There's been a spurt of awesome old film soundtracks for awesome old films coming through our door in the last while -- Daisies, Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders, Blood On Satan's Claw, Bedazzled, The Hindenberg, and now this one! The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T! Not MR. T, mind you, as one customer thought! Hahaha, that would be a whole 'nother bizarre thing, wouldn't it? Nope, this is a children's movie musical from 1953, but it's one of the most enchantingest dream AND disturbingest nightmare kids' films ever. Makes total sense when you discover that the man behind it was noneother than Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss!!!).
Quite prim and tame by today's standards, but there's still some stretches that are downright disturbing and bizarre. For those unfamiliar with it, long story short, the tale centers around a young boy learning to play piano. As one might expect, the soundtrack is quite heavy on the tickling of ivories, but you'll also be swept up in sumptuous '50s orchestral and marching band numbers as well as parts of the storyline sung in loopy Dr. Seussian rhymes. Don't miss the "Elevator Song" and "Dressing Song Do-Me-Do Duds" (you might recall The Simpsons' Mr. Burns doing a rendition of that one!). A deliriously twee delight that's not just for kids.
We'd been hearing about this band quite a bit, often touted by reviewers as being "the loudest band in New York", which is all well and good, but that sort of thing generally doesn't translate very well on record. What we can tell you, is that more than any band we've heard in ages, these guys have their My Bloody Valentine, Loop, Spacemen 3, Jesus And Mary Chain chops down pat. But before you get all exasperated as we would be likely to do, we do realize that the bands who actively rip off some or all of those bands couldn't be counted on your fingers even if you had a thousand hands. And most of those bands steal the sound, but then have no idea what to do with it anyway. And most of them don't even get the sound right.
So it's definitely saying a lot, when we can say that, yes, these guys owe EVERYTHING they have to MBV and Jesus And Mary Chain and Loop and Spacemen 3 but still manage to totally rule. And somehow, they manage to make all of this borrowing sound totally fresh and original and exciting, and loud and heavy and like they just might have made our new favorite record.
From the first track these guys have it nailed. Murky, fuzzy, lo-fi, super blown out, with a weird buzzy guitar sound, wrapped around an almost gothy Interpol-ish bassline and keyboard melody, but when the vocals came in we were immediately transported to Psychocandy era Jesus And Mary Chain, the vocals and melodies and even the drums buried beneath clouds of billowing crumbling distortion. The second track is even more in-the-red and distorted, a crashing wave of dissonant guitars, that gives way to some almost Stereolab like Neu!-worship, and some sing songy indie boy vocals, which of course are summarily crushed by the moaning massive bursts of guitar fury and what sounds like bleating horns in the chorus.
"To Fix The Gash In Your Head" begins with sputtering drum machine and is quickly ensconced in thick minor key swells all dramatic and gothy, and the other distinct side of the band is revealed, a sort of super charged extra heavy Depeche Mode, which is in no way a bad thing. But on this track especially, the vocals are super Dave Gahan, with some industrial Skinny Puppy-isms thrown in for good measure, but still the heart of the song is a throbbing synthy new wave. And it sounds amazing!
Later tracks veer from swirling washed out wall of sound dronerock, to murky doom pop, to super eighties John Hughes soundtrack electro-pop, to grungy distorted Grebo, to throbbing Joy Division miserablism, to rocking Swervedrivery shoegaze, to shimmering glimmering M83 blisspop, but always liberally doused with waterfalls of coruscating white light guitars, sheets of roiling feedback, massive walls of buzz and hiss. Noisy and chaotic and furious and epic but always with a heart of pure pop and a halo of washed out guitar shimmer. So great.
One of our favorite purveyors of what we've taken to calling FLOORcore (short for crouched-on-the-floor-core), the constantly evolving genre, which is marked by live shows featuring performers on their knees, surrounded by a kitchen junk drawer's worth of equipment, coaxing all sorts of noises from a battered assemblage of broken effects pedals, old synths, and homemade noisemaking devices.
Acre tends to weave all of his random noisemakers into gorgeous undulating walls of slow shifting drone, and on this two track 7", he does just that, but in dramatically different ways.
The A side is a creeping, thick, gnarled, grinding, looped, hypnotic, crumbling and superdistorted glacial riff, not sure if it's guitar or synth, but either way it sounds like sonic tar, it oozes and shifts and grinds and creeps, a thick black mass, a deep filthy doom-ed drone. It's the kind of sound we could listen to forever. Pretty sure that if we had this on cd, we'd just set it to repeat and listen to nothing else for a month!
The flipside is a dense slab of that sort of vacuum cleaner / hair dryer high end drone, upper register tones drifting in a field of ringing feedback and blurred white noise. The intensity builds and builds as if one at a time, some new appliance was being added to the mix, like a department store gone haywire, the result though is a very dreamy Sunroof!-like mighty high end ur-drone. Super minimal but with close listening strangely ultra maximal, with all sorts of stuff going on within the layered skree.
Packaged in cool white on yellow hand screened sleeves. Pressed on thick white vinyl with yellow labels, and of course VERY VERY LIMITED, ONLY 300 COPIES...
Geez, if only we still had our Fisher Price record player, this opaque guacamole-green 7" would look so good spinnin' there in our bedroom this dark winter's eve. The music on this new Agent Ribbons record is as delightfully darling as that thought... except maybe carpet the floor with cushy moss, blanket the bed with a patchwork of gingham and string blossoming ivy from the nightstand. Oh and sprinkle the whole lot with twinkling pixie dust. Those who were charmed by this Sacramento duo's enchanted folk pop debut album On Time Travel And Romance last year won't wanna miss Ms Natalie and Ms Lauren's two new tunes. Plus they've found the perfect matching offkilter bewitching maven to do the cover art, Dame Darcy! Sure to tickle pink fans of Jolie Holland, Ditty Bops, Coco Rosie, and y'know what? We'd bet Agent Ribbons would be a favorite of Astrid Lindgren's irrepressible storybook heroine Pippi Longstocking too.
By the way, this is the first installment of the Seven Inch Project. Yup, it's a brand new series of very limited edition 7"s being released by some cool folks down in Long Beach, CA. Only 500 records of each edition will be pressed on hefty 70 gram colored vinyl, packaged in impressive sturdy gatefold sleeves, and hand-numbered. Truly a joy to hold and admire in your hands and in your ears. Oh and each one comes with an mp3 download passcode for all you newfangled types. So hop to it!
Final release from longtime aQ favorites Ashes, a one man black metal band from the UK, whose particular brand of metal was decidedly damaged and demented. But a lot has changed in the 2+ years since Hymn To A Grey Sky. Here's how we described that record:
Weird warbly melancholy acoustic guitars, wavering keyboard ambience, totally fucked up drumming, spastic and stumbling, totally damaged drum programming, all wrapped in a blissed out stumbling black metal buzz, and topped off with some of the most fucked up vocals EVER, a guttural, super processed, creepy insectoid gurgle.
Sounds good. It is good. In fact one of our favorite discs on the always kick ass Supernal label. But here we are a few years on, and while many of those elements are still present in Ashes' sound, it's not nearly as fucked up or freaked out, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just different.
The opening track is a chunk of lilting acoustic folk, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, fluttering flute, a very dark and dreamy intro, until track two kicks in, and we're off! The rest of the record is a series of buzzing midtemo blasts of Burzumic lope, super simple riffs, the drums equally simple, pounding relentlessly, the vocals a more traditional demonic rasp, that sometimes turns into more of a hissy shriek, and even occasionally a Viking-like croon, in the background keyboards soar majestically, the melodies grandiose and epic, and thankfully the drums still have a bit of stumble in them, and the riffs seem to always break into a more dynamic weird sort of chug, before resuming their droning buzz. A gorgeous buzzing soundworld of foresty blackness, very reminiscent of Woodtemple and Graveland, but even more stripped down and simple.
And then there's the last song. Which sounds like NOTHING on the rest of the record, but is so weird and epic and doomy and gorgeously fucked up, we sort of wish there was a whole record of stuff like this. The drums a slow motion plod, the guitars not so much riffing as a constant blackened blur, thick whirring rumbling distorted bliss, totally washed out and dreamy, and so so so divinely droney. Then the vocals, a soaring clean croon, not growly or evil in the least, totally melodious and epic, singing a gorgeous hook, buried in the mix. Folks into all that new shoegaze black metal will go nuts for this track, almost worth it just for the one song alone, even though the rest of the record is pretty fantastic.
This marks the final release by Ashes, who are as of now defunct, but let's hope the man behind Ashes is working on new music, and let's hope it sounds like this final chunk of black bliss.
Usually, on Aidan Baker's solo records, the list of instruments almost doesn't matter in terms of the actual music. Voice, flute, whatever, Baker tends to smear and blur all of the various pieces into one fluid and gently flowing organic whole. Even in Nadja, his doom metal duo, the guitars are rendered fairly un-guitar like. Instead, the riffs are delivered as huge swaths of molten granulated sound. On Scalpel, his latest solo record, guitar is again the main instrument, but unlike most of the time with Baker, you can actually hear the guitar, and it sounds, well, like a guitar. In fact the first two tracks, the shortest of the five, sound almost like pure folk music, albeit a dark and minimal and lugubrious folk. The guitars wispy and ethereal, chords gently strummed, melodies softly fingerpicked, Baker's voice a gruff whisper. Quite lovely, but surprisingly straight ahead, reminding us of Loren Connors or Hisato Higuchi, a dark languorous folky shimmer, the only hint of Baker's penchant for sound processing, at least in the first two songs is the blur of shortwave interference separating the tracks, a woman's voice, hissy white noise, but it quickly subsides and the sound dials back down to a dreamlike crawl.
The last three tracks, all well over 10 minutes, seem to have the same root, that soft shimmery folk, but here's where Baker's deft hand and soundscaping and sound processing finally surfaces. "Our Needs Bear No Relation To Our Desires" is a slow gentle strum, the various overtones gradually building into moody swells, eventually joined by bits of textural grit, muted buzz, what almost sounds like field recordings, but it's all very subtle, the focal point still that lonely minor key melody, marching resolutely forward through a fuggy dreamlike haze. "Indifference" also begins with a lilting folksy strum, but is also soon nearly subsumed by dizzying whirls of sound, subtle backwards sonic swoops, fuzzy smears of effects, turning that heart of folk into something much more glimmering and glittering. And finally, "Drawn Like A Moth, Slip Like A Snail", returns, mostly, to the unadorned folk of the opening two tracks, another gorgeously drawled, barely audible vocal line, and a lovely main melody, but for its entire 11+ minutes, the guitar and vocal lines drift in an gauzy expanse of humid minimal whir and soft focus high end flutter, various bits of vocal flecked with FX and occasional bits of backwards blur.
Yet another beautiful Aidan Baker disc, and while this one will of course appeal to the Baker / Nadja faithful, it just might hit the spot for dark freek folk fans as well�
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!! Each one hand numbered. Gorgeously packaged, fold over die cut sleeve, silver metallic ink on maroon textured paper, a black and white insert / cover image visible through the diecut.
