed out SW dronemusic, it's also a film the band "chopped and screwed" and presented at the third annual Experimental Film & Music Night in Humboldt, and this dvd contains the film and the music composed to accompany it.
The film itself is Sudden Fear, from 1952 starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance, but the band re-edited it and re-arranged it, hard to say how much was changed, we haven't ever seen the actual film, but from this version it looks pretty freaked out and fucked up. Although it could be the Starving Weirdos' extra creepy score too, a cacophonous Hermann Nitsch like drone, thick and abrasive, but haunting and ominous. The film playing out, at different speeds, the screen split, images super imposed over one another, the music, appropriately dark and terrifying.
This is definitely the darkest and most menacing we've heard the Starving Weirdos, and it really suits them. Strings sing and squeal, feedback moans and groans, bits of percussion surface and are carried a way by thick swells of low end whir, it's like Bernard Hermann meets Nitsch covering Goblin. Scary as hell and so so good!
Packaged in a mini dvd style plastic case, with a black and white insert cover, and pasted on liner notes on the inside.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES, each one hand numbered.
Arguably the definitive recording by the man who has been called the Welsh Dylan, Meic Stevens' 1970 debut Outlander has been finally reissued in an affordable format (after getting the deluxe but super expensive Rhino Handmade treatment a couple years back). Panned upon its release as a Dylan / Syd Barrett / Donovan derivative, it has since gained an earnest following among purveyors of obscure acid folk and psych-folk releases (as well as fans of retro-Welsh grooves like Super Furry Animals) for its inventive use of sitars, tablas, and flutes. Full of idyllic and romantic allusions to fogotten lands of yore, Stevens puts a more raga spin on his arrangements than Dylan ever would have, which definitely sets this apart from mere style-copping. Another essential necessity for any psych-folk collector!! So good.
Any one lucky enough to visit hypnorockers Circle in Finland, besides being showered with hospitality and crazy adventures, hockey games, private concerts, lots of record shopping, reindeer dinners and Finnish pizza, also is quite likely to be invited to record with the band, as they seem to be in a constant state of ready-to-record-ness, as our very own Andee can attest to: just check http://www.tUMULt.net to hear Jaappollot, the results of several sessions he shared with the boys in Circle!
Seems a similar thing happened to abstract free rock collective Sunburned Hand Of The Man when they were in Finland, and it's hard to imagine a better match. Sunburned seems to have lured Circle back into the murky woods, for long languorous stretches of slow burning psychedelia. The metallic sheen of recent releases has been rusted and caked with mud and old dried branches, the result a trancelike folk flecked tribal krautrock, the perfect mix of what we like best about both bands.�
The sound on first listen is like some sort of�alien world music, with dense, but laid back�tribal drumming, swirling serpentine guitar lines,�whispered chanted vocals, all wrapped in a cavernous production, making the tracks sound warm and wide open, expansive and endless, there is clatter and clang, but for the most part it's smeared and blurred, buried in sonic murk, wrapped around abstract krautrock rhythms and chunks of angular guitar riffage. Some of the tracks get wild and chaotic, but even then, the sound is still restrained, not jagged or harsh, more swirling and washed out.�
One of our favorite tracks ever, by maybe either band, is the super hypnotic�"Heinavelho", another growling ambient sprawl, but strangely rhythmic and musical, still�murky and muddy and super hypnotic, but with ultra subtle�repetitively strummed guitars, held in check by martial drum rolls and little squalls of brushed snares, eventually building to an FX drenched gothy cabaret crawl, all moody and drunken, lurching and downtuned, staggering through a thick cloud of chirping bleeps and bloops and dense swells of rumble and shimmer.�
Fans of either band will definitely dig, and a good gateway for anyone into one, but not yet so into the other...
We just had a big "Witchcraft weekend" 'round these parts... The incredible Swedish doom/prog rockers played two shows in the vicinity -- a packed one at Slim's in SF and also a much more intimate one at a place down in the woods near Santa Cruz (which was thus even more amazing). Several of the AQ staff made it to both shows, and are still recovering. Witchcraft are such cool guys, very down to earth and friendly despite all the ego-stroking rock star adulation that they've begun to receive... and totally deserve, 'cause they ROCK like nobody since about 1972. Their new album The Alchemist is still in heavy rotation here at the store, and MORE new Witchcraft is, geeze, icing on the cake.
The Sword from Texas are another young band of fairly retro doomsters we like who got pretty darn big pretty darn fast... makes sense the two bands would team up for something, in this case a limited edition 12" vinyl only split ep!
On Side Sword, you get a brand new composition from them called "Sea Of Spears" and also a cover version of Led Zep's "The Immigrant Song"! Witchcraft fill the flip with three tracks, the first of which, "You Bury Your Head", was originally released in 2002 as the b-side to their debut single (this is that recording, not the re-recording of it found on their first album). Then there's "Queen Of Bees" and "Sorrow Evoker", newly recorded versions of songs found on Witchcraft's Firewood album. FYI this record is already SOLD OUT at the label, so...
This one is for the slow and low crowd. More gorgeous slow motion sludgery, crawling dreamdronedoom, a slow black sprawl, but unlike the current crop of guitar-against-the-amp droners (and no dis, we love that stuff), this disc by the trio Tecumseh, harkens back to the classic Earth 2, the record that spawned a million sludge bands, by reintroducing the riff. And as we must have mentioned before, it's always ALL about THE RIFF.
So all three looooong tracks here, begin with a riff, downtuned of course, nearly to the point of dissolution, and slowed way down, so that 9 or 10 times through the riff might cover half a side of vinyl, and that riff is stretched out as far as it will go, the notes drifting in blackened expanses of buzz, no drums to speak of, it's all about the riff. EXCEPT, for something strange going on in the background. A constant low level hum, the soft swirl of wind like whirs, all manner of subtle buzzing and layered drones, all woven into a constantly, but subtly, shifting background, in front of which, Tecumseh's slow-low grind creeps and crawls. Not so much heavy as it is meditative, it's very dreamy and soothing and mesmerizing, not to take anything away from these guys, cuz I'm sure this sort of band prides itself on it's heaviness, but this is the perfect metallic drifting off music, almost like they've discovered some new genre, sludge-ambient, doom-age, whatever you decide to call it, it's pretty amazing, and fans of all things slow motion, downtuned and yes, heavy will dig this big time.
Packaged in gorgeous thick fold over gatefold sleeve, hand screened, blue metallic on grey, and of course quite limited...
A few lists back we gushed unapologetically about the gorgeous ultra heavy sludge pop of the mighty Torche, their self titled debut having just been rerecorded remixed and reissued. And as we mentioned in that review, that sucker had been lodged in our cd player for years, since the very first time we laid ears on it. The heir to Nirvana's throne, adding a megaton of heaviness to Nirvana's near perfect sound. The result was some sort of impossibly heavy pop music, as downtuned and punishing as it was hooky and anthemic.
