*Acid Mothers Temple Alert*
Seven That Spells is a psych rock outfit from Croatia. But they sound a heckuva lot like Japanese kraut-channellers Acid Mothers Temple. And guess what? They've got AMT guitar guru Makoto Kawabata on hand as a special guest! He obviously feels right at home jamming with these Croatian freaks, together stirring up billowing smoke-clouds of droning space rock, the babbled and chanted vocals giving this the feel of some sort of medieval folk ritual, zapped with swirling electronic FX. And when it comes time for the guitar solo (and that time comes often) Kawabata and co. hold nothin' back. Spaced OUUUUUUT maaaaaan.
Packaging is sorta swank: the cd rests on a foam numb affixed to the inside of a heavy-duty gatefold kind of sleeve, adorned with busty, naked hippie ladies (again, in the Acid Mothers Temple tradition!).
Some of you who were living in San Francisco a while back, might just remember these guys. Sharkbait. It's been a long time since we'd heard, or even really thought about these guys. The way we remember it, was they were a sort of industrial post punk rock band, maybe like a West Coast version of Cop Shoot Cop, all junkyard percussion, howled vocals, crunchy guitars, skeletal, noisy and slightly funky. And the truth is pretty close to that.
So a customer of ours discovered a box of Sharkbait tapes, still sealed, stashed and covered in dust, and thought that since folks were digging cassettes so much lately around here, and that Sharkbait were a seminal eighties SF outfit, that he would bequeath them to us, so we could disseminate them to hungry ears that might want a little taste of what the SF scene was like back in 1988. For some of us, it was all about funk metal, bands like Mordred tearing it up, or thrash, but there was a whole 'nother thing going on in the underground. Bands like Bomb, Tragic Mulatto, the Skatenigs, and of course Sharkbait. And Sharkbait were indeed a sort of proto industrial punk rock band. Lots of samples. Lots of tribal percussion, some Cash Worship going on here and there, throbbing basslines, crunchy guitars, and howled sloganeering vocals, sort of political, definitely punk rock. It sounds dated sure, but it still sounds pretty cool. There's some art of Noise percussion, some weird spoken word, slabs of feedback, droning ambience, but all wrapped up in a pounding churning post punk caterwaul.
We thought UK noiseniks Shit & Shine couldn't get any more brutal or abrasive or, well, noisy, but of course we were dead wrong�
This two track monstrosity lets us hear us two very different sides of the multi headed S+S beast. The A side finds the band kicking up an absolutely ear shredding din, so noisy and blown out that it's almost impossible to hear the actual band. There are multiple drummers, and multiple bass players, but here it sounds like they're all armed with white noise machines and sine wave generators. Layers of in-the-red buzz and high end hiss, super distorted vocals and a murky rhythmic throb. It almost sounds like what we wished Merzbow sounded like, a fierce super dynamic heavy as fuck white noise juggernaut.
But then there's the unexpected B side, which is downright tranquil, a carnivalesque loop warbling beneath children's voices, tons of delay and reverb, a dizzying blur of funhouse ambience. Weird as fuck, but somehow a good balance for the chaotic skree on the flipside.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
Shooting Spires is one fella, BJ Warshaw from the Brooklyn band Parts & Labor. His debut solo album raises a warmly familiar indie rock racket with its furious strumming, clatterous drumming, wheezing organ keyboards, and hazily bristled male vocals. Very much drawing from the tweaked, buzzy, raucous pop vein of Guided By Voices. Heck, we hope he never does, but if Robert Pollard ever does decide to close up his pop shop, it's comforting to know that he's already left such an indelible mark. And that there are young'uns who will fly his noise pop flag and do him proud.
Fans of Sic Alps, your fave band is keeping their primal distorto-rock love flowin' with their latest 7"! Three new songs, the title track "Strawberry Guillotine" is a commentary on and a dedication to the Bay Area homeless. As with most Sic Alps releases we don't know for certain how long we'll have these in stock, so best to get 'em while you can (which is now)!
The beautiful Slowsix cd Private Times In Public Places was originally released by Habit Of Creation back in 2004, and it has now been reissued on cd by Western Vinyl!
Here's what we said the first time around: Mesmerizing! Something new from the Brooklyn, NY Habit Of Creation label who brought us the two wonderful Edison Woods albums. If you dug Seven Principles of Leave No Trace, you'll surely wanna check this out! Slowsix is very much in the same glistening yet darkly mooded spirit as E.W. but less song-oriented and more soundscape-y. Treading solemnly in the footsteps of Philip Glass, their open, spacious aural atmospheres are crafted primarily from strings, guitars, sampled dialogue and Rhodes keyboards (both processed and clean).
Sound good? Yes. And don't let the fact that there is only three tracks mislead you. With a running time of 73 meditative minutes long, this is a perfect cd to sink in and drift off to... especially on such a chilly winter's day as today. Recommended.
Reverberant electric crackle opens the album, like you've got your ears wedged right there next to the pickups on Steven R. Smith's guitar. In a surprise move for S.R.S. fans, his unadorned, dolefully sonorous voice then wails gently and lamentingly over this sometimes thick, sometimes sparse, very droney music. This disc is mostly just vocals and guitar (and occasional other, acoustic instrumentation), slow and sad and distorted. It's a very intimate, raw duet for hushed, humming folky singing and whale-call psych guitar, dissonant yet melodic ...oooh lovely. Definitely something that fans of recent Richard Youngs and Six Organs Of Admittance and Dan Higgs should check out. Steven R. Smith fans too without question, even though you've never heard him like this before (singing)! At times his vocals come across like Kurt Cobain's at his most mumbled...thus kinda Neil Young-y too.
Basically we've liked pretty much EVERYTHING that S.R.S. has been involved with, from Mirza to Thuja to Hala Strana to various solo recordings to this here new album. On Owl, while musically similar to, say, his Kohl album, he's still doing something new and different for him, really sticking his neck out with the addition of his own vocals... very admirable and thankfully in fact successful! The lonely, spacious, dreamy, plugged-in folkiness of this, and especially the emotion in S.R.S.'s singing, reminds us a bit of that band Rex, from back in the day, dark and lush, moody with a bit of twang. Heck this almost takes Steven R. into the territory of another, unrelated Smith, Elliott. Recommended!
And stay tuned for another new Steven R. Smith project due out soon on the Soft Abuse label, Ulaan Khol. It's equally as S.R.S. as this, but in the other direction...
This one came out of nowhere and kicked our asses. And to be totally honest, as is often the case, we ordered it almost entirely because the band had an awesome name, heck, they're called the Snivelling Shits. Fingers crossed we threw it on, and what do you know? The sound was as snotty and snarly and snarky and catchy and punk as fuck as the name implied.
The 'Shits were a joke band, formed by music journalist Giovanni Dadamo in 1977, designed to take the piss, but they ended up whipping up a batch of songs as good as if not better than any other groups at the time. Some impossible blend of the Buzzcocks, the Undertones, the Modern Lovers, The Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Velvets. Propulsive drumming, looped hypnotic riffing, and Dadamo's high pitched invective over the top. Take "I Can't Come", a bawdy sex tale about bedroom misadventure, with an insanely long list of other luminaries who couldn't come, culminating in the classic "Jesus Of Nazareth, heeeeeee can't come!" delivered in a snotty nasal whine. The rest of the tracks are just as funny: "Only 13", "Terminal Stupid", "I Wanna Be Your Biro", the all in French "Et Moi, Et Moi, Et Moi" and the impossibly catchy "Bring Me The Head Of Yukio Mishima". Every song here is a stone cold classic. Why these guys weren't huge it's hard to say. Might be because they didn't take it all that seriously, or the fact that they only ever recorded EIGHT tracks in their whole brief career, all collected here, along with some demos as well as the holiday chestnut "There Ain't No Sanity Claus" with the Damned (Dadamo also wrote a couple songs for those guys) and the previously released "isgodaman?" which was included on a comp under the pseudonym Arthur Comix because the record label didn't want the word Shits on their record cover.