Whoops, here's something we shoulda reviewed already but as you can imagine we get a bit swamped here. Chances are, if you're a fan of this up-and-coming metal band from Georgia (as we certainly are, along with many AQ customers) you already picked up this excellent new album on Relapse when it came out a couple months ago. But if you didn't, or aren't familiar with Baroness to begin with, let's rectify that situation with a brief write-up.
This is actually the very first full-length album from Baroness, who have previously teased us with ep-length or split releases only. Since they're one of the best American underground metal acts going (hence Relapse's interest in 'em), anticipation for the Red Album was high, and it's absolutely no disappointment. Baroness are a state-of-the-art (and we do mean art) band that's both extreme and eclectic, combining (as always) modern metalcore tech, stoner riffage, Southern sludge groove, "true" traditional metal shredding, and post-rock loveliness in one brutal, beautiful package. Press play on track one and you're in for a surprise, as things start off deceptively mellow and pretty. You wouldn't even know they were a metal band at first... but it DOES get a lot heavier though, right quick. Reminding us a bit of another AQ fave, Torche, the Red Album showcases a poppier Baroness for sure, but one that still kicks ass with their usual sinewy, old school axe attack and Maideny dual guitar harmonies. Just imagine the spawn of a hypothetical mating between post-rockers Explosions In The Sky and headbangers Skeletonwitch! Pretty much an essential purchase for fans of the likes of Mastodon, High On Fire, Isis, Pelican... but you know that 'cause you probably already bought one...
Now available on vinyl! And super limited. Each record hand designed and painted by handicapped adults in an art program, much like Creativity Explored here in San Francisco. Gorgeous, ultra personal one of a kind designs for a super pretty record. Here's our review of the cd:
The Black Swans third stop in the land of indie record labels is the appropriately named La Societe Expeditionnaire. Their music traverses the shadowed terrain between Tindersticks and Bob Dylan -- particularly in Noel Sayre's slow moody fiddle creep and Jerry DiCicca's vocal inflection. More rugged than the former, less travelled than the latter, and more raw and fierce than either. You might recall this Bay Area band's last two fine pit-of-despair releases the full length Who Will Walk In The Darkness With You? and the Sex Brain cdep which came out on Delmore and Bwatue respectively, but are unfortunately now out of print.
But you shan't despair too much once you get yer paws on this new one because Change! packs its own deep, dark, earthen wallop. The electric guitars slash at the handwringing of the strings, then melt into snaking melodic streams. A gripping listen.
Yeah, we know that this Japanese import dvd+cd set isn't cheap, unfortunately. But we also know that a few of you are died-in-the-wool Boredoms fans who are gonna want it regardless. And it IS pretty cool of course. The dvd portion (NTSC, all-region, 65 minutes) features a full show filmed live in San Francisco, we mean Sun Flancisco, at The Independent back in May of 2005. Several of us here attended that show and this DVD lives up to our cherished memories of that night, a fantastic display of the Boredoms' current psychedelic, rhythmic power. If you haven't seen 'em lately, the lineup here is bandleader/vocalist Eye Yamataka on various electronics and weirdness, alongside not one, not two, but three drummers (ATR, Yoshimi, and Yochan), pounding away. Andee, who participated in the Boredom's 77 drummer Boredrum extravaganza in Brooklyn last summer, says this is a similar piece to the one they played then, minus 74 drummers, but still pretty much the bomb.
The DVD starts off backstage, actually, with the Boredoms, friends, and kids hanging out, then moves to the show itself. At first it's all dark but for some blurry, colorful, moving light-spots and initially we wondered, is this what the whole thing is gonna look like? We wouldn't put it past 'em. But after about five minutes the scene comes into focus, the show having begun with Eye doing a bizarre ritualistic dance with intense sound-making electric "lighting balls" held in each hand. And then it's off to the races, as the drummers attack their kits and do their best to send the Boredoms' special vibrations to the far ends of the cosmos.
The other disc found in this lavishly designed, bright orange package is an audio cd. It's only about twelve minutes long, but what a great 12 minutes (11:40 to be precise)!! Billed as "Yamataka Eye Original Breakbeats" there's two new tracks here, "U-bus" and "Relerer" and both are definite percussive party-pleasers... if your party digs the freaky Bore-tronics, that is!
We recently discovered this little label in Germany called Gruenrekorder, who specialize in "Phonography and Audio Art" which translates to field recordings, turntablism and audio installations, which definitely sounded right up our alley. We then discovered that they had 60 or 70 releases, probably more by the time of this review, most cd-r's and all incredibly limited, usually to 50 or less. Yikes. Had to do some quick thinking, so we picked two of the most promising sounding and got a bunch of those (a bunch meaning 25 copies, which is half of the pressing). So elsewhere on this list you'll find the other Gruenrekorder release, a field recording of bats (and you know our love of bats is second only to our love of frogs!), which somehow seems to perfectly balance this one right here, a live recording of a sound installation for turntables, records and... plastic angels.
The set up goes like this, a bunch of turntables, all set up on a small dais, each with a plastic angel spinning in the middle of the lp, and each angel with a weight hung between its wings, which shifts with each rotation, and causes various loops to alter, drift, shift, change duration, overlap, all the while, Brandstifter, the man responsible, crawls around moving the angels, replacing the records, changing speeds, the result is pretty magnificent, a looped hypnotic soundscape of operatic voices, fluttering flutes and fiddles, droning whirs, hiccupping song snippets, skipping stuttering rhythms, the vibe very festive, as most of the discs are choral, the voices locked into hypnotic mantras, the various cracks and skips adding percussive filigree. Some passages are epic and triumphant, voices soaring, while others are murky and mumbled, sounding like they could have been yanked from some mysterious Finnish free folk record or from some blurred Philip Jeck turntable landscape.
Haunting and eerie, like some damaged funhouse mirror holiday soundscape, Christmas carols twisted and gnarled, holiday favorites scratched up and looped, bits of opera looped into fuzzy repetitive seasick mantras, you can almost imagine some Tim Burton-ish mad scientist armed with a bunch of dusty scratched up records and weird old fashioned turntables and all those painted angels, hovering in a dark cobwebby corner of some old seventies mall, families and children steering clear of the crazy man in the corner and his murky muddy choral din. SO AWESOME!!!
Beautifully packaged, printed cd-r, full color sleeve, but again, LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! So once these are gone, that's it...
Andrew Chalk has long been one of our favorite drone composers here at Aquarius Records (if not THE favorite!!!). Even though Mr.Chalk has been busy releasing cds in recent years, Goldfall (from early 2006) was actually the last new piece of work that this master of the drone had produced until this one, Time Of Hayfield. His work is slowly shifting toward a brightly cast sensibility, even as he continues to emply soft focus impressionism of his ringing overtones and dynamic vibrations. Again, as on Goldfall, Chalk employs the talents of Vikki Jackman on the piano as some of the source material here. The airy, ethereal ambience of Chalk's drones shimmer as if they were the reflections of the sun striking the windswept body of water of your choice. For us, it would obviously be the cold waters off the Northern California coast; but for Mr. Chalk living in the northeast of England, it's the North Sea. There's something bitingly cold about this album; but the slippery icy drones that evolve and tumble in their organic cycles enjoy a beauty so profound as to ameliorate anything threatening and hostile. A beautiful, airy, and meditative drone record.
As with all of his self-released records on Faraway Press, the packaging is as immaculate as the sounds within; but there's a twist to the packaging. Chalk printed at least six different covers, each with a replication of a pastoral painting depicting some vintage slice of British country life. All are very nice, so there's no reason to fret!
When it rains, it pours. And when Finland's Circle is concerned, there certainly has been no drought of releases lately. Fine with us though, we say bring it on! Last list, we reviewed their excellent new live disc, Rakennus. We mentioned that there was *another* live release upcoming, and this is it. Dare we ask, do you need another live Circle album so soon? Silly question. And Telescope IS quite a bit different from Rakennus. While that cd documented an hour-long show recorded on Circle's 2007 US tour, Telescope contains an epic 131 minutes of music, spread over two cds, captured in 2003 at a show in Wurzburg, Germany. And it's all looong tracks, several of 'em jams in the 20-30 minute range, which means there's only six individual tracks here (three per disc) as compared to the eight songs found on the single disc Rakennus. Circle's lineup of four years ago is the same as it is now, but the material they're doing here differs somewhat. Maybe it's 'cause they were playing in Germany, but the "krautrock" side of Circle (as opposed to, say, their "metal" side) is to the fore here. Total jammed-out space rock grooves in the usual ultra hypnotic, ultra repetitive, trance-inducing Circle tradition. The air is thick with amped-up psychedelic guitar textures, some of this recalling Spacemen 3, or more accurately, since it's heavier than that, Loop.
At moments you'll think you've stepped back in time into a San Francisco '60s hippie ballroom concert (or krautrock commune)... at others you'll be surprised by the angular, garage-rock guitar shards flying from the stage. Much of this is totally flowers and beads pretty, while some of it breaks into a dervish frenzy. Circle's cyclical riffs and beats are certainly in full effect, and due to the happily stretched-out durations of these songs, the band can really develop shifting patterns of their seemingly endless pulsations... also having many minutes to build from spaciously mellow, minimalist meandering to more urgent, energetic explosions. We can only imagine that being in attendance at this concert, if you really let yourself get into it, would have resulted in some sort of altered state of consciousness, time slowing down or even seeming to stop completely. What, it's over already?? Some "Circle-casualties" might never snap out of it, spending the rest of their days in a head nodding daze, communicating with others only in an approximation of Circle vocalist Mika Ratto's nonsensical but beautious babble... And if this happens to YOU as a result of purchasing Telescope, consider it money well spent!
As far as we can tell, most of the tracks are exclusive to Telescope, being previously unreleased/unrecorded compositions or improvisations, while the couple we do recognize are derived from their album Guillotine, which was Circle's current studio release in 2003. And on the final, 33 minute mega encore track "Kaare", Circle is joined by a special guest, from the German psych rock bands Sula Bassana and Zone Six, on "space bass". Not that they need any help in that department...
FYI this is limited to 1000 copies, not to be repressed... we got 100 and that's it.
NWOFHM. That's what it says on the inside of the cd booklet, in big bold letters. NWOFHM? WTF? If you don't get the joke, explaining it won't help, but here goes: New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. Our Finnish friends Circle are apparently referencing the famed NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) that took the rock world by storm circa 1979, giving us Saxon, Angel Witch, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Venom, Samson, and many many many more. What's that got to do with the Can and Neu! pulsed space/prog/post-rock normally practiced by Circle?? Well Circle fans know that these guys have indeed established their very own trademark "circular" sound (repetitive, rhythmic, looping, hypnotic rock) that, whirlpool-like, pulls in all sorts of influences, from the aforementioned Krautrock forefathers to jazz and dub and lo-fi drone improv and, yes, metal. When you get a new Circle album, you kinda both know what to expect *and* never know what to expect. Well we'll tell you about Circle's latest studio effort, Tulikoria. In part, it's Circle donning the leather and spikes (metaphorically, perhaps, though they do threaten to do so for real live on stage at their show in San Francisco THIS FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2nd, THAT'S TONIGHT IF YOU'RE READING THIS THE DAY WE SENT OUT THIS LIST!! SO GET DOWN THERE!!). Ahem. Circle's love of metal, specifically the true, traditional heavy metal of the '80s, has borne fruit before, on several of the songs from their amazing Sunrise album released in 2002 (sadly now out of print). So, the heavy metal component present on Tulikoira is precedented in the Circle discog. But, like Sunrise, this isn't just Circle "doing metal". It's a lot of other things besides! Nobody will confuse it for an "actual" metal album. But heavy metal is definitely, proudly an element here, amongst others. And graphically, too, it's an inspiration, as you'll see from Circle's new fangled, tough-looking symmetrical logo, which even incorporates a lightning bolt!