So here we have the long in the works follow up, and on first listen it's got a definite different vibe, distinctly less poppy, more heavy, and aggressive, less groovy, more well metal. Not a bad thing, but we kind of had our fingers crossed for THE heaviest pop record of all time. And on first listen, this wasn't necessarily that. But, the more we listen, the more the magic of this record becomes clear, and the more the pop side reveals itself, blossoming like the flowers on the cover, revealing blissed out beauty amidst all the downtuned pummel. In fact, we just noticed that the third track, "Bring Me Home" sounds like a heavier mathier Jesu, which is a very good thing indeed. All washed out My Bloody Valentine swirls of sound, big booming drums, wailing guitars, and a hook to die for. Some of the other tracks are fast and heavy and groovy and play almost like some sort of stoner rock, but still twisted into a distinctly Torche-like shape. The Melvins vibe is BIG all over this record, which is also a very good thing, and while we don't hear as much of the Torche we loved so much on their s/t full length, we do hear lots more of the other Torche related bands like Floor and Dove, and even some Harvey Milk. Which is our way of saying while we were slightly disappointed by the not-quite-as-poppiness, it's more than made up for by killer riffing and insane heaviness. And this is some heavy heavy shit, but still with just enough groove and pop to keep us listening NONSTOP.
And holy shit! The Packaging is mind blowing. A deluxe gatefold 10", adorned with a super close up of John Baizley's Pushead like painting, all smeared inks, water drops, flower petals and bees, inside, more amazing artwork, including portraits of each of the band members inside flowers, and right in the middle 4 little flaps holding the cd version of the record, a three inch cd housed in a clear 5" plastic cd shell, also adorned with a flower, the inner sleeve also printed in full color, the vinyl super thick and on various different colors of swirled clear vinyl, everything housed in a plastic sleeve, with a cool art deco clear sticker with more artwork and the track titles and band name. WOW.
Maybe you don't know it yet, but (IF you buy these Bobb Trimble albums) you have just been handed the key to a secret realm, an alternate rock n' roll universe of dark despair, fragile hope, and gossamer beauty, a haunting personal soundworld that will always stay with you, within you... these two albums are reissues of exceedingly rare, DIY pop-psych-prog holy grails from the unlikely time and place of early '80s suburban New England. Bobb Trimble is singer-songwriter and would be (shoulda been) rock star from Worcester, Massachusetts. Born in 1958, he was in his early 20s when he recorded the two self-released albums that constitute his obscure discography, and which over the years have developed a small but devoted cult following among those lucky enough to have encountered these gems. There's been bootlegs of one of them (Harvest Of Dreams), and a hard-to-find anthology that came out 12 years ago drawing material from both Bobb LPs, but now Secretly Canadian, bless 'em, have at long last brought out legit reissues of both amazing Trimble records, on compact disc and vinyl (unfortunately, the vinyl went pretty quick, we only have a couple copies of each LP left in stock at the moment, though we're told there will be a second pressing sometime soon, hopefully). As far as we're concerned, this is one of the most significant musical events of 2007!
Influenced by the Beatles (on the back of his debut LP, he politely asks if he can someday become the 5th Beatle), Bowie, Pink Floyd and other psych and prog rock of the '60s and '70s, Bobb boldly brought that sound into "a world he never made", the malaise days of the late '70s and the new wave Reagan '80s, creating homemade timeless tracks that could just as easily have been recorded today, or tomorrow, too. We're reminded of those artists, yes, and also the disparate likes of Ariel Pink, Antony & The Johnsons, Richard Youngs, Ed Askew, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Roy Harper... but Bobb Trimble's music is also like nothing else we've ever heard.
Both albums are highly recommended... though weird enough to perhaps not be for everyone, we'll admit. If you like 'em at all though, chances are you'll LOVE them. It's about time they were reissued, we expect that they'll do MUCH better today than they did when they were first (barely) released. The world, or at least the indie-rock scene, is finally ready for Bobb's unsung outsider genius, and it's nice he's getting a second shot at recognition now. And also especially nice for the new audience that's gonna flip out over this music (we predict).
This record, 1982's Harvest Of Dreams, is the one with a grainy photo of Bobb pondering what appears to be a unicorn-goat on the cover, apparently found at some RennFaire petting zoo. Looks a bit like a Jandek album cover, doesn't it? It certainly is a wonderful indication of the magical mysteries and sheer oddity of the album's musical content. Of Trimble's two LPs, Harvest is where his dreamy visionary aesthetic reached its absolute pinnacle (at age 23!). Bobb has his helpers on various tracks here, several of 'em recorded with The Kidds -- a bunch of 12-year-olds from his neighborhood he befriended and taught to play! So maybe he felt there was more hope for the future. The mood here isn't quite so dark as side one of Iron Curtain Innocence, though certainly a continuation of that style, and just as emotional and moving, moreso even... Bobb, his high fragile pixie voice (one reason for the Ariel Pink comparison) caressing like fairytale kisses, takes you by the hand and leads you into his heart, on this masterpiece of bedroom recorded lovelorn proggy psychedelic weird gentle beauty. Track two, "If Words Were All I Had" is likely to be one of the best songs you'll hear all year. One of the most aching, affecting love songs ever, actually. It could make you cry. "Armour Of The Shroud" is another highlight. A nearly 8 minute epic woven from Bobb's angelic voice, chiming bells, guitar strum, a bed of electronic swirls, and such droning "environmental" sonic textures as a beeping disconnected dial tone and falling rain. It's not all as mellow as that -- for instance an outburst of distortion and swearing at the end of the otherwise lovely "Selling Me Short While Stringing Me Long" leads into the backwards-effected intro of this album's biggest anomaly, "Oh Baby", a primitive garage-punk number sung by one of the Kidds, with lyrics that seem to reference the Saturday Night Live character Mr. Bill. Backwards effects and children's voices are in fact all over the place here on this densely-layered disc, along with swirling psych guitar, distorted electronics, and Bobb's heartfelt lyrics and melodies. Yep, definitely there's an Ariel Pink vibe, also we're even reminded of the folky pagan weirdness of Comus at times, & also the damaged new wave psych of the Happy Dragon-Band, if you've ever heard them.
Urgh it's hard to do this justice in a mere review. Words are all we have... This is the sort of album that it really seems that someone (a better writer than any of us here) could, should write a whole book about. Like one of those 33 1/3 volumes. It's that deep, that unique, that compelling.
This reissue again includes enthusiastic, enlightening liner notes, this time from Florent Mazzoleni. And more vintage photos, including another one of Bobb sitting with the spooky unicorn-goat from the cover, this time serenading it with an acoustic guitar. And on this cd there's also another three bonus tracks of unreleased songs!! Nicely put together, way better than any bootleg version of course! So, again, both albums are highly recommended (obviously, as we made 'em both Records Of The Week) but if you're gonna buy just one, maybe start with Harvest Of Dreams... but we'd say get both!