Bottom line is this stuff is amazing. Hooky and haughty, frenetic and so bad ass. If you dig ANY of the above mentioned bands or have been digging on the current crop of snotty punk rock: the Catheters, the Thermals, Times New Viking, and the like, this will DESTROY YOU!!
A brand new full length from Humboldt County's masters of dark droning cinematic ambience, and another gorgeous chunk of masterful dark mystery. In the beginning, their sound, while still quite beautiful, seemed much more haphazard, much more improvised, the vibe decidedly NNCK or SHOTM, a bit chaotic and druggy, the sound of guys just sort of jamming and seeing what happened. Obviously we dug that stuff, a LOT, but the band have continued to hone their craft, their music becoming much more assured, much more dense and varied, more expressive and emotional, and weirdly enough much darker and scarier.
Their last disc was a new score for their chopped up version of the classic film Sudden Fear, but Summon With Electronic Sorcery, sounds just like the title would lead you to believe, some ancient ritual performed in a cave below the Earth's surface, surrounded by demons and shadows dancing in the firelight, like it could be the soundtrack to some lost Argento film, a truly creepy and intense sonic sprawl�
Four long tracks, each one a self contained soundscape of billowing blackness, layers of muted buzz swirl and shift, various steel strings reverberate and shimmer, melodic fragments drift through the ether, doomful melodies chime and ring out and are then sucked under, strange creaks and moans are blurred into a constantly evolving backdrop. Eventually, the sounds coalesce into huge black sonic swells, an ultra slow motion ambient doom, lurching glacially through flurries of percussive clatter, like some huge demon rolling hollowed out skulls like dice. Later, we wander through some old boiler room in an abandoned building. The clank of old pipes, the hiss of escaping steam, all woven into a hissy whirring drone, underlaid with droning guitars and streaks of shimmering melody, barely discernible. Chant-like vocals drift up from the abyss, haunting loops overlap and blur into each other, a murk that seems to glow from within, building to an intense staring-into-the-sun buzz. Finally, a field of high end sound, thick streaks of feedback, simple clattery percussion, distorted melodies, moaning horns, all doused in reverb and allowed to drift and intermingle in gloriously washed out slow motion. Like watching a decaying filmstrip of and old noise rock band frame by frame, the sound flickering in the dim light, the heat of the bulb causing the film to bubble and melt.
So gorgeous. As always.
Packaged in a crazy, glue sealed multiple folded envelope style silk screened package. You have to unseal it, unfold it, and then the cd is revealed inside held in place by a diecut slot. And of course, it's super limited. A ONE TIME pressing of only 250 copies. We got 40, but judging from past SW releases these will go pretty quick.
Once again, we head back into the grim black rainforests of Tasmania, to unearth more of one-man-black-metal-misanthrope Striborg's amazing back catalog, a constantly evolving and devolving soundworld of washed out buzz, chaotic black blur, and haunting dreamlike ambience. If you're already a fan, and have made it this far in Displeased's reissue campaign, odds are you're probably gonna want this one too, and if you've yet to experience the gloriously grim what-the-fuck brilliance of Striborg, then this is as good a place to start as any, in fact it might be one of the best ones to begin with as it's the most varied, and thus the most freaked out and bizarre.
Beginning with a surprisingly melodic almost poppy guitar part, 2004's Spiritual Catharsis quickly unravels into the buzzing stumbling confusional blackness that's so near and dear to our withered hearts. The core of Striborg's sound, is the ever present sheet of white noise guitars, that still sounds like a microphone placed on the floor of a shower, a constant and nearly overwhelming shhhhhooooosshhh. While behind this wash of hissy sibilance, lurk creaking shrieked vocals, and simple stumbling drums, and of course thick epic washes of grandiose keyboard. The drums flipping between punk rock pound and doomic plod, while that wall of blown out buzz remains fairly static. Totally hypnotic. At it's most straight ahead, it sounds like a way more blissy Burzum, loping and midtempo, with those haunting keyboards offering up creepy minor key melodies, but where Burzum buries those keys in the mix, Striborg shoves them right to the front, where they warble and whir and threaten to swallow up the rest of the sounds around it.
But as we mentioned before, Spiritual Catharsis is all over the map. "Glorification Of Mother Nature" is a gorgeously minimal expanse of ambient creep, sci fi synths swirling and shimmering, soft focus layers of sound shifting subtly like fog in an old crumbling graveyard, but then there's the title track, thirteen minutes long, probably the harshest and most chaotic of the bunch, the guitars whipped into a nearly Merzbowian frenzy, the effects so dense it's almost like black metal dub, the vocals careening and rippling out in all directions, the drums like a landslide of snares, the whole thing enveloped in a rippling cloak of black ambience, until part way through when the track shifts into some cinematic doom, the hiss and buzz pushed back a bit, allowing low end rumbles and whirs to play out a super intense melody, while the drums lurch and stutter, other keyboards joining the fray, drifting like soft glowing orbs against the jagged buzzy backdrop, before finally building back up into the fierce fury of the track's opening. The rest of the record constantly shifts between buzz and bliss, blast and crawl, from the minimal rumbling drone of "The Haunted Gum Trees", to the relentlessly blasting black chaos of "Misanthropic Necroforest", to the echo drenched plodding doom of "Dicksonia Antarctica" (replete with more of those dubbed out FX), to the tripped out funereal dreaminess of "Eternal Blackness Surrounds The Bushland", to the full on pounding in-the-red crush of "Black Metal Is The Forest Calling...", Spiritual Catharsis, is indeed just that, a spiritually cathartic, beautifully bizarre, darkly droning musical journey through a black forest of sound, and into the even blacker musical mind of Striborg
Re-mastered, with all new artwork, including a swank metallic silver front cover, and drawings and lyrics inside.
Metal bands gone acoustic, tend to be pretty 'blah' affairs, especially in black metal. Simple strumming often reveals that minus the wash of buzz and the blasting drums, black metal doesn't hold up very well, especially when pared down to -just- acoustic guitar. So we were a bit wary when we heard about this 'acoustic' side project from Claudio of Frostmoon Eclipse (who we love BTW), but we were knocked for a loop, as this isn't really acoustic, and beyond that, it's a gorgeously creepy, weird and dark, grim ROCK record. Shades of Opeth for sure, but also Angels Of Light, Sixteen Horsepower, Katatonia and the like. The acoustic guitar is central to the sound, but there are huge cascading distorted stretches, the drums are massive and dense, crushing and complex, the vocals are a whispery croon, the whole thing so moody and minor key. Each track a slow build from mathy folky post rock to bombastic dramatic epic, the melodies so perfect and catchy, even in the heavier parts, the acoustic guitar surfaces in dense little tangles, over a tribal drum pattern, a complex sonic interplay that often erupts into super emotional swells, with the lead guitar pealing off gorgeous guitar lines, the whole band whipped into a frenzy before settling back down into a dark strummed meander.
The more we listen to this, the more it definitely sounds like a more post rock Katatonia. That sort of super dramatic bombast, the super catchy, strangely sad and haunting melodies, but the metal here is dialed way back, minus a few end of song blow outs, most of the record is spent darkly brooding, the sound gorgeously melancholy, a mournful drift that wouldn't be at all out of place on your shelf between Red House Painters, Woven Hand, Katatonia, Kiss The Anus, Crippled Black Phoenix, Blood And Time, Jeffrey Luck Lucas and Earth.