There's four tracks here, starting with "Rautakaarme", an atmospheric seven-minute cut featuring monkish chant, eerie drone, and energetic bursts of rock action. Second track "Tulilintu" is *entirely* active and energetic, really bringing in the headbanging, fist-pumping metal, complete with guitar leads and soaring screams in the manner of Rob Halford. Seriously. The lyrics are in Finnish (presumably) so we don't know how tongue-in-cheek-or-not they are. Track three, "Berserk", is kinda weird, another atmospheric exercise with some lines in English like "I'm a scorpion" and "I'm a crocodile" spoken over rather spooky, bass-heavy grooves. A lot of tension in this one. Could almost be a noirish film soundtrack from the '70s, but with additional "circular" electric guitar riffing. Then the final track "Puutiikeri" arrives, pretty much taking over the album since it's an epic 24 minute affair, beginning and ending with authentic heavy metal riffing, but journeying far and wide in-between. Creaky improv splatter, lush keyboards, gently whispering vocals, spacey electronic effects, chugging, pulsating rhythms (of course!), and even some quasi-techno beats (!) are stirred into this weird mix. Ranging in mood from calm tranquility to flat out rockin', this is a real trip, as is all of Tulikoira. If you've been following Circle's output in recent years, and rolling with all their eccentricies, from Sunrise to Guillotine to Forest to Empire, you'll be happy to add Tulikoria to your collection too!
Okay, so we have to admit that the first time we listened to this album, a customer was playing the Rastan game at the front of the store. The music from both sources somehow got enmeshed and became one crazy adventure soundtrack!
On its own, Cloud Archive's first album Left The Bright Opening... has its own fair share of epic dynamics. The band draws from some very familiar instrumental post rock traditions -- the loud/quiet bursts, the hypnotic cyclical guitar and basslines -- but they avoid the obstacles of triteness and redundancy. Sometimes it seems like the guitars are escaping in a getaway car separate from the rest of the band, but hang on tight, they weave and roam and find each other again. A terrific debut.
Eschewing the "less is more" aesthetic of most DIY outfits, local SF-based duo Coconut has made an ambitiously beautiful lo-fi debut, comprising of not just one album but three. This would be a big gamble for most bands, but with Coconut, it seems to make sense. You see, Coconut has long been the side project of visual artist and drummer Colter Jacobsen, who also has played in bands Window Window and Steeple Chase and multi-instrumentalist, Tomo Yosuda who is a member of both Tussle and Hey Willpower. Recording at home over a period of three years, Coconut has been the kitchen sink for all the ideas they haven't been able to place in their various other projects: Deconstructed Appalachia guitar, melancholic pop, pretty long-form experimental electronic compositions, disembodied vocals, musique concrete, druggy rhythm excursions, and sprightly angular guitar anthems. It's all here but with a solid consistency throughout that doesn't seem like it's a bunch of one-off ideas. Sort of like Deerhoof meets Gastr Del Sol.
The first of the three discs, Rain, is about 29 minutes, and it's perfect for a rainy day with shimmering electronics, percolating percussive elements and acoustic guitar with far off drifting vocals. Cocoanut (note the added a) is the second disc and is the most far out experimentally especially with the nearly 13 minute electronic mindmelt centerpiece "Dubbud". Running at about an hour, it is also the longest of the three. While the third disc, Hello Fruity, is about 30 minutes and is the most song-oriented, featuring guest appearances from members of Tarentel and Deerhoof. Part overview and part artwork, this 3 cd set is housed in a handmade triple folded cardboard stock with spray painted stenciled images of clouds, crescent moon, and lemon drops and includes a folded insert of drawings and credits. Conceived as half a box set, with another 3 cd set in the works, so that both sets put together will comprise a hand painted cardboard cube. Odd, Sweet, Beautiful, and Totally Recommended!!!!
Oh how we once were so smitten with Rivers Cuomo. There is no denying the pop brilliance of the first two Weezer records and even the first several tracks on their comeback (Green) album from several years back, but since then it's sadly been pretty downhill for the Weezer boys who have sort of sunk into 'modern rock' mediocrity. But we have to admit that recently we revisited some of the not so hot more recent Weezer records to find there are still a couple great tracks to be found amidst all that drivel. This is a collection of Rivers Cuomo's home recordings spanning from the early '90s to the present day. It's helped us remember why we fell so hard for Rivers in the first place. Earnest, humble and endearing pop songwriting captured in its most pure and simple state. We love the liner notes for each song with short little stories as Cuomo tells us how the song came to be. There are for sure a few misses (the Ice Cube cover is a serious offender!) and it's easy to imagine that folks who never dug Weezer might not like this, but if you ever had any sort of soft spot for Weezer you will find a few more treasures from the Rivers Cuomo vault to help you hold on to that faith for a little longer.
While these are songs that Dionne Warwick made famous this 1972 album could have easily been called The Dells sing Burt Bacharach as these were all songs that Bacharach wrote for Dionne. With the great producer Charles Stepney (Rotary Connection, Chess Records, Ramsey Lewis, etc.) at the helms adding his dynamic touch on arrangements complete with a full string section and a tight funk band featuring members of The Pharoahs. The Dells managed to breathe new and exciting life into songs that have been covered many times. As romantic and majestic as Bacharach originally dreamed them but with a little more raw soul underneath it all. One of the finest moments for this long standing classic Chicago soul outfit.
By the standards set by 2008 trends in experimental and avant-garde music, Roger Doyle's The Ninth Set is profoundly uncool. There's nothing to connect this electro-acoustic body of work to the drone-metal hybrids or to the forest dwelling psychedelic splatter of Finnish weirdness or even to the long-form trance induction from the high minimalists. Nope, this is a composition of dramatic plasticity, sculpted with the isolationist bunker mentality embraced by Pierre Schaeffer or Michel Chion. Perhaps that's the reason Doyle's work strikes a chord with us right now, precisely because it's so antithetical to the current streams of the avant garde (or at least the streams that pass through Aquarius).
Doyle is a composer who has enjoyed a considerable amount of notoriety from both the establishment as well as from the underground elite. He's been granted a number of high profile awards from academic types, but at the same time, he also released an album under the moniker Operating Theatre that United Dairies released back in 1981. So it doesn't come as a surprise that high praise has been granted to Doyle from all over the map; but even so, this is actually our first encounter with the man's work. At the moment, we can't say how it compares to that United Dairies record or to Oizzo No (which many have claimed to be a masterpiece, despite it's terrible title). Through the five lengthy pieces of The Ninth Set, Roger Doyle cycles through rumbling episodes of recontextualized tumult and industrial heft, with every sound recorded and presented with impeccable digital clarity. At times, his work mangles Ligetti-esque vocal chorale through timestretching DSP tricks and thick digitally swabbed crescendos of grey noise; at others plucked cords, wires, and strings congregate into an unsettled mass with opaque rumblings and seasick swells. Throughout each movement, there's plenty of pregnant interludes of relative quiet with punctations of rapidly approaching noise that halt at its peak with a razor cut to silence. Uncool, it may be; but The Ninth Set is a brilliant record.
After the gorgeous dark folk of Songs Of Grief And Solitude, Ukrainian black metallers Drudkh return to their roots, offering up a 5 song ep, with four looooong tracks of sprawling, epic, depressive, nature obsessed, foresty blackness.
Definitely the best sounding Drudkh yet, the drums are awesome, way up in the mix, the guitars soar and ring out, so mournful and majestic, the vocals too are much more intense than in the past, a raw feral roar, passionate and emotional and surprisingly musical for BM vocals. And then there's the bass, a whole new addition to Drudkh's sound, not that there wasn't bass before, but now the basslines are as crucial to the sound as the guitar parts, not just a simple thump thump thump, the bass is slippery and intricate, unfurling dense webs of complex low end, creating a thick black backdrop, so the guitars can buzz and howl, and the drums can blast wildly.
The core of the record are the first three songs, each 10+ minutes, and each a stirring sonic journey. This is the sound of dark forests, and windswept peaks, of rushing rivers and snow cloaked mountaintops, full moons and firelight. The tracks vary greatly, often in the same song, the tempos shifting effortlessly from doomy plod, to midtempo lope to furious blast, but the riffs this time, wow, so totally catchy and melodic, without losing any of the grim fury, powerful and hauntingly heartbreaking, soaring in long drawn out melodies as often as buzzing maniacally. In fact more often. The drums are way different too, sort of sloppy and chaotic, but it suits the sound, no clinical super tight blasting, but instead, the rhythms have feeling, some swing to them, letting them lurch and stumble, and work in perfect concert with the ever shifting riffage. The sound is definitely reminiscent of classic Drudkh discs like Forgotten Legends and Autumn Aurora, but revamped, and recharged, imbued with a surprising amount of drama and moodiness and emotional intensity. No more so than in the last track, the briefest of the bunch, but what a grandiose blast of epic black beauty. Beginning with acoustic guitar, it soon launches into a glorious blissy midtempo blow out, that would sound pretty good right next to some Alcest. It even has a super intense guitar lead, that wails wildly over the roiling black bliss beneath. Woah. So fucking awesome, and so recommended.
And of course, a review of Drudkh is never complete without a mention of the bands problematic politics. While they do seem somewhat removed from all that, at least musically and lyrically, focusing instead more on nature, it is worth mentioning as it is a distinct part of what they're about. We talked about it in a past review, and since we don't think we could write about it again as eloquently, here it is again.
We've been through this before with Burzum and Graveland and umpteen others, we love the music, but abhor the message. In some cases, like with Drudkh, it's easy to just enjoy the music and ignore the problematic politics, there are no printed lyrics, no fucked up song titles, just images of forests and sky and rain and darkness, a mysterious booklet with more images of trees and forests and the sky and rivers, all very mysterious and evocative. For some though, there is no ignoring the message, no matter how subtle or indirect, and the thought of giving any sort of support is unacceptable. That's perfectly fine. But for us, the music -can- transcend the message, and does at least in this case.
One of two new releases from this Portland based one man black metal project. And it's a doozy. Been playing this nonstop since we first got it. But as with a lot of black metal records, some questionable right wing politics come into play, so fair warning to those put off by those things. On Kali, that influence is subtle, especially considering the fact that the record is totally instrumental. The song titles give nothing away either, but there's a quote on the inside of the cd booklet, "Creation and destruction are one, in the eyes who can see beauty." Which also doesn't seem any more oblique and grim than text found on other black metal records. But the quote is attributed to Savitri Devi, a French writer who wrote much of trying to synthesize Hinduism and Nazism, believing Hitler was an avatar for the Hindu god Vishnu, among other problematic and bizarre beliefs. Woah. She does seem pretty fascinating, what little we've read about her, at least in a seriously fucked up way, but she was definitely a total loony, and because of her strange beliefs has become a bit of a favorite amongst neo-Nazi's, hence the quote and hence the warning.