Maybe you don't know it yet, but (IF you buy these Bobb Trimble albums) you have just been handed the key to a secret realm, an alternate rock n' roll universe of dark despair, fragile hope, and gossamer beauty, a haunting personal soundworld that will always stay with you, within you... these two albums are reissues of exceedingly rare, DIY pop-psych-prog holy grails from the unlikely time and place of early '80s suburban New England. Bobb Trimble is singer-songwriter and would be (shoulda been) rock star from Worcester, Massachusetts. Born in 1958, he was in his early 20s when he recorded the two self-released albums that constitute his obscure discography, and which over the years have developed a small but devoted cult following among those lucky enough to have encountered these gems. There's been bootlegs of one of them (Harvest Of Dreams), and a hard-to-find anthology that came out 12 years ago drawing material from both Bobb LPs, but now Secretly Canadian, bless 'em, have at long last brought out legit reissues of both amazing Trimble records, on compact disc and vinyl (unfortunately, the vinyl went pretty quick, we only have a couple copies of each LP left in stock at the moment, though we're told there will be a second pressing sometime soon, hopefully). As far as we're concerned, this is one of the most significant musical events of 2007!
Influenced by the Beatles (on the back of his debut LP, he politely asks if he can someday become the 5th Beatle), Bowie, Pink Floyd and other psych and prog rock of the '60s and '70s, Bobb boldly brought that sound into "a world he never made", the malaise days of the late '70s and the new wave Reagan '80s, creating homemade timeless tracks that could just as easily have been recorded today, or tomorrow, too. We're reminded of those artists, yes, and also the disparate likes of Ariel Pink, Antony & The Johnsons, Richard Youngs, Ed Askew, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Roy Harper... but Bobb Trimble's music is also like nothing else we've ever heard.
Both albums are highly recommended... though weird enough to perhaps not be for everyone, we'll admit. If you like 'em at all though, chances are you'll LOVE them. It's about time they were reissued, we expect that they'll do MUCH better today than they did when they were first (barely) released. The world, or at least the indie-rock scene, is finally ready for Bobb's unsung outsider genius, and it's nice he's getting a second shot at recognition now. And also especially nice for the new audience that's gonna flip out over this music (we predict).
This one, Iron Curtain Innocence, with a striking photo-studio shot on the cover of Bobb armed with both an electric guitar and a Tommy gun, was his debut, a private pressing in an edition of just 300 copies! Side one, credited to Bobb Trimble with The Violent Reactions, was recorded in 1980 and represents the darker, more apocalyptic material on the album, the songs dramatic, melancholic, and laced with much mysterious sound FX. The very first track, "Glass Menagerie Fantasies", starting off with some shortwave static, establishes Bobb's special talent for fragile and melodic otherworldliness, utilizing weird "glitch" textures long before electronica made that a rock-crit term. His multitracked vocals, ranging high, are of translucent beauty throughout this record, yet so much of the musical mood is one of dread and psychosis, lyrics touching on fears of WWIII, the gothic likes of "When The Raven Calls" heavier with sizzling synth drones and volume-cranked psych guitar.
Side two, designated Soliloquize, was recorded two years earlier, in 1978, and features what Bobb considers the more "straight" songs on the record, simpler perhaps, but with Bobb's vocals just as delicate and the mood just as melancholic... and definitely of psychedelic bent, note ferinstance the backwards guitar on "Through My Eyes (Hopeless as Hell: D.O.A.)". On side one Bobb is accompanied by a drummer and bassist, on side two just a drummer, Bobb handling vocals, guitar, and all other instruments, credited also with "interference patterns" and "hope".
Hope? Maybe. Bobb dedicates this album "to a children of a dynasty destined to ruins who build their dreams on the darkness they buy... and steal." You can see where he's coming from, his despairing musical mood. It's fairly certain that back in 1980 he could have never imagined that his music would be being re-released in 2007, not just because such lasting "success" seemed elusive but also 'cause it seemed doubtful, in those days preceding the Ronald Reagan vs. "Evil Empire" face-off at the height of the Cold War, that world would survive this long. Thankfully, it has, but sadly, though, times haven't really changed that much regarding this civilization's and this planet's long-term prognosis, Mutual Assured Destruction replaced with global warming and WMD and another Evil Empire (ours, or Islamofascism, take your pick), so Bobb's sentiments on Iron Curtain Innocence still seem unhappily relevant as ever... but this reissue is also a token of hope, since we, Bobb and this music are are still here.
This reissue also includes three bonus tracks, reverb-drenched solo demo versions of songs from side one, recorded by Bobb in his parents' basement. The cd booklet contains extensive liner notes by Eric Weddle, as well as lots of photos and a newspaper clipping of a review in the local newspaper at the time.
We discovered the D-Trash label (and consequently Unitus) via the amazing DHR 'Don't Fuck With Us' compilation from a few lists ago. Unitus is definitely very beat heavy ala DHR, but lays the beats down in a thick, dark miasma of digital crunch and ambient drones and rumbles. Making for an almost dreamy, definitely droney, hypnotic drum and bass workout with stretches of ambient whir, reminding us quite a bit of the seminal Third Eye Foundation 12" 'Semtex' from a few years back. Nice thick analog sounding dirgescapes, with simple, skittery beats woven throughout . Really fucking great! Myabe electronic music isn't dead after all. You just have to know where to look.
There aren't many instruments that we would want to hear a whole record of. But drums are an exception. Drums seem to be the unifying instrument for all music lovers. Whether it's hip-hop, Japanese noise, krautrock, funk, afro-beat, etc. we all love hearing the drummer get wicked! There is something so mystical and powerful about the sound of drums that its no wonder that they have often been used as the main instrument in so many mystical & spiritual settings. Recorded by Soul Jazz in Cuba at the ICAIC studios these recordings demonstrate the African-influence on the drumming used in Cuban religious cults and ceremonies. Much like the amazing Voodoo Drums, and Spirits Of Life comps Soul Jazz put out a few years ago this is another great collection of frenzied drumming for a higher calling.
The world may be full of doom and gloom, and your shelves may be bursting at the seams will all manner of slow motion sludge and funereal dirges, but there was a time, when true doom wasn't so easy to come by, the world wasn't prepared for slow motion misery and abject musical miserablism, but we were, and we hunted and searched, and thus we discovered Finland's Skepticism. The heaviest, most beautiful, most perplexingly atmospheric music we had yet encountered. It was so washed out and dreamy it was barely metal. So slow and pretty it almost sounded choral. We described the music of Skepticism as sounding like sitting in a church, while a doom metal band practiced in the basement, the huge thudding crush, barely audible through the floor, the sounds intertwining with the warm whir of the church organ, some strangely spiritual sonic confluence, that was as magical as it was mysterious.
And it wasn't just us. The sound of Skepticism spoke to all sorts of people, metalheads, doomlords, drone freeks, weirdo music obsessives, and it made perfect sense, as it was all those things, metal, doom, drone, weird. Add to that, lovely, haunting, creepy, ominous and absolutely fucking brilliant.