There seems to be two sides to Siltbreeze. The arty noisy side, represented by bands like the Dead C and Harry Pussy, and the fractured pop side, with bands like Guided By Voices, Psychedelic Horseshit, the Strapping Fieldhands (be prepared FINALLY for a cd reissue of SFH's mindblowing classic Discus this year!) and of course, Times New Viking, who sonically have much in common with labelmates Psychedelic Horseshit, but where PH do a sort of post new wave jangle filtered through nineties noiserock, TNV are much more jagged and sing songy, a definite post punk pogo vibe. Less deconstructionist that their Horseshit pals, instead, they just write perfect indie rock jams, but when committed to tape, they somehow turn into something much more raw and intense. Howling teenage noisepop jams that stick in your head as they're destroying your eardrums. Dig past the distorted buzz and lo-fi crunch, and there's all sorts of crazy stuff going on in there, chunks of classic new wave, riot grrl howl, groovy sixties style jangle, furious garage rock stomp, but all wrapped up into something that really only sounds like Times New Viking. We LOVE it.
There's something very strange going on in Finland. Well, yeah, obviously. That's why we love Finnish music so much. But we mean even STRANGER. Or nowhere has it been stranger than in and around the Circle camp. But whatever it is, we like it. The stranger the better. As if it wasn't enough that Circle records proper continue to get weirder and weirder and more in keeping with their self perpetuated New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal (NWOFHM) movement, the band continually create other outlets for their seemingly endless outpouring of damaged musical genius. So first they offered us the murky chug of Circle side project Doktor Kettu. Then the blown out psychedelic stoner rock of Pharoah Overlord. But more recently, running a parallel course to Circle's gradual metallizing, things started getting, well, still even more metal. Culminating in records by Krypt Axeripper and Steel Mammoth, who took Circle's new Judas Priest worship as far as it could go, until now. Circle seem to enjoy taking on the guise of lost mysterious Finnish heavy metal bands, only -sort of- trying to pretend it wasn't in fact them...
And thus we have yet another mysterious Finnish metal band, from the eighties? Maybe? Maybe not? It's the strangely named Tractor Pulling. Whose debut 7" is also the first release on Ektro sublabel Full Contact. The cover art while not metal, is definitely bizarre. The Tractor Pulling logo is appropriately metal, the band members are called Electric Erko, Eeto Von Tomb and Brutalpo (who is credited with "Exploding tom-toms"), and so it will come as no surprise that Tractor Pulling are fully and unabashedly (though perhaps ironically) metal. Eighties style. Falling somewhere between Judas Priest, AC/DC and Accept. Killer super distorted riffs, bombastic drumming, and crazy multi tracked vocals, one low and growly, one eighties metal falsetto, singing in tandem until the inevitable call and response of the chorus "HIGH SPEED! LOW SPEED!" with, yep, you guessed it, the falsetto vocal for the first part, the low growly vocal for the second. The guitars are a bit tripped out, processed and harmonized, some soaring dual guitar action, little flurries of space rock FX, and some serious hooks. It's pretty dead on in its borrowing and stealing from the eighties metal canon, but there are bits and pieces that are too modern, and a little too psychedelic, to be one hundred percent convincing, but those things only serve to make this stuff even more wacked and AWESOME. Maybe too 'metal' for hypnorockers, but any one who dug any of Circle's more metal side projects will probably dig this too.
It's been about a year since Tussle's great sophomore release, Telescope Mind, and now they've put together an ep of remixes from that disc, calling on the capable hands of folks like Optimo, Dennis Young (Liquid Liquid), Kango & Torkill and their friends Hot Chip (who they hit the road with for a jaunt across the east coast last summer). We are still really anxious to hear what the new incarnation of Tussle will end up sounding like (as there has been some major line up shifts since the original recording of the songs getting the remix treatment here). But until then this will sit nicely next to the other forward thinking kraut-meets-dance-floor offerings in this current chapter of Tussle ever evolving sound.
Our very own mailorder underlord Matt just got back from a month long US tour with his band Wildildlife, hope you got to catch them live. We grabbed a bunch of this tape that Matt was selling on tour, a recording of his solo project, the bizarrely titled Usputuspud. When he's not shirtless and flailing wildly on stage with a bloodied and battered guitar, he's apparently holed up in a dark corner of some basement with some tapes, a 4 track, a different guitar and a harmonica (!). That's right, harmonica. But fear not, these aren't a bunch of back porch blues jams, this is some seriously dark and droney ambience. Deep resonant swells, drift and shimmer, melodies are pulled apart, the constituent notes allowed to float freely along the mysterious black tide, dramatic, melodic and strangely cinematic, you can almost imagine some vocalist like Nick Cave, crooning over the top, some hellish end of the world balladeering. Mysterious and mystical, a muted mumbly soundscape of rumble and shimmer, a gauzy low end smear, through which all sorts of subtle sonic colorings are visible, everything druggy and subtly psychedelic, an ominous creeping crawl into some dark pit of sound, glowing red, lit from below by some mysterious fire below. Essential for fans of all things slow and low, but wouldn't be entirely out of place in your tape case, next to your Yellow Swans, Skaters and Quetzolcoatl cassettes...
As far as we're concerned, Providence artrock/noise rock label Corleone, never has to do anything ever again, just by merit of releasing Throne Of Blood's genius I Hope You Fail Miserably And Never Accomplish Anything Ever Again record. And before we get into this review, let's once again beseech those guys to reissue that Throne Of Blood. C'MON!!!!!
Okay then, well, it's been 10 years that these guys have been assaulting our ears, so it makes perfect sense that for their tenth anniversary they decide to destroy our eyes as well. And as should be common knowledge by now, Providence Rhode Island is not just a hotbed for music, it's also jam packed with visual artists and filmmakers, so this collection of videos for various Corleone bands is totally eye popping and amazing.
Did you dig the Paper Rad dvd on Load, then you'll probably dig this too. Super varied, from ultra pro shot films to hand made animations, to absolute WTF weirdness. Some highlights: the super eight video ritual for Bonedust, the perfect visual to go along with their hissy drone-y buzz, the gorgeous sepiatone washed out video for The Body, mostly them playing live, but lit weirdly and all washed out like some old filmstrip, the super gross live action / animation mix of Snake Apt's video, featuring lots of applesauce spitting, and blood and guts and gore, the goofy live action video for Lorna Doom's bad ass white boy rap, a live Black Pus show, which is basically just Lightning Bolt's Brian Chippendale rocking out on the kit, the super blown out experimental video for Night Wounds, awesome arty collage intercut with live action for Get Killed, rad weirdo home movies to accompany Uke Of Spaces Corners, an awesome video of Fang Island performing for a class full of little kids who dance wildly, so cute! And on and on and on. And it's also a good way to get acquainted with a bunch of the bands on Corleone, all of whom are pretty bad ass. A killer audio AND video mix tape that will blow out your ear drums and make your eyeballs melt!