But if you can overlook the politics, as subtle as they may be here, this record is intense and beautiful and completely epic. Three loooooooong tracks, blazing buzzing, majestic, almost orchestral black buzz, furious and frenetic, relentless and weirdly gorgeous, separated by brief droning ambient interludes, moaning cellos, deep cavernous rumbles, epic minor key swells, soaring majestic synths, crumbling distortion, a dark industrial ambience with haunting music box melodies drifting over stretches of mournful murk.
But it's the three long tracks, which make up the bulk of this disc, that really make this such essential blackness. And even referring to this as blackness is not entirely accurate, as those tracks soar, the chugging guitars and tangled melodies, the furious drumming and the super emotional melodies all whirled into an epic slab of blissed out metallic beauty. In fact, the first long track, "The Great Destroyer", sounds to us what that Alcest record would have sounded like if it was actually metal. Shoegaze-y and dreamy and blissy, but still fierce and heavy, multiple guitar lines unfurling melodic tangles that stretch heavenward, all sustained and super dramatic, the drums a non stop barrage, perfectly complimenting the dense whirl of dreamy high end buzz.
The second long track, "The Intoxication", begins all slow and meandering, a crumbling distorted guitar picking out a minor key melody, before the song launches into a furious melancholy blast, the guitars continuing to soar and wail, with brief bits of midtempo drift separating the blissy blasts. The final long track, "The Dance Of Creation", is more of the same, but with two awesome interludes, the first, a gnarled breakdown with grinding high end guitars, and convoluted melodies over seasick riffing, the other a haunting expanse of synthesized strings, wavering and whirring before being swallowed up by the drums and guitar crashing back in. Very weird and strangely beautiful, epic grim not-so-blackness. The disc ends with a two minute stretch of ghostly buzz and reverb drenched swells of hiss and whir, creepy and abstract...
And again, while we of course find all that aforementioned political / racial stuff reprehensible, it's hard not to love a record this fucked up and gorgeous.
The packaging is pretty amazing too. Super thick textured paper, the images all washed out like some old parchment, the cd itself, red on the playing side, matching the artwork on the cd face. Cool.
Ok, someone needs to give these guys a medal. First off, there's a song here called "Satanic Rites Of Drugula". Drugula?? That's brilliant. Dave Wyndorf is kicking himself for not having thought of that first!
England's Electric Wizard, the reigning kings (and queen, with Liz Buckingham of 13 and Sourvein on guitar) of utter spaced-out heaviosity (think Black Sabbath + Hawkwind + Eyehategod) also deserve a medal 'cause they are still caning harder and making great albums worthy of their legacy (2000's Dopethrone is an all-time AQ fave of psychedelic sludge stoner genius). It's like they themselves have morphed into the ancient ones from whence all these drugged-out, doooooom metal vibes come.
On their sixth album Witchcult Today, which opens with the sluggish title track, they keep doin' what they do best. Guitarist/vocalist Jus Oborn's wasted wail drifts up from beneath the band's monolithic, mesmeric riffage, as they enact such "Black Magic Rituals & Perversions" as, well, that one, and the other seven tracks here. As blown out and sludgey as it gets (which is VERY) they have an uncanny knack for keeping it catchy and poppy too when they desire. Songs like "Torquemada 71" and the one about Drugula will get stuck in your head, only to slowly drip out like the viscous black tar they are... while "Dunwich" has got to be the grooviest -and- heaviest H.P. Lovecraft-inspired song of the year. As usual, the whole album is getting heavy airplay here in Aquarius, where we're ALL fans even those of us who don't smoke pot, do drugs, or usually listen to stoner metal... we've just been bitten by Drugula is all.
It's usually the case that improvised music is best experienced live. It's usually made live after all. Seeing as well as hearing the interactions of the improvising musicians often adds a lot to the experience. A live cd or lp of an improv session can be great, but it's not the same as being there in the moment as the music was happening. Next best thing to being there? A live audio-visual document. Anyone into the extreme sounds of Japanese electronics and jazz improv outfit Exias-J is thus in for a treat with this release, a DVD on the PSF label presenting live footage from three shows, two in Tokyo and one at the Tonic (R.I.P.) in NYC.
Exias-J head honcho, guitarist Hideaki Kondo, explains that in addition to the usual free improv process, these performances find his group experimenting with more conceptual, structured forms and restrictions, minimalism, sonatas, compositional stuff like that. Whatever their methods, though, they kick up a heck of a ruckus, featuring guitars, computers, analog synth, piano, live electronics, cello, contrabass, drums and percussion.
142 minutes, region free, NTSC.
Anyone who scours thriftshops regularly for records will surely be familiar with the names Ferrante and Teicher. World-renowned pop-classicists and dueling pianists from the fifties to the seventies, they're often squarely associated with the Lawrence Welk and Liberace markets our grandparents dallied in. While their recorded output easily tripled the most prolific artist you can imagine, their legacy has pretty much resulted in stacks and stacks of the kind of unwanted records that make crate digging an oft-frustrating chore.
But not everything they did was so square. In the early fifties at the dawn of the hi-fi age, they were among the first composers to take John Cage's prepared piano experiments (a method of altering piano tones by wedging various objects between the strings and hammers) and apply them toward orchestrated melodies. By doing so, and then running the sounds through state-of-the-art, multi-channeled stereophonic recording equipment of the time they were able to create an illusion of multiple instrument sounds such as tympanis, marimbas, xylophones, glockenspiels, and various percussion instruments, all from playing pianos. This reissue of Soundproof and its follow-up Soundblast is the result of such experiments. While this is hardly what we think of as experimental music, it sure does sound amazing. The kind of music you can imagine with Tex Avery cartoons on the moon, or in some space lounge on Venus. Some songs sound like the far-out Afro-Cuban rhythms of Esquivel, other songs have a more impressionistic underwater quality, while others have a more Joe Meek sci-fi surfy vibe. Some tracks experiment with reverse piano and early echo effects. In fact, to create the echo effect, in a time without easy echo electronics, they wired the sound from the piano down to a tiled bathroom a floor below, and placed microphones looped to a delay outside the bathroom door. Out of the two records, Soundproof is more experimental and playful while Soundblast relies on more Latin compositional formulas albeit ones you might hear in danceclubs on Mars. If you come across these Ferrante and Teicher albums in your crate digging adventures, don't dismiss.
Sound artists like Matt Shoemaker, Loren Chasse, and Steve Roden are some of the very few who are successful in turning found objects and field recordings into thoroughly engaging compositions that don't rely upon the flashiness of techniques to make their work successful. Add New Zealand's Richard Francis to that gaggle as well. It's been a while since any solo work has been available from Francis, who has previously recorded under the moniker Eso Steel; and more recently, he's been entertaining many a collaboration with his fellow NZ noiseniks such as Campbell Kneale and Michael Morley.
On Together Alone, Together Apart, Francis turns to the miniscule events of daily life whose peculiar sounds capture his imagination. It could be a crackle from rain falling or the distant surf of the Pacific Ocean or a creaking electric radiator or the hissing static from television snow. It's these small sounds which Francis has recorded and stretched into relatively longer compositions. These rattling, crackling streams of softened white noise move in a synchronous fashion, much like the way that a huge flock of starlings can gracefully circle in the sky without bumping into each other, all moving organically in three dimensions. Think Loren Chasse, as if he were reworking any of Bernhard Gunter's compositions, making them rougher, in line with Chasse's Hedge Of Nerves disc. Headphones are certainly recommended for this album, as the last track is awfully quiet... at least, it is when there's a record store full of people. Very well done!
Here's a lovingly homespun assemblage of field recordings which have been altered and pieced together over the last couple years into a hushed collage of mysterious texturous scrapings and ambience. These three hazy soundscapes were created by Bay Area artist Fuzzboy (aka Dan Borstein). 'Tis the gentler side of experimental noise that he treads.
Blimey, this is our favorite pure heavy rock n' roll album in a month of Sundays, pretty much, well since the Birds Of Avalon debut a few lists back anyway. '70s stylings to the max, fully indebted to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the MC5. And paying those debts with freshly minted $100 bills. (If only, in a perfect world these guys would be raking it in like Wolfmother.) Signed to the Rise Above label over in England, home to Electric Wizard and Witchcraft and sundry other sterling stoner/doom outfits, this British band is indeed kinda Witchcrafty, if Witchcraft were more single-mindedly concerned about kicking out the jams... like a more cock-rock Witchcraft perhaps. Certainly Gentlemans Pistols are as much convincingly "out of time" as those Swedes, a bellbottomed retro-rockin' good time that ought to get your head to banging with such should-be car stereo staples as "Just A Fraction", "Widow Maker", and the MC5-ish high energy "Out Of The Eye" amongst the ten equally rad tracks on offer here. Gentlemans Pistols win us over with confident melodic vox, an abundance of catchy riffs, and a bit of clever... what's up with the song title "Parking Banshee"? They're sly ones, these guys, even when displaying some slightly cheesy, lemon-squeezin' rawk and roll lyrics that we suspect are halfway tongue in cheek, on the track "Heavy Pettin'" in particular, which is a slower, bluesy number a la Zep's "Dazed And Confused"... Definitely an album for Pentagram and Leaf Hound and even Raging Slab fans... Recommended, rockers!!
It was sort of inevitable that this disc would end up being an aQ record of the week. But before we tell you the strange tale of how we got to this point, how we discovered this band and this disc, let's offer up a quick, succinct, three word description that might render the rest of this rambling review moot:
CAVEMAN THIS HEAT.
Sold? We would be. Imagine Man Is The Bastard transported back to the early seventies and let loose in This Heat's Cold Storage recording studio, or take the black hypno kraut noise of former aQ record of the week, Aluk Todolo and strip it down to its bare essence, a sound based almost entirely on rhythm. A pounding, Neanderthal groove, pelted with squelches, and laced with a strangled inhuman mewling, huge chunks of grinding minimalism and long swaths of dreamy shimmering bliss, an ultra intense slab of kraut-doom power violence for sure.
The weird thing is, the first time we hear Geronimo was several years ago, when Circle came to play some shows on the West Coast, and so I (Andee) was happily drafted to drive them around, roadie for them, all that stuff. So one of the shows was at Arthurfest in LA Circle were playing with SUNNO))), in a way-too-small seated theater, based on how many angry folks were turned away (as in HUNDREDS!). I spent the whole time, running back and forth, up and down the stairs, trying to sneak as many people into the show as possible, through the emergency exit, the backstage door, every time I went back out I would run into someone who wanted me to get them inside. While this was all going on, a band started playing, and they were AMAZING. A bunch of cholo looking dudes, handkerchief headbands, all sort of just standing there, behind huge racks of busted looking equipment, making the most unholy racket, a gorgeously destructive rib cage rattling pummel, eventually I had to stop running back and forth, cuz this band was totally sucking me in, and so I just sat down on the floor and let the band's vibrations wash over me, the floor literally shaking violently with every note.
Well, we later discovered they were called Geronimo, but no one knew anything about them, and the folks waiting for Circle and SUNNO))) didn't seem to get it or be that into it at all. We never got to talk to them in the chaos of getting Circle sorted. And eventually it sort of just slipped my mind.