So here we have a double disc tribute to the masters of slow motion doomed beauty, from a handful of bands, as with most comps, many we'd never heard of, a few we were already big fans of. And also with tributes, how do you pay tribute to a music that is already so perfect? Do you try to sound as much like it as possible, or change it into something else entirely? Somehow, all of the bands here have managed a little bit of both, enough that this is a gorgeous and epic funereal doom record all the way through. Pretty enough to appeal to folks who just like their music dark and dreamy, but heavy enough to mesmerize the blackest hearted of metalheads.
Right out of the gate, Nest (who we'd never heard of) offer up a 14 minute version of a track off the first Skepticism, and do their own sort of blissed out reverential dronedoom version which might be our favorite track on the comp. Stretches of lilting acoustic guitars over rumbling drones, separated by shimmering keyboards and slow plodding muted riffs, so soft it's barely metal at all, more a sort of droning slowcore. Much like the original, but even more soft and shimmery.
The rest of disc one, offer up more traditional doom versions of Skepticism classics, but each twisted and tweaked enough to be a good fresh listen. The final track on disc one, "The Organium" by Oktor, might be the weirdest, a sort of industrialized, mechanical stumbling doom lurch, with sung / spoken deep crooned vocals. Weird but super cool.
The highlight of disc two is of course Rigor Sardonicous, who we of course LOVE, and who do a killer version of "Chorale", beginning with backwards guitars, which eventually morph into a massive downtuned dirge, with that mournful melody buried in the mix, and the strangely loud cymbals we love so much (see some of our other RS reviews about that). The other groups on the second disc definitely take their liberties, Calmsite, turn their track into almost death metal, Aarni give Skepticism a folky makeover, and It Will Come, start out slow and sludgy, but then slip into some sort of drifting post rock slowcore. It's all pretty awesome. How bad could it be starting with Skepticism songs after all?! But either way, this is an awesome collection of intense and beautiful, slow sad heavy dooooooooom, that most definitely does Skepticism proud.
It's inevitable! Every few years someone gets a wild'n'craaazy idea for one of these kinds of guilty pleasures compilations. Non-commercial artists covering commercial artists how fun/sick/hilarious is that?! Very. As per the time honored tradition there's some complete song renovations (Banhart's interpretation of Oasis' "Don't Look Back In Anger"), genre switcheroos (Luna gives Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" the lounge croon treatment, Superchunk totally unsouls and unsexes the Destiny's Child hit "Say My Name"), and all-out silliness (Petra Haden's girlish a cappella version of Journey "Don't Stop Believin'") and Mike Watt's strange, loose bowelled and toothless take on Blue Oyster Cult's "Burnin' For You"). A totally mixed bag of coverers and coverees, other artists doing the covering include Will Oldham, Mark Mulcahy, The Concretes, Jim O'Rourke, Money Mark, Mooney Suzuki, and Geoff Farina. Other artists being covered include Shania Twain, Spice Girls, Mariah Carey, Take That, Fall Out Boy, Love Unlimited Orchestra, Cher, Eddie Money, and System Of A Down. Fun stuff.
We're pretty smitten with Mississippi Records. Not only are they a cool little record store in Portland Oregon, like AQ and OM and a handful of others, helping the neighborhood record store stay alive, they are also an amazing label, releasing remarkable vinyl only compilations, as well as a handful of limited release from underground musicians. In the past we listed the I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore 1927-1948 comp. Packed with lost old time blues (now sadly out of print), and the equally amazing Lipa Kodi Ya City Council collection that featured tons of rare African music, from high life to ju ju to pop to choral music...
And now we have the latest release from Mississippi, Life Is A Problem, which collects some totally mindblowing gospel rarities. A few we had heard of, like Utah Smith and Bishop Perry Tillis, but so many we had never heard or heard of before, and it's all fantastic. And so varied. Some tracks are classic gospel, all voices and handclaps, others are wild psychedelic freakouts, with slippery slide guitars and rambunctious percussion, still others are super soulful, some are sermons set to music, testifying over groovy guitars and warbly organs. The sound quality varies wildly too, from the crackly hiss of old 78s, the fiery and furious sound of blown out analog tapes, some are washed out and ethereal, others immediate and intense. But again, they're all fantastic, and wild and varied enough that even folks who aren't always into gospel, might dig this stuff for what it is, super creative, original, out there, personal and super inspired music, that transcends genre for sure.
Like all Mississippi releases, super nice handmade packaging. This one includes a printed insert featuring liner notes on each of the performers on the comp from Yeti Magazine's Mike McGonigal, as well as a bonus 7" featuring Bongo Joe Coleman doing "This Old World Is In Terrible Condition.
Obviously VERY recommended.
Over the past few years, disco has gone from being popularly accepted as a big, kitschy mistake to some sort of golden idol for the nerd intelligentsia. The New York funk of labels like West End and Prelude, the soul of Philadelphia's Salsoul records, and even the cosmic disco of Italy's very own Daniele Baldelli have all suddenly gained a very devoted following. More importantly, a healthy handful of newer artists have been hard at work recontextualizing some of the aesthetics and the various sound palettes of disco and its sub-genres. Milky Disco is a compilation from Lo Recordings that showcases some work from a handful of new disco's brightest stars; from Morgan Geist to Lindstrom to Black Devil Disco Club. Among these familiar and welcome faces are a few lesser known artists, like Johan Ageborn and Sally Shapiro, Daniel Wang, and San Francisco's own Sorcerer -- formerly one-half of Call & Response. If you can handle a little dance with your synths and a little prog with your dance, Milky Disco is a great place to check out disco's newest wave of innovators. Definitely recommended!
It's again time to liberate your inner Austin Powers, and get down to the Swingin' Sixties sounds of Return Of The Instro-Hipsters, Vol. 2! That's right, another 20 "groovy instrumentals from the UK, 1965-1973" compiled by noted collector Nick Saloman of The Bevis Frond. His first volume, entitled On The Brink, was a big hit 'round here, and this second one is just as much fun! This is what you'd have heard in the hip discotheques of Swinging London back then, rock n' roll beat music influencing jazz orchestras to get all freaky and psychedelic, filling dancefloors with shiny, bubbly tunes considered totally sophisticated and hip at the time. Honkin' organs, bright stinging horn sections, and swirling rock guitar are all part of the many lush arrangements found here. There's slinky lounge vibes, and fully day-glo, go-go dancin' funkiness.
In addition to getting you wigglin' your hips, there's definite goofy kitsch value to a lot of this, ferinstance the gimmick track "Fuzz Duck" by Jerry Allen, with all its crazy quackin'. Another group, Thunder Road, does a version of "Peter Gunn" that certainly fits right in. And Cliff Adams's track appears to be from an advert for P.G. Tips tea... Other artists heard here (and almost nowhere else, these days): D. Cordell's Tea Time Ensemble, The 4 Instants, The Roger Coulam Quartet, Harold McNair, Music Through Six, Sounds Sensational, The Masked Phantom, The Johnny Harris Orchestra, Tony Newman, The Tony Evans Band, Kenny Clare, Sharks, The Outer Limits, Oliver Bone, Paraffin Jack Flash, The Helmut Zaccharias Orchestra, and Ning. Groovy, baby.