Full color artwork, clear dvd case, MASSIVE thanks list, full color booklet with liner notes and video info. ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! 3/3 "s/t" (P-Vine) 2cd 42.00 AFRIRAMPO "Suuto Breakor" (P-Vine) cd 25.00 AHMED, MAHMOUD & EITHER / ORCHESTRA "Tsedenia Gebre-Marqos" (Buda Musique) dvd 14.98 AHOUSEN "s/t" (PSF) cd 22.00 ALCHEMIST "Tripsis" (Relapse) cd 14.98 ALTER EGO "Why Not?!" (Klang Elektronik) cd 16.98 AMBER ASYLUM "Still Point" (Profound Lore) cd 12.98 ANGELBLOOD "Mambo Mange" (Locust) lp 17.98 APACHE "Boys Life" (Douchemaster) 7" 5.50 ARMISEN, FRED PRESENTS: JENS HANNEMANN "Complicated Drumming Technique" (Drag City) dvd 15.98 AVENGED SEVENFOLD "s/t" (Warner) cd 17.98 AXA HOUR OF DARA BLEU "Clones Of Eros" (Fire Museum) cd 13.98 BACH, SEBASTIAN "Angel Down" (Get Off My Bach) cd 13.98 BACHDENKEL "Lemmings" (Ork) cd 17.98 BEHOLD THE ARCTOPUS "Skullgrid" (Metal Blade) cd 12.98 BETTER BEATLES, THE "Mercy Beat" (Hook or Crook) cd 11.98 BORIS / MERZBOW "Rock Dream" (Daymare) 2cd 32.00 BOSMANN, KARL "Eskalation" (You Don't Have To Call It Music) lp 38.00 BROTZMANN, PETER / MANGELSDORFF / SOMMER "Pica Pica" (Atavistic) cd 14.98 BROTZMANN, PETER / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE / MATS GUSTAFSSON "The Fat Is Gone" (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 16.98 BRYARS, GAVIN "The Marvellous Aphorisms Of Gavin Bryars: The Early Years" (Mode) cd 16.98 CARBONARA, ERIC "Exodus Bulldornadius" (Locust) cd 15.98 CENTURIONS GHOST "The Great Work" (I Hate) cd 16.98 COFFINS / THE ARM AND SWORD OF A BASTARD GOD "split" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98 COHEED AND CAMBRIA "No World For Tomorrow" (Sony BMG) cd 11.98 COLLINS, BOOTSY "Ultra Wave" (Collector's Choice) cd 13.98 CONTROL "OST" (Warner / Rhino) cd 16.98 COPE, JULIAN "You Gotta Problem" (Head Heritage) 2cd 27.00 DAUNER, WOLFGANG (QUARTET) "The Oimels" (Long Hair) cd 24.00 DEAD RAVEN CHOIR "My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind" (Aurora Borealis) cd/lp 14.98/17.98 DEATH AMBIENT "Drunken Forest" (Tzadik) cd 16.98 DOO SOO, KIM "Ten Days Butterfly" (PSF) cd 22.00 DOWN "III: Over The Under" (Down Records) cd 17.98 EQUIMANTHORN "Exalted Are The 7 Throne Bearers of Ninnkigal" (From Beyond) cd 14.98 ERGO SUM "Mexico" (Lion Productions) cd 15.98 ESKIBOY "The Best Of Tunnel Vision" (Baked Goods) 2cd 22.00 FIFTY FOOT HOSE "Cauldron" (Phoenix Records) lp 24.00 FLOWER TRAVELLIN BAND "Satori" (Phoenix Records) lp 24.00 FUTURIANS "Play The Breathtaking Sounds Of Tivol" (Soft Abuse) lathe cut 7" 14.98 GATES OF SLUMBER / SPIRITUS MORTIS "From The Ultima Thule" (Emissary) cd 14.98 GLUTTONY "Collapse Of The Roman Republic (Liber Primus)" (Cyclops) cd 15.98 GRUDZIEN, PETER "The Unicorn" (Subliminal Sounds) 2lp 39.00 GRUPPO D'IMPROVVISAZIONE "Nuova Consonanza" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98 GUSTAFSSON, MATS / PAAL NILSSEN-LOVE "Splatter" (Smalltown Superjazz) cd 14.98 HABIBIYYA "If Man But Knew" (Sunbeam) cd 16.98 HALF MAKESHIFT "L'Anse Amort" (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98 HAROLD & MAUDE (CAT STEVENS) "OST" (Vinyl Films) lp+7"+booklet 42.00 HIORTHOY, KIM "My Last Day" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 16.98 HUGUENOTS, THE "s/t" (Hydra Head) cd 14.98 HUMAN BEAST "Volume One" (Sunbeam) cd 16.98 IELASI, GIUSEPPE "August" (12K) cd 14.98 IRISH COFFEE "s/t" (Set) cd 25.00 JACKIE-O MOTHERFUCKER "Valley Of Fire" (Textile) cd 15.98 JUNO "OST" (Rhino) cd 14.98 KLIMEK "Dedications" (Anticipata) cd 15.98 LICHENS "Omns" (Kranky) cd + dvd 16.98 MANINKARI "Le Diable Avec Ses Chevaux" (Conspiracy) 2cd 22.00 MARGINAL CONSORT "s/t" (Improvised Music From Japan) 4cd 79.00 MARTIN, AARON "Almond" (Preservation) cd 15.98 MASHAYEKHI, ALIREZA & ATA EBTEKAR (SOTE) "Persian Electronic Music: Yesterday And Today (1966-2006)" (Sub Rosa) cd 16.98 MAYER, NATHANIEL "I Want Love And Affection Not The House Of Correction" (Vampi Soul) cd/lp 17.98/29.00 METZGER, PAUL "Deliverance" (Locust) cd 14.98 MITSURU, TABATA "Lumrapideco" (Utech) cd 16.98 MONSTER MAGNET "4-Way Diablo" (SPV) cd 16.98 NAGOSKI, IAN "Kerflooey" (Ehse Records) lp 16.98 NERVE NET NOISE "Dark Garden" (Intransitive) cd 14.98 NILSEN BJ & Z'EV "22'22" (Ideal) cd 14.98 NOSTRADAMOS "s/t" (World Psychedelia) cd 17.98 OAXACAN "s/t" (self-released) cd-r ep 8.98 OCEAN, THE "Precambrian" (Metal Blade) cd 14.98 ONNA "Katawa" (PSF) cd 22.00 OPETH "The Roundhouse Tapes" (Peaceville) 2cd 16.98 PEEESSEYE, THE "Mayhem In The Mansion, Shivers In The Sack" (Evolving Ear) cd 11.98 PINCH "Underwater Dancehall" (Tectonic) 2cd 22.00 PINHAS, RICHARD "East / West" (Cuneiform) cd 15.98 POCAHAUNTED / ROBEDOOR "Hunted Gathered" (Digitalis) 2cd 22.00 PRIMORDIAL "To The Nameless Dead" (Metal Blade) cd 13.98 R/S ONE "Snow Mud Rain" (Erstwhile) cd 14.98 RE/SEARCH "#4/5 : W.S. Burroughs, B. Gison, Throbbing Gristle" (Re/Search Publications) book 39.00 REICHEL, ACHIM "AR3" (Germanophon) cd 17.98 RELIGIOUS KNIVES "It's After Dark" (Troubleman) cd 13.98 RIGGS, DAX "We Sing Of Only Blood Or Love" (Fat Possum) cd 14.98 ROBEDOOR "Rancor Keeper" (Release the Bats) cd 15.98 ROOT "Daemon Viam Invenient" (Shindy) cd 15.98 ROSENHOLM, ELEANOORA "Vainajan Muotokuva" (Fonal) cd 17.98 ROSETTA "Cleansing Undertones Of Wake/Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 9.98 ROSETTA "Wake / Lift" (Translation Loss) cd 13.98 ROTH, DAVID LEE "Sonrisa Salvaje" (Friday Music) cd 15.98 ROTHER, MICHAEL "Flammende Herzen" (Water) cd 16.98 RUDD, ROSWELL "Blown Bone" (Emanem) cd 19.98 RUINZHATOVA "Original Soundtrack For Dream, Sea, Vacancy, Metropolis" (Kaeru Cafe) cd 14.98 RWAKE "Voices Of Omens" (Relapse) cd 12.98 SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS "Face" (Radium) lp 13.88 SCIENTISTS "Sedition" (ATP) cd 15.98 SCORCHER "Thunder Power" (T.H.E. M.O.V.E.M.E.N.T.) cd 15.98 SEAWORTHY "Map In Hand" (12K) cd 14.98 SIEBENSUNDEN "Teratologen" (I Hate Records) cd 15.98 SIGRBLOT "Blodsband (Blood Religion Manifest)" (Nordiska Forlaget) cd/2lp 15.98/22.00 SIGUROSSON, VALGEIR "Ekvilibrium" (Bedroom Community) cd 15.98 SILMARIL "The Voyage Of Icarus" (Locust) cd 14.98 SIMONETTI, ENRICO & GOBLIN "Gamma" (Cherry Red) cd 17.98 SINCLAIR, JOHN "Guitar Army: Rock & Revolution With MC5 And The White Panther Party" (Process) book+cd 22.95 SKEPTA "Greatest