So flash forward two years to the end of 2007, when we highlighted that No Skull Left Unturned comp a list or two back, collecting the various offshoots of Power Violence pioneers Man Is The Bastard. And we were particularly taken with the band Sleestak, a doomy math rock variant on MITB's bassy grind, and their sound reminded us of THAT band, the one that opened for Circle back in 2005. Then we sort of randomly stumbled across this here disc, and suddenly everything clicked, THIS was the band we saw and loved so much, and whaddayaknow, Geronimo just so happens to feature folks from both Man Is The Bastard and Sleestak. And it sounds even better than I remember, heavier, groovier, way more fucked up and WAY more freaked out. So here's a song by song breakdown of this devastating chunk of brutal beauty and monstrous minimalism:
The opener, the 18 minute "Firewater", is perfectly placed to test the listener's mettle, an endless epic stretch of looped high end klaxons and choked cymbal crashes, like a metal intro stretched into an entire song. All around this constant crunch and whine, whip flurries of electronic glitch and crunch, swaths of grinding crumbling analog buzz, while beneath it all a rumbling minimal bass line lopes lazily, until about half way through, when the track suddenly switches gears, and turns super abstract, minimal smears of drone and muted feedback, LOTS of space, and huge percussive crashes spread WAY out. It's like a super minimal abstract doom. But with bits of atonal keyboard and strangled vocals. Like the rhythm section of Khanate scoring a Dario Argento movie. That soaring high end from the beginning of the track returns, along with some speaker destroying analog buzz, still spaced out around long stretches of silence, finishing off with a brief burst of intense fury, distorted vocals, thick wall of crumbling distortion, If you survive the first track, then track two, "Headdress", is your reward, a short sharp shock of rhythmic groove, it's all about the drums, a simple, killer rhythm, the drums slightly distorted, locked into a relentless loop, while all around it, malfunctioning synths and skittering shards of glitch and skree soar and swoop, until it too shifts suddenly, into a mathy breakdown, another mesmerizingly minimal and hypnotic looped drum fill, pounding its way through a sky filled with creaks and groans and whirs and garbled grinding lo-fi squelch, finishing off with another furious blast, this time a spray of super distorted bass riffing, howled ultra effected vocals, and total drum destruction.
"Spiritwalker" offers up another side of Geronimo, the strange homemade electronics muted and smeared into much softer shapes, allowed to drift and shimmer, the drums a muffled pulse, lots of low end rumble and whir, darkly droning and cinematic, thick swells of minor key melodies, over a wasteland of glitch and buzz, slow motion tribal percussion, everything wrapped in a gauze-y haze of psychedelic textures, low end murk, and abstract FX, a gorgeous soundscape, of slow black krautrock ambience. "Medicine Man" is another brief chunk of abstract doom. A simple plodding rhythm, a thick grinding rumbling low end synth, huge blasts of effects-drenched crunch, and ominous spoken vocals and shrieked demonic howls,
And then there's "Facepeeler", which begins with a propulsive drum part, a serious metallic jam, huge bass riffs, shrieked maniacal vocals, and speaker shredding, super stereo panned effects, until suddenly the song slows down into a lurching doomic plod, the drums blown out and in the red, locked into another super simple, but completely intense and relentless slow motion rhythm, again, the sky full of FX, squealing and grinding and buzzing and screeching, but now sprawled over Geronimo's angular what-the-fuck minimal math doom, are some of the most fucked up and intense vocals ever, alternately growling, roaring, howling, whispering and mewling, it sounds a bit like an industrialized Wolf Eyes-ian Oxbow, until you realize that the vocals in question belong to one David Yow, of Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid (if only Qui sounded this bad ass). The suddenly it begins to sound like some Jesus Lizard outtake, slowed down, pulled apart and run through a bank of rusted and duct taped effects. One of those songs that easily could have been stretched out to the length of a whole record. Abrasive and brutal and hateful and super intense and heavy as fuck, but somehow weirdly hooky, and impossibly catchy, it's almost like having your pain and pleasure centers swapped, so having that anvil dropped repeatedly on your head ends up feeling so so divine. Definitely the song we keep coming back to, and playing over and over and over and over...
Finally, the band finish things off with the uncharacteristically mellow "Prints Tie", wrapped around a fluid almost jazzy bassline, drifting keyboard melodies, and shuffling abstract percussion, the Neanderthal electronics are still present, but used much more sparingly, gorgeous and glimmering, a soft smeared minimal workout that almost sounds like a more lo-fi Necks. Super dreamy and darkly shimmery, and just pretty enough to almost make you forget the 47 minutes of glorious sonic punishment you just endured. Almost.
So so so recommended. The minute we threw this one, we knew, THIS WAS THE ONE. Definite contender for record of the year (and actually, since I got it in December, it WAS my record of the year for 2007, even having only had it less than a month!) Folks who dug the Aluk Todolo will for sure dig this too. Likewise if the idea of, say, Mammal doing This Heat songs sounds cool to you too. Basically anyone into brutal rhythms and abstract minimal heaviness NEEDS this...
Not sure how we managed to miss this one. Only just realized we had a batch of these stashed in the store, and somehow they never got listed. Needless to say these are probably the last copies EVER as this came out on aRCHIVE and was of course crazy limited, and since that stuff routinely sells out in NO TIME, and according to the aRCHIVE website this is indeed out of print, this may very well be it for these, but at least a handful of lucky folks, who enjoy ruining their hearing, punishing their poor speakers, and of course annoying their neighbors, will be in N.O.I.S.E. heaven.
A pretty serious match up, noiseniks should know both these guys by now, NY noise legend Carlos Giffoni, and Scandinavian speaker shredder Lasse Marhaug. So you might expect a punishing blast of Merzbowian white noise, but in fact this is pretty listenable, and really strange and wondrous. There are definitely brutal moments, but there are gorgeous, almost tranquil moments as well.
From a crunchy thump that sounds like a fetal heartbeat run through a busted amp, to a field of decaying glitch and hiss, beneath which, strange metallic melodies drift and shimmer, to washed out crunchy almost Oval like digital skitter, to huge tangled streaks of detuned guitar and full on blown out black buzz, to dense fields of electromagnetic disturbance and malfunctioning machinery, howled voices and glitchy squiggles, grinding industrial clatter and fuzzy swaths of corrosive blacknoise, but all deftly arranged into what sound like actual songs. Melodies mysterious surface here and there, rhythms coalesce out of seemingly abstract sounds, it's pretty dang cool. But be warned, it most certainly is still NOISY. So if you have an aversion to noise, this might be too much for you, otherwise, a wicked slab of gorgeous grinding corrosion and lurching chaotic crunch. More musical manna for the iron eared.
Packaged in a cool 6 panel aRCHIVE style gatefold. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Already out of print. We have a handful left...
We recently discovered this little German label called Gruenrekorder, who specialize in "Phonography and Audio Art" which translates to field recordings, turntablism and audio installations, which definitely sounded right up our alley. We then discovered that they had 60 or 70 releases, probably more by the time of this review, most cd-r's and all incredibly limited, usually to 50 or less. Yikes. Had to do some quick thinking, so we picked two of the most promising sounding and got a bunch of those (a bunch meaning 25 copies, which is half of the pressing). So elsewhere on this list you'll find the other Gruenrekorder release, a sound installation for turntables and plastic angels, which somehow seems to perfectly balance this one right here, a field recordings of bats, collected via ultrasound, much like the The Inaudible World cd / book we listed a while back, but while similar, the sounds here are different enough, that if you dug The Inaudible World, Fledermausrufe Im Modulationsverfahren makes a good addendum.
Collected by Matthias Gottsche, head of the NABU department for protection of the bats in Schleswig-Holstein, the sounds here were a part of an infrared film project, assembled for species analysis, but due to the overlap and chaos of the various animals recorded, it ended up useless as research material, leaving it to exist simply as sound art.
The best part is the description of this disc on Gruenrekorder's website, explaining why it is all one track "Because of the reduction to only one track the listener has to go through it all at once and with it is confronted with his one staying power." Yes! And this will definitely test your staying power. As the sounds of bats, their sonar rendered audible to human ears, sounds a bit like several people playing Yahtzee!, shaking dice in those little plastic cups, but never actually rolling them, just shaking and shaking. The percussive rattle fluctuates from baseball card in the spokes flutter to a dense clattery cacophony, a tangled rhythmic web that is constantly shifting and undulating, and is in its own weird way quite soothing and hypnotic. Still hard to believe these sounds come out of bats...
Beautifully packaged, printed cd-r, striking black and white sleeve, cool infrared photos, but again, LIMITED TO ONLY 50 COPIES!!! So once these are gone, we won't be able to get more.
We haven't seen the new film from Paul Thomas Anderson yet but judging by the string heavy, super intense score composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood we get the feeling this is going to be one serious and probably very bloody filmic experience. Unlike his prior venture into the world of film soundtracks with his eclectic and imaginative score to Bodysong, this has a much more grand and classic quality to it, recalling the sounds of some Stanley Kubrick films with a very in your face, Penderecki-styled attack of string sounds. Meticulously executed, you would think Greenwood had been scoring films for decades.
It gets harder and harder to describe the music of Hoor-Paar-Kraat. A subtle blend of abstract noise, composed sound, and field recordings, deftly assembled into the musical equivalent of little dioramas, little soundworlds, where the normal rules don't apply, where the sound of lapping water can be a rhythm, where piercing feedback can be as lovely as a little lullaby, where the creaking of rusted machinery can become soft and warm and inviting, and beautiful melodies can become poisoned and ominous.
So while it gets harder and harder, it sure is fun to try. So we'll try again, to describe the sounds, and the little soundworlds contained in HPK's latest, In Eros Veritas, available as a super limited handmade cd-r (like past HPK releases), hand signed, numbered (limited to 38!) and with the artist's fingerprint (oh, and an extra track of dark droning ultra minimalism)! And for the first time, also as an ultra deluxe vinyl version, missing a track, but still, NOT a cd-r and super super nice...
The record begins with backwards guitar, bits of abstract clatter, streaks of feedback, the muted metallic thump of what sounds like bicycle spokes, or pachinko machines, all over a backdrop of what sounds like reverbed harmonica. The sound makes us think of some super lo-fi junkyard bicycle gamelan, which is eventually overtaken by circusy keyboard melodies and weird electronic squiggles, which quickly gives way to huge grinding chunks of distorted low end, roiling over creaking metal, everything smeared into layers of kinetic dissonance, tangled up into frantic fragmented melodies.
Later the record unfurls into spacious field recordings, voices, lapping water, more creaks and groans, all the while a distant whir paints the background a swirled grey, various sounds wrapped in reverb and allowed to float ghostlike.
Occasionally the sounds coalesce into something almost rocking, at which point we're definitely reminded of the washed out murk of the Dead C, with plenty of lo-fi muted clatter and deep resonant rumbles, and still the strange field recordings whisper in the background. The record finishes of fiercely, but still abstractly, with some seriously SUNNO)))-roof! style ur-drone, thick and low and heavy, but somehow impossibly glimmery and radiant, laid thick over the sound of lapping water and huge distorted chunks of grinding bass rumble. So good.