Oh man, how this takes us back. Canadian label D-Trash is definitely the new DHR, spawning a whole new scene of breakcore bruisers and digital hardcore crushers. Admittedly they owe a huge debt to Alec Empire, Atari Teenage Riot and that breakcore/metal hybrid sound those folks practically created. So here it is, years after the demise of ATR, Empire has moved on, DHR seems to have disappered, so what better time to remind folks how amazing that shit sounded then, and brutal and heavy and badass it still sounds today.
So here's the whole D-Trash roster, each tackling a classic Atari Teenage Riot track, all our favorites for sure, "Start The Riot", "Into The Death", "Delete Yourself", "The Future Of War"� Most of the bands here do it pretty straight, if anything just making the guitars crunchier and heavier, the beats more distorted and blown out, but still the tracks are classic, and sound enough like the originals that from note one, we're already banging our heads wildly.
A few folks mix it up, Untitus (whose reissued full length is listed elsewhere on this list) slows things down, unfurling a thick buzzing backdrop, letting the drums lurch in a grinding anti-funk, the vocals all sultry and slurred. Schizoid (who also has a full length reissue on this list) turns his ATR track into some howling ultradistorted blast of blackened breakcore, the drums a chaotic blur, the vocals a hateful howl, so intense and furious, so much so that it almost makes the original sound tame. Other highlights include the robotic electro of Evestus, the old school (digital) hardcore punk rock of DHC Meinhof, the skittery metallized jungle of CTRLer, the playful video game gabber of 64Revolt� It's all pretty amazing, we of course lean toward the heavier more brutal blasts of digital hardcore, but goddamn, this all still sounds so great. We've been going pretty nuts, immersing ourselves in all this amazing D-Trash stuff, it's like a nonstop breakcore dance party around here and we STILL can't get enough.
Start the riot! Delete Yourself!
Peru's biggest Paul McCartney worshippers, We All Together, came out of a community of bands in Lima that shared the same love for dreamy Beatlesque pop. Eight of the bands are collected here: Monik, Cerro Verde, Laghonia, Smog, Illicit, FE 59 and others. Chronicling singles from the Mag label recorded between 1968-1974, the songs range from original compositions to covers of songs popularized by The Doors, Malo, and Lesley Gore. All quite nice.
First off, the music IS pretty cool. If you like bombastic, progged out folk/psych symphonics (think Citay meets Six Organs) then definitely check this out, it's good! Leave aside all your preconceptions of its possible pretentiousness (a "New Weird America" tribute to the Czech New Wave of cinema) that seems like someone at Arthur Mag's wet dream, and just bask in its sheer instrumental glory, evocative of its inspiration (the 1970 celluloid cult classic Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, one of the must surreal, sexy and psychedelic "vampire" stories ever filmed, with a mystical mood quite different from, say, Vampyros Lesbos) but also free standing as a soundtrack to whatever similarly delirious imagery your imagination can conjure. Jittering strings, crashing cymbals, wordless moaning female vocals, storms of heavy-duty psychedelic guitar... grandiose and heavy, also lilting and lovely. It's done with full-on chamber rock instrumentation, which means flutes-a-twitter and harps-a-zing. Atmospheres of dusk, of ancient ritual, of your utmost acid-prog-folk-dreamings are readily achieved. Yep, pretty cool!
Onboard for this project are a bunch of well known indie rock/folk artists from the environs of Philadelphia, perhaps foremost among them Greg Weeks, a longtime AQ fave both solo and with his band Espers. Also in the band, other members of Espers, Fursaxa, Fern Knight... the whole Philly "acid folk" scene essentially.
Now, we're both fans and friends with a bunch of these folks, and in fact Aquarius was a co-sponsor (along with Drag City and Arthur Magazine, natch) of the recent Valerie Project performance at the Castro Theatre here in San Francisco. But, we can see how some might have a few issues with the whole thing. Issues? Well, as controversies go, this one's pretty minor. Some might be critical of some musicians being "arrogant" enough to make a new soundtrack to to a film that ALREADY HAS an awesome soundtrack -- especially when that soundtrack was recently released on cd to much ballyhoo (you can read our review of it elsewhere on our site if you haven't already). Heck, a lot of people probably only know about this movie because of the soundtrack. So to remake it takes some nerve. But why not? It's not like the original is being erased or something. So we don't have a problem with that. And if folks want to associate themselves with the "coolness factor" of Valerie, well that's understandable too. And like we said, the results are pretty swell.
No, it was more the actual fact of the performance that caused some qualms. There were even a couple "protesters" leafleting outside the Castro (among them, former San Francisco mayoral contender Matt Gonzalez! Hmm, you'd think he'd have other demands on his time... but that's why we like the guy, you'd never catch Gavin Newsom up to something like that!), and we can see their point. Basically, it's 'cause the film had NEVER BEFORE been screened in the United States, until now, but WITHOUT any of its original (and like we said, awesome) music, dialogue, or foley work!! You can see how some hardcore cineastes are gonna find that a tad upsetting! All this "controversy" could have been avoided had they simply ALSO shown the film in its intended form, like earlier that day or the night before or something. Heck those protesters could have pooled their dough and put it on. Oh well. Especially since the Valerie Project's "soundtrack" didn't appear to be synced shot-for-shot with the action in the film anyway, perhaps another solution would to have had the band on the stage (instead of hidden in the orchestra pit), with scenes from Valerie projected over them as an imagistic backdrop, presenting it as a rock show, instead of as a legitimate screening of the movie, a move that you'll otherwise never get to see in a theater. Anyway, such quibbling has little to do with the worth of this album, which we like quite a bit!
This is certainly an unexpected surprise! Caetano Veloso's misunderstood experimental outing from 1972 (the same year he returned to Brazil following a three year exile in London, and recorded the mostly English album, Transa) prompted massive refund requests from his diehard fanbase when it was released, but has remarkably withstood the test of time. Saying that he wanted to record an album without thinking, Araca Azul is marked by exuberance as well as a kinetic sense of urgency. Wordless vocals, concrete sound effects, strange serpentine song forms that appear and dissipate, bits of orchestra, and percussive passages followed by psych-tinged rockers and sublime ballads. It's all over the map but always exciting and interesting. It may not be the best album to start with for those new to Veloso's discography, but it's becoming one of our favorites. We think perhaps Devendra Banhart listened to this a lot while recording his latest record. So Awesome!!
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 related stuff, this 7" photo book combo looks gorgeous. A 7"x7" softcover book, the cover a thick textured cream colored paper, the title embossed on the front cover, wrapped in a full color vellum obi, the text printed in metallic silver, with color photos of Wata from Boris and the members of the band sharing the split, Ai Aso. The book itself is nothing but glamour shots of the various women, full body shots, close ups of their faces, very fashion magazine looking, the pictures slightly distressed, the women posed in front of washed out colored backdrops. Strange, but heck, the pictures are quite nice, and the women are of course quite lovely, so who can complain.