Hits" (Boy Better Know) cd 21.00 SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "Open The Gates Of Mimer" (AA / Nosordo) cd 14.98 SKULL DEFEKTS, THE "The Sound Of Defekt Skulls" (Utech) cd 14.98 SOL "Let There Be A Massacre" (Van) cd 13.98 SOLITUDE AETERNUS "Alone" (Soul Food) cd 17.98 SOLITUDE AETURNUS "Hour Of Despair" (Metal Mind Productions) dvd 24.00 SORIAH "Ofrendas De Luz A Los Muertos" (Beta-lactam Ring) cd 17.98 SPEKTR "Mescalyne" (Moribund) cd 12.98 STRIBORG "Trepidation" (Displeased) cd 14.98 SUISHOU NO FUNE "The Shining Star - Live" (Important) cd 14.98 SUN RA "Disco 3000" (Artyard) 2cd 33.00 TAKAYANAGI, MASAYUKI NEW DIRECTION UNIT "April Is The Cruellest Month" (Jinya) cd 24.00 TERJE, JESPER & JOACHIM "s/t" (Shadoks Music) cd 15.98 THROBS, THE "s/t (Special Collector's Edition)" (Rock Candy) cd 17.98 TIME FLYS, THE "In Crowd" (Douchemaster) 7" 5.50 TORSKE, BJORN "Feil Knapp" (Smalltown Supersound) cd/lp 16.98/21.00 TULUS "Biography Obscene" (Candlelight) cd 14.98 TURBONEGRO "Retox" (Cooking Vinyl) cd 14.98 ULVER "Shadows Of The Sun" (Jester) cd 12.98 UPSILON ACRUX "Galapagos Momentum" (Cuneiform) cd 16.98 V/A "10 Tons Heavy" (Planet Mu) 2cd 13.98 V/A "200" (Planet Mu) 2cd/2lp 9.98/17.98 V/A "A Number Of Small Things" (Morr Music) 2cd 21.00 V/A "Achtung! German Grooves" (Bureau) cd V/A "Asian Flashback: Underground Music From Asia" (PSF) cd 22.00 V/A "Beyond Amsterdam: Baltimore Tracks From The Wire" (Nonesuch) cd 13.98 V/A "Cut It Up Def: Miami Bass Jams" (Cut It Up Def) cd 14.98 V/A "Dr. Boogie Presents: Rarities From The Bob Hite Vaults" (Sub Rosa) cd 15.98 V/A "From Dubplate To Download" (Greensleeves) 2cd 19.98 V/A "Greasy Truckers Party" (EMI) 3cd 38.00 V/A "Lifting The Veil: The Earliest Blues Guitarists" (World Arbiter) cd 17.98 V/A "Melodii Tuvi: Throat Songs And Folk Tunes From Tuva" (Dust To Digital) cd 15.98 V/A "Messthetics #105: D.I.Y. 77-81 Scotland I" (Hyped To Death) cd 13.98 V/A "Papagayo! The Spanish Sunshine Pop & Popsike Collection" (Toytown) cd 21.00 V/A "Pillows & Prayers" (Cherry Red) 3cd+dvd 42.00 V/A "Runeology 3" (Rune Grammofon) cd 9.98 V/A "Smashits" (Shitkatapult) cd 16.98 V/A "Sock It To 'Em J.B." (Body & Soul) cd 15.98 V/A "Space And Time" (Hotflush) cd 21.00 V/A "The Essence Of Swedish Progressive Music, 1967-1979" (Premium Publishing) 4cd 60.00 V/A "The Rubble Collection Vol. 1-10" (Fallout) 10 cd box 96.00 V/A "The Wire: "...And All The Pieces Matter."" (Nonesuch) cd 24.00 V/A "Trojan Country Reggae Box Set" (Trojan) 3cd 19.98 V/A "Waking Up Scheherazade" (Grey Past) lp 28.00 V/A "War II (The Turd Hunt Continues)" (Hip Hop Slam) cd 11.98 V/A "Welsh Rare Beat 2" (Finders Keepers) cd 23.00 V/A (ESHETE, ALEMAYEHU) "Ethiopiques Vol. 22 : More Vintage!" (Buda Musique) cd 15.98 VILE CHERUBS "The Man Who Has No Eats Has No Sweats" (Afterburn) cd 13.98 VILLAINS "Drenched In The Posions" (Aurora Borealis) cd 14.98 WALTER, WEASEL QUARTET "Revolt Music" (ugExplode) cd 11.98 WANDERING MIDGET, THE "I Am The Gate" (Eyes Like Snow) cd 15.98 WARMER MILKS "Let Your Friends In" (Release the Bats) cd 13.98 WILLIS, NICOLE AND THE SOUL INVESTIGATORS "Keep Reachin' Up: Remixed" (Above The Clouds) cd 17.98 WYATT, ROBERT "Comicopera" (Domino) cd 15.98 YEASAYER "All Hour Cymbals" (Are We Free) cd 14.98 YEH, C. SPENCER "Violin, Objects" (Tone Filth) lp 17.98 YOKOTA, SUSUMU "Skintone Collection" (Skintone) cd 14.98 YOUNG, NEIL "Chrome Dreams II" (Reprise) cd 17.98 YOUNGS, RICHARD "Summer Wanderer" (Gipsy Sphinx) lp 17.98 _______________________________________________________________________ ABOUT MAILORDER
Train wrecks, war, drought, despair, atomic bombs, sinking ships, and more, are all to be found in the songs compiled by Christopher Wagner for the latest in a string of themed compilations from Trikont.
Wagner, in his introductory essay "In The Shadow Of The Apocalypse", takes the position that the modern age brought with it a newfound sense of fear and alienation that isolated individuals from religion, tradition, and community, leaving them with an overarching, unrelenting sense of melancholy that pervaded all aspects of their lives; for him, these recordings are a musical testament to the zeitgeist of that era. Heavy stuff indeed (what else would you expect from a compilation cd that uses a passage from Walter Benjamin as an epigraph�?).
But what really stands out in this selection of songs is the depth and breadth of responses to disaster that the musicians are able to present. To be sure, you'd be hard pressed to find more plaintive, harrowing or emotionally evocative recordings than "That Great Ship Went Down" by William and Versey Smith (familiar to anyone who's heard The American Anthology of Folk Music) or "Off To War I'm Going" by The Carolinan Twins, but tracks such as these are starkly contrasted by The Allen Brothers' buoyant, kazoo-driven, "Jake Walk Blues" and the gruesome yet disconcertingly matter-of-fact narrative found in The Dixon Brothers' "School House Fire." Doom & Gloom is a success because the songs themselves are never overshadowed by the academic conceits of the compilation itself -- the thematic thread is always there, but what you hear first and foremost is the humanity, humility and resilience found in the music. Seriously recommended.
Another document of Finnish music weirdness featuring a handful of aQ favorites, CIRCLE, in the form of their more sinister side project Rakhim, as well as Finnish cd-r darlings KuuPuu and LauNau. We won't go into too much detail as these are super expensive and we only got 15 or so...
Circle team up with Hans Joachim Irmler from Krautrock legends Faust, for a sidelong heavy percussion jam. The track begins with someone on the kit, busting out some wild fills that eventually coalesce into rhythms, while beneath the drumming is a constant low level clatter of tinkling chimes, muted hand drums, bits of percussive thump and rattle, sometimes whipped up into little flurries of subtle tribalism, but just as often allowed to just shuffle and drift. Part way through washes of muted looped guitar strum surface, accompanied by strange, heavily effected cookie monster vocals, all beneath thick swaths of droning chordal whir. The vocals continue to grunt and growl over an increasingly frenetic percussive backdrop, until everything stumbles to a halt.