The cd, like all the past Goat Eater Arts releases, is packaged in a super deluxe hand made and numbered and autographed fold over card stock sleeve. The lp is in a gorgeous thick black gatefold, and pressed on thick milky clear vinyl. Both are again, EXTREMELY LIMITED!
As we mentioned a few lists back, we're way behind on our dutiful worship of the mighty Finnish beasts of grim blackness Horna. We reviewed their Bathory tribute record, and the split with Peste Noire, and now this, which is funny, since of these three, only the 7" truly reflected the true sound of Horna, a furious blasting brutality that has rarely been bested as far as we're concerned.
The Bathory tribute sounded like, well, like Horna doing Bathory, which is not a bad thing, as Horna were hugely influenced by Bathory, but it wasn't nearly as fierce or fucked as typical Horna.
And then there's this, Aania Yossa, a concept record about the black plague, which again sounds NOTHING like Horna typically does, but somehow it still sounds totally unlike anyone else. The speed ahs been swapped out for murky midtempo monotonous plod, the riffs smeared and blurred into black drones, creating one of the most mesmerizing and hypnotic black records ever.
The first three songs are all totally druggy and buzzy and super repetitive, the riffs sound almost looped, everything throbbing and pulsing over and over, only the vocals shrieking over the top offering any sort of variation, although every once in a while the band will slip into some killer convoluted breakdown, only to immediately ease back into that droning black dirge. Those three songs vary slightly from doomy plod to midtempo lurch, but form a pretty perfect blackdronedirge suite, that will either have you banging your head in a total trance or drifting off into some sort of other dreamstate dimension. Totally powerful in it's relentless hypnotic buzz, but repeated listening reveals all sorts of subtle hooks, and mysterious melodies buried amidst the murk and mire.
Then there's the 21 minute closer, the fastest track on the record, but even more intensely hypnotic, a single riff, a stumbling blast beat, intertwined and played over and over and over and over. Again, only a croaked demonic vocal offers any variation, while the music beneath continues to roil and churn and blast and draw us down into some whirling sonic altered state. So fucking awesome. Essential for anyone who likes their blackness dripping with DRONE. And as much as we love love LOVE every Horna release, this one, the one that doesn't sound like any of them, just might be our favorite.
Ahhhh, the black ambient onslaught continues. A vinyl based campaign to rain corrosive black drones on an adoring audience moves forward unabated, and we're right there in the front, face raised to the sky, letting the buzz and whir and rumble and roar rain down on us...
KTL is the duo of Stephen O'Malley, one half of the not-so dynamic duo SUNNO))), and Peter Rehberg, aka Pita. Their sound is a bit SUNNO))) like, with O'Malley unfurling sheets of abstract riffage, and Rehberg contributing various blasts of processed sounds and power electronics, the result is in fact quite beautiful, the three full lengths have helped solidify KTL as one of our favorite SUNN side projects, taking the churning brutality of that group, and stretching it out into something more abstract and expansive, still a dark sonic trawl, but the guitar is less downtuned and sludgy and more glimmering and effulgent, not to say it's not still doomy and dark, just more colored and less BLACK. And of course, there's so much more texture, with Rehberg delivering intense subsonics, smeared buzz, and all manner of blurred wonder, it's a pretty stellar combination.
So here we have a live recording of the duo, performing a few KTL classics, and one brand new track. Which is interesting as we just assumed that KTL was improvised, and while maybe there is an element of that in their music, you can definitely here bits and pieces that you'll recognize from the other recordings, and probably the more eagle eared among you will be able to pick out whole songs.
The first side opens up with a doomy swirl of washed out guitar, corrosive and keening, the riffs unfolding and overlapping. We don't really hear Rehberg until a few minutes in, when he offers up a thick, crumbling, superdistorted low end throb, that grinds ominously just below the sprawling guitarnoise, surfacing every once in a while to nearly blow your speakers. The sound builds to a glorious crescendo, sounding a bit like Sunroof! Or GHQ or one of those sort of ur-psych combos, but with a subtly abrasive digital component, that gives the sound a bit of an alien feel, the sound constantly thickening, with Rehberg's electronic machinations gradually overtaking the moaning guitars.
The flipside is even more blown out and psychedelic, O'Malley's guitars soaring ever skyward, roaring and keening, Rehberg wrapping those guitars in billowing sheets of grumbling digital glitter, smearing the churning riffage into haunting, nearly orchestral swells. So good.
Gorgeously packaged, deluxe gatefold, striking live images from the performance, also includes a massive poster of the show. Vinyl only for now. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one numbered. Not sure if there is a cd planned or not, still no cd of KTL 3, so you might want to grab one before they're gone.
What the heck? There's FIVE new Les Rallizes Denudes archival releases on this hitherto unknown label Ignuitas? And three of them are ALREADY out of print? (Sorry!). That's right. We were only able to get a handful of each, and they sold out in the store almost immediately. But we do have A FEW copies left of two of 'em that we were able to get more of, and by a few we mean like 6 or 8... so act fast, Rallizes-heads. Not even sure if we should bother with a "review" since in this case it'd be a mere formality, but here goes, briefly... Les Rallizes Denudes were/are a seminal underground Japanese psychedelic rock band, totally influential on the current crop of Tokyo guitar psych acts like LSD-march and Up-Tight (for instance), yet obscurely under-documented. What you CAN find, is primitive lo-fi genius (?). For more possibly dubious but nonetheless very interesting info get Julian Cope's recent book the Japrocksampler (when we have it back in stock, it's on backorder right now). And check out the recent Rallizes "best of" cd entitled Yodo-Go-A-Go-Go reviewed on AQ list #282.
These two releases, since we have so few, are reserved for the devout fans. There's Are You Rallizesed?, subtitled Shizuoka Stupa 1974, a double disc of material recorded live in '74 (natch). 115 sprawling minutes of classic Rallizes murk, nine tracks total. It's all moodily melodic psych drift that's a wraith-like presence, about to spontaneously combust into ashes even as it echoes irresistibly in your mind, ever out of reach. Is it band leader Takeshi Mizutani's searing guitar making that distorted sound... or just the deteriorating recording medium? Either way, once you've ingested the entirety of these two discs you won't be able to listen to any "normal" or "correct" recordings, quite the same way again. What else has this much fragile emotion, or needs your ears to meet it more than halfway, to hear the music within the magnetic tape miasma that they made that night 34 years ago? (Or maybe it's not all from the same night, since they do one song twice...)
The other one we've (barely) got is called Live May 25 1975 Yaneura. And that's about all the info we have for you right there. Four tracks, about 31 minutes of Rallizes' damaged distorted jangle as captured by someone's cheap, tinny tape recorder. It's a mysterious meeting of the shrillest of feedback and the sweetest of psych pop. You can put your imagination to work to try to figure out what it actually sounded like in person or just go ahead and assume it's meant to be so fucked up and muffled and utterly destroyed... that's right, we probably don't need to spell this out, but be warned: these are EXTREMELY lo-fi, dub-of-a-dub, Nth generation, ultra-bootleggy sounding recordings. The tape hiss is almost as loud as Mizutani's guitar. It's like this Rallizes music is psychically appearing on tape from beyond the grave a la EVP, Ghost Orchid style... But of course, you wouldn't expect anything less. It's all part of the Rallizes mystique anyway. Half the reason folks like Rallizes is 'cause nothing else is ever allowed to sound like THIS. What we can legitimately complain about is the crappy cheap graphic design Ignuitas has thrown together for these releases. Good grief these look terrible. But you're not buying 'em for the packaging anyway. And the ARE real cds, not cd-rs... so that's something. Rallizes fans will take what they can get, when and if they can get it, we know 'cause we are. First come, first served...
What the heck? There's FIVE new Les Rallizes Denudes archival releases on this hitherto unknown label Ignuitas? And three of them are ALREADY out of print? (Sorry!). That's right. We were only able to get a handful of each, and they sold out in the store almost immediately. But we do have A FEW copies left of two of 'em that we were able to get more of, and by a few we mean like 6 or 8... so act fast, Rallizes-heads. Not even sure if we should bother with a "review" since in this case it'd be a mere formality, but here goes, briefly... Les Rallizes Denudes were/are a seminal underground Japanese psychedelic rock band, totally influential on the current crop of Tokyo guitar psych acts like LSD-march and Up-Tight (for instance), yet obscurely under-documented. What you CAN find, is primitive lo-fi genius (?). For more possibly dubious but nonetheless very interesting info get Julian Cope's recent book the Japrocksampler (when we have it back in stock, it's on backorder right now). And check out the recent Rallizes "best of" cd entitled Yodo-Go-A-Go-Go reviewed on AQ list #282.
These two releases, since we have so few, are reserved for the devout fans. There's Are You Rallizesed?, subtitled Shizuoka Stupa 1974, a double disc of material recorded live in '74 (natch). 115 sprawling minutes of classic Rallizes murk, nine tracks total. It's all moodily melodic psych drift that's a wraith-like presence, about to spontaneously combust into ashes even as it echoes irresistibly in your mind, ever out of reach. Is it band leader Takeshi Mizutani's searing guitar making that distorted sound... or just the deteriorating recording medium? Either way, once you've ingested the entirety of these two discs you won't be able to listen to any "normal" or "correct" recordings, quite the same way again. What else has this much fragile emotion, or needs your ears to meet it more than halfway, to hear the music within the magnetic tape miasma that they made that night 34 years ago? (Or maybe it's not all from the same night, since they do one song twice...)
The other one we've (barely) got is called Live May 25 1975 Yaneura. And that's about all the info we have for you right there. Four tracks, about 31 minutes of Rallizes' damaged distorted jangle as captured by someone's cheap, tinny tape recorder. It's a mysterious meeting of the shrillest of feedback and the sweetest of psych pop. You can put your imagination to work to try to figure out what it actually sounded like in person or just go ahead and assume it's meant to be so fucked up and muffled and utterly destroyed... that's right, we probably don't need to spell this out, but be warned: these are EXTREMELY lo-fi, dub-of-a-dub, Nth generation, ultra-bootleggy sounding recordings. The tape hiss is almost as loud as Mizutani's guitar. It's like this Rallizes music is psychically appearing on tape from beyond the grave a la EVP, Ghost Orchid style... But of course, you wouldn't expect anything less. It's all part of the Rallizes mystique anyway. Half the reason folks like Rallizes is 'cause nothing else is ever allowed to sound like THIS. What we can legitimately complain about is the crappy cheap graphic design Ignuitas has thrown together for these releases. Good grief these look terrible. But you're not buying 'em for the packaging anyway. And the ARE real cds, not cd-rs... so that's something. Rallizes fans will take what they can get, when and if they can get it, we know 'cause we are. First come, first served...
Nobody makes us move quite like Hans-Peter Lindstrom. His full length collection of singles It's A Feedelity Affair a year or so back quickly became an AQ favorite, with its spacey dance floor gems equally inspired by Giorgio Moroder, Patrick Cowley, Italo Disco and Loft-era party mixes. While we aren't usually the biggest fans of ep's with just a single and various remixes, this one is totally essential! Contemporary Fix is a new and way-beyond-infectious track from Lindstrom, and the folks he got to remix it are a testament to his superb taste and wide reaching vision. EYE from The Boredoms works some tribal psychedelic magic on his remix making the song burst with frenetic energy and drip with every color you could imagine. We have the feeling Black Dice would want to listen to this track in the studio for a shot of inspiration. The closing remix from Bjorn Torske is the perfect way to end this half hour party. Like Lindstrom, Torske is from Norway and is one of the innovators of the great Norwegian disco/house scene. Who says dance music can't be as engaging as it is pleasing? Recommended!