But here is a 7", and presumably, that's the main reason to pick this up (right?), it features Wata and Ai Aso each doing a cover, Ai Aso cover King Crimson's "Islands" and Wata covers Masashi Kitamura's "Angel" which we had never heard (or heard of) before.
Ai Aso take "Islands" and let it unfurl softly and sweetly, a blissy dreamy drift, with hushed vocals over shimmering guitars, the drums are the focal point, way up in the mix and driving the song, almost martial at times, while at others shuffling along side the glimmering guitars. Very skeletal, but strangely lush at the same time and really quite pretty.
Don't let the fact that the flipside is credited to Wata fool you, as the lineup is essentially all of Boris, AND Michio Kurihara. So it's basically the Rainbow lineup, with the addition of some other guy playing Mellotron! The track is gentle and tranquil, a soft focus psych folk, the guitars are simply strummed, the vocals and sweet and ethereal, the percussion is essentially just a tambourine, that is until the very end, when the band launch into a slow burning psychedelic freakout, not sure if it's Wata or Kurihara, but the guitar soars majestically, howling and screeching, wailing wildly over the dreamy strum underneath. Definitely sounds like it could have come from the same sessions that produced Rainbow, which is most definitely not a bad thing.
LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES. Once these are gone we won't be able to get more.
One thing we love about this magazine of hiphop, jazz, funk and soul is the photography, and guess what, this is The Photo Issue! With Miles Davis staring out at you from the cover, and an article inside about his improvisational funk years... Also featured: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, East Bay funk, Peruvian funk, The Dragons, the Beastie Boys's Check Your Head album, and much more. Being the photo issue, many of the 186 pages of here are eyeball-pleasin' photo-essays, taking you into the early days of hiphop and other cool places.
Awwwww Weeeeeeeeen!
Love to hate 'em?
Hate to love 'em?
So dorky.
So damaged.
So fucked up.
So fun.
For the erratic Ween no musical style is out of the question nor out of their league. On La Cucaracha they unflinchingly navigate through country, reggae, blues rock, and AOR balladry. Once they catch wind of smartypants/dumbass songs like "Object", "Lullaby" and "My Own Bare Hands", Tenacious D fans might take a shine to this specific Ween album too! As usual not for everyone, but those who dig it will dig in good!
(Yes the vinyl version is insanely expensive.)
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!
Some of you must remember the Simon Wickham-Smith disc Twofordancin', a sort of out of left field blast of house-y trip hop electronica. Which threw us for a loop at first, but ended up getting crazy play in the store.
So when we heard about this new collection, a triple disc spanning 8 years, because of the title we were maybe expecting more of the same. And we got it. The opening track here, from way back in 1999, is a nearly half hour jam, all simple percussion, and house music whistle, looped and hypnotic, again it takes a second, but once you get into it, you're hooked. In the background is a thick distorted whir, there are occasional bits of strange effects and processed vocals, but for the most part it's a killer stripped down groove.
But surprisingly, that's it for the groove, the rest of disc one jumps to the 2000s, and we're back on more familiar ground. "Sealight", from 2000, is a barely moving shimmering whisper of a song, high end streaks smoothed into oceanic swells, everything glimmering and glistening, muted and minimal. Quite lovely. "The Horizontality Of Saskatchewan" (2202) is a strange gnarled guiatarscape, the riffs distorted and crumbling, sounding a bit like damaged bagpipes, or some lost Daniel Higgs jam, melodies lurching and threatening to fall apart, lots of whir and buzz, on closer listening maybe that's not a guitar but a pump organ, minimal percussion, very haunting and hypnotic. Track 4 is brand new, recorded this year, and is another super minimal dronescape, lots of glitch and click and whir, but all muted into a subtly pulsing melody, eventually building into a distorted blown out swirl of processed vocals, Eastern melodies, and thick grinding buzz.
The second disc begins with the warped warble of "Cool Memories" from 2004. a seasick backwards dreamworld of subtle buzz, mumbled voices, and a gorgeously woozy main melody. "Angels And Birds And The Coming Of Night" is the centerpiece of the second disc, recorded in 2004 as well, and clocking in at 45 minutes, an epic expanse of soft focus fuzz and billowing metallic drones, dense and lustrous, dark and dreamlike. The disc closes with 2005's "Cool Memories II", a sonic addendum to part one, the mumbled backwards swoon, now peppered with bits of glitch and smears of static.
The final disc in the set is a live set recorded earlier this year in Paris, a 48 minute stretch of high end minimalism, a flickering fluttering upper register electronic trill, oscillating endlessly, is spread out over almost the entire length of the entire performance, with subtle sonar like overtones and subtle low end throbs, until the flutter begins to fluctuate, and suddenly the track is a twisting and tangled squall of warped synth, blurred effects and processed vocals.
As always, packaged in that instantly recognizable Celebrate Psi Phenomenon wallpaper packaging. Inserts and liner notes for each disc, and as always, EXTREMELY LIMITED.
Holy shit. Doom fiends rejoice, for NWN! and BBT&D have unearthed *another* disc of rarities from the most Sabbathy of NWOBHM bands, the illustrious, infamous doom metal pioneers Witchfinder General. Like the live cd that came out last year this one is again material from the archives of original guitarist Phil Cope, who provides liner notes in the cd booklet (which is also filled with vintage photos and graphics) discussing the music herein, which consists of tracks from Witchfinder General's 1981 debut 7" single ("Burning A Sinner" b/w "Satan's Children") and their 1982 12" single Soviet Invasion (three songs: "Soviet Invasion", "Rabies", and a live one, "R.I.P."), along with four further live tracks recorded at a pub in Birmingham circa '81. The songs from the 7" and 12" are all raw, riffy, heavier-than-thou tunes bearing all the hallmarks of the material we know and love from the General's subsequent classic albums Death Penalty and Friends Of Hell. "Burning A Sinner" (which Cope mentions was often referred to as "Burning A Singer") was later re-recorded for their first full-length Death Penalty, but the other songs remained available only on those original two hard-to-find single releases -- until now. Reason enough for most Witchfinder General fans to want this! In addition, the rather rough-sounding live stuff here is a headbanging hoot, singer Zeeb Parkes charmingly and so obviously a (drunken) pupil of Ozzy's in the stage banter dep't. and vocal style too... and also they do a totally unreleased composition, "Phantasmagorical", never heard elsewhere. So definitely a bit of history there, and all the more reason that this collection of early tracks is essential for all true fans of the band and old school doom metal in general! In fact, considering that currently we can only seem to sporadically get copies of the reissue of Friends Of Hell, but never Death Penalty, this is all the more welcome of a release, being a good place as any to start for anyone keen on hearing what this cult doom band was all about.