The B side features Lau Nau and KuuPuu teamed up with someone called Lauhkeat Lampaat for a double boy/girl free jam, the results are as percussive as the other side, just more abstract, and less propulsive. The vibe is very NNCK or Sunburned Hand, Jew's harp, swirls of video game FX, strange chirping vocals, scraped steel strings, clattery percussion, fragmented melodies, peppered with brief bursts of frenzied drumming, wheezing kazoos, lots of woodblock, disembodied ghostlike vocals, all wound up into a chaotic finale, a wild forest faerie drum circle.
SUPER LIMITED, so much so that we probably can't get more, in a gorgeous blue tinted reindeer-and-snow sleeve, pressed on thick marbled blue vinyl...
Ariel Pink dropped by the store the other day to sell us some tour merch and he had a handful of these Madonna tribute cds for sale. Looking at the line-up (which also includes Lavender Diamond, Giant Drag, Jeremy Jay and a host of other LA pop underground bands some of which we've heard of, others we haven't), we have to say our curiosity got the better of us and we bought a few. Tribute cds are always a mixed affair, especially when it's dedicated to a pop star bigger in concept than in musicality. But while most bands diverge from the straight ahead cover, this is not exactly the Cicconne Youth-style take we were hoping for. Still if you love the Material Girl, and you are into bands like Jonathan Wilson, Golden Animals, Winter Flowers, Mountain Party, The Tyde, Alexandra Hope, The Chapin Sisters, The Bubonic Plague, Apollo Heights, The Prayers, Lion of Panjshir and the other above mentioned folks, all wading and whirling through Madonna's many wonders and blunders, then there is lots of fun here to enjoy.
In case their moniker and the album title didn't clue you in, this new Bay Area band has a dark, dark heart. We'd venture a guess that these young gents and gal were raised on a wonderfully wan diet of '80s British rock (think: early Cure, Siouxsie, Echo And The Bunnymen). With such sallow complexions that you only get from sulking in angst filled gloomy shadows, fevers and chills are inevitable. Veil Veil Vanish's hot flushes come in big guitar rushes that also bring to mind Swervedriver, Bailterspace, My Bloody Valentine and Killing Joke. Those dynamic injections give their music more depth, fuses the various influences together and helps the band dodge the cloaked clutches of the '80s goth and post-punk revival camps.
It is with no small significance that we end this year highlighting one of our very favorite artists of all time, Caetano Veloso. If we were anything like Time Magazine, we could definitely see ourselves making him Man of the Year, because indeed, it has been a stellar year for Veloso. Not only have some of the many highlights of his extensive back-catalog been made available once again, but he also began the year, at age sixty, releasing one of the best rock albums of the year (Ce) that has made many of our top ten lists. If you were lucky enough to catch his performance at this year's San Francisco Jazz Festival, he shocked and delighted the audience by performing with just a stripped-down rock band, three young men on electric guitar, bass and drums, barely over a third of Veloso's age, his voice in amazing form, running from one side of the stage to another working the audience into a frenzy, causing a seemingly endless string of female (and one male) fans to jump on the stage for a quick kiss. Here was someone who could of easily just sat on his laurels and played his popular hits with the kind of over-orchestrated band you see in concerts on PBS, but instead embraced his forward-thinking musicality playing mostly new songs with a tight killer band and still managed to sway his oldest fans to cheer along. One of the best shows of 2007 for sure!
Years ago, when we first discovered the sounds of Tropicalia, it was through the more blatant psychedelic spectacle of Os Mutantes and their first three well-beloved records. But while we were aware of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil being the main songwriters and architects of the movement, most of their songs, until recently, we got to know through compilations and cover versions rather than through their full length records. While we have seen in the past couple of years so much amazing music being dug out of the far reaches of that fertile period and the post Tropicalia boom from Alceu Valenca, Jorge Ben, and Lula Cortes, as well as the amazing Soul Jazz comp, Brazil '70, it's been nice to see some of the best full length albums from Gilberto Gil and Veloso becoming available again. Earlier this year, Lilith reissued Veloso's first solo record from 1967 and his post-exile experimental jaunt from 1972, Araca Azul. So for a year that began with a return to musical form from this beloved Brazilian musical master, it's even more fitting that by years end we see the reissue of arguably the most important and most essential album of his vast discography, the second self-titled solo album from 1969.
Notice the blank cover with just a signature? Much different from most of Veloso's records which almost always feature his picture. That's because when he recorded this album, Veloso and Gilberto Gil were in captivity by the Brazilian Government for violating recently imposed orders against artists performing non-nationalistic music or expressing any statements that could be perceived as antigovernment. While confined, their long hair was shaved off, hence the decision to not display a picture. Allowed to play acoustic guitar and record songs through a masterful use of the media to keep a connection with the public for fear of being "disappeared" or tortured, both Gil and Veloso recorded albums (Gil recorded his masterful 1969 album as well at this time) using just voice and guitar and then sending the tapes to Rogerio Duprat, who added all the arrangements: electric guitars, strings, flutes and rhythm tracks. For such a strange and backwards production process, what results is a fervently articulate statement of politics and personal freedoms, with some of his first songs sung in English, namely the very pointed, "The Empty Boat".
Of course with time, it may be difficult to understand how radical the situation was, especially with the language barrier. Album opener "Irene" may seem like a pastoral groover with its opening flutes and guitars, but when he sings in Portuguese, "I want to see Irene laughing", it's rumored that the "Irene", he was referring to was the name of the machine gun of Tenario Calvacanti, a robber famously celebrated in leftist circles. While "Os Argonautas" is based on the belief that all oppressive dictatorships are fated to be temporary (Let's hold on tight to that belief!). The penultimate track "Acrilirico" is Veloso's response to the Beatles' "Revolution #9", a track very fitting to be on Veloso's own white album.
Like most Tropicalia albums, the urgently emotional song writing is tempered by a need to unite multiple populist musical forms together. So there are bits of Fado, Tango, Carnival music, psychedelic rock, with lyrics sung in English, Spanish as well as Portuguese. Veloso through the Tropicalia movement understood that the politics of freedom are best communicated through the musical language of the people. This record is more prescient than ever!
Newest record from this long running post industrial neo-folk outfit, whose sound fits perfectly amongst AQ faves like Der Blutharsch, Folkstorm, Toroidh and the like. Combining militaristic rhythms, acoustic guitars, field recordings, snippets of newsreels, military speeches, their sound transporting the listener to otherworlds, other times. The last disc to war torn Europe specifically, the music evoking the smells and sights and sounds, crumbling buildings, smoldering fires, smoke and the smell of burning flesh, the marching of soldiers, announcements over loudspeakers, all wound up into a haunting dark ambient sonic journey.
This latest disc though is a lot more song oriented, less dark and droney and more lilting and lovely. A dark apocalyptic folk reminiscent of later Swans, The Angels Of Light, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, even New Model Army and especially Current 93.
The opening track is all acoustic guitars and soaring strings, haunting harmony vocals and simple subtle percussion. The second track begins with a simple eighties style drum beat, until the minor key guitar strum joins in as well as a totally gorgeous falsetto vocal hook, some strange chanted vocals, and weirdly some awesome "Stand And Deliver" style Adam Ant horns. "Gloomy White Sunday" is pure folk, like some lost seventies UK single, or Current 93 channeling their sonic forefathers. Gorgeously dark and languorous. And then there's the perplexing but brilliant "Occidental Identity", which steals wholesale the main riff from the Who's "Pinball Wizard", and transforms it into a haunting chunk of dark folk, intertwining vocals wrapped around that instantly recognizable riff, eventually the acoustic guitar drops out, leaving just the dynamic crashes, while strung in between are strange drones and processed vocals. A totally brilliant appropriation.
The rest of the record dabbles in both: moody, melancholy folky strum, and the occasional purloined musical phrase or melody, as well as bits of cinematic ambience, dramatic strings, thick washed out drones, and various other mysterious sounds, with the focal point remaining the songs, the strum and the voice. All the disparate elements gorgeously woven into one of the coolest weirdest collections of dark apocalyptic folk we've heard in ages.