Another entry in the who-can-release-more-records competition currently going on here at aQ. It's Machinefabriek versus Jasper TX, complicated by the fact that the two occasionally decide to make records together! Thankfully, it's a contest where everyone wins, especially those of us into gorgeous ambient dronemusic.
You couldn't ask for a better set up though. Two Fabrieks. Machinefabriek and pianist Leo Fabriek. We have to wonder if it was a coincidence and the two already new each other, or if Machinefabriek discovered this other Mr. Fabriek and tracked him down. Either way, the results are fantastic, and sounds like the two of them are very much of the same sonic mind.
The main sound source is of course Fabriek's piano, while Machine fabriek contributes guitar, banjo, effects and something called Povtronic. And we assume does all the mixing and processing. Dark doleful piano sprawled out over slow shifting whirls of processed low end. A constant slow pulse of rumble and whir, the piano a constant dark melody drifting dreamily. The background sound some sort of slowly moving nearly static sonic snapshot. The various elements moving subtly beneath the piano's slow crawl. The fourth track has little swirls of backwards guitars, some disembodied banjo twang, and ends up sounding like some back porch piano flecked ambient doom. While the final track features a gorgeous languid piano melody, drifting downstream on a buzzing sea of murk and hiss and whir, rumbling and shimmering, building in intensity until it's almost a machinelike grind, never deterring the resolute piano, plucking out note after note, letting them sink into the noisy abyss. So gorgeous.
We only wish there were more hours in the day, so we could spend some of them listening to this, and the growing stack of Machinefabriek cds we've been amassing.
Amazing packaging too. An elaborate folded origami style sleeve, not exactly sure how it's assembled, so haven't pulled it all the way apart to see what lurks inside, but it looks gorgeous. And there's a printed cardboard insert, with the liner notes, that slides into the side. Cool.
The cd is unfortunately long gone, but for a very limited time, we have the lp version of the Magik Markers' recent contribution to Southern's awesome Latitudes series. Past installments have included the Grails, Ginnungagap, Ariel Pink, Shit And Shine, Sir Richard Bishop, and others. A wildly disparate group for sure, but one that seems to suit this band just fine...
The Magik Markers are definitely one of those love 'em or hate 'em kind of bands. Sloppy and chaotic, noisy and psychedelic, free and seriously fucked up. Live they can be an explosive revelation, or an absolute mess. One show found the drummer blasting away on stage, while the quite comely guitarist clambered through the audience, climbing over audience members, dragging her guitar behind her, stirring up a seriously chaotic skree. Great to see, but not the best thing to listen to. And the band seem to know that, at least on The Voldoror Dance, not relying on any sort of unorthodox antics or wildly destructive staging the band simply unleash some seriously drug addled, psychedelic space rock bliss. Free and blown out, actually VERY free, this is like a band hurling their equipment into the abyss, and capturing every second on tape, the drums a constant splattery free jazz web, the bass (or is it another guitar) buzzing and warbling, throbbing and pulsing, wrapped in dense little tangles around the relentless drumming, while over the top, vocals drift and hover, ghostlike, barely audible over the din of the main guitar, a squirming, squealing sonic supernova, spewing wild peals of shrieking feedback, dense sheets of corrosive skree, walls of fuzzy riffs, smeared into almost-white-noise, tons of FX, wah wah, delay, a relentless free rock, space psych blow out. Tripping wildly though free jazz, free rock, drone rock and drug rock territory, sometimes all at the same time. An ultra noisy, dizzy, stumbling, crumbling, explosive mind melting musical trip.
Like all the Latitudes lps, packaged in that instantly recognizable black and white diecut 12" sleeve, pressed on old school black vinyl. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, we have less a handful...
On its surface Mandrake's music may ring familiar with elements of Americana folk and pop traditions, but to categorize this East Bay foursome as a folk pop band would be far too simplistic. In fact, that's why it's taken us this long to find words to write about their impressive debut album Featherweight. We should have known from their Prelude cdep which came out a couple years ago. Its title suggested beginnings, and we drew from it a sense of eager anticipation for things to come. Indeed, it and this full length prove 'twas no beginner's luck. They resonate with a depth, composition and composure far beyond their years. The songs echo with, but are not enslaved to the influences of greats such as Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens and Gram Parsons. As has become the norm for contemporary bands, the standard pop/rock instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums and vocals opens its arms to embrace strings of other sorts, horns and such. However, Mandrake never falls prey to empty accessorizing. They fully integrate each one tastefully into their often subtly prog-leaning, but very earthy songs. Each member's exceptional musicianship allows the band to ably leap from skeletal voice and guitar intimacies to fully fleshed rock numbers in a flash. Heavy in mood and emotion, dark in tone and lyrical matter, need we say, this album's title is a misnomer! Recommended for those that dig the more recent sounds of Bright Eyes, Jason Molina and My Morning Jacket.
Wai notes is essentially the raw and super stripped down version of The Letting Go, the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy album from 2006, compiled from the demos of that album. On that record he teamed up with Dawn McCarthy from Faun Fables who added back up vocals that sounded both sweet and haunting. But we have to say that these bedroom recordings do these songs more justice then the fully produced version that ended up being the album. We love hearing Will Oldham's classic voice as it's captured so intense and raw right onto what sounds like a 4-track cassette. It's the sparse and chilling side of Oldham's songs that made us fall in love with him all those years back. And we love the tape hiss that crackles so slightly throughout the recording adding such a scrumptious layer of warmth to the cozy and intimate words being sung alongside very minimal and bare acoustic guitar all accented by McCarthy's other worldly back-up's. So simple and stunning! Very limited so you know what that means....
Former member of two beloved bands Half Film and The Red Thread, Mr. Jason Lakis has a new project now called Mist And Mast. Their self-titled debut album is filled with such warm and wonderful pop sounds we just had to hit 'play' again the second it was finished. Mist And Mast definitely seem more straightforward pop than The Red Thread who had some '70s classic soft rock leanings. Once again though, Lakis' songcraft is very pleasing to the ears and would probably hit the spot for folks who dig Pernice Brothers, Pinback and the like! Yum.
Finally a new Necks record! And as usual, it's a single epic, slowly shifting jazzscape, shuffling and hypnotic, circular and completely gorgeous. Folks around here have been totally smitten by this Australian minimal jazz trio for years now. Every record another new 'song', most of their releases are one long piece, which makes sense once you understand the Necks.
If Circle are the masters of repetitive, motorik hypnorock, then the Necks are their jazz equivalent, unfurling endlessly looping, slow shifting Steve Reich-ian dark jazz epics, and like Circle, while there is a motorik element to the rhythm and the groove, it's much more fluid, almost like some strange living shape, and it seems like maybe these guys aren't playing it so much as trying to control the sound, pushing and pulling, stretching and shaping. And the songs are only limited by the length of a compact disc, they all sound like they could, nay should, go on forever (there was a rumor of a Necks 24 hour performance!!).
We sometimes joke about Necks records all sounding quite similar, and sure they sort of do, but only on the surface. Each record is a subtle and entirely unique collection of sounds. Much of it has to do with the compositions themselves, but also the fact that many of the recordings are live performances, which capture a piece, but only the way it was performed that one time. Some are more propulsive (Drive By), and some like this one, are more abstract and ambient.
On Townsville, a single 54 minute performance recorded live in Australia on February 15th 2007 (Andee's Birthday btw), the band reel in their rhythmic tendencies, instead opting to float and flutter, to drift and swirl, the drums are barely even present over the first half of the performance, offering up soft sizzles and billowing clouds of metallic shimmer, the bass too is merely support, offering up dark dense tendrils of low end sprawl and blurred low end whir. It's all about Chris Abrahams' piano, gorgeous glimmering flurries of notes, tossed in the air like confetti, or falling from the sky like snowflakes. It almost sounds like Lubomyr Melnyk is sitting in, offering up some of his swirling 'continuous music' piano. The whole track is one long slow build, the bass and the drums lurking in the background, offering a soft warm sonic bed over which the various notes and chords from the piano dance and drift, moody and melodic and so mesmerizing.
Further into the track, the bass and drums become much more animated, subtly sparring with the piano, the whole band engaged in a series of fluttery swells, but still with the piano leading the way.
Easily one of the jazziest of the Necks discs, but without losing its drone-y minimal psychedelic vibe, so much so that certain parts definitely remind us of the more ambient Circle records, like Tower, Empire or Miljard. Imagine Circle featuring Lubomyr Melnyk on the piano, performing a piece co-written by Steve Reich and Terry Riley, and you'll have an idea of what to expect from Townsville. As with all Necks records, totally divine and totally recommended.
The return of our favorite masters of faerical blasting punk! Who else could it be but Nuit Noire? We just raved about their most recent disc, the brilliantly titled Fantomatic Plentitude, and were already hankering for more when what should show up, but MORE!
This split 7" matches up Nuit Noire with Italian noisy new wavers His Electro Blue Voice, who end up being a perfect match for the Nuit Noire.
What can we say about Nuit Noire that we haven't said before. A blackened buzz wrapped around spiky crusty new wave-d punk rock. A blackened Rudimentary Peni. The guitars kinetic and buzzy, the drums rapid fire and frenetic, the vocals a wild caterwaul. These two new tracks are awesome. Crusty and catchy, lo-fi and super rocking. The opener is mostly instrumental, an epic extended intro, leading up to what could very well be the NN theme song: "Faerie Punk", ultra catchy and with some of the best lyrics EVER:
Stardust all around the drums
Stardust all around the guitar
Stardust blown away from the high speakers
Stardust everywhere on stage
Faerie punk in the moonlight
Faerie punk in the starlight
Faerie punk far in the night
Faerie punk on stage tonight
Hell yeah! The lyrics just reaffirm what the music is already saying. Wild forest faerie freaked out black new wave crusty punk pop madness.
So who could possible share a split with these guys? His Electro Blue Voice are up to the challenge, and are a pretty good match, their moody bass heavy new wave post punk, perfectly balancing NN's high end howl. Their sound is very 45 Grave, like some band you might have seen play the Scream in LA in 1985. Murky Joy Division riffing, wrapped around lugubrious Cure rhythms, the vocals a throaty gothy croon, the first track playing out lie a more metal Smiths, the second, some sort of dark doleful surf rock, with a Dick Dale riff stretched across and expanse of moody melancholia.
Another mighty reissue of audio irritation (meant in the best possible way of course!) from Nurse With Wound. This CD with its guttural yet slippery title has been through the reissue campaign more times than we really need to mention, but we will say that the original 12" was released back in 1984 through L.A.Y.L.A.H. At that time, Steven Stapleton had just begun working with David Tibet in Current 93, and thus Stapleton invited Tibet to contribute some of his vocal growling to the Nurse cause, although the Tibet material on Gyllenskold could simply be out-take material from the Current 93 material of the day (Nature Unveilled); and it's vintage Tibet snarling through a series of devilish words which Stapleton twists even more so with his inimitable talents in the studio. Splattered throughout the phlegmatic collage are volatile transmissions of piercing noise, rhythmic metallic scrapes amassing into a seasick chorale of polyphonic alarm sires, banged gongs which rippled with varispeed warble, and blurting horns that could be sampled from some bloodcurdling Morricone soundtrack and mangled into something even more uncomfortable. As with much of the Nurse material from the early '80s, there's plenty of sounds that had become recurring elements for Stapleton, and this album is no exception. Stapleton's exceptional hand with a razor and a piece of tape certainly makes this, like many of his recordings, seminal avant-garde listening.