This band was originally touted to us as being THE buzziest black metal band. So obviously we were intrigued, and you know, that wasn't all that far from the truth.
This one man band from Buffalo, is indeed a master of the buzz, and the cool thing is, while this is indeed buzzing blown out black metal, it seems like he's coming at it from a non black metal background, which might be why this sounds so unique. Barring a few breakdowns, and various stretches of propulsive riffing, most of the record is indeed an intense wall of buzz, so thick and fuzzed out, it's almost impossible to discern anything else going on. Drums, vocals, they sort of blur into the overall buzz, turning this record into the ultimate blackbuzzdronedisc. Incredibly hypnotic and mesmerizing, so much so that when the band locks into a riff, and locks into a buzz drenched cyclical loop, it's easy to get totally lost, the various notes shift and blend into each other, almost like some Niblock piece composed with buzzing black metal riffs. Heavy on the drone, and the repetition, a few times writing this review I even found myself totally entranced and almost drifting off. Can't think of a much better recommendation than that.
The record has song titles like "The Snowstorm" and "The Thunderstorm", and that's pretty much what this sounds like, like some intense black clouded metal storm, relentless and furious. But be sure and stick around for the final 24 minute track "Cuniculean Rampage", which begins as another blurry buzzy blast, but near the end, the riff is locked and looped and suddenly it's less a black metal record and more some strange experimental droned out noisescape, all loops and skipping stuttering digital glitches, but still weirdly heavy. A brief blast of Autechre-ized blackness. Awesome.
With music, as far as we're concerned, when it comes right down to it, it's all about the vocals and the drums. Sure bands have kick ass guitarists and amazing bass players, but the thing about singers and drummers, if they suck, they can drag down a band that is perfect in every other way, and if they are amazing, they can rescue an otherwise forgettable group. So many times, we've seen bands play live, only to have the drummer hit super soft, or play to slow or too fast or too sloppy, and remove any sort of energy or power the band would otherwise exude. Singers are worse. How often have you heard a band, and thought "Shit, this band is amazing" until the vocals come in and no matter how great the band was before, a shit vocalist makes all that moot.
In black metal, the vocals aren't as make or break, sure some folks prefer the classic demonic rasp, others the monstrous growl, still others the hysterical shriek, but for the most part, most BM vocalists fall somewhere between all three, and rare is the black metalhead who absolutely can't stand one of those...
Drums are a different matter. Black metal is all about the drums. As much as the buzzing riffage, it's the drums that define the sound, whether it's a the plodding beat of a midtempo Burzumic dirge or the blazing blast beats behind a burst of furious grimness. The strange thing is, at least around these parts, we have to redefine 'bad drummer' when we're talking about black metal. One man black metal bands are du rigeur these days, but its not uncommon to notice in the liner notes, that while that one man did everything else, some other person played the drums. That's because the guitar, the bass, those are related, synths and vocals are much easier to figure out or fake, but the drums, that black house of cards could easily tumble to the ground with terrible drumming as the foundation. But there are exceptions, and kudos to those one man bands who decide to tackle the drums themselves. In some cases it makes perfect sense, Leviathan for example, Wrest was a drummer first, so the drumming on Leviathan records is amazing. The more midtempo bands, well it's not nearly as hard to drum a simple 4/4 as it is some insanely complicated blast beat. But some groups, the drums struggle and stumble, the tempos waver, but as we mentioned above, in BM that's not always a bad thing, Graveland, Woodtemple�the sound of those bands for some reason is enhanced by the off kilter drumming, just like in some crazy artrock bands it's not about precision or perfection, it's about feel and emotion, and a drum part that is stumbling wildly is sometimes way more suitable than a super straight locked in rhythm.
So what the fuck does this all have to do with the new Xasthur record? Well, if you must know, it's that Defective Epitaph is the first Xasthur record to feature real drums. No more programmed drums, this is the sound of Malefic behind the kit, and while the sound is different, it's not half bad. In fact if anything it makes the sound more raw, more live, due in no small part to the murky lo-fi production. The drums definitely have that sort of rehearsal space quality to them, but they do suit Xasthur's murky muddy soundworld. And there's only one track that requires a serious blast beat and even then it's only briefly before the song reverts back to a loping dirge.
But beyond the drums, Defective Epitaph is just another step in Malefic's slowly evolving descent into darkness. All of the usual sounds are present. And a quick listen, you probably wouldn't be hard pressed to immediately pick this out as a Xasthur disc. But it's not just the drums, or the presence of real cello, also played by Malefic, the songs are generally slower, the chords more dissonant, sometimes to the point of sounding detuned. It's almost as if Xasthur is transforming from a black metal band into a funeral doom band. Which is definitely not a bad thing.
"Purgatory Spiral" on first listen was really atonal, and the most out of tune sounding of the batch, but repeated listens reveal some strange masterplan, the music becoming more twisted and gnarled, more woozy and sick than out of tune. The cello moaning way down in the mix, the drums a super simple plod. "Cemetery Of Shattered Masks" is more classically Xasthur sounding, but the recording is really strange, cavernous, very much like a rehearsal recording, not just the drums, as if everything was recorded on a single mic in the corner of the room. Once again, it's not bad, just strange, but like the rest of the disc, it grows on you, taking on a sort of washed out blurred vibe as if the record was recorded by Tim Hecker or something. Then there's "Malignant Prophecy", which launches out of the gate thick and distorted and corrosive, the guitars loud and crumbling, again slightly atonal, but heavy and thick, until about halfway through, where it reverts back to that booming practice space sound, as if two separate tracks were pasted together. Weird but still pretty cool. And actually a lot of the record sounds like that, as if maybe all the tracks were super raw and lo-fi, recorded with a few mics, but then some got guitar overdubs adding that super intense buzzing immediacy.
There are long stretches of near ambience, and moody murky interludes, and even bits of the song proper change in timbre and sound like haunting breakdowns, the cello, sounds less classical and more like an abrasive drone, but it suits the rawness of the overall sound.
This record has been pretty polarizing. Lots of folks have absolutely hated it, lots of folks love it. It seems hard to believe if you were a fan of Xasthur, that you could totally hate it, but it is weird, and definitely takes some warming up to. For us, since we're into the damaged and demented, the fucked and far out, well if anything, this Xasthur record is more of all of those things, so it's probably easier for us get into. But folks of a similar mind will most likely feel the same. Nocturnal Poisoning may still be our favorite Xasthur record ever. Subliminal Genocide might be a close second. But Defective Epitaph, while currently in third, is just fucked up and unique enough that it might move up to second any time now�
We do carry the Hydra Head version, but the Daymare Japanese import version comes with an entire extra disc of unreleased tracks, nearly 40 minutes! So we figured anyone into Xasthur would probably want the extra disc as well. So here it is, five tracks, all unreleased, a couple alternate early versions of songs on the record proper, a couple untitled tracks, a pretty cool sort of coda to the record. From a long drawn out doomy synthscape, to a classic old school buzzing Burzumic dirge, complete with chanting monk like vocals and a killer overblown riff, to an epic buzzing black doom jam, that morphs from creepy crawl to blasting buzz�It's cool to hear some of the alternate versions, with the fucked up edits, and weird segues, all left in (hence the subtitles "First Attempt", "Second Attempt").