EM Records of Japan is a label from which we *always* are eager to hear more, specializing as they do in the most odd, obscure, awesome reissues EVER. Without them, we wouldn't have such a great selection of musical saw cds here at Aquarius. Or '70s New Age weirdness. Or psychedelic surf music soundtracks. Or (most recently) steel drum jazz funk!
While the steel drum jazz funk might have appealed mostly to the more eccentric crate digging DJ types, we know that THIS release is gonna really take off here. That's 'cause it's all about the DRONE. And y'all love drone we know.
Yoshi Wada is a Japanese artist who relocated to New York City in the late '60s and (just like another Japanese expatriate, Yoko Ono) got heavily involved with the conceptual art movement known as Fluxus. Doing sculpture, performance, and sound installations, he rubbed elbows with the likes of minimalist maverick LaMonte Young, studying with both him and Indian vocal guru Pandit Pran Nath. That's very evident on this album, the intriguingly titled Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile, which was originally released on vinyl in 1982 by the avant garde label India Navigation (responsible for important Dreyblatt and Niblock documents as well). Wada only made two records, of which this one is considered his most significant, not to mention rarest.
There's two long tracks here (over a half-hour each). Both are utter drooooooooooone nirvana. Track one, "Singing" (31:06), is ALL voice, Wada giving long guttural throat-bleatings (waaaaah waaaaaah ooooooooo....) that he builds into a gorgeous, rising and falling soundscape of overtones and drones. He recorded it in an empty swimming pool for extra bass and natural echoing effect... the results are serene yet joyous, somehow liturgical, suggestive of blissful monkish raptures. Wada certainly got into it, actually spending the night before this recording *sleeping* alone in the pool, and (he says) almost experiencing auditory hallucinations due to the resonant acoustics of the space.
The second track, side two of the original LP, is a continuation of the first with even MORE drone. Entitled "Bagpipe" (33:17), it adds to Wada's vocal intonations the sound of experimental homebuilt reed instruments of Wada's own devising, "adapted bagpipes with sympathy" made of plumbing tubes, powered by an air compressor. Improvising with voice and "bagpipe", this piece is much louder, denser, and grindingly trance-like than the far more delicate first track. The two instruments he used are pictured on this cd's back cover. One is called The Elephantine Crocodile, and another The Alligator. Both are Partch-like sound-making sculptural objects in their own right. They're carefully tuned to take advantage of higher octave harmonics and microtonal partials and other things that we'd need more study of music theory to understand exactly, but obviously with which Wada is fully conversant. What we do know for sure is that with his voice and unusual instruments he's conjured a deeply psychedelic and meditative dronescape that we're darn glad EM (in conjunction with another cool Japanese label, Omega Point) have seen fit to unearth and reissue!!
If you like drones, this not only a worthy historical document, but also would be a fantastic listen even if it had just been recorded yesterday. In fact, it compares interestingly to another drone release reviewed this list, Schmickler and Chisholm's Amazing Daze. But Wada achieved these drones without the aid of electronics or computers. About the only complaint we could make about it is the rather abrupt ending! We realize that it can't go on forever (as much as we'd like it to) but its sudden cessation (instead of a gradual fade out) can harsh one's mellow... though if you're like us you'll listen to this going to sleep at night and won't ever make it conscious to the end anyway.
This has been digitally remastered from the original tapes, with the two pieces restored to their original intended lengths (they'd been edited down to fit on the LP release). And as usual, it gets a fabulous EM packaging job, complete with vintage b&w photos and extensive 1982 and 2007 liner notes in both English and Japanese, written by Wada himself. This one is definitely up there in the pantheon of EM essentials, and that's saying a lot.
A new ep from San Francisco's Wildildlife serves as a more concise and slightly less abusive introduction to the band than the dense and unremitting Six, December's Crucial Blast full length release (see review on list #281). Whereas Six showcases the band's expansive capabilities, Peas Feast demonstrates a band equally willing to direct their songs more pointedly. Simply put, this is the sound of a bunch of stoned Hessians taunting Tatiana the tiger (R.I.P.)...
The opener, "White Eyelidz" starts with Chrome like distorted vocals that slowly give way to a groove that is simultaneously long-haired and atonal. The vocals are treated with such reverebarance that they may have been recorded in God's icy womb. The guitar line swirls effortlessly while the band locks into circular Neu! like syncopations. The deep-sea diver finds his hidden treasure; a sludgy walk along the ocean floor. Darby Crash drops by for some tea; for the record he wants Darjeeling, fill his cup 5/4th's full.
"Violent", keeps it super slow and heavy. Picture My Bloody Valentine on 6.66 RPM. Harmonies shouldn't work but they do, possibly accidentally. Every sound feeds back grossly. Like a too full stomach. But the food's just so good, how're you gonna stop eating? Yet the song only gets slower and slower and now your burrito weighs seven pounds. Gentle Californian psych licks expedite the digestive process. Still, you're gonna shit blood.
If your crusty friend P-Nutty let his dog stick his head out of the window of a car he didn't have, "The Shining Son" is what it would sound like inside his doggie's brain. This is easily the catchiest song Wildildlife has ever written. Vocals wretch triumphantly, trying in vain to disgrace this gem of a pop song. Not gonna happen. The final track, "My Song", which had appeared earlier as an acoustic track on the bands self-titled EP, mixes an urgent sing-songy dementia with timpanic bass and drum blasts. This review has yet to mention the constant presence of the shrieking guitar, and this track is jammed with it, beginning to end. The epic track eventually melts away into a into a lalaland that channels a desperation not heard since the coda of Leonard Cohen's "One of us Cannot be Wrong." It should also be said that the experience of seeing Wildildlife's live show can range from pseudo-intentional beer-on-amp pouring to psychosexual hypnosis to telekinetic skull-bashery. Buy this ep it is HIGH-ly recommended.
(Thanks to aQ pal Amitai for the killer review!)
The always fascinating year end 'Rewind' issue of The Wire, a magazine that most people who shop at aQ probably already read, and if not, probably should. This month Radian guitarist Stefan Nemeth, electronic musicians NSI, Global Ear on Pacitan (in Java), musical historians and re-enacters Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Invisible Jukebox with AMM's Keith Rowe, ex-Japan drummer Steve Jansen, aQ fave Six Organs Of Admittance, an eyewitness account of one of our favorite scenes, Sweden in the late sixties and early seventies: Parson Sound, International Harvester, Trad Gras Och Stenar and more, the usual massive collection of reviews, lps, cds, tapes, dvds, performances, installations, festivals, books, films, exhibitions, etc., a back page Epiphany from Napalm Death founder Nick Bullen reflecting of Crass, and of course since it's the Rewind issue, various writers and artists look back on 2007, discussing the highs and lows of a tumultuous year. In addition to the Wire's best records of 2007, and lists from the Wire staff, as well as various "The Year In�' pieces, you also get lists and reflections from Robert Wyatt, Battles, Grinderman, Ricardo Villalobos, Pram, Om, Laub, Rhys Chatham, Pole and more. Always a good read, and lots of lists to pore through and find all the goodies you may have missed in 2007...
It doesn't really get any more METAL than this. Wormsblood. Killer name. Wicked illegible logo, the band name written out in the black roots of some hellish plant. Over a black and white photocopied canyonscape. Epic and windswept, snow covered and GRIM. The man behind Wormsblood is Wyrdskull, and to the black cause he contributes "common ritual tools, heavy-handed electro-overblood, vibrations of the unsilent dark tomes and the crossing of song and siege." Guests include Crimson Maaritkitaka who delivers "cryptwyrm bloodlet and akashic magnet", Vragknacht The Two-Handed, who offers up "battle-ready bloodsong", then the song titles: "Thundercall", "The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken", "Ritual Of Bone And Horn", "Tolling Beyond Our Lunar Trance", plus they do a Manilla Road cover, "Street Jammer" and they even offer up a hearty "Hails to the fucking Mad Street Hammers".