FINNISH MUSIC FREEKS HEADS UP!!! A brand new release from a name you may not recognize, but you definitely know some of the bands he spent time in: Avarus, Anaksimandros, Maniac's Dream�
Fricara Pacchu may have a pretty illustrious Finnish underground musical resume, but weirdly enough, he began his musical career as a rapper, though you'd be hard pressed to tell from this, his debut solo 7".
And while you can definitely hear some of the above mentioned bands in these three songs, the sound is something else entirely, much more jangly and poppy, three little chunks of druggy, dreamy psychedelic confection. The opening track has a bit of a Krautrocky groove, some Eastern sounding sitar-like buzz, and swirling clouds of trippy FX, but they're wrapped around some sunshine-y jangle, it's like Avarus playing Olivia Tremor Control. The second track is more lo-fi and druggy, a gorgeously plodding tripped out drift of woozy piano, still MORE effects, spidery guitars, all coated in morning dew and dappled with sunlight.
The flipside is a bit less poppy, a sort of noisy soft industrial, lots of smeared grind and clank, but piled atop lovely melodies and hazy ambience, and distant moaning guitars, and with a strange staticky rhythm holding it all together. It definitely reminds us of our favorite Finnish free folk, but also like the Storm Bugs or some lost recording you might hear on one of those deluxe Vinyl On Demand reissues. A gorgeous slab of damaged experimental psychpop jangle, we can hardly wait for a full length.
The packaging is extra special. Included with the full color sleeve is a thick eye popping book of Pacchu's artwork, 7" x 4", stapled but on thick matte paper, drawings, collages, photos, squiggles, snakes, motorcycles, garish colors, intricate patterns, negative images and more. Folks who dug the Glomp books of Finnish art will definitely dig this too, and the images in the booklet seem like what you might see if you closed your eyes and played the record. The perfect visual analogue for Pacchu's druggy trippy soundworld.
Funnily enough, both Allan and Andee independently reviewed this, each unaware that the other was also writing a review. Whoops. The above is Andee's, below is Allan's for comparison (turns out their duplication of effort was remarkably similar, which is as it should be we suppose!):
First off, that cover art makes this pretty hard to resist. A simple painting of a weird-looking furry cat sitting next to a daisy... with the artist's incongruously black-metal suggestive logo floating overhead. That this 3 track, 11 minute 7" is from Finland, and on the ever-reliable Fonal label, is also a good thing. Fricara Pacchu being a member of such illustrious underground Finnish outfits as Anaksimandros, Avarus, and Maniacs Dream is further reason to be interested. But the proof's really in the pudding, or in our business, the music, so let's take a listen....
First track "Bianca's Beachparty" is an uptempo, uplifting utterly psychedelic instrumental home-recorded techno-disco number that immediately makes us think BOREDOMS. Crunchy, burbling synths zig and zag over a steady, insistent rhythm. Magic. We're sold. The other two tracks, "Upsidedown Wind" and "Text-Message From Beyond", are equally cool, woozy instrumental space-outs, not quite so "techno" tho. And what's also pretty cool is the 42-page, full-color booklet of Pacchu's cartoon/comic/collage art that comes with this 7"! Lots of insane eyeball-joy to be had here. If you liked those Glomp books we've listed, you'll dig this. This 7" package is presumably limited, we have just a few and may or may not be able to get more...
Some more great classic Chicago soul from the early '70s (check out the awesome Dells disc we're listing this time around was well). Pieces Of Peace have been getting a much deserved second life in this great era of soul reissues. They were recently featured on the Numero Group's Eccentric Soul series on the collection featuring the Twinight label. It's no surprise we hadn't heard Pieces of Peace till recently as this one and only full length from the band was never released by their label after it was recorded in '72 because of the bands breakup shortly after finishing the album. Thankfully it's getting its time of day 35 years later and what a great artifact of that special musical moment of the Chicago scene in the late '60s and early '70s. As informed by spirituals and free jazz as it is funk and soul. Long instrumental stretches of horn fueled deep hitting soul and tasteful vocals never take away from the amazing musicianship that truly shapes these songs. Fans of The Pharaohs (who add their chops to this record) will for sure be in love with this. A great lost discovery brought to life by an exciting new soul/funk reissue label run by DJ Shadow.
Remember the good old days? And by old days, we mean the nineties. When there were regular bands, who wrote real songs. Just sort of indie rock, punk rock, rock and roll, whatever? At the risk of sounding like old fogies, we miss those days now and then. The sort of college rock heyday. Soul Asylum (when they were awesome), the Replacements, Husker Du, Pavement, Skunk, Guided By Voices, the Grifters, the Swirlies, the Volcano Suns, the Lemonheads, you know exactly what we're talking about.
Regular old rock bands that write real songs and play guitars and basses and drums, are becoming more and more rare, amidst the dudes crouched on the floor with a garage sale of equipment, nerds hunched over laptops, scary guys in corpsepaint. As much as we love all that stuff, we sometimes miss a bunch of drunk dudes in jeans and t-shirts playing awesome catchy indie rock.
One of those bands was Prisonshake. They never hit it big, like some of their indie brethren, but they made a handful of kick ass records back in the day. We thought they were long gone, but all of a sudden here comes a brand new single, and man if it doesn't have us flashing back to those days, smoky dingy clubs, bands sweating up a storm on stage and just rocking out.
They may be older and a bit less brash, but they still sound pretty great. A stumbling chaotic mix of all the above mentioned bands, lots of indie jangle, distorted crunch, angular riffing, even some handclaps, the vocals are not entirely tuneful, but suit the music. The A side has some wicked funny and snarky lyrics (it's called "The Cut Out Bin" after all) and a weird coda, a randomly recorded conversation and some backwards guitar. The flipside is all over the place, more of a collage than a song, bits of studio stuff, lo-fi live action, more backwards guitars, all tangled up into a stumbling indie blues jam.
The single comes with a bonus cd, including the tracks from the 7" as well as two extra numbers, a groovy, downtuned jangle rock jam, and a shorter poppier one, both instrumental, and both sounding like they could be unfinished tracks from the last proper Prisonshake record. We like!
We got a handful of the SUPER limited version, only 200 made, a blue vinyl 7" housed in a cardstock fold over obi instead of a sleeve, with the cd, and each one hand numbered.
Another band we were in love with before we heard a single note of music. C'mon, they're called Psychedelic Horseshit! And they're on Siltbreeze. And they sound almost exactly how we imagined, only BETTER.
Willfully noisy and chaotic, snotty, snarky and blown out, in the red, a complete feedback drenched dissonant pop shamble, it's like a mad scientist beneath some mountain top somewhere, discovered the gene for the Siltbreeze sound and injected it into these guys when they were babies, ensuring that they would blossom into this, perfectly fucked up freaked out noise drenched pop miscreants.
And pop is the key here. Cause these guys at their core are a kick ass pop band. Little nuggets of crunchy jangle, but dipped in filthy amp buzz, and rolled in busted casio beats, doused with liquid LSD, plugged into an amp with a blown speaker, set up on a street corner, and blasted into the empty street at midnight in the pouring rain.
The clatter and clang of old Pussy Galore, yelped distorted vocals, like a punk rock Dylan, that whiny drawl, all around it crumbling distorted bursts of psychedelic guitarnoise, a totally damaged snarling lo-fi punk rock jangle, like the Strokes via the Strapping Fieldhands. Or the Dead C covering Pavement. A glorious, chaotic, hook filled crust pop mess. Awesome.
After a whole mess of lps and 7"s and cd-r's and splits, we finally got our hands on the very first proper cd release from East Coast dirge drone duo Robedoor and it's a killer.
As we admitted before, we were late on the uptake, having only discovered Robedoor early last year, but have been doing our best to make up for it, grabbing every single shred of sonic sludge we can.
Closer To The Cliff is more of what we've come to love. Long extended dirgescapes of crumbling distorted drones, buried black melodies, rumbling expanses of downtuned thrum. Keening feed back and coruscating high end smeared into glimmering expanses of effulgent murk, a deep black glow in a roiling whirl of muted melody. It's like SUNNO))), in its massive nearly static crawl, but where SUNNO)) is like sticking your head in a black hole, Robedoor is like staring into a black sun, letting your eyes glaze over, and the various sounds and colors blur into dreamlike dronescapes, much more lo-fi and textural, gritty, grimey, constantly in flux, less about riffs slowed down as it is about pulling sound apart, exposing the strange musical guts inside, allowing them to spill out like deep black sonic viscera.
But beyond just the sheer brute force of Robedoor's deep black sprawl, much of this disc is spent sans heaviness, letting the rumble and roooaaar dissipate, exploring delicate crystalline expanses of barely there shimmer, twinkling music box melodies suspended in gently whirring fields of whispery ambience and soft chordal washes, reminds us of Andrew Chalk filtered through Tim Hecker, gorgeous and glimmering, but always with that ominous low end in the background. Or imaging a Nadja record, spun really slow with your finger and broadcast through a beat up old amp.
A gorgeously washed out and dreamily disembodied soft-doom...
Drone. DRONE. DRRRRROOOOOONNNNNNNE. That's what you get on this recent Hapna release by Pluramon's Marcus Schmickler. He's teamed up here with someone less well-known to us, New Zealander Hayden Chisholm, who is apparently a quite successful saxophonist and new-music composer. But Chisholm's not playing saxophone here, instead he's playing bagpipes and sho (a Japanese mouth-organ), whilst Schmickler adds electronics to the mix and processes the sound through his computer, to extend and abstract, to amplify and multiply, and further modulate the drones blown by Chisholm. The results are, well, exquisitely droney. Now we all know that bagpipes can be droney, but pleasantly so? Schmickler's manipulations keep this sounding like there's a real breathing human being behind the instrument, but also sands off some of the shrill grinding abrasiveness characteristic of the bagpipes... yet the threat lurks.
There's two pieces here, the 23:36 title track (dedicated to the venerable dronologist Phill Niblock, and it sounds like it) and the 21:06 "Infinity In The Shape Of A Poodle" (which is dedicated, oddly enough, to Bjork, but still sounds like a Niblock homage). Where track one displays a calm yet powerful, all-encompassing beehive grind, track two starts off rather whispy, more of a gentle drone, and then eventually soars to higher, heavenly realms of (to our ears, and hopefully Bjork's too) glittering beauty, that at the same time also suggests suspense-movie sinisterness.
As noted, both tracks are lengthy, but those many minutes are put to good use. During each there is constant movement, these aren't static drones at all. Basically if you want drone, this here's a good drone disc!!
PS. for some reason, Hapna have switched from their thin plastic sleeve cd packaging to the more ordinary (but no less nice-lookin') digipak.