As with all Daymare releases, the packaging is gorgeous, a miniature lp style gatefold, Japanese obi, and a foldout insert with tons of liner notes (all in Japanese).
What we're about to say, we don't say lightly. Trust us. We may traffic in hyperbole. And our shelves may be stuffed with lots of 'best evers' and 'worst evers' and 'greatest evers', but this friends, is quite possibly the weirdest record we've ever carried. When we first threw it on, we were immediately struck with the realization, that what we were hearing, was either the most amazing thing we had ever heard, or absolutely the worst piece of shit EVER. Andee quickly decided on the former. And no matter how hard he tried, or how many repeated listens he was subjected to, Allan is sticking with the latter. But the more we play this in the store, the more the tribe of Xynfonica worshippers grows, Antaeus, Matt, Cameron, one can only handle a few listens before you're forever in its thrall. We're not sure how Allan does it, maybe there's some sort of chip in his brain, or maybe he's not really human at all, who knows. What we do know is we will wear him down, and just like you, faithful yet doomed reader of this list, he will eventually bow down to the damaged glory that is Xynfonica.
By now you're probably wondering what the fuck we're on about. Fair enough. So let's go back a bit. Not sure how we first heard about Xynfonica, but we got the disc in, it had an amazing cover, an old painting of some ancient battle, men on horseback, wielding swords, the record title: A Feast For Famished Ravens, song titles like: "From Your Father's Skull" and "The Viking Zodiac", a huge booklet jammed with more lyrics than could possibly fit in the three songs here, there are even footnotes!!! So we still hadn't listened to it, but we were pretty much sold already.
So we finally threw it on, and were greeted with some strange synthesizers, guitar synthesizers to be specific (we later discovered) and a growled demonic vocal, the synths, sort of atonal and detuned, like a demented Peter And The Wolf, the vocals, a strangled black metal rasp, so okay, we're thinking, a cool weird intro, so we waited for the band to kick in, and waited, and waited, and waited some more, scanned forward� So then we thought, okay, maybe the whole first track is the intro, so we skipped to the second track, which of course started with the raspy vocals and the seasick synths, but we gave it the benefit of the doubt and waited and waited, scanned forward, and then it dawned on us. HOLY SHIT. This was the band. There were no drums, no guitarist. It was just some trollish demon and his damaged synth, spewing endless tales of mysterious battles and lost civilizations. And suddenly, it had us. Xynfonica. Sure it's creepy and demented, and borderline retarded, and the synths sometime sound so wrong it makes us dizzy, so 'off' it makes our eyes water, the melodies are demented, alien, creepy ominous one second, bouncing cheerfully the next, but always those vocals, an everpresent demon storyteller, it's hard to explain exactly why we're so taken, but we are. Every time we play this, initial reactions range from confusion, to hysterical laughter, to anxiety to sheer unadulterated joy. Imagine if Jandek was the keyboard player in a black metal band and decided to make a solo record, or imagine Mr. Roger's neighborhood but Mr. Rogers is out sick, so the dude from Abruptum is filling in, or imagine the music files from some medieval video game getting corrupted, and then used as the intro music for some evil metal band. Well you know, what? There's no need to imagine. It's all right here. Xynfonica will give you all of that and more. With just a rudimentary grasp of the synthesizer, and a frog in his throat, all will be revealed, and we shall all revel in his stumbling, confusional musical brilliance.
Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica. Xynfonica...
It might be unfair (though easy) to lump Richard Youngs' recent output into the trendy category that lately has been swallowing all music that includes singing and acoustic instruments, namely "freak folk" (or "acid folk" or whatever you want to call it, you know what we mean). On Autumn Response Youngs is hardly singing the music of "the people", nor is he making conscious efforts to associate his music with that of past artists and traditions of his native British Isles. Instead, the lyrics suggest a solitary imagination, isolated and introspectively afoot in a landscape (the further journeys of a 'summer wanderer'?). His song structures are simple and atmospheric...mantra-like..built around emotive, hypnotic, doubled vocal tracks that become vertiginous at times with repeating riffs on acoustic guitar. The affecting, pastoral melodicism and minimalist structuring of these songs gives the impression that Youngs has combined the talents of the great Roy Harper with the methodologies of folk guitar experimentalist Steffen Basho-Junghans, perhaps.
Like most of Youngs' recent records on Jagjaguwar, this one is constructed with a limited set of 'rules' (instruments, production effects, etc.) which makes the record less a collection of songs and more a cohesive single work evolving through its various parts until arriving at the 16+ minute closer, "Something Like Air". It's something all right, and it's breathtaking, as is so much of this lovely, lovely album.
Another killer hard rock reissue from the UK's Rock Candy label. See elsewhere on the list for the other one, the legendary debut, and only release from SF's own Sea Hags, a classic slab of gritty hard rock glam brilliance. But this one, this one is something extra special.
Some of you might remember a short lived musical movement in the eighties in the UK, affectionately called Grebo. A bunch of greasy bastards (which is where the name came from supposedly), in leather and spikes, long hair, wielding big guitars, even bigger riffs, and singing songs about sex and drugs, and well, yeah, rock and roll. Some other Grebo bands included Pop Will Eat Itself and Crazyhead but it was Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction who carried the Grebo torch most proudly. The lineup: Zodiac Mindwarp, Cobalt Stargazer, Flash Bastard, Thrash D. Garbage and Slam Thunderhide, the sound, equal parts glam rock, seventies hard rock, and obviously lots and lots of camp and theater.
This is over the top, wild and wooly heavy metal rock and roll. As much about getting laid and getting high as it is rocking. And it shows in the songs. "Backseat Education", "Bad Girl City", but it's the opening track, the kick ass "Prime Mover" that was there biggest hit, and definitely their best song. Beginning with a goofy messianic bout of testifying some sort of utter nonsense, but when that main riff kicks in, you're hooked. Thankfully the rest of the record is just as kick ass. Every track a perfect little pop song, wrapped in glammed out riffs, sing along choruses, wild leads, and killer drumming.
This is another one of those records, that isn't weird or fucked up enough to appeal to anyone other than folks who dig this kind of shit. So we won't try to convince dronenerds or popkids, or avant garde elitists to check it out. But anyone into glammy, punky, hooky hard rock and roll will go nuts for this, that is if they weren't already waiting for the reissue anyway. Just check out the sound samples, you'll know in a matter of seconds if you're the kind of greasy bastard this stuff was meant for.
As with all the Rock Candy reissues, the packaging and presentation are amazing. If only ALL reissues were this well done. Jewel case wrapped up in a full color slipcase. Bonus tracks, all the 12" B-sides, tons of photos, extensive liner notes, interviews with Zodiac himself, as well as an extensive band history.