But for all the pure troo metal action, the sound is anything but, which is most likely due to the fact that Wormsblood is very likely made up of folks from the free noise / freak folk scene, who in Wormsblood finally get the opportunity to indulge in their darker musical side, to touch that blackened part of their music soul, to unleash all those pent up demonic forces, and the result is a dizzying confusional blast of chaotic, lo-fi, muddled and muddy, freaked out and blown out, damaged what-the-fuck blackened METAL.
The closest comparison we could come up with is probably a black metal Faxed Head, which is pretty much all we'd need to hear. The vibe is definitely similar, the riffs a garbled buzzing mess, thick swaths of weird keyboard, the drums splattery and stumbling and blasting, the tape hiss, and random instrument buzz as much a part of the sound as the bands damaged black roar, then there are the vocals, hysterical shrieks, rumbling grunting moans, haunted howling, the tracks often crumbling into utter disarray, or coalescing into epic doomy pound, everything drenched in malfunctioning electronics and fried FX.
An absolutely dementedly genius fucked up black metal noiserock melt down. Packaged in a super strange fold over plastic sleeve, with multiple printed inserts, and most likely crazy limited...
Latest release from the crazy prolific E.E.E. Recordings label, home to all things unblack, as in Christian black metal. We've gone into the whole unblack thing at great length in the past. While it may seem antithetical to most, a music that was founded and is defined by its very anti-Christian bent, being subverted and appropriated to glorify the Lord, but we'll leave all that stuff to the chatrooms and message boards, all we know is this unblack stuff sounds amazing! In the past we've raved about Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Elgibbor, Flaskavsae, Offerblod and Njiqahdda, check any of those reviews for more on the whole unblack phenomenon, in the meantime, we'll investigate the grim buzzing soundworld of Wrathful Plague.
With a name like Wrathful Plague, and the fact that these guys are on E.E.E., you might assume that this is more unblack metal, but in fact, according to the label, the band is non-religious, not the first E.E.E. band to keep their convictions on the DL (Drommer is another), thankfully, they SOUND unblack, which by now has a definite sonic connotation. Unblack artists are definitely on the fucked and freaked out end of the BM spectrum, the sounds as much a part of their music as the songs, sure there's plenty of grim buzz, and furious blast beats and harsh hellish vocals, but all performed and recorded in such a way, that they end up smeared and blurred, murky and damaged, tape hiss offering up as much buzz as the guitars, the tone changing from muddy and muffled, to tinny and brittle, but it a way that only adds to the mood and atmosphere of the music.
Wrathful Plague, for all its claims of eschewing religion, at least in the context of their music, DOES in fact feature folks from all of the above mentioned bands, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, etc. so we imagine there is some pro-God action going on somewhere in there, but the more important thing is, that it -sounds- as awesomely fucked up as records by those other bands.
WP are not as mathy or complex and convoluted as a lot of E.E.E. bands, instead, they traffic in raw blasting fury, and in this case, the lo-fi recording enhances the bands washed out buzz in a big way. The guitars grind and swirl, but sound looped, often blurring into near static streaks of minor key sound, the drums, programmed it sounds like, are a chaotic framework, buried miles down in the mix, offering up another crackling layer of hiss, the vocals a distorted croak, the distortion alien sounding, and blown out, so at it's most furious, various overtones begin to surface and beat wildly against each other, creating strange subtle rhythmic variations and subtle distortions and causing the sound to become even more hazy and indistinct. A blurry blast that manages to be fierce and black and grim but also warm and dizzyingly droning and intensely hypnotic. Minus the few acoustic interludes, it's a mesmerizing chunk of relentless black drone hypno-metal. And if you can read the words "black drone hypno-metal" and not buy this record, that you are made of stronger stuff than us...
Swans. Godflesh. Big Black. Melvins. Eyehategod. Unsane. Zeni Geva. We're concerned here with the latter, who maybe aren't as well known as the first half dozen bands mentioned, but sure as heck belong in that illustrious company... and sound VERY much like some unholy, heavier-than-thou hybrid of all of 'em!! It's been a long time since we've had a new Zeni Geva album to write about... and no this isn't actually a new album. But we're still pretty excited. Every once in a while, we have the opportunity to list and review an old favorite. Something that's been out of print for longer even than we've been doing the Aquarius website and New Arrivals emails, that we'd never had the chance to stock and recommend before, that finally at long last gets a well-deserved reissue and is cause for much celebration 'round here. For instance, to name a couple of recent examples, Harvey Milk's My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment Of What My Love Could Be. And Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper. You'll note the examples we just cited are all on the "heavy" side... well that's 'cause what we're about to recommend here also pretty darn heavy. To say the least.
You may already be familiar with Japan's Zeni Geva, as they've been around for years and years. This cult "progressive hardcore" trio is the brainchild of guitarist Kazuyuki Kishino Null, also well-known for his "nullsonic" solo recordings. Definitely influenced by early Swans, KK Null started up the doomy and noisy ZG in about 1987. Previously he'd done time in Tokyo underground industrial noise-terrorists Absolut Null Punkt, and with prog act YBO2, which also featured drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, who of course later went on to lead the incredible Magmoid duo Ruins. Meanwhile, post-YBO2, Null formed the far more metallic* Zeni Geva. Null did draft Yoshida in to play drums on some early ZG material (wouldn't you?), and you'll here him here on about half of this disc's tracks, contributing his distinctive vocals as well to a couple songs. Ikuro Taketani (ex-Hanatarashi) plays drums on the other half. The lineup also includes Tabata Mitsuru (ex-Boredoms and Leningrad Blues Machine) on guitar. That's right, there's no bassist in Zeni Geva which is pretty incredible considering how hellishly heavy they are! And it's clear that ZG are something of a underground Japanese rock supergroup.
MMM was ZG's first cd release, coming out originally in 1990 on the UK's now long-gone Pathological label. It's a lumbering juggernaut fully blessed and bloated with everything we LOVE about Zeni Geva that would also be heard on later, Albini-produced releases like Total Castration and Desire For Agony: Utter headbanging, slo-mo, dirt-plowing destruction. Molasses thick riffs dripping from electric axes. Frenzied, technical bashing. Mathy post rock song structures. High-end guitar solo skree. Mean misanthropic attitude. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition. Pounding repetition.... adorned with the aforementioned guitar soloing, providing a crashing, crushing soundscape to underscore the throaty proclamations of "Sweetheart!" or "War Pig!" or "Blackout!" from gruff vocalist/guitarist Null -- the lyrics to these tracks being little more than the song title shouted over and over with fervent anguish. Glorious stuff, massive and mesmeric.
From the first track, the 16 minute harrowing dirge-stomp "Slam King" that ends terrifyingly with waves of unaccompanied, effected vocals, to the last, the rhythmic and witchy "On Suicide", featuring lyrics borrowed from Bertold Brecht, this is scary, monolithic, artistic heaviness of the highest order.
Let's give a big thanks to Cold Spring for making this classic available once again (as part of a wave of Japanese releases including a new disc from noise legends CCCC). Though we don't see why Cold Spring felt the need to replace the original, much more colorful, and in our opinion, superior artwork, we are happy to note that they did make one major improvement. While the eight songs on the original disc were inexplicably presented as one loooong track with no separate-song indexing (annoying!) they're thankfully corrected that. Now you can skip right to "Guystick Bodie", or put "Skullfuck" on repeat. And in addition to the eight original tracks, they've added three previously unreleased bonus cuts as well! Devastating live versions of album cuts "War Pig" (a Zeni Geva song, not Sabbath's "War Pigs" plural) and "Skullfuck", along with "Dead Car, Sun Crash" (an early ZG number not included on the album proper), recorded in Tokyo circa 1988-89. Whee! Like we said, we're so stoked to get to list/review/recommend this!
*Though not metallic enough to be accepted by the online metal authority Encyclopedia Metallum it must be noted...